Nobody Truly Knows, and Nobody Can (Honestly) Say That They are Absolutely Right.

I know that many besides myself are now tired of bellicose, errantly-righteously-indignant, uncivil and demanding people in our society eagerly willing to lash-out at others who dont share their shallow ‘woke’ views about economics, social organization & ‘equality’, and the binary sexual diffentiation that nature – not any people – came up with. It is common for them to hold that all this should be forcibly imposed without dissent. It is not so much the stupidity nor even the moronic, self-bestowed noblity of their views that I’m tied of. That might actually be amusing to witness if the damage they caused was only to themselves. What I find most repulsive is their unwillingness to openly and honestly test and debate the merit of their views against the huge corpus of wisdom accumulated from the results of so many pertinent trials and experiments conducted by people throughout history; most of whom were wiser and more thoughtful.

They have convinced themselves that their shallow, emotionally-based, and reactive demands for change are so ironclad right-and-true that it is an insult to suggest that their primacy even be held up to any verification via sober scrutiny and testing – which is a obviously a gravely serious ignorance. But what most concerns me is that in their minds, their ideas are more important than their now-obvious real-world deleterious results, even as they are hurting many people as well as the overall welfare of our society and ways of life. The historical record is grim concerning the movements driven by large groups of people with such willfully-blind, totalitarianism.

Just as there is no such thing as ‘settled science’, there is no such thing in public policy as ‘rightness’. All that exists to draw from is a historical database of the results from prior policy experiments. Science is based on advancing theories and models which, however useful, are never to regarded as ‘the last word’ on answering the great questions posed. They are always open to new theories and models of how things work, and the arbiter of which ones are best is not the opinion nor view of anyone, but rather how-well and how-universally their behavior matches the observable behavior of experiments expressly designed to test them.

And so it should be with any policy, law, or social stricture that affects the real welfare of people. If it doesnt work as-proposed and does harm, discard it. If it does what it was supposed to without causing substantial ‘collateral damage’, continue using it cautiously (always looking for as-yet unseem pitfalls in it). And there will always be something that can be chalked-up as collateral damage, for as Thomas Sowell said: “In social policymaking there is no such thing as clear ‘solutions’, but rather only a set of tradeoffs (e.g., funding allocated somewhere will not be available elsewhere).

We know we are now all being conned, demagogued, and abused by the ‘ruling elite’, so I’m not talking so much about them. I’m talking about so many people, some leaders of their own organizations, who go along with that. I was shocked to find how that anonymous strangers were quick to condemn me from their perceived pulpits as a scourge for not wearing a mask in an open parking lot a couple of years ago. People who choose leaders who they feel an emotional affinity towards (and a righteousness with) might do better instead to assess them by holding them to a cold, rational account based on some if these very simple things that we all regularly rely on to conduct ourselves in business and in our dealings with other people generally:

(1) What did they say they were going to do (and how) when they assumed power? Also, what were the results of those actions supposed to be for all of us ?

(2) Did they do what they said they were going to ? If not, why not ? If they did additional things they didnt talk about, do their explanations for them jibe sensibly with their stated overall policy stance ?

(3) If the results of their actions turned out not to be what they said they would be, have they explained why adequately, and have they course-corrected sensibly ?

and finally, the big one:

(4) Do they put the consensus will of the people above their own desires when the time comes for a reckoning or a course-correction ? Do they instead lie, dissemble, distract, or use force in place of persuasion to continue along the unpopular direction ?

These things, which obviously are simple checks on whether their leadership is headed where its was supposed to, and if it is proceeding via that steps that were laid-out to get there, are all that matters. Results are what we need – period. The gender, race, charm, and charisma of a leader are far secondary to the place he/she takes you. An inspirational leader can galvanize a body of people into determined positive action. But what makes an inspirational leader (for-real, in the longer term) is not his/her superficial style or personality. It is his honesty, integrity, determination, clarity, and capability to execute. Anyone who excels at those things, and who aligns them with advancing the interests of the people he leads, will be respected and appreciated (by the sensible), even if he’s not engaging on talk shows, decent at playing the saxophone, or cool enough to get away with singing Al Green songs without being massively ridiculed.

