Appalling Vista Arguments

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."