There are any number of proofs of this proposition: The closer to Reality, the closer to reality.
Here’s one, recalling first that there is always a +/- to all surveys, which makes getting excited about a one- or two-point difference ridiculous:
The top group, more or less, have a better grasp of Reality, and so behave themselves more often according to reality. Where by Reality, I of course mean the Ultimate Truth. And by reality I mean the world as she is: The Way Things Are. And not the ways things as we want them to be. For the opposite of Reality, and of reality, is Fantasy and Desire.
Now a man who calls himself a Muslim does not prove he holds himself in accord with what can be considered orthodox faith. It is not Muslim orthodoxy, nor Christian, to believe you are “Something else.” These “Something else” people believe in Fantasy, not reality, in spite of their self-awarded religious label.
It’s clear, too, that the people farthest from Reality, the bottom group, are also farthest from reality, preferring much more often to embrace Fantasy. Which would be well enough, because really who cares. Except that once you embrace Fantasy, you can’t stand being reminded of reality—for reality is harsh and unforgiving. Much better to impose your beliefs on others and make them by force of law lie to you, as you lie to yourself.
Example two, from the peer-reviewed paper “Homogenous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty” by Mitchell Langbert in Academic Questions:
Now there is almost no difference between Republican and Democrat politicians. Possibly, Republicans have a greater share of politicians who want “progress”—defined as the heading toward Fantasy—to go a little slower than Democrats.
As I have said many times, when Democrats hold the majority it’s “We passed this bill without Republican support.” When Republicans hold the majority it’s “We passed this bipartisan bill.” So no matter who holds the majority, we move closer to Fantasy.
Further, everybody knows this. But since there are only two viable parties in the once United States, there is no other option for realists except to call themselves Republicans. Since that party is feckless, we don’t know how many sincere realists there are in any group which calls itself Republican.
Then, too, these are academics. Engineers arguably have the greatest contact with reality. It’s their profession! But there is a chasm, with few bridges, between engineers and academic-engineers. The latter crowd could have any number of people devoted to DIE—which, incidentally, is the fastest way to Fantasy.
This is why we see there are still more Democrats than Republicans in academic-Engineers, 1.6 times as many. Which is a lot.
A complete non-surprise is “Communications”, which is where the dumbest kids go to collect their “degree”. It follows the academics staffing the departments are not much brighter, if at all. Communications is primarily concerned with propaganda—how to generate, how to promulgate it, and the like—which makes it a natural ally of Fantasy.
Maybe the only surprise is that is the rate is only 56 times as many Democrats and Republicans, when the expected number should be infinity times as many. That is, no Republicans. But we must remember Republican means only mostly Fantasy, and not all, like Democrats.
The numbers would change from college to college, but not by much. Not enough to matter.
Now both Reality and reality are multi-dimensional. The Ultimate Reality is an infinite space, and it is likely reality is, too. We cannot represent infinite spaces visually, but we can make use of a mathematical trick called projection to create a cartoon on infinity.
You’ve seen projection, and can easily try it yourself. Draw an x-y axis, and a vector starting from the origin to anywhere you like. Then drop a straight line down from the tip of the arrow to the x-axis. There you go: a projection. You have summarized, incompletely, but not without some justice, that vector.
Let’s do the same thing with the Fantasy to Reality spectrum, collapsing it to a single dimension so we can see it.
Using my unmatched, and unmatchable, photographic skills and my award-eligible artistic talent, I have created this representation:
Sticking with our usual political metaphor, Reality is on the right, and of infinite size. Fantasy is to the left, and of finite size.
The little dots in a row have a mathematical meaning, which is distance that can be long or short but which cannot be pictured. The distance from the saints to Infinity is infinite, which the dots represent. But some groups are closer together.
Our major groupings are pictured. Saints are those closest to Reality. There are very few Saints. Dissidents, geniuses, true philosophers, holy men and the like are next.
The dots indicate another gap, after which come conservatives. Then more dots, but these are for a smaller gap, leading to normies, the great mass in the middle. Then a very large gap where we find democrats. Small d: i.e. those who believe in democracy.
Then we really start our slide toward the Abyss of Fantasy. The Outraged, lunatics, activists, the woke, anitfa, perverts, and NPR listeners form the bottom group.
Remember that this is a projection. Each of the individuals in the graph differ along many dimensions. But I think you have the idea.
Readers are welcome to enhance this magisterial Art.
Update Look what my enemies did to Infinitey. Dirty rotten….
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Damn, Briggs… sometimes you are REALLY FUNNY!
… and with more than a grain of truth! Keep it up!
(NPR listeners…OMG;LOL)
I love your hand-drawn diagram. I wish you had included “lunatics, NPR listeners”, etc. who are mentioned in the text but didn’t make it onto the drawing.
I recently had a public confrontation with an idiot who was doubling down on his BS. It happened not to have anything to do with ideology, but there was something familiar about his demeanor. Afterward, my wife and I both said the same thing at the same time–we both noticed this clown had NPR face, also known as liberal face, or leftist face. I swear they’re recognizable. There’s just a certain face, expression, haircut, and style of glasses that say “I am a smug, arrogant leftist with a collection of Public Radio tote bags on my closet shelf.”
Cary, if you had more time on your hands you would probably find out that he not only had the face for NPR but also its talking points. Who has time to wade through the nasal-speak to find out what they are saying?
A survey of the sexual orientation of 18-25 year old college students? That one made me chuckle. Yeah, sure, 18-25 year old college students are going to be totally honest when asked about their sexual orientation. As I’ve said before in these comments, I firmly believe that one of the worst ways to find out something about people is to ask them.
The reason that asking people questions is such a poor route to knowledge is that there is no vested interest in answering honestly, and indeed often people have more of a vested interest in answering dishonestly.
This is where I usually stop, laughing at the stupidity. But that’s not really fair to the researchers. They were tasked with this effort by somebody. If that somebody had tasked me with this effort, and the goal really was knowledge and not just furthering a political agenda, how would I go about getting reliable data?
The key here seems to introduce some vested interest on the part of the people answering the survey, so they have “skin in the game”. In this case, applying that literally might be a workable approach. For example, instead of a multiple-choice pick-your-orientation question, they could be shown a binder full of pictures of attractive people, and then asked to pick a person to make out with. The pictures would be stereotypical pictures representing all of the orientations under consideration, maybe with a short description of the individual to reinforce the orientation. The key here is that the participants would really have to believe that they will be required to follow through with a short make-out session with the person they choose. This belief could be reinforced by some actors going first; I know that when I was 18-25 years old, I would have been totally on-board.
Anyway, I call total BS on that worthless survey. Do the survey my way, and you are going to find 95% straight for all groups, as always has been the case, and always will be the case. The agenda for the alphabet crowd has always been to puff up their numbers, it has always pained them greatly that they are a small minority, since small numbers make it easier for the majority to pigeon-hole their lifestyle as a mental disorder.
@Milton Hathaway: you reminded me of a study I read about once regarding the total number of sexual partners people had. See, the overall problem of these studies is that they just ask, and then they end up with impossible results. Men supposedly have plenty of sexual partners and women have only a few. Which is impossible, mathematically. So to get to the bottom of things, these researchers hooked up women to lie detector tests and asked them again. Would you know it, turns out women have about the same number of sexual partners as men do! xD You just need to interrogate well. 🙂
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