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It is apparent that one property of self-deception is a need to have others validate your wrong-ness (as right-ness). You can't be settled or peaceful about your untruthfulness, to use a term I like to use. You must constantly seek justification from others, or attempted justification, we might say, since it is not real and is never satisfied. The scriptures are filled with examples of people who weren't satisfied to ignore the testimony of the prophets or the righteous and go about their lives. They needed to cancel them - kick them out of their cities, or kill them. The Zoramites couldn't even handle that the righteous whom they had kicked out were accepted by another people, and so they began a great war. Obviously the crucifixion of the Savior is another example of this need to cancel the person who is challenging your erroneous beliefs and works. There's no, oh well I don't feel the way he does but he's free to express and live his beliefs as long as my rights are maintained. No, there's not a feeling of equality, but a need to squelch the opposing viewpoint, to the point of harm. So there are extreme examples and there are far more common examples of people who are in the wrong seeking to impose their views on others, or not being comfortable with others having differing views. I don't know if I need to cite current societal trends, probably not. But if your view is correct and in line with God and your knowledge of the truth, through the light of Christ, which everybody has constantly, you don't have this need. You might not agree with people, their views may disturb you in a way, but not because it threatens your correctness. You might have a desire to convince others to your way of thinking, but it's out of love and a desire to do good and serve God and fellow man. So this becomes a clue to everybody, it seems to me, to detect if you're in the wrong about something or not. Do you feel a need for others to believe something you believe? Do you feel a need to silence or eliminate those who don't? If so, it's time to examine your position. This happens in more subtle ways every day in normal interactions, and that should probably be talked about sometime...

I discuss the mechanics of willpower and choice in the face of temptation. Basically, #1, in the face of temptation, should you have gotten yourself out of the situation or otherwise avoided it in the first place, or can you now? When Joseph in Egypt found himself in a bad situation with Potiphar's wife, he "got him out". He has been described (by Niel A. Maxwell) as having had good legs. So first avoid the situation or get out of it in the first place. Does a certain situation present temptations for you and you know it? Then avoid that situation, if you can. You don't have to ever go to the bar. You don't have to go to that party in the first place. You don't have to even touch alcohol, or drugs. You might not need to hang around that person. You might not need to use that app, or that website. You don't have to stay up way late at night with that person or those people. Be smart. Don't be dumb. Keep yourself out of those situations in the first place. #2, if you HAVE made some bad choices, or are otherwise struggling with a bad habit, or a resentment that's not good for you (they're all not good for you), and you can't seem to break free, you might need to do like the alcoholics anonymous people do, and acknowledge that you can't do it without a higher power. There are many traps in life, not just alcoholism or drug addiction or pornography addiction. Maybe we need God's help with even the "little" things, as well as the "big" things. So pray for that help. Your deliverance may not be immediate, like it wasn't for the people of king Limhi, but "That soul who on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I cannot desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake." God will make a way for your escape, and "though [you] were dead, yet shall [you] live."

