07 Jun 11, 10:41PM
"An inescapable, pervasive culture of fear leads to a "fight or flight response" in the populace which in effect has moved American society into an "everything is either black or white" mindset. Discuss."
i have a tentative answer, but would appreciate any help you will offer attacking this from different angles.
my answer so far:
almost inescapable, although ironically it saturates our very diversions from it, sports scandals, celebrities in jail, cynicism in art. A lack of honesty from anyone in power -- but of course no one can ever accept that they are constantly being lied to. Like fanatics, an extreme faith hides a much deeper insecurity.
"excessive irritability with a preponderance of negative judgments, the pessimism of 'unfree will' - in other words: a lack of strength in resisting stimuli, and doubt. These psychological states can all be observed in the madhouse, if in an exaggerated form. Also nihilism - the penetrating feeling of--'nothingness'.. To give excessive weight to moral values or to fictions of the 'beyond' or to social distress or to suffering in general: every such exaggeration of a narrow viewpoint is in itself already a sign of sickness, also the predominance of the herd instincts in us" -nietzsche
related to morality. Moral values have hitherto been the highest values (faith, equality, love, truth, purity, complete responsibility for ones own fate, freedom, the entire monetary system depends on the myth of the 'invisible hand' of god giving all the moneys to the people who will use it in the best most righteous way possible) -- but we now recognize in our 'virtues' a subtlety, a cunning, a form of lust for gain and power. The belief in absolute truth turns and directs its stare at its neighbor values and discovers the fiction from which they, and it, spring. Extreme positions are not replaced with moderate ones, but with other extreme positions, often worse than the first.
* * * * * * * * * *
of note: An example would be the former president Bush stating that the world had a choice to make; "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
"People who suffer from depression, even in mild forms, commonly view the world in black and white, categorizing experiences and events in extreme terminology that fits with their generally negative perspective on life."
this is an inductive informal fallacy of the type 'hasty generalizations' or red herrings which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association, and are likely based on an Appeal to Emotion
Black and White Thinking is like an infection, reducing the terms of discussion unnecessarily, eliminating an entire range of possible ideas and often demonizing others by implicitly categorizing them in the "Other" - the evil that we are supposed to avoid."
i have a tentative answer, but would appreciate any help you will offer attacking this from different angles.
my answer so far:
almost inescapable, although ironically it saturates our very diversions from it, sports scandals, celebrities in jail, cynicism in art. A lack of honesty from anyone in power -- but of course no one can ever accept that they are constantly being lied to. Like fanatics, an extreme faith hides a much deeper insecurity.
"excessive irritability with a preponderance of negative judgments, the pessimism of 'unfree will' - in other words: a lack of strength in resisting stimuli, and doubt. These psychological states can all be observed in the madhouse, if in an exaggerated form. Also nihilism - the penetrating feeling of--'nothingness'.. To give excessive weight to moral values or to fictions of the 'beyond' or to social distress or to suffering in general: every such exaggeration of a narrow viewpoint is in itself already a sign of sickness, also the predominance of the herd instincts in us" -nietzsche
related to morality. Moral values have hitherto been the highest values (faith, equality, love, truth, purity, complete responsibility for ones own fate, freedom, the entire monetary system depends on the myth of the 'invisible hand' of god giving all the moneys to the people who will use it in the best most righteous way possible) -- but we now recognize in our 'virtues' a subtlety, a cunning, a form of lust for gain and power. The belief in absolute truth turns and directs its stare at its neighbor values and discovers the fiction from which they, and it, spring. Extreme positions are not replaced with moderate ones, but with other extreme positions, often worse than the first.
* * * * * * * * * *
of note: An example would be the former president Bush stating that the world had a choice to make; "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
"People who suffer from depression, even in mild forms, commonly view the world in black and white, categorizing experiences and events in extreme terminology that fits with their generally negative perspective on life."
this is an inductive informal fallacy of the type 'hasty generalizations' or red herrings which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association, and are likely based on an Appeal to Emotion
Black and White Thinking is like an infection, reducing the terms of discussion unnecessarily, eliminating an entire range of possible ideas and often demonizing others by implicitly categorizing them in the "Other" - the evil that we are supposed to avoid."