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HOW TO RESPOND TO SADNESS AND AVOID EMOTIONAL INVALIDATION

Posted by slizer88 on May 29, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: help, communication, self, psychology, selfhelp,
self-help, relationships, therapy, counseling, guidance. 1 Comment

To learn about what emotional invalidation really is, what it isn’t, and why
it’s bad, read the previous essay titled “Emotional Invalidation“.

For this essay, we will talk about

* Adam (male pronouns), who has a problem which is making him sad
* Betty (female pronouns), who is listening to Adam talk about his sadness.

This essay will use sadness as one example of the many emotions that can be
invalidated, for the sake of brevity. The other emotions can be talked about in
similar ways.

As far as I can tell, I grew up in an environment where emotional invalidation
happened (and still happens) regularly without being recognised as a concept. I
was lucky to have a comfortable enough upbringing for it to not have had a
noticeable impact on me, other than noticing that I might be doing it to others.
Last year I was accused of emotional invalidation, but I did not understand what
it was. To the end of remedying this issue and preventing it from happening
again, this essay will contain the results of my research and thoughts.

Emotional invalidation is a social act that causes severe psychological harm,
and so it should be avoided. This essay will attempt to explain how and why we
invalidate emotions, and how to avoid doing it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sadness is a clear sign that things are not right.

* Most directly, the mere fact that someone is sad is an ethically bad thing,
that is to say, I do not think sadness is something we should celebrate.
Sadness might be the most appropriate response, but that means it’s
necessary, not good. Therefore, we should try to avoid people being sad, and
try to make them less sad, when it’s reasonable to do so.
* More indirectly, if the sadness is caused by a problem, then the problem
might be ethically bad (or if we define a “problem” as bad, then it’s
certainly bad).

Since being sad is not good, we naturally want to help people who are sad, by
making them less sad. This essay will discuss the issues that can arise from
trying to do this. In my experience, people tend to assume that their method for
doing this is the only valid method, but I have learned that there are different
methods, and each has different situations in which they should be used. Using
the wrong method can multiply someone’s sadness.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

METHODS:

When Adam expresses his sadness, there are three methods that he might benefit
from:

1. Being listened to
1. This directly helps him by letting him know that he has someone he can
trust, who cares about him, who wants to know what he has to say/what
he’s feeling/what troubles him.
2. The other two methods require you to listen to them, but this method can
be interpreted as listening without talking.
2. Being comforted
1. This directly helps him by alleviating the sadness, even if just a bit.
3. Having the problem solved
1. This indirectly helps him by getting rid of the source of the problem. If
the problem is gone, it can no longer make him sad. The sadness he is
currently feeling might not immediately vanish, but Betty has made sure
that it doesn’t last.

Since each method helps to alleviate Adam’s sadness, each choice shows that
Betty cares about Adam’s sadness. This presumably means that Betty genuinely
cares about Adam, and does not want them to be sad.

Each individual benefits a different amount from each of these method. Some
people need all three. Others may only want to be heard, or may only want a
solution. Meanwhile, Betty might not realise what method Adam prefers. In fact,
Betty might not even realise there are different methods, so she might use the
only one she knows, without realising she might be doing harm. There is a claim
that men tend to favour solving problems, while women tend to prefer
consolation. I do not know if this is a generalisable trend based on gender, and
I do not think it particularly matters, since we shouldn’t be satisfied with an
approach that abjectly fails with anyone who does not fit the norm.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PROBLEMS

If Betty truly cares about Adam, there are issues with using the wrong method:

1. Listening to someone who expects consolation or advice will make you seem
like you are uninterested.
2. Consoling someone who expects to be listened to will make them feel
interrupted. Consoling someone who expects advice will make you seem
patronising.
3. Giving advice to someone who expects to be listened to or consoled can
result in them feeling like you care more about solving the problem than you
care about how they feel.

If Betty cares about Adam, she might seem uninterested, patronising, or uncaring
if she uses the wrong method. But if Betty does not care about Adam, she might
actually be uninterested, patronising, or uncaring. This might be due to malice,
incompetence, or indifference.

When Someone Does Not Care

Malice

The worst type of person that Betty could be is someone who wants to harm Adam.
This is unlikely, but in this case Betty would have a reason to do what will
harm you the most. They might pretend to be trying to help, while actually doing
it wrongly on purpose. This would achieve doing harm to you, while seeming to be
innocent. Another possibility is that they won’t try to hide their malice, but
then you will know their true intent, and you will be able to try to avoid them.

Incompetence

Sometimes even people who care about you can end up hurting you. In the case of
incompetence, even your closest friends and family can mean well, but make a
mistake. Betty might care a lot about Adam, so she would care immensely about
him being sad. Even then, Betty might have some beliefs that cause these issues.
For example:

1. She might have read an article in a psychology magazine saying that it’s
important to listen to people when they talk about their problems. She might
take this too seriously, and listen without interrupting, missing queues to
console or advise. This might give the impression that she is bored, and is
saying nothing because she doesn’t care.
2. She might have seen her friend silently listen to Adam, and realised that
listening is not enough, so Betty instead decides to compensate for that
with a lot of consolation. She takes every opportunity to apologise and
empathise with Adam. The added enthusiasm can seem like it’s caused not by
genuine concern, but rather by a disingenuous attempt to seem like she
cares. Trying too hard can be confusing, especially when it is
disproportionate to the level of emotions that Adam is presenting.
3. The way that my mind works is that if i have a problem that makes me sad,
solving the problem will get rid of the sadness, though maybe not
immediately. Until last year, I had assumed that this worked the same way
for everyone else. So the way I dealt with almost all problems was to try to
solve it. I tried to solve the problem because I care about the person, and
I don’t want them to be sad, and the way I make them less sad is to fix
their problem. I was not concerned with whether or not the other person knew
about what I was doing, my concern was exclusively on making them feel
better. Even if I was concerned with conveying my intent, I would have
thought that the fact that I was helping would convey my good will, since I
would not help if I didn’t care. When I tried to help someone who wanted
consolation, they felt I did not care about them feeling sad, they possibly
felt I only wanted to solve the puzzle for my own entertainment. I never
imagined my intents could be interpreted like that, so it was my
incompetence and ignorance that caused this issue.

Indifference

Someone who does not care about you would ideally not pretend to care about your
problem to begin with, but they might pretend to care to avoid being rude. In
the case of someone who does not care about you, they will not care about what
you are feeling. They might try to help you just to get through the
conversation, or to get you to stop talking.

When Someone Does Care

These issues are not obvious to people who only know one way to approach others’
sadness. Once Betty knows about the need for different methods, it makes sense
that all of these issues can make her seem like she does not actually care about
Adam’s problem, or his sadness. This would naturally upset Adam, making their
sadness worse, or even making them angry.

Even worse, this is a serious mistake, because if someone really does not care
about your well being, it is almost certain that they do not care about you.
That means that they are almost certainly not your friend, and that they are not
a good person, because good people care about other people.

Therefore, these issues can end relationships. Since they are mistakes, and you
actually do care about the other person, it would be a tragedy to lose them over
a misunderstanding.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PROPOSED APPROACH:

Rather than picking a method and using it without considering what Adam needs,
the solution should be to acknowledge that everyone thinks differently, and that
that’s OK. There are two parts to this solution:

1. Adam letting others know what method benefits him the most.
2. Betty asking Adam what method benefits him the most.

This is an easy approach to implement, as it takes a negligible amount of time
to ask, but two issues can arise:

* Adam might be upset that Betty does not know what method to use, or
* Betty might be afraid of seeming socially awkward, or inept for not knowing
the correct method to use. This can be caused by wanting to avoid Adam’s
anger.

Betty’s reluctance is understandable, but is merely something to get over,
because it is more ethical to give people the best help you can, even if it is
uncomfortable. Adam’s anger is also understandable, but we should look at the
reasons why he might be upset:

1. His judgment might be clouded by his emotions, so he might get upset because
he expected consolation and did not receive it. This might make him lash out
and blame Betty, because that anger can be a coping mechanism to deal with
negative emotions. This is a normal reaction, but it is not acceptable to
treat Betty in this way simply to feel better, especially since she was only
trying to help.
2. Adam might think that only one method is valid, no matter who it is for. He
might think that everyone benefits from that one method, and that the other
methods do not work.
3. Alternatively, he might think that it should be obvious that only one method
is valid for the current situation.

Reason 1 is an emotional response. There is no actual reason to be upset with
Betty; blaming them is a purely selfish act, pushing away and hurting someone
who wants to help. Reason 2 is not valid, since it is demonstrably true that
different people benefit from different methods, depending on the situation.
Reason 3 is the most reasonable, but thinking that the correct method should be
obvious assumes that Betty has come to that same conclusion, which can only be
the case if:

1. she has learned it beforehand from somewhere
2. she is capable of determining it on her own

Since the best solution depends on the person and situation, learning it would
require her to have a list of the correct solution for every person and every
situation. This would be impractical, so the alternative is to figure it out for
every case. This can happen in two ways:

1. There are no alternatives to the correct method, which is not the case since
know we have three methods.
2. The alternative methods exist but are not valid for this situation.

Before we can confirm that asking questions for every emotional situation is the
best approach, we have to first figure out if we can figure out for ourselves
what the best method is, rather than ask what the best method is.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIGURING OUT WHAT PEOPLE NEED

Since Betty has three methods that she knows reduce sadness, she would need
additional information to discount two options. This information comes in the
form of:

1. Sensory information, such as seeing Adam’s facial expressions and if he is
crying, hearing his tone of voice, seeing if he is trying to hide his
responses to her
2. His word choice, such as if he is swearing, the topics he chooses to talk
about, whether he has a positive or negative view of those topics
3. The messages he is conveying, such as directly saying he is sad
4. Previously known information about his beliefs and psychology

If Adam says he wants to be consoled, Betty has received all she needs to know
to choose the correct method. Since most people don’t do this, we need to
consider situations with less direct information.

LIMITATIONS OF RELYING ON OTHERS’ STATEMENT OF PREFERENCES

Incomplete Information

If Betty knows that Adam wants to feel better immediately, and that solving his
problems doesn’t give immediate relief, then she would know that listening or
consolation are better options. Adam has given her this information before she
needed it, which is very helpful. However, she would still need to know which of
these two remaining options is better, otherwise she would need to ask. That
means that Adam told her what to do, but he didn’t give her enough information.
He would need to specify not just that he wants immediate relief instead of
problem solving, but he would also need to specify what kind of immediate relief
he wants: being listened to, being consoled, or both. If it is both, he would
also need to specify how much of each is enough. So if we expect others to know
to do, we need to tell them specifically what methods we prefer, and which cases
to use each in. This can be difficult for individuals to figure out on their
own, since it requires time and effort to reflect and analyse your past’s
emotional moments.

Unknown Information

Another problem with this is that even if Adam told Betty that he does not
benefit from problem solving, she still needs to know if he truly -never-
benefits from it. He might say that simply because he can’t think of any times
where it helped him, and the current problem might be different. There are also
many cases where a quick and simple solution to a problem is enough,
particularly if it is not too emotionally charged. If Adam is sad because his
father is dying, then saving his father should alleviate his sadness. So despite
him saying that he doesn’t benefit from problem solving, this would be an case
where solving the problem did help. So even if we are confident that we only
benefit from one method, none of us can ever be sure, since that information
isn’t generalisable.

Mental Context

Of course, we usually know ourselves better than others do, so we might have a
good idea of what benefits us most. At the same time, these are situations where
we are emotional, which can overwhelm our reasoning. This can cloud our
judgment, making us not think too deeply about how hard it might be for the
other person. Adam might have the mental context to know exactly what he wants
right now, but that is because he knows how sad he is feeling, he knows how
lonely he is feeling, and he knows he feels the desire to be consoled. Betty
cannot feel those things inside Adam, and lacks that mental context, so if Adam
believes it is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be explicitly said, then Betty
will have to pick this up from other means, such as his mannerisms, tone, and
other indirect means. Adam could have explicitly said it, but instead choose to
keep that from Betty.

Interpreting Indirect Signs

Because Adam has the mental context of his sadness, he has all the information
required to build up to his conclusions. He knows he is shouting because he is
sad, so naturally, he expects others to know that his shouting is an indicator
of his sadness. The issue is that Betty lacks his mental context, so she is
missing pieces of the puzzle. She could just as easily interpret the shouting as
a sign of anger, so she might think he wants to be left alone. Therefore,
indirect signs are usually ambiguous, so they can be misleading.

Crying would be a clear indicator Adam is sad, but that alone only means you
need help, it doesn’t specify what method of help you need. A shaky voice, an
angry tone, self-deprecation, and other signs generally indicate being upset,
but can also indicate being nervous, joking, or simply having a low opinion of
yourself, without necessarily meaning you want someone to help you. If we always
treat these as a sign to help, we will ruin jokes, or console someone who is
commenting on themselves rather than being upset. To avoid those mistakes, which
are fairly common in my experience, we need to judge every individual situation
we are in. Then we can give an appropriate response to sadness, jokes, or
otherwise. Because these signs can be mean different things, relying on them
would mean we are sending ambiguous messages. The more signs we give, the more
likely others are to piece them together. However, there is no clear minimum
amount of signs that can ensure that everyone will get it. Many people are bad
at reading signs, and since we are not taught how, we cannot just demand that
everyone know how. A much easier and effective method is to simply tell people
what you mean, but understandably, it can be difficult to ask that of people,
especially when they are emotional.

Since sensory and indirect information are unreliable, they will inevitably lead
to misunderstandings. To avoid that, we have to rely on previous or current
things Adam has said. If he has not given a thorough guide to figure out what
method to use, asking him directly is the fastest, easiest, and most effective
method. Even if we did have a general guide to know which method to use in which
situation, that might change or be incomplete. I always want to hear solutions,
so I would tell people that is my preference in all situations. Even though I
can only think of situations where a solution is what I wanted, there could
easily be situations where I would be distraught, or where I know there are no
solutions, so I would just want someone to listen to me vent, or get
consolation. Therefore we should ask which method to use for our current
situation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Implementation

Once Betty knows what methods to use, she must then know how much of each to do.
Ideally she would listen for as long as Adam feels he need to be listened to,
console him until he feels better, and then try to solve the problem. If he asks
her to console him, she might be too eager, and not listen to him for long
enough; or she might console him for too long, and not offer a solution even if
she has one. A solution will prevent more sadness, so it is important to know if
he is open to hearing it. Additionally, he might not be open to it while he is
sad, but after consoling him he might have calmed down enough to start talking
about solutions.

Is it enough to say a few lines expressing empathy and consolation? Is it enough
to only say “That is terrible, I understand why you’re so upset.”? If we have a
solution to the problem, is that a reason to spend less time on consolation?
This depends on each individual, which is more reason to communicate these
things.

We cannot expect people to know what we want unless they have a way to learn
that. The best way for others to learn what we want is to tell them, and for
them to ask if we do not. If you want to have healthy relationships, communicate
with that person, no matter how awkward or painful it might be.

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EMOTIONAL INVALIDATION

Posted by slizer88 on May 29, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: emotions, help, self, psychology, selfhelp,
self-help, therapy, counseling, counselling, emotional invalidation, dismissing.
1 Comment

For this essay, we will talk about

* Adam (male pronouns), who has a problem which is making him sad
* Betty (female pronouns), who is listening to Adam talk about his sadness.

This essay will use sadness as one example of the many emotions that can be
“invalidated”, for the sake of brevity. The other emotions can be talked about
in similar ways.

