Tag Archives: lies

Because I Am Involved in Mankind

Posted on by under Compassion, Critical Thinking

As I said in a previous post, lies spread because people want to believe them. They need to believe because often it goes to their very identity. Without those lies, they would lose their sense of self.

And people are fed lies for related reasons. Primarily, it is to create an atmosphere of confusion, out of which power brokers, politicians, and cultural elites can solidify and reinforce their power.

I just read an insightful article on this topic, laying out the framework under which lies are used to seize and retain power. Written by Leo E. Strine, Jr., a law professor, and published by Harvard Law School, it says that “The utility of those [false and misleading] issues is to inculcate a sense of identity and fealty in the masses who serve as their power base.” (“Inculcate” means to impress upon the mind through frequent repetition–I had to look it up.)

Think about it: picture for yourself someone–either in person or online–who is vehemently defending the position that all abortions should be illegal everywhere, or that climate change is only accepted by those “indoctrinated” by the “woke”, or that vaccines cause harm and create no health benefits. When you try to present an alternative to their worldview–using facts, logic, or reason–what happens? They get angry, they get upset, they start name-calling, some even begin to issue threats.

Why? Because they are scared. Like a cornered wild animal, they are lashing out.

And why is that? Because your perfectly legitimate views–based on facts, logic, and reason–threaten their very existance.

Because those lies have created for them the equivalent of family, of The Team, of Us (versus Them). It is protection from the terrors of an uncertain future. It is where they feel most safe and secure, even when, paradoxically, they are actually embarking on a path toward their own harm (such as with the refusal to get vaccinated against preventable disease, or the refusal to take rational action to prepare for a changed climate).

What then? We have seen hints of what is coming: fanaticism, tribalism, dissolution, violence.

Would it not be in everyone’s best interest if those stoking the fires with their self-serving lies were to turn down the rhetoric? Show some humility? Show some humanity and acknowledge that all lives are interconnected?

Strine’s advice is this: “When someone denies fact, mainstream institutions should call that out and refuse to legitimize their misinformation tactics.  Lies should be labeled as lies.”

That’s as good a place to start as any.

Tucker Carlson is a Miserable Human Being

Posted on by under Career, Critical Thinking

It is widely known by now that one of this country’s most awful people, Tucker Carlson, was fired from Fox News.

My first thought was that it should have happened sooner. Why it didn’t says a lot about Fox News and the people who run it.

What I only just learned is that Carlson, born in 1969, is only a few years younger than me. In other words, he is a member of Generation X.

This I find shocking and sad.

Why? Because I generally think that Gen Xers are better than that. I look back on the events that brought me to where I am today and I feel that I was shaped by those events. These are what the Pew Research Center calls “period effects” and they are the social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances, or political movements of a period in time and how people react to them.

My response to those period effects made me turn out to be socially liberal, fiscally conservative, a critical thinker who feels that diversity and inclusion are good things, and that all people deserve to be treated with a certain amount of baseline dignity and respect as a result of our shared humanity.

Carlson ended up completely different. He ended up as an egocentric self-promoter who cares more about money than he does about other people. He apparently thinks that diversity in America is a weakness, not a strength. He is someone who feels no remorse over peddling abject falsehoods, under the disguise of “scholarship” and “journalism,” for his own personal gain.

He somehow missed the lesson on shared humanity and has instead arrived at middle age as miserable human being.

Carlson it appears, is the evil twin of Eric Garcetti. Garcetti may also have an outsized ego, since many politicians do. But he devoted twelve years of his professional life to steering Los Angeles, a large and diverse city–home to more people than the entire state of Wyoming–in a positive direction. One cannot do that by peddling division and discord.

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Carlson. But wherever he pops up next, I can guarantee it will be bad for America.

And the Lies Go On

Posted on by under Critical Thinking

Lies are alive and well and circulating among us. In case anyone thought my recent posts about the seductiveness of lies were an abstract exercise, current events prove otherwise.

The Washington Post reported this month about a Ponzi scheme that allegedly swindled $500 million from unsuspecting investors. (A Ponzi scheme is a type of financial scam.)

A key point of this scam–similar to all Ponzi schemes–is that the investors believed the lies told to them by people they knew and viewed as having some authority on the investment. These lies were flattering and played to their desire to help others while getting rich.

One person who lost money is quoted as saying “We were a little nervous, but we trusted him. Because we were friends and belonged to the same church, the red flags were heart-shaped. I was like, ‘Wow. We are really lucky to be involved in this investment.’”

It was falsehood with just the right amount of truth to make it believable.

These lies, as lies often do, defrauded many for the personal benefit of the few. And such lies will continue for as long as there are people willing to fall for them.

Dust off and recycle some old lies. Serve them up again. People fall for them. They want to believe them.

