My Critical Thinking Post highlighted one of the more pervasive of the cognitive distortion logical fallacies, that of polar thoughts; black and white thinking - the either/or statements of FALSE DICHOTOMY.

schpydurx's weekend post The Definition of Job To Do Theory quoted Horace Dediu's understanding of FALSE DICHOTOMY by stating it as such, then countering it with a FALSE DICHOTOMY of his own (highlights mine):

Your question was framed by an implied market categorization: that buyers are either high-income or, presumably, low-income. This is a false dichotomy. Buyers are either needful of a job to be done or not.

Divine Grace - God's gift of salvation granted to sinners for their salvation. Only, its not freely given. Not really. Sacramental/Orthodox religions aside, its only given to those who ask for it.

Cooperative reciprocal tendencies - positive reciprocity, and ethic of reciprocity - the golden rule - enumerate the benefits of existing in a mutually supportive environment. The things I desire in life, I give freely, so they may be returned upon me. If I have to ask for them however, it defeats the purpose. At that point rather than engaging in a fulfilling relationship with someone, I'm instead bartering for goods and services. Friendships and marriages then give way to partnerships and limited liability cooperatives, or worse - dependency.

Attachment reduces marriage to a quest for safety, security, and compensation for childhood disappointments.^*

Prominent 60s psychologist Richard Lazarus asserts that people become accustomed to positive or negative life experiences which lead to favorable or unfavorable expectations of their present and near-future circumstances. I've written for weeks on the premise that expectations may or may not be realistic and can give rise to the emotion of disappointment. I know because I myself have fallen into this trap recently.

The famous sociologist, Robert K. Merton, wrote that a person's expectation is directly linked to the Self-fulfilling Prophecy. Whether or not such an expectation was truthful or not has little or no effect on the outcome. If a person believes what they are told or convinces himself/herself of the fact, chances are this person will see the expectation to its inevitable conclusion. If we act on false information, certain positive or negative unintended consequences could result. If overly positive or elevated expectations were used to describe or manipulate a person's self-image and execution falls short, the results could be a total reversal of that person's self-confidence. If thought of in terms of causality or cause and effect, the higher a person's expectation and the lower the execution, the higher the frustration level may become. This in turn could cause a total cessation of effort and motivate the person to quit.^*

Even knowing that expectation leads to disappointment, I maintain an expectation of reciprocity for it is that which defines us as human animals, yet the moment I have to ask for it I rape it of its empathizing healing nature, turning it into a cold, selfish act. I cannot seem to untrap myself from this paradox, and feel it could very likely destroy me. That "one thing" I've been seeking which could unravel the very essence of my existence I may have finally discovered.

A professional psychologist once asked me to define intimacy. As I had recently published my thesis on self-actualized intimacy I very candidly replied, "dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity." The psychologist laughed. Then told me I was wrong. As an aside, it must very frustrating to have all the working knowledge and understanding of the psychology behind self-actualization coupled with the knowledge that you'll never reach it, let alone the underlying envy of facing someone who - by all accounts less worthy - has. He explained that "it" was none of those things and took me on a journey of beautiful descriptive modifiers in a very limited scope of application in which he never effectively stated what "it" was and when asked (because I did ask) he just shook his head in disbelief at my simplicity.

But there is never despair without hope! I implore you - all of you - to never become complacent with anything, ever. As a hard and fast rule you must aggressively reevaluate without provocation, for therein truly lies the secret to everlasting life.

I used to be so enamored with personal responsibly that I would often accept responsibility for things which were not mine to own up to. Of course understanding the true nature of personal responsibility means also knowing what not to claim.

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities. ~Josiah Charles Stamp

Personal responsibility is a big subject, with many far-reaching ramifications and it alone holds the key to real (not perceived) happiness, self-confidence, and all the rewards which self-actualization affords. True happiness is knowing ahead of time you will have all the courage you'll need in the face of adversity, and unflinching confidence in your decisions - its the absence of fear. Not the healthy fear which keeps us alive, rather the pervasive fear which destroys lives. Because happiness itself requires unconditional acceptance of personal responsibility, and personal responsibility requires courage.

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, discontented one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate, happy and contented one.” The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?” The grandfather answered: “The one I feed.” ^*

The choice to which to feed of course is just that, a choice. Many do not believe that to be the case; that it is simply a platitude without any realistic practical application. They would be wrong - and I am very aware of my use of the word, "wrong." It was less than a month ago that I said I wanted to teach my children there is no right or wrong just motivation and intent and behavior. It was I who was mistaken. There is wrong in the world. Cognitive distortion proved that to me. I was re-reading the definitions of the traits of those who suffer at its cruel hands and was struck at the despair these people who think this way think is normal, right and good: limited, expectation, discounting positive, negative, inflexible, inability, rigid rules, absolute, and blame. Its not enough to teach my children that happiness is a choice - I need to teach them discernment - the ability to recognize this damaging disorder and to run from it! People who suffer from cognitive distortion do not live their life as if happiness were a choice - they are often disappointed. They suffer at their own hands.

