The Empirical Manifesto

I recently made the statement that I was discouraged by someone allowing their moods to dictate their behavior. The reply was, "Most people do." Yet given why "most people" do what they do - because everyone else is doing it - that is not a sustainable reason to do anything. For myself at least, that is one of the poorest responses ever.

@nilofer recently shared an article from the Journal of Applied Psychology entitled Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men’s and Women’s Altruistic Citizenship Behavior by Madeline E. Heilman and Julie J. Chen which detailed the (perhaps not so surprising) prejudice which occurs when people who are unaware that expectation and should-statements (as well as role identity) are all indicative of cognitive distortion. While we all presumably use highly personalized measuring sticks, it would appear many simply pulled theirs from the freebie bin at the societal norm discount store at checkout. And because everyone is using the same one, it is assumed accurate despite it's manufacturing defect. The entire nation is negatively impacted.

While the below comic by The Oatmeal is timely and sadly humorous, the implication is no matter what the current event issue, society will not have learned how to think in the next 50-years. Once again we will confuse some random event with the process of critical thinking, believing it to be somehow different, or not applicable.

No matter where I turn I find the same patterns over and over. Those who embrace mindfulness; open-mindedness, are happy and successful and exude joy. Those who don't, aren't. And its worse than it sounds. Its not just that the close-minded aren't happy or successful, they're actively frustrated. Frustrated because nothing ever seems to work out. Frustrated about being perpetually frustrated. While I generally attribute this to ignorance, which dentin clarified as bad modeling - the answer seems to be incalculably simple while simultaneously complex:

Critical thinking.

To those who can appreciate its powerful logic understanding yourself, others, and the world around you is an eye-opening, mind-altering, intrinsically motivating experience. For those who struggle with the concept of intrinsic motivation, and hold fast to absolutism, egocentrism and a whole host of other close-minded mumbo-jumbo, discredit causality - and break the very fabric of time with their inflexibility.

As surreal as my life feels at times, the alternative is akin to a lobotomy for those of us who do not require external events to create our happiness. But we do require energy.

SHOULD

The more I discover, the more I am in awe. The more I thought I knew how life was supposed to be, the more I've had to unlearn. Simply put, I was wrong. About everything. I now understand that even thinking that things "should" be a certain way is indicative of cognitive distortion, the hideously opaque mask of mood disorders - once we know what to look for.

When we know what to be on the lookout for, it becomes rather easy to spot the cognitive distortions in others. It may be a little more challenging to spot our own, but it is possible. Doing so usually brings lasting positive change in the way we experience stressors in our life.^*

Of course given my nature I am far more interested in spotting and cutting out my own seeds of negativity. Besides, its near-impossible pointing out shortcomings in others. They become irrationally defensive (despite the fact I wasn't even accidentally attacking the poster). No thank you. I'll pull the plank from my own eye first to empower myself with jesus-authority prior to removing the speck from theirs. I do this for one reason alone - I DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE LIMITATIONS OF LOVE. I seek lasting positive change in the way I experience stressors in my life.

"Should Statements" occur when anyone thinks anything should happen a certain way. No matter what we think is normal or right is immediately wrong if we believe it should be that way - and all of a sudden we're treading the dangerous waters of expectation - where disappointment lurks. When someone doesn't behave as we think they should, we become hurt or angry or resentful. When we ourselves break our own rules of how we think we should act or behave, the emotional consequence is guilt. The problem lies with reality - which often never seamlessly matches up with what we experience. "Should" is someone else's ideas planted in our head that we didn't know were false, and which have no basis in our everyday lives except to frustrate us when nothing seems to go as planned. The problem isn't anyone else, rather entirely our own fault. Unsurprisingly, this brings us right back to personal responsibility. We alone are solely in command of our every thought, our every action, and our every consequence. Right or wrong we feel how we choose to feel 100% of the time.

Our feelings follow what we are thinking. When we’re feeling stressed, anxious, or worried, our thoughts about ourselves or the thing we’re worried about are almost always negative.^* And negative thoughts like these can send us spiraling down into depression. If we think something often enough, we begin to believe it's true and our feelings match what we are thinking.^*

OPTIMIST

The funny (or sad, really) thing about cognitive distortion is that it very nearly (not entirely) falls along the same lines as self-fulfilling prophesies. That being, negative beliefs predicate negative behavior. Its entirely about false definitions evoking new behaviors - nothing positive ever comes from it. But it was being led down this primrose path in which I discovered why I am an optimist - cognitive distortion! Optimists apparently can subvert cognitive distortion into positivity. And all this time I used to think pessimists were a natural balance to optimists. Nope! Pessimism is nothing more than another brutal mask of mood disorder. Goes to show how much unlearning is required when we think things should be a certain way.

