Spin And Emotions: Selective Reporting, Distorted Perception, Irrational Actions
December 16, 2005 - The art of life is making necessary conclusions from insufficient premises. - anonymous
I just came accross notes I took on a book I read in the mid 90’s by Richard Brodie who writes in a field called memetics called Virus Of The Mind (a fantastic, quick read), and it got me thinking.
The wide world we experience often differs dramatically from the world we actually live in. The “facts” on which we build our understanding of what is happening are “spun” by media savvy spin doctors from every pulpit, but even more by our emotional responses to the information we are given. If our actions are a function of our thinking and values, and our thinking and values are a function of the information we get, how can we protect ourselves from the spin of our conventional media providers (polititicain, priests, professors) and the independent bloggers in the seemingly more and more conventional blogsphere?
So, take a ride with me…
“(Insert your most recent annoying person) is a big fat idiot!”
These simple and fighting words make for confrontive and often invigorating conversation. But are they an example of the very behavior they are denouncing?
Yes, I agree with Mark Twain when he said that “A person may be intelligent, but people are stupid.” At the same time, as Ken Wilber puts it, “no one is stupid enought to be 100% wrong.” We all use our intelligence to build reasonable conclusions from incomplete information. When that information is partial, inaccurate, or distorted, the conclusions we build are likewise “screwed up.”
You know, “stupid, idiotic, clueless, dumb, hare-brained, Bush-like…”
Since we are all operating on incomplete and inaccurate information of one type or another, we all say “off the mark” or “stupid” things now and again. When we do, it is often helpful for people to get in our face and point out our glaring mistakes with an epithet or two (or 20…).
However, our stupidity cuts both ways. Not only do we say stupid things, but more often, we hear intelligent things stupidly. Sometimes, someone can say something that is “right on” but we distort it according to our stupidity and end up calling them an idiot. The people who see the intelligence of the person we are calling an idiot then experience us as an idiot, often expressing their observation in lengthy and clever ways - to the delight of the crowd who agrees with them, and inflaming further invective from others…
Who wins in this battle? : The very stupidity each person is denouncing.
In blogs, this is all good and fun - I mean, HELL, I “IS” one!
In politics, when we empower the idiots with legislation, guns, TRILLIONS, and public podiums, it is tragic.
Richard Brodie gives this example inVirus Of The Mind:
–
In 1992, 37,776 people were killed by guns in the United States. An other
40,982 were killed by automobiles. Yet a casual look at reporting would
verify that guns get much more coverage than cars, even though almost half
the gun deaths (18,169) were suicides. I’m not saying guns shouldn’t get
more coverage after all, this gun problem is new and growing, while the car
problem has been with us for decades. But people get a distorted picture of
the dangers involved.
Just doing a simple calculation, the chance of any one person dying in an
automobile accident in a given year in the U.S. are one in 6224; the chance
of dying in a gun incident other than suicide is less than half as likely:
one in 13,005. If you put yourself in a low-risk group by not being a
criminal or a police officer, the odds get considerably better. But what are
people more afraid of: guns or cars?
If you’re like most people, the answer is guns. and it’s likely because of
the distorted media coverage. This kind of disturted coverage leads to an
outcry from the populace, which often leads to politicians going
off–forgive the pun half-cocked with “solutions” to the problem.
Now let’s get a handle on what it really means to have a one-in-6500 or a
one in 13.000 chance of dying. lt’s as if you lived on an island in the
South Pacific with a population of 650. You make your living by swimmuing
around in the azure waters around your idyllic paradise and spearing fish
for dinner. Yum, yum. About once every 10 years. a stray shark happens by
and eats a swimmer. That’s a one in 6500 chance of any one person being
eaten by a shark. just the same as the odds of dying in an automobile
accident in the U.S. in 1992.
Also, about once every 20 years, two men get into an overheated argument
over a fish or a woman and one of them kills the other one with his spear.
That’s a one-in-13,000 chance of being killed in an argument, just the same
as the odds of being killed by someone else with a gun in the U.S. in 1992.
These are very sad events, and probably dinner table conversation for quite
a few days, but not the be-all and end-all of life. Fortunately, since you
live on an isolated island, these events come and go, and life goes on.
But now imagine there are 392,000 of these islands all linked by television
and INN (Island News Network). This brings the total population to about 254
million, similar to the U.S. today. Every night, INN reports on the goriest
of the 107 shark attacks and 54 spear deaths that day. Suddenly people’s
picture of the world is quite different. From a peaceful existence disrupted
only by a tragedy every few years, you go to a fear-ridden hell filled with
fear and terror.
Isn’t this interesting? Nothihg has changed except the addition of
television. Yet now it feels like you’re living in a dangerous world, not an
idyllic paradise. Same number of shark attacks; same number of spear deaths.
What happened?
Television news.
–
Thank Dick! 
The question becomes: What is your “Television news?” What are the sources of information you use to get the “facts” on which to build your world, your opinions about who is or is not an idiot? Towards what emotions are they spun to inflame in you, and towards what purpose?
Intolerance breeds intolerance, and when communication breaks down, violence increases. When we cannot find enough common ground with our adversaries (political, military, or familial) to build negotiated solutions, our only alternative is to force them or be forced. And as Ayn Rand put it through the character of Francisco D’Anconia, “when force becomes the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.”
Of course, to find common ground, to look for where people are right rather than self-righteously pointing out where they are wrong, requires energy, time, and patience.
Screw that, who was the idiot that wrote this anyway?
Mark Michael Lewis
http://LastingHappiness.com