I watched the Vice-Presidential debate last night on TV and have to admit I was fascinated in a freak-show kind of way. Apparently it’s unwise to blog about politics unless you actually write a political blog, but politics is part of life and no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to ignore life with any measure of success.

It’s difficult to know where to go with this without panning Sarah Palin and potentially losing readers. So if you think being ‘folksy’ qualifies somebody to be VP of the most powerful nation on earth, you may want to have one finger hovering over the unsubscribe button.

Actually I don’t think there is an unsubscribe button, but you can compromise by leaving a scathing comment below attacking my professionalism as a life coach and suggesting I’m a pinko commie bed-wetter.

I haven’t really listened to any of the post debate debate so I may be at risk of repeating some stuff that has been discussed ad nauseum by the TV pundits, but here goes anyway.

Palin never really said anything meaningful on many of the issues. She waffled a lot and used some brilliant artfully vague language to make it appear like she was saying something profound and intellectual (almost), but that’s about it. To keep an element of balance, Biden also employed artfully vague language too, but nothing like the extent that Palin did.

Political speechwriters are masters at using AVL or as it is sometimes known, the Milton Model of language. It allows them to construct speeches that individuals can attach their own meaning to. And trust me people love to do that even if it’s not always at a conscious level.

The greater the specificity the more likely the recipient is to disagree, so they avoid specificity a bit like I avoid using an electric sander to wipe my ass with.

Other than politicians, horoscope writers and fortune tellers (using cold reading) are also masters of AVL. They have to be because nobody can actually tell the future with any level of accuracy. Whoops, there goes another 50 subscribers.

If you do disagree with me or have doubts, here’s an interesting fact for you. Nobody has ever been able to predict the future under laboratory conditions with a degree of accuracy that staggers much above random chance.

So let me ask you this. Do all the good clairvoyants have an unnatural aversion to white coats and test tubes? Or are they’re just dishonest con artists or deluded human beings?

If I said to you “America needs to stand tall and be strong in these times of troubles” you’d probably nod your head sagely, stroke your chin and agree that I am indeed a wise old soul. Unless of course you’re Spanish in which case you’d probably tell me to piss off, or more accurately, ¡vete a la mierda!

But what does that phrase actually mean to you?

If you are in favor of the ‘War on Terror’ it may mean you believe American needs to retain a proactive military presence in hot spots such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and be highly visible to hostile regimes in countries like Iran and North Korea.

On the other hand if you’re from the other side of the political spectrum, you may think it means America should be offering more humanitarian support in places like Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma where human rights atrocities occur with sickening regularity

Obviously, there are numerous stages in between the two examples, but none of them (based on that one sentence) are any more accurate than the other.

The reality is that political debates like these are as close to pointless in the grand scheme of things as you can get. Unless Biden had called Palin a MILF, or Palin had put on sunglasses and declared Biden’s teeth too white to look at, it’s doubtful much would change. You can probably lose an election 5 weeks beforehand, but you can’t win one.

The vast majority of people that tuned-in for the debate (including many so-called undecided’s) were doing so to cement an opinion that they had already formed. Few people watched with an open-mind because our brains don’t work like that. We want to know that the original opinion we formed was correct and as such we look for evidence that backs it up and not information to contradict it.

If you are a Democrat you’ll have seen Biden’s performance as Statesmen-like and polished. You probably didn’t even notice the couple of times he stumbled over his response because you weren’t looking for that. Similarly, if you’re a Republican you’ll be basking in the knowledge (whether accurate or not) that Palin performed creditably and proved the interviews with Gibson and Couric were mere aberrations. The fact that she responded to a question on foreign policy by talking about energy would have gone straight over your head. And her ‘shout out’ would have seemed plain cute.

Why am I even talking about this you may be wondering and what has it got to do with life coaching or even just real life?

We don’t stop at politics when it comes to jumping to conclusions and making incorrect assumptions either, we do it all areas of life. In an effort to try and make things easier for you, your brain is constantly messing up. It deletes information that it thinks isn’t needed. It distorts experiences to make them fit your view of reality and it generalizes when sometimes it shouldn’t, so that you can make rapid decisions.

Have you ever had a false memory? Of course you have, everybody has. In fact you will be holding lots of them as you read this. It’s because your mind constructs memories rather then reconstructs them as you would think. It has to, because otherwise every memory would take as long to think about as the actual event.

So the brain retains crucial bits of information and lets you fill in all the blanks with gay abandon. As such, you frequently make mistakes. We’ve all had moments of absolute certainty and clarity about an event only to come across incontrovertible proof that demonstrates we got it completely wrong. It can be a sobering experience.

There’s no way round any of this, it’s one of the things that makes life so intriguing. However, if you can stay aware that your opinions may well be wrong even when you just ‘know’ they are right, then you are more likely to grow as a human being. Self development is much easier if you check your beliefs and presuppositions at the door.

I’d love to hear any clever uses of artfully vague language that you have come across or great stories about false memories.