A New Way to Think About the Idiot Next Door

. . . or the Next Country

For the last 20,000 years, give or take a few, philosophers nand politicians have been dreaming up solutions to problems nwith the idiots next door or with those moving in.

You may be more familiar with those problems in the last nthousand years. Remember the Crusades? If you scan the nhistory between 1000 and 1500 AD, the news sounds eerily nfamiliar. So does the geography.

It might lead you to think there is no hope for peace in the nhuman psyche. There seems to be a built in resistance to nrational behavior.

The French sociologist, Jean Braudrillard pointed out in
1981 that New York's twin towers were the epitome of neverything the West stands for. In 2001 he argued that the
West would never defeat Islamic fundamentalism because it is nthe consequence of American superiority and a lack of nalte
atives to the new world order. The more successful the nwar on terrorism is, he wrote, the more terrorists would be nproduced. (The Australian, March 9, 2007)

Some called him the idiot next country.

Hope springs ete
al in the human breast, if not in the human nbrain. Brain research in the last ten years shows that our nthoughts at any given moment are more like a drunken chorus nline than a military parade passing in revue.

David Brooks of The New York Times writes, "The mind is not na centralized thing. There are dozens of thoughts, processesnand emotions swirling about and competing for attention at nany one time." (New York Times, July 24, 2007)

The attempt to be rational can be an exercise in futility.
Accepting this fact is a first step in accepting the idiot next ndoor.

Brooks points out that most political and social disputes ngrow out of different theories about the self. He contends nthat there is no concept of self that exists before society; that neach of us is profoundly shaped by our own little society.

The beliefs of our homes and neighborhoods are buried in nour subconscious minds by an early age. Brooks writes,
"When people communicate, they send out little flares into neach other's brains. Friends and lovers create feedback nloops of ideas and habits and ways of seeing the world."

You've heard of peer pressure. It's real.

"The research documenting the spread of the obesity epidemicnfrom friend to friend," writes Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe,
"leapt from the sober annals of the New England Jou
al of
Medicine to the front pages of newspapers everywhere." n(Boston Globe, August 2, 2007) This got the researchers,
Christakis and Fowler, in hot water. How could a friend ninfluence another friend to get fat? Actually, they simply nreported after years of research that close friends of the nsame sex fundamentally affect each other's points of view andnbehavior. All together, they create a norm. You remember high nschool, don't you?

Guru entrepreneurs lecture to their audiences: "If you want to nbe successful, change your friends. Hang out with successfulnpeople."

It doesn't change, either, after you die. Your habits, values nand ideas stay alive in the minds of your living friends and nrelatives. Recently I overheard a woman in her eighties nsay, "My father always said ..."

Because we are the sum of our particular little society and nbecause we are not wholly rational, we often fight the idiots nnext door. Worse, we attempt to do good (by reforming them)nbut often fail. We assume the idiots next country share our nperceptions and values.

Consider programmed attempts to eradicate poverty. As
Brooks says, "The habits that are common in the underclass nareas get inside the brains of those who grow up there and nundermine long-range thinking and social trust." The programsnthat do work recognize such habits and distrust and addressnthem first.

Programs that rehabilitate felons address self-concept head on.

Consider attempts to create democracy in the world and therebynprovide freedom. Who is defining freedom?

In 1980 a student from communist China came to America.
When in an ice cream store he complained about the nnumber of choices in flavors. "Too much work," he said. "Too nmany decisions everywhere. Americans work too hard."

We may say we want something in the abstract, but when we nget right down to it, what we really want is embedded and definednin our subconscious. That's why we think our neighbor with andifferent set of perceptions is an idiot.

A new way to think about him is to think about what was drummedninto his head before age seven as well as what was drummed intonyours. Repetition sells.

My father used to say, "All the world's a little queer,
Martha, except thee and me, and sometimes even thee."nnnnn