Loving Each Other -- and Life, as Is.

"I am a passionate seeker after truth, which is but another name for God."

--Ghandi

More than anything else, I want myself. I want to live with integrity and truth. I’m not going to hide the jewel of who I am, nor will I mask my imperfections. No bargains, no avoiding reality, no conning myself, no lies.

I strive daily to make my life center around compassion, kindness, truth, awareness, and clear perception of reality -- yes, life, as is. When I find I am busy with words, images, and fantasies of what I think I must have, I end up frustrated, disappointed, and unable to live in the moment and appreciate life, as is. I try to make a point of simply “being.” I strive daily to cease any demands and accept life, as is. When I see through all these superficial desires to the essence of all that is, I feel peace and love.

We can make an important distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is not a choice but suffering is. While painful situations are inherent in life—loss, death, hurt, illness—if we accept them as part of life, we do not suffer so much. To a large degree, suffering results from our demands that that life be “fair” and not include obstacles, challenges, or illness. Once we accept these aspects of life, as is we can more easily cope with them or seek solutions.

I aspire to understand, to choose my words with care, to do the right thing and to cause no harm to myself, or others. In focusing on my moment-to-moment of every aspect of life, as is, I become mindful of my attachments or demands. I consciously try to loosen the grip and learn to let go – the most difficult lesson of all in accepting life, as is. Whenever I am frustrated, irritated, or demanding, I am attached to someone or something being different than life, as is. When I try to mold someone into what I want rather than getting to know and appreciate that person as is, I create a distance, a chasm, a gap, a separateness, a frustration, a loneliness. As I become mindful of my demands and less insistent on having things my way, I feel increasingly peaceful and in touch with God and my compassion and tenderness, my spirit or God-within. I have the ultimate responsibility -- and accountability -- for my behavior.

We should all take refuge in ourselves and in our spiritual community. We must make make ourselves, not anyone else, our refuge. We can find refuge within ourselves through mindfulness. This is not to be confused with being selfish or self-centered; rather, it means self-knowing and self-loving, which takes the shape of knowing and loving life, as is. This frees us to connect with our true essence and that of another, as is.

We should notice our judgments and our attachments or demands that situations or people be different from what they are. Too often, we try to mold someone into what we want that person to be rather than honoring that person, as is. 

Things are always changing -- our thoughts, hormones, consciousness, relationships, and the world around us. Instead of trying to freeze the present moment and hang onto it, we need to remember that life is a process of constantly letting go. The ego wants dependable rituals and people who stay the same. But to be free means to acknowledge, to enjoy, to be grateful, then to let go -- appreciating life, as is.

We must develop a fearless, an unbounded compassion for our own suffering, and that of others. We must make peace with all of who we are as is because life, as is is sacred -- our fear, our sadness, our anger, our confusion, our peace, our happiness, our beauty, our love. As we get to know and accept these parts of ourselves, they no longer have power over us. We realize they are the same in others and are simply, life as is.

Daily, I strive to stop identifying with the thoughts that parade through my mind -- and there are many. I try to realize that I am not my mind, my words, my thoughts, my looks, or my personality. I am simply the essence of a spirit (God-within) seeking to connect with the spirit in others -- and God, the Creator, the Source of life, as is.

Have you reached into the depths of yourself to truly understand life, as is?

Are you able to recognize the spiritually immature notion of control? 

Can you openly and readily recognize the spirit in you and its likeness to the spirit in others in this life, as is?

If we are in fact different at the core, then how? What makes us so?

Thoughts?

Are You Terrified? Is it Because You are Different?

“There’s more money than ever before, and more people online, and you can’t go on the Internet without running into one of these things. Social media is for people to have their own conversations, but these groups have their own money and until we have some kind of campaign finance reform that sticks, we are going to see more and more of these kinds of campaigns.”

-- Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government transparency

Well known is the fact that people have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. The few who become the focal point of such desire offer the many a cause, a new faith to follow. They few keep their words vague but full of promise; they emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. They give their new disciples rituals to perform and ask them to make sacrifices on their behalf. Humans are motivated to quell the potential for terror inherent in the human awareness of vulnerability and mortality by investing in cultural belief systems (or worldviews) that imbue life with meaning, and the individuals who subscribe to them with significance (or self-esteem).

Terror Management Theory (TMT) attempts to explain this reality and has generated empirical research into not just the nature of self-esteem motivation and prejudice, but also a host of other forms of human social behavior. To date, over 300 studies conducted in over a dozen countries have explored such topics as aggression, stereotyping, needs for structure and meaning, depression and psychopathology (e.g., phobias), political preferences, creativity, sexuality and attraction, romantic and interpersonal attachment, self-awareness, unconscious cognition, martyrdom, religion, group identification, disgust, human-nature relations, physical health, risk taking, and legal judgments.

