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Guest Post: The "Majority Opinion" Is An Illusion
Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,
If there is one concept on Earth that has been the absolute bane of human existence (besides global elitism), it would have to be the concept of the “majority opinion”. The moment men began refusing to develop their own world views without first asking “What does everyone else think?”, they set themselves up for an endless future of failures. We are, of course, very social beings, and our natures drive us to seek those of like mind and spirit in what some might call a “tribal imperative”. However, this imperative to organize is often manipulated by those who understand the psychological mechanisms behind it. Oligarchs and tyrants abuse and exploit the inherent social natures of the people in order to fool them into abandoning their individuality for the sake of the group, or some abstract and dishonest ideal. When successful, the organization of a culture becomes bitter and twisted, changing from a tribe or a community of sovereign individuals, into a nightmare collective of soulless sheep.
Human beings desperately want to belong, but, they also desperately want to understand the environment around them. Often, the desire to belong and the desire to know the truth conflict. In some societies, in order to be accepted, one must give up on his search for truth and avoid eliciting the anger of others. This causes a severe mental and emotional disturbance within a population. In order to reconcile their conflicting needs within a system that does not nurture their quest for transparency, they tend to unconsciously cling to the “majority view” as if their very existence depends on it. The idea of the majority view or the “mainstream”, gives people the sense that they are a part of a group, and at the same time, gives them the illusion of being informed.
Their rationale is:
If most of the population believes something to be true, then, by “statistical law”, it most likely is true. Those who do not share in the majority opinion are therefore in opposition to statistical law; meaning they are behind the times, social deviants, or just plain crazy..
The problem is, history has shown that at pivotal moments in a society the “majority opinion” is usually WRONG. Any progress we do enjoy as a species is almost always due to the actions of tireless aware minorities, or even a lone man or woman who saw what the rest of us could not.
The greatest discoveries and truths have always been the product of individual thought and effort; numerous individuals working on parallel paths to generate new pieces of knowledge or more balanced and principled methods of living. There has never been such a thing as a collectivist realization, or a collectivist truth, and there never will be. Collectives do not think creatively or honestly. Their only concern is the survival of the system at all costs, and usually this requires a foundation of lies.
As a nation or culture edges towards collectivist tyranny, the battle-cry of the “majority opinion” will drown out all other reasonable voices. It has happened before, and unfortunately, it will happen again. In America today, I believe we are nearing the moment where the mass view becomes the only acceptable or legally sanctioned view. With the 2nd Amendment issue alone, the most common argument by anti-gun proponents is that “the majority opinion is on their side”. I’m here to point out that the “majority opinion” is, in fact, an illusion, and completely irrelevant. Here is why…
Most “Majorities” Are Fake Majorities
A recent poll on gun rights touted by Reuters stated that over 74% of the American public supported new and stricter gun laws including a ban on “automatic” (do they mean semi-automatic?) weapons:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/17/us-usa-guns-poll-idUSBRE90G1B120130117
Reuters pretends as if the poll is a sweeping vindication of anti-gun advocates, but what is the deeper story behind the poll? Reuters waits until the very last line of the article to mention that only 559 people participated, which hardly seems like a large enough pool to determine the overall position of the entire American public. Who were these people who were polled? Where were they polled? What questions were they asked and how were the questions posed? All of these factors can be manipulated during polling to produce a desired end result.
In April of 2012, a similar poll stated a somewhat similar case, but also relented that a “majority” of Americans supported most pro-gun positions, including conceal carry, and the need for civilians to intervene during a criminal event:
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5586
What the polls do not outline is the fact that many people are undecided on a number of details, and that there is no clear “majority” on any of them. Polling methods are indicative of the mainstream farce. In most cases, when a mass of people are presented as a “majority”, we do not know exactly how that conclusion was arrived at. Who decided these people were of the same mind and how?
Beyond this problem, those people who claim to be a part of the majority, are sometimes ill informed and do not have all the facts at their disposal. If there is indeed such a thing as any majority, it could only be the majority of people who do not know what to think! So, instead of the gun issue, for instance, being a fight between a “majority” of anti-gun advocates versus a “minority” of pro-gun advocates, we are actually looking at a fight between two educated MINORITIES, pro-gun and anti-gun, pro-liberty and anti-liberty, with an uneducated and oblivious public in-between.
To gun control propagandists I would point out that being able to lie to the unaware and con them into parroting your talking points is not the same as “having the majority on your side”. There may be some utility to retaining an army of bleating sheep, but in the end what do sheep really do beyond bleat, except eat, sleep, watch, and wait to see which way the winds blow…?
