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Inoculation > Isolation

I’ll never forget the story I once heard Christine Caine tell about sending her daughter to kindergarten. She comes home from her first day and she’s crying. Some boy called her stupid and it hurt her feelings. Caine’s husband sits her down and says, “Let me tell you what I think. I think you’re very smart. And I think you’re very beautiful, just like your mom.”

The next day she comes home from school with a smile on her face and says, “Hey mom, that boy tried to call me stupid today and I told him that he’s wrong because my dad says I’m smart. Then he tried to call me ugly and I told him he was wrong about that too because my dad said I’m beautiful just like you, mommy!”Subscribed

The little girl was almost elated to tell this story. Why? Because she realized she had an antidote for vitriol. She had a way to fight back and win. She was armed with the necessary tools to withstand great adversity (for a 5-year-old).

Caine told that story to point out that sometimes we need to remember what our Heavenly Father says about us when the lies from the world start creeping into our minds. And that’s so true. I’m going to take a slightly different angle here.

To me this screams inoculation over isolation (I must give credit where credit is due. I read that phrase in an article by Dr. Steve Stewart-Williams. He is an accomplished psychologist and author). If she had never heard those words from that boy, she would’ve gone through time having been shielded and not having built a resistance to hurtful words. By that point, she would have built up this unrealistic notion that people don’t say hurtful things to each other and once this hurtful rhetoric is encountered after years of believing it didn’t exist, the let down is significantly stronger than it would have been if she’d learned it sooner. This would have caused greater stress.

As it stands, she learned it early. And was able to apply what she learned the very next day. The feeling that came over her in the wake of this new empowerment was driven by dopamine (the proper amount) and a sense of self achievement, self-efficacy, and proper cognitive alignment as it pertains to her identity.

This is what has crippled an entire generation. Mom and dad bubble-wrapped them and when they entered the real world and found out they really weren’t that special, it wrecked them, thinking it was certainly their fault. They had been able to make mom and dad happy and now somehow, they can’t impress certain people, like the professor or the new boss… “What’s wrong with me?!”

Keeping children isolated from what the world offers is the wrong way to go about it. It only delays the inevitable and causes more pain than if they’d learned it sooner.

It reminds me of a client Dr. Jordan Peterson had who came in and could not overcome certain hurdles in life. She was in her late 20’s and was dealing with issues like not being able to finish college. Couldn’t keep a job. Couldn’t set boundaries with her stepmom. Somewhere in the conversation Peterson noticed that she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of death, animals being used for food, and the processes of both. It was just too much. Peterson immediately knew what to do.

He asked her to go to a butcher’s shop with him. She needed to see the meat hanging. She needed to know what was out there. Exposure therapy. They went. She cried after walking 5 feet into the shop. So they left. They went back again. This time she stayed and touched the meat to gain a realistic acknowledgment of what she was witnessing.

At their next session, she asked to go to a slaughterhouse. She wanted to gain a deeper understanding. This blew Peterson’s mind. This someone who could barely think of the idea, much less someone who would willingly attend something of this nature. Dr. Peterson couldn’t arrange that but was able to get into a funeral home where they were embalming a body. So they went. Again, it was hard to watch. But she did.

What happened next was amazing. She finished college. Got the career she wanted. Made a phone call and drew a healthy boundary with her stepmom. Everything fell in line. Now that she knew what the world actually had to offer, she was able to properly assess where she stood in the hierarchy of achievement.

When I was a child, my mom didn’t see how long she could keep me away from chicken pox, she gave me an inoculation so that my system knew what it looked like in order to fight it later.

If we wait to allow them to see what the world has to offer, they won’t have the luxury of learning this under our guide as parents and instead learn the truth of the matter and coping mechanisms from those they are around, which may or may not be beneficial. The child is much better off learning the truth of the world while they can ask you about it rather than asking their dorm roommate who may use unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Our children don’t need isolation. They need inoculation. Don’t hold all the information back. Of course I’m speaking of age-appropriate info. We don’t need to let a 5-year-old in on the mental issues of a psychopathic narcissist that murdered his wife and children. But they do need to be placed in a situation where they can hear hard things for their age and know that if little Johnny says something that doesn’t line up with what mom and dad said, they can trust you and no longer need to acknowledge little Johnny’s rhetoric.

Inoculate. Don’t isolate.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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Dopamine

Watching tv in the morning while getting ready for work? Listening to music when you get bored? Watch tv as soon as you get home from work? Watch tv to go to bed? Sleep with the tv on? Can’t have any amount of silence? Dopamine is mostly the culprit. Well, mismanagement of dopamine.

One aspect worth noting is that for some, not being able to sit in silence is related to being left with one’s thoughts. This sometimes stems from ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) that were never dealt with. As soon as it gets silent, those memories start coming back, so we look for noise to drown it out. The problem is it never goes away until we actually deal with it.

