Category: Psychology

Beauty in Philosophy, Ethics, and Art: A Conversation with David Fideler

4/19/2023

In this engaging conversation, David Fideler and I delve into the rich history of ancient Greek philosophy to explore the concept of beauty as an objective quality of nature.

We discuss the ideas of Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics, and the ideas they held about beauty. In this highly illustrated video, we also explore the importance of harmony and proportion in nature and art, and how they were used to enhance beauty in ancient architecture and Renaissance paintings.

The conversation also touches on the connections between beauty, truth, and goodness, and the timeless wisdom of ancient philosophy that can still inspire us today.

Links: https://livingideasjournal.com/
https://therenaissanceprogram.com/the-renaissance-program-in-florence-italy/

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Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Online Course and Book Review

2/28/2023

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I just finished taking an in-depth 12 week parenting course, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, that I have really benefited from, and I'd like to share more about it with you. Laura Markham, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, and founder of the Aha! Parenting website, based her approach "Peaceful Parenting." As a longtime reader of Dr. Laura's website, I'm very excited to be able to review both the course and Dr. Laura's book!

The Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids course teaches parents to coach and connect with their children while better regulating their own (parental) emotions. Both course and book provide many strategies on how to have a more positive, cooperative relationship with your children. The course offers detailed strategies and information, plus weekly audio lectures, daily meditations to help rewire your brain, and homework. Interestingly, this parenting philosophy is very compatible with Stoicism, which also seeks better emotional regulation.

In this post, I've written a full review of the course including key concepts, who will benefit from it, plus benefits and drawbacks of this parenting approach. If you're interested, but not enough to commit to a 12 week course, the key concepts are all addressed in Dr. Laura's book, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting available on Amazon.*

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The Top 5 Personality Traits Necessary for Resisting Social Pressure, And How You Can Develop Them

9/23/2022

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In the 1950s psychologist Solomon Asche conducted a famous social science conformity experiment. While there are some variables, Asche concluded that roughly 3 out of every 4 people will conform to social pressure in a given situation.

Many of us are inclined to follow the majority or yield to social pressure because of our evolutionary biology. When our ancestors lived in tribes, we learned various skills by watching others and there were significant risks to our survival for being ostracized from the group. While there are fewer risks to our survival for not conforming with the majority today, there are still risks of being ostracized socially when we disagree. There are also psychological factors at work. People conform because they want to be right, because they want to be liked, or at the very least, because they don't want to seem eccentric or strange.

The ability to resist social pressure is quite important, because it determines what we will do in many contexts and how much backbone we have. While there may be some social drawbacks to resisting peer pressure, there are many benefits as well, such as not always seeking other's approval, thinking more openly, standing up for yourself in situations that matter, living a more authentic life, avoiding potential harm, and perhaps having more opportunities or career success.

Some people naturally have personality traits that make them more resistant to social pressure, but anyone can develop these traits with practice. Here, I'll discuss the stop 5 traits of peer pressure resistant people and how you can develop these traits:

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What Can Philosophers Tell Us About Mental Health Challenges and Stigmatization?

6/1/2022

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This month's excellent guest post is contributed by Heidi Bitsoli, a writer and editor for Sunshine Behavioral Health. We hope this original post will bring awareness to mental health challenges and the stigmatization sometimes faced by people experiencing them:

The debate as to whether mental disorders are biological diseases or whether they are merely deviations from social norms is not new. Plato takes on this question in the Phaedrus, a dialog dating back to ancient Greece.

In 2013, C.D. Herrera pointed out that philosophical discourse about mental illness started with the Greeks: “Meaningful talk about inclusion and justice has, since Plato and Aristotle, included observation and speculation which have been directed towards answering questions of what we should do when people reason differently, when they manage emotions differently, and when they resist attempts to bring them into line.”

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A Meditation on Courage: 2 Techniques for Overcoming Anxiety

10/16/2018

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In an interview with the World Ethical Data Forum, Julian Assange warned that the generation being born now is the last to be free. The message is quite disturbing. After all, it does seem as though we are headed that way, that long shadows are falling. "Look back over the past with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can forsee the future too," Marcus Aureluis declares. Is this period of time similar to the fall of Rome? Maybe just the end of the Republic?

Anxiety seems to be at the root of the modern condition. Besides the stress that we deal with in our private lives, there are always political and geopolitical concerns (like the above) that stress us as well. Given all of this, I actually don't think that anxiety is by any means an irrational response. It's only when our response is disproportionate to the threat or when anxiety starts to take over our lives that it really becomes a problem.

I can honestly say that with each new child that we have added to our family, my own anxiety has increased. After all, I have my family's wellbeing to look after, not just my own. Courage however, is a decision. It's how we respond to anxiety provoking thoughts that we have control over, not the external situation. Let me share with you the 2 best techniques that I use to overcome anxiety.

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How Can We Overcome Our Biases?

4/4/2018

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Why is it so hard to for us the change our beliefs or to get other people to change their minds? A new documentary film Right Between Your Ears, examines the science and psychology of how people form convictions. According to producer Kris De Meyer, a neuroscientist, certain aspects of human psychology make it very hard for us to be objective or unbiased.

