Being An Anti-Radical
Recent political events and rhetoric are so out of line from how I think people should behave I believe I should respond. Part of my response is a declarative rejection of the way many leaders and, more importantly, the public have lowered their ethical standards. I think it is helpful to write up my humble thoughts and suggestions: Being An Anti-Radical.
1. Nothing shatters political radicals like loving our neighbors - as God said that we should.
2. Ask the people we agree with hard questions. It is easy to find disagreements with those we oppose.
2b. When someone says they are telling the truth while claiming that everyone else lies – they are probably lying.
2c. Doubt elaborate claims. It makes an exciting story but lacks confirmable information. Our mind wants to believe elaborate lies over simple truth.
3. Politicians should be held accountable for lying and slander, just like ordinary citizens.
4. Do not believe politicians who claim to be victims. Your time is better spent listening to a neighbor who might be a victim.
5. Never trust anyone who derives joy from the suffering and misfortune of others.
5b. Beware of those who are driven by emotion but who lack empathy for others.
6. It is unlikely that you will never find fulfillment through a group identity, but you will find it when you engage in charity or help a child learn.
7. Never allow discontentment to be disabling. That is how lies take hold.
8. Stop feigning surprise at contradictions and flaws. We all have them and must learn to be better.
9. Do not use the flaws of others as justification for your flaws.
10. Spend time alone--- thinking for yourself.
11. Politicians have quirks and problems, but some are pretty decent people. It is best to neither love nor hate them.
12. Read more and watch TV and social media less.
13. Hold the media to high standards. If they are dishonest or distract you – find another news source.
14. Radicalism feeds on a belief that people are different. Then these differences are assumed to be great threats. This is a lie - your neighbor is not your enemy.
14b. These arguments often devolve into a justification for committing violence.
15. Agreeing with someone is very different from trusting them.
16. We are not as smart as we think, and others are not as dumb.
17. Where people grew up, went to school, and look is a predictive indicator of nothing.
18. Plato, Hegel, and Marx believed in a great man / leader who would fix everyone’s problems. This never happens. Humans are not that great and leaders with great power are rarely good.
Quotes:
If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted. ~ Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
The discredited rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia sends his wife to seek the great man’s mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter of the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great deed. ~ Tolstoy, War and Peace
News:
The moment graduate students decide to become archeologists:
Thank you for joining me. In the coming weeks, I plan to do a multipart series on issues related to China. It will look at the domestic economy in China, their relations within the region, and a comparative look at U.S. approaches between this administration and the previous. ~ Kevin