Archive for the ‘ Psychology ’ Category

Confusing Hate With Love

This is a continuation of my key insight that the human mind considers opposites to be the same thing – the problem of the identity of opposites.

In my family we confused hate with love – and only recently have I discovered that this confusion still exists in my mind – and in my behavior. You cannot imagine how destructive this is for me – and everyone else in my life.

As more and more of our functioning becomes unconscious – this confusion becomes more and more of a problem – because this kind of reasoning occurs in our unconscious mind – without our knowing about it – because this is what the unconscious is for.

It takes a fully-awake mind to make solid moral judgments – and to see the world clearly. But more and more we prefer illusions to reality – because they provide instant gratification.

Developing a trained mind takes time – and strong social support . Something the classical world had – at least for some of its upper classes at one time – but then lost. This was one of the goals of the Enlightenment – but we have lost that too.

The conflict between our emotional mind and our thinking mind is perhaps the most serious one we have. It requires a careful balancing act – a skill we have lost – and don’t want back.

Our society has a perverted moral code – because we confuse opposites with each other. And one other thing – we confuse our things with ourselves. In other words – because we are completely confused. We confuse intelligence with stupidity – for example.

But more importantly – we confuse being confused with mental clarity. And feel we are as smart as we can be.

Let me run that by you again. In our highly developed condition (highly developed technologically) we have flipped into a being socially and mentally undeveloped. The exact opposite.

This is hardly a new observation – it is as old as the hills. Except for the technological part of the complex (where everything affects everything else) which, as far as I know, has been overlooked.

2013
04/15
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Philosophy
Psychology
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Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?

TED

This was a presentation made at TED Rio de la Plata - on the border between Argentina and Uruguay – both Spanish-speaking countries.

The audience were young professionals who were fluent in English – and who had probably worked in the States at various times – as the presenter had.

This was interesting to me because I live in Central America, in Costa Rica – which is not part of the Informational Economy – which consists of, most importantly, knowledgeable people.

I just talked to a young acquaintance, who is completely bilingual, and who is going to college, and studying programming – among other things. I was shocked to discover that he knew next to nothing about what was going on in the Computer world!

I get much of what I get on the Internet – from Aerocasillas – who flies what I get delivered in Miami – to the nearest large town, where I pick it up every week. Their web site is excellent – so they must have some good software engineers working on it. Probably somewhere in the States.

But only a small minority of Gringos and Ticos use it. The rest think it is too different.

And while I am at it – I might as well mention that only a small minority of people in the States are computer-knowledgeable.

Here we are in the Computer World – and most can only look at their smart phones – and marvel at them – having no idea how they work – and no desire to know how – or much of anything else.

2013
04/13
CATEGORY
Life in Central America
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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If the World is Not Interested in Them, They are Not Interested in It

This is the basic dynamic that shaped what we call the Post-modern world – it seems to me – although I seem to be the only one who sees this.

I did not come to this conclusion from a study of history – I am hardly qualified to do that. I simply noted what the people in my world (late 20th Century America) were like – and drew my own conclusions. America was the most highly developed country in history – but this development was not interested in people – quite to the contrary. It was interested in the production of products instead.

In the town was born into in 1936, Ft. Madison, Iowa – the west end of town was devoted to the Santa Fe Railroad, which had a large repair depot there for its steam locomotives – and the east end of town, where the Sheaffer Pen Company was. Today there is nothing left of either one. Ft. Madison is now part of the Great American Rust Belt – where most of the world’s goods were once manufactured.

Americans have carefully overlooked this part of their history – and pretend that it was not important. They have forgotten their past – and, as a result, have no present – and don’t want one.

Let me summarize this development again. We became more and more interested in our things (our manufactured products) and less and less interested in ourselves – and our children. As one of those children – I fiercely resented this – and I am sure many other children did too. But this resentment was simply shoved – along with much else – into our unconscious. Where it determined how we behaved.

These people – latter dubbed The Great Generation – did very well in WWII – after failing completely in the Great Depression. They emerged the most powerful country in history. And this promptly went to their heads. Instead of building the Great Society - they set about destroying it! Because – as I keep saying over and over – this society did not want them – as people. But only wanted them as building blocks for their industrial economy.

I am not saying anything new here. What I am saying has been said so many times it has become tiresome. All I am doing is putting it in context – its own social context.

There is nothing complicated about this analysis. It depends entirely on the functioning of the unconscious. Which people usually recognize – in a formal way, but deny in practice. Because that would involve acknowledging some very unpleasant parts of themselves – that they would rather ignore.

The overall result is that people (especially the young) have ceased to function. But due to an inversion of values – they interpret this as being perfect!

