We live in a very dangerous world, a world in which empowered individuals and small groups can cause great damage. In such a world, attention to one's environment, which can at times border on paranoia, can be seen as a trait enhancing survival. In such a world, those who overvalue their own self and their own ideas place themselves and others at risk.
When I describe an idea as overvalued, I mean that an idea has acquired significant affective importance and meaning for a person. The person loses the ability to adequately "reality test" the idea and the idea escapes the usual moment to moment comparison with the state of reality that allows us to discard ideas when they fail the test.
When I describe the self as overvalued I am describing a person who places his immediate need for gratification of his own wishes in a position superior to the needs of others.
Current news offers multiple examples of just such overvaluation of the self and ideas.
By now you have probably seen or heard the news that the CDC has, for the first time in many years, imposed a quarantine on a patient infected with a multi-drug resistant form of TB, one of the great killers of the 19th and 20th century:
Federal Quarantine for TB Traveler
The infected man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. He returned to North America on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague to Montreal. The man then drove into the United States at the Champlain, N.Y., border crossing.
...
The man had been told by health officials in early May that he had a form of TB that was resistant to first-line antibiotics and was advised not to travel to Europe. "He was told traveling is against medical advice," said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health & Wellness. [Emphasis mine-SW]
This thus far unidentified man's excuse reportedly was that he did not want to disrupt his wedding, which had been in the works for a long time. The story continues:
The government issued the quarantine after a CDC official reached the man by phone in Rome and told him not to take commercial flights, but he flew back to North America anyway. "He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back," Cetron said.
Cetron reached the man once he was back in the United States. At that point, he voluntarily went to a New York hospital, then was flown by the CDC to the Atlanta hospital. He is not facing prosecution, health officials said.
The quarantine order was the first since 1963, when the government quarantined a patient with smallpox, according to the CDC.
He was told not to fly to Europe, and in no uncertain terms, not to fly back; the confined space of an airplane, with the air recirculated, is an ideal locale in which to spread an air borne infectious disease. This man, bowing to the dictates o his own selfish needs, placed his wife, who he claims to love, and a great many strangers at risk of contracting a disease that at best would require lengthy treatment with highly toxic anti-biotics and at worst would be life threatening. The story reports there are no plans to prosecute him; that is unfortunate.
An off-shoot of the overvalued self is the overvalued idea. In a pair of stories illustrating the triumph of ideas over reality, the BBC reported on the current state of intellectual discourse in the United Kingdom.
Campus extremism request rejected
Lecturers have voted unanimously to oppose government plans urging them to fight against extremism on campuses.
They had been asked to monitor and report suspicious behaviour amongst Muslim students.
But at the University and Colleges Union annual conference in Bournemouth, delegates rejected the demands, saying they amounted to spying on students.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said student trust would be undermined by fears of a "quasi-secret service".
In November, the government warned of what it described as the serious threat posed by radical Muslims and issued guidance to colleges and universities calling on them to monitor student activity.
'Demonisation'
But Ms Hunt said: "Lecturers have a pivotal role in building trust. These proposals, if implemented, would make that all but impossible.
"Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sorts of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive and even extreme. [Emphasis mine-SW]
"The last thing we need is people too frightened to discuss an issue because they fear some quasi-secret service will turn them in."
The juxtaposition with the next story is priceless, especially when paired with BBC radio interview this morning (no link available) with a University Professor who echoed the position that all ideas must be discussed and refused to answer what he would do if he found out that a student or group of students were sharing videos explaining how to make bombs. Apparently, depending on the source, some ideas are more dangerous than others:
Israeli boycott divides academics
Academics are being urged to reject calls from colleagues for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.The University and Colleges Union is debating a motion that academics should consider the "moral implications" of links with Israeli universities.
The proposal condemns Israel for its "denial of educational rights" for Palestinians, citing invasions, curfews, checkpoints and arrests
Based on a series of overvalued ideas, the UK Professors have already once voted that academic freedom is trumped by Jewish oppression of Palestinians, an idea that the BBC has done as much as any Western media source to promulgate. Unfortunately for the British public, the long standing depiction of Arabs and other "others" as oppressed by the likes of the British (essentially a variant of white male oppressors) leaves them vulnerable to the metastasizing influence of radical, hate filled, murderous, Islamic terror. The derivative overvalued idea, that UK Professors can determine from afar that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be reduced to a simple two dimensional axis of oppressor versus victim and that they can also determine the level of victimhood of all the participants is pernicious nonsense, yet it is nonsense that will in all likelihood have real world deadly consequences.
Finally, in a variation on the theme, an idea that has formed the bedrock of the Democratic and left wing excoriation of the Bush administration foreign policy has borne fruit this week. At the same time as an American diplomat had the first high level contact with an Iranian official, Iran, as if reading from an old script, acted:
Iran Accuses 3 Americans of Spying
In an announcement one day after the first long-form talks between America and Iran since the 1979 hostage crisis, Iran's judiciary ministry said it had formally charged Kian Tajbakhsh, a scholar with the New School in New York who is affiliated with George Soros's Open Society Institute, on charges of espionage and plotting to destabilize the Islamic Republic.
The Iranians also announced similar charges against a journalist for the American-government-backed Radio Farda, Parnaz Azima, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, Haleh Esfandiari.
Ms. Esfandiari, the wife of a scholar of the Iraqi Shia, Shaul Bakhash, has been one of Washington's main proponents of engagement with Iran. The arrests this month of the American citizens suggest the regime is less interested in negotiations with the West than some of the critics of the Bush administration have suggested.
What is most notable in this is the politics of at least two of the victims. Tajbakhsh and Esfandiari both are members of organizations that oppose American "intransigence" toward Iran and radical Islam and firmly espouse engagement. They are now quite thoroughly "engaged" with the Iranian Mullahs.
I do not mean to trivialize their predicament; people considered threats by the Iranian Mullahs do not fare well, but the point remains that ideas have consequences. There are clearly ideas that many Americans (at one time I would have said most Americans) believe are worth fighting, and sometimes dieing, for, ie Freedom. Risking one's life for nuanced abstractions like Academic Freedom (especially when honored so capriciously) or the belief that our enemies can be reasoned with if only we are reasonable, is risky in our dangerous world. The danger of being wrong, finding too late that one's ideas have failed the test of reality, can be fatal.
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