From Self-Doubt to Self-Love: Objectivity of Self-Presence

In many cases, self-doubt and self-criticism are driven by emotional wounds perhaps as a result of neglect, abuse, betrayal, or any number of psychological assaults individuals may suffer on the way to their present stage in life. Trauma has the effect of focus the mind on the environment from which dangers arise. Trauma has two kinds of effects. First, trauma teaches the sufferer that he or she is in some way expendable or irrelevant. This can be a hard lesson to overcome as the individual learns to love him or her self. Trauma also makes it difficult to free the one’s feelings and thoughts from the world around one in order to attend to, come to understand and to love oneself. The process of healing leads through conscious connection with and acceptance of the wounded part along with any associated thoughts and feelings. The person who experiences such a emotional healing is freed from the doubt and criticism generated by the distressed part. He or she won’t be easily led to doubt the reality of what happened. However, the individual may not as easily be able to understand why it happened in order to repeat the process elsewhere. Coming to an understanding of why healing happens also means healing from philosophical injuries sustained on the way to their present stage of education or professional development.

Understanding the process of healing correctly would have several important consequences. First, the process may be deliberately repeated with respect to other wounds or areas of distress. Second, the individual may serve as a guide and help to others. Finally, understanding the process is a matter of understanding oneself as a living human being. Such deep understanding promotes authentic self-love. However, understanding what self-love is and how it is possible and the ability to recognize it when it occurs, requires healing from the philosophic wound.

There exist patterns in modern daily life and education that constitute specific obstacles to authentic self-love. These patterns grow out of and reinforce an extroverted mindset that orients individuals away from inner experience, consequently making self-presence difficult. In conversational speech ‘extroverted’ refers to being outgoing. In this context the term refers to a pattern of attention and of questioning that is oriented away from inner experience and toward external events. This extroverted pattern in conscious living does not prevent folks from attending to and making connection with inner sources of distress, though it does make the chances of healing less likely in ordinary daily living; however, extroverted consciousness will never understand of the process of inner healing.

The societal and educational patterns that promote this extroverted orientation away from self-presence include almost exclusive reference to performance outcomes and consequences to quantify achievements and personal growth and a formal scientific training in education all along the line. These two factors are mutually reinforcing and make it a challenge for individuals to properly conceive their own inner process of healing, communicate it to others, or incorporate it into a full knowledge and understanding of the self.

The focus on outcomes and consequences in all areas of modern living is consistent with our scientific culture and takes its cue from the way in which school children are taught to think about truth and objectivity in contrast to opinion and subjectivity. Beginning with the basic division between fact and opinion, students learn that being objective is good while being subjective is bad. Believing objective facts is a sign of intelligence, while placing too much faith in subjective opinion in not. Here is the first step in the orientation away from self-presence. Self-presence is subjective conscious experience. But such subjective experience has no currency in formal prescriptions for scientific, fact-based, objective thinking.

Students are generally taught two lessons about objectivity drawn from the natural sciences: that it is objective truth is public and it is sensible. Objectivity is measured by ‘publicity’. That is, if other people agree, then the idea is objective. In the history of scientific discoveries, no experimental results are accepted as valid unless they can be replicated independently by other scientists. A single experiment, especially if it involves a small sample, is never sufficient to establish the validity or truth of a scientific idea or hypothesis. An opinion is something that Is held privately (I am the only one who thinks it) or is held by a sub-group. I am the only one who thinks something. A lone scientist may turn out to be correct, but he or she cannot know that he or she is correct unless the results are reproduced by others. The scientist must entertain self-doubt until the results are confirmed by others. 

Objective facts are sensible. Science follows the empirical method, which deliberately restricts its observations to sensible data. Scientists do not perform experiments on data that are not given to the senses and that cannot be weighed or measured. Consequently, anything that cannot be seen, heard, etc. is by definition not objectively observable. And, what cannot be objectively observed cannot be objectively verified. As a result, science can obtain no objective facts about anything in human life that is not given to the senses and subject to weights and measures. Here the scientist’s methodical self-doubt comes closer to home. Making an objective observation is simply a matter of seeing what is there to be seen. However, bias is a psychological blind spot. A biased observer does not see what is there to be seen. A biased observer, instead, may see what he or she wants to see. However, the act of seeing is not something that can be measured except when instruments are applied to the sense organs to determine whether they are responding to physical stimuli. Even if scientists were subjected to audiological and visual testing prior to entering the laboratory every day, most of what counts as bias is not a defect in the sense organs. Most bias is psychological. The scientist, therefore, must constantly entertain self-doubt. Am I being an objective observer or not? How would I know?

By contrast with objectivity, subjectivity is personal and non-sensible. One’s own subjective mental and emotional experience will never be sensibly available to others for independent verification. These formal lessons in and about objectivity are of no help in the world of subjective human experience, thinking and loving. Since I am the only one to whom my thoughts are given and (non-sensibly) observable, no one else would be able to confirm that I did in fact have a thought, never mind able to verify the content of the thought. Since, my feelings arise only within my own conscious experience, no one else is able to verify directly whether I had a feeling, never mind what the feeling was about. To be sure, there may occur indirect evidence about thoughts and feelings as communicated non-verbally in facial expressions, tone, etc. But the external observer, relying on sensible data is limited to making educated guesses and hypotheses.

