A surprising outcome

 I am 90 years old and have been a psychotherapist for over 60 years. For most of that time I have treated   people who have come to a Community Mental Health Center for treatment. They are financially poor and struggling to survive in a  world that has little use or place for them. While I don't share their financial problems, I am now struggling to find a value and meaning for me in what I do.

In recent years, more and more I find that new patients are not interested in psychotherapy. They want, even demand medication and emotional support. They want the world they are in to change and make it more possible for them to have a comfortable life. They have little or no interest in therapies that would help them feel better about themselves or that would show them how to continue growing up. 

When  prospective patients are admitted, they want something easy and short. When they are referred for psychotherapy, they come for a few sessions, rarely more than 4 or 5, and then they stop coming other than to get medication and apply for whatever financial assistance might be availabled.

Let me be perfectly clear about this. There is nothing wrong with what they want. The world they live in has little in common with the world I came from. But the world they come from is totally unlike my world. There is an increasing disconnect between the middle- and upper classes and the poor.  There seems to be no easy way for people to change their worlds from poverty to middle/upper class.

I and other psychotherapists are part of that disconnect. The bottom socioeconomic classes have little or no understanding of mental health or illness. They come into my office with absolutely no idea as to what could happen. They are not accustomed to talking about personal issues with others face-to-face, even their parents.  They rely on smart-phone contacts, video games, social websites. They are accustomed to quick and effortless results, and TV ads have lead them to expect medications to solve their problems.

Their values are different from those of other generations, which is to be expected.  They don't know what is possible or even desirable. The idea of being in psychotherapy just to help them develop longer range values, such as growth and emotional maturity, does not occur. They understand wanting "to feel better".  They may not understand the value of greater honesty and kindness in relationships because they have not seen that demonstrated in their families, which of course is not their fault.

Most of them think that individual "counseling" is simply understanding and comforting. Two or three individual sessions and they are "done", they "feel better". Most of them need help with basic life problems, such as jobs, transportation, even a bed to sleep on. This socioeconomic class of people have few survival skills beyond the most basic. Even safe shelter and regular meals are hard for them to manage, and social workers (at least where I work) are far more helpful and useful to them than the therapists. 

From a more personal standpoint I have watched my hard-earned skills lose their importance or relevance. I have less and less value for the most poor. When they do make an appointment with me, they almost never return for more than 2 or 3 sessions.

Of course, initially I did what I was taught to do in these circumstances.  I looked at the "common factor" in these cases, which, of course, was me. I sought consultation, learned some "brief therapies", discussed it in staff meetings, only to find out that all the other therapists were having the same problem.  The difference was that other staff had not often (or even "ever") had patients who wanted intensive individual therapy. For them, the drop out rate had been the same "bad rate" from the beginnings of their practice.  The administration seemed to be pleased by the rapid "cure" (or drop-out rate). As far as they were concerned, rapid early termination of therapy was a desirable outcome.

So eventually it occurred to me that my goals and values were hopelessly out of date. Why did I not like the dropouts? That seems to be considered a success, not a failure, as I was taught. In fact, it seemed to me a big disappointment and a failure. I again did as I had been trained to do. I asked myself what were my needs and why was I paddling a canoe when most other therapists had speedboats?

I enjoy (perhaps too much) the attempt to make better and more honest connections with my patients. I value the effort to get past the cliches they trot out and enjoy the moments when we make genuine and honest contact. For a brief time the patient and I share the same world, before we drop back into the cliches and lies we rely on in "social settings". 

A few patients return. For them, therapy is a place in which honesty and kindness is valued, and they see themselves growing as human beings. The same applies to me.  Honesty and kindness are important growth factors for the therapist as well as for the client. I believe I have grown with my patients over the years, and I don't resent the time that has been spent attempting to help them. It has helped me as well.

 

What's the matter with "Guilt"?

 It's not uncommon for people to seek help from a therapist to alleviate the guilt that results from something(s) they have done which they do not approve. They see therapy as resembling confession to the priest and expect to be given a punishment commensurate with their "crime",  Somehow they have come to the belief that causing themselves pain (or allowing others to cause it) wipes out their slate and they will be guilt-free.

The notion that you can reduce your guilt through suffering is clearly absurd.  Whatever harm you have done to yourself or others "proves" that you deserve suffering. More suffering is better than less, and the history of religions is witness to that belief. The focus is on the reduction of the feeling itself, not on attempting to repair the damage done to self or others.

Somehow the guilty person believes that suffering and self-blame is enough to undo the bad behavior.  Is the world a better place as a result of your pain?  Exactly how does this take place?  If you take the time and trouble to consider this belief, its absurdity becomes obvious. The bad behavior is ignored. Only the relief from guilt matters. 

Guilt is the recognition that you have done something damaging to your world, combined with the belief that if you can manage to feel badly enough, your guilt will go away.This belief is clearly self-serving. You have done damage. How exactly does your personal pain take that damage away?

Following this line of thought results in the recognition that your interest is not in making the world a better place, but in a magical belief that there is somewhere a cosmic accountant who keeps track of the good and the bad that we do, and that we can bribe him/her/it with a gift of additional misery to clean our record.  Seeking help in therapy to get rid of therapy is exactly the same reasoning: a magical cleansing.

What the guilty person has not done is recognize and take responsibility for what he has done, and try his best to do enough good that the bad is countered. If you break something, fix it.  If you can't fix it, do enough good that you have more than made up for it.

If you follow this rule, you will leave the world better than you found it. Punishing yourself does not typically result in benefiting you. And it certainly does not help the people affected by your behavior. 

 And shame and guilt are not illnesses.  They are both learned and built in, and they serve a useful and valuable purpose:  to encourage people to adhere to the rules of their tribe. Don't expect your insurance company to reimburse you for feeling guilty or ashamed of bad behaviors.

What's the matter with 'Shame'?

Lately I've seen some advertisements for workshops purporting to be in the service of banishing shame from people's lives.  The reasoning seems to be something like "If it feels bad, it must be bad".  I think this is a gross simplification, perhaps to help people or perhaps to provide a salable product. I propose to take a deeper look at shame and how it functions.  

Firstly, shame is a phenomenon that only exists in group settings.  If you were hopelessly alone on an island in the middle of an ocean, would shame be relevant to your experience?  Would you blush if you were nude in the open?  Would remembering some social gaffe you perpetrated earlier in your life embarrass you?  Probably not.  If you were giving a lecture to a hundred people and discovered that your fly was unzipped (assuming only for the moment that you are male) or loudly farted, would you be humiliated?

Shame appears when the unacceptable behavior is known to other people in your group.  To feel shame you would have to have done something others in your group would find unacceptable.  When you are a young adolescent, for instance, wearing the "wrong thing" can be catastophically shameful.  If nobody notices you would not be embarrassed.

