A shrieking child in the supermarket - familiar enough to all so there is no point paying much attention to it, but it does raise the issue of how long it can take to come down from an emotional outburst.
Worth pondering because there are adults who also take too long to come down from an emotional outburst even though they don’t fill a supermarket with unappeasable shrieks. At a quieter level though – that may be just what they do and it may go on for much longer than the shrieking child.
If we go off at a tangent to this problem of not letting go, then we come across another familiar type of behaviour. We come across people who can’t let go of a weak argument, dubious standpoint, misplaced loyalty or even a factual inaccuracy. It can be emotionally disturbing to let go in such cases. There are no shrieks in the supermarket, but it can seem undignified.
Yet if enough members of the same social class share the same dubious standpoint, the same loyalties and even the same factual inaccuracy, then no dignity is lost by holding onto it. Being wrong can be the dignified standpoint. Even a pompous idiot can be dignified in these circumstances. There is such a thing as dignified idiocy, as Dickens frequently highlighted.
Mr Podsnap, as a representative man, is not alone in caring very particularly for his own dignity, if not for that of his acquaintances, and therefore in angrily supporting the acquaintances who have taken out his Permit, lest, in their being lessened, he should be.
Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865)
2 comments:
The working class were always derided for voting Labour, come what may. Another set of middle class people would vote Conservative, come what may. Lib Dems had their own club, and the nationalists voted for their aspirations.
Pretty much everybody took the easy path, ignoring policies for the general direction and style - arguably this was efficient in uncertain future.
But now things are different. The curtain has been pulled back and the various
Wizards of Oz have been exposed as mere mortals, and the pundits as merely gossips.
I guess Reform are offering an alternative but they are at risk of showing their weaknesses too. The Tin Man has found his heart, the Straw Man has found his brain, and the Lion has found his courage.
We're not in Kansas any more.
DJ - well put, we are not in Kansas any more. It's a weird situation. Some years ago I watched a few videos by a chap who was enthusiastic about the potential of AI because he thought it would make us more intelligent. Maybe a tad optimistic and it's wider than AI, but we are seeing something along those lines.
Almost as if veracity is becoming the only safe option. That would be very weird indeed.
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