PR is not necessarily true.

It is not being negative.  It is seeing what is real rather than what the PR techniques of the government want us to see.  When there is a conflict between what the government claims, and what our personal observation tells us, we simply tell them we are not easily swayed with their rhetorics.  

This politically colored network, and the government PR team seem to have been insulting the intelligence of the many Filipinos by giving us false information just to make us believe that everything is under control.  Yes, we appreciate the effort of the government.  Besides, we cannot compare to japan to how It responded to the aftermath of the Tsunami because unlike Japan, we are, so to speak, a third world country.  Japan did not become ready overnight.  Their readiness is the result of long tedious process of policy making.  We, on the other hand, are barely trying to get back on our feet even before Yolanda hit us; and when it did, it just washed most of our previous efforts to rehabilitate our nation away.

But why are many people mad at the government?  Is it because they are less Filipinos?  Or is it because they feel insulted as Filipinos?  For decades, corruption has festered this country and the common Filipinos, despite their wailing, do not feel heard.  Instead of listening to the cries of its citizens, the government tells us the economy is improving, or (in this recent calamity) we are prepared to face Yolanda, all with the attempt to either pacify the Filipinos, or worse, to cover up their lack of capability for good governance.  

I am a proud Filipino.  I love my country.  However, it is saddening to see how our so-called country fathers rape our mother nation with their impotent dicks; how they appear to be pure to conceal their adultery.  We, the sons, and daughters of this nation cannot help but use our words to let these politicians know that we deserve better, our nation deserves better, and something has got to be done quickly, now, before our other brothers, and sisters die, helpless, because a lot of people kept quiet to let it happen, or because they think it is negative to say something.  

It is not purely negativity.  It is seeing clearly.  It is not being less of a Filipino, but being a true one.  

To my fellow Filipinos, may this humble message reach you.  Do not be disillusioned with what they are trying to make us believe that social harmony is not to be disturbed; and that peace is achieved when there is quiet.  The truth is the opposite.  Real harmony exists when despite differing views, we choose to co-exist.  Real peace exists when despite warring ideas, we choose to use our words and not our fists.  

If I may rephrase, "the only necessary thing for evil to succeed is for good men to say nothing."

High or Law

Shocking.  The study of law is not what I imagined it would be.  I have heard challenging stories from law students on how their professors castrated, and castigated them.  I have heard stories of law students crying, which I then thought to be "too" much.  Having heard all these, I knew that what I was putting myself into was not an easy matter.  Now, I am an irregular 2nd-3rd year law student, and I have witnessed the same.  And yes, they are a bit "too" much.  Apparently, there is a generally accepted practice among law professors to antagonize their students inside the class.  I tried reading blogs from law students both locally and internationally, and well, it seems that this is the trend and practice.  IT DOESN'T MAKE THE PRACTICE RIGHT.  And so goes my appreciation to the other law professors who make learning a collaborative and an interesting one.

Having taken Education and having passed the LET (Licensure Examination for Teachers), I somehow understand the basic foundations of and concepts in education.  These concepts are nowhere near the classroom of a law class and this makes me wonder.  I will not claim to have observed classrooms in other law schools but I will claim to somehow know that in teaching, there are principles and methods that are effective and are not so effective.  I also know that these principles and methods apply to all levels of learners be it in the elementary, secondary, or tertiary, or even in further studies.  I will not attempt to discuss learning styles because while related to learning, it is a different topic requiring a more in-depth discussion.  However, if there is one foremost objective of an educational institution, it is to ensure student learning - nothing more, nothing less.

Here is one of the principles of learning from Horne and Pine (1990): Learning is an experience which occurs inside the learner and is activated by the learner.  the process of learning is primarily controlled by the learner and not by the teacher (group leader)… Learning is not only a function of what a teacher does to, or says to, or provides for a learner… Learning  flourishes in a situation in which teaching is seen as a facilitating process that assists people to explore and discover the personal meaning of events for them.

In law school, recitation is the most common practice in teaching.  Other professors call it the Socratic method (although I'm not sure if some professors really understand the underlying principles in Socratic method.  Some of them just threateningly ask questions.  Such is not Socratic.)  While learners control their learning, they should also be provided a situation where teaching is seen as a facilitating process.  This is where some of the professors lack a skill in - the skill in facilitating and assisting.  It is as if their expectations of their students should already be that of a lawyer's and anything that fall short of should be regarded as mediocrity.

