Failures of Human Attitude: |
What is this Issue Concerning?If we can accept as fact that our society has been making very poor decisions with dire consequences, as revealed in many other pages on this site, it is worthwhile to realize that a failure in our attitudes is the only reasonable explanation of so many poor decisions by so many people over a long time. After all, decisions depend on perceptions, beliefs, and ultimately attitudes. For example, what kind of issues we prioritize as important, what kind of verification we choose to require to believe that information is true, and what we believe is an appropriate urgency and response to different types of facts are all attitude questions. If our attitudes are poor, our decisions will also be poor. What is the Threat to Life of a Failure of Human Attitudes?The Earth being under human management, poor human decisions, and the poor attitudes from which they arise, are a paramount threat to life on earth because of the mismanagement of life on Earth which results from them. This mismanagement affects all biological life on this planet, all being under human influence and none able to withstand this influence (at least as far as we know). Specifically we have:
All of these poor decisions are caused by poor attitudes. The problem is at the foundation of our minds. So what?If we can identify the poor attitudes, and the error of them, and correct them, we can improve our world. Which Attitudes are the Problem?Unfortunately there are many:
Sadly, at least some prominent humans with broad influence in society, if not the majority, seem to be devolving towards far lower levels of thinking and morality than they should have, at least from the benefit of learning from history. This includes: Humanity should have already learned that: war is the worst way to settle differences, it's wrong to attack civilians and military indiscriminately, it's wrong it's wrong to prevent civilians from escaping a warzone, and it's wrong to dehumanize any human population and call and work for their destruction. Partly related to pride of choice, this is where people become so fixated on the all-importance of their choice that they actually come to believe that whatever they choose makes it true. The attitude has been surprisingly common, for example most major religions operate on the premise that if they believe it it's true without any need to hear what someone else has to say on the matter. Pride of belief, ie. that what is chosen must be true, is why very few people born into a religion ever question it or compare it to other offerings. In our experience, sometimes encountered that some people don't seem to understand such a thing as 'truth'. They only seem to understand sides and what side they are expected to be and speak on. In our experience, we've sometimes encountered a willingness to voice strong opinions on an issue without any desire to understand the facts of those issues first, especially in issues ffecting others more than themselves. This is not uncommon: typically, in democratic elections, the Public is strongly encouraged to vote but not encouraged to research the issue they vote: agains as though opinion matters more than understanding. One of the greatest disappointments with society today is that a disinterest in higher level of truth has become a dominant attitude. It is common now to approach someone with some new discovery of truth, even in a topic undisputedly of utmost importance, and the receiver not be interested to hear it at that time or any other time. They generally welcome any improvements in technology, and welcome unlimited criticism of existing technology which might lead to an improvement, because they love the power of technology and value any increase in it. The reasons for this are three: This is when people carefully decide who to trust, but not carefully what to trust. Rather they believe whatever flows from the one they have decided to trust. Although a primitive mode of thinking, it has been amazingly common, even the primary way people decide issues. The reason seems to be that relying on experts (so that only choosing the right expert is required) is a lot easier than trying to understand a topic yourself. In fact, trust in experts has become so popular that contrasts in opinions of the average person are often only a contrast in which expert they trust, rather than evidence offered or accepted at all. A method of evaluating truth which has become popular is judging it based on the success of that message in society. For example, when judging a religion using this method, the evaluator might claim that a certain religion proves its truth in being the most popular in society over the longest time. A popular claim based on this model is that many supporters cannot be wrong. Of course, truth is very different from popularity, and although what is true should be more popular, there are so many assumptions in that thinking that, in practice, truth and popularity are mostly independent. For one thing, there is a time advantage in long-established beliefs compared to new discoveries. Second, some truths are deliberately kept secret. Most importantly, lies which the Establishment wants to promote typically have popularity effectively given to them, such as through donations of: money, credentials, coverage, and