The unthinking thought processes that bring ruin to society
Conservative Swede writes:
In the City Journal article on Milton Friedman that you quote, the author, Charles H. Brunie, writes:
Milton said something like, “You’re completely wrong. Politicians always try to avoid their last big mistake—which was clearly the 1930s. So every time there’s a contraction in the economy, they’ll ‘overstimulate’ the economy, including printing too much money. The result will be a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one.”
This is a pattern we see repeated everywhere.
At a larger scale, the Nazi genocide of the Jews was the number one last big mistake. So this is the main problem that the politicians tried to “solve” for the last half century. By “overstimulating” certain things, like centralized anti-discrimination laws and elimination of intolerance of minorities.
At a smaller scale, also airport security routines try to “solve” the last big problems, such as shoe-bombers or liquid bombs, in a spirit of “overstimulation.”
The world would be safer, wealthier, and happier if the politicians did absolutely nothing.
Twenty years from now, the last big mistake will have been the mass immigration to the West (with its outbreak of jihadist gang-rapes of underaged girls etc., etc.) So will the West by then be “overstimulating” nationalism, white racialism etc.? We will have gone full circle. The main effect of modern liberalism being to cause a new Nazi-like era (in addition to the way they support Arabic “Nazism” today.)
It would have been so much better if they hadn’t tried at all…
LA replies:
Very good (or rather very, very bad). Just as modern liberalism was born of the over-reaction to Nazism (Nazism consists of discrimination against a minority, therefore we must systematically eliminate all discrimination against all minorities!), modern liberalism, by opening the doors of the West to mass invasions of unassimilable peoples including Jew-hating Muslims, will give birth to a new era of Nazism, or at least of horrific ethnic and religious conflict, massive civilizational destruction, and mass deportations and possibly mass killings, which could have been easily avoided had we avoided the initial over-reaction to Nazism.
The basic problem is that political leaders do not think with the thinking, intellectual part of their brains; they think by verbal formulae, which they mistake for thinking. For example, the rationale for President Bush’s Forward Strategy for Democracy in the Mideast was as follows: “Coddling despots hasn’t worked—it has allowed the growth of terrorism. Therefore we have no choice but to promote the opposite of despotism, democracy.” This slogan has been stated by Bush and his political team and his herd of journalistic publicists a thousand times, as if it were the definitive and final statement on the matter, requiring no further argument or justification, and precluding any counter argument.. In fact the statement makes no sense at all. The fact that “supporting despots” led (supposedly) to terrorism does not at all lead to the conclusion that spreading democracy is the solution to terrorism or even that spreading democracy is possible.
This is a type of thinking by association or by crude opposites that P.D. Ouspensky called mechanical or formatory thinking. Formatory thinking is what most of the human race is using most of the time for ordinary communication and routine functioning, and in its place it does the job it is intended to do and does no harm. But where real thinking is required, formatory thinking can lead to catastrophe. Political leaders and commentators fail to understand the world and learn from their past mistakes, because instead of thinking, they rely on mere associations of words, and call that “thinking.” Despotism didn’t work; therefore democracy must work! By such non-thinking thinking processes was the Bush doctrine and the disastrous Iraq occupation born.
Similarly, by such non-thinking thinking processes was modern liberalism with its cult of tolerance born.
Conservative Swede replies:
> Very good.
I was hoping you’d say “brilliant” (just kidding :-) )
LA replies:
Remember, all that God said when he surveyed the world that he had created was that his creation was very good. He didn’t say it was brilliant or great or marvelous or (the liberals’ favorite adjective) wonderful.
Your idea of “the last big mistake” is a new concept opening up new insights.
Andrew E. writes:
I recently had an experience where a liberal friend of mine displayed exactly the type of false binary thinking you ascribe to the Bushites in this thread. He and I were out at a Manhattan bar and the subject of politics came up. Inevitably, the conversation turned towards immigration as any serious discussion of contemporary American politics must (though when my friends ask me what my number one issue is and I tell them it’s immigration, I get confused looks in return. It’s as if they can’t understand why I would care so much about THAT. What’s wrong with immigration policy they say? Our disconnect on this is magnified by the fact that most of my friends are minorities whereas I am white). So I explained my position on immigration which is a traditionalist position and I made sure to emphasize that I don’t see diversity as a good in itself, actually that once diversity is allowed in it then becomes something that has to be managed rather than appreciated. Needless to say this blew my friend away and he responded with a look of bewilderment and I even sensed a very mild disgust when he said (I’m paraphrasing):
“How can you live in New York City and feel this way? Look around you, don’t you appreciate all the variety? Don’t you enjoy or find interesting Mexican culture, or Indian culture, or these other cultures? This doesn’t make any sense given who your friends are.”
