There is an old adage that one should not discuss politics or religion.
I say that’s out-dated.
Frankly, in most places in our world right now, everything is political. In the US, where freedom is touted as the cornerstone of our culture, we still have some military personnel and GOP congresspersons who want to keep LGBT persons out of the military. We still have domestic terrorist groups who murder medical providers of legal abortions. We still have homelessness, poverty, crime, unemployment, massive intentional mortgage fraud, corporate and government corruption and an epidemic of legal noncompliance with labor laws.
I say the reason all of this happens can be explained by looking at a lack of Whole Thinking (TM pending). Whole Thinking can be measured by examining:
Critical Thinking Skills
Emotional Intelligence Skills
Use of Psychological Defense Mechanisms
and Intellectual Honesty
Or not. Those who do not think wholly or who have or choose to have incomplete thinking, are not using these skills or do not have these skills.
When a human being is lacking in critical thinking skills, intellectual honesty, emotional intelligence skills, and/or critical thinking skills – depending on the extent of this condition, they are likely to have extremely diminished intelligence and/or have a mental illness or personality disorder. If you have a serious personality disorder or mental illness that prevents you from thinking critically, you probably shouldn’t be a government leader. You cannot have it both ways.
The world’s religions all have extremely similar messages: do not harm others, be good to others, do not take more than your share, etc. Yet there is incredible distortion of those messages all in the service of hatred, greed, violence and more intentional fraud. Again, you can’t have it both ways. You cannot say you’re a christian and yet choose to further enrich the wealthy while denying basic financial and healthcare rights to the poor. You cannot say your’re a christian and burn the holy books of other religious traditions.
The US is supposed to be built on a foundation of the separation of church and state, and yet there are vast numbers of politicians who “refudiate” this and insist, incorrectly, that the US is “a christian nation”. These are symptoms of a lack of critical reasoning skills and intellectual honesty in most cases. Christine O’Donnell revealed that she truly believed that there was nothing in the US Constitution that insisted on the separation of church and state, and in her case, she seemed to truly believe this out of stupidity and ignorance, which is different.
When factually incorrect statements are made, it is done either out of stupidity or for fraudulent purposes.
Christine O’Donnell and others who make factually incorrect statements about important things like the US Constitution are as irresponsible as Islamic extremists who repeat factually incorrect statements about the Koran to illiterate young people in order to get them to join their cause.
Most GOP politicians, however, intentionally make factually incorrect statements in order to defraud voters. The GOP knows very well that the Bush Tax Cuts have been in place for the past ten years and have failed to create jobs or trickle down to the middle and working classes. There are multiple credible reports that are statistically valid and reliable which prove that tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans do not create jobs, stimulate the economy, or trickle down.
In fact, the tax savings for the wealthiest 2% of Americans often winds up in offshore banking accounts or invested into yachts or the purchase of a 5th home – sometimes the money is re-invested into corporations, which also do not pay enough taxes – and which frequently pay no taxes at all.
When there is intentional deception, we call this fraud. In England, making false statements in campaigns is unlawful. We need that law here.
Ideally, all US citizens would be informed by credible news sources such as Democracy Now!, F.A.I.R., Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, The Nation, and the Daily Kos. Unfortunately, many Americans watch FOX, listen to Rush, or otherwise allow themselves to believe absolute untruths about important issues that affect all of our lives.
That is why everything is political. School funding, sexuality, birth control, medical care, what is in our food, housing issues, laws about workplaces, sick time at work for employees, water safety, protection from injury or death from or at work, protection to keep oceans clean, the price of gas, who gets sent to war, etc. It’s all political.
An old classmate from junior high had something on her facebook page that said, “not interested in politics”. Really? Seriously? If someone told her that she couldn’t sleep with or marry the person she loved, would she suddenly become interested in politics? Probably. If the water from her faucet was making her children sick or was flammable, might she suddenly care? Probably.
The question is, how can those of us who understand that everything is political, that the GOP intentionally lies to voters, and that we all need to be mobilized in solidarity to protect our very lives and those of our children – get through to these people?
It isn’t easy because we are often up against a lack of whole thinking. When a person truly believes that the GOP cares about them even though they earn less than $250k a year and do not own a corporation, there is something very wrong with that person’s ability to think clearly, understand facts, use crtical reasoning skills, stop using denial as a defense mechanism and there may be a lack of emotional intelligence skills, particularly in the empathy and social responsibility hubs.
When a person is stubbornly unwilling to listen to facts that discredit and debunk their strongly held opinions, this is a combination of intellectual dishonesty, a lack of critical reasoning skills, and a large number of defense mechanisms being used.
