political – Page 2 – Midlands Psychological Associates

Left, Right, and Center

Ron Johnson Feelings, mindfulness, morality, political, Self-Awareness, Spiritual April 7, 2019

I’ve had a bit of a difficult morning. I didn’t feel quite “right.” Know what I mean? This “not quite right” brought me right into what I’ve been writing about lately, namely the murky realm of “feelings”. In fact, Deb and I are furiously writing and re-writing our latest endeavor, namely a book tentatively entitled, I Need to Tell You How I Feel. So, this “not quite right” feeling is quite like what we have been writing about; this “something”, or call it a “feeling,” may or may be terribly important, but it is real and needs to be acknowledged, examined, and valued so I can decide or discover what I should say or do…if anything. As I have written about in this whole business of “feelings,” I have allowed myself to “just feel” emotionally and physically, staving off too much thinking and certainly staving off doing or saying anything. As I have previously written, “feelings” as I understand them, are deep-seated, spiritual, and core self phenomena that then erupt first into physical, then emotional, then cognitive, and then productive expressions of feelings. You will note that the way I am using the word feelings is not to equate them with emotions, but suggest that emotions are but a subset of feelings.

One further note before I go on with the “left, right, and center” blog, if you will indulge me, please. People of different personality types and temperaments tend to gravitate towards one of the four elements of feelings, namely physical, emotional, cognitive, and productive. I tend to be a person who races right through the first three of these elements into doing something. So, my strength tends to be getting something done and fixing what needs to be fixed, while my weakness (strength to a fault) tends to be in doing too quickly and too instantaneously, often without sufficient time being spent in the physical, emotional, or cognitive areas of feelings. In the present case I have tried to allow myself to stay with these first three elements of feelings to get to an honest and appropriate place of doing something.

The “something that is not quite right” has to do with Facebook. I’m not a regular on Facebook and don’t have 700 “friends.” Maybe 50. And I don’t spend much time searching the friends I do have, except to keep up with the doings and dreamings of my friends, which is always fun. I’m sure I’m not the only Facebook guy who has been distressed by the increasing amount of advertising on Facebook, but I can tolerate that because I can just scroll down the page. What I have found, however, is that I am not tolerating increasingly vitriolic, one-sided, and mean-spirited political/social statements. I wrote to my Facebook friends some time ago that I would no longer respond to such statements, even to “like” them because I found it was not good for me to do so (read: “felt” bad to do so). This worked for the most part, but I still get postings of such statements, often from dear friends, that stir less than valuable feelings with me. In other words, I am not any better after having read such postings. Rather, I am worse, whatever that means. I have been musing about this matter for some days, if not weeks, and have worked diligently to follow my own advice on feelings: first physical (pit of my stomach not right), emotional (largely sadness), cognitive (agree, disagree), before I do something. But I think I have come to honestly decide what to do. But before I identify what action I intend to do, let me tell you my dilemma, which is the “left, right, center” part of this blog because I am quite left, quite right, and quite center on things social, political, and religious.

For instance, on the matter of LGBTQ, I suppose I am quite to the left. There is little doubt that one’s gender orientation is largely, if not entirely biological/genetic in origin. I have seen many gay patients and friends over the years who admit that they have never had heterosexual interest. While their reports do not amount to a scientific study, there are studies that are quite solid that seemingly prove that fact, not the least of which being the lack of any person every having “changed” from homosexual to heterosexual. So on this matter, I am quite left of center, if we use that term, but I am not left on all things.

I find myself quite right of center on several matters, including minimum wages and unions. I think, forgive me my left-leaning friends, but I think unions have long outlived their usefulness and have for years only entitled a very few at the cost of many. And as for a minimum wage, the current direction of companies and corporations are moving towards better hourly wages all on their own. You can’t find a job in Madison for less than $14/hour, which by the way is $28,000 a year. Here, capitalism works, at least it works when we don’t have monopolies.

Unfortunately, monopolies of any kind tend to protect the few at the expense of the many. Monopolies, by the way, would include unions, but also Google, Amazon, and the like, not unlike the monopolies that my favorite president, Theodore Roosevelt, Republican by the way, attacked. He also attacked violence begun by unions. Oh, for a person who could see both sides of the social/political spectrum today. So when then there is a free flow of opportunity, capitalism works just fine, but any kind of financial control makes capitalism only for the rich and powerful.

