How do I control my anger outbursts?

quietvoice wrote:

Leo Volont wrote: that crazy fascist

If you're serious, then there is no sense in me having talks with you. (Get your facts straight.)

It wouldn't be the first time that friends parted over Ayn Rand. But I wouldn't have taken you for being one of her's.

Leo Volont wrote:

quietvoice wrote:If you're serious, then there is no sense in me having talks with you. (Get your facts straight.)

It wouldn't be the first time that friends parted over Ayn Rand. But I wouldn't have taken you for being one of her's.

Yes, I've read her books 30+ years ago. I don't know what you mean that I'd be one of "her's." What I do know is that you don't have the facts straight.

Hi Quiet Voice, I wonder if you know that Ayn Rand is controversial, right? Apparently you take exception to my calling her a 'crazy fascist' (I could have went on). Well, you read "Atlas Shrugged", right? A bunch of Capitalists form a powerful militia and go up against a legitimate Government, that happens to be be Leftist. Oh, and the point of view of the Narrative is to glorify the Capitalist Sponsored Militias while demonizing the Legitimate Government, and largely because it does not approve of its Left Wing slant. Okay. Quiet Voice, that is sort of Text Book Fascism, isn't it? And I called her "crazy" because she wrote that Pro-Fascist tome just barely 12 years after the smoke of WWII cleared, but, yes, well I should consider that she was then riding high on the Red Scare and Fascism was coming back in vogue. that's where Ronald Reagan got his start: denouncing Hollywood screenwriters, producers, and actors for having associated with communists, who 12 years before had been our Allies in a War against the Fascists. How Fashions Change, don't they?

But, you know, Quiet Voice, you seem nice enough. Heck, you choose the name "Quiet Voice". SO where do these Fascist sympathies come from?.... but, yeah, you might have been tricked. Remember, Ayn Rand did employ the Anti-Hero methodology -- setting the Narrative Voice to be in sympathy with a character that should otherwise be the villain. Yes, Literary Critics were amazed when this technique first came out, but it does fool people. It turns out that the Moral Center of most people isn't very strong. There was a movie "A Clockwork Orange", made on a dare to prove the point. Anyway, Ayn Rand was serious and didn't realize that her sense Social Morality was all screwed up. But, Quietvoice, you read those books 30 years ago. Now think about what they were REALLY about. Forget the Pro-Evil Narrative Voice and just sum up the plot in your head. Those were Bad Evil Selfish Predatory People, right? the Socialists who were described by the Evil Narrative Voice as contemptible weren't really all that bad, when you think about it, were they? Actually, they would more closely approach the Social Moral Ideal, wouldn't they? Yeah, A lot of young people were taken in by Ayn Rand. Narrative Voice in a 1000 page Novel can be hypnotic. but you have to be able to shake it off and ask yourself "Okay, what just REALLY happened". In "A Clockwork Orange" a psychopath sexually assaults and mutilates people for amusement (or whatever... haven't watched the movie recently) and that does NOT make him a HERO, no matter how the Narrative Voice plays it, and he should be considered the exact opposite of anybody we would wish to emulate. right?

So, really, you wouldn't be the first person who had their head screwed with by Ayn Rand. Just think about the job she did on Nathaniel Brandon. he thinks Assertiveness is a good thing.

But, yes, thanks for coming back to talk.

Leo,
Here's why I'm not engaging on this topic with you:

-1- First thing you did was ad hominen Mr. Branden for this association with Ms. Rand.
-2- Your portrayal of Ms. Rand's political philosophy is way off base.
-3- I've noticed in this short interaction that you made some exaggerations.
-4- There is a distinction between aggressiveness and assertiveness, and I see that in your made-up mind that they are equated.

The best thing for me to do is to leave you be.


