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Welcome to stren #95, Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. Understanding what motivates us is practical knowledge to help make our life joyous and meaningful. This stren explains the special opportunity to assume responsibility for our life’s experience that other species lack. With this knowledge, we position ourselves to make our wishes and prayers a reality. We become our own genie.
Scientists have shown that behaviors can be predicted and controlled by managing the rewards and punishments available in the subject’s environment. The more accurate our conscious awareness of the relationship of cause and effect, the greater our power to effect control. I am in awe when I see a chicken trained to play ping pong, basketball, or golf by manipulating the conditions that lead to reward or disappointment. I am appalled that fellow humans can be readily influenced to violate nature’s most powerful instinct by becoming a kamikaze pilot or a suicide bomber. Laboratory observations of animals and humans help us understand the way fate and circumstance influence behavior. Our growing knowledge of cause and effect empowers us to influence the behavior of others as well as our self – and resist the self-defeating behaviors that get us into trouble. Most everyone prefers to be master of their own behavior rather than controlled by other masters.
In animals and humans alike, behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and behavior that is punished is avoided. When we make mistakes we experience unpleasant consequences. When mistakes are not fatal, we learn to avoid that mistake in the future, and that leads to a repertoire of effective behaviors. With repetition the adaptive behaviors become hardwired, and are passed forward in the genes of survivors and by education in the tribe’s established culture. A benefit of habit is that action pathways become increasingly automatic and less mental preparation is required; instant response to emergency situations is a basic requirement for survival. A disadvantage of preprogrammed action pathways is that they are inflexible and lack the common sense problem solving required to create new solutions to new challenges.
The power of knowledge may be directed for both constructive and destructive outcomes. The directors of our behavior include our animal brain, our nurturer’s rules, and our intelligent cerebral cortex. Additional names for these three controllers are instinct (nature’s genetic action paths), culture (the traditions of our nurturers), and common sense wisdom (the newer way of thinking that leads to self-mastery). Instinct initially rules alone until joined by culture and thereafter common sense wisdom. Instinct has been designed for survival in primitive and hostile environments. Culture is a combination of instinct’s predetermined behaviors and the common sense action pathways based on knowledge of cause and effect. Common sense wisdom is the outcome of intelligence applied to knowledge. A significant distinguishing factor is that while instinct and culture address yesterday’s problems using yesterday’s knowledge, common sense applies new technology to create wiser solutions to current problems. Instinct emphasizes survival through confrontation to attain dominance for one side. Common sense supports cooperation and collaboration to benefit all tribes. The culture of any tribe is some combination of instinct and common sense; the greater the tribe’s skill in civilization, the greater the common sense. The persistence of destructive aggression tells us common sense is still uncommon.
Historically, collectively, and individually, it is our nature to progress from mental slavery to stupidity before we act with common sense wisdom. We are all born into mental
slavery – to serve the whims of our early masters. Stupidity is continued mindless obedience to fate and circumstance when we are equipped with wisdom. Wisdom is applying knowledge of cause and effect to elevate ourselves above the animals by popularizing the civil skills that make us humane. During our formative years our animal brain rules our intelligent but immature cerebral cortex. We are headed for catastrophe because we deceive ourselves into believing that we are acting with common sense wisdom, when our intelligent cerebral cortex remains more servant to instinct and our culture than their master.
Emancipating our will from the demands of our early masters, instinct and culture,
requires an understanding of the positive and negative rewards that sustain them. What is experienced as satisfying or disappointing is different for instinct, culture, and common sense. As we acquire maturity and common sense wisdom, the rewards that “work” change. Words provide the power of imagination. We become sensitive to past experience and future consequences of action. Local allegiances and craving for immediate satisfaction give way to awareness of global priorities and investing energy now for greater future benefits. The marvelous benefits attainable by our use of common sense are ours to create IF we can get our will unstuck from instinct and tradition.
We must make ourselves consciously aware of our self-deception before we can consistently engage in wise action and unite to further our collective well-being. Our knowledge of weapons of ultimate destruction is spreading so rapidly that the doomsday clock is ticking dangerously close to midnight. This ominous reality requires urgent collective action, beginning with recognizing our own stupidity. Knowledge of our animal brain brings us the realization of what we can and must do. The wonderful news is that we are so close to the tipping point that we can effect a dramatic change with limited effort.
