Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Places Where Logic is Officially Dead


First, there is good news. There are still plenty of spots, from every nook and cranny, some “nookier” and “crannier” than others, where Logic still thrives in pockets of hopes, or temporarily taken out of life support. I apologize for the newly minted made-up-words but feel free to use them.  Editors of Urban Dictionary are always looking for new ones. Whoever thought of “Selfie” and “antifa”!

So, let’s hold off on Last Rites for the total demise of Logic but keep them on stand by while we examine places where folks had already pulled the plug. In some spots Logic gasped for its last few molecules of common sense just moments before everything went dark.

There was actually a time in history when something similar had occurred when darkness enveloped the whole world, when knowledge or the pursuers of knowledge went into hiding. It was aptly called The Dark Ages – specifically the period 500-1500 A.D.

It is very difficult to imagine Dark Ages Redux in the age of information technology and social media.  But it could come if we’re not careful, in places least suspected by unsuspecting folks.

The Marketplace

In the Dark Ages and before it, the marketplace was exactly just that – a place where people sold and where people bought. By word origin, “mercari” was Latin for to buy (hence, the words merchandise and merchants). In Roman times, it was either a covered or open place where buyers and sellers convened. The Greeks, the erstwhile world power whose reign preceded the Romans, first came up with the idea of a marketplace out in the open where people could freely come and go to buy and sell. The Greeks called it agora; unfortunately, today psychiatrists use the word to describe a mental distress, thus folks who have fear of open spaces suffer from agoraphobia.

Today, we exhibit no fear of open or covered markets, including those in the cloud. We may be taken advantage of, taken to the cleaners, fleeced, or baited and switched, but we feel no pain because Logic is no longer around to give us signals or warning signs in the market place. In ancient times people went to the market to fill their needs. Today’s marketplace goes above and beyond that. After filling your basic needs, it creates and defines for us additional needs we haven’t thought of yet. Look at your smart phone today. How much of it, or in it, do you really need? But every two years or so we keep falling for the latest and greatest features, 90% of it we already have with the last model.  I read that some if not most of what we consider today our basic needs did not exist two or three generations ago.  Granted that today’s conditions call for items we absolutely must have, the marketplace ever so slightly keeps tweaking them so that what used to be a basic need had turned into a much needed item that happens to be pricey (or luxurious). Don’t scratch your head or roll your eyes. Since when did a pair of working pants become designer jeans? Since when did one terribly soiled, oil and dirt stained pair of denims cost $400 at a high end department store? Nothing is more basic than food but marketing turned them into Gourmet, or labeled it Select or Reserve and we fall for it.  Why? Merchandisers and marketers and clever researchers realized that the marketplace is Logic’s open graveyard. We can’t cover everything here but you get the picture.

The Opinion Makers

We need opinions and ideas to be expressed and discussed.  Those are indicators of a healthy democracy. We have opinions as a vehicle for conversation and they are part of the social scene. Business decisions get done when the CEO or decision makers had heard all the opinions that needed to be heard before committing to any course of action. We expressed them at the polls, at our preference for this product or that product, this book for another, this movie for another, etc.

We as consumers want to be entertained and we are willing to pay for it. Those whose business it is to provide the entertainment must aim to extract maximum return for their efforts because their livelihood depends on as many customers as possible. Consumers are not a monolithic group when it comes to their political affiliations, their religious beliefs, their social affinity, and their moral beacons. However, there are many common grounds where these consumers get together.  They leave all their differences at the theater doors, or right before they enter concert halls and sports arenas. 

Entertainers must know that. In fact, it is required of them to know and understand their customers. These customers represent the country, and if the country is split right about the middle when it comes to politics, then the logical thing for entertainers to do is make sure their opinions do not offend half of their customers. There are countless instances and examples in human interactions where it is prudent, even mostly advisable, to keep those opinions to oneself, certainly not out in the public forum, if you are an entertainer and your goal is to get as much of the public as you can. They can capably play many roles but political commentating is said to be one role too many. By the way, keeping their opinions to themselves does not diminish the value of their vote come election time. One movie idol’s vote is valued as one, just as one ticket stub admits one paying customer.  They should leave opinion making in the open public to those whose job it is to disburse those nuggets – the politicians and political pundits.

