THREE MEN MAKE A TIGER
T
he Chinese proverb “three men make a tiger” refers
to our ability to accept
inaccurate, absurd, or irrelevant information as long as enough people repeat it.
In effect, the crowd tells you how to think (and live), while critical thinking is
shoved under the rug.
Reflect on your life’s current circumstances and ask yourself, have “three
men” put you here? Have “three men” smothered your life in debt? Have “three
men” awarded you with an art history degree that can’t get you a job? Have
“three men” asked you to forsake five days of personal sovereignty for two? Have
you surrendered to crowd-based conventions and now you’re wondering, “Crap,
is this all there is?”
Once again, the consensus fallacy underscores the “three men.” When
universal ideas are repeated and lived by the majority, they are rarely questioned.
Has anyone really stopped and asked WHY we think and do what we do?
Tradition? Because our teachers say so? Because Facebook made it a trending
news story?
WHY
are we indoctrinating our kids to follow the same path we’ve taken
when that path has been a token failure?
WHY
do people think trading time for money is the only way to make
money?
WHY
do parents force their kids into debt for the promise of jobs that might
not exist?
WHY
do couples rush to
get married based on their age, not based on the
quality of their relationship?
WHY
do Republicans believe that unconstrained capitalism has no effect on
the environment?
WHY
do Democrats believe that success should be progressively penalized
and that somehow it will translate into better-paying jobs? Why do they believe
that government bureaucrats are virtuous and selfless, while the citizens they
regulate are not?
WHY
has your brain been
co-opted by a political party, a church, a news
outlet, a blog, a radio station, a Facebook group,
or books translated by long-
deceased conquerors?
You see, anytime you allow a homogeneous group to write your thoughts,
you slowly poison free thought. For example, many of my readers have already
boxed me into a category: MJ is one of these libertarian goons with a cache of
guns! MJ is a corporatist! MJ this, MJ that! The truth is, if I disclosed my views
on hot-button issues, such as religion, gay marriage, or environmentalism, your
eyes would pop their sockets because no box fits me. Perhaps that makes me
“independent”—but I call it someone who hasn’t crowdsourced their thoughts to
the likes of Jon Oliver and poorly written
Saturday Night Live
skits.
Behind our willingness to outsource thought sits our beliefs.
Beliefs are merely concepts, ideas, and thoughts that we regard as true.
And no
matter what your beliefs, there’s an identical group who believes the same. 9/11
was a government conspiracy? You’ve got a group. Aliens living among us?
You’ve got a group. While we are free to question and investigate our beliefs, few
do. Instead, we seek to ratify them through a collective groupthink. And as a
result, they
escape critique and transcend, year after year, producing the same
old results. Many times, these beliefs aren’t our original thoughts but carbon-
copy doctrine planted by seeders or co-opted from the crowds we identify with.
In other cases, they are generational, passed from ancestry.
“Get a job, baby!”
That’s my mom screaming up the stairs. She
screeched at me weekly in a
voice that could shatter windows and incapacitate an invading infantry. It was
after college and I was still leeching off Mom while I struggled to find my
entrepreneurial way. My mom was staunchly old-school and regularly hurled
these “get a job” Hail Marys straight from the
SCRIPTED
play-book. For her,
success was earned nine to five, Monday through Friday.
The
point is, thank your parental seeder for some, if not all, of your
crowdsourced beliefs. As children, we internalize the beliefs of those around us.
If you come from a third-generation military family, you’ve probably adopted a
military mindset. If your parents believe a particular religion, so do you. On my
forum, countless young Asian adults complain about their demanding parents
who
unequivocally, without negotiation, insist they become an engineer or a
doctor. The
SCRIPT
might as well be etched in stone.
Besides parental conditioning, crowdsourced beliefs also come from your
usual gang of seeders: authority figures
and communal associations, such as
political parties and advocacy organizations. If your favorite actor endorses a
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