Kantian School of Critical Thinking

Immanuel Kant and Learning Critical Thinking

2012-02-17T13:17:00.000-08:00

Immanuel Kant not only believed that people should learn to think for themselves he also believed that the way philosophy was taught determined whether students learned to think for themselves or only learned how to memorize a philosophical system. He distinguished between philosophy that was taught in the scholastic sense and philosophy was that was taught in the cosmopolitan sense. He wrote: “one must differentiate between two types of learning: there are minute [grüblerisch] sciences, which are useless for human beings, and formerly there were philosophers, whose whole science consisted in exceeding each other in ingeniousness, these were called Scholastici; their art was science for the university [Schule], but no enlightenment for everyday life could be acquired through this. He could be a great man, but only for the university, without giving the world some use for his knowledge” (Starke, Menschenkunde, p. 1). The scholastic philosopher was exacting, minute and pedantic in his teaching methods.

Students who studied with scholastic philosophers imitated their professors and memorized the philosophical system. Kant argued this was philosophy based on historical knowledge (cognitio ex datis) rather than philosophy based on rational knowledge (cognitio ex pirincipiis) because the philosophy was simply memorized. He gave the example of Christian Wolff’s and said: “Wolff was a speculative…philosopher…he was actually not a philosopher at all, but rather a great artificer [Vernunftkünstler], like many others still are, for the intellectual curiosity of human beings” (Philosophische Enzyklopädie, XXIX, 8). Immanuel Kant maintained that: “Anyone, therefore, who has learned (in the strict sense of that term) a system of philosophy, such as that of Wolff, although they may have all its principles, explanations, and proofs, together with the formal divisions of the whole body of doctrine, in their heads, and, so to speak, at their fingertips, have no more than a complete historical knowledge of the Wolffian philosophy” (Critique of Pure Reason, B 864).

Immanuel Kant went onto say that students who learned philosophy in this way were often very clever in the use of concepts but their loquaciousness was also “blinder than any other self-conceit and as incurable as ignorance” (Nachricht II, 305). They had merely memorized the concepts and system and were imitating the philosophy but not thinking for themselves. They sounded impressive and could talk the good talk but they were not able to do philosophy for themselves. These students did not gain insight into the philosophy but were merely learned [Gelehrt].

Instead Kant thought it was important for students not just to learn philosophy, but to learn how to philosophize and learn how to think (Nachricht, II, 306). And he regarded his cosmopolitan philosophy as a good example of disciplines that taught students to think for themselves. So he taught physical geography and anthropology to introduce students to thinking methodically. The physical geography lectures demanded that a student think in terms of effective causality whereas the anthropology lectures required that students think through final causality. Effective causality was the kind of causality we use in the natural sciences whereas final causality is the kind of causality we use in the human sciences. Effective causality demands that the cause precede the effect, whereas final causality requires that the final cause comes after the effect. For example, an earthquake causes a tsunami in the first instance, but wanting to live in a house causes us to build a house in the second case. Both types of causality create a nexus that can be thought through systematically.

These two disciplines taught students to think methodologically and the disciplines made it impossible to just memorize philosophy. Students were able to take the method and then apply it to their everyday lives in new and unexpected ways. Students could identify natural causes in their experience, but they could also learn to evaluate their lives in terms of purposes and final causes. Both disciplines required reflection whether on the world or on themselves and hence resisted mere imitation. So Immanuel Kant not only believed in critical thinking, he taught it to his students at Königsberg University.

If you would like to know more about this in Immanuel Kant, please read chapter 6 of my book at Amazon: Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology. Or at Abebooks: Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology.

Immanuel Kant and Critical Thinking

2012-02-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

Immanuel Kant articulated his primary position on critical thinking in his essay "What is Enlightenment?" In there he defines enlightenment as "man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity" and he defines immaturity as "the inability to use one's reason without the guidance from another." What he means by this is that critical thinking is thinking for oneself and so he affirms the Latin term "Sapere Aude!" which means to have the courage to use one's own understanding.

Kant thinks that people are lazy and do not want to use their understanding and do not want to think for themselves. They prefer to let others think for them. So they pay their doctor to give them a diet or prescription. They let their pastor serve as their conscience. They let books do their thinking for them. What their doctor or pastor says is right and cannot be questioned. Books must be right because, after all, they are in print and so their authority is impeccable. We not only believe that we are ignorant in comparison to those who have expertise that we do not have, but we simply are not willing to question them or let what they say come into question using our own reason. We don't want to think for ourselves. We want to be told what to do and what to think.

The remedy for this is not to quit going to a doctor, or to church, and to stop reading, but rather to question the authority of one's doctor and pastor and books. One should seek alternative explanations and directions. One should consider the alternatives and weigh them with what the doctor, pastor or book says. One can always get a second opinion. One should always consider the opposite position. And this is what scholars do.

The private use of reason does not necessarily have to be free. For instance, if you are a pastor you have to follow certain beliefs in order to fulfill your role as a pastor. Otherwise by definition you are not following what is required by the position. A pastor who calls the Apostle's Creed into question is not a Christian. Likewise, it is right to follow the orders in a military context. One should not question the orders and think for oneself when in a situation of war. One has to follow what is prescribed. This is the private use of one's reason.

However, the public use of one's reason needs to be free. This is needed by scholars. The primary symbol for thinking for oneself is the scholar in an academic situation. The scholar needs to be free to question received authority and think through the matter for herself. For instance, it was the received tradition that Moses wrote the Pentateuch of the Old Testament. Scholars who questioned that and began to see reasons why that was not possible suffered ostracism when they challenged that position. it was not until the 20th century that scholars could research and hold a position contrary to that tradition without losing their jobs. But even today, students are often forced to memorize their professors' positions and are not allowed or encouraged to think things through themselves. They are forced to exchange their prejudices for their professors' prejudices instead of being allowed to challenge both opinions. In an academic situation scholars and students should be encouraged to push the envelope and challenge received beliefs so that truth can emerge.

Although Kant is right that the private use of reason restricts thinking for oneself, it is not true that pastors and soldiers and patients don't need to think for themselves. Pastors will meet circumstances and issues that are not dealt with in the bible or the tradition. Soldiers still need to think how best to carry out the orders given to them. Patients may need to trust the expertise of their doctors but they should also seek a second opinion or research the issue on the internet for themselves. So everyone needs to be like a scholar in some sense. We all need to see ourselves in the pursuit of the truth. So good critical thinking is necessary for everyone in every circumstance in life, not just for the scholar.

Fighting Cancer with Critical Thinking

2012-01-29T14:28:00.000-08:00

Everyday I hear of people who are in end stages of their fight with cancer. They are losing and will soon lose. It saddens me greatly because I know you can win the battle but so many people will never know that they can because they rely on modern medicine and their conventional care doctors to tell them that their own chance lies with chemotherapy and radiation. Neither chemotherapy nor radiation cure cancer however, but rather attack the body's immune system and the good cells in the body.

People are afraid to question their doctors and use their own critical thinking because of the great esteem doctors are held in and because for the most part their doctors do base their knowledge on medicine that is supported by scientifically credible studies. But people should question their doctors and use their own critical powers of thinking. There are a number of reason why. 1. Doctors and even cancer specialists are dependent upon pharmaceutical companies who have a lot to gain by selling expensive chemotherapy drugs. 2. Medical schools do not teach alternative methods but are also influenced by studies that are funded by pharmaceutical companies. 3. Pharmaceutical companies have the big bucks to invest in medical studies that study their own products. 4. Potential cures that don't cost much will not be studied because there is no money in their promotion and studies cost a lot of money.

Instead of studies, then, a person who wants to know about alternative cures is going to have to rely for the most part on personal testimonies of people who have tried the cure and succeeded in curing themselves. Personal testimony can be persuasive if is collaborated by many personal testimonies. We should not be frightened off of personal testimony just because it is not a controlled experiment. When you put a whole lot of personal testimony together it becomes an informal study. The control group is already known: those who are taking chemotherapy and radiation and are dying.

The most widely hailed cure and preventative for cancer is the Budwig Diet. It is a great pity that Steve Jobs did not discover this cure. It is not only cheap and simple it cures within 6 weeks. The cure rate is said to be 90%. And when I say "cure" I mean that the cancer is gone. One can learn about the Budwig Diet from the Budwig Center (http://www.budwigcenter.com/). Their site hosts many examples of personal testimony of people who have been healed of cancer because of the diet. The diet is simple: it consists of flax seed oil and cottage cheese or kefir. Just blend the two together, add some cinnamon and sweetener and eat it once a day. Flax seed oil is an omega 3 the cells need to be healthy and fight cancer and cottage cheese or kefir gets it into the cells. It is also inexpensive. I take this daily as a preventative measure and it costs me about $25 every two weeks. It not only tastes good it makes you feel good and supports your immune system.

The second most widely considered support for the fight against cancer is found in Transfer Point's Beta 1.3D Glucan which can be found here (http://www.transferpoint.com/). Although they cannot say it cures cancer because of the FDA's crackdown on such claims, they host many credible studies that hail its ability to build the immune system and fight cancer the natural way. It too is cheap. You can buy a bottle that lasts a month for $40 and some people use this as a preventative too. In any case it is going to keep your immune system functioning in top form. If you were to put these two together and eat a healthy diet you would have the best chance of winning the fight against cancer.

Immanuel Kant and God's Grace

2012-01-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

Immanuel Kant writes: “God’s justice is usually divided into justitiam remunerativam et punitivam, according as God punishes evil and rewards good. But the rewards God bestows on us proceed not from his justice but from his benevolence. For if they came to us from justice then there would be no premia gratuita, but rather we would have to possess some right to demand them, and God would have to be bound to give them to us. Justice gives nothing gratuitously; it gives to each only the merited reward. But even if we unceasingly observe all moral laws, we can never do more than is our duty; hence we can never expect rewards from God’s justice.” [Immanuel Kant, Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, 28: 1085, quoted from Religion and Rational Theology, translated and edited by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 417].

Immanuel Kant has been accused of holding that we merit God’s grace by our actions because we choose to adhere to the moral law and hence by choosing to adhere to the moral law we thereby make ourselves worthy of happiness. In this point of view, that happiness would be a gift from God, and he gives it when we merit it from having chosen the moral law as the incentive for our actions. But this would reverse the very idea of God’s grace being freely given from his sovereignty, since this kind of position would mean that God is constrained to reward us for our good choices and hence, that is merited happiness, not unmerited grace. Kant would be in direct conflict with the Christian concept of grace if this were his position. However as the quote above shows, this is not Kant’s position. Kant has a position that is consistent with the doctrine of unmerited grace that St. Paul and the Gospels articulate.