As far as I can tell, I grew up in an environment where emotional invalidation
happened (and still happens) regularly without being recognised as a concept. I
was lucky to have a comfortable enough upbringing for it to not have done much
harm to me, but unfortunately I might have picked it up due to it being so
normalised. Last year I was accused emotional invalidation, but I did not
understand what it was. To the end of remedying this issue and preventing it
from possibly happening again, this essay will contain the results of my
research and thoughts on what emotional invalidation is, and what it isn’t.

Emotional invalidation is a social act that causes severe psychological harm,
and so it should be avoided. This essay will attempt to define emotional
invalidation as thoroughly as possible, and identify what is causing damage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Popular Definitions:

> “Dismissing the feelings of others… [denying one’s] feelings”
>
> – “Recognizing the Pain of Emotional Invalidation” Amy Lewis Bear MS, LPC,
> “Psychology Today”
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/charm-harm/202205/recognizing-the-pain-emotional-invalidation
>
> “the dismissal of a person’s feelings… saying whatever you are feeling or
> thinking right now is irrelevant.”
>
> – “20 Signs of Emotional Invalidation & Why It’s More Damaging Than It Seems”
> Janey Davies, B.A. (Hons) “Learning Mind”
> https://www.learning-mind.com/emotional-invalidation-signs/

These definitions are not bad, but are ambiguous. I think “feelings” is clear
enough, referencing emotions such as happiness, sadness, confusion, fear, anger,
etc., but “dismissing” and “denying” could mean a few things. It may help to
define “dismiss”:

> “to decide that something or someone is not important and not worth
> considering”
>
> “Cambridge Dictionary”
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dismiss

What would it mean for Betty to “dismiss” or “deny” the feelings of Adam? It
could mean:

* Betty does not believe Adam is feeling that emotion
* Betty does not think Adam should be feeling it
* Betty judges Adam for feeling it
* Betty does not care that Adam feels it

With this definition, we can define “emotional invalidation” as probably
accepting that someone is feeling an emotion, but not caring about it. For
example, Adam might say he feels sad, and Betty has no response, or continues to
talk as if Adam had not said that. Worse, Betty might say it doesn’t matter that
he feels sad. If someone does not care about how you

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACADEMIC DEFINITION:

> “any social exchange during which an individual’s expressed emotions or
> affective experiences are met with a response from another person that is
> perceived by the individual as implying that their emotions or affective
> experiences are incorrect or inappropriate. This definition characterizes
> emotion invalidation as an active process occurring in response to affective
> communication, and conspicuously prioritizes the perception of the individual
> sharer over the intent or objective behavior of the respondent”
>
> Cited in: Zielinski MJ, Veilleux JC. The Perceived Invalidation of Emotion
> Scale (PIES): Development and psychometric properties of a novel measure of
> current emotion invalidation. Psychol Assess. 2018 Nov;30(11):1454-1467. doi:
> 10.1037/pas0000584. Epub 2018 May 24. PMID: 29792500; PMCID: PMC6212305.
>
> Original source:
>
> Ford G, Waller G, Mountford V. Invalidating childhood environments and core
> beliefs in women with eating disorders. Eur Eat Disord Rev. 2011
> Jul-Aug;19(4):316-21. doi: 10.1002/erv.1053. Epub 2010 Oct 19. PMID: 20957770.

This definition is similar, but we need to define in what sense an emotion can
be “incorrect” or “inappropriate”.

I interpret this as referring to the cause of Adam feeling sad. This brings up
three more concepts:

* Betty does not think that Adam’s problem caused his sadness.
* Betty does not think that Adam’s problem should cause sadness in general.
* Betty judges Adam because of this problem being the cause of his sadness

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANALYSIS

If we analyse the sort of situation where emotional invalidation occurs, we can
find at least six different aspects that can invalidated. These six aspects
encapsulate the definitions cited above.

Consider the following situation: Adam is telling Betty about his problem and
how it makes him sad.

There are eight concepts that need to be distinguished:

1. “Adam has has a problem”
2. “Adam is currently experiencing the emotion of sadness”
3. “Adam’s problem caused his sadness”
4. “Adam’s problem does not matter”
5. “Adam’s sadness matters”
6. “Adam’s problem is meant to cause sadness”
7. “Adam has the right to feel sadness”
8. “Adam has the right to feel sadness caused by his problem”

To define “emotional invalidation”, we must ask which of these concepts are
being invalidated, and what “invalidation” means. For the purposes of this
analysis, we can use negation as a proxy for invalidation. That means we will
take each of the six statements listed above, and add the word “not” to them.

It is possible to say:

1. “Adam does not have a problem”
1. This could gaslight* him into thinking he imagined a fake problem, so he
can’t trust his idea of reality.
2. On the other hand, it is possible to see problems where there are none.
For example, I often misinterpret what people say, and think that they
dislike me, so I might be sad and avoid them. I have wrongly assumed that
someone has a problem with me, and I would want someone to correct me. It
would not be gaslighting to tell me that the person actually doesn’t
dislike me.
2. “Adam is not feeling sad”
1. This could gaslight* him into thinking what he’s feeling isn’t real, so
he can’t trust anything he feels.
2. It is not possible to feel the emotions someone else is feeling, so if
you tell someone you feel sad, they cannot know that you don’t feel sad.
They would have to be psychic to know what you’re feeling better than you
know. There might be signs that make you look happy or angry rather than
sad, but those signs are not reliable, so your word should be trusted
over any signs you give, so long as you are being honest. Even if you are
3. “Adam’s sadness is not caused by his problem”
1. It can be difficult to figure out what caused the emotion you’re feeling.
Usually you are the best suited to make the connection between what you
feel and what caused it, because only you have access to your emotional
memories. Other people can only interpret your emotions, never know them
with certainty, so they should trust you.
2. It is possible to incorrectly attribute a cause to how you feel, but it
would require someone who is well-informed, or who has a good insight
about the situation, to figure out that you misattributed the cause of
your emotions. If you did get it wrong, the other person cannot be sure
of it because they can’t feel what you felt when things happened. They
can only go off of how you said you felt, and off of signs you gave that
might have been indicative of your emotions. So they can only suggest it
and see what you think. For example, you might be in denial about having
a romantic interest in someone, but others might have seen subconscious
indications you gave around the person. You might have mimicked the way
they speak, or talk about them frequently, which are things you do
subconsciously, so it’s easy to miss them. It would be beneficial for
others to suggest you might be interested in the person, for you to
consider and think on it.
4. “Adam’s problem does not matter”
1. Adam thinks the problem matters, and he would know better than Betty,
because it’s his problem, so it has affected him more than Betty.
2. It is possible to misjudge if a problem matters. Let’s say that Cameron
told Adam that his essay needs to be improved, and Adam takes that as an
insult. Adam might take this as a big problem, cries because of it, and
avoids Cameron, thinking that Cameron hates him. Let’s say that Cameron
does not hate Adam, and actually likes his essay, Cameron just thinks
there are some small improvements that Adam can make. It would be wrong
to judge Adam for crying, and Cameron should have told Adam that his
essay was good, but it is not wrong to try to help.
5. “Adam’s sadness does not matter”
1. This is terribly mean. To tell someone that it their feelings don’t
matter might be the most unethical of these aspects.
2. Even if someone is trying to overcome sadness, we should still tell them
that it matters. One can still overcome their emotions while caring about
them. Pain can be overcome without ignoring it.
6. “Adam’s problem is not meant to cause sadness”
1. This is the most difficult statement to analyse, because it is not
invalidating something that is happening, or that happened, rather it is
a statement that could be neurological, psychological, or philosophical.
2. Adam could be right, so the problem should cause sadness, for example
losing a loved one justifiedly makes you sad. If Betty tells him he
shouldn’t cry because his loved one died, that is not good.
3. Or, Adam could be wrong, so the problem should not cause sadness. For
example:
1. If I tell you that seeing bright lights makes me feel angry, I might
have a neurological disorder that triggers emotions. It would be
justified for you to tell me that that isn’t normal, and I should have
a medical examination.
2. If I tell you that I feel fear when I see kittens, you might
justifiedly say that that is not the right emotion to feel in
response. There is no discernable reason for me to be scared when I
see a kitten, so I might have some sort of unhealthy psychological
conditioning that makes me afraid for no good reason.
3. If I tell you that I feel worried when I see you smoking, you might
say that I shouldn’t feel that way, because smoking isn’t that bad.
This would merely be a philosophical disagreement, so long as you
trying to convince me, rather than trying to force your view on me.
7. “Adam should be judged for feeling sadness”
1. This is categorically false. Humans have a range of emotions, and we did
not choose to feel those emotions. Everyone has the legal and ethical
rights to feel all emotions.
2. The right to feel emotions should not be confused with the ethical
consequences of feeling emotions. You should never be told that you
aren’t allowed to feel anger, but you can be told to manage your anger,
because our actions have consequences that we are responsible for. There
is no shame in feeling sadness, anger, hate, lust, or anything else,
because we did not choose to feel them.
8. “Adam should be judged for feeling sadness caused by his problem”
1. This is categorically false, for the same reasons as the previous
statement. You always have the right to feel any emotion, regardless of
what caused it. That right cannot be taken away from you.
2. The right to feel emotions caused by something, should not be confused
with whether or not it’s a good idea to feel an emotion caused by
something. You have the right to feel scared when you see a pack of wild
dogs, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a bad idea, since the
dogs will detect your fear and attack. There is no shame in feeling that
fear, but at the same time it’s a good idea to learn to not have that
event trigger your fear. It’s not easy to change your emotional triggers,
but it is often possible, and it’s ethically acceptable to point out that
it would be a good idea to do so. It is not acceptable to shame or force
anyone into trying to change.

*”Gaslighting” is defined here as as a form of deception that causes someone to
doubt their sanity without justification for doing so. It happens when someone’s
feeling or belief is real, but they are told that it is not real, that it’s an
illusion. Since it actually is real, they are now being told that what they
perceive isn’t there, their mind is hallucinating it, and this causes them to
doubt their sanity. However, if the person actually is hallucinating, telling
them so is -not- “gaslighting”. If you and the other person genuinely disagree,
trying to discuss it is -not- gaslighting. If you assume they are hallucinating,
you should be careful, to avoid accidentally gaslighting them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONCLUSION:

Each of these six interpretations of emotional invalidation are questioning an
aspect of the situation. For each of them, there are cases where the questions
hurt, and cases where they help.

Questions themselves are not bad or disrespectful, if you ask them genuinely
with the intent of hearing them out. However, if you ask them with the intent of
forcing your view onto them, that is wrong

1. There is no ethical issue with asking someone if their interpretation of a
problem is accurate,
1. but it’s wrong to assume that someone is imagining problems.
2. There is no ethical issue with asking someone if they truly feel sad,
1. but it’s wrong to tell someone they do not feel sad.
3. There is no ethical issue with asking someone if a problem caused an
emotional response,
1. but it’s wrong to assume that a problem did not cause an emotional
response.
4. There is no ethical issue with asking if their problem has consequences, if
you do not know what the consequences are,
1. but it is wrong to ignore someone’s perceived problems, especially if
those problems affect them.
5. There is a problem with asking if someone’s emotions matter,
1. the only exception is for someone who does not understand how human
emotions work, which is a rare case.
6. There is no ethical issue with asking if a problem should cause an emotional
response,
1. but it’s wrong to force your view on the matter onto others.
7. There is no ethical issue with asking if someone has the right to feel an
emotion,
1. but everyone has that right.
8. There is no ethical issue with asking if someone has the right to feel
certain emotions from certain events,
1. but everyone has the right to feel emotions for any reason.

Since questioning itself is not necessarily the issue, we can look at the
possible issues raised in the six aspects:

1. “Adam does not have a problem
* Gaslighting
* Rejecting others’ views without good reason
* Forcing your views onto others
2. “Adam is not feeling sad”
* Gaslighting
* Rejecting others’ emotions without good reason
* Forcing your views onto others
3. “Adam’s sadness is not caused by his problem”
* Gaslighting
* Rejecting others’ views without good reason
* Forcing your views onto others
4. “Adam’s problem does not matter”
* Gaslighting
* Rejecting others’ views without good reason
* Forcing your views onto others
5. “Adam’s sadness does not matter”
1. Gaslighting
2. Malice
3. Belitting
6. “Adam’s problem is not meant to cause sadness”
* Rejecting others’ views without good reason
* Forcing your views onto others
7. “Adam should be judged for feeling sadness”
* Judging others for things they did not choose
8. “Adam should be judged for feeling sadness caused by his problem”
* Judging others for things they did not choose

The first three aspects gaslight, because they consist of Betty trying to
dictate things that Adam knows better about, because they’re about him. Only
Adam knows what he’s feeling, so Betty cannot ever be certain of that, she’s
better off trusting him.

The second three aspects are more generalised. Rather than dictating things
about Adam, they are Betty’s philosophical/psychological/neurological views,
which presumably apply to all humans equally (but could also be only about Adam
if she is not being fair). Aspects 5 and 6 have the problem of blaming people
for things they probably have no control over, and definitely did not choose.

Based on this list, these are the six reasons that these aspects of emotional
invalidation harm people:

* Gaslighting
* Rejecting others’ views without good reason
* Forcing your views onto others
* Malice
* Belittling
* Judging others for things they did not choose

Let us describe each of the aspects

1. “Adam does not have a problem”
1. Denying a claim of a problem (Problem Denial)
2. “Adam is not currently experiencing the emotion of sadness”
1. Denying a claim of an emotion (Emotional Denial)
3. “Adam’s problem did not cause his sadness”
1. Denying a claim of a cause (Causation Denial)
4. “Adam’s problem does not matter”
1. Denying the importance of a problem (Importance Denial)
5. “Adam’s sadness does not matter”
1. Denying the importance of an emotion (Importance Denial)
6. “Adam’s problem is not meant to cause sadness”
1. Denying a claim of a general cause and effect (Causation Denial)
7. “Adam should be judged for feeling sadness”
1. Denying the validity of an emotion (Emotional Judgment)
8. “Adam should be judged for feeling sadness caused by his problem”
1. Denying the validity of feeling an emotion as an effect (Emotional
Judgment)

We can distinguish between the different things we refer to when we say
“emotional invalidation”:

Denial: refusing to believe what someone probably knows better than you

* Problem Denial: Denying that something is a problem for someone else
* Emotional Denial: Denying that someone else is feeling an emotion
* Causation Denial: Denying that someone else’s problem caused their emotion
* Importance Denial: Denying that what someone cares about actually matters to
someone (this is about what someone values, not what is useful to them)

Disagreement: disagreeing on the nature of things

* Causation Disagreement: Agreeing that someone’s emotions were caused by
something, but disagreeing on whether or not that something should be able to
cause that emotion.
* This is not invalidation, because it’s not a personal matter about
someone’s emotions, it’s just a disagreement about opinions.

Invalidation: accepting that something is true, but judging the person for it

* Emotional Judgment: accepting that someone is feeling an emotion, but blaming
and judging them for feeling it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Isn’t Emotional Invalidation?

