Personality, Experience, Thought, Belief

In that Order

There is much talk these days about free speech, fake speech, misinformation, false news, conspiracy.  I think all of these are off-shoots of the wrong understanding.  Because they are all variants of thought and belief.  Now I  wish to define thought as a reflection or interpretation of experience through the lens of an individual personality. That development begins with the interaction between child-and-parent and whether the parent attempts to deny and conform the child’s personality to a more preferable personality from the parent’s perspective, more or less trying to force the parent’s personality or the parent’s desired personality upon the child.  Or whether the parent tries to accept and help the child develop their own personality as much as possible.  Now I spent those first formative years in a primary male-female two parent bond.  This creates different tensions and pulls the personality in possibly different ways.  But as much as many would like to say that is the norm, or the preferred norm, there really is no norm.  In fact that was not at all my earliest interactions with my first prime caregivers.  That is my earliest memories of my prime caregivers which began when I was around three.  But by the time I was aware of my situation, my first prime-care givers who essentially interacted with me were actually three persons, my mother, and my paternal grandfather and grandmother.  My father within weeks of my birth was sent off to war and had little effect on my first interactions. My memories begin in Muncie as I have written about.  

But it wasn’t until many many years later that I gained any memories of anything before then. I didn’t gain these latent memories through some kind of scientologist probe that traced me back in time to the womb.  Because that is not cognizant of how memories develop whatsoever.  It is not about recalling suppressed moments of pain as they claim.  In fact memories of pain or trauma are the most vivid because the brain needs to relate those memories to avoid further pain.  The problem with painful memories before birth, and contrary to all conceptions of when life begins, in the womb the body possibly might endure some pain, but it can never remember because the brain is the slowest to develop and is incompletely developed at birth.  We don’t birth with memories and full memory development  does not occur until later.  Primarily the first two years of life after birth the brain is concentrating not on mental images, i.e. memories, but on motor development.  So while there is surely a shock at birth it is impossible I am quite sure to ever naturally recall the moment of one’s birth  or the first years in life playing with the mobile above one’s head.  But a  child is born with a personality.  I witnessed five births and at the moment of first life—-because that  is the moment of separation and viability , like a chicken hatchling, it is the first moment of independence as a separate lifeform no longer part of a combined lifeform within the mother, and at that first moment, the five births I have witnessed also had initially different reactions.   But the next moments are probably the most important “shaping” moments because the mother’s reaction to the birth begins the first steps in the bonding and developing relationship that will begin the development of a future human’s personality acceptance or rejection.  Because there is no always one reaction by mothers either. 

And coincidentally why all women don’t scream when raped.  And the screaming is not always interpreted similarly either because men sometimes have been known to think screaming means the woman is excited and taken as encouragement.  So many women would not scream as a way of perceived discouragement.)I   I may be a man, but I have had women tell me about being raped because I seemed to be a good listener, probably, kind of “one of the girls”.  On the other hand, I spent a lot of years driving a cab, and later an Uber, and I picked up many a woman who had been traumatized, either violently or by some type of sexual aggression.  I mean I could tell they were traumatized, any normally unobtuse person can recognize such emotions. But there was a tell-tale if a woman felt violated by a man.  Somewhere in route (and not claiming all seemingly traumatized women would do this, but the ones I became aware had felt they had been sexually assaulted) came the question, maybe aggressively, maybe shouting angrily, maybe a whisper, maybe a whimper, however it comes out the question, when it comes, is “Are all men like that?”  And that moment the response cannot be “What happened?” or “what way?”  That is prying into something you are not being invited into; nor can it be “No.”  I tried that the first time it happened and the passenger flung open the door and dived out of the cab. In motion. No it has to be “Yes.”  Only a yes will suffice, because they are not talking about all men, they are talking about the one man who just raped them.  The follow-up question though, I don’t know if there is only one acceptable answer, but when the follow up comes, “Are you like that?”  I always reply “yes’.  Now remember they haven’t told me anything, and I do not know what happened, but they are severely traumatized and they are talking about men doing things.  “Yes” seems to open the door to a minimal trust, and it generally leads to querying what had I done, and then I relate the two stories I told in my notes at the end of my article on “Harassment.”  When I wrote that in my notes, I had never before related those incidents to even close friends, or to my wife, or anyone except these women in my cab.  Some would say it wasn’t my fault, the women had acted badly, and sometimes they would just sort of say “yeah, see?’  But it somehow seemed to perceptively be what they wanted to hear, even if they might interpret it differently.  I could sense some tension being released, even though they might break into tears.  Different things would happen, rides would end or they would ask for advice or they would just want to pour out their hearts about the abuse they’d suffered from men in their entire past.  But I don’t believe they ever told me what had just happened except in the vaguest details.  Only one time did that ever happen, but not driving in a cab.  

