Factions

Reservoir Dogs

People are difficult.

What people do is influenced by several factors:

• Instinct
• Emotion
• Beliefs
• Logic

Their precedence is in that order. Instinct is the primary and logic is the least. Logic can overrule the others, but it requires conscious thought and strong confidence that your logic is correct. Most of the time we operate on the first three. Only when we get in a jam and at a time where we happen to be clear headed will we resort to logic. This is why arguments rarely solve anything.

Most of what we learn, we learn outside of school. Things like walking, running, talking, listening we pick up on our own before we get to school. You might think that these are no big deal, everyone does that, but since we have arrived in the computer age, we have learned that these are some of the most complex tasks we have. We might conclude that they occupy a large portion of our brains.

Much of this is instinct, but it still needs to be adapted to our current environment. Everyone learns to talk and understand what is spoken, but not everyone learns the same language.

People are pack animals. They like to be members of a group. There are survival advantages to being a member of a group, or pack, which is probably why we have this trait. Being a member of a group can be such a strong force that we will overlook minor problems, and if the pack ethos is strong, we will even overlook major problems, like the holocaust.

Sometimes, if a person is a thinker (an unusual condition in humans), they will reject the pack's dogma and rebel. If the pack finds out this person is engaged in wrong think, they will tear him to pieces. In the bad old days, they would be stoned. In our wonderful present, they will be doxxed, fired or 'canceled'.

A thinker may reject the pack's curriculum because they have a moral objection to their actions, or it might simply be because he (or she) thinks the leaders of the pack are stupid, which they often are.

Schools can teach us many useful skills, like reading, writing and 'rithmetic. What they don't explicitly teach you is how to deal with people. Everyone picks that up, to a greater or lesser degree, from simply being immersed in the pack. The skills that schools teach are simply tools you can apply to get things done in the real world.

I like tools, both the metaphorical kind that you learn in school and the physical kind like hammers and saws and wrenches. With those tools, I thought, I can do anything. But the power of those tools pales in comparison to what you can accomplish when you learn how to manipulate people to do your bidding. Some of our most infamous leaders had little to no education, but they had learned to read people and how to get them to do what he wanted. People like, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-il and Idi Amin spring to mind.

I was brought up to believe that the people in charge knew what they were about. It took me a long time to appreciate the fact that in everything but people skills, I was much smarter than they were. It took me even longer to realize that my lack of people skills is what held me back, career-wise.

The biggest people skill seems to be the ability to sit and listen, apparently attentive, to complete morons blather on endlessly. I cannot do that. I cannot even listen to a news broadcast. I can only engage in verbal communication when I am having a conversation with a small group of people. Four people is about my limit, and only for a couple of hours at a time. I have lunch once or twice a week with some friends and it usually exhausts me. I need to come home and take a nap afterwards. Okay, I need to take a nap most afternoons, but still.

Our leaders are chosen the same way penguins decide who is going be to first off the ice and into the water, the water where there might be a shark waiting to gobble them up for lunch. It's just a pack jostling for position until an unlucky fool gets pushed over the edge. Okay, it might not be exactly the same. The leader needs to be able to read and motivate people. He also needs a thick skin, but he doesn't need a superior intellect. An average intellect will probably be better.

My latest epiphany is that the Democrats are steeped in this pack mentality. All they care about is the pack. Science and engineering are alien concepts that have no more effect on their thoughts and actions than Pluto has on the tides. Republicans come from the world of logic and reason. The only reason they are in pack at all is because they have to combat the moronic Democrats who are driving us straight towards destruction. Because Republicans are independent thinkers, their pack ethos is not as strong and that's why we are getting pummeled in the polls. Yes, this is gross exaggeration, but I like it.

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Corruption

Political parties can be called factions. America has a two party, or faction, system. However, there are no longer just two factions. There are zillions of factions. It's actually always been this way, it's just that most factions used to be small and ineffectual outside their limited sphere of influence. But lately we have numerous, larger, more powerful factions popping up left, right and center.

On one hand, people with people skills have found that they can sell ideas to people with money and so fund a campaign to right social wrongs. Sometimes it is for a cause they believe in but oftentimes it is simply a way to make money, i.e. line their own pockets. They recognize that some people (with money, that part is important) have a soft spot in their hearts for some group of the downtrodden and they exploit this feeling ruthlessly. In some cases they might actually do some good, but mostly they just drain money from willing givers and transfer it to their own pack, none of whom are in the target group of downtrodden. I call this the old lady syndrome.

On the other hand we have zillionaires who have amassed so much power and wealth that they are charting their own course. If the United States is like a giant ocean liner on course for the edge of the world, the zillionaires are launching their own yachts and setting courses for the islands of promise and profit.