Charisma and hubris can actually be red flags with leaders when they come with unquestioning self-righteousness. Many with those charateristics did massively-horrible things in history. Its a shame that, when choosing their leaders, people dont have a better appreciation for ones (any they might be able to find) with humility and a steadfast fidelity to their own integrity, as well as to basing their courses of action upon the time-tested results that indicate those that will most-likely work and those which most-likely will not.

In the realm of science I like the example of Einstein for these qualities: He began working on his theory of General Relativity after he had already become widely respected and renown for his philosophical and humanitarian views as well as his acheivements in physics. So he had sufficient popularity to persuade people to support his views by means other than clean, cold, rationality if wanted to use that influence. But he had no interest in it – he just wanted to discover more about the true nature of things.

He was advanced in age when he began working on his new theory at Princeton. He had to learn a then-new area of mathematics (Riemannian Geometry) with which to express it and subsequently work-through it. It took him nearly a decade to complete the work, and it was such a radical departure from the Newtonian paradigm that it stirred controversy, even among the scientific community which is supposed to be rationality-based and ever-open to new theories and models of physical reality. So a group of around 100 of them penned a rather-political letter stating their ‘opposition’ to his theory, even after a famous experiment had verfied that it worked flawlessly. But Einstein never became political, defensive, or even emotional about the letter. Ever-driven by his curiosity to probe the deeper truths, he remained a humbled by truth, something he knew none of us can ever claim to ‘know’ with finality and completeness. Instead he simply said: “If they object to the explanation that my new theory provides, all they need to do is to present the results of a single experiment showing that it is flawed.” Nothing mattered to him except the factual evidence, from the results of real-world tests, which indicated the way forward that was most-correct.

Obviously that was because that is the way most-likely to produce the most reliable future results. But the way people approach politics is so-often ridiculous. They allow themselves to be provoked-into and driven-by the strongest and most rationality-destroying emotions like fear, anger, envy, resntment, and even hatred. And to hold certain people and groups of people in disdain or contempt based on feelings of perceived ‘inequality’. But the best way forward is always to look for what will be the most reliable, prudent, just, and sensible one, and to let-go of whatever happened in the past – it can never be changed.

However, when others seek to censor you, deplatform you, de-bank you, slander you, incarcerate you, unemploy you, villify you, or otherwise nullify you simply because you are willing to openly outline and state the case for your ideas, you should know that is confirmation that your ideas are most-likely more rationally-sound than theirs (else they would be willing to debate them with you publicly on the basis of their merits rather than try to remove your voice from the public square). And this is where fighting – justly, rationally, and peaceably, yet steadfastly becomes absolutely neccessary. Because then you know that they dont merely irrationally beleive that they and their ‘ideas’ are better than you and yours – they beleive that they must prevail regardless. They view you at-best as an obstacle and at-worst an enemy who, in either case, is to be overpowered and neutered from having any say or further influence. In short, you then know that they are not out to debate you nor to compete with you, but rather to remove your rights and conquer you. And if you love yourself you cannot allow that to happen.

If you are humble and respect provable truth over dogma, then you are the one who is a more trustworthy agent of productive change than those who dont for a simple and obvious reason: Anyone who truly holds those values will never regard their ideals and agendas, however cherised, as a justification to actively hurt or repress others, nor to continue to pursue courses of action that obviously are categorically-harmful. Whenever an emotionally-based revolutionary spirit has overtaken prudence and respect for everyone’s rights as well as for what actually works, really big and really bad things have happened. It is incumbent on those of us with that respect who are being repressed to stand up against the repression now. Else the ongoing overtaking is going to complete itself in the not-very-distant future. In case you are well-aware of everything I’ve written, and are still standing-by and waiting, I have to repeat what Neil Oliver saidin his closing here: “What are you (really) waiting for ?”

“There is little as dangerous as sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. – Thomas Sowell