On The Self-Stupefying Normalization Phenomenon Within Cognitive Systems
or
Why You’re Smarter Than Everyone Around You
Sven Gelbhaar
3.04.2019
Either Civilization or Cognition.
If people were able, willing, and allowed to think, society would schism.
People wouldn’t put up with half the things that they do now because they would
think through, around, and over them. People would demand decent housing:
housing that isn’t composed of 2 karat wooden shells so you can hear your
neighbor’s every fart. They would demand cinder-block so you could conduct
yourself at decent volumes without the guilt of pissing off your neighbors, for
example. Instead, society encourages, nay, demands that people not-think and
thereby unquestioningly put up with things because, hey, that’s the American way
of doing things, and other appeals to tradition. This of course leads to
heightened stress and unhappiness, but who are you to question the wisdom of our
peasant ancestors? Don’t get selfish, Einstein!
If people thought about how crappy their lives actually are, and how things
really aren’t going to get better by themselves, they would do horrible things
to improve their lot. They wouldn’t put up with shitty jobs that a robot can do
better and cheaper, especially now with the drive for artificial intelligence
and machine learning. Maybe robot jobs should be done by robots. What a silly
concept. Do you think you’re better than your manager, who himself is managed?
Don’t get selfish, Einstein! If people thought things through they would
demand, and strive for, objective improvements to their lives instead of petty
slogans and platitudes to keep them just-content-enough to keep perpetuating the
same privation for themselves and their children. “That promotion is just
around the corner.” Yeah, and inflation counter-acts it. “People need jobs!”
Yeah, until we can obviate the NEED for people to work. The list goes on.
If people were given free-reign of their minds they would discover all sorts of
controversial things. Eighteen years of age is just as arbitrary as 14 or 21.
Aesthetics is just what you’re used to and associate positively with. This is a
victim-society where the person that can out-victim everybody else wins.
Pigovean taxation is still taxation, just with an added amount of guilt. Hell,
if you smoke and drink you should be treated as a better-class citizen because
you pay more taxes and won’t need as much social support when you’re old and
frail because you’ll die sooner. We should thank people that smoke and drink
for their sacrifice. And because they’ll get cancer at an earlier age than
otherwise, they’ll probably still be in their working-years and will therefore
pay their own healthcare costs. Thank you ever so much!, we should be saying
to them. These are all low-hanging fruit, and it doesn’t take too much effort
or cognition to arrive at them.
If people discover all sorts of controversial things — if tradition gets eroded
— then there won’t be one cohesive (set of) paradigm(s) by which civilization
can be governed. This will lead to more localized governing bodies, and
inherently more war as our scarce, non-renewable resources will be distributed
among even smaller, weaker military-wielding states. If people knew, on a large
scale, that we don’t have free will, then there goes the whole basis for our
justice system. Civilization would naturally crumble.
Hope for civilization and individuals both: The Self-Stupefying Normalization
Phenomenon Within Cognitive Systems
If people were happier, they would be less inclined to think about how crappy
their lives are. People are lining up to willfully make themselves numb and
dumb, going so far as voluntarily guzzling gallons of alcohol and shooting up
drugs, so things will remain at this level of retardation for years to come.
Again, from a societal standpoint we should be subsidizing the use of illicit
substances instead of making them illegal.
Even if people don’t pop, snort, and smoke, original thought and actions aren’t
exactly tolerated. Oh sure, they’re grudgingly condoned in our youth so we can
learn rudimentary mathematics which logically follows from premise to premise to
conclusion. After elementary school, true original thought is stifled. People
are taught that the height of intelligence is to parrot what the notable people
of the past managed to sneakily think for themselves. Beyond that, the only
things we’re allowed to think about are things that perpetuate our situations.
Like “love”, money (see above), and solving crimes (see above), or which vacuous
political slogans most resonate with our arbitrary sense of aesthetics. Things
that would objectively make the world a better place are laughed at,
begrudgingly accepted ala-carte, and served as consumerist culture for a while.
The system to devise these things for ourselves is derided, and for good
reasons.
Premise the first
If things were allowed to improve objectively, people would be less
inclined/compelled to think. Sure, there wouldn’t be 7 billion(!) of us.
Granted, we’d get to redesign social reality to replace the status quo of today,
for the improvement of all involved/that-are-left-after-the-dust-settles.
Admittedly, some things would be allowed to change, but that’s the point! No,
if people were objectively better off, there would be less inclination to think,
and the society where its members aren’t constantly suffering the slings and
arrows of collectivist culture would ultimately be stupefied, on an
individualistic scale. If all the things that needed to get done — be they
agriculture, defensive wars, etc — would be getting done, there would be less
opportunity to think and want to improve things because we’d all be KOed on
contentment and bliss.
We’re already on the road to thought
Horrifyingly for society, grass-roots political activist groups are already
forming. We see it in the Occupy Wall Street movement. We see it in Tea Party
political campaigns. We see it in the Venus Project. Those are just a couple
of well-known examples from the last decade. People are finally turning away
from artificial happiness and are starting work toward the real thing. People
are giving up the crutches of non-cognition and non-action and are taking the
time to think about and improve their lives. By depriving the plebeians
happiness, civilization courts disaster. If a critical number of individuals
accidentally learn to think as a matter of course, then society as we know it
will assuredly fall.
The blind guiding hand of societal preservation
The anthill doesn’t and shouldn’t give a damn about individual ants. It is an
entity in and of itself, and if anything it should view its constituent
individuals as potential competitors. The anthill commits its resources, to
include individual drones, to all manner of self-preserving tasks:s conquest of
land, oil, and more people. The anthill has no conception as to its potential
downfall at the hands of its own individuals, or does it? Maybe it’s just good
fortune that people are susceptible to religion and superstition. Maybe it
doesn’t rule by fear(, bread, and circuses). Perhaps it wasn’t some overarching
scheme to deprive its constituents of will, effort, time, and thought that could
be used to replace it with something more benign to its component individuals.
Whether intentional or not, these are all appalling facts to take to heart.
The middle path
Should society, both the (epi-ego)/collective and the individuals, strive for
some kind of middle ground? Would that we as individuals had that option.
Instead of coaxing us into stupefaction by caring for our needs and desires, the
powers that be rule under a flag of terror. The 9/11 terrorist attack was
co-opted by society and used to pass the draconian PATRIOT Act, most of whose
provisions are still active laws on the books to this day even though its been
18 years. Let alone that we (the USA) have spent trillions on counter-terrorism
(subsuming individual rights and ruling through fear), whereas the #1 killer of
the individual is heart disease. That alone should tell you what society cares
about more: the subjugation of the individual or their well-being? Before that
we had the Communist scare of the 50’s, etc. Yesterday’s freedom fighters are
the tools of a de facto rule-by-terror today. Society doesn’t feel like
compromising, and takes no effort to disguise this fact.
What can we do?
If you care about the objective quality of your own life, then think. Make it a
habit. Do it because you’ll be refining a useful tool which will be available
to you down the road, at the very least. Don’t merely spread the results of
your prognostication, but teach other people how to think and reason on their
own.
Conversely, if you’re a patriot, nationalist, jingoist, or anybody else who puts
the mob before themselves, then don’t think. Scoff at the obvious results of
human cognition. Stamp it out! Ban anything witty or clever, and lock up those
dirty commies who dared to oppose the masses by thinking. Burn Universities and
coffee shops, the bastions of the all-too-dangerous intellectuals.
On the gripping hand, cognition and all its perils could also be avoided if
people’s lives were significantly, genuinely improved over time. This is the
least likely to occur; however, as the stick is so much cheaper than a life-time
supply of carrots.