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STAYING SANE IN AN
INSANE WORLD
Exploding 2000 Years of Myths, Lies,
& Misconceptions in the 21st Century
by R. Vincent Riccio
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright 2009 — R. Vincent Riccio
ISBN: 978-1-60585-743-5
* Nonfiction Series *
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
...............................BELIEFS & ATTITUDE
Chapter Two
........................................................... LIFE
Chapter Three
............................................................SEX
Chapter Four
................................. LOVE & MARRIAGE
Chapter Five
................................................ RELIGION
Chapter Six
....................... PREJUDICE & HATREDS
Chapter Seven
............. “THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES”
Chapter Eight
.............................................. CHILDREN
Chapter Nine
....................................... WORK & PLAY
Chapter Ten
...................................... BITS & PIECES
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PROLOGUE
Did you ever think that everyone on the planet is going crazy, or worse, has already gone there a long time ago? And that maybe you’re the only one that has any sense at all? Perhaps the better question is, “How often do you feel like that?” The likely answer is: often.
Relax. It’s been happening to people for the last two millennia. You’re one of the majority of Earthly inhabitants out there who does feel that way. Paying some heed to the news media, op-ed pieces, and the radio talk shows, there has apparently been, in the final years of a rather apoplectic 20th century, a general feeling by the public at large that its collective intelligence has declined over the last century. The trouble is we all comprise the public, so who are the guilty parties that are pulling our group IQ down, and making the rest of us crazy?
For the purposes here, let’s analyze what “crazy,” or “insane,” means here. In an individual, crazy means becoming anxious, distraught, perplexed, caught within a difficult problem which there is great pressure to resolve, i.e., “between a rock and a hard place,” all of which causes stress and forces one to behave less reasonably, productively, or tranquilly.
In society, the craziness or insanity has infiltrated us collectively, particularly in the post World War era, and has developed through many confounding events we have witnessed. Let’s take a look at some:
* We’ve seen some people shoot at a few Presidents and politicians, killing a couple of them, for reasons that are at best sketchy if not outright berserk.
* Americans have poured more money into their education systems than ever before, dwarfing all previous economic efforts; however, our kids do worse on tests, and in life, than in the early part of the 20th century, not to diminish the teen suicides, drug problems, runaways, and family/society disconnections. The Columbine High School shooting/bombing in Colorado, April 1999 - along with other similar incidents - in a relatively affluent community, defies traditional common sense, while “experts” have climbed all over themselves trying to establish precisely what the problem was.
* There have been high-tech wars the world was able to view in progress and which the public indicated were the best thing on TV; unfortunately they were probably right.
* Many billions of dollars were poured into our “War on Drugs,” which was ramped up during the Regan years, yet it is a war we continue to los The outlaws have better funding, more and better equipment than any of our policing agencies, so the world is confused as to why we keep doing it. Decriminalizing drug usage, and forgetting the “war,” would be the logical solution, since the billions used to police, catch, prosecute and house drug criminals (not to mention the ones we never get) would be far more effectively utilized in the direct treatment of drug users in clinics and medical facilities than in prison systems where the facts show us the problem continues, festers, and even gets worse. This solution removes the motivation for countless criminals to beat up and rob old ladies, ransack houses, and buy expensive illegal weapons, plus eliminates the profits and consequent lifestyles of pushers and drug lords - a sane consequence. A sensible approach, nonetheless it makes politicians feel as if they are “commending drug use,” so they tell us, and is not “politically correct,” which is another moronic problem we developed during the dwindling years of the 20th century, and which seems to prevent us from doing anything intelligent.
* Congress, somehow, in it’s increasingly shaky rationale, tried for the hundredth time or so to establish what an “assault weapon” was, as the 21st century approached, ultimately arriving at the conclusion that something which shoots eleven rounds or more was a horrible danger, even though the same weapon at ten rounds is just peachy. Apparently they didn’t give much credibility to the assault-person (the true danger) simply taking along a few extra clips of ammo. After all, exchanging two clips of 15 rounds for three clips of 10 rounds is not what you’d call an enormous handicap for some demented criminal who’s decided it’s a good day to puncture a couple dozen citizens or so.
* Paying attention to what has happened in government during the finale of the 20th century reveals that much of what Congress and the Presidency - and that is any Presidency, Democratic or Republican - has done is for perceptual effect rather than any genuine change or improvement (“Form over Substance”: the show). The aforementioned gun laws are only one example. We can look at the flawed “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays in the military that didn’t really affect the situation in any positive way at all, but was something that government could do to say it was “handling the problem.” We still hear it in the 21st century. They’re still handling it. It’s still a problem.
Congress’ entire impeachment fiasco of Pres. Bill Clinton was TV theater in it’s grandest format, on both sides. Republicans knew they would not be able to remove Clinton from office, needing a 2/3 vote that had to include far too many unwilling Democrats, so what was accomplished? Good daytime TV drama, smut and all, with nighttime news putting the final spins on it. Everybody in the broadcasting world won, not to mention giving Monica Lewinski - whose contribution was bad sex (or non-sex, if you’re Bill Clinton) - celebrity, fortune, and a career, which is nice for the kid, but as for anything else, it was meaningless.
