Of One or Two Mindsets?

March 8, 2026 Leave a comment

A 7th century BCE proverb, attributed to Greek poet Archilochus, speaks of two ways of perceiving the world:

“The fox knows many truths, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The fragment on which this metaphor was found doesn’t include what the poet meant or to whom he was referring to. But amplified versions of the two contrasting ways of thinking have come along.

Basically, hedgehog types, it is said, ignore many things available to them and relate everything to a single organizing idea – one big thing – that guides how they understand, think and feel.

Fox types, on the other hand, take in the big picture. They pursue many ends and draw upon many experiences and perspectives, some of which may be self-contradictory. They are pluralistic and know many things and approach issues from diverse perspectives.

In his 1953 essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas explored these two different approaches to perceiving reality – diversity or unity in thought; breadth or depth in intellectual pursuit.

Berlin saw hedgehog types as possessing a singular, unifying vision that guides their understanding of the world. To get to an essential monistic worldview, hedgehog thinkers simplify the complex and may even accept easy explanations. They hold strict beliefs and are not likely to consider alternatives. As such, they are idealists who are not likely to waver from their purpose. They have a singular focus.

Berlin saw Fox types as being curious and wanting to explore, as knowing many things. They draw upon diversity and complexity. With new perspectives, they adapt. They are practical and not ideological. Foxes see the world in all its intricacy and interconnectedness.

Robert McCrum, writing in The Guardian about Berlin’s essay: “the division of humanity into hedgehogs and foxes had become not only a witty means of classification, but also an existential way of confronting reality. Foxes, for instance, will come to understand that they know many things, that a coherent worldview is probably beyond them and that they must be reconciled to the limits of what they know . . .

“Berlin’s hedgehog, by contrast, never makes peace with the world and remains unreconciled. His or her purpose is to know one thing and” quoting Isaiah Berlin’s biographer’s words, “strive without ceasing to give reality a unifying shape. Foxes settle for what they know and may live happy lives. Hedgehogs will not settle and their lives may not be happy.”

The subtitle of Berlin’s essay: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. The Greek poet’s saying had Berlin seeking to classify Lev Tolstoy as a either a fox or a hedgehog based on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history as expressed in his novel War and Peace. Both War and Peace and Anna Karenina are written with an overarching moral order and with life’s intimate details. And, there are characters in each novel that exhibit the two different mindsets.

Asking whether Tolstoy’s “vision is of one or of many, whether he is of single substance or compounded of heterogenous elements,” Berlin decided, “there is no clear or immediate answer.” Berlin thought that Tolstoy embodied both the fox and the hedgehog types of thinking. 

Berlin did categorize well-known thinkers and artists.

 Those with profound central visions, were systematic and held rigid ideas about life he considered hedgehogs. He included Plato, Dante, Pascal, and Dostoevsky in this category.

Those who took in and thrived on a wide range of multi-layered experiences were the foxlike. He included pluralist thinkers Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Joyce in that category.

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The above is a brief summary of a school of thought that summarizes mindsets into two groups. You can read more about the Fox and Hedgehog Theory and how the two ways of thinking have been compared and how each mode is thought to apply at What is the fox and the hedgehog theory? where this table is found:

Using the supposed traits of each mindset, some have extrapolated how each mindset operates in terms of business and politics and in problem-solving and leadership skills.

Some may compare the two ways of thinking as a Fixed or Growth mindset.

Of course, Berlin’s interpretation is not supported by the Archilochus fragment. And there are those like myself who see the project as oversimplifying the multifaceted way we think and do so in diverse contexts.

Consider, for one example, the single-minded focus of a violinist who, in private, rehearses Paganini Caprice no. 5 and then at the time of performance, tunes her instrument to A440 and then plays focusing on the bowing and her performance.

Think of an orchestra conductor who sees the scoring of all the instruments and hears the sound of the whole ensemble. He directs the musician’s phrasing, tempo and sound according to his interpretation of what the composer had in mind.

Both solo violinist and conductor are focused on their “one big thing” and both are aware of the setting and the acoustics. They each listen to what comes forth and adapt as needed to enrich the performance for the listener.

hedgehog–the-fox_Chapter-1

Introduction to Berlin’s Division – Hedgehogs and Foxes

https://www.bookey.app/audiobook/hedgehog-%26-the-fox

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Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson refers to the fox and hedgehog saying and to Berlin’s essay in the conclusion of his magnum opus on classic Russian literature: Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter.

Throughout the book, Morson provides examples of how certainty and wonder played against each other in the writings during the Soviet era.

The nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia and its Bolshevik successors embodied Certainty. The intelligentsia or “party-minded” related everything to a single central vision – a scientific-materialist-atheistic worldview – and did so with dogmatic certainty. Everything, everyone, and reality itself had to conform to the iron-grip of ideology. Violence made sure.

Russian realist prose, with questions posed, evoked Wonder. Realist authors drew upon the complexity in the world, its many human experiences and perspectives. They wrote about the world and the human condition in realist terms – as it was and not as it was end-of-history supposed. They knew life had contingencies and that there was no one single way to go about things

You can read more about this in my previous posts A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over and Reentry.

