Negative persona (mask) inhibits learning

[coberst]

Negative persona (mask) inhibits learning

 

‘To be negative’ is not the same as ‘to be critical’.

 

The dictionary has many definitions for this word, “critical”, but I would choose the critical (decisive) meaning, as regarding learning, to be—exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation.

 

A negative persona is an attitude of non-acceptance.

 

I think that part of the problem is that too many of us have only an accept button and a reject button.

 

Accept or reject are not the only options one has. The most important and generally overlooked, especially by the young, is the option to ‘hold’.

 

It appears to me that many young people consider that ‘to be negative is to be cool’. This leads them into responding that ‘X’ is false when responding to an OP that states that ‘X’ is true.

 

When a person takes a public position affirming or denying the truth of ‘Y’ they are often locking themselves into a difficult position. If their original position was based on opinion rather than judgment their ego will not easily allow them to change position once they have studied and analyzed ‘Y’.

 

The moral of this story is that holding a default position of ‘reject or accept’, when we are ignorant, is not smart because our ego will fight any attempt to modify the opinion with a later judgment. Silence, or questions directed at comprehending the matter under consideration, is the smart decision for everyone’s default position.

 

Our options are reject, accept, and hold. I claim that ‘hold’ is the most important and should be the most often used because everyone is ignorant of almost everything.

 

Do you accept, reject, or hold judgment regarding my claim?

[Eclogite]

It appears to me that many young people consider that ‘to be negative is to be cool’. This leads them into responding that ‘X’ is false when responding to an OP that states that ‘X’ is true.

You have made quite a few points in your post and I find myself zeroing in on one that is probably not at the centre of your argument, but I wanted to explore it with you anyway.

 

Your statement, quoted above, just does not gel with how see 'young people'. I don't see them as being any more, or less, negative than anyone else on the planet.

 

I could just about accept that more mature individuals learn to conceal their negativity, but I think that ability (or the motivation to apply it) vanishes when they enter the anonymity of the internet.

 

So I was wondering if you had some specific evidence, or research that would support your position, or is it just a personal opinion?

[LaurieAG]

It appears to me that many young people consider that ‘to be negative is to be cool’. This leads them into responding that ‘X’ is false when responding to an OP that states that ‘X’ is true.

...

When a person takes a public position affirming or denying the truth of ‘Y’ they are often locking themselves into a difficult position. If their original position was based on opinion rather than judgment their ego will not easily allow them to change position once they have studied and analyzed ‘Y’.

 

Hi Coberst,

 

You mean when young people say 'good afternoon' in the morning and 'good morning' in the afternoon. Or 'sick' if things are good etc.

 

This is just an example of 'quantum' mimicry and opinion doesn't really come into it. It's not just young people, politicians do similar things all of the time, it's called lying.

[CraigD]

A negative persona is an attitude of non-acceptance.

To respond critically (not negatively) to this statement (and neither accepting or rejecting it :evil:), I suggest that coberst research the usual meaning of the word “persona”, which is the character adopted consciously by an actor, or, in psychology, usually Jungian, unconsciously by all normal people.

 

In Jungian psychology, the persona is a primary ego defense mechanism, a way that the self protects itself from threats of all sorts. A “negative persona” then, is simply a negative character: a naysayer, curmudgeon, grouch, etc. An individual’s tendency to initially accept or reject the claims of others – their credulousness – and change their opinion in light of new information or reflection – their flexibility – correlates only loosely with their persona.

 

Although ones persona may not correlate closely to ones credulousness and flexibility, it can have a strong, consistent influence on other’s perception of these and other attributes. In Jungian psychology, personas are not innate, immutable, or even persistent from situation to situation. Becoming conscious of the role of personas, and thus able to assume ones best suited to long and short-term circumstances in ones internal and social life is, in its therapeutic model, key to good mental health.

[LaurieAG]

Although ones persona may not correlate closely to ones credulousness and flexibility, it can have a strong, consistent influence on other’s perception of these and other attributes. In Jungian psychology, personas are not innate, immutable, or even persistent from situation to situation. Becoming conscious of the role of personas, and thus able to assume ones best suited to long and short-term circumstances in ones internal and social life is, in its therapeutic model, key to good mental health.

 

Hi CraigD,

 

Good points. There is a difference between a 'lying' persona and a 'stupid' persona, one can be taught amost anything but the other cannot because they know that they can solve their present problems minimistically by lying.

