CRUELTY WITHIN FAMILIES IS NOT BEAUTIFUL

When I spoke of evil earlier in Mind Check, the examples I used tended to be drawn from recent history or the sensational brought to us via the media. The fact is that for every dictator with human blood on his hands or every serial killer, there are millions who have committed acts of cruelty on a smaller scale. Because these acts are intended to bring harm to others, at least emotionally, and because this harm is perpetrated as a calculated act of self benefit, they fit the definition of evil.

In many cases, these acts of cruelty are committed within families. Family members hurt other family members because they can. Dependency relationships are common within families. One family member depends on another family member financially or for help during illness or debilitation or for love. The family member who is depended upon can exact revenge upon the dependent party by refusing any or all of these expected forms of assistance or by making the other grovel in some way before extending himself.

Wedding, Humiliation Opportunity

Here is an example. The oldest of three children, a daughter, was getting married, and the parents sent out wedding invitations. When the 85-year-old grandmother, that is, the mother of the bride-to-be’s son, received her invitation, she called the mother of the bride-to-be, that is, her daughter-in-law.

What her motive was in making the call is the subject of speculation. My guess is that the grandmother suspected that the treatment that was to be accorded her at the wedding was not going to be to her liking, based on her past relations with this family, which had not been good for some time. Specifically, the grandmother feared this family might do what they had done in the past, which was to use family celebrations over which they had control as opportunities to humiliate her and other family members.

Unreturned RSVP

In the course of the telephone conversation, the daughter-in-law stated that the grandmother of the groom was to be escorted down the aisle at the start of the ceremony, but that she, the maternal grandmother of the bride, would not be accorded such an honor. This revelation had its intended effect. The grandmother was most upset. In fact, she was so upset that she never did return the RSVP to give notice that she would be attending the affair.

She did not return the RSVP and thus was not expected, but she did attend the wedding anyway. She was not present for the banquet and dance, but she did appear at the ceremony at the start of the night’s festivities. Wearing a checkered outfit more in keeping with a women’s club luncheon than an evening wedding at a downtown Philadelphia hotel, the grandmother took a seat close to the bride and bridegroom and the rabbi who was officiating and thus in plain view of almost everyone in attendance.

Rabbi’s Homily

It is interesting to note that in his homily the rabbi addressed the danger of not resolving ill will in a family at the start of a marriage, thus allowing the possibility of its infiltrating the relationship of the newlyweds itself. How had the rabbi learned about the ill will in this family? It is customary for the bride and groom to meet before the ceremony with the person who will officiate. It is probable that the bride-to-be discussed the angry telephone conversation between grandmother and mother of the bride and other unfortunate events in the history of this relationship at one of these pre-nuptial conferences.

How good it would have been if at the end of the ceremony the mother or father of the bride and thus the hosts for the evening affair had approached the grandmother and made room for her at the banquet that was to follow. That would have been the magnanimous thing to do. One of them should have taken a cue from the rabbi and said to the older woman, “What has happened between us is water under the bridge. For the sake of this young couple who are just starting out life together, let us have peace in this family.”

Told to Leave

This did not happen, and instead the grandmother was told she could not stay and was escorted out of the hall.

What were the supposed crimes of the grandmother that merited her such shabby treatment at the wedding and in the years leading up to it? The grandmother was no saint. For one thing she was no diplomat and had a supercilious side to her personality that had a tendency to show itself in her relations with close family members. This unloving side to her nature diminished as she became older, but any close family member who had known her earlier and had a tendency to hold a grudge might never forgive her, no matter how she reformed herself later.

Imagining the Satisfaction

It is clear that the host and hostess intended to use the wedding of their oldest daughter as another vehicle for exacting revenge on the grandmother. Had unquenchable anger been their dominant feeling towards her, then they should not have invited her in the first place. No, it was important for them to mete out punishment once again. One cringes at the thought of the host and hostess taking pleasure at the grandmother’s discomfort as she sat in her seat along with everyone else attending and bore witness to the honor accorded to her counterpart, but not to her.

People who use family celebrations as a means to exact punishment on other members of their family bring infamy upon themselves.

ABOUT MIND CHECK

Thank you for tuning into Mind Check, a biweekly effort to prove that we are what we think and that clear thinking leads to effective action and to a better world. Mind Check is intended to serve as a bridge between the realm of the human spirit, that center of our energy, mental and physical, and our rationality or reason, of which the scientific method is an excellent example. Mind Check is also intended to prove that the ideas of right and wrong are innate, not exclusively inherent in the situation or the whim of the moment.

