Stop the inner struggle over whether your thoughts and feelings are “right”
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
FTFY
/not actually serious
“To do is to be” —Jean-Paul Sartre
“Do be do be do” —Frank Sinatra
Presenting mindfulness in a form that can reach the people who are not easily moved by the older forms of "evangelism" (e.g. monks living in poverty in a monastery, doing good works in their community) seems to me like a highly worthwhile pursuit.
[EDIT] ... yes, even if the concealed motive is to sell copies of yet another book about mindfulness.
The title of this post would perhaps pull up "Thoughtcrime" and other related tropes (religious heresy among them probably, wonder how far back this particular trope goes in recorded human history).
Fortunately we have an extremely powerful fuzzy narrative pattern matcher in our heads and with a bit of effort and interpretation people would still get useful advice from the method.
1. We suck with memory. We re-write memory every time we recall.
2. We suck with delayed gratification. No other animal had to invest. We haven't evolved past that.
3. We suck with time estimates. The engineering trope of "3x the amount of time you think the project would take" illustrates this point. There is something in Pragmatic Programmer, too.
That is why we need calendars, planners, and timers. People who rely on their conception of time are ignoring the limits of their underlying OS.
I.e., examine your feelings deeply and understand whether the thoughts behind them are right.
I don't know about that. The key to true happiness is accepting that happiness is the path not the destination. When you realize that life becomes a heck of a lot easier to live.
No. They're always trying to tell you something. That's all emotions are. And they've already spoken, so arguing with them is futile. They're telling your brain how you feel so you can act intelligently on them, not so you can turn around and argue with yourself in the mirror.
There are no negative emotions. They're dumb and honest. There is no "how you should feel". Your brain is the only organ smart enough to pretend. You feel a certain way because that's the way it is. We should always start there.
Our biological OS is not constructed for the current world. That is why, even when everything is going right, we have intermittent moments of anxiety and depression.
This is chronic. The moment you ignore our biases, you fall into some deep shit.
And you can never get out; you can't see your own biases.
I've seen people who reflect daily on whether their breakfast egg is cage free and what that means for us as an ethically omnivorous species and our corporate agribusiness food economy... and by the time they're done it's dinner. I have better things to do with my day than think logically about everything all the time.
Read the sequences on LessWrong! You might glean a thing or two.
How do you know this if you're having "intermittent moments of anxiety and depression"? It's none of my business, but you sound troubled.
Emotions being broken is a different issue, but the article was about "normal" people.
Emotions are a physical reaction to your circumstances. You don't have to react to your emotions, but to second guess how you feel without second guessing your physical circumstances is the chronic modern illness that get's you into deep shit.
> ignore our biases
You don't ignore them. You adjust for them.
"Oh, I didn't have to be angry. Sorry about that! I lost my cool for a second."
That's what our brains are for.
H = R/E
The higher the expectations, the lower the happiness. This also means that:
lim(E->inf) = inf
The conclusion is inescapable yet profound - expect nothing and you'll be blissfully happy.
How exactly did you arrive at that conclusion?
https://campuspress.yale.edu/karenwynn/files/2015/10/WynnInn...
Pretty sure there is a zoo in Cincinnati that agrees with me on that one.
You're here aren't you? Had it not been sufficient, the human animal wouldn't have survived for 200k years. Morality is innate, instinctual, and is present across the animal kingdom.
Human archetypes don't change, but they do put on different clothes over time.
It doesn't suck the fun out of life.
Yes. Sometimes those bad outcomes are pernicious, and you may want to limit their effects.
> but trying to make yourself unbiased is ridiculous and non-sensical.
Why would it be so? Sure, you can't make yourself completely unbiased and lacking in prejudice. But you can try to be more aware of how you act in different situations so that biases you consider unhelpful have less of an influence.
> The fact that you want to be unbiased makes you biased for information and people you think are unbiased.
What?
I think what is meant is that your analysis of people is different when they say the "right" things. The wife-murdering Earth Day founder comes to mind.
As Dag Hammarsköld said: It is much more difficult to care about those close to you than those far away.
I have seen plenty of people that use implicit accusations as a means of getting ahead. White, "angry", old men is a term that's been popular lately - I will use that as an example.
Are all old, white men "angry"? Are only the old, white men that disagree with the speaker "angry"? Are old, white men angrier than old men in general? Than old, white women? Than <colour> [menopausal|child-caring|single] women? Is there some skew in who brings their opinions to market? In who is heard?