In a further bizarre twist, adding additional illogic to this truly goofy panorama, the person who discovered Bill and Monica’s lies and deceptions, Linda Tripp, was indicted on criminal charges of wiretapping (which she began to keep herself from being included in a criminal conspiracy issuing from Monica Lewinski’s ingenuity) whereby she could go to jail essentially for reporting something illegal occurring at the White House. True, she was not being the best of friends, but the woman did find herself in a bind, and jail is not the place for blowing the whistle on Bill & Monica who were committing real - if insipid and dumb - crimes. Wacky!
* Masters & Johnson’s studies on sex and marriage in the latter half of the 20th century showed us that most folks are absolutely rotten - way past “poor” - at communicating their sexual needs and desires to each other (even Clinton & Lewinski had their problems), leaving most parties sexually unfulfilled or unhappy, even after as much as twenty years together. Apparently, people would rather have extramarital affairs than ask their partner for more or different sex. The simple solution is to talk to each other about it - tell your partner what you like and what you don’t - but this doesn’t seem to occur to Americans in any great number. Thus we find this nearly incomprehensible data on our languishing relationships, and why there are fewer and fewer marriages as time goes by, and why less than half of the ones that are created work even minimally. We should have some long conversations with our European brethren, who don’t have nearly the amount of sexual problems and peccadillos that we Americans have. Therapy sessions throughout the whole country are replete with large varieties of truly goofy and silly sexual problems. The answer? Some empathy and understanding for your partner, as opposed to pure selfishness; go read some books from Kinsey and Masters & Johnson for info.
* In a truly extraordinary political event, we elected a President - twice - in the 1990's, who is amoral, possibly sociopathic, at least psychologically unbalanced, sexually bizarre, definitely criminal on several levels (some will have to be left to history to decide) if you could understand all the legalese, a consummate liar, and untrustworthy at nearly every level of humanity, yet who remained popular. And after George Bush the Younger’s crazy 8 years, Bill Clinton looks pretty good! As it turns out, he was actually not a bad president. He may not have been a great one, but things could’ve been far worse - as we saw later. Go figure! Maybe the key is not trying to do much - or trying harder; act like an honorable, trustworthy human being, not a politician. Whether one likes Pres. Barack Obama or not, he’s definitely a bright guy who seems to have his ducks in a row, and appears to be trying hard to solve the myriad problems created over the first several years of our 21st century. We can only hope he succeeds. But, there are those among us who, for purely selfish political reasons, would like him to fail: really tragic.
Another contrasting personality and situation was the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, arguably a great, moral, competent, and compassionate man; he had a very poor term by most accounts. It is probable that if he had earned a second term he would have been a greater president, but, we chose to elect an actor instead. Then again, you have George Bush the Elder, the man with perhaps the greatest resume’ in Presidential history, performing one of the dumbest moves ever recorded in providing us with the memorable phrase - “read my lips, no new taxes!” - and then he raised taxes! No second term! Later, he took us to war over oil, which, two Presidencies later, and not to be outdone by his father, his son did also! What did we learn from all this? Nobody knows exactly, but apparently not much. It has caused Congressmen and Senators to walk about the halls of Congress - often - babbling incoherently to themselves.
All of which delivered us unto our friendly Texan, George W. Bush (the Younger), for eight years, and, whether it was his fault, V.P. Cheney’s or not, ended the 8 years in pretty sorry shape. Then all that pushed us into a set of the most unique characters ever to run for President in the 2008 election in McCain, Obama, and Hillary, and eventually marked a major changing of the guard for all time in our Presidency, and perhaps our history, when Barack Obama won.
* In a monumentally screwy endeavor, our techno-genius geeks - whom we now revere rather than mock and play practical jokes on - created an electronic marvel in the personal computer which has changed and will continue to change the entire world and every electro-mechanical thing in it, and yet somehow they didn’t believe it would survive more than twenty years afterward, since the things virtually shut down after the year 2000. The problem was that computers defaulted to (automatically used) the year 1900 when a person entered in “00" as a year in our abbreviated date form (e.g., “01/01/00"), which is the format a great many (not all) computers and their software utilized.
The situation is incredible because the computer, especially the “PC” type, was made so close to the 21st century, that is, to the year 2000 (not 1900)! Why would anyone build the computer with an automatic function that used the 20th century (i.e., 1900's) rather than the 21st century (2000's) when you entered dates like “06/01/00" or “12/25/05"? Weird! The computer also defaulted to the 1900's when you put in any date prior to 1980. Thus, “01/01/01" became Jan. 1, 1901, instead of 2001; “04/03/09" became Apr. 4, 1909, instead of 2009; “12/25/30" became Dec. 25, 1930, instead of 2030. Why?! A 4th grader could figure this was a problem and provide a solution; I can actually say that because my 4th grade child did. No one even imagined a computer in the year 1900, so if the computer were going to automatically utilize anything when you entered a year prior to “80" (as in “06/02/45"), why would they not have it default to the 2000's (i.e., “June 2, 2045") rather than the 1900's (“June 2, 1945"), when there were no computers? Of course, the genuinely intelligent thing to have done was to utilize a 4-digit year format in the first place (“05/01/1995"; “12/25/2001") so that the year field would be fine until the year “10,000" - when our great, great, great - lots of greats - grandchildren would have that problem (Y10K)! Truly amazing, it is the single most expensive technological foul-up in history, costing us many billions to fix. And the fixes are mostly stop gap, not permanent, until a 4-digit year field is universally used, which is still not currently being done in many applications; so, in another hundred years a lot of us will have the problem all over again (Y2.1K).