So I’m on the left and the right on such things, but there are many more phenomena, some social, some financial, and some racial that push me to one side or the other, not being able to find comradery with anyone. The idealist left-leaners had a good heart, but not a good head, when they instituted entitlements in the 1960’s, these entitlements keeping many people in poverty and dependence. Mean-spirited punitive measures by the political right have been no better with its insistence tax decreases for the rich. I was raised largely in the 1950’s that included (Republican) President Eisenhower suggesting that people making over a million dollars should pay 70% taxes. This “I have the right to what I want” attitude on the right infuriates me just as much as someone who panhandles on the corner right next to the Kwik Trip sign advertising for workers at $15/hour. I was caught in that dilemma when I debated about buying and giving blankets for the homeless not long ago thinking they should “just get a job” and then within an hour found myself buying 6 blankets for them. Free apartments: is that going to help them? No apartments: is that going to help them?

There are many more questions than there are answers. How, for instance, do we deal with the 100,000 migrants last month who sought asylum in America coming from gang-run poverty-ridden countries in the “northern triangle” in Central America. Good minds and good hearts ought to get together on this one and find a solution that is generous and reasonable. My own thought would be to cut our $650 billion for Defense in half (or more) and find ways to really invest in Africa and Central America, not just in dictators and despots. But mine is a simple answer, not more valuable than President Trump’s simplistic solution of a wall separating us “haves” from those “have nots.”

So am I right, left, or center. Depends on what you’re talking about. And it probably depends on what I have heard on the news and what I have read on Facebook. So my decision…or is it a discovery…is that I will “unfollow” my friends, both on the left and on the right, who stir me to distress. I recently and mistakenly responded to a deeply passionate post about “30 Christians murdered by Muslims in Nigeria,” and found my response was less than valuable, and the responses I heard in return lacking in a wider view of life. I don’t need the distress, much less than challenge of someone’s feelings. I should know better. And I certainly don’t need to end up in some kind of fruitless tit-for-tat with people I respect, love, and simultaneously antagonize if I speak my feelings. So for now, goodbye to some of you. I wish you well. I really do.

I feel better. Now about “feelings,”…

America Depressed and Distressed

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, Mental, political, Positive psychology February 17, 2017April 9, 2018

It is remarkable that the popular media has properly identified President Trump as a person with a narcissistic personality disorder. Sadly, this is certainly an accurate diagnosis for Mr. Trump although I prefer avoiding all such diagnoses because they just look at what is “wrong” with someone, which is never helpful. Instead of identifying someone with some kind of psychological diagnosis it is more valuable to understand the mechanisms with which someone operates and possibly the causes of these operations. Then it is important to know how to relate to those people. Diagnosing someone does not help us understand how to relate to people. Diagnoses only tell us what is supposedly wrong with someone. Let me propose to identify the psychological mechanisms that Mr. Trump uses in life, how they affect us as Americans, and how we might survive and thrive over the next four years.

President Trump most certainly fits the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, or we might say he is “narcissistic.” Ultimately, we should be thinking about how we might be affected by what he says and does instead of simply calling him names and giving him a diagnosis. People with so-called narcissistic tendencies seem to act in selfish ways, and they seem very self-centered. But this is only their surface functioning. Inside such people is a much different operation. Selfish self-centered people do not have a sense of “self” inside. They are focused on external things, i.e. outside of themselves, instead of internal things that are inside of themselves. Sometimes we say that people with a narcissistic personality disorder, or any of the other personality disorders, lack a “core” of what it means to be a person. Lacking this “core” or “self”, people who act selfishly need these more from the external world because they don’t have a solid internal world. There is a deep psychological hunger inside people who are selfish. Because they feel “empty” inside, they need to “fill” up with as much external “food” as possible. Their hunger is insatiable; they are rarely satisfied. Furthermore, when they don’t get constant refreshment from the outside, they feel this deep hunger and become afraid. In a way, they are afraid of dying. They feel like they need to be “fed” by external rewards to keep them alive.

