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neil young

A Guide on How to Achieve Dysfunction through Logical Fallacies

Welcome one and all.  We are here today to teach you how to screw up your life.  We hope you will apply the lessons you learn here to destroy your health, your marriage, every positive relationship, and make you poor, needy and dependent. Don’t worry, you can live on the government dole and someone else will do the work that you are unwilling and will soon be incapable of doing.  It’s really a simple, step-by-step process.  Here’s how it works.

Step One

We will convince you that you are number one!  How does that sound?  You are the only important being in the world. Others exist to meet your needs.  When they stop doing this, their being is no longer necessary.  They owe you.  You need higher self esteem.  You need to be the center of your own universe.  You da man!  The special fallacies that you will need to show your proper place relative to others are,

1. Ad Hominem
2. Straw man
3. Appeal to misleading authority
4. Appeal to force
5. Well Poisoning
6. Tu Quoque
7. Appeal to Nature

With these fallacies well mastered, you will be able to manipulate others into getting what you want from them.  Time for…

Step Two

Because you are special and unique, the laws of logic, economics and statistics do not apply to you.   You are truly exceptional.  That which signals failure for most is mere noise for you.  You will learn the proper use of the following fallacies:

1. Anecdotal fallacy
2. Texas sharpshooter fallacy
3. Fake precision
4. Slippery slope (Semantic and causal versions)
5. Question begging
6. Hasty generalization
7. False dichotomy

Just to give you and idea of how this works, let’s take a closer look at a few Step One fallacies.

In Step One we teach you a host of Red Herring fallacies.  This is done so that you will be distracted from real issues and and focus on irrelevant things instead. It’s like flipping channels to see what Spongebob is up to at the expense of the History Channel presentation on the American Revolution or foregoing a slice of homemade wheat bread in favor of a Twinkie.

Red Herring fallacies are similar in that they all deflect attention from the real issue.  The name of the fallacy came from the ancient and effective practice of confusing hounds by dragging a stinky fish across the scent trail.  The Red Herring fallacies include the following,

• Straw man
• Bandwagon
• Two wrongs
• Appeal to consequences
• Appeal to emotion
• Guilt by association
• Ad Hominem
• Tu Quoque
• Poisoning the well
• The Hitler card
• Appeal to celebrity

Let’s look at Two Wrongs, Tu Quoque, Ad Hominem and Guilt by Association.

The Two Wrongs fallacy will come in handy when you do something bad and you want to deflect blame.  There is really no need to own up to your wrong when all you really have to do is point out someone else’s worse wrong, thereby making what you did seem good by comparison.  For example, If your mom catches you drinking, you could say, “Well, at least I’m not smoking dope.  You should be happy that drinking is all I’m doing.”  This is a classic Two Wrongs fallacy and works well on bad parents.  You may even get a really bad parent to believe that they are lucky you are getting drunk on a regular basis.

If you really want to make an impact, bring your mom’s family into it.  Say something like, “Yea, you should be glad I’m not an alcoholic like uncle Bob.” The two wrongs fallacy will get you out of responsibility while you are young.  If you keep practicing, you can use it on your wife or girlfriend and your obnoxious kids that you have to see every other weekend.

The Tu Quoque fallacy is similar to the Two Wrongs fallacy but with a twist.  Instead of deflecting blame by pointing at a wrong that is worse than yours, you accuse the person that is accusing you of being just as bad as you are or worse.  For example, let’s say a girl at your school accuses you of being mean to your girlfriend.  You could say, “Oh, yea, maybe I should treat her the way you treat Becky, idiot.”  Adding the word “Idiot” to the end brings in the next fallacy to be discussed, Ad Hominem.

An Ad Hominem (Attack against the man) attack is an attack against the man instead of the woman, just kidding.  It is an attack against the person instead of their argument.  It’s so powerful, it’s almost like a Jedi mind trick.  It works great against weak minded people.  They will be so focused on answering your attack that they will completely forget the logical merits of the discussion.  Here is how it works…

Friend 1:  Hey, you are pushing a few pounds there, dog.

You:  Oh yea, well, you are stupid and ugly and I can lose weight.

See how awesome that is?  You just dragged a stinky old fish across the scent trail about your needing to lose weight.  At this point, your friend will probably fall for your Jedi mind trick and say, “Oh, you mean stupid and ugly like your mama?” This could lead to tons of other fallacies like Appeal to Force.

The last fallacy to discuss in Step One is the Guilt by Association fallacy.  This one is used to shut people up by saying that they could not have anything intelligent to say because of the group they run with.  You can attack their heritage, their religion, their political party, their family, just about anything.

It makes sense to study the Red Herring family of fallacies.  You can deflect blame and put others in their place quickly. Remember, you are number one.  People and organizations are useful only if the benefit you!

Once you have learned and practiced Step One fallacies, you will be ready to move on to Step Two fallacies.  Let’s look at the Anecdotal Fallacy and the Hasty Generalization fallacy.

