Category Archives: religion and politics

Jeb Bush Teaches Me a Lesson

Leave a reply

Yes, I was “schooled” by Jeb Bush last night who was a guest on Stephen Colbert’s inaugural late-night talk show.  The brother of former president George W. Bush and son of former president George H. W. Bush is seeking the Republican Party’s nomination and found this occasion to score some points with those of us who love the irony and sarcasm of Stephen Colbert.  When the subject of politics and President Obama came up, he noted that he does not question the President’s motives, pointing out very astutely, “If you question someone’s motives you can’t ever find common ground.”

Well, immediately he explained why he is not the darling of the Republican Party, polling in the bottom tier of candidates right now far behind the darling of the hyper-conservative base of the party, Donald Trump.  The disdain that the Republican have demonstrated for Obama for the whole of his presidency reflects “questionings” of his motivations, a critical stance which stems for their outright disdain of his person.  This disdain has been so obvious, so blatantly egregious that it often has reached the point of comic.  To illustrate, I recently saw a cartoon which illustrated their penchant to blame him for everything, the cartoon posing the question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and Fox News is not there to report it, is it still Obama’s fault?”

We are all “motivated” creatures and in being critical of the motives of others we run the risk of “assuming” that we are not motivated ourselves.  And Bush’s observation indicated that he grasped the notion that when we are trapped in this “embedded thinking,” based on deep-seated fears and insecurities, we cannot even “seek” common ground.  But this applies to all of us, even…cough, cough…ahem, ahem, ”moi.”  Persons like myself, very much on the liberal wing of politics, often have trouble realizing that conservative values have an important place in our life, politically, socially, and culturally.  It is then so easy to find ourselves guilty of the same obnoxious arrogance that we attribute to “them.”

However, I do admit that the current situation with the GOP is beyond the pale.  But the real root of the problem lies only in the hard-core base of the party…those that their own Senate leader once described as “knuckle-draggers”…with most Republicans being quite intelligent and thoughtful.  The real culprit has been the leadership of the party which has routinely capitulated to this “baser element” in their ranks who depend on “low-information” voters without which they could not win anything.

( http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2015/09/09/jeb-bush-stephen-colbert-donald-trump-orig-dlewis.the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert}

Senator Ted Cruz Demonstrates an “Echo Chamber.”

1 Reply

Here is a video clip of Ted Cruz tossing “red meat” to a group of hungry, rabid supporters.  He carefully follows his script, not missing a point, offering up to those reptilian brains everything they want to hear.  (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/04/1418371/-Ted-Cruz-Kingwood-Texas-Tea-Party-delusional-speech-in-under-5-minutes)  It reminds me of my youth in Baptist revivals with the firebrand evangelist tossing our the appropriate “red meat” for that setting with his approbation coming in the form of “amen’s” and cries of, “Preach on, brother!”  In each setting, the crowd goes home basking in the delight of having their prejudices and premises confirmed.

This is an illustration of the echo chamber that we hear from the media so often.  And, yes, the “echo chamber” is present with any line of thought…even we damn liberals… who much prefer basking in the self-serving comfort of “smooth words” that the prophet Isaiah warned us against.  No one, individual or group, wants to have his/its pre-conceptions brought to the table.  We prefer the comfort of this “echo chamber” even to our own detriment rather than be brought to an awareness of our limits which is always very painful.  As W. H. Auden put it, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”  We prefer to remain embedded in our own thinking.

Anyone ensconced in an ideological comfort zone, fights tooth-and-toenail against being disillusioned.  And, of course, all the ugliness that we hide beneath our comfort of being “right” and “noble” is seen to be “out there,” embodied by people who are different than us.

