Saturday, December 31, 2016

No wonder you don't trust government!

I’m always amazed at the capacity of humans to learn at any age.  All it takes is a little curiosity and humility – admitting there might still be something out there we don’t know.  Granted, this goes against some of what we’ve learned.  We could look foolish if we open ourselves to learning something new.  We could make ourselves vulnerable, subject to ridicule, or even danger, but hey, that’s how it works.
Of course I’m talking about myself, and something that just occurred to me recently as I try to remain a knowledgeable citizen of the world.

Here it is:  When people say they don’t trust the government is it because in their own narrow-mindedness they assume everyone (public servants and otherwise) is as greedy and self-centered as they are?  If so, I finally get it. No wonder they don’t trust government, or anyone else!

Now before you get your conservative panties bunched up, hear me out.  Let me start with “narrow-mindedness.” What I mean by this is an inability to acknowledge or understand the validity of any perspective beyond one’s own experience.  A good example might be Ohio Senator Rob Portman’s once anti-gay stance.  Because he wasn’t gay, and didn’t know anyone close to him who was gay, he couldn’t believe that someone else might be, that his God made someone that way, unless there was something wrong with them.  It was beyond the realm of his personal experience and so he was convinced that it was just wrong.  (either that or he was flat out lying in order to boost his VP chances)

Then his son came out.

Suddenly Senator Portman’s worldview was expanded. Now that he had some up close and personal experience with an actual gay person he was able to see that being gay isn’t some character flaw or choice any more than being born into a Republican household might (or might not) be! …or being born with different colored hair, or skin, or height, or weight, or gender or any other genetic result. Why couldn’t he see this before it was personal to him?  Because he was narrow-minded.  My assumption is that he still is, but he’s learning!

We’re all subject to such prejudices, and to a degree, they help keep us alive and safe, but we also have to constantly question them as we proceed through life or we risk being limited in our contributions and our own personal achievement and happiness.  Senator Portman was unwilling to question his former ideas about homosexuality until it became personal.  That’s what I mean by narrow-minded – the inability to see other’s beliefs, traits, characteristics, ideas, etc. as valid when they differ from our own personal experiences.  Again, we all face this kind of thinking.  It’s a survival instinct, but at some point, as adults, as we develop the ability to think rationally, we have to overcome them and challenge them in order to develop beyond a level of basic, caveman-like survival, and grow to fit into the modern world that exists around us today - where cavemen no longer exist, and where we move beyond basic survival in order to advance socially, technologically, financially, culturally, or in all ways that matter.  If you can’t get beyond the limitations of your own personal experience, you are doomed to never being any better (by any measurement) than you are right now.  THAT is the definition of a miserable life!

OK, so that’s the narrow-mindedness.  It’s important to start with that because, while it is inextricably associated with self-centeredness, particularly in the form of greed, it is a separate characteristic.  Greed, as a specific form of self-centeredness, is a whole other ballgame.  Greed has to do with getting mine, often at the expense of others.  Sure, there’s a lot lacking in that definition, but I’m trying to keep this explanation simple.  I could add that greed requires a lot of false zero-sum mythological economic thinking, probably resulting in the related lack of curiosity, and thus being satisfied with the simplest economic theory one has ever read and then misapplying it to far more complex real life situations simply because one cannot be bothered to apply rational thought to the more complex situation and thus sticks with what one knows – kind of like looking for the keys one dropped in the driveway in the living room because the light is better in there – but that won’t help keep it simple.  (here’s an example of that kind of ridiculous oversimplification:  )

In the meantime, dig into “Economics in One Lesson,” by Henry Hazlitt. It sounds like a snooze but it really is a page turner, and you can download it for free.  http://mikerowe.com/2016/08/otw-economicsinonelesson/


(note:  it’s NOT a page turner, and it contains fatal oversimplification errors almost from the very start, which is what makes it such a great example here)
Back to the point: greed sneaks into one’s world view like poison and then clouds one’s thinking at every turn thereafter.  Much like narrow-mindedness, there’s some value in limited doses of greed.  It too can be a survival instinct.  Charity begins at home.  You’re no good to anyone else if you don’t first take care of yourself, etc. and so on, but when one allows greed to taint all other decision making, that’s where the trouble starts. 

Like any other unquestioned dogma (yes, that’s redundant, but people misuse language so much in these “post-fact, post-knowledge” times I figured this post is a good place for otherwise unnecessary emphasis) greed prevents us from thinking rationally in other areas of thinking as well.  Once greed becomes one’s primary motivator, it can block out all possibility of win-win situations.  It actually fools us into thinking that if someone else wins, I must have lost.  We know this isn’t true, but that’s what too much greed does to our thought process.  (We’ve seen this with our president-elect on several occasions.  Those who seem to be able to have real discussions with him must first acknowledge that he is a “winner”…by a landslide…bigly, and only then will he listen to them regardless of their expertise, experience, education or value of their ideas.) 

Greed corrupts our thinking to the point that we assume everyone else is just as greedy as we are.  This false (in many cases, but not always) assumption thus creates competition with others where no competition actually exists.  Instead of being able to work together, greedy people automatically assume they are always competing for something.  Instead of considering the possibility of better results as a synthesis of combined thinking, cooperation, broad experiences and training coming together, greedy folks see only that they might not get all there is to have.  This is the zero-sum myth, especially when it comes to ideas.  (but also when it comes to wealth in most cases)

Like any other pattern of thinking, when you do it long enough it not only becomes habit forming, it becomes who you are.  What’s worse is that it combines with that narrow-mindedness and convinces you that everyone else is the same way.  You assume no one can be trusted because everyone thinks exactly like you do – everyone else, like you, is out to get theirs, and probably at your expense.  When you’re already susceptible to projecting ONLY your experiences onto others, you naturally assume everyone thinks the way you think.

As I mentioned, this just dawned on me.  How it took me half a decade on the planet to realize it seems rather baffling, but now it all makes sense.  Before this realization, I could never understand how anyone could be so suspicious and pessimistic about his fellow man.  My experience on this planet tells me otherwise. (“Trust, but verify,” a wise fellow one said) Sure, I’ve been burned before, (most often as a result of my own lazy thinking or actions) but for the most part, I’ve found common ground with just about everyone I’ve met in just about every corner of the planet.  It’s been my experience that we have more in common than contrast when it comes to other humans. We all need oxygen …and a nice, clean, private, preferably flushable toilet once in a while is really nice too!  It’s been my experience that two heads are better than one, not something to be feared.  I guess I have been guilty of assuming everyone would want the benefit of that, and so I have projected my thoughts too – that better solutions generally arise when you have as many perspectives and as much information as you can before making up your mind – is what it means to be a grown up. It still seems like a better way of doing anything, but now I understand why greedy, narrow-minded people think otherwise.

So now I understand what people mean when they say they are distrustful of government, or other humans in general.  It’s not that they don’t grasp the concept that in America, WE ARE “the government,” it’s that they simply assume the worst in anyone else, precisely because that’s how they see themselves, and thus they project their own misery, greed, narrow-mindedness onto others.  It also just occurred to me as I write this that the only solution for people who think like this is some sort of authoritarian dictatorship, but each one of them would have to be a dictator, so it would have to be anarchy, with each individual a sovereign entity, but that brings up issues of property rights, which would severely dampen the gathering of wealth, and that’s kind of at odds with the whole selfishness thing. (if there were no government, then how would we establish and record deeds? The real estate market would never work like that!)  I suppose the only way we can make them happy is if they find some surrogate whom they believe can represent their narrow-minded greed.  I guess we’ll see how that works out.

Luth
Out