Category Archives: conservatism

“The Joy of Being Wrong”

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“Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” declared Hamlet though in modern English, Shakespeare would have had Hamlet call it “consciousness.” Shakespeare saw that the awareness that consciousness brings is stunning and tends to give us pause to the point that his projective characters Hamlet and Macbeth were often stymied into inaction with their “pauser reason.” Shakespeare had Hamlet note that his obsessive thinking, which created his hyper consciousness, was actually cowardice when he admitted that if all his wisdom were “quartered,” it would be, “three parts cowardice and one part wisdom.”

Shakespeare knew, as would T. S. Eliot centuries later, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” This is the reason that the gods graciously gave us blinders and we sure as hell better hope we never lose them for we will be face-to-face with what poet Wallace Stevens called, “the fatality of seeing things too real.” But I have found it very important to acknowledge that I have these blinders and to realize that this is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said that, “we see through a glass darkly.” Acknowledging our blinders is merely acknowledging our human-ness and that is so very hard to do.   Just ask Isis. Just ask the extreme right-wing of my country’s Republican Party!

Acknowledging my blinders has been actually quite liberating! I no longer have to be “right” for I know that being “right” is merely self-deception. “Right” is a Presence in the human experience that visits us from time to time but none of us can claim it and pontificate about it. This is probably related to what the Catholic priest Charlie Alison had in mind with his book, “The Joy of Being Wrong.”

Mental Illness is a Reference Problem

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It is axiomatic in clinical lore that mental illness is a reference problem arising from having formulated too narrow a field of reference, one’s decision-making guided by internal whims and fancies with little or no concern for external validation. In recent months I have “discoursed” re the extreme close-mindedness of the Republican Party in my country and yesterday’s post might make one think I had them in mind. Well, kind of, but only “kind of” for if I would deign to call the Republican Party “mentally ill” then I would be revealing my own “mental illness.” For they are not “mentally ill” though they do have a “mentally ill” dimension in their collective psyche just as do all groups, including the Democratic Party. This “mentally ill dimension” is the inordinate need to maintain and perpetuate group identity to the exclusion of any long-term, broad-based, inclusive agenda.

All groups function like individuals and have a need for homeostasis and go to great ends to achieve this objective. And this is good, if it is not carried to an extreme. When homeostasis becomes an inordinate concern for a group they will become excessively concerned with boundaries and self-definition. Inevitably a need for purity will emerge and one will see a tendency to threaten or exclude anyone who departs from the party line. This is reflects a profound insecurity in its collective psyche—the aforementioned homeostasis is perceived to be very tenuous and great energy is invested in shoring up its precarious internal sense of identity. The reinforcements employed to shore up this tenuous identity become profoundly important as without them the fear that “the center will not hold” and a beast will come “slouching toward Bethlehem.” (See W. B. Yeats poem at conclusion)

The key is for homeostasis…or the bedrock of identity…to be based on some belief system that finds unity in a whole larger than oneself. This belief system will allow the group identity to be maintained but without such inordinate emphasis that the larger context of which the group is part will be de-emphasized or even rejected. Such an impoverished identity does not see…and feel…its connection with the larger context (i.e., “the world”) as it cannot forego its pristine, private, “unique” view of self and opts to live in an autistic shell. It makes me think of Hamlet who pined, under his great duress, to “flee to a nutshell and there be king of infinite spaces.”

The following poem by William Butler Yeats conveys the terror of a group or individual who experiences existential insecurity and fears that “the center will not hold” and will fall prey to “the beast” of chaos:

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Idealogue, Bigotry, and Epistemic Closure

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Epistemic closure or confirmation bias has been a focus of mine for the past several years because of its personal relevance and because of political relevance in my country. This preference for self-referentiality produces the ideologue which I recently shared I realize I am one myself, though avowedly “in recovery.” (One reader replied that actually I was merely “in denial.”)

