Discernment Diaries - Part 1 | Guilty By Association

There's this odd notion in our society that whenever someone says something we feel much more informed about, we tend to disregard anything else the guy has to say.

"If he doesn't even know that, how could he be right about anything else? I knew listening to this guy would be a waste of time!""

We don't value ideas, we value the people who put forth the ideas

Even more precisely, we value the reputation of the people proposing something - the reputation that has been carefully crafted by third parties when it comes to topics, people or groups in the public arena. The magic term for this is "Public Relations" - the manufacturing and management of perception in the public's mind.

Consequently, the greatest idea could be uttered by some publicly despised "madman" and it would never catch on because of people's inability to separate the idea from the alleged reputation of the one who put it forth. Someone the media labelled as "evil dictator" can never be right about anything from the public's point of view, because we trust more in what we hear about people (and therefore think we know) than what we can discern for ourselves listening to the guy speak and seeing him act.

This leads to a massive disconnect from what is actually talked about - enemy images and negative associations overshadow the actual objective merit of the idea proposed.

Appealing to the manipulated public sentiment can quell essential debates long before they ever get started, while those who quelled the discussion preemptively get to feel like saints - having saved the rest of society from an evil doer and "all their damaging ideas".

Nevermind the fact that his ideas might precisely be the ones most needed - to heal society's damage that already exists. If only these ideas could be discussed in ernest... But who is going to listen to him when it has already been made clear by the media and influential people that "this guy is evil or insane and not to be trusted"?

Most people will simply take their word for it instead of investigating the actual proposal - after all, "why would responsible media outlets and politicians lie about someone or their ideas?"

Shepherd said what's up, so we just have to follow that and be careful of that black sheep over there with his weird ideas - whatever they are.

Prime example: Politics

We can see this propaganda mechanism perfectly within politics. Allegedly, parliaments and congresses were once places were ideas and proposals were weighed, discussed and voted upon - in the interest of the constituents, i.e. the people who gave those representatives their vote.

This foundational concept of a representative democracy has long been turned on its head however.

Today it seems to matter much more who said something that can be twisted and associated with negative sentiments to put him in the naughty corner - and it matters little what was actually said. Unless it can be twisted as well.

We can often witness a situation in parliament where a piece of legislation that is in the interest of party A is being rejected by party A - solely because party B proposed it. And "since we all know how terrible party B is we have to protest party B diligently" - regardless of their proposal's actual validity.

It's the phenomenon known as "partisanship" - siding with your own vested interests and in-group, no matter what the actual situation is.

In German politics the situation is even worse, if one were to take the institution of politics seriously, which I don't anymore. But it's a great example:

The mainstream media bashes whatever comes out of the mouths of sideline parties who are proposing that the unchecked influx of millions of people into Germany needs to be halted and thoroughly checked beforehand, so as not to endanger the security of Germany's native population and economy. It's pretty much the same situation for the majority of European countries at this point.

"German politicians have a responsibility to the German people first and foremost - as do politicians in other countries for their own populations".

Considering the official story of democracy we have been taught in school this seems to be a reasonable statement, and if you asked any student after his first year learning about the political system they would agree that this is "of course" how democracies work and should work. Every country has their own government, responsible for that country's people - not for other countries' people.

Both the US and Germany even have this written into their Constitution and political oaths that politicians have to publicly swear to abide by before taking up the position as head of state.

However reasonable this idea of country-specific representation may seem - in case you didn't know: this is a major nono to say publicly in Germany, because for decades the mainstream media, academia and others have worked tirelessly to create toxic and artificial associations in people's minds - knee jerk reactions - that whenever somebody talks about the needs and interests of the German natives he "must be a Nazi with a pathological hatred towards foreigners" - what other explanation could there possibly be?

And many people believe this narrative due to their inability to see the bigger picture, as well as their naive trust in established institutions.

It's a highly dangerous development because the discussion is no longer about the ideas, it's no longer about finding a sensible solution to a looming problem, or even acknowledging there is a problem at all. Instead, debate about major decisions that affect society as a whole are turned into a dirty popularity contest - reminiscent of stubborn children throwing baseless insults at each other to proliferate themselves in the eyes of the onlookers and to fight the other side before they can make their case heard.

Learn from where you haven't looked

If I held a public lecture about something but couldn't answer a basic question about - say - the technical workings of electrical circuitry... would that mean that any engineers listening to me could take away nothing of what I have to say?

Of course not!
There is more to life than electrical circuits - if these engineers are able to make it through that part of my lecture to see what comes beyond ;)

On the other hand: if I come across someone who says something I have long left behind me for good reasons, I try not to take it out on him that he may still see it that way. Instead I note the discrepancy in my mind and move on to see which - if any - pieces of his knowledge I can pick up to complement my own understanding, possibly in entirely different areas of inquiry than where the discussion started.