Abstract: Dogs, who are not accountable before God and do not have the capability to make choices regarding good and evil, nevertheless get angry/aggressive, can have anxiety, low self-esteem, fear, etc., like a human can. This to me tells us that emotional stuff we deal with such as depression and anxiety are not necessarily (if ever?) a result of our own moral choices. If a dog, or a young child, can be self-deceived (be going against one's own knowledge of good and evil, on some level), knowing that they themselves are not accountable before God for their actions...well wait a minute, I thought only humans had the light of Christ and that having that means you have a knowledge of good and evil. So does this mean even dogs have the light of Christ? Even though they're not capable of differentiating between good and evil and will never be morally accountable before God? We know little children are not morally accountable until they get older and are able to know good from evil...but dogs never will, and they will be redeemed and saved. Great, now I've opened up a whole can of worms. But it's one that probably had to be opened. We need to understand this precisely. Full text: Hi, welcome to the Should Be Known Podcast. I'm Clayton Pixton. It is getting dark and I am pressed for time. I've got to get out and go for my jog, so hard to sit down and do this sometimes, but I'm going to do it. So welcome here and yeah, it's been a while. Blahda blahda yadda. But glad you're here. So I'm just going to say a few things that I've been thinking recently about psychology as we are wont to do, trying to figure out depression and anxiety and a lot of other things really. Kind of looking for a fresh foundation for psychology. Sounds like a pretty lofty goal. And maybe it is, but it's fun and I do believe there are some unsolved problems there, some puzzles that we don't know because there's something going on there that we don't understand in our current collective understanding of psychology. Everybody's got their own theories of psychology. I guess we all understand it in our own minds, but. Yeah, well. I'm not going to go back and uh. Review I guess where we are going to keep it a little short. So I was walking some dogs today. We are pet sitting some dogs...before I do that, I got to do a little more music... [music] So that was High on a Mountain Top. Or is it high on the mountain top? High on a mountain top? Pretty sure. On the mountain top.  [music] Not sure if that's the key. Probably is. Or maybe it is. [except I raised it after playing it, to Bb because it was too muddy in Ab.] So I learned to play piano in priesthood meeting in the ward of my youth in California - Clayton Valley Third Ward. What a great ward, I was very blessed to grow up in that. We weren't perfect, certain things could have been better, but we had...it was a great opportunity for me to grow and everything. And my calling was to play the piano in priesthood meeting. So I learned a lot of the hymns that way. I've learned a lot since. But I was kind of young and didn't know what I was doing in large measure when I started. Which is kind of the case with a lot of stuff I've done in the church - kind of inexperienced and didn't know what I was doing. Still am that way. Spent my whole fatherhood that way. I am almost an empty nester now. 49 years old. OK. But you didn't come here to listen to that. I was walking these dogs. And as I've thought before with dogs...so dogs don't have moral accountability. They are like the rest of the animal kingdom. Anybody besides humans doesn't have a knowledge of good and evil, and therefore is not responsible before God to make good choices over evil. A dog, you know, may be full of love and affection - and dogs are awesome and a great gift from God, in my view, I guess, as are other animals. But they are not morally accountable before God. They can be a good dog or a bad dog -

Well the text below isn't super close to the words I actually uttered forth in my podcast, but here they are anyway. Enjoy and thanks for listening/reading! Monday, May 20, 2022 Offense a Conscious Choice? More on the idea that it’s not totally accurate to say that getting offended or getting angry is a conscious choice. (Or getting anxious or …) Friday, June 2, 2022 Insight vs. New Information and Logic So I’m thinking about insight versus kind of actual new information, or might we say, conclusions or whatever. So what is insight? To me you get an insight just purely from thinking about something. It’s an observation. Maybe that’s a better concept, an insight is an observation. Then in the theoretical world, and really the world in general, you make an insight into an assumption or something, you use that insight to explain the world. And so all these theories develop that are based on one idea and one idea only. Evolution, for example. Or behavioral theory. Or brain chemicals, or sunlight, or cognitive theory,…. And of course none of these theories explains everything well on their own. In fact, even together they don’t necessarily explain things that great. Maybe I’m just biased because I know that the principle of self deception isn’t in there. But anyway none of them explain everything, and that includes the theory of self deception. It doesn’t explain everything by