Shame is experienced when we deviate too far from the norms of our group.  Partially it includes fear, fear of rejection in the form of being laughed at or jeered.  It is an emotion that operates to push our behavior back within the range of acceptance of our group.  It encourages conformity to our particular group norms.  Deviating from the norms of a group to which we do not belong is not shaming.  Something in us tells us that being excluded from our group is awful-bad-dangerous.  We are urged to change our behavior to fit in.  Think of The Scarlet Letter, for instance.

What happens in a world in which there is no shame?  There is nothing to encourage conformity.  There are few prohibited behaviors, and we can do pretty much what we want.  But do we want to live in a shameless society?  We would be confronted with behavior that is now strictly prohibited.  We would live in a world in which little is forbidden other than those things we prohibit by law.  Our behaviors would be wildly divergent. Breaking the law would still have consequences, but shame would not be among them.

It would be a lot like it is now, only more so, wouldn't it?  I leave you to decide if this is a good thing.

A therapy problem

At an out-of-state convention I was talking with another therapist who presented an interesting treatment problem.  I had no really adequate answer, and after having been a therapist for 60 years that's at least a little unusual.

His patient told him that many years previously he had committed some terrible crimes.  Without going into detail, the patient stated that he had accepted money to kill several people. More recently he had gotten sober for the first time in many years and had subsequently fallen into a severe depression.  He had become suicidal and been hospitalized.  

His therapist told me that later on in the therapy his patient recognized his nearly unbearable guilt as undoubtedly the driver for his suicidal impulses and depression.  The patient's depressive thoughts were severely self-blaming, and in some ways even appropriate.

Here are the questions the other therapist asked me.  Should he even be assisted in recovering from his depression?  Isn't his guilt an appropriate response to his behaviors?  Is it an appropriate use of psychotherapy to be relieved of the guilt for his crimes?  Is it acceptable to kill people and then expect to be relieved of the psychological cost of committing such awful crimes? Is that even ethical?

I thought a long time before I was able to give the other therapist any answer at all.  After some thought my initial response was that the first and second principle of the psychologist's ethical code is:  Do no harm. Act to help the patient.  There are no exceptions to those principles, and to me there should be none. 

That being said, the other questions are open for your answers.  I'll be glad to hear any comments.

So before that was what?

 I apologize for my ignorance of physics.  However, ignorance doesn't stop me from puzzling over the larger mysteries, such as the state of the universe at the moment of the Big Bang.  In fact, ignorance seems assist me in being puzzled.  So if you are knowledgeable in this area, you have my apology, and you might want to spend your time reading something more useful to you.  Nevertheless I will appreciate any comments.

In the universe entropy always increases, which is to say the universe gradually becomes more disordered, ultimately resulting in a state of maximum entropy or disorder in which nothing can happen.  Time has even been defined as taking its direction from increasing entropy, i.e. that time is the rate at which entropy increases.  

The point-universe at the moment of the Big Bang was in minimum entropy, or maximum order.  Since that moment. entropy and disorder have increased as we move slowly toward total disorganization.   At the end of the universe, it will become a "soup" of undifferentiated states of energy in which nothing can happen.  Time will have stopped since there can be no events. All the little fires will be out.  Like a giant firework display, the Universe will have happened. 

Prior to the Big Bang, what can be said of the nature of the universe?  Probably we can't use the concept "prior" since there would have been no time in existence.  Time requires events which it can discriminate between.  A famous physicist (whose name I can't recall) said that time was what kept everything from happening all at once.

At the moment of the Big Bang, an event occurred and thus time began.  We can't conceive of a prior universe existing without time.  "Prior" requires a preceding time.  Events require an increase in entropy, so there could be no events in a timeless universe.  We do know that the universe at the moment of the Big Bang must have been in a state of minimum entropy/maximum order.  

How did a state of maximum order occur, and how can it be described?  The Big Bang was an event, and therefore it happened within time and space.  How did that event happen prior to time? Once it has happened we can consider the order of events. But "before" the Big Bang nothing can exist. Time begins with the first event, the Big Bang.

To fall back into the supernatural and posit an agent who starts the Big Bang seems to me a cheap and superficial way of avoiding the problem.  The Big Bang is itself a causeless cause.  Since event history began with the Big Bang, it is pointless to assume a prior event.

Someone out there, please enlighten me.  I also recognize that it may be impossible to do that, but I will appreciate the attempt.

A request for rational thought in emotional times.

Much has been publicized about the way police officers differentially treat particular ethnic or other easily identifiable groups.  It is almost invariably implied that the differential treatment observed arises solely from the racial or religious (or other) biases of the police.  If group A is treated differently than group B, it is implied specifically that this is because of the attitudes of the police, not real differences between the groups.

This implication ignores the possibility that group A may behave differently than group B.  What if there is a higher rate of crime in group A than there is in group B?  Other factors may also make the groups actually different in their public or private behavior.  The police may of course be biased, and that can be a terrible thing.  The police may also be responding to legitimate and measurable differences between groups. 

In fact, of course, the factors of bias and behavioral differences may play into each other, each making the other factor more embedded and extreme.  We should also consider the important functions of “prejudice”, meaning, of course, to pre-judge a situation on a basis of incomplete data, as in to judge an individual solely on the basis of some group to which he belongs.  Nature seems to have intended prejudice as an emergency default judgment in a rapidly unfolding situation in which the data are not yet clear.  For instance, when a homeless stranger knocks on my door wanting to spend the night, my prejudices kick in instantly, based on the generalities I have in my head about homeless people.  Fair?  Of course not.  Pro-survival? Maybe so!  Certainly my first response is skeptical/distrustful, at least until I have thought through several scenarios.

Back to my original topic.  Police in particular frequently respond to a ongoing violent situation with little or no time to step back and rationally assess it.  Such situations invite, even demand, pre-judgment.  It is easy to observe that in video recordings of confrontations between police and groups of people that both sides display prejudice and over-generalization in their attitudes and behaviors, and this tends to intensify the irrational violence already beginning in the situation. In such situations, immediate distrust is not an irrational response, but it should not be the only factor.

Many questions need to be asked that are not being asked.  Instead we are encouraged to “take sides” without ourselves knowing all the facts.  Our responses are becoming more and more extreme and emotionally-driven.  Nobody asks if group A (or B) is actually more violent than the other, or asks if there are more crimes committed by group A than group B.  The society in which we live needs to look harder at how specific groups are treated.  If there is more violence or crime in group A than B, why is that?  We need to look at the systemic illness, not just the symptoms.  We need to address the illness itself, our systemic rationalization for the unfair treatment of various groups. 

Out of systemic unfairness comes rage against the system.  Systems don’t like to change.  We don’t like to change. Perhaps it takes rage to get us to pay attention, but rageful decisions are invariably exaggerated and extreme.  We need to think, not just feel, and think clearly and publicly about what we need to do differently.  Talk is cheap.  Change is hard, painful and anxiety-producing.  For change to last, it has to be studied and carefully planned. Immediate emergent responses are not a basis for real, stable solutions. We need to slow down and make our changes work.

More to follow.

A comment on Trump

I wonder whether the politicians who scream so loudly against Trump have ever paused to ask themselves what his appeal to the voters is?

