Keith Hudson wrote:
>
> "Scotosis" is a new term to me
It is important that we not have words to name the obvious. That way
we have a harder time getting a "handle" on it even if we happen
to stumble over it. Two fine works here remain Edward Hall's short and
readable book _The Hidden Language_, and Alain Resnais film
"Mon Oncle d'Amerique" (at least some Blockbusters have it!). Most
persons who lack the concept are fortunate enough (from the "perspective"
of the obvious's self-replication in their lives!) not to even notice
that they stumble, or, a fortiori, that stumbling is unnecessary,
not to mention possibly undesirable.
A particularly interesting scotosis is the way many educated
persons today still circumcise their children for
"erligious reasons" (or so that the child will not
be "different"(sic)) but in other areas of life
work to try to "cure" "troubled" teenagers from "cutting
themselves", and tell their children
to not just do things because others are
doing them (like drugs, of course, not when the day
will come for them to mutilate according to
standard social norms their own children!).
*Splitting* is scotosis's sidekick, since it permits
focal awareness in one situation on a thing that it is imperative
to not be aware of in another situation.
Competition is another obvious thing to which we are blind. We think
losing is bad -- and it is -- but we fail to contextualize
the damage done by losing within the broader attack on all
areas of life by competition as opposed to cooperation in
the first instance.
Then there are (to quote the title of Elias Canetti's fine book" ) _Crowds
and Power_. Hitler and Albert Speer's mass rallies were bad, as all
know, not because of their *mass* aspect, but because the mass was
organized around the leader principle of Nazism, not some
leader principle acceptable to "us" (like maybe working overtime
on a project that everybody knows will never ship
but everyone still has to bust their -ss to prove they
are good employees...).
And it's a good thing it is not considered polite to stone persons
in the social circles in which I travel, for when I proposed that
Scouting is preparation for Fascism, I was made to
understand that was not an acceptable thought to entertain in
my head, much less to give voice to in public (but they wear *uniforms*
and *salute* a totem and they *follow a leader*???? No! It's
totally different: Scouting builds individual self-confidence
whereas Hitler youth made little mindless followers of an
evil leader. You don't think that virtue is easier to
cultivate when we don't have to try to distinguish between
good bad things and bad bad things? What *are* you talking
about you ungrateful fool -- Go live
in The Soviet Union since you are a commie lover! And
if you don't get a haircut you cannot come home!)
Definition: "Initiative" is taking individual initiative(sic) to
undertake and vigorously follow through with activities
that mean nothing to oneself other than that one's
superiors want one to do them without one having to be told to
do them....
> but I have often thought about this
> phenomenon when reading history -- even fairly recent history -- and noting
> fashions of thinking which were universally accepted but which are now
> regarded as fallacious -- so fallacious indeed that it is a matter of
> wonderment to us that they could ever have been believed.
That's one way "the obvious" protects itself: By everyone being dazzled
at how obviously wrong others were/are. Of course the earth is not
flat -- how stupid those ignorant people were -- even though few
of us even study the not fully convincing evidence of eclipses and
the fact that ships' hulls disappear over the horizon before their masts.
No, we *learned* that the earth is round, and our *schools* teach *scientific
truth*, unlike medieval church institutions and even worse, the
Taliban, which inculcate
mythological superstitious doctrines, not empirically verified
truth! If quantum physics is true and flat earth is false -- which
may indeed be the case --, the reason most Americans believe the
first and not the second is Scotosis, not the result of rigorous
scientific experimentation (praying hard!), not to mention
having seriously engaged with critical reflection on the meaning of
scientific praxis in human life.
"You can't prove *everything*!" "Right: It's important
to accept the important things on faith."
>
> I'm not sure that such scotoses (if that is the plural form of the word!)
> are cultivated.
They are propagated in at least 2 ways:
(1) Threat and shame: "What's wrong with you [to think/feel/do] whatever?
It is *unthinkable* that that you think happened really happened --
what's wrong with you? (And if you don't shape up, we always have
ECT to help you overcome your delusions...).... (Freud's
unconscious of the repressed).
(2) Encouragement and approbation! "You won! My hero! You got the
[promotion/A-grade/sale/...]! We love you!" Study George W Bush's
face. It seems to me so expressive how baffled
he gets when he does the obviously right thing (which is the thing
he always does, by definition! --And then some strange person
doesn't pick up his ball and run with it and not everybody
lauds him to the sky for having done THE RIGHT THING!
(Hall and Resnais' positive social unconsciousness of permissions).
