Etiology of Social Dementia - 5

A Picture of Scientific Consensus?

In this series Dredd Blog has argued that propaganda is a trigger, or cause,  of "social dementia", or if you prefer, "cultural dementia."

We have noted that the primary thrust of this series is a focus on the dementia of cultures, societies, or civilizations, rather than a focus on the essence of individual forms of dementia, except of course, where those forms are indistinguishable in some significant way.

For a spark of clarity, let me first say that one example of "social dementia" would be a well known social dynamic called "social darwinism", which is touched upon from another angle in the Dredd Blog post "Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy."

Today's post, in this ongoing series, looks at the issue from the standpoint of the impact experts have had, or still may have, on this notion of social dementia.

To begin with, let's note that others have asked a very relevant question concerning the impact of experts:

Why doesn't "scientific consensus" settle disputes about climate change and other issues? The answer, a CCP experimental study suggests, is not that only some citizens view scientific opinion as important, but rather that citizens of diverse cultural outlooks form different perceptions of what most scientists believe. (Published in the Journal of Risk Research.)

(Cultural Cognition Net). Those asking that question go on to provide the best answer they could come up with, but what any well-intentioned, light weight analysis of that sort misses is the brutal truth about how western propaganda has shaped western society (see e.g. The Ways of Bernays).

What we see, hear, smell, taste, and experience via other sensory input, goes through our amygdala before it ever reaches the area of our conscious brain (see e.g. The Toxic Bridge To Everywhere, a post with some focus on fear-based damage to the amygdala as one source of social dementia.)

The amygdala can and does sometimes actually become like a PR (public relations) firm within the brain, which "spins" everything to fit our culture's world view, in effect to deceive us, or to render us socially demented (which can be simply defined as "becoming a member of a culture, meme complex, group, or society that is out of touch with reality").

I mean this in the sense of a meme complex or group, that has been affected by ruling group mind (RGM), for example.

This explains, for another example, why conservatives deny global warming, in the sense that they are a group, a sub-culture, or a meme complex. One which does not understand how to reason, because they actually don't know what reason is.

Let's finish this post with a video of Professor George Lakoff discussing some cultural out-of-touch issues, especially our society's utterly false notion of "reason", because that false notion is based on 18th century academics:

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The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.