Name 1
Student Name
Interpersonal Communications
Professor Anzoleaga
Date
My Autoethnography
There is a girl I know that understands fallacies like no other. She has learned through her
own personal experience the crippling affects of living a life under fallacies, but more
specifically, the fallacy of approval as well as the fallacy of helplessness. The fallacy of approval
is “the idea that it is not only desirable but also vital to get the approval of virtually every
person” (Proctor and Adler, 2014, p.138), while the fallacy of helplessness is “that satisfaction in
life is determined by forces beyond their control” (Proctor and Adler, 2014, p.141). She wants to
teach others that living under fallacies growing up can damage someone’s self esteem and even
their future. This is her story.
She is a girl of Swedish heritage. The red in her hair is proof enough for her to believe
she has a family in a far off place. She was born during a long summer, but has since seen her
share of hardships and cold winters in her nineteen years. She feels responsible for her three
siblings, who are only half related to her, but she does not want to admit that she can feel that she
does not really belong. Her mother and her step-father were both very educated people who went
to school and they expected the same of her. But, she always dreamed of being a hero; she
dreamt of saving people from monsters, but that was before she realized that the monsters were
deep inside the people that she wanted to save. That was before she realized that she might not
be the hero, but the villain.
Name 2
She has met her demons and they are strong. She has learned of her weaknesses and
realized that she is a savage. She is a destroyer, a taker, a monster herself. She is the thing she
wanted to save people from. How many people had she fooled? How many people really thought
that she could have been the hero? She was ashamed of herself for being selfish and a monster,
but only at first. When she was just a girl she believed very much that maybe there was a place
called heaven and someone named God that saved the good and punished the bad, but as she
grew, she became unsure. She learned of science and evolution and wondered if science would
prevail as it seemed to always do. As she grew older she learned to accept herself for who she
really was. She chose not to live under the fallacy of helplessness anymore. She knew she could
control and change her own life, and she did. She no longer felt sorry for herself and she grew
from that. She became strong.
She was lost when the semester began. She had moved from her family into the home of
a man that she loved. But she never forgave herself for leaving the kids. She often longed for
them to be with her in her safer place she found. She knew her mom was not always there and
that there was often a shortage for food in her mother’s home, and that made her worry
constantly. She always does her best to hide those feelings though by posting on Facebook things
like “My life is over. I just realized my eyes are two different sizes. I can never leave the house
again. What will the neighbors think?” This status update, which was posted around the start of
the semester on January 25th 2014, was obviously meant as a joke. Everyone knows that no one
is exactly symmetrical like the wings of a butterfly.
But while it was a joke, I believe that it was a bit over emotional and exaggerated
compared to what she posted later in the semester. By May 3rd 2014, she has learned to express
her feelings in a more professional manner and posted things like “Nothing happens to a man
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that he is not fitted by nature to bear.” Through this semester and in taking the Interpersonal
Communication course, she has grown as a person and found better ways in which to
communicate her ideas. She has learned how to analyze people’s messages to find the real
meaning; she has learned how to help solve arguments with loved ones before they can really get
started, and she has learned that it is possible to love ones self even when it feels like no one else
does. She discovered, with the help of the course, that she can free herself of the fallacy of
approval by just believing that she doesn’t need other people to be happy with her decisions as
long as she is happy with them. Her own opinion is the only one she needs to hear.
Since she has lived under the fallacies of helplessness and approval, she knows what they
can do to a person. If someone were to live believing that everything is out of their control, and
that their own life is not in their hands, they would take chances that no one else would. They
would be unafraid of making deals with the devil, making them more in the prone to darkness
than others, since their lives are out of their control anyway. They would succumb to lust and
greed and all of the other deadly sins because they cannot control their lives anyway. The girl I
know knows this well. But she has fought it since then, and learned that, as explained before, that
she does in fact control her own life and she knows now that she should have been more careful
with her fragile life. That maybe she could have been the hero she dreamed of, if she knew from
the beginning that this life was hers to dictate.
Along with feeling like things were out of her control, she felt like she needed everyone
to agree with her decisions, so she did things she would not normally do, pushing her more down
the slippery path of the villain all because of the fallacy of approval. Fallacies such as these can
ruin lives and make it seem like the light is gone from the world. And while it may be too late for
the girl I know, others can still save themselves.
Name 4
They can learn from her and jump tracks to a lighter path. Do not just take my word for
it; there are academic journals from all over that explain the harmful effects of fallacies. There is
one called Dangerous Fallacy that talks about how fallacies can be dangerous to even the safety
of people, not just their moral values. While it may not just be strictly about the fallacies of
helplessness and approval, it just goes to show that other fallacies, if not all fallacies can be
dangerous and harmful. There is another academic journal that discusses dangerous fallacies and
it is called, Why we Allow the Destruction of our Planet. This academic journal is about the
common fallacies of the world and how they help with the destruction of our planet. Fallacies are
no joke, and can destroy not only the lives of people but the planet. The topic of fallacies is not
to be taken lightly and should be taught to students much sooner than in college. It could help
students to free themselves before it is too late.
The girl that I know always wanted to be a Social Worker and work for Child Protective
Services to save kids from bad homes. But as she realized that she was not the mighty hero that
she always thought she could be, she realized that even her career choice was questionable. What
does taking a child from its family do to help the child grow as a person? They will only feel
abandoned and alone as they grow up in Foster Care away from the people that they have known
their entire lives. And the real kicker, she realized, is that no matter what terrible things the
parents do to their children, they will most of the time go back to them when they turn eighteen.
If that is the case, what is the point of taking the children at all? Is the point to give them
separation anxiety and a feeling of abandonment to live with their entire lives? Who is really in
the right in that situation? Through her experience with the fallacies of helplessness and
approval, she has learned that the nothing is at it seems and that people are damaging themselves
and taking away from their true potential by living under fallacies. She has learned that nothing
Name 5
in the world is black and white and that everyone has their own opinions. I know so much about
this girl and her past because that girl is me.
Name 6
References
Adler, R. and Proctor, R. (2014). Looking Out Looking In. New York: Cengage.
N.A. (n.d). DANGEROUS FALLACY. Record, The (Kitchener/Cambridge/Waterloo, ON).
Swanson, D. (2013). Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet. Humanist, 73(4), 6-8.