Further, subjective experience and references to self-presence are suspect, being formally associated with bias and prejudice. In formal educational settings, being objective means not being biased, whereas to be subjective means the opposite, that is, to be biased. The scientific method along with methodological approaches in every discipline are designed to limit and make corrections for anything that might be properly considered subjective. Objectivity is achieved in so far as we are able to avoid being influenced by prejudice or bias by, for instance, being focused on exactly and only what’s in the room at the moment. History, prior judgments (whether true or not), pre-existing interests or desires (whether good and noble or not) are all sanctioned as illegitimate. What count as evidence and as legitimate grounds for argument is what is available for sensible observation and interrogation to all parties at the moment. Finally, there is a democracy of questioning as well. All questions are treated equally, and none may be excluded or disqualified as being beside the point. Where the desire for truth has no special status in the face of those who would muddy the waters, sow confusion, or trade in tribalistic thinking, no standard exists for the exclusion of false equivalencies, unsupported allegations, nor many other recognized forms of fallacious reasoning.

Under the influence of this high cultural standard of objectivity, everyday common sense strives to imitate this extroverted mentality.  Opinion, bias and subjectivity all come to mean similar things. The standards for proof and legitimacy are conceived along the lines of the objective-subjective dichotomy. Children and adults all carry away the prize in any argument if they can successfully assert, “That’s just your opinion.” Similarly, from the classroom to the workplace, to courts and legislatures, to the dinner table, every argument or dispute is expected to satisfy the requirements of a scientific experiment. Nothing is deemed relevant that does not come directly from the data and material right in front of the disputants. No ideas or interests from the past should be allowed to influence or inform how individuals interpret what is going on right now in the present.

On this basic, popular formulation of the conditions of objectivity, there can be no objective facts about personal experience and no self-knowledge. If objectivity must meet the requirements of publicity, then there can be no objective knowledge about whether a thought or a feeling occurred or what either might have been about. First of all, I cannot ‘see’ and confirm the fact by looking in a mirror. The most relevant data on the occurrence of the thought or feeling are not reflected back to me. Second, my observer’s hypotheses about what I am thinking and feeling can only be confirmed by asking me. People claim to know what others are thinking or feeling even without being told, but such cannot be knowledge in the strict sense because the observer does not have access to the most relevant data, which are mental operations. The observer is in the position of one who may have very good reasons to suspect the truth, but has to choose whether to believe my report about my inner experience or to doubt it. Neither his or her suspicions nor belief in my report fulfill the requirements of publicity required for the common notion of objectivity. What I know and what he or she believes about me are both grounded in my personal experience.  On the commonsense account, I cannot assert as an objective fact that I felt confused or curious, that I did or did not have a question, that I got an insight or understood something, or that I know anything about myself at all. I must live in perpetual self-doubt.

The problem is that I do not really live in such perpetual self-doubt, but I must at times pretend to do so according to the requirements of common conventions but accepting that my own ideas are simply my opinions and that I do not know what I really do know even about myself, or else take my stand on experience alone. What I mean by that is, although my private experience dose not measure up to the stature of public knowledge, it is nonetheless my experience which cannot be refuted. Thankfully there are institutions and movements that defend my right to my unassailable private experience. The hitch is that any experience, like any scientific observation, spontaneously gives rise to a question about that experience or observation. After sensing or seeing something new, we spontaneously ask “What’s that? What is that all about?” And, should I turn to those same institutions and movements for guidance in the interpretation of my inner experience I find that they have only the common, public notion of objectivity at their disposal. As a consequence I am left in a state of constant second-guessing, psychological uncertainty and fruitless rumination. To take my stand on experience alone while avoiding the abyss off self-doubt means preventing the emergence of or the serious consideration of such questions. For such questions lead to hypotheses required verification and heading in the direction of knowledge. If I would be accepted by and meet the approval of others, I must lie even to myself or at lease deny my own native curiosity. The thrust of formal educational practice is an orientation away from self-presence, and the cumulative impact is pervasive anxiety.  Healing the philosophic wound of socialized extroversion with its mistaken ideas of objectivity begins with understanding what we are doing when we get insights and pass judgments on the validity of those insights. But here we run into another difficulty related to a pervasive democratic bias against judgments. But that is for another article.

Flight from Experience 3: Gnosticism

Gnosticism, refers to a theory of human happiness, which in the ancient world was connected to a special knowledge about transcendence and the human soul, whose salvation lies in divine liberation from forces outside the individual. Gnosis today means an intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths or an esoteric form of knowledge. In the modern world transcendence has been replaced by an immanent source of healing. Happiness and salvation are achieved by means of the integration of conscious and unconscious drives or habits or the creation of a social order which provides a human solution to the problem of evil. In either case, human beings are themselves the sources of their own healing and happiness. Such ideas are alluring today, in part, because people commonly take experience to be equivalent to knowledge. However, to insist that happiness results either from the integration of unconscious drives or in the creation of social orders alone is to reject human experience in favor of some mythic version of experience.

