Either we change our ways, or the ozone layer will be destroyed and we will all suffer from skin cancer.
False dichotomies, like the one above, are prevelant in almost every facet of media, advertising, literature, and policy. They are an effort by others to direct the outcome of decisions or direct us away from the alternatives because they do not suit the agenda of the issuing party.
Either we stay in Iraq until their government is stable, or we pull our troops out and they will fall into chaos.
The problem is, it only gives the person making the decision a narrowed set of answers from which to pick. Thus, if you disprove one of the options, the other one must be the one to pick, despite its validity. Thus, the person (or entity) asking the question is automatically directing you to a small subset of possible answers simply by not mentioning the alternatives.
In November, you get to vote either Republican or Democrat.
What about Independent? Green Party? Jedi Party? All of these will be valid choices when it comes time to vote, yet by implying that the choice is limited to only the standard 2-party system, the fields is naturally narrowed through the process of disinformation and exclusion.
But…this isn’t news. Sales people, news reporters, and politicians have both been using this technique forever to try to skew the public’s opinion and viewpoint on anything and everything. The car salesman smiles at you, “So, will you take the red car or the blue car?” By eliminating your alternatives, they try to pin you down to a decision that, one way or the other, will be beneficial to them.
More disturbing than the false dichotomy, however, is a recent trend towards what I will term a blank dichotomy. This is a situation where normally a false dichotomy would be presented, but instead of presenting two or more options in the limited scope, only one is presented and the others are implied. This is happening more and more often and it’s quite unsettling.
This is very, very much like stating an unsupported opinion, except it is leading to the end user. They are encouraged to, “fill in
the blanks”“fill in the blanks”, with whatever their minds come up with. Since nothing is specifically stated, the person’s mind naturally starts off thinking of a default thing and then quickly proceeds to something in the extreme.
We must fight terrorism.
What does this statement leave in the wake? A person reads this and naturally thinks, “Well….terrorism has the word, ‘terror’, in it, so whatever will happen if we don’t fight terrorism must be pretty darn bad.” Their mind searches and reels until it settles on something that fulfills their requirement of “something really bad”. Thus is panic and terror already present in something that, by itself, doesn’t elicit any particular conclusion or feeling.
Few people are testing these statements, however, and the general public ends up believing what they are told by “authoritative sources” without truly exploring the validity or application of the information to reality. The media is therefore free to direct the populace’s minds on various tangents without having to do much work at all, resulting in a lot of “shell” reporting and information gathering. All you need is enough.
So…what does this mean for you, gentle reader? How do you avoid and handle the false and blank dichotomies?
Simple — learn to think for yourself only and when someone else is doing the thinking for you, question the validity of their conclusions and statements. Don’t automatically assume that those in charge and feeding you information have your best interest at heart or choose to tell you the whole story. Most of what is out there now is skewed in some direction or another, it is up to us to use our minds to decipher the jungle and make sense of it all. (Yes, this post is skewed, and you know it. Sort it out, dummy.)
False, blank, true — whatever your choices, burn those brain cells for the truth, and the truth will set you free.
(or not, as that’s another blank dichotomy, too.)
