RE: HARVESTING CLIENTS - Another practice peep
It must be a great balancing act to do what you do. To remove yourself and your prejudices (or correct points of view) from the equation and help the client at the thing that might be more important to him in the moment. I mean, let's say a person dies, like the suicide case above ... it's probably not the right time to mention that God doesn't exist! The client doesn't want to hear that.
But does he need to? That's a more complicated question. Again, as a philosopher, I care about the truth, and I tend to think that the truth will make the world a better place. I will tend to think that religious faith will cause this person harm at some point in the future, and the world in general. But, the client comes to you for a reason, and that's is not the right place maybe for a therapist to get involved in religious issues! I guess it's better to leave that to documentaries and education or whatnot. For example if they taught all religions at school, and the different forms they all take, and how they all have miracles, and all have conflicting beliefs, etc. etc., the students will draw their own conclusions.
Hey Alex,
can you go with the argument that if my point of view is correct for me, it is not necessarily correct for my client or for you?
Life is complex, no? How can I impose my view as correct if a faith of another human being will probably harm him on one occasion and not at the same time acknowledge that it will probably do him good on another occasion, as well?
From how I perceive life and its million single events I cannot see that one side is superior to the other side. A faith, a habit, a survival-strategy might serve me good for today and serve me not so well in the future and then all the way around. I experience life as an ongoing ever-changing process.
Do you like it when I (or someone else) does question what you believe in the most is wrong? If that is a really significant part of your identification and I do insist on my notion that you should drop it: What do you think, how will it affect you?
Teaching & education: yes, I find it good when the students can make up their own minds and not being directed at what the teacher beliefs. When they "smell" that, they stop listening.
But as we are all role models & teachers for the younger ones ... we can be a teacher for the method of open questions and not pre-determined solutions to them, as well.
Have a good evening :)
P.S. I am thinking of doing a break with blogging. So if I am not responding or visiting, you know, why.
Yes, I think our education system should be geared more toward participatory learning. I find opposites are really helpful here, because opposites make everything interesting. If you teach a child something as an established fact, it becomes boring. "We know this. Humanity knows this. So why do I have to learn it? Why do I have to learn all the names of all the rivers in my country?" But if you introduce opposites, controversy, suddenly the subject becomes important, because the truth is at stake. Take the moonlanding for example. You can either teach the dry facts of the case, in which case I believe the reaction will be "who cares". Or you can introduce all the arguments of all those people who say we never went to the moon. Now suddenly you have to take sides, participate, defend your opinion, etc., it's much more like sports, and kids play sports for fun, you don't even really need to teach them much!
Well it all depends. Some things have to do with personal values and might be difficult to judge, but other things are objective facts. People might have a certain reaction when I say "God definitely does not exist and I can prove it 100%", but they will not have the same reaction when I say "Hercules doesn't exist, 100%", "Zeus does not exist, he is a fabrication", "Santa Claus is a lie". People have outgrown those beliefs, these beliefs don't offer them anything anymore, so in those cases they agree it's an objective fact, they don't even care, it's like "why are you stating the obvious?" Would those beliefs offer people some good if some people believed in them? Probably. Does believing in Santa Claus make children happier? Probably. But we have to ask ourselves if, in general, it's better to believe in lies or in truths. Of course, sometimes, lies will be helpful. But we can't make separate calculations each individual time, or for each individual person, and say "Erica will probably benefit more if she believes, Alex will benefit more if he doesn't believe, but if x happens to Erica she's probably better off not believing, and if y happens to Alex he's probably better off believing". This becomes too complicated, and we have to adopt a general rule to make life simpler, a rule like "in general, it's better to be rational all the time, even if sometimes it's really painful". Also, I don't know any research that shows that countries or eras where religion is more important than science, are happier or better off. Was Europe better during the Middle Ages? I don't think so. It's pretty clear that religion actually makes people more unhappy.
I hope you are well and that you will return! I hope it's just too much work, and not some other more serious matter.