The Anecdotal fallacy is a favorite among the dysfunctional, a group that you will soon be joining if you stick to the lessons. It consists of carefully selecting the more emotional and more immediate data from a mountain of evidence.  Here is an example.  Let’s say that you are a 28 year old female who saw every Twilight movie and read every Twilight book three times.  One Friday you decide to have lunch at the park in hopes that your Edward might come by and swear that he is addicted to you like a drug.  As you bite into your pita sandwich a guy in stylish yet shabby clothing asks if he can share the bench.  He tells you that he is not sure why he had to sit by you but that there is something intoxicating about your vibe. Flash forward two weeks.  You learn that he has been imprisoned for drug use, he beat up a former girlfriend, he goes to a clinic to get checked once a week, and he works at the adult book store.  He says that he is over the drugs, that the girlfriend was psycho and that he was only protecting himself, that he has been scab free for a month and that he is looking for a different job.  In order to join the dysfunctional group, you need to commit the Anecdotal fallacy by ignoring the evidence that this guy is a loser and will hurt you now and in the future and go with the emotional evidence that he makes you feel special and would never hurt you.  You can increase the speed and intensity of the dysfunction by allowing him to use you to create progeny.  You go, girl!

Las Vegas is built on the success of this fallacy.  The evidence that you will probably lose money, pollute your mind, over-eat and leave dumber than you were when you came is extremely high.  But if you merely rely on the Anecdotal fallacy, ignore statistical realities and economics, you can confidently go and share in the mystique.

Few things will propel you to dysfunction faster than the Hasty Generalization fallacy.  It is committed when you conclude something from a data set as small as one.  For example, you may conclude that smoking really doesn’t hurt you much. After all, your friend’s uncle started smoking at 14.  He is 86 now, still smokes and is still going strong.  Instead of looking at all of the available data on the pro’s and cons of smoking, you draw a conclusion from a single data point.

Related to the Hasty Generalization fallacy and something that will aid in deepening your dysfunction is the notion that you are a statistical exception.  It is the conviction from deep in our soul that although others have failed doing what you do and have suffered pain and humiliation, it won’t happen to you.  You are special.  You are different.  You are unique.  There is no one quite like you (remind you of anything?).   Here are some examples:

“If you try it once, you have a high chance of becoming an addict.”  If someone says this to you, you need to respond, at least in your head if not out loud, “I am special, I am unique, there is no one quite like me.  Therefore, what you say does not apply to me.”

“If you are intimate with him this soon, you will end up hurt or worse.”  If someone says this to you, you need to respond, at least in your head if not out loud, “I am special, I am unique, there is no one quite like me.  Therefore, what you say does not apply to me.  There has never been a love like ours.  How could you know possibly know what is going to happen to me.”

Finally, you need to ignore history.  At least ignore history before President Hayes and for dysfunction’s sake, under no circumstances study Plato, Aristotle or any other weirdos in togas…unless one of them is John Belushi.

That Which We Call a Rose

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?  Four.  Calling a tail a leg, doesn’t make it a leg.” — Abraham Lincoln

But political rhetoric would have you believe that it is not a tail but a leg.  It’s time to apply the potent laxative of logic to constipated political spin.  Your life (freedom) depends on it.  Skeptical?  Read on.

The political correctness movement was not the beginning of linguistic spin intended to get you to first believe, then to swear that the excrement you consume is really organic delicacy.  The un-duped would say, “Eh Gad, Man.  You are eating a steaming pile of dog feces!” but if you dupe enough people over enough time, dogs become the world’s most important commodity and Mastiffs the greatest breed.

Dung devourer creation is profitable enterprise.  Solitarily standing in the way of obscene windfall is a skeptical populace armed with logic and motivated by freedom.  Linguistic codification, the marketing wing at Excrement Eaters Unlimited, enjoys a remarkable history of obscene profits and of death and debauchery desensitization.

Spin Tutorial

Spin takes on several forms. The two most popular are Euphemisms and Dyseuphemisms. When there is an attempt to make a word or idea sound better than it is, a euphemism is created. The opposite is true for a dyseuphemism. Here are some examples:

Insect Extermination

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn makes the case that post revolution communists co-opted euphemistic phraseology to disguise a reality that would have ensured an early end to both empire and existence for Lenin groupies.  Here are some examples:

Euphemism:  Pacification

Reality:  Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets.  If people cause trouble, you can create peace by getting rid of them.

Euphemism: Transfer of Population or Rectification of Frontiers

Reality: Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry.

Euphemism: Elimination of Unreliable Elements

Reality: People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of Scurvy in Arctic labor camps.

Solzhenitsyn painstakingly documents several other euphemistic reality incursions.  “Thus the death penalty was rechristened ‘the supreme measure’ — no longer a punishment, but a means of social defense. (Gulag pg 436) In 1927, the benevolent Russian Central Committee abolished capital punishment except for crimes against the state and army, including “banditry.”  In time, the revealed reality was that “every armed nationalist who doesn’t agree with the central government is a ‘bandit,’ ” and, similarly, “any participant in an urban rebellion is also a ’bandit.” (Gulag pg 436)

Lenin expressed his sinister intent from the beginning when he said, we must go about “purging the land of all kinds of harmful insects.” The “insect” classification grew progressively larger.