In this quote above Kant distinguishes between remunerative justice and punitive justice. Remunerative justice regards positive rewards for just actions whereas punitive justice has to do with punishments for unjust actions. Kant is saying that God definitely punishes unjust actions and we merit punishment by our unjust actions, but that God does not reward just actions. God’s justice is not the source of reward but of punishment. The source of God’s reward is in his benevolence. There is a great difference between God’s justice and his benevolence. God’s benevolence is freely given to all and is not based on merit. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45). God gives his benevolence universally to all people. He gives rain to both the just and the unjust. He doesn’t just give rain to the just, but also to the unjust. So merit has nothing to do with God’s benevolence. His benevolence extends to all people. He gives good things even when we don’t deserve it.

As Kant would put it – God wills the happiness of human beings universally, and does not favor some people over other people by virtue of having merited it. It is the universality of God’s will that characterizes his benevolence. And it is also unmerited benevolence since it is given whether one deserves it or not. God universally wills that all people be saved and that all people be happy. We do not deserve this by our moral decision-making according to Kant because our morality is motivated by duty. We are to choose the moral law as the incentive for our actions not because we are trying to please God but because it is our duty to do so. We are under the moral law and it requires of us that we conform our maxims to the universality of the moral law. To expect a reward for this is precisely to be moral out of self-love, which is an evil motive. Hence we are to be moral for the sake of being moral and by virtue of that pure motive we become worthy of happiness. But being worthy of happiness does not mean that we thereby acquire a right to be happy. Happiness is not a reward but a free gift of grace.

Hence, we can conclude that Kant does not hold that we make a demand on God by our moral action and then grace is no longer grace. Rather, in our decision to make our maxims conform to the universality of the moral law we become worthy of happiness which is a gift of God and always was a gift of God’s benevolence and good will toward human beings.

Immanuel Kant and the Limits of Knowledge

2012-01-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

Immanuel Kant begins the Critique of Pure Reason with this pregnant statement: “HUMAN reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.” This statement is astounding and amazing because it is reason admitting that it cannot answer the very questions it poses so necessarily. Our reason longs to answer the questions: Does God exist? Is there a free will? And why is there something rather than nothing? Yet, our reason has to profess its inability to answer those very same urgent and life size questions.

Kant says in his project that he is limiting the claims to knowledge so that he can make room for faith. Kant goes on to show that our capacities for knowledge extend only to the way our minds are disposed to knowledge, namely to the way experience is constructed by our concepts and intuitions. That is our capacity to know something depends on how our minds are capable of knowing something. We cannot know something that our minds are not so constructed to know. This is like the limitations we have in our senses. I cannot hear certain sounds that elephants can hear because my hearing apparatus is not such that it can hear that level of sound. Likewise there things that I cannot see because I don’t have the capacity to see that far or that deeply. Now we have learned to extend our senses through instruments like microscopes, telescopes, radio, etc but there are limits even to the ability of these instruments to extend the degree our perceptions of reality.

Now Kant is saying that same principle of limitation applies to our minds and our reason. Our minds by their very nature know through two elements: concepts and intuitions and they both must be present for there to be knowledge. Our concepts give form to our knowledge while our intuitions put us in touch with reality. But our concepts by their very nature are limited and can comprehend nature only as far as they extend and they must be linked to intuitions or they are empty.

So let us take the big questions again: Is there a God? Is there a free will? Why is there something rather than nothing? These questions demand that we extend our knowing beyond experience and intuitions. Our concept of God as an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God does not permit us discovering that in experience because everything we experience is in space and time (our intuitions) and God as we just defined him is not in our experience of space and time. There is nothing in space and time that is all-knowing, all powerful, or all-loving. Nor is there anyway for us to see the free will. The will itself is not visible in space and time. We can have a concept of the will but we cannot observe it. And the question of why there is something rather than nothing is obviously impossible to answer for our limited capacity for knowledge. There is nothing in our experience to tell us that answer and science itself cannot answer it. That is why Kant calls these questions “metaphysical.” They are not questions that science by its very nature can answer because science confines itself to experience.

Yet Kant understands that our reason demands answers for these questions. We cannot stop our reason from venturing into the arena and asking the question. Hume thought we could simply stop ourselves from asking these questions but that is like telling someone they cannot break the 4-minute mile. Human beings don’t want to be subject to limits. We are constantly trying to transcend our limits as can be seen with the microscope, telescope, computer and car. By our very nature we long for transcendence of our limitations and that to me is evidence that we have something in us besides just cells and dna. We have a spirit and that spirit bears witness to something.

Now Kant made room for faith in God by limiting reason, but I want to go beyond Kant and say that the very reason our reason longs for answers it cannot give is already evidence in experience for something beyond experience. It is evidence there is something beyond experience that right now is hidden to us because of the limitations of our minds, but someday we may come to experience it. Just consider this: at one time in the evolution of life on earth, there were no eyes, ears, or taste buds. But while there was nothing to perceive light, sound, and taste, light, sound and tastes already existed. There just weren’t any sense perceptions to perceive them at the time. But we evolved those sense perceptions because we are constantly transcending our limitations. Before there were eyes there were amoebas and if they could have argued, perhaps they would have argued about whether light existed or not. But once we developed eyes we no longer argue about that – we see the sun. Now we argue whether God exists but someday we will no longer argue about that. We will know. But for now it is a matter of faith and by showing us the limitations of our knowledge, Kant made room for faith and for an open future. (picture by Andy Potts).

Christmas and Immanuel Kant

2011-12-15T11:44:00.001-08:00

These two topics do not normally come together but I think there is good reason to consider what Immanuel Kant might have to say about Christmas. Or what Christmas might have to say about Kant.

Christmas is a time when family come together and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I know of no evidence in Immanuel Kant that he celebrated Christmas with his family, but we do have lots of evidence that he loved his family. At his baptism as an infant he was given the name Emanuel, which he later changed to Immanuel (which Christians know means “God with us”). His mother gave him a term of endearment and called him “Manelchen” which means ‘little Manny,” which was short for Immanuel. He was also endeared to his mother and said later in life: "I will never forget my mother, for she implanted and nurtured in me the first germ of goodness; she opened my heart to the impressions of nature; she awakened and furthered my concepts, and her doctrines have had a continual and beneficial influence in my life." We see the seeds right here to his conclusion in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) where he wrote: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

But it was the moral law within Immanuel Kant that gave rise to his formalistic moral theory which does not give much credence to moral sentiments. Nonetheless these sentiments seem to have served him well not only in his remembrance of his mother but also in the development of his philosophy. It seems that the seeds of his philosophy were already planted by the love that he received from his mother.

Still the categorical imperative is universally valid precisely because it is not derived from sentiment. His mother may have given rise to sentiments in him but he had to transcend these sentiments in order to develop a moral philosophy that had universal validity for all people.

Just consider the first formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” You can’t universalize a sentiment but you can universalize a maxim and Immanuel Kant is saying only maxims that can be universalized ought to count as moral. This procedure makes it impossible to act on feelings, rather one must act on reason and act in ways that all people could act. Immanuel Kant is accused of formalism for this reason. Such a procedure for determining morality would make it impossible to act in preference for one’s family members since our preferring family over other people would be linked to our feelings for them.

It is not that we love the family less but that we love others more. Kant is saying that we need to love because love is something we can universally will to do. We can't universally prefer everyone. Preferences narrow down our love. The categorical imperative broadens out our love.

Where I think we can narrow down our love is where we know people better. We know our families better and for that reason we may be able to love them more effectively than a stranger. But we love them not because we prefer them (they give us something) but because we are more aware of their needs and they are nearer to us so we know more about them. And we might be more in a position to help them than to help a stranger in India.

But I think that in order to overcome our selfishness we have to learn to love the way Jesus teaches us. Love your neighbor as yourself. You know you love yourself more because you know more of your needs and because you are affected by yourself. So to love others as yourself is to extend that love to more people.

The second formulation of the categorical imperative says this: Treat the humanity in yourself and others as an end and never as a means only. And I think that is very similar the golden rule. But the main thing is that it refers to all human beings and not just to a person's family members. So that too leads us to universalize our love.

So what does all this have to do with Jesus?

Jesus too loved his mother yet he also said this: “If any one comes to me without hating his father^* and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). This statement by Jesus makes Christians uncomfortable for good reason. Jesus teaches that the greatest of all commandments is to love God and then to love your neighbor as yourself and yet here he is saying the Christian must hate his family and himself. How can we make sense of this? Is it possible that Jesus was saying that in order to be moral we have to give up and hate our sentiments and feelings of preference that we give to members of our family. He goes on to say “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” So is he saying what Immanuel Kant is saying that we need to crucify our sentiments and feelings of preference we have for our families and for ourselves in order to be truly moral? I would suggest that he is. Jesus is surely using hyperbole when he says we need to “hate” our families and ourselves, because he doesn’t mean we should hate other people or ourselves, but he means we should hate the feelings that are so strong in us that lead us to give preferences to our families and to ourselves. We should hate our selfishness. And it is selfishness because we often love our families more than other people because they give us more love in return. They give us presents at Christmas time and so it is natural to love them more than people who give us nothing in return.

But then the Christmas spirit is to give to those who have nothing to give to us in return. I know a family who packs up Christmas presents with their children, makes a home cooked meal, and then on Christmas morning brings it to homeless people because they feel called by Christ to do so.

In such a family where thought is given to people who have needs that are not met, one could grow up with the sentiment that it is good to help others and that sentiment would help them overcome their selfishness, but such a person would always love their family not for what the family members have to give them but for what they inspire in him, namely the love of others and even strangers.

Is that not the Christmas message? Maybe Kant has more to do with Christmas than we originally thought. Reflect on that some and let me know what you think.

Checkout Medical and Health Information Online

2011-05-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

In this blog I want to point to some sites I have found helpful in making myself more informed about medical issues and health issues. Some of the sites are more conventional and some more alternative. I am going to give you the statement the website makes about itself. A person with good practical judgment ought to be proactive about their health.

