This concept reminds me of an old Jane Addams passage which I like to quote:
"Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him. The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudoscientific parent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. He talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and development which the child does not possess."
I think this also illustrates a subtler shading to the meme image: the "midwit" is typically not just expressing a conventional belief, but also trying to actively assert said belief as accepted dogma. (And hence it's all the more satisfying to the meme consumer to view themselves as bucking such "dogmatic conviction".)
This concept reminds me of an old Jane Addams passage which I like to quote:
"Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him. The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudoscientific parent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. He talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and development which the child does not possess."
I think this also illustrates a subtler shading to the meme image: the "midwit" is typically not just expressing a conventional belief, but also trying to actively assert said belief as accepted dogma. (And hence it's all the more satisfying to the meme consumer to view themselves as bucking such "dogmatic conviction".)
And now I would like to know what your previous favorite hieroglyph was before you saw man standing on two giraffes.