Thus do we have a set of phenomena in modern society that seems as if “everyone has gone crazy,” at least a little, and, at one time or another, seeks to drive the rest of us just as nuts. It is not unique to our generation, however, since previous ones had their own problems: Attila the Hun, the execution of Christ, the Crusades, the Feudal System, the Plague, the Inquisition, the Potato Famine, the Civil War, and so forth. Of course, earlier on, things were simply bad, even terrible; you had to get to this point in human history to make it all the way to nuts! Social problems continue to bug everyone, always.
What happened to the simple, basic approach to life and happiness? Did we ever have one? Yes! And we all know what it is: having a good and loving family, acquiring an honorable talent, trade, job, or profession, getting married for life to someone who loves and respects you, making a few loving and law-abiding kids, residing in a decent neighborhood that we work to improve and dignify, living a long and happy life spoiling our grandchildren. Live the Golden Rule - an easy prescription. How many people actually do it? At the heart of it all, that’s pretty much everything important in life. When you start looking for other things - when this easy, rational lifestyle “isn’t enough,” as the fated comedian Freddy Prince reminded us in his suicidal death mantra, “Is this all there is?” - you become lost.
There are many things we do because we find them interesting; but they’re not necessary for us to live a sane and happy life. For example, it is not necessary to travel in outer space and establish colonies on other planets - well, not for another few thousand years, maybe - but it is fascinating, and desirable. It is not necessary to have automobiles that can go 150-200 MPH (or even over 70), but for some of us, including the car companies, it’s fun and desirable. It is not necessary to take a Concorde jet, or a cruise ship, to Europe, but it can be fun to get there that quickly, or slowly, in that amount of luxury. It is not necessary to have a 40 foot Hatteras yacht or Silver Cloud Rolls Royce to cruise around the oceans or highways with, but it sure is nice. There are some things we do need, certainly, but there are many more which are simply desirable and not necessary to make a happy life, and so we should not become too upset over obtaining them. The change in focus from what is necessary to what is desirable is an all-important shift. Often, it can be the difference between happiness and insanity.
Human beings have always had difficulties with civilization. They always will. You put two people in a room, or on a desert island, eventually you’ll have an argument; that’s the kind of thing that we are. Unfortunately we can’t get away from it. Here, with the advent of the 21st century, we have the most advanced society and enlightened people there have ever been. And yet myths, superstitions, and misinformation abound. It is time to drop our primitive and naive beliefs, legends, tales, and illusions, and pursue a more sane, practical, reasonable, and intelligent approach in order to live happily and productively.
In these days of speed, high technology, and instant universal information, we have let the task to stay sane, to “keep it all together,” become daunting. When you have a host of people running about the planet blowing themselves up and taking as many people with them as possible in the name of something so abstract and tenuous that it can’t even be adequately defined, we’re in trouble. Even simple relationships, of any type, have become problematic. We must still nurture and educate our kids, enjoy our families, run our careers, elect our leaders, and direct the future of our planet. “We the people” are at the heart of everything meaningful that happens in the world, so it is important to get it right with as little stress as possible, without going crazy (at least not too often). That means discarding the falsehoods and paying attention to what is happening. Now! We can’t live history, and we can’t live the future; where we do live, and what we can affect, is now. And the answers are not as simple as “having faith,” as many preachers tell us; the bad and crazy people “have faith,” too! Living happily and well together is not rocket science; many of the answers to life’s problems are right in front of us. Quite often solutions are provided by simply looking at what you have around you, paying attention, and reasoning it out. To that end, this book is provided.
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ONE: BELIEFS and ATTITUDE
The key to life: your attitude, which is based in your beliefs. We consider our beliefs to be our knowledge; unfortunately, that is too often not the case.
A kind of dry, philosophical subject, it is the cornerstone of all we “know,” and was therefore unavoidable as the primary chapter. It is necessary to understand the concepts of belief and attitude thoroughly before we can understand anything else.
Your attitude can keep you sane - or continuously drive you (and others) nuts. You’ve heard it before a hundred times, more if you have anything at all to do with sales, or simply work for someone else. Your superiors and mentors, even if you forget parents, have been cramming it down your throats for years. “Think big, be big,” “the power of positive thinking”; it has been the most powerful force in human civilization, there are scores of books on it.
Let’s first look at the concepts. Beliefs and opinions are essentially the same thing (although you may say that beliefs are what you hold internally, and opinions are what you provide to others), we’ll use them that way here. Attitude is the general posture you have which is generated by a group, or all, of your beliefs. Your attitude becomes an “automatic” frame of reference, an immediate state of mind, designed by the total collection of your beliefs. Accordingly, there are people who were brought up in a very religious environment generally opting for conservative, moral, cautious behavior and opinions. Then of course, we have the people who like to live on the edge, a plethora of types, from criminals and drug users to race car drivers and pilots to mountain climbers and scuba divers. This more adventurous group frequently crosses the line from morality to criminality, and includes people with a wilder, less cautious, less controlled and conservative frame of mind - attitude - which pervades all of their opinions and beliefs. Most of us are a combination of these two polarities, and fall somewhere in the middle, the “gray area” - which is what makes psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, both group and individual, more difficult.