I will start by pointing to a commonly debated point: Is it possible to love someone else until I love myself? Some people insist that we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. Others are not so sure. We may ask the parallel question: Can I really know anyone else unless I first know myself? Again there are different opinions. If anything brings knowing and loving together it’s relationship. And, of course, people often wonder how they can be in a healthy relationship without first becoming healthy individuals. If I do not know and love myself, how can I know and love my spouse, partner, family, friends, etc.?

Gnosticism offers a clear answer to each of these questions. You can’t! If we need the appreciation or approval of others to feel good about ourselves, we make them responsible for our mental health and well-being. If we look beyond ourselves to role models to learn out how to love and live responsibly, we are being untrue to ourselves. If we hope for someone, anyone, or the universe or God to save us, we will be waiting along time. No help is coming. Gnosticism offers the hope and promise of self-salvation and self-grace. This why we cannot know, love or be in genuine relationship with anyone else unless start with ourselves.

My first point is that this kind of self-salvation, self-knowledge and -love, rests on a certain forgetfulness of experience. Everything we learn, we learn by first experiencing something. This does not mean that experience is the same as knowing. Insights begin with experience and are verified by returning to experience. I have had many experiences of hearing people speak in foreign language. But I do not know what those speakers are saying. I have also been frightened when coming upon things in the dark that I perceive dimly but do not understand. I recall being startled in a dark and unfamiliar room when I saw a black figure which I took to be a crouching animal and that turned out upon further inspection to be a large throw-pillow.

So experiencing is not knowing. Experience together with ideas however insightful, appealing or well-expressed is not knowing. But knowing begins with an experience that is not understood and returns to verify, upon further investigation, an initial guess in experience. The sounds coming from foreign speakers and the confused outlines of obscure figures are the stuff about which we ask questions on the road to knowledge. Those same sounds and outlines are what we later use to assess our initial interpretations. When I saw the dim and frightening image in the dark room, my instinct was to run. My mind suggested a few further questions to test the original impression. Surely, what appears to be an animal would present additional information or data: shouldn’t I hear or smell something that supported the idea? If it were an animal, certainly its presence might be accounted for: did my hosts have a pet or was there a door or window open? Further questions along these lines may or may not have settled the issue, but in the end the simple act of turning on the light provided me with the final experience and information that I used to disconfirm my first guess about the nature of the figure. Knowledge involves a learning cycle that moves from experience through thinking and back to experience. The return to experience supports, corrects or disconfirms what I thought was going on. We build up our ideas about things, people, cultures, traditions, the world, God, and even ourselves piece by piece by being attentive and curious about our experiences and returning to experience to verify, challenge, correct or dismiss our first impressions.

Gnosticism supposes that knowledge involves only the first two moments of experience and interpretation, grasping the whole picture from just the initial encounter with experience. Since there is no return to experience to verify ideas, gnostic ideas are held to be true because they are invulnerable to challenge or further question. They are not subject to second-guessing because of their revelatory, self-evident or creative nature. They are closed to challenge or question as a revelation by those in the know, who communicate to us the impressive truths that government, media, your family or the church don’t want us to know. Or they need no verification because they are self-evidently what we discover within ourselves, perhaps by entering altered states of consciousness. Or they are closed to investigation as the aesthetic truths that we creatively invent for ourselves. Gnostic wisdom attempts to circumvent the long, slow process of self-discovery and self-correction by completing an end-around that avoids the return to real contact with everyday experience in the process of verification.

My second point about the kind of knowledge on offer is that it involves a flight from the process of social experience, understanding and verification that constitutes history. The process of knowledge that begins experience and ends with experience constitutes a social cycle of self-correction. There is a history to my knowledge of myself, others, my world and God that plays out as a virtuous cycle. There is also a history to our common knowledge that follows a similar path of experience, ideas or plans, implementation, re-evaluation, and self-correction. The re-evaluation and self-correction of plans and policies happen in a return to experience in light of which we judge whether or not things have actually gotten better or not. This is history in the sense of a personal or intellectual and communal autobiography. It is history as lived. But history means something else as well. We cannot avoid representing to ourselves this process of knowledge itself. Besides the history that we live, there is the history that we write about and try to explain to ourselves.

The importance of the second type of history and the way in which we think about the process of knowledge is that we learn to take control of the process of self-correction both personally and socially. If we represent knowledge to ourselves accurately we can collaborate authentically with own natural process of learning and loving. If we misrepresent the process of knowledge to ourselves, we inevitably fail to live responsibly. Gnosticism offers an explanation of knowledge, love and relationships that, as I say, involves a flight from experience. it prevents us from becoming active and responsible collaborators in our own personal and social growth.

Certainly, we can become better at loving others as we learn to know and love ourselves and correct our mistakes or the direction of our living. And we do this most effectively and efficiently if we consciously and deliberately commit to the cyclical path. But the commitment is one we make from wherever we happen to find ourselves. The process of living itself is one that we have already begun and we are already well on our way. We need not possess an invulnerable idea about ourselves before claiming that we are coming to know ourselves. We need not possess the ideal self-love before making improvements in our love of self or others.

