Mindsets

“I can’t stop drinking alcohol. If I don’t get my daily bottle of whiskey, I’ll get sick. It is a genetic thing. It has been proved scientifically. It could also be a deep social conditioning but it doesn’t make any difference. I can’t stop drinking. I need alcohol to live a decent life. I'm not a boy scout. No rehab or therapies work for me. Some people pop Prozac, others smoke pot and I drink whiskey. Stop your nagging. You have to accept me as I am or leave.”

This is a typical mindset of an alcoholic. He can’t see that he has to do something and that he can do something. His deeply ingrained mindset is not the truth. It is a deeply ingrained mindset.

We all have or have had deeply ingrained mindsets. I have always nurtured the idea that there is not much point with anything, really. The human race is mad and there is nothing we can do about it. I have tons and tons of proof of human madness, including my own. A few weeks ago, I caught a glimpse of that mindset, realizing it was just a mindset and that was very liberating. “Bloody Hell! It's just a mindset.”

I’m now reading Ellen Langers book Counter Clockwise. Here are a few quotations from her wonderful book:

“In most of psychology, researchers describe what is. Often they do this with great acumen and creativity. But knowing what is and knowing what can be is not the same thing.”

“When faced with disease or infirmity, we may find a way to adjust to what is. In the psychology of possibility, we search for the answer how to improve, not merely to adjust.”

“There are many cynics out there who are entrenched in their beliefs and hold dear their view of the world as fixed and predictable. There are also people who, while not cynical, are mindlessly accepting of these views.”

“In more than thirty years of research, I have discovered a very important truth about human psychology: certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility and closes them to the world we actually live in. When all is certain, there are no choices for us. If there is no doubt, there is no choice…”

“People are not that observant, although we think we are. We see what we expect to see, even to the point that we don’t notice things that others clearly do.”

“People have a tendency to see what is and to assume that is what must be.”

“We can all say we believe in the possibility of improvement, but unless we really do, we won’t find it. That is, we are more likely to find it if wee look than if we presume it cannot be found.”

“Tightly woven ideas and theories may be fabrications that make it hard to see how things could be otherwise.”

Payback time

If you have lived beyond your means for a long time, you will eventually find yourself in a lot of trouble.

In the same way, if you have been extremely selfish for many years, you will eventually find yourself lonely and miserable. You may have saved up a lot of money, but what if there is nothing your children desire more than your death. Your employees may be polite to you, or even praise you for your business acumen, but no one loves you and if you look inside of yourself, you will find nothing but a wasteland.

If you drink too much or take too many drugs for years and years, you will eventually find yourself in the gutter. In the same way, a society that emits more toxic waste than nature can decompose will eventually be poisoned to death. This is very simple logic.

Some people are constant, habitual complainers. Absolutely everything is wrong and all people they meet are complete idiots. They often try to hide their feelings of disgust behind polite manners and smiles, but it shines through. It is not very pleasant to be around such people.

The question is, is it possible that mindsets like this can be changed? This is in fact the only question you have to consider. Is it possible?

Take it like a man

OK, should we take life seriously or should we take it like a joke? Well, some things in life we have to take seriously, I guess, and other things we have to take as a joke.

The Synchronicity Classification Scale

The synchronicity classification scale was developed by Professor Arnold Konstieg and professor Margaret O’Connor’s from Harvard University. The scale has proved to be useful in scientific evaluations of synchronistic phenomenons. Synchronicities is given points as follows.

5 points is given to extremely strange life changing synchronicities.

4 points is given to very strange coincidences; for example, if a person for some reason happens to think of someone he or she has not seen for more than 20 years and then he or she suddenly bump into that person 3 minutes later.

3 points is given to strange intuitions where a person is picking up information from the background field.

2 points is given to good, undeniable strange, everyday coincidences.

1 point is given to minor interesting little everyday coincidences.

 

 

“The story of the blind men and an elephant originated from India. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one touches a different part, but only one part, such as the tusk or the leg or the trunk or the ear. They then compare notes on what they felt, and learn that they are in complete disagreement. The story is used to indicate that reality may be viewed differently depending on one’s perspective, suggesting that what seems an absolute truth may be relative due to the deceptive nature of half-truths.” (Wikipedia.)

In reality we are more like the fleas behind the elephants ears or maybe we are like the bacterias in its intestines, or maybe even something much smaller. Our perspective is extremely limited. No human being knows but a tiny little fraction of the totality.

This doesn’t mean that nothing is important. I’m not advocating ethical relativism. To the fleas, it is important to know what is right and what is wrong. What the elephant think is nothing fleas have to care about.