Optimists explain positive events as having happened because of them (internal). They also see them as evidence that more positive things will happen in the future (stable), and in other areas of their lives (global). Conversely, they see negative events as not being their fault (external). They also see them as being flukes (isolated) that have nothing to do with other areas of their lives or future events (local). Understandably, if you’re an optimist, this bodes well for your future. Negative events are more likely to roll off of your back, but positive events affirm your belief in yourself, your ability to make good things happen now and in the future, and in the goodness of life.^*

TRIFECTA

Psychology, Spirituality and Eastern religions. The more I know, the more I know I don't know. When I first read the quote in Psychology Today which stated, "Attachment reduces marriage to a quest for safety, security, and compensation for childhood disappointments." It didn't immediately dawn on me they were using the word attachment as the Buddhists do, as the origin of suffering as detailed by the Four Noble Truths on which the cessation of such is the Noble Eightfold Path. The Wheel of Dharma. Psychology. Spirituality. I've read many times over that the application of Buddhism is eerily similar to that of cognitive-behavior therapy. One might draw the correlation that psychology is our version of those Eastern religions.

Take a look at the prism of self-realization as filtered through this trifecta:

• Psychology


• The impulse to convert oneself into what one is capable of being.


• Abraham Maslow




• Spirituality


• The ultimate goal of a human being, attaining permanent happiness and complete independence and freedom from all worldly bondage.


• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-realization




• Eastern religions


• Knowledge of the true self beyond both delusion and identification with material phenomena.


• The Divine Life Society

Even Plato taught that the attachments and defining illusions & behaviors that human beings conventionally rely on for security, respect, affection, social identity, and other needs must be questioned and abandoned in their original form.^* In short, continual, aggressive reevaluation without provocation.^*

RELATIONSHIPS

It just so happens that I was introduced to interdependence through a Psychology Today article on marriage - but my initial, though limited understanding of it, is that it can be applied much more broadly. To all relationships, friendships, acquaintances and even to society at large for there is no society without us, without our individual thoughts and actions operating in relationship to the greater whole. Therefore attempt to search for application in that vein despite the martial context of the quotes. Unhealthy and unsustainable can transcend marriage and seep into our personal lives no matter what our station is.

Wikipedia revealed to me that the first recorded use of the word was in Karl Marx' Communist Manifesto which I then delved into to glean the original meaning - in this case the opposite of narrow-mindedness in the required adaptability of burgeoning nation-states. This jives with interdependence psychologist David Schnarch (the subject of Pamela Weintraub's article in PT) who likens dependency in relationships to the emotional security an adult would provide an infant. The opposite in relationships isn't independence, which is easy compared to pursing our own goals and standing up for our own beliefs, personal likes and dislikes in the midst of a relationship, no, the relational opposite is interdependence.

Interdependence allows partners who are each capable of handling their own emotional lives to focus on meeting their own and each other's ever-evolving goals and agendas in response to shifting circumstances. Dependent partners by contrast spend their lives compensating for each other's limitations and needs.

Therapeutically Schnarch recommends a dynamic process he calls differentiation; living within proximity to an emotional partner while not caving to pressure from them in order to maintain a sense of self. This could again be applied between not only spouses but lovers and friends and neighbors as well. Acknowledging and overcoming differences in who we are rather than making excuses for them or worse, trying to change ourselves or our partner. A process which requires discomfort and confronting conflict. A dynamic process remember; Active. Not passive. Basically, continual, aggressive reevaluation without provocation. Interesting how that keeps coming up.

There are twelve nidanas or "preconditions" for causal relations in Buddhist philosophy, of which two are agreed upon to be the most important for enlightenment/self-realization/interdependence:

• Ignorance


• The lack of wisdom not limited to not having learned some fact that they need to know, but rather rather that their habitual ways of perceiving the world are fundamentally flawed thus they are "blinded" by greed, desire, lust, etcetera.




