Thinking in Generalities

The unfortunate thing about mass education (indoctrination), is that it makes us “think” in generalities rather than investigating the specifics -- that may defy the generality (abstraction). Thus we think that simply labeling something, is understanding it, and think that if we classify someone a “Republican” or “Democrat,” “liberal” or “conservative,” “black” or white,” “rich” or “poor,” we presume we know all there is to know about that person -- when we in fact, know absolutely nothing! -- except our generality.

That is the spectacular failure of mass education -- and why that failure has to become more spectacular in the future -- most notably, at its highest end of achievement, when one hopes to be able to process higher volumes of information expediently in this manner. The most spectacular failing, is in the understanding of people -- as unique individuals, who are not merely living up to their stereotypes, and ideas of conformity to the political correctness they must embrace to earn the highest grades and acclamations -- “as they ought to be.”

One notices this “enforced” conformity in the public communications of forums and publications -- where the intent is no longer to gather to share information but to very deliberately mold every other person’s thinking, and so those most aware of these manipulations and deceptions, feel no obligation to subject themselves to such brainwashing -- since they are no longer required to since graduation from their respective institutions of highest learning.

There will always be those of course, who think “conformity” is the end -all and be-all of society -- because that is the only thing they learned in their schools, along with all the meaningless clichés to obscure that fact. The more isolated a community is, the more effective such indoctrinations can be -- even when that isolation is self-imposed, as it often and mostly is, in a world of virtual communications and information -- which means that people have to deliberately learn to resist and reject information that does not conform to what they already know.

That is the learning culture in Hawaii -- of rejecting all ideas that do not confirm what they already believe -- summarily rejecting all information that is new, which of course, defeats the whole purpose of seeking information. Again, such close- and narrow-mindedness is most advanced at the highest levels and institutions of such “learning” -- that in the new environment of virtual information, places them at a distinct disadvantage, which few will be able to overcome. It is like having an advanced disease -- rather than just an infection that the body is valiantly resisting.

So one notices in this new world environment that those having the most difficult time adjusting, adapting and adopting new behaviors, are those who have been the most successful in the proficiency of the old propaganda techniques, and why they so spectacularly or abjectly fail, in these new modes and paradigm. The peculiarity of that attainment was the rise of the “authoritarian personalities” who could effectively exploit mass media in that way -- but are totally powerless in an age in which the appeal must be to the intelligence of the other, rather than their ignorance, gullibility and susceptibility. They have no strategies and skills for dealing with such an environment. So of course, they don’t want the world to change -- leaving them hopelessly behind and irrelevant, when formerly, they were society’s self-proclaimed Most Important People.