Syllogisms,Points to Ponder,Iconoclasm Through Circular Reasoning,Rationalization & RELATIVE STANDING

Syllogisms,Points to Ponder,Iconoclasm Through Circular Reasoning,Rationalization & RELATIVE STANDING By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

{Perfection is doing things right and nobleness is doing the right thing.}

Syllogisms:

{Once you are initiated into the mysteries of this arcane science; you have at your command the spurious plausibility. There is no statement then you may not assert with complete confidence and everyone will buy the illegitimate shifting of terminologies.}

Ø A hedonist acquaintance of mine proves that people of his sect are wrongly believed to have Spartan existence. 

Ø No rich man can be charged with non-payment of taxes as only rich pay taxes.

Ø Teachers manage this school, I am a teacher, and therefore, I manage this school.

Ø Children in this house eat most of the deserts, he is a child, and therefore, he will eat most of the deserts.

Points to ponder

Ø Aesthetic sense is feeling the big facts in ordinary occurrences: ‘nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical.

Ø Hollywood description of ‘Heroes’ is so deeply hammered into modern man through stream of movies that historians may, as I fear, be forced to fictionalize history so that modern readers believe that great figures in history did great wonders after ‘strange wanderings, or having been healed in strange waters’; and valiant dissidents stood up to tyrants having drunk poisons that had stimulated them like drugs’. Our concept of heroes, poignantly ‘rests on a ridiculous confusion that certain primary principles or relations will become interesting when they are damaged, but are bound to be depressing when they are intact’.

Ø Waiting for experience in order to write is simply a confession of incapacity to experience anything’: every writer is then autobiographer.

Iconoclasm through circular reasoning:

{Circular reasoning is incorrect reasoning because the very thing that is to be proved is wrongly assumed to be true in the first place; however, everything that is assumed to be true in the first place is not always wrongly assumed to be true but iconoclastic approach applies circular reasoning to create subtly such an impression.}

Example:

Ø People in one epoch assume something to be true such as ‘engaging in sexual intercourse with a person to whom one is not married is a sin’; and then declare: ‘since premarital intercourse is, by definition, without the institution of marriage, it is therefore, a sin’. Interestingly, people in other epoch may have opposite assumption and so opposite declaration. People those see and see rightly relativism are seen forced to withdraw from the social mainstream. People instead of being lionized for being independent of the collective judgment are witch hunted.  

Rationalization through generalization:

Ø Straitjacket embodies the eternal principle: Not protecting a person from himself is a great crime as the failure in this regard has serious implications for a person himself and people around him. USA has and will always continue sacrificing for deposing rulers through out world.

Rationalization through circular reasoning:

Ø Black are incapable of learning, and since they are incapable, educating them is a waste of time and money.

RELATIVE STANDING AND RECEDING HORIZON

 (Modern man is no longer characterized by personal impotency emanating from fatalism but by a psycho-social complex of norms based on democratic orientation that imply implicit faith on egalitarianism and meritocracy as value concept. Mass media act as mobility multipliers; infusing people with diffused rationality; consequently ways of thinking and acting cease to be articles of faith and become instrument of intention.

The rise of Political Marketing as the privileged forum for the transmission of political cues is the response to needs of time as all parties need political campaign not because they know it will deliver but because they do not know for sure it will not.

Article draws upon socio-cultural perspectives in seeking to understand how cultural, social and economic changes mediated by industrialization influence the way people relate to political parties or leaders).  

For the sake of structural intactness; traditional culture permits individuals to flourish only within not beyond. As boundaries that set one class apart from others are permanent; individuals of one class can aspire to be better than what they already are by birth. Every class has its own heroes and pursues to emulate only their achievements.  

Traditional cultures established quite firm guidelines for intersubjective comparison, presenting a limited set of role and behavioral models to guide tastes. In traditional culture ‘Best’ is relative to class. Best of lower class can be worse than worse of upper-class; but urban societies are egalitarian believing in equality of opportunities and rights; and each class is fully alive to safeguard its rights to have more or less same access to facilities as others classes have; and any inequality in this regard unleashes potent backlash.      

“The consumer society creates an ‘open set’ of inter subjective comparison. It is not so much what one has as the relationship between what one has and what others (the more successful) have that is most relevant: the concern with ‘relative standing,’ the continual scanning of the social landscape to ascertain how others are doing and to compare one’s condition with theirs”.

No society can be egalitarian in perfect sense of word. Certain policies can leave certain classes with impression of being persecuted or any policy can have inadvertent or ricochet effects that create social imbalance. Sense of being discriminated and consequent emanating of ire is cashed in on by parties; and ads appear featuring pledges to redress the wrong and restore equality.

Urban societies are marked by discontent; insatiable cravings to have more and more underlie malaise that imbues every segment of population. There is always something not in possession that is better than possessed best, and when that better is attained another better is simply in the offing.   

“Unlike traditional societies where forms of wealth and social success, like the forms of satisfaction, tend to remain the same over long periods, a market society undermines fixed standards. Competition for social honor is freer, but victory is fleeting, since criteria for success are always subject to redefinition. An individual’s striving for a permanent place of distinction is like the pursuit of a mirage across the desert. The horizon of social honor recedes as one approaches it”.

Contentment as a virtue good for individuals but bad for political marketing; as lies in insatiable craving the alluring promises ads can dangle to tantalize voters; this is to say, that mirage is fertile breeding ground of ideas employed in constructing messages and contains within it the unending prospects for the future of political communication as the ‘HORIZON ALWAYA RECEDES’ As long as animal keep chasing its tail the supply of ideas for running election campaign would never dry up.