helplessness

Helplessness

by Bob on January 29, 2008

If we choose to ignore the proverbial "chicken and egg problem" which is somewhat philosophically threatening, we see that Mankind starts as a baby just out of the womb: largely if not totally helpless without his mother and adults around him.

At some time in life anyone might return to a primitive state of helplessness. And it's not fun necessarily but rather numbing. Or to some it's an experience of odd sorts.

But it's not quite fun. It's a bit different than a question of being in control, but rather one of whether we can pick ourselves up out of a spiralling downward rabbit hole. For, sometimes simply losing control can be a transcendent experience in life as in Yoga or riding a roller coaster.

Helplessness has a connotation of giving up. Perhaps not forever but for a while, or even a long while, or in some cases for an eternity.

Singers sing about it, especially in the context of loving someone or even the helplessness of hopeless love. Or oppression and its bearing down on the oppressed to the point of helplessness.

Joni Mitchell sang a wonderful song about it in her melodic song "Help Me". It partially says "Help me/I think I'm falling/In love again/When I get that crazy feeling/I know I'm in trouble again". Or even the next verse: "Help me/I think I'm falling/In love too fast/It's got me hoping for the future/And worrying about the past". Joni knew the risk of love is a certain kind of helplessness.

That's just the way it is.

If we are in an automobile skidding, and spinning out on the icy road, we know, despite how we turn the steering wheel, we are helpless and in a state of suspended animation and time dilution. For in such a spinout, time seems to be very long although it really lasts only seconds by the wall clock, and we are in a state where we oddly see our whole lives, past and present, flashing in our mind's eye.

Helplessness means we just can't do anything about it. It's futile to try.

Now Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania came up with a very interesting twist to helplessness: learned helplessness. The idea that by conditioning, we can learn to be helpless or believe ourselves or situation to be, although in an objective sense it's not. In the lab, Seligman found that by eletrical conditioning, the subject eventually gave up and expected the eletrical shock, giving up any hope there would not be another one. For the human, Seligman extrapolated from this, it was a case of not believing that one is actually empowered to get out of the helpless situation, which is a kind of formed depression. It was, according to the theory, a perceptual distortion and fallacy of the person.

Dr. Seligman went on to write books on happiness as opposed to helplessness as a counter-notion. And invented or coined what he called "Positive Psychology": the ways a person can see how and know how to thrive in a situation. Seligman wanted to pin down the virtues and attributes which helped someone to thrive in a situation: Character Strengths and Virtues.

Still, even today, learned helplessness is all around us and amongst us. And even real helplessness, too.

Technology has again contributed to it. Common sense doesn't prevail in many situations, such as when a check out clerk in a supermarket points to a computer screen which scanned a can of peas and insists it costs more than was on the sticker on the can. It's what the computerised register says, not what was on the can. So the consumer can't find anyone to convince, even the manager points to the computer screen for the same information. So the consumer learns the perils and hopelessness of trying to argue.

We then move into another counter-notion to helplessness and it is Neo-Ludditism. These people believe, just as the original Luddites did in opposing mechanised looms in England, in smashing down modern technology in favour of a more humanistic approach.

But it may all be lost in the enchantment, if not the utter unstoppable seduction of modern technology. And with that goes a new colour of learned helplessness.

The glass just might be half-empty. Just maybe. Or cracked and leaking.