WebMD is site where you can get very reliable information about health issues for yourself and your pets too. The site is found at:

http://www.webmd.com/default.htm

“The WebMD content staff blends award-winning expertise in medicine, journalism, health communication and content creation to bring you the best health information possible. Our esteemed colleagues at MedicineNet.com are frequent contributors to WebMD and comprise our Medical Editorial Board. Our Independent Medical Review Board continuously reviews the site for accuracy and timeliness.” This site is comprehensive and so I always start my research here.

When I want to go into more depth into the scientific research that supports a treatment or finding I go to PubMed, which can be found here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

“PubMed comprises over 20 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and preclinical sciences. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant Web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources. PubMed is a free resource that is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).” PubMed is also a very reliable site that will probably give you more information than you need or can even evaluate. They also have a section on supplements in which you can find out if there are studies that support the claims that supplements make.

A third site that I visit for conventional medicine is the Johns Hopkins Health Alerts site:

http://www.johnshopkinshealthalerts.com/

“Johns Hopkins Health Alerts provides cutting-edge information on healthy living after 50 in an easy-to-read format, completely FREE of charge. The goal of this interactive site is to educate you on the major medical conditions which affect healthy living, particularly over age 50. Johns Hopkins and University Health Publishing has set up this free site to help our readers and editors communicate and share factual information and personal experiences in an open community forum, in a well-organized manner.” Johns Hopkins has a bookstore with cutting edge articles on common diseases and treatments. It is a very useful site if you have a specific diagnosis and want to learn as much as possible about the available treatments and scientific studies supporting their treatments.

Of course it is simply crazy to ignore alternative medicine and therapies because many of these rely on nutrition, which we should be taking into account even before we get sick so that we won’t get sick.

Total Health Breakthroughs is a site that helps you identify healthy and safe ways to nourish yourself. This site can be found at: http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com/

“We also believe that people can transform their health, maintain their ideal weight, reverse chronic disease and avoid the need for prescription drugs by consuming healthy, nourishing foods, supplementing their diet, drinking pure water, exposing their skin to sunlight and exercising properly and consistently. The alternative eating plan we encourage is NOT about dieting. It is about choosing the right foods and knowing what to avoid in your diet. We believe that for most people, a diet rich in protein and healthy fats and consisting of low glycemic carbohydrates is not only the best way to achieve weight loss, but also optimal health. We stress the importance of a whole food diet consisting of organic fruits and vegetables, nuts and berries, healthy fats in the proper ratio, fish known to be free of mercury and other toxins and meat from free ranging animals raised on their natural diet (i.e. grass fed, not corn-fed beef).” Total Health Breakthroughs reports on food issues that you might not be aware of. They give you a behind the scenes look at food.

If you are wondering how to cook wholesome foods and need recipes, you can find them at My Healing Kitchen, which can be found at:

http://myhealingkitchen.com/

“My Healing Kitchen is a website about the top “healing super foods” which have been scientifically proven to improve, relieve and help reverse specific medical conditions. In addition, we bring you delicious original recipes and complete menus, which combine these super foods in such a way as to multiply their healing power.

You’ll also discover numerous clinical studies, which confirm the healing power of these super foods over today’s most prevalent medical conditions. While drug treatments provide “band-aid” solutions, many times with unwanted side effects that are harmful to the body, nutrition is the ultimate medicine because it supercharges the body’s ingenious self-healing functions. No drug can even approximate this ability.”

These sites ought to help us stay well, but in case we get sick and conventional medicine is not helping, it is good to go to sites like Bottom Line Secrets which can be found at:

http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com/index.html

“Bottom Line/NATURAL HEALING with Dr. Mark Stengler is dedicated to empowering readers with the deepest understanding of natural and alternative therapies—and how to use them to treat disease and stay well.” Bottom Line Secrets researches all kinds of alternative medicines and treatments and reports on a wide variety of approaches. They have a great bookstore of digital books to keep you informed of their latest findings.

Finally, I would also like to mention the Natural Health Dossier, which is a group of researchers dedicated to finding the best cures out there. They can be found at:

http://naturalhealthdossier.com/

“At Natural Health Dossier, our primary goal is to distribute the best natural health information in the world. Our independent health research team scours the world to bring you all the most powerful new, natural cures from the brightest doctors and research scientists, every month. We are dedicated to bringing our readers the latest proven health science… with real-world results backed by credible research… straight from scientists and doctors with exceptional credentials and solid track records to back them up.” Natural Health Dossier has an excellent video on 11 breakthrough cures to diseases that have stumped conventional medicine. They report on a cure for cancer that is 14 more times effective than chemotherapy.

Bookmark these sites and when you need them, you can visit them for more information. You can also get on the email list of these sites and receive periodic emails with new information. A person with good practical judgment should be open to information but should also critically evaluate that information. And the more information you have the better you will be able to evaluate that information.

Using Critical Thinking for Your Health Care

2011-05-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

A person with good practical judgment does not just rely on one source of information regarding her health. Today, if you go to the doctor and just trust the doctor’s information without checking into the matter yourself it is less than ideal. Doctors have been trained by medical schools and many even keep up with the latest information but they are also influenced by pharmaceutical companies and hospital administrations which do not have your best interests in mind but rather their own best interests. Pharmaceutical companies court doctors and feed them the latest information on their drugs, which they stand to make money with. They invest millions in the development of drugs and want to get patients using their drugs and the way they do this is to meet with individual doctors and explain the benefits of their new drug therapies to them. This is not to say the drugs are not useful and helpful, but they may not be the right thing for you. You also need an advocate, someone who is looking out for what is right for you. Hopefully your doctor is that person, but it is still important for you to learn as much as you can about your diagnosis and treatments.

This is why the Internet is such a godsend. You can find out more information from reliable sites on the Internet about your diagnosis as well as treatment options and alternative medicines. Sometimes what you find out can save your life. Let me tell you the story of how I saved my mother’s life by researching her alternatives on the Internet.

My mother was diagnosed with heart valve problems at age 68 and she was told that she needed to have a replacement valve put in. She told me that the surgeon had explained her options: either a pig’s valve or a mechanical valve. He also explained the differences between them. The pig’s valve would last approximately 10 years and so she would probably have to go through open-heart surgery again at age 78. But the mechanical valve would last until she died. With the mechanical valve she would have to take Coumadin. When she told me about this, she said she would probably get the mechanical valve since that seemed to make the most sense.

I told my mother to wait until I had a chance to research the situation and told her I would get back to her. It didn’t take me more than 15 minutes of research to find out something about the mechanical valve her doctor didn’t tell her. The mechanical valve would last until she died, but she might die immediately if the valve ever malfunctioned. I then looked into the pig’s valve. If the pig’s valve ever malfunctioned she would have plenty of time to get to the hospital to have it replaced, just like she does with her failing valve right now. I was alarmed by what I found out about the mechanical valve and was surprised the doctor did not inform her of that possibility. So then I began to think about the Coumadin. Coumadin is a blood-thinner that would keep the blood from coagulating around the mechanical valve. And although you have to be careful about getting cut since your blood won’t coagulate in the cut as easily anymore, people have been known to live well with Coumadin. But something came to mind that also alarmed me. I knew that my mother had diabetes and suffered from retinopathy, which is bleeding behind the eyes. I wondered if she would bleed more if her blood were thinner.

So when I got back to my mother, I had decided I definitely wanted her to get the pig’s valve. I would be devastated if I lost her suddenly. So I told her that and I warned her about the Coumadin. She then called her eye doctor to ask if Coumadin would cause her eyes to bleed more and he called the leading eye specialist in America to find the answer to that question. She got back that by no means should she ever take Coumadin because she could go blind.

So my mother opted for the pig’s valve even though her surgeon recommended the mechanical valve. She was lucky to get a very fine specimen of a valve and to this date (11 years later) it is still functioning at 100 percent.

But the real shocker is that one month after her open-heart surgery, when she was still recovering, the mechanical valves were recalled. Had she gotten a mechanical valve it may have malfunctioned, and if not, she would have had to undergo open-heart surgery twice in a few months time.

My mother thanks me for having saved her life. I have since discovered that the mechanical valve clicks all the time, including when you are sleeping. That was another drawback the surgeon never explained to her.

I don’t know if the surgeon gets some kind of kickback for recommending the mechanical valves but I do know that he did not explain all the shortcomings of the mechanical valve to my mother. He made the mechanical valve look better than it is. That kind of biased reporting needs to be checked. Doctors are supposed to inform you of the side effects of medications and treatments but they can skew that information to favor the choice they are most interested in.

For this reason, and many others, it is important that you do your own research into your diagnoses and treatment. And even more importantly than that, you should be taking a proactive approach to your health by learning about how you can stay healthy longer by eating the right foods and exercising. In my next blog, I will let you know about some of the websites out there where you can find information for taking care of your health.

Face Your Fears: Don't Let Them Imprison You

2011-05-29T14:32:00.001-07:00

Our fears have the power to imprison us if they are unconscious and we don’t face them. Facing your fears means first of all, making them conscious and then evaluating them by determining how realistic they are. In order to face your fears you have to spend quiet time alone, first of all, to bring them to the surface. This is a very painful process that a lot of people want to avoid. We are almost as much afraid of facing our fears as we are of what we fear. The reason we are afraid to face our fears is because we are also afraid we don’t have the resources to deal with them. In other words, we are afraid they will overwhelm us emotionally.

But not facing our fears is far more dangerous than facing them. If fears go unchecked they motivate us unconsciously and they do not go away. They simmer and they stew and they influence every decision we make or fail to make because of them. They can cause us to do something completely contrary to our self-interest because they are effectively undermining us. They don’t cease to be powerful because we suppress them. In fact they come out in many different ways and destroy the things we are not afraid of. People, who for instance, are afraid of not being in control all the time will destroy their relationships with their loved ones because they will constantly try to control everything that happens even if it frustrates and infuriates the loved one. Where as if they faced the fear they would not act in ways to constantly frustrate the other.

So the first thing one needs to do is overcome the fear that you do not have the resources to deal with the fear. First of all, you will not know what resources you need until you face the fear so not facing it keeps you in the dark about the resources you will need. Hence you have to face it and overcome your fears that you won’t be able to handle it. I find that in facing the fear, bringing it to the surface and looking at it objectively, that already in doing so, the resources begin to emerge. In order to help this process along, you should consider what the worst-case scenario is. Whatever fear you have it has a worst-case scenario: that thing you fear the most. Imagine what that would be in the quiet of your mind. Let your mind consider all of the fearful possibilities. If you are like me, immediately, you are going to start thinking about how you can deal with those possibilities. Options will present themselves even without your trying to think of some. Our minds are like that. They tend to problem solve so when you face your fears, your mind sets to work to solve the problem.

