Bridging the generational divide

The results of the latest ICM poll paint an extraordinary picture of a shocking inter-generational divide.

Just look at the graph in the header image and consider the fact that Labour are outperforming the Tories by almost 5:1 amongst the younger generation, who see Jeremy Corbyn's transformational investment based manifesto as a beacon of hope for a future with decent opportunities after seven bleak and ruinous years of Tory asset stripping.

Unbelievably, despite the Tories' despicable Dementia Tax policy of imposing a huge stealth inheritance tax on anyone who hasn't hidden their assets in shady offshore shell companies, the over-65s are going to come out in force for the party that plans to strip them of their winter fuel allowance, scrap the triple lock on their pensions, and asset strip them if they end up suffering from age-related degenerative diseases.

It's alarming that so many millions of pensioners are not only intent on voting to allow the Tories to trash the aspirations of their grandchildren by gutting education funding, keeping exploitative zero hours contracts, enforcing the highest fees at public universities anywhere in the world, chronically under-investing in infrastructure and innovation, and gutting public services in order to fund their tax cuts for corporations and the super rich, they're also intent on voting against their own interests too.

For goodness sake why?

Obviously not all pensioners are intent on voting for a dystopian future where the aspirations of the young are crushed and the assets of the old are asset stripped in order to fund tax cuts for very wealthiest in society, but a huge majority are.

The reasons why are not clear cut and identical for all elderly Tory voters, but here are two of the big ones.

Echo chambers

The first big reason is that the older generations are very much more likely to be stuck in a mainstream media echo chamber, where their only sources of political news are the television, a single (incredibly biased) newspaper or their favourite radio station.

Independent media simply has no way to reach the large percentage of pensioners who don't even have access to the Internet, let alone social media networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Mainstream journalists often talk derisively about social media echo chambers, and the problem of selection bias on social media is undoubtedly a real one ... but anyone who thinks that people who use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are suffering a worse echo chamber problem than those who only ever rely on mainstream media for their news has got the situation so ridiculously backwards it's beyond parody.

Mental decline

There's no polite or politically correct way to put this so I'm just going to come out and say it (with evidence to back it up of course): The older people get on average, the more gullible they are, the crapper their mathematical abilities, the more they're likely to over-estimate their own expertise, and the more attracted to right-wing authoritarian leaders they become.

The Online Privacy Foundation carried out some very interesting analysis into the political psychology of the 2016 EU referendum vote. You can view the results here.

One of the most remarkable results was that Brexit voters are very much more attracted to right-wing authoritarianism than Remain voters, but also that older generations are very much more attracted to the right-wing tyrant style of leadership than the younger generations (here's another study into older people and right-wing authoritarianism)

Theresa May is undoubtedly the most right-wing authoritarian Prime Minister the UK has ever had. 

Yes Margaret Thatcher crushed whole communities in pursuit of her hard-right ideological agenda, but she never openly fantasised about trashing the European Convention on Human Rights and scrapping our human rights!

Another thing that the research revealed is that the older people get the worse their critical thinking skills and mathematical abilities become, meaning they're very much less able to see through shockingly misleading political propaganda, blatant smear jobs, misleading push polls and the like.

People like to think it's the young who are gullible and naive, but the research shows that the wisdom of old age is a total myth. Once you start getting older, you start becoming ever more susceptible to believing in ridiculous economic fairy stories and mathematical jiggery-pokery.

One other thing that the research shows is that older people are very much more likely to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is the problem that people with a very limited understanding of a subject are liable to significantly overestimate their level of expertise, while actual experts are liable to underestimate their level of expertise (the more you know, the more you realise you don't know too).

The older people get, the more likely it is that they end up as a blowhard know-it-all on all subjects, even subjects they actually know next to nothing about.

Obviously not all old people suffer this kind of mental decline (the best ways to avoid this kind of mental decline are mental and physical exercise, a good diet, and avoiding brain cell wrecking substances like alcohol as much as possible) but on average most people do end with declining cognitive abilities.

