Greg Robie, facilitator
Please see original workshop description for details before posting here.
Homeostasis is the psychological term for the inner sense of optimum equanimity an individual experiences and trusts; a dynamic integration of ones sense of health, feelings, and thoughts. Relative to stress mitigation, it is, functionally, ones refuge. This workshop will start with a brief expansion on this dynamic, and a brainstorming of linguistic synonyms for the dynamic. The workshop participants will then engage in a group sharing and processing of experiences and consequences concerning whether experiencing what is trusted as homeostasis has proven to be rational, irrational, or beyond reason. The concluding report will summarize what is discovered through this sharing and processing, and develop a list of insights to consider that might decrease the role motivated reasoning has over a desire to behave rationally.
UPDATE, 26 DECEMBER 2012:
As facilitator I am hearing a need to include a few more categories when a word or phrase gets listed. One is whether the term is pejorative, academic ‘wha, wha, wha’ (www), the vernacular, something else, or more than one thing. The other is the name of the person contributing it, so, if I have misheard, this can be corrected. Updating these lists of similar words and phrases, here are ‘synonyms’ offered for motivated reasoning so far:
cofirmation bias / academic (www) / (Guy, NBL meme)
delusional / vernacular, pejorative / (Jennifer & dairymandave)
irrational / vernacular, pejorative / (Greg)
non-rational / vernacular, pejorative / (Greg)
denial / vernacular, pejorative / (facilitator)
stupid / vernacular, pejorative / (Greg & ulvfugl)
Put down / vernacular, pejorative / (Lidia via facilitator)
confused / vernacular, pejorative / (ulvfugl)
Immature /vernacular, pejorative / (OzMan, ulvfugl)
“psychological transitional object” / academic (www) / (OzMan)
…?
Here are ‘synonyms’ for homeostasis:
“feeling moral” /vernacular / (Greg)
“almost beyond words” / vernacular / (facilitator)
To the degree maturation constitutes psychological shifts, “psychological transitional object” / academic (www) / (OzMan)
“beginners mind” / vernacular / (facilitator)
…?
With it looking like all of the ones for motivated reasoning have a negative connotation regarding what someone holds as valuable and precious, what does this suggest regarding how best to live non-violently with this behavior as a species that tends to voluntarily cluster in memes/tribes?
A story:
My role as facilitator in this virtual OPT conference experiment led Guy to set the Blog’s software preferences such that my posts were not subject to moderation. After Lidia’s ‘put down’ post, he reset mine to go through the moderation process. I haven’t checked with him, but I what I read into this was that he was concerned about a ‘flame war’ erupting.
To the degree his preemptive move was merited, and a blog’s commenters are an iteration of virtual community, and with what has been shared and learned about motivated reasoning so far, what is needed in a social meme, besides a moderator, to keep it from falling apart . . . or growing in the first place?
Since this workshop is at the making-a-list(s) stage, what are ‘synonyms’ for moderator?
December 20th, 2012 at 4:34 am
Hi Greg, I was not familiar with word homeostasis, in the sense that you appear to be using it, so I looked on the wiki page. I understand the biological and medical meanings, where it remains a profoundly mysterious and incredibly complex organising force or principle, which nobody really understands, and likewise re the biosphere, but all I see re psychology is something from a George Leonard, re Mastery, which, if I understand it, appears to be about getting control over ( bad ) habits; and another somewhat idiosyncratic, although interesting, use of the term by the typically idiosyncratic Lyotard… who ..has applied this term to societal ‘power centers’ that he describes as being ‘governed by a principle of homeostasis,’ for example, the scientific hierarchy, which will sometimes ignore a radical new discovery for years because it destabilises previously accepted norms”
Perhaps you could clarify what you are meaning by the word ? Is it perhaps just a synonym for ‘peace of mind’ or ‘sense of well-being’ ?
Btw, if I have grasped what this exercise is about, I’m happy to attempt to contribute. Fwiw, I’d begin from the premise that we are story-telling animals. Although, what we have are keyboards and text boxes, what we are doing, in effect, is what we have been doing for the past hundreds of thousands of years, across the embers of the camp fires, is muttering about what’s on our minds. We transmit a message, like a bird transmits a song, and the other person receives and decodes it, ( often with multiple errors in the process ), and sends back a reply.
December 20th, 2012 at 10:53 am
http://www.theburningplatform.com/
Hey you, out there on the road
always doing what you’re told,
Can you help me?
Hey you, out there beyond the wall,
Breaking bottles in the hall,
Can you help me?
Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.
Pink Floyd – Hey You
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
“And always, everywhere, there would be the yelling or quietly authoritative hypnotists; and in the train of the ruling suggestion givers, always everywhere, the tribes of buffoons and hucksters, the professional liars, the purveyors of entertaining irrelevances. Conditioned from the cradle, unceasingly distracted, mesmerized systematically, their uniformed victims would go on obediently marching and countermarching, go on, always and everywhere, killing and dying with the perfect docility of trained poodles.” – Aldous Huxley
Yeah, about that homeostasis . . .
(from the site)
Just a cursory examination of our society reveals a population of salivating consumers (dogs) who can be stimulated to buy the latest iPhone or techno-gadget with a simple Madison Avenue advertising campaign (bell). Everyone has seen the videos of the masses lining up like cattle on Black Friday, stampeding through aisles, and fighting each other like their the entertainment at Michael Vick’s house on a Saturday night. All the mega-corporate retailers and the corporate media have to do is ring a bell (SALE) and the dogs start salivating. Product placement, Hollywood star endorsements and influential people using a product immediately convince the easily manipulated dogs to salivate and purchase the products. The difference is that these dogs have credit cards issued by the Wall Street banks and funded by the Federal Reserve with dollars created out of thin air. We are inundated with millions of TV, newspaper, radio, billboard, and internet advertisements designed to make us salivate (spend). Huxley’s dystopian vision of a society whose economic values, in which individual happiness is defined as the ability to satisfy needs, and achievement as a society is equated with economic growth and prosperity, has come to full fruition. He never conceived of consumers having the ability to consume without even having the money to do so. The credit card became our form of Soma. The so called progressives point to our ever increasing “advancements” in technology as proof that our society is progressing. Huxley knew otherwise, decades before we reached this disgusting point in history:
“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley
(continues)
In reality our “technological progress” has done nothing more than create a humorless, shallow, superficial world of alienation and egocentric desires. Just as in Huxley’s Brave New World, science and technology have not been used to seek truth and advance our culture. They have been used by the State to sensor, control, and monitor the citizens. They use technology as a means to create electronic entertainment machines that generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption and production that are the basis of societal stability and state designed happiness. When those in control talk about progress, they mean greater control over our lives. When the consumption of material goods isn’t enough to fill the holes within our souls, our owners are quick to prescribe a pill to smooth over those feelings of unease and discontent. In Huxley’s novel the population voluntarily consumes Soma to dispel any anxieties or negative emotion. The saying was, “One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.” In America the government controlled drug industry has thousands of pills to treat every ailment or unhappy thought that might ail you. Just don’t try and treat yourself with an unapproved natural or banned substance. The threat of imprisonment always lurks in the shadows. They just want us to be interchangeable bricks in the wall.