Narcissistic people, or more accurately selfish self-centered people, feed on many things that are “external,” mostly other people’s approval. Because they do not approve of themselves at a deep psychological level, they need almost constant approval from other people. The result of this constant seeking others’ approval works when everyone approves of them, but it doesn’t work when even one person disapproves of them. This constant demand for 100% approval from all people is what we see with people like President Trump. It is painful to see such a brilliant and successful person as he obviously is find it impossible to admit that everyone didn’t vote for him. His recent ludicrous assertion that there was some kind of conspiracy of “voter fraud” with millions of illegal immigrants voting against him is almost delusional. I think that if there had been only one person who voted against him, he still would be upset because he is not capable of managing the disapproval of anyone. He is deeply “hungry” inside and craves constant external rewards of some kind.

There are other ways that typify people who are narcissistic, but they all have the element of being external to oneself. People find different ways of attempting to satisfy their deep hunger. Hoarders are people who have found a way to feel satisfied only when they keep everything, whether of practical use or not. Many obese people have found excessive food to satisfy this deep psychological hunger, but only briefly. Extraverted people with this lack of inner core tend to talk too much and demand constant social engagement hoping to keep from feeling this internal hunger, while introverted people feel marginally satisfied only when they say nothing and keep to themselves. Working and dreaming are both good elements of life but if people are deeply “hungry” inside, they might work all the time to avoid feeling this hunger, and dreamers might dream all the time for the same reason. All addictions are essentially outgrowths of narcissism and the accompanying feeling of emptiness. Addictions include chemical (alcohol and drugs) as well as behavioral (sex, gambling, buying, exercise). All of these addictive elements are natural and useful, but when they are used to satisfy deep inner emptiness, they fail. An important aspect of an addiction is that the individual needs more of the substance or behavior to reach the same level of satisfaction.

Allow me to describe the cause of narcissism, that deep seated hunger that many people, like President Trump, suffer. Simply put, selfish narcissism in adults derives from natural narcissism in early childhood. Think of it this way: when I am an infant, or approximately until I am about two years old, I get most of what I want. It is a challenge to take care of infants’ demands and needs but infants get most of what they want because they don’t want much more than food, clean diapers and a bit of physical contact. But from about the age of two, things are very different. Because they can now talk, walk, and run, they see that the world is much bigger and there is much more interesting. Their wants now multiply by a hundredfold. They want more than they can have. If children of the ages two through about six receive good parenting, these children are routinely limited. They should hear “no” a hundred times more than “yes” because they simply want 100 times more than they can have. If children are not given their basic needs, they remain deeply hungry, sometimes for the rest of their lives. More common, however, is that children in these toddler years are given too much, and given to, rather than limited. This creates the 4-8-12 child that I have discussed elsewhere.

Narcissism is natural for children of the ages two through six: they want everything and feel “hungry” for everything. The task for parents during these years is go give to their children what they need but not much of what they want. Parents and children who have migrated these challenging years well lead to these children understanding that they do not get everything they want. If they learn this important lesson during the toddler years, they are then prepared to engage the social world during the elementary school years where they learn how deal with other people. They learn the importance of sharing, and the intrinsic value of giving. Most importantly, they learn to care about other people because they have been cared for and they care about themselves. If they do not adequately get through the toddler years, they lack self-care and certainly care for others.

No one gets through the early childhood years of natural narcissism unscathed. As a result we all suffer some remaining narcissism, i.e. wanting more than we can have. This adult narcissism shows itself in undue anger when we don’t get what we want, selfishness, and jealousy of what others have. It is very important to understand that we all have at least some of this leftover childhood narcissism if we are to deal with the narcissistic self-less people in our lives. It is not just President Trump who is narcissistic. We also are all narcissistic to some degree. And we know plenty people who suffer from the same lack of development. Being around anyone who is narcissistic is a challenge. Children who are psychologically undeveloped are a challenge because they throw fits when they don’t get what they want. Adults throw different kinds of fits. You can deal with a four-year old’s natural narcissistic demands by saying “no” and taking the consequences: he hates you. But it is much harder to deal with the adult who wants everything, whether your time, your property, your money…or your vote.

