September 2023
The Fuzzy Dark Side of Nationalism and Fanaticism
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The lazy, evil, unscrupulous, and treacherous “them” are against the hard-working, pure, and intelligent “us”. (one of “us,” after all, invented some widget (maybe) 732 years ago, and it is very sane and logical to conclude that I must be great too, just like that guy, since we have similar shades of skin color).
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(Special Case: Angry Racist Idiots [The Follies: Dark Outcomes]. Fuzzy on the Dark Side)
In “Fuzzy on the Dark Side: Approximate Thinking”, I discuss the dynamics of fanatic nationalism, and how identity fanaticism can affect how we understand and how we interact with the world.
Part of it can be explained by the need to “Bask in Reflected Glory” of the group (Tajfel).
Here I’ve included a few interesting (telling) examples on the funny side of BIRGing:
The endless Persian-Arab exchange:
"If *we* do something they don't like..."
The "we" in this quote is very important. What does it really mean? Either twitter (X?) bro (and his friends) built this magnificent building, or there is some kind of collective pride that he feels he deserves but not others (probably the 'arab' bit in the original tweet). Interesting question that explains a lot about the follies of racist thinking: What exactly gives one commentator the right to 'bask in the reflected glory' of the great artisans who built this? "We" ... !
On the other side, the above is just as bad as someone else on Twitter (X?) bragging that Steve Jobs is an Arab/Syrian…
Regardless of how proud Jobs was of his ‘Arab/Syrian’ Origin (I don’t know anything about that), I’m not sure how this can be a source pride for anyone…
Similarly this ‘journalist’ is bragging that Amine Maalouf is an Arab..
Why brag that he’s an Arab not Lebanese?? not sure.. but she doesn’t work in Lebanon.
Anger, Racism (Identity Fanaticism), and stupidity are a triad that frequently come together… They obliterate reason and proper thinking, and their interactions present great opportunities for understanding how bad approximate thinking works and can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings and illusions.