Max: Rant on Reason

The following started out as a reply to this comment on the last post;

Stereotypes exist for a reason. The further from the coasts and the further from the large cities you get, the more the population shifts toward the right. Large cities tend to be more diverse and tend to harbor more left wingers. It's a generalization, but it's an acurate one. Is everyone like this? No. I don't think most people would say "if you live in the burbs, you must be a christian fundamentalist." But, I think a lot of people would agree that the average fat, happy, christian, ugly American lives in middle America in a suburban or rural location. I live in a blue state, but it's just barely blue. Not everybody here is a liberal - do you remember the "Battle of Seattle?" But, for the most part, Cupie and I and the majority of Seattle are looney libs. Go east of the Seattle/Tacoma/I5 corridor, get a lot more red.

Laura, the only time we think you are an ignoramus is when you take something not aimed at you and make it personal. But, power to you, my strong, blue sister. Fight the power! Better Dead than Red!

BTW, you are certainly right on the principals this country was founded on. Our fore-fathers, the framers of our Constitution were thrown out of every decent country for their looney beliefs, or were sent to prison here. Now, we want to do the same to everyone else. Sad!

Typical for me, I overdid it and decided to just turn it into a post.


Actually stereotyping is a survival tool. We touch one hot stove, or even hear that hot stoves burn, and we assume that all hot stoves will burn us. Replace hot stove and burn with a racial, religious or ethnic grouping and some trait and you have the exact same dynamic.

The thing is, hot stoves being a hazard is also intellectually sound and supported by the laws of science. The difference between a useful survival tool and civilization destroying stupidity is the application or not or that other survival tool, reason. We have the advantage of being able to balance out both cold reason and animal survival instincts. My dog freaks every time she hears the word "fuck". She can't reason that "fuck" is not always used in anger. Neither can she reason whether or not she is actually the target of the expletive. On the other hand, if all we had was reason and no assumptions, we would start at zero in every situation. We wouldn't get very far very fast if we had to reason through getting out of bed in the morning. And when bullets are flying, reason might not lead us to conclude that ducking might be a good plan until too late. If fact, without assumptions about the nature of flying bullets, we would not be able to begin to reason about a reaction until we have a bullet hole or two in us.

It seems the animal instinct is plenty strong on its own and requires little support. Reason, however, is under constant assault. I once read a book that argued that the European "dark ages" were in fact the enlightenment because the Christian bible was almost universally taken literally. What we generally call the elightenment was the beginning of the true dark ages because it was the snuffing out of the light of Christianity by Demon Reason.

It is that sort of religiosity led the well off scion of one of the wealthiest families in country to become one of the most hated people in the world, to cause the deaths of thousands who never did him harm. There is no rationality, just the unquestioned - unquestionable - truth he reads in his holy book.

But enough about Shrub...

In this country there are people who want nothing taught in the schools that contradicts the Christian bible. That is somewhat hilarious given how much the Christian bible contradicts itself. Elsewhere in this world blind dictatorships driven by religion and ideology regularly crush people beneath the weight of official beliefs. And viewing the historical record and the current results of such governments we seems keen on recreating it here - to protect us from non-believers, to protect us from "them".

I saw a map a couple of weeks ago that broke down the partisan results of the last election by county. On that map, we saw that blue states weren't all that blue, red states not so red. Of course, there were blue people in the red counties and red people in the blue counties. And there were blue people who voted red and red people who voted blue for their own reasons. Or lack of reason.

It comes down to those who want to think and know versus those who want to believe. At this point in history, other differences are of nowhere near the same importance.