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Thoughts XVII - Ebola, Intellectuals

Now to Ebola... In the late middle ages with the epidemic of the black plague, one of the first causes was declared to be the public bath house.  these were common.  But with the pronouncement, most of these houses disappeared, and consequently personal hygiene essentially disappeared in Europe for centuries.  The ramifications of other diseases probably has never been properly estimated.

Ebola manifests the big scare of 2014.  It keeps other calamities and catastrophes off the front page. It allows the bigger issues of cyber security, terrorist threats, and crime on the back burner.  It disrupts the fabric of normal business.

My feeling is that with the Ebola scare, hospitals may induce and endure a climate of intense contagion awareness, causing unusual and severe protocols that will not disappear even if Ebola is effectively reduced to nothing.

As you know sensible people are not in charge.  Politicians will work this scare to their demagoguery maximum; hospital administrators will do everything in the name of public safety to keep their positions. Even the slightest variation from total safety will be avoided.  Hospital costs will rise significantly on this account. We will see the emergence of the 10,000 page policy and procedures manuals at all health facilities.

This will all come to pass!
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You have to love the intellectual. Never has so intelligent a group of persons been so wrong about so much, but still believe their assessments and solutions as near gospel truth. Their self-belief is without bound, without reflection, and without doubt.  When intellectuals' judgments fail, they have natural corrections assigning unfavorable outcomes on other forces or that their assessments would have produced better results did not go sufficiently far. Intellectuals would rather double down than accept intellectual failure.  Why not?  Failure is something we all do.  Some ideas simply fail.

Personally, I am most proud not to call myself as one, yet not an anti-intellectual either.  I cannot expatiate on any topic.  My arguments are based on a mixture of logic, beliefs, and pragmatism.  I understand that the community of man has no allegiance but for a sense of well being. I am unmoved by ideologies of all forms.   When another is wrong, it must be first observed, internalized and then recognized.  However, to be polemic is equally wrong.

Make no doubt, the intellectual's principle skill must be with articulation. When the illiterate expresses a view, it appears as flawed by dint of the words used.  When the intellectual expresses the same view, the words provide the lubrication for and ultimate intoxication of truth. This self-intoxication provides the justification of correctness and belief.

Intoxication, yes.  No other word counts as more descriptive.  Why?  Consider three words, maxim, aphorism, saying.  All use exactly the right number of words, in often a clever way to express a sentiment often interpreted exactly as one wishes.
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The everyday academic is a firebrand until the age of 30 after which becomes fossilized.

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Put the word "instinct" before any subject and you've got a book on the subject with a particular viewpoint.  Examples: faith, language, math, political, piker, gaming, medical, musical, confusions.  There is even quite a well developed theory of instincts.  The word instinct has multiple meanings ranging from mental operations to some higher level or shortcut to understanding, to the most primitive action of lower animals.  It is ripe for centuries of unproductive dialogue. Philosophers love it, psychologists love it, personal motivation authors love it, everybody loves it and uses it when they brag about some quick insight.

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