I have also referenced several times a Rutgers University political science professor, Stephen Bronner, whose research has focused on this phenomena which he has described as “bigotry.” According to Bronner, the bigot utilizes selective attention to draw his conclusions having his mind made up even before he begins to conduct his research. Now of course, this is true to some degree…at least…for all of us but the bigot cannot dare to consider this “preflective judgment” for that would threaten his perceived sense of objectivity. Most of us purport merely to have an opinion or perspective on a matter but the bigot has “fact” and cannot dare to question the premise in arriving at this “fact.”  Brenner writes:

Emphasis on the reactionary’s imperatives of argument fails to capture his preflective judgment or, perhaps more importantly, the way in which the opinion of the Other is ignored. To this extent, indeed, the issue is not simply that the elitist lacks knowledge of the Other. As Salmon Akhtar, explains, “Prejudice frequently exists despite our knowing the facts. Lack of knowledge often plays a lesser role that the active jettisoning of available information that does not support one’s emotionally needed convictions and plans. It is more often a matter of ignoring than ignorance. (The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists by Stephen Eric Bronner)

When I address this issue, I always think of this brilliant poem by Emily Dickinson:

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

The Courage of Admitting We are Wrong

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It is so hard to admit that we are wrong. In this venue I’ve shared several times of a life-long effort to “be right,” an effort that still rears its head even in this venue! And the obsessive effort to “be right” always reflects a deep-seated conviction that one is inherently “wrong” and can only be “right” by investing in some external value or belief system or individual. And the more that alienated belief is challenged, the more fierce, vehement and even violent will be the defense of that belief.

I have recently held forth how the right-wing extremists in our country epitomize this arrogant insistence on being “right” and have been delighted to see some of them equivocate at times recently. It is hard to equivocate when the “club” that you are a member of does not permit equivocation.

Just yesterday the chairman of a Young Republican college group in the state of Mississippi, Evan Alvarez, had the courage to not only resign from his chairmanship of that club but to denounce the Tea Party and chide the Republican Party for the stance they were taking on critical issues in our country, particularly in the “culture wars.” Furthermore, he announced he was becoming a Democrat. (See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/02/1311119/-College-GOP-Chairman-Slams-Republicans-Resigns-And-Joins-Democrats?fb_action_ids=10203306166847689&fb_action_types=og.likes)

Now the childish side of me said, “Oh boy! One of ‘them’ defected!” But that voice was a faint impulse as the thing I most appreciated was his articulate description of the ills of the Republican Party, ills of which most of them are deliberately oblivious. The essence of these “ills” is the pitfall of subscribing to ideology to the point that one becomes an ideologue and worships the idea rather than the “thing” to which the idea refers. And this is a passionate concern of mine because as I also shared recently I am an ideologue in recovery myself and just as with an alcoholic in recovery, I must admit that I realize I am not completely past being intoxicated with my present set of ideas! But to paraphrase the wisdom of Eckhart Tolle on this issue, “To name the beast is to begin to process of avoiding and/or escaping it.” But it takes a lot of courage to “name” this beast as one has to recognize that he/she has been short-sighted and ego-ridden and therefore “wrong.”

Culture Wars and Fear of Uncertainty

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The culture wars are raging again in my country. The most recent flare-up took place last week when two states (Arkansas and Indiana) toyed with legislation that could be used to restrict liberties of gay and lesbian citizens. In both instances the out-cry was so fierce that the state legislatures and governors had to back down and modify their stance in the face of certain economic back-lash.

I see the core issue that is always on the table with this “war” is certainty itself. Hyper-conservative people cannot tolerate change as it jeopardizes dimensions of their life which they have held to be beyond question. This is because their “certainty” is not based on any underlying and thus unifying Reality but on what they see as “objective fact” much like was the case with those who once felt the earth was flat.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni today demonstrated how many conservative Christians cling to a dogmatic interpretation of the Bible rather than risk the uncertainty they would encounter if they dared to practice the theological practice of “hermeneutics.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-same-sex-sinners.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well)

The Moon is Made Out of Cheese!

