Peterson Postmodern Connection

The issue of gun control and individual freedom can bring about some discussions that drive logical people to want to tear our hair out.  The apparent inability of some people to use linear logic and reason to come to rational conclusions in spite of feelings and emotion has given rise to Joe Huffman coining a name for the condition Peterson Syndrome, in "honor" of Joan Peterson of  the Brady Campaign.

Some of us have spent some time discussing how it is possible to be so disconnected from reality.  While Huffman and myself, as well as others seem to be able to describe Peterson Syndrome, we would still like to understand where it comes from.  After all, you want to know if it's organic or communicable, and if it is communicable, you want to be able to take all possible precautions against it.  I never got around to writing an in depth post explaining how I believed it was the result of postmodern education. But then, today, I started at Smallest Minority, where Kevin led me to Labrat's post at Atomic Nerds.  His post led me to MaxedOutMama.

Wading through all of this seemed to confirm for me that what I originally suspected.  That Joan Peterson and this professor Venkatesan have the condition we now call Peterson Syndrome as a result of postmodern indoctrination.  This is a very subtle form of solipsism.  It is very subtle because you have to let someone like the professor, or Peterson, talk long enough for the origin of their irrationality to manifest itself because neither of these women would consciously be aware of, let alone admit, that they were steeped in solipsism.

I can understand that Peterson has succumbed to her mental disorder because she lost a family member to a violent predator using a gun.  I would liken it to a child getting thrown by a horse, who then is afraid to ever go near a horse  from that day forward.  She allows her emotions to completely override rational thought, and gets support from like-minded individuals.

The postmodern thinking described by the two citations at MaxedOutMama's blog, as well as her explanation got me thinking again about how people like Joan Peterson become the way they are.  The best quote from the professor that drove it home for me, was the following:

In graduate school, I was inculcated in the tenets of a field known as science studies, which teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth and that science is motivated by politics and human interest. This is known as social constructivism and is the reigning mantra in science studies, which considers historical and sociological understandings of science. From the vantage point of social constructivism, scientific facts are not discovered but rather created within a social framework. In other words, scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.

Wow.  Just, Wow.  No wonder her students were making fun of her.  The first part of that statement isn't completely bizarre, but the last statement is whacko.  Let's break it down.

You are not in any kind of reality if you think that facts are created rather than discovered in the realm of science.  That there are people who believe such a concept would explain why so many buy into the global warming hoax.  If your social framework is that capitalism and free markets are bad, there is no better idea than to make naturally occurring gases that are good for plant growth into some kind of evil pollutant. If you want people to believe that biochemical molecules can somehow defy the laws of physics and that complex, coded information simply arises out of inanimate matter, I suppose the view of the professor makes sense to you.

Since the world began, scientific discovery by humans has been driven mostly by need.  Need for better ideas, tools, and techniques in everything from agriculture to warfare. That there may have been a political (warfare) reason to try to figure out a trebuchet or discover the chemistry of gunpowder doesn't make the facts of chemistry work differently because of why you need it.  Food plants don't sit around thinking about whether or not you have the right historical and sociological motivations or understandings about how to cultivate them. Ergo, to make the outrageous leap to concluding that last sentence just makes me want to find whoever passed on that idea and drop them in the Australian outback.

As someone who passionately defends the truth of the Bible based on hard, proveable science and history, I find it hard enough to have discussions with people about real science and the scientific method even when they haven't had their minds warped by ideas like that.  How then do you have a rational discussion about scientific facts versus theory with someone who thinks that social construct determines facts?  In short, you don't.  Facts that conform to a social construct are not facts at all.

If there are people with the title of professor in colleges and universities spreading this kind of mental disease, it's no wonder we can't have any civil discourse on politics.  We can't have any discourse.  It's no wonder I run across comments on various blogs that reflect complete ignorance of historical facts on the constitution.  It's no wonder that so many people don't, or simply can not, distinguish between raw facts and interpretations of evidence.

Because we didn't make a concerted effort to embarrass people like that professor out of the classroom long ago, we end up with people like the person Kevin Baker is engaging in this post.  People who a hundred years ago we would have just pointed at and laughed at, because even a sixth grade child could have explained why what they were espousing was sheer nonsense.  Now such people are numerous enough to have elected a president to what once was the most powerful country on the planet.

Peterson Syndrome II

The first installment of this essay can be found here.

