Traps of Logic and Reasoning

8/2/2019 Traps of Logic and Reasoning

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The purpose of this e-guide is to help arm with knowledge those who choose to live consciously.On the path of your own conscious evolution, you will no doubt come across various mental andemotional traps. These traps will not only test your self-discipline, but also your ability to discerntheir presence and false-hood amongst other truths. Bringing these traps into your consciousawareness is the only way you'll be able to avoid them. As you progress, you will become more andmore adept at identifying the traps of logic and reason which hold unconscious people back.

At the same time, I wish to put forth the following disclaimer:

It is not my intent to purposely aggravate and stir the pot in regards to ideologies. I respectand admire everyone's opinions and beliefs, as they are reective of individual choice. This e-guide was created for the sake of completeness in illustrating the eects ofemotionalbias on a

world-wide scale, beyond the individual. With that said, an un-biased look at the aws andshort-comings of reasoning allow those to extract the power to proceed via consciousunderstanding.

For those who wish to stop reading here, head on over to ThinkNowLiveNow for moreinvaluable information.

This e-guide was written/created byJason Demakis,owner and creator ofThinkNowLiveNow Page 1
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This e-guide was originally the nal chapter ofThe Beginners Guide to Living Consciously, But I

decided to make it its own e-guide. This allowed me a little more wiggle room to expand on theseconcepts so that YOU, the reader, can get the most out of them. I honestly thought about leaving thisnal chapter out, as I gured it would probably rub a few too many people the wrong way. But for allintents and purposes, this site and guide are about informing you on things other people miss ordisregard. With that said, I found it informative to include a quick breakdown so you can see how lackof emotional discipline can cause severe issues not only on the individual level, but insome of ourbiggest institutions as well.

This e-guide is a very dense, abstract look at the faculties which we use to deduce truth andreason, exposing their aws to help better understand ourselves and how we relate to oneanother. This is perhaps the deepest level of development, for this knowledge gives you furthercourage and determination to begin living consciously. The below might seem a bit technical andbrash, but it serves the purpose of informing those who would otherwise fall prey to these traps. All

that I ask is that the reader keep an open mind while wading through this information for the rsttime. Those who do will benet from a bigger picture view of their relationship and understandingof knowledge as a whole.

Before we can fully discuss how logic and reasoning play a large role in how each of us interacts withreality (as well as extracts knowledge through experience), I nd it necessary to analyze the faculty ofthe intellect of the human mind. The mind is a wondrous machine, capable of analyzing, storing andaccessing information far beyond the greatest computers we've ever known. But without consciousawareness of the use of the intellect, you can actually end up blocking yourself from deeperunderstanding of any given issue. This will make more sense as you read on.

The intellect is overrated and underrated because few understand its true purpose. In truth,

the intellect is a passive tool that evolves a given input towards an output according to certainrules and takes a premise toward its logical conclusion. But like a computer, it passively carriesout its programmed function without true creativity of its own. What the intellect producesdepends on two things: its input and programming, both of which originate from outside itself

and are therefore unguarded sources of corruption. As the saying goes, garbage in garbage out:

with a corrupted input comes corrupted output. And even with perfect input, if the rules are



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incomplete or sloppily applied then the output is likewise garbled. So for all its virtues, theintellect alone is insucient for eective truth seeking.-Thomas Cox

You see, it's not so much that people are ignorant as they are simply not using their mentalequipment correctly. A lack of critical analyzation of input of data leads to an automatic(unconscious) choice based on assumption.

Reread that sentence until it makes sense to you.

You are quite literally choosingto simply assume that whatever information you are receiving is100% accurate and true. The above assertion reveals the fundamental aw in the majority of people'sreasoning on any given subject or topic of discussion.

At this point you might be saying Well, that's not necessarily true. I can tell when someone is lying tome, therefore I don't always believe what I hear. And you'd be correct in stating that. But what aboutan area as complex as the arena of politics? How to do you personally relate to thatinformation? Whatis inuencing your decision making in regards to whom you vote for? Are you aware of the trueveracity of your choices in life?

What follows is a brief and to-the-point analysis of the mental traps you will encounter on thepath of conscious personal progress. Their use and validity is left up to you as a consciousindividual to decide for yourself. Upon completing this e-guide, I hope to inspire and motivateyou into taking control of your situation, as well as understand why choiceis so integral topersonal growth.