#1 is applied only as a fall-back position when #2 does not work.
> Those of the past that amaze me seem to be cultural
> consequences of what went before and entirely subconscious. They are only
> exposed and questioned when some major innovation changes the culture in a
> fundamental way.
Yes, generally some *new* ethnoparochialism masquerading as
"progress" (we are right; everybody in the past was wrong -- this
moment will *not* in its turn become just another benighted past,
because we life in *reality*!). Children used to believe their
senses (not that that was worth much), but now they believe in
a spherical earth, dinosaurs, the human mind is a complex
computer, representative democracy where your vote
matters 1/150,000,000 and your boss can fire you
and your teacher flunk you are *true freedom*, whereas
in the past people (like the social circle
in 1000AD Kyoto where _Genji_ was written, or
Socretes' Athens, etc.) were not free.
I never saw a purple cow
and I hope I never will.
But I can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see than be one.
> I think that it is salutary to realise that our present
> western civilization more than likely suffers from scotosis and that our
> grandchildren or further decendents will look back on our beliefs with
> incredulity.
Don't hold your breath. Many persons one hundred years ago
saw through a lot of what has us in its thrall. Most
"scientists" today still don't know what Kant wrote that is
relevant to them. We can, however,
safely say that our grandchildren will think the cars
*we* use to commute 2 hours to work are primitive compared
with the new cars they will use to commute two (maybe three, by then!)
hours to work!
The 35 hour work week? What do you mean that technological progress should
reduce the amount of necessary labor time in a society. "Necessary
labor time" sounds like Marxist stupidity to me, along with words
like "alienated" (what was supposed to be "alienated"? Why I
find a new job at a better pay every time my current
company downsizes. And I really am better at selling
underarm deodorant than all the other reps -- I'm proud
of the work I do!...)
[snip]
> I don't know why Tom Walker is quite so hung up about shorter working
> weeks. There are several more serious social/work problems in the modern
> developed world (and I confine myself to the developed world because the
> undeveloped world can only catch up with us by recapitulating our own
> traumatic historical "progress" -- though hopefully much quicker than we did).
"Don't compare. Don't compare. All suffering is intolerable."
(Elie Wiesel)
What better way to preserve "small" irrationalities like
circumcision, when we need to devote our energies to
more *important* things (and *not* doing the circumcisions
would take a lot *more* social energy than "just doing them",
right?).
My parents and teachers and others "above" me tell me I have
lots of "hangups" -- i.e., things I want a lot but they do
not want to deal with.
I still think John Kennedy was a massive
hypocrite when he asked the American people not to ask what their
country could do for them but rather to ask what they could do
for their country --> before asking them to
seach their souls and see if "their country" deserved
such a response from each of them as it in fact probably did deserve
from himself and his brothers.
>
> For example, the most serious problem to my mind is the way that the
> educational system (state plus private) is now more polarised in western
> countries than it ever has been.
[snip]
Where do we see persons asking if the relationship between teacher
and student in which the teacher has massively asymmetrical
power over the student is not just another form of the kind
of power which employers have over employees, etc.? (What's
wrong with *that*? People who work hard deserve to be able to
boss other people around! Oops, I mean that people who work
hard deserve not to have the fruits of the
sweat of their own brow stolen by the
government as tax for anything except Anti-Ballistic
Missile defenses which isn't really taxation anyway since
it's for defense [see above: *Splitting*!]....
I got a thoroughly useless "degree", but the process was
interesting: I actually freely contracted with persons
who had no power to hurt me, for them to provide
consultative mentorship with me under terms where either could
break the relation whenever they felt it was no longer useful.
I had found a way of learning that seemed suitable to me
(even if not to any other human being who has ever lived -- see
below).
When a teacher gives a student a "test" (the pencil and
paper kind", not a real life challenge to try to accomplish
something of personal and social value),
why isn't it "obvious" that the student should
be puzzled at this affronT upon his or her
dignity as a peer interlocutor in the discourse
which shapes and preserves the social order (AKA "us")? Why
doesn't the student, if not laughing in the teacher's face
and tearing up the test and dismissing his employee (after, all,
it's the students and their trustees AKA parents who pay
the teacher's salaries!) -- why doesn't the
student look in the teacher's face and ask in
soulful, hurt disappointment: "Why are you doing this to me?"
In the land of the blind,
The one-eyed man is deemed
to have a treatable sickness,
And his eye is surgically removed
to make him
Healthy and whole, with normal
prospects for a full and satisfying life.
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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