There is a video that went viral going around the Internet of a lady at a town hall meeting on gay rights spouting out crazy things. She had a reason to spout out crazy things. She was a delusional schizophrenic who was off her meds. Her children told reporters that she was under their care and couldn't live alone. She had just wandered off and walked into the town hall meeting while they were looking for her.
She has a good excuse. The other people at the meeting, not so much. If you look at the audience only two guys seemed to notice that there was something wrong. They started passing notes back and forth grinning.
The looks on the faces of the rest show what is wrong with politics today.
The Progressives in the crowd just rolled their eyes and thought, “It's the same old shit. Hillary Clinton was a lesbian and the gays are working with the Bilderberg Group to control the media.”
The Conservatives just nodded and thought, “Well I hadn't heard that, but it doesn't surprise me.”
Humans are social animals, that means it is instinctive to choose sides and stick with the people on your side. No matter how bat-shit crazy they are. But we also have the ability to think for ourselves. But we tend to forget that.
I've posted before how I hate the “both sides do it” argument, but in this case it is true.
I am on both the oil industry and the nuclear industry's watchlists because of some of the things I've written on this blog. You would think that would put me high up on the environmental bloggers lists. Except they hate me.
I've blogged about how some environmentalists are talking about a 18 to 22 degree warming, which is nonsense. The real projections are bad enough. The myth about how organic food that is shipped in from other states is better (it's not). And a few other sacred cows of the environmental movement.
Back in business school (in the 80s when it was about production and reaching consumers, not just how to move money around) we had a word for this Groupthink. Going along with the group becomes more important than the reality.
The cause for most man made disasters can be traced back to Groupthink. In the last century millions have died because of it. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union because his Generals told him it was a weak economic power. They excluded any one who studied military history and invaded the exact same way Napoleon did and got the same results. LBJ invaded Vietnam because his advisors said a bunch of peasants couldn't stand up to the biggest military in the world. George W Bush's main advisor Karl Rove called his critics, “The reality based community” and actively scorned people who pointed out the reality of the situation. We can see how that turned out.
The problem is, as social animals our brains are wired to reward those who go along with groupthink. In the case of the delusional schizophrenic speaking at the town hall meeting. The Progressives who met with their friends afterwards and said, “Man those conservatives are really crazy.” Got rewarded with by having his friends agree with him. The endorphins flowed through his brain making him feel good to be one of the crowd.
If that same Progressive questioned the weird rantings and approached the Conservatives after and politely asked, “Do you really believe that the gays and the Bilderberg Group control the media?” He would probably get some embarrassed looks and they'd say, “Well that's a little extreme.” He'd go back to his group and they'd all be bummed they didn't have something new to pick on the other group for.
On the other side, if one of the Conservatives asked, “That lady was way out there right? Nobody believes that.” He would bum out the whole group. By saying nothing the next time they heard something a little less crazy they would think, “Well they do control the media with the Bilderberg Group.”
The way the human brain is wired, it's hard to go against our friends, or reach out to our enemies. When I write this series and I correct people who support an issue that I support, but are wrong on something, I feel bad. Worse, I often run across bloggers who I respect and consider friends who repeat a debunked myth and I post about it.
However I have studied some history and the worst disasters come, not from peoples intentions but, from people ignoring the critics.
Penn Jillette outlined his approach to a strategy session, “Write it down, and shoot it down.” Come up with an idea and look for all the flaws in it. Go with the idea that has the fewest flaws. If you don't, you treat everything equal and you can have a delusional schizophrenic speaking for your group.
Normally I end posts in this series by saying, “Shut-up Stupid...” (it is the title after all.) But this time I'm going to end it by asking people not to shut-up. If you feel something someone said, ally or foe, is wrong, speak up. If I'm wrong about something, I often am, let me know. The human brain maybe wired against criticizing people on “our side” but that pro-social behavior can lead to more harm than outright anti-social behavior.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
Fun With Shorts: Family Life
This is a short Josh Way made about a year ago. He riffs the 1949 Coronet short, “Family Life”.
One thing these old Educational shorts commonly did was have multiple narrators. I remember during high school how irritating that was. Believe it or not this was not the worse example of the time.
In this short the mom gets sick of her whiny ass family and comes up with a simple guide to a healthy and balanced family life. Which Josh explains at 4:11 in the short:
Guides to Home Management:
1.Schedule (Leave me alone)
2.Responsibilities (Do it yourself)
3.Privileges (Hands off my stuff)
4.Finances (Leave me alone)
The family expands on this pointing out that all the troubles in the family are caused by the Mother and Daughter not doing their chores. Simple!
Later they go on to Budgeting. They discover that as long as the women sacrifice their hopes and dreams the family can take a vacation. Whoo-ho!
My favorite line:
They figured out as a family they wanted to have fun, who doesn't?
Mormons.
Overall:
This is classic Josh Way. Like always his observations are on point and funny. The short is really, really horrible. With this one his timing is great.
Josh has a lot of shorts like this and in the coming weeks I'll be showing them. I hope you enjoy them.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Reviews!
There is nothing that boosts a writer's ego like a good review. Here is what Matthew Morrison had to say about, AN EXTRA TOPPING OF HORROR:
An Extra Topping of Horror – Guest Review by Matthew Morrison
This one has it all: ALIENS! PIZZA! TIME TRAVEL! A 50 FOOT CAT!
In An Extra Topping of Horror, Darrell B. Nelson takes over a sleepy little town and makes it the nexus of a rambling series of loosely connected (by time) vignettes. It’s almost as if Stephen King’s character, Roland, in The Drawing of the Three sat down to a palaver with a John “Johnny Wad” Homes about the merits and detriments of applied String Theory, and somehow Mr. Nelson (no doubt, disguised as a lobster monstrosity) managed to record their conversation. If one looks beyond the plethora of interplanetary inter play, in the end, this is a love story in reverse at least for one of the pair of lovers.
I will place An Extra Topping of Horror on the shelf between the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and the Talisman by Peter Straub, just beneath my massive collection of Rodox!
His review was posted on:
Martha Cheves blog “A Book and a Dish”.
http://marthaskitchenkorner.blogspot.com (A Book and a Dish)
http://marthaatkitchenkorner.blogspot.com (Martha's Kitchen Korner)
http://marthasrecipecabinet.blogspot.com (Martha's Recipe Cabinet)
http://stirlaughrepeatcookbook.blogspot.com (Cookbook Site)
And if you like to cook and are looking for indie books to read, you can check out her book, A BOOK AND A DISH at Amazon.
That really inflates my ego. It also gives me an idea for an other story. What if someone's ego got so inflated that it threatened a town. The only one who could save them was a Pizza Delivery Driver named Brian and an over-affectionate houseplant named Audrey?
Thanks for the review Matthew.
By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE
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