Existential Ennui

~ Searching for Meaning Amid the Chaos

Existential Ennui

Tag Archives: psychology

Convincing Those Who are Oblivious

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Sherry in An Island in the Storm, Editorials, fundamentalism, Human Biology, Psychology, social concerns, Sociology, teabaggers

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

brain research, conservatives, liberals, psychology, public issues, sociology

Malcom-X-Quote-oppressed-peopleI spend a lot of time thinking.

I write a lot about the things I’m thinking about.

People who think like me, read what I write, and they think it’s pretty okay.

People who don’t think like me, don’t read me, but if they did, they wouldn’t agree with me.

Which is curious, since much of what I think about and write about is pretty well substantiated by actual things called facts.

It would seem evident that my facts should trump your fact-less opinion. But it doesn’t. Because you dismiss my facts. You don’t even waste the time to think about them, you simple use your magic eraser and voilà they are gone.

My husband, the great thinker, The Contrarian, reminds me that people are on a continuum. People are not neatly packed into the left or right or middle. It’s all bleeding all over the place. But we are dealing with averages after all.

“Recent converging studies are showing that liberals tend to have a larger and/or more active anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC—useful in detecting and judging conflict and error—and conservatives are more likely to have an enlarged amygdala, where the development and storage of emotional memories takes place.  More than one study has shown these same results, . . . .”

This has been known for some time. It ends up suggesting that these truisms are mostly true for liberals:

Liberals, according to this model, would be likely to engage in more flexible thinking, working through alternate possibilities before committing to a choice. Even after committing, if alternate contradicting data comes along, they would be more likely to consider it.

On the other hand, conservatives respond rather differently:

“. . .[W]hen faced with an ambiguous situation, conservatives would tend to process the information initially with a strong emotional response. This would make them less likely to lean towards change, and more likely to prefer stability. Stability means more predictability, which means more expected outcomes, and less of a trigger for anxiety.”

You see the dilemma?

Liberals continue to pepper conservatives with facts, and conservatives respond with concerns about values and things that affect them personally. They give you anecdotal information that they see as equally valuable in how they should respond.

Case in point. I know a person who is conservative and a fundamentalist. She is opposed to the ACA because it stems from President Obama, and pretty much is in agreement with all the known Tea Party positions regarding, abortion, gay marriage, guns, and so forth. I’ve never seen her seriously out of alignment with them on any issue.

At one point in her life, her health situation became serious enough that she applied for Medicaid. She was denied as “not eligible”. She self-reported that a “neighbor” couple got Medicaid however. She then went on to explain that God saw fit to have her denied because obviously He had other plans for her.

Let’s try to reconcile this. First, this woman has quoted her pastor as approving statements that call the American poor “akin to the rabble of Rome”. Her remark about her neighbors getting their Medicaid seemed offered as an example of  people who got what they didn’t deserve at least as much as she did. Yet, her application for Medicaid doesn’t define her as a “taker,” because of course she felt that in her situation, she “deserved” it.

However, when Medicaid denied her, that would mean she was not deserving, and thus one of those who was trying to get what she didn’t deserve, thus a taker. Since she cannot see herself as a taker, she is a qualified applicant denied what she deserved by a loving God who had other plans for her.

That’s the way you twist the world to fit your beliefs. People who get government assistance are still takers because they are not deserving, while good people like herself are denied. God has a plan and someday she will understand.

The example is instructive. It will do no good for me to  give her facts about how well Obamacare is actually doing now. She will not be impressed with knowing that in several states, competition between carriers has actually doubled, making it likely that premiums will come down even more in ensuing years. Eight million plus new insured will not do the trick either, since they are like her neighbor, people who shouldn’t get it, and could get their own if they would only get a job.

She might, on the other hand, be persuaded that it’s the Christian thing to do, that a healthier country means that everyone will benefit in myriad ways. Playing to her sense of Christian charity should work. But alas it does not to the fundamentalist. Jesus did in fact make it most clear that we were “our brother’s keeper” and he again and again emphasized to his disciples that here brother meant the truly marginalized. His examples of the marginalized he considered “brothers” were people of other nationalities,  victims of disease, women, those in employment to the oppressors, and sexually active persons.

Some how Jesus’ teachings about carrying for the prisoner, the sick, the hungry, the unclothed, got mixed up. I would take another post to untease the tangle of Pauline and pseudo-Pauline doctrine that is both misunderstood and mis-applied to these teachings to get where we are today with the evangelical right, namely that government should not proffer  programs for the needy, instead, they, the evangelicals should, so they can weed out all those who are not deserving, i.e., the lazy, the takers, the rabble, reserving charity for the “truly needy” which is essentially someone who has suddenly through no fault of their own, “fallen on hard times”, from which, if given just a little help for a short while, they will recover and once again be productive citizens.