It's clear he is crude, poorly educated in general, tasteless and oblivious to political (or even common human) decency.  But he is also blunt and direct.  He says what he means whether people/voters like it or not.  He is not clever, calculating and politically devious.  At least, if he is any of those things, he is good enough to fool me.

However, in a field of politically correct dishonest and devious candidates, he stands out for his directness.  He isn't a standard bullshit artist like all the professional politicians.  Sometimes, frequently in fact, he doesn't use even basic good judgment as to what he says.  Sometimes he could say the exact same thing differently in a way that wouldn't be so egregiously crude, vulgar and tasteless.

And maybe that is exactly his appeal.  We are so fed up with the dishonest, slick and devious politicians and their bullshit that his honesty and even his ignorance/stupidity look good.  Why don't the politicians read the handwriting on the wall?  When this many of the voters are fed up with their political crap that they will vote for a candidate like Trump, shouldn't that be a red flag to them?  How about the "career politicians" try saying what they mean and meaning what they say?  Don't they see they have almost totally lost their credibility?  They have caused Trump to be elected and probably re-elected in spite of his poor quality as a human being. Their quality is even worse because it is better hidden.

Trump is such a dumb-ass that even when he tries to be dishonest he gets caught.  He doesn't even know why he gets caught, because he is so lacking in common sense.  Doesn't it say anything to the politicians that he still looks better than they do?  We need a different kind of politician.

The function of shame

In recent years there has been somewhat of a movement in the direction of treating "shame" as a bad, neurotic, harmful sort of thing.  It is treated as an illness, something to be eliminated or to be recovered from.  It seems to me that this view of shame as a pathology ignores the positive and useful aspects of it.

What does "shame" do for us?  It seems to me that shame is a group function whose purpose is to emotionally motivate an errant or deviant member of the group to change their behavior so as to conform with the group norm.  Shame is an unpleasant experience, of course, that being its point.  It is perhaps the primary force intended to produce conformity.  (Conformity to a group's norms, of course, is one of the characteristic elements defining the boundaries of group membership).

It is frequently important to a group to establish its identity by publicly displayed behaviors or dress.  The threat that shame poses to an errant member is that of being expelled from the group.  The threat is not just to the errant behavior, but to the identity or self, and therefore is experienced as a depressive event.  As a result, the experience of shame has elements of depression as well as of anxiety.

When we try to imagine a "shameless" society, we picture a group of people whose behavior is totally without regard to the norms or standards of ours.  Certainly we are most likely to imagine a group whose norms are very different from ours.  We find ourselves "shocked" or repulsed by their behaviors.  Historically, when this has occurred, we have attempted to "shame" the others into conforming to our behavioral norms.

Instances of "shameful" (or aberrant) behavior by an individual may be defined by their group  as "sick" or "insane" or even "evil".  The norms that an individual violates usually have little to do with realistic limits, and are frequently irrational or unreasonable.  The shaming carried out by a group can be personal, aggressive or even violent, and may not be proportional to the offense.

Interestingly, people with untreated schizophrenia have great difficulty in understanding or conforming to the norms of the groups to which they belong.  An individual might dress or behave in a bizarre fashion and experience no discomfort from the disapproving or shaming behavior of others.   In fact, as such individuals get older, their behavior may depart more and more from the local norms, since they experience  no shaming force to cause them to comply by modifying their behavior.

Sometimes the norms of the group have (or had, at least at one time) a rational basis.  But the real motive force behind a group norm is to identify the group, keep it separate from other groups, and to make it readily identifiable.  There is nothing rational about clothing norms, for instance,  but they are highly important to specific groups of people.

Currently there has been a sort of rebellion against "body shaming".  People who are obese experience instances in which a group rejects or shames them for their body shape.  Ostensibly this shaming is based on health issues and sexual attractiveness, and is expected to provide pressures for the obese person to conform by losing weight.  It is rarely effective, however, and almost always painful to the object.

But without shame, why would we conform to the norms of our social groups?  We would have no manners, no etiquette, no rules for acceptable public behavior.  Many people would say we are moving in that direction fairly rapidly already.  Without shaming, there would be little to stop the drift into ungoverned public behavior.

However, while shame may have its uses in producing conformity and rules, it does so through producing discomfort and unhappiness in the person shamed.  When the shamed behavior is out of the control of the individual, the shaming is only damaging and hurtful.  For instance, "making fun" of an individual with a physical or intellectual defect is obviously a hurtful thing to do.  It can't produce conformity, which is not in the realm of possibility for the shamed person.

A more serious instance is in the case of the individual who shames themselves on the basis of what they consider unacceptable behavior.   As a result, they emotionally expel themselves from their group. What makes this more serious is that the group from which they think of themselves as deviant, from which they deserve expulsion, is the human race itself. They withdraw and isolate themselves and ultimately may become suicidal as their ultimate non-membership.

Individuals whose behavior or characteristics are the subject of shame may prefer to view their non-conformance as "not their fault", i.e. something out of their control and thus not be subject to shaming.  Sometimes that is true, but sometimes it is an attempt to justify behavior that the subject knows is aberrant and probably not acceptable to their group, so they believe they can be granted an "exception".

The more "exceptions", the less potent shaming can be as a force producing conformity in manners and behavior.  Too much shame has produced in the past societies with rigid and narrow standards of behavior.  And too little shaming produces a society whose standards are rude and "uncivilized".  Which direction do you think preferable?

Guns

Making it legal to possess weapons that are either automatic (or can be made so) is absurd to the point of laughability, if it were not so tragic.  How can anyone defend the use of an automatic weapon for hunting?  How many bullets are needed to kill a deer?  And 30-shot magazines?  Are people actually shooting down entire herds?  But the guns are not root causes of the problem, although they make it easier to do more damage.

Why do we not give people the right to own other kinds of weapons capable of large-scale destruction?  Hand-grenades?  Flame-throwers?  Bazookas? (Although I have to admit that many times when driving on the highway I would love to have a roof-mounted bazooka.) 

There are only two reasons for defending the power for civilians to own automatic weapons:  to provide us the power to defend ourselves against a totalitarian government, e.g. to rebel, and to have the emotional satisfaction of owning a powerful weapon, which of course is most satisfying to the least powerful.  It is, in fact, the least empowered people, such as adolescents or adolescent-minded adults, who want the automatic weapons.

However, I think there is a deeper and more basic cause, and it is a cause that can't be addressed with simplistic solutions.  We are, as a nation, fascinated by guns and are in love with violence, in particular fantasies of "revenge" and "fighting back".  We are apparently terrified of being powerless, and concomitantly we are in love with the idea of personally having the power to hurt those who might hurt us.  We love movies and television about people who are victimized fighting back and victimizing others.

We have to be "ready" all the time.  We don't need the guns, but we want them desperately because of our fear of powerlessness.  Our culture is largely about violence.  Look at our tv shows, our books and comic books, our movies.  What percentage of them are violent?  As a nation, we won't give up our fantasies about having weapons of mass destruction, even if we kill each other to exercise the fantasy.