The animal portion of our brain is the end product of a software program finely tuned over hundreds of millions of years for survival at all costs. Reaching back far beyond the nine months preceding birth, our genes express the trial and error learning that has enabled us to persist as a species in the savage environment of our distant ancestors. The most important reward was survival. “Might is right.” Kill or be killed. We are hardwired to protect ourselves, our family, and our tribe. The rules of civility in effect for one’s own tribe don’t apply to “sub-humans,” a label which includes not only animals but also members of other tribes. Making sub-humans servant to our tribe is among the highest rewards.
Our animal brain lacks the wisdom to manage the power of intelligence. Power without common sense will insatiably pursue the survival of the fittest perspective. Security to the animal brain is the use of power to accumulate as much material wealth as possible and dominate others. Most people remain passively dependent on the hardwired action pathways of instinct and culture. We obey the “rules” we inherit from our genes and the traditions we acquire from our nurturers. We accept the programming of nature and our nurturers as our own. We still believe wars “work” to reward us when common sense shows us clearly that the next war will result in mutual destruction. The action pathways of our animal brain will persist until we choose to actively free our will from fate and circumstance and assume responsibility for our well-being. “Normality” to the animal brain includes what most of humanity now calls “murder,” “rape,” and “terrorism.” Only consciously aware people actively intervene to assume personal responsibility for our collective well-being. They apply common sense wisdom based on today’s knowledge to create better solutions to current issues.
The prize of successful destructive aggression is dominating any perceived competitor. In my visit to the Galapagos Islands I observed a common practice among the Blue-footed Booby species – only one sibling survives because the strongest pushes the weaker from the nest. In contemporary society, we call this “murder.” We have only recently passed laws to make minorities and women “equal” to white males, but still maintain significant obstacles to equality in gender and race. In civilized society we consider fighting and rape immoral and do our best to curtail it with our most severe punishments. Fighting for mating rights is a common practice among animals – “spoils to the victor” is expected and normal. We still reward with homage and adulation those with the greatest material wealth, physical “beauty,” and cunning. The most powerful get to be “dictator” and others submit their common sense wisdom to the authority of power, irrespective of the degree of irrationality. Would you agree that most of our world’s population engages in stupid actions when we are well enough equipped with common sense to act wisely? The problem persists because we widely and uncritically accept the biased perception that the world is divided into two categories and that our side is “all good, just, and right” and others are “evil, unreasonable, wrong” and deserving of harm. Good and evil addiction is epidemic in our society; this way of thinking justifies bigotry, prejudice, harmful confrontation, and war.
Our animal brain contains the pleasure centers that are intermingled with centers for aggression; they compel us to procreate and compete to preserve the species. In a civilized society, pleasure-seeking requires constraints – this has become a function of the cerebral cortex. We each experience the inner confrontation where our older emotional brain says “yes” to immediate satisfaction and our intelligent cerebral cortex, equipped to apply common sense and anticipate longer term consequences of action, says “no.” This is why alcohol, which selectively dulls the cerebral cortex, releases sexual and aggressive behavior such as the “bar fight.”
Nature distinguishes male from female by the design of our bodies and the allocation of chemical messengers such as androgenic and estrogenic hormones. The concentration of pleasure receptors in the glands penis (tip) preconditions the male for easy orgasm and a proclivity to service many females. The erect penis displays unmistakable intention compared to the diminutive clitoris. The female dedication to nurture her offspring to maturity and the satisfaction from breast feeding is unmatched by men save in unusual circumstances. Males, compelled to seek orgasm, rarely declare intercourse to be lacking pleasure, while many women say that they have sex more “for love” and “to be loved” than to satisfy a craving for orgasm. How would behavior change if babies were born during intercourse and orgasm occurred nine months later? How would the education of our children be different without extraordinary maternal enthusiasm? These features lead me to conclude that women are likely to be the dominant force in avoiding human catastrophe and creating world peace.
