# When proven wrong people don’t feel enlightenment but defeat

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/10/23/when-proven-wrong-people-dont-feel-enlightenment-but-defeat/
- Published: 2016-10-23T20:13:54+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/ac06b-1p3hfdxr9hwfledna4uabka.
png)

“The Agony of Defeat”, Trevor Batstone.

Emily Dinckinson wrote:

    ```
    Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne’er succeed.To comprehend a nectarRequires sorest need.
    ```

    ```
    Not one of all the purple HostWho took the Flag todayCan tell the definitionSo clear of victory
    ```

    ```
    As he defeated — dying –On whose forbidden earThe distant strains of triumphBurst agonized and clear!
    ```

**She was correct.**

Maybe the progressives should take note of this reality of the human spirit.
Maybe
we should take a moment to realize that the balloon of progress is inflated more
and more each day, squeezing conservatives against the wall of the unacceptable.
Maybe we all, the open minded folk, should acknowledge the dark clouds of global
movement of population bringing the same problems back into societies that have 
already cleared them, more or less.

I’m not sure! Maybe!

I mean _our mentality _is barely out of the dark ages. Knowledge is out of the middle
ages for hundreds of years, but our collective models of the world, well, they are
just seeing the light. So the progressive pressure might be the new steam revolution,
for the archetypes of the worlds.

But the main argument still holds: whenever you manage to make your take win remember
someone lost. Viscerally, it has zero importance that the argument was obvious, 
or that “history” is on your side, or that, hell, facts are overwhelmingly with 
you. Sure, people will dissimulate as much as possible. Most will rationalize the
defeat as “lessons”, but there will be a lot who will accumulate defeats.

The defeated don’t give up. They build up. They move from existence to subsistence.
And when they emerge, the subsistence made them so sharp that they can pin the entire
world to the ground.

Radicals were never the majority, yet since forever, a strong and determined group
of people can change their entire world. And sometimes radicalization makes strong
and determined groups of people.

And it is about nothing in particular. The wrong is everywhere: in science, in politics,
in family life, at work, no matter the setting, the defeat of the ones in the wrong
keeps piling up. And we’re all sometimes in the wrong! Sure, there is local defeat
which sinks with the dying of generations. But global defeat on concepts and mentalities
thrive with the passage of time because we forget how hard we’ve got the freedoms
and the progress. Forgetting is the springboard of demagogues.


This year I realized we’re going back to salon manners. Ideas like etiquette gained
solid support. Shunning merit because of nodding done behind closed doors is ever
more common. The terms of sexist, racist, old, lame are imparted as easily as ever,
but today there is a committee of those “in the know” and if they label you as such,
you’re done. So medieval.

I also fear the new tech nobility, because it doesn’t matter how enlightened you
are if you live in an ivory tower you’ll eventually get tired of the common people,
forgetting the fact that:

    ```
    Success is counted sweetestBy those who ne’er succeed.
    ```

Just my 2 cents,

A

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds)

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