itself. These are all parts of the machinery, right? All parts of the mechanism that work together to influence us to do what we do. Anyway what is the difference between an insight, and observation, an assumption, a conclusion, and anything in between? Maybe you can make anything into an assumption, or maybe to use a better word, you can take any idea and, assuming it to be true, reason from there. That idea may be right and it may be wrong. But you can reason from it all the same, just like you can do math using one number or another, you’ll just get an erroneous result if you start out using the wrong number or the wrong idea. I wouldn’t mind strengthening my ability to do logic. I wonder how I would do that? I’m sure there are books on it and maybe even YouTube videos. My minor in logic was a good primer, and the logic I used to program stuff for work is good training, and other reasoning in life all helps. I have the idea that Socrates loved to use words and phrases and statements in logic and go in a very step-by-step fashion through it to say what he wanted to say or make the point he wanted to make. But I feel like he changed the meaning of words or phrases in the middle of the process somehow to get people to agree to stuff that they didn’t really think based on statements they would agree to. Something like that. Isn’t that cold sophistry? Or maybe that Sophocles did that and that’s why they call it sophistry. But I feel like Socrates did that too, kind of twisting stuff to his own benefit sometimes. But he was right a lot of the time too. Listing Psychological Principles I’m also wondering about making a big list of psychological principles. Thursday, June 9, 2022 Moral Accountability for Self-Deception and Choices Just a little thought to tack onto the discussion (is it written down or did I just say it in my podcast?), The discussion on the thought that if we are not held morally accountable for all of our self deception. I started trying to say, as I was doing my podcast, how mental illness probably isn’t in the category of stuff that we’re morally accountable for. But I was starting to wander into an area that I unsure about, so I stopped, and even erased what I started in the podcast. But my additional thought about that is that we don’t experience life as a continual stream of choice or whatever before us. That’s how I’ve heard it described by some philosophers I guess I’ll say. We experiences, I mean we experience choices. They’re more discrete and

SBK039 Self-Deception is Not Necessarily Sin Transcript by Microsoft Office 365 dictate/transcribe – not super great, had to do tons of editing just to turn many many separated fragments on separate lines into sentences and paragraphs, not to mention the wrong words and everything, but here you go! *music* All right, good enough. Welcome to the Should Be Known Podcast, I am Clayton Pixton. If you're new and episode 39 is your very first episode, we talk about principles of psychology on this podcast, but not the ones that I guess you may be used to if you were used to talking about psychological principles from a psychology book or any of the kind of established sources of psychological knowledge or whatever, not to diss them, necessarily, at this moment, but we are taking it kind of afresh from the perspective of, what, just common sense and deriving principles from what I see and from, I guess revealed truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We draw upon the scriptures and inspired words that are consistent with the truth as taught by the Holy Ghost. And common sense, and then just ideas that we have that we don't know are true, which is called theories...yeah, theories are part of science, but you have to understand them right.  Theories are theories.  Science kind of makes up theories to explain what it sees and then...And goes yeah, yeah, that must be what's going on, and then it finds out, oh wait a minute, these things are inconsistent and then everybody says no, no, this is the theory, this is what we've accepted, it's right.  And then some smart person is able to break through some ground and say no 'cause look - there are all these inconsistencies, and tell you what - I have a better explanation, a better theory and then ...Finally, after decades or generations maybe, hopefully though, not that long, people start to accept it, and then science actually moves forward.  So I've got a little chip on my shoulder, maybe, with some of these things because I come from outside of the establishment and I'm used to being kind of, I don't know, rejected a little bit maybe, and I'm not...I'm not part of the establishment.  I have a minor in psychology, ok, I have a major in philosophy. That's all I have. And I think about things, but I enjoy it and I actually think there's a lot of truth there to be had. I think that a lot of people are barking up the wrong tree, and what do we say I...I don't want to get too Far on a maybe negative path.  I want to do some constructive stuff here, but yeah, that is not the introduction I was necessarily planning on, but there it is. It's been a little while since I've recorded a show, and the podcast is meant to be investigative.  We're on a journey. I don't come to you with all the things I've already figured out, just with thoughts. But moving in a positive direction I hope. Yeah, so let's do some more music and then we'll go from there.  *music* All right? Well, lots to talk about. Last episode we talked about the lectures on faith. OK, do you remember those, they were from Joseph Smith's time? It was a series of lectures or lessons kind of thing. Seven of them. They were actually canonized of a sort together with actual revelations from the Lord. But they are of a different nature really, so I don't know if you'd say canonized, but they were published as part of the doctrine and covenants first. It was called the Book of Commandments and Doctrine and Covenants. And I talked about that, and one of the first statements that came out of there. They're about faith, and how faith is like the main principle of action in all intelligent beings, actual statement goes like this - they quote the scripture: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” From this we learn that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle

Monday, February 21, 2022 There’s still a huge gap. I understand depression involves a lie, and anxiety. I understand a little about self-deception. But as it turns out all ways we err involve self-deception, not just depression and anxiety. I don’t understand how people get depressed and anxious. I don’t feel like I can explain the whole thing. Gotta keep trying.  Maybe read some about it. I think Wendy Treynor had a good explanation for depression, in part at least. It is a rejection of the self. Or it involves or results from a rejection of the self. And she talks about self love a lot on her website, which has to be a thing. Amy weeks talked about that in church Sunday, and Elder ___ in conference. It has to be a thing. We are self-reflective beings. We can love ourselves, like we love other people? If that’s all it is, in essence, failing to love ourselves, which is the lie I’ve been talking about (I’ve termed it as thinking we’re worthless or whatever), then we just have to make the connection between there and all the resultant symptoms of depression, mental and physical. Can we do that?  Or can we make an attempt? Maybe we don’t have to understand exactly how all the physical stuff comes to be, just make a good case that mental stuff causes all kinds of physical stuff, using plenty of real world examples. There are plenty. And for now we might have to leave it at SOMEHOW these mental states sink in and dig in and become a pattern and a habit and an addiction, really, and effect our physical being. SOMEHOW the body and the mind are tied such that one effects the other in ways we might not expect or understand. Would we even have habit and addiction like we do if it weren’t for our physical body?  Or learning and proficiency? —— I really think we should know how these things come to be, if we’re going to know what to do to get out of them. Wednesday, February 23, 2022 Like we need to be able to track how these things develop from one’s youth. You start innocent. You start without any addictions, psychological illnesses, bad habits, preconceived notions, no sexual orientation, none of that. No coping strategies good or bad, nothing. You have who you are and have been for eons, and you’ll have that all throughout your mortal life and again throughout eternity. And you have a brand new body, to house your spirit, that you need to learn to control and subject to your spirit. And a lot to learn through the world because you forgot everything. So as you grow up…what?  Something happens, and it’s right in front of us. No dumb experiments necessary. Saturday, February 26, 2022 Copied from Lectures On Faith, Lecture First: The author of the epistle to the Hebrews, in the eleventh chapter of that epistle, and first verse, gives the following definition of the word faith: 8 Now faith is the substance [assurance] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 9 From this we learn, that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle of action in all intelligent beings. 10 If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the operations of their own minds, they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action, in them; that without it, both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental. 11 Were this class to go back and reflect upon the history of their lives, from the period of their first recollection, and ask themselves, what principle excited them to action, or what gave them energy and activity, in all their lawful avocations, callings and pursuits, what would be the answer? Would it not be that it was the assurance which we had of the existence of things which we had not seen, as yet?—Was it not the hope which you had,