Most older people end up losing their ability to critique the things they're told, seriously over-estimating their own expertise, and craving harsh dictatorial right-wing governance.
 

What we can do

The only way we can try to stop the older generations from wrecking the aspirations of their children and grandchildren is to talk to them.

We have to try to bridge the generational divide by getting them to rekindle the skeptical abilities they had in their youth.

We have to try to make them understand that the majority of the mainstream media, and especially the right-wing dominated newspapers are trying to con them into voting for the Tories.

Conscientiousness

Older people tend to suffer significant mental decline, but one hugely important thing that really stands in older people's favour is that they are very much more likely to be conscientious. 

They're far more likely to care about other people, behave selflessly, and put other people's needs above their own.

Appealing to older people's-interest is a reasonable strategy. Telling them that the Tories are going to rip them off by scrapping their winter fuel payments, abandoning the triple lock, and asset stripping them if they get ill and need social care might work.

However the cynical Tories know that they're more likely to be conscientious, so they've dressed these ideologically driven economic assaults against pensioners up as necessary sacrifices for the greater good. 

The Tories are so depraved that they know older people can be tricked into accepting massive personal impoverishment by telling them it's for the greater good, rather than a way of funding yet another round of lavish tax breaks for corporations and the super-rich (as it actually is).

If you're going to try to appeal to an older person's self interest, it's absolutely vital that you make sure they understand that the Tories are lying through their teeth: That the cuts aren't for the greater good at all, but actually a way of funding even more giveaways for the millionaires and billionaires.

Probably a much better way of appealing to older people is to talk about the significant differences the Labour manifesto makes for the younger generations, their own grandchildren.

Talk about how the Tories are going to scrap free school meals and slash education funding so the kids of today have worse opportunities than previous generations of children.

Talk about student debts. Explain that tuition fees in the UK are the highest in the whole world, and that nearly all the good jobs need a degree these days. Tell them that an incredible 70% of today's students will never be able to actually pay off their student debts despite paying a 9% tax for their entire working lives.

Talk about exploitative zero hours contracts and how they represent a modern incarnation the unstable employment days of the 1930s where dockers and steelworkers waking up at the crack of dawn to queue at the gates in the desperate hope of being called to work, and having to go home with absolutely nothing if their name wasn't picked.

Help them understand that the Tories aren't just taking wealth from the older generations, they're robbing wealth and opportunities from the younger generations too, just to stuff the already bulging the pockets of the super-rich elitists who totally bankroll the Tory party.

Give them a copy of the Labour Manifesto to read, and ask them to consider it for themselves. Tell them that you really like it, and that they should disregard what the Tories and the mainstream media say about it and judge it for themselves.

Good luck

The only way the Tories can be stopped from getting a whopping great majority, with which they can rob all generations in order to line the pockets of their super-rich mates, is if we all talk to our parents and grandparents and plead with them to disbelieve the Tory lies, think of themselves, and above all think of their grandchildren's futures.

Good luck.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The psychological impact of Trumps' victory

An awful lot has already been said about the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. One thing that really struck me was a comment by the US political commentator Van Jones.

In his reaction to Donald Trump's unfolding election victory he said "It's hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us. You tell your kids 'don't be a bully'. You tell your kids 'don't be a bigot'. You tell your kids 'do your homework and be prepared' ... Then you have this outcome. You have people putting their children to bed tonight who are afraid of breakfast in the morning. They're afraid of 'how do I explain this to my children'."

The point he raises is an extremely good one. How is it possible to explain to children what has happened? It's not just the parents of American children who have been left asking this question either. Pretty much any child with access to a television or the Internet will have had countless hours of exposure to contemporary liberal American values and they'll have also have seen clips of Donald Trump behaving atrociously (like this one my kids showed me).

