Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Some comments in the ongoing debate regarding the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren got me to thinking about our political system and people’s reactions to it. Warren is criticized by the Right for obvious reasons, given her strong stances on managing the economy and controlling the excesses of the Corporate Culture. In a sense she offends their sense of political purity, but then that is but a given because she is a Democrat. We have seen though on the Right that such conservative stalwarts as Richard Lugar have gone down to primary defeat because he failed the Tea Parties test of what a “true” conservative should be. Richard Lugar failed the “purity” test even though his conservative history is impeccable. In my conception political purity conforms to “party line” thinking, punishing those that fail to adhere in all respects to the standards of a given faction’s concept of standards their candidates must adhere to in order to retain enthusiastic support. I use “faction”, rather than “party”, because our two party political system actually represents an amalgam of various factions imperfectly coalescing under the rubric of a “Political Party”.
From a Left, or even Centrist perspective, there has been both amusement and trepidation about how the “Tea Party” faction has exerted control over the Republican Party. Then too, there is the same reaction to the power exerted by Fundamentalist Christians, a group that at some points overlaps with the “Tea Party”. A human trait is to see the foibles of groups we define as “other”, while being oblivious to the idiosyncrasies of the groups we are aligned with. Liberals, Progressives, Radicals and even Leftist Centrists like to believe that they are immune from the turmoil that they see in their Right Wing opposites, yet the “Left” and even the “Center” also routinely define people in terms of litmus tests of political purity. This was highlighted by certain comments on the Warren thread where people who were seemingly in tune with her domestic policy views, disliked her positions on the Middle East and appeared to hold them against her. This has definitely been true with many progressives and/or civil libertarians in viewing this current Administration. My purpose here is not one of castigation for anyone’s perspective; rather I’m interested in exploring the phenomenon of the belief that political figures need to meet all of our expectations in their positions, or be unworthy of our support. My own perspective is that tests of political purity are self defeating because it is impossible for any particular political figure to be in perfect agreement with all that any of us individually believe and politics becomes oppression without the ability to negotiate. The process of real negotiation requires compromise. What follows is why I believe that is true. Before my discussion though, I think a definition of perspectives would be helpful. There are some of us, including myself to a certain degree, who believe that we are living under a corporate oligarchy and as such the common pretense that our national fate is in the hands of the majority’s vote, is but pleasant mythology. I wrote about this in my guest blog Published 1, March 17, 2012: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/ .One logical conclusion that can be drawn from believing that democracy is an illusion, is that voting is a wasted effort, since whatever person we choose will either be a corporate stooge, or unelectable. I can respect those who draw that conclusion since the evidence of its truth is quite convincing. My own conclusion is not quite there yet, even though I do believe that we are under the rule of a coalition of the Military Industrial Complex and of the Corporate Elite. The redeeming feature to me is that I don’t believe in the homogeneity of the “ruling classes”. I think that they are made up of various factions and roiled by clashing egos. In my estimation voting for politicians thus has value because the vote affects the competition among our oligarchs. There is a qualitative difference for instance between Buffett/Gates and the Koch Brothers, in the sense that the former believe in more humane social policies and the latter have a draconian social view.
If one believes that Democracy is completely illusory, then why bother voting, since voting is a futile exercise? The logical conclusion of such a belief is to disdain all of American politics and politicians as being tools of the Oligarchy. From that perspective it isn’t a question of particular policy, since almost every player in normative politics is not to be trusted. So the question becomes how do the people change things when the political process is believed to be non-existent? Obviously, if it is ones view that America politics is a total sham, then a massive uprising of the people would be needed to make change. How does that uprising occur? Will its’ nature be peaceful, or violent? While I know there are “militias” out in the hills of places like Idaho, are they capable of banding together to overthrow our current government, I think not. Violent revolutions always seem to breed unforeseen and unpleasant excesses, which make their original aims moot. So the question becomes how do we effect a peaceful revolution? The answer is simple, but the process itself is immensely complex. A peaceful revolution can come about when you are able to convince an overwhelming majority of the people that the current system needs change and that they need to refuse to cooperate with it. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the media is in the hands of corporations though, the issue is one of how does the message of change come across to reach the populace? It’s a question I’ve pondered for years.
