Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Mario Sikora, the brain, and the 6's Inner Guidance
Note: This was originally published on 12/16/07, by Mary Beth, of all people.
If you've been following along extremely closely, you know I've been in Tallahassee for the past week. While in Tallahassee I did three things and three things only: work, gain weight, and read books and articles related to the Enneagram. Before I left I had printed out Enneagram Monthly for Nov. of 2006 (one of three issues available for free, here.) My favorite article from it is Notes and Melody #6: Composing the Tune by Mario Sikora. (As you might imagine it is the sixth article in a series; the entire series as well as many of his other articles are available on his website, here, and here is the link to his home page.)
Sikora captured my attention right out of the gate with this clause from his first sentence: "...and being by temperament indifferent to the gentle sound of rustling angels' feathers and earnest tones that accompany much of the talk about the Enneagram...." Hee! I feel the same way. More on that point in a few days.
The article as a whole focuses on coaching Sevens; the part I am going to discuss is about working with Point 5 (whether with Sevens, Fives, or whomever.) I am about to quote a massive amount of Sikora's text; read it here, or read it in the original article (then come back to see what my points are.) It 's the part of the article beginning with the bolded title Point Five. And here begins Mario Sikora's material:
Point Five
I don’t know what you mean when you say Big Mind and Little Mind. First of all there is the brain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is a famous medical case discussed in neuroscience literature in which a woman suffered brain damage that impaired her short-term memory. Much like the character in the film “Memento,” she was unable to form memories of events that occurred after the injury. Each time she visited her doctor, he would hold out his hand and introduce himself anew as if it was the first time they met. If he left the room, even momentarily, she would forget who he was and he would have to introduce himself all over again. One day, the doctor decided to try an experiment: He hid a thumb tack in his hand before entering the examination room. When she
shook his hand, she was pricked by the tack and recoiled in pain. The doctor apologized profusely and left the room after calming the patient. Upon returning a short while later, the patient again had no recollection of the doctor, but she refused to shake his hand. She refused to shake his hand at subsequent visits as well, but when asked why she would offer weak justifications, such as explaining that she feared she would spread a cold or catch germs from the doctor. She had no resistance to shaking other people’s hands, however.
The point of retelling this story is to show that the brain processes information in ways that we are not consciously aware of, either because we have habituated the behavior and no longer need to be consciously aware of it or because we do not have the capacity be consciously aware of it. The first situation happens through repetition. If you do something enough times it becomes automatic. The second situation occurs because of the way the brain evolved—giving us the capacity for mental function before giving us the capacity for consciousness of those functions. (See Part Two for more on this.) Therefore, we have the capacity to process information, store experiences, and manufacture responses in ways that are non-conscious. We “simply” do them, not really understanding why. There is a reason, but the reason is formed through cognitive functions that are not connected to the parts of the brain that we have conscious
access to.
This phenomenon—“knowing” something without being aware of how we know it— is Intuition, the core quality found at Point Five of the Enneagram. (Merriam- Webster Online defines “intuition” as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”)
Alec’s younger brother, Alexei, will be six months old when this article goes to print. He has recently begun to learn things—most importantly how to soothe himself to sleep at night by sticking his fingers in his mouth or reaching for the pacifier. Today, Alexei naturally and unconsciously soothes himself with his fingers, but he is still figuring out how to wrangle the pacifier. Manipulating an external object is a more-complex task than sucking on his fingers and he is figuring it out with some effort struggling to coordinate emerging mental skills with emerging manual dexterity. Soon, however, he will be popping the pacifier in and out, literally in his
sleep, as if it were an appendage.
As we grow, we develop the ability to intuitively process more complex situations or tasks. The oldest of the three Sikora boys, Adrian, is three and a half and can catch a ball thrown from a short distance. Last summer, a thrown ball would bounce off Adrian’s chest as his arms flailed together a beat too slowly. In a few years he will be chasing down pop-ups as effortlessly as you or I shoo away a mosquito.
While they are the easiest to describe, it is not only physical activities that we learn to perform intuitively; the brain is constantly habituating thinking processes and carrying them out below the surface of our awareness. We intuitively step away from a dark alley, resist getting onto an elevator with someone who looks “wrong,” and turn one direction rather than the other when lost. We all have the experience of “knowing” something without being sure why we know it.
Once again, however, the socialization process inhibits our trust in our intuition. As children we think we know what is best for us based on what we feel, but our parents—if we are lucky—do their best to keep us from hurting ourselves. The unintended consequence is that we learn to doubt ourselves when we shouldn’t. And the bigger the risk is, the more we doubt ourselves. We stop relying on our inner knowing and we begin to consciously analyze our circumstances and figure out our responses. Casual situations—catching a ball, driving a car on a familiar road, making small talk by the water cooler—are comfortably handled intuitively. Larger, more-critical situations—who should I marry, where should I live, what car should I buy, etc.—are pulled into consciousness for analysis and resolution.