All of a sudden, you begin to realize that you do have the resources to face your fears. You will not die if this worst-case scenario comes to pass. You may not like the worst-case scenario, but you can survive it. The moment you realize that you could survive your worst-case scenario, it begins to lose power over you. It is amazing how this happens. And it happens so naturally and effortlessly. Which proves again how much our emotional states are reflections of our thoughts. Change your thoughts and you will change your emotional state of mind.

You don’t always have to do something to face your fears. Maybe you are afraid of sky-diving. It is not necessary to go sky-diving to face that fear. Instead, consider what it is that is so fearful about the act of sky-diving and see how you face those fears in your everyday life. So, perhaps what is fearful about sky-diving is that you are faced with uncertainty. Obviously, we face uncertainty everyday. So consider how often you have faced uncertainty before and have survived it. If you did and we all do, you will realize that uncertainty is not something we need to be afraid of because we endure it for a time and eventually things become certain.

Perhaps you are afraid of someone who appears to hate you. Instead of considering ways to confront that person, which might make it worse, consider what your resources are for dealing with the effects of their hatred. Do they ignore you? You can live with that. Do they try to undermine your reputation? You have the resources to tell others the truth. Instead of trying to attack them back, simply support yourself. Give people the contrary message. Be specific about what the manifestations of their hatred are and address each one on its own terms. Problem solve. Perhaps at some point talking to them might be the right thing to do.

However, sometimes facing your fears means doing something. If you fall off a horse, you need to get back on a horse to face that fear. If you are in an accident, you need to get back in the car to face the fear of having an accident. If someone hurt your feelings you might have to talk to that person to deal with the hurt feelings. If you are afraid of speaking in front of people you might just have to do it a few times to overcome the fear. But we shouldn’t assume that doing something always helps us face our fears. Often we need to simply imagine what they are and see that we have the resources to deal with them.

People with good practical judgment face their fears because otherwise they have negative impacts on our lives. No matter what the fear is, simply facing it and becoming conscious of it, helps stimulate thinking about the resources to deal with the fears. This is a natural process that can be trusted so one should always face fears.

Possibility is not Probability: Watch for that Slippery Slope

2011-05-28T14:41:00.000-07:00

As I said in my previous blog, what causes the upset we experience is often due to the implications and overhasty generalizations we draw from our experiences rather than the things themselves. What we do is imagine a possibility that is extreme and hence very upsetting. We imagine that possibility follows naturally from the event itself. But that isn’t true necessarily. It is possible but not necessarily probable.

We have to distinguish between possibilities, which are almost infinite, from probabilities, which are more likely to happen. A lot of people when they want to persuade you that their position is the right one will come up with extreme possibilities if their position is not taken. This is called slippery slope. They lead you to believe that if you take the other position you will slip down a slope into something very bad and will not be able to recover. Slippery slope makes sense if you are on skis and the slope is full of snow but if you are walking on dirt with a pole, it is not necessarily so slippery that you will inevitably end up at the bottom.

Take for instance, euthanasia. Most people are against the possibility of physician assisted suicide because they think we will slip down the slope of eventually having physicians kill patients who don’t want to be killed, namely involuntary euthanasia. So voluntary euthanasia is never given a chance. In a world where there are no regulations and laws it certainly would be a possibility that voluntary euthanasia would degenerate into involuntary euthanasia, but in a world like ours where physicians’ actions are regulated and lawfully prescribed it is not probable that voluntary euthanasia would degenerate into involuntary euthanasia. Again, it is helpful to use our “just because, doesn’t mean.” Just because we allow voluntary euthanasia doesn’t mean we will end up with involuntary euthanasia because physicians can be sued and prosecuted for such actions.

This same kind of thing happens in our personal lives when we deal with terrible circumstances that overwhelm us. We draw conclusions that might be possible but not probable. So what we need to do is distinguish between what is possible and what is probable. Just about anything is possible. And if we lived our lives with mere possibility we would be in a state of distress constantly while we are on alert for every possibility. But if we recognize that life and events have statistical probability, it makes it easier to deal with life as it is. For instance, if you are afraid of flying it is probably because you are aware of the possibility of a crash. If you kept that possibility in your head the whole time you were on the plane you would go nuts. Instead it is wise and healthy to consider the probability of a crash. Plane crashes are very rare events given how many flights occur everyday uneventfully. Therefore it is improbable any one person will ever be in a crash their entire life. Actually more people are less afraid of driving a car than flying and yet there is a greater probability for a car crash than a plane crash.

We are all afraid of things that might happen whether to ourselves or to our children or to loved ones. Those fears are often based on possibilities rather than probabilities so we have to remind ourselves what the probability is that our fears will come to pass. Once we do that, the fear is naturally lessened. Some fears are probable, but then we also know what we need to do to decrease their probability. When we approach our fears in terms of probability we are more aware of the conditions that make them happen and the conditions that can impede them from happening. In the case of a flight we should be aware of how many people are engaged in ensuring the safety of the flight. In the case of a child driving for the first time, beware of how you have taught the child the right way to drive. In the case of a natural disaster, beware of what you need to do to evacuate to minimize the possibilities of harm.

On the other hand, sometimes it makes sense to protect against something that is improbable but only possible. Sometimes it is important to protect against the possibility even if it is minute just because it would be so destructive if it were to happen. That is why people get flood insurance and have health insurance even if they are healthy now. That is why people get life insurance. Even if they don’t think they will die in the near future, they want to protect their family in case of that possibility. This kind of thing can also produce peace of mind.

It is important to distinguish between possibility and probability because they have different realities. Possibilities are not probabilities and hence we should not fear them as much as we should probabilities. Nor should we take measures against them as we should against unwanted probabilities. And telling the difference between the two can make the difference in your peace of mind.

Spend Time Processing Your Emotions Not Enduring Them

2011-05-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Some people have trouble falling asleep at night because they are emotionally upset. Emotions can overwhelm us and cause us to be distressed. The response to this is to process the emotion. A lot of people do not know how to process their emotions and simply rehash them and go around in circles with them. But processing emotions puts them to rest and reinstates a peaceful state of mind. First of all it is important to understand that overwhelming emotions are just brain states of chemicals surging through the brain and most likely through the amygdala. The amygdala prepares us for fight or flight so when the chemicals are surging there, we are upset and those chemicals need to be quieted before we will feel peace of mind again.

Then there are those people who get angry when they get upset and go over what other people did to them to make them angry and they get angrier. Or those people who are hurt go over how the other person did them wrong and hurt them. Often the same thing is happening in the brain. The amygdala is firing with its neurons and the brain is in a state of alertness to fight or flight. Since this is a brain state it stands to reason that we should just consider how to change this brain state to a more peaceful state. Regardless of who did what and why they did it, it has been done and now the brain is upset and needs to settle down.

Processing your emotions is the answer to this problem. Processing emotions requires first of all that you are aware that you are upset. It is important that you not say “I am upset,” but that you say to yourself “I am experiencing upset.” This will make it easier to process the emotion. The next thing to do is to refuse to consider the causes of the upset. The causes of the upset are not so important as the implications. And focusing on the causes and make it impossible to focus on the implications of the event. This is the difference between backward-looking reason and forward-looking reason. Backward-looking reason looks at causes, which are in the past and cannot be changed. Forward-looking reason looks at future consequences, which can be changed. We generally are overwhelmed with fear and upset when we think there is something that is very bad that is going to happen to us. So consider what you think it is that is so bad that is going to happen. If your girlfriend left you, consider what thoughts you are having about that, for instance that you will be alone for the rest of your life. Generally it is not the event that is so bad as the implications we draw from that event. We often generalize from the event to horrendous consequences that are not at all required by the event itself. You lost your job and think you will never get another one. That is what causes the distress, not the losing of the job because if you take a moment to think about it, you are probably glad you lost such a crummy job. The implication that you won’t find another one that is better and that helps pay the bills is really what is distressing you. And these forward-looking consequences are things we can change.

Now that you are thinking about the implications, you need to assess the reasonableness of those implications. We draw overhasty conclusions all the time and jump to conclusions that are unwarranted. So we need to determine how reasonable those implications are. Critically evaluate them by using this formula: just because…, doesn’t mean…. So you think now that your girlfriend has left you that you will be alone for the rest of your life? Say this: “just because my girlfriend left me, doesn’t mean I will be alone for the rest of my life because next year I am going to meet my future spouse.” You don’t know if that is true, but it could be true and certainly has greater probability of being true than that you will be alone for the rest of your life.

Likewise: “Just because I lost my job, doesn’t mean I won’t find a another job because I am going to go out looking right now and I might find a better job.” Using this formula immediately brings a sense of peace into one’s mind because it is logical and also necessary. Our minds are constructed like this. Sometimes it might take a little bit of time for the logic to settle in but when it does it immediately brings hope and peace back to the mind.

So processing our emotions is about processing our thoughts. We need to critically evaluate the thoughts that we let into our heads. Sometimes the thoughts come so quickly and unconsciously we don’t know they are there until we reflect on them. That is why we need quiet time to reflect when we are upset. But the important point is that we reflect not on the causes but the consequences and implications that we draw from the events that brought about the upset. This is productive process and actually has the power to settle the mind and bring it back to a sense of hope and peace.

Think about your plans in the morning, not your regrets at night

2011-05-26T15:00:00.001-07:00

Some people find it hard to fall asleep because they find themselves going over and processing what happened to them during the day, often with regrets. Going over your plans for the day ahead of time during the morning hours can help calm the mind at night. There are a number of reasons for this. It is not that our plans are always fulfilled if we think about them ahead of time but rather that when we think about them ahead of time we are more likely to see where they might not be fulfilled and how we can thus make adjustments ahead of time. Practical judgment, knowing the right thing to do at the right time and in the right way, is often a quick thing but it is prepared for ahead of time. During the day we often don’t have time to deliberate, so it is important to deliberate in the morning when we have time to quietly consider all the consequences and unexpected events that may happen during the day.

Wisdom comes when we spend quiet time. We can go over our plans for the day and all of a sudden, we see a hole where we didn’t see one before. That is the coming of wisdom. Just taking time to sit quietly before you start your day can be conducive to wisdom. This quiet time can also help you prioritize your plans. Maybe some things will not get done in the space of a day because we cannot always predict what is going to happen that day, so if you prioritize, then you at least get done what is really important and cannot be put off until the next day. And quiet time going over the plans allows you to see their importance and the consequences that follow not only from them but if they are not done.

