Assess this line.
- Thread starter op2
- Start date
Here is what this made me think of relative to how things are today, although it was said long before our current environment existed.
So much of our social world has become what I would describe as inauthentic. Virtue signaling is at epidemic proportions. Twitter is crazy (if you don't think so, go there). Outrage culture is, well, our culture now. There is so much posing with the intent to show other people how virtuous you are or how angry you get when something happens you don't like or whatever.
Not only is it inauthentic, it's so common that it affects people who aren't like that. There is a witch hunts atmosphere and people are afraid to speak. Furthermore, not only do some suffer severe social sanction for saying something incorrect, it's not evenly applied. One person says something deemed bad and gets clobbered. Another person says something that by the same metric as the first person should be considered even worse and nothing happens.
This all sounds like social totalitarianism to me.
In case you're interested in where I read the quote in the OP, I read it in the Jordan Peterson book "12 Rules." He has become a sensation to some and a hated figure to others but I was familiar with him long before his recent hit book came out. I think he's interesting and says a lot of good stuff along with a fair bit of pointless blather, but the hatred he has engendered is, I don't know, I guess I'd call it weird.
I had no big desire to read his book but I noticed it was available at the e-library I use so I went ahead and put myself on the wait list and it came up eventually so I'm reading it. It's pretty good although there are sections I don't get and won't get unless I put in a lot of work and I'm not that interested so I don't do it. He talks some about the symbolism of Bible stories and other ancient literature and how it relates to the human struggle, etc, and I've read some analyses of texts like in the past so I get that they exist but I'm not familiar enough with it to get it on my own now. But when he talks in plain English about modern days stuff, I get it and mostly like it.
All that said, the quote in the OP isn't his. He notes that it's from Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor, who wrote a book that Peterson mentions named "Man's Search For Meaning," which I haven't read. I do like the quote though.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
I just came across another great line in the book, again not said by Peterson himself. It's by a 1900s psychologist named Carl Rogers and in fact I remember the name (but not this quote) being part of a Speech Communications course I took at WVU taught by a guy named, I think, John Shibley, who this many decades later may or may not still be with us. Here's the quote.
"The great majority of us cannot listen; we find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening is too dangerous."
"The great majority of us cannot listen; we find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening is too dangerous."