Psychological Trends and Needs Reflected in Movie Choice

PSYCHOLOGICAL TRENDS AND NEEDS REFLECTED IN MOVIE CHOICE

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.     11-13

ABSTRACT:  Human beings manage their emotions in various ways, including the stories and narratives that they choose to hear or view.  Movie choices can indicate emotional themes of concern, and trends in movie themes can indicate trends in emotional concerns in response to societal changes.

KEY WORDS:  cinema, movies, emotions, societal trends

As human beings, we all manage our emotions in various ways, including expression, reflection, psychological “defenses,” and engaging in activities that can help us to moderate or forget about unpleasant emotions and/or feel more pleasant emotions.  One of the ways that we do this is by listening to stories or observing others who are engaged in feeling and reacting to emotions, and this occurs for us today in movies, plays, sports, etc.  Since in this day and age we have many choices of such stories or observations, the movies that people choose to see can tell us something about emotional concerns and themes that are common to large groups of people in our society.

I have been struck over the past ten years or so with the number of movies involving fear of harm.  These include crime and police movies, mysteries in general, war movies, conspiracy movies, movies about predators (kidnapping, sexual abuse, etc.), horror movies, movies about aliens, zombies, and other scarey entities, and movies about superheroes, who exist, of course, only to help people with harm or threatened harm, usually harm by other human beings.  I believe that the large number (and percentage) of such movies suggests that fear of harm is a major concern for us.  

It is my interpretation that choosing to watch movies in the “murder, war, predation, other harm, conspiracy, crime” category is motivated by fears of harm from other human beings and a desire to believe that such things can be managed (crimes are solved; hidden or mysterious behaviors of others can be figured out; there are competent people trying to help; kidnap victims are found; wars are won; etc.).  (I would assert that there would be little viewership of movies in which the criminals win, nobody cares, things remain mysterious, crime is not avenged, etc.)  Watching fantasy/horror movies would be interpreted as also dealing with fears of harm but particularly harm from inhuman or inhumanly powerful sources (or perhaps harm from sources that are other than human, which may soften our fear a bit through this separation from reality).

FEAR

It is my impression that the fears that we have currently regarding harm from fellow human beings are greater than they have been in the past, although this is a difficult judgment to prove, since it is quite difficult to know how people felt in times that precede our own existence.  Across the millennia we have always been fearful of harm from others, especially those with whom we are not familiar, but it seems that there are added reasons for fear these days.

(1) We are more anonymous now and have less immediately available help and social support.  911 with strangers is not the same as an extended family that live in the same house with you or next door.  Most people don’t view their neighbors as trustworthy allies, since lives of most of us are intertwined not with our neighbors but with persons at a distance, through work or through the internet.  The Wall Street Journal (11-4-13) reported that in current, large studies approximately 40% of Americans report being lonely, up from 20% in 1980.

(2) Since we all are more mobile now, criminals have more mobility, too, and more opportunity therefore to strike in your neighborhood at any time.  (This may be a major factor in the apparent increase in child sexual molestation outside the home.)

(3) Individuals have more power to harm others these days—more powerful guns, more weapons of various sorts readily available, more knowledge about making bombs, and readily available information on the internet on how to harm others.  This puts us even more on our guard with respect to strangers, including all the people in our immediate environment whom we do not really know and therefore whose dangerousness we cannot assess with confidence.

(4) Governments have more information about us now and more capacity to harm us in other ways than violence than they used to have.

(5) We feel increasingly powerless individually, since so much of our live are determined by the decisions of others at a distance or by social change itself (market crashes, availability of pornography and other potentially harmful information and images on the internet, changes in Social Security benefits, the results of other people’s wasteful use of resources, etc.).  As interdependence inevitably increases (because we always opt for more complex cooperation since this is the way to most quickly enhance our material lives), our sense of our lives being in the hands of others increases.  

(6) As the complexity and consequences of our life decisions increases, along with the greater complexity and interdependence in society, we are increasingly aware of the significant consequences of making “wrong” (or simply “wrong” by chance) decisions, and we are increasingly fearful of making these decisions.  (What jobs can you be sure will still exist and have good pay for more than ten more years?  What market investments can you make that will ensure you a good retirement income?)

WATCHING MOVIES THAT FRIGHTEN

It might at first glance seem that people would generally avoid frightening movies, but there are psychological processes occurring as we watch movies that may be helpful with our fears.  (Of course, those moviegoers who identify with the evil or the criminals are not frightened and do not need help with fear!)

The general psychological assumptions about movie choice would be (for all of the various types and themes of movies, not just movies of harm) that we identify with some aspect of a story or movie (usually a character but sometimes a theme, a setting, or an emotion); we want to bolster our self-esteem through our identification; we want to see the specific problem of the movie worked out or solved; we want to have our beliefs and our assumptions about life affirmed; we want to feel more secure as a result of assuming that our own lives will mirror the movie outcomes; we want to improve our mood (through distraction or through monitoring the process and/or outcome of the movie); and to a more minor degree, of course, we may want to see a movie to gain or maintain status (being the first to see it), to avoid losing status (because all our friends have seen it but we have not), or just to go along with the crowd.

(1) Many people choose movies that are frightening or that involve overcoming bad people or evil because they themselves have been marked or even traumatized by bad people or evil.  These movies, then, offer an opportunity to “work through” some of the remaining difficult emotions without using a therapist.  This “working through” involves basically experiencing a lesser degree of some of the same emotions again but having these lead in the present to a more desirable outcome (bad people are exposed, good people stand against evil, innocent people who are suspected are eventually exonerated, etc.).  Benefiting from this venue for “working through” would take a long time (many, many movies) and might not improve one’s feelings but serve only to keep them from getting worse.

(2) Some people are reassured straightforwardly and gain hope for their daily lives from generalizing, appropriately or not, the standard conclusions of the movies, in which the good guys win and bad guys and evil are overcome.

(3) Some people focus on the hero as proving that there are heroes who will help him or her (the viewer) if danger or evil approach.

(4) Some people are reassured by the process through which mysteries are solved or bad guys are caught, and they gain confidence that they could figure things out if need be or that smart people would be available to help when needed.

