Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero.original_ [56]
EXAMINING THE PROBLEMS IN COMBINATION
Let's examine several combinations of problems closely and determine the specific ways they affect the thinking of the people involved.
Claude is an active worker for his political party. Because he feels a strong personal identification with the party and is therefore convinced that its platform and its candidates represent the salvation of the country, he is unusually zealous in his efforts. One day he is having lunch with Nell, a business acquaintance. The discussion predictably turns to politics. Claude delivers a few pronouncements on his candidate and the opposition. His candidate, he asserts, is a brilliant theorist and practitioner. Her opponent, in Claude's view, is a complete fool. Claude delivers a few pronouncements on his candidate and the opposition. His candidate, he asserts, is a brilliant theorist and practitioner. Her opponent, in Claude's view, is a complete fool. Claude volunteers harsh judgments of the opponent's political record and of his family and associates and rattles on about how the country will be ruined if he is elected.
After listening for a while, Nell challenges Claude. She quietly presents facts that disprove many of Claude's ideas and points up the extravagance of Claude's assertions. Thought there is nothing personal in Nell's challenge, and it is presented in a calm, objective way, Claude becomes angry. He accuses Nell of distorting his words, denies having said certain things that he did say, and stubbornly clings to others despite the facts Nell has presented.
Let's reconstruct what happened in terms of the problems we have been studying. Claude's initial problem was his "mine is better" attitude, which blinded him to the possibility that his candidate and platform were not perfect and that the opposition had some merit. In other words, it made him overvalue the things he identified with and undervalue those he did not. Accordingly, when he spoke about the candidates and the platforms, he was inclined to oversimplify. Then when Nell called his errors to his attention (as someone sooner or later was bound to do), Claude was driven to relieve his embarrassment through face-saving devices. Because the stronger one's commitment, the greater one's reluctance to admit error, Claude undoubtedly learned little from the incident.
Alma is very conservative in her dress. She strongly resists any fashion change. When miniskirts came back into style, she was scandalized. She was fond of remarking, "today's designers are nothing but perverts intent on destroying the very idea of modesty and promoting moral decay."
Like Claude, Alma was the victim of a combination of problems in the new and to exaggerate the importance of the matter. This perspective caused her to form a hasty conclusion about the character and intentions of miniskirt designers and to over-generalize that conclusion to all designers.
Ten years ago, Sam fell in with a group of sexually promiscuous people. At first he had some reservations about becoming involved with them. After all, their attitudes toward sex and marriage were very unlike those had grown up with. But the group seemed so exciting, so modern, so "relevant." Sam wanted very much to be accepted and approved by them. Once he was part of the group, he began buying books that glorify group sex and attack traditional attitudes toward sexuality, and attending lectures calling sexual promiscuity and enlightened, liberating practice. Now Sam assumes that all sexually promiscuous people are intellectually courageous and emotionally healthy, and that monogamous people are unthinking, frightened, and repressed. Furthermore, he believes that warnings about AIDS are based on a puritanical aversion to sexual expression.
Sam's urge to conform was too strong for his own good. His desire to be popular, to belong to the "in" crowd, overrode his individuality. He did not join the group out of conviction, after thinking carefully about its good and bad points and