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This is just a whimsical notion I’ve tossed around for years to illustrate lunacy. And our imagination is a myriad of whimsical notions some of which are occasionally more outrageous than that one. This dimension of the human heart is the birthplace of everything that makes up the world, everything from the wheel to bread-ties. Without the capacity to imagine we never would have even made it to the Stone Age.  And, yes one is free to imagine that the moon is out of cheese but hopefully the notion would not find lodging in too many minds!

My mind/heart is now teeming with these whimsical notions as I have taken giant strides towards escaping the linear logic of the “literallew” of my youth. And, I feel that these whimsies are fine as they are just that—“whimsies.” But, some of them aren’t so nice…to put it mildly…and fortunately I have the “faculty of judgment” available which empowers me to not pay any attention to them. And if our imagination is in play, there will be a myriad of fancies that flutter past our mind’s eye and we cannot be dismayed by the unpleasant ones.

History is the tale of visionaries who have dared to imagine the impossible. One simple example is that unknown soul who dared to imagine that the earth was not flat back in the 16th century. Whoever he or she was must have been hesitant to share this “crazy notion” and when it was first shared the outcome was certainly not pleasant. The “tyranny of the way things are” holds us captive and it takes bold individuals to dare and question that “psychopathology of everyday life.”

I think religion should have a role in challenging this “tyranny” and does on occasion though usually the insight of the challengers is quickly co-opted and turned into dogma. Scientists are often earth-shakers as they are willing to think outside of the box and bring new dimensions to our consciousness. And art provides my favorite “earth-shakers,” people who are not only able to think outside of the box but at times outside of the box that the box is in!!!

The imagination is very much related to the body. One whose imagination finds the freedom to flow will be in touch with his/her physicality and will be comfortable with it. The unconscious, the gut-level dimension of the heart, will be allowed to speak its truths some of which are occasionally very dark at first glance. As Ranier Rilke put it, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.”

“Apocolypse Now”—Always Near to Some

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Two days ago Senator Ted Cruz presented his stock-issue tale of woes, wrapping it up by saying, “Your world is on fire!” An alarmed three-year old girl in the crowd innocently asked, to no one in particular, “Is the world on fire?” As the crowd chuckled, Cruz tried to soften the blow with an answer but he had done his damage. This young sweetie had implanted in her innocent little heart the knowledge that the world is a dangerous place and doom is near at any moment.

Well, the world is a dangerous place and “doom” is possible any moment in that misfortune or even death is always a possibility. But Mr. Cruz and his fear-mongering allies know that trotting out a litany of woes and emphasizing impending doom is a perfect way to impact the old-brain fear-base that we all have and is especially predominant in his party’s base. Now three-year old children are very impressionable but so are these “low-information” voters that predominate the extreme of Cruz’s party. I, too, have a fear-base but I also have a neo-cortex that allows meta-cognition and the ability to formulate a hopeful scenario even in the face of apparent “doom.” For example, I am aging and the River Styx is fast approaching but this dreadful notion is not as frightening to me as I’m able to approach the end of life with hope. (So far, anyway!)

Being a Christian like Mr. Cruz, I subscribe to the notion that “Perfect love casteth out fear” but I think this should disallow fear as a political ploy. Though not a politician, I do not have any reason to subscribe to, much less constantly promulgate, a litany of woes when there is so much to be grateful for and so many opportunities before me. But, if I was a politician in the Republican Party, I too would probably have “drank the kool-aid” and know that fear-mongering…or “catastrophizing”…was the sure-fire way of winning over the base of my party. Certainly the ills of our society and of the world need to be addressed, but focusing on these issues to roil the masses is cheap and even tawdry.

