Block Thinking

I use the word ‘thinking’ inadvisedly, because blaming the whole United States of America, and randomly murdering any Americans who happen to be close at hand, for the actions of a few evil halfwits who happen to be its citizens (if indeed they are – the perpetrators of this insignificant chunk of trollery don’t seem to be that keen to stand up and defend themselves) isn’t really worthy of that scale of recognition, never mind respect.   But it’ll have to do.  Thought – the ability to string together ideas, however puerile, into courses of action, as opposed to reaction – is the one faculty that distinguishes us from slugs.

No, it’s the ‘block’ bit that worries me.  Hitler was the undisputed master of this trick – to select a myriad of trivial day to day niggles, irritations, learnt attitudes, aversions; and build from them a monolithic construct that could then, somehow, be inserted into a mass of people’s minds as though it were a single thought.  So it’s nothing new.  In fact, it’s depressingly old, the continual resurgence of this intellectual heresy.  What’s worse, it’s not a matter of black hat, white hat.  Nobody, from any of the estates, seems capable of building, sustaining and sharing a little thought that might go something like ‘right, let’s calm down, sit down and break down exactly what’s going on here.’ 

 

Instead, the thinking blocks seem to be swelling and congealing along the lines of ‘America has insulted our ideas, so we must kill America’ on the one side; and ‘We must respect those ideas, even though we don’t like them killing us and haven’t a clue how to stop them, except with bombs’ on the other.  And so the unceasing war goes on.