(my opinion)
We’re so conditioned and surrounded by 24/7 brainwashing that the very microwaves and cell phone radiation we’re awash in is causing a breakdown in the ability of humans to think clearly, have any kind of “real” life or any semblence of control over their lives. It takes such a long time to figure out that we’re going the wrong way, that what we’re doing is completely insane and is in fact contributing to
(y)our own demise – that, once accomplished, if we aren’t sidelined by depression, mental impotence, old age or psychological trauma, we may have actual physical troubles like cancer to keep us busy for what remains of (y)our pitiful existence.
“Born into captivity” is such a great phrase that Guy uses to describe our complete helplessness after being dropped into the fossil fuel driven machine of civilization. Indoctrinated in pre-school, grade school, high school and finally college and maybe grad school – we mostly conform until, if you’re extremely lucky, you “figure it out” and try thinking for yourself, shedding your former self like a snake shedding his skin or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, distancing yourself from what you’ve become and begin to walk down another road, inhabit a different space under a new worldview.
If that spark or “refuge” that enables a person to be conscious of his/her situation and directs their “right action” be called homeostasis, it’s a rare thing to witness. (i’m of the opinion that) out of the billions of people that inhabit the planet a mere handful is not enslaved or completely captured by industrial civilization.
The tide of life sweeps us all along and will be our undoing.
December 20th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Signing up and introducing myself:
My muse that inspires me to learn about the subject matter of this workshop is an ongoing effort to make sense of 19 years of the power struggle within a 39 year marriage. Discovering how motivated reasoning “works” has allowed for some humor amid a dispair born of our different addiction systems relative to neuropeptides, and immune, neurological and endocrine systems. To the degree social memes can embody gender specific differences, which George Lakoff popularized regarding our political blue/red divide and morals, I have found what I’ve learned about motivated reasoning helpful on multiple levels…even if such and $1.25 is needed for a cup of coffee. =)
December 20th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Don’t know much about George Lakoff, but wiki is my friend and tells me…. hahahaha
“We are neural beings,” Lakoff states, “Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything — only what our embodied brains permit.”[6]
Lakoff believes consciousness to be neurally embodied, however he explicitly states that the mechanism is not just neural computation alone. Using the concept of disembodiment, Lakoff supports the physicalist approach to the afterlife. If the soul can not have any of the properties of the body, then Lakoff claims it can not feel, perceive, think, be conscious, or have a personality. If this is true, then Lakoff asks what would be the point of the afterlife?
So now I must ponder that…. ‘point to the afterlife’ ? crikey, did anyone yet solve the question about ‘what is the point to the life before the afterlife’ ?
December 20th, 2012 at 2:55 pm
All respect to Mr Lakoff, but, way to go….
“Offspring of the Buddha, great enlightening beings have ten kinds of super-knowledge:
By means of the knowledge of others’ minds, great enlightening beings know the difference of the minds of living beings in a world system: good minds, bad minds, minds that go along with birth and death. . . . this is called the great enlightening beings’ first super-power of accurate knowledge of others’ minds.
“By means of the super-knowledge of the unobstructed pure celestial eye, great enlightening beings see sentient beings in worlds as many as atoms in untold Buddha-lands, dying in one place and being born in another. . . . They clearly see sentient beings with unobstructed eyes, seeing whatever deeds have been accumulated, whatever happiness or su!ering they have experienced and whatever languages they speak. “is is called the great enlightening beings’ super-knowledge of the celestial eye.
“By means of the super-knowledge of instant recall of past lives, the great enlightening beings are able to know the events of past lives of themselves, as well as the lives of persons in countless worlds, over countless eons . . . how long they lived and what Buddha works they performed. “is is the great enlightening beings’ third super-knowledge, the spiritual faculty of knowing past lives.
“Great enlightening beings, by super-knowledge of the eons of the entire future, know the ages of the worlds as numerous as the atoms in untold Buddha lands. They also know the whole future of worlds as numerous as atoms. . . .This is called the great enlightening beings’ fourth super-knowledge, the power of knowing the ages of the entire future.
“There is also the super-knowledge of the great celestial ear; the super-knowledge of going anywhere; the super-knowledge of dwelling without attachment, motion, or action; the super-knowledge of understanding the speech of all beings.”
http://www.realitysandwich.com/naked_awareness
December 21st, 2012 at 5:05 am
I’ve posted a new essay. It’s here.
December 21st, 2012 at 7:53 am
Homeostasis is maintained through many mechanisms. One of the first was cell membranes corralling the biochemical machinery and keeping out other stuff: ethnic purity at a molecular level. There were and still are mechanisms for sensing and responding to the internal and external milieus, constituting feedback loops, both positive and negative.
With cooperative groups of cells (metazoa) the additional requirement of signalling to other cells, both in proximity and at a distance led to endocrine and nervous systems, which to this day, even in humans, act in close concert. When brains acquired sufficient complexity, the biological drives and functions were selected for as motivating forces at the most primal stages and remain hardwired throughout.
With the aggregation of groups of multicellular organisms various degrees of social behaviour developed. The same biological drives operating through motivations remain, but are overlaid with societal and community constructs that were selected for, both for individual survival and propagation within the group, and for group survival and propagation viv-a-vis other groups. Where the two survival drives were in conflict, natural selection at both levels optimised the balance, curbing the former where the latter would lead to greater propagation of the individual.
Motives since they first appeared in complex brains have continued to be the captain of the ship. But like other biological functions, the feedback loops that they sustain are structured for immediate to short term responses. Long term adjustments depended on evolutionary change. Reasoning is a most recent phenomenon. It can not only make short-term responses, but through anticipation can plan and execute intermediate and long term responses, something that was hitherto only possible through biological evolutionary change and proceeded at an biological evolutionary pace. However, reasoning and intellect, a newcomer who was at the helm from the outset, was assigned the role of the helmsman, while the motivations remain the captain.
Hence appeals to the motivations will be rationalised as maintaining individual and group homeostasis, even when over time through disruption of larger cycles they clearly jeopardise homeostasis.
December 21st, 2012 at 12:54 pm
With Guy hitting the road–may the wind be at your back–additional workshops are not likely to get posted, even if offered. There is one more I’ve suggested the conference would benefit from “What are motivated reasoning’s impacts on the dynamics of the Blogosphere?”, with this as a description:
“To the degree the Blogosphere constitutes a place of virtual social communities, what are the roles motivated reasoning play in hi-jacking the enabling social networking tools to amplify trusted, but dead end, memes? The workshop will explore the insights that are shared, and process these with the intent of developing queries to report out that can be available to evolve how the tools are used and engaged with.”
