President Trump claimed he could end the Ukraine war in a day. Did anyone take him literally or didn’t we all recognize his boast as generalizing?

Democrats during Trump’s first term claimed Trump colluded with Russians to get elected. Who didn’t see this as a generalization to parse the shattering of the Overton window?

Independent media criticized legacy media for fanning the flames of “Russiagate”. Each side carved out competing generalizations that ignores the specifics of the Overton window crash.

Politicians rely on generalizing and now privileged to generalize into absurdities. Both legacy and independent media now collude to undermine credibility in politics itself as a viable answer.

Hyperbole culture covers those social norms privileging generalizing that easily overlooks relevant specifics. Which often extends to the point of overgeneralizing and accepting exaggerations as fact.

Defunction: overgeneralizing norms

Publicized ideas get condensed for easy, rapid and widespread consumption. Our minds lack the cognitive bandwidth to properly process in real time all the relevant details in a pressing matter. So we accept rhetorical shortcuts that must skip over some vital specifics.

We don’t always get back to those skipped details. We gloss over reality and pay the price. Especially when provoked defensiveness motivates us to cling to biases. Meanwhile, reality explodes in our faces as our generalizations catch us looking the other way.

Anankelogy recognizes an array of generalizing that correlate with its four levels of functionality.

1. Dynamic generalizing. You reduce something to cognitively process it in the moment but always ready to get back to specifics temporarily set aside. Peakfunctional: Readiness to switch back to engaging relevant specifics allows needs to resolve promptly.

2. Popular generalizing. Popgen for short, you accept widely accepted generalized versions of concepts, often too complex to be readily understood. Symfunctional: Which is enough to adequately function in social spaces, at a level of socially tolerated mediocrity.

3. Relief generalizing. Relief-gen for short, you gravitate toward generalizations that offer relief from discomfort, even if divorced from what is true. Dysfunctional: Which easily compromises wellness and leaves you exposed to more emotional pain.

4. Broad absurdities. You cling to baseless generalities that draw you deeper into trouble. We could also call this “believed stupidity” or BS for short. Misfunctional: Which exposes you to existential disillusionment as reality slams in with full shock.

Legalism counts on generalizing. Politics exists on generalizing. Courts generalize people as defendants, accusers, witnesses, plaintiffs, appellants, felons and so forth. These serve the institution’s processing pipelines more than accountably deliver on justice needs, which can result in mass institution mission creep (see below). Consider some examples.

Examples: 

Examples of political generalizing - partisan generalizing for coalition support

• leftists are bad people, who want to replace freedom with a communist state

• right wingers are all racist xenophobes

• Democrats are coming after our guns

• Republicans think capitalism will fix anything

Examples of judicial generalizing - categories for adjudication convenience

• guilt or acquittal and nothing in between

• victim or offender binary overlooking nuance where victim had victimized another around the same time and offender was fending of some form of violence

• crime categories that overlook nuance of many situations and the full context of volatile situations harboring less visible forms of violence

• criminal justice process with discrete steps from decisionmakers, each sidestepping the nuance of both accused and accuser, occasionally resulting in a miscarriage of justice

Examples of generalizing by functional level

Peakfunctional - dynamic generalizing

Consider how each of these are viewed through the lens of those held accountable for its accuracy.

• critical liberalism

• critical existentialism & critical rational choice theory

• critical postmodernism

• critical microaggression

• critical race theory

• critical identity politics & critical intersectionality

• critical transgenderism

• critical libertarianism

• critical gun rights

• critical free market dynamics

Symfunctional - popgen

When packaged for wide appeal, each of these get watered down for easier consumption. Social norms tend to accept these as the same as the critical version above. Problems then creep in subtly, often without awareness.

• popgen liberalism

• popgen existentialism & popgen rational choice theory

• popgen postmodernism

• popgen microaggression

• popgen race theory

• popgen identity politics & popgen intersectionality

• popgen transgenderism

• popgen libertarianism

• popgen gun rights

• popgen free market dynamics

Dysfunctional - relief-gen

Those eager to relieve the pain from all of their unresolved needs gravitate toward a more simplified version of these concepts. With limited cognitive bandwidth, from coping with all that pain from unmet needs, such concepts often get oversimplified into cheapened versions. Those challenging such a concept favor such a diluted version to denounce the whole thing.

• relief-gen existentialism & relief-gen rational choice theory

• relief-gen postmodernism

• relief-gen microaggression

• relief-gen race theory

• relief-gen identity politics & relief-gen intersectionality

• relief-gen transgenderism

• relief-gen libertarianism

• relief-gen gun rights

• relief-gen free market dynamics

Politicians and pundits who conflate these different level versions, typically for coalition support, leave themselves open to conflict. Which privileges norms for rushing into conflicts.

For example, the voter clinging to relief-gen postmodernism views (e.g., all things are relative) is not the same as the voter discussing critical postmodernism (e.g., words exist within a context of cultural norms). React culture privileges the denunciation of postmodernism as a whole because somewhere someone diluted it with the generalization that all things (which is an absolute) is relative.

There are other hyperbole culture examples, like

• reified reductionism (reducing something to make sense of it then forgetting the big picture),

• cognitive bandwidth contraction (exaggerating when simplifying for limited attention), and

• distant from one's expertise (disregarding details not within one’s purview of knowledge)

but these represent some key examples fueling many of our problems.

Refunction: relevant nuance path