The naive think that rational people should be able to incorporate new data to modify their beliefs. For example, if you once believed that the moon is made of green cheese, you would have watched the first moon landing and concluded that you were wrong. In reality, there were some who supposed the moon was covered with a layer of dust many feet deep; they saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and concluded their fears of astronaut engulfing dust were misguided (at least for that section of the moon.) Learning from new data is an assumption. Sadly, once ideas and beliefs have become cathected (an archaic word meaning that they have become invested with psychic energy, ie have become emotionally attached) the ability of reality to made any inroads into the beliefs is quite limited.
Some examples from today's news of long dead ideas that distort our polity:
1) Israeli intransigence prevents a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Barry Rubin describes the leadership of the "moderate' Fatah movement:
Fatah's power structure spells trouble for peace with Israel
With Fatah, ruler of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO - in effect, Israel's Palestinian negotiating partner - planning to hold a rare congress to determine the group's future, it's a good time to examine its leadership, the Fatah Central Committee.
Two important facts leap out at you: the high degree of both age and intransigence among those who lead the Palestinian movement. A generational struggle cannot be postponed forever, but the younger cohort may be even more radical. Almost all the members have been on the committee for more than 20 years; the last one was added in 1995. All are over age 65.
Why are Fatah's leaders so rarely discussed? Because to do so immediately shows there isn't going to be any comprehensive peace agreement in this generation and that the designation of Fatah as "moderate" rests on a rather broad definition of that word.
PLO and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, 74 years old, is no dictator able to order around the other leaders. Even if he wanted to make a compromise deal - which he doesn't - he couldn't deliver his own purported followers, much less his Hamas rivals.
Read the whole thing and keep in mind that those who insist that if only Israel were to stop all settlement activity there would be an opening for Peace have never addressed the fact that Fatah's leadership, let alone Hamas or any of the various and sundry other "Resistance" groups, have ever accepted Israel's right to exist. Barry Rubin concludes:
The end of Abbas's career is in sight. There is no conceivable consensus candidate to become head of Fatah, the PA, and/or the PLO. Equally, there's no leadership willing to make any comprehensive peace agreement with Israel. The Palestinian movement's troubles may get much worse.
How can such huge factors be ignored by those many people and governments in the West acting as if a quick resolution of the conflict is both possible and such a high priority?
This is not that difficult to understand. A fair minded, rational person concerned with the Middle East can only conclude that there is nothing Israel (or the United States) can do to bring about Peace until the Arabs decide that Change is necessary for them. Yet too many, including far too many among the Western elites, simply ignore such inconvenient truths as the belief structure of the Palestinian leadership.
2) Racism remains the biggest problem facing black Americans.
Last week President Obama bemoaned the racism inherent in the interaction between a Cambridge Policeman and a Harvard Professor, who happened to be black. Shelby Steele in his comments Sunday, pointed out that this incident is a distraction. Group identity and racism miss the point that the black community is failing, even with all the assistance that has been offered in the last 30 plus years. At some point, surrendering one's victimhood is the only way to stop being a victim:
Today's "black" problem is underdevelopment, not discrimination. Success in modernity will demand profound cultural changes -- changes in child-rearing, a restoration of marriage and family, a focus on academic rigor, a greater appreciation of entrepreneurialism and an embrace of individual development as the best road to group development.
Whites are embarrassed to speak forthrightly about black underdevelopment, and blacks are too proud to openly explore it for all to see. So, by unspoken agreement, we discuss black underdevelopment in a language of discrimination and injustice. We rejoin the exhausted affirmative action debate as if it really mattered, and we do not acknowledge that this underdevelopment is primarily a black responsibility. And yet it is -- as historically unfair as it may be, as much as it seems to blame the victim. In human affairs we are responsible not just for our "just" fate, but also for our existential fate.
But continuing black underdevelopment will flush both races out of their postures and make most discussions of race in America, outside a context of development, irrelevant.
3) The cost of healthcare is spiraling out of control because of greedy Insurance companies and/or Doctors.
The healthcare discussion is a triumph of sloganeering over reality. The president and liberal Democrats insist that "Health Care is in crisis" because the costs are rising so fast. Further, they insist that increasing the availability of health insurance will solve the problem. Even without the math, which doesn't add up, the arguments have missed the key problem with healthcare. The cost of health care is increasing because too many of us are surviving illnesses that once would have killed us, and by living longer and healthier lives, we are costing much, much more money:
A Case of Getting What You Pay For
With Heart Attack Treatments, as Quality Rises, So Does CostIn the 1960s, the chance of dying in the days immediately after a heart attack was 30 to 40 percent. In 1975, it was 27 percent. In 1984, it was 19 percent. In 1994, it was about 10 percent. Today, it's about 6 percent.
Over the same period, the charges for treating a heart attack marched steadily upward, from about $5,700 in 1977 to $54,400 in 2007 (without adjusting for inflation).
There is simply no getting away from the fact that if we wish to live longer, healthier lives than our ancestors, it costs money. Those of us who wish to refuse emergency cardiac care would be saving us all a great deal of money, but few wish to volunteer for the sacrifice. If we don't want to die prematurely, and the definition of premature death changes daily as Medical science comes up with new and expensive treatments to cure/manage once deadly diseases and disorders, than we have to pay for the care we want.
Unfortunately human beings are expert as devising ways to convince themselves that their failing ideas are true while dismissing all evidence to the contrary. That is why people change very, very slowly, if at all.
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