Children learn solutions to problems by watching adults.  What they see is that we kill people who cause problems for us.  They see other solutions as well, but the most dramatically satisfying and frequently observed are those in which we use weapons to blow apart our opponents.  Our movies, books and televisions have always relied on violence as a dramatic solution, but over the past 20 years or so the violence depicted is increasingly gory and detailed.  So violence becomes a solution, and one which they increasingly have the power to evoke.  This is especially convincing to them when they watch their parents treat each other with violence.  How do you deal with a frustrating person?  You kill them, and as many of them as possible.

I don't see any easy way to deal with this issue.  No law that can be passed (and we probably won't even do that) will solve the problem.  I have to admit reluctantly that I enjoy the same movies and the same television series.  I also note that after all the bad guys are killed, nobody seems to care.  The bodies disappear somewhere.  Nobody suffers.  Nobody mourns the loss of the dead.  The "heroes" of the shows don't regret the killings, apparently.  Death is basically trivialized.

Why would we think our kids would have any more respect for life and death than the heroes we give them to model themselves after?

A talk with God

Mr. Smith is sitting alone in his office, looking at memos.  There is a tap on the door and it opens.  A middle-aged man of indeterminate race, wearing casual and unremarkable clothes, comes in.

Mr. Smith:  Hello, can I help you?

God:  I know you have been wanting to talk to me.  So, here I am.
(Sits in one of the office chairs)

Mr. Smith:  And who are you?

God:  The short version might as well be "God".

Mr. Smith:  (laughing) Thanks for dropping in.  Who put you up to this, and is this just a casual chat or do you have something specific in mind?  

God: Neither.  I'll explain later, if 'later' is a meaningful word.  I had considered My need for some time to get some things done, but then I realized that 'time' is something I'm in charge of, so I simply stopped it for ... (laughs) whatever we need.

Mr. Smith:  You've ... um... stopped time?  (looks around uneasily)

God: Yes.  Your phone won't ring.  Oh, do you have one of those smart phones? How sad! But it won't work either.  Don't panic, I'll restart... later (laughs).

Mr. Smith: (picks up phone, listens, shakes head, picks up smart phone, looks intently, tosses it back on desk, looks at watch).  I don't know how you did that!

God:  Of course you are aware that I must have the power to do that.  You just aren't prepared to believe it.  Look, I don't want to make this any more difficult than I have to. Why don't you just pretend that I'm telling the truth (as if I could lie) so we can have a little discussion?

Mr. Smith:  So for the sake of a little … discussion, you can be considered to be God?

God:  Yes.  Why not?  I need to explain some things, and you are as good a connection to the rest of humanity (and I use the term lightly) as I need.  You'll almost certainly... wait, it is, in fact, certain, that you will write this up on your blog thingie.  To make that a little easier for you, I'm putting a transcript of our conversation on your computer, so you won't forget anything important.  Actually, everything is important, so..

Mr. Smith:  I got that.  (looks at desk clock, then at wrist watch).  Umm... It's still 9:34!

God:  We’ve already covered that.  Can we move on?

Mr. Smith:  (laughing unbelievingly).  What’s the hurry?

God laughs.

Mr. Smith:  Does it matter that I don't believe in God?  umm.. in You?

God:  Not a bit.  A better question is, do I believe in you?  But you have interesting questions and a point of view that I want to address.

Mr. Smith:  Well, at least this begins to be a more realistic conversation.

God:  I’m nothing if not realistic.

Mr. Smith:  So.  You’re here to discuss some topics you want to make available to other people, do I understand You correctly?

God:  Yes.  Of course I already know your questions, but unless you ask them, they won’t show up on the computer transcript.  So, take your time.

Mr. Smith:  Since there appears to be no hurry… it’s still 9:34… I’ll take my time.  Is that all right?

God:  Hard to get you to listen, isn’t it?  Sure.  In fact, it’s not your time, it’s Mine, but I know what you mean.

Mr. Smith:  You look just like other people.  I would have thought you’d be more… imposing, you know, clouds, lightning, burning bushes, stuff like that.  (God laughs, shakes his head).  Instead, you look like a middle-class American male, about my age, not that old.  Why did You choose that stereotype?

God:  Pretty hard to have an intelligent discussion with lightning or a burning bush, not to speak of how it might affect you if I walked in here like that.  Back in the day, it was harder to get people to take me seriously.  So it had its uses.

Mr. Smith:  But not needed now?

God:  You’re taking me seriously, are you not?

Mr. Smith:  Umm… yes, I suppose I am.

God:  If you’re thinking that I’m showing sexual or racial bias by taking this particular form, and of course I know you would be thinking that, I picked a form in deference to your racial and sexual biases.  I Myself have little interest in your specifics, skin color, dangly bits, hair style and so on.  That stuff is important to you, of course.  I have a good idea, actually, a perfect idea, as to how this works.  And this isn’t my first time down here talking to one of you. That answer your question?

Mr. Smith:  Yes, at least, I guess so.  You had to pick someone to talk to.  So why me?

God:  Now there’s a question that’s been asked through the ages.  I’ve answered it many times, of course, but you humans don’t like the answer, so you forget it quickly.

Mr. Smith:  Umm… remind me, please.

God:  Why you?  Why not you?  There are so many of you, and there’s little to distinguish one of you from any others.  Right now, you’re handy. And you’ve been considering the questions I would like to deal with.  Saves me some time (smiles).

Mr. Smith:  I would have thought that anybody would be equally handy to God.

God:  True.

Mr. Smith:  So.  Why me?  Never mind, I got it.

God:  (laughs)

Mr. Smith:  The “why not you” answer raises an interesting question.

God:  I expected it to.

Mr. Smith:  You’re implying that, at least at times, what happens to a particular person is simply a matter of who’s handy to You at that moment?

God:  That’s correct.

Mr. Smith:  Not merit, reward, punishment, answering a prayer or…

God:  (says nothing, smiles)  Asked and answered.

Mr. Smith:  (after a moment of silence)  That implies there’s no real system of reward or punishment behind Your choices.

God:  Have you ever read the newspapers? Watched what you call ‘news’ on television?  Let Me ask you a question:  Do you see any system of reward and punishment?

Mr. Smith:  No!  But I always hoped that… that things somehow made sense, that I just couldn’t understand them.

God:  Nope.

Mr. Smith:  So things are just as irrational as they appear?  Bad things and good things happen to people without regard to their personal worth or accomplishments?

God:  You need to hear this, so I’ll say it again.  Yes, without regard to worth or merit.  Why don't I just go ahead and answer your next question: The universe is neither fair nor unfair.  It has its own rules, and it doesn’t operate on the basis of what you humans think are better rules, such as good and evil, kind and unkind.  You think The Rules should involve moral choices.  That’s a contradiction in terms. Rules eliminate choices, that’s why they’re Rules.  Duh.

Mr. Smith:  This implies that prayer, worship, things that are intended to communicate with You, are not of any use.