(5) Some people are reassured simply by the fact that while they are quite frightened during the movie, that fear subsides and after the movie they are OK.  This feels to them like a form of mastery of the emotion and mastery of the feared events (even though they have done nothing but watch the movie or in some cases seek comfort from a fellow moviegoer).

There is, of course, some minor learning that can take place through watching mystery and crime movies.  We may learn something about court procedures and elements of the law, or we may pick up emotional tricks for dealing with painful feelings from the characters in the movies.  This learning, though, is usually minor compared to the emotion-management processes already described above.

(If the exploration here were broadened to include the more recent but now ubiquitous reality shows, then other major human motives are revealed.  These shows come in two major types—social relations/popularity (The Real Housewives of...., Big Brother) and activity-focused competition (Top Chef, The Amazing Race). Reality shows gain viewers through the simple fact that we do much of our learning and gain much of our knowledge of how to behave from watching other people, first our parents and siblings and later others in our social world.  Most reality show watchers are attracted by the themes of social popularity/acceptance/rejection and competition, since these are fundamental to their own lives, and their internal processes as they watch are the same as those described above for movies relating to harm from others.  They wish to identify with winners, lord it over losers, mourn their own losing, and pick up tips about how to deal with losing and how to win more often.)

SUGGESTIVE DATA

As a very limited check on some of the above, a categorization was made of all movies shown by the standard TV networks plus all HBO and SHOWTIME channels and by most of the channels that specialize in movies (Lifetime, Oxygen, A&E, Hallmark, etc.), on 11-4-13 from 5 PM to 9 PM PDT (all movies overlapping or contained within those hours).  The results are as follows:

         10  family relations
          4  romance
          1  comedy
          1  sex
         21  murder, war, predation, other harm, conspiracy, crime
          9  dark fantasy/horror (aliens, zombies, superheroes, etc.
          1  revenge
          2  adolescence/coming of age
          5  addressing social problems, advancement of society
          1  history
          1  religion

Movies were assigned to only one category, according to what seemed to be “the point” of the movie, so that, for instance, in this sample there were more comedies than just one, but all but one had strong themes, such as “family relations” or “romance.”  In order to interpret this data with confidence, more data would be needed, of course, and an assumption must be made that the movies that are offered to viewers by TV programmers are the movies, out of a much larger potential pool, that viewers will most want to watch.  It must also be assumed that viewers choose movies largely on the basis of emotions and emotional need, as posited above.  (It can be argued that movies watched “for distraction” or “just for entertainment” are chosen at least partly for the purpose of not feeling certain emotions in one’s life, and even movies chosen just to pass the time are perhaps chosen to avoid the feeling of boredom.)   Nevertheless, these results are consistent with my daily observations of the TV schedule and consistent with my observations of changes in the emotional demands made on us by the ways in which our society is organized and the ways in which that is changing over time.

From this admittedly tiny amount of data, it would appear that our big concerns are dealing with fears of harm (30 movies out of 56), making family relations work, solving societal problems, and achieving a loving/romantic relationship with a significant other, in that order.  Since family relations and love relationships are so important to our daily lives, it is fitting that these concerns be represented in our movie choices, and it should be noted that even if they are not “the point” of a movie, it is standard procedure for almost all movies nowadays to include some sub-plot regarding romance and sex.  We like to believe that societal problems can be solved (even if we think that they probably cannot be); hence the five movies on solving societal problems, portraying dedicated people succeeding in improving schools, helping the homeless, or correcting government corruption.

This small experiment with movie themes could be expanded to an entire day or, even better, an entire non-holiday week to get more reliable data.  It could also be tried again every five years, to see if the data support any interpretations of directions of societal change.

POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS

There should be nothing embarrassing for the reader in recognizing his own psychological processes among those described here.  These are normal human coping and learning activities.  If the reader becomes aware through this recognition, however, that fear in general or specific fears (perhaps related to his history) are a larger problem than he has consciously recognized, he might wish to consider whether some other approach is worth trying as well, such as therapy, counseling, talking with a religious adviser, or just talking with a trusted and empathic friend.

Recognizing the degree of fear and insecurity in the general population (regardless of whether it is greater than in previous decades) might cause us to wonder what choices we have made individually and collectively that have lead to this degree of fear.  Some of it is inherent in the existential uncertainties of human life, but how we organize our social and societal relations also contributes.  For instance, our (in my opinion) overemphasis on “the bottom line” (assuming that material wealth automatically represents success and means greater happiness) has lead us to overall greater wealth but at the cost of greater insecurity through less job security and poorer job benefits (so companies can be “nimble” and compete better with overseas firms) and also perhaps through individually recognizing over time that even though we keep getting raises, we are not any happier.  Our emphasis on “taking care of number one” economically (the Great American Dream) has led us to a society in which we know few people well and have almost no one with whom we can share fully our deepest concerns.

These choices are typical of many that we make in life in which we choose immediate pleasures or gains without sufficient consideration of other consequences of our behaviors.  Hence, when we choose for economic benefit, we don’t think about what it will do to our family relations or our neighborhoods or our political processes.  Of course, we often cannot know for certain what these longer-term and more subtle changes will be, but it is possible to predict, if we are willing to recognize it, that emphasizing competition over cooperation will result in social relations that are less trusting and in which we are less concerned about others (and them about us).  This probably translates, then, to greater insecurity and fear of others, since we are less certain that others will refrain from harming us.  We might do better to discipline ourselves to consider all of these potential consequences, as best we can, and to factor them into our decisions in general. 

We are in the midst of a period of discovering that we have much less personal privacy than before, due to digital (and drone?) data being collected about us, so perhaps this is a time when we should pause to consider carefully what we hope to gain against what we may lose.  For instance, how much privacy do we wish to give up for the sake of having a free and unfettered internet, and how much privacy do we wish to give up in order to prevent some small number of terrorist attacks within the U. S.

 

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Empathy

EMPATHY

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.

 

ABSTRACT:  The valuable skill of empathy is described, as well as how to cultivate more and more accurate empathy.

