Perhaps you believe our democratic settlement was merely a ruse to get the old white regime to hand over power. When our living legend, Nelson Mandela, finally crosses the ultimate great divide, the whites will at last be driven into the sea.
Perhaps you believe the TRC was a trade-off, and the Constitution an elite pact between the ANC and powerful financial interests (which might include not only apartheid capitalists, but the Illuminati, Freemasons, the Council of Foreign Relations and Jews).
Do you think the media is a front for white capitalists?
Maybe you believe that Aids escaped from a biological weapons laboratory and beetroot will cure you. We had a minister of health who did.
Or that climate change is the biggest hoax since the Y2K millennium bug; the flu shot makes you sick; the polio vaccine causes autism; if you sit in a draft you will catch a cold.
Do you think evolution is false? Or that aliens landed and their bodies are kept in Area 51? Will the Large Hadron Collider accidentally turn the world into an amorphous mass of grey jelly?
Why do you believe the things you do?
Do you support the death penalty, but not abortion? Do you think racial classification is wrong, but affirmative action is right? Do you believe in a non-racial society, but believe there are biological racial differences?
Are you in favour of nationalisation or privatisation? Are you a libertarian or a communist? Who will you vote for?
A while ago, I found myself retelling a humorous story my father had told me as a child. I had often told it, but this time someone pointed out a glaring flaw in the tale. The story was patently false for a very logical reason. Yet I had never thought about it or questioned it before; simply retold it because it was funny.
We enjoy many stories we have never really tested or interrogated. What our parents tell us is part of our socialisation. We also tend to go along with our peers. There is a good deal of evidence from sociologists that our beliefs are more influenced by the circles we move in, and our desire for acceptance among our immediate peers, than it is by any rigorous investigation of our convictions. It’s a discomfiting thought, but true.
People value harmony with their neighbours, their spouse, their family, their class, their tribe. We hold as true all manner of shibboleths.
Or we put our careers first. You only have to look at the sorry level of debate in Parliament and the lack of independent thinking among MPs.
For nearly two terms, the ANC NEC didn’t speak up while the president perpetuated his delusions about HIV. Surrounding yourself with yes people has consequences. Thabo Mbeki appears to have believed up to the last minute he’d win at Polokwane.
Large political rallies of support for a leader are not to be believed. Time and again, tens of thousands flock to the streets to worship their hero – remember Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, and recently Putin – only to come back the next day and utterly condemn the same man. Gaddafi’s merciless end was not much different from Mussolini’s.
The dinner party of the chattering classes can be a mob of sorts too. People don’t tend to stick their neck out and spoil the occasion. Those who do it regularly may find that invitations dwindle. The polite prefer to keep quiet or they join in the stone throwing.
To disagree is to risk being constructed negatively by others: as “stupid”. Insult trumps argument; in the old days a “kaffir-boetie”, today “coconut” or simply “white”. Attributing colour to beliefs is probably the ultimate in thoughtlessness.
Comments on blogs, this one included, are with tedious frequency based on an utterly false construction by the reader of the writer. If you are sure of your beliefs there should be no need to shout down others.
How much of what we believe is based in ignorance and prejudice or fear and suspicion? When it comes to politicians, a little knowledge is a particularly dangerous thing.
An added complication is that we fall prey to confirmation bias. People searching the web tend to find those sites that verify their positions; online they soon assemble ammunition for their pre-existing beliefs. If you believe the Apollo mission never landed on the moon (as an honours student in economics at UCT told me), you’ll find all the evidence you need on the internet.
The world will end on December 21, 2012.
In fact, policy wonks and financial wizards keep on proving that often the most intelligent people get things horribly wrong, precisely because they are so good at arguing and articulating.
On the other hand, much of our political discourse is posturing; our public debate emotional argument. Politics has become the art of false consensus.
The problem is compounded by an inability among many in leadership positions to admit mistakes. Some of our policy debates are pathetically churlish. Political alignment seems far more crucial to people than getting facts straight: the ANC is totally corrupt, the DA are all racists etcetera. Taking a moral stance against political affiliates is even rarer. And far too many of the positions our leaders popularise have an unhealthy element of conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories are especially seductive. They give the believer superpowers – the X-ray vision to see through the vile, secret scheming of the powerful. And they award the believer with imaginary status – the conspiracy theorist is one of the few who knows that the US military-industrial complex was behind 9/11.
The conspiracy helps explain away one’s own disappointments or failures. The Zimbabwe economy collapsed because of imperial machinations; the people are not rising up against Assad, it’s Al Qaeda or Nato or American-paid mercenaries. Leaders give legitimacy to popular beliefs (a Nobel scientist agrees HIV is harmless; Einstein believed in God; Iranian President Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust never happened).
The conspiracy comes to the rescue when the truth is unsatisfactory or unpalatable; the foreigners are stealing our jobs; whites are keeping us down; it’s a political plot; the election was rigged. Once lodged in popular belief they are almost impossible to disprove, yet need no real proof of their own – the facts on the ground are all that is needed: we have no money, no jobs; our candidate lost.
Conspiracy is of course the first step to dictatorship.
The sad thing is that conspiracy theories are often based in hope, in a yearning for justice, even out of a love for one’s country. They can become the sustaining illusions for a community: we try hard but the world is ranked against us. Their believers are in a sense innocents; hoping for a better world, wishing the guilty punished.