So why is it a big deal that we have tv on all the time? One reason is that if we are trying to sleep, the tv prevents us from going into REM sleep. Another is the brain needs more and more dopamine to reach balanced levels.

Dopamine was designed to be released in doses apropos to the stated goal. Too much or too little and things go bad.

A research study was done on rats and dopamine. They successfully muted or deactivated the part of the brain in the rat that produces dopamine. Then they put a piece of cheese about 6 inches in front of it. The rat starved to death. There was no system of pursuit in the rat. So we need dopamine to survive.

However, too much is just as bad. When we get hits of dopamine from things that cause us to produce massive amounts at once, it overloads our system. Things like TV (studies show that the brain is at its lowest functioning when watching tv and listening to college lectures), smart phones, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, chocolate (anything with lots of processed sugar), porn, the list goes on.

This is where homeostasis kicks in. Our body is meant to be in balance. So when our brain gets overloaded by dopamine because we turned the tv on, the synapses shut down and stop allowing dopamine to travel from neuron to neuron. The only medicine… is more dopamine. So when we turn the tv off, our brain says “NO! I need stimuli right now!!!” This is because your brain is mislead into thinking you are lacking dopamine all because it took in too much dopamine and your body’s attempt at homeostasis is sending mixed signals. This is the literal reason for addiction.

I’m not suggesting that tv is bad, that background noise is bad, that listening to music when you’re bored is bad. I’m only suggesting that if the intake of those things appears to be out of balance and there’s no possibility of silence without a disruption in your mental state, you may not be living your best life.

So what now? Dopamine fast. More on that later. But it is a thing. After that, we monitor our dopamine intake carefully to ensure we don’t overload. Knowing is one step closer to making it a possibility.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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10 Truths to Live By

I have had a couple of people that I hold in high regard recently all but chastise me, citing that there is no one way to do certain things and there’s no right way or wrong way to do other things. What those are will be for another day. Today I’ll list 10 verifiable, objective truths that everyone on planet earth could and should live by.

1. One should always aim high enough that the goal is unachievable while simultaneously making one better for taking steps towards such an ineffable aim. When you take one step towards the highest aim, the dopaminergic system kicks in and rewards you for doing so.

2. What one aims towards should never be another human being and should always be greater than anyone on earth, as people will let you down at some point. One must aim towards one that will never let you down. Aristotle once said:

Everything that is in motion was moved by another being in motion, but that this could not have begun by anything in motion. The very beginning of motion had to have been started by an eternal unmoved mover.

This is where our aim should be.

3. Anything you do for a child that the child is capable of doing for themselves has just delayed the development of that child in that area. Resilience and achievement are pillars for human flourishing.

4. Suicide is always preceded by isolation. We are social beings. The only thing that prevents us from becoming mentally insane is meaningful social interaction.

5. The greatest meaning in life is found at the crossroads of order and chaos. The greatest meaning for a man can be found at the intersection of productivity and generosity.

6. Life is about the journey. Not the destination. The destination takes care of itself through the manifestation of the journey’s steps.

7. To truly find meaning in life, make your life about others. Stop focusing on you and focus on others.

8. For children, self esteem is not the primary goal, but rather the secondary byproduct of the goal. If self esteem is the goal to aim for, it will be attained falsely and will not sustain without manufactured achievement. If personal self-achievement is the goal, self esteem is obtained through the successful merit of such achievements. Self esteem is the result of something else, not the primary goal.

9. If you marry because you feel love for the other person, you will divorce because you no longer feel love for them. The reason for marriage must reside on a much more sustainable foundation of compatibility, reaching beyond the fleeting nature of feelings into the cognitive process of knowing this person is right for you and you are right for this person, even and especially when times get difficult.

10. Pineapple ruins pizza (Ok. I had to put one funny note in here. But really, yuck. Don’t do that).

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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#notadragqueen

The issue of sexual misconduct is a dark subject. No one wants to hear about how awful some people can be. The primary distinction between sexual crimes and other dark and evil crimes is that it is done in secret. When one commits murder, there is open proof that a crime has been committed. When one steals, there is also proof. When one commits a sexual crime, they do so, often with a calculated, premeditated approach to ensure the victim does not reveal the crime nor the perpetrator. This is mostly done by scaring the victim into believing something very bad will happen if they reveal this dark information. Sexual crime is a secret crime. Sexual predators can continue their crime and often there is no open evidence of a crime having been committed.

This type of hidden malevolence invites any type of individual, not just the typical criminal. In murders, there are all types, but the most common are those killing for passion, status, or an addiction. These killings involve types. In theft, it is often for the same reasons. Also, these criminals have types. Usually, they are not the type of person that has a positive reputation, a job that requires a background check, and a close direct tie to their community and family they grew up around. Sexual predators do not have a type. It could literally be anybody. They can hide behind their perfect family, their cub scout leadership status, their money, and even their position at a church.

