Motivation

MOTIVATION   

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.   1-11

Human beings are constructed with "natural" inclinations to seek the cessation of unpleasant sensations and feelings and to seek to feel pleasant sensations and feelings.  We can call this total sense of one’s current experience the "internal environment."  These motivating experiences are actually biological events in our nervous systems, and therefore only partially  definable in human language, but we naturally seek to understand them through language, and these motives can be generally categorized in terms of the behaviors that we use in attempting to change a negative internal state to a positive one or simply to augment a positive one.  (Motives can only be identified through observing the correlations between identified feelings and resultant behaviors.)

         1—to find food, water, air, and a non-harmful environment,

       in order to continue existing

         2—in early years, to find touch, love, comfort, and

       empathy, to support our emotional development (in later

       life, this may be a continued desire for self-development                 

       or simply a desire for a positive emotional state)

         3—to find physical comfort (and stop or avoid

       pain/discomfort or bodily damage)

         4—to find security (and stop or avoid insecurity, which is

       often chained to experiences in which not being able to

       predict or control what is about to happen to one has led

       to negative experiences)

       (Security is often sought through equilibrium or

       homeostasis and efforts to find congruence and

       resolution.)

5—to be in a positive emotional state which we do by

  regulating our emotions, seeking pleasurable experiences,

  and gratifying desires 

  (This includes having positive self-esteem—to have

  positive reactions to self and not to be conflicted about

  rejected aspects of self, and also includes conditioned

  desires such as objects, money, important environments,

  etc.)

  (To be in a positive emotional state often requires

  avoiding or stopping emotional pain, especially fear of

       difference, fear of the unknown, fear of death,

       feeling rejected/alone, and feeling other unpleasant

       emotions such as shame, guilt, etc.)

         6—to nurture a child

         7—to have sex

8-to rise or at least to maintain one’s position in

  applicable status hierarchies

9-to defend and protect one’s primary groups (family,

  village, nation, etc.) and to help, in crisis, members of

  one’s primary groups

The reader might perceive that motives 2 (touch, love, comfort, and empathy) and 4 (security) could logically be subsumed under 5 (positive emotional state), but they are so important for development and so constantly on our minds that it is useful to attend to them separately.

Given our current understanding of DNA and heritable traits, it is reasonable to view all of these fundamental motives as inherent to the human organism rather than learned.  How an individual goes about responding to these motives does involve learning and is shaped by the specific environment in which the individual lives.  Perhaps the least obviously biological of the motives is security, but security is actually a sub-item of “seeking to change a negative emotional state to a positive one” in the sense that we seek to escape from the anxiety of insecurity and achieve a more comfortable and more secure state.

People vary in the importance of the approach and avoidance poles of motivation.  Some will tolerate more unpleasant sensations and feelings without seeking to stop them, and some do not work as hard to create pleasant sensations and feelings. 

Every behavior is motivated.  It is easy to understand some motives, such as being hungry or thirsty or feeling shame, but others are more complex, and some we attempt to hide from ourselves and from others, particularly the ones that we as a group typically disapprove of (acting selfishly, harming others in order to gain revenge or to gain advantage over others, etc.).

It is worth noting that many behaviors are multi-determined—i.e., are the result of more than one motive.  With regard to psychological issues, desire for security and for a positive emotional state are predominant.  Curiosity is perhaps not so much a motive as a product of the never-ceasing attention that we pay to the world around us, in the context of our momentary need states.  Boredom is the absence of motivation.

These nine are not simply "fundamental" motives, but rather these are all of the available motives for human beings.  All other motives claimed by people are derivatives of these.  If one says he wants a job, his motive is actually to gain whatever a job will give him, such as money to enable him to get food and shelter, status, to feel more secure, etc.  A job may also help him to be in a positive emotional state, from the interactions with others on the job, from feeling good about himself for his accomplishments on the job, or from fulfillment or satisfaction from the work. 

With regard to the desire to get a job, a person is usually aware of the actual motives and could name some of them is asked why he wants a job.  For other motives, people are not as aware of why they really want what they think they want.  When people say they want to have friends or a primary relationship, they may not be able to name the underlying motives, such as to feel more secure and to be in a positive emotional state (from feeling loved. acknowledged, etc.).  Some would prefer to view the motive to relate as a fundamental motive, but I believe that it can be satisfactorily and more accurately accounted for by reference to the motives listed above.  Relationships are simply the source of many of the more fundamental things we want.

When a person states a desire for something, it is useful to understand the desire in terms of the motives listed above, for then we are best able to help the person to get what he really wants, as opposed to what he says he wants.  A person may say and think that he wants a friend, when what he really wants is recognition and love.  Understanding things in terms of fundamental motives also helps us not to be misled, since people often claim to have motives that they think will be acceptable to others, while actually having a different motive or desire, such as when a person says she wants to be your friend when what she actually wants is to get your help or your money.  Parents may sometimes say that what they are requiring of a child is “for the child’s own good” when what they actually want is for the child to behave in ways that do not cause the parents trouble.  All of the manipulations, maneuvers, and stratagems that take place in relationships are aimed at satisfying the fundamental motives listed above.

People may be at least temporarily satisfied with something (such as attention) that they associate with something else that is their real desire (such as love).  People sometimes make the one a measure of the other (“if I am getting a sufficient amount of attention, then it proves that I am loved”).  A child may settle the anxiety-provoking question of what grades will please his parents by deciding to get all A’s, since then his parents will have to be pleased.  This illustrates how conditioning chains develop, and these chains can be several links long.

The "internal environment" is the sum of our internal experience, consisting of sensations as well as our emotions and their derivatives (“existential states”, such as fulfillment and satisfaction, which are combinations of cognitive and emotional activities in the brain).  "Subjective state" is the overall experiencing condition of the person at any moment, as distinct from the various specific experiences of the moment (sensations and emotions) themselves.  "Emotional state" will be defined as the emotions and their derivatives that one feels at any moment.

