Redistribute wealth, remove most white people in power, abolish police and prisons, give preference to some regardless of aptitude (equity) instead of equal opportunity, "free" health care, universal basic income, reparations, get rid of private property, "free" housing, and gender affirming care are just some of what they want. You can be the judge which ones would be acceptable. I haven't even touched on their lunacy of double standards, contradictions, punishing those who don't fall in line with their agenda or their violent and unstable behaviors, just the policies they want.
They sure have! Personally, I believe that the whole gender thing is going to be the lead issue that will bring about the fall of this house of cards. Of all the bizarre destructive components of the progressive agenda the gender thing is just the biggest deal breaker of them all. Endocrinologist , surgeons, pediatricians, psychiatrists, not to mention parents and school counselors, are advocating for surgically altering children’s bodies and injecting drugs that will leave them sterilized. Anyone who thinks this is EVER acceptable has absolutely lost their mind. It just terrifies me.
You hit on a fascinating issue. Liberals tend to see the world as they wish it to be, rather than how it is. They are often factually challenged and often echo talking points from MSM. Some of it is education/brainwashing, some seems more innate. Whoever can figure out how to talk to progressives successfully should get a Nobel Prize, though I'm sure the Nobel Committee wouldn't vote for that.
There's apparently a massive amount of insulation for the top 10% of household wealth these days. It's allowed bien pensant elites to construct dream worlds that bear very little resemblance to the street level reality of the sub-Olympian realm of existence.
I'm reading ominous talk in the thread about civic breakdown being the result of some sinister conspiracy coordinated from on high by villainous billionaires...nahh. Even worst-case scenario, the primary driver of tragedies like Seattle is what I call Pernicious Fatuity. An attitude mostly held by comfortably affluent professional managerial class liberals (and their children).
We also have a dismal profusion of street addicts- a problem that's been driven by half-measures that coddle even the most antisocial behaviors of the most dysfunctional addicts, while keeping the substances completely prohibited and leaving the users dependent on keeping up a relationship with a supply chain staffed entirely by criminalized suppliers, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. The addicts (only the addicts, but that's most of the market) are better off getting their supplies from medical doctors; it's the most effective way to stabilize junkies long enough that they can escape the process of degradation long enough to maybe realize what they're doing to themselves. And also the most direct way to deprive the illicit opioid- now including fentanyl- dealers of their customers.
The other side of the policy has to be that anyone trespassing, taking a dump in the street, shoplifting to feed their habit, denying public space on sidewalks or parks, littering with their dirty needles, or any of the rest of the list of malum in se behaviors that are already on the books as misdemeanors needs to get hauled off to Rehab Jail for a year of lockup- at minimum, after their first failure to appear on a citation. The softcores will clear out; the hardcores will have to be cleared out. No community has any business conferring de facto impunity on shiftless habitual offenders.
Drug law reform is probably required to put a regulated (and non-profiteering) medicalization addict maintenance program in place, and the sooner the better. But the second part can be done right away. It isn't about criminalizing anyone for being poor, or simply for using forbidden substances. It's about accountability for criminal acts that everyone agrees are crimes.
You're welcome... I'm always embarrassed when I get a written compliment in reply to any of my posts, and wonder whether I should upvote it in return. I'm dubious about the productive utility of upvotes in general. (Definitely not a fan of using Top Comments as the default ranking of comment accessibility...too inertial.) I read a lot of good comments that I don't upvote, just because I don't know why. But I also hand them out sometimes, so you're getting one.
I say upvotes when You can find something worthy. But I tend to find a lotta things worthy, and sometimes don't.
As far as drug legalization, I'm right there with You. (John McWhorter thinks this will also reduce contacts between Blacks and police, and by that alone will reduce conflicts. Mebbe so.)
Thing is to look at unintended consequences. Unless You focus the dollars saved from the war on drugs over to treatment and prevention, You're gonna have some real problems in the future. I mean.. Ten or twenty years from now when AI and automation have eliminated a large percentage of the jobs, then a lotta people will just drug their way through the years, right?
"John McWhorter thinks this will also reduce contacts between Blacks and police, and by that alone will reduce conflicts."
Both logic and history indicate that taking the illegal drug market out of the hands of the criminal underworld will also dramatically reduce the number of contacts of the bodies of black people with bullets fired in their direction by people who aren't police. (Often by other black people, according to statistics.)
