Naïve Realism & Implicit Bias, Punishment & Discipline, Upstream Actions/Downstream Consequences, and You Can’t Change the Game by Winning It
In this four-part essay, I give examples of how the four minds of the quadrune mind model of human nature can be observed as they function in various day-to-day circumstances. In the final part, I’ll describe how actors of each mind would perform their parts on the stage of life, as an elaboration on Shakespeare.
Note: The topic headings above are from our earlier evolutionary model of the minds. The examples below represent our later corresponding developmental categories of minds: Reptilian Mind/Infantile Behavioral Mind; Old Mammalian Mind/Childish Emotional Mind; New Mammalian Mind/Adolescent Intellectual (Cognitive) Mind; Human Mind/Grownup Spiritual Mind; and Pre-Human Minds/Immature Minds (all minds and “mind” except the Grownup Spiritual Mind).
Naïve Realism1 and Implicit Bias2
Infantile Behavioral Mind
Have you ever had a vehement argument over something you just know is true, but the other person just can’t see? Maybe you believe that everyone has a right to their opinion, but facts are facts!3 What if our bitterest arguments are caused because we treat our opinions as though they are the facts, which would be obvious to any right-thinking person who is not an idiot? What if the other guy is thinking the same thing?
Adult confrontations that allow for no consideration of the other person’s point of view result from an immature mental state of egocentrism. Infants naturally have an extreme egocentric view of the world. Adults who have not outgrown the infantile level of consciousness also cannot understand that another person could see “reality” differently.4
The conflict here is not over adolescent ideological differences. Naïve realism and implicit bias arise from the pre-intellectual infantile mind, in the form of dogma. Facts exist individually and are not organized into schematized ideologies in the infantile mind.
Grownup Spiritual Mind
As unsettling as it may be, the Grownup understands that there is not just one “real world” that every “normal” person, like them, should be able to see. The Grownup realizes that how we see the world is necessarily an idiosyncratic (re)creation made by our brain. No two people will ever see anything in exactly the same way, whether that includes physical objects or abstract values.5
Even perceptions that most people believe are in the “real” world are actually created by our mind, and may or may not exist at all “out there.” For example, the color “pink” does not exist physically for our senses to detect.6 It is also well-known that animals possess very different sensory receptors (which would represent “superpowers” for humans) to perceive their real worlds.7 Minds are as diverse as the brains from which they emerge, across species and within the human family. This is a good thing for the Grownup; it makes the world less “solid,” but more interesting and entertaining.
Punishment and Discipline8
Infantile Behavioral Mind
For the behavioral mind it is only the act of punishment that matters. There is no mental concept beyond the administration of emotional or physical injury to a “mis-behaving” person—adult or child. There are no such things as mitigating circumstances9 for the adult or child.10 The act of breaking a rule is all that is considered; it is black and white. Easy. Punishment is designed to stop “bad” behavior by “bad” people. Helping them to become “good” is not relevant or may not even be considered possible. Law and order—that is, securing the safety of the privileged and frightened classes—is the goal.
Grownup Spiritual Mind
For the spiritually minded Grownup, every person is more important than any rule. To find an equitable (humane) balance between individual behaviors and social order within a society is much more difficult than just knowing “right from wrong.”
A distinction is made between punishment and discipline. Punishment is designed to cause suffering in the “offender.” Discipline is focused on providing the resources and skills needed for an individual to become more healthily self-disciplined (not self-punishing).11 It takes much greater skill, time, patience, attention, and love to teach discipline than to administer punishment. And doing so requires a nurturing relationship.
Upstream Actions/Downstream Consequences
We recently had our windows replaced. The two-man crew had called another pair of men for additional help with a large sheet of plate glass over our two-story high entry hall. As they were sizing up their options, I asked one of the men, who had 25 years of experience replacing windows, if this is an unusually difficult setup for them. He said, “Yeah, it looks like when they built the house, they never considered that the windows might one day need to be replaced.” They did it successfully with the help of an indoor scaffold. The man said he had only seen window crews resort to scaffolding once before. They had always been able to do the job with ladders. The outdoor team did use ladders as they handed the glass down. Mike, one of the original two men, who was on a ladder, said, “I’m glad the glass didn’t break on me.”
