No title

[bert louis]

 

Most people work for personal gain. Some, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. Such people may say that they act not for profit but for the spirit, or the abstract, or the force, or whatever name they give to their deep felt existential awe. 

[bert louis]

Wolfbird: I'd suggest that most people are trained, from early childhood, to see the world and soceity in certain ways, and to find their sense of identity within that culturally-constructed context. 

A minority find that situation uncomfortable and difficult to accept, and a smaller minority find a wholly different way of seeing the world and soceity.

I think you are on the mark with that.

But to awaken people to the wonder of perception, and to accept the idea that  our perception of the world can actually change, and when that happens we change - that's a tall order. We are very much social creatures, and a slight momentarily change of perception may already place us outside our social comfort zone. 

 I would think that only a still smaller minority of that smaller minority would be able to create a situation and a mood that would facilitate a perceptional 'shift' in someone else. 

You try to awaken people to the potential possibilities of perception because the standard, orthodox, cultural conditioning is destroying our future as a species. I am still trying to awaken myself from my own culturally imposed world-dream, with it's believe systems and demands that for a large part all seem to work towards goals that are not mine - like the destruction of the biosphere that you mentioned. 

So I'm looking out for situations and people that can boost my perception, help me see and understand what's really important, and learn to control my efforts towards that - acting in the here and now. 

I'd say that my longing to follow the spirit is hampered by my fear of loneliness, notwithstanding my boredom - my utter weariness over all the rights and wrongs in the world of politics and economics that seem to fill the heads of so many.

[Karen Barnacle]

I return to work today. I'm lucky because I work with highly motivated and highly able 16-18 year olds and teach them psychology. Okay they have to pass the exams and there is pressure to get the grades but along the way I'm able to talk and listen to them about stuff that matters. I have a mortgage and need the wage but the truth is that I choose to work because I feel priviliged being around young, energetic people some of whom have open minds. I always tell them that studying psychology means that they will never be the same again - especially the stuff about conformity and obedience. I regard it as a form of innoculation. I also love teaching the humanistic approach with its beliefs about the unique nature of every person and its emphasis on the phenomenological approach. 

So yes, I'm working with an ulterior purpose - I also hope to be a representation of sanity amongst my colleagues who are mostly caught up in the current myth of the desirability of growth and consumption. The irony of course is that I am one of only two colleagues who have diagnosed mental illness  and have regular visits with my psychiatrist (depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder in my case). But I genuinely believe that my sanity is more certain than many others!

I've only had time to read the first post in this thread and will read the rest when I have time - it looks interesting.

[Karen Barnacle]

Hi wolfbird,

It was a good day listened to colleagues about their holiday adventures in places that I won't see - Cuba, Russia, Africa etc. Planning and the inevitable staff training. Listened to our head talk about starving and shooting the monkey which I thought was an interesting metaphor. The monkey being a problem that someone puts on our back. Made me think about what a macho and predatory culture there is in management - even in educational management.

I hadn't heard of Rufus May although I'm familiar with the Hearing Voices Network and am committed to awareness raising about mental health. One of my colleagues was told by management to tell her students that she had had appendicitis after her breakdown which I thought was appalling but she was apparently okay with even though she had planned to be h0nest.

I've had a long battle over medication, but after 20 years, several major breakdowns, 7 years of psychotherapy and 10 years of Buddhist practice I did a lot of reading and decided that I'm better on meds than off them. I'll think about experimenting with getting off them when I am no longer working - which will be within the next 6-8 years (once the mortgage is paid) or sooner if my health gets worse. My cardiologist is also of the opinion that I'm better medicated as stress has a definate effect on my heart - so for now happy pills it is! I'm lucky because my background is in nursing so I have a pretty good idea of the cost/benefits. I admire people who can white knuckle their way through difficulties but it gets too dangerous for me and atm I quite like being alive!

Have you read Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind? She's interesting as someone working in psychiatry with a major psychotic disorder herself.

Hope your day went well too and thanks for the links.

[bert louis]

An interesting link I'm sure. But somehow I was already aware of this 'wondering.'  Surely Wolfbird must also have noticed this 'wondering effect,' almost from the very beginning of his 40 years of Zen practice.  Anyone who has ever contemplated anything can know from experience that the mind has a very strong tendency to wonder of by itself.

And just look at the collection of posts in the "argumented discussions department" on DM ....  Jeez! It's nothing more that a vast collection of individual minds wondering all over the place aimlessly.

[Karen Barnacle]

“We want to see how much of what gets published turns out to be bunk.”

The trouble is that in psychology studies there are so many variables that it is impossible to replicate studies in the way that hard science studies are replicated. Psychologists have to be honest about the limits of our field. We are studying people. You can ask a person a question one day and the same question another day gets a completely different answer - that's with the same person. Replications use different samples - that means different people which introduces a whole set of different variables. Science treats people as if we are animated machines. Our physiology looks the same and our observable behaviour also looks very similar so we are representative of one another right? Wrong. It saddens me that such a beautiful endeavour - to understand the person has been bullied and tormented into fitting the mechanistic, materialist model of hard science. There have been some interesting and useful findings from experimental psychology - obedience and conformity spring to mind - but the cost has been massive. We have generations of psychologists who know more about statistics and physiology than about the person sitting across the desk from them.

wolfbird said:

As someone interested in psychology, Karen, you may already have come across this ?

.