KEY WORDS:  empathy, understanding

Empathy (the ability to feel, know, and/or appreciate what another person is feeling, thinking, or experiencing without being directly informed of it by the other person) is the one human ability that is most helpful to us in our efforts to have good relations with others and to live together harmoniously and productively.  If we could not appreciate what others are feeling, we would not care about them as we do.  If we could not intuit or "interpret" what others are thinking, we would not feel comfortable around them, because we could not predict what they would do next (and could therefore not "trust" them).  Empathy allows us to recognize our basic similarity to other people and therefore become willing to give them the same rights that we have.  Empathy also helps us to anticipate the reactions of others to various behaviors we might choose to do, so that we can then choose behaviors that will be most to our advantage.  Empathy makes possible accepting others as they are, and it also makes possible (but is not sufficient for) choosing as our behaviors those that do not harm others and behaviors that benefit both ourselves and others.  (Without this empathic appreciation of others’ subjective experience, reason easily gets off course.)

Empathy is a key skill for coming to understand the deeper and comprehensive truth about human beings, since the more accurate information we have about people, the better we can understand them.  This includes understanding ourselves as well, since we often come to understand ourselves through understanding others.  Having empathy helps us to abandon the false assumption that so many people make that others feel about and view the world the same way that they themselves do (which leads to surprise, fear, and anger toward others when we are confronted with the fact that they are not just like us).

Failures and mistakes usually flow from misunderstanding information about the environment, about oneself, or about others, and from purposive (though often unconscious) distortions of reality in order to avoid emotions or to justify desired actions.  Empathy helps us to understand others’ misunderstandings and errors, which can open up opportunities to work toward common understandings.

Having empathy involves both emotional and cognitive components. We resonate with the other person’s expressions of emotions, and we also perceive the other person’s situation and place ourselves in that situation in order to imagine what the other person is feeling or otherwise experiencing.  We observe the cues from others in words, voice patterns, posture, movements, and facial expressions, and putting this together with what we perceive and what we know historically about the person’s current situation and concerns, we intuit or imagine and partially experience what that person is feeling and thinking.  This is a complicated process, and empathy is often only partially accurate and sometimes wrong.  Our internal processes are so complex that empathy generally captures only the highlights of what is happening for the other person, but the more we know about the cues that we see in a particular person and the more we know about his circumstances, the deeper and more accurate our empathy can be. 

It should be clear that in order to have empathy for others, we must we willing to experience, at least to some degree, what the other person is experiencing.  Also, in order for us to make sense of what we experience of another person’s experience, we must have some familiarity with the sorts of things that the other person is experiencing.  Therefore, self-awareness provides the foundation for empathy, since in empathy we respond from our own past experience to cues that we think are telling us what others are thinking and feeling.   If we are not in touch with our own emotional experience, then we cannot make sense of the other person’s emotions.  An important next step is to adjust our initial impressions, that are based on our similarities to the other person and her experience, using our knowledge of how we are different from her and how her circumstances are different from our own.

Empathy allows us to view firsthand the tendency that we have to view the world the way we want the world to be, as well as to distort reality in order to avoid unpleasant emotions and improve our security and self-esteem.  (This concept of how we want the world to be, or how the world “should” be, is one way we have of preserving hope and of preserving the belief that there is some order and fairness to life.)

It takes us years of observing and trying to make sense of ourselves and others to develop accurate empathy, and it is critical that empathy be accurate if our actions based on our conclusions from that empathy are to be beneficent.  In this process of developing accurate empathy, the skill of facing reality squarely and not distorting our understanding in order to feel better ourselves or to spare others is clearly essential.

The typical difficulties we encounter in having accurate empathy are (1) not correctly perceiving another person’s situation, (2) not being familiar with the feelings likely to be associated with that situation (3) not wanting to feel the same painful or unpleasant feelings that the other person is feeling, (4) being afraid of being too close to others, (5) fearing that having empathy will mean that one will always give in to others’ needs, and (6) assuming that others feel and think the same way we do about the world (which they do not),

Accuracy of perception depends on paying attention, attending to all of the relevant factors in a situation (emotions, thoughts, others involved, the history of the person with similar situations, cultural context, etc.), and having some familiarity with the type of situation in which the other person finds herself.  We can choose to pay attention, to take seriously what is happening, and to learn enough about the other group to have useful familiarity.  (If we do not care enough to pay serious attention, we can only ask ourselves why knowing about and understanding these others is not important to us.)

We should assess whether we have sufficient familiarity with the situation before we enter an empathic connection, whether it deals with relationships, expectations, customs, or coping with the world around us.  Fortunately, most external situations are common to us all (getting along with others, doing our daily work, raising children), but many of us shy away from familiarity with internal situations such as dealing with depression or anguish.  Most of us could broaden and deepen our human awareness by learning more about dealing with emotions.  Learning about other cultures and knowing that our own culture’s customs are only one way to live can also help us to understand a broader array of people and situations.

Being empathic requires that we be willing to partially experience what others are feeling.  We may prefer to avoid emotions in general, and we may resist the experience of feeling what someone else is feeling.  If a person is not secure in his own boundaries, he is likely to avoid experiencing the feelings of others, since this could lead to uncertainty about identity and difficulty in making decisions.

Some people resist empathy because they do not wish to deal with emotional pain, whether it is their own or that of others.  They do their best to deny or otherwise avoid their own painful emotions, instead of dealing with them or managing them.  Such people are cut off from an important area of human experience, since if we cannot appreciate emotional pain, we are cut off from the information that such pain can give us about what needs to be done or improved in our lives.  Learning to accept and manage our own emotional pain can lead to greater ability to empathize with others (and to closer, more satisfying relationships with them).  This requires working to become more tolerant of the full range of our feelings.

Some people fear that closeness will result in “engulfment” (the primitive fear that if one is close with someone, one will be taken in or taken over and completely controlled by that person).  Engulfment fears may require psychotherapy if they are to be overcome.  Some people fear closeness because they fear being hurt or rejected in a close relationship, but this can be overcome by becoming more supportive and loving toward oneself, to help one better tolerate the negative things that others can sometimes do.