Back in the 60’s there was the idea of “dropping out” of a corrupt system. Its problem was that it was espoused by many and practiced by few. The truth was that for those “dropping out” the system didn’t miss their participation, nor would it now. A current conservative stratagem is to make voting harder, thereby limiting turnout of voters negative to their cause. We solve nothing by not voting. We could vote, but cast our votes for nascent opposition parties. This is not a bad premise in my estimation, even though in our loaded political system, minority party effectiveness is more limited than under parliamentary government. Let us think though about a minority party legislator’s ability to be effective once elected, since I assume that the process of gaining political power through organizing a minority party opposition would be slow and could be violently opposed. Think of the police reactions to Occupy Wall Street. However, OWS does show that the elite can feel threatened by a mass movement.
When we discuss the election of someone whose political views are outside of what the “mainstream allows”, we need to take into account how much positive influence they can have on the political process, if they are unwilling to compromise their “political purity”. Let us take the real instance of Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, as he does his job in the Senate. I believe that Bernie is the most ethical and perceptive Senator we have had in the Senate in a long time. He is also an effective Senator in terms of being able to not only put forth a progressive point of view, but to actually influence Senate activity. In order to be effective in the Senate, Bernie has had to compromise on certain issues and thus would certainly be seen from the orthodox socialist perspective to have sold out. In contrast let us take another man whose career I’ve admired, Dennis Kucinich. Dennis has been an aggressive/effective spokesman on a national level for unpopular, yet valid causes. Within the house though he has not been able to effectuate change simply because Dennis does not do compromise well
In today’s world a political change process is mainly effectuated in four ways:
1. Violent revolution, which is highly problematic at best.
2. Massive non cooperation with the system, ala Gandhi and King, which can be very successful based
upon the right circumstances.
3. Organizing and creating an opposition political movement, a possibly fruitful, yet hard process to carry
out with success..
4. Working within the system, imperfect as it may be, to effect slow change.
All of the above can be work to effect change in a given context, but one factor is a given no matter which method is chosen. To build a mass movement in a diverse population the need to compromise is paramount. This need to compromise is called “coalition building”. The Right has been effective at this for years when you think of the coalition between religious fundamentalists, lukewarm objectivists and outright corporatists. What would Jesus, Ayn Rand and even Adam Smith think of the ways their teachings have been presumably melded? In the past the Left also coalesced around certain issues, bringing together groups that were hardly homogeneous. However, from the 60’s onward building of coalitions on the Left has broken down. “Centrists” and “Liberals” became anathema to “progressives” and “radicals”. After all that he had accomplished Martin Luther King became an “Uncle Tom” in the minds of “Black Power” advocates for his refusal to entertain the concept of violence as a tool.
The Left coalition also began to break down in the 60’s over the issue of Viet Nam. Working class union members generally supported the war that was drafting and killing their children. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, who had striven to disassociate themselves from Marxism during the McCarthy era, had become part of the country’s establishment. As George Meany, the AFL-CIO President, began to play golf with Eisenhower and major industrialists, the Union movement swung away from its Left Wing roots. The fact that the labor movement was overwhelmingly “white working class” in an era where Blacks were demanding equal status also took its toll on the coalition between Big Labor and the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO and Teamsters supported Richard Nixon in 1968..
The labor movement’s departure from coalition with the Democratic Party was to have devastating consequences for its strength. Their workers, doing well financially aspired to a scaled down version of the American Dream. The threat that competition with Blacks for jobs and with the Left’s critique of muscular foreign policy, helped drive white workers into the Republican Party. The fact that their leadership had become cozy with Management and Republicans led the way. The power of the labor movement waned until today it is a shadow of what it once was. The Left coalition forged under FDR and informed experientially by the “Great Depression”, began to fight amongst themselves. The battles increasingly became issues of “purity of political belief”. When a person’s political value is weighed on only specific issues that are politically “black and white”, coalition becomes almost impossible. Without the ability to coalesce “Movements” face severe limitations in their ability to grow.