2013
04/13
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History
Philosophy
Psychology
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Marrying Dolly was James’ Best Decision

I am listening to Mr and Mrs Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence. The historian, Hugh Howard, sets out to tell a good story – and the narrator, John Chancer, supports him admirably.

But I wish he had been even clearer about how highly James Madison valued women – something most unusual for his time.

Unfortunately, their combined intelligence (mostly James’) and charm (mostly Dolly’s) did not keep them from making the blunder they are remembered for – the war of 1812.

Where America showed it could make the same mistakes all the other powers (great and small) were capable of making.

2013
04/11
CATEGORY
History
Morality
Psychology
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The Loss of Human Potential

This is hard a hard problem to write about – for the simple reason that we have decided it doesn’t exist. We have lost interest in ourselves – and in our all-important thinking and feeling abilities.

We have decided we are only good for doing other things – and not for being our precious selves. A recent issue of Scientific American, for example, concentrated on proving that the self was an illusion – implying that it was not important.

Self-development, it seems to me – is all-important. And we should be making it our first priority. But the very idea makes us nervous – because, we think something else (the economy, perhaps) is more important.

What we do not say (but do believe) is that human beings have become unsatisfactory – compared to other things. Things we cannot specify, but we feel strongly to be better than us.

This is a disastrous state of affairs – the worst possible – but a situation we have carefully overlooked.

This has resulted in a cumulative negative feedback situation. People have made a society less and less interested in people – and society has made people less and less interested in themselves.

And we consider this a vast improvement – when it is a total disaster.

2013
04/08
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Philosophy
Psychology
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Living a Dream

I want to amplify on my last posting The Basic Problem. In it I said that we helpless – at the mercy of whim and circumstance – having no desire to be in charge of our world. This was not well-received – probably because it did not make people feel good – the ultimate good for most people.

I see nothing wrong with that analysis – as far as it goes. But I think we have look to below the surface to see what is going on beneath it.

In other words, to guess what is going on in our collective unconscious. This is not as difficult as it may seem – because, as humans, we have been doing this forever. Figuring out what people really are like – and what they really want. Because we are all experts at deceiving others. And even ourselves.

Now that we know about the unconscious (thanks to Freud) – we should be better able understand ourselves. Unfortunately, psychology – in the form of advertising – has been able to use mass communications (mainly Television) to turn us into nothing but consumers – unable to think at all.

But completely able to believe. And to believe messages never put into words. Which we pick up from the very air we breath in our mass culture. Without thinking, we believe what we are supposed to believe – and don’t believe what we are not supposed to believe.

All the while believing we are in perfect control of our lives. When nothing could be further from the truth.

Our schools should be helping us to resist the influence of advertising – but they have become part of the business complex that produces all this deception. And only wants workers who will fit in.

One message we pick up is that – we have become perfect! We are the result of a process that had made us that way. And anyone (such as the Taliban) who implies otherwise must be destroyed.

And this includes internal enemies who must be carefully ferreted out – by carefully monitoring every communication going on. Including this posting – as soon as it hits the press.

Drone warfare is the perfect analogy for what is going on. Society’s snoops – and there are enormous numbers of them, all highly paid – are in the business of detecting the enemy. And then neutralizing them – with the equivalent of a missile strike.

I have been on the receiving end of these hits – especially when working for the Military as a young man (they paid very well, and you didn’t have to do anything). And I can testify that it is not a pleasant experience. It blows you to pieces.

For those already blown to pieces (emotionally scattered) this is no problem. For those desperate to maintain personal integrity – it is devastating.

2013
04/06
CATEGORY
Negative being
Philosophy
Psychology
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The Basic Problem

My posting Agile Software Development Methods Can be Applied more Widely, started me (and some other people) off on a new train of thought. My first response was to write an essay titled The Basic Question – which asked what kind of new world we should be building for ourselves.

This seemed like a reasonable question – did the world need to be fixed or not? And if so, which parts needed to be fixed? And what should be the guiding principles for this social re-engineering? All reasonable questions.

Then I realized there was a more basic problem – did we want to be in charge of our world – or not? The answer was clearly – we do not!

Somehow in our development we have decided to not develop any more.

We are not the first civilization to make this decision. A good case could be made that it has been made many times – and is the reason for the familiar rise and fall of civilizations. They rise, and then decide they do not like the results – and destroy them.

First construction is fashionable – then destruction. And we are very much creatures of fashion.

We like to flatter ourselves that we have more profound motivations – and perhaps we do – but it seems to me that this is the most fundamental one. Our as another thinker has labeled them – eternal expansion and contraction.

To put this another way – eternal progress in one direction is impossible. Instead we seem to be doing a random walk – going off in one direction, then tiring of it – and trying another.

To put this yet another way - chaos or randomness rules in the human world. Whether we like it or not.