Mr. Trump wanted my vote. And he is angry that he didn’t get it. He is throwing a temper tantrum because he didn’t get what he wanted: everyone’s vote. He will continue to be angry. He will continue to be demanding. He will continue to be selfish and self-centered because he does not have a good sense of self and personal core. We will hear him whining about one thing and another, all of which amount to the fact that he can’t have everything and he can’t have everyone like him. There will be more tweets and public statements, the substance of which will be how he isn’t getting everything that he thinks he deserves. He is not capable of accepting loss, disappointment, mistakes, and people’s disapproval. And he will be in our faces about it. He is a man of 70 who has a brain and life experience that is certainly well beyond those years. But he has the emotional structure, and hence the social ability, of a four-year old. We need to accept this phenomenon, which I called the 4-8-12 phenomenon in another blog. But the real task is how to feel, what to think, and what to do over the next four years dealing with his four-year old temper tantrums without being angry or afraid. This is no easy task. It will be distressing. It already is distressing. It could easily be depressing.

If we are to avoid the anger that is the essence of depression, and the fear that is the essence of anxiety, we need to attend to how we really feel. That feeling is sadness. Narcissism, like its cousins anxiety and depression, is contagious. When I am around a depressed or anxious person, I will tend to become depressed or anxious. When I am around a narcissistic person, I will tend to become narcissistic. It is something like, “He is getting everything he wants. I want to have everything I want.” This is real dangerous. It is dangerous enough to be angry at him all the time; it is more dangerous to be afraid all the time of what he might do; but it is much more dangerous to become narcissistic, i.e. become more selfish, self-centered, and self-less. We can do better.

My suggestions for your mental health, your social health, and your physical health:

Note the incipient narcissism that occurs in you when you are confronted by Trump’s narcissism. I could say, “Don’t stoop to Trump’s level,” but that would be wrong because it would suggest that you are superior to Trump.
I prefer to say, “Be mature in the face of immaturity,” “Be honest in the face of dishonesty,” “Be generous in the face of selfishness,” and “Be yourself. Don’t let yourself be dragged into thinking and feeling that is childish.” You are a mature, honest, and generous person. Be that way. Stand tall.
Be sad. It is sad that Mr. Trump has been elected. It is sad for me. It is sad for many people. It is sad for the country. It is sad for the world. If you can continue to feel sad, you will avoid the tendency to be angry and anxious, which are simply the result of repressing the feeling of sadness.
If you are a person of faith and prayer, do as Jesus said: pray for your leader. If you have a different philosophical perspective, you may profit from meditation and personal reflection. If you are a person of wit, use it carefully and constructively. If you are one who writes, write. If you write poetry, write. If you sing, sing. If you dance, dance. Be yourself. You will be well. Stay well.

Liberal’s Moral Dilemma

Ron Johnson morality, political, Positive psychology, Spiritual November 11, 2016April 9, 2018

We liberals are not as moral as we might think. Worse yet, conservative America has just voiced their belief that the Republican Party has the corner on morality. Certainly, most liberal readers of this document will wonder how I could possibly suggest that conservatives are more moral than liberals. Well, it depends on the definition of morality, and to some degree ethics.

I recently read The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor who integrates psychology, morality, religion, and politics. Importantly, he has been a lifelong political liberal and served for a time on the Bill Clinton staff. I was put onto this book by the editor of The Week, a center left periodical that remains a mainstay of my weekly reading. Haidt admits that he found himself dragged kicking and screaming to a very important understanding of how morality is at the core of our current political divide. He comes to the painful conclusion that many Americans, not all of them conservatives, find the liberal moral platform lacking. His conclusion is based on a brilliant examination of the concept of morality, an examination that in a broad definition of morality liberals are found surprisingly wanting.

Haidt proposes that morality has five, or perhaps six pillars: (1) care, (2) fairness, (3) loyalty, (4) authority, and (5) sanctity, possibly adding (6) liberty. Simply put, liberals value care most and fairness next, while conservatives value authority, sanctity, and loyalty. Liberals give lip service to these last three values, but frankly not much, while conservatives give lip service to care and fairness, but not much. We liberals think we have the corner on the market of morality because of our care/fairness orientation. What could be more moral, we think, than taking care of the needy and giving everyone a fair chance at success and life satisfaction? What we have seen in the recent election should wake us up to see that we do not have such a corner, and more importantly, morality, and to some degree ethics, is much broader than care and fairness. This is, so I believe, how the Republicans have taken over so much of the country recently: they have cornered the market of morality, or perhaps more accurately, they have taken over at least three of these five corners leaving Democrats to cry in our wine about how immoral these Republicans are.