From my studies on language, the government welfare systems, politics, and history, I find that people are pretty much like electricity and water; they take the path of least resistance and they seek their level.  Both of these things are a corollary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Both of these conditions have never changed in the course of human history.  The founders of the U.S. of A. understood this.  Mankind is not inherently good. Therefore, he needs to be trained in the ways of goodness. The Left wants to believe that mankind is inherently good and because they want it to be so, therefore it must be so. Both cannot be correct.  The proof of this can be found every time one ventures out into the community.  You can easily find one example of the Leftist style of parenting.  It is often hard to find examples of conservative styles of parenting, especially if you live in a large, metropolitan area.

You are in the store, and you can hear the kid wailing, sassing back, just being an all around little jerk in an effort to get his way (girls too).  The reason this is happening is because the parent sees little Johnny or Susie as an adult with all the rights and privileges that they themselves have. Johnny must be negotiated with. Johnny deserves to know that mommy can't afford to buy him that toy. Never mind that he doesn't contribute anything to household income or even know how to balance a checkbook.  The word "No" to Johnny simply means that he hasn't negotiated long enough or used severe enough tactics. This kid has been reared to date under the assumption that Left wing ideas about human nature are true, only to prove that such ideas are nonsense.  This kid has not the slightest inkling of concern over what is good for his family, his mother, or anyone around him.  He wants what he wants and is determined to push the envelope as far as he can to get it.

Once in a great while, you come across a family, often there are two or more children (that's the first clue, and there's a reason for it) where the children are quiet, respectful, and observant.  The older one's might even be helping to tend to the younger ones.  These are kids who have been trained under the assumption that the training is necessary.  Lest there be a misunderstanding, I'm not talking about strict discipline that borders on abuse.  I'm simply talking about loving discipline that helps the child develop into a loving, caring adult.  The conservative understanding of human nature and the subsequent training that results from it, produces people who function well in a society as self-sufficient and contributing to the overall good.  The leftist philosophy of human nature is that of leaving the garden to grow completely untended so that it produces nothing of any value, and we all end up starving.  The only thing that keeps the latter scenario from happening quickly is the reality of human nature that creates the speed bumps on the way to hell.  We just experienced such a kind of speed bump in the 2010 elections, or as P.J. O'Rourke said, "more like a restraining order."

What does this have to do with Peterson Syndrome?  Well, in thinking long about it (and I intend to think more, and refine my thoughts on this), Peterson Syndrome is something akin to Stockholm Syndrome, in that it is induced by outside factors, rather than being something innately organic.  It is my opinion that it is like brainwashing.  Albeit slow and subtle and accomplished by what I would call a "Cattle Conspiracy."  Once a Cattle Conspiracy has fully developed, reality becomes a very inconvenient truth.  This is what we see happening in France and Greece as of this post.  It does not matter that there is no more money to allow government union workers to retire at 55 and continue to collect taxpayer money in the form of pensions. They will riot in the streets until either the government sprinkles more magic pixie dust on the treasury to produce the money, or the government sends in troops to violently squash the rebellion.  This is the fruit of Peterson Syndrome on a large scale.  You could take a classroom full of Greek or French union workers, or for that matter, General Motors union workers and set them all down with charts and graphs and give them a crash course in basic economics and you would be lucky if one or two out of 50 understood that the game was rigged for disaster from the start.  It doesn't matter that the laws of economics have no feelings for their circumstances. They were promised something. Logic and facts be damned. "I have my RIGHTS!"  These people don't even understand the rules that determine whether or not something can or cannot be a "right."  Somebody said  "_____" was a right, and they believe it, and that settles it.  Look for a forthcoming essay on what constitutes a right.

Peterson Syndrome was coined by Joe Huffman about Joan Peterson and her irrational and illogical perception of inanimate firearms and human nature.  I think this became easier for us conservatives to analyze because the firearms issue has statistics that are far less complex for understanding than economics, while at the same time having far more emotional aspects that paint the picture with much more vivid colors.

In the next installment, I'm going to try to show why the promoters of the Peterson Syndrome do what they do.  After that, I hope to delve into their methods.

Peterson Syndrome

I won't get into my reasoning and thoughts about predestination. That's a subject that I wouldn't discuss with someone unless they were a fairly accomplished Bible scholar and over the age of 30 and it would help even more if they had children.  I only mention that to say this: I am very blessed that I did not start college until I was almost 26 years old.  I had been orphaned at 13 and lived at the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch. I had intellect, but no wisdom, and no one to help me or make me realize that good academic scores would realize a big payoff in the future.  After graduating high school, it would be straight into the work world.  Before beginning college I would have had at least six very different jobs.  One of them involved digging in the hot sun to install phone cable with a guy who had a Ph.d.  in some liberal arts field that I don't even remember.  By the time I was 20, I was THE store manager for an auto parts chain. I would go on to more things, and all of that experience gave me some wisdom.

