Michael Prescott's Blog

Everyday insanity

Yesterday I learned that there may be an effort by members of my condominium association to remove a tree that stands directly outside my unit. When I woke up today, the first thing I found myself thinking about was the tree. The more I thought about it, the more exercised I became. I could not stand the thought of losing the tree. I spent most of the day dwelling on the problem, envisioning various strategies to protect the tree, and considering fallback positions if the tree should in fact come down. I put in a work order to have some groundcover cleared away by the landscaping crew so as to determine whether the root system of the tree poses any threat to the sidewalk or nearby driveway. I called a tree surgeon to arrange an appointment so I could get an expert opinion on the health of the tree and whether it ought to be removed. I was so distracted by this problem that I found it difficult to work, even though I'm overburdened with projects at the moment and have several deadlines I'm trying to meet.

And then at some point in the evening, a little ray of clarity broke into the turbulence of my thoughts. I found myself thinking, What the hell, man? It's only a tree.

At that point, I was able to step outside of my emotional connection to the tree, my feeling that any attack on the tree was an attack on me personally, my egoic attachment to this tree which is an extension of my home and therefore an extension of myself. That's not to say I was suddenly okay with the prospect of the tree coming down, if it is in fact healthy and not posing a threat to the sidewalk, etc. But at least during this period of clarity I was no longer fuming and obsessing.

Later, I happened to look out the window at the tree, and the simple sight of it immediately brought back a lot of the rage, frustration, and exasperation I'd been feeling. I could easily have gotten caught up in another whirlwind of negative thinking if I hadn't consciously pull back.

What this little episode illustrates, I think, is a simple point that has been made often enough by Eckhart Tolle and similar writers, but remains insufficiently appreciated–namely, the ego is insane.

I mean this literally. There is a sane part of us, but it is not the ego. The ego is capable of lucidity when lucidity serves its self-defined interests. But it is equally capable of brazen irrationality when irrationality serves its perceived interests. It is also very adept at disguising irrationality and making it appear perfectly sensible, at least to ourselves, and sometimes to others.

The ego is not our friend. The ego is looking out only for itself. The ego wants to enlarge itself, and it does so by getting us worked up, angry, righteous, obsessed, vindictive, frustrated, and defensive, among many other things. Occasionally it may actually be beneficial for us to experience one or more of these states of mind, but most of the time it is not helpful. Not helpful to us, that is. It is very helpful to the ego.

It is true that most of us identify with the ego and have trouble drawing a distinction between the "I"  and the ego. And that's just the way the ego likes it. The more we identify with it, the more power we give it and the less able we are to resist its siren song. People who are totally in the grip of the ego, without any ray of clarity from the higher self or true self, are psychotic. They may be walking around in public, they may be successful in their field, they may even be admired and envied, but they are still psychopaths.

It is entirely possible for a person to be very successful in a material sense, outwardly normal and even likable, and still be, in fact, insane. Actually, I think this state of affairs is more common than we like to admit.

But all of us have an ego, and all of us are insane to one extent or another. Maybe there are a few very enlightened gurus who have overcome the ego completely, though I wouldn't count on it. But the overwhelming majority of human beings on the earth, and probably every human being you or I will ever meet, is in the grip of the ego much of the time, and therefore is functionally insane for a good part of his or her life.

People wonder why they see so much cruelty in the world, so much craziness, so many examples of man's inhumanity to man. But if you consider that nearly all of us are insane at least part of the time, and many of us are insane most of the time, the cruelty, craziness, and inhumanity of the human species is less surprising. To be honest, it is a little surprising that things aren't even worse. The better angels of our nature do seem to temper our egoic tendencies more often than we might expect.

Lately on this blog, I've been talking a lot about manias, and specifically the idea that the heyday of Spiritualism as a cultural, social, and religious movement may have been characterized by an atmosphere of mania, or perhaps more accurately, by recurrent waves of mania erupting at different places in different times, not unlike the witch hysteria of an earlier era. But how can otherwise rational people become subject to any sort of mania? Well, perhaps they can't; but the trouble is, people are not “otherwise rational.” As creatures of the ego, they are insane for a good part of their lives, so it's not surprising that their individual insanity should sometimes coalesce into a group insanity, and that this insanity should seem perfectly reasonable to the people who are subject to it.

