In the appeal of the Birmingham Six in 1979, the ruling judge Lord Denning stated that: "If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further." He also expressed the view that "We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied." Of course, it eventually transpired that the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous.
My focus though is the abdication of intellectual integrity that is the appalling vista notion. This can probably be seen as a manifestation of the Slave Mentality. To break down what is happening: the mind is faced with certain truths or facts. It then projects itself towards the perceived future arising from pursuing these truths logically. It doesn't like the future that arises from this pursuit, presumably because the static structure that is this notion of self & corresponding worldview rightly feels itself under attack. And so the undesired information is annihilated by either, in the manner of Denning, simply believing that the undesired implications are enough in themselves to erase consideration of the inconvenient truth; or intentionally deceiving oneself by fraudulently arguing around the undesired truths - anything to avoid the appalling vista.
To put it another way, A implies B. B is impermissible. Therefore A must be denied. This, no doubt, the kind of brain activity that is in operation when a controlled demolition is viewed as not a controlled demolition. As William Blake wrote, "He who never alters his opinion is like stagnant water & breeds reptiles of the mind."
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4 comments:
i remember talking to a gay temp who thought Tony Blair was great. This was in 2005. i pointed out that Blair had taken us to war, unjustly, and the alleged reason, the weapons of mass destruction, didn't exist. The temp replied, "yeah but he set our minds at rest. I was really worried about those weapons and now I'm not worried anymore, so he was right to take us to war."
Wonderful. Just shows how insanity is the friend of the state.
as an Appleyardian thought experiment i wondered what i'd do if i was a sinister cabal type of person, trying to take over the world. Obviously, i'd destroy education because stupid credulous fools like the gay temp aren't going to object when you bring in 1984 type laws, they won't even realise what's happening. Then i thought on how education has been systematically destroyed in this country over the last 20 years at least...
Though you'd be best interested not so much in destroying education but fostering the education that produces the desired kinds of people, with presumably this amounting to people whose intelligence goes roughly as far as their specialised work discipline, & who have a touching uninquisitive trust in the world as it is run, to the point of not having the vaguest idea that it is run.
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