Let’s Stop Listening To Relabelling Efforts

…and pay attention to their slippery slope instead.

Photo by Michal Matlon

The Technique

Relabelling situations is one of the worst approaches to problem-solving. Yet, it is rather common. We are scared of something but tell ourselves we simply don’t like it. We loathe someone but say we don’t mind them; we are just differently inclined. Corporations use the technique regularly: a company suffers losses or makes erroneous decisions and explains them away as unpredictable shifts in the market. In politics, relabelling reality has all but become everything that politics stands for.

The Example

For instance, the European Parliament has recently classed gas and nuclear energies as ‘green’. It would be funny if the issue weren’t so critical to our future. There was an energy crisis before Russia attacked Ukraine, similar to how there was a health care crisis before the coronavirus pandemic. One of the cheapest and most effective fallacies of the hyperconnected world is establishing a fact that exacerbates an existing condition as its cause. It is another example of relabelling in action. Since it’s impossible to deny that the Russian invasion or the COVID pandemic turned things for the worse in their respective fields, our limited attention is happy to take the latest as the most…