The following text was intended as a response to MikeM's comment to the previous post. It may be of wider interest, hence I'm offering it as a separate post
MikeM: I've been reflecting on what, for want of a more elegant label, I call Lack of Application. It lies at the heart of a newish form of ignorance manifest in the result of your recent presidential election and is even more overt in Trump's progressively insane pronouncements. But it isn't at all confined to the USA; Brits too suffer from this ailment.
At its lowest stratum (ie, those who failed to profit in any way from mandatory formal education) it is represented by a total lack of useful data. Such that when these bottom-feeders utter observations they do no more than repeat sentences (more often slogans) previously uttered by celebrities, and often repeated. These nuggets are complete in themselves, they are not related to each other in any way. The sequence of words is never altered.The next stratum concerns those who passed comfortably through school education and may even have gone on to college, albeit to take subjects where rigour of proof is unnecessary (Media studies is a good example). They have - willy nilly - accumulated data but these facts lie like pebbles on a beach, separate and incapable of manipulation. Their owners have, to some extent, been educated by rote. I can't ever remember any quantification of this group but I suspect - gloomily - that it is larger than most would imagine and may even be the majority.
The final crust is very thin. Data is accumulated via controlled selection and is used to arrive at home-baked conclusions. From this, certain skills - often not always recognised as skills - emerge. Such as an ability to recognise national or even global contradictions or to make allowance for bias in the sources of data suppliers.
That's the thesis. Obviously it needs examining, preferably via dialogue with like minds. If I can recoup the energy - very much in short supply these days - I used in creating this once-over-lightly categorisation I may resume. Otherwise I shall continue to study discs in my boxed set of The West Wing, a TV series that amazingly ran for seven years and was based on a very close examination of governmental and political processes.
And yes I am aware that "data" is a plural noun and that associated verbs should conform. I have written about this and in my view I think the pedants got their arses kicked. the battle for "datum" is lost.
That seems reasonable, though I don’t think the top crust is vanishingly thin. Something like 48% of “us in the us” voted against the most horrifying candidate. Or even “for” the more palatable one. Not to say that the Dems have no downside - and of the people I know most considered, fairly, the issues raised during the campaign. Of the people I know who voted for Trump there are a couple other categories: The utterly selfish and often very well off - terrified that their wealth will continue to accrue more slowly - utterly heartless - but well educated in finance and even the arts. Peering out of their windows expecting to see the invading hoards they’ve heard about nonstop in the media. They will construe any stranger’s face to be a threat - sightings I would compare to my own glimpses of UFO’s when I was 12 years old. They perpetrate the rubbish as ardently as the stupider fools. I think they consider the effects of policies on a global level but just don’t care. Children needlessly dying? Don’t care. Humans treated inhumanely? Don’t care or “let me help.”
ReplyDeleteThese are the worst of the worst I’d say. Another faction are those people who are perpetually aggrieved. Always something to bitch about, insincere when expressing anything but dissatisfaction. Entertained and thrilled to join a chorus of their peers (who they will ridicule privately, for something, at any opportunity. Generally course in manner and as selfish as the first lot, but more aggressively hostile.
I discovered your post at bedtime, an hour ago - I’m sure I could go on about this and perhaps I will - but not tonight. Cheers.
MikeM: In fact, you are too kind to describe my post/comment as “reasonable enough”. Re-read in the context of your response it is fatally flawed. I should have spent far more time defining my terms of reference and given it a more explicit title. Something like: Trumpism – Viewed Purely Intellectually, but even that would have been inadequate. The points you have raised reflect the fact that you’re on hand for your info whereas I get mine third-hand
DeleteOne positive outcome is I’ve been forced (Yes, forced. We’re talking about my lifelong line of business) to reflect on why I “sinned by omission”. Three reasons emerged.
(1) Third-hand sources. VR and I both qualify as more or less immobile invalids; our social circle extends no further than narrow segments of our respective families and has shrunk shockingly during the last decade. I at least communicate by letter and email but VR only has me. We both read The Guardian, lots of books and watch the BBC news. Impromptu external conversation is non-existent, although to some extent we have only ourselves to blame; we have never been considered “sociable” and an obsessive commitment to writing (in my case) leads to very few parties.
