Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Philosophy

Biblical Mindset

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One of the great casualties of modern academic theology and biblical studies is any sense that the Bible offers a philosophy for life. And I don’t just mean that it provides information for the creation of an accurate worldview or political practice. I mean that the Bible offers actual insight into the realities of human nature (mind, body, spirit/soul), history, and God. But I think that the Bible claims to offer such a philosophy. A brief example can be found here:

For those who walk according to the flesh are mindful the things of the flesh, but those who walk according to the Spirit are mindful the things of the Spirit. For the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:5-6)[1]

Paul, in the passage above, is claiming that his own gospel message contains a Spirit inspired mindset. And while Paul describes the mindsets in absolute terms (you have one or the other), elsewhere, Paul makes clear that one must be renewed over time and through tremendous effort to overcome the mindset and practices of the flesh (see Romans 6, Ephesians 4, and Colossians 3). So to be a Christian is to be daily obtaining and putting into practice the mindset of the Spirit, with the help of that same Spirit.

Kyriacos Markides described this view of the Bible as a book designed to help people form a way of life very well:

Likewise, the role of the Bible must be seen as a therapeutic tool to heal our existential alienation from God. And those who can offer an expert’s opinion about its worth as a handbook for union with God are neither the fundamentalists nor the Bible historians, but the saints who have extensively put it to practice. Furthermore, Father Maximos added, the Bible by itself is not adequate as a guide to reach God. One must take into consideration the entire experience of the Ecclesia, the entire corpus of the spiritual tradition as articulated in the lives, aphorisms, homilies, spiritual methodologies, and written testimonies of the saints. And this tradition is being tested and retested by the experiences of the saints.[2]

My definition of mindset is the beliefs, attitudes, and processes individuals and organizations utilize to interact with circumstances. The definition of the Greek word I translated mindset above is ‘a way of thinking.’ So Paul’s concept is not dissimilar from my own. What does the Bible say about the Christian mindset? The lists below are incomplete, but sufficient to show that there is biblical content to the mindset of the Spirit.

  1. Beliefs
    1. God is benevolent and does not tempt us to sin.
    2. To love is to be like God.
    3. The world is ruled by evil and I have contributed to that evil and fundamentally chosen to rebel against God.
    4. God’s kingdom is at hand.
    5. Jesus has been raised from the dead.
    6. Jesus will reconcile those who trust him to God.
    7. Jesus’ teachings can be the foundation for an invincible life.
    8. God is present in his people, the church and the history of the church is filled with wisdom and both good and bad examples of faithfulness.
    9. God has given the Christian everything necessary for spiritual growth.
    10. Every temptation is supplied with a way out.
    11. There is eternal as well as temporal hope for the righteous.
    12. Human beings are responsible for their own virtues, vices, and eternal destiny in a profound way.
  2. Attitudes
    1. Gratitude should be cultivated daily.
    2. Knowledge is good and love is even better.
    3. Hatred of all evil is good as well as a desire to overcome evil with good.
    4. Wonder at God and his creation is encouraged.
    5. The Christian is given a spirit of love, power, and self-control.
    6. Christians should approach church disagreements with moderation.
    7. Joyful anticipation of good works to accomplish.
    8. Money is a metric among many, it isn’t everything.
  3. Processes
    1. Negative visualization (consider losing everything in advance of losing it)
    2. Fasting
    3. Daily prayer and meditation
    4. Silencing your soul/mind/heart
    5. Planning for the future while remaining outcome independent.
    6. See every temptation, challenge, trial, disaster, and tragedy as a test of virtue.
    7. Subjecting spiritual claims to public scrutiny
    8. Self-examination and comparison to divinely inspired ideals
    9. Daily attempting to become more virtuous
    10. Confession of sins
    11. Honoring God by doing your best at work and in daily interactions
    12. Maintenance of property and household economics

References

[1] Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Ro 8:5–6, “ οἱ γὰρ κατὰ σάρκα ὄντες τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς φρονοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ κατὰ πνεῦμα τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος. τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη”

[2] Kyriacos C. Markides. The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality (The Crown Publishing Group). 48.

 

Philosophy’s Meaning and Utility

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What is Philosophy?