With normal or "average" experience, the fundamental human motives (food, physical comfort, security, positive emotional state, sex, etc.) will develop in a positive direction (i.e., food will be sought and enjoyed; life will be viewed as basically good; etc.).  These normally positive motives, however, can, through particular experiences, be altered in direction (i.e., food can be viewed ambivalently and sometimes avoided; desire to end life can be predominant; safety and comfort can be derided; insecurity can be courted; anguish and despair can be valued over happiness; etc.).  These inversions of motive still serve a fundamental motive, though, as when the desire to die is imagined to mean the end of pain or as an act that will elicit the concern from others that they person craves.

For the most part, all of the fundamental human motives except positive emotional state are sought in straightforward ways.  We seek straightforwardly to get our daily food, to avoid harm in the world, to find comfort in our homes and relationships, and to arrange our lives so that we feel basically secure.  Seeking a positive emotional state, however, is sought in unique ways by each individual, since it involves complex mental efforts to feel certain feelings and not to feel others.  An individual may be more avoidant of shame than other individuals, because of his particular upbringing, or he may be more desirous of acceptance than others.

Human beings are constructed so as to normally be able to feel a range of emotions or feelings (see the table of emotions and experiential states).  Societal culture and family culture play a role in determining which of these naturally possible emotions will be emphasized as being important for societal and family interactions (and, to some extent, will play a role even in determining what these emotions will be, out of the myriad of possibilities for combinations of the fundamental, biologically-occurring events that we call emotions).  Some cultures use shame, for example, more intensely as a mechanism of social control, while others rely more heavily on guilt or on the consequences of behavior.

The key to understanding motivation is that every behavior is motivated by an effort to alter the internal environment (all physical sensations, plus one's emotional state) in a desired direction.  Behaviors may appear to be motivated by something outside the self (desire for a car, desire for a friend, etc.), but this is only because these actions will affect something inside the self.  This is not to say that people are necessarily "selfish," but simply that this is the way the human organism is constructed.  Take as an example the behavior of a parent who offers to exchange his life for that of his child (with a kidnapper or terrorist).  This behavior is not motivated by what may happen to the child, but by the effect that what may happen to the child has on the parent.  The parent considers what he will feel like if the child dies in this circumstance versus his anticipation (in thought and feeling) of dying himself for saving the life of the child.  He may think things like "It wouldn't be worth living if my child dies," or "It wouldn't be worth living if I fail to act to save my child," or "I've had a long life; my child deserves a chance at the same."  Then, based on his values and the consequences to himself (including the effects of the child’s death on him), the parent decides how to act.  The child, the child's value, and the child's relationship with the parent are all part of the evaluation/decision process, but ultimately we choose based on ourselves.  This evaluation and decision process may, of course, take place almost instantly and without much consciousness, but the evaluation and decision process does take place and leads to the decision to act.  (This does not make the parent "selfish," or "self-centered," since I am arguing that we all determine every one of our actions in this way.  To be "selfish" or "self-centered" relates to putting an excessive amount of value on the self's concerns versus the concerns of others, compared to how other people in our particular group do this.  In order to have an adaptive and successful life, we must perceive others' interests to be important, and we must put others' interests ahead of our own frequently.  But, it is our choice to put others' interests ahead of our own, based on our sense of the benefits to us of doing so.)

Understanding fundamental motives is not only useful in understanding others, helping them, and avoiding their manipulations, but is also useful for understanding ourselves.  This requires understanding fundamental versus more surface or chained motives, and it requires being honest with ourselves about our real reasons for doing things.  Instead of hiding from ourselves what we really want (“I’m just trying to help,” “This is hurting me more than it does you,” “Of course I love you,” “I really am a nice person; they just don’t understand,” etc.), by being clear with ourselves about what our real goals are, we can have a greater chance of achieving them.  After achieving greater self-honesty, the hypocrisy of others can be annoying to us, but self-honesty can also be humbling and can lead to greater compassion for others as they struggle with the vicissitudes of being human!  As a start, examine the list of fundamental motives as you think about some of your own behaviors that you don’t understand, that others complain about, or that you suspect may stem from motives other than the ones you claim.  Don’t avoid seeing the truth about yourself.  We are all basically the same in motives, and you know, therefore, that most others are having the same struggles and doing the same self-deceptions!

essays\motivation    from serensys2 (and normdev2)

Meaning--Finding It and Making It

MEANING—FINDING IT AND MAKING IT

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.     1-4-11

Abstract:  What human beings call “meaning” and “having a sense of meaning” in their lives is described, and psychological elements and processes that contribute to meaning are identified.  Suggestions are made for adding meaning to one’s life.

Key Words:  meaning, meaningful, purpose, values, fundamental emotions, fundamental motives

Human beings like to “feel meaning” in their lives, since this is both pleasant and a signal that what we are doing in life is “right” for us.  Our desire for meaning arises when we want our lives to “mean something” or we say “what does it all mean?”

Meaning can be found through both cognitive and emotional means.  We are not biologically given an inbred or automatic cognitive sense of meaning but are on our own to create it.  The desire for cognitive meaning is usually only satisfied by “making sense of things” or seeing “the big picture” in a satisfying way, although we may also engage in activities that seem to “justify” our rationales regarding meaning.  For those seeking cognitive meaning, feeling some success in explaining and understanding reality (human beings, life, the world, the universe, etc.) leads to satisfaction and usually to some sense of meaning (particularly if the person feels that a part of his purpose is to understand and explain).