public policies, all of which the Establishment controls. The effect is so powerful that many obvious lies, even to the harm of the Public, have remained very popular in society due to Establishment support, such as that fluoride is so vital to human health that Government must add it to public drinking water. It's been said that a lie told often enough becomes the truth, but of course it doesn't. Rather a lie repeated often enough, by enough different credible sources, is accepted as the truth, in those who base truth on social pressures, either because that's their way or they get tired on some level of resting. Psychological studies have confirmed for decades that people will conform their statements even against obvious facts if they a social conformity pressure to do so. As another evidence, in marketing, advertising tends to motivate people the more it is repeated: not just to new people, but to the same people. The sheer repetition of a claims seems to wear down the human mind's resistance. Of course, it is the influential Establishment who are in the best position 'hype' whatever product, service, or idea they want. Perhaps this is why, for example, over-hyped Bitcoin is the most expensive of all cryptocurrencies, despite being the first and worst technology in that sector. This is the predisposition that: Tribalism leads people to support things which do not fairly deserve support, or to reject things which do not fairly deserve to be rejected, simply because tribalists considers that kind of analysis irrelevant (while they focus on and react to only what is for or against their side). Even hard evidence is ignored by sheer freedom of choice to do so. Tribalism permits national atrocities to continue for long after they are noticed to be wrong, because any critic of those atrocities is assumed to be the threat, for mentioning them, rather than the atrocities any threat. For this reason, atrocities in tribalist societies tend to stop only when the leader decides, or all the victims are ravaged, or when a foreign power overthrows the administration. For example, we can safely say that tribalism was the reason that persecution of Jews was not recognized in Nazi Germany as the evil it was, and why there is fierce resistance to recognizing wrongs which our own society does today. Tribalism is why many people accepted the COVID-19 vaccines while actually refusing critical information on it. Tribalism is also why it's so difficult to raise contrary religious ideas within an established religion without being persecuted for it. Tribalism is a major impediment to correcting the wrongs we are guilty of, as well as to identifying and shifting to better ideas when they become available. Tribalism is supported by the popular belief that loyalty is the highest virtue. Rather than higher levels of truth, society has become more interested in the most easy way out of any situation. Based on this tendency, it is very easy to construct traps for society where, due to very slight increments of increasing torment, so slight that no one change is worth resiting, the easiest thing to do is to stay in the trap. This is opposite to the attitude behind, for example, the American Revelution, where Great Britain attempted to impose extremely slight changes which the American colonists rejected, in the face of the greatest military power of the world, not because of the magnitude of the change, but only the principle behind them. For example, the Boston tea party was an event where colonists made a spectacle of their rejection of taxed tea, because they believed that Britain had no right to tax it, even though the tea, even with the tax, was cheaper than what they usually pay for tea. The psychology attempted to control the colonists was that they would not reject cheaper tea, and in so doing would accept the new tax with the tea, which could all be increased at a later date. That didn't work with the colonists, but it works all too often today. There doesn't seem to be many people left who understand that their right to vote is something entrusted to them to decide the best course of the nation, and there is a duty to vote in your best understanding for that goal, rather than your own selfish gain. Too many people treat it as their personal priviledge, to not vote, or vote to exploit future generations by Government deficit spending now, for example. Too many people decide emotionally rather than logically, and this hurts decision quality. For example, you might drink a soda because someone you like is seen drinking it, or you might refuse to believe someone, without explanation, because they don't sound confident about what they're saying. We have minds and we should be using them in priority over emotions in making the most important decisions. Positivity has become a popular psuedo-religion of preventing any attention to, or presentation of, anything against what you want, while maximizing focus on what you do want. It is promoted by successful celebrities, and it doesn't seem incompatible with anyone's formal religion, so it has tended to be accepted. The hope is that by simply choosing what to focus on, you can change the universe in the direction of what you focus on. The theory of Positivity seems wise, ie. to only focus only on the positive, and it is self-empowering, but there