With that information being included in this AM’s “check in” comment at the original motivated reasoning blog entry, should a facilitator(s) step forward, it can proceed in that comment space.
It’s the solstice, so let’s make this space for “Homeostasis, and the role of motivated reasoning.” an active workshop.
There are lots of doorways for engaging in an exploration of the role motivated reasoning plays in homeostasis, and mine was a book by Candis Pert, _Molecules of Emotion_. The film “What the Bleep…”, in which she is part of its Greek Chorus was another. Even if “motivated reasoning” is a new term (and “conformation bias” would appear to be a synonym for which there is greater familiarity here at NBL, consider sharing what either of these terms mean to you and how they helped you in your pursuit of truth.
For those who are familiar with the film, it does a pretty good job visualizing how neuropeptides and their receptors in our immune, endocrine and neurological systems link these systems. Pert’s book does so as well, and does so in a very readable fashion that includes the discovery of the receptor mechanism in the early ’70s by Pert. She includes in that book her struggles as a female scientist getting respect from her peers that also make the book a good read. Anyway, the neuropeptides in our system communicate with all three systems such that feelings color thoughts and thought shape our sense of health, etc.
With the brain structure that is the home to the feeling we call fear being, evolutionarily, the oldest part of our brains (shared with all vertebrates), fear, as we call it, is an evolutionarily trusted feeling. As conscious critters, however, this presents us with a problem: too much fear can kill us (thanks to the shared receptor mechanisms of our immune, endocrine, and neurological systems). While neuropeptides are metabolized by our system in about a twenty minute time frame. A stimuli that effects them, and even recalling them, can keep the flow going.
In the matter of fear, the military pulls it’s special forces out of high stress situations before 100 hours. It is their experience that this is the maximum time the body can tolerate high levels of fear without falling apart.
What this information suggests is that to the degree a social stimuli triggers fear, this constitutes a problem relative to having a well function immune system; staying alive. Motivated reasoning appears to function as a solution to this problem. Effecting non-rational “reasoning” for which we reward ourselves with dopamine for having gotten the right answer, it functions as a “savior”; the problem stimuli is experienced as something it isn’t. Pretty cool.
Logically, motivated reasoning functions as a sycophant around stimuli that generate feeling that are valued. Phenylethylamine (PEA) would be one that would relate to what I shared in my introduction, though the power struggle in an intimate relationship tends to be due to the loss of it, and the fruitless efforts to get it to kick in again with flawed–if trusted–thinking and feeling regarding what will do this. It’s enough to make you sick!
Homeostasis, in the context of motivated reasoning, would be the irrational things we think, feel, and do, which we are relatively clueless about, but that gets us through the night…all right. At least in the short-term, though in successful societies–unlike the meme of CapitalismFail–seven generations might be considered short-term.
Hopefully that is enough to set the stage for the brainstorming of synonyms, but it’s is time to pause and let this space be used by others to see if more would be more, or less, before going there.
December 21st, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Greg : Homeostasis, in the context of motivated reasoning, would be the irrational things we think, feel, and do, which we are relatively clueless about, but that gets us through the night…
I still don’t have any clear idea as to what you’re looking for with this workshop project of yours, and these rambling mixtures of verbiage read like something from that automated post-modernist jargon generator bot thingee… it sort of might mean something, but nobody could ever tell you what that something is…
If I have grasped what your ‘psychological homeostasis’ means, as a sort of inner equanimity, well, yes, it’s a massive problem for everyone.
You kind of want an internal stability which is ‘me’, which is familiar, to which you can return, and which feels secure and pleasant. And instead, there’s this constantly changing helter-skelter, feelings, thoughts, sensations, moods, which can get totally out of control in an instant, into panic or anger or depression or any number of unwelcome surprises. It’s possibly most acute during adolescence or during falling in love or breaking long term relationships, but really it seems to be the baseline human condition for many, the ‘normal’ existential angst, stressed out, feeling bad, that everybody tries to remedy, with music, buying themselves presents, watching tv, or alcohol, pot, other pharmaceuticals, therapies…. in other words, it’s just ‘life’, that everyone is trying to cope with, in their own various ways…
But is that the best we can do ?
I don’t think so. It was all too much for me. It was like impossible ‘to be’, because there was a war going on inside my head. It took my a long time to find ways to sort that out.
First, cerebral intellectual analysis is a very weak tool. You can explain something to yourself, or somebody can explain something to you, that makes perfect sense, for example, what to do if your loved when gets angry with you, but in the heat of the moment, it’s all forgotten.
So what has to happen – and I learned this from eastern martial arts stuff. It may relate to Lakoff’s embodiment ideas, I don’t know, I have not read his stuff – is to bring the physical body into the formulation. You have to do this deliberately and consciously, training your awareness, using breath control, so that you become a ‘body-mind’, or a ‘mind-body’, rather than a disparate mental entity.
Refined intellectual thinking energy gets used up and exhausted very quickly, in emotional situations, and then you’re at the mercy of more primitive responses, and stuff like jealousy and vanity and fear and so on, can easily take over. But if you use the power centre in the belly, the hara, the tanden, which is a sort of secondary brain, it has plenty of energy available, it’s ancient, sort of at the level of an octopus brain with it’s own intuitive wisdom. If you know how to connect to that, you become a whole different kind of being, really.
So, after that is learned, then, yes, on the way to some sort of homeostasis… It’s a way to deal with the irrational animal stuff, the passions, the emotions, the Id, the stuff that ‘makes no sense’ in terms of logic and reason…
December 21st, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Medium-term lurker here. I completely understand the frustration with “motivated reasoning”, although I find that an awkward moniker. “Reasoning” it is not; it’s just lizard-brain fear, denial, and group identification (often under an “authority”) at the cost of Real Reason and Real Reality.
I’m sure you are familiar with the insider quote about Republicans, for example, creating their own Reality™® that we will remain in awe of even as we scramble to document it.
Given the changes in our environment, plus a lot of life changes in my immediate family, I have had the occasion to recently witness a handful of these “Reality?-What-reality?” moments with particular clarity:
1.) A politically progressive chef in Boston of my acquaintance. I made an offhand remark about knowing that something dire is up with the seafood stocks when Legal Seafoods (a medium-to-upscale chain of fish restaurants in the Boston area which has long prided itself on having the freshest and most extensive seafood menu around) starts pushing its chicken and steak dishes. PPChef: “They are just trying to expand their clientele” (!!!) Complete denial about the decline in the quantity and quality of the raw materials she uses on a daily basis.