Implicit throughout Wonder Confronts Certainty is the contrast of the fox and hedgehog mindsets in Russian writers. Only in Conclusion: Into the World Symposium does professor Morson refer to the fox and hedgehog saying and to Berlin’s essay. He does so to make the point about “true dialog.” He writes:

Life is eternal dialogue, a world symposium that never ends. In Bakhtin’s notebooks we discover his core belief:

The dialogic nature of human consciousness. The dialogic nature of human life itself. The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the open-ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, and his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire life in discourse, and his discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium.[i]

Further on, under the subheading The Fox Knows Many Things, Morson writes:

Given human difference and the plurality of viewpoints, wisdom consists in learning to see the world from the perspectives of others. By intellectual as well as emotional empathy, we can bring discrete positions into open ended-dialog. When we do, we enrich both ourselves and the world.[ii]

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I don’t see a need to classify myself as a fox or hedgehog. There are benefits of both mindsets. I can hold two different things in my mind at the same time, and I am able to adapt to new situations.

I don’t have a degree in any area. As an autodidact, I have an open-ended humanities attitude toward life.

I am by nature a fox that takes in the big picture and I am also a hedgehog that focuses. I see the whole and wonder. I then drill down to explore my wonder. The game is afoot. A reader of my blog over time will notice this. I touch on various topics and often drill down to explore meaning. I do this so that I may understand what I think and to send it out in a post and have it come back to me as wisdom I can use.

I avoid binary, black or white, either/or, left-brain oriented thinking. The “dialogic nature of human life,” if invested in, can make a person knowledgeable and wise. And so can Michael Polanyi’s concept of knowing: ‘from-to’ subsidiary-focal-integration. See the video below.

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How Can We Know Anything? Artful Knowing with Esther Meek

Philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek to explore how our understanding of knowledge shapes everything, from faith to creativity to everyday life. Esther challenges the modernist assumption that knowledge is merely information gathering, arguing instead for a view of knowing that is personal, participatory, and artful.

“Polanyi will argue that apart from personal epistemology as he describes it, not even knowledge is possible, let alone realism. Positively, he will view realism as integral to personal knowledge and vice versa” Esther Lightcap Meek

Discussed:

How the “knowledge as information” paradigm cuts us off from reality

Michael Polanyi’s concept of subsidiary-focal integration

Why imagination is essential to all knowing (including science!)

The relationship between attention, love, and knowledge

How artful knowing can help us navigate crises of faith

The doctrine of creation and wonder in the ordinary

Re-enchantment vs. the “lively real”

Comparing Esther’s work with Iain McGilchrist’s brain hemisphere research

https://www.estherlightcapmeek.com/

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Hedgehog Mindset?

Monologue – Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes

We are clerks, medieval clerks leading this mental life that is natural and healthy only to men serving a transcendental idea. But have we that now? And what then does all this thinking, poring, analyzing, arguing become – what but so much agony of pent-up and thwarted action? The ceaseless driving of natural physiological energy into narrow channels of mentation and intellection… (p. 80)

Hedgehog TDS:

In a January 2026 media article in The New Criterion – A range of derangement: On the persistence of Trump hatred – James Bowman notes a Wall Street Journal article Is Trump Derangement Syndrome Real?

We now have it on the authority of a licensed psychotherapist that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (tds) is clinically real—though it’s probably not destined to have its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association any time soon. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Alpert claims that he finds a mental illness worthy of the name in his Manhattan-based practice,

where the presentation aligns with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders: persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. Many confess they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump even when they try. They interpret his every move as a threat to democracy and to their own safety and control. Call it “obsessive political preoccupation”—an obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentation in which a political figure becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal and compulsive monitoring. (Emphasis mine.)

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Speaking of hedgehog TDS:

Responses to a squishy feminized elite:

Late Friday, New York Times columnist David French snarkily referred to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a “walking MAGA caricature” on X.  

Four hours later, Hegseth’s troops were pounding Iran in an intricate series of strikes that left its evil regime reeling.

The response to French — who has not withdrawn his sneer — was unsympathetic. 

My favorite: “Let’s have a contest . . . you and Pete show up at Fort Bragg, see who the troops respect more.”

Is Hegseth a caricature? 

To French and his ilk, maybe; but to many others, he’s a guy who gets results. 

Presumably a 1945 David French would have considered Gen. George S. Patton a caricature, too . . .

As commentator William Wolf observed on X, “The fact that a billionaire real estate playboy who liked to slap his name on steaks and wine has proven to be a better diplomat and military strategist than every other politician and foreign policy expert over the last 30 years is such a damning indictment of the DC establishment I honestly don’t know how they recover.” Emphasis mine.)

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.

Why Trump and Hegseth’s swagger leaves the ‘elite’ seething

Fox Mindset?

Time for climate education:

Dr. Willie Soon Reveals the Real Driver of Climate Change in New Video – PJ Media

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[i] Morson, Gary Saul. “Conclusion: Into the World Symposium.” In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, 384. Harvard University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.1791936.16.

[ii] Morson, Gary Saul. “Conclusion: Into the World Symposium.” In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, 388. Harvard University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.1791936.16.

Filed under Philosophy, Culture, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Reduced to Alibis?

December 21, 2025 Leave a comment

At ten o’clock on a dark September evening six-year-old Andrey, the only son of Dr. Kirilov, a Zemstvo physician, died from diphtheria. The doctor’s wife had just thrown herself upon her knees at the bedside of her dead child, and was giving way to the first ecstasy of despair, when the hall-doorbell rang loudly.

The death of a child is one of the most difficult and traumatic events a husband and wife can experience. Coping and getting on with life after the loss of a child seems almost impossible. The death of a spouse is also tragic.

Anton Chekhov, in his short story Enemies, brings together both tragedies and their effects on the two main characters.

