Ran Prieurhttp://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b2021-01-01T13:10:09ZRan Prieurhttp://ranprieur.com/ranprieur@gmail.comJanuary 1, 2021.http://ranprieur.com/#68cedbae2a8353119fc0b71774c42ce8a31fb51a2021-01-01T13:10:09Z
January 1, 2021. I can't think of anything to say about the new year that's not completely obvious, and I seem to be in a mental fallow period right now. Posted yesterday to Weird Collapse, Alienation and Doublethink is a smart blog post that starts with a Twitter thread "in which Allison Pearson claimed that she knew 'hardly anyone' who knew somebody who'd had Covid only to immediately say that her whole family had had it." The point is, a lot of people have two minds, one for practical stuff, and one for ideology.
The author mentions Soviet doublethink, and corporate doublethink, but I'm thinking, in those cases, you can get sent to the gulag, or lose your job, for allowing practical understanding to inform your ideology. Where's the penalty for accepting the medical consensus about COVID? For that matter, what's behind the recent surge in flat-earthism?
I think ideology exists for its own sake, and can thrive in the total absence of extrinsic penalty and reward. There's something about humans that compels us to tell stories about the world beyond our senses, and we get in trouble when we depend on those stories to feel good about ourselves.