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Quote of the Day: On Fools, Fanatics and Wisdom
“The problem with the world is that fools, and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell
This statement, by one of the most famous and committed Lefties in history reminds me very much of Ronald Reagan’s words: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
And it reminds me that there’s often a fairly short step from one side of the equation to the other.
And that reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s purported response to the question of whether he thought God was on his side during the Civil War. Lincoln’s response was to the effect that his greatest concern was not that God was on his side, but that he was on God’s side.
All of which makes me wonder how I can really be sure where I am and who’s side I’m on, and where the best place to start is, if I want to find out.
Published in General
As father Zosima says, “Above all do not lie. Especially to yourself.”
I guess one of the things we can do is try to avoid “picking sides”; although it looks like I’ve picked a side, I work continually on clarifying my own beliefs and values and positions. Since so many people disagree with me (on the other side), I feel like they are the ones who’ve chosen to create sides, not me. I’ve reached a point where if they are clearly going with the propaganda of their side, I’m not interested; I already know that tune. So I regret to say that I’m not much interested in the other side, except to keep up with their delusions so that I can anticipate the dangers ahead. Gosh, this sounds so dark, but that’s the way the world has evolved. Good questions, She.
Oh, thank you. Yes! I wrote a post on this somewhere else, and am about to throw it out here to fill in a QOTD slot from earlier this month.
Excellent advice, as always, Susan. I think I’m congenitally incapable of not picking sides, or at least of not “picking a side as a starting point” and going from there. Sometimes, my “starting point” is that friendship means more to me than politics.
And I think I’m lucky in my friends, in that most of them (even those on the “other” side) seem to feel the same way, and to value friendship more than politics, in an age when that’s a rare occurrence.
I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t have to rub each others’ noses in it. And to realize that, if my friends feel the same way, we can manage. The nose-rubbers, however, can go hang.
Agree 100%. If we don’t keep up with the delusions of the other side, we won’t be able to deflect, let alone overcome, them.
I’ll inject a personal note here and say that my lifelong interest in Bertrand Russell has less to do with his polymathism, his philosophy or his politics than it does with stories Mum used to tell me of childhood holidays in Cornwall, just before–and perhaps during the early days of–World War II, when she and her brother, and Granny and Grandpa, found themselves holidaying at the same Cornwall boarding house as “Dirty Bertie,” his then current wife and one or more of his children.
Mum functioned as the family’s Forrest Gump character, in that she was always running into persons of note: Bertrand Russell, Ken Tynan (with whom she used to walk to primary school), Colonel Sanders, Duke Ellington, Jackie Kennedy, Anne Murray, Danny Kaye, and so on.
It’s a talent that has completely passed me by.
I was a big fan of the works of Bertrand Russell when I was a young man. Thanks, She, for reminding me of my foolish youth. By the way, I can’t believe that Russell punctuated his sentence like that. (You have to be careful when you’re around punctuation pedants like me, Mrs. She. But you know that.)
Indeed I do, @kentforrester. I just vacuumed it up from somewhere on the Internet, and that’s how it appeared in the copy that I found.
At least there wasn’t a semicolon in sight…..
The difference is simple. If you believe that those who disagree with you are free to be kooky, misguided or even, wrong, you are conservative. If you believe that those who disagree with you are evil, must be censored, silenced, converted and ostracized or worse, you are not.
That’s why conservatives always lose ground to the narcissistic.
It creates kind of an interesting emphasis though. :-) I wonder if it was intentional.
She, if you’re wondering, then you’re probably on the right track.
What about those of us who are certain that we have doubts?
Very good point, KC. Thanks!
Most people don’t want to lie to themselves, but it’s very easy to be wrong or to believe “credible experts” who face the same problems. The world is infinitely complex and at best we can only know a few immediate things. The rest we have to work at and even that isn’t easy. The knowledgeable”experts” don’t agree on much so if one wants to know about some foreign policy place or issue, you have to get seriously engaged in trying to figure out which experts are honest and actually know about the subject you’re interested in.
You have to engage the experts, so to speak, and ask questions, in order to figure out how they evaluate things. You may not be able to ask your questions person to person, but you can still formulate your questions, and read and listen with those questions in mind. The “experts” who just expect you to take their word for it are the easy ones to cross off your list. They’re all honest and dishonest to some degree, being humans and all, but I try to take advantage of what I can learn even from the mostly dishonest ones. Sometimes I don’t regret it .
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