"The younger a person is, the more likely they are to get their information from a flash on a screen, a single image, a meme, a 10-second video, a 240-word screed."
The younger a person is, the more likely they were or are being taught by teachers or professors who are committed to the dissolution of Israel and see their function not as educators teaching their students how to think critically, but as indoctrinators in what you must believe in order to belong to the "Community of the Good".
Unfortunately this does seem like the only tactic that could have a chance of getting through.
This whole generation uses cruelty like it’s funny. Blatantly antisocial behavior is cool so I don’t know what else works except blunt verbal force and public shaming.
I agree but I also think it's because of appeasement. Appeasement is a deep-seated mammalian survival mechanism where an individual reacts to a perceived threat by displaying submissive, affiliative, or placating signals to de-escalate danger and avoid aggression. Think of a frightened dog cowering, exposing its belly, or peeing itself - or of the reaction of European countries in the 1930s to the Nazis, the current reaction of the West to Islamonazis, and of course, think of the antizionist Jew.
If an aversion to complexity helps to drive antisemitism, then no wonder antisemites deny rational but complex counter-arguments
Either way, I agree critical thinking would solve a lot of problems. I don’t see our education system teaching kids how to think. As for adults, well, those who are most likely to benefit from critical thinking are those who are least likely to want to
An interesting prefactual, Pat. Revive critical thinking and life for most of us gets better. But we had critical thinking and meritocracy that rewards it, and it has eroded. Why would we let it erode? Why did it erode? I think before we can reinstate it, we need to understand how we let it slip away. Was it laziness? Was it aimlessness? Was it technology? Was it pernicious cultural forces at play? Was it a bunch of things? If so, how did they combine to let it get so bad? Are we, culturally, in the equivalent of heading toward the Big Rip or the Big Crunch? That is, are we going to accelerate madness or is there going to be a massive pendulum effect?
Okay, enough questions... let me put it another way: social behavior persists when it is in an evolutionarily stable state, but even those states are usually just "meta-stable". There comes a time when they go through the equivalent of a phase transition. At the other end of that process, some old behaviors are no longer supported and some new behaviors are supported. So perhaps the loss of critical thinking you are observing is the result of a state transition. If so, the challenge is not simply to get people to reason more critically but to assess whether the current state stably supports that mode of thinking.
Prejudice is always with because of irrationality, a part of our evolutionary heritage. Suspicion of foreigners probably had some survival value in our ancestors because the motive of strangers is unknown and it is better to be suspicious initially before actual intentions are known. These leftovers of human evolutionary development have to be overcome by education, socialization, and development of means of cooperation and communication. But authoritarians and dictators can easily manipulate reality in order to obtain public support, and attributing evil motives is one of their methods to spur public fear of and anger at even invented threats. How to educate people in order to shove irrationality aside is a huge challenge. It works in some circumstances but not in all, depending on the political and social conditions of society. WWII worked because of the Versailles treaty but then allowed Germans to impose their views. A stable, fair and
successful society can resist these pressures.But it does not suppress anti social or evil behavior. So societies are imperfect and require regulation and policing and a good law system.
Human imperfection is part of our evolutionary heritage. We need to structure our societies to deal with antisocial behavior and crime but not in ways that impact human rights and justice.
Our esteemed mayor of NY just delivered a speech using Mussolini-like coded language to call Jews literal monsters to an uproarious crowd. How much time do we have to implement critical thinking before the Jewish bodies start piling up? It doesn’t seem like very much.
And then, how many Jewish bodies is it going to require this time to satiate the world‘s appetite for dead Jews? It seems it requires a killing spree every 100 years to calm the urge and then swing the pendulum back to each age of reason.
“Antisemitism almost always requires a fundamental antecedent: a society that has abandoned critical thought.”
Absolutely. I do wonder, though, whether this is an occasional occurrence or if there is actually a chronic condition running through human society in which a large segment of people are incapable of critical thought even at the best of times, and antisemitism is simply the visible sore that erupts every now and then that exposes the condition for all to see – like herpes.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, Hannah Arendt observed that “It is an obvious, if frequently forgotten, rule that anti-Jewish feeling acquires political relevance only when it can combine with a major political issue, or when Jewish group interests come into open conflict with those of a major class in society.”
In this case just like Holocaust education is a complete failure with the new Jew hatred, but persists because Jewish leaders still think it is 1980, critical thinking does not work on fanatics, Muslim or Marxist Red Guards, "useful idiots" as the Arabs in the ME call these pathetic robots. One must understand this fanaticism in Islam is infiltration in every ME country as well all Pakistan and of course Afghanistan. Many of the saner countries in the ME have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas being an off-shoot, because they foment violence and attempt to overthrow governments. Westeners seem to never understand that ME thinking is totally different than Western thinking. There is no logic, it is wonderful to lie to non-believers, dying for Allah, is a given, especially in the more fanatic people. Now the Red Guards should be treated like Mao's Red Guards when they turned on him. Send them out to work in rural areas and the North, far away from their bubble wrapped existence with safe spaces, micro aggression fantasies, colouring books and cats to stop anxiety about writing exams, with no internet or phones, and give them a chance to see the reality of life and how lucky they were to play terrorists.
"The younger a person is, the more likely they are to get their information from a flash on a screen, a single image, a meme, a 10-second video, a 240-word screed."
