I don't know what makes some people "empaths" and others not, but I have noticed that those who are not tend to change their tune when the chickens come home to roost. I've noticed this to be particularly true for members of the Republican Party.

I certainly believe my own thoughts on religion and politics are based on my life experiences rather than any other factors. — Jack Cummins

To clarify, do you mean cultural life experiences or personal experiences not influenced (if that’s possible) by culture.

I am thinking of our individual experiences but they take place within a cultural context. So, for example, so many people must have been affected by the pandemic throughout the world. However, we have all had our own unique experiences, according to our life circumstances.

The question of empathy in connection with experience is interesting because it may be that experience of suffering may make people more empathetic. On the other hand, it could be that certain experiences have an effect of numbing emotions, and becoming more self centred. It could even go through different stages for any individual.

I find that I feel more compassionate as a result of personal knock downs and setbacks, but at times I do wallow.

One other aspect is that I do believe that it is possible to have compassion fatigue if one tunes into others needs constantly, especially if it is not reciprocated.

A psychological topic for sure; not a philosophical question.

Another good topic, Jack.


It is less "experience changing us" and much more "experience becoming us". All of our lives are "experience" of various magnitudes, from blips to meteoric impacts. Events don't "change history" -- as if history was intending "Plan A" and then changed to "Plan B".

I can't deny obvious 'tendencies' in history or myself. The history of an economic downturn can be more or less aversive to the people, depending on the government's policy (like, are they Keynesian or not).

In my life (and many others) college changed my life. Without it, I would have been a very different person. But then, so did kindergarten, learning how to ride a bike, 11th and 12th grade English. 12 years of Sunday school, confirmation, church, sex in the park, many nights at gay bars, having hepatitis, breaking a leg, falling in and out of love, good, bad, and indifferent employment, and so on.

We have to figure out what our background pattern was and is to see how experiences alter it. That's true for history in general, or for our own.

I can see that my question may fall more into the scope of psychology rather than philosophy. However, the reason why I raise it is because from my point about view the psychology comes into our philosophical constructs.

I am not talking about simply what we wish to believe but how our life experiences are so based in the experiential. For example, I would probably have never questioned religious beliefs of Catholicism if it had been for difficult experiences, such as knowing a couple of people who committed suicide, and the way certain ideas gave me a deep sense of guilt. I remember when I was exploring all kinds of ideas, explaining to a woman who I was talking to, about my own thinking and she remarked that, for her, it would just be too much work to question the ideas she had grown up to believe.

You might think that my question is only relevant for religious questions, but I do think it goes beyond this, even to political ideas. For example, certain experiences of inequality may lead people to challenge certain previous political assumptions. Some people's ideas seem more static, while others seem to shift, and that is where I think experience comes into play. I am not sure that the philosophical and the psychological can be separated that clearly.

I am not sure that the philosophical and the psychological can be separated that clearly. — Jack Cummins

Agreed, but the latter is only a catalyst (i.e. strange attractor when e.g. traumatic or sublime (re: limit-experiences)) for the former yet wholly lacking conceptual content.

I am glad that you can see the angle which I am coming from. Certainly, my life as a student seemed to be an exploration of experience and ideas in conjunction with one another. If my life had gone so smoothly, I probably would not have not have questioned that deeply. As it was, I ended up taking lots of caffeine tablets, as a student, beyond the recommended doses on the box, because I was just needing to think so clearly trying to put life and ideas together.

Even now, I am using this site, exploring all kinds of philosophy questions, and that probably would not have happened to me at all if I had not lost my job last year. Some people may think this is all about me, but I am inclined to wonder if most of the people on this site, or those who read philosophy books, are doing it without there being any underlying psychological dimensions to it. In saying that, I am not trying to reduce philosophy to the psychological, but just suggesting that it is interlinked.

So are you saying that I should be formulating questions which are more conceptual? I probably go into areas which are on the edges between philosophy and psychology, but, for me, that feels be a less stagnant ground than many other territories. I am interested in exploring the catalyst as a means of exploring, because I am not sure that a detached analysis of concepts is able to get to grips with what lies beneath the surface fully. The concepts occur and are tools within our minds in the first instance, even though this involves shared meanings within cultures, or even on a universal basis for human beings.