Gnosticism claims that we do not really know and love ourselves or others until we know and love the whole thing that we are a part of. In reality, knowledge and love are the culmination of a long and cyclical process.We do not really wait for our lives to be explained to us before we start living them. We live a bit, stop and reflect on what we are doing, get some ideas, go on living, reflect some more and perhaps correct our first ideas, go on living perhaps putting some of the new ideas about the process into action, and gradually progress to a fuller and fuller sense of what it means to love self and others. It’s a beautiful cycle we call human growth. Learning to cooperate with this ongoing cycle is the challenge of adult living.

Flight from Experience 1: Observation Biases

The orientation of contemporary psychology is primarily to experience. Depth Psychology originates with Sigmund Freud’s theory of unconscious drives and early childhood events. Central to Freud’s approach was insight into the way in which drives and early experiences shape one’s current thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Freud’s own approach has been characterized as archeological because it centered on bringing to consciousness problematic forces that have been operating below the surface of awareness due to unconscious drives and unremembered childhood experiences. In more recent decades Freudian therapists have brought more attention to beliefs, fears, and habits as they function in the present while acknowledging that these likely were acquired in early years. This goal of understanding how thoughts, feelings and habits may be influencing the quality of one’s work, relationships and life in general is the dominates the majority of psychological interventions.

To the extent that an individual’s goal in counseling is psychological insight, a necessary first step is observation of and attention to the data that the insight will be about. Biases related to research and decision-making seem to have become common knowledge. For example, a confirmation bias refers to the temptation to focus on evidence that supports my own thesis and an egocentric bias inclines me to make choices that benefit myself personally. A good method for, or good conversation about, research and decision-making is an important aid to resisting such temptations.

Biases also exist that tempt us to be poor observers of our own experience. Here good observation means heightening conscious awareness of inner experience. Biases that skew such observations include avoidance of feelings in favor of thoughts about feelings (what some psychologists have termed intellectualization) and avoidance of feelings that are not only uncomfortable in themselves but that evoke secondary feelings, for example, shame or anger. A good method such as mindful self-acceptance or a good therapeutic conversation help to limit the destructive impact of such biases.

Part of making a good observation is managing thoughts and expectations about what I should be feeling or what other people might feel or what I am expected to feel. Such thoughts about what I must be feeling or should be feeling will occur, but mindfulness exercises cultivate a capacity to look past them and to constantly check such thoughts against inner experience as it occurs in real-time to see if the thoughts are accurate. Similarly, a therapeutic conversation brings a person into the present of ongoing inner experience and makes it possible to correct thoughts about what must be going on against what is occurring in inner experience.

Heightening conscious experience means adopting a welcoming attitude to whatever occurs and being open to, even seeking, novelty. Very often thoughts about my feelings are drawn from the pool of knowledge that I already have about myself or from things I already know about people in general. What matters most in psychological insight is learning something new. That means being open to the as yet unknown parts and depths of myself. To be open to the unknown is to hold my ideas about what I am or must be feeling lightly and be ready to add to my personal the catalog of feelings whatever this new inner experience might turn out to be.

A welcoming attitude serves as an antidote to selective attention and poor observation by managing secondary experiences. What I am feeling about a person or situation is distinct from what I might feel about being uncomfortable in the first place. Here, for example, is where shame or anger about feeling sad, weak or embarrassed might come into the picture. Such secondary feelings often complicate the process of self-discovery. They function as a filter that pre-selects which feelings I’d be willing to allow into the catalog and which feelings I would not. Feeling ashamed about or angry because of some inner experience means that the primary feeling is banished from the catalog and I’ll never discover whatever I might otherwise have learned about myself.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 4

In this final post in the series, I wish to reflect on some specific questions related to work and career that people often struggle with and on how the shift to interiority, Bernard Lonergan’s mindful way, if you will, of doing philosophy and theology influences how I think about work-life balance.

Two questions in particular come to mind: 1. What kind of career will bring me the most satisfaction in life? or How can I make the job I have now more meaningful? and 2. How can I strike a better work-life balance? The best answer turns out to be the same in both cases.

Individuals deliberating about potential careers often think not just about the tasks and rewards of the job itself but wider questions about family, society and faith as well. They may frame the question in terms of finding a job that they enjoy that provides sufficient income to raise a family at a hoped for standard of living. Or, they may focus their deliberations on finding a career that allows them to make a decent living while doing some good for society or the planet. In both cases the job itself is instrumental to higher goals and values.

Psychologists have learned that people are most happy or experience the greatest satisfaction when the rewards they seek and the challenges they face are grounded in their own interior lives. Here is where human beings have the greatest degree of control and can exercise the greatest level of responsibility. Those who ground their hopes and expectations on outcomes over which they have little or no control set themselves up for disappointment. And, if they assume responsibility for things outside their control they are likely to experience anxiety or depression. Determining what is and what is not in one’s control may not be easy but it is an important step in the journey toward job, marriage and life satisfaction.

The shift to interiority likewise shifts the question about the most satisfying career track. Traditional wisdom suggests that a good way to approach the question is to find out what needs to be done, determine what can be done by me, and deliberate about which course most aligns with my highest values. To find out what needs to be done is to know about some potential difference that can be made in the world. To determine what I can do is to know about the realistic possibilities of my making that difference and avoiding burnout. To determine which accords with my highest values is to set for myself a goal and standard of responsibility from within. Here is where we meet the challenge of career discernment at core. The satisfaction I derive from my career is determined by my faithfulness to a life of authenticity. By committing myself to a life of genuine attentiveness to, of curiosity and learning about, and of loving responsibility for the tasks and people around me, to that extent the rewards and challenges of my career are grounded in my interiority.

