Maxims, rules of thumb and other observations on human cognition and sociocultural affectations

This will be added to on an irregular basis...
  • What is said to humans directly is received with skepticism and considered with dubiousness while that which is heard in passing, especially that which most conforms to their mentality or prejudices, is readily believed.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive latency between exposure to new information or experiences and the ability to think dispassionately and intellectually about it.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive spectrum starting with the moment of exposure to new information or experiences and ending with some point at which the thing is effectively "in the past" for them.
  • This cognitive spectrum is linked to the emotional process often referred to as shock, anger, denial and acceptance.
  • The more and faster information or experiences are presented to people and the closer the quarters and the lesser the distance between people, the more their early reactions in the passionate emotional stage are reflected back to them in the manner of responses to those reactions from others in light of those responses.
  • The more outrages which are suffered without sufficient time to allow emotional bleed-off, the farther the bar for subsequent reaction and outrage are pushed, and the more further events must progress before reaction and outrage.
  • It is possible for serious detriments to eventually sit below this threshold for long enough for their damaging effects to build and multiply until their entire society undergoes some reactive convulsion.
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Monday, January 19, 2009

And they would know: German, Polish ambassadors blast comparisons of Gaza campaign to Holocaust | Jewish News | Jerusalem Post

The question is, why can't everyone else see it?

Separately, Polish Ambassador Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska said that any comparisons between Israel's operation in Gaza and Nazi Germany's extermination of one-third of the Jewish people were "pure anti-Semitism."

"Any comparison to what has happened to the Jewish people in the Shoah is pure anti-Semitism which cannot be justified, even if we don't like everything that happens in Gaza," Magdziak-Miszewska said.

If Germans and Poles are rushing to the defense of Jews and the streets of allegedly free Europe to their condemnation, something is seriously rotten in this world.