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It is not a matter of choosing from a smorgasbord of ideologies and rejecting the awed, theself-contradictory, and the over-simple, in favor of the unawed, the complex enough. Where isit writ in adamantine that semi-carnivorous monkeys can or should be capable ofunderstanding reality? That seems to me one of the rst illusions and one of the moreprideful illusions of human culture: that a nal understanding is possible in the rst place.Better, I think, to try and frame questions which can do it questions which can do it andleave o searching for answers, because answers are like operating systems: theyre being

upgraded faster than you can keep up with it.-Terence McKenna

ideology |dlj; id-|noun1 ( pl. -gies) a system of ideas and ideals, esp. one that forms the basis of economic or politicaltheory and policy : the ideology of republicanism. the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual

Quite simply, ideologies are the belief systems that people choose to adopt. This can range fromanything from political parties, to religion, science, medicine and even sports teams. People tend tohave an emotional bias towards certain ideas, concepts or beliefs which are then congruent withexternal systems mutually shared with others. The important thing to take away from this is that

belief is attached to emotion.

Emotional response is strong enough to overpower your ability to think and study topics froman unbiased perspective. Relative to an individual with low self-discipline for personalprogress, anything and everything that challenges the norm is viewed as erroneous,delusional or conspiracy because they cannot replicate or substantiate yourlevel ofunderstanding. They cannot reach conclusions that you have because you took the time to ndand connect more pieces of the puzzle.

Whypeople choose fear, greed and ignorance over truth, understanding and love will become moreand more apparent to you as you see how all these pieces relate to one another. This is what I meantearlier by holisticunderstanding.



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The problem with overrating the intellect comes from thinking that through accurateapplication of the rules, one can produce an accurate output, which ignores the possibility ofincomplete or false input. In practical terms this implies that intellectuals (or lets say stubbornskeptics who pride themselves on scientic objectivity) refuse to question the root assumptionfrom which they are logically reasoning. These root assumptions originate with statementsmade by potentially fallible sources of external authority like group consensus, prolicacademics, university curriculums, and irrational biases rooted in nancial and social survivalthat embed themselves into institutional policies. When confronted with truths that contradictthese, rather than revise incomplete or false assumptions, intellectuals use them to rationalizeaway counter-examples and counter-reasoning, thereby misappropriating the intellect intofortifying the walls of their mental prison.-Thomas Cox

At best, ideologies function as ways to describe a persons thought process and perceptions about theworld around them. The problem is, at present, we tend to become emotionallybiased in ourperception of people of a dierent political party or sports team. Subconsciously, we tend judgeothers. It is precisely this ego attachment that is ultimately responsible.

The problem with ideologies is not only do they limit the individual (by behaving as though they aremutually exclusive/exhaustive), but they also subconsciously attach via the ego. The person feels

emotionallyconnected to their particular ideology, and an attack on said ideology is then perceivedas an attack on the person themselves. Without conscious awarenessof the intelligentuse ofemotion, irrational logic, reasoning and actions result.

Lack of conscious awareness to emotional bias and impulse leads to lack of consciousawareness of logic and reasoning. This is precisely the same phenomena that people use torationalize their way out of exercising, eating healthy and fullling their dreams. Emotionbecomes the guiding hand of logic instead ofconscious choice.

Ideology, by function, are closed sets of logic which rationalize away counter reasoning and truth bydeducing conclusions via methods of investigation rooted in emotionalism. These closed setsremain incapable of expansion and growth becausetheir purpose is in the business of reningrather than expanding.Their very existence is to interpret raw data by use of their particular

brand of logical reasoning which is rooted heavily inemotional (aka selective reasoning) bias.While the intelligent person deals with the raw data of experience from an unbiased emotionalperspective, ideologies reverse the process and blind their follows to absolute truth via runawayemotion or intellectual arrogance.

In layman's terms, this implies that people adopt belief systems out of emotional biases that



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they may not even be consciously aware of. Thus, their entire worldview and perception isbiased by emotion of an unconscious nature.

In this next section, we are going to take a look at the most common intellectual traps involvingideology. We will see the benets as well as the limitations of each, and how to eectively utilize themin one's own personal progress. The benet of this information is invaluable. To limit your potentialto what you currently understand is to shoot yourself in the foot in regards to personal growth.In this case, knowledge truly is power.

