Narrative bending
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In light of the news from Denver: https://ballotpedia.org/Denver,_Colorado,_Initiated_Ordinance_301,_Psilocybin_Mushroom_Initiative_(May_2019)
And coming off our recent discussions of phase transitions, narrativity, experts' tendency to dig in under failure, etc, I found this essay interesting: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-jungs-collective-unconscious-inspired-alcoholics-anonymous > Wilson (who was receiving the ‘Belladonna Cure’ at Towns) reported that the room lit up with a great white light and he experienced a frightening ecstasy. He described ‘a new world of consciousness’ and of ‘God and His world’. Following discharge from the hospital, he never drank again. Of course, at least here in Oregon, our liberalism is being exploited by hucksters posing as alcoholism treatment specialists. If you're arrested for DUI, the court forces you to pay $$ to a treatment program, which seems chock full of sleazy people making money off others' misfortune. Many of these victims are low income and *must* have a car in order to keep their job. The sleazy huckster "counselors" then foist Alcoholics Anonymous on these people, relying on the heartfelt anecdotes of the ex-alcoholics who comprise the majority of the staff. My favorite mathematician (Raymond Smullyan) has a good argument that Christianity, absent all the sleazy stuff associated with it, is a defensibly spiritual conception (if you subtract Hell from the mythology). And I buy his interpretation. So I'm not a fan of trashing Christianity. However, if these sleazy court-appointed ... [ahem] ... therapists would ... were competent enough to ... talk about the deep psychological changes that have been (scientifically) demonstrated to change one's behavior, and presented AA as one (questionable) method by which to achieve a spiritual experience capable of such deep changes, then I'd be OK with it. But they do not, for the most part. Luckily, more reasonable voices are getting louder: https://psi-2020.org/ -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Glen, I am ambivalent about AA. There are many people I know whom I feel it has saved from death, but, at the same time, it doesn't seem to be able to move them beyond being "Alcoholics". It's like you’re put on some crazy cruise from Hell to Bliss, which, three days out, you discover is only circling aimlessly in the Atlantic. You're glad you're no longer in Hell, but you're getting awfully tired of Shuffleboard and Whist, and wouldn't be nice to actually get somewhere? I think there is a lot to be said for self-help groups, much though they make my skin crawl. I think, for instance, the hearing aid industry could make more use of them. However, that industry profits from treating each deaf person as a totally new phenomenon entirely disconnected from all other human beings, each of whom can only be cured by the purchase of $5,000 miniturized differential amplifiers. Sharing the banalities of being deaf and the ingenuities of others dealing with it cannot be a bad thing. Here's a heads-up for those of you who still hear well: in my kultcha, one of the ways to bond with others is to slip sly comments back and forth under a conversation. All that goes away when you're deaf. "who is that guy over there who looks like a pickeled frog?" "PICKLED FROG?" "'PICKLED FROG', YOU SAY? LOUDER, FRIEND, I CAN'T QUITE HEAR YOU!"* just doesn't work in polite company. I imagine that some lightly organized group settings for exchanging strategies for dealing with deafness might be useful. Nick *in larger font, for those of you not in html. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- In light of the news from Denver: https://ballotpedia.org/Denver,_Colorado,_Initiated_Ordinance_301,_Psilocybin_Mushroom_Initiative_(May_2019) And coming off our recent discussions of phase transitions, narrativity, experts' tendency to dig in under failure, etc, I found this essay interesting: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-jungs-collective-unconscious-inspired-alcoholics-anonymous > Wilson (who was receiving the ‘Belladonna Cure’ at Towns) reported that the room lit up with a great white light and he experienced a frightening ecstasy. He described ‘a new world of consciousness’ and of ‘God and His world’. Following discharge from the hospital, he never drank again. Of course, at least here in Oregon, our liberalism is being exploited by hucksters posing as alcoholism treatment specialists. If you're arrested for DUI, the court forces you to pay $$ to a treatment program, which seems chock full of sleazy people making money off others' misfortune. Many of these victims are low income and *must* have a car in order to keep their job. The sleazy huckster "counselors" then foist Alcoholics Anonymous on these people, relying on the heartfelt anecdotes of the ex-alcoholics who comprise the majority of the staff. My favorite mathematician (Raymond Smullyan) has a good argument that Christianity, absent all the sleazy stuff associated with it, is a defensibly spiritual conception (if you subtract Hell from the mythology). And I buy his interpretation. So I'm not a fan of trashing Christianity. However, if these sleazy court-appointed ... [ahem] ... therapists would ... were competent enough to ... talk about the deep psychological changes that have been (scientifically) demonstrated to change one's behavior, and presented AA as one (questionable) method by which to achieve a spiritual experience capable of such deep changes, then I'd be OK with it. But they do not, for the most part. Luckily, more reasonable voices are getting louder: https://psi-2020.org/ -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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So, your anecdotal evidence suggests the article is wrong and that AA does NOT bend their narrative far enough? ... that their spiritual experience of surrendering to a "higher power" is too wimpy to have a liberating effect?