The younger a person is, the more likely they were or are being taught by teachers or professors who are committed to the dissolution of Israel and see their function not as educators teaching their students how to think critically, but as indoctrinators in what you must believe in order to belong to the "Community of the Good".
Perhaps try the LOSER’S tactics:
“Palestine DOESN’T EXIST!”
“The only genocide is what Hamas tried on October 7”
“Show us on this doll where the Jews hurt you”
“Jew-haters are LOSERS who can’t admit they did it to themselves”
You get the idea…
Unfortunately this does seem like the only tactic that could have a chance of getting through.
This whole generation uses cruelty like it’s funny. Blatantly antisocial behavior is cool so I don’t know what else works except blunt verbal force and public shaming.
I agree but I also think it's because of appeasement. Appeasement is a deep-seated mammalian survival mechanism where an individual reacts to a perceived threat by displaying submissive, affiliative, or placating signals to de-escalate danger and avoid aggression. Think of a frightened dog cowering, exposing its belly, or peeing itself - or of the reaction of European countries in the 1930s to the Nazis, the current reaction of the West to Islamonazis, and of course, think of the antizionist Jew.
If an aversion to complexity helps to drive antisemitism, then no wonder antisemites deny rational but complex counter-arguments
Either way, I agree critical thinking would solve a lot of problems. I don’t see our education system teaching kids how to think. As for adults, well, those who are most likely to benefit from critical thinking are those who are least likely to want to
An interesting prefactual, Pat. Revive critical thinking and life for most of us gets better. But we had critical thinking and meritocracy that rewards it, and it has eroded. Why would we let it erode? Why did it erode? I think before we can reinstate it, we need to understand how we let it slip away. Was it laziness? Was it aimlessness? Was it technology? Was it pernicious cultural forces at play? Was it a bunch of things? If so, how did they combine to let it get so bad? Are we, culturally, in the equivalent of heading toward the Big Rip or the Big Crunch? That is, are we going to accelerate madness or is there going to be a massive pendulum effect?
Okay, enough questions... let me put it another way: social behavior persists when it is in an evolutionarily stable state, but even those states are usually just "meta-stable". There comes a time when they go through the equivalent of a phase transition. At the other end of that process, some old behaviors are no longer supported and some new behaviors are supported. So perhaps the loss of critical thinking you are observing is the result of a state transition. If so, the challenge is not simply to get people to reason more critically but to assess whether the current state stably supports that mode of thinking.
Prejudice is always with because of irrationality, a part of our evolutionary heritage. Suspicion of foreigners probably had some survival value in our ancestors because the motive of strangers is unknown and it is better to be suspicious initially before actual intentions are known. These leftovers of human evolutionary development have to be overcome by education, socialization, and development of means of cooperation and communication. But authoritarians and dictators can easily manipulate reality in order to obtain public support, and attributing evil motives is one of their methods to spur public fear of and anger at even invented threats. How to educate people in order to shove irrationality aside is a huge challenge. It works in some circumstances but not in all, depending on the political and social conditions of society. WWII worked because of the Versailles treaty but then allowed Germans to impose their views. A stable, fair and
successful society can resist these pressures.But it does not suppress anti social or evil behavior. So societies are imperfect and require regulation and policing and a good law system.
Human imperfection is part of our evolutionary heritage. We need to structure our societies to deal with antisocial behavior and crime but not in ways that impact human rights and justice.
Our esteemed mayor of NY just delivered a speech using Mussolini-like coded language to call Jews literal monsters to an uproarious crowd. How much time do we have to implement critical thinking before the Jewish bodies start piling up? It doesn’t seem like very much.
And then, how many Jewish bodies is it going to require this time to satiate the world‘s appetite for dead Jews? It seems it requires a killing spree every 100 years to calm the urge and then swing the pendulum back to each age of reason.
“Antisemitism almost always requires a fundamental antecedent: a society that has abandoned critical thought.”
Absolutely. I do wonder, though, whether this is an occasional occurrence or if there is actually a chronic condition running through human society in which a large segment of people are incapable of critical thought even at the best of times, and antisemitism is simply the visible sore that erupts every now and then that exposes the condition for all to see – like herpes.
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, Hannah Arendt observed that “It is an obvious, if frequently forgotten, rule that anti-Jewish feeling acquires political relevance only when it can combine with a major political issue, or when Jewish group interests come into open conflict with those of a major class in society.”
Since October 7th, we've had both.
You simplified something complex. 😏 Thank you.
In this case just like Holocaust education is a complete failure with the new Jew hatred, but persists because Jewish leaders still think it is 1980, critical thinking does not work on fanatics, Muslim or Marxist Red Guards, "useful idiots" as the Arabs in the ME call these pathetic robots. One must understand this fanaticism in Islam is infiltration in every ME country as well all Pakistan and of course Afghanistan. Many of the saner countries in the ME have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas being an off-shoot, because they foment violence and attempt to overthrow governments. Westeners seem to never understand that ME thinking is totally different than Western thinking. There is no logic, it is wonderful to lie to non-believers, dying for Allah, is a given, especially in the more fanatic people. Now the Red Guards should be treated like Mao's Red Guards when they turned on him. Send them out to work in rural areas and the North, far away from their bubble wrapped existence with safe spaces, micro aggression fantasies, colouring books and cats to stop anxiety about writing exams, with no internet or phones, and give them a chance to see the reality of life and how lucky they were to play terrorists.