Before I go any further, it needs to be made abundantly clear, I despise sexual predators. They ruin entire lives, even if they don’t murder their victims after their sexual crime. The damage they do is lifelong and though it can be healed, the victim is never truly the same. Now that this is clearly established, let’s address the pendulum swing.

Many supporters of drag queens performing in libraries have decided to call out the hypocrisy of clergy committing sexual crimes. More about that in a minute. For now, let’s talk about children in libraries. There has been an attempt by parents to not allow drag shows to be performed in public places, particularly where children will be, like a library. First, the issue is not of hate, or even judgment. The issue surrounds children and their proper development. For centuries, we have known that children need to be exposed only to that which fits their current developmental stage. This exposure expands as they get more mature. But for some reason, there are a group of people that have decided that this exposure is perfectly acceptable for small children. The idea that someone with autogynephilia or gender dysphoria might have their feelings hurt is enough to risk the development of an innocent child. That is a problem.

Here’s also where part of the problem is: imposition. For decades now, many have been averse to the Christian religion, citing that they continue to impose their beliefs onto American society. Every time someone wants the Ten Commandments up in a public courthouse, they cry foul for reasons of imposition. This is where it gets quite hypocritical. Now, the T in LGBT wants to impose their beliefs onto our children. I know people in each letter. And I can assure you that the Ls, Gs and Bs do not impose their lifestyle on my children. But the Ts are certainly trying. Here’s what parents are truly saying, We want you to be happy in your lifestyle. We want you to love the way you wish to love. We just want you to honor and acknowledge centuries of child development understanding, and conduct your sexual life behind closed doors, or at least among consenting adults. Children do not belong in rated PG-13 movies, much less sexually charged dance shows. Do what you want, just leave our kids out of it. But there’s a new issue.

The hashtag “#notadragqueen” has become wildly popular lately. This is primarily concerning Christian clergy who have committed some form of sexual criminal activity. The sarcastic slogan basically suggests, “It may be a dark sexual crime against children, but at least it’s not a drag queen!” Or “This crime was not committed by a drag queen.” Obviously, this is intellectually dishonest. No one endorses sexual crimes against children… anywhere in the world. No one approves of anyone, especially someone in a place of power and influence, committing sick atrocities against children. But the hashtag suggests something more serious, it suggests an epidemic of sorts. Is it an epidemic? Are all pastors doing this? Well, let’s look at the numbers.

In America there are approximately 465,000 ministers, pastors, priests in America. What percentage of these clergymen do you think are committing these sexual crimes? If you said .001%, you’d be wrong. That’s too high. There have been approximately 7000 allegations of sexual abuse from a clergy member in America over the last 20 years, approximately 350 per year (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2007). In 2022, there were 10 pastors in Texas charged with child abuse. If you applied that number to all 50 states, there would have been 500 charges that year. This still equals .001%. This means, that using the highest year of sexual crimes committed by clergy, 464,500 members of clergy each year were doing the right thing, helping those they loved, honoring their commitment to God and God’s people, loving people where they are, sacrificing their lives to ensure those they serve are helped, and being attacked for doing so by people that simply don’t understand the life of a pastor.

But why pastors? Why leaders who preach against this? And why does it seem like it happens all the time? The reason it appears to happen all of the time is the media. The media covers it because it is an easy target. They don’t report that 21% of transgender women (men with gender dysphoria (GD): DSM-V, section II, vi, page 1059) spend time in prison (Movement Advancement Project). That’s an estimated 220,000 people in the US. They won’t report that over 70% of transgender prisoners in British jails are serving sentences for sexual and/or violent crimes (Rayment, S., The Telegraph, “More than 70 per cent of transgender prisoners in British jails are serving sentences for sex offences and violent crimes, February 2024). You will not see a report that says on average, 1 in 424 transgender women (again, men with GD) have been convicted of a sexual crime in the UK and New Zealand. I’m not suggesting that all drag queens suffer from GD, but almost all either do suffer from GD or autogynephilia.

I’m not suggesting that one is better than the other. They’re both awful. But the numbers on clergy don’t suggest an epidemic. To ensure I’m not letting the pastors off the hook, one of the primary reasons they are so prone to this is what I mentioned at the beginning of this article, secrecy. It is a hidden crime. They don’t deal with their issues because it will cause their power and status to come into question, so they commit a private, secret crime. There is never a reason that will be satisfactory to commit a sexual crime of any kind, especially against children. But for the T community to suggest that there is a huge problem with ministers committing sexual crimes against children (7000 over 20 years) without glancing into the mirror (220,000) is the literal definition of hypocrisy.

Most pastors are doing it right. Most are not predators. A very small number (<.001%) of sick miscreants do not represent an entire occupation. So while #notadragqueen is cute, gets emotions stirred up, and sends a virtuous signal that they possess moral superiority, this is #notarepresentationofchristian either. It’s just a small subset of sick people doing sick things.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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Does Empathy Equal Morality?

Empathy: Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing? Does being high in empathy make you a good person and does being low in empathy make you a bad person? Good questions. We turn to research to find the answer.

