Lord of the Flies – What a World Run by Children (with or without with Asperger Syndrome) would be Like!

A follow-up to a previous blog …

The world has gone mad! You may have heard people saying this, and if proof were needed, look no further than a Swedish child with Asperger syndrome having a temper tantrum at the September 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, while engaging in her rant about how others – those possessing the property of otherness – in this case climate change heretics (those who have not been indoctrinated into the repent your sins for the end of the world in nigh ideology of the messianic Swedish child) are blamed for destroying her future. Only one person is responsible for that – the Swedish child with Asperger syndrome!

Looking beyond the echo chamber in which, no doubt, some of her devotees dwell, picking up (oh so accurate?) information from that (oh so reliable?) information source called the world-wide-web and a proliferation of social-networks (complete with imaginary friends), I suggest a remedy for their misguided thoughts, which are of course beliefs – secular religious beliefs! They are part of a socially constructed reality in case you were wondering. I’m afraid you will need to be familiar with one of the classic works of sociology to understand what I am referring to. Most people are not familiar.

And that remedy – I suggest that those who are still able to read, should do just that – read that is! I mean books. Hard work! Yes of course. Nothing worth having comes easy! In particular, as a starting point, read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies! You might also want to familiarize yourself with Asperger syndrome as well! You might then look at the Swedish child in a different way and realise how potentially dangerous she is. You might also want to reflect upon just how easy it is for people to follow messianic figures. The world went mad in the 1930s as well!

Lord of the Flies is a novel about children’s attempt to govern themselves in a situation where there are no adults to govern them. Whether children have Asperger syndrome or not, there is a reason why children do not get to become Prime Ministers, Presidents or to determine environmental policies! Read the novel to find out more about what a world run by children – with or without Asperger syndrome – might be like!

Lord of the Flies is interpreted as a story about the conflicting human impulses toward civilisation and social organisation – living by rules, peacefully and in harmony – and toward the will to power. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. How these play out, and how different people feel the influences of these, form a major subtext of Lord of the Flies. The name Lord of the Flies is a literal translation of Beelzebub.

Some people might think that Beelzebub is highly appropriate to the Swedish child, judging by the hate speech directed against her. Such thoughts though are inappropriate. The point is that there is another side to the Swedish child that people are missing, and that is the potential danger she poses to civilisation, as her message encourages young people to give up on civilisation and social organisation. Her negative message somewhat misses the point too, because children, like many adults, do not understand the science of climate change, and they also overestimate the integrity of the scientific community, being as they are naïve children lacking in worldly experience. More on the integrity issue at the end!

The aforementioned interpretation of Lord of the Flies does of course have relevance to issues around global warming, and the contradictions between what people think collectively (socially constructed reality) and individually (special people who see what others do not see – artists for example if you believe such myths, or children with Asperger syndrome who think that they are special (this it seems is what the Swedish child told the BBC!), who become messianic. Think back to the 1930s – surely the world has had enough of such people and the mass hysteria that they create? Or perhaps not! Perhaps people want more of that sort of madness?

What individuals think, based on what some psychologists call, fast thinking, could be very different from what individuals think based on slow thinking. Fast thinking though is natural and automatic and can be wrong. Everyone thinks fast, including scientists! Esteemed presenters of natural history programmes also think fast and can be wrong. So, I suppose, do children with Asperger syndrome. Or perhaps you want to believe that is not the case?

How can one tell whether what people are saying is not the result of fast thinking with its high risk of systematic error? What implication does this systematic error have for humanity? This is why I study flawed decision making. It is more common than people realise. Experts in particular are prone to this problem including scientists, esteemed presenters of natural history programmes, artists, and others too! Everyone in fact including the Swedish child! And the followers of Extinction Rebellion! Even the ones who say they are former senior police officers! There is no escape from fast thinking. The only remedy is to slow down, take a long time to analyse the original source material, and start critically questioning what people are saying. And you have the free time for this do you? And the specialist knowledge and skills?

Probably you will know (you have acquired an understanding) that children are innocent and that out of the mouths of babes … In other words children can say things which might seem wise and perhaps, unconstrained by social norms, will say things that adults will not say (but perhaps need to say!). Thus, when a child with Asperger syndrome turns up, apparently saying wise things, and claiming that because she has Asperger syndrome she sees things that other people cannot see, you may have a strong inclination to believe her, even though you probably know nothing or very little about Asperger syndrome. This will not stop you from believing – because it is a good story and seems to make sense, even if it is not correct.

This is an example of fast thinking – fast and automatic. Thus you might also accept too, that young people have no future and that causing young people to miss out on their education by not attending school is not a problem, and that the Swedish child with Asperger syndrome is not leading young people astray. Back to Lord of the Flies!

If you try to stop this automatic process and make an effort to think through issues slowly, in other words critically, you might become horrified by the idea that someone, because of their condition, who may have an obsession with one narrow subject, who may engage in restricted patterns of behaviour and who may also have a very literal understanding of language, who may also struggle with the natural ambiguities of language, and think people always mean exactly what they say, is encouraging people to miss school and damage their future.

This is the future that collectively the world is making – which is (perhaps?) in the longer term, more damaging to humanity than issues which apparently have already rendered young peoples’ futures irrelevant and not worth working for – a message of hopeless! Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

The way for young people to make a better future for themselves and the rest of the world, is through education, not through listening to those who think that the future has been stolen from young people. The future belongs to no one, and is made by those who journey to the future, not by those who encourage the young to give up this precious gift called education.