Edit to add:

By the way, Branden's Six Pillars are:

-1- The Practice of Living Consciously

-2- The Practice of Self-Acceptance

-3- The Practice of Self-Responsibility

-4- The Practice of Self-Assertiveness

-5- The Practice of Living Purposefully

-6- The Practice of Personal Integrity


Peace.

Dika wrote:Hi Jesse,
Just predict the impact of an anger. I am sure the impact wouldn't favor you anyway. The practice you must undergo is not an anger management but be more patient. Figure out the ways to boost your patience. hope below linked article will help you...

https://arisewithin.in/how-to-be-more-p ... -patience/

Thanks
Dika

Hi Dika, You really shouldn't use URL's. Nobody really knows where a URL will land them. You should use a Site Name, so that people can go to a home page. So that our Firewalls have half a chance of blocking nasty malware that a URL will land us right in the middle of.

Dika wrote:Hi Jesse,
Just predict the impact of an anger. I am sure the impact wouldn't favor you anyway. The practice you must undergo is not an anger management but be more patient. Figure out the ways to boost your patience. hope below linked article will help you...

https://arisewithin.in/how-to-be-more-p ... -patience/

Thanks
Dika

Hi Dika, You really shouldn't use URL's. Nobody really knows where a URL will land them. You should use a Site Name, so that people can go to a home page. So that our Firewalls have half a chance of blocking nasty malware that a URL will land us right in the middle of.

Leo Volont wrote:

Dika wrote: . . . arisewithin.in . . .

Hi Dika, You really shouldn't use URL's. Nobody really knows where a URL will land them. You should use a Site Name, so that people can go to a home page. So that our Firewalls have half a chance of blocking nasty malware that a URL will land us right in the middle of.

See how I took the kernel of the URL, containing the mid-level domain (the site name) and the top-level domain (.com, .org, .in, etc.). You can do a search upon that, if you are concerned about landing on a page that may give you trouble.

Hi Quietvoice,

yeah, I searched arisewithin.in and google didn't like it, but it gave me the Site anyway. And then I found the "Patience" section that Dika was talking about. Yeah, that stuff is okay, but here on this Site we are dealing with people who throw office chairs through the 30th floor window. Patience almost cuts it.

One thing you have to realise about anger is that we live in a society which generates anger. So, if you experience anger then it is hardly surprising!

What sorts of things generate anger?

How about the woman in the 2nd hand shop I chatted to the other day? She said that she had problems with her Sky tv service. She phoned up their help line and waited 40 minutes for a reply. By the time she had talked to someone on the help-line she had been on the phone for an hour and a half. Not only did they not help her, but they also tried to sell her a new Sky box. In the end she hung up. She said the whole thing ruined her evening. As it happened, she managed to sort the problem in the end herself by disconnecting all plugs etc, cleaning them and then rebooting the Sky box. That sort of thing used to leave me really, really angry. That experience made that woman really, really angry.

Then there is the TV Licensing Authority. Every 2 years they check up on me to find out why I don't have a licence. Every 2 years I tell them I don't have a licence because I do not watch tv on any device (I only watch dvds i.e. films). Every 2 years I have to go to both the effort and the expense of telling them why I do not need a licence. That makes me angry. Why shouldn't it? Also, why shouldn't I get angry when I am not trusted?

The DVLA do not trust people to keep their car off the road when it is uninsured/not licenced. They used to, but do not now. Now you have to SORN your car. They force people to use up more and more of their own time and energy by getting them to jump through more and more of their hoops.

And, if you are on benefits, jeez, does that not generate anger? I've not been on benefits myself but my sister was a number of years ago. The benefits people pry into every little nook and cranny of one's private life, they even looked at my private life even though my sister was the claimant! The benefits people treat claimants like dirt. They also threaten claimants with dire consequences should they tell a lie. So, then, don't people ever make simple mistakes???? That just generates anger.