I teach men in prison and I ask them why they are there and instead of telling me what crime they committed to get them there, they invariably tell me that they are there because they did not consider the consequences of what they were doing. They began their days with or without plans but did not think about what consequences would follow from those plans. That is a recipe for regret. We certainly cannot completely control our days and so many unexpected things can happen but if you plan your day and understand what the priorities are you can adjust to the various unexpected happenings better and end your day with fewer regrets.

Try just taking time before heading to work after breakfast and a cup of coffee to sit quietly with no distractions. Let your plans for the day come to mind. Consider the plans and consider what might happen during the day. It is amazing to me when I do this that so many things come to mind that I had not previously anticipated. I remember things that need to be done that I had forgotten. I consider the order in which I should do things and it is easier to imagine the best way to accomplish my plans because I see connections that I would not have seen otherwise. People and their concerns also come to mind. I think of people I might want to pray for or people whom I need to contact. Wisdom comes sometimes to tell me a plan is not a good idea. Alternatives suggest themselves. And as I consider the alternatives one emerges as better than the other. Objections have a chance to get through to me. I question a plan I had never questioned before. I see my plans from other people’s points of view. I consider how what I plan to do will be perceived by others. I consider whether I want to let that matter. I consider how I want to explain myself to others so that they understand me as I understand myself.

All of this allows me to anticipate problems that I may not have thought of before. I actually can fulfill my plans more smoothly because I have anticipated problems. And when the day doesn’t go as I plan, I can also adjust more quickly so that I can eventually come back to my plans. Knowing the right thing to do at the right time is not magical, but something that is prepared for in advance by spending time with wisdom. Practical judgment needs wisdom and wisdom is something that comes to us in quiet moments. So spend time in the morning instead of at night reflecting on your day.

Dealing with other people's expectations

2011-05-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

The fact is that other people develop expectations regarding us and sometimes these are beneficial to us and sometimes they are harmful. When people expect us to behave a certain way, it is actually conducive to our behavior if that is the way we are and want to behave. When people expect us to come to work and function in a competent way, they leave us alone so that we can function competently. If they expect us to mess it up and hover over us we become frustrated and that contributes to our messing it up. So expectations are not always bad but can conduce to our best interest.

However, people also develop unwarranted expectations of us and when we don’t conform to their expectations they are disappointed and often angry. Therefore it is important to manage other people’s expectations. In the cartoon above the employer is managing the employee’s expectation of length of employment. The employee is being put on notice that he can be terminated at any time and how that termination will look. This will affect the employee’s expectations about the security of his position.

In the work environment, contracts often establish legitimate expectations. These are characterized by necessity and consequences when the expectations are not met. People then are not merely disappointed, they are harmed. In these cases, expectations are perfectly legitimate. However, it is still possible that the expectations are not grounded in the contract and then there is conflict and a need to interpret the contract.

In a wedding ceremony, couples exchange vows, which then establish expectations about faithfulness and constancy. These are legitimate expectations and when they are violated there are good reasons for disappointment and outrage. In these cases, people are also more than disappointed, they are also harmed by the breaking of vows. These are expectations that hence need to be taken seriously and when you enter into a marriage you are creating these kinds of expectations and promising to fulfill them. So they too must be managed. A wife expects to grow old with her husband. A husband expects a wife to care about him. Some of the expectations that arise in this relationship are well founded, some of them not. Managing the ones that are well founded is a task of practical judgment. And managing to dissuade the other person of the ones that are not well founded is a task of practical judgment.

The key to managing other people’s expectations is first of all to become aware of them. When people first marry or first enter the work place they are not aware of all the expectations that are unconsciously lurking. It is only in living and working and facing the frustration of the expectation that we become aware of the expectation and then can modify it or change the circumstances. And as we become aware of other people’s expectations of us some of those are not going to be conducive to our best self-interest. In these cases, we need to learn how to help other people change their expectations of us in an effective way. Getting angry can sometimes be effective but not always. Sometimes anger just gets anger in response.

It is often very helpful to simply tell the other person what your expectations are so that they are aware that you too have expectations. Most people can adjust to your expectations if they don’t have strong expectations themselves. But conflict is going to occur when they have strong expectations. That is when it takes finesse and not direct appeal to maneuver their expectations to your side. Sometimes just dropping hints subtly can be effective because the hints bypass the conscious brain, which can put up defenses. Sometimes just telling a story about someone else who behaved in a similar way can over come the conscious rejection of contrary expectations.

Combatively fighting another person’s expectations can often solidify them. Most expectations are unconscious to begin with and that is the best way to leave them and change them. So being subtle and being kind is important. Frustrated expectations really do hurt and so you don’t want to create them, but dissolve them before they happen if possible. This is not manipulation if the other person consents to change his expectations. The consent is what you are aiming for. Using fear and threats to change expectations is manipulation.

A person with good practical judgment will be aware of expectations and will pick up subtle hints of their reality and will also subtly replace them with more appropriate expectations. However, where subtlety is not effective a person with good practical judgment will explicitly set her boundaries in a kind but firm way. A human being cannot be all things to all people and some expectations are simply in appropriate or too excessive.

Dealing with your own expectations

2011-05-24T17:40:00.000-07:00

Expectations are inevitable and you can’t eliminate the propensity to have expectations, but you can learn better ways to deal with the resultant disappointment. Some self-help books recommend getting rid of expectations to solve the problem of disappointment. It is true that if you have expectations you are going to experience disappointment because life is not always going to correspond to your expectations. So it is recommended that you get rid of expectations and then there will be no disappointment. But this fails to take into account human nature and human reason. Human beings by their very reason develop expectations because they use their reason to generalize their experience. We generalize from our experience, from other people’s experiences and from what we learn. Expectations are anticipations of other people’s behavior. We naturally want reality to conform to some kind of lawfulness because that is the nature of reason. When reality doesn’t conform to our expectations it is because it didn’t conform to the generalization we made. So you expect your spouse to come home everyday at the same time because that is what your experience has shown you she has done in the past. The expectation arises out of the generalization from past experience. Now if she doesn’t arrive at the same time then your expectation is thwarted. You come into the office and expect the computers to be working because from past experience they were always working before, but now they are not working and your expectations are thwarted.

The problem is not with the expectations. Most expectations if they are based on generalizations from experience are well grounded in repeated experience and hence they should not be abandoned just because of one counterexample. However, they can be misapplied expectations. Sometimes we have expectations that a certain circumstance or person will behave like another circumstance or person. So you may expect your spouse to behave the way a parent did. Then the spouse doesn’t behave that way and your expectation is thwarted. This is misapplying an expectation to a new person and it may not be right to apply it to that person. Of course you may nevertheless want your spouse to be like your parent and then we have a problem. Applying expectations to new persons and circumstances where they don’t apply causes disappointment. Now the issue is not the expectation so much as how you deal with the disappointment. Do you try to change the other person? Do you get angry and resentful that he does not behave as your father did? Do you retaliate? Or do you adjust your expectations according to the new person and situation?

Disappointment is probably one of the hardest experiences people have to deal with and we are generally not taught how to deal with disappointment in a positive way. Frustrated expectations and disappointment happens quickly and since our expectations were largely unconscious to begin with, it is almost an unconscious thing that happens to us. How many people actually say to themselves, “I am suffering disappointment.” Usually they get angry and indignant and self-righteous and immediately blame the person or situation for their state of painful experience. It takes a very self-aware person to look at themselves and their expectations rather than at the other person. In my experience, people have to be gently led to look internally. But in my experience people also find it comforting to look inwardly because where it is very hard to change external circumstances and people, it is relatively easy to change one’s expectations. Once a person gets the knack of this they appreciate looking inside for their salvation rather than outside. But it generally takes another person who has compassion to elicit this inward look. Continued self-righteous talk and blame will continue the outward look.

It is not wrong to tell someone you are disappointed. Sometimes, this actually can cause a person to want to change their behavior because they don’t want to be a source of disappointment for you. This is not only a positive way to change the other’s behavior but the only effective way because they have to be motivated to want to change and blaming them only makes them defensive. Of course if you tell the other you are disappointed with contempt in your voice this will also make it impossible for the other to change. The disappointment must be expressed with a sense of genuine hurt and humility. But even this can become manipulative and counter-productive for genuine change. So, for this reason, it is always appropriate to spend time reflecting on your expectations, making them conscious, and evaluating them as to their appropriateness to this particular circumstance or person. It is always easier to change your expectations than change the other person.

A person with good practical judgment will know when to change their expectations and when to communicate their disappointment. But a person with good practical judgment will be aware that it is expectations that cause disappointment, not the other person or circumstance.

Ethical Maturity Takes Time

2011-05-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

People’s motives for being moral vary according to their maturity. Lawrence Kohlberg developed a 6-stage motivation and judgment scale to measure moral motivation. He divided the stages according to three criteria: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Each level contains two stages of moral judgment. The first stage of moral judgment, which corresponds to our earliest motivation for moral behavior is the stage in which we are motivated to be moral primarily by fear of punishment. In this stage, the young person does what the parent wants them to do mostly because they are afraid of being punished by the parent. This is a kind of obedience orientation. The main motivation is fear and although as we mature we grow out of this stage of moral motivation, we never fully leave it. It can always play some role in our motivation for good behavior. Many people, for instance, are highly motivated not to break laws because of the fear of prison and fines. I am still motivated not to speed while driving because of the fear of a ticket.

But as a child matures other motivations can take precedence over this motivation and Kohlberg believes that the next stage is characterized by a hope of reward as motivation. In this stage the child is motivated to good behavior by the promise of some kind of reward, whether that is a toy or candy, or some other tangible sign of reward. This stage continues to be effective as a motivator our entire lives as long as we see something in it for us. Of course being moral only because you are going to be rewarded is not an efficient motivator, because there are many times we have to do the right thing and we are not rewarded and sometimes we are even harmed by doing the right thing. But one can see this motivation effective in adult behavior in so far as they are moral in hopes of going to heaven. If heaven is the only reason for being moral, then this stage is behind the good behavior.