Where do we look for the true principles of psychology?  Why not the scriptures?  The concepts there are actually true, while those from the philosophies of men may or may not be.  I use the term "philosophies of men" to mean the ideas of the great thinkers of our time and times past.  They may be great thinkers.  But many of their ideas may be wrong.  On the other hand, the ideas put forth in the scriptures ("ideas") are actually true and accurate.  While I enjoy reading and listening to the thoughts of thoughtful men and women over the ages as well as from our time, they are actually full of errors.  They may not have intentionally erred or misled, they just didn't know, and unfortunately many of them kind of acted like they knew, and act like they know.  And many take their word for truth, because they don't know, either.  Some is true and some is false, and you need to reference a higher knowledge to tell the difference. It's been driving me a little crazy that people don't try harder for accuracy in the principles they espouse.  If you don't know you don't know.  But as I've said, God gives liberally to them that ask (James actually said that) and we can seek and knock and ask and the Lord will open to us (the Lord actually said that).  I don't want to give the impression that I think I'm perfect with regards to accuracy. I'm sure I'm mistaken about many things. But I try to be honest about what I know and what I don't know. I try, at least. And I feel like it helps a lot. So my point is just that we can look to the scriptures and the word of God for psychological principles.  True ones.  I believe they're in there, if we'll look.  I'm going to keep looking. I suppose some might think asking God is for spiritual knowledge, not temporal or whatever. But that's not true. You can ask God for whatever knowledge you want. My testimony is that He's very liberal with that. And I guess that brings us to how God can give us knowledge. So first of all, all the knowledge we have is really from Him, whether it be about spiritual things or the workings of mechanics or electronics or chemistry or psychology or anything else. It's all from Him. So how do we get our knowledge? I'm not sure, it's a great question and I've been thinking about it. But you've obtained knowledge, you've been doing it all your life. What does it feel like when you get knowledge? It's light. You can feel it. You can taste it. It tastes sweet. It feels right. It enlightens you. Your mind expands, and you can thus tell it's right. I've had God communicate to me truths that I didn't know before that weren't revealed by anybody else, and you can, too. How does He do that? I don't exactly know. How do we gain knowledge when somebody besides God reveals it to us? I have a feeling its really the same. But I don't know how that is, exactly. When somebody else tells us something or shows us something, we have their words or images or tactile information or whatever other light we perceive at the time, but really the light comes from God. I'm just saying he can communicate intelligence to us in the absence of any sensory information, which I'm calling light, directly to our minds. Or He can do it while we're viewing something or hearing something. All the same, really. Is it not so, surely?

Sunday, January 17, 2021 So if the instant you cross the line you have to justify yourself, or in the instant you cross the line you are justifying yourself, then it's just like a property of being on the wrong side of the line.  And it's a trap, because you are deceived as to the fact that you are in the wrong and you are deceived as to the way to get out, and it sucks you in.  Maybe good has its own rewards.  Namely peace and happiness, and all the fruits of the Spirit.  But evil has its draw, and it's definitely more appealing to the carnal mind.  It has great allure and once you're on its side it's a blinding trap.  Then it takes away peace and happiness and you want that, I guess.  So it's up to us what we want to choose.  Good or evil.  Evil has all the carnal appeal, and good just has peace and happiness, but it's not immediately apparent that it's necessary.  Something like that? Saturday, January 23, 2021 Finding fault. I said slander, and I could have said finding fault. When someone is finding fault with something they are probably justifying themselves. You only need one reason to align yourself or disalign yourself with something - because it’s true or not. If it isn’t true, judge ye. If it is, judge ye. That’s all you need. If it’s false, separate yourself from it and be done. If it’s true, though, you'd best align yourself with it. I'm not talking about the people involved, who might be aligned with it also, because they will always be flawed. All the persecution in the world, all the slandering, all the fault finding, can’t change truth. —- Now, if we’re to wrestle depression and anxiety to the ground, how are we doing? (And other disorders.) Isn’t self-deception the big missing puzzle piece, and everything else is kind of there already, or will more easily fall into place?  Sunday, January 24, 2021 Or are there lots of things we don't understand and self-deception is just one of them?  Let's pretend self-deception is the big missing puzzle piece.  By self-deception here we mean the whole idea that there is a good and an evil, a right and a wrong, that there is a God, that right and wrong is based on God's will and that we all have an innate knowledge of right and wrong in every situation, and then that if we act against that we self-deceive in a way that justifies our action.  That's self-deception.  Now we are equipped, or better equipped, to tackle anxiety and depression and everything.  Sunday, January 31, 2021 Well I'm going to sit here and write for a minute even though I don't have anything in mind to write about.  Sounds like self-deception is what we learn from the gospel - the idea that there's a God and a truth and all.  