Humainologie dialogue tonight Wednesday August 12 with Zoom link and golden opportunity to take our

Here once more is the revised Zoom link for tonight’s dialogue, provided by Shinobu. It starts at 6:30 PM (Calgary time) and by 8:00 we would be drawing toward conclusion, but participants who would like to continue will be able to do so.

Topic: Humainologie Dialogue Session Time: Aug 12, 2020 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85956856218

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Meeting ID: 859 5685 6218

Greg and his family decided to take time off to be in the mountains (Lake Louise), and Shinobu offered to become the host. By the way, taking time off to be in nature is important for mental health (a suggested topic for our dialogue tonight) and Brian Seaman’s exercise in the park events on Sundays are a golden opportunity for all of us to experience good social interactions, a natural outdoor setting, and exercise all in one big boost to mental health.

I am supposed to facilitate tonight, but I’ll do something different. David Bohm’s concept of dialogue is that a facilitator is okay, but as the practice of dialogue evolves, a facilitator should not be necessary. Tonight, instead of facilitating, I’ll ask each of the participants to consider leading the session for ten minutes or so. If you prefer, you can pass the opportunity to someone else. Brian might use his ten minutes to lead our exercise session; Leila might use hers to lead us in a song. When your turn comes, if you would like to take the lead, you could (for example) do any of the following:

· Tell us about something that’s currently on your mind (might be something you are interested in or something that has set you back a bit) and either ask us to just listen empathically; or ask for our own thoughts about your current interest or concern.

· Give us an interesting idea that occurred to you after reading the book synopsis (The Coddling of the American Mind) appended below this message, and then use that as background for a good question that you present to us for our response. (Today, August 12, is the third anniversary of the killing of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville by “a white supremacist who idolized Adolf Hitler,” and this incident is mentioned in the book and in my synopsis.)

· Pick one of your favorite quotations and ask us to give our own thoughts about that quotation. Or if you prefer, here are some good quotes, any one of which you might use to lead the dialogue for your ten minutes:

o “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” - Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

o “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.” - Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

o “Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don’t.” - Anonymous

o “They say best men are molded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad.” - William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

o “Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.” - Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

· Use any of the surrealist prompts that I had sent out previously and respond to that prompt creatively. (I’ll append the prompts just below the book synopsis.)

In other words, tonight’s dialogue is our chance to carry the art of dialogue to a new high here in Calgary and your chance to become a more skillful dialogue artist. I am very much looking forward to seeing you this evening!

Arthur

Book: (Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt) The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018)

A survey of both very liberal and very conservative college students in 2017 revealed that 58% of the students overall supported the view that “it is important to be part of a campus community where I am not exposed to intolerant and offensive ideas.” Of the liberal students, 63% agreed with the statement, while 45% of conservative students agreed with it. The statement, of course, is at odds with the view that education should make students think rather than making them comfortable. Protecting people from ideas and experiences that make them uncomfortable means restricting freedom of speech and undermining the emotional maturity of those who are protected in this way. It’s an old problem. The Athenian authorities forced Socrates to drink hemlock and die because he had been a “gadfly,” stirring up the youth of Athens to think for themselves.

The authors write: “Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals …[by] seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that ‘feels unsafe’), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).”

Children who are not exposed to peanuts early are more likely to develop peanut allergy later in childhood, because early exposure enables them to develop immunity. This example is used by the authors to illustrate the general principle that we become stronger by having to cope with difficulties.

Chapter 2, “The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings,” is about why it is actually a bad idea to “always trust your feelings.” The chapter opens with this quotation from Epictetus: “What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.” While emphasizing the importance of countering racism, for example, it also emphasizes the dangers of conflating intention and impact. We should oppose (and transcend) intentional racism (Ku Klux Klan rallies, screaming racist insults, etc.). Otherwise, exposure to the great diversity of people with all their faults, including the deeply ingrained tribalism that can probably be found in every human being, is a good thing. It is also a good thing to listen to adversarial ideas, such as someone who thinks that a lot of well-intentioned “anti-racism” is in fact detrimental to the very people it is intended to help.

By avoiding people with ideas different from your own, you might feel more comfortable. By exposing yourself to such ideas, however, and by considering them carefully, you gain wisdom and resilience. You overcome your tendency to “emotional thinking” and learn to control your emotions. The emotional part of our brain and the intellectual part have a relationship like that of an elephant and a person riding the elephant. If we are ruled by emotional thinking, we are placing our ability to cope with all sorts of things in jeopardy. Cognitive behavioral therapy is designed to enhance our ability to cope with our emotions. That way, this elephant we are riding is less likely to ruin our lives.

Part II of the book, chapters 4 and 5, is entitled “Bad ideas in Action” and begins with this quote from Nelson Mandela: “When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.” In 2017, just days after the inauguration of Donald Trump, the Berkley campus at the University of California became violent in response to a visit from “Milo Yiannopoulos, a young, British, gay Trump supporter” who was scheduled to speak. He was a provocateur, a self-described “troll” – “a master of the art of triggering outrage and then using that outrage to embarrass his opponents and advance his goals.” The violence included property damage and physical attacks on students and others who attempted to attend the speech. The authors of the book see the event as a “turning point – an escalation of conflicts over campus speakers. Berkeley and its aftermath were the start of a new and more dangerous era. Since then, many students on the left have become increasingly receptive to the idea that violence is sometimes justified as a response to speech they believe is ‘hateful.’”

