{"id":2194,"date":"2016-01-07T07:14:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T15:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=2194"},"modified":"2016-01-07T07:14:07","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T15:14:07","slug":"illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=2194","title":{"rendered":"Illusions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m preparing a series on illusion for a class I\u2019ll be giving starting at the end of this month at the lifelong learning organization<\/a> that I helped found about 19 years ago. Not optical illusions, or magician\u2019s illusions\u2014though those are undoubtedly interesting, but psychological illusions. These operate at all levels of social organization.
 
I think it\u2019s good to know about this, and the knowledge can range from very superficial to in-depth. Fooling oneself and others can include many forms of deception, manipulation, rhetoric, propaganda, sales pitches, advertising, religious preaching, and even the talk in the street. Indeed, I\u2019d go so far as to suggest that all human thought is contaminated with a degree of illusion.<\/p>\n

For example, we tend to believe that words mean things, forgetting that words are tools of a particular language, and words don\u2019t mean whatever it means in another language. So linguistics and semantics plays a part here. Human psychological developmental theory, from childhood to elder, or according to the technological advancement of the culture, also lends different meanings. Then there\u2019s the simple fact that a given word like \u201cGod\u201d (for example) may well \u201cmean\u201d quite different things even among people who say they belong to the same religious denomination. The same may be said about politics!<\/p>\n

At this point, having studied rhetoric, I cannot say what does not operate within a context where just about everything is a little illusory. There are so many steps in thinking and communications, so a sign I read some time back hints at this ambiguity: \u201cI know you think you understand what I said, but I\u2019m not sure that what I put into words was really what I meant.\u201d (In other words, can human beings escape from some degree of illusion?)<\/p>\n

The point to make here is that types and combinations of illusions are innumerable, without numbering. There are variations, twists and turns.  Adult, mature people who pride themselves about being matter-of-fact-ual or no-nonsense seem to me to be embedded in many types of self-deception. I invite your disagreement and with it your permission to post your argument and my response. I may agree with you. Whether you want your name used should also be included in your response. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m preparing a series on illusion for a class I\u2019ll be giving starting at the end of this month at the lifelong learning organization that I helped found about 19 years ago. Not optical illusions, or magician\u2019s illusions\u2014though those are undoubtedly interesting, but psychological illusions. These operate at all levels of social organization.   I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,35,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-mind-spectrums","category-literacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}