Below, plain as day, are the traps which limit people in regards to reaching their full potential. Howyou chooseto interpret and relate to this information is up to you, but know that proceeding withan open and un-biased mind will change the way in which you relate to the types of informationyou encounter.



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I nd it very interesting that even the Wikipedia entry about logical fallacies references emotionalexploitation:

In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is usually an improper argumentation in reasoning resulting in amisconception or presumption. By accident or design, fallacies may exploit emotional triggersin the listener or interlocutor (appeal to emotion), or take advantage of social relationshipsbetween people (e.g. argument from authority). Fallacious arguments are often structured usingrhetorical patterns that obscure any logical argument.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy

You can see many examples of fallacies on that Wikipedia entry alone, but for the sake of practicalitywe will be focusing on the most common. Insight into the realm of logical manipulation and

persuasion reveals much about how we relate to the information around us.

Whether you were currently aware of it or not, logical fallacies are the name of the game ininstitutions such as politics, news and media. Here's an example in the form of a statistic you are

probably well aware of:

Assertion:College graduates earn $1,000,000 more than those with only a high school diplomaover the course of their lifetime. Therefore, the only way to truly be successful is to graduatecollege.



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The problem with that statement:

Anybody who has gotten a passing grade in statistics knows what's wrong with this line ofargument. A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and eect. It mayreect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people arelikely to go to college. To cite the extreme and obvious example: Bill Gates is rich because heknows how to run a business, not because he matriculated at Harvard. Finishing his degreewouldn't have increased his income. -Forbes.comhttp://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0202/060.html

I would also encourage you to read the article in the link above. It won't take more than ve minutes,and it will give you a really good idea of how freewill choicecan easily become biased by emotionalmanipulation.

The above section should make this one obvious. With emotionencouragedto fuel decisionmaking, people can be coerced into accepting false reasoning for the benet of others. At present,our society has embedded within it multiple institutions who's best interest is to keep you ignorant.Your ignorance guarantees you'll make the choices which benet them at your expense. For ifyou had the knowledgethat you were being manipulated in the rst place (like this guide isoering you), you'd understand you have a choicein the matter. Recognizing your ability toexercise freewill choiceis the rst step in breaking out of this trap.

By leveraging emotionssuch as fear, worryand doubt, it then becomes possible to manipulate largepopulations of people into making choices which cause eects of your choosing. Think this soundstoo fantastical and far fetched to be real? Consider the fact that the advertising industry investsbillions of dollars annually into the study of subconscious mind control. This allows them to optimize

their advertising to appeal to the most vulnerable emotionsthat will persuade (bias) their targetaudience into purchasing their product or service. It is no coincidence that sex, violence and deathare leveraged so much in the media; they invoke deepest and most primal urges and desires.

Because of this reason alone, you should not respect nor tolerate people, institutions and orpolicies who can only operate by directly manipulating and exploiting the ignorance of theirtarget audience. It is then up to the audience to educate themselves on that which controlsthem. This is the purpose of conscious personal development; to take back control and yourrightful sovereignty as a human being.

The next section will expand on what happens when fallacies go ignored, and un-intelligent actionpursues.

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Group consensus occurs when several individuals set out to reach/deduce a conclusion. Instead ofone individual making a decision, multiple perspectives oers a more eective way of approachingproblems in need of solutions. However, it is quite common for a group of people to fall prey to thesymptoms of groupthink in this setting.

Groupthink, a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a groupmakes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of mental eciency,reality testing, and moral judgment (p. 9). Groups aected by groupthink ignore alternativesand tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups. A group is especiallyvulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group isinsulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.-http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm

Because of this, otherwise infallible sources of authority (such as the news and media) can assert falseclaims and logic due to faulty reasoning via emotionalimpulse.If you've readThe Beginners Guideto Living Consciously, you're probably starting to notice how the Three Principles of Growthpermeate all aspects of our lives. Perhaps now you are starting to understand just how important ittruly is to remain consciously awareofthought, emotionand actionat all times regardlessofthe setting.



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You've encountered the eects of groupthink in areas such as politics (especially democracy), school

boards, business management and marketing and statistics. Group think is not limited to theseexamples, however. You can experience groupthink on a smaller scale in your own life with yourfamily, co-workers and even your own business. It is not limited solely to the institutions of the world,but active (much like most fallacies and traps of logic) in our daily lives in ways you may be presentlyunaware.