Again, this is as it should be. The problem, which is typically one of efficacy rather than dire consequence, occurs when situations that can be handled intuitively are forced into the conscious: Decisions are delayed or deferred and opportunities are missed. In the business world this phenomenon is called “paralysis through analysis”: deadlines are missed, market opportunities come and go, time is wasted.
This is the central dilemma found at Point Five of the Enneagram. Again, it occurs for each of us, Ennea-type Five feels the disconnection from intuition most acutely. Rather than trusting inner knowing based on experience, they step back and analyze, weigh options, and cogitate. This stepping back, or detaching, leads to the Five’s not actually doing things, robbing them of opportunities to internalize actions and processes and further reinforcing the need to step back and analyze some
more.
Mature intuition, because it is based on internalized experience, takes time to nurture, just like the rest of the core qualities. One way to assist that development is through the accelerator of “conscious practice.”
The focus of the Five tends to be on observing from a distance rather than engaging and doing. They can nurture intuition by consciously practicing activities so that they develop the ability to do them naturally and unconsciously (that is, intuitively). When we practice something we carve neural pathways in our brain that allow for habituated behavior. While I’ve written in past articles about the danger of habitual behavior and how to overcome it, I am not against unconscious behavior. I
am against ineffective unconscious behavior. There are many times when
unconscious behavior works for us: when swerving the car to avoid a collision, snatching a child out of harm’s way, catching a ball.
Conscious practice allows us to create patterns of effective unconscious behavior.
Here’s how.
Learning follows four typical phases:
1. Unconscious incompetence (“I don’t even know that I don’t know how to do this”),
2. Conscious incompetence (“I now see that I don’t know how to do this”),
3. Conscious competence (“I now see that I know how to do this”), and
4. Unconscious competence (“I no longer pay attention to how I do this”).
Making this cycle conscious is what the accelerator of conscious practice is all about. It means not just “practicing” something, but practicing deliberately in a structured manner.(1) Here are two examples:
Beginning martial artists spend countless hours practicing their techniques individually, executing thousands of single kicks, punches, and blocks until they develop adequate coordination. Then they will string the individual techniques into sequences called “kata” or forms and practice pre-arranged combinations with an opponent. Eventually, they will practice free-style sparring. The martial artist who is new to sparring will be trapped in his head, constantly thinking about what his opponent is doing, might do, and how he will respond. This will cause his movement to be hesitant and stiff, and he will easily be defeated by a more experienced fighter. Eventually, however, with enough practice the martial artist will begin to unconsciously act out his training and experience. His movements will be natural and relaxed, he will find himself automatically executing the techniques he has practiced countless times at just the right moments. He has learned to fight intuitively.
Fives are often plagued by an inability to be decisive. They want one more piece of data to analyze, one more variable to factor, or one more day to consider the evidence before being ready to act. This capacity for patient analysis is a gift and has great potential benefit; it is also the source of frustration for many people who expect decisions from Fives and it is the most common behavioral inhibitor of Fives’ careers.
Fives (and others who struggle to be more decisive) benefit from consciously practicing making decisions, starting small and working up to larger matters. I sometimes urge Fives to pick a simple decision they have to make each day, such as what to have for breakfast, what kind of coffee to have, or what to wear to work, and put a short time limit on themselves. Rather than deliberate for the 30 seconds they may usually take at the Starbucks counter (at the risk of being thrashed by the large and irritated Eight behind them), they limit themselves to 10 seconds. Since the stakes are relatively small, the Five doesn’t lose much by making a decision he
later regrets. As time goes on, he can move to larger and more complicated
decisions to practice.
Despite our view of ourselves and rational creatures, most decisions are based on emotion, and there is a specific feeling that accompanies decisiveness. It is important to learn to recognize the feeling that accompanies this exercise. This feeling can then be deliberately recalled in the future as a useful aid in making more important decisions. What typically happens, however, is that practicing decisiveness eventually makes it an unconscious skill that no longer needs to be practiced.
The goal here is not to make anyone rush to decisions; there are many times when that is a mistake. The goal is to develop the ability to be more decisive when the situation requires. Practicing being decisive at Starbucks today helps one be more decisive in critical matters tomorrow.
Thus ends Mario Sikora's writing, and now back to me:
I love the clarity and specificity with which he lays out his points, and I particularly like his use of brain science (with references to popular cinema and observations of his son's development, too!)
