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Only The Republican Way of Life?
Paul Krugman writes:
But aside from John McCain, who to his credit echoed Gen. Petraeus (and was met with stony silence), the candidates spoke enthusiastically in favor of torture and against the rule of law. Rudy Giuliani endorsed waterboarding. Mitt Romney declared that he wants accused terrorists at Guantánamo, “where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil … My view is, we ought to double Guantánamo.” His remarks were greeted with wild applause.
[…]
What we need to realize is that the infamous “Bush bubble,” the administration’s no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there’s a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job — and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.
And the Republican nomination will go either to someone who shares these beliefs, and would therefore run the country the same way Mr. Bush has, or to a very, very good liar.
Don’t Blame Bush, Paul Krugman, NYT, May 18, 2007 (liberated version)
Well said, but I’d argue that this phenomenon stretches beyond the Republican party and one has to extend some of the above to quite a chunk of Democratic politicians and their voters. How many Dems did vote for the Patriot Act I and II and the Military Commission Act killing habeas corpus?
Further, change the subject from torture to the justification of a general Empire foreign policy and "city upon a hill" attitude and you’ll have a quite solid majority of U.S. people who share no-reality believes.
I recall this story here only because it illustrates the mental habits of most of humanity throughout most of our history. When confronted with the mysterious, the inexplicable or the unsettling, popular wisdom tells us we should ignore it and hope it will go away. (An Irish proverb says, “If you see a two-headed pig, keep your mouth shut.”) Just about the only humans not governed by this infophobic reflex have dwelt in the bohemian artistic and “deviant” sub-cultures, where the dominant attitude partakes more of infophilia. (As one of Shakespeare’s characters says, “If it be new, it matters not how vile.”) Modern experience, as it graduates into the postmodern, seems to have overwhelming tendencies to move more and more people from infophobia to infophilia, sometimes with shocking and traumatic abruptness.. Let me define the two key terms I have just used. As readers of Prometheus Rising will remember, the Leary model of “first circuit” (infantile, oral) consciousness has a forward-back polarity: we tend to go forward to Mother/safe-space or anything motherly (associated with mother/safety by genetic programs, imprints or conditioning) and we tend to retreat backward away from the unmotherly, the unsafe, the predatory. This level of consciousness exists throughout faunal evolution, and in humans it forms the bedrock of either a innovative/creative or a conservative/conformist lifestyle.
In my first attempts to popularize Dr. Leary’s work, I called these tendencies “neophilia” (creative) and “neophobia.”(conformist) I have more recently decided that infophilia and infophobia have more generality and describe the associated habits more broadly. The pure infophobe (represented not too badly by most “respectable” law-abiding citizens anywhere) obsessively avoids exotic foods, exotic ideas, exotic clothing, exotic people, “dern foreigners,” new technology, innovative art or music, tabu subjects, originality, creativity etc. Sen. Exon, Sen. Gramm, most of Congress, Theodore Roszack and Unibomber represent various styles of compulsive infophobic imprints. The pure infophile remains a relatively rare person at this primitive stage of evolution. The infophile seeks out the new and exotic in food, ideas, clothing, technology, art — everywhere. Picasso, Joyce, Niels Bohr, Bucky Fuller and all the murdered heretics and innovators of history represent extreme infophiliac imprints.
In Cosmic Trigger III, I represented these extremes by CSICOP (Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), representing infophobia, and CSICON (Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal) representing infophilia. Amusingly, many readers assumed I invented one of these organizations as a hoax or Swiftian satire, but they disagreed about which one…. Most of us, of course, exist somewhere on the continuum between pure infophobia and pure infophilia. (Personally, I lean toward infophilia about almost everything except eating octopus, in which case I remain nervously infophobic. I tried it once, and only once. I’d rather try digesting the back left tire of my car.)
Unfortunately for the infophobic majority, civilization derives from increasingly rapid information processing, which means that those “open societies” which accumulate information fastest provide a higher quality of life in all respects than the “closed societies” where infophobia dominates. Tribal societies where tabu imprisons the minds of its members in strict infophobia never advance beyond Stone Age conditions until or unless incorporated into more “open” societies.
After the coming of the Holy Inquisition, nobody discovered any new chemical elements in the Catholic nations of Europe; all the new chemical discoveries, i.e., the majority of the elements now known, came from Protestant nations. (See my Reality Is What You Can Get Away With for more data on this.) Even today, the effects of the Inquisition linger on, visibly, in the quality of life in most of northern Europe as compared to southern (Catholic) Europe. Similarly, seven years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the effects of the Stalinist closed society still hang on as a dead weight against the efforts of the reformers.