Examples of groupthink ascoes studied by Janis include US failures to anticipate the attackon Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the escalation of Vietnam war, and the ill-fatedhostage rescue in Iran. Current examples of groupthink can be found in the decisions of theBush administration and Congress to pursue an invasion of Iraq based on a policy ofpreemptive use of military force against terrorists and rogue nations. The decision to rush towar in Iraq before a broad-based coalition of allies could be built has placed the US in anunenviable military situation in Iraq that is costly in terms of military deaths and casualties,

diplomatic standing in the world, and economically.-http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm

The benets of group consensus only occur if the logical reasoning behind it is sound and un-biased. Since that is almost always not the case, it's important to understand some of the common

ways in which group consensus can actually do more harm than help. As far as limitations go, you cansimply end up with irrational choices. Like a house built upon a foundation of toothpicks, if the baseof the argument itself is awed, everything built upon it will crumble. It shouldn't take long for anany intelligent individuals to realize that the convenience of culture is not an adequatesubstitute to thinking for yourself.

Group Polarization is a phenomena that occurs in which groups of people end up agreeing on termsthat are much more extreme and over-driving than their original intentions. For example:

Similar eects of group polarization are evident in the U.S. legal system. In jury deliberations,an essentially random group of people must come to a mutual consensus over whether or notthe accused individual is guilty or innocent. Throughout a trial, after discussing with each other,

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the group may decided on a punishment that was either harsher or more lenient than what anyindividual juror in the group would have decided individually prior to the group discussion.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization#Government.2C_public_policy.2C_and_the_law

BandwagonEect is a phenomena that occurs in which an individual decides to join a group simplybecause it is perceived as being the right way to go or the right thing to do. For example:

In the 1994 study of Robert K. Goidel and Todd G. Shields in The Journal of Politics, 180students at the University of Kentucky were randomly assigned to nine groups and were askedquestions about the same set of election scenarios. About 70% of subjects received informationabout the expected winner (Goidel and Shields 807). Independents, which are those who do notvote based on the endorsement of any party and are ultimately neutral, were inuencedstrongly in favor of the person expected to win (Goidel and Shields 807-808). Expectationsplayed a signicant role throughout the study. It was found that independents are twice aslikely to vote for the Republican candidate when the Republican is expected to win. From theresults, it was also found that when the Democrat was expected to win, independentRepublicans and weak Republicans were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate(Goidel and Shields 808).-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_eect#Use_in_politics

Information Cascadeis very similar to the Bandwagon Eect, in that people observe the actions andchoices of others, and then make those same choices and actions for themselves. This is basedheavily on emotionalbias of the decision making process, as the individual chooses as others havechosen, rather than consciously choosingfor themselves. For example:

Information cascades occur in situations where seeing many people make the same choiceprovides evidence that outweighs one's own judgment. That is, one thinks: "It's more likely thatI'm wrong than that all those other people are wrong. Therefore, I will do as they do."In what has been termed a "reputational cascade", late responders sometimes go along with thedecisions of early responders, not just because the late responders think the early respondersare right, but also because they perceive their reputation will be damaged if they dissent fromthe early responders.[9]

An example of social proof in that people will see the actions of the group and will feelcompelled to act with the larger group of people. People in large groups will tend to act with a

herd mentality. Large groups of people can be controlled with little information passed downfrom a small few to a large group.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_cascade

Social Proofis the phenomena where people assume that actionsand choicesmade by others reectaccurate or correct behavior in regards to a particular situation or circumstance. You can see this plainas day with things like cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and anything else with negative eects onhealth. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of these things, people continue to use andconsume then based solely on cultural traditions and values that they themselves may not even trulyagree with.

The most famous study of social proof is Muzafer Sherif's 1935 experiment.[7] In thisexperiment subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to look at a dot of light about 15feet away. They were then asked how much, in inches, the dot of light was moving. In reality it

was not moving at all, but due to the auto-kinetic eect it appeared to move. How much thelight appears to move varies from person to person but is generally consistent over time foreach individual. A few days later a second part of the experiment was conducted. Each subjectwas paired with two other subjects and asked to give their estimate of how much the light wasmoving out loud. Even though the subjects had previously given dierent estimates, the groupswould come to a common estimate. To rule out the possibility that the subjects were simply



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giving the group answer to avoid looking foolish while still believing their original estimatewas correct, Sherif had the subjects judge the lights again by themselves after doing so in thegroup. They maintained the group's judgment. Because the movement of the light is ambiguousthe participants were relying on each other to dene reality.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof#Early_research

You can add Normative Social Inuence, or being inuenced to conform with the hopes of beinglooked upon positively by peers, to this group as well.