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The preprogrammed action pathways of our animal brain are our first master. Instinct cannot maintain exclusivity because after our birth, nurturers are ready and willing to take over the dominate role of determining behavior. For the first years of our lives, we are “takers,” helpless and dependent on others for our survival. We don’t ask – we are compelled by our prolonged immaturity to accept whatever fate and circumstance make of us. The labels that trigger our thoughts are designed by nature and our nurturers to emphasize their
perspectives. We first rent them and in time we will passively own them until we invest in our own independence. Most people go through life remaining a “love junkie,” craving approval for their self-worth and addicted to material wealth.
Physical pleasure and pain powerfully influence behavior until our cerebral cortex is taught a second signaling system – the power of symbols to “turn on” our primary signaling system. Words are a source of mental energy to influence how we think, feel, and act. By linking emotion to symbols, our mental activity becomes sufficiently powerful to selectively restrain the action pathways of our animal brain. The culture of our nurturers, as they define it, gradually assumes a dominant role in the way we think, feel, and act. The sources of reward and punishment are beyond our control; our behavior is determined by fate and circumstance, nature and nurture – “the luck of the draw.”
Our animal brain is characterized by its uninhibited desires, while our nurturer’s traditions are generally known for their advocacy of restraint. “No” is the most common word of nurturers, and punishment is more common than positive rewards. Nurturers even use language to condition our thoughts, for example, teaching the uniquely human self-punishment we call “guilt.” We learn to “guilt” and punish ourselves merely for thinking about “evil” or forbidden acts. Guilt may stick with us throughout a lifetime! The power of interpretation extends to yelling (unpleasant sounds), gestures, posture, “the look,” and voice tones. With the addition of language, our nurturers add symbolic rewards to the physical rewards – greed, insatiable pursuit of physical wealth, beauty, titles, “adult toys,” power over others, and guarantee of a reward in the hereafter. Punishment may include withholding love, endorsement, attention, food, and whatever additional symbolic rewards have been established in our culture.
Symbols also introduce pleasures that are prominent in our species, for example – values, peace, philanthropy, reading, and solving puzzles. When my dad was growing up in Russia, they had no toys. A popular game was pitching broken shards of pottery or glass against the wall to win the valued “prize” – the loser’s shard. As an expert pitcher, he felt very wealthy from his accumulation of shards. What were the common forms of reward and punishment in your formative years? Which were most important? Which do you most pursue now?
Self-mastery is
becoming our own person. Through our formative first decades, our cerebral cortex attains maturity and knowledge of cause and effect – the universal order of nature’s creative force. The secret of self-mastery is the intelligent use of symbols to become self-programmers of reward and punishment. We store knowledge and create symbols, usually words, by which we call forth and manipulate knowledge in our imagination to reveal common sense wisdom. Through this process we free our will from fate and circumstance to direct our own life experience. Our freed will can redirect the energy of instinct and our culture to design original action pathways to reach our own preferred outcomes. Self-mastery enables us to pursue our own good in our own way.
We remain “mental slaves” to our early dictators, instinct and culture, until our specialized freedom organ is sufficiently mature and our language is equipped to exceed the rewards and counteract the punishments established by our first masters. Children can be motivated, like the game-playing chicken, by food or treats; and our biological motivation to seek pleasure and avoid discomfort is powerful but our special ability to attach meaning (emotion) to symbols has even greater power. Symbols create beliefs that make it possible to override nature’s most powerful instinct – survival. To many species, killing, robbing, and forced sex means “reward, reward, reward”, whereas the assigning of symbols such as “murder, rape, and theft” can call forth a vision of morality characteristic of our species.
As we expand our collection of labels that accurately reflect cause and effect, we grow our power to influence our self and all that is about us. Words that switch on pleasure and turn off pain empower us to modify established behavior and initiate new action patterns. Through education in self-endorsement we attain self-mastery and apply knowledge to make ourselves powerful creators. Common sense wisdom using current knowledge to solve current problems has far more survival value than hardwired solutions to yesterday’s challenges based on yesterday’s knowledge.
Mental skill in self-endorsement is essential if we are to free our will from dictators and become our own person. There are many techniques to endorse ourselves, which are easy to teach and readily learned. The early strens in the newer way of thinking curriculum consist of a collection of the most powerful self-endorsement skills, beginning with emotional self-endorsement and secondary endorsement.
