A commenter made an excellent point about another illusion that handicaps Mantra Thinking: the illusion that people have as they grow old is that they are therefore Wise.
This is, in fact, twin with the problem of people who have been dealing with a problem unsuccessfully for decades at public expense automatically being declare Experts on solving it. But this one makes life especially difficult for me.
I am handicapped by the general image of a Leader and the general image of an old man who is writing. BUGsers are very kind to me, so they do not want to be disrespectful and they actually apologize for disagreeing with me.
That is good behavior if it doesn’t get in the way of what BUGS is all about. One new commenter was obviously uncomfortable contradicting me and one of our old hands told him that my reaction would be “So what?” I really appreciated that.
I tell you my view of the world. One reason you read BUGS is because you think I’m right often enough to be worth while. But I have a personal reason for writing here too.
As usual things in BUGS interrelate. Years ago I wrote a piece about a method of getting real information out of famous experts, real ones.
The problem is that someone who knows a subject has developed a standard set of answers. So if you take out time to go to a lecture or, worse, are seeing someone your boss has PAID you to go to, you get standard fare from him. The result is that you go back with something you could have just looked up.
My solution was simple. I found out what this guy really hated.
I would state a position in his field of expertise that he loathed.
Then I kept prodding that way and the standard stuff stopped. He began to give me examples and his actual opinions in the heat of getting me off that position that he hated so much.
When a person is Giving Advice, he is very guarded and he will have technique for handling all questions and he will be a lot like a lawyer who will not let you probe into certain areas. Make him mad enough and all bets are off.
Which is the reason you wanted to see him in the first place.
I want to dump out my thinking here so you can comment on it and look things up for me. I am not a Leader, I am not depending on my age.
Considering the world older people have left younger ones, it seems outrageous to me that they would have the cajones to say that young people should look to them for dealing with reality. While respect and courtesy is welcome, too much of that attitude would be fatal to the whole purpose of BUGS.
Think of BUGS as saying the only thing the older generation has any right to say to say to the people we have dumped all this on:
Where did we go WRONG?
#1 by BGLass on 10/27/2010 - 9:25 am
Sometimes old people really are wise. And sometimes educated people are smart and can still think and aren’t just groveling idiots. Working class people write off “educated” idiots and then can miss when occasionally there’s an educated person who is not merely indoctrinated. Lots of old people could never admit their weakness in buying into their own betrayal, seems like. But then there will be a smart one. Too bad there’s not more. Old age has to be earned to be worth anything.
#2 by shari on 10/27/2010 - 10:07 am
I hate to say it, but I think it’s money and flattery that is the fat in the brains of too many “educated” people. We definately need a different banking system. An HONEST one.
However, debt is a big problem for the younger educated. They don’t have the cushy deal, the older generation had.
#3 by Dave on 10/27/2010 - 10:23 am
Aldous Huxley used to say, “People are so different from one another, it is astonishing they breathe the same air.”
I keep repeating that Huxley quote as a reminder of the world before Political Correctness.
Huxley was a member of the WWI generation, but his mind was firmly rooted in the world before WWI, a world that has now been forgotten.
That world had an intense discernment of racial nuance and genetic endowment. It was a world that was blatantly racial and genetic in its outlook.
The notion of “mankind” was merely religious in connotation. In an ordinary sense, such a thing as “mankind”, outside of pastors, priests, and monks, was not believed at all in the world before WWI.
That was a world where the enormous ambit of racial and genetic endowment was discerned. It was front and center in peoples’ consciousness.
Political Correctness has suppressed this discernment entirely, so that today the stupendous distance between persons in intellect, in ability, in beauty, and so on is denied. It is heresy under Political Correctness to believe that superior traits and lineages should be husbanded.
Yet throughout most of history the moral desirability of this kind of husbandry was taken for granted.
Nature casts a wide net genetically. There is a universe of difference between persons and races.
The genetic endowment of intellectual ability (that is, the ability to discern and see accurately) is age agnostic. There is a small minority in the world that is simply one hell of a lot smarter than everyone else. Universes smarter.
For example, Truman Capote explained his extraordinary genetically based intellectual endowment this way: “I have five perceptions for each one perception an ordinary person has’”
Robert Whitaker is a member of this camp of minorities. These people are very important. They have a big role to play in the world.
Political Correctness does everything it can to annihilate them. Political Correctness cannot tolerate the notion that these people even exist. They themselves, in the very fact of their own flesh and blood, are proof of the fundamental wrongness of Political Correctness. This is intolerable to Political Correctness.
Aldous Huxley was a dedicated opponent of Political Correctness. He was a student of racial and genetic differences. His mind was rooted in an earlier time, and he well understood the enormity of the evil of Political Correctness.
In many ways Robert Whitaker began where Huxley left off. Whitaker has a broader and more thoroughgoing mind than Huxley ever had, particularly in his understanding of political and organization realities and the dominance of temporal provincialism in shaping perceptions and also in the nuances and details of the role of Wordism in diverting peoples’ loyalty.
But what they both have in common is that they punched through veil of the delusions of the provincialism of the present to get at the actual truth of things.
These kinds of intellects are essential to the overthrow of tyranny. Don’t think that tyranny doesn’t hate them.
#4 by Gator61 on 10/27/2010 - 12:45 pm
The old people that Bob seems to be the hardest on are the WWII, “Greatest” generation. I tend to be more forgiving of them than I am of the Babyboomers. The WWII generation, thought they were doing the right thing based on what they they were told. They were beaten down and yelled at until they learned to obey. Then they were shipped overseas and did what they had to do to survive.
When it was all over they all had jobs and could see the world would be better for their children than it was for them or their parents.
The boomers were never beeten or cowed into submission. They dove into muticulturalism with gusto. They intentionally did things to that any sane person would tell would be bad for their children. The boomers were not drafted and force to believe. They chose to believe mommy professor. Now they are the old people. They can look around and see the fruits of their labor. They brag about riding the freedom bus for a weekend and registering voters. Because of them the next generations got to ride the school bus across town everyday for 12 years. The boomers can look at the fruits of their labor and see clearly that things are not better for their children, yet they still brag about all they did for “social justice”.
Of course I am not talking about every baby boomer. David Duke and my older brothers and lots of other boomers did not go along with freedom riders and the woodstockers. But the boomers you see dispencing wisdom on TV always brag about the social change they brought about.
#5 by Creator on 10/27/2010 - 4:43 pm
We went wrong around Cro Magnon…
#6 by Epiphany on 10/27/2010 - 6:03 pm
Well, we really have to wonder what
words mean, when used by the enemy!
#7 by The Old Man of the Mountain on 10/29/2010 - 10:40 pm
They say that wisdom comes with age, but if Odin traded an eye for wisdom, then he bought it cheap!
As far as I can tell, getting older just means that I forget more.
I know I am a smart guy, smarter than most any way, so why have I made so many dumb mistakes in my life? Important mistakes!
At least I know that I made some dumb choices. Is that wisdom, or simple honesty?