Monday, February 8, 2010

Knowing It All

There’s a lot of talk today about addictions of various kinds: to substances, gambling, sex, video gaming, etc. There’s some controversy about what constitutes an addiction and whether all of these behaviors really qualify as addictions. Whatever they are called, one characteristic that I’ve found among people with such fixations is a know-it-all attitude. You can’t tell them anything that will help them to change their behavior, minds and lives for the better, because they know it already.

It’s interesting to reflect on how this connects modern psychological and traditional spiritual values. What would be considered to be a kind of ego defense, in psychoanalytic terms, or cognitive rigidity, in cognitive behavioral psychology, equates pretty well to what would be regarded as arrogance in spiritual terms; meaning simply that the person thinks that she knows things that she doesn’t, and therefore doesn’t have important learning to do, including thinking about what is being said to her by someone whom might be saying something useful if listened to. Two qualities that are missing in such people are humility (without humiliation) and spiritual motivation (motivation for experience of relationship with divinity, higher power, higher purpose, etc.). Interestingly, these qualities are directly cultivated by 12-step programs.

It’s all about brain chemistry, at some level. Substance addiction alters brain chemistry directly, while compulsive gambling, sex, and video gaming alter it more subtly, as research as indicated. But so does humility and a proper kind of motivation for higher or deeper experience, even if we haven’t been able to measure that yet.

Paradoxically, we can know more by sincerely thinking that we know less, and identifying, with humility, with a higher power or purpose; although that involves a different kind of "knowing." It's interesting, to me, that such identification connects the individual brain with the brainwork, the thought and lives, of very many people, past and present; and, who knows, maybe future as well.

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