Archive for November 2024
I’m not a political scientist or a politician, but I am a voter, and I do know some stuff as a psychologist that can be of practical help in decision making on both the macro and the micro level, i.e. in making choices on both the social and the individual level. If you’d rather not put up with this intrusion you should, of course, feel free to ignore this posting. Or you can read and respond with hints on how I might do better.
Today I’m choosing to focus on “control.” In my opinion it’s absolutely the most basic issue for reducing stress and increasing health and happiness. For today it’s directed to people who enjoy at minimum a home with comfortable temperature, a stocked refrigerator, food preparation (or service) facilities, a comfortable and safe place to sleep, sufficient and attractive clothing, and a secure sense that there will continue to be enough money to support a comfortable lifestyle. Throw into the mix access to good health care and a generally secure environment and you have one of those “normals” they talk about. In other words, I’m talking about people like you and me keeping individual stress at a minimum by taking control.
But now I wish I were so computer savvy that I could set off firecrackers as a warning that “control” is a really hot issue! I think of it as the ability to regulate, rule – oneself, because there’s really no way any of us can control another while there’s lots of ways we can admit them in to control us. I learned this in spades while studying and writing about “forgiveness.” Put simply, I learned that refusing to forgive an offender left them in charge of our lives. Just to “blame” and leave it at that leaves it up to the “blamed” to fix my life. What better example of losing control than to hang it on the actions of someone else?
Is it safe to say that taking responsibility puts me in a position to look at what I did and can do differently? It puts me in control. I find it works for me to do that with anger. Don’t get me wrong, I know when the other person (or situation) is wrong, but what’s causing me pain is my own anger. OK, so why can’t I let go of the anger? Am I angry with myself? What did I do to bring on the situation? Or what did I do or not do in response to it? Often I discover I was a wimp and start working on myself to find ways to respond differently the next time it happens. Or maybe I made the mistake of using the “you” word evoking a hurtful response from the person I offended. Wherever I go with it, I’m working on the one person I can control: myself. Sometimes I even conclude I can work at loving the offender. Maybe they’ll feel better, but mostly I will.
I’m stopping here for now with the rule “The only person you or I can control is ourselves.”
(Sure, maybe hogtying or shooting or locking in a closet could control someone else, but I’m not capable, and I doubt it would really increase my own sense of control and happiness.)
p.s. I had a lovely Thanksgiving day at our North Shore retreat, thankful for all the personal blessings I’ve received right from the get-go. I hope you had much to be thankful for too.
My manuscript/memoir, A Healthy Woman Was a Crazy Person: A Psychologist’s Personal Journey, led me to a conclusion I hadn’t anticipated when I started writing. Remember how the recent decades of the quite successful women’s movement began with an exploration of “The problem that has no name?” Now many young men are facing their “problem that has no name.” as their previous primary relative position has fallen. The financial aspect is strikingly illustrated in the October 26, 2024 “New York Times,” article, They used to be ahead in the American Economy, Now they’re fallen behind, by Emily Badger, Robert Gebeloff, & Aatash Bhatic,
I have no doubt that relative deprivation contributed to the results of our recent election. I also know that we Americans tend to think in terms of “opposites” with the belief that “If one group is up, the other must be down.” I’ll stick my neck out and say I suspect that way of thinking has played a large part in the current movement to ban abortion just as it has in the various “isms” that separate us. But those role restrictions don’t have to prevail and trap anyone, no matter what their gender, in social prisons that deprive one of fulness of life.
I know, too, that while it isn’t making the headlines, there is major concern and research going on into the positive influences of generosity, gratitude, kindness, forgiveness, and related routes to happiness. Even local TV programming seems to make a point of at least one kindness story before signing off. To tell the truth, I think those are the strengths that will ultimately overcome the unhappiness, disappointment, and dissatisfaction so many of us are feeling.