When I was in the library the other day using the library computers, the man sitting at the computer beside me was on the "Universal Credit" page. I.e. he was on benefits. He was clearly having to justify his existence to them because he was having to type up some sort of journal, this to "prove" that he was seeking work. And the man was a very slow typist. Keeping such a journal was clearly very hard work for him. Poor folks just get treated like dirt. Being poor is hard work - I know, I've been there - so making poor folks work hard just to claim benefits HAS to make people angry. In fact, this government even acknowledges that anger is a major problem in the UK. Trouble is, it hasn't the faintest idea that it is the cause of some of that anger!!

Oh, and here's another example. My father was a relentless tease. He had various ways of teasing us. For example, we'd be sitting down in front of the tv. It was always my father who chose what we watched. This included the 9 o'clock news (this was in the 70s). None of the rest of us wanted to watch the news but there was little choice. When my father was watching the news, he'd often fall asleep. One of us would then get up and change channels to a programme we wanted to watch. My father invariably woke up and demanded that we return to the news channel. Once the news was back on again, he fell asleep again. My father drove his whole family nuts with his teasing. .

So, the first piece of advice I'd offer is that people should know that anger is not a personality defect. There are very real outside influences, some of which I mentioned above, that make people angry.


PS: Oh, and by the way, I used to be a secondary school teacher. One of my pupils was regularly out of class to attend anger management classes. He always came back into class absolutely fuming, far angrier than before he went for his session. That HAS to say something about anger management classes themselves. .

Hi Little Brown Dragon, Yeah, I was able to sympathize with you. All those triggers you listed were really good examples of the kind of triggers that get people angry. But this IS an Anger Management Page. You know, just because people have a reason why they got angry doesn't justify them in throwing their office chair through a 30 story window. Little Brown Dragon, what do you DO when you get angry. So people blow up and have a rage episode. If they do that at work, they become redundant really fast. In relationships, well, nobody can stick with a partner that is all the time flipping out, even if they can come up with excuses. But some people just have these little nervous breakdowns. Is this what is happening to you. You let this stuff bother you? You know, you should be more relaxed about it. For instance, with the TV Licensing Authority. You seem to KNOW they do a review of your file every 2 years. So why do you still let it bother you. It is a recurrent trigger. If you knew about Anger Management then you would know that we should be prepared to smile on through recurrent triggers, you know, like in a Jane Austen novel... we can be prepared for them and keep a stiff upper lip and all of that. It is surprise triggers that take a great deal of skill and practice to withstand. Now, if you want any advise, I can give you some, in regards to surprise triggers that sneak up on you. It seems that a gland in our brain, when it discerns stress and threats, gives off Cortisol, which sets in process the whole Fight and Flight Response. If you are the type of person that has anger blowups, then it is cortisol that is getting it all going and fueling the charge. It all happens quickly, but the first sign of a Cortisol Rush is that your teeth clench. If you can Instantly Relax your jaw muscles, then you can turn off the cortisol. In your case i believe that you are under chronic stress, and so you would need to monitor just how often your teeth are locked together. Apparently your jaw muscles are the gateway to this Gland in your Brain that is the valve in charge of the cortisol drip. Stress builds up. With Chronically Angry People, they have an episode and Cortisol and Adrenaline are released, and it takes about a day for all of that to wash out. But before the day is through, they have another episode. They just keep it going. You have to be able to stay calm an entire day so that the cortisol and adrenaline can wash out. The Psychologists are going more and more into Cognitive Behavioral Control. If a Behavior is getting you into trouble, well, stop doing it. But at the Cognitive end, we are encouraged to just stop thinking about things that upset us. Little Brown Dragon, really, when you experience one of these triggers, how much are you dwelling upon it? Yes, we should all work for a better society and overthrow the Capitalist Class Structures, but while you are dealing with day to day stuff and the various bureaucratic offices, then it is best to ride your mind like you are riding a horse, and keep it on the path and keep it at a trot. Especially monitor your teeth clenching. Really, after a good hard 5 seconds of teeth grinding, you really will be wired up for the rest of the day. Also, what I have found is that much of the Endless Thinking that keeps one up at night, well, that is because you engaged in some kind of an action, that is, you did or said something. So, Little Brown, when at all possible, keep quiet and do nothing. I have been re-reading Jane Austen and several of her characters make it a point to just let some things go without comment. Mobilizing for Battle is hard on both the mind and body. Pick your battles. Also, things will go faster and easier if you are friendly to the Government Bureaucrats and the Customer Service People. they are so used to being hated. If you smile and laugh and talk of nice days and all of that, well, the business will go so much smoother. Really, people align themselves in terms of US vs THEM. When dealing with people, always treat them like an US. Treat people like your new best friend. some don't respond to it, but many do. But, yes, that should do for now. Let me know what you think. have a nice day!

