Free Will, Erroneousity, and the Problem With the Backfire Effect

Is this phenomenon common only to conservatives and Christians?

Someone posted a link to a podcast about research which shows that when a strong-yet-erroneous belief is challenged, most people may experience a weakening of your convictions, but most people quickly rebound, reassert their original belief and dig in their heels. Note here that this starts out with an assumption that we cannot be certain if something is true of false. The point of all this seemed to have been to prove why conservatives won't change their minds when liberals tell them the "truth". This is supposed to be a common weakness not shared by great minds (i.e. people who supported Hillary Clinton) who always go with the truth come what may. At least that's the mythology.

This research only stiffened my belief that B.F. Skinner was entirely full of horse crap. This is not inevitably true. I believe the research suffers from the same problem it tries to identify. Skinner was a famous psychologist who put forward the belief that free choice is an illusion and that we are all preprogrammed by our external experiences. Skinner also thinks believing in God is a delusion.

I'm not here to argue about God. I'm here to challenge the humans-as-robots idea. As anyone who reads my stuff knows, I believe that people have free choices. We can, as it were, overcome out programming. Not that we aren't programmed to some extent. It would be exhausting to have to go through the choice process about every little thing. Most of our lives we go through our days on auto-pilot. It's the way our brain learns to cope with the complex series of decisions we have to make and it is the way we learn any skill, idea, or ability.

All sights, sounds, and senses pass through our brains through the amygdala, a series of structures in the brain that process input and decide what to do with it. It works like this for something like swinging a baseball bat and hitting a ball:

1. We swing at a pitched ball the first time and decide second by second throughout the pitch where to direct the bat, how hard to swing and where we want it to go. Usually we miss or, if we are lucky, we foul the ball into the stands. 
2. We repeat the action again and again. At first the amygdala sends the visual and sound cues to the frontal lobes where we think and decide what we believe about what we are seeing and hearing. Then the frontal lobes send instruction to the brain stem telling it what to do with our muscles in order to direct the bat into the ball and hit it.
3. The more we repeat this action, the more ingrained the action becomes and the less the forebrain has to think about it. Soon the amygdala lays down strong neuronal pathways that go straight to the brain stem with instructions the forebrain has sent time and again. Once these pathways are established we swing a bat almost without thinking, the forebrain only needing to make minor adjustments in the swing to control your aim. A good swing then just feels right.

This is how we learn behaviors, attitudes and physical responses. I experienced this at camp. I saw enough copperhead snakes that I could pick them out of the leaves almost without realizing it. I've jumped up in the air and out of the way, almost before I realized why I was jumping. My amygdala had recognized the snake pattern and instructed my feet to jump and on the way up to ask how high. Feet don't fail me now. It is also how we develop automatic reactions to ideas and beliefs.

It is true that attacking someone's firmly held beliefs often only strengthen that belief, accounting for this so-called backfire effect. Believe it or not, this is a good thing and does not represent some sort of willful resistance to new information. This stiffening of belief comes because we have over the course of our lives, consciously or unconsciously chosen the beliefs we hold. Sometimes this is because we wish to be part of the herd, but that is less the case than liberal propagandists suppose.

Often our beliefs and our ingrained defensiveness with regard to them are the result of careful choices made over long periods of time. People who never consciously choose do not develop such beliefs and become easily influenced by the herd of people they want to belong to. Their beliefs depend on feelings; not so much as upon rational consideration.  But a conscious resistance to information that sounds not right, is not of the herd beast thought process. It can also be the product of a series of decisions made calmly and rationally and as the result of much reading, study and research.

So, if it smells like horse poop and looks like horse poop, it's probably some kind of horse poop! If we weren't able to do that on auto-pilot, we'd have a very very difficult time crossing a horse pasture without tripping over a steaming pile of the aforementioned equine waste product.

Don't get me wrong for minds can be changed by argument. It's easier and happens more often than Mr. Skinner would have you believe. My three favorite conservative pundits, for instance, all were big time liberals when they were coming up through high school and college. But once they hit real life they began seeing evidence that something was amiss. The theories they had accepted from their Marxist university professors were not playing out like they were supposed to in the real world. So they eventually became big time conservatives and reread history.  This happened because they encountered information that challenged their initial fundamental beliefs. It happened enough times that eventually, their brains changed the positive feelings long associated with one set of beliefs and connected them with another set of beliefs, thus making them resistant to the old belief system.

The same thing happened with my religious convictions. I went from being a militant agnostic to being a firm Christian over a period of about two years.  It happened with me resisting the change most of the way. You do not convince another that you are right and they are wrong by pounding them with facts. This only stiffens the resistance of the person to changing their beliefs.