 

The thing that really gets me is that two people who aren't stupid and don't lie can perceive each other as both being negative, merely because of the opposing sides they stand on. By holding the position that the other person is being negative, the first person is being negative in the first instance.

[coberst]

You have made quite a few points in your post and I find myself zeroing in on one that is probably not at the centre of your argument, but I wanted to explore it with you anyway.

 

Your statement, quoted above, just does not gel with how see 'young people'. I don't see them as being any more, or less, negative than anyone else on the planet.

 

I could just about accept that more mature individuals learn to conceal their negativity, but I think that ability (or the motivation to apply it) vanishes when they enter the anonymity of the internet.

 

So I was wondering if you had some specific evidence, or research that would support your position, or is it just a personal opinion?

 

I have only observaion and judgment to support my claim.

 

I have 5 children and 7 grandchildren, also I have been posting on these Internet forums for 4 years plus 73 years of observing human nature. All of which leads me to believe that many, if not most youngsters, think that to be negative is to be cool.

 

It appears that it might just be part of "growing up". However, I think that you may be correct that it is part of many if not most adults thinking but they hide it.

 

There is a joke about the Irishman washed up on a desert island who shouts as he drags himself from the sea "If there is a government on this island I am agin it."

 

I think that many responders in these forums are determined to post and when they encounter an OP about something they know nothing about their recourse is to say X is false. That way they get to be argumentative and no one recognizes their ignorance.

[coberst]

Craig

 

I appreciate your definition of 'persona'. I am wondering if this enlightenment should cause me to change my claim. I do not see any reason to change my judgment because basically I thought the word meant something like this.

[coberst]

Hi CraigD,

 

Good points. There is a difference between a 'lying' persona and a 'stupid' persona, one can be taught amost anything but the other cannot because they know that they can solve their present problems minimistically by lying.

 

The thing that really gets me is that two people who aren't stupid and don't lie can perceive each other as both being negative, merely because of the opposing sides they stand on. By holding the position that the other person is being negative, the first person is being negative in the first instance.

 

 

Therein lay the invidious nature of ideology.

 

In October of 1978, surrounded by hundreds of his followers, cult leader Jim Jones was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head; this event took place in Jonestown, Guyana, where the followers of Jones drank the Kool-Aid of group psychology, killing them self by drinking a soft drink laced with cyanide at the cult's sprawling compound.

 

The images of bodies found at the compound were seared into the consciousness of a generation. The phrase "drank the Kool-Aid" came to describe any blind devotion to a cause or person. It was not the Kool-Aid that killed all of these people but it was a human propensity called transference.

 

Freud informs us the reason for this form of behavior is the tendency for humans to be suggestible and influenced by a psychic form of transference.

 

What do the following entities have in common: fascism, capitalism, communism, political parties, and religions? They all have a common characteristic that can be called “group mind”.

 

What is striking is that members of these entities often undergo a major change in behavior just by being members of such entities. Under certain conditions individuals who become members of these groups behave differently than they would as individuals. These individuals acquire the characteristics of a ‘psychological group’.

 

What is the nature of the ‘group mind’, i.e. the mental changes such individuals undergo as a result of becoming a group?

 

A bond develops much like cells which constitute a living body—group mind is more of an unconscious than a conscious force—there are motives for action that elude conscious attention—distinctiveness and individuality become group behavior based upon unconscious motives—there develops a sentiment of invincible power, anonymous and irresponsible attitudes--repressions of unconscious forces under normal situations are ignored—conscience which results from social anxiety disappear.

 

Contagion sets in—hypnotic order becomes prevalent—individuals sacrifice personal interest for the group interest.

 

Suggestibility, of which contagion is a symptom, leads to the lose of conscious personality—the individual follows suggestions for actions totally contradictory to person conscience—hypnotic like fascination sets in—will and discernment vanishes—direction is taken from the leader in an hypnotic like manner—the conscious personality disappears.

 

“Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.” Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—a creature acting by instinct. “He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.”

 

There is a lowering of intellectual ability “pointing to its similarity with the mental life of primitive people and of children…A group is credulous and easily influenced”—the improbable seldom exists—they think in images—feelings are very simple and exaggerated—the group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty—extremes are prevalent, antipathy becomes hate and suspicion becomes certainty.

 

Force is king—force is respected and obeyed without question—kindness is weakness—tradition is triumphant—words have a magical power—supernatural powers are easily accepted—groups never thirst for truth, they demand illusions—the unreal receives precedence over the real—the group is an obedient herd—prestige is a source for domination, however it “is also dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure”.

