Category: Psychology

Love, power and “othering”

Post author By Mike Lowe
Post date October 26, 2023
No Comments on Love, power and “othering”

Bridges Between Us by Carl W. Rohrig

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
William Gladstone

In this time of increased polarisation and conflict everywhere, a new verb has appeared in the English language. To “other” someone is to stop seeing them as a fellow human who has motives and emotions that are understandable and relatable. The “other” might as well be an alien or a malevolent android: they can be opposed, blamed, hated, even killed – but not understood.

This “othering” is a real problem. It massively reduces our options for dealing with behaviours we don’t like. Here’s why:

Culture Politics Psychology

Monarchy: symbol of belonging – and not-belonging

Post author By Mike Lowe
Post date September 12, 2022
No Comments on Monarchy: symbol of belonging – and not-belonging

I have been thinking a lot recently about identity and belonging – two distinct but overlapping concepts.

We are social animals. Evolution has wired deep into our DNA a sense that our survival depends on being part of a group – a tribe, family, nation, culture. Non Western cultures emphasise belonging more than individual identity. Māori writer Owen Eastwood describes the way this is expressed in his culture as whakapapa (pronounced far-ka-pa-pa). As a child searching for his identity in the years following the death of his Māori father, he received a letter from the office of his Māori tribe with the heading “You belong” and including a detailed genealogy tracing every ancestor back through grandparents, great-grandparents back to Paikea – the whale rider – a mythical ancestor who had come from the spiritual homelands of Hawaiki across the ocean to the islands the Māori now call home. This heritage, he was told, is his whakapapa, and it includes not only the names but the stories of those ancestors. And embedded in those stories are the values which describe what it is to be Māori.

Culture Psychology Spirituality

A Return to Conscience

Photo by An Min from PxHere

I’m thinking more and more about the importance of conscience as distinct from values.

Values are certainly important. As kids we absorb the values of the adults around us (which may or may not be a good thing!) Part of growing up is finding what our own values are – whether through trial and error or serious inner reflection. Finding people whose values are somewhat aligned with our own is an important foundation of the trust required in all our relationships – whether intimate partners, friends or work colleagues. We could all benefit from some serious reflection about what we value individually and as organisations/institutions.

But conscience is more than just having values.

Culture Psychology Spirituality

A Dangerous Slide into Unconscious Religion

Post author By Mike Lowe
Post date November 14, 2021
No Comments on A Dangerous Slide into Unconscious Religion

If we don’t do religion consciously we will do it unconsciously.

A bold statement, I know! – But one that I believe more and more to be true. We are religious animals, despite the brief interlude of The Enlightenment, Modernism and Post-modernism. We are wired to look for a grand over-arching explanation of the world we experience, and our place in it (a meta-narrative) and within that to belong to a community of fellow believers motivated by a purpose bigger than ourselves.

Culture Economics Psychology

The True Power of Money

Faust und Mephisto by Anton Kaulbach

Imagine I offered you a potion that would give you super-powers to control other people, to bend them to your will. You could use this power however you wanted – for good or ill. You could quit your job, stay in a fancy hotel dining on caviar and champagne and have as much amazing sex as you want. You could help your friends and hurt your enemies. You could use your powers to make the world a better place, ending poverty and hunger and halting environmental destruction.

Would you take the potion?

Health Psychology

Acknowledging Emotions in a Pandemic

Post author By Mike Lowe
Post date August 11, 2021
No Comments on Acknowledging Emotions in a Pandemic

We mostly make our choices based on emotions… and then, after we’ve decided, we find a way to justify those decisions rationally.

It’s a secret that marketers and politicians have long known.

We like to think we are making rational decisions. We like to believe we are making our own choices without being emotionally manipulated. But it’s seldom true.

That is why, when it comes to debates around vaccination, appeals to reason are seldom effective.

Tags emotions, pandemic, Sense-making

Culture Economics Psychology

The genius and curse of specialisation

Post author By Mike Lowe
Post date May 23, 2021
No Comments on The genius and curse of specialisation

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
Arthur Schopenhauer

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully, nor for much longer, unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
Buckminster Fuller

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.
John M. Culkin (provenance unclear – see here)

The genius of capitalism is also its fatal flaw – and that thing is specialisation. In simplest terms it means that the baker can just focus on baking, the cobbler can just focus on making shoes, the builder can just focus on building and at the end of the day each person gets everything they need – food, clothing and shelter … and much more.

Politics Psychology

When we don’t listen

Violence is often a form of communication born of desperation.

When we don’t or won’t or can’t listen to each other and respond to what we have heard at a human level, there are consequences.

The wisest commentary I ever heard on the Middle East was from a young Palestinian who observed that in her home country there are two peoples crying out in deep pain, desperate for their pain to be heard and acknowledged by the other – and yet each unable to hear and acknowledge the other’s pain. The rocks and rockets, bullets and bombs have their roots in a desperate cry to be heard and seen and acknowledged as fellow suffering humans.

Psychology Spirituality

Altered States

There’s been a lot of articles published recently about the astonishing results people are getting using psychadelics to treat difficult psychological conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and anxiety/depression around end of life/terminal illness. The mind-altering substances being used for these studies are mostly psyllocibin (as found in “magic mushrooms”), MDMA (ecstasy) and LSD. A recent book exploring this is by Michael Pollan: How to Change Your Mind.

Culture Psychology

Who is to blame?

Who’s fault is it? (another long but important read)

Who’s to blame? is not something we ask when things are going well. But when the proverbial shit hits the fan it’s often the first question that comes up. And right now, when so many people are struggling with what feels like a lifetime’s worth of shit hitting a fan of global proportions, it’s a question and a sentiment that is showing up everywhere. It’s a question that comes up whenever people are hurting and angry and looking for somewhere to direct that anger. Current popular targets of blame include various political leaders, certain wealthy individuals and corporations, the Deep State, the Illuminati, various ethnic groups or genders or even nations.