[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #26 COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS AMONG PROTESTORS

Sun May 31 13:33:26 EDT 2020

From: L. Michael Hall 

2020 Neurons #26

May 31, 2020

Thinking for a Living series #12

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

AMONG PROTESTORS

For anyone who wants to protest something, if you want to truly win minds
and hearts and bring change to a system, a community, or an organization-
you're going to have to use your best thinking and your best intelligence.
If you are protesting out of mindless anger, if you are just reacting, your
protest will be contaminated by the cognitive distortions.  These are the
childish thinking patterns that we all tend to regress to under stress.
Today you can see them in the raw in the protests and riots occurring in
many American cities.  Here's another place where thinking for a living is
so critical.

Over-Generalization and All-or-Nothing Thinking.  This cognitive distortion
takes one or a few instances of an action and generalizes it to everybody in
a category.  Factually, however, when one person misbehaves, that does not
mean all related persons do the same.  One policeman who doesn't listen to
bystanders, doesn't follow protocol, and whose actions lead to a death
doesn't mean all police do the same.  Among any and every profession there
are going to be "bad apples."  99.9 percent of police never do what Darrell
Reider did in Minnesota last week.  Protesting against "Police violence" is
an over-generalized hallucination.

Labeling.  This cognitive distortions fails to recognize the difference
between a name or a term and reality.  Darrell Reider may be convicted in a
court of law of "murder," but calling him a "murderer" before that
conviction is name-calling.  The video certainly indicates that his "knee to
the neck" actions were responsible for George Floyd's death.  We will know
more when the autopsy comes back.  Protest signs, "Blue Lives Murder,"
combines over-generalization with labeling to aggravate the situation and
induces unreasonable hatred and anger.

Emotionalizing.  Protest signs, "No Justice, No peace" emotionalizes the
situation using two vague nominalizations.  What does "justice" mean?  It
doesn't mean anti-vigilant revenge.  "Justice" is a matter of the legal
system-a process now underway.  Reider has been arrested and charged with
manslaughter.  Officials say the others will be charged.  "No Justice, No
peace" is a threat to riot if one doesn't get his way, that's not how
civilized people operate.

Personalizing and Identification.  Many speakers on TV have said things
like, "I could have been George Floyd."  Oh really?  You try to buy things
with counterfeit twenty dollar bills?  You have done time in prison?  The
identification based only on skin color and not on character, profession,
lifestyle, etc. is a cognitive distortion.

Blaming.   Over-generalizing about "black" people and "white" people and
using vague phrases about "racism" (another vague nominalization, especially
when there is only one human race) leads to childish and non-responsible
blaming.  Adults assume responsibility for their lives, their finances,
their education, their skills, etc.   It's easy to blame, it's much tougher
to take responsibility.  A person is a victim to the extent that one thinks
and acts like a victim.  If you believe circumstances make you and you are
powerless to help yourself, then "so be it unto you."  Your belief is the
problem.  You are just giving your power away and endowing others (or "the
system") with the power to victimize you.  Nelson Mandilla did not do that.
Martin Luther King Jr. did not do that.  Viktor Frankl did not do that.  

Blaming someone else for acting badly often distracts us from the bad
behaviors of the blamers.  Blaming one (or four) police for what happened to
Floyd while throwing bricks, setting fires, fighting, looting, etc. makes
the blaming just an excuse to act badly. 

Awfulizing.  "Isn't it awful the plight of minorities!"  Here again we have
all-or-nothing thinking and over-generalization.  All minorities?  Many
minorities, especially first-generation emigrants to the US, typically so
thankful to be in a country of opportunities, go out and make things happen
so that they enter the middle class by the second generation.

Entitlement and "the musts."  This is the cognitive distortion that starts
from the premise that "the world owes me," "the government owes me," etc.
Little children think this way and think that "everything always must to be
fair."  And when it's not fair, they throw a tantrum.  When people grow up
and put away childish things, they get over this distortion and put in the
effort to earn and achieve the things that they want. 

These cognitive distortions prevent people from thinking clearly and, in the
end, make things worse for everyone.  A great way to handle the current
torrent of mis-information is to listen for, and learn to identify,
cognitive distortions.  Once you can do that- you are in a position to clean
out the distortion and think more clearly. 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

 <http://www.neurosemantics.com> www.neurosemantics.com

To un-subscribe--- write to  <mailto:meta at acsol.net> meta at acsol.net 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20200531/249aac3f/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3892 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20200531/249aac3f/attachment.jpg>