Foreword: When I tried to post my reply in its original form i.e. quoting particular sections of your, Leo Volont's, post to reply to, I was told by the computer that my reply was "too spamy" for a Newbie and that it would not be published. I don't know what that meant. I've never had a problem with quoting other's posts before. To get round the problem, instead of using quotes to indicate passages from your previous post, I've underlined them and changed the colour to blue. And while on the subject of anger, I could say quite a lot about the contribution computers have to make to this problem........….!

Leo Volont wrote:Hi Little Brown Dragon, Yeah, I was able to sympathize with you. All those triggers you listed were really good examples of the kind of triggers that get people angry. But this IS an Anger Management Page. .

Thank you for your very thorough reply to my post. There is just so much there to respond to that I’m not quite sure where to begin. However, let me say straight away that I speak from personal experience. I had an extremely severe anger problem – the word “extremely” does not do justice to the intensity of my anger - which I have cured (this with the help of a close friend who also cured herself of a severe mental health problem). So first let me emphasise that I am speaking about anger from the point of view of success, NOT of failure.

You know, just because people have a reason why they got angry doesn't justify them in throwing their office chair through a 30 story window.

First of all, however, I would ask you this: if anger is such a problem for people in the UK (and all over the world, in fact), then don’t you think that we should be asking the reason why? And given that there are so many external factors fueling people’s rage, don’t you think that people, especially governments, should be modifying their behavior so as not to fuel people’s anger? After all, it is by fueling each other’s anger that we have world wars. It is by fueling each other’s anger that there were riots in the UK against the Poll Tax (I refer to Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980s). To disempower people, as she and so many other politicians did and still do, is a recipe for fueling anger

Little Brown Dragon, what do you DO when you get angry. So people blow up and have a rage episode. If they do that at work, they become redundant really fast. In relationships, well, nobody can stick with a partner that is all the time flipping out, even if they can come up with excuses. But some people just have these little nervous breakdowns. Is this what is happening to you. You let this stuff bother you?

Yes, I did “let” that stuff bother me. And the first huge release I got with respect to my anger was being told that this world is a place in which people go to such extraordinary lengths to aggravate each other that we spend most of our lives having to deal with being under almost constant attack. Realising that was a HUGE release.

(Of course, I do not claim to be purely a victim here. Like everyone else, my bad behaviour made other people angry just as their bad behavior made me angry. No one in this world is innocent in that regard.)


If you knew about Anger Management then you would know that we should be prepared to smile on through recurrent triggers, you know, like in a Jane Austen novel...

You are right, I do not know about anger management. This is because I have never attended an anger management class. As I said, I have cured my own anger myself.

Smile? That, I agree, is the place where one eventually wants to get to. More than that, in fact. One actually wants to be able to laugh and shrug it all off. But I know from experience that it takes a long time to get to that place. For example, I had to discover the sorts of things that triggered my anger. (These will be the same for many people.)

These triggers included (a) inarticulacy, (b) insecurity and the fear that comes from feeling insecure, (c) a fear of authority and (d) lack of self-respect.

