As in — not this . . .
Until the rise of podcasts, twitter, and the various forms of independent media / journalism, people weren’t really aware how legacy media was influencing their thinking. I think people are finally waking up and may surprise you here, especially if more talk about it.
New formats for funneling information that caters to your cravings is not what I’d call enlightened. And those who couldn’t spot clearly dishonest actors before — think they’re wide awake now? The Twitter bio behind that quote begins with “Groupthink averse.”
It would never occur to him that everything in that Tweet is Groupthink 101.
[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it
In a nation that incessantly blames and complains (seemingly for sport) — no one’s taking responsibility for anything. The ever-rising ocean of partisan pettiness is gluttony under the guise of concern.
It’s the same charade it’s always been:
Just new branding to believe whatever you want and see yourselves as bastions of virtue for it. “New media” is just newfangled gloss for gutting the truth while proclaiming to be champions of it. Anything Goes when going for gold in the Gutter Games of Government:
In your echo chambers of choice: You’re constantly reinforced by your fellowship of fury — where you can promote principles in one breath and abandon them the next. And get away with it with ease — because you’ve got friends:
The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.
These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.
— When Prophecy Fails
Or as I coined it . . .
What does it say to you that across communities where claims of critical thinking are everywhere — I haven’t found it anywhere? It’s become a pastime for people to take endless delight in advertising their immaculate critical thinking skills. But the second they’re challenged on anything that is even perceived as threatening their interests:
Don’t do any of this . . .
In your rush for #winning: At no point does anyone even bother to ask, “Is any of this working?” (as in making a measurable impact on the atmosphere of America). Anyone who dares to ask such questions — will be met with apathy, contempt, or the kind of half-ass effort that prompted this post. I borrowed the title from an article offering some great points I hadn’t thought of in my original version called The Substack Sector: Where I argue that the “scam” element goes well beyond monetary motives. The far more dangerous and destructive scam is how it’s yet another tool for deceiving yourselves.
It’s not the tool’s fault — it’s yours!
And this quote captures the premium people are willing to pay for the illusion embedded in that opening Tweet touting the virtues of “new media.”
There are apparently a great many journalism consumers who aren’t willing to pay $5 a month to support the work of dozens of journalists at a single publication but are eager to pay $8 a month to patronize a single blogger.
They’re paying to feel connected in a way that legacy media doesn’t deliver. Content creators create the impression of purpose and participation — so concerned with the state of society and the need for new ideas, that when presented with one requiring real thought — they blow off what doesn’t fit the formula.
Ya know, the same formula that created this clusterf#@% in the first place.
To see the character of the government and the country so sported with, exposed to so indelible a blot, puts my heart to the torture. . . . Or what is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? Am I a fool, a romantic Quixote, or is there a constitutional defect in the American mind?
Were it not for yourself and a few others, I . . . would say . . . there is something in our climate which belittles every animal, human or brute. . . . I disclose to you without reserve the state of my mind. It is discontented and gloomy in the extreme.
I consider the cause of good government as having been put to an issue and the verdict against it.
Good thing we have the Hamiltons of today:
So fearless on the front lines — racking up subscribers as they pump out candy for their consumers (just craving for ideas but never stop talking long enough to listen to one).
Brought to you by “new media” . . .
Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. Explaining America’s decline from decades of dishonesty and systematic self-delusion: Is apples & oranges as it gets when compared to the transactional nature of news and social-media norms. Understanding how seemingly unrelated events impact one another takes time and effort to digest.
You are being conditioned to do the exact opposite in a nation that never learns.
In reference to its opening image on Without Passion or Prejudice, I wrote: “Half the country is with me on this — and I just lost the other half. Had I started with the image below — it would be the opposite half.” When you make up your mind on lickety-split perception alone:
In what parallel universe does that qualify as critical thinking? Ann Baker’s article beautifully captures what critical thinking is and is not:
Indeed, nowadays, we tend to take in and repeat whatever the values and beliefs of those around us have rather than forming our own independent thought and stopping to organize and evaluate the information we are receiving.
That is not this . . .
A world where regurgitating garbage gets people to Like you — celebrating “victory” by clicking “bravo” to bad manners and bunk. A world where the rush is everything:
- The rush to respond
- The rush you get from responding
- The rush to roll out the next issue of concern
- Repeat and never reflect
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
— Attributed to Mark Twain
Welcome to Your World
V for Victory & Venom for Values
In this fantasyland where wishful thinking rules: You can win an argument without even knowing what the issue is about. What you do in denying the undeniable daily would be unthinkable for me to do ever.
Dittohead Nation:
The Next Generation
In their collective state, the Borg are utterly without mercy; driven by one will alone: the will to conquer. They are beyond redemption, beyond reason.
— Jean-Luc Picard
Imagine America as an engine and you come along with a cross-section of it to explain why it’s not working. Since your audience shares your concerns, you’d think they’d be interested in understanding the internals of the problem. But they spend all their time talking about parts made by people they don’t like — never considering the defects in their own parts. And even though you’ve got a rock-solid idea for how to fix the engine (or at least make it run on reason):
They’d rather spend the rest of their lives complaining about problems than take responsibility for their part in creating them.
To concisely capture the absurdity that’s canon across these echo chambers: Imagine a club for international travel made up entirely of people without a passport. Day after day, they talk about their love of going somewhere — with no interest in anyone who’s been somewhere.