[ parenthetically: "black people" this, and "black people" that...if we're gonna get all sensitive about descriptive language, how about pursuing the goal of maximum accuracy? Use wood tones, or something...assigned on an individual basis. I think John McWorther would agree. As would Thomas Sowell, who entitled one of his books Pink and Brown People. Which is still a bit too vague and over-general, but which neatly dispenses with the overarching metaphysical implications of the terms "black" and "white", words that tacitly add so much confusion when adapted for an inappropriate purpose that they're capable of derailing entire conversations into utter incoherence. It's at least as bad as the reliance on "left" and "right"...terms that are for turn signals, not political symbolism. ]
Right, it isn't about logic. It's about accepting the convention that's most commonly accepted. Noise quotient notwithstanding, and with due allowance for idiosyncrasy. (ex. I once knew an American of substantially sub-Saharan African ancestry who referred to himself as "Black", and his ex-wife, whose identity was assigned as "Black" by her native* South Africa**, as "African." He was telling me about her once, and described her as Black, and then corrected himself; "She wasn't Black; she was African." For him, as pplied to humans, the definition of "Black" relied in part on "native-born American" cultural heritage. )
I've tried to tell people that I'm a member of the Angel Race, but that has a way of resulting in no end of confusion. It's like an inner teaching, fated to be understood by only a self-selected few. On matters of Identity, I'm typically enjoined to answer to the wider, more mundane social consensus. But I'm not terribly traumatized by that particular situation. It's merely a pity.
[*"native" in the sense of the matter of the country where she was born, and held ancestral heritage.]
[** the nation, not the region. Complete title, Republic of South Africa. Abbreviated for the convenience of the readers. Footnoted in an effort to remove every last possibility of confusion on that score.]
As for the "purist" ideal of semantics that's shared by John McWorther, Alfred Korzybski, me, and the rest of the people who have learned to think that way***: the purpose isn't Purism for Purity's sake, it's Purism for Clarity's sake. Improving the ratio of signal to noise gets verbal language closer to a basis in factual reality. Plays hell with Poetics, however.
[ *** nobody just starts out with these ideas, as if we have some sort of extra-special brain; we all have to achieve a familiar acquaintance with the basic principles of General Semantics****, like the problems with "the is of identity" that get solved by learning to think in "e-prime." Which is hard work, no kidding. Unending. ]
[ **** The basic principles are sufficient. They're the ones that can be modeled with informal logic. Alfred Korzybski, the founder of the named subdiscipline of Linguistics known as General Semantics, was formally trained as an engineer. He got into modeling the principles of communication with formal logic equations...whoa. Thankfully, most of us can skip over that level of concentration. But for what it's worth, Korzybski's insights about language show up how out of his depth Richard Dawkins is, with his cute little "meme" coinage. ]
You expanded on Your original post in interesting Ways. I don't mean to be critical. I would note that spending time SEEING reality is also a worthy effort. Time and inclination don't suit me for learning much about General Semantics.
But I'd be interested in what You mean by Richard Dawkins being outta his depth about the "'meme' coinage." Did he invent the term then, mebbe? And?
I'll hafta think about the others. TY for replies.
I want criticism, especially if its purpose is constructive. Criticism works as a prompt for me.
Learning to "see reality" calls for as much discipline and practice as General Semantics (a subject which consists in large part of learning to notice how seeing "seeing reality" is focused, edited, or otherwise altered by language use- and by language abuse.) Processing reality isn't merely a matter of perception; even in the case of most non-human animal species, perceptions from the sensory faculties are received by the cognitive faculty that assembles (and to some extent edits) them into a usable structure. In the case of humans, the cognitive center is linked to an extensive and complex memory bank, a goodly portion of which is handled by the unique verbal faculties of humans. Memory isn't merely a set of files; its elements also function to provide associations. The human verbal faculty provides for the ability to provide those linkages, and to allow them in such a wide array. Although they don't necessarily wire together in a productive way. In fact, carelessly linked chains of word association are liable to get in the way of accurately "seeing the world."
