[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #8 Name-calling: Primitive Thinking that Shuts Thinking Down

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #8

February 12, 2018

Thinking is in Short Supply #3

 

NAME-CALLING

Primitive Thinking that Shuts Thinking Down

 

All politicians all do it.  At least, I can't think of a single politician
who doesn't do it.  Yet in name-calling, they are actually practicing a very
primitive form of thinking.  It is one that is appropriate for a seven-year
old or maybe a 13-year old, but not for an adult.  Actually, it is a form of
pseudo-thinking that shuts down healthy thinking.

 

Now there's a particular kind of name-calling that Donald Trump does.  I
never liked it, yet it was often funny, and sometimes incredibly
entertaining.  And what would you expect from a successful TV entertainer
and producer (The Apprentice) or from a successful business man who knows
how to establish a brand (the Trump Brand)?   During the campaign, he gave
names to his opponents, names that typically stuck: lying Ted, crooked
Hillary, Pocahontas, etc.  This simple kind of name-calling strikes me as
what young children do, sometimes for play, sometimes to torment other
children.  It also stops thinking.  Once you label someone in that way, the
conversation is over.

 

A more insidious form of name-calling is making a judgment about someone and
then presenting that judgment as if it was a fact.  This is what many of the
Democrats do in response to Trump.  They make a judgment that he is unfit to
be president or is mentally deranged or something else and then they use
those terms to describe him.  While it is also name-calling, it is more
hidden.  Once they describe him with their judgment terms they do not own
that it is their judgment.  They try to sneak it in as a fact.

 

This form of name-calling confuses two levels of information- descriptive
and evaluative.  Yet when a person cannot make this distinction, that person
can never be a professional communicator.  You can find that statement over
and over in the early NLP literature and it was made to introduce the
importance of sorting out what is sensory-based (see, hear, feel, etc.) as a
description.  A description that is empirical versus those that are
evaluative based.  The first set of descriptions use the sensory predicates.
The second set use the Meta-Model distinctions that are ill-formed-
unspecified nouns and verbs, nominalizations, lost performatives, universal
quantifiers, etc.

 

Descriptive language can be immediately tested because it is empirical and
available to your eyes and ears.  Evaluative language cannot be seen or
heard.  It is an evaluation by someone using some values, criteria, and
standards.  So when you use evaluative language, you are engaged in a
high-level and subtle form of name-calling.  "You are rude."  "She is very
gracious."  "He is hateful."  "She is a racist."  "They are blind to their
prejudices."

 

All of that is just name-calling.  It is using and imposing evaluative
judgments on someone.  All that it accomplishes is to prejudice people
against someone that the person doesn't like.  To the question as to why
someone thinks, say, or does what they do, this is the answer.  It gives
people an answer and thereby enables them to stop thinking.  It fallaciously
"explains" the person's actions that they dislike.  This kind of
name-calling offers a false answer that shuts down further inquiry.


 

Name-calling confuses map with territory.  The word (as a map) is then
assumed to be the real thing (the territory).  It is as if the word is the
reality.  The strange thing about this is that if the person reacts to this
name-calling by vehemently reacting- that very reaction then encourages more
name-calling.  The reactiveness fuels the person doing the name-calling
because it works in that if it galls the person, upsets him, and "gets" him.

 

It is stereotypical thinking that feeds name-calling.  We make a judgment
about someone based on a stereotype about some classification assuming that
"everybody in the class is essentially the same."  That stops any fresh
thinking that considers the person based on his or her uniqueness.  Malcolm
Gladwell spoke of this in his book, Blink (2005) by quoting psychologist
Keith Payne:

"When we make a split-second decision, we are really vulnerable to being
guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necssarily
endorse or believe. (P. 223)

 

This map-territory confusion can seem "magical."  Because we don't question
the name calling, we take it as real.  It is a negative form of reframing.
So where reframing puts a positive spin and meaning on what we would
normally find challenging, name-calling uts a negative spin and meaning on
what we might otherwise value.  In this way, name-calling creates disvalue
as it attempts to set a negative anchor.

 

The next time you hear name-calling, whether it is overtly in the way Trump
does it or more covertly as others do it- remember it is designed to stop
thinking and to make robust inquisitive thinking in short supply.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


    ISNS new logo

    

 

Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
subscription, sign up on www.neurosemantics.com.   On that website you can
click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
find a Meta-Coach see  <http://www.metacoachfoundation.org>
www.metacoachfoundation.org.   For Neuro-Semantic Publications --- clink
Products, there is also a catalog of books that you can download.   

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20180211/c194e303/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 10627 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20180211/c194e303/attachment-0001.jpg>