Wednesday 25 June 2014

The pointlessness of pointing-out the obvious

*

These are very, very strange times.

For someone who uses common sense and the experience of their own observations and experience, it is weird (to put in mildly) to be in a position where you are required to argue, persuade, provide 'evidence' for, and mount elaborate arguments to support what anybody can see for themselves.

Modern society - dominated by the mass media - has created a world where anything can be believed except the obvious: the obvious is invisible: necessarily so, else the mass media could not be so vast and could not continue to grow.

*

Clearly, for this to be the situation means that stating the obvious is not going to achieve recognition of the obvious - if it would, there would be no need to state it.

When the obvious has been rendered invisible, then pointing at it just looks crazy!

*

When the world is full of unclad Emperors who are solidly regarded as being sumptuously garbed - then any person standing in the marketplace, pointing and shrieking that everybody around them is naked is going to be the one who looks weird.

*

And this is what we find. When someone states the obvious or points-out the obvious in the public arena (and it doesn't happen very often) - then they are not argued-with, but instead treated as crazy.

If the obvious needs pointing-out - then, obviously, the obvious cannot be seen - so there is no point in pointing it out!

*

6 comments:

Imnobody said...

Great post. I have been aware of that for some years now and it seems to me the weirdest thing of modernity.

This is the end-game of modernity: replacing reality with a virtual world of lies. Living in the Matrix.

The Enlightenment defined the rules of the Matrix and we are only seeing its logical development. Political correctness was the logical evolution of the Enlightenment.

An early example of this is as follows:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and so on and so forth"

Really? All men are equal? Is this self-evident? Is it self-evident that pigs fly?

Of course, it is self-evident that no man is equal to another man.

But if you say that, you are evil. You have to agree with the lies of the Matrix lest you are an awful person.

And this is how common sense disappeared from modern life...

After two centuries of fighting common sense, "all men are equal" implied "the members of a given collective are entitled to do absurd things even if it is against logic"

JP said...

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king, but a reviled outcast!

Boethius said...

Bruce,in your opinion,is natural law obvious?

Bruce Charlton said...

@B "is natural law obvious?" - Yes, I think so - although I am not sure what you personally and exactly mean by natural law - I may be misunderstanding. I believe that there is a morality built-into every one of us (by God) if that is what you mean - although this is incomplete; and also mixed with survival/ reproduction-type instincts.

Wizard Prang said...

Imnobody's "all men are created equal" example is a great opportunity to engage in the conversation.

The sad fact is that most folks misunderstand what is actually being said - or deliberately bend its meaning into something that they desperately *want* to believe.

In this case I would repeat the phrase, emphasizing the word *created*. We are all *created* with equal rights and potential. Sadly, most will squander or waste the opportunity for greatness, or it will be denied them through circumstance.

Bruce Charlton said...

@WP - I don't believe that Men are equal (i.e. the same) in any significant way at all! Never have been and certainly never will be.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=equality