To provide an updated summary of Immanuel Kant, our neural systems function as communications media. We don't view "reality" directly; we process the signals that we receive into a useful model of it. Both the external and internal realms offer sets of stimuli, which we receive and assemble into "the world". Ideally, the goal is to have our cognition and our verbal ideas match closely enough with what's actually happening that- at minimum- we stay out of trouble. But humans have a strange vulnerability to favor our structured verbal ideas and plans over paying continuous attention to our cognition, or to noticing when conditions change, or when our verbal thoughts don't match up with what's actually happening. That's where learning General Semantics and Informal Logic can help with "seeing reality." Not only do the principles work to provide a more accurate assessment, they also work to remind the thinker of the limits of their knowledge, and hence the limits of that assessment. Along with aiding the thinker's ability to make accurate and appropriate judgements, they also acquaint them with a sense of the limits of their judgements, and the ability to suspend them in favor of asking more questions.
"I'd be interested in what You mean by Richard Dawkins being outta his depth about the "'meme' coinage. Did he invent the term then, mebbe? And?"
Richard Dawkins did invent the word "meme." And his ideas about language are drawn entirely from his background in genetics; Dawkins doesn't appear to have considered the notion that verbal language and genetics actually share very little overlap, and that the amount of overlap they do share is largely coincidental. Dawkins is too in love with the cleverness of his supposed insights to examine them for the ways in which they go astray, which are abundant.
Dawkins' definition of "meme" is all-encompassing: "a unit of cultural transmission."* Dawkins views verbal constructions (and related imagery, signs and symbols) as following a model of evolutionary progress: the fittest "verbal meaning packets" (memes) survive.
The postulate is flawed from the outset; to begin with, words are not discrete "units", and neither are phrases. They're always embedded contextually, attached to chains of associations and reference that are potentially endless. It's arguably possible for language features to "evolve" in some respects. But other times they just change, that's all. What they change to isn't necessarily better.
Furthermore, Dawkins doesn't even begin to address the challenges of examining semantics, because his entire theory would fall apart if he did. For him, the value of a "meme" is demonstrated by its fast spread, ascendancy to mass popularity, and durability of its acceptance in the currency of discourse. But the fact that some verbal constructions happen to exhibit those qualities (typically within a relatively limited span of time, albeit sometimes longer than the average human lifespan) is not the key to viewing human language functioning and its relation to thought. Dawkins is implicitly advocating for the view that human cultural transmission is chiefly reliant on the techniques mastered by advertising campaigns and propagandists. He evidently hasn't realized that as far as using language with the goal of conveying substantial value on the basis of content, Pavlovian conditioning/reinforcement techniques like branding, eye-catching imagery, other attractive or aversive stimuli, and continual repetition work more like misleading bugs than as indicators of intrinsic merit. Look no further than Dawkins' coinage "meme"; it's undeniably catchy- easy to say, easy to rhyme, easy to spell, easy to remember- Dawkins intentionally designed it that way. But as far as the ability of word content to accurately depict reality, "meme" is on par with the word "phlogiston".
[ *Dawkins' original, sweepingly ambitious definition is entirely different from the way "meme" has been creatively redefined by youthful consensus: as a still frame of a pop media image- often featuring a human's facial expression- attached to a quip of some sort, and then spread through social media. It's a tech update of a concept that's been around a long time, from graffiti to political cartooning. I much prefer the redefinition- which is delimited, and as a result comprehensible as a valid descriptor.]
If you can stand it, turn on MSNBC for a while. Left-wing people are fed lies every day, and then regurgitate those talking points. They never hear anything else (like at Common Sense, for example) and so they have no reason to use logic or reason to question the party line.
I used to listen to MSNBC all the time. Sometimes for several hours every evening. When I wasn’t doing that I was pouring over every single word of the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. All my friends did the same thing. We constantly talked about the latest rage fest also known as the MSNBC lineup. As I watched my beloved city completely crumble under the influence of a stream of woke politicians I started to get really angry and to face reality. All of the sudden I decided that I just couldn’t take it anymore. I finally got burned out on how predictable and one sided MSNBC is along with the unrelenting negativity about ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. I thought I would take a break and give myself a rest. I never turned it on again and that was over a year ago. I honestly feel like I extracted myself from a cult. I just can’t believe I fell for it. I consider myself to be pretty intelligent, I am very well educated, unendingly curious, and a voracious reader. And yet I still got pulled into the complete nonsense! I’m still working on forgiving myself. In the meantime I switched to mostly independent media and started to “recover”. I have finally got my head on straight again. What a relief. Good grief, it was simply just ridiculous. It’s soooo hard to not get sucked into left wing mainstream media and culture when you live in a very woke part of the country. It’s also extremely socially isolating when you are an outlier and don’t speak the woke party line. I’m trying to get my friends out of the cult. Almost zero success on that project!