That leaves us with appealing to self-interest and values, but here too we run into trouble. Let’s take the issues of food stamps and a living wage as examples. Regularly we are told that food stamps are misused by uncounted numbers of people who are “too lazy” to work. (Facts are to the contrary of course, but facts don’t matter.)  These people are taking advantage of “us” through taxes when they could just as well get a job.  But on the other hand, conservatives are essentially against any minimum wage, arguing that it impinges on an employers right to pay what he/she deems appropriate, and that such a law interferes with free markets. These are values conservatives hold dear: working and free markets.

However, if you wish people to work, but allow business owners to play unfair low wages, doesn’t that put us into the food stamp business? Logic says that if you want people to work you need to pay them enough to care for themselves and their families. So you should support a requirement of a fair living wage.

But again, logic is not the point. Conservatives can and do hold opinions on things that are in considerable conflict. Remember, it is liberals who have to reconcile conflicting beliefs, not conservatives.

While it is easy to say that the way to change the mind of a conservative is to forget facts and give them arguments that appeal to their self-interest and values, such is not always possible as we can see, or at least it requires a great deal more finesse than one would think.

It would seem then, that the answer lies in education. Only by teaching our youngsters that the mind has a way of creating reality to suit its own comfort zone, can we set about the business of giving them the tools that will allow them to avoid the pitfalls of their own predilections.

In this no doubt liberals also have something to learn. The focus  in this essay has been on explaining why liberals can’t change the minds of conservatives with facts. But they too have positive points to contribute. In a stable compromising world,  we could do what we have mostly always done, bring out the best in each other.

What is most important to remember, is that no individual can be utterly pigeon-holed by this analysis. We change over time as well. We do have free will, and the ability to overcome our own negative tendencies. These are generalities across a spectrum. Genetic predispositions are just that, predispositions, over come again and again by serious study, and life experiences. We would do well to remember that.

(Do read the link–it gives a lot more detail and links to further study)

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The Quest Continues

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Sherry in Chris Christie, Crap I Didn't Learn, Essays, fundamentalism, Health care, Humor, Mike Huckabee, Psychology, Satire, teabaggers, Women's issues

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

brains, Christie, fundamentalists, GOP, high school, Huckabee, Politics, psychology, Women's issues

python2You’d think that I’d know pretty much all I need to know at my age.

I mean seriously folks, shouldn’t I just sit and chortle at all the younglings’ who are still running into things, unable to fathom that pace of life yet? Shouldn’t I know the BIG issues of life?

Why am I always surprised and puzzled?

Having just finished reading Joseph Campbell’s, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, I should get that we are all just playing out the story of humanity in infinite forms, no? Can’t I leave it at that?

NO, apparently I’m forced to admit at my refined age, that I may be just a tad, just a tiny bit, miniscule actually, ANAL.

Case in point.

Or in several, but in POINT now.

Michael Huckabee, once governor of Arkansas, a state lost between Noah’s ark and Kansas. Now our Huck as he is fondly called by many, was once upon a time (not a fairy tale) a preacher. A southern Baptist one, to be exact, and that means literally, literal, insofar as a fundamentalist can be literal, which is way a lot when they need to and way not all when it would be inconvenient to be so. Which makes him really a Christianist, one of those rather duplicitous individuals who sorta uses Jesus when needed and ignores him when not, although pretending to NEVER forget Jesus, i.e., sprinkling all talk with plenty of “thanks be to God” and Thank the Lord” .

So, Mikey as he is not fondly called, figured he would jump into the fray of the “war on women” being continuously waged by the GOP.

That that is clear to every human being save the GOP itself who continue to remain with head firmly inside butt is also clear.

restrictions2012And the trend has continued as we all know in 2012, 2013 and so on.

It is Republicans who are trying to restrict abortions and are, through phony laws, forcing PPH offices to close all over the country. Women are being denied reproductive care quite simply and that results in more women dying from reproductive disease, and more unwanted pregnancies, the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Republicans claim they are introducing such legislation for.

In pops the Huckster, who is starting to think that running for President might be a good thing, and off he goes with the mouth part:

“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,. . .”

So, old Mikey thinks that Democrats believe that women’s insatiable libido requires contraceptive care in the guise of Uncle Sugar?

Seriously, explain how he came to that conclusion, or is just simply the way dead-below-the-waist-Mike feels? Is his wife dragging him to bed every night and telling him to Viagra up or something? Is the old man tired of “gettin’ it up” and gettin’ going?

This after some dip wad in Virginia by the name of Black, who is running for Congress, suggests that there should probably be no laws against marital rape.

“How on earth you could validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie, and so forth, there’s no injury, there’s no separation or anything.”

Seriously, it’s just a he said, she said kinda thing, right? Boys will be boys. . . .or, I bet he’s the one in the nightie.

Are Republican men this utterly clueless. Is there no Republican woman around who can just tell them to SHUT THE F**K UP?

