Genies don’t cause epilepsy

I wrote about this a few weeks ago.  Genies don’t cause epilepsy.  But I wanted to write about this again because I think it is that important.  Genies don’t cause epilepsy.

We skeptics and naturalists are often asked, why does it matter if we believe stuff that turns out not to be true. What’s the Harm?  Well, first – check out WhatstheHarm to see real life examples of the harm caused by believing things that aren’t true.

Next, consider this. You cannot solve your problem if you don’t know what causes it. If you attach yourself to beliefs that aren’t true, you are preventing yourself from effectively solving your problems.  I don’t know about you, but I would rather solve my problems than cling to beliefs, however comforting, that turn out not to be true.

This is why understanding that genies don’t cause epilepsy is so important. In the west, this is something we understand and know, for the most part. But it was only about 75 years ago where epilepsy was treated by exorcism. And even people who reject supernaturalism still fall prey to the practice of not properly identifying the root cause of their problems. Consider how many people think vaccines cause autism despite NO evidence for that belief and you can understand why this is still an important point to make.

The next time you are struggling to solve a problem, remind yourself that genies don’t cause epilepsy. Use that as a reminder that yourself how important it is to truly understand what is causing your problem so that you don’t waste your time and energy solving a problem you don’t have while doing nothing to solve the problem you do.

Dealing with Disappointment

One of my fans asked me for advice the other day. She is taking a college course and a person she admires and uses as motivation to do better herself, turns out to be cheating on her course work. She wanted to know whether she should report her friend or let it go.

I keep saying, to fix your problem, you have to first properly identify the problem you are trying to solve.  In this case the problem was less what to do about the friend who was cheating and had more to do with how she herself should deal with the disappointment she felt in learning that someone she admired was cheating and that the success they were having was based on bad ethical decisions. How can she motivate herself to continue to do the right thing in the face of others behaving badly?

It is very easy to be disappointment when we find out someone we admired was cheating. Lance Armstrong comes to mind as a major example of this, but really, we encounter this problem throughout life.

The advice I gave her was to recognize that the person being the most hurt by the cheater taking shortcuts was that the person who was cheating because it was preventing them from learning what they were paying good money to learn. 

The next thing I told her was that this shouldn’t dissuade her from putting in the effort herself to learn the material properly. She can still use her friend as a motivation, just now, instead of trying to be as good, she should see if she can be better by doing the work properly. Is this harder than succumbing to temptation. Yes, But, you will feel better about yourself and you will have learned important skills the cheater won’t.

Now, as for whether to report or not, I’m told by college professors that yes, indeed, they do want to know if one of their students is cheating. Professors want to help, but they  can’t if they don’t know there is a problem. So the advice is to report. Not to get them in trouble, but to get them the help they need to do better. Will it work. It might not, but the ethical thing to do is to at least make the effort.

Accept people for who they are

For me, part of being a Humanist means that I accept people for who they are, not who I want or might need them to be.  This is what “the inherent dignity and worth” of each human means. It is also important to me because embracing reality is important to me. I know that in order to solve my problems, I first need to understand them.

Many or most of our problems have an interpersonal dimension to them.  In order to solve our problem we need other people to help us. And in in order to get them to help us, we need to understand how to motivate them to help. And to do that, we need to understand what actually motivates them.

And here is where people go wrong. They assume that other people are motivated by the same things they are. Someone who is motivated by money, tends to throw  money at the problem hoping that this will motivate other people. Others might be motivated to help the environment and so trying to give them money to agree with you isn’t going to work, just as an example.

In order to be successful, you need to take the time to accept people for who they are and not as who you assume them to be.