 

Thoughts from a Recovering Ideologue

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Following my post of yesterday, I learned that Senator Tom Cotton illustrated a point I made by declaring that he did not regret anything he had said in his letter to Iran. Well, f course not. Any ideologue cannot back down, cannot admit that he is “wrong” because to admit that any of his ideas are less than “Right” is to understand that his perspective on the world is limited. That is much related to something uncovered recently in his college newspaper editorials in which he declared, “Spare me the diversity seminars.”   “Diversity seminars” are of as much value to him as they are to ISIS. If the notion…and experience of diversity…sunk into his heart it would totally melt down. The house of cards that is his reality would come tumbling down.

Of course, I am talking from experience and am guilty of the “projection” that I speak of so often. For, just as an alcoholic in recovery announces that “once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic” and ideologue in recovery like myself has to make a similar announcement, “Once an ideologue, always an ideologue.” But with alcoholism and with ideologue-ism, “confessing the sin” is a step in the direction of addressing the underlying issue. As poet Conrad Aiken noted, “To name the abyss is to avoid it,” though in this case I would say “to begin to get some distance from it.”

Yes, ideas are still very important to me. And, furthermore, without ideas we could not function as human beings. But, seeing that ideas are not the “thing-in-itself” I am now less obnoxious than I used to be and can even handle the realization that some who stumble upon this palaver are briefly stunned before flashing a sign of the cross at the computer screen and running from the room screaming. And that is the right thing for them to do for I offer here only a finite perspective on the world and for those who respond with disapproval are doing the right thing…for them! And I will never want to kill them, or shame and humiliate them. Heck, I won’t even try to stop them from voting! Diversity is good! As the French say, “Vive le difference!”

But sharing this notion with Tom Cotton and his minions would be…borrowing rural Arkansas wisdom from my dear momma…”like pouring water on a duck’s back.” And for you “city folks,” the water just runs off a duck’s back without ever penetrating the surface and getting to the skin. So with his intransigence he is safe. And that allows him to feel really good about himself and makes him politically tenable with like-minded souls. But in his position, there are many more important issues on the table than his own safe, smug little worldview. And that is something we must all remember each day.

 

 

GOP Facing God’s Judgment!

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Matthew 12:36-27 “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

I used to interpret these words of Jesus to mean that some time in the distant future I would stand before God and listen to Him remind me of ugly and stupid things that I had said and done in my life. But now think that one dimension of the “judgment of God,” occurs at those moments when “reality” confronts me with the lunacy of a particular vein of thought that has preoccupied me, influencing my speech and my behavior. Some of these “judgments,” especially from my youth, still make me cringe with the realization, “How could I have said that? How could I have done that!” Sometimes the angst is so intense it is even visceral. These are my “Rick Perry moments” when I realize I had completely made an ass of myself; and, yes, I often respond with Perry’s famous, “Oops.” For, our words reveal what is going on in our hearts, that unconscious domain which we can never “know” in the sense of “wrapping out head around it.”  But these “Rick Perry moments” have helped me to learn that this region of my heart is ever present and offers many opportunities to learn something about myself.

The Republican Party in the U.S. Congress is currently being exposed to this same “judgment of God” as the “The Letter” they impulsively wrote to Iran is being deemed “ill-advised”  by many.  Some of those who signed this letter are voicing second thoughts about the decision and criticism from outside the GOP echo chamber is mounting. But having “second thoughts” about our thoughts, words, and deeds, individually and collectively, is part of being a human and the self-reflection can lead to modifying one’s agenda. This is listening to “reality” rather than stubbornly and blindingly continuing on a course of action or with a vein of thought simple because it is too painful to acknowledge to oneself and others, “Oops! I was wrong.” This simple self-reflection is a God-given neurological gift if we have the courage to use our forebrain to monitor old-brain impulses.   But for those moments when we fail to do so, we have the T. S. Eliot wisdom, “Oh the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things ill-done, and done to others harm, which once we took for exercise of virtue.”

