Principia Discordia > Think for Yourself, Schmuck!
thinking for yourself is a group activity
Joshua123:
--- Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 24, 2022, 04:02:12 am ---That's not a bad hypothesis, but there's another possibility.
2 million years of primate survival have taught us to emulate the successful. When we had to worry about leopards and Those Other Bastards Over There hogging up all the game, that was a really good strategy. In a high tech society, it's not a particularly successful.
However, the fact is that we existed for hundreds of thousands of years in the first case, and maybe a hundred years in the second case.
Now, marketing nerds understand this, so your views are presented to you by one of three types:
Athletic young men.
Distinguished older men.
Hot young blondes.
They aren't talking to the front of your brain, they're talking more towards the back, because the great majority of people will listen to and absorb what they have to say, because they are perceived as being the winners of the tribe by the part of your brain that spends all its time looking for leopards (and, of course, Those Other Bastards Over There).
Turn on the TV and hit a "news" channel, just for one example, and watch it with the sound off. You don't know what they're saying, but at least part of you wants to trust them anyway.
--- End quote ---
Great point, well summarized.
To your list I'd just add a 4th one, "Any persons with tons of money"
Doktor Howl:
--- Quote from: POFP on January 26, 2022, 03:40:32 pm ---
Wanted to clarify that Think For Yourself Schmuck isn't necessarily only tied to survival situations, or systems that focus on those areas of the brain
--- End quote ---
Actually, in survival situations, TFYSS is a non-starter. Group thinking does, after all, have its advantages when the chips are down. Everyone pulling the same direction is better than scattershot responses, even if everyone is pulling in a non-optimal direction.
That being said, the person that panics first usually survives. It's never too early to panic.
POFP:
--- Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 28, 2022, 11:36:18 pm ---
--- Quote from: POFP on January 26, 2022, 03:40:32 pm ---
Wanted to clarify that Think For Yourself Schmuck isn't necessarily only tied to survival situations, or systems that focus on those areas of the brain
--- End quote ---
Actually, in survival situations, TFYSS is a non-starter. Group thinking does, after all, have its advantages when the chips are down. Everyone pulling the same direction is better than scattershot responses, even if everyone is pulling in a non-optimal direction.
That being said, the person that panics first usually survives. It's never too early to panic.
--- End quote ---
That's a good point. I guess I was only thinking of situations where Group Think is directed by a centralized Power, and therefore manifesting out of one's need to maintain status quo - Pressing buttons to get the cheese, if you will. Or manufactured environmental pressures that require one to place higher importance on Productivity over personal and social growth (To pay the bills/survive).
But I see what you mean. Unless you have a significant amount of Influence in an environment like that, Think For Yourself, Schmuck really may need to be traded out for Think For Everyone Else Too, Asshole. Or at the very least, TFYSS should be applied in the context of directing the herd.
But if we're panicking, I have dibs on all the Sudafed, Nicotine Patches, and blue pills. Due to adrenal deficiencies of some kind, I'm not be able to panic first, but I'm certainly going to be harder than whoever does! :argh!:
serendipity:
--- Quote from: POFP on January 26, 2022, 03:40:32 pm ---You can tell if you're heavily influenced in this way by whether significant group paradigm shifts, cause you to tune out completely, as opposed to redirecting your focus on adapting to the new paradigm and/or fighting it/supporting it. Maybe a fact comes out about some political topic that makes your "Tribe's" Reality Map fall apart. Front-brain auto-pilot will favor incorporation of the new information into your personal Reality Map and presenting it to your Tribe for review. Back-brain auto-pilot will take you offline for a few weeks, and then you'll be back to beating the same dead horse. Or maybe you don't even need the downtime to escape, and you're able to forget the information or use memes to (in your mind) refute it without extra consideration.
--- End quote ---
hmm, that's interesting - i would usually interpret that sort of scenario in terms of the narrativist framework (it's formulated about cults, but we're all a little bit narrativist) - our core beliefs are usually too abstract to be refuted by a single fact coming out, and the beliefs that can be refuted like that usually function as excuses for an underlying belief generally of the form 'there is an evil power which is responsible for injustice, and a good power which is coming to destroy it and give us and them what we and they deserve'. i suppose there's no conflict, narrativism is the back-brain approach and that's how it convinces itself that the old horse still has some beating left in it
Chaos_Zebra:
--- Quote from: serendipity on January 24, 2022, 11:57:24 pm ---that's a good point - funnily enough i think i saw someone writing recently about not mistaking a deliberately adversarial environment for a neutral one. i really should get around to learning about marketing
--- End quote ---
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