Life is relatively short, and it's highly delusional to think that any human could ever know everything there is to know. So why don't we make that our advantage instead of finding the one guy who seems to "have all the answers"?

We could talk to different people and take mental notes of their responses - trying to gauge the issue at hand from all sides through the diversity of their backgrounds and specialization.

If I want to learn about raw food, I shouldn't ask the cook about it. But he will surely tell me good reasons why I want to cook my food to begin with.

If I want to hear about the advantages of cryptocurrency, I shouldn't ask the bank manager. But he could probably tell me the most likely downfall-scenario of cryptos from his point of view. And even if he is far off - I have probably learnt something new just now, like how much awareness there is about cryptos in the banking world or where cryptos are misunderstood even by finance professionals.

This means I do not need to trust my conversation partner to know everything, nor to be fully spot on with their assertions about any given topic. But it does give me the luxury of gathering more diverse information to ultimately make up my own mind in a much broader way than before the conversation. And thus enhance my understanding and improve my critical thinking skills.

Eventually, my ability to recognize shoot the messenger-propaganda will become sophisticated as well, and it will become easy to separate empty terms from what was actually said. Listening to a guy saying the words "freedom" and "liberty" over and over again in a prepared speech is not the same as actually having the guy answer the question of how he is going to achieve it.

But it seems for many people the buzz-words still seem good enough... because they are not discerning label from content - despite all the evidence that label and content are hardly EVER the same thing.

Discernment as dance between critical listening and suspended judgment

It's always a good idea to speak with competent people in their field to learn from them, because they can speak from a position of practice and experience rather than theory and guesswork. However it's also a good idea to not automatically accept everything they are telling you either - specialization may have made them masters in their discipline, but it may also have made them stagnant in their understanding - unable or unwilling to incorporate recent developments of their field of expertise into their viewpoint.

Especially if these new developments threaten their position.

I want to make a proposal here. The proposal is that whenever you come across someone who says something you are more informed about - let him continue to speak. Not only will this grant you a frictionless exchange of information - it will also lead you to discover much more quickly what your conversational partner "knows", what he doesn't "know" and what pieces you can take away from the discussion.

I could listen to a homeless guy on the street people rush by... and pick up a piece of wisdom that would have forever eluded me chasing the quotes of popular philosophers, accomplished authors or anyone else widely promoted by my culture or the media. The guy in question might be wrong about everything else in my view, but that does not take the merit of the one new major puzzle piece away that was new to me and that helped me to understand my life better.

If we are able to suspend judgment it can be amazing to see how many of these invaluable puzzle pieces of understanding can emerge from beyond the point of disagreeing with someone on a minor issue.

These puzzle pieces are always present and available around us - it's just that we may have never considered to consider them because we generally think we don't like this guy or that group (or what we think we may know or have heard about them, mistaking propaganda about them for their actual ideas).

If we want to learn from people's best advice, there is no need to like their basic conviction. There is no need to agree with their world view. Just a need to take away what you find useful, and discard the rest.

If we stop shooting the messenger we may get to the actual message and its merit much more quickly. And we may find out that his bad reputation has little to do with what he actually proposed or did - but everything to do with shielding the public from an idea that threatens the established (and often inefficient) structures.

One only needs to look at the indifferent way of how the various cryptocurrencies and all their varying applications are often treated in the mainstream media as if they were this one homogenous and dangerous thing threatening "people's financial security" and eventually "the stability of our economy"...

If you are familiar with both cryptos and the fiat-based monetary system, you will surely agree that such a critique is not only unfair, but also loaded with malicious conditioning that benefits the establishment at the cost of manipulating people's perception of something they have never actually used for themselves.

A "critique" of an opinion or development can thus easily serve as a justification for keeping things as they are - no matter how inefficiently organized or insanely reasoned.

As for the "stability of our economy":
If you want to read more about how inefficiency drives our current economic structure you can do so in my recent article What I Learned in the Zeitgeist Movement | Part 1: "Money Makes The World Go 'Round"

If you'd like to dive deeper into the significance of giving away your authority of interpretation, you can read up on it here: A Beginner's Guide to Etymology & the Power of the Word | Part 2 | Authority of Interpretation

Whenever you hear something or someone being badmouthed in an extreme way, I suggest you go digging right there - research, ask questions, talk to them directly. More often than not I have found incredible things looking into aspects of society everybody seems to have a very strong opinion on - without actually knowing why.

It's a telltale sign that you are dealing with someone who fully believes a third party's narrative and has never dared to test it for its validity.

_{Image sources:
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
wikimedia.org
publicdomainpictures.net
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
unsplash.com}

Thanks for stopping by <3