The epigraph is the opening to the story. Husband and wife are devasted by the loss of their only son. Reeling from the loss of his son, Dr. Kirilov can barely function:

 . . . in this moment he had no intentions, no wishes, thought of nothing; and probably had even forgotten that in the anteroom a stranger was waiting. The twilight and silence of the hall apparently intensified his stupor. Walking from the hall into his study, he raised his right leg high, and sought with his hands the doorpost. All his figure showed a strange uncertainty, as if he were in another’s house, or for the first time in life were intoxicated, and were surrendering himself questioningly to the new sensation.

The narrator describes the deathplace:

In the bedroom reigned the silence of the grave. All, to the smallest trifle, spoke eloquently of a struggle just lived through, of exhaustion, and of final rest. A candle standing on the stool among phials, boxes, and jars, and a large lamp upon the dressing-table lighted the room. On the bed beside the window lay a boy with open eyes and an expression of surprise upon his face. He did not move, but his eyes, it seemed, every second grew darker and darker, and vanished into his skull.

But in the anteroom a stranger was waiting. Dr. Kirilov’s deathplace is soon invaded by another’s cry for help.

Can one’s all-consuming grief cross over into emotional conflict and animus? Can the egoism of the unhappy shut down dialog and be the alibi for the poison of resentment? The story ends with another loss, another tragedy.

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Enemies-Chekhov-AntonDownload

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Before reading further, please take a few minutes to read the short story. As you do, see how Chekhov mirrors inner turmoil with nature, as at the beginning (above) and at the end:

It was dark, much darker than it had been an hour before. The red half-moon had sunk behind the hill and the clouds that had been guarding it lay in dark patches near the stars.

What draws me to the writers of Russian realism (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Solzhenitsyn, Chekhov) is how they reveal human nature in everyday situations and under the relentless oppression of totalitarian regimes. You can hear a thousand sermons about human nature in theologically abstract terms but in a story like “Enemies,” the characters are straightforward you-and-me.

Chekhov, a doctor, had many opportunities to observe human nature. His description of the effects of a tragic loss is true to life. (I experienced the death of a step-son – his car crashed. That was 25 years ago. And though life goes on, his deathplace remains in my heart.)

Chekhov’s description of using one’s suffering, unhappiness, and perceived victimhood as an alibi for treating others unjustly as justice is also accurate.

Once Abogin, the one who was knocking on Dr. Krilov’s door At ten o’clock on a dark September evening, finds out the trick played on him by his wife, he tells Dr. Krililov, who was rushed to Abogin’s house to revive his wife. Reeling in his emotions from his own loss, Abogin, tells the doctor that he is “deeply unhappy” about the loss of his wife.

The miserable Dr. Krilov cannot relate at all to Abogin’s unhappiness.

While Abogin spoke, the insulted doctor changed. The indifference and surprise on his face gave way little by little to an expression of bitter offence, indignation, and wrath. His features became sharper, harder, and more disagreeable.

Dr. Krilov, in the midst of his own grief, feels insulted and extremely put out by the well-to-do Abogin. “Be so good as to tell me … where is the patient?”

Soon after, Dr. Krilov says Am I a lackey who will bear insults without retaliation?

The narrator:

The two men stood face to face, and in their anger flung insults at one another. It is certain that never in their lives had they uttered so many unjust, inhuman, and ridiculous words. In each was fully expressed the egoism of the unfortunate. And men who are unfortunate, egoistical, angry, unjust, and heartless are even less than stupid men capable of understanding one another. For misfortune does not unite, but severs; and those who should be bound by community of sorrow are much more unjust and heartless than the happy and contented.

A tragedy of poisonous resentment plays out one night between the two men, each with a tragedy of their own.

Egotism that says “Your loss and your grief are nothing compared to mine. I’m the victim here” can lead to resentment, revenge, misplaced anger, exclusion and not embrace.

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Professor Gary Saul Morson cites Chekhov’s Enemies story in Wonder Confront Certainty, Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter. (See my previous post for information regarding Morson and his book.) He does so in Chapter 8 of Part Three Who is not to Blame? The Search for an Alibi, in the subsection titled The Consolation of Suffering.

Morson writes[i] “The Russian experience demonstrates the danger of ideologically based alibis.”

“The appeal of moral dualism represents a still greater danger for those who class themselves as belonging to the good group of oppressed people endowed with the right to attack their oppressors. Victim psychology, indeed, constitutes another of the great themes of Russian literature.”

The moral dualism he refers to is that which divides the world into two groups: the good belong to one group and evil in another. This, he says, “absolves people of individual responsibility. It also offers the heady feeling of moral superiority.”

Morson again: “Here then is another reason Dostoevsky, and Dostoevsky alone, foresaw in detail what we have come to call totalitarianism. He detected in intelligentsia ideology a systemization of victimhood psychology which licenses unlimited harm and provides a preface alibi for those who inflict it.”

While “lying on rotting straw in prison,” Solzhenitsyn “realized the moral truth that precludes spurious alibis: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good from evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.”

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Can our suffering, real or imagined, turn into hostility and then murder? Can a devastating loss and the ensuing grief make us both egotistical and cruel, incapable of understanding another’s suffering? Can legitimate suffering lead to crossing the line of good and evil in the human heart?