Moslem nations, although suddenly rich due to Oil, still show general backwardness compared to the more open European nations. As Norbert Weiner, one of the first two mathematicians to define information and show its importance, wrote once, “To live effectively is to live with adequate information.” Infophobic societies do not live very well compared to more open societies where infophilia remains permissible even if not yet widespread. For instance, a United Nations study of “quality of life,” including education, life expectancy, civil liberties, medical care and economic wellbeing ranked the five top nations as:
* Canada
* Japan
* Iceland
* Sweden
* Switzerland
None of these nations have one dominant religion or one dominant dogmatic ideology; all rank as “open” in Sir Karl Popper’s sense, and all either encourage or allow infophilia. No Catholic or Islamic nation made it into the top five. Infophobia means stagnation and, usually, filth, poverty, plague and general misery. (And don’t forget that what I here call infophobia means exactly what the Right Wing in this country calls “traditional family values,” including the right to hate the same people that Grandpa hated.) But an infophiliac age, such as we now willy-nilly live in, has its own risks, and the chief of these lies in the growing uncertainty that comes over all those who try to “keep up” with the latest discoveries. The most telling example of this social Uncertainty Principle: the dizzying attempt to find out what foods really nourish you and what foods might shorten your life. I sometimes think this adds a bit of stress to every mouthful of food we eat these days.
Every time a major new scientific study of nutrition and health appears, millions learn that some of what they have believed safe actually may contain hidden dangers — or, even weirder, foods considered dangerous by the known data of 1986 may look much safer according to the data of 1996. I use this example because more average persons try to keep up with this field than with any other; but the same general indefinite wobble infests all science lately. If you have miraculously read enough to have the latest knowledge in all fields as of December 1996, a large part of what you know, or think you know, has already fallen under the axe of more recent research. But even more unsettlingly, you simply could not have read that much, even if you found a way to live without eating or sleeping. Dr. Stanley Ullam estimated, nearly 30 years ago, that the best-read full-time mathematicians knew about 5% of the theorems published since 1900; nobody in any other science knows much more than that about their own field. I once met a very knowledgeable physicist, who had specialized in rocketry and astronautics, and he not only knew less about Bell’s Theorem than I, a layperson, did: he had actually never even heard of Bell’s Theorem. (I feel quite sure that among the 99% of biochemistry I know nothing about, there exist several discoveries as important as John Bell’s nonlocality.) According to a legend I have always doubted, the Chinese have a curse which says, “May you live in interesting times.” I doubt this because you can’t say that to anybody unless you live in the same times as they do; but nonetheless I find wisdom in the subtle Oriental irony here. Nobody any longer doubts that we live in interesting times, or that they get more interesting every year.
The Walls Came Tumbling Down
“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who know better…” ~Tom Robbins
Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 18 2007 21:06 utc | 6
… need to realize is that the… “Bush bubble,” .. no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the WH. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there’s a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner.. contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.
Yes. On the face of it.
We are creatures of myth and belief, our reality is the stories we are told, the ‘facts’ we decide to accept and adhere to; the fabrics we weave and construct together. The view points constructed and taught by those who have vested authority, those who have power over us, who can hurt, exclude us; those who can turn us, us!, -whoever may be speaking- moral, friendly, sincere cooperative people, into outcasts, non-humans, trash, deprived of voice, love, and life.
To function, to live, we need to adhere, to participate, to join in, to believe.
The tales of those in power – in the US (elsewhere as well, etc.), the Gvmt., the think tanks, the military industrial complex, some of the corporations, big Pharma, the universities, Dee-fense, the ‘elites’, the banks / finance sector, the international ‘powers’, and all their hangers on, sent out 24/24 by the msm, have incredible sway.
Ppl deal with all this as best a they can…
Those who ‘sincerely’ believe often take on a position oscillating between perpetrator and victim. They may enlist, be good soldiers, and both kill or die.
Those who accept in part, are puzzled, sit on the fence, preserve some personal space, some autonomy, no matter how small, how trivial, self-serving, calculated, are edgy, doubting, but carry on – there are children to feed, family to care for, a mortgage, health, it all is due. They are in touch, and do complain – state of the roads, price of gas, fluoride in the water, Alaska, tests at school, etc. Righteous and strident or diffident and hesitant; they need not act – as it is possible, it is said, to vote for the candidates of *their choice*.
Others create a chasm between what is seen as ordinary life, beers around the BBQ, selling row-boats, supervising Public Parks, nurses nursing, programmers in the cubicle…and the tinny voices of politicians, anchors, experts, print editorials, either thru conscious blocking out or frightened, uncomprehending, withdrawal and disdain. Two planes of reality. Inshallah.
The poor, the outsiders (…), hold to cynicism and forced sacrifice which comes with that position; understanding and empathy for like are the badge of belonging. Gvmt. lies are completely transparent. They understand, better than most. (Even when they adhere with hopes…) Absolved of the responsibility of action, as they cannot have any impact – they face the sadistic boss with the time sheet, the slinky supervisor, the landlord, the frowning emergency doctor who will not, cannot, help; deal with impossible meanders that poverty imposes- .. they know.
The intellectual elite? Hmm. Who is that exactly, in the US? Or elsewhere, eg. as France, often cited (erroneously) as an opposing social system, Gov. force?
They seem to be wannabees – such as DKOS where it is forbidden, by explicit censorship, to question the official 9/11 fairy tale. (The tales we weave…) Or individual internet wankers. Or unwitting stooges for the PTB. Or worse. Or complainers, who tank up, landscape, hire maids at slave wages, and finally vote ..say for Obama…
a bit pompous 😉
Posted by: Noirette | May 20 2007 21:02 utc | 31
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