by PAUL COLLITS – ANYONE observing the trajectory of modern societies will be unable to avoid the conclusion that individuals, communities, regions, nations, their “leaders” and the world have been overtaken by collective stupidity.
As Stephen Hawking said: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
- The whole package is doing us in.
- Critical thinking skills have been lost on politicians and bureaucrats.
- Handing Hamas terrorists a State to play with is the result.
I have tried talking to people with opposing viewpoints. I get back slogans, talking points (verbatim), tribal protectionism, being interrupted, talked over, etc.
No matter how much proof I attempt to present to support my views, they were dismissed and ridiculed.
DEVICES
Some of the dismissive devices used were the bandwagon fallacy, the straw man fallacy, the appeal to authority.
I was unable to get through, so I walked away. I had to become comfortable to stand alone and not be part of the group.
Examples of collective stupidity are not hard to find:
- COVID compliance. Like lamely wearing masks that don’t work and lining up for repeated death jabs that can kill you.
- The widespread acceptance of thinly veneered lies, like climate catastrophism.
- The willingness to pay vast sums of money for university “education” which has been one of the chief agents of the destruction of critical thinking.
- Reflexive obeisance before the administrative State.
- Front bar wisdom, shouted drunkenly.
- Giving Anthony Albanese another term of government.
- Believing that periodic elections means we live in a democracy.
- Handing Hamas terrorists a State to play with.
- Thinking that mass immigration will solve our problems, and not create new ones.
- Accepting massive cultural change to the benefit of no one, without demur.
- Thinking that those who question dubious narratives are the stupid ones.
A random selection.
There are a number of contending answers to the obvious question – why is it so?
One theory is, ironically, the overload of information, which encourages short-cutting and discourages real thought.
Another is the pressure to conform and the desire to be accepted that trump real understanding, and perhaps, courage. One now seeks “social proof”. And virtue signalling replaces being right.
Collective stupidity has a number of close relatives, and together they act to destroy the true, the good and the beautiful.
Stupidity alone cannot achieve this. Those close relatives include fear, ignorance, the desire to conform, cowardice, the absence of intellectual curiosity, naivete, gullibility, blind faith in authority, a willingness to trust the supposed goodness of those in power, laziness, presentism and the abandonment of history and tradition.
It is the whole package that is doing us in. The loss of critical thinking skills – ironically, given how many job descriptions demand them – is, however, paramount on the list.
There couldn’t be a much more egregious example of collective stupidity than willful ignorance of one’s past. Sleepwalking to ignorance – and so to submission.
There have been clues about our present condition for some time now.
Solomon Asch’s chilling conformity experiments back in the 1950s demonstrated an embarrassing willingness of modern man to go along just to get along, even if it means denying the obvious.
The old Leftist writer Noam Chomsky spoke – when the Left mattered – of “manufactured consent” in the context of public acquiescence in lies.
His target was (of course) business and the media and not the State. But his thesis was, and is, powerful and relevant here.
In ways he could not have foreseen at the time of writing. Chomsky also wrote of institutional stupidity.
Organisations full of apparently intelligent people can be stupid. This is a form of system stupidity. And, ultimately, systemic evil.
Can we outsource our critical faculties? What of so-called rational ignorance? Can this be an excuse for the public’s abandonment of critical thinking in relation to (often complex) policy issues?
Being duped isn’t rational. It is merely lazy. And very, very costly.
AUTONOMY
Trading off individual autonomy for presumed convenience is about as head-in-the-sand as it gets.
Is stupidity the same as voluntarily choosing the path of least resistance? Even if we lose our freedom.
This might be termed the “putting food on the table” argument. A rationale for simply keeping your head down, even if you are in the know.
When it results that we become prisoners of the State, when we pay our taxes into a vast pit of policies of which we do not approve, the answer is “yes”.
Excuses for inaction abound. Learned helplessness might be seen as another excuse for taking on the powers that rule us with bad laws.
Who benefits from collective stupidity? No prizes for guessing here. Bad governments benefit. Evil governments benefit. Corporates benefit. The beneficiaries of the State’s largesse benefit. The insider class benefits.
What are the prospects for a turnaround?
The coming absurdity of the age verification for accessing areas of the internet – possibly the whole of the internet – will be a timely test of our collective stupidity.
For here is an issue that might, pretty quickly, become the digital age equivalent of the old “hip pocket nerve”. It will not bite you in the wallet, but …
What might be gained from push back and insurgent behaviour? From a revival of collective intelligence?
Two things might be achieved – expanding the area of permitted public debate, and influencing those who still think critically but need more and better information. Building and motivating coalitions of the smart and the willing.
Not many among the ruling elites will be moved by popular pushback. We already know they don’t care what the people think.
Just think of the Voice referendum. Or endless popular appeals for a slowdown in migration. So far, so bad.
This is at least partly because we have mostly stayed at home and listened to right wing podcasts.
But, we might assume that about a quarter of the population are in synch with the globalist progressivism of the age. And that somewhere between a tenth and a fifth are awake to what has gone on.
That leaves a large bunch of the ignorant/undecideds. They would be the target of any campaign from more of us using our critical skills and good information to move the middle group to righteous anger.
Now, it will be countered that many voices of reason have already been doing this, for a long time, without apparent impact.
And, also, that arguments from the facts fall on the deaf ears of those who decide things on emotion. Hence the whole piece on collective stupidity.
But maybe we just need to find better, smarter ways to fight back.
The alt-Right, the Make Australia Great Again brigade, has had its own experience of collective stupidity and the abandonment of critical skills.
If the rational actors among us don’t give this a crack, we will die wondering and be asking what ifs.
id we just stand there, like the bad guys in the good Samaritan story?
The duty of the informed is to act in the face of the greatest examples of global insanity in history.
It is happening on our watch.PC