That's why I have to treat with skepticism even the most sober accounts of séances and other purportedly paranormal experiences if they were supplied by people whose rationality and objectivity had been compromised either by excessive personal enthusiasm or the larger insanity of a mass movement. These people were convinced that they had witnessed paranormal or supernatural phenomena of epochal importance. Naturally they became intensely committed to the reality of what they had seen. Their commitment was reinforced by sharing their experiences with others who felt they had seen the same things. This commitment became an extension of the ego, and any attack on that commitment–any questions raised about the validity of the phenomena–were felt as an attack on the ego. And the ego will go to astounding lengths to protect itself from such an attack. It will marshal all of its resources, including all of the intellectual capabilities of the mind it is using (and I do think the ego uses the mind, not in a symbiotic relationship but parasitically;  the ego is, in a sense, an alien entity that clings to the mind in order to sustain itself).*

A mind that has been hijacked by the ego can believe itself to be entirely lucid, objective, even unusually perceptive–while spouting sheer nonsense. Some behavioral psychologists use the term “thought attack” to describe the cascading avalanche of irrational thoughts that can lead to severe anxiety, depression, violence, etc. But all ego-based thinking is a thought attack to some degree. And while we are caught up in it, we are no more able to extricate ourselves from our racing thoughts than from a descending mountainside of snow.

I think we need to keep this in mind when we evaluate any eyewitness accounts or recollections of paranormal events, especially those from the frenetic halcyon days when Spiritualism, like Revivalism before it, was burning like a prairie fire across the nation. Again I have to say: the ego is not our friend. It is not interested in truth or facts or even logic and reason, except as these may be used to serve its own purpose, which is to survive and grow stronger. The ego is not a reliable guide. It will intentionally mislead us if, by leading us astray, it can aggrandize itself. The ego is not honest or rational or moral, though it may speak in the language of reason and morality when it pleases.

The ego is really the devil in us all, the original sin that taints us. We ignore it at our own risk. And nowhere is this more true than when matters of ultimate spiritual significance–the nature of life and death, and the meaning of it all–are at stake.

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*It's possible that the relationship orginally was symbiotic, i.e., mutually beneficial, but it does not seem to fit that description today. At the very least, the relationship seems to do much more harm than good in modern society. 

Seance and sensibility

For a preliminary look at the possibility that reports of psychic phenomena can be influenced by emotional and psychological factors, I tracked down a paper co-authored by Richard Wiseman, Emma Greening, and Matthew Smith titled "Belief in the Paranormal and Suggestion in the Seance Room," published originally in the British Journal of Psychology, 94(3), 285-297. It is available online here (PDF). 

Before going on, I should say that I have certain reservations about using this paper, because one of the authors, Richard Wiseman, has a dubious reputation in the field of parapsychology. Consider how he is characterized on the website Skeptical Investigations (which, despite its name, is actually an anti-skeptical site): 

He has been at the centre of many controversies with researchers in parapsychology, and has often been accused of deliberately misrepresenting data.

In 1995, he replicated Rupert Sheldrake’s results with a dog that knows when its owner was coming home, and then claimed to have debunked the 'psychic pet' phenomenon....

He has been described by the President of the Parapsychology Association as motivated by "obvious self-interest", and by a desire "to support an a priori commitment to the notion that all positive psi results are spurious and all methods which seem to show the presence of psi are flawed".... In December 2000 he carried out what he described as the 'world’s biggest ESP experiment' which, like many of his activities, was widely publicised in the media. A skeptical observer of the experiment claimed that he had designed the experiment to fail and interfered with the procedure in such a way as to gain the non-significant result he expected. 

In September 2004 he took part in a classic CSICOP debunking excercise, claiming that a young Russian girl who had seemingly psychic powers of diagnosis had failed a test he and his fellow skeptics designed. In fact the girl scored at a level well above chance. Prof Brian Josephson, FRS, a Nobel Laureate in physics, investigated Wiseman's claims about this test and found them to be seriously misleading....

By the autumn of 2004, after a series of other very questionable claims, widely publicized in the media, many of his peers in the parapsychology research community concluded that his behaviour was not consistent with commonly-accepted standards of scientific integrity, and he was voted off the main research forum in parapsychology by a large majority. In addition, for similar reasons, some members of the Society for Psychical Resaerch called for him to be expelled for the Society. He resigned. Despite his strong skeptical beliefs, in 2004 he applied for the newly-established chair of Parapsychology in Lund, Sweden, which was endowed to promote research in this field. 

Obviously there are major controversies swirling around Wiseman. Nevertheless, I don't know of any other recent research that looks at the issue of suggestibility in the séance room. So with the caveat that Wiseman's conclusions may not be reliable, here's what he and his colleagues found.

The researchers put on a series of fake séances using an actor or, in a later series, Wiseman himself as the medium. The sessions were held in darkness, with various objects arranged on a table and glowing with luminous paint. During the course of the session, the medium would make suggestions to the sitters about the movement or lack of movement of these items. A hidden assistant would move some of the objects, using a long stick. The first series of experiments was videotaped using infrared photography.