I applaud your move. The groupthink on cable news channels is appalling. The whole "24 hour news" model is bogus. And to think the news channels run stories about how Facebook uses alogrithms for "attention driving." CNN, FOX, MSNBC have been using the hosts and guest lineups of their shows to do the same thing for decades.
But if you really want an eye-opener, stop watching any television at all for a year. News or not news. The ads are some of the worst chronic mind poison of all. Ironically, some of the worst messages are sent by the ads for "medications."
In this era you'd probably need to dump a lot of computer watching/scrolling, too, in order to get the benefit I have in mind. It's difficult to stop being distracted and drawn in by computer garbage. But there are programs that can help you limit your exposure. Takes a lot of self-discipline to use them. But self-discipline is the best kind.
I would agree. TV I bought a year or two ago is still in the box. No social media at all. I get random bits of news, like here. I read. Comment too much. And try to read books, but haven't kept up on that as much lately.
But it'll really open Your eyes, if You get away from TV and social media.. TV the least of it, actually. And I was just *lucky* I never got addicted to SM and thank my lucky stars. (Everybody knows, by now, that they're *designed* to be addictive, right?)
They are taught to turn off their brain. No need for reason or skepticism - because the Party (and their media propagandists) tells you what they want you to know. They brain wash people. They act more like a cult than a political party.
Easy. BLM's funding by guilty Whites is allowing BLM's leaders to buy mansions in wealthy White areas, thus bringing more equity to housing discrimination.
Redistribute wealth, remove most white people in power, abolish police and prisons, give preference to some regardless of aptitude (equity) instead of equal opportunity, "free" health care, universal basic income, reparations, get rid of private property, "free" housing, and gender affirming care are just some of what they want. You can be the judge which ones would be acceptable. I haven't even touched on their lunacy of double standards, contradictions, punishing those who don't fall in line with their agenda or their violent and unstable behaviors, just the policies they want.
They sure have! Personally, I believe that the whole gender thing is going to be the lead issue that will bring about the fall of this house of cards. Of all the bizarre destructive components of the progressive agenda the gender thing is just the biggest deal breaker of them all. Endocrinologist , surgeons, pediatricians, psychiatrists, not to mention parents and school counselors, are advocating for surgically altering children’s bodies and injecting drugs that will leave them sterilized. Anyone who thinks this is EVER acceptable has absolutely lost their mind. It just terrifies me.
That's been my hope. That the gender-affirming nonsense will mobilize people to actually *look* at the end results are of this whole agenda.
You hit on a fascinating issue. Liberals tend to see the world as they wish it to be, rather than how it is. They are often factually challenged and often echo talking points from MSM. Some of it is education/brainwashing, some seems more innate. Whoever can figure out how to talk to progressives successfully should get a Nobel Prize, though I'm sure the Nobel Committee wouldn't vote for that.
There's apparently a massive amount of insulation for the top 10% of household wealth these days. It's allowed bien pensant elites to construct dream worlds that bear very little resemblance to the street level reality of the sub-Olympian realm of existence.
I'm reading ominous talk in the thread about civic breakdown being the result of some sinister conspiracy coordinated from on high by villainous billionaires...nahh. Even worst-case scenario, the primary driver of tragedies like Seattle is what I call Pernicious Fatuity. An attitude mostly held by comfortably affluent professional managerial class liberals (and their children).
We also have a dismal profusion of street addicts- a problem that's been driven by half-measures that coddle even the most antisocial behaviors of the most dysfunctional addicts, while keeping the substances completely prohibited and leaving the users dependent on keeping up a relationship with a supply chain staffed entirely by criminalized suppliers, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. The addicts (only the addicts, but that's most of the market) are better off getting their supplies from medical doctors; it's the most effective way to stabilize junkies long enough that they can escape the process of degradation long enough to maybe realize what they're doing to themselves. And also the most direct way to deprive the illicit opioid- now including fentanyl- dealers of their customers.
