I’ve been wading through Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, and not particularly enjoying it. I felt at first as if Wheen had merely strung together example after nauseating example, without explaining clearly what his argument was. Not until I reached page 193 did I find this paragraph:

The new irrationalism is an expression of despair by people who feel impotent to improve their lives and suspect that they are at the mercy of secretive, impersonal forces, whether these be the Pentagon or invaders from Mars. Political leaders accept it as a safe outlet for dissent, fulfilling much the same function that Marx attributed to religion — the heart of a heartless world, the opium of the people. Far better for the powerless to seek solace in crystals, ley-lines and the myth of Abraham than in actually challenging the rulers, or the social and economic system over which they preside. Ever since idealist philosophers such as Hegel and Schopenhauer denounced the demythologising spirit of modernity, empirical analysis has always been opposed by those who fear that the stripping away of illusions can only end in miserable disillusion.

The Church of the Subgenius has a handy slogan: “Relax in the safety of your own delusions”. One for instance may believe faithfully in the wisdom of the market and the Invisible Hand, ignorant of the fact that the hand is directed in much the same confused way that ants carry food — it goes in whichever way the majority are pulling, even when the majority are resolutely pulling in the wrong direction.

What Wheen seems to be saying is that people have gone overboard in rejecting rationality for emotionalism, and that this has left them vulnerable to exploitation by the powers that be.

Personally, I would dub this the Age of Greed: where people want the world to conform to their wishes and their wishes alone; where they get what they want, when they want it, and to hell with what they or anybody else need. Hence stories of firemen needing to cut out walls to extract morbidly obese people, conspiracy theories and extremist punditry, proliferating cheap junk stores… all right, I’m conflating greed and selfishness here, but you get the idea. The seven deadly sins overlap anyway.

I wonder what Wheen would have made of the “birther” nonsense, in which the very eligibility of President Obama has been called in question by certain fringe elements, or the sheer tribalism of modern American politics in general.

It doesn’t mean you’re crazy –- talking to yourself has cognitive benefits, study finds.

In a recent study published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, psychologists Gary Lupyan (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Daniel Swingley (University of Pennsylvania) conducted a series of experiments to discover whether talking to oneself can help when searching for particular objects… It was found that speaking to themselves helped people find the objects more quickly.

I talk to myself a lot, partly to try and help myself focus on and work through problems, and also shut out distractions when I’m trying to think or remember.

The only problem of course is that when you’re talking to yourself, people always think you’re talking to them.

I’ve been wading through Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, and not particularly enjoying it. I felt at first as if Wheen had merely strung together example after nauseating example, without explaining clearly what his argument was. Not until I reached page 193 did I find this paragraph:

The new irrationalism is an expression of despair by people who feel impotent to improve their lives and suspect that they are at the mercy of secretive, impersonal forces, whether these be the Pentagon or invaders from Mars. Political leaders accept it as a safe outlet for dissent, fulfilling much the same function that Marx attributed to religion — the heart of a heartless world, the opium of the people. Far better for the powerless to seek solace in crystals, ley-lines and the myth of Abraham than in actually challenging the rulers, or the social and economic system over which they preside. Ever since idealist philosophers such as Hegel and Schopenhauer denounced the demythologising spirit of modernity, empirical analysis has always been opposed by those who fear that the stripping away of illusions can only end in miserable disillusion.

The Church of the Subgenius has a handy slogan: “Relax in the safety of your own delusions”. One for instance may believe faithfully in the wisdom of the market and the Invisible Hand, ignorant of the fact that the hand is directed in much the same confused way that ants carry food — it goes in whichever way the majority are pulling, even when the majority are resolutely pulling in the wrong direction.

What Wheen seems to be saying is that people have gone overboard in rejecting rationality for emotionalism, and that this has left them vulnerable to exploitation by the powers that be.

Personally, I would dub this the Age of Greed: where people want the world to conform to their wishes and their wishes alone; where they get what they want, when they want it, and to hell with what they or anybody else need. Hence stories of firemen needing to cut out walls to extract morbidly obese people, conspiracy theories and extremist punditry, proliferating cheap junk stores… all right, I’m conflating greed and selfishness here, but you get the idea. The seven deadly sins overlap anyway.

I wonder what Wheen would have made of the recent “birther” nonsense, in which the very eligibility of President Obama has been called in question by certain fringe elements, or the sheer tribalism of modern American politics in general.

Originally posted 18 October 2009