Embedded Thinking #3

Leave a reply

Blog—embedded thinking#3

I

Abu Abdallah is in an Iraqi prison, awaiting execution for recruiting suicide bombers.  In the following Guardian interview he remains adamantly committed to his cause, firmly resolved that his actions were Allah’s will, and that even collateral damage in the attacks he orchestrated were Allah’s will.  Abdu perfectly illustrates the “embedded thinking” that I have been writing about the past week, “thinking” which has such an emotional (and unconscious) investment that the body of thought appears to be completely autonomous.  He is not thinking, he is being “thought.”  This is the “dis-embodied word” that, carried to an extreme, leads to pronounced evil.  Abu Abdullah is enslaved by ideology and this “enslavement” is so complete that human experiences like regret and remorse are not possible.  Those “bothersome” human qualities are laid aside for the accomplishment of Allah’s will.   (See full article in following link:  http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-mastermind-describes-suicide-bombers-2015-8

Certainty is usually not toxic like Abdullah’s.  Most human beings live daily with the comfort of certainty that their way of viewing the world does not merit any introspection and the doubt it would create.  Give everyone the “pauser reason” that some of us have and the world would collapse immediately.  But for some individuals, and groups of individuals, the need for certainty becomes pathological and the consequences are often severe.  This need stems from deep-seated fears, an unconscious uncertainty that can be assuaged only by investing inordinately in a vein of thought that provides the illusion of certainty.  This “illusion” might appear delusional to outside observers but to those who are deeply embedded in an “illusion” it is the right way of viewing the world; and, so often this assuredness is attributed to a Supreme Being.

Life is fragile.  We are merely dust of the earth, “quintessence of dust” to use Shakespeare’s term, that has miraculously managed to gain “consciousness” and find the power to create human culture.  But beneath this thin veneer of consciousness, that reptilian brain still percolates and sometimes it “breathes out threatenings and slaughterings” and overrules the “pauser” that our forebrain was designed for.  One poet had this in mind when he wrote, “Only a tissue thin curtain in the brain shuts out the coiled recumbent land lord.”  (Eugene L. Mayo)

Pathological certainty is like a cancer in that it cannot be contained and always needs to “convince” others even at the point of the sword.  For those embedded in their own ideological certainty need to swell their ranks for the end purpose of making the world “the way it should be.”  And inevitably this “way the world should be” will be “God’s will” or “Allah’s will” and the end will always justify the means.  And as long as there is anybody in the world who does not subscribe to these “noble” and “true” ideas, the fear-based ideologue will be threatened.  The fear-based ideologue seeks to obliterate difference or “otherness”.

Mental illness is a reference problem.  This clinical bromide grasps the pathology of this “embedded thinking” which at a certain point of “embeddedness” becomes incapable of realizing that there are other ways of viewing the world.  One who feels certain that his tin foil hat will keep intrusive thoughts from outer space away is not insane in a community of like-minded souls.  And one who believes that President Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim socialist is not “nuts” in a group that firmly believes this to be true.

“Waging the Collective War We Are”

3 Replies

W. H. Auden’s observation, “We wage the war we are” also applies to human collectives. Carl Jung eloquently described the “collective unconscious,” one example seen often in mob psychology where otherwise law-abiding people can have subterranean demons stirred up to the point of violent behavior. And sociologists and anthropologists…and other social scientists…are adept at delineating how our connection with social groups influences our behavior much more than we ever would like to acknowledge. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has very interesting recordings on YouTube and TedTalks in which he shows evidence that my “firm conviction” to be a liberal Democrat is not without unconscious motivation just as Conservative Republicans are also driven by similar needs.

Even the species as a whole can be compared to an individual child, still early in development, struggling to integrate fragmented impulses into a working, harmonious whole. Just in my lifetime, with technological advances like computers and the internet, our world is so much “smaller,” so much more a “whole”, and we are so very near, yet so very far, to being able to come much closer to world peace and harmony than ever before. We have the means, but lack the will. And I recently came across someone who pointed out the “coincidence” that terrorism has emerged as a formless (i.e. “stateless”) expression of the violent dimensions of our collective unconscious. Jung would say that our collective unconscious is telling us that all of our accomplishments deriving from our conscious need for structure and organization, are finding their complement in the chaos of violence. It is as if our collective unconscious is reminding us, “Oh yes. Technology and progress is great. But it comes by sublimating repressed violent impulses and these violent impulses need to be given attention.” The goal is to continue to seek meaning and coherence in our world while simultaneously acknowledging and addressing the violent unconscious impulses that are within us all. And this can be done through sublimation such as with religion, literature, art and mythology. But I issue a caveat re religion—“Danger, danger Will Robinson.” For religion can easily become just another form of violence as we see so often today.