When the subject is esoteric or fundamentally metaphysical, it is often useful to employ well-known analogies as an aid in its elucidation. In the present writing, it is our thematic intention to explore the underlying dynamics of the substantial American voting population who resolutely favor the democratic form of polity, yet dissonantly voted for (and elected) Donald J. Trump, the declared “would-be dictator.” For this purpose, we will reference the tale of our legendary friend, Pinocchio, the mythical wooden puppet, eternally aspiring to be a real person.
Since it is rational to accept John Locke’s “tabula rasa” theory, i.e., that Man is born with a “clean slate,” and that the totality of his knowledge is acquired by experience. (“the empirical theory”), it would seem contextually appropriate to, once more, consider the epistemological subject of individual human advancement through learned experience, personal or referential.
The human baby is born with basic, primal inclinations concerning safety, warmth, light, security, appetite, and ambient sound. As he matures, he learns through empirical experience, progressively more complex and determinative concerns, ubiquitous affirmative pleasures, and natural as well as perceived. [It is conceivable that some of these primitive perceptions dynamically endure in his mature life experience (a subject for another time).
Aside from these real or perceived inclinations and concerns, the newborn babe enters the Planet in a melange of maternal chemicals, but, in a singular and temporarily analogous condition to our fictional protagonist, “Pinnocchio,” with a complete absence of experiential or didactic knowledge. The latter wooden construct, plainly, lacks conceivable potential for growth, either in size or understanding, for personal advancement and mature fulfillment. The operative construct of this brief comment is to observe that too many humans appear to prefer to retain an intransigent, wooden insensitiveness or resistance to growth and the acquisition of mature perception; thus, depriving themselves of social consciousness and potential for mature fulfillment. Like our fictional protagonist, they waste their allotted time on Earth pursuing unattainable states of temporal satisfaction, yet, eternally articulating the feeling of loss of the felt opportunity for personal fulfillment and success.
It is the chosen failure to engage in a universally available, socially interactive, and culturally uplifting life that provides the etiology of their wooden, limited, hapless life and their inevitably consequential discontent.
Despite their ubiquitous protestations and their face-saving attributions (to other races, creeds, immigration, gender disparity) and the like, their colossal disappointment with life is ultimately based upon their own choices to be unattached and disinterested in the pursuit of a fuller life of introspection, or in the universal state of mankind, thus, inevitably leading to feelings of meaningless existence and a futile effort to see life as an ever- evolving experiential journey. They inhabit the wooden, feelingless stagnation of a wooden entity, like Pinocchio, an insensate puppet, available for ubiquitous manipulation.
As an extremely hazardous and sad behavioral observation, it is to such an innately discontented and shallow-thinking people that Donald J. Trump has enjoyed the greatest appeal with his despicably false demagogic offerings of “Snake Oil” amelioration, empirically accepted by such self-defeating and underdeveloped, “wooden,” puppet-like unsophisticates.
As presciently admonished by Thomas Jefferson, the success of a democracy is dependent upon an informed and enlightened citizenry. The causes of its present state of existential vulnerability are perceived by us to be empirically discernible.
-p.
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