Turns out, the answer is actually that empathy is not moral or immoral, rather it is amoral. It’s just a thing. It does not make you a good person to have a lot or a bad person to have little. There is no such connection.

In a 2014 paper for the Psychological Bulletin, researchers reviewed all available data on this subject in a meta-analysis and found that 1% of the variation of aggression was due to lack of empathy. There is no real correlation to low empathy making you a bad person.

Studies show that when “spotlighting” one through empathy, one is willing to disregard laws, ethics, morals, and good reasoning to make sure the one they’re empathizing with is taken care of. This clearly clouds our judgement.

Participants in one study were willing to move one subject up in the list of transplants, even if it meant there was a good chance the subject would still live and a good chance the ones she skipped would die. It didn’t matter. Participants had empathy.

Another study took it another step and participants were willing to inflict pain that could result in hospitalization on a math contest participant that was opposing the one they were empathizing with. Didn’t matter. Gotta empathize.

You can only empathize with one person at a time. You can sympathize with many and have compassion for many. But you can only empathize with one at a time. This is why it is so dangerous.

Is it all bad? No. Cognitive empathy, theory of mind, and effective altruism are all ways in which empathy can be a good thing. We can allow it to drive us in a good direction but empathy must be met with analytic and altruistic reasoning that calibrates the possible upcoming action for effectiveness and realistic achievement. Understanding where someone is and how they are feeling is a good thing. When it propels us into unfettered, unbridled, blind action is when it becomes a problem.

Compassion is the best emotion to feel for those suffering. It is a true feeling that keeps bad decisions at bay long enough for your prefrontal cortex to get involved and make a rational decision. Rational compassion.

So, please remember this when you begin hearing people claiming empathy is the one all encompassing path to morality and goodness. It is FAR from that. On a good day.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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Where is the Middle?

Where is the middle?

I’ll start walking your way, you start walking mine…

I heard the story of girls in college who were roommates. The four of them were eating dinner and the conversation turned to politics. One girl said to one other girl, “You can’t be part of this discussion because the three of us are not on your side. We are on the other side.” This was brought to my attention because I know some of them. My immediate response was, “Why is there a ‘side’?” But really, why does there have to be a side? This isn’t a new problem.

There we were, people were willingly losing lifelong friends in the name of “Their team.” The entire first term of Trump and the entire time Biden was in office, this permeated throughout society. Biden and his team were making claims that no one consciously believed to be true. Men were not having babies. But this was being said by very important people that were believed to be smart. But this is what one “side” was saying. The more the conspiracy theories became true, people began questioning what a conspiracy theory really was.

Then comes Trump for a second term. Trump could announce that he will dedicate a state park and include outstanding black men and women in American history and someone would still find a way to hate him. In fact, he did just that! Notable black people in American history, like MLK Jr., Fredrick Douglas, Muhammed Ali, Harriet Tubman, and many more, will be honored by this new park. But it will somehow become a bad thing. Why? Because we can’t find the middle.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner speaks as President Donald Trump and Tiger Woods listen during a reception for Black History Month in the East Room of the White House Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. AP/PTI(AP02_21_2025_000007B)

What does the middle look like?

It probably looks like a place where I get to think for myself. If I like Trump more than Harris, and I vote for Trump, then he renames the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, I can think for myself and come to the conclusion that this was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen a president do. The middle is also a place where I can acknowledge that one the best moments of the Biden administration was when they began making steady moves towards bringing mental health to a place where it is recognized similarly to physical health, in the way of insurance coverage and medical recognition. It is being normalized by the medical society and subsequently helping save lives every day. This was because of the Biden administration.

If I loved Biden/Harris and despised Trump, the middle would look like a place where I could acknowledge that the insanity of claiming men can have babies and that anything non-white is good must cease if we are to move forward as a country. In the middle, I could despise the things that Trump says, enjoy the things that Biden or Harris say, and still recognize that both Trump and Biden gained the most financially from the production of covid vaccines. In the middle, I could see that while Biden was my choice for president, He changed the catch and release program from release back to Mexico awaiting trial to release into America while awaiting trial, causing there to be less actual trials for asylum seekers than ever before. I could recognize that the First Step Act enacted during Trump’s first term released over 1000 black men on day one of the implementation, and that this is a great thing. I could acknowledge that one is my president but call him out when he makes a bad decision. Because in the middle, I am my own person.

We have this terrible tendency to look at politics in much the same way we do sports. There is a binary way of thinking. Me against you. One way or the other way. Good verse bad. In sports, it is my team against your team. The problem with this analogy is that, in sports, when the Eagles beat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, America still won. When one part of America defeats another part, nobody wins. We become the divided states of America.

