The 1966 Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth” has been bouncing around in my head over the past couple of weeks, especially these lyrics:
“There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware…”
Weird, right?
But there is something happening here, and it is far from clear to me what it is.
I’m a curious sort, always have been, and not knowing something is as irritating as a splinter in a finger, so I tend to try to figure stuff out. One way I do it is to talk to people, often people who exhibit characteristics representative of about that which I am curious.
Yesterday, I conducted a sort of an amateur social experiment, which I do from time to time when I can engage with a particular subject in a somewhat controlled environment. It’s no more than a normal conversation about something of which both parties should have a reasonable amount of awareness.
I’ve been wondering why some people, usually those who lean toward a leftist/social justice/woke view of the world, seem casually resilient to logic and facts.
So, I spent some time talking with a young adult, a Democrat, as the subject of my informal study of human nature.
I find I learn a lot from talking to people and carefully observing their words and reactions, from which I can begin to form a sort of map of their thinking.
I chose her because I know her family – they are what I would describe as moderate conservatives – church going but not terribly politically active, but they live their lives according to what many would recognize as Western Christian principles.
This young lady is in her late twenties, works in media, so is exposed to daily dumps of information.
What interests me about her is that she simply does not process the world or facts, not even reality, the way I do. She is willing to convert opinion to fact and accept rumors to truth, completely without corroboration. She also possesses a kind of moral code that is entirely defined by with which she approves or agrees rather than based on any objective standard. In other words, from a moral and intellectual perspective, she lives in an insulated, hard-shelled, bubble, a completely self-contained system of being.
In other words, a state of being completely at odds with her parents, her other siblings and her home life growing up.
We had the occasion to be in the same place at the same time, so we struck up a conversation about a situation with which we both were familiar. It was about a person about her age who we both knew (at a distance) and who had committed a crime, was witnessed doing it and then freely admitted to the crime – but because she liked the person, she would not recognize or accept any information that did not agree with her preconceived notion of the situation.
I sat and handed her objective facts from multiple sources about a local issue and none of it mattered.
She kept looking for reasons her view of the situation was correct, that something or somebody made the guy do what he did because she simply refused to believe he was at fault. As noted, we both “knew” the person – more “knew of” than actually knew – but she had this image of the guy that was so set in stone, she tried to make all the puzzle pieces fit whether they did or not.
In my mind, I saw a person who buys a puzzle and a pair of scissors and when sitting down to assemble it into the picture on the box, takes the scissors and begins to carve away at the pieces to make them fit.
Our society is moral only because we agree on certain limits - and back the most important ones up with human created law - but there have been (and are) societies built around completely different social mores and morality that run counter to those established as a basis for Western culture.
Slavery, human sacrifice, cannibalism, polygamy, casting out unwanted or unsupportable children, things that shock our senses today have often been just part of everyday life in some cultures and civilizations.
Were their brains different?
If so, how?
The age-old question of nature versus nurture comes to mind.
I sort of sarcastically joked yesterday that maybe we are drugging kids too much and using too many psychotropic drugs on teens and adults but I'm beginning to wonder if there is a real physical change in brain chemistry going on.
I have no knowledge my subject has ever been diagnosed with any condition that would have required such drugs or has ever taken or used any recreational drugs, which makes me wonder if what I am seeing today is far more foundational - and visceral - than just the operational conditioning of leftist indoctrination by teachers and parents in schools and homes.
It appears to me to be more than something people learn; it is something they ARE – or at least BELIEVE they are.
I don’t know if it is drug, environmentally or just evolutionarily induced, but a larger number of people are verifiably different than people once were. They just don’t process or consider information in the tradition of logic and reason so basic to Western civilization.
I guess there is no concrete rule that human advancement is guaranteed to go in a positive direction, perhaps it can also become retrograde.
I believe the far left gov schools have focused on “feelings”, erased critical thinking and eliminated almost all “curiosity”. I was a big lib in my late teens and had many arguments with my elders but I was always curious as to why they thought the way they did so when they recommended a book or an article I read it and pondered the contents and would start to concede that perhaps I was wrong about some things. This does NOT happen today. Most young people don’t even engage with those of a different opinion or if they do, it’s to yell names/labels at them...zero substance, zero curiosity
Of course. That would explain a single case, but would explain an entire political movement?