When you hear the word philosophy your eyes may glaze over while you immediately start thinking about pizza or video games. One of the chief criticisms of liberal arts degrees (especially philosophy) today is that they are pointless and cannot help you to make money (source). But this causes many people to think that they are exempt from philosophical questions such as:

  1. What is real?
  2. What/who is a good person?
  3. How can I become such a person?
  4. What can I know?
  5. How can I know it?

Keynes once made this valuable observation about those who don’t care about ideas:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”(General Theory of Employment and Interest, 383)

What perhaps causes people to shy away from philosophy is that many philosophers after Plato were boring. Also, many philosophy professors are unpleasant and impractical people. But I suggest thinking about philosophy by breaking the word down. Philosophy is fundamentally about loving wisdom. The early Christians often called Christianity “the true philosophy,” and saw Christianity as a complete approach to life because it was a philosophy. Taken this way, philosophy is a wisdom-loving approach to all of life.

How is it useful then?

If we conceive of philosophy this way, then we can say that it trains us to:

  1. reason from principles and such reasoning applies to almost everything.
  2. abstract principles from phenomena.
  3. apply reason to our feelings and circumstances so that we can have self-control. In other words, philosophy is mindset training.
  4. recognize the difference between intuition, vague impressions, and reasonable beliefs.
  5. compare our ideas and narratives with reality.
  6. approach life practically. I just read a Tweet (a post on a social media site known as “The Twitter”) which asked “What are you going to do today to A) improve yourself B) make someone else’s life better? And if you don’t have plans for both, why not?” Philosophy is the art and science of asking, answering, and perfecting the answers to these questions.
  7. examine ourselves to see if we are on the trajectory of becoming the best version of ourselves. For Christians this is a rather lofty goal, so any tool to help us is important and the Bible is clear that we should “get wisdom.” Wisdom in the Old Testament is probably very similar in meaning (though different in direction and content) to Philosophy in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

The Danger of Philosophy

  1. Reading too much philosophy is a serious time waster so read good stuff. I suggest starting with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the wisdom of Solomon, the book of Sirach, Fourth Maccabees, the dialogues of Plato, the letters of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Aristotle.
  2. Putting philosophy into practice, if the philosophy is bad, can prove your ideas wrong very quickly or worse, ruin your life!
  3. Learning to reason well without learning to manage your emotional reactions to the world is frequently frustrating, see Ecclesiastes 1:17-18.

 

Mindset: understand your self theory to improve it

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Mindset?

Your mindset is the collection of beliefs, attitudes, and thought processes that you and the groups you’re a part of use to approach the world.

Mindset has become a buzz-word of sorts in education, business, and psychological circles. Food is a buzzword in hungry circles. So, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Well, why does it matter?

So what?

Mindset matters because those who have a growth oriented mindset are often more resilient with respect to personal failure, sudden trials, and tend to possess more self-control. Those who have a static or fixed mindset tend to have less resilience and a more skeptical attitude to learning to new things or facing personal difficulties.

In the definition above, the core of mindset is belief. The main beliefs behind a mindset are beliefs about yourself. Why? Because you experience your life, so the beliefs you hold about yourself affect your approach to everything. These beliefs are called, “self-theories” by educational psychologists.

Carol Dweck and Andrew Elliot identified two sorts of self-theories (Dweck and Elliot 121-144):

  1. Entity-theory
    Entity theory is the belief that you are simply you: smart, stupid, strong, weak, etc. Because the beliefs about the self like this, they usually lead to absolute interpretations of circumstances because the self is either
  2. Incremental Theory
    Incremental theory is the belief that you can change in response to new situations and new information and that choices have a direct effect on the kind of self you become.

We all think we know what we believe about ourselves, “I hold to the incremental theory.” The fact is though, that our theories are only held to when we act on them. The most basic action we based on our self-theory is self-talk. If you want to know what you believe about yourself, look at what you saw about yourself.

Self Talk Questions

Take a day and write down everything you say about yourself internally and externally. Then ask these questions:

  1. What words do I use to describe myself?
  2. Are those words descriptive of the sort of person I am or want to be?
  3. How do I describe my experiences?
  4. Do I catastrophize (this is the worst, I’ll just die, this is sooo stupid/hard)?
  5. Do I describe my mistakes as examples of who I am or as things I could do differently?