So, I first had to deal with inarticulacy. Of course, one reason (and there are others) that I, along with the vast majority of other people, had difficulty expressing myself and saying what was on my mind was that people are always being muzzled. One way in which we are muzzled is by the use of political correctness. At work, of course, one is also muzzled by being expected to tow the party line. Being surveilled also inhibits free speech. (To say that we in the UK have freedom of speech is utter nonsense.)

To improve articulacy I did lots and lots and lots of writing, especially of the kind where I spoke my mind. At first I kept a private journal where I let off steam. But then I increasingly began to speak out, this at work. I began to reclaim my freedom of speech. My boss didn’t like this, of course. Nor could he deal with a member of staff speaking out. He tried again and again to muzzle me until he finally resorted to threatening me. He made up ridiculous accusations against me, each more exaggerated than the last.

In the end I was formally disciplined. However, before the disciplinary hearing, I handed in my notice. I did not wait for them to fire me (which in this case they could not have done, my “crime” was relatively trivial), instead I took the initiative. I resigned.


So people blow up and have a rage episode. If they do that at work, they become redundant really fast.


It is because people have such little self-respect, that they kow-tow so much to those in authority, that employers get away with bullying them. When I reclaimed my freedom of speech, my standing in my place of work really grew. My colleagues began to show me a great deal of respect which they had never done before. In addition, they really envied me. They wanted to be able to do what I was able to do. I made no secret about my formal disciplinary and when I told my colleagues that I had resigned, they were very envious. They too wanted to reclaim their freedom.

All of these actions began to reduce my anger. Especially being able to speak my mind. In addition, they revealed to me that my bosses were not as powerful as they had led me to believe. This did much to reduce my fear of authority and therefore my anger.

I still had to do a lot of work on reducing my anger, but I am now in the position where I can smile. I can even laugh at other’s attempts to manipulate me by trying to make me angry. That does not mean I will not express anger when it is appropriate to do so. I will express anger.


I can give you some, in regards to surprise triggers that sneak up on you. It seems that a gland in our brain, when it discerns stress and threats, gives off Cortisol, which sets in process the whole Fight and Flight Response. If you are the type of person that has anger blowups, then it is cortisol that is getting it all going and fueling the charge.

Thank you for your advice. However, the idea that anger is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain is not one I adhere to. I do not think the “flight or fight” idea, that one’s behavior is “hard-wired”, is correct either. The chemical imbalance approach is also one that psychiatrists use when treating patients with mental health problems. These approaches address the symptoms, not the underlying causes, of emotional problems such as anger or mental health problems such as depression. And taking drugs only serves to suppress the mind’s own immune system such that it eventually withers and dies. The death of one’s (psychological) immune system leaves one prey to all sorts of emotional problems that it becomes unable to deal with. (Taking cold or ‘flu medicine likewise suppresses the body’s immune system. When the body is attacked by a virus, the immune system’s response is to raise body temperature. This kills off the virus. Taking pills to lower temperature when one has a cold or ‘flu therefore stops the immune system from working.)

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Mobilizing for Battle is hard on both the mind and body……………………………….Also, things will go faster and easier if you are friendly to the Government Bureaucrats and the Customer Service People. they are so used to being hated. If you smile and laugh and talk of nice days and all of that, well, the business will go so much smoother.

I agree with what you say here, but not on how to get there. As I said before, I speak from the position of success, NOT of failure.

