Terminator Intellectuals and the Drowned.

I spend much of my public time complaining about the state of our pubic intellectuals, of how low and dirty the bastards are, of how shamelessly they lie about the most obvious realities, and how so many people rely on the "expert" authority they assume. The majority of our public intellectuals today seem to be made by a cookie-cutter in Hell who bakes these creatures half-way and sends them straight to the media, the universities, to our legislatures. How else can we find ourselves stuck with such filthy scum people as Ward Churchill? How can a man stand up in pubic and lie and lie and lie-- and have people believe him? Easy, as it turns out. OK, I'll take a look.

Below is an abbreviated book review from the National Post newspaper in Canada, preceded by some snippets from Amazon about why, among others, our intelligentsia lie and are such scum-bags. Bad enough that our public intellectuals are so often scum-bags, but worse is that so many normal citizens across the world simply believe them to be more or less right anyway, even when they are so obviously scummy. I read the reviews, and this one has me interested in looking at the book itself .

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.

An amazon blurb:
"Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Why the parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up? Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or do we really believe the stories we tell?
Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.
Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception—how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it ."

Scrolling down through the reader reviews one comes to this: M. L. Lamendola, "Almost Great." Some reader responses to this interesting and well-thought-out review dismiss the writer on the grounds that s/he is an Anne Coulter fan.

And finally, here is the column from the National Post that got me this far so far.

Jonathan Kay, " The reason that innocents get prosecuted," National Post. Canada: 27 July 2007.

Kay begins his piece by highlighting a case of criminal justice gone totally wrong, the false accusation of boys in a case of murder. Then:


"How did trained investigators screw up so badly?

Two eminent California social psychologists have a convincing explanation. In a new book, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson argue that many of the problems that plague our society -- from lying politicians to dysfunctional marriages -- originate with the fact that humans simply cannot admit when we're wrong. We form an opinion about something -- say, about who committed a murder-- and then systematically reject or explain away any incoming evidence that contradicts our preferred thesis. We think we're being rational and scientific. But in fact, we're subconsciously falling prey to mental defence mechanisms that protect us from cognitive dissonance.

[In] the case of murder investigators... mental intransigence destroys lives. Astonishingly, police and prosecutors often refuse to admit they screwed up even when slam-dunk evidence has proven them wrong.

[....]

Of course, police aren't the only people in our society who exhibit misplaced professional solidarity. But the nature of their jobs means that the stakes are particularly high: Innocent people can rot in jail for crimes they didn't commit. There's no surefire way to make cops place their commitment to truth above their commitment to colleagues. But getting every Canadian man and woman in uniform to read Mistakes Were Made would be a good start .

jkay@nationalpost.com.

****

How do normal and ordinary folk get stuck in a "Terminator" mode? Kay uses the example of cops unrelenting in the face of their obvious mistaken assumptions. They just can't back down and admit they were wrong. Yes, the police charging and creating evidence to convict the innocent is dramatic, but it's not really as important as the every-day examples one finds on the streets of our cities and towns, the average guy going on and on about things obviously wrong. "Islam means 'peace' and it's only the Americans who have stirred up Islamic hatred blah blah." No amount of reality is going to penetrate the mind of the fanatic, the normal guy on the street, the guy who is so totally conformed to "the way it is" that he will die like those Primo Levi calls "the Drowned." Walking off a cliff is normal if everyone else is doing it. Going against the crowd pisses people off in a big way.

I'll check out this book if and when I see it available. Meanwhile, send in your review or even your opinion. Maybe I'm wrong about Ward Churchill. I'm willing to consider that, if I find it's possible. I'd rather find out I'm wrong that live in stupid aggressive ignorance just because I can't let go of a wrong idea. But hey, that's just me.