The Truth about Liars, Advertisers and True Believers
I hated it when my father said that all facts are just
someone’s opinion. It was damning as he
was a renowned Chemist and decorated artillery officer from WW2 in the Pacific. His nickname in the 31st Infantry
Division (Dixie) was “Fearless Fred”.
If facts are opinions, so is the truth. In order to manage getting through the day,
one must make decisions on other’s opinions based on opinions that one would
like to treat is if they were true facts.
. What we do is to assign a level of confidence in the accuracy,
relevance and reliability to the “opinions” we want to treat as “facts”. After all, doesn’t one and one make two? One apple and one banana make two fruits if
one is from San Francisco.
But, one can’t get of bed without knowing where the floor
is. Or where the car keys are.
Fig_01
When dealing with other people, however, we treat their opinions
based on the “truthiness” of that person and/or their opinions. It helps to
know when they are diverging from the real truth (whatever one accepts as
such). Such divergence can be
categorized as lies which the liar knows is false. There are True Believers who
believe the false as true but also lie to themselves as well. Being wrong is
not a measure of belief or lie, just being wrong as the facts don’t support the
truth (or the other way around).
Fig_02
Deep down, the liar and the true believer know that the
truth they speak of are not true facts, at some level of awareness. Deep down.
The instinctive cover up is to raise the volume, intensity, and
assertion to cover the falsity subject to false attribution as true. This is especially true when dealing with
Virtues and Vices asserted or assigned.
When the volume goes up, they reverse.
I call it, the Law of the Inverse Attribution Reflex which
just so happens to work out as an acronym. L.I.A.R. The braggart brags of his own
weakest virtue, and blames other with his own worst vices.
Fig_03
The True Believer believes in the falsity, but
subconsciously doubts. The Liar knows he
is lying.
Fig_04
Back in the Sixties, there was the Pam Am auto race from
Canada to the Mexican border. It was not
about speed, but upon gas consumption which was touted in the ads for cars of
the guzzling Sixties. The virtue of
those old cars was size, glamor and comfort, not safety. Today’s cars are hard
to tell apart compared to the Sixties.
Fig_05
In the days before seat belts one could be belted through
the windshield on collision. And, steel
cars were more easily reparable even if the driver wasn’t.
Fig_06
Then there were the cigarette ads that touted how low the
tar in the lungs would be by smoking the Right Brand
Fig_07
Fig_08
Now we know that gas guzzling and smoking are negative while
the comfortable gas guzzler and the sexy smoker are positives. Both are tweaked in the pitch. Going out on a date to the drive in movies
back then was as roomy as a motel room.
Then came air conditioned inside movie theaters and no foreplay room in
the front nor rear.
Now, as then, one can enhance one’s image and social impact
with the display of socially significant toys, trinkets, clothes, big boobs,
and hard abs. In Los Angeles one is what
one wears on the wrist and what one drives. In San Francisco it is how, what and where one
eats. In New York it is what one wears, drinks,
as well as how fast one seems to be. In
Texas and Chicago all serious business is done behind closed doors, where it
belongs. If you don’t know who or what,
you don’t have the clearance to know.
And everywhere it is what comes out of one’s mouth that
marks one’s turf. Sort of a dog walk and whiz.
Fig_09
The dog knows what he is doing, and why. That’s not always the case with us higher
animals.
Fig_10
Who knows?
Fig_11
It helps to know what role the players are playing, plus the
knowledge that the role will switch for a payoff. Lucy gets a win which she wants, while Linus
gets a dump which why he went for Lucy’s predictable switch with the football.
A knight and a murderer often use the same tactics,
techniques and procedures so which color the other is doesn’t really alter the
truth. Which is why the Drama Triangle
is really a circle.
Fig_12
The switch between victim, rescuer and prosecutor can be
done in a single sentence, and in the current election especially so. From the darker side of American demagoguery:
Fig_13
It boils down to what’s the tar and what’s so cool that it
is hot. The most impressive mix these
days is the ad for the latest drug which pictures a picture of health while
reading off a list of all the really sick stuff that could happen. Music in the background. The mind easily slides past cognitive
dissonance without as much as a hiccup.
Cialis, and the four
hours:
or “stifficade”
True Believers don’t lie just because they have up and down
mixed up, it’s what they believe that separates them from Liars. Liars know
which way is up, but they profit from calling it down. True Believers switch
sides because the buzz or payoffs are greater, while the Liar lies when it is
to his calculated advantage. It is hard to tell one from the other absent
objective data of the subjects at hand.
