Pragmatism - #4 Mindfulness Series
November 16, 2020
Henry T. Hill
From June of 2018 to today I have faced Amyloidosis, chemo and peripheral neuropathy. In my Amazon book, "Mindfulness vs Disease and Debilitating Symptoms Such As Pain, Fatigue and Loss of Coordination" and in my Mindfulness Series essays posted on Latitude Attitude at https://latitudeattitude.blogspot.com/ and on Marketplace Mission Learning Center at http://marketplacemission.squarespace.com/, I present my journey.
To achieve the healthiest me, daily, I use the following mindfulness techniques:
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Five Stages to Acceptance
Pragmatism
Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy
Transactional Analysis
Making Sense with General Semantics
Somatosensory Part of the Brain and the Role of Behavior Chemicals, Emotions and Physical Activity
Placebo Effect Concept
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Marshall McLuhan and The Medium Is the Massage
Words and Questions and Grammar and Chaos
Learning Theories
Poems and an Essay and Quotes
Feelings and Reactions
Pragmatism offers another mindfulness tool. William James in The Principles of Psychology published in 1890 presented the formula: Self-esteem = Success/Pretension or Self-esteem equals Success divided by Pretensions. The goal of this equation is to have Self-esteem equal one and have Success divided by Pretension equal one so that balances with one equals one. Pragmatism, a philosophical movement, began in the United States in 1870 from the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce and continued with William James and John Dewey. Pragmatism holds to the maxim, “Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.” Think of “objects” as events, actions, conversations, thoughts and sensations in your body and outside your body that disrupt/effect homeostasis/balance that you describe in words. So these become “objects” real-to-you, nouns with names and everything a noun represents like a “banana” to you in your mind. But “objects,” namely events, actions, conversations, thoughts and sensations, etc. when turned into words are not like “banana.” According to the pragmatism maxim, these “objects” you have created in your mind of physical objects like “banana” become your reality or conception of the “object,” which you in your mind have “objectified.” But what about “mind objects” that are not physical, cannot be observable, measurable, aren’t rational, aren’t scientifically verifiable, can’t be measured, weighed, dissected, dated and timed and indexed and with the underlying et cetera (etc.) but yet are still “objectified” in our minds. We react to these non-objects, these mental objectifications, as if they were like a “banana.” Words and thoughts act as tools and instruments for predictions, problem solving and actions. Words and thoughts do not describe, represent or mirror reality. “Pain” from my peripheral neuropathy offers an example of how to use pragmatism. Is “pain” an object like “banana,” or have I “objectified” “pain” and then I treat “pain” as an “object”?
Ideas … become true just so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience. Any idea upon which we ride…; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally. William James (1842-1910) Pragmatism: A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking 1907
"Our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and to do. Our self-feeling is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities, thus the equation where our Self-esteem equals Success, what we have actually achieved, divided by Pretensions, what we pretend to achieve in the future.
Self-esteem = Success / Pretensions.
Such an equation may be balanced by increasing our successes to equal our pretensions or by lowering our pretensions to equal our successes. To achieve the best self-esteem, we must balance our successes and our pretensions so that they equal as 1=1. To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do."
Success (our measurable actualities) divided by Pretensions (our pretendings or our imagined potentialities) equals our Self-esteem. So what should we do? Work day and night on our internal and external dialogue. Control our thoughts to maximize our self-esteem. Before peripheral neuropathy you may have walked three miles a day, but now with peripheral neuropathy you might find yourself only able to walk 200 steps a day. So put 200 steps a day as success divided by 200 steps pretensions so when you walk 200 steps, your self-esteem is high. Work to increase your number of steps per day. Work to maintain your number of steps. Like any learning task, this task takes time. You must change “I can’t” statements to “It is hard, but I will keep trying” statements. “I can’t” statements belong in the “Insane” category of General Semantics. “I can’t” statements using Rational Emotive Therapy represent “belief statements” we learned. We can’t unlearn these statements, but we can substitute a healthy productive statement as soon as we replace these “I can’t” statements with “I can’t right now, but I will continue working on this problem.” Date and time statements, repeat healthy scientific statements over and over as if you were learning a new song, record your struggle and your successes in your daily journal and look back at your journal to see how far you have come.
Free will, with whatever means we have to exercise free will, gives us freedom to choose to act or to choose not to act, to choose to say something even to ourselves or to choose not to say something even to ourselves. By the way, a choice to do or say nothing is still a choice for which we are responsible. Since kindergarten, we teachers have taught three rules: 1. Try to show up everyday on time and ready to work. 2. Try to do the job. 3. Try not to cause trouble. These rules will serve us throughout our lives. We patients must try to follow all three rules.
