On the Eve of the Midterms, 2022
Some words from others that play around in my head:
“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.” Frank Zappa
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“If you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“Large numbers of people feel left behind both economically and socially. As a result, they are turning to populist—or at least popular—politicians who have limited experience of government and whose ability to take calm decisions in a crisis has yet to be tested.” Stephen Hawking
“A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves.” Jared Diamond
“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure about anything, and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.” Richard Feynman
“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.” Richard Feynman
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” From a psychoanalytic report of Adolph Hitler commissioned by William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the OSS (U.S. Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA) and submitted by Harvard psychoanalyst Walter C. Langner and others to the OSS during WW II, in late 1943 or early 1944.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman
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Some thoughts of my own:
The atmosphere around our home planet is a fragile sheath that makes all life possible. Protecting it is our top priority. Every other problem is secondary. We cannot take the easy path of blaming somebody else for the damage we’ve done to our life support system. We’re all responsible. We have to accept that solving these problems will be extremely complex and difficult, and denial won’t get the job done. We have to change the way we think and live—a task that seems impossible. Still, we have to believe that every act of good will contributes.
Joining the mob is a failure of courage.
Everybody wants the world that is familiar to them to remain as it is. But it will change. The survivors will be those who can adapt.
Turn off the propaganda and think for yourself.
Beware of simplistic answers for complex problems. Laziness breeds servitude—
Love subtlety, creativity, and mystery.
Don’t fear historical facts that make you uncomfortable. Know what happened. Teach your children what happened.
Banning books, ideas is malignant. Trust the marketplace of ideas. There is no democracy without it.
Mistrust anything that requires you to prefer an abstraction over the flesh and blood standing before you.
Beware any tribal belief that forces you into hypocrisy, and the undignified groveling you have to do to justify it.
As sleight of hand magicians work by getting you to look the other way, propaganda magnifies minor problems to conceal the real ones.
Whatever keeps your mind in a furor is keeping you from thinking for yourself and owns your mind. Beware of anybody continually throwing red meat to your prejudices. Know your prejudices.
Certainties have a bad habit of decaying with the passage of time into new questions.
Democracy is not possible without a critical mass of people with free minds. Not having a free mind is bad; not wanting one is worse.
Run from talking faces that make the irrational sound real.
Philosopher-king, liberator, savior—there’s just no such being. Think. For. Yourself.
You wish for a war, a coup, a dictator? The wish will turn on you like a rabid dog.
Looking around one day and realizing not everybody is like you is not a good reason to go into politics.
People aren’t angry so much as they’ve been pulled into an all-absorbing game and the instinct to win has taken over (see Zappa). They don’t dare think about what they will win.
Not even Dante could imagine a deep enough level of Hell for the people who have grown rich pitting us against each other, profiting off the destruction of the best thing the world has seen.
Mistrust anyone whose driving motivation is to be right.
October 25, 2022