Stepping Back to Look at What's Real

I’m noticing some of our leaders in Congress don’t think there’s enough money to go around.  

 

It reminds me of how Larry Norman used to sing, “You can’t see nothin’ when you close your eyes.” 

 

Of course we will never find what we’re looking for if we’re looking where it isn’t.

 

Consider this:

 

The top 1% have enough money to wipe out the entire national debt and STILL BE IN THE TOP 1%!   Most 1%ers have more money than they can spend in a lifetime.  It’s just sitting there, unused.  (or reproducing itself, unused).  IN FACT, THE TOP 1% CONTROL MORE MONEY THAN THE OTHER 99% COMBINED.

 

Now, when you add the wealth of the top 2%ers, 3%ers, 4%ers and 5%ers, we’re really rolling in dough!

 

I have nothing against making money or having lots of it.  I have spent a big chunk of my professional career helping people get more of it.

 

What does give me a raised eyebrow are those around us who worry there’s not enough money to meet everyone’s needs, when in reality, it’s quite plentiful.  Some of us are like fish that don’t know we’re surrounded by water.  The issue is not that there’s not enough money.  It’s that those who have much less cannot foot the bill for those who have much more. 

 

We don’t have a money problem.  We have a moral problem.  It takes caring, awareness, and gratitude to reach an emotional maturity level that can comprehend the point of view, “I’m blessed to be a blessing.”

 

Yes, it may be true that many who are wealthy worked hard for it.  And yes, much wealth has also been handed down and gifted from previous generations.

 

But it doesn’t make sense in my mind that if I live in a country that allowed me to have more dollars than I could ever spend, I should let others suffer while I enjoy my blessings.

 

Research shows that in general, the more we have, the less generous we are in sharing it. I think many on Capitol Hill have forgotten why they are there.  And it’s not to give more privilege to the privileged.  It’s to make sure the privileged help the less fortunate.

 

Of course, if we were all willing to look at the truth, we’d have to give up a lot of the drama that helps us feel alive, and instead the peace of shared abundance would rule.

Although many of our leaders endorse skipping out on paying our bills, the time to decide what to spend on what is during the formation of the budget, not when some want to hurt people they made promises to.

 

Tricking ourselves is unflattering.  Tricking others is cruel.  Let’s acknowledge the abundance and move on.

 

As always, I’m open to feedback and discussion. 

How to Understand Those Who Seem Impossible to Understand

Psychology is "the study of the human mind, and how it influences behavior."

This is how I discovered judgement is folly.

When studying the background of Osama Bin Laden (who grew up in extraordinary violence and saw this as his only choice to be a major influencer to please his god), his future behavior was quite predictable, and a reflection of what any of us may have chosen under the same unbearable conditions.

Once one understands Adolf Hitler's upbringing (ex: Hitler ran away from home at age 5 to escape the abuse he later repeated inflicting on others), it becomes clear he could not become anything else than he was, as would any of us being subjected to the same challenges.

For those who have studied Donald Trump's history, it is clear that his choices in behavior could not be anything else from what we see, again, as would be the case for any of us raised under those conditions. (Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp_Ew98D4OM )

Those of us who act strangely, as well as those who cannot even recognize abusive or disrespectful behavior, are all products of our environment.

If you grew up being taught compassion, empathy, integrity and honesty, it is likely reflected in your behavior now. Those who were not as fortunate as you require we use that compassion, empathy, integrity and honesty to understand, not reject or attack, someone who could not be anyone else.

It is sometimes these radical differences in how our environment shapes us that make it difficult to understand someone who thinks or acts so differently from us.

Most decisions are not made rationally, but emotionally. Many of us try to understand someone through logic, but we get a lot further ahead in understanding someone when we focus on the emotional basis for their thinking. Most of us miss understanding others because of this.  

Understanding other people requires emotional intelligence more than intellectual intelligence. If we do not understand someone's emotions, we will not likely understand their thinking or their behavior.

So instead of becoming enraged by people who act out with manipulative or unlawful/abusive behavior, find ways to understand what motivates them to do so.

And keep in mind, that those people who judge you suffer from the same dilemma that challenges you - they have not taken the time to understand you emotionally. Many of us do not have patience to do this work, which is why humans often miss each other like ships in the night.

What this means is that everybody deserves our grace. (Even you deserve your own grace.) When we have doused our lives, and the lives of others, with enough grace, we will stop judging/attacking, and finally experience the inner peace we are seeking.

Understanding Gun Violence

It’s difficult to follow the logic of many in the United States who make decisions based on repressed fears and misinformation fed to them over many years.  Prejudice does not seek out facts, because staying the dark feels safe, especially when being informed threatens one’s self esteem.  None-the-less, this seems odd to many of us who find more relief in facts than in the delusion of fantasy.

