Hello Philosophy Society!
Discussion 1: Trumpism
Our first discussion began with the recent political phenomena of ‘trumpism,’ where ignorance and fascist charisma have taken over a significant percentage of the U.S. popular vote. How is this phenomenon possible in a time of access to the internet and abundant education? Another example of a similar vein of uncritical beliefs would be conspirators following Qanon. Here, the infamous Pizzagate conspiracy theory lead a gunman to terrorize a restaurant owner, falsely believing that there was a child, sex trafficking organization being held in its premises.
These kinds of phenomena, political or conspiracy theories in general, are based in flawed forms of thinking. On the side of the Trumpism phenomena, where large groups of a nation side with the charismatic falsities of a person in political power, many social and cognitive biases can account for the beliefs that they hold. In the context of the conspiracy theories, we can also explain this as a symptom of schizophrenia that may be prevalent in the population but is not necessarily at a ‘disordered’ threshold. In either case, the value of an awareness of our psychology and the means of reasoning we use when standing in a belief are both ways we can mitigate the issue.
There needs to be a social value for these kinds of properties for the emergent phenomena of mass conspiracy theories or political fascism to be reduced. People in society would have to learn why valuing self awareness, critical thinking and effort to understand the truth matters. In the extreme case of full blown schizophrenia, an individual may hold delusional beliefs regardless of evidence or reason and can conclude that anyone trying to convince them otherwise is also part of the overall conspiracy.
As a society, it is in our best interest to find a way to deal with these problems and in an optimistic perspective, this is the territory of advanced members of the Philosophy Society. 'Advanced,' meaning that they are able to be compassionate yet critical of others beliefs and have the willingness to put effort into helping those who do not understand their reasons in a sound minded context to achieve solid reasoning that does not lead to voting in fascist political leaders or conspiracy terrorism.
Another case is the school shootings that has been seen in the U.S. for many decades. Some members identified that social media can be contributing to the problem in the context of validating the shooter with gaining infamous publicity as a motivating factor to follow through with the shooting. Here is a reason why some regulation on the freedom of speech in social media is important so that people who have malicious intentions are not enabled or socially reinforced to do so.
Discussion 2: Discussion Mechanics
One of our members asked a question: How do we deal with false accusations or when someone is being disrespectful to us? First we want to understand that some people may have a predisposition to this kind of behaviour.
1) Mental Illness
Ex: 1 - Bipolar Disorder
Someone who is in a manic state may be engaged in a delusional frame of mind by only looking at a situation from one specific, distorted perspective. This individual may hyperfocus on a specific detail or emotion and not be able to disengage from it. Their fixation or obsession can prevent them from not empathizing with others, mindfully retracting from their emotional state or unable to incorporate new information that is relevant to the circumstance.
Ex: 2 - Narcissism
A person who suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder will usually have the tendency and trait of being arrogant, haughty, and aggressive in response to criticism. Another trait of NPD is being interpersonally manipulative where they will create false frames or contexts to a situation where they are not to blame. In this case, the self-concept or ‘ego’ of the person with NPD cannot be challenged or represented differently than the way they see themselves. These unhealthy or dysfunctional responses are a means to protect a fragile and hidden self-esteem or sense of identity.
2) States of Mind
Ex: 1 - Substance Abuse
Alcoholism, for example, is a very standard case where an individual may conjure false claims about a person or see things from a very distorted perspective. Alcohol affects the prefrontal cortex, where all of our abstract and logical reasoning takes place. This individual is psychologically incapacitated from being reasonable due to the saturation of the substance in their brain. Sometimes, a person suffering from Alcohol Substance Use Disorder can go into a psychotic rage, where they create a false narrative which is fueled by the substance. In these moments, there is very little reasoning that can take place due to the duration of the substance’s effect on the person.
Ex: 2 - Negative Emotional States - Anger
When someone is angry their limbic system has taken over the majority of their brains functioning. The prefrontal cortex, where our reasoning takes place, is not being used and hence will make it very difficult to come to some understanding at an abstract level. In these contexts, the person may need to vent their anger first before they are able to comprehend reasons. Things can get tricky when they become aggressive and it is best to try to understand why they are upset. A good question to ask when understanding the outburst is: ‘What is the object of emotion?’ or ‘What is the thing that is making the person upset?’ If you are able to display that you understand why the person is upset, then the anger could very well dissipate. Anger is a form of communication when words do not work at a ‘calm’ level. Some people may not have the skills to communicate certain messages to others unless they do so from an emotional context.
Meta Communication
There are two properties to keep in mind. The first is the content of the discussion or the subject that the individuals are talking about. The second is the manner that they are speaking or communicating with each other. The way we talk to each other is a behaviour. If that behaviour becomes problematic in the sense that the person is being disrespectful, a good method is to switch from talking about the content to discussing the method or means of communication. For example, ‘I feel that the tone of your voice was very patronizing there. Can you please make an effort to speak to me in a way that is respectful. If this is not a good time to talk, we can try again later when it will be easier.’ It is important to never compromise the way we are discussing the content by degrading the method.
If someone violates the manner of discussion, switch from the content to the meta analysis of the way we are relating or how we are talking. This will become a behavioural analysis frame of reference and some people can be very resistant to this like the NPD. In this arena, you will have to learn how to stay stable and model taking feedback in a healthy way, then offer course corrections to the other person if they are not able to do so for themselves. This requires you to do two roles: one is the player discussing the content with the goal of understanding and the second is being a fair, conversational referee who moderates how the discussion is progressing.
