Have you ever heard of “thought-terminating clichés”?
Robert J. Lifton coined the term in his 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. He also called it "the language of non-thought."
A thought-terminating cliché is most often used to try to end an argument OR to calm cognitive dissonance. They sound like little proverbs, usually, even though they may not have any wisdom in them. I’ll give you some examples.
This week, I had a post on Facebook go viral.
I won’t rehash the post here, but to give you an idea of what it was about so that you can understand the cliché responses and how they work, here’s the slimmed down version:
I talked about green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested without charges (despite authorities thinking he was on a student visa) in front of his US citizen wife who is eight months pregnant, and then disappeared to a for-profit prison (his wife and lawyer couldn’t find him at first because immigration authorities moved him).
Another piece of the puzzle to know: Khalil has been one of the spokespeople for a student movement at Columbia University protesting for “divestment”… asking their university to stop investing in weapons manufacturing and specifically in investing in companies financially participating in the war in Gaza.
Okay, so thought-terminating clichés.
They work like this.
Me: The US has illegally arrested a green card holder without charges.
Thought-terminating cliché response: Well, actions have consequences.
Interesting! Do you see what happened there? Instead of continuing the conversation with an objection or a question or digging into the facts, the commenter tried to shut it down with a proverb-like conversation killer. “Actions have consequences.” Well, of course they do! How could you argue with that? But the POINT of the comment is to prevent us from examining the situation together.
This one in particular really gets me, because the implication is that “actions have consequences” for KHALIL. Essentially “he shouldn’t have been part of a student protest if he didn’t want to get arrested and possibly deported.”
No examination if this is a good or legal way to treat lawful permanent residents of the US. And no acknowledgement that, for instance, the actions of the government might have consequences as well. It’s designed to stop the conversation and/or stop having to think about the conversation.
Here’s another: “He’s a terrorist.”
This stops us thinking because TERRORIST IS BAD. Stated as a simple fact, it’s designed to sort of short circuit our thinking process with an emotionally freighted word. The argument behind it is, well, he’s a terrorist and therefore whatever bad thing we do to him is actually a good thing for everyone else because he’s evil/violent/have you ever heard of 9-11.
And of course there are several issues here, the first one being that Mahmoud Khalil is *not* a terrorist. Not only is he not a terrorist, he’s not aligned with terrorists, he’s not arguing for terrorism, he’s only asking for one thing: could you stop using our tuition money to kill people.
But we never get to the key parts of the conversation (free speech, what lawful permanent citizenship means, who has power to deport, do we need proof of wrongdoing to do it) because “he’s a terrorist” is used to stop the conversation.
Those are examples from the “he probably somehow deserved to be illegally detained” side of things. But they’re easy enough to find across the political spectrum.
For instance, liberal folks might be trying to figure out, what is the motivation behind some of these weird immigration decisions. In the midst of the conversation someone might say, “The cruelty is the point.”
This comment is often designed to end the conversation (we don’t need to keep trying figure this out, there’s not an underlying logic, they’re being cruel on purpose and that is the reason for it, there’s no greater plan and no political goal here). This leaves a lot of questions not just unanswered, but unexplored: why, for instance, do Democratic administrations and Republican administrations have such similarly cruel and often illegal policies when it comes to immigration?
Almost any community you’re a part of has some of these “conversation is now over” or “I’m not gonna think about it” little sayings. For instance, if you’ve grown up in Christian circles you’ve almost certainly heard someone say, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” This is not an invitation to deeper conversation hahahaha.
Here’s a list of really common phrases that can be used as thought-terminating clichés:
Many of these are “let’s stop processing the bad things” kind of phrases. The drawback being, you know, sometimes we do need to process that stuff a little longer.
What I find most useful about recognizing these thought-terminating clichés is, when I find myself using them I can see that there’s something I’m trying to avoid examining. When I see others use them, I can try to help them re-engage in the conversation OR recognize that this is them willingly leaving the conversation and letting them disengage.
Anyway, it is what it is. It could be worse. Let’s all try to look at the bright side.
GOD WITH US book launch on April 5th!
When I was in my 20s I worked at the best comic book shop in the world, Flying Colors Comics and Other Cool Stuff. And the owner there, Joe Field, has invited me to do the book launch for GOD WITH US at the shop!
So if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area I sure hope you’ll come hang out. And here’s some photographic evidence of me hard at work:
And here’s a list of all the upcoming FlyCo special events. As you can see I am sandwiched between some pretty amazing comic creators!
Meanwhile, my favorite thing on the internet this week
Is this comic:
Bruce the rabbit is not a terrorist
When Christmas is over I throw our Christmas tree in the back yard for Bruce. He likes to eat it and hide behind it. This week I went and “rotated” the tree so he could get at another section of it, and he gladly spent a couple days gnawing on the wood and hiding behind it again, like he used to do in January.
Here’s hoping someone refreshes something you enjoy this week so that you get even more enjoyment out of it!
Peace to you,
Matt
You could write a comic book called The Terminator (of conversation). And you don't even have to give me credit for my brilliance!
Matt—thanks for this bitesized critical thinking moment. I could imagine this post being set to some music a la “schoolhouse rock,” or a “the more you know” PSA during the after school special. 🙂 we need more of this.