2.) My born-again (not born right the first time, for some reason) RWNJ sister, when confronted with a recent tempest in a teapot regarding “father/daughter” dances at public schools. Some kids don’t have fathers present in the home, or may even have two mothers as custodial parents, so this “tradition” is nowadays understandably on shaky ground. Usually, RWNJ sis HATES it when schools attempt to program or dictate family activities; she thinks busy-body “liberal” school administrations over-reach in this. So I said, “Yeah, why is the school holding these dances *anyway*? Shouldn’t that be the purview of the local church or Rotary club or whatever? What stake does the government have in this father/daughter bit and why is it cutting into families’ precious extra-curricular space? Why don’t those who want a father/daughter dance do it on their own time/dime, outside of school?” Well, I wish I had a camera to capture the gears grinding and the smoke issuing from her poor, overtaxed brain. As a wingnut, she usually takes the automatic stance that schools should butt out of family issues. But then… here was a chance to demonize and alienate teh gayz that could not be passed up! And indeed, after some gear-grinding she and her husband chose a full-throated defense of the creepy school/state-sponsored father-daughter dance, an activity that—were it of any other complexion (Mother-Son dances?)—they would have roundly denounced as originating from the Evil Godless Nanny State. She does not perceive right-wing authoritarianism as a negative, only left-wing authoritarianism. We haven’t too much common ground since I am ecumenically anti-authoritarian, but I am spurred to challenge her on occasion even though it seems to have the effect of making her dig in her heels harder than ever.
3.) My mother, a long-time victim (self-inflicted) of FOX News. I’m taking her into my home and arranging for medical and hospice care. She really did click with the new primary care physician I found for her, who conversed with her in a frank, yet caring and respectful, way about her options and the likelihood of various outcomes given her current condition. Once home, I couldn’t help but rib my mother—who couldn’t repeat often enough how excellent the doctor had been—that what she had just been through was what her fellow Republicans called a “death panel” (i.e., a Medicare-funded appointment where end-of-life care is discussed). I asked her if she had felt pressured in any way, and she said “absolutely not!” and continued to praise the doctor’s approach. But then in the next breath—because the FOX talking point/ideology had been invoked and set into operation—she insisted that “they” (the private doctors and hospital she was just praising) were all “working for the government” and that was bad and would lead to bad care. After telling her it wasn’t entirely so that her doctor was “working for the government”, I asked her whether she experienced it as being bad, though, on a personal level (she was assured that whatever treatment she wanted was what they would provide: the choice was hers, as the doctor took great pains to stress). And I saw that same sort of blue smoke when the gears are being stripped. She insisted that the doctors were being taken over by the gov’t. which would result in poor care, even though she was thrilled with the Reality-Based care she was getting from these exact same Dr. Mengeles or whatever FOX claims they are.
4.) In trying to make sense of her only-slightly-tangled financial affairs, I have had to deal briefly with a broker from her old state of residence (to whom I communicated several years ago that the banks were all bankrupt—he looked at me as if I had three heads) and a chosen-somewhat-at-random new financial advisor whom I take to be equally dense. I told him that I thought “all this” (the array of papers representing my mom’s paper wealth) meant nothing when you got down to it, and got the feeling that he might have wanted to call the men in the white coats. I do “need” him short term to make sense of instruments I don’t understand on their face, like annuities, and to assist in deciphering the tax code of our newly-adopted state.
These are all cases where the subject has some level of investment in the status quo, an existing ideology, or an existing “reality”, and does not want Real Reality to intrude and dispel them of their false reality. Real Reality = there continue to be fewer and fewer fish; non-traditional families are becoming the majority of families (just as non-white “minorities” are becoming the majority in the US); investments in general will cease yielding as exploitable energy stores which goose that yield enter permanent decline.
What I have had to tell myself in recent years is to turn everything inside out and upside down and then the picture will become far clearer and start to make sense. For example, once it’s been pointed out that food stamps are, in reality, a subsidy to Wal*Mart, it’s impossible to see food stamps the “normal” way ever again. But as to why some people will never see things the way they truly are, I cannot shed any real light.
December 21st, 2012 at 8:07 pm
I agree with ulvfugl about the “rambling mixtures of verbiage read like something from that automated post-modernist jargon generator bot thingee… it sort of might mean something, but nobody could ever tell you what that something is.”
It’s really no wonder that academicians have been largely useless to us in modernity, as their own language has degraded into a compulsively masturbatory simulacrum of language, devoid of content accessible to anyone outside the circle jerk. This is not only true of higher education, but of elementary school education as well. I’ve seen my nephew’s homework and the edu-jargon obscures all real meaning and turns learning from a common and natural, virtually irrepressible, happenstance into a perverse and deadly slog fraught with anxiety, where hours can be spent hand-wringing over a seven-year-old’s not “showing his work” when asked to add 5 + 2.
It all has to follow a baroque and unnatural “process” which Educators™® have analyzed to death, involving “Rubrics®™” (the word used lavishly and insistently yet improperly from what I can tell), “Triads®™” and other mental exotica invented purely to further justify the so-called educator’s existence.
It’s a process explicitly designed to be incomprehensible to parents (a good number of whom are not even conversant in English, much less educator-ese) so that the maximum of frustration can be experienced by all who are party to the situation.
As an ex-graphic-designer, I was happy to help my niece with her homework, which was to make a poster advertising a movie she had seen (corporate, in this case Disney, tie-in… nice!). We had a great time laying out our poster until I realized I had not read the fine print, which was that the poster headline had to be a complete sentence. WTF? You want complete sentences from kids, teach them to write essays, for Christ’s sake, not posters!!! A poster with a complete sentence as the main communication is going to be BOTH a crappy poster AND a crappy means of communicating your complete sentence, or paragraph or whatever. AND KIDS KNOW THIS. They know something is wrong. They know they are being warehoused and made to do work that doesn’t amount to shit. They know they are being patronized by mediocrities who think movie posters boasting complete sentences are normal. They hate school and don’t want to go, which is completely understandable.
Sorry for the rant, which is not really related to the macro delusions about our environmental plight, or even our economic plight, but has something to do with just DELUSIONS ALL THE WAY DOWN in a society that just can no longer be honest with itself EVER under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
December 21st, 2012 at 8:37 pm
I really loved your ranting, Lidia. Rant away. Your vivid examples of delusional thinking were fabulous. Couldn’t agree more. Call it out, sistah.
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:44 am
Comment as a participant:
And as ulvfugl noted in the first comment in this workshop thread, we learn through stories we hear . . . and, I would add, live through. I enjoyed them as well (and was jealous at how well and easily you write).
As a facilitator:
Which, related to my writing affecting the adult “wha wha wha wha wha” in a Charlie Brown cartoon, begs the question, why do anything but drink, eat, sleep (warmly and safely), stories, and procreation…(successfully)? In my experience, and an answer to the “why not” of this “why”, the basic needs this species has, and the conditions that are desired for them to be experienced in, constitutes the-devil-is-in-the-details thing. And, thanks to motivated reasoning effected homeostasis, the species has muddled through–until now.
Considering how and when to do the workshop’s synonym exercise–a brainstorming of linguistic synonyms for the dynamic of motivated reasoning–and Lidia’s stories, what might be words that name the motivated reasoning dynamic in each of her stories? Let’s get this part of the workshop started, but still leave this space open to additional comment concerning the “wha wha wha” framing.