Your beliefs are the building blocks of who you are. Your attitude is how you feel about those beliefs - emotionally, spiritually, morally and ethically. Each feeds the other. Attitude taps those beliefs to determine which mechanisms you will utilize to confront everything in your life and put them into action. It is what others see. From your beliefs and attitude we develop the axiom that “you are what you do,” since what you do is generated by them.
Other people witness an attitude that demonstrates to them that you are: accomplished, criminal, sexual, spiritual, powerful, weak, moral, brave, or adventurous. In each of these characterizations, we’d have a better than fair idea of what general behavior and opinions to expect from a person who displays such an attitude. This is the real person that everyone witnesses. You are not something different from what you do or the beliefs you have. What you believe engineers what you do and is you. This is why you cannot have hitmen who are otherwise good people; why you cannot have priests that molest children being otherwise saintly; why you cannot have alcoholics that abuse their families being otherwise decent and loving people. The beliefs you hold, and your attitude about them, generates your behavior (action) - and that makes you what you are.
It is instructive to look at how attitudes and beliefs are formed, and what they do. A great deal of what we are is based upon things which are real, that is, things which exist in actual reality. But, there are a great many things, unfortunately, which influence and generate our attitudes and beliefs that are based in things which are not real, things which do not exist in reality, but which we believe (want to believe or even hope) are real. As a practical matter, it doesn’t matter if our entire personalities and psychologies are based on things which are completely fictional and untrue, or on hardcore facts. We are still what we are and do what we do. Learning to deal with people means coming to grips with their beliefs and opinions, and the attitudes they project, regardless of what they’re based on. That means we have to learn about their “reality,” what each person believes to be true.
If you were to be a “perfect person,” for instance, you would have a set of beliefs and opinions based entirely on facts, things which truly exist in the real world, and your attitude would be formed by that explicit set of facts which you knew. As that “perfect person,” you would confront great varieties of people in the world who had beliefs and opinions based on great varieties of things - some facts, but also a collection of fairy tales, old wives tales, fables, stories, fantasies, myths, superstitions, allegories, hunches, guesses, and other such things. To deal with these people effectively, and keep yourself sane with all the nonsense (to you) that you would be hearing, you would have to learn how these people came to believe these things - where the beliefs started, and why. That is what psychologists do and why it takes as long as it does to become one - even longer to become a good and wise one. Most of this stuff you cannot learn merely from books; it takes years of experience and study of many different areas to effectively understand human nature - whether you’re a psychologist or not.
Much of a human being is made up from a world of things each one of us perceives to be real, and which may or may not be, in actual fact. A person believes them for comfort and ease, to feel positive, or, perhaps, because he or she is pessimistic. As creatures with an intellect, humans seek to have instant answers to everything. We need to have answers, it is the essence of our intelligence. The more of our answers which are actually correct (i.e., based on what is real), the better we are able to cope with a real life and universe. But there is an enormous amount which we believe that is based on what we perceive or what we interpret, which may not be real at all.
We can see this principle working at once in religion. No one knows what is actually true, yet everyone has beliefs and opinions about it, and acts accordingly. What is real doesn’t matter, in this case, because it’s not capable of being known. You need faith to believe in the absence of facts. The trouble is, we take this posture into everything else in our lives, thinking that faith is enough, that our beliefs are correct, and also that others’ differing beliefs about the same things are incorrect, and that is where the human race finds all its problems.
The study of Psychology formulates this problem of differing beliefs and perceptions of the same reality in simple, if seemingly paradoxical, terms: “the perception of reality is more important that the reality itself.” In fact, “the perception of reality is the only true reality.”
Let that sink in for a few minutes:
“THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY IS THE ONLY TRUE REALITY.”
Generally, perceiving reality and dealing with it, rather than some other misinformed piece of information, is the sanest course. You can deal with what is real even if, in some cases, you can’t control it - like a death in the family, onset of a disease, loss of a job, or finances. There are established things you can do, behaviors you can enact, to cope with these dire circumstances, and those things will maintain your sanity, even if you do go off the deep end for awhile. You’re human, you’re imperfect, and you have emotions; they will distract you from time to time, affecting your attitude. You keep sane by keeping your eye on reality, what has actually transpired and what is really happening, and that will bring your attitude back to positive and productive. Focusing on “what is” gives you something you can cope with. When you develop some fantasy about what has happened or is happening, if what you believe is in fact untrue, then there are few ways to cope with it, since it lies outside the realm of what is. Not only will such delusions adversely - and even unpredictably - affect your attitude, but they will make you crazy (i.e., neurotic) - since you cannot resolve an unreal problem in real life. That’s what psychotherapy was made for. You don’t want to go there if you don’t have to.
We all kid ourselves from time to time - thinking we’re better, smarter, younger, stronger, more attractive than we are - but “coming down to reality,” seeing what we really are, what actual strengths and weaknesses truly exist in us, will steer us to a “normal” - that is, a well-balanced - posture, keep our sanity. It is this coming to grips with reality, as opposed to what fictions a person might believe, that is the end of educational systems, and is also the basis for all the therapeutic successes of Psychology, which has as its purpose to keep you on an “even track.” We call this track “Homeostasis” - a “steady state” in which our emotions and thinking and living stay more or less even and steady. Due to myriad circumstances, we get “up” occasionally, and then soon come back down; we get “down” occasionally, but soon come back up. That is the pattern for “normalcy.” When we feel incapable of staying even and steady, we need help. The trick is not to leave the “steady state” in the first place. One of the purposes of this book is to show you how to accomplish that.
