How to spot the four horsemen of apocalyptic stupidity
We’ve given this so much though that our inside jokes turned biblical and ended up in the core terminology. But bear with us. The matter itself is fundamental, and we are developing the discourse as we go along. This is about four perfectly fixable problems with the way people currently think. Many of you know all these already.
1) Emotional immaturity
We live in an upside down world where incompetent and emotionally immature people can hold positions of great power and be in charge of matters that impact very many people. I am sure you can think of an example of such an adult child making a mess on the world stage off the top of your head.
Research adjacent to this topic suggests that it takes a society with some breathing room in early adulthood for development beyond what happens in childhood and adolescence. It is true that in our known history, most have been deprived of the luxury of introspection. Trauma and other issues hindering development have generally been rampant no matter which society you look into. And even now, in the Western world where many people would have the time and space to develop in the adulthood, trauma and other hidden issues keep them stagnant or in a downward spiral.
Because traits such as competence, maturity and integrity no longer seem to play a role in who succeeds and who doesn’t, many people don’t see the point of making an effort to evolve. And unfortunately to the rest of us, the most emotionally immature people rarely realise how immature they are. This combined lack of incentive and self-awareness produces individuals who may well have found “success” in adulthood but are completely unable to cope with how fast the world is changing.
Emotional immaturity makes one blind. Emotionally immature people do not know where their thinking is eroded by their hidden fears and unhealthy needs. Even if they had some skills of introspection, the system completely skips addressing these blind spots (lest it would become destabilised). This is why it is impossible to have a fully rounded conversation with an emotionally immature person. Instead of the obvious and available fix, which is therapy, they refuse to change. Therefore, the rest of us will always have to filter, soften and play-pretend, and the emotionally immature people have no idea that they are being babied. (Small wonder, seeing that they might also get elected president.)
The way this brand of stupidity becomes apocalyptic is when “what I want” gets confused with “what is true.” Emotionally immature people often have no way of telling these two apart, as amazing as it sounds. What becomes of the world when it is led by people who believe what they want to believe? A shitshow, that’s what. It’s right outside your window. Yet, it wouldn’t have to be that way.
2) Semantic collapse
People are wasting countless hours having conversations with a foundation that is in shambles. This is because people are inclined to assume that other people interpret the same words the same way they do. Great examples of the semantic collapse include conversations about god or love. To some people, god is a personified being with specific attitudes and values. To others, it is “all that is” and/or the entire universe. Some view god as a great benevolent spirit of undefined or undefinable essence. And so forth. As for love, for some people it is the glue that connects themselves with other people. Some only view romantic love as love. To some, it is all-encompassing reverence for all that exists. Some narrow it down to empathy. And so forth. Now imagine different people with these different interpretations trying to have a discussion about questions such as “does god exist” or “what is the meaning of love” without first discussing the words themselves. Yeah. (Now imagine the autist in the corner trying to figure out an escape before their brains explode from the idiocy of what they are being forced to witness.)
Like most matters discussed here, the idea of semantic collapse isn’t anything new either. Scientific research has addressed it e.g. under the name of semantic disagreement and delving deeper into the entire matter takes one to a gloriously fascinating rabbit hole of fallacies. So if it’s known and well documented, why is it so rampant? Somehow our society still refuses to teach people how to think good quality thoughts.
People get weirdly attached to terms. They lean on them too much intellectually. Key terms should almost always be explained, otherwise there is a high risk of misinterpretation. The words themselves would not need to be taken so gravely. We can choose which words to use for which meaning, and if need be, we can change the words for something more suitable. What matters is that metalinguistic negotiations have been covered in one way or another, thus everyone involved knows what every key term has been agreed to mean.
3) Inability to extrapolate
There are many very intelligent and fully logical people who completely illogically refuse to apply their logic completely logically. The inability to extrapolate is best explained through discussing an adjancent term, cognitive dissonance.
Let’s imagine that a sceptic person witnesses someone they know and trust doing telekinesis in front of their very eyes. As their worldview didn’t consider any kind of telekinesis possible, witnessing it in real life burdens their system with cognitive dissonance. It is jarring how many people just stare at the dissonance for a little bit and then just… forget about it.
That is inability to extrapolate in action. That is intellectual laziness. If they witnessed telekinesis in real life, that’s not nothing. Doesn’t it mean that something is off in their worldview? The intellectually honest person would extrapolate that experience, and it might go something like this:
I saw telekinesis. Besides science, I trust my senses. My idea of what science says about telekinesis is now in conflict with my lived experience. Extrapolated, this means that either science has a blind spot I am not recognising or the way I interpret science is distorted. If this can happen with telekinesis, what else can it happen with? I need to go back to the point where I concluded that telekinesis is not real and review all of it. I need to identify the blind spot and amend it until my idea of the world is logical and coherent again, and the dissonance is resolved.
Inability to extrapolate is the same as inability to see what something means, eventually. Where something leads, eventually. In other words, inability to extrapolate is stubborn intellectual laziness that halts logic because otherwise the logical chains of thought would continue to conclusions that require effort to deal with. The problem is that the world is now changing so fast, particularly when it comes to making sense of it, that this avoidant style no longer serves. It’s true that addressing cognitive dissonance might lead to (gasp) a pressing need for self-development… But in the medium to long term, the emotional cost of that will probably be way smaller than the cost of failing to navigate in the ever-changing situations and disinformation bombardment of today’s world.
There is another term that’s been used for the ability to extrapolate. And that is neurodivergent pattern recognition. Make of it what you will.
4) Dull-mindedness
Curiosity is a curious trait. Children are naturally very curious, which is lovely to observe. But adults… Don’t seem to be very curious in general. Those who retain that childhood curiosity are usually exceptional individuals in some way or another because curiosity takes one to places unknown. Adventures of the intellect foster growth. Fascination about life makes it more wholesome and meaningful.
If curiosity is such a positive trait, why do so many people lose it? Usually has to do with how much of their stagnant emotional stability or self-confidence has been attached to these fixed beliefs that can’t deal with the moving, breathing real life. It doesn’t help that in adult life, competence is rewarded. Competence requires appearing certain. Curiosity requires uncertainty and, occasionally, admitting that “I don’t know.”
One way to summarise this is to say that people whose self esteem is too attached to the perception of others and/or society become dull minded. It is usually only after a crisis such as the death of a loved one, when they awaken from that stagnant haze enough to wonder… if too often just for a little while. Is it really necessary to wait for a crisis? Especially considering that it is fear that lurks behind all the reasons for lack of curiosity. In retrospect, many people would have preferred to face their existential upheavals separately to the hardships following a crisis. That would however have required admitting, facing and overcoming the fear of… being wrong, being uncertain, appearing incompetent, being judged… honestly, is it really wise to give this much power to other (often immature) people over your own feeling of safety?
What does all of this mean?
The idea of this blog post is not to give people concepts that allow them to judge others more harshly. It is important to understand that while the four horsemen indeed manifest stupidity at an apocalyptic level (it’s not difficult to extrapolate the issues discussed here to how they have impacted today’s cluster of global problems), people embodying them rarely do so by conscious choice. Hidden trauma is the most common root cause. Compassion is necessary here and, like always, it doesn’t mean we accept the unhealthy choices.
Rather, this blog post invites the readers to contemplate themselves. All of us have ridden with at least one of the horsemen at some point in life. Admitting this and honestly exploring whether this still happens is an exercise that requires a great number of virtues. Even if the result of the investigation was that “nothing applies,” the exercise would still have been worth it. And if reading this post led to emotional upheaval, well. Case on point.