What do UFO-ologists and Politicians have in common?
Conflation!
I have been thinking a lot about belief this week, and the difference between religious and political belief and the belief that science is not a belief.
The truth is out there. More so in politics than in UFO and mysteriology. In the world we have various systems but generally two diametrically opposed beliefs today -democracy and oligarchy``````````. Either you get to decide somethings about your environment, family life and working conditions or someone else does. That applies equally to both views, the ultimate socialist view point and the ultimate capitalist vis a vis oligarchist view point.
In the UK and to some extent the USA, after the 2008 melt down of the international financial loans and invesment system(s) the left got the blame for the woes of the country. This was a conflation: juxtaposing two unrelated phenomena so as to build credibility for the arguement. They couldnt pull it off in the USA, because Obama was not on the scene long enough to be blamed, but they did try, by saying of course he was making things worse.
Leaping to a conclusion, attributing cause away from the real root, over looking contrary evidence. This is very much the connection which bonds politicians to UFO-ologists. Sound bites actually become little packets of belief carried and amplified by the media.
One of the best conflational stories was that of the UFO ology 'church', the seekers, who were lead to believe by their leader, that the world would soon meet its end in destruction by aliens. A date was chosen, in the 1960s sometime, when the event would happen and the group made ready to meet the aliens with prayers and chants. It was either midnight or sunrise or whatever time, but on a hill top in a circle with perhaps hands held in a chain, the seekers fell silent awaiting the second of the apocalypse. It passed. Some more time passed. The charismatic leader and founder of the "religion" took some time and then announced : " Ah, our faith was strong, the aliens heard our chant and we have spared the earth !!!" Putting the con in conflation.
The same happens today all the time with on the one side politicians and on the other UFO ologists. The funniest example is probably the Dark Knight Alien Satellite . What is funny strange and ridiculous is the way the image of an unidentified orbital object, photographed by the US during a space mission, is juxtaposed immediately with the claim that this is a 13000 old object known to be omitting radio signals. There is then presented a whole chain of mysterious radio observations, merely loosely connectable and never substantiated or previously connected to the object and then just the presentation of fiction as fact or a belief system we should follow, because we are being mislead by the authorities. The fact that strange claims and undocumented, uncorroborated observations go unchallenged by governance, and do not warrant official denial, means that of course via conflation a tautology is created which some people choose to follow.
What is lacking in our education systems which means that we do not as a huge majority of sane middel intelligent, rational beings just see through the false logic? Well it is just rude for governments and institutions to go round dneying these things, and a waste of time. There is some serious research into phenomenii such as the Hessdal Energy Emission Lights (there I just made my own little conflation for my own purposes!!) However we as the public are left uninhindered to believe these things as long as they do not do us harm, or that our belief does others harm. You can see where I am going with this. Radical godless "islam", fundamentalist nazistic zionism, Christian fascist conservatism. See three more confaltions slipped into three massively damaging total systems of conflation.
Governments cannot go against the logic of conflations otherwise they threaten not only to incurr the wrath of religion, but also to avoid them losing the biggest party and political movement tool of basically juxtaposing some economic facts, or environmental facts with a cause or with an outcome which are only tentatively linked. But they sound good together. They sound chain of events, cause and effect.
Teaching greater use of logic and enabling individuals to think critically is the reserve of the university system and outside the command economies of the east, that is a tiny proportion of global society. School tends to avoid metaphysics and logic. Critical thought and expression is tallied to language and literature, and that just exacerbates the potential for conflations to be presented to others and promoted in the media as fact and likelihood. Science of course touches on basically the concept of the 'rigourous scepticism' from Hume and Descartes. The binding theory of the Null Hypothesis and the need for observation and experiment as a series of small steps. It is boring, it changes the world slowly, the atom took 40 years to split. But it makes planes fly and iPads work.
Politicians it can be asserted, make an environment in which planes can be designed to fly, and iPads designed and built to work, and they believe that environment must be built on belief, because science does not build confidence. It answers most often with more questions. Economics, sociology and even accounting are most often taught at traditional universities in the colleges of arts. Belief builds investor and consumer confidence, and that does to some extent build economic growth.
In fact the belief in the need for economic growth, the top line industrial output, exports, price and volume harvest and so on is so paramount as to be suspiscious, like the birth of jesus on the 25th of December. It is a blunt weapon, growth is a simple cause and effect parallel to build investor confidence on.It is a big day one economic mega-digm which is based on a massive string of conflations and juxtapositions. Perhaps it is just belief which floats it as being so important and so 'effective' in creating well being. Inflation is the enemy, but also a consequence of growth. So in fuelling growth and value multiplication in the western world where we are still de industrialising, the sub prime vehicle emerges as the angel of terror, the unicorn in the mist whcih shows the folley of the whole system. Bang.
Teaching logic and the rigourous scepticism in state schools is dangerous in the west. Perhaps though in China you can see that the combination of a huge history of a hierarchical mega bureacracy and also the grand scale destruction of religion by the cultural revolution. Now they play at command capitalism, but in many other aspects of building a society, and industry and other structures of a new mega power, they are at a huge advantage. There is a rational chain of command and corresponding chain of events, cause and cascade of effects.Perhaps they are better poised not only to tackle the challenges of their own existence as a giga state, but also the challenges of the world.
A final conflation, With Freedom comes Responsibility. You could say that this idiom is just that, a nice bit of wishful thinking.
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