To add, "no one directly teaches anyone anything of significance.  If teaching is defined as a process of directly communicating an experience of a fragment of knowledge, then it is clear that little learning process occurs as a result of this process and the learning that does take place is usually inconsequential… People forget most of the content "taught" to them and retain only the content which they use in their work or content which is relevant to them personally.  Then it must be wise to engage the learners in an activity that is connected to their life experiences.  It is unwise to impose teaching on our students.  No amount of imposition can cause student learning."  

Imposition of teaching on our students is counterproductive.  You can't teach anyone anything.  A teacher must know how to use the students' experiences as the basic foundation of their own learning.  While some professors engage students, other professors would regard teaching a one way process, that is students should think only the way professors think.

Learning is also a social activity.  Human beings are by nature and culture a small group species.  We have survived, despite our physical vulnerability, by working together as a group.  And it is through collaboration - not competition - that we learn best.  In fact, competitive learning environments (my mark is higher than your mark) encourage surface-level thinking, increase dislike for school and decrease both creativity and subject interest.  People learn best through interactions with others, and these interactions strengthen both communities and individuals. (changelearning.ca)

I enjoyed two of my subjects not because the course was easy but because our professor allowed the class to group and to solve a case together.  Not only did this promote friendship inside the class, it also diffused the tension of competitiveness among us.  It allowed us to exchange ideas no matter how silly the ideas were.  It forced us to actively question each other.  It helped us overcome that trickle of insecurity by making us work as one.

On the other hand, I cannot completely discount the fact that the training I got from my professors continuously makes me to be stronger and more competent in what I do.  I am sure that just like any other law student, there were a lot of times when they felt disappointed of themselves each time they walked out of their classroom; disappointed that the question probably was the topic they didn't read that day or simply because their nerves got to them before the question the professor asked did.  These experiences all in all would make one a stronger person but being a stronger person is not the only thing we need to pass the bar.  We need to maximize our learning with the guidance of those who stand in front of us.

I remember one professor telling my classmate while he was reciting nervously, "Are you sure you want to become a lawyer?  Why don't you know that?"  

I wanted to say to my professor, "Maybe he doesn't know that because he still wants TO BECOME a lawyer since he is NOT YET one."  

Another professor says, "We are preparing you for real-life.  In real-life, if you fail the bar, you fail the bar.  So if you fail my exam (patterned after bar questions), you fail the course."  

In my head it rang, "Seriously?  You're a lawyer and you don't know logic?  That is false analogy.  Baristers have finished 4 or 5 years of law studies and most of them fail after taking the bar.  Now, you expect us to be able to answer bar questions while we are only on our second year?"  I bit my lip and I murmured, "That's not realistic."

Shocking.  But I'm getting used to it.  Although, I do not understand yet how law education has evolved into such a competitive, and adversarial system.  Maybe some law professors should take a step down from their pedestals and start reaching out to their students more.  Or maybe they should also be required to take at least 18 units of education before being allowed to teach; besides, being a good lawyer is not tantamount to being a good teacher.  Or maybe it's high time law professors realize the importance of applying learning principles in their classroom instructions.  After all, law students are not excused from benefiting from these learning principles; neither are our professors.

The Other Side of the Optimist (Part 2)

This habit poses a challenge to us in our dealings with people who have low tolerance of negativity.  Their tendency is to suppress anxiety and maintain a positive self-image of themselves or their surroundings.  This lens allows them to maintain their balance at the expense of not acknowledging reality.  If practiced for a long time, the habit of self-deception slowly clouds one's judgment.  While Freud understood self-deception as a kind of protection mechanism and sometimes a false sense of security that self-deception creates contribute to psychological health, this defense mechanism could also lead to being delusional.  Once delusional, people who may have acquired this kind of practice, to preserve their optimism, may refuse to see the reality.  This poses another challenge because the first step to real positivism is the ability to acknowledge the reality of the situation, no matter how negative it could be.  Only when this conflict is recognized can real positivity start taking place.  Feldman found out that researchers studying depression have found that clinically depressed people often have surprisingly accurate views of themselves - a phenomenon known as depressive realism.  People suffering from depression make better assessments than nondepressed people about their control over events, their role in effective positive outcomes, their good qualities, and their shortcomings.  Their perceptions are not irrationally pessimistic. On the contrary, they are unusually clear-eyed.[1]  This is not to say, however, that one needs to be depressed to clearly see one's self or surrounding.    However to those who refuse to see reality, they are consistently in the stage of denial and they bury in their unconscious guilt and fears that might threaten their ego and this could lead to mental imbalance.