Some people resist having empathy for others because they think that it will mean being overly sympathetic toward others and giving in to others all the time.  Fortunately, this is not true.  Appreciating what others experience simply gives us more options.  Depending on history and circumstances, we may decide to let others have their way or to help them, or we may decide that it is appropriate or necessary for us to have what we want and for them to give way to us.  Being appropriately assertive in taking good care of ourselves is an essential skill in getting along with others, for we cannot get along well with others if we resent them for what we give to them or what they have taken from us.

Many errors in empathy arise from incorrectly interpreting what others are thinking or feeling because we believe that they react to stimuli and situations more or less as we do ourselves.  In terms of some basic life situations in our own culture, this may be true, but even within our own culture each person is unique, and the picture that each of us has in his or her head of the world is somewhat different.  We must realize that others may feel differently about things than we do and not assume that they feel the same as we do.  We imagine ourselves in their situation and note how we would feel, but we must then adjust our empathic understanding for the ways in which the other person is different from us.  Taking differences into account is especially important with a person from another culture or background, since that person will almost certainly have different assumptions than we do about the meaning of events and about how people are expected to feel about them.  The more ways in which the other person is different from us that we can take into account, the more accurate our empathy will be.

Having too little empathy is socially maladaptive, but some people have too much of it, as when they cannot escape from the feelings of others or when they suffer so much for others (in regard to what they understand to be the experience of those others) that they become dysfunctional themselves.   People with too much empathy will benefit from toning it down, but in order to do this they may have to deal with why others' feelings are so influential with them, which may have resulted from their own permeable personal boundaries and may also be part of a pattern of putting others ahead of themselves in life in general.

Perhaps the key in this regard is that while using empathy, we partially experience (at a lower intensity) the experience of others, but at the same time we know that our experiencing of this is our own experiencing. We are not actually experiencing the feelings of another person.  In other words, when we experience something empathically, it is still ourselves processing and experiencing the information and emotions.  In empathy we are not “taken over” by the experience of others so that we become those others and think and feel exactly what those others are thinking and feeling.  We are ourselves trying purposely to put ourselves into the shoes of others to understand better what others are experiencing.

The "proper" amount of empathy allows us to gladly join with others in their experience when we want to and withdraw from it when we wish.  It allows us to feel gratified when we affect the experience of others positively by our behavior, and it helps us to remember that we are basically similar to each other, having the same needs and emotions as everyone else.

Expand and deepen your empathy by paying more attention to others’ feelings and thoughts and relating them, as appropriate, to your own feelings and thoughts.  Purposely imagine what you believe they feel and think, based on your observations of them and using both your emotional resonance with them and your interpretations of what they say and what they do.  Don’t fight the awareness that these practices will bring.  Allow yourself to accept others for who they are (which does not mean that you like everything about them or allow them to take advantage of you).

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Acceptance, Rejection, and Cooperation in the Body Politic

 

ACCEPTANCE, REJECTION, AND COOPERATION IN THE BODY POLITIC

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    10-13

ABSTRACT:  The fundamental choice of how to relate to persons within one’s society who are different from one is explored, along with its consequences in the political life of the country.

KEY WORDS:  difference, politics, acceptance, cooperation, rejection

The recent “shut down” of the U. S. Federal government brings into stark relief the question of how to relate to others in one’s society who think and act differently from oneself.  The small minority of Congresspersons who had enough power to temporarily prevent authorization by Congress of money to run the government caused harm to some citizens and to the economy, but they felt justified (even exalted) in doing so because by halting government operations they expressed their beliefs about how they want government to operate.  Some of them and their supporters are also expressing built up anger over having their views and beliefs generally ignored and demeaned by the opposition.  Their focus on “stopping” the national healthcare effort has resulted partly from feeling that their views were not incorporated into the healthcare law (though mostly from a dislike of central control of citizens’ lives).  Both sides in the shut-down operated politically purely through the exercise of power, and neither showed interest in compromise.

These liberal-conservative, right-left, and “red state-blue state” differences in this country have a great deal to do with far-reaching life differences, with more liberal persons viewing life more from a large group, urban perspective, in which individuals have less power and must receive help from the group from time to time through less personal and more institutional actions, in which there is a great deal of diversity in cultural backgrounds, and in which there are so many different belief systems that no one of them can be viewed as dominant.  More conservative persons view life from a more small group, rural perspective, in which operating groups are smaller, individuals are more important and have more power, helping is motivated by personal knowledge or contact, there is little diversity (compared to urban settings), and Christian assumptions about life are presumed to be dominant.  (There are other meaningful ways to define liberals and conservatives, but the arguments presented here apply to all definitional distinctions between the two, since the focus here is not on liberals vs. conservatives but on the general issue of how to deal with people who see the world differently.)

The reasons for such seemingly insoluble conflicts that will be explored in this paper are (1) both sides using power to get their way rather than engaging in cooperation and compromise, (2) lack of understanding by each side of the other, (3) lack of interest on the part of both sides in understanding each other, (4) the basic human fear of and suspiciousness of those who are different, and (5) a view by both sides of the other side being “the enemy,” unreasonable, and not worth being taken seriously.  The only way out of this battleground view of things is to give value to the constituents and views of the other side, to get to know and understand them (through relationships and empathy), to accept the other side as an ongoing and legitimate part of the country just the way they are, to treat the other side with respect, and to enter policy discussions with the assumption of working together to produce results in every case possible, by recognizing and incorporating the needs and wants of both sides.

One key reason for the intense political conflict that we see in the U. S. is that neither side is able or willing to take the other’s worldview seriously and to give it legitimacy when legislative and government planning are done.  Urban liberals think that rural conservatives are ill educated, prejudiced, and behind the times, and rural conservatives think that urban liberals relate to people only abstractly, have no values, and have lost touch with what is meaningful in life.  Neither side is correct in these assumptions.  Urban liberals are intent on solving the problems of mass society, using, in part, tax dollars of rural conservatives, and rural conservatives value their lives and worldview and want to preserve their values (and to benefit from the tax dollars of urban dwellers).  Both sides think to themselves that these problems could be solved “if only the other side would see things my way.”  Each side views the other as wanting to unilaterally control the future of the country, and both are correct in this!  To do more effective planning and have a more collegial atmosphere in the country in general as well as in Congress, the challenge is for persons on both sides to be able to think about life and about problems from the point of view of both sides.

