Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Welcome back to another episode of the Filter It Through a Brain Cell podcast, where you get a little smarter & a little harder to fool with each episode! So, just a quick update: for those of you who are listening in real time as these episodes are being released, it’s summer, yay!, which means we are out of school for the school year and our family has some trips planned, so I won’t be releasing 3 episodes a week like I normally do. My goal is to scale back to just 2 episodes a week on Monday & Thursday over the summer, so if you see fewer episodes and are wondering where the Tuesday episode is, that’s what’s up. I took the entire summer off last year and didn’t want to do that again…I want to keep episodes coming out consistently, so I think this is a good way that I can do that and still be able to have family time and travel, etc. So, just fyi.
Alright, Let’s start off today with a quick review of a fallacy we covered earlier this season, the Chronological Snobbery Fallacy. Chronological Snobbery is the belief that the ideas, discoveries, art, and architecture of societies in the past must be inferior b/c we are so much more advanced now.
The question to ask yourself if you think you’re facing Chronological Snobbery is this: “Is it really true that it’s better just b/c it’s new?” or “Is it really true that it’s invalid just b/c it’s old?”
If you want to review or hear more about this fallacy, go back & check out Episode 92.
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Alright, let’s dive into today’s new fallacy, the Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy. The Big Brain/Little Brain fallacy happens when a leader tells their followers to not ‘worry their little brains’ about something and let the leader do all the thinking for them because they’re smarter or have superior thinking abilities. These leaders could be a military leader, a cult leader, a hyper-controlling boss or an evil mastermind speaking to their minions *evil laugh* …Ok, just kidding about that one, but you may see something like that in movies and it’s a great example of this fallacy!
And yes, this is similar to the Blind Loyalty fallacy that I covered back in episode 96, in fact, this is almost an extreme example of the Blind Loyalty fallacy, but it’s unique enough that I decided to give it its own episode.
Ok, here’s a simple example of the Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy: Brian goes to college and joins a fraternity, and at the very first meeting, the leader of the fraternity says to all the new initiates: “Ok, all you new pukes, you’ll get along just fine here if you realize that you know nothing, we know everything and all you have to do is whatever we tell you to do.” Now, that sounds ridiculous, but I promise you, there are environments where just this sort of thing happens!
I’ve mentioned before that we used to be a part of a business group where there were some really manipulative tactics taught. This was one of them. This group had leaders who taught this very thing. They would say things like, “If I could just do brain surgery and replace your brain with my brain, you’d start getting amazing results in your business!” Now, on the surface, it just seems like they’re really passionate about teaching the new people what they know so that they can be successful as well, and for some of them, that was probably their motivation, and there’s truth to it. When we are learning a new skill from someone who already has the skill, you are kind of trying to put some of their brain into your brain…that’s how we learn and there’s nothing wrong with it. But, there’s a fine line between just trying to teach somebody something and trying to control them. When you can make someone believe that their brain and their thinking is inadequate and that therefore they should turn their thinking over to you b/c your thinking is superior, it’s a setup for a manipulative, controlling relationship. Because now they’re going to start doubting themselves and wondering if ANYTHING they think is good or right, and, taken to the extreme, they’ll start to believe that NOTHING they think is right and that they have to rely on the other person’s thinking for EVERYTHING. Can you see the fine line between learning from somebody and turning your thinking over to somebody? Big difference!
The problem behind this fallacy is that it’s a form of manipulation. Telling someone that their thinking is inferior so they should just let you think for them is a bid to try to control someone. Think about it. If you’ve convinced someone that they don’t know how to think well and should just blindly trust you, you could tell them to do some crazy stuff! And that has absolutely happened in history, I’ll give you an example in just a minute. The other problem behind this fallacy is that there’s nothing wrong with your brain.Sure, you might have things you need to learn…we all do…but there’s nothing wrong with that. The answer to now knowing things is to TEACH someone those things so that they can know them for themselves, not to tell them to just let you do the thinking for them. If anyone ever tells you to let them do the thinking for you, you should have red flags going off in your brain!
As you know, I love reading about WW2 and this fallacy has its roots in Adolf Hitler’s ideology and the organizational structure of the Nazy Party in Germany during the 1930s & 1940s. One of the words for this fallacy is the German word Fuhrerprinzip. And as you probably just guessed, I don’t speak German and I’m sure I butchered the pronunciation of that word! But anyways, Fuhrerprinzip means “Leadership principle” and in Nazi Germany, it represented absolute obedience and loyalty to Hitler himself, who was referred to as the Fuhrer.
According to the Führerprinzip, all authority and decision-making power rested with the Führer, and his orders were to be followed without question. This centralized authority structure allowed Hitler to hold power and control over all aspects of German society, including politics, the military, and various organizations and it had the effect of suppressing the will of the people and ensuring that people knew they werent’ allowed to disagree with their leader. As you can imagine, Führerprinzip and the ideology it represented were highly controversial and closely associated with the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime, including the Holocaust. Big Brain/Little Brain is a bad leadership ideology and very often leads to people being subjugated and hurt.
So, the question to ask yourself when someone is trying to convince you that you should think with their brain is this: “Is it really true that I should outsource my thinking to that person?” *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?”