The outcome of this initial series of tests was consistent with the idea that people in a dark séance room have a tendency to see things that didn't happen when these things are suggested to them by the medium. The most striking case involves the purported movement of a small table. Though the medium strongly suggested that the table was moving under the psychic influence of the group, the table actually remained stationary throughout the test. Nevertheless, 31% of participants later said that the table moved.

A second data point involves a small handbell, which also remained stationary throughout the test. In this case the medium told the group to focus their psychic powers on the handbell and make it move, but he did not suggest that their efforts had succeeded. In this case only 10% reported seeing the handbell move. This indicates that the medium's suggestion is an important factor in the way the session is remembered.

Moreover, people who expressed a prior belief in paranormal phenomena were significantly more likely to accept the medium's suggestions than those who expressed a prior disbelief.

The second series of tests yielded results that seem less conclusive. Still, there was a significant amount of misreporting. 11% said the stationary handbell moved. 10% said a stationary tambourine moved. 86% said that an actually moving slate remained stationary (the medium, Wiseman in this case, had strongly suggested that the slate wasn't responding to their psychic efforts, even though his assistant was in fact moving it). 9% said that a moving candlestick was actually stationary.

In addition to the above, many of the participants described feelings and sensations consistent with some kind of paranormal experience–the same kinds of feelings and sensations often reported by people who attended “genuine” séances. 

In Experiment One, 20% of participants indicated that they had experienced these phenomena, with a significantly greater percentage of Believers (30%) than Disbelievers (8%) reporting such experiences (Chi square=6.36, df=4, p=.04). In Experiment Two, 21% of participants reported such experiences. In addition, the relationship between participants’ prior belief in the paranormal and the reporting of such experiences was in the same direction as Experiment One, and approached significance (Chi square=8.78, df=4, p=.07). The Questionnaire also asked participants to describe their experiences. Many people reported the type of quite dramatic phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including being in an unusual psychological state (e.g., ‘Feeling of depersonification and elation when the objects moved’); changes in temperature (e.g., ‘Cold shivers running through my body when I concentrated hard on moving the objects’); an energetic presence (e.g., ‘A strong sense of energy flowing through the circle which increased’), and unusual smells (e.g., ‘A smell of hot plastic, combination of sweet and acrid smell’). Thus, the fake seances caused participants to report many of the experiences described by those attending ‘genuine’ seances, suggesting that such effects are the result of psychological processes (e.g., psychosomatic experiences brought about by participants’ heightened expectations or strong beliefs), rather than being caused by paranormal, psychic or mediumistic mechanisms.

Wiseman et al. sum up: 

For over a century people have attended physical seances and reported witnessing seemingly inexplicable phenomena. Experiments conducted around the turn of the last century revealed that many of these accounts were unreliable. The experiments reported here have shown that modern day witnesses also produce inaccurate testimony of séance phenomena. In addition, these experiments represent the first attempt to systematically examine verbal suggestion within the context of the seance. They have demonstrated that such suggestions have the potential to cause sitters to incorrectly report that stationary objects were moving, and that moving objects were stationary. The studies have also produced strong evidence that within the context of a seance, Believers are significantly more susceptible to verbal suggestion than Disbelievers, but only when the suggestion is consistent with the existence of paranormal phenomena. Both experiments also revealed that during the fake seances many participants reported experiencing the type of unusual phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including, for example, sudden changes in temperature, a sense of unusual energy and odd smells. Finally, results also showed that about a fifth of participants believed that the fake seance contained genuine paranormal phenomena, and that a significantly greater percentage of Believers than Disbelievers believed this to be the case. 

Again, I don't want to put too much emphasis on this report because I do have doubts about Wiseman's credibility. It is worth mentioning, though, that the paper lists some prior research efforts that purportedly came to the same conclusions regarding inaccurate reporting of séance phenomena and (separately) the heightened suggestibility of believers in the paranormal. One of these papers dates back to 1887 and was co-authored by famed psychic researcher Richard Hodgson, best known for his work with Leonora Piper. 

Hodgson and Davey (1887) held fake seances for unsuspecting sitters and asked them to write a description of the seance. They reported that many sitters omitted important events, recalled others in an incorrect order and often believed that they had witnessed genuine paranormal phenomena. In 1898, Lehmann (cited in Jahoda, 1969) conducted a similar experiment and again described how participants’ accounts of a fake séance were often wildly inaccurate. Besterman (1932) had sitters attend a mock seance and then answer questions relating to various phenomena that had occurred. Besterman reported that sitters had a tendency to underestimate the number of persons present in the seance room, failed to report major disturbances that took place (e.g., the experimenter leaving the seance room) and experienced the illusory movement of objects....