God:  Depends on what you mean by ‘use’.  If you mean, do I change the laws of the entire universe to grant a request from a particular person?  No, of course not.  I'm not Amazon or an on-line ordering catalog, and the universe doesn’t operate on the basis of your personal preferences or beliefs.  I do think that prayer improves your attitude toward the universe, it reminds you that you’re not in charge of anything, really.  Humility is good for you, at least to a degree.

Mr. Smith:  You don’t need or .. particularly value our worship?

God:  Being God does not require that I have needs for worship or even admiration.  So, no.  It is nice to be appreciated, of course, but not required.

Mr. Smith:  OK, another question. 

God:  What I’m here for. Go for it.

Mr. Smith:  Did you create the universe and the rules it apparently runs by?

God:  Short answer:  Yes. In a nutshell, I made the Rules and then I started this thingie, the universe, running.  It’s held together quite a long time, at least, long in your terms.  Of course, it’ll eventually stop, nothing lasts forever.  But it’s been pretty successful, for the most part.

Mr. Smith:  Have there been, will there be, other universes?

God:  Yes indeed.  I’ve been here a long time, although I know my answer is a little misleading.

Mr. Smith:  What’s the point of all these ... universes, if I can ask?

God:  I knew I picked the right connection! Good question!  Listen carefully.  The fact that I made the rules doesn’t mean I know how they will all develop over time.  The future of every universe is unpredictable, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Mr. Smith:  If it operates by rules, how can it come out different every time?

God:  Some of the fine details are a little ‘iffy’.  Ask one of your scientists about quantum physics.  (Laughs).  That’s an in joke, by the way, don’t worry about it.  Free will is a quantum phenomenon.  And free will means that different choices will have different outcomes.  So free choice means multiple outcomes, by their nature not predictable though they are determined by the Rules.

Mr. Smith:  OK.  That answers another question, about whether You have a sense of humor.

God:  What conclusion did you come to?  Like I don’t know.  A sense of humor is indispensable.

Mr. Smith:  (looking at watch) By the way, it’s still 9:34.

God:  You’re telling Me this as if it were news.  And yes, I suppose, in a certain way I do have a sense of humor, or at least of amusement.  In a shallow sense, the universe serves the same purpose for Me as a video game does for you.  It… passes the time in an interesting way.  By the way, that’s not a trivial answer, although it might seem like that to you.

Mr. Smith:  Jesus Christ!

God:  I wondered when that would come up.  Before you ask, I’ve visited here many times, I already told you that, trying to put you on a better path.  In past years, the computer wasn’t available to record things, so people with whom I spoke relied on their memory, or in at least one case, stone tablets.  Memory is extremely unreliable, of course, as you know.  I had to save some space in your little brains for a new idea or so, so memories get compacted and reorganized to suit you.  Takes up less space but introduces a bunch of errors.  Hey, nobody’s perfect!  Except me, and I’m not a person, strictly speaking.  It’s all I can do to fit inside this (points to self)

Mr. Smith:  (bitterly) I’m so glad we amuse You.

God:  You’re welcome.  Sometimes I wish your egos had not turned out to be so… touchy.  You have such a wide variety of amusing antics, you’re very inventive and find surprising, even to Me! ways to use the rules to create new things, new ideas.  Because of free will, you come up with amazing ideas, such as wars.  Your wars are always fun to watch, of course, and you all seem to like them too.  Even when you’re not actually having one, you make them up on your computers!  That almost surprised Me when it happened.  And the wide variety of things you’ve found to do with your bodies! Jumping, running, adventures… Amazing! I love being surprised.

Mr. Smith:  My opinion of You is getting lower and lower!  You find our sufferings ‘amusing’, you’ve designed a universe that is brutal and unkind.  You can dismiss my opinion as being worthless, which it is, of course.

God:  Of course.  You don’t like the way the machinery that I designed and brought into being works.  It’s (laughs) inhuman!  It’s unfair!  It’s unkind!  You don’t even understand the meaning of the word ‘unfair’!

Mr. Smith:  I understand it well enough. 

God: No, you don’t!  You only use that word when somebody other than you has something you want.  You use that word when what you really experience is not the need for justice but is simply envy.  If the world were fair, if the playing field were really level, you rich white guys would have far less than you have. You sit in a house that 99% of the population can hardly imagine, and think it’s unfair when the rich white guy next door has a nicer car.  If I had a somewhat different sense of humor, I’d make the world fair and then watch you whine and bitch.  You ought to be careful what you ask for, you know.  I’m too kind to give you what you deserve.

Mr. Smith:  Since for the sake of argument You created the universe, you had the power, you could have made the choice to make it both kind and fair.  I may be just an amusing bit of protoplasm, but You appear to be a cold-hearted bully, perhaps even a monster.  Maybe you’re the Devil, in fact.

God:  Oh yes, of course I am, and God as well.  You can’t really comprehend me, so you divide me up into smaller and more comprehensible pieces.  And you give them names.  You judge Me and the universe (and We’re kind of the same thing) by your personal values and preferences.  Does it occur to you that you judge from a very limited perspective? 

Mr. Smith:  I can only judge from my perspective.  A perspective that You created and limited.  And for that matter, so can You.  It’s a cheap answer to point out that Your motives must be incomprehensible to the likes of me.  I didn’t create my limits.  You did, and that makes You responsible for them.

God:  (laughs) That’s true.  It’s also true that My perspective is considerably larger than yours.  I don’t fault you for being limited, although I remind you, I am under absolutely no obligation to be ‘fair’.

Mr. Smith: (frowning, clenching fists) While of course it doesn’t matter, at least, not to You, I don’t like your values, your amusement at our suffering!  If you were human, I’d be shouting, ‘Who do You think You are?’

(God stands, sudden darkening, huge roll of thunder and a bolt of white light on the figure of God)

God:  (In a huge voice) Where were you when I created the universe? 

(Mr. Smith falls to the floor, covering his head with his hands.  Then normal light returns and God sits back down.  Mr. Smith gets slowly up off the floor and makes it back into his seat, shaking.)

God:  I thought it appropriate to remind you of who we are.

Mr. Smith:  I got that. (Takes a deep breath)  And frankly I think that was rather a cheaply theatrical way to win an argument.

God:  But it made the point.

Mr. Smith:  That my understanding is limited?  Of course it is.  You made it so.  You set the limits that I have to operate in.  I can only judge with the equipment I was given.  There might be a much broader set of values, but I don’t have them, which is, of course, on you.  By my values, which are all I have to go on, it seems to me we humans would be much better off without you, you and your amusing little games, your justification for unkindness, your randomly and uncaringly allowing terrible things to happen to innocent people.

