About ME, @MRJAMESNOB
THE 'TRUTH'
To some, self-described, 'normal', 'intelligent', 'well educated', 'evidence-based', 'happy', 'productive' ‘socially active’, people it is preferable to label me as a sad, lonely loser who needs my head examining for my 'bonkers' or ‘lunatic’ views. Such people are frequently wrong about other, more important, things too.
About ME
Because of some of my views I have been told, by a radio presenter who's never met me, that I'm a nobody. I take this seriously because radio presenters are very important people.
The same broadcaster suggested I am an irresponsible, friendless, loser. A ‘loony’ who sits alone in my room in a deck chair surrounded by mess, draped in a soiled dressing gown with a grungy laptop on my knees. The audience was told that I spend my days in a YouTube and Facebook echo chamber trying desperately to find excuses for my failure and loneliness. I apparently harvest ‘likes’ by disseminating bullshit to other, gullible idiots because I have no friends and need the dopamine hit that ‘likes’ apparently bring.
And, it seems, whilst completely at odds with my own experience, all this must be true.
It must be true because the very important person who said it, live on air, knows how to be right and, even more impressively, knows how not to be wrong. And he must be right and know how not to be wrong because he has written books, real, 'printed by a proper publisher that you can buy in bookshops', books so he must know what he's talking about.
Anyway, since everything he has said about me is 'right' so, as I say, everything I thought about myself up to now must be 'wrong'!
I have been set straight. It seems I have misjudged myself. I have imagined it all. I am, it appears, utterly deluded about the reality of my life. Nothing I knew about myself, my history or my current circumstance appears to be true.
So I have decided that I will settle in and cast myself as this 'right' man's loser. It seems the ‘right’ thing to do.
So here I am, sad and alone, in my imaginary deckchair, in my imaginary basement, with my laptop and no friends other than the meaningless likes on the facebook page I don't have (but, I’ve decided, I’m about to!).
I will do my best to articulate my thoughts, views and insights in a way that any normal, intelligent , educated, evidence-based, happy with their place in the world person should be able to understand. This shouldn't be too hard 'cos that's what I thought I was until I was told otherwise by a self-righteous, cretin.
Oops - slap on my wrist - I can hear my mummy's voice in my head. 'Stop that! Stop that name calling James NO'Braien'. You shouldn't call people names! It's rude.
WHY IT'S WRONG AND DANGEROUS TO THINK YOU ARE ‘RIGHT’
This site is a call for help. It would be particularly interesting to get help from someone who knows how to be right and, even better, someone who knows how not to be wrong. I really need this help because I keep coming across facts that don't match what I am told by the media, by government and by the self-appointed 'righteous'. So I thought I would present my insights here
By so doing I might be better understood by any 'normal', 'intelligent', 'well-educated', 'evidence-based', 'rational', ‘productive’ people who have enough open-mindedness to consider an alternate reality to the one they have chosen to blindly inhabit.
This is not because I want to be right. On the contrary. I’m totes open to being wrong. In fact I don't much care to be 'right'. I rather think that believing one is ‘right’ is the first, disastrous step on a road to extremism. As soon as we think we are 'right' then we make others out to be 'wrong' and that can cause a whole heap of trouble. The world is a complex and complicated place and things are rarely 'right' or 'wrong'. Things and people just are what they are. Our only hope is to try to understand them better.
Unfortunately in this complex world there appears to be a powerful, scum layer (in a cess-pool economy the scum tends to rise to the top - more on that in my book). This scum layer seems to have enough influence to manipulate ‘truth’ and 'facts', they can corrupt 'science', they’re able to fabricate 'economics', control 'politics', manipulate the 'law', restrict the 'news' and generally exert malign control.
The reason the scum layer can, largely, do this and, frankly, anything it wants, is because it has the power to create 'money' out of nothing and this trans-national scum layer owns virtually everything.
As soon as anyone makes a statement like this 'normal' people recoil in horror. It is comforting for 'reasonable people' for ‘educated people’ to bucket those with these kinds of 'unacceptable' views in a group of undesirable (and therefore ignorable) individuals who are 'losers', 'wackos', 'fascists', 'conspiracy theorists', 'racists', 'bigots', 'crackpots' or any one of a range of other deemed insulting names that means 'they are not like me'.
It is often very uncomfortable for 'normal', 'educated', 'intelligent', 'evidence-based' people to have their world view contested, let alone shattered by the truth or actual reality.
This is not to say that there aren't people out there who believe things that do, absolutely, seem to be and almost certainly are, completely ridiculous and unfounded. However, I think we can learn more by holding back on judgement and exploring their thoughts, listening to their experience, investigating their ideas and debating issues coherently in a collegiate way. This is likely to be more productive than insulting them, shutting them down, refusing to have the debate and dismissing them as ‘sad losers’ or some other disparaging pejorative. To do so is just lazy and is deliberately divisive.
But what do I know? I do not think I am right. And I have a long way to go before I'll be convinced I'll know how not to be wrong. Life is a journey. There is a world full of fascinating people much smarter than I am out there. I want to learn from them all. I'm open to anything but, along the way, I'll do my damnedest to be properly informed and check my references for myself.
Welcome to my world. I do hope you enjoy the ride.