I left unsaid the obvious fact that who I choose to be friends with has no bearing on what national immigration policy should be. But I did have a devastating response for him. I told him that I do appreciate these cultures and I am glad there is such diversity in the world, but then added that that’s why there is a Mexico where there are Mexicans and an India where there are Indians and a Brazil where there are Brazilians. Why do we have to conduct this massive social experiment, unprecedented in the history of world, by allowing them all to come to one place and try to live as one people, inevitably changing American culture and its people from what they have always been?
Immediately sensing that I had penetrated his liberal armor he began to back up repeating over and over the word “no,” trying to deny the legitimacy of my comment. He couldn’t accept that my position on immigration was not based on a hatred or a prejudice against foreigners but on a love for my people and a desire to see them exist and prosper. For him, it was either I hated foreigners and thus wanted to restrict immigration or I loved them and wanted to let them in en masse.
One last point, his denial of my ability to appreciate other cultures while still wanting to restrict immigration, I think proves that the liberal is not interested in valuing foreign cultures but is interested in replacing traditional American culture. I did not make this point to him but I will next time.
LA replies:
You are very unusual in not feeling uncomfortable in telling nonwhite friends that you don’t like nonwhite immigration.
I think that’s the most powerful factor pushing whites to surrender. Now that there are so many nonwhites here, to say you don’t like immigration is to say that you don’t like all those nonwhites who are already here. That seems like a declaration of war against other Americans. Rather than do that, the whites fold, and the rest is history.
So you are very unusual.
I’ve told an anecdote of how when riding a train from D.C. to New York about 15 years ago I was sitting next to an Asian woman and as we got into conversation I experienced a hesitancy to tell her the kinds of things I write about and in that moment I realized the paralyzing inhibitions white Americans feel on this issue.
Andrew replies:
To be sure, it’s a fine line I have to walk with my friends because I care about them very much and don’t want to hurt their feelings which is why I generally don’t volunteer these topics for discussion. But we are an educated group of people who need much more to talk about than American Idol or Britney Spears so politics often come up and when they ask me what I think about something, I tell them the truth. Or when there is an opening I absolutely cannot ignore or someone makes a statement I cannot leave unchallenged, I step in.
I remember once riding in the backseat of a car with my brother driving and his girlfriend, now fiancee, in the front seat. We were discussing politics and the subject of Islam came up and I offered up some of my knowledge, of course the substance of which was anathema to them, both liberals (though not leftists at all). I then felt comfortable enough to make the important connection between the truths about Islam and their consequences for immigration policy. I had just struck at two of the liberal’s most cherished shibboleths, and flustered, my brother’s fiancee asked me what my friends think when I say this? (A few of my friends are Muslims, or rather they call themselves Muslims anyway.)
I paused for a second to acknowledge the seriousness of her question and simply told her: You’re right, they don’t really enjoy it, but what am I going to do, lie to them?
Ken Hechtman, a Canadian leftist and VFR reader, writes:
You’re onto something here and it’s bigger than just left and right. Think of the old military cliche that “generals are always fighting the last war.” This applies everywhere, not just to unthinking liberals.
I came around to this same idea, not by way of Peter Ouspensky but by way of Marvin Minsky (the Artificial Intelligence guru). Somebody asked him if science wasn’t “just like” religion since there were so many similarities. And he unloaded on the guy. “Of course you can see similarities! That’s easy. All you have to do is let your vision get blurry enough. Look for differences! The other way lies mind rot.”
Minsky’s rant pops into my head unbidden every time I hear the phrase “just like.” And the phrase comes up all over political hack-writing. For the neocons every diplomatic initiative is “just like” Munich. For left-liberals, every U.S. military expedition is “just like” Vietnam. (And it’s not true at all—Iraq is a dry heat … )
LA replies:
I would add that only to see differences between different things is as bad as only to see similarities. The function of the intellect (and this is a definition I got from Ouspensky) is to compare and contrast.
Richard writes:
Andrew E. writes:
“For him, it was either I hated foreigners and thus wanted to restrict immigration or I loved them and wanted to let them in en masse.”
Very interesting. This is an illustration of Evan Sayet’s observation, “In order to eliminate discrimination, the modern liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate.” Either an exercise of any kind of discriminatory faculty is ipso facto a manifestation of hatred … OR you can love, cherish and welcome all differences, cultures, and peoples with no thought as to how doing this will affect your own life.
By definition, your own life can only be enriched or simply unchanged by people from different cultures. To notice differences is only a precondition to actively accepting and validating them. To evaluate, however, is to hate. QED.
LA writes:
For more on formatory thinking (though I don’t use the word), see my first encounter with Undercover Black Man, where I discuss how the relentless search for “hypocrisy” in an opponent’s position (which was what UBM was doing to me) is often an empty intellectual exercise based on the mere form of words, not their meaning.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 13, 2007 09:46 AM | Send