Scapegoatingis the act of singling out a particular party or individual in which to place blame.

In management: Scapegoating is a known practice in management where a lower staemployee is blamed for the mistakes of senior executives. This is often due to lack ofaccountability in upper management.[23]For example, a teacher who constantly gets blamed or accused of wrongdoing could be ascapegoat if said teacher is only guilty of doing her job so well that she makes her coworkersand supervisory administration look bad. This could result in letters being placed in permanentles, condescending remarks from co-workers and constant blame nding fromadministration.-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoating#At_the_group_level

Sheeple(sheep + people = sheeple) is a popular term used to reference how certain populationsbehave like herds of sheep in relation to the information they acquire. These people tend to acceptand take at face value that which they are told via their government, news, media, politics andreligion. In laymen's terms, sheeple implies blind conformity.

The term is also used for those who are deemed inordinately tolerant, or welcoming, ofgovernment intrusion and regulation. In a column entitled "A Nation of Sheeple," columnistWalter E. Williams writes, "Americans sheepishly accepted all sorts of Transportation SecurityAdministration nonsense. In the name of security, we've allowed ngernail clippers, eyeglassscrewdrivers and toy soldiers to be taken from us prior to boarding a plane."-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheeple#Usage

These are some of the most common traps and loopholes of logic that you'll come across. There aremany variations of the above, but I feel that this group does a good job of illustrating the point. Whatall of these traps have in common is that the observer (YOU) either reaches their conclusionthrough emotionalbias or allows the external circumstance to bias their choice. This type ofbehavior is ultimately antagonistic to not only living consciously, but progressing beyond theboundaries of logical limitation that the majority of people subscribe to.

Limiting yourself to the same choices that others make and assume is beyond dangerous.Assuming limits and understanding is not the same as exploration via freewill choice. Manipulationat the level ofchoiceis what keeps most people from fullling their dreams. If the manipulation canstimulate fear of consequence, it is even more eective. Consider the scare tactic of college educationon young people. It is in the institutions best interest that kids keep taking out loans in excessiveamounts, despite overwhelming evidence that post-college graduate jobs are getting more and moreslim.

Instead of recognizing and adapting, we just hear the same mantra. What results are millions of kidswho listened to the media instead of themselves, ending up in debt with no real job to help pay it o.An entire future is sacriced so a campus can update their computer lab. The banks win because theymake a prot o of the interest owed, and the college wins because they get new computerequipment with the tuition money. Redundancy runs the course yet again.



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I hope you are beginning to see that when you are not in direct conscious control of yourreasoning and choices, you are pretty much guaranteed to become the eectof someone else'scause. This is harmless when enjoying the company of family and friends, but not so much when thelargest aspects of your life such as health, nances, politics and beliefs become biased via externalsources. This is precisely why it's in your best interest to understand these traps so you can not onlyidentify them in the future, but also begin assembling the puzzle of the bigger picture in regards tothe human potential.

Please do not become confused and romanticize this phenomena. It is very real and occurs everyday.You can argue and speculate about the reasoning behind such slight-of-hand reasoning in ourculture and society, but the truth is that we all have the ability to recognize and prevent this.Each of us has the ability to be one less person who's entire life image is based around theillusionary reasoning of their culture and society.

In this next section, we'll explore another level that strengthens and re-enforces the variousgroupthink outlets. That level is the assumption of authority.

Authority worship is the phenomena whereby individuals simply assumethat someone orsomething is correct, knowledgeable or trustworthy based on their/its status alone. Forexample, this reasoning asserts that if cures for the most violent diseases were known, then doctors,the government and scientists would inform the media and we'd know about it immediately. Theentire train of logic and reasoning behind this method is that someone in a position of power orauthority (such as a teacher, doctor, police ocer or even an elected ocial) knows what's best,truthful or morally right solely because of their position.

What this reasoning fails to address is the possibility that authority gures themselves can becomebiased, and push for agendas that ultimately benet themselves and those involved. Lack ofknowledge and intellectual reasoning between king and surf makes it so.

