Change your attitude?

This is an essay I wrote in a Facebook Note, and I felt it was also worth sharing.  The Note was titled:  Change your attitude?  In a way it could be applied to the theme of this blog in terms of victims' perspectives. 

Whenever anyone is negative about work, school, or the doldrums of life, it’s not unusual to hear someone say, “Change your attitude.”  It’s supposed to be a positive statement, but in my honest opinion, it’s not natural.  It’s not good to just change your attitude about anything negative or painful.  Try telling that to a Holocaust survivor and their terrible memories.  O, just change your attitude and learn to like the Nazis….no.

While on the point of the Holocaust, I remember listening to an inspirational tape by Earl Nightingale, and he was a Holocaust survivor who believed in changing one’s attitude.  I give him kudos because he underwent indescribable cruelty.  He talked about his experiences being vivisected by the Nazi scientists.  The Nazis could do virtually anything, but he realized they could not control his choice of thoughts.  He could either feel like crap while scalpels were cutting into him, or he could change his attitude toward the situation.  I don’t know how anyone could be happy while undergoing vivisection, but I couldn’t call him phony for “changing his attitude.”

I thought about this for awhile because I always thought it was flaky and insensitive to tell people to just change their attitudes.  Then something clicked.  Vivisection is unspeakable enough that medical schools ban its practice on animals.  It’s traumatic for a human.  With trauma, come the mind’s defenses to get through it.  In psychology, they are called ego-defense mechanisms.  Changing your attitude is an ego defense mechanism, specifically Reaction Formation.  In order for Nightingale to get through the torture, he had to form an alternative reaction.

Besides extremes like torture, we are expected to change our attitudes when faced with problems.  For instance, if you hate math, staring at your homework and grumbling for a few hours will not get it done quicker.  If you pretend to like it, it gets done quicker.  It may be fake, but it works, and it’s better than feeling miserable.

Though in some cases, changing your attitude is not the best idea.  Let’s say you work at a department store and you don’t believe in the store’s overburdening policy to force-sell credit cards on every customer, driving more people into debt.  Bosses and stupid posters say “Change your Attitude.”  The reason for this is to keep you in your place.  Retailers have high employee turnovers, so management wants to retain its subordinates by keeping them “happy.”  If you choose to change your attitude, then, OoooHHhh my goooshhhh I LOVE SELLING CREDIT CARDS TO THESE DEBT-LOVING CUSTOMERS……This isn’t the only option.  You can get another job.  Then maybe your boss can change his/her attitude about the employee turnover rate.

You shouldn’t have to change your attitude all the time.  Sometimes it’s a good thing, and other times, it’s not healthy.  If you are in the military, should you have to change your attitude toward killing?  If you are a rape victim, should you just change your attitude toward rape?  There’s always that flaky person who says, “You have a choice.  You can either feel horrible or you can change your attitude and think happy thoughts.”  Try telling that to child porn victim!  Changing your attitude is not the best idea, despite it being advertised as such – it’s not the only idea.

Your initial feelings and thoughts are your truest reactions to any situation.  Changing your attitude masks those honest feelings with alternative, secondary emotions that we make ourselves feel.  It can be an emotional crutch, but you don’t always need a crutch.  It represses or denies our real feelings.  If someone changes their attitude too often, emotional compromise becomes habitual and at some point, the person may be confused on what their natural feelings really were.  They have emotionally lied to themselves so long that they don’t even know what their real attitude is anymore.

Tom Sawyer changed his attitude toward painting a fence to deceive the neighborhood kids to help him finish the chore/punishment.  The idea is that he changed his attitude as a means of deception.  Tricking yourself into liking math will get you through your homework so you can play your video games sooner.  Although changing your attitude may help to an extent, but if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Instead of creating attitudes to protect your true but vulnerable feelings, embrace your honest feelings.  Even though sadness may be horrible, it’s at least real.  Tears release toxins.  Anger is your mind’s alarm system, letting you know something is wrong.  Sweeping your problems under the carpet will build up over time.  Even though sadness and anger are painful, they are a part of your psyche.  Denying the fact that you hate certain things is ignoring part of your character.  Get to know yourself for how you really feel and think.  Self awareness is the first step of self-actualization.

Changing your attitude is not the best answer to life’s problems.  Learning to like a messy house will not keep the cockroaches away.  (Don’t learn to like the cockroaches, either).  Instead, look at the problem from different angles.  Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.  By viewpoint, I mean an intangible standing point to view a scenario.  From there you can draw more than one judgment and develop many attitudes naturally.  Keep your first view, because all views equally exist, just like your attitudes whether you repress them or not.  Instead of thinking like someone else, you can think like many different people.  It’s multi-dimensional thinking.  Looking at situations from multiple angles enables analytical abilities.  Take into account the positive, negative, and neutral standpoints.  If you only think positively, then you are ruling out the negative, which is biased – not positive.

Here are my key points.

1. Changing attitude is Reaction Formation, an ego defense mechanism.
2. Like other ego-defense mechanisms, they can be good or bad.
3. Don’t change your attitude if you have other options.
4. Don’t change your view.  Change your viewpoint.
1. Look at things from multiple stances.
5. Your first feelings are your most honest.
6. If you can, embrace your feelings, and know yourself.

If you are traumatized, don’t pretend you aren’t.  If you hate stuff, you don’t have to pretend you love those things – unless you need to tackle the chores or homework, then just fake it for awhile.  If you have a problem, do something about it.

I’m just throwing this in here.  I once read that some murderer was happy while being executed.  While the lethal injection was being administered, he said, “This is awesome!”  Did he change his attitude or was that his real attitude?