≠

Explain to me how any person can go to college for four years and become educated sufficiently to teach math, and still denies the truth of evolution?  How does a brain do that?

≠

By all accounts Chris Christie is a reasonably intelligent human being. I have learned that he was darned good at running for stuff in college and in organizing so that his “team” would win across the board in student elections. And we are most aware of his spectacular rise in New Jersey, a definitely blue state.

So, in looking forward to someday running for President, (and surely you know he’s always had that in his mind since he was 12 or so), wouldn’t you sorta know that thugs and others who did your dirty work and the people you intimidated all your life, would literally flood the plains of Jersey should they even SMELL a leak in the dike?

Is it just me or is this just the beginning of an avalanche of charges, and victims parading forth telling their story of how Christie thugs forced them to throw Grandma off the train? The Bridge and Hoboken are just the tip of the iceberg I suspect.

Why do people who don’t play by the rules always think nobody will find out?

Do the really believe in perfect crimes?

≠

Here’s one for ya.

I went to a typical high school. Maybe not so much as I thought.

A whole bunch of us started in kindergarten and graduated together. Over the years, cliques changed. Our group splintered into a good five groups or so. Some of us got hurt by being dumped. Some never aspired to group 1, probably most. We all dissed those below us, more or less. We gave what we got.

I’ve been to college, three times. I’ve worked for people and for myself. I’ve been in a ton of relationships, all of which obviously went sour for one reason or another, due to one thing or other, until the last one, which has lasted nearly 14 years. I’ve been screwed over by the best and worst of them, regarding all sorts of things. In that regard I am no different from any other human.

As my friend Jean said, all humans are flawed. We get to accept that about each other, and how our flaws blend enough to get along.

But, when I reconnected with high school classmates, I found this:

A friendliness that turned out to be all too superficial. Most of the lines remained drawn. A rather stunning realignment based on who agrees with who. Fundies gather together and chat like great friends when way back then, they never spoke and one would not be caught “dead” with the other. All the liberals now, however, were my friends back then. People I thought were smart turned out to be dumb, or as uninformed as a person could be and still walk. A whole slew are angry, very angry people, mostly those who stayed in the factory town that went belly up.  And although raised in a working class environment where the UAW was the norm in most households, most are conservative, hating folks, who blame unions, and the poor for being takers. And kids should be slapped around because “it was good enough for me”. They are “patriotic” as they define it, meaning they love “the troops” and the flag, but hate the President, and income redistribution, although surely they would benefit from that.

And I don’t get most of ’em. A few who were a year or two behind me or ahead, I get. They escaped the hate thing somehow. They are good people, who have worked hard, but avoided blaming those who have less for what they don’t have.

And the real point here, is that, all those people from college and work situations and relationships that didn’t do unto me as I think they should? I have long ago forgotten them and their transgressions because, hey, we are all flawed. But the angers from those old high-school slights still linger and still seem rawer than they should.  And I have a couple of those classmates who don’t participate in group discussions and I think they are  so much smarter than I. They are not wasting their time on stupid.

Which all goes to say that I delight a bit too much in telling old X and Y what utterly stupid people they became. Ain’t that funny? Or sad in a funny sort of way?

The first cut is the deepest. Thank you Rod Stewart for reminding me.

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To Paddle or Not?

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Sherry in An Island in the Storm, Crap I Learned, Psychology, Sociology

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

child rearing, critical thinking skills, psychology, sociology

disciplineIt’s disconcerting to be 63 and still find so much of human behavior unintelligible. Yet I do.

It’s disconcerting to be 63 and find myself pondering a subject that doesn’t apply to me personally at all. I really have better things to do.

It’s disconcerting to be 63 and find so many people so woefully out of touch with reality with no desire to enter into it.

Yet, here I find myself.

And as I ponder the realities of life, I guess I end up thinking I’m among the more fortunate of the human race to date, for I think at least that I possess the skills and tools necessary to see the world as it is rather than how I want it to be.

That means, for me at least, that I can work toward improving that world. If your worldview is faulty, then of course, you have no hope of effecting a change since you misjudge from the start.

I have learned that I will never reach China by digging away in the backyard with my sandbox shovel. Too many of those I know have not learned that yet it seems.

It all started here:

spankingThis was posted by a guy I went to high school with.

It is, as you note, one of those Facebook memes that travels from person to person. There is supposed to be some point. And there is supposed to be something one assumes that this addresses.

It seems to address that “fact” that the poster doesn’t think that the world is a very good place anymore, though it once was.

It seems that we aren’t spanking any more, but we should. It seems to address the criticisms of spanking, with “evidence” that contradicts those criticisms.

Of course it does none of the above.

Before I get into that, let me say that I responded to my classmate with a generalized thought that I thought spanking wasn’t particularly helpful and that hitting kids didn’t teach good lessons and that what the world needs is more peace and perhaps the home was a good place to start.

