I don’t think that it’s the “we are stupid” problem. In America, the comfortable are vigilantly attuned to their rickety perches, and that is the stuff of emotionalism. This is where education as a social service has left a black hole in the national profile.
Capital punishment is predicated on bombarding voters with venomous visions of human depravity, and personalizing the anger that victims feel. There was a presidential candidate named Michael Dukakis who was destroyed in a debate when he was flummoxed by a question, which he clearly didn’t anticipate. The question was in regard to Dukakis’s opposition to capital punishment, and posed a scenario where the candidate’s wife was heinously murdered, and the candidate held firm, but didn’t engage the moment. The question was a classic example of the reporter calculating his own celebrity, and to me, that should have been the essence of the candidate’s response. Do we want victims to dictate our social norms? Put another way, can we agree that emotional reactions are not going to achieve sound policies.
I feel that as social creatures we can recognize that certain principles like fairness and equanimity are more basic and critical than the satisfaction bequeathed by identity politics. Essentially, conducting elections via TV is closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Sound and fair policies are NEVER achieved in a sealed corporate bubble that peddles its narratives to entertain and distract. George Monbiot has argued that our present level of technology could proficiently articulate our collective needs and priorities and wills. That would only exist in a society hungry for peace and democracy.
Nice try7 unwarranted... but not enough bananas... No matter how you try to analyze it, aiming 15,000 nuclear warheads at each other, knowing that using most of the weapons in national arsenals could cause human extinction, is as stupid as it gets.
Webster defines stupidity as lacking intelligence or common sense. In that sense, it implies that intelligence would prevent humans from making nuclear weapons, and so if we are intelligent beings making nuclear weapons, we are therefore Stupid.
I think we may be individually intelligent, but collectively stupid,.... i.e., the lemming syndrome. If you know there are enough nuclear arsenals to end human existence, and you say nothing or do nothing about it, then the collective is you.
To me there’s no shame and no controversy in recognizing our ancestry and primordial roots. I suspect that you are either exhausted with human attempts at self- reflection, self-improvement and social justice, or you are possibly ideologically conservative, embracing a theological fatalism regarding temporal human existence. All humans struggle and I believe that a collective awareness of our shared options and limitations is available through institutional mediation and intervention.
I think the Austrian/American attraction to corporate socialization and value inculcation has proven over decades to be hugely successful, as Americans regurgitate the mindless, apolitical worldview that they are fed. America has been dumbed down intentionally and socially neutered by design.
I think it’s too easy to look at American society and draw negative conclusions about human nature and capacities.
I don’t think that it’s the “we are stupid” problem. In America, the comfortable are vigilantly attuned to their rickety perches, and that is the stuff of emotionalism. This is where education as a social service has left a black hole in the national profile.
Capital punishment is predicated on bombarding voters with venomous visions of human depravity, and personalizing the anger that victims feel. There was a presidential candidate named Michael Dukakis who was destroyed in a debate when he was flummoxed by a question, which he clearly didn’t anticipate. The question was in regard to Dukakis’s opposition to capital punishment, and posed a scenario where the candidate’s wife was heinously murdered, and the candidate held firm, but didn’t engage the moment. The question was a classic example of the reporter calculating his own celebrity, and to me, that should have been the essence of the candidate’s response. Do we want victims to dictate our social norms? Put another way, can we agree that emotional reactions are not going to achieve sound policies.
I feel that as social creatures we can recognize that certain principles like fairness and equanimity are more basic and critical than the satisfaction bequeathed by identity politics. Essentially, conducting elections via TV is closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Sound and fair policies are NEVER achieved in a sealed corporate bubble that peddles its narratives to entertain and distract. George Monbiot has argued that our present level of technology could proficiently articulate our collective needs and priorities and wills. That would only exist in a society hungry for peace and democracy.
Nice try7 unwarranted... but not enough bananas... No matter how you try to analyze it, aiming 15,000 nuclear warheads at each other, knowing that using most of the weapons in national arsenals could cause human extinction, is as stupid as it gets.
Webster defines stupidity as lacking intelligence or common sense. In that sense, it implies that intelligence would prevent humans from making nuclear weapons, and so if we are intelligent beings making nuclear weapons, we are therefore Stupid.
I think we may be individually intelligent, but collectively stupid,.... i.e., the lemming syndrome. If you know there are enough nuclear arsenals to end human existence, and you say nothing or do nothing about it, then the collective is you.
No offense... just my thoughts...
To me there’s no shame and no controversy in recognizing our ancestry and primordial roots. I suspect that you are either exhausted with human attempts at self- reflection, self-improvement and social justice, or you are possibly ideologically conservative, embracing a theological fatalism regarding temporal human existence. All humans struggle and I believe that a collective awareness of our shared options and limitations is available through institutional mediation and intervention.
I think the Austrian/American attraction to corporate socialization and value inculcation has proven over decades to be hugely successful, as Americans regurgitate the mindless, apolitical worldview that they are fed. America has been dumbed down intentionally and socially neutered by design.
I think it’s too easy to look at American society and draw negative conclusions about human nature and capacities.