Curious to note, when Earl Nightingale said he changed his attitude towards vivisection, he did not mention what his new attitude was.

©2015 Caroline Friehs

Originally posted to Facebook:  February 5, 2014

Posted to Blogspot:  October 3, 2015

Two Hermits - An Essay

            This is one of my midterm essays from college, one which I find very memorable.  Although it does not fit the topics of crime or criminology, I thought its content was interesting and people may find it thought provoking in the way we see war.  Before the midterm, I took time to count the frequency of a particular word in The Poem of the Cid.  It took time away from my test taking, but this was my result.

I transcribed the essay from the booklet, verbatim.

Front of the test booklet:

Caroline Friehs

University of Pittsburgh

Western Civilization I

Section: 10AM

Date:  3-31-03

Midterm Question:  Take two people from society, one from the time the Book of Matthew was written, and one from the time when the Poem of the Cid was written.  Write how they would have viewed the book.  Compare their views.

My Answer:

This is a comparison between two hermits; one who heard the Cid, & the other, the Book of Matthew.  It’s important to compare the two characters as the same roles in society to make a better comparison of time.

Matthew:  In given the Circumstances, I am a hermit living in what seems to me the middle of no where.  I was a very educated man enough to have read the Bible, and my favorite book was the book of Matthew.  That was well before I became a hermit.  It wasn’t until my incurable illness developed that I headed to my cave for the sake of others not catching it.  I look back at the book of Matthew, and I even kept a copy to read before I die.

            It’s amazing that Jesus performed so many miracles, healing people like me, and it is ironic I was born later than his time.  I wonder if Jesus is with me even now?  I read now, Chapter 8.  In 8:2-3, “And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.  And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean, and immediately his leprosy was cleaned.”  All it takes is his hand, yet in his physical absence, all I will get is his spiritual hand.  When that comes my ailment will be gone through death.  In the same chapter, there is a storm at sea, which Jesus calms.  It begins 8:24-26, “And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.  And his disciples came to him, and awoke him saying, Lord, save us: we perish.  And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?  Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and then and there was a great calm.”  I feel the storm within me, this disease.  It grows more painful everyday.  I wish for the calm to come for me.  I flip the pages.  I feel so strongly about the mysteries of this faith because my death is underway, and the mystery will be solved.  I have faith that I will go to heaven.  In Chapter 13, the Parable which Jesus speaks of, about the sower and the seeds interests me.  I know that I am not the one among the thorns, nor am I the seed upon the rock.  I am still a Christian, and I believe in all the words of Jesus; no other, therefore I am not set out for animals to eat away.  I have strong roots in the good soil, and I have grown into a tree bearing good fruit.  This tree is about to die.  At the end of the book, Jesus is crucified, which he accepts.  I will have to accept my death if I am to transcend to Heaven.

Cid:  Long after that hermit’s death, time went on, and there was another hermit.  This is his story.

            Here in the mountains, in Spain, I dwell here for my own security.  I ran away at a tender age, and no one has yet found me.  If anyone does find me, I’ll claim to be severely ill.  By now, no one should recognize me, since I’ve aged so much.  I don’t even know my age any longer.  I ran away, because the dominance of religion in society was driving me into insanity.  The hypocrisies of the bible and the concept of worship give me rage.  To love only God is not to love thy neighbor.  Jesus is not the reason why I am an atheist, yet the arrogance of the people who are less than holy. 

I am not even literate anymore.  The last time I came across a book was a couple of years ago.  Along came a wounded traveler.  I helped him, and in exchange for my kindness I didn’t want any money, for I had not use for it.  Instead I wanted him to read me his book, the Poem of the Cid.  After he had read it, he was astonished at my reaction.  I hold him half of the time I was not listening to the story, but I manage to take note to the great number of references to God and Christianity.  In the book, god was mentioned 143 times, but the majority of the time, praise was given for unholy reasons.  The Cid and his followers killed and robbed people in the name of god, and at the same time not considering thy neighbor’s feelings or lives.  “I win battles as it pleases the Creator,” (p. 153, stanza 122), “I can be certain of defeating them with God on my side,” (p. 143, stanza 114), “overjoyed that by God’s favor they had won the day,” and “Attack them my knights, for the love of God!” – All these quotes cause me great anger over what God’s purpose is.  Yes, god spared their lives in time of risk, but they took other people’s lives, whom no one had the heart to mourn over.  Do unto thy neighbor as thou dost unto thyself.  How could they not recognize their hatred?  Even in the Bible it talks about how you treat others will be how the Father treats you after death.  Justice doesn’t seem to be granted for the Cid.  He always wins, and ever so simply, never even expecting victory.  He thinks his victories of blood and gold are god given.  The only time there is a loss for him, the loss is the treatment of his daughters.  Since he is not the one directly hurt, his sense of self worth is given more fuel to win the battle at the end of the epic.  It’s easy to always be the hero and always win, but he never experienced his daughters’ pain.  What would have happened to his confidence then?

Even though these two characters are hermits, they have polar viewpoints.  In one time period where God is important in terms of God’s teachings, the hermit feels strong about religion, and feels truly concerned about his afterlife.  The other, in times of war and persecution of Moors, becomes a recluse to society because of the misuse of god and religion.

Grade: A

Professor’s note:  I enjoyed this – Your 2^nd hermit did a good job to hide away – a skeptic like that would be a prime target of the inquisition!

©2015 Caroline Friehs

Originally posted:  October 2, 2015