Terror Management Theory was proposed in 1986 by social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszcynski, and Sheldon Solomon. The theory was inspired by the writings of cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, (wrote “Denial of Death”), and was initiated by two relatively simple questions:

1) Why do people have such a great need to feel good about themselves?

2) Why do people have so much trouble getting along with those different from themselves?

Most empirical research for TMT relies on two hypotheses. First, the mortality salience hypothesis centers on the idea that if a psychological structure protects against mortality concerns, reminding people of death should increase their reliance on the structure. Secondly, the anxiety buffer hypothesis explains that strengthening this structure should reduce anxiety in response to mortality salience. Both of these concepts hinge on the presence of self-esteem, which enables individuals to feel they play an important role within these psychological structures. In 1992, this link with self-esteem was tested on college students who participated by reacting to short video clips, after which the experimenters provided them with personality assessments. The assessments presented either a positive or neutral evaluation, and students later completed the “Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale” to assure self esteem had been raised. Students were then made aware of their own mortality by watching a video of an autopsy and electrocution, and as expected, those students who had received neutral personality evaluations reported higher levels of anxiety. This experiment supported the idea that self-esteem reduces anxiety as individuals believe they are a vital part of their own worldview.

In today’s world, terror management has played out with events like September 11th. Pyszczynski suggests that TMT could explain why people have trouble interacting with people from different cultures or political ideologies or religions. They explain that if culture serves as a death-denying function, then the existence of the people who are culturally different undermines our own defense against the fear of death. In this sense, people feel they must be able to rely on their own personal worldview. It is this very worldview that, “From a TMT perspective it shields individuals from fears surrounding death by enabling them to view themselves as valuable members of an eternal cultural reality that exists beyond the point of their own physical death” (Pyszczynski et al., 1999).

In light of the vitriolic nature of the 2012 presidential campaign and the role the media plays in its heightening, consider the ads that have been paid for and approved of by both camps. Ads from the Obama and Romney campaigns and their allies are usually targeted at television viewers in battleground states. Most of them end up online, where anyone can watch and share them. They've included a Romney ad accusing Obama of gutting the federal welfare-to-work program, to which the Obama campaign responded with an ad that called it "blatantly false."

Another of Obama's most popular ads online is one that attacks Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, for his plans to cut entitlement programs. A Romney ad that has gotten a lot of hits lately is one that accuses the president of declaring war on religion.

But the steelworker and job-creation ads stand out because they represent the more nefarious aspect of the trend: they aren’t truthful, and they aren’t directly connected to the candidates themselves -- even though Obama and Romney have run their own ads accusing each other of dirty campaigning.

The steel worker spot, titled, "Understands," was made by a pro-Obama group called Priorities USA Action and it features Joe Soptic, who was laid off from a company owned by Bain Capital, the venture firm co-founded by Romney. Soptic tells the story about his wife dying from cancer after losing health benefits, making it seem as if the loss of his job had something to do with it. But as many fact-checking organizations have pointed out, the plant was closed in 2001, two years after Romney left Bain.

The job-creation ad, called “Another Month,” was made by the pro-Romney Restore Our Future. It splices together video of Obama making jokes and comments like “we tried our plan and it worked,” which FactCheck.org said “twists his words way out of context.”

The current political ads, and the angry response to them by their targets, have raised the level of vitriol in what is quickly becoming a more negative campaign. The reason is, it works. Why does it work?

How is TMT evidenced in not only the ads but the day-to-day interaction voters have with one another?

Does TMT play a role in the current divisiveness we see in relationships among friends and family as they find differences in the values that prompt one to vote for a different candidate than another?

How can we manage such vitriol, if it can be managed and if it cannot, how can we choose to remain free from its impact?

Thoughts?

What Moves You?

"You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades."

-- President Barack Obama, speaking at the Democratic National Convention

The son of a physician, Aristotle was encouraged to be a thinker about the world around him. He went to study with his mentor, Plato, at the age of 17. Aristotle and Plato had conflicting worldviews; therefore, their philosophies differed as well. 

Plato was always in search of absolute truths about the world. He didn’t care much whether these truths had practical value. Plato felt that as long as people could agree on matters of importance, society would survive. Aristotle, however, was more interested in dealing with the here and now. He wasn’t as interested in achieving absolute truth as he was in attaining a logical, realistic, and rational view of society. 