I am really interested in opening up areas beyond the psychological, including the anthropological. Perhaps, I am just framing my questions wrongly, or maybe I have just written too many threads in a short space of time. Have you written any threads? Maybe you could come up with an interesting discussion, to really get people thinking and exploring..

Okay. Carry on then with your focus on, if I may say so, (the) 'psychology of philosophy'.

I was just adding to the comment I wrote, that maybe you could come up with one. My threads are maybe becoming a bit repetitive. I was hoping that this was a bit different from the one I wrote last week. I may need to take a bit of a break from creating new threads, but sometimes I find it a bit hard writing in the ones others create, a bit like going into other people's houses. However, I say that with some humour, and may be it is time for me to creep outside the safety of my own home...

I have edited my title to make it more of a philosophy question rather than a psychological one, although it combines the two.

It's a good question. I think it depends on how you think of experience. I use it interchangeably with consciousness, so as to not repeat this very word so many times. Life altering experiences of the kind one may have when you see something awful or fascinating haven't really changed how I view things. They're just that powerful experiences.

The experience that I associate with changing my views is when I read things or when someone tells me something I did not know. So when I learned a bit about Kant's ideas of "things in themselves", that was mind-boggling. So it was when I learned, way back when I was a kid that colours reflect from objects.

I was also quite taken aback when I read Strawson's Real Materialism as well as Chomsky's explaining of how we recognize objects via psychic continuity and not physical properties.

So in short, yes, for me personal experiences have been impactful, within the context of taking experience to include reading. Real life examples only emphasize some aspect or other of the world.

I definitely agree that reading has a large part to play in the process of changing viewpoints. My times of reflection have mostly been spent reading. Difficult experiences seem to lead me to read more, and that seems like an important connection between the two. But I would imagine that it could work the other way round with the experience of sudden moments of a change in one's ideas giving rise to anxiety too.

After reading The Coming Insurrection in my early twenties, I became an acolyte of Communization before later leaving the Anarchist movement in protest. I had actually gone quite mad and came to suspect that a set of factions within the Intelligence community was making an attempt to incite a global clandestine civil war so as to be given the legal and extra-juridical justifications for the establishment of a global crypto-Fascist totalitarian regime, which, I believe, was more or less the exact word choice that I used when I detailed this to The New York Times. My stated reasons for leaving the Anarchist community were in opposition to its "general proclivities towards crypto-Fascism and political violence", which are concerns that I can now let go of, but do have yet to have come back. In a way, going mad kind of liberated me from the cult pathology of the ultra-Left, as, as I had made great efforts to explain much of this to more or less anyone that I could find, I found myself to have become fairly isolated and with a lot of time to reflect.

Though well aware of that the members of Tiqqun are just kind of some people who think that engaging in political terrorism will be like living in a Jean-Luc Godard film, reading The Cybernetic Hypothesis as I was coming out of all of this had the effect of that I finally let it bother me that they would do things like castigate Antonio Negri before advocating for a return to the "Years of Lead". I, then, came to realize how much it bothered me that much of the far-Left would casually call for political violence without having considered whatsoever as to what it would actually be like. Somehow I had gotten into the ultra-Left through Anarcho-Pacifism. What I understand all too well about it is that their ardent support for what we call adventurist terrorism is that it's just kind of this elaborate display of revolutionary fidelity. It's sort of autopoetic and sort of a form of political suicide. It's also kind of a façade. While its extraordinarily rare reifications are just tragic, its pretense is just kind of reprehensible. You'll find ecstatic praise for the aesthetics of violence in certain left-wing journals written by people who probably haven't thought about events like German Autumn for longer than the two hours and twenty-nine minutes it takes to watch The Baader Meinhof Complex. It's difficult to explain this well, but I came to realize that there are other reasons to take offense to terror chic than what most will commonly encounter. The whole quixotic experience got me to respect things that I wouldn't have otherwise. I realized that it takes kind of a lot to really care about Pacifism and to engage in dialogue.

As transformative of an experience as that was, however, the entire psychodrama just kind of played out in my own mind. It's not like I've ever met an actual political terrorist. I did write this work of hypertext about it, though.

What do think of the notion of the psychonaut? It's a new term to me which I'd just stumbled upon and found summarized in this wiki article. Some (maybe you) might say 'philosophizing is psychonautical'; I wouldn't rule that prospect in or out yet. Investigation ...

