Observation Of The Day

While this comes from the comments of an otherwise interesting post over at Watts Up With That, it covers the mindset that we see all to often when it comes to controversial and politically charged issues.

The 2 reactions our fellow (but unthinking and/or uneducated) humans usually have when confronted by topics they don’t understand but somehow get convinced are important, seem to be:

1) Pseudo intellectual – people actually convince themselves they understand the “essence” of the issue, and consider their uninformed/uneducated opinion to be as valid as that of any “expert” in the subject.

2) Witch doctor – whomever scares them the most wins, especially if it’s a trivial but apocalyptic explanation.

Both of these reactions involve over-developed self esteem and loss of faith in “experts”.

Goodness knows I've seen both again and again over the decades.

When it comes to the first, the less they know about the subject, the more they pontificate about it and the louder (and more profane) they become. At some point they invoke Godwin's Law and you know any chance of debate is over, as if it existed to begin with.

As to the second, fear is a great motivator. But as always, when fear takes over the truth of the facts become meaningless, and again any chance of rational debate is gone.

If nothing else these two reactions show the outcome of falsely building self-esteem, a virus that infected our public schools a couple of decades ago and continues to plague us to this day.