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. ~Albert Einstein

The problem I have in explaining personal responsibility, is that it can only be truly learned through experience - one cannot understand the sheer scope of its empowering ability without first shedding attachment of self, attachment of other, and stepping through the empirical tests. Fear must not only be faced to be conquered as the poets would have you believe, but also dealt with accordingly, and reconciled for optimum effectiveness.

The enemy of my enemy may very well be my enemy also. ~ehowton

For this exercise, I suggest using my oft-discussed proven-results checklist of character-building which is a marvelous example which can be applied to a broad range of personality flaws and shortcomings. More specifically, "No, its not magic. And sure its difficult - anything worth doing is. But only its unfamiliarity makes it so. Start small. Try it with little things. Try it on for size. See how it feels. Don't go too far outside your comfort zone, but go far enough. What do I mean? Its like this: What you're doing now is obviously not working, so you really have nothing to lose, despite the initial discomfort of uncertainty. Once you've had a few small successes - and failures, don't forget the importance of failure - you can branch out even further. Utilize your newfound power on even larger issues to tackle." Before you know it, by having confronted your fear in challenging the small things, you can now effortlessly - and this time without fear - face the larger issues. No one is going to do this for you. Ever.

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

In researching personal responsibility I ran across Dr. Laura's blog where she had a hashtag for it. Not knowing anything about Dr. Larua but knowing quite a bit about personal responsibility I was horrified to discover that she was confusing personal responsibility with her own morals and values - what she herself thought was right and wrong action based on her beliefs alone. Responsibility assumption is an entirely secular doctrine insofar as it is universally applicable. Sure its been adopted into many different religions because of the truth of its nature - but to say that any one of those is the right way suggests that a different way is wrong, and we're suddenly back to cognitive distortion, the bane of critical thinking, personal responsibility's kissing cousin.

Some pursue happiness - others create it.

"You can’t accept responsibility for a situation and be angry at the same time. You can’t accept responsibility and be unhappy or upset. The acceptance of responsibility negates negative emotions and short-circuits any tendencies toward unhappiness. The very act of accepting responsibility calms your mind and clarifies your vision. It soothes your emotions and enables you to think more positively and constructively. In fact, the acceptance of responsibility often gives you insight into what you should do to resolve the situation."^*

Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others. ~Confucius

I think - and please disagree - I'm having difficulty finding anyone to bounce these ideas off of, I think the opposite of personal responsibility is victimization. If you cannot, will not, or refuse to take responsibility for your own happiness and well-being, or easily get your feelings hurt, you are blaming others. You are finding fault in others. Portraying a victim is the short-game, it is absolutely not sustainable. Something somewhere will most assuredly break - even if its a lifetime later - and when it does, the inevitable inescapable judgement day. How we handle this eventuality is also a choice.

Choose wisely.

My grandfather-in-law is 90. His age notwithstanding he still bikes five miles a day. Or at least, he did. While we've all thought whatever ailment he was enduring at the time was going to be the end of his days on the bike (one doctor infuriated me by telling him he would be back on his bike five days after removing a third of his colon, but it was I eating crow when it turned out to be true - as an aside what I know about modern medical science is nill), a bike wreck caused a compression fracture on one of his vertebra which didn't reveal itself until a month later when he couldn't get out of bed.

As I work from home and am only 8-minutes away he called me early one morning for what turned out to be a 36-hour day of unprecedented activity.

But it was my dream which was the most interesting:

I was living here at the assisted living facility with him, and my wife and kids. He was working on his bicycle in the common garage. Where I was riding my son's unsteady bike with the tiny wheels and the super-high "chopper" style handlebars that I was ill-equipped to pilot given my size and weight comparatively.

At some point I left the garage and came back where my grandfather-in-law was underneath a precariously elevated red 4x4 Jeep, changing out what appeared to be overly complicated CV-joints. Not only changing them out, but disassembling them and machining internal parts for reassembly before reattaching them. Quite complicated work. So there he was shaking/tremors with his damaged spine, laying under a wobbly vehicle lifted dangerously by four different jack mechanisms. I was scared for his life.

