I’m Theory-Driven and Not Ideologically-Driven

I intend for my project to be soundly grounded in theory from the disciplines of sociology, psychology and mass communications.

The underlying theory that I am trying to apply is that fixed attitudes and beliefs can limit one’s perception of reality. Our attitudes and beliefs are influenced by our value system and sense of morality. Our value systems serve as the primary filter to how we see the world and what we perceive to be the "truth" as we understand it.

The project will be covering issues that are very emotionally charged, and it will inevitably stimulate emotional states of high passion and low logic. But at the same time it is difficult to make a credible argument to an opposing viewpoint by going outside the bounds of accepted academic discourse. The more that the film’s content is grounded in academic theory, then more persuasive and acceptable it will become.

PITFALLS OF IDEOLOGICAL THINKING
As social psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson write in their book Age of Propaganda, "The more that a person is committed to a course of action, the more resistant that person will be to information that threatens that course."

The more that your attitudes and beliefs are set in stone, the more that your self-esteem will become associated with your value system, and the more resistant that you will become to altering any of your opinions. People have an amazing capacity to be able to rationalize their unsubstantiated beliefs even in the face of an overwhelming amount of contradictory factual evidence.

Given this phenomenon, it can become dangerous to believe that you have been enlightened with the "truth," and that your attitudes and beliefs are "right" any dissenting perspective is "wrong." William Shakespeare’s aphorism should apply to everyone regardless of political affiliation, "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

MY SCIENCE BACKGROUND
My background is in science and academic scholarship. I received my bachelors of science in electrical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 1998, and I then worked for 4 1/2 years as a radar systems engineer within the military industrial complex.

So I’m very familiar and comfortable with science. I’m a theoretical wonk. I read books about the Superstring Theory and devour psychology textbooks searching for scientifically grounded theories that explain the way I see the world.

I love studying techniques of critical thinking. I enjoy challenging every perception of my reality that I’m grasping onto for the sake explaining observed anomalies. Theoretical physics predicts that there are 7 unseen dimensions to our reality -- I’m just preparing for the major paradigm shift that is going to occur when the full implications of our living in an 11-dimensional and not just a 4-D world hits our popular culture.

I feel that trusting the theories that the Science Method have repeatedly validated is a grounded way base your paradigm of reality.

APPLYING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO POLITICS
I think of myself more as a scientist, and not so much as a partisan ideologue.

My science background gives me a different perspective on political debates.

I don’t trust that politicians are going to provide me with an accurate representation of how the world works. Politicians emphasize the strengths of their policies while minimizing their weaknesses. We all to do this to a certain extent, but representatives of institutions are especially less candid with the truth because they are mostly interested in protecting their position of power.

I prefer to use a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning to come up with a closer approximation to "the truth."

With Deductive reasoning, I look towards theory to provide me with predictive insight into what I should expect when I observe a set of phenomena.

For example, I have a theory that issues that are not actively being debated by the political leadership of Congress will receive little or no media coverage. If we look at the issues where the Democrats and Republicans agree, then we would expect that there would be little or no media coverage of these issues -- pending some newsworthy Presidential action, crisis or statement from a credible watchdog group. Examples include US foreign policy towards Israel, corporate influence in the legislative process, globalization policies, etc.
With Inductive reasoning, I try to observe a representative amount of data and try to come up with theories that describe the order, structure and character of the observable phenomena.

For example, I watched the five months of ABC, CBS, and NBC television news coverage leading up to the war in Iraq, and I built the theory that the journalists were covering the diplomacy debates as if war was already inevitable. I tested this theory on CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante, and he responded with a confirming statement of "But if you take it as a given, as I've already suggested to you that we did, that the administration was hell-bent on going to war, then you could only point out the steps that were being taken down that path."