See this link for a new review by Robert M Ellis of ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion’ by Jonathan Haidt.
All posts by Robert M Ellis
Meditation 9: The hindrance of ill-will
Ill-will, or hatred, is not that different from sense-desire really. It’s just positive desire turned the other way round so as to reject someone or something. Just as there’s an incremental progression from sense-desire to love, there’s a similar progression from hatred to wisdom. You don’t have to be an obviously hate-filled person to come across ill-will as a hindrance in meditation, just have a critical tendency which leads you to dwell in a slightly obsessive or unbalanced way on what’s wrong and ought to be put right.
So, having distanced myself slightly from stereotypes of hatred, I’m now able to admit that ill-will is my biggest hindrance. In my case it consists almost entirely of sitting in meditation thinking of things I should have said, or might say, to people so as to show they’re not entirely correct about things. For a long time, my experience of trying to practise the Middle Way has often consisted of having subtle arguments with both sides representing the extremes instead of just one side – which is sometimes conducive to a bit of a siege mentality. Perhaps it’s only since the society started that I’m beginning to find it easier to think primarily of the Middle Way as offering something positive: but I’m aware that I still have a tendency to over-emphasise the negative.
One way of trying to manage ill-will is just to reflect that the object of your aversion has too much power over you. Your aversion itself doesn’t want that, so the energy it consists in may thereby be directed into less obsessive channels. After all, if you hate something, or someone, why are they worth so much attention? In fact, giving that b*****d so much emotional energy (whoever it is) is a lot more than he’s worth! That’s one reason why, if you hate God, strong agnosticism is a much more effective way of “getting your own back on him” than atheism or anti-theism. People who hate God tend to spend a lot of time thinking about him, and in the process give him a lot more reality. Aversion taken to a rational conclusion tends to lead you into wisdom, where you start criticising your beliefs about the hated object rather than just the object. Nevertheless, subtler forms of hatred may still hang around such an intellectualisation, and you tend to discover these when you meditate.
Another relatively effective approach to ill-will in my experience is merely to focus on one’s physical experience. Hatred (especially in the form of anger) has a very narrow mental focus, and just remembering that you have a breathing, feeling body can take you a long way out of it. That’s obviously why taking deep breaths is a popular way of controlling anger.
Alternatively, you can reflect on the object of your ill-will so as to give that object a wider meaning than the narrow one you are probably obsessed with. When we hate someone, we tend to think of them only in one sort of situation, having one sort of characteristic, or saying one sort of thing. We focus narrowly on a particular experience we may have had of that person, even though we may have experienced other aspects – or, if not, can at least imagine them. The Buddhist metta bhavana (cultivation of loving-kindness) works in this sort of way to get you to expand the meaning of your ‘enemy’. So, instead of thinking of your evil boss in the office being odious, you can imagine him on the beach throwing a ball back and forth to his children, or taking his dog for a walk on a spacious wind-blown hill. My own experience is that if I am wrapped up in ill-will I am unlikely to be able to focus on such visualisations, but they may work better for some other people.
Whatever approach you find works best, the underlying point seems to be that ill-will is just energy following habitual channels. For the moment, it’s your ill-will, in the sense that you need to do something about it rather than projecting it onto others. No, it’s not his or hers – they didn’t “make you angry” – it’s yours! There may be a genuine problem out there, but ill-will won’t help you to resolve it. However, in the longer term the ill-will is not even yours: it’s just the direction your energies have taken. You can take them somewhere else. If more direct approaches don’t work, use more indirect ones. Stop meditating and go for a walk. Keep walking until you actually start experiencing the trees and the bird-song instead of hatred.
Picture: Angry woman by Lara 604 (Wikimedia Commons)
Completion of the audio project
I’m pleased to announce that we have finally completed what might be called the ‘audio project’: that is, the turning of recordings from the 2013 Middle Way Retreat into a series of illustrated talks and discussions, providing an audio resource on Middle Way Philosophy. These enhanced audios are now all up on Youtube, and also embedded on the following pages on this site:
Belief, metaphysics and science
I’d like to give a big vote of thanks to Barry, who has done a lot of the less interesting parts of the work involved in creating all these resources: for example, removing extraneous noises from recordings and connecting audio to pictures! Another vote of thanks goes to Tim Kaine, who provided the equipment and did all the recording on the retreat. It was me who found the pictures and edited the recordings into the chunks they are now in – as well as giving the original talks of course!