The phenomenon of “perception being the only true reality” is simple to state, but as it works out is very complex. In its simplest form, for example, it means that if you think your piece of steak is a good cut of meat, that is exactly the way it is in truth; if you or someone else think your cut is a bad piece, then that’s equally true. It doesn’t matter how good the steak actually is (for example, how expertly a world famous chef may have prepared it to look and taste, or how many rare and precisely measured ingredients were used when marinating it). The fact is, the steak has no other real value than what you believe it to be. That will affect your entire attitude about the place you’re eating in and all its employees: because of your belief about their food, regardless of what the food is “really like.” If you had a bad day or are on some type of medication or have a cold, any of which can change your palate for a span, this will affect your perception of the food and also your attitude about the establishment. We have to keep that in mind when appraising things.
Maintaining an eye on all these variables will enable you to see what is happening in truth, to understand that your perceptions may occasionally be somewhat off (i.e., not perfectly accurate), and seek not to make a long term decision or develop an incorrect attitude based on them.
So, here, in the case just mentioned, with food, if you have, say, a cold, your perceptions will be a little off. Even though your actual perception is a factual one, in that you actually do taste what you taste, the greater truth is that your taste would be false, and so the experience should be thoughtfully considered in that light, and not allow your attitude to change about the food until you’re better. Many things in life are like that, offering bits and pieces of true information mixed with untrue information, providing us with slightly skewed impressions of reality, at any particular point in time; yet these perceptions will, in the longer view, come into balance and provide a more accurate insight. Keeping sane and well-balanced means continually understanding that; haste does often make waste, and can deliver to us impressions, perceptions, and conclusions which are not completely accurate. Wisdom comes over time, with experience, looking at the same situation over and over again, in many differing circumstances, to see “the truth.”
When someone points this out to you, as here, it seems self-evident, yet this phenomenon of attitudes and beliefs based on misperceptions and misunderstandings causes more problems than any other factor that has ever existed, and contributes to more distress and strife than any other human trait.
We are reminded of the old postulate which questions, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see or hear it, has the thing really fallen?” The proper answer is: who cares! If no one is there to see it or hear it, it’s meaningless - providing there are no consequences from the tree actually falling, in which case the event would ultimately intrude into our lives and become an event. Barring that, it’s reality, or non-reality, is so unimportant we may treat it as nonexistence; it affects no one, we should invest no time in it, other than as an academic exercise.
There are many things which are similar to this: things we cannot know are real or not. Trouble is, people get definite attitudes about these unknowables, and argue or fight over them constantly. Return to religion again, for a moment. No one knows what is right and true about God and His plans - or even His existence - no one. You’d have to be God to know exactly what God is, so it should be easy to see why no one has the ability. We can discuss it, and know we all have different beliefs about it - which in this country are tolerated by law; but to be passionate or fight about it, or even worse, to kill because of it, is ridiculous. Yet we all know historically people have done precisely that, usually to make them feel good about whatever they believed themselves. The Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, even Nazi Germany and the Soviet Republic, and now the modern Islamic fundamentalists and their terrorist cohorts, are examples of some people trying to force others to their beliefs - we can see and understand what the attitudes of each of these groups of people were, and are, based on their beliefs - ridiculous as many of them are - and we know what actions they took, and are taking because of them: mostly bad ones. Prior to these, there were multitudes of tribes and folks who attempted forcibly to persuade others to their beliefs, always with little success in the short term, and over the long term, none; unfortunately, it hasn’t deterred those who are so uncomfortable with what they believe, that they violently attempt to force those beliefs on everyone else in order to validate themselves.
The aforementioned are obvious examples of attitudes gone wrong, because of non-factual beliefs. In current times, and everyday living, the examples are far more subtle, extending to such things as race, gender, nationality, one’s location in the country (the North-South, and East-West things) and religion (still). Much of the stuff we believe about people in these regards is erroneous, but that hasn’t stopped us from holding those beliefs. Education has helped, and as I keep reiterating, is the most important answer to such problems - that and a general posture of tolerance (a good and profitable attitude to have, and the cornerstone of every major faith on the planet - ironically enough). We need a sound understanding of how we form our beliefs, and what attitudes we project because of them. In diehard criminals, we can see what they believe, and the attitude they have about the law, respect for others, the sanctity of human life, and hard work. We have to take earnest steps to ensure we do not let our beliefs take us that far off track.