I say that the people that the most seductively claim some one is biased, are those most likely to sweep their own biases under the rug.
Furthermore, I claim it is a much better goal to be consciously fair in one's dealings, than to seek some mythical state of "biased-less-ness". It seems more work, but it truly brings greater rewards to you and the people you deal with.
Trying to be "unbiased" leads to exactly zero good, because it isn't how the human mind functions. I will put my own family before the stranger on the street. That doesn't mean I won't help the stranger on the street that I _see_ needs it. I need a functioning mind for that, and this college nonsense about bias is something I had to unlearn to do so, as it leads to cowardice at the hint of personal danger or embarrassment.
(Unless, of course, you dont't perceive a real threat, but just some poor sod you can lecture about how morally superior you are.)
[EDIT: Spelling]
I'm not seeking a mythical state of being unbiased. I'd say it's more like what you say, trying to be consciously fair. I'm aware that I'm likely to be prejudiced against certain kinds of people, so I try my hardest to be fair when I deal with them.
If I came across a case of taharrush gamea, Heaven help me. I believe I would turn out a killer. If I came across some guy not being able to tell me he's late with a delivery; I understand it, but to him it's a loss of face? Of course I try to help.
I can't believe defending those in an exposed situation is a bad thing. The thing is: One has to be able to trust oneself without some sort of nonsensical, theoreticsl framework.
But you're spot on. It's difficult to unlearn something that you never knew you were learning in the first place, because you just take it as fact or how the world is.
Confronting your own biases is uncomfortable, but it's well worth it, for it makes you a better person and helps you interact with the world in a more positive way. Besides, having your worldview shaken up and challenged is good for you; that's the best way to learn.
It's funny to me, since I do, to some extent, try to recognise my prejudices in my thoughts, but it's not been a problem for me. Whereas I actually have had problems with worrying about whether my thoughts and feelings are “right” in the sense that the OP is talking about.
As it stands, your comment comes across as flippantly disrespectful and totally void of empathy for those who's lives are actively and continuously harmed by that sort of anxiety; that such anxiety is a perfectly acceptable externality in the process of achieving some theoretically perfect lack of bias.
But seriously, the article isn't saying "so be an insensitive boor."
It's just warning of the pitfall of being "neurotic" (I mean that in the commonsense, rather than clinical, sense) in the pursuit of happiness.
Really it's only basic bio/psycho-physics: When you worry or stress out what are your muscles doing? They are tense, burning ATP molecules at a furious rate, working to get rid of waste products, and generally feeling uncomfortable.
Now relax. Take a few calming breaths, meditate, have a scotch, whatever. Just let the tissues of your body relax, despite your problems. Make sure you do this in a place where you can reasonably expect not to be interrupted, so your body can commit to it. Lo and behold, you feel better.
There's no magic, and the only mystery is why it seems so mysterious! :-)
Sure the mortgage is still due and you've got no job, but you can cope with all of this much better when your system is relaxed and tuned. Really that's the difference between animals and humans: we can stop, think, and act differently. You "should" be panicking, except that reaction is no longer adaptive.
Really all this article boils down to is: when you start to tense up, stop and take a breath instead. (Unless there really is a bear or something, then just run like hell.)
----
As for the challenges of telling racist jokes, the trick is to establish the safe place first. In my cubicle at work we all trust each other enough that we can drop all sorts of stinkers and we can laugh, or throw wads of paper, as apropos. But that's because we all know and trust one another, and it's never mean-spirited. We respect each other so it's safe. And fun.
The issue when you try to have this sort of ease in a larger context is that there are "smiling monsters", racists who have the hate, the illness, in them, and those kind will use the safety to psychologically "knife" the vulnerable members of the group. When there is scope for this sort of thing to happen, people close themselves off to protect themselves, and become more sensitive to "violations" of the safety protocol (aka P.C.). Given the current and historical circumstances, I don't find it an undue burden to hew to the greater common denominator of kind and friendly speech when I'm in public, or even in most private spaces. Only among friends is it humane and proper to cut loose. Basic manners really.
Is this something you feel a need to do? Given your previous mention of political correctness, I'm assuming this means you want to tell jokes about black people or Hispanics, but resent the fact that society no longer smiles on such things.