Psychology has become a fascination for me in recent years, particularly trying to understand how the mind works. A class I sat in last year about love which focuses a lot on our relationship to others had me also asking the question “What about the
From Illinois.edu
love we have for ourselves?” In talking to my colleague who teaches the class, she said to her knowledge, while many have done intensive studies both through surveys and neuroanalyses of the brain in relation to the love we feel towards others, she wasn’t aware of any studies that really studies our brain when we think about our own self. For instance I wonder, what areas of the brain activate when we start talking about ourselves? Is it the same area that activates when we talk about our mother? A frightening thought indeed. Like many questions it began to lead me down a whole other path of thinking as well about how we develop identity and about individualism. How do we become the people that we are? How do we know ourselves? Is our sense of self just an illusion?
In the first month or so it is clear that newborns don’t have a sense of self, and numerous studies have shown that they still see themselves as extensions of their mother. Essentially still in the womb, although the womb conditions have clearly gone through some big changes. 🙂 For the past few weeks I can clearly start to see changes in my son as he begins to engage in the world and starts realizing that he is an individual separate from others. Although filled with a lot of terminology I am less familiar with my colleague sent me a link to a paper that talks about the development of self (as well as other things). I found it interesting to learn that the sense of self is initial learned by imitating and watching the behavior of others. As social animals only through learning about others do we begin to get a sense of self. I found this to be a fascinating dichotomy. Because on one hand we think of ourselves as unique, which is at the heart of our individualism, but this uniqueness appears to come from the observations of others.
Now I am not suggesting that we don’t have some genetic uniqueness as well. Many parents report their children having a personality from very young ages that appears to be different from their own or their siblings. I have no doubt that this is true. But it could be that the children are picking up on personality traits that we don’t recognize (or admit) in ourselves or it could be that genetic differences influence how we perceive the actions of others and thus each child interprets behaviors and intentions slightly differently.
It seems to me that even if this would not be the case we would still all be quite unique because our lives are sum of a unique set of experiences. No person meets the exact same people, goes to the exact same places, and experiences the exact same education. We are all dynamic and constantly changing individuals such that even children of the same parents will experience their parents and different times in their lives when they have more or less experience, different skill sets, etc.
So it’s not that self is so much an illusion but rather that the concept of self perhaps has no value without the context of others, especially for a social species. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others, judging others, labeling and categorizing others, and while I can see the harm that this can sometimes, it seems that it is something we have been doing all our lives. Without doing that can we understand who we are as individuals without comparing and contrasting ourselves to
others? People tell you not to care what others think of you, but this seems like somewhat unrealistic advice. No matter how much a person protests that they don’t care, there is no question we all do care. What we really want to do is shrug off the people who think we suck and believe hook, line, and sinker in the people who think we are awesome. It seems to me that this is really hard thing to do given how much of our life we spend defining ourselves through our relationships with other people and so we must often take the good with the bad and then reflect on the interpretation that others seem to gather of our behaviors and actions.
I would love to hear the thoughts others have about this, and would love to get academic about it as well is you have any expertise to share. This I would like to be just one in a 3 part series as I am also fascinated, as an extension of individualism, by collectivism. After that I’d like to look at the somewhat more ethereal topic of duality.
I have been reading a lot of Isaac Asimov lately. I am not sure if all lovers of science fiction would love Isaac Asimov, but if you are interested in the human condition I think Asimov would be your thing. His understanding of human nature is phenomenal and his writing of the future seems to me more of a commentary on who we are as a people and what we are capable of then attempt to be some sort of prognosticator of the future. To me that
is the best part of good science fiction and I am sure it is to many as well.
One of his books that really got me thinking was The Naked Sun which is part of his Robot Series. In it he paints a picture of a planet called Solaria that has been colonized by Earth and is similar in size to Earth but has only 20,000 people. The people are very spread out having vast estates that are similar in size to something like Delaware. In this future people have robots and especially on Solaria where the ratio is around 10,000 to 1 for every human. Robots do everything. Build all the houses, maintain the grounds, cook the food, and basically tend to every human need. It is a world without human contact, where even sex becomes mechanical and only for the purposes of breeding. And that breeding is only selective because they always maintain the population at exactly 20,000.
Earth on the other hand is crowded with everybody living in cities and all cities at populations of 10 million or more. While human touch is still a part of everyday life, there are many social conventions that act to keep people’s privacy intact. Not overly different from today’s city life really.
Both societies seemed very plausible in the way they developed and I started to think of how we might be trending in a direction of isolation whether it is an isolation in which we are surrounded by others or a physical isolation in which human contact in unnecessary or unwanted. We know from studies of anthropology that we started off in hunter-gatherer groups; a society in which we were dependent on each other for survival. Survival was a result of the coordination of each member’s skill set applied with extreme vigilance. As we have developed civilization, larger populations, and new technologies, life has essentially become easier for some of us, and quite a bit harder for a lot of other people. The disparity in standard of living makes the culture of the “haves” admirable to the “have nots”. It seems, at least in this country, that many spend a lot of time reducing the value of the poor, on whose backs our comfort is maintained. It seems to me though that the culture of the “haves” is not necessarily one to admire, and is perhaps not beneficial for our health.
In the house I grew up in, my parents knew most of the people on our street. Perhaps not well, but knew their names, and a few of our neighbors they did know well. I know there are some neighborhoods where people remain very close, but think there is a lot more distrust towards neighbors today than there was in the past. I know the names of two people on my block and that’s it. As I write this article to post it on my blog I am reminded that while it may touch the lives of others, perhaps many of them I will not meet. I will not shake their hands, not see their smile, not hear their laughter, not embrace in warmth and friendship. Like the people of Solaria a large percentage of my interactions are not face to face. Is it simply because these types of interactions are not part of the mental grammar in which I was raised or are we moving towards a world in which physical interaction is less and less necessary?
And the truth is that if I wanted I really don’t need to rely on anyone if I so chose to except for in very impersonal and indirect ways. I can still conduct
my business, get groceries, get a car fixed etc, but don’t really need to get to “know” any of them and certainly no need to touch them or for them to touch me. You can do most of your shopping on-line and have things brought to your door. Banking and paying bills can be done on-line. As a professor I could even be a solely on-line teacher. And while I would still be reliant on society, my need to actively engage in it is not necessary. Of course, that is not to say I couldn’t be a good person and give money to charities, I’d still be paying taxes, I may even be a fantastic teacher who can write well enough and give interesting exercises that will expand the minds of others. The question is, is that the kind of future we want to be. Clearly what I’ve outlined is a lot of personal choice, but it seems that this is a trend amongst those who are as privileged as me and worse yet it seems that this type of lifestyle is almost admired.
