We humans have always had a terrible problem with calculating scale. We're utterly irrational and hopelessly subjective. Even when we attempt to shape our world view via humanism and logic, we fall prey to insidious prejudices few of us are able to even detect well. We think we're much smarter than we are, and it's only by growing older and expanding our time scope that we're capable of beginning to understand how limited our view always was the minute before. Most of us don't live long enough to ever really accomplish anything remotely like an objective view point.
And so, we fear plane crashes, and not car crashes, despite the latter vastly outnumbering the former. We say "je suis charlie" for the 12, and pass by the thousands dead. We only care when the PR machine snaps a gorgeous tragedy and Buzzfeed includes it in "Top 5 Photos From World Conflicts: You won't believe number 4!". When one person dies, it's a tragedy, but when a million people die it's a statistic. Stalin said that. Remarkable bit of insight from someone who created some notable statistics. We Americans are terrible with statistics. We're smart enough to know that they're a weapon to bludgeon the less Google savvy, and we pick and choose to suit our bigotry. Then once a year we pour ice water over our heads while hash tagging #Kony2012. Verily Babylon has fallen. Hello, Minds Eye. I've missed you. Neil's been commenting on my G+ posts, and it put me of a mind to come see how the group's been. On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 10:29:52 PM UTC-5, archytas wrote: > > Killing cartoonists clearly can't be allowed. There is no absolute > authority for jihad, crusades or lacking a self-depreciating sense of > humour prepared to rip loved ones from the lives of relatives and friends. > The most common 'cause' of killing and war in primitive societies is > revenge, generally pretty dumb. > > On the day Charlie Hebdo was struck, Boko Haram was doing much worse in > Nigeria and 2000 died. Yemen was pasted again. 25 million or so have died > in wars after WW2 and any number of people have had peaceful lives > destroyed by various forms of imperialism. We understand revenge films > where the child not slaughtered by Barbarians grows to destroy them. There > are at least questions we should be asking on whether fundamentalist Islam > is radicalising terrorists, or the various imperialisms and the conditions > these create in countries kept poor and run by installed despots. > > Institutional religion is no use to me and I detest the hostility of those > believers who would have me respect belief in superstition,clearly false > history, varieties of justified sexism, racism, apartheid and selfish > chosen-peopleism. This extends far beyond religion and to false ideas that > the Greek Enlightenment was the zenith of civilisation. This was a sexist, > racist, slave economy. Western democratic free trade liberalism is such a > lie as to be merely another control fraud, not the end of history. > > There is little clarity. We stand as Charlie for free speech, yet do > nothing against indecent Saudi floggings and beheadings. We have never > produced democratic foreign policy, population control or sustained peace. > Now we are arresting people protesting publicly against Charlie, somewhat > contradictory to say the least. All that seems clear is that we are all > Charleys, without much of a system to openly discuss what is wrong, leaving > tyranny anywhere a threat to freedom everywhere. > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
