“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. O…
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
There’s a huge problem here in people’s propensity to have blind faith in things that are absolutely incompatible, a tendency that is overdeveloped in America; one that lays people open to delusions and to the total misinterpretation of science, reason and religion.
The strangest thing—though, in one way or another, this kind of thing has happened time and again in history—is how self-professed Christians have been taken in by this demonic pseudo-Father figure. If they were able to attend to Christ’s message and abandon the adoration of Mammon for just one moment, daylight would get in and dispel their delusion.
Any genuine religion—as opposed to worshipping shattered splinters of a confused idea of God—would have the same effect.
Which could be the reason church membership is dropping. People are rejecting what the modern church has become. When we moved to the South we dropped our church membership, we found most southern churches to be more like country clubs and Yankees not wanted.
I believe that many Christians have no idea that Christ’s messages of love, and that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” are what is important. Too many believe that faith in the name is all you need. This leads to an easy explanation for what has happened, Jesus has been supplanted. Faith is all they have.
They take shelter in the institution and the community it creates. It follows the history of the Catholic Church from 400 AD as a "political" organization protecting the faithful and offering up themselves as both controller of mores and mediator with God....as most people have difficulty handling the demands personal responibility implicit in a more direct relationship.
Gregory Bateson called that 'the double bind'. Indeed, I need to think this through but perhaps that is exactly what is going on at a societal level. Nice play Stuart.
Reid, you're touching something there. "Blinds" is the right word too.
To be a little kinder and more understanding, people have every reason to feel lost in a world in which change, social, economic and technological, is unprecedented and forever accelerating. One would have to be stupid and insensitive never to feel alienated. Alienated by the take-over of our lives by alien forces that have no longer any connection with our human bodies, our minds or our shared household.
As far as I’m concerned, this compels humans to stop messing around and ask ourselves the most basic questions: What, who are we? What do we think we are doing here? What do we really need? What do we really want? Especially the first question. The others flow from it.
Socrates is said to have spent a whole morning looking at a market stall selling bric-a-brac. When one of his students picked up the courage to ask him what was so special about it, he replied: “Isn’t it wonderful? All these things I don’t need!”
This is significant, I think. On an individual level, I've noticed that helping others change can involve helping them maintain their self-regard as they face wrongs they've committed. Not sure how that applies on the level of society, but I know that it takes more finesse than displaying a superior attitude. I wish we'd learn this lesson.
The truth of equality is a hard one to swallow and digest. The Germans took the bitter pill in 1949, having no choice but to face the truth: “Human dignity shall be inviolable”—the dignity of ALL human beings without exception—this is the foundation of the German constitution. However, the victors failed to apply the same high standard to themselves.
A truth hard for oppressors and their heirs whose collective self-image is wedded to delusions of superiority, while stirring uneasily in the darkest shadows of their unconscious lurk phantoms of guilt and shame which, when they come to light, often take the form of yet more violent aggression projected against the usual victims who, by their mere presence, remind the would-be masters of a heritage of guilt.
Hard for the oppressed, heavily conditioned by all the filth, the shape-shifting evil, the fear and hatred endlessly projected against them. Often it will feel safer for these victims to play the vile parts reserved for them by their self-appointed “betters”. Under the circumstances, is it surprising that the 2016 Republican line-up of presidential candidates should have looked like a page out of a psychiatric manual showing specimens of narcissistic perversion? A page into which the winner, with his in-your-face narcissism and imposition of “superiority” didn’t even fit.
There’s no space left for the oppressed, no time. They breathe the same air, but—as we have seen—on sufferance. Although the Declaration of Independence states that they too “are created equal” the oppressors arrogate unto themselves a monopoly right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
Becky, you speak as one who understands education, the need to make students feel they are even better than they really are, freeing space so that they may rise to the occasion. What the oppressor understandably fears is blowback, that when victims are freed from all that has long weighed them down, they too may indulge in delusions of superiority. Hence the all-important role of education, including cradle-to-grave civic education. Hence the resistance of those privileged beings whose mindset of poverty assumes there is not enough liberty and happiness to go round…
The Germans did have a choice in 1949. They are to be commended for the one they made. Other countries who had been conquered into the Nazi orbit - Austria and Poland come to mind - did not face the truth.
. When the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme came to light, some of his biggest defenders were his victims‼️ They were too sophisticated, too rich, too smart to get taken in by a Ponzi scheme. What a massive blow to their ego that must have been.
So many people equate admitting they've been wrong with humbling themselves, bowing down. If they only knew that, if the admission is genuine, you raise yourself to your full height and gain dignity, not lose it.
Carl Sagan summed it up when he said
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
There’s a huge problem here in people’s propensity to have blind faith in things that are absolutely incompatible, a tendency that is overdeveloped in America; one that lays people open to delusions and to the total misinterpretation of science, reason and religion.
