Mental bins
I think I lamented here before about my wish to have spiritual faith so I wouldn't have to worry so much about things. Whatever part of my brain it is that causes me to believe in things for no reason seems to be malfunctioning, alas, so I'm out of luck in that department. There's another mental crutch in the vein of reducing mental anguish I'm kind of envious of, too.
I came across this link on reddit and I just kind of gave up. "Well that's really horrible" I thought to myself, but I couldn't bring myself to read it. I don't really want to inform myself of it or gain any insight in vain. I just kind of wish I had ready-made mental bins I could conveniently drop these stories into. The "religion is destructive" bin (or the slightly more bigoted-or is it nuanced?-"Islam is destructive" bin) or the "politicians are corrupt" bin, just some way I could neatly categorize this story so I can purge my mind of it and not have to wrestle over the facts of it anymore.
It's a common complaint of US Libertarians that they never actually consider problems, but rather just rapid-fire ready-made solutions for them. If they were a level in the Hume hierarchy (see top of page 7: yes, I just tied my research into this because it's ALL I EVER DO), the political workings of the stereotypical US Libertarian mind would be HW-Hume: no computation, just straight-up pattern matching. Oh the problem is something about an oligopoly: the solution must be less government interference in the free market. And I'm aware real-life US Libertarians don't quite live up to the stereotype, but it's a lot of fun to pretend they are since they're so easy to make fun of :P
Anyway it seems everyone just sort of give up at some point. Their worldview and life experienced has equipped with them with a good and comfortable set of bins such that any new idea doesn't need to be considered anymore: it only needs to be categorized and forgotten. Truth be told it's almost certainly the only way to get through life and I'm not so naïve I don't already have a lot of bins that I'm blind to. Indeed constructing bins is a very necessary part of any education, I would argue. My Russian professor said a similar thing, once, about the purpose of the introductory Russian course I took when I was in undergrad. To paraphrase, the purpose of Russian 201, which extends to any university course, isn't to teach you Russian, but to give you basket. If you go out on your own and try to teach yourself about the Russian language or the Russian culture, you'll be initially disoriented, finding a wide collection of disparate things without a clear idea of how they fit together. What Russian 201 gives you is a basket, so that when you go off to learn things on your own, you have a place to put them.
To tie back in with the beginning of the rant, I sort of wish I had mental bins for political issues. It seems the world for me would become a lot simpler that way. Part of the problem is that I've been so strongly opposed to the notion of political affiliation, so strongly opposed to party politics (I sometimes remark that the political party is the most anti-democratic institution in Canada today, which I do believe) that it itself has become a sort of bin. Whenever there's a political problem (most evident in Canadian Parliament being prorogued) I, like the US Libertarian, immediately bin it and say "the problem is the existence of political parties". Well now I'm just ranting.
Ah! Initially I thought I had no conclusion. I do! As evidenced by my unwillingness to read the story on the Filipino executions, I'm too mentally exhausted to think about things that can't be readily binned, or put much mental effort into much besides research. As a consequence, I haven't put the effort into giving this entry a coherent narrative and so the only conclusion I can give is that I'm too tired to come up with a proper conclusion.
I came across this link on reddit and I just kind of gave up. "Well that's really horrible" I thought to myself, but I couldn't bring myself to read it. I don't really want to inform myself of it or gain any insight in vain. I just kind of wish I had ready-made mental bins I could conveniently drop these stories into. The "religion is destructive" bin (or the slightly more bigoted-or is it nuanced?-"Islam is destructive" bin) or the "politicians are corrupt" bin, just some way I could neatly categorize this story so I can purge my mind of it and not have to wrestle over the facts of it anymore.
It's a common complaint of US Libertarians that they never actually consider problems, but rather just rapid-fire ready-made solutions for them. If they were a level in the Hume hierarchy (see top of page 7: yes, I just tied my research into this because it's ALL I EVER DO), the political workings of the stereotypical US Libertarian mind would be HW-Hume: no computation, just straight-up pattern matching. Oh the problem is something about an oligopoly: the solution must be less government interference in the free market. And I'm aware real-life US Libertarians don't quite live up to the stereotype, but it's a lot of fun to pretend they are since they're so easy to make fun of :P
Anyway it seems everyone just sort of give up at some point. Their worldview and life experienced has equipped with them with a good and comfortable set of bins such that any new idea doesn't need to be considered anymore: it only needs to be categorized and forgotten. Truth be told it's almost certainly the only way to get through life and I'm not so naïve I don't already have a lot of bins that I'm blind to. Indeed constructing bins is a very necessary part of any education, I would argue. My Russian professor said a similar thing, once, about the purpose of the introductory Russian course I took when I was in undergrad. To paraphrase, the purpose of Russian 201, which extends to any university course, isn't to teach you Russian, but to give you basket. If you go out on your own and try to teach yourself about the Russian language or the Russian culture, you'll be initially disoriented, finding a wide collection of disparate things without a clear idea of how they fit together. What Russian 201 gives you is a basket, so that when you go off to learn things on your own, you have a place to put them.
To tie back in with the beginning of the rant, I sort of wish I had mental bins for political issues. It seems the world for me would become a lot simpler that way. Part of the problem is that I've been so strongly opposed to the notion of political affiliation, so strongly opposed to party politics (I sometimes remark that the political party is the most anti-democratic institution in Canada today, which I do believe) that it itself has become a sort of bin. Whenever there's a political problem (most evident in Canadian Parliament being prorogued) I, like the US Libertarian, immediately bin it and say "the problem is the existence of political parties". Well now I'm just ranting.
Ah! Initially I thought I had no conclusion. I do! As evidenced by my unwillingness to read the story on the Filipino executions, I'm too mentally exhausted to think about things that can't be readily binned, or put much mental effort into much besides research. As a consequence, I haven't put the effort into giving this entry a coherent narrative and so the only conclusion I can give is that I'm too tired to come up with a proper conclusion.