Category Archives: Critical thinking

Doubt Free Zones

Critical thinking, reason, Right-wing Extremism, Skeptical Philosophy

 

Dr. Bryant Welch in his book State of Confusion said, “The sound and visual effects of Fox News are almost carnival-like, with multiple crawlers and a seemingly constant state of news crises created by ‘Fox News Alerts.”  I am aware that CNN bombards its viewers with “Breaking News,” but frankly they are much less effective. On Fox the graphics and images are vivid if not overwhelming. Americans obviously, love them. The colors are stunning. Viewers are stunned. The brain is stunned.

 

Moving images and beautiful women enlarge the distraction and confusion, but commentators, like Sean Hannity are there to give strong opinions that eliminate confusion. They make it very clear what viewers should think. Viewers know what they should think. There are no doubts on Fox. It is a doubt free zone. Nuance is an anathema on Fox. Their listeners want certainty, not doubt.

Such news shows are stimulating. Regular media looks dull in comparison. If you habitually watch Fox, every other news show seems boring. One unnamed critic said, in the film The Brain Washing of My Dad said this:

 

“This creates a mood that mesmerizes an audience and holds it captive. Then when they are captive and overwhelmed and a bit confused they have someone like Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity with their passion, and confidence and certitude tell the audience who they should blame for their confusion and uncertainty.”

 

That is a very effective strategy basically to excite and then calm the nerves.  The film really suggested it was the tool for brain washing.

 

Where there is no room for doubt there is no room for thinking.

 

There is no monopoly on shenanigans

American Fascism, Critical thinking, Fascism, Freedom, Right-wing Extremism

Language is never neutral. Or at least it is very difficult to be neutral. In 1994 Newt Gingrich on behalf of Tea Party, the radical right wing of the Republican party at the time, hired Frank Luntz, considered by many to be a genius of a wordsmith. For example, he persuaded Republicans to refer to estate tax as death tax. It sounded more ominous.  One thing is clear, Frank Luntz is sharp. Luntz professionalized framing language to get a desired message across.

 

Thanks to work like Luntz’s, and others with his skills, conservatives talked about “energy exploration” rather than “drilling for oil.” Instead of talking about poor people they talk about “the takers.” Or even “parasites.” Or “enhanced interrogation techniques” instead of “torture.” Instead of “rich people” say “the job creators.”

 

Words are important. So is spin. And of course, both the left and the right do this. There is no monopoly on shenanigans.

 

George Orwell, that brilliant political thinker and writer said, in his book 1984, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”  I think he was being ironical, for who would say that? Another brilliant and more modern writer, Robert Macfarlane said that words are critically important to our ability to understand the world. No words, no thinking. Macfarlane feared that if we no longer knew the exact words for plants or animals we would not be able to find spaces for them in our imaginations. As Carol Off recounted in her wonderful book At a Loss for Words, he told her in an interview that “to name something is to know it a little more clearly. And maybe to care for it a little more.”

 

As a life long seeker for truth about things in the natural world, particularly wild flowers and wild birds, I must say I disagree entirely.  Therefore, I don’t really like spin doctors like Luntz. Political operatives like him, whether of the left or the right, are trying to mesmerize us in order to manipulate us into supporting those who are paying him for that manipulation.

 

Off said in politics “we keep the word, but the idea it represents is lost.” I think the best current example of that is the word “freedom.”  I think people like truckers in the Convoy movement of Canada have lost the meaning of the word completely.  They mean the freedom of themselves to do anything they want, no matter what effect that has on others. That means freedom all right, for them, and misery for the rest of us. Freedom for wolves; not so much for sheep.

 

As Orwell might have said, abuse of language is the beginning of fascism.

 

The Monsters of Unreason

Critical thinking, Death of Truth, Vaccines

 

The Spanish painter Goya labelled one of his paintings with this caption: “The Sleep of Reason brings forth monsters.” I think that is a profound statement that is deeply true. That has become extremely important during the pandemic. It is my belief that in the United States in particular, but including many other countries, it has become painfully obvious that reason has gone to sleep and we have had to suffer the consequences.  We don’t have to look any further than the refusal to use vaccines by millions of people even after the scientific evidence and real-world evidence made it overwhelming clear, that the best chance we had to combat Covid-19 was to take the vaccines. There were no good reasons not to take vaccines in almost all cases. Yet people resisted.  Why was that?

 

I have been talking about the sleep of reason since my second post in this blog. That was long before the pandemic. I was concerned that many people, particularly in the United States, have forsaken evidence-based decisions making, critical reasoning, and thinking obsolete in favor of faith, hunches, feelings, instincts, and ultimately conspiracy theories. It seemed people prefer living in FantasyLand to the real boring world of truth and facts.  Some call this a “post truth world” as it seemed people no longer cared about truth. I believed this was a dangerous development.

