INDEPENDENT THINKING

INDEPENDENT THINKING



In this day of presidential elections, the phrase situational ethics is being thrown around a lot. Situational ethics, as I understand it, defines an ethical position which changes depending on the situation. It is as if someone, morally appalled by war, decides this war is morally right.

My job, as a psychotherapist, is on a basic level working with change, transformational change in many cases. As people change and come to terms with past and current behavior, they often rethink their most firmly held values. Past values decided on with a different lens, one colored by such strong emotions as anger, bitterness, grief or loyalty. This makes sense to me. Internal change finds expression in the outside world.

What doesn’t make sense is how, sometimes at least, the larger world views changing values. This dilemma is thrown into sharp relief in our presidential elections. The candidates’ positions seem carved in stone. If they have changed their position due to a change or even a shift in their way of seeing an issue; we seem to say they have character problems. Or we ask, are they changing values, now, because of expediency; to gain more votes?

I like to think the candidates are constantly being exposed to new information as they travel around the country and meet with people. I wonder if it isn’t at times, overwhelming…at the very least, I hope they question their positions as they meet, again I hope, with people on both sides of the issues.

In my work, it still amazes me how much people can change. What I see is through life experience, through trauma, through loss, people change the weight put on certain core values; not the values themselves. The flexibility, the openness to weigh the importance of certain values, rethink positions and beliefs based on new information seems to me a positive attribute in any leader. It certainly makes for a higher degree of emotional health.

I want to base my vote on a candidates’ position on the issues first. But I also want some sense of the character and the basic ethical core of the candidate. Because the world changes and I will have to depend on them to make good decisions, which means by definition decisions made from a similar set of values as mine!

My question is this. How do we, as voters, tell the difference between internal change based on more information, insights, change of heart or perspective and change based on expediency and political realities? Don’t the candidates have public relations people who can put a spin on any change? A good test of any lasting change in the psychotherapy world is behavior across time. How do we winnow out the truth when there isn’t time to test by watching behavior?

My answer is I can’t. What I can do is decide whether I agree or disagree with the change in position. Their change in position, in fact, gives me an opportunity to think about my position again.

I can’t decide, in the morass of television, print and radio coverage on the candidates as much about their character as I would wish. Assumptions can be dangerous. I have been wrong and right before. But I can look at their lives.

As a writer and a psychotherapist, I believe how people live out their lives, not what happens to them but what they do with what happens, says a lot about their character. One of my favorite thoughts about this comes from the author Joseph Campbell talking about the hero’s journey in world mythology. He says, in my words, it isn’t the heroic moments that define us. It is how we live after we come back from the journey.

Put this in another way. Running for president, for any office is a huge undertaking and an enormous commitment for self and family. Win or lose, what happens after the election is the more important part.

How do they use what they have learned being involved in this big campaign traveling in the world? Lets hope it isn’t just how to get the most votes. I hope it is an increased capacity to look critically at their own decisions, to question and be questioned about their thinking. I also hope, it is a willingness to change their mind despite how the larger world spins it. That is one of my important values. Independent thinking. Our country was born on it.