5 most common mistakes of men #3

(The art of thinking wrong)



Part C
"Mistake Facts with Opinions"
(Failing to difference oneself from reality)

This is probably one of the most terrible mistakes people can make in their lives, and the mistake that is possibly hurting the most the modern Western Civilization.

Legions of persons, living in the protective umbrella of developed countries/cities/societies have totally lost the perspective about what it is really living in this World, what it takes to any individual of any living species to survive, flourish and ultimately to die
They have lost their reality checks and can go away with this because the "society" (the tribe) protects them from their own mistakes.

But reality, the final unappeasable, unappealable arbiter of everything usually comes sooner or later with the truth on one hand and a swath in the other and the candid smile of a child in the face to make accountable everyone for the mistakes made. Then "life is unfair" when it doesn't match my whims...

Example:
-"This cougar is just a big cat, let's have one in our backyard"
or
-"Rich people are responsible for the existence of poor people in the World"
or
-"Doctor Smith must save me from this strange tumor, otherwise I will sue him"


Of course everyone needs opinions because they are essential to make the infinite choices that allow us to keep ourselves alive and move forward.

But of course the cougar killed one of their kids, poor people existed before rich people and doctor Smith is not God.

And it gets worse since erroneous opinions are like transmissible diseases: They travel fast from person to person, hosting specially in brains not used to check information against the only a final judge of everything: Reality.

Some people of this kind are fortunate and can live all their lives in this sort of "pink lie" supported by the effort and thinking of other people. Other less fortunate just die or live unhappy because of their mistakes, without finally knowing what happened

This essential mistake is in big part responsibility from the default and ultimate failure of the ones supposed to help to guide the course of humanity's mental evolution: Philosophers, who contribute everyday to this confusion of Metaphysics with Epistemology allowing the fundamental mistake of taking one opinion of the World as the World itself.
They are supposed to be the enlightened, the best thinkers, the beacon in the night but instead they resigned from reason and engaged in the same mainstream fallacies and faults than the "common citizen" who they were supposed to help. Mysticism, grayness, subjectivism, ignorance, magic-thinking, laziness, cowardice, to name a few are the vices supposed to be fought by philosophers but they mostly don't.

It is up to everyone of us to correct this, because the future of the World and our kids is in our hands.