We find ourselves looking at the middle as if it is a severe compromise that denigrates our own conceptualization of what is right and wrong, causing us to combat such cognitive dissonance with blind fervor in an effort to retain what’s left of being right, regardless of whether we are right or not. This perception of the middle is a very nihilistic and produces nothing good. We would rather hang on to wrong information than accept that fact that we could be wrong and welcome new correct information. James Baldwin once said,

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to hate so stubbornly is because they sense, once the hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the pain.”

So what happened to the middle?

Well, it moved. If you found yourself just slightly to the left of the middle 10 years ago, it is now moved to your left. You are now slightly right of the middle. How did that happen? Each group pulled to the outer realms of their beliefs. The right pulled towards the far right and the left pulled to the far left. The results were that the left pulled stronger. How did that happen? Negative emotions. Studies show that when an emotion is tied to an event, you are far more likely to remember it, especially if it is a negative emotion (Kensinger, 2009). This is because during episodic encoding and retrieval, neurologically encoding negative emotions involves the sensory systems of process and positive emotions involve conceptual processes. So when something good happens, we see it from a conceptual framing, as if it contributes to the overall existential congruence we hoped for. But when something negative happens, it catches all of our senses, particularly sight, feeling, and hearing, which is directly involved in the release of cortisol.

Why is this relevant to the left pulling stronger?

Because the left are typically the ones responsible for suggesting new ideas to replace old broken ones. This is vital to our country’s success. However, this usually involves being emotionally tied to a negative situation where there needs to be a new policy or a changed policy. So they feel strongly about a situation and begin acting on this negative emotion. This activates the sensory system and gets emotions directly involved, which studies show can severely cloud good judgment. That’s where conservatives come in. Conservatives’ job is to address the new suggestions from a more analytical approach. So when the pulling began, the emotional ties to policies were stronger than the conceptual ties to policy. Thus, the left pulled stronger.  

Why are feelings bad when making policy?

It has been shown that empathy can cloud judgement beyond the scope of morality or even legality. Studies have shown that juries are more likely to find one guilty based on the emotional display of the victim regardless of facts, laws, or evidence (Prinz, 2011). Studies also show that people are willing to inflict pain on an innocent person if that person is in competition with the person one is empathizing with (Buffone & Poulin, 2014). Lastly, studies show that people are willing to be unfair and unjust to someone if they are in the way of the person we are empathizing with getting the help they need, even if it means someone else, or a group of people all dying as a result of the person you’re empathizing with getting help (Batson et al., 1995). It is a terrible idea to make policy based on emotions.

So how should this work?

The ideal situation goes like this: A liberal sees a flaw in a policy or a lack of a policy and suggest, “This is broken (or missing) and we need to do something about it. I think we should do_(xyz)__!” The conservative says, “Ok, let’s look at history. Has it been done before? Has it worked? What do we think will happen if we implement this policy? How will it affect the overall population?” Then the liberal and the conservative reach a compromise, and a policy is enhanced or created that is better for society as a whole. Emotions drive it, analytics define it, and reason implements it.

Why is this not happening now?

Algorithms. If you are not paying for the product, you are the product. The algorithms of social media are designed to only show you more of what you say you like. So the amount of opposing views you now see is minimal, on purpose. If you only see what you like, it only pours gas on the fire of fury you have over perceived atrocities. If we can remember this, we can understand that the real world looks nothing like the online world. Then and only then we may be able to meet in the middle… beneath that ole Georgia pine (please tell me you’ve heard of Diamond Rio!).

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

References

Buffone, A. E. K., & Poulin, M. J. (2014). Empathy, Target Distress, and Neurohormone Genes Interact to Predict Aggression for Others–Even Without Provocation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(11), 1406; 1406–1422; 1422. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214549320

Kensinger, E. A. (2009). Remembering the Details: Effects of Emotion. Emotion Review, 1(2), 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073908100432

Prinz, J. (2011). Against Empathy. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49, 214–233. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=pif&AN=PHL2175308&site=eds-live&scope=site&authtype=sso&custid=s4672406

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The Returning Rabbit

Are bunny rabbits cute? Sure they are. So let’s talk about them. One group of researchers took babies between the ages of 3 months and 7 months old and conducted an experiment. They put on a puppet show with little stuffed bunnies. They were wearing various colored shirts. The primary bunny had a gray shirt on. He was trying to get an item into a box and needed help. Along came a bunny with a blue shirt and helped the gray bunny get the item in the box. Nice thing to do. They did the scenario again, but this time a bunny with an orange shirt came and closed the box so the gray bunny could not get the item in. Not so nice. Afterwards, they presented the blue and orange bunnies to the baby and allowed them to choose which one to pick. Over 80% of the babies chose the blue bunny. They instinctively knew the blue bunny was good and the orange bunny was mean.

Next, they had a yellow bunny and a green bunny involved. First, the baby was to choose a food item, a golden graham or a cheerio. Let’s use the cheerio for this scenario. The baby chose a cheerio. Then the yellow bunny chose a cheerio. Next, the green bunny chose the golden graham saying the cheerio was bad. Again, they presented the bunnies to the baby and over 70% of the babies picked the bunny that chose the same food they selected.  

