It isn’t what the masses do, but rather what my own friends do that tempts me to think that we are doomed. As long as intelligent people continue to think in over-generalizations like socialism vs. capitalism, republican vs. democrat, Obama vs. McCain, most humans will be blind to half of the evils in the world, and we will continue to play political ping-pong as we have been for decades with the only constant being steady progress toward fascism.

Idealism is the enemy of reality. Reality is not ideal.

I always hope that intelligent folks will find a common cause and positively influence the world through coordination and purpose, but still today a simple invocation of certain key words is enough to send them all scrambling with their hands over their heads, ranting nonsense like so many wind-up toys.

Each side begins with the premise that their system is optimal, and filters all observations through this. When something goes wrong, the question is never “what went wrong” but rather “where is the deviation from my system which explains this”? As long as this remains true, I have no hope for high-level intellectual discussions. Think about it — when two opposing sides both approach a system this way, where can it possibly end?

Each would do better to patch the holes in their own side of the boat, but neither can stomach the thought that theirs is imperfect, and so they all go down together.

I would have said a year or two ago that with the internet there might be room to educate people; but what I’ve learned is that faced with all the evidence they need, people simply re-apportion significance until the bulk supports their premises. (E.g. Christians who filter out evolutionary evidence, cosmologists who filter out the electronic universe theory etc.) The premises are programmed by a lifetime of subconsciously-integrated experience.

Still, it is worth notice that things are getting better in the world all over the place. It is my wish that over time, narrow minded idealism will eventually be replaced with the collection of perspectives. I’m not sure if we can ever get away from “right” and “wrong” but we can damn well do a lot better than we do today. When you change perspective, right and wrong changes, and thus he who has the broadest perspective has the deepest insight into reality.

Strong unyielding idealism is useless in an emergent universe. The universe is evolving, and so are you, your ideas, your knowledge and your perceptions. Be a master of perception. Don’t argue, discuss instead. Can you leave your ego outside of discussions and discover a new world of possibility and understanding?

Remember the old philosophical story. Two people went to the cinema to watch a movie. When they got out, one said “The movie sucked…”. The other said “What a great movie!”. Who was right, and who was wrong?… Neither or both, it’s just a matter of perception.