I’ve heard it said that there are four types of people:
I’d like to think I belong to the first group, especially in regards to my business. Continue reading Groupthink. Sort of.
If you listen to the media, Al “I invented the Internet” Gore, and many of the self-appointed expert witnesses we call Hollywood stars, you’d count Chicken Little as an underachiever. It seems that, every other day, we get another politician telling us that we must limit carbon emissions, or that the pollution on our planet is all our fault (humans in general, and America, specifically). According to the prevailing wisdom:
Let’s look at the last one first. Continue reading Gullible’s Travels
I have a great family. Like all families, you care about all of your siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, and kids. Like all families, there are some you would like even if you weren’t related to them – and some that you wouldn’t. What’s good about family members you really like is that you can disagree with them, but still love them and care about them – agree to disagree, if you will. What’s bad is that sometimes they do something you vehemently disagree with, but you love them, so you don’t do what you would normally do with a perfect stranger – use your powers of persuasion, logic, reason, and oratory to reduce their position to dust, leaving them a quivering mass of protoplasm.
I have such a family member. My registered Republican brother-in-law, we’ll call him “Joe the Contractor” for anonymity sake, is proudly sporting a “Texans for Obama” bumper sticker.
Oh, the shame! Continue reading When loved ones cross over into the dark side.
groupthink (grūp’thĭngk’) n. The act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view.
It is a part of human nature to want to belong. Belonging takes many forms – families, clubs, schools, sports teams and their fans, and even politics. In society, many of us classify themselves by labels that indicate to which group we belong. Conservative. Liberal. Republican. Democrat. But where things get weird is when one group takes hold of the idea that their ideas and beliefs are not only superior to the other groups, but that the other groups are stupid, wrong, and even dangerous.
Welcome to politics in 2008. Continue reading Groupthink.