I believe that in the desire for reforming our governance to work for the interests of all the people, all viable methods must be used. Of the four methods I list above I believe that only the latter three are really viable. A violent revolution in this country will only hasten the totality of oppression, since violent revolutions never seem to work out the way people have planned and that the people once having risen find themselves ruled harshly by those they so hopefully followed. Refute this premise if you will, but please don’t cite the American Revolution. While it certainly had violence it was a rebellion of colonies against an overseas colonial state. By revolution I mean the rebellion of a people in a certain geographical area against their own government.
Methodologically, none of the three methods can work without bringing together people of differing standards via a coalition that accepts deviation from a “party line”. This seems obvious to me since rarely do those who wish change agree on all issues. Are there “deal breakers” that cannot brook compromise? That depends upon the individual, the perceived threat and the current circumstance. I have my own deal breakers, certainly, but I invoke them in context of my reading of the perceived threat.
What do you the reader think of the argument I’ve made? If you disagree please let me know, since I understand that on any given subject I can be wrong and I am really willing to learn. If you agree with me then what are your “deal breakers”? Perhaps if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Tony C:
“OUR country is awash in natural resources and various forms of wealth, yet we are not as happy as the Scandinavian countries.”
That is true, environmental Marxist have decimated our ability to use the coal and oil and natural gas we do have.
I think North Dakotans are some of the happiest people around now that oil and natural gas are flowing.
Gene H:
Man that was good. Not right but good.
And that is why I used rhetorical as an insult. You can dress up a wrong idea and make it purty like no bodies business but pretty doesnt mean right.
You should have stayed in the law, you could be John Edwards, well actually you are a lot like him.
@Bron: All white European countries full of candy asses who have a bunch of oil to support them.
PLENTY of countries in the Middle East are awash in oil to support them, yet their citizenry is not happy. OUR country is awash in natural resources and various forms of wealth, yet we are not as happy as the Scandinavian countries.
The reason they are happy has nothing to do with oil, which they do not depend that heavily upon (for example, Norway is prohibited from supporting social programs with any oil sales or capital whatsoever; their social programs are supported by income taxes, asset taxes, and interest alone on sovereign wealth funds).
The reason they are happy is they worry much, much less about catastrophic financial circumstances: No matter how bad it gets, they will have shelter, food, health care, education for themselves and their kids, and police protection.
Your paranoia that such a guarantee would mean nobody works is completely unfounded and proven by one example country after another. In order for them to have any luxuries they must work, and virtually all of them do work and earn. Your assessment of human nature and our propensity to laziness is based on falsehood, or perhaps based on your personal resentment of work.
In the socialist-leaning countries, people are motivated to work to get above the safety net level and enjoy some of the luxuries and fun of life. As it turns out in real humans, the threat of starvation, death, bankruptcy, or homelessness is not really necessary to get people to work. The promise of cable TV, a big screen TV, a bigger house, a more comfortable chair, gourmet food, a nice car instead of a public bus, and in general the allure of participating in the better things in life and just being productive are enough to get people out of bed and into the office.
Bron,
No wonder you don’t understand human psychology. You read Cracked as an authority on the subject. Combined with Rand, that certainly explains a lot.
“By the way, the 15,000 to 20,000 was a low guess at the number of words you know so that you would respond as you did.”
Thus admitting you are manipulative: a key trait of sociopaths. However, I don’t believe you. Not about the manipulative personality trait, but rather your lame excuse for using a number less than half the average vocabulary. That’s a post hoc rationalization to cover your general ignorance of the language.
“I figured it was higher than that but just wanted to see what you would say.”
If you’d understood what I wrote, it is a higher than that quoted. Considerably so. I simply wasn’t going to include my technical vocabulary.
“I have been amply rewarded. You do know that there is no way for you to prove what you just wrote.”
Actually, I can prove everything I said, but you didn’t ask for proof. You just asked for a number. I could have said 95-100,000 and including my technical vocabulary that would be about right, but the other items I stated as fact were sourced quotes to the OED and a language professor. If you want more proof than that, you’d have to play Scrabble with me – here’s a hint: you would not win – or be really embarrassed as you read off words from a dictionary to find that I do indeed know the meaning of a great many of them. The relevant fact is my vocabulary is more extensive and of higher quality than yours. Then again, given your track record for abusive linguistics, that’s not saying much in and of itself.