I was met by a universal condemnation, mostly having to do with “spanking isn’t beating”. This was accompanied by more anecdotal testimonials that “spanking never hurt me.” It was met finally with a pointed jab of “how many children have you raised?” I cited a statement by professionals whose business it is to understand the psychology of child rearing. No response to that, just more claims that I was wrong.

Then this was posted:

spanking3That really threw me, for as anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills would see, there is no attempt, nor can there be, to show that violence in the world is in any way directly linked to the physical discipline of children.

In fact, the implied premise is wildly wrong.

There was not “less violence when it was normal to give your kid an ass whooping.” Violence has pretty steadily decreased over time in the world.

To the degree that people physically discipline their children less today than they did say 30-40 years ago, is more a symptom of this, and perhaps of the studies that show that pain-causing discipline doesn’t help, and often harms children.

What we have here is a complete and utter failure to read and think critically.

Let’s examine some of the faulty thinking:

  1. I’m okay and I was spanked, so there is nothing wrong with it. True enough for a lot of people, however anecdotal testimonials are not evidence, they are what they are. Statistically they mean nothing and prove nothing. There are always exceptions to any rule, sometimes many, but the rule remains the rule. The considered opinion of child experts is that there are too many bad effects and virtually no good effects, so the practice remains ineffective period.
  2. There is more violence in today’s society than there was “when I was a kid”. This is fallacious as the statistics again prove out. It should be noted that the overall crime rate in this country has dropped significantly. However, the perception is that is has not.
  3. Children who were “spanked” or otherwise physically disciplined, grow up to be more law-abiding and more respectful human beings. Somehow today’s ills wouldn’t be as bad or wouldn’t exist at all if we were still physically disciplining our children at the perceived rate that we did in the fifties or sixties. Except that is demonstrably not true based on studies, crime statistics and the total lack of evidence to support this assumption.
  4. One must be a parent in order to know anything about proper disciplinary choices. This is simply too ludicrous to respond to, and bespeaks the most obvious type of knee-jerk, non-thinking response imaginable. There is no such requirement to becoming  an expert in child care or the psychology involving the child. Most families are dysfunctional to one degree or another. Obviously one doesn’t learn parenting skills simply by giving birth or donating sperm. This is non-critical thinking at its worst.

So how does one explain that some people want to think that spanking is the answer, and that more of it should be done? (As you might expect the requisite fundamentalist piped in with resort to the highly misunderstood, “spare the rod, spoil the child” response).

Can we conclude that such people are just poorly educated and grasping at the only thing they can think of to “right the world” they see as having gone awry? Perhaps. At least it accounts for the fact that in this example, there is a stunning and appalling lack of critical thinking attached. The FIRST question should be, why would causing pain to a child make them a better person? And then you actually start doing research. Obviously our high schools do a terrible job of teaching these skills and a large percentage of our population is thus prey to the simplistic answer.

Perhaps we can conclude that most people see their own upbringing over time as more rosy than it was. Given that the times are different today, they seem worse. There is probably much truth here. Teapartiers and others from the Right Wing do tend to long for a past that was not real, but seems so to them. This is well documented today with our penchant for rewriting history regarding our founding, i.e., being a Christian nation, and our “freedoms” being eroded, all without real documentation.

In fact, I suspect that those who “support” spanking as discipline are probably more conservative than those who don’t. This then becomes just another on a long list of items that have and are destroying the “American way of life.”

ADDENDUM: The next issue that has arisen is an urgent plea to spread around a letter documenting all the terrible things Jane Fonda did during the Vietnam war era. It claims that Barbara Walters has condemned her as a “traitor” and that President Obama is going to honor her as one of the 100 most Influential Women of the Century. Write immediately to stop this atrocity! This urban legend started before Obama was president. In fact Walters did honor Fonda for the above back in 1999. This legend resurrects every year or so, and seems to have popped up again since Fonda had the temerity to play Nancy Reagan in The Butler, something the RIght cannot stand. I suggest that the statement within the “letter” suggesting that Barbara Walters  had publicly called Fonda a traitor, would to the critical eye, suggest immediately that this was most unlikely and required further researcher. The same poster, again failed to see the obvious issue and do so.

I sometimes feel like I’m traveling through the woods stomping out small fires. Help our educational system!

spanking1

Related articles
  • Discipline is not Spanking (thespankingmyth.wordpress.com)
  • Research on Spanking: It’s Bad For ALL Kids (psychologytoday.com)
  • Yelling at teens: similar effect to physical punishment (medicalnewstoday.com)
  • Is It Ever Okay to Spank a Child? (theatlantic.com)

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It’s Good News Thursday!

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Entertainment, Essays, Gay Rights, Health care, Humor, Satire, Women's issues

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Entertainment, gay rights, Good News, Humor, psychology, sociology, women's rights

happyDon’t worry, be happy. I’m just oodly happy today. Don’t know why, no good reason. Just breathing in and saying hey, lungs fill up with this OX-y-Jin!