* Asking questions with the genuine intent of understanding is not emotional
invalidation.
* Disingenuous questions can be emotional invalidation.
* Genuine disagreements about impersonal things (like if kittens -should- cause
anger) are not emotional invalidation.
* Disagreements about personal things, like if kittens cause you anger, are
usually emotional invalidation.
* Sometimes we don’t understand our own emotions, so it can help us if others
disagree with us, but if they try to force their view onto you instead of
discussing it, that is emotional invalidation.
* Sometimes people feel attacked they’re told that they’re wrong. If I claim
that anyone who disagrees with me is emotionally invalidating me, or
gaslighting me, then I am abusing the concept of emotional invalidation as
a coping mechanism to avoid the pain that comes from feeling inferior. This
would be a bad thing to do, since disagreements are how we grow and improve
as people. If we do not accept that we can be wrong, then we can’t fix our
problems.
* Disingenuous disagreements, like gaslighting, are emotional invalidation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When we say “emotional invalidation”, we can be referring to many different
things, and the one that we actually mean can make a big difference. Some are
far worse than others, and we should know just how bad someone’s actions are.
Therefore, I suggest that we treat emotional invalidation as a category of
actions.

To avoid confusion, I recommend the following distinctions,

* Problem Denial: Denying that something is a problem for someone else
* Emotional Denial: Denying that someone else is feeling an emotion
* Causation Denial: Denying that someone else’s problem caused their emotion
* Importance Denial: Denying that what someone cares about actually has meaning
to someone
* Emotional Judgment: accepting that someone is feeling an emotion, but blaming
and judging them for feeling it.

I believe these are the five types of emotional invalidation. It’s OK to ask
questions when you do not understand, denying what you do not understand is
unethical, and judging someone’s emotions is also unethical. Denying and judging
emotions are particularly unethical and harmful.

The next essay will describe how to avoid invalidating someone’s emotions.

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MENTAL CONTEXT (HOW GOOD EXPLANATIONS CAN FAIL)

Posted by slizer88 on May 28, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: argue, arguments, explain, explanation, fight,
understand. Leave a comment

For any thought you wish to convey, there is mental context. Mental context
consists of all the memories you recall which relate to your thought, all the
facts that justify your thought, all the emotions you feel that relate to your
thought, all the beliefs you hold that you used to reach the conclusion of your
thought, and any other internal, mental things that are necessary to lead to you
having thought of it. This does not mean all your memories, known facts,
emotions, and beliefs, rather it only means the ones that contributed to the
thought you want to convey to someone. Mental context is all of the mental
resources you used to come to a conclusion.

To convey your thought, you must codify it in language (put it into words). The
words you choose will determine if the person you are communicating with will
understand what you wanted them to. Choosing the wrong words (or tone) can lead
to a miscommunication. A miscommunication is when I say something in a way that
doesn’t necessarily reflect what I mean, or when you misunderstand something I
said adequately, or both. Miscommunication is common, and is nothing to be
ashamed of. When miscommunication happens, we should not care about whose fault
it is. Instead, we should care about correcting it, and about avoiding a similar
confusion in future. If we want to communicate, we should try to understand what
others really mean, and we should try to be clear about what we really mean. To
this end, we need to take time to choose our words carefully.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Good Explanations Can Fail

Consider a very common situation: I give what seems like a sufficient
explanation, but the other person lacks the mental context to understand it.
This can happen when trying to come up with a description for a large group of
things. If I refer to the group called “animals”, anyone can look up the formal
definition of an animal to know exactly what I’m include and excluding. However,
there is also the informal idea of mammals, like dogs, cats, hippos, giraffes,
etc., where someone might exclude insects because they’re so different to the
larger animals. This is a view children often have, since they never see insects
when they’re taught about animals. So when I talk about “animals”, I might think
I am being clear, while others think I mean something else.

Labels

I might ask my friend to get “my things” from a storage locker where a group of
us are storing things, but how does my friend know which are mine? I know which
are mine because I have memories of them, and that is part of my mental context.
So “my things” is an accurate description of what I want my friend to get, but
this is not enough information for them to figure it out on their own.
Therefore, it is possible for me to give an accurate description of what things
I’m referring to, but for other people to not necessarily understand, because
they lack the information that makes my accurate description helpful to them.

Insufficient Patterns

Let’s say that my favourite colour is blue, so most of my things are blue. I
could give my friend more mental context by telling them this, so now they will
know to get me the blue things. However, I am not familiar with all the things
in the storage locker, so I do not know how many blue things are in there. My
friend might think that other people’s blue things are mine. Also, it might be
that most of my things are blue, but not all of them. It’s easy for me to forget
about the non-blue things I own, since so many of them are blue, and since I’m
not going through an entire inventory of what I own. That means that my friend
still doesn’t have a thorough description of what I’m asking for, even though I
think I have given a good explanation.

Let’s say instead that I explain to my friend what sorts of things I own. I
might tell him that my things are sci-fi themed, that I do not own anything
mainly coloured in red, that I do not own anything cute, that I like small
things, that I store them neatly, that I am minimalist, and that I always try to
get “edgy”-styled things. This is a good and thorough description that describes
me very well, and might allow my friend to get most of my things, but it does
not describe the gifts others have given me, since they might not buy things in
my style. I might have also bought something in red because there were no other
options available.

Lists

Let’s say I give my friend a comprehensive list of things I own. This would be
difficult for me to compile, because my mental context is unlikely to include
every item in a long list. If i were able to compile this list, my friend would
be able to bring me every item I own without missing any.

Exclusions

However, in the last two cases, my friend would also bring me items from other
people that match or are identical to my items. So even with a complete and
thorough list of what to get, they might still make a mistake by bringing me
things that aren’t mine. My memories of the items and where I put them might
allow me to figure out which are mine, if I went to get them myself, but those
memories were not part of my mental context when I asked my friend to my things
for me.

Interpretations

I know someone who has asked me to get a blue bag, so I looked for a blue bag
and found none. They got upset, and went to get it themselves. When they did,
what they showed me was a bag that I would describe as unambiguously gray, not
blue at all. This means that the way we perceive colours is different. One of us
might even be colour blind.

Therefore, it is possible for an explanation to be sufficient for me, while not
being sufficient for someone else. This is due to mental context, and
differences in how we perceive things.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

In fairness, I had no reason to have those things in my mental context, because
these are problems that are not natural to think of until they happen. I know
that I can figure out which things to get from the locker, without too much
effort, but my friend needs to know all these specifics that I haven’t
explicitly thought about. My mind certainly recalled the memories of these
items, and my tastes, and whatever else I needed to come up with the concept of
“my things”, but all those details were subconscious, I was not actively
thinking about them. That’s why my description is accurate, but only for someone
with the right mental context.

This is similar to when you do mathematical calculations, figure out the answer,
and then forget about all the steps you took to get the answer. If your answer
turns out to be wrong, no one will be able to tell why, unless they see the
steps you took, so they can figure out where you went wrong.

The result is that I believe that my explanation is sufficient, and I don’t
understand when my friend tells me that it isn’t. It would be natural for me to
blame my friend for not understanding my explanation, since my explanation
demonstrably works when I use it. Since mental context is not a concept that is
well-known, we can’t be blamed for not knowing that we need to share that mental
context with people when we want them to understand our thoughts. In my
experience, it is extremely common for people to get upset when others do not
understand their explanations due to a lack of mental context. Neither person is
really even aware that the problem is a lack of mental context.

I hope this essay has justified the existence and need for being aware of mental
context, and that it can help to fix these problems.

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MALICE AND VENGEANCE

Posted by slizer88 on May 28, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: golden rule, hammurabi, malice, mean, payback,
revenge, treat others, vengeance. Leave a comment

There is no shame in feeling any emotion, because we do not choose to feel them.
Emotions happen to us because of our subconscious, so we cannot be blamed for
having them. We can only be blamed for the things we choose to do in good faith
and with good information. We cannot be blamed when we thought we were doing a
good thing, and we acted to the best of our abilities at the time. Sometimes we
are emotional, so we may be less effective, or forget, or lash out, and that’s
OK. Sometimes our emotions make us do things we shouldn’t do, but the solution
is never shame, or guilt, or punishment.

The same way that we shouldn’t punish people for emotions they did not choose to
feel, we should not punish people because we feel like hurting them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Malice is doing something mainly because someone else does not like it, with the
goal of having them feel something they do not like. This can be anything as
small as wanting them to feel slightly worried, to wanting them to suffer. It
can be physical or mental. It can be pain, annoyance, inconvenience, or simply
removing a positive experience (like denying someone access to a sweet food they
enjoy). For something to be malicious, its ultimate goal must be harmful rather
than helpful.

* If a parent hits a child with the intent of helping them learn to avoid a bad
habit, that is harmful, but not malicious.
* If I do not care that I am making someone feel bad, that is indifference, not
malice.
* If I refuse to talk to my partner because I feel they deserve to feel a bit
bad for something they did to me, that is slightly malicious.
* If I want my former partner to feel very sad because I think they
intentionally hurt me, that is very malicious.

Sadism

Malice is often associated with villains, but this is not usually the case.
Fictional villains are often portrayed as doing bad things because they enjoy
doing that. They enjoy the suffering of others. This could be described as
“sadism”. While there are sadistic people, their sadism is usually limited to
sexual contexts, often in the form of physical pain that the target consents to
and also enjoys. Outside of that context, there are also people who enjoy seeing
people suffer, but it’s usually only if they consider that the target deserves
that suffering. That is arguably a limited form of sadism, but it is very
different from people who enjoy seeing anyone suffer. Someone who thinks it is
good to make anyone suffer is arguably evil. Such people are rare, if any exist
at all. The limited form of sadism could be described as being vengeful, that
is, they think they are doing a good thing by hurting the people who do harm.

Vengeance

Whenever someone does harm, it is always harder to forgive than to attack them.
They caused harm to us, which puts us in a negative emotional state, such as
sadness, anxiety, or worry. Because we do not want to be in this state, we try
to find a way to cope with it, either by getting rid of that emotion, trying to
ignore/avoid it, or trying to live with it. There is a method that lets us avoid
the sadness, potentially indefinitely, and that method is to turn our pain into
anger or hate. To be angry, we must be angry -at- someone or something. To hate,
we must hate something or someone. So when someone has harmed us, even if it was
very minor harm to our emotional state, it is very common to be angry at or hate
that person, as a means of coping with our sadness. This is a form of selective,
limited malice, where we are only malicious in certain situations, or to a
certain person.

To avoid repetition, I will talk about anger only, but everything said after
this point refers to hate as well.

Vengeance means that if they hurt me, I hurt them. In this scenario, we are both
doing harm, so the only good we can do is making ourselves feel better by
hurting others. That can be viewed as stealing their happiness for our own; they
lose happiness, and we gain it. That means that we prioritise our happiness (or
lack of sadness) above theirs, which makes it inherently selfish. While it may
give us some comfort, hurting them will not fix our problem or undo the pain it
caused, so hurting them cannot make us truly happy. Vengeance can do some good,
but it is selfish, and always comes at the cost of doing bad, so vengeance is
always destructive. There are always better alternatives to vengeance, which
heal us and relieve our pain without hurting anyone else. Constructive options
such as discussion, therapy, and forgiveness, are much harder, but are always
better, and always worth trying.

A possible exception to this is when my mind is not capable of handling the
struggle of going through these harder options, in which case you would be
asking me to do something I am simply not capable of at the moment. I do not
think that vengeance is justified, unless its selfishness and damage is the
least destructive option you have available (or the only option). In most cases
this isn’t the case, because it is rare to not be able to, for example, avoid
the person, or get consolation from someone who cares about you. These cases do
happen, and I do not blame people who do what they must to survive. Nonetheless,
there are limits. If my survival comes at the cost of someone else’s survival,
it would be too selfish of me to do that. I am no more important than them, so
either one of us dying is equally bad.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Malice as a Response to Malice

If someone is malicious towards me, I need to be careful around them, because
they wish to cause my some form of harm. This might mean that I avoid them for
our own safety.

I might instead choose to respond to their malice with my own malice, resulting
in vengeance. If we agree this is selfish, then this is the wrong choice. If we
do not agree that this is selfish, then this would be the most justified of the
cases for vengeance, since we are punishing a bad person. If this is true, it is
a strong justification that can tempt people to take vengeance. I do not believe
that punishing a bad person is a good thing, because all I see in that situation
is needless destruction. Instead, I could try a more constructive alternative
where I learn to overcome my sadness, and no more damage is done to anyone.

Those that believe in this might think that they are being constructive, by
“balancing the scales”. This means that they believe there is a sort of cosmic
or abstract set of scales, which become imbalanced when someone does something
wrong. They think that if you hurt them back, the scales become balanced, and
that this is a good thing. Therefore, they think that hurting bad people is an
actively good thing that anyone should do, because it adds more goodness to the
universe. This seems like a very contrived fiction to me, because I do not think
that there are any such scales that are imbalanced. When I look at the
situation, I see two human beings that are both suffering in a cycle of attack
and revenge. I see only hurt and more hurt, at every step of what happens, with
some temporary relief. The only way to have a net benefit of good is to stop the
cycle of hate. Hate causes more hate, and hate causes damage. The healthiest
option for everyone involved is to never resort to hate as a coping mechanism.

Malice as a Response to Perceived Malice

It is possible to be angry at someone just because they hurt you, but it is
harder to do so if that person did not have any malicious intent. If someone did
not mean to hurt you, and regrets the harm they did to you, they are already
suffering from guilt, so we can empathise with them. If we think they are a good
person, we are more likely to think that they do not deserve to suffer.
Therefore, if someone lacks malicious intent, it is difficult to be angry at
them.

It is possible to misinterpret someone’s intent as malicious, particularly if
their actions are ambiguous. For example, I once knew someone who I thought had
false hair attached to their real hair to make it look longer. I once heard them
exclaim because their hair came out, and I thought it was the cosmetic hair
extension, not their real hair, so I made a joke about it. Someone else in the
room said I was being mean, but I was confused because I didn’t see the harm I
had done, so they had to explain to me that it was their real hair, and I
apologised. I was misinformed, and that made other people misinformed about my
intent. Because I did not understand the situation, people thought I was being
malicious.

In such a situation, someone might want to punish me because they thought I was
being malicious. If they did, they would actually be punishing someone without
the justification they thought they had. When they realise I was not being
malicious, they would feel bad for hurting me, since they only did it because
they want to punish malicious people.

Wanting to Perceive Malice

Denial

All human beings, no matter how intelligent, empathetic, or healthy, can be in
denial. This is not something to be ashamed of. Rather, it is something we
should always be aware of, and we should tell each other if we suspect this
might be happening to someone. No one is infallible, we can all make mistakes.
Denial is perhaps the hardest mistake to deal with, because it’s when our minds
betray us in an attempt to protect us. Our minds can lie to us, and when that
happens, there is little we can do. When someone else lies to you, your
faculties are still intact. When our own minds lie to us, our faculties are
affected, so our judgment cannot be fully trusted. It is very difficult to
overcome this.

Denial for Facilitating Vengeance

If we are suffering so much from the harm they did to us that we really need a
way to avoid feeling that way, it is possible for our subconscious to
incentivise us into thinking that the person that harmed us must have had
malicious intent. Even if it is more likely for that person to have had good
intentions, we can choose to interpret things in a less generous way, to justify
our anger. We can also selectively remember the bad things they did to us, while
leaving out anything that can excuse their behaviour, and leaving out all the
good they did.

It doesn’t even have to be anger that our minds crave; if we think someone has
good intentions, we are more likely to forgive them, but forgiveness is
difficult and often painful. To avoid this pain, we might want to forget about
that person, and it is difficult to forget about people we care about.
Therefore, to avoid pain, we try to find any justification to see that person as
not worthy of our love, admiration, or respect. That means we don’t have to
forgive them, and we can live with this self-deception indefinitely.

