Duality Will Blindside You

Ah, the pretty plastic horse for females, the pretty naked girl for the males. Throw in a mystical background, a fan to blow the girl's fake extended hair, add in fancy lettering and the effect is complete. The eye is drawn in by the Bacardi Rum ad feel only to be smacked upside the head with the actual message: horse-drawn carriages are cruel. Good ol' PETA, with plans to release this ad on Nov. 20, is up to its old tricks once again. It seems like it's more important to shock people than it is to tell the truth. Their arguments are as fake as their advertising campaigns.

The truth is, hooking a horse up to a carriage and giving rides in any downtown metro area is far from cruel. NY City has so many rules, regulations and constant inspections of horse-drawn carriage services that it would be impossible for any cruelty to happen. A horse is sent back to the stable if it breaks a sweat. A horse will sweat while grazing out in pasture!

Any argument for or against anything that is based only on emotion instead of facts is faulty, misleading, irrelevant and imposing at best, but is most likely extremism in all its glory. The duality, the totally misleading imagery, the exclusion of actual facts, the hypocrisy and the very obvious shove-it-down-your-throat tactics are just plain sickening.

If PETA was the only one using this insulting and demeaning method of operating, it wouldn't work. Advertising psychology discovered long ago that the best way to influence people is to play on emotions. That's where people are weakest and most vulnerable to persuasion. The last year has been filled with emotional arguments minus facts with the presidential campaign and that's exactly the way the majority  elected the next head honcho. It was too easy to do -- the majority had no clue about any of the facts, and therefore couldn't decide on anything beyond the emotional rants and raves. Split the objective away from the subjective and the battle is won with divide and conquer. It works every time.

Duality will blindside you in thousands of less obvious ways. Look at the man pleasant and agreeable, and not a minute later changing his tone and tune when talking with a different person. Look at the teenager trusting her boyfriend only to be date raped. Look at the x-rays of the ribs of a wife constantly beaten by the man she married. The used car salesmen, the big box chain stores, the company that steals hard earned pensions by firing a month before retirement, the government that goes to war to protect business interests under the guise of humanitarian efforts...

The best defense - observation, objectivity and intelligence. Use the same tactics to your benefit by splitting the objective from the subjective; set aside the feeling and use the thinking.