People usually form beliefs by accepting what they've been told by someone they trust: parents, teachers, media and so on. Our beliefs can change when we learn new things. But when we become convinced of something, it is similar to a religious belief in the way our brain operates. We may react with anger when challenged. This human tendency often leads us to seek out information which confirms what we already believe and ignore everything else - it's a cognitive bias actually - called confirmation bias.

It seems obvious why confirmation bias can be a problem - it can prevent us making good decisions. It makes us rigid thinkers. Someone can easily fool us by simply appealing to our established belief systems. The good news is that there are some practical strategies to overcome this natural human shortsightedness that I'll let you in on at the end of the post.

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Stop Doing This if You Want to Be Happy

2/2/2017

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Have you ever felt like you would be so much happier as soon as you fulfilled some desire, only to end up unsatisfied soon afterwards? Why is it that getting something we want doesn't always make us consistently happy over the long term? What are we meant for? Merely the experience of pleasure, or something more profound?

Hedonic adaptation is the observed psychological tendency to revert back to prior levels of happiness soon after experiencing something pleasurable. The psychologists Brickman and Campbell began studying this phenomenon scientifically in the 1970s, calling it the Hedonic Treadmill. Hedonic adaptation accounts for our tendency to overestimate how happy pleasurable experiences will make us, and the fact that we tend to maintain a relatively stable level of happiness regardless of our material circumstances. It also explains our unfortunate human habit of taking what we have for granted.

Even though the Hedonic Treadmill was scientifically observed in recent history, it turns out that Kant possessed a remarkably similar insight into human psychology, simultaneously defining hedonic adaptation and changing the course of one man's life in an impromptu late night meeting in 1789.

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5 Insightful Ways to Identify and Change Your Character Flaws

11/5/2016

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Since I write about ethics, virtue, and character there has always been a possibility that someone will ask what exactly makes me so great. The answer is nothing. I have faults like everyone else. I am however, continuously working to discover and overcome my faults. It's important to do this type of ongoing self assessment if you have any real interest in improving your character.

In ancient philosophy, arete, translated as excellence or virtue, was often held as the goal of a lifetime. Excellence can be developed through insight and habit. It's important to have insight about your negative personality traits if you want to change them. Usually just a small part of your total personality is actively holding you back and keeping you from flourishing in life as you might if your faults were corrected.

Examining your own character flaws is actually not the easiest thing to do. We innately resist looking at our truly negative qualities as a matter of psychological self-preservation. So how can we identify and work with our own shortcomings? Uncovering your faults takes some maturity and courage. These 5 techniques inspired by the ancient philosophical tradition and Jungian psychology have helped me to gain more insight into my personal failings, and I hope they will be helpful to you as well.

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Is It Fantasy That a Happy Life is All About Pleasant Experiences?

7/11/2016

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A guest post by Winton Bates of Freedom and Flourishing:

It seems to me that the view that a happy life is just about pleasant experiences is a fantasy. I’m not saying that it is not desirable to have a life full of pleasant experiences, just that a happy life involves more than that.

In his famous thought experiment, Robert Nozick asked readers to imagine an experience machine that would give them any experience they desired. They would be able to select experiences from a large library and the machine would be pre-programmed to give them those experiences while they spent the rest of their lives floating in a tank (Anarchy, State and Utopia, 1971, pp 42-44).

Would you choose to spend the rest of your life hooked up to such a machine?

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5 Things That You "Owe" Your Child

3/12/2016

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As a writer, I read a great deal, both online and between the covers of books. Sometimes I encounter a blog post or story that inspires me, or that I feel the need to respond to. One such piece is Mom on the Move 35's post "10 Things You Don't 'Owe' Your Child."

The point of the article is that children aren't entitled to many of things that society typically considers to be good, including lots of material possessions, winning, gourmet food, and popularity. It's not that I disagree with the author, per se. It's that I want to add an addendum in the affirmative. If there are many things that you don't owe your child, then what do you owe them exactly?

Mom on the Move concludes that "Children are entitled to parents who will teach them the difference between the things in life they have to work for and the things in life that are given freely."

Since she doesn't expand on the topic, let's examine it further here. What does the classical philosophical tradition have to say about the things that parents should freely give to their children? Modern psychology? How about common sense?

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<<Previous

Beauty in Philosophy, Ethics, and Art: A Conversation with David Fideler

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Online Course and Book Review

The Top 5 Personality Traits Necessary for Resisting Social Pressure, And How You Can Develop Them

What Can Philosophers Tell Us About Mental Health Challenges and Stigmatization?

A Meditation on Courage: 2 Techniques for Overcoming Anxiety

How Can We Overcome Our Biases?

Stop Doing This if You Want to Be Happy

5 Insightful Ways to Identify and Change Your Character Flaws

Is It Fantasy That a Happy Life is All About Pleasant Experiences?

5 Things That You "Owe" Your Child

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