Comment by RyanMcGreal
10 years ago
Haunting and frighteningly timely short essay. This particular part jumped out (not least because the first sentence is highlighted):
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.
Around the same time (1930), Sigmund Freud articulated the concept of "the narcissism of small differences" in his book Civilization and its Discontents, a concept that is endlessly useful in understanding how otherwise like-minded people tend to tear themselves apart. A related concept in software development is "bikeshedding".
However in "bikeshedding", like-minded people tearing themselves apart over small things is a byproduct of the underlying problem: they're procrastinating the bigger issue.
Maybe that's the point. I feel sometimes like the world today is so complex, that it's hard to be sure of any politics whether it will work, or produce more misery than good. So, perhaps on a subconscious level, it's easier to bicker about details and never actually do anything.
Moral high ground is the privilege of those that don't do anything...