"Sounds Of Silence" by Astranat (Deviantart)
Most people have heard of The Butterfly Effect?
"In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state."Some interesting observations concerning the so-called national discussion of Britain's Referendum on EU Membership in the legacy news-media from Dr. RAE North EU Referendum: the tedium of it all and from Lost Leonardo The Mainstream Debate ; an excellent summary at The Sceptic Isle The media’s analysis of the EU referendum is lamentable:-
"Prepare yourself for the long haul; there will be no early referendum. The timetable was set out last June in the Five Presidents’ Report. The process of treaty change will begin in 2017 and will look to create a two-tier EU, it is on the basis of that treaty that David Cameron will present Britain with it’s “reformed Europe” and “British model” of membership."The Brexit Door Presenting The 'Open Goal' along with many such refrains from White Wednesday (We Need To Talk About Immigration) laments the degradation of quality of argument (see Argument Abstraction) that is not only demeaning but also detracting from winning the argument (the irony of bigotry)
"Despite this reality having been apparent for quite some time the media are still making up rubbish about an early referendum, demands being made, rebuffed and backtracked on and generally muddying the waters."
Brexit simplified = Arguing the Central Point: "What is Brexit?"
What all the above are really illustrating in total combination is this point (pun intended): The Central Argument not being argued means the quality of argument suffers; which Pete North points out in direct relation to both Leave Campaigns in Fun While It Lasted. It does mean more waffle to fill columns, more "controversy generation" for the legacy news-media. An example of a news-story that caught my eye in particular illustrating this:-
Glamour, Controversy, Accusations, Counter-Accusations: Purr-fect!
I can't see too many downsides to this story: The BBC gets splash coverage of Strictly Come Dancing (which is quite an enjoyable musical-dance show imo), Ola Jordan gets some publicity perhaps for her subsequent act and the news-media are delivered a news-story with all the elements of interest, in particular Ola Jordan herself, a consummately, professional dancer and alluring screen presence rolled into one.
Sometimes I don't really mind these sorts of stories, I think I "get" what is going on and I remember when the above lady won Strictly Come Dancing with Chris Hollins, demonstrating a huge degree of professional pride when they both won demonstrating two really wonderful emotions we all enjoy seeing on our screens (Reference: Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun):-
- Fiero = The expression of triumph when you have achieved a significant task (pumping your fist, for example).
- Naches = The feeling you get when someone you mentor succeeds (professional pride)
However such Sound And The Fury when it comes to Politics, an area where perhaps less pleasure should be mixed with business, we end up with:-
It's barely entertaining, in fact as per above it's "tedious and boring" which are deadly to democracy.
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." ~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28As we can see, most people are attracted to controversy, as per Robert Cialdini, strong social relations pressures drive us to act in ways that influence us far more than we're really ready to admit and the result is the battle between people climbing the social ladder to dominate and those falling down the ladder into submission, for every Naches there's Schadenfreude at seeing our competitors or rivals fall off the ladder (!). If you notice a lot of those google news stories have "David Cameron" at the top: He must be very very important to our societies very survival and well-being to hold such media exposure and talk around him?
And this is the problem: This is not entertainment but very serious for millions of people yet here we are with this soap-drama scrutinizing the emotions on David Cameron's face; all that is going on is the Dominance-Submission relationship as per Legitimacy & Listening. But there we learnt that this is built from Authority Influence (see Cialdini: The "expert" in the white coat selling you toothpaste on the television advert (who is in fact an actor picked for his "chemistry appeal" again Cialdini) which itself is derived from The Office of Prime Minister which is based on 3 levels of Legitimacy:-
- Cognitive
- Moral
- Pragmatic
The sound of a tiny drop of water dropping into an ocean.
How do we win the Referendum? By questioning that authority against expertise and real knowledge that is communicated from a source of authority based off that cognitive legitimacy that is tranmitted either through or around the legacy news-media. The more it can be shown/revealed that Cameron's legitimacy is deeply compromised by The Great Deception and vica-versa the more cognitive legitimacy is amplified from a source of authority in public, open communication, the greater the public will make their verdict on the EU Referendum on the value of David Cameron to our society vs the damage to our society he is perceived to be causing and continuing via his domination of the Popular Referendum.
Leave Campaign: A source of cognitive legitimacy
We have this referendum because our politicians made a huge mistake they have not admitted to and have after >40yrs admitted they cannot resolve legitimately without the people signing up to "What Next?": How about politicians being forced to listen instead of making so much wasteful noise for once? As per Leave HQ: Why We Must Leave?