“Insects” included not only all class enemies but also “workers malingering at their work.” George Douglas of the Foundation for Economic Education said, “It is not possible for us at this time to fully investigate exactly who fell within the broad definition of insects; the population of Russia was too heterogeneous and encompassed small, special groups, entirely superfluous and, today, forgotten. The people in the local zemstvo self-governing bodies were, of course, insects. People in the cooperative movement were also insects, as were all owners of their own homes. There were not a few insects among the teachers in the gymnasiums. The church parish councils were made up almost exclusively of insects, and it was insects of course who sang in church choirs. All priests were insects — and monks and nuns were even more so. (Gulag pg 27 -28)”

So far, political attempts at euphemization in the United States have not been as toxic as they were in Russia in 1927.  George Orwell is erroneously credited with originating the term Doublespeak from his book, 1984, in which the term never appears.  Regardless, Doublespeak refers to Euphemism and Dyseuphemism.  Doublespeak examples span all levels of comedy and severity.  Both sides of the political spectrum employ Doublespeak for rhetorical advantage.  But before dung-heap diving, peruse Doublespeak’s lighter side:

Euphemisms for someone who has died:

passed on, checked out, bit the big one, kicked the bucket, bitten the dust, popped their clogs, pegged it, carked it, turned their toes up, bought the farm, cashed in their chips, fallen off their perch, croaked, given up the ghost, shuffled off this mortal coil, assumed room temperature.


On the heavier side, politicians are notorious Doublespeakers, yet both are pot and kettle.  Consider, first, the liberal point of view:

Doublespeak:  Abortion

Real meaning:  Killing and removal of a human fetus from its mother’s womb.

Doublespeak:  Affirmative action

Real meaning:  An attempt to achieve equality of outcome by favoring women and non-white males.

Doublespeak:  Working Americans

Real meaning:  Non-professionals who may or may not work harder than professionals and other wealthy people, and probably have invested less in schooling and training than professionals but should view themselves as oppressed by lazy, greedy professionals and entrepreneurs and vote for their liberal advocates.

Doublespeak:  Community organizing

Real meaning:  Do whatever you can, including lie, miscount, cheat, fudge and threaten, to give your group more than one vote per person (See Acorn).

Doublespeak:  Affordable Healthcare

Real meaning:  Shifting healthcare costs away from near-term voters and burdening the next two or three generations.

Doublespeak: Social Justice

Real meaning: Using the word “justice” implies that subsidy is deserved as a matter of justice. Therefore, the taking from one and giving it to another is authorized by morality and law and should not be questioned. Socialism.

Doublespeak: Planned Parenthood

Real Meaning: Promote abortion and undermine traditional families.

And on the conservative side,

Doublespeak: Strong National Defense

Real meaning: Meddle in world affairs, in campaigns with dubious gains and huge loss of fortune and life.

Doublespeak: Neo-conservatism

Real Meaning: Dupe the base, pacify the independents and get some libs to believe that you will somehow spend money like a drunken sailor and still ensure prosperity.

Doublespeak: Operation Iraqi Freedom

Real Meaning: Wow, no WMD’s. Let’s re-brand the war to be about freedom and not defense.

Please add some of your own in the comment section. I love ‘em. If I were a doublespeak consultant, I would advise the following…

The NEA (National Teacher’s Union) should change its name to, “Society to Protect the Future of America’s Children.” Any critic would be going up against three sacred untouchables, Children, America and Future.

The Communist Party should change its name to, “The American Institute for the Promotion of Compassion.”

Truly the emperor is naked no matter what you hear from congress, Hollywood and the media. Calling a thing by its name has liberating power in thought and action.

With the exception of comedic and artful uses, if doublespeak is not confronted, it will get passed off as reality. When this happens, life, freedom and goodness are sacrificed. Solzhenitsyn says of most of his countrymen who allowed Lenin to exist and thrive, they “didn’t love freedom enough” to fight for it from the beginning.

If you choose not to engage, the question becomes, “how would you like your excrement served, madam?”

So, you want to start an internet business…

I got a call from my dentist a few months ago asking for an appointment. He had heard from another patient that I had some small business expertise and wanted to improve his business. To his credit, he saw his practice as a business and actively looked for ways to improve his revenue, efficiency and profitability. I always thought it would be cool to set up an education forum just outside a dental school campus and offer classes on small business essentials. Every dentist that I have polled has said that, looking back, they would have spent a small fortune to learn in advance what business hard knocks had taught them over the years.

My dentist arrived just after lunch on a Friday. After the customary exchange of pleasantries, he got right to the point.

“Here is my problem. I am not number one on a google search. I am number two.”

He meant that if a potential customer were to type in “(his city) dentist,” google would display several pages. Being ranked number one, or being the first, non-paid google entry can be valuable. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) amateurs generally assume that a number one ranking is automatically worth the time and money it would take to achieve.

Statistically (averaged), you will see, the following click distribution for respective ranking:

Position #1:  45.5% of all clicks

Position #2:  15.7% of all clicks

Position #3:  10% of all clicks

Position #4:  5.5% of all clicks

Position #5:  5.0% of all clicks

My friend believed that by getting from #2 to #1, he would see %30 more clicks that would result in more patient visits and therefore, more money.  Makes sense, right?

Wrong

When I asked him why he wanted to be #1, he looked at me as though I had asked him what was so good about electricity.  ”#1 is better, right?” he asked.

I explained the percentages and click domination above which solidified, in his mind, his resolve to get to #1 until I said, “so you will see, on average 30% more search engine generated traffic to your site at #1, but 30% of zero is still zero.  we need to see how many people are actually searching for a dentist in your town on the internet.”  He had not considered that and asked how we could find out.

