Can we change attitude?

[coberst]

Can we change attitude?

Solitude is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required—“solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support from a friend”.

Our way of thinking about life and ourselves is so habitual that it takes time and effort to change attitudes—people find it difficult to make changes in attitude but solitude and perhaps changes in environment facilitate changes in attitude because habit is fortified by external environment—religion is well aware of these facts—only through experience of change in environment can one know if such change will facilitate change in attitude—“one needs not just solitude but one needs to be able to sink roots into some replenishing philosophy also”.

Solitude is not to subject oneself to sensor deprivation, which can lead to hallucinations. One needs the stimulation of the senses and the intellect.

Imagination—solitude can facilitate the growth of imagination—imagination has given humans flexibility but has robbed her of contentment—our non-human ancestors are governed by pre-programmed patterns-- these preprogrammed patterns have inhibited growth when the environment changes—humans are governed primarily by learning and transmission of culture from generation to generation and is thus more able to adapt—“for humans so little is predetermined by nature and so much is dependent upon learning”—happiness, the contentment with the status quo is only a fleeting feeling—“divine discontent” is the gift of our nature that brings moments of ecstasy and a life time of discontent—the present is such a fleeting part of our reality that we are almost always in the past or the future.

I think that a regular dose of solitude is very important for everyone, young and old. Does that make sense to you? I think that each individual needs to make radical adjustments in their attitude toward learning when school dazes are over. Solitude might be helpful in facilitating such adjustments.

This stuff comes from reading “Solitude: A Return to the Self” by Anthony Storr. Most of this is snatches of text that is sometimes a paraphrase and sometimes a quotation

[NikolaiI]

Some of us can change our attitudes and some of us have a hard time at it. The final frontier of philosophy is "Who am I?" The ideas we were given do not hold up. Western thinking is a bit stagnant, because we never get around adequately to the question of who we are. Ideas of "I, me, and mine," are false.

The idea that I am separate from the rest of existence is also false. Einstein called it a sort of optical delusion of consciousness. The Vedas call it the Dream of separateness. Hinduism and Buddhism both refer to it as Maya, or Samsara. To those who are completely skeptical minded, or "scientifically" minded, I will not leap into anything esoteric or metaphysical about who the self is.

To go back to the idea that "I am an individual," "I am a human being," and "I am separate," all of these which center around the ego, the ego boundaries, and reinforce it, would be necessary for such skeptics. Some philosophers say they are skeptcis, and so they are naturalists, or atheists, and they denounce anything metahpysical, esoteric, or mystical. And yet if one is skeptical it is a good thing. Then they will always have a high standard, and they will be continually seeking truth. So a true skeptic is a good thing.

In address to those skeptics I will not leap into anything metaphysical, as I said. And yet, we must examine the question of "Who am I?" and seek to understand the Eastern ideas that the individualized ego represents an illusion of separateness. To explain this idea, by analytical thinking I can see that I am part of my environment, part of the universe. Therefore I am not separate from it. All things are connected, so therefore I am related to the grass, to the trees, to the sky, to the air, to the entire universe. Feeling this connection is the source of mystical feeling.

There is no "I" that is separate from the entire universe, there is no "I" that dies, anymore than grass, trees, or even wind or air.

It is necessary to seek out the question of "Who am I?" to begin to change our attitude.

Some solitude is necessary to stay sane, also some is necessary to have time for meditation.

[coberst]

Skepticism—suspended judgment

Criticism—exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation

Negativism—a tendency to refuse to do, to do the opposite of, or to do something at variance with what is asked

I suspect that most young people think negativism is cool. I support skepticism until criticism has had time to work out a comprehension of the matter.

[grotto]

I support solitude in finding or becoming aware. I agree with both of you (yes, more so with you NikolaiI, which he may find surprising) hehe, and I know that no amount of dialogue will ever work in defining who or what you are. Solitude and focus on the self alone will allow you to become aware of what is, not what should be.

We are all products of social habits, including how we think. What is right and wrong is incorporated into our conditioning which sets the dualism in motion. I don’t however think you can use the self to focus on the self to change the self. I think only becoming aware through meditation, solitude and true acceptance that no-thing exists as separate from me.

Can we change our attitudes? Sure we can! But what is doing the changing and what is judging the attitude as changed? To me, the idea that you can change your own attitude to a place of being more of a positive attitude is an illusion, a mere game of the ego that continually tries to prove that it exists as a separate entity. The ego as a chameleon ever trying to reinvent itself to prove it exists.

I support the idea of asking “who am I”, it’s amazing how far you can take it. Not only who am I, as if I was a separate entity, but why am I? I always question why I think something along with who is thinking it.

For what it’s worth, I’m not a nihilist.

