= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
TimFreeman comments on You Can Face Reality - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (32)
"What is true" does not refer to the entire universe. In "owning up to it doesn't make it worse", it refers to the specific thing "what is true" that you are trying to change your mind about. "Owning up to P doesn't make P worse", because your state of mind is not causally connected to P. In the specific example of finding that X is false:
Clearly whatever bad things are brought about by a state of affairs where X is false are already occurring -- because it is in fact false! Changing your mind about X should have no effect on these affairs. Your social situation, on the other hand, is a completely different thing.
The Litany of Gendlin is meant to neutralize fears like "but if god didn't exist, that would be terrible!" resulting in clinging to faith in a god, or "I can't be ill, that's too bad to imagine!" resulting in not going to the doctor.
Makes sense, if the universe can be chopped up that way. If "what is true" overlaps enough with your social situation and you aren't good at lying, it might not make sense. I suppose the Litany of Gendlin was not meant to be universally applicable.
Take an example: coming out to a homophobic friend. Now, I'm gay - due to conditioning, I may feel bad about "I am straight" being false. Owning up to being gay won't make ""I am straight" is false" any worse, cause it's already true. This is the limit of the Litany of Gendlin, because my homophobic friend doesn't know I'm gay. So "X thinks I am straight" is true, not false, and owning up to it WILL make it worse, because it changes my friend's belief from true to false (and then they will act upon that belief).
Acknowledging the truth of ""I am straight" is false" doesn't make anything worse.
Acknowledging the truth of "X thinks I'm straight" doesn't make anything worse.
Telling X that you're gay could make things worse for you, but that's not the type of thing that the Litany of Gendlin applies to: It's taking an action, not acknowledging a truth.
(I think that's what you meant, but your wording seems to have gotten confused toward the end if so.)
Indeed it did.
Case of management of truth