But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is told only what his target thinks will not cause him to pull the trigger. The elite, with their burden of omniscience, face the underlings, with their burden of nescience, and receive only the feedback consistent with their own preconceived notions. The burden of omniscience becomes, in short, another and more complex burden of nescience. Nobody really knows anything anymore, or if they do, they are careful to hide the fact.
Hagbard Celine
Democracy has been less than a total success — and the intellectual’s half-shamed cynicism about democracy is justified — to the extent that traditional society did not need, could not use, and in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal (“rational”) skills in the majority of the population. That is, concretely, most people are not encouraged to be very smart, and are rather heavily programmed to be comparatively stupid. Such programming is what is needed to fit them into most traditional jobs. Their bio-survival circuitry works as well as that of most animals, their emotional-territorial circuitry is typically primate, and they have little third-circuit “mind” to verbalize (rationalize) with. Naturally, they usually vote for the charlatan who can activate primitive bio-survival fears and territorial (“patriotic”) pugnacity. The intellectual looks at the dismal results and continues to believe in “democracy” only by an act of Blind Faith similar to the way beliefs in Catholicism or Communism or snake-worship are maintained.
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