For those who do know me, you know I’m not a technophobe and I don’t think technology is evil, but I do think it is worth stopping and thinking about the lives we lead and whether we are going in a direction we want to be going, not only as an individual but as a species. Is it simply not part of our
mental grammar to be surrounded by millions, making cities a place of almost fighting against the idea of community due to sensory overload in comparison to smaller and more rural communities? Do we have specific social traits that come from millions of years of evolution such that we do ourselves harm as we become less and less reliant on the close proximity of our fellow man? Or do we simply adjust easily to the times and simply find happiness where we find it? What seems clear is that many of our prejudices and distrust comes from a lack of familiarity and empathy with struggles and hardships of others. In some ways the power of the internet and new technologies bring us so much closer in an informational way, but less so in a physical way. Does learning about someone’s struggle from a distance build the level of compassion necessary to help them in any meaningful way? Or is it something that I can just say I care about, disseminate the information to others and then move on to the next interesting tidbit of information.
If I had something important to say, I should be glad that it could so easily reach a million people or even more. But is it better to reach a million people without my smile, a friendly tone of voice and warm embrace? Or do I change the world more through the interaction with a few hundred people that I meet while volunteering at a soup kitchen? I guess Isaac Asimov’s writing made me worry that despite global warming the world might be getting colder. It made me pause and wonder whether we may be trending towards more separation and isolation and thus towards less empathy and more apathy.
For me I will keep working on it, try to find the right balance. I have now spent too much time in the digital world and I will now go spend time with the family. 🙂
On Dec. 17th, Ethan Couch, age 16, was sentenced to 10 years of rehabilitation after admitted to driving drunk and killing four people. The reason for his light sentence according to the judge was that the defense successfully proved that he suffered from affluenza.
If you clicked on the Wikipedia link I provided for this condition (a condition which doesn’t even pass my spell check), I think that one could conclude that if someone was suffering from this condition, this could certainly impact their decision process greatly and make them likely to be reckless and careless.
Now I am a strong supporter of psychological treatment and the impacts our parents have on our development and decision-making processes. We over-incarcerate far too much in this country and I am especially for providing our young with psychological treatment over incarceration because study after study shows how the earlier we recognize a behavior (whether due to a traumatic event or crappy parents) we can correct that behavior.
Ethan is a rich, white kid. Worst-case scenario his parents are selfish assholes who spent little time with him, who enjoyed the privilege that money has given them. They probably flouted laws themselves knowing that as an upstanding member of the community they probably wouldn’t get too many speeding tickets if pulled over, and even if they did they could pay any fine. Remembering, I’m sure, to mention to the cop that they might have a talk with some politician of theirs who is a friend and talk about possibly reducing the budget of the police force after a generous donation to that politician’s re-election campaign. When you have ridiculous sums of cash, the law is always on your side. After 16 years of seeing such behavior and without your parents giving you the time a day, I would say that your sense of right and wrong would be screwed up. Your attachment to reality would also be screwed up, because you literally don’t understand how most of the world lives when the only other people you know are also filthy rich. So I support the idea that it is at least possible that bad, extremely rich parents can screw up their kid so badly that he would do something so terrible. I mean there was no intent to kill here, but this is always the danger of drinking and driving, and punishments are often quite harsh for most people. Now most people are outraged by the judge’s verdict of affluenza, and for good reason. I am among one of those outraged, but perhaps for slightly different reasons.
The case raises numerous philosophical questions for me. At what age do we become blameless for the mistakes of our parents? Should parents ever be made responsible for crimes their children commit? How long does the psychological impacts of things that happen in our childhood last? How long can we use them as an excuse for poor decisions that we make? A child that is raised to hate African-Americans will probably hate African-Americans, but will he ever commit a hate crime? Who knows, but if he did, would it be an acceptable excuse to use the fact that your parents taught you to hate as a defense? If the kid committed the crime at 13, is that adult enough? Would we still all be as outraged at the verdict? What about traumatic events like sexual abuse or physical abuse? These things have definitely been shown to do psychological damage for possibly the rest of one’s life. It seems reasonable that if you reinforced from childhood that a certain behavior is acceptable, you will likely feel that way as an adult. The condition of affluenza, however, is perhaps not as legitimate as one thinks, at least according to one of the co-producers of the 1997 PBS documentary on the subject. As John de Graaf points out, that in a capitalistic, consumer based society such as ours, we may all suffer from this to a certain degree. Furthermore he says it is not a psychological condition, but rather a societal criticism. Affluenza is not a condition recognized by the American Psychological Association.
But let’s say that even if we accept that bad parenting seriously messed up this kid, a whole host of other questions come to mind. How often can we use psychological conditions as a defense? Are such rulings equally applied to all such cases? If there is a psychological condition that can be contracted by rich kids, what psychological condition does poverty cause and can these not be made for their defense when they commit crimes?
The same judge gave a 14 year old African-American a much harsher sentence for a much lesser crime the previous year. One only has to look at the amount of minorities and poor people in the prison system, who commited crimes that did not lead to anyone’s death, to be convinced that such defenses as affluenza or any other defense based on psychological damage in their upbringing has not been successful. The impacts of poverty on children, in fact, is a far greater reason actually for “deviant” behavior as young adults and is actually well researched within the psychological community. Ultimately this is why I am so enraged. There is probably no greater slap in the face the legal system could give to the poor than this verdict. A compassionate sentence is either deserved by all or by none. Whether you think incarceration helps society or not, there cannot be any true justice when it does not apply equally to all citizens. If prison isn’t the answer for Ethan Couch then at the very least he should be made to volunteer and live in an inner city neighborhood. If society truly believed in his correction then he won’t receive the education he sorely needs which is compassion and understanding for how the rest of society lives, especially since he hasn’t been punished in a way that the rest of society is punished for similar crimes. His parents are paying $450,000/year to go to this swanky facility in California. I shudder to think how many lives could be made better with that money instead of teaching one kid a lesson that would perhaps be better taught in other ways. There is nothing inherently more valuable about Ethan Couch than any other youth who has been sent to a juvenile detention center or jail. As income disparity mounts every branch of our government still continues to help the smallest minority ; the rich. How long can we live in this illusion that we are the best country when we incarcerate more people than those places we consider our enemy and backwards in thinking? How long can we live in the illusion of trickledown economics? How long can we live in the illusion of the American Dream that all you have to do is work hard and that dream will come true? This case is as much about racism and inequality as the George Zimmerman case and it is even more of a reason to be outraged at where our country is headed. Don’t confuse the meanings of money and value. Nobody is better person just because they have money and it’s time the government and the justice system stopped acting like this was true.
What is this war on Christmas I keep hearing about? Is it real? And if so, how will it lead to the downfall of the United States? My feeling is that both sides of the argument are both a bunch of scrooges, so let’s take a look.