In A Republic The Majority View Does Not Matter
America was established as a Republic, not a Democracy, and in a republic the natural and inborn rights of the people, as embodied in the U.S. Constitution, are not subject to the mood swings of the masses. Each individual has certain rights, including the right to firearms and self-defense, REGARDLESS of what the so-called mainstream believes. That is to say, even if 99.9% of all people decided tomorrow that the right to free speech should be abolished, this would still be unconstitutional. The .1% who retain the right to free speech are not required to adhere to such law.
The same rule applies to the 2nd Amendment and gun ownership. When shills for gun control like Pierce Morgan claim that the majority supports them, what they don’t seem to grasp in their collectivist fervor is that even if this were true, it is a meaningless sentiment. Our rights as Americans are not allowed to be held hostage by 51% of the population (or any other claimed percentage). This is not how a republic operates.
Regardless of what is decided in the near term on gun control, we as citizens, protected by the legal shield of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, are not morally required to comply, even if the “majority” says we are. Mob rule is no rule.
The Majority Is Usually Wrong
As stated previously, the majority of people are generally ill-informed until the fight for a particular issue is long over. Only when the dust has settled do the masses take a side (usually the side of the winner). When the day finally arrives where we live within a system that nurtures free individual thought and our political leadership no longer seeks to manipulate the people in subversive fashion, then, perhaps, the situation will change. However, for now, the “majority” cannot be trusted to determine the course of the future for every single one of us. They are too open to exploitation, and too easy to sway.
While many see being a part of the mainstream as a safe method for remaining “in the know”, the opposite usually holds true. The mainstream is instead a place where people go so that they don’t have to think, and such an environment rarely finds its foundation standing firmly on truthful grounds.
If the majority was really a legitimate deciding factor in the course of history, then the first American Revolution would have never occurred in the first place. That fight was won by a minority of men and women who knew they were right in the face of a malicious world power structure supported by an ignorant subsection of the populous. Generations to come would be influenced by a small group of people who stood on honor and principle in the face of the tyranny of the “majority”.
Our True Enemy Is An Elitist Minority
Elite oligarchies are notorious for using the masses as a shield for their criminal behavior. Whenever an atrocity is committed, the elite claim it was for the “greater good”. That it was done in the name of “national security”. That the “majority” is in agreement with their methods. They do this in order to artificially inflate the size of the obstacle in our path and make us feel as though we stand against “the whole world”. They do this to make us imagine that we are too small to make a difference.
This tactic is also designed to redirect our energies away from the oligarchs and towards a nameless faceless mob of people who may or may not be aware that they are being used as cannon fodder.
As much as Liberty Movement proponents and 2nd Amendment guardians may despise the naïve prattle of the so-called “Left”, and the fact that their propaganda seems to be spreading like a malignant tumor across the country, from gun grabbing to socialized nanny government, we must remember that they are not who we are really at war with. They are merely spectators in the arena, and though their chanting against us might make us feel as though our opponent has won favor, in the end all will be decided by force of will between the two gladiators, and the bread and circuses will matter little.
The fight for liberty ultimately has nothing to do with awakening a “majority of people”. Rather, our goal should be to gather a tireless and courageous minority that can weather the coming storm. If we endure the crisis and remove the anti-liberty minority from the picture, the dumbfounded masses caught with their pants down from the very beginning will in the end simply follow along as they always do.
I have heard it argued recently that the gun control issue in particular is one of wider social implications. That pro-gun advocates are too “selfish” to see the big picture, and that we do not care about the safety of our nation as a whole. This is the collectivist methodology at work, utilizing the false “majority” as a tool for oppression. The fact is, Constitutionalists are the ONLY people in this country today that see the big picture, and the only people who are not thinking merely of themselves when it comes to the safety of our society. The average anti-gun socialist is acting not out of reason as they pretend, but out of fear. They want us to relinquish our rights so that they can retain the illusion of safety.
Behind this drive for a deluded sense of mainstream “compassion” and “compromise” is a concerted effort by the establishment to destroy the last barrier to overt centralization; the armed citizen. The language for this is already being carefully implanted:
We are a “fringe element”. We are “narcissists”. We are “barbarians”. We are clinging to the last vestiges of an archaic philosophy which no longer applies to our modern and “civilized” age. The vast “majority” is against us, and we should shut up, comply, abdicated the fight, and take our seat at the collectivist table while one still remains open to us.
Okay…so we’re barbarians. We’re not interested in a “seat at the table”. We are not interested in participating in the lie. We are not interested in playing a bit part in the grand faux theater of the “global community”. If the majority of Americans really do believe that the death of the Constitution is the best course for our culture, then the majority has gone clinically insane, or pathetically soft, and has abandoned all conscience. We will remain in our little “minority”, and we will put a stop to the progression of collectivized despotism without them, and they can do what they please in the meantime, as long as they stay out of our way.