God:  I might point out that not all “innocent people” are innocent, but clearly there are some that are. But that’s really irrelevant. The Rules that operate the universe don’t have the power to exercise judgment.  Gravity doesn’t decide who to let fall or fly. The Rules are in many ways mechanically fixed, they have no discretion in their operation.  When you humans set off an atomic bomb over a city, it killed without discretion or judgment, adults, animals and children, bacteria and lichen, plants and viruses.  That’s the way laws work.  They are by definition indiscriminate.  When a rock falls on your toe, the rock has no power to choose.  In that sense, the rock is innocent.  There would be no universe at all if there were not laws that govern its operation.  Can you even imagine a universe without rules?

Mr. Smith:  No, of course not.  Could you not imagine a universe whose rules, at least for sentient beings, require kindness?

God:  You want kindness by law? Without discrimination?  How kind is it to kill a cow or a carrot?  What would you eat?  Can you even walk without killing insects, bacteria or plant life?  But wait, there's more!  If you had no choice but to be kind, how would good and evil exist?  
Mr. Smith:  You're saying that good and evil only exist because they are voluntary?
God:  Of course.  You humans are the only creatures really capable of judgment, of having choice and discrimination, and how have you used that?  Did you become more tolerant, more kind, more honorable?  You did not! Why did you not?  I created a universe in which you had a choice, and we can both see how you have used it.  You blame Me for creating a universe in which you chose to be heartless, unkind and without compassion?  You did that yourselves.  You did that without instruction from Me. You exercised your free will, and you chose what you chose.

Mr. Smith:  I see.  If there is evil in this world, it isn’t Your fault, it’s ours, you're saying.

God:  I didn’t say anything about ‘fault’.  How can I take more responsibility than by acknowledging that I created this world?  Or at least, the rules by which it developed.  Those rules included free will for humans, and free will means the power to make choices, good choices and bad choices.  I don’t interfere with your choices. If I did, that would make your choices irrelevant and meaningless.  I have chosen that the world be free (at least in a limited way) to develop according to the choices you make.  That means you have the power to choose badly or heartlessly. That’s the way free will and choice work.

Mr. Smith:  We didn’t make the world.  We didn’t make ourselves.  You allow evil to exist. You created our brains, and you created the conditions under which we survive, including killing and eating. You can’t escape responsibility. If the buck stops anywhere, it must stop with You.

God:  You heard Me, but you just can’t make yourself believe I meant exactly what I said.  I created a universe that can unfold and develop unpredictably.  The rules are real, but the outcome of the operation of the rules is not entirely predictable, even by Me.  There has to be the possibility of evil for the choice of good to be meaningful.  If you had no freedom of choice, nothing new could exist.  The universe would be like a giant clock, totally predictable and equally trivial. 

Mr. Smith:  I forgot for a moment. We are here to be… amusing.

God:  That’s an oversimplification, of course.

Mr. Smith:  If I oversimplify, perhaps You should have created me in a more complex way.

God:  You have made that argument already. You're trying to make me responsible for your momentary mental laziness. When I used the word ‘amusing’, I had meanings for that word that the language we are using doesn’t have the words for.  You are more like an experiment than an amusement.  And before you get all bent out of ego-shape, as participants in this particular experiment you are free to make any choices you like.  I am not controlling you.  You use “amusing”  to convey a sort of contempt for the objects of My amusement.  That is simply untrue, but my ‘feelings’ are not the subject of this discussion, and in reality they are not even comprehensible to you.  Which, as you will point out, is not your fault, since I am your Creator.  You should get over the “fault” thing.

Mr. Smith:  So what is the point of this discussion?  You apparently have had this discussion, or something like it, many times in human history.  What are You trying to accomplish? What is it You want us to know?

God:  Good question, and in fact, the only question.  I want you to know you have choices, for good or for evil, for kindness or cruelty.  The fact that the universe itself is uncaring about humans or their values, does not excuse humans for being uncaring.  You blame Me for the unkindness of life, but you have the power to make life more kind, and you instead make it worse.  I can't foresee the outcome of the universe, but you have the power to change that outcome.  At this moment I’m not particularly optimistic about you humans.  It’s a good thing I have back-up plans.

Mr. Smith:  You mean, like if we don’t… work out?

God:  Exactly.  There are other species, even on this world, who may eventually develop choice and free will.  And if not on this world, then …

Mr. Smith:  You don’t seem to care personally, I notice.

God:  Of course I care.  I’ve put a lot of energy into this particular arrangement. I’m just not optimistic about you guys.

Mr. Smith:  What would a … a positive outcome look like?

God:  Oh, what an interesting question!  I didn’t foresee that one, so thanks!  I had this thought… the universe might be changed by you, by your decisions and choices, perhaps might even become sentient itself.  And at last I would have a companion!  But even if that doesn't happen, your freedom to choose means an interesting trip, at the very least|.

(A long silence ensues.)

Mr. Smith:  I don’t have any more questions.

God:  I know that.  Have you noticed the time?
Mr. Smith: (looks at watch)  It’s … 9:34.

God:  If you’re surprised at this point, you’ve missed a lot. By the way, in the heat of the discussion, you have forgotten one of the questions you have been thinking about a lot, over the last few years.  Shall I remind you?

Mr. Smith:  No.  How about you save us the energy?

God:  Reverence is certainly not one of your traits.  On the other hand, I wouldn’t have chosen you if it were.  Your question is, in general, about life after death.

Mr. Smith:  That’s right.  Can You, will You tell me about it?

God:  Short answer, there is none.  Death is death.  It is the ending of your individual self, your awareness.  But there are lots of other 'selves' and awarenesses out there.

Mr. Smith:  I was afraid of that.

God: You needn’t be.  What was it like 200 years before you were born?  Rhetorical question, by the way.

Mr. Smith:  I wasn’t there.

God:  Correct.  You weren’t in existence.  There was no ‘you’.  You didn’t wait impatiently through the first 14 billion years of this universe, because there was no ‘you’ to wait.  The next 14 billion years  (and I pick this number randomly) will go the same way.  You just can’t imagine a universe without you in it, but believe me, the universe can and will go on without you.  It will be neither pleasant nor unpleasant.  There will be no 'you' to experience, feel or remember.

Mr. Smith:  That’s … depressing. 

God:  That’s one way to look at it.  Some people might consider sitting around with nothing to do for 14 billion years a little depressing.  You can choose to think of it another way.  And I think that brings our conversation to an end.  It’s 9:34, and getting late.  (laughs and gets up)

The text is on your computer.  You don’t have editing rights, by the way.

Mr. Smith:  What am I supposed to do with it?

God:  (goes to door and opens it, then laughs)  Why, anything you choose, of course!

(shuts door behind self)

Ignoring the future

The real problem with legislators arises from the fact that they are elected for a specific limited period of time.  As a result, they are not particularly interested in the longer-term consequences of a current vote, when 'longer-term' is defined as 'not on my watch'.  Their concern is focused on their own term of office, and what serves them best over that range of time.

So when we see the huge and rapid increase in public debt, we see the direct consequences of being focused only on the current issues.  Legislators won't be around to take responsibility for the debts they have incurred.  Current needs are met.  The future can take care of itself, or at the least other people will take care of things.

