When my daughter was about six years old, we would play opposite-day on occasion, where every no turns into a yes, and vice versa. Cold into hot, funny into not-funny, delicious into disgusting, you get the point. A fun game at first, until you forget what day it is, and you receive an unexpected sequitur non grata. Especially now that she is sixteen.
I have come to recognize this game of opposite-day is played all the time by certain people. A game widely practiced and relied on and deeply institutionalized into the fabric of our society, with its disciples no longer understanding right from wrong. Or made to believe things they shouldn’t, with grave consequences to the collusion of democracy they align themselves with.
Opposite-Day Addicts
Let me give you some examples:
Opposite-day economists who our world-leaders rely on for forward-looking advice portray the extrapolation of hindsight will yield foresight to break the norm—an impossible and incompatible feat.
Opposite-day Muslims, who assign xenophobia to anyone who challenges their barbaric war-lord religion, described in the Kuran and Hadith, issuing life-threatening fatwas of xenophobia to “infidels” from other beliefs or independent thinkers.
Opposite-day racists, black aggressors portraying to be victims, who keep aligning themselves with the very religion that shipped them from Africa to the United States and made slavery legal, still blaming white people for their unwillingness to submit to career-criminal adulation, yielding newfound populism of unacceptable and unconstitutional segregation even Martin-Luther King disavowed.
Opposite-day asset managers, who proclaim to be expert risk managers, as they deploy ten levels of bottom-heavy diversified embedded risk, incapable of offering accurate risk management.
Opposite-day fan-boys of sustainability, while sustainability does not exist anywhere in the universe. Blissfully ignoring the rules of renewal expanding the fractal of human ingenuity in tune with nature.
Opposite-day impact investors, who know nothing about the laws of nature that actually define what impacts humanity.
Opposite-day traders calling themselves investors, who know nothing about the investible asset but are willing to bet on how little the general public knows about the investible company. Modern-day scalpers who subsequently bet on the aberrations of said miscomprehension and jump off quickly when the fog clears. Leeching pur sang.
Opposite-day politicians, who proclaim to be the voice of the people, chosen to protect our collective interests as they rake in pay-to-play dollars from corporations chasing vile-maxims of corporate self-interest.
Opposite-day senators align themselves with the rights-of-man defined in the U.S. Constitution and have failed to establish the obligations to freedom that build trust in freedom.
Opposite-day scientists, who, as they revel in consequence from an existing normalization of truth, become rebels without a cause. The job of real scientists is to study and discover new normalizations of nature’s, rather than manmade, truth.
Pattern-seeking
I can go on forever. Humans are pattern-seeking animals. And if a good one is not on offer, we will make one up. Even when making up such a pattern is contrary to the truth as we know it today.
Of course, the crux of this confounding between right and wrong comes from a diligent assessment of truth, not from a Macdonald’s version of it. As I explain in Learn To Think, truth is not defined by absolutism or confined by protectionism, yet instead defined by our highest normalization of proof and purview.
Rise Above
The world is a dangerous place because of these tyrants of make-believe. Not because they exist, but because we, as a society, let them get away with it systematically.
Hate the game, not the players. The players are mere serfs to the injustice our society embraces and institutionalizes. It pays the bills for the desperation and continuation of their survival.
Stand up and rise against injustice of any kind. Any time, all the time. Especially against the charlatans of injustice for whom opposite-day is every day.