2013
04/05
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Philosophy
Psychology
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Agile Software Development Methods Can be Applied more Widely

I have been saying – and saying over and over – that expertise in technology cannot be expanded to expertise elsewhere – to life in general. But the Agile approach may be an exception to this. Wikipedia (which can also be seen as  using an Agile process) has a good article on this. 

But the best place to get a feel for this is to poke around the many AWS (Amazon Web Services) related sites - such as the ones here. 

Right away I can hear the whining “But that is too much work!” Which, in my opinion, is nothing but people saying “The only right way to be is to know nothing at all!” Or to keep tightly-focused, and not look at the Big Picture at all.

To me, you got to be like a hound-dog – following a scent wherever it goes. No matter how much work it takes. Since when has anything worthwhile been easy?

One obvious way Agile has to be expanded is to turn the customer (in the business world) into everyone. To use it for social engineering.

Perhaps I can use my nose for sniffing out real progress (as opposed to all the fake stuff). I have certainly been down enough dead-ends  - maybe this scent-trail will go somewhere.

We did have the idea, at one time, that the world could be improved – and we should be doing that.

And it’s time we started doing that again.

2013
04/05
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Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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Being an Animal is Dirty

Crazy ideas sometimes pop into my head – and this is one of them. It may be priceless or it might be worthless. But here it is, for what it is worth.

As we have concentrated our attention more and more on our machines – we have naturally concentrated less and less attention on ourselves. And somehow we have unconsciously assumed that machines are better somehow than we are. After all, they are getting all the attention – not us. There must be something wrong with us – by comparison.

This line of reasoning, and others like it, requires that we assume the existence of the unconscious – and especially the collective unconscious. Unless we take this seriously, it seems to me, we have no hope of understanding ourselves. Because the unconscious is a very important component of what it means to be human. If we deny this (as many do) we deny ourselves – and insist that we are machines.

Understanding what is going on in the unconscious takes some moxie (something novelists are good at) – a combination of intuition and logic. Other people are often better able to understand ourselves than we are – this has been known for a long time and is the basis of therapy – again, something many avoid like the plague.

My insight this morning is mostly an intuition – but is also based on observing how people tend to think highly of their machines – and less highly about themselves. I think highly of machines (especially computers) myself – but I also carefully balance that with an interest in people – and their many imperfections.

We are animals – something my mother denied emphatically. We are a special kind of animals, true enough – but still very much like every other animal. This is convenient, because we can study some of our relatives (such as mice) or even fruit-flies to deduce how we work.

We cannot do this with machines – because they work entirely differently. Usually, being an expert in them is no help in understanding ourselves – since we are basically animals – something entirely different.

I have to also take religion into account here. Many religions consider people impure – and strive for greater purity – and tended to regard our bodily functions – especially the sexual ones – as undesirable.

One of the results of this was Industrialization – which was derived from Protestantism. This produced a world with a heavy emphasis on technology – all of which are machines of various kinds. Manufacturing – and its products – became our central preoccupation. As well as our occupations.

Right here is where the subtle – but all-important – shift occurred. From thinking of ourselves to thinking of our machines. And – at the unconscious level – considering them as superior to ourselves. Or to put it the other way – to thinking of ourselves as somehow inferior to them.

We reasoned (unconsciously) that there must be something about us that made us less desirable. The answer was clear enough – we were animals – and this was disgusting!

Immediately, I will get lots of objections – people saying (most emphatically) that they have done no such thing. And reached no such conclusion. All I can do (or anyone else) is calmly observe their actions to see if they are consistent with this theory. Or something like it.

Whatever the conclusion, awareness and social sensitivity are required. Two human (and animal) qualities that many lack.

2013
04/04
CATEGORY
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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The Freud Exhibit

Freud – Conflict and Culture

Michael S. Roth – who teaches my The Modern and the Postmodern online course – and who is also the president of Wesleyan University - curated this exhibit for the Smithsonian. It has many photographs – which show how over-dressed those people were.

This is another fine example of how much free, high-quality information is available on the Web – for those who want it.

Here is a great quote (written by Freud himself) from the exhibit:

It almost looks like analysis were the third of those “impossible” professions in which one can be quite sure of unsatisfying results. The other two, much older-established, are the bringing up of children and the government of nations.

The exhibit also makes clear that Freud often exaggerated the value of psychoanalysis – as many other people have noticed.

My last therapist was a Jungian therapist – Karl Jung was a follower of Freud, who parted ways with him. This therapist was the most expensive therapist I ever had – and I had quite a few. But he did me absolutely no good.

Fritz Perls had also been a disciple of Freud. He started Gestalt Therapy – which was popular in the Seventies. I don’t know if it effected any cures or not – but at least it was entertaining.

2013
03/26
CATEGORY
Psychology
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