Fallacy Pronunciation [fal-uh-see]
–noun, plural -cies.
1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc.: (That the world is flat was at one time a popular fallacy.)
2. a misleading or unsound argument.
3. deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness.
4. Logic. any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.
5. Obsolete. deception.
—Synonyms 1. misconception, delusion, misapprehension.
I hate lies. I hate lying, and I hate liars. Lying to me or lying in front of my face is a sure fire way of getting yourself kicked out of my life very ungraciously. There is no higher principle in my life than truth. Indeed there are fewer higher principles in most people’s life. Lies are almost always unnecessary, cowardly and gratuitous. And there is no mitigation due to the size of the lie. A lie is a lie, is a lie, is a lie. A small lie is no better than a very big lie, despite what the CIA says. There are very few situations that cannot be resolved far more effectively and righteously with the truth.
Lie in front of me and I’ll know you lie to me. Slag someone off to me and you slag me off to other people. It’s a very simple equation.
But there is something wrong in this Age of Aquarius and era of spiritual self-awareness. We know more than we ever did but feel more disconnected from who we are than ever before. Even though we can communicate more effectively than ever, we are lost. There is a dark and cynical restlessness in so many people that drives them to behave in strange and self-destructive ways. We can put our finger on it but we know something is wrong. There is something under the surface we’ve become estranged from.
Politicians “spin” the facts, journalists manufacture drama, TV makes sell us dreams and everyone around us seems to want to sell something or create an impression in our minds of what they are. We feel empty and unsatisfied on a spiritual level. There is a hole we see in ourselves and each other that we try to fill with anything that appears like it will help, often short-term evil in favour of long-term good.
And you shall know the truth, as the truth shall set you free. People respond to truth, and they know and recognise it at a spiritual level automatically and implicitly.
Businesses, brands and companies feed drive bullshit into your head repetitively as it makes you buy their products. They scare you, make you feel insecure, incite your envy, upset you, shock you and all manner of other manipulative tactics because it sells their goods and services, and hence drives their business and makes them money.
This is bullshit marketing. Get over it and see it for what it is. It’s designed to make you buy and consume products. If it’s a complex you have, most likely someone bullied you and implanted it in your head when you were a kid. Wake up and exorcise it from your head.
Governments and communities run securely through having structure and order. Chaos makes a mess, costs money and can hurt people. Keeping you dumb, apathetic and ignorant is a simple and effective way of maintaining order. It also helps politicians to personally do as they please, and helps them to relieve you of taxes that can pay for new initiatives that help them get one over on their rivals and re-elected to power.
Organised religion fights itself and its competitors to enforce morality and order on us to recruit new members and swell its ranks. Corruption spreads through our institutions as the seductive craving of power is too gentle to be felt and too much to be resisted. Everyone is telling us every day who to be, how to behave and why we are the way we are. Football clubs are our new tribes.
If you actually take a look inside your own head and objectively analyse what you belief and why, a startling pattern emerges. Most of it is opinion. Its someone’s take on something, not the facts. Ifs things you never questioned and just believed, yet you don’t know why. You’ve been gently brainwashed without knowing it. You’ve been patterned, conditioned and infected simply because everyone else has too. You’ve allowed people to lie to you, distort your view of the world and enjoyed it as it took away your anxiety and made you feel better for a little while.
But once you identify the demon in your midst, the only way to exorcise it is to fight through the fog, call it what it is and to set about surgically removing to replace it with truth. Your truth. Out truth. The greater knowledge and understanding that defies consumer marketing and social apathy.
Its time to start asking the questions and get angry about why its there in your head in the first place.
Who taught you this? Why is it in your head, and who put it there? When did you pick it up, and why? Why didn’t you question it and just accept it?
It came from a company, a newspaper, a friend, your parents, their parents, a TV programme, a book, a teacher and many other places. Out with the old, and in with the new. Its time to see the lies for what they are so you can be free to be the best you can possibly be.
So let’s take a look at some of the most common fallacies held in people’s minds and kill them right here, right now. You may not think you believe these things, but you almost certainly will, albeit on a much deeper level than you realise.
