As I said in the last blog entry (yesterday), deffils are the personification of the tendency to buy into simplistic beliefs. Another form this takes is to identify with the role of innocent victim, projecting one\u2019s selfishness on the blameworthy \u201cother.\u201d This justifies defensive aggression: Get them before they get you, undermine your culture. Again, these complexes disguise themselves; they don\u2019t seem to be really wicked or mean devils, but something softer, more wide-eyed and innocent\u2014yet they support such nastiness as genocide. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another variation of the aforementioned deffil: Things should be nice so if they\u2019re hard, or if there\u2019s a price to pay, or if they seem at all complicated, it must be someone\u2019s fault. Let\u2019s find the one who is to blame and punish them! The deffil is innocent, but this simplistic sentiment can morph into the most monstrous sadism and wickedness\u2014true devils. <\/p>\n
Another deffil is that there is no shame in resisting the warnings of people who warn us that our folly may lead to unpleasant consequences. \u201cThey\u2019re ol\u2019 meanies and grumps, and we don\u2019t have to listen to them, la, la, la.\u201d Seemingly innocent and childlike, this feeling of being okay feeds the general state of inertia and complacence that again generates a lot of trouble\u2014the trouble of waiting until the problem reaches the level of generating monstrous complications. Then the deffil is all innocent and betrayed: \u201cWhy did mommy and daddy let this happen? It\u2019s all their fault!\u201d <\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the deffil that denies that we get the news and the government we vote for and deserve. \u201cBut they\u2019re supposed to be wiser! They promised! It\u2019s not fair! Let\u2019s vote for the other side! They promise not to be as limited as the last people we voted for. We know it\u2019ll change, now, because they promised.\u201d <\/p>\n
Please forgive me if I seem to be patronizingly saying that most people think like young children. That\u2019s clearly not true in many roles in their lives: They raise kids, do a good job, exhibit real cleverness in some roles\u2014far beyond anything a child is capable of. It just doesn\u2019t make sense that someone so smart can unconsciously be thinking like a young child! Wait, the reason it doesn\u2019t make sense is that what does make sense is that people are either little babies or grown-up. Right? Wrong: In fact, people play many roles and some can retain deeply immature attitudes and modes of operation while other roles are forced to become very mature. It\u2019s possible to be both very sophisticated and very childish, and this explains a lot of history and our human predicament. <\/p>\n
What evokes our compassion is that humans are sincere and innocent, feel themselves good, even as they subconsciously avoid grappling with more complex and difficult modes of thinking. There is indeed a fundamental moral obligation to think more deeply and to synthesize seemingly opposing ideas, and most people really don\u2019t get this. I\u2019m not sure that this is even taught in school, because it challenges those who presume to construct a politically correct curriculum. <\/p>\n
In spite of the great deal of information taught in school, what tends not to be taught is the idea that what they teach may be (a) mistaken; (b) partial; ( c) politically biased; (d) evocative of the sense of righteous taboo if challenged; (e) may be irrelevant to the current situation, etc. The volume of information is confused with true wisdom. This confusion is itself a deffil. <\/p>\n
Folly often takes the role of sincere innocence and simplistic idealism. Still, its naivete about its own limitations can lead to terrible evil. It starts off with child-like simplicity, along with a subtle entitlement that the world should match it, and if doesn\u2019t, then the world is to blame for being an old meany. Thus disguised, folly may be personified not as devils, who are sophisticated, clever, manipulative, sociopathic schemers\u2014and wicked to boot; but rather soft, cuddly, \u201cdeffils\u201d (almost daffodils!) who aren\u2019t hurting anyone! Awww. <\/p>\n
Folly wants to be left alone to play. What\u2019s wrong with that? It uses our natural yearning for the simplicity and care-free life of the young child, and the flush of good feeling, of nostalgia, helps to disguise the reality that this entitled foolishness is a source of great evil. <\/p>\n
The dynamic partakes of something similar to wanting to stay in bed and dream rather than get up and get into the game of living a truly engaged life. That engaged life is more complex can easily be misinterpreted as being \u201cno fun.\u201d In fact, living an engaged life can be great fun, but not the same kind of dreamy fun as being half-asleep or wallowing in the simplicity of carefree la-la land. Many people do not have this distinction clear in their mind, and our consumerist culture does its best to give us both\u2014the freedom to be truly semi-conscious, passive, free, while at the same time enjoying the illusion of being engaged and grown-up and involved. The television boob-tube is a major tool for this, but now there are scores of other media that deliver the same service. <\/p>\n
So the television set is a deffil, as are all the time-wasters. How can we engage more actively? Can we allow ourselves to feel morally obligated to limit our own distractions? Could mindless pastimes and mythically rich shows be deffils, leaching our time away from constructive engagement? <\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a peculiar circular madness that says that the world should be the way it is supposed to be unless someone is messing it up\u2014the devil?\u2014and deserves to be blamed and punished. We should not under-estimate the power and prevalence of simplistic thinking, which, though seemingly innocent, child-like, even, is the actual source of a great deal of our troubles. <\/p>\n
I may add more to this theme. It points out, to summarize, that many of the more nasty behaviors of humanity can begin with what feels subjectively to be innocent and even noble. But there is a naivete about the potential for self-deception and for unintended consequences that needs to become part of the mainstream ethos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I said in the last blog entry (yesterday), deffils are the personification of the tendency to buy into simplistic beliefs. Another form this takes is to identify with the role of innocent victim, projecting one\u2019s selfishness on the blameworthy \u201cother.\u201d This justifies defensive aggression: Get them before they get you, undermine your culture. Again, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-literacy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}