Take nutrition. Our nation only became fat when it adopted a nutritional prescription intended to prevent obesity, the notion that fat makes people fat. Once this “lesson” was learned, obesity skyrocketed. We are still dealing with it today.
Nutrition often acts as a sort of ersatz religion. Health is inextricably tied in with our mortality, so in some ways nutrition gets at the fundamental strangeness of human life: being here, but knowing this will not last forever, and that we will inevitably lose some large measure of our vitality before the end comes.
As I see it, many people, confronted with mortality, become vastly concerned with shaping out some area of CONSISTENCY, in the face of the randomness of death. They find a little corner, and hide there, hoping death will find them last. The need for this corner, this security blanket, this solace: this all leads inevitably to cognitive error. But the point to be made here is that the error is SHARED. That is the point of the corner: you are not alone there. In fact, you have gathered around you in close proximity any number of kindred souls who have found the same hiding place. This not only offers the comfort of “home”, but also family.
This does in fact serve many useful purposes, and I would propose that to the extent we have a diversity of corners, of opinions, we zig zag our collective way in the approximately correct direction. This is the point of freedom, of genuine Liberalism.
Yet there exist those who want to impose their corner on the world, who cannot believe themselves that they are right until they have compelled everyone else to adopt the same world view; who in fact think it is there destiny, privilege, burden to share the “truth” with everyone out there. This is the root of totalitarian thinking.
Academics are most dangerous for a simple reason: they have been taught–by test-taking, by obeisance to authority, by virtue of having substantial intellectual capabilities–that “right” answers exist in the world, and that THEY ARE THE ONES MOST LIKELY TO FIND THEM.
Practically, morality gets DONE every day, all over the world, by people making necessary decisions. Academics don’t generally get to DO morality, so much as talk about it, about what a better world would look like, what “justice” looks like.
Thus, you have a confluence of people who DO something close to nothing, but who believe in absolute truth, and that they KNOW IT.
Why was the Russian nation–and virtually every nation bordering it–plunged into a nightmare? Because of this dynamic.
Few thoughts on Woden’s Day.