Why many prefer lies to the truth

While out for a drive today I noticed a bolt of lightning strike a few miles away (it's been a stormy several weeks with many isolated thunder storms roaming around.) This was one of those bolts that lingered a bit, and since I was looking in that direction from a place higher above the ground (driving on the crest of a bridge) I got a good look at it. That made me think of an analogy to help you to understand why so many people actually prefer lies to the truth! Here it is.

Anyone who has seen a lightning bolt, either in reality or in a cool photograph, knows that lightning usually is long and curved. Sometimes it forks, but usually (especially ground to cloud lightning), it is like a rough rope that is slightly curved.

Yet, if anyone were asked to draw lightning, what would they draw? They would draw the cartoon symbol for lightning, which is the straight zigzag. Even knowing what lightning looks like in reality, if someone were asked to draw it, most would do the zigzag.

(I'd embed images here but I remain a total tyro at using the computer and really don't know how to get it to consistently work on this blog...I almost always get error messages when I try.)

Now, if you asked the person, "Why did you draw the cartoon symbol for lightning, the vertical zigzag, rather than how it actually looks?" the person would reply, "Well, you might not be sure what it was I was drawing if I drew how it actually looks, but if I use the symbol there is no mistaking it."

This is the irony of not only how the human brain is wired, but the conventional societal attitude in communications. Often we make ourselves clearer in conveying an idea by simplifying it into total or near artificiality!

This is both a brain thing and a society thing. Brains want to work "fast" and "get to the point." Hence they are wired to "fill in the blanks" and also to respond to key stimuli. Thus a cartoon of lightning gets the point across faster, more uniformly and clearer rather than even a talented artist drawing a rough line that is slightly curved.

You can see exactly what I mean about what a "bolt" of lightning really looks like by the many fine pictures at this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

At this lightning safety page, you can see great photos of actual lightning plus small yellow vertical zigzag symbols of lightning, so you can compare what I mean side by side, the reality and the very helpful symbol.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=lightning_safety

But if a person extracted just one lightning bolt and drew it on a piece of paper, it would not be obvious what it is. The person would probably have to explain, or draw scenery to show the context.

Yet, if a person draws a vertical zigzag, nearly everyone recognizes instantly, without context, that it is a depiction of a lightning bolt. If the zigzag is drawn horizontally, it usually indicates electricity symbolically.

So the "survival trait" part of the brain favors pithy, quick, simplified, cartoonish depictions of "reality" so that it can "get the message" and the "bottom line" in a hurry. This is true whether people are in actual danger situations or not. Why? Because the second half of the brain influence is that brains become lazy, just like their human owners. Truth requires more detail, discernment, and thought, while untruth or overly simplified reality does not require much effort to think about.

This, then, is also a societal problem. A consumer oriented society (or, to be blunt, a greedy worship the dollar and instant gratification society) favors fast pitches of their product that provide rapid stimulation. Thus, again, a consumer oriented society favors the lazy brain, one that does not think about the reality, the truth, or the implications of what is being displayed.

So this, then, is where a survival trait that is good in the brain (make great and quick leaps in understanding based on simplified information) turns into an addiction (I don't want to think about anything difficult or complicated, so I'd rather believe something easy to believe rather than something difficult to comprehend).

What is an example? Well, of course a loving, all powerful and demanding God is a complicated, mysterious, "work is required" concept to think about, to believe and to obey. Mindless entertainment and worse, many cult beliefs, such as an "evil alien invader," satisfy the over stimulated but lazy brain demand. Faith is work and even a simple symbol, such as the cross, the Star of David, or the crescent are symbols of a complicated reality. Unfortunately, modern humans have taken their God given great brains, which can process very complicated concepts, but also make great conclusions based on little information, and have turned those two abilities into an addictive thought process whereby the brain craves not reality or truth, even if they are happier and more pleasant options, and instead prefer whatever is simpler and non-thought stimulating, even if that is the sadder and more depressive option.

So you can see by my analogy that this is another example of where a "good" capability of the brain has been increasingly used for the wrong purposes, and has therefore become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

That's why I like my analogy because there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a symbol for clarity, such as the vertical zigzag for a lightning bolt, drawn with a simple stroke of the pen or pencil, rather than a person having to laboriously draw what lightning actually looks like, put it in a landscape for clarity (as in the Wikipedia photographs) and probably label it too. The problem is when the brain grows to prefer intaking only simplified symbols, including ones that are simply NOT real at all, rather than intaking reality, the truth, as it actually is.