Haraldsson (1985) found a significant positive correlation between paranormal belief and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Likewise, Dafinoiu (1995) reported a significant relationship between participants’ levels of paranormal belief and their scores on a suggestibility questionnaire, with people who believed in the paranormal exhibiting higher suggestibility scores than disbelievers....

Jones & Russell (1980) asked both Believers and Disbelievers to observe a staged demonstration of extra-sensory perception (ESP). In one condition the demonstration was successful (i.e., ESP appeared to occur) whilst in the other it was not. All participants were then asked to recall the demonstration. Believers who saw the unsuccessful demonstration distorted their memories of it and often stated that ESP had occurred. Disbelievers tended to correctly recall the demonstration, even if it appeared to support the existence of ESP.

If we can trust the Wiseman paper's summary of these various reports, it would seem likely that a fair amount of eyewitness testimony from séances in dark rooms is unreliable; that belief in the paranormal renders eyewitnesses more inclined to perceive these phenomena in response to the medium's suggestions; and that emotion and psychology play a large role in how séances are experienced and remembered.

In the Victorian era, when Spiritualism was all the rage, and may even have qualified as a kind of “mania,” these psychological and emotional factors could have been far more pronounced then they are in most people today. Perhaps this social atmosphere helps to explain the extraordinary prevalence of physical mediumistic phenomena in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compared with their relative absence now.

Having said all this, I need to supply an important addendum. Some of the most convincing investigations of séances were not conducted in total darkness. For example, when Everard Feilding and his colleagues investigated Eusapia Palladino in Naples in 1908, they did so in conditions of dim but (reportedly) adequate light. They also took the precaution of examining the phenomena in detail whenever possible–for instance, crawling under a levitating table to ensure that all four legs were off the floor and that no part of Palladino's body was in contact with the table. These investigators were seasoned professionals who, among them, had exposed and debunked more than 100 physical mediums before encountering Palladino, whom they fully expected to debunk also. They hardly seem to have been carried away by irrational enthusiasm about mediumship, and given the lighting conditions and strenuous efforts to verify the phenomena, I don't think their results can be explained as hallucinations prompted by the power of suggestion (a possibility that the investigators themselves considered).

In short, the research done by Wiseman and his colleagues does seem relevant to a great deal of Victorian table-tipping and related physical mediumship when carried out in pitch darkness by excited amateurs or, in some cases, by overly credulous professionals. But I don't think it can disqualify the best and strongest cases from that era. It may, however, help to whittle down the number of good cases and to explain the extraordinary popularity of séances at that time. It may also explain why physical mediumship is so much rarer nowadays; perhaps people are simply not primed to accept it at face value as they once were.  

Boys and girls together

Lately the Internet has been crowded with stories of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, in which hundreds of college-age or slightly older kids have assembled to air a vague but passionate collection of grievances. The demonstrations have spread beyond Wall Street, and in some cases have turned violent. I'm not going to comment here about the protesters' ideology, because I don't think they have much of one, and what little of substance they are saying doesn't interest me. What does interest me is their psychology, because I can relate to it, and because it carries implications for human nature in general.

 

I need to get autobiographical here. Thirty years ago I graduated from college, having earned a not-very-marketable degree in Film Studies. I set out for Los Angeles, expecting to take the movie industry by storm. I had been encouraged in this expectation by my teachers' praise, and by the fact that my life up to that point had been pretty easy–I'd never had to work very hard to get good grades, and though I'd held a few jobs to earn extra money, I'd never been in danger of missing a meal. I saw no reason why things should be any more difficult for me when I left the comfortable embrace of institutions of learning. I was in for a rude awakening.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that a film degree was nothing special in Los Angeles. Everybody had one, including the waiter serving me a cheeseburger at Bob's Big Boy. I also discovered that without connections or any particular talent at self-promotion, I wasn't likely to make inroads into the movie industry anytime soon. In fact, everything was a whole lot harder than I'd expected. I ended up taking a rather crummy job as a delivery person for a company that sold investments over the phone. My job was to drive around Los Angeles County delivering contracts. I put hundreds of miles on my car, a cheap little Chevrolet Chevette, which was, incidentally, one of the ugliest automobiles ever produced in America. I wrote a number of screenplays and tried hard to get an agent, but faced a wall of rejections and mounting frustration. I began to feel that I'd been badly misled. The easy path to success that I felt I'd been promised had not materialized–had, in fact, turned out to be a chimera, a mirage. My teachers had made it all sound so easy, and the constant self-esteem-building encouragement I'd received in my formative years had led me to believe that whatever I wanted was there for the taking. How wrong I was.

