substantially blots
out skepticism, reason
and criticism
That intensity of emotion, and the way it substantially blots out skepticism, criticism, and reason, explains a pathological technology’s persistence across time: it endures because rational thought is virtually powerless against it. The potent force of emotion also explains the third defining characteristic of a pathological technology: its proponents regularly and systematically underplay its downsides, risks, unintended negative consequences, and even blatantly obvious dangers.
Thus began the Delirium.
The Delirium was a mass hallucination, shared psychosis, or induced delusional disorder. This strange phenomenon amounted to a nationwide folie à deux*, one that affected all age groups, both sexes, and all classes of society: rich and poor, rustics and urbanites, royals and commoners. It was as if a universal mass drugging had occurred.
What a marvelous parade of words!
Now, guess …
Go on.
Go on and guess what the title of the book is where that passage came?
Guess the topic if the title is too hard.
Give up?
I was reading Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology by Edward Regis, Basic Books, September 8, 2015
Mr. Regis, through the story of dirigibles, an airship this is lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power, tells the story of Pathological Technology or bad ideas that keep going.
More specifically, German dirigibles, or Zeppelins, named for their Chief designers and cheerleader Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
Mr. Regis points at that almost all Zeppelins ever built, caught fire, exploded and burned.
Yet Germany as a whole was sized by a delirium that kept Zeppelins flying until the Hindenburg caught fire, exploded and crashed.
Yes, Zeppelins were used as bombers in Word War I, about which Winston Churchill remarked, “I rated the Zeppelin much lower as a weapon of war than almost anyone else. I believed that this enormous bladder of combustible and explosive gas would prove to be easily destructible.”
When Great Britain experiment with 2 Dirigibles of there own before giving up after they both crashed, Rear Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee, checked over the wreckage, and said : “The work of an idiot!”
But it took another 20 years and the crash of the Hindenburg before the German People would give up there Zeppelins.
Delerium.
What a great word.
A great word to describe what this Country is going through right now.
A Delirium.
A mass hallucination, a shared psychosis, or induced delusional disorder.
A strange phenomenon amounting to a nationwide folie à deux, one that has affected all age groups, both sexes, and all classes of society: rich and poor, rustics and urbanites, royals and commoners.
As if a universal mass drugging has occurred.
*shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder
No Haiku For You 