Month: September 2008

by

Talking ourselves into it

Amazing, when you think of it, but today, just now, I came across this recently published essay which bears a remarkable similarity to the Slactivist essay I was enthusing about yesterday. This one, entitled The Political Brain and Inconsistency, published Sept. 6, is sort of the academic version of what Slacktivist said in yesterday’s quote, to wit, that people have many reasons for retrofitting reality to fit their preexisting belief system, not the least of which is malice (not stupidity, not ignorance, not foolishness):

“A fifth possibility is that such people say whatever they think will support the claim they are making at the time and they do not worry too much about what they say from day to day. In this case, such people do have a principle that they apply consistently: I will say whatever I think will support the claim I am making now.”

by

False witnesses

Brilliant, and I mean absolutely flippin’ brilliant, essay over at The Slactivist on the pathology of false information and rumor, and the willful suspension of intelligent thought. Here’s an excerpt:

“I used to believe that maybe some people were that stupid. They were acting that stupid, so I went along. I believed that the people I was sending that dossier to were merely innocent dupes.

But in truth they were neither innocent nor dupes. The category of innocent dupe does not apply here. No one could be honestly misled by such a story. The only way to have been misled by it is dishonestly — which is to say deliberately, willingly and willfully. They are claiming to believe a foolish thing, but they are not guilty of foolishness. They are guilty of malice.”