“It’s not what we don’t know that prevents us from succeeding; it’s what we know that just ain’t so that is our greatest obstacle.”
I’ve seen versions of that quote ascribed to Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and even others. This one is said to have been said by Josh Billings. Those men knew each other, so that quotation may be a shared creation.
Whoever said it was right. For here is wisdom. Obvious wisdom at that. Problem is, the stuff we know that ain’t so we now insist is so. We even make law to force people swear to error. Yea, even in Science itself. Or, I should say, especially in Science.
Fat people are now healthy. Say it. You have to. It’s Science. A little girl who thinks she is a boy, must be cut, with real knives, into the vague shape of a boy. And we have to swear the result is a boy. That’s Science, too. There are no such things as human population groups, i.e. races, and white people are congenitally evil. You have to agree. Science. A man inserting his pertinents into another man’s sluice gate is engaged in no more dangerous act than a second man impregnating his wife. Science says so, and so must you.
Covid was the deadliest plague evah, and you had to do exactly what the TV told you, even if it told you contradictory things, or you would die. Science said so. There are no differences, at all, between men and women. Instead of wondering how we could therefore tell the sexes apart, which should therefore be impossible, we swear to the sameness. Because Science. In the same way, everybody is a blank slate, equally capable of all things, except whites, who cause differences to manifest by their mere presence using an occult power called whiteness. Science again.
It’s not just people. Every time you act when you could have acted differently, you spawn off an entirely new universe, to add one more to the infinite multiverse. Science insists on this, and so must we. And you couldn’t have done anything differently anyway, because your will is not free. Unless you seek to punish the evil. Then it is. Say it. Say the Science.
I could go on, and so could you. But let’s not and instead inject and actual Science quote. (Thanks to TD for the tip.) This Science quote is from a peer-reviewed paper, in a prominent journal. That’s how you know it is Science. And since it is Science, we must agree with it. The journal is BioScience, from the American Institute of Biological Sciences.
Here is the first sentence in the paper: “Life on planet Earth is under siege.”
If they say so, it must be so. It is Science. I may look out the window and see that life on the planet is not under siege and, except for a great consuming political madness that grips us, life besides man seems to be doing okay. But I can also look out that same window and see a shapely lovely creature and know it is a woman, and therefore weaker than I am, and who therefore thinks differently than I do. Yet I know that my senses are deceiving me here. Because Science said they are.
Which means I must also be wrote about what I see about the weather. I see that there is nothing special happening. Other people have reported this, also from their very own eyes. But none of this counts, not against the Eye of Science.
Anyway, in the paper is a picture of a woman sitting up to her chest in water. Which must mean there is a “climate crisis”, just like our scientists claim.
Problem is, the lady doesn’t especially unhappy to be in the water. Don’t we hear of women paying outrageous sums for “spa days”, which they they soak themselves in who-knows-what substances? Maybe that’s what we see here.
But, no. Science says it is a sad picture, and so we must take it as a sad picture. We have learned the lesson, many times, have we not?, that sad pictures cannot be argued with. I mean, you could, but then you might hurt somebody’s feelings. And that cannot be allowed.
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Epectetus the Stoic roman philosopher said something similar along the lines “you cannot learn what you think you already know”.
Agreed with what you wrote but it lost some impact from lack of editing.
The most interesting application of this estimably true phenomenon is to our own political confraters. Cook a few sacred cows on the Right, from the Right, and it’s like watching the Helen Kellerization of an entire room of formerly healthy people. A sort of intellectual malediction.
For example:
“Democrat controlled cities, municipalities, and states fail.” – New England seems to be doing OK. Could it be something else? No, no…certainly not demographics….or – just maybe?
“The government is the problem!” – Do guns kills people, or do people kill people? Oh, it’s people? Then explain why government is the problem and not the people controlling the government. And by the way, just who are those people anyway…? Best not to say aloud if you look too closely, I hear you have a well paying job.