There are several tools available, my favorite is www.seobook.com.  You will need to register to access the good stuff on the site.  If you go to tools, then to keyword search tool, you will find a glorious database of searchable searches on the major search engines.  If you are like me, you will spend a lot of time testing theories and assumptions.  There is also great trending analysis, key word suggestions, etc.

The search revealed that there are exactly zero daily internet searches for dentists in his city.  To make the point clearer, I showed him a search for “New York City dentist”  The stark population difference, community characteristics and behavior, and internet capability should indicate whether or not the ‘zero’ finding was realistic.  Here is the finding.

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Given population and other differences, a local dentist is going to get an abysmal return on his investment buck by attempting SEO optimization.  Assuming that there are around 10,000 dentists in NYC, competing for a few measly clicks is a waste of time.

Without any data to fall back on, I surmised that people make dentist selections from mailers, radio adds and especially word-of-mouth referrals.  Investment into some combination of these makes more sense.  He thanked me for saving him the time and money he would have spent on SEO optimization and left.

It should be noted that there are ways to create traffic independent of SEO.  These ways will be covered in a later post.

What if there had been a large number of searches.  Is that the end of the story?  Should he invest in SEO?  There are three other questions that need to be answered.

The first is to determine market trending.  Suppose that you want to start a business that sells educational accessories to home schoolers.  After determining the interest through the key word search (10000 daily searches on average for ‘homeschool’ and ‘home school’ combined), your next step is to pull up a google trends report.  In the homeschool case, we see,

Some interesting things to note are the seasonal dips in trending during the summer months and during Thanksgiving and Christmas.  You would certainly want to create buzz during the hotter search times (more on that in a different post).  Also noteworthy is the breakdown of cities and states.  I’m really not sure how to read this, but, given the relatively small population densities, and political demographic of the states and cities listed, you are dealing with geographically concentrated groups and across the political spectrum.  That information should be useful in your marketing.

The second question to answer is, “how many sites compete in my space?”

To find this out, do a google search for your search term and look at the total number.  In the case of “home school,”  there are 7,200,000 competing sites.  Discouraged?  Don’t be.  The third question to ask is, “How good is the competition?”  for that, you will need to get into the guts of the competing websites to determine their quality (an issue for another post).

The internet can be a lucrative place to do business.  If you choose to go forward, it will require a significant time investment in staying on top of all of the changes that rock cyberworld on a regular basis.  Social Media, which we will soon explore in depth is world rocking stuff.

Please leave a comment below.  I would be interested in what you think I should cover next.

Housing Process Flow Chart

Subprime crisis cause graph

My Response to G-Man on the Freedom Post

Here is G-Man’s comment on my Freedom Cannot Ring post…

Dear Dave,

What a fascinating post. A few thoughts occur and I would be curious to hear your response.

1. What is the relationship between sacrifice/martyrdom/integrity and desire for reward? I ask because I believe it is an inverse one. That is, the more one seeks reward, whether in the form of money, advancement, self-aggrandizement, etc., the less one is likely to be willing to sacrifice those things in the name of any kind of integrity. I ask this because I’m curious whether you believe our country’s struggle with corruption is at all related to capitalism and its tendency (one tendency among many) to champion/reward/require individual achievement or accomplishment. In other words, if we live in a country whose economic system is designed to both promote and reward competitiveness, is it any wonder that we, as Americans, find it difficult to sacrifice advancement and profit in the name of integrity or charity? This may also be related to your idea about visibility, illustrating perfectly my point. Example: The stock market was doing well, then purposefully slipshod accounting and questionable business deals were discovered to be at the heart of some of the biggest corporations’ practices and then the stock market went down. This of course illustrates my point and yours: visibility is a wonderful tool for the fighting of corruption, but, on the other hand, it leads, in this one case, to economic downturns and to substantial amounts of innocent people losing their retirement while the people responsible for some of the mess are substantially rewarded.: In this case, visibility leads both to the curtailing of corrupt practices (a desirable end) and to significant financial losses for millions of people (an undesirable end).

2. Corruption, Faith and Hypocrisy. Many Americans refer to their country as a Christian Nation. Such a claim may not be entirely specious, but if, as the term implies, America was not only founded by Christians but also continues (or should ideally continue) to be a nation of Christian character, there are some deeply troubling trends. The first, and perhaps most troubling may be related to your comments about corruption. My interpretation of the New Testament reveals a Christ who is very clear about the differences between worldly and spiritual rewards. I can find nothing in the Savior’s earthly ministry that casts any sort of earthly prosperity in a positive light. This leads me to conclude that Christians who believe in the so-called “prosperity gospel” (see Joel Osteen, eg.) are mistaken. The question of whether they or I are mistaken can be put aside momentarily, but I think that the application of an ideology that appears to promote its polar opposite is indicative of the relationship between corruption and self-justifying rhetoric. This is a topic for further exploration, but I’d be interested to know if you seen any link between Americans’ tendency to re-shape an ideology to serve their own purposes and corruption generally.

