> "Remember that there is no light behind their dead eyes, no burning flame of independent thought."
Some truth to that. ICYMI, you might "enjoy" Mark Twain's elaborations on the same theme:
MT: "Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party's approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals. ....
Half of our people passionately believe in high [silver] tariff, the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that question, too -- and didn't arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of God."
Mark Twain has been my favorite author since I read "Tom Sawyer" at the age of ten. I never cease to discover (or have pointed out to me) his seemingly endless pearls of wisdom. Thanks for yet another one.
Oh, absolutely. I don't dispute a word of this.
Trouble is, to be able to reach the shores of sanity-land again.
Amen to that. Apropos of which and of your references to Orwell:
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one."
Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/289693-men-it-has-been-well-said-think-in-herds-it
THE HERD: A warning against false hope: https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/the-herd
> "Remember that there is no light behind their dead eyes, no burning flame of independent thought."
Some truth to that. ICYMI, you might "enjoy" Mark Twain's elaborations on the same theme:
MT: "Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party's approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals. ....
Half of our people passionately believe in high [silver] tariff, the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that question, too -- and didn't arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of God."
https://www.paulgraham.com/cornpone.html
Mark Twain has been my favorite author since I read "Tom Sawyer" at the age of ten. I never cease to discover (or have pointed out to me) his seemingly endless pearls of wisdom. Thanks for yet another one.