Now, do your answers imply that you believe you can change and adapt to anything you face? Or do they imply that you think of yourself as a passive victim to your current state of being?

Thankfully self-theories, like all beliefs come from a combination of evidence and habit. So you can change your self-theory and as a result, your mindset.

References

Elliot, Andrew J., and Carol S. Dweck, eds. Handbook of Competence and Motivation. New York: Guilford Press, 2005. Print.

If you should sin

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St. Peter of Damaskos, in his treatise on The Great Benefit of True Repentance, wrote:

It is always possible to make a new start by means of repentance. ‘You fell,’ it is written, ‘now arise’ (cf. Prov. 24: 16). And if you fall again, then rise again, without despairing at all of your salvation, no matter what happens. So long as you do not surrender yourself willingly to the enemy, your patient endurance, combined with self-reproach, will suffice for your salvation. Nikodimos, St.. The Philokalia (Kindle Locations 20409-20414). Kindle Edition.

With respect to the daily sins of which we are tempted this is true. The big response which many make falling back into an old pattern of sin is to arrogantly throw up the sponge, admit defeat, and wallow. Neither the ancient Christians nor the Bible they read gives credence to such a method of repentance.

We forget that, according to Scripture, Satan is the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4) and that sin resides, somehow, in our members. What this means is that we’ve habituated sin so deeply that for all practical purposes, it lives in our minds and bodies! Of course we’re going to mess this whole holiness thing up. We’re going to mess it up badly! To imagine that discipleship would be easy is to miss the impression Jesus was trying to give in Matthew 11:28-30. He meant that discipleship, because it leads to rest for the soul, is easy because the broad path of destruction leads to weeping and gnashing of teeth. Easy didn’t mean instant.

A struggle many bright students often have is to feel or even say how stupid they are when they make a normal mistake. The self-flagellation that occurs, especially out loud, is a clear signal to those around them that, “Such mistakes are beneath me,” when the student knows full well that those in the room make such mistakes often. In other words, it’s performance art with the arrogant message that, “I messed up, but I’m not as dumb as you lot!”  I think that our responding to personal sin with self-destructive thoughts, and punishing self-talk is a similarly arrogant. It’s better to simply, rise again without despairing of your salvation, no matter what happens.

Book Review: Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich

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Introduction

Mike Cernovich is a civil rights lawyer, though I do not think he practices any longer. He’s considered a controversial figure. I don’t really care about that. A person could be utterly terrible, but it does not change the merit of their arguments or the truth value of their claims. I first came across Mike Cernovich a couple of years ago when I had found a study on ebsco about cabbage juice and heart burn symptoms. When trying to find more information about the constituents of cabbage and what it contains that might increase mucilage production in the stomach lining, I came across a blog called fit-juicer which cited the same article. While the site was clearly designed to sell his books on juicing, it had excellent recipes for juice (my wife brought a juicer into our marriage…I never would have considered one, but I’m glad we have it). Not only were his recipes tasty, but he typically cited scientific literature related to the consumption of juice or plant constituents in relation to the benefits he claimed for his juices. It was interesting. I literally went through his website using in-article links and never read the comments. I had no idea that the guy was a lawyer, a figure or controversy, or even his name.

Anyhow, well over a year later, I was working on a writing project (still am) and was looking for a more practical application of Carol Dweck’s mindset ideas that I had found in her book on motivation in education. In the process, I came across Mike Cernovich’s book Gorilla Mindset. It had a title that seemed cheesy, although most people want the things it claims to provide. I found, a preview on Scribd (or was it a pirated version?). After I looked through the exercises at the end of each chapter and saw how similar they were in design to the ones I was writing for something else, I went ahead and bought a kindle edition of the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the book. It didn’t merely provide a model for what I was trying to do myself, but it provided legitimately helpful insight into improving one’s life and happiness.