Using a political example: the ousting of President George Bush in the 1992 election. A year or so earlier he was an indestructible war hero and symbol of America and the free world. Did he change in that following year? Of course not, especially not old George, ex-World War Two pilot and factual hero, ex-CIA Director, ex-Ambassador to China, ex-V.P., current President - as mentioned previously, probably the greatest resume’ in Presidential history. Opinions and attitudes of the voting public changed, which affected the way they voted; and the man was gone, for better or worse. Who knows whether he would have been better than his successor, Mr. Clinton? No one. But, to be sure, there are plenty of opinions about that, in the absence of possible facts. Debates should be constrained, however, because it is something about which there is only opinion and is incapable of being known in fact. More Liberal attitudes find Mr. Clinton doing a better job, while Conservative ones perceive that Clinton was atrocious and ruining the country. The same type of thing happened when George Bush the Younger followed Bill Clinton; Liberal perceptions are that he’s atrocious, and Conservative perceptions are that he was helping protect the country. Everybody’s watching the same guy! And yet the differences in our perceptions (“the only reality”) are staggering. All that caused by attitude, driven by our held beliefs.
What we have to know here is that those beliefs we have about politicians come from a host of things occurring in our lives, and what we think we know about those Presidents - which is not much, in fact. We guess about each man’s political expertise, based on feelings, hopes, and desires, for the most part, and vote accordingly. People with a Liberal attitude will tend to favor the Liberal candidate and see him as competent, while Conservatives do the same for their more reserved candidate; each has the exact opposite conviction about the opposing candidate because of their beliefs and fundamental attitude. Nobody knows, everybody is guessing. These are the types of things we must understand and take into every consideration: that we take our best educated guess, and go for it; there are very few facts involved. Therefore, the lesson is not to get too caught up in it, don’t let it make you crazy, i.e., remove you from that steady state. Tolerance is key here - knowing what you know, and what you don’t know, and not letting that condition upset you; it’s the reasonable course.
Recalling our falling tree example for a moment, let’s say someone forms a religion called “The Tree Has Fallen Believers,” and they enlist a million followers, then march on a highway to stop traffic. Now the tree falling thing becomes important, because it starts to affect people’s lives, albeit indirectly. Pretty soon you’ll have an opinion about those trees, and have developed a strong attitude toward trees falling in the forest in general, and also toward all those pain-in-the-neck followers who made you wait on the highway and late for work the day they marched and stopped the traffic - all of this happening whether a tree ever fell or not.
What was reality? The marchers and the stopped traffic are real, and to those immobilized in their cars, it doesn’t matter why those people are there, they are affected nonetheless. Once the drivers know, you can bet they’ll have an attitude about the tree-worship people and the trees, without too many facts connected to them. The inconvenience was real - the trees are unimportant, and no one knows whether a tree fell in the forest. This is not unlike many religious wars which have been fought - and are now being fought with fundamentalist crazies - over one side believing they know some spiritual thing which they have few clues about, but which certainly affects others who believed otherwise or couldn’t have cared less. Here, many human beings’ lives were affected by someone else’s beliefs in something, whether or not the thing ever happened or is objectively true. More significantly, whether the phenomenon actually occurred or not is irrelevant.
What people believe is relevant and important; it generates their attitudes and spawns their behavior, which is what affects others. “The perception of reality is the only true reality.” The smart people, the stay-sane people, will grasp this; discussion of controversial material for academic purposes is fine, but investing more of oneself in it is silly, since no one actually knows what is certain about it, or even if whatever it is exists at all. You do have to deal with the believers, however, and that becomes a painful reality. If they are raucous and create trouble, or worse, you will have to interact with them; otherwise, you ignore the whole thing as routinely unimportant - the sane way.
An entire set of circumstances and consequent actions can come about because of one’s belief about something which in reality is fiction. Because life is comparatively short for us, we’re compelled to be concerned with those things that have some direct and relatively quick effect on us, and a pronounced effect at that. In our falling tree hypothesis, the effect on those of us who don’t care is nonetheless felt through the aggravating marchers (and traffic stoppers) who believe that the tree falling phenomenon is significant, even though it may never have factually happened.
The basis for attitude is belief; a group of beliefs will beget an attitude about the object of those beliefs. Whether or not the beliefs are based in fact, the attitude (and consequent opinions) is real. Thereby does an attitude become fallacious and unreasonable when based on a set of equally erroneous beliefs. In the tree falling scenario, those adversely affected by the disciples’ march will probably develop a negative attitude of them, beginning to believe that anyone who even mentions trees falling is a nut case. Some will be truly unpleasant to them; others, more tolerant, will choose to stay sane and even, finding the tree-believing folks annoying, but will grumblingly tolerate them under our Constitutional Rights, perhaps after uttering several epithets as to the character of their ancestors and wishing they would all return to the mountains from whence they came to see if they can catch a rock slide.
The trigger for all this, in our foregoing example, is the suspicion that a tree fell; but by the time we get to the tail end of its effect, that is, what we feel, the actual phenomenon is unimportant. That is critical to understand, since so much we think we know in life is just that: suspicion (i.e., belief or opinion). What matters, what we will have to deal with, is everyone’s beliefs about a thing, regardless of their accuracy or factuality. Thus do we see the perception of reality (belief) being more important than the reality itself. Further, we can see how an entire development of attitudes and beliefs may be generated by a non-event, a “reality” which is wholly created, in effect, from a non-reality. That is the bulk of what we confront each day, what can make us crazy if we’re not careful, and why understanding the significance of facts, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes is vital to us and to maintaining our “steady state.”
