Here are the materials to help orient you as we meet together on Sunday 3 November 2013.
We are delighted that you are able to come!
Warm greetings,
Kelly and Michele
1. Self-Care and Lifestyle Balance Inventory (25 items, two pages--free online access). Take this Inventory developed by th Headington Institute and feel free to share some of it when we meet.YOu wil lneed to print it out in order to take it (it is a pdf).
http://www.headington-institute.org/Portals/32/Resources/Test_Self_care_inventory.pdf
2. Courage: Heroes and Honesty (excerpts, one page--see below). Read thi material in advance and take some notes--we will be interacting about it when we meet.
Courage: Heroes and Honesty
“In prior generations, words like bravery, fortitude, gallantry, and valor stirred our souls....But we spend little time thinking about the deep meanings these words once carried, and focus less on trying to encourage ourselves to consider how we might engage in bravery in the social sphere, where most of us will have an opportunity to be heroic at one time or another. As our society dumbs down heroism, we fail to foster heroic imagination.
There are several concrete steps we can take to foster the heroic imagination. We can start by remaining mindful, carefully and critically evaluating each situation we encounter so that we don’t gloss over an emergency requiring our action. We should try to develop our “discontinuity detector”—an awareness of things that don’t fit, are out of place, or don’t make sense in a setting. This means asking questions to get the information we need to take responsible action.
Second, it is important not to fear interpersonal conflict, and to develop the personal hardiness necessary to stand firm for principles we cherish. In fact, we shouldn’t think of difficult interactions as conflicts but rather as attempts to challenge other people to support their own principles and ideology.
...Fourth, we have to resist the urge to rationalize inaction and to develop justifications that recast evil deeds as acceptable means to supposedly righteous ends.
Finally, we must try to transcend anticipating negative consequence associated with some forms of heroism, such as being socially ostracized. If our course is just we must trust that others will eventually recognize the value of our heroic actions. Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo, “The Banality of Heroism”, Greater Good, http://www.lucifereffect.com/articles/heroism.pdf
*****
So what are the seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil? Mindlessly taking the first small step. Dehumanization of others. De-individuation of self. Diffusion of personal responsibility. Blind obedience to authority. Uncritical conformity to group norms. Passive tolerance to evil through inaction or indifference.” Philip Zimbardo, The Psychology of Evil, TedTalk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg
*****
“When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that is dumb, immoral, and wrong.
"Most people, when directly confronted by evidence that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously. Even irrefutable evidence is rarely enough to pierce the mental armor of self-justification…." "That is why self-justification is more powerful and more dangerous than the explicit lie. It allows people to convince themselves that what they did was the best thing they could have done. In fact, come to think of it, it was the right thing. “There was nothing else I could have done.” “Actually, it was a brilliant solution to the problem.” “It was doing the best for the nation.”…."
"Now between the conscious lie to fool others and unconscious self-justification to fool ourselves lies a fascinating gray area, patrolled by that unreliable, self-serving historian—memory. Memories are often pruned and shaped by an ego-enhancing bias that blurs the edges of past events, softens culpability, and distorts what really happened…Over time, as the self-serving distortions of memory kick in and we forget or distort past events, we may come to believe our own lies, little by little….Before long, we have persuaded ourselves, believing privately what we originally said publically…."
"Yet mindless self-justification, like quicksand, can draw us deeper into disaster. It blocks our ability to even see our errors, let alone correct them. It distorts reality, keeping us from getting all the information we need and assessing issues clearly. It prolongs and widens rifts between lovers, friends, and nations. It keeps us from letting go of unhealthy habits. It permits the guilty to avoid taking responsibility for their deeds. And it keeps many professionals from changing outdated attitudes and procedures that can be harmful to the public." Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, Tavris and Aronson, 2007