Basically that and the idea that we have a conscience that is reliable, which the world does not understand.  But many people in it understand.  So you can talk to them.  I wonder if you could start just by saying, so we all have a conscience that tells us right from wrong in any given situation, and it's completely reliable.  You can rely on it.  Because it's completely reliable.  You don't have to start saying it's called the light of Christ or the spirit of Christ, maybe you can call it a conscience, and people will get it.  To the extent that we listen to it and obey it we dwell in the truth, and to the extent that we suppress it or disobey it, we dwell in error, and that error…blah blah blah.  This is boring.  I don't have confidence anyone will listen to this.  I'm afraid it's going to just die right in it's tracks, that I won't get it communicated to anybody and that will be the end of it.  Will that happen?  I don't know.  It's my job to do whatever the Lord wants me to do with this - if it's nothing it's nothing, and if it's to write a little book or do this podcast and a few people maybe rea

Full Notes: You know this thing where you can’t tell the violation from its justification—do we just say that certain things go together - depression and failure to forgive oneself, sin and it’s attendant self-justification, uh, what else?  Basically everything where you’d say you do the bad thing and then you justify it by self-deceiving. That’s everything. So rather than one happening first, they both come together somehow and you can’t tell which one comes first. Very confusing. But sometimes the truth isn’t immediately intuitive. Take the theory of relativity and quantum physics. But do we just say they come together?  And if so exactly how - is it a necessary relationship?  The theory I’ve been putting forward is that it is. You might say it like this—any time you go against the light you self-deceive. That way you’re not making it a cause and effect thing, as if it were two separate things. Seems like other cause-and-effect stuff is actually like this—not separate things so much in actuality, just in our way of speaking and conceptualizing. I think of my old writing session at BYU where I talked about how words don’t necessarily represent different isolated things, but rather all “objects” are really connected, and the words we use just kind of conceptualize a different element of them. Guitar, guitar strings, wood, steel, whatever. How do you separate the object from the parts of the object, and everything else?  It’s an artificial separation. It’s a linguistic thing. It’s a conceptual thing. There’s no such actual thing as “things”. So cause and effect are not really separate either, everything’s connected.  Is that too strong to say?  For that matter everything is one big connected blob?  It’s just however we want to categorize things for our purposes. You can categorize them however you want in order to understand them and communicate and so forth. So this cause-and-effect relationship between acting against the light and justifying it is, strictly speaking, not cause-and-effect at all, since nothing is cause-and-effect strictly speaking? Or because just it isn’t cause-and-effect?  How do I always run into these things?  In any case, it’s not cause-and-effect. The choice you make brings you into the self-deception at the same time any act is committed. Man, this is so central to everything, it would be nice to understand it. I guess for right now it will have to be sufficient to say that it all happens at the same time. But it also seems like sometimes there is a state of mind/perception/self-deception in the absence of an act that you can track down.   This is central, too!  Is that possible?  A person can be a thief in their heart without actually committing a theft?  A person can be a murderer, an adulterer, whatever, without ever committing the act?  Or will it always manifest, sooner or later?  Isn’t this an important question?  And I don’t know. Tuesday, January 5, 2021 I was listening to Jody Moore's podcast, Better Than Happy, and she said that she teaches that the thought comes first and the emotion comes after that, or whatever.  Well if she can teach that, can I?  I mean is that close enough?  What about the "soft seat principle"?  Where physical things can influence your emotions?  Am I confusing stuff too much here?  Don't prophets and apostles teach that, too?  I'd need to check that, I guess.  But surely I can say that yea, other things influence your feelings and all that, including soft seats and uncomfortable ones, but it's still your thoughts that influence your feeling of well being, or something like that.  Right??  Does this mean I can also say that going against the light, whether in thought or in deed, causes… What am I getting wrong here?  Pushing through a paragraph.  Going against the light, whether in thought or in deed, is all in though