What our education system should instil in people is the desire to lead an examined life. An intelligent society values freedom of expression, creativity, disobedience, and non-conformity. Intellectual honesty cannot exist in a society or an organisation that frowns upon dissent or typecasts those who disagree.
One expects politicians to lie. As a famous South African satirist said, if politicians told the truth we wouldn’t vote for them. Unfortunately, too many of our columnists, analysts, and opinion makers, are also playing to the gallery these days. We could all do with a little more introspection.
Follow Brent on Twitter.
Although I agree with Brent Meersman on the point of more introspection , I strongly disagree with his insinuation that everything that is non-mainstream, is potentially a “conspiracy theory”. Yes, of course many people are reverting to Google to get instant info and alternative opinions – BUT way before and way beyond that, books have always been available for informing ourselves through serious research & analysis.
So any topic or subject can be read up on, an in-depth manner, covering various or multiple (preferably conflicting) sources and then the knowledge gleaned, after analysis (and seeing both sides of the story), can be compared to the information made available in the mainstream press and media.
My point being that in fact, people are relying less and less on mainstream media, due to its lack of quality (and the “tabloidification” of it). No wonder “conspiracy theories” have become popular. It’s the fault of media itself, which once used to be a (more) reliable source of quality information. Also, as time progresses, people can see how what is reported does not always play out or manifest in truth or in reality, so again, no wonder that if mainstream media cannot be trusted, people are more inclined to start “trusting” or believing unverifiable sources.
Hi Tofolux, as an atheist, non-conformist, I have neither a human master, nor a human-made master, if you get my drift. I have neither read Biko’s works, nor do I intend to, but that does not render me any less of an admirer.
As someone else pointed out, your presumptiousness about my character is akin to that of the religious fundamentalists who accuse me similarly on my blog with boring regularity. I’ve become immune to it.
It’s been my misfortune to observe that those screaming the loudest about human rights, are frequently some of the most egregious abusers and violators. And you don’t have to bury your nose in Biko’s books to see it, touch it, taste it – look no further than the current SA regime, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
@Paul & et al, I dont know if you noticed that we as modern society of late has been xperiencing this phenomena of junk mail. Our response, most times is to ignore this and throw it in the bin. Point is, one does not have to respond to everything. One chooses the level you engage. The other phenomena is the dumbing down of information. I wonder if there are those amongst us who recognises this and are completely dumbfounded at the complete non-sense noting that they experienced unwarranted priviledges.
@ Max (to Tofolux)
“you are using the internet and speaking English are you not? Are these not the inventions and ways of the masser?”
With respect, this is typical a WHITIST discourse that assumes that everything worthwhile comes from colonialists. Are you forgetting that the WHITE man invented the technologies of mass destruction that destroyed Dresden and Nagasaki, and a carbon-fueled economy that threatens catastrophic rises in water pressure? And that there was a thriving civilizations in Great Zimbabwe and Cradock while your brutish ancestors huddled in caves in the Alps, etching pitiful “paintings” from half-burned embers?
@ Tofolux – Independant thought is NOT allowed. Either you are with us or against us. You seem to have severe lack of empathy. So it is true: you cannot educate to emotional intelligence….
@Lenny, no I do not get your “drift” at all but let me say that I am most surprised that you are then able to declare something as ”rational and realistic” and pose the question ”degenerate into race-issue”. This is surprising because noting your ‘drift’ one ask what has influenced your views to make a declaration of the ”r & r”. If you have not been influenced by someone else’s experiences, not walked a day in their shoes and have had no empathy with their experiences. Not only are these experiences from one person, but from many, in very different countries. What strikes a chord is the fact that all of these wonderful freedom fighters, black in particular agree on the circumstances, agree on the practise and agree on the pain. And yet, here you are ”drifting” and making this huge declaration without being accordingly informed. Also, what is this new thing amongst you people, who are willing to dictate to people what they are experincing, I have noticed this phenomena that some tell us, there is no pain, some tell us, there is no such thing as continued racsim post apartheid state and that we should stop complaining. What is this new thing, maybe YOU are best placed to explain this noting that have these very different experiences compared to some of us.
@Tofolux: You are not responding to rational arguments presented to you. Instead you side-step and misrepresent everything to which you do not respond as “junk mail.”
As Lenny said, your responses are those of a fundamentalist – only that with which you already agree is considered, all else is dismissed out of hand.
@ Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder
Hallelujah! Thank you for informing and enlightening me.
Until I read your comment today, I never realized that by disagreeing with tofolux, I was in fact endorsing:
the A-bomb,
the destructive aspects of a carbon-fueled economy,
whitist racist imperialist colonialist discourse…
I was an ignorant fundamentalist simpleton/moron.
I repent.
I shall endeavour to be more insightful and nuanced in my thinking from now on. Praise Tofolux!
@ Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder:
“ETCHING pitiful paintings from half burned embers”?
By your own reasoning, that is a racist attack on the Bushmen.
Also, etching involves acid and has nothing to do with painting.
Tofolux, I may not have suffered to the same extent under apartheid as Biko and others, but I suffered nonetheless. I felt the pain of oppression acutelynas he did. I don’t need to relive the experience through his or anyone else’s books. The difference between me and you, and dare I say many others like you, is that I grew from that experience, and I decided to move on with my life.
You, and others like you prefer to wallow in this victim mentality. Isn’t it time you moved on and started really living, instead of constantly looking for sympathy?
Max, OK, I was wrong to say ETCHING. I meant “scratching.”
But I still say Tof is correct on her main points.