Beyond all this, I also felt alienated from mainstream society for ideological reasons. In college I'd become infatuated with the writings of Ayn Rand and had adopted a radical libertarian political perspective. The first presidential candidate I ever voted for, in 1980, was Ed Clark, nominee of the Libertarian Party. In 1984 I didn't vote for president at all, because I felt there was no difference–no difference?–between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. My view at the time was that all mainstream politics was hopelessly corrupt and that American society was hopelessly irrational and stupid and that we were all going to hell in a handbasket and deserved it.

And so, as a result of my personal frustrations and my ideological estrangement from society, I became a very angry guy. I mean, really, really angry. I spent a lot of my time just seething at the injustices and stupidities of the world. I was furious at American society and its economy and culture and leadership class and voting public–all of it–furious because it wasn't behaving the way I wanted it to, and it wasn't giving me the life I wanted to have.

It is probably fortunate that I had an outlet for my anger–namely, writing. In those days I cranked out a large amount of fiction, most of it garbage, but while the material may have been unpublishable dreck, at least it allowed me to vent my frustrations. The first novel I ever sold was a horror story in which a pack of attack dogs, having gone feral, proceed to terrorize a small town very similar to the one in which I'd grown up. The book is brutally violent and contains numerous scenes of innocent people being torn to shreds by the howling ravenous pack. The mutilations and maimings inflicted on these characters are described in voluptuous detail. I definitely had issues, and ripping the hell out of people in my fiction was my way of dealing with them.

There was a lot I didn't know at the time. I didn't know that the first steps are always the hardest, and that things do get easier as you go along. I didn't know that it takes time to build a career, especially in a field like filmmaking or novel-writing, where there is no clear path to success. I didn't know that I wasn't alone in my frustrations and failures–that millions of people my age were going through much the same thing, and that millions more had gone through it in the past. I didn't know that my assumptions about the way the world should work were fundamentally unrealistic, a product of dorm-room bull sessions and Ayn Rand's feverish fiction. I didn't know that most people really are doing the best they can, and that if society is unsatisfactory, it's because human nature is imperfect.

I also didn't know that it wasn't all about me.

That was really the main thing I didn't know. I was stuck in a stage of narcissistic development in which the only thing that mattered was my life, my ambition, my desires, my disappointments, my beliefs, my ego, myself. I couldn't see past my own problems and my own very limited perspective. I couldn't see that other people had far worse problems and were dealing with them without complaint. I couldn't see that my problems really didn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed-up world, as Rick in Casablanca would have said.

Narcissism is, I think, a perfectly normal stage of emotional development. It is actually healthy, because it allows young people to exhibit the self-confidence necessary to attract their mates. It is a biological adaptation that encourages or that promotes procreation. Undue self-regard, as obnoxious as it may be, is beneficial in terms of reproduction, just as the flamboyant feathers of the peacock are helpful in attracting the amorous peahen and ensuring new generations of peacocks.

The author Barbara Sher writes persuasively on this topic in her excellent self-help book It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now, which discusses the changes in personality that most of us go through as result of biological adaptation and social conditioning. Narcissism, grandiosity, and self-dramatizing self-obsession are hallmarks of adolescents and of the immediate post-adolescent years. Thus has it ever been and thus shall it ever be. And our indulgent and comfortable society only encourages this mindset and helps it to stick around a little longer than it needs to. 

Even so, for most people, this stage of development is blessedly temporary. By their mid-twenties they are moving beyond narcissism, usually because they have started a family and must provide for their children, which requires sacrificing their own pleasure and convenience. But in the interval between the onset of adolescent narcissism and its gradual dissipation in light of adult responsibilities, there is an extended period akin to the terrible twos, which can be summed up in one word: me. Or more precisely: me, me, me, me, me!

Now we come back to the Wall Street protesters. Most of them are lodged securely in this demographic group. They are of college age or a little older, and they have not yet had children. They are taking their very first steps into the real world, away from the protection of academia and their parents. They are finding those first steps difficult–perhaps unusually difficult right now, because of the bad economy, but let's not kid ourselves; those first steps are always difficult, even in a good economy. And, like me thirty years ago, they are deeply frustrated, disappointed, and angry. Things are not working out the way they were supposed to. Implicit promises made by the system are not being kept. The easy path to success and happiness has vanished like a dream, replaced by a stony and winding uphill trail that leads to an uncertain destination. They feel lied to, and in a sense they have been. They have been coddled and therefore somewhat hobbled by those who, seeking to boost their self-esteem and make them feel good about themselves, have told him over and over again how special they are and how bright their future is. They feel betrayed. They feel cheated. They feel scared. They feel lonely. They feel helpless. They feel hopeless. They feel all the things I felt, and all the things that young people always feel when youthful dreams crash headlong into the brick wall of reality.