I have come across the idea of a psychonaut,and at one stage at university I joined and went to some meetings of The Cosmic Space Cadets society. So, I have my roots as a psychonaut. I did experiment with mind altering substances for a while. The main reason I stopped was because along with another student, I got arrested. We had bought and smoked some skunk weed at Camden lock. My friend was driving his car and we ended up in a car chase through North London, getting handcuffed and kept in a police cell for hours, and let off with a caution. Fortunately, the caution has never showed up in police clearance checks for work.

But, I do read some psychonaut writing, including Slanislov Grof, Robert Anton Wilson. However, I have my limits with how far I wish to go in exploring such ideas. I still wish for the analytical perspective of philosophy to counterbalance it all. I guess that my question is putting philosophy on the couch. I'm don't really think philosophers are psychonauting, but it can become too academic at times. Also, having worked alongside psychologists I feel that they often don't think much about the philosophical assumptions behind their approaches. But, I probably think too much, and probably in too remote ways,cand don't just want to become a psychonaut, lost in esoterica.

I'm all for the 'philosophy of psychology' (& neurophilosophy) and don't mind the primary academic sources (though I try to avoid derivative, secondary "scholarship") so long as they are well-supported yet outside-the-box explorarions of 'familiar' topics and concepts. I agree philosophy itself isn't 'psychonauting' but can propose prolegomenas to any future psychonautics like certain genres of music or cinema or literature do (though I'm a effin' snob about what I'm either pushing or ingesting physically as well as metaphysically). :smirk:

Ah! But are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Not necessarily stoned, but
Beautiful ...

Goo goo g'joob! :victory:

Sure. We all vary in this respect. An experience can cause you to want to find out why something is so instead of just taking it as an established fact.

I think that certain experiences, especially the harshest ones can break us or stretch us to explore beyond the familiar. Of course, it is all so individual and we all have our coping mechanisms and different degrees of resilience. Psychologists often divide people into personalities types A and B. They also speak of type C which don't become hyperactive or passive, but just go a bit strange in response to stress, and I think that I probably fall into that category.

However, I do think that stress does lead us to think more outside of the confines of the norms, and possibly has some use in leading us to become more critically aware as individuals.

Thanks for your lengthy contribution.Your experience does sound interesting and I do believe that we can go to extremes of all kinds in our searching. I can remember a time when I was attending evangelical churches and Marxist meetings simultaneously.

I think that I may have known someone who may have been a terrorist, but I was uncertain of his actual involvement, but I knew that he had personal problems. He was asleep on the floor in my room while I was sitting on my bed writing an essay. Despite being completely against religion, he shouted out,'Jesus was a revolutionary' in his sleep.

It is less "experience changing us" and much more "experience becoming us". — Bitter Crank

But we tend to be involved in situations which reinforce our pre-existing traits. Most people go through their lives enacting some variety of the Freudian "repetition compulsion," similar situations arise over and over to which we respond in similar ways. It is only with recognition of this that the notion dawns of wanting to experience life in a different way.

When I was quite young I mostly read Sartre. Eventually, contemplating his notion of "radical freedom," that we are so free that we can choose to do anything, even to the extent of doing something radically different from our normal predispositions, I had a clear intuition this was an essential truth. I began to consciously strive to enact this choice. Instead of choosing to avoid doing something I didn't really like doing, like going to a party with a bunch of people I didn't know, I chose to do the thing that I didn't like. Not only do it, but embrace it, be outgoing and gregarious. And the opposite, refraining from doing some things that I would otherwise spontaneously do.

After having done this a few times, it became obvious that this worked. People see us as we present ourselves. We are what we do. The more I did this, the easier it became to make choices, not based upon past habits, but upon a reflective/intuitive sense of the direction in which I wanted to go, who I wanted to be. The transformation took a long time, and is still on-going. But I do feel that now I have the power to take responsibility for the quality of my own experiences, maybe not always, but overall.

Interesting topic. I've noticed that people make changes when their life becomes so unbearable or painful that a new one is (often desperately) sought. Then, where they take this, depends on their resources and influences - who they meet, what they read, etc. It might be anything from a death cult to Spinoza...

