Mother's Day Thoughts

Here is just a quick thought I had on this mother's day, and this goes for father's day too: If a mother and/or father is virtuous, kind, and good to be around, why does there need to be a national holiday for it? I think if your mother and/or father is a good human being, you can celebrate that person everyday if you wanted. What is with the special occasion day where thousands of people are guilted into buying stuff for your parents, and guilted even more if they happen to forget or something?

You don't have to be guilted into giving some kind of gratitude for your parents if they really are as virtuous as you say they are. Just something to think about.

A 2 X 2 Matrix Explaining Faith Healing

So I'm sitting at Starbucks having coffee when I overhear these two women at another table talking about the other woman's ability to heal people using the power of the "holy spirit". The conversation involves the "healer" giving anecdotal evidence at the awe and praise of her table partner. This peaked my interest so I popped open my handy-dandy pocket notebook to draw and fill out the following 2 X 2 matrix consisting of: willingness to prove ability (willing to prove | not willing) by ability (has ability | doesn't have ability). So when somebody claims to have the ability to heal somebody magically there is four possibilities =

I. Willing to Prove | Actual Ability Great! But the problem is this has never demonstrated. Wouldn’t there be more ppl willing to prove such abilities?	II. Willing to Prove | No Ability This is simply fraud and taking advantage of the needy and these are well documented (e.g., faith healing , psychic surgery)
III. Not Willing to Prove | Actual Ability This is simply cruel! Think of all the kids suffering because these healers won’t use talents!	IV. Not Willing to Prove | No Ability Then any claims are simply lies with nothing to back them up.

So with my table figured out I made the bold move of actually walking up to their table to ask this amazing woman some questions. Most cases I know of fit into box II so I'm excited to find out of this lady belongs to box I!

Me: "Excuse me, but I couldn't help but overhearing your conversation and that you, ma'am, have some amazing abilities!"

Magic woman: "Uh, heh, well I have done some pretty amazing things through Jesus before."


Me: "That is just awesome. You know what? If you do have these said powers, I know of a cancer treatment center here with some very sick children who could actually use your help. Would you be willing to--"


Magic woman: "Heh! Well... it doesn't quite work that way... I just don't have time and I don't want money for this ability but I will pray for those kids--"


Me: "Now hold on now, I don't have to pay you anything. All you have to do is come on down to the hospital and do some healing. But you say it doesn't work that way? How does it work?"


Magic woman: "Look young man, it just does work through Jesus. If you'll read the bible from cover to cover you will understand."


Me: "Yes, I've read the book and understand there are some miraculous healings in there and so I'm excited that you can demonstrate such abilities that are discussed in that tome!"

Magic woman: "Uh... I'm just not interested."

Me: "Look, there are 4 possibilites here:  you do have such abilities and would be willing to come to the hospital (which would be awesome), you have such abilities but are not willing to demonstrate them (which is very cruel to those children), you don't have such abilities but have tried to demonstrate abilities (which would make you a fraud), or you don't have such abilities and are not willing to prove them (any such claims are lies with no evidence). It is pretty clear which catagory you fall into.

"Have a good day."

Ohhh man you should have seen the look on their faces. I didn't hear another peep about this super healing BS and they eventually left (BTW, they were both sitting at a disabled-reserved table and none of them were disabled!) without saying a word or looking in my direction.

I hate to be the person to do it, but isn't it time we all grew some balls and confronted people who openly abuse others or talked openly about bullshit claims? Such claims, BTW, have cost a lot of unwarry people tons of money and have hurt people (i.e., claiming to heal them outside of medical science, causing them to forgo medical treatment). I would seriously be happy if there was such a person with such an ability to heal. Unfortunatley, such people who make these claims either won't put their abilities to the test, or perform something with trickery. The only way to really get these people to shut up is to be openly curious.

Anyway, this scene gave me a good reason to discuss using the 2 X 2 matrix to solve problems or map out some possibilities. Quite a useful tool if I do say so myself. 

