Partisan tribalism versus thinking for yourself.

[misteraven]

So this is a sort of aggregate of several threads that I thought is past due as a focused topic of discussion. It Dort of occurred to me while in the shower this morning, that the Covid-19 debate is very near exactly the same as the gun debate once you abstract the specific detail. Like most discussions, it falls near;y perfectly along partisan lines, which in turn, moves in a different direction that what would likely benefit everyone both individually and collectively.

 

Go grab a coffee or a beer, as I explain my thought process and position...

 

We see the word "science" thrown around quite a bit lately, most especially in regards to the Covid-19 topic. Lets start by defining what science is... According to Google (likely most definitions fall pretty close to this)...

 

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Science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

 

So in other words, science is a framework for humans to increment forward their understanding of the world. By its very nature, its sits firmly in a position of skepticism, which in turn prohibits it from reaching absolute conclusions. Though we can pretty much reach consensus on basic principals like the world is indeed round and not flat as science once dictated, once we get past superficial observations / understandings, we can no longer speak in terms of absolutes or we slip into dogma.

 

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Dogma: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

 

As you can see by comparing both definitions, these two approaches pretty much sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. The language of absolutes is not science. Fort that we have math as a language to communicate absolutes.

 

In any case, I think these days when you see people use "science" as a hashtag, most often the context is actually dogma. It's being presented as this is incontrovertible truth, which is something that should not and does not fall within the framework of science, in which its purpose is to methodically question everything, generally in very formalized ways, specifically for the purposes of improving our understanding of it.

 

Looping back to the gun debate, which is a slightly different conversation, generally the anti argument is that guns are inherently bad. This debate is most often approached very much from the same position of dogma, because if we approach it logically we can very quickly see that it has much more complex underpinnings, such as economic and social inequalities, cultural difference, etc. Once we start to look at the subject scientifically, we can reasonably look at other data points such as how the defensive use of firearms compares to its illegal use. Why firearm specific crimes or violent crimes in general often follow fairly predictable patterns, as well as how they are also historically also concentrated to specific areas. 

 

I believe like Covid, once you analyze the situation critically and apply reasonable debate to the subject, you begin to see that the realities differ from the public discourse quite significantly and like guns, if the true motivation was a tangible solution that prioritizes mitigating the negative effect of either, that the conversation would look much different, as well as the study and almost certainly the strategy / solution.

 

Likewise, in both of these specific debates, its hard to ignore how massively politically charged they are and again, when start to view the politics around both from a place of skepticism and apply critical observation and thinking, we can also quickly see that there are many agendas at play that start begging the conclusion that those leading the discourse and debate have other priorities besides actual solving the problem.

 

In regards to Covid specifically... If we take the loudest voices on the side of the debate advocating for vaccines... Shouldn't we be more focused in understanding anti-bodies? After all, the entire purpose of a vaccine is to engineer anti-bodies. Yet, Israel recently stopped including that data point publicly in their reports. In the USA, the Red Cross recently dropped reporting that data point for blood donations, but likewise, it doesn't seem to have even entered the debate as perhaps being something we should be keep a close eye on. Further, if the priority was genuinely an understanding of Covid for the purposes of a solution, even a high school science student would call out the flaws in data collection. We'd be applying the same metrics across the board, from infected groups to vaccinated groups to control groups. You'd also think they'd give more priority to peer review and establishing an accurate testing protocol.

 

Anyhow, my purpose here isn't to get people to argue for or against vaccines. Rather, I'd like to open up the discussion about thinking for yourself. Applying reason and critical thought to subjects and doing what you can to ignore the positions and talking points that are built into the partisan tribalism that seems to have infected the entire country (if not world). I still wholeheartedly stand by position of it being useless to advocate for the left or right when at the end of the day you're still just shoveling a heaping pile of shit into your mouth despite what hand you've picked. And I do believe the government and talking heads have been largely over playing their hands so that despite partisan position, people are kinda at the point of telling the powers that be to go fuck.

 

I don't know... I've tried to stay focused on putting energies towards the things in this world I can actually control (since putting energies towards the things you're concerned about pretty much come at the expense of what you can control), but maybe I can have a little influence on opening minds and accelerate the process of opening people up to genuinely thinking for themselves.

 

Discuss...

[abrasivesaint]

Coincidentally, much of the far-left doesn't trust the vaccines and media nonsense the same as the far-right doesn’t. 
 

I’m skeptical as fuck of the motives. I believe the vaccines work, but they seem to be on par with many drugs you hear pushed on cable commercials. They fix whatever issue they’re designed to, but have “rare but serious side effects.”
 

I’m already at risk for blood clots due to trauma to my leg, and having to replace an artery with a vein from my motorcycle wreck years ago. That Johnson and Johnson shit could have smoked me. I understand that only 28 people out of 9 million had issues with it, (as of May), but i wasnt trying to be number 29. 
 

Seeing as how Pfizer has the largest health care lawsuit slapped against them, and Johnson and Johnson has hundreds of thousands of lawsuits slapped on them, i’m very skeptical of them both. Moderna seems to be fairly clean. I’ll get the shit eventually, because i believe vaccines work, but i’m not jumping to the head of the line. I got COVID a couple months back, i apparently have anti-bodies for now.

[abrasivesaint]

Just like anything else though, i couldn’t give a fuck what party my line of thinking falls in. I make my own mind up. 

[abrasivesaint]

Also on the topic of dogma, i just unfollowed an account on Instagram for their use of the word “comrade”. The use of that word makes me fucking cringe. To me, it says you’ve read some political theory (congratulations), and are still willing to accept ideas that are spoon fed, an unavailable to question. I have little to no time for that sort of approach to any organized efforts, political or otherwise, but probably especially political. 

[psalm91]

On 8/6/2021 at 9:09 PM, abrasivesaint said:

Also on the topic of dogma, i just unfollowed an account on Instagram for their use of the word “comrade”. The use of that word makes me fucking cringe. To me, it says you’ve read some political theory (congratulations), and are still willing to accept ideas that are spoon fed, an unavailable to question. I have little to no time for that sort of approach to any organized efforts, political or otherwise, but probably especially political. 

 

@Dark_Knightlikes this word.

[Dark_Knight]

53 minutes ago, psalm91 said:

 

@Dark_Knightlikes this word.

[Mercer]

On 8/6/2021 at 8:09 PM, abrasivesaint said:

the word “comrade”

 

Tankie dog whistle. Same people who wear Che t-shirts, and can justify any act of violence towards an innocent person in seconds.