Examples:

* This might happen in moderate ways, such as assuming that someone arrived
late to an event because they do not respect your time.
* It can happen in extreme ways, such as jumping to conclusions about who
someone is, without any evidence. For example, if our computer does not work,
we might want to blame someone to cope, so we might resort to racism and
blame an Asian person we know, claiming they are a Chinese spy.

Either of these cases could be true, but they could also be misunderstandings,
or unfair assumptions. If we do not try to investigate these claims, we can
easily fall for the temptation of believing whatever fiction helps us cope with
the discomfort or pain we felt as a result of what they did. In either case, we
give ourselves an unfairly bad view of the person, which will cause us to
dislike them, resent them, and probably treat them worse. This pollutes our mind
with anger and hate, so it is bad for us. We do not benefit from having
negatives thoughts towards others, it can bring down our mood and give us a more
cynical view of the world. When they find out we are doing this, this would
confuse and hurt them, making them feel guilty or attacked. There is no good
that comes of this, other than the selfish coping of sadness that can be
achieved in healthier ways.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Should We Do?

Being vengeful is a coping mechanism to deal with pain. When I am vengeful, I am
incentivised to see other people as malicious, because that is justification for
me to be malicious to them. Sometimes other people are malicious, but other
times people are not. Sometimes I make mistakes and misjudge situations. I
shouldn’t be ashamed of this, because everyone makes mistakes. Since everyone
makes mistakes, that means I will make more mistakes in the future. What matters
is to avoid as many mistakes as possible, and to fix the mistakes I do not
manage to avoid.

Since I make mistakes, and I do not want to make mistakes, I should always check
to see if what I am currently doing is a mistake. When I feel angry at someone,
I should try to remember that I feel that way because I want to avoid pain, not
because of any other reason. Even when I think the reason is because they
deserve to suffer, that is ultimately just a way to make me feel less pain, no
one else benefits. The way I am avoiding my pain is by distracting myself by
blaming someone. If I have someone to blame, I can focus on how terrible they
are, instead of thinking about how bad my own situation is. Alternatively, I can
focus on how it’s their fault, which I can generalise to say that they are a
person who does bad things. If they repeatedly do bad things, I can take that as
a reason to avoid them, so that I avoid bad things happening to me.

When is Someone Malicious?

The issue with this is that some people will avoid anyone who hurts them once or
twice, because one can take this as sufficient evidence of future harm. To avoid
ending what could be a very good relationship, we should consider two things:

1. Does the person know they are hurting you?
1. If they have made the same mistake before:
1. Is the a similar enough situation for them to know this also hurts
you?
2. Do they remember your explanation that what they’re doing hurts you?
2. Can the person change?

(1) Do they know they are hurting you?

If they do not remember that this hurts you, then their memory has failed them.
Since they do not choose to forget things, they cannot be fairly blamed for
this. Sometimes people need to commit things to memory, but this is not a
normalised activity. It is not fair to say that if someone cares, they will
remember. That is not how the human brain works. I forget the things most
important to me.

Let’s say that this person does repeatedly harm me, and they claim they never
meant to. I can claim that they did mean to, but I would need evidence to
support that. If I previously told them that something they said hurt me, that
might seem like sufficient justification to prove that they said it again
knowing it would harm me. This is only a valid justification if the person
understood my explanation of what harms me, and what doesn’t. Let’s say that
they called me stupid, and I told them that hurts me. They might later call my
friend stupid, but I only told them not to call -me- stupid, so my explanation
was lacking. They avoided repeating the same mistake. Let’s say that I told them
not to call other people stupid; if they later call a concept stupid, they are
still following what I said previously, because I only told them not to call me
or other people stupid. What I should have said is that I do not like people
using the word “stupid”, that way they can avoid using it for anything. I cannot
be expected to know this is what I should have said, and likewise they cannot be
expected to understand me unless I say this. Therefore, there needs to be a
dialogue about what we really mean, so that these issues can be resolved before
more issues happen.

If I am not able to give the person a thorough explanation, then they might only
know some of the things that harm me. That means that they did not know they
were hurting me, so I would not be justified in saying they have malicious
intent. This is justified in the following section, “Mental Context”.

(2) Can the Person Change?

Everyone changes in different ways. Some people need an emotional push to
change, while others need a thorough explanation. I cannot change something if I
do not know how it is broken. It is one thing to say that a watch is broken, but
it’s another thing to explain how it is broken. If I am asked if I can fix a
watch, I need to first know what is wrong with it, so either I need to be told
that, or I need to investigate it myself. Unfortunately, there are cases where
you are not able to investigate things by yourself, such as other people’s
emotions. If someone asks me to avoid hurting them, I cannot know what hurts
them unless they tell me. I can look at past things that hurt them, but that
will only help me to avoid those specific problems. I will be unable to avoid
all the other things that might hurt them unless i can figure out a pattern. I
will change every time I learn about another thing to avoid doing, but until I
figure it all out, the only way I can change is incrementally.

Other people need major help to change. They might be immature, or they might
require that someone tell them what their problem is, or they might not be ready
to face their problems. They might require therapy, and there’s nothing wrong
with getting that. Sometimes we do not even know that we have problems, or we do
not understand them.

One mistake I have heard is to assume that the person’s problematic behaviour is
a core part of who they are. It is not for us to decide what is a core part of
other people’s personalities or beliefs, so it is irresponsible to make that
decision for them. They should be allowed to decide if that is a change they are
able and willing to make. To deny them this opportunity is to say that we have
the right to make choices for them. If they say they are willing, then to not
believe them is to think that we know them better than they know themselves.
Would you want someone to tell you that they know you better than you do, and
that they should make a decision for you?

Therefore, we cannot be sure that other people will not change. If we do not
give people the opportunity to change, we are doing more harm to them just to
feel better about ourselves. Cutting people out of our lives prevents harm, but
it does damage. We should always try the constructive methods before we try the
destructive methods.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mental Context

This is a very common situation: I give what seems like a sufficient
explanation, but the other person lacks the mental context to understand it. My
mind has the context of all the situations where I was hurt (that I can recall),
and I can summarise them to tell someone to avoid that. However, the summary I
give them might be too vague, or it might not have enough information to let the
other person figure out all the bad situations I recall in my mental context.

In other words, it’s like trying to come up with a description for a large group
of things. I might ask someone to get “my things” from a place, but how do they
know which are mine? I know which are mine because I have memories of them, and
that is part of my mental context. So to me, “my things” is an accurate
description of what I want my friend to get, but this is not enough information
for them to figure it out on their own. Therefore, it is possible for me to give
an accurate description of what things I’m referring to, but for other people to
not necessarily understand, because they lack the information that makes your
accurate description helpful.

Let’s say that my favourite colour is blue, so most of my things are blue. I
could give my friend more mental context by telling them this, but this has
another problem. I do not know all the things other people own nearby, so I do
not know how many blue things they have. My friend might think that other
people’s nearby blue things are mine. Also, it might be that most of my things
are blue, but not all of them. It’s easy for me to forget about the non-blue
things I own, since most of them are blue, and since I’m not going through an
entire inventory of what I own. That means that my friend still doesn’t have a
thorough description of what I’m asking for, even though I think I have given a
good explanation.

Therefore, it is possible for an explanation to be sufficient for me, while not
being sufficient for someone else. This is due to mental context, and
differences in how we perceive things.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion:

If you think malicious people deserve to be punished, then you would need to be
punished when you’re malicious to them. This would be a never-ending cycle, and
is a form of circular logic, where you believe that people should not be
malicious, but you’re finding an excuse to do the thing you admit is bad.

If you make an exception for yourself, then your belief isn’t consistent. If you
think that hurting people is OK when it’s revenge, but is bad when it’s not
revenge, then your belief is ignoring the fact that people are getting hurt.
That sort of belief is not ethical, and does more harm than good. If beliefs are
not based in a greater truth, and are doing more harm than good, there is no
justification for holding that belief. I held the belief that fixing problems
was the best way to address other people’s sadness, but I was presented with
compelling counterevidence, so I changed my belief because it was demonstrably
wrong. Beliefs are not sacred, they are fallible and should be changed when we
realise they are not right. To find out if our beliefs are not right, we have to
let others comment on them, so we can together analyse them. We should not
change our beliefs just because other people say so, nor should we keep them
just because we say so. Beliefs must stand up to the rigours of truth, otherwise
they are likely to cause problems.

Malice is a sickness. It can be caused by mental illness, or simply as a coping
mechanism for sadness. Sometimes we need a coping mechanism, but they are not
sacred either. Sometimes there is a better way, and when we do not get the help
we need to try a better way, we and others suffer.

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UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

Posted by slizer88 on May 18, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: break, breakup, divorce, help, love,
relationships, self, self-help, selfhelp, up. Leave a comment

> Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And
> when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether
> your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should
> ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not
> excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is
> not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake
> at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body… That is just
> being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when
> being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate
> accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other
> underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we
> found that we were one tree and not two.

– Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin

Love, whether for a romantic partner, family member, friend, a stranger, or
otherwise, should not be contingent on meeting certain conditions. If love is
conditional, then by definition, it only exists so long as those conditions are
met. If those conditions cease to be met, then by definition, your love for them
will disappear. This might happen instantly, quickly, or slowly. I put forward
that if what you feel for someone is so deterministic, and so easily changed,
then it is a feeling that has little value, and isn’t love.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conditional Emotions

One might feel surprise or frustration for a brief period, and those feelings
can disappear as quickly as they came. There is certainly a neurological
approach to explaining this, but nonetheless, I believe that if what we feel is
to have any value, it should also have explanations that are not so mechanical.
The feelings that humans generally care more about are things such as happiness,
sadness, anger, hate, and love. The more fleeting feelings, such as surprise,
are not given as much value. Rather than to say that the duration of a feeling
determines the value of the feeling, I believe it would be wiser to consider
that the duration is determined by the value of the feeling. We cease to feel
surprised after a few seconds because we no longer have any need to feel that
way; the cause of the surprise has ceased to matter. That cause would be a
discrepancy between our expectation of reality, and how reality actually turned
out. Once we reconcile the two, there is no discrepancy, so we no longer are
surprised that the way things turned out was different to what we expected. We
might eventually feel less happy about something good, not because we like the
thing any less, but because we have become used to it. It still matters, so it
still makes us happy to some extent. When we stop being angry, it might be
because we have forgiven someone, so the grudge that caused the anger no longer
exists.

The duration of what we feel can be artificially extended, or shortened. Anger
is a way to help cope with pain, by giving us a target to blame and hate,
focusing our attention away from processing the pain caused. Anger makes us feel
like we are making things right, by thinking that someone’s crimes are so
grievous that they deserve hate, which balances a sort of cosmic scale. Since
hate makes us feel righteous and avoids pain, the subconscious is incentivised
to continue to be angry for as long as possible. It is capable of maintaining
anger and hate indefinitely, to avoid ever dealing with pain. This is
essentially holding a grudge, which we do because we are afraid of the
alternative, feeling the pain that comes with the reality of the bad situation.

Likewise, a feeling that would naturally continue to exist can be shortened in
duration. For example, if you have done something you feel guilty about, you
might cope with the pain by telling yourself that you do not deserve to be
happy. This is self-pity, another coping mechanism. Consider that while feeling
guilty, something happens that makes you happy. In normal circumstances, you
would likely continue to be happy about it for a few hours, days, or longer.
Instead, you quickly stop feeling happy due to your feelings of guilt, and your
focus shifts back to how you don’t deserve to be happy, and how you think it’s
better for you to suffer. You might simultaneously feel a bit happy while
guilty, or you might feel incapable of enjoying the happiness while your guilt
remains.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Love

I currently do not have a satisfactory theory on what love really is. I believe
it is safe to say that love is not merely an emotion or feeling, but I believe
it follows a similar pattern.

Why do we love?

I am not sure what causes love to bloom or flourish. Some would treat it
mechanically, saying that it is nothing more than an evolutionary quirk that
helped us survive. Others would say it’s nothing more than hormones and
neurological activities. Those that do not believe in causality would say that
it happens without cause, so there is no point asking the question. To them,
love could just as easily appear as disappear, and they would dismiss any
attempts to question it.

To those who see value in love beyond the practical, love has meaning, and
therefore it has reason. Some might say we have soulmates that we are destined
to be with, others might say that we can develop love with anyone compatible
with us, others might say we can love anyone we choose. In all these cases, the
practical aspect is less likely to be relevant, instead the focus is usually on
how enriching and good it is to have that love. To them, love is healing,
improvement, happiness, and purpose. It is not “ethically good” in the sense
that it prevents evil, rather it is something that makes our lives better. It is
in a sense virtuous, but not for practical reasons, rather because it is a
worthy goal in itself. Perhaps there is overlap between the mechanical view and
this view, but we shall reason assuming that they are mostly incompatible.

This non-mechanical view establishes the value of love, and so we return to the
original question of the conditionality of love. If love only exists given
certain conditions, and ceases to exist when those conditions are gone, then it
is necessarily mechanical, because it has mechanics dictating its cause and end.
Such a love could be induced and ended at will. If that were the case, then we
could figure out a science to make everyone fall in love with someone compatible
and convenient for them, and we could stop anyone from loving someone with whom
they will have issues. This scenario would make love nothing more than a
utilitarian tool for pleasure, though some might argue that it would give us
happiness. Pleasure is not easily defined, but I believe it is far easier to
define than happiness. We can usually identify the feeling of pleasure, such as
when eating food we like, while happiness is something that likely requires us
to experience it before we can have a good idea of how different it is to
pleasure, and how it is not just intense pleasure.

If everyone had induced love, we likely would feel some happiness, but we would
also know that what we feel was planned and forced on us. If it is so
mechanical, then it could easily have been any other person we were with. The
person we think we love is not special to us in any way, it was purely
calculated circumstance. We did not choose them, we did not find their eyes
noteworthy, they did not show us any great kindness, there was nothing about
this person that made us love them, rather it was simply that they were
convenient, and it is unlikely that anyone would be satisfied with that as thee
reason the other person is with them. Neither is what we feel for them special
in any way, as everyone would receive that same feeling. If there is nothing
special about the person, the relationship, or what we are feeling, then all
that remains are the cold, mechanical facts of the situation: our brains have
been put into this state and forced to feel the way they do. This would be
similar to not liking broccoli as a child, so your parents give you surgery to
make you enjoy broccoli. Such induced feelings are meaningless because there is
nothing to them beyond the mechanical.

It is entirely possible for an arranged love to turn into true love, as can
happen with arranged marriages, or relationships of convenience. Acknowledging
this is to acknowledge that there is a difference between the brain being
deterministically full of hormones to feel love, and the mind holding true love
for the person.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

True Love

If love is more than just what we feel, than we must ask what that “more” is. I
do not have an answer to this, but from all that I have learned and experienced,
I believe that yet-undescribed “more” exists.

There is a quote that I think describes a way we can distinguish the feelings
and the “more”: “Love… is what is left over when being in love has burned away”.
I believe that if there is anything we can call love, that thing must be
meaningful in some way. For it to be meaningful, it must be more than
mechanical, and whatever that “more” is, it exists independently of the rush we
get when we love someone.

If we only have feelings towards someone because of qualities they have, which
we find attractive, then that is conditional love, therefore it is mechanical,
so it is not true love.

Relationships can start out extremely passionate and emotional, and sometimes
those emotions fade away. What remains is the truth of the matter: if you do not
care about the person after the emotions have disappeared, then it was never
true love to begin with. If however you still care about that person despite a
lack of emotions, then you have true love. Love is what remains after feelings
have gone.