Robert
Critical Thinking 9: The Nirvana Fallacy
This is not just a problem with Buddhism, nor with the rock band of that name, but an interesting and common fallacy, alternatively known as the Perfect Solution Fallacy or the perfect as the enemy of the good. Those subject to this fallacy reject an imperfect proposal merely because of its imperfection. They implicitly compare the imperfect to a perfect measure, and then reject the imperfect just because it doesn’t match up to the perfect, even if by any other criterion it is the best imperfect solution available. Since as finite beings we are never going to encounter a perfect solution to anything, this type of fallacy effectively blocks all solutions.
This kind of fallacy is often used to reject political proposals, which of course nearly always involve compromises. If the government introduces a new and generally helpful measure on, say, environmental protection, you will nearly always find a pressure group commenting through the media that this doesn’t go nearly far enough. Or if crime rates are reduced, they are still ‘too high’ because crime hasn’t been eliminated altogether.
My guess is that in practical terms, most people have learnt the limitations of the Nirvana Fallacy. Unless you’re a ‘perfectionist’, you’ve probably come to terms with the fact that when you cook a meal, for example, something may turn out just a little under or over-cooked, or slightly too sweet or too bitter. However, I’m still astounded by how much the Nirvana Fallacy affects our root thinking on larger matters that still do have a big practical effect on our lives in the longer term.
Religion is perhaps the most obvious of these. Theistic religions involve constant comparison with God, or with God’s supposed absolute commands. Even Buddhism involves the comparison with perfection that the name of the fallacy suggests, since Nirvana is said to be a perfect state. Hooked on belief in these pure ideals, it’s no wonder that we feel sinful or inadequate. A type of religion that makes constant reference to belief in perfection of any kind just institutionalises the gulf between perfect and actual, discouraging us from making incremental progress. Religion doesn’t have to necessarily take this form, but it often does.
The same applies to ethical thinking, even when this is not religious. Utilitarians tell us that, in theory, we should always act so as to bring the greatest pleasure to the greatest number, probably implying that (again in theory) we should give away most of our possessions and spend our lives in constant compassionate activity. In practice, of course, it is psychologically impossible for most people to do this, but there is still a common tendency to think that we somehow “ought” to act in such a way. Again, the effect of this kind of idealised thinking is to discourage actual moral advances, because nobody really takes ethics seriously in the way it has been conceptualised.
Similarly, the pursuit of unattainable beauty not only tortures artists, but many young women who are never satisfied with their appearance. In this case we could argue that it is advertising and the marketing of beauty (with the help of photoshop) that implicitly puts forward the perfect as an enemy of the good, and prevents the recognition of genuine but imperfect beauty.
In terms of scientific evidence, too, the Nirvana Fallacy can be highly damaging. taking the form of a non-acceptance of imperfect evidence (through selective scepticism) because it is not perfect. Those who refuse to accept the clear but imperfect evidence for Anthropogenic climate change seem to be a particularly strong example.
So, this is an example of a fallacy that has become recognised in Critical Thinking, but involves so many habitual attitudes that I think only a whole revised attitude to life can address it. The Middle Way as a whole approach is needed to avoid the Nirvana Fallacy. We need to recognise the perfect being used as a measure whenever it crops up, and challenge it. The merely better is a much better measure than the perfect, as long as we accept the basic conditions of uncertainty that surround it.
Unlike with most other fallacies, I don’t think there are any justifiable resembling cases that need to be distinguished from the unjustifiable. Where perfection is used as a measure, the resulting judgements will be mistaken. That doesn’t stop us finding perfection meaningful, or even exploring its meaning creatively, but fallacies immediately arise when we use it as a basis on which to judge the imperfect. The only exception is the mere recognition of the absence of the perfect (i.e. scepticism), which does not involve using the perfect as a measure so much as deliberately avoiding doing so.
Exercise
Are the following examples of the nirvana fallacy? If so, why?
1. It is impossible to travel to the other side of the universe, because the universe is infinite.
2. I’ve had enough of your lies! When you told me the journey would take half an hour, it turned out to take three times as long. And you told me you’d repay that £100 you owe me months ago, but you’ve only paid £50 of it!
3. All our experience is imperfect. So we can never experience perfection. We must have got this idea of perfection from something perfect. The perfect being is God, so God must exist and have provided us with this idea of himself. (Summary of an argument made by Descartes).
4. The brain contains trillions of neural connections. However much we may try, we are hardly likely to ever gain a full understanding of such mind-boggling complexity.
Picture: ‘Elizabeth’, described as a ‘perfect beauty’ by ‘Lies thru a lens’ (Wikimedia Commons)
Malvern introductory talk
A reminder for anyone within travelling distance of Malvern, UK, that I’m giving an introductory talk there called ‘What is the Middle Way?’ from 7.15pm on Thu 13th March. See Introductory talks page for details.
Robert