Story

I was doing some contract work in Cleveland for 9 to 5 (secretarial union) and there was another woman from out of town also contracting and the office manager had set us up pallets on her front patio.  One night the other lady, let’s call her Maybelle because it’s a rare name that I’ve never met anyone bearing, came in after having gone out on a date.  She had met him at a conference that afternoon when several union organizers from the Cleveland area had met to hear a speech from Cesar Chavez. Maybelle just stood with her back leaning against the door.  Finally I decided to say something, what came out was, “how did the date go?”  She didn’t reply, but began to silently shed tears.  At that point I was speechless without a followup because it was pretty obvious the answer was not too well. “Can you hold me for a minute?’ she whispered.  I started to rise from my pallet, but she said, “No, can I lie beside you.”  “Sure.”  She lay down next to me and I put my arms around her and she buried her head into my shoulder and began to cry harder.  Eventually when she got herself together she told me what had happened, essentially a rather violent date rape.  After she had quit speaking, she remained next to me still entwined in my arms and eventually I did as well.

Maybelle and I had essentially arrived into Cleveland a week prior, and we had bought groceries together, and kind of hung around in the evenings together with other co-organizers, but not knowing the others as well we had talked a lot together and played darts and spent the weekend sightseeing together and frankly I thought Maybelle gorgeous.  But since that second event in high school, previously mentioned, I do not approach women sexually, I decided, not to play it safe because I had thought I had been sexually aggressive to them but I began to reflect that nature illustrated that sexual selection was generally done by the women, and it was males who had to preen and attract.  So I may preen but I do not, not knowing current terminology, put moves on women.  Of course it’s not universal amongst all species, but I would almost bet it was pretty universal amongst hominids until the day the first king forced the first queen to submit to his whims. As a result, I’ve been told a couple of times by women whom I had been keeping company with that they thought they were not sexually attractive to them.  But do you know what happened when I woke up the next morning lying next to Maybelle.  I got a hard-on.  And she must have felt pressing into her, because she woke up in alarm and jumped away with a look of horror.  She had trusted me enough to confide in me, to allow me to comfort her after a traumatic experience.  I can accept responsibility for most things, but I simply do not know how to apologize for getting an erection before I’m even consciously awake.  I think she was aware of it even before I was comprehending that my position was any different than waking up alone because I was consciously aware of her presence. So no matter how conscious we may feel we have become, the experiences of every male-female reaction are not going to be the same and all presumptions of how people should behave in not only male-female, but in any human dynamic will never be the same.  Why didn’t E. Jean Carroll scream Mr. Tacopino?  Why did you scream at her?  Why must the assumption of sameness and stereotypical reactions be assumed in the first place?

Well , I have an answer to throw out for what it’s worth; it’s what we are taught to believe.

Concept

But memory is composed of not just what you encounter through your senses, but what you encounter from being told, what you learn from reading, and also from what you assume.  But like all truths, memory is partial, and can be interpreted.  We all know about the rashomon effect wherein people will remember the same event differently.  What we do not understand, however, is that even our own memories are not truthful, because our personalities and the way our personalities are shaped determine our memories.  Our memories are formulated by the manner we train our memories.  We cultivate our brains to remember in the manner we wish it to observe.  A great majority, probably to some extent every one of us, train our memories to channel our negative actions more positively towards ourselves and negatively towards others, and it is precisely why negative information is more easily remembered.  For instance, a candidate who has done a great deal of positive things for his constituents and thus campaigns on his accomplishments will be remembered for what he hasn’t done more easily.  A candidate who promotes police reform to create better justice for everyone can easily be remembered if his opponent merely accuses is accomplishments of reducing crime by stating “there’s too much crime” and we know there is too much crime because crime is in our memories because its existence is reported everyday but how many times is the absence of crime reported?  So when we go to vote we vote because crime still exists which is more memorable than less crime exists.  You only need one immigrant to commit an act of atrociousness to remember the politician who had told us that immigrants create atrocious crimes to now remember immigrants are bad.  Similarly, negative advertising against a candidate is commonly more influential when people cast votes than positive advertising.  I believe this is because we cultivate our brains to protect ourselves against feeling negative about ourselves.  But if what am I suggesting is correct, then why do sociologists suggest that feeling  less positive about oneself creates low self-esteem?  I do not believe they are wrong, but incomplete.  People do feel low self-esteem when they  feel personally denied, but to deny any culpability or to try to remember events only to put oneself more positively, I believe lowers self-esteem.  A perfect example is Donald Trump. He is accused frequently of lying, but I don’t believe he ever lies.  He has cultivated his memory to such an extreme his memory only allows him to remember his failures as successes.  By limiting his own culpability he sometimes is accused of admitting his guilt.  But of course he has so falsified his own memories that these seeming confessions are actually boasts of positivity as proofs that he has no culpability.  His esteem is so low that it has prevented him from remembering anything but the hurt, and yet his prideful boasts are the meager attempts of the bully  to find positivity.  So Trump only remembers what has been done to him.  And in general, I think the more you are capable of also cultivating your memory to reflect on personal culpability the more positively you will feel.  Like everyone when you tell of a personal memory it reflects my heroism, my good character, but I also try to reflect that the stories show neither.  I may remember they show my positive side but I try to reflect and acknowledge the falseness of such a memory, that my memories are damaged in that they reflect myself positively to my own self.  I have been told that is putting myself down.  I disagree, if I refuse to accept harm I cause or might have caused, if I refuse to accept my own fallibility, if I think I have to be right, therefore the other has to be wrong, we injure ourselves and inflict harm and consequently may act overly aggressively because of that self-harm. 