Best to you in the New Year,

G-Man

My Response:

I need to set up a critical backdrop before getting into the guts of my response.  Trade is at the core of our essence.  One great and important paradox of existence is that we can only be defined individually by our social interactions.  We trade favors for status, money for goods, votes for pot legalization, devotion for trust, my labor laying sod for my neighbor for my neighbor’s well being.  Trade is at the core of our essence.  Jesus traded the only perfect, unblemished and precious life for our salvation.  A carrot trades it’s life to keep you alive and to give you health benefit.  It is at the core of what it means to be.  Karen Carpenter traded her time and outstanding vocal talents for my money at the record store.

We also trade sex for money, drugs for money, drugs for standing, votes for power, integrity for self-agrandizement, etc, etc.  If you allow for completely free trade, you will get a lot of good trade and a lot of bad trade.  The role of government needs to clear the way for good trade to happen and to block bad trade from happening.  Most governments and political organizations think it best to divide moral trade from financial trade.  Generally, Liberals want financial trade checked but allow for free moral trade.  Conservatives want free financial trade but checked moral trade.  Libertarians want free trade for both.  China opted to restrict moral trade and free financial trade.  Russia opted to restrict financial trade and free moral trade.  These are broad, sweeping generalizations, but I think they are directionally correct.

The great government opportunity and problem is to know how much to insert itself and where.  If the government inserts itself too little, you get anarchy.  If the government inserts itself too much, you have totalitarianism.  If a government restricts the right things and to the right degree, trade, both moral and financial is enhanced.  If a government restricts the wrong things, moral trade and financial trade are stifled.  It is the natural disposition of all men and organizations to centralize power.  Power centralization will ALWAYS result in disastrous consequences. This was clearly understood by the founders of the nation, and all of our founding documents reflect this understanding.  This is why there is so much in the Constitution limiting governmental reach.  The founders perceived, I believe accurately, that bad government is far more dangerous than bad trade.

The Problem at Hand

Your specific question was, “I’m curious whether you believe our country’s struggle with corruption is at all related to capitalism and its tendency (one tendency among many) to champion/reward/require individual achievement or accomplishment. In other words, if we live in a country whose economic system is designed to both promote and reward competitiveness, is it any wonder that we, as Americans, find it difficult to sacrifice advancement and profit in the name of integrity or charity?”

By capitalism, I assume you mean the following…

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the free market; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses and companies.

If trade is at the core of our essence, Capitalism is successful insofar as it allows for greater creation of wealth by enhancing trade possibilities and efficiencies.  So far, it has been the greatest creator of wealth that we have seen, I believe, because it is closely aligned with our essence as human beings.  Among moral people, there is nothing that is proven to be better.  Among evil people, it is not the worst thing, but it is destructive.  Capitalism requires both facilitation and checks to work for the benefit of people.  Even if outlawed, capitalism will continue, only it will do so without the aid and sanction of the state (look at Russia’s thriving black market.  Demand will get met whether you agree with it or not).  The perfect storm exists when both capitalists and traders are equally corrupt.  When this happens, and I argue we are headed that direction, a huge fall is immanent.

Here is the answer.  I do not think that Capitalism, per se, is at fault.  I think that evil capitalists and evil government folks are responsible for most of our current financial woes.  I don’t know of even one capitalist that believes that Ken Lay and others who committed heinous acts in total darkness, both soul and financial, should be cut any slack. On the contrary.  I think that most believed that there was too much leniency.  It would be a reckless overreaction and destructive to the public good to cut the legs out from under the mechanism that is generating the wealth that will cover current and future tax revenues, not to mention recovery.  Need there be more laws?  Sure.  But if I had my way, Congress should be required to repeal ten laws for every new one created.

Answer part 2.  I also fear the destructive force of a totalitarian government far more than run amok capitalists.  One can be checked through law creation, the other through revolution and usually bloodshed.

Answer part 3.  Capitalism does not create competition, liberty does.  I remember well the number of coeds vying for your attention in college.  It was certainly competitive for them and had noting to do with capitalism.  They had the freedom to give their best arguments as to what would make them more desirable for you then the other.  You had your freedom to choose.  It made for wonderful competition, no capitalism required.  We could eliminate the competition and just assign you a spouse like they do in other cultures.  But then, who gets to decide?  Your mom?  That is an uncomfortable centralization of power that could easily result in pain and suffering.

Your point…

“visibility is a wonderful tool for the fighting of corruption, but, on the other hand, it leads, in this one case, to economic downturns and to substantial amounts of innocent people losing their retirement while the people responsible for some of the mess are substantially rewarded.”

I don’t see how visibility led to the corruption.  In fact, at least in the case of Enron, World Com and others, the accounting evils were done invisibly.  Enron corruption occurred in the dark.

Question 2

That is a brilliant question/observation.  My initial observations are, Jesus did not have much to say about wealth creation and economics other than to touch upon the importance of putting the kingdom of God first..  He had volumes to say about forgiveness, love, righteousness, charity, compassion, dedication, humility.  We are certainly failing as a nation on these points and I believe that invisibility is a major enabler of christian dysfunction.

Thanks for your comments, as always.  Hugs to you and yours.

