Cognitive Distortions

"Cognitive distortions ... cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. These thinking patterns ... reinforce negative thoughts or emotions. Cognitive distortions tend to interfere with the way a person perceives an event. Because the way a person feels intervenes with how they think, these distorted thoughts can feed negative emotions and lead ... towards an overall negative outlook on the world and consequently a depressive or anxious mental state."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion

Was wandering around the internet looking for something that would interest me, and I stumbled upon a reference to cognitive distortions. I've seen these lists before, but it continues to amaze and trouble me that so many of the people one encounters every day have one or more of these traits. I see these in the media, especially television. Here are just a few:

• Always being right
• Blaming
• Disqualifying the positive
• Filtering
• Mind-reading (being God)
• Fortune-telling (more being God)
• Magnification
• Personalization
• Splitting

I see these, sadly, in myself of course. I am happy that I see fewer of these today than three years ago, but also it reinforces to me how toxic the environment we live in is. These traits are thrown at us so constantly in media and daily relationships that we accept them as normal. We adopt them for ourselves. We model them to our children.

Although, I suppose not solely so, cognitive distortions are often narcissistic defenses, and it occurs to me that if we live in an essentially narcissistic society, then it makes sense that that society's inhabitants adopt these unconsciously.

Armchair psychology. 

But as I think about writing real, flesh and blood characters, I feel that I should see more of these traits than fewer of them, and that these traits and the related acts should probably drive some of the relationships and plot points. 

All words have meanings, but not all meanings have words.

It's a fairly natural tendency, or perhaps common tendency, for one to go around defining things. Defining in fact everything. As an incurable writer I have this affliction. I want to find and understand the meaning of the words I encounter. I want to find new words to use. I want to find the precise words to precisely describe a precise set of circumstances.

But.... There's always the "but". 

But sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better to throttle back and be more selective in what I choose to define, and let other things just be. 

Are there in fact some things which defy description? Meanings that have no words? Meanings that can only be felt or hinted at or sensed as nearby? 

define: hu·bris

ˈ(h)yo͞obrəs/

noun

1. excessive pride or self-confidence.

   synonyms:

   arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, hauteur, pride, self-importance, egotism, pomposity, superciliousness, superiority;

   • (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

     
     

     
     

     
     

     one might even say falsely based pride. egoistically based pride.

     
     

     There's a lot of hubris around sports. By sports I don't necessarily mean athleticism or athletics, although that's not necessarily not true. Athletics as a substitute for violence or abuse? Isn't that a kind of hubris-based behavior?

     
     

     But most often I see it in sports fans. Maybe it's the olympics that reminded me of this observation tonight. Maybe it's the coming college football season or NFL season. Maybe it's the election season.

     
     

     It is one thing to be humbly proud of one's efforts or accomplishments. It is one thing to be grateful. It is another thing to mask hate, bigotry, greed and dysfunction with "patriotism" and "fandom". 

     
     

     Sure, it's better to channel these ugly things into sports than to roll the tanks, but it would be even better to cleanse our souls of this darkness.

     
     

Cause and effect.

Things don't "just happen". Life, the universe, may seem like one damn thing after another without rhyme or reason, but actually there is cause and effect. Causation. Causality.

Stuff happens because other stuff happened to cause it.

This is important because it means that there are consequences to our actions.

I look at a monster of a person, and I wonder what happened to make that monster. George Lucas tried this, right? He failed, but he tried. And it's important that he tried, because I believe in our hubris and our self-satisfaction we look at terrible people, or terrible countries, and we say "Well, they're evil, you know." or "That would never happen here because...."

Or we say "They were insane." What is sanity? Do we really, really know?

It is not just foolish, but dangerously foolish to think ourselves immune.

Given the right (or wrong) circumstances it can happen anywhere to anyone. Rip apart support structures, abuse, torture and deprive someone, and you can create a monster.

And there are many monster-types, and degrees of monster. They are not all created alike. There is it seems no shortage of narcissistic, materialistic, pleasure-obsessed monsters. I encounter them every day. On the road. At the office. At the store.

What is their story? Who abandoned them? Who abused them? Who told them "you're not hurting"? Who denied them agency?

Millions of little monsters out there, and sometimes one of them grows up into a very big monster that threatens to kill us all if given the chance.

My current novel in progress is about some monsters who are trying to grow up.

Way back in 1995 or so (you know about a million years ago) we were attending (I was part of a we back then) Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio. We were staying in one of the attached hotels and headed back to our room. It was late in the evening around 10 or 11. We noticed off to the side a darkened room with a pulsating light. "Oh cool. A movie."

We took a look inside, and the movie was Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind". Anime. We had never seen it. I'm not sure we had even heard of it. We sat down and were amazed.

21 years later I sat down tonight to watch it one more time. I spent a few hours at GenCon today in Indianapolis, and thought it might be nice to put in Nausicaa for nostalgic purposes.

I'm still amazed by this movie. It morally compels us to rethink our lives and to cast away these evil  trappings of material possession, money, greed and power. What good are these things if we are destroyed? What on Earth shall it profit a man, right?

It is certainly not a new notion that "money is the root of all evil", but really it is not simply money, but things themselves. It is the love of things - the pursuit of things - rather than the pursuit of moral, ethical and spiritual completeness, that is the source of nearly all evils that we know. It sickens us. It corrupts us. It kills us.

The worldwide pollution, the universal toxicity, the ravenous consumption, and the deranged self-absorption are all by-products of a worship of things.

The things that we really, truly need do not need batteries. The things we truly need are not things at all.

So now we try the blogging thing.
So now we see if I can sing,
or will I stare into my soul
and see emptiness within that hole?