User:RobSmith/Essay:the nobsian method

A Study in the Art of Rhetoric

How are political and ideological views formed?

 * parents and traditions
 * teachers, and to a lesser extent peers

Psalm 82 says (abridged),

The meaning of this is, probably, a parent takes the place of God in a child's life. And God here is reminding parents of that, and calling them to account.

The role of tradition is one of the most neglected and misgauged concepts in human affairs. Revolutionary ideologies, for example, dismiss tradition. However the debate needs to be framed, What's more powerful in shaping people's lives, guiding their behavior, attitudes, and understanding of the world they live in, Law or Tradition? A careful study of this sociological and historical question should reveal, surprisingly, Tradition, and rejects revolutionary concepts that threaten or challenge tradition, unless one is born of parents who, by tradition, are revolutionary. These are few in number.

Then comes the age old debate: ''Who's responsible for screwing up the next generation? Is it the parents or the schools?'' The teachers will tell you, "it's the parents", the teachers have only what the parents send them to work with. And if the parents don't care, why should the teachers? It is the parents who blame the teachers for the parents own failings.

But by teachers here, more importantly, I'm referring to mentors. And a mentor need not just corroborate and expand upon the garbage one picked up at home or in school. A mentor can be from the opposite side of the spectrum of one's upbringing, if one wants a truelly broadminded education in critical thinking. The aim should not be to proselytize and recruit a new good little wooden soldier for a cause, but rather to learn how to defend one's convictions.

Peers in certain communities are useful sparring partners to sharpen one's wit, or to motivate preparation and study. In other communities they add no more than the dead weight of an echo chamber, or the unchallenging inertia of conformity.

How are political and ideological views changed?

 * personal experience and traumas
 * national and global calamities

The first of these are within oneself, and typically outside one's control. The second are larger than oneself, and in most all circumstances outside one's control.

The pupose of political and ideological views is to ease adjustment and exist comfortably with one's environment, and in some cases to shape that environment. What causes a person to wake one day to the realization everything their parents and teachers inculcated in them, the traditions they hold fast to, is wrong and a lie? This in itself is a traumatic experience. Occassionally one can come to the conclusion to shift their views by logic and rational thinking; but is this really careful analysis, or giving in to the conformity of social pressure with one's teachers and peers?

Then there's the role of trauma, mental anguish and pain. No one wishes trauma on anyone, but sliding down the birth canal into the cold air is a traumatic experience. Human beings are quick to adapt. Now do we respond to trauma by relying on our traditions, beliefs, experience, and what we've been taught? Or do we blame our trauma on our traditions, beliefs, experience, and what we've been taught? The later can cause a person's political or ideological views to shift.

The trauma itself can be physical, such as disease or loss of a limb. FDR it's been said, was an elitist greedy rich kid - until he was stricken with infantile paralysis, or polio as an adult, and forced to embrace compassion while in therapy with children. Suddenly money and privilege, to him at least, wasn't so all-fired important. There's a lesson here which countless other examples will illustrate: Compassion is not inherent in human nature, compassion must be learned. Some do, some never do.

Mental anguish and pain can be caused by one's ideological belief system or by wholly unrelated emotional and personal problems. In either instance the suffering can lead to abandoning political and ideological views of one's youth. But here one must be careful, predators lurk to recruit unstable sufferers into all kinds of crazy cults or fringe movements. This isn't the place to go poaching for proselytizes. The sufferer needs genuine sincerity and help. "A word spoken in due season," as the Proverb says, should suffice. Distill your words into something meaningful that will stick.

Then there's national and global calamities. In the 20th century, an entire nation of 80 million people, men, women, children, and elderly had to reasses not only their own political, ideological, and moral underpinings and responsibilities during the Third Reich, but that of their parents and grandparents as well. In America, events such as the Civil War, or the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks forced on people changes to their political and ideological outlook on the world, whether they liked it, or wanted to or not.

Global calamities. The invention of the atomic bomb, and decision to use it, or climate change issues force people to look at, and sometimes reassess what they learned from parents, teacher, peers, and their own experience. But the world's a big enough place that some people can hide from facing reality.

Change is inevitiable. Even such rock solid foundations, such as Islam or Christianity, must change with each successive generation. Growth is only one phase of life. If a person bites off a nibble of truth in their youth, it pays to understand there is always so much more than they can swallow or comprehend. They will never know it all, be in command of the facts, not in this life.

Argument and persuasion
The purpose of argument is persuasion, but one must have their ducks in a row to be effective. The Apostle Paul said, "I planted, I Apollos watered; but God gave the increase," meaning your not always going to win the argument there and then, like a wrestler applying a submission hold. And you shouldn't be looking to. Constantly sowing seeds, seeds of the strength and veracity of your position, and seeds of doubt in the mind of your counterpart's faith in their own words.