In the emotional realm, we have some relatively automatic responses that relate to and sometimes “give” meaning.  The desire for emotional meaning leads people to engage in activities “that give my life meaning” so that they can feel that sense of meaning.

The “meaning” that one feels or senses regarding one’s activities or one’s life is brief, can come at any time, is somewhat like a feeling of satisfaction in one’s activities or one’s life but additionally is a sense that one’s actions or life are “right” in the sense that they are right for one and that they demonstrate what one believes in or what one views as important.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines “meaning” (in the sense that we are exploring here) as a “significant quality” and defines “meaningful” as “having a meaning or purpose” and “significant.”  (Obviously Webster is not much concerned with human beings’ psychological desires to have “meaning” in their lives, unless “meaning” means nothing more than “significant”!)

Our desire for meaning is most closely connected with our values, and in general if a person is living much of the time in accord with her values, she will feel satisfaction from doing so and will also feel a sense of meaning.  Living a conscious and value-driven life (if those values are freely chosen) will lead most people to feel that they are living meaningful lives.

Our desire for meaning is also closely related to our desire for purpose in life, and many people are sufficiently satisfied with regard to meaning if they have a strong sense of purpose that they feel that they are carrying out (raise children well; lead the community; do God’s will; be who my parents wanted me to be; etc.).  If one feels fated (that one has not chosen one’s purpose but had it imposed on one), then fulfilling one’s purpose is not likely to give one a sense of meaning.  Also, if one feels that one is not carrying out one’s purpose to the best of one’s ability, then there will be little satisfaction or sense of meaning.

On the psychological side of things, I hypothesize that at least a fleeting feeling of meaning physiologically occurs every time we contact (feel) our deeper, more fundamental positive emotions (joy, love/affection, wonder/amazement, relief, contentment, excitement) and every time we feel success at serving and/or gratifying a fundamental motive (to find food, water, air, and a non-harmful environment; to find touch, love, comfort, and empathy; to find physical comfort (and stop or avoid pain/discomfort or bodily damage); to find security (and stop or avoid insecurity); to be in a positive emotional state; to nurture a child; and to have sex).  I suggest that finding things other than these meaningful depends on conditioned or logical connections between them and these fundamentally “meaningful” neural states.  (Making money may feel meaningful or give one’s life meaning, but this is because for the individual it is associated with comfort and/or security.)

As an example, much as we might not like that it is true, many people feel satisfaction and meaning from defending their loved ones by violence.  Directly defending one’s family serves a number of our fundamental motives (continued existence, love, security, positive emotional state, children, sex partner), and these are also felt when we participate in war that we believe is preserving our opportunities to gratify those fundamental motives.

What does “meaning” “mean”?  Sometimes one’s feeling of meaning can be readily understood and “makes sense” to one as it relates to current actions.  For instance, watching our child’s wedding would arouse a sense of meaning in most of us, which we could readily identify as summarizing our satisfaction (and self-satisfaction) with our part in raising the child to this point, as well as our wonder at the process of life creating life over and over.  Defending a loved one against attack would also arouse a strong sense of meaning, relating to the importance to us of the safety of that person.  However, meaning is a deep response, and there will be times when it is only vaguely clear why we are feeling it.  As noted above, we feel “meaning every time we contact (feel) our deeper, more fundamental positive emotions and every time we feel success at serving a fundamental motive.  Many times we experience a number of emotions together or serve several motives at once, so our feeling of meaning at any moment can actually be a mixture of meaning responses.

In Man’s Search for Meaning Victor Frankl emphasizes the value and satisfaction in surviving (even in terrible circumstances) and in helping others to survive and flourish, and from his experiences in concentration camps, he finds these to be the most fundamental sources of meaning.  Many people find sufficient meaning in helping others (Big Brothers, food kitchens, visiting the sick, etc.).

Many people find a strong sense of meaning in participating in large group activities (war, watching football or sermons in a stadium, political rallies, lynching), which probably relates to our sense of safety and gratification in our early lives as part of our families, as well as to our innate tendency to “school” like fish or line up together in parallel in group activities.

In a more general sense, many people feel considerable meaning from being an active part of a valued larger entity or enterprise (church, science, nation, corporation), which again probably originates in our early family experiences.

Finally, people often feel meaning or find life meaningful when they do something that means something to someone else.  We probably learn this from pleasing our parents, and it extends to finding meaning in serving any valued authority (Pope, parent, boss).

In summary, an activity is experienced as meaningful or a life as full of meaning if it embodies and expresses our values, sense of purpose, and/or what we think to be important.  We feel a sense of meaning or meaningfulness when we become aware of how our actions or our lives are “right” for us and are demonstrating what we believe is important in life.  Our values, sense of purpose, and what we think to be important are constructed as we grow up to be consistent with, serve, and express our fundamental emotions and motives.

DIFFICULTIES IN FINDING MEANING IN LIFE

There are a number of circumstances that can make it difficult to experience a satisfying sense of meaning.

1. First of all, if one is not in touch with (willing to feel) one’s deeper emotions, then one will to that extent reduce one’s opportunities to feel meaning.  And, if one is holding back from or sabotaging one’s efforts to satisfy one’s fundamental motives, to that extent one limits one’s opportunities to feel meaning.  Any life circumstances that cause one to avoid one’s feelings or to fail to satisfy one’s needs will reduce one’s chances of feeling meaning.  For many in our modern cultures, it is tempting to live by more superficial values such as status and monetary value, while telling ourselves that we “really” believe deeper and more eternal values.  Unfortunately you cannot do both.  Where you put your daily energies will determine your opportunities to feel meaning in your life.

2. If one has been raised to present a false front to the world, then it will be more difficult to identify aspects of self and activities that are truly aligned with what is fundamentally important to all human beings (our fundamental motives).

