Why do we say, Blind as a bat? Bats are not usually blind. - TopicsExpress

Why do we say, Blind as a bat? Bats are not usually blind. There are no species of blind bats. So where did the bats mythical blindness come from? The answer is, (probably) because we tend to assume that there is a kind of Law of Compensation which guarantees that people -- and by extension animals -- who lose one quality are compensated by an extension of another. So the observation that bats have highly developed radar (actually sonar) that they use to hunt with in the dark, leads us to assume that this must be compensation for them having lost their sight after living in caves for millions of years. We tend to reason in this faulty way because of something called, The Just World Hypothesis. The Just World Hypothesis is not a scientific hypothesis, but a term psychologists use for a naive implicit theory; an attribution thery. In order to try to make sense of the world, we assume it to be just. There is plenty of evidence for this; Im not making it up. Someone injured in a traffic accident we assume in some peculiar way to havedeserved it, because we do not want to think such accidents happen for no reason. Similarly, when people lose their jobs, even when they are clearly made redundant, we tend to assume that they could have kept their jobs if they had worked harder or been friendlier to their colleagues, or been a better team player. We tend to denigrate failures. If someone repeatedly fails to get a job, we soon start to believe that they are not really trying. On the other hand, we tend to exaggerate the number of opportunities for finding a job -- if we already have a job. We tend to think, I got a job through hard work and application, not through chance, so there are enough jobs to go round, providing people try hard enough. Therefore, these people who are unemployed cannot be trying hard enough. We also tend to assume that people who are sick, or have a disability, brought this on themselves. The reason is that we do not want to be sick or disabled, so we cling to the hope that we wont. If you are protesting by now that you are not like that, I am not saying that people always behave as if they are, we do not have to be slaves to this kind of primitive thinking, but it is lurking their, in the background, simply because we have to believe that our efforts will be rewarded. We may grow cynical, or even feel guilty, but the belief in a just world never quite goes away. This is why people tend to drift to the right in politics during economic recessions as is the case today. We see unemployment rising, we hear of the plight of the homeless and people with disabilities and so on and become fearful as more and more people raise these issues in public and through the media. We dont want it to happen to us, so we tend to distance ourselves by pretending that people who are suffering are in some way different when it is the situation that is different, not the people who are in reality -- the same as us. Am I saying that right wing thinkers, conservatives are primitive thinkers? Well, yes, I suppose I am. Or maybe that is my own rationalisation? It is very difficult to escape the fallacy of the Just World. Everyone is subject to all kinds of pressures to conform, and governments are no exception. This is not a stick to beat others with, it is meant to be thought about, so that we do not jump to specious but ultimately vacuous conclusions such as, Its the xxxx (insert your own bette noir here) who shafted us; get them! Grab your burning torch and follow me!