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Mish's blog about 2nd Am. issues today was probably the most foolish blather I've read on the topic. He revealed he has no realistic notion of how fragile and costly liberty is, or how it is taken away. His comments related to self-defense revealed utter ignorance. His "favorite" replies were actually even worse: One prattled on about how nearly impossible it was to defend one's self with a gun. What? Thousands of grandmothers have just picked up the gun and shot the home-invading bastard. Clearly neither Mish nor his comment writer has experience of the matter, at least not with a gun in their hand. I suppose Mish is more afraid of legal liability (he lives in Illinois) than freedom from criminal predation. Mish is a conservative? Nah. Just money-hungry for investment rents. If he thinks a revolver's enough to cut the ever-rising cost of ever-more LEO's, he's just hasn't thought about it. Mish is anti-union? Nah. He swallows the big city union line completely on issues that count. What a fraud.
More expert advice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7C5VcmMRstQ#!
And yet your grandmother having a gun in the home significantly increases her chance of dying from a gun related accident, suicide or homicide. More likely than her having to fight off a "home invading bastard".
And what exactly does Mish swallow regarding "big city unions"? Everything I've ever read from him on public unions has argued against them.
Wisconsin has 600,000 hunters. That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan's 700,000 hunters, all of whom have now returned home safely. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. And then add in the total number of hunters in the other 46 states. It's millions more. There have been 2 gun related deaths in since 2010 in Wisconsin. When Australia implemented their gun ban home invasions went up by 21%. Why? Criminals knew there were no guns. These are government facts. I used to be against guns until I watched a debate. If your goal is less crime, then you are undermining your goal. Crime will go up and you will create a black market for assault weapons. Conclusion? YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT.
outlawing shit never works. prohibition proved it, and the "war on drugs" is proving it all over again because we're too stupid to learn the lessons of history.
Mish has no credibility at all.
The majority opinion doesn't mean squat and that's why the US founders included the bill of rights.
D.C. and the media would have us believe it's the 'Bill of Permissions'............
Yes, why does anyone "need" a ten foot deep pool in their backyard as it claims so many four foot childrens lives?
Why does anyone "need" a car that drives over, say 70mph?
It gets to be a very long list of logical inconsistencies.
I won't even go into why women "need" to have breast enlargement surgeries as they can then be used as weapons...both psychological and pugilistic ;-)
I like to do my own deciding, I'm kind of funny like that, lol............
I will align myself with the silent majority.
"as embodied in the U.S. Constitution, are not subject to the mood swings of the masses."
The same U.S. Constitution which permits amendments, including by popular referendum?
Er, not quite.
Article VThe Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
So an amendment requires agreement by 2/3 of both houses of Congress, plus ratification by 3/4 of the State legislatures. That's a fairly conservative set of requirements.
No provision in there for referenda either alone or as part of the prescribed process.
Back to school.
Mr. Smith does not go far enough in criticizing polls. Polls, at least the ones that get publicity, are not conducted to measure public opinion. Polls are used to shape public opinion.
First, the MSM pumps out propaganda for a couple of weeks about some issue. Then a poll about that issue, carefully crafted to elicit a specific result, is conducted. Then the results of the poll about that issue are publicized by the MSM. And, since people want to "belong" to the majority, the poll serves to shape their opinion about that issue.
So, not only is the majority frequently wrong, the majority is being led around by their noses and they are too stupid to know better.
edit: fixed spelling error.
I think he alludes to "push" polling when he asks: "What questions were they asked and how were the questions posed?" There is a whole literature (mostly psychological science research) that delves into the question of how the questions themselves frame the answers, and that research is what drives push polling.
I agree that this is a big factor in controlling the public mind, but I appreciate that Brandon is trying to keep his articles shorter and more to the point. One can't mention every factor in a thousand words, but I think he made a very compelling argument.
You are correct in articulating that sometimes people who make up a majority can be misinformed. It is also true of those in the minority though, like you. You happily tout that we are a republic, not a democracy, because of the wisdom of the ‘founding fathers’, but the founders you are on the side of are not those who stood for liberty, like you claim you do.
You should be clear – the checks on democratic power being held by the ‘unwashed masses’ did not come from the Democratic-Republicans, like Jefferson. After events like Shays’ rebellion, Jefferson wrote "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.... God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." The Federalists, like Hamilton used this rebellion as reasons to fight for checks on popular democracy – you sound a lot like his writing:
"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first arc the rich and well-horn, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government.... Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.."
This was Hamilton’s rational for suggesting a President and Senate chosen for life at the Constitutional Convention. When this failed he settled for other measures he pushed for, like limiting voting rights to property holders, only allowing large property holders to run for public office, and having a Republic system where leaders (like the senate at the time) were appointed to check the Congress (elected representatives of the people). Later Hamilton got the First National Bank of the US approved through Congress (an early version of the Fed), got tariffs passed to help manufacturers, and was instrumental in making sure the wealthy bond-holders got paid full value on revolutionary war bonds and that taxes, like the Whiskey Tax, were instituted to repay them – and a little while later in having the Whiskey revolt brutally put down.