This shift to interiority in which one embraces the challenges of authentic living may be made at anytime. So whether one is thinking about a major, choosing an internship, accepting a job or stepping back and hoping to get more out of a current job, the best option would be to internalize the goal and criterion of success.

The world of work and the world of family life are distinct worlds but the thing my work and my family have in common is me. The real challenge of full adulthood in the modern world is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time and to be able to move smoothly in and out of the diverse worlds of the consumer, the employee, the family member. What is common to all the worlds we inhabit is the need to be as attentive as possible to the people and tasks that populate them and to be as intelligent as possible in making sense of the situation and in knowing what is going on--what are the goals and patterns that make this world be what it is? In whatever world we find ourselves, we make sense of that world by making sense of its goals and structures. Finally, there is a need to be as responsible as possible in living up to the expectations set by that world and by the demands of human authenticity. The more we develop the skills to live up to the challenge of authenticity the more we can be at home in our own skin whether we are in the marketplace, online, at work, or in the bosom of our families.

Fellow-passengers to the grave: Reframing our society

“I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” Fred’s beautiful sentiment in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol is one of the greatest cognitive reframes in literature. Cognitive reframing is a powerful tool which allows us to alter how we feel about a situation by changing how we think about it. Thinking about others in light of a shared humanity and common goal has the capacity to evoke a great many positive thoughts and feelings and motivate positive actions.

Often parodied as saying positive things to oneself, reframing works best when it is motivated by a desire to make sense of a situation by challenging mistaken or distorted ideas and replacing them with more realistic ideas. That other human beings are another race of creatures bound upon their own individual journeys is certainly a distorted way of thinking about things. It shares in the folly of the myth of the ‘self-made man’ or ‘self-made woman’. Yet, it can be hard to feel the truth of the idea that what unites us is more important than what divides us. Differences amplified in media and adjudicated by political violence and activism become sources of division and the further we get from our fellow-passengers, the harder it is to see them as human. It also becomes ever harder to recover basic truths about ourselves. In this case, simply saying positive things to oneself may have only limited value and it may actually make things worse.

A good reframe widens the spotlight of consciousness keeping one from going down the rabbit hole of a particular negative thought or feeling. Fred’s statement is more comprehensive than the distorted thought about others as less than or in competition with oneself. It expresses a fuller grasp of the situation. Fred’s insight goes beyond seeing people in terms of status to grasp the fuller truth of people in the upper and lower classes as people. It also grasps the wider picture within which all people have a common end and a common goal. That goal both transcends us and unites us. Apart from that fuller grasp, a positive statement is just words, and those words appear to be contradicted by the evidence of daily events.

A good reframe is also more realistic than the distorted thought. It is tempting to say that Fred’s insight is more realistic because it embraces wider truths about human beings and leave it at that. But this only works if you and I agree that the wider, more comprehensive idea is truer just because it is wider and more comprehensive. Unfortunately, the “evidence” of daily events has its own appeal. Increasing division counts as evidence for distorted thinking precisely because it is less comprehensive and more immediately relevant. The ideas that inform and structure Fred’s class-based society, impact not only what people think about others but what counts as evidence for the truth of those thoughts. Let’s take another example. Students, athletes, CEOs or politicians may believe that winning is what counts (“good guys finish last”) and accept the fact that everyone cheats. Then everyone acts on the same idea about putting myself or my group first. When those who cheat most effectively earn the prizes or gain power, the guiding thought gains credibility: “See, that’s how things are”. The distorted idea is accepted as the truth about social living. What counts as evidence that supports the truth of this idea is the success of those who get around the rules. The political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, argued that in the modern world we can make almost any idea true by consistently acting upon it. What this means is that when our common lives are structured around flawed ideas, we set up patterns of feeling, thoughts and actions that embody and support those ideas. But this is only part of the story.

It is one thing to try to get around the rules in a criminal way in order to get ahead. It is another thing to manipulate the rules themselves and to rig the game. Let’s say that publicly I justify my own advantages and privileges on the grounds that rewards ought to be meted out on the basis of work or merit, but secretly I am willing to cheat on an exam or pad my resume to make myself appear more meritorious. That sounds rather shady, and I would justly be accused of hypocrisy. Things get morally worse if I collude with others to manipulate the qualifications that count as meritorious, for example setting up social status or race as the standard, to favor our own group. In the first case, what is at stake is the truth or falsity of my claim to a commonly accepted standard of meritorious achievement. In the second case, the standard or criterion itself is at stake. In order for status or race, or even financial success, to be generally accepted as the measure of true ideas, all other measures must be disqualified. Corruption manipulates the criteria to favor one individual or group over others. False ideas become true not simply when people act on them together but when those same people embrace corrupt and inauthentic criteria that make the false ideas appear true.