The article also has a long section on working with a 7; as a 6, I identify with both 7 and 5 issues, so I found the article helpful. However, I was quite surprised that the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge is used to discuss point 5, rather than point 6. I associate 6 with needing and wanting more certainty before making decisions, rather than 5. I also associate 6 with the compulsive need to drag things into conscious awareness instead of just doing them.
Sikora's discussion of developing decisiveness and learning to trust to one's intuition reminds me of my task as a 6, which is to learn to trust my Inner Guidance. As a 6 (i.e. as the primary type in the thinking triad), I am supposed to be "most out of touch with" thinking. Riso and Hudson in The Wisdom of the Enneagram say "Sixes are the primary type in the Thinking Triad, meaning that they have the most trouble connecting to their own inner guidance. As a result, they do not have confidence in their own minds and judgment. This does not mean that they do not think. On the contrary, they think -- and worry -- a lot." Riso and Hudson discuss contact with Essence as what helps 6s realize that they are on a firm foundation with their own inner guidance: "When Sixes experience this truth, they feel solid, steady, and supported, as if they were standing on a massive bed of granite. They realize that this ground is the only real security in life, and it is what gives Sixes immense courage. This is the real meaning of faith, their particular Essential quality. Faith is not belief, but a real, immediate knowing that comes from experience. Faith without experience is belief. Faith with experience brings reliable guidance. Much of the personality of Sixes can be seen in an effort to imitate or recreate faith in terms of beliefs and to find a substitute for the certainty that they are already secure as an expression of the Divine."
I find this problematic. As a 6, my central sin is faithlessness (as Cindi and I teach it, anyway -- many others teach that the 6's sin is fear.) The 6's dilemma is how to get there from here? (That is, if you haven't had the kind of experiences Riso and Hudson describe.)
As for Sikora's prescription, frankly, I don't find the advice to practice making small decisions ALL THAT satisfying as a way to access one's intuition, but I do see how it would help, and I see why, and it has the added virtue of not making me extremely uncomfortable.
I am interested in reading more by Mario Sikora, for the reasons enumerated above, and I am in luck, because Cindi received his book, Awareness to Action, for Christmas.
Sikora's discussion of practice and martial arts reminds me of this idea about dreams as the dojo for waking life.
If you've been following along extremely closely, you know I've been in Tallahassee for the past week. While in Tallahassee I did three things and three things only: work, gain weight, and read books and articles related to the Enneagram. Before I left I had printed out Enneagram Monthly for Nov. of 2006 (one of three issues available for free, here.) My favorite article from it is Notes and Melody #6: Composing the Tune by Mario Sikora. (As you might imagine it is the sixth article in a series; the entire series as well as many of his other articles are available on his website, here, and here is the link to his home page.)
Sikora captured my attention right out of the gate with this clause from his first sentence: "...and being by temperament indifferent to the gentle sound of rustling angels' feathers and earnest tones that accompany much of the talk about the Enneagram...." Hee! I feel the same way. More on that point in a few days.
The article as a whole focuses on coaching Sevens; the part I am going to discuss is about working with Point 5 (whether with Sevens, Fives, or whomever.) I am about to quote a massive amount of Sikora's text; read it here, or read it in the original article (then come back to see what my points are.) It 's the part of the article beginning with the bolded title Point Five. And here begins Mario Sikora's material:
Point Five
I don’t know what you mean when you say Big Mind and Little Mind. First of all there is the brain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is a famous medical case discussed in neuroscience literature in which a woman suffered brain damage that impaired her short-term memory. Much like the character in the film “Memento,” she was unable to form memories of events that occurred after the injury. Each time she visited her doctor, he would hold out his hand and introduce himself anew as if it was the first time they met. If he left the room, even momentarily, she would forget who he was and he would have to introduce himself all over again. One day, the doctor decided to try an experiment: He hid a thumb tack in his hand before entering the examination room. When she
shook his hand, she was pricked by the tack and recoiled in pain. The doctor apologized profusely and left the room after calming the patient. Upon returning a short while later, the patient again had no recollection of the doctor, but she refused to shake his hand. She refused to shake his hand at subsequent visits as well, but when asked why she would offer weak justifications, such as explaining that she feared she would spread a cold or catch germs from the doctor. She had no resistance to shaking other people’s hands, however.
The point of retelling this story is to show that the brain processes information in ways that we are not consciously aware of, either because we have habituated the behavior and no longer need to be consciously aware of it or because we do not have the capacity be consciously aware of it. The first situation happens through repetition. If you do something enough times it becomes automatic. The second situation occurs because of the way the brain evolved—giving us the capacity for mental function before giving us the capacity for consciousness of those functions. (See Part Two for more on this.) Therefore, we have the capacity to process information, store experiences, and manufacture responses in ways that are non-conscious. We “simply” do them, not really understanding why. There is a reason, but the reason is formed through cognitive functions that are not connected to the parts of the brain that we have conscious
access to.
This phenomenon—“knowing” something without being aware of how we know it— is Intuition, the core quality found at Point Five of the Enneagram. (Merriam- Webster Online defines “intuition” as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”)
Alec’s younger brother, Alexei, will be six months old when this article goes to print. He has recently begun to learn things—most importantly how to soothe himself to sleep at night by sticking his fingers in his mouth or reaching for the pacifier. Today, Alexei naturally and unconsciously soothes himself with his fingers, but he is still figuring out how to wrangle the pacifier. Manipulating an external object is a more-complex task than sucking on his fingers and he is figuring it out with some effort struggling to coordinate emerging mental skills with emerging manual dexterity. Soon, however, he will be popping the pacifier in and out, literally in his
sleep, as if it were an appendage.
As we grow, we develop the ability to intuitively process more complex situations or tasks. The oldest of the three Sikora boys, Adrian, is three and a half and can catch a ball thrown from a short distance. Last summer, a thrown ball would bounce off Adrian’s chest as his arms flailed together a beat too slowly. In a few years he will be chasing down pop-ups as effortlessly as you or I shoo away a mosquito.
While they are the easiest to describe, it is not only physical activities that we learn to perform intuitively; the brain is constantly habituating thinking processes and carrying them out below the surface of our awareness. We intuitively step away from a dark alley, resist getting onto an elevator with someone who looks “wrong,” and turn one direction rather than the other when lost. We all have the experience of “knowing” something without being sure why we know it.
Once again, however, the socialization process inhibits our trust in our intuition. As children we think we know what is best for us based on what we feel, but our parents—if we are lucky—do their best to keep us from hurting ourselves. The unintended consequence is that we learn to doubt ourselves when we shouldn’t. And the bigger the risk is, the more we doubt ourselves. We stop relying on our inner knowing and we begin to consciously analyze our circumstances and figure out our responses. Casual situations—catching a ball, driving a car on a familiar road, making small talk by the water cooler—are comfortably handled intuitively. Larger, more-critical situations—who should I marry, where should I live, what car should I buy, etc.—are pulled into consciousness for analysis and resolution.
Again, this is as it should be. The problem, which is typically one of efficacy rather than dire consequence, occurs when situations that can be handled intuitively are forced into the conscious: Decisions are delayed or deferred and opportunities are missed. In the business world this phenomenon is called “paralysis through analysis”: deadlines are missed, market opportunities come and go, time is wasted.
This is the central dilemma found at Point Five of the Enneagram. Again, it occurs for each of us, Ennea-type Five feels the disconnection from intuition most acutely. Rather than trusting inner knowing based on experience, they step back and analyze, weigh options, and cogitate. This stepping back, or detaching, leads to the Five’s not actually doing things, robbing them of opportunities to internalize actions and processes and further reinforcing the need to step back and analyze some
more.
Mature intuition, because it is based on internalized experience, takes time to nurture, just like the rest of the core qualities. One way to assist that development is through the accelerator of “conscious practice.”
The focus of the Five tends to be on observing from a distance rather than engaging and doing. They can nurture intuition by consciously practicing activities so that they develop the ability to do them naturally and unconsciously (that is, intuitively). When we practice something we carve neural pathways in our brain that allow for habituated behavior. While I’ve written in past articles about the danger of habitual behavior and how to overcome it, I am not against unconscious behavior. I
am against ineffective unconscious behavior. There are many times when
unconscious behavior works for us: when swerving the car to avoid a collision, snatching a child out of harm’s way, catching a ball.
Conscious practice allows us to create patterns of effective unconscious behavior.
Here’s how.
Learning follows four typical phases:
1. Unconscious incompetence (“I don’t even know that I don’t know how to do this”),
2. Conscious incompetence (“I now see that I don’t know how to do this”),
3. Conscious competence (“I now see that I know how to do this”), and
4. Unconscious competence (“I no longer pay attention to how I do this”).
Making this cycle conscious is what the accelerator of conscious practice is all about. It means not just “practicing” something, but practicing deliberately in a structured manner.(1) Here are two examples:
Beginning martial artists spend countless hours practicing their techniques individually, executing thousands of single kicks, punches, and blocks until they develop adequate coordination. Then they will string the individual techniques into sequences called “kata” or forms and practice pre-arranged combinations with an opponent. Eventually, they will practice free-style sparring. The martial artist who is new to sparring will be trapped in his head, constantly thinking about what his opponent is doing, might do, and how he will respond. This will cause his movement to be hesitant and stiff, and he will easily be defeated by a more experienced fighter. Eventually, however, with enough practice the martial artist will begin to unconsciously act out his training and experience. His movements will be natural and relaxed, he will find himself automatically executing the techniques he has practiced countless times at just the right moments. He has learned to fight intuitively.
Fives are often plagued by an inability to be decisive. They want one more piece of data to analyze, one more variable to factor, or one more day to consider the evidence before being ready to act. This capacity for patient analysis is a gift and has great potential benefit; it is also the source of frustration for many people who expect decisions from Fives and it is the most common behavioral inhibitor of Fives’ careers.
Fives (and others who struggle to be more decisive) benefit from consciously practicing making decisions, starting small and working up to larger matters. I sometimes urge Fives to pick a simple decision they have to make each day, such as what to have for breakfast, what kind of coffee to have, or what to wear to work, and put a short time limit on themselves. Rather than deliberate for the 30 seconds they may usually take at the Starbucks counter (at the risk of being thrashed by the large and irritated Eight behind them), they limit themselves to 10 seconds. Since the stakes are relatively small, the Five doesn’t lose much by making a decision he
later regrets. As time goes on, he can move to larger and more complicated
decisions to practice.
Despite our view of ourselves and rational creatures, most decisions are based on emotion, and there is a specific feeling that accompanies decisiveness. It is important to learn to recognize the feeling that accompanies this exercise. This feeling can then be deliberately recalled in the future as a useful aid in making more important decisions. What typically happens, however, is that practicing decisiveness eventually makes it an unconscious skill that no longer needs to be practiced.
The goal here is not to make anyone rush to decisions; there are many times when that is a mistake. The goal is to develop the ability to be more decisive when the situation requires. Practicing being decisive at Starbucks today helps one be more decisive in critical matters tomorrow.
Thus ends Mario Sikora's writing, and now back to me:
I love the clarity and specificity with which he lays out his points, and I particularly like his use of brain science (with references to popular cinema and observations of his son's development, too!)
The article also has a long section on working with a 7; as a 6, I identify with both 7 and 5 issues, so I found the article helpful. However, I was quite surprised that the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge is used to discuss point 5, rather than point 6. I associate 6 with needing and wanting more certainty before making decisions, rather than 5. I also associate 6 with the compulsive need to drag things into conscious awareness instead of just doing them.
Sikora's discussion of developing decisiveness and learning to trust to one's intuition reminds me of my task as a 6, which is to learn to trust my Inner Guidance. As a 6 (i.e. as the primary type in the thinking triad), I am supposed to be "most out of touch with" thinking. Riso and Hudson in The Wisdom of the Enneagram say "Sixes are the primary type in the Thinking Triad, meaning that they have the most trouble connecting to their own inner guidance. As a result, they do not have confidence in their own minds and judgment. This does not mean that they do not think. On the contrary, they think -- and worry -- a lot." Riso and Hudson discuss contact with Essence as what helps 6s realize that they are on a firm foundation with their own inner guidance: "When Sixes experience this truth, they feel solid, steady, and supported, as if they were standing on a massive bed of granite. They realize that this ground is the only real security in life, and it is what gives Sixes immense courage. This is the real meaning of faith, their particular Essential quality. Faith is not belief, but a real, immediate knowing that comes from experience. Faith without experience is belief. Faith with experience brings reliable guidance. Much of the personality of Sixes can be seen in an effort to imitate or recreate faith in terms of beliefs and to find a substitute for the certainty that they are already secure as an expression of the Divine."
I find this problematic. As a 6, my central sin is faithlessness (as Cindi and I teach it, anyway -- many others teach that the 6's sin is fear.) The 6's dilemma is how to get there from here? (That is, if you haven't had the kind of experiences Riso and Hudson describe.)
As for Sikora's prescription, frankly, I don't find the advice to practice making small decisions ALL THAT satisfying as a way to access one's intuition, but I do see how it would help, and I see why, and it has the added virtue of not making me extremely uncomfortable.
I am interested in reading more by Mario Sikora, for the reasons enumerated above, and I am in luck, because Cindi received his book, Awareness to Action, for Christmas.
Sikora's discussion of practice and martial arts reminds me of this idea about dreams as the dojo for waking life.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Fear and Anxiety in Nashvegas: Enneagram Autobiography Class 3 Recap
Before session 3 of the Enneagram Autobiography class, there was a Mexican dinner in the social area of FUUN. During the dinner, we were asked to say a few words about the topic of the class. I tried to win over prospective new students by saying we would be "exploring issues of fear and anxiety." Shockingly enough, a couple of new people came to the class anyway.
As is our way, we went around the room sharing our thoughts. The two most popular homework questions turned out to be "How do I know that I am loved?" and "What does focusing on your differences with other people cost you?", so most people spoke to those.
We talked about differences and the creation of drama in relationship to type 4. The 4s in the room denied being dramatic. That is not the way they perceive it at all and they explained their behavior, rather, in terms of being sensitive.
I recommended the book Emotions and the Enneagram, by Margaret Fringes Keyes, as an insightful take on the Enneagram as a whole and type 4 in particular. It explains how 4s romanticize loss and use melancholy to stave off real depression. Mary Beth talked about connections between personality type and brain chemistry and recommended Riso and Hudson's book Personality Types, which correlates Ennegram Types with the DSM, and a website called something like "The Enneagram: A Clinical Pharmacist's View." It seems that this site has been taken down, but I was able to find the pahramcist's description of type 4 here.
Next, we segued over to the head triad -- the triad associated with fear, anxiety, and worry. I was reminded of this church sign I photographed recently:
We meditated a bit, and having acheived full Presence, were able to fully notice things like how funny-shaped the room was and that it had closets. If you would like to have such revelations at home, follow the instructions on page 217 of The Wisdom of the Enneagram.
We spoke of type 5 and their love of skulls and dead chickens. I found myself talking at length about the "effective" combination of the type 5 propensity for ignoring one's emotions combined with the type 4 habit of making a really big deal of them. It sound like a paradox, but it has played out in my life, and there were a few knowing nods in the room.
For homework, we suggested the consideration of the following questions from The Wisdom of the Enneagram:
"Record your observations about isolation. What kinds of situations cause you to detach emotionally? What are your attitudes about people at such times? About social life? About yourself? Can you recall any incidences from your childhood that you feel reinforced this tendency in you? Did you feel engulfed by others' needs or intruded upon? What would it take to be in relationship with others and not lose your own sense of purpose?"
"Record any examples of times in your life when you let significant opportunities for growth and challenge pass you by. Why did you decide to let them go? Would belief in your own abilities have changed the outcome?
Recall some times when you did fly against common sense and took a chance. What was the outcome? How did you feel at the time?Are there areas in your life now where you know that you are resisting your true desires out of fears or doubts about yourself? What can you do differently?"
Up next: More fear and anxiety, as Mary Beth leads the discussion on types 6 and 7.
To Prepare: Look over pages 235 - 286 in The Wisdom of the Enneagram.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
This morning's New York Times features an article by Steven Pinker called The Moral Instinct. It does not relate to the Enneagram per se, but it does touch on individual differences in several places. Pinker:
- asks who is the most admirable, Mother Theresa (2w1), Bill Gates (5w6), or this other, way less famous dude, Norman Borlaug, who's apparently done a lot for humanity.
- mentions the agreeableness and conscientiousness scales on the Big 5 personality test, also known as the OCEAN (for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism),
- explains how and why there may be evolutionary niches for some of us to be high-minded self-sacrificers, some to be grudging reciprocators, and others to be outright cheaters.
- mentions that Hitler probably thought he was acting morally, which I consider enneagram-related -- look at the chart in the back of Personality Types by Riso and Hudson that shows how each type is trying to SOLVE a problem when they're spiraling down the levels. (In this case, type 6.)
I'm also guessing that people interested in the Enneagram are likely to be interested in psychology and morality generally, which is what the article is about.
But before you read it, you will want to go to YourMorals.org and take the Moral Foundations questionnaire: Findings will be discussed in the Pinker article, so this is your last chance to take it before you are forever tainted by hearing what it's about. (The site also features many other tests you can take; most, if not all, are ongoing psychology experiments so if you take 'em, you're also helping some researcher.)
Also, you will want to take this test, the Moral Sense Test (also an actual research project. You will be helping out a researcher named Fiery Cushman, if that makes a difference. If you are like me, you are wondering whether Fiery is a man's name or a woman's; a foreign name or just some American whose mom and dad thought Fiery was underused as a first name. He is a man and looks to be a regular American; his brother's name is O'Neill and his sister's name is Holly. Here is a website that he and his wife Julie have started.) Again, findings from this research project (or a very similar one) are discussed in the article so here's your chance to take it fresh (although granted, the Moral Foundations test is sort of a spoiler for part of the Moral Sense test. So, like, half of y'all take this one first, ok?)
Now, here is the article:
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
Some thoughts, randomly presented:
Who can explain the significance of the Adrian Tomine drawing of two women running to catch a cab?