Most people go through life lacking adequate self-endorsement skills and instead become their own worst enemy. We act stupidly because we are not consciously aware of our self-deception. We actually believe we are acting appropriately when common sense would show we are simply marching to the tune of fate and circumstance. We are unaware of our mental slavery to other masters and will continue with our faulty assumptions as long as we remain addicted to “others” approval. This may be O.K. if our environment is nurturing and benevolent; it’s not O.K. when our source of sustenance is self-serving; it is a catastrophe when we are dehumanized and considered dispensable.
Freed from the need to serve other masters for our minimum daily requirement of mental nourishment, we position ourselves to pursue the humane values that consistently support our well-being. Common sense enables us to recognize the value of cooperation and collaboration for mutual gain. Common sense is the basis of universal values such as “the golden rule,” love, forgiveness, peace, gratitude, compassion, kindness, and all behaviors that elevate us to humanity. We are not born with wisdom; we acquire it by applying common sense to knowledge. It took our ancestors many years before we found non-violent ways to face difficult issues. For example, humor and laughter not only detoxify fear and anxiety; they are among our favorite pleasures. Wisdom can be taught and readily learned. Understanding the principles of reward and punishment are instrumental in changing the way we think, feel, and act.
If you are like most people, you won’t take action to change a belief, no matter how false, as long as you label it as “true.” The secret of mental freedom and sustained well-being is knowledge of cause and effect. You have available to you all the word power you require to free your energy to become your own genie. I urge you to make your wishes and prayers your reality because I know you share my passion for world peace. World peace needs you! When you teach yourself a newer way of thinking and wake up to your mental slavery you will want to join Einstein’s army to make our planet a safer gentler home – this labor of love that will bring you your greatest rewards.
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Welcome to stren #93, the process of making decisions right. How much better could we make our lives if we removed the stress of making decisions? Today’s stren offers a way to do just that, along with additional important benefits. Think how many choices we are confronted with every day. Are you among the majority of persons who waste time and energy obsessing over making the right decision? Here is the simple solution:
Make your decision right instead of demanding that you make the right decision.
We have no difficulty deciding between a favorite food and garbage. Choices are easy when the benefits of one side clearly exceed the benefits of the alternative, but we hesitate when we have done our due diligence investigation and the benefits and risks of alternative choices are still equally balanced. This dilemma can lead to the common sense conclusion that there is no “right” and “wrong” alternative. We have the freedom to wisely deal with such uncertainty by focusing our energy to make our choice work. The more energy we can apply to the task, the greater the likelihood that we will make our choice successful. Instead, we are prone to procrastinate, glorify the benefits of the alternate choice, and waste our energy fantasizing that “the grass was greener on the other side.” We chastise ourselves and deflate our spirits, “Stupid me, I should have ….” The more energy we waste dwelling on the alternative and “what iffing” the less energy remains to make our choice successful. Even though working to make our choice right makes sense, we still tend to inappropriately obsess.
We act in accordance with the assumptions we hold to be true. When we believe we must choose “right” or “good” to avoid punishment, and that we must succeed to receive others’ approval and be worthy of love, we are motivated to avoid making decisions. We act on our self-deception until we become consciously aware that our false assumptions are the source of harmful behavior. Understanding the phenomena of universal cause and effect, i.e. knowledge, motivates us to replace faulty assumptions with newer ones that are supported more by personal knowledge than mindless authority. The more we make our self aware of our self-deception, the more likely we are to change the way we think and thereby wisely manage our feelings and actions. Consider these sources of self-deception to motivate you to upgrade your thinking with common sense wisdom.
Dealing with uncertainty: Our childhood is called the “magic years” because things just happen. We are provided with food and shelter and we are told what is “right” and what is “wrong.” We need not be concerned about making decisions because authorities, i.e. instinct and our nurturers have determined what is “right” and we only need to follow orders. We have been programmed that to do the right thing is rewarded by approval, love, and usually material benefits. If we do the wrong thing, we may be punished and even worse, considered unlovable. Time after time, we learn that our decisions get us into trouble when they differ from those in authority.
