The Madness of the Individual Hero or Saviour. Mercy to our souls of humanity in such madness.
It appears each morning of late that the news reports — the radio as I get out of bed, breakfast television, the social media sources — expresses the madness of our societies. That madness is generally not clinical. Those with mental illness have other problems of the brain but those persons expresses themselves in the social madness.
The social reaction to these “mad” persons then centres within the thought-bubbles of the social madness. That is, most persons, when they have not turned to the researched education and do not think on that knowledge-base and skills, merely repeat nonsense statements, which on the surface have the appearance of “sense” but is not in fully and properly-functioning cognition.
Let’s take the news of today (16 April 2024), as I read it. According to The Times Higher Education supplement. There is a term of ‘Clarkonomics’ which is a reference to a big boost for local economies. We told that “Caitlin Clark, a 22-year-old basketball player, has captivated fans across the world and created unprecedented interest in college sport with her record-breaking performances for the University of Iowa.” It then creates an “economy” for the local University. For the average graduate who has studied history, sociology, and philosophy, let alone economics, there ought to be the understanding why the thinking of ‘Clarkonomics’ is localised social madness.
Scientific American published April 5 an online article which arrived in my Inbox this morning, and it goes to one explanation of the social madness. Corey S. Powell and Openmind Magazine in this article produced, “The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows that People Don’t Know What They Don’t Know”, which in public relations terms does not internally welcome the stupid to read the article:
The common misconception is that the Dunning-Kruger effect means “stupid people don’t know they’re stupid.” The Dunning-Kruger result is a little complicated because it’s actually many results. The one that is a meme is this idea: On any particular topic, people who are not experts lack the very expertise they need in order to know just how much expertise they lack. The Dunning-Kruger effect visits all of us sooner or later in our pockets of incompetence. They’re invisible to us because to know that you don’t know something, you need to know something. It’s not about general stupidity. It’s about each and every one of us, sooner or later.
If the writers are trying to say that we are all stupid at some place and time, and not for the only place and time, the argument is correct. But even the writers get their thinking conflated in the attempt to untangle the social madness. Yes, in what is denied, is a truth of the stupid people do know they’re stupid in some masking place of the mind. But the writers’ logic simply does not follow, even as acknowledging the complicated. The conclusion of “It’s not about general stupidity” does not follow the correct logic, and so that on that presumption — that society is okay in terms of mental heath — is wrong. The writers, no doubt, took that certain tone of assurance to comfort readers. But lets be clear, that is propaganda.
As a result of this type of comforting propaganda, we now have public school teachers teaching “anti-woke” programs, as explained in The Washington Post article, today (with time zone differences). It is pure culture-history warfare, in its motivation and content. It is dumbing-down the curriculum, even as the alternative histories accounts are factual correct, and, are, in fact, taught. The “anti-woke” is propaganda.
In Australia this week there are several stories of social madness. The Sydney Morning Herald told me about the crash of the Bruce Lehrmann’s civil claims against a media company from the Federal Court in Sydney. For those outside of the country, the civil case had to do with Lehrmann suing the media after a criminal trial against Lehrmann was effectively aborted, on allegations of rape. The outcome of the civil case was that the Federal judge directly, and on high probability, accused Lehrmann of the rape. Such was the nature of all of the testimonies. However, the allegations was performed in the country as the contests of characters, and the civil case was paid for, and set-up as, a competition between two media companies.
The attention to the Lehrmann case was lost this week from a significant number of murders and attempted murders; significant for Australia, but the run-of-the-mill event for the United States. Yesterday, a teenager attempted to murder Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of the Christ The Good Shepherd Church, in Sydney. Sydney appears to be the focus of this type of news. But that event took place after what was Australia’s possible third mass murder event (apart from the frontier violence). Its place in the record books is still being verified, but it comes somewhere among the Lindt Cafe killings (2014) in Sydney and the Port Arthur massacre (1996). It is be called, the “Bondi Junction” stabbings, on Saturday April 13th. Currently, there is speculation that the killer had targeted women. A baby, who survived, was knifed but his mother was killed.
Nevertheless to say, the killer’s mental heath is being widely discussed. And this comes from the common belief, that “stupid people don’t know they’re stupid.” How can a person with schizophreniform psychosis kill innocent life? There is a part of our thinking that cannot accept the truth, and so we invent nonsense narratives to make sense of it.
Far worse, for anyone to explain that it is nonsense in such comforting stories there is hatred towards the expert. The comforting stories are too important to “the victims” for it to be challenged, including the “social victims“, unrelated directly to the crime and crime victims. However, what does that mean for our society without the experts who have not been given the paid jobs, particularly in education ? Is it not better, before the journalistic drama-written stories, that experts, like myself, are given the jobs in higher education to help persons to think in threads of correct thought before the murder ?
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Neville Buch
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