Am writing on Substack again.
The redoubtable wisdom of Mark Twain has only tended to magnify in force in the years since his passing. Arguably one of his most adroit insights, quoted above, points to the perils of groupthink—again, arguably. What, after all, is the difference between being in a state of ignorance with an open mind, and being in a state of ignorance with a closed one?
Might it be the difference between being able to do something about being a state of ignorance, versus becoming hostage to a state of ignorance, and in so doing being condemned to act out on being hostage to a state of ignorance? This seems the classic conundrum of the bounded rationalities of ideologies, of closed systems of instrumentalist, power-driven thinking and their authoritarian psychologies; the ability of the group to defend consensus against causality. Its groupthink claims: the truth of an idea is determined by the number of people who believe it, not by any demonstrable foundation in casual reality.
Or, in other words, what I know for sure to be true is more important than my capacity to asesss and know truth where it fails to conform with my preconceived assumptions about what actually constitutes reality.
Check the rest on Substack.
About the Author
