Life and Living: Thoughts on Nearly Everything

By Larry Wharton

Life and Living: Thoughts on Nearly Everything is about just that---nearly everything. Whatever happens to interest me at the time gets attention. But diverse as the chapters are, there is one guiding theme. We live our lives better and more fully if we understand ourselves and our needs, acting to improve both our own well being, and that of others. The book’s diversity helps us see ourselves and the world from multiple, often challenging, perspectives. But my hope is that these different views will stimulate an appreciation of aspects of the world and human behavior not seen or understood before. To this end, my opinions will be gently provocative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796062304

Larry Wharton

Larry Wharton is a retired organizational consultant and college instructor. His interests range widely, from science to personal relationships to religion to poetry. All of his writing, blogs and books, stems from a desire to continually improve his personal understanding and effectiveness. For readers, his goal is to stimulate thinking in areas seldom getting our attention, but which can be very beneficial for life and living. He writes a short blog every Friday which continues the on-going exploration of anything he finds interesting. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Copyright © 2019 by Larry Wharton.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019915011

ISBN:                  Softcover                        978-1-7960-6229-8

                            eBook                              978-1-7960-6230-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/26/2019

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I am deeply indebted to my wife, Eleanor, for her extremely helpful editorial support, having read all seventy pieces a number of times, and made numerous excellent suggestions for improvement.

I am also grateful to my blog readers whose comments made this a better book.

Introduction

I NEVER INTENDED TO write this book.

I did intend to write a blog that I sent by email to friends and relatives. Originally, I focused the content primarily on issues and problems impacting thinking. But that didn’t last long, as I found it confining. So, I started writing about anything I found interesting at the moment, including poetry, authors’ quotes, individual and societal psychology, East Asian thought and practice, raising children, unintended consequences, and interpersonal relations. Writing is the most useful and enjoyable way for me to think and intellectually explore a wide range of different issues.

Notwithstanding the enjoyment I got out of writing the blog, I gradually grew tired of the format of around 800-1000 words and decided to do a shorter one offered more frequently. But I didn’t want to just abandon the 64 large blog chapters, deciding to make them into this book. The pieces are not always in their exact original blog form. I have edited them for clarity, and added or subtracted elements to enhance what I am trying to express.

The chapters reflect what was on my mind at the time, and can be read in any order, or no order. Additionally, there is some intentional repetition because I often examine an issue from different viewpoints when writing about it at different times. With each of the chapters, I hope to provide a limited, occasionally provocative, viewpoint encouraging further thought by the reader.

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Ann Patchett, What Now?

Contents

1. Thinking and Emotion

2. Thinking and the Brain

3. We Like What We Like

4. Embracing the Unknown

5. The Danger of Passion

6. Words, Values and Hypocrisy

7. The Dangers of Two-Valued Reasoning

8. Not Much Thinking Going on in the Jury Room

9. The Loss of Shock and Shame, and Societal Disintegration

10. Rights, Responsibilities and Consequences: The Lost Connection

11. Biases

12. Self-Interest, Selfishness and Labeling

13. Compassion

14. Vulnerability Creates Invulnerability

15. Opinions Obstruct Thinking

16. What About Relativism I?

17. What About Relativism II?

18. What About Relativism III?

19. Open and Closed Systems and (In)Civility

20. The Myth of Tolerance

21. Conflict Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up To Be, Or Is It?

22. Trust and Interpersonal Conflict

23. Religion and Society I

24. Religion and Society II

25. The Real Function of a Spiritual Friend is to Insult You.

26. Order and Disorder

27. Utopiates

28. You Can’t Get There From Here

29. I Am Effective! Or Am I?

30. Anti-fragile I

31. Anti-fragile II

32. Anti-fragile III

33. The Road to Character

34. Incompleteness Or Completeness?

35. The Problem With Certainty

36. No Defending

37. I am Awake

38. What’s Wrong With the No Borders Concept?

39. Questionable Musings

40. Conversations: Restrictive and Expansive

41. Conflict Is The Beginning of Consciousness

42. Open-mindedness and Irrelevant Factors

43. Psychic Complexity and Its Challenges

44. Cognitive Complexity

45. Control Or Influence—Which Shall It Be?

46. Honesty

47. Why We Need More Structure For The Young

48. Slack Emotional Resources

49. Knowing Yourself

50. Humility and The Tao Te Ching

51. Wu-wei

52. Wisdom

53. Great Passions Are Maladies Without Hope

54. Voltaire and Fools

55. Definitional Patterns and Successful Communicating

56. More Musings

57. Is Righteous Anger Righteous?

58. He Raises Little Dust

59. The Counterpuncher

60. Rest

61. Trade-Offs

62. Five Magic Words to Save Society

63. Vocabulary and Thinking

64. Selective Perception

1

Thinking and Emotion

W E HAVE A quality thinking crisis in our society. Simply, there doesn’t seem to be much of it, either in public life or private life. Poor thinking has been around forever, but it seems worse with the increasing social fragmentation and polarization. There are plenty of causes for poor thinking, some to be explored in later chapters. For now, emotion’s role.