This last experiment is where it gets interesting. They used the bunnies who chose the food items, yellow and green, and conducted the first experiment. For instance, the baby chose the cheerio, and the yellow bunny had also chosen the cheerio. The yellow bunny approached the gray bunny and slammed the box shut so that the gray bunny could not get the item into the box. While the green bunny helped the gray bunny get the item into the box. This produced an internal dilemma for the babies. They liked the good bunny in the first experiment. They liked the bunny that chose the same food they liked. But what happens when the bunny that chose the food they liked is the bad bunny in the next experiment? When presented with the yellow and green bunny in the situation I just presented, the baby still chose the yellow bunny who selected the same food as the baby, even though the yellow bunny had been mean to the gray bunny.

What does this mean? The baby chose what was familiar over what was good. In fact, most babies in this experiment chose what was familiar over what was good. This indicates a natural tendency in humans to choose the familiar over the moral or ethical. The implication for human behavior is that when we encounter adversity in our lives, we quickly return to whatever is familiar. We like, and ultimately choose, whatever is familiar because there is safety in this. We recognize this. It shields us from the unknown. If abuse is familiar, this is what we will return to. We are quicker to return to abuse if we a) don’t know our worth and b) possess too much empathy for our abuser, also known as identification with aggressor (IWA).

Setting the tone for our children to learn and fully understand who they are and their worth is vital to adequate development. They must be taught what their actual value is. If they are not taught by parents, someone else will teach them, and it will likely be wrong. When we believe we have more worth than we actually do, this causes problems, as we overestimate our abilities, as seen in the Dunning-Kruger effect. When we believe that we have less worth than we do, this causes problems in assertiveness, standing up for ourselves, and allowing others to take advantage of us personally and professionally. The solution is simple. Who is God in you? That is the question. If we truly understand that we are nothing without God, but we are everything with Him, this gives us proper perspective. I have accepted this perspective, and subsequently, I do not allow someone to offer me less than what I deserve, but I simultaneously do not believe I am owed more than I deserve either. When you do not understand your worth, you allow things to happen to you that you would never normally allow if a) you knew your actual worth and b) it wasn’t previously familiar.

Another aspect of this conversation is empathy. Too much empathy can be absolutely poisonous. Empathy has a dark side to it that discriminates against anything or anyone not in perfect alignment with the individual you are currently showing empathy for, even in the face of moral or even legal dilemmas. This happens in the context of this subject as women try to show empathy to their abuser, believing there are good parts of them and they choose to focus on those aspects of the person they are in a relationship with. In this case, empathy drives IWA and blinds them to the reality of the boundaries this person has obliterated, in the name of empathetic dysfunction. A pre-covid study was done on this subject. Victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) were surveyed, and it was discovered that over 66% of women had reported to have left and returned to an abusive relationship once and 97% reported to have left and returned multiple times. There are many reasons for this, but the primary reason is not knowing your worth. It is fair to suspect these numbers are even higher post-covid.

This only highlights the need for parents to instill in our children good habits and good interpersonal perspectives. My parents forced me to go to church when I was younger. Then later, when life became very difficult, I returned to what I knew, church. Whatever you instill in them as a child, they will return to when things get tough. My parents made sure that I knew that I could accomplish great things, while understanding my place in the home and in the world, all while putting me in the position to return to healthy practices when life did what life does. Set your children up for success by instilling a balance of knowing who they are and who they are not. This will take care of the self-esteem issue and knowing their worth will help them avoid many obstacles in life.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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We Have Work To Do

Was 2024 different from 2023? Better or worse? The answer to that will be drastically different for those who experienced severe tragedy in 2023 or 2024. For those that didn’t, what was different about 2024? And the real question, what are you going to do differently in 2025 to make it better than 2024? The real answer is a very uncomfortable one. We have work to do.

Anytime something is better than before, it goes through an arduous process prior to the improvement of status. When making glass, it goes through extreme heat. For muscles to get bigger, they first tear. If you obtained a degree, license, or certification, you first took some very difficult tests.

There is no workaround. There are no cliff notes for actual progress. There’s no “swipe right” or “door dash me a degree please.” It’s the hard process that makes it real, adds value, makes it better, provides a sense of accomplishment.


What does that mean for you? For most, we could start with opening our minds. If I type, “Liberals are..” and you immediately finish that sentence with something negative, you have work to do. Because my first instinct is to finish the sentence with the word “needed.” I said this on the first page of my book, America’s Greatest Threat: America, “Without both liberals and conservatives, we don’t have a thriving country.” The same can be said on the other side. No “side” is any better than the other. They have work to do.

A recent example of this was the tragedy of the man driving the truck through a New Orleans crowd. Conservatives ran immediately to border policies, which was disrespectful of the deceased, if nothing else. They ran without all the facts. Just like liberals did with the last 5 mass shootings. They just ran headlines to push an agenda without waiting for the facts.

