Make it unthinkable, please

A story

Once upon a time, in a certain place, there was an ordinary man who did not stay ordinary. His story is riveting.

One day, he was traveling. He wasn't a boss, but he was going to a meeting of bosses, because they were gathering to talk about his country.

En route, he had an idea. A few things he'd thought about for years coalesced: "what if we could have a country like THIS?" He hastily scrawled a blue-sky, eight-point plan.

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Of course, he did not ask himself "What seems best for me or my status group?" He asked "What is best for everybody, including those who are not being noticed?"

Otherwise there would be little for me to tell you about.

A boring list (and something interesting)

I won't list all eight points, because they sound boring, but here are a few (edited) to give you a sense of it.

• Both upper and lower legislative houses should be created and government policies should be decided by this legislative body. — boring!
• Class or position should not impede being appointed councilor. Abolish sinecures. — boring!
• A modern legal code. — boring!

Now here is something interesting: his country was feudal. (Which isn't like fairy tales or Tolkien.)

The plan that sounds boring to most of us supposedly modern folk was, in fact, so outrageous that it was likely UNTHINKABLE.

Ǝlqɐʞuᴉɥʇun!

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Of course, I've told you a shadow of the story. Even getting to this point required our ordinary man to think outrageous, "DUDE, WHAT PLANET ARE YOU ON?" thoughts several times in unthinkable succession.

Such as an alliance between bitter, warring enemies.

It worked

Yet with only a few further twists and turns, it all worked, including the unthinkable plan, which was composed on a ship in 1867. Japan became modern in a few years.

In other words, feudalism ended RAPIDLY. His outrageous ideas entered the constitution.

I'm pretty sure that would not have happened if our ordinary man, who was a merchant-origin hick who was bullied (and known for bedwetting) as a child, and a few others like him, had settled for what was thinkable.¹

What did he NOT do?

But what DIDN'T our guy do? This is interesting, too.

He wasn't a peasant (he was a low-rank samurai), but he DIDN'T throw peasants under the rickshaw! He DIDN'T allow the new bosses to trick everybody back into feudalism! And the overseas forces breathing down everybody's necks didn't take over Japan.

He didn't choose between unacceptable bosses. He refused to tolerate those who would do the country wrong, even if that meant the shogunate. And a shogun resigned.

In other words, he didn't lose track of the right thing.

Now let's ponder thinkability vs. unthinkability

THINKABLE reforms could have thrown the country into "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" (got fooled again). Empty promises. Or full-blown colonialism.

But our ordinary man's reforms were UNTHINKABLE. (Imagine: "What's a 'vote'? Be realistic! Baby steps!")

The old order was dangerous. The new order could have been dangerous. Baby steps were DANGEROUS! The reforms HAD to be unthinkable!

Moral

In everything we do and demand, I believe we must not settle for what is merely thinkable.

I don't mean that like a New Age business guru. I mean it's logically necessary. Just like our ordinary man, we do not live in a time in which thinkability works.²

Here is my query to the community of a big disease:

Have we scrawled our clear vision of what is right? Not "realistic", and NOT comforting to the comfortable, but actually RIGHT?

Did we make sure it's unthinkable enough?³

Are we sure?⁴

Danger

Thinkability is DANGEROUS!

Exclude anybody, and victory is false.

Demand too little, and you always get even less.

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And in a disease that very often progresses by very large amounts in severity, "they" is everybody, including people who don't seem like one (YET) and those not being noticed.

It is DANGEROUS to disregard the facts of severity and disease progression (for any reason).

Online communities (and oneself) are a selection bias.

Carefulness is not the enemy of boldness

I have one more point.

He was careful to travel the country, learn from the best minds he could find, and broaden his own mind. He thought about everything he did.

Conclusion

It seems to me that at least one disease, with millions of sufferers, lives in something like the above period of history, right about now.

Thinking is desirable, but thinkability is NOT!

Samuel

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rika Kageyama for valuable comments after I ran this post by her.

P.S.

Please comment on my posts to tell me that you are listening. I need to know this website makes a difference.

Footnotes:

¹

His name was Sakamoto. As a sort of side effect, he was present at the forming of what became Mitsubishi, commanded ships, brokered major alliances, fought off assassination attempts, planned battles, left his domain (punishable by death), and unusually invoked international law to resolve a local maritime dispute, all by the age of 32.

But you're a sharp reader, and you've discerned that my point is not going to be about Sakamoto.

²

Do we all know the Overton window? It is the range of expressible opinions on a given topic, in a given political climate. (Imagine a wide political spectrum, and a smaller segment somewhere in the middle. That segment is the Overton window.) It can shift.

A given opinion can be considered one of these (depending on where that window is at the time it is proffered):

1. Unthinkable
2. Radical
3. Acceptable
4. Sensible
5. Popular
6. Policy

Do we appreciate how this window has been used against us? Extreme corporate anti-science — snow as black and coal as white — got shifted to Policy, while basic science is Unthinkable or Radical. That is what the bad guys have done: they shifted the Overton window from science toward their political goals.

Now here is the really key question: do we realize that we reinforce the current position of the Overton window when we water down the truth to make it palatable? Compromising science, health, and human rights reinforces the status quo, even when it feels to us as if we are moving it.

We have adopted the mindset of the authorities more than we realize. In order to accurately show reality, our sights (including the breadth of symptoms in disease portrayal, recent funding demands, and attention to human rights) need raising until what we see is currently unthinkable to ourselves. We HAVE to make it unthinkable.

³

We have allies (visible, latent, and hidden). But even good champions cannot hear what they are not told. They absolutely rely on us to shatter their normal-person sensibilities (and replace them with reforms that address the facts and needs they never imagined).

They rely on us to tell them UNTHINKABLE things!

⁴

Here is why we should be cautious about being sure, and a reading recommendation for everybody:

Overton is a window of perception. It defines what is thinkable.

I believe it has cropped our community's view (not merely everybody else's).

It is all because our Overton window faces a dark, littered alley's concrete wall. The same is likely true of most oppressed groups. Thinkability is oppression tech.

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Meanwhile, to broaden horizons, please read what one disease (not ours) has, for SERVICES: {NYT article}.

Now let's talk science funding for causation, fundamental pathophysiology, and treatment. Wanna see the numbers? (Scratch that. Wanna see THE NUMBER OF ZEROES?)

Thinkability is distilled evil. It obliterates reason.