Memories are also capable of being influenced, or capable of being altered by further memories.  The young lovers turning into bitter antagonists forgetting the joys of the past, or demarcating them into separate memories—the good times, the bad times.

Of all methods of gaining knowledge, they are the least trustworthy.  Almost any psychological study will repeat what I have just said.  But they are deemed the most trustworthy—in courts of law, in persuasion.  In the midst of a discussion in which two people might disagree, say, one likes a store and the other hates the store, a memory by a friend can be more persuasive than a multitude, or even the testimonials on the web page. I heavily interface memories however, not for persuasion, but to explain the developmental processes in the concepts I propose, to expose my bias,and perhaps to persuade.  And also because the very reason memories are the most trusted source of information is because memories create our future, and how we interpret what happens to us in the future.  It is probably the reason we have memories. Without memories we don’t know a fire will burn us. But memories, improperly cultivated, can do us more harm than good, can lead us to believe in misinformation, or false information or fake or misleading information.

Belief

If you accept my definition of thought as a reflection or interpretation of experience through the lens of an individual personality.  Then I would like to define beliefs as a formulation of what we have been taught to conform our thoughts into acceptable beliefs (to someone) and our experience of whether those teachings are experentially valid.

Vilfredo Pareto 

“Social thinkers assume rationality & logic in social attitudes & instructions.”

In fact I tend to think that we assume the presumptions of a rational argument are more true or less true depending on whether we believe the premise.  Logically any statement can be true or not true whether or not the premise is true or not true.  And so contrary to Pareto, I think Pareto is presuming all logically rational arguments to have truthful premises in the very same manner he is accusing social thinkers of assuming people think rationally and logically  in their social attitudes and instructions.  Well it seems that Pareto is absolutely correct in that the generally consensual perspective of social thought is the assumption that people should accept our premises and therefore our argument and when they don’t they are being illogical. From this perspective we talk at crosshairs with each side believing his premises are true and so each side believes the other is misinformed and being fed false information.

But if we look at beliefs as a formulation of what we have been taught to conform our thoughts into acceptable beliefs (to someone) and our experience of whether those teachings are experiencially valid, then we can propose two propositions here.

Premise : America is a democratic country and we express our freedom in being allowed to          freely vote.

Argument 1. My vote gives me the power to vote for candidates who will favor ideas I favor.

                 2.  If  my candidate loses, I am still free to vote again and have my voice heard on       

                    the next time I vote.

Conclusion: The premise is true and America is free because we vote for our representations, 

                     therefore elections are fair and honest.

Premise: America is a democratic country but I have no opportunity to express my feelings of                                             

                powerlessness and hopelessness and therefore I have no freedom.

Argument: 1. Others always make the decisions, leaving me without influence.

                  2. Elections make no difference in my life no matter how I vote.

Conclusion: If the premise is true, then elections must be stolen.

Very simplistic and not well-crafted arguments,but you see the problem.  The premise in number one creates the premise in number two because if the premise in number one is true I wouldn’t experientially feel number two.  So the problem is we are taught to believe premise number one but experience does not give us the experience of its truth, then we cut the premise in number one because we actually believe the conclusion in number one is false.  So actually the better argument would be to reverse the conclusion and premise in the 2nd argument, but just a minute here, we can’t do that without altering the entire premise in the second argument.  That becomes a problem though without disbelieving our entire cultural upbringing that America is a democracy and that makes people free.  But if that is not true then we are forced to begin the premise with something like America is a democracy but I am not free.  But if I am not free, the  opposite is I am a slave.  But I am taught I am free, so perhaps America is not free.  

Enter Steve Bannon, “you are free but America’s not democratic.”  Enter Alex Jones. “America is democratic but they’re trying to enslave you.”