 

Psychology is a domain of knowledge that is complex and filled with concepts that are completely unfamiliar to the vast majority of our population. But Psychology provides us with an insight into why humans do what they do that no other domain of knowledge can provide.

 

Sapiens are at heart slavish. Therein lay the rub, as Shakespeare might say.

 

Humans seek to be more than animals. We seek to be gods or at least propagate that level above animal and just below God.

 

That which promotes life is good that which promotes death is evil. “Evil lies not in the hearts of men but in the social arrangements that men take for granted.”

 

Wo/man lives a debased life under tyranny and self delusion because s/he does not comprehend the conditions of natural freedom. Sapiens need hope and belief in themselves; thus illusion is necessary if it is creative for life, but is evil if it promotes death.

 

A psychodynamic analysis of history displays saga of death, destruction, and coercion from the outside while inside we see self-delusion and self enslavement. We seek mystification. We seek transference; we seek hypnotists as our chosen leaders.

 

We seek the power to ward off big evil by reflexively embracing small terrors and small fascinations in the place of overwhelming ones.

 

Freud was the first to focus upon the phenomenon of a patient’s inclination to transfer the feelings s/he had toward her parents as a child to the physician. The patient distorts the perception of the physician; s/he enlarges the figure up far out of reason and becomes dependent upon him. In this transference of feeling, which the patient had for his parents, to the physician the grown person displays all the characteristics of the child at heart, a child who distorts reality in order to relieve his helplessness and fears.

 

Freud saw these transference phenomena as the form of human suggestibility that makes the control over another, as displayed by hypnosis, as being possible. Hypnosis seems mysterious and mystifying to us only because we hide our slavish need for authority from our self. We live the big lie, which lay within this need to submit our self slavishly to another, because we want to think of our self as self-determined and independent in judgment and choice.

 

The predisposition to hypnosis is identical to that which gives rise to transference and it is characteristic of all sapiens. We could not function as adults if we retained this submissive attitude to our parents, however, this attitude of submissiveness, as noted by Ferenczi, is “The need to be subject to someone remains; only the part of the father is transferred to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities; the submissive loyalty to rulers that is so widespread is also a transference of this sort.”

 

Freud saw immediately that when caught up in groups wo/man became dependent children once again. They abandoned their individual egos for that of the leader; they identified with their leader and proceeded to function with him as their ideal. Freud identified man, not as a herd animal but as a horde (teeming crowd) animal that is led by a chief. Wo/man has an insatiable need for authority.

 

People have an insatiable need to be hypnotized by authority; they seek a magical protection as when they were infants protected by their mother. This is the force that acts to hold groups together, intertwined within a mutually constructed but often mindless interdependence. This mindless group think also builds a feeling of potency. The members feel a sense of unity within the grasp of their leadership.

 

‘Why are groups so blind and stupid?’ Freud asked; and he replied that mankind lived by self delusion. They “constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real.” The real world is too frightening to behold; delusion changes this by making sapiens seem important. This explains the terrible sadism we see in group activity.

 

I have read that some consider objectivism to be a cult rather than a philosophy; I asked my self what is the difference between a philosophy and an ideology. I turned to Freud and his book “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” for my answer. I discovered that Freud had turned to the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon for an understanding of group behavior.

 

Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. His work on crowd psychology became important in the first half of the twentieth century. Le Bon was one of the great popularizers of theories of the unconscious at a critical moment in the formation of new theories of sociology.

English translation Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, was explicitly based on a critique of Le Bon's work. The quotes and short phrases in this post are from this book.

[Zythryn]

I disagree, I believe the only choice anyone has is to agree or disagree. There are different levels of agreement or disagreement, but everyone forms some initial stance on any subject.

Once the initial decision is made additional information (weather it be from recollection of ones own memories, study or additional discourse) can cause one to either change their decision to accept or reject or to move along the scale (strengthening or weakening their acceptance or rejection).

Lack of critical thinking, IMO, will cause people to be less likely to be able to change their opinions even in the face of information that would normally sway their opinion.

[CraigD]

Therein lay the invidious nature of ideology.

An interesting adjective, “invidious”. Because it’s not a word I encounter or use often, I looked it up via the preceding link, reading there that it originates with the same Latin word as “envious”. Various dictionaries’ definitions vary significantly, spanning the memetic territory from malignant to prejudiced to “worthy of envy”. In this context, I sense an implication of “difficult to detect”, from its homophony with “insidious” (characterized by treachery and deceit).

