ï»żHey whatâs up Thinkers! Happy New Year! Can I just say how thankful I am that youâre interested in this topic of learning to think well, learning to love God with your mind, and that you realize how incredibly important it is to develop these skills! Whew, Iâll tell you what there have been so many things that Iâve heard recently that have got my brain churningâŠlike AI, Artificial Intelligence. In fact, Iâm going to do an episode this week with some thoughts on AI and how I *think* itâs going to affect our lives, and especially the lives of our children, and why itâs more important than ever to learn how to be a human being as a human being ought to be, which is where good thinking, goodness, truth all come into play.
This leads me to the next thing I want to let you know about: Iâve been talking for a while about creating a resource for you to be able to practice identifying and thinking through the fallacies either for yourself or with your kids. Well, itâs coming this month! Iâm super excited to be bringing you a way to truly practice the skills of good thinking with other people & families who are also serious about seeking the truth. Iâll be bringing you real-world examples and providing the means for good, deep conversation to identify good & bad thinking and develop discernment and seek truth in a world filled with an ever-growing amount of lies & falsities. My 15-year-old daughter is also going to be helping me out with it, so for those of you who listen to the podcast with your kids, hopefully youâll enjoy the conversations, too, with another teenager already participating. Iâll be putting out the info first to those on my email list, so if youâre not on there already, please sign up! Just go to filteritthroughabraincell.com/contact and you can sign up for my email list and youâll get all the details about this when it launches!
Also new for 2023 is some new branding, which Iâm super excited about, and Iâm working on a few ideas for merchandise! Of course, the first thing Iâll be starting with is stickers, b/c who doesnât love a good water bottle sticker?! Itâll be super fun, and I canât wait to share it with you guys!
Ok, letâs dive into todayâs new fallacy: Glittering Generalities. Glittering Generalities is a type of logical fallacy that occurs when someone uses vague and emotionally charged language to make a claim, without providing any concrete evidence or reasoning to support it. The idea is to appeal to people's feelings and values, rather than their logic and reasoning. This phrase is used to describe any set of ideas or principles that are appealing but nonspecific. The Glittering Generalities fallacy is actually categorized as a form of Propaganda and is sometimes also called Glowing Generalities.
Interestingly, the phrase originated during the mid-1800s fight to end slavery. One of the arguments that those who were against slavery were using came straight from the Constitution, such as âall men are created equalâ and therefore had natural rights to âlife, liberty and the pursuit of happinessâ. These were part of their argument to end slavery. Well, those who were against them and were arguing to keep slavery called those phrases from the Constitution âglittering and sound generalitiesâ and felt the antislavery representatives were going to ruin the union. Even President Abraham Lincon used the phrase in an1859 letter to Henry Pierce saying that those Constitutional phrases werenât just Glittering Generalities, but instead they are "definitions and axioms of free society."
So, hereâs an example of what this fallacy sounds like. Let's say that someone is trying to sell a product and they claim that it is "the best" or "totally amazing." These are examples of Glittering Generalities because they don't provide any specific information about what makes the product "the best" or "amazing." They are just vague, emotionally charged words that are meant to appeal to people's feelings and values.
In fact, Glittering Generalities happens a lot in advertising. If youâre on my email list, Iâve sent out an email to you today with some examples of them, but here are a few: Starbucks had an ad with a cup of coffee and the saying: âThe best coffee for the best youâ. HmmâŠis it really the best coffee for me? What are they basing it on? Or how about Appleâs marketing slogan: âThink differentâ. Um, okâŠsounds good, but how does that help me decide whether buying an Apple computer is the best option for me? The reality is, itâs not. It was designed to appeal to peopleâs desire to feel like theyâre âdifferentâ, an âout of the boxâ kind of person.
The problem behind Glittering Generalities is theyâre just meant to create or stir emotion and make people feel either pleasant or unpleasant feelings without actually providing any reasoning to support their claim. They want you to get on board with whatever theyâre saying without questioning whether what theyâre saying is actually true or not.
Hereâs another example: During a political campaign, a candidate made the claim that their opponent was âunpatrioticâ and âdid not love Americaâ. These are examples of Glittering Generalities b/c they are vague, emotionally charged words that donât provide any specific information about what they mean by âunpatrioticâ and ânot loving Americaâ.
So, the question to ask yourself when youâre facing a Glittering Generality is this: âAre there actually any merits to back up their claims?â *repeat* Ok, thatâs it for todayâŠ
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: âIs that really true?â
