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Stupid Times
by Monolycus
lifted from a comment
We live in some stupid times. I’m not saying there haven’t been
other stupid times in the course of human history… countless
witnesses have attested to that. I’m just saying that the present times
have their own peculiar flavour of stupid, and human beings are, by and
large, products of their culture and environment (if you’ll forgive me
for taking such a dreaded… *shudder*… anthropological viewpoint).
That is my lens, though, and while a society is nothing more
than a collection of individuals, those individuals are shaped and
guided by their physical and social environments in exactly the same
way that a squid or a whale is shaped and constrained by the ocean they
live in. A steady diet of absurdity will produce only a more or less
absurd creature. This has been amply demonstrated to us over and over
again, however, like a bottom feeding catfish feeling its way through
the murky silt of its home, we are unable to see the obvious through
what it is that surrounds us.
It is natural, then, that when we are not simply engaged in groping
our way through this sea of stupidity, we are justifying our entirely
reflexive behaviour as being the only rational way to behave.
It isn’t, of course, but we will go to amazing lengths to deny that we
are every bit as constrained by our own physical and social environment
as that poor, silly, bottom-feeding catfish. These rationalisations
contribute to the culture of absurdity and perpetuate it until it
becomes legitimate to ask if the times have made the stupidity or if
the stupidity have made the times.
When the individual observes the larger culture, it is extremely
easy to become contemptuous of others. They do, after all, respond to
the stupidity in profoundly stupid ways. On the other hand, there are
mitigating factors at work… a human being who ingests lead or mercury
doesn’t just fall over dead; their psyche as well as their body is
profoundly affected. They behave stupidly and erratically because our
minds and our bodies are inseparable… a physical toxin will produce a
psychological pathology. Is it not rational to assume that
psychological toxins provided by this culture of violence and avarice
will just as surely produce erratic and stupid behaviour? The
laboratory that is the world around us seems to be validating that
hypothesis.
A recent fluffy retrospective OpEd about the year in US scandals
poses an interesting question. While acknowledging that we live in a
culture in which it is increasingly easy to don the mantle of
victimization while being a perpetrator, the author observes
"… the 2006 Hall of Shamers benefit from the Oprah dividend – the public’s desire to seek reasons to reprieve bad behavior.
You may have been able to preach, appraise legislation, invent off
the book partnerships or address a radio audience, goes the logic, but
you weren’t really responsible because of addiction and/or childhood
abuse.
And while the forgiven get another chance by this reasoning and forgivers get to think they’re Oliver Wendell Holmes, no one brings up the fact that almost everyone behind bars suffered childhood abuse and substance addiction. That’s practically the definition of a criminal.
The author is concluding here that forgiveness, at least the
selective forgiveness that we practice in our culture, is unwarranted.
I believe that I am beginning to form rather the opposite view.
Forgiving selectively is, of course, silly… but rather than becoming less
compassionate as a result of this obviously unfair situation, I think
it would be healthier to extend our compassion to include more than the
rich and successful "victims" of a bestial culture.
Some seem to be taking that approach, however cynically they might
do it. Consider Barry Cooper, a former drug enforcement officer from
Texas. Apparently appalled by the vast numbers of non-violent offenders
filling up US prisons, he has apparently planned to release a video to
instruct people in the technique of not being arrested.
(The article is an extremely interesting read, but doesn’t seem to want
to let me cut ‘n’ paste any excerpts… please take a look). Those
sitting on the "less compassion, more vengeance" side of the equation
are appalled by Cooper’s actions.
This polarisation of "compassion for all" vs. "compassion for none"
seems to me to be at the heart of most of the cultural stupidity I am
seeing these days. It’s a classic dichotomy, really, that has been
discussed here many times in various forms. Of course, it’s been discussed throughout history in various forms, so this should surprise nobody.
