Bill Murray used to do a very funny routine where he was the sleazy piano bar musician playing inane tunes and urging a sing-along to an audience which was oblivious to his kitschy banter. Do you know the words to the music of Star Wars? We all roared with laughter. But my mother had a very different reaction. Having a great deal of experience in small piano bars, she saw Murray as the quintessential loser struggling to remain relevant: he wasn’t funny; he was sad. My mother didn’t like Bill Murray … he was too real.
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Something Very Special
Thank You Michael Shermer for posting this.
Beliefs Kill People
Guns Don’t Kill People, Beliefs Kill People
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
If by fiat I had to draw one core generalization from a quarter century spent studying the psychology of beliefs, it is that almost everyone thinks that their beliefs are right, both ontologically and ethically. For the most part, people think that their beliefs are true, moral, or both. No one joins a cult—they join a group that they believe is going to help them and/or society. No one thinks they’re practicing pseudoscience—they believe they’ve discovered a new truth that mainstream science has yet to recognize. And very few believe their actions are immoral—at the time they had perfectly rational and moral reasons for acting as they did.
You do not have to give people reasons to be violent, because they already have plenty of reasons. All you have to do is take away their reasons to restrain themselves.