It could be you who wins the lottery
It’s not going to be. You are a fool. The odds are 14 million to 1 against and it’s *designed* to look possible when it’s virtually impossible. The house always wins. If it didn’t, it couldn’t afford to run itself, and charities wouldn’t get any funding. The lottery is a political tool and was created as a tool to let the government of the hook for its dismal support for charity, social projects and small business. You’re desperate for hope and to feel special. Yes, you can’t win if you don’t play, but you’re not going to win even if you do. Spend the money on something more worthwhile.
It’s better and easier to avoid conflict if you can
In the short term it probably is, but conflict is a natural and healthy part of life. It doesn’t feel very nice, but you can’t please everyone all the time and someone will inevitably disagree and/or be offended. You can’t avoid upsetting people in this life because we’re implicitly different from each other and crash into each other all the time. Some people you really don’t want validation from. The secret of some people’s success was in who they said no to, not just to who they said yes to. You can hurt them a little now or a lot later. 99% of the time, avoiding the problem in the short-term makes it 50x worse in the long-term. Every second you put off saying it or dealing with it makes it worse.
Mr/Mrs Right (”the one”) is out there
This is bullshit that gooey novels and Hollywood movies have drilled into you from when you were a child. It’s a wonderful romantic fantasy notion that sells a lot of books and films. The truth is that there are a lot of people who are very right for you in many stages of your life, and finding someone who is right for you at that time in your life that you can grow with as the years go by is truly special. There is no “one” soulmate or person, although it’s possible to get very near. True loves takes years and huge amounts of work once the honeymoon is over to reconcile differences and consider someone else.
Celebrity = fame = worth
The price of success is fame, and once you’re famous for something you have a few years of shelf life to achieve financial security and/or establish a long-term career before you are forgotten again. After that it’s very difficult to get back into a job or normal life again. It’s like climbing to the top of a mountain to find out there’s nothing there. Most celebrities are deeply damaged or unhappy. Notoriety doesn’t equal integrity or quality. Popularity shouldn’t decide how valuable you are. You slag them off, yet you worship them. Just because you know who someone is does not mean they have done anything worthwhile or should be held in any esteem.
Money will take away your worries
It won’t. The lack of it might create them, but getting more of it simply creates different problems. Once you have it, holding on to it is impossible as there are always so many people all too happy to relieve you of it or help you spend it. It’s not the money; it’s the things you can get in exchange for the money. Those things are irrelevant and superficial. Almost all millionaires are paranoid, deeply isolated and unhappy, and if you don’t believe that, you simply don’t know any. Don’t believe the marketing. The only things that are worth anything in life are the things you can’t buy.
It will just arrive on your doorstep
It won’t. You have to get off your ass, go out, and get it yourself. It has never arrived on anyone’s doorstep, ever. Everyone who has ever got it has had to work and fight for it. The fact you believe it can is a marketing lie. You won’t be discovered without putting yourself in front of someone, you won’t earn anything without doing it, and the world is not waiting in a queue to make you happy. Think of the probability of it just happening. Then think of the probability if you work your ass off to make it happen. You take the better odds every time.
You’ll do it later
You won’t, and you’re kidding yourself because it’s easier than thinking about how uncomfortable doing it might be. There’s no reason you can’t do it right now, or put something towards it right now. You’re not doing it now because you’re lazy, lacking faith or just scared. Putting it off is a mechanism to avoid the anxiety you feel when you think about it. The chances are 70/30 against that you will actually do it. The most likely scenario is that it will take 10x longer than you think it will, there will always be something more important to do and by the time you actually decide to get round to do it, its too late, you missed the window of opportunity and you lost the chance.
Sex is just sex, and doesn’t mean anything
This is a lie people tell themselves to block out the consequences of how they behave. Sex is about intimacy, and the mind, body and spirit are always interlinked as part of the human condition. You are not an object or robot, and you are more than your body. It’s the most intimate thing two human beings can do. If you don’t think that has any emotional ramifications, you are an idiot. Tell yourself anything you want, the truth is that there are always emotional complications, even if it’s the way you feel about yourself and the other person isn’t involved. A craving for sex is more often than not a craving for intimacy. Other times it’s about lust, validation and/or power. Sex itself is almost always an expression of something else, rather than something in itself.
The quality of your life comes from the “things” you own
You don’t actually *need* any of that shit you own, even though you think you do. You need warmth, shelter, water, food and safety. Clever marketing has programmed into your head that you need it, it feels good and fills a hole in your life, and that you are defined by it. Its crap. Spend a week in a place without it and you’ll know it’s totally irrelevant. None of it matters, and in fact, being without it forces you to re-evaluate and even enriches the quality of your life because you appreciate the simple things, and god forbid, other human beings.
Anything for a quiet life
You’re not designed for quiet or peace, so enjoy it while it lasts. Homo sapiens is the only species that systematically preys on its own kind. You are designed for war and survival. Your biological goal is to pass on your genes in competition with your rivals, and nature is a meritocracy that selects you for your strength and overall virility over that of those you vanquish. You will kill for your children and give your life for your friend. Peace may a worthwhile higher goal, but you are an animal just like every other. Accepting your humanity means embracing your darker side as well as your angelic nature.
You have plenty of time
You have so much less than you think you do. Reaching full adult takes 30 years. Your prime fertility period is generally between 20 and 40, and building a career takes a minimum of 10 years. Your mind and body will be in irreversible decline from around age 50, at which point you will slow down and have little opportunity to achieve the same types of things you would have done if you started earlier. Things always take 3x as long as we think they will. You naturally assume you will live to at least 70, or sometimes 100. Very few do, and the life expectancy stats make grim reading. If you’re a boy, you have 30 good years, and as a girl, probably 10-15 at the most to do what you want to.
You can’t do that
You can. You can do anything if your will is strong enough. Will finds a way to provide resources and courage. The only thing stopping you is you. You have beliefs, programming and experiences from the past embedded in your head which hold you back. Most of the time it is someone else’s words in your head, not yours. You are fighting yourself, as most of them are subjective and based on how you felt at the time. The people around you more often than not don’t want you to succeed as it will make them feel crap.
Don’t stick your neck out, fit in, and be like everyone else
You have a deep need to feel accepted and like you belong. Everyone does. Hiding away is warm and secure as nobody will notice you, pick on you or be horrible to you. It helps those above you stay where they are because you won’t threaten them. Rising above your station means disrupting the status quo, which a lot of people don’t like. The only way you can make anything of yourself is to be different and be someone. You have to be unique and develop your specialist skills and talents, which means you will naturally stick out. Its that, or suffering the same irrelevance as all the people you dislike or despise.
Homosexuality is unnatural
An odd one, but a common belief. Unnatural means something doesn’t happen in nature. Nuclear explosions are found in the sun, so even they are natural. There are over 1500 documented species that exhibit homosexual behaviour on this planet, which means it is found in nature. It’s not an argument in any discussion. Its culturally unacceptable, and nothing more.
Immigrants are stealing everything we have
Uncontrolled immigration is causing problems. The key word is “uncontrolled”. Immigration itself provides diversity, drives our economy and is often the decisive factor in whether we succeed and fail in what we do. If immigration stopped, our country, or anyone else’s, would collapse. Asylum is a legitimate humanitarian principle that is good, right and necessary, but is appallingly managed as some of the best qualified immigrants to our country (doctors, lawyers, nurses etc) can’t work because of their temporary status, even though they want to and could contribute to our country enormously. The immigration issue has been hijacked by journalists to sell newspapers, and by far-right political groups to stir hatred. Don’t believe everything you read, and stop before you turn people and groups into objects in your head.
Laws are always right
Everyone Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal. Laws are made by the people, for the people. They enshrine what we deem as acceptable and unacceptable in our culture and help keep order. They are different in each country as they reflect the differences in culture. Some laws are deficient, unnecessary and unfair. All of them must be challenged, and the legal profession relies on precedents set in court, that is decisions that have been made before. Life is too complicated to be able to have boxes that everything fits into. Laws are not moral standards, they are pieces of paper made by people with vested interests.