As the child matures, she looks less for a tangible punishment or reward but more for social approval from her parents. In the third stage, which Kohlberg calls the “good girl/good boy” stage, a child is motivated to good behavior in order to please their parents. This is especially evident in the “look.” Many children are motivated to be moral just by the “look” their parents give them when they are misbehaving. The child no longer needs a tangible punishment or reward but is simply motivated by approval or disapproval. Adults still struggle with this stage of moral motivation when they fear being judged by their neighbors. In my previous blogs, I wrote that one should not be motivated by fear of one’s reputation and it is this stage that I am criticizing in the adult. Adults need to move beyond this stage of moral motivation.

The fourth developmental stage has to do with being motivated to obey laws and norms because they are the social structures that hold the community together. In this stage one is motivated by the law, because it is the law. One does the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because it will get you some reward or punishment or one will be approved. This is a higher stage of moral development and judgment because what is moral is not always something that is rewarded. Sometimes you have to do the right thing even when it is painful or uncomfortable. Paying taxes and obeying laws that are inconvenient are good examples. Sometimes you have to go visit a friend in the hospital even though it makes you sick to be in a hospital. Sometimes you have to tell the truth when it has bad consequences. Sometimes you have to help someone you don’t really like, but it is the right thing to do.

But obeying the law because it is the law is not the highest stage of moral judgment because sometimes it is morally right to break the law. It might be right to jay walk in order to save a child that is about to be hit by a car. It might be right to speed and violate traffic signs in order to rush someone to the hospital to save their life. Civil disobedience is the morally right thing to do in cases where the laws are immoral and result in immoral actions. In Nazi Germany, for instance, the law permitted killing Jews who were citizens. Those laws were obviously immoral and breaking them would be the right thing to do. In America, during times of segregation, Jim Crow laws turned American citizens into 3 fifths of persons and justified treating these people as inferior which is obviously immoral. In these cases, disobeying laws that are immoral is justified by the belief that morality is higher than the law. People in this stage of moral motivation will make hold that belief. This does not mean that laws may always be broken, but only in those cases where they are immoral. This stage is called the social contract stage because it assumes that the laws exist for the sake of persons and not persons for the sake of laws. Laws are an agreed contract we enter into for our mutual benefit as human beings.

The sixth stage of moral judgment has to do with a person who is motivated to be moral because of principles of morality that person has chosen for themselves. These principles motivate to moral behavior without fear of punishment or hope of reward or because of any other legal motivation. They are the highest principles of morality. Kohlberg thought that only a few people actually achieved this level of moral judgment and that only a handful of people, like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others actually operated on these principles. I suspect that Kohlberg also had Immanuel Kant’s moral law in mind for this stage of moral motivation. These are principles like “don’t use other people as means to your own ends” or “treat other human beings with respect” or “serve other human beings for their sake” or “refuse to harm other living beings.” People who are motivated by moral principles stand out as people who do moral deeds without self-interest or without getting something in return. They are people who are self-sacrificing. They are also people who will obey laws not out of fear or reward but because they see how laws benefit people. They won’t speed for instance not because they are afraid of a ticket but because they are afraid of causing an accident and hurting someone. They pay taxes, not because they are forced to but because they understand that society requires taxes for human beings to survive and thrive in community with one another.

In relating to people a person with good practical judgment should be aware of the stage of moral judgment and the type of moral motivation that a person exhibits. We can motivate other people to moral action only by appealing to the level at which they found themselves. Trying to motivate someone by a much higher level will not be effective. Kohlberg found that people could reason one stage above their strongest stage and that was it. People with good practical judgment know that motivating other people is an important part of our ability to cooperate with others and get along with them, and so it is important to be intelligent about how to motivate others morally as well.

Don't Take it Personally

2011-05-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

If you have ever read the Four Agreements, you know that one of the four agreements is not to take things that happen to you personally. This is such important wisdom that it bears repeating in case you have not read the Four Agreements.

"Taking it personally" is what you do when you identify with what happens to you, you identify with what you think, or you identify with how you feel. First of all, everything that happens to us is not always because of us and that is why we shouldn't take it personally. A friend is walking down the street and you greet her but she doesn’t greet you back. The first thing you do is to take it personally. You immediately jump to the conclusion that she is deliberately ignoring you and you feel really bad in fact so bad you don’t even try to call out louder in case she didn’t hear you or see you. This is a typical example where we attribute the cause to ourselves rather than to the other person. Perhaps she is lost in thought, perhaps she has just received bad news, perhaps she just didn’t see or hear you. When we take it personally we don’t consider these other options although they may well be the case.

Some one cuts you off in traffic and you immediately think they did it to you on purpose and you become very angry. It might well be that this person is having a terrible day and did not mean to cut you off. Or maybe they were more aggressive in their driving because they are hurrying home because their child is sick. Whatever the reason, it is just as likely that there is some other reason than that they meant it for us. If you really think about the fact that you are taking it personally, it is ridiculous to take it personally. The guy doesn’t even know you.

Some one criticizes you. The cartoon says: “shoot him.” But the truth is that you have to “consider the source.” If someone criticizes you consider where they are coming from. The source of their criticism is in themselves more than it is in you. Consider how insecure or jealous or envious they are and how that motivates them to see less in you than is actually there. Perhaps they have an ulterior motive for criticizing you. Their criticism is probably not motivated by what is best for you but what is best for them. So don’t take it personally, since it isn’t about you at all.

A dean got upset with a student and the student took it personally and attributed the cause to herself. She left the office in tears. But then later she learned that the dean does that to all students. She took personally what she shouldn’t have taken personally. The cause of his behavior was himself and not her. It is true that she didn’t know this ahead of time, but she quickly made the assumption that it was because of her that he was so rude.

I have talked about assumptions before. When we make assumptions quickly in a specific way it keeps us from being good critical thinkers. We need to be aware that taking it personally is an assumption that many people make and they need to question that assumption. I suspect that 99 out of 100 times the way people behave is attributed to themselves rather than in response to us. We should then make the assumption that it is because of the other that we were treated that way.

We also take things personally when we identify with our thoughts and our emotions. One way to know you identify with your thoughts is talk to someone who disagrees with you and see how you feel. If you feel bad then you know you identify with your thoughts. People who are always right and never wrong identify with their thoughts and hence cannot change them or admit a new thought that might contradict the other thought. They cling to their thoughts and will cut others down rather than admit someone else has a valid thought. That is pretty extreme but you can see shades of this in just about everyone. The reason why it exhibits better practical judgment to be able to give up your opinions and thoughts is because thoughts and opinions have to be based on evidence and if someone presents contrary evidence that calls that opinion into question, one ought to be able to consider it. This is not to say there shouldn’t be deep-seated convictions, but even how these convictions are held and how they are interpreted can come into question and should be questionable. We are not thoughts and opinions. We are human beings who hold convictions.

Another way in which we take things personally is when we identify with our emotions as though we are our emotions. The tell tale clue that a person is doing this is when they say something like this. “I am angry” or “I am sad” or “I am jealous.” This sentence literally says: “I am my emotion.” This is not true of course since we are much more than our emotions. The truth is that we are just experiencing that emotion at this particular time. So it makes more sense to say “I feel angry” or “I feel sad” or “I feel jealous.” This formulation takes a little more thought but it is more accurate and it keeps one from identifying with the emotion so that you can’t get rid of the emotion. Anger takes longer to get over if you identify with it. If you simply say “I feel anger,” you are already half way over it.

The final way we take things personally is when we say that other people caused our emotions. “He made me feel bad.” It is true that someone might have done something that then preceded your feeling bad, but what really caused your feeling bad was not that thing, but your perceptions of that thing. Our perceptions intervene so quickly we don’t notice our agency in the causation of our feelings. But it is always the case that we interpret what others do and we see what they do in a specific light and that is what brings about our feelings. Our thoughts cause our feelings. We find this out when we realize that we misinterpreted what the other person did. To show how fast this can happen, consider the example where someone runs into you and you are incensed that they purposely hit you. But immediately they apologize profusely and it becomes clear that they did not intend to hit you. Your emotions change from rage to forgiveness in a few seconds. And if they keep apologizing you are reduced to telling them it was nothing. That is how fast your perceptions can change and then change how you feel.

So a person with good practical judgment should not take things personally. And if we do, we should introduce an intervening thought that critically examines the personal reaction. We don’t even need to wait for the other to introduce that thought, we can do it ourselves as soon as we note that we have taken something personally.

The Stages of Marriage

2011-05-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

There really is no other way to live marriage than in stages. That is not to discourage people but to encourage them to persevere. There are four stages to the married relationship. Not everyone will go through all these stages and that is why so many fail, it is almost always because they cannot move to the next stage of the relationship.

The first stage of a relationship is the pre-married one in which the couples try to please each other all the time and along with that they ignore each other’s faults. This is a very pleasant state for both people but it can’t last very long so it needs to progress to marriage.

The beginning of the marriage starts with vows. These vows prepare each person for the expectation that marriage is going to make them happy and that it is the responsibility of other person to ensure that. Actually, each person projects his mother or father on the other and expects them to care about them like their parent did. It is like a contract. Having said vows supports this idea that there is a contract. The essence of the contract is “it is your responsibility to make me happy and if you do I will reward you and if you don’t I will punish you.” The implication of this contract is that the couple are in a constant battle to change each other for the first part of the marriage because of course they are not going to make each other happy when their own egos assert themselves. They are actually saying to one another: “I would be happy if only you were better than you are.”

Of course, this stage cannot last forever because at some point the couple are going to discover that the other is really not getting any better and they are not getting any happier. So if this couple is lucky they will move to the second stage of marriage in which they will decide to make themselves happy and accept and love the other as they are instead of trying to change them. Many couples get so fixated on the first stage and so sure they can make the other person better that they never make it to the second stage. When they get to the point that they begin to humiliate the other and speak with contempt in their voice, the marriage is on its last legs.

But if a couple is lucky they will begin to accept each other as fallible and as they are and will take responsibility for their own happiness. At this stage each person appears to go her/his own way and they spend time making themselves happy and again over look the faults of the other. If true love exists at this stage, they will actually begin to love the other for who they really are and not what they wish them to be, but love at this stage is very difficult because both are trying to make themselves happy. A couple can drift apart in this stage simply because they don’t spend much time with each other and they want to avoid fights and the attempt to change the other person.

