BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, False Dilemma, and Hindsight Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 9.4% saturation with 88 hits. Analysis detected 390 faulty-reasoning hits from 933 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 17.1% and a BS Rank of 7% (26,215 of 28,092 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 93.30% of the article peer group.
Occhiolism – An awareness of
how small and limited our perspective is.
###
Much like gawking at car crashes, I
often scan the obituaries from several of the communities I once
called home.
It’s not that I expect or fear I may find my name or
the names of family members and close friends.
I might know about
those without referring to the media.
My interest, I hope, is not morbid,
but in a culture that denies death and is obsessed with youth, any
discussion of mortality, I have found, can be viewed as, well,
deadly.
It’s hard to chalk up my searches
to curiosity, since there’s no mystery.
Eventually all will appear
in the chronicles of time passing.
Often, however, an obit provides
an opportunity to remember fondly those who were once friends,
neighbors or worthy acquaintances, enough so to sanction a sincere
offer of condolences to survivors.
While lives that end by violence
or addiction, or the tragedy of a child’s death are understandingly
unsettling, there is another class of obituaries that especially
troubles me: The obituaries of those people whom I knew and whom I
was not fully reconciled with at the time of their passing.
I regret
that there’s now nothing to be done to repair a failed
relationship.
But is there something that can be done for one’s own
soul?
Can we forgive ourselves for only
knowing belatedly that other choices might have been made?
The Swiss psychiatrist and father of
analytical psychology, Dr.
Carl Jung, said the intensity of our
negative reaction to another person often corresponds to the degree
that we have not dealt in our own lives with the darkness we see, and
detest, in them.
The young man that I was would have said “nonsense.”
Jung wasn’t the first to theorize
about our projection of our failings on others.
A 13th century
poet/mystic named Rumi wrote:
Many of faults you see in others, dear reader,
Are your own nature reflected in them.
As the Prophet said,
The faithful are mirrors to one another.
When I think of those who have just
passed and the fact that I never got over my dark feelings about
them, I ask myself, why is that?
And what is the cost of not letting
go of an eternal grudge?
For a decade, “Bill” and I
shared the political stage in a small town.
Recently, Bill, a decade
my senior, died.
Although 25 years had passed since I
last saw Bill, I still viewed him in an unfavorable way.
Now, belatedly, I consider the
reality of our political rivalry and conclude, “You idiot, of
course in politics people are going to oppose you.
Especially those
whose perch you threaten.
You were very young (age 29) when you first
took political office and, in your arrogance, did you really think
your views on every subject were unassailable?”
Of course I did.
What were the things you didn’t
like about Bill?
His claim of unquestioned integrity?
His “virtue
signaling”?
The seeming differences between his private life and
his public proclamations?
Yes, all of that.
Have I ever done hypocritical
things?
Let me count the instances and describe the myriad ways.
This
could take some time.
Now I understand that I was shaped
and made a better office holder by knowing my reasoning would be
challenged by Bill and others, forcing me to make better decisions.
Today I am grateful.
My first term in political office featured
success, failure and many near misses.
It would’ve been worse, but
for the opposition that shaped my judgment.
And what good has my stubborn
refusal to move on done me or anyone else?
Multiple peer-reviewed articles in
scientific journals note that when a person perseverates about old
hurts, the amygdala, the portion of the brain that deals with
emotions, treats the ancient memory as if it was a current threat.
Did I really need decades of that
occasional, if fleeting, but always unpleasant, sense of existential
stress?
Thoughts of old hurts will shape our
reality, until we reframe them.
Finally, I understand — we see
things, not *as they are*, but *as we are*.
And when we
deny our darker side, we undeservedly put ourselves on a pedestal, a
place without hope for a growth that offers peace.
I’m not saying that I was wrong in
viewing Bill as a mortal enemy of my inadvertent political career — I
was appointed to a job that I really didn’t want — but once I
left that position, he was just a bad memory.
“Bad” because we were both
smart enough to make things better, but we never did.
In *The Dictionary of Obscure
Sorrows*, the invented words “*Nodus Tollens*” appear.
(Aren’t all words invented?)
The phrase is defined as the
realization that one’s life story, the things we say to ourselves
about ourselves, no longer makes sense.
How absurd to think of
ourselves on a hero’s journey, with everyone in opposition an enemy
rather than as people who, regardless of intent, might serve to
instill a sense of humility.
And eventually, wisdom, which is a
far better foundation for a peaceful life than a mind contaminated by
hurtful memories from a time of foolish, fiery, youthful passions.
Steven Pence retired from Michigan, where he served as an attorney with legal services, was an elected prosecutor and a county commissioner, seven years ago.
He finished his legal career in private practice.
He is married and lives in Ferndale with his wife, Teresa.
He’s been a freelance writer, both in Michigan and California.
Speakers
4speakers6.8%attributed speech870writer words
Selected voice
15%flagged-word coverageRumi
27 attributed words43% of attributed speech38% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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