Yours Truly
A few days ago, we were discussing ideas that had gained purchase without necessarily being true. It made me think of several more.
First, the "Big Lie": The idea that, strategically, you should make your lie so preposterous that no one would believe you'd dare make it up, whereas a small lie they'd catch. It's associated with Nazis, and ever since, people love nothing better than to fling the "big lie" accusation at others, even though it's an ugly and childish tactic.
But one thing always bothered me (which the slightest research would have cleared up, though I just happened to read about it in this piece by Michael Moynihan): as hateful as the Nazis were, they generally believed in what they were doing. Most people do. So I wasn't surprised to discover that far from being some sort of technique in which Goebbels consciously partook, it was an accusation that Hitler made against the Jews. Hitler sounds just like all the thousands who have followed him in calling others out.
Another idea that you hear a lot is that we only use 10% of our brains. I don't know how many TV shows and movies have repeated this canard, though I most recently heard it from Nicolas Cage in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. At least I can understand why Hollywood would use this as a plot point. Unfortunately, the myth is also irresistible to those who want to claim we've got all sorts of untapped capabilities if we'd just open ourselves up.
Then there's the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (about language controlling thought) except I don't think anyone's really believed that in years. And the old bit about Inuits having twenty words (or whatever) for snow. But this post is already long enough.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:10 AM
4 Comments:
There's a good piece on the NYTimes site about modern research on Sapir-Whorf. Rather than taking the perspective that language constrains us from certain thoughts, it explores the idea that certain languages *require* us to have particular thought patterns. I'm too busy at the moment to look it up, but just searching the site for "whorf" should pull it.
I remember seeing a play set in France but written in English. One character mentioned a cousin and another asked if it was a male or female. It actually took me out of the play because I knew in French they'd know the sex immediately based on which version of cousin was spoken.
Tangential point:
Many people bear a lot of blame for the various evils in Germany from 1914 to 1945, but one of the less remembered names is Ludendorff. Yet he deserves great blame. Up to the Fall of 1918, he had been feeding the German newspapers lies about how they were on the verge of total victory. Then in November he privately informed the Kaiser that the war was lost. The German government promptly surrendered. But when the first leader of the Weimar Republic publicly stated that the loss was not due to military failures, Ludendorff just stood by silently, allowing this lie to spread throughout the land.
And yet he knew more than anyone that the war was lost entirely because of military factors. I used to read the move-by-move transcripts of championship chess games, and play them out on my board. And I never understood them. After many moves, Black resigned, and I was left scratching my head. I didn't even know that Black was losing, much less that it was hopeless. Similarly, Ludendorff and the German General Staff correctly calcuated in October 1918 that the war was unwinnable, but the average person without advanced military training couldn't tell that from the maps. (The Allies had barely set foot on German soil!) So the field was left open for the biggest lie of that era... which in turn paved the way for Hitler.
That's a common thing in politics (if not at the level of evil found in fascism)--something bad happens that most people can't quite understand but someone needs to be blamed. You could say politics practically runs on blaming the other side for all the problems of the world.
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