[Neurons] 2010 Meta Reflections #45

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2010 - #45

September 14, 2010

More about a Strategy for

Defeating Book Burning 

 

 

THEY ARE JUST SYMBOLS

Unplugging Buttons and Opening the Mind

 

 

In writing about a Strategy for Defeating Book Burning (Meta Reflection
#44), I mostly got emails about the spelling of Koran (Quran) but also three
that questioned my comment about holy books and flags and the like being
"just symbols."  Only one disagreed; the other two asked how could that be
and what did I mean.  Two others asked about beliefs and especially
beliefs-about-beliefs.  So here goes.

 

We are all believers.  I am.  You are.  We all have to believe in things.
You have beliefs about yourself, about others, about school, about money,
about work, about emotions, about where you came from, about the source of
the universe, about what happens after you die, about intelligence, and a
thousand other beliefs.  You cannot be human and not a believer.  The only
question is: What do you believe in?  And you can't escape this even by not
believing in things because your not-belief is a belief!  To believe "there
is no God" is a belief.  That's what you believe!

 

So, first, we all have to believe.  And believing simply refers to the fact
that you have taken some of your thoughts and confirmed them.  You made a
meta-move to a higher level to establish a frame about your thought, "This
is real, true, and the way it is."  It is this confirmation that transforms
a mere thought into a gestalted meta-state that we call a "belief."

 

What is a belief made out of?  Thoughts, ideas, and understandings and a
level of confirmation.  And it is the level of confirmation that
distinguishes a belief from just a mere "thought."  Now you believe in
something and that makes it operate as a "command to the nervous system"
which in turn, sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy so that you become
organized around your beliefs.  Now you will see and hear and experience the
world through the color of your beliefs.  If you have ever tried to "argue"
someone out of his or her beliefs, then you know that doing that only makes
their beliefs stronger! 

 

As a meta-state structure, beliefs are strong, resilient, and
self-organizing.  So what happens when a person creates a
belief-in-a-belief?  Well, that's an entirely different story from a belief.
When you believe in your belief, you end the discovering, you stop the
exploration, you close shop, you stop your openness to new information, and
you become a fundamentalist!  A fanatic.  Now you act as if you "know"
something.  Now you stop recognizing it as a belief and you treat it as
unquestionable fact.

Now the belief that any book (religious or otherwise) is not just a book but
more, that it is the "reality," confuses map and territory.  It confuses
what the book speaks about and refers to - that is, to the territory beyond
the book, to the reality which is not words or sentences or ink or paper.
As this belief confuses and over-identifies a person's map about something
and the territory, it violates a basic epistemological understanding- "The
map is not the territory."  ("The menu is not the meal.")

 

Interesting enough there's a passage in the Bible that speaks to this,
distinguishing "the book" from the reality.  The context was a debate with
the religious leaders, the Pharisees and so to them Jesus said, "You search
the scriptures because you think that in them is eternal life, but they are
they which testify of me."  (John 5:39).  Now whether you agree or disagree
with the content of that statement, he at least distinguished from the means
that delivered the message, the book, the scriptures, and what the writings
referred to- that which they pointed to outside of the text itself.  Maybe
there's something similar in the Koran, I don't know because I'm unfamiliar
with that text.  It would be nice if those scriptures also distinguished
between the map / territory.

[Another verse in Romans says that the "letter of the law kills, but the
spirit (the intention) gives life."]

 

Now you know why one of the chief problems in our world (if not the chief
problem) is fundamentalism: a belief-in-a-belief and how this creates
fanatics!  They close their mind, they look for no new evidence, they can't
be talked to, they are on a mission to convert everyone to their way of
thinking.  This is true of every form of fundamentalists, even atheistic
fundamentalists, or the fundamentalists of scientism.  The belief has become
an -ism and that's what makes it dangerous.  Now they believe they have a
mandate to do anything to force others into their way of thinking,
believing, and acting.  And that's what gives them the green light to become
dictators!

[That might explain why Dr. Bob Bodenhamer writes fundamentalists as
"funDAMentalists!"  I like that.  My thought is: If only they would have
more fun there'd be less damnation going on!]