Let me look a bit closer at this concept of morality. Take, for instance, the concept of authority. We might think that Hillary spoke with authority, which she certainly did, but she did not speak as an authority, nor did she speak as someone who would use her authority as President. Donald Trump, for all his brashness and profound narcissism, spoke as an authority and spoke of using this authority as soon as he would gain office. Yes, there are significant dangers of being the authority and abusing authority, but we must admit that it is attractive to many Americans, not just conservatives, to have someone speak of setting things right with authority, however impossible it might be to do so. How silly it was for Trump, following Scott Walker and other Republican candidates to speak of doing something “the first day in office” but it was attractive to many people. These people felt a certain safety in the fact that finally someone would just do the right thing even if it offended many people.

Of course we, as liberals, might challenge what is right to do and whether a President even has the right to do the so-called right thing, but that doesn’t matter to people who daily hear of the danger of ISIS, the lack of healthcare for millions of Americans, and the exploding national debt. People just want the magic bullet that will cure these ills, and Trump provided it for them. We can complain that Trump was elected by “uneducated white males,” but this minority of Americans was not the only element in his victory. It is too easy for us to sit back and wine (sic) that people should have known better. We need to see what Republicans and other conservatives are saying about morality, particularly about the value of authority. My favorite President, Republican Theodore Roosevelt, “carried a big stick” in many ways, spoke and acted with authority but was more progressive in many ways before his time. His Democrat cousin FDR also spoke and acted with authority and not always within the rule of law. He just did the right thing with lend lease and other measures to subvert the liberal pacifism of the 1940’s. Kennedy acted with authority, often against a significant element in his own party fighting for racial equality on the one hand, and with the threat of war against Russia during the Cuban missile crisis. Liberals have forgotten the value of moral authority and focused on care and fairness.

The majority of Americans might give lip service to care and fairness, but the larger majority want the freedom to do what they think is right. The hallmarks of the Clinton campaign has been on these two laudable elements of morality. Unfortunately, most Americans care less about care than they do about the freedom to do what they want to do. I am fully behind a woman’s right to “care for her own body” (freedom to choose abortion) but most Americans don’t care much about this element of morality. Clinton also focused on the fairness element of morality speaking frequently and wisely about the great and increasing disparity between rich and poor in this country. So why would most under-waged Americans vote for Trump the billionaire? Because he said that everyone could be a billionaire if government would get out of the way and let them do what they want to do. Thus, the focus of the Clinton campaign was on this fairness element of morality while Trump trumped the other moral element: freedom. Which is more attractive to the person on the street, if we dare to admit it? We can complain that the freedom element can lead to narcissism so clearly displayed by Trump, but if it is a choice between what I have and someone else needs, we will always go with the first…and then hopefully the second.

Not only have Republicans garnered the corner on authority and freedom, they have added the sanctity element suggested by Jonathan Haidt. I find it truly remarkable that such a despicable person such as Donald Trump could secure the majority of evangelicals and many other peole with lesser strict religious convictions. The only vaguely religious element in his campaign was his exaggerated talk about “tearing babies out of the womb.” Otherwise, he was almost completely devoid of anything objectively religious. But we must consider that his statement about restricting Muslims coming to America, and perhaps even his threat of deporting 11 million Latinos seemingly spoke to a kind of sanctity, namely the sanctity of our allegedly Christian nation. As a recovering Christian fundamentalist, I recall the safety and sanctity of the absolutes that fundamentalism of any kind provides. Note the success, if we call it that, of ISIS based on similar absolutism. But aside from Trump, the Republicans have made great hay in espousing quazi-religious elements in their programs over the recent decades. I found it interesting that in her concession speech Clinton used a biblical reference, but never before in her campaign. Rather, she spoke of fairness and care, but little of the religious element. There is a strong element among liberals to belittle much that is religious, often for good reasons, but not with an understanding that sanctity is very important to Americans, including those who rarely darken the doors of church.

So I close with the suggestion that we liberals need to be more moral, or perhaps more broadly moral and understand the sanctity, authority, and freedom corners of morality finding value in these pillars. Authority is not authoritarian, freedom is not licentiousness, and sanctity is necessarily theistic.