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Inferiority Complexes Lead from Equality to Supremacy
As I was reading a particularly insightful and brilliant post (even by Ricochet standards) about smartphones, it occurred to me that the alternative medicine trend has something in common with feminism and Black Lives Matter. I immediately made two decisions – perhaps I’ve had enough bourbon for today, and perhaps I should share my thoughts on this fascinating topic, that I’m sure has been keeping you up at night. You’re welcome.
The feminist movement and the civil rights movement have a few things in common, the most obvious of which is that they are both equality movements that rapidly evolved into supremacy movements. Or perhaps ‘devolved,’ if that’s a word. I think that alternative medicine is falling into the same trap. It’s not hard to imagine certain ‘alternative’ treatments playing an important role in our treatment of certain diseases under certain circumstances. Which is fine. We should study this. But the idea that modern medicine is more sophisticated only in the realm of Medicare reimbursement and not in the realm of outcomes requires a suspension of disbelief that, until recently, was difficult for most people to achieve. But no longer, it seems.
Why do the supporters of alternative medicine feel the need to not simply promote their ideas, but also to denigrate the ideas of modern science? That would seem to be a losing proposition for them. Once someone looks at the data, they will lose. Badly. They would only attempt a power play like this if they presumed that no one would look at the data. And that’s ridiculous, of course. Except it’s not. With the internet, you can look at whatever data you want. It’s very reassuring. It beats thinking. And it certainly beats questioning your own assumptions. That can be uncomfortable. This is better. Well, in a way.
So where does that take us? In the realm of feminism, we end up with men in women’s sports. In the realm of civil rights, we end up with CRT and anti-racism (whatever that is). And in the realm of alternative medicine, we end up with cancer patients dying because they’re trying homeopathic remedies until just before they die – by the time we get them on conventional chemo, it’s too late for anything to work.
Our desire to see that which is not there leads us to be blind to that which actually is there.
I mentioned in a comment that the real trick to being an outstanding physician is balancing the arrogance necessary to take people’s lives in your hands, with the humility to recognize that you may be wrong about even your most basic assumptions. That really is difficult, and physicians struggle with it. Well, the good ones do, at least.
The excitement of a revolutionary movement like feminism or the civil rights movement tends to blind its adherents to the possibility that they might be wrong, about even their most basic assumptions. Their admirable passion leads their arrogance to overtake their humility. There is a reason that all revolutionary movements start with impressionable and impulsive students.
So we rapidly descend from “Perhaps there is a better way to do things” to sharing the view of the philosopher Elwood Blues: “We’re on a mission from God.”
Looking for better ways to do things is what defines Western Civilization. Once we stop arguing and striving for a better tomorrow, societal growth stops, and we rapidly transition from America to Syria. We should avoid that at all costs.
But there is a big difference between looking for better ways to do things, and simply attempting to defend whatever point is popular at the time, at all costs. It’s ok to be wrong about something. It’s not ok to defend a position that’s wrong, just to make yourself look virtuous.
Such behavior is the opiate of the lazy and the weak-minded.
And it’s becoming a national pandemic, which I would argue is significantly more dangerous than COVID-19.
As a nation, we find ourselves in desperate need of adult supervision. I see none immediately available.
I heroically maintain sufficient humility to acknowledge that perhaps I was wrong about even my most basic assumptions. Perhaps I’ve not yet had enough bourbon for today…
Published in General
Wow.
I need to go lie down…
I think Reticulator means that you need to interpret events to make sense. You can’t just look at the facts and the facts magically form an explanation of what happens. For example, every time Communism has been tried, there have been famines. However, you need the ideology of capitalism or anti-communism to blame it on central planning. Now ideology doesn’t mean a lie. It means a theory that helps explain the world.
For example, cell theory is the theory that all living things are made of cells (viruses are kind of iffy.) As far as we know, it’s a perfectly accurate theory but it’s a theory and not the data itself.
How am I doing Reticulator?
It seems you’re doing well, but I need to think over your way of describing it.
