CampfireDan wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:21 am
Fred the Cat wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 2:45 pm
When I was working as a pharmacist, I had
opinions I felt unheard or even unwanted. The internet has opened a platform for all to voice their opinions but societal courtesies have not kept pace with technology. In golf there is an observed etiquette that parallels the rules. Society, currently, has no such equivalent.
In our political system founders conceived checks and balances. I’ve often wondered if they missed one – an ethical branch that guides rather than rules. Just my opinion.
Opinions are great, but the problem is where people get emotional. I watched a few youtube videos earlier by Steven Crowder called "<topic> Change my mind" which were conversations on controversial topics and many people who had a conversation with him got quite heated. Then it kind of turned into an argument or debate.
For example, I don't think we need pride month anymore because it is just exploited by businesses for money and by loud fools and fakers. The people who argue always say "straight people have all year" which isn't true anymore. The reason why they all say that is because there are so many old and uneducated people who don't understand and turn to hate people for it.
I think this is an example of a subjective issue – one’s position can be driven entirely by opinion/beliefs. In this case I suppose you bolster your argument for or against using polling data on public opinion surrounding the awareness month?
There will always be subjective issues we won’t agree on. My concern is the frequency of discord on things that have a basis in objective reality, yet our knowledge/experience is not the framework on which policy and decisions are made.
If you set a burner on your electric oven to high, wait for it to glow orange, and put your hand on it you’ll be burned. The tissues in your hand are damaged by high temperatures. Your political views, religious beliefs, profession, favorite sports-ball team, preferred car brand, artistic taste, musical preferences, sexual orientation, favorite color, GPA, etc. will have zero effect on this fact. Damage from high temperatures is an inextricable aspect of our biology. Most of us tend to make decisions about whether we should touch hot stoves based on this reality, not how we “feel” about it or what we want to happen when do touch hot stoves. I am hesitant to make assumptions on anything these days, but I feel confident we’d all agree that our physiology is reason enough to maintain a “no touch” policy for hot stoves.
Should we think of viruses, as a threat to our health and safety, any differently than hot ovens? Viruses don’t care about political persuasion or religious beliefs any more hot surfaces do. Viruses simply go about the process of reproduction using any host they can access. So why is there such a dependency between our response to a global pandemic and how we deal with hot surfaces?
I hypothesize that humans – all of us - are susceptible to, lets call them, “emotional short circuits” preventing the direct path to a rational solution. I feel like politicians and advertisers have become extremely adept constructing “emotional short circuits” and once they are in place, they are very difficult to remove. There is no political motive to suggest that hot stoves are not dangerous, so it’s easy to find consensus.
Another thing to consider is the human brain’s predisposition for deferring to consistency. The most effective propaganda is not the sudden accusation but the subtle messages over time. In Ukraine today there are people calling back to their families in Russia, explaining what is happening. There are parents who refuse to believe their own children. The state media has been feeding them a narrative for decades and the words of their own children, experiencing the effects of the war first hand, won’t sway them. This shows you how powerful “emotional short circuits” can be, and the hill we have to climb if we ever want to become a society that bases its problem-solving methodology and policy decisions on objective reality.