Interesting article at The Clean Collection blog that examines a human behavior pattern where we can witness humans continuously living their lives within a complete false reality. In this case, the authors investigate how humans often can continuously mislead themselves.
What is self-DDD?
When we deceive, delude or deny to our self, we mislead our self, we misrepresent or disown what we know to be true, we lie to our self, we refuse to acknowledge that which we know.
In Vital Lies, Simple Truths, Daniel Goleman notes that we do not see what it is that we do not see, because:
The mind can protect itself against anxiety by diminishing awareness. This mechanism produces a blind spot: a zone of blocked attention and self-deception. Such blind spots occur at each major level of behaviour from the psychological to the social. (p. 22)
Psychological blind spots create a not-knowing about something. However, in order for a system to recognise what to avoid, deny or mislead, it has to maintain knowledge of what to avoid — what it knows to be true. In other words, deceiving our self requires that we both know and not-know something. This apparent paradox is one of the keys to understanding how self-DDD operates.So the authors suggest, that these false people (the ones who are self-deceived) may at some level actually know the truth, and somehow, these people go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to convince themselves of something opposite or alternative.
The examples used I will point out are ones where there is an avoidance of "negative" realities or "bad news", for instance they cite an example where a woman was continuously claiming that she was losing weight (the scale told a different story) and was apparently avoiding disappointment at her inability to meet her weight loss goals.
So as we seek to understand how all of these monetary morons can continue to lead lives in continuous falsehood, what is the "bad news" that they are trying to avoid if they are self deceived?
Or as MMT in-paradigm blogger J.D. Alt asked me recently: "Why don't people want to hear the good news?".
Good question. We will continue to investigate this as we are able.
I believe that all of these false monetary moron people DO NOT know the truth in this AT ALL. So it is impossible for them to be self-deceived in the manner identified in this article, because they do not know what the truth is. They do not possess the cognitive (math) skills to be able to understand the truth.
They are not self-deceived, there must be another process going on in this with them.
27 comments:
Being an MMT'er is actually more difficult than being an atheist. I'm almost certain there are more deficit hawks in one form or the other than believers in God. Most believers in both God and the "evil" deficit operate through fideism (blind faith). Good luck overcoming that hurdle. If you choose 100 people at random and asked them if our federal deficit was bad/unsustainable, I'd bet the farm you'd get a 95%+ response in the affirmative, even if only a hand-full could cogently explain why they believe this is so.
Thus, it is no easy task to persuade the masses of what we see as self evident regarding MMT. Obama and his political cohorts understand these mass man realities, and therefore take the expedient route instead of the principled one. The bottom line, however, is that something MUST and will be done to stop deficits in their tracks, according to both Dems and Repubs. Entitlement reform is 100% a part of that equation. The only question left is how high will taxes rise and how much of the social safety net will be eroded? In other words whose ox will be gored the most? But make no mistake, Americans will gladly supply the rope in which they hang themselves with, all in the name of eradicating that demonic debt, and they can at least rest assured they acted sacrificially as martyrs to their debt crusade.
And one more thing. Pete Peterson won, but he didn't achieve his victory without the backing from the overwhelming majority of American true believers (95% or so) in the evil that are deficits.
Some of the creative destruction paradigmers understand the "injection of heat" into the system to generate & stimulate activity, but don't understand that heat can be taken out of the system.
They decry Cristina Fernandez Kirchener as a failure in Argentina, but at least she has an inflation spiral to worry about and not a deflation spiral like in EU and USA.
In fact, she has followed a job guarantee, full employment, and give money to the poor paradigm.
She has used Argentine pesos internally, and she has built up a bulwork against having too many dollars in Argentina.
This means she has relied more heavily on her SOVEREIGN currency the Argentine Peso - at least she has forced her country to do so.
It may not be tasty medicine to use your own currency in Argentina, but she is reducing foreign debt and reliance on the U$D.
And the neoliberals chastise her for not allowing dollars while at the same time they are saying Argentina is not worth investment by downgrading their bonds.
