Fallacies, Division and Dissonance

Thoughts for the day April 5th, 2019 Today’s Show: Fallacies, Division and Dissonance Dividing & conquering is an age-old technique used to win battles. For example, if a few rich people wanted to conquer or rule a large nation of poor people, an effective strategy would be to divide the larger group of people into a bunch of smaller groups & then to turn those smaller groups against each other. The few would focus their efforts on turning young against old, men against women, short against tall, poor chicken owners against poor pig owners. With this in place the rich few could ally with one group to subdue the other and then turn on the first group. Silly as this may sound this technique has been working for centuries. In modern times we are divided by skin color, income, education, religion, sexuality, gender, country of origin & belief systems (i.e. pro-life, should we fight certain wars, immigration, etc.) The point is that a divided nation is easier to conquer and control. This lays a foundation for a rich few to grab & hold onto power over the masses. You might ask: if this is real then why don’t the people unite and changes things? The answer is because the is an invisible problem. It’s literally, nearly impossible to see because of its evil companion: cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is Defined as the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by the person.” What this means is that people are programmed to believe in their leaders and when evidence is presented that conflicts with that belief people get uncomfortable, to put it mildly. In fact, we may need to create a new term for modern society and call it ‘cognitive aggression’. People get angry and ready to fight to defend their beliefs however misguided or flawed despite any evidence presented to them. So, while divide & conquer is being implemented cognitive dissonance presents the perfect cover to allow it to operate. This is called the double whammy. This is what makes communication with people nearly impossible. If the story ended here it would be bad enough, but it doesn’t. There is a third element that comes into play that further cements the problem in place & its called argument fallacies. A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves" in the construction of an argument. A fallacious argument may be deceptive by appearing to be better than it really is. What this means is that ppl use ill-logic to support their belief & discount the beliefs or facts presented by of others. This is a problem because it is a common practice and it renders open minded dialogue impossible. Have you ever had a conversation with someone that went something like this: dude smoking crack is bad for you – maybe you should quit doing it? And their response was ‘you didn’t even graduate high school, why should I listen to you?’ Or something to that effect. That fallacy is called ‘attacks against the man’ where a person’s character is attacked rather than considering their point. When all these factors come into play you have the perfect storm of insanity whereby you no only have the few rich at work conquering the poor masses, but you also have the poor masses working hard to defend the rich and conquer themselves. This is a movie that unfortunately you can’t simply turn off… Hosted by Opinoin8d