Ulvfugl, I’d like to revisit the story of your adaptation in the subsequent part of the workshop, if that’s OK (a group sharing and processing of experiences and consequences concerning whether experiencing what is trusted as homeostasis has proven to be rational, irrational, or beyond reason). To my ear yours is an example of an “old” story we’ve been enabled by the fossil carbon industrial economy to forget.
December 22nd, 2012 at 2:03 pm
DELUSIONS ALL THE WAY DOWN in a society that just can no longer be honest with itself EVER under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Excellent rant. Don’t be sorry. But aren’t delusions and dishonesty the overall goal of the system?
I have always loved farming; no one gets away with that shit down here. It’s the honesty I love in spite of the work load.
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Thanks Lidia, thanks Greg, apologies for typos in that comment, hope my meaning was discernible.
Sorry, but I’m still not getting this ‘motivated reasoning’ stuff. As I understand it, it’s something academic psychologists ( of whom I’m generally suspicious ) have cooked up, to try and explain why people appear to be ‘irrational’ in their judgements of issues, situations, people, etc. and then this is supported by a load of what appears to me to be quasi-scientific or pseudo-scientific speculation that isn’t really a lot of use to anybody, is it ?
I mean, to be a little cynical, there’s all those people with degrees in psychology, who need work doing research and to further their careers by publishing papers and attending conferences, with papers such as this suggesting sophisticated ways as to how people might possibly be manipulated this way or that…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00772.x/full
It’s a bit like research done by big corporations that sell cattle feed to farmers like dairymandave, as to how they can add ingredients to manipulate the cows metabolism to squeeze a few extra drops of milk per day out of her system to increase profit margins, isn’t it ?
December 22nd, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Synonyms offered for motivated reasoning so far:
2 for delusional (Jennifer & dairymandave)
I’ve referenced it as irrational and non-rational
Another word I’ve read commonly used here is denial
Going to the pajoritive, does stupid work?
…?
Let’s add to this list. Phrases are good to. I think ulvfugl’s point about the term motivated reasoning and, likely, confirmation bias, being part of an exclusionary language, and an obsticle to communication, is something developing a varity of synonyms can move toward addressing. Translating them into the vernacular one is comfortable with is important to effecting communication and telling a story; talking about the dynamic in a more inclusive way.
And while we’re doing this, let’s do the same translation for homeostasis.
I’ll start its list by offering “feeling moral.”
…?
December 23rd, 2012 at 4:45 am
Hmm, I’d call what you just did there, something like ‘hijacking’, Greg, and I don’t think these examples fit the dictionary definition of ‘synonym’, but let’s be loose about grammar ( and spelling ? ) for a moment, and imagine this workshop thingee as analogous to a freeform musical enterprise, improvising a track provisionally titled ‘anarchists guide to cat herding’, then this tremulous blast of notation from Greg has to be sufficiently inspiring to keep the rest of the musicians engaged….
Or else they might just walk off the stage and find a more promising gig next door… ( but cannibalism ? again ? yawn…) I mean, ffs, I’m in solidarity with guys like Tom, about the forests, etc, and if this riff you’re playing here, Greg, has some direction, some meaning, some quality, some potency, some insight, some authenticity, that inspires, then I’ll go with it… but ?
Basically, the secret to herding cats is to be Miles Davis, the Pied Piper, then they follow, because the melody bewitches, grabs attention, ‘motivated reasoning’ just isn’t that sexy or enchanting…. is it ? or maybe it could be ?
that video on your site…
http://youtu.be/k8yYEik5E88
The ancient Greeks, the Romans, knew humans are not, primarily, rational, St Augustine knew it, Ed Bernays knew it, Rupert Murdoch knows it, it’s why the Sun is the most popular UK newspaper, the workers like tits and football and scandal and violence, and the elite likes motor racing, grouse shooting and fox hunting, like Guy and Tom said, they’re all born in captivity, like chimps in a zoo, they learn their routines at an early age, and they stick with it… propaganda keeps the herd bunched, when that stops working fear and terror does the trick.
Feeling moral ? feeling superior ? feeling anything?
I play acoustic fingerstyle guitar, in a particular way. It’s a shamanic tool. A hobby-horse. It is magic, in the thaumaturgic definition, of being able to consciously adjust one’s consciousness. So one begins with one feeling and the sounds carry one through a sequence of feelings until one arrives at other, different, feelings. This is no small thing. Using the scales of the blues or of the ancient irish airs one touches the deepest parts, deepest sensibilities, of human ‘being’. Music therapy.
December 23rd, 2012 at 6:24 am
ulvfugl, again you’ve shared pertinent insights. In the context of this workshop, I’ve two responses I’d value your thoughts on:
1. To the degree motivated reasoning is innate to homeostasis in a highly stressed culture and is non-rational, can, what is trusted as feeling good be left unquestioned?
2. Doesn’t the responsibilities a facilitator carries in the OST framework require the exercise of guidance? (Which I have intended to exercise in a shared way.)
In addition, the Law of Two Feet is the mechanism by which a group engaged in OST takes responsibility for controlling ‘hijacking’.
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:19 am
1. ‘Feeling good’, yes, certainly, and everything else should be questioned, let’s have the Platonic dialogue, no stone left unturned… is there time for that ? That ‘pursuit of happiness’ crap is part of what got us into this mess… unless you’re ‘feeling good’ you must be doing something wrong, need therapy, need medication… trouble is, as you say, highly stressed culture, everybody is freaked out, including the psychiatrists, the therapists, seems there is nobody ‘sane’ left any more to turn to…
Chimpanzees confined in the cage in the zoo for generations have completely forgotten what it was like to be laid back and easy going without a care in the world…
Sorenson gives us a glimpse, a hint, but your average therapist is also trying to adjust to survival amidst madness, I know, I’ve spoken with loads of them, spending their days with freaked out crazy people and going home to freaked out crazy people… expecting them to answer my questions was ridiculous, when they had no answers for their own questions…
http://rewild.info/anthropik/vault/sorenson-preconquest/
For me, that paper is a sort of anchor point. How can anyone ‘feel good’, if they truly comprehend what is happening on this planet, and grasp what NTE means ?
I’m here on this blog, because, as I understand it, it’s the bleeding edge of the acknowledgement of that insight… ( fwiw, my own way is zen/tao, ‘beyond the opposites’, not feeling good, not feeling bad… but that’s hard to explain…)
2. Oh, no doubt you’re doing your best, and it’s your thread and project, so you can’t really hijack it, i just meant that you kinda grabbed what people had said and paraphrased it to suit your ‘motivated reasoning’ agenda, by stretching the meaning of ‘synonym’ beyond normal usage, which I don’t think was quite legitimate… nevermind, it doesn’t matter… if the thread gets interesting, it’ll go somewhere, otherwise, it won’t… Can you explain your motives ? Why are you doing this ?
