ThirstyFish

"Be Black And White"! I'm not sure what the owner of this Volkswagen Beetle had in mind when he or she chose that sign. It was most probably just a reference to his or her all-black Beetle.

The New Beetle was introduced in 1998 with an exterior design inspired from the original Beetle. Under the hood, it is a totally different car. These days, retro design is major market. The Beetle and other cars like the Ford Mustang, and The Mini have gone retro. Even the camera that took this photo, the Olympus PEN E-P3, is a retro inspired by the original Olympus Pen film camera. Since its introduction, The New Beetle, became popular among women. The 2012 model is going through a sex change, to attract male customers.

Black and White Thinking (Splitting), is considered to be a cognitive distortion by psychologists. Thinking purely in extremes, good versus evil, victimization versus oppression, winning versus losing, etc., is regarded as a defense mechanism due to existential insecurity or due one's weak self-concept. Very few things in life, if any, can be seen as black and white. Black and White Thinking results is a fallacy called a false dilemma, where we consider only two alternatives, when in fact there may be additional options. Many elements within our culture, from television to movies, politics to religion, commonly advance a binary worldview that hides choices from us, and makes it more difficult for us to understand reality in a way that is compatible with reality. If one thing is certain, that is, reality is not black and white.

Splitting is another form of kitsch - a sanitized view of the world where any further questioning is precluded. I have not read any research that has studied the occurrence of splitting, but I can say that almost all people whom I know, routinely engage in it, including myself.

Song of the Day: Parting of the Sensory - Modest Mouse (2007)