If you want to encourage a person to change, you, instead, present them with hard questions that force them to think. Such questions create a cognitive dissonance that forces their amygdala to route the problem to the thinking part of their brains. If you can get a person to think, to examine their beliefs, you can shake them out of their emotional comfort zone and place them on the path to what Thomas Kuhn called a "paradigm shift".  This shift of strongly held beliefs (the kind that resist change) to a new set of cherished beliefs happens, not as a result of a single salvo of facts, but as a result of questions raised by a series of data conflicts, which do not fit the old paradigm.

Now many people will never change for a variety of reasons. They may not wish to leave their personal herd. They may fear losing their job, position in society or the affection of family should they accept the implications of the problem posed by all this new and conflicting data they are seeing. But every person, confronted by such a conundrum, has to make a decision. Even the decision not to decide and put it all out of their head is a decision.

So the backfire effect doesn't much help the propagandists of the left, especially if challenging a set of beliefs leads the holders of those beliefs to do a little research of their own into the "facts" presented. Such an investigation may actually cause more damage to the would-be persuader's case than to the belief set of the targeted person.

Conservatives appear to be pretty tough nuts to crack in that respect, much to the chagrin of Democrat political consultants. This would make sense given that so many are Christians and the Christian beliefs system was created by someone who knew an awful lot about how the human mind works and how to train it. Jesus said, "The Truth shall make you free."  It actually does. It frees you to do what you really want and free from the kind of conditioned responses B.F. Skinner thought were the only thing influencing the behaviors of all people. I have found that the life with Christ trains the mind to choose what it chooses in principal and not by blind emotional response.

As it turns out, the Truth really does set you free!

© 2017 by Tom King

Before You Judge a Person's Intelligence by an IQ Score - Read This!

Albert Einstein is the epitome
of the high IQ sort of genius, but
something else enabled him to
transcend physicists with
higher IQ scores.

IQ is a highly over-rated measure of intelligence.

I can say this possessing a Mensa level IQ of my own. I know this is from my own experience and from considerable training in psychology at the graduate level; training which included the administration of IQ tests. IQ tests measure only two specific types of intelligence - verbal and mathematical/logical. Those who study human intelligence do not believe that verbal and mathematical intelligence is all there is to it. IQ is good for rating writers and physicists perhaps, but intelligence quotients only capture a part of the picture.

Michael Jordan's kinesthetic
genius enabled him to almost
appear to fly without wings.

IQ scores do not measure kinesthetic intelligence, for instance. It's often overlooked as a form of intelligence, except possibly by ESPN commentators. Kinesthetic intelligence is the brain's capacity to manipulate objects and execute physical skills. Coaches call a person with high levels of kinesthetic intelligence a "natural". Kinesthetic intelligence is marked by a strong sense of timing and the ability to perfect complex skills through the union of mind and body. We just witnessed a gathering of kinesthetic geniuses at the Rio Olympic Games. Kinesthetically intelligent people include not only athletes, but also dancers, surgeons, and skilled craftsmen. Michael Jordan, for instance, is probably a kinesthetic genius in his understanding of the movement of basketballs and his own body through space. If you've ever watched him drive home a dunk shot in slow motion, you'll see it. I for one could never do what Michael does. I'm not a natural. Kinesthetically, I'm a bit retarded, except possibly in a canoe. Kinesthetic intelligence can be strengthened, and may even be selective, favoring one skill over another, but there is a limit to what you can do if you don't have it.

John Williams' masterful movie scores
turn movies into something more
than just images on a screen.

IQ scores do not measure musical–rhythmic and harmonic intelligence. We've all known folk with perfect pitch and people who can't carry a tune in a bucket. Musically, I'm average because I worked hard at it as a child.  Some people on the other hand are naturals at making music, even from a very young age. I knew one little girl who performed her first solo in church at the age of two. The voice that came out of her was dead on pitch and at a volume that would have done an adult proud. She has grown up to be and accomplished singer and musician by diligent practice, but I know that she had a head start over someone like me. Some examples of musical geniuses include Mozart, Beethoven, John Williams, Paul Simon, and others whose work seems to transcend the ordinary almost effortlessly.
 

Walter Elias Disney
captured the imaginations
of generations of children
and adults.

IQ scores do not effectively measure visual–spatial intelligence. Spatial intelligence is the ability to visualize the world accurately, to modify one's surroundings based upon one's perceptions, and to recreate the aspects of visual experiences in other formats. Artists and architects, designers and urban planners possess higher levels of visual–spatial intelligence. People like famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, and designers and planners like Pierre Charles L'Enfant who designed Washington DC and Walt Disney who not only designed some of the most beautiful films of his day, but also laid out both Disneyland's and Walt Disney World's brilliantly conceived theme parks.