You were born special
Your mummy and daddy think you are special. Everyone’s mummy, daddy and friends think they are special and tell them that they are special. Everyone wants to feel special and wants to believe they are special. It’s up to you to make something of yourself. Having a great idea means nothing, make it happen does. No-one else thinks you are special, or will reward you simply for being who you are. You may have been born with gifts and talents, but the proof is in what you do with them and the action you take.
Popular = good
Just because everyone likes something, it doesn’t make it good. If 1000 other lemmings are throwing themselves off a cliff and the herd mentality kicks in, it doesn’t mean what is happening is right or true. Groupthink dictates opinion and makes you feel secure as someone else is doing it. If they are all doing it, it must be right so you don’t need to challenge it and stick out. Charts are rigged. Popularity is exploited as a form of “social proof”. People believe anything you tell them if someone else believes it. The TeleTubbies single was a chart number 1, but it was shit. Artists’ work is only appreciated after their death and unpopular and/r unliked whilst they are alive. IN fact, its only true that the things that are the most unpopular are the most important and/or influential.
Spiritual = religious
They’re not. Religion is a framework for someone’s spirituality. Being religious doesn’t make you spiritual, as paedophile priests testify to. Being spiritual doesn’t mean you have to be religious. Spirituality is the matter of the heart and soul, and is about the things you can see or touch, but can feel. Love is spiritual, as is hope, as is truth, as are most emotions and higher principles. Religion is organised dogma, ritual and ceremony that forms a way of expressing belief. All normal human beings are spiritual creatures whether they like it or not, and whether they are religious or not. It’s built into us all. Problems like fundamentalism and fanaticism happen when people put religion (a creation of man) at the centre of their being instead of spirituality.
Things happen by “accident”
They might do, but very rarely. Those “accidents” are almost always part of a marketing plan to make people look very special and talented, when in reality what got them where was a tonne of hard work, sweat and tears. Accidents and so-called genius set them apart and make sure few people challenge them. They enforce mystery and separate people from the general crowd. You can get anything that’s worth anything unless you work your ass off for it, and nothing good comes easily. Don’t believe the marketing. You can’t do it that, neither could they or anyone else in a few thousand years.
Anyone can live the dream
It’s a beautiful fantasy. Anyone can become a pop star. Anyone can make a million Anyone can become famous. They can’t. If you can’t sing, you can’t become a singer. Being good takes a hell of a lot of practice, and that’s only 1% of the equation. There is no dream. It’s marketing. It makes you curious and makes you consume as it presses your button for wonder and fantasy. Getting there is incredibly hard, and only the top 0.001% make it. You need to be brilliant at marketing yourself or extremely talented. That’s not a great statistic. Most of the best quality bands, directors, artists, philosophers and scientists were never discovered or fell into obscurity,
Society as we know it is falling apart
This bullshit has been spouted by right-wing newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express every day since they were first printed. Fear sells newspapers and they put this slant on things t make you notice them and buy their product. Drama makes people read. It’s yet another simple formula that very few people seem to get. Society has been crumbling and falling apart for thousands or years but we’re still here. Rock n’ roll was going to bring about the total annihilation of our culture as we knew it in the 1950s, as was communism in the 70s. Today its paedophiles, immigrants and political correctness. What they are talking about between the lines is change. Societies, cultures and communities change, they don’t get better or worse. Those terms refer to people’s opinion, not fact.
Be happy with the cards life dealt you
You can have more. You deserve more. Your children’s future depends on you. Nothing moves on or gets better unless you want more. The dissatisfaction and unhappiness with your life as it is will drive you on to get something better for yourself and those you love. Its ok to hate what you have as long as you do something to change it or use that frustration to better yourself and enhance the greater good. Random circumstance and people’s choices gave you what you have. Its natural to want to go further. What is your gain is other people’s loss, so they don’t like you sticking your head above the parapet, criticising them and/or doing things to show up their own failures or inertia.
