Moral blinders and the Banality of Evil. What you don’t ponder won’t disturb your conscience.

Who does more damage, A) mean-spirited people or B) "normal" people acting thoughtlessly? According to Hannah Arendt, the answer is clearly B. I would agree. Why? Because we serve as our own gate-keeper as to what what aspects of the world are relevant, usually oblivious to the fact that the "gate-keeper" of the flow of "relevant" facts is our sycophantic enabler, and that the gatekeeper is often willing to help us express our deepest darkest instincts. How is it that “normal” people so often behave (and vote) as moral monsters? In Eichmann in Jerusalem (discussed below), Arendt has written that the "banality of evil," the failure to think, leads to monstrous deeds--the road to hell is mostly paved with a lack of intentions. I largely concur with Arendt, but I would explain the source of most evil in terms of the psychological concept of attention: human animals have limited attentional capacities, and ghastly things can happen when this scarce human resource (the ability to attend) is diverted (often self-diverted). Moral monsters self-train themselves to pre-filter their sensory perceptions so that they don't need to attend to anything in the world that challenges their preferred viewpoints. The trick to becoming a banally evil person is to allow yourself to dwell on limited viewpoints and experience. To grow your evilness, stop being self-critical, stop being skeptical and stop exposing yourself to viewpoints that challenge the way you currently live your life. When you become a professional at selectively attending to the "things" of the world, you can feel the rush of becoming a self-certain--you'll become so certain of your beliefs that you won't hesitate to impose your narrow intellect onto everything and everyone you encounter. And even when you are incredibly wrong-headed, you won't realize it, thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect. That is the great power of the ability to selectively attend to one's favorite parts of the world. It takes courage to expose one’s self to information that challenges one’s pre-existing beliefs. Humans are intrinsically able to be self-manipulative--being skeptical requires much more work than running with the types of believes and conclusions that have pleased us in the past. That is also the nature of the confirmation bias. Most of us, most of the time, sub-consciously (or semi-consciously) selectively expose ourselves mainly to the types of information that will substantiate our preconceived notions and motives. We’ve all seen this with the many dysfunctional people who use the Internet selectively. They seek out only web sites that are compatible with their pre-existing bigoted, consumerist or shallow life-styles. If you put on blinders that allow you to see only a limited slice of the world around you, you can spare yourself the need of emotionally reacting to desperate needs of humans around you. Most of us constantly blind ourselves to the plight of starving children in Africa. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s merely a matter of diverting our attention to something else, something not so disturbing.

Continue ReadingMoral blinders and the Banality of Evil. What you don’t ponder won’t disturb your conscience.

Our future is being ruined by a “reckless fiscal theology”

You might have to force yourself to work all the way through "America 101," a recent article by Bill Moyers.  Those who care about America's future will make it all the way through, despite the bad news.  The article is yet another well-researched and well-expressed piece of writing by Moyers,…

Continue ReadingOur future is being ruined by a “reckless fiscal theology”

Don’t criticize corporations or YOU’RE OFF THE AIR!

Check out this piece on Huffpo, "Air America's ABC Blacklist," co-written by Josh Silver (Executive Director of Free Press) and Robert McChesney (co-founder of Free Press) This week 90 major corporations demanded that their ads be pulled from radio stations that run Air America programming, "demonstrating the fundamental challenge facing everyone…

Continue ReadingDon’t criticize corporations or YOU’RE OFF THE AIR!

Bush has urgent secret mission for progressive Democrats

The Onion is at it again.   "This mission is absolutely vital, for the next week to 10 days will determine the future of our country," said Bush, who would not reveal what the operation entailed, only to say that it was "highly classified." Worth a look and a laugh.

Continue ReadingBush has urgent secret mission for progressive Democrats

Bush criticizes Kerry for not talking good

Hey, I know the headline isn't grammatical!  It was to get your attention regarding this post by Bob Cesca on Huffpo.   Cesca makes the point that "Bring em on!" cost who-knows-how-many deaths, while Kerry's recent gaffe was but a gaffe.  It must be surreal to be criticized by a speaker…

Continue ReadingBush criticizes Kerry for not talking good