(no subject)

[avevale_intelligencer]

H P Lovecraft once wrote "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

I was reminded of that quote when re-reading West Wing scripts the other night. I got to the flashback where Sam Seaborn, working as a lawyer at the time, is helping to facilitate the purchase by an oil company of some obsolete second-hand tankers, his job being to make sure that whatever happens to them the company is protected from any financial consequences. Halfway through he gets an attack of conscience, and outrages his bosses and the clients by suggesting that instead they spend more money and buy newer, safer tankers. He points out that these ships are old, their navigational systems are rubbish, and they will hit things and catastrophic oil spills will result. The clients' response:

"We've got PR firms to deal with PR problems."

Now, this is a fictional character saying this, true, but isn't it a perfect example of what Lovecraft was saying? An oil spill is nothing more than a PR problem to these people. They are buying the right not to care. They are buying the freedom not to correlate all the contents of their minds. I am morally certain that if an oil company ever knowingly bought a substandard tanker because it was cheap, this is how they thought.

I don't believe that people who disagree with me are stupider than I am, or that they're "evil" and I'm "good"; yet I still think I'm right, and so they must therefore by inexorable logic be wrong, and it worries me. Buzzphrases like "cognitive dissonance" convey no meaning, but merely sound impressive. "The inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents" is a readily observable fact of life--I've got it, you've got it, we've all got it. I can see, in those terms, how someone neither stupid nor evil could countenance the purchase of a rusted old tub with busted radar, fill it with millions of gallons of oil and put it on the ocean, and simply not think about the consequences. It wouldn't even seem to be a problem to him, because it would make it easier for him to do his business, serve his shareholders, keep his bonuses coming. He'd probably call it "focus."

And so I wonder about the people who trade and speculate in things that don't exist, pushing up the prices of real things that ordinary people need, and far too often overreaching themselves and having to be bailed out by (ultimately) those same ordinary people. I wonder about the people (some of them women) who support and plan to vote for a candidate for Vice-President who wants to abolish the freedom of all women. I wonder about the people who have lived through the last eight years in America, and support and plan to vote for a candidate for President who has supported the actions of the current incumbent almost without exception, and intends to continue his policies. Is it simply that they haven't--that they don't--that they can't put the pieces together?

And, of course, being me, I wonder about myself. What is there in my mind that I have failed to correlate? What is the missing piece that could help me understand why they are right and I am wrong? What is it that I'm not seeing that makes the war in Iraq a just war, that makes women's bodies rightfully the possessions of men, that makes it morally okay to buy and sell nonexistent things for real money, and when you get caught out cheating entitles you to carry on doing the same thing?

I don't know. Obviously. Whether that's a merciful thing or not, I'm not sure.

Comments

Kill the bugs...

[earth-wizard.livejournal.com]

I like Dick Morris's observation:

"Cleaning up government, and policing private business, can be a bit like trying to eradicate cockroaches: every year or two a new generation appears, immune to last year's preventive measures. It's up to us to come up with new, improved ways to kill the bugs we can catch - and keep the rest on the run."

Long live the bug killers! Bug killers of the world unite! May the great exterminator be merciful and quick... lol :)

But seriously, H.P. is right, if we could correlate all the mind's contents we'd be like James Joyces eternal insomniac running the river of Finnegan's Wake endlessly, looping and looping, in a totalized vision, wherein, as one astute critic suggests, the "erasure of memory" finds us in that "totalizing machinery of the hegemonic system that brings exploitation, terror, and misery to society."

In the end all we can do is continue working toward emergent eutopian strategies of hope, seeking a "seat at the table of power" while continuing to carry on mass protests and grass-roots organizing. But let us beware of what Saul Alinsky once called the " utopia of status and security" which "has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal". Many of us should go back and re-read his "Rules for Radicals" a little closer....

Re: Kill the bugs...

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

But seriously, H.P. is right, if we could correlate all the mind's contents we'd be like James Joyces eternal insomniac running the river of Finnegan's Wake endlessly, looping and looping, in a totalized vision, wherein, as one astute critic suggests, the "erasure of memory" finds us in that "totalizing machinery of the hegemonic system that brings exploitation, terror, and misery to society."

Or God. "A mind that encompasses the entire universe and all that is in it" matches about every description I've read of the mind of God, and the ability to correlate it is implied as well.

Not that that's much help to us.

[howeird]

Taking a hard right turn at the intersection, oil companies don't buy used tankers, they rent them. This completely removes their liability, and makes PR a breeze.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Some people cannot put the pieces together because they don't have the pieces handy. Some have the pieces but ignore the truth or relevance of some of them. It happens personally; it happens fiscally; it happens politically.

And yes, it is frustrating to watch.