Polar Bear: Yesterday at work, a Black woman defended a worthless Black and a woman with mental illness defended a guy with at least three mental illnesses. We all have biases, to see beyond them is rare. Men are more into truth and logic, parting the sea of emotion. Women are mostly swept away like ragdolls by the current in a flood of tears.
That’s tribal thinking. I don’t want to fall into that. I’ve often said about White nationalists that I can’t understand why the death of a White by a Black is more important to them than the death of a decent Black person by a Black. Why? Because they’re a member of my tribe? Did I know them? Did they do anything for me? They’d probably dislike me if I met them? Do I get a check from White Central Control every month so I should support all Whites? Why should I feel more for this guy just because he’s White. But he’s just like me! He’s White and I’m White! Goes the argument. And…?
This is supposed to be important or something? We’re not the same. He’s dead and I’m not. Why does his death diminish me more than the death of some good Black person? I just can’t fathom this type of thinking. Of course, being on the Left, I spent a lot of my time working my way out of tribal thinking. And I’ve always been a dissident and an iconoclast who was on the outs with mainstream opinion on most things. So I don’t care about peer pressure because I’m used to believing stuff that 80% of the world disagrees with.
Why Should I Believe Things That Aren’t Even True?
I dunno. Why should I believe something that’s not even true? I keep asking myself this over and over when I try to find out what actually happened, for good or for ill, for my side of the bad guys. I can’t think of any possible reason why I should believe lies about…much of anything! Everyone seems to be happy to, but it’s not for me.
Setting aside the metaphysical and religious where we all have our egoistic reasons to believe in what may well be falsehoods, and setting aside what one believes about oneself and society at large, I want to believe what’s true and disbelieve what’s not true. It’s ok to tell yourself as many lies as you have to about yourself and others to get along.
You may need to tell yourself enough lies to make it through the day without killing yourself, have a peaceful sleep, and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning without wanting to smash it. You may have to lie about others, saying they are wonderful when they are not, playing down their bad qualities, etc. You may have to lie about society by saying it’s the best of possible worlds when in fact your own life may be a shit sandwich to be swallowed whole, dammit! These are the prosaic, quotidian, metaphysical, social, personal, and religious aspects of life.
What I want to know the truth about is what I see on TV. The news, the facts, the everyday local, national, and political issues (in a word, Politics) that make our world go round. And in science too, I wish to know what is true and what is not true. Why should I believe a bunch of crap just because it makes me feel good or because I want my guys to be pure and the other guys to be evil? Forget it.
I’m not that weak! I can handle it if what I want to be true is not and vice versa. It’s ok. I can deal. I can handle it if my guys act bad and the other side acts good, although not too much please. But I support Assad in Syria and I’m the first to admit that he acts pretty damn bad. But this is what I wanted to know about him – precisely how bad he was and in which ways and what aspects of his purported evil were not true.
Believe it or not, the CIA does not want to believe any lies or so I have been told. There is what the CIA puts out for the masses, which is often a pile of the biggest steaming pile of crap you’ve ever seen. This is often put out via the media and the CIA itself even calls this material disinformation. The CIA people in charge of it know it’s all lies but they don’t care.
Then there is what the CIA puts out for itself. The CIA does not want to believe any crap or falsehoods about the world and the things it is analyzing. They have to know the truth, dammit! If you begin your analysis from a point of falsehood, your analysis is already flawed. And the CIA is all about proper analysis.
I’m on the Left, but I’m willing to acknowledge that leftwing regimes have done some pretty bad things. I support the Democrats, but I’m more than willing to acknowledge how awful they are. I’m a man, but I’m willing to acknowledge how generally awful we are as humans and how terribly we behave towards other humans (on the other hand, I still love being a man).
I’m White, but I’m willing to acknowledge that we Whites have treated non-Whites pretty terribly. I’m straight, but I acknowledge how homophobia has seriously harmed gays in the past. None of this is threatening to me. Why should it be. You have to know the dark side if you wish to walk in the light. By learning of the bad tendencies of Whites, men, straights, etc., I can see what I am vulnerable to and generally try to act in the opposite way. You can’t understand good until you understand evil and that they are two sides of the same coin.
Further, I don’t wish to be a hypocrite. Face it, humans are hypocrites. It’s just what we are, flat out, full stop, period. Perhaps we have to be this way. But hypocrisy seems to be one of the worst aspects of being human. There’s almost no way to justify it morally.
What will happen if my guys (the good guys) are losing and their guys (the bad guys) are winning? Nothing. The world will simply be a pile of shit, but I’m perfectly ok with that because that seems to be the dispensation for most of my life. I can be perfectly happy believing that the world is a pile of shit and that most people are complete idiots. Doesn’t mess up my day at all. I don’t need to believe that the world is some wonderful place for me to eke out some meager happiness in it.
Also, I’m used to depressing and disappointing things in my life. You might say it’s my life story. So when something lousy happens, it’s not a shock to me. It’s just the same old same old. That life often seems rather lousy is not that upsetting to me. I’ve felt this way forever. I simply try to escape from it by doing fun things all day so I can forget about all the lousiness. I focus on other things.
Just to show you how unbiased I am, on the Russian sites I am on, I am regarded as a pest and a troll because I often post things that go against the current narrative. The news de jour on those sites typically portrays Russian advances as much more advanced than I think they are. I chime in that no, we have not advanced that far at all. I share maps from viciously anti-Russian sites not because I like them but because I think they are accurate.
My brother often says, “Aha!” and thinks he wins arguments against me because I admitted that my side did something bad – lied, killed people, tortured people, acted horribly. According to my brother and most NPC’s, if you admit that your side did something bad, you automatically lost the argument because he will never admit that about his side.
Because my brother is a typical NPC. His side is pure good and the other side is pure evil. Anything that goes against that world view is “enemy propaganda.” He dismisses anything from the Left, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Belarus, Lebanon, Iraq, or China as automatically false if it doesn’t back up his views.
These are enemy nations and he rejects everything they say unless they make themselves look bad and his side look good, in which case they are somehow correct. Just about everyone is exactly like he is. Keep in mind that he has a 140+ IQ and a Master’s Degree. He’s also just about the most closed-minded person I’ve ever met, with the possible exception of my father, a Cold War liberal who also had a Master’s Degree.
Most Americans probably can’t even find Ukraine on a map. How do you expect them to be able to think critically about it?