Hi Little Brown Dragon,

Oh, I wish I had longer to reply. I have an appointment coming up. But I wanted to comment on how you were admired at work for standing up to the stupid bosses. Maybe you were in a large workplace. But I myself am articulate and talked back to the bosses, but most of my fellow workers were quite resigned to kowtowing and kissing up. They resented my resistance as a kind of personal affront to their own humiliating cowardice, which, of course, they don't see in those terms, but they are aware of the implied accusation in that I must see their behavior that way. I recently went back to school on a Senior Citizen Program, for a second degree, and retook Psychology 101 to see what has changed in 50 years (they still can't get past Freud!?) and I learned about Cognitive Dissonance. It seems that whenever a person is intellectually or emotionally conflicted, rather than attempting to change their environment or society to fit their beliefs, ideals, and natural inclinations, well, they tweak their own cognitive assessments of Reality. In the case of our Work Place Experiences, we are treated like worthless low class slaves by our stupid idiot bosses, BUT if we kowtow and kiss up then we can work our way up in the system and get raises and promotions and ostensibly arrive at success. SO, something happens in out brains where we do not just make calculated adjustments to our behaviors and 'play' the bosses and manipulate them consciously, all while continuing to despise them, no, our brains, or rather, personalities, reconstruct to eliminate the 'cognitive dissonance' and we begin to believe in the Legitimacy of the Bosses Authority. At my place of work, the co-workers saw it as a huge character flaw on my part that I would 'talk back' to a boss. It simply isn't done! They had turned Duty and Obedience into the most sterling and necessary of virtues. Indeed, you can see how conflicted I am about it. These people really do arrive at greater success then those who consciously and cynically try to game the system while trying to maintain any degree of self respect. The Bosses LOVE those sincere azzkizzers! But the problem with Cognitive Dissonance, and people auto-correcting their personalities in order to put up with all kinds of social, relationship, and workplace abuse, is, well, it permanently distorts their social and political behavior. People who adjust to authority at work, also begin to vote for authority at the polls. Indeed, in talking about Technological Unemployment and the Rise of the Robots, the natural solution is to say fine, let the robots do all the work and you can pay everybody to just stay home, which would be better for the environment anyway. But, well, it should be surprising but it's not, that many people are complaining that they would not know what to do if a boss wasn't there to tell them to do it. Honestly, people have twisted their minds to the point where they like being screwed over. That is why we have so many working class fascists. The last thing they want is to be liberated from authority and being told that their lives are their own. That was a great essay, Little Brown. It was nice talking with you.

Leo Volont wrote:Hi Little Brown Dragon,
But I wanted to comment on how you were admired at work for standing up to the stupid bosses. Maybe you were in a large workplace. But I myself am articulate and talked back to the bosses, but most of my fellow workers were quite resigned to kowtowing and kissing up. .

Hello.

I was in a small workplace with around 25 staff – it was a small secondary school. When I started speaking out for myself my colleagues did not support me. Right until the end they never backed me up. I was very much on my own. However, my colleagues were just as scared of authority as I used to be. “There but for the grace of god went I…” as they say. So, I do not blame my colleagues for kow-towing. They were just too frightened.

Speaking out enabled me to gain self-respect. This, as I said, did much to alleviate my anger.

When I resigned my post as a permanent teacher, I stayed on at the school as a supply teacher until a replacement teacher could be found for me. The funny thing is that during my time there as a supply teacher, my boss, the man with whom I was in conflict, actually admitted that he was sorry I was leaving. In addition, when I had to re-apply for my job i.e. apply to return to the school as a supply teacher, I had to ask my line-manager for a reference. This reference turned out to be an absolutely glowing report (the first I have ever had) in which he commented that I was respected by my colleagues etc, etc. That, then, is what speaking out did for me. (I should add here that this new found respect was not what restored my self-respect. What restored my self-respect was my attempt to regain my freedom of speech by speaking out.)

I recently went back to school on a Senior Citizen Program, for a second degree, and retook Psychology 101 to see what has changed in 50 years (they still can't get past Freud!?)

Perhaps we could start a new thread on Freud (I do not want to hi-jack BO-DACIOUS’ thread). I would be interested to hear what they teach about him these days. You do not seem to be a fan of the man. What about Jung?

Cognitive Dissonance.

I heard that phrase used recently on the radio. It seems to be a rather fancy word for Orwell’s “Double Think” (1984).