(Full Notes) Why would a person believe a lie, I ask again?  Cognitive might recognize that the thoughts are unhelpful and negative or whatever (it doesn't even know they're false), but it doesn't know why.  It doesn't know why a person would continue believing something ridiculous.  It doesn't know why it's sticky.  Doesn't only pride explain that?  Let's think here.  Self-justification is great, and it's wonderful to be self-justified.  But wouldn't we trade it for happiness and peace, if we knew what we were doing?  But it's hard to change, and the reason is pride, is it not?  Habit is a hard thing to break, I guess, but we would definitely go in that direction, would we not, naturally, if not for pride?  Am I right in this?  Evil has chains, good does not.  Have you ever heard of the chains of heaven?  That's because there aren't any.  But hell has them.  This professor of abnormal psychology keeps describing these disorders and some student keeps asking, "what causes that?", and he keeps basically saying we don't know.  We don't know, we don't know, we don't know.  We don't know what causes depression.  We don't know what causes these anxiety disorders.  We don't know what causes OCD.  He mentioned how Freud thought it was related to masturbation.  Really, that's all you've got?! What I'm driving at is, of course, that I think self-deception has the power to explain these things better than what we have.  How would I explain OCD, for example?  What did the person do wrong, or is doing wrong, for example, to have to justify themselves by painting the world in a way that they have to continually check the oven that it's not on?  Sorry if that's a bad example, but it's one of the ones you hear.  Why do I keep checking that the oven is off?  Because I think it's on all the time, that I forgot to turn it off.  Why do you think that--you should know that you hardly ever in reality leave it on, think back or make a chart or something--it's always off.  I know but I think it's on all the time.  It's crazy, I know, I hate it.  It's stupid.  I just can't stop.  Ok, so you realize all that, that it's unreasonable.  Yes, absolutely, totally.  Doesn't matter.  I just keep doing it.  If I don't check it I'll just worry about it and it will drive me crazy until I do.  Gotcha. It's almost like a person is looking for an excuse to be anxious.  It's not about the oven.  It's about having something to worry about, almost.  Isn't it.  Speaking for myself I feel like that's kind of how my anxiety works.  If I'm not worried about one thing I’m worried about another.  And if I'm not miserable about one thing I'm miserable about another.  If I'm physically sick, I don't feel anxious and miserable that way.  It's almost a relief, really.  I'm not kidding.  That's me, at least, and I don't think I'm the only one.  Well how would you explain someone with OCD, I ask again?  Why would a person do that?  I'll try pushing through a paragraph to see where I can get.  Well certainly the person has a view of the world that is such that they likely left the oven on (a view that we've already acknowledged is false--it's not likely at all.)  And how did they get that view?  Is that what's so hard to tell and is different for different people and situations?  I don't know for sure.  Well it's simple, really - the person needs something to be anxious about, and so that's what they found, for whatever reason.  The idea that they left the oven on makes them anxious and miserable, and that's what you need.  If their life were different and if circumstances were different they'd find something else to be anxious about.  Why would they "need" to find something to b

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 17, 2020 Sometime talk about Freud's subconscious and self-deception. Saturday, November 21, 2020 Without looking up what Freud said about the subconscious (it's been a long time), one thing I think that plunges certain things at least into our subconscious is self-deception.  Like when we do perverse things to ourselves and others, it's not the same as some automatic action like blinking or breathing.  No, there's self-deception involved.  It seems to me like self-deception drives stuff like that into our subconscious.  The author of my psychology book makes it all sound so innocent, giving as examples of the subconscious times he makes a bad pass in basketball even though he realizes at the last minute it's a bad pass.  Not sure what to make of that.  Or how he acts when he is put under at the dentist's.  I don't know about that, either.  And that's interesting and everything.  But when we do subversive things to ourselves it seems to me it's more perverse than that.  We do it for a reason.  We are looking for an excuse.  I'm not saying it's all conscious.  But you know that's an interesting subject, because some people will say it's all a choice, it's all conscious, basically.  I missed my therapy appointment in NY and Ken said it was because of my false self (not just because I innocently forgot).  I think there's something to that.  Do I selectively forget stuff?  I'm sure I do.  I tend to want to disagree with people who say it is a conscious choice all the time.  I guess I don't feel like I experience it that way.  But is there something to that?  Well, seems to me there are more like moments of choice.  Maybe we're in a bind and it's hard to make the right choice or something, or it's become automatic.  I don't know.  But there do seem to be these moments of choice.  I wouldn't say it's every moment, like some people say.  At least I don't experience it that way and I don't think anybody does.  