How fortunate I am to be among those—like my friends—who understand the world correctly.
We know who to trust and who to doubt.
We study the facts. We weed out errors. We reason carefully. And as a result, we arrive at conclusions that are best for all.
We don’t base our conclusions on what is good merely for ourselves, but for what is good for our neighbors, and for the entire world.
We align ourselves with like-minded individuals who have independently arrived at the same conclusions.
How lucky that I’m not part of the half of the population that sees things differently.
And how fortunate I understand not only that they are wrong, but why.
Why they’re wrong
Some are wrong because they are evil and corrupt. Some are wrong because they are lazy and unprincipled. Some because they are naive and ignorant.
The evil and corrupt know what’s right. They have gone through the same reasoning process that we have. They know that our conclusions are correct. But because they are greedy and selfish and power-hungry and evil, they sacrifice the good of the world to their own interests. They lie. Shamelessly and constantly.
The lazy and unprincipled could discern the truth if they took the trouble. But they don’t. They don’t care enough about learning what’s right to sift through issues. They trust the liars when they should not.
The naive and ignorant follow the crowd around them, also naive and ignorant, led by the lying, lazy, manipulative, corrupt people that they trust. They don’t question what they are told. They are impervious to reason, and unlike us, they are incapable of learning what’s correct.
How fortunate we are to be among the half of the population that is right.
We are the virtuous ones
It’s not a matter of intelligence: there’s no significant difference in IQ among the two groups. Nor is it just education: both groups have both highly educated and uneducated people. It’s not wealth and income: both groups have wealthy members and poor. It’s not just geography: plenty of both groups live in cities and rural areas. It’s not a matter of belief: both groups contain people from all religions, people who are spiritual but not religious, and people who subscribe to no religion.
The only real difference between our group and the other is our virtue.
My friends and I have the virtue of sound judgment. We choose wisely who to trust. They do not.
We have the virtue of unselfishness. We are concerned with the greater good. They are not.
We have the virtue of diligence. We work hard to find the facts and avoid ignorance and delusion. They don’t.
We have the virtue of rationality. We reason carefully and thus avoid the errors that the evil perpetrate, and the others accept.
How sad to think that unless we were one of the evil, lying, selfish people who lead the other half, we wouldn’t suspect that some of what we believe is incorrect, that some of our reasons are wrong, that some of our conclusions are not for the best of all.
How sad to think we might be wrong in countless ways, and not know it.
How fortunate we are to be right.
No comments:
Post a Comment