Absolutization - The Source of Dogma, Repression, and Conflict - Robert M. Ellis
Systems Theory
Absolutization - The Source of Dogma, Repression, and Conflict - Robert M. Ellis
Robert M. Ellis [+]
Middle Way Society
Description
a. Reinforcing Feedback Loops Reinforcing feedback loops, whereby organisms maintain and reproduce themselves in a self-replicating process, are a background feature of all systems. However, in the human case, the capacity for imagination adds a further capacity for balancing adaptability, that can then in turn be hijacked by more specific reinforcing feedback loops of belief. These reinforcing feedback loops appear as mental proliferation, and are prone to dangerous competitive escalation. This provides a crucial standpoint for understanding absolutization. b. Assumed System Independence Absolutization involves the assumption of the independence of an isolated cognitive system, whose representations can be considered apart from awareness of the psychological and neural process of their development. Systems theory offers no evidence of any such independent system being possible, and neuroscience gives evidence of how this assumed isolation operates so as to continually delude us. c. Fragility Fragility is the tendency of a system to remain stable only up to a ‘tipping point’, when the effects of its reinforcing feedback loops become incompatible with the environment. Absolutized beliefs drive human actions to such tipping points, after which the beliefs dramatically ‘flip’ to their opposites, as can be seen both in psychosis and in dramatic religious conversion. In the human system, absolutized beliefs are fragile because of a lack of antifragility or resilience - resilience which is experienced as grounded confidence and comes from testing against a breadth of experience.