Each side tends to lose sight of its dependence on the other side.  Urban groups could not survive without the food and raw materials produced by the smaller, more dispersed groups, and the smaller, more dispersed, rural groups are benefiting greatly from the roads, subsidized electricity, and other modern services provided by the money of the larger groups (which the smaller groups could not pay by themselves).  The current “red states,” which are more rural, receive far more services and benefits from the Federal government than they could pay for themselves.  Both sides should keep this dependence in mind when deciding on their version of what is best for the country!

This worldview conflict occurs frequently for human beings, primarily because they tend to associate their views and values with their safety and security, thinking that their views and values (how to get things done successfully, what things to revere and worship, the customs of the group, etc.) are causally responsible for their current security and welfare, when in fact there are many, many other ways to think about the world that would produce the same or better security and welfare.  To consider living by any different set of views and values is frightening (to liberals as well as conservatives) because of our sanctification of our own views and values, and to admit that one’s views and values are not the best and most truthful would undercut one’s security, so groups close ranks when their views and values are questioned or threatened and trumpet their wonderfulness even more loudly.  The vast majority of people never have an opportunity, through education or travel, to see and evaluate what it would be like to live in and believe in a different worldview system. 

In our society we are more intent on raising children to be independent and assertive than to be empathic and cooperative, and this primes us, when we grow up, to be combative rather than cooperative when we encounter barriers put up by people we do not individually know and accept.  We believe in forcefulness more than we believe in understanding.  Most of us believe that those who work to understand others instead of fighting or competing are odd or sissies!  There has been an increase in “programs” in schools recently to show children how to accept other children and be cooperative, but schools are afraid to show children the fact that any set of views and values (including those of their parents) is to some degree useful (perhaps more or less so than other sets of views and values) but not sacred. 

Unfortunately this part of our collective psyche is only strengthened by (1) the fact that individuals in our society are becoming less and less able to control their lives and destinies (and more and more anxious about it), while more and more of our lives are being determined by decisions made elsewhere and above our heads to which we have little individual input, and (2) the fact that it is much harder now than it used to be to get another job when one is laid off due to economic downturns, because jobs are becoming increasingly specialized and complex.  Due to these factors, our sense of security is reduced and is more easily threatened, and this leads to a tendency to fight before investigating.  It adds to our economic insecurity that so many of us have chosen to consume so much that we live on the economic edge, with no savings or cushion, and are more vulnerable to any economic shift.

Most people have great difficulty understanding the complexities of themselves, others, and society and in reaction want simply to assert their own viewpoints (the ones “that they were raised with”) and to try to force people with other viewpoints to conform to theirs, so that they can continue to believe that their views and values are powerful, can triumph over other viewpoints, and have in fact produced their current security and welfare. 

Liberal readers may believe that they are not subject to this fear or to the desire for others to change instead of themselves, because they can consider things objectively and intellectually, but they are just as unwilling to change as conservatives and just as prone to believe that their views and values are “right” as conservatives.  It is as true of liberal views and values as of conservative views and values that there are many, many other ways to conceive things and to organize society that could produce just as high levels of security and psychological and material welfare as their own.  Look at the world’s cultures and at what each of those cultures produces in terms of material welfare, happiness, well-functioning families, lack of anxiety, peacefulness, etc., and you will conclude that your own views and values, while useful, are not sacred and perhaps not even outstanding.

The resulting worldview conflicts range from the struggles of each newly married couple to settle on a joint way of life all the way to religiously motivated wars.  Salafi jihadists sincerely believe that not having women veiled will lead to societal disaster, while many Westerners believe just as sincerely that gender equality is humane and desired by God.  Neither is correct.  Having women veiled (and all of the other restrictions on women that go along with that) may reduce incidents of rape and adultery and keep women from leaving marriages, but it also restricts them to only half a life (as life is conceived in modern times) and in the view of most men and women keeps them in an inferior role.  Gender equality does provide more options for women, but it also adds considerable anxiety and stress to most women’s lives, as well as downgrading women’s importance and value in the home and in the family.  The maintenance of these conflicts reflects the fact that only rarely does anyone see the other side “from the inside,” through knowing individuals in the other camp or living in the other camp.  It is easy, then, to view the other camp as “the others” and not quite as human as our camp, and to be simply frustrated that the other camp is so intransigent that it won’t be more like our camp.

Human groups (and individuals) almost always prefer to work to get the other side to change, rather than having to adjust themselves, and this preference not to have to adjust sometimes results in wars and other inhumanities.  The decision of the North to impose its views of slavery on the South and to not permit secession resulted in a war with the largest casualty list this country has had in any war, and regardless of whether slavery was moral or not, and regardless of the “good” that resulted from freeing the slaves, to force Northern views on the South was a selfish act of people who wanted others to see and do things their way and were willing to use deadly force to accomplish this.  (Slavery would almost certainly have disappeared over time without the Civil War, due to economic changes, changes in morality due to cultural and economic evolution, and the gradual worldwide abolition of slavery.)  To take another example, the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act was a power play by one side imposing on everyone much that was disliked by many, when a more balanced approach would have been to take several large but incremental steps, instead of making the total change all at once. 

Both sides prefer to fight rather than to work together toward workable compromises.  Both sides think that they “should” be able to have their own way, even when they only get 50 to 55 percent of the vote in elections.  How do you feel when the other side says that it has a “mandate” from ”the American people” to pursue their own worldviews when your side got almost 50 percent of the vote?  Consider how the other side feels when your side makes these claims.  Most of us feel ignored and demeaned by such arrogance, but we should remember that the other side feels that same way, too, when we do it.  Given how you feel or would feel, why do we continue to distort reality by claiming these “mandates”?

