#215 Whose side are you on - Anger or Wisdom?

     Normal human maturation involves transitioning through various stages throughout life. These psychological developmental stages are well described, but not generally well known or understood. "Black & white thinking" (rigidity & ambiguity-intolerance) and tribalism (identifying completely with a particular group, very closely linked to self-centeredness) are characteristic of adolescents and pre-adolescents. Unfortunately, some people never mature beyond these stages.
     Typical examples of such arrested development are found among gangs, "empire builders", and other cults. "You're either with us or against us" is a typical sentiment, and violent crime & other extreme adversarial measures are not only condoned, but advocated to promote the "in group" at the expense of "outsiders". Of course, members of these groups are "cognitively fused" - identify completely with the group's thoughts & emotions ie are "zealots", "true believers", "brainwashed", with trance-like adherence to "group-think", devoid of individual objective perspective or morality - "my (insert tribe) - right or wrong". The 1998 movie, "American History X", starring Edward Norton, is a powerful study of cults (see trailer below). The 2012 movie, "The Master" is also insightful.

     The classical “Greek view (is) that wisdom is a marriage of knowledge and virtue (and) that folly is a product of ignorance about what matters in life and how to solve life’s problems.”
     Ferrari M, Potworowski G, eds. “Teaching for Wisdom: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Fostering Wisdom.” Heidelberg: Springer, 2008.

      “There exist within us … latent but unexplored creative capacities, depths of psyche, states of consciousness, and stages of development undreamed of by most people.”
       Walsh R, Vaughan F eds. Paths beyond ego. The transpersonal vision. Penguin Putnam Inc, NY, 1993.

     “The challenge is, can we live more consciously? In a sense, mindfulness and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) are really about the art of conscious living. … Our work in MBSR is based on the conviction that … we have infinitely more capacity and dimensions – and I emphasize the plural – that we usually simply ignore. Even the educational system emphasizes only certain aspects of development, such as critical thinking, but it doesn’t emphasize somatic experience or intuitive experience or the cultivation of compassion or, for that matter, self-compassion or empathy and all sorts of other aspects of being human – including perhaps the most fundamental of all – awareness itself, which is an innate capacity we share by virtue of being human.” Jon Kabat-Zinn
       Gazella K. Bringing mindfulness to medicine: An interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. Adv Mind Body Med 2005; 21(2): 22-7.