 

Ronald Reagan's ability to connect
with friends and enemies alike
fundamentally changed the world.

IQ scores do not effectively measure interpersonal intelligence.  Interpersonal intelligence is basically social intelligence or what we like to call people skills. People with higher levels of interpersonal intelligence are good at getting along with others.  Skilled diplomats like Henry Kissinger, great public speakers like Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, as well as great actors and actresses like Meryl Streep, Jimmy Stewart and others all have that ability to read people and deliver just the right words, body language and inflection to engage other people effectively.

20th Century Writer/
Theologian C.S. Lewis revived
a sagging Christianity
through his remarkable
ability to articulate the
logical 

IQ scores do not measure intrapersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence is self-awareness and accurate and effective forms of introspection. Great philosophers and theologians, writers and poets have this sort of intelligence.  Folk like

Locke, T.H. White, John Donne, Martin Luther and CS Lewis possess high levels of intrapersonal intelligence. These people have the ability to observe the world and then look within themselves to find meaning and purpose and to put all of that into a form that inspires and guides people towards creating their own sense of self and of purpose.

I would say, however, that John Muir did
have something special going for him
where an understanding of nature was
concerned, though his gift might have been
in the way he was able to transmit that
understanding to others as much as anything.

IQ scores do not measure naturalistic intelligence.  Whether this is an actual form of intelligence or a politically correct add-on to appease modern progressives is debatable. I personally think this last one is a made-up kind of intelligence. It was inserted into the list quite recently, I would suspect to make the guys at Greenpeace and the Sierra Club feel good about themselves. I’ll grant you that perhaps folk who work with nature might have a kind of intelligence the rest of us lack. Someone has suggested that really talented landscapers have an abundance of naturalistic intelligence. I suspect landscapers have more of a visual-spatial intelligence, though knowing what sort of plants will thrive where could be part of it. That seems more about skill and training than anything else.

 

Now, I would say, however, that "naturalistic intelligence" might be what we think of as having a "green thumb" or a way with animals. In that case I’d have to give intelligence props to gifted farmers, ranchers, botanists and even zoologists before I’d go labeling environmentalists and Greenpeace activists as possessing a particularly unique kind of intelligence. Environmental activism is more a political skill than a particular form of intelligence to my way of thinking. I would make an exception for naturalists like John Muir, however as noted under the picture to the right of Muir. Have to respect a guy who could maintain a beard that formidable in the wild.

The sudden duct-taped addition of "naturalistic" intelligence to the list of intelligences seems indicative that even intelligence is politicized these days. Psychology as a field is sadly vulnerable to politicization. They've already set a precedent back in the 80s with the sudden elimination of a whole category of what were once considered mental disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the DSM III-R), and the suppression of research into the causes and potential treatments for said condition. The American Psychological Association caved big time to political pressure then and probably will again. The inclusion of "naturalistic" intelligence as a type of intelligence is just the latest political correction. I suspect there will be more and more disorders dropped or added to the DSM and new forms of intelligence added to the list in order to make people feel good about themselves - or at the very least, less guilt-ridden. It's unlikely to matter what the science tells us in the face of the lumbering threat of political incorrectness.

I fully expected President Obama to suggest to the APA that they recognize Quranal Intelligence - the ability to interpret the Quran correctly - as a specific form of intelligence. The the National Institute of Mental Health can take on a new goal for itself - to make Muslims feel good about themselves. NASA's director has already taken that on as one of the agency's primary goals.

It wouldn't have surprised me. With President Biden being recognized as a true genius by his progressive sycophants as the smartest president ever, the APA may soon have to add a new type of intelligence - Lingual Incomprehensibility Exegesis (LIE) or the ability to translate dangerous Marxist claptrap into undecipherable word salad on the fly and hide what you're really trying to say. Should soon be an officially recognized form of intelligence if they follow the path of "naturalistic" intelligence. 

Just sayin'.

Tom King © 2016
If you'd like to see a video version of this blog, check it out below. It's my first vlog, so be patient with me. I'm still learning how this stuff works.

The "Aha!" experience.

I once did therapy sessions and served as program director at the  Odyssey Harbor Ranch campus while I was in grad school studying Rehab Counseling Psychology. Odyssey Harbor was a residential treatment center for children and youth with multiple psychiatric and physical diagnoses.  I was responsible for the Bear's Den, a dorm for kids ages 6 to 10.

