• Recent Posts

  • Neurology examination
  • Go game web site
  • Brutal Dutch football
  • Final word on God
  • Sleep revisited
  • Bird song update
  • Contrary brain
  • Cause and effect
  • Rollercoaster
  • Virgin on the ridiculous
  • Teaching the Chinese game of Go
  • If I were God
  • Catastrophising
  • Mood
  • Spam commenters

• Categories

  • Atheism (21)
  • Business (4)
  • Health (26)
  • Life (74)
  • Psychology (52)
  • Religion (26)
  • Sport (4)
  • Technology (2)
  • Uncategorized (11)

• Archives

  • August 2010 (2)
  • July 2010 (3)
  • June 2010 (2)
  • May 2010 (2)
  • April 2010 (1)
  • March 2010 (3)
  • February 2010 (2)
  • January 2010 (6)
  • December 2009 (3)
  • November 2009 (5)
  • October 2009 (3)
  • September 2009 (2)
  • August 2009 (4)
  • July 2009 (6)
  • June 2009 (7)
  • May 2009 (6)
  • April 2009 (10)
  • March 2009 (2)
  • February 2009 (6)
  • January 2009 (9)
  • December 2008 (5)
  • November 2008 (9)
  • October 2008 (2)
  • September 2008 (2)
  • August 2008 (1)
  • July 2008 (2)
  • June 2008 (4)
  • May 2008 (4)
  • April 2008 (1)
  • March 2008 (6)
  • February 2008 (10)
  • January 2008 (14)

• Meta

  • Login
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Imagine a genetic condition where you lost the guilt and ill feeling of upsetting people. No sense of hurt when you do wrong to them, and no remorse after the event. Well, as you might guess, people exist like this, and are easy to detect, often ending up on the wrong side of the law.

But supposing this genetic condition evolved to have accompanying changes that disguised the lack of feeling for others. Where you could simulate concern, and maybe, because you were free from the draining effect of wondering what others think of you that you could be in a fun mood most of the time. The party animal maybe.

This combination exists, with the charm and emotional mimicry sufficiently developed to allow the person to blend in socially. This is supported by the general trust of people with normal emotions. If someone appears to behave with the right emotions, we give them the befit of the doubt.

It is called Psychopathy, or Anti-Social-Personality disorder. I prefer to call it ‘Conscience deficit disorder’. These people are not directly anti-social - that is merely aconsequence of their freedom of conscience and empathy and remorse.

You might think me mistaken - surely Psychopaths are ruthless killers, unlikely to ‘blend in’.Yes, a small subset of them are. But many more go undetected, even by their partners.

They have a devestating, draining effect on socciety, and are much more prevelant than most people would guess. The average school classroom will have a Psychopath in their midst. And yes, the condition is there in childhood, but rarely detected that early.

If I extrapolate, where would the liberation gained by the absence of ’social niceties’ most likely express itself? First, in positions the liberated energy and lack of fear would be of advantage. Business and Politics. Cold business minds, effortlessly sacking incometent staff. Huge decisions to be made, where the feelings of people have to be put to one side.Big sportingevents where winning is much more important than being nice. Religious extremists…

You see, there is always room in this World for a diversity of personality types. To call Psychopathy a mental illness is not quite right in my view. A mental illness is principally one where your life is compromised by your actions. Psychopaths can be liberated by their [lack of] emtional concern. It is principally the people around them who suffer.

At least, this is what the religious community would have you believe. That God in his all powerful, all knowing, all loving capacity is with you all the time, caring for and guiding you.

Well let me tell you what happened today. But before I do, I will add that I am aware that in the general scale of things, what happened was entirely trivial.

Mid afternoon, having made great progress on my book, and feeling a bit stale, I decided it was a good time to drive to my sister’s house to start work on relocating a power socket for her. I scanned the house and loft for equipement. When I switched the loft light off, it made a popping sound. Oh oh - a fuse has gone. I switched it back on but it was fine.

So I drove to my sisters, and got down to work. I could not finish because I had forgotten things. I left my tools there.

When I got home, I switched on the room light and discovered that the fuse had indeed gone.  Abd of course, the fuse wire was way over at my sisters. I popped to my local DIY shop and they were shut early.

So there I am, going out of my way to help my sister, and I get a kick in the teeth. So was God really watching all the way, loving me more than any human could,  infinite in power, and yet cannot use this combination to stop the fuse going, or getting me to need to switch on the light downstairs.

So maybe God did not feel my good deed was worthy of a matching level of kindness from Him? He is all powerful, so why the reluctance? Ah - becasue I do not believe in him? I must give my heart to him, and then he will guide me.

But that is conditional love, I am afraid. And his love is hardly the more powerful than human love if it fails at such a simple hurdle.

Or God is simply a fiction.

When I discovered Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, via the eminnetly readable, practical, and aptly titled book “Feeling Good”, I learnt that I ticked all the boxes for behaviour that makes for an arduous life. Such as making extreme judgements based on one point of failure.