Good cognitive reframes therefore address the second as well as the first class of faulty ideas. But now we face a deeper and more perilous challenge. The manipulation of criteria for common judgments about truth and common action derails the very process of learning and self-correction that accounts for so much of human progress. Ideas inform action that yield results. When those results are genuinely positive and really solve problems, they legitimately confirm the originating ideas. By genuinely and legitimately, I mean that under careful examination the problem really was solved, and the situation has gotten better--there was progress. Modern civilization is built upon many good ideas that actually solved problems and improved living conditions, notably indoor plumbing that separates drinking and wastewater. Think about where we would be without that modern marvel. In other cases, the original idea may be incomplete and address only part of the problem. In that case, the unsatisfying results should reveal the limitations of the idea. Those affected by unfavorable results are likely to raise questions. Corruption forestalls wherever possible the emerge of these further questions. It is not possible here to even outline the many tactics employed to silence critics of a poorly designed or executed plan. It is sufficient to note that such manipulation calls into question our ideas about ourselves as moral beings and whether the effort to live a moral life is worthwhile after all.

There is thus a third problem in addition to criminal activity and corruption. At this third level distorted ideas effect not just how we act or the criteria we adopt to evaluate our ideas and actions, but our estimates of ourselves as intelligent and responsible beings. Research indicates that while cognitive reframing often contributes to overall well being, it can at times can increase symptoms of depression. What makes the biggest difference may be something that psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who along with Arendt was a Holocaust survivor, noticed many years ago. Reframing works best when we are faced with unchangeable conditions and can find some inner, deeper or higher reason to endure them. This is what many psychologists mean by internalizing the challenge. However, if we try to adapt our thoughts and attitudes in order to become more accepting of changeable circumstances, we deny ourselves the capacities, intelligence and power that make us responsible human beings. In the first case, we increase our range of freedom by finding something we can control and working on it. We experience ourselves as intelligent and responsible actors in history. In the second case, we decrease our range of freedom by robbing ourselves of our own power and responsibility. What people may conclude from this is that we cannot employ our own intelligence to improve situations. We are morally powerless. Simply putting a positive spin on an awful situation, instead of identifying something that can be changed, may make things worse because it alienates us from our own capacities. The problematic reframe shrinks our horizon of understanding and responsibility. Corruption operates at this level of despair shrinking the moral agent’s autonomy.

At the first and second levels, what look like perfectly legitimate cognitive reframes only work where moral despair has not yet set in. Individuals bothered by the bad behavior of politicians, public figures, colleagues or competitors can lift their own spirits and aspirations by reminding themselves that character matters. But as disagreements regularly devolve into conflicts and differences of opinion are adjudicated by activist in the streets and on social media, guilty bystanders embrace increasingly negative ideas about human intelligence and goodness. We progress from excusing our own crimes: “It’s okay because everyone is doing it”; to justifying collusion: “Winning is what matters”; to despair: “Moral living is not worth it”. Then, no matter how often we say it, we find it hard to believe that character makes the slightest bit of difference.

From all this we can derive a universal lesson. What lies at the heart of any legitimate reframe is curiosity. Curiosity is the desire and the willingness to discover what is really going on. It is not satisfied with half-truths or partial pictures. It wants the whole story. Curiosity breaks out of the group-think that just accepts the common ideas, no matter how half-baked, because that is how we win or maintain our own advantage. It challenges corrupt notions by insisting on its own inner criterion for truth restoring intelligence, reason and moral responsibility to the heart and soul of human living. What makes Fred’s reframe so beautiful to me is its frontal attack on moral despair.

Fred’s reframe starts with the third class of faulty ideas about human goodness, adverts to the criteria of truth and only then challenges particular ideas about one’s fellow human beings. “I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time,” he says, “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely”. Where corruption skews ideas about evidence in a way that selfishly privileges a particular group, Fred adopts an unselfish, kind, forgiving and charitable criteria. In this he also expresses hope for human intelligence and responsibility. For Fred, ideas emerging from an open heart contain more truth than ideas emerging from a closed heart. Ideas that originate in kindness and charity are truer, and for that reason replacing “creatures bound on other journeys” with “fellow-passengers to the grave” is more accurate. The reframe works so well precisely because it is embedded in a great work of literature. A Christmas Carol insists on the value of thinking about deeper questions of meaning, value and purpose. It addresses head-on corruption’s artificial rules on questioning and manipulation of intelligence. It evokes in us a desire for moral goodness and a call to conversion of heart and mind in the spirit of Christmas.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 3

Those who have created a healthy work-life balance seem to be ‘at home’ wherever they are, in the marketplace, online, at work, at the dinner table or at a family function. Unfortunately, the goal of ‘being at home in the workplace’ may have the negative effect of conflating two different worlds. Studies also suggest that a blurring of work and family roles is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Individuals may expect family to feel or to operate like work or expect work to feel and look like family. This may result is significant social and emotional confusion, notably when work is a family business and the boundaries are easily crossed. It can be helpful to keep in mind the purpose and nature of work and realize that these are not the purpose and nature of family-life.