3. If one has been raised by someone who is bitterly disappointed in life, it may be hard to believe that it is worthwhile to risk being disappointed oneself, and one will shy away from the things about which one could be passionate and activities that could be experienced as meaningful.

4. If one has been exposed largely to superficial representations regarding meaning (emotions that are largely pretended, values such as money and status that are ultimately unsatisfying, etc.), then one may come to believe that meaning itself is false (and, of course, if one pursues those superficial emotions and values, one will keep oneself away from emotions and motives that could lead to a feeling of meaning).

5. Some people assume that things must be perfect in order to be meaningful or before one can feel any satisfaction.  Human life being what it is, no matter how we accommodate or try to fool ourselves, it is certainly never perfect!

6. A few people “see through” our human “making” of meaning, perceiving correctly that our very natures determine what we think of as meaningful.  If this is true, then what we experience as “meaning” is not related to any larger or more stable, moral, or consistent set of meaning or values outside ourselves, and this appears to these people to make any confidence or “belief” in what feels meaningful to us too tenuous and uncertain to trust.  The most common way of relating meaning to something outside our human frame of reference is to believe that “true” values are determined by God or some other super-human entity or force, and that the only “real” meaning relates to those revealed values.  Another way is to seek “eternal” or timeless values and to strive for their fulfillment.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO ADD MORE MEANING TO YOUR LIFE

If you would like to feel more of a sense of meaning about your activities and your life, here are some things to focus on.

1. Think seriously about what you believe is most important in life (money, power, status, religious belief, family, achievement, sports, helping others, etc.).  Write them down.

2. Write down the values you hold most dear (strength, loving kindness, honesty, responsibility, etc.).

3. Consider and write down what you believe your life’s purpose to be (or your primary purpose in life).  Why are you here?

4. Ask yourself whether you live by your values and what you think is important in life, and whether you consistently focus your energies on what you consider your purpose in life to be.

5. If you are living by your values and putting energy consistently into your purpose, but you still don’t feel much sense of meaning, ask yourself whether you might not be giving yourself enough credit and whether you give yourself opportunity to reflect on yourself and how you are living so that you could appreciate what you are doing and have a sense of meaning about yourself and your actions.

6. If you are not living by your values or furthering your purpose in life, ask yourself why not.  Are you too busy with other things (which might suggest that you actually think those other things are more important).

7. Create a plan for living in a manner more consistent with your values, your purpose, and what you believe in.  This might involve relating to people differently, changing who you have around you, changing jobs, going back to church, taking up a creative activity (or just taking time off to create this plan).

8. If the above steps do not seem to be working for you, ask yourself whether you might be denying the possibility of meaning in order to avoid being disappointed or because you have concluded that there is no such thing as meaning or that “everything is meaningless.”  Such conclusions may arise when one has been disappointed in people, activities, or institutions that were supposed to have meaning or supposed be better than they actually turned out to be (e.g., leaving the Catholic Church because of sexual abuse of others by priests; leaving the church in disappointment because God has “let” your loved one die; or abandoning your own behavioral control after being devastated by finding out that your parent has been breaking rules even while preaching the importance of those rules and trying to appear to be an upright and righteous person).  If you are wary of meaning or feel hurt about disappointments, you will need to make your peace with these existential issues before you will be able to engage in life on a positive basis again (through psychotherapy, pastoral counseling, revivification of your religious foundations, or some hard personal explorations and discipline).

Give yourself some time to consider these steps and to make some changes.  Come back to these issues over and over (revisit them once a month?) until you become clear about what you want to do and how to get there.

To find more meaning in life, organize your actions and your life around our deepest and most fundamental human emotions, and focus on living by and expressing your most treasured values.  Meaning is found in acting to express and further what we think is most important in life and to live out what we perceive to be our purpose.

essays\meaning

Personal Responsibility or Shared Responsibility?

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY OR SHARED RESPONSIBILITY?

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D., ABPP     1-13-11

ABSTRACT:  The U.S. believes in maximum freedom and near complete individual responsibility, but one of the results is denial by the rest of us of any responsibility for either influencing or helping those few citizens who may respond violently to feeling intolerable pain at what they perceive as abuse or unfair treatment by others.  In reality we do influence each other in society, both individually and through the ethos that we create as a group.  Since we wish to preserve maximum freedom, and we believe in near complete individual responsibility, we find it difficult to do what would be required to reduce this violence by the few citizens who react violently.  Acknowledging how we influence each other would be a first step toward reducing this violence.

KEY WORDS:  freedom, individual responsibility, shared responsibility, personal influence

In the U.S. we are witnessing yet another round of violence, soul-searching, arguments about responsibility, and efforts to overcome grief and look for meaning.  The shooting of a U.S. Representative in Tucson last Saturday by a young man who appears from reports to have been mentally unbalanced has led to accusations (by mostly “liberals”) that those who use violence-related rhetoric or symbols in their political speech (most of them “conservatives” these days) bear some responsibility for the actions of this young man.  These accusations are being resisted vigorously, partly by ad hominem arguments (“You’re only saying this because you want to make us look bad”) and partly by claiming that no one but the shooter could morally bear any responsibility for the shooting.  This claim is a radical expression of personal responsibility—i.e., that no one can “make” you do anything and that regardless of the influences on you from others, society, or the environment, you decide on your actions and therefore you bear all the responsibility and blame.

This “radical individuality” view of human beings is consistent with our American claim to be “self-made” men and women who are independent, consistent with our highly-prized and fiercely defended freedom to do whatever we want (limited only by the law), and consistent with the capitalist view of consumers who decide freely what to consume (“let the buyer beware”).

