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My Favorite Sagan Quote, and Commentary
By Tim Rambo
12-15-2007
Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which Information is collected and used.
Carl Sagan
This is a huge problem in my opinion even with some of the otherwise intelligent.
We tend to forget that we have hardwiring, including preconditioned filters. One of the biggest, most intrusive filters is the religious preconditioning that none of us escaped. Anyone that believes otherwise is either a fool, or hasn't thought it through.
As to hardwired aspects we all have preferences for what we want to see, and hear, not just the Jesus freaks, or religious moderates. If you deny this like they do, you are only nurturing the human propensity for errancy. People need to be aware of their limitations, and that identifiers like atheist, or free thinker give you no immunity to faulty thinking. No immunity to selective facts that fit your perceptions. Particularly filtering out the whole picture of your adversaries, and enemies. Allowing your emotions to see in delusional archetypes. As an example I don't think any of my friends hate Hillary Clinton any more than I do, but I saw a bulletin the other day that was so preposterous, and obviously audio edited, to say nothing of the fact even if she believed what was depicted in the video she wouldn't be stupid enough to publicize it. In the video they had her remarking about genesis, Mark, and then say she believed in white supremacy. The person wanted to know if this could be true rather than just deleting it for the moronic propaganda that it was.
This goes to what Sagan states. It isn't just about knowledge, it's how complete and objective your knowledge gathering is. It is understanding the information, and conceptualizing when necessary. Then knowing how to incorporate that information into credible dissemination, let alone your own accurate perceptions.
I will say this, unlike our Ron Paul counterparts, and 9/11 truthers, most of my friends came to grips with a huge despairing disappointment, namely Dennis Kucinich, without downplaying, rationalizing, or apologetics. But I think there are far more like the former rather than the latter.
It appears to me anyway that arrogance plays a part in their dysfunction when it comes to critical thought. They have never even considered in what ways their thinking, and concluding can be corrupted. They hate religion to such an extent that to them admitting they could have been effected by aspects of it's conditioning caused them to put horse blinders on a long time ago, refused introspection, and simply didn't address it to begin with so it stayed alive and kept them ill.
I was one of the lucky ones that shit canned the supernatural by the time I was 13, and the seeds were planted a few years before that. As I grew older and my reasoning developed I held much of society in contempt after realizing it was imbued with religious conditioning right down to many of the laws, and legislation on the books today, and growing. I know the vast majority of the people in society, including a large segment of the secular community bought into and accepted with no scientific basis whatsoever the myth of evil by being pro capital punishment as one example.
I think the older you get the more difficult it is to shed the entrails of cultural, and religious conditioning.
Even many atheists get ruptured sphincters trying to be oh so politically correct, even in their own sub culture, which wasn't immune either from the main player. PC has gone way beyond the pale of reason. Now it spins, ignores, and out right fabricates alternative realities.
It's like a cancer, and you have to be on guard, and attack it with critical thinking chemo every time you see it.
If you don't, depending on how much of a slave to preconditioning you are, you'll find yourself being right, or even partially right more times by accident, than on purpose.
7:17
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