While self-deception can help preserve our optimism, the bigger challenge is how to realize we are falling victims to self-deceptive optimism.  What are the indications that we could be deluding ourselves?  How does delusional positivism affect our relationship with others?  How can we face the negativity around us and still be able to maintain a positive disposition?  And most importantly, how can we balance what is real and what is positive?  These are just some of the many questions that posit an individual in the middle of optimism and pessimism.  Thus, it is through these issues that this writing discusses the other side of the optimist.

Self-Deceptive Optimism

How do we know we are falling victims to our own self-deceptive optimism?  Unfortunately, we usually don't.  In the book, You are Not so Smart by David McRaney (a book that will make you smarter, by the way - a MUST read!), our different cognitive biases are discussed.  He wrote in his book that we have a deep desire to be right all of the time and a deeper desire to see ourselves in a positive light both morally and behaviorally.  We can stretch our mind pretty far to achieve these goals.[2]  Cognitive biases, according to McRaney, are predictable patterns of thought and behavior that lead us to draw incorrect conclusions.  He further wrote: 

            "You and everyone else come into the world preloaded with these pesky and completely wrong ways of seeing things, and you rarely notice them. Many of them serve to keep you confident in your own perceptions or to inhibit you from seeing yourself as a buffoon.  The maintenance of a positive self-image seems to be so important to the human mind you have evolved mental mechanisms designed to make you feel awesome about yourself.  Cognitive biases lead to poor choices, bad judgments, and wacky insights that are often totally incorrect."

According to him, most people believe that their opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis.  The truth, however, according to him is that their opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information that confirmed what you believed while ignoring the information that challenged their preconceived notions.[3]  This is what we call confirmation bias - you want to be right about how you see the world, so you seek out information that confirms your beliefs and avoid contradictory evidence and opinions.[4]  Our confirmation bias bends toward our looking for validation. 

Most believers of positivism whose tolerance for anxiety is low often fall victim into self-deception through this bias so that they could maintain their positive view of themselves and the world.  This often compromises the truthfulness of their words and along the process, unfortunately, the integrity of their relationship with other people.

(To be continued.)

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[1] Ibid.

[2] McRaney, You are Not so Smart

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid. 

The Other Side of the Optimist (Part 1)

According to Covey, almost all the literature in the first 150 years are so focused on what could be called the Character Ethicas the foundation of success - things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule.  The Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.  But shortly after World War I, the basic view of success shifted from the Character Ethic to what we might call the Personality Ethic.  Success became more a function of personality, or public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction.  This Personality Ethic essentially took two paths; one was human and public relations techniques (or PR), and the other was positive mental attitude (PMA).  Some of this philosophy was expressed in inspiring and sometimes-valid maxims such as "Your attitude determines your altitude," "Smiling wins more friends than frowning," and "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to face interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the "power look," or intimidate their way through life.

Some of this literature acknowledged character as an ingredient of success, but tended to compartmentalize it rather than recognize it as foundational and catalytic.  Reference to Character Ethic became mostly lip service; the basic thrust was quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills, and positive attitude.[1]  Thus, these practices overshadowed a lot of professionals who overlooked the importance of character over personality.  It is mainly because of these too many quick fixes that men who almost always choose to look at the positive side of life, without knowing it, are made weaker by refusing to acknowledge the other side of the coin.  It is through this premise that this short research work is borne.  It aims to give insight at how the two paths of Personality Ethic - public relations and positive psychology, while helpful at times, may be detrimental some other times.  And it is my hope to expose us to some of the cognitive biases that hamper our growth and to discuss the way our minds work in relation to these biases.

Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Deception

Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP is one of the proponents of positive mental attitude or PMA and positive communication (whether internally or externally).  It presupposes that to let go of negative feelings, we have to alter the way we look at a situation and focus on its bright side.  Some NLP books even suggest that where another person's response or behavior surprises you, or irritates you, or leaves you puzzled, you can (1) count all the blessings in your life; (2) put on your most generous hat; (3) consider the other person's point of view.  This process, according to some NLP books, can help you become happier, and become more accepting of people and their idiosyncrasies with greater ease.  Propositions such as, "there is no failure, only feedback", "having a choice is better than not having a choice" are often used to help some people deal with their own anxiety.  This positive psychology often suggests even the use of positive words as much as possible to attract positivity.  It also presupposes that the unconscious mind can't process negatives (Don't think of an elephant!).  It therefore directs the use of more active and engaging words as a developing habit in daily communication.  This practice has been helpful to many people around the world and undeniably has become one of the most common tools in counseling and personality development. 

