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Old August 13, 2004, 11:33 AM
Arnab Arnab is offline
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A side effect of such categorising inhibits reasoning and critical thinking amongst the general populace, as we usually end up toeing our party line on any given issue. But putting things into nice little categories makes it easier to manage society as a whole.
Thank you. It kind of relates to the subsequent point I was going to raise regarding political spectrum. Such political categories do make things easier to "manage society". But your average Joe or Jen doesn't "manage society." The ruling class manages society. It is to their benefit to divide people into categories, friends and enemies, kind of like intra-tribal power wars.

Now to answer your questions:

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If there weren't these categories of thought, how would political parties in a democracy be formed? What are these political parties anyway? They are basically groups of people with SIMILAR ideologies on how they think their communities should be managed. We
vote for these people, because we think they will run society in a way which we
favour.
My point is just because there are categories of thoughts and ideologies doesn't mean that all the thoughts/ideas of one thought system is more favorable than all the thoughts/ideas of another thought system. And a functional democracy doesn't have to choose just one winner who gets the sole custody of managing society. A society should be run by people with the best ideas. And history teaches us that there was never a party all whose ideas were the best all the time.

The form of democarcy prevalent today in America is not the only kind of democracy we can possibly have.

Now let's see where you take me from here:

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Say we banished this thought of liberalism and conservatism, how do you propose political groups be formed? Should we have referendums on every single issue and apply our critical and logical thinking on a case by case basis? Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, there will have to be SOME form of generalisation, otherwise it would be impossible to manage a democracy. It's all very well to discredit an establishment, but unless you can provide an alternative (workable) solution, it's moot.
Ah, here's some subtelty for you: I don't want to outright banish the thought of liberalism and conservatism. As an individual I can't. Even as a society we can't do that at the drop of a hat. Even as a society we cannot just propose something new and assume people will
follow the new doctrine with metronomic accuracy. But, that is NOT my point. My discrediting of the "political spectrum" has come from my reasoning of how the current system works. If the number of people like myself grows in proportions, the idea of "providing an alternative, workable solution" would be moot itself. For example, you, fab, kind of understand what I am talking about, but you still want to cling to the status quo, maybe because all your life you have known nothing beyond it and formed some kind of post hoc reasoning to justify it. But if you were not so apprehensive of a life beyond status quo and were patient like me about a gradual change out of the status quo, there would be one more people like me. And if people like us started to grow, there won't be any need to ram an explicit, "workable" "solution" down people's throat. People, most of whom will be critical thinkers, will figure it out themselves. It will work becauseall the ingredients to make it work will exist by then.

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I'm sure there are people on the 'right-wing' who excercise similar actions to [1]. Can you name any that you admire?
I am not sure about the context of this question. But no, I have not found any right-wing journalist yet who fully exercises actions described in [1]. For that matter, I haven't yet seen a "left-wing" journalist yet who fully exercises those actions as well, but they seem to do it more consistently than their "right-wing" counterparts. In fact, I don't even CARE too much about whether a journalistic interpretation is called "leftist" or "right-wing", other than the convenience that those labels initially, but not ultimately offer.

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I beg to differ. I think it had more to do with their ignorance. Before 9/11 the average American did not know the difference between a muslim, a saudi arabian, a taliban, and an iraqi and Islam. All this mumbo jumbo, genuinely confused the hell out of them, and hence it was easy to mislead them. After all how can one be critical of something when one has no prior knowledge or understanding of it in the first place?
You are resorting to over-generalizations. The "mumbo-jumbo"s "confused the hell out of them" (them being those 65% Americans who thought the terrorists were Iraqis) precisely BECAUSE they lacked the minimal critical thiking ability, which is my point. If they had the MINIMAL critical thinking ability, they HAD to smell something foul about it. Subsequently, they could have checked the internet, or read the paper. My point is this thing callled "prior knowledge" or "awareness" isn't mana from heaven. "Awareness" HAS to be formed AND updated proactively. And one can only be proactive in updating his awareness ONLY IF he constantly applies critical thiking to the awareness he already has and finds some area in it to update.

You are being overly sympathetic to these Americans and not seeing the actual problem. Their actual problem lies in their inability to think critically, which is needed to update their "awareness" so that they can't be misled. It's a chicken-and-egg thing. It seems as if awareness comes first. But this awareness (the latest updated version of it) actually comes from applying critical thinking to the prior version of "awareness".

The proof of my argument lies with the 35% people who DID NOT believe that the terrorists were Iraqis. If you talk with any of these people, you will find out that they are, on some level, critical thinkers, and THEREFORE couldn't be "confused the hell out of".

About YOUR subtle difference between "Critical" and "logical" thinking:

Potayto Potahto. Using your example, and going back to my previous argument, people do have SOME ideas of A, B, and C (given to them by the media/authority), but they don't "doublecheck" the accuracy of A,B,C BECAUSE they are not critical thinkers. Look, on American TV, NOBODY said 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis. In fact, passports of Saudi Arabia were shown on TV. Commentaries were given abut the identity of the terrorists. There is NO WAY a person with minimal critical thinking ability would confuse the two entities "Saudi Arabia" and "Iraq". If an average American can differentiate between the words "Toyota" and "Chevy", it is unfathomable why they can't differentiate between "Iraqi" and "Saudi Arabian". The only possible explanation is that they SELECTIVELY turned off their MINIMAL critical thinking ability, the ability that let's them simply distinguish between two different nationalities. They were not TOLD to do that by the media. Bush NEVER said that 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis. He just said, "9/11...Al Qaeda....Iraq....Saddam" and repeated ad nauseum. It's those nice little catch phrases that make the society so easy to "manage". Well, Bush was able to "manage" the society pretty well. Fooling 65% of the people is a pretty good success rate.

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By success of humanity I mean, humanity's progress in changing their environment and improving their quality of life and longevity and ADAPTING to those improvements. Without the collective intelligence, logic and rationality of the average human, society couldn't function as it does. Otherwise we would be in a state of total anarchy. So, how is this a post hoc fallacy?
Well, We have used different definitions of "the success of humanity". And there are too many flaws in your definition. Take slavery in America. The slaves were part of a very efficient economic system, a system that produced quality products, improved the quality of millions of people aroundthe world. Even the slaves themselves were very well fed. They were physically stronger and more productive than the average American. The slaves adapted to their lifestyle, too. They were, in some sense, better off than they were in the jungles of Africa. Considering a lot of factors, slavery was a "success". Hell, if it wasn't a success, how could it have lasted so long? If ALL the people in this slave system: owners, slaves, etc. were not collectively intelligent and didn't have the minimal logical requirements to run the system, the system wolud not have existed in the first place.

Do you see the flaws in your definition of "success of humanity"?

About Critical thinking and "Awareness":

Reiterating my previous point, thinking critically is needed to update "awareness". It's a chicken-and-egg thing. It seems as if awareness comes first. But this awareness (the latest updated version of it) actually comes from applying critical thinking to the prior version of "awareness".

Actually, to be even more subtle about it, you are lumping ALL kinds of awareness in one big thing, which is NOT the way people generally behave, as of now. Sure, people may be logical enough to be aware of various personal and societal duties they have to perform to live together in a society, but the "awareness" we are specifically talking about here is political awareness that demands somewhat more acute thinking than say, "What cerial am I going to have this morning?"

We actually agree on many of the basic ideas. But I disagree with you on some subtler distinctions. I insist on disagreeing because if not checked, these might lead to some slippery slope of logical fallacies/failures in critical thinking/whatever you want to call it, some of which I tried to point out in this reply.

[Edited on 13-8-2004 by Arnab]
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