And there were so many resident's bicycles in the common garage that other families coming in and out of the facility had to walk around a veritable obstacle course of them (the garage seemed to be the only ingress/egress point of the facility). So I put both my kids on one of those self-propelled scooters, disappointed that we had a battery-powered one rather than a gas-powered one, because with all three of us standing on it, it was very slow going up the asphalt grade and I was sure we were soon going to topple without adequate power.

My dream was rife with perilous imagery.

I just subscribed to Psychology Today. After my last foray I was pretty sure I wanted to, but was waiting to see if the quality remained issue after issue. We had a subscription in the late 80s but I wasn't as interested in it as much then as I am now.

I subscribed today after reading only the Editor's Note:

We all know Big-D "Difficult" when it saunters into a room. Difficult people are the bullies and whimperers who must be spoon-fed feedback that's been purged of negative content, so explosive or "sensitive" are they. Then there are those who generally get along well with everyone, save one or two people in whose presence they behave badly, or, more often, people on whom they negatively fixate; the "occasional offender." I'm thinking of the grown-up who devolves into a petulant toddler in the company of Mom, or the person who is uncharacteristically curt with certain people. If you’re consistently annoyed by (and annoying to) a select few — congratulations, you’re human. Knowing the person or situation that sets you off is half the battle and you are capable of dialing-down problematic interactions.

Family: A realist might say that seeing someone at their worst is the price of intimacy. But when little effort is made to control "the worst," the family member you theoretically cherish has been rezoned as an emotional dumping ground. Once the parameters of a relationship are set, expectations emerge and you start to feel like the person exists to meet your needs. This erodes your love and their patience. You can back off by taking responsibility for your own well-being and actually thinking about someone else's.

Friends: If you have just one or two friends who are never sufficiently attentive or somehow let you down, question why they’re coming in for this special treatment. Sure, it could be them. But it could also be that you are placing demands on them that reflect your desires for the friendship, rather than its realities. By privately and unilaterally setting the terms, you may create conditions for a relationship that almost by definition cannot be met. People unconsciously place demands on friends who enhance their own self-image or social identity; it is these friends who are likely to "disappoint" in a friendship.

Everyone else: The default style between two people who have little in common is neutrality. But if you find yourself irritated or negative in minor exchanges with someone you barely know, you may believe that person is wasting your time, and you don’t know how to extricate yourself. The result is a rude or avoidant exchange, rather than an assertive one.

How to know whether you’re the "occasional offender" or Big-D "Difficult" here's the classic folk psychology test: If you’re concerned enough to ponder this question, you probably don’t have much to worry about.

I absolutely adore how suggestions of personal responsibility can apply across the board to so many different ailments. I think I'll post on this subject next.

The World is my Teleconference Room

I have a new meeting space, its the walking path around the water-filled ditch (read pond) in the subdivision adjacent our own, about a sixty second walk from the house. At four and a half miles an hour, each lap takes me about 10-minutes. This is where I take all my scheduled calls. We have a daily meeting at 0900 which lasts between half an hour and 45 minutes. I arrive early and get a good hour in in the mornings.

If we don't have an afternoon call, this is where I spend my lunch hour. I try to spend an hour there in the evenings as well.

Only I haven't been doing as much walking as I have running. Interval training. And I'm surprised that I'm able to do it the full hour, three times a day. Especially given my weight. That being said, I was afraid my Merrell's might no longer be up to the task. But "traditional" style running shoes have been replaced with minimalist "natural" "barefoot" running shoes. Shoes with no cushion, no heel, and no support. The opposite of what someone of my size/age requires.

catttitude and I were in the Wichita mall one Friday after work and I stopped at a Famous Footwear because we have one here in the outlet mall in Newton. I found the most expensive pair of traditional running shoes they had for $125 - Asics. I've never had a pair before but I think celtmanx wears them regularly. This morning I found them at the outlet mall for $90. They arrive in a week.

If the gel does what they say it does, I may end up increasing how many times a day I run, or how long.

I feel compelled to.

This exercise is made more effective because I gave up wine. This exercise is made more effective because I started getting adequate sleep. And this effective exercise attunes my mental health.

I am becoming more powerful at an alarming rate.


Asics Gel Nimbus 13 "Fire"

Short cuts suck
Originally uploaded by gnat23

HOW TO KILL A GOD

Deny him his nature.

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

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

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

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

Belief.

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

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

Therein lies two immediate issues with that:

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


• People who don't "believe" facts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• OVERGENEALIZATION – Extrapolating limited experiences and evidence to broad generalizations


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


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


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


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


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




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


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


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


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

And my personal favorite:

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

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



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

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

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

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

Herein lies the crux, the everything about everything.

Most people don't care to think critically.

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

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

I am a critical thinker.

Its what I do.

Its what defines me.

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

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