Jesus: “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill. –Mt. 5:21-22

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[i] Morson, G. S. (2023). Wonder confronts certainty. In Harvard University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674293434, pp 275-278

Filed under Death, Psychology, totalitarianism, Chekhov, Russian Literature, ideology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Binary Beckons for More from You

October 15, 2023 Leave a comment

Two options guided my early incorrigible years: “Either you do what I say or your father will deal with you when he comes home” “Either you clean you room or lose your allowance” “Either you are home by 9 or you will be grounded.” The church, too, presented two stark choices: “Either you get saved and go to heaven or you go to hell”; “Either walk the straight and narrow or walk the wide way of the world.”

The either/or binaries of my early childhood were meant to prepare me for life. I learned that if I wandered off into “or” territory there was sure to be consequences. My parents guided my behavior from their own experience of walking within binary guard rails.

They had learned that from the simplest safety issues to the most important issues in life, honest straightforward either/or choices are required. My late mother shared one such either/or choice.

My father, having grown up in the Dutch Reformed church where smoking was the norm for men, was given a choice by my mother when she was dating my father: “Either you stop smoking or that’s it.” Thankfully, my father didn’t “or” the situation. I wouldn’t be here if he did.

With knowledge of their own either/or choices and exposing me to the either/or choices of the book of Proverbs, my parents either/or’d my youth. Binary guard rails were set in place for my time in Jr. High and High school.

When I attended Moody Bible Institute after high school (early 70s), the binary thinking infused in me by the church came into question.

A first-year class called “Personal Evangelism” was taught by Mr. Winslett. During that semester Mr. W described different religions. As he did so he labeled the churches of the Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness and others as cults. When he came to the Catholic church, he said it was a cult because Catholics worshipped Mary, had a pope, and put tradition ahead of scripture. I remember hearing this and thinking that we’re better than all of them. But something felt off.

(Per Article I of The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy found on the Moody Bible Institute website, the Bible, not tradition, is the authoritative Word of God.)

The highly partisan Mr. W, a representative of MBI, had sallied Catholicism: MBI represented real Christianity and Catholicism, a “cult”, did not; either you are with us in Bible first thinking or you are not one of us. (Mr. W was the only teacher I met a MBI like this. But there are many who preach and teach the same binary “us and them” thing.)

I was raised Protestant. Differences of Protestantism and Catholicism were minimally noted in my church. But I had read about Luther, the Ninety-five Theses, and the Reformation. I knew about the abuses and corruption of the Catholic church. Those include Johann Tetzel selling indulgences.

But faith in God and his salvation coupled to Mary, the pope and tradition were not Christianity deal breakers for me. For without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

Instead of imposing exclusionary theology, abide by the words of the old hymn: “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform . . . God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.”

Years later I came across the same “us and them” attack. I brought my daughter to an Awana program going on at a Baptist church. On the night that she and I were to race the Pinewood Derby Car we had crafted together, the speaker bad-mouthed the Catholic church during a promotion for the Baptist church we were standing in.

He said something to the effect that their Baptist church wasn’t like the unsound Catholic church. I was shocked. There were members of that Baptist church and other churches in attendance. What did they walk away with that night?

I’ve seen this attitude surface so many times by haughty either/or Protestants. I’ve also seen it in either/or Catholics. Both groups interpret Church teaching in a narrow way, then argue that whoever disagrees with their tightly wound interpretation must—by the fact of that disagreement—be in opposition to Church teaching. The Either-Or fallacy used by both Protestants and Catholics: “I can’t be in error therefore YOU must be!” 

Another anecdote of the “us and them” attitude: One night I was sitting in a donors meeting listening to a presentation. The Episcopal church I attended wanted to annex and refurbish the house next store and make it ministry usable. At front and center of the room that night was a picture board showing the proposed design. The crossway from the existing church building to the house showed a cross in relief in the arc above the passageway. One woman remarked that we should get rid of the cross because “we’re not Baptists.”

Look. Our family and church backgrounds teach us to think in opposites – basically in terms of good and bad. We are presented with two options and they appear as your only options and mutually exclusive. We then bring unmediated polar extremes into adulthood.

Either/or thinking integrated into our lives and then reinforced by our respective cultures can produce a worldview in stringent binary terms: as a one or zero. Black-and-white thinking is used to reduce the world to something we can handle which then provides a sense of certainty and security. But “a one or zero” thinking can be adversarial, dividing people into “us vs. them.” A few examples:

“I am right and you are wrong.” (How does that work out in marriage? With our neighbors?)

“If you’re not with me, you’re against me. I have friends and enemies but not acquaintances.”

“Either I win or I lose in this situation.”

It can also produce all-or-nothing false dilemma fallacies which are really manipulative setups:

“If you care about your neighbor, you will get vaccinated” and “Putting others first will get us through he pandemic” “Getting vaccinated is loving your neighbor as yourself.”

“Social solidarity is the most precious tenet of our democracy.” 

“You’re either pro-choice or anti-woman. There’s no other moral stance.”

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

“Either you let your child change their gender or they will commit suicide.”

“You are either racist (by not agreeing with me) or you are anti-racist (by agreeing with me).”

“If you are against LGBTQ books in the library you are a book banner.”

“If you question what is being taught in public schools, you are a domestic terrorist.”

“If you question the 2020 election you are a MAGA extremist.”

“If you don’t accept the climate science consensus (or COVID science consensus), then you are a science denier.”

Either/or “us and them” thinking tends toward exclusion and not embrace. It tends toward absolutism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism and judgement. We see it in Hamas’ attack on Israel. We see it in climate activism. We see it in cancel culture. We see it in the murderous history of totalitarian regimes. We see it in church teaching and we sing it: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.”

