S3 E51 — What Do Cult Followers Lack?

“Let’s face it” the host said, “They just lack critical thinking skills.  Not everyone who fell down the rabbit hole of social media stormed the capitol.”

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Freedom isn’t always a process that takes forever. Sometimes, it’s a state of mind that can be achieved in an instant. The way out may be just to get out — to rise above and find something different to care about.” Pisces

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 51 in Season 3 of  My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 23rd day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E50 Swinging with Systematic-Professionals, Sorta; S3 E49 Stealing Your Sign Without Doing the Time; S3 E48 Is That an Ace Up Your Sleeve or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E51Let’s Agree to Make Things Worse, Shall We?; S2 E505 Fundamental Uncertainties; S2 E49Navigating Waves of Disruption When You’ve Lost Your Bearings; S2 E48Tracking Millennials from One Resort to Another

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E51Brief, Broad, Fast, Wow and Delight; S1 E50The Bias Brothers or Just Plain Losers?; S1 E49 — Magnetize the Version You Imagine; S1 E48Holiday TauBit Trumps Funk

Context

CNN’s cohost commented on the defense of one of the arrested insurrectionists by dismissing the attorney’s claim he was a victim of “Fox-itus” a type of brainwashing.

 “Let’s face it” the host said, “They just lack critical thinking skills.  Not everyone who fell down the rabbit hole of social media stormed the capitol.” 

Critical Thinking 

I fell down the rabbit hole called “stack-itus” like when I searched through background experiments in graduate school.  I grew curiouser and curiouser tracking one to another.  

“Critical Thinking” led to “Reasoning” to “Executive Decision Making” and led to the “Cerebellum and the Central Nervous System” with a brief philosophical stop at “Socrates” and then onto a severe right hand turn shockingly back into my history to Donald Broadbent, “the influential experimental psychologist.”

What in the world triggered all this?  

The missing topic for the “Conclusions” section in my 1-Year Natural Experiment Report — Critical Thinking, 

The process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.Wikipedia

Here’s the so-what definition that matters to critics of Q-anon, the MAGA crowd and the traitors who stormed our capitol, from Wikipedia:

The analysis of facts to form a judgment. 

Socrates established the fact that you cannot depend upon those in “authority” to have sound knowledge and insight.

He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational. 

Socrates maintained that for an individual to have a good life or to have one that is worth living, he must be a critical questioner and possess an interrogative soul.

He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief. 

Socrates established the importance of “seeking evidence, closely examining reasoning and assumptions, analyzing basic concepts, and tracing out implications not only of what is said but of what is done as well.” — Wikipedia

Reasoning, which seems to be in short supply:

Is the capacity of consciously applying logic based on new or existing information … associated with acts of thinking and cognition, and involves using one’s intellect. Reasoning, as a part of executive decision making, is also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change, in terms of goals, beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and institutions, and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination. — Wikipedia

Evidence

And, then there’s this from Holiday Mathis’ Forecast for the week ahead: 

It’s been suggested that there are those who observe how things are and ask, ‘Why?’ and then those who dream and ask, ‘Why not?’ But these needn’t be, and usually aren’t, two different groups. The best thinkers, both diligent and imaginative, bounce between both questions, taking what they can from past conclusions as they move forward to build the new world.

And, so the circle is closed with “Holiday-itis.”

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Freedom isn’t always a process that takes forever. Sometimes, it’s a state of mind that can be achieved in an instant. The way out may be just to get out — to rise above and find something different to care about.” Pisces

So, the unless your Holiday Tau applies to domestic terrorists spouting liberty and freedom as their excuse for January 6th’s insurrection, what are you getting at today?

“2”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61:Since what you seek is also seeking you, all this shifting you’re doing only makes it harder for the thing to catch up with you. Be still. Stop searching for it and let it find you.” Virgo

Try as I might today, Greene and Guttenberg, your Holiday Tau feels confusing.

“2”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Confucius said, ‘To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.’ Arguably, some offenses are more memorable than others. You’ll be judicious about which grievances to carry.” Libra

Is your Confucius Holiday Tau just as confusing as G&G’s or what? 

What’s Going On

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8203 to 8218 organically grown followers.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips