As we are slowly edging out of the Covid-19 panic, some faster, some slower, two key questions call for our attention.
The first question is: Why do so many people still believe the madness that took hold of most of the world was justified?
The second question is: How can we prevent such madness from taking hold again, or at least decrease the probability of it happening?
To answer the first question, serious psychological research is needed.
To answer the second one, we have to figure out what the barriers are that protected those who didn’t succumb to the propaganda and become engulfed by the ocean of irrationality. The most important of those barriers is critical thinking. And the first step toward critical thinking is to understand the limitations of language and how to overcome them. This is the subject of a short piece I published on my professional Substack a couple of weeks back. I hope some of you find it useful. If you do, please subscribe to The Edge of Reason.
Judging from what has just happened north of Blighty's border, I fear that the madness is set to continue-at least where the SNP is concerned- under the guise of progressivism.
Newly installed FM Yousaf is determined to resurrect the disastrous and dangerous Gender Recognition Bill, already knocked back by Westminster and seems to be intent on squaring the political and theological circle, since,as a practising Moslem, he must therefore be planning to defy his religion's notably strict and ,in many countries, lethal, proscriptions on homosexuality and gender ideology.
This will inevitably invite the linguistic contortions and double speak favoured by the progressive left: young children are 'non binary', 'be kind' gives howling violent mobs a get-out-of-jail freecard when persecuting women who try to make the case for irrefutable biological fact and climate change means whatever the green inquisitors say it means.
As with the ridiculous masking rituals, also eagerly promoted by the left, the assertive dogmas brook no discussion, no debate, no dissent and no challenge.
Basic rules of grammar and syntax are now disappearing into the melange of group speak and double think.
Alas, psychologists have neither the tools nor the will to investigate this issue. But the short answer is available in psychology's back catalogue: cognitive dissonance. It's important to appreciate just how drastic a transformation of beliefs is required to transition from faith in the Nonsense to putting together a broadly plausible version of events. As long as the legacy media is able to maintain their story, the Covidian non-religion rolls on.