Practically every American kids' TV series is rammed full of moral messages promoting tolerant socially liberal values. The rude, bigoted, dishonest and lazy characters always get their comeuppance, and there's almost always rewards in store for characters who choose honesty, kindness or hard work. These are undeniably the cultural values American TV has been instilling in generation after generation of children all over the world.

The election of Donald Trump as President is a massive betrayal of these heavily-promoted liberal American cultural values. American kids have been indoctrinated into believing that the virtues Trump was so sorely lacking will be rewarded, and that bigotry, laziness and dishonesty are impediments to success. Yet despite having these cultural values drilled into them on a daily basis, American kids have just witnessed the adults around them prove American cultural values to be a load of rubbish by rewarding Donald Trump with the highest office in the land.

This betrayal is much worse than kids finding out that Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are a pack of lies. Finding out that the presents and cash actually came from the adults in their lives is a disillusionment, but at least the kids know that the lies came from a parental desire to make them happy, and that their parents love them. There's no underlying positivity to finding out that the cultural values you've been instilled with for your whole life are a sham.

The brazen negation of so many almost ubiquitous cultural values that was necessary in order for Trump to succeed is going to have a profound psychological impact on millions of children in the United States and further afield too.

One obvious implication is that of millions of kids all over the world have been shown that bigoted and narcissistic loud mouths can and do get what they want. How many of these kids are going to see Trump's victory as a vindication of their own rotten behaviour? How many kids are actually going to be inspired to begin acting like bigoted bullying little loud-mouths in the hope that they too will achieve great things like Donald Trump?

The fact that Trump's victory is teaching kids that dishonesty, bigotry, bullying, narcissism and arrogance are not vices, but recipes for success is not even the worst of it.

The worst of it is that millions of kids have had the adults around them prove themselves utter hypocrites who constantly promote one set of cultural values, but when it comes to something as important as the Presidential election they went and endorsed a candidate who negates pretty much every socially liberal value there is.

Any parent will tell you that it's possible to get away with being a lot of things. Grumpiness, forgetfulness, clumsiness, bossiness, busyness ... but one of the most vital things you should really try to avoid doing in front of your kids is being a total hypocrite, because when kids see through your hypocrisy they inevitably lose faith in you, and that makes things incredibly difficult for everyone (yourself and your kids).

Hopefully only a small minority of kids will end up seeing Trump's victory as an inspiration to behave like dishonest and narcissistic little bigots, but any teacher will tell you that it only takes a small minority of disruptive kids to wreck an otherwise productive classroom.

The problem obviously gets a whole lot worse if a significant proportion of the other non-disruptive kids are suffering disillusion at the fact they're surrounded by a bunch of brazenly hypocritical adults who always seem to expect kids to constantly behave in a decent and respectful manner, but just rewarded Donald Trump with the highest office in the land for doing precisely the opposite.

This sense of disillusionment at the hypocrisy and double standards is bound to have long-lasting psychological impact on children. Every time an adult tells them to behave decently and respectfully, it is natural for them to want to ask "why should I?", and every time they suffer criticism for not being prepared and trying to bluster and bullshit their way through life, they're obviously going to see the utter hypocrisy of it if their critic is a Trump voter.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Iain Duncan Smith: Slavery and Narcissism

Iain Duncan Smith has once again demonstrated how out of touch with reality he is. In an absurdly self-congratulatory speech he compared his "welfare reforms" (which are hopelessly inefficient, economically illiterate, dishonest, unlawful, discriminatory, fraud riddled, punitive, target driven, wasteful, incompetently administered and compassionless) with the abolitionist movement of the 19th Century!

Given that one of Iain Duncan Smith's favourite welfare policies involves compelling tens of thousands of people (under threat of absolute destitution) to rescind their labour rights and work for free for his corporate mates, it is perhaps possible to believe that Iain Duncan Smith is simply engaging in a spot of "trolling". However, in my view he isn't comparing himself to great abolitionists like William Wilberforce and Anthony Ashley-Cooper as some kind of sneering juvenile wind-up, he is clearly delusional enough to actually believe the appalling nonsense that he spouts.