And so they occupy a park, march on Times Square for no particular reason, chant silly slogans, carry misspelled signs, and bang on drums–not because any of this will do them any good, but because they don't know what else to do. Incoherently they feel that if they just express their rage loudly enough, somehow the universe, like a loving and indulgent parent, will hear them and take pity on them and make everything all right again. And if it doesn't, then at least they can lash out and try to inflict hurt on this world that seems so intent on hurting them. I know all about that. When I was their age, I often felt like screaming and lashing out too. The emperor Nero famously said he wished humanity had a single throat so he could cut it. I used to wish humanity had a single face so I could punch it. These protesters feel the same way.

Are they idealists? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that they imagine there is some better system which, if implemented, will magically make  the problems of adult life go away. It doesn't matter whether they imagine that system to be socialism, communism, anarchy, or–as in my case–libertarianism (radical laissez-faire capitalism). They are naïvely hopeful that human nature can be altered and perfected if only the right policies are implemented. This is a kind of idealism.

But it is also a kind of ignorance and stupidity. It is the ignorance and stupidity of the young, who simply don't know better, because they haven't experienced much of life, and because they're relying on information obtained in books and lectures safely removed from the real world. And it is a dangerous ignorance, a perilous stupidity, because it may lead some of them to do desperate things. In fact, it already has. Hundreds of these protesters have been arrested, and those arrests will remain on their records for the rest of their life, complicating their efforts to find employment. Some have committed acts of violence; an 82-year-old woman suffered a fractured skull in the Times Square riot on Saturday night. Some may become so frustrated and depressed when their movement inevitably fizzles out that they will turn to drugs, alcohol, even suicide.

So yes, I do understand these people. I understand their fears, their frustrations, and their rage. And I understand that since most of them have no creative outlet, they can find relief only in mob action, in screaming and running amok and acting like idiots. They're young; they're supposed to be idiots. That's what youth is for.

But they also need to be corralled, controlled, disciplined, and—in cases of lawbreaking—roundly punished. Because, you see, that's what adulthood is for.

And we all have to grow up sometime. 

Dangerous liaisons

In a recent post I quoted from Richard Carlson's self-help book You Can Be Happy No Matter What. I recommended the book and mentioned that I've found it very useful.

But I don't want to give the impression that I agree with everything Carlson has to say. I think his approach can be too simplistic and, at times, even dangerous. Here's an example from his chapter on relationships:

Think about someone you know whom you perceive to be an offensive or demanding person -- someone you have difficulty maintaining a positive feeling toward. Now, despite your difficulty, you know there are people who feel warmly toward that person. How do they do it? Are they blind to the facts? No. They do the same thing we all do for people we care about, without even knowing it. They look beyond the person's behavior. The person they like is not a static personality, set forever in stone, but someone whose behavior fluctuates according to his level of insecurity. They say, "Oh, Jim didn't mean what he said. He tends to lose his temper, and sometimes he says things he shouldn't." They see Jim, whereas you look at Jim's behavior.

We are all capable of looking beyond another's behavior, and do it all the time intuitively. We dismiss or defend the actions of people we love when we understand that they are feeling insecure. To improve our relationships we need to do the same thing with intention, to have a warm feeling for someone even though we don't feel they deserve it. As we practice this, our rapport and feeling of mutual respect will increase. [Page 81]

Now, there is certainly some truth in this, and in many cases it can probably work, but I would not recommend Carlson's approach in all situations. For one thing, it is not always possible or even desirable to separate the "behavior" from the person. A person, after all, is responsible for his behavior. More important, to intentionally overlook bad behavior on a regular basis is to reward and even enable that behavior.

Consider the case of a battered spouse. The thought process described by Carlson is exactly that of a wife whose husband has just physically abused her. "Oh, Jim didn't mean to hit me. He tends to lose his temper, and sometimes he does things he shouldn't." The battered wife doesn't look -- doesn't want to look -- at Jim's behavior. She wants to look at the "real" Jim, who is somehow distinct from the bad things he does. She wants "to have a warm feeling for someone even though [she doesn't] feel they deserve it."

Practicing this technique will not cause the "rapport and feeling of mutual respect" between the wife and her husband to increase. Quite the opposite. The more excuses she makes for Jim's behavior, the worse his behavior is likely to be.

Carlson would probably say he's not talking about really bad behavior, such as acts of violence. But there are other kinds of abuse. Jim might not beat up his wife physically, but he might subject her to chronic emotional abuse, which can be just as bad.

In general, Carlson strikes me as someone who has had little experience of the dark side of life -- someone who dramatically underestimates the amount of sheer malice that's out there in the world. His techniques work well in dealing with people who are basically decent and well-meaning, but I think they would fail -- in fact, I think they would bring about the opposite effect to the one that he intends -- when applied to people who are just plain bad.