Another example is the issue of global warming.  That's a future event, well after their current term of office.  Right now oil is profitable and reasonably available.
Who cares about the emissions?  I can't smell a thing.  Unless I go into a town.

The limits on this kind of spending and thinking, if we can call it thinking, were originally managed by keeping the dollar tied to the gold standard.  We couldn't print more money than we had gold to back it up.  It was harder for the country to go into debt.  Having the requirement to live within our current means limited our ability to incur debts.  There is no such limit now, of course, because otherwise we (as a nation) would have experienced great restrictions on our ability to spend money.  Money that we don't have.

We thought that in the future our increased prosperity, triggered by our ability to spend vast amounts of money we didn't have now, would generate the taxes that could be used to pay off our debts.  Kind of like spending money with a platinum card on the assumption that we would earn enough at some time in the future we could pay our debts.

Legislators aren't the only short-sighted people.  I am old enough that it's very clear to me that I have a relatively short number of years ahead of me.  I sometimes find myself thinking about such issues that they won't be my problem because I won't be around to deal with them.  So for those who are both elderly and legislators, the incentive to deal with future problems becomes rather weak.  Can we afford the luxury of short-sightedness?

A final note.  The voting population seems afflicted with the same disorder.  They (and I mean 'we') want what they want when they want it, which is now.  The hell with the future.  It will take care of itself.  We can indulge ourselves in what we want. Someone else will have to pay the credit card bill.

The Afterlife

First of all, you should know I don't believe there is an afterlife.  I think the 14 billion years or so after I die will go as rapidly and painlessly as the first 14 billion years or so before I was born. To believe in the super-natural is to open your mental doors to believe in absolutely anything without any evidence at all.  Not a good plan, and when people have acted on their supernatural beliefs, it has led to really catastrophic consequences.

Given the above, I would have some preferences if there were an afterlife.  And since to believe in the afterlife we have to accept the supernatural, I can posit any conditions I want.  After all, there are no limits or rules about 'supernatural'.  People have manufactured a wide variety of afterlife conditions from clever to adolescent.

My idea of hell is boredom. The conventional idea of heaven includes clouds, harps, streets of gold, and lots and lots of singing, maybe doing nothing, or maybe sitting and talking to relatives long dead. That's about as close to hell as I can imagine, and I do NOT want to be sent there.  I don't even know anyone who wants that in this life for a brief period, much less for eternity.  Like holiday get-togethers that last forever. Without wine.

But least in hell, there might be something to do.  Different torments, scenery, demons, and so on.  Maybe I can get a job.  In fact, I would prefer to be a worker in hell than a guest in heaven.  I could push burning coals with a red-hot broom.  I could dirty up torture rooms (I don't imagine keeping them clean would be a priority). I could carry hot lava in my hands to the lava pools.

Perhaps I could run group therapy for famously bad people. There are some very interesting people in Hell, and they would have a lot of time on their hands. Would a group with Hitler, Judas, various mass murderers and child killers and political figures, be interesting?  Of course. However, there is the problem that if the therapy helped (and I would certainly have plenty of time to work)  and if the members got "better", what would happen to them?  Would they be sentenced to heaven?

And in this hell there would be other workers like me.  I could organize a union of workers, and maybe later we could let the demons join as well.  I wouldn't suggest we could strike for more interesting working conditions, but I wouldn't rule it out, either.

Considering my strong preferences, perhaps the worst punishment for me would be heaven.  I don't like being bad, andit's hard to know just how bad I would have to be to get out of being sent to heaven.  I don't want to be any worse than I really have  to be.

I'll have more thoughts later if I last long enough.

Financial Bailouts for the Improvident

Lots of people in Houston are suffering after the last storm.  Some of them need and deserve help.  Some need the help but should not be entitled to it.

When you build or buy a home in the flood plain, you know without a doubt that you are taking a risk.  This is especially true when you buy or build in a coastal city such as Houston.   So you have the option of buying flood insurance.  Like all insurance programs, flood insurance spreads catastrophic individual costs among a larger pool of people, so that no one person gets wiped out.

Now, many people lost their homes due to the flooding in (of all places) the flood plain.  The government offers to use our money to provide financial assistance, as if the government were a huge insurance company that you don't have to sign up for.  You get flooded, the government will help you.  You don't have to pay premiums or anything.  Maybe you don't even pay much or any taxes.

Buying a home in the flood plain and electing not to purchase insurance in the knowledge that the government (i.e. all the rest of us in the US) will chip in and buy you a new home.  Makes it a lot easier to buy the house when you don't have to pay for insurance.  You are ENTITLED to help you didn't pay for and didn't sign up for, so what is the risk for you?  Not much.  If you had to take a share in the risk you might think twice, but you don't even have to think once.

Our representatives in the government feel the same way about banks.  We will bail them out, too, if they make unwise investments and take high risks, because we can't afford for them to fail.  So what holds them back from taking such risks?  Nothing, of course.  Lots to gain, little to lose.  We got you, buddy.  Do we get to share in the profits?  Ummm... no.

The degree of risk in an endeavor should be factored into the costs of the endeavor, otherwise there is nothing to limit risky behavior.  When the risks could not be anticipated or avoided, we can and should help.  But when people gamble, it should be with their own money, not ours.

The Problem With Buddhist Philosophy

I want to be clear and avoid unnecessary offense to those who might be bothered by a critical discussion of some aspects of a particular religion.  I am not concerned about the religious aspects of Buddhism.  As far as I am personally concerned, all belief systems that are based on supernatural events are equally absurd, but there's nothing to debate about that.  Absurd is absurd.  I am interested in the practical outcomes of living by some specific philosophy in this world.

Philosophies about how one should live are frequently embedded in religious belief systems, and it's hard to consider the ethos of a religion without being influenced by the mythos.  I am here interested only in the applications of the Buddhist philosophy and its impact on individual and community life.  I will say it again:  this is not about religion.

Buddhist philosophy, like Confucianism or Christian philosophy, is about how an individual might live in this world to achieve a better or happier life.  As such, it can be evaluated apart from its religious aspects in terms of how useful, effective, or practical it might be, and how much its practice results in a happier life for the practitioner.

Buddhism prescribes behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are intended to create a better life (in this world) for the practitioner.  The individual is taught how to adjust their attitudes in such a way as to result in less pain and conflict.  A person practicing Buddhist philosophy learns to adjust himself to his environment and social situation.  He learns to accept what happens, to let go of desires and "false goals", to live at peace with his environment without conflict or struggle.

Such an approach works well.  Much of human unhappiness is related to our tendency to hold on to things, to refuse to let go of bad feelings, of envy and resentment.  Learning to let go of our past is an important and difficult task, but one that promotes freedom and joy in the present.

Buddhist practitioners adjust to their environment.  What they do NOT do is adjust their environment to themselves.  They accept what is, and make no attempt to change it or improve it.  And while this is certainly beneficial to the practitioner, it creates a community which is basically passive, which accepts the status quo and adjusts to it. Buddhist communities and governments are stable and essentially passive.  They are rarely involved in scientific exploration or technological advancement.