It occurred to me that over the years I have seen many repair and remodeling workers meet similar complications after they get under the surface of things. Substandard, jerry-rigged, corner-cut, or thoughtless work upstream—at the time of construction or by a previous repairer—make the downstream work more difficult, expensive, or even dangerous, as it was for the glass replacement men. (Another common upstream complication are the half-truths or whole-lies that salespeople tell to make the sale, unbeknownst to the delivery and installation workers who must then calm disappointed or angry customers.)
Other examples of upstream laziness or cheapness that I’ve seen lead to downstream problems include 1970s padding that was used under the carpet in a relatively expensive house built in the 1990s; low-quality, brittle window caulking that had to be chipped off one tiny piece at a time by a man who had priced the repair job expecting higher quality, peelable caulking; and ducts that problematically zigged and zagged, causing headaches for the duct cleaners.
Mindless, or careless, of the consequences to others, people metaphorically “upstream” do things in all areas of activity that make life more difficult for the folks who live “downstream.”
Upstream: No quality childcare. Inferior schools. Unsafe neighborhoods. Unstable housing. No social or legal support. Limited access to healthy food and healthcare. Poor access to transportation. Discrimination and bias.
Downstream: Stressed parents and families, child abuse and neglect. Lack of opportunity in life due to insufficient education. Living with constant fear from gun violence and the prevalence of gangs. Heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, respiratory conditions, obesity, arthritis, and other chronic diseases.12 Fewer job opportunities and more pedestrian fatalities. Low self-esteem and chronic stress.
Less metaphorically, another example of immature adult behaviors by upstream folks causing serious problems for downstream folks is taking place along the Colorado River.
Upstream: “[L]ocal leaders are looking for the next economic development opportunity [after the oil and gas companies leave]. And they may have found their solution—divert more Colorado River water with a new dam and reservoir that will generate more hydropower, irrigate more agriculture and store more water for emergencies….
Downstream: “The project in Rangely, Colorado, and ones like it come at a crucial time for the West as the federal government, seven states and 30 tribes that rely on the Colorado River look to use less and find solutions to save the system’s integrity.”13
Grownup Spiritual Mind
It takes a lot of Grownups to work out solutions to the world’s inequities caused by “upstream” people’s behaviors on our fellow humans “downstream.” At least, we can recognize that such behavior is not just unethical or immoral but obstructs the spiritual development of everyone who lives along the river.
Mike, the window guy, said, “I’m not a ‘make it work’ guy; I’m a ‘do it right the first time’ guy.” And he was. Mike cared about the quality of his work and how what he did affected the people who lived with the results of his work. It is called integrity by labor. I’m grateful that Mike is not the only worker we have had who is skillful at his craft and respectfully mindful that his skills can make life better for others. It’s what a Grownup would do.
You Can’t Change the Game by Winning It14
Childish Emotional Mind
The childish mind sees everything in life as a dramatic conflict between “us” and “them.” This conflict must result in us “winning” or “losing” to them. We deserve to win; they deserve to lose. God wants us to win; God wants them to lose. Because God is on our side, then the conflict must be “Good” against “Evil.” With God on our side, if we lose then it must be that “they” used Satanic or witchy superpowers against us.
If you win, it does not end the game. You must always be vigilant less you are caught off-guard. For example, look at any progressive or conservative battle that was won in the past but later lost, leaving the “players” fighting again to regain their former victory.
Grownup Spiritual Mind
The Grownup recognizes that as long as you play the same win-lose game, no victory is forever. The game goes on as long as there are willing players. For example, the political power game will swing from Left to Right and Right to Left throughout changing times over the decades. Victories that “should” be understood by everyone as representing how the world “ought” to continue will be challenged by “stupid” people who think their way represents the world as it “ought” to be.
The Grownup recognizes that the goal of the game is not to “win” but to make the competitors “better” at the game they want to play. For example, the more evenly matched competing basketball teams are, the more likely that both teams will see improvements in their play.15
More to the point of the quadrune mind is that “winning” our favorite conflicts with others does not make the human condition better as much as we think it will. The best outcomes for everyone are to use conflicts as opportunities for enhanced well-being for people on each side of the dispute and to create better solutions than either party could have come up with alone.
