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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Shallow thinking and arrogance led to ruin of once-great society

By David McElroy · December 18, 2018

It must be nice to pick a political “team” and then never again bother to question whether your team’s beliefs might be fundamentally flawed.

It must be nice to do a shallow scan of everything you encounter and look for anything you disagree with — so you can use that as an excuse to disregard everything else a person might be trying to say. It must be convenient to know you don’t have to bother considering anything you don’t already believe is true.

American society is still pretty good at doing things and making things. We have better tools and technology than ever for molding physical objects into what we want them to be. (Those are an extension of open inquiry by previous generations.) But we are failing on a deeper level — and we are heading toward a devastating collapse — because we have become intellectually shallow and morally arrogant.

We are rushing over a cliff as fast as we can — and everybody can point a finger at someone else to blame.

When I was young and arrogant myself, I knew everything. My beliefs were absolutely certain — and they were based on what other people had told me to believe. I didn’t realize that, of course. It just didn’t seem to occur to me for a long time that I had happened to be born into the one social, political and religious group which had perfect knowledge about everything.

Eventually, I saw the errors of my shoddy thinking and blind faith in others, so I wanted to share what I had learned with others. For awhile, I made the same mistake again, just from a different point of view. I again believed I had all truth. I just had to get other people to accept what I’d found.

Then I moved into a more reasonable phase. I just wanted to get others to think clearly about what they believed — about why they believed things and where those ideas came from. I wanted them to understand that we should all question where we can from and that we should all think for ourselves.

That didn’t work any better than any of my previous attempts.

Today, I’m just numb to the intellectual blindness and arrogance of most people. That doesn’t mean I consider all those who disagree with me to be blind and arrogant, though. There are a rare few among those who I disagree with who I’ve had respect for, because they’ve attempted to explore truth in a more humble way. And there are those among my would-be allies who are some of the most intellectually blind and arrogant I’ve known.

The last couple of generations of Americans — roughly speaking — have increasingly been taught that everybody’s “truth” is equally valid, so everybody’s thoughts and ideas — no matter how stupid — are supposed to be valued. People have grown up being praised for terrible and shallow thoughts — instead of being pushed to think more deeply and rationally — so they never bothered to learn how to be intellectually humble or to approach issues with a genuine desire to learn.

This has created a culture in which almost everyone has an opinion about almost everything, but the vast majority of opinions about any issue are shallow and stupid. (Oh, no. I’m not supposed to say that. Everybody’s ideas are equal, right?)

It’s a waste of time trying to share something insightful with most people — such as posting a thoughtful article on social media — because they have one of several different reactions.

The dirty little secret is that almost nobody reads the article.

Most people who see it are indifferent to learning what someone else has to say about an issue, because they already know what they believe. They have joined a political or social team somewhere along the way — and that group has already made it clear what “we” think. So these people have an opinion that someone else has given them and they have no interest in anything they might not have already considered.

Another group of people see the headline and click “share” without bothering to read the article. They agree with the headline and they want to promote the point of view they already agree with, so they mindlessly share.

Yet another group see the general subject matter of the article and proceed to post comments explaining what they already think, especially if they disagree with the headline. They don’t bother to read the article and if they skim it, it’s only to find something they disagree with — so they can dismiss the whole thing. They’re most interested in explaining why someone is wrong, even if they haven’t read what the person wrote.

Almost everybody has decided what he believes, so people no longer read for nuance or substance they might not have thought about. It’s a very shallow existence, but it’s all most people know today when it comes to controversial topics.

I used to be angry about this trend. I used to think I could shame people into seeing the shallowness of living this way. (It was desperation.) But that didn’t work. Nobody cares.

Ideas control the world. If you have given your thoughts and beliefs over to someone else without understanding the ideas which underlie what you’ve accepted, you are being used by an idea which you don’t understand — and you don’t even know that.

Are you one of those people? How many times in your life have you decided that some of your most important beliefs were wrong? How often have you had to go through serious intellectual change because you’ve realized you had been completely mistaken about things you were taught or things you had concluded on your own?

The fewer times this has happened to you, the more likely you’re one of those people. If you’ve gone through the painful process of changing your ideas multiple times — about things of major important to you — there’s a better chance that you’re thinking for yourself.

American society used to be a caldron of ideas and genuine debate. Many people read deeply and then debated in highly rational ways. Today, it’s a bunch of shallow and arrogant children yelling insults at one another.

We’re willingly going over a cliff blindly — and I’ve become numb to my fear about where it’s taking us, because I have absolutely no idea how to convince an entire society to start taking ideas seriously again.

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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