The Ghost of Christmas Past
I am not going to spend a lot of time going into the detail of the origin of Christmas. And when I say origin I don’t mean the birth of
From BlogSpot.com
Christ. Scholars agree that he was not born in December. Using December was classic early Christianity. A time when many already celebrated the solstice, Christianity took the day to celebrate the birth of Christ to make it appear as though everyone was celebrating it. A celebration in December goes far back into human history.
Moving closer to the present we see the celebration of St. Nicholas’ day in Early December where gifts are given starts to overtake Christmas as a popular holiday. Martin Luther, hero of the reformation and part-time door abuser, decided that the celebration of St. Nick be moved to Christmas eve, and even suggested that instead of St. Nick bringing presents it was the Christ Child (ChristKindl). I find it interesting that Santa has been usurping Christ for some time. The attempt to have a cherub-like Christ Child deliver gifts didn’t really work. Unknowingly many North Americans mock Martin Luther’s attempt to keep the focus on Christ by calling Santa, Kris Kringle.
It’s important to remember that historically, wishing someone a Merry Christmas was only done on Christmas day and not in the weeks preceding.
Fast forward to the recent past what was life like in America before this war on Christmas? Well anybody who has been around long enough can tell you that corporate America and marketing has been taking over Christmas for some time, and this trend has only continued. The way Black Friday has become so ridiculous in terms of now trumping Thanksgiving is a good example of what I mean. Jesus Christ and St. Nicholas would be turning over in their grave (or heavenly cloud shelter) knowing that the kindness, compassion, and generosity they tried to live their lives in accordance with has been replaced by the stress and greed. So if you haven’t noticed Christ disappearing from Christmas slowly over the past 50 years you haven’t been paying attention.
The Ghost of Christmas Present
So we now live in this age of political correctness and people being easily offended. We also live in a country that has been dominated by
Christianity for some time and has been used to justify slavery, segregation, preventing interracial couples from marrying, and most recently homosexual couples. We’ve never had a non-Christian President, nor does one appear to be electable in the near future. So it’s perhaps not completely out of the question that people might be worried about Christmas being shoved in their face.
That being said, should wishing someone a Merry Christmas really be offensive? In India, even many Muslims celebrate Diwali (the festival of lights) and wishing people a happy Diwali is not a national debate even though there are certainly a diversity of people in that country who may celebrate different holidays. As the American population grows it makes sense that businesses should try to not be exclusionary around this time of year. Hanukah and Kwanza are around this time and you are likely getting time off from work for so this does represent the holiday season. So if you don’t know exactly who you are addressing as a business why not try to be more inclusive in your marketing and advertising.
As individuals though should we really be that offended if someone wishes us a Merry Christmas and we aren’t Christian? Should we call the emergency number at Fox News because our favorite department store now says Happy Holidays and not Merry Christmas? Perhaps I know all the wrong people but any time someone has wished me a Merry Christmas I never got the impression that the subtext was apparently “convert to Christianity you heathen pond scum”. People seem sort of friendly when they say it and have good intentions. I am an atheist but I grew up in Canada and my mom celebrated Christmas so we all did. My memories of Christmas are filled with warmth, togetherness, lots of cookies and chocolates, presents, and decorations. There wasn’t a lot Christ mentioning at Christmas for me but my parents were charitable people, and we often had wayward international students who couldn’t go home for the holidays at our Christmas dinner. I’m pretty sure Christ would be pleased at the way we celebrated his day. One of Jesus’ big things was tolerance. Perhaps getting easily offended isn’t the best way to keep Christ in Christmas.
Holidays are about relaxing. This is something we desperately need to do in a society that doesn’t value leisure time in favor of the pursuit of money. This is a shame because the pursuit of happiness is far more fulfilling.
The Ghost of Christmas Not Yet To Come
So there are two possible futures my dear Scrooges. One involves many angry atheists and other minorities being wished a Merry
Christmas by well meaning people. The years of offense that these poor souls who have been wished a Merry Christmas endured will lead to aneurisms causing us to marvel at the power of two simple words. The angry secular battle will win out in the media, business and government. Everywhere you go there will be signs that say Happy Holidays and you will look up in despair because you know that even though it is the holidays, Jesus has all been forgotten by everybody, except for all the millions upon millions of families who will still be celebrating Christmas in this future which still makes calendars available to the general population. These will not be happy Christmases though because you won’t get to hear about Christ because whenever you turn on the TV it’s just filled with advertisements, trying to convince you to spend your money on presents you don’t really need by a rotund man with a beard that has got to make it difficult to drink a bowl of soup. People in need of help around Christmas won’t get it because after all it’s only the holidays and not Christmas. And since there is no love for Jesus anymore (except for about half of the American population) what is really the point of being nice anybody anymore? What day is it today? The 25th? Oh whatever.
The second choice is to remember that Jesus was a good human regardless about how you feel towards his divinity. He cared for the poor, showed tolerance towards others, and was kind. We should be like this all year, but these qualities are worth celebrating at least once a year. Peace on Earth and good will towards men (and women). What more can summarize the Christmas spirit better? What could honor Jesus better if that is what you believe? Shouldn’t such words be the central tenet of everyone regardless of race or religion? If Christmas is to have any meaning on the 25th or on any day of the year it is in what you do to make things merry for your fellow human and not just saying the words.
So I wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Take time to rest. Spend it with family and loved ones if you have them. Help people as your time and budget allows. If you are feeling sad during the holidays, giving is a great way to fill any emptiness you might feel. Try to spend your time around joyful people, because in this cold and flu season joy is the best contagion worth catching. 🙂
I decided to write a response to one of the many excellent posts written by a fellow blogger. It became long enough and I thought a worthy enough to be a blog post of it’s own! If you are interested in the idea of correlation vs. causation you can read his blog here first.
In your last paragraph I was reminded of Dawkins’ argument in the God Delusion when he is talking about miracles. Since miracles are by definition unique and rare events there is no way to really disprove a divine explanation. This is of course if the same thing doesn’t keep happening again and again, which if it does, you really don’t have a miracle on your hands anymore. He uses the example of the one documented miracle in Catholicism in which some 100,000 witness near Fatima, Portugal reported the Sun doing some odd things including zigzagging towards them and crashing to the Earth. Dawkins argues that in looking for a natural explanation for the event, all of them, including the possibility that all 100,000 people are lying are actually more probable than the laws of physics being thwarted for a group of people in one part of the world (no other people reported seeing anything other than those at the event). So I think that you are very correct that we the “correlation does not mean causation” argument does not negate a particular postulation for why a correlation exists. However I would go a step further and say that it is not even an argument in of itself.
It is of course the responsibility of anybody who poses a correlation to provide a reason why such a correlation exists. Provided you have done that, then the “correlation does not mean causation” response isn’t a logical argument in response to yours. The person on the other side of the debate must either address why your reasons why are not valid, or must present something else that correlates better and why their reason for x causing y is more probable. So I think you might be giving a little too much weight to the argument in how much it actually negates a correlation between two variables.