If love were just what you felt:

* If love can only exist when you feel emotions for someone, then those
feelings are a condition for love, making love conditional.
* Feelings can go and return, so if they are a condition for love, then love
would be able to disappear and return as well.

If we agree that love is not conditional, then the previous two statements do
not follow.

Love cannot be dependent on feelings, so there must be something else it is
based on. I propose that it is based in a -type- of caring about and
appreciation of someone. Not every form of caring about people is love, but love
holds in it a sort of care. Neither is every form of appreciation the same as
love. Love is a connection, not just emotional, but mental, and if one were to
believe in such a thing, spiritual. When we truly love someone, it cannot simply
be based on convenience, circumstance, practicality, or emotions. True love is
knowing someone things about someone’s core (mind or spirit), and appreciating
them deeply. We might not fully understand them, as human beings are far too
complex to fully understand even in a lifetime, but we understand enough of the
important things about who they truly are, and those things are so beautiful
that we are moved, and we are improved simply by knowing them, and this
culminates in love. Love is touching another’s soul.

If we define love this way, then love cannot ever die. This begs the question,
how do we get over a former lover, and is that even possible? This question has
a contemporary answer, which is that one should always “get over” a former
partner, and “move on” so that you can find happiness somewhere else. This
approach is based in the belief that the way we are happy (or in this case, the
“who” that makes us happy) does not matter as much as being happy. This is by
definition a Hedonistic view, because it values happiness above truth. The truth
which it devalues is the idea that true love does not die, or equally, that the
particular person we love matters. If we love someone, we cannot simply stop
loving them to move onto someone more convenient, because that would mean that
love can be switched off, discarded, or forgotten, which devalues love as a
mechanical concept. If we abandoned our love so readily, then what value does
our next love have? Following that reasoning, we could discard all our loves and
move onto new ones like the newest model of car or phone. Would any of them have
any deeper meaning, given how expendable they are? Thus, the idea of “getting
over” someone or “moving on” requires you to have a demeaning idea of love,
since you value the results of love more than love itself. Love would simply be
a tool, a means to an end that we might hypocritically convince ourselves has
meaning to avoid facing the reality that we gave up on something meaningful.

To retain any meaning in love, it cannot be mechanical, so it cannot be
expendable, so we cannot “get over” it and “move on”. This does not mean that we
must suffer and constantly want to return to our previous partner, rather, it
means that we must not start or end a relationship until we have determined that
it is not based in love. If love depends on convenience, then it never was true
love, so when you feel that same thing again, you must accept that it is not
real either. For this reason, we must be very careful when entering a
relationship, to avoid mistaking lust, convenience, or coping mechanisms for
love. We must also work to fix problems in a relationship, because true love is
always worth the effort.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Repressing Love

Sometimes people are not psychologically or physically capable of working on
problems. They may have trauma or other psychological issues that currently
prevent them from being able to fix those problems. These issues must be fixed
before they can be expected to resolve practical issues. However, if true love
cannot die, then ending a relationship for these reasons is not justified. It
may be the case that being in a relationship starts to cause distress to someone
with psychological issues, and they might not know why. Such an issue should be
resolved with therapy, because ending a relationship to avoid pain demeans the
concept of love very much, since it values the absence of pain above the
enriching presence of love. It also demeans the specific love between the
partners, as that should have value as an enriching and meaningful part of their
lives.

If we do truly love someone, and we choose to end our relationship with them for
practical reasons, it may occur that we try to move on as a means of coping with
the pain of no longer being with the person we love. It may also be a means of
coping with the idea that someone we love has hurt us, as the love and the pain
they caused us are conflicting feelings. To cope with the pain, the subconscious
can develop ways to convince us that we no longer love the person. The most
obvious change for us will be that we no longer feel the same emotions towards
them. More subtle changes would be that we feel numb or neutral towards them.
Less subtle would be more serious coping mechanisms to ensure that we cannot
believe we still love them, such as blaming them, either for mistakes they are
to blame for, or coming up with excuses to blame them for issues they should not
be blamed for. A more extreme version of that would mean being angry at them, or
even hating them. Blame, anger, and hate are well-known coping mechanisms, and
serve the same function here.

The result of these coping mechanisms is repressing love, such that you no
longer believe you have any love for the person, allowing you to avoid feeling
bad about no longer being with them. But as established before, if love is to
have any meaning, it cannot die. Just because you blame someone, or even hate
them, does not make the love you felt for them any less true. The beauty you
felt inside them does not cease to exist just because you have issues with them.
It is far easier to hold negative emotions towards someone rather than go
through the pain of resolving issues with them.

On the other hand, it may be that you find out the beauty you saw in them was a
lie, in which case your love would have been based on a lie, so you only loved
the idea of them, so you never actually loved them. There is a grave danger with
this, since our subconscious knows this fact, and therefore is prone to
convincing you that the person you love was lying, so you never actually loved
them. The subconscious cannot be trusted, as its intent is to avoid pain, so it
will lie to achieve that goal. This is why trusting your impressions is
unreliable and dangerous. To avoid this danger, we must exercise rational
discussions with our partners, and choose to trust while verifying. Our
impressions can be wrong, no matter how confident we are in them, and no matter
how certain we feel that there are no other possible explanations, or that all
other explanations are invalid.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If love can only be repressed, and it can never die, then it follows that in the
case of a relationship ending (by choice or by one partner dying), that the love
persists, because the person doesn’t retroactively stop having that beauty
inside them. The person is not suddenly evil just because your subconscious
might want a reason to stop hurting (unless they were lying to you, but that has
to be proven). Whatever reason a relationship has for ending, the love you held
had a reason for existing, and that reason is not based in temporary things, it
is based on the core of the person that you touched. That person might become
cynical, or hateful, or close themselves off, or die, but that does not change
what you witnessed inside them. To have true love is to have connected, even
briefly, with the essence of another human, and for that essence to have made
you a better person. This is not the excitement of a new relationship, it is the
bond forged by exposing your souls to each other. As nebulous as such an
explanation is, I believe it hits as close as I can to the true nature of love,
and its consequences.

While these views may be controversial, I truly believe that for love to have
any meaning, it must be unconditional, which means that must be based in
something that cannot die, and I truly think that what it is based in is the
fundamental core of what makes every individual who they are. Whether that is a
soul, or the mind, or something else, is a question I do not have an answer to.
I choose to believe that love has meaning, so we should admire the beauty that
love has given our lives.

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THE DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY, AND PSEUDOPHILOSOPHY

Posted by slizer88 on May 14, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: advice, epistemology, help, philosophy, self,
self-help, selfhelp, sophistry, trust. Leave a comment

The Question “Why?”

I believe that the fundamental question of philosophy is “why”. This forms the
basis of most philosophy, but more importantly, it is the driving force for the
practical application of philosophy: the reason why things are, determines what
we should do about them.

The answer to this question matters, because if I know that someone hurt me
-because- they hate me, my actions will be very different to someone who hurt me
by accident. The intent, and the reason why, are a major factor in determining
if it will happen again.

For example, if there is no reason to have a law, we should consider removing or
changing it. If we have no reason to do an activity, we should consider saving
time by not doing it. If we do something merely out of habit, but it has no
benefit, prevents no bad things, and we do not enjoy it, then we might be better
off simply not doing it anymore. There might be some difficulty changing the
habit, but we will be better off not wasting our time on something that has no
reason to be done.

We might go to a job because we get paid. We might play a game because we enjoy
it. We might eat a sweet because we enjoy it. Many people say that they do not
need a reason to do what they do, but this view generally assumes that a reason
must have practical, constructive, and quantitative benefits, such as
progressing in your career, improving your skills, or making money. But, these
are not the only things that count as a reason to do something. You might think
that you do fun things for no reason, but the reason is that they’re fun. That
is a perfectly valid reason to do something. Other things we do due to feeling
compelled to do them, or being forced to. Those are reasons for doing things.

Through this lens, we can see that everything we do has a reason, even if we
just act on instinct and do nothing but enjoy ourselves. For many people, the
ultimate reason they do things is to be happy, or to avoid sadness. For others,
the reason is to do what is right, regardless of how happy or sad it makes them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Acts Without Reason

Let’s consider the opposite case; an action that has no reason. Say that you
punch someone, and you did not have -any- reason to do so. Possible reasons
include: having any anger or hatred for them, them having done something wrong,
a benefit to punching them, or you simply feeling an impulse or compulsion to
punch them. If there was no reason to punch the person, then none of those
things are the case. So you punched someone without being angry, without hating
them, without them having done anything to deserve it, without there being any
benefit to it, without you feeling better because of it, and without even
wanting to punch them. I think most would agree that without any of these
reasons, this would be a purely random act, which would make it insane. It would
have no benefit, and only cause damage.

When some say that humans are irrational or unpredictable, what this really
means is that we often act on instinct and emotion, which are in fact reasons
for our actions. But an act without reason cannot be based on instinct or
emotions, because those would give a reason for happening. So any act that has a
rational basis, and any act that has an emotional or instinctive cause, are acts
that have a reason for happening. They have an answer to the question “why”.
Even if we do not know what that answer is, the reason exists. A purely random
act has neither rational nor emotional cause, and that is not how sane people do
anything. Even if we try to be random, we have done so -because- we had a reason
to; we did so to prove that people can do random things, or we did so because we
felt like it, and those are answers to the question “why”. We can even look at
why we felt like doing it, and the answer to that might be complicated, based in
psychological reasons, or neurological issues, which we might not be able to
figure out on our own, but there is always an answer to the question “why”.

If human beings acted without a reason whatsoever, everything would be random.
We would not be capable of doing any complex task reliably, because those would
require us to work towards a goal. Working towards a goal typically has many
steps, and taking a wrong step can set you back. For example, building a pyramid
requires you to make bricks and stack them in a specific pattern. If your
pattern is random, the chances of it being a pyramid are almost zero. If the
brick-making is random, they will either not form bricks, or the bricks will
collapse. If your actions are completely random, you won’t even necessarily
build bricks or stack them, you might instead punch someone. If people were
truly acting without reasons, we would punch people randomly, walk to random
places, move our limbs randomly, make random noises, not reply to people who
talk to us (because you would have a reason to talk to them, and that’s not
random). Our actions would be genuinely insane. Therefore, given how far reality
is from this description, I believe it is safe to say that human actions are not
random, and instead always have a reason why we do them, even if that reason is
not good, or even if the reason is not known.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pseudophilosophy

When we philosophise, we look at the reasons why things are. By doing this, we
can identify wasteful activities and cut them out of our lives, giving us more
time to do fun or productive things. We can identify false beliefs we held, and
stop believing them if they are harmful. This definition of philosophy is likely
not what most people go to when they think of philosophy, because popular
depictions of philosophy typically sound pretentious and impractical, asking
questions that lead to useless answers that change nothing about how we live.
Sometimes rather than pretentiousness, philosophy sounds “wise”. A poor
definition of something sounding “wise” would be that it invokes questions and
thoughts in others, which are called “deep” because they make people consider
and question things they thought to be true without needing justification, or it
makes them consider things they had never considered before.

This definition of things being “wise” or “deep” has a similarity to the
fundamental question of philosophy, because in both cases we are being
open-minded and considering new things. However, the “deep” definition is
broader than the philosophy definition, because we can consider new things
without necessarily giving them enough care to ask “why”. Instead, we simply
marvel at their novel appearance. Many statements are offered as “wisdom”, all
of which will sound “deep” and make you consider new things, but they won’t
necessarily address the reasons why. This means that they won’t necessarily
reach the same conclusion as a philosophical statement would, since the
conclusion depends on how deeply you analyse it.

Example

Let us consider the topic of finding a romantic partner.

True wisdom will ask why we can have difficulties finding a partner we like, and
why we like them. The answer to these questions will include things such as
social norms, psychology, communication issues, and beliefs such as political
views. Some people mistakenly believe women should be subservient, or that they
have a common way of thinking, and these beliefs change who they are interested
in as a partner.

False wisdom will offer an explanation that sounds like an answer, without
asking or explaining why.

* There was a joke, which has been mistakenly taken as a genuine description of
reality, which goes along these lines:
* “Women can be only two of the following three things: attractive, sane, or
available.”
* This is followed by a shallow justification:
* “If she’s attractive and sane, she’s taken.”
* This means that an attractive and sane woman is ideal, so will already
have found a partner.
* “If she’s attractive and available, she’s not sane.” and “If she’s sane and
available, she’s not attractive.”
* This means that the only reason a woman will be available is if they are
either unattractive, or insane.
* This joke offers a system that is easy and intuitive to understand, and which
claims to explain something that we might not have not previously considered.
* But, it does not attempt to explain why the system is the way it is.
* One can naturally conclude that the justifications they offer have reasons
for being, but they are extremely shallow:
* A sane and attractive woman will only be taken -if- she wants to be in a
relationship, and is interested in her potential partners. There are many
reasons why such a woman would choose to not be a in a relationship, but
this joke simply assumes that women will be in a relationship if they can
be.
* An attractive woman can, as just established, choose to not be in a
relationship. To say that an attractive, single woman must be insane,
implies that 1. she must have an issue preventing others from dating her,
such as being insane, and 2. that she will be in a relationship if she
can be.
* A sane and single woman can easily be attractive. Some might claim that
this is statistically unlikely, but such people rarely have any
statistics to justify their claim. Regardless, to make that claim again
assumes that women will be in a relationship if given the choice, but
this is simply not how reality works. Women are human beings, and human
beings have individual beliefs, wants, and free will. An attractive and
sane woman might believe she should be single, or she might not want to
be in a relationship, and she is free to make the decision to not enter a
relationship. To say that a sane, single woman must be attractive implies
that only ugly and crazy women are single. This is nothing more than
imposing your own beliefs onto reality, which in this case, are that
women are products to be taken or rejected based on their properties,
rather than treating women as human beings who have lives they live
outside of dating.
* I believe this is a thorough proof that the joke is just a joke, and does
not offer any wisdom, because it does not attempt to investigate the true
reasons for why dating is difficult.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pseudophilosophy is an attempt to explain a system in a way that seems wise on
the surface, but has none of the rigour or investigative methods of philosophy.
This is analogous to pseudoscience, in that it retains the appearance of
something that offers answers, but it retains none of the methods that actually
give reliable results. This results in sophistry: a method to get others to
believe anything you have to say, no matter how untrue, by decorating your
statements in a facade that is similar to true statements.

Example

Pseudophilosophy often does this by using analogies that work in other
situations, such as the joke discussed above. That joke uses the concept of
having mutual exclusivity, that is, if you have one thing, you cannot have the
other.

* This concept exists in math and science, but in those fields it is only valid
if the system truly cannot exist when two things contradict each other. For
example, a single object cannot be in two places at the same time. Either it
is in one place, or it in the other place, or it is not a single object (it
has been broken and parts of it are in both places).
* Many choices are mutually exclusive, such as accepting or rejecting a student
into a university; the student cannot be both accepted and rejected, because
they are opposites (conditional acceptance is still an acceptance, it is not
both acceptance and rejection).
* In business, products are generally said to be two of three things: cheap,
high quality, or offered quickly. If something is cheap and of high quality,
it generally takes longer to make or offer. If something is cheap and can be
offered quickly, it is generally at the expense of quality. If something is
of high quality and can be delivered quickly, it generally costs more to
achieve that. Note that these are only generalities, they are not in any way
absolute, and it would be foolish to assume that your business will run this
way, without first investigating how you can make and deliver your product or
service. Many businesses can offer cheap, quality, fast goods, so if you take
this principal of mutual exclusivity too seriously, you will miss out these
opportunities.
* “You can’t have your cake and eat it” is an example, which might be true in
some cases, but can easily be used for cases where it does not apply. The
apparent wisdom, and the popularity of the phrase makes it more likely to be
accepted without question, even if it does not apply to your situation.
Believing it will mean you lose out on having both options. If you think you
cannot have both a romantic relationship and a career, you will be
sacrificing a major part of your life and happiness based on a falsehood,
when you could have had both.
* When we believe this pseudophilosophy, we accept their claim of mutual
exclusivity. Instead we should quite simply ask, why can we not have both
options? Often, the answer is that we can have both.