Persons who intentionally deceive others without regard for the harm they cause are considered sociopaths. Studies have shown that many corporate leaders and workplace bullies are sociopaths. I put forth that most GOP politicians are also sociopaths.
When journalists cannot get a politician or leader to answer a question directly, there is something wrong. That person is unwilling to be discovered for the fraud he or she is. There is a very unhealthy willingness to think that one can dodge direct questions and get away with it.
Luckily, more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that sociopathic, dishonest GOP (and other) politicians are defrauding them of their mortgages, their workplace rights, their voting rights and their rights to liberty and justice for all.
There should be absolutely zero injection of anything religious into politics or government other than protections for the freedom of religion and laws to address civil rights violations based on freedom of religion. Given that the US has so many leaders in the GOP who actively engage in incitment of violence towards persons based on their religion, we have a serious problem. In any ordinary workplace, such comments could result in termination. GOP candidates like Sharron Angle and Jan Brewer need to be similarly held accountable for their hate speech. This is also an example of a lack of whole thinking. Angle and Brewer need to learn critical reasoning skills, emotional intelligence skills and how they are using their defense mechanisms in a way that makes them more sociopathically mentally ill than qualified for public office.
When religion is used to violate others’ rights, campaign for the GOP in violation of IRS tax codes or incite hate and violence by violating others’ civil rights, something is very wrong. This is also an example of a lack of whole thinking. The GOP loves to quote the constitution and the bible selectively. This is intellectually dishonest as well as lacking in critical reasoning skills. This is probably driven by the use of defense mechanisms; there is such a thing as racism psychosis. Therefore, there are also such things as sexism psychosis, LGBT psychosis, ethnic psychosis, Islamaphobia psychosis, etc. Homophobes have sexuality psychosis. These are mental illnesses and those with these mental illnesses should not be in governmental leadership positions.
The fact that voters respond favorably to the epidemic of psychosis in GOP leaders is indeed disturbing. Those of us who recognize the GOP for the hate-mongers and fraudsters they are, must continue to tell this to all those who have been duped by the GOP.
Those who engage in intentional fraud via public office need to be called out as purveyors of fraud and prosecuted as in the UK. Those who try to impose religion into US government, need to be censured. Those who incite hatred and violence also need to be censured.
The US needs to look at what works in other nations and stop this delusion that “we are number one”, when in fact, we are not number one in the important categories of life expectancy, health care quality, health care per capita expense, lack of crime, college graduation rates, labor laws, whistleblower protections, environmental protections, etc.
It is a salient fact that many GOP politicians and religious leaders who have been vehemently against LGBT rights eventually are found to be self-hating homosexuals. This does make one wonder what is in John McCain’s closet.
We see the workings of defense mechanisms daily in our politics and in religion. Luckily more and more voters are seeing through this and are calling hypocrisy, fraud, lying, intellectual dishonesty and manipulation when they see them. We need much more of this.
I don’t quite understand anyone who votes for the GOP given what they stand for. They are no longer the party of Lincoln. They are the party of corporate greed, civil rights violations and creating a permanent US Hooverville over which they and their billionaire cronies will preside.
They want to defund education to keep the electorate ignorant and unquestioning so they remain in power. They want to erode labor laws, whistleblower protections and civil rights protections so they can do whatever they want in their lives and in their corporations and so workers have no recourse.
It is true that throughout history, oppressed peoples have found ways to rise up against the kind of tyranny that the GOP seeks to impose on the US. They will not say this is their goal, because they know that if they did, they would lose 98% of their votes. So, they count on ignorant and uneducated voters to believe them.
The GOP seems to have forgotten the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the countless resistance movements in many other nations over the last thousand years. An oppressed people will not remain oppressed.
It is mind-blowing that many in the GOP consider themselves to be christians given that Jesus was a middle-eastern man who provided free healthcare, called on people to love one another and not judge each other, and was opposed to the economic oppression of anyone.
When you encounter a lack of whole thinking in yourself or others, think about it. When you see facts that are new to you; consider them and their source. Glenn Beck is on the air, but he does not speak facts. There are incorrect and untrue things on the internet. Not all news has journalistic integrity. Consider where you get your news.
A woman I knew when I was growing up considers all Muslims to be bad. She is a Jew and has a firm understanding of what bigotry is, when it comes to Jews, Blacks, LGBT persons, etc. But she does not see that her dislike of all Muslims makes her a bigot. We have had conversations about this a few time, and it appears that some progress is being made.
Progress. Progressives must do what they can when they can to break through the lack of whole thinking in the US. If that means pissing off family members, neighbors, classmates, friends, spouses, lovers, etc., so be it. It must be done.
****
<strong>All of these are interconnected and affect each other.