In many areas in science we can say why pretty easily because there are usually physical laws that explain why quite easily, and those things are testable and repeatable. In social science this may be harder to do. Especially since it is not always clear what all the variables are. For instance it is clear that there is a positive correlation between gun deaths (accidental, homicide, and suicides) the amount of guns per capita in a population. There are plenty of psychological factors of course to consider here on why would a person own a gun or why would someone choose to kill themselves? There are practical questions like how to we get people to be more responsible about locking up their guns so their kid doesn’t pick it up, how to we make sure that more people remember to store their guns unloaded, how can make guns safer from accidental misfires, and how can we make sure that people who buy again are well trained in how to use it? There are likely even bigger questions like how does income disparity lead to increased crime in general? What are other ways that don’t involve firearms where people can be made safe? All of these and plenty more are likely part and parcel of explaining gun violence, but that doesn’t change the fact that reducing access to guns would result a lowering of the number of gun deaths. So making some laws that create a national gun registry, that do better background checks, and limit the type of weapon the general public could buy, would make some sense even though it clearly won’t eliminate gun deaths completely. If by a counter-argument someone says “correlation does not mean causation” they haven’t actually addressed the argument being made. They actually have to find an example with all other variables relatively constant between the U.S. and that country, except gun control laws, and show that an opposite correlation exists. i.e. Restrictive gun control laws and increased gun deaths, or high gun ownership and low gun deaths. And that would be for a country with similar economies, democratic, with a high standard of living, and that doesn’t have mandatory military service in which the high amount of gun ownership isn’t because they keep their piece given to them in the military (Switzerland the example always used here).
So in the classic humorous example that has been around for awhile is that graph between global temperature and the number of pirates. I can’t just show that graph and say see…look how the number of pirates is impacting global temperature? I actually have to provide a reason why pirates might impact temperatures. I can say there is less plundering and razing of towns so the urban heat island effect has increased thus raising global
From Wikipedia.org
temperatures. Obviously this is a silly argument, but a response of “correlation and causation are different”, while a true statement, does not negate my assertion. There are many ways to disprove my assertion but pointing out a correlation is not causation does not. Because the truth is, “correlation does not always mean causation” so one has to go past this statement to further argue one’s point. This is true for many arguments that contain logical fallacies. You could take the classic argument used against gay marriage. Well if we let gays marry, pretty soon we’ll have to let people marry their pets. Well this is of course the slippery slope logical fallacy. Slippery slope arguments may not be incorrect, but are very often wrong. So it’s not enough for me to counter your slippery slope argument with “Hey that’s a slippery slope argument”. I would be quite wrong to think the argument was done, because they could actually be right. Some events do lead to a chain of events that are far from where things started. To win the argument I would actually need to argue that there has never been a push for legislation to marry a pet, that if anybody has tried this they were a crazy person, that this is not a psychological drive of human beings as a species, etc. I could also point to many other marriage related laws or other laws that have not led to a hyperbolic slippery slope situations.
To say that “correlation and causation are not necessarily the same thing” is actually a Straw Man argument (which is fallacious) because the argument assumes a position that you have not taken in the argument. Correlating variables is a valid method for discovering relationships, and by presenting that correlation, one’s assertion is not that correlation is a valid method, but rather that two variables are related to each other. And to say two things are correlated doesn’t imply that this is the only important variable, or that even it is the primary or secondary cause of a particular event. One has simply said there is a relationship and a counter argument must challenge the relationship. A correlation must be presented along with some sound reasons why there is a correlation, and an argument in response must challenge those reasons. The art of argumentation isn’t easy and few people can actually argue well. 🙂
Who doesn’t love a good story? We see it television, in movies, and in books. We all love good stories told around a campfire, around the dinner table. We love writers and directors and people who can weave a good story together. Are stories just something that purely are for entertainment if they are fiction, and education if they are true? Is there any such thing as a true story (and if there is, is it exciting enough to listen to)? Is there any such thing as a fictional story?
There are plenty of people I’m sure who have addressed this topic, so I don’t think I am coming up with anything new here. The value of stories and storytelling has been on my mind ever since I read Patrick
From kkc.wikia.com
Rothfuss’ two books The Name of the Wind and A Wise Man’s Fear. The main character in that book is from a group of people that are somewhat gypsy like. They live their lives on the road traveling from town to town putting on performances of plays, telling stories, acrobatics, and playing music and singing songs. They are performers. The main plot of the series (which is not finished yet and I’m anxiously awaiting the 3rd and final book in the series) is that the main character is trying to determine the truth behind a traumatic childhood incident (don’t want to give too much away). The source of the traumatic event was something that he heard as a story and thought it was just a myth, something not real, and thus when this myth does seem real he questions his own memory of the event, since he was a child and could possibly have just made a story fit what he witnessed, or did it really happen. As this main character grows and travels he hears more stories from different cultures and different people. Stories are always slightly different because good storytellers exaggerate a bit here and there and of course stories generally change throughout time as they get passed down and pass from region to region. taking on aspects of the culture they move into. In a way the main character is learning about what’s real through what everyone thinks are fictional stories. Taking bits and pieces from all the different stories and putting it together into a narrative that might explain what happened to him as a child. The books represent masterful storytelling themselves, but the author really hits home the value of stories in general. The main character states at one point “There is truth to every story”.
Truer words were never spoken.
Fiction is defined as:
1. a. An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.
b. The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
2. A lie.
3. a. A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.
b. The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including novels and short stories.
Even the most damning definition of fiction here “A lie” can carry with it truth. If you know someone is lying you might know then that the opposite is true. You might know that to find truth more investigation is needed. You might try to understand why I’m lying and learn something about why people lie. I think we need to be mindful that this doesn’t necessarily mean that there still isn’t any truth to be found within the context of our imagination. And I think everybody sort of gets that, but for a while I was heavily into non-fiction because I was like I have so much to learn, and I still do, but I think in my mind I had forgotten sort I also decided to write about this today because of an article I read recently regarding stories and how they impact our view of the world. For instance if we are old stories about violence repeatedly this may skew our view of how prevalent violence is. The article has many more thought provoking ideas than that, but the gist is that stories shape our lives, because we do search for meaning in every story and when we read only one kind of story all the time, whether it is non-fiction, a news story in the media, or in a movie, our neurons start to forge pathways that make that one kind of story a narrative for our life. So it seems it is important to actually fill yourself with different types of stories.
