This is part of the stinging verdict announced in the November 20, 2006 edition of The American Conservative: Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why—thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did…
I am only through the first chapter of A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives (2006). Nonetheless, this is a delightful and insightful work by experimental psychologist Cordelia Fine. So much so that the first chapter of the book, “The Vain Brain,” is well worth the price of the entire book.
Fine is a witty yet precise digester of cognition research. The main point of “The Vain Brain” is that we work exceedingly hard to interpret reality in a way that is kind and gentle to our egos. We do this constantly, often to an extent that is often comedic.
In one experiment, subjects were arbitrarily told that they did well on a test. They were happy to take credit for their “success.” Those who were told they did badly tended to blame their “poor performance” on conditions other than their abilities. Whenever we fail, we dig hard to find lots of “reasons” other than blaming the person we so often see in the mirror. Researchers have dubbed this strategy “retroactive pessimism.” According to Fine, it “makes your failures easier to digest.”
We have two big allies to help us in our “retroactive pessimism”: manipulative memory and manipulative of reasoning. Who is doing the manipulating? We do it.
With regard to memory, we are terrifically talented at forgetting evidence that embarrasses us. “It seems that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for negative feedback to …
Oh, all right. I'll say a few things about this Reverand Haggard thing, although what really there is to say I'm not sure. Those caught up in the spell of an evangelist community may not care--this is just another example of how rotten-to-the-core sinful human beings are and even the…
Here's an interesting column by a staunch Republican Kevin Koehler, who is fed up that our single party government is doing everything that they have always dunned Democrats for doing. His Preface: I am a Southerner, a conservative, and what the press cynically labels a Bible-believing Christian. I’ve voted in…
"We resolve to grant Christians and all other men freedom to observe whatever religion they think fit, so that the divinity, who has his abode in heaven, be propitious and benevolent as well for us as for any of those living under our rule. It seemed to us a very…