I am increasingly of the opinion that the "compassion for none"
position is the more harmful of the two. It seems to have at its root a
degree of pride and hubris that not only results in the obvious
degradation of civil liberties that we are seeing, but by its nature
plants the seeds for all manner of absurd intolerances and cruelties
such as Dr. Rice’s cold-hearted endorsements for murder or U.S. Rep Virgil Goode’s conclusion
that a US citizen who has converted to Islam represents an immigration
problem. Without the pride of the authoritarian mentality, these
positions are baldly and patently absurd, however both Rice and Goode
are like the bottom-feeding catfish groping through impenetrably murky
water and can not see what should be obvious if there weren’t so much
silt (in this case, emotional and cultural baggage) in the way.
As trite as it might sound, I’d like to take the opportunity on this
Christmas Eve to suggest that a little goodwill toward humans might
actually go a long way towards actualising that peace on Earth we keep
hearing about. At least I don’t see how it could make the times much
more stupid than they have already are.
Forgiveness can be tendered or offered once the ‘crime’, insult, offence or violation is defined and accepted by agreement of both parties, victim and perpetrator.
Yes, you spat on me, and yes I did, and I forgive, and so you forget, and we forget (wild pronouns, because at that point they should no longer matter.)
But with so many offenses about, forgiveness becomes a frayed rope. Offered again and again, with no results, no reparation forthcoming, the move becomes worn, thin, and may snap. Forgiveness then turns into, first, a strong stance on ‘rights’, second a tolerance and justification for self-committed insults, third into revenge, directed at many targets.
The problem, we see, is with the first offense, offense(s) as defined by the culture, law, others, etc. The small stash sold, the woman grabbed, the inconsiderate racist remark, the theft of the cousin’s car, the dog who destroyed the tulips, the nurse who screwed up the plaster cast, the policeman who hit once, the boss who lied.
The worst case (that I have personally experienced and suffered from) is of pardon sincerely offered but refused, as the acceptance of pardon would officialise the sin. (Pardon, sin, I prefer them to forgiving…) That destroys the implicit contract between human beings, completely. And it is, I think, becoming more common.
I hope this makes sense? Cheers and Merry Xmas.
Posted by: Noirette | Dec 24 2006 20:54 utc | 5
@ Rowan (#6)
My choice of language was a little unfortunate… but I didn’t really write the above with the thought that it might be “front page” material. I was trying to express a small, personal observation and assumed that it would get buried quickly under the larger, more important, observations of others. I would certainly have paid closer attention to my grammar (oh, the typos!) if not my language in general if I had considered that it would have been read by anyone more closely than merely in passing.
To clarify my meaning… I don’t believe in psychometrics. Some of the most “stupid” people I have ever met hold the most sterling academic credentials or can boast of the highest IQ’s. They use language deftly to conceal rather than to illuminate… and this belies a certain “cleverness” that is, at the end of the day, no less stupid. It is stupid because it is ultimately harmful. I would not applaud someone for their ingeniousness in making toast if it “cleverly” involved setting themselves or anyone else on fire. In some ways, it is even more “stupid” to be learned and to harm oneself and others than it is to be merely inept… but we do not, to my knowledge, have vocabulary to describe this. Kissinger, unlike Bush the Younger, will always be described as brilliant… but what has his brilliance brought to the advancement of humankind if not decades of suffering or personal gluttony?
I was using the word “stupid” in about the same way that Camus used the word absurd, and he (along with Kafka and a few others) was among the “witnesses” I was referring to in the first sentence of my post. The stupidity I am on about has little to do with “intelligence”, and certainly less to do with “rationality”, although it is often disguised as both. I don’t want to continue to use the word “absurd” (it’s a bit cliche and doesn’t contain the quite emotional horror and disgust I feel), so I sacrificed some of my meaning and used the ambiguous “stupid” to express this. Anna Missed (#7) is using the word precisely as I had intended… the “stupidity” is a compounding, horrific, willful blindness that leads us (all of us) into an abyss from which we can not climb back out.
(I can hear O’Brien whispering in my ear: “The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing.”)