“By the way I understand Shakespeare knew around 60,000 words how come you’re not writing books? Probably for the same reason a parrot knows a few human words but cant take a square root.”
You sell Shakespeare short. He knew closer to 66,000 words based solely upon his writing but in all likelihood our actual vocabularies are probably comparable discounting my technical vocabulary. A man need not use every word he knows, but a man should know every words he uses.
Also, who says I’m not writing books? You have no knowledge of what I write other than what I write here. I could be writing a magnum opus at this very moment. I may have written books under a nom de plume.
As to the parrot analogy? I’m not the one who perpetually gets busted for using words he doesn’t know the meaning of. That would be the poster whose name rhymes with “moron”.
A hearty thanks for also showing how little you understand the variety and scope of IQ testing by pulling the number 132 from your nether regions.
However, thanks for trying to deflect as much of this on to others than addressing the points being made about you. Sociopaths don’t like it when they are discovered because hiding their true nature is a self-defense mechanism. The liar’s ability to lie is compromised once he is a known liar.
You still haven’t answered the question:
What do you get by coming here?
What psychological need is met by never winning an argument and having the flaws in your thinking and your knowledge pointed out time and again? Is it a subconscious desire to warn others about your untrustworthy nature? Is it a form of self-punishment? Is it raw hatred of all that is not you? Is it the misguided thought that you can achieve acceptance through repetition rather than on the merits of your ideology?
What itch is being scratched by your perpetual failure to gain acceptance of your dogma and your thought processes here (such as they are)?
Gene H:
Quite fascinating, if a reasonably educated person knows 75,000 words, then 86,000 isnt really that many more. It is a little more than 15%. Considering the level of education in this country and that IQ of an average college graduate is 115, that means you have an IQ of 132. Good for you Gene H.
Why do children participate in spelling bees and geography bees? Because they want to. Almost all of them lose, but they do it anyway.
Gene H:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-saddest-things-people-do-to-look-smart/
you should read this, you might get some insight into your personality.
By the way, the 15,000 to 20,000 was a low guess at the number of words you know so that you would respond as you did.
I figured it was higher than that but just wanted to see what you would say.
I have been amply rewarded. You do know that there is no way for you to prove what you just wrote.
By the way I understand Shakespeare knew around 60,000 words how come you’re not writing books? Probably for the same reason a parrot knows a few human words but cant take a square root.
Tony,
I think the distinction you point to is valid, but that it also refers to the difference between a valid and an invalid vocabulary. Knowing the word is not the equivalent of knowing the meaning. An incomplete understanding of a definition – while it technically may be valid as a part – is still incomplete and thus allows for error and manipulation of connotation (such as Bron’s attempt to use “rhetoric/rhetorical” as a pejorative). I stipulated that what Bron presents (including general “knowledge” and in his maladaptive vocabulary) is often based on false or incomplete information. And as Graves noted, “After presenting these three hypotheses, Anderson and Freebody note that all three of them contain some truth.” To me, this indicates any true answer is going to be some form of synthesis (if not an innovation that recognizes the contributions of the other hypotheses).
@Gene: I think two of those things are conflated; in order to really teach somebody what a word means, you need to impart a concept, and often a history that gives a reason for having a word. Teaching someobody to parrot the word “Darwinism” is pointless, and telling them it refers to a process described by a guy named Darwin is useless. To teach the word so that somebody can use it, you have to teach the process it describes, and that is “world knowledge” conflated with “word knowledge.”
Bron,
15 to 20,000? Once again your answer betrays you. You are way off. Maybe not about yourself given your demonstrably weak and fictitious vocabulary, but 15-20,000 is not even close to the mean vocabulary in adults. However, let’s add some context to the numbers I’m about to give you:
“The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don’t take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).” – OED
The average abridged dictionary contains about 100,000 entries.
In English, the average vocabulary of an adult is about 50,000 words.
The vocabulary of a reasonably educated person is about 75,000 words.