But in the la-la-land of Hollywood, the rarefied air of highly paid moguls and superstars, Logic had perished a long time ago.  It had been extinct there for some time now and it seems an impossible task to resurrect it because the barnacles of oblivion are well dug in. So, Logic will forever remain dead in Hollywood.  Unfortunately, Logic’s death is not only contagious, its specter, its vapor-like phantasm is well on its way to the sports and stage arena. Same people whose business it is to entertain as wide an audience as they can get just can’t help themselves from emulating their Hollywood brothers and sisters.

The Destroyers of Statues

When people, alive and well and healthy (because they’re mostly young) start calling for the destruction of inanimate objects that represent dead people, we’ll have to wonder what motivates them. We know we have a problem when objects that are the daily landing zones for pigeons’ unsanitary habits pose a threat to the welfare and well-being of such vibrant and active protesters.

Safe Spaces

That has to be one profound irony - the death of Logic in safe spaces, brought upon by micro aggression by a multitude of people upon naïve but otherwise bright students. The aggressors had to be imaginary. How does one project aggression in very minute dosage as to be labeled micro aggression? What real world is it where young college students have to be coddled because of hurt feelings?  What is going on? Trigger warnings have nothing to do with guns but they could be so much more dangerous; in fact, they are supposed to cause more mental ailments on students at college campuses.  Whose fault is it when we send snowflakes to fight through, to survive and succeed in the cauldron of learning we call a university? We have a problem when four-corner-strategy is taught instead of business tactics and economics.  I did not invent those words and phrases; they are lexicon already well embedded in social media.

What, what Matters

We are at a point in history where equality is a daily mantra, so why does one particular this or that matter more than others?  Let’s do the numbers.  Numbers are the last refuge where Logic may have a chance for survival. I know numbers can be manipulated but deception has less cover to hide in them where news and punditry can be thick in artificial facsimile of the truth.  For example, we know what the protest du jour is lately.  Let’s examine how common is police killing of unarmed black men, with regards to the rest of the population. If some extraterrestrial reads only the media account, killing of unarmed black men in the U.S. had reached epidemic proportions. Not only that but they are all innocent unarmed black men.

Last year Washington Post reported 16 unarmed black men out of a population of 20 million were killed by police.  The year before that, the number was 36 (from the same 20 million). Between 2006 and 2016, a 10-year period, 352 people were struck and killed by lightning. The nation is 20% black, or 7 % of the population, so extrapolating from that, about 24 black people would be represented in the total number of lightning fatalities in the last 10 years. From that, using lightning fatalities statistics, we know police shootings in general are rare and the perception of an epidemic is blatantly incorrect and particularly so of black unarmed men.  Yet, based on news coverage, it looks awfully bad.

Logic must be brought back to the media news desk.  But alas, at Logic’s death was born the slogan of the year in 2016.  Even if we use three news media statistics and two from the government (FBI and BJS –Bureau of Justice Statistics) the number of unarmed black fatalities tracks with the population. The news organizations are focusing on one segment of it that matters more than others.

Gun Control (there is room for one more)

Logic dies another death after each mass shooting. Guns, like all inanimate objects such as cars, knives, blunt instruments, poisons, etc. are another of those that need to be destroyed, so claim the same voices each and every time. It is always about the removal from society of these objects that will solve all problems. Yet, these are objects that do not think for themselves, cannot act on their own, let alone hurt anyone, until they’re picked up by somebody, who can think, willfully decide, who is responsible for his or her action.  The gun is no more a tool than a screw driver or a car but each is capable to hurt or kill when used improperly.

If the beef of the argument against guns is the number of people killed then shouldn’t we go after, with same fervor, other agents of death, some even deadlier than guns? During the entire 10-year Vietnam War 50,000 Americans were killed. During the same 10-year period close to half a million people (men, women and children) were killed in traffic fatalities in the U.S., about 25 % of those caused by drunk drivers or were under the influence. There was no outrage or campaign to ban cars or alcohol then and now, yet these caused a thousand-fold the number of deaths caused by shootings in the country.

Logic is dead in these places and it dies every day we choose not to use it, ignore it, unencumbered by the ability to think or think properly.




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