There is a phenomenon is modern business that seems to many like forcing a square peg into a round whole. That phenomenon is non-financial reporting. Non-financial reporting (NFR) takes into consideration, for example, a company’s sustainability practices, anti-corruption policies and protection of the human rights of its workers and stakeholders. To those who customarily think of business in terms of the maximization of profit, NFR is indeed a square peg. There is, the traditionalist argues, only one bottom line; while advocates for the new approach looks to a triple bottom line encompassing profits, people and the planet. Those in each camp interpret the meaning of business differently. They appeal to diverse criteria in assessing the truth of a company’s actual performance. And they each place a different value on possible changes in practice and policies, that is, what would count as a good thing.

Intuitively, we might expect that those who gravitate toward the ideals and ways of thinking of NFR are the same whether at work or at home and would have an easier time transitioning from work to home. After all, if at work one’s mindset is oriented toward others as people, and not simple as parts of a corporate machine, then the adjustment to a family mindset is not such a large leap. However, there lurks even in the business-oriented mindset of the non-financial reporter a foundational difference in conscious living than is needed at home.

At the heart of NFR is still a business-oriented criterion of what counts as a good thing -- principally assets that explain a company’s market capitalization, its future profitability and contribution to the industry or to the local or global economy in which it operates. The criterion of value remains the same as in financial reporting. It is a pragmatic criterion. What counts as good is what works. Consequently, all individuals regardless of their roles in modern economic living are expected to think about goodness and success in terms of outcomes, from paychecks to ROI, to churn, to carbon-costs. They are also expected to, and are socialized to, feel deeply the importance of these goals and the factors leading to them. Finally, in a data-driven economy directed by opaque algorithms the best NFR improvements in human work amount to a rear-guard actions.

NFP is a much-needed humanization of modern industry. Like the patterns of sociality in parts of the country that subsume retail shopping under into the wider social goals of general friendliness, NFP understands that business is a human activity. But it does not alter the fundamental fact that the human activity involved is business and not friendship at its highest level. It contains a self-referential orientation that is opposed to the orientation adopted between truly intimate friends and loved ones. Such friendship that puts the utility, enjoyment and well-being of the other first, invites sacrifices that business associates, partners and customers could hardly be expected to make.

The transition to homelife is a shift out of this exclusively pragmatic mode of conscious living and into one that involves a kaleidoscope of mindsets and values. Often what counts as good in the interactions among family members is not what works but what is beautiful. The refrigerator in many homes is a gallery dedicated to the value of creative endeavors that win no prizes and earn no lesser accolades than parental love. What counts a good is time spent (quality time) that serves no utilitarian purpose. The worlds of work and home are distinct not simply because of the rules and roles that constitute each, but because of what the members cherish, because of the patterns of feelings and emotions that are expected and appropriate, and because of the values the define each world as a unique sphere of human living.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 2

Striking a work-life balance in modern society is challenging. For many people the period of transition from one to the other is a period of high stress. What’s at stake goes well beyond scheduling work hours so that we can spend enough time at work or shopping, in scholarship or an engrossing hobby, and at home. The challenge we face when turning our attention back to family reaches into our minds hearts inviting us to learn how to move fluidly in an out of two, or perhaps more, very different worlds.

Beyond any surface differences, worlds of human endeavor are forms of conscious living shaped by different expectations regarding meaning, truth and goodness. Some people become very creative in the rituals and hacks they use to help them make mental, emotional and physiological shifts, especially when these diverse worlds exists in the same place either a home office or home studio. But adjusting requires not just adopting new behaviors and patterns of cooperation but engaging distinct modes of thinking, feeling, caring and responsible living. Something that helps the deeper transition is to understand that the worlds of work, commerce and home, as well as the worlds of scholarship and art, are defined in large part by what they exist for or what is of ultimate importance within those worlds.

Communities are structured around goals and differ from each other and in terms of what the members care about most. At the most superficial level, the community of retailers and customers exists for the sake of economic exchange. Whether the interaction and relationship goes any deeper than the handing over of money and gathering-up of purchases may depend in large part on what part of the country the store is located in. How I am expected to act, to think and to feel as a customer is determined by the patterns that make up the world of retail exchange. What members of this transient community of sellers and buyers most care about, what counts and true and good, is utility or being useful to others so that they in turn will be useful to me. This may sound cold and heartless, but as the saying goes, it’s just business. And, without it we would all be at a great loss.

At a deeper level, the social world of friends and acquaintances involves a degree of utility, friends do wish to be helpful to each other, but it differs from the world of economic exchange by the interest and enjoyment each person takes in and from a common activity and the presence of other people. Attending a book club is quite different from visiting a bookstore. In parts of the country where a trip to the grocery store may involve catching up with the retail clerk, economic activity is subsumed within the social world. Stopping in at a bookstore may well turn into a book club meeting. In other contexts, interactions with employees of large corporations or conversations with telemarketers reading from scripts feel phony. Here social interactions feel like a veneer in the service of the economic objectives rather than a genuine interest in and enjoyment of each other and the activity itself. How we operate socially with friends is very different from how we operate simply as customers and business partners. The worlds differ, the expectations differ, the patterns of thought and feelings differ, and the values differ. Consequently, we are different. What counts as true and good in my social world is doing things I enjoy with people that I like.

