Category Archives: Gap Trap

The Know-Better Leaps

Camp Psychology, Character, Christianity: Then and Now, Cognitive Bias, Cognitive-/Moral-Miserliness, Dysrationalia, Gap Trap, Politics, Religion, Responsibility, Struggle, The Will

People are messy, and once you’ve got some years under your belt, it’s really not all that hard to find some fault in what they say or do, in their attitudes or beliefs about things. If you pay much attention at all to someone, it’s likely that it won’t be long at all before you know better than something they’re doing, thinking, or saying. And at the moment you realize that you know better, if you’re like most people, you’re very likely to make some irrational leaps in your mind. You can easily make the unjustified mental leap from “I know better in this…” to other thoughts and attitudes such as:

  1. “I know better in this…therefore, I know better about everything than this person does.”
  2. “…therefore, I’m a better person than this person is.”
  3. “…therefore, I know pretty much everything, more or less, about the topic in question.”
  4. “…therefore, I should be a teacher of, or an authority on this topic.”
  5. “…therefore, we should start a new organization based on this.”
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“The Fake Get In Where They Fit In”

Camp Psychology, Character, Civic Duty, Cognitive-/Moral-Miserliness, Dysrationalia, Gap Trap, Hearsay/Meme Culture, Hypocrisy, Labels and Identity, Politics, Pondering Memes, Religion, Rule of Law, Self-deceit

I saw this meme posted on Facebook and what follows is my response.

The meme seems to presuppose that people are either 100% real or 100% fake, when in actuality, we are a mixed bag—maybe 100% real about this, but not about that.

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Life and Doctrine

Camp Psychology, Character, Christianity: Then and Now, Cognitive-/Moral-Miserliness, Gap Trap, Hearsay/Meme Culture, Hypocrisy, Labels and Identity, Real Love, Religion, Self-deceit, The Will

The moral precepts in the Bible are relatively few, while its points of doctrine, and the implications thereof are multitudinous. And the way I see it at this point in my life, we could come close to mastering the former, while we could never master the half of the latter. But instead of going after excellence in morality, so many let that slide, even as they make much ado over their camp’s official doctrines, half-baked as they may be.

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Four Things For Which Jesus Is Most Popular

Camp Psychology, Character, Christianity: Then and Now, Cognitive-/Moral-Miserliness, Dysrationalia, Gap Trap, Religion

In this society, Jesus is immensely popular for various reasons, while also being, hands down, the most misunderstood man in the history of this Earth.

Let me demonstrate for you the following schedule, rough-hewn from my own long-term observations of common religious behavior and sentiment. The first three items are from his deeds, and the fourth, from his demeanor, as popularly understood.

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How Shall We Define “Cult”?

Character, Cognitive-/Moral-Miserliness, Double-mindedness, Dysrationalia, Gap Trap, Religion, Self-deceit

How shall we define “cult”—and what if we were to define it thus?:

cult— n. any group in which the beliefs and practices of the group are guarded from the free, honest, and rational investigation and discussion of the members

If that were the definition, is there anyone among us who has never been a cult member?

And if this is our sad state, how twisted it is that so many are so hellbent on pointing out the cultishness of other groups and ignoring that of their own?

So many love to think they have won the battle by condemning the cultishness of other groups, even as they live in surrender to the cultishness of their own. And what more pernicious social trap is there than this?