How to Overcome Nonfactual Emotional “Arguments”

Date: 
Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - 19:30
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      Excellent article Joshua. Perception is reality for most folks often absorbed by exposure to advertising on TV. The truth of the product conveyed in 30 seconds or less. The only point, the only truth, is how it helps me. Good is what helps me be happier, evil the opposite. Pure utilitarianism.

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      I sometimes wonder if what we see in some of the more "post-truth" quarters of modern society even rises to the level of utilitarianism. Are people really happy living in their sheltered, socially-constructed bubbles in their socially-constructed realities? Are people even going as far as to judge products (let alone larger, more important phenomena, people, or ideas) on their inherent usefulness? Even utilitarianism operates more comfortably in a world in which facts are facts. Unless we posit anger and outrage and offense as actual products, "utilitarian" in the sense of offering catharsis to those dearly in need of it, there are definitely parts of modern society operating below the level of even utilitarianism. Emotivism, as the article well put it.

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Dorothy Sayers sounded the alarm in 1947 in her essay "The Lost Tools of Learning" :

"Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of
literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?"

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    Just got back from a 'Left Coast Wedding'. I didn't 'argue' anything with anyone. I just watched the 'nice' people and the 'good' people 'virtue signaling' and hadn't the slightest desire to 'argue'. Who can argue when the basic premise is that "We are the nice, good people and you are the devil."

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      You'll never convince a liberal of his irrationality. If you ask progressives to describe the utopia they are endeavoring to progress toward, you will mostly get blank stares.

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The fundamental divide, historically no different than now is one side of the cultural divide seeks the Objective Truth while the other sides entertains, then embraces any other novelty in their rejection of that Objective Truth.

Lucifer knows today, no different than what he knew at the fall, the Objective Truth but Lucifer willfully chose to take a stand against God, against the Objective Truth. That Lucifer persuaded 1/3 of the angels to fall with him is beyond my comprehension but that persuasive lies applied to humanity is more readily apparent for which it is equally amazing that Lucifer is not more successful given Lucifer's success in the Garden.

Adam and Eve walked and talked with God, saw the face of God yet Eve believed Lucifer persuading Adam to join her to enjoy the forbidden fruits by appealing to their respective passions irrespective of the presence and first hand knowledge and love of the Objective Truth.

What I find to be as or more interesting, is that Adam even in the presence and personal knowledge of God shared that there was something more that God had not yet provide him that he desired... that being a companion to share his life within the Garden of Eden. God looked throughout Creation finding nothing suitable, God then created woman from Adam's rib. The rest of the story is our history with God and our personal testimony to God until He comes again.

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    We live in a society where all things are political and thus emotional. Nothing gets done because we live in the world of the never ending campaign.