The templars

Kinutil

Incredulity is the “state of being unwilling or unable to believe something.” It is a good word to have in these times.

The late author Umberto Eco gives quite a discussion of it in his book “Foucault’s Pendulum,” where he makes a distinction between skepticism, pessimism, and just plain old incredulity, the unwillingness to believe all the proverbial feces that fly about come election time. And since there seems to be an alignment of US

American and Philippine elections, then we must note how feces seem to have gone international.

He finds Umberto Eco hard to read and he had been too busy lately. Though he’s rereading him, he has yet to bring himself to the passage in the book which goes: “There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…”

But not to worry. This is Kinutil’s second time to read this book. He read it once when he was a younger man. He remembers it inside something somewhat of a haze. And so he is reading it again.

He is not raising this quote as a reference just to politicians. Rather he is raising it for people who do political commentary especially in the social networks, not to offend or give insult but simply to remind that while we make a big thing of our own chosen candidates, we must do so inside the sure knowledge that while they matter so much to us, we probably do not matter as much to them. We are only numbers inside a simple statistical system.

The statistics predict only one thing: How much money will each candidate still need to win? This question matched with other questions like, how much money does the candidate actually have, gives us a reasonably correct prediction of eventual outcomes.

Often, the prediction is a self-fulfilling one. Especially when political sponsors use it to determine which candidate they will finally lay all their money on. Political sponsors, especially business interests, usually lay a bit of money on all candidates. They call it insurance money. But days before the voting, they will have already known who is likely to win.

At that point in time, they will put the greater chunk of their donations on that candidate. In this way, elections are usually won or lost days before the first ballots are even cast.

This view would seem rather pessimistic, but it is not. It is only incredulous. And, yes, if we use the measure cited by Eco in his quote, Kinutil’s words would immediately seem to be the lunatic’s view following after the logic of the moron. But perhaps it is not that much more moronic than other views flying about; no offense meant.

All we need now is to bring up the templars…