Confusion of Ideas 101, class1
What do I mean by “confusion of ideas”? The premise is simple. You, and I, and everyone who was born after about 10,000 B.C. (B.C.E. if you’re picky, but the date is arbitrary anyway, so it really doesn’t matter) has been subjected to a deliberate attempt at mental confusion since birth. In most cases, this attempt is highly successful. The purpose of this confusion is to create a non-critical mind; one that is not very capable at employing critical thinking to solve problems, and one that completely lacks confidence in its own ability to make good judgments. Such a mind is superstitious, and susceptible to persuasion to a far greater degree than a self-confident, critical mind would be. Hell, the tools of persuasion one uses on a superstitious mind need not be provably real.
What possible motive could there be for this? Also simple. A leader requires followers. In and elitist society, one is elevated upon the backs of the less fortunate; the more backs, the better. This holds true no matter what guise the relationship takes. In sales, it is known as the principle of leverage. In the capitalist business structure at large, it produces the gulf between the few high-salaried positions at the top, and the many more moderate incomes of the workers who actually produce the marketable product. It is also the mechanism responsible for turning the government of the CCCP into a privileged class. For every person that rises above the median of wealth and privilege, about 10 to 30 must sink below the median, depending on the economic wealth of the region. The higher one rises, the more numerous must be those below median to provide support. Ultimately, another several tiers are created, sinking below the poverty line. If we all possessed equal potential as leaders, the reward for leadership would not be as great. There are many mechanisms in place to create barriers to entry into the elite class, but in my opinion, the primary and most fundamental barrier is the confusion of ideas, and the social acceptance thereof.
Where does it start? It starts with the gullibility of young children and our social training to screw around with it. Example: Santa Claus. Harmless mythology, or reinforcement for things to come? If you’re Christian, try to remember when you were really little, and you believed in Santa Claus. Put yourself back into that state of unconditional acceptance if you can. Now try to remember how you felt when you found out that Santa wasn’t real. Disoriented? Disillusioned? Was there some gnawing doubt about your ability to process reality and make competent decisions? Maybe you just felt all squirmy inside and didn’t have a name to put on the feeling. Maybe your intellectual Waterloo was something else, but similar. You were the victim of a confusion of ideas, resulting in self-doubt and uncertainty. This is the unnatural nature of society: in order to create more followers than leaders, leadership qualities must be extinguished.
This is not the essay that I intended to write, but I am still learning the principle of parsimony. If anyone out there is interested, you will have to wait for more.
posted by breakerslion @ 5:24 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Non critical mind is dangerous. A people with non critical mind is so easily fooled by the government! Then we call a system "democracy", yet there are almost only puppets moved by the politicians, or even worse, by people who stay hidden and use the politicians as puppets... Going back to Esperanto, it's really easy to learn... I'm struggling now with Japanese and I'm sure I'll be fluent in it this year :-). Even after leaving more than 5 years in the States, I find weird the fact that most of the people here can only speak on language, hehehe. I agree, they don't really need (yet) to speak more than English. But with China's ascension and the hispanic population on the rise, you never know what surprises await for us :-).
I can trace my own "confusion of ideas" trail to my childhood. I grew up on a small farm in the woods of central Massachusetts, and was well versed in the birds and the bees from the time I was quite small. Nothing was hidden from me when it came to animal reproduction, but that was, well, animals. People were somehow different. I remember the first time I ever performed fellatio on someone, I felt like I was doing the most unspeakable, horrible thing because of the memory of the way my mother had almost whispered the words "oral sex" with a look of horror on her face. The fact that I enjoyed what I was doing and the effect it had on my partner made me realize that there was something amiss, and I spent quite a lot of time feeling confused and disconcerted. Then I realized that the cause of my discomfort was the "confusion of ideas" garnered from childhood and adolescence, when it was drummed into me that sex was necessary, but should not be enjoyed. When I asked "why?", it was met with that same look of horror and a half explanation that it was a debasing, animalistic thing and should not be dwelt upon.
I have since worked hard to rid myself of that limiting, damaging idea that sex is unclean and nasty, and had quite a lot of success at it. Now the question I have is "How many more things were forced into my impressionable young mind that I have yet to recognize and still to vanquish?" I can't even beging to hazard a guess. All I know is I am glad that I am willful enough to enjoy the hell out of sex, and I believe that I can overcome anything that doesn't make sense to me, given enough time and desire.
I have the feeling, watching all the media, that sex is believed now as a MUST, as someting COMPULSORY. We all MUST have sex, otherwise people will think we're crazy... Sex can be clean or unclean, depending of how you do it, with whom you do it, and what place doe it occupy in your life. But ultimately, unless there's love behind it, it's only an ephemereal pleasure that wastes our time and keeps us from evolving into a higher quality being. And, we don't really use sex to reproduce, do we? It's becoming more like a drug for most of the humans. It's worth reading some of Mantak Chia's books about sex as a tool for spiritual evolution...
Indeed, I have read a few of Mantak Chia's books, and his ideas align much with my own feelings about sexuality/spirituality. I have never considered sex to be a mere recreation, as many of my peers have, but as a way of communing with my partner (and I do not take that term lightly) on a deeper level. The stigma I was trying to describe here was the notion that ALL sexual expression between two consenting humans was a source of shame rather than beauty. My parents were from an era that used shame and guilt about our bodies as a means of controlling behavior. I reject the notion that giving pleasure to and accepting pleasure from my lover has any taint of shame to it. It is a source of joy, energy, and soul-deep satisfaction, in whatever form our interactions should take.
Back to points raised;
Knowledge, intellect, wisdom - all highly anti-democratic things. The closer your internal model of reality approximates that reality, the smaller the number of individuals who share that model.
The Pat Robertsons, Osama bin Ladens, and Louis Farrakhans - and their faithful - will always vastly outnumber the Hawkings, Einsteins and Dawkinses and the 'elistists' who share their more accurate models of reality.
How do you tell the average citizen, with his innumerable misperceptions, low self-awareness and faith in majority rule - that virtually all of human progress consists of the products of a very small number of 'elite' minds?
Try Kornbluth's 'The Marching Morons' for some insight into this matter.
Your analysis sounds like Marxism despite the fact that you see Chinese Communism as capitalistic or elitist. Marxism is also a confusion of ideas. See Karl Popper on closed system thinking and potential falsifiability or the lack of it.
What you are observing is probably the way of nature. The challenge is to deprogram yourself out of the belief systems you were originally sold into. You must realize that you are living in a competitive society in which people are constantly trying to "sell" you belief systems which may or may not be valid and some of these belief systems may not have much depth of justification.
Most people become what they're taught to become and a few people learn to teach themselves what to become. Those people probably deserve to become the elite. It is a struggle to develop the ability to think for yourself. Even in higher education there is a heirarchy. Undergrads do not have the independence to use the college library as skillfully as a graduate student.
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