I love reading. My wife and I actually read stories together, with usually me reading and her listening. I tend to read in a British accent most of the time, because hey it makes the story sound better for me, but I also try to do different voices for different characters. She likes the way I read, but I sort of wish she would read to me more too, because when we started she was the one that read to me, and it was actually her getting into the reading and doing different voices that made me feel comfortable getting into it. 🙂 She says I’m better at it, and maybe that’s true, but I just hope I haven’t taken something away from her that she enjoyed doing. I do find value in reading a story out loud, telling it. It makes you think about the characters more, what their moods and emotions might be. I sort of find that when I read to myself I pay
Orpheus and Eurydice (from www. maicar.com).
more attention to the non-dialogue part, where as when I read out loud I pay more attention to the dialogue. It’s a very different experience. I strongly recommend giving it a try. 🙂 Rothfuss’ books have also made me think that it would be cool to have, instead of a book club, a story club where once a month you meet and tell stories to each other. I am super excited to read stories to my child that is soon to be in this world, and I hope I can share the appreciation I have for the value of stories. 🙂
There is one solution that really solves all our problems. It’s just two words. In these two words there is no more hunger, no more war, no more cruelty, or rape. There is equality amongst gender and races. People can have guns and don’t have to have taxes imposed on them. Everybody makes smart decisions about their health, about sex, about when to be a parent, about how to be a parent, and raise their children well.
You probably know people like this, and you know people who advocate it because it’s so obvious and easy. It’s called Personal Responsibility. I capitalized it because it’s so important and because it is the answer. Alright, I’m done blogging.
…hang on…nope…I just remembered something. We don’t live in a utopian fantasy.
You shouldn’t need to have a law that tells you to wear a seat belt or text while driving I know this is important so I drive safely
You shouldn’t need a law that forces you to get health insurance or makes you be a responsible employer and take care of your employees by giving them a living wage
You shouldn’t need to have laws that force you to hire women and minorities as it should be self evident that gender and race don’t matter and that ultimately it boils down to who is best for the job
You shouldn’t need to have gun control laws. One can be trained how to use a gun and keep it in a safe place away from children
You shouldn’t need to impose regulations on corporations.
You shouldn’t have taxes imposed on you. If something is important I’ll be happy to contribute some money to someone who will do what needs to be done.
You shouldn’t need to get welfare because you can work.
You shouldn’t need money as an incentive to work.
You shouldn’t get raped if you are personally responsible about what you wear and how you behave (umm…how about being personally responsible and not raping someone?)
These are just some of the common complaints you hear from people in regards to laws, governance, and “responsible” behavior. Anyone can see how sensible these statements are, theoretically. Yet one wonders why indeed do we have laws or talk about imposing such laws and regulations? If everyone was as awesome as you, who feels so injured to have something imposed on you when you already know you should do it, what’s the point of government sticking its nose in your business? Why is society dictating my behavior when I already know better? You know your business and conduct yourself responsibly. Right?
For now I am going to pretend that nobody is willfully ignorant (which is also pretty utopian). The problem of course is, that personal responsibility is kind of like the nature of God. Everyone has a different definition of what it means. If every citizen in the country had the same definition of personal responsibility things might be alright. Although this in itself would be hard for a big country, in which everybody lives in different regions and by definition the regional disparity requires different needs. It only takes a handful of farmers to feed a lot of people, yet those farmers are just as important as the whole lot of people they feed. So the first step would be for all people to accept within a country at the very least that people in all parts of the country have value and we may have to contribute some of our income to them. This might include roads, education, and protection. Protection itself can come in the form of a police department, fire department, or military. One could argue that if everyone was personally responsible the need for a police department kind of goes away.
A personally responsible society however also recognizes their place in the world and in nature, and so realizes that the decisions they make might adversely impact other countries and wants to make sure that it is nice to other countries. They recognize the value of preserving wildlife and rare species and is responsible about what it hunts and where it builds. They recognize the true cost, not only in monetary units of drilling, mining, extracting. This type of responsibility also costs some money because sometimes we might have to do things a little more expensively to preserve ecosystems or protect the environment. This personally responsible society doesn’t mind.
And accidents do happen. There are infectious diseases, natural disasters, etc. Society pays for things in which nobody is to blame. It is the personally responsible thing to accept that and contribute to help mitigate damage and help rebuild and repair.
Most of the people in this personally responsible society don’t feel too much stress, because the very rich realize that they don’t really need all that money and are quite happy to use their massive wealth to help out the person who doesn’t make too much of his own. As a successful head of corporation he is extremely happy to contribute more to society because he has a lot of excess.
What a great place to live, but of course it doesn’t exist.
So perhaps the first question we might ask, “Is everybody capable of this broad set of requirements for personal responsibility? Of course the answer is no. Nurture plays a big role in this. We have belief systems, disparity in education, disparity in resources. Even if nurture could everywhere be equal, we still have genetic differences. Some people have physical and mental disorders. Trauma happens in people’s lives that impact their ability to function at a high capacity. Even when it’s an accidental event, and not something like murder or rape. The free market ends some businesses, causing people to lose jobs. Theoretically new jobs are created, but those might be in some other location. Another country even. Also as time goes on we make new discoveries in science and technology. The industrial revolution has brought about climate change, but it seems unlikely that we started building all these factories knowing the harm it would do in the future. As we become aware of things, new areas of responsibility become apparent. So there is going to be a natural evolution towards winners and losers, new problems to deal with as old ones become understood and more cost efficient, and the personally responsible thing to do would be work together to continue fighting that imbalance. It requires vigilance.
The next question we need to ask is “What can be done to make people more personally responsible?” There is no quick fix, and there is no one answer. Education can make us better aware of problems that impact society. Of course knowledge and wisdom are very different. In Plato’s famous treatise on love he talked about agape and love of humanity; a brotherly love for all mankind. We need more of this kind of love, but people fear (and perhaps with good reason) that it comes at the cost of a loss of individualism. I’m not certain that is completely true, but it might be. But this love must extend to more than just to our fellow human, but to life itself. The planet. Our home. We must also be humble and lose our conceit. It may have served us well in our evolutionary past, but now survival is not so difficult when we are working together.
Love for the humanity and the planet, however begins at the individual level. It begins by showing compassion and love to those in our lives and those we meet. Helping those who need help and also thinking about how best to help them. Being personally responsible is a journey within our own lives and does not happen overnight. It is journey that doesn’t end when you’re 30 or 40 or 50, but continues your entire life. And it is everyone’s job to be personally responsible but always keeping in mind that some people simply don’t have the ability to contribute as much as you, often through no fault of their own, and when you help raise them up and show sincere concern for their well-being they are likely to reciprocate that generosity. Finally we must value happiness over wealth.
And even after all that…it’s a struggle. The great thing is though if we do a better job of keeping these virtues in our heart we will never struggle alone.
Topics are building up in my head faster than I have time to write them, and so despite the fact that I swore I was going to write about numerous other topics, particularly in the area of psychology a Facebook conversation has led me down a different path.