 

"But this book is more than just a book!"  That's what a fanatical "true
believer" (Eric Hoffer) or fundamentalist believes.  In terms of human
cognitive and emotional development, this reflects the "magical thinking"
stage of childhood wherein a child believes that things can be magically
powerful and so they go through the superstitious stage.

 

Yet in the end, a book is just a book- any book, Koran, the Bible, Book of
Mormon, Torah, etc.  It is not a magical item dropped out of the heavens.
And as a "map" about spiritual things, it offers various ideas about a great
many things.  And as a "map" is it not the territory.  So burn them or kiss
them, toss them away or read them daily- know what you have in your hands, a
symbol ... full of symbols ... and not the reality.  If you believe in the
reality behind it all, then that reality is so much more than paper and ink!
Or is that your god?

 

Provocatively Yours

 

 

 

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2010 - #44

September 11, 2010

                        

 

A STRATEGY FOR DEFEATING

BOOK BURNING 

 

 

Unless you have been lost in the wilderness for the last week, you have
heard about Terry Jones the pastor of the very small church in Florida who
somewhere got the idea that burning the Koran would be a good idea and
instead of letting that fleeting thought pass, he decided to act on it.  Now
normally this would not have been a problem because it would have been
contained in his little community.  No one would have heard of it.  No one
would have made much of it.

 

With the hundreds of thousands of Christian pastors all over the planet
doing things every single week, almost none of it is ever considered
newsworthy.   And they actually do lots of good things -from helping the
poor, visiting the sick, providing inspiration for people who and down and
discouraged and so on.  But none of that hits the news.  None of that is
considered newsworthy (!) (which is a real shame that the Media around the
world is so negatively and catastrophically oriented).

 

But just let some not-so-bright pastor talk about burning a book, and
presto, News-Worthiness! of such a high degree that every radio station and
every television station and every cable outlet, and every blog and internet
website carries it.  And why have we heard so much about Terry Jones?  Well,
it's obvious, the News Media think they can make money that way, fan a
controversy, and get new readers or viewers.  And of course, they then take
no responsibility to being a part of it!

 

The other key contributing factor to all of this is an invisible one- the
invisible attitude and frame of mind called fundamentalism, both the
pastor's and those who are cursing him.  Fundamentalism is an attitude
driven by the belief that a symbol is not just a symbol, it is more, it is
"real."  This is the failure to distinction map and territory.  The mental
map of ideas, feelings, and beliefs about something is confused and
over-identified with what's real -the territory.

 

Personally, I think it is a stupid idea to burn books and that stupidity is
having a field day in all of this.  Yet Jones has no monopoly on stupidity.
The curses against hm, the protests, the threats to kill him, and the
over-identification of him with "America" - all of that is just as stupid.
Ultimately, the pastor is just burning a book.  In response they burn the
American flag or the Bible.  Yet all of these things are just symbols.  And
that's all.

 

Even though I wish he wouldn't burn books, Jones certainly has the right to
burn any book or flag or anything else if it is his.  In a democracy that's
called freedom.  And in a democracy people have the right and responsibility
to live by their own values and beliefs.  That's why we don't allow
ourselves or others to become dictators of another's conscience.  Instead we
treat people as adults who are responsible for their own actions.

 

Here's the craziness in the current conflict: Every Moslem who gets stirred
up, provoked, and reactive to Jones is actually letting Jones control them!
By dis-empowering themselves over the symbolism, they are empowering him to
push their buttons.  Confusing map and territory, and getting serious about
this, they are endowing Jones with a whole lot of power, authority, and
influence.  And that's the problem from that side: they are taking him
serious.  They are giving to this unknown person his 15 minutes of fame and
they are making him more important than I think he deserves!

 

My recommendation: ignore him.  Don't let him push your buttons.  Set higher
frames in your mind to his provocative actions.  As long as you respond at
his level - pushing back and trying to make him stop or calling him names or
insulting him, you are coming down to his level and letting him win!  When
you unplug your buttons and view it as a silly choice on his part, you make
him and his actions less import ant, and redundant.

 

The Koran, the Bible, the Torah and every other religious book is just that-
a book, a symbol.  It is just writing about spiritual issues- and so is a
map, not the territory, not reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, International Society of Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

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