What solutions are there? I can think of several. Comment below and I will share some of them with you.

Lies – A Conclusion

Posted on by under Critical Thinking

People will believe lies. People will go so far as to destroy their own lives and the lives of others for a lie.

People are more likely to believe a lie from someone they view (rightly or wrongly) as having authority.

Conversely, people are less likely to listen to and believe someone who may be telling the truth but who does not in their eyes have authority.

Generally, people have a moral and ethical obligation to promote truth basically because there are real-world consequences for not doing so. By truth, I mean objective, verifiable fact, and not some clerical or political interpretation.

The First Amendment of the Constitution has been interpreted to mean that the government cannot prohibit a particular point of view. It does not matter if the point of view the government is prohibiting is true or not; it is barred from infringing on speech.

The position the Supreme Court has taken is that the cure for a proliferation of lies is to flood the “marketplace of ideas” with other points of view.

Unfortunately, many times the lies are more attractive, more comforting, and feel more “right” than the actual, albeit inconvenient, truth. And people believe them for a lot of very real reasons.

To be clear: an unintentional untruth is a mistake; an intentional untruth is a lie.

Lies do not qualify as “legitimate differences of opinion” or “political dialog”; they are scams, intended to mislead. Falsehood with just the right amount of truth to make them believable.

And the lies spread because people want to believe. They need to believe because often it goes to their very identity. Without those lies, they would lose their sense of self. Simply being given more information, or better information, will not overcome the deeply held need identify as a particular kind of person.

So, what is our moral and ethical obligation at this point, as a society? How to we approach situations where lies are being marketed as truth? How much do we owe to ourselves and to our family, friends, and neighbors to stand up to the lies, to call them out for what they are? How do we keep functioning and avoid descending into violence and chaos?

Freedom and liberty are good things, but an overabundance of individual freedom is essentially anarchy. I for one am not in favor of anarchy.

But that’s not really what’s going on, is it? What is going on is people with an agenda and a platform and a megaphone are feeding people untruths they identify with, the desired end result being more and more power to fewer and fewer people.

I am not in favor of fascism either.

The Seductiveness of the Lie, Part 3

Posted on by under Critical Thinking

There has been a lot of talk in recent years in the United States about “free speech,” much of it misinformed.

It has gotten so bad that elected officials, and not just the fringe ones, and lawyers–people who ought to understand the law–are promoting a theory of protected speech that is unsubstantiated by the legal framework of this country.

Protest march in Washington, D.C. in 2017 past the text of the First Amendment

The term “free speech” or “freedom of speech” derives, as best I can figure, from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….”

What that means specifically has been interpreted by over 200 years of Supreme Court decisions. The key bottom line for me is two things:

  • Citizens and noncitizens are not free to say literally anything in the US. The government can put restrictions on speech that would lead or does lead to violence, cause mass panic, or is used to intimidate or threaten others.
  • The “abridging the freedom of speech” part of the First Amendment applies only to the government. Not private employers. Not your neighbor. Not media outlets that are not controlled by the government. Again, only the government.

In other words, when some idiot is yakking about how suspending someone from Twitter is taking away their right to free speech, that is outright bullshit. Twitter is a private company, not the government.

No one has a Constitutional right to use Twitter. Or to comment on web pages owned by private companies. Or to say anything they want to at work, when the employer is a private enterprise.

What about bald-faced lies? Yes, in the US you have the freedom to say, and believe, lies. The government is not allowed to stop that (unless it involves some of the above mentioned circumstances). But anyone who is not the government can have policies and procedures in place to put a stop to deliberate falsehoods, hate speech, and advocating violence, if applied with equality and with consideration to protected classes of people.

***

There is another long-standing legal concept of the “reasonable person standard.” This is where judges and juries consider what would be acceptable or unacceptable to a hypothetical reasonable person, when deciding whether to rule for or against someone in court.

This assumes there is agreement and understanding held in common and widely shared of what “reasonable” means. The events of recent years, when people form their opinions based on the intentional falsehoods of celebrities such as Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson, makes me wonder if that will continue to be the case.

***

The position the Supreme Court has taken is that the cure for a proliferation of lies is to flood the “marketplace of ideas” with other points of view. The gist is that the more ideas that are circulating, and the more varied those ideas are, truth and a shared concept of reality will ultimately win. (See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York (1980), United States v. Alvarez (2012).)

Unfortunately, many times the lies are more attractive, more comforting, spoken more loudly and with more fervor, than the actual truth. I worry that facts cannot keep up with the constant output of lies.

This to me raises the issue of how long our modern civil society can tolerate this festering subculture of lies. Just being passive is, increasingly, not an option, in my opinion. Rather, those who are still able to identify the truth need to speak, speak loudly, and not assume that one can appeal to people’s reason, compassion, or sense of community.

The risks are real.