Americans seeing the world through the glass darkly:
Extra training ... so you know that shooting babies is WRONG ?!?
by Simon 146 Replies latest social current
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Abaddon
SixofNine
S'truth. I don't bristle in the least when I hear someone say "dumb Americans", unless they are specifically criticising a belief that I hold.
If you hadn't noticed, there are a hell of alot of dumb Americans out there (no, no more than any other country, but our stupidity f**ks the world more often, and with less lubrication). Look at how dramatically the American public's attitude has changed towards the occupation of Iraq in just the last two years. Did all these people suddenly get smart? No, they got hit upside the head with a 2x4 of reality. But that reality was in play much longer than two years ago.
Look at how many idiots believe that "supporting the troops" means cheerleading even the ones who do bad (there are still people who will claim that the only thing done wrong in Vietnam was that there weren't enough My lai's), and cheerleading the civilian leadership who have demonstrably abused the very troops the yellow ribbon wearing chickenhawks claim to "support".
Honestly, with friends like many Americans, our troops don't need enemies.
Hoo ray!
And interesting reading for any worried about 'W';
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,415638,00.html
In the absence of any reliable evidence, CIA analysts had refused to put their stamp of approval on the administration's reasons for the Iraq war.
But despite urgent pressures to report to the contrary, the CIA never reported that Saddam presented an imminent national security threat to the United States, that he was near to developing nuclear weapons, or that he had any ties to al-Qaida. Moreover, analysts predicted a protracted insurgency after an invasion of Iraq.
On April 21, 2005, his mission dictated by Bush's political imperatives, Goss became CIA director. Immediately, he sent a memo to all employees, ordering them to "support the administration and its policies in our work." He underscored the supremacy of the party line: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."
The "global war on terror," meanwhile, was a boon to the concentration of power within the Pentagon, and that department gained control of more than 80 percent of the total budget for intelligence. Without its assigned place at the top of the pyramid, the CIA became disoriented and ever more peripheral. That suited Rumsfeld's empire building. And the CIA's plight was aggravated by the power grabs of the first NDI, John Negroponte (coincidentally an old Yale classmate of Goss'). Without natural functions of its own, Negroponte's office seized them from the CIA.
Goss' attempt to run the CIA through his own band of loyalists proved his ultimate undoing. It turned out that the "gosslings," as they were known at Langley (after "quislings"), had unsavory connections that trailed them into the agency. An unintended consequence of Goss' dependence on his team of political hatchet men was that his future was dependent on their past.
As Goss parried with Negroponte and Rumsfeld, federal investigators began to close in on his third-ranked official, in charge of contracting, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, for possibly granting illegal contracts to Brent Wilkes, the military contractor named as "co-conspirator No. 1" in the indictment of convicted former Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving eight years in prison for accepting $2.4 million in bribes. Wilkes, who gave $630,000 in cash and favors to Cunningham, remains under investigation by prosecutors. Cunningham has confessed to accepting a $100,000 bribe from "co-conspirator No. 1." Wilkes' business associate, Mitchell Wade, has pleaded guilty to bribing Cunningham.
The White House announcement of Goss' resignation was incredibly abrupt, without advance warning or a named successor. White House aides frenetically briefed the press that the sole reason was an internecine conflict between Goss and Negroponte. But such an internal controversy could have been managed for a smooth transition. Something else appeared to be at work.
President Bush has nominated Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and currently Negroponte's deputy, as the new CIA director. He has distinguished himself as a loyalist to the administration by using his uniform as a shield against the heat generated by the revelation of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA.
The militarization of intelligence under Bush is likely to guarantee military solutions above other options. Uniformed officers trained to identity military threats and trends will take over economic and political intelligence for which they are untrained and often incapable, and their priorities will skew analysis. But the bias toward the military option will be one that the military in the end will dislike. It will find itself increasingly bearing the brunt of foreign policy and stretched beyond endurance. The vicious cycle leads to a downward spiral. And Hayden's story will be like a dull shadow of Powell's -- a tale of a "good soldier" who salutes, gets promoted, is used and abused, and is finally discarded.
Of course, this is nothing to do with Americans in general, and is something many are against. But I'd be worried as hell it I were an American, that America was being manipulated in such a way.
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Simon
Is it just me or does AlanF really like the sound of his own voice? God he can waffle on about nothing!
