That phrase drives me bonkers. We're not really in "this" together, are we? If your business dies because of the lockdowns, you're on your own. If your neighborhood gets torched by Vandals of Color, you're on your own. If part of your state goes up in flames because environmentalists prevented preventative forestry, you're on your own.
As a matter of fact, you're on your own in almost everything. That's just life.
Instead, I feel like we're fed a constant stream of sheepdog barking, designed to keep us in the herd and obedient to our "leaders." All of the barking - climate barking, Chicom Flu barking, racial injustice barking - it's all meant to create a set of enemies, some human, some not, against whom we must band together.
Meh.
Climate change is coming from China. They emit a huge and rapidly growing portion of global CO2.
The Wuhan flu is dangerous only at very close ranges. Masks outside are pointless.
Racial injustice is simply nonsense. It's paranoia aimed at a specific demographic, built from the terror that some of them had begun to stray.
We're being herded for nothing.
Nah. This is not for me.
This reply could have just as easily been written yesterday, but I'd decided to mull it over before posting. As it still applies to today's post, I decided to put it here.
ReplyDeleteLots of today's 'Elites' and 'Political Leaders' (and the sheeple who follow them blindly due to the barking sheeple dogs - a.k.a. 'duckspeak') will never accept your reasoning because many (most?) of the folks in the groups just mentioned simply do not, and will not, accept that God exists, but you pointed out yesterday, you base it on accepting "the rules laid out in the reality that God created for us". In order to have any chance to influence them you must base your argument on a basis not dependent on God. Fortunately it is easy to make such an argument.
It goes like this... Since the dawn of human history, and for generations before that, humans survived and thrived on the basis of cultural norms that were equivalent to those which were eventually codified in the Judeo-Christian bible. That these are the best rules for humans is clearly indicated by the simple fact that no other system was ever developed that 'out competed' them. This is because, just as evolution selected for the most fit genes, it also selected the most fit memes (norms). Hence, any attempt to impose a fundamentally different set of norms is doomed to eventually fail. Q.E.D.
That's a very elegant formulation of an "I believe because it works" idea. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI find my thinking often boils down to "Theory guides, Experiment decides".
ReplyDeleteFirst time I saw that dang line, it was in a comic making fun of it.
ReplyDeleteFAmous person on boat: We're all
Famous person on private beach: in this
Famous person in amazing huge kitchen: together!
character under blanket in tiny, dark livingroom, huddled over laptop on the floor: "Yeah, together."
Ohioan, I agree with your third paragraph. The proof is in the pudding. A moral code that leads to a society that gets wiped out by its neighbors is obviously no good, and we've been selecting for ones that can last for all of our existence.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are two ways a bad moral code can get you wiped out. One is the obvious case where your society can't get itself organized to defend itself effectively, or even maintain itself. The other case is the one where your society is so obnoxious and dangerous to other societies, that they all band together to erase yours from the earth in self-defense.