 

Is my perception of your intended meaning accurate, coberst?

 

Ideology, in its present day common usage (which seems to me to have emerged no earlier than the late 1910s) is, I think, malignant and difficult to detect – a good match for the meaning I take from this use of “invidious”.

It was not the Kool-Aid that killed all of these people but it was a human propensity called transference.

This statement doesn’t agree well with my experience with the concepts involved.

 

Unlike “invidious”, as a health care IT professional married to a social worker, “transference” is a term I hear on a nearly daily basis. Although, along with nearly all psychodynamic theories of personality (eg: Freud, Jung), transference is no longer a widely accepted term of clinical art, it remains in common use by clinicians to informally describe, inappropriate affection between therapist and patient. For example, in casual conversation, my wife and other clinicians will sometimes describe a potentially problematic clinical situation with words like “a bit of transference and counter-transference going on there”. Although no longer a feature of most therapeutic approaches, practically all mental health clinicians are familiar with the concept of transference from various overview of/introduction to/history of/theories of psychology courses.

 

The tendency for a self-identifying cohort, from a religious cult to a political party to a army, to unquestioningly follow instructions, is, I think, better described as conformity than transference. Transference is characterized by having feelings for one person that one formerly had for another – typically having feelings for a business, religious, military or government authority that one formerly had for a parent. (Parents are, or course, typically also a kind of authority)

 

Although not, I think, proper synonyms, transference and conformity are related in significant ways. Because parents typically encourage trust and unquestioning obedience in their children, an individual or organization able to assume the psychological role of a parent is in an advantageous position to hijack these appropriate child-parent emotions, and exploit them to their own ends.

 

Rather than focus on the negative potential of transference, I think it more practically effective to focus on the emotions being “transferred”, particularly child-parent related ones. In “Moral Politics” (speaking from having read about the book, not, alas, actually having yet read it) Lakoff proposes that important sociopolitical traits are strongly correlated to peoples perception of parenting roles, explaining why, for example, some people will enthusiastically enlist and fight in an army, while others will enthusiastically protest against their actions. Each person sees their action correct in light of their model of how society works, which is, in turn, closely based on their beliefs about best parenting practices.

 

I believe that I, coberst, and Lakoff are suggesting very similar ideas. However, it appears to me that coberst is implicitly proposing that cognitive approaches – for example, exposing adults to philosophical literature and discussion – is a potentially effective way to effect significant political change. My, and I believe, Lakoff’s, suggest the arguably more pessimistic view that individual’s political views are largely instilled unconsciously during childhood, and that only a small number of people can change their beliefs cognitively – in short, (to employ another technique much described by Lakoff, metaphor), the culture war is necessarily a multi-generation war.

[coberst]

Z..

 

I agree somewhat to the possibility that everyone takes some sort of positive or negative response to every idea they encounter. However, it is the public stance that is important. We are very aware these days that some people are incapable of showing a change or accepting an error.

[coberst]

Craig

 

For invidious I would be willing to substitute the combination of obnoxious, lurking, dangerous, and virulent.

 

Transference is a word I learned by reading Ernest Becker. It is a word signifying the human characteristic if transferring the authority one has developed for a parent to the doctor especially in psychoanalysis and in my case it is the transference of the father image to the leader of the group. It is the characteristic that makes hypnotism possible. It is the characteristic that allows me to become your slave.

 

I think you misread Lakoff. Lakoff is the master of framing. Lakoff tells us that our abstract ideas contain many concept structures derived from experiences. He tells us how our politicians can manipulate this knowledge to make us associate one thing with another without being conscious of it. Lakoff is the one how came up with the 'General Petraious are you going to betray us slogan'. From now on no one will be able to think the name General Petraious without this association.

[LaurieAG]

Therein lay the invidious nature of ideology.

....

I have read that some consider objectivism to be a cult rather than a philosophy; I asked my self what is the difference between a philosophy and an ideology. I turned to Freud and his book “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” for my answer. I discovered that Freud had turned to the Frenchman Gustave Le Bon for an understanding of group behavior.

 

Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. His work on crowd psychology became important in the first half of the twentieth century. Le Bon was one of the great popularizers of theories of the unconscious at a critical moment in the formation of new theories of sociology. English translation Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, was explicitly based on a critique of Le Bon's work.