Let’s use these abbreviations for them as we continue: EI, IH, PD, and CR.
One cannot have sound critical reasoning skills and still be blinded by more than a few minor psychological defenses. One cannot be intellectually dishonest and have sound critical reasoning skills. One’s psychological defenses will affect one’s emotional intelligence, critical reasoning skills, and ability to be intellectually honest.</strong>
What examples of this do you see in your own personal or worklife?
<blockquote><strong>Here are a few examples to think about:
The BP Oil Disaster has been called “not a disaster” by some politicians. We can see the lack of EI in this lack of empathy. We can see a lack of critical reasoning skills in this political dismissal of all reports on this disaster from environmental experts. We can also see a lack of intellectual honesty as hyperbole is used to compare this to Watergate, when those are not even comparable. What I believe drives this are psychological defenses in place that trump the skills of EI, IH, and CR. </strong></blockquote>
<blockquote>A mother is furious that her daughter cannot attend her sister’s bridal shower. The mother forgot to tell her daughter when it would be. The daughter had plans and was unavailable. The mother became furious and displaced her anger at herself and at the situation onto her daughter. The mother said things like:
“I just thought you would be there”.
and
“but it’s your sister’s bridal shower”
and
“You don’t know how to be a maid of honor – why don’t you google that?!”
and
“You’re jealous and selfish”
So, what have we here? We have a mother whose psychological defenses and lack of EI are completely eclipsing any abilities she may have had to engage in intellectual honesty or critical reasoning skills.
If her latter skills (IH and CR) were stronger than her PD and lack of EI, she would simply be able to say, “Oh, I should have told you the date sooner. I know how busy you are. Oh well, I know you’ll send a gift. We’ll tell you all about it”.
Also, there is the fact that the way we respond to conflict (which is inevitable among humans and that is not necessarily a bad thing), is directly related to how much of our identity we ourselves impart into the conflict.
In the case of the mother, some of the other things she said were “I am a good mother” and “<em>I’m</em> not angry; <em>you’re</em> angry” and “this is not my conflict; this is your conflict”.
<strong>This woman (the mother)had the following beliefs about her identity and was not able to question them for herself:
1. Good people do not get angry
2. Good mothers do not make mistakes when planning bridal showers
3. Good people do not have conflicts
4. Conflict is bad
5. Anger is bad
6. I need to blame someone (because she didn’t know what else to do with her anger and it was too uncomfortable for her to take responsibility for her own mistake because she believes that a mother who makes such a scheduling error is a “bad” mother).
7. I cannot and will not acknowledge that I made an error
8. The bridal shower will be ruined if my daughter cannot attend
9. People will think bad things about me and us if one of my daughters is not at the bridal shower
What is wrong with all of these beliefs? They are untrue and limiting. What prevents someone from overriding deeply-entrenched psychological defenses and low EI by employing their IH and CR skills?
Several things:
Fear
Fear of learning, development and growth
Fear of acknowledging that the way we’ve been thinking or doing things before was not optimal
Fear of imperfection
Fear of acknowledging errors and feeling shame over those errors
Fear of acknowleding that what we were taught by our parents was not optimal
Shame in general
Disdain for intellect, learning, discovery, or psychology
Disdain for change
Disdain for and fear of the short-lived (but worthwhile) discomfort that can come from overcoming harmful psychological defenses</strong>
<strong><em>What else? Think about it.</em></strong>
When we are using Whole Thinking (TM pending), we are checking ourselves via our thoughts and feelings through the following filters:
The 16 subscales of Emotional Intelligence based on the Bar-On EQi, (I will examine these in a future post, but descriptions are elsewhere on this blog)
The Psychological Defenses (ditto),
Sound Understanding of Critical Reasoning Skills,
and we are checking with ourselves to see if we’re being Intellectually Honest.
Obviously doing this requires that we be familiar with all of the above. When we are, we become very practiced in doing this and what may sound like an onerous process can be done fairly quickly and become simply a very healthy habit that benefits oneself and others.
It’s as simple as “processing” something – only it is more than just taking the time to understand one’s thoughts and feelings; it is also holding our understandings of our thoughts and feelings (our whole perceptions) to standards around criteria that we know to be sound, healthy, and clear.
We already do this in our thinking regularly, but refining our thinking and stretching our thinking/feeling skills as well as better-integrating those (thinking and feeling, which influence each other), the more wholly we think.
Another tool that can help in the development of all of these learned skills is NVC (non-violent communication), which was created by Marshall Rosenberg, PhD. There is a free course to learn <a href=”http://www.nycnvc.com”>NVC at http://www.nycnvc.com</a> and there are also links and posts about NVC on this blog going back to Spring of 2009.
Thanks,
Denise</blockquote>