I don't normally go in for psychological analysis, but Iain Duncan Smith makes an absolutely fascinating case because he is such an unbelievable narcissist. In Iain Duncan Smith's worldview, he is some kind of infallible superhero and anyone who dares point out his appalling mistakes (which are far too innumerable to count) is to be instantly dismissed as "the enemy".

 After Iain Duncan Smith's "Workfare" mandatory unpaid labour schemes were declared unlawful by the courts (due to the unintelligibility of the rules) , IDS repeatedly lied about what the court judgement actually said, then stuck two fingers up at the justice system by pushing a truly outrageous piece of retroactive legislation through parliament so that his "Workfare" rules would have been intelligible had they been written that way in the past!

After the courts twice declared that Iain Duncan Smith's Atos administered WCA regime for the disabled is inherently discriminatory, he simply ignored the rulings and continued as if the UK judicial system is some kind of minor irrelevance.

After he was rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for his egregious misuse of statistics he claimed that he was entitled to blatantly misuse statistics to justify his actions as long as he believes that he is right!

After the Trussell Trust food bank group provided evidence that the exponential rise in food bank dependency is linked to Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms he launched into a spectacular tirade which clearly illustrated his desire to have them silenced via the "Protection of Corporate Lobbying and Silencing of Legitimate Political Debate" Bill that the Tories are pushing through parliament despite massive public opposition.

It is absolutely clear that Iain Duncan Smith suffers from a psychotic level of narcissism. It doesn't matter how many catastrophic mistakes he makes, and it doesn't matter how much evidence is provided that he is wrong, his mind is filled with very little other than an overpowering sense of self-regard.

What is much less clear is the reason that the rest of the coalition government allow him to get away with one spectacular blunder after another. Unlike masters of deceit like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the man clearly lacks the charisma to convince others of his own brilliance. So how does he get away with it?

There seem to be two different motivations. His Tory colleagues (the ones that unceremoniously removed him as leader of the Tory party in 2003 after it became absolutely clear how much of an incompetent charisma vacuum he was) hate the welfare state with a passion, so it makes some kind of perverted sense for them to put an incompetent moral and intellectual pygmy in charge of it, in order to inflict as much damage as possible.

The unyielding support for Iain Duncan Smith that has been provided by the Liberal Democrat members of the coalition is harder to fathom. There is absolutely no long-term political benefit to be derived from their undying support for Iain Duncan Smith (despite his regular displays of incompetence, malice, hubris, cognitive illiteracy etc). The only conclusion seems to be that they are prepared to actively support Iain Duncan Smith's reign of terror over the most vulnerable people in society because they believe it is a price worth paying for a few six figure ministerial salaries and the short lived sense of self-importance that comes with being part of the government.

In conclusion, the most offensive thing about Iain Duncan Smith's narcissistic and self-aggrandising comparison with the famous slavery abolitionists of the 19th Century is not the fact that he is responsible for herding hundreds of thousands of people onto mandatory unpaid labour schemes: It is the fact that the rest of the government don't just let him get away with being the dangerously psychotic narcissist that he so clearly is, they back him to the hilt and willfully allow him to continue his delusional reign of terror.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE
            
Iain Duncan Smith's retroactive "I'm Above the Law" legislation
     
Iain Duncan Smith's tirade against the Trussell Trust
          
Iain Duncan Smith's callous contempt for the dead 
                   
Iain Duncan Smith's lame Workfare propaganda
            
A letter to fans of Workfare

      
Gaming the Work Programme
          
Can the Atos administered WCA regime be considered psychological torture?
             
A coalition of Lying Thieving Bastards

        

How the Lib-Dems are just as bad as the Tories when it comes to welfare

                     
The "making Work Pay" fallacy
         
The "Protection of Corporate Lobbying and Silencing of Legitimate Political Debate" Bill
                                          
A fascistic Tory redefinition of rights

                                            

Why dissent is positive

I was recently asked why I bother to complain so much beneath a protest image I'd created for Facebook. This is the comment:

"You're too angry and focused. Why? Has someone or something made you feel this resentment? I'm wondering, don't you have any good stuff, positive thoughts?