PH was one of the more interesting kids I treated. I had started a self-government in the Bears Den where the kids elected a dorm captain every week. It was a popular vote thing and you couldn't be on any kind of restriction to be dorm captain. The kids met on Fridays to determine consequences for some transgressions where that was appropriate. The dorm captain was the dorm's representative with me and he was the guy that got them special activities, privileges or treats. PH wanted to be dorm captain so badly that it hurt.

The kids didn't like him and he knew it. He complained to me in therapy one day, "I don't know why they don't like me," he shook his head in bewilderment. "I done beat up every kid in that dorm and still they won't pick me for dorm captain."

I was beginning to see a little distorted thinking going on. I tried to help him see that beating people up probably wasn't the best way to win a popular election, but the idea was totally outside his cultural paradigm. In PH's world, if you want to be the boss and be respected, you intimidate everyone else. Unfortunately for his popularity, the world we had constructed in the Bear's Den was ruled by law. It was a democracy and the citizens of that little world could exert power over their world with their secret ballot vote.  No matter how small they were, staff would protect their right to vote. No one could effectively control by bullying as PH had discovered.

That week PH was caught in the Bear's Den restroom doing some experimenting he shouldn't have been doing with another boy. Since it was on their turf, the kids voted to restrict both boys to campus for two weeks. I had to invoke a supreme court decision to prevent them from voting to take a more Mohammedan approach to punishment that involved amputation of offending parts. I explained that that according to our constitution, that punishment was not on the list of acceptable consequences. They relented at last (there was a lot of pent up anger at both boys because of their bullying).  They finally chose to issue both boys a one-and-one sentence that allowed for a pardon/parole the second week, but only if the dorm voted unanimously to let them off with 1 week time served. This was a very powerful teaching tool and often worked well, especially with kids who had any cognitive ability whatever. They were pretty fair about it since any one of them might face a jury of his peers at any time.

In two weeks the group was going to a baseball game and PH wanted desperately to go. He was an angel for that first week. He was helpful to the younger boys, respectful to staff and amazingly well-behaved. He told me in therapy that he was "trying real hard" to be good so the other boys would vote to give him that second week pardon. Fortunately for PH, the Bears Den boys had pretty short memories.

He came to me in therapy the next week almost giddy with excitement and it wasn't just over the upcoming baseball outing. The kids had not only voted him a pardon for the second week of his punishment so he could go to the game, but in the same session they also voted him Dorm Captain. The other boy had been awful that week and wound up serving the second week of his punishment and missing the ball game.

PH told me the whole story and then cocked his head as though a new thought had struck him. "You know," he said with the air of someone imparting a great truth, "If you are nice to people they like you!"

Following that revelation, PH's behavior improved so dramatically that he went home for good just 4 months later.

It was the most profound success I ever had doing cognitive behavioral therapy. 

Romans 8:28 promises that all things work together for good to them that love God.  I wonder if that's also true for those whom God loves, which is basically everybody.

I suspect that's true. No matter how we finally choose in the great "As for me and my house, we shall follow...."  decision, I think God gives us every opportunity to have that great "Aha" moment in our lives. I think everyone comes to it and either embraces the light or chooses the dark. George Lucas was on the right track with the cave scene in Star Wars. We face the dark and light throughout our lives, but in one moment of startling clarity, we all see two paths stretching before us.  There is a narrow, less well-trodden path uphill toward the light and a wide, easy glittering road sloping down toward a place deliberately kept obscured beyond broad twists and bends by those who keep the path well greased.

And at that moment we choose.

And at that moment we are forever changed. 

As Robert Frost so eloquently put it, "I chose the road less traveled and that has made all the difference."

Tom King

 

American Psychiatric Association Warns Therapists not to Treat Homosexuality

"Politicizing a Mental Disorder"

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the primary diagnostic tool used by psychiatrists and psychologists to identify mental disorders. With a stroke of the eraser, the mental health establishment made it okay to be gay. There was dancing in the streets of San Francisco. There was strong opposition to this measure from the psychological community, but these scientists were shouted down.

With that action APA instantly "healed" millions of troubled individuals by simply saying "Never mind, go ahead with what you're doing, just learn to live with it."

The APA tried to reach a compromise with objectors in 1980 by including a new diagnosis - ego-dystonic homosexuality which simply stated was a persistent lack of normal arousal, that interferes with heterosexual relationships the person wants and emotional distress caused by unwanted homosexual arousal. Apparently, even this recognition that some people didn't want to be gay was too much for the activists. There were riots by gay activists at scientific conventions. In response to the ensuing uproar, the APA, always a tower of Jello, in 1986, removed the diagnosis entirely from the DSM, leaving only a faint vestige of it under "Sexual Disorders Not Otherwise Specified".