We see it in the teachings and practice of Christians, Muslims, and the Progressive Left which would have us believe that they are the opposite of conservative either/or thinking while mandating their own anything-goes version of it. Theology, ideology and government policies are marketed with the dichotomy of good and bad.

It seems that many have retained their childhood’s unyielding binary worldview. It is used as a defense mechanism, as a means of protection from the “hazards and vicissitudes of life”. (From the statement made by FDR when he signed the Social Security Act.)

I’ve seen the binary thinking defense mechanism employed by Christians. Though it comes across as holding fast to the faith and Sola Scriptura, faith vs. science messaging reduces the supposed conflict to “us vs. them” binary thinking which allows no quarter for God’s revelation in nature as revealed by science. Yet, God has revealed himself in both scripture and nature. Science is a tool for understanding God’s revelation of Himself in the physical world.

When I told my eighty-nine-year-old Godly mother that, based on research, I believed the universe to be billions of years old and that God used evolution, she didn’t reply “That’s interesting. Tell me more.” She said “That’s heresy!” Her defense mechanism alarm bell went off. She was reacting from what she had been taught and how she had been taught to think about what she was taught.

Becoming emotionally invested in extremes may lead to the exclusion of people, as “Heresy!” suggests. Such binary thinking can produce unrealistic portrayals of others and it can become used, as mentioned above, as a weaponized defense against others.

Certainly, there are people who watch news commentators because they relish the mocking and “owning” of the opposition. Certainly, there are people who go to church for the same reasons. But there is nothing mature about participation in bad mouthing others. I see nothing of this in Jesus.

I come across Jesus-whipping-the-money-changers-in-the-temple memes on social media. These are extrapolated as Jesus is “destroying” his enemies, so we can do the same. Horrible nonsense.

Relying solely on binary thinking is intellectual and spiritual laziness. An open both/and questioning mind is not a slippery slope and it’s not anything-goes Progressivism. Seek truth and not the comfort of tribal consensus.

Consider that no one has all the information – not your pastor nor MBI nor Anthony Fauci nor climate scientists. It’s OK. Consider that not everything is black and white. Knowing the difference and knowing when to introduce AND with “perhaps” is wisdom.

The Creator of the universe is not a small-minded Person. He holds a universe of disparate thought, theories, and faith in his hands. He is not threatened by any of it. A follower of the Creator of the universe lets God hold the messiness and uncertainty of life in His hands and does not feel threatened.

Finally, a reductionist’s worldview makes it incredibly difficult to hold space for the uncertainty and messiness of others. But there is a better way, a much better way: love and maturity.

Love is great-hearted; love is kind,

Knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,

Is not puffed up, no shameless way,

Doesn’t force its rightful claim,

Doesn’t rage or bear a grudge,

Doesn’t cheer at other’s harm,

Rejoices, rather, in truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things;

Love hopes all things, endures all things.

As a child I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child; When I grew up, I threw off childish ways.

I Cor. 13:4-7, 11

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(Note: I’ve summed up a lot so as to make this post accessible. I was involved in the Jesus People movement during high school. Along with those in the movement I questioned a lot of the binary thinking of the church. I’ll share that story in another post.)

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Science and Faith

In this episode, we focus on the apparent tension between science and faith.

“Many people believe that science and religious faith are bitter enemies with conflicting views of the universe. One the one hand there is the scientific account of the origins of life and then there is the story of universal origins told by the bible. But is this tension real, or is it based on a deep misunderstanding of what the Bible is and how it communicates?

 . . .

“Consider this a crash course in reading the Bible as an ancient cross-cultural experience.”

Science and Faith
Science and Faith TranscriptDownload

Science & Faith (bibleproject.com)

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 Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle

Kate Boyd has been learning to live out her faith in the messy middle in a culture that rewards picking a side. While her journey didn’t begin with a conflict between science and religion, her story explores the complexities of understanding the Bible in today’s context and anyone who has struggled with issues of science and faith will resonate with this conversation.

Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle

149. Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle | Language of God (biologos.org)

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I’ve been told that I’m either naive or stupid.

I’m not sure which side I’m moron.

Filed under Christianity, Psychology, Science, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

What Are You So Affirmed Of?

July 8, 2018 Leave a comment

 

Affirmations give us feedback. They tell us our status at a certain place and time. And so, we look for affirmations from those around us. 

A wife looks to her husband for affirmation of his love for her. A husband looks to his wife for affirmation of her respect for him. Children look to parents for affirmation of their boundaries.

Outside the family, the employed look for affirmation of their employment in a regular paycheck, in a regular review and in a manager’s approval. Students seek affirmation of their studies in the grade received and in the teacher’s approval. Church goers seek affirmation of their faith and atheists seek affirmation of their faith. Both faith groups do so in communities of others like themselves.

We choose friends who will affirm us in life-sustaining ways. Or, we look for friends who will affirm our unhealthy choices. We look for feedback from our friends. Our Friend the Way affirmed for us the life-sustaining way:

“Go in by the narrow gate. The gate that leads to destruction, you see, is nice and wide, and the road going there has plenty of room. Lots of people go that way. But the gate leading to life is narrow, and the road going there is a tight squeeze. Not many people find their way through.”

Like the roads signs I encountered on my recent trip to Memphis, affirmations can be signposts and confirmations that we are heading in the right direction. They can also tell us where paths diverge, as shown above. Affirmations guide us along.

Affirmations of relationships are writ large in the gospels. We read of God the Father’s out-of-the-heavens affirmation of His Son in Matthew 3:17 and again 17:5:

“This is my son, my beloved son,” said the voice. “I am delighted with him.”

