17 November 2008

These thoughts hit me today while I was reading The Economist Magazine - well, the book section actually.  I have to get them down quickly or I forget them.  And so why do I bother?  It gives me pleasure, whether anyone reads or not.  That fits right in, whether logically or not.

The charm of liberty and freedom lies with the people.  They are illogical, emotional, ignorant and ruled by perception.  I have spent a lot of time trying to understand what is best, what is logical, and what works.  Uh uh.  Where there is freedom and liberty that has relatively little to do with it.  In fact, even without freedom it doesn't - it's just a matter of a different set of people's illogic, biases, emotions and perceptions.  That, after all, is really all that matters.

Are people concerned with facts?  Noooooooo.  I even read recently that politicians that try to feed voters facts inevitably lose.  Voters are concerned with...yup, you guessed it.

People don't care about what is, they care about what seems to be and what they think is.  History?  Economics?  Even math.  It's not what is but what they perceive is.  And try to change their opinion.  Nope, perception is too strong - bias is too strong.  They believe what they want to believe.  Education?  Forget it.

It really makes people charming, if you can get by the frustration, and if you are not concerned with getting anything done.  Of course when things go bad, when their biases and perceptions are wrong, who is blamed?  Themselves?  Nahhh.  They always find someone else to blame - anyone else.  And their logic is strong - it's their fault, whoever they are.

Why does democracy work?  Sort of?  Because there are enough people with different perceptions so that it all balan ces out in the end.  Think about the Constitution for example: it is heavy in trying to keep people from screwing things up, not getting things done; there is a reason for that.

God bless people; but don't take them too seriously.