Gun enthusiasts often maintain that guns are not a serious factor in shooting deaths.  I have even heard some say they believe more guns will protect us.  Statistics do not bear out this fantasy.  Documented evidence shows 98.3% of the time guns are used offensively, not defensively (FBI).  That means the hope of being saved by a good person with a gun is an historically unlikely event.  Only 1.7% of the time are guns actually fired as defense against an attack. We are 50 times more likely to be hurt by a gun than saved by one.  

 

Unless you are a gun owner.  Because a gun owner is 3 times more likely to die from a gun, those in possession are 150 times more likely to be hurt by a gun than saved by it.  Note: for every 111 Americans killed daily in the US, only 1 is attributed to law enforcement gun use (bradyunited.org).  While over 40,000 people are killed each year by gun violence in the US, only about 300 of them are killed in defense for safety (FBI).

 

I have found that non-thinkers will also often ignore more than 50 years of research showing whenever gun safety protocols are enacted, shooting deaths go down.  Note records of Canada (by 50%), Australia (by 95%), or Japan, the country with the fewest gun deaths per capita.  

Japan, which has strict laws for obtaining firearms, seldom has more than 10 shooting deaths a year in a population of 127 million people.  In other words, The United States has as many gun deaths per capita every 2 hours that Japan has in a year.  In fact, more children are killed by firearms in the US every day than in all of Japan in 6 months.

If Japanese civilians want to own a gun, they must attend an all-day class, pass a written test, and achieve at least 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test.  They have to pass a mental-health evaluation, as well as a background check.

By contrast, 40% of guns are sold in the US without a background check, easily obtainable by the mentally ill, and there is no training required.

Norway has 1/10 the gun deaths per capita as the US.  Australia and the United Kingdom reduced gun deaths through buy-back programs.  Canada cut theirs in half simply by requiring registration.  Other countries, such as Norway and Thailand, attribute fewer gun deaths to a cultural attitude of respect for each other as citizens.

Although most shooting deaths in the US are from handguns, automatic rifles are the weapon of choice for most mass killings.  Since 85% of killings in mass shootings are executed with assault rifles, it is no wonder that mass shooting deaths went down when such weapons were banned from 1994 to 2004. (Gifford Law Center).

There are lots of real-world successes in managing gun-deaths.  The United States has historically enjoyed respect from many nations for a number of reasons, but seems quite satisfied to be leader of the world in allowing the shooting of its own citizens, adults and children, without employing proven methods to stop it.

My Adventure In Denial

 I was recently referred for a prostate biopsy.  I was told I would have the results in "3 - 5 days."

Since it was beyond the 3 days of the biopsy procedure, and I had not yet heard from my doctor, I was asked by a friend if I planned to call to get the results.  I responded that I was in no hurry to hear, and planned to simply wait until the doctor reached out to me with a report.  My friend was surprised by this, saying her approach would be to be proactive in getting the information, so if something needed to be done, the process could begin as soon as possible.  That makes a lot of sense.  I had a different motive for my choice, however.

 

I replied that was rather enjoying not knowing the result of my test, and appreciated the opportunity to consciously choose the denial of not knowing a few more days.  

 

Most of us spend time in denial from an unconscious place.  I realized I had the opportunity to choose denial from a conscious place – so I could observe the benefits of denial, not from a clinical point of view, but from the vantage point of watching from the “inside out”.  I wanted to understand more about what it is that leads us into our fantasies and why we stay there.

I became aware of the following:

 

I felt at peace, realizing that guarding myself against bad news in this way gave me a chance to stay distant from the truth, in case it was an unsavory truth.  If I don’t know there’s a problem, I don’t have to face doing anything about it.

 

I felt the power of excusing myself of responsibility of changing my life in some way to cope with the truth of my diagnosis.  Not knowing meant I didn’t have feel uncomfortable about what was really going on, and I was not required to do anything different, or even think anything different that would upset my status quo.

 

My life was not threatened immediately, and denying knowledge would not hurt me or my family for quite some time down the road.