I would add that intuition is an intellectual process (if not explicably rational) that includes barely quantifiable experiences, and weighting them subconsciously. Changing one’s mind has to do more with the last straw intellectually, but relies fundamentally on the unspoken, and largely not consciously organized, intuitive process.
You have different examples in your head than I would have thought of, but you seem to have the same idea.
That should be rejected. Intuition is the vestiges of our ape spawn self that should be genetically weeded out. We are naturally irrational communist partisans. It is through our higher reasons that we can understand the world.
Instinct and intuition have demonstrated survival value.
They do indeed. No one would deny that. However, primitive people relying on instinct lose to a scientific people in competition. Though I wish humanity could do this in a less brutal fashion, competitions between different human groups show that higher reason demonstrates more power over this chaotic and pitiless world than our instincts.
All such comments should be replied:
Educate. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Probably pointless. She would just want to “educate” you on what “educate” means.
Someone should educate her by pointing out that these days it isn’t fashionable for educators to educate students and impart knowledge. Instead, they act as coaches to encourage and provide opportunities for students to construct knowledge.
Except with CRT, of course.
I recall approximately 2 decades ago reading some historians cum social scientists observation that we were entering another Great Awakening. They argued that based upon various cycles they plotted going back some number of centuries, all the components were in place and we were due for another round of religious fervor. I — stupidly, as it turned out — thought this would be a good thing. I was wrong. Instead it’s been the “Great Awokening”. We’re being subjected to zealous missionaries raining down fire and brimstone in the name of their angry, false, ephemeral, barbaric moloch-like god, Woke.
Everyone needs meaning and purpose to their life. Different people try to find it in different ways. Those who think they never will find it, numb themselves through various means, or shuffle themselves off the mortal-coil. Everyone has a god, for those who don’t have God, but have the missionary zeal, there is the pagan golden calf of Wokism. Woke has many rooms in xer house: climate-change, racism, sexism, trans-whatever, socialism, CRT, etc. But the foundation is an absolute refusal to accept the world as it is; instead they believe they can make a new world with words for bricks. They reject biology, chemistry, physics, and so attempt to force the universe to be what they think it should be. They are mad at God for not aquiescing to their will. But they are also in angry opposition to science and excellence. Their fanaticism breeds aggressive narcissism. They want everyone to be unique, in exactly the same way they are unique; an assembly line of unique colors and “genders”, who are all exactly the same.
However, underneath the certainty and fury, is a deep black pit of self-loathing and insecurity, which is often echoed in their self-mutilation and self-harm. They know they are the unworthy inheritors of a great civilization. They are told they have the elite credentials of this civilization, yet they know that as the plastic-participation-trophy-winners they will be unable to add to it, let alone perpetuate it. They know they pale in comparison to their predecessors, so instead they denigrate those self-same predecessors through flimsy fierceness, but innately brittle and weak cudgels.
Nevertheless, they can do a lot of damage before they are gone. But resist — intelligently — we must. And in ways appropriate for each individual. But there is no other option. To turn away from the world as it is, is to forfeit the world. These cycles do not end. But the direction of recovery is not a certainty. It requires the unWoke to pick up the pieces and put them back together, and not allow a new Dark Age to take hold. Learn from the mistakes of the Woke, and — more importantly — the mistakes of the generation that nurtured and raised these barbarians. Otherwise it’s a wasteland for centuries. There is no magic bullet or simple fix, but victory must be won, and then maintained. Each generation that maintains it has won a victory and is a worthy inheritor of this great civilization.
This is the only political fight that matters now. All other problems flow from it. Without addressing the cancer of Woke, nothing else can be fixed.
I could not have said this better.
Lots of great stuff in this comment. I wrote a post on a similar concept a few years ago.
I hope you touch it up a bit and publish it as a post on the feed – I’d love to hear the discussion on some of the points you bring up.
Brilliant stuff.
Thank you both. I have been thinking on this subject for some time. Just no time to really develop it. yet…