Many people believe that their emotional reactions are the same as thinking. I feel good/bad about something is considered as thinking. A recent language change reflects this. A person concerned about the poor today might say, I feel we should do more for the poor. Not many years ago that same person might have said, I think we should do more for the poor. Regardless of the topic, the change in usage is important. Conflating these two words of very different meanings could mean that some people see them as synonymous. One adverse result among many could be to make helpful political or personal conflict conversations more difficult. If emotions rule, and they are what is real, then I have the right to express those emotions in no uncertain terms, regardless of the impact on someone else. The danger is that care, attention and respect will be lost as we try to sort out our conflicts through a deluge of emotions. In the language of emotion, some believe that restraint is a harmful, stifling action. When emotions and reason conflict, the advice from many is that emotions rule.

But I am not giving emotions a bad rap. Their existence could not be more natural, or needed. Joy, love, and enthusiasm are valued positive emotions. Valued negative ones are fear, sadness, and anxiety. So, having emotions is not at all the problem, but unexamined and undisciplined ones could easily be. Acting out the negative ones in particular may lead to a highly unpleasant interpersonal outcome: I win, you lose. When we perceive a threat to our views or values, there is an immediate and understandable emotional reaction to minimize the threat. But the impulse does not have to translate into action. People with good self-understanding and self-control can over-ride the emotion’s dictate if they think it will compromise objectivity or cause a hostile and disrespectful exchange.

When threatened, our views may become more solidly entrenched, often leading to a powerful emotional state in which we experience our views as defining us. Contrary information is so dangerous that it cannot be tolerated, never allowed into our self-contained and self-referencing system of values, views, beliefs, and emotions. Nearly incapable of distancing ourselves from our views, we cannot have a fair and respectful engagement with someone who differs. The end result, besides very hostile engagements, is the very strong need to accept only information that accords with our existing views and values. Known as selective perception, it seriously obstructs quality thinking.

Needing to hear only what we like or agree with we congregate with those whose views and values we share. Normal and healthy when it does not obstruct quality thinking and respectful action. But when it does, such gatherings reinforce thinking and emotions which are absolute, often wrong, and at the very least highly simplistic. In such a setting, we are powerfully urged to maintain the false story that we are actually thinking, that we are objective. After all, how could all these other very bright folks who think like I do be wrong? Further, neither group nor self-critique is possible since it could easily be seen as threatening to the self or disloyal to the group.

Part of the sense that we are thinking arises from our seeking objective backup for our views. But this is self-serving. Scientific studies show that the emotional connection to a view or value comes first, and only then do we seek support. Only information that buttresses the already-existing emotional attachment gets a hearing. But quality thinking requires that we put aside emotions, preferences, biases, and prejudices, and examine a situation on its own merits, no matter what our feelings are. Exceedingly difficult in the best of moments, and nearly impossible when we are under stress and emotionally undisciplined into the bargain.

Emotions are one aspect of compromised thinking, but the connection between thinking well or poorly, and emotions is far more complex than I am describing. Emotions can cause us to think about something, and thinking can cause an emotional reaction, neither of which need produce bad outcomes. Emotions can actually enable quality thinking, often aided by intuition. Suppose I am an art critic and am looking at a painting I have never seen before. I have an emotional sensation of anxiety that something is not right. This causes me to examine the painting from a more skeptical standpoint. Or, perhaps conversing with a good friend about a contentious topic brings up a feeling of excitement about how our ideas, though quite different, are opening avenues of expansive thinking not anticipated.

As important and beneficial as emotions can be, we cannot allow them to drive our behavior, especially under conflict. Acting as protectors of the existing state of feeling and thinking, they can be highly damaging to us and to others. Having emotional self-discipline allows us to use emotions as guides to our thinking and relations with others, instead of having them dictate action.

2

Thinking and the Brain

W E KNOW THAT emotions can play a potentially compromising role in thinking, with selective perception being one example of that. Mentioned in the first chapter, it is the mainly unconscious tendency to accept only information supporting our values, views, etc. Oppositional information is rejected out of hand. Advances in brain science help us understand why people reject contradictory information, and why they might have adverse emotional reactions when confronted with such information.

One recent study (http://www.noetic.org/blog/rejecting-uncommon-beliefs-how-worldview-shapes-ou/) …(has) discovered that a resistance to new information may actually be hardwired into our brains. When confronted with dissonant data that contradicts what we expect to see, even trained scientists appear to reject information that goes against their assumptions about how the world works.

