Oh, for the love of reason!

I realise this makes three rather exasperated posts in a row, so I’ll try to keep this short, and I promise to follow up with something a little more on the positive side.

I was reminded the other day of a pet frustration of mine whilst reading this CBS News article. To be honest, I thought the whole thing a bit trite, and by no means would I trust the figures quoted, but one question in particular caught my eye: that of whether it is “still possible to start poor, work hard, and get rich”.

Tiny little alarm bells started ringing in my head before I had even read the answer, not because of the topic of the question itself, but from the way in which it was asked. Of course it’s still possible, I thought. Perhaps a better question could have been based on how likely respondents thought it is for this to happen now, relative to some previous period. What a waste of a question, I thought.

Maybe not so.

Apparently 18% of respondents offered a negative response to this question. Now my question is this: did all these people truly believe in the answer they gave, or were they simply displaying a form of stupidity that is all too often the norm? And remember, given a less polarising question, the portion of respondents in this category would likely be far greater.

I know a lot of people who would criticize that statement, saying I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s just common usage, they’d say. Don’t be so pedantic.

But is it really that trivial? Sure, it doesn’t help to waste time getting too hung up on minor technicalities in everyday conversation, but this isn’t exactly complex, it’s far from rare, and it’s more important than most of us care to admit. To accept and employ such broken reasoning — in this instance gross oversimplification — is to voluntarily corrupt one’s ability to reason.

Once you embrace this sort of corruption, you’re going to make poorer decisions. You’re going to be easier to deceive, and easier to manipulate, because you’ve discarded your defenses against these attacks. In turn, you’ll be more open to further corruptions of your mind, completing the vicious cycle.

And it will start with the small, ‘unimportant’ things like this.

With the United States’ Independence Day looming, I’ll finish up with a plea to all Americans: don’t think like the respondents of that survey. Take some responsibility for your thinking, keep yourself informed of the world around you and the actions of your government, and once you’ve done all that, go and exercise your right to vote. If you don’t, then come the 4^th of July next year, there might be nothing left to celebrate.