At the time, psychologists working on homosexual treatment programs wondered if preventive therapy for homosexuality would be prohibited. They were reading the future correctly.

The campaign to legitimize homosexuality continued with a recent two year APA task force that examined the issue. They released their report this year with a stern warning to therapists not to suggest that homosexuality was a mental disorder or to recommend "reparative" therapies aimed at changing sexual orientation. APA further states that in dealing with gay clients from conservative faiths, therapists should be "very cautious" about suggesting treatments aimed at altering their same-sex attractions." The report goes on to say, "Practitioners can assist clients through therapies that do not attempt to change sexual orientation, but rather involve acceptance, support and identity exploration and development without imposing a specific identity outcome."

The task force that issued this report included not one psychiatrist that believed homosexuality is not a normal adaptation. Further, the APA task force took as STARTING POINT, the belief that homosexuality is a normal variant of human sexuality, not a disorder, and that it nonetheless remains stigmatized in ways that can have negative consequences.

Big surprise the outcome of that "scientific" study.

This issue makes less and less sense the longer it is debated. The Rolling Stones once sang, "Satan, Satan is my name. Confusion is my game." So it seems to be with this issue. Both sides grow increasingly muddled in their thinking.

The gay community wants you to believe that homosexuality is not a choice. They also get mad every time someone tries to find out whether there is a genetic or physical problem with the brains of gay men and women. A study that indicated a shrinkage of the pineal gland in homosexual men was hooted down by the gay community. If it's not a choice, then there ought to be a physical basis for it not being a choice. For a long time the gay community has maintained that being gay is not a choice, but also has no physical basis.

This confuses me. Heterosexuality has a definite physical basis. I am aroused because physical things happen in my body. How is that now so with homosexual arousal? Recently the gay community has embraced the muddled idea that there is a so-called normal "gay gene" and claims that proves that gayness is 'normal'.

Unfortunately, the APA says there is no gay gene and with this recent ruling, the APA's version of 'don't ask, don't tell' for scientific research, the APA has effectively shut down any legitimate research into what does cause homosexuality and how to treat it. They have, in effect, told gay people who don't want to be gay to "Get used to it!" They've opened the doors of derision on such researchers in the same fashion that the global warming people have done with scientists who are skeptical about global warming in the Al Gore era.

The Christian community's resistance to such research hasn't helped. The mystical nonsense about the human brain that many Christians accept as gospel, does not allow either mental illness or genetic factors to be causative for homosexuality. Homosexuals some vocal leaders argue, are just bad people who want to be bad and therefore must go to hell.

This too is obvious balderdash. God places us in a physical body that, in a sinful world, is not always perfect. If you can get cancer, lung disease or have birth defects that cause asthma, digestive problems or a physical disability, is it any less likely that the delicate mechanism of the human brain might also, on occasion, have something wrong with it?

When Christ healed people with mental illness, did he not also repair the shattered brains of those people as well? When he drove out the "demons" did he not also repair the damage that allowed those demons to lodge there in the first place. It is God's purpose to bring us in this life to healing and health so that we are free to choose whether to follow Him or not. The Psalms say, "He knows that we are dust." That is a comfort to me because I have worked for years with people whose minds, through no fault of their own, have been damaged to the point that they could not make good decisions. Does God abandon them because they were born with fetal alcohol syndrome and cannot reason cause to effect properly?

God, whose eye is on the sparrow, surely sees these folks and finds a way to save them. The Apostle Paul says that some of us will be saved as a "man escaping through the flames". I have to wonder whether he was talking about some of the truly damaged among us, the aborted babies, the severely mentally ill or those who die under tremendous abuse. I believe God can bring each and every one of us to a point of decision. Who will you serve? He knows what is truly in our heart. The evidence of the thief on the cross shows that salvation isn't about what we do, but about simply embracing the salvation that is offered to us. To those who die not fully formed as humans, I believe God is powerful to save. In heaven, God could place in my arms any child that never had a chance at life and I will with unspeakable joy, raise that child as my own. I will befriend any soul that had Downs Syndrome in this life and comes to heaven as a childlike soul and I will gladly mentor him or her to adulthood.

