Update [2005-2-13 23:34:29 by thingamabob]: Changed the title. Old one was "Do we need Religion or Philosophy" and I started to wonder if we needed a diary called that.
There's a great piece today about the "cult of sincerity" and the rise of bullshit in contemporary politics and discourse. It suggests that we are continually dumbing ourselves down as we reject "intellect" in favour of "sincerity".
Are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? ... Coffee is good for you -- or was that bad? The Atkins diet doesn't work. Oops, yes it does. Voting irregularities in Ohio? Why slow down for a recount? ... Feeling unloved? Viagra will make you dance in the street.
Coping with life's brutality ... is exhausting, so people switch off their minds and coast. They seek an escape from helplessness and despair. There is a benefit to being ill-informed, even if we've turned 180 degrees from the time when Greek philosopher Socrates pronounced, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Why does philosophy matter? Below...
The rest of the piece
in today's Toronto Star goes on to (ironically) provide a pretty superficial look at what the culture of sincerity is all about, mentioning areas of concern but never really finding the answers.
But it reminds me of one of last night's diaries on atheism. At least one (perhaps at most too, I can't remember) commentator asked what atheism had to do with the objectives that DailyKos was set-up to address. And I think this is an important question.
Look at it this way. There have been a number of diaries recently on the Democratic five pillars, eight words, values, frames and so on. What all of these hope to find is a recipe for communication--how to understand our values and how to be understood.
Mixed in with these are all kinds of diaries which examine strategies, positions, controversies and such. Values lie behind all of these, but sometimes it's hard to see where.
One of the things which we surely must start defending is the right to use intelligence as a tool. I remember some commentator (I think it was Brokaw, but I don't recall) saying that most people would rather spend 5 hours in a car with Bush than with Gore. And I thought: "that's great, at least if he's running to be head chauffer instead of President."
But this is the crux of the matter: that one of the values Dems stand for is solutions that work, and reasons for doing things that matter, not just pretty speeches and that gosh darned sincere look that says: "I am just like you". And right now, the Dem focus on using intelligence is itself under attack. How can we hope to persuade people to share any of our opinions if they have a built in resistance to thinking?
Caught on camera, well known and ordinary people scream, riot, bare their backsides and throw up onstage with the same cheery abandon with which President George W. Bush decided to invade a WMD-less Iraq.
They get away with it not because it makes sense, Nerenberg implies, but because it's done with either a fabricated sincerity or a false sense of urgency designed to impress a public that would rather not think; a public that applauds but doesn't question.
"You don't have to be stupid to enjoy doing stupid things," says Nerenberg. "Advocates of deliberate stupidity believe that it makes you happier."
Happiness is news and entertainment that has merged into snappy docu-dramas, courtroom circuses and blanket coverage of the lives of celebrities.
Films rely on special effects rather than plot and character, and complex scripts discourage backers from funding them. "The hype around movies imitates the passion of ideas, but it isn't the real thing," says Nerenberg. "What's sad about that is that movies have become a substitute for intelligence."
In the same way, beliefs have become a substitute for complex ideas. Citizens are fed a diet of urgent issues -- from foreign affairs to same-sex marriage -- that they are told must be addressed or their very way of life could be affected.
I want to take back the right to use my intelligence. I want to get rid of all of those idiotic commercials--Benylin "whoosh!" anyone--and particularly, the brazenly underproduced infomercials that show the cheesily fake audience members earnestly nodding and making "big eyes" as though they were two-bit hack actors in some banal silent movie. How about some black spray paint for that bald patch, sir? Or "smiling Bob" and his lifetime supply of Enzyte, "for natural male enhancement" (please, if you must joke about this, be funny!). This should be ILLEGAL on it's face, and not just for the ridiculous throwback to the '50s look of the whole thing. What if the Beav's mom actually had orgasms?
Listen, this is a pretty incoherent rant at times, but there is a serious plea here. It's been decades of decline for use of the intellect in America. "Eggheads" were never well-regarded, and Dems these days are the quintessential "Eggheads" whose concern for actual people and actual experience shows how out of touch we are with the sincere ignoramuses and their pleasant, safe banal bullshit.
So here's my question to you: how do we make philosophy and intelligence matter again? And this is non-denominational--whether this fits with your atheist ideas and secularism, or whether this is simply about taking Jesus back from the Force Ministries, FoF and Left-Behind bullshit, it's pretty much the same thing. How do we start to cut through the many layers of bullshit in our lives today?