I have enjoyed reading a blog by a professor who appears to divide his time between Sweden and Britain (mostly in Sweden these days), Bernard J. Porter. He is one of the hopeful voices in the cacophony that is social media and the Internet--not because he has much hope, but because he is a rational voice who understands argument format, the importance of empirical analysis, and a belief that maybe one day we'll mostly get it right. His latest two posts on Brexit politics are deliciously insightful. He also understands why Corbyn has been correct all along with respect to navigating through the working classes on the Brexit issues, and why Corbyn's critique of the European Union is essentially correct, something that seems to be beyond most corporate media pundits in Great Britain, including, amazingly enough, much of The Guardian's staff writers.
Here is a post of his from 2016 that captures my present mood, where I find more and more irrationality and refusal to accept facts is now included among those on my FB page. His example is admittedly more extreme than my recent experiences, where a fellow called in to an American radio show in the year 2000--he was in the US at the time--and, after the host attempted to correct the caller that the 1940 bombing of Britain by the Nazis preceded the 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany, the caller said, "But I'm a free American and believe whatever I like." That of course is high level cognitive dissonance, where Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous line, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts" bounces off one's forehead without leaving a trace.
The Wife has saidit is time for me to get off FB for at least awhile, and I have agreed to not post anymore. Today, instead of working as a substitute teacher, I am off to help her in her classroom, per her request. And yesterday afternoon, as a test for FB forbearance, I decided to read further in my latest Van Wyck Brooks acquisition, Howells: His Life and His World (1959), one of Brooks' last published books. I may have felt alone, but I was admittedly more happy than arguing with otherwise intelligent people suffering from cognitive dissonance.
I am finding more and more I am losing patience when people do not see how their arguments are irrational--one otherwise good friend tells me where I came from is somehow a reason why I am wrong on various issues--or how their arguments lack foundation as to causation. I am more and more losing patience when people do not see how corporate media functions, and people think media criticism focused on use of language, slanting, placement, and what is not covered is the same as Trumpists saying "fake news" to avoid unpleasant facts to one's ideological or political party stance. I am more and more losing patience with what Paul Krugman calls "zombie" arguments, where we regurgitate theoretical talking points that ignore the evidence already in, and, instead of maybe arguing around the edges, we act as if the evidence is not already essentially established. Worse, we seem incapable of accepting paradoxes, accepting that one can hold disparate thoughts that, yes, can crash into each other, but which, when considered, deepen perspective. Worst, I find people rush to comment when not reading the article posted, failing to even understand what may be a misleading headline, and just talking from one's own apocryphal, and therefore narrow experiences, without even knowing what was behind business decisions, when talking about the minimum wage, or refusing to understand how businesses often go under or are squeezed due to commercial rent pressures more than labor costs. I sighed as I just wrote this last sentence, I admit.
In any event, I have tried to quit the FB habit before and failed. That is because The Wife says I have "Messiah syndrome," where I feel like I have to save the world, and impart my vast knowledge and yes, even experience, I have accumulated. She properly notes how, each day I do a substitute teaching job, I come home telling her how I reached a student who other students or teachers say has been unreachable. I don't reach all by any means, but she has noted how stunning it is that I keep reaching at least one in only one day--and how, when I return to a particular school, the students are happily buzzing the "best" substitute--one said "the wisest substitute"--is back. So maybe I am at that Candide stage of life and the local schools the gardens. Maybe I will start writing a second novel since PhDs in History of Literature are not in my future or my life. Or maybe just continue to dry out after 37 years of lawyering, though one former client from Texas with business in CA called me out of the blue yesterday afternoon to sort through a new legal problem. The CEO asked to call again, after the advice was provided, and I said, Of course. Practical advice has its merits, though we never talked about whether I am going to be paid for the advice. :)
So here we go. Another test of removing oneself from FB, though maybe I will continue with the blog so I don't have to read comments where I end up battling zombie arguments. Writing an essentially non-read blog is the modern equivalent to writing for the dresser drawer, to paraphrase Victor Serge. We will see how things go. I ask, with arched eyebrow, Can the relatively few people who read me live without my public commentary? Will things in our nation and world continue to deteriorate so that intellectual "types" end up hiding in monasteries while the nation and world descend into a much less friendly "Idiocracy?" Who knows? I lack any power and frankly, I have very few who read my FB posts with any appropriate critical eye. We will see how things turn out. I pray for Bernie Sanders' health and know the US is running out of chances to redeem itself.