 

I have been amazed that it could happen in the United States home to the finest universities and scientists in the world. How could this have happened? In previous posts I have tried to explain why I think this happened. This was a pandemic of unreason long before anyone heard of Covid-19.  Since then, this disease has been delivered to us in high-def and there are no vaccines to save us or mitigate the harms. We just have to suffer. And we are suffering from the monsters of unreason.

Those monsters of unreason are still lurking and are more dangerous than ever

Freedom

Critical thinking, Freedom, Vaccines

 

The first word Carol Off tackles in her book At a Loss for Words, is the word I immediately thought of when I realized what her subject was. Off like me was appalled at how the word “freedom” has been repeatedly hijacked by diverse groups in their own personal interests, at the expense of truth. The one group that came top of mind to me was Canada’s truckers’ convoy and their allies around the country, including Steinbach. To them the word “freedom” has come to mean the capacity to do anything one wants no matter what the consequences to others. Any restraint, no matter how rational is considered an affront to freedom.

 

In Ottawa and across the country the truckers demanded release from the tyranny of government-imposed vaccine mandates, even after those mandates  had been largely eased, while they forgot about the fact that millions of lives had been amazingly protected by those vaccines from a novel virus that was threatening them even though the problems with the vaccines were miniscule to minute compared to the substantial benefits for the vast majority of people.

 

As Carol Off said, “They’ve attempted to repurpose the word for a political agenda that seeks to exclude anyone outside their tribe. For those who have truly escaped the iron hand of oppression, these freedom chants smack of privilege and historical revisionism.”

 

I think she nailed it.

 

The best Defense is our Mind

Authoritarianism, Books, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Fascism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

When the capacity to think is destroyed, as it seems to have done in the United States, we must realize we have entered very dangerous waters filled with dangerous predators and we have no defenses. For example, in the wars of Yugoslavia people were driven by demagogues to attack their former friends and neighbours for the vital goal of ethnic cleansing. Sort of what Trump has done by claiming that illegal immigrants have poisoned the blood of the country.  We must always remember, as Carol Off makes clear in her book At a Loss for Words, that

 

“words are freighted with ideas. They carry meaning but also hide it. They inspire great acts of kindness and incite people to kill. We live in a moment…where we need to pay very close attention to the language around us—and the language we use—because it holds the secrets of what might be coming.”

 

 

We must always remember as Voltaire told us, “If someone can make you believe an absurdity, he can make you commit an atrocity.” If Trump can make you believe that the 2020 election was stolen against all the amazing amount of evidence to the contrary, he probably would be able to persuade you to attack immigrants with your bare hands. That is what might be coming.

 

Similarly, when Trump persuaded his followers that the rioters on January 6th were engaged in a love in, we must understand that his oratory was important. His words were important. As Carol Off explained,

 

“The January 6 insurrection provoked by the oratory of Donald Trump demonstrated the connection between words and actions and revealed the darkest qualities of this threat: that the language that Trump and his supporters shared is coded. Everyone in the crowd knew what the outgoing president meant when he told the mob that they needed to “save America” and “fight like hell,” just like …that Serbian politician meant when he said that Christians and Muslims could no longer share the same space. What we saw in Bosnia during the war, in the UK during Brexit, and in the United States during Trump’s speeches is the power of demagogues to speak to people in the language of fear, uncertainty, and anger using rhetoric to break down our trust in our governments, our societies, and each other. Our only defence is language that’s clear, rational and unambiguous.”[2]

 

I would summarize these thoughts as follows: our only defence is our ability to think critically. If we lose that we are sunk.

 

We can’t Speak anymore

Books, Critical thinking, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate

 

I did not realize it but Carol Off the former host of CBC’s long running talk show As it Happens on his radio network, and the author of a very good book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage, has a lot of wise things to say about words. Words and our inability to use them properly. In this respect she follows in the path of that great English writer George Orwell. Of course, Off has experience as she was employed by the CBC for many years to talk to people around the world 5 days a week. She knows how to have conversations from personal experience, not just book-learning.

 

Off points out that in our current age, which she calls, not without justification, ‘The Age of Rage,’ it has become very difficult to hold rational conversations.  People don’t want to talk anymore. They want to yell instead. She believes the reason for that is that our lives have been taken over to a significant extent by extremists.  It often seems like only the extremists get to speak. Only extremists have platforms. The rest of us have to suck socks.  Off put it this way:

 

…we have become incapable of talking to each other. The language we once shared has been co-opted by extremists and we’re reduced to barking and snapping. It’s not just that we dispute what path to take; we no longer agree on the meaning of the words that define our destination. I’m not saying we should be of one collective mind about anything, but surely, we need the vocabulary to coherently disagree, to negotiate our way to some rational understanding, with reasonable  people on all sides. Without an embrace of a shared and logical discourse, we can’t even agree on the facts. Without facts we can’t hope to conclude what is true, and without truth we lose trust. This is not a good position to be in as the planet burns.