You can estimate your vocabulary by taking 20-30 pages in a dictionary, counting the number of words you know on each page, averaging out the total and multiplying it by the total number of definition bearing pages in whatever edition you are using. Using this method, my estimated vocabulary is approximately 86,250 words. It would be more if I went through and did the same thing by using Black’s to include legal terms of art. Do you know what a usufruct is? I didn’t think so.
Your lack of vocabulary (and propensity to fabricate meanings to cover your gaps) probably goes a long way in explaining your general lack of comprehension. As Michael F. Graves, Professor Emeritus of Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota, notes:
“A great deal of evidence testifies to a strong relationship between vocabulary and comprehension. As Baumann (2005) points out, the evidence for this relationship includes:
(a) the close relationship between vocabulary and IQ,
(b) early descriptive studies,
(c) a number of correlational and factor analytic studies,
(d) the close relationship between vocabulary and achievement tests, and
(e) the centrality of vocabulary to readability.
But the question remains: Is this relationship merely correlational? Is it simply the fact that people with larger vocabularies have good comprehension skills? Or is the relationship causal? Does increasing students’ vocabularies make them better comprehenders? As the reports of both National Reading Panel and the RAND Reading Study Group make clear, we do not have an absolute answer to that question understood.
As Anderson and Freebody (1981) noted and as Baumann (2005) has emphasized, the repeatedly verified relationships between vocabulary and comprehension can be accounted for by three hypotheses. The first and strongest position, the instrumentalist hypothesis, posits that vocabulary is causally related to vocabulary, that teaching vocabulary will increase comprehension. The second position, the knowledge hypothesis, posits that a large vocabulary reflects a large knowledge base and that it is world knowledge rather than word knowledge that accounts for the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension. Based on this hypothesis, teaching vocabulary would not necessarily increase comprehension. The third position, the aptitude hypothesis, posits that a large vocabulary results from having high intelligence or verbal aptitude. Based on this hypothesis, teaching vocabulary would be unlikely to increase comprehension. After presenting these three hypotheses, Anderson and Freebody note that all three of them contain some truth. Moreover, some studies have shown that teaching vocabulary improves comprehension. Still, the argument for teaching vocabulary would be stronger if there were more evidence supporting the instrumentalist hypothesis. Even without this stronger evidence, however, what evidence there is and common sense argue for teaching vocabulary, both for the intrinsic value of students knowing the words taught and for the likelihood that knowing additional words will improve their comprehension.”
Making up the meaning of words instead of knowing their actual meaning is not an actual vocabulary, Bron. It is a concerted effort to lie to yourself and consequently to others. It not only impairs your general comprehension, but that bad habit of yours actually actively works against you acquiring the basic facts required to synthesize proper knowledge. What you present as knowledge is very often anything but and is instead based on false or incomplete information, dogma, poor memory, illusion, or – in the worst case scenario – delusional thinking.
For example, your response to Tony C.:
“All white European countries full of candy asses who have a bunch of oil to support them.
Socialism is for people who believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Klaus.”
The first sentence is a proposition I’ve seen debunked against you more than once. You persist in your belief despite evidence previously presented to the contrary and illustrating that your understanding of the Scandinavian economies and their use of oil profits is both fundamentally flawed and overstated. The second sentence is pure ideological dogma and contains no substance whatsoever.
There is demonstrably (and repeatedly so) not only something wrong with what you think, but how you think. If you don’t like people pointing that out? What other explanation for your continued attacks on both persons and ideas in the face of overwhelming defeat of your ideas and tactics could there be other than masochism and/or denial?
If almost everyone (with the exception of people like the half-baked Skippy) thinks and can prove you’re both factually and logically wrong on given subjects, then what are the chances that multiple highly educated people with varied backgrounds come to the same conclusion about you and your arguments are wrong and you are the Gaultian superhero standing alone in an intellectual wilderness with an exclusive line on truth? The Arabs came up with a unique word to describe the numerical concept that best describes your odds: zero.
So again, what do you get from coming here?
tONY c:
“The fact is, as I demonstrated with the list of the happiest countries, is that countries with higher taxes and a greater component of socialized life necessities have the highest prosperity and economic happiness.”
All white European countries full of candy asses who have a bunch of oil to support them.