You can take any principal from a more rigourous field and use it to make a
pseudophilosophical statement.

Let us take a principal from science called “path independence”:

* This is when, for example, the energy it takes to get from one state to
another is always the same, no matter what path you take. This happens to
electrons when they move from one level of an atom to another. They gain
energy when they go up a level, and lose energy when they go down a level.
That means that to get from level 0 to level 5, you can take a path from
level 0 to level 2 to level 5, or you can take a path from level 0 to level
10 to level 5, and both paths will result in the same energy.
* Let us create a pseudophilosophical statement using this:
* “It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you get there.”
* This statement can be used to convince people that only results matter, and
that methods are irrelevant. Such a statement can be used to justify doing
terrible things, so long as it achieves a goal. It can also be interpreted as
saying that what your goals are don’t matter, it only matters that you
achieve it. Both of these are terribly unethical, mirroring the phrase “The
ends justify the means”, which is clearly unethical, as demonstrated by the
German Nationalist Socialist Party in the 20th century.
* If you are selfish and want to benefit at the expense of others, you will
likely need to convince other people to allow you to get away with this. If
you can convince them that the damage you are doing to others is justified
because it’s wise to achieve your goals by any means possible, then they
will have no reason to oppose you.
* A quite simple counterargument is applying this to literal paths. If you and
your friend start at the same point, then walk down different paths to get to
the same destination, it probably did not take you both the same amount of
energy to get there. If your path was two miles long, and your friends’ path
was one mile long, you likely spent twice as much energy to get there.

One can develop a pseudophilosophy by taking any idea, true or false, and
finding any system or principal that it fits into. If it is internally
consistent, or at least sounds consistent, it will seem like evidence for your
view, even if your view is wrong. It could even just sound fancy, or sound too
complicated to be a lie. So long as the person you are trying to convince sees
no glaring issue with your argument, they will focus more on the quantity of
arguments you offer, and the confidence and complexity of those arguments. The
only way to cut through the deception is to look beyond the surface, to find the
truth deeper within.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusions:

Pseudophilosophy is used by those who wish to manipulate others. If your views
are unethical, there is no justification for them. Telling others the truth will
therefore show them that your actions are unethical and should be stopped. To
avoid this, you must prevent them from knowing the truth. Lying about what you
are doing is one option, but is generally easier for them to debunk. However, if
you tell them the truth about what you are doing, but lie about how it is
ethical, they can no longer rely on investigating the facts to oppose you,
instead they will have to rely on philosophical investigation. Since
philosophical investigation is much less popular, you are more likely to get
away with it. Nazi Germany’s soldiers knew that they were executing people for
being banned minorities, but they did it anyway because they were persuaded that
it was the best choice. They were told that those minorities were dangerous, and
that they were helping the world by getting rid of them.

Just because something sounds wise does not mean that it is good advice, or even
that it is true. Thus, whenever we encounter something that sounds wise, we must
determine if it really is. There is a simple method to do this: ask “why”. If
someone confidently claims that “we are judged by the actions we take, not the
beliefs we hold”, ask yourself why we are judged by our actions over our
beliefs. Ask who is judging, why they are judging in favour of actions, what’s
wrong with judging based on beliefs, and why they’re judging us at all. If you
think this much thinking isn’t necessary, then you are saying that it is not
necessary to avoid believing lies. In this case, the claim was not true, because
it implies that there is some sort of universal truth, or at least a consensus,
that people will judge you in this particular way. But there is no universality
or consensus, as everyone judges in different ways. It would be foolish to not
judge people by both their actions and beliefs, since both are practical and
relevant. Most actions are instigated by your beliefs; people try to act in
accordance with what they believe is the right way to do things, and the right
goals to have. Great philosophers, activists, mathematicians, political
scientists, and most academics are judged by their ideas, and these ideas form
the basis for people to act better. Without meaningful ideas, there are no
meaningful actions, except by accident.

Appearances are deceiving. When we do not ask questions, we allow others to
control us. Philosophy is the art of truth, cutting out falsehood until only
reality remains for us to understand. We ask “why” because everything has a
reason for being the way it is, and that reason determines its nature. We ask
“why” to find the truth, to do things better, to avoid mistakes, to figure out
what we really want, and to achieve what we really want.

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COPING MECHANISMS

Posted by slizer88 on February 26, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: cope, coping, emotions, mechanisms, psychology.
Leave a comment

Human Fallibility

No one is perfect. Everyone has flaws and makes mistakes.

Since everyone is imperfect, it’s acceptable to have flaws and make mistakes.

The best we can do is try to avoid making mistakes, so it helps if other people
let us know when we make them.

Human Response to Fallibility

It is natural to feel bad when other people let us know when we make a mistake,
because we try to not make any, and because sometimes people mock us for making
mistakes.

This leads to a very bad feeling when someone tries to help us by informing us
about what we did wrong.

It can make one feel inferior, broken, insufficient, hated, or alone.

Guilt is a natural response to having done something wrong. It is not pleasant
to feel, but it is required because it is the sign that we care about doing
good. Without guilt, we become worse people.

Processing Negative Emotions

Accepting these feelings and moving past them is healthy, and lets us avoid and
prevent feeling these things again.

We cannot always handle the emotional pain that comes with processing these
feelings, especially if we never learned how.

We should not force people to process emotional pain if it does too much harm to
them. Instead, we should make it easier for them, and teach them to be able to
process those emotions on their own, without so much harm.

When we do not receive the help we need to do this healthily, we might instead
resort to coping mechanisms.

Coping mechanisms are mental tools that the subconscious mind uses when it
realises that emotional pain is coming. These mental tools prevent the pain as
quickly as possible by distorting one’s perception of reality.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coping Mechanisms

Incapability of Making Mistakes

One coping mechanism is persuading ourselves that we could not have made a
mistake. For this to work, we must believe that we are incapable of making
mistakes. Since this is not true, this coping mechanism persuades ourselves of a
lie. While this prevents emotional pain, it also gives us a false impression of
ourselves and our abilities, leading us to make even more mistakes.

When this coping mechanism is used, we might be offended that we were accused of
something that we believe is beneath us. We might blame the other person for
even suggesting it, which shifts the blame and focus of the conversation to
them. Instead of us being wrong, the offender is wrong for having suggested
anything of the sort. By doing this, we avoid feeling bad.

Avoidance

Another coping mechanism is refusing to acknowledge that we might be wrong, by
avoiding the topic.

This could be done by simply changing the topic of the conversation, and hoping
the other person does not object.

It can also be done by stopping the conversation. This can be done by saying
that we are tired, or busy, or that this is not a good time. Sometimes these are
true, and the conversation might be best saved for another time. Other times,
this coping mechanism will use the fact that we are tired as an excuse to stop
the conversation, even if we are only slightly tired and still able to have the
conversation. This puts the conversation on hold indefinitely, and the other
person is unlikely to remember to continue it. This means that we will
potentially never have to acknowledge that we made a mistake.

Another method of avoidance is attacking the person who has suggested that we
did something wrong. This might happen by accusing the person of hypocrisy.
While they may indeed be a hypocrite, that does not mean that what they said
about us is wrong. The coping mechanism will make sure that we only focus on the
hypocrisy, and never on if their statement about us are right, so we can avoid
acknowledging our mistake.

We might instead attack the person by fixating on something the person said
incorrectly when they told us about the mistake we made. Rather than try to
understand what they mean, we might pedantically insist that they are wrong
because their mistake in speech invalidates their point. Sometimes their mistake
might give us the wrong impression, so we have a good reason to point it out and
ask for it to be resolved, so we can better understand what they mean. Other
times, these sorts of mistakes in speech can usually be overlooked, or accepted
and moved past, so that the true meaning of what they said can be understood.
When we choose to ignore what they mean and instead focus on what they say, we
are avoiding the truth about the mistake they are trying to inform us about.
This derails the conversation by spending a lot of time on a single part of the
topic, therefore never allowing us to get to the important part of the topic.

Surrendering

This coping mechanism involves verbally accepting the other person’s claim, but
not mentally accepting it. This is usually done in an exasperated and defeated
way, to emphasise that the other person has made us feel bad. This shifts the
blame to the other person for having pointed out our mistake.

This might make us feel like the victim that deserves pity, and it makes us feel
self-righteous. Since we have shifted the blame, we do not feel obligated to
accept the consequences of our mistake, even if we verbally admitted to making
it. Our subconscious said the words, but it shields our mind from the internal
consequences of accepting our mistake. Instead, it focuses on how we have been
wronged. The other person might be too confused, or feel too guilty, or also
feel defeated, so they are more likely to end the conversation.

Changing Our Views

An extreme example of a coping mechanism goes to the root of the negative
emotions. We feel bad about making mistakes (and particularly about hurting
others) because we care about doing good things, and we want others to be happy.
When we do something that goes against these things we want, we not only feel
bad for the people affected, but we feel even worse because we feel guilty for
having done so ourselves.

This coping mechanism involves a self-righteous response to realising our
mistake. We mentally accept that we did it, but we cannot handle the feelings
resulting from it. Since those negative feelings happen due to our beliefs, we
decide to subconsciously change our beliefs.

For example, if we feel guilty because we hurt someone, that happens because we
believe that hurting others is unethical. To avoid feeling guilty, we change our
ethics, so now we believe that it is acceptable to hurt others (at least in the
circumstances we had). This is usually accompanied by saying that we do not
care, and that we have to look out for ourselves, because no one else will. This
is a self-fulfilling prophecy; to help ourselves we stop helping others, which
means that we are the ones making it such that people do not look out for each
other. There are plenty of people who will look out for us, and we can look out
for others. Anyone can decide to help others, which means that everyone can.

The reason that not everyone does help each other is not based on human nature.
There are plenty of studies that make such claims, and plenty that make opposite
claims. Many of these studies have been debunked for being poorly conducted and
having results that are not justified.

Some selfishness can happen naturally, but real selfishness is learned. We teach
others to help by showing them that helping is good, and by making sure that
they do not fall pretty to the coping mechanisms that make people selfish. We
teach others to be selfish by hurting them and refusing to help them. They are
forced to be selfish, in order to survive, or at least to avoid pain.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avoiding Coping Mechanisms

Most people tell us about our mistakes because they care about us, and want us
to be the best people we can be. Part of being better is accepting our mistakes,
correcting them when we can, being aware of them in the future, and avoiding
making those mistakes again. It is natural to feel offended or guilty, but it
does more harm than good when we rely on coping mechanisms instead of facing
what we have done. There is no shame in making mistakes, so long as you want to
improve.

Some of us need help to process our emotions, or we need to learn how. There is
no shame in this either, and it should be taught to all children as they grow.
Unfortunately, many children are taught the opposite, to “deal with it” by
repressing and never processing negative emotions. This leads to those emotions
festering and creating further issues, which leads to a change in beliefs, and a
cycle of negative emotions being taught to others. Such people view processing
emotions as weakness, because there is sadness and guilty involved, and because
it takes time to process. They mistakenly view the absence of these things as a
sign of strength, because those things get in the way of doing things. This is
the result of coping mechanisms, as they have persuaded themselves that their
delusions are strength, and strength is ethical; and that this is the only way
it can be. In reality, such people lack the strength to face their emotions, as
they avoid sadness, grief, and guilt entirely. This leads to them eventually
breaking down, or going mad with coping beliefs that twist their perception of
reality until they are clearly irrational.

Coping mechanisms can be necessary in the short term for people who would suffer
unduly because they cannot process their negative emotions. However, coping
mechanisms do not naturally go away with time. They linger indefinitely until
they are recognised and removed, because the subconscious only reacts to
triggers; it does not have the awareness to change by itself. This is
facilitated by the nature of coping mechanisms; they function by avoiding an
issue at all costs, so they are incapable of realizing that there are issues, so
they are incapable of correcting issues. This means that coping mechanisms
ensure that we keep our issues, and add more to them. They offer us an escape
from feeling bad, at the expense of anything else. And those expenses inevitably
end up harming someone else, or ourselves.

This is a delusion, and an escape from reality. The illusion of not having an
issue means we will continue to make the same mistakes over and over. We and
those around us will have to suffer from those mistakes until we stop relying on
coping mechanisms. This can escalate and become increasingly problematic, to the
point of being dangerous. Our refusal to accept reality can lead us to blame
whatever is most convenient to satisfy our delusions. We might even look for
other people to blame for our mistakes, or we might blame others for bad
conditions that we cannot even control. If we dislike someone, we may
subconsciously blame them for things they didn’t do, since that gives us an
outlet for our anger. We blame, berate, and punish that person, because it lets
us feel like we are solving a problem, when in reality we are hurting others to
feel good ourselves.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coping mechanisms are by their nature, a rejection of reality. This means we
cannot effectively interact and live in reality. This leads to problems that get
increasingly worse, and it leads us to be unable to realise that we have
problems, and that we are doing harm.

When we have truth as a virtue, we are less sad as we have learned how to handle
our emotions. We avoid making mistakes as we learn and try to be better.

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THE MYTHS OF ESCAPISM

Posted by slizer88 on January 27, 2024
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: advice, help, problem, selfhelp, solving. Leave a
comment

For the purposes of this essay, I will define “escapism” as the intentional
avoidance of a problem due to the resolution of the problem being in some way
undesirable. I propose that in reality, escapism can only ever be the illusion
of escaping problems rather than dealing with them. This is because if you do
not resolve a problem, you can never truly escape it. You can delay a problem,
delegate it, or ignore it, but the problem will continue to exist until it is
resolved. Let us call the aforementioned three approaches “bypassing” a problem.
Bypassing a problem is often considered to be as good as resolving it, but it
requires a compromise that can often be felt even if it is unrecognised. It can
cause stress and anxiety, make the problem worse, or make you unable to process
reality accurately. Most problems have such a price to pay, one that is rarely,
if ever, worth paying instead of resolving the issue.

It may in some cases be possible to temporarily escape all aspects of a problem,
resulting in a period of reduced stress. This might be well-deserved and wise,
as it may be healthier than an immediate resolution of the problem that would
result in dangerous levels of stress. There might well be other counterexamples
to this essay’s thesis, but I maintain that the premise holds in general. The
ultimate recommendation of this essay is to identify the costs and benefits of
different methods of problem resolution, and to choose that which does resolve
the problem in the best way.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Causes:

In most cases, resolving a problem as soon as possible is the best approach. It
prevents the problem getting worse, involving more people, or getting out of
hand. There are many reasons that we do not do this:

* Laziness gives us the urge to avoid doing something we do not enjoy. This can
result in procrastination, which is a delaying form of escapism.
* Grief can be overwhelmingly sad, making us emotional to the point where we
cannot think clearly. Trying to process that sadness can be extremely
painful, and the human mind naturally seeks to avoid pain. The most effective
way to deal with the pain is to process it so that we can move on, though
this takes time, during which we will suffer. The simplest and fastest way to
comply with the urge to avoid pain is to not process it at all. This requires
a form of escapism to make sure that for all the time we spend not resolving
the pain, we do not feel it.
* Fear of failure can paralyse us, or make us feel that the costs of doing
nothing are better than the costs of potential failure. This fear can result
from the sadness and anxiety of being blamed for failure, so we feel the urge
to simply not risk it. It can also be the result of wanting to prevent others
being sad or disappointed. We can also fear the unknown dangers of failure,
forcing our minds to imagine all sorts of hypothetical scenarios that make us
increasingly unwilling to take any risks.

