Spin - it isn’t just for liars anymore.
A crooked wisdom reader named Ellen recently commented on one of my posts and said, in part:
“...the stuff that you put out and encourage people to think about and comment on is really important in a world where hype and spin is so prevalent.”
While I’m pretty sure I’ve stepped in some truth here and there, more often than not I discovered that what I thought was “the truth”, wasn’t.
Not long ago this type of statement would have left me dancing on my desk. But this time, after I finished dancing, I got down from my desk and felt compelled to take a shower and explain myself. This post is my attempt at the latter.
It isn’t that I don’t appreciate compliments like this - I do - but they always leave me feeling like I’ve pulled one over on my readers.
I have long admired Andre’ Gide’s admonition, “Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.” And while I’ve had my periods of arrogance - and am likely to have a few thousand more - I’m very clear which group I’m in. Hint: it’s not the one that comes with screaming fans and fancy cars.
While I’m pretty sure I’ve stepped in some truth here and there, more often than not I discovered that what I thought was “the truth”, wasn’t. Of course, I didn’t learn this until after I tried to bestow my “genius” upon the world. Take this dammit. It’s good for you!
This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the existence of, and/or the importance of, facts. I do. In fact, (pun intended), I’m a big fan of them.
But like most of my other heroes - Ayn Rand, Robert Anton Wilson, Groucho Marx, Mighty Mouse, etc. - they are all too human. Or, to be more accurate, they’re only as good as the humans that employ them. Case in point…
We can often “lie” using facts - and only using facts - just as easily as we can lie without them. Stress these facts, ignore those, and voila! We just created a brand new truth.
In the classic film Table for Five
At one point, the stepfather, a high-priced, cutthroat attorney, threatens to sue for custody and says he will win because he could, “make Mother Theresa look unfit to run a children’s home without telling a single lie.”
And for once, I believe every word a “lawyer” is saying.
My point is, we can often “lie” using facts - and only using facts - just as easily as we can lie without them. Stress these facts, ignore those, and voila! We just created a brand new truth. But it gets worse.
I believe that we - and by “we” I mean all of us, not just “the bad people” - do “lie” using facts every time we open our mouths. I believe it is, by definition, impossible to do otherwise.
Consider this description of “propaganda” from Wikipedia:
Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience.
Pay attention to the two sections I underlined.
First, according to this description one component of propaganda is the intent to influence. Doesn’t that sum up all communication? When we communicate aren’t we doing so for a reason? Even when we’re just shootin’ the shit, giving directions, or making small talk, we’re doing so for a reason. And I say that that reason is to influence something. To have some sort of an effect on a given situation. To change things.
If you don’t believe me, I invite you to prove me wrong by identifying one piece of information a person can communicate without having an intention to influence. Could you do it? I doubt it. But even if you could, would you tell me? If so, why? What would be your intention? Think about that for a moment.
Ultimately, all communication has a purpose and complete communication is impossible. Thus, all communication is spin.
And second, notice that the description says, “...some propaganda presents facts selectively.” I don’t think this is quite accurate. I’d change the wording a bit and say, ”All communication is the presentation of selective facts.” Yes, all. And yes, communication, not just propaganda. Not that there’s much difference, mind you.
As many philosophers, psychologists and other troublemakers have pointed out for years, it is impossible to say everything about anything. Despite our best intentions, when we take an oath to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” we’re lying.
But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that almost none of us realize this. Instead, we think we’re walking around telling “the truth” when we’re really - at best - just telling a portion of it.
With the exception of my daughter’s best friend, at some point we are all going to shut up and let our words stand for themselves. And the point at which we’ll shut up is the point at which we think we’ve included enough detail to suit our purpose of the communication itself.
Don’t kid yourself; if you make the effort to communicate something, there is a reason for it - even if you don’t know what that reason is.
So why am I telling you all this? No reason.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Actually there are four things I hope I’ve accomplished by writing this post. Probably more. But here are those I’m aware of:
First, I hope it stretched your mind a bit. But not too much, of course. Believe me, I know what that feels like.
Second, I hope it made you laugh a bit. After all, I take these ideas seriously enough for the both of us so there’s no sense in you losing your mind as well.
I say, if we’re going to spin - and if we’re going to open our mouths we’re going to spin - we might as well be honest about it.
Third, I hope I’ve given you a little more insight into what I’m trying to do around here. While I am very clear that there is a line between truth and bullshit, I’m also clear that the line is always moving and we can never be too sure which side we’re on at any given moment.
And finally, I wanted to make sure Ellen, my reader who inspired this post, didn’t faint when she learned I’m writing a book about the positive aspects of spin. Yes. Spin.
I’m writing this book because I think it is critically important for us to be honest - with ourselves and with each other - about the possibility that our words may not always be as pure and benign as we might like to believe.
Ultimately, all communication has a purpose and complete communication is impossible. Thus, all communication is spin.
And despite the spin we’ve been fed about spin, spin is useful for far more than covering our butts; it can be used - and is already being used - to transform the quality of our lives, past, present, and future.
