Viewpoint Development Process

Communication and Miscommunication

___________________Phase One / Stage One / Day Eleven__________________
5 "Opinion is the admitting or receiving any proposition for true upon arguments or proofs that are found to persuade us to receive it as true, without certain knowledge that it is so. " Locke, Human Understanding IV, xv. 3 10 "By opinion then is meant not merely a lower degree of persuasion, a more feeble belief, but a belief held as the result of inference and not of direct perception." Encyclopedia Britanica VIII, 741 15 "When we speak of a man's opinions , what do we mean but the collection of notions which he happens to have and does not easily part with, though he has neither sufficient proof nor firm grasp of them?" J.H. Newman, Gram. of Assent, pg. 55 Opinions and judgments are the basic building blocks of our false realities. We use our opinions to instruct ourselves, punish ourselves, entertain ourselves and above all encase ourselves from others. Although we may wish to be loving or at least insightful and helpful in our communications, we do not move beyond our opinions long enough to get a clear sense of another being's reality. We may have thoughts of concern for others and opinions of how others should live their lives, but rarely do we feel our natural tenderness, or allow space for true insight. In addition, we often use our opinions to keep ourselves at arms length from another in order to defend and preserve our personal psychological territory. In the words of David Bohm, from his work: On Dialogue: 30 There is a great deal of violence in the opinions we are defending. They are not merely opinions, they are not merely assumptions; they are assumptions with which we are identified- which we are therefore defending, because it is as if we are defending ourselves. The natural self defense impulse, which we got in the jungle, has been transferred from these jungle animals to these opinions. In other words, we say that there are some dangerous opinions out there, just as there might be dangerous tigers. And there are some very precious animals inside us that have to be defended. So an impulse that made sense in the jungle has been transferred to our opinions in our modern life. Without knowing it, we are functioning as opinion factories, and in the process, sealing ourselves off from others in our opinion fortresses, or membranes. The most effective ways to maintain our membranes are to avoid being influenced by others and to avoid extending ourselves toward others. There is a basic pragmatic kind of laziness at play here: Having spent

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a large portion of our lifetime constructing our opinions, we do not want to redo the whole project! Therefore, we tend to associate with those who will support or at least not disagree with our opinions. Moreover, we have many reasons to generate opinions: 5 * We create opinions to avoid being changed by others; * We create opinions to avoid serving others; *We create opinions to avoid contact with forms of suffering, such as poverty, or sickness; *We create opinions to attain and maintain our social standing. When we have the majority of our impressions catalogued into opinions and judgments, we may experience a false sense of security. It could be described as somewhat like a nice, neat file drawer with alphabetical dividers. From the outside all looks in order, but the inner content, our opinions, are often contradictory, misfiled, chaotic and wildly inaccurate. Our opinions and evaluations are often a collection of one misinterpreted moment cut and pasted onto another like a series of collages made to suit whatever personality we were trying to represent at the time of the memory! We also simplify our perceptions in order to cope with time pressures as well as our general sense of overwhelm. We choose to create opinions of issues or events as good or bad, pleasurable or distressful, because we cannot be bothered to look any further into the issue, or we feel we do not have the time to understand. When an experience leaves us with mixed feelings, we often simply eliminate our recall of one side of it, so that we can be done with it. This habit is part of the unconscious program which is used to maintain our membranes. Deep down we know that many of our opinions and attitudes are fraudulent, but since we spend so much time with them, we are loyal to them, and feel obliged to make the most of them. We retain our opinions as a shield against chaos and uncertainty. Our opinions also give us a position on the map. Like a five year old proudly spouting whatever his older brother tells him, we are announcing our existence. Since we are intuitively aware that our version of reality is slippery, we dig our heels into our position, to keep from falling off the map. And the last but not the least of our motives for creating opinions is our desire for superior stature (in our own minds). This again is part of the ancient "jungle directive" that impels us to seek power and stature in order to assure survival. In human terms we find ourselves tending to our shaky self esteems with the sweet taste of self flattery combined with contempt toward others. From the false ego's point of view, the only way to be more than a "lesser than" is to be a "better than". Most of the time we are completely unaware that we are thinking thoughts which dismiss others and enlarge ourselves. If you listen carefully to the nature of your thoughts, particularly when you feel irritated, you will almost certainly detect a gossiping commentary about almost everyone and everything. Our spirits know that we are here to love and help one another, and yet, we find ourselves endlessly judging, analyzing and gossiping about others as if they were no more than characters in a book or on television. If we want to bring ourselves back to a more humane way of relating with one another, we need to observe ourselves and our opinions more carefully. If we reduce the volume of negative opinions which we generate, we can free our minds from the

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distressful and toxic overload of misinterpretations and reactions. In this process of Viewpoint Development we will work carefully with the deception of our opinions so as to unfold a deeper understanding of our common humanity. 5

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