Is Evil Necessary?

My latest article published on Lost Liberty Cafe. Special thanks to Nate a crap load of edits and suggestions. Foreword: This article has been waiting for a long time to be written. I finally sat down and put the pen to the paper, deeply exploring a concept which has aggravated for the longest time. It is my hope that the reader will find the article educational and, if I have performed the methodology correctly, avoid errors in judgments/applying morality. I also hope that this article provides the reader with enough ammunition to recognize when somebody else is making these mistakes in moral judgments and actions.

Faith & Despair: Two Sides Of The Same Coin?

This thought recently posted on the Maverick Philosopher:

Despair requires as much of a leap as faith does. In either case we jump beyond what we can strictly know.

I thought this was quite fascinating and wanted to expand on this a bit more here. Faith can be understood in two ways. The first being where one believes something to be the case despite all evidence that it isn't, or as Mark Twain would put it: Faith is believing what you know ain't so. The other definition of faith is better described as trust based on actual evidence. The distinction here is very important, and many people make the fallacy of equivocation when they fail to realize the distinction. A common example of this is where a religious person claims an atheist has just as much as a religious person, such as:

You have faith that the taxi driver will take you to your destination just as I have faith that Jesus is my co-pilot.

Well, no. I have trust in the taxi driver based on evidence I know about taxis in general:

- It is their business to know about locations so that they can take customers to their desired destination.
    - Failing to do so would lose them business.
- I have used taxis in the past successfully.
- Other people I've known have used them successfully.
- Taxis drivers are humans like me and must learn how to drive a taxi, and learn the lay of their land.
- They have resources for doing their job - their vehicles, headquarters, maps, etc.
- etc.

Notice that with this sense of trust that it is likely that an event will happen given the evidence, but not always %100. I was in Hawaii a few years ago for a vacation and wanted to visit a particular locale. Prior use of taxis had gotten me to my desired locations but this particular taxi driver was having some difficulty finding this one location because he had never been there before. Being a seasoned taxi driver, he called in to headquarters and was finally able to obtain proper directions to get me where I wanted to be, and he didn't charge me for the wait! So yes, you can't be %100 certain that event will happen even given the evidence, but it is more likely than not, and a reasonable way to approach the world.

With the other sense of faith, it would be like stepping into a car with somebody who has no idea where he was at and and he says, "Hey man, I have no idea where anything is around here, but all I have to do is ask my invisible friend Fred where you need to go and he will be my GPS, man!" Would you trust such a lunatic? Even the most sensible religious people would not. Yet this is an example of faith in the sense of believing something without evidence.

So what we're talking about here is a trust based on evidence and the other is plain bigotry. What our friend the Maverick Philosopher is talking about is the bigoted form of faith.

Now onto despair. I would not call despair a form of bigotry as such, but I would say that, like faith, there is an error in thinking. Despair can be found in people who suffer certain types of depression and neurosis and at the very least low self-esteem. People who despair latch on to the conclusion that everything will turn out for the worse despite evidence. They lack proper expectations due to a disregard for a healthy way of thinking about their problems and current situations.

As with faith (in the non-trust sense we discussed above) despair is latching onto a conclusion without evidence. One could say that the two are going in opposite directions. With faith you do expect something to happen despite evidence, with despair you don't have any expectations of things changing beyond their current condition (again, without much reason to believe so).

It would be a false dichotomy to conclude that one either has faith or despairs, for, as we discussed earlier, there is also the trust based on evidence. I think evidenced-trust is the opposite of the faith/despair dichotomy and a way for people to escape bigotry/neurosis condition.

Understanding Perfectionism As It Relates To Self-Attacking

Check out this post reviewing research on perfectionism. I myself am currently doing a master's thesis in psychology and the subject is primarily extreme self-criticism. One of the facets of extreme self-criticism is the tendency to be a perfectionist.