Coca-Cola includes extracts from Coca leaves for cocaine,
and Kola nuts for the caffeine. In 1903, the cocaine was removed from the Coca
leaves for making Coca-Cola. This goes
to the everlasting snide commentary about “the Real Thing” that Coke has no
coke in it anymore. Coke was originally
sold in drug stores then over drug store counters the last of which disappeared
by the Sixties.
Fig_14
Taking the Coke out of Coke is about Power, not Truth. The word “truth” when stressed with
unnecessary trappings, wrappings, bells and whistles are fairly good lie
indicators.
Fig_15
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But it doesn’t cure getting
out of the rut, grind, routine and dirty diapers. Or the in-laws.
It takes no brains to see the link between the erection and
vitality side to the core of biological survival. Feed and Breed, Paid and
Laid, Dinner and a Date, Food and Family. Decoding transactions (messages, propaganda,
etc.) can be done with connecting the Tools, Rules, and Roles to Food and
Family and back again:
Fig_16
The Rules (Sociological) fall into two groups: Social Status
and relations with the Physical World. The arm and hand signals work better
than another damn acronym.
 |
| Sociological Rules |
Fig_17
Smoking a sexy cigarette (body) in a sexy manner saves Face
and hopefully Fame and maybe fortune which would be applied at the Biological
level, which in turn delivers Fame as a successful breeder which enhances one’s
Face and possibly fortune to buy a set of wheels to cover the Distance over the
Ground in less Time. Smoking while
driving a sexy set of wheels was a definitive statement of savoir faire.
Fig_18
In drinking, driving and smoking were (are) at the core of
the attractiveness of who gets bred. The
core of politics goes to the successful survival of the bred. As in Family and the preservation of what was
once called a “bloodline”. The
biological center of survival is the interaction of who controls the bloodline
as coded in the DNA of the bred.
The male and female sides of any given species, or part
thereof, are addressed in two distinctive strategies. The male seeks to control the bloodline by excluding
any but him. The female seeks to control
the quality of the bloodline through selection of the right male. A dominant theme in natural selection is
competition between males for the female to select the winner. An alternate (horses and lions) only one male
gets to breed, the Stallion and the Simba while the lesser competitive lurk or
wander.
Fig_19
Biological survival of any given bloodline in humans is
delicate compared to other animals by the dangers of in-breeding. Consequently, and instinctively, the female
seeks to enrich the bloodline of her part of the brood by adultery. In response by the male bloodline is to kill
the adulterous, as in stoning. If the male doesn’t suffice, another will. Rape is the reverse of selective breeding by
female selection, hence men comprise six sigma of all rapists. And adultery is a necessary element in
preventing in-breeding. And arranged
marriages relied more on issues the smitten could not.
Fig_20
Even though arranged marriages are largely out of flavor
today, save in certain sub-continents, the deep investment in who gets to swap
whose genes for whom extends to issues other than gene swapping. It goes to
deep sense of who “we” are from nuclear family to family of nations. “They” are the enemy of the purity and
essence of vital bodily fluids, so sayeth Sterling Hayden in the role of General
Jack Ripper in the movie classic “Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop
worrying and love the bomb”.
Closing scene with Vera Lynn’s “We’ll meet again”, a truly beautiful song.
Note the reference to breeding and a mine shaft gap:
Fig_21
In this movie, Sterling Hayden plays the role of a True
Believer, albeit crazy. He orders his
B-52 Squadron to bomb Russia using a loop hole in the law. Post this, and double-double checks were made
in SAC. His purpose was to leverage the
Murderous side of protecting the Family in accordance with rules (Fate) to
break the Body of the Soviets and make them lose Face and Fame.
Fig_22
Elmer Gantry was a liar, Leon Trotsky was a True
Believer. Stalin had Trotsky murdered
in Mexico City so much a threat he was to Stalin, a liar.
Gantry plays the (Battering Bastard) aka Murderous parent to
cow those seeking a replacement for the Battering Daddy and Manipulative Mother
(Bitch) as if disruptive (Brats). This
theme of replicating dysfunctional parenting is very much at the core of True
Believer motives. Themes such as these
are found in ISIS, North Korea, and were fundamental in the Soviet Union, Red
China under Mao, and Germany under Hitler.
War, however, is serious shit.
(to be continued)
Gordon S Fowkes
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