Can You Challenge Your Own Assumptions?

THE DAVID MAMET QUESTION

Playwright David Mamet, in his new book, The Secret Knowledge, explains why he's jumped from liberal to conservative in his thinking.

It might be an extreme leap to make. My idea is to take the best from both camps-- or at least eliminate the worst of ideas available from both sides.

The question is why Mamet made the change.

It might be his realization that what passes today as Liberal is not liberal-- not as the word was known fifty years ago, during liberalism's heyday and the idealization which came with the election of JFK. (See the notion of integration, for instance, which has been abandoned by the Left in the interest of the balkanization of American society and culture.)

Or, it might be that Mamet became frustrated with the utter stupidity, on issue after issue, by those mechanically mouthing the stances of today's liberal-Left.

Maybe not stupidity so much as gullibility-- the inability to question what's programmed into them.

This is an interesting phenomenon. When you see the progressive individual wearing a t-shirt that says, "Question Everything," you can be certain that the individual questions nothing. Wearing the slogan eliminates the need to question. It certifies that the individual is already correct in his ideas, no further examination necessary. The work has already been done. Somewhere, offstage, presumably by the person's professors, who hand the hapless soul prepackaged doctrine accompanied by liberal sanctification removing any need for further thought.

I use the example of manmade Global Warming Theory because it's such an obvious case. (I've been introduced to people before with this phrase: "Karl doesn't believe in Global Warming." In other words, I'm something of a nut. All thought closed off.)

The vast mass of people who accept Global Warming haven't looked into it. They accept it as a whole, in large part because it comes from on high, from authority figures. How can anyone question it?

The more successfully educated the person, the more gullible. For this reason: Those who do best in high school and college, at the very top of the pool, all A's and other scholastic honors, are those persons who best accept what's taught them, and ingest it fully so they can hand it back at a moment's notice.

I could sit down in front of you with graph paper and within fifteen minutes show you what Global Warming Theory is based on, and what's wrong and inadequate about its premises.

Not that this would make a difference to you. Humans aren't logical animals, for the most part. They're most comfortable when part of a herd. (p.s. This applies to the Right as well as the Left.)
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Global Warming hysteria can be explained through a book which should be part of everyone's education, but isn't: Charles MacKay's Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Well known among hard core investors and speculators. It's worth a look.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: In correcting a mistake I made regarding the author of said book, and googling the title, I stumbled upon an interesting paper regarding the Global Warming controversy:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases
Worth a look for those interested in truth instead of ideology.)