Reposted as OP - There is a deep flaw in the human psyche...

[sibelian]

(from a subthread on why the justification for the Iraq War was so widely believed by some and so obviously a pile of stinking bullshit to others...)

There's a switch that usually gets flipped roundabout your 20s when you realise that all the cuddly stories you've been told about how things are are made up by people and the cold hard ground you stand on is something different altogether and you'd better find out what it is.

People who never flip the switch from "I have to believe" to "I guess I'd better find out" reach for solutions that make them happy. If there's never any negative feedback that clearly impacts their own physical comfort or circumstances, they stick with the original thinking. They don't need to behave as if the world's real.

That's where the whole "they hate our freedoms" thing came from. It was the explanation that made them feel good. It had nothing to do with the enemy. They just spurted out whatever qualities they needed the enemy to possess in order to make them feel good about themselves in contrast.

It's an extremely common phenomenon. "I declare that you have whatever personality flaw I need you to have in order to make my behaviour look reasonable!" (It happens right here on this website...)

It's easier for some people than others. It's very easy for people who have never had to sacrifice anything or fight for anything, particularly the rich.

We rail against the self-absorption of the privileged but very often their lives have never in fact provided them with the opportunity to reconsider their mythology.

A lot of us are on this site because circumstances forced us to change our footing. If I wasn't gay I might not ever have developed the critical faculties to sniff out the bullshit that reeks so heavily to us and smells so fragrant to the self-absorbed bullshitters.

But... I'm sure you knew all that...

[malaise]

1. My favorite aunt told me that I recognized bullshit before I was four years old

Why did I question everything - as opposed to all but one of my siblings?
Maybe because I listened to my aunt - she was anti-colonial to the bone.
As I grew up I saw racism everywhere and I saw the breathtaking hypocrisy and lies spewed in these so called decent institutions. I also saw how people treated 'the help' and the contempt with which they spoke about people they viewed as inferior. I challenged them every step of the way.

I have no doubt that gays are forced to sniff out bullshit, but lots of us who aren't gay knew and continue to know that we were seeing an inversion of reality.

[sibelian]

2. True, v true.

One need not necessarily be pushed into the fresh air... it is sometimes possible simply to open the door and walk outside.

In my experience, people who do so are unusual. Like yourself.

[GeorgeGist]

3. Is your theory based on belief or science?

[bemildred]

5. Observation.

No studies, no dogma, just watch it happen over and over. And usually, getting clubbed up side the head after marching happily off in the direction you were supposed to, according to what you've been told by people you trusted. Vietnam and the failure of my first marriage did it for me, and I've never had cause to doubt the worth of that lesson.

I remember exactly what he/she is talking about.

[sibelian]

7. I don't really it as a theory.

And your response to it is actually a little ironic.

[bemildred]

4. People can rationalize anything, you see it every day, and they do. nt

[el_bryanto]

6. That seems accurate to me; many people of all beliefs have them uncritically.

That said, you do also come across people who actually have thought deeply on the issues and come up with what seems like a wrong answer. Some who disagrees with you might be someone who has uncritically absorbed a message from the media or parents or they might be someone who has investigated and come up with something else.

Bryant

[sibelian]

8. I find it extraordinary.

...the number of people who spend their lives advocating positions by just slapping adjectives and categories on things... and it's always the adjectives and categories that cast the subject under discussion as somethning in relation to the advocate or the advocate's image or for the sake of some imaginary audience on the inside of advocate's head, also constructed by the advocate.

The "Gay Agenda". It's what they need to believe in in order to feel persecuted. It's nothing to do with any actual gay people. It's about how gay people relate to THEM and what they are able to look like to themselves in the baleful glare of it's imaginary perscutory nastiness...

[hfojvt]

9. Does it happen in this OP?

"It's an extremely common phenomenon. "I declare that you have whatever personality flaw I need you to have in order to make my behaviour look reasonable!" (It happens right here on this website...)"

a personality flaw? You mean like this one?

"There is a deep flaw in the human psyche..."

But it's a deep flaw in OTHERS, not, of course, in you or in the people reccing this thread.

It must make some people feel pretty good about themselves to believe that there are huge flaws in OTHER people.

[sibelian]

10. Actually, I *have* been guilty of the flaw that I describe...

...on numerous occasions. Not in writing this OP, though, I'd suggest.

It doesn't make me feel good about myself watching other people talk out loud mostly to themselves, for the sake of hearing their own voices, for the sake of some imaginary internal audience. It makes me feel wary of them.

[bemildred]

12. We all do it. Some of us notice it.

I spend a great deal of effort at times waiting for the little monkey in there to shut up and sit down so I can figure out what to do. The fucking tape loops in your head that just will not shut up as they wallow in self-pity and anger.

[sibelian]

13. ...yes.

I'm off, bemildred. Partially to wrangle with the monkey


God bless....

[bemildred]

15. As a fellow scot, 2nd gen. Amurkin, let me wish you well.

My dad was born in Glasgow.

[sibelian]

18. :)

So many Scots in America!

Ciao...

[Rex]

17. Interesting reply.

nt.

[applegrove]

11. Actually that "freedom" talk is used to make

Last edited Sat Mar 15, 2014, 02:36 AM - Edit history (2)

pawns. The psychpaths, in this case the powers that be within the GOP/1% who have been organizing for 30 years or more, convince their followers that the followers are pure and perfect. Step one in making them pawns. In the case of america it was all about the perfection of capitalists and freedom, the creation myth of america, for the followers. Then whenever someone tells these newly formed perfect people that someone somewhere doesn't think they are perfect in every single way, the follower is taught that they are being grivously harmed. Their boundaries have been so expanded they would go to war if possible.

So either light is shinning out of the follower's ass all the time or somebody, usually an other who is 100% wrong in the eyes of the follower, is doing them wrong and should be attacked. So the powers that be get an agenda of implementing this pure and perfect capitalism implemented by their very angry followers who will run over anyone, or say and believe anything to get her done. All the while believing that anyone who doesn't see their leaders, them and their agenda as pure perfection is robbing them. And the other is often a previously persecuted group or person, who takes the brunt of this baiting. Also persecuted but more mildly at times, a newly attacked group the followers can't get to believe in the purity like educated elites in the case of Nazi Germany or Hollywood liberals in the case of the USA. Indeed hollywood is only just getting its voice back.

For sure the followers would do anything to protect their psychopathic leaders who give them meaning in their lives. So it is not the rich who universally need to look at their lives. Indeed rich people can be the psychopathic leader, the follower, the persecuted against (if they are say gay) or the non believers of the purity delusion like hollywood liberals or Paul Krugman. What makes people guilty of being pawns is more likely lack of meaning in one's life until the psychopath came along and made the person perfect and self-actualized..... and thus a delusional pawn in this war. All humans, or systems humans can come up with, are a mixture of good and bad. If anyone tries to tell you either they or you are perfect...Yell out "Boundaries" and RUN.

This explanation works for almost any event in world history where psychopaths are involved in getting groups to persecute their enemies. Indeed it works for how most wars were started.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Erect bogeyman, wave flag, give more money to the MIC, send in the troops..or bombers.

Works every time.

[Fumesucker]

16. It's a good bit easier to find that switch for people who don't "fit" in society for some reason

There have been a couple of examples on this thread already, race and sexual orientation, there are other reasons someone might not fit in our society, my own switch was somewhat different but just as valid.