The Lord’s affirmation of his followers is made obvious throughout the gospels. He let us know that we are of much greater value than a sparrow that the Father feeds and cares for daily. Through parables, Jesus affirmed to us our worth. He let it be known that when the lost are found and when the prodigal returns, the heavens rejoice. My last post talked about Jesus calling us his friends if we do what he asks of us.

Jesus affirms the choice his followers make in leaving all and following him. He does so by giving them the same confirmation that he received from the world: rejection. From John’s gospel account:

“If the world hates you, “Jesus went on, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were from the world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you for this reason: that you are not from this world. No, I chose you out of this world.”

 

The world seeks affirmation from its own. Writ large on social media: the world is fond of its own. If the scroll of a Twitter feed is any indication, those in the world seek constant critical-free affirmation. Some, the malignantly narcissistic, insist upon “affirmation independent of all findings” per Austrian philosopher Martin Buber. These want to live in a fact-free world about their own character. They are intolerant of any examination of their character. When challenged many will quote Jesus about not judging others even though their behavior suggests that they do not care one iota about what Jesus has to say. That pretty much sums up many of the replies I receive on Twitter.

Typically, the world’s demand for affirmation is couched in the high-sounding “rights”. Legal rights as enforced affirmation is desired by the world because legal rights coerce others to affirm them. Affirmation was demanded of the Supreme Court. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the Court’s same-sex marriage decision that the plaintiffs in the case were seeking “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

Yet, even with “equal dignity in the eyes of the law” the world’s superficial affirmations, in the eyes of the beholder, quickly fade. And, with it satisfaction wanes. Consider receiving a participation trophy for just showing up. Or, receiving “dignity” for just showing up.

One has to wonder if the world’s narcissistic impulse to be constantly, dramatically and legally affirmed is due to popularization of self-esteem and the big business of self-love:

Self-Esteem in the Classroom is a curriculum guide for grades 1-12 contains 416 pages detailing over 220 classroom-tested activities to build self-esteem. -Jack Canfield, Maximizing Your Potential website

You can download a free About Me: Self-Esteem Sentence Completion Worksheet

Self Esteem Activities boost your self-esteem, confidence and experience of peace and happiness. Just as a muscle requires regular exercise to maintain its’ strength and flexibility your positive self-esteem brain pathways are fortified by specific self-esteem exercises and worksheets.

-15 Great Self Esteem Building Activities & Exercises For Teens and Adults

Many psychologists will spend a lot of your time (and your money) seeking out the cause of your low self-love. 

Retired psychologist Anthony Daniels, writing under his pen name Theodore Dalrymple, offered his tongue-in-cheek thoughts about self esteem in Chapter Four of his book, Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality

Whatever else you must do, you must always love and esteem yourself, otherwise you are doomed to a life of sterile denigration. In dynamic psychotherapy one must uncover the roots of a lack of self-esteem …

In behavioral psychotherapy a lack of necessary self-esteem is the result of a vicious circle of thought in which reflections upon failure lead to real failure, which lead to future reflections upon failure, and so on ad infinitum. The object of the cognitive behavioral therapy is break the vicious circle, thus transforming a wretched mouselike creature who barely dares to leave his mouse hole into a go-getter who wins friends and influences people. It is not difficult to see the connection between these ideas and the modern pedagogic tendency to praise children for their efforts, however desultory …

The notion of self-love or self-esteem is in itself either ridiculous or repellent. No one ascribes his good character or successes in life to an adequate fund of self-esteem … Self-doubt, within reason, is something to be overcome; self-esteem is complacency elevated to an ontological plane.

In the world, self-importance and its kissing cousin self-affirmation are all the rage. Literally. Affirm one’s self and thereby avoid and denounce all critical examination. Allow others to generously affirm you at no cost to yourself. And, if someone gets close to the beloved self with the light of truth then release all stored-up wrath to blow out the candle.

 

What Are You So Affirmed Of?

Those who behave this way act out of fear. They do not know the affirmation of God that releases them from fear. As it is written, There is no fear in love; complete love drives out fear. Fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not been completed in love.

Jesus summed up his affirmation of us on the cross as he honored his own words: There is no greater affirmation than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. The world sums up its affirmation in self-image participation trophies and fortune cookies.

Filed under Christian character, Christianity, Psychology Tagged with , , ,

Mental Illness or Moral Illness or a Life Well-Lit

August 3, 2015 Leave a comment

“See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.” Jesus, from an eyewitness account recorded by Luke the physician, chapter 11, verse 35.

“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” Jesus as recorded in the eyewitness account of Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6, verses 22 and 23.

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I don’t have to tell you that mental health and the lack thereof has been in the news lately. Tied mainly to reports of mass killings, the national mental health issue has been spotlighted when evil rears its ugly head. This post is about perspective on the mental health industry from someone who knows and for those on the treadmill of psychoanalysis.

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We learned the other day that the mass murderer Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez supposedly suffered from depression “…Abdulazeez’s family said he suffered from depression for years, and condemned the “heinous act of violence.””

Yet, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez willfully and coherently texted “an Islamic verse: “Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, then I have declared war against him.” Then, Abdulazeez immediately acted out those words by killing four Marines and a sailor.

Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez

Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez

GIGO: Abdulazeez was not depressed. Rather, he was unhappy, bored and dissatisfied with his view of the West and probably with himself. Stoking his ego with radical Islamist mal-machismo and personal grandiosity, Abdulazeez thought he would become bigger than life itself by becoming part of something that he thought was even bigger than himself – Islam’s Grand Jihad and the Slaughter of Innocents.