Here's a silly example. It's like modern humans think that if they are going to get hit by a lightning bolt, that someone is going to take a piece of paper with a vertical zigzag on it and rub it on them, rather than being hit by the reality of a lightning bolt. That is how modern brains have been warped. They have taken the "talent" that the brain has and made it cross wired, so that the simplified and even the totally wrong has replaced the complicated truthful reality in many situations.

It's like the slogan problem, where people get excited over a nifty chant or slogan to express their beliefs, rather than plumb the more complicated reality that underlies the issue. It is an instinct, a helpful instinct, of the brain that has been transformed into a harmful addiction.

So I hope that this is a helpful analogy for you. This is a very serious problem and those of you who are either rediscovering your genuine faith and/or those who are leaving cults must understand why the temptation to believe the "strong but wrong" is so persistent. Modern brains in the context of an increasingly consumer oriented and very artificial society have come to favor-and even become addicted to-strong but over simplified and often totally wrong lies over truthful but more nuanced and complicated reality that takes time, effort, and some sacrifice in order to actually understand.

Capitalism is easy to understand and interesting

Forget everything you thought you knew about the "definition" of capitalism. Here is an easy to understand explanation of what it really is, as a springboard from my previous post about history.

Capitalism is what you have when an individual or a family grows enough food to meet their own needs to eat, and also grows an extra amount that it sells for cash. That is the definition and origin of capitalism.

The extra amount of food that is grown is called a "surplus." The fact that it is sold for cash is capitalism. For example, if it was swapped for a different type of food, that is called "bartering" and is not capitalism.

Many people define capitalism as being "the law of supply and demand," but that is not true. Supply and demand is the method by which the family sets and obtains a cash price for their surplus.

For example, cars run on gasoline, but a car was not built because someone was looking for a use for gasoline. Thus supply and demand is like gasoline for a car. It is the method by which the car runs. So supply and demand is the method by which the family prices and then settles on cash for their surplus.

For example, suppose that a family grows corn. They grow enough corn to feed themselves, and some extra that they can sell. One year corn is abundant, so they don't get a very high price for their extra corn. But the next year corn is either scarce due to crop failures or in high demand because of extra usages of corn becoming popular, so the family gets a higher price for their surplus corn than they did the year before. That is an example of supply and demand fluctuating from year to year, and thus an example of "low demand" one year followed by "high demand" the next year.

Here is another example. Suppose a family really likes broccoli. They grow enough to meet their own needs to eat, and also some surplus. But when they go to sell their surplus broccoli they find that no one else has a taste for it like they do. They either cannot sell it or they settle for a low price figuring that even a small amount of cash is gravy since their primary reason to grow the broccoli is their own eating habits. That is an example of supply and demand that illustrates a "low demand" situation.

Farmers invented capitalism. It's not a devious tool of evil western bankers. Capitalism was the natural and healthy outcome of human culture, family by family, raising itself up from subsistence farming (that means farming that yields just enough for the family to be able to eat and not starve) to having surplus that it can sell. Capitalism is as natural as rain. Capitalism has nothing to do with greed and exploitation. Capitalism is grassroots; it sprang up on the family by family boundary between "having just enough to live" to "having something extra to sell." So no one "invented" capitalism and it exists everywhere in all cultural systems. What is invented is the methods of obtaining cash (the demand mechanism), gauging interest in the surplus (the supply mechanism) and the reaching of markets where the deals are struck.

Every family should have this original mindset of capitalism if it wants to be healthy, even though people in developed countries are no longer subsistence farmers. There are several reasons for why this is important. One is that you cannot help impoverished people elsewhere in the world if you do not understand and support this form of capitalism. "Surplus being taken to market" is THE way that people are lifted out of poverty. That is why a "handout" mentality fails. Of course you need to supply emergency and subsistence food, medicine and shelter as stop gap measures. But to raise people permanently out of poverty they must be able to provide for their own needs plus generate a surplus for cash.

The second reason it is important that everyone understand and embrace this origination and definition of capitalism is that it is the prudent and balanced way to view things. I don't need to remind people of the current housing market and financial crisis as an example. Again, let's look at the car and gasoline example. Suppose your car breaks down. Do you yell at the gasoline saying "You stupid gasoline! You made me invent the car and now the car doesn't work! It's all your fault!" That is what it is like when ignorant people blame "capitalism" whenever there is a financial problem or shortcoming. It's like blaming gasoline for your even having a car that then gets a flat tire. It's not the gasoline's fault that you need a car or that things break. Likewise it is not capitalism's "fault" when there is a huge scandal, mess, crime or stupid decision making.

