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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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

What constitutes proof of existence?

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/national_review_birthers_are_an_embarrassment_to_the_right/#c499262

wilzyk:

Obamas own paternal Grandmother stated unequivocally that she was present at his birth in Mombasa Kenya in the summer of 1961. No other living human has claimed to be present at his birth.


This one point is continuously studiously ignored.

While the terms of the stand alone complex that caused this election to go this way generally lend themselves to total unknowns taking the fore due to having the least amount of likelihood to generate cognitive dissonance and disrupt the phenomenon, there’s something else.

Obama has precious little record of anything prior to 2007. There are the usual papers and paperwork, the usual legal records and filings, but they’re just paper. Artifacts that signify nothing. Does the pipe I own and smoke mean I was here? Does the chair under your butt have some special power proving you existed? No. They’re no more meaningful than the cars rusting in your nearby auto yard or the remnant calcium compounds where the bones of a caveman have finally gone. Something happened but it’s all a matter of your interpretation.

I have a birth certificate from the US Navy that the US Govt. itself will not accept as proof of my citizenship for a security clearance… but will take any given state’s from an era when $100 was enough to convince an overworked clerk to falsify any number of documents. What’s the likelihood of getting a false document from a major military hospital staffer who carries a rank? Strange that don’t you think?

He’s supposed to be a lawyer and their entire claim to fame is oratory before other people, their ability to spin a convincing tale that gets a jury to give them what they want which is to justify their billed hours. I live in a court town and you cannot throw a rock and not generate a lawsuit. I know no lawyer so incompetent at speaking without a prepared speech, and one prepared by someone else I might add, as Obama.

That doesn’t track.

He’s probably among the whitest black men ever to grace Washington, D.C. but he’s still black and in a nation obsessed with skin color he practically rode a Segway into office without a peep about it. African-Americans seemed to pay no attention whatsoever as if this was every day and nothing out of the ordinary. Whites and the rest paid no attention either.

What gives our lives meaning and says we were here is what is formed in others when we reflect off of each other by our presence, our actions, what we communicate and show.

There’s next to no sign that Obama existed before just a few years ago and while some people slouch through their lives leaving no ripple in them, utterly irrelevant to their own lives, so much so they could die and they wouldn’t even notice their own passing, he’s achieved a rare thing certainly. One so rare as it has never happened before. He’s managed to leave so little a mark on his own existence as to not exist and yet managed to get his hands on the executive control of the most powerful nation ever to exist as if he’s just the latest in a long line of clerks hitting aisle 7 at Safeway.

I’ve also noticed that other people don’t seem to think he exists either. Or that his existence if he has one has any significance. Haven’t you noticed the distinct lack of leadership from the White House? Almost as if he’s just some shmoe hired to play housekeeper and face on the TV and the policy is made elsewhere? The Democrats aren’t lining up behind him at all. They’re lining up behind a big blank space with Obama’s face, but not lining up behind him. There’s a difference between getting with someone and merely standing behind the concept of them, like a cardboard cutout.

If that doesn’t strike you as a bit odd, then maybe you’re just the sort the story was written for. We’ll see how well the editing takes, but this is not the way it went.