The unconscious fear of being exposed is intrinsic to human nature. But I have learned that the pain is more bearable since I found the courage to acknowledge that I always have so much I’m hiding and that when bits of it surfaces I should see it as a gift, albeit a painful gift!  I think it was Ranier Rilke that said, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.” The God-given gift of self-reflection makes the moments of vulnerability less intense and allows me to say, “Oh there you go again, being human!”

Having the “thoughts and intents of our heart” exposed often evokes the feeling of being “wrong.” But this feeling of being “wrong” is ok as we are all only human and will always find ourselves subscribing to ideas that are self-serving and ultimately counter-productive for everyone. But when we are trapped in our ideas…when we are ideologues…we are so invested in our ideas that we cannot allow them to be modified by the feedback of others. People who cannot acknowledge and experience this fear of being wrong, i.e. the “judgment of God,” will likely spend their lives projecting their anguish onto others, seeing the “wrong” out there and often seeking to obliterate it. As psychologist Martha Beck noted, “You spot it, you got it!” People obsessed with attacking and condemning others for being “wrong,” are merely diverting their attention from the painful challenge of the Apostle Paul to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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AN AFTERTHOUGHT—Well, the Apostle Paul’s suggestion is a good one but after thinking about it, I’ve decided, “Bah humbug! I’m gonna continue to blame those dang Republicans!!!  Listen, I’m “preaching” here and don’t think I should have to “practice what I preach!”

(For more info on the backlash the Republicans are experiencing, see the following link—http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/14/gop-iran-letter-criticism_n_6868398.html)

 

 

 

 

Out Smarting our Brains!!!

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Wray Herbert is a journalist who has written about science and psychology for the past 25 years. He recently wrote in Salon a report about neurophysiology and the ability to “out smart our own brains.” (See the following link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/temptation-in-the-neurons_b_6861836.html) Of course he does not believe that we can actually “out-smart” our own brain but with willingness to learn from modern neurophysiology we can learn that our thought patterns are often driven by something other than we are conscious. With this gift of meta-cognition we can self-monitor on occasion and identify maladaptive patterns of thinking and behaving. In my clinical practice I would often use cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies, one of which was to help clients identify these “mal-adaptive thought patterns” which CBT calls, “stinkin’ thinkin’”

Recently Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas raised my ire with his letter to Iran that signed also by 47 other senators. This action reveals a rigid certainty in their heart which allowed him them to jeopardize complex negotiations between President Obama and other world leaders with Iran over nuclear disarmament. If Cotton and his colleagues could have employed the Shakespearean “pauser reason” they could have been more judicious in pursuing their goals. Having spent most of my life in Arkansas and being a “good ole boy” myself, Mr. Cotton is really “grinding my gears.” or, as I like to put it, has my “panties in a wad.”

My emotional reaction has reminded me that I’ve spent most of my life as an ideologue myself and that the first half of this self-imposed prison sentence found me very rigid. Though now I have changed, there is always a residual presence of the ideologue, which I call, “literallew,” that I have never exorcised and never will completely. For example, I often find myself taking my own “pet thoughts” too seriously and at times find myself using them as a hammer. Eckhart Tolle’s teachings tell us that “thought” is what confines us to the space-time continuum, living our life in the past or in the future but not in the Present moment. And, there is only the Present moment. The past and future are only fancies many of which are not realistic and sometimes delusional. And Tolle certainly realizes that we cannot do without “thinking” but insists that if we acknowledge other dimensions of our reality then our “thinking” can be less rigid and less self-centered.

“Pet ideas” are so easy to take so seriously because they often embody and perpetuate a view of the world with which we are comfortable. If we are too fond of these “pets” we will be unable to compromise with diverse points of view; for, allowing these “pets” to be questioned will tap a fear our ego has of losing control. But slavery to these “pet ideas” is always just slavery to our ego and the ego never likes to consider the possibility that it is not in control. To a person in such bondage, the consideration of neurophysiology (and the unconscious) on his thinking is just not permitted.

Decades ago I read a relevant observation somewhere, “Our thinking is the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we’ve already been led by our desires.”