Don't ever confuse knowledge with wisdom.  You can know a lot of crap that is factual and not have "a lick of sense," or wisdom.  You can spend a lot of your time and intellectual power to learn a lot of facts and information that is very useful, or stuff that won't make a pile of dirt worth of difference to your well-being.

My hard won wisdom borne of experience was with me when I started taking the requisite classes for my associate of arts degree.  So, when I had to sit in a college classroom and listen to some instructor pontificate on a subject, my BS meter would go off like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl. I was nothing like the teenagers fresh out of high school who sat there listening to every word that came out of the instructor's mouth as if it was all beyond question.  I had many "lively discussions" with many of my professors, to the shock and disbelief of surrounding students, especially when I made them admit their errors and biases.  It was a couple of years into my college work and also teaching Creation/Biblical apologetics that I discovered what the problem was in academe.  Which brings us to the following quote by Joe Huffman regarding his naming of the condition that we conservatives encounter in people on the left:  Peterson Syndrome; named for Jan Peterson who advocates for the Brady Campaign.  [Hat tip to Kevin at The Smallest Minority]

She is frequently incoherent. She cannot distinguish the difference between intentions and results. If she is a liar she would not repeatedly make these kind of mistakes. Or if she is a liar then she is very very smart and skilled to consistently use the same sort of tool without ever slipping up.

I claim it is not necessarily and in fact probably isn't stupidity. If this were stupidity then this sort of faulty thinking would not continually show up throughout human history even with people that are exceedingly well respected. Every age and society has stupid people in it and they are easily recognized and the instances of them being well respected are exceedingly rare. This is some other type of mental disorder.

This mental disorder can be, and has been, easily detected. Ask the question, "What is the process by which you determine truth from falsity?" People suffering from this mental disorder not only won't be able to supply an answer but frequently cannot even understand the question. The question is nonsensical to them. They are lacking a thinking process. Hence, by necessity, they fail to process information. Asking them to supply a process when they are totally unaware of the existence of such a concept results in the same sort of difficulty as asking a person blind since birth what color the walls are. They have no common basis with the questioner such that they can even understanding the question. This is the same sort of response we get from her. She cannot understand concepts that to us are intuitively, blindingly, demonstrably, obvious. It is nearly impossible for us to believe that she does not understand what we are saying. But if she were blind you would not claim she was stupid or a liar if she did not know the color of the wall.

Joe describes the condition, but does not offer a cause.  This is what I would like to rectify.

The problem begins when the philosophy of education shifts from teaching students HOW to think to just teaching them WHAT to think.  I wondered how we got to this model of education in the United States and most of the western world. In my own autodidactic studies, and teaching of apologetics, I saw the need to demonstrate to my students how important it was to use logic to determine truth.  I had known that in the past, even high schools had debating classes and competitions, but this had become passé.  That's where the breakdown of education had begun.  Having to learn how to reach a conclusion and then articulately defend it is the real measure of knowledge.  With rare exception, such learning is now missing from all "higher" education past the twelfth grade.  When that which is supposed to pass for education has been reduced to merely memorizing facts and information with no understanding of how the information should be usefully applied, society is heading for disaster.

History bores the snot out of kids in the public government school indoctrination centers because it has been stripped of the information that makes it relevant in the name of "separation of Church and State."  Math is boring because it isn't coupled to history and the significance of what each discovery in the field did to improve the human condition. Science is boring to many students for the same reason.  I've always loved science and thought it was fun, but it had nothing to do with what I learned in school.  It was because I was always finding stuff on my own and doing my own experiments.

How many people understand syllogism?  Far too many people cannot recognize a false premise to start with.  This is what creates the famous GIGO condition that software engineers and other scientists in the hard sciences are painfully familiar with (Garbage In, Garbage Out).  If the basic facts or information is flawed, no amount of wishful thinking is going to create a better outcome.  Not within the confines of this space/time continuum.  That is the first lesson of logic.

This will be my first essay on understanding the Peterson Syndrome.  If you'd like to contribute your thoughts on the matter, email me at:  moses5768@yahoo.com.