Psychology would not have benefitted the mental health of Abdulazeez. Psychology does not judge right from wrong. Psychology is the multiculturalism of all values, the egalitarian leveler of all thoughts into equal subjective and even political values.

Could it be that psychology, like gun laws is ineffectual due to the depraved moral character of the persons involved? Could it be that the individual’s eye and society’s eye is NOT focused on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”  (From the apostle Paul’s to epistle to the Philippian church, chapter 4, verse 8.)

With regard to mankind’s focus and his progress in the area of proper human self-reflection…”Psychology is not a key to self-understanding, but a cultural barrier to such understanding as we can achieve…” from the Preface of “Admirable Evasions, How Psychology Undermines Morality” by Theodore Dalyrymple, 2015.

Admirable Evasions

Admirable Evasions

Who is Theodore Dalyrymple? Theodore Dalyrymple is a pen name used by retired prison psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Daniels. I have written about Dalrymple in a previous post (see below).

 

Theodore Dalrymple aka Anthony Daniels, retired prison psychiatrist

Theodore Dalrymple aka Anthony Daniels, retired prison psychiatrist

“Admirable Evasions” sheds much-needed light on the mental health industry and in particular on the proactive diagnosis of depression.

Commercially advertised medications are prescribed to stave off unhappiness, dissatisfaction and ennui. Depression as a mental health state is used in courtrooms (and the media, as shown above) as a defense. Thus, responsibility for one’s felony first degree murder is not correlated to one’s accumulated misbehavior or evil compounded into utter darkness.

Dalrymple’s book, as the sub-title puts forward, exposes the absolution of patients from moral culpability. Psychology, instead, seeks to divine a secret knowledge through its Sisyphean scientism efforts in hopes of uncovering the ‘deep’ mystery of the patient’s unhappiness. We read also of the consumer’s constant demand for felicity and the bottom line commercialism behind antidepressant prescriptions. Dalrymple also provides a brief and sardonic history of psychoanalysis.

“The purpose of such all-encompassing understanding, other than moral self-aggrandizement, is the evasion of one’s own moral responsibility; for it follows that if no one is to be judged (because to judge is to judge harshly), then one is not oneself to be judged-not even by oneself. This, in effect, means carte blanche to do as you feel like, because all behavior is put on equal moral footing; it is only to be understood.” (Chapter Four)

Briefly, scientism is a coupling of the lexicon and theories of science with pop culture, anthropology, politics, popular consensus and ultimately with Neo-Darwinism. Scientism becomes a form of ‘truth’ through repetition and consensus opinion. Scientism is the appearance, the apparition, of science and not the reality of science.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) for example, is a frequent scientism apparition. And, just as in the opening scene of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the apparition of AGW sets a macabre and eerie tone while foreshadowing a theme of death.

Scientism, like Hamlet’s apparition’s appearance is expected by ‘those in the know’ to be feared and revered-the spirit of Mother Gaia is to be worshipped.

But scientism, uncoupled from reality and from this earth, is not subjected to honest reflection on the empirical science or the realities of cost to benefit analysis (see my previous post). Scientism seeks to generate free-floating angst meant to separate you from your money for the ‘right’ environ-mental cause and candidate.

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Theodore Dalrymple has worked in the mental health industry over a course of a lifetime, mostly with prison inmates. With characteristic insight, candor, humor and background Dalrymple empowers the reader with his common sense observations about the mental health industry. He tells us that the mental health industry is NOT based on science. (This pseudo-science has to finance its own grandiosity by repeating its weekly psychic readings.)

Using his logo centric cerebral scanner Dalrymple gives us his diagnosis of mental health scientism where experimentation becomes published ‘settled science” until the next ‘sure’ thing comes along. Counseling “initiates” sooner or later are subjected to new ‘insights’ but the game is always to designate them as “victims”, victims who need to forgive themselves and/or learn to churn out positive self-esteem so as to inflate the ego and ward off scary intruders. And, remember Primal Screaming? “Shout, shout, Let it all out.”

“We [the mental health industry] need everyone who suffers to be a victim because only thus can we maintain our pretense to universal understanding and experience the warm glow of our own compassion, so akin to the warmth that a strong, stiff drink imparts in the cold.” (Chapter Four)

From Chapter One: “The first psychological scheme of the twentieth century to provide man with the illusion of much expanded, if not complete, self-understanding, together with hope of an existence free of inner and outer conflict, was psychoanalysis, then came behaviorism, after which came cybernetics, Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology were next; and now neuroscientific imaging, together with a little light neurochemistry, persuades us that we are about to pluck out the heart of our mystery. Suffice it to say, by way of deflation of exaggerated hopes and expectation, that 10 percent or more of the population now takes antidepressants, a figure is all the more remarkable as the evidence is lacking that they, the antidepressants, work except in a very small minority of cases; rather the reverse. That they are taken in such quantities is evidence more of dissatisfaction with life than of increased understanding of its causes, as well as of the spread of superstition regarding neurotransmitters and so-called “chemical imbalances.” (emphasis added)

Dalrymple goes on to talk about the absurdities of Freudianism and of Freud himself: [Freud] belonged more to the history of techniques of self-advancement and the foundation of religious sects than to that of science… He says Freud was ”a habitual liar who falsified evidence…”and “ he was a self-aggrandizing manipulator of people…”

“Admirable Evasions” delves into the mental health industry’s ‘absolution’ of a patient’s wrong doing based on as yet to be determined psychological mysteries locked in the patient’s brain. Hence the undermining and “Evasion” of morality as the book’s title posits. Hence, morally deficit people are left to roam our streets and at times kill others. Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is not a defense in court or a comfort to those who have lost a loved one to amoral psychoanalysis with its lawless diagnosis.