However, if a couple is lucky they will find a desire to spend more time together as they not only accept each other the way they are but begin to appreciate each other the way they are. Their acceptance turns into love and curiosity and interest. At this final stage of marriage the two see each other as persons and there is an admiration and gratitude that arises in relationship. You admire the ability of the other to have endured you and you are grateful that the other has persevered with you in spite of your fallibleness. At this stage each person wants to make the other person happy and will deny her/himself to do so. This is usually a good time for this to arise as each person is now also aging and needs more help. A great satisfaction arises in making the other person happy and this binds the relationship together. A couple will also develop a deep and abiding affection for each other. They now like the very things that drove them crazy in the other in the first stage of marriage. They find it endearing. And they develop an intuitive understanding of each other so that they can practically read each other’s mind and anticipate each other’s needs.

A person with good practical judgment will understand how important the married relationship is and will learn patience as the relationship develops over time. Marriages take a life-time to develop and one should be flexible enough to move from one stage to the next as it develops.

Care Not About Your Reputation This Way Too

2011-05-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

What about the case where you are worried about the judgments of others who are evaluating you on whether you are principled enough? Politicians, judges, teachers, doctors and preachers worry about their reputations in this way. This is so, because these professions are held to higher standards of morality. These professions are concerned with the welfare of many people and if their standards and principles are lax, then that will affect many people detrimentally.

Yet, such professions are held by human beings who are not perfect and yet also not immoral. While some people in these professions need to be reminded about obeying the laws and upholding moral principles, many people in these professions need to be reminded that they should not care about their reputations to such an extent that it impedes their ability to be human and it leads to dissemblance. People who deny who they really are and pretend to be better than they are because they fear for their reputation are undermining our perception of truth and reality, not to mention their own authentic experience of themselves.

First of all, the person who dissembles is denying her own humanity and particularity. Trying to conform to laws and principles all the time denies those parts of us that are not generic but are rather very particular. Most of all, this can cause a person to deny their own bodily uniqueness. People try to conceal their body behind masks of cosmetics and fine clothing, but that doesn’t conceal the contempt they have for their bodies. It is often years later that such suppressions manifest in bodily diseases. Sometimes too, one’s uniqueness gets masked in abhorrent sexual activity as though the person is trying to make their body into a generic tool to correspond to the principle one is supposed to uphold.

Then there is the cost to others who are victims of this elaborate semblance of perfection. Many people look down upon themselves in comparison with the alleged perfect one. It causes people to feel inferior and it is no wonder that when this contrived semblance is exposed they feel so outraged. And their outrage of course strikes fear in the hearts of all people who are trying to live principled lives but not always doing so perfectly. Which then leads to further dissemblance and suppression.

The way out of this vicious cycle is to not care about your reputation. That is a very hard thing to do. Especially in those points where the fear is the greatest that you will be exposed, you have to let down your mask. Practicing letting it down will make it easier as time goes by. Constantly protecting the mask will make it harder to let down and overtime will make it impossible. You have to have the courage to be yourself in all your particularity and uniqueness. Paul Tillich wrote about the Courage to Be. This is the courage to face our particularity and death because death is what makes us unique. No one can die for us. Only we can die. And so letting your reputation die is the first step to accepting yourself as you are and having the courage to be yourself.

My stomach taught me all I needed to know about accepting my bodily uniqueness. I used to drink tons of coffee until one day it turned up with gastritis. Then I learned my limitations. But it kept teaching me. When I would go to people’s houses and visit they would offer me coffee but my stomach taught me how to say “no, thank you.” As a child I had never learned to say “no.” I was under the compulsion to say “yes” all the time to what adults asked of me. My stomach taught me to say “no” because if I didn’t say “no” I would hear from my stomach later. Bodily uniqueness has a way of particularizing us and getting us out of the generic reality we try to live as social creatures.

And when you are yourself, others will have courage to be themselves too and will be much less likely to judge you harshly when you are not perfect. Pretend to be perfect and they will judge harshly any deviation; but if you let them know from the start you are not perfect and are fallible, they will be more lenient and accepting. And you will probably also live longer when you accept the uniqueness of your own body.

People with good practical judgment must have the wisdom to look beyond the reputation and see reality as it is. But they must also have the courage to scorn their own reputation and do things that would put it at risk not only for their own sake, but for the sake of those who are so eagerly watching.

Care Not For Your Reputation

2011-05-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

If you stand for principles and the right thing you won’t always be pleasing to everyone. In Epictetus’ day, they made fun of philosophers who wanted to see more deeply into reality. They were scorned as being pretentious and then derided. Today you can be scorned for being chaste, moral, wanting to follow the rules, obeying the law, being religious, believing in God, etc. But be this way anyway. The scorners are not more knowledgeable about reality than you are. They just use scorn to dissuade you. They have their preferences but your choices are not mere preferences but are actually matters of principle and right, so don’t let their preferences outweigh your choices based on principles and right.

When I was in seventh grade I was the butt of jokes for Debbie H. She made fun of me every chance she had. I was drinking from the water fountain? She would say “Drink all the water why don’t you.” If I was walking home from school, she would say “where are all your friends?” She and her friend Vicky made my life miserable for a year. Then all of a sudden at the end of the year she turned around and tried to be my friend. She offered me her cigarettes. I didn’t do anything to encourage this, I was just Stoical the whole year. I put up with her derision without a fight. That is when she finally realized that my values were based on principles. Her values were based on momentary pleasures but I was going for the lasting values. If I thought she could have been a true friend, then maybe I would have made friends with her but sharing cigarettes was not a basis for a true friendship.

Sometimes there is no way to argue your point except to endure derision Stoically. To fight back would be to give into the momentary pleasure. If you are living by principles and not by momentary desires you are not going to be able to argue your principles easily. Principles show themselves over a long period of time and not in the ease of the moment. So don’t be afraid to simply say nothing when derided. Not fighting back is not losing, it is standing for something that is more permanent than fleeting words.

A person with good practical judgment is going to know that principles have more lasting value than cigarettes anyway. And friendship is not based on cigarettes, but rather on principles of commitment and courage.

Jealousy is based in possessiveness

2011-05-16T16:06:00.001-07:00

An unknown author writes: “Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare; but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common.” Jealousy presumes that someone belongs to you and you are disturbed by that person’s disposition. You cannot be jealous of someone that you don’t assume belongs to you. You can only be jealous if you assume someone belongs to you and that is why there is a way to save yourself from jealousy. You must overcome the assumption that another person belongs to you and you will rescue yourself from jealousy.

Jealousy is a very powerful emotion that can overwhelm you and devour your thinking and time. Jealousy occurs often in love relationships because even if we know we can never own another person we still love to entertain the idea. We assume that person belongs to us and to us alone and when we find they belong to themselves and to others we become jealous. We don’t just stop at jealousy either. Just like envy we move to destructiveness and we attempt to arrest the other person to keep them to ourselves. We get angry, we implore, we manipulate and maneuver the person so that they are available to us alone when we are jealous of them. Jealousy is not envy. It is possessive. Jealousy wants control of that which it loves. And in trying to control what it loves it smothers it and exterminates it. Jealousy is a very ugly emotion that destroys the very thing it loves.

Love if it is to survive jealousy must be set loose. One must learn to let go of that which one loves. Learning to love with out possession is a noble endeavor but also a rare one. Most people are not capable of letting go but grab and grasp. But if you can let go and let the other live you will find that the other comes back willingly again and again. Letting the other live and thrive attracts them to us. They find their path but are attracted to our support and encouragement without demand and possession. It is extremely powerful to let go of another person. And hence also extremely attractive. It takes courage to make the move though at first, but when you practice letting go you will be surprised at how powerful the pull without jealousy.

A person with good practical judgment understands that jealousy destroys love. And such a person has the capacity to explore the alternative of letting the other be and watching how that letting go attracts the other to her. Jealousy is a very negative and destructive emotion that only can be over come with time and patience and great love.

Envy is your worst nightmare

2011-05-15T16:39:00.001-07:00

Harold Coffin notes: “Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.” So many people are unconsciously motivated by envy and it is a pity. In order to be envious you have to look at another’s success and resent it. You can’t envy someone if you are really happy for her. You only envy them when you resent their success and think you are not capable of that much success. So Harold Coffin has a very profound insight into the case of envy. Envy is looking at someone else’s successes and blessings and ignoring one’s own successes and blessings.

But envy doesn’t just stop at this. Envy moves on to resentment and often to an attempt to undermine those who are doing well. Envy is not sufficient to itself. It wants more and it normally wants the destruction of the other’s success. So then envy leads to planning that is destructive. I have noticed this pattern in academia. It is never good to inform your colleagues of your successes because it not only leads to envy on their part but to strategies of destruction.

There is a good reason for this. This world is very competitive and people are judged and evaluated based on comparisons with other people. So if you cannot compete with the other person on objective terms it is better to undermine the competitor. Now not everyone in academia is like this, but there are enough people to make this advice sound. Keep your successes to yourself so that you don’t provoke the envy of others. It is better to lay low and not proclaim yourself and thereby evade envy-motivated reactions.

But for those who are willing to develop beyond envy and avoid its complicated developments, the counter measure to envy is to count your own blessings and successes. We are not going to be measured by the standard of other people in the end but measured by our own standard. What have we undertaken? What is the measure of goodness and success in that undertaking? Be proud of what you have accomplished and count the blessings you have received. Put your best foot forward and hold fast to your vision of goodness and success. You surely have not given that up! Those who envy give up on their own visions of goodness and success. Don’t do that. Hold fast to your life plan and what you hope to achieve in the time allotted to you. Sometimes you won’t shine as brilliantly as others but you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have done so with integrity and not envy.

A person with good practical judgment knows when envy is rearing its ugly head and knows enough to let it go and replace it with an appreciation of the gifts that you yourself have to bring to life. We are not all equal, but we are equally gifted in our own ways.

Don’t let other people’s judgments bother you.

2011-05-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Epictetus writes: “If your body was turned over to just anyone, you would doubtless take exception. Why aren’t you ashamed that you have made your mind vulnerable to anyone who happens to criticize you, so that it automatically becomes confused and upset?” This is a really good question but the truth is that we are all vulnerable to other people’s judgments. We often assume the worst. We do anything out of line and we assume that other people’s judgments will be condemning and dismissive. We don’t even know what other people are thinking and yet we assume the worst. We assume the judgment is so condemning we are embarrassed that we did what we did. We can hardly forgive ourselves we are so sure that other people are judging us harshly. Have you been there and experienced that? If not, you are probably not a human being. We are almost programmed to be judgmental. I have friends who know being judgmental is wrong but they can’t stop themselves and the backlash is overwhelming because the degree to which they judge others is the degree to which they will judge themselves.