Although I am intelligent enough, and really do no want to make my life any more arduous than it need be, I suspect that I made these cognitive mistakes, and continue to do so, simply because my emotional reaction to each scenario paints a picture that makes the inappropriate response seem entirely valid. The emotion itself is inappropriate, and hijacks me, marginalising mypowers of rational thought. Much as happens, for example, when someone gets angry - they are effectively incapable of a balanced, reasoned viewpoint.

This morning, I awoke to a seriously tired head, as if I had had no sleep at all. So I was hardly well placed to discover that the book I am writing failed to print because of a transparency error. And no clues as to which page(s) the problem resided on.

My immediate reaction was to have a sinking heart, and seriously feel that the problem would be unresolvable. This feeling is so powerful that it is tremendously difficult to ignore. Such ill feelings can often last for hours or days, lingering often beyond resolution of the problem itself. So not only is the initial reaction extreme, ill judged (I simply do not know yet if the transparency problem can be resolved), but it sets up a background negative state that weighs heavily, tarnishing the enjoyment of the day.

However, I have developed a fabulous habit now of recognising that my emotions are highly likely to be misguided. Ijust let them ride, and calmly seek remedy to the problem. Not only that, but with a view to gain as I can from the problem.

So far, precisely this has happened - an email dialogue from the printers  has helped me set much more sensible PDF document generation parameters.

And I have not been burdened with a negative emotional state.

This has been a record - I was emotional for about an hour.

By focussing on my inappropriate emotional reactions, I am essentially applying CBT methods - retraining my brain to serve me better.

Just a quick thought regarding the affect of money on your life.

I’ve been busy, but not earning at the moment. I am very lucky not to have to worry overtly since I have savings. However, I am trying to live frugally. I’m not so used to this. I found that when limiting expenditure, this was not so much itself a problem. It was when I mis-spent that I felt it more. I am used to not worrying if I make a silly purchase. Now I am.

Taking this to the breadline, when you scrimp and scrape just to survive, you deeply appreciate anything you can get. But, every mistake is amplified.

Go in the other direction, where you have so much money that you never worry about what you spend. The worries go, but so too with them the sense of appreciation.

So maybe the balance between these extremes explains why you are happy when you have enough, but not too much. Yet we all strive to get more than we need, as if happiness is proportional to money. The happiness derived from financial security is a foundation for a happy life, but not the driving force.

I can see you wince as you wonder what I can say on this contentious subject. My motivation for writing is the treatment of Geert Wilder, the Dutch Politician, as a political scapegoat. He was invited to the UK by a British MP for an airing of his anti-Islam film ‘Fitna’. But summarily ejected from the UK by the British Parilament.

OK, the guy us extremist, and his film is overly emotive. But the need to bow down to any stirring of the Islamic angst is all too common. He was ejected on the grounds that he would be likely to incite religious hatred.

What on earth does that actually mean? I presume, it means an enflaming of ill feeling towards a religion or religious figures. This, I agree, is unwise. Whether it should be a criminal offence is another matter.

Is the action of creating the Dutch cartoons that apparently generated religious hatred a bigger offence than the religiously legitamised killing of the cartoonist by some of those duly offended?

But I want to look at it from another angle. That religions themselves are often guilty of creating religious hatred, and not in the way you might first think. But religions are exempt from the close scrutiny applied to those who might question them.

Is the man sporting a sign that says you must repent or you will go to hell not inciting hatred towars religion? The deeply vicious, disproportionate and unprovable threat used by Christianity to threaten you with a life time in hell if you do not adopt their way of life is lightly ignored. Yet it frightens children into submission - like lambs to the slaughter.

But we are not allowed to hate religions since the offence this gives the religions is deemed much larger than the catalyst for our hatred.

The Atheist bus messages in London is the start of a campaign against the priviliged status of religions that will lead to much conflict, I fear.

I’m writing impulsively. Sorry.

I experimented last week to see if I could work 7-8 hours  for a full five days, regardless of headaches and tiredness, my chronic complaints. And do you know what, I did. the headaches kicked in and out, but my energy levels rose enormously. It was relatively easy in one sense because the work - a book I am writing - had great flow.

But there is one side effect I did not envisage. That being so engrossed in work has shut down a lot of my social skills and time. And I feel most selfish.

Which brings me to the blog theme. To life balance.

Most people tend to invest time, resources and energy into doing things for others. Most obvious is in family matters, good times with friends and in your job.

And of course, everyone talks of getting a balance between work and pleasure - a life balance.

But there is more - what if you wanted to give to others the most you possibly could.  Suppose you added 30 minutes to every day one week, for charity, say. Then 30 more minutes each day the next week. Not only would you soon have too little time to sleep, but you would be offering your services in a degraded state of health.

The point here is that a fair degree of selfishness is not only good for your own well being, but the renewed vigour it gives you can help you help others more effectively.

So I am not going to get too hung up on this selfish trend. Besides, a large part of the selfish focus is my growing desire, or obsession even, to spend increasingly larger parts  of each day writing a book that is targetted at others anyway. So my selfishness is not purely hedonistic.

And as I give my natural insitincts a bit more legroom,  my headaches become less and less imposing. Further proof, it seems, that they are merely a strong message from my subconscious that I am not living my life in a way it is happy with. The headaches being a sign of childish sulking.