Thought-Terminating Cliché
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Neither of these examples have much relevance to thought-terminating cliches, whose purpose is to "stop an argument from proceeding further," because neither of these examples involves an argument.
Rather, they both have a meditative purpose, intended not to end thought but to focus it on something. In the case of Catholics reciting the rosary, the intention is to focus their thoughts on the mysteries of their faith. In the case of Hare Krishnas chanting the maha-mantra, it is intended to achieve self-realization by connecting with Krishna.
But whatever. I'm entitled to my opinion, so let's just agree to disagree.
However, Wikipedia says "the admonition given to Catholic schoolchildren to recite the Hail Mary or rosary to ward off 'impure thoughts'"; if such an admonition is made in response to when the schoolchildren will say something that the teacher didn't want, then this will be a thought-terminating cliche, although the prayer itself isn't.
Wikipedia also mentions 'when certain members of Islam label something haram ... that employs the use of the tactic since it states that something is forbidden and "There is no need for any more consideration of whether it is bad."'; in such a case, I think that this use of "haram" is also a thought-terminating cliche, if you cannot explain why it is bad.
> I'm entitled to my opinion, so let's just agree to disagree.
I agree that you are entitled to your opinion, although, like other comments mention, I think that "let's just agree to disagree" is also a thought-terminating cliche.
However, of course even despite such a saying, responses can still be made anyways; so, if they are discussed/argued despite that, then it can be less of a problem.
And, rather than merely saying "agree to disagree", you had presented your arguments for why you disagreed with it, so that is better than merely saying that you will disagree, or will agree to disagree; so, more discussion, argument for/against it can be possible, rather than shutting it out.
(Of course, you can agree or disagree with me, too. However, it is good to make the argument of why you will agree or disagree, if you can.)
That‘s one, I‘d say.
There are others that are "you're wrong, conversation over". Calling someone or something "X-ist" is often that.
I guess both of those can serve as thought-ending cliches, because now I don't have to think any further about what you say. But in terms of what they do to the conversation, they are not equivalent.
- It's basically impossible to have more than one productive discussion going at any time.
- There's no threading (or threading is a mostly half-baked ignored niche feature, like in Matrix), so 90% of answers are followed by everybody else just guessing which comment they answered.
- You need to seize the moment to keep the other participants engaged and to avoid confusing readers (see above), so quick answers rather than thoughtful ones are more likely to get a follow-up.
That's life.
Don't overthink it.
... Seems to me that these clichés grew rapidly in the last couple decades.
The fact that people just accept without challenge that Threads will de-platform anything "political" [0] is an outcome of this kind of thinking, imo. People would have been a lot more cynical about such a move (from Mark "they trust me - dumb fucks" Zuckerberg) fifteen years ago.
It's definitely gotten worse in recent decades. Oratory and intellectual debate are increasingly rare in our society since the Cold War. Political bipolarity eviscerated the American/Western intellect.
Great people like Stallman, Tesla, Feynman, Chomsky, Assange and Snowden, etc, are smeared and dismissed due to unrelated, out of context, twisted, false selections of views.
Tribalism is fed and magnified, saying the 'wrong' (no matter if true) thing gets you dismissed as a conspiracy theorist / tankie / Trumpist / how many other "thought-ending insults". No questions, no time for looking at evidence, just thrown in the 'other' bucket.
Biden asked Twitter to censor true information that went against the preferred narrative, and the so-called left wing collectively decided "there's no there there", it's a "nothing-burger". More clichés. And the 'other' sides thought-ending clichés are so barmy that it's impolite to even describe them accurately; and it physically hurts to even try.
And it does go back to that "bipolarity", which acts very like a monopole on certain big issues like oil, war, equality, censorship, and people not in the tribe.
I don't think we can blame it all on social media or human nature either. In too many cases, you can point to someone shadowy putting their finger on the levers of power. Murdoch, Turner, Zuck, etc; they all have a lot more in common with each other than with us.
It happens in New Zealand too, and we don’t have bipartisan politics
I'll have to think about it some more. I will say this though - America is at the vanguard of anti-intellectualism, and has been for quite some time. Mark Twain commented on it frequently, for example.
And even so, the last couple decades have seen the dismissal of deep / nuanced thinking grow far worse, even as "bipartisanship" also rapidly got bad enough to bring us a lot closer to civil war than I expected in the 90s.
One last point - it's weird that this would happen even as everyone gets nerdier. People all use computers, watch LOTR and Harry Potter, cosplaying and conventions are all normalized... It's not what I'd have expected.
I occasionally will see nuanced, heterodox comments from AUS/NZ politicians that would not be tolerated in Washington.