Mark Connely

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Mark Connely

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“Reason and logic are a force for unity. People can rally around the objective, absolute Truth. All of these are undermined by the Dunning-Kruger effect, by the rise of irrationalism. Today, the world is full of subjectivists and relativists who actively sneer at the Truth and proclaim that everyone has their own truth. When you start believing your own truth, your own propaganda, your own bullshit, you become a narcissist. You think you are a god, and that no one is allowed to contradict you. After all, who are they to challenge your truth?”
― Joe Dixon, Dumbocalypse Now: The First Dunning-Kruger President

tags: all-truths, anti-intellectualism, dunning-kruger, narcissism, relative, relativism, subjectivism, truth

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“The great rationalist Descartes said, 鈥淚 think, therefore I am.鈥� The religious mystic the Buddha said, 鈥淚 think, therefore I am not.鈥� Why is the Buddha much more popular than Descartes? Because the average person barely thinks at all.”
― Thomas Stark, The Sheldrake Shift: A Critical Evaluation of Morphic Resonance

tags: anti-intellectualism, buddhism, descartes, i-think, meditation, mindfulness, mindlessness, philosophy, rationalism, therefore-i-am

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“Necessary features of the human mind impose structure upon our experiences. Language acts as a gatekeeper for the mind. We learn and embark on personal transformation by formulating, revising, and refining our conception of the world each time that we encounter new facts, experiences, ideas, and viewpoints. To understand the world a person must employ reason and organize their episodic personal experiences into a system of narrative thought. The language that we employ to internalize our personal experiences constructs our mental system, and our mental thoughts in turn regulate us. We become of a personification of our language, as expressed in narrative stories of the self.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“To some people independent though is heresy and critical thought blasphemy”
― rassool jibraeel snyman

tags: critical-pedagogy, critical-philosophy, independence, independent-thinkers, independent-thinking, independent-thought, independent-zen, individuality, lateral-thinking

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“The world of conspiracy theories is one where stupid people dismiss the expertise of highly qualified people, and attribute to these experts a wicked desire to lie to and gull the masses. In other words, they portray experts as sinister enemies of the people. Conspiracy theories reflect the increasingly prevalent notion that the average, uneducated person is always right 鈥� can always see the real truth of a situation 鈥� while the educated experts are always wrong because they are deliberately lying to the people to further a conspiracy by the elite against the people. It is increasingly being perceived as a 鈥渟in鈥�, a crime, to be smart, to be an expert. Average people do not like smart people, do not trust them, and are happy to regard them as nefarious conspirators. They are constructing a fantasy world where the idiot is always right and honest, and anyone who opposes the idiot always wrong and dishonest. A global Confederacy of Dunces is being established, whose cretinous values are transmitted by bizarre memes that crisscross the internet at a dizzying speed, and which are always accepted uncritically as the finest nuggets of truth. Woe betide anyone who challenges the Confederacy. They will be immediately trolled.”
― Joe Dixon, Dumbocalypse Now: The First Dunning-Kruger President