The problem with regurgitating the past to suit an argument are the factors many of us, blessed with vast knowledge and balance, are all too well aware of, especially students of Darwin. When you parade fiction dressed up as fact you are displaying your bias for all the world to see, albeit disguised behind a facade of self interest. These are critical issues that must be addressed in marketing:
Firstly you must make the distinctions between truth, expectations and falsehoods. Our brains are wired for political bias and we can't do anything to rid ourselves of tribal bias, which is the core question being posed by WayneL and his concern for the terminal condition of our once great culture
To go back in history to prove the present is a great way to apply personal bias'. In marketing you/we must accommodate these bias' and be aware that frequency often gazumps probability:
1) age bias
2) gender bias
3) Over confidence bias (something I'm not susceptible to)
4) Rationalsim
5) Hindsight bias
6) Fallacious Conjunctions
7) Base rate fallacy
8) Racial, ethnic and cultural bias
Maslow's theory aside, one of the biggest drivers for arguing the toss when confronted with a superior protagonist is heuristics, where we assume something that agrees with our point of view is much more valid than something we know nothing or little of. When heuristic boundaries are encountered in an argument generality often replaces specificity.
The fallback is to recognition of names, places, trauma, etc. Often that heuristic single minded point of view has a truer decision merit than Bayes theorem or the multiple points of evidence that the Perry Mason people would use to prove their own intransigent point of view.
As has been proven time and time again on this forum, I have a solid heuristic core that is predicated on fact and nothing but the facts. After relentlessly asking for proof of argument using facts, the score so far is Tisme: 1,347 Others: Zip. My record rests on its own merits and I rest my case.