Our needs change as we mature. The clothes we wear as a child no longer “fit,” so we change our wardrobe as we grow. The need to upgrade is obvious with clothes, but less so with our early beliefs. We need to become aware of our self-deception before we can take action to selectively update our language to the new realities we face. Each revelation of the source of your self-deception will strengthen your skills in creating a joyous meaningful life.
Our world, once full of certainty, no longer provides the clear directions that a child’s mind can follow. Dealing with uncertainty is a specialized skill that must be acquired; otherwise the certain uncertainty in our lives becomes a major source of anxiety and inappropriate behavior. Conscious awareness of uncertainty is normal, and is the trigger to replacing our early faulty assumptions. We become effective managers of our life experience when we realize that difficult decisions are not “right” or “wrong.” They simply “are” and then we proceed to succeed by applying our energy to do our reasonable best with whatever choice we have made. We accept that we have limits on time, energy, and knowledge and have limited control of circumstances. We skillfully make our choices work. Using a “reasonable best” input measure (see strens 23-24) of our self-worth instead of an outcome measure enables us to maintain 100% per cent mastery of our well-being.
Two-category “dichotomous” thinking: The most common source of self-deception is rooted in the two-category way of thinking we all first learn. We all learn to divide the world into either/or categories because that is what an immature, unschooled mind can understand. Two-category thinking distorts the world into opposing sides that must be resolved by confrontation to establish superiority. We perceive choices only as good or bad, right or wrong. Naturally, we will feel compelled to seek the “good” and confront or avoid the “bad.” Education in a newer way of common sense thinking (ANWOT) that accurately perceives the positives and negatives of each alternative requires that we learn a series of mental skills over time. Then we rely on wisdom to make our choice and then make it right instead of demanding a sign of “rightness” before we can proceed.
“Red alert” biology: The hard-wiring of our instinct prior to our birth has been programmed over millions of years by trial-and-error to rapidly create a “red alert” response to any perceived danger. Our ancestor’s life in their savage environment was always subject to peril without warning. The emergency fight or flight response encoded in our genes was immensely successful in preserving our species. In today’s relatively civilized world, however, physical flight no longer works given today’s technology. Running and hiding is replaced by symbolically avoiding danger – we procrastinate, lie, deny, use drugs and substitute mental running. Today’s mental stress results in a sustained “pink alert” stage of emergency response leading to chronic tension and the many consequences of exaggerated muscle contraction and changes in our physiology. Teaching ourselves to maintain our “calm” is among the most beneficial skills we can add to our survival behaviors.
The Doomsday sentence – “My (our) way, the only way.”: This simple sentence that characterizes our early belief system is related to our early dichotomous way of thinking and our “red alert” biology. The animal portion of our brain guides our thinking until our cerebral cortex can become physically and mentally mature. It has the narrow-minded perspective that our family and tribe must survive at all costs. Our side counts; others are there to serve our wants. The power of knowledge has suddenly made this simple sentence, formerly required to survive, the source of our most imminent danger – our immense knowledge has led to weapons that cause unprecedented catastrophe, perhaps even annihilation, owned by multiple tribes who all believe their way is the only way.
Perfectionism: Our formative years are characterized by an inability to feed, protect, and think for ourselves. We learn early on that it is necessary to make the “right” decision – our very survival depends on mindlessly following the prescriptions of authority. Perfectionists learn this too well. They are likely the most miserable people in the world, because they consistently demand more of themselves than is reasonable. There can be no “right” decision or acceptable level of performance because the perfectionist’s imagination can always picture something better. No matter how excellent the outcome of a decision, or how tiny the shortcoming, the perfectionist focuses on the shortcoming, the hole in the donut, the empty part of the glass. We can understand why depression, self-flagellation, and even suicide are predictable if deciding and not deciding are equally unacceptable. The treatment of perfectionism is corruption while learning to laugh at mistakes! From my professional experience, I believe that it’s possible in most cases to soften the rigid standards of the perfectionist without overshooting the mark and leading to an abyss of degradation.
Self-endorsement and the Reasonable Best measure of self-worth: If you want to sharpen your skills in decision making and dealing with uncertainty, review the strens on self-endorsement. The Reasonable Best strens (#23-24) are especially relevant.