A few months later, “the most shocking event of all occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia. On the night of August 11, 2017, members of the self-described alt-right, including many neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen, marched across the fabled grounds of the University of Virginia, carrying Tiki torches and chanting neo-Nazi and white supremacist slogans, including ‘Jews will not replace us.’ If you are looking for examples of common-enemy identity politics, it doesn’t get any clearer than this.” The next day the mob went to the city carrying swastika flags and it was on that day, August 12, 2017, that “a white supremacist who idolized Adolf Hitler stopped his car in front of a group of counter-protesters, backed up, and then sped forward, slamming into them,” injuring many and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer,“a paralegal described by friends as ‘a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised who was often moved to tears by the world’s injustices.’”

The authors quote Van Jones, who had been an advisor to Barack Obama, when Jones was asked how progressive students should respond when speakers they find ideologically offensive are invited to speak on campus. Distinguishing between physical safety on campus (a good thing) from “ideological safety,” which Jones considers a bad thing, he said: “I don’t want you to be safe ideologically, I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong.”

Part III of the book, “How Did We Get Here?” includes chapters such as “Anxiety and Depression,” “Paranoid Parenting, and “The Bureaucracy of Safetyism.” Part IV, “Wising Up,” includes “Wiser Kids” (Chapter 12), “Wiser Universities” (Chapter 13), and “Wiser Societies” (Conclusion). For wiser kids, the authors provide such advice as allowing children more unstructured time to play and to interact with other children and limiting the length of homework assignments. You can help children learn cognitive behavioral therapy basics by expressing emotional thinking aloud in the voice of a cartoon character like Daffy Duck, then responding wisely to those anxious emotional thoughts.

The Conclusion summarizes things in a simple table with three “psychological principles” and for each of those three, a corresponding bit of wisdom; and the “Great Untruth” that must be transcended to gain that wisdom. The first psychological principle is that young people are potentially very resilient (or “antifragile” as they call it). The corresponding wisdom is to encourage the growth of that resilience: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” The Untruth that must be overcome is essentially about overprotection: “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.” The second psychological principle is that “we are all prone to emotional reasoning…” and the wisdom comes as a quote from Buddha: “Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.” The corresponding Untruth is: “Always trust your feelings.” The third psychological principle is that we are all prone to [Us Versus Them] thinking and tribalism. The corresponding wisdom is a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” We are all capable of “evil” and we need to become much keener detectives of the errors of our own ways.

Optimal human psychological development can lead to a “spiritual consciousness,” usually in old age, in which everything that happens is seen as an opportunity for spiritual growth. However, that optimal development requires exposure to many things that make us uncomfortable. We cannot achieve this resilience and wisdom by sheltering children and young adults from adversity; on the contrary we should encourage exposure to diverse cultures and unfamiliar ideas.

Here once again are my “surrealist prompts” to inspire your creativity for mental health. My “good question” for August 12 is in the form of a surrealist challenge, as follows: I’ll give you four conceptual frames as prompts to evoke a surrealist response. My challenge is for you EITHER to respond to one of the four prompts I’ve provided OR to come up with a fifth such conceptual frame to encourage surrealist creativity in others – and give them (along with your prompt) an example of your own response to it. Here are my four prompts:

1. Give us an idea for a fresh approach to collage, with your own example of a collage you have made following your innovative idea. (As you know, collage is itself already a kind of surrealist art form, in which various elements are brought together in the work of art, for example pasting an old photo, a ribbon, a postage stamp, the label from a bottle of beer, and the fragment of a handwritten letter together on the canvas or sheet of watercolor paper. Your challenge is to further develop the definition – perhaps with more detailed and very imaginative instructions - of how to come up with a brilliant collage, with the aim of fostering highly innovative works from the other surrealists who use your fresh approach to this art form.)

2. Give us an idea for a fresh approach to writing short stories, and then provide the outline of a short story of your own to illustrate how your evocative approach might be used to advantage. (As you know, many people find it difficult to come up with an idea for a good story. For your response to this prompt, you might for example look at some of the best short stories you have ever read, identify elements in them that made them so good, then use those elements to create some sort of structured approach to getting a group of people started with writing their own short stories.)

3. Take any two of the book synopses I have sent to you over the past couple of years and combine ideas from the two synopses into a paragraph or so of your own based on that combination of ideas. The paragraph could either be a clearly expressed insight you gained by connecting ideas from the two different books; OR it could be a paragraph of surrealist fiction inspired by the wording you found in the two synopses. Either way, make it fresh!

4. Identify a practical problem you have faced recently (could be a small or a large challenge or difficulty) and give us one or two surrealist solutions to the problem you have come up with. (Notice that for the pragmatic surrealist, every problem is an opportunity for creativity.)

5. (Your idea for a creative prompt here.)