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:39 am
R.D. Laing on the destruction of experience through homogenization
http://youtu.be/fD4OIsudjik
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Ulvfugl is right that everything can be questioned, and that this comes at a cost: making such a priority. OzMan observed at the other workshop I’m facilitating:
“One of the things that has impressed me from reading some historical accounts of some Indian holy men, like Ramana Maharsi ,and Swami Nityanunda, and others, is that even as their spiritual awareness is very great, they would still listen and discuss very ordinary things, details from the life of a devotee, who may have expertise or other experiences from a field of life endeavour, and they would respect these reports in a straightforward manner, and learn new things, about which they even had little knowledge. There was to my untrained eye, no motivated reasoning, but no over or under critical appraisal of the issues, new information, and the individuals attitude to it. In other words, there are acceptable real gaps in the world knowledge of the Adult mind, but no prejudice there as an attempt to cover up those ignorances. That is one sign to me of an adult mind – no pretence of omnipotence and no arrogance concerning real time and real world information. Just an open mind to get more informed, without uncritical acceptance, nor defiant rejection of others’ abilities skill and knowledge.”
What is it about our culture that leads to such interest in new knowledge being experienced as “impressive”? Could it be that only adults can, paradoxically, know how to learn? Is knowing yourself sufficiently to observe motivated reasoning, and not act on it, a part of being an adult? Is it the nature of the adolescent mind to be so lost to emotions that motivation reasoning is indemic?
If I remember correctly, among the comments in this conference’s threads comments, someone suppositioned that only 10% of humanity is capable of being rational. To the degree that is true, logic would dictate that expecting even a majority to respond to a rational appeal in our democratic republic is not rational . . . and, inspite of that, what but motivated reasoning feeds the desire to double down on the rational approach to communicating a message?
So, part of my answer to your question of what motivates me to do [an OST virtual conference for a guest blog entry here at NBL] is that the structured interactiviness of it is not a rational argument (though such have been included), rather an invitation to enter into a shared learning experience. NTE is a thing we will do and process together as a species. When the going gets tough, this Internet will not be here to provide a virtual sense of community. The chaos will be processed with our physical geo-political neighbors, especially the ones iterations of motivated reasoning have allowed us to dismiss as the problem, or as not awake. Since my bias is that the remaining choice before us is how what we do feeds into a non-violent collapse of industrial society and its redistribution and redefinition of wealth, there is a lot of practice needed to do this other than through motivated reasoning and violence. This blog post is my attempt to do this with those who wanted to at the NBL blog. To do the change that is rational to do: justice, with mercy and humility.
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:04 pm
Yes, dairymandave, DELUSIONS ARE THE GOAL. I wasn’t the worst offender in my past but certainly complicit: as a designer, my work had been to render corporate offerings more attractive. I saw it—at the time—as a fairly innocuous trade, especially since the products my clients were selling did not seem to be, at first glance, damaging.
Following my rule that everything must be turned around 180° to be properly understood, it’s clear that all forms of corporate-sponsored design are meant to sell delusions: delusions of power, security, control, happiness and stability that the very fact of corporate existence is contemporaneously robbing us of.
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Greg Robie:
“1. To the degree motivated reasoning is innate to homeostasis in a highly stressed culture and is non-rational, can, what is trusted as feeling good be left unquestioned?
“2. Doesn’t the responsibilities a facilitator carries in the OST framework require the exercise of guidance? (Which I have intended to exercise in a shared way.)
“In addition, the Law of Two Feet is the mechanism by which a group engaged in OST takes responsibility for controlling ‘hijacking’.”
Do you think any of these sentences makes sense to the average person?
WTF is “the OST framework”?
“Responsibilities” are PLURAL.
What does “exercising guidance” mean?? WHO is to exercise it? Why don’t you phrase this more clearly? I think that “guide” is a verb, if that helps…
Can “what is trusted as feeling good” be left unquestioned? Of course it can, and is. That’s the whole fucking point. And what do you mean by “to the degree…”? If “motivated reasoning” is not “innate to homeostasis”, can’t we still question “what is trusted as feeling good”?
What do you mean by “what is trusted as” feeling good? People either feel good or they don’t. I can see that you might mean “what is conventionally assumed as…”. This seems like a whole life’s study in itself: what people mean when they say they feel good. “Trust” seems like a confusing word to use here: as before, trusted BY WHOM? The passive construction of nosebleed-seats-educator-speak is unnecessarily obfuscating.
Perhaps you underestimate how severely your stilted language and insistence on some sort of academic procedurals undermine whatever your efforts here are. They really make me want to laugh out loud at their absurdity. I actually had to Google “The Law of Two Feet”. I had no idea that it was “the mechanism by which a group engaged in OST takes responsibility for controlling ‘hijacking’”. I would have said that it is just a sensible means for escaping whatever pain is on offer.
====
I think you might be over-intellectualizing what is going on. From what I gather, “homeostasis” is just a ten-dollar word for “chillin’”. How ya doin’? Jes’ chillin’. This is not non-rational. Other animals don’t worry about situations more complicated or drawn-out than maybe storing food for the next season, and that’s the extent of it. Most of the time they chillin’, taking life as it comes.
At the same time Guy and those who adhere to his line of thinking have come to the conclusion that there is nothing we can do to avert a fatal sequence of disastrous events, we have here a series of blog post offerings designed to explore why we shouldn’t be “chillin’”.
Instead, really, probably what we all should be doing is NOTHING. Don’t run around to conferences. Don’t use the Internet. Quit going to work. If the end is here, it’s here. Everything that people “do” just brings the end that much closer.
Rather than examine humanity’s problem with “homeostasis”, I would examine instead its problem with having to constantly DO THINGS. The more things we do, the worse off we are. If we had just stuck—”homeostatically”—to the basics of food, clothing and shelter, we’d be way better off at this point (although it certainly would have been a less-interesting ride over the last handful of centuries).
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:25 pm
I hadn’t refreshed my page, so I missed ulvfugl’s comment before writing my own.
Chimpanzees confined in the cage in the zoo for generations have completely forgotten what it was like to be laid back and easy going without a care in the world…
Wild chimpanzees certainly have some cares, but not at the level of those in captivity. This is pretty much what I meant in part of my comment, above, though.
We have a dog (my husband’s choice) and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t have to deal with some sad and unnatural aspect of this circumstance. He has to go around with a string or a chain around his neck. He can’t freely engage with others of his kind except under particular circumstances, plus his bodily functions are problematic in a modern human society. Though he is part of our “family”, he can’t enter most buildings with us. It’s like “Planet of the Apes” and he’s the human. Psychologically, his cares in a dog group or an “uncivilized” relaxed dog/human group would be much fewer than his cares in human society, where he desperately tries to read the often conflicting alien signals that come his way. Is it too much to extrapolate that modern humans, in captivity as we are, are also somewhat iffy—somewhat incompletely evolved—in terms of our competence at reading the signals issued by our masters, hence our largely prevalent perplexed anxiety (and submission)? Just kind of rambling here.
