OK I realize I am repeating myself here for at least the twentieth
time but apparently I am about the only person in the internet
universe who is concerned with this question. This is not my opinion.
I give you data!
Google on "learned helplessness" + protagoras and you get 17 measly
little hits and only one of them has anything remotely to do with the
answer to my question. What does Protagoras have to do with it you
ask?
I am going to get to that!
This comes by way of an interesting conversation and lengthy debate I
had over the last couple days with anima woman. She claims that
Seligman's hypothesis (and all his fellow travelers) is nothing more
than warmed over Protagoras and Plato refuted him 2500 years ago so we
don't have to bother with the bogosity of it. It's old news and it's
done with. When I asked her for what line in Protagoras this happened
she didn't know and I whipped my copy out and then things got pretty
ugly for awhile there. Apparently she was quoting somebody else who
she thought knew everything and she couldn't believe somebody would
have a Protagoras right there even though google will give you the
same thing as fast as you can start your laptop and connect to your
local wireless internet provider.
Anyway the Protagoras meme is a little polluted in the grand dialectic
of our fellow humans is the lesson I take from that. The dialog is
about the question of "can virtue be taught?" Protagoras was trying to
teach it in weekend seminars and Socrates makes quick work of pointing
out the folly in that logic. But also he is a shorthand for cultural
relativism and his quoted fragment of "man measure all things" is
definitely in the same soup pot as optimism pays. So her point was
actually OK although it goes across a lot better if your fellow
conversationalist isn't a ticking time bomb moggin agonistes ready to
lord it over your rhetorical goofs.
So, to recapitulate, here is the evidence for all you empiricists. On
the one side we have the Seligman et al experiments which show
factually that it pays to be optimistic. On the other side is all the
studies which show that people with low self-esteem and depression
have a better grasp of reality. How to choose which way to go?
Usually I try and do both because I haven't seen any convincing
evidence that being wishy-washy is an evolutionary burden. I don't
believe there is any answer to the question. I have it in my Don
Quixote file of questions that haunt me that I will never have the
answer to. Is she faithful? Do I have cancer? Is it true that a third
of American women have been diddled in their home and a quarter of
them have been raped? Did William Casey collude with King Fahd to
flood the oil market in the 1980's and destroy my world view in the
process as inconsequential collateral damage in the geopolitical
struggle?
Would you rather be happy and stupid or smart and miserable?
(Actually I am 95% sure she isn't faithful; I just put that in there
for literary elan')
The other thing we talked about was hypnosis. I have been doing a
bunch of breath following meditations, just like the zen dudes. The
reason I have hit the wall on my skip ropes is I do not have enough
diaphram control. I have the cardio and the legs to do 3000. I have
actually done it a couple times and I was not staggering winded after.
I just cannot maintain the breathing timing regular at the proper pace
for the length of time it takes to get 3000 skips in. It might not
matter to some people. It isn't like doing a crawl stroke and you have
to have that inhalation perfectly timed because otherwise your mouth
is underwater. But it really bothers me when I am tired from 2200
skips and I have to think about how deep to inhale or how far to
exhale and then before I know it I have lost track of exactly where
the rope is on the arc and bam the sucker is tied up in my ankle. But
I digress.
Anyway she says the problem with most trance activity is it's not only
not higher consciousness but it's false consciousness. Which I think
is her value system being a little corrupted by protestant work ethics
(she is a _jungian_ after all, although jung didn't work for his
fortune he married it) and the idea that if it doesn't pay it's a
waste of time. Talk about your false consciousness. But she was really
adamant about what I could be doing which would really be worth my
while with all the time I am sitting in my recliner chair observing my
breath going in and out, which she considers totally silly. I just let
her beat me up about it though I was feeling so guilty about ambushing
her on the protagoras.
This morning I had a great dream. I dreamt I was a dog sleeping on the
floor. It felt really good.
B.