Under the assumption of authority, people irrationally assume that institutions such as government



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and politics have their best interests in mind. Because these institutions are very large and powerful,people erroneously assume they are immune to corruption. They reason that corruption cannot occurin something such as governments and politics, especially in America, because of constitutionalprotection and checks and balances. This reasoning ignores the potential for intentional deceptionand self-serving motivations, as well as skillful manipulation of intellectual (thought) and emotionalblind spots to coerce cooperation.

It is truly amazing that the average person will identify an info-mercial as a money scheme, yetrefuses to acknowledge the same principles are present in their political and economic systems. Lackof knowledge places one directly into the path of manipulation, and convincing someone theyaren't being manipulated (or worse yet, that their choices matter in the big scheme of things) makes

this even easier.

I feel that the following clip sums it up rather nicely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=4zyo10lusCY&sns=fb (Note: I am neither for or against Ron Paul, his name just happens to beinvolved in the title of the video. Also, keep in mind that this is now way implies dissent or negativitytowards the government (another awed train of logic), it's merely a reection of valid observations.Trust me, you'll want to see this!)

We encounter the authority bias just about everywhere we look. It could be something so simple asbelieving that your teacher or school faculty knows what's best for you, to allowing political parties tohave an inuence on your beliefs and behavior. It is very natural to initially feel intimidated by thosein power, but much like the emotion of fear, it is usually unwarranted in the types of situations wend ourselves in. There is a big dierence between a life or death situation and absorbing theopinion of an authority gure, though most people will feel the same negative emotionalattachment regardless.

It is not my purpose to dispute the value of the various authority gures that make up ones town,country, region, and/or country. The point is to identify how people immediately bias theirthoughts, emotionsand actionssimply because of the initial perception of authority.Because ofthis, freewill choiceis abdicated in favor ofemotionalsubjectivity. What this implies that in yourmoment ofchoice(the present moment), you become biased by a perceived threat or consequence

should you chooseotherwise. In this way, that which coerced your choicehas chosen for you.

If your best friend and a police ocer both told you to pick up trash o the ground, which one areyou most likely to listen to? Why? Both are human beings, the only dierence is their perceivedrole. Though unlikely, the ocer could write you up for refusing to cooperate. Your friend will mostlikely just continue talking and walking if you refuse. Now, what if that same friend told you that

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standing on your head and saying the alphabet backwards cures all diseases? What if the President ofThe United States of America came on TV and announced the same thing? Which one would pull moreweight with you? The truth is, you have a conditioned emotionalresponse to authority gures,and while the protection and service they provide is invaluable to society at large, it creates massiveproblems on the individual level.

The real danger comes when people simply assume that sources of authority have their bestinterests in mind. More often than not, this is not the case. One simply need analyze the institutionof politics to understand that it can't exist without funding, and getting people to fund certainpolitical parties is heavily based on mental(thought)and emotionalbiasing. Instead of confrontingthe issues that would actually improve people's quality of life, politics becomes a con-game ofappealing to the lowest common denominator in regards to achieving social and political clout.

Politics then becomes a self-perpetuating game of mere surface solutions to the symptomsofproblems, rather than going for the obvious core or root causeof the problem. It becomes blatantlyobvious that if all the worlds problems were solved, no more money could be made o of oering thesolutions to those problems.

For Example:

Consider the recent argument for gun control. In this argument, we have two groups of people (twopoles if you will) with opposing views. Group one believes we should make it more dicult toacquire rearms, thus reducing crime and unnecessary deaths in the process. Group two views this asa violation of the second amendment, despite its adverse cultural eects. Extremists from both pointsof view will only analyze data that is in line with their personal beliefs regarding the topic (selectivereasoning), and thus block themselves o from seeing the holistic value of the information. Canyou spot it?

Here's the fault in the above logic:

Regardless if one supports gun laws or guns in general is besides the point. It should be clear that therst group is using incomplete reasoning to reach their conclusion. What they fail to account for isthat creating laws to limit gun acquisition will do nothing to lower crime, because criminals do notobey laws anyway. This is why they are criminals. Their emotionallydriven (reaction, unintelligent)decision to stop crime actually makes it easier for criminals to bypass resistance in future crimes.Said criminal can now condently break into houses with minimal resistance because it is harder forpeople who actually follow the law to protect themselves against invasion. All this law would do islimit the honest, law-abiding citizen's ability to protect himself against criminals. Crime wouldactually increase as a result. Once again, a decision made via emotional reactioninstead ofintelligent analyzationmakes it so.