Rapists behind bushes and paedophiles at the playground
These are very dangerous lies. They are stereotypes that very rare, but often get reported in the media as they make a good story. Over 90% of sexual crimes are perpetrated by those who already know, and already have a relationship with their victim. Crime against a random strange is almost always linked to drug-related or violent crime. Sexual crimes are about power, not sex, and hence are very badly named. Children are most likely to be abused by members of their families and women are raped by their husbands, friends and/or dates.
Friday night partying
The barometer of a good night out in the UK is how drunk you got. Alcohol is a very nasty poison that depresses the central nervous system. It removes inhibition that is there in the day when we are sober. Most social surveys report that the myth of the Friday night party animal are massively overblown. The vast majority of people (70%+), even in the 18-30 bracket, list their favourite Friday night activities as having dinner with friends or spending time with their significant other on the couch. The ideal that your social worth is determined by how you drank, where you visited, how loud you screamed or how late you stayed out is carried on by those people who want to appear to be more than those around them.
Money lenders want you to live your dreams
Nobody has any interest in your resolving your debts and paying them on time. People lend money to make money, not to help you. They wrap it up in a cosy packaging to make you buy. The longer you take, the worse you struggle, the better it is for them. The longer you just pay off just the minimum amount on your credit card, the more money the make from the interest you owe. Its not a free ticket, and they don’t care about you at all. They are horrid, evil and greedy companies that prey on your emotional needs to trap you into a cage that allows them to milk you dry. They are not your friends, they do not want to help or support you, and they are not responsible caring people.
You have to be perfect
You don’t. No-one on planet earth has ever been, or ever will be perfect. People want to be perfect as they think they won’t suffer the problems they have. Unfortunately its like money in that the nearer to perfection you get, you just end up swapping one set of problems for another. People don’t trust perfection. It makes them suspicious, uncomfortable and makes them feel crap about how imperfect they are themselves. That the reason politicians often deliberately publicise a vice or fault they have, to their apparent disadvantage. We only empathise with others through their imperfections and the resonance with ours. Mannequins and computer animations are perfect, but false. Often imperfections are what make who we are and are perfections in the eyes of others.
Your vote won’t change anything
Not on its own, but in combination with other people it certainly will. When we vote, we act as a whole rather than as an individual. Our personal contribution makes up something greater. If you have no vote, you have no say. There is no such thing as a “protest” or “wasted” vote. That line of spin is politically expedient for the biggest political parties against their rivals, and exploits their size and your need to be a lemming. Your obligation to vote is not with you or the country, it is will everyone else you lay eyes on in the street. You need to vote for them and to declare how you stand. You are part of something bigger than yourself. If no-one voted as they thought their vote didn’t count, we wouldn’t have a country.
Exams and memory measure your intelligence
Our school system is a joke and desperately needs an overhaul. Education in the Western world is measured by the power of your memory. Allegedly this changes into a focus of application as the years and seniority goes on. Memory is not intelligence. Intelligence comes in many forms, such as logic, problem solving, lateral thinking, spatial awareness, artistic ability, emotional intuition and many other forms. Richard Branson was a dyslexic school drop-out, and Einstein was a classroom dunce. Exams are nowhere near as accurate as coursework because they show what your competence was on one day as opposed to a long-term record using coursework. An education system that caters for everyone can’t possible truly measure the particular strengths of one individual as everyone is so wildly different.
You can’t change anything
You’re just one little person in a very big world, with limited resources, influence or support. Someone else will have to do it with or for you. Not so. The greatest things in history have occurred through the actions of one person, and that person alone. Only those that stick out from the rest and change the day actually change the world. Groups do very little, and they all have leaders and are started by someone. They only way you change things is by yourself. It’s not easy, it may take a lifetime, it may involve suffering, but only you are the unique combination of your upbringing, your beliefs and your experience and hence are unlike anyone else who has ever lived. Its in the interests of a lot of people to keep you thinking like that. You can, so do.
This all sounds very negative and cynical, but it demonstrates a principle I set out a while ago. Once you identify the crap, you know what to avoid and can make space for the good. Only by knowing the lies can you find, recognise and understand the truth.
P.S. If you haven’t got John Mayer’s new Album (Continuum), then download it ASAP. Its fantastic.
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