My initial response was; why is this guy trying to give me the "headshrinker treatment"? Not every motivation boils down to something that happened to us in the past. I consider much of the Freudian rooted "psychosciences" game to be a sham and a lucrative profit making opportunity above anything else. Of course our upbringing has some formative effect on who we are today, but raking through the past to try to identify incidents we can retrospectively assume are causal factors in our current behavioral tendencies, has always seemed like an abject waste of time to me. Past incidents certainly have an effect on who we have become, however I believe that attempts to establish direct causation simply reinforce the idea that our current behaviours are determined by our past circumstances, rather than our choices and actions in the present. More than that, once a causal narrative has been established, it is then easy for the individual to use such retrospective causation theories as justification techniques to excuse their current behaviour. 

I find it odd that someone would consider me worthy of impromptu "headshrinker analysis" for the fact that I complain, whilst so many others prefer to turn a blind eye to the environment of corruption and injustice they live in, or choose to carefully maintain a state of deliberate ignorance. Surely the psychosis of the masses is a more interesting (and important) subject than the motivation that drives some random blogger?

My second response was a reaction to the absurd snap judgement that I may have no life outside my protest activities. I do have a life outside of Another Angry Voice. I write other, explicitly positive things, I enjoy spending time with my family, I find pleasure in countless other activities too, such as photography, reading, teaching, film, good music, swimming, darts... But the most important thing, is that I thoroughly enjoy what I do here too. 

Critical analysis and dissent against tyranny may seem like burdensome occupations to many, but to me, there are fewer more positive feelings than having applied one's own critical judgement to form a conclusion that is entirely one's own, rather than having simply adopted something learned, derivative or crudely synthesised. 

To learn something new is a pleasure in itself, but to develop one's own idea is a greater pleasure still. It is a joy to think for ourselves, rather than accept at face value what we are told by the media or by "experts" but it is also a positive thing to take action. Boycotting a company that is engaged in unethical behavior, writing a blog post, attending a protest or creating a "Facebook meme" are positive things too. If we do nothing and simply allow the corruption and injustice to go on around us unchecked, this leads to feelings of resentment and despair. By attempting (in whatever small way we can manage) to change things, these feelings of frustration, despair and resentment are somewhat alleviated.

From a purely personal point of view, critical analysis and dissent (as opposed to intellectual laziness and lethargy) are overwhelmingly positive activities. One of the fundamental factors in depression is a feeling of powerlessness; an inability to change one's circumstances. However before we change our circumstances we must first change ourselves. Instead of allowing ourselves to get stuck in a negative loop, where we blame our past circumstances for our present condition or despair at our powerlessness to change our current circumstances, we must give ourselves the cognitive skills to break out of it.

Instead of allowing ourselves to sink into the pit of despair, fixate on the negative or traumatic experiences of the past or our perceived powerlessness in the present, we must recognise when we are allowing ourselves to slip into unconstructive thought processes or self-destructive coping strategies (alcoholism, over-eating, drug use, self-harm, lethargy ...) and break out of it. This is easier said than done, but it is achievable, myself and many other sufferers of depression have developed techniques to snap out of our depressive thought patterns, cognitive over-ride switches, if you like.

Instead of focusing on the trauma of the past, or the injustice of the present, we must focus on something constructive. Instead of fixating on our problems, we must make a conscious decision to focus upon what we can enjoy in the present and what steps we can take towards changing the circumstances that drive us to despair. This brings us back to protest and dissent. I enjoy critical analysis, to me it is a positive and rewarding pastime, and even though I am unlikely to ever change the world dramatically, by expressing myself in order to criticise corruption and injustice and to explain what I believe to be right, I am making a difference. I am making a difference within myself and I am making a difference to the thousands of people that read and share my work.

