Category: Mind

Cool Experience

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

– Viktor Frankl, author of “Man’s Search For Meaning” and concentration camp survivor.

I first came across that interesting quote in early college. I remembered as a child noticing a moment that happened in my mind before I lost my temper. That moment gave me the option of choosing not to act out on my temper. I still did and I still felt horribly stirred up. At times however, I could choose not to. I never understood people who acted out and said “I’m sorry I was so angry I couldn’t help myself”. I realized later that sometimes that was an excuse and that sometimes it was sort of true. Peoples mental reflexes happened so fast that they didn’t have a moment of choice.

Later in college when some professors introduced me to meditation I had some experiences related to this quote. I found myself in some situations that in the past would have gotten me very upset, but did not. This was different from my experience as a child being self aware enough to clamp down on my acting out while *FEELING* rage. In these experiences, I felt calm, in a moment that was a pause before my emotions started.

I went ahead and got upset anyway. Then and several more times over the years when I had that experience.

I later read that most people will stay with bad patterns because the mind craves security and being in a new situation, even one that is known to be better is insecure. There is no frame of reference for it, no mental maps, so the mind chooses the old pattern.

That and sometimes people can’t see themselves in their beliefs and their old patterns. Invisible prison bars.

I’ve been seeing a type of interpersonal experience coming that I knew would make me very upset. I decided to fight the urge to avoid it and face it head on. I told myself if it happens and I get upset, so be it, I wasn’t going to run from it, that is not healthy. I was expecting to get upset.

Instead I had one of those moments again. I found myself in a calm before any of my emotions took off. I felt the pull of the options of different emotions that could have taken me in different directions. This time around I knew to expect the fear and disorientation from choosing to feel out of pattern.

I stepped out of my old pattern. It felt disorientating. A bit frightful. I could hear my superego talking to me, telling me I would get smacked down or that something bad would happen to me by acting off-pattern. I told myself that wasn’t true and that I didn’t have to listen to those things.

I kept repeating that to myself and other positive, but realistic alternative interpretations of that experience. I went to the gym and worked off the nervous energy of the feelings of disorientation and of the negative emotions that got ready to launch, but didn’t.

I’ve seen many people on online dating sites who have in so many words stated that traveling is the essence of an interesting and fulfilling life. I agree that traveling really expands one’s personal world, but this experience today……wow! This is also the stuff that makes life interesting. What an extraordinary experience to see through your personal invisible beliefs when before you thought it was THE world and then to step out of it into a new way of being. If anything is freedom, it is that experience and feeling. It felt like traveling to a new country in a way.

Ignorance Begetting Confidence?

 

If you’re one of those “tea party” people, go look up the Dunning-Kruger effect. That’s what I think of the tea party. Now move along, nothing to see here.

I read that quote from an online dating site profile I was perusing this morning. The woman was describing who she did not want contacting her. I was curious, so I Googled on the “Dunning-Kruger Effect”:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is

Exactly!

I would also include global climate change deniers, people in the anti-vaccine crowd and other deniers who do not respect expertise.

No disrespect to anyone, most people have their blind spots and I know that I certainly have some. I have also been told more than once and I agree that I tend to be negative. So, we all have our problems.

I don’t know if the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” is a real term or field of study in psychology, but I also found it interesting as I have seen many articles about the epidemic of narcissism in the U.S.. Aside from being an adult spoiled child and the self involvement, narcissists also have the problem of “being legends in their own mind”. I find that to be a humiliating insult added to the injury of having a neurosis.

Finding this term made we wonder if the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” is just another name for one of the limbs of the narcissism epidemic.

Arguments

In arguments one side is correct, but not right
– Ajahn Chah

You can be right or you can be happy
– Dr. Phil

I enjoyed this talk by Ajahn Brahm, a former British scientist with a salty sense of humor and now a Buddhist monk in Australia. He had a number of interesting things to say about about heated arguments, which can be applied to discussions off and on the internet.

He went into some interesting diversions during the video. The first was a piece of graffiti he found in a bathroom at a British university:

The eminence of scientist is measured by how long he can forestall progress in his field.

Love it! I think anyone who has been to graduate school for any length of time can appreciate that quote.

The other diversion he mentioned was a comment about how he noticed people react to death in Thailand. A country with a strong Buddhist culture, far less influenced by the West than other countries. Ajahn Brahm stated that when people die in Thailand they tend to feel loss, but not grieve as much as people in other countries do. I’ve always noticed religious people grieving after the death of someone they value, which is logically inconsistent with a conviction ( a belief you actually believe instead of wanting to believe ) that their loved ones are going to a better place. The situation would not be unlike in another century when someone moved to a distant country and would not be able to communicate anymore.

Back to arguing.

Ajahn Brahm had a lot to say about what psychologists call comfirmation bias or what ordinary people call “filters”, but in plain language, in a way that really hits home. He advised people to be on their guard for wrapping themselves up in a cocoon with friends who only think like they do. It is so easy to do that these days with very biased news outlets, web sites that will reinforce any viewpoint and the paucity of free time in an adult life.

He also mentioned how many arguments are not really arguments, but ego contests where only one person can be right and the other person has to self declare themselves as being a “loser” ( worthless ). According to Ajahn Brahm this kind of thing turns arguments from potentially enriching experiences into time wasting, relationship damaging pissing contests.

Ajahn Brahm reminisced about the time he spent in pubs during his college days arguing passionately with his friends, with the understanding that the person who won the argument bought the next round of drinks. That is one of the things I miss about my days as a philosophy student as well. An argument was a true argument. A chance for discovering new things, where the discussion was about the subject, never about the people and never about their personal worth ( unless it was in graduate school when professors were involved 🙂 ).

I had a friend at a job who had the extreme opposite of all of my political and social views. However, he was a gentleman to the core and I had one of those kinds of friendships with him. We could passionately argue, be friends before the argument, be friends during the argument and be friends after the argument. I learned how people very different my ilk saw the world, which I found fascinating. I miss this coworker more than I miss some friends who I have fallen out of touch with who share all of my values.