And such people do exist. They're not the majority, but they're not an inconsequential minority, either.

In other words, there are wolves in the woods. And not all of them can be won over by simple acts of kindness. Some of them perceive kindness as weakness, and will take ruthless advantage of you if you let them. They will bite the hand you extend to them.

So by all means, read and profit from Carlson's book. But as always, caveat lector.

Thinking makes it so

Back in 1992, before he became famous as the author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and its innumerable sequels and spinoffs, Dr. Richard Carlson wrote a wonderful little self-help book called You Can Be Happy No Matter What. This brief (141 pages) volume is chock-full of penetrating insights and useful advice, presented in a readable and engaging style. Over the years I've turned to it repeatedly and have always profited from it.

Early in the book, Carlson discusses what he calls "thought systems," and makes some valuable points (all emphases are in the original):

All of our past thoughts can be clustered into our "thought system," a self-contained unit through which we see the world. Every decision, reaction, and interpretation we have is colored by our individualized thought system.

Our thought system is like a filter that information passes through before it gets to our awareness. It is a complex, perfectly woven pattern of thought, linked together into concepts, beliefs, expectations, and opinions. It is our thought system that enables us to compare new facts or situations with what we already know from past experience.

Your thought system includes all the information you have accumulated over your lifetime. It is past information that your thought system uses to interpret the relative significance of everything that happens in your life. In this sense, a thought system is the source of conditioned thought. When you rely on it, you are thinking in a habitual manner, your usual way of seeing things. Here is where your habitual reactions to life are formed.

Thought systems contain our view of "the way life is." They are the psychological mechanisms that convince us when we are right, accurate in our understanding, or justified. Thought systems by nature are stubborn and do not appreciate being tampered with. They are absolutely self-validating. If your thought system includes the idea that our country's schools are horrible and are the cause of most of our problems as a nation, then the following scenario would be possible: You're reading the evening paper and on page thirty-six, you come across an article near the bottom of the page that says, "Twenty-one students fail literacy exam in district." You smile; you are proven right again. You show the article to your spouse, "You see dear, our schools are falling apart. It's just like I've been telling you." You don't know that on the front page of the same paper, the headlines read, "Nation's school test scores up 17% over the past five years!" But such is the nature of thought systems. Due to the way they are wired in our minds, there will always seem to be a logical connection among things we perceive to be true. Our beliefs will always make perfect sense to us within our own thought system.

Our thought systems lead us to believe that we are realists and that the way we see life is the way life really is. The fact that one person can view a situation as an opportunity and another equally intelligent person sees the same thing as a major problem doesn't bother a thought system. Our thought system dismisses the other point of view as off track, well-intended but wrong, or not quite right.

Because our thought systems are filled with our memory of the past, information we have accumulated throughout our lifetimes, they encourage us to continue to see things in the same way. We react negatively (or positively) to the same situations or circumstances over and over again, interpreting our current experiences in life as we have in the past. A person who believes that people are inherently critical will become defensive whenever anyone offers a suggestion, regardless of whether the person meant to be critical. This will become a theme in his life unless and until he understands the nature of thought systems, particularly his own. Understanding this concept will help him see that he is not seeing reality, or truth, but an interpretation of reality through his own thinking.

Because our thought systems are so familiar to us, they seem to be giving us true, accurate information. Because of the self-validating aspect of thought systems, we accept familiar ideas and disregard the rest. This is why people rarely change their political or religious views, and why they hesitate to even discuss them with friends or family. They "know the truth" and can come up with examples and arguments to support their claims. They also "know" that their family and friends "don't understand the truth," and because they are stubborn they probably never will. We know the result of locking heads with other thought systems -- usually frustration is experienced on all sides. This is why people gravitate toward others who share their beliefs, and become impatient with those who don't.

Understanding the nature of thought systems can change this. When we know that other people (and ourselves) innocently interpret our beliefs as if they were reality, we can let go of the need to be right. We can see that our beliefs are merely a function of past conditioning and experiences. Had our past been different, our ideas about life would be different. Other people's beliefs are also a result of their past experiences. Had things been different, a totally different set of beliefs would have surfaced.

"This may be true," you say, "but my view of life is a good one and not only do I still think it's accurate, I wouldn't change it even if I could." The point here is not to change your thought system or your ideas about life, but to see the arbitrary nature of them. We only need to see the fact of thought systems, not tamper with the contents, to reduce the frustration in our lives. Unless we understand thought systems, we can rarely hear other points of view. We interpret what others say and do based on what we already know. Information comes in and we decide whether it makes sense, based on our previous knowledge. Unless the information is something we already agree with, our thought system will have a tendency to discount it. In short, new information is usually unwelcome within our existing thought systems. This is why we can be bothered by the same events or circumstances over and over again throughout our lifetimes. We have developed recurrent cause-and-effect relationships between certain events and reactions.