So if someone masters their DDD ( like the neo liberals ), they then want you to become confused in such a convulted morass so they can profit off of you.
She has not used the IMPORT of goods corrollary of Mosler - instead she has built up protective tariffs against flooding while heavily gearing Argentine companies to export.
All the distractors are saying that she is giving their tax money away to the poor and this system will fail because these poor do not work and there is too much crime.
They say she is fudging numbers, but she has two provinces like California and Illinois who are in debt. But the Federal government of Argentina has enough dollar reserves to pay for all provinces' external bond debts from the 10 year ago crisis for the next 14 months.
What do you do about all these DDD distractors ?
They definitely what to entice you with their delusion and profit off of you while they seize assets under the creative destruction paradigm.
They would love a Kristal Nacht or kristal noche - and blame the immigrants ...
Malmo,
"I'm almost certain there are more deficit hawks in one form or the other than believers in God."
Probably so imo... but my point still stands that in this regard it does not look like all of these people are "self-deceived" that "the deficit is bad" because they do not understand at any level that the opposite/alternative is true....
rsp,
Matt,
I understand what you are saying, which is why I said deficit hawks are largely fideistic thinkers, as are many believers in God. Revelation over reason is the majority report with both (theologians would call it presuppositionalism). That's a hard nut to crack, self deception or no self-deception, which was the larger point I'm attempting to make.
I don't believe I was self deceived when I was in the deficit is bad camp only a few short years back. Once I stumbled onto MMT over at Naked Capitalism, it only took me a day or two to kick off the shackles of ignorance, and fully reject the debt fret meme. I think it helps, in my case, that I went from theist to atheist within the last 10 years, so I'm generally open to skepticism regarding so called self evident truths. I'm probably the exception to the rule, however, when it comes to challenging myself--an outlier.
Will there eventually come a time when the MMT message gets legs and subsequent air play to challenge the prevailing wisdom? Maybe. But I think that day is far into the future. Perhaps many decades. I see this as a ultra-marathon from an expectation standpoint, and I still envision many many individuals, even if presented with the MMT argument, as not being persuadable. Is this because they are self deceived? Maybe. But the end result will be the same no matter what the psychological road block/motive.
Irony in the DDD's :
They preach that liberals import socialism from Europe, while ironically importing Europe's austrian austerity and bigotry.
They require urgent balancing and fixing of the government side deficit as if the government is going to need those dollars for some emergency purpose, while ironically refusing any tax system to loop the monies back into the government treasury.
Malmo,
do you think "math" had the most to do with your ability to quickly put off the false?
That I would say is basically how it worked for me anyway...
rsp,
Forget deficit hawks!
Show me a highly educated "progressive" and I will show you someone who feels the debt must be paid down and that the current budget deficits will be a burden on our grandchildren.
They all crow about how great is was when Bill Clinton presided over a surplus.
People are definitely not deluding themselves. They literally have no earthly idea.
I think people are really disturbed by the idea of a sovereign currency with a floating exchange rate. They realize we don't have a gold standard but it's easier for them to pretend that we do. So maybe they do delude themselves to some degree.
but Wid,
that would require someone to literally think like this (per these authors):
"I understand fully how a free-floating, non-convertible state currency works... but.... since I painfully disagree with that policy I will choose to ignore that and proceed to conduct my mental activities as if we really are on a gold standard"
I dont see that happening here... they dont understand the truth to begin with... so whatever is happening to them seems to be coming "from without"... it's an exogenous source.
rsp,
Matt,
It was partly math, I suppose. It also had a qualitative component that swayed me. In other words it struck me as intuitively correct, especially from a descriptive standpoint of how our monetary system actually operates. I'd read Wray, Kelton, Roche, Mike Norman, Joe Firestone, Scott Fullweiler, Michael Hudson, Yves Smith, et al, and after a few short weeks I pretty much went from a crazed deficit hawk to a repentant ex deficit hawk.