are many harms of this ritual in practice due to subtle errors of its application which are rarely explaoined to followers. One of those mistakes is that it's dangerous to refuse to discuss crisis issues just because they are 'negantive' topics: it leaves you without information or preparation on that topic in that crisis, which is a strategic failure. Another error is to blame people in their trouble that their troubles must be only their own making somehow. This discourages anyone to help people in need, out of a sense of justice. It's an easy way to explain your way out of helping others. Another error is that there are limits to the power of your own mind, especially when there are so many other minds out there, and some of those minds might become to beings much more powerful than you. It's not all there is. This is exploitation of helpful people or programs in an attempt to derive the most possible benefit from those programs to the unlimited exploitation of the giver: even to their obvious harm. This is perpetrated by various tactics inluding exaggerating your need, misusing the help you receive, and returning to the giver never to repay them but to demand more. This attitude eventually gets found out as the exploitation it is, and it creates suspicion or distrust when the next person asks for help. Although most people won't admit it, our society worships money and technology by placing paramount importance on them. Our society is keenly interested in any way to get even a little more of them, and, on such topics, will not take offense if you criticize their current method for inefficiency (this is very different, for example, with religion). The worship includes the ideas that science and markets must not be constrained but allowed to roam free and without limits, being of supposedly paramount importance to our progress. In contrast, interest in truth, morality, theology, and afterlife have become relative non-priorities in our society, to the point that most people react like you're bothering them if you try to raise these topics for discussion. The foolishness of it is that those last four topics are eternal ones on which our eternal security most depends. It's so bad that if a person had a direct encouter with God right now, and wanted to share His message witht he world, unless that person could leverage some existing influence they had, the main difficulty would be finding anyone interested to hear it. Due to accepting the blaming of population as the root cause of nearly every evil, as so-called 'overpopulation', society has come to harbour a notion that population is a threat. In so doing, they tend to accept any prospect of mass death as a good thing, or at least a necessary evil, instead of a horribly tragedy to avoid at all costs. The truth is that our population is our greatest asset, and it's gross mismanagement of our resources (which we tend to waste or destroy) and technology (which we tend to invest primarily in weapons) which is the true cause for most problems blamed on population. Our society has come to see prayer as a foolish inaction whcih only seems like action. In fact watching television is considered more commedable and useful to society than praying. Our society has come to view distrust of the Government as something extreme and dangerous, but the fact is that Government is on one side of social power and the Public is on the other side, so Government has no incentive to exploit the People, and virtually all governments in history have. We need to be watchful of that. Government's incentive is to take everything from the People which they allow to be taken, and we can't expect them to stop themselves simply due to their own internal moral bounds. The Public seems to think that the larger a news agency the more credible and therefore more trustworthy it is, ignoring basic questions like who owns it, their advertising revenue from Government or corporations, or whether they offer evidence for your own research. Typically it's the independent media who offer supporting evidence with their stories, while larger news agencies offer authorities and experts to take at their word. What makes the 'mainstream' news 'mainstream' is typically partnership with the Establishment. People tend to choose a religion and then are simply told who their leader is, and this person is replaced periodically. For some nebulous reason, only the leader and whom the leader appoints is allowed to share ideas with the group, and if the leader approves or disapproves of an initiative that is the end of it. In most of these systems it's not only an explicit choice of god but an implicit acceptance of human masters also. A logical reason to put such high trust in the infallability of these people or necessity to follow them is absent. It's as if our bodies are designed to work with synthetic chemicals, especially patented ones, rather than natural foods, herbs, or off-patent drugs. It's as if every new disease requires a pharmaceutical company to rescue us with an entirely new patented product, and as if our own immune system, nutrition, or healthy lifestyles are of no importance. A most amazing trait of many humans is that they will opt for what they recognize as evil if they believe it's the least evil option they have which has, in their mind, a realistic chance to