For example, you might believe that whenever someone gives you a suggestion, it means that they disapprove of you as a person. You won't question this because your thought system will validate it. It always seems to be a true, accurate assumption about human nature. Even if someone assures you that your assumption is off-base, you convince yourself that the other person has hidden motives or that they are not aware of their hostility toward you. However long it takes, you will seek to verify your existing beliefs to prove yourself right, even at the expense of making yourself miserable.

But if you understand the nature of thought systems, you can begin to see beyond them, and sense the value in other points of view. What we used to interpret as criticism we now see merely as an opinion from another person with his or her own thought systems. We can virtually eliminate unprofitable arguments in our lives and can completely eliminate feeling resentful, confused, or angry at others who don't see things our way. In fact, when we understand the stubborn nature of thought systems, we will expect others not to see things our way.   [pages 19-23]

I would add that one feature of what Carlson calls thought systems (and what I call worldviews) is that, in order to justify them, we usually create arguments to prove that the consequences of accepting or rejecting a particular worldview are monumentally important.

For instance, skeptics -- in order to convince themselves that their rejection of any belief in the paranormal is a matter of crucial importance -- sometimes make an argument like this:

"Belief in the paranormal would take us straight back to the Dark Ages. It would destroy modern science and technology and reduce us to a primitive, subsistence level of existence. It would wreck civilization. Moreover, Nazism had elements of mysticism and paranormal belief. Opening the door to such things means throwing down a welcome mat for totalitarianism. Therefore, belief in the paranormal jeopardizes freedom, civilization, science, progress, and all human life."

The stakes could hardly be higher than that! But the argument is, of course, a threadbare rationalization. There is no necessary cause-and-effect linkage between belief in the paranormal and rejecting all of modern science. In fact, one can make a case that certain developments in modern science make it easier to accept the evidence for the paranormal. And many leading scientists throughout history have had strong mystical or paranormal beliefs.

As far as the Nazis are concerned, their ideology was a confused mishmash of disparate elements, including an attempt to revive the pre-Christian Teutonic religion/mythology of their ancestors for propagandistic purposes (they wanted to make the Fuhrer into a god). Other totalitarian movements, such as Maoism (which killed even more people than Nazism), have eschewed any mystical or paranormal ingredients.

Of course, as a certain carpenter once pointed out, it's easy to see the sawdust in your neighbor's eye, but much harder to see the timber in your own. Believers in the paranormal have their own way of convincing themselves that their belief system is critically important. They often say something like this:

"Materialism is the cause of all the ills of the modern world and is leading us to destruction. It's responsible for war, environmental degradation, rampant consumerism, dehumanizing social conditions, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Only by adopting a more spiritual view, which includes the acceptance of paranormal phenomena, can we defeat materialism and attain a higher, nobler, more fulfilling state of being. As long as materialism is the dominant philosophy, the world will continue careening out of control. Our only hope of ensuring humanity's survival is for the forces of anti-materialism to win out. Otherwise we're doomed."

I'm afraid that I would characterize this as a mere rationalization also. While there are certain advantages to a more spiritual outlook, there are also definite hazards. People who are open to "spiritual" guidance may find themselves drawn into cults; they may become overly trusting and therefore gullible; they may become the victims of con artists like fake psychics and fake mediums; they may see world-saving leadership qualities in political figures who are quite unworthy of this acclaim. (Not that anything like this has happened lately...) They may become disconnected from the practical requirements of daily life. They may divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, with themselves and those who agree with them elevated to the former category and everyone else relegated to the latter. They may even develop mental illness, begin to hear voices, become addicted to using a Ouija board or calling a psychic hotline.

Countries around the world with high levels of belief in the supernatural and the paranormal are not necessarily known for a higher standard of living, higher quality of life, or higher level of overall happiness than their more materialistic counterparts. Indeed, quite often the opposite is true. And periods of history characterized by high levels of belief in the paranormal have not been golden ages of universal prosperity and harmony. For the most part, these periods have been no better than other periods -- and perhaps, in some respects, worse.

Those on each side try to convince themselves that the fate of the world depends on having as many people as possible agree with their opinion. But the fact is, they want people to agree with them simply in order to justify and vindicate their own worldview; the stuff about the fate of the world is mere window dressing.

That's just how the mind works. We're all better off if we can at least become aware of it. Richard Carlson's fine little book can help us to do just that.