Man In Progress

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photo credit: photographer padawan

I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about how emotionalism seems to trump logic and reason in this country, and perhaps in the world at large. There was the recent NY Times article about anti-intellectualism, which I found fascinating. Then the other day, my fellow Cincinnatian Bill Cunningham obnoxiously teed off on Obama, later justifying it by saying that he’d been instructed to toss the crowd some “red meat” in preparation for McCain’s speech.

Red meat? Those two words were a not-so-subtle suggestion of how the voters in this country are viewed by the elite. Quite simply, the candidates and their advisers view their supporters as mindless sheeple who are easily worked into a frenzy by empty and juvenile diatribes. We’re viewed as emotional, irrational dimwits.

Don’t get me wrong. Emotion has its place, and is important to our ability to empathize with and connect to others, but when it is allowed to outweigh reason, scary things can happen. I think we always need to be on the defensive against those who seek to convince us of their assertions by appealing to our prejudices and biases instead of our minds. The yelling and the screaming should, in fact, alarm us to the often uncomfortable reality that their position couldn’t pass muster if viewed intelligently. It takes an honest person to pull back the curtain of noise and pulpit-pounding so that the truth can be seen.

I’ve noticed in myself an occasional tendency to be easily swayed by demagogues, and it’s something I’m trying to improve on. First you must see it in yourself, and then you can address it.