win. In elections, his starves newer, less established candidates of the support their policies deserve, and growing gradually in support over time, and prevents our politics from evolving towards new parties with new ideas. It's literally as if a new candidate must show they have strong support before the Public will give them strong support; that's how insane it is. Regardless, to choose an option which you, by your own morality, recognize as evil, is an evil act. It's one thing to see humans as above the other animals ('other' because we are part of the Animal kingdom) whom we share the planet with. It's another thing to consider ourselves so far above other animals that literally anything we do to them is acceptable, for example to destroy no limit of their habitat and to use them in no limit of medical experiments to their unlimited harm. And if we kill them to extinction, even directly (such as with the dodo), too bad for them and no one of us is blamed. Is there any moral limit as to how we should treat these indigenous co-inhabitants of Earth? Our society seems only interested in protecting victims in proportion to the strength of the complaint they raise in the Public arena. Our society doesn't seem to care at all about any victims who can't complain, such as the unborn, or are otherwise hidden. This is not the path to world peace but only world ignorance. Evildoers seem to understand a need to support any initiatives on their side, but 'good' people have been much more reluctant. Reasons to avoid supporting others' good initiatves include: Although the majority has learned not to prejudice someone based on their race or gender, they still do it based on many other superficial criteria, even if it makes no logical sense to base their decision on that. For example, it's popular to refuse any kind of financial advice or product from someone who doesn't appear to be wealthy themselves, no matter what the product is or how it is explained to you. Although we humans are quite good at demanding rights for ourselves, we have been shamefully slow to demand or defend human rights for other people. Unfortunately if there is no one else to defend your human rights, there are no human rights. The only established rights we have are the rights we consistently defend for each other. This failure has opened a successful strategy for powerful enemies to destroy us: by simply attacking one minority group at a time, relying on the majority to fail to come to their aid, they can slowly conquer a large society. Techniques used to Control Human Societies:
One of the greatest weaknesses of human nature is our tendency to look to others to verify our perception of reality. For example, if you think you saw a ghost when you are with a friend, the first thing you do is ask your friend if they saw it. If not, the tendency is to self-doubt whether you saw it, even though you saw it, and certainly not speak about it. The side of evil also has weaknesses, one of which seems to be that they need to reveal, or allow the revelation of, what they are doing on some level to reduce their responsibiltiy for doing it. The combination of these two phenomenon has become a strategy of evil where they do evil, they allow it to be detected and revealed by a minority of reporters, in some cases even with hard evidence and strong logic shared publicly. But by preventing Government, politicians, maintstream news media, and universities from acknowledging it, humans are denied the confirmation of reality they like to have before acting on anything. The more shocking the information, the more a confirmation of the reality of it from society at large is desired. Such is the case, for example, with geoengineering: where despite hard evidence and clear rationale to prove that we are being sprayed, since social institutions won't acknowledge it as real, we question our own belief in these issues, rather than ever act to stop them. This is where people accept drastic change so long as it's scheduled long enough away that it's of no effect now. For example, when the Canadian Government wanted to ban gas-powered vehicles, rather than try to do it now, they simply scheudled it for far enough away in the future that no one would feel immediately threatened, and therefore accept it: December 26, 2022 Trudeau’s Liberals inching closer to banning all sales of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 When most people are presented with options they dislike, they simply choose the one they dislike the least, rather than rebel. They will even choose what they see as evil solong as it's teh least evil. Using this technique, it's not been difficult to get any evil leader elected so long as their competition seems worse. It takes a long time to read and understand documents before singing them, so some people don't bother, and this includes legilsators voting on bills to become laws, bills which often contain hidden provisions. Although it's difficult to compel people to choose exactly what you order, by omission and emphasis of news, media, and political focus it is quite easy to get the Public talking about something unimportant or never talking about something important. What to do About It:Once we realize the flaws in our attitude, we can consciously correct them, to the improvement of ourselves and our society. |