Fallacy Symbols

People are doomed by their very nature to fall victim to psychological processes that blind them from understanding the truth of their situation. One such process is the gambler's fallacy, where people believe that after a prescribed number of failures their luck is actually improving, because "the wheel has landed on red twenty times; it's only a matter of time now." These are the same people who believe that their dysfunctional relationships will last because they, and not their partner's previous attachment, will be the one to reverse the bad habits and usher in a new era of sensibility. The only real truth that can be ascribed to the gamblers and overzealous lovers who suffer from this fallacy is that they will all fail. And yes, there are exceptions, but the exceptions rarely last.

The other popular process is the idea of "rock bottom." Everybody has experienced an event or a time in their life where they felt they had hit their lowest point. Then, they believed, everything from this point on must improve, because it is impossible that things could actually regress from the state they are in now. Unfortunately, these Depression idealists are grasping at straws. Whenever something looks as if it cannot get any worse, it can and often does.

There is a corollary to the theory of rock bottom. The basic premise of "after [him], anybody is an improvement." This is true in the case of government administrations, multi-national corporations, and school organizations. There are institutions where the quality of existence is so abysmal that those involved would rather change their names and enter witness protection than continue their current path. Inevitably, authority figures who are so obviousy horrible are replaced. The problem lies in the expedience. Often, those to whom the responsibility of replacement falls are rushed to find a person to fill the vacant position, and while they may uphold the loftiest ideals and criteria in their search, they may settle for significantly less than perfection in the interest of a fast disposal of the problem.

There are many instances in which such a fast replacement works out for the best and that the outcome would be the same regardless of the time frame. However, in the "anybody is better" fallacy those who are affected by the change of command are often traumatized by their previous experiences and are all too willing to offer a vast amount of "wiggle room" to their replacement. This derives from an unconscious fear that circumstances will change and that they once again will be left at the mercy of someone as unsuitable as the person with whom they've just parted. The willingness to place all faith in the replacement allows them to ignore obvious signs that there may be just as imminent a threat of danger as there was before, though perhaps in different ways. Only time and serious scrutiny can determine whether there is justification, but the fallacies do not allow for the scrutiny.

Too many fallacy symbols in the world....