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]People are stupider in groups. When the cops interrogate a suspect, they do it individually, not to a room full of them crowded together all at once.[1]
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Why do people get more upset about killing something that's just an idea (a set, in logic) than about the killing of real persons, whose individual mortal minds are the only place where immortal ideas can exist? Why do people identify as being members of a group instead of as being unique individuals? You can have the tribe/
| 1 | is solitary, lonely, solipsistic | + + + |
| 2 | can be a couple, dialog | + + + + + + |
| 3 | is a crowd | − − − |
| 4 | has an audience | − − − − − − |
| ≥ 5 | just keeps getting worse.... | − − − − − − − − ⇒ |
Here's the net of this page: Increasing population size decreases the possibility for universal peer recognition of each person as a unique individual. If man was made in the image of God, then is the true faith throngotheistic or monotheistic. Can I, or you my reader, hope for nothing more in my (your) life than to be a particle in a colloidal suspension? I will use the second person pronoun in what follows, but I intend it to address primarily the first person: the man (woman, child, other...) in the mirror.
How much of what do you ideate are you really sure of based on personal verification of the whole relevant context? Let's say you are a left-leaning Biden supporter with a good heart, not a "progressive" in the neo-/crypto-Stalinist sense (for instance, an ADLB). You believe certain things, like that Donald J. Trump is a madman traitor who is destroying The United States of America to punish everybody who does not worship him and to prop up his balance sheet (December, 2020). But there are Trumpies who also are not genuinely evil persons, who believe that Donald J, Trump won the 2019 Presidential election because it was rigged, or that Neil Armstrong never set foot on anything farther from the center of the earth than a Hollywood stage set. Can you prove you are right about the facts and the Trumpie is wrong?
What evidence do you have for your position besides CNN, The New York Times newspaper, The BBC, etc.? You could be living in "The Truman Show", couldn't you? And, with each passing year, things keep coming out about how "The Cold War" was more or less a soap opera staged for the American people, Did you even read D.F. Fleming 's – no, no Peggy, but: Denna and Denna was no Donna, i.e., female). book: "The Cold War and it Origins (2 vols.; Doubleday)?
Why are the Trumpies wrong? Because they are believing stuff they have no evidence for. Why might you be wrong? Because you have no evidence for what you are believing. If you say: I watch CNN, they say: I watch Fox News. Sociological disenchentment of people's lifeworlds applies to everybody, not just to people whose ideation you don't like.
There are 7.94 * 10 ** 9 concurrently living persons on earth today, and 3.28 * 10 ** 8 of them are in the United States of America? But have I counted each and every one to confirm those figures? They (TMTC) could just be more of The Truman Show. On the other hand, if there were 100 persons on earth, I could count each and every one of them, and if a Trumpie said there were 3.28 * 10 ** 8 of them and that most of them voted for Donald J. Trump and therefore Trump won the election, I could drag a Trumpie around with me and we could count everybody together. I could ask the Trumpie to show me where the rest of the 3.28 * 10 ** 8 - 100 were. I would have evidence that the Trumpie's assertion was wrong. Would the Trumpie concede that fact? Maybe he or she or other would and maybe not. Heraclitus wrote:
"Waking men inhabit a world in common; the dreamer turns to a world uniquely his own."
Who is waking and who is dreaming? Who can know this? In the bitter end, we can never get anywhere vis-à-vis some persons and may need to interact with then by means of firearms or other defensive measures. Bullets do seem to end arguments even if not to settle them. What is the fake news? Is this The Truman Show?
As said, the net of this page is: Increasing population size decreases the possibility of rational thinking and feeling and, consequently, also, action. Crowds are not only dehumanizing (Where's Waldo?) and, at least for myself when I am being who I wish I was, viscerally repulsive and repugnant, but also destructive of truth. What makes the audience at a symphony orchestra any better than kids at a Rock Concert? That the medium content is more "high brow"? Is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky really as high as Bob Dylan or Mark Knopfler. I, for one, think not, and so what? Both are crowds. Neither is Wanda [Landowska] or Bob [Dylan] performing for myself and my intimates, or are they?
The population explosion is far bigger than Tsar Bomba, (Russian:"King of Bombs") , by name of RDS-220, also called Big Ivan, Soviet thermonuclear bomb that was detonated in a test over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961 with 50 megaton "yield" (Britannica.com). Persons who pro(?)create more than 2 children are exacerbating the problem. They are unethical. Aren't there too goddamned many people already? Even with communism, not every one of them could have Aristotle for his or her (or other's) private tutor.
If I were a woman, I would deeply hope I was irremediably "barren" (remember that word?), and free to create and enjoy living without fear of Amy Conan Barratt reverting Griswold v. Connecticut, for all my life, until maybe the end of days. As for the Cat Stevens quote, above, increasing population means decreasing dreams, or at least decreasing chances to spend one's days in gracious leisure personally talking with Aristotle, walking quietly in shady colonnades, doesn't it?
Why do I like the above picture? I think boxing is barbaric. It wrecks the fighters' brains (Muhammad Ali had Parkinson's disease later in life – maybe not just a coincidence like him having had an unlucky draft number?). I think nobody should be paid one cent to do any athletic act. I think competition in athletics, the economy and everywhere else is bad on principle because persons should all, always and everywhere cooperate or else be hermits. This is the first picture in Sports Illustrated's slide show of the 100 most important sports pictures of all time. I went through the whole 100 of them. Why did I do this?
Because most of the pictures showed individual persons doing something individually excellent. Muhamad Ali stands alone. He is surrounded by 35,460 Where's Waldos, but he stands by himself as an individuated person in the ring. And, yes, his opponent, Cleveland Williams, also has an individuated presence, not just being a particle in a sociological colloidal suspension, albeit, for himself, a less felicitous one. Ali (and Williams) are surrounded by 35,460 Where's Waldos. A few are facilitating Ali to be "The Greatest." Some are probably making money off him and his performance. Most probably just paid to watch him, some paid more, some less, but all of them are just spectators whose names are not recorded for History, because they did nothing individually important .
I resent and deem criminally culpable (even though I can do nothing to get justice...) having been childbirthed and childreaered to be a Where's Waldo. Which is more desirable: (1) Not to have bee born, or (2) to have been born to light up the lives of other people who probably had/hve no value and have eyes but see not and ears but do not hear? If I could not do better, I might find value in being a servant of the Chief of Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, thus contributing in the only way I could to much social good; but to be a human resource for a sociological colloidal suspension of Where's Waldos with fancy job titles and their toadies with less fancy job titles, of for some useless celebrity like Kim Kardashian West? Go Muhammad Ali! And Cleveland Williams, too.
There used to be great American Express credit card ads. A very famous person would get no attention. A clerk would ask the person something like: "Who?" → i.e.: "Who are you?" When the person presented their American Express credit card, the service person snapped to attention and the famous person got the attention their American Express credit card justly warranted. "Mr. J.P. Morgan (or Michael Jackson...), who?"
Of course there is more to this story. Muhammad Ali in the picture is very small. But aren't even Bing Crosby and Mr. Socrates and the Madonna who is not a Virgin and Vladimir Putin etcetera and so forth small in the perspective of the Hubble space telescope, which itself is small in the perspective of the astronomical universe it sees, etcetera and so forth? As all the persons who see me as a human resource for their selfless selfish ends never tire of reminding me: "Everything is not about you!" "Look in the mirror, dude!"
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