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Desire relentlessly drives the Collective: seeking pleasure from titillation with no prospect of lasting peace of mind. One in the Collective may become temporarily sated but is never truly fulfilled.
Most people are possessed by their mind. ~ Eckhart Tolle
The Collective are preyed upon by their minds. To momentarily ease their angst, the Collective indulge in deleterious psychotropic substances of all sorts: caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, antidepressants, opioids, and other pharmacological wonders of the modern age. Only a few refrain: scarce stalwarts of stately awareness, with an infinitesimal number aiming for clarity as a value in and of itself. These few risk leaving the Collective altogether by finding the path to enlightenment.
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How they struggled to fill their brief life with all the passions humankind could muster. ~ American novelist Kristen Britain
The Collective value their emotions. They embrace passion as a positive attribute.
He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. ~ Proverbs 28:26, The Bible
Pignorance (perspective-ignorance) cages the Collective, its bars built of fear. The Collective worry of the future. The specter of death shadows life. Acceptance of oblivion only comes with the fatigue of old age.
Fools dwelling in ignorance, yet imagining themselves wise and learned, go round and round in crooked ways, like the blind led by the blind. ~ Katha Upanishad 2.5
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Common sense is not so common. ~ Voltaire
The Collective commonly take what comes into their minds as gospel, especially if warmed by emotion. Advertising and propaganda – which enjoy stunning success – are founded on the power of first impression.
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. ~ English American revolutionary Thomas Paine
While most indulge in superstition and mysticism, particularly belief in a supernatural supreme being, the Collective are also enthusiastic empiricists, in taking what they sense as physical existence to be an accurate account. This too is a naïve acceptance of whatever comes to mind.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds. ~ George Berkeley
Ersatz philosophic materialism (matterism) is matched by the economic variety. In valuing their possessions as prizes, the Collective believe there can be a price attached to all before them. The Collective commonly consider competition a natural state of affairs; hence, capitalism is considered a legitimate economic system.
Political systems labeled “socialist” and “communist” have been fronts for authoritarian elitism that never delivered economic equity. Slogans of equality were paid lip service as part of a ruse by the pigs at the trough of political power. Familial communism (eusocialism) has never been attempted at the societal level.
When people aren’t carefully oriented to reality, the result isn’t just ignorance, it’s ignorance indulged and defended. People become addicted to their ignorance, doubling and tripling down on it, digging in their heels, unwilling to surrender it. Our common impulse to regard reality as fiction and fiction as reality, closing our eyes and dismissing as fictions all challenges to ourselves and embracing the fictions that lay the burden elsewhere. ~ American psychologist Jeremy Sherman
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People are cognitive misers. ~ German psychologists Thomas Mussweiler & Fritz Strack
The great bulk of the Collective live largely unquestioning lives, believing what they are taught, adjusting as best they can to their lot in life. Worldviews are built from belief systems riddled with falsities and unexamined assumptions. These are the emotional life rafts to which the Collective cling.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. ~ English politician Winston Churchill
With existence largely inscrutable and contentment out of reach, the Collective aim for complacency. The worldwide rise in obesity illustrates.
We have moved through the looking glass into a world where reality is loosely tied to outcome and perception rules supreme. ~ Peter Anderson
The cooler, studious sort in the Collective place reason on a pedestal. What they subjectively see they treat as objective reality (naïve realism) and insist that the only knowledge arrives from the senses (naïve empiricism). Fully elaborated into a smug methodology, this dogma is called science.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. ~ Bertrand Russell
Scientists seek answers in the outside world. They are rewarded with facts, which they struggle to sew into a fabric for understanding Nature. Their refusal to countenance the non-empirical implications of their findings means they constantly come up short in comprehending the fundamentals.
It all looks fine to the naked eye, but it don’t really happen that way at all. ~ English musician Pete Townshend in the song “Naked Eye” (1971)
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Billions of people, just living out their lives, oblivious. ~ Agent Smith in the movie The Matrix (1999)
The Collective are terribly gullible. By definition beliefs are fantasies with crumbles of facts sprinkled in to firm them up. Yet the Collective place their undying faith in beliefs. Religion and social media amply illustrate.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. ~ American sociologist Herbert Simon in 1971
