These irk me…..

I want to give free rein to some of my less accountable and self-indulgent thoughts.
In the coterie of my friends there arises an impatience with any number of people with dumb thoughts. Let me first list a few of the dumb thoughts, which thoughts you will recognize as common to those who read a lot of Bertrand Russell when we were kids. Things like:
religion has no basis in anything except human psychology.

cruelties and atrocities of ‘these days’ are no worse than routine such acts in the past

women have always enjoyed sex as much as men and are often the aggressors

children know far more than adults think and observe far more than adults realize; when they grow up to be ass-holes they learned it from somewhere

the exploitation of one-off, off-base, off-day and off their rocker events to smear movements, points of view, ideologies, religions, ethnicities, people or just places that do not please somebody should disqualify anyone so exploiting such events. Here’s an example from a blog by Shikha Dalmia where she refers to Sohrab Ahmari’s entire anti-Frenchism movement started with one drag queen story hour in a library. So much, she goes on to say, of it is just built on isolated outrage stories that expecting Democrats to constantly take that into acount, you know….” 

From those to what underlies such dumb comments:

going along with popular notions and ‘common sense’ e.g. separate public bathrooms marked Men and Woman prove that.

repeating what you were told as a child as received wisdom, as in, “My daddy always said…….”

living with unreasoning anxiety, the Chicken Little syndrome.

schadenfreude, as when you enjoy or anticipate enjoying the discomfort and agony of people you don’t like. 

a failure to investigate your sources of information.

ignorance of how other people investigate their sources, e.g. reading peer reviewed or edited written material, taking in viewpoints across the spectrum, finding some trace of expertness.

raising the art of skepticism and questioning to the level of rejecting all but one’s own thoughts.

not reading.

Please add to the list in ‘comments.’

 

 

 

 

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