Good old cognitive dissonance.
We just can’t bear it. But nor will we face up to it. Having a bad conscience about lying or cheating or stealing won’t necessarily stop us from doing it. Instead, we’ll go to extraordinary lengths to ‘make it OK’. We’ll square off that conscience somehow, no matter how much self-deception it [...]
Archive for March, 2009
Psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell (my father) coined the term ‘one track thinking’ to describe the typical thinking style of people who are ‘context blind’, such as individuals with autistic traits. Autism is not a condition like epilepsy, where you either have it or you don’t. It’s more of a continuum, and we are [...]
How often do you have a really good laugh? I mean, really weep with laughter?
Yesterday I spoke to a man with chronic pain who claimed that by far the best ‘pain medication’ was to recall times when he’d been convulsed with laughter. He found this often worked better than ‘pain pills’. I didn’t roll [...]
There’s a old Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times!’ Why a curse? Because ‘un-interesting times’ would mean stability, predictability, security, safety – things which are in mighty short supply right now.
The present times are really rather excessively ‘interesting’.
I don’t know about you, but I am starting to hear about job losses through the [...]