December 24th, 2012 at 4:19 am
Hi Greg,
If I remember correctly, among the comments in this conference’s threads comments, someone suppositioned that only 10% of humanity is capable of being rational.
Don’t know about that, I thought it was that only 10% are capable of abstract thought ? Anyway, I’ve become very suspicious of your usage of this word ‘rational’, so I’m wondering how you are defining it. Wiki defines its usage in philosophy, which appears to be considerably different to usage in common speech, and then goes on to say ” However, the term “rationality” tends to be used differently in different disciplines, including specialized discussions of economics, sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology and political science.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality
So that may be a source of confusion here.
To the degree that is true, logic would dictate that expecting even a majority to respond to a rational appeal in our democratic republic is not rational . . . and, inspite of that, what but motivated reasoning feeds the desire to double down on the rational approach to communicating a message?
I suppose politicians, propagandists and marketing experts know this, which is why they are as they are.
So, part of my answer to your question of what motivates me to do [an OST virtual conference for a guest blog entry here at NBL] is that the structured interactiviness of it is not a rational argument (though such have been included), rather an invitation to enter into a shared learning experience.
Sure. Let’s learn whatever we can learn… fwiw.
NTE is a thing we will do and process together as a species.
Don’t know about that. I was born alone, an individual, lived my life, die alone, not as ‘a species’.
When the going gets tough, this Internet will not be here to provide a virtual sense of community.
Going is tough now. If electricity and internet goes, my personal going gets a lot tougher, that’s for sure. When was the last time anyone on NBL couldn’t sleep because they were so hungry, or thirsty ? From what I gather, there’s about a billion who have a daily struggle to stay alive until the next day.
December 24th, 2012 at 4:45 am
Lidia, I think Greg has come here assuming that he speaks a language that we share, and that the technical terms ( from academic psychology ) he’s familiar with e.g.’motivated reasoning’, ‘homeostasis’, ‘OST framework’, etc, would appear clear to us. He’s learning that is not the case. Either he has to learn to speak to us in basic vernacular, or we have to try and grasp his jargonese. Fwiw, I think the use of ‘homeostasis’ is pretentious pseudo-intellectual bullshit, but there we are, as Adam Smith noted, all professions are conspiracies against the wider public. Every speciality has its jargon, shorthand, including this blog, with its NBL and NTE, it seems unavoidable, and some, like law, medicine, computer programming, etc, make very certain that only those who have been initiated can understand that of which they speak…
December 24th, 2012 at 4:59 am
Lidia Wild chimpanzees certainly have some cares…
Yes, well, every living thing has to cope with whatever is going on… but my basic thesis would be, ( as Kathy C. and others have discussed ) we evolved to fit certain circumstances, over long periods of time, and so if we wish to be fairly happy and healthy we ought to try and replicate those circumstances as closely as possible…. not much chance of it happening, of course
December 24th, 2012 at 5:06 am
Good Morning Lidia, and thanks–really.
In terms of this workshop, and I appologize that the link to the Open Space Technology information (http://www.openspaceworld.com/users_guide.htm), isn’t on this web page or more readily available, my use of the acronym, and for you, as a master of communication, was apparently a muse for more of your amazing writing. The corporations you worked for under paid you. I told my wife as I crawled into bed last night that I had just had my balls cut off, stuffed in my mouth, and my head cut off and handed to me. As I said before, and I still am, jealous at how well and easily you write.
In terms of this workshop you have provided an example that I’d like to think, adds to this thread. With your assumed permission, and as facilitator, I’d like us to use it. In terms of homeostasis, and synonyms for this concept, it sounds to me like NBL functions as a refuge for you. It would appear my writing’s affect makes a mess in it. Being protective of it you act as you feel is appropriate.
To the degree I’m reflecting this right (and I us that phrase a lot because, in my experience, when trying to communicate with someone, behind what they are saying is a lot more than what they are saying. Since the wake up work is not welcomed in this culturenthe way it is in India, as OzMan shared (and I’ve quoted in this thread), and I do not feel it is loving to not include work on the wake up work in virtually all of my social interactions, I need to do what I can in my communication, to pre-emptively avoid allowing the initial perception of what I am saying to be (any more easily than it already is) processed with our capacity to “blink” things; trigger motivated reasoning; consequence a conversation that gets off topic), homostasis seems almost beyond words, anger invokes motivated reasoning, or the put down.
Ulvfigl makes a good point about my use to the term “synonym” in this workshop exercise. To the degree we are talking about dynamics that are largely directed by the unconscious (Robin Datta linked to an excerpt of a book that I found laid out this dynamic well: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/31/136495499/incognito-whats-hiding-in-the-unconscious-mind), are there synonyms that apply to the social meme, and synonyms that apply to the unconscious/energetic meme? As an example of the latter, is my use of the phrase “almost beyond words” for homeostasis. Doesn’t what our refuge is inspire in us the poetical?
Where’s BenjimanTheDonky? A limerick, please?
Anyway, let’s add “almost beyond words” and “refuge” to the list for “homeostasis”, and “put down” for ” motivated reasoning”. What others come to mind?
(And today is my oldest daughter’s 35th birthday, and tomorrow is one of my wife’s favorite days–i.e. a facilator’s holiday.)
December 24th, 2012 at 5:55 am
Lidia
I enjoyed your rant and agree with much of what you say.
Can I offer some comments here to clarify what I seem to be sensing is a understanding gap between the language used.
Yes, academic speak is dense and uses invented terms and definitions to describe cultural objests and artifacts and structures not normally seen let alone studied.
Untill learning what a ‘transitional object’ is I was really unaware of what was behind teenagers being welded to their mobile screens and refusing to surrender them to a classroom teacher. A term like ‘transitional object’ has the hallmark of exclusionary vocabulary, something that has got many a college kid beaten up when wandering into a pool hall or trucker diner.
Exclusionalry language is endemic in my opinion when groups are in competition and/or close proximity, or there is an economic incentive to keep the knowledge embedded out of common circulation – (eg doctors scripts disgraceful handwriting.)
Accepting some exclusionary language is counter to an inclusive culture, or social justice and equality is only part of the picture here.
‘Comfort object’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_object
“In human childhood development, the term transitional object is normally used. It is something, usually a physical object, which takes the place of the mother-child bond. Common examples include dolls, teddy bears or blankets.”
After reading this it is very obvious that motivated reasoning is just a mental form of transitional object.
So a transitional object is a substitute for the mother, or the FEELINGS of security and comfort normally given when close and engaged with the mother.
Emergene into this sensate and physical world requires a lot of help in emotional and psychological orientation and adjustment.
A child will need a primary bond to a human lover, one who feels its needs and yields to those needs in preference to its own. or as its own – in short one devoted to it for a time.
As a Species we have developed so far into population overshoot and the world culture is so anti-stasis now that everyone typically is in shock of being born into a fragmentary ‘world’ or human environment.