 

This gave me expanded insight into why I believe some people assume what’s comfortable rather than choose to learn about what causes problems.  It allows me not to care about those less fortunate than myself so I can ignore: 

 

·      sick people who can’t afford health care,

·      immigrants in need of safety, a place to live, and a job, 

·      the effective ways to prevent abortions rather than insisting on methods that have proven again and again not to work, 

·      how I can maintain comfort believing the myth that everyone has an equal chance to get ahead because I was able to do it, 

·      the droughts, the floods, the fires, the melting glaciers, the decades of data that show if we don’t change our direction we’re headed for an early demise,

·      my safety in staying with my own kind and not risking the unknown of associating with people different from me racially, socio-economically, educationally, etc.,

·      how my denial can allow me to create in my imagination the outcome of an election without evidence, rather than supporting an outcome supported by evidence,

·      disturbing the comfort of simply judging those I don’t understand because learning can sometimes be hard (the LBGT community, racism, how my prejudice hurts people, etc.), 

·      that denying history means I don’t have to think about injustice to those around me, 

·      that it’s OK to steal what belongs to someone else regardless of how it affects others,

·      that banning books deepens my ignorance and that of others, and that I am not helping others by drawing them into my own fear,

 

and so on …

 

In short, I understood there’s a lot of payoffs to entertain and remain in denial, and it helps me understand why people do so, as I did, to maintain a comfort level not knowing what the truth is, so I don’t have to adjust my life in light of it.

 

With my new realizations, I can now choose whether to hide my head in the sand about things that make me uncomfortable, or choose to deal with them asap to make my life and the world a better place.

Thankfully, There is a Path Out of the Mess

One of the greatest challenges of a psychologist is negotiating a way to help people let down the defenses that protect their denial of reality, so they can embrace the world as it is and resolve the maladies associated with not living fully in the real world where problems are solvable.

Over the years, I have observed an increase in these denial defenses, a sign that people are being overwhelmed with fears that their lives are out of control.

Remaining in denial has had devastating consequences, not just for individuals, but for our society as well.

Fires, floods, tornadoes, record heat, hurricanes, pummeling rain storms, rising insurance premiums to cover the damage, all on the increase, are not yet enough to pierce our fear-fed defenses of the truth about climate change.

I've noticed there's a large segment of our society that is blaming President Biden for rising gas prices, seemingly content to remain in denial that the president, whether a Republican or a Democrat, does not control the factors effecting gas prices, while giving a pass to those in Congress who do have power to influence these costs but don’t.  Choosing ignorance has a cost.

Gun violence continues in the wake of fear that the loss of the potential need for a gun (or enjoying the entertainment of such) overrides the right of more than 45,000 Americans to live.

 

Although research has shown time and time again that limiting access to abortion does not reduce the number of abortions (it usually delays them to later in the term and then are performed in less sanitary and more dangerous conditions), our society faces a renewed challenge to ignore what is real to perpetuate what is false.  Already having the highest maternal mortality rate of any country in the western world (by more than double), we seem content to expand the risk to mothers and increase that mortality rate even further.  There has been plentiful testing and real world experience to show us what strategies really reduce abortions, but we choose not to use them.  

 

As I write this, we are in the midst of the Hearings on the Riot of January 6, 2021, and we will each have the opportunity to choose whether we will stand for truth substantiated by facts, or “truth” we make up without evidence to support it.

 

I have often been amazed at the level of pain required to motivate humans to reconsider their denial and realize it’s not working for them.  Convincing people that facing the truth is the way out of their dilemmas requires finding a way to support them in overcoming the fears that lock them into self-destruction.

 

I believe that supporting people that are in fear and showing them a less painful way out of implosion is a more effective choice than simply waiting for the pain to increase enough for us to change.

 

Most parents are familiar with the pain of watching their children make mistakes in judgment due to their lack of information or support, which is often rejected by the offspring of well-meaning parents.  This frustration is shared by the empaths of the world who face the same challenge of dealing with the powerlessness to help their friends and neighbors out of self-created despair.

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Challenges are inevitable, but suffering is optional.  May we develop the emotional maturity to listen, care, and respond to the fears within us and in those around us that are caught in the delusion of believing that remaining protective of our prejudices will lead to satisfaction.  Being informed or uninformed are choices, determined mostly whether we are guided by love of the truth or fear of it.

 

As a psychologist, I experienced that only a small percentage of the population had the inner strength or support to confront the fears that kept them isolated, anxious, and depressed.  So it is with voters who either choose a victim and/or blaming role as a more desirable alternative to actually believing that the truth can set them free.

 

The question is not that the truth is that illusive; the question is whether it is important enough for us to pursue.

 

The good news is this:  Although we have limited ability to set others free from their fear and pain, we have the power to set ourselves free from it, and that is our primary responsibility.  I applaud the thousands of individuals who I had the privilege and honor to help through the process of shifting from ineffective choices to effective ones.  My heart is full of gratitude for their courage, and how their fierceness has inspired me to remain open to the truth.  

 

I have witnessed the miracles of embracing integrity and the liberation it brings, and I share with all of you the relief, utter joy, and personal power experienced from being real with each other, of risking rejection to unshackle ourselves from self-delusion, and experience the peace and fulfillment of life that comes from living in the real world.

