Back in 1992, before he became famous as the author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and its innumerable sequels and spinoffs, Dr. Richard Carlson wrote a wonderful little self-help book called You Can Be Happy No Matter What. This brief (141 pages) volume is chock-full of penetrating insights and useful advice, presented in a readable and engaging style. Over the years I've turned to it repeatedly and have always profited from it.
Early in the book, Carlson discusses what he calls "thought systems," and makes some valuable points (all emphases are in the original):
All of our past thoughts can be clustered into our "thought system," a self-contained unit through which we see the world. Every decision, reaction, and interpretation we have is colored by our individualized thought system.
Our thought system is like a filter that information passes through before it gets to our awareness. It is a complex, perfectly woven pattern of thought, linked together into concepts, beliefs, expectations, and opinions. It is our thought system that enables us to compare new facts or situations with what we already know from past experience.
Your thought system includes all the information you have accumulated over your lifetime. It is past information that your thought system uses to interpret the relative significance of everything that happens in your life. In this sense, a thought system is the source of conditioned thought. When you rely on it, you are thinking in a habitual manner, your usual way of seeing things. Here is where your habitual reactions to life are formed.
Thought systems contain our view of "the way life is." They are the psychological mechanisms that convince us when we are right, accurate in our understanding, or justified. Thought systems by nature are stubborn and do not appreciate being tampered with. They are absolutely self-validating. If your thought system includes the idea that our country's schools are horrible and are the cause of most of our problems as a nation, then the following scenario would be possible: You're reading the evening paper and on page thirty-six, you come across an article near the bottom of the page that says, "Twenty-one students fail literacy exam in district." You smile; you are proven right again. You show the article to your spouse, "You see dear, our schools are falling apart. It's just like I've been telling you." You don't know that on the front page of the same paper, the headlines read, "Nation's school test scores up 17% over the past five years!" But such is the nature of thought systems. Due to the way they are wired in our minds, there will always seem to be a logical connection among things we perceive to be true. Our beliefs will always make perfect sense to us within our own thought system.
Our thought systems lead us to believe that we are realists and that the way we see life is the way life really is. The fact that one person can view a situation as an opportunity and another equally intelligent person sees the same thing as a major problem doesn't bother a thought system. Our thought system dismisses the other point of view as off track, well-intended but wrong, or not quite right.
Because our thought systems are filled with our memory of the past, information we have accumulated throughout our lifetimes, they encourage us to continue to see things in the same way. We react negatively (or positively) to the same situations or circumstances over and over again, interpreting our current experiences in life as we have in the past. A person who believes that people are inherently critical will become defensive whenever anyone offers a suggestion, regardless of whether the person meant to be critical. This will become a theme in his life unless and until he understands the nature of thought systems, particularly his own. Understanding this concept will help him see that he is not seeing reality, or truth, but an interpretation of reality through his own thinking.
Because our thought systems are so familiar to us, they seem to be giving us true, accurate information. Because of the self-validating aspect of thought systems, we accept familiar ideas and disregard the rest. This is why people rarely change their political or religious views, and why they hesitate to even discuss them with friends or family. They "know the truth" and can come up with examples and arguments to support their claims. They also "know" that their family and friends "don't understand the truth," and because they are stubborn they probably never will. We know the result of locking heads with other thought systems — usually frustration is experienced on all sides. This is why people gravitate toward others who share their beliefs, and become impatient with those who don't.
Understanding the nature of thought systems can change this. When we know that other people (and ourselves) innocently interpret our beliefs as if they were reality, we can let go of the need to be right. We can see that our beliefs are merely a function of past conditioning and experiences. Had our past been different, our ideas about life would be different. Other people's beliefs are also a result of their past experiences. Had things been different, a totally different set of beliefs would have surfaced.
"This may be true," you say, "but my view of life is a good one and not only do I still think it's accurate, I wouldn't change it even if I could." The point here is not to change your thought system or your ideas about life, but to see the arbitrary nature of them. We only need to see the fact of thought systems, not tamper with the contents, to reduce the frustration in our lives. Unless we understand thought systems, we can rarely hear other points of view. We interpret what others say and do based on what we already know. Information comes in and we decide whether it makes sense, based on our previous knowledge. Unless the information is something we already agree with, our thought system will have a tendency to discount it. In short, new information is usually unwelcome within our existing thought systems. This is why we can be bothered by the same events or circumstances over and over again throughout our lifetimes. We have developed recurrent cause-and-effect relationships between certain events and reactions.
