The Spiritual Life
November 2002
The Lies We Live With, Or How Do You Decide Without Enough Facts?
By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess
They called the panel Gnosticism and Mysticism in Science Fiction Films. Not your usual fare at the Mile Hi Science
Fiction Convention in Denver, Colorado. But they invited me to be on it so I got busy doing research on Gnosticism
(I remembered a little about that early church heresy, that powerfully influenced the church’s problems with body
image and sexuality, but not much). The central idea is that the world, and anything physical, is false or evil, and
you have to have a revelation or knowledge (gnosis) to break out of this web of lies into the truth so that you could
be saved (it even went so far as to say that the creator or god of this world was evil and that is why the world was
evil and broken). Then we related that understanding to the movies The Matrix, Pleasantville,
and The Truman Show. But the more I thought about it, though they looked Gnostic on the surface, the
real issue was our sense of alienation, or the feeling that you can’t trust the world we live in, and Hollywood was
just picking up on this feeling. And there are reasons we feel that way about our common world, it is not completely
trustworthy. We lie to each other all the time. Sometimes we make is sound better by calling it "spin doctoring," "new
speak" or "information control" in politics, or the most common version, "advertising."
Professor William Lutz is the author of Doublespeak and The New Doublespeak, two books
that tell how people in our culture manipulate language to hide the truth. Here is a short excerpt on what he calls
“weasel words” as quoted in pages 722-727 of Uncle John’s Biggest Ever Bathroom Reader.
The Rule of Parity: The first rule of advertising is that nothing is what it
seems . . . which brings us to the Rule of Parity. Products such as
gasoline, toothpaste, soap, aspirin, and cold remedies (plus a long list of others) are
called parity products.
This simply means that most of the brands in their category are pretty much the same.
Most toothpaste, for example, are made the same way, with pretty much the same formula.
There is no essential difference -- so as far as the law is concerned, all toothpastes are equal.
Now comes the interesting part.
1) Since all toothpastes are equal, no one brand is superior to any of the others. 2) Therefore,
not only are all parity products “good” products, they are all the “best" products. 3) Thus, you can
legally advertise your product as the “best” and not have to prove it. 4) However, if you claim your
parity product is “better” than another parity product, you have to prove your claim because
“better” is comparative and a claim of superiority, and only one product can be “better” than
the others in a parity class. Get that? In the world of advertising doublespeak, “better” means
“best,” but “best” means only “equal to.” . . .
The Weasel Words: Advertisers can get just so much mileage out of parity
claims . . . . So they need other ways to convince you their product
is different from others.
They can’t just say anything they want -- their claims are subject to some (though not many)
laws designed to prevent fraudulent or untruthful claims in advertising. So instead of making
outright false claims, they use weasel words. Weasel words get their name from the way weasels
eat eggs . . . . They make a small hole in the egg, suck our the insides,
then put the egg back in the nest . . . . That’s the way is it with weasel
words in advertising. Examine them closely and you’ll find they’re as hollow as any egg sucked by
a weasel . . .
Help: The biggest weasel word used in advertising is “help.” It only means “to aid or
assist,” but once an ad says “help,” it can say just about anything after that -- because “help”
qualifies everything following it . . . . A toothpaste ad may say, “Helps
prevent cavities,” but it doesn’t say it will actually prevent cavities. A liquid cleaner ad says,
“help keep your home germ free,” but it doesn’t say it actually kill germs, nor does it even specify
which germs it might kill . . . .
Virtually Spotless: One of the most powerful weasel words is “virtually,” a word so
innocent that most people don’t pay any attention to it when it is used in an advertising
claim . . . . In 1971, a federal court rendered its decision on a case brought
by a woman who became pregnant while taking birth control pills. She sued the manufacturer, Eli
Lilly and Company, for breach of warranty. The woman lost her case. Basing its ruling on a statement
in the pamphlet accompanying the pills, which stated that, “When taken as directed, the tablets offer
virtually 100% protection,” the court ruled that there was no warranty, expressed or implied, that
the pills were absolutely effective. In its ruling, the court pointed out that, according to Webster’s
Third New International Dictionary, “virtually” mean “almost entirely” and clearly does not
mean “absolute”. (Whittington v. Eli Lilly and Company, 333 F. Supp. 98) . . . .
The next time you see the ad that says that this dishwasher detergent “leaves dishes virtually spotless,”
just remember: You can have lots of spots on your dishes after using this detergent and the ad claim
will still be true, because this claim really means the detergent does not in fact leave your dishes
spotless . . . .
He goes on to explain the real meaning of "new and improved," "acts," "works," and "like," which all mean
things much different that you thought they did. Then he hits "unfinished words" such as a battery that lasts
“up to twice as long”. Twice as long as what? A tank of gas? The unfinished sentence is actually meaningless,
it just distorts the words enough so that you think you know what it means.