Surely it does not make sense to believe that the side that wins an election by a slim margin should be entitled to shape the country to their vision of it until the next election, ignoring the views of the other side.  That attitude guarantees resentment, conflict, and redoubled efforts by the other side to win the next election and get that supposed privilege for themselves for a while.  It would be more sensible, wouldn’t it, if the election were 52 percent to 48 percent, to presume that 52 percent of decisions “should” go the way of the winning group and 48 percent of decisions “should” go the way of the losing group?  It’s peculiar that we do not think of this reframing of the issue.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DIFFERENCE

From a psychological point of view, we know that human beings are troubled by differences between themselves and others.

This applies to all levels of relationships, from dyads to nations.  Since other human beings affect us or potentially affect us practically all the time, we are always watchful about what they might do toward us, and we depend for our sense of personal security on being able to understand and anticipate the actions of others.  This means that we are most comfortable with those who are just like us.  The more another person is different from us, the more frightened and insecure we become, or conversely, the more effort we must make to preserve our sense of security and to maintain comfortable relations with the other person (by making special efforts to understand the person and predict his/her behavior).

Culture is the set of understandings, beliefs, customs, and rules that all members of a cultural group use to organize their behavior and goal attainment efforts.  Culture is often viewed as sacrosanct, even though it is only made up by human beings, probably because people transfer the awe they felt for their parents as virtual gods, to their society and its forms and rules.

Regardless of the stimulus, if one person reacts with surprise or amazement to the stimulus and another person with fear, they will be unable to predict each other's next move.  In a similar vein, those who believe in following the instructions of authority figures (parents, police, teachers, etc.) will distrust and fear those who comfortably decide things for themselves, sometimes contrary to what authority has said.

Imagine how you would feel if, when you walked into a room, the people in the room were very different from you—perhaps speaking a language that you do not understand, having furniture with which you are not familiar, and having behavioral rules that you do not understand.  (You think that a slight wave is a friendly gesture, but perhaps because of their culture they see it as an insult.)  You would experience considerable anxiety about being in this situation, until you learned more about them and could once again predict what will happen and how your behavior might be seen by them.  The important conclusion we reach from these considerations of prediction and uncertainty is that differences are always threatening.  We may value diversity, but despite these beliefs about diversity and despite our tolerance for others who are different, we are still threatened by difference.

The emotions most often felt in response to differences are fear, confusion, distrust, frustration, consternation, suspicion, shock, disbelief, and insult (or disrespect).  Actually, the annoyance, irritation, or anger that we feel are reactions to the fear and insecurity that we feel first but then suppress and cover up.  Cognitively our reaction is caution, because we realize that we are not confident in predicting the behavior of the other person.  If behavior proceeds further than an initial, cautious backing off, it may involve aggression, with verbal or even physical attacks, which are seen most often when the misunderstood behavior of the other person is viewed as insulting, disrespectful or as demeaning to one's honor.

This would be an opportune time to pause and to reflect on your own stance with regard to others who are different.  Is it conceivable to you that some elements of others’ worldviews (beliefs, attitudes, customs) could be more useful or more conducive to getting along with others than your own worldview?  How much do you know about the worldviews of others (including the worldview of your political opponents)?  Try to define the worldview of your political opponents, in four or five sentences.  Do you believe that it is better to fight your political opponents than to get to know them and to work with them for the best possible outcomes as seen by both sides?  Why or why not?  Can you imagine both sides coming to a compromise on abortion or the budget—a compromise that included elements that each side disliked (as well as elements that each side liked) but which both sides accepted because it was the best that could be done?  How would you feel about such compromises?

EMPATHY HELPS

Employing our empathy skills with others is an ideal tool for understanding others, understanding our differences, and exposing possible means of bridging differences.  Having accurate empathy for those who are different is more difficult than empathy for those who are like us, and this calls for us to gain more knowledge about those who are different, so that we can both “feel our way into” the experience of those others (through what we share with them that is universally human, such as the experiences of sex, having and raising children, trying to get along with others, feeling embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, or frustrated, etc.) and adjust our projections according to what we know about our differences from them.  (If you would like to read more about how empathy works and how to develop greater empathy, see the blog “Empathy” on http://livewiselydeeply.blogspot.com or on www.livewiselydeeply.com. 

MOTIVATION

Given the arguments in this essay, an obvious motive for changing our political attitudes is simply to be better able to get things done through our already established governmental structure and process, instead of continually dealing with stalemate and potential stalemate due to having two political parties, relatively equal in strength, that have come to represent two quite different attitudes toward life and government.

Even our revulsion at our current “government by stalemate and crisis” situation will not be enough to cause us to change our attitudes, however, if we do not have a key belief—that we can get more of what we want by cooperating and compromising than we can get by fighting with each other.  All of us want to maximize our benefits in life (rewards and benefits in general, not benefits from government programs!), so the only way we will change is to believe that the new attitude or behavior will get us more than the available alternatives.

Please take a few minutes to consider whether you believe this—that you can get more by cooperating than by fighting for what you want.  It may mean a major change in your coping methods, but cooperating does not mean never fighting again.  It simply means choosing your fights more selectively, and even in cooperating, there is a place for passion and forcefulness.  Each of us must consider the alternatives of fighting versus cooperation.  If you believe that you will get more by fighting and “overcoming” the opposition, then you will continue to fight, and our political situation may remain the same.

The current situation does occasionally deliver results on significant issues, though this is only when one party can outvote the other.  Our current situation, however, leaves bitterness and makes enemies of people whether there is stalemate or whether one party manages to force through something it wants.  This psychological consequence cannot be ignored, even if some might say that “it’s just politics, and it isn’t personal,” because it is taken somewhat personally by both politicians and by voters.

There will be some who will say that they can’t give up fighting because that would be giving up hope of ever getting their way and having things just as they want them.  However, in reality, unless we change our governmental procedures, there is even now no hope of either side getting its way fully.  Perhaps, though, that is as it should be, since respecting all citizens and looking out for the welfare of all citizens should be the aim of government and of all of us as well.  Also, it would be a disservice to democracy if one side got its way fully, for that would mean total disrespect for a significant number of citizens who would prefer things to be different.  The only alternative, then, is to accept that we should go ahead and do all we can to benefit both sides to the maximum_at the same time.  This means working together to figure out how to do this, and this requires people on both sides to take seriously the wants and needs of the other side.