“WUT”
In my youth, I could not have imagined a world in which even people with PhDs would act like imbeciles in the face of information they don’t instantly understand. That an entire country could take satisfaction in insulting your own intelligence on a daily basis just astounds me.
Adulthood is about spending the time to think before talking . . . Adulthood is about controlling our emotions, learning to take a deep breath and modulating our moments of anger or frustration.
First time I ever heard of John McWhorter was in a 2017 interview. In talking about take a wild guess, he said, “He has a rather narcotic joy in dismissal and belittlement.”
A lot of that goin’ around!
[T]here could be no country that makes less use of the accumulated experience of those who have served it – none that is more frivolously neglectful and improvident of these assets – than the United States of America.
— George F. Kennan, Around the Cragged Hill
“Now! . . .
Let’s Analyze . . . What’s Been Working for Us”
Necessary Roughness could not be more fitting for what’s needed.
That you don’t understand how you’re all being played (and always have been) — is bad enough, but that you make it nearly impossible to explain it to you reflects how new media has hardened you even more than legacy did. None of these boxes of beliefs are entirely wrong, but bonding within them makes you think you’re entirely right (on everything).
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises … in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
— Francis Bacon, Novum Organum Scientiarum, 1650
Long before brain imaging to understand human behavior, we already had all the tools we needed for a hopeful humanity. We didn’t take advantage of the gifts were were given, and what a shocker — we don’t make good use of those fancy new insights either. But why examine the efficacy of your efforts when failure is a pretty profitable enterprise these days . . .
And easy is all the rage!
Fueling this folly on steroids is the smorgasbord of subcultures that’s hardening minds while believing they’re being broadened. The commentary in these communities speaks volumes about social media and the state of society: Habitually hailing high praise for purveyors of virtue: Virtues that vanish the second they’re called to put them to the test. Echo chambers across social media worship channel hosts as “National Treasures” — treating them like they’re some of the greatest minds to ever live. At the helm of these cesspools of certitude — are people who peddle repeatedly rehashed insight their sycophants praise like they split the atom. To be sure, some of it is insightful.
But these “geniuses” are so wise in their ways: They’re oblivious to how they’re feeding the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to solve.
Isaac Newton and Einstein were brilliant — partisan hacks and high-minded influencers fueling a fix, are not. These people are not problem solvers, they’re entertainers. Their audience doesn’t know the difference (and I’m not sure they do either). I’m sure it’s intoxicating to amass a following and feel like you’re making a difference. But I’m going to weigh their impact partly as a reflection of their community: How people behave, not what they believe. If they can’t get that right, I don’t care how big their following gets — they’re taking this nation nowhere. What’s more, they’re making matters worse and being rewarded for it.
If you abandon your critical thinking skills the moment you even perceive a threat to your interests — doesn’t that bring those skills into question? How can you expect anyone to admit when they’re wrong if you won’t? And every time you allow emotion to run roughshod over reason — you further calcify habits at the other end of the spectrum from these:
Rather than assert that all opinions are equal, students in seminar learn to judge opinions on the basis of the reasons given for those opinions.
Nobody ever had to explain that to me. I’m sure you all feel the same:
And yet here we are:
There are countless people saying the same things in the same old ways — with channels, sites, and substacks that conform to the formula. And this fantasyland language fits right our Age of Unenlightenment:
But we’re all here because we share some important things in common: a commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation. In our upside-down world, holding fast to these ideals can sometimes feel lonely.
More than ever, we crave the company of people who share our core values.
— Bari Weiss: Welcome to Year Two
It’s a nice gesture for Bari to bond with her audience. Alas, it’s not true — in any audience. What people crave is the company of those who see themselves as they do — never mind their record doesn’t remotely reflect their claims. Following facts going in the direction you desire doesn’t count: Anybody can do that!
Without “commitment” and “holding fast” — it’s just wishful thinking . . .
And it shows!
America’s in perennial pursuit of ideologies: Warfare waged with galactic levels of baggage & bullshit bolstered by . . .
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
Borrowing from Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom — and how fitting! That quote’s at the core of of what’s crippled this country. Across-the-board, you’re all in bondage to baseless beliefs (painfully obvious lies that have become calcified as fact).
We could do something about that:
But you’re busy. You’re always busy!
There was a time when people saying, “Show me the evidence” would look at it when you did. Those days are long gone in a world where people ask questions they don’t want the answers to (well, not if it takes work, anyway): As in the time and effort it takes to solve problems instead of being entertained by talking about them.
Not to mention that my kind of work includes holding your own accountable — so there’s that.
As in — not this . . .
Why have things come so undone? And what can we do to rebuild them?
Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.
We are living through an epidemic of cowardice. The antidote is courage. . . .
— Bari Weiss
I’ve seen no such courage in her community or any other. But it’s all about keeping the illusion alive: The lofty bios, the sloganeering, Pro-Human Pledges, plastering websites with platitudes, and empty overtures on courage and conviction: Whatever it takes to belong with a willingness to believe what cannot survive scrutiny.
Which is why this is nowhere to be found in the force fields of fallacy you hind behind:
Hence The Substack Sector . . .
One of a 15-part series on factions within your world of V for Victory world of insisting upon “affirmation independent of all findings” (borrowing from Peck who borrowed from Buber). Within the walls of these force fields of fallacy: You’re shielded from the whole truth while you’re pursuing part of it believing you’re after all of it. And who has to time for actual critical thinking:
When you’ve gotta get crackin’ on that next newsletter on the need for a new direction.