In the context of self-criticism, perfectionists are constantly engaging in harsh self-scrutiny, overly critical evaluations of one's own behavior, an inability to derive satisfaction from successful performance, and chronic concerns about others’ criticism and expectations. Additionally, perfectionism, as it relates to depressive symptoms, places them at a very high risk for depression. Perfectionists tend to respond to stressors with a helpless orientation and experience chronic dysphoria.

High self-critics engage in harsh self-scrutiny, have chronic fears of being disapproved of and criticized by significant others, and expect others to be critical and judgmental towards them. Self-critics experience less social support and have fewer friends compared to others. This may be because self-critics engage in more hostile, competitive interpersonal behavior and will attempt to protect themselves when self-worth is threatened by retaliating against friends and partners. Self-criticism and perfectionism are also akin in that there is a preoccupation with issues of self-definition and self-worth.

The reason behind high self-criticism (and thus perfectionism) lies in the childhood. Specificially, the child is confronted with parents who are extremely critical and controlling. This adverse parenting fosters insecure attachment from the child, and thus enforces within the child negative mental representations of self/others, and thus they end up having negative cognitive representations of others.

It gets worse as these children get older. They then are rejected because they gravitate to partners who view them unfavorably, and studies in this particular area show that even if you offer them positive feedback, they will always prefer the negative feedback, as this confirms their world view. And aside from relationships these adults have a high tendency to become perfectionists.

One metaphor that is often compared to perfectionism is the story of king Midas. The more I learn about what perfectionism actually entails the more I tend to disagree with king Midas as a metaphor for perfectionism. Perfectionists are not just people who are deluded into thinking they have the Midas touch and are miserable when they find out that instead of turning to gold, everything they touch does not transform. And pointing this out to a perfectionist will not give them this eureka moment and cure them. At some level they realize they are setting standards and expectations way too high, so helping the perfectionist is not merely an exercise in only being aware of it. The moral of the king Midas metaphor only goes so far as to apply to people who simply do not appreciate what they have, or with shallow people. With perfectionists, it goes far beyond just not appreciating what you have and what you can do.

As pointed out earlier, self-critical perfectionists will (unconsciously or not) go out and seek those things which confirm their negative beliefs about themselves. In relation of the Midas metaphor, it is like they tell themselves there is gold out there (a high, unrealistic expectation) and then they find out the truth and self-attack. In layman's terms, it appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to horrible childhood conditions. These people have internalized the harsh criticism of their parents.

Now that you understand what perfectionism is you will understand why I get upset when somebody is attacked for being a perfectionist and not attempt is made at understand the root causes of it; most likely an abusive family. Also, stop repeating this cute Midas story as if the damn thing will magically transform the person into somebody with healthy expectations for life. You would be more helpful if you went to his or her parents and told them the Midas story (and we both know you will not do that). The best thing to help with perfectionism and self-criticism is therapy, and specifically cognitive behavioral therapy.

I myself have struggled with self-criticism and perfectionism for years. Now in therapy, I can deal with these issues and the childhood experiences that brought these things on. Before I close this post I would like to talk about the healthy side to self-criticism and perfecting one's self.

Self-criticism is concerned with issues of self-worth and self-definition. When there isn't a preoccupation with this aspect it can really be helpful. If I were to fill you with all kinds of excessive praise that was not true, e.g., "you are such a rock star that you could just quit your day job and go for a singing career!", that you would be justified in using some self-criticism to debunk this claim. If you were not self-critical here, you would likely fall victim to this false claim and then disaster would happen. A healthy person has the capability for accurate self-definition, for developing realistic, positive and increasingly integrated self-definition and self-identity.

Basically, eveyrone has a need to be acknowledged, respected and to define themselves in terms of their seperateness from others. It is unfortunate that the cruelty of some parents deprives them of this need so what we see now in these adults is a type of dysfunctional way of relating to the world. It was appropriate as a child given their harsh circumstances, but now as adults they face a lot of hardships unless proper help is sought out via therapy.

If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, or if you would like to relate your own experiences with perfectionism, please do leave a comment below.