 

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

One key to a change in this political competition based on who is “right” is to be realistic enough to acknowledge that no group and no individual has the complete truth.  No group’s truth is really true.  In order to function in life, we must decide what we believe to be true, but very few of our positions are absolutely true, all the time, everywhere in the world, and yet we act as if everyone else would be better off if they just believed and acted like us.  There’s nothing wrong with being satisfied with or even proud of one’s serious efforts to determine what is best in life, but we should also recognize that we can’t be really sure of much of anything, and this applies especially when we try to tell others how they should live.  Your political opponents have what they feel are good reasons for their beliefs.  It would behoove you to find out what they are and to take them seriously.

The challenge for both political sides is to accept that the other exists and has a perfect right to exist.  Both sides are composed of real human beings, probably identical genetically, with the same basic hopes and goals—to make a living, have a reasonably satisfying life, raise children to be good adults, and contribute as they can to the welfare of the group as a whole.  It would be a relief for both sides to stop thinking that the other side “should” change.  We need a different worldview—one that assumes that the most constructive course of action is not to fight all the time but to find the solution, policy, or position that does the most for both sides. 

People do not choose their worldviews.  Their worldviews are their conclusions (largely unconscious) from their total life experience (including what everyone around them is saying about these fundamental issues), and their worldviews are not going to change except through additional life experience (which includes seriously observing and listening to others).  Since no group has “the truth,” all human beings must try as best they can to figure out how to live, which both sides are already doing to the best of their abilities, so there is no reason to demean the other side (except to use demeaning as a tactic to subdue those others).

When you wonder how your neighbor could believe and act the way he does, it is easy to proclaim him to be crazy or ignorant, but it is much harder (but would be much more useful) to find out why he believes and acts as he does.  Have you ever done this?  Have you looked at all of the other cultures around the world and carefully concluded that for good reasons that you can cite, your group’s way of believing and acting produces the best life possible?  Have you found out or tried to find out what motivates jihadi terrorists or what they believe that makes sense of their actions?  Their motives and reasons come from the same large pool of human motives and reasons that yours come from.

We often use strength in numbers to justify our beliefs, especially when we can’t or don’t want to investigate something ourselves in enough depth to come to a conclusion, but bear in mind that just because a large group of people believe one way, that does not mean that that belief is true or right.  It only indicates that it is probably useful.  And, if we were to judge solely by numbers, the Chinese would outvote everyone else!

Don’t be fooled by your politicians.  The main goal of most of them is simply to get elected, and many of them seem to make a living on brief and inflammatory public statements that are designed to frighten you into believing that your values and views are in danger if you don’t “fight back” by giving money to their campaigns, so that they can “fight for you” in Washington.  This approach, when used by both sides, leads naturally to a fighting stance by both sides, and the politicians play out these fights for your viewing pleasure and to maintain the belief within you that you must fight (and contribute) or your way of life may disappear.  This leads predictably to governmental gridlock (as long as neither party has a clear majority) and to resentment and more conflicts if one party does have a majority and uses it to ram its views down the throat of the other.  We need a more constructive assumption about political interactions.  A better alternative would be to acknowledge that everyone deserves to be heard in our democracy and that everyone’s views and needs count, and to assume that the best way to get the most done is to find positions that benefit both sides as greatly as possible.

Newly elected Presidents often say that now that they have been elected, they will be the President for everyone, not just for those who voted for them (in a bid, sometimes falsely, to get Congresspersons on the other side to “work with them”), but you rarely hear such statements from Congresspersons, who presumably believe that the “winner take all” principle of vote counting gives them the right to represent only those who voted for them.  How do you feel when your Representative or Senator does not represent you but instead represents only those who agree with him?

So, what is the adaptive thing to do when two groups are part of the same larger group (the nation), are quite dependent on each other, and have different worldviews?  The best thing to do is to get to know each other, to understand each other, to recognize the humanity and the skills and knowledge of each other, and to therefore resolve to work together amicably to make choices that benefit both sides as much as possible.  To create public policy that is as acceptable to all sides as possible (because all have contributed to it and been recognized in it) should be a satisfying accomplishment, something to be proud of, rather than a grudging “giving in” done solely in order to move the political process.

An example might be melding concerns of “hawks” and “doves” by approving construction of a new fighter plane but including in the same legislation new specifications for when aggressive actions against other countries would be appropriate and when they would not.

To take a more difficult example, at any point in time abortion can only be defined as “murder” or “not murder,” so one side will always be the “loser” on this aspect of the debate.  Since only one side will get what it wants in this respect at any point in time, the other side can be given something, too (like a restriction of some sort on when abortion can be done, or if the murder decision went the other way, some circumstantial exceptions where abortion will be permitted given certain specified authorization procedures). 

A similar approach on the issue of appointment of Supreme Court justices would benefit our society as well.  Instead of trying to figure out a candidate’s future inclinations to rule in one direction or another (so that they can “have their way”), both sides would do best to approve only candidates who will be the most fair and objective (i.e., those who are most able to separate their personal predilections from the questions of law before them).

If operating in this new fashion is difficult for those currently in elected positions, there are many individuals in several professions (such as psychology, psychiatry, counseling, and pastoral care) who could serve as guides to operating in this new fashion.  Each chamber of Congress could have not only a parliamentarian but also an “interactional consultant” to make all aware of why stalemate is occurring and aware of alternative behaviors.  These consultants could be available to all Congressional members individually also, to help them plan for creating and enabling legislation.

 

WHAT CAN INDIVIDUAL VOTERS AND CONGRESSPERSONS DO?

First of all, it is your decision whether to choose the current situation or to seek change.  The barriers to change are all within ourselves. 

(1) It is essential to acknowledge that there are large groups of people in this country that have markedly different worldviews (beliefs and values).