To be a fair conversational referee is to accept when you make fouls in the conversation and emulate or demonstrate good conversational etiquette. If you are able to maintain a stable behavioural pattern, the other person will start to show signs of modeling their behaviour after you, which then you can identify the progress with a social reward, ‘I appreciate that you are speaking to me in this tone, it makes it easier for me to understand you.’ In essence, you are socializing the other person to communicate to prosocial standards which will be challenging in certain situations, like those listed above.
Even though it is challenging, it is better than being the hopeless victim of abuse. It is better to stand up for yourself in a prosocial way by opening a meta discussion on the way communication is being conducted than allow someone to be abusive without consequence.
Some content may be very difficult for the thinker to understand, not to mention communicating that confused thought to another. It may take 10 trials, under normal conditions, for all parties to understand each other. First we must understand ourselves then we have to translate our understanding to the other person. If the means of discussion are violated, the probability of satisfying all trials are low meaning understanding will not be achieved. If we become aggressive or disrespectful we may only last a partial trial and never reach understanding together because the communication method was so harmful or irrelevant to the content, understanding the content never occurred.
Discussion 3: Self-Love
The self is always part of our experience. It is us and the container for our awareness. Our self does not interpret our experiences in a 1:1 ratio but has certain biases or predispositions within it. We have to actively check those biases and predispositions through a variety of means like changing our perspective through empathizing with another, changing our state of mind, or variables within our environment to find differences and similarities in the phenomena we are perceiving. When we ‘triangulate’ our perception of something by observing it from multiple perspectives we have a better sense of what the thing is independent of our single, first perception of it.
In relationships, the other can dominate our world and hence become more valuable than ourselves. This can be dangerous for us for a variety of reasons like placing too much value on the other over ourselves, reducing our own self care and growth.
It is important to always make the self the larger quantity in the relations between things. If we understand the self in relation to that which it perceives as a fraction, the self would be the common denominator in all experiences and relationships. This is always true because consciously, you are always present in your experience and as much as you may favour some other in your life, the self is the dominant person. Love is important but must not place more value in the other factor over the self.
For example, we can understand the relationship between self and other with the self as the bottom half of a fraction expressed as [X/self]. The value of the perceived phenomena, including others, and the value of ourselves matters. If we get into a loving relationship we can find ourselves lost due to valuing the other person more than ourselves. A ½ relationship would be that we value the other person 50% as much as we value ourselves whereas a 3/2 relationship would mean we value the other 33% more than we value ourselves.
In true love relationships where the other person has the capacity to be all encompassing of our attention and directions in life, we must remember the relationship between self and other. Our self is always the dominant person in the conscious experience because it is tied to our body and our psychological framework. The other can pop in and out of our experience but the self is always constant.
In the case where we find ourselves in love to the degree that the value of the other is going beyond the value of our self, ‘I can’t live without them,’ it is important to take that love and invest it in the self. The function of love is for growth and when we are supersaturated with love from the other we can utilize that state to expand the self. That expansion would be relative to the 5 main categories of self love: physical, emotional, social, intellectual and ontological or one’s purpose.
If we allow another to have more value than the self it can lead to many negative outcomes like the other not appreciating us reciprocally, being taken advantage of, feeling at loss if the other disengages from the relationship intentionally or not. Our existence cannot be dependent on another for without that other we would have no existence. Our existence must fundamentally be dependent on our self which is relative to the sense of independence necessary in the psychological development of one’s maturity: becoming an adult means to be independent.
Discussion Mechanics:
When involved in an intricate discussion, many tangent topics may arise. It is important to go back and complete previous topics for a sense of closure.
Discussion 4: The Social Method
The fundamental philosophical thesis for the Philosophy Society is based on a social method. First, we must develop our sense of self-awareness then expand that awareness to the social group. There are tools to make sense of the context we exist in which would be some language, a set of symbols and relations between them, to describe the phenomena we experience and that which we perceive. We must also rule out whatever biases we have that distort our view of what exists.
The function of the Philosophy Society, embodying the briefly described social method above, works analogously to a religious group by creating a sense of group cohesiveness and community but is not based on scripture, dogmatism and appeal to authority. We have seen the success of religious groups via their social survival even though the content is not based on evidence or reason and expects faith to bridge these gaps.
A group diametrically opposed to those gaps, bases its content on philosophical skills and principles can yield a stronger group which has the ability to proactively prevent mental health issues and retroactively treat existing ones. For example, learning how to deal with cognitive distortions which are reasoning errors that create unhealthy emotions and can lead to problematic issues like depression, dysfunctional anger and procrastination.
Meaning in life has been shown to be based on three properties: coherence, purpose and significance. The Philosophy Society can embark on discussing these elements of each member's lives and support facilitating meaning in life that is relative to the individual. The means that we have to make sense of our past, which is a story that we tell ourselves. Depending on the construction of that story, it can be empowering or debilitating. Our present self is composed of a set of beliefs and principles that we may not be immediately aware of that create our emotional states as well as direct our decisions and goals.
Our self-awareness is the beginning of the construction of meaning in life based on a coherence and empowering narrative. We can filter through our past experiences and learn new behavioural responses to certain situations. This takes time for reflection, practice and training. When we go back and correct a past narrative, by correcting any distortions or trauma we may have. We can also prevent future issues from being created by having a constructive set of attitudes, beliefs and habits in the present as we are creating new memories and experiences.
Practice is necessary which is founded upon learning principles within psychology like neuroplasticity. Our ancestors have given us an evolutionary structure of instincts, biases and heuristics. It is up to us to develop some form of education to complement that structure. This is where the weekly Philosophy Society meetings can provide an environment for training and education. The next phase is socializing with other members of the Philosophy Society so that they can support each other in how to deal with social circumstances and interpret different experiences.
© Achilles Atlas Justice and achillesjustice.com, 2018-22. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Achilles Atlas Justice and achillesjustice.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.