The other side of the policy has to be that anyone trespassing, taking a dump in the street, shoplifting to feed their habit, denying public space on sidewalks or parks, littering with their dirty needles, or any of the rest of the list of malum in se behaviors that are already on the books as misdemeanors needs to get hauled off to Rehab Jail for a year of lockup- at minimum, after their first failure to appear on a citation. The softcores will clear out; the hardcores will have to be cleared out. No community has any business conferring de facto impunity on shiftless habitual offenders.
Drug law reform is probably required to put a regulated (and non-profiteering) medicalization addict maintenance program in place, and the sooner the better. But the second part can be done right away. It isn't about criminalizing anyone for being poor, or simply for using forbidden substances. It's about accountability for criminal acts that everyone agrees are crimes.
Very thoughtful comments. Nice addition to this discussion - thanks!
You're welcome... I'm always embarrassed when I get a written compliment in reply to any of my posts, and wonder whether I should upvote it in return. I'm dubious about the productive utility of upvotes in general. (Definitely not a fan of using Top Comments as the default ranking of comment accessibility...too inertial.) I read a lot of good comments that I don't upvote, just because I don't know why. But I also hand them out sometimes, so you're getting one.
I say upvotes when You can find something worthy. But I tend to find a lotta things worthy, and sometimes don't.
As far as drug legalization, I'm right there with You. (John McWhorter thinks this will also reduce contacts between Blacks and police, and by that alone will reduce conflicts. Mebbe so.)
Thing is to look at unintended consequences. Unless You focus the dollars saved from the war on drugs over to treatment and prevention, You're gonna have some real problems in the future. I mean.. Ten or twenty years from now when AI and automation have eliminated a large percentage of the jobs, then a lotta people will just drug their way through the years, right?
"John McWhorter thinks this will also reduce contacts between Blacks and police, and by that alone will reduce conflicts."
Both logic and history indicate that taking the illegal drug market out of the hands of the criminal underworld will also dramatically reduce the number of contacts of the bodies of black people with bullets fired in their direction by people who aren't police. (Often by other black people, according to statistics.)
[ parenthetically: "black people" this, and "black people" that...if we're gonna get all sensitive about descriptive language, how about pursuing the goal of maximum accuracy? Use wood tones, or something...assigned on an individual basis. I think John McWorther would agree. As would Thomas Sowell, who entitled one of his books Pink and Brown People. Which is still a bit too vague and over-general, but which neatly dispenses with the overarching metaphysical implications of the terms "black" and "white", words that tacitly add so much confusion when adapted for an inappropriate purpose that they're capable of derailing entire conversations into utter incoherence. It's at least as bad as the reliance on "left" and "right"...terms that are for turn signals, not political symbolism. ]
Yeah, a lotta deaths can be prevented.
You're a purist, as is John McWHorter. From what I know, Blacks preferred to be called Blacks. That's the only reason I do.
Right, it isn't about logic. It's about accepting the convention that's most commonly accepted. Noise quotient notwithstanding, and with due allowance for idiosyncrasy. (ex. I once knew an American of substantially sub-Saharan African ancestry who referred to himself as "Black", and his ex-wife, whose identity was assigned as "Black" by her native* South Africa**, as "African." He was telling me about her once, and described her as Black, and then corrected himself; "She wasn't Black; she was African." For him, as pplied to humans, the definition of "Black" relied in part on "native-born American" cultural heritage. )
I've tried to tell people that I'm a member of the Angel Race, but that has a way of resulting in no end of confusion. It's like an inner teaching, fated to be understood by only a self-selected few. On matters of Identity, I'm typically enjoined to answer to the wider, more mundane social consensus. But I'm not terribly traumatized by that particular situation. It's merely a pity.
[*"native" in the sense of the matter of the country where she was born, and held ancestral heritage.]
[** the nation, not the region. Complete title, Republic of South Africa. Abbreviated for the convenience of the readers. Footnoted in an effort to remove every last possibility of confusion on that score.]
As for the "purist" ideal of semantics that's shared by John McWorther, Alfred Korzybski, me, and the rest of the people who have learned to think that way***: the purpose isn't Purism for Purity's sake, it's Purism for Clarity's sake. Improving the ratio of signal to noise gets verbal language closer to a basis in factual reality. Plays hell with Poetics, however.
