November 18, 2008

Jonestown? That's So Over. Isn't It?

jimjones.jpg
neo-neocon has some chilling " Jonestown reflections: 30 years later"

The first relevant lesson to be learned is the danger of blindly following a charismatic leader.
The second lesson is to beware of the trust that gullible and trusting human beings can place in that charismatic leader.
Go for the text. Stay for the subtext.

Posted by Vanderleun at November 18, 2008 1:08 PM | TrackBack
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Sure reminds/smacks of Obama.

Posted by: mickey at November 19, 2008 12:40 AM

One of the operational advantages of liberalism that depends not at all on higher intellectual activity is that liberalism is the default worldview. That is, those of us fortunate enough to be born into a Western culture (among others) are predisposed to believe that people are nice, kind, fair, and that there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Although there are some deep intellectual liberal thinkers, most people who would support such a leader are not such deep thinkers- and non-deep-thinkers tend to be liberals. With obvious exceptions, Jonestownies.

Therefore, the combination of charisma and liberalism is one of the most obvious, dynamic and dangerous forces the world has ever seen. Call it the problem is bad ideas.

In ages past, cultures grew up in the siol of shared beliefs. It didn't matter whether the beliefs were true or not or benign or not (generally) because no person or group of people could possibly do enough damage to themselves or others so as to endanger a whole community. Therefore, strong cultures grew from people who were predisposed to agree with one another regardless of the quality of the thing they agreed upon. Subcultureal groups (tennis players, punk rockers, etc) function identically today. Group identity trumps idea functionality.

But as science and technology have expanded our abilities exponentially, the power of bad ideas as the basis for agreement has also grown exponentially.

Now we have a charismatic leader who got millions of people to agree that it would be a pretty neat idea for him to be President- regardless that he has no qualifications whatsoever, no accomplishments besides decorating telephone poles, and possibly the most dangerous ideoloy of any president since Wilson.

To those folks seeking "change", it was irrelevant that they were agreeing to elect such a dangerous incompetant. It was the agreement that mattered.

And now those same folks may be the ones holding us down and pouring the kool-aid down our collective throats.

Best Regards

Posted by: ATNorth at November 19, 2008 6:00 AM
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