Emotions

In all relevant cases, the reason we avoid solving the problem is emotional.
Practical reasons to delay resolution are usually valid, and are not considered
here.

The emotions we feel generally result in a sort of urge or compulsion that is
subconscious, so we have a limited amount of power in making decision to seek
escapism. When we feel the compulsion to avoid a problem, we still have the
possibility of complying or refusing. This means that escapism can be something
pushed onto us by something that isn’t our consciousness, resulting in a
conflict between two parts of yourself. A person who has little control over
their emotions and impulses is thus more likely to seek escapism, which means
they might require assistance to prevent their problem becoming worse.
Developing stronger impulse control thus leads to better decision-making and
problem solving.

Sometimes the subconscious need to avoid the problem may result in escapism so
immediate that the conscious mind has no time to make a decision. When we
realise what we have been doing, it may be too late to avoid the damage it has
done, and we may realise it was never what we really wanted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Example:

Dealing with grief can be a good example of escapism being a myth. In this
example, we will describe the “problem” as the need to reconcile the reality
which causes grief, with the need to move on and live without grief. Another way
to view the problem, or perhaps a separate problem, is the emotion of sadness
that is usually naturally resulting from grief, contrasted with the desire to
not feel sad. In some theories, resolving grief has stages such as “denial”,
“bargaining”, and “anger”. These are attempts at escapism rather than resolving
the problem.

* Denial of grief aims to ignore the problem, which requires a rejection of
reality that you already know to be true. If something has happened, and that
something makes you sad, then the reality is that you should process that
sadness. If you deny that the thing happened, you can trick yourself into
thinking there is no cause to be sad. Thus, you escape the problem by being
irrational.
* It may even be possible to permanently ignore the problem, at the highest
cost of living in a permanent and extreme denial, thus distorting your
perception of reality just as permanently and extremely. I would propose
that this is a form of insanity.
* Bargaining is similar, but attempts in futility to reconcile reality with
what one desires reality to be, such that the problem can be avoided without
being irrational.
* Anger is nothing more than an attempt to avoid processing sadness, again by
distorting your perception of reality. By looking for something to blame for
whatever causes you grief, you can trick your mind into thinking that you can
resolve the problem by dealing with the target you blame. In this case, you
think that anger, hatred, or revenge will in some way make reparations, or
tip a sort of cosmic scales, restoring justice. If you think that someone
deserves your anger, then showing them your anger makes you feel better. This
delays processing grief and sadness, at the cost of the mental toxicity of
your vitriol. Those that attain revenge will inevitably realise that their
actions resolved nothing, at which point they are forced to finally resolve
the problem, or to find new ways to delay it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Myths

Procrastination

When you procrastinate, you try to forget about the work you must do, while
doing something more enjoyable. You may even successfully forget about the work.
This leads to two potential issues:

* Forgetting the work may lead to you not having enough time to do it later.
You might miss an important deadline, contributing towards failing a class or
losing a job.
* If you had finished the work and then done something more enjoyable, you
would enjoy it without stress. Procrastinating carries with it the stress of
work unfinished, which might be difficult to notice (but still decreasing
your enjoyment), or it may be so noticeable that you end up regretting trying
to procrastinate.

These issues can be avoided by doing the work first, which also avoids
unnecessary risk.

Fear of Pain

When you avoid resolving an issue because you want to avoid the pain, you leave
the problem to continue causing damage. This is analogous to taking out a loan
to pay for something you don’t need, instead of waiting to save up enough money
for it. You get what you desired, you have postponed the payment you couldn’t
afford, but you end up paying a higher price. If you have tooth decay, getting
it fixed early will involve pain, monetary costs, and possibly mental distress.
If you wait, the tooth will decay further, possibly breaking apart, resulting in
more extensive dental work being required, or even requiring the tooth to be
pulled out entirely. This costs you more money, more pain, and you lose more of
your tooth. If you have to clean up a spill, you could delay it without it
getting worse, but every moment you wait runs the risk of someone slipping on
the spill and getting hurt. If the spill is on wood, waiting for too long may
result in the wood absorbing all the water and permanently deforming.

Fear of Failure

When you avoid a problem because you don’t want to risk failure, you often
ensure that you have no chance to succeed, or even ensure that you fail by
default. When those are the case, failure to act is the same as failing to solve
the problem, arguably even worse because you could have at least tried instead
of making sure you failed. This is one of the more understandable reasons for
escapism, because it is not necessarily selfish or hedonistic; it can be out of
a practical fear and a concern for others. Nonetheless, it is far more practical
to act more decisively, even if you need to take extra time to ensure you do not
fail. Avoiding disappointment from others’ judgment of your performance is also
understandable, as they set your standards, so you cannot be blamed for worrying
about meeting them. This can be complicated, because you may for example wish to
play a sport, but your parents force you to take lessons in it and perform in
competitions, which means that even though both you and your parents want you to
play the sport, your enjoyment of it is ruined by their standards for your
performance in it. For you to escape the stress of those standards, you may wish
to quit the sport, injure yourself, or consistently underperform so as to lower
their expectations. In most of these outcomes, you compromise on your love of
playing the sport for the sake of reduced stress, or you accept the stress and
your love of the sport may be decreased. The true problem that needs to be
solved is the disagreement between you and your parents on the level at which
you should be playing the sport.

A more relevant example would be not revealing your romantic feelings towards
someone for fear of being rejected. A rejection is painful, and is only possible
if we risk asking, so the easiest solution to avoid the anxiety and sadness is
to simply not ask. The result is that you preclude the possibility of being in a
relationship with this person, this having been the goal and premise of this
thought experiment. Furthermore, you almost ensure that the person you have
feelings for will move on to be in a relationship with someone else. The longer
you wait, the more likely that is. The alternative does not require you to
immediately confess your feelings, you can wait, but it does require you to wait
for practical reasons rather than out of fear. If you consider these two
approaches of doing nothing to avoid rejection, or risking a confession, it is
clear that doing nothing only delays certain pain. Taking the risk on the other
hand resolves the issue, because while you may have the pain of rejection, you
now know that you can move on, and more importantly you allow for the
possibility of greater happiness in a relationship. The risk of pain is always
better than certain pain.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problems You Cannot Solve

One might argue that escapism is necessary for problems we cannot solve.
Ignoring that this approach favours emotional satisfaction at the expense of
accepting reality, the premise should be questioned: what makes it such that we
cannot solve the problem? Consider the example of someone named Person A, who
has to suffer through a job they hate, because they have not had any luck with
getting a job they prefer, and being unemployed would be far worse for them.
Many would say that such a person deserves escapism as a reprieve from the
suffering of their work life.

While they do require relief for mental health reasons, they may be able to find
that without escapism. More importantly, this scenario only assumes that the
person cannot solve their problems because the problem is much larger than them.

Consider a Person B saying that products from a company should be boycotted due
to unethical actions the company is engaging in. Person A enjoys these products
because they offer relief from their stressful life, and claims that a boycott
will have no effect because very few people will join in. Person A is engaging
in the fallacy of a self-fulfilling prophecy using circular logic: there is no
point joining in a boycott because not enough people will do so, but not enough
people will join in the boycott because they’ve been told there’s no point.

Now consider Person B telling Person A to vote for a political party that will
improve working conditions for Person A. Person A replies that there is no point
in wasting your vote on that party because not enough people will vote for them.
This is the same fallacy: there is no point wasting your vote because they won’t
win, but they won’t win because people believe that vote would be a waste.

In these three scenarios, Person A truly believes that there is nothing they can
do to change their situation, but their cynicism means that they do not bother
to join in the efforts that lead to change. The only way that big changes like
these are made is when many people join together, and that starts with smaller
groups failing until they slowly grow larger. These movements are intentionally
stifled by spreading the cynical idea that you will never be able to change
things, so you will never be able to solve your problems.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You shouldn’t feel pressured into solving all your problems immediately. There
are many approaches you should consider, and each problem has its own
circumstances. Take time for your mental health, but work towards dealing with
problems at your own pace instead of avoiding them.

The best way to deal with problems is to resolve them.

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FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Posted by slizer88 on October 26, 2023
Posted in: philosophy. Leave a comment

Philosophy is not just a matter of interesting hypothetical questions; it deals
with unavoidable questions that must have some form answer for us to carry out
our lives.

It is entirely possible for one to claim that they have never thought about
these questions, since they would have no memory of explicitly asking them or
making choices in response to them. This can imply that rather than ever needing
to ask the question, they were born with the answers, or the answers developed
naturally without having to think about them. This argument is however biased
because it relies on already having the answers to some of these questions. For
example: “thinking is bad, and coming up with answers instinctively is good”, or
“natural things are better than what humans think of”, or “the first answer that
came to me must be right”, or “the simplest answer is always right”, or “there
is only one reasonable answer”, or “there is no need to consider other
alternatives once you have an answer”. These result in circular logic: if you
claim that these questions do not need to be thought about, your arguments
cannot rely on answers to those questions, because that proves by example that
the answers to these questions are useful; you just used them.

I believe the more likely case is that we as children thought about these
questions, partly consciously and partly unconsciously, and developed answers
based on reason, intuition, what others told us about the topic and the
worldview we had been given. Children are given answers and trust them. They
will also ask questions, but unfortunately many parents get frustrated with this
because they either don’t have the answers, or have been taught that questioning
is not good. They can then pass on this belief, such that their descendants are
prone to spreading the idea that questioning their beliefs is bad. The more
those children are dissuaded from asking questions and thinking critically, the
more likely they are to simply accept increasingly wrong answers. Any philosophy
can be passed from one person to another through generations, even if it is
wrong, or hateful, or impractical, or harmful. The blind acceptance of others
views is no better than brainwashing.

If we do not ask these questions, then someone else will answer them for us, and
then we are at their mercy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Such fundamental questions include:

* What do I want to do in my life? What constitutes a life well-lived?
* This leads to the question: what things in life are good and worth doing,
and what things in life are bad and worth avoiding, and to what extents?
* There is no question more practical than asking what you want to do, and
what you should do. It is the most fundamental practical question: what do
we practice?
* What can I do, what can I not do, and what will happen in either case?
* If we are to choose what we do, then we must first know what options we
have available to us. If we do not try to learn of the options available to
us, we can regret missing out on options we value highly, or worse, we can
persuade ourselves that there are no options outside of what we already
know, leading us to be stagnant and stay in our current conditions. This
can lead to closed-mindedness, xenophobia, decreased critical thinking, and
missing out on things that we would have enjoyed, but now simply dismiss as
foreign.
* If we believe that we can do anything, we are more likely to live our lives
trying new things, and taking risks on what we do not fully understand,
leading to varying degrees of failure due to the risk of the unknown. If we
do not have a practical sense of risk management, this can lead to the
regret of horrible failure, or the lack of regret in death. If we can
manage risk properly, this can lead to a life that we would consider vastly
improved to what we had prior, and what we would have had if we did only
chose our first, safe option.
* If we are not given the confidence to try other options, and have an
irrational fear or failure (as opposed to a rational fear of failure when
the risks are too great), then it is likely we will persuade ourselves that
we cannot do things that we can do. Both confidence and a deep knowledge of
your own abilities and limitations (through testing what you can do) is
required to pursue your options. Without those, we will limit ourselves and
miss out on things we may have much preferred having. This leads to regret.
* It is easy to find people who do not care about the consequences of their
actions. This can be because they do not see the consequences of their
actions, so they can easily ignore them, or it can be because they have no
concern for the damage they do. This depends on the extent to we care about
other people, which is both a philosophical and psychological question.
* To what extent am I fully in control of my actions? Do I have free will, and
what other forces affect my choices?

