Overwhelmed by fear: beware the “low road” of emotion

It is because we tout ourselves as the smartest animal on the planet we are oh-so-vulnerable.  As one can read in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Human cognition is an unwieldy and fallible bag of mental tricks. Anyone who has seriously studied human cognition knows this. As Leda Cosmides and John Toby wrote: 

“The mind consists of a set of adaptations, designed to solve the long standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter-gatherers.”

Many people think, however, that they know how they think; they have faith that conscious common sense is always accurate and on target.  Common sense fails consider Freud’s rock solid finding: conscious awareness is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg. 

Common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like “uncontestable facts” to those of us who believe we can merely sit around and think in order to figure out how we think. Although common sense has led us well us for eons, it often leads to errors.  The Sun does not circle the Earth.  Our ears do not operate like microphones and our eyes do not work like cameras. “I” am not really a little person who seems to dwell in my head.  Science has shown that what the “thing” that constitutes me is a complicated and often self-contradictory bag of skills and strategies.  For many good examples of how we are often misled by the same heuristics on which we usually depend, see the …

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Demi-gogs R Us

I wondered recently, during an idle conversation, whatever became of that monumental media presence Rush Limbaugh.  Now I know.  He's been upstaged.  Check out the following quote: "They're almost always biologists—the "science" with the greatest preponderance of women. The distaff MIT "scientist" who fled the room in response to Larry…

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Causes And Canards

I saw a phrase today that made me think--The Darwinist Cause. Now, I'm sure I've seen it or heard it before, but it's one of those taglines opponents to certain worldviews use to instigate absurd debates (which turn out not to be debates but drubbing sessions wherein they hope to…

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The Democratic Party doesn’t need cohesion. It needs better marketing.

The Democratic Party’s “lack of unity” has become an oft-cited criticism of conservative pundits. The Republican right has successfully exploited intra-party dissent—primarily regarding the Iraq War—and cultivated the image of the Democratic Party as weak, faltering, and therefore ineffective. Republicans have artfully crafted a fear of uncertainty, and suggested on no uncertain terms that a divided party accomplishes nothing, and the divided Democrats would run the Iraq War and America into ruin if given the opportunity. As we all know, the Democrats have finally begun to recover from the GOP’s fear-mongering tactics, but the complaints of lacking cohesion remain nearly as strong as ever.

Analysts say that the Democrats need to create a new image, and they need to do this by creating a unified front. A few gained House seats won’t last if the Democrats continue to look weak and vulnerable. The talking heads seem to see cohesion as a wholly beneficial aim, something to achieve and advertise on the part of the Democrats.

Let’s inspect that assumption for a moment. Polls throughout the decades have indicated that most voters don’t fully subscribe to a party; they instead tow-the-line in the moderate middle. An independent “American Moderate Party” exists on the fringe, but allow us to face reality: most Americans feel they have but two choices when they go to the polls. In most cases, they really do only have a Republican and a Democrat candidate from whom to choose. And when an …

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New Civilian Casualty Theme Park lets you experience the thrills and spills of being a CIVILIAN WAR VICTIM!

I didn’t know that they had amusement parks like this, until I recently saw this advertisement . . .

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Americans are unfairly deprived of what it’s like to be a genuine civilian war victim.  Americans experience the effects of bombs and bullets from a distance, through antiseptic television reports and glitzy video games.  Our research has shown, however, that many of you want a much more up-close, detailed, exciting and visceral experience.  We also realize that Americans have a difficult time learning anything at all in the absent of a concurrent entertainment experience.

It is for this reason that we have built Civilian Casualty Theme Park to give you the Adventure and Experience of being a civilian war victim.  We offer you the thrill and exhilaration of BEING THERE while your own neighborhood is ripped apart by warfare. This is no ordinary theme park.  We give you up-close and personal real-life action where the bombs actually explode.  If you like haunted houses and slasher films, you’re going to love Civilian Casualty Theme Park!

 civilian casualty theme park drawing.jpg

We use state-of-the-art computer simulations and pharmacology combined with hundreds of highly trained actors and technicians to give you the gut-wrenching and mind-twisting experience of what it is like to be a civilian war victim.  For starters, our experts and technicians will construct a replica of your own neighborhood in anticipation of your scheduled visit. 

After allowing you to settle in at your own residence in your own personalized Hollywood-caliber “neighborhood,” your heart will start …

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