No, I’m not on pain killers nor other mind-altering substances. I’m just finding the news particularly upbeat today.

First, let me tootle my own horn just a tiny bit. I finished Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, and you can read my review here. It’s a humbling book I gotta tell you. Being smart and well-educated doesn’t necessarily make you any more open-minded. What it may do, as I surmise is make you more aware of just how much we intuit our  beliefs and then come up with “evidence” to substantiate it. Knowing that, we can, I hope, be more vigilant in being open, if you get my drift.

Secondly, I found out that neither rich, poor, religious or not, we all mostly look out for Number One, we can all be altruistic to our “tribe”, we all cheat if we can get away with it to a greater or lesser degree (the rich the most), and we all worry about what others think of us (the conservative more-so than liberals). At least those were big take-aways for me. And it suggested to me that the claim that conservatives give more of their money and time to charitable concerns may be the result of inflated self-reporting than anything else. I do admit that that conclusion is the result of (1) a desire on my part that it be so, (2) the knowledge that conservatives worry excessively about their reputations, and (3) anecdotal evidence that the only people who ever tell me about their charitable largess or right wingers. So it’s my extrapolation and may not be accurate. Do tell what your experience has been.

Anyway, my bottom line? Professor Haidt’s revelations are perhaps as anger provoking to liberals as they are to conservatives. And that means it’s probably important to read and understand. I am fairly convinced that he makes some good points about what liberals miss and what some conservatives bring to the table. I would argue that nothing much good comes from the tea Idiots however, but that again is my elephant in full control. (read the book and you will get the reference).

So, the other good news for me at least is this:

I adore Glee. I say that with a certain degree of embarrassment because we didn’t watch it for a couple of years. Thought it was for kids. But kept hearing all the raves about it. So tuned it one evening and we’ve been hooked ever since. Silly as all get out. Nobody ever in life went to a high school like this, but we all should have. And it’s great fun. And it sends a very important message about being WHO YOU ARE, and about being accepted for WHO YOU ARE, even when that can be just down right a horse’s ass. The most important point they make, and you have to watch for a while to get it, is that seemingly mean people have soft undersides, and very nice people have dark hearts. And we all have to make allowances for each other, and support each other just because we are all really freakin’ human and being human is freakin’ hard a lot of the time.

So anyway, the good news is that my darling boy Adam Lambert is joining the cast this fall. Adam, is drop-dead boy toy gorgeous if you didn’t know. adam

And he’s so young that for me to get excited means I’m a sick woman. So I only from a distance say, damn that is one fine lookin’ child, and no more.

And if you listen to him, he’s not dumb either, which is something that seems to often unfairly attach or not to people who are that good-looking.

Johnny Depp is another exception, being fabulously gorgeous, closer to my own age, and not dumb as a rock either.

So, I can hardly wait until fall. And I know I shouldn’t be that way, because at my age, wishing time to pass is surely not a good thing.

Speaking of gay.

Oh, yes we were!

All kinds of crappy shit is going on in Pennsylvania these days but here is some good news.

The AG for PA, (has a snappy sound no?) has apparently said that she has no intention of defending against the lawsuit filed by a gay couple challenging the ban on gay-marriage statute in that state.  So says Joe.My.God, who so says the Washington Post.

It appears that the thing about gay marriage has turned a corner, or as we science-oriented types like to say, passed over the event horizon, meaning nothing in the known universe can turn back the procession to full equality for our friends who are other-oriented than me. I for one couldn’t be more happy. It seems that the latest polling in PA suggests that well more than half of the population in that state now favors marriage equality, which is why the AG perhaps decided what she did.

Anyway, hurrah, hurrah.

Those of you in the know, know that Scott Walker, Guv from Wisconsin has been a real pain in the rear for women. He pushed through a repeal of women’s right to equal pay, has essentially defunded PPH, and has signed a number of bills making abortion rights much much harder for women to exercise. Sarah Silverman, comedienne, tweeted: “I’d very much like to anally probe @govwalker each time he needs to make an “informed decision” “.

The Right-wing has gone bonkers over this, accusing Ms. Silverman of wanting to “rape” the governor. Breitbart was suitably chagrined.   (read the comments which quickly degenerate to Hitler’s death camps I promise you). Anyway, pissing off the right just makes me joyful. It’s my great happiness to know they are turning purple in the face. It makes me happy, and this IS happy day.

Taken by a British Photographer (Austin?)

Taken by a British Photographer (Austin?)

Related articles
  • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion ~ Jonathan Haidt [updated May 28, 2013] (planetizen1network.wordpress.com)
  • Adam Lambert Joins ‘Glee’ Season 5 (aceshowbiz.com)

 

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Scrambled Brains

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Learned, Humor, Life in New Mexico, Life in the Foothills, New Mexico, Psychology, Sociology

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

life in the foothills, lifestyle, New Mexico, psychology

scrambledSooooo, whatcha reading?

