There are many aspects to a sceptical outlook. A situation may be perceived as criminal, crooked, stupid, mistaken, foolish, a result of bias, irrelevant, manipulated, wrong but understandable and so on.
The sceptical aim is to draw back a metaphorical curtain on these aspects, but there is one aspect where drawing back the curtain has problems of its own and that is what we could describe and often should describe as silliness.
A situation may be stupid, misguided or idiotic but it may also be silly or the result of silliness. But then the people endorsing the situation would have to be silly and that would in turn imply a certain degree of childishness. Even hard-nosed scepticism can become uncomfortable when presented with adult silliness, but it is real.
In almost all of us there is a hint of the child we were, a fleeting love of the ridiculous however dominating our adult demeanour might be. However, we have to speak of an infantilised culture every now and then because there is certainly an infantile aspect to the culture of the developed world.
If there is a weak adult ability to handle cause and effect or evidence of absurdity or a streak of the ridiculous in the adult world, then we don’t mind drawing back the metaphorical curtain on that. A problem arises if the inability or unwillingness to handle cause and effect is so pronounced that certain degree of silliness becomes too obvious. Even sceptics are not so keen to draw back the curtain on adult silliness and describe it as silliness.
An example of the problem is the current UK electoral contest between the two main political parties. Draw back the curtain on that and it has an unmistakable aspect of an absurdity which has gone much too far, well into the realms of silliness.
It not so much that voting for either main party has become silly, but the conduct of the debate has an element of infantile posturing which is too pronounced. There is a too obvious, too theatrical, too infantile determination to avoid the adult world of responsible language and cause and effect.
Draw back the curtain and the silliness of Sunak v Starmer is unmistakable.
Draw back the curtain and the silliness of Sunak v Starmer is unmistakable.
3 comments:
Yes, good point. I think that one issue is that we are reluctant to draw back that curtain when what lies beyond it reflects badly on us. If we are committed to one of two options - let's say that we are Conservatives, and have argued in the past for the Conservative party - then it's difficult to step back and admit to ourselves that the whole game of choosing between the options is silly. There comes a time when we admit to ourselves that what we favoured, even as the least worst option, is so bad that it doesn't matter.
Project this into the future. Imagine that there was a group of sane scientists who formed a political party dedicated to removing the effects of "bad science" from our politics. They campaigned on removing Net Zero targets, and getting to the truth about vaccines, etc. They would be worth supporting, wouldn't they? We might even pay a subscription, or write articles and blogposts in their favour. But then we know that there would come a time when we would realise that the party was stuffed full of careerists, chancers, fanatics, and idiots.
Maybe it's just the whiff of power. It attracts the silly, and makes people behave in silly ways.
Draw back the curtain and there is nothing there. The main parties appear to be nothing more than curtain rails to hang suitably (silly) ideas upon. The curtain on the left appears identical to the curtain on the right.
Unfortunately the curtain material available only comes in a limited range of universalist, interventionist, and collectivist patterns. It's like being back at school where the teachers always knew best, even though their own lives were sometimes chaotic. The country is being 'run' by milk monitors.
Sam - "There comes a time when we admit to ourselves that what we favoured, even as the least worst option, is so bad that it doesn't matter."
Yes, it's difficult to let go but they have made it much easier. As you say, it does attract the silly and does makes people behave in silly ways. It always did and maybe a relatively small increase has made a big difference, but voter tribalism is a major problem too.
DJ - yes the country is being 'run' by milk monitors, it's an apt description. Maybe it's partly an age thing, but the self-serving mediocrities seem even more transparent than they were a few decades ago.
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