The highest form of community is one that involves some measure of usefulness, a high degree of enjoyment in each other, and an deep commitment to the well-being of the other. There is something self-referential in the orientation of people to each other in the worlds of economic exchange and social engagement. In the first, all hope to gain something useful. In the second, all hope to gain some enjoyment or pleasure. The highest form of human friendship is oriented to the what is true and good in the other person. In this world, what matters most is virtue. Starting and maintaining this kind of friendship requires the greatest change in me. To be a good friend, I must cultivate a capacity to think and care about my best friend or loved one first. A great friendship is one in which both friends prioritize the utility and enjoyment of the other and desire to see the other grow in virtue and goodness.

The degree to which couples and members of a family cultivate this highest form of friendship determines the goodness and happiness of the family circle. The degree to which individuals develop the skills needed to shift back and forth among these three worlds determines the emotional safety and happiness of the members. All three worlds are needed for a fully functioning society and the mark of full adulthood is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time.

From ‘Work Mode’ to ‘Home Mode’: Patterns in Conscious Living 1

A healthy work-life balance means being able to move, not simply between two different environments, but two different frames of mind and heart. Discovering the difference in ourselves between the patterns in conscious living that make up a person’s work-mode and home-mode makes that shift easier and more peaceful for everyone.

A pattern is the way in which diverse elements are organized in an overall structure, and conscious living is a structure in which we organize the elements of thought, feelings and actions in a particular pattern. This fact of daily living is illustrated in how people speak about an artistic or a scientific mindset or refer to the difference between street-smarts and book-smarts. The notion of patterns in conscious living includes but goes deeper than popular beliefs about multiple intelligences. These patterns, for example, do not just organize how individuals think, feel and act, but also organize these elements in cooperation with others. They are patterns in social living that result in the different worlds in which we live, the worlds we are constructing together.

In subsequent posts in this series I will offer some ideas about the different patterns of thinking, feeling and caring that make up the different worlds of work and home. I will also suggest some ideas related to questions about establishing a work-life balance just to bring out the relevance of the larger questions. So the purpose of this first post is just to suggest some ways of navigating a common transition in everyday life, the transition between work-mode and home-mode.

Transitioning from work to home can be difficult. For some it is a time of high anxiety. Clinicians have noticed that many of a couple’s most heated and sometimes violent arguments begin during this crucial time of transition. Studies also suggest that a blurring of work and family roles is associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and marital satisfaction. Intuitively we might image that exhaustion, hunger and stressful commutes, along with left over negative feelings from work itself, contribute to the heightened tension and risk of explosions at home.

But psychologists have begun to suspect something else. Moving from work to home is not simply a change in location. It is a transition from one world with its rules, expectations, roles and cues to another world in which everything is different. It is a transition that requires interior adjustments in ways of thinking, emotional expressions, skills and responsibilities. And, it is a transition that often enough must be navigated in a moment of exhaustion and limited personal resources. Understanding this reality and how to manage external demands and internal challenges is part of what we mean by work-life balance. Balance is not just about spending more time at home. It is about developing a capacity to really be at home.

The organizational structure and culture of a workplace may be fairly hierarchical. Expected and acceptable behaviors may be clearly tied to one’s status, rank, or role. Rewards, approval and esteem may be doled out strictly on the basis of performance and output. At home, spouses and children are rarely impressed with one’s title or latest productivity measures. Roles and responsibilities are often flexible and functionally determined by who happens to be in a position to do what when. Decision-making may not follow clearly defined protocols but emerge in some indefinable manner.

In making the transition from work-mode to home-mode, individuals often find it helpful to provide themselves with cues and rituals that help orient them to the new world in which they are entering. These rituals prepare the body and release feelings and affects from the routine necessary for work life. They prepare the intellect to attend to and think about the people, objects and tasks that populate the world of the home. They help the heart and soul to re-orient to the unique values that constitute family life.In a time when for many people ‘work’ and ‘home’ are the same place, shifting gears may be an even more impossible task.

Couples who do not even notice the difference between the two worlds are at greatest risk for conflict or emotional disengagement.

One way to help transition from work-mode into family-mode is to make use of specific routines that help the body and mind to make the adjustments. Couple therapists encourage clients to develop boundary marking habits and rituals of connection that help effect a transition from work to home. These include:

• Physical reminders to leave work at work, such as taking off work badges and removable insignia or uniforms

• Values-informed scheduling, for example, blocking-off “family-time” or “date-night” on the calendar

• Self-Care and relaxation is helpful and may take many forms and a bit of creativity can pay great dividends. This may include taking time to Admire nature, Listen to music, Take a walk, Meditate and pause for a few deep relaxing breathes, Say some prayers, Shower or bathe

• Rituals of re-connection with loved ones, which may be as simple as a long hug or more strategic as meeting a spouse on ‘neutral ground’ like a restaurant or café

• Most importantly, talk with your spouse and family about home-work boundaries

Individuals who work from home may have to become creative. There are many ideas out there. For example:

• ‘Commute’ to and from work by walking around the block

• Maintain a dedicated workspace in the house that you can leave and forget about

• Set an alarm that sounds at the end of your day or shift

• Change into and out of work clothes (imagine, if you are old enough, Fred Rogers changing his sweater and shoes!)

Above all couples are encouraged to talk together about home-work boundaries, and what each needs at the period of transition.