The dangers and merits of the cliche.

A cliche is an expression that has been so overused that it has lost it's original effect, where once it was deemed meaningful it's now a stereotype.

Wouldn't the everyday use of the cliche only add to it's meaning, that it's an expression that applies widely to human life? Why do we have to lower it's value just because it's common? Of course it's a poor tool in literary work, but such things as words of wisdom have become meme-like, there are certain things teachers or parents will say almost for the sake of it "If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?"

There is a problem with some of these cliches and Robert Jay Lifton can say it much better than I can:
“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

Their meme-like properties have allowed them to spread, along with being beneficial to the speaker, “I’m the parent, that’s why”, their fallacious logic embedded themselves into our minds, so no wonder they have been wielded by both politicians and priests to draw us to their uniform message. This is dangerous, often they present no argument but conclusions that seem positive, such as "Support our troops" or "God has a plan and a purpose".

So what is so good about the cliche, the thought-terminating end of ideological analysis? We can choose and create our own cliches to live by, our mind is a very fuzzy place, and cliches offer a clear answer to our problem, we could whine about how we procrastinate too much or decided to "live like a man", then follow it with zeal. Cliches appeal to our super-ego much more efficiently than hazy ideals with no clear basis, this is why people live by quotes, or find an almost transcendent truth in them that follows them for the long-term. If you violate the cliche, there is no easy way out, but in the hazy world of pragmatism, the super-ego can make an easy excuse for the actions of the id. But even so, one should avoid the destructive and fallacious cliches that appear in day-to-day life, even going so far as pointing them out, the one I hate the most is "well that's just like, your opinion, man."

I think cliches are a "necessary evil".