"If you’re a psychologist, the news has to make you a little nervous—particularly if you’re a psychologist who published an article in 2008 in any of these three journals:Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,or the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

Because, if you did, someone is going to check your work. "

.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come-u...

.

And here's another bit of news, which sort of reinforces what you said in the Moderation thread, about staying on topic, etc.

.

"I am going to do my best to hold your attention until the very last word of this column. Actually, I know it’s futile. Along the way, your mind will wander off, then return, then drift away again. But I can console myself with some recent research on the subject of mind wandering. Mind wandering is not necessarily the sign of a boring column. It’s just one of the things that make us human.

Everybody knows what it is like for our minds to wander, and yet, for a long time psychologists shied away from examining the experience. It seemed too elusive and subjective to study scientifically. Only in the past decade have they even measured just how common mind wandering is. The answer is very."

.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/15-brain-stop-paying-atten...

.

[Karen Barnacle]

Hi bert,

Do you mean "wondering" or "wandering"? The difference is important as the article is about the mind wandering. There are plenty of people of my acquaintance and closer whose mind never wonders about anything - but it does plenty of wandering! :P

bert louis said:

An interesting link I'm sure. But somehow I was already aware of this 'wondering.'  Surely Wolfbird must also have noticed this 'wondering effect,' almost from the very beginning of his 40 years of Zen practice.  Anyone who has ever contemplated anything can know from experience that the mind has a very strong tendency to wonder of by itself.

And just look at the collection of posts in the "argumented discussions department" on DM ....  Jeez! It's nothing more that a vast collection of individual minds wondering all over the place aimlessly.

[Karen Barnacle]

To bring this back onto topic ;)

A lot of psychology is done purely for personal (professional) gain. Research interests go where the funding is. They do not follow the heart. When I was in teaching in HE unless you were a cognitive neuroscientist you were stuffed. The best way to do the stuff that you enjoyed was to carve out enough free time to work independently and without thought for publication or promotion. It also allows the mind to wander in a way that can be both productive and enjoyable - nor does it have to be productive in a material sense.

[bert louis]

Wandering, wandering, wandering of course! I was reacting to the article about mind wandering ... Stupid me.

==

Karen: It saddens me that such a beautiful endeavour - to understand the person has been bullied and tormented into fitting the mechanistic, materialist model of hard science.

How so? What about hard science saddens you? Now clients have to conform to psychological models that spring from cultural hypes.

[Karen Barnacle]

bert louis said:

How so? What about hard science saddens you? Now clients have to conform to psychological models that spring from cultural hypes.

 

Hard science per se doesn't sadden me except when its practiced outside any ethical frame of reference. What saddens me is that so many psychologists feel that they have to compete with materialist/mechanistic sciences and that anything outside this rigid framework is rejected. A person is  not as predictable as 10g sodium placed in a test tube and heated or cooled or reacted with other elements and averaging the behaviour of groups of people doesn't make it so either.

What saddens me is that we reduce the immense complexity and creativity of the human mind to a bunch of electrograph recordings or to the number of words recalled in one minute and ad nauseum. We reduce emotion to rating scales and grief to pathology if it continues for "too long" or displays "symptoms" that are atypical. Psychology as practiced in most university departments is profoundly mechanistic and dehumanising and I trace this to an obsession with being A Science.

As for conforming to the models based on cultural zeitgeist (hypes) that too is dehumanising. We are more than our culture and our period of history. I would prefer a psychology based on the individual, although I recognise that our concepts and vocabulary are (primarily) culturally determined.

I have to teach this psychology as a science stuff - that is what is on the specification, but throughout I keep saying to the people in the room with me - you know what? This is theoretical. This will change and each and everyone of us is unique - (which is also a good reason to stay alive) - no one else can do what you do and by being alive (to use Vinya Gupta's phrase) you have been activated.

So my occupation pays the bills, but there is a part of me that would do (some of) it for nothing because I think its important and I love it.

 

[bert louis]

Hi there Karen :)

OK, that clears it up. You have nothing against hard science. Your have ethical concerns, and rightly so. But ethics can only come after the fact. On the fringes of science there are no ethics to guide us, just curiosity and the promise of power - anything goes.  

Karen: What saddens me is that we reduce the immense complexity and creativity of the human mind to a bunch of electrograph recordings or to the number of words recalled in one minute and ad nauseum. We reduce emotion to rating scales and grief to pathology if it continues for "too long" or displays "symptoms" that are atypical. Psychology as practiced in most university departments is profoundly mechanistic and dehumanizing and I trace this to an obsession with being A Science.

This comes from your own experience in the field.  I have no such experiences.  I'm not a psychologist. 

Reading through your lines, I now understand that you are actually saddened by the fact that you have to conform to some directives of  your employer that  don't agree with you, in order to keep your job and safeguard an income.  Yes, there's a source of conflict.

Karin: I also love teaching the humanistic approach with its beliefs about the unique nature of every person and its emphasis on the phenomenological approach.

By that I figure you to be a Carl Rogers adept   :)

==

Coming back to the intent of the topic text ... I say that you have to overcome your tendency to get sad over things that are beyond your control.

[Karen Barnacle]

You are right. The Dark Mountain is helping me to do just that. I work on the things that I can do something about, try not to get attached to the outcome and am (still) learning to enjoy the moment.

 

Yes, Carl Rogers, but I'm also very interested in psychodynamic theory and have read a far bit about psychoanalysis and Buddhism.