I think the problem with "protest" is that so many people see criticism and dissent as inherently negative things. They assume that you must be a negative person to in order to complain so much. But to complain about corruption and injustice is not negative. Protest and dissent are not inherently negative things because to protest against tyranny, corruption and injustice demonstrates an optimism that things should, and could be better.

Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the PayPal donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE

Psychoquackery

The economic case against tax-dodging

My views on Occupy Wall Street

My views on SlutWalk

What is confirmation bias?

Confirmation bias is a a form of cognitive bias,which often manifests as an inability or unwillingness to spot faults in arguments with which we agree.

One of the classic examples of confirmation bias is the tendency to cherry-pick evidence. It has been repeatedly shown in experiments that people generally test hypotheses in a very one-sided way, by deliberately searching for evidence consistent with the hypotheses they find agreeable and neglecting evidence that conflicts with their worldview.

Another classic example is the persistence of discredited belief. Take the neoliberal theory of "trickle-down economics" as an example. Neoliberals argued that a minority of people should be allowed to develop extreme wealth so that the wealth would then trickle down to wider society. The economic evidence is absolutely clear that this effect never happened and that in fact the opposite is true; that allowing a minority to develop extreme wealth, massively widens the gap between the rich and the ordinary (because the wealthy elite often just hire tax lawyers to ensure that their wealth ends up stashed in personal accounts in tax-havens rather than allowing it to "trickle away" to wider society). Despite the wealth of concrete evidence that the trickle down effect is a myth, many people still believe in it because it suits their worldview and provides them with (pseudo) economic justification for their greed.

Everyone suffers from confirmation bias to a certain extent. It is always easier to spot errors in statements we find disagreeable than it is to find errors in statements we like.

"That seems wrong; in what way is it wrong?" is a perfectly natural though process, however on the face of it "that seems right, how is it wrong?" seems like an absurd though process. I believe that the fact that humanity has been able to recognise and develop the second state has been one of the key driving forces in human advancement. To give a crude example; the scientist that tends to critically appraise the commonly accepted model (that seems right, how is it wrong?) is far more likely to end up devising a groundbreaking and superior new model than the scientist that instinctively prefers models that form part of the established paradigm, and reserves their criticism for unorthodox ideas (That seems wrong; in what way is it wrong?).

It shouldn't matter whether we agree with a hypothesis or not; from an unbiased and objective point of view, the most important thing to consider should be whether the subject matter is rational and coherent. Is it backed by facts, logic, reason, empirical evidence? Or by simplistic generalisations, anecdotal evidence, unsubstantiated opinion, fallacious argument strategies?

In order to adopt a more rational, objective stance it is particularly important to strive to find errors in statements with which one generally agrees, since the mind tends to instinctively deconstruct disagreeable statements and blithely accept agreeable ones. In order to overcome confirmation bias and maintain objectivity one must actively strive to critique agreeable subject matter in a similar way to which we naturally tend to critique the disagreeable. If we give in to the natural tendency to subject disagreeable subject matter to much greater levels of scrutiny, we allow ourselves to create an increasingly subjective worldview.

Politicians and the media thrive on this human tendency to form subjective worldviews by providing a steady supply of simplistic justification narratives for their favoured policies. As long as they can get the basic narrative right, it doesn't really matter how much empirical evidence they go on to provide, since huge numbers of people will blithely accept an agreeable narrative because of confirmation bias.

To give an example: People generally don't like unfairness, so they find the idea that they must work hard whilst others laze around "scrounging off the state" acutely disagreeable.  In the UK the Tories and the right-wing press play up to this sentiment by grotesquely exaggerating the number of "benefits scroungers" any downplaying (or completely ignoring) the fact that their own favoured austerity policies have actually increased unemployment and under-employment by reducing the amount of demand in the economy. Once the "scroungers narrative" is set, it is almost impossible to make a reasoned counter-argument, since confirmation bias will allow those that find the "scroungers narrative" plausible, to blithely dismiss any facts and evidence as leftie "scrounger apologism"; thus the "blame the victim fallacy" becomes another example of the the persistence of discredited belief.