To communicate with the author of Mind Check, please write to stephen.saft@gmail.com. For examples of the writer’s other writings, see the website http://www.iwillmeanpoetry.com. The author is also preparing to launch a site of podcasts consisting of spoken poetry, essays and short stories. Be on the look out for it.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

POSITIVE THINKING, THE SIMPLE MINDED ANSWER

This posting was supposed to be about mental energy, but I have become distracted by another subject and need to address it first. I’ll have a few things to say about mental energy in this posting and then return to it at a later time.

The main topic for today is positive thinking, specifically making supposed good things happen in our lives simply by thinking them into reality. The fact is that a strong connection exists between positive thinking and mental energy. In any case, the advocates make such a claim. Making our positive thoughts come true, they say, is dependent on how hard the positive thinker thinks, that is, on how much mental energy he applies to the positive thinking act.

Making Millions Through Positive Thinking

The fact is that positive thinking is a lucrative cottage industry in this country, and it’s keeping many a publisher and many a writer alive. Millions of dollars have been made through books, articles, audio CDs, DVDs, TV guest appearances and lectures. Watch the Oprah or Ellen or a score of other talk shows on television for any length of time, and you are guaranteed to hear from a number of these people.

Norman Vincent Peale whose The Power of Positive Thinking came out in 1952 is the best known of the positive thinking gurus, and Wayne Dyer, a star of the lecture circuit and author of Your Erroneous Zones, among many works, is a contemporary advocate with a wide following. (Internet references: http://normanvincentpeale.wwwhubs.com. http://www.drwaynedyer.com.)

The latest of the positive thinking gurus is an Australian television producer by the name of Rhonda Byrne whose best selling book, audio CD and DVD are called The Secret, The Law of Attraction. See the website http://www.the-secret-book.com for information on the book and links to the audio CD and DVD and note that the works include contributions by several people, not just Byrne.

Manipulating Objective Physical Reality

I am indebted to the weekly news magazine Newsweek for bringing Rhonda Byrne and The Secret to my attention (March 5, 2007 edition, page 52ff). In the article, written by Jerry Adler, we find out that “ ‘the secret’ is the law of attraction, which holds that you create your own reality through your thoughts…Its explicit claim is that you can manipulate objective physical reality—the numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of other people who may not even know you exist—through your thoughts and feelings.

“In the words of ‘author and personal empowerment advocate’ Lisa Nichols [and a contributor to The Secret] : ‘When you think of the things you want, and you focus on them with all of your attention, then the law of attraction will give you exactly what you want, every time.’

“Every time!,” Adler continues in the Newsweek article. “Byrne emphasizes that this is a law inherent in ‘the universe,’ an inexhaustible storehouse of goodies from which you can command whatever you desire from the comfort of your own living room by following three simple steps: Ask, Believe, Receive.”

Closer Look at Newsweek

So let’s take a closer look at Newsweek, in fact at the same issue that contains the article on The Secret, to see if there is anything redeeming at all in this bizarre philosophy. Let’s start with the cover of the magazine, a cover which shows a wounded veteran of the War in Iraq, double-amputee Specialist Marissa Strock. Strock, pictured with her protheses detached and propped up by the chair on which she sits, was the gunner on a Humvee that on Thanksgiving Day 2005 was hit by the explosion from an IED (improvised explosive device). The explosion killed two of her fellow soldiers in the Humvee.

Is there anyone in his right mind who would argue that if Specialist Marissa Strock were to “ask” to have her real legs back, no matter how passionately and how much mental energy she exerted in asking for it, and how much she might “believe” that it might happen, that in fact she would “receive” her legs back? The question does not require an answer.

In Furtherance of Greed

To set the record straight, The Secret is not marketed as the secret for using the mind to have lost limbs suddenly reappear or to bring about any number of other comparable medical impossibilities. When I am postulating that an amputee might get real limbs back, I am projecting Byrne’s central thesis out to its most ridiculous extreme. Rather it is a guide for material acquisitiveness and other forms of self aggrandizement, in other words using the mind in furtherance of greed and personal advantage at the expense of others.