Of course individual Buddhists may not fit the above description, but that doesn't change the overall flavor of their communities.  Just look at countries that profess Buddhism in this century.  They are much the same as they have been for thousands of years.

Is learning to be at peace with one's life, even if it is unhealthy, uncomfortable or unsafe, a good thing?  On the other hand, philosophies that lead to constant change, improvement in individual conditions, at the cost of unrest and violence at times may or may not be good.  Sometimes individual comfort/happiness conflicts with community improvement.  Sometimes miserably unhappy individuals have given rise to  amazing and beneficial changes.  Sometimes happy and content individuals have played their fiddles while Rome burns.

Which is better?

How "belief systems" are born and developed

Looking around at the world, full of conflicts and wars, incompatible and irrational belief systems, it is important to look at the processes by means of which all belief systems are created.  How, living in the same world, did we come to have such widely discrepant belief systems, totally incompatible with one another and all believed to be totally right?  How did individuals grow up with such peculiar beliefs about themselves and the people around them?

We seem to have the inborn trait of curiosity and speculation about how the world works.  We want to know what influences what, what controls what.  We want to predict and control the future.  Where this trait arises is open to speculation.  How we use it is fairly clear.  Humans make theories about causation.

Two factors are important.  The first factor is the post-hoc fallacy.  This fallacy stipulates that when thing B happens directly after thing A, thing A "caused" thing B.  This is a fallacy because it is not always and invariably true.  However, it is true a lot of the time, and leads to our first discoveries of the laws of the universe.  Eating the fruit of a strange plant, followed by miserable illness, leads us not to eat that fruit again.  We don't know for sure that the plant was poisonous, but logical certainty is not as important as avoiding taking the chance.

The key phrase here is "not sure".  We form theories of connection or causality.  We think "A may have caused B".  Eating the fruit MAY have caused our illness.  How do we know?  We try it out, or at least observe carefully.  We look for evidence that our theory is valid.  It is important to our survival that we try to understand how things work and make guesses (theories) as to what might hurt us.  We have to accept probabilities, that is, relative proof rather than absolute. We have to look at the data coming in and allow it to strengthen or weaken our theories.

The second factor is called (by us psychologists) confirmation bias.  This bias tells us that when we think X theory may be true, we pay selective attention to  evidence supporting X.  We do NOT look systematically for evidence disproving X, at least not until the birth of scientific thought.  And even scientists trained in collecting data don't think scientifically most of the time.

For instance, someone who believes they are "unlucky" will selectively attend to "evidence" of unluck and selectively ignore evidence of luck. The "unlucky" person accumulates data over time that "proves" his theory about luck to be correct for him.  Someone who believes they are unlovable will collect rejections, and even invite them, believing rejection to be inevitable.  It is easy to see how religious and political beliefs are supported.

These two factors are sufficient to give rise to thousands, millions, of conflicting ideas and beliefs, many of which are so strongly held that people will kill to defend them.  Our beliefs tell us what to look for, what to believe, how to behave.  They define our civilizations, our religions, and our politics. They define which groups are "good", and which "bad".

In children the process is easier to observe than it is in adults, but adults function in pretty much the same way.  Suppose we are given a theory, such as: step on a crack and you'll have bad luck all day.  We then begin paying selective attention to cracks.  We try stepping on one or two, and then observing the following events, which by means of the post-hoc fallacy, we believe to be directly connected to the crack-stepping behavior.  A number of things happen, as they always do on any given day.  However, because of confirmation bias, we notice particularly the events that "confirm" our theory about cracks.  We discount or minimize those events that do not confirm it.  For at least a few days, while we are paying attention, the theory seems to be more and more true.  We do accept negative evidence, but it takes a lot more of it to disprove the theory than positive evidence to confirm it.

When events occur that have special emotional meaning to us, we try to find a theory that accounts for them.  We wonder what we did or observed that might have "caused" the event to happen.  We form a theory.  When we are young, our standards for a good theory are loose.  (Hopefully they get tighter as we mature).  A small child once asked me if her mother had died because the child had "bad thoughts".  The child is not capable of seeing the weakness of the connection between the child's thoughts and the mother's accidental death.  So all of our theories seem worth investigating, at least while we are young and not appropriately skeptical.

Many events can give rise to theory formation, but events with a lot of emotion attached are primary stimuli for theory formation. Theory: If I don't take a raincoat to work it will rain. Event:  If I don't take a raincoat and it does rain, the theory is supported. Event: If I don't take a raincoat and it does not rain, that doesn't count. So theories mostly find support and rarely find disproof.  They get stronger over the years as we collect more "supportive evidence" and continue to discount negative evidence.  

This pattern results in our changing beliefs about ourselves as we grow older.  Something happens to get our attention and we form a theory of connection.  We accumulate support for that theory, but not disconfirmation.  Suppose some event happens that causes us to form a theory about ourselves.  As an example, imagine getting a bad grade on a test in the first grade.  We might begin to form a theory, such as: "Maybe I'm stupid".  We then begin to look for evidence, but we pay most attention to the evidence that supports our belief in being stupid.  From then on we accumulate more evidence and become more convinced that we're "stupid".  

Religions get formed in the same way.  In the dawn of time, a loving parent falls to his knees and prays to the heavens for the return to health of his child.  The child recovers.  The parent forms a theory:  praying to the heavens results in blessings.  He tells his friends what happened.  They all begin collecting evidence that supports the theory and discounts the negative evidence.  When a parent prays for their child and the child dies, the parent discounts the negative evidence by forming a new theory:  one must have to pray in a specific way for it to work, and he must have got it wrong.  The future evidence is heavily weighted in favor of support of the future theory(s).

Some of the theories formed may be valid, others not so much.  But they continue anyway as if they were confirmed.   We still throw rice at weddings, even when we are not strongly in favor of immediate fertility.   A problem is that theories can never be absolutely proven or disproven.  There is always the possibility of getting more evidence.  We may find connections between event A and B that we didn't know before.  So our world is more and more full of divergent and supported (but not proven) beliefs.

We believe we are right.  We forget that "belief" is not proof.  We do not really question our beliefs unless something happens that forces us to reconsider.  That takes a lot of force.  For instance, many people believe the universe is "fair".  A cursory reading of the newspaper should be enough to cause doubts about that theory.  However, in order to keep the theory intact, people develop new "theories" as to why the universe appears unfair:  the people to whom bad things happen "must have deserved it" or "there must be some higher purpose we don't understand" or any number of theories designed to allow the old theory to continue in the absence of supportive evidence.

To overcome our own confirmation bias requires conscious attention and respect for new data, a conscious willingness to question your beliefs and an equal willingness to consider and evaluate new data on its merits.  For instance, to overcome your belief in being unlovable, you have to be willing to consider data that supports your being lovable. By challenging beliefs, you can become more aware of contradictory data, and vice-versa.  Perhaps you can't entirely eliminate beliefs that have accumulated "support" over the years, but you can weaken them over time.  (A central tenet of CBT).

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