“Men can change; this is their glory and their burden, for it is precisely the capacity to change that renders them responsible for their actions; but what they do may be irreparable.”

The above quote from Admirable Evasions is found within the article “The Multiple Lives of Mehdi Nemmouche” . There Dalrymple talks about the “doctrine of the Real Me”.   

Mehdi Nemmouche

Mehdi Nemmouche

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Everyone wants an out…

Remember CPL Max Klinger of the MASH unit who feigned mental illness (in women’s clothes) so as to be discharged as unfit?

Remember “The devil made me do it.”?

On the couch, morality is posited as just a scary apparition, an angry “Epicurean” god, a figment of a tormented mental condition, an unwarranted guilt complex, genes gone awry, synapses misfiring or firing at the wrong time due to over-stimulation. One Nudge too far!

To neo-Darwinists, morality is considered a Darwinian materialist’s adaption to one’s societal surroundings. Neo-Darwinists do not want to go where morality dwells because that would entail submitting to a Moral Absolute. It is much easier for their pride to accept a humanist’s scientism solution every time. It is easier for them to dabble in the mystical arts of new age scientism.

Dalrymple, in a footnote, admits that he (an atheist) has no moral high ground of his own:  “The fact that I do not have any watertight metaphysic of morals does not mean that psychology can just rush in to fill the gap.”

…but fools rush into the utter darkness anyway.

“…Emerson said in one of his brief excursions into comprehensibility, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” (Chapter Four)

The default diagnosis of mental illness proffered by the media and by the waiting in the wings defense psychologists is most likely evil and its focus on fatalism.

“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

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Theodore Dalrymple’s answer to the mental health industry’s inability to improve one’s healthy self-awareness is straightforward-read good literature. Read and become self-aware after reflecting on the characters and the situations they encounter in the book. I agree. Psychoanalysis tends to be a masturbation of the ego.

I also agree, as Dalrymple asserts, there is some good in the mental health industry. There are those who are dealing with incurable psychosis. These need help working with reality. But, most people do not need the packaged nonsense. They do need good books, good friends, exercise and to be held accountable for their actions by their friends and society before the point of no return.

As a Christian, I would strongly suggest that if you are desirous of a healthy mind that you also turn your eyes upon Jesus. Cable TV and today’s media have nothing healthy to offer you. You won’t find moral absolutes on TV.

Consider the following offering to evil:

“Lady Gaga’s Bisexual ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ Character Revealed in Sexiest Season Yet”

[Ryan] “Murphy tells ET that he plans to initiate Gaga with a particularly “disturbing and awful” murder scene with her co-star Bomer, when the show begins filming next week.”

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“Diversion is the only thing that consoles us in our wretchedness, and yet diversion is itself the greatest of our miseries. For it is diversion above all that keeps us from seriously taking stock of ourselves and so leads us imperceptibly to perdition.”

—Pascal, Pensées

From the Evil One’s point of view, the liturgy of psycho-babble is meant to replace the Lord ’s Prayer.

In Jesus you learn to forgive others and no longer hold grudges or unresolved anger. Any root of bitterness is soon uprooted and you are free to plant a plush garden in its place. That garden will be where Jesus comes to visit-as he did with St. Teresa of Avila and where He also visits me.

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“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20

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I have written about Dalrymple in a previous post: “Three Atheists I Listen To”

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A second opinion:  “The Moral Limits of Psychology”

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Added 8/6/2015: 

Bryant Brewer

Bryant Brewer

Judge rejects insanity defense, convicts man in Chicago cop’s murder:

“Following more than 2 1/2 hours of closing arguments, Judge Timothy Joyce concluded that Bryant Brewer wasn’t mentally ill but simply chose “not to be bound by society’s norms.”

“The only completely truthful thing I heard from (Brewer) is that he’s a cop killer,” the judge said as Soderberg’s widow, Jennifer Loudon, clutched a tissue in her right hand. “He brutally, callously, viciously and without compunction murdered Officer Thor Soderberg.””

…

Officer Thor Soderberg

Officer Thor Soderberg

“Joyce delivered a lengthy verdict, finally announcing the guilty decision after 8 p.m. He found Brewer guilty on all counts — including the attempted murder of three other officers in addition to Soderberg’s first-degree murder.

The judge concluded that the defense presented no admissible evidence that Brewer had schizophrenia.”

 

 

 

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Added 8-7-2015, from NBC News:

“…the same jury that convicted Holmes of 24 counts of first-degree murder and 140 counts of attempted murder last month in the July 20, 2012, massacre at a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora. The jury deliberated less than 13 hours before reaching that decision.”

“Defense attorneys argued that [James] Holmes suffered from schizophrenia and he was legally insane when he carried out the attack. The jury rejected that defense in finding Holmes guilty.”

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Added: 10-4-2015

This astounding finding should be an integral part of the mental health debate:

Robert Whitaker author of Anatomy of an Epidemic asks the question, here paraphrased…

Is there a correlation between the increase of prescribed psychotropic medications over the past twenty-five years and the current epidemic of disabling mental illness? He notes that the disabled mentally ill place a significant burden on society.

Filed under mental health, Political Commentary, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,