Imagine yourself with an expensive necklace around your neck, and viola the expensive necklace suddenly appears around your neck. Imagine yourself driving a Mercedes Benz and viola, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Self-centered Nonsense

A universe in which such self-centered nonsense were possible is not a universe in which I would care to live. But as bad as the Byrne philosophy is in its own right, it also shares some of its negative features with many of the other positive thinking philosophies. The trouble with so many of the positive thinking philosophies is that they reduce the experiences and processes of living into just plain simple mindedness.

The Pleasures of Complication

Norman Vincent Peale when he was alive would frequently tell us how “simple” the solutions to life’s problems were, first and foremost our worries. The solution to our worries for Norman Vincent Peale? Trust in God, of course. I am not arguing against a belief in God, but I am arguing for an acceptance and a respect for the complexity of life. Life is complicated, and in its complexity lies one of its great pleasures, but also many of its difficulties. Read literature, study art and music, read history, read philosophy, read psychology and the social sciences. In fact, read the bible. These contain the records of the immense range of possibilities and complexities that is the richness of life.

The utter unpredictability of some of the situations in which we find ourselves—who our parents are, wars and death, to cite some extremes—the fact that we are social beings and never operate entirely alone and are often subject to the decisions of others, the reality and complexities of addictive behavior, the vicissitudes of other forms of mental and physical health. Yes, we are often presented with opportunities to take charge and direct our lives—and we must be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities—but we also often have to play the role of reactor. We also have to play catch up.

As we learned from Scott Peck, to deal with the complexities of life takes work and discipline. Easy answers are no answers. Are you ready?

ABOUT MIND CHECK

Thank you for tuning into Mind Check, a biweekly effort to prove that we are what we think and that clear thinking leads to effective action and to a better world. Mind Check is intended to serve as a bridge between the realm of the human spirit, that center of our energy, mental and physical, and our rationality, of which the scientific method is an excellent example. Mind Check is also intended to prove that the ideas of right and wrong are innate, not exclusively inherent in the situation or the whim of the moment.

To communicate with the author of Mind Check, please write to stephen.saft@gmail.com. For examples of the writer’s other writings, see the website http://www.iwillmeanpoetry.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

M. SCOTT PECK, WAR AND EVIL

To understand what M. Scott Peck means by evil, it is helpful to understand what he means by mental health and how theology and morality are the foundations that support his entire thesis. We all fall short in our striving for mental health, but only a small number are able to undertake the effort and to see it through to conclusion. To be effective as a facilitator, the therapist must have a relationship based on love with the patient. This is not romantic love as in “falling in love,” but agape, love as in compassion.

Because “entropy” or the tendency of systems, mental and physical, to run down and cease to work is so pervasive in the universe, the person who is motivated to undertake the quest for self improvement and mental health must be viewed as unusual. Those who have the “discipline” for such a difficult undertaking do so because they are touched by grace, that is, a power that is not understandable in terms of strict rationality but must be explained as an example of a manifestation of the divine in human affairs, as Peck sees it.

Laziness in the Human Psyche

Those who refuse to acknowledge personal failure and refuse to embark on any kind of path of self improvement do so out of “laziness,” simply another example of entropy at work in the psyche. However, when this laziness is reinforced by the armaments of self absorption and self righteousness, “narcissism,” those so afflicted become prime candidates for evil. “The evil deny the suffering of their guilt—the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection—by casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating,” says Peck in People of the Lie (page 123).

When evil people take control of the apparatus of government, then we have a replication of what took place in Germany, in Russian, in China, in Cambodia and in so many other places in the lifetime of this writer. Is evil as expressed through political structures restricted solely to the actions of a ruthless dictator? No, says Peck. Is a democracy such as that in the United States immune from evil? No once again, says Peck, and the example of political evil that he cites in People of the Lie is the War in Vietnam, the lowest moment out of many very low moments of which was the massacre at MyLai.

MyLai Massacre, Example of Group Evil

This in abbreviated form is how Peck recounts this flagrant example of group evil in People of the Lie (pages 212-214). “On the morning of March 16,1968, elements of Task Force Barker moved into a small group of hamlets known collectively as MyLai in the Quang Ngai province of South Vietnam… Army intelligence had indicated that the Vietcong were currently being harbored by the villagers of MyLai…All troops were supposed to be familiar with the Geneva Convention, which makes it a crime to harm any non-combatant or, for that matter, even a combatant who has laid down his arms because of wounds or sickness…

“Although essentially all elements of the Task Force were involved one way or another in the operation, the primary element of ground troops directly involved was C Company, 1^st Batallion, 20^th Infantry of the 11^th Light Infantry Brigade. When ‘Charlie’ Company moved into the hamlets of MyLai they discovered not a single combatant...No one fired on them. They found only unarmed women, children and old men…Some of the things that then happened are unclear. What is clear, however, is that the troops of C Company killed …somewhere between five and six hundred of those unarmed villagers.”