We must also accept the responsibility of Free Will. William James’ two-stage model of Free Will postulates that we have the basic ability to choose Free Will. William James separates chance and choice, the two factors, by arguing that chance is the part of the model over which we have no power, but after chance comes choice where we have, if we choose, the opportunity to make a decision of what we do or what we don’t do. We make our choices based on our unique experiences. So when you argue that you did not have a choice, often, that argument does not prove true-to-the-facts. We all live with chance, and our chance experience includes amyloidosis, PN or other health conditions. To become as healthy and productive as we can become, we must learn to accept the chance experience not with “Why me?” but with “Why not me?” and then take responsibility for the consequences of our Free Will choices such as Acceptance and use all the mindfulness tools to make us as healthy and productive as possible.
William James received his M.D. from Harvard in 1869. During his years of study James developed a neurasthenic condition which included symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, neuralgia and a depressed mood. James, reacting to his diagnosed neurasthenia said, “I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide." We must choose to accept as a fundamental core belief that we have free will. We do not have control over chance, the cause of our disease, but we do, with free will, have control over the choices we make every day, and those choices must include our willingness to fight, to just do it.”
Use pragmatism in everything you do. Even small acts will accumulate and help you to create great effects. Even the littlest act can help to make you healthier and more productive. There can be no difference that doesn't make a difference (Pragmatism (1907), p. 45). Record your journey in your journal so you may look back to see how far you have come.
Pain, the word, grammatically functions as a noun: “The pain is real,” “The pains are real.” The examples show the word pain as a subject (a noun use) in a sentence and shows the word pain as countable, a characteristic of nouns. Pain, the word, functions as a verb: “It pains me …” or “They pain me…” and as a verb expresses action or being, has a form for a singular subject - “It pains me” and a plural subject - “They pain me” and has the following forms: pain, pains, pained and paining. Nouns name a person, place, thing, idea, action or quality. Verbs describe an action, state or an occurrence. The word “pain” falls into both noun and verb categories.
Now apply pragmatism to the word “pain.” Are you treating your pain as an “object” like a banana of your conception? If so, “then, your conception of those effects is the the whole of your conception of the object.” This means that you have ascribed your pain as “real,” “real” like the chair, the window, the table, the television set, the walls and the floor and the ceiling of the room, like a noun. The difference of pain as “real” as chair, window, table, television set, walls, floor and ceiling has profound effects on your daily experience of “pain.”. Other people may observe, measure, and physically react to the chair, window and such. Researchers can sometimes measure nerve signals but cannot measure with a degree of certainty your brain’s reaction as “pain.” You feel something you define as pain in your brain, the somatosensory area of your brain, because somewhere in your body nerves send a signal to your brain and your brain hits the “Pain” alert button. Your “pain” is “real” to you but not “real” like the chair, the window, the table and such and get rid of the word, “pain.” Use the word, “real” for observable, measurable objects that have a distinct individual identity, have a state of properties which change and have a behavior that can do things (even slowly decay) or can have things done to them. Now for something even harder, get rid of the word “pain.” Substitute the words “strange nerve signal.” Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) or congenital analgesia describes a person who cannot feel and has never felt physical pain. People with CIP can feel a discriminative touch and usually have no other physical abnormalities. Some researchers believe this condition exists because of an increased production of endorphins. From December 19, 2018 through June 2019 when I experienced daily and nightly PN pain, I noticed that a visit by a friend often turned off the pain for a while. Endorphins could have contributed to this relief from pain. Could my brain learn to release endorphins daily and nightly to lessen the peripheral neuropathy (PN) pain? Could my brain learn to feel the PN nerve signal as just a “strange nerve signal” and not as a “pain” nerve signal?
So, I stopped calling my daily PN pain “pain”, and I stopped thinking of the daily pain as “real”. The former “pain” became “strange nerve signals,” which gives a neutral (neither positive nor negative) measurable, and sometimes observable phenomenon. “Nerve signals” constantly define living and therefore present a positive experience. I stopped feeling and acting angry about my nerve signals and said to my brain using internal dialogue that these nerve signals should not register as “pain” and should register as simply “sensations.” Using this and other mindfulness techniques requires discipline and focus. One must practice using these techniques over and over every time the PN “pain” returns. This practice took me six months, December 19, 2018 through June 2019, to reduce my PN “pain” to PN “strange nerve signals” and PN “sensations.” Now I receive strange nerve signals that are just strange.
Give yourself a Self-esteem badge, a blue ribbon, for every time you balance the pragmatism formula: Self-esteem = Success / Pretensions.
For more see "Mindfulness vs Disease and Debilitating Symptoms Such As Pain, Fatigue and Loss of Coordination" by Henry T. Hill on Amazon (September 23, 2020 and 153 pages and 3359 KB). Henrythill@gmail.com
References
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