The Good

  • Cernovich writes in a terse, no-nonsense style that is easy to absorb and does not leave the reader with so much theory that they cannot act on the principles he explains. Example, when talking about the way you make plans in life, he writes, “Maybe this, maybe that, maybe I’ll be a contender. Mr. Maybe is the ultimate seducer. Mr. Maybe whispers honey in your ear.”
  • Cernovich’s advice on health is actionable and the mindset shift he offers on health makes sense. Particularly his comment that a sick body leads to a sick mind. While it is true that some bodily ailments cannot be changed through exercise/nutrition (I have a genetic bone disorder), it is true that nutrition and exercise can shift you into a more positive frame of mind about such things. Not only that, but when I lift weights regularly, I have significantly less chronic pain than I have after just two or three weeks out of the gym.
  • Each chapter has helpful and actionable exercises that one could actually do to improve himself or herself.

The Bad

  • The kindle version had several typos, he could have used an editor (or a better one).
  • I wish he had cited more sources…but getting his readers lost in secondary literature probably wouldn’t have helped them the way he intended to, so while this is a bad in relationship to my preferences as a reader, it is probably a good with regard to his goals as a writer.

Conclusion

I have nothing to say about Mike’s more controversial endeavors. But he’s a helpful writer and 9.99 for the kindle edition of his book Gorilla Mindset is a good price for people who struggle with being stuck in life, feeling ineffectual, or who have persistent and powerful bouts of self-doubt the prevent them from achieving a measure of emotional or moral happiness in life. I recommend his book.

Disclosure: I wrote this review after buying the book because I enjoyed it.

Review of Mindset by Carol Dweck

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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

This is a review and appreciation of Carol Dweck’s book on mindset. The topic of mindset is important to me because I’m a teacher and I often struggle with my own sense of melancholy and of having a static self.
The negatives:
The worst part about the book is that Dweck never properly defines what mindset is. There is never a sentence or paragraph in which she says, “the technical definition of mindset is…” She associates mindset with beliefs (1) and a way of seeing the world (244). From reading the book I did manage to come up with my own technical definition of mindset: the beliefs, attitudes, and processes a group or individual uses to respond to the world around them.
The other part of the book I didn’t like is that it gives too many examples. I’d give a long list of evidence to prove this, but I’d be doing the same to you in my review. In all seriousness, I prefer things to go this way: explanation, evidence (enough to be convincing), followed by how-to. In some cases, the evidence given by way of examples makes the book too clunky. But I’m not the one who wrote an excellent book on mindset, she did!
A final negative is that Dweck leaves out a lot of information about the importance of IQ. While I suppose that most of the people reading the book would have an above average IQ, any book on the relationship of mind and achievement ought to mention the importance of IQ. I do see why she left it out: 1) she wants people to succeed, so supplying them with self-limiting beliefs is the opposite of her goal 2) it’s bad marketing to psyche people out of the lessons you intend to teach them.
The positives:
The key distinction Dweck makes is between a growth and a fixed mindset. The growth mindset is a set of beliefs, attitudes, etc, that tend toward personal growth and the growth and improvement of those around you. The fixed mindset is simply the opposite. Because these are beliefs, ultimately, about the self they have wide ranging implications. Dweck applies mindset principles to school, romance, friendship, business, coaching, sports, and parenting. If you read the book, the chapters that don’t directly apply to you can be safely skipped. The relationship chapter is particularly good. Recently my pastor told me that he was impressed by the ‘stoic culture’ my wife and I had developed for problem solving, fighting, and disagreement in general. While I hadn’t read Dweck’s book when we were trying to learn to approach life that way, the flawed mindsets she outlines in her book are roughly similar to the patterns we explicitly tried to avoid and the positive mindset she recommends is our own almost verbatim, “To me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your partner’s development and have them encourage yours” (160).
Another major positive for educators is that Dweck sees that education is not merely about information nor about social programming. Instead education is about training people to take ownership of their own learning while providing a nurturing atmosphere for the inevitable difficulties and failures they will experience (201-202). A good teacher provides extremely high standards and criticizes the students’ work with a view to improving it, not the students themselves.
I would suggest that the most powerful chapters in the book are “Parents, Teachers, and Coaches: Where do mindsets come from?” and “Changing Mindsets: a workshop.” These two chapters are really worth the price of the book.

Conclusion:
I highly recommend this book to teachers, parents, managers, and ministers. The positives far outweigh the negatives, especially because most people like having books with several examples included.