In other words, we could argue that Aristotle was much more grounded than Plato, trying to understand the various types of people in Athenian society. Because he taught diverse groups of people in Greek society, Aristotle became known as a man committed to helping the ordinary citizen—at the time, a land-owning male. During the day, common citizens (men) were asked to judge murder trials, oversee city boundaries, travel as emissaries, and defend their property against would-be land collectors. Because there were no professional attorneys at that time, many citizens hired Sophists, teachers of public speaking, to instruct them in basic principles of persuasion. These teachers established small schools where they taught students about the public speaking process and where they produced public speaking handbooks discussing practical ways to become more effective public speakers. 

Aristotle, however, believed that many of these handbooks were problematic in that they focused on the judicial system to the neglect of other contexts. Also, he thought that authors spent too much time on ways to arouse judges and juries: “It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity—one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it,” Aristotle observes. Aristotle reminds speakers not to forget the importance of logic in their presentations.

The  Rhetoric could be considered Aristotle’s way of responding to the problems he saw in these handbooks. Although he challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about what constitutes an effective presentation, what remains especially important is Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric -- the available means of persuasion. For Aristotle, however, availing oneself of all means of persuasion does not translate into bribery or torture, common practices in ancient Greece, where slavery was institutionalized. What Aristotle envisions and recommends is for speakers to work beyond their first instincts when they want to persuade others. They need to consider all aspects of speech making, including their audience members.

Politicians often indict their opponents by stating that their “rhetoric is empty” or that they’re all “rhetoric, with little action.” These sorts of criticisms only trivialize the active and dynamic process of rhetoric and its role in the public speaking process. 

Rhetorical Theory covers a wide range of thinking in the communication field, and so it is nearly impossible to capture all of the beliefs associated with the theory. Nonetheless, Aristotelian theory is guided by the following two assumptions:

• Effective public speakers must consider their audience.

• Effective public speakers use a number of proofs in their presentations.

Communication is a transactional process. Within a public speaking context, Aristotle suggests that the speaker–audience relationship must be acknowledged. Speakers should not construct or deliver their speeches without considering their audiences. Speakers should, in a sense, become audience-centered. They should think about the audience as a group of individuals with motivations, decisions, and choices and not as some undifferentiated mass of homogeneous people. Many public speakers, engaged in audience analysis, which is the process of evaluating an audience and its background (such as age, sex, educational level, and so forth) and tailoring one’s speech so that listeners respond as the speaker hopes they will.

Aristotle felt that audiences are crucial to a speaker’s ultimate effectiveness. He observes, “Of the three elements in speech-making—speaker, subject, and person addressed—it is the last one, the hearer, that determines the speech’s end and object.” Each listener, however, is unique, and what works with one listener may fail with another. Expanding on this notion, audiences are not always open to rational argument. Consider a speech on drinking and driving. This speech may work wonderfully in the public speaking classroom, but have different results with a group of alcohol distributors. As you can see, understanding the audience is critical.

The second assumption underlying Aristotle’s theory pertains to what speakers do in their speech preparation and their speech making. Aristotle’s proofs refer to the means of persuasion, and, for Aristotle, three proofs exist: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos refers to the perceived character, intelligence, and goodwill of a speaker as they become revealed through his or her speech. Ethos is a broad term that refers to the mutual influence that speakers and listeners have on each other. Aristotle believed that the speaker can be influenced by the audience in much the same way that audiences can be influenced by the speaker.

1) Ethos is something you create on the occasion. To that end, a speaker’s ethos is not simply something that is brought into a speaking experience; it IS the speaking experience. Aristotle felt that a speech by a trustworthy individual was more persuasive than a speech by an individual whose trust was in question. Aristotle felt that ethos is part of the virtue of another and, therefore, “can be trained and made habitual.”

2) Logos is the logical proof that speakers employ—their arguments and rationalizations. For Aristotle, logos involves using a number of practices, including using logical
claims and clear language.

3) Pathos pertains to the emotions that are drawn out of listeners. Aristotle argues that listeners become the instruments of proof when emotion is stirred in them; listeners judge differently when they are influenced by joy, pain, hatred, or fear.

The proofs of Aristotelian theory, therefore, guide the speaker’s effectiveness. Each of these three—ethos, logos, and pathos—is critical to speech effectiveness. But each, alone, may not be sufficient. Keep in mind Kenneth Burke’s belief that according to Aristotle, “an audience’s confidence in the speaker is the most convincing proof of all.”

West, R.L. (2009). Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application. Humanities & Social Science.

In light of Rhetorical Theory and the recent Democratic National Convention, can you think of reasons why my friend from the South stated, "Disgusted with DNC!" on my personal Facebook page?

Do you agree that opposing views deserve merit when based on 1) facts, 2) intuition, and 3) reason -- even if that person's position differs from yours? Why? Why not?

Thoughts?