 

I bow to your magnificence, and how you make the world a better place for me to live.  Your love does not go unappreciated.

 

Blessings,

 

David

Climate Change Update 2022

Ten of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last 16 years. (NASA)

This past year, California recorded its driest year in decades.

Over the last 30 years, the number of wildfires has doubled.  Eight of the 10 largest fires ever in California have taken place in the last 5 years.  

Two Hundred Twenty (220) medical journals came out agreeing that global warming is the world’s greatest threat to global health. (NOAA)

 

Heat is rising at the polar ice caps at twice the rate of the rest of the world.  The ice caps are our only hope for cooling the earth back down.  We do not know how to get that ice back.

The oceans have risen one foot in the last 100 years.  They are on track to rise another foot in the next 30 years.  In communities like Boston, buildings are being built on hydraulics so they can be raised as the sea rises.

 

Property losses due to natural disasters (wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods) have more than tripled since 2015.  Have you noticed what that’s done to your insurance premiums?

 

According to the Journal of Nature Climate Change, by 2050, most of Grand Bahamas, Nassau, and 30% of Tybee Island, will be submerged.  In addition to sea level rise, tides will rise 4 ft on the west coast, and parts of Seattle will be under water. 

 

By 2070, 10 populated parts of the UK, and the country of Maldives will be gone.

By 2100, Galveston and ½ of Charleston will be submerged.  Hoboken, NY, across from Manhattan, will lose 8 feet of its shoreline.  In the LA area, Santa Monica and Long Beach will be the first to go.

 

Forty percent (40%) of the world’s population live on the coasts.  How many of them will be moving to your area?

 

Denial is a wonderful thing because it protects us from the anxiety of what’s happening in the real world.  The ol’ ‘stick your head in the sand’ approach may reduce anxiety, but only allows the continued deterioration of our planet, which will eventually destroy it and our future ancestors.

 

One Hundred Thirty Five (135) nations around the world are committed to carbon neutrality.  Two countries have already achieved carbon neutral status (Bhutan and Suriname).  Following closely behind are Albania, Iceland, and Paraguay, who obtain essentially all of their electric from renewable sources. Costa Rica has become the first country in the world to become fossil-fuel-free.  

 

Three countries use more than half of the world’s fossil fuels – the United States, China, and India.  The U.S. uses 4 times as much as China (16 times more per capita)    and 11 times more than India (46 times more per capita).  The US is the clearest abuser of climate protection.

Thankfully, many in the U.S. are working to catch up with the rest of the world to protect it.  It will require sacrifice from all of us.  Difficult as it may be, this is much better than the alternative of destroying the planet.  We, too, can become leaders to save the world.

 

How about we hop on that?

Love in the Midst of Denial: An Appreciation of Those Who Face Their Fears

Psychology is known as the observation and prediction of human behavior.

As a psychologist, denial is a fascinating thing to watch. It is a strategy we use to protect our emotions when we feel we do not have the capability to cope with the truth.

For example, we recently experienced the driest year (2021) in the Western United States in 1200 years (Journal of Nature Climate Change). Moreover, the direction of increasing droughts cannot be reversed. There are not enough cooling ice masses left to cool the planet. 

Many studies have also concluded that 2/3 or more of our COVID deaths could have been avoided if our government had not denied the virus in the beginning - that's 600,000 people that could be alive today had we the courage to face truth.

As in most cases of denial, the situation does not go away as we hope, but continues to escalate until we can no longer ignore it. Many will need to continue to block awareness in order to deal with their anxiety about coping with reality. Thankfully, others have confidence they can face real challenges and do something positive to influence what hurts people.

The oceans have risen about 12 inches in the last 100 years. We are at a pace now that it will only take 30 years to rise the next foot (National Oceanic and Atmoshereic Administration). Since 40% of the US population live on the Coast, people there are impacted faster than those in the middle of the country ($40 billion damage expected, to be paid by rising insurance premiums and tax dollars).

If there's ever a time for love (actually its always been a time for love), it is now. Empathy is being able to understand the experiences of others without having to experience them ourselves. It's being willing to be educated about what's going on around us, even though it may not yet affect us directly. (In Boston Harbor, for example, contractors erect buildings on hydraulic pillars so the buildings can be raised as the ocean level rises.)

It is not helpful to judge those in denial, for we are all doing the best we can with the skills and awareness we have. Hats off though, to those who are aware, and do what's necessary to improve humanity while others remain unable to face what is.

As the old song goes, "Love, love, love, that's what it's all about!" Today, I salute those who are paying attention and care enough to act reponsibly in a time of true need. I appeciate you. :-)