Radical individuality is a convenient view for society, in that it relieves others of all responsibility for an individual’s actions and leaves others free of such concerns so that they can pursue their own ends.  It also avoids the very difficult parceling out of legal responsibility in criminal cases by the courts that would be necessary if we viewed responsibility as shared in some ways.  How much legal responsibility would we assign to the parents of a convicted shooter, for example, after examining in detail their parenting practices, etc., if we viewed responsibility as shared?  (The courts already do parcel out responsibility in some civil cases where damages are concerned.) 

On the other hand, probably even hardened conservative radio commentators would have some hesitation at removing all moral responsibility from parents who horribly beat and otherwise abused a child who later kills them or someone else.  Our society has mixed feelings about excusing wives who are abused over time and kill the husbands who have abused them.  Those same radio commentators would probably praise a dedicated teacher whose students even thirty years later attribute some of their success to this teacher’s inspiration, but holding to a “no shared responsibility” view would suggest that the teacher deserves no gratitude, since the student took in what was helpful and used it and therefore deserves all the credit.  As a society we believe that businesses owe no responsibility to consumers beyond delivering what they promise, yet we allow consumers of tobacco to sue tobacco companies because they did not know of tobacco’s dangers(!).  (Amazingly inconsistent with that, the same opportunity to sue is not offered to consumers of alcoholic beverages.)  Boiling all of this down for our society, we know that we influence each other, but the waters are so murky that it is easier to ignore shared responsibility.

The chief focus of the current discussions is the influence of speech on others.  We cling to our principle of “free speech,” limiting it legally only to prohibiting incitement to violence against the government and prohibiting certain sexual speech.  We want to be able to say anything we want to say, to express whatever we “need” or want to express, without limit.  If this is really what we want, then we must acknowledge that our speech does influence others, since our wish to express ourselves “proves” that we hope that our speech will influence others!  Most people would probably acknowledge that speech can hurt greatly and that repeated pain from words can lead people to want to harm those who have hurt them.  We would also probably acknowledge that behaviors other than speech can hurt others, too (direct physical harm, taking advantage of someone, using rumor to get someone fired, etc.), and that this harm would predictably lead those who are harmed to want to hurt those who have harmed them.  If we preserve this right to express ourselves without limit (including the right to lie to others when we wish) and the right to harm others in other ways than speech (limited only by existing laws), then we must accept that we will experience periodically these outbursts of mass killing, as the hurt that a few people experience becomes too much for them to handle, and they resort to hurting back in response. 

There is no need to ask repeatedly why these killings occur (in the workplace, in our schools, in our courts).  We know why they occur.  Most people (probably including you and me) could engage in violence in response to a certain intolerable (for us individually) amount of harm or unfair treatment from others.  All (or almost all) mass public shootings are done by people who feel unfairly treated or harmed, through being fired, being given poor grades, being dumped by romantic partners, or being physically or emotionally abused.  We simply want to believe that no matter how our speech and behavior affect others, they should not try to harm or get back at us through violence, but a few of them will.  (We do accept “getting back” through emotional methods or financial manipulations.  We accept ruining another person’s life as long as it’s not done violently or illegally!)  This belief, that no matter what we do to others, they should not engage in violence toward us, protects our desire for freedom, relieves our legal system of an impossible task, and simply ignores the non-violent damage that we do to others.  It simplifies our lives, but reality then requires us to pay the price for ignoring how we affect others.

The most common argument against a shared responsibility view is the claim by an individual that he himself did not abuse that shooter, so he did not contribute to harm or to the emotions that later led to the shooting, and that therefore he bears no responsibility.  The counterargument is that he did nothing to stop the abuse, either himself directly or through his representatives (e.g., in the child welfare system), and that therefore he will share in paying the price for the results of the abuse, whether he wants to or not.  He would then say that he elected officials to take care of all of these problems and that they failed and not him.  The counterargument would be that he knew that they were not taking care of the problem but failed to elect someone else to do it.  In a sense he would be correct to say that he did his part, but people who choose (or are “driven to”) violence do not carefully assign their violence according to how the system is set up.  Inevitably, all of us (the total group of which the shooter is a part) pay some prices for some of our citizens being in situations that provoke deep and ongoing anger and hatred that in a few of those situations lead to violence.

The very size of our system contributes to our feeling that it is not our fault.  We assign every task to a specialist of some sort, including doing something about those who are in situations that might lead eventually to violence (soup kitchens, rescue homes, skid row missions, child protective services, adult protective service, etc.).  We feel that we have done our part, and we want to believe that we are both insulated from such problems and can justifiably wash our hands of responsibility, and then when we do have to pay some price, we complain that we don’t deserve it.  (It is somewhat curious that the President and other officials visited Tucson to help people there in their grief, but none of these persons visits when children are killed in gang shooting crossfire, which occurs every day in Los Angeles for the same general and psychological reasons for violence that are described here.)

It is the nature of human groups that severe inequities always lead to disruption.  These inequities are not simply in terms of income or status but more often involve the feeling that one has not been fairly treated or that one has not had the opportunities that everyone is “supposed” to have.  

We base our belief in freedom and opportunity in this country in the responsibility of every person to take care of himself—to work hard, succeed, and take for himself all of the benefits of his labor.  For this reason, even though we may be sympathetic, we don’t feel any responsibility for others’ bad situations.  We have given them opportunity (we think), and they haven’t succeeded, which is not our fault, so they shouldn’t take out their anger on us.

The other significant aspect of the current arguments about blame and responsibility have to do with the climate of society.  Some believe that the current amount of accusatory and defamatory political speech, including references to violence (“they should be horsewhipped,” “they deserve to die for killing babies,” etc.) makes it more likely that violence will occur.  Those who wish to engage in such speech or who are guarding their right to say anything they want to say do not believe this and defend themselves by pointing out that such speech has been common in this country and was engaged in by the Founding Fathers themselves.

