Wow. The Doctors seem to have everything covered in their list of irrationalities.
They even get irrational themselves while committing to the list. For example:
Scripts we have in our head about how we believe life "should'' be for us and for others.
The Constitution is an "ought" (where "should be" = "ought"). My life should be sober. My children should not become screwed up because of my alcoholic actions. I should not lose my job; therefore I must admit I am alcoholic and go to A.A. The "is-ought" problem in morality apparently is still not settled, after nearly 2500 years.
values with which we were raised.
I'm certain that Christians who were raised as Christians would not agree that those values with which they were raised are "irrational." I believe that only an atheist who despises Christianity would say that. There are many other values with which we are often raised that are not irrational: the value of honesty, of bootstrap individualism, of gardening, of brushing our teeth, etc. The Doctors leave that one so wide open it is worthless to consider it.
Self-defeating ways of acting [that] may look appropriate for the occasion...
How can we know, when they look appropriate, that they are not?
Habitual ways of thinking, feeling, or acting that we think are effective; however, in the long run they are ineffectual.
Ditto
idealistic ways of looking at necessary life experiences
Anytime anyone tells me to quit being idealistic (back to the "oughts") I cringe. Idealism in the sense of oughts are philosophical Romanticism, which deals "
with the timeless, fundamental, universal problems and values of human existence." Oops, there is that pesky problem of "values" again!
Patterns of thinking that make us appear to others as stubborn,
Oops, there is that pesky problem of "values" again. I will stubbornly hold to my values as long as I understand them to be of value to me. Sometimes, stubbornness can be a value: just to give in to some other argument so as not to appear "stubborn" is no virtue. It takes virtues to hold on to our values.
Lifelong messages...They are unproductive...
No explanation is given as to why they are unproductive, yet the fact that we have received them all our lives (perhaps messages like "One Day At A Time" or "Take it Easy"?) would appear to be the reason they are "unproductive". The Doctors give no explanation.
Standards by which we were reared and from which we learned how to act, what to believe, and how to express or experience feelings.[Period. No equivocation on that.] When followed, however, these standards do not result in a satisfactory resolution of our current problems.
When it is true that they do not result in satisfactory resolutions, the Doctors are correct. However,
they also unequivocally state that such "standards...when followed...do not result in satisfactory resolutions". Really? 100% of the time? Christians, would you say this is true of
every Sunday School lesson you have ever learned?
The Doctors are Humanists, but they seem to be determinists, whereby such broad generalizations are meant to show "compassion" to the "poor humans" who are "
fully caused to be what they are", rather than moral agents capable of making informed choices.
The Doctors do, however, offer a couple of good points about irrationalities:
Messages about life we send to ourselves that keep us from growing emotionally.
This is almost always the alcoholic's dilemma. My own spirituality was totally arrested before I admitted I was powerless over alcohol. I kept sending myself the "message" that something was wrong, but that it wasn't the alcohol; it was the excuses I made for drinking it. Sure the excuses were the wrong message; but so was the reliance on alcohol to give credence to the excuses. (They never did.)
Unfounded attitudes, opinions, and values we hold to that are out of synchrony with the way the world really is.
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True. When we are in "synchronicity with the way the world really is", that is called having "correspondence" with the truth of reality. [
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Counterproductive ways of thinking, which give comfort and security in the short run, but either do not resolve or actually exacerbate the problem in the long run.
We call these "excuses".
Ways of thinking about ourselves that are out of context with the real facts
Again, the "correspondence theory". But the Doctors go on:
resulting in our either under-valuing or over-valuing ourselves.
This demonstrates that "values" are not detrimental
unless, according to the Doctors, you were raised with them, and then they are
bad. The Doctors leave no room for argument about that.
I don't like lists such as the one put together by the Doctors. By definition they must be so general that they suck anyone into their argument who isn't familiar with the embedded issues in each argument. This generality waters down the list so it becomes unusable, once you bother to look twice. No one should [ought] ever accept such a list without looking twice.
But most people are not trained to see the deficiencies in such arguments. Don't be fooled by any argument. Look closely at it. Question it. Ask yourself if it fits the "correspondence theory". Obviously most of what the Doctors wrote in this piece does not correspond.
I know that many will argue with me. It isn't necessary to do so in writing.
I am not trying to change your minds. I don't know if you agreed with that list in the first place. I'm trying to open some eyes, and if you disagree with me---Good for you, so long as you can make your disagreement correspond.
for reading my critique.
Sincerely,
Curtis C