Once we realise that swathes of political debate and media commentary are fundamentally reliant on simplistic justification narratives, the confirmation bias effect and the subjective worldviews of the general public, it becomes extremely important to recognise that  the "agreeability" of political statements or media representations should be secondary considerations to their validity.

In the practical reality of day-to-day existence the maintenance of such a deliberately considered and objective stance is impossible. We cannot rationally deconstruct every statement we ever hear in search of methodological flaws so we often rely on heuristic judgements (rule of thumb, common sense, educated guesses, believing in testimony of previously reliable witness, personal opinion). I mean who would even want to brutally deconstruct their favourite piece of poetry,  cherished work of art, sentimental object or the words "I love you" in search of empirical validity?

It is extremely important to realise is when we are allowing ourselves to apply heuristic short-cuts and when we must apply rigorous objective analysis to avoid being misled. When a friend invites us around for dinner at 7.00 PM there is absolutely no need to subject their statement to rigorous critical appraisal, however whenever we read a newspaper article, listen to a politician speaking on the radio or watch an advert on the TV, it is much more important to apply critical analysis, even if we tend to agree with what is being said.

In order to maintain a more objective view of reality it is vitally important to read between the lines because what is omitted is often far more important that what is presented by the media as "objective fact"; to critically doubt everything that comes out of a politician's mouth, even if you find yourself instinctively agreeing with them at the time; or to carefully consider the tricks and techniques being used by the advertiser to incentivise us to pay for their products even if we instinctively want to buy them.

The more effort we expend on combating confirmation bias, the more natural it becomes to us,  however it will always be impossible to live ones entire life on a unbiased plain of perfect rationality and objectivity. This means that it is important to recognise when it is necessary to deliberately adopt a more objective and critical stance and also to be aware that we will continue to live most of our lives in a much more comfortable cloud of subjectivity, unsubstantiated opinion and heuristics.

We must recognise when we are allowing ourselves to adopt such a heuristic state, since a great deal of propaganda can slip through as we relax, peruse a seemingly lightweight magazine, read a crappy novel or watch a soap opera. "Soft media" is actually an ideal medium for propagating social stereotypes, facile generalisations, fallacious arguments and the like, precisely because most people choose to read a celebrity magazine or watch a soap opera as an escape from the hard world of critical analysis. Once we are in this relaxed, uncritical, heuristic state lazing around in front of the TV or comfort reading we are much less likely to subject the subject matter to painstaking objective analysis, meaning confirmation bias is more likely to allow subjective and distorted ideas to leak into our consciousness.

As a crudely oversimplified conclusion, I suppose I could say that: As we observe a subject matter, the first step towards avoiding confirmation bias, and the subjective distortions it creates, is to try to be aware of our own state as we are making the observation.

Read more articles in the "What is...." series

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.

More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 

The economic case against tax-dodging

The "Waaah, you're censoring me" fallacy
       
The "I don't understand you, so you're stupid" fallacy
       

What is ... A Justification Narrative?
       

Common Sense and Neoliberal pseudo-economic nonsense
            
What is ... Information Asymmetry?

 

Psychoquackery

From the very beginning, the so called psycho-sciences (psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychotherapy) were built on a foundation of deranged nonsense. Sigmund Freud came out with a lot of pseudoscientific gibberish (all little boys are latent motherfuckers and all little girls fantasise about a good fucking from their dad). To use a phrase that is common to the psycho-brigade this looks like a classic case of projection. 

Even today Freud's ideas still have huge influence over the field, his theory that adult problems can be traced to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and adolescence is still popular, his descendants also heavily influenced the field and the vast majority of people able to name a famous psychoanalyst would probably come up with Sigmund Freud.

One of "Pavlov's children."