It is fair to say that no one statement causes another person to kill, but it is overly simple to claim that such speech has no influence, particularly on those who are so unhappy that they are already thinking of violence.  For those who have mental problems and for those who do not, any statements urging violence or permitting violence add to the “reasons” in the individual’s mind that he or she is permitted to or “should,” in his or her frame of reference, engage in violence.  For example, certain statements by abortion foes about death to abortion providers clearly made it seem more OK for a man in Kansas to kill a doctor who performed abortions a year or so ago.  In a similar way, close participation in a group of people, who are all for or against some activity and who engage in some hyperbole of speech when they meet together or communicate, without question makes it just a little more acceptable in the minds of some participants to engage in the exaggerated activities talked about loosely in the group.  Defenders of free speech who “believe in” the “radical individuality” view of responsibility may still say that no one “should” be influenced, but we are human beings, and we are influenced.  This does not automatically mean that those whose speech influences someone should share in the responsibility for that person’s actions, but it means that those who speak cannot say that they had nothing to do with the person’s actions.

As one more example of how we influence each other whether we intend to or not, consider how human beings accommodate to their current situations.  Every circumstance, even a concentration camp, brings forth the brain’s ability to accommodate, so that over time the new circumstance seems more and more “normal.”  (This accounts partly for many abused children wanting to go back home rather than be placed and abused wives failing to leave abusive situations.)  It becomes difficult to remember how things were.  In plainer terms, people “get used to” whatever they consistently encounter, even if they maintain memory of and valuing of a previous situation.  For instance, even if most of us still believe and feel that murder is wrong and using a gun to harm someone is wrong (except in self defense), there is no doubt that we are more “used to” seeing gun violence than we were fifty years ago, because we have viewed thousands of incidents of gun violence in the media (movies, video games, TV).  The result is that gun violence seems more expectable and more “normal” when it occurs.  This accommodation happens to us unconsciously, so we are all affected. 

Persons vary, of course, in the degree to which they can hang onto their previous values while experiencing this sort of accommodation shift.  Some are aware of its incongruence with what they believe about violence, if they believe that gun violence should never occur except in war or self-defense.  The vast majority, however, unconsciously shift their values in response to the exposure, in the direction of being less shocked and a little more accepting of gun violence, particularly because of the large number of portrayals in the media of guns being used “justifiably” by those who have been wronged and are seeking revenge.  Many, also, have come to be fond of gun violence, because in watching it in the media, they work off a little bit of their own anger about their own situations in life, and a few fantasize just a little (or more) about taking a gun to work or to the mall and showing people that they matter, too.

We are all responsible for these subtle changes in attitude about violence and guns, because, together, we allow more and more exposure to the things that we deplore (including public sex as well as violence).  Showing extreme behavior in a movie or play can be effective in making a point, but only if it’s done only a few times.  Now violence and sex are used in media not to make a point but simply to attract viewers.  We tell ourselves that there’s no harm in this, since we ourselves are just titillated and will never shoot anyone or engage in promiscuous sex, but this society-wide exposure shifts the attitudes of most people in the direction that makes such behavior a little more acceptable.  This will inevitably lead to a few more people who are on the edge (for mental illness reasons or just unfortunate life experience) going over the edge and engaging in violence (a few more than would have done so without the exposure), because of the implicit message that what is in some sense acceptable to everyone (because it is allowed to be portrayed publicly) must be OK.

SUMMARY

It is the nature of human groups that severe inequities always lead to disruption.  These inequities may be in terms of income or status but more often involve the feeling that one has not been fairly treated or that one has not had the opportunities that everyone is “supposed” to have.

Mass killings are almost always carried out by people who feel that they have been abused or unfairly treated in life by others.  They may or may not have diagnosable mental problems.

Most people (including you and me) could engage in violence in response to a certain intolerable amount of harm or unfair treatment from others.  Some “abusive” speech is harmful enough to add to someone’s sense of being abused. 

Any statements urging violence or condoning violence add to the “reasons” in an individual’s mind that he or she can or even “should,” in his or her frame of reference, engage in violence in response to unfair harm. 

If we choose to preserve the right to express ourselves without limit and the right to harm others in other ways than speech (limited only by existing laws), then we will experience periodically outbursts of mass killing, when the hurt that a few people experience becomes too much for them to handle, and they resort to violently hurting back in response, particularly because we believe that they should take care of this hurt themselves, and we feel no obligation to help them with these feelings. 

The belief, that no matter what we do to others, they should not engage in violence toward us, protects our desire for freedom, relieves our legal system of an impossible task, and simply ignores the non-violent damage that we do to others.  It simplifies our lives, but reality then requires us to pay the price for ignoring how we affect others.  Inevitably, all of us pay some prices for some of our citizens being in situations that provoke deep and ongoing anger and hatred that in a few cases lead to violence.

People accommodate unconsciously to what they are repeatedly exposed to, and this can make violence seem more acceptable to some.  We are all responsible for the greater “normality” of violence and guns over time in our society, because, together, we allow more and more exposure to the things that we deplore.

Acknowledging the ways in which we do influence each other, sometimes harmfully, and the choices that we make that determine what is perceived as acceptable in society would be an important first step toward reducing the mass killing violence.

While this essay seeks to create insight about how we influence each other for good or ill, partly by debunking the myth of radical individuality, we should recognize that assuming radical individuality (and therefore radical responsibility for one’s life) leads to considerable motivation to act in one’s best interest (knowing that no one else will and that we will be held responsible by the group for all that we do).  It is not my intent to promote excuse-making and rationalization by individuals in order to escape responsibility or avoid efforts to support themselves, to contribute to their groups, and to make their own lives good ones.  We all bear primary responsibility for ourselves and our lives.  The point here is simply to recognize that we do influence others and our groups and to maximize the good effects of our influences.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

This essay has focused on increasing acceptance of the dictum that we all influence each other (that “everything is connected”) and that in that sense we have all had a part, however tiny, in the meanderings and convulsions of our society and its members.  For us as individuals, this suggests the value of being aware of how we influence others and the total group, so that we can then decide if we wish to change our influencing behaviors.  Outcomes will be worse for a society in proportion to the number of its citizens who focus only on what they can get and experience that day themselves, while ignoring their connectedness with others and what they could do to benefit others and society (which will ultimately benefit themselves as well).

