A Pause for a Cause

My ship of reason foundered on a rock of ridicule recently. I went on a back woods web site the other day. Devoted to current events, politics, jurisprudence, and many other prudences. Found the Bog, er, Blog, and the comment section. I posed a thought experiment, implicated by references to vetted authorities, adjudicated by appeals to logic, and supplicated by requests for respectful dialogue.

"What do people think of this?" I quandaried. “Is this valid? Can we learn from it? Indeed, does this demand our honest and self-reflecting attention?”

                             

Call me old fashioned. Call me reasonable. Call me an idiot, better still. I was set upon by the Harpies of the Hinternet. The Muses of Specious Reasoning.

Responses to my conundrum included; That's propaganda; One, minor detail is wrong so, therefore, everything you say and believe throughout your entire life, and all carnations, in, out, up, and down, must be wrong, also; You're a bad person and so are you (a remarkably common conclusion;) That's a Conspiracy Theory, and; Here's my totally unsupported and unqualified take on the subject which is totally supported by my tribe and must be self-evidently true, as well, so there.

Whatever happened to: Let's discuss something important-too important to let our eyes be blinded be fallacy, fiction, or fraternal prejudices? Let’s respect each other’s perspective and consider each other’s view point? I disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death your right to say it?

Gone. Or maybe they never existed. The Inklings. The gymnasium steps of philosophy. Brilliant pockets of knowledge held precariously together in Baghdad, Toledo, Paris, and Edinburgh through the Dark Ages. Maybe those are all myths, too. Intellectual pleasantries we made up later to tell ourselves how great we are. And the gods of our own creation come back to mock us. Maybe it was always just one of those meaningless, 'Conspiracy Fallacies' people are always yammering on about.

What is Philosophy? Is it not the vanity of Man in a cloak of the gods? Better still. What are the gods? Must we admit, in horror, that there are no gods? The gods are we and there is no holy Them we can blame for our own dilemmas? Perish the thought! There’s always a scapegoat. Why, the scapegoat might very well be the oldest god.

Can we answer Pontius Pilate's question? No. Not then, not now.

The Internet is just a visceral engine, barely up to the level of the cockroach. Capable only of the five F's: Fight, flight, friend, food, fuck. And not always just one at a time. Often they work together in chords.

We should be proud.