[ *** nobody just starts out with these ideas, as if we have some sort of extra-special brain; we all have to achieve a familiar acquaintance with the basic principles of General Semantics****, like the problems with "the is of identity" that get solved by learning to think in "e-prime." Which is hard work, no kidding. Unending. ]
[ **** The basic principles are sufficient. They're the ones that can be modeled with informal logic. Alfred Korzybski, the founder of the named subdiscipline of Linguistics known as General Semantics, was formally trained as an engineer. He got into modeling the principles of communication with formal logic equations...whoa. Thankfully, most of us can skip over that level of concentration. But for what it's worth, Korzybski's insights about language show up how out of his depth Richard Dawkins is, with his cute little "meme" coinage. ]
You expanded on Your original post in interesting Ways. I don't mean to be critical. I would note that spending time SEEING reality is also a worthy effort. Time and inclination don't suit me for learning much about General Semantics.
But I'd be interested in what You mean by Richard Dawkins being outta his depth about the "'meme' coinage." Did he invent the term then, mebbe? And?
I'll hafta think about the others. TY for replies.
I want criticism, especially if its purpose is constructive. Criticism works as a prompt for me.
Learning to "see reality" calls for as much discipline and practice as General Semantics (a subject which consists in large part of learning to notice how seeing "seeing reality" is focused, edited, or otherwise altered by language use- and by language abuse.) Processing reality isn't merely a matter of perception; even in the case of most non-human animal species, perceptions from the sensory faculties are received by the cognitive faculty that assembles (and to some extent edits) them into a usable structure. In the case of humans, the cognitive center is linked to an extensive and complex memory bank, a goodly portion of which is handled by the unique verbal faculties of humans. Memory isn't merely a set of files; its elements also function to provide associations. The human verbal faculty provides for the ability to provide those linkages, and to allow them in such a wide array. Although they don't necessarily wire together in a productive way. In fact, carelessly linked chains of word association are liable to get in the way of accurately "seeing the world."
To provide an updated summary of Immanuel Kant, our neural systems function as communications media. We don't view "reality" directly; we process the signals that we receive into a useful model of it. Both the external and internal realms offer sets of stimuli, which we receive and assemble into "the world". Ideally, the goal is to have our cognition and our verbal ideas match closely enough with what's actually happening that- at minimum- we stay out of trouble. But humans have a strange vulnerability to favor our structured verbal ideas and plans over paying continuous attention to our cognition, or to noticing when conditions change, or when our verbal thoughts don't match up with what's actually happening. That's where learning General Semantics and Informal Logic can help with "seeing reality." Not only do the principles work to provide a more accurate assessment, they also work to remind the thinker of the limits of their knowledge, and hence the limits of that assessment. Along with aiding the thinker's ability to make accurate and appropriate judgements, they also acquaint them with a sense of the limits of their judgements, and the ability to suspend them in favor of asking more questions.
"I'd be interested in what You mean by Richard Dawkins being outta his depth about the "'meme' coinage. Did he invent the term then, mebbe? And?"
Richard Dawkins did invent the word "meme." And his ideas about language are drawn entirely from his background in genetics; Dawkins doesn't appear to have considered the notion that verbal language and genetics actually share very little overlap, and that the amount of overlap they do share is largely coincidental. Dawkins is too in love with the cleverness of his supposed insights to examine them for the ways in which they go astray, which are abundant.
Dawkins' definition of "meme" is all-encompassing: "a unit of cultural transmission."* Dawkins views verbal constructions (and related imagery, signs and symbols) as following a model of evolutionary progress: the fittest "verbal meaning packets" (memes) survive.
The postulate is flawed from the outset; to begin with, words are not discrete "units", and neither are phrases. They're always embedded contextually, attached to chains of associations and reference that are potentially endless. It's arguably possible for language features to "evolve" in some respects. But other times they just change, that's all. What they change to isn't necessarily better.
