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That type of negativity comes mostly from insignificance. Someone without a spark of creative genius may become wealthy, powerful, or socially successful, but he still lacks any inner direction, which is important because creativity comes from an orientation toward something instead of against things.
If we had to summarize creativity, it begins with the ability to perceive a need, and extends from that toward incorporating patterns from elsewhere in reality and drawing comparisons between them. Metaphor exists at the heart of creativity and allows greater understanding of how the world works as well as invention of the new.
Those who find themselves perpetually discontented are individualists; that is, they see nothing but themselves, therefore cannot explore the inner space that connects self to world. They want to reject the world, therefore they become contrarians who portray reality as unreal and manipulations as real.
All human pathologies come from this primal hubris, or a desire to be more important in a social setting than we are in any meaningful measurement of reality and our contributions. People who want to socialize, manipulate, attention seek, and otherwise get ahead without contributing are this type of contrarian individualist.
We can see the creative impulse comes from a sense of inner balance and purpose which is achieved through thinking about things other than the self. A recent study on meditation showed how people go from externally-directed but individualistic to internally-directed and holistic:
Twitter users who completed a 60-day online mediation challenge were more likely to post positive original tweets, according to a University of Auckland study, which is one of the first to track real-world behavioral changes in a group of Twitter users before, during and after attempting a mindfulness challenge.
“We argue that if consumers practice mindfulness, they more fully engage in online activities that require creativity and creation, which means that they are more likely to post original content rather than simply retweeting information created by others.”
The study findings also indicate that Twitter users who completed the mediation challenge, compared to those who didn’t, exhibited more positive emotions in original tweets.
Mindfulness involves being aware of the world around you through the lens of inner space. Instead of accepting what one sees as perceives as an absolute truth, people who pursue mindfulness — sometimes called prayer in the West — try to translate what they see and perceive into a consistent model of patterns and function in the world.
This requires that they tame their inner self, calming the neurotic voices of fear and trauma, while discovering how their brains think and therefore becoming able to harness that power. It also requires they accept themselves as they are, which allows them to separate desires from needs.
People who have explored inner space tend to be more creative in the sense of having ideas outside of the dominant trends that everyone else is participating in so that they gain social importance. They also have clearer minds, so can see important issues and the structure of those patterns, allowing the use of metaphor.
This runs in contrast to the echo chamber of malcontents that is human socializing, where those who are most emotional and attention-seeking dominate, which is why social media is unrepresentative:
Unlike surveys, which are designed to collate opinions from diverse groups that closely reflect the country’s demographics, it is well established that the demographics on social media platforms are not truly representative of the larger population.
There’s another, lesser-known bias—quantified for the first time in a recent paper co-authored by Pokhriyal, Vosoughi, and Professor of Government Benjamin Valentino—known as participation bias.
“Even if you have everyone on Twitter, they may only participate in certain topics—ones that they find interesting or maybe feel comfortable talking about in public,” says Vosoughi. So, he says, when a small group is very vocal about a particular issue, their opinions get over-represented in the data.
Participation Bias says that most people think in social terms, and when they see some people doing something, they assume this small group speaks for all and they emulate it because that group is getting the attention.
People who have explored inner space find that getting attention comes from doing useful things for others or intangibles like nature, culture, and the divine. People without that exploration see only social activity and try to become important there by imitating successful gestures others have made.
This hacks our brains, which are designed to find optimums in ranges based on multiple inputs without consciously intending to do so, resulting in a Bayesian inference engine that is easily fooled by enough polarized or repetitive input:
Bayesian inference is a statistical method that combines prior knowledge with new evidence to make intelligent guesswork. For example, if you know what a dog looks like and you see a furry animal with four legs, you might use your prior knowledge to guess it’s a dog.
This inherent capability enables people to interpret the environment with extraordinary precision and speed, unlike machines that can be bested by simple CAPTCHA security measures when prompted to identify fire hydrants in a panel of images.
When a Bayesian system sees multiple points of data which are similar to each other, it assumes that this is part of the world and not a human manipulation. It can easily outfox one manipulative human, but is naked and clueless when confronted with even a small angry, sad, vindictive, or incensed group.
In this way, malcontents see a power in destruction (movements that find beauty in destruction, like heavy metal, steal this from them). They can be destructive and attract attention, therefore manipulate others, and by doing so create their own version of relevance and importance that does not need reality, only human opinions.
For this reason, they become individualists who are anti-realistic or opposed to any mention of reality outside the world of human opinion. This leads them to form a movement oriented toward destruction that ends in their own destruction, something that bothers them less than one might guess because they remain in control even in death.