As you can see, the problem of crime remains completely unaltered in the above debate. Guns are not

the core issue, but political campaigns refuse to knowledge this obvious point. They are more

concerned with acquiring allegiance via emotionalresponse over intellectual integrity. In thisway, endless amounts of money can be siphoned from an unknowing and heavily biased public.



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The pharmacological industry follows the exact same behavior. Large corporations with heavy

inuence have the ability to push the market in the direction of their choosing via publicperception. This is what's known as a power monopoly, and this industry is a prime example. Notonly does the pharmacological industry prot by limiting and controlling the types of drugs andmedicine readily available to the public, but they also prot from the diseases and death created viathe glamorization of alcohol and tobacco in the media. Two of the most destructive drugs (outside ofnarcotics) are legalized for prot, while something such as cannabis (which occurs naturally, has beenused by people for thousands of years, and has been known to cure countless ailments), is illegal.

Healthy people don't generate prot; sick and diseased people do. Therefore, it is in this industriesbest interest to suppress and control the availability and knowledge of things which expose their con.You can see this in the form ofscapegoating Cannabis as a gateway drug (which is another logicalfallacy, because keeping the drug illegal forces otherwise law-abiding citizens to deal and interactwith people who sell other illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroine), as well as various forms of

media portraying the use of Cannabis as a path to slothful and unproductive behavior.

At the same time, these same people promote and endorse chemicals such as nicotine and alcohol,two of the most addicting (an in alcohols case, fatal) substances the public consumes. Relative toCannabis, these two drugs may as well be heroine. The amount of destruction these drugs have onthe body is conveniently balanced by the solutions oered by the same industry.

Are you starting to see the big picture here? The purpose isn't to argue for the legalization ofCannabis, but to show you how one-sided the largest institutions on the planet really are. In this case,they argue that Cannabis is illegal because they are unsure of it's properties and eects, yet they arewell aware of the countless studies proving the deadly nature of alcohol, and that remains heavilysubsidized by the government.

None of this could have occurred if the majority of people used their intellectual reasoning correctlyinstead of against themselves, and this is precisely the reason for the level of corruption and injusticeplaguing this planet at this time.



17/17

In reading the above, I hope you are starting to see the importance and power of consciously thinkingfor yourself. In a world riddled with mental and emotional traps, it can become increasingly dicultfor one who seeks progress. Knowledgethen becomes the shield with which one is protectedfrom ignorance, and choiceto pursue truthbecomes the sword with which one cuts through thefalse and incomplete. Relative to this analogy, the majority of people on this planet are unarmed androaming in plain site for any number of hungry and capable predators.

The point of this e-guide is to demonstrate the importance ofchoosing your own path in life. YOUare in direct control of your choices, not your governmental policies, political party or sports teampreference. Until you gain the clarity and understanding that YOU are responsible for the types ofchoices you make (even the unconscious ones), your goals will forever remain out of reach. You canvery easily spend your entire go-around here on Earth being a pawn of various institutions seeking toprot from an increasingly ignorant population.

Everything begins and ends with choice. So which will you choose? Just like goal setting and achieving,it is self-discipline to initial emotional impulse that makes all the dierence in the world. Do youchooseto allow others to make your choices(by submitting to emotionalresponse instead ofintelligent thought), or will you stand up and assert your freewill choicein the face of inaccuratelyrepresented assumption? The only way to learn and move forward is to become consciouslyawareof the nature of your choicesin the present moment.

Let's Connect!I hope this e-guide not only helped you identify the various mental and emotional traps, but inspiredyou to begin living consciously in regards to the types of information and material you encounter. Andeven though this is the end of the guide, I'd love to hear what youhave to say! Here are several waysin which we can connect:

1. Become a fan ofThinkNowLiveNow on Facebook, and follow ThinkNowLiveNow on Twitter

2. Add me as a friend on Facebook

3. Comment on the any number ofarticles and podcasts found at ThinkNowLiveNow

Most importantly, thank youfor taking the time to check out this e-guide. I love to hear feedbackand discuss concepts of consciousness with people just like you!drop me a line, and together we willmake the present moment count!

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Traps of Logic and Reasoning

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Transcript of Traps of Logic and Reasoning