Furthermore, Dawkins doesn't even begin to address the challenges of examining semantics, because his entire theory would fall apart if he did. For him, the value of a "meme" is demonstrated by its fast spread, ascendancy to mass popularity, and durability of its acceptance in the currency of discourse. But the fact that some verbal constructions happen to exhibit those qualities (typically within a relatively limited span of time, albeit sometimes longer than the average human lifespan) is not the key to viewing human language functioning and its relation to thought. Dawkins is implicitly advocating for the view that human cultural transmission is chiefly reliant on the techniques mastered by advertising campaigns and propagandists. He evidently hasn't realized that as far as using language with the goal of conveying substantial value on the basis of content, Pavlovian conditioning/reinforcement techniques like branding, eye-catching imagery, other attractive or aversive stimuli, and continual repetition work more like misleading bugs than as indicators of intrinsic merit. Look no further than Dawkins' coinage "meme"; it's undeniably catchy- easy to say, easy to rhyme, easy to spell, easy to remember- Dawkins intentionally designed it that way. But as far as the ability of word content to accurately depict reality, "meme" is on par with the word "phlogiston".
[ *Dawkins' original, sweepingly ambitious definition is entirely different from the way "meme" has been creatively redefined by youthful consensus: as a still frame of a pop media image- often featuring a human's facial expression- attached to a quip of some sort, and then spread through social media. It's a tech update of a concept that's been around a long time, from graffiti to political cartooning. I much prefer the redefinition- which is delimited, and as a result comprehensible as a valid descriptor.]
If you can stand it, turn on MSNBC for a while. Left-wing people are fed lies every day, and then regurgitate those talking points. They never hear anything else (like at Common Sense, for example) and so they have no reason to use logic or reason to question the party line.
I used to listen to MSNBC all the time. Sometimes for several hours every evening. When I wasn’t doing that I was pouring over every single word of the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. All my friends did the same thing. We constantly talked about the latest rage fest also known as the MSNBC lineup. As I watched my beloved city completely crumble under the influence of a stream of woke politicians I started to get really angry and to face reality. All of the sudden I decided that I just couldn’t take it anymore. I finally got burned out on how predictable and one sided MSNBC is along with the unrelenting negativity about ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. I thought I would take a break and give myself a rest. I never turned it on again and that was over a year ago. I honestly feel like I extracted myself from a cult. I just can’t believe I fell for it. I consider myself to be pretty intelligent, I am very well educated, unendingly curious, and a voracious reader. And yet I still got pulled into the complete nonsense! I’m still working on forgiving myself. In the meantime I switched to mostly independent media and started to “recover”. I have finally got my head on straight again. What a relief. Good grief, it was simply just ridiculous. It’s soooo hard to not get sucked into left wing mainstream media and culture when you live in a very woke part of the country. It’s also extremely socially isolating when you are an outlier and don’t speak the woke party line. I’m trying to get my friends out of the cult. Almost zero success on that project!
I applaud your move. The groupthink on cable news channels is appalling. The whole "24 hour news" model is bogus. And to think the news channels run stories about how Facebook uses alogrithms for "attention driving." CNN, FOX, MSNBC have been using the hosts and guest lineups of their shows to do the same thing for decades.
But if you really want an eye-opener, stop watching any television at all for a year. News or not news. The ads are some of the worst chronic mind poison of all. Ironically, some of the worst messages are sent by the ads for "medications."
In this era you'd probably need to dump a lot of computer watching/scrolling, too, in order to get the benefit I have in mind. It's difficult to stop being distracted and drawn in by computer garbage. But there are programs that can help you limit your exposure. Takes a lot of self-discipline to use them. But self-discipline is the best kind.
I would agree. TV I bought a year or two ago is still in the box. No social media at all. I get random bits of news, like here. I read. Comment too much. And try to read books, but haven't kept up on that as much lately.
But it'll really open Your eyes, if You get away from TV and social media.. TV the least of it, actually. And I was just *lucky* I never got addicted to SM and thank my lucky stars. (Everybody knows, by now, that they're *designed* to be addictive, right?)
They are taught to turn off their brain. No need for reason or skepticism - because the Party (and their media propagandists) tells you what they want you to know. They brain wash people. They act more like a cult than a political party.
But, but, but Strawman!!!! Whataboutism!!!!
"How is BLM helping the Black community? "
Easy. BLM's funding by guilty Whites is allowing BLM's leaders to buy mansions in wealthy White areas, thus bringing more equity to housing discrimination.
We have a “diversity and inclusion center” in my neighborhood now. I so badly want to spray paint it “the center for the alleviation of white guilt”
I really did LOL.