THE DEATH OF LOGIC
‘Logic is a dish best served cold.’
‘Fear’ is the result of a perceived threat combined with a sense of personal weakness.
When fear overwhelms groups, large numbers can be frozen in place or compelled to act together in ways that convince them that they are not weak.
Common results to fear can range from self-mutilation to atrocity.
This may sound like a grim linkage, but it is reality.
Since the start of human group action, responses to a variety of fears have led to destructive behavior starting with ritual personal injury and leading to holocausts.
At all times we are on the edge of watching fear warp into large-scale action, somewhere, justified by familiar messages and in total defiance of logic.
‘Ignorance’ can be both a way of life and an imposed method, used to sustain superiority for sets of leaders.
‘Language’ is a tool that can cut both ways, leading to cooperative achievement, as well as self-injury and even terrorism.
‘Territorial expansion’ is a universal and perpetual game of brinksmanship, since endless living bodies are created every day, while land is a limited commodity. As the headcount increases, the need for position and control pits groups against each other.
In the U.S. the disenfranchising of ‘lessers’ has been a fundamental principal from the start, being frequently codified in law.
Mandated illiteracy is an ongoing absolute.
Religion can offer a potential antidote: When religion works well it has been a shield against the fear of the unknown. At the same time gods and dictators have also been answers to a wide range of fears. For each to work, the requirement is the elimination of logic.
An acceptance of a God, as a justification for political hierarchies, has been a result, leading to both the construction of towering meeting places by impoverished workers, as well as systematic slaughter, conducted by groups empowered to dominate.
Fear of the unknowable is not automatically dangerous, but a fear of being inferior is at the center of active prejudice leading to atrocity.
Slavery in many forms has been a repeated solution to fears of group weakness.
Group action to diminish the ability and opportunity of ‘others’ is an ongoing result of fear.
Using unearned advantage for self-selected groups is a tool of competition and takes the form of mandated illiteracy, sexism, and the demeaning of both education and logic.
If there is one universal logic, it is that logic itself is the enemy of solo rule, and has been from the first glimmer of the need for absolute leadership in human society.
Welcome to the ongoing death of logic.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (ca. 1843)
NOTE: The comments placed here will be based on recent events and patterns of behavior.
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