Reality-denial and dealing with reality-deniers

perpetualburn wrote:

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"Belittling jokes" can lead to genocide if we're not "careful"...

"Justifying biases by seeking out like-minded people"...whatever that means..maybe just simply organizing yourself among others who share similar values is a potential sign of the genocide to come...which must not be "accepted"...

I like how they inserted "social avoidance" in the second from bottom base...

Listened to a good video by BlitheringGenius recently titled 'God is a telomeme'. In it he mentions two main ways of how sets of ideas/worldview (memes) propagate.

One way is tradition where ideas are passed down by genetic descent, from parent to child. Since this type of propagation is reliant on reproduction, the memes reproduced tend to be in favor of reproduction as well.

The other way is fashion. He compared fashion to a disease because it spreads from adult to adults. Instead of being adaptive in evolutionary terms, a fashion is about being persuasive. I don't remember if he actually said it or suggested it himself, but I think humanism can be classified as a fashion.

All the new forms of media in the modern world such as the radio, TV and internet help spread fashions because fashions due to their persuasive nature propagate easily through mass media, while traditions do not. Unlike traditions, which are selected for their ability to help people survive and reproduce, fashions are selected for appealing to as many people as possible.


Although this is interesting and encompasses how most people form their worldviews, I think there is a third way. It's called realism.
What differentiates it from the previous two?

A traditionalist's beliefs might include some religious or mythical components which can be based on reality to various degrees. In order to propagate them, traditionalists need to educate their children about them from an early age, possibly because they are absurd and/or difficult to accept either rationally or emotionally, usually it also includes promises of rewards, or threats (belief in God)

If one cares about fashions, their beliefs might include emotionally motivated distortions of reality, so the fashionable people must constantly use emotional blackmail against others, and use emotionally based premises to justify their beliefs and threatening with social ostracization if you reject them (human rights are unquestionable, if you disagree you are evil, psychopath, racist, sexist, ...)

Realism needs no indoctrination, and it needs no emotional blackmail. Realistic beliefs are based on observing reality with honesty and using healthy senses. A realist doesn't need to argue much to convey his ideas (at least about simpler topics), for his ideas are based on observing reality directly, reality which we all share. He doesn't need much more than to point with his finger, and say 'Look! Do you see what I see?'. All he needs is such a simple appeal to reality to propagate realist ideas.
If the realist finds it that the other person is telling something new and interesting, and exposing him to ideas he finds reasonable but may not have considered yet, a realist can change his mind. Likewise, a realist can change the mind of another fellow realistic minded individual who might still be ignorant about a certain topic by simply appealing to reality and pointing out things that individual might not have noticed, or dared to speak about.

Another thing I dislike about traditions and fashions is that they often use circular reasoning, so they demand that one should accept something, no matter how stupid or even blatantly wrong it is, just because it is "the tradition" or "the current fashion".

Cartesian doubt: I'm gonna doubt in and be skeptical of everything that is right in front of my eyes and that my senses tell me obviously exists such as the sky, earth, color, sounds, and I will even consider my own hands, eyes, flesh and blood to be mere deceptions. I will assume none of that exists.

I will, however, assume that an evil demon/spirit exists whose specific purpose is to trick me into believing the above things actually exist when they don't, even though I have absolutely zero fucking basis for assuming the existence of any such being, much less that it has the specific intention of tricking me into believing some things exist, and others don't.

This will be the basis for all of my further reasoning.

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^^ I'm supposed to treat this la-la-land nonsense as serious philosophy according to some. It's very typical religion-influenced thinking in that it ignores the actual reality and pretends it doesn't exist while at the same time coming up with complete bullshit for which they will claim is reality.

Realists will always be confronted by idealists, from the left to the right side of the spectrum.
His motive differs from theirs. He is interested in what is - call it truth, or world, or existence, or cosmos - they are interested in what might be, and/or what ought to be.
From the radical left to the radical right, what differs is how much of the perceptible, experienced world will be denounced, denied, and ignored, relative to an ideal that does not exist, but ought to, in some future point in time, or already does in some occult dimension, and ought to be brought forth to replace the experienced, perceptible world.

This is most clear when dealing with human identity.
Radical leftism denies the individual replacing it with a collective - reaching the extreme absolute representation of a collective, i.e., universal, named god; radical rightism denies collectives, groups, from tribes to species - as these apply to homo sapiens - reaching the extreme of individual identifying only with the period between birth and death, and perhaps, his immediate family in as much he shares genes with them, reaching the extreme of narcissism, or selfish egotism, as a divine god-like 'I.'
Minimal overlapping is tolerated, and only if it preserves the ideal identifier of collective Self or individual self.
From radical Communism to radical Capitalism, i.e., collectivism, individualism.

An objective mind, recognizing an individual as a dynamic fluctuating synthesis of the two, would be accused of belonging to the radical opposite of whatever is espoused as ideal.