Okay, so I’m talking like a Social Psychologist. Of course I am, That’s who I am! Glad of it, and aware that what we have to offer is powerful when heard.
I think I’m including the graphic illustration from the article to which I’ve been referring. That red line tells us something very important about where we need to go as a people. On the other hand the magic of the Internet might erase it from this document before it posts on my blog. If that happens, please Google the original article.
Just my opinion, but it seems to me we acted like a democracy. People really cared and came out to vote. Now it’s time to add honesty back into the mix and I’m thinking that may happen. The misinformation has served its purpose. The goal has been achieved. Now I hope we’ll all get on the stick and exercise our people power by paying attention to our real problems.
I wish I had the youth, energy, knowledge, training, expertise, and wherewithal to establish a truth commission, but I’m hoping others will do that. And I hope they’ll start with the truth about who’s arriving at our borders – like stories of families escaping terrible situations at home, hoping to save their kids and themselves. Then I hope we’ll get on a freedom search and get out the information about what banning books really does to damage our kids. And the life-saving issue of abortion choice as it affects not only the hosts of the embryos and fetuses but also the products of forced birthing. And how about the floods and fires related to climate change. Maybe we can take all that stuff and more out the political denial/distortion mix and get busy focusing on real problems.
Maybe the truth distortions have served their purpose and we can flick the switch to the “On” position, on to the search for real problems and real solutions. Maybe we can give up on the idea of letting someone else do it and get busy being aware and active ourselves. But that won’t work if we sit back, relax, and leave the work of destruction to the powers that be.
Just sayin’
I just read an article about people who paid thousands for a Vacation Plan. (I won’t say which one. I might get sued.) Basically, they said, they had been sold a bill of goods. When they went to use it, they found they couldn’t collect on what they thought they’d bought, but they are still committed to the payments they signed for, using up the money they could have used for future vacations.
I’m writing this because it reminded me of the number of people who took out major loans because they were sold a bill of goods that exaggerated the advantages of having a piece of paper that said they had a college degree. It’s like mortgaging one’s future to buy a house unseen and finding it’s a dilapidated fixer-upper. As a former professor, I was dismayed when I saw the sales pitch because I know the difference between correlation and causation. I know it’s true that people with college degrees traditionally have better incomes, even better wealth. But I also know there are many factors involved, including the prestige of the school, the people of power one meets, the problem solving skills one develops, what career skills one actually learns, even what one’s economic position was to begin with. I knew that too many people were going to get stuck paying off loans without the incomes they had counted on receiving.
At one point I was supervising a PhD who was seeking licensing. One thing she was doing for extra money was teaching a psychology course for one of those degree programs advertised on TV. We were both horrified by the syllabus she had to work with – from Pavlov through Freud and Carl Jung, and everything in between, measured by answers to multiple choice questions, all in one semester! I don’t know the data for success of the students who paid for a program like that, but I’m darn sure they didn’t end up making the thousands of a graduate from Yale or Princeton. I hesitate to add, not all such programs are as bad as that one, but it is an example of paying for a bill of goods.
And now there are folks who are stuck with paying for the ramshackle, close to worthless house, limiting their options to start a family, buy a home, even spend money on better educational opportunities. Consider moves to forgive that loan, like the mortgage on an unlivable house. I hear too many people saying things like, “They took out the loan; they should pay it back. That’s what I did when I took out a mortgage. I never asked to have the loan forgiven.” Or something of that self-righteous ilk. But what would you have done if you found you’d been sold a bill of goods? That the house you hadn’t seen before you paid for it was a disastrous fixer-upper? That the promise of possessing a piece of paper called a college degree would put you in league with the top dollar earners and it doesn’t work out that way, no matter how hard you try?
At any rate, I hope it’s obvious that I’m arguing for loan forgiveness when someone has been sold a bill of goods. It couldn’t hurt the economy to have that money freed up for personal, family, and economic growth.
OK. Please have at it in the comments!
monagustafsonaffinito 