Todays study topic is the word "you". Everyone will be expected to write a 1,000 word essay on it. AlanF can stop at 15,000 or when we run out of paper.
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MsMcDucket
God he can waffle on about nothing
Are you talking about the topic you started?
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Simon
Are you talking about the topic you started?
So you think it is inconsequential? That it doesn't matter and won't affect anything? Sheesh ...
Really. You've ignored the fact that you've offended other posters with your ill-conceived remarks.
Why did you kill a million Irish in the 19th century? Why did you kill up to 100,000 Kenyans in the 1950s, including women and babies? Why did you kill tens of thousands of Indians and Afghanis over the course of several centuries? Why have you killed hundreds of Iraqis recently, including civilians, and tortured Iraqi prisoners? Why did you allow the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1940 to use dum-dum bullets against the Germans in violation of the Geneva Convention? Why did you kill thousands in the Boer War of 1899-1902 and even kill women and children in concentration camps? Why did you kill thousands in the Crimean War of 1854-1856? Why did you kill millions of people while establishing and maintaining your world empire? Why do you have laws that punish people who defend themselves against crime?
How have I offended? If people chose to take offense then that is their problem.
Is your list of attrocities intended to offend me or spur me to try and defend the indefensible? Not too good on the reading front today are we 'cause I've already answered that.
The big difference is that I can nod my head and say "yes, terrible things. something we are not proud of". It's not hard. You should try it sometime. Will people keep posting it? No. But I bet there would be a huge discussion if I did try and defend things.
Yes, we* did those things. What matters most is that we are not doing those things now.
*For Alan: we = the british government and soldiers of the post with at least some support of the general population, not the current population of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or other countries and peoples of the commonwealth associated or affiliated with the British Empire.
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MsMcDucket
Yes, we* did those things. What matters most is that we are not doing those things now.
Shiite militia members attack British troops after a helicopter crash
By Leila Fadel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A British military helicopter crashed into the center of the southern port city of Basra Saturday, killing five soldiers and drawing several hundred mostly young men to the crash site where they chanted in celebration as the chopper burned.
Six children were killed as British troops came under attack from Shiite militia members in the crowd, Iraqi officials said.
A shoulder-fired missile caused the crash, Iraqi police said.
The helicopter slammed into an empty two-story home at about 2 p.m., according to Major Sebastian Muntz, British military spokesman for the Multinational Division Southeast. British troops attempted to seal off the area but the gathering crowd turned hostile, Muntz said. The melee lasted until 8:30, he said.
The British military would not release the number of soldiers killed or confirm the cause of the crash, citing an ongoing investigation. But witnesses saw five dead bodies inside the burning aircraft and Iraqi police confirmed the number.
Doctors at Basra's two main hospitals said six children were killed in the post-crash assault and that they were treating 46 people. Most of their injuries occurred, they said, when the crowd stampeded as young men attacked the British and their armored vehicles with gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades, Molotov cocktails and stones.
Hours later, Ahmed Ali, 25, stood before his home near the crash site and pointed to the blood on his track suit.
"I carried five dead children to the ambulances," he said. He said he watched a man in the crowd shoot a rocket-propelled grenade at the British and the soldiers respond with bullets. "They killed these children because of him," said Ali, whose account could not be confirmed.
Some onlookers were warned to retreat to their homes by gunmen before they attacked the British troops, residents said.
Iraqi Security Forces imposed a curfew on Basra Saturday night. Overhead, British military aircraft produced a constant ruckus.
The attack on the British came a week after a computer-printed flier circulated in Basra, threatening to "kill" Iraqi police for collaborating with the "occupying forces." It was signed by the Al Hussein Brigades, which residents believe to be a part of maverick Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Saturday's attack came as relations between the British military stationed in Basra and local police and authorities appeared to be improving. The British and the provincial council had recently agreed to work together after a six-month standoff, said Sharma Fagar, a British Ministry of Defense spokesman.
"It's not clear at all what would have caused this," Fagar said.
In other violence one U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
A suicide bomber wearing a military uniform exploded amongst a crowd of Iraqi soldiers inside a military base in Tikrit. Three Iraqi officers were killed and the brigade leader was wounded.
And a mortar hit a home in northwest Baghdad, killing two children and injuring one.