For example, you might believe that whenever someone gives you a suggestion, it means that they disapprove of you as a person. You won't question this because your thought system will validate it. It always seems to be a true, accurate assumption about human nature. Even if someone assures you that your assumption is off-base, you convince yourself that the other person has hidden motives or that they are not aware of their hostility toward you. However long it takes, you will seek to verify your existing beliefs to prove yourself right, even at the expense of making yourself miserable.
But if you understand the nature of thought systems, you can begin to see beyond them, and sense the value in other points of view. What we used to interpret as criticism we now see merely as an opinion from another person with his or her own thought systems. We can virtually eliminate unprofitable arguments in our lives and can completely eliminate feeling resentful, confused, or angry at others who don't see things our way. In fact, when we understand the stubborn nature of thought systems, we will expect others not to see things our way. [pages 19-23]
I would add that one feature of what Carlson calls thought systems (and what I call worldviews) is that, in order to justify them, we usually create arguments to prove that the consequences of accepting or rejecting a particular worldview are monumentally important.
For instance, skeptics — in order to convince themselves that their rejection of any belief in the paranormal is a matter of crucial importance — sometimes make an argument like this:
"Belief in the paranormal would take us straight back to the Dark Ages. It would destroy modern science and technology and reduce us to a primitive, subsistence level of existence. It would wreck civilization. Moreover, Nazism had elements of mysticism and paranormal belief. Opening the door to such things means throwing down a welcome mat for totalitarianism. Therefore, belief in the paranormal jeopardizes freedom, civilization, science, progress, and all human life."
The stakes could hardly be higher than that! But the argument is, of course, a threadbare rationalization. There is no necessary cause-and-effect linkage between belief in the paranormal and rejecting all of modern science. In fact, one can make a case that certain developments in modern science make it easier to accept the evidence for the paranormal. And many leading scientists throughout history have had strong mystical or paranormal beliefs.
As far as the Nazis are concerned, their ideology was a confused mishmash of disparate elements, including an attempt to revive the pre-Christian Teutonic religion/mythology of their ancestors for propagandistic purposes (they wanted to make the Fuhrer into a god). Other totalitarian movements, such as Maoism (which killed even more people than Nazism), have eschewed any mystical or paranormal ingredients.
Of course, as a certain carpenter once pointed out, it's easy to see the sawdust in your neighbor's eye, but much harder to see the timber in your own. Believers in the paranormal have their own way of convincing themselves that their belief system is critically important. They often say something like this:
"Materialism is the cause of all the ills of the modern world and is leading us to destruction. It's responsible for war, environmental degradation, rampant consumerism, dehumanizing social conditions, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Only by adopting a more spiritual view, which includes the acceptance of paranormal phenomena, can we defeat materialism and attain a higher, nobler, more fulfilling state of being. As long as materialism is the dominant philosophy, the world will continue careening out of control. Our only hope of ensuring humanity's survival is for the forces of anti-materialism to win out. Otherwise we're doomed."
I'm afraid that I would characterize this as a mere rationalization also. While there are certain advantages to a more spiritual outlook, there are also definite hazards. People who are open to "spiritual" guidance may find themselves drawn into cults; they may become overly trusting and therefore gullible; they may become the victims of con artists like fake psychics and fake mediums; they may see world-saving leadership qualities in political figures who are quite unworthy of this acclaim. (Not that anything like this has happened lately…) They may become disconnected from the practical requirements of daily life. They may divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, with themselves and those who agree with them elevated to the former category and everyone else relegated to the latter. They may even develop mental illness, begin to hear voices, become addicted to using a Ouija board or calling a psychic hotline.
Countries around the world with high levels of belief in the supernatural and the paranormal are not necessarily known for a higher standard of living, higher quality of life, or higher level of overall happiness than their more materialistic counterparts. Indeed, quite often the opposite is true. And periods of history characterized by high levels of belief in the paranormal have not been golden ages of universal prosperity and harmony. For the most part, these periods have been no better than other periods — and perhaps, in some respects, worse.
Those on each side try to convince themselves that the fate of the world depends on having as many people as possible agree with their opinion. But the fact is, they want people to agree with them simply in order to justify and vindicate their own worldview; the stuff about the fate of the world is mere window dressing.
That's just how the mind works. We're all better off if we can at least become aware of it. Richard Carlson's fine little book can help us to do just that.