(2) The don’t-offer-the-baby-gin stricture. I was the world’s most impermeable schoolboy; very little, other than from books I’d chosen, got through. RAF national service opened my eyes to a narrow aspect of science (electronics) and, thereby, and even more surprising, mathematics. Ideally I should have gone back to basics in both subjects but I was already doing that (intensively) with regard to French language.
So I jumped ahead and read books (about science and maths) that were beyond me, perhaps looking for the literary equivalent of osmosis, During the last month or so I’ve been reading Lost In Math by Sabine Hossenfelder, three pages at a time. (SH is, or was, a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies; has contributed to New Scientist, Scientific American and the New York Times, and her spoken essays on her trade are available on YouTube). The book’s sub-title is How Beauty Leads Physics Astray and it says a great deal about the subject matter that I can – though probably delusionally – switch from zero comprehension on string theory to a refreshing 3% on the open book that is quantum mechanics. Serves me right, you say, and I sort of agree. The baby coughs uncontrollably after a teaspoonful of Tanqueray.
But – how fortunate, that “but” – there’s a side order of awe in all this. Fascination in brushing against those sweaty and highly speculative individuals, desperate for work-sustaining grants, who are trying, fruitlessly I fear, to define life itself. Three decades have passed since the last half-significant revelation in this field. And I, trailing a hundred miles to the rear, sniffing their odour, may have allowed their urge to propel my over-ambitious but only half-realised piece about Trump.
(3) Is telly a voice in the wilderness? I watched the US TV series The West Wing at the time. And I’m just finishing a re-watch on a box set. I have my own reasons for laying out £69 for this experience but, I ask myself, why did this arcane entertainment (young-ish people striding down corridors while discussing the governmental implications of the 1965 Farm Regeneration Bill at 200 words-per-minute) run to seven seasons? In fact much of it deals with political failure and the US is not prone to this as a concept. At the time I seem to remember some Americans suggesting that the attractions lay in an idealised version of work done by articulate people slaving their guts out doing dull and impenetrable things;
government taken seriously. Something that wasn’t happening in reality.
Certainly the contrast between Bartlett’s battered integrity vs. Trump’s greed and narcissism couldn’t be more marked. So did I yearn for a form of nostalgia that didn’t happen?
Enough, enough.
MikeM: Read your comment having had to get up early to prepare for the arrival of the cleaning lady (Yup, life has got that complicated). Excellent response, as I'd hoped for. Will return to this when my eyes are ungummed.
ReplyDeleteI guess I’ll have to watch some West Wing - I’ve heard of it but never watch even a snippet. Seems like Charlie Sheen is in it? The son of Martin who was lovely in Apocalypse Now.
ReplyDeleteI lay abed after commenting last night feeling I’d more to say. Addendum to thoughts on the perpetually aggrieved:
They seem happiest when clustering with others of their ilk. Commiserating, basking in an orgy of whin(g)ing. In their idol they have found a new level of constant whining to aspire to, and a bully to match their own personas. As the cluster has grown exponentially on these fuels it has achieved critical mass. Our new DNDC. The Dept. of Nuclear Dissatisfaction and Complaint. Non-governmental but encouraged to influence. Like DOGE (preferably pronounce “doggy.”
This is not to say that Libs don’t cluster. My human interactions are limited to my wife, a couple close friends, and cashiers at grocery stores. My greater social life is online - but also with more distant friends and acquaintances. Oh yes. We whine. About the political mess, but NOT about life in general. The mystery and beauty of life is appreciated by all and remains the gist of existence. Our whining gets old to me, and feels useless save for providing and echo chamber support group.
We talk of taking to the streets - indeed thousands did last weekend. But not enough to get more than a few seconds on national news - and so surely not enough to warrant rolling tanks over us, a foregone conclusion if protests get massive. Or, heaven forbid, violent. The exonerated J6r’s lost only the “executed” Ashli Babbit, but in the upside down world of Trump, the Libs would be massacred. I myself watched J6 unfold on live TV, and stated to my wife and web mates, in real time, that the lot of traitors should be gunned down en masse.
So we’ll continue to find solace in the rants and witticisms of or nook of the internet. Things will get worse and the weather will warm. Horror and heat can be catalytic. More soon.