dangers of optimism

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Side note before I write this.... I'm not a pessimist, to me labels such as optimist and pessimist aren't worth whiping my ass with. I don't TRY to view anything in a positive or negative light, rather, I believe in weighing the facts. This is called realism.

The engagement in, attention to and willingness to do something, do anything, about the current state of world affairs must be applauded for good intentions. Ethical and intelligent activism can only be encouraged. Good intentions are, however, famously associated with roads leading to hell.

This encouraging slap on the back is based on the idea that unless something is done, then nothing is done, and on the Don Quixote behavior of tilting at windmills, meaning that the cause is probably hopeless, but that we must fight the good fight, hoping for the slim chance that we just might succeed simply because miracles happen, novelty exists, and complex systems are unpredictable. We also fight the good fight to prove that there is still some vestige of ethical spine and rudimentary intelligence left somewhere in the human species. We want to be able to look into the mirror and not see an unethical beast.

That said, cheery optimism is something more than merely a matter of style. It is, in fact, a counterproductive stance that contributes to the net decline and headlong rush of the human species toward its own annihilation. Suicide by idiocy.

The first trouble with optimism is that it leads to complacency. The usual apathy associated with the marginal IQ of the average human individual, who may even be, perhaps, dimly aware that something is in need of fixing, and combined with the delusion that hopes are high, leads him to the expectation that someone else will get the job done.

Optimism removes the sense of urgency.

The sense of urgency is mandatory because the situation is dire.

The US is a collapsing culture. In fact it so far gone as to be well past the point of recovery. The democracy is all but dismantled; the population is in a state of ethical torpor; civil rights are dismantled. Intellectual capacity has achieved an all time low: 53% are creationists, 44% believe that Jesus will return in the next fifty years, 12% believe that life evolved through a natural process, 70% believe in the devil, 31% believe that evolution was guided by God. Stem cell research has been shelved; a no-brainer like gay marriage is an actual issue; anti-abortion sentiment is taking over in a world where other people's children die at the rate of one every ten seconds; agriculture is threatened; education is all but extinct; health care is the most expensive in the world and the quality of care is somewhere below 30th among industrialized nations; drug and insurance cartels own most legislatures; the high court is in fascist hands; retirement and elderly care are about to fall through the floor; elections are anti-democratic and being hijacked by sophisticated rigging methods; and the economy has all but collapsed with trade deficits, national debt, unfunded mandates, predatory economics and war, war, war.

The world at large is in worse shape: China and India are about to spend the remaining food, energy and water resources of the world into extinction; the collapse of global ecosystems are past the point of no return; population increase has been out of control for over a hundred years; global pandemics with enormous death tolls are certain. Exhaustion of water, food and energy resources will result in massive world-wide human casualties; global economies are always teetering on the edge of catastrophic implosion based as they are on pyramid schemes such as free market fundamentalism in combination with declining resources; world wide starvation is imminent; failed states are appearing on a more frequent basis; genocide is becoming fashionable; fundamentalists of all stripes are about to perpetrate wars of great magnitude until human cultures are inoperative and the species itself faces extinction. France will be a Muslim country in twenty-five years; the US will be a third world theocracy in less than another generation; human stupidity remains entrenched, aided and abetted by the permission and tolerance of what used to be liberal Western democracy.

That, and optimism.

As for the US economy, it has been broken since Teddy Roosevelt first institutionalized the program of American Imperialism. Contrary to the opinion that the military-industrial complex is a recent phenomenon, it has been the driving force of the American economy since Eli Whitney instituted the industrial revolution during the Civil War with the mass manufacturing of small arms, as opposed to the hand-made musket. The war economy saved the American economy from its precipitous decline in WWII. Since it was the only economy left standing, it dominated the emerging world economy for over fifty years. Then America became economically spoiled, made crappy products and eventually lost market share. This failure of vision has resulted in the extinction of products like the Ford Taurus a couple of weeks ago. Fascism is nothing new. It has been going on since the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, through Rome, the Roman theocracies, the Third Reich, Italian Fascism, Russian and Chinese Communism, right up to and including the emerging American fascist and theocratic takeover of the remnants of the American pseudo-democracy.

To quote the recent reportage on military spending alone:

"…in Afghanistan, where the mission now costs about $370 million a week"

"…military operations at home and abroad since 2001, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will top half a trillion dollars, "

"Bush administration incompetence, not corporate greed, is the chief culprit."

The final misconception is merely a propagandistic whitewash of American fascism. Bush incompetence is really the Bush effort on behalf of corporate greed, using war as a medium of exchange. Corporate greed, in conjunction with military might, is the definition of fascism.

The trillions mentioned above, lost to American military adventurism on behalf of corporate greed, come directly out of the pockets of the American middle class and at the cost of quality of life, retirement, health care, and other social safety nets for entire generations of American citizens. That is the real cost of the war.

In fact, the war in Iraq is a war of American fascism against the American people. It is a thinly disguised transfer of wealth from the American middle class into the vaults of corporate greed and military power. These corporations no longer have any ties or allegiance to American culture, politics or economics. They actually never did. In fact, foreign ownership of American corporations will become the norm.