I think it's pretty common to reject the ideas of one's upbringing (especially if these are experienced as limiting) and embrace a different direction (often a kind of reactive opposite) in teenage years and early twenties. I'm not sure how often philosophy comes into this or how often philosophy makes a real impact. I do know that many 25 year-old males I have met have had their Nietzsche phase...

Coincidentally, at around 25 I had dropped Freddy and simultaneously began a decade-long study of Benny. Good catch! :up:

hey also speak of type C which don't become hyperactive or passive, but just go a bit strange in response to stress, and I think that I probably fall into that category. — Jack Cummins

:lol:

I'm probably passive in these respects.

Yes, I've met people who say that certain experiences just made them change the way they view the world. They either become left wing or right wing and come up with some rather strong conclusions about how society should work. A bit more often than not, it's a series of experiences that does this, but sometimes it's only one.

It makes sense. But it's never applied to me. I just see something good or bad as highlighting good or bad things, it didn't change my way of understanding the world, that came with reason and argument.

But stress is surely an important factor in determining how many people think and (change the way) view the world.

Two ways, probably mutually incompatible, of looking at the issue of what is in fact someone undergoing a psychological "transformation", Transformation in quotes for the reason that it could very well be an illusion.

I will use an analogy because firstly, it's usually easier to wrap your head around and secondly, it's my preferred teaching tool, not that I'm a teacher, also not as good as I'd like to be with analogies.

Here goes...

Imagine a room and it's dark. There are two things you can do:

1. Go to the hardware store, buy yourself a bulb, go back, install it in the room and hey! light!

2. Look for a switch, the room may already have a working bulb. All you have to do is throw the switch, and hey presto! light!

In the first case, the room has changed in the sense it acquired a new bulb. In the second case, the room hasn't changed in that the bulb was already there, it only had to be turned on.

Psychological change could be like this. Sometimes, a person changes i.e. acquires a new idea that provides faer with a new perspective and at other times, a person may only be needed to be made aware of an idea that's dormant in faer, with the same results in this case too.

It is interesting that you speak of going through different phases at different ages. Strangely, I went through my Nietszche phase before I really questioned my religious background. However, I have generally preferred to see him as more of a poet than take his ideas literally, especially the idea of superman. It seems to be so ego inflated.

As you know, I am into the rock and alternative music and that has been as much as my worldview in relation to psychological change. I would say that it was during one of my most difficult periods that I embraced nu metal music and began going to dark metal live music events. It was while I was studying art psychotherapy, and the whole psychodynamic approach to life.

I also wonder about my question in relation to having worked in mental health care. I have seen people who have been driven beyond their breaking point. I do believe that some people don't just find books and music to cope. Of course, this is complex because it does depend on genetics and support structures people have. I do believe that we all have our limits as to what would be too much to cope with in some ways.

I often think about worse possible scenarios. My own are becoming blind or becoming homeless. Either could happen because I do have some minor retinal abnormalities and securing long term accommodation in London is extremely difficult. I do wonder how I would cope if one of these two ever occurred. But, it is quite likely that neither will happen and if they did I would cope better than imagined. It can sometimes be the unexpected smaller things which can be the stumbling blocks.

I am not sure that we are best thinking too much about the worst possible things which could happen too much. But, I think that it is useful to be aware of them partly as a way of thinking about life and the minor setbacks in proportion, and probably being grateful that the worst have not happened and possibly never will. I also think that the underlying philosophy of CBT can be useful for reflecting on experience in a critical but positive way.

I do see the point of your analogy, although I think psychological change may be a bit more complicated than changing a bulb. Mind you, I have lived in places where the underlying electrical wiring is faulty to take the symbolism of your story a little bit further. Right now, one of the people in the house I live is taking the washing machine apart, trying to repair it, so maybe that is another metaphorical story for thinking about taking apart the broken in ourselves and in views, and probably locating the underlying source of the problem is the hardest part.

But you are probably right to say that we may be able to get in touch with something that is dormant in ourselves. We probably spend a lot of wasted time and energy looking widely for solutions, missing the most obvious ones.

I do agree that it is usually a series of events and experiences which motivates us to try to find new ways of seeing and thinking. This is because the process of repeated knocks or certain experiences is so much more profound for us because it can really throw us beyond our usual balance.