“We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.” — Rod Sterling
In order to get a better understanding and background on how we are “developing a new citizenry,” it would be important to read How Emotions Have Been Hijacked By Psychological-Conditioning Programs (Part 1) in tangent to the concept in this article.
“In short, it is not merely that Johnny can’t read, or even that Johnny can’t think. Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is, because thinking is so often confused with feeling in many public schools.” (1)
The intentional use of emotions has been a long-standing strategy employed by both influential authorities and those advocating for societal change. Confusion, a key tactic utilized, serves to complicate matters and divert attention. Infiltrating the minds of our youth, the emphasis on feelings has replaced critical thinking, resulting in manipulation, indoctrination and brainwashing.
Brainwashing occurs not solely within our educational institutions, but also from various sources. The media serves as another significant battleground within the cultural warfare.
“It’s Time to Give Up on Facts Or at least to temporarily lay them down in favor of a more useful weapon: emotions.” (2)
Jess Zimmerman, the author of the article tells us how we must put the facts aside “temporarily” for a more favorable and useful “weapon“. The weapon of choice is “emotions“.
“The physical pathway . . . (enters) at the spinal cord. Your primary senses enter here and must travel to the front of your brain before you can think rationally about your experience. But first they travel through the limbic system, the place where emotions are experienced.” (3)
We learn when an event, incident, or crisis happens, the experience enters through three key areas in order to make a complete circuit and arch. The first stage of a situation or stimulus would enter into the spinal cord and travels into the Limbic System, where the unconscious and subconscious of emotions and feelings are happening with an unfettered elephant. As the action continues into the third phase, the frontal lobe. This has to happen before a person can think rationally about our experiences.
“Everything you see, smell, hear, taste and touch travels through your body in the form of electric signals. These signals pass from cell to cell until they reach their ultimate destination, your brain. They enter your brain at the base near the spinal cord, but must travel to your frontal lobe (behind your forehead) before reaching the place where rational, logical thinking takes place. The trouble is, they pass through your limbic system along the way-the place where emotions are produced. This journey ensures you experience things emotionally before your reason can kick into gear.” (3)
The journey of these signals passing through our bodies and evolve into our brain to travel through the Limbic system where we “experience things emotionally“. This is the second phase of the stimulus that we are experiencing at the moment. In order to think rationally, the situation has to move into the third phase where “logical thinking takes place.”
In order to complete a healthy arch, our stimulus must take in the entire circuit; an unbroken neural pathway(4) to enhance one’s logical thinking. If this circuit or neural pathway is rewired, changed or taken off the path by not completing the phases or chain, it could have devastating effects on our critical thinking skills and the impact on life in matter of choices, quality and beliefs.
“The rational area of your brain (the front of your brain) can’t stop the emotion “felt” by your limbic system . . . “ (3)
The cell to cell electric signals cannot be halted or stopped in the limbic area of the brain. If it does, we can stunt our critical thinking growth, and enhance our echo chamber or confirmation bias. (5)
“Engaging on the plane of belief, where lies live, means taking a break from trying to prove what’s factually accurate and talking instead about what feels meaningful in the heart.” (2)
Referencing Jess Zimmerman’s article again, she is telling readers that her opinion is taking a “break from trying to prove what’s factually accurate“. I would contend, proving what is factually accurate is critical to knowing what is right and wrong along with what is the truth.
By taking a break, it effectively interrupts and impedes the flow of electrical signals within the cells, confining and containing the energy within the limbic containment area of the brain. This pause in the signal prevents it from reaching the rational part of the brain, hindering the circuit from completing its path and impeding critical thinking. It would be like not allowing a roller-coaster to make a full lap to complete the ride.
“You’ll hate it because we liberals tend to pride ourselves on caring about evidence, science, and accuracy. Being factually right, or at least grounded in reality, is something we value, something meaningful to our self-concept.” (2)
To prove what is “factually accurate” is exactly what science is all about. Jess Zimmerman tells the readers how “liberals tend to pride” themselves “on caring about evidence, science, and accuracy.” The author can’t have it both ways by telling the readers to not allow the neural pathway to compete the arch, by placing people in-the-box of emotions and feelings and keeping people ignorant and hamstrung on getting to the truth.
