Friday, February 10, 2012
Tin ears
Lots of 'tin ears' in the news.
Misteromney gives us a fresh example every day. Not concerned with the poor, loves to fire people, and so on.
Jerry Sandusky wants to get out of house arrest so he can visit his grandkids.
Bernie Marcus and other rich bastards think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?"
Pseudoscientist charlatans think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "The social controversy over climate change is in part due to climate change denial. In order to defend and support the teaching of climate change, it is important to understand — and be able to rebut — arguments about climate science, and to understand why people choose to attack such well-tested science."
= = = = =
A generation ago these 'tin ears' weren't nearly as common.
Wrong-doers weren't innately different then. They didn't have any more conscience about their wrong-doing than now. They slept easily, just as modern wrong-doers sleep easily.
But old-fashioned malefactors had a clear intellectual understanding that their deeds were abnormal and disapproved by the rest of society, and knew how to avoid saying such brazenly dumb things!
I'm inclined to blame our tight caste system.
A couple generations ago, most people shopped in the same stores, rode the same streetcars, and attended the same movies and organizations.
Most of us smoked the same cigarettes, which gave us a natural ice-breaker. Most didn't brush our teeth regularly, most didn't shower daily. We were much less fussy about smell.
Rich folks had to ask a poor stranger for information at times, teaching them that poor strangers were capable of knowing things; poor folks had to answer a rich stranger's question at times, teaching them that rich strangers didn't know everything. Now Siri has taken over this job, allowing us to keep our pet illusions about strangers.
Rich people had black American domestic servants who schooled them in working-class ethics. (Redundant: should just say ethics.) Vice-versa, the blacks serving in rich homes understood with perfect and cynical clarity how rich bastards behave. Now the rich have disposable Mexican servants who barely speak English and go home to Mexico when they're fired.
The bad/good distinction also works both ways. Modern wrong-doers can't picture how a normal mind works, how a normal mind perceives their words. Vice-versa, modern innocents fail to understand how the criminal or con-man mind works, and can't conceive that the criminal sleeps well at night. They say fantastically stupid things like "Well, I'd rather see him get life than the gas chamber, because life will give him time to regret his mistakes." No it won't, you hopeless idiot. Life will just give him time to train lots of young criminals.
= = = = =
Bet you're expecting me to issue a disclaimer. Expecting me to say "Well ha ha, we may look back fondly on olden times, but we wouldn't really want all of that to return, would we? We can't go back to racism, classism, ageism, fatism, somethingelseism, homophobia, somethingelseophobia, etc, etc, etc. We're past all that now. This is, after all, 2012, ha ha."
Nope. Not gonna say that.
All of those idiotic -ism words are fancy Orwellian ways of saying just one -ism.
REALISM.
We could go back to realism if we wanted to. We don't want to, because we've been hopelessly stupefied by 57 years of Die-Versity in "laws" and "courts", 57 years of Leninist propaganda on TV.
And even if some of us wanted to recover realism, we know perfectly well that the Gulag awaits, the Delta Force is ready to rumble. Not worth it.
Misteromney gives us a fresh example every day. Not concerned with the poor, loves to fire people, and so on.
Jerry Sandusky wants to get out of house arrest so he can visit his grandkids.
Bernie Marcus and other rich bastards think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?"
Pseudoscientist charlatans think they're doing smart PR when they say things like "The social controversy over climate change is in part due to climate change denial. In order to defend and support the teaching of climate change, it is important to understand — and be able to rebut — arguments about climate science, and to understand why people choose to attack such well-tested science."
= = = = =
A generation ago these 'tin ears' weren't nearly as common.
Wrong-doers weren't innately different then. They didn't have any more conscience about their wrong-doing than now. They slept easily, just as modern wrong-doers sleep easily.
But old-fashioned malefactors had a clear intellectual understanding that their deeds were abnormal and disapproved by the rest of society, and knew how to avoid saying such brazenly dumb things!
I'm inclined to blame our tight caste system.
A couple generations ago, most people shopped in the same stores, rode the same streetcars, and attended the same movies and organizations.
Most of us smoked the same cigarettes, which gave us a natural ice-breaker. Most didn't brush our teeth regularly, most didn't shower daily. We were much less fussy about smell.
Rich folks had to ask a poor stranger for information at times, teaching them that poor strangers were capable of knowing things; poor folks had to answer a rich stranger's question at times, teaching them that rich strangers didn't know everything. Now Siri has taken over this job, allowing us to keep our pet illusions about strangers.
Rich people had black American domestic servants who schooled them in working-class ethics. (Redundant: should just say ethics.) Vice-versa, the blacks serving in rich homes understood with perfect and cynical clarity how rich bastards behave. Now the rich have disposable Mexican servants who barely speak English and go home to Mexico when they're fired.
The bad/good distinction also works both ways. Modern wrong-doers can't picture how a normal mind works, how a normal mind perceives their words. Vice-versa, modern innocents fail to understand how the criminal or con-man mind works, and can't conceive that the criminal sleeps well at night. They say fantastically stupid things like "Well, I'd rather see him get life than the gas chamber, because life will give him time to regret his mistakes." No it won't, you hopeless idiot. Life will just give him time to train lots of young criminals.
= = = = =
Bet you're expecting me to issue a disclaimer. Expecting me to say "Well ha ha, we may look back fondly on olden times, but we wouldn't really want all of that to return, would we? We can't go back to racism, classism, ageism, fatism, somethingelseism, homophobia, somethingelseophobia, etc, etc, etc. We're past all that now. This is, after all, 2012, ha ha."
Nope. Not gonna say that.
All of those idiotic -ism words are fancy Orwellian ways of saying just one -ism.
REALISM.
We could go back to realism if we wanted to. We don't want to, because we've been hopelessly stupefied by 57 years of Die-Versity in "laws" and "courts", 57 years of Leninist propaganda on TV.
And even if some of us wanted to recover realism, we know perfectly well that the Gulag awaits, the Delta Force is ready to rumble. Not worth it.
Labels: Ethics
¶ 9:05 AM
