George Carlin’s Position on People and Groups

The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don’t belong; it doesn’t include me, and it never has. No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

George Carlin, Preface to "3 x Carlin" (2008)

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Asch Conformity Experiments Confirmed

STEVE STEWART-WILLIAMS:

Not everything you were taught in intro psych was false! Solomon Asch’s famous conformity experiments have once again successfully replicated. For the classic length-of-line experiment, participants conformed 33% of the time: very close to the original rate. For political opinions, they conformed 38% of the time. Link.

Other related articles on this website:

Why you need to be the one to speak up

Brett Weinstein Discusses the Importance of Speaking Up

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Just Say No to Tribes

Just because I don't like Coke doesn't mean that I like Pepsi. People need to take a deep breath and step out of their tribes. Doing this will add 40 points to their IQ scores.

[Added May 18 2024]

Being in a tribe is mighty potent hallucinogen. How potent? Monty Python & friends illustrate with this Eric the Viking skit:

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COVID Face Masks and Middle East Politics

Below is a recent photo from Washington University posted on Facebook.

Notice all the participants wearing COVID face masks. The COVID pandemic is long over and more than a year ago, the Cochran study found no evidence that face masks are effective to prevent spread of COVID.

What do these face masks have to do with Middle East politics? Nothing. What do totally unnecessary post-pandemic face masks have to do with tribalism? Everything. The masks serve as badges of in-group membership. They function the same way that fancy suits do for trial lawyers and executives. The same way that buying pre-torn jeans serve for young women or that wearing ashes on foreheads serve as badges of group belonging to Catholics. For more than 100 posts on Ingroup-Outgroup dynamics at this website, click here.

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