It was strangely easy for me. I guess I had no real allegiance to my old dogmatic views on the subject. However, like I posted earlier in the thread, once I parted with god, I pretty much exorcised much if not all of the ideological bent that shaped my views. That makes me an outlier. That's why I don't think most debt fret types will jettison their views even if they get a healthy dose of MMT arguments. At any rate, I'm 100% sure that the MMT message will not reach anything close to the critical mass needed to stop the Grand Bargainers. The GB might not go off, but it won't be because of the ethos emanating from MMT.
"Wray, Kelton, Roche, Mike Norman, Joe Firestone, Scott Fullweiler, Michael Hudson, Yves Smith, et al, and after a few short weeks I pretty much went from a crazed deficit hawk to a repentant ex deficit hawk."
so an appeal to authority? ie you would rather believe these good folks rather than the debt morons?
Or was it your ability to discern the semantic falsehoods via math?
Or both?
Agree this is a tough nut to crack btw...
rsp,
so an appeal to authority? ie you would rather believe these good folks rather than the debt morons?
For me it was like the five stages of grief.
Denial: MMT is crazy and wrong.
Anger: MMT is just a plot to push (insert political agenda).
Bargaining: OK, they make some good points but they overlook interest rates or China or (insert doomsday scenario).
Depression: MMT has it right and there's no hope of changing the policymakers who are torturing the economy for kicks.
Acceptance: Talk about MMT as the operational reality it is and get used to people thinking I'm crazy.
but gee,
what "sealed the deal"?
rsp,
At the time I didn't recognize any of those people I mentioned as people that were looked up to. I was actually roaming around those places because I had enough of Karl Denninger's insanity. I might have visited NC once in a blue moon. It just so happened that someone at her blog linked CRoche. I read him and was led to the others in various ways. I had no sense of what or who they were. I did, however, sense they were on to something. It was new to me, but made sense. Actually it kind of bothered me at the time that they were heterodox, if anything. I'm over that now, but I do think someone like Paul Krugamn eventually coming on board would, right or wrong, broaden the message. Appeal to authority has its merits if it helps to propagate our message, no?
Excellent piece, and one that lines up closely with disaster management theory. I am specifically thinking of the living below the failing dam problem. You can tell the householder or farmer living below it to evacuate, but, since humans work to minimize distress, rather than risk per se, the easiest way to respond is to deny the existence of the threat, since that minimizes distress. The best and most complete exposition of this problem is that by Terry Lustig in The Fundamentals of Risk Analysis and Management, Chapter iv.3, ed. Vlasta Molak. It is akin to an Bettelheim-type description of fixation -- retreating into outworn "verities" instead of dealing with changing conditions. This is even more a problem among people who have been through a war or a bout of austerity, and have been constrained to make (wholly unnecessary) sacrifices. They don't want to know the truth because they cannot bear to believe that their sacrifices were for naught. The Molak book can be downloaded at:
Fundamentals of Risk Analysis and Risk Management.pdf - Acmt. Here are two excerpts:
1.
"We should recognize that people act not so much to minimize losses, but to minimize distress (Green 1990). Thus, they will only start to reduce losses if they
perceive that this is the most effective strategy for minimizing distress. Handmer and Penning-Rowsell (1990a) conclude that this is why people cope with unavoidable
threats by ignoring them and devote themselves to matters they perceive they can control."
2. "Saarinen points out that there is very little support from the hazard literature for
there being any relationship between awareness and behavior. People may be aware
of a hazard, but they tend to underestimate the probability of an unfavorable outcome
(Quinnell 1981). This tendency can be found just as easily among disaster-management
experts as among lay people (Saarinen 1990)."
While MMT more or less had me at hello with the logic and accounting, Fullwiler's work taking MMT all the way down to the bedrock of real-world banking operations was probably what sealed the deal.
It's one thing to quitely believe that MMT is correct, quite another to pick up and move to what very serious people say is crazytown. Being able to appeal reality made that easier.