In mormal parlence the transitional object is adopted so a chid can transition to sleep, or quiets anxiety in free waking time/being without the mother present. That in itself indicates that the mother is really needed, and why not a granmother or sister or father, known to the child, frequently held by the child and rather 80-90 % or the cumfort function of the mother say?
But no, I venture industrial cycles of illusory wants as needs, and burnout and machine living has led to mother not being there, or something like that. No blameing the mothers here though, just pointing to how mothers get shafted by industrial culture as well.
So the transsferrence of security and ‘feeling ok’ or anxiety free ‘feeling good’ to me requires more clarification here because as you point out it could mean a few things.
My view is that we could say that anxiety free feeling good is not transitional, that is it does not revert to anxiety when the transitional object is removed or can longer be located. So deep happiness is that feeling of anxiety free ease and alertness without stress. Now there is also lying to yourself ‘feeling good’ but this is characterised by supplying ‘transitional objects’ of a more sophisticated kind.
When I refer to a child psychologically it is regardless of being an adult in age. The child mind finds security in the realm of the mother. When mother is absent then another family member in a similar status can suppply the security and comfort, and share the feelings. If no mother type is there a transitional object will suffice, but only untill the mother returns and re-affirms the feeling relation again.
What happens on a cultural level is if mother culture is abandoned, and in Western culture the Christian religion provided that ralation on a feeling level, to the devine, (so defined as masculine Father Son Holy Ghost).
With the rise of Science an adolescent impulse arose, and the child stories were no longer sufficient to satisfy a mental development reached.
Science however is presented as Objective, and discards any subjective reality, so Feeling as a primary cultural mode of human action became a non reality in cosmological terms, it is entirely subjective.
However, in many rural places, where aggriculture prevails and to a lessor or greater extent, village life has some vestigial existance those cultural ways of relating through local customs etc still give structural support in the name of an older devotional culture. Church on Sunday, although devoid of culturewide import, still provides the village meeting, (and perhaps the ‘feeling’ of social cohesion).
So having left the Mother’ culture organising agency/function of Feeling behind, Thinking dominates and its apex arrived in the Reagan and Thatcher years in the West on economic scoreboards as the doctrine of Economic Rationalism.
Translated into English this meant that the Feeling informed social conscience that was still housed in the churches in the West was finally hijacked by legalease and they were muzzled by the Welfare legislation of those governments so as not to speak out or their funding would be compromised. They accepted and so was extinguishe the last institutional power engine with sufficient strength to regenerate social justice as a right if being human.
This meant that the industrial economy was completely free to evaluate, or ‘value’ any cultural agency, especially if it had a monetary component, from national parks to ‘unemployed’ single mums as to its econiomic input to an unfeeling machine culture in monetary terms.
This is what happens when Feeling as a human function is all but lost in the agency and institutions of a culture. Madness.
But in the last two hundred years the groups and classes that have been educated, essentially for emerging job categories to serve industries, that require literacy and numeracy, have developed a degree of relative mental maturity in a larger proportion of the populations in Anex-1 Nations, i.e. the middle classes, and the wealthy elite in Non-Anex-1 nations.
They have not been able to cope very well with the destruction of the mother culture, or its nurturing and supportive consciuosness enabling structures at least, ( as distinct from the basic growth needs of the body, like food, clothing, shelter, and medical and dental care, which are or were supplied very well by Anex-1 nations).
The emotional anxiety rose commensuarate with the abandonment of the extended family, and the fragmentation of human feeling bonds and this would only persist for the middle lower and upper classes if a broard sweep of ‘transitional objects’ were not created and supplied wholesale, and marketted to the anxiety laden of the populations.
We all know them:
Drugs, TV Movies, High Fructose Corn Syrup, stimulants like Caffene, Nicotine, and consolations like class envy induced status seeking consumption, alcahol and all manner of momentary distractions from an underlying anxiety.
So I am calling ‘motivated reasoning’ a psychological manifestation of a ‘transitional object’, insofar as there is a rising and long pervading deep anxiety existing induced by an ever fragmenting world industrial civilisation, devoid of the cultural processes that bring love into the world.
In this regard it is very clear that when I and others discuss challenging issues with people who have the blue smoke coming from their ears because their baby-food-worldview-delivered-by-Fox-News-et-al induces the same infant response of anxiety, because the ‘comfort object’ for them is their worldview. This worldview includes endless economic growth,(aka, a neverending titty), endless consumption,(endless titty when I want it, now), and a secure and peaceful life (endless war on terror).
Motivated reasoning is a useful concept IMO if it is understood as a response by a semi-differentiated child-mind challenged by a contrary worldview which induces inner anxiety to such an extent that reason is facsimilied by placative coos of the advertisers, politicians and spin doctors.
To finish, it cannot go on forever, because if the advertisers cannot any longer hide the overwhelming privelage of the rakers of profit, then baby will begin to cry, and spit the dummy for good.
It is just a wierd coincidence we ‘wake up’ only on the brink of anialation of all we hold dear and precious, this planet and all the beings here, and may still come into being.
Also, subjects like Semiotics, and the academia speak, to return to a previous note, were attempting to look at and describe the unconscoius embedded meanings in language structures that enabled and created meanings, which were obviously culture specific. This was on the back of an earlier movement to understand if humans of differing races(now discredited term) were intrinsically different or the same. They were answering the question ‘How is the would created by/through a language?’
To me that is a worty endeavour, and should not boil down to incomprehensible gobbdigook speech, but by the same token, a difficult to grasp concept does need some preparatory specialist understanding to be understood. Semiotics at its heart was trying to look at how we construct a mental reality that diverges from reality, something ‘we here’ often comment on with not a little consternation.
I love your examples of the gears grinding and the smoke emanating from the ears.
I would encourage these very people to look into your eyes and trust you, (reducing anxiety) and help them understand a little bit more about what is really happening.
Say:
“Come to a talk I’m going to by a guy called Guy who is telling everyone about the end of the world as we know it due to catastrophic climate chaos”
Would that help…or create more Blue smoke?
December 24th, 2012 at 6:31 am
Ozman After reading this it is very obvious that motivated reasoning is just a mental form of transitional object.
Don’t agree with that at all. IMO, it just adds another layer of bullshit.
“a theory called “motivated reasoning,” which political psychologists have used to explain all manner of divides over factual, resolvable issues. Motivated reasoning is, in many ways, the updated, neuroscience infused version of “cognitive dissonance”:
In old fashioned vernacular parlance, that would have been called ‘stupid, confused, immature…’ so you replace a basic common term with a fancy upgrade that makes it sound as if you’re being smart and intellectual and superior and educated, but the actual added insight and utility is zero.
Of course, you couldn’t publish papers in academic journals or give talks at conferences about ‘stupid’ or ‘ignorant’ people, but you can about people who use ‘motivated reasoning’, so that makes it okay and acceptable.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/04/18/the-science-of-why-we-deny-science-motivated-reasoning/