Yesterday, the esteemed Dkos diarist Jerome A Paris wrote a seering diary on how the Reality War ™ was a lost cause.
It's no use being "reality-based". It no longer works.
I've been spending the past couple hours struggling with an increasing number of articles that distort reality blatantly, or even include outright lies to make the same points over and over (globalization is inevitable and wages must go down, the French economy is fucked up and needs a dose of Thatcherism, Democrats are terrorist enablers and should not confront Bush in such a partisan way, etc...). I have graphs ready (from unimpeachable sources i.e. business newspapers) that demonstrate the exact opposite of what is stated as obvious truths in these articles. I have the facts on my side, I have widely read tribunes on DailyKos or European Tribune, and I could post (yet another) deconstruction of the propaganda that now passes for journalism, and have a good chance of seeing it be well received.
But today, I'm struggling with hopelessness as I read yet more articles...
Today I respond to his heartfelt frustration with a hearty battle cry and a new plan of attack.
You see, the first problem is Jerome's approach, one I'm sure shared by many of us Reality Warriors, is in our attempts to use the Fact Swarm Blitzkrieg to overwhelm our opposition. We attempt to gain the high ground, position our Fact Battalions on our opponents left flank, time our attack to be in sync with a massive carpet bombing raid of Hardened Depleted Uranium Tipped Facts from the MSM Air Wing of the New York Times or Washington Post, this we coincide with a bombardment of Youtube Vids from Battleship Olbermann parked just off shore firing volkswagen Jetta sized shells of searing and pointed Special Comment Rants.
We plan thoroughly, we marshal our forces with care.
Yet when the smoke clears the Koolaid Kommando's are still in place, holding their ground, visibly unaffected.
I'll admit it's more than a little annoying.
Their Fact Resistance Shield © is quite strong, if not nigh impenetrable, as well it should be - they've spent the entirety of western civilization, if not human existence helping to construct and refurbish it.
Thus rather than attempt to overwhelm the shields capacity from the outside, we must change our plan of attack to focus on de-constructing that rather impressive obstacle from it's very foundations. In order to that we need to strive to truly grasp the nature of this resistance, and after a least of couple decades of consideration - I've come to the conclusion that this shield is actually a part of how the human mind functions on a biochemical level.
You see, our minds are limited in their capacity - at this stage in our development and existence we don't yet have the ability to simultaneously see every single aspect of our reality at the same time.
Let me give you a couple examples.
When I was first studying psychology at Cal State Long Beach they described to us many of the leading theories of personality construction. They described Freud, Rogers and Skinner (who was a disciple of Pavlov) and told us that each of these man had developed their own rules, terms and structure for how the mind works. Each were valuable and had led to many effective treatment techniques for various patients - yet each was mutual exclusive and contradicted the others. To me, this was a conundrum. It's as if Freud argued with his Id, Ego and Superego that our minds were the equivalent of a Diesel engine, while Rogers said it was coal fired and Skinner a gas powered turbine. The only thing they had in common was that each was certain of their own rightness and the wrongness of the others.
But the fact is, our mind and brain are all made of the same basic component parts. Freud, Rogers and Skinner are all simultaneously correct, which is possible only because each is only seeing a portion of the larger issue at a time. The truth, the reality is too large for us to completely grasp - yet (or at least until I finally publish my Unified Personality Theory, it's only been 20 years in the works - I still got time...) Anyway - they (and us) are like the three blind men and the elephant, one thinks it's a rope, the other a stone wall while the last thinks it's a snake.
The Facts are on all of their sides - they all have a piece of the truth, yet their final and complete understanding of the True Reality of Things remains incorrect and incomplete. No matter how high you climb or fly, there's always a horizon beyond which you can not see, and can only imagine.
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