I know it is hard to think about capitalism as a family by family "subsistence plus extra for cash" definition because modern society seems to have come so far from that reality. However, it was only forty years ago that this was still being taught in schools and personally experienced by many families in the US. My grandparents, for example, raised their own food to eat and sold the surplus in the farmers' market to obtain cash. So my generation both saw this in practice and heard about it explained in schools. Again, here is my experience. In the summer of 1962 when we were staying with my grandparents, when my mother needed some cash she joined my grandfather and grandmother up the ladder picking cherries which they then took to the farmers' market to sell. Later in school history teachers taught what I put in the previous post about tribes, clans and flock/herd/land owning explaining the transition that all developing people make family by family from "subsistance" to "surplus." Children used to be taught reality and not agenda.

So whenever one gets confused by complicated financial messes of today, it is very helpful to impose whatever you are hearing upon the original measuring stick of capitalism because it helps you to sort through to the essentials very quickly. Here is a quick example, without getting into a lot of detail.

Everyone today has heard the marketing expression "to create a demand" or to "create buzz about a product." Often that is the average person's first "entry" into even thinking about capitalism, and that is unfortunate but inevitable. Original capitalism springs from a recognized human need (the corn example) that prospers enough that the supply crosses the boundary from subsistence to surplus. Thus one family "has" a surplus of what other families "want and can use." The capitalism transaction is a natural outflowing of what people need and want.

In recent decades, however, product is being envisioned and invented whether it is needed and wanted or not, and then peddled to potential buyers. In other words, people are "convinced" that they need a product before the need actually exists. Now, I'm not being all austere and being against luxuries. But I'm helping you think through what is actually capitalism and what is societal quirks and dysfunctions. Any parent out there knows what I am talking about when they think about how marketers constantly "create a need" among their kids. I remember the days before and after "name brands" became de rigeur among kids, such as for expensive sneakers. If you think back to the original model I have explained here of capitalism, you can recognize the difference between the surplus of an "essential commodity" being taken to market (corn, for example) and some product being invented out of an idea factory and then being "marketed" to potential consumers to "create" a need. There is nothing wrong with having a great idea and then convincing lots of people to buy the product except for one thing: society as a whole starts to forget how to distinguish between "essential commodities" and "created products." There then is a cascading series of risks of displaced emphasis and priority with disastrous effects. The diverting of corn from feed to ethanol is a perfect example of this problem. No one thought through the difference between growing a surplus to provide the corn to a new use (ethanol) and cutting into the subsistence use of corn (feeding people and cattle).

This is so essential that I want to make the point a second time. Because I'm sane and a good economist who actually understands humans I made an assumption when I first heard about the push for ethanol development. I assumed that ethanol producers were paying to take farm land that was now idle and putting it to corn growing. In other words, I never dreamed that they were going to extract the corn out of the food and feed subsistence market. To this day I am still boggled that anyone was so irresponsible and stupid as to do that. I assumed that anyone in their right mind was going to first create a surplus of corn in order to put it to this massive scale new usage (ethanol), and not take the corn out of the mouths of humans and animals. So the ethanol disaster is not the fault of "capitalism," it is an example of how people have become totally detached from discerning the reality of distinguishing between subsistence and surplus "supply."


See what I mean? If you always use this model that I have taught you as your baseline of understanding capitalism in general, then you can put yourself on a knowledgeable basis of foundation for discerning opportunities and pitfalls in even complex decisions and transactions. For example, if I had been consulted (ha ha, dream on) when the ethanol idea first came up, I'd have asked "Where will the corn come from?" This is because being real intelligent I know that corn is an essential foodstuff for humans and animals. I would have assumed, I must confess, that the answer would have been the executives whipping out a list of idle farm properties that they would put into production of new corn growing. My jaw would have dropped if I heard them say they were going to "go to the market" for the corn, which means, compete against humans and animals who actually need and eat this product and thus end up making the price of food skyrocket. Then I'd have b-slapped them, so to speak.

The ethanol disaster is an example of how people have 1) forgotten the basic principle of capitalism which is surplus on TOP of subsistence, not biting into subsistence 2) too often created a demand for a product using fallacious lures and assumptions and 3) lack of discernment of all the pros and cons of a given "product" development. I don't want to be cynical but being a realist there is implication number four: these three problems open the door to a small but powerful clique who know full well the disaster they are about to wreck onto people but are in it to pull out the maximum money that they can before "the gig is up." Thus I suspect that some people knew full well that they'd destroy the food prices for the average Joe and Mary but they locked into commodity and other bets to maximize profit when corn prices spiked and did not care at all whether ethanol "succeeded" or not.