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SOMETHING rare happened last week: I turned to Richard Dawkins for a dose of reality.
When Dawkins writes on science he is clear, precise, almost lyrical; unfortunately when he turns to philosophy he sounds like a know-it-all fourth-former, and when he touches on theology you could get greater insight and depth from your congregation’s Sunday School.
However, Dawkins sometimes talks common sense. I turned to him after reading that an analysis by the Civitas think tank revealed that 52 local authorities in England have passed a motion to adopt a definition of Islamophobia rejected by the government because of free speech concerns. Thirty-four of these authorities are Labour-led, with nine having no overall control, five run by the Liberal Democrats and four Conservative-led.
In 2018 a cross-party group of MPs led by Anna Soubry, a former Tory minister, and Wes Streeting, a Labour backbencher, influenced by radical Muslim groups, issued a report stating that organisations should formally adopt a definition describing Islamophobia as ‘a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. In 2019, the all-party parliamentary group accepted this definition.
The Government rejected it amid claims that it would limit free speech. Even liberal Muslims have rejected it as it would prevent criticism of radical Islam. Nevertheless, it has been adopted by the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Mayor of London and all major political parties in Scotland.
The Civitas report was written by Hardeep Singh, deputy director of the Network of Sikh Organisations and assistant editor of the Sikh Messenger. He argued: ‘If we are not careful, we may soon find ourselves in the rather peculiar situation in this country where we can talk freely about the crusades but may choose to self-censor when it comes to the jihads. Council employees – like history teachers – should especially take note.’
In a YouTube video response to the report released on September 9, Dawkins goes right to the heart of the situation: ‘If your belief is indefensible, your ignominious last resort is to accuse your critics of “phobia”.’
Dawkins has consistently decried the existence of the word Islamophobia, describing it as ‘an otiose word which doesn’t deserve definition’. In the video he states that ‘Islamophobia is a deeply silly and pernicious abuse of language, and is not the only fashionable word ending in “phobia” that condemns itself as a last-resort substitute for rational discussion.’
It is not only the use of the word which offends Dawkins, it is also the hypocrisy of the left and left-leaning who are perfectly willing to entertain and welcome criticism and attacks on Christianity but call for the smelling salts if anyone criticises Islam.
He notes that while most of his attacks on religion have been against Christianity, the religion he knows best, he has never been accused of ‘Christophobia’ and yet he is ‘regularly berated for Islamophobia’.
Dawkins tells of how he had a radio broadcast in California about a totally unrelated subject cancelled ‘because of my reputation for Islamophobia’. He was cancelled ‘not by Muslims but by American so-called liberals’. The left are supportive of Islam and the LGBTQ+ community because they see them as oppressed minorities. They don’t appear to have a problem with the fact that one group utterly rejects the other and, given the right circumstances, are willing to stone them to death and throw them off rooftops.
‘I am not Islamophobic,’ declares Dawkins, and yet if we ‘temporarily redefine “phobic” not as irrational fear but as rational detestation, then I am phobic about the following . . .’ He proceeds to list practices such as stoning women accused of adultery, female genital mutilation, killing cartoonists, and the death penalty for apostasy.
Dawkins concludes: ‘What is especially galling is those Western “liberals” who think Islam is a race, and are so terrified of being thought racist, that they refrain from criticising the above horrors.’
Like Christianity, Islam is a proselytising religion which aims at the conversion of the whole of humanity. As such it inevitably enters a world in which its beliefs and practices will be challenged, sometimes robustly.
Muslims call Christians ‘cross-worshippers’ because we believe Jesus died on the cross whilst Muslims reject this core belief. Christians reject the idea that Muhammad is the last and greatest prophet. Muslims and Christians profoundly disagree on matters which each group sees as central to our understanding of God, the world in which we live, and ourselves.
Muslims and their supporters appear to wish to shut down debate on the grounds that criticism can be offensive to Islam. Christians welcome the interchange of ideas as we see this as an opportunity to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. This is not ‘phobic’, and any attempt to stifle criticism of Islam is deeply worrying.
The taunt of Islamophobia is used to silence any critique of any aspect of the entire Islamic world, including Islamic extremism. As well as the assault on free speech, the growing acceptance of this deeply flawed definition of Islamophobia heralds the backdoor introduction of a blasphemy law in the UK where all religions except one are open to criticism, as they should be, but there is one which must never be mentioned except in terms of acceptance and praise.
We should treat accusations of Islamophobia with the contempt they deserve as a form of cultural thuggery.
This article appears in A Grain of Sand