The facts came out that he was an American. Border policies had nothing to do with this. If you can’t see the problem with that, just because they appear to be on your “team”, you have work to do.


This thinking only comes about from limiting our informational intake to resounding echo chambers of negative outrage that captivates our attention and merely stokes previously held beliefs, that on the surface appear to be axiomatic, regardless of whether they are actually right, wrong, good, or bad. There was a paper recently released that showed that most Americans believe that if someone disagrees with them, it was because they did not listen properly. They must not have actually heard them. That is a big problem. They may just disagree because people have varying perspectives. Perspectives that you don’t have. And it is likely that you may benefit from other perspectives. Actually, it isn’t likely, it is a guarantee. We all have work to do.

If 2025 brings us anything, may it bring us the instantiation of diverse conversation, leading to and from diversity of thought, completely irrespective of nonmalleable identity characteristics. May it bring difficult, yet civil, discourse, with a central goal to make the immediate world around us better, often beginning with understanding others better, especially those we don’t align with optimally. May it produce conversations that have a central aim, and may we not be so rigid in our thinking that we can’t see that there may be a better way of thinking than the mode we currently employ.

If you want to see 2025 as being better than 2024, start with reshaping how you view those you don’t often agree with. Jesus did. So can we. Clearly, we have work to do.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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Beneficial Opposition vs Polarization

Why is polarization so bad? I mean, I like what I like. And what I dislike, I don’t want any part of it. There are people who like pineapple on pizza and there are those who are right. You either hate pineapple on pizza or you’re wrong! There are only two options. So far, polarization sounds pretty good. There is group polarization. This type of polarization is when there is a group of people that consistently reinforce previously held beliefs or opinions. The more the group opinions are discussed, the more extreme they become. To understand the impact, we must break it down a bit. Binary thinking and beneficial opposition are two good places to start.

Binary thinking is the process of thinking in terms of two. It is either this way or that way. There are no other ways. This has roots as old as time. But as it pertains to the U.S., we can go to the Revolutionary War. It is us, the new British, against them, the old British. It is the unrepresented against the negligent representatives. It is the oppressed against the oppressor. Karl Marx capitalized (ironic word to use here) on this weakness of the mind when he wrote the Communist Manifesto. He highlighted the oppressor (Bourgeois) and the oppressed (proletariat). Marx realized that if he could accomplish the task of everyone thinking in terms of two, then get the two at total odds with each other, this would open the door for someone to come in and “save the day.” This is how you take control of a group or country. As a result, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao attempted just that. Even Hitler knew to get people within Germany at odds with themselves. He also set out to divide the country into groups so that they fought with each other, allowing him to do whatever he pleased because they were so preoccupied with the fight at hand.

So what does binary thinking have to do with polarization? When we are in a binary mode of thinking, one against the other, it turns the argument into being polarized one way or the other. If we could get our thinking out of binary and into multivariate thinking, it would begin to eliminate polarization because there are many different ways of viewing something or someone. For instance, politics is the easiest mechanism to use for this conversation. People often think we are either republicans or democrats. But what if we’re neither? We feel ostracized. What if I believe in liberal ideals in some areas and conservative ideals in other areas? What if there aren’t only two ways of viewing a problem or a solution? If we open our eyes, we will see that there are many reasons why someone would want the government out of their business. There are many different ways to view a problem and even more ways to view a solution. If you limit your thinking to bi-directional, you miss out on so many other vantage points that are very plausible.

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Another part of the problem with this polarized way of thinking is that it only stokes existing fires and begins to remove anything beneficial to you coming from such sources. For example, you believe orange man is bad for our country. So everything you will see on social media and everyone you talk to will echo this sentiment. You will never be able to digest him doing anything good, if indeed he does something good. Polarization exacerbates negative emotion… “Get your pitchforks and your torches!” they said, when they were running to lynch Shrek. They knew only what they had been told by their echo chambers and never heard another perspective that may challenge theirs. As the story goes, we learn that Shrek was actually a very kind gentleman.

Beneficial opposition is maybe the most interesting concept, and yet a quite simple one also. Opposition, in the way I’m using it here, can be explained in terms of working out. When you lift weights, you cause opposition, or resistance. You tear the muscle to make it heal stronger. You put force against it so that in the final analysis, it benefits the muscle. We require beneficial opposition to keep us calibrated in life.

Another interesting version of beneficial opposition is marriage. In the Bible, God says that it isn’t good for Adam to be alone and that He is creating a “helpmate” for Adam. That term helpmate is made of two Hebrew words, ezer and kenegdo. The term ezer means to rescue, save, to be strong. Kenegdo means to oppose, compliment, counter. This term is used 21 times in the bible; 3 for military, 2 for women, and the other 16 times it was the term used to describe God as a stabilizing helper. This is how important women are to society and to us. So God said (paraphrased), “I’m going to give you someone who will help you on one hand, and oppose and counter you on the other.” This is a principle that is used in neurophysiology when they want to stabilize something. Applying opposing force to something causes it to become more steady, less shaky, and more capable of direct linear movement. If you have recently changed a car battery, there is usually a block that is bolted down that helps stabilize the battery so that it doesn’t move around and cause harm to the engine. That is a beneficially stabilizing force. So God Himself knew that we needed beneficial opposition and created just that for us. In common vernacular, God gave us someone to keep us in check, because as men, we need it!