It is only when we play the “mutual responsibility to spiritually grow up” game that outcomes will be worth our time. And be a game that can make us all better human beings where no one must lose.
- Koehler, J. (2021, January 23). Perceiving is believing: How naive realism influences our perception of everything. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-school-walls/202101/perceiving-is-believing. “Perception is everything—and it is flawed. Most of us navigate our daily lives believing we see the world as it is. Our brains are perceiving an objective reality, right? Well, not quite. Everything we bring in through our senses is interpreted through the filter of our past experiences….
“Usually, the meaning we apply is functional and adequate—if not fully accurate, but sometimes our inaccurate perceptions create real-world difficulty….
“What happens when we extrapolate our perceptual shortcomings to large-scale human interaction? Too often, humans get stuck believing their view of the world is an objective reality. This, of course, leads to conflict with other humans who disagree, especially those we perceive to be part of an out-group. Naive realism leads us to reason that we see the world objectively—and that others do as well. When we encounter people who disagree with us on important matters, we tend to think they are uninformed, irrational, or biased.”
- For a more detailed look at naïve realism and bias, see Why do we believe we have an objective understanding of the world? Naive realism, explained. (2023). The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/naive-realism. “If we are unable to see that our perception of the world is clouded by our biases, when someone’s perception is different to ours, we believe them to be ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid.’ Instead of expanding our knowledge by trying to understand the world through a different perspective, we think of ourselves and our point of view, as being superior. While we are the people who are ignorant, not well-informed, and biased, we end up thinking that the other person that doesn’t share our point of view is all of those things…. While we can point out the influences that impact some else’s behavior, we find it difficult to see our own biases…. Based on [German-American psychologist Kurt] Lewin’s work, Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget studied children’s perceptions and found that they viewed the world through an egocentric lens. He found that children have trouble separating their beliefs from the beliefs of others—and apparently, we don’t grow out of that!”
[My emphasis. The article describes naïve realism as a “top-down” process. From the quadrune mind perspective, concrete views of reality that block the reasoning mind to defend our biases is a bottom-up function of the brain. The infantile behavioral mind is dominant over the adolescent intellectual mind, which is otherwise able to take in new information from the environment].
- For related descriptions of the differences between “facts,” “knowing,” and “truth,” see my essays, Do Facts Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth? Yes or No: (Looking for black and white answers in a kaleidoscopic world) and Absolute Certainty: Doing, Knowing, and Thinking.
- See Clarke, J. (Gans, S. med. rev.). (Updated 2023, March 15). What does egocentrism mean? Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-egocentric-4164279. “Egocentrism represents a cognitive bias, in that someone would assume that others share the same perspective as they do, unable to imagine that other people would have a perception of their own…. Egocentric people can find it difficult to connect with others or maintain meaningful relationships for a long period of time. The bias toward self can result in an egocentric person struggling at home, at work, and within their intimate relationships. The primary reason for these struggles is the lack of ability to empathize or imagine someone’s perspective other than their own…. “Although it may feel that someone like this is narcissistic, an egocentric person does not necessarily obsess over things like success, beauty, or status. They simply don’t consider other people in their decision-making.”
- Compare MacLean, P. D. (1990). The triune brain in evolution: Role in paleocerebral functions. New York: Plenum Press. “[T]he phenomenology of psychomotor epilepsy reveals that even the least obtrusive feelings generated by limbic activity are tinged with some degree of affect.… Something does not exist unless it is imbued with an affective feeling, no matter how slight…. [T]he phenomenology of psychomotor epilepsy suggests that without a co-functioning limbic system, the neocortex lacks not only the requisite neural substrate for a sense of self, of reality, and the memory of ongoing experience, but also a feeling of conviction as to what is true or false. This presents a problem of crucial epistemological significance because there is no evidence that the limbic structures of the temporal lobe are capable of comprehending speech, nor is there any basis for inferring a capacity to communicate in verbal terms. Hence, it would appear that the manufacture of belief in the reality, importance, and truth or falsity of what is conceived depends on a mentality incapable of verbal comprehension and communication…. [I]t is one thing to have a primitive, illiterate mind for judging the authenticity of food or a mate, but where do we stand if we must depend on that same mind for belief in our ideas, concepts, and theories?” [Emphasis in the original. Pp. 578-579].
