Cooper’s Constant

THE MINDLESS M-TYPE I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized man. It’s the M-type! --Oscar Cooper The essence of humanness is thinking: both analytical thinking and creative thinking. Analytical thinking tells humans what is, and creative thinking tells them what could be. By contrast, the essence of M-ness is imitation—indeed, the M in M-type stands for “mimesis,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “imitation of another person’s words or actions.” Unwilling to think for himself, the M-type lets others think for him. Undigested and unanalyzed, their thoughts become his thoughts. Often the M-type is a smartphone with an app that limits it to recording and playing back only what it sees and hears—usually a damaged smartphone, which tends to diminish and distort what it copies. Imitation is not to be confused with ignorance, which merely denotes a lack of knowledge. For example, only 14% of all Americans know that the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, and only half of America's high school seniors can name a country that touches the Pacific Ocean. That is ignorance. An occasional M-type with a photographic memory can regurgitate hundreds of pages of Wikipedia, while grasping none of it. That is imitation. How, then, do we discern the difference between Thinkers and M-types? What are the lineaments of the M-type? He does not look different—indeed, he makes every effort to look the same. Superficially she does not act much different—indeed, she makes every effort to act the same. He does not think differently—indeed, he scarcely thinks at all. M-type is the woman who rushed her dogs to the canine chapel in Las Vegas, insisting that they be married before the panting bride gave birth to puppies. M-type is the arsonist in Cheyenne, Wyoming, who started an insurance fire in his business after forgetting to renew his policy. M-type is the woman who served as hostess for a Neighborhood Watch meeting in a room of her house which contained a TV set she had stolen from an attending neighbor. M-type is the fellow who wrote an indignant letter to the London Times: he had been studying a report from the Ministry of Health, which indicated that half of the youngsters in the United Kingdom were below average weight. He considered this shocking, a disgrace to the nation, and insisted that the Government do something about nourishing the nation's children. A Scary Case Everyone knows about the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis, when we came ever so close to nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. Virtually unknown is an incident during the Carter Administration, when at 3 a.m. one morning National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski received word from the U.S. National Military Command Center that the Soviet Union had just launched 220 nuclear missiles at the United States. The U.S. had exactly seven minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike. Brzezinski held off to await confirmation; one minute later he received word that the report was inaccurate—the Soviet Union had actually launched 2,200 warheads in an all-out attack on the U.S. With under six minutes to go, Brzezinski was about to call President Carter to advise him to loose Armageddon. Then he got a third call, informing him that someone at the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado had put a training drill in the computer by mistake. Freak Accident? A freak accident, you say? Couldn’t happen today? How about this in January, 2018: EMERGENCY ALERT: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. This early-morning cellphone message that sent Hawaiians scurrying for cover all over the state was caused by someone “clicking the wrong thing on the computer [menu],” according to a spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. But that’s all right, the agency rescinded the order—38 minutes later. Thinkers easily recognize such M-type folly, but how can they identify the M-type before he blunders? Fortunately, there are four easy ways to identify M-types. M-types: 1. Copy 2. Imprint 3. Implant 4. Flock M-types are startlingly unoriginal, and since they rarely produce original thought, they copy. M-types become deliriously devoted to the people they copy—they imprint. M-types unthinkingly glom onto the ideas of others, despite the fact that they fail to understand them—they implant. Finally, M-types are passionately attracted to crowds—they flock.