Chairman of Psychiatrists Committee

Scott Peck was one of a committee of three psychiatrists and served as chairman of the committee who in the spring of 1972 was appointed by the Army Surgeon General “to make recommendations for research that might shed light on the psychological causes of MyLai, so as to prevent such atrocities in the future.” However, once the committee described the research it wanted to do, the whole effort “was rejected by the General Staff of the Army reportedly on the grounds that it could not be kept secret and might prove embarrassing to the administration…” (p. 215)

In People of the Lie, Peck then proceeds to look at the nature of groups in general and military groups in particular to describe why they so easily become the perpetrators of evil. The roots lie in “specialization.” Specialization is a function of groups and one of their greatest advantages, but with respect to responsibility and individual conscience groups lead all too easily to the fragmentation of responsibility and from that to a sense of no responsibility at all. This is classic “passing the buck.”

Beware of Specialization

Peck writes, “…I am thoroughly convinced that much of the evil of our time is related to specialization and that we desperately need to develop an attitude of suspicious caution toward it… Specialization contributes to the immaturity of groups and their potential for evil through several different mechanisms. For the moment I will restrict myself to the consideration of only one such mechanism: the fragmentation of conscience.” (p. 217)

Fragmentation of responsibility or conscience was a major problem at MyLai and helped to explain the MyLai coverup that came after the series of ugly events themselves. In the current War in Iraq debacle we have already seen this problem at work in the Abu Ghraib travesty—another case of evil personified—where the higher ups in this Bush Administration disgrace escaped all responsibility.

War Parallels Are Overwhelming

Peck makes no direct reference to the War in Iraq in People of the Lie, but the contemporary reader of the book can’t help but be overwhelmed by the parallels. The War in Iraq is the War in Vietnam all over again. It needs to be pointed out that Peck died in 2005 at the age of 69. At the time he was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and pancreatic cancer and presumably had been sick for a long time. I should also take this opportunity to point out that People of the Lie first came out in 1983.

The reasons that groups serve so effectively as breeding grounds for evil, according to Peck in People of the Lie, is that they encourage so many to assume the role of follower. The group can have only one leader or in any event only a small number in that role. Everyone else is a follower. Everyone in the group is expected to be loyal to the group and to do what he is told in order to continue his standing in the group. Specifically participation in the group encourages the follower to be “immature,” and as Peck points out throughout the book one of the characteristics of immaturity is narcissism, that is, self absorption, a building block of evil.

Of the possibility for still other wars like the War in Vietnam, Peck points several times to the warning signs. Peck writes, “For the reality is that it is not only possible but easy and even natural for a large group to commit evil without emotional involvement simply by turning lose its specialists. It happened in Vietnam. It happened in Nazi Germany. I am afraid it will happen again.”

Dangers of an Army of Mercenaries

He continues, “…I am not arguing that we should do without specialty groups entirely; that would be to throw out the baby with the bath water. But we must realize the potential danger, and structure our specialty groups in such a way as to minimize it. We are not yet doing so…Our response to the antiwar sentiment engendered by Vietnam has been to opt for an even more thoroughly specialized military, overlooking the danger involved. Abandoning the concept of the citizen soldier in favor of the mercenary, we have placed ourselves in grave danger.” (p. 231-232)

In the next installment of Mind Check, I will be tackling a quite different subject, namely mental energy, also known as spirit, soul or charisma.

ABOUT MIND CHECK

Thank you for tuning into Mind Check, a biweekly effort to prove that we are what we think and that clear thinking leads to effective action and to a better world. Mind Check is intended to serve as a bridge between the realm of the human spirit, that center of our energy, mental and physical, and our rationality, of which the scientific method is an excellent example. Mind Check is also intended to prove that the ideas of right and wrong are innate, not exclusively inherent in the situation or the whim of the moment.

To communicate with the author of Mind Check, please write to stephen.saft@gmail.com. For examples of the writer’s other writings, see the website http://www.iwillmeanpoetry.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft