[FRIAM] Your personal truth

Fri May 9 14:37:08 EDT 2025

No excuses necessary.   You're absolutely entitled by the constitution of
this strange organization to which we  both have long been members.   So,
just to remind  anybody who cares,  the question is, Do I know my emotions
in any way essentially different from my knowledge of the huge white truck
parked on the street not  20'  outside my  study window.   He has every
right to park there  and I have every right to grumble about it.
n

On Fri, May 9, 2025 at 11:02 AM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:

> Please excuse me if I have accidentally set off an eternal loop of thought
> from which there is no escape (although what if consciousness is such an
> eternal, strange loop for which there is no solution? Gilbert Ryle says in
> "The concept of mind" that the "self" belongs to the things which remain
> confusing no matter how you look at it: "Should I, or should I not, put my
> knowing self down on my list of the sorts of things that I can have
> knowledge of? If I say no, it seems to reduce my knowing self to a
> theoretically infertile mystery, yet if I say yes, it seems to reduce the
> fishing-net to one of the fishes which it itself catches")
>
> I was trying similar to Victor Klemperer to understand the evil that
> haunts us. At the core evil is selfishness, but why are people so easily
> deceived by it? As you know Klemperer was a German linguist who tried to
> understand the Nazis by examining their language (in his LTI book) and
> their actions (in his diaries). He used the tool which he knew best, which
> was language.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii
>
> If there is a (wannabe) dictator at the top who is deceiving us, how he is
> doing it, is the deception somehow visible in his language, and what role
> do emotions play in the bigger picture as a mechanism of deception and
> control?
>
> Donald Trump for example seems to judge everything if it is good or bad
> for him personally. Everything is always about him. He seems to be unable
> to discuss things in an objective way, and his speeches are full of
> subjective descriptions, from simple judgements to heavy insults. Things
> around him are either terrific or terrible, tremendous or tedious, awesome
> or awful, great or ghastly, huge or tiny, etc.
>
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/how-to-talk-trump/550934/
>
> As you you know Hitler was full of emotions in his speeches too. In his
> speeches he talked himself regularly into a rage. Demagogues almost embody
> negative emotions. The rage and hate towards the perceived opponent, and
> the shame of the own situation soon to be replaced by pride, as Arlie
> Russell Hochschild describes in her latest book "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame,
> and the Rise of the Right"
>
>
> https://speakoutsocialists.org/book-review-stolen-pride-loss-shame-and-the-rise-of-the-right/
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: thompnickson2 at gmail.com
> Date: 5/9/25 12:17 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Your personal truth
>
> Oh Gosh, Jochen.  On the one hand I am deeply indebted to FRIAM members
> for allowing me to noodle in areas of thought where I have no business; on
> the other hand, I feel obligated not to hide from you how very, very bad I
> think Mary C. Lamia’s thinking is.  In the first place, lover of metaphors
> that am, I think the anthropomorphism of the brain is one of the most
> dangerous metaphors a human can bring to psychology, because it sets off an
> eternal loop of thought from which there is no escape.   Meteorology and
> Psychology have much in common.  They both have to do with objects with
> innards operating in environments.  With Psychology, the objects are human,
> the innards are the guts and brain, and the environment is the people and
> things around us.  In Meteorology, the objects are the storms, the innards
> are the fronts and other structures of cyclones, and the environment is the
> earth’s surface and the larger circulation of its atmosphere.  Perhaps I
> feel drawn to Meteorology just because it seems so like a behavioral
> science.  (Or, to get the order of events right, I was drawn to Psychology
> because it was so like Meteorology.)   But we must keep our levels of
> organization straight.  And if we, like Mary C., are to make metaphors
> between the whole (the person) and the part (the brain) and then to say
> that the part is manipulating the whole, she ought to be damn clear what
> kind of metaphorical world she his let herself into or she will never get
> out alive. I don’t think she knows anything she is talking about.  I would
> be terrified if one of my college-aged grandchildren were to fall into the
> hands of such a person.
>
>
>
> I am deeply sorry if I am being a jerk.  (And will no doubt deeplier
> sorrier when one of you points out both that I am both being a jerk and
>  that I am wrong).  If you were tempted to carry on this conversation
> further, now I have been a jerk, I would love to explore with you how some
> aspect of Mary’s thought accorded with your experience and perhaps gave you
> comfort or insight because of that.  When she talks of the brain, what is
> she actually talking about for you.  Because, if one thing is damned sure,
> it is that when people talk about their brains, they are talking about
> something they have never touched or seen or heard or felt.  They are
> talking about a beetle in a box, a nothing.  Or they are using the brain as
> a model of behavior.
>
>
>
> OK, Russ, Dave, Glen, Marcus, Erics, have at me.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 24, 2025 2:10 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Your personal truth
>
>
>
> If Nick shares his struggles with weather I can share my unqualified
> thoughts about psychology :-P I was thinking about the orange menace, how
> he deceives everyone and how he manipulates his followers by controlling
> their emotions and I was wondering if emotions deceive us in general. Do
> emotions deceive us by creating a reality distortion field that paints the
> objects they have identified as desirable (primarily food & mates for
> supper and pairing time) in the brightest colors?
>
>
>
> Emotions certainly need to manipulate us in order to control us. Their
> purpose is to influence our behavior and interactions. Psychologist Mary C.
> Lamia writes "Without any deliberate effort on your part, your brain
> evaluates every situation you encounter and decides if an emotion should be
> activated to alert and protect you" [1]. They are in a sense the PR machine
> and advertising agency of the body. As if the body would create an
> advertising agency that highlights the objects it should seek.
>
>
>
> Emotions deceive us because they exaggerate. If we are in love they turn
> the desired object of person into some kind of wonderful dream. We only
> perceive positive traits while negative ones are overlooked. If we hate
> something we only perceive negative traits. These distortions act on top of
> your beliefs which "create a cognitive lens through which you interpret the
> events of your world" [2]
>
>
>
> They exaggerate to alert and protect us. Mary C. Lamia writes "By creating
> anxiety, anger, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, disgust, embarrassment, or any
> number of emotional responses that your brain has at its disposal, your
> emotional system attempts to inform and protect you by making you feel
> whatever it is you need to know." [1]
>
>
>
> Emotions deceive us because they can be misguided based on your previous
> experience, for example in anxiety disorders or addiction: "Your emotional
> system has no reason to lie, although it can be misguided based on your
> previous experiences in the world that have informed it." [1]
>
>
>
> Apparently emotions create a personal truth for each of us which shows us
> the world as they (on behalf of our selfish genes) want us to see it. A
> kind of personalized, distorted version of reality that reflects the
> importance of each object based on our personal longings and desires. Mary
> C. Lamia writes "nevertheless, your emotions will tell you the truth - your
> truth - even if you don't want to listen." [1]
>
>
>
> [1]
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intense-emotions-and-strong-feelings/201208/do-emotions-lie
>
>
>
> [2]
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-forward/202009/how-your-thinking-creates-your-reality
>
>
>
> -J.
>
>
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-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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