Socialism is for people who believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Klaus.
Bron,
You’re almost humorous.
@Bron: Just a thought, the ideas you boys espouse actually lead to economic misery. The ones I espouse lead to prosperity. Everywhere you cut taxes and reduce government spending the people prosper.
A wrong thought, and factually wrong. You cannot produce any evidence that everywhere you cut taxes and reduce government spending “the people” prosper. Unless you mean a “handful” of people, but “the people” implies all of the people, not a few, it means the typical person, not the elite, it means everybody.
The fact is, as I demonstrated with the list of the happiest countries, is that countries with higher taxes and a greater component of socialized life necessities have the highest prosperity and economic happiness. The countries with the fewest enforced laws and least effective business regulation also have the highest degree of misery, because they have the highest degree of exploitation and unfairness.
If anybody thinks large corporations, banks, insurance companies, hospitals or even Unions are acting unfairly or taking advantage of the people they serve, that is implicitly a call for better regulation that reduces the unfairness, not less regulation.
To forestall your answer, a call for competition is pointless, if nobody wants to take the risk of time and money to fight a behemoth and provide a better alternative, then the call for competition will go unanswered and the unfairness will continue. The only sure route to prevent harm to citizens is to outlaw harmful behavior and punish it when the law is broken. It isn’t unanimous that murder, robbery and rape should be outlawed, the sociopaths and idiots that think they would come out ahead if those were legal tactics would not vote for them.
But the vast majority of people want those harmful behaviors outlawed, and many other harmful practices and activities outlawed for exactly the same reason, it is only by outlawing harmful behaviors that they can be minimized. An eventual possible chance that somebody might someday be economically punished is not enough.
Mike Spindell:
Thank you for telling me yet again your credentials, it is always good to be reminded how smart you are and of your contributions to society.
You have also stated that I have empathy, so which is it Mike? Am I a sociopath or do I have empathy? You dont have a clue and neither does Gene H or Tony C.
As far as being a masochist, I am not. I am not much into pain. But I am stubborn, especially when I want to learn something new.
Just a thought, the ideas you boys espouse actually lead to economic misery. The ones I espouse lead to prosperity. Everywhere you cut taxes and reduce government spending the people prosper.
Economic misery is human suffering, economic prosperity is human well being. In terms of actual results you are the sociopaths.
But I do agree that some regulations are required, I dont want my well or my neighbors well polluted by GE’s production of wind mills.
“You have also stated that I have empathy, so which is it Mike? Am I a sociopath or do I have empathy?”
Bron,
At times you have exhibited a degree of empathy in your comments, so I tried to positively enforce whatever few decent feelings you have. However, you have displayed a long history of deception and sock-puppetry here over the period of many years, with many pseudonym alterations. Even at oe point you pretended to have changed, chastened by evidence, but later on you returned to your original counter-factual modus operandi. I can only conclude, after hoping for the best from you, that you are indeed sociopathic in style. As I said before, not knowing you I couldn’t give a complete diagnosis. However, the way you portray yourself is sociopathic and it has been pointed out where you have outright lied. Now it is possible that you in the end are merely a paid troll, then you would need to behave as a sociopath, in order to defend your indefensible positions. As for my bona fides as a therapist I was merely responding to your taunt and reminding you of what you already knew. But seriously, why do you spend so much time here?
@Malisha: I thought we were eating chickens and eggs (which first?)
Evolutionary theory answers that for you: The egg came first.
At some point in time, an animal much like a modern chicken, but NOT a chicken, laid a fertilized egg with a mutation in its DNA that, when hatched, resulted in the modern chicken. No matter how you measure the degree of “chicken-ness” an animal may possess, the egg came first; it was laid by a non-chicken and the chicken hatched out of it.
@Bron: I do not defer to anybody because of their intelligence, I only defer to the work, the ideas, proofs and logical arguments put in terms I can understand, follow, and believe are air tight (or at least have merit.)
To buy an argument just because the person making it is “smart” or “genius” or “intelligent” or a celebrity or famous historical person is to accept something you do not yourself understand, based upon acclaim, or the opinion of others. It is a form of faith, it is a belief without reason or despite reason. Personally I try to avoid faith as much as possible.