 

Hello Coberst,

 

I'm glad you put all of the extra detail in, or I would have failed to incorporate the conscious and the unconscious into the personas of honest/dishonest people and recognise how important the group is in developing both types of people. While there's no real difference between being subconsciously or consciously honest there is a distinction between being subconsciously dishonest and being consciously dishonest and group think or group spin is the direct cause of subconscious dishonesty via group propaganda.

 

Unfortunately it looks like society, or more correctly sub groups within society, are the dominant forces that create good, bad, stupid and enlightened people.

 

This becomes even more interesting when you consider politics, propaganda and the desire to win at any cost, not to forget the more modern democratic experiments (based on almost universal suffrage, at the start anyway) of national socialism and neo conservatism.

 

Getting back to the youth who think 'negative' is cool, once they cause people to become desensitized to their conscious lying, they can get away with almost anything, just like politicians, without being conscious of it.

[coberst]

Hello Coberst,

 

 

 

Getting back to the youth who think 'negative' is cool, once they cause people to become desensitized to their conscious lying, they can get away with almost anything, just like politicians, without being conscious of it.

 

Good point. I suspect the masks we all wear now and then can truly distort our intellectual posture and slowly become less of a persona and more of a personality. Long term persona becomes personality.

[CraigD]

I suspect the masks we all wear now and then can truly distort our intellectual posture and slowly become less of a persona and more of a personality. Long term persona becomes personality.

Though my Jung is very (20+ years) rusty, I don’t think this is an accurate depiction of the concept of a persona (this brief wikipedia section appears to agree with my recollection).

 

Personas are not masks we wear “now and then”, but ones we wear all the time. Although they change from situation to situation and gradually throughout our lives, they are an essential part of a healthy or unhealthy personality, "the self as self-construed".

 

Although, as with many other components in various psychodynamic theories of personality, the persona may be more or less appropriate, even to the point of dysfunction, it is not intrinsically bad or dishonest, but rather essential, and except for bizarrely abnormal personalities, exists for all people. A very open and honest person is simply a person presenting the persona of a very open person, not a person with less – or more – psychodynamic energy invested in the persona than a closed or dishonest person.

 

PS: I’m looking forward to reading Lackoff and Becker – both of whom I’ve been introduced (or reintroduced) to in this and other philosophy forum threads. Thank you, coberst and other philosophy stalwarts, for the educational direction ;)

[LaurieAG]

A very open and honest person is simply a person presenting the persona of a very open person, not a person with less – or more – psychodynamic energy invested in the persona than a closed or dishonest person.

 

Hi CraigD,

 

A dishonest person presenting the persona of a very open person is much more widespread these days, believe me, 35 years ago I lived in a society where people didn't even bother to lock their front doors let alone their back ones (20 years ago we started locking the front doors but leaving the back ones open for family and friends). Now things are like Fort Knox.

 

Maybe persona's develop a bit like houses? What do you think Craig & Coberst?

[coberst]

Laurie

 

We create our culture. This aspect of life gives us a good example of what George Soros calls reflexivity.

 

Our educational system and our culture lie to us. We are taught by our educational system and by our culture that there is thinking and there is reality and that thinking’s job is to discover reality; never informing us that reality and thinking go together, one is not separated from the other. Reflexivity is a concept that informs us that thinking is part of reality.

 

In the natural sciences truth is of the utmost importance because knowledge of reality is a precondition for success. In human affairs there are shortcuts to success—one can lie, manipulate, spin, and use force to gain success. Thus in human affairs truth often takes a back seat.

 

In his book “Open Society” George Soros speaks of many things; one important concept is ‘reflexivity’. “I started thinking in terms of reflexivity nearly fifty years ago. It may be interesting to recall how I arrived at the idea. It was through the footnotes of Karl Popper’s “Open Society and its Enemies”…I started to apply the concept of reflexivity to the understanding of social affairs, and particularly of financial markets, in the early 1960s before evolutionary systems theory was born…”

 

The first chapter of this book, wherein he explains this concept, can be found at The Crisis of Global Capitalism.

 

An example of reflexivity might be: I believe the war in Iraq is good.’ This is my response to the polltaker on Monday. On Tuesday I read in the paper that 60% of those polled on Monday said the war was bad and 40% said the war was good. I talk with my friends at work on Wednesday and decide that the war is bad. ‘I believe the war in Iraq is bad.’ This is my response to the polltaker on Thursday.