The APA has said we must not offer healing to those who suffer with unnatural desires of homosexuality and wish that they did not. Well, civil disobedience works for Christians too and I believe that every Christian therapist, psychologist, counselor and psychiatrist should fearlessly disobey the APA. We should continue research into the physical causes of this disorder and work tirelessly on treatments. We should treat our brothers and sisters who choose to remain gay with the same love and tenderness we would treat anyone. We must love our enemies as well as our friends and that duty extends to the lesbian couple next door, the gay men down the streat and even to the misguided protestors at the APA conventions. They are our fellow travelers and we are commanded to love them as we love ourselves.

It's that simple.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Spaghetti Sauce, Ranch Dressing and the Myth of the Ultimate Banjo!

The Non-Paradox of Choice

I like my music eclectic. I like to choose what I listen to and there's really not a good radio station out there that plays what I want to hear. I like talk radio and Pandora on the Internet that lets me listen to what I want to hear. Imagine to my surprise to discover that all this ability to choose what I want, whether it's radio or spaghetti sauce is making me miserable. Who'd a thunk it?

I watched a couple of TED speeches this morning on the subject of choice. Now, you would assume that choice is a good thing. In fact, if you support “choice”, you apparently are a good solid liberal.

Well, not necessarily.

Choice is "not necessarily" a good thing according to Barry Schwarz, author of “The Paradox of Choice”. Barry, an avuncular commentator, who gave his talk wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers, disagrees with the great Western belief that the way to maximize happiness is to maximize freedom and that the way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice.

Now already, Barry has got on my wrong side by giving a speech in the same clothes he wears to mow the yard. I hate avuncular, possibly because I’m avuncular myself and other avuncular pundits steal my thunder! How can I be a loveable oddball if everyone else is going to be a loveable oddball!

Next Barry gets further on my bad side by telling me that too much choice makes me unhappy.

What old man? Have you been drinking? I love choice. Choice makes me deliriously happy. Give me 10 varieties of everything and I get this contented goofy smile that makes my wife wonder what I’m up to. When I was a kid, for instance, there were just two kinds of salad dressing. Miracle whip and that orange French stuff. I remember when Thousand Island first appeared. They didn't want to stray too far, though. They called it Thousand Island French so we wouldn't be confused. Then Bleu Cheese came along and that was interesting. Then, finally the king of all salad dressings hit the shelf---- RANCH! We thought we had died and gone to salad heaven!!! But according to Barry Schwartz, all those 176 varieties of salad dressing make me unhappy because no matter which one I pick it will never come up to my expectations.

I’m sorry, Barry, but if I pick up a bottle of Kraft Buttermilk Ranch or Ken’s Ranch, either one, then I’m gonna be very happy. Now, if the only Ranch dressing out there were Hidden Valley, I’d be much less happy - too much pepper, I think. But, the wonderful thing is that there are also people out there who like Hidden Valley or some other brand of Ranch (or one of the 20 brands of vinaigrette, 7 brands of French and dozens of other interesting choices).

Barry takes us next to the electronic store and complains that there are over one million possible combinations of components you can buy to create your home stereo system. Poor Barry says he’s going to regret his choice whatever he chooses because his expectations for perfection in sound are just way too high. He figures we'd all be much happier with just one choice like in the good old days when you bought one of those clunky console radios or you didn't buy any radio at all. Apparently we were happier in those days.

Well I lived back then and nope! Wasn't happier. It actually hacked me off that the corporate radio makers had so little imagination. I saved my nickels and bought the first transistor radio that hit the Woolworth Store. When the Gibson's Discount center came to town, I became a devotee of their electronics section. When Wal-Mart went up, I thought I'd died and gone to home stereo heaven. I don't know if I assembled the best stereo ever, but my mother kept making me turn it down, so I figured I'd done well enough! Only a sociology professor from Swarthmore College could be such an obsessive naval gazer that he couldn’t pick out a stereo he likes because there were too many components to choose from.

Then, of course, there's the moral of this sad tale. Barry ends by pointing out that the truly happy are those whose choices are so limited, that anything new will make them ecstatically happy. From there he draws the (leftist) conclusion that since most of the world is poor and has limited choice and we have too many choices in the wealthy West (and by his definition - therefore incapable of being happy), we should (surprise) redistribute our wealth to the world's poor countries thereby making them happy and us happier too now that we’re rid of all that pesky money that gave us all those choices.

Schwartz’s assumption that making us poorer will result in our being content is just plain goofy. I suggest, that instead, we reduce the salaries of Swarthmore sociology professors so they instantly have fewer choices. It ought to make them happier, huh? Then when Barry goes to the store, he doesn’t have so many choices – the Value Time brands offer far fewer varieties of salad dressings and since he wouldn't be able to afford the expensive stuff – voila! His expectations for satisfaction would thus be lowered. I do believe that Barry will be happier because some of the Value Time products are quite better than you would expect. So Barry would have every chance of happiness and we wouldn't have to wreck our economy to improve his outlook!

If it doesn't work, Barry, you might try anti-depressants. Wal-Mart has some really good ones for $4.

The other lecture I listened to was by Malcolm Gladwell who talked about Howard Moskowitz’s experience with consumer choice and spaghetti sauce. Gladwell to my surprise disagreed with Doc Schwartz. Gladwell talked about how Dr. Moskowitz did market research for food companies and discovered the principle that there is no universal best choice for anything. Marketers had for years been asking the wrong question.

Instead of which spaghetti sauce was best, the question they needed to ask was “Which spaghetti sauces were best.” Note the plural. Turns out people didn’t like just one type of sauce. When Moskowitz finally asked the right questions he found that consumer preferences actually fell into 3 to 6 clusters (like thin old world, cheesy and chunky).

Shock!

People like different varieties of things! Who would have guessed? Variety makes us happy? Wonder why that is? Have you ever looked around at the world? There are oceans, deserts, plains, mountains, rolling hills and rivers. Look at just the flowers - the infinite variety of them. Animals, plants and minerals abound in spectacular array. If we are truly made in our creator’s image, then it’s little wonder that variety makes us happy.

Schwartz is wrong. Variety does not make us unhappy. We make ourselves unhappy. The lust to have the most, the best, the greatest is what makes us unhappy. Schwartz and his ilk are constantly looking for the perfect answer, the best system, the ultimate government that will make everyone be content with their lot in life.

Barry gave it away the problem, though, when he talked about how no matter what we choose, it’s never enough because we expected to have the absolute best and didn’t get it. There is no absolute best, Barry! It’s a false premise! Is there a best flower in the world? No, only millions of wondrously beautiful flowers. Is there a best vacation? Nope, only trips to the mountains, to the sea, to historic sites that are wonderful and fun each in its own way. Maybe you love going to Vegas. I didn't much care for it.

If in your life you must have the most, the best, the absolute greatest, whether it be things or prestige or power, then you WILL be miserable whether you have many choices or no choices at all. If in your quest to have it all, you’ve realized you never will, then it makes perfect sense that you would then want to spoil it for everyone else. Those who have more than you must have less or you cannot be happy! At least if you can get people to accept this redistribution of all the wealth thing, then everyone will be ‘equal’ and then you can stop worrying that you didn’t get as much as someone else.

My grandmother who was raised in a racist culture once told me she didn’t mind if black people were equal to her, it only bothered her if they thought they were better. The truth was, it bothered her if they were richer than she was too. I didn’t understand that then, but I have come to see that those who long for power, prestige and place are always discontented if they imagine that anyone else has got a better deal than they did. They can never be happy unless they have a sufficient number of folks they can look down on.

If they can’t have that, at least no one should be better than they.

On my banjo hangout website, unfortunately Dr. Schwartz's theory seems to play out.  All the wondrous variety of banjos and banjo styles seems to cause some folks a lot of dissatisfaction and downright unhappiness. Guys are always fighting over which banjo is best or which style is correct. Why? I think I have an answer.  I think it's about why we choose.

There are two kinds of people in the world I believe.  Givers and takers.  Givers believe they are here to serve others.  Takers believe they are here to get as much as possible while they are here.  They expect to have the best of everything - the best stuff, the highest position, the most power.  They are unhappy when they do not get the best of whatever it is.  They feel like they have failed.

So for them it is true.  They are happier when there are fewer choices.  That way they can make sure they get the best.  Then they are happy because they have manufactured evidence that they are better than others.

It explains why socialists claim to want everyone to be happy and content and yet persist in creating monochromatic societies where everyone is equally miserable. They talk about choice and then give us only one party to vote for and one leader. Think how happy we'll be to actually get a pair of shoes after waiting an hour and a half in line - no matter that they are all one color, style and not available in your size. After all, you have a pair of shoes when before you didn't. Be happy!  Of course, then they exempt themselves from being like everyone else and build a dacha in the country and sip champagne and nibble caviar while they congratulate themselves that everyone else is not equal except, of course, themselves.

For those of us who follow Christ, capitalism doesn’t cause us distress when we have too many choices. We're happy if others do well (or even better than we). We believe if we do well, we should share with others. It doesn’t bother us if there are those who don’t share their wealth. That's between them and God. They are not our responsibility. It is only important that we are kind and share with others. It’s why in cultures that have a significant proportion of practicing Christians, you find they literally pour money and aid into poorer countries. In the United States, everyone, rich, poor or middling gives more foreign aid to the world than the US government does.