The conversation was about a McDonalds worker who wanted her $8/hr salary to go up to
From money.cnn.com
the living wage of $15/hr. Which is still not a terribly high wage. The conversation that ensued went as you’d expect. Most people (who are in good jobs and living comfortably) saying that working at McDonalds requires no skill and thus should be paid accordingly. Or criticizing the person for not doing more with their life and thus have no one but themselves to blame. One person did make the argument that no wage has kept pace with inflation, which is true, but minimum wage has gone up at an even slower rate.
I made numerous arguments in response, most importantly challenging the assumption that the person had all these choices in their life. Most of the people reading this blog live in a position of privilege. And it’s not your fault. Your parents probably pushed you, help educate you, made you aware of different options for your life, encouraged you to do well in school. You probably grew up in relatively safe neighborhoods. You had friends that were similar to you. You had good schools to go to, with a lot of skilled teachers. But not all neighborhoods are safe. Not all parents care enough to encourage your education.
From blog.volunteerspot.com
Not all schools are equal in the quality of education they provide. Some environments make it easier to fall into a bad crowd. Not everyone has the freedom to go for further training after they get out of high school. Maybe they have to work to take care of a sick parent who has massive bills because they couldn’t afford health insurance. There are a million scenarios that could limit the opportunities one has.
I also made the argument that I did not choose my career path as a meteorology professor because of the money. It is because I loved it. I am glad it pays well enough for me to live comfortably. But should all of a sudden a McDonalds job become available that pays more. I am not going to jump ship and say, “Yay more money, flipping burgers all day is going to be awesome!”.
An argument was made by someone that garbage men get paid a good wage so they
From nypost.com
could do that instead of working at McDonalds. Okay true. But we can’t all be sanitation workers let alone teachers, lawyers and doctors. It’s also important to remember that at one time sanitation workers didn’t get paid very much. Thanks to unions though they could organize, strike, and refuse to pick up garbage until they made a decent wage to live by. Because picking up the trash and removing waste from our streets is actually an important and necessary part of our society.
I think education and teachers are extremely important. But do I think that makes a job that doesn’t require as much knowledge and skill less important? Of course not. There is nothing inherently more valuable about my role in society than someone who picks up the garbage. In fact someone could argue that picking up the trash is perhaps more important. When trash was in the streets, things like the bubonic plague happened. Hygiene and sanitation are extremely important. So let’s go a step further. Is there anything more inherently valuable about my job than a restaurant worker? Arguably we can have a world without restaurants and everybody cooks their own food. Might not be a bad world, but that’s not ultimately our world. People like to go out to eat. There will always be restaurants. So restaurants are just as much part of the fabric of society as anything else. So should the required skill level in any job be what determines the wage. The sanitation worker, from a skill level is just as demanding as a burger flipper and yet makes more. Is that right? I would further argue that an employee earning a living wage at any job has more loyalty to the company and stays longer thus becoming better at their job. If you’ve had bad service at a McDonalds, maybe it’s because they are constantly having to train new people since the pay is so bad that people leave after a short time. The money isn’t probably worth the level of abuse they get from customers.
Now there are even more good arguments to be made about a McDonalds worker making a living wage. They would need less social programs saving the taxpayer money, they can perhaps afford to move to send their kids to a better school to break the cycle of poverty, not to mention they may now have more free time to better themselves or spend with their kids, which also helps break the cycle. However what concerns me the most is the attitude towards the poor. One commenter on this thread said that “it serves them right making a low wage for their self-inflicted wounds”. I was like wow. As I’ve just argued it is extremely judgmental to assume the wounds are self-inflicted, but basically this person is saying:
“Hey poor person, sucks about the mistakes you made in the past. You deserve now to suffer the rest of your life because of that”.
How callous is that? I wonder if that person has ever had somebody so unforgiving to their mistakes. And how should the poor person respond?
” Thank a lot Captain Hindsight. Now that I realize my mistakes I’ll go back in time and fix it.”
Furthermore we can see how materialistic our society is by people who would look down on poor people in such a way. Because where is the condemnation to the rich owner of
From socialmarketbuzz.com
McDonalds or any corporation? Why don’t we judge him just as harshly? Because he has money of course. And obviously he must be working really really hard in order to make all that money. This is of course nonsense. A single mother working two jobs to support her family is most definitely working harder than the CEO of McDonalds. And I doubt that mother is having fancy lunches on an expensive account and playing a round of golf out in the sun with business associates. But even if they were equal, why is that CEO more valuable than the person working at minimum wage jobs? The corporation itself made almost $30 billion last year in revenues. And the CEO’s take home pay is $9 million a year. Is that CEO that much more valuable than one of his employees? Is he/she that much more skilled?
And if workers should get a living wage, many argue about how much everything will cost. But there is a second option. The company could make less money. The CEO could make less money. Is that likely? Perhaps not, but in the free market there is always somebody who is going to take an advantage of an opportunity and will undercut the competition and take home only 2 million a year instead. That CEO is still living a better life than 99.99% of the people in this world. If we want to equate a monetary value to skill, a CEO still makes far beyond what his or her skill warrants.
The Great Pyramids, one of the 7 wonders of the world, was built on the backs of slave labor to entomb the rich and powerful. When I look at the vast wealth of a few, at the expense of countless millions who can barely meet their daily nutritional needs for themselves and their families, I wonder how much things have really changed. What’s clear is that by dehumanizing the poor as many do in this country it allows a system to continue that allows the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. So it saddens and sickens me when I hear people idolize wealth and abhor the poor. If the income gap continues to widen in this country I can tell you that statistically speaking one is more likely to find themselves in a poor man’s shoes. Perhaps only then will people learn.
Recently Jon Stewart had a man named Andrew Harper on the show who works for the U.N. in a refugee camp in Jordan. The area of course is flooded with refugees from Syria. Jon talked about how much of a hero this guy is for doing this every day. It can’t be easy.
From Heroes Wiki
An interest concept to me is the idea of a hero. It feels like to me that those we laud as heroes are often not the ones we should. Maybe this is cultural and is not true everywhere. Is there such a thing as a true hero or is it always subjective to a particular person or culture? I am sure most would agree that the latter is more the case. Although I always find it interesting how much people want to get you to appreciate what they consider a hero. Maybe it’s the same sort of mentality that convinces someone to push a belief system on you.
The subjectivity of a hero made me think about military heroes. I find this to be the be a bit paradoxical at times. In the U.S. there is a strong emphasis over all others to consider those in the military as heroes. It occurs to me that an enemy to a warring nation has their heroes too, so can the person that kills Americans be a hero and also the American who kills the enemy be a hero? Who has the moral authority? The one that wins the war? Of course each side would not consider the other to have heroes even though arguable both fighters would be brave, adept, strong, etc. There is also a strange dichotomy between those in the military and then the larger context of the war itself. There is no doubt in my mind that the men and women are brave and heroic for being willing to put their life on the line. But what if the war is unjust? I am sure Nazi Germany had their heroes; ones that were elevated to hero status for killing the most allied soldiers or even killing the most Jews. In the context of their fight those people were heroes. We of course would not view them as such.