Jesuits, Teens, Romance, Statistics and Frontal Lobe Development

1552

In 1552, St Francis Xavier, one of the founders of the Jesuits, sailed to China in an effort to convert souls to Christianity.  He never made it to the mainland, but others would soon follow who would have vast impact in China and on world technology exchange.  The same efforts were undertaken at about the same time in South America.  The campaigns were eminently successful.  At the peak of Jesuit prominence in China, several Jesuit Priests served in the emperor’s court and enjoyed thousands of converts to Christianity.  In Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, the Jesuits set up a unique society, successful by almost any measure, that lasted for 130 years.  It took the martyrdom of the priests to finally end what many considered heaven on earth.

These amazing priests, armed with education and the conviction that what they were to accomplish was divinely appointed, impacted the world in profound ways.  The priests were armed with three foundational skill sets that are virtually neglected in today’s educational system.  You have to go out of your way, and only then at the University, if you want to learn Logic, Economics and Statistics (LES).  Why these are not every bit as foundational in the American education system as reading, writing and arithmetic is a travesty.  Through these foundational skills, the Jesuits were regarded as prophets in that they were able to predict crop cycles, planetary movements, tides and weather patterns.  Their goodness and strict adherence to a clear and defined order made them trustworthy advisers and leaders.

The logic training they received came from the educational fare of the time, the Trivium.  Trivium learning consisted of three disciplines, Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric.  Or, a thing as it is (Logic), the symbolism of the thing (Grammar), and the communication of the thing (Rhetoric).  In the case of LES, Logic is the study of a thing as it is, Statistics is the study of the symbolism of the thing, and Economics is the study of the thing as it is exchanged.

2002

Studies at Cornell University point out one thing that most parents of teens already know and at least one thing that they do not know.  The already known thing is that teens have a hard time processing certain types of information.  The result is that they have difficulty recognizing future consequences resulting from current actions, choosing between good and bad actions (or better and best), overriding and suppressing unacceptable social responses, and determining similarities and differences between things or events.  What was not previously recognized by parents is, in the words of Dr. Geidd,

“…unlike infants whose brain activity is completely determined by their parents and environment, the teens may actually be able to control how their own brains are wired and sculpted.” Kids who “exercise” their brains by learning to order their thoughts, understand abstract concepts, and control their impulses are laying the neural foundations that will serve them for the rest of their lives. “This argues for doing a lot of things as a teenager,” says Dr. Giedd. “You are hard-wiring your brain in adolescence. Do you want to hard-wire it for sports and playing music and doing mathematics–or for lying on the couch in front of the television?”

1960

Especially since the 1960′s, but going back even further than that, the modern educational focus took a radical shift inward.  Instead of the student being a somewhat passive subject that stands before the wonder and awe of the world and learns as much as possible about “things,” educational theorists presumed that the real wonder was not in “things” but in one’s self.  The modern concept of self has Cartesian origins.  The Cartesian epiphany, “I think therefore I am,” is not mere highbrow phraseology, but has had viral impact in all aspects of modern life.

A theorist’s check is populace consent.  Said another way, to be successful, a theorist’s ideas need to be conveyed in a way that either the populace at large is convinced or the group in power is convinced.  The turn away from the world and toward self had the advantages of timing, a weakened logic core, stealth and sloth appeal.  The industrial revolution seemed to provide a shortcut for everything.  Thanks to Pasteur, you could shortcut an illness.  Cars allowed for time shortcuts.  Shortcuts were created for everything from science to sex to religious rite.  Because shortcutting was so successful in science, production, and other areas, it was implicitly believed that all areas of life cold be shortcutted as well.  Here was their shortcut argument for education.

1. On average, confident people do better in school, have better relationships and make more money in life.
2. Confidence is really self confidence.
3. Self confidence can be taught and learned through self emphasis
4. If we teach self-emphasis (self-esteem), we can bolster self confidence and thereby get people to do better in school, have better relationships and make more money.

The argument has several fatal flaws.  I will mention three.

One of the logical flaws in the argument is a Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.  The argument assumes that because confidence and well-being occur at the same time, that confidence must have caused the well-being.  The metaphysical flaw is in the assumption that there actually is a self that is somehow separate from a person.  The ethical flaw in the argument is that the concept of self elevates the satisfaction of the needs of the ego as being a higher order good than the satisfaction of the needs of others.  Christians should have spotted this weakness early (It is Jesus who taught and exemplified the opposite.  In an attempt to lull the Christians, some clever religionists found what was thought to be justification for radical self-regard in the passage “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” A deeper look into the injunction shows that Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19:18, and in the original Hebrew, there is no reflexive like there is in English.  Careful study of the passage will yield a different conclusion than, “therefore, I have to love myself before I can love my others.”).

2011

Fatherhood and my ecclesiastical assignments put me into the path of raging adolescents.  Their uniqueness is dwarfed by their commonality and predictability.  I am finding that there are fewer surprises and many more common experiences.  The adolescents having difficulty all suffer from the same LES malady.  They confront the world as a thing to be dominated, with an underdeveloped frontal lobe and with no logical, statistical or economic check and balance against dysfunction.  Their statistical mistake is that they believe they are exceptional, that probabilities, actuarial tables, and data do not apply to them.  They take risks that have enormous possibility to destroy with dubious gains in momentary satisfaction.  Their economic mistake is that they trade time, money, health, psychological health, true, lasting friendships and solid grounding for social currency that promises to yield some combination of the three P’s, power, pleasure, popularity.  Their logical mistakes are legion.