I'm not sure I agree with Pinker about human cloning. In other words, I think this Kass fellow is onto something with his "wisdom of repugnance" as it relates to human cloning. A cursory web search shows that most writers agree that Kass's argument is bogus, and Wikipedia has it listed under fallacies here. (You might also want to check out some of the links; for example, the Uncanny Valley is pretty cool.) And yes, everybody's making really valid points that lots of other things like interracial marriage, homosexual sex, and in vitro fertilization either were once considered repugnant, (or still are, at least to some people, at least the homosexuality.) However, to me human cloning is more similar to murder in the sense that there should just be a line drawn there. For instance, let's say there are some good reasons to kill somebody -- ok, I don't have to think too hard, since I've been reading ethical dilemmas. You are a doctor, and you have five patients needing organs who will die if they don't get organs. And a pharmaceutical rep comes in, who happens to have matching versions of all five organs. And for whatever reason you would never be caught if you were to take them out of the pharmaceutical rep and put them in those five people, saving five people but killing one, and just a pharmaceutical salesman at that. Should you do it? Of course not, and you didn't even have to think hard about it. Should be the same with human cloning; a bright line should be drawn between things up to human cloning and human cloning itself.
As for the trolley problem: I've heard of it before, and I always wondered why most people say that yes, they would push the lever. (Note: here begin those spoilers I was talking about.) Because I said no. For the same reason as not harvesting the organs; you can't kill people even if you think it would help in a utilitarian sense. However, when I actually took Fiery Cushman's test (ok, it's not just his test), I said yes; why? Because what was asked was not whether you'd do it, but whether it is morally permissible, and I think it is: I can certainly see why someone else would do it. Also, in the version where you are actually DRIVING the train, of course I would turn down the track with only one person on it to avoid hitting five. Why is this different? This scenario doesn't posit an inanimate object barrelling down on those five as a fact of nature with me as a by-stander who has the option to not get involved (and not be hauled into court); it is me driving an out-of-control vehicle and I know when I am in that situation I will turn to avoid the worse obstacle to hit; that's just how driving is. Also, there is no question of being a criminal versus not; if there is a question of vehicular homicide it would apply in both cases here.
About a month ago we held a poll about who is more famous, Steven Pinker or E. O. Wilson. The (statistically meaningless) results were: Steven Pinker 2, E.O. Wilson 3, and I've never heard of either of them, 2. Our discussion of this "controversy" here and here. Well, this morning I woke up at 3:35 am, January 13th. This Pinker article came out on January 13th. I'm on Central time, so it had been out for about 4 and a half hours, assuming it comes out right at midnight. In that 4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night, enough people had emailed it around that it had already shot up to number one on the NYT's most emailed articles list. (New articles usually appear on the list after everybody's woken up and had time to look at them.) I think this speaks to Pinker's fame (and the quality of the article, and the appeal of the subject matter.) But don't count E.O. Wilson out! Because a brief web search also turns up this article, Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, which is where I first encountered these ideas about the 5 strands of morality (harm, fairness, authority, purity, and ingroup loyalty) and the Trolley Problem. In it, the author states:
"Most people who study morality now read and write about emotions, the brain, chimpanzees, and evolution, as well as reasoning. This is exactly what E. O. Wilson predicted in Sociobiology: that the old approaches to morality, including Kohlberg's, would be swept away or merged into a new approach that focused on the emotive centers of the brain as biological adaptations. Wilson even said that these emotive centers give us moral intuitions, which the moral philosophers then justify while pretending that they are intuiting truths that are independent of the contingencies of our evolved minds."
and
"I think E. O. Wilson deserves more credit than he gets for seeing into the real nature of morality and for predicting the future of moral psychology so uncannily. He's in my pantheon, along with David Hume and Charles Darwin. All three were visionaries who urged us to focus on the moral emotions and their social utility. "
Incidentally, if you like articles like these, check out the blog http://www.3quarksdaily.com/, which is where I found this article initially.
Finally, one last link, the brain in a vat problem here. Hee.
- asks who is the most admirable, Mother Theresa (2w1), Bill Gates (5w6), or this other, way less famous dude, Norman Borlaug, who's apparently done a lot for humanity.
- mentions the agreeableness and conscientiousness scales on the Big 5 personality test, also known as the OCEAN (for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism),
- explains how and why there may be evolutionary niches for some of us to be high-minded self-sacrificers, some to be grudging reciprocators, and others to be outright cheaters.
- mentions that Hitler probably thought he was acting morally, which I consider enneagram-related -- look at the chart in the back of Personality Types by Riso and Hudson that shows how each type is trying to SOLVE a problem when they're spiraling down the levels. (In this case, type 6.)
I'm also guessing that people interested in the Enneagram are likely to be interested in psychology and morality generally, which is what the article is about.
But before you read it, you will want to go to YourMorals.org and take the Moral Foundations questionnaire: Findings will be discussed in the Pinker article, so this is your last chance to take it before you are forever tainted by hearing what it's about. (The site also features many other tests you can take; most, if not all, are ongoing psychology experiments so if you take 'em, you're also helping some researcher.)