Those who will not admit this are far more dangerous than those who do. And, those who do not embrace this are far less effective than those who do.
The trouble is, the only ones currently embracing this idea are the scoundrels. While they’re using it to shape the world more to their liking, the rest of us are beating each other over the heads with our truths. But hey, at least we can pat ourselves on the back for being honest, right? Wrong. We can pat ourselves on the back for being ignorant, but somehow that’s not quite as gratifying.
I say, if we’re going to spin - and if we’re going to open our mouths we’re going to spin - we might as well be honest about it.
Of course, I could be wrong about this. In fact, something tells me that one day I’ll be sitting on my back porch scraping this off my shoe with all my other truths. But that’s not such a bad thing; you should see my collection.
Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 06:46 PM
Tags: spinShare Blair:
(6) Reader Comments about Spin - it isn’t just for liars anymore.
John Thomas says...
Blair,
This goes right along with a belief that I’ve held for a while (possibly influenced by reading your material, but I can’t say for sure where this idea came to me from). It is this:
Objectivity is a myth.
What I mean by that is this: as human beings, we can only hold in mind 7 + or - 2 pieces of information at any given time (that’s 5-9 bits of information at a time, to make it a clearer statement). Most any (I would say, probably, all) situation, scenario, viewpoint on anything or anyone has more than 9 pieces of information that COULD be relevant at any given time. That means that is literally impossible for a human being to be able to hold and evaluate all of the pertinent data on anything ever. (To be fair, it’s very likely at least some of that data may be unavailable to us at the necessary time of evaluation and/or decision). Because it is impossible to hold all the relevant information at the time of evaluation, it is PHYSICALLY impossible for human beings to be objective about anything.
And that means that we cannot communicate in a non-spin manner. It’s simply impossible.
By the way (and I’m sure to irk somebody by saying this), this also means that all our attempts at logic (including all skeptical analysis of anything), while useful (and it can be useful), is fallacious and imperfect, i.e. absolute logic is inherently illogical.
- John
Posted on 03/16/2008 at 09:15 PM
Blair Warren says...
Well, John. That’s certainly one way to spin it.
I hadn’t thought of the 7 + or - 2 angle with regard to this, but it does seem to lend a little credibility to the argument I’m trying to make.
Another interesting hiccup in the “objectivity is possible” argument that I can see is with the issue you raised about pertinent data.
Pertinent according to whom? Pertinent according to what end?
Both subjective questions that introduce personal biases into the equation.
I agree with your position about our attempts at logic being illogical. But as you point out, they are useful. And in many situations, they’re the best approach we have.
Of course, there are other aspects of life where logic isn’t quite so helpful or even welcome. The arts, romance, etc.
I’m afraid very few people are going to understand what I’m trying to get at with all of this. That’s what’s making the book so challenging (non spin translation: such a pain in the ass) to write.
How do I introduce the idea that we have more say so in the way we interpret the world than we’ve been led to believe without coming across as a “we create everything about our lives” kook?
It seems everyone wants to pin me down to one side or the other. Oh, how I hate that game.
I’ve heard from a couple of people who have been deeply distressed by my suggesting that their grasp of reality may not be as solid as they think it is.
I can certainly understand this position. When I was struggling in the darkest days of my depression, I was absolutely convinced that the my life and everything in it was, to put it frankly, shit. And I took great offense when someone tried to show me that there were things to be happy about. Though I was desperate to get over the depression, I couldn’t let go of the very interpretations that were keeping it in place.
Anyway, despite the humor I try to weave through my work, I do take all of this very seriously and am convinced I’m onto something.
But then, I’ve been there before.
Posted on 03/16/2008 at 10:20 PM
ellen says...
I won’t faint, as an accomplished spinner I will buy your book for any tips and wrinkles to polish my own performance.
Language, even for the articulate, is a very imprecise tool of communication. I can make what I think is a clear statement of fact or intention but I cannot control how it is received. I can make an assumption that my statement makes sense and then I can assume that the recipient has the mental equipment and/or willingness and interest to take the time to understand what I am trying to say. Neither of these is a given. Who knows what weird neural patterns are firing inside my recipients head? who knows what weirdness inside mine gave rise to my statement in the first place?
And yes, there is always intention. When I say hi to my neighbour it is a transaction. I am giving him a stroke of recognition in the hope of receiving one in return. I need that stroke to kid myself that I exist, however momentarily, in someone elses reality.
I used to try to be a good person, children who grow up being screamed at about evil and sin and wickedness often try this (in my case it was quite a while after I had drunk deep of all that deliciously forbidden wickedness and sin and evil-- with such a bad press who could resist?)
Luckily for both me and my victims, my stint as a good person came to an end through boredom. Eventually even I had to admit what an apalling pose it was. Being an intense and tortured soul I had taken to extremes the search for truth and I relished turning the spotlight of honesty on hypocrites and scoundrels everywhere, nothing like the moral high ground for scoring a few guilt-free points is there?