In Shakespeare’s Henry V, King Henry pretends to be a soldier and walks among his men to gather their mood. At one point he questions one of his men, well what if the cause be unjust? The man simply responds that if the war is unjust it is matter for the conscience of the King who leads them into battle and not the responsibility of the soldier. This idea makes me uncomfortable, and of course was not supported during the Nuremburg trials, and probably with good reason. And though it makes me uncomfortable I still find some merit to it. It must still be a difficult choice though, to know you will be jailed, possibly killed for not supporting your country’s cause. In a democracy perhaps we are all responsible for fighting an unjust war. So perhaps the soldier is a hero, since in a way many are responsible for giving that soldier the motive even if it is not a just motive.
Of course heroes are someone that we connect with. Some people connect with military heroes, I perhaps do not connect as much with them as those who take part in humanitarian efforts. It bothers me that these people are not celebrated in the same way we are asked to celebrate those in the military. Support of our troops does make a difference to their morale, so shouldn’t we also support the tireless efforts of those who bring humanitarian relief to people who are struggling? There is a lot of it in this world and these people also work long hours, in less than ideal conditions to provide aid and relief to others. Do their tales not deserve the spotlight are they not the source of inspiration?
And how often do we praise the everyday heroes? What about people who volunteer in soup kitchens, good cops, firefighters, or teachers, doctors and nurses who go the extra mile? What about a single mom who works hard every day to support her children and give them a chance for something more in life? Should we define heroism only by the level of danger that one faces? It seems like this is the most commonly used criteria. The one thing that seems clear is that true heroes do what they do because they are driven to do so, and not to be elevated by society at all.
Many heroes have their flaws too. I am sure there are bad days when they want to give it all up. They may be extremely good at what they do for people, but as a result neglect other parts of life and thus not live up to our elevated expectations of morality. Nobody is perfect, not even heroes. Perhaps the best we can do is try to be heroes ourselves while at the same time never forget to celebrate all those who demonstrate the best in human virtues. They are all equally as important. A person who is willing to die for our freedom should be at least as important as one who is willing to live for our freedom.
“Nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth” – said by Kvothe in A Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
Every person on the planet can agree on one thing. The world could be a better place. For those of us who strive towards equality, wish to reduce human suffering, and care about the planet as a whole the world looks fairly messed up. Some people ignore the problems. That’s a bit selfish perhaps, but the weight can be a lot to bear and we all have our limits, so who am I to judge? Some people are definitely selfish because instead of trying to fight it they simply become part of the problem. Trying to get a share of what they think is theirs. If the world is going to be unfair then why not do whatever it takes to be a winner and not a loser? In recognizing that we are a cooperative species, to me the fight to making the world more fair is always worth it even if the goal is never achieved and feels like a continual uphill battle that sometimes gets steeper and not gentler. As a whole, we are simply better when we are working together to solve problems. Problems do arise, even ones not of our own making. Even ones that do arise because of our own making we can’t always blame ourselves, because hey nobody’s perfect and hindsight is 20/20 (at least we hope).
In this age of information and social media the amount of people that can be in contact with each other has expanded exponentially. As a result we see the vast array of opinions out there. Some people are clearly uneducated about the subject but seem very excited that they can say something and somebody will see it. Some people make comments simply to anger people and cause an outrage or what is known as being a troll and this has been a topic of much discussion lately. How we deal with people who make inflammatory comments or are very hostile towards the author of an article or another person commenting on a thread. Interestingly inflammatory comments that support the view of a particular piece is not seen as negative, only the person who disagrees. I would argue that if you read an article that say expresses a Democratic point of view and in the comments you say something like “Just another example that Republicans are pieces of shit” then you are just as bad as anybody you consider a troll in the ensuing comments.
Spurned by a few incidents in the recent past and also by this excellently written article about making better arguments in politics I wanted to express my thoughts about how we might be able to engage people we disagree with in a more meaningful way. The quote that starts this article is something that just struck me as the wisest words ever written when I read them and speaks to why if you like to debate and engage people with different points of view, why you are rarely successful.
Picture from Amazon.com
The article that I linked in the previous paragraph talks about biases we have. For a very comprehensive look at our biases and beliefs I also strongly recommend reading the The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer. It’s a brilliantly constructed book and very educational. His argument is that we believe first and rationalize later. I think your immediate intuition sees the truth in that. Right now you might think well that’s what the other guy does, but if you are really honest with yourself you’d realize you do it too. It takes a lot of discipline to let your reasoning side take over, and suppress that “gut feeling” to believe what you think is right. As a result of this tendency to believe first and then rationalize those beliefs, when absorbing a new piece of information we tend to see it in a light that supports our beliefs rather than negate them.
Another bias we have that is the main part of the article is the self-serving bias. The idea that in order to protect our self-esteem or sense of self-worth we must reject ideas that make us feel like we are wrong about something. As the article says is we are wrong about one thing, then what else might we be wrong about, and then how do we deal with the idea of not being as smart as we think we are? This is why I think one of the most important human virtues we can have is humility as I wrote about in a previous blog post. Being wrong about something is a tough thing to deal with. What is strange to me is that I think we can all agree that we’ve experienced being wrong before. If you reflect on your life you’ll realize you actually got through it and you are actually okay. Nevertheless we still tend to not deal to well with it in the moment. Just like dealing with addiction, admitting you have a problem is the first step. 🙂 In this case, don’t worry because everybody has these biases and so everybody has this problem. So I would like to provide what I think is a helpful guide to getting people to see things from your point of view. And if right now you are asking, “Why should I listen to this guy?” Well because quit frankly I’m right dammit! 😉
Be the person you would like others to be
Painting by Miles Halpern
Don’t you hate it when someone is not sympathetic to you and the oppression or struggles you face? It makes you angry, it makes you not really like that person, and it makes you frustrated. So what should your response be? Most people seem to respond by being equally dismissive to others and their problems. What if, however, you tried to remain that sympathetic and compassionate person you hoped the other person would be? What if you said “I’m sorry you can’t understand how the incident made me feel, and even though I don’t know why you can’t be sympathetic to my struggles I sincerely hope that you never have to feel the way that I do right now.” If someone cannot demonstrate compassion for your genuine reason for being angry about something or being hurt about something, being afraid of something, or whatever is causing a negative emotion that is all the more reason to give sympathy towards them in return. Give them an example of what sympathy and empathy is all about. Maybe nobody has ever showed them any and so they literally don’t know it’s value or what it’s about. Maybe they had an ultra-chauvinistic father who never allowed them to show their feelings and were always told “Buck up and be a man you pussy!” Imagine growing up with that all your life. How much compassion would you have as an adult? Gandhi said “Be the change you’d like to see in the world” and so if you feel your worldview is superior in making this world a better place, make sure that you are genuinely being the type of person you would like to see in others.