The strangest thing—though, in one way or another, this kind of thing has happened time and again in history—is how self-professed Christians have been taken in by this demonic pseudo-Father figure. If they were able to attend to Christ’s message and abandon the adoration of Mammon for just one moment, daylight would get in and dispel their delusion.
Any genuine religion—as opposed to worshipping shattered splinters of a confused idea of God—would have the same effect.
Which could be the reason church membership is dropping. People are rejecting what the modern church has become. When we moved to the South we dropped our church membership, we found most southern churches to be more like country clubs and Yankees not wanted.
I believe that many Christians have no idea that Christ’s messages of love, and that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” are what is important. Too many believe that faith in the name is all you need. This leads to an easy explanation for what has happened, Jesus has been supplanted. Faith is all they have.
Alas, is that faith? Sounds like a cheap talisman, a counterfeit token. An alibi for irresponsibility.
"The Kingdom" is not a somewhere else, promised at another time.
"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
Weird how such a radical, immensely demanding religion can have been reduced to a means of imposing social conformism.
They take shelter in the institution and the community it creates. It follows the history of the Catholic Church from 400 AD as a "political" organization protecting the faithful and offering up themselves as both controller of mores and mediator with God....as most people have difficulty handling the demands personal responibility implicit in a more direct relationship.
Mutually contradictary instructions/obligations are also recognized as triggers of episodes of schizophrenia!
Gregory Bateson called that 'the double bind'. Indeed, I need to think this through but perhaps that is exactly what is going on at a societal level. Nice play Stuart.
I think the abortion issue blinds many of them.
Reid, you're touching something there. "Blinds" is the right word too.
To be a little kinder and more understanding, people have every reason to feel lost in a world in which change, social, economic and technological, is unprecedented and forever accelerating. One would have to be stupid and insensitive never to feel alienated. Alienated by the take-over of our lives by alien forces that have no longer any connection with our human bodies, our minds or our shared household.
As far as I’m concerned, this compels humans to stop messing around and ask ourselves the most basic questions: What, who are we? What do we think we are doing here? What do we really need? What do we really want? Especially the first question. The others flow from it.
Socrates is said to have spent a whole morning looking at a market stall selling bric-a-brac. When one of his students picked up the courage to ask him what was so special about it, he replied: “Isn’t it wonderful? All these things I don’t need!”
This is significant, I think. On an individual level, I've noticed that helping others change can involve helping them maintain their self-regard as they face wrongs they've committed. Not sure how that applies on the level of society, but I know that it takes more finesse than displaying a superior attitude. I wish we'd learn this lesson.
The truth of equality is a hard one to swallow and digest. The Germans took the bitter pill in 1949, having no choice but to face the truth: “Human dignity shall be inviolable”—the dignity of ALL human beings without exception—this is the foundation of the German constitution. However, the victors failed to apply the same high standard to themselves.
A truth hard for oppressors and their heirs whose collective self-image is wedded to delusions of superiority, while stirring uneasily in the darkest shadows of their unconscious lurk phantoms of guilt and shame which, when they come to light, often take the form of yet more violent aggression projected against the usual victims who, by their mere presence, remind the would-be masters of a heritage of guilt.
Hard for the oppressed, heavily conditioned by all the filth, the shape-shifting evil, the fear and hatred endlessly projected against them. Often it will feel safer for these victims to play the vile parts reserved for them by their self-appointed “betters”. Under the circumstances, is it surprising that the 2016 Republican line-up of presidential candidates should have looked like a page out of a psychiatric manual showing specimens of narcissistic perversion? A page into which the winner, with his in-your-face narcissism and imposition of “superiority” didn’t even fit.
There’s no space left for the oppressed, no time. They breathe the same air, but—as we have seen—on sufferance. Although the Declaration of Independence states that they too “are created equal” the oppressors arrogate unto themselves a monopoly right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
Becky, you speak as one who understands education, the need to make students feel they are even better than they really are, freeing space so that they may rise to the occasion. What the oppressor understandably fears is blowback, that when victims are freed from all that has long weighed them down, they too may indulge in delusions of superiority. Hence the all-important role of education, including cradle-to-grave civic education. Hence the resistance of those privileged beings whose mindset of poverty assumes there is not enough liberty and happiness to go round…
The Germans did have a choice in 1949. They are to be commended for the one they made. Other countries who had been conquered into the Nazi orbit - Austria and Poland come to mind - did not face the truth.
As further support of what Sagan said.
. When the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme came to light, some of his biggest defenders were his victims‼️ They were too sophisticated, too rich, too smart to get taken in by a Ponzi scheme. What a massive blow to their ego that must have been.
What a brilliant and succinct observation Carl Sagan was a truly amazing man.
You don't get it back without serious dammage to your ego......a good lesson which many prefer to avoid.
So many people equate admitting they've been wrong with humbling themselves, bowing down. If they only knew that, if the admission is genuine, you raise yourself to your full height and gain dignity, not lose it.
It strikes at the heart of our attitude towards failure...as a result of personal incompetence or inadequacies.
Yes.