Politicians declaring climate emergencies does nothing to solve the issue – but it does make them popular! Hence populist politicians, like in Scotland, who in contradictory style, declare the primacy of a border (leave the UK), while simultaneously declaring borders to be irrelevant (join the EU), or who (again contradictorily) declare climate emergencies while looking to the extraction and sale of more fossil fuels (oil) to enable the implementation of that other contradictory policy that declares the primacy of a border, while simultaneously declaring borders to be irrelevant. Well they are politicians! Thinking politicians? What do you believe?

And to that matter of the integrity of scientists, and others who I would say, dwell in the House of Salomon (or Solomon if you prefer). If you are wondering what I am referring to it is because you do indeed need to read more books!

I have spent my working life surround by those who dwell in the House of Salomon, and understand them better than most, and I speak their disciplinary languages as well. For many decades I have been monitoring and recording case studies of their flawed decision making, noting too an increasing lack of integrity in that domain called research, from which the climate change narrative emerges. I have noted too, how people who do not support this particular narrative are treated. Not very scientifically, but essentially as heretics, which is why I have also studied the social sciences and looked for explanations why people behave in this way, and indeed why people believe others, like scientists, who have a dark history that cannot be dismissed as a few bad apples, or as aberrations. This latter statement may conflict with your beliefs:  yes the word is correct – beliefs.

The scandal of Eugenics is a prime example of scientists and their lack of integrity – and morals! It is something that still persists today, only few now dare to say openly what they think, which is not scientific, but just prejudice masquerading as science. By way of example, I suggest you look at Richard Dawkins’ imbecilic views on Down’s Syndrome – do you really believe that his opinions are the result of scientific work and critical thinking, that he has spoken to people with Down’s Syndrome? If you do then you are part of a socially constructed reality – a very dangerous one that would have been well appreciated in Berlin between 1933 and 1945.

This is an appropriate moment to mention an eminent British evolutionary biologist talking scientific nonsense. Sir Julian Huxley, FRS! Note the letters FRS which is the highest scientific accolade available in the UK – FRS or Fellow of the Royal Society. You should watch Julian Huxley’s 1937 film Heredity in Man. It is available for free viewing on the British Film Institute web site (https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-heredity-in-man-1937-online). The film is described as “a chilling insight into the brave new world of pre-Holocaust eugenics.” Notice the language he uses – “mental defectives” and “maintaining the race at a high level, physically and mentally”. Do not be fooled into thinking these are the perverse views of one individual – there was what scientists call, a scientific consensus around this eugenics nonsense. If you do watch the film, notice the (scientific?) (pseudo-scientific?) prediction at the end. Can you see the flaws in this model and his arguments? If not you might want to rant and scream about the need to listen to these scientists, for your future is being destroyed because the purity of the race will be destroyed by (to use Huxley’s words) “mental defectives” who are going to swamp all normal people (that’s another phrase Huxley uses – what exactly is a normal person?).

If you follow the Swedish child’s advice to listen to the scientists, you will want to implement Huxley’s brave new world, and rant and scream at those who are Eugenics Deniers! Or perhaps you are going to be inconsistent – which is okay, because that is what people are.

Here is something else to imagine. It is the early 19^th century and a different (earlier) Swedish child with Asperger syndrome has just read Thomas Malthus’ (another Fellow of the Royal Society) Essay on Population. Its full title is: An Essay on the Principle of Population; or A View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; with An Inquiry into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils that it Occasions. Suddenly this different Swedish child is ranting, saying we should listen to the scientists, otherwise my future will be destroyed because there will not be enough food to feed the population. Perhaps you might want to join in the chorus? Or perhaps you might see the flaws in Malthus’ oh so scientific model and predictions! Or perhaps not! Self-evidently his prediction of the global food emergency that was already happening turned out to be – a false prediction. I wonder why?

The most fundamental problems of humanity are not external, but lie within us, for we are fundamentally flawed, and the flaw lies in the mind. Most of what you think is knowledge – what you know – is not knowledge in the philosopher's sense of justified true belief, but in the sociologist’s sense that, if enough people believe something, then it is knowledge. Hence Eugenics, Communism, National Socialism, and climate change hysteria, to mention just a few examples of human madness based on – knowledge. He who eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil will surely die.

Beware those who with beguiling words speak of scientific consensus, for it may just be another way of describing human behaviour in group situations, and what people want to believe based on knowledge – that is to say beliefs! And how many of you have the knowledge (in the sense of justified true belief) to understand this, regardless of age and Asperger syndrome? So please do listen to the scientists, and then question what they say, for as Hannah Arendt writes at the end of her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” As I said at the beginning, the world has gone mad for we are increasingly seeing people whose reality of experience and standards of thought are that of the ideal subject of totalitarian rule. Quite a few scientists fall into that group, as Huxley demonstrates, which is perhaps why scientists and engineers so enthusiastically embraced the new world order that was National Socialism. More books to read!

I find it difficult to convey to people using this genre (blogs), the extent to which people and organisations that speak with the voice of authority by virtue of their standing in society, are engaging in communicating misinformation and false truth claims. Huxley illustrates this. So does Dawkins. The problem seems to have grown as mass media has also expanded, and anyone can now broadcast their beliefs to an audience hungry to believe in something (anything?).

The evidence I collect increasingly points to people who dwell in the House of Salomon being either morally corrupt, ignorant, or incompetent, sometimes all three. And few want to believe this. This is why I have turned to developing another genre – the scriptovisual – for as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in the text of his Nobel Lecture, beauty saves the world. More reading!