The only baggage we all like to carry...

>> However, after seeing you latest post
> the reason I posted that

There is a bit of confusion here. By "latest post" I was talking about your latest blog entry [called "Screw it!" - A goodbye to all online debating"] and NOT your comment on the current blog entry ["The only baggage we all like to carry..."]

Nothing in your comment in "The only baggage we all like to carry..." surprised. From the name "forgiven10" I could guess quite a bit about your religious affiliations -- which one and how much, for instance.

I have decided to continue making the point I said this morning that I will make.

I am rather tired but I will get started. This may take multiple posts. This is also quite subtle and counter intuitive.

What does it mean to carry wasteful "emotional baggage"?

We all go though bad experiences. Recalling them months/years after the event seems definitely quite wasteful. There seems to be no benefit whatsoever to this. This is what is called carrying "emotional baggage". I am sure that you will agree with this definition.

Let me give you an example. People who have spent time in air-raid shelters during wars have often undergone traumatic experiences in the shelters. If they are taken back to the shelters for the first time after 20 years (say), they will still recall the bad war-time experiences. It is automatic. The sight and smell of the shelters produce these. Asking why are they carrying this particular emotional baggage misses the automatic nature of the "reflex like" things involved. What is happening is as automatic as flexing our knee when struck on it (as in the patellar reflex). To blame it on the "I" inside the person returning to the shelter is to appeal to a mythical cause. Given the history of stay in the shelter, its sight and smells will produce the emotions involved.

You had written about your unpleasant experiences with a debate in IL and about your recalling the painful memories often during the last month or two. Again, several words/parts of words may invoke the recalled pain. It is automatic. Your "I" (which would be "You") is not the cause of the painful recalls.

I will give one more example and then quit. About 15 years ago, I had a rather unpleasant experience with a coworker called Janine. I haven't seen her since the project where this experience happened. I have suffered the recalled pain several times in the intervening 15 years or so. She supported the Hawkeye football team of the University of Iowa. She went to college in North Dakota. Her parents had an animal farm. Several stimuli make me recall those painful times -- the building where that project took place, the word "Janine" or "Jan" or "Janice" or "Iowa" or "Hawkeye" or "North Dakota" or "animal farm" or "George Orwell" (in sound or print) automatically evoke those painful memories. The intensity of the recalled pain varies. It depends on my other emotions at that time.

Later. I need to go run an errand now -- someone is calling me.

 

> I have a couple comments but I haven't yet decided if I want to say or not

I wasn't prepared for this response.

I wanted to post a couple of other things too, one called rule governed behavior and the other another Harvard incident. I didn't because I didn't want the main point to be missed due to the tangents.

 

The world view I presented is due to a great man called B.F.Skinner, my guru. He was once walking near Harvard's Memorial Chapel. Two girls who were in one of his courses were coming out of Memorial Chapel. When they saw him they blushed and rushed to explain:

"We were in there only because we were singing" said one.

"And we got paid" said the other.

The great man, of course, didn't mind that they were inside the chapel. It was the students who felt defensive.
----------------------------------------
As for rule governed behavior, it is most like using mental entities to make things happen. Of course, even this can be explained in naturalistic terms. Some limited things may be accomplished by following rules as opposed to direct conditioning. In practice, the world is expected of rule governed behavior [for instance, to discard emotional baggage ]. [This is a quickie explanation. However, this is all I have energy for now.]

 

The Memorial Chapel incident has no connection to the emotional baggage discussion except in the following way:

Skinner is the king of naturalistic explanations. His course in that vein (also called as Nat Sci coincidentally) caused the Nat Sci 114 Syndrome. Students in his class perhaps in Nat Sci 114 felt self-conscious seen by him to be attending chapel.
--------------------------
Rule-governed behavior has a big connection. In order to make the connection, I need to explain what Rule-governed behavior is. I will take the time to do so at another time. [It is past my bedtime ] Very briefly, if you ask someone to "walk out the front door and take 13 steps, you will see the crab apple tree" and they are able to do it, that is rule-governed behavior. [This will work only with people with a certain verbal skill level. This will not work with pre-language children.] More to the point for current discussion, rule-governed behavior will work only for simple behavior (like taking 13 steps). It will simply not work for "behavior" like thinking about the Janine unpleasantness incident. In other words, the following "rule" (instruction may be better word but Rule-governed behavior is the technical term, we are stuck with it, there is a famous parallel in economics of being stuck with something sub optimal) will work

"walk out the front door and take 13 steps, to see the crab apple tree"

but the rule below will not work:

"when you are reminded of the Janine unpleasantness incident by say the Iowa Hawkeyes mascot, stop thinking about that, use your willpower to think about it"

will not work. This is a misapplication of something which will work only in a very limited domain.

I hope that this is more understandable.