At least seven bodies with shots to the head surfaced today throughout the capital in the latest round of sectarian
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MsMcDucket
UK troops 'killing Iraqi civilians'
Tuesday 11 May 2004, 16:32 Makka Time, 13:32 GMTBritish troops breached human rights laws, says Amnesty
Related: Tools: Email Article Print Article Send Your Feedback Amnesty International has accused British soldiers in Iraq of killing civilians, including an eight-year-old girl and a wedding guest, when they posed no apparent threat.
The human rights group said on Tuesday Britain was undermining the rule of law in Iraq by failing to investigate properly the suspected unlawful killings.
In a report released amid a storm of allegations about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US and UK forces, Amnesty said the British troops' actions had breached international human rights standards.
"The British Army's response to suspected unlawful killing of civilians has undermined, rather than upheld, the rule of law," it said.
"It has failed to conduct investigations into all killings of civilians, and the investigations that have been carried out have failed to ensure that justice was done and seen to be done in the eyes of the victims' families."
Amnesty said in total, UK troops had been involved in the killings of at least 37 civilians since 1 May 2003, when the war to topple Saddam Hussein officially ended.
Girl killed
It highlighted nine cases in the southern Iraqi areas of Basra and Amara, including those of an eight-year-old girl, Hanan Salah Matrud, shot dead on 21 August 2003 near her village.
"The British Army's response to suspected unlawful killing of civilians has undermined, rather than upheld, the rule of law" Amnesty International
A witness told Amnesty Hanan was killed when a soldier aimed at her and fired a shot from around 60 metres away, but the army said she was killed accidentally by a warning shot.
Amnesty also reported the death of Ghanim Kadhim Qati, who was shot outside his home while celebrating a family wedding.
It said investigations into the killings, if conducted at all, were shrouded in secrecy and victims' families had not been given adequate information about how to apply for compensation.
A Defence Ministry spokesman said the government was studying the report.
Amnesty also reported on the killings of several civilians during demonstrations and killings of supporters of Saddam Hussein's government, carried out by armed vigilante groups.Government's responsibilty
"All governments are under a duty to take action to secure right to life," Amnesty said. "In the case of suspected killings, a government must launch a thorough, competent, independent and impartial investigation ... and bring to justice persons who are reasonably suspected of responsibility."
Lawyers acting for 12 Iraqi families who allege their relatives were unlawfully killed by British troops in postwar Iraq, took their case to Britain's High Court last week. The lawyers argue the killings were a violation of the victims' right to life under European law. The High Court challenge and the Amnesty report will pile yet more pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, already under fierce fire about how British troops are treating Iraqi prisoners and civilians. Scandalous revelations Thirteen months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the administrations of both Blair and US President George Bush have been rocked by a scandal that hit the headlines, when graphic images were splashed across their national media of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated and mistreated. Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper last week printed photographs apparently showing troops urinating on a prisoner and beating him. The authenticity of the pictures has been questioned, but the paper has since published evidence from a soldier who said he had witnessed savage beatings of Iraqis. More damage has been wrought by the revelation that the International Committee of the Red Cross had alerted the government with a report months ago on mistreatment of Iraqi captives. That report - leaked and published by an American newspaper - described British troops forcing Iraqi prisoners to kneel and stomping on their necks in an incident in which one captive died. It also said US troops kept Iraqi detainees naked for days in total darkness.Iraqi children have been killed by
UK troops the report says -
Gill
We don't doubt for one minute that british troops have been involved in unlawful killings.
In the end, for all sides, all the killings are unlawful.....some are just even more unlawful than others.
We hear regularly on the news what soldiers have been charged with what. So far, they mainly get away with it....yes...that's an assumption of guilt.
In an undoubtably unlawful war, they're all unlawful killings.
However, the proportions of troops from countries involved is highly stacked against the US soldier. They are involved in the majority of skirmishes taking place.
They also have the Abu Graab prison pictures posted all over the world going against them that makes the average US soldier look like a pervert.
How long till pictures of british soldiers involved in similar 'escapades' come along...who knows.
The fact is...IT IS ALL WRONG.
A man should never have to be trained NOT to shoot a baby in the head. When you get to that point.....you've lost it.
Islam 'lost it' or rather 'extremist Islamics' lost it when they wrought all out war on civillians.
We don't have to be the same.
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unclebruce
JWD GOD Simon said:
Todays study topic is the word "you". Everyone will be expected to write a 1,000 word essay on it.
Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it. What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble. At least one thing that would have gotten you in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it that the earth moves.