Also, you will want to take this test, the Moral Sense Test (also an actual research project. You will be helping out a researcher named Fiery Cushman, if that makes a difference. If you are like me, you are wondering whether Fiery is a man's name or a woman's; a foreign name or just some American whose mom and dad thought Fiery was underused as a first name. He is a man and looks to be a regular American; his brother's name is O'Neill and his sister's name is Holly. Here is a website that he and his wife Julie have started.) Again, findings from this research project (or a very similar one) are discussed in the article so here's your chance to take it fresh (although granted, the Moral Foundations test is sort of a spoiler for part of the Moral Sense test. So, like, half of y'all take this one first, ok?)
Now, here is the article:
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
Some thoughts, randomly presented:
Who can explain the significance of the Adrian Tomine drawing of two women running to catch a cab?
I'm not sure I agree with Pinker about human cloning. In other words, I think this Kass fellow is onto something with his "wisdom of repugnance" as it relates to human cloning. A cursory web search shows that most writers agree that Kass's argument is bogus, and Wikipedia has it listed under fallacies here. (You might also want to check out some of the links; for example, the Uncanny Valley is pretty cool.) And yes, everybody's making really valid points that lots of other things like interracial marriage, homosexual sex, and in vitro fertilization either were once considered repugnant, (or still are, at least to some people, at least the homosexuality.) However, to me human cloning is more similar to murder in the sense that there should just be a line drawn there. For instance, let's say there are some good reasons to kill somebody -- ok, I don't have to think too hard, since I've been reading ethical dilemmas. You are a doctor, and you have five patients needing organs who will die if they don't get organs. And a pharmaceutical rep comes in, who happens to have matching versions of all five organs. And for whatever reason you would never be caught if you were to take them out of the pharmaceutical rep and put them in those five people, saving five people but killing one, and just a pharmaceutical salesman at that. Should you do it? Of course not, and you didn't even have to think hard about it. Should be the same with human cloning; a bright line should be drawn between things up to human cloning and human cloning itself.
As for the trolley problem: I've heard of it before, and I always wondered why most people say that yes, they would push the lever. (Note: here begin those spoilers I was talking about.) Because I said no. For the same reason as not harvesting the organs; you can't kill people even if you think it would help in a utilitarian sense. However, when I actually took Fiery Cushman's test (ok, it's not just his test), I said yes; why? Because what was asked was not whether you'd do it, but whether it is morally permissible, and I think it is: I can certainly see why someone else would do it. Also, in the version where you are actually DRIVING the train, of course I would turn down the track with only one person on it to avoid hitting five. Why is this different? This scenario doesn't posit an inanimate object barrelling down on those five as a fact of nature with me as a by-stander who has the option to not get involved (and not be hauled into court); it is me driving an out-of-control vehicle and I know when I am in that situation I will turn to avoid the worse obstacle to hit; that's just how driving is. Also, there is no question of being a criminal versus not; if there is a question of vehicular homicide it would apply in both cases here.
About a month ago we held a poll about who is more famous, Steven Pinker or E. O. Wilson. The (statistically meaningless) results were: Steven Pinker 2, E.O. Wilson 3, and I've never heard of either of them, 2. Our discussion of this "controversy" here and here. Well, this morning I woke up at 3:35 am, January 13th. This Pinker article came out on January 13th. I'm on Central time, so it had been out for about 4 and a half hours, assuming it comes out right at midnight. In that 4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night, enough people had emailed it around that it had already shot up to number one on the NYT's most emailed articles list. (New articles usually appear on the list after everybody's woken up and had time to look at them.) I think this speaks to Pinker's fame (and the quality of the article, and the appeal of the subject matter.) But don't count E.O. Wilson out! Because a brief web search also turns up this article, Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, which is where I first encountered these ideas about the 5 strands of morality (harm, fairness, authority, purity, and ingroup loyalty) and the Trolley Problem. In it, the author states:
"Most people who study morality now read and write about emotions, the brain, chimpanzees, and evolution, as well as reasoning. This is exactly what E. O. Wilson predicted in Sociobiology: that the old approaches to morality, including Kohlberg's, would be swept away or merged into a new approach that focused on the emotive centers of the brain as biological adaptations. Wilson even said that these emotive centers give us moral intuitions, which the moral philosophers then justify while pretending that they are intuiting truths that are independent of the contingencies of our evolved minds."
and
"I think E. O. Wilson deserves more credit than he gets for seeing into the real nature of morality and for predicting the future of moral psychology so uncannily. He's in my pantheon, along with David Hume and Charles Darwin. All three were visionaries who urged us to focus on the moral emotions and their social utility. "
Incidentally, if you like articles like these, check out the blog http://www.3quarksdaily.com/, which is where I found this article initially.
Finally, one last link, the brain in a vat problem here. Hee.
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