I have a good reason for asking.

Reading could be dangerous.

It could scramble your brains.

I know.

I happened to me.

Yes, yes, you always want me to explain.

So, I used to be a one-book person. One at a time that is. I picked up a book, I read it, I moved on.

Sometime a decade or so ago, I became a multiple reader. I read several books at one time. It’s a thing I share with my love, Johnny Depp.

Sometimes I read three books, sometimes only two. At the moment I’m reading two seriously–Autobiography of a Yogi and The Righteous Mind. Now, you may ask, so what? And I would too, but for the fact that suddenly it occurred to me that my subconscious was at work here.

A subconscious is a terrible thing to waste, as plenty of people have learned to their eternal damnation, so I began to think about what my subconscious was trying to impart to me, conscious me, consciously thinking of me.

Hence, the scrambling of brains, which is almost sure to ensue during such an examination. So I can but caution you to make sure you are drinking a cup of coffee and have your ankles crossed when you proceed to such an undertaking.

If you are now thoroughly confused, well you should be, since my subconscious is a place only those with the strongest constitutions should venture into without fireproof clothing at a minimum.

So the Autobiography of a Yogi is what is known as a “spiritual classic” detailing the life and journey of Paramahansa Yogananda and his adventures in God-realization. Without going into any detail, one can know that Eastern religious traditions are very big on the idea of discarding the emotional ties to the here and now in favor of joining with the Oneness of God, however that is defined. In other words, one avoids emotional elements such as hatred, sadness, fear, worry, and so forth, and recognizes that “good” emotions are also to be kept in context, i.e., temporary and arbitrary.

These ideas are not unknown in the Western world either of course. Plenty of Christian saints did in fact testify to the “emptying of self” as the means of joining with God. Meditation, often called centering prayer, attempts to do this in much the same way that Eastern meditation does, most often by concentration on the breath and a cessation of “thinking” in the normal sense.

I finally broke down and ordered Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, The Righteous Mind. A social psychologist, Professor Haidt got interested in why we remain such a divided people and discovered some rather amazing things along the way. Basically he determined that the human mind is not a logic center, nor is it dedicated to the pursuit of ultimate truth. This holds true, by the way, whether one is above average in IQ or highly educated. We are essentially creatures of intuition. We make “gut” decisions constantly, and use our brains to justify those decisions to others, and of course ourselves. We all like to think we are smart.

To a fairly equal degree, liberals and conservatives, deciding on little information, decide what we want to be true, and then assimilate to a greater or lesser degree, the evidence to support that conclusion. This is not to say that the rational brain can’t change our mind, or that others can’t either, but it is damn hard to accomplish and works only under similarly arbitrary circumstances; liking the bearer of different news encourages us to accept it for instance.

scrambled2

We all know this to a degree. It is the basis of Madison Avenue. Humans are malleable creatures given to emotional whim. The Republican Party became expert at this sort of thing. Here’s an example:

  1. The Democrats’ solution to the problem is more taxes.
  2. The Democratic solution to the problem is more taxes.
  3. The Democrat solution to the problem is more taxes.

Which of these sounds “better” to you. More fair? More pejorative? Which one makes you uneasy, or uncharitable?

The word Democrat, used as a singular word for a group, sounds harsh, and emphasizes the harsh T sound and also emphasizes “rat”.  The Democrats’ solution, sounds normal, and proper plural for a group position. Democratic, sounds, of course “fair”. The GOP has schooled itself into using number three as its normal course of speech, because they know how it affects the subliminal mind. Pure marketing trick.

The book about Paramahansa Yogananda is soothing and joyful. It is amazing to look at a culture who take “miracles” for granted, and boldly claim that Yogis commonly read minds, can see the future, cure illness, and can affect the material world as easily as breathing. They defy gravity, make things appear and disappear, and all manner of things that the Western mind does not see as possible certainly today.

It’s hard not to conclude that such a life, devoid of pesky human emotions, especially those that inhibit us is bad. It’s so good. Material desires vanish, as do worries and concerns about our lives. We live in bliss, aware that this life is a vehicle to use, not a destination.

scrambled4

The other, informs me, much to my dismay, that I am not a rational creature, motivated by a desire for truth, but rather, just a step above the average animal to which I am related–making a snap judgment–go toward it, back away–and only having the added ability to “justify” my choice to others. How depressing is that?

I’m not sure where all this leads. I’m just relating the strangeness of these two ways of looking at the human mind. It’s all quite scrambled to me at the moment. It suggests however, that if you are a multiple reader, you might from time to time, ask yourself–what is my subconscious mind asking me to address?

Mine has something in mind about my wandering in the desert–I’m searching for some meaning no doubt, some oasis of security. Or maybe I’m just weird.

Weigh in. If you dare. If you can make heads or tails of all this.

