Dear Friends,
It seems to me, people’s attitudes to others are exposed by their actions and speech. When someone is condescending to another that action shows low regard. You never act condescending to a superior. That would get you fired. You condescend to children and the slow. So when the media tells us we need to be careful of dis and misinformation, they are talking down to us. This shows they think we are slow and childish. The more you control someone the more you tell them they are incapable of it themselves. You control what a child reads, imbibes, and does… not an equal. This shows that those who demand we limit ourselves to their wishes don’t consider us their equals… but childish dolts in need of their guidance. But we aren’t children or slow, we are the equal of anyone in power.
Disastrous lives are lived by the arrogant. Those who treat others as less have few actual friends. Plus, their relationships suffer from their oppressive self-esteem. Such people cling to power over others and wealth as the measures of a person. This is because they have nothing, internal or external to cling to, to validate their existence. So the paradigm is, those incapable of running their own lives successfully, demand to run ours, using a gun if necessary. While such people would be better served to clean up their own room, pluck the plank from their own eye, or look at those three fingers pointing back, and try to understand. Wisdom is learning how to live before telling others how to live. Foolishness is ordering others how to live… from a state of ignorance.
Arrogant people don’t trust others to make up their own minds. This is because we might come to the “wrong” conclusions. The reason they worry that we could be swayed by propaganda is because the education system inculcates following, not leading. So since they consider us followers they worry night and day about misinformation. That’s why the narrative is so well guarded. A small amount of disinformation could change the minds of millions of people. This alone tells us those who shout about mis and disinformation consider us nothing but sheep, to be led, corralled, and sheered. You wouldn’t let a ewe wander in the street, nor would the arrogant let the hoi polloi wander in thought. In the one case because a ewe could be run over and killed, in the other because the people might get uppity.
Children, psychopaths, and the slow need to be controlled, not so much adults. The very act of putting restrictions on others that don’t apply to those that wrote the law or regulation is a statement of subjection. Those limited are less than those who limit. An equal is unable to limit an equal by anything but logic. Once violence or the threat of violence is brought in, they are no longer equals, but have become a master and slave. This means those who purport to be elitists, (anyone who derides populism) consider their fellows less wise, less intelligent, and therefore less human than themselves. Their actions and language illustrate their attitude. Moreover, the arrogant often figure it makes more sense to have the smartest people making all the decisions, instead of letting dumb people do it.
If you added the IQs of the top 10% of humanity, the number would be quite impressive. If, however, you combined the IQs of the 90% that’s left… that number would dwarf the 10%. This is a mathematical illustration of Hayek’s distributed knowledge. Clearly, problems would be better addressed if the distributed whole intelligence of mankind is applied to all at once, (instead of planners doing it one at a time). The arrogant are too self-blind to see this though. We know elitists are arrogant because of their actions and language. Humble people don’t seek to impose their will on others. Such people fear they could harm another inadvertently. Humility is an attitude of equality and fraternity with mankind. Even as arrogance is an attitude of superiority and hostility to mankind.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
