Sometimes it Is Difficult to Distinguish between Stupidity and the Lack of Intellectual Integrity — Take Business Insider’s Misleading Story about Russia’s Alleged “Brain Drain” — A Comment about the Consequences of Making Unsupported Statements

© 2014 Peter Free

 

03 December 2014

 

 

My irritation with the overwhelming prevalence of stupid and narcissistic people in our culture got the best of me this morning

 

My annoyance started with this culturally representative piece of trash from (the usually admirable) Business Insider:

 

 

Elena Holodny, Russia's Brain Drain Is Astounding, Business Insider (02 December 2014)

 

 

Standards for professionalism are slipping all over the world, it seems . . .

 

. . . being replaced by a deceptive “hey, look at me” syndrome exhibited by the least characterologically admirable (but powerful) people on the planet.

 

Truth is one of this phenomenon’s victims. With the media playing a leading role in bludgeoning it to death.

 

 

The “brain drain” story published by Business Insider . . .

 

. . . illustrates how subtly the “got’cha sucker” phenomenon attacks our societal ability to reason.

 

The article’s (apparently intentionally) misleading title is “Russia’s Brain Drain Is Astounding.”

 

It chatters on for 16 paragraphs trying to support the characterization (in the absence of any data at all) that more smart (high status occupation) than dumb (low status occupation) people are leaving the Federation.

 

The Insider article and the World Policy Institute blurb which it links to are entirely impressionistic. The only statistical data provided in both pieces demonstrates only that noticeable numbers of Russians are emigrating. The linked Institute source throws in a few snippets from non-random interviews with a handful of people.

 

Thus the “brain drain” claim (in both cases) has no statistical support. Indeed, in the 6th paragraph from the end of her article, author Elena Holodny admits that:

 

 

The number of people moving into Russia actually tops the number of people moving out.

 

Which leads her (finally) to tell readers the less sensationalized truth:

 

 

The bottom line: Russia is seeing some dramatic demographic changes that could greatly influence its economic and political future.

 

© 2014 Elena Holodny, Russia's Brain Drain Is Astounding, Business Insider (02 December 2014)

 

Holodny inanely stumbled into the only provable truth. She even infers that the vacated high status jobs are attracting the new immigrants, (who presumedly have the smarts to fill them).

 

It is too bad that she did not have the intellectual integrity to demand that Insider publish a more accurate title. As it stands, the title and self-contradictory progress of her article make her look like a nitwit.

 

 

The unsubstantiated brain drain assertion has the potential to mislead American policy

 

The statement makes it seem as if Western economic pressure on Russia for Federation aggression in Crimea and Ukraine is wise policy, when (in fact) it may not entirely be.

 

“Brain drain” suggests that time is on the West’s side and Russia is weakening. Which, given the United States’ now customary warmongering nature, may cause us to foolishly provoke more aggression from an underestimated Russia.

 

That such a development would work to the American war industry’s benefit (by provoking combat or a military buildup) is suspicious.

 

The alleged flight of Russian "smarts" also implies economic and cultural dynamics that might not exist. Which could lead to silly or unrealistic policies on our economic side of the water.

 

In sum, the brain drain statement probably parallels (in reverse) the missile gap lie of the 1960s. In which Americans were persuaded that the Soviet Union had outstripped us, when in fact it had not.

 

That lie was intended to persuade the public to support increased military spending. The ploy worked. Just as a similar brain drain trick would work (in reverse) to justify putting increased military and economic pressure on an assumedly weak Russian Federation.

 

 

Why untruthfulness matters

 

When truth vanishes, most of us get stuck in someone else’s fantasy:

 

 

Hitler’s Third Reich

 

American imperialism, disguised as do-gooding

 

Irrational resistance to proven concepts, regarding greenhouse gases’ effect on climate

 

And so on, year after year, generation after generation.

 

We are too frequently like imbecilic cows milling in a pasture, contemplating nothing of substance — and prone to terror-stricken stampedes that crush things in their path. To wit, America’s inane, but publicly supported rush to war with ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

 

 

The moral? — Intellectual and moral integrity eventually matter to all of us

 

In a world where the influential people are both inveterate liars and self-centered manipulators, the rewards for short-cutting truth and integrity eventually vanish, as the phenomenon spreads to those envious of the accoutrements of flaunted power.

 

With time, theoretically, there is no one left to take advantage of because everyone is now wise to the fact that wisps of personal and corporate spiritually sound breadth and depth have not paid off. Game theory psychology experiments support this insight.

 

Cynicism predictably begins to reign. The immoral darkness that we all carry, merely by virtue of being human, increasingly takes over. I have had people tell me that they stopped caring about America’s direction because everyone is predictably a rat and rats cannot be influenced in positive ways.

 

With the spread of that nihilistic feeling, I suspect, everything goes to hell. I would just as soon not be on that boat and neither (I surmise) would you.