Since we are biologically built both to promote our individual interests and to protect and contribute to our various groups, we must find a satisfying balance between the two.  Being totally self-centered in our choices is destructive to our groups, but being totally group-centered in our choices creates internal conflicts for the individual that lead to debilitation.  We must individually assign levels of responsibility that we accept for various types of influences that we have.  The key to staying sane while doing this is to recognize that all of our actions are driven by what we consider to be in our best interest, so that actions that we take to benefit our groups are really aimed at our own benefit—determined by our built-in sense of what will be in our best interest—and are not therefore really sacrifices.  (Altruistic actions, even giving up one’s life for another, are determined by our own assessment about what will be best, and sometimes what we believe at that moment will be best includes our own demise!)  Another key (and blessed) guide in the responsibility game is that we have only so much time and energy.  There are limits to what we can do, and all we can do is to apportion our time and energy appropriately.  We must also recognize the larger limits of our influence.  Most of us as individuals will have only small influences in society (although those who devote their entire energies to a focused cause can sometimes have significant impact), but we have much larger influences on those we interact with daily.

Most of our time and energy will go toward supporting ourselves and those who are dependent on us and to nurturing the social connections that enrich our lives.  In the course of these daily activities, however, we have frequent choices of how to act and which activities to support with our money.  We can choose how we treat others, either in ways that contribute to their well-being or in ways that harm or take advantage of them.  We are not faced with a choice of benefiting either ourselves or others.  Treating others in ways that contribute to their well-being can be done in ways that also help us to accomplish our goals.  We can use our money to further environmental, healthcare, self-development, or moral interests, depending on what we view as important.

I will not champion any particular distribution of beliefs, time, energy, and money, but I do urge all of us to do this consciously.  Individuals bear some moral/ethical responsibility for ill in society if they have directly harmed others and if they have done nothing to alleviate or correct societal malfunctions that harm others.  There is no formula for how what to do, how much to do, or how much to give, and we will all make different choices of how to help others and how to shape society, but the critical thing is to be doing what we can.  We can all develop our sensitivities and attitudes so as to best express our values and what we believe in, and if we truly want what is best for others as well as ourselves, how we treat others may be the biggest contribution that most of us make.

Mass killings will occur, regardless of how much we try to avert them, and if we have done our best to treat others in respectful, accepting, and supportive ways, and if we have attended to what we can do to promote a healthy society and well-being for all, then we can only feel deeply the sadness of the events, grieve for the losses and the damage to the social fabric, support those who have been harmed directly, and consider whether there is anything else that we wish to do to minimize such tragedies.

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Mulsim Complaints About the U.S. and the West

MUSLIM COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE U.S. AND THE WEST

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.   1-6-11

It seems reasonable to posit that understanding the grievances and feelings of others toward one gives the best opportunity for settling disputes and avoiding violence.  This was certainly true of the “war on terrorism” that the U.S. is engaged in, but it has led only to the most superficial focus on the feelings and attitudes of Muslims around the world regarding the United States and the West in general.  Our media reported comments by some that the U.S. “deserved” the 9-11 disaster, and other Muslims felt some satisfaction that the U.S. had been taken down a peg.  The overwhelming majority of Muslims decried the 9-11 violence, of course (although this was not well publicized in our media), as well as the violence that has followed.  As in most wars, our media have ignored the question of whether Al-Qaeda has some legitimate complaints and reasons to oppose and even attack the U.S.  The U.S., like most countries, cannot see its own flaws and considers all of its actions appropriate and blameless.  This situation provides an opportunity to see ourselves through the eyes of others and to learn something about ourselves, but we are letting it slip away, and the government and the media have done almost nothing to take advantage of the opportunity.

Historically Western countries have taken advantage of and bullied Middle Eastern Muslim countries for business gain, starting before World War I.  The West was involved even in setting some nations’ boundaries in the Middle East (including Iraq and Iran).  Muslims naturally resent this patronizing and disrespectful treatment.  (See the history of the Middle East in the Twentieth Century for more on this.  It is of interest also that China resented this same sort of disrespectful, self-serving, manipulative treatment toward it by the West and now feels some satisfaction in evening up the score with its growing economic and military power.)

Since World War II the U.S. has stationed some of its military forces overseas, to reduce the chances of further wars (although the need for this is now quite unclear due to the break-up of the Soviet Union).  One of Al-Qaeda’s main reasons for starting its attacks on the West was the presence of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia.  These bases were agreed to by the Saudi government, but Al-Qaeda saw the presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil as intolerable disrespect (to Islam as well as to Saudi Arabia).  (Differing ideas of what constitutes honor and respect add to this issue.)  Before you dismiss this as silly, ask yourself how you would feel about having foreign troops on U.S. soil.  (It’s hard to imagine, because we have not needed such troops, but try anyway.)  Imagine having Chinese army bases on the West and East coasts, supposedly to help us defend our country.  We could assume that we would not need or tolerate this unless we really needed the help, and that therefore we would feel OK about it, but imagine yourself driving by such bases, seeing the Chinese flag, seeing Chinese troops marching on parade, and knowing that Chinese troops get financial privileges in the local economy that U.S. citizens do not have.  (You may not realize that U.S. troops have such financial privileges when stationed in other countries.)  Throughout the Iraq war, even those Iraqis who were glad to have Saddam Hussein overthrown still wanted American troops out of the country, and one of the factors working against the U.S. in Afghanistan right now is the strong desire by the Afghan populace to have U.S. troops out of the country .  I’m guessing that most of us would feel the same about foreign troops in the U.S.

