Intellectual Capacity (3) Diagnosis and Proposed Solutions

In the previous two parts we examined various concepts relating to our main heading, set out scientific data, and made observations about how and why the government has for years been dragging society and future generations into the dead end of ignorance, and about the inadequacy of politicians.

We touched briefly on the point that the way out against disinformation, deliberate ignorance and the delusions of “the world envies us” is, once again, quality education and, at the individual level, quality reading. Let us now continue with some new additions and complete our series by gathering the proposed solutions.

As you know, in quality reading the diversity of news sources and nourishment from accurate sources of information are of great importance. Unfortunately, in an atmosphere like Turkey’s, where those in power have monopolised the media and what remains practises controlled opposition, things are, as you might expect, not at all easy. One of the most important means of breaking this media siege is a foreign language.

In a nutshell, eating well matters a great deal. The saying “you are what you eat”, said of physical health, applies here too. We can make a similar statement for intellectual development. A person’s mental world takes on the colour of what he reads, learns and observes. To reach a sound judgement about the people, objects and ideas we encounter, certain reference values must exist in our minds. For example, to judge the taste of the pasta we eat, the taste of an ideal pasta must be in our repertoire. If the coding of this reference value was done wrongly in the brain, errors occur in the judgements made on the subject.

This is the truth behind so many people constantly talking about their mother’s cooking and saying things like “no food beats it”. Because the tastes of mother’s cooking are etched into the subconscious from childhood, they are accepted as ideal reference values, and even much better dishes a person eats may not be liked.

From another window, a cook who knows the ideal taste of pasta in his customer’s mind can win the customer over with pasta served in that format, even if the quality of the ingredients and the nutritional value are low.

That is why politicians guided by populism professionally serve up not what ought to be but what people wish to be. In the end, a series of daily actions emerges, devoid of any notion of strategy and with no connection among them. The bricks that should be laid patiently one on top of the other according to a definite plan to raise buildings are scattered randomly across the land to win the applause and approval of the masses. And when the sweet dream ends, nothing but dust and earth can be seen in a country that has turned into a building site.

That is why the foundations of a fine country must rise on the mental worlds of individuals. If mental coding is formed wrongly as a result of poor and unbalanced nourishment, choices will not be sound either. Millions may insist on calling “white” things that are pitch black at heart. And the social engineers who systematically exploit the people see these gaps very well and turn democracy upside down in the name of democracy.

Because of social interaction, they pinpoint the pathological mental genes that are generally present. For this is one of the main veins on which populism and demagoguery feed.

Democracy is not a planet that, once in orbit, starts revolving with its initial velocity in a frictionless medium without needing extra energy. Building democracy is a hard process, and sustaining it is harder still.

Just as the success of an athlete who takes performance-enhancing drugs is unjust and contested, so the so-called victories of democracy won through the manipulation of minds by exploiting the socio-cultural gaps of societies are equally unjust and contested.

Is there a difference between interfering with the ballot box by using election results designed down to every comma and full stop in advance, and interfering with and shaping people’s will by various illegitimate methods?

That is why the only mechanism able to detect those in the system who are doping and to say stop to democracy being entrusted to unjust hands is a society formed of free wills that have vision and have attained intellectual accumulation.

We need minds that read themselves and the world very well, that are rational enough to leave no room for demagogues, and awake enough to grasp at a glance the lavish, utterly unfeasible promises and insincere heroic rhetoric of populists.

Otherwise the vicious circle created by the brokers of democracy will grow even larger and turn into a giant whirlpool that rapidly swallows all social values.

Part One: Our Intellectual Capacity, Mown Down for Years

Part Two: The Questioning Society and the Government’s Report Card