Also haven’t you ever had someone in your life who you really respected because they seemed like a good person. You admired them. You wanted to be like them. You are more likely to cause a change in someone’s behavior by being a positive role model rather than someone who berates them for their ideas. Why would anyone want to be like someone who just belittles people for their beliefs even when those beliefs are misguided. Because to the person with those beliefs…well they believe it and thus think they are not misguided.
Make sure you have a good sense of self-worth
What’s this you say? I thought this was the problem. The article I linked actually talks about using daily affirmations to enhance your self-worth as being important in being able to face things that you might be wrong about so that there is no net loss in self-worth. I think the author glosses over this to almost make it seem like a trick you are using rather than genuinely building your self-worth. If you have low self-esteem it can be hard to debate or argue with someone in a constructive manner. Obviously if you barely value yourself, the few things that you do value about yourself, you will be even more afraid of losing. Building a true sense of self-worth takes time and experience. It takes an admission of your faults and the continual persistence to improve. It takes trying not make the same mistake twice, even if it sometimes happen. Practice humility, forgiveness, and spend time just observing and reflecting on those experiences before forming an opinion. Then learn about how other people experience the world and try to pick out the commonalities in your experience rather than focusing on the differences. Your self-worth will grow actually when you recognize that the world doesn’t revolve around you. Self-worth and self-centered are completely different but often get tangled.
Make sure you respect the self-worth of others
From hellobeautiful.com
I’m not asking you to admit you’re wrong or say somebody else is right, but when you are humble and are willing to at least to consider the possibility that you might be at least partially wrong about your point of view, you will find that you move to a place of being inquisitive about where someone else’s point of view comes from. This will lead you to ask more questions to see where that person is coming from. It will help you get to know the person and that person now knows that you are interested in who they are, and are simply not just interested in making them feel like they are wrong. After all who wants to listen and take seriously someone who is only interested in pointing out how right they are, and how wrong you are? It doesn’t matter if you are actually right and that the other person is actually wrong. People have a lot of wrong ideas not because they choose to be wrong but because they have been conditioned in their environment to see the world differently.
Recently there has been a lot of arguments in social media about racism and reverse racism. What if someone is trying to advance the position that reverse-racism of blacks against whites is just as big of a problem as racism against black people? You can respond angrily, dismissively, you can throw out all sorts of data and you’ll probably notice this makes no difference whatsoever. What if instead you said “Hmmm…you know that hasn’t been my experience. Can you tell me what makes you think that way? Have you experienced racism as a white person? If you have I am really sorry about that because I have personally experienced racism as well. Maybe we could share our experiences. Because I know how much it hurts when someone assumes something about you based on the color of your skin.” In reality of that interaction with someone it doesn’t matter that as a whole blacks are not treated as equals and that white people do enjoy a position of privilege in society, because that person has simply been shaped by their experiences and their interpretation of those experience. Sometimes being able to see the big picture is also a position of privilege. It probably means you have had greater opportunities for education and slightly better income so that you have leisure time to explore a topic in more detail. Perhaps parents who were interested in different points of view, valued diversity, etc. Not everyone is lucky enough to have that. Showing respect for a person and their experiences that led them to what they think is true today, is a better way to be heard by that person. You might just tear down a few walls and find that you might not be that different at all.
Be willing to walk away
This seems pretty obvious. A common piece of advice told by parents who want their child to not get into a physical fight. It is true for fighting with words as well. If you are hitting a wall with someone and trying harder each time, you will probably find that the wall is only getting thicker and harder. You probably don’t even notice the tone of your dialogue change, but in my observation not just in other arguments I have watched, but when I’ve had a chance to look back at my own words I realized that the angrier I get, my logic gets worse and my tone becomes more inflammatory. Being a more experienced teacher I now have more experience in just watching people who have trouble learning. Being a good teacher is to find alternative ways in which someone can learn what you are saying and all those ways require patience and understanding. So I think I am better at it that I was, but one can always improve.
More importantly of course getting angry, frustrated, and stressed because someone simply doesn’t “get it” is no way to live life. It could be your inability to argue effectively, it could be your tone, and of course it could be completely and absolutely all their fault. So what? Maybe it is possible that they will simply never, ever agree with you so why waste your time and energy? If you really feel convinced that you could make your argument better, then don’t keep arguing maniacally, but step away and reflect. Pay less attention to the content of what you have said, but how you have said it. Look less at the content of what they have said but try to pay attention to the experiences that may have led them to that line of thinking and try starting again. The point is, if you feel yourself starting to get angry or frustrated, you should probably just stop. Because I guarantee that you will not only not win, but you will have to deal with an emotion that can quite honestly ruin your day.
True change takes time
Photo by Alan Cleaver via flickr
Plenty of times in my life I have thought I have made no impact and sometimes weeks, months, or years later I see someone who has changed their position on something that they seemed so sure of in the past. Most teachers will have stories of students who they couldn’t motivate, were often at odds with, and felt sadness that they weren’t able to “reach” that student. Only to get an e-mail a year later with an apology, or a revelation from that student, saying that they realize now how their behavior was wrong and that they appreciate you for trying to motivate them and believing in them. Many times in the moment I have felt frustrated at being told I’m wrong about something. I might even argue my case further even if I am out of additional legs to stand on. Then I sit and think. I read some more. Realize that maybe something I read, or something somebody told me was wrong. Or perhaps I realized that I hadn’t looked at a previous experience in the right way, and that I hadn’t perhaps learned all the lessons from it I should have. Nowadays I try to let that person know that they were right about something and I was wrong. In the past when my own self-esteem wasn’t strong I was often too embarrassed to admit it to that person. That doesn’t mean that person didn’t have an effect on me. So it may seem like wishful thinking, but don’t ever think your exchange didn’t have any value at all. Because you never know. It may happen years down the road, or the change may be ever so slight but because it caused someone to look in a different direction, it sets them down a path of learning they never would have gone down before without you.
——–
As a final thought I want to make it clear that I don’t pretend any of this is easy, or that I am the awesome person that I describe here. I HATE being wrong and in my experience most other people do too. Perhaps its because I have gotten older that the accumulation of things I have been wrong about has added up to such a proportion that it has humbled me. I don’t know. What we consider right and wrong however is a product of many things. A function of space and time. Perhaps instead of thinking of yourself as being wrong about something, think of it as “Maybe I don’t know everything there is to know about something. So maybe I’m not wrong, just not as right as I could be.” 🙂 Play nice and remember it’s a big sandbox. There is room for a lot more people in it than you think. 🙂
Cloak Unfurled 