Until we teach ourselves to deal with uncertainty, we will sustain childhood beliefs based on authority, such as the Doomsday sentence that are no longer adaptive to us as mature adults. Established beliefs, no matter how unsupported by common sense wisdom, require skill in dealing with uncertainty before we can challenge and change them.
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Mission Statement
The Educational Community (EC) notes the prediction by experts that weapons of mass destruction will likely be used before the end of 2013 and teaches Einstein’s recommendation on how to prevent such human catastrophe – a newer type of thinking is essential.[1] We offer forever free to anyone, anywhere, anytime the collected wisdoms that create a joyous, purposeful life (Mental Wealth) and prepares individuals to become a powerful force for world peace. The EC will create a coordinated grass roots movement that enlists peace advocates and prepares them to work together to popularize the Mental Wealth skills that promote world peace. Fostering the newer way of thinking is essential if humankind is to survive the nuclear age and move toward higher levels.
Company and Staff
The EC is a privately funded nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation based in East Hartford, CT. Its educational content is guaranteed forever free to anyone, anywhere, anytime through its web site, www.anwot.org.
- Donald Pet, M.D. is a retired Johns Hopkins trained psychiatrist who was fortunate to have as a mentor the late Jerome Frank, M.D., Ph.D., a world expert on the psychological issues of war and peace. From his life’s experience Dr. Pet has created an easy to teach and learn curriculum of the proven skills that “work” to make life more wonderful. “I am committed to direct the EC program to its (or my) conclusion. My motive is to benefit my loved ones and give back what I have received.”
- Herbert Gerjuoy is a retired professor of experimental psychology and computer science, and a futurist; he has lectured and published about the future of technology, society, and social values.
- Tom Robben is a high level consultant to corporations, matching their needs to current technology. He is directing our database.
- Rashaine Johnson is a computer specialist who adapts our content for use on the Internet.
- Shanti Fader provides the EC professional editing services.
- Darlene Davis is a human resources professional assisting in EC promotional activities.
- Janet Woods is a virtual assistant handling special assignments.
- Suman and Swapna Medisetti are helping us build a database in India.
Vision
We look forward to an elevated humankind whose self-taught, proven common sense thinking and living skills will perpetuate love, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, mercy, and those additional common sense wisdoms that make us humane. Thus we foster the creation of a peace movement through a newer way of thinking that, beginning with self-mastery, will spread out to others, respecting their varied cultures and heritages.
The Program
- The Educational Community offers 100 wisdom tips on the proven skills (strens) that make common sense common, i.e. our interpretation of Einstein’s newer way of thinking. They will be delivered free for the asking to one’s computer on a once-every-two-day schedule. The strens will be sufficiently engaging that individuals will want to encourage others to visit the web site. The wisdom tips are a unique approach causing our program to go viral. They may be accessed directly through the Internet or downloaded in three modalities – video, audio, and script.
- Additional always free content and opportunity will be available through www.anwot.org including two books – The Short Course to Mental Wealth and A Newer Way of Thinking, our Peace Quiz, Mini-course, interactive blog, telephone seminars, and more.
- The Educational Community will provide a live telephone seminar twice a month. The line will handle 200 calls and the podcast 2000 listeners. Recordings will be available.
- The educational World Peace Quiz will be widely promoted to inspire individuals to come to our web site. Short “magnet” videos will be issued through an extensive email database we are developing, and submitted to other broadcast media such as radio, TV, and Traffic Geyser.
- Our Mini-course, Become a Mental Wealth Millionaire and a Powerful Force for World Peace, is recommended to follow the Peace Quiz. It explains the problem we face and introduces the mental skills that create Mental Wealth millionaires and World Peace leaders.
- Given the topics, Mental Wealth and World Peace, the free, no-obligation offer of rich educational content, and the timeliness of stress management, we expect the Educational Community program will circle the world by the domino effect, reaching individuals otherwise too distant in geography and presuppositions to effectively engage in common sense problem-solving.
- The EC encourages Peace Leaders to partner with us, adding their creative efforts to pass forward our free self-educational content to as many individuals as possible.
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[1] The New York Times; May 25, 1946.
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