Once the middle class has been economically bled to death, the vestiges of democracy will be shelved and America will cease to play any significant role in the further global decline of the species. After its defeat by Persian money, Spartan fascism, and Macedonian militarism, Athens never again had a significant role in world affairs. But the American electorate is not one that takes note of historical precedence.

Moreover, the American population, in a fit of fundamentalist idiocy, is, in fact, simply too stupid to realize that it is actively cooperating in its own annihilation. It is too stupid to retain its own democracy and too stupid to function as a democracy.

If it walks stupid, acts stupid and talks stupid, it is stupid.

As for its current involvement in Iraq, the horse is not only out of the barn, but is already in the next county. It no longer matters what we do in Iraq. The neo-con conspiracy for the fleecing of America and the destruction of democracy is a fait accompli. Iraq as a self-determined geopolitical entity was finished the moment Bush the Second invaded. The only difference between staying and leaving is that by staying we spend vastly more American wealth and kill many more American soldiers. Iraqi factions will engage in mutual annihilation and genocide no matter what America now does or does not do. Religious fundamentalism and native human stupidity will guarantee the outcome that is the direct result of the initial American destruction of the fragile state of Iraqi cultural, religious, political and economic homeostasis.

It simply doesn't matter whether America stays in Iraq or not, except to those who are maimed or killed in the effort, and the generations who will live lives of quiet desperation and increased impoverishment as a result. And as an issue relative to the actual global threats to the human species, it is trivial.

As to the implications of the changes in the US military, these horrors are reflected in the fact that we now operate with a paid mercenary army, recruited from a desperate underclass or from culturally deluded individuals or from bribed foreign nationals. This removes the interests of the military from the interests of the citizens, who no longer voluntarily participate in defending a system they are not likely to participate in or derive any benefits from. As it did for Rome, the professional, mercenary military will one day assert its own agenda.

Back to optimism.

In light of the above state of world affairs, optimism can only be one of three things; it is either evil, stupid or insane, much like the policies of the current American leadership.

It is evil when it becomes a program for deluding the weak-minded and the flat-out stupid into behaving or acting in ways that are counterproductive, even when those behaviors are supposedly engineered for their own good. It is every bit as cynical as the manipulation of weak intellects by the fundamentalist/neo-con agenda.

Insanity can be set aside as not impossible, but as unlikely. Although insanity remains as the last resort of malicious rascals.

That optimism is stupid is glaringly obvious from the state of the world.

Not only does optimism engender complacency, but it is counter-productive in terms of the loss of focus of human energy and resources into numerous and fragmented do-good efforts, while it permits the truly egregious human behaviors (population explosion, religious fundamentalism, free market economics, nationalistic imperialism, anti-democratic fascism) to proceed unmolested by intellectual or ethical activism.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. The only other thing necessary for the triumph of evil is human stupidity.

Optimism kills urgency by understating the case. It is the delusional course taken by ineffective people who want to soothe a burning conscience with minimum effort. It is based on a false encouraging assessment of the state of affairs in the face of overwhelming contrary facts. That is either delusional or intellectually lazy; which is to say insane or stupid.

Worse, optimism obliterates effective action, because you cannot undertake the cure until you recognize the disease. Optimism seriously whitewashes the actual state of affairs and disguises the diseases of the body politic.

Just like alcoholism, global diseases of the human culture cannot be addressed until the patient hits bottom and is willing to not only recognize the disease, but to take drastic measures to cure it.

The conundrum is this:

It is disingenuous to manipulate the weak minds of the people in an attempt to motivate them with false hopes.

On the other hand, accidents do happen, miracles do occur, and novelty does exist. Even if an unpredictable happy accident should save humanity from itself, human stupidity will attribute it to one or more of their asinine gods. Ironically, on the contrary, they are not likely to attribute their own pain and suffering and possible extermination to the same gods. Also, there is no guarantee that luck or accident works to the benefit of humanity. It is just as likely to work against the species as for it, and cannot be counted on either in an optimistic sense or as a likely probability.

If enough people were to be motivated by a realistic assessment of the dire nature of human affairs, it is possible human beings could engineer their own salvation.

In which case, there would be a realistic justification for optimism.

But the odds of a happy accident saving the species are so remote that by any realistic assessment the species is doomed.

The only action open to intelligent people of good will is to persist in their efforts in case just such a happy accident does indeed come along.

Part of that persistence may include deluding the weak-minded into believing that there is some level of optimistic hope, in order to motivate them into taking some form of action.

The fly in this ointment is that such manipulation is more than just a harmless ethical choice about whether or not to delude the weak minded with mindless optimism even if it is for their own benefit. Such manipulation actually causes harm.

As for someone who actually chooses to believe in irrational optimism, it can only be associated with that kind of blind faith practiced by believers in monotheistic religious fantasies. It is just the sort of unrealistic expectations that result from choosing to blatantly disregard the actual facts. It further suggests that the sole motivation for such optimism is for the purposes of relieving stress and facing intolerable conditions.

