Our Headlong Charge Back To Pre-Industrial Society (CBD)

Sometime commenter and beer guru Beeerslinger sent this along. Cocktail guide offers recipes made with urine. it reminded me of the discussion (was it yesterday) about tiny houses, and the Left's desire to return to a pre-industrial-revolution quality of life. People drank urine because they were ignorant of science, and relied on alchemists and "physicians" to cure their ailments. But we know exactly what urine is....waste products from metabolism, and the body balancing various other compounds. This is not clever deduction....this is well known. Because 2,500 years of Western philosophy and intellectual development has taught us how to study the world and discern facts from bullshit. And drinking urine is bullshit -- it hearkens back to an ignorance based on lack of knowledge -- but we don't have that excuse any more.

Am I making too much of this? Is this simply a bunch of rich people with too much time on their hands? 10 years ago I would have laughed, and chalked this up to stupidity and boredom. But I am now deeply suspicious of any attempt to reject science and logic. And I think this is exactly that.

But......

Seamus Muldoon brings up an excellent point.

maybe it is not so much a rejection of science as it is a rejection of statistics. By that I mean, the element of society that you are reading about in such an article have rejected a sense of 'normal' in the statistical sense. Perhaps it stems from a deep-rooted desire (which they change to mean a 'need' or even a 'God-given right') to stand out from the crowd. If someone is unable to achieve excellence in a productive way, they might seek excellence in a self-destructive way.

There should still be nothing wrong with reaching one's potential (give it your best), but if that puts you within two standard deviations from the mean in everyday things, it just isn't enough to make someone feel special these days. Hence the rampant celebration of the ever more aberrant. They have to be hipper and edgier than the hip and edgy.

posted by Open Blogger at 11:02 AM

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