* This is not simply a question of free will; this question is the beginning
of realising that we have both free will, and subconscious desires and
impulses. We realise that we have varying degrees of control over these
impulses, some we cannot control at all. Meanwhile, our desires tempt us,
and we may think we choose of our own free will, when really it was our
desires guiding us with a carrot or stick. Once we achieve our desires,
those temptations can vanish, leaving us to realise that we never truly
wanted those things, and that we weren’t as in-control as we thought.
* The practical implication of this is deciding whether or not to fight our
impulses and desires. Do we impulse-buy things to make ourselves feel
better? Do we train ourselves to have restraint? Do we carefully monitor
our expenses, or do we base our purchases only on how badly we want
something? Do we obey our sexual impulses, even when they can harm
ourselves or others? Do we moderate our impulses, suppress them, or simply
deny them? When do we obey them, and when do we not? Are we capable of not
obeying them?
* This leads to the vital question answered by Hedonism and Stoicism: To what
extent is it good or bad that my actions are controlled by forces outside of
my free will?
* Even if one does does not believe in free will, the conscious mind can
still be influenced by the subconscious or by other people. Psychological
marketing is a prevalent form of manipulating people into making purchasing
choices without realising they have been manipulated. It can be as simple
as someone removing options you would have preferred, leaving their
preference as the best option you have. The question is then: is it ethical
for them to manipulate me, and do I mind this illusion of choice so long as
I get what I think I want?
* This leads to the more explicit formulation of the philosophies of Hedonism
and Stoicism: do I care more about doing good, or feeling good?
* Another question that follows from this: which do I value more, truth and
reality, or pleasant illusions and lies?
* The practical applications are whether or not we try to discern when
someone else is trying to manipulate us, whether or not we perform the
research and training to identify and resist such attempts, and what
decisions we finally make when faced with manipulation. This determines
whether we fall for scams, if we’re controlled by marketing, if we join an
armed force for nationalism, if we join a religion, if we join ideological
groups, and how we vote. These things can change our lives drastically as a
result, shifting us to entirely new environments, changing or entirely
replacing who we interact with, replacing our diets, making us miserable or
ecstatic, or ending our lives.
* Matters of freedom are intrinsically philosophical, even when they are
practical. We cannot determine how to be free, or how to maintain our
freedoms, if we do not agree on what freedom is. “Negative liberty” is the
idea of being free in the sense of being unimpeded by the world around us
to choose options. Being imprisoned in a violation of negative liberty.
This type of liberty explicitly allows for our choices to be manipulated so
long as they are not forcefully controlled. “Positive liberty” is the idea
of being capable of choosing with our own free will, without being
manipulated by our subconscious or other people. A prisoner has the
positive liberty to decide to attempt to escape, but does not have the
negative liberty to carry out that decision. Meanwhile, a non-prisoner may
be persuaded to stay in a single place by controlling what desires they
have and then fulfilling those desires, without being forcefully confined.
This non-prisoner is free to leave, so their negative liberty is not being
infringed upon, but their desires are being controlled and therefore their
free will is being manipulated. They are only free insomuch as they are
free to be slaves to the voice in the back of their head.
* What do I use to determine what is true and what is false?
* This fundamental question is the philosophical realm of epistemology.
* This question is thoroughly practical: if we trust our instincts more than
we trust the word of others, we will be extremely limited in what we can
correctly determine, because our instinct is limited in scope, and it is
not infallible. We might believe the world is simple and that we know the
world, so anything that is too complicated or too “unlikely” is as good as
impossible. By doing this, we dismiss true things that we simply are not
familiar with. We allow our worldview to determine what is true, rather
than give new things proper consideration and analysis. On the other hand,
we may misunderstand science, and believe that all things that exist can
have their veracity proven by scientific method. This can lead us to
dismiss anything we find that do not suit the scientific method, like
history and math.
* Worse, we might not even make our decision of what to trust based on
genuine beliefs of what is right. Instead we might distrust any sources
that disagrees with us, because we hold pleasure to be more important than
the truth. If someone hates the feeling of being wrong, they may reject
anything that proves or even suggests they are wrong, leading to delusional
behaviour, and ultimately leading to poor choices based on lies. Any
practical person will want to make the best decisions they can, which goes
in stark contrast to philosophical beliefs that value pleasure higher than
the truth.
* Do I care more about what someone is telling me, or do I care more about
what I think they are telling me? One is to accept the truth, the other is
to retreat into fantasy and blame someone else for something I did.
* Or similarly, do I care more about what someone means, or the words they
may have mistakenly used? If someone does not speak your language, they may
phrase something in a manner they did not know was rude. It would not be
practical, helpful, or right to consider them as a rude person, it would
only be harmful.
* To remedy these things, we must question them, their uses, and their
limitations. Instinct, science, logic, reason, emotions, desires, trust in
others, simplicity, or any other epistemological method have limitations on
what they can apply to. If you study each of them, you realise they work
because they describe certain things. Instinct works when a situation fits
something your subconscious is familiar with, like certain patterns or
survival situations. It does not work when a situation is unfamiliar and
extremely complicated; you cannot develop a computer by instinct.
Similarly, scientific method has absolutely no application to mathematics;
you cannot perform a scientific experiment with abstract concepts.
* Perhaps the most important consequence of this question is determining
whether you are closed-minded or open-minded. The closed-minded limit
themselves by not correcting mistaken beliefs they have, and making
decisions based on falsehoods, which are more likely than not going to lead
to bad outcomes. They also limit themselves by not considering better
options, or simply not considering new options. On the other hand, it is
possible to mistakenly be naïve instead of open-minded, leading to being
manipulable.
* What do I value?
* This is such a fundamental question to some that they may not consider it
to be philosophy, rather simply a fact of being a person. But these are the
same; to be a sentient, conscious person that acts in the world is to have
values. Without values, we cannot make choices on what we would rather do.
If you pursue a romantic relationship, you likely value love. If you pursue
power, you likely value power. It could also be that you pursue things not
because you value them, but rather because you have been persuaded that you
should do that, and instead you value obedience, or you value the approval
of whoever has persuaded you. If you are misguided in what you pursue, it
will likely clash with your values, or you will realise you are pursuing
something you simply do not value. This realisation will allow you to stop
wasting your time on something that will not give you what you want.
* Values are essential, but can also be thrown around in disingenuous ways.
The term “family values” is an example of elevating the concept of the
standardised nuclear family structure to a value, and including
barely-related concepts along with it as a bundle that is falsely presented
as being homogenous and consistent. It is possible to claim that
discipline, opposition to abortion, and punctuality are family values.
While they may traditionally be values taught in families, this is all but
meaningless since they could easily be taught elsewhere, and they could
just as easily be replaced with different values. This means that they are
only “family” values by tradition, so they hold no practical meaning to
families. A family need not be punctual or disciplined or oppose abortion,
these are simply values that some people wish to endorse, and have done so
under the guise of being necessary and good for families, hidden in a
bundle of values that are to be taken as a whole, too homogenous and
complex for most to question on an individual basis.
* In a broad sense, everything could be reduced to values. One can value
truth and ethics, and build a complex life philosophy around those. This is
perhaps reductive and simplistic, but offers a perspective on how
inextricable philosophy is.

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ANGER

Posted by slizer88 on September 18, 2021
Posted in: philosophy. Tagged: anger, angry, essay, help, mad, madness,
philosophy, rage, raging, self, self-help, selfhelp, thoughts. Leave a comment

Anger is a natural emotional response to many situations. It offers a release
for emotions that would be harmful if kept suppressed or unaddressed. It is
demonstrably feasible as a coping mechanism. However, the nature of this very
feasibility and coping benefit are why anger is never the correct response to
any situation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Definition

Anger, as most emotions, is prompted only when we realise something about
reality. To the best of my reckoning, anger’s only prompt is when we realise
that the reality of a situation does not correspond with what we believe the
situation should be, in such a way that it is offensive. A good example is what
one would consider to be an unfair situation, or a perceived injustice.

If someone believes that:

1. The fastest runner deserves to win the race
2. John was the fastest runner

Then,

1. John deserves to win the race

If in this example, John does not win the race for some reason, this is
sufficient to lead certain people to anger. Of course there may be mitigating
circumstances to alleviate that anger, but the more important issue is that
anger still arises in these people. Let us assume that proposition B is true;
proposition A is the only remaining cause of contention. In this case it is a
claim of desert; for the purposes of this example, we are not simply saying that
such a person believes the fastest runner should win because those are the rules
of the game; we are going further than just following rules by saying that it is
a moral imperative.

Many fans will go to great lengths to show their anger for their chosen
candidate losing, not simply because they think the rules were broken, but also
sometimes claiming that the rules were wrong. Whether it is a sports team or a
political candidate, many supporters will feel personally offended and attacked
by the perceived injustice of a loss, as if the universe has some sort of moral
balance or scales which have been upset, and this will cause some sort of
problem until the balance has been restored.

In many cases the upset of these abstract scales doesn’t create any sort of
problem at all, except for the problem of these people being angry. In the
absence of any ethical or practical problems that arise as a result of the
supposed imbalance, the only remaining problems are self-fulfilling; it is the
belief that things must be a certain way that creates the (sole) problem of
anger. There is no benefit to having the fastest runner win the race, so if we
stop thinking this is the way things should be, we will stop being angry when
the fastest winner loses.

Anger is caused by the belief that reality must be a certain way, and when
reality does not conform to that way, we essentially lash out at reality for
being wrong.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Properties of Anger

Some claim that anger is good, for the reasons that

1. Anger, and particularly the degree of anger, are necessarily consequences of
morality, in a similar way that guilt is.
2. Anger has benefits, such as improved performance, ie. strength, conviction,
reaction time, decision making.

Moral Obligation

The first claim betrays a shallow and dogmatic understanding of morality and the
human mind. It is reasonable to make this assumption simply by associating the
resultant anger that people show after a moral offense has been made, with the
existence of a moral compass. Quite often those that care will be angry, and
those that do not care will be unaffected. This is nothing more than correlation
being mistaken for causation. In this case anger is caused not because of a
moral offense, but because the person finds it unacceptable that reality has
turned out in such an immoral way. The anger is caused by dogma, not by
morality.

There are several other, far more mentally healthy responses, such as sadness,
shock, and the need to fix the problem. Some would say that because these
emotions are less intense than anger, they betray the person’s relative lack of
care. In other words, they think if someone really cares, they will be not just
sad, but angry. This is a baseless claim, since sadness and shock have no metric
to compare (even roughly) their intensity compared to anger. One can be
extremely sad or extremely angry; the concept of anger is not somehow more
intense by default. It is possible that people believe this simply because
extreme rage is far more common than extreme sadness or shock, and because
extreme rage manifests itself for longer, more destructively, and more loudly or
obviously than other emotions.

Benefits

It is that long, loud, destructive nature that also leads people to believe that
anger is beneficial.

Anger can make you momentarily stronger, and it can make you think or react
faster, and it may even give you the emotional impetus to solve problems that
you would otherwise have taken longer to. These benefits come with the massive
disadvantage of losing control to your emotions, often resulting in focus
blindness and dogma. There is no point in being more effective and achieving
your goals, if you chose the wrong goals. Anger chooses a target for you, and
only if you are lucky do you realise afterwards that it was the correct target.
An angry person is not simply more effective and dangerous, they are also more
prone to making mistakes. With increased focus and power comes blindness to
anything that your subconscious mind has not deemed to be relevant to the target
of your anger. This makes you prone to making mistakes, being attacked by things
you would have noticed or considered if you were calmer, and causing collateral
damage. These are all things that an angry mind will typically disregard, and
once the target of anger has been attained, that anger will disappear, leaving
you with the realisation that your quest to do damage has also done damage to
things you wanted to protect. Acting in anger is an excellent way to regret your
actions and make things worse than they were. At that point you likely will have
no target for your anger, since your anger is the cause of your new problems.

Lastly, people incorrectly believe that without emotional impetus and desires,
people will not be pushed to take action. This is an extremely cynical view of
human behaviour, likely caused by those people’s own inability to control their
emotions. It is only someone who lacks the willpower to act on what they believe
in, who will rely on emotions to both dictate what they should do, and push them
to get it done. Someone acting on emotions will always be a slave to their
desires; those who develop the will to resist in the face of overwhelming urges
are proof that emotions are not needed to do what is right. Some might say that
emotions are an easier way to get things done, but this is again cynical and
simplistic; allowing your emotions to control your actions is no different to
letting a stranger do it for you. They are not reliable, they will likely do
more damage, and you will likely regret not dealing with it in a more controlled
and healthy manner.

An angry person tends to be (overly) focused on achieving an anger-driven goal.
Anger gets results, and narrow-minded people will see any result, even a harmful
one, as better than doing nothing. The impetus to do something, even if it does
not benefit anyone, is due to the perception of an injustice, and the person’s
obsession with balancing the scales. This demonstrates the irrationality of
decisions made in anger: if the scales demand harming yourself and others for no
benefit other than temporarily feeling better, the scales clearly don’t reflect
any sort of moral balance. Any sort of true cosmic moral scales would demand
that people be better off, not worse.

All the benefits of anger can be attained in other ways, with none of the
disadvantages. The focus of anger can be replaced with the focus of moral
obligation. The more you care about something, the more determined you are, not
the more angry you are.

Acting in anger does not balance any scales. It serves the sole purpose of
giving someone a target to hate or attack, deceiving them into thinking that the
injustice can be corrected. Such people cannot emotionally or mentally handle
the reality of a problem not having a solution, or even it having a solution
that is not quick or easy to attain.

Anger is not a solution to a legitimate problem, it is a coping mechanism to
help those affected deal with their inability to process and accept the reality
of the situation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Implications

If we accept that anger is not worth it, the questions then become

1. whether we can stop believing that reality must be a certain way,
2. and whether we should stop believing it.

The Possibility of Stopping Anger

We can stop thinking this in the same way that we started to believe it. Let us
demonstrate this by showing how unimportant it is to get angry at the winner of
a race.

Example:

At some point in our lives we did not believe that the fastest runner should
win, because at that point we did not know what a runner or a race even was. We
all had to learn these ideas at some point, and some of us, either by
convincement or by our own reasoning, put a moral importance on the fairness of
the race. This is not entirely unreasonable; some competitions are intended to,
for example, determine the fastest runner, in which case the rules should be
modified to make sure that happens. If not, the competition is failing at its
purpose. However, (and many have trouble accepting this) this is not the sole
purpose of competitions. Many competitions are conducted for fun, or simply to
have an easy way to select a suitable (rather than ideal) candidate efficiently.
It can be extremely difficult to develop rules for a competition that are both
true to the goal of the competition, and consistent throughout every instance of
the competition.

To achieve the goal of finding the fastest runner, flexibility is needed to make
exceptions for things like tripping over, temporary poor performance, temporary
unfair advantages, and most importantly, unforeseen difficulties in figuring
what it means to be the fastest. A runner with robotic legs might be the
fastest, but the spirit of the competition might have been to find who is the
fastest without assistance. The fastest without assistance may have been
underperforming because they slept poorly the night before, and the second
fastest may have tripped and fallen behind during the race. Flexible rules will
ensure the rules can account for things the creators of the competition did not
consider. Flexibility also allows for corruption and abuse, leading some to fear
flexibility to the extent that they discard the spirit of the game for the sake
of what they call fairness.

If the third fastest person wins the race, some might say they did not deserve
it because they are actually not the fastest and would lose a repeat of the
race, while others might say the spirit of the game is only to determine who was
the fastest during this race, while others might disregard the spirit of the
game and say that sleep, tripping, and enhancements are simply part of the game.
Each might say the others’ view is unfair, because fairness is relative to what
you believe is the spirit of the competition. To some, fairness means that
people must be excluded to make sure those playing have no unfair advantages. To
others it means that everyone, even those with an unfair advantage, get a chance
to win. Fairness deals with rules and some sort of equality, but it changes
depending on what exactly we think should be equal. It can be an equal chance to
play, an equal chance to win, or simply being equally unrestricted by rules.

Conclusion

Everyone develops a different view with a different degree of importance given
to whether the spirit of the game is followed. Those who believe too strongly in
an arbitrary rule of reality become obsessed and closed-minded. Like anything
else, our views of reality must be questioned if we care at all about truth.
Ultimately, a football game is just a game. Since the only problem caused by a
team losing is that some people are sad, the best solution is for those people
to stop caring so much. Anger serves no purpose and offers no benefits here.

This is not to say that ceasing to care is the solution to all problems: if it
is a moral problem, it requires a moral solution; if it is a practical problem,
it requires a practical solution; and if it not a problem justified by any
ethics, consequences, or other reasoning, then it is not a real problem. It is
then an avoidable problem because it is an avoidable situation; we can, at any
moment, cease to care about the problem, and the problem disappears. This is not
true for moral or practical problems, which continue to exist regardless of our
beliefs.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stopping Anger

Some will say that you cannot prevent anger. A common reason given for this is
that anger is a natural human emotion. This reason is not valid, because there
are a range of natural responses from the human brain which we do reject as
wrong, and which we may never experience. We are capable of feeling jealousy, or
incestuous desires, or desires to harm others, but some of these are so
abhorrent that they are almost universally socially rejected. The ability to
feel or do something does not mean that it is healthy or good.

Another reason some give it that trying to avoid anger is nothing more than
repressing anger. This assumes that the feeling of anger cannot be avoided, so
when it is felt, the only way to avoid it is by bottling it up. This of course
leads to unresolved anger and an eventual and unhealthy release of that stored
anger. Instead, the method to avoid anger is to “deprogram” it. The emotional
response that is anger is a learned one, which is triggered by events that do
not conform to our idea of how reality should be. It is as simple as realising
that we should not dictate what reality should be, rather that we should
understand reality based on our skeptical perception of it. When we stop making
assumptions about how things should be, and instead take things are they are,
anger ceases to happen.

While this is simple, it is not easy. To fully adopt this belief, one must go
through every assumption about reality that they hold, and one by one identify
and resolve them with how reality might be. When this method is applied to
genuinely moral problems, the result is that we stop assuming that reality will
turn in a moral way, so we stop getting angry when immoral things happen. This
must not be mistaken with ceasing to care about moral outcomes altogether. We
will continue to care about morality because morality is based on thorough
ethics, not on dogmatic assumptions. With the assumptions gone, we stop being
surprised and angry when bad things happen, but we retain the moral imperative
that we must make sure that bad things are avoided or resolved. Our moral
convictions are what give us the determination to follow through on this,
instead of relying on animal instincts.

There may be more efficient methods to stop being angry, but if I am correct
that anger is fundamentally based on assumptions about reality, then ultimately
the solution will be to in some way eliminate those assumptions, and replace
them with a more open-minded system.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anger is natural and understandable, but it is neither optimal nor necessary. We
live healthier lives by relying on moral reasoning.

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