In the early 20th century, psyco-sciences progressed from Freud's deranged pseudoscience to barbaric experiments on animals and people. Most people have heard of Pavlov's dogs and the "conditioned reflex" but few are aware that Pavlov carried out the same experiments on children too, including surgically adding taps to their salivary glands and force feeding them.

Others like William Sargent pioneered some horrifying treatments like insulin therapy (regularly inducing comas with huge insulin overdoses), Electroconvulsive therapy (giving huge electric shocks to the patient in order to "burn out" their mental illness) brain surgery like lobotomies and all kinds of experimental drug therapies. It seems that many of the people working in the field in the early 20th century would be described as psychopaths by today’s standards because of their willingness to inflict unproven and traumatic treatments on people, often with little or no scientific justification.

By the 1950s the idea of treating "deviance" was commonplace. People such as young women who had a child out of wedlock or refused to stop seeing a boyfriend that their parents disapproved of would be institutionalised and given treatments like electroshock therapy and in many cases lobotomies. Many victims of this regime can still be found in mental institutions to this day and have suffered whole lifetimes of bogus psychotherapeutic treatments and institutionalisation just for failing some social conformity expectation in their early years.

Thankfully the "profession" has left some of the worst treatments like insulin induced comas and lobotomies in the past, however the concept of medicalisation of "deviance" and "non-conformity" is still fundamental to the profession. As you can see from the video there is an ever growing cloud of so called psychiatric disorders, the most famous being ADHD for which hundreds of thousands of children are treated with a stimulant called Ritalin (which has pharmacological effects similar to a mix of amphetamines and cocaine). Imagine the public outrage if I were to set up a website aimed at selling amphetamines to children in order to help them stay awake and concentrate on their school work, however the psycho-brigade can get away with it by deflecting criticism with their expertise and qualifications and pointing to the evidence base they have built up to support their methodology of drugging children with powerful stimulants.

The experimental data does show that the kids become less disruptive when they take these powerful stimulants but the methodology of medicalising symptoms like hyperactivity, impulsive behaviour and inattentiveness with extremely powerful drugs at such early ages must lead to medical dependence in the same way that mass institutionalisations of the mid 20th century led to a huge number of completely institutionalised patients.

The creation of medical dependence is clearly beneficial to the big pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs like Ritalin and to the professional prescribers, who with the right techniques can create lifelong patients out of children with "disorders" like not being able to "sit still and concentrate on boring stuff" which until recent times was considered fairly normal childhood behaviour and treated with corporal punishment in schools. The profession is not only punishing and stigmatising people that display non conformist behaviour they are making a profitable industry out of their medicalised treatments.

The rise of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has given traditional psychotherapists a lot to worry about. In layman's terms CBT is a methodology that focuses on helping patients to develop the mental skills to overcome their own behavioural problems and has been shown to work in the treatment of anxiety, depression, phobias, insomnia and a range of other "mental disorders". One of the main benefits of CBT is that it can reduce patient reliance on expensive long term drug therapy.

It is no surprise at all that leading establishment psychiatrists such as Andrew Samuels like to use their influence to characterise CBT as "a coup, a power play by a community that has suddenly found itself on the brink of corralling an enormous amount of money". It is frankly disgraceful to see a spokesman for, and proponent of, the traditional and expensive methodology of medicalisation and institutionalisation trying to smear the cheaper and more humanist approach as a bunch of money grabbing usurpers.

I don't see CBT as a magic bullet, but it is much closer to the holistic and humanist approach to mental illness that I favour. To me it is obvious that helping people to work out how to overcome their own problems where possible is a vastly superior approach to trawling their childhood for traumatic experiences and helping them to pin the blame for their situation on things that simply can't be undone, prescribing lifelong regimes of expensive and powerful drugs like stimulants and sedatives and herding patients into institutional care. It is time for the so called experts to get rid of the view of mental health conditions as deviances that can be categorised and medicated and start to see and treat their patients as people.

More info - CCHR