After you've enjoyed an erotic romp in the hay with the vicars daughter you'd best not be caught asking "did the earth move for you darling?"
Americans are always getting in trouble. They say improper things for the same reason they dress unfashionably and have good ideas: convention has less hold over them than it does us normal people.
The Conformist Test
Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?
If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are much of what you just think is whatever you're told.
The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.
Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn't do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.
If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.
Back in the era of terms like "well-adjusted," the idea seemed to be that there was something wrong with you if you thought things you didn't dare say out loud. This seems backward. Almost certainly, there is something wrong with you if you don't think things you don't dare say out loud.
Trouble
What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for.
Of course, we're not just looking for things you can't say. We're looking for things you can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many of the things you get in trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of your insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking.
Certainly, as we look back on the past, this rule of thumb works well. A lot of the statements people got in trouble for seem harmless now. So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least some of the statements that get people in trouble today. Do we have no Galileos? Not likely.
To find them, keep track of opinions that get people in trouble, and start asking, could this be true? Ok, it may be heretical (or whatever modern equivalent), but might it also be true?
HeresyThis won't get you all the answers, though. What if no one happens to have gotten in trouble for a particular idea yet? What if some idea would be so radioactively controversial that no one would dare express it in public? How can you find these too?
Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. By now these labels have lost their sting. They always do. By now they're mostly used ironically. But in their time, they had real force.
The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.
We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate", "unbecomming", "mischevious" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.
LabelsSo another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label "sexist", for example and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?
Just start listing ideas at random? Yes, because they won't really be random. The ideas that come to mind first will be the most plausible ones. They'll be things you've already noticed but didn't let yourself think.
In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer. They found that even when the radiologists missed a cancerous lesion, their eyes had usually paused at the site of it. Part of their brain knew there was something there; it just didn't percolate all the way up into conscious knowledge. I think many interesting heretical thoughts are already mostly formed in our minds. If we turn off our self-censorship temporarily, those will be the first to emerge.
Time and Space
If you could look into the future it would be obvious which of our taboos they'd laugh at. We can't do that, but we can do something almost as good: we can look into the past. Another way for you to figure out what we're getting wrong is to look at what used to be acceptable and is now unthinkable.
Changes between the past and the present sometimes do represent progress. In a field like physics, if we disagree with past generations it's because we're right and they're wrong. But this becomes rapidly less true as you move away from the certainty of the hard sciences. By the time you get to social questions, many changes are just fashion. The age of consent fluctuates like hemlines.
You may imagine that you are a great deal smarter and more virtuous than past generations, but the more history you read, the less likely this seems. People in past times were much like you. Not heroes, not barbarians. Whatever their ideas were, they were ideas reasonable people like you could believe.
So here is another source of interesting heresies. Compare present ideas against those of various past cultures, and see what you get. Some will be shocking by present standards. Ok, fine; but which might also be true?
You don't have to look into the past to find big differences. In our own time, different societies have wildly varying ideas of what's ok and what isn't. So you can try diffing other cultures' ideas against ours as well. (The best way to do that is to visit them in a little Turkey of Chinatown near you.)
You might find contradictory taboos. In one culture it might seem shocking to think x, while in another it was shocking not to. But I think usually the shock is on one side. In one culture x is ok, and in another it's considered shocking. My hypothesis is that the side that's shocked is most likely to be the mistaken one.
I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones that are universal, or nearly so. Murder for example. But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we're mistaken about.
For example, at the high water mark of political correctness in the early 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure saying, among other things, that it was inappropriate to compliment a colleague or student's clothes. No more "nice shirt." I think this principle is rare among the world's cultures, past or present. There are probably more where it's considered especially polite to compliment someone's clothing than where it's considered improper. So odds are this is, in a mild form, an example of one of the taboos a visitor from the future would have to be careful to avoid if he happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992.
PrigsOf course, if they have time machines in the future they'll probably have a separate reference manual just for JWD. This has always been a fussy place, a forum of i dotters and t crossers, where you're liable to get both your grammar and your ideas corrected in the same conversation. And that suggests another way to find taboos. Look for prigs, and see what's inside their heads.
Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. It seems fitting to us that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. The picture we give them of the world is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds, but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think.
MechanismI can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look at how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to see it at work in our own time.
Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions are. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of some influential person. The fashion for broad-toed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began because Charles VIII of France had six toes on one foot. The fashion for the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a tough mill town in Indiana. Moral fashions more often seem to be created deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often because some group doesn't want us to.
The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't. In fact, Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. But by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas.
To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be numerous or energetic enough to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle.
So if you want to figure out what you can't say on JWD, look at the machinery of posting fashion and try to predict what it would make unsayable. What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress? What ideas were tarnished by association when they ended up on the losing side of a recent struggle? .
This technique won't find us all the things you can't say. I can think of some that aren't the result of any recent struggle. Many of our taboos are rooted deep in the past. But this approach, combined with the preceding four, will turn up a good number of unthinkable ideas.
Why
Some would ask, why would you want to do this? Why deliberately go poking around among nasty, disreputable ideas? Why look under rocks?
You do it, first of all, for the same reason you did look under rocks as a kid: plain curiosity. And be especially curious about anything that's forbidden. See and decide for yourself.
Second, you do it because you don't like the idea of being mistaken. If, like other eras, we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, you want to know what they are so that you at least, can avoid believing them.
Third, you do it because it's good for your brain. To do good work you need a brain that can go anywhere. And you especially need a brain that's in the habit of going where it's not supposed to.
Great work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked, and no idea is so overlooked as one that's unthinkable. Natural selection, for example. It's so simple. Why didn't anyone think of it before? Well, that is all too obvious. Darwin himself was careful to tiptoe around the implications of his theory. He wanted to spend his time thinking about biology, not arguing with people who accused him of being an atheist.
In the sciences, especially, it's a great advantage to be able to question assumptions. The m.o. of scientists, or at least of the good ones, is precisely that: look for places where conventional wisdom is broken, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's underneath. That's where new theories come from.
A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble. This should be the m.o. of any scholar, but scientists seem much more willing to look under rocks.
Whatever the reason, there seems a clear correlation between intelligence and willingness to consider shocking ideas. So here we witness Simon pissing into the wind of conventional wisdom. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. I think conventions also have less hold over them to start with. You can see that in the way they dress.
Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages beyond the thoughts themselves. It's like stretching. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think things so outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative.
CautionWhen you find something you can't say, what do you do with it? My advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles.
Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.
The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking "improper thoughts". I think it's better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed. Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
When Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be "i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto." Closed thoughts and an open face. Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're thinking. This was wise advice. Milton was an argumentative fellow, and the Inquisition was a bit restive at that time. But I think the difference between Milton's situation and ours is only a matter of degree. Every era has its heresies, and if you don't get imprisoned for them you will at least get in enough trouble that it becomes a complete distraction.
I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. When I read about the harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics [12], or that pro-Israel groups are "compiling dossiers" on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses, or about people being held without trial, part of me wants to say, "All right, you bastards, bring it on." The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd spend the rest of your days arguing with fluffposters (those who write reams of crap like this paper Simon assigned us).
The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends online you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing your online friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know.
Perhaps the best policy is to make it plain that you don't agree with whatever zealotry is current in your time, but not to be too specific about what you disagree with. Zealots will try to draw you out, but you don't have to answer them. If they try to force you to treat a question on their terms by asking "are you with us or against us?" you can always just answer "neither".
Better still, answer "I haven't decided." A lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. There is no prize for getting the answer quickly.
If the anti-yellowists seem to be getting out of hand and you want to fight back, there are ways to do it without getting yourself accused of being a yellowist. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to avoid directly engaging the main body of the enemy's troops. Better to harass them with arrows from a distance.
One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The spread of the term "political correctness" meant the beginning of the end of political correctness, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress.
Another way for you to counterattack is with metaphor. Arthur Miller undermined the House Un-American Activities Committee by writing a play, "The Crucible," about the Salem witch trials. He never referred directly to the committee and so gave them no way to reply. What could HUAC do, defend the Salem witch trials? And yet Miller's metaphor stuck so well that to this day the activities of the committee are often described as a "witch-hunt."
Best of all, probably, is humor. Zealots, whatever their cause, invariably lack a sense of humor. They can't reply in kind to jokes. They're as unhappy on the territory of humor as a mounted knight on a skating rink.Hey you bossman - Is that a thousand words yet?! I'm bust'n to water the horse
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mrsjones5
Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're thinking.
Good advice. I plan to do that alot when I'm in California visiting my parents who happen to be jws working hard on their spirituality.
Josie