“Identity Politics is bad!” – All politics is identity politics. Learn to play, or lose the game. P.S. we have the stronger tribal identity if we will just embrace it. To quote Mr. Belloc, “The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold Divine – but for unbelievers a proof of it’s divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”
“We’ll win any Civil War EZ, we have the military, and all the guns!” – Wouldn’t bank on the former, and as for the latter constituting some sort of impregnable fortress of military might in the eventuality of a civil conflict, I’m sure the Tsar felt secure in his might in 1914 as well. In fact, I know Wilhelm did, so did the South with it’s aristocratic military culture, and Charles I, and Caesar on the Ides of March, and Darius when he landed his army, and the British in 1776. I guess we might get a chance to see if we’re special, huh?
Oh it’s so much fun.
About half of what I know is wrong – unfortunately I do not know which half.
Screw ’em all. I’m down to my last ten or fifteen years, and I don’t give a damn any more. My goal at this point is to have a good time and make my carbon footprint as big as possible. Gen Z can cry.
@Cary D Cotterman
I’ve never heard that righteous remnants of fallen nations are born of spite, nor that our fellow Men or God much care for it, but best of luck with that.
One thing is certain to satisfy your prophecy, Gen Z is crying and will continue to cry, but more for a want of fathers, civilization, and God than anything else. It’s the cry of an infant with an empty stomach, irritating, but no fault of the infant’s.
Recall, Gen Z isn’t the generation writing these papers and making these claims, except to ape their predecessors. So who’s the first ape? I’m positive he shed some tears when he realized he’d gotten involved in this monkey business. Can’t recall his name right now, but I just don’t give A-dam.
“¡Science™!”
I just get tired of all the arrogant people that actually believe they are important and what they say is the truth and science. Whenever I see Hillary Clinton, she is the ultimate Yankee and will try convince people of her hollow mind and soul. Even her husband probably got tired of it long ago. Kept her around to support his lies.
Throughout most of human history, there has been something of a consensus about public knowledge. A certain body of facts was considered to be agreed upon and generally accepted.
Since the Industrial Revolution and the growth of cities – an environment so friendly to the huckster, the demagogue, and the con-man – more and more “knowledge” has been cooked up and disseminated in pursuit of special interests. Manufacturers and salesmen telling us that their special snake oil cures all known ailments, and lengthens life. Politicians selling us all kinds of biased and fictional stories, which eventually grow into actual ideologies.
The Internet accelerated this trend. Not only can one not trust the newspapers, travelling salesmen, and politicians; today one cannot believe radio and TV, doctors, scientists, business executives, or even civil servants. The leaders of our armed forces lie their heads off about non-existent threats to “national security”. Industry and government have their own massively-funded propaganda departments. And now attention has shifted, ponderously but decisively, to choking off the supply of truth.
H. G. Wells predicted these developments about a century ago. Replying to those who claimed that new-fangled wireless would be the means of spreading culture and learning to the masses, he replied that, on the contrary, it would soon be taken over by hucksters crying their wares.
How right he was.
Marker coming down for the year-end predictions review:
https://www.popsci.com/science/asteroid-nt1-earth-planetary-defense/
Just to tie to the top post, “what science knows that ain’t so” is that global warming is more a risk than falling space rocks. If both were considered as trolley problems, and we had to throw the switch to devote resources to dealing with the greater risk, don’t we have to consider that the occult and unexpected and very very sudden risk of a space rock makes a difference from the (supposedly) obvious and predictable and very very slow change in climate?
And now …… https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-calls-for-paradigm-shift-in-theology-for-world-of-today ……. One World Religion well on its way!!!
God bless, C-Marie
Perhaps the woman in the photo is trying to tell us that her toilet is backed up.
Here’s more Expurts! Look at their expurtize! You would be mad not to heed it!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/taibbi-according-pundits-ignorance-makes-americans-give-wrong-answers-economic-confidence