Push Button Mentality

What exactly is push button mentality (PBM)?

It is using concept of "buttons" in the mind, in the mindset, in one's ideology, in one's view of the world. Especially useful if one follows an agenda, a platform, a group or belief system. It is what religion depends on.

It is a binary action. On, change happens. Belief is that you can fix things in this way and if you can't, it is desired. If not demanded. People want easy answers. Simple explanations, easy fixes. It is a short cut for initiating a reaction, or action. It is not a deep evocation, it is a shallow one.

It is how Pres. Trump and the Republican party have found their way into being primary in American politics today. The lowest common denominator.

Education is the antithesis of this.

It is a concept that is especially useful to extremists. It is much used in the conservative movement (and religion) where deep thinking is not desired. Where indeed it is antithetical to it. Where accurate information is counter to its sustainment.

Where education is undesirable and while massive or complex information is highly valued, it is only superficially understood. Highly valued because too much information is the same as not enough to most people. Too much or too complicated information leads to paralysis and then people start to demand the push button answers.

It's odd. An odd behavior. But it relates to fight or flight. Another binary decision. Easy. Effective to either remove your threat, or remove yourself so that the threat remains, but you do not. It has led to the dumbing down of America. But not just America. We're seeing these authoritarian platforms growing world wide.

Even the intelligence community has issues with too much information.

In an age where we have massive amounts of data and information, "intelligence", how does one evaluate it all in order to make use of it? ONE, does not. Because that requires many analysts, computers and programs to do the analysis and serve it up in formats that make most needed data available and actionable.

Those who are informed, who are professionals, are then able to make use of it.

But there is no push button mentality involved there.

Where there is, it widely desired and yet, minuscule functional.

Beware when politicians offer quick and easy fixes. Who say, only they can fix things. Who claim what the problems actually are, are not.

Therein lay insanity. If not...evil.

From "The Man in the High Castle" (S2E5):

"Its intentions were pure. But its methods were cruel."

That says so much too about the republican party and many conservative, especially misguided theistic based beliefs.

The ethically blind cannot see where they step, while those around them who can see, can merely try to warn them of the dangers they are approaching.

It is how faith can be used by those who have no shame, just power, in order to convince their blind followers of the grand stairway before them, yet not warn them of the cliff's edge that is actually there. All to their benefit and that of, the Party.

Open your eyes. See the cliff's edge.

Then push those guiding you toward it to the demise they had planned for you.