In sales, how do you persuade people to part with their money? How do you persuade people to listen to you, to allow you to help them do for themselves what is to their advantage to do for themselves, by buying from you? It's a field loaded with sociopathic predators, and fundamentally there are only two factors which motivate people to part with thier money. And both are negative. Fear and greed. So the message of the salesman is, "Hi! I'm your friend," then (leaving out the transition points) you have to plant negative ideas that read essentially like, "unless you buy from me the world's gonna come to an end, your house will burn down, and your family will die in a fire." Or, appeally to greed, "Wouldn't you like to have..." or "Be the first on the block..." etc.

One must exude confidence. Confidence in yourself, and confidence in your product or service. The successful salesperson (not of the criminal sociopathic type) is selling confidence.

Is this any different than a campaign speech of a candidate for office? Unless a candidate's speech appeals to fear (e.g. racism, the Russian bogeyman, Republicans, etc.), or greed (e.g. free healthcare, free daycare, taxcuts, etc.) and focuses only on 'feelgood' points, journalists will call it boring.

But let's get back to confidence, and the role of tradition. What is tradition? Tradition comes from trade, the sources of subsistance. These traditions, or revenue flows follow custom, and a customer is dependent on the revenue source for subsistance. Anything that disrupts trade, tradition, custom, or a customer's access to subsistence is a threat to existence. This is why we have police and armies, because the tradesmen have pooled their resources to create and fund a government to protect against threats to trade and existence.

What is money? Money is confidence. The purpose of money is to facilate transactions of equal quantities of labor, and confidence is required that one party is not being cheated. Money is in essence a representation of labor. (Adam Smith said "a quantity of labor" may be difficult for some people to comphrehend, but it shouldn't be too difficult today for anyone reading a paystub). When a currency looses the confidence of its users, it looses its value. When a currency is esteemed with high confidence it maintains its value or increases relative to competing currencies.

What are prices? Prices are always ratios (from the same etymological origin of rational). For example, 1 gal. gas exchanges for USD $2.29 at todays prices, properly expressed as 1:2.29. But prices are dynamic, constantly rising and falling, and labor prices vary depending on the type and trade. Aristotle said the function of money was to express as a ratio how many quantities of shoes a shoe cobbler must cobble to equal the labor of the carpenter who built his house.

Who invented the monetary system? Contrary to popular myth, God invented the monetary system (See Proverbs 16:11, A just weight and balance are the Lord's: all the weights of the bag are his work), which stands to reason. God invented the monetary system of exchanging equal quantities of labor to keep the thieves in check.

Is trust between human beings a normal thing? What, traditionally, causes two human beings to trust one another, if trust is inimical to human nature? Is trust merely a gamble against the odds until one gets burned? Do the rules of self-preservation require every man or woman to suspect iniquitious motives of every human being they meet? Trust is the basis of any human relationship, and a trusting person is generally considered naive. So how are any human relationships, from the personal to the institutional, built if trust carries with it the potential for disaster?

Tradition plays a big part - the values inculcated in youth, and not necessarily law. No law can mandate a person take on the obligation of trusting another. Laws generally exist to deal with breaches of trust, but trust itself, the basis of all relationships, can only be gained by experience and guidance, the guidance of traditions.

So how do we persuade someone our argument is not only valid, but carries a weightier conclusion than their own forgotten or corrupted values learned in childhood? Now emotion plays a role. Here it can become difficult, separating the completely logical and rational lines of argument from the emotional trauma it can engender from a person questioning internally their very existence. Here you must continue exuding the confidence in your argument, and make it attractive. Some competing traditions are programmed to make repulsive anything that challenges the father of lies. The axiom, We wrestle not agsinst flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers... holds; principalities and powers refers to political structures or regimes. Someone programmed to worship the god-man, i.e. Pharoah and statist institutions as the end goal of human existence, can be exceedingly stubborn.

Use of bait
The use of bait requires not just command of a broad range of subjects, but a fully thought out convincing, pursuasive, memorable end conclusion narrative. Using this tool involves an interplay of ideas, or rather, an interplay of an idea with a non-idea or false narrative. Non-ideas or false narratives are particularly common among propagandists. As such, they present opportunities for the unfortunate victim to rethink the purpose of their life.

Propaganda, false ideas, and false narratives are spread by propagandists by mimesis. Mimesis is a faculty or trait inherent to the human species - the ability to mime thoughts, actions, and processes learned from others and previous generations that are necessary for basic survival, economic growth, and an improvement in living standards. The propagandist relies on this inborn trait for the deliberate dissemination of false ideas.