In Boris Pasternak’s novel Dr Zhivago, near the end of the book Dr Zhivago himself talks about people holding 2 conflicting ideas in their heads and how this must create all sorts of psychological trouble. Of course it does. For example, whenever someone says that we live in a free country, then that sets up a conflict for there is no such thing as a free country. No one who is governed is free. This must generate a whole lot of anger in people, this conflict, even if they are unaware that they are succumbing to Double Speak.

It seems that whenever a person is intellectually or emotionally conflicted, rather than attempting to change their environment or society to fit their beliefs, ideals, and natural inclinations, well, they tweak their own cognitive assessments of Reality. In the case of our Work Place Experiences, we are treated like worthless low class slaves by our stupid idiot bosses, BUT if we kowtow and kiss up then we can work our way up in the system and get raises and promotions and ostensibly arrive at success.

Yes, it rather depends on what one considers to be “success”. I got promotion to middle management at that same school. I was in the post for less than a year when I became so disenchanted with it that I resigned and went back, in the same school, to being a non-promoted teacher i.e. an ordinary classroom teacher. That was about 1 year before I actually resigned. It was rather nice to thumb my nose at management and say “No, thank you” to promotion.

At my place of work, the co-workers saw it as a huge character flaw on my part that I would 'talk back' to a boss. It simply isn't done!

If only more people would speak back to their bosses.

They had turned Duty and Obedience into the most sterling and necessary of virtues. Indeed, you can see how conflicted I am about it. These people really do arrive at greater success then those who consciously and cynically try to game the system while trying to maintain any degree of self respect.

Again, what is meant by “success”? In this society we have a very distorted view of success. If “success” means that people have to sell their souls in order to get promotion, then does their promotion really signify “success”?

I used to run a small photography business. (I was still a teacher at the time.) Photography was a hobby and I used the business to fund what was then an expensive hobby i.e. this was before the days of digital photography when one still used film. Anyway, within about 6 years I began to tire of this business. It actually put me off photography. The reason? I was not taking photographs for myself, but to please other people i.e. my potential customers. So, I had sold my soul to do my photography and I paid the price. Having said I paid the price, in fact the experience was invaluable and it taught me a lot i.e it taught me the consequences of selling my soul for money.

The Bosses LOVE those sincere azzkizzers!

And yet, did they but know it, if all that those bosses have around them is “yes” men and women, then it makes their own job, not to say their life, much, much harder. For example, bosses will never get honest feedback from their staff. They will only ever be told what their staff think they want to be told. So bad behavior always rebounds on the perpetrator. Therefore despite appearances, the bosses do not, in fact, have it all their own way.

That was a great essay, Little Brown. It was nice talking with you.

Thank you very much. It is an interesting discussion.

Hi Little Brown, Yeah, the classic experiment on Cognitive Dissonance was that they pretended to have a really boring experiment where they would have people turn a knob one way, then turn the knob the other, and go up and down rows just turning the knobs one way and then the other. It was purpose designed to be stupid and boring. But the REAL experiment started only afterwards when they would tell the people leaving "Hey, our receptionist had a doctors appointment and had to leave" and then to some, they would offer $20 (a lot of money at the time) to stand in and prep the incoming subjects by telling them that the experiment would be really fun and interesting, but then to the Control Group, they would just ask them to fill in as a favor, if they weren't doing anything else, but tell the new people how great everything was. Well, the PAID people didn't have any Cognitive Dissonance because they KNEW why they were there... to get paid to lie to people, and they were really cynical about it, but they never lost sight of the fact that the Experiment was boring and stupd (twisting knobs). But the people who weren't paid, who had to wonder why they were blowing their afternoon and not just say, "Hey, screw this! I never liked your stupid experiment anyway". Well, it turns out that it messed up their heads. To keep themselves at the desk working for nothing they convinced themselves that they LIKED being there and in addition to that, that they LIKED the Experiment and thought that twisting knobs meaninglessly was cutting edge fun stuff. Really, the implications of Cognitive Dissonance should be telling us that Democracy and impossible and that people can be conditioned to take crap, like it, and ask for more. Orwell's 'double speak', well, I always found Orwell far fetched. After all, Orwell went to fight in the Spanish Civil War and changed sides. who can be a Socialist when being a fascist is so much more fun. So all of Orwell's books are thinly veiled shrieking fascist attacks on caricatures of socialism. I hate that twirpy little chain smoker.

