And your fifth speaker, code 166. The title is, Our Quest for the Golden Apple. I blame many of our problems today on the ancient Greeks. Except for Kanye. Yeah, we opened up that Pandora's box all on our own. But seriously, the Greeks created so many problems by comparing apples to oranges.
Take the judgment of Paris. Story goes that the queen of gods, Hera, goddess of wisdom, Athena, and goddess of love, Aphrodite, approached Prince Paris of Troy with a golden apple. asking him to present it to the fairest. And he did.
Fun fact, this is the origin story of the ancient proverb, men are trash. Seriously, it's just one of those questions you should never answer. Like, who's your favorite child?
Dad, emphasis on never answer. But Paris, instead of using his frontal lobe, he used his lower robe. Gave the golden apple to Aphrodite and all Hades broke loose.
Yes, they were all women, but given what each represented, it was not a fair comparison. While this may seem like ancient history, Our modern day tendency to compare apples to oranges has taken on a life of its own. And that's my concern. Far too often we wrongly make harmful false equivalences.
as defined by Dr. Katie Pryor, law professor at University of North Carolina. False equivalence is a logical fallacy where opposing ideas are equated, even if they're not equal. By doing so, former White House senior policy analyst Jeff Schweitzer warns that we lose our ability to arbitrate between conflicting claims because everything is considered equally valid.
Even in the absence of evidence. So, let's discuss how we use false equivalences first, to vilify. Second, to justify.
Then examine the harms. And finally, reap some fruitful solutions. Okay! So maybe equating Paris and all men to trash wasn't a fair comparison. Because not all men are trash.
I mean, there's Michael B. Jordan. Barack Obama. Bill Nye.
But, like I did with Paris, we make false equivalences in order to vilify. Parents are famous for doing this. It's the old, why can't you be more like your older brother?
Mom, I don't even have an older brother! From the kitchen table to Congress, we do this. Don't like the Affordable Care Act?
According to Salon.com, North Carolina Republican Bob Rucho compared it to genocide. Or how many times have you... heard someone compare their opponent to Hitler or Nazism? John Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, explains.
Misplaced comparisons to Hitler trivialize the magnitude of this. unique tragedy in human history. Despite your feelings on president Trump, comparing him to Hitler is simply a false equivalence because let's face it as Anne Rehm writes in the American prospect, marginalizing a people is not the same as exterminating them.
These These false equivalences used to vilify someone or something are just the low-hanging fruit of argumentation. Now, I'm not saying that we can never utter a comparison, but it becomes a problem when we make them not only... to vilify but to justify.
Recently in Congress, Virginia Representative Morgan Griffith argued against gun control legislation by stating, after a vehicular attack on a crowd, nobody wants to talk about increased automobile legislation. As if guns and cars were created for the same purpose. When we make illogical false equivalences to justify our stances, we lose a sense of perspective and proportion, which make molehills.
suddenly seem like Mount Olympus. And it's not just irrational thoughts that we justify, but our behaviors as well. We do this by pushing away blame and difficult matters and equating it to something else. According to David David Graham of the Atlantic, we've even created a saying for it. What about?
Well, that may be true, but what about? Yeah, I may have said that, but what about? I may have hurt you, but what about? And that's when we become a nation of falsely equated whatabouts who justify the horrible things we say and do to one another.
What about each other? What about what we've become? The harms of these false equivalences invade into our relationships and reasoning. Last spring, one of my friends shared with me her struggle with depression, which included suicidal thoughts.
Her cousin, who was her emotional rock, also battled depression and had recently killed himself. In her words, leaving me completely alone. In my attempt to console her, I said, I get it. I get it.
And in those three small words, I falsely equated my experiences with pain and suffering to hers, when the reality is, I can't and never will get her pain. Russell Friedman. Author and founder of the Grief Recovery Institute explains that all pain is unique and when it comes to relationships Comparing our own to someone else's is dangerous.
It minimizes their experience even worse In her 2017 book Live Large, author Elizabeth Crook explains that these false equivalences limit our reasoning, so that rather than discerning the differences, we box everything into oversimplified categories. and call them equivalent. We compartmentalize and that is the greatest harm.
It happens when we falsely equate young black men to dangerous predators or Muslims to terrorists. Sound unlikely? My classmate used this equation when he saw my hijab, the symbol of my faith, and said to me, it really brings out your inner terrorist. These...
are the Trojan horses that we let into our daily lives, the false equivalences of language, logic, and emotion that we allow through our front gates. So, how can we learn from Paris'mistake? Let's deconstruct the golden apple, from its surface to the core.
On the surface, false equivalences are set up with language like X is Y, or X is like Y. These linguistic propositions should be an immediate alert of a possible false equivalence. Think of this next solution step.
...as biting into the fruit, or in our case, the substance or logic of a false equivalence. Is it really a fair comparison? Or do these things simply share similar traits? As explained by Harvard Law professor...
William Fisher. A balanced comparison doesn't mean perfectly equal, but it does have to be reasonably equal. And finally, we need to re-evaluate the core or intent of these false equivalences.
Ask yourself, why am I making this comparison? Is the intent to change someone's mind? Then an unfair comparison to vilify or justify will only derail the logic and inflame the emotion.
Is the intent to console or comfort someone? Then we need to do more than equate our experiences to theirs. Psychologist and author Dr. Jeanne Segal suggests simply saying, I don't know what to say. but I want you to know that I care.
Listen. Ask questions. And keep the focus on them. Try to be like the most empathetic listener we all know. Siri.
The Greeks were never too particular when it came to their comparisons. As stated in the book Beyond the Fruited Plain, Greeks named all newly discovered citrus after apples, meaning that golden apple, yeah, probably was an orange. their apples to oranges comparisons, like many of our own, simply weren't accurate. But if we can begin to plant the seeds of reason, empathy, and fairness, maybe they can be.
Now that would truly be golden.