Know Thyself! posted September 19, 2001 "Do you even know how to think?" she asked. "Sure," he said. "I think you are an idiot." Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one. Opinions are also like shrines. We will often defend them with a zeal that can validly be described as religious. But how many of us ever look at what we think and consider why we think it and what the assumptions that underlie our opinions might be? In the standard twelve years of education, there are no courses in psychology or sociology. Unless it is your major, even those who go to college don't generally get more than one survey course. Yet it was way back in the third century that Diogenes urged "Know thyself." For approximately seventeen centuries, we have been blithely bantering that quote about without ever really stopping to think about what it might entail. Psychology and sociology are the study of us--of how our minds work individually and in groups. Why does a culture so vested in freedom not put them at the center of our educational system? Most of us have had experience with the picture that when looked at one way is a beautiful young woman in a plumed hat and when looked at another way is an ugly old hag. We have all heard of the Stockholm Syndrome, whereby prisoners begin to identify with their captors. We all know about peer pressure, groupthink, and mob rule, and all understand that there must be something to advertising or companies would not pour large percentages of their budgets into it. There is nary a one of us who has not looked back at what we once considered the epitome of fashion and thought, Ugh! The popular media often talks about the effect of violent movies, video games, and song lyrics on the nation's youth; we shake our heads at those we consider duped by cults; yet when it comes to our own opinions and beliefs, we never consider the possibility of taint or manipulation. Right now, lots of Americans are feeling helpless and angry. Any psychologist will tell you, that is not a state of clarity. Right after the World Trade Center disaster, even my sister, who has been a life-long pacifist, went through four days of wanting to "bomb the hell out of them." Although she recovered her perspective, many people still feel that way, in spite of the fact that we don't really even know who "they" are. My reaction is much different. I want to grab people by the shoulders and shake them--want them to see that buried in the ashes of this horror is incredible opportunity--opportunity that if fully grasped could bring about changes to our world that would more than redeem the five thousand or so deaths that have resulted. People like myself, who do not support a military solution, are often accused of not caring about the victims; but that the dead would wish to be avenged is one of those unexamined assumptions to which we spontaneously leap. I wonder how those people would have responded had they been asked on Monday night, "Would you be willing to die if your death would bring about world peace?" Far from being unsympathetic, I think we owe it to them to make their sacrifice count for something really big. The inspiration for this article came from one by Michael Christopher. Although I was starting to think that I'd read just about everything that could be said about all this, Michael's article addressed the psychological aspects better than anything else I'd read. I urge you to check it out, and if you are one who still thinks the answer lies in bombing the hell out of somebody, I ask you to spend some time considering that opinion, looking at where it comes from and the consequences it will have, then doing a little reading about what the psychologists have discovered about human thought and how it works. I understand doing that takes courage. I've maintained for a long time that reality is "funky stuff" and very relative. I've seen my own take on things go through radical changes as, over the course of my life, I have found myself immersed in various communities with various points of view. Although we in the west tend to discount myth as make believe, I think to one degree or another, we all live in a mythical reality, governed by archetypes and fantasy. Few of us over thirty have gone though life without at least one major change in our point of view; and yet no matter where we stand, we always assume that spot is the one that shows us truth. Now, more than ever before, submitting our unexamined opinions to the light of scrutiny can bear fruit. What we face today is unprecedented in history. Shared experience creates bonds, and we have been through a powerful experience that has been shared by people all over the planet. Though some have embraced violence, many have been shaken to the point of letting go of differences in order to be of help or simply because they suddenly just didn't seem so important. Those of us who live in the U.S. have had our priorities violently re-arranged. If just for a moment, we have seen our indulgences and petty grievances in a new light. For several days after the bombing, there was no road rage and little crime, as we all grieved together. I think we have also awakened to our ignorance. I know I have learned so much about things that, as an educated person from the most prosperous country on earth, I should have known, but didn't. I am convinced that we are at a cusp. The choices made at this juncture can make our world a safer place with more dialogue and expanded opportunity for everyone; or they can result in an escalating conflict that has the potential to make five thousand deaths seem like nothing. Back in the sixties, people were quite attached to a phrase that declared All power to the people! I think today, that is, in fact, where power lies. Our leaders need leading. No matter what their hearts tell them, they are under the effect of powerful concepts that insist they have to strike back. Any of you who have ever felt the need to defend an image know exactly what they are up against. The sort of rhetoric they are putting out is the kind of rhetoric they are convinced we need to hear. One phrase I hear over and over is that "these people" hate freedom. Hating the United States, however, is not the same as hating freedom, for we have not extended our notion of liberty and justice for all to the entire world. Hard as it is to admit, the freedom we all love is our own. The quest for self-knowledge is a painful quest because it invariably shows us things we do not want to see. It's easy to divide the world into black and white, good and evil, us and them. It is not so easy to look at those who would destroy us and see that we have a lot in common or to admit that if our lot were their lot, we might be tempted to act, or at least think, in a similar way. We do not want to look at their humanity, though, fully in touch with our own, some of us are supporting policies that will bring the same experience they brought to us to other innocent people. None of this is easy. Perhaps nothing worthwhile ever is; but I think it is critical. I think those of us who oppose the use of undue violence must do it through means that are exclusively non-violent in all aspects, including verbal; and that we all owe it to ourselves and our children to understand that, reasonable as retaliation seems right now, it might not be the means to the result we want. The links below are ones that promote self-knowledge. I hope you will take some time to explore them and consider their implications in our present situation. This is not a time for knee-jerk reactions. It is a time for all of us who have ever talked about world peace to realize that it begins with us. We have to understand our own natures and understand that human nature is something we all share. We have been fighting for peace ever since the dawn of history. I think it's time to concede it hasn't worked. Among the things Americans are known for is our ingenuity. It's time to be creative, to go back to the drawing boards and come up with some fresh approaches to the problems of the world. It is hard to reverse forward motion, but the bombings on September 11, stopped us in our tracks. When our country goes to war, people are willing to make sacrifices. We have to be willing to make those same sorts of sacrifices for peace. We have to learn new things, and primary among them is how the mind works, for until we understand that, we will never truly be free. War of Man Michael Christopher's excellent article The Stanford Prison Experiment Chilling study on how easily minds are warped Religion's Role in the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, by Michael E. Nelson, Ph.D. Beyond Prejudice A site with many articles exploring this phenomenon. Religion's Misguided Missiles A Guardian article about the psychology of self-destruction The Emotional Life of Nations by Lloyd deMause A review of Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul, by Michael Lerner Don't Get Emotionally Attached to Your Own Opinion An article by professor Tina Blue about how to get the most from an exchange of ideas. |