How can a person care about evidence, accuracy or even science without going through the scientific process (6). The scientific method (the core of parallel thinking and Six Thinking Hats) is exactly what is needed to test and prove the facts. It is making a hypothesis and then testing multiple times in different environments to see if accurate. Sometimes the hypothesis is not accurate, so the conclusions change. But if done correctly you should be getting closer to the truth as it enhances the process and gets one closer to what is morally right by process of elimination, experience and exploring the subject honestly.
“Being factually right, or at least grounded in reality,” is an incomplete circuit by concentrating on emotions, as we all know blinds us to what is real as it has revved high and lingers too long. We can see in the above chart, how emotions are actually at the lowest point of both self-development and success as it gradually climbs to the highest point on both to Awareness and Metacognition.
How can one achieve what is “factually right” or even “grounded in reality” if they create a habit that their neural pathway electronic signals haven’t reached the Rational part of the brain? Being emotional or staying in the limbic portion of the brain will deceive and blind us to the truth. Being emotional reminds me of the human development of a child that is immature, spoiled and full of temper tantrums in order to get their way.
(8)
Being placed in the emotional part of the brain either by design or by uncontrolled reaction and/or both. It helps us understand what we have experienced and observed when we have dealt with immature people throwing temper tantrums in both the right and left camps. Being emotional is nothing short of being in the Elementary Culture acting childish.
Elementary Culture (9)
The culture of grade schools has huge impact beyond the schoolyard. Elementary Culture values the following:
- Staying in the good graces of those above you, especially the authorities
- Reliance on experts
- Dependence on basic needs and remedies being provided
- Playing
- Having good toys
- Learning and following the rules
- Getting rewards from the authorities by meeting their expectations
“As good as these things may be for classroom and playground management, they are less enchanting as cultural underpinnings for adult neighborhoods, towns, cities and nations. Free citizens are not exactly marked by their desire to please government authorities or being dependent on state programs. Nor is liberty positively promoted when the citizens focus mostly on play, getting the best toys (from cars to computers to vacations) in life, or seeking rewards from upper classes or government officers.” (9)
“Obviously order and cooperation are desirable shared values in a society; but there is a huge difference between free citizens who have a significant say in establishing the rules and dependent citizens who are hardly involved in governance.” (9)
“And when adults act like children, the state steps forward to feed and care for them.” (9)
“Think of the great freedom cultures of history—from the Hebrew and Greek golden ages to the free Saracens, Swiss, English and early Americans, among others. These citizens were not dependents and not particularly interested in pleasing the authorities. In fact, they held the government dependent on the people and required government officials to please the citizens. They made family and work the center of adult life, as opposed to the “bread and circuses” of Elementary Cultures in Rome and other less-than-free societies.” (9)
We can see how Elementary Culture parallels with liberalism:
“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child – miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.” — P.J. O’Rourke
Returning back to Jess Zimmerman opinion:
“. . . sometimes, (we) are going to have to engage with voters and representatives who are mired in pernicious misinformation.” (2)
The author implies in her article of confirmation bias towards others, especially in the right and left paradigm. She suggests by being and using emotions and staying in the limbic region of the brain, she is admitting to her own confirmation bias (7). She shorted and even short-circuited the process by not allowing the electronic signals to go through all the phases of the brain, but instead only to go half-way in the course and movement of the neural pathways.
With her own confirmation bias, self-deception and being a detractor; she’s for “science” and then shortchanges the exact thing she says she is for in the form of Neuroscience. In her own ignorance, she wants to engage and educate the general public especially the “voters and representatives who are mired in pernicious misinformation.” But she is not taking into account her own ignorance, mired and misinformation from her own limited and damming viewpoint and perception. As she advocates for the “useful weapon: emotions“(2) in “developing a new citizenry” in arguing against Neuroscience due to her opinion; which is a half-truth in staying with emotional portion of the brain in order to argue against humanity, like a spoiled child, who is “unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined” and “despotic.”
“The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.” — Washington Allston
“The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton
“A half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.” — J.I. Packer
By not seeking the complete truth, one is living a lie and an illusion as their life unfolds into a greater error as the days, months and years pass widening the gap between what is false and what is true as we gradually follow the herd into the wrong direction of insanity.
(1) Inside American Education, The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas by Thomas Sowell
(2) It’s Time to Give Up on Facts
(3) Emotional Intelligence 2.0
(4) Neural pathway
(5) Echo Chamber
(8) How Emotions Have Been Hijacked By Psychological-Conditioning Programs (Part 1)