I think this capitalism explanation is helpful in getting people on the same page to understanding a lot of the economic problems (and very hidden opportunities) that people are struggling with globally. As always, I hope the young people in particular find this information a truthful beacon and context setting.

Ponder: youth outreach (2)

In my previous post I mentioned I think about how this younger (under 40) generation has been incredibly cheated and shortchanged, and how I often think of it when I drive my car. Here's the story behind the connection to cars and some perspective you might draw from it.

When I was growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, the overwhelming favorite color of both men and women was blue. Americans loved blue. It had nothing to do with politics or, as you will see, marketing. It was the natural expression of people's favorite color. Study after study showed that blue was favored by both men and women, both for its beauty (evoking sky and water) and also that it was soothing. So when the automobile industry matured and came out of it's Model A black car phase, and utilitarian black, to offer color selections, the overwhelming majority of cars on the road were blue. Not the metallic or bright blue that you see sometimes today, when you see a blue car at all, but a "steady Eddie" kind of blue. Here is a link to a color paint chip sheet for 1960 Chevrolet cars:

http://www.tcpglobal.com/aclchip.aspx?image=1960-chevrolet-pg01.jpg

So you have to kind of use your imagination, but think of what it looked like when a good half or more of the cars on the road were colored blue or green shades, such as in the first column. Even when a white car was selected, it was viewed as being very individualistic to that person, and a cream tone. Reds were also rare, not because they were unavailable, as you can see on the sheet, but people just did not select red, white or gray cars. They loved blue.

You have to take my word for it, but driving was more serene in those days. It's not just the courtesy and careful driving that was predominant back then, but it also simply looked more serene with all of that blue! To this day it hurts my eyes to look at the color of cars today, because I remember when it was better. I can testify that it is different today, looking at cars that are either neutral, soul-less, or jangling in color than when people drove cars colored in their favorite colors, serene blues and greens.

So what happened? How did it change so radically? Well, it was a joining together of two forces. One was the "revolution" against the "establishment" by hipsters and discontent generation of your parents who wanted to do something "different from their parents." So called "women's liberationists," don't laugh, I wish it wasn't true, declared war against blue as being "discrimination" because baby boys wore blue and baby girls wore pink. I'm not kidding. I remember well women slavering like maniacs that "blue is the color of oppression." Girls and women who LOVED blue gave it up, because they were brainwashed by the libbers that liking blue was "giving in to the man" and "allowing yourself to be oppressed." So women cut off their own noses to spite their own faces, giving up their own love of blue so that they could shove it in the face of their parents and "the male establishment." Denim became the only acceptable blue, except for the period of blue eyeshadow in make up. Girls and women rejected the very color that they loved in order to "stick it to the man." Yes, young people, your parents were that stupid.

The second force drew its energy from the "social revolution," which was to deliberately change people's tastes so that they would spend more money. It was the shift from painting cars in the colors that most people loved to painting cars in different colors, and then convincing people that new colors were their "new image." So the marketers started peddling colors that convinced people that they were "luxury," or "racers," and "the new neutral metallics" (silver). As people increasingly bought off the lot, rather than ordered the car with the paint you wanted, you had to choose what the marketers supplied. This is why I'm driving a maroon car and hate the color, and why all you see is white, silver and red. It's not like it used to be where people would order their car and wait for it in more leisurely times. Since the 1970's you basically have gone to the lot and selected among what is there. And every car ad is pushing an image, rather than selling cars that are painted in the predominant favorite colors, as it used to be.

So it's not like people changed their minds about blue. It was social and marketing brainwashing.

I mention this story because I think when I share something like this, it opens your eyes a bit and you can relate. Unless you have someone like me who can break the story down and tell you what really went on, you'd have no way of having this social, cultural and historical fact based history to understand what is going on. Young people today are brainwashed by their parents generation to think that "you are in charge" and "the individual rules." Well, think about it. If I can witness the entire country's taste in car color deliberately manipulated to flip flop in a total change, you can imagine what I've seen about other important social and cultural factors that have been totally manipulated. So this is an example where you can learn that you are not so much in charge as you think you are, and it's your own parents who, for the most part, sold the American spirit down the river.