But we do have these moments of choice all the time.  Nor would I say we have no choice, as I suppose some might say.  Determinism, no.  As President Monson said, decisions determine destiny.  We have personal freedom.  We have agency.  We talked about agency earlier.  It's by virtue of us having knowledge, having power to act.  Well I obviously don't quite know how to talk about this, this choice stuff.  But people who have maladaptive behavior, who are doing things that hurt themselves, and aren't getting it (and this is all of us), there's a reason we don't get it.  Beyond just habit, though habit is surely a part of it.  Good and evil is involved.  There's a gravity to evil - it sucks us in - it has a pull.  You observe it in the universe and you know something is there, and you postulate a force or some phenomenon to explain it.  (Space-time)  In the case of good and evil you postulate a knowledge that we must have that we go against and thus self-justify.  It's a very logical postulation to me.  Well, plus we have scriptural evidence that it actually exists, the light and the phenomenon that happens when we go against it.  Christ is that light.  It's the light of Christ.  And what do the scriptures say about going against the light?  For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.  (John 3:20)  Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil (v. 19).  He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things. (D&C 93:28)  Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they r

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 4, 2020 To the question, is there a different quality  of anxiety that is bad and one that is good or whatever, I say, the anxiety itself is indifferent. It’s not a quantity either that is bad or good. It’s that the bad contains a lie. It’s the lie that’s bad, not the anxiety itself. Something like that. Wednesday, Nov 5, 2020 Any time you talk about the “fine line”, is it not about whether evil is involved?  Excess this or that - is it not about whether there’s a lie involved?  Self-deception? There’s a fine line, for example, between taking needed time for yourself and being selfish. “Not killing yourself” at work and being lazy. Talking softly and talking too softly. Talking loud and talking too loud. Being appropriately fearful and being overly so. There’s always a fine line. And anybody will tell you it’s fine - it’s not a sudden, obvious thing, is it?  It can be hard to pinpoint. Can it become easy?  I’m thinking of the teachings of Mormon, where he says it is as easy as telling the day from the dark night. Hmm. Anyway we experience it as fine a lot of the time. Excess this or that is on one side of the line and the appropriate amount is on the other. And the line is defined by the lie. Appropriate anxiety and “excess”. (What is depression in these terms?) Monday, November 9, 2020 Just read a TIME  magazine article entitled 'Depression's Many Causes', in a special edition entitled 'Mental Health - a New Understanding'.  First of all, I’m not sure what's new about the understanding it presents.  Seems a little old to me.  Quoting from the article - "Depression is a disease influenced by age, gender, genetics, situational loss or an ineffable mix of more than one of those."  It then proceeds to talk about those four factors in turn for the bulk of the article.  Something felt missing to me and a little off by that treatment.  I never find myself calling depression a disease.  I think maybe because I like to make it clear that it's not just a physical thing.  To call it a disease to me emphasizes the physical, unavoidable aspect of it or something.  And because I believe it comes in different intensities, whereas most diseases are thought of as being there or not being there, perhaps.  Here's the very next sentence of the article:  "Understanding these factors can do a lot to strip the remaining mystery from the disease and make us better able to face and treat it."  So you acknowledge that there is mystery surrounding depression.  Mystery.  Nobody understands depression, as they say.  Can't we have a common understanding of it, which leaves room for the various factors that influence it?  This whole thing to me is missing the heart of depression, which I feel like we've talked about in this podcast. Quoting the conclusion of the article, "If there is one thing that every single case of depression has in common, it's that it's unchosen."  Really?  That's the only thing different cases of depression have in common?  That they're unchosen?  That's too broad.  They absolutely have something in common and it's the lie, the self-deception, and everything that goes along with that.  I do think it's important to realize, if you don't, that it's unchosen.  But that's certainly not the only thing every single case of depression has in common.  So anyway, I found this "new" understanding to be lacking.  This should help me see what it is that we have here that is unique to the understanding of depression and anxiety.  What's unique about ours is that there's a lie involved.  And I fear the world with its limited scientific point of view will never be able to accept that.  Because a lie implies truth and error, which implies a God, and everything else that comes along with that.  Oh well.  We have to