So, bored with righteousness, I turned the spotlight on myself.
What horrors I found! No truth, no honesty, no god to praise or blame, no meaning and worst of all no me, no separate soul or self. I was just a jumbled bag of borrowed bits of other peoples hand-me-down thoughts, half-remembered advertising slogans and religious threats all glued together with a few hero fantasies filched from the movies.
It was a bad day to wake up to, and a bad few years walking around thinking this stuff, knowing it to be real and to have integrity. Lonely too, as the fear that this type of thinking evokes in others is terrifying to behold.
Strangely though, I remember thinking this stuff when I was very young, but then the whole world seemed to conspire to beat it out of me, there’s a childrens story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ that captures this precisely.
So I tried to fit in as I’d come to realise that people only accept those who are exactly like themselves but I always knew that I was an imposter. It’s only quite recently that I’ve realised that we are all imposters, some of us knowing it, most of us not.
The reality is that each of us experiences the world from inside our own heads--we can’t get out.
This is the human condition.
And all our attempts to communicate, to spin, to control our world with words, violence, love, war or fancy notions of what is really going on are attempts to escape the prison of ourselves. If we get good at it (that is to string together enough moments of kidding ourselves to make a really coherent lie) we can kid ourselves that we have escaped but all we have done is expand the cell walls a little. We remake the world in our own image- it has to be in our own image for that is all we can ever see. We are still prisoners but now we are dreaming that we are free.
All our struggles for power, from cradle to grave are attempts to escape ourselves. If I can use my power on you for good or for ill, I can see a reaction, a result and I can take this as evidence that I exist, however momentarily, somewhere else than in the prison of myself.
This all sounds bleak, and it felt very bleak to me for a long time but it is curiously liberating. If I can value an idea, concept or belief for it’s usefulness to me rather than it’s ‘objective truth’ I can chuck it out when it no longer serves me and find something better. I can also tolerate the odd beliefs of others as being useful to them for whatever reason. This, I think, is the beginning of real compassion, for myself first (as ever self obssessed) and then for others. I can be just a person, with all the human limitations that go with that, rather than an impersonator.
So I still need your book, being just a person requires an ongoing awareness of our human limitations and I have not yet plumbed the depths of those. I want the most spacious prison cell I can get.
Posted on 03/17/2008 at 06:10 AM
Blair Warren says...
Ellen,
This is very strange. I traveled the very same psychological journey you describe and recall the feelings of alienation and despair you describe.
How odd we didn’t run into each other at the time.
But then, maybe that’s the point of the journey we took. It must be taken alone.
I also agree with you about it being curiously liberating, even though at the time it can be unbearable.
Now, on the other side of that journey, I wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned along the way for anything. I have earned every scar in my psyche and I intend to wear them proudly.
They sort of make me look like a pirate, no?
Are you familiar with a writer named Allen Wheelis? Something tells me you would love his work.
Here’s a sample from his last book (he passed away last year at 91) called The Way We Are:
“I am obsessed with death; and this obsession, I am convinced, is not a private terror but the unchanging backdrop to the stage of our existence. We block it from view with the contrived sets that we call reality, and though we know those sets to be fake we labor endlessly to make them look real. And as we go about those actions on that stage which accord with those sets, we come finally to believe that they are real. The backdrop behind them is forgotten.”
His writing gives me chills. I was lucky enough to speak with Dr. Wheelis briefly a month or so before he died. Someday I will write about that conversation. It was one I’ll never forget.
Posted on 03/17/2008 at 07:28 AM
Jan says...
This spin-post has the power to keep one soul-searching for at least a year or two....at least to a ‘spinner’ like me.
Rare. Very rare.
Complimenting you again Blair, not caring about the risk being regarded as ‘one who sucks up to an authority figure’, like Ellen mentioned in your previous post.
“But why do I compliment so easily. Why do I comment to this post at all? What’s the spin???”
Well, first, I don’t compliment that easily.
Second, that ain’t nobody’s business!
p.s. Can’t a man just give a compliment without having to explain himself to himself and to everybody else??? What’s the world coming to?!
Jan
Posted on 03/17/2008 at 01:56 PM
Carol says...
Blair,
You’re one deep person. This post on ‘spin’ was definitely some heavy duty stuff. Usually I come to your blog, gobble up whatever you have to say on any given topic then anxiously await your next thought provoking post. Very seldom have I left a comment. However, after reading this one and your latest entry about not finishing what we start, I knew I had to comment and see if I could get you to at least finish two things that you started.
1. Please finish your book..as soon as possible. Why? Because this post rocked...it has all the markings of being a classic. And this was just a taste. I’d certainly want to be among the first to read it. So hurry up. Will you?
2. And would you also write about the conversation you had with Dr. Wheelis. I had never heard of him before you mentioned him. Imagine how surprised I was after doing a bit of research to discover he may have written my life story. I have to find out for sure. So I ordered his 2 latest books.
I’ll be patiently watching and waiting.
Posted on 03/18/2008 at 12:27 PM
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