Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Let’s start off with a quick review. This was part 7 of the manipulation mini-series we covered earlier in the season: love-bombing. Love-bombing is an attempt to influence another person through over-the-top or unnatural displays of attention or affection.It’s typically used to create loyalty and obedience in a person.
The Question to ask yourself if you think you’re being love-bombed is: “Does this person have an ulterior motive for treating me in such an over-the-top way?”
If you want to hear more about love-bombing, check out Episode 52.
Ok, so today we’re wrapping up with Part 3 of the 3 Laws of Logic. If you didn’t catch parts 1 & 2, go back to episodes 107 & 108 to check them out. This little 3-part series has been a way to introduce Formal Logic in a simple way, and these 3 Laws of Logic are meaningful to us today and will help us recognize bad thinking when we see it.
So, the 3rd Law of Logic is called the Law of the Excluded Middle. The Law of the Excluded Middle states that for any proposition, it’s true or its negation or its opposite is true. In other words, there is no middle ground - something is either true or false, and there are no other options.
An example of this is a light switch. When you flip a light switch, it can either be on or off. Again, there is no middle ground - the switch is either in the on position or the off position. There is no possibility of the switch being in some sort of in-between state.
Another example is the weather. Let's say that the statement is "It is raining outside." This statement is either true or false. There is no possibility of it being partially true or partially false. If it is raining, then the statement is true. If it is not raining, then the statement is false.
Here’s why this law matters and one of the ways we see it being violated in culture today: It matters when it comes to our pursuit of truth. If you remember from the interview I did with Elizabeth Urbanowicz in episode 62, one of the things she talked about was something called worldview. Your worldview is how you view the world, how you determine what’s true and what’s not true, how you view yourself and other people. Everybody has a worldview, whether they know it or not. One of the problems in society today is that so many people are comfortable operating with a worldview that is full of contradictions. They may hear or see the truth, but they don’t want to accept or believe it, so they learn to get comfortable living with contradictions and have convinced themselves that those contradictions are ok, that they’re both true and they’re ok with holding contradictory viewpoints and not working to settle them in their minds.
There is no shortage of people out there telling you their “truths” and there are really smart & convincing-sounding people on both sides of pretty much every issue out there. And we have a general public that is woefully lacking in logic and the ability to think well, so they don’t know how to filter the messages they’re getting. And the result of that is people ‘believe’ something without knowing why they believe it, or they believe things that are completely contradictory and they don’t even know it. And most people don’t recognize the contradictions that other people hold b/c they don’t even recognize them so they can’t challenge their thinking. But not me, and not you. We are learning to recognize contradictions and say, ‘no, these two things can’t both be true, so we need to press in a little further and really seek the truth in this matter.’ It is a worthy goal.
Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search a matter out.” To paraphrase, it’s God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to search it out. Guys, it’s a privilege and a responsibility to seek truth. We should not be content to live in a murky place of contradiction. It’s ok to be there, but not to stay there. We need to be doing the work to find the Truth.
The Law of the Excluded Middle compels us to keep pressing in, to keep looking for Truth with a capital T b/c I believe there is truth and we can know it. And knowing Truth will change the world.
Question to ask yourself here is really simple: “What’s the truth here?” *repeat*
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: “Is that really true?”