In a previous blog I wrote about the anecdotal fallacy.  Here is the example I used.

The fallacy is the Anecdotal Fallacy.  Basically, the fallacy is committed when immediate or more emotional evidence is given greater weight in an argument than what may be mountainous evidence supporting the opposite or another position.  The famous description used is the Volvo versus Saab dilemma.  Suppose that you need a new car and after weeks of research, you have narrowed your choice down to either a Saab or a Volvo.  After more methodical study, the Volvo is the clear choice.  You have read hundreds of magazine and customer reviews and nearly all of them indicate that the Volvo is the better choice.  You decide to buy a Volvo the next day.  That night, you attend a social gathering and you excitedly tell a friend of the family about your decision and your research.  The friend says, “Oh, NO!  Don’t buy the Volvo.  My sister bought a Volvo and it was nothing but trouble.  She ended up selling it for parts after three years of ownership.”  In the morning, you ignore the mountain of evidence, and because of hearing your friend’s experience, you go to the Saab dealership and buy the Saab.

The Twilight Anecdotal Fallacy

For most abuse situations, there was ample evidence that abuse was statistically probable long before there was any commitment or involvement between the victim and the perpetrator.  A friend recently told me of her aunt who was getting involved with a man who had a history of abusing women.  When confronted about the statistical likelihood that she would become a victim of abuse, her aunt said, “He would never do that to me.  It’s different between us.”  As you read this, ask yourself how this is going to end for the aunt.  Let me add some more evidence.  The man was incarcerated for abuse in the past, and he has shoved some of the female relatives of the aunt.  If you conclude from the evidence that there is a high statistical probability that the aunt will be abused, you are correct.  Mountains of evidence point to a high probability of abuse, yet the aunt is sure that she is can escape high statistical probabilities.  Everyone thinks they are the exception.  The affliction of supposed clairvoyance born of emotional connection is hardly a teenage-only malady.

Bella and Edward

Here is Bella’s evidence: Edward has killed humans in the past.  The taste of human blood is the only thing that really satisfies.  Her blood is beyond delicious and Edward has said that he may not be able to stop himself if he gets a taste.  He has warned her to stay away from him.  He has told her that he is dangerous.  He is exciting.

At one point in the dialogue between the two she is asked, “Are you afraid?”  Her response is, “No.”  Somehow, in spite of the evidence that she should be afraid, the only evidence that mattered was, “He is exciting.”

It’s a story.  Who really cares?

In the bedroom of one of my friend’s daughters (she’s 13) hangs a poster of Edward over her headboard.  If the light from her window hits the poster just right, you can see several good-night kiss marks on Edward’s face.  Edward will come along someday.  He always does.  The dangerous thing for my friend’s daughter is that Edward, true to form, will be problematic.  He may be violent, addicted to substances or media or have multiple other vices, and he will be exciting.  When he comes along, she will recognize him as Edward and will respond like Bella, “I’m not afraid.  He wouldn’t hurt me; I just know it.”

The modern educational curriculum is incapable of delivering the kind of education that safely guide teens through their brain challenged years.  It must be done by parents and mentors.  I have contemplated the creation and delivery of LES studies for both parents and adolescents for some time.  Would you want a copy?

Freedom Cannot Ring!

Quiz:

Rank the following in order of impact to your (you, your family and others you care about) future well-being or the lack thereof:

1. Having the right people in political office
2. Removing undesirables from political office
3. Second amendment rights
4. Stopping terrorists
5. Government debt
6. Corruption
7. Adherence to the Constitution
8. The Economy
9. Health care
10. Education

If you picked 6 first, you get an A.

John Adams accurately pointed out that,

Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Remove virtue, altruism, conscience, charity, public and private virtue, honesty, integrity, and you will quickly find your well-being substantially diminished.

Power and Corruption

Making the connection between power and corruption requires little study.  Most of us are familiar with Lord Acton’s quote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  What is not as easy to see is the connection between invisibility and power and, therefore, corruption.  For Tolkien, who really got the idea from Plato, the connection between invisibility and corruption comes down to a ring.

In The Republic, Plato, through Glaoucon, told of a shepherd named Gyges who found a cave that was revealed after an earthquake.  Gyges discovered that the cave was a tomb. Inside the cave was a bronze horse.  Inside the bronze horse was a corpse wearing a ring.  Gyges removed the ring from the corpse and found that as he adjusted it, the ring was able to make him invisible.  He sought after and was given the post of “messenger to the king” to report on the status of the king’s flocks.  Once inside, with the help of the ring, he seduced the queen, and with her help, killed the king and became king himself.  The Republic then launches into a discussion of whether or not justice is possible where there is no accountability.  In other words, “can you be invisible and just?”  For our purposes, “Can you avoid corruption if you are not held accountable?”

It is an important question, not because the answer is difficult or controversial, but because the conclusion is the battleground for the future of civil society.

The conclusion in The Republic is that it would be impossible to be invisible and just.  I concur.  Where there is no accountability, there will be corruption.  Tolkien implies that it would be nearly impossible but doable for someone like Frodo.  Every other ring bearer was unable to avoid corruption.  In Frodo’s case, the ring’s destruction was the only way that it would not be used at all.