We do this because we are a social species and that is the way we regulate our behavior but our judgments and their harshness far exceed what is necessary to create a harmonious society. So we need to cut back and introduce charitable thoughts in place of the judgments. And if we want to be free from the harsh judgments of others we really need to be free first of all from our own harsh inner critic. So the technique is this: whenever you are aware that you are judging another, introduce a charitable thought instead. “Oh he made a mistake but didn’t mean too.” “Oh he just didn’t know we did things this way.” “Oh she is struggling with her weight.” “Oh she really meant well.” Whatever the judgment is, introduce a thought that mitigates the severity of the judgment just as though you were a judge sitting on a bench dolling out judgments. You might even put yourself in the other person’s place and realize how they must feel if they find out that they did it wrong or were out of line. That takes a lot of courage and grace.

So the point of course is that when we practice charity towards others, when we make a mistake, we will not condemn ourselves so strongly. We will realize “Oh everyone knows I did wrong, but they are just like me, they introduce a charitable thought and do not condemn me, so I don’t need to condemn myself.” Realizing that people can be charitable is possible only when I practice charity myself. It is so much easier to get over a social mistake if you simply realize that most people are far more charitable than you think. And you will know that if you practice it too.

So don’t worry too much about how other people judge you. Our fear of judgment often impedes our creativity and unique contributions because we fear they will be judged. But that is giving your mind over to others as a slave would give his body over to be used. It is better to realize that we can and should break molds since we are all unique persons with different needs and desires. Because even if people are not charitable, they should be so we needn’t adjust our reality to everyone else’s sensibilities especially if they are not trying to rise above their judgmental dispositions but are just giving into it.

A person with practical judgment must be free to make judgments without fear of what other people are going to think. Otherwise we are enslaved to other people. Therefore it is important that we not be overly concerned about other people’s judgments.

LET THE MUD SETTLE

2011-05-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

Do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles? The Tao te Ching asks this question but teaches us a wise thing. Do we have the patience to wait until the mud settles before we act. So many things in life that happen to us alarm us at first and then our emotions are all mixed up just like a river where the water is mixed up with mud. You simply cannot see very far if the water is muddy. Better to wait for the mud to settle and then you can see where you are going. This same thing applies to events in our lives that stir up our emotions.

Your boyfriend was seen with another girl. Your husband is late getting home from the office. Your wife wants to go back to school after raising the children. Your best friend didn’t come to your party. Your teacher wants to see you after school. You miss your plane or bus. So many things in our lives that are unexpected have the potential to stir up our emotions and get us into a state of fear and panic. And of course, this is what the amygdala is supposed to do. When neurons fire in the amygdala, it readies your brain for action and we feel like it is so urgent that we must act. But the truth is that when we act in that state of mind we usually act in ways that make the situation worse.

But if we are aware, “oh gee, my amygdala just fired” and not react in that crucial time it will give us time to calm down and let the neurons find their proper place again and things will look so much clearer then. The firing of the neurons in the amygdala were necessary for escaping tigers in the jungle, but now that we live in civilized society we often do foolhardy things in response to the firing. Better to let the excitement and emotions settle, and then you can think the thing through using your whole brain. The amygdala pretty much hijacks the brain and makes it ignore everything else. But if you calm down and go sit somewhere quiet or take a long walk, the brain state will calm down and you can think more rationally about what you should do.

A lot of people discover that when they let the mud settle, they shouldn’t do anything, because doing nothing is the right thing to do. They also discover that if they had done something with the mud in the water they would have damaged a good relationship. So, let the mud settle. That is the origin of counting to ten. And teach yourself how to bring your emotions into a kind of calm state by contemplation or meditation since there aren’t always other people around to help you lower the level of confusion and emotion in your brain. If you practice contemplation when you are not disturbed, then when you are disturbed, it will be easier to bring yourself back to a clear and ready mind.

Good practical judgment needs patience when it comes to our emotions because our emotions can overwhelm our thinking brain. This is not to say that emotions are bad, but only that when they are very strong, they keep us from seeing clearly. So practice the virtue of patience for the sake of good practical judgment.

Be like water and seek the lowest places.

2011-05-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

The Tao te Ching says that the highest good resembles water in that it seeks the lowest places. “Therefore the sages: Place themselves last but end up in front. Are outside of themselves and yet survive.  Is it not due to their selflessness?  That is how they can achieve their own goals.” This paradoxical teaching is also found in the New Testament, where Jesus tells his disciples that the first will be last and the last will be first. It is paradoxical because we don’t expect to end up first when we put ourselves last. We expect to stay last. But the Tao te Ching and the New Testament are saying the same thing about how reality works.
When you put yourself last and seek out the lowest spot you can be raised to a higher spot.

How many people seek out the closest parking space at Walmart, when it really would make more sense to simply park further away and then walk a little and get exercise? How many children are always wanting to be first and don’t ever want to be last? When you are the last picked for a ball game it is usually because no one really wants you on their team. And then when you are finally picked you feel so bad about yourself that you muff it up the first chance you get. Or consider being first in line. How many people want to be first in line because they believe there are a scarcity of goods and so they want to make sure they get those goods.

On the contrary, it makes more sense to choose to be last for a number of reasons. First of all, in the Walmart example being last to park puts your car in a safe spot away from other cars and then it gives you the advantage of a short walk to the store and some exercise. In the team example, a child does not have to internalize what the other kids believe, she can take it as a challenge to perform at her best and show the other kids that she is competent and good. And when we live the idea of scarcity we are then living with the reality of greed. It is far better to live a life believing that there is plenty for everyone rather than a scarcity in which only a few get some. We can choose to live one way or the other. These works of wisdom are telling us that belief in the fullness of reality and that there is enough for everyone actually results in their being enough for everyone.

The reason everyone wants to be first is because they believe there is a scarcity of good things in life and they want to make sure they get them. One can choose to be last only if one thinks at the same time that there is enough for everyone including oneself. But believing there is enough tends toward a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is like when Jesus took the bread and fish the disciples found and then distributed them. Although there appeared to be a scarcity of fish and bread at first, because they acted on the belief that there was enough, it turned out that there was enough for everyone with much left over. Everyone who had some fish and bread stopped hoarding it because of selfishness, and then there was enough for everyone.

Of course, a skeptic is not going to follow this. The self-centered and narcissistic person believes in scarcity and is intent on getting his share first. But this kind of person is selfish and will not share even what he does not need. And hence the more people are like this the less there is enough to go around. The skeptic will say, “I know there is not enough. There just isn’t enough for everyone.” And if everyone were to believe this it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy and indeed there would not be enough for everyone, so in spite of the evidence for this position, the sage goes the opposite way and believes there is enough for everyone, even for himself, if he is last. And that too becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the sage achieves his own goals.

This is why such teaching is so paradoxical. It doesn’t really follow the laws of logic and reason, but if you look out of the corner of your eye, it does make sense and that is the way the world is or can be. Like water, the gift of goodness is given to all without contention. Water seeks the lowest spot but draws all things to itself. That is the way goodness is too. Goodness doesn’t seek to be noticed but nevertheless draws people to it.

So practical judgment is also good critical thinking. Instead of assuming there is always a shortage, as many people assume who then try to be first all the time, the good critical thinker questions that assumption and is able to see that there is enough if each assumes the last place rather than the first place.

Don’t be like Tigger and be distracted all the time.

2011-05-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations, “Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around. But then thou must also avoid being carried about the other way. For those too are triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to which to direct every movement, and, in a word, all their thoughts.” When I read this by the good Stoic, I am reminded of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh. He is the most exuberant and bouncy creature in 100 Acre Wood. And although this is also an attractive feature about him, his impulses get him into trouble along with creating mayhem wherever he goes.

Some people like this kind of activity, but most people are probably distressed when they find themselves bouncing from my activity to another with no time in between to rest and refocus themselves. Marcus Aurelius is reminding us that we need to pay attention when this happens to us. We become externally motivated and no longer internally motivated. We don’t have a priority list but are just driven from one thing to the other. And not only do we become tired and exhausted but we lose sight of what is really important to us. And if that is not the worst thing that can happen, we can also lose things and people who are very important, as they begin to get less of our notice, since they are not screaming as loudly.

There is just no avoiding the fact that we have to be self-motivated people if we are going to have good practical judgment. Letting ourselves become motivated by external demands and requirements takes us off balance and creates havoc with our lives. So many things can get out of control simply by not paying attention to them because we are distracted by exteriority. We have to be the ones who say “yes” to demands and when we let others demand without our conscious approval it wears down our sense of self-confidence and self-initiative. We became slaves to others. Practical judgment needs the initiative to be within you.

A suggestion that might help to settle one’s state of mind is to take time everyday to prioritize what one is going to do. Consciously go over all the tasks for the day and prioritize their worth. What if one of them becomes impossible? Could you live with that? Can you drop one of them without compromising your commitments? What is the best order to do them in? Can you get help for them? Prepare your mind daily in the morning during a quiet period for what you will be doing that day and tell yourself you could let go a whole lot of it if that were necessary. The reason why it is important to let go of the demands is because if they are external demands they are not integrated with your sense of what is important and your integrity. They are not originating in you but outside you. So take time in the beginning of the day before breakfast before anything else to go over the day in the quiet of your mind.

Maybe you can lie awake without opening your eyes yet and go over the day and internalize the events and prioritize them so that they are issuing from you and not from some unknown and indeterminate source outside you. As you go through the day then you will be doing what you are doing for self-motivated reasons rather than for other motivated reasons. You will know why you are doing the activities and why they are important to who you are and what you are about.

Another reason for going over in your head all the events of the day before you do them is to make sure they run smoothly. A downhill skier is going to run through her whole trip down the mountain before she does it because when she gets to the point of going down the mountain there won’t be time to look and think, she just has to react. And the same is sometimes true of our days if they are really busy. There is only time to react, so think through every event and place it in its own spot before you begin your day and when you are finished with your day there will be a reward of satisfaction rather than exhaustion, just like it is for the skier.

People with good practical judgment also have integrity and act out of self-motivated reasons rather than other motivated reasons. You simply cannot have good judgment when you are only enacting the demands of others because those demands are limitless. You have to have internalized what you are doing so that your judgment is grounded in your assessment of reality and in your prioritizing of importance by doing things that are consistent with your self-understanding.