Once in command of the facts as to what is necessary for survival of the species, it's easy to spot the inklings of false narratives. It helps if your conclusive narrative to refute false ideas and false narratives are blessed by God. If not, you're on your own, which doesn't mean necessarily you will fail. But the overall objective of bringing the unfortunate victim and hearers to a path of self-examination should never be forgotten.

The purpose of sparring in any argument is not necessarily to win, but strengthen your own use of words, idioms, phrases, ability to argue, convictions, and cause the advesarial position to doubt themself.

What is the purpose of human existence?
What is the purpose of human existence? We'll deal with alternative theories further on down. For now, let's begin with two assumptions we've learned by tradition: (1) God exists; (2) God created the human species for a purpose. Let's begin at the beginning with an encapsulated narrative.

God created a bunch of spirit beings in the hopes they would love one another and get along. What does it mean 'to serve God'? Simple. To love your fellow creature, and not rape, murder, or steal from them. God did not create a bunch of blind slaves to serve him, rather granting each free will, hoping they would be genuine and sincere in choosing the right path. Then one day a chieftan among them forgot God, lifted himself up in pride and began worshipping and serving the creature (himself) rather than the creator (God). A few cronies followed and they were tossed out, down to Earth, where they became the rulers of the planet. Later God purposed in himself to retake the Earth from evil, so he created human's of flesh and blood (i.e., seed bearing or the ability to reproduce themselves) to retake the Earth from evil. But the humans lifted themselves up in pride, began worshipping and serving the creature (themselves) more than the creator, and joined the rebellion against God. All the foundations of the earth are out of course.

So God was faced with the problem that the grandiose solution he had come up with to retake the earth from evil had gone off the rails. Such is the problem of granting free will. A rebellious child will always take advantage of it. Nevertheless, he predestinated and foreordained that he and his team would win in the end. The rebels denying him his sovereign rights as creator are playing with a stacked deck that God created. So God took the form of man to set things right blah blah blah and the rest is history. Accept it or rot in hell for eternity.

Now, there are various alternatives and perversions, and outright denials, of this synopsis. But no one has yet produced a plausible satisactory explanation, other than to serve self, which aligns with God's narrative but ignores the big picture. And to not ask these questions leads to a conclusion that life is pointless and meaningless, which justifies murder.

There is a real world struggle between good and evil going on everywhere, everyday, with every breath we take. And you can't see it til the struggle between good and evil within yourself is remitted. "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."

So how do we retake the earth from evil?
Ah, simple stupid question - the best kind. First, we must recognize we are incapable of doing it alone. We must be part of a larger movement or entity. Secondly, we must arrest and subjugate the evil within ourselves that puts us on the team of the bad guys. But just as in the first step, we are incapable of performing this action ourselves. Only good can drive out evil, and we are just possessed by too many self-destructive tendencies.

Democracy and tolerance
Democracy is an adversarial system that requires two or more opposing views to function properly. Respect and tolerance of people with differing views is critical. The 20th century, and into our own time, suffers from a totalitarian mindset, a view that many people among all orders of society - working class, professionals, civil servants, media and journalists, democratically elected officials, religious clerics in Christian, Islamic, and other societies - that the world would be better off if people of dissenting and opposing views were silenced, and even exterminated should be official state policy.

The Cold War did not end the competition between democracy and totalitarianism. This competition, while ideological in nature, was never a left-right, liberal vs conservative issue; it was always a matter of coersion and violence vs freedom and protection of minority opinion.

In 1945, immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Gallup Polling organization conducted a public opinion poll in Germany to identify people's ideological political identification. Christianity won hands down, over Communism, Social democracy, Nazism, and a smattering of other 'political ideologies'. The appearance of polling results in German newspapers was a novelty, intended to be among the first steps in rehabilitating the German nation, getting them to accept responsibility for themselves and the actions of their government. Perhaps the most startling result was revealing the German nation's ignorance of core democratic principles and concepts.

No nation in the 3000 plus year history of Western Civilization has been more ravaged by war and division by the internal sects within Christendom than Germany, yet a this moment of collapse and national catastrophe Germans pled ignorance under the blood of Jesus. And the full extent of the horrors of Nazi persecution were not fully known or revealed yet.

Science is responsible for racism
19th Century anthropologists observed that the natives of the Americas had not discovered or invented the wheel yet. Scientists best estimate the wheel had been invented to aid transport approximately 20,000 B.C.E. Hence a scientific conclusion was postulated that American natives were 20,000 years behind historical "progress." In an age of Enlightenment, these ideas were widely disseminated.

The progressive view of history
In the progressive view history, the human species improves over time. Technological inventions such as the microchip or genetic engineering makes the human species morally superior to its predecessors.