TODO widening of meaning, include e.g. ADHD, gifted, ...
TODO Political causes e.g. anti-terrorism: Cure worse than disease
A few observations on the big picture:
Many of the ideas and observations that I had already written about before starting this article have been revealed as fitting in a frame-work of feminism, PC propaganda, or similar. Where I e.g. thought that lack of intelligence in the average scientist was the main cause behind the problems in a discussion of prejudice, it turns out that it may well be deliberate distortions by them, or a result of them having been indoctrinated by someone engaging in deliberate distortions. (However, lack of intelligence is still likely a contributing factor among very many of the involved.) Similarly, many individual characteristics of women have turned out to fit in a bigger picture, like my discussion of women and losers is just a special case of “shaming language”.
Feminism is only one of several movements causing problems in a very similar way, e.g. the US pseudo-liberals, the politically correct, parts of the environmental movements, and parts of the “black rights” movements.
Similarly, other negative forces (often in a partial alliance with the previous) with commercial interests gains and wields power to the detriment of society in a variety of ways, including manipulation of the public, unsavory dealings of various kinds, ...
Ditto for e.g. political forces not already mentioned, ditto some religious forces, ...
Common to these is at least a similar way of functioning, that ostensible (often originally true) goals do not coincide with the actual goals, that individuals abuse organisations to do their bidding, that the organisations often steam-roll over individuals (sometimes the same who did the bidding at an earlier time ...), that the same type of people eventually ends at the top, etc.
In particular:
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
(http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/288200.htmle)
Various movements on various levels tend to follow very clear patterns along, to some approximation, the lines of Animal Farm. Notably, the world is full with ostensibly good organisations that are, in fact, evil. Consider e.g. PETA or Autism Speaks, or obviously the DV shelters.
These movements and forces are in turn part of a higher level dynamic which they may sometimes influence or be influenced by, or be aware or unaware of. In many ways, human societies can be likened to gases, where the individual particles/humans can move around with some amount of freedom, but where in the long term the aggregated behaviour becomes the same, affected only by aggregated measures (e.g. temperature), but not individual actions.
Interesting issues for the future include what happens when such aggregated measures (e.g. average intelligence or ease of knowledge transfer) change, or when sufficiently many individuals become aware of this phenomenon (by analogy, if particles were self-conscious, could control their actions, and wanted to change the overall system behaviour, then Maxwell’s demonw would be available.
These is worthy of a deeper analysis; however, due to the complexities involved, this would likely require writing a second document of the same size as this one [the original one page that contained this entire category] (and require the same extensive readings). In addition, the insights I have, at the time of writing, can almost all be retrieved by reading a few classic dystopics (including, obviously, those by Orwell) and blogs dealing with side-effects and extremes of political correctness, corruption of the justice system, the DV shelter situation, and similar themes; looking into the events of e.g. the revolutionary France, the Weimar Republic and Nazi-Germany, East Germany, ... The general principles are that history repeats it self and that human nature remains the same.
I would even advice contemplating some conspiracy theories (without taking them as truth!), e.g. in that some evil hidden force (popular examples include the Illuminati, secret groups of businessmen, the Jews, and, depending on definition, our old friend “the Patriarchy”) is in control, that we already live in a brave new world or the metaphorical year 1984, and similar.
In all likelihood these are wrong; however, they can still lead to the right kind of big picture thinking and awareness. Further, if we replace a hidden conscious force with natural developments due to human nature, the dynamics of organisations and memes, whatnot, there is often more than a little truth in them: Yes, the modern world does seem Orwellian, but not because of a single controlling force. Instead there are a multitude of partially conscious, partially unconscious, forces interacting to produce a similar result. Notably, this is extremely likely to have been true in Orwell’s age too, else he would likely not have come to the right conclusion; further, it can well be argued that even the characters within Nineteen Eighty-Four were in the same situation, with no true controlling force, Big Brother just a (likely non-existent or already dead) figure head, ...
Bush (with near certainty) did not mastermind the 9/11 attacks; however, some indirect benefits did occur to him and the people around him—and by gaining an understanding of these benefits a better understanding of society can be reached. The claims that the moon landings were a hoax were based on flawed arguments; however, valuable insights can still be drawn from the alleged motivations and methods of the supposed hoaxers. Etc. (At the same time, these serve as valuable warnings not to make too far-going interpretations, in particular concerning intentions.)
Going somewhat off-topic, I note that there is a clear tendency that e.g companies, parties, systems, countries, ..., go through a brief period of “idealism” (or some equivalent in the relevant area) and then proceed to grow increasingly corrupt, increasingly controlled by those interested in their own careers, increasingly collectivistic (in the non-idealistic way of e.g. Anthem) or focused on its own machinery over the individuals it is composed of. For this reason, it can be argued that it is bad for a single party to remain in government for more than two electional cycles, that cataclysmic upheavals are sometimes a good thing, that limits on the size of companies can be a good idea (and I write this as someone with mostly libertarian sympathies), ...
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