Related articles
  • How to Develop Inner Certainty (meboucherblog.wordpress.com)
  • Your Mind Utilizes the Placebo Effect (meboucherblog.wordpress.com)
  • Scientists identify emotions based on brain activity (scooprocket.com)
  • Overcoming Your Negativity Bias (dealbook.nytimes.com)
  • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion ~ Jonathan Haidt [updated May 28, 2013] (planetizen1network.wordpress.com)

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What a Difference a Mind Makes

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Sherry in An Island in the Storm, Editorials, Essays, fundamentalism, Psychology, science, Sociology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

absolutes, education, learning, Matters of faith, psychology, science, sociology, surety, truth

witchcraftYou know it’s really funny. Prepare you face for it. To laugh that is.

When I talk about faith or religion here, it brings out the new atheists and their smarmy yak-yak about believing in fairy tales. When I talk about faith or religion on my actual religion blog, Walking in the Shadows, I sometimes get folks who deign to explain to me that I’m not practicing the right kind of Christianity from their point of view.

Yesterday, I was asked, after making a number of statements regarding various fairly technical aspects of Christian theology (atonement theory, faith/works), the sort of things that some of us love to discuss, whether I was a “follower” of Jesus.

I guess it caught me oddly since I can’t imagine why anyone would spend all that much time on a subject of which they had no interest. But then I thought of a few rather well-known scholars who had started their studies in faith, and then lost it, and remained in the discipline. So I guess it wasn’t so odd.

Which brought me to the well-known principle that on just about every subject known to man and woman, people see things very differently. To this person’s mind at least, because I didn’t believe as she did, I must not be a follower of Jesus as she was. There was one way to follow Jesus, and I wasn’t doing it.

Similarly, whether it be economics or climate change, or any of a host of human and worldly problems, you discover that people have views that seem idiotic to you. Yet, when you talk to them, they have the same passion as you do. They are just as sure. Well, I guess that’s not totally true. I always figure that I’m never totally sure about much of anything. Doubt to me is part of the package. Those who are diametrically opposed to what I think, they seem to be very sure.

Therein lies the rub as Shakespeare was wont to say. The “follower of Jesus” if asked, would assure me that her belief is absolute, without question. That seems to me to be the total opposite of faith. For to me, faith is such in the face of doubt. It’s a choosing to believe even when there is no proof that you are right, just no proof that you are wrong.

It led me to conclude that that is probably true about most people who are given to being “absolutely sure”.  I’m also engaged with a very reactionary type who is “very sure” there is no such thing as global warming. Even though logically he can’t be, since he has no training in any science even remotely related to the subject. He is adamant that he is right, because the people he aligns himself with say what he wants to be true.

A scientist will tell you that you can’t be absolutely sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. Something catastrophic could always happen. Is it true that only the reactionary right are “sure” about things? I wonder.

I’m not completely sure where this comes from. One can refer to the fundamentalist mind. People think it refers to super conservative church people, but it actually is a mindset. It refers to a person who likes things in neat little boxes, all tidy and a whole world gets constructed of rights and wrongs. Once they have established this nice world, they can finally relax, they have all the answers. Nobody is allowed to jeopardize that with actual facts to the contrary. They must be defeated, and they are, by naming them as suspect. They are “purveyors of lies”, they are “Marxists” or “socialists” or “one-world government” nuts. They are hucksters conspiring  to obtain grants based on known falsehoods, for the “money”. (of course nobody explains how tens of thousands are all in on this conspiracy and waste their careers getting grants to do things they know already are false). Nobody explains the lack of logic of it all.

One can refer to self-interest, and that explains a lot too. When you poke at the angry all too sure person, they generally erupt in a retort of “we’re going to be taxed to death, and all for nothing!” That is the crux of the issue when you puncture the pus-filled wound they carry around with them. They hate taxes, hate everything they perceive is keeping them from retaining every dime they make.

That is why the GOP mantra is so attractive. They not only support the angry right and it’s desire to pay less taxes, they give them all the reasoning as to why they need not feel guilty about it either. If you show them statistics that prove that raising the minimum wages doesn’t result in an uptick in the unemployment numbers and that it results in raising up the wages of all workers, they retort with a firm “no it doesn’t, all it does it deny poor black kids a chance at a job, and perpetuate poverty, which is all Democrats want because then they have a ready-made electorate who want those handouts.”

It’s so nice when people tell you aren’t racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or wrong period. It’s nice to be told that you are right in denying full rights to gay couples because “God wants it that way.” Nice to deny SNAP to women and children because it just “encourages laziness and relying on the government”. It’s nice to  leave the planet in a mess to the next generation because a few opportunists are willing to assure you that it’s really okay and you shouldn’t be scammed by and forced to pay more taxes to encourage green technology.