A majority of Americans are NOT unhappy socialists. So why should we turn our government over to people who believe that they are unhappy because they have too much choice and can’t be sure they have the best of everything and want to make us all equally poor and restrict our choices so we’ll be grateful for what little we have. Henry Ford once said that his customers could have any color Model T they wanted as long as it was black. That worked so long as Ford Motor Company was the only game in town. Once he got a little competition, people started getting new colors for their cars. Ford was a progressive socialist pioneer. Of course Old Henry only liked socialism as it applied to the masses. He'd really have squawked if you'd tried to apply the same principles to the great man's own lifestyle, but then the folks who advocate universal misery expect the masses to give them extra stuff, a higher position and more power as a reward for their outstanding leadership.

I'm thinking we're better off with capitalists like Moskowitz and Gladwell who are out there busily trying to figure out what kinds of things make us happy so they can make it available to us in more abundance? I have no interest in governance by people who want us to have only one or two TV stations. I like that we have 157 channels and I don't care if Bruce Springsteen thinks there's "nothin' on".  I always find something because I don't have to watch the best show, just something I like.

For me it’s like choosing between an all you can eat $5.95 buffet with tons of choices versus one of those little places where you pay $100 a plate and the chef tells you what to eat and shrieks at you if you ask for some ketchup!  For me, it's a no-brainer, but then I don’t need the ego boost you get from being able to afford to pay a couple hundred bucks to be told what I like to eat.

Don't like socialism for the same reason!

Me, I'm glad there are banjos I can't afford and styles of banjo I can't play yet.  How cool is that?  And when I stand at the Baskin Robbins counter, I know that whichever of the 31 flavors I get, my mouth is going to be very happy.  So, don't be telling me there's only one best banjo and one best playing style and that having fewer choices would make us happier.

It would be like God only making one kind of flower.

How boring would that be?

Just one man’s opinion…..

Tom King

Fun Diseases and Their Cures!

Well, now, isn't this special. PEOPLE who send excessive texts and emails may have a mental illness, according to an article in a leading psychiatric journal. I wonder who funded that study? Likely it was somebody who wants us to be doing something else besides communicating with our friends.

There is a certain segment of our society that hates for anyone to have unsupervised fun. They are funding research into all sorts of apparently subversive fun in an effort to prove these activities are causing abbherant behavior and draining society's social service resources.

I wondered what sort of other activities I've done a quick survey of on-going medical/psychological research projects and discovered the following:

1. A Stanford study to prove that Diet Dr. Pepper is evil. The researcher first suspected this when he failed to distinguish between regular and Diet Dr. Pepper in a blind taste test. Deciding there had to be something wrong with a diet drink that good, he applied for and received a grant from the American Corn Syrup institute to test his theory.

2. A Columbia university research project by Dr. Harlon P. Fussbudget is looking at APD (accordion playing disorder), common in the Hispanic, German, Italian, Swiss and Irish cultures and medications that will permanently stop the music. So far meds investigated are usually fatal, but Dr. Fussbudget hopes to find one that merely incapacitates.... This one was funded by ASCAP and RIAA. Who'd have guessed?

3. A Harvard Study of people who read science fiction found that SFRS (Sci-fi reader's syndrome) causes independent thinking, excessive consumption of Twinkies with Root Beer and Star Trek conventions. The researchers suggest a new federal "Sci-Fi!" Ban. This one was funded by the Harlequin Romance Foundation and the Fabio Modeling Institute.

4. A University of Boston researcher, Dr. Fedora Fardlewitt, is conducting an extensive study of compulsive banjo playing throughout North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas funded by the Uppity Yankees Coalition of America. Dr. Fardlewitt theorizes that CBP can be prevented by banning corn whiskey consumption in states with high incidences of the disorder, too many bluegrass festivals and/or any state that has a statue of Earl Scruggs anywhere it it.

5. Finally, The National Alliance of Anal Retentive Vegans has funded a study proving that Krispy Kreme Donuts are addictive. They've recently created a pilot 12 step program called Donuts Anonymous (DA) Sponsored by The University of Wisconsin and the state of New York

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what they'll make into a disease next.

Just a word of caution to everybody. If there is anything you do that's fun, absorbing or makes you happy, DON'T TALK TO A PSYCHOLOGIST ABOUT IT! They'll just make a disease out of it or make it illegal and spoil all your fun!

...I'm just sayin'

Tom

© 2008

* Warning: The above essay uses humor, irony and sarcasm to make a point. Please do not read if you are brain-impaired or suffer from PCS (Political Correctness Syndrome). Could be harmful to your complacency or could damage your calm.