Neshomeh ([info]neshomeh) wrote,
@ 2008-06-17 18:54:00
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Current mood: blah
Entry tags:notebook, philly

Critical Reflection Entry 5
I haven't been keeping up with this thing. Some things happened last week that I'm not prepared to reflect on, though I've told a couple of people. The problem with critical reflection is that it demands a state of mind detached enough from events to look at them objectively and not as sources of stress.

Also, rumors of my coping ability have been greatly exaggerated.

It's not that things aren't going well for the most part. I get up in the morning, I do stuff, I come back to the dorm, I have food, I do whatever else wants doing. It's fine when I have tasks to perform, because that makes sense and they prevents me from thinking too much about anything. It's the coursework that's hurting me. After the debacle over this journal, I don't really want to analyze or critique anything of theirs. If that weren't enough, I'm really just fed up with the whole "critical thought" rhetoric. I know how to question my basic assumptions, I promise. I was raised to do it and I was educated to do it. I do it all the time. I can't help it. I want to stop. I want to know what it's like to be one of those people that can (apparently) go through a whole day without seriously doubting the validity of what they think about things.

Anyway, I wrote something for today's Notebook Focus, but it wasn't really the assignment and I didn't get to sleep until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning because of the mental state I ended up in. I have what's been described accurately enough as an allergic emotional reaction to stress. At some point I realized that I'd really lost it this time, or come close. Today I talked to people at the Phila Center and I'm getting help, so I don't need to be rescued or anything and I don't want to talk about it, because it's humiliating and I don't have any answers. Just figured I'd better confess the truth.

I'm just hoping this will make my last year of college relatively simple by comparison.


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Critical thought
[info]daddyhill1949
2008-07-20 07:11 pm UTC (link)
Hi Neshomeh,

One way of describing the phenomenon of being caught up in "critical thought" all the time is that it's like being trapped in a squirrel cage inside your own head. It's definitely tiresome when you can't stop running and get out of the cage. It will wear you down and wear you out. Nobody ever said (or should have said, if someone did, such as me) that a person should be actively engaged in critical thinking and questioning their assumptions 100% of the time. As the character Medea says in the play of the same same, "We must not think too much. People go mad when they think too much!" On the other hand, she then killed her children to get back at her husband, Jason, who had been fooling around with a sweet young thing, whom Medea had also murdered with a poisoned cloak.

We all make assumptions about a lot of things, and we act on those assumptions freely most of the time in order to get things done and interact with the world and other people in an orderly way. The best reason to devote time and energy to questioning your assumptions seriously is when things aren't working out the way they used to or the way you think they should. For example, when people get older, they sometimes discover that things they remember quite clearly in fact happened differently or never happened at all. So questioning the assumption that memory is reliable is a good idea when the memories in question have immediate and significant bearing on what's going on now.

Another way of looking at this is that getting caught up in the squirrel cage is just another way of taking oneself too seriously. A lot of stuff we worry about or fret over just isn't all that important and can be let go of. That's easier said than done, of course. So people use tricks to accomplish this, such as various kinds of distractions (exercise, music, movies, food, etc.). Distractions typically work only temporarily, and then directed effort is required--learning how to say "No, I've had enough of this" over and over until you've moved on to something more profitable.

Nobody said living the examined life would be easy. It's just that in the long run it's superior to living the unexamined life, though that often appears easier and more comfortable. The real objective, what works the best in the long run is that word you hear all the time--balance. It's the Golden Mean, the Middle Way, or something like that. Hard to achieve 100% of the time, but worth striving for.

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