The Ring of Gyges has become the prototype for societal disruption, and in the United States we have a particularly difficult dilemma on two fronts.  The first is that one of our sacred, implied rights is the constitutional right to privacy.  A peek into privacy law reveals a quagmire of opinion, commentary, conflict, and dysfunction.  It will certainly end up being one of the most important debates of this century.  The second reason that the Ring is prototypical for societal disruption for the United States is that we have not been able to adequately grapple with the difference between privacy and anonymity.

Though privacy and anonymity share likeness, the effective difference is drastic.  Consider Ebay, one of the best functioning exchange mechanisms ever devised.  You can buy and sell in complete privacy.  It is a unique marketplace where typical prejudices are irrelevant.  Judgment as to the possible success of a transaction is based almost solely on historical transactional data that is completely public.  Ebay’s success is found in the discrimination of what will be private and what will be public information (interesting that the free market dictated the wildly successful mechanism condition).  In an Ebay transaction, race, gender, weight, political affiliation, religion, nationality and personal history are private.  Skinheads and Black Panthers freely buy and sell to each other.  Liberals and conservatives exchange goods and services and give each other stellar ratings.  Yet, in the Ebay marketplace, you will find little to no anonymity.  Though identity is private, there is wonderful accountability and therefore no anonymity.  In fact, through protocol and Paypal guarantee, you will not suffer an anonymous (Ring) transaction.

Unfortunately, in other arenas, Ring seeking has become a national pastime as it was for others before us.  Those that hold the Ring can amass fortunes, gain influence, murder, plunder, and destroy with impunity.  In one historical example, by the 1400′s, Ring wearing had led to multiple sacerdotal abuses.  Priests could not be held accountable because only they had access to scripture and could claim scriptural justification for nearly anything.  Wycliffe, Tyndale and Luther were all Ring destroyers.  Their successful attempt to widely publish the bible cost many their lives.  In Wycliffe’s case, the hatred for his accomplishments in Ring destruction led to the un-earthing and re-burning of his bones after his death.  Tyndale was strangled and burned.  Others suffered similar fates.  Those that hold the ring will hold onto it at the cost of many lives and vast destruction.

It could be successfully argued that the world’s current financial woes are a direct result of Ring-holder activities.  For lawmakers, every attempt is made to remove accountability for one’s closed-door, backroom deals through spin, favors, bribes, kickbacks, mountainous paperwork, lies, promises, threats and compromises.  Conditions in manipulated financial markets allow for destructive speculator anonymity.  The resulting mortgage crisis can be blamed on both governmental and financial speculator anonymity.  None are required to account for the actions that have wreaked havoc on present and future financial markets.  Though some may lose office and position, they can safely float home in their golden parachutes.

How we are trending

We are in trouble.  Transparency International’s 2010 survey of corruption shows that, with the exception of Fiji, Georgia, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Palestine, we are far worse off than we were three years ago.  The data for the United States shows that 6% believed that there was a decline in corruption in the United States over the last three years.  22% said that there was no difference, and 72% said that there was more corruption.  Venezuela’s numbers are 7%, 7% and 86% respectively and they have a corrupt dictator at the helm.  As far as perception of corrupt institutions goes, the following numbers are sobering.  On a scale of 1 – 5 with 5 being the most corrupt United States scores the following:

Political parties             4.3

Congress                         4.0

Police                               3.3

Media                               3.5

Public officials              3.8

Judges                             3.4

Religions                        3.1

Military                           2.8

Education                        3.0

Action

We must push for public transparency, individual and business privacy and limited anonymity.  The end of the invisibility road is corruption, and where there is corruption, there is suffering and it is usually the suffering of the weak and the innocent.  The most serious of all of the President’s campaign promises to be broken is the transparency promise.  There is power in the presidency, on the courts and in Congress.  If these are allowed to work in the dark, corruption will breed faster than blame at an Obama press conference.  Integrity needs to be elevated to the number one electability criteria for all public officials.  Shareholders should insist on the same thing for corporations.

Not long ago, a friend and I were debating the relative merits of wikileaks.  I argued that wikileaks is aiding in anonymity destruction.  He conceded the point but argued that wikileaks amounts to vigilante justice and that although wikileaks did remove some anonymity, it also unfortunately removed some privacy.  There are two ways that integrity increases in an individual or a population.  It can happen internally and may begin with a religious or transcendent experience or by an awakening of sorts.  The other way is through the imposition of exterior conditions that threaten an undesirable consequence.  Wikileaks will only promote the latter.

Freedom and Rings

Two of the most poignant moments in movie and actual history occurred at the death of two martyrs.  The first was William Wallace as played by Mel Gibson.  Wallace’s last word before his execution was the cry “Freedom!”  The second was the same cry from Hans Scholl who, immediately before suffering death by guillotine, shouted “Freiheit!” (Freedom).  You may conclude from each film that bad government or some other entity or circumstance was responsible for the death of both Wallace and Scholl.  In the end, the executions were mandated and carried out by ring bearers.  Corruption and Freedom are antithetical.  To cry for the one and not decry the other amounts to the worst kind of ignorance. (If you are unfamiliar with the story of Hans and Sophie Scholl, you would do well to spend some time learning about them.)

Ring removal can be painful to the point of bloodshed, but where there is no accountability, there can be no freedom.

Luke 12:3

Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.