Historically we see that most fights, disagreements, altercations, and wars commonly have begun with some belief people had which they thought was good or right or would bring happiness to life (usually their own). Trouble comes when someone else has a different perception of exactly the same situation. This happens every day, everywhere, in every context - work, home, sex, love, sports, literature, education: everywhere. The stay-sane approach comprehends this and the fact that we are essentially very similar, that our actual differences as thinking beings are small and should be insignificant; they become large and significant only when our opinions and attitudes make them that way.
Traveling around the country and the world, you see people living and dying, laboring to earn their keep, taking care of their families, worrying about who to vote for, how they will raise decent children, questioning why there’s so much pain in life, so much work to do, and why there is so little time to do it. They laugh at jokes, they cry at their loved ones’ funerals, they like to give at Christmas, Hanukkah, and birthdays; they love to see the light of respect, health, and caring in their children’s eyes. They bleed when cut, bruise when bumped, hurt when physically or emotionally injured, and, like all human beings, they die - usually too soon. We are all very similar, and should not be fighting about the fractions of difference. Maintaining our “steady state” of well balanced elements means realizing this overwhelming principle, before considering any other component of humanity.
Understanding our likenesses will make us less apt to become hostile at the disagreements and differences of opinion which arise daily between people. It literally forces us to stay steady and even, not going too far off the deep end - up or down.
Take a gander at the divorce rate, now about 55%; you know that it’s obvious there are some major differences in the way people are perceiving the same situation. Now, what makes marriages work is mostly a complex puzzle, filled with many, many pieces of information. Sometimes they don’t work simply because you married the wrong person; not everybody can live together - at least not with ease and harmony. And you can’t always know that until you try. But in light of the many arranged marriages which have occurred around the world, and their much better success rate - longer, happier, more productive - one is obliged to say that it is probably not that people are different from each other which causes marriages to fall apart.
Over the span of a marriage - not too long a span these days - individuals don’t change that drastically. But by the time estranged married partners get to court, they have usually destroyed most, if not all, of whatever things they originally had going, and it becomes irreparable; here, one can only learn not to repeat past mistakes. You begin to get the picture that something strange is going on with marriages in that divorces are overwhelmingly painful, agitating, hate-filled experiences! It simply can’t be that all these people who once loved each other changed that much, or suddenly converted to hating their spouses. There must be something else! What Psychologists, Sociologists, and Marriage Counselors find makes good relationships work, or not work, is maturity: simply put, a deep desire by two people to be and stay with someone they care about. That’s it, no magic - or, that is the “magic.” Essentially, tolerance and will power. You tough out the bad stuff, without making too big a deal of it, enjoy the good, and go on - that’s it. Why? Because it’s who we are, life’s not perfect, and there is no alternative other than solitude or death - which, unfortunately, some people choose.
Selfishness of some form is usually at the heart of failed relationships, not the inability to understand the other person or personality differences. After all, who would want a relationship with someone exactly like him or herself! The Stay-Even-and-Sane group understand all this, and tries to make their marriages work, do not get overly provoked or exasperated due to bad days, unimportant taste differences, and harrowing or even tragic events which develop by chance and are no one’s major fault (I say “major” fault because you can always see some blame in another person, or yourself, to the extent that either one of you were involved in the situation at all). Even in those cases where there is major fault and disagreements arise, trying to resolve them reasonably, without becoming overly irritated, is wise. The Japanese have an ancient proverb which states “fix the problem, not the blame.” This is what occurs in all those relationships which happily stay together for many years.
When it becomes apparent that two people cannot live with each other, then it is necessary, for sanity’s sake, to discuss the separation without hate or great anxiety, for both to realize that another path for each is necessary, taking into account any children’s welfare and disposition of material things. Vengeance, hatefulness, and spite help no one, in fact are childish and counterproductive, causing further complications, becoming an impediment for either party to live a happy life, and disheveling the lives of any offspring. Of course, occasionally you find people who are just bad and there is not much you can do about them; they will make you miserable. The only thing to do here is get as far away from them as possible, as fast as you can - forget the disposition of things. Move on, try again - that’s the simple and sane course.
Most of the time both parties are in some part responsible for the breakup; but, bitter feelings generate beliefs which shade perceptions, causing each to think the other is completely culpable for what went wrong. Counselors and Lawyers hear it all the time, and both make money because of it. These same breakups, when viewed by others, or even from a distance by the two parties involved, appear silly. Few disputes have real substance, for gigantic differences would have made it difficult to have gotten together in the first place. What really caused the destruction of the relationship usually goes unknown, although often has much to do with a lack of communication and honesty between the parties (choosing beliefs over facts); after enough time the reason is irrelevant. Yet there are, surely, beliefs and perceptions abounding everywhere by the two involved regarding what actually occurred - even when it is unknown. And of course it is unknown because neither is willing to come to the understanding (belief) that there is something wrong with him- or herself, God forbid. Their beliefs color their perceptions of themselves and their partners (rendering a distinct attitude), and thus, not based in fact, cannot lead to a sound resolution of the relationship. In this way many divorces occur, and are bitter, with each despising the other because of perceived wrongfulness in their partner’s behavior. This kind of thing will make you irrational, stressed out, upset, and for much too long a period of time.