Oh, Freud and all of those other famous Psychoanalysts were just scamming quacks. They had no science, and kept no records. They did have theories which they created like pieces of art, and like everything at that period they just wanted to outrage Victorian sensibilities. But, a hundred years later, the psychology books still treat it with respect, and while every paragraph has to be followed by disclaimers and reservations, it is puzzling that they just don't throw out all that baseless and contrived garbage. Jung too. He should have been a novelist. But all his books were lies. When he died, they wanted to create a Jung Library from all his data files. There were none. Then PhD candidates began going over Jung's written references to 'data' and found it was inconsistent gibberish. From writing to writing he couldn't keep it straight how far back his studies went, his sample sizes, .... nothing followed. It seems they all just wanted to become FAMOUS so they could bill more per hour.

Oh, my theory about Bosses and Office Politics is that nobody really cares about the success of the company. You know, let the share holder make their own money, right? So, even the Bosses are there to take an easy ride and make easy money. Nobody wants to be bothered. So, they find pushy self-motivated employees irritating. So there is a contradiction. The Human Relations people hire people who SEEM self-motivated and interested in their work. They would NOT hire people who say "I just want a job and I won't bother anybody, but I can tell great jokes at the water-cooler". But it turns out that with the actual work, the Bosses really do prefer the people that don't push, that don't make any noise, that do what they are told and not a thing more, that never bother them with their brilliant ideas. Everybody just wants to get paid and go home. Yeah, some Bosses do want to be worshiped , or they want their employees to hold their hands and keep them from being lonely. But that is all Office Politics. As for doing the Assigned Mission of the Corporation, well, it just seems that it is a big mistake to think that the Corporate Mission is really any kind of a priority. Look at the people who get fired, and about half of the people get fired because, well, they are too noticeably lazy which causes complaints, but the other half of the people who get fired are TOO zealous and overwrought about the job, and that annoys people and causes more complaints then in regards to lazy-azzes. Heck, I would probably still be working if I never cared half as much about anything. Bosses just want to sleep and I kept waking them up.

Leo Volont wrote:
Oh, Freud and all of those other famous Psychoanalysts were just scamming quacks. They had no science, and kept no records. They did have theories which they created like pieces of art, and like everything at that period they just wanted to outrage Victorian sensibilities. But, a hundred years later, the psychology books still treat it with respect, and while every paragraph has to be followed by disclaimers and reservations, it is puzzling that they just don't throw out all that baseless and contrived garbage. Jung too. He should have been a novelist. .

Do I understand correctly that you are, or were, a psychologist?

For myself, my first contact with psychology was when I did teacher training. At teacher training college we had to study a little child development psychology. Names like Piaget and then Skinner and Eysenck (and their nature v. nurture debates) come to mind. These three are probably very outdated by now.

You have said you don’t like either Jung or Freud. Who do you like? Any names to recommend?


My first real contact with psychologists was through my sister. She developed schizophrenia. She was not automatically offered a referral to a clinical psychologist but had to ask her psychiatrist for a referral. She found psychological services much more useful than psychiatric services, particularly as she did not want to be pumped full of drugs. Her psychiatrist tried to force drugs on her. The psychologist introduced her to CBT which she found more helpful.

Have you had any experience as a clinical psychologist? If so, did you use CBT at all? In any case, what do you think of it?

I have explored various therapies and am currently interested in many of these self-help books that are so popular today. I've just finished Mastin Kipp's LoveDaily. I do not like these books. I do not think they offer good advice. What do you think?