@John Francis Lee (#9)
Hannah K.O’Luthon once (correctly, I feel) chided me about how inclusive I tend to make my “we’s” when I am writing a larger complaint. I do that not because I don’t recognise that there are individual exceptions to my complaints, but rather because I am discussing a subject in which I feel a certain amount of repression or denial might be involved (and I am not neglecting to include myself in that equation).
You are absolutely correct to observe that “(t)here is only one set of humans on this earth.” That is why I say “we”, and when I discuss “stupidity”, I do not contrast it with an existing example… I contrast it with the way “we” imagine ourselves to be.
@ Noirette (#5)
Questions of “stupidity” aside, you are addressing the real heart of my post, and that is the problem of compassion and forgiveness. And yes, this is a genuinely sticky issue. Annie’s quotation of John Mohawk (#1) does not go away, regardless of the magnitude or frequency of the offenses against us. When we dehumanise our opponents, when we hold irreconcilable grudges (and this is one of my greatest failings as a human being that blocks me from Nirvana), we place ourselves in the unfortunate role of being as valid an obstacle to peace as the original offense itself. We preclude even the notion of reconciliation or peace when we seek “justice” at the expense of compassion.
It isn’t easy. And sometimes, we instinctively decide that compassion makes us vulnerable or invites more and greater offenses. But isn’t that exactly what the American “War on Terror” boils down to: “Peace can not be achieved, so we will not seek it: instead, we must annihilate our opponents and remove them from the equation by force”…? It has become clear, at least to me, that the expense of an inability to seek peace has outweighed the expense that “being vulnerable” would have entailed. There are hidden costs to intolerance, but the final bill does eventual come.
I am certainly not trivialising your observation; it is an extremely valid one, and one that cuts to the heart of this matter. What does one do when forgiveness has the appearance of only inviting more of the same? I simply must focus on the fact that, just as vengeance contains significant hidden costs, compassion contains significant hidden benefits. If we are going to be as rational as we imagine ourselves, we have to attempt to lift ourselves above the silt we live in and view a larger reality. It could possibly be that neither approach (viz. “compassion for all” vs. “compassion for none”) will bring about an entirely satisfactory outcome, but as we can clearly see unfolding daily on the stage of world events, one approach is certainly more harmful to us than the other. If we want to break the equation down into game theory (and I would really, really rather not do that), we must recognise that life is not a zero sum arrangement. We may certainly all lose, however there can ultimately be no “winner”. That is the reality we must face if we are going to minimise the negative consequences of what I have foolishly termed “stupidity”.
@ b real (#10)
I am also a tremendously paranoid sort who finds conspiracies lurking in every corner… so, too, is José Padilla now. We have all been victimised by this culture… this system. Just like Padilla, we now suspect even those who would defend us. We can’t prove that they are not complicit in some way with those who harm us. It is very valid that after one has been victimised, they are unable to trust…
But what life is this? Padilla is now reduced to helpless infancy, trapped in his own mind and unable to function. His understandable distrust of his captors has actually made him more dependent upon the very people who harm him. The government has made him exactly the way they wanted him to be; I don’t fault him for that.
Yes, it is remotely possible that Cooper is “setting people up” for a sting, just as it is possible that he is genuinely as appalled as we are at the growing US prison population… a population he has seen firsthand. It is also possible that he is, as his critics suggest, going rogue in order to make a few bucks off of the corruption he has, until now, been a part of.
I don’t know. It’s not in my power to know. Unlike Padilla, however, it is in my power for the time being to judge for myself, and I elect to believe that Cooper is a human being as I am… and feels the same things that I do. If I am as appalled at the unnecessary incarcerations, it is not out of the realm of possibility that someone whose life revolved around that world would be just as, if not more, appalled than I am.
It doesn’t matter to me. The only drugs I use are legal (alcohol and nicotine). But whatever the genuine Cooper’s motives are, the abstract Cooper has stood up and said “This is an unfair situation”. The abstract Cooper is all I have to talk about, and I agree with him.
Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 25 2006 8:20 utc | 11
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