If so, I think I can safely disagree. While it's true that some fraction of people who claim AA has helped them have only slightly modified their narrative. They rigidly adhere to whatever story they've told themselves and focus more on the day-to-day, like an impoverished form of CBT. But I think there's a significant fraction who genuinely discovered that the world is bigger than them. All this running around, apologizing for their drunken behavior, trying to make amends, relinquishing the control/guilt/self-made-myth, etc. has completely distorted, if not broken, their previous (self-centered) narrative. In that sense, AA is like any other (authentic) Christian ministry, where the intent is to turn individualists into socialists, or at least indoctrinate them into a tribe. What irritates me, though, is this side-loaded indoctrination. The science we have indicates that a "spiritual" experience can break narratives like PTSD, alcoholism, end of life depression, etc. We no longer *need* to couch it in terms of ghosts, virgin births, and magic wafers. Those oracles can be replaced by challengable authorities in lab coats (even if those lab coats are soaked in pathogens: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/upshot/doctors-white-coat-bacteria.html). On 5/9/19 11:20 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > I am ambivalent about AA. There are many people I know whom I feel it has saved from death, but, at the same time, it doesn't seem to be able to move them beyond being "Alcoholics". It's like you’re put on some crazy cruise from Hell to Bliss, which, three days out, you discover is only circling aimlessly in the Atlantic. You're glad you're no longer in Hell, but you're getting awfully tired of Shuffleboard and Whist, and wouldn't be nice to actually get somewhere? -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Glen writes:
"All this running around, apologizing for their drunken behavior, trying to make amends, relinquishing the control/guilt/self-made-myth, etc. has completely distorted, if not broken, their previous (self-centered) narrative. In that sense, AA is like any other (authentic) Christian ministry, where the intent is to turn individualists into socialists, or at least indoctrinate them into a tribe." There's a difference between failing to recognize the various groupings and their purposes & behaviors, and rejecting many of those groupings. An individualist can be the self-centered person who is ignorant of the groupings, or a person who finds the groupings counterproductive toward achieving even more universal goals. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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I'm not sure what you're describing is well-described with an -ism, i.e. individualism. Most individualists, it seems to me, are *actually* very socially dependent creatures. They're deluded into thinking they're self-made or independent from the infrastructure around them. But in their actual behavior, they are entirely and deeply embedded and dependent. So one can be an individualist and not be an individual. Similarly, one can be a socialist, yet live in the woods, eat squirrels, and never talk to another human. That's because -isms are thoughts/beliefs/delusions.
Now, if you're simply saying there are fine-grained gradations and types of socialism, then I agree completely. The point is to bend or break the (false) narratives those diachronic people tell themselves and make them pay closer attention to the facts staring them in the face. And AA does that for some people. On 5/10/19 10:33 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > There's a difference between failing to recognize the various groupings and their purposes & behaviors, and rejecting many of those groupings. An individualist can be the self-centered person who is ignorant of the groupings, or a person who finds the groupings counterproductive toward achieving even more universal goals. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Glen writes:
"The point is to bend or break the (false) narratives those diachronic people tell themselves and make them pay closer attention to the facts staring them in the face. And AA does that for some people." A false narrative and the absence of continuity (episodic) seem pretty similar. But the scenario I'm pitching is the superego without a narrative. The superego may impose corrective actions while tolerating semi-random restarts. (Restarts with or without pharmaceutical causes.) The diachronic person wants to believe that their life has unfolded with them driving. To me that seems pretty similar to narcissism. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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On 5/10/19 10:53 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> A false narrative and the absence of continuity (episodic) seem pretty similar. Well, I don't think episodic is absent any (type of) continuity. It seems piecewise continuous, to me. The high curvature inflection points between relatively linear segments would dictate whether one sees a pattern *across* those inflection points. If you can see that pattern, then you're diachronic. If you can't, then you're episodic. And Strawson does consider, in that paper, the case where someone might be non-narrative, but diachronic. > But the scenario I'm pitching is the superego without a narrative. The superego may impose corrective actions while tolerating semi-random restarts. (Restarts with or without pharmaceutical causes.) The diachronic person wants to believe that their life has unfolded with them driving. To me that seems pretty similar to narcissism. If the superego is induced over one's lifetime, it seems the extent to which it's robust to discontinuities would depend on that induction mechanism. E.g. the idea that we learned everything we need to know by kindergarten might indicate that the induction is fast and any restart would complete relatively fast. So, if you "restarted" in Viet Nam, under assault, that experience could impose corrective actions for the rest of your life unless you get another "restart" at a yoga retreat in Santa Fe. But if the induction is slower and more robust than that (which I suspect deep learning has taught us that it is, despite how bad the analogy to human brains are), then those who believe they're driving their life would be a little more correct. The predicate being learned by the superego would be complex and evolvable. And that would indicate that there are different *types* of "restart", from psychotic breaks to mild changes in habit. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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