 

In the current era, much of the power of words has been unleashed by the power of algorithms that encourage rage, fear and hate because they attract engagement on the internet and multiply its power. Masters of harnessing such language include people like Donald Trump. He knows that by turning  people such as immigrants and Muslims and foreigners into objects of hatred people will pay attention to him. That is how demagogues take power. They are able to persuade ordinary people that they need a strongman, like Hitler, Mussolini, or Trump to control the rabble and bring them peace. Lately this is what is happening on the streets of Minneapolis. Recently, on PBS broadcasting who are working hard to listen to all points of view, they interviewed an intelligent right-wing commentator who really believed that Donald Trump was a moderating voice in Minneapolis bringing peace to quell the rabble.

Words are dynamite in the age of rage. And dynamite is dangerous.

 

 

At a Loss for Words

Books, Critical thinking, Extremism, Hate

There is a book I want to recommend. It was written by Carol Off who was for many years, the host of CBC radio’s As it Happens. I listened to it many times but never thought of her as an author. My bad. She is an excellent writer.

 

By now it is clear to everyone that we are living in an age of hate and political rage. Really, it is an age of extremism. Carol Off in her book At a Loss for Words: Converstaon in an Age of Rage,  nailed the problem on the head:

 

“The political rage that has engulfed us is exhausting, rendering us almost incapable of rational conversations. But that’s the intent of those who are fuelling it.”

In many ways it really is a book about extremism–one of the plagues of the modern world. Some say, the plague.

When we are consumed by rage truth becomes impossible. We are, as they say, blinded by rage, and that is exactly the problem. We lost the capacity to think. We only feel and what we mainly feel is rage. This is what the age of anger and rage is all about. Destroying our ability to think.

 

There is ample evidence in the language they use, that Americans and Canadians have lost the capacity to think. Here are some examples Carol offered up in her book:

 

“White men claim they are not privileged but persecuted. Politicians are devils, and some people disparagingly regard government—the system with which we organize our societies—as hell on earth.  One side insists liberals are really communists and the other argues that all conservatives are fascists. Teacher and librarians are alarmed to find themselves redefined as “groomers,” not to be trusted with children. “Feminist” is often hurled as an insult. After decades of struggling for dignity, queer is once again demonized. Words like antisemitism and genocide are used to shout down debate concerning Israel. Policies supporting social justice are branded as the cynical workings of the “deep state.”  And the climate crisis is vilified as a conspiracy to destroy our jobs and way of life.”

 

In her wonderful book, Off recognized that she could not possibly cover all cases of dead thought, so she selected some key words that she believed were hijacked, weaponized, or semantically bleached. She devoted a chapter to each of the following: Freedom. Democracy. Truth. Woke. Choice. Taxes.  An interesting list with some surprises, at least to me. But I assure you each chapter is interesting and worth the read.

Autocratic Leaders take advantage of our weaknesses

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Fascism, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Populist, Machiavellian, and autocratic leaders have learned to take advantage of our natural (evolved) biases against us.  Goodman used the example of Andrew Tate in England to illustrate his point. I would use leaders with autocratic tendencies instead, like Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. And of course, it seems to me, that the young people, being even more impressionable than the older people, seem to be most attracted to such strong man leaders.  Perhaps they are more impressionable, or perhaps, even more likely, they are the most unhappy with themselves.  In modern society, young people are starting to realize that their parent’s generation has screwed them by rigging the rules of society against them. It is no accident that this current generation, for the first time in history, is likely to live less well off than financially than their parents.

 

Strongmen, like Trump, are masters at using deceit and manipulation to create absurd trust in their abilities, against all evidence to the contrary, and then use that ability to propel themselves into positions of authority where they can use that authority to improve their own financial position at the expense of those who supported them. It’s a nasty trick if you can get away with it, and none is better at it than Donald Trump. Trump has done it many times and continues to do it as his supporters don’t seem to notice or don’t seem to care.

 

One of the techniques that strongmen in the past have used to gain influence over the populace include attacking science and knowledge. Hitler did it. Stalin did. And now Trump is doing it. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia they quickly attacked the scientific community with claims that they were merely, “bourgeois” scientists who were acting on behalf of their financial supporters and then replaced them with more compliant and ideologically pure scientists. This is precisely what Trump has done by attacking woke scientists.

 

We must be careful to avoid allowing this to happen. As Jonathan Goodman said in his Guardian article,

 

“Where we see brute power combined with ignorance, we can throw our support behind knowledge, peaceful protest and education.

 

And finally, when reigns of terror end – and eventually, they always do – it is critical to learn and absorb the lessons. That way, we inoculate ourselves afresh against our natural tendency to trust the untrustworthy, carrying that wisdom forward into the future so that we’re better able to stymie the autocrats who seek to close our minds.

 

The best tool we can muster to defend ourselves from such attacks is our ability to think critically. We must cherish and protect that skill, as it is our most powerful weapon of self-defence. This is always our most powerful tool. When we give it up we submit to arbitrary and ruthless authority. That is why autocrats are so quick to attack it because that makes us defenceless to their attacks.