• Craving


• A desire not to be separated from pleasurable sensations and to be free from painful sensations becoming reinforced into habitual patterns of attachment and aversion.

Believe it or not, I'm not making this up - though I admit it sounds like some shit I would say - this is actual Buddha philosophy. And it fits into our Western psychology quite seamlessly. Point is, for those of us who may eschew one over the other, it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend both sources are in error.

An argument is valid if and only if the truth of its premises entails the truth of its conclusion. It would be self-contradictory to affirm the premises and deny the conclusion.

And my point is this gives rise to self-validation (see optimist, above). Schnarch suggests rather than asking someone else for their stamp of approval, in which case rejection affects our self-worth, even if our partner were to aggressively reject or withhold that approval, by having respected our own thoughts and feelings we've maintained our sense of self-worth. He goes on to say that by having said what we think without fear of rejection, we are ironically loved and respected even more by our partner for speaking our true mind and are therefore now free to choose to be with our partner out of mutual respect instead of feelings of dependency - dependency being the state in which one person uses another person for a specific purpose. I wish to neither "use" someone nor in turn be "used" by them. Its not sustainable.

True, sustainable security can only come through self-reliance. I personally have been seeking communication without repercussion for a very long time. It would appear the search is now over, for apparently I alone am responsible to be the very thing I desire.

Be the change you want to see in the world. ~Ghandi

Schnarch has his own version of the Four Noble Truths he calls "Points of Balance" which emphasize resilience. As a gentle reminder, these are in direct opposition with cognitive distortion's inflexible all-or-nothing-no-change-under-any-circumstance viewpoint. These require adaption and quick redirection without losing track of one's overall goals, agendas, or sense of self.

1. Operating according to deeply held personal values and goals even when pressured to abandon them.


2. Handling one's own inner emotional life and dealing with anxiety and emotional bruises without needing to turn to a partner for help.


3. Not overreacting - but still facing - difficult people and situations.


4. Forbearance and perseverance in the face of failure and disappointment to accomplish one's goals.

We alone are responsible for our happiness - easily enough said, more difficult to comprehend. But these are the repeatable metrics, recipes if we must for excelling at life, no matter what it throws at us. Not life as we expect it should be, but life as it actually is. These are the tools to use to manufacture our own hopes, our own dreams, and to realize our own desires. We can use others to bolster us, help propel us toward those goals - but only ever mutually, never at our own expense. Dependency and attachment weakens us. The more we become their master, the more we take charge of our destiny. Do not settle for anything less.

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.^*

HOW TO KILL A GOD

Deny him his nature.

`An open mind is a mind of curiosity, wonder, learning, infinite possibilities and a beautiful desire for understanding.`

The Critical Thinking Community defines critical thinking as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

The Critical Thinking Company defines it as the identification and evaluation of evidence to guide decision making. A critical thinker uses broad in-depth analysis of evidence to make decisions and communicate his/her beliefs clearly and accurately.

CRITICALTHINKING.NET defines critical thinking as reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do.

Belief.

In all three instances belief plays a role in critical thinking. Belief is a principle, a proposition or premise which is accepted as true. As belief is but the simplest form of mental representation - the lowest common denominator - it can be expanded through critical thinking. When someone learns a particular fact, they acquire a new belief.

Understand and acknowledge that facts can support beliefs, as well as disprove or nullify inaccurate or incorrect beliefs.

Therein lies two immediate issues with that:

• People who "believe" only the former to be true, but not the latter.


• People who don't "believe" facts.

Belief without substantiating evidence is fine; belief without personal understanding of that belief is not. WHY is it believed to be true? Critical thinking can help.

Analyzing, conceptualizing, defining, examining, inferring, listening, questioning, reasoning & synthesizing. Apply all of these to anything anyone says or any belief held and start taking personal responsibility through intellecutal independence which allows us to solve our own problems ourselves.

Critical thinking can be applied to everything, across the board by very easily asking or analyzing; Ask to clarify indistinct or ambiguous statements, ask for verification of statements, ask for specifics, rather than use of subjective language, consider the relationship of the statement to the issue, consider the superficiality of statements which do not address the complexity of the issue - to be truly fair and unbiased other points of view and different perspectives must be considered - and the combination of thoughts should be mutually supportive and make sense both individually and once assembled.^*

But above all, be open-minded - how could one possibly think critically if the results were chosen to be ignored rather than applied? Critical thinkers are acutely aware of their own ignorance and biases and motivations and default societal rules and question it anyway, just in case they're wrong.

