From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 11

We’re coarse:

Inclined to crudity and refractory to sharpness, we stubbornly favour the simplistic over the detailed. Suppose something dangerous is moving close to us in the dark, and the only light available is a strobe one; our fate depends inexorably on the strobe speed: too slow the strobe, too poor and scarce our information, too few our chances. I previously brought to your attention that all answers are basically simple; well, this is totally different. Woe betide he who mistakes sloppiness in method for simplicity in result. When we observe something, it’s as if we shot a series of pictures of it – and each picture, motionless and two−dimensional, is but a distant approximation of the actual three−dimensional and moving thing. So, when we and that thing will be face to face, we’d better have had and studied the highest possible number of pictures of it, or else. Predictably enough, instead, we claim the authority to dictate the fates of people and issues on the solid grounds of a couple of passport−sized photos of theirs.

In the same frame of mind is repetition of inspection. Repetita iuvant, repetitions are beneficial, the Romans said. And you can test its truthfulness for both its uses: to clarify or to manipulate. I’m touching on manipulation in another paragraph, so suffice to say here that as to clarification you just have to try and test: pick up whatever you want and repeatedly observe, inspect and study it, and then notice if in the process you find more and more understanding and previously unnoticed facets and details. Once done, next comes repeating it with something else, and then with something else, until you have an ample enough statistical base on which you can conclusively say whether sharpness in observation is a useful and functional virtue universally. In light of all this, consider how the more the range of colours we’re capable to detect shrinks towards black and white, the easier the task of those aiming at shifting us from self−control to remote control.

We’re quantitative:

There’s an old Lombard saying, “Chi vusa püsée la vàca l’è sua.” It literally means, “He who screams loudest the cow is his.” Or, in more explicit terms, “He who screams loudest wins the ownership of the cow in people’s eyes.” For anyone to get anywhere, two ingredients are vital: intelligence and force. Both of them are vital, which means that, lacking either one, one is going nowhere. And between intelligence and force we favour – or rather succumb to – force. We, beings made of quality, abdicate to the world, made of quantity. If there’s something we’d deserve damnation for, well, here it is: anything becomes true to us by dint of sheer repetition, impact, force, quantity, regardless of its truth.

Here’s where we demonstrate what we’re made of, steel or clay. Any fabrication, any lie, becomes truth if it gets repeated far and wide enough in terms of time, space, force, repetition or whatever form of quantity, in spite of its quality; and we’re prone to see quality in it according to the quantity we’ve been overwhelmed with.