Perhaps the issue evoking the greatest animosity among Muslims toward the West is the West’s apparently unthinking support for Israel and lack of concern about displaced Palestinians and their needs.  Israel has somehow become a sacred cause in the U.S. and one that cannot be questioned and can do no wrong.  It may certainly be appropriate for the U.S. to militarily guarantee Israel’s survival against its resentful neighbors, but it has also become apparent over the decades that Israel could settle the Palestinian questions in as fair a manner as realistically possible, perhaps even in a unilateral manner, but chooses not to do so.  Thus, the failure of the U.S. to put effective pressure on Israel to do all it can to settle the Palestinian questions appears to Muslims to be egregious favoritism, and it puts the lie to any other expressions by the U.S. of concern for Muslims.  Is it any wonder that many, many Muslims doubt the sincerity of the U.S. and doubt that the U.S. really views them as equal citizens of the world community?

Americans may need to be reminded that the Israeli-Palestinian problem originated when, after World War II, Jews took over the country of Palestine by force to make it a Jewish state, and the Western powers, fatigued from the war and saddened by the Holocaust in Europe, looked the other way and let it happen.  We can understand the Jewish desire for a homeland, especially after the events of the Holocaust, but we tend to ignore conveniently that this was accomplished at the cost of expelling the Palestinians who were rightful residents of the territory that became Israel.  Many of them are still in difficult straits due to this displacement.

Many Muslims view Western societies as being basically immoral or at least loose morally.  The U.S. was called “the great Satan” by an Iranian religious leader, indicating his view that the U.S. is purposely and thoughtlessly immoral.  Living inside our society, we naturally fail to see ourselves objectively, but we should strive to be objective and truthful about ourselves.  There is no doubt that over the past seventy or so years, our pressing for more and more freedom has resulted in more violence, more public sexual behavior, and more sexual indiscretions in our society, and the U.S. has become a symbol of that unrestrained behavior to the rest of the world.  The correlation between people seeing endless violence in our media and our growing murder and incarceration rates is no accident, since more and more of us want to have guns and see using guns as a “normal” way to settle disputes.  Since our economy keeps running by inducing desire in people for more and more expensive products, it is no wonder that there is more theft.  The latest evidence of this sense of freedom to do whatever we want regardless of the risks to others is the behavior of financial professionals in profiting from the mortgage bubble and then causing the mortgage crisis that resulted in the recession of the last three years, leaving many other citizens out of work.  None of these people who were taking unreasonable risks with other people’s money have received any punishment, and few have lost their jobs (which is part of the energy behind the Tea Party Movement in the last election).  Many homeowners have simply stopped paying their mortgages, since their currently low home prices make their homes seem like bad investments.  They have no moral concern about the mortgage contract that they have, something that would have brought strong public condemnation in the last century.  Our churches appear to have no stand on the moral issue here!  We seem to believe now that if a behavior is not illegal, then it must be OK.  Is there any wonder that many in the world, especially members of stricter religions, see the U.S. as deeply immoral?

The U.S. has absolutely no concern about the impact of its culture and systems on other cultures.  If profit can be made, then we will make it, whether or not our activities introduce new diseases to the other culture and regardless of whether our examples (e.g., “freedom” and profit-making) corrupt the morals of the affected culture.  Some Muslim cultures have been and are being affected by us in these ways.  Our attitude is that everybody should take care of themselves, so how we affect others is not our responsibility.  People in cultures that are more concerned about how everyone impacts everyone else understandably view this as basically immoral on our part.

Since the U.S. has been militarily dominant in the world for several decades (despite its inability to defeat insurgent movements), some Americans have come to feel that it is not important to consider the rightness of our actions, because if anyone objects, we can intimidate them militarily or if needed, simply “blow them back into the Stone Age.”  This “might makes right” attitude of the dictator and the bully understandably arouses animosity among other nations and peoples.

Our application of the term “terrorist” to those who attack U.S. interests but are not part of a national army is another example of our willingness to bend the truth if it serves our purpose.  Many in the U.S. may have been frightened by the 9-11 events in New York, but only those running from the Twin Towers or the Pentagon were actually terrorized.  Al-Qaeda’s attacks have not been oriented toward causing terror, even if they hope to cause widespread fear and economic disruption.  Our willingness (both government and media) to stoke wartime energy with hyperbole by calling all who attack the U.S. “terrorists” is an example of our willingness to lie to ourselves and to others, which naturally calls into question our concern about morality and immorality.

I am not suggesting that these examples of how we unthinkingly affect others justify killing and war, but it is important to understand that many Muslims in all parts of the world are bothered by our behavior and do not look on us as a “good” or righteous people, and they have some good reasons for this view.  If we want to avoid being seen in this way, and if we wish to be seen as a fair and considerate nation, then we cannot simply dismiss the views of anyone who has different opinions than ours.  At the very least, we must grant others the respect of taking their views seriously and trying to understand them, and we should be able to present an honest and comprehensive argument for why we act as we do, so that others can understand “where we are coming from.”  (Should we take more responsibility for how our culture affects other cultures?  Why or why not?  Is it really right to wait until Israeli politicians are comfortable settling the Palestinian issues, instead of doing more to speed up the process?  Is it right to lie to ourselves about why Al-Qaeda attacks and hates us?)  Only through these efforts to see ourselves as we really are and to understand each other better can we hope to get along with other nations and minimize open conflict among nations.

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