So, add another point to how to determine when you are hearing the truth, or when you are hearing what somebody wants you to believe for their own purposes. Are they sure? If they are, and they don’t have the background to make that determination, look for something else at play, and tread carefully when you make your decision of what you believe.

Belief and surety are not the same.

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How Do You Decide?

01 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Sherry in An Island in the Storm, Editorials, Environment, Psychology

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

mind, opinions, psychology, thinking

popular_opinion1-640x51211I’ve mentioned more than once that I’ve been engaged in debate on Facebook with people who went to my high school, on a variety of topics.

As you might expect there are two camps, the liberals versus the conservatives. As you might assume, there are any number of shades of grey.

It got me to thinking. Yes, we are THERE again.

The Contrarian asks me occasionally why I bother. “You will convince no one, you know that don’t you?” he muses.

Yes I know that. Here is my list:

  1. There are lots of people who read but don’t comment because they are interested but not passionate. My comments may provide the last piece of the puzzle that enables them to form an opinion. They more people who are involved in the process the better.
  2. I learn a great deal myself. Arguments lead me not to empty talking points but to actual research, and so I learn refinement of my opinion as well as to create a more cogent argument for what I believe.
  3. In attempting to figure out why those who disagree with me believe what they believe, I’m forced to confront my own reasons for believing what I believe. Sometimes I find that my reasons aren’t worthy of supporting that opinion–in a word, they are self-serving. I can adjust  my opinion accordingly.

It’s this latter point that I wish to address.

I’m inclined to think of myself as something of a Renaissance woman. Now before you commence to laughing out loud, let me proceed. I am such only in the sense that my interests are very far-ranging and always have been. Along the way, I’ve managed to learn more than the average person about a whole lot of things from cosmology to paleontology, to biblical studies and theology, and so forth. I am not a Renaissance woman in the sense of having expertise in any of these, just an intense interest and the willingness to learn.

That said, this is how I approach forming an opinion. I will use the example of an area of biblical study called Markan priority. Markan priority simple states that the Gospel of Mark was probably the first gospel written that has come down to us. It posits that both Matthew and Luke used Mark, their own independent information, and a source called “Q” to form their own gospels which were written 10-15 years after Mark’s.

I’ve read numerous books on various aspects of biblical studies, some couple of hundred at least, and I have studied under three professors with PH.D’s in the field. I’ve attended dozens of workshops and adult education classes on various biblical issues as well. So I consider myself above average in knowledge.

Yet, I am no expert. Far from it. I cannot read Koine Greek which is essential to actually study of the bible on a professional level. So how do I arrive at an opinion?

You may first wonder why anybody cares. I can tell you that they do; there is a hotly contested debate over this issue. Why?  Because to a fundamentalist, not only the words in the bible, but their very organization within the bible is something God ordered. Open any bible and you will find that Matthew is the first gospel you come to. To disturb that by suggesting that Mark was written first is tantamount to calling God a liar.

So I have read all the arguments pro and con on Markan priority. I understand them well enough. I am aware that at this time, there is a clear and fairly overwhelming majority who believe that for all kinds of reasons, Mark was probably written first. All kinds of other things make sense when this is assumed. They make no sense by and large when you don’t.

So my opinion, given that I am no expert myself, is that the better opinion is that Mark was written first.

This is how I arrive at opinions on any field of study that I am not an expert in.

Sometimes, I might even wish that the things were otherwise. When it comes to theories about the future of the universe, I’m compelled to accept that the majority opinion is that the universe is continuing its expansion from the “big bang” and that that expansion is accelerating. I’d rather believe that the universe is in a “steady state” meaning it’s stable. For some reason, that’s comforting to me. But I feel that I have no basis to buck the experts who spend their lives studying this stuff, and like any real scientist, aren’t going to pursue dead ends intentionally. There is not glory in pursuing obvious falsehoods.

So while an opinion might make me feel better, I cannot maintain it for that reason alone.

Similarly, I’d love to believe that global warming isn’t true. It would make me feel a lot better about the future certainly. But I’m constrained to believe what 97% of all climate scientists tell me–that humans are indeed part of the equation of global warming and that we need to do what we can to turn it around before it is too late–if that is at all possible.

What troubles me deeply is the degree to which average people, who have no expertise in the area of climate (just like me) are passionately in the camp of the 3% claiming that global warming is a hoax. Since they cannot possibly be following the same process of opinion forming as myself, what system are they using?

I’m afraid that they are buying into the hoax theory simply because they wish that to be the answer. Either because they feel guilty that they have been a part of the problem, or because they don’t want to pay (taxes) to attempt to solve the problem. If you admittedly aren’t an expert, how do you “choose” one set of arguments provided to you by  those who have a very high stake in their position, i.e., gas and oil interests and those they pay to “study” the issue?

Is my model of opinion formation wrong? Am I missing something here? I’m puzzled, and when I am, I figure you guys can bail me out. So straighten out my aching head, for I’m confused.

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