- Pang, D. K. F. (2023, May 29). Why pink doesn’t exist: Lessons in perception and reality: We don’t access reality directly, just the brain’s representation. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-and-beyond/202305/perception-reality-and-why-pink-doesnt-exist.
- For some examples, see Wnuk, A. (Pub. and rev. 2017, July 31). What can animals sense that we can’t? BrainFacts. https://www.brainfacts.org/thinking-sensing-and-behaving/vision/2017/what-can-animals-sense-that-we-cant-071317.
- For more details, see Briggs, R. D. (with MacLaughlin, S.). (2023, January 12). Positive parenting: Discipline vs. Punishment: Explaining the difference and guiding caregivers in positive parenting. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/on-babies/202301/discipline-vs-punishment.
- For links to how specific populations of disabled adults and children are affected by the criminal justice system, see Prison Policy Initiative. (Last updated 2023, October 5). https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/disability/#:~:text=People%20with%20disabilities%20are%20overrepresented,state%20prisons%20have%20a%20disability.
- Regarding children see Carter, M. S. (2023, October 15). Most Oklahoma schools have eliminated paddling—but the state still uses it more than others. The Oklahoman. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/government/2023/10/15/oklahoma-schools-paddling-corporal-punishment-option-rural-communities/71128940007/. “A 2022 survey by the Oklahoma State Department of Education showed that 63 state school districts used corporal punishment on more than 400 students who were covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2021-22.”
- Parents, teachers, and employers may say that a child or adult is always harder on themselves for mistakes or misbehaviors than other people would be on them. Usually, this is seen as a moral strength. However, it is more likely the person has introjected a self-protective attitude of “self-loathing.” Not only is this attitude not morally healthy, it is also a definite block to any hope of a spiritually mature life full of self-love and capacity to love others. From infancy on, self-love is an essential precursor for love of others. Healthy self-love is revealed, although not necessarily in a public way, as a life of service to other people and the earth.
- See Merck, A. (2018, October 8). The Upstream-Downstream Parable for Health Equity. Salud America! https://salud-america.org/the-upstream-downstream-parable-for-health-equity/, and Robezniecks, A. (2021, May 28). 3 key upstream factors that drive health inequities. AMA. https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/health-equity/3-key-upstream-factors-drive-health-inequities.
- Myskow, W. (2023, September 10). Inside Climate News. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10092023/colorado-river-upstream-use-it-before-they-lose-it-2/.
[As the Colorado River declines, some people upstream look to use it before they lose it: As states negotiate future water cuts, some officials are looking to build new dams and reservoirs in the Upper Basin of the overallocated Colorado River to use more water].
- This phrase comes from my early counseling training. I have not been able to find the source. A similarly sounding phrase is, “If you can’t win the game, change the rules.” The idea is to openly create a game you can have greater enjoyment playing and a better chance of winning. However, this phrase would also apply to cheating. The person who wins a game by cheating is no longer playing the original game with the original rules. The cheater is playing a different game by their own (secret) rules while acting like they are endorsing the original game’s legitimacy. For example, players become more adept at the private game of “deception,” than the public game of good business. See MacLean, P. D. (1990). The triune brain in evolution: Role in paleocerebral functions. New York: Plenum Press. “Deceptive behavior is no respecter of animals or persons…. [D]eceit has been exposed at the highest level of government….
“If people have learned through culture that ‘honesty is the best policy,’ why is it that they are willing to take enormous risks to practice deception? Why do the games that we teach our young place such a premium on deceptive tactics and terminology of deception? How can pupils be expected to come off the playing fields and not use the same principles in competition and struggle for survival in the classroom?” [P. 242].
- See Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The inner game of tennis. New York: Random House.
[This approach to sports is a classic Zen approach to competition. Competitors want to be about equal in athletic ability so that each becomes more skillful at their sport through their competition. Rather than adversaries to “beat,” they are collaborators for mutual benefit].