It is not within the purview of this paper to talk about the advantages and the disadvantages of NLP.  However, on the other hand, this paper aims to expose how the overuse of such practice can serve to the disadvantage of one's being.  Failure to at least acknowledge the existence of a negative feeling or to try to deal with anxiety can also harm our mental health.  Some people with low tolerance for anxiety and negativity may, unaware, use positivism to deceive themselves or even others.  This unawareness can lead to the habit of self-deception.  According to Feldman in his book, The Liar in Your Life, specifically, it (self-deception) helped validate a psychological theory that has remained essential for over fifty years: cognitive dissonance.  Cognitive dissonance is one of the key elements to understanding the mechanics of self-deception.

"Cognitive dissonance" is the term psychologists use for the tension that arises from holding two contradictory ideas in the mind simultaneously.  For example, a man with high cholesterol might know "I need to avoid red meat" but at the same time be faced with the contradictory fact "I am eating a T-bone steak."  The conflict between these two ideas, or cognitions, as pychologists refer to them, creates the mental discomfort labeled dissonance.

According to cognitive dissonance theory, in order to resolve the dissonance the mind, consciously or unconsciously, alters one of the two competing ideas.  The man with high cholesterol eating the stake might decide that he eats so little red meat that the steak shouldn't count; or he might conclude that the evidence linking red meat to high cholesterol really isn't so convincing; or he might add a new idea that helps ease the tension, such as "After this meal, I will never eat red meat again."  These are the kinds of rationalizations and conditions we all employ when we're doing something we know we probably shouldn't be.[2]This same rationalization may be used when we are trying to make something positive out of a negative situation.  Only in this case, a person with low tolerance with a negative situation may convince himself or herself by little positive delusions of grandeur to suppress anxiety.  For instance, if you are a student who is failing your subject, your mind may automatically convince you that all that's needed to be done is to look positively at the areas of your grades with better standing.  This self-deceptive optimism can lead you to believe that you will pass your subject.  Instead of leading you to verifying the aspects of your grades that need improvement, your mind automatically justifies your situation because it may not be ready to find out the truth about your failing grade.  Your mind helps you to suppress the anxiety that you may not be ready to deal with.  This kind of positivism is a form of self-justification that allows you to retain such positive self-image.  According to Feldman, psychologists and researchers have found this need to protect one's self-image to be an extremely powerful force in shaping our perceptions of the world.  Only, the danger is when positivism clouds reality.  When positivism clouds reality, we have what we call self-deceptive optimism.  It is when we give less attention to criticism than to praise.  Feldman asserted that psychologists call this phenomenon selective exposure.  He added that we seek to minimize our exposure to, and even avoid altogether, information that contradicts what we think - particularly what we think about ourselves and we avoid information that challenges us and embrace that which reinforces us.[3]

Unfortunately, the habit of self-deception is practiced by all of us - knowingly or unknowingly.  Feldman also narrated the memoirs of Scott McClellan who worked as the press secretary in the George W. Bush White House for close to three years.  In 2008, McClellan published a memoir recounting his work for Bush.  Titled, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, the book was less than flattering.  In it, McClellan asserts that President Bush was a victim (or practitioner, depending on one's perspective) of self-deception.  McClellan writes, "As I worked closely with President Bush, I would come to believe that sometimes he convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment."  McClellan describes how the president's tendency to bend the truth in his own mind had costs for his policy toward Iraq and for the administration generally.  For powerful leaders, Feldman added, the necessity of maintaining an aura of strength and competence can make it difficult to accept policy failure and mistakes.  It goes back to the issue of cognitive dissonance.  Powerful people can have difficulty reconciling their faith in their abilities with the fact of their errors and evidence of failure is viewed as an anomaly in a larger picture of success (or positivism); disagreement is regarded not as reasonable but as mulish partisan resistance.[4]

(To be continued...)

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[1] Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

[2] Feldman, The Liar in Your Life

[3] Feldman, The Liar in Your Life

[4] Feldman, The Liar in Your Life