(2) For change to occur you must “accept” that these differences exist and that the other group’s views and values are just as important to them as yours are to you.  You do not have to agree with the other group’s views and values, only to acknowledge and accept that the differences are meaningful and must be taken seriously if we are to take proper care of the country and its citizens.

(3) It would help if you tried to understand the other group’s views and values.  Finding out how supporters of the other side actually live (geography, jobs, religious participation, size of communities, etc.) is essential.  Understanding the history, ethnic issues, population composition, and religious composition of the other group would help you to make more sense of their views and values, and you can get this information readily from historical and popular political writing.  As noted above, empathy helps greatly in efforts to understand others, but, of course, you can have empathy for others much more easily if you accept them as having legitimate needs and wants and if you believe that cooperation and compromise will get you more of what you want than using power tactics alone.

(4) You must treat the other group as important and recognize them as fellow countrymen whose needs and wants are meaningful, and you must attend to their needs and wants as being almost as important to you as your own.  You are “your brother’s keeper” in an important sense, since we are all in this country together.

(5) In your relations with persons of the other group, you must treat them with respect and approach them with a positive attitude.  Obviously, demeaning others and approaching them assuming the worst will produce mostly negative results. Treating the others side as the enemy and demonizing them may produce more campaign contributions from the extremists and the frightened in your party, but it will also destroy all chance of working together with positive expectations.

(6) Candid discussions of worldview differences (views and values) between supporters on both sides, and between politicians on both sides, could be very helpful, and this would ideally take place before working to resolve legislative differences, since it will make it easier to understand why the other side is saying what it says and wanting what it wants.  In these discussions, it is vitally helpful for everyone to give understandable, plausible reasons (background, life experience, and data if possible) for their views and values.  Only when we know what information another person is using to form her worldview (as well as knowing what our own reasons and supporting facts are for our views and values) can we compare these reasons and data and have the maximum chance of making our own views and values more consistent with reality and ever more useful.

(7) It will be important to reassess frequently whether you really believe that you can get more in the long run by cooperating and compromising than you can be fighting and doing what you can to take advantage of others.  Don’t forget what has been occurring lately in government as a result of most people taking a fighting approach, as this will help you to be willing to give cooperation a chance!

(8) In every discussion of issues and plans, you must attend to how the other side can get something from a joint action.  Even if you have the votes to get something you want without giving anything to the other side, if you do that, you will kill future cooperation.  More will be accomplished if each side looks out for the welfare of the supporters of the other side, because it is only with a positive attitude and expectations that we can achieve maximum cooperation.  If we acknowledge that others are entitled to their views and values, then it follows that both sides (all sides) should be benefited to the maximum possible in every governmental decision. 

(9) You can require more truthfulness of your elected officials.  Many public statements by many politicians seem to be aimed at stirring up support among constituents rather than reflecting what the total constituency wants or needs.  The many references to what “the American people” want surely refer to vastly different portions of the American people, and Congressperson should make this clear, rather than pretending that what they say represents everyone.  In addition, it has apparently been found that for most politicians, the less they say about actual policy stands, the more likely they are to be elected (because more people will be turned off by policy stands than will be turned on by them).  We as voters can challenge our officials to be truthful and to tell the whole truth about themselves and what they will do in office, and then we can reward their doing this by voting instead of staying home.  (If a candidate won’t reveal what she would do, you probably wouldn’t want her doing it.) 

Television advertising (and the money it requires) is probably the biggest enemy of an informed electorate, since many voters are swayed most easily by ads with appealing pictures and phrases plus the U. S. flag.  It would be a big change, but publically financed campaigns would help, and fair rules could be established to prevent campaign ads that have absolutely nothing to do with the fitness for office of the candidate. 

BARRIERS TO CHANGE

The barrier that you have the most control over is your own attitude toward your fellow citizens who have different views than yours.  If enough of us change toward understanding each other and giving everyone’s needs some legitimacy, things will change.

The desire of most Congresspersons to be re-elected is a huge barrier to better government, both in terms of campaign contributions and appealing to voters.  If Congresspersons know only what they hear from those who take the time to communicate with them or come to the community meetings that they hold while “back home”, then they have a decidedly skewed sample of the American people, since those who write to their Congresspersons or attend these meetings surely contain more “extremists” and single-issue voters than their actual constituency.  Many polls show that “the American people” want even-handed and reasonable government, rather than the combative split that we currently endure.

Campaign contributions are another barrier to change.  There is nothing inherently wrong with voters contributing money for political work, but it would appear that since campaigns have become races to see who can get the most money (and therefore the most TV advertising), your money is only buying advertising, most of which is purposely deceptive and deceitful, if not outright lies, so your money is not helping you to elect the person who will do the best job (since neither your candidate nor the other candidate are telling you what kind of job he or she would do).  Politicians can get more money out of people with extreme views and single-issue voters than they can out of the vast party membership, so they naturally appeal to these voters.  This makes them seem more extreme themselves, and then they have to perform as promised to all these contributors (businesses, ordinary folks, single-issue voters) so as to get those contribution for the next election.  They therefore have little maneuvering room when important issues require creative solutions.

Political parties are the other major barrier to working together better.  It is certainly natural for like-minded Congresspersons to establish relationships with each other and to work together, but the big problem is that the two major parties require adherence in voting (vote as we tell you on everything) in return for helping with less important bills that the Congressperson might want passed just for the sake of his or her own district.  If Congresspersons vote independently from the party, then the party refuses to help with those bills that will benefit his or her own constituents.  This distorts total votes greatly and makes the Congressperson dependent on the party.  In addition, gathering Congresspersons together into two major parties means that there are only two positions on every issue, and since these positions have to be some amalgam of the views of all party members, these views become unwieldy and have little chance of being accepted by the other side (which is doing the same thing itself).  Having only two possible views also restricts creativity in solving the country’s problems. 

It will be difficult for many Congresspersons to change their attitudes on this matter of compromise, since they have been demeaned and demonized by the other side for years, and feelings have been badly hurt.  Be clear, though, that making government more responsive and more efficient is within our grasp.  It only takes a change of attitude (cooperating/compromising as our modus operandi, rather than fighting for our own way).

 

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