[coberst]

I would say that in my life I have made several attitude changes.

My most dramatic attitude change was made when I went to army boot camp and my civilian attitude was changed into a military attitude. The primary purpose of boot camp, in my judgment, was to make this very dramatic attitude change. This required eight weeks of intensive 24/7 effort by a cadre of military officers and enlisted men.

My next big attitude change came with marriage and parenthood.

Wiki informs me that Jung’s definition of attitude is “readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way”. He thought that attitude often displayed itself in a dual manner: consciousness/unconsciousness, extraversion/introversion, thinking/feeling, rational/irrational, and individual/social.

[coberst]

“Man cannot evolve beyond his character”—Ernest Becker

Becker makes the point that the humanization process is one wherein the individual exchanges the natural organismic propensity for a mysterious symbolic dictation. The child in its very essential formative age is faced with denying that which ‘comes naturally’ for what are symbolic dictates that are far beyond its ability for comprehension. The child’s formation of character is dictated by its need to be somebody in the symbolic world.

The child continual loses battles that s/he cannot comprehend. John Dewey learned long ago that “the child continually loses battles he does not understand…we earn our early self-esteem not actively but in large part passively, by having our action blocked and re-oriented to the parents pleasure.”

In the very essential formative years the child develops character traits that in many cases remain with that individual for the rest of their life.

What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. “Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction.” “The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought.” “Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness.” “Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.”

Britannica specifies that attitude is “a predisposition to classify objects and events and to react to them with some degree of evaluative consistency.”

If I consult my inner self I cannot focus upon an attitude but can infer such an attitude based on behavior. If I wish to become conscious of my intuition I can through observation of behavior describe the attitude, which, in turn, allows me to ascertain the nature of my intuition.

When a mother tells her son “you must change your attitude”. The son cannot change the attitude directly but the son must change his intuition from which the inferred attitude emanates. This does become a bit convoluted but in essence when we wish to change an attitude we are saying that our intuition must be modified. We can modify intuition only through habit directed by our will.

“Were it not for the continued operation of all habits in every act, no such thing as character would exist. There would be simply a bundle, an untied bundle at that, of isolated acts. Character is the interpenetrating of habits. If each habit in an insulated compartment and operated without affecting or being affected by others, character would not exist. That is conduct would lack unity being only juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations. But since environments overlap, since situations are continuous and those remote from one another contain like elements, a continuous modification of habits by one another is constantly going on.”

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from “Habits and Will” by John Dewey

[grotto]

I think part of attitude changing revolves around first changing how we respond to certain situations. When a mother asks you to change your attitude, she is asking you to modify your response so it fits some pre-conformed norm, e.g. “don’t make me or those around you uncomfortable”. It may also be done out of genuine care for wanting the best for the child, but in my experience, it is far more the previous. There are just as many mothers out there that need to change their “attitude” as there are children.

Once you start changing your responses, you start to think about what to say. Some of us only become game players then, knowing how to say what needs to be said for a specific outcome. We all know people who are really good at this mode of action, scammers, players and good salesmen but, there are also those who start questioning why it is that they feel and think the way they do, they start searching for their motive. They start asking why they feel a specific way and continue going deeper. Granted, doing this kind of personal work takes you farther away from the social norm, conformity is granted higher merit in society over individualism. Some now flounder as outcast in their own heads and again the process continues as to why they feel this way along with modifications to response and attitude perceived by those around them.

An unexamined life is not worth living, but then again, an examined life takes courage and is hard work, few are willing to really examine.

[NikolaiI]

I support solitude in finding or becoming aware. I agree with both of you (yes, more so with you NikolaiI, which he may find surprising) hehe, and I know that no amount of dialogue will ever work in defining who or what you are. Solitude and focus on the self alone will allow you to become aware of what is, not what should be.

We are all products of social habits, including how we think. What is right and wrong is incorporated into our conditioning which sets the dualism in motion. I don’t however think you can use the self to focus on the self to change the self. I think only becoming aware through meditation, solitude and true acceptance that no-thing exists as separate from me.

Can we change our attitudes? Sure we can! But what is doing the changing and what is judging the attitude as changed? To me, the idea that you can change your own attitude to a place of being more of a positive attitude is an illusion, a mere game of the ego that continually tries to prove that it exists as a separate entity. The ego as a chameleon ever trying to reinvent itself to prove it exists.

I support the idea of asking “who am I”, it’s amazing how far you can take it. Not only who am I, as if I was a separate entity, but why am I? I always question why I think something along with who is thinking it.

For what it’s worth, I’m not a nihilist.

You might like to check out the writings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.

[grotto]

You might like to check out the writings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Thanks, Already have! Been there, done that.