And so the door swings open to any deceitful conman who can identify with them and develop a logically sound conspiracy with a totally false premise and frames itself on arguments about drag queens grooming illegal immigrant mexicans imported from China who want to abolish the police force and the only way to solve your problem is to feed Hilary Clinton to George Soros who bought a vile of covid at the Nuremberg Market in China to kill all of the white men that don’t have guns to shoot the virus out of the air before they sneak in to steal our gas stoves and drive them over the cliff in SUVs that will make it too hot too fish.

Yes, well, something like that, and I’m making it sound nonsensical on purpose because the non-subscriber to premise two has  a tendency to continually  be ridiculed followed by some variation of “...how can anyone believe that?”  and then warnings to subscribers of premise one that such ideas are leading us to the end  of “our democracy” (the concept of premise one) and will lead to the establishment of some form of autocratic government.

In a previous article, I made reference to a current judicial crisis many see as a court making wrong-headed (“bad”) decisions because they are not “what the majority of Americans want” and I attempted to create a distinction between wrong decisions that could seemingly be “unpopular”, therefore wrong because of disagreement with them and decisions that are wrong in their furtherance of common law.  I have no imperative on my perspective of any particular decision being “right” or “wrong”.  My attempt was to show that when decisions are civilly decided in a culture that determines its standards commonly they create a confidence problem in the interpretation of law.  The problem however is not a matter of the rightness or wrongness of the conclusion, and let’s return to Justice Frankfurter for a moment and his often very contentions relationship with Justice White, who often concluded a decision on the same side with justice Frankfurter but very frequently argued everything about the process of determining the conclusion was not in keeping with common law jurisprudence, name using precedent as determinative in formulating justice to the individual case.  In common law precedent can be interpreted by differing justices in accordance with personal thought but it can’t be supported by personal belief if that belief upsets the apple cart in the established manner of determining justice.So in common law, the law is established not just by the majority precedent but also by consenting and dissenting opinions that also establish precedent that can be referred to in future decisions.

I proposed the danger of our current court was that they were determining justice by an ideology that was neither conservative nor liberal but somewhat medieval in that the ideology wants to determine the law neither civilly or commonly but by a fiat of belief that imposes a judicial assumption that society is not to be maintained by either a justice that supports the civil or justice determined by situational or contemporary common needs but by using justice to conform behavior to a particular perspective of what that behavior should be or determining justice by cultic rules, which then (supposedly) will create a stable society by removing all power to the behavioral-determiners.  Of course in all cultic organizers, the determiners are unbound and must be unbound because the cultic leaders maintain power by constantly creating uncertainty in the rules of behavior so the only rule becomes the cult and the leader of the cult.

So I want to conclude by throwing out that it is not premise number two is wrong in itself because the conclusion is believed to be true by thoughts that reflect experience that have interfaced with individual personality and attempts to conform individual personality to expected behavior.  So premise number two is vacated rather than supported by the conclusion because the conclusion is the belief, and i.e. should be the premise, but since a belief should result from the rationality of argument establishing the conclusion.  So now we are back to Pereti and falsely assuming belief and behavior should conform to rational logic.

And if belief rather than logical argument is determinative then the rational argument of premise one is only believed to be true and not actually true apart from belief in the conclusion itself.  So ultimately belief is the a priori premise to any rational logic and all arguments based on rationality are meaningless if belief is determinative in the validity of the premise then all rational argument becomes rational only from the perspective of belief in its own rationality and the conclusion was always contingent upon a priori belief then rationality itself becomes contingent itself on what one believes, and by my definition is formed on the thought processes reflecting on the experiences of the personality in attempting to mold the behavior of the individual.

So the question becomes and where we will leave off until the follow-up discussion is this:  Should we all believe in the same truth, or is there only one truth that all must accept as truth?  And if all should believe the same truth or if there is only one truth that can be accepted the how is the premise America is a democracy and its citizens free even possibly acceptable if we can therefore argue there is only one truth and the statement of truth that citizens are free is absolutely contraindicated logically or illogically and can be supported by a prior belief.

Notes:  I am trying to approach this neither from a conservative nor a liberal perspective, and while my conclusions may seem liberal, i.e. democracy itself limits freedom and to be democratic we need more freedom, the irony is the conclusion of liberal thought today is the actual premise, or a priori  belief of what we term the “maga”.  Except that, when presented as the a priori belief, it becomes “democracy has limited.”  But I see this not as oppositional conflict, but those who may desire more freedom and those who feel their expectations of freedom have not been met—viewed from this perspective the conflict becomes petty interference that actually creates the limitations both on  desires to either be and/or have more freedom.And  my perspective is that it is the intra-argument itself that maintains the limitations and not the argument between not–having-had and there-should-be more freedom, This debate of what should be looked at as a common goal becomes twisted into a debate about who-should-have more freedom. And that debate prevents the first commonality and creates a dystopian selfishness of everyone dipping their finger into the pot not to eat together but to prevent someone else from eating more.