Friday, April 05, 2013

The Epistrophe: Or, "Turn That Thing Around, You'll Hurt Someone...!"



I think it’s a mistake to assume that any given instance of Islamophiliac (and Islamophobophobic) obtuseness is due to some nefariously willful (and hence effectively seditious) “cultural Marxism”. 

Occam’s razor ought to be applied, such that we first assume a sincerely starry-eyed and benighted PC MC is the primary psychological motivator. With PC MC (unlike with hardcore Leftism), the problem is not evil, but a sincere and relatively intelligent goodness warped, where the resultant ideology and policies reflect a semi-conscious error; not malevolence. One must not let the grievously injurious effects of the error lead one to impute an evil will where there may likely be only sincerely starry eyed confusion. 

One good metaphor, I think, is that of a useful instrument simply pointed in the wrong direction or applied in the wrong place. Imagine a perfectly functioning vacuum cleaner, efficiently plugged in, turned on, then applied to a rug on which one has carefully set out a thousand delicate and priceless photographic slides. The fault is not in the vacuum cleaner’s effectiveness; it’s running fine. Nor is the fault in the rug which needs to be cleaned. The fault is in applying the vacuum cleaner to a specific rug not ready for cleaning.

Or to vary the metaphor, consider a firearm which is in perfect working order, and would be most useful in preventing a murderous rapist from destroying your child; but which, when pointed in the wrong direction, would destroy yourself or the innocent bystander merely coming to assist you.

In these metaphorical scenarios, the PC MC idiot is not the user of the instrument, but the instrument itself.

Simply put: Most PC MCs are good guys, pointing their sincerely starry-eyed concern in precisely the wrong direction.

Why this wrong orientation has come about, and why it is obtusely maintained in the face of daily burgeoning data contraindicating it, is a more complex problem. Many in the Counter-Jihad seem to have an impulse to simplify this problem by imputing a nefarious cabal afoot: this would not be, I insist, Occam’s razor aptly applied; but rather the brute hacking of the Gordian knot. 

While Occam’s razor is useful and its principle of valuing simplicity over complexity is sound, there is such a thing as the opposite error that reaches impetuously for a false simplicity in order to avoid an unavoidable complexity. In our current predicament regarding the Problem of the Problem (the latter being Islam and the former being our Western myopia of it), this error could have reckless and dangerous consequences.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"With PC MC (unlike with hardcore Leftism), the problem is not evil, but a sincere and relatively intelligent goodness warped, where the resultant ideology and policies reflect a semi-conscious error; not malevolence."

If you seriously try to introduce a PC MC cultist to reality, you will see their true malevolence rather than intelligent goodness.

Many are called, but few answer....

Egghead

Hesperado said...

Egghead,

No, again, I think you are confusing Leftists with PC MCs. The former are for the most part the way you describe; the latter will not in that kind of circumstance betray an underlying malevolence, but rather a maddeningly annoying cheery obtuseness fused with a tinge of self-righteous "I'm on the side of ethics here, and only an idiot would disagree" attitude.

But I do appreciate you continuing to bang your head against the Hesperado wall... :)

Anonymous said...

It may be the way that you say if you lightly scratch the surface, but get into a knock down drag out fight of facts with either leftists or PC MC cultists and you will see malevolence rear its ugly head.

People HATE to be proved wrong by facts even more than they fear to be maimed and murdered by savages.

That malevolence will attempt to hide in avoidance. NEVER talk to me about that topic ever again....

Too much of people's identity is invested in PC MC and too little in GOD.

Egghead