The idea that intelligence must cater to stupidity in order to make contact and arouse sympathy from intellectually lazy, ethically challenged, and economically spoiled middle-of-the-road morons, is in fact counter-productive in the long run. In the long run it only results in business as usual. There is no reason to hope that catering to the stupid will suddenly make them intelligent. Otherwise, the only purpose of such a validation of the fight to be stupid can only be to tell them how to think, in lieu of teaching them to think on their own.

This curtailment of honest criticism is an infringement of the fundamental rights of free speech, open inquiry, honest investigation, and the scientific method. It defies common sense to not ridicule those forms of human stupidity that have led the species to the brink of annihilation.

It does nothing to remedy diseases when the existence of diseases is denied.

To not ridicule idiocy and to not satirize fanaticism does not transform them; it validates them.

Catering to the stupid for purposes of political leverage is analogous to the liberal democracy policy of tolerance for religion and the politically correct attack on freedom of speech. Tolerance for religion is a term that is interchangeably applied to the freedom to practice religion and to freedom from religion. The problem here is that under the banner of tolerance any type of religious fanaticism is considered to be above criticism and not to be touched by satire, art or sarcasm, even when that fanaticism aims at the destruction of the very culture that has mandated tolerance for it. Granting anyone the right to practice religion as they choose, does grant anyone the right to use religion as a weapon against the culture at large, or even against the similar right of other individuals. Monotheistic fundamentalisms are indeed cancers on the body politic. Tolerance of the less virulent forms of Monotheistic nonsense is the Trojan horse in which the fundamentalist agenda gains a foothold on liberal and tolerant societies.

Since it would be contrary to that society's fundamental liberal and tolerant nature, it is imperative that a distinction be drawn between the tolerance for religious practice and proscriptions against dialog, debate and criticism. There must legal restrictions against the incursion of religious nonsense into the public arena including government and education.

Liberal political correctness has developed an excessive curtailment of all manner of speech, satire, criticism, art and discourse, when its subject is one of any number of special interest groups: racial, religious, gender-based, etc. The end result is that any manner of idiotic, dangerous, or otherwise counter-productive special interest group can claim discrimination or harassment and the right to proceed with their agenda, even if that agenda is aimed at destroying the very culture that tolerated it. Often enough, it is true that actual discrimination does exist. However, overzealous reaction on the part of the politically correct has thrown the baby out with the bathwater by suppressing free speech, free inquiry, honest criticism, open dialog and healthy debate. Satire and sarcasm are forms of speech and debate that need to be aired and need to be protected every bit as much as the right to practice religion. The crucial point is that even when speech is intended to be harmful, or is unintentionally incorrect it needs to be debated. If the intellectual and ethical fragility of the subject cannot deal with criticism, then perhaps the criticism is correct. This is directly related to the Catholic Church's historical refusal to look through Galileo's telescope, and to the refusal of Luddites to accept the advancement of technology. Truth or moral standing cannot be established if all manner of speech and debate is curtailed in order to assuage an overly delicate sensibility. In practice, the more untenable a belief is, the more sensitive the believers are.

Religious tolerance began with a well-intentioned mechanism for preventing violence among fanatical believers in wildly contradictory fantasy constructs. As a tool for maintaining civic peace it has been useful. It does not do much, however, to engender true empathy or compassion. It is a legalistic restriction on uncivil behavior. Unfortunately it is used by all manner of religious fanatics to promote their own agendas of hate and intolerance by claiming that any criticism of their particular brand of intolerance is intolerance, and therefore, they should be allowed to pursue, teach and proselytize any sort of hatred, intolerance, bigotry, inhumanity, and stupidity they care to spread. Most often, the more dangerous and stupid forms of religious bigotry and hatred are spread by population takeovers of the more liberal and more humane cultures. Such takeovers are accomplished by cynically manipulating a liberal culture's institutions of tolerance.

Nothing spreads stupidity faster than breeding. This is the main reason why France will be a Muslim country in 25 years, replacing yet another liberal western democracy with a repressive, inhumane and thinly disguised theocracy.

America is already at that point.

The point is, when the welfare of the species is at stake, tolerance for destructive, dangerous and stupid belief systems, at the cost of open criticism and honest dissent, is an act of suicide for the human species. It is morally and culturally mandatory that each and every belief system is open to any and all types of inquiry, criticism, sarcasm, satire, art, dialog and debate. Without forceful and vocal opposition, toleration is taken to be validation, and democracy, free speech and open inquiry are all put at risk. Democracy, free speech, honest debate, satire, art, civil rights and open inquiry all require vigorous defense and repeated confirmation, or we will all end up living in a repressive theocracy with ever more effective and ever more violent thought police governing our thoughts from the most trivial to the most profound.

If this sounds grim it is because the situation is very grim indeed. Unless large numbers of humans suddenly become intelligent, see the light and act decisively, the situation will remain grim, until it gets grimmer and finally ends in the destruction of the human experiment.

Until then, there is no choice. We keep on fighting the good fight and helping those we can. Keep your head down, your powder dry and dig your trenches deep.