Its difficult at best to seriously consider ideas which may run contrary to decades of conditioning. `Humans can be very logical but more often than not are swayed from its use by many traps. Our long evolutionary history of reliance on the "herd" has compromised rational thought in favour of going along with consensus of opinion. To not do so places us outside the herd and thus into an unfavourable survival position.`^* No taboo is presently known to be universal - can the mind be expanded to accept what is considered unnatural things?

Be passionate about critical thinking! I find each irrationality a challenge to unravel! For within lies truth and truth can soothe even the most hardened of disbelief in the closet critical thinker.

`Stop worrying about what job will bring you passion. What hobby. Or even what person. Be passionate and its spirit will call itself out, attracting life to a you that is ready, willing, and able to dance that kind of dance.`^* Without a passion for effective communication and commitment to glorious mutual understanding, what else is left but confusion, and where confusion leads? Acting on a perception of what might have been said instead of asking for clarification skirts dangerously close to the opposite of critical thinking, which as I've come to understand it, is cognitive distortion.

And cognitive distortion is chock full of some of my most oft decried pet peeves:^*

• OVERGENEALIZATION – Extrapolating limited experiences and evidence to broad generalizations


• WISHFUL THINKING - Expectation of certain outcomes based on performance of unrelated acts or utterances


• DISQUALIFICATION OF POSITIVE - Discounting positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons.


• JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS - Reaching (usually negative) conclusions from little (if any) evidence.


• MIND READING - Sense of access to special knowledge of the intentions or thoughts of others.


• FORTUNE TELLING – Inflexible expectations for how things will turn out before they happen.




• CATASTROPHIZING -Inability to foresee anything other than the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or experiencing a situation as unbearable or impossible when it is just uncomfortable.


• EMOTIONAL REASONING – Experiencing reality as a reflection of emotions, e.g. "I feel it, therefore it must be true."


• SHOULD STATEMENTS – Patterns of thought which imply the way things "should" or "ought" to be rather than the actual situation the person is faced with, or having rigid rules which the person believes will "always apply" no matter what the circumstances are.


• PERSONALIZATION - Attribution of personal responsibility (or causal role or blame) for events over which a person has no control.

And my personal favorite:

• FALSE DICHOTOMY - All-or-nothing thinking; conception in absolute terms, like "always", "every", "never", and "there is no alternative"

More to the point, false dichotomy is generalized by BLACK AND WHITE THINKING:



What's wrong with the simplicity of black and white? To start with `using dichotomous language boosts dichotomous thinking, and the latter is a type of cognitive distortion that can negatively influence the way you feel about yourself. If you’re dealing with anxiety, casual usage of extremely polar words can lead you to magnify thoughts and events through a distorted lens that can ultimately make you more anxious.`^*

Simply put, thinking critically can save us from the ill effects of polar words which can lead to polar moods. And this is something which can be accomplished from home! I imagine that critical thinking could very well be the cognitive behavioral therapy to less-severe cases of dysfunctional emotional-behavioral issues.

`If we think in false dichotomies we will tend to draw false conclusions. Black and white thinking often reflects an underlying reluctance or refusal to deal with the uncertainly that results from complexity in an absence of definite answers. But leaping to flawed conclusions because you can't tolerate the ambiguity of not knowing is not about truth or curiosity, but comfort.`^*

Ah comfort. That warm blanket which is so effortless to draw up around us to shroud ourselves in the lazy pastime of assuming if we ignore the problem, it will surely go away. Or to even keep the pain we've so long identified with its now a part of our identity, intact.

Herein lies the crux, the everything about everything.

Most people don't care to think critically.

I was shocked by an epiphany I had concerning something I feel strongly about, that being not ever denying anyone their opinion. But if I am going to live by my own rules, I must certainly incorporate new information as it becomes available if I expect others to afford me the same courtesy. So here it goes:

If I arrive at my opinion through critical thinking and someone else arrives at their opinion though cognitive distortion, does that make their opinion wrong?

I am a critical thinker.

Its what I do.

Its what defines me.

Part time lover. Part time dreamer. Full time me.

`The process of being open-minded is tied to not judging, being flexible, learning, letting go of attachment. Those who can change their minds can change everything.`^*