So what harm does this acceptance of “adjusted truth” do other that sometimes waste some of your
money and make you untrusting and suspicious? Well honestly, sometimes that is all it does do, but
sometimes thousands of people die and the history of the world changes. Let me use a historical illustration
from More of Paul Harvey’s The Rest of The Story by Paul Aurandt, pages 136-138.
In 1899 four newspaper reporters from Denver, Colorado, set out to tear down the Great Wall
of China. They almost succeeded. Literally. The Four met by chance one Saturday night, in a
Denver railway depot. Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis, Hal Wilshire. They represented
the four Denver papers: "The Post," "The Times," "The Republican," "The Rocky Mountain News."
Each had been sent by his respective newspaper to dig up a story -- any story -- for the Sunday
editions; so the reporters were in the railroad station, hoping to snag a visiting celebrity should
one happen to arrive that evening by train.
None arrived that evening, by train or otherwise. The reporters started commiserating. For them,
no news was bad news; all were facing empty handed return trips to their city desks.
Al declared he was going to make up a story and hand it in. The other three laughed.
Someone suggested they all walk over the Oxford Hotel and have a beer. They did.
Jack said he liked Al’s idea about faking a story. Why didn’t each of them fake a story and get off the hook?
John said Jack was thinking too small. Four half-baked fakes didn’t cut it. What they needed was one
real whopper they could all use.
Another round of beers.
A phony domestic story would be too easy to check on, so they began discussing foreign angles that
would be difficult to verify. And that is THE REST OF THE STORY.
China was distant enough, it was agreed. They would write about China.
John leaned forward, gesturing dramatically in the dim light of the barroom. Try this one on, he
said: Group of American engineers, stopping over in Denver en route to China. The Chinese
government is making plans to demolish the Great Wall; our engineers are bidding on the job.
Harold was skeptical. Why would the Chinese want to destroy the Great Wall of China?
John thought for a moment. They’re tearing down the ancient boundary to symbolize international
goodwill, to welcome foreign trade!
Another round of beers.
By 11:00 p.m. the four reporters had worked out the details of their preposterous story. After leaving
the Oxford Bar, they would go over to the Windsor Hotel. They would sign for fictitious names to the
hotel register. They would instruct the desk clerk to tell anyone who asked that four New Yorkers had
arrived that evening, had been interviewed by reporters, had left early the next morning for California.
The Denver newspapers carried the story. All four of them. Front page.
In fact, "The Times" headline that Sunday read: "GREAT CHINESE WALL DOOMED! PEKING
SEEKS WORLD TRADE!"
Of course, the story was a phony, a ludicrous fabrication concocted by four capricious newsmen in a hotel bar.
But their story was taken seriously, was picked up and expanded by newspapers in the Eastern U.S. and
then by newspapers abroad.
When the Chinese themselves learned that the Americans were sending a demolition crew to tear down
their national monument, most were indignant; some were enraged.
Particularly incensed were the members of a secret society, a volatile group of Chinese patriots who
were already wary of foreign intervention.
They, inspired by the story, exploded, rampaged against the foreign embassies in Peking, slaughtered
hundreds of missionaries.
In two months, twelve thousand troops from six countries joined forces, invaded China with the
purpose of protecting their countrymen.
The bloodshed which followed, sparked by a journalistic hoax invented in a barroom in Denver,
became the white-hot international conflagration known to every high school history student . . .
as the Boxer Rebellion.
Now I know that there were other issues that had made tinder for that spark to fall onto in China, but the issue
here was the lie that caused the deaths of thousands and destroyed an entire generation of missionaries. How can
we trust what we see and hear? Even if it is not deliberately misleading like advertising, or some great conspiracy
or stupid hoax, still mistakes are made and repeated as truth. How do you evaluate the world around you, and
what can you trust? Of course we have a duty to check our facts and pay attention, especially on issues of justice
and political power used in our name. But we still have to have some criteria from which to make a preliminary
judgment as we investigate, and often we will not have enough time to gather all the data we need.
As I was driving back from Denver I stopped in a truck stop to get gas. As I was waiting in line to pay for it,
the trucker in front of me was telling the lady minding the counter how we needed to go blow up all those
Arabs. She said, “You can’t think like that, they are people too, some good some bad.” He made another
crack and she replied, “Look I’m just trying to do my job so I can feed my kids, they got the same problems
I do.” After the trucker had left I thanked her for speaking wisdom, even if no one was listening. The
Commandment God gave us through Jesus’ voice was, “Love . . . .” If the
information you are hearing is filled with fear and hate, look at it very very closely, if it is loving you probably
can accept it as a working idea to try. Fear is most often used to manipulate and control, love almost never is.
You have to stand somewhere to evaluate what you hear and see. I have never found a better place to stand,
and I have been looking a long time. Might we try it together and see where it leads us?
Your brother-in-Christ, Rev. Michael Lee Burgess
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