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Today’s guest is Dr Jessica Tracy, the leading expert on the emotion of pride. Jess is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and a Canadian Institute for Health Research New Investigator. Her work is currently supported by a Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) Operating Grant. She is an Associate Editor at Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relationships and Group Processes.
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The distinction between emotions and how pride is expressed.
Universal expressions of pride in humans around the world.
4:40
Both kinds of pride lead to power–both different kinds.
A self evaluation is needed for the emotion of pride.
Amy Cuddy’s book Presence
(Power poses produce certain chemicals that help us succeed.)
MIN 7:00
Shame
A gobal negative sense of self.
Pride and shame body expression in congenitally blind athletes.
MIN 9
Dr Tracy became interested in studying more complexed emotions. Paul Ekman showed that 6 distinct emotions were recognized all over the world (1960s) and determined through facial expressions. Similarly pride was determined to be an emotion due to bodily expressions.
MIN 13:30
Do other primates have expressions of pride and what is it like?
MIN 17:00
Humans notice high status expressions in pride body language.
18:30
Dominance and Prestige both work to get power.
Dominance and success.
Types of tasks and types of leaders and types of pride.
23:30
Avoiding the wrong kind of pride.
Authentic pride is a huge motivator.
MIN 25:30
Looking for praise (which can lead to bragging) for the feelings of pride instead seeing the accomplishments for the sense of pride.
Social costs to hubristic pride ( which gets you power or status) but creates situations where others don’t like you.
26:30
[ictt-tweet-inline]A big misconception about pride is that it should be avoided.[/ictt-tweet-inline]
Pride strengthens our identity.
Our society determines what we feel the emotion of pride about.
A caution:
Don’t get caught of in the great feelings of pride and get grandiose and forget why you did the good thing you did.
Shownotes: PART I
A conversation (in 2 parts) with
the author of Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality, by practical theologian Tom Reynolds
Bio:
Tom joined the Emmanuel College (part of the University of Toronto) faculty in 2007. He is committed to an interdisciplinary, practical, and relational vision of theology, his teaching and research address a range of topics related to constructive theology (particularly the doctrine of God and theological anthropology), theological method, intercultural and interfaith engagements, contextual theologies and globalization, philosophical theology, disability studies, and the thought and influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Incorporating the theology of disability into his work training pastors at Emmanuel Seminary, because theology is personal, and not disconnected from the real world concerns of the church and people living their lives.
4:30
About his son Chris sparking his interest and work in the theology of disability.
5:30 Learning that disability isn’t a problem to figure out, but rather it’s about a person who I love and live with, and care with and for, which radically reoriented my perspective on theology.
5:50
Disability and God’s Providence
(Questioning does God “cause” disability as a curse or opportunity for healing…or a kind of moral lesson…)
6:30
His son exploded the theological categories (and assumptions) pertain to Providence…making everything confusing and needing to be re-thought.
7:00
What is abnormal? What is “faulty” humanity?
Amos Yong, Hans Reinders, John Swinton writing on the topic too.
8:15
Tom details the new book on the Theology