Mal,
" I did, however, sense they were on to something."
this had to have been a mathematical insight no? How else could you have known who was right or wrong?
(FD: I am a heavy math person)
and yes no problems with "appeal to authority" from me... what ever gets it done is good enough for me... as long as the end result is true...
rsp,
Tom,
". This is even more a problem among people who have been through a war or a bout of austerity, and have been constrained to make (wholly unnecessary) sacrifices."
That blog also investigates metaphor usage here: "The Role of Metaphor in Recovery from Trauma"
http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/291/1/Role-of-Metaphor-in-Recovery-from-Trauma/Page1.html
I came upon this site while I was looking into metaphor... the debt morons ALWAYS USE METAPHOR rather than actual/real truth.... so I think metaphor use somehow ties into this...
rsp,
Also Tom,
"They don't want to know the truth"
But what these authors posit is that to be able to self-deny like this you actually have to actually KNOW the reality/truth and THEN deny it so as to avoid "bad news".... which I submit none of these people do... rsp,
ps and it also is not "bad news" they would be avoiding it is "good news" as my friend JD Alt observes....
Matt,
Sure it's the math. From a purely mathematical perspective there is no debt crisis. That's the bottom line here. MMT led me to see that fact.
If one ignores the operational realities of our monetary system, as Denninger does, then one can invoke math and warn us of becoming the next Greece. That made sense to me at one time, but it obviously doesn't anymore because the equation changes when we look at currency users as opposed to currency issuers. That's at base very simple stuff, and yet people like Karl Denninger ignore it and at the same time invokes bad math to support the idea that debt is bad/fatal even for a currency issuer. I'd say dimwits like him are clearly self-deceiving, self-delusional and in self-denial. In other words he should know better. What's holding him up from getting this right?
"While MMT more or less had me at hello with the logic and accounting"
Not only does this say it for me, I have thought of it in exactly the same framing. Great movie btw, and I don't generally like romantic movies or Tom Cruise. One I could watch 10 more times just to watch that scene.
Mal,
I dont think someone like Denniger is SELF DDD, rather he "does not get the math" and is relying on an 'appeal to authority' from some part of the economic academe...
I agree with these authors that to be SELF DDD, you have to understand the truth at some level and I do not believe someone like Denniger does, in his last appearance with Mike he asserted that Mike had it all wrong and the "money disappears into the ether".... so he does not understand this so he CANNOT be self-DDD.
This would be like the woman who cannot lose the weight in the article's example when confronted claiming that "gravity has changed"... rsp.
Given that Denninger was part of a Santeria cult, perhaps his blind spot is a result of the forces in what Hoffer postulates will culminates in a true believer? At any rate, that man is nuttier than a fruitcake.
I think a vast majority know, but are ideologically opposed. I mean you watch cable news ( for entertainment purposes only) the first segment they tell you the government is going to cause hyper from the out of control money printing, then after commercial the same guy tells you old people have to eat dog food because the government is out of dollars. I'm sure their all laughing off camera, how easy it is to dupe the masses out of their standard of living.
they hate any government or any group that challenge their position in society.
@geerussell
Great summary of the 5 stages of currency operations! :)
You really should start Deficit Terrorists Anonymous (DTsA), and make your 5 points the association prayer.
miller,
"the first segment they tell you the government is going to cause hyper from the out of control money printing, then after commercial the same guy tells you old people have to eat dog food because the government is out of dollars"
good point! They cannot discern contradiction... this is manifest lack of basic intelligence...
rsp,
Roger,
What we are witnessing I believe is a fairly significant period in the history of human leadership behavior... pretty bad... I think because we are caught up in it day to day it is hard for us to truly understand the historic significance.. but some day, this is going to be studied as a major decades long event and not favorably... rsp,
"the first segment they tell you the government is going to cause hyper from the out of control money printing, then after commercial the same guy tells you old people have to eat dog food because the government is out of dollars"
This is a great observation…as MMT'rs we need to add it to our arsenal of anti-talking points…I know I am.
Heads will explode when confronted with this.
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