Monday, November 6, 2017

Chiropractic Philosophy And Gun Control



Intelligence or ethics is no prerequisite for power.


The world always provides fodder for war, intrigue and black humor. As I was listening to the radio this morning, I heard a US politician apologize (excuse) for the most recent gunning down of civilians. 26 lay dead, 20 more injured, as the 'tactically dressed' man opened fire on a congregation inside a small Texas church. Just as predictably as gun violence in the USA, any perceived threat is met not with reason but primitive reactions. People might tell you that they are complex creatures (we are) but that doesn't extend to complex thoughts, to well reasoned actions, at all. 

The right screams for rights and the left for what appears to be the same, the right to life, but what is apparent is the inability of people to learn. When Obama brought in laws that sought to restrict gun ownership the US responded with such paranoia that the gun industry expanded. Laws that looked as though they would achieve one thing, established quite the opposite.

Similarly, although the figures are not nearly as clear, or present at all, the growing vocal opposition to the religion called chiropractic philosophy (unethical by professional standards), may well aid it. Ideological wars are as common as breakfasts as far as human society is concerned, since the human mind evolved to be an excellent tribe member not a wise rational thinker. So although the church of the Universal Intelligence (chiropractic philosophy) is only an effective tool for attracting our worst qualities (narcissism, creationism, fundamentalism, fraud, stupidity), those traits are widely shared by humanity. While we all hope that our species will exceed it's most base desires we cannot escape the fact that we are first and foremost a species, creatures, not a collection of magically driven beings destined for enlightenment. But the fact is that the later non explanation is more intuitively popular and is far more easily believed if education is crippled, faith thinking elevated, professional boundaries breached and ethics slaughtered. Humans only learn by finding out they were wrong not by pretending to be right and spending a life perfecting ignorance. This is exactly what happens when you live through an identity which, in your mind, is utterly irreversible, dogmatic, a fundamentalism, a 'true belief' that is it's own absurdity. If we cannot test anything, we do not have a 'yet' we have a 'nothing yet' and to pretend otherwise is to ossify any intelligence we ever had. We may just as well be back 'in the cave'. So a dogmatic profession will continue to exist but it has never expanded unless local associations have chosen to respect learning, not use it to promulgate it's faith.

Does this mean that we should abandon oppositions to ridiculous gun laws (I personally have a license so the matter is not one of extremes) or the intrusion of religion into education and professionalism (the stupid claim that creationism can replace evolution), faith into education, hubris into candour? While it will always be easy to offend people one need not try, one need only point towards the honest answer and wait for the outfall so the decision is easy - remain indifferent or press on. I suggest the later. If a god was found lurking, hand held high, if there was anything at all except insistence from 'philosophers', then we would honestly include a god as fact in the record and teach accordingly. But to inject dogma into education (as if it were fact) in the absence of anything but force, nothing but a persistent philosophical whining, is to practice nothing more intellectual than swinging a club. It may well bring you comfort to believe all sorts of things but it never amounts to education and certainly not a profession.

So you may be interested to learn that when the politician from the USA rationalized the murder of 26 people in a small town in Texas he used the only logic that paranoia knows - he never mentioned the issues of mental health or firearms, he said it wasn't as bad as Hitler. Similar logic is the sine qua non of the paranoid gun owner and traditional chiropractor. But one need not give up a belief to hold a more ethical position. There is nothing wrong with believing in spirits only pretending you know. After all, Martin Luther still believed in a god concept but pressed for reformation. He agreed on a god but disagreed with the rules and so contradicted his own god (apparently). No one on earth can show the former as a truth only the later - that the religions practiced in a void of reason and ethics are even worse than the weak apologetics that remains, but at least it is not the pure totalitarianism that having a single tribe at the helm would give although that is easy to achieve. One need only ensure that the subject is never brought up, that the need to remain 'civil' to stupidity is more important than ethics and life itself. This is our problem.

But we are a profession.

We are not a faith.

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