To me, intelligence and genius are only reflected in one’s ability to produce better content. More surprising, more insightful, more creative, more incisive, better explained, more ground breaking, more unifying, more useful, more enjoyable content. To me, intelligence and genius are descriptive adjectives applied to individual works or a collection of works, they are not absolutes.
What credentials, fame, or reputation can buy with me is a greater presumption on my part that a piece of work has content, something worthwhile, and therefore a greater effort on my part to follow the argument and comprehend the content. Credentials, fame or reputation is to me like a recommendation to a restaurant or movie from a friend; it makes me more likely to try it, but I will still judge the content for myself, and then the reliability of the person making the recommendation.
So is Gene smarter than me? I don’t know and don’t care, it truly makes no difference to me, I am not in competition with Gene to produce better comments or gain admirers. I am here to read and write, nothing more, to read the ideas and concerns of others, and to respond or offer my own ideas and observations. I like Gene’s comments, sometimes I think they are smart and sometimes I think they are wrong, he has said the same about mine, but I do not approach it as a contest. I tend to approach things as a collaboration of effort to refine and produce a “good thing,” a better argument, philosophy, or understanding of reality, not as a contest that has to be won, and not even something that has to match my original instincts or expectations.
As for “smart” in general, I think if somebody is smart they should be able to figure out how to make their arguments understandable by others, and to answer questions and problems raised by others. If they cannot figure out those problems, I suspect they are really not very smart after all.
As for credentials, I will repeat that I post anonymously for a reason, and if credentials or stature or fame is really what it takes for a person to accept an argument then I feel real pity for them, they assume they are inferior minds and must resort to a position of blind faith in the judgment of other, greater minds. They have remained like children, or subjects trusting in their kings and priests. They have abdicated trust in their own ability.
It is pointless to argue with them because they believe in truth by proclamation, so their “argument” is just a popularity contest of competing experts, it has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion: who they trust, like, or respect more. It is not in fact an argument based on testable reason or reality, it is all just an irrefutable claim of emotional preference.
As for my area of expertise, it hardly matters, but it is a hard science (In this sense “hard” means reality based and tested), with a component of advanced mathematics and statistics.
Malisha:
I agree with you but called out Mike’s credentials. Personally I think college degrees are over rated and wish that I had learned welding and machining skills. Good pay and less hassle. I think for the most part if you want to go into business you just have to do and hire the accountants and the lawyers.
In this day and age I dont think you can put much stock in a college degree they have been dumbed down so much. When every body has one it doesnt mean much and is a way to legally discriminate against a potential employee.
I must mention though that one of our regulars on this blog has far surpassed my accomplishments in the mental health field and that is Otteray Scribe. He is the only one here to whom I bow when the discussion of mental health becomes the topic.
I don’t have any degrees at all, but I assess information when I detect information, and if I think I have both (a) enough information and (b) the analytical power to measure it within the parameters of one or another field (such as “human behavior” or “political value” or “factual sufficiency,”) I go ahead and do so and I don’t apologize to anyone for my conclusions. I also accept correction if someone else has a better take on the information or a better way to analyze the information, and I have taken correction on this blog from plenty of experts without checking their credentials, simply because what they told me made sense and helped me understand MORE of what I wanted to understand. Among those who have instructed me are (and of course I will leave some out) Mike Spindell, Otteray Scribe, Woosty, Gene H, Elaine M, Tony C, Blouise, SoniofThunder, and Bron. I don’t automatically accept what any of them says about anything, nor does that make it harder for me to accept what any of them might say about anything tomorrow. If I’m not interested in what they have to say about something, I will sometimes read just for the Helluvit, and sometimes just skip.
They all have degrees, but I have forgotten what most of those degrees are; it is not my job to keep track of them. The day I can only learn from people with degrees (and only in THEIR OWN FIELD) will be a sad day for me because probably 90% of my education will shut down with a big bang and I don’t mean “big bang.”
“And that is what I think of your “psychologizing” if it can be called that since you do have a degree in psychology, not even a BS.”
that should read – you do not have a degree in psychology, …