... anxiety and fear are more responses to the absence of comforting beliefs than the presence of uncomfortable beliefs.
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Explorations Outside
What lets fear in is the uncertainty, not the belief. Uncertainty without the compensation of belief - that ultimately it will work out, that there is a secure harbor, despite the present confusion – creates a vacuum that is filled by alarm.
There is a time to give into temptations and a time to resist them. Whenever there’s a tug-of-war among competing goals, and you have to override one behavior or goal in favor of another, self-regulation is involved. Enjoying what the moment has to offer is a worthy goal. When to honor that goal is the question.
We want witnesses to our witnessing. Most of the time, eyes glaze over. You had to be there. Except for the blessed: those who are good story tellers. They gather witnesses. And so their worlds live on a little longer.
Linguistic conventions keep tripping me up when I write about thoughts and thinking. It sounds like there is a little homunculus in the head listening to thoughts, encouraging them to proceed, or directing them to more worthwhile topics.
Some thoughts and thought-streams lead to slightly lower mood – so what? A slightly lower mood isn’t the end of the world. If a line of thought leads to identification of problems, unresolved issues or as yet unrealized goals, fine.
What exactly is a ‘belief’? The dictionary says, to believe is to have confidence or faith in the truth of something. People may ‘hold’ beliefs or ‘entertain’ them. To hold is to adhere or remain steadfast. To hold is to continue in the relationship – to be committed. To entertain is to be in an uncommitted relationship.
Ideal # 2: Everyone has a right to safe and sanitary living conditions Questions (focusing on ‘safety’ only): Re-wording ‘safety’ as protection from danger, what types of dangers should we be protected from? What types of dangers should be tolerated? How much danger should be tolerated within each category of danger? ...
The immediate future looms large in human psychology. People tend to care more about near-term payoff or danger than what might be coming down the pike in a few years. This tendency to downplay later rewards or threats – called hyperbolic discounting – probably evolved because prehistoric conditions were too harsh for long-term calculations to be of much benefit. Live for today because tomorrow may never come.
You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand correctly. And you can’t begin to understand a problem unless you see it as a problem. And you won’t perceive it as a problem unless it conflicts with some ideal of what you want the world to look like: a vision of the good (not just a vision of a fixed bad). In that spirit, here’s an outline of my ideal society...
Like scientists, medical doctors appreciate their own limitations. Yet they are tasked with making important decisions – possibly life-and-death decisions – despite not knowing for sure they’ve got it right. Wait and see? Try something? Try something else? All the while observing and thinking and investigating further. Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds.
Ideology is not a collection of beliefs and opinions. Ideology is a system of beliefs and opinions. The parts (beliefs and opinions) are interconnected and form a complex whole. The whole is organized according to some core principles or themes.
At any given moment the spotlight of awareness leaves almost everything in darkness. People vary in where they point their spotlight. Perhaps some people have a wider or more quickly oscillating spotlight, so they see more stuff. Or maybe it only seems so.
“Being” with the flow of thoughts and feelings, and not trying to cut them off through redirection of attention, can generate good things and bad things. Sometimes it helps to “be” with thoughts and feelings, to let them carry one along for awhile, for them to work themselves out, or for us to become desensitized to them, or for us to learn or change through them.
Making it a general principle to “accept, then redirect” thoughts - that is, to accept the initial manifestations of a thought stream and then redirect attention to the “present” – reflects low regard for what thought streams have to offer. The technique of labeling moods and emotions reflects a similar devaluation of emotional life.
Words point to something beyond themselves. When you “accept” a thought, that means you have not resisted an arbitrary stopping point in the potentially endless signifying.
Some patterns of thought are like family. A few words out of their mouths and you know where they’re going.
Problem-solving when we’re in a good mood tends to be quick, flexible, creative, and intuitive. Problem-solving when we’re in a bad mood tends to be information-based, detail-oriented, systematic, and cautious. Then there’s problem-solving when we’re on the rebound from feeling bad to feeling good ...
The phrase “wandering thoughts” is interesting. Why not call the movement of thoughts “exploring thoughts”? From the outside, exploration may look like wandering. From the outside, you can’t see direction; you can’t see what is being sought. It’s all helter-skelter.
I just don’t see mild –sometimes very mild - stress as “suffering”. Occasional feelings of irritation, guilt, anger, shame, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, chagrin, boredom, and all the rest of the less-than-positive spectrum of emotion are not a cause for alarm. These are not “toxic” emotions, unless you define them as such.