There are many examples where individuals act as if they were something altogether different from their fellow human beings (bigger, smaller, better, worse, smarter, dumber, privileged, unfortunate, etc.). In such situations there is a snowball effect, whereby incorrect beliefs form a faulty attitude, that attitude begetting inappropriate behavior, and that behavior leading to more inaccurate perceptions and beliefs, the whole routine feeding on itself. We have no doubt all seen this vicious cycle in something as simple as getting cold. The cold begins, you feel crummy, this depresses you, you have “bad days,” your perceptions are off or ruined, you snap at people, all of this leading to more general (although admittedly minor) depression, perhaps inappropriate behavior, and you believe your life, and lot are worse than they actually are. All this from a cold! All these perceptions and feelings are not your “normal” self, you feel as if you’re the only one who’s ever felt like that, and it takes an act of will, sometimes with great effort, to realize that and stop the cycle. How many times has something like this, some illness of one type of the other, affected us, and later, when we’re feeling better, we tell our friends and family something like, “Sorry, I was just a little off, not feeling very well.” It’s common.
The same type of thing occurs when we have a lack of knowledge about something, believing something which is not altogether factual; this generates an entire series of misbehavior, bad feelings, and anxieties, leading to a disharmonious lifestyle and unhappiness, which for our purposes constitute lack of sanity. If we look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for example, we witness both the rioters and the rioted claiming that the other was insensitive and very much different than the other. The same phenomenon occurred during riots at universities during the Viet Nam War days, and still more in southern cities (as in Alabama, under Gov. George Wallace) when integration procedures were being implemented - unhappiness, misinformation, and misbehavior abounded because of erroneous beliefs that the “other people” were substantially different.
Everyone thinks they’re right, and yet all the behavior is based on beliefs and misperceptions. Under these conditions, one group of people sees another group of people , who merely have opposing opinions, as different. Mind you, these are merely beliefs, not facts, which erroneously slant perceptions (that the other side is actually different) and generate an entire sequence of conduct. In view of the actual staggering similarities in all of us, it can be deduced that the difficulty we have connecting with people has more to do with ourselves than with other people or circumstances.
Since we are very similar to our compatriots, any difference of lifestyle must be due to individual choices and actions. Too often this is a bitter pill for a person to swallow, and why a certain state of denial (an attitude which disbelieves painful things are present) exists regarding our own true strengths and weaknesses. Often people will try to improve and learn more about what is truly going on, but the path of least resistance is to lie to ourselves rather than work on improvement; unfortunately, we all take that path now and then: we’re human. Lying and laziness will always give one a bumpy lifestyle filled with anxieties - not a thing to be aimed for. In this atmosphere of faulty knowledge, misperceptions, and flawed beliefs, one’s opinion of him or herself becomes biased, which is to say, inaccurate. Belief reigns, reality doesn’t figure into the picture.
This is what psychologists regularly deal with in psychotherapeutic treatment of their patients: the process of enabling patients to recognize the truth - what truly is - leaving their incorrect opinions and beliefs (along with poor and inappropriate behavior) behind, and deal more with facts and reality. In this way troubled individuals can learn to deal with actual problems encountered rather than their misconceptions, making their lives more proficient. Problems we induce because of errors in our perceptions are difficult, even impossible, to cure until we change ourselves (our beliefs & behavior), and will cause an abundance of tension and pressures until we can let go of the illusion. We can easily see that education, especially obtaining more exact information on human beings, is a critical step toward a harmonious and happy lifestyle. That knowledge will show plainly that people have many more important similarities than differences, and that the differences we see are superficial and immaterial.
Research generally finds what you probably see yourselves, that those who seem very sane, happy and productive, are those people who have a clear vision of the world, and are adroit at solving problems quickly. They never seem to get bogged down or overly upset or strained. That is what you are aiming for, what you can achieve when you drop your facades and false beliefs, rather confronting what is happening - not fighting ghosts, which cannot be obliterated since they’re not really there.
Each of us has the problem of inaccurate beliefs and putting up facades, to greater or lesser degree. Life is hard; we establish defense mechanisms to help protect us from the pain and stress, and some of them let us believe things which are not completely true. In these cases, we do take the path of low resistance, of easiness, rather than diligently strive to comprehend or empathize. It can be difficult to get beyond our own opinions when we are not in the habit of doing so, that is, when we are generally intolerant of other constructions of reality, of other beliefs. As a practical matter, it is impossible to get completely outside our own views, as many well-known skeptical philosophers have pointed out; but we do have other great human qualities, notably vision, foresight, and faith, which enable us to deal with this predicament.
Philosophers from Plato to Rene Descartes to John Locke to Jean Paul Sartre to St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas have theorized about this very thing (getting outside ourselves and knowing others) - for millennia. Like many things in life, coming to know another person can be difficult for us, patience and diligence to understand being the only course which yields any real solutions for interpersonal problems and misunderstandings. The sane and steady lifestyle entails a broadness of mind and a willingness to realize that each of us can be at least a little wrong about something (or someone), to empathize with others’ beliefs, to remain open to accepting new truths and different opinions. In that this can occasionally be a bumpy road, it will be challenging from time to time, since, as mentioned earlier, we all want our lives to be secure and stable. It certainly seems as if accepting new beliefs and facts would upset our steady apple cart. Sometimes our life is tossed around a little, it’s true, but being placed on a more reliable path, one with more truths in it, more facts about other people, will ultimately enable our lives to become more harmonious and productive, even when it doesn’t seem so at first.