Over and above the overwork, excessive taxation, and crazy pace of our lives, I think a reason so many Americans feel anger–why shows like “The Walking Dead” and CSI do so well–is that despite our supposed individualism, most people watch and model the same shows, get their social signalling from the same networks, and overall exist as virtual ideational and ideological clones. It is this trained need for conformity which allows rapid social engineering, such as when it was decreed from on high that boys can be girls if they choose to, and the rest of us can’t say shit without being bigots.
I think a very large number of Americans leave many important things unsaid. I think a very large number of us don’t know how to go deep, to be deep, to have truly meaningful conversations about issues of genuinely intrinsic importance. We have lost that habit, and the things which would more or less force such conversations, such as genuine want, closeness to death, and misery of various sorts, are largely foreign to most of us. We watch them on TV, but this of course is not the same.
It breeds a sort of numbness, a distance from Present Reality. We are always looking at the world outside through a screen. It filters out the worst, but also prevents the best, absolutely and necessarily.
For my part, I am always happy to run into people with unusual and weird ideas. It is so rare. So many people, if you know what news channel they watch, you can predict with uncanny precision not just what they will believe tomorrow, but to a great extent the exact words they will use to describe “their” beliefs. Its sad.
To take one example, I was having a conversation with a guy in a bar the other day, who seemed to know a bit more about geopolitics than I did. He said China was in up to its eyeballs with Venezuela. I ask you: have you read anything about this anywhere? I hadn’t. I see Russia’s name, but never China.
Simple DuckDuckGo search: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/06/venezuelas-road-to-disaster-is-littered-with-chinese-cash/
I recently finished listening to the book “The Metaphysical Club”. It reinforced my commitment in principle to a broadly “pragmatic” philosophy.
To this topic, though, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., a genuine Liberal, argued that the freedom of speech is essential for public flourishing, because only with the most diverse marketplace of ideas can we be reasonably sure the best idea will be produced, and that it will, over time and in aggregate, win.
When you suppress ideas, you run the massive risk of eradicating before it can be heard the winning idea on any topic. When everyone can be heard, certainly many need to be ignored, but sometimes, highly heterodox ideas actually make the most sense.
Again, this is why people like Alex Jones and Natural News are essential. They represent qualitatively different and potentially interesting viewpoints, from which intelligent people might sometimes infer or discover important truths not discussed or covered anywhere else.
Where ideas are concerned, 85 kinds of ketchup may be confusing and overwhelming, and one or two may predominate, but our long term prosperity and social wealth depend on allowing them all a place on the shelf.
It also makes life much more interesting. I feel sorry for the people who look to the news to tell them what they believe, and who are naive enough to honestly feel they are not being manipulated.
And to be clear, there is no compelling reason for me to believe I too am not being manipulated, OTHER THAN my willingness to consider and remain aware of as many perspectives as I can find, on a variety of topics. They compete in my head, and the best ones, or so I hope, win.