Final thoughts – no, we don’t have a direct democracy, the Swiss have about the closest anyone in the world does at this time – when their legislators pass a law the people are the final check on their power. If enough petition signatures can be gathered in the right timeframe the law won’t be enacted, until a national referendum vote can be help. The Swiss are much better informed on their politics true; perhaps this empowerment in the law has helped then see voting thoughtfully as a duty and pride. But imagine if Americans had Democratic power like this? No bailouts. No Obamacare. Sure, the propaganda might have swayed our opinions at the start, no more wars would continue. No drones over our skies. No national security state…remind me again why it is better to have the elite make these decisions?
Interestingly Mr Hamilton, was born to a Creole (he was thus 1/4 black, he'd have hidden this fact, yet now you don't hear this in our politically correct world, interestingly) in the West Indies, out of wedlock, and not himself of "The first arc the rich and well-horn", but "the other the mass of the people" yet through the magic of fractional reserve banking became quite "rich" from the 200K in silver contributed by the US Govt to that 1st "Bank of the United States"/FED. He sure as hell wanted the "haves" to run the show, though! Thanks for that one valkyrie99.
6 min video below is that of a gun expert being interviewed on Fox. It's well done. He also provides a compelling reason for why limits on magazine size is a bad idea, especially for home defense. Worth the watch.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/2112146653001/
Other info of interest that's been posted before:
http://www.assaultweapon.info/
http://americangunfacts.com/
If ever you find yourself in the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
I didn't make that up myself, it was some hack who called himself "Mark Twain".
A very well-written and argued piece, and I agree with it. There are a few other folks through the centuries who have raised this idea as well. Schopenhauer wrote an essay called "On Thinking for Yourself," where he says:
"Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance."
Had Schopenhauer experienced television, he most likely would have made this point even more vigorously than he did for text. I also have an expanded version of his argument in a small booklet called "The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking For Yourself," written by anonymous author(s) (published by See Sharp Press. Tucson, AZ 1992). One line from this booklet worth mentioning here is:
"Despite the suffocating effect of the dominant religious and political ideologies, many individuals do learn to think for themselves; and by doing so - by actively, critically thinking for themselves, rather than passively accepting pre-digested opinions - they reclaim their minds as their own."
This is a very encourgaing idea.
So you realise that now you have this idea to think for yourself...but that wasn't your idea.
There is no way now to be unbiased toward the means and the mechanisms you read- the words that prompted you to "think for yourself." By getting the idea from a book, you have completed Schopenauer's argument for him and and for yourself.
This means that all of your original ideas about thought aren't yours after all and that's a bummer because now you can't "unsee" that.
:-
I realize that I have always thought and learned for myself, and only discovered much later that there were others like me.
Schopenhauer went on to say:
"It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could easily have been found already written in a book; but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself. For only then will it enter your thought-system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed; thus it will stay firmly and for ever lodged in your mind."
I know what Schopenhauer is talking about, because I have experienced just this phenomenon many times. I count on it.
thanks for those quotes, from both posts. . . those "aha" moments which are then re-confirmed by another's writings/thoughts, so valuable.
the difference between thinking, and memorising, IMHO.
I know how you feel Cathartes; I've had the same feeling reading many of your posts. These quotes are merely confirmation of things you and I already knew.
Somewhere along the line, I heard that this idea of thinking for oneself was called the "Golden Thread," an idea that has been passed down - mainly by heretics - throughout the ages and even DaVinci was one. It seems apropos that a blog advocating gold/silver as money would be the place where that thread would be defended and maintained.
What happened to me then? Silver and gold are merely commodities, not money. Never again will it be the root of all money. They're a medium of exchange as it is now but no different from a Swiss Franc or a Euro.
How can my Golden Thread and your Golden Thread be so different? Which on is correct? How did we both arrive here at once?
Maybe those things are one in and the same.
Why is there no known historical record of a pre-language era in man's evolution?
Per the historical record, there is no pre-language era, and language appeared instantly from nowhere.
A curious response. Perhaps you are unaware, but there is another kind of langauge, a langauge older than words.
Goethe's saying of something like: literature is a bloodless substitute for life, is a similar concept.
I learned it as: Most peoples' brains are full of unthought thoughts. Of course, I kept that as an unthought.
Being born Asperger's, anarchist, atheist, avenist, and anti-death has been very enjoyable.
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. - Patton
Speaking for soulless sheep everywhere, every tribe I joined taught me a secret handshake and gave me a decoder ring. It made me feel special.
Folks, eat more shit! Millions of flies can't be wrong!
Wow, did this article ever raise some opinions. I have news for all of you: your opinions sucked. Every one 'em. Mine, of course, is the best.