In addition, we have discovered that incoming sensory information takes two paths: first and more rapidly to the amygdala, and second, more slowly, to the frontal cortex where higher levels of thinking occur. The amygdala is the processing center for emotions, and is the storehouse of mainly negative memories of dangerous things. The speed of transmission to the amygdala reflects the evolutionary need to act immediately when confronted with danger. Meeting a tiger in the bush demands immediate action, generated faster by the amygdala than by the cortex. Too much (or any) thinking in such situations means a failure to breed.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Professor Jonathan Haidt says that: There is a two-way street between emotions and conscious thoughts: thoughts can cause emotions...but emotions can also cause thoughts, primarily by raising mental filters that bias subsequent information processing (my underline), a point I made in the first chapter. Further: A flash of anger toward someone raises a filter through which you see everything the offending person says or does as a further insult or transgression." Just think about the number of relationships you are aware of (perhaps your own) characterized by such interactions. In my personal and professional lives I have seen many.

Among the legions of responsibility avoiders, there is likely to be jubilation: Hey, it’s built into my brain. How can I possibly act compassionately, objectively, or respectfully? And even if I do act badly, I am not responsible! Brain structures and processes clearly influence how we act toward others, but we are hardly prisoners of our brains, as many aware and disciplined people have demonstrated. Some years ago, the great Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was giving a talk, and an audience member said something so upsetting to Hanh that he left the stage until he could compose himself. True to his teachings and beliefs, he did not allow the anger he felt to infect how he dealt with the unpleasantness upon returning to the stage.

We no longer face tigers in the jungle, but like Hahn, we have today’s analog: the person (or group) who insults us, or whose views we do not like or even hate, or whose blaring music is troubling. Just as the amygdala dictates near instantaneous action in dire circumstances, it does so now for situations that are not dire, but which are perceived as very threatening: If this guy is right, even partially, my world is ruined is what the unconscious says, calling for immediate action. Because people have huge emotional attachments to positions, views, etc., a perceived threat to those evokes a reaction similar to that when we are confronted with a tiger, although in this case we do not run away, but attack or aggressively defend. If you have ever asked a neighbor, even politely, to help with his dog’s barking…, well, you can guess the outcome of that interaction.

In this state, there is no thinking. Reacting and emoting for sure, but no thinking. The role of the amygdala is to protect from threats. Its reactions are automatic and instantaneous; there is no thought at that moment. Add Haidt’s observations about the flash of anger filtering everything the person says, and the problem gets even more complex. After the immediate reaction generating attack or some defense of position, self-justification arises. Arguments supporting the reaction are employed, giving us a self-satisfied sense that we are thinking. But none has occurred, and none will occur until the person is out of the grip of the amygdala, an effort requiring considerable self-knowledge and disciplined action.

Some emotionally fragile people are hair-trigger reactive, constantly on the alert for an attack, a disagreement, an insult, and seeing them behind every bush, whether they exist or not, and frequently they do not. These people have long-standing reactive habits that may arise from childhood experiences. Their emotional over-reactions have occurred so many times in their lives that the brain has changed to facilitate them. Having seen people like this, I can testify to the immediacy and force with which they respond. But frequent over-reactions of any type can change the brain even if the motivating force is not from childhood challenges.

Since frequent repetition of almost any action or emotion can change the brain, why not repeat helpful emotions and actions? It takes considerable effort and often quite a while to overcome the years of negative repetition. But in the end, we can alter the brain so that beneficial responses are generated as easily as the undesirable ones were.

3

We Like What We Like

I N THE TWO prior chapters I mentioned three critical factors that can adversely affect our thinking: our unconscious, our emotions, and our brains construction. I also mentioned selective perception, one of a number of cognitive filters affecting our thinking. An often-unconscious process in which we accept only information with which we already agree or which we like, it ensures that contrary information never sees the light of our examination. One or more of these factors may be operating when we make decisions, causing challenges in how we decide and what we think about how we have decided. Some implications of selective perception.

When most of us read or hear about things that concern us, we may imagine that we are thinking when we make decisions about what we will respond to, and what we will agree or disagree with. This view is often false. What’s really going on is that incoming information aligns with our preconceived notions and the emotions supporting those. Consider a very contentious issue: the minimum wage. There are groups of fine economists on opposite sides of the issue, one saying that raising the minimum wage is helpful to the less economically fortunate, and the other saying that such increases harm the job possibilities of those very people. Both sides have Nobel-prize winners in support. Who is right?

There is no way to conclusively answer the question because neither side can conclusively prove its position. Even when the rate has been raised or not raised, there are no conclusive results. The issue has too many influencing aspects which interact in ways we cannot see or understand—the issue’s innate complexity precludes in-depth understanding. This complexity forces the economists to develop models which simplify aspects of the issue so conclusions can be drawn. But the models themselves are built on assumptions that are not always testable or verifiable, so the economists are working information that is not definitive. As we all might do in certain circumstances, they have chosen the data that fits their preferred view of the minimum wage issue and have essentially neglected that which does not confirm their view. They are not necessarily acting falsely. Because there is so much ambiguity in data which can often be interpreted in a variety of ways, they have to make choices. But I suspect that at least partially unconsciously they accept and interpret the data in ways that bolster their pre-existing position and undermine that of the opponents.

Most of us have no way of understanding the models that underlie each side’s position on the minimum wage, but that does not