Back to polarization. If we now know that we need multiple viewpoints to avoid binary thinking that leads to inevitable polarization, the only way this is possible is through beneficial opposition, hearing something we haven’t heard before. We must open our ears to viewpoints we don’t typically share in order to hear a perspective we haven’t thought of. The problem is that listening to viewpoints that may conflict with our previously held presuppositions causes internal conflict. This internal conflict is uncomfortable. We are presented with an idea that, if accepted by us, means we have been wrong the whole time about the previously held idea. And this goes against our very nature to seek proper understanding. Now we’re faced with the possibility of being wrong, which could cause us to second-guess everything else in our lives. What all have I been wrong about if I was wrong about that? For some, this causes them to rethink their entire existence, which is detrimental to their health. Hopefully, at some point, we get more and more comfortable being wrong about something in order to become more knowledgeable and closer to the ultimate aspiration in proper understanding. It’s ok to be wrong. Let the old idea go. Accept the new idea and let it propel you forward.

The way to avoid polarization is to open your mind to multiple ideas and be willing to hear opposition to a previously held idea with the possibility that you were already correct or maybe you were not and now that you have accepted this new idea, you are now correct in your thinking on that subject. It’s possible. Having said all that, don’t expect me to start putting pineapple on my pizza. I have to draw the line somewhere.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger

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The Best Two Presidential Candidates?

The founders were on to something when they left England. They left a situation where they knew it was wrong and couldn’t last. They left a monarchy. They had already seen what a pure democracy did. The mob rules. Two wolves and a sheep decide what’s for dinner. Every night. So pure democracy didn’t work. Monarchy didn’t work either. The rulers corrupted the church and caused an alliance between church and state so powerful that no one could stand against it. This is the reason they sought to keep it separate. To put a check on the government, the church, and ensure freedom to worship without such corruption looking over their heads. If you can’t tell me how to worship, then you can’t tell me to worship or not to worship.

This leaves them with brainstorming possible solutions. Fortunately, they eventually came to the correct solution. A republic: a representative democracy. Alexander Hamilton stated, “But a representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable.”

Ronald Reagan said it best…

However, this can only come about if it truly represents the people. And the way this was ensured was to document that those governing only do so by the sovereignty of the consent of the governed. Meaning, the people being governed are those who chose the government. Those who make rules, enforce rules, and execute rules, only do so with the consent of the governed. This is what it means to be in a representative democracy. When people far away from the meeting itself needed to be at the meetings, they would send a representative to speak on their behalf. Whose behalf? The governed, who gave consent.

This representation keeps both the government and the governed in check. The first check in the constitution was consent. This checked the government. The second check in the constitution was the sovereign being excluded from government. That’s a check on the governed- us. In this manner, neither can have too much power. See, Athens didn’t last nearly as long as Sparta for one main reason, Sparta had divisions of the government and Athens did not. In Athens, the government was the governed and it was all ran by the people entirely.  

Ok, enough with the history lesson. What does this have to do with the presidential candidates? Glad you asked. If you were to poll Americans, the overwhelming majority would say that Trump and Harris are NOT the best two options we have for president in this country. Most conservatives and liberals would rather someone less divisive. Someone that will unite the country. But that is definitely not what we have.

What we currently have in our country are two people running for president that the majority of the “governed” did not “consent” to. This is a massive problem. Politicians have routinely been accused of lying. Why? Because they say they are going to represent us in order to get our vote, then once elected, they do the opposite, which is always what they intended on doing anyway. It is rare to see a politician truly vote and lobby on behalf of the people that elected him or her. Recently, there was a group of politicians that got together to discuss the future of the area they served, and one stood up and said, “You expect us to listen to these people that don’t know as much as we do and just do what they want?” To which the speaker said, “Yes. That’s exactly what a representative democracy is.” This happened this year, 2024. Someone had to be reminded publicly that they represent people. They didn’t just get elected to do whatever they wanted. They got elected to represent us. That’s tragic.

If we don’t begin holding the “government” accountable to the “consent of the governed”, the government will only get bigger and bigger until it’s too big and we no longer have a republic, but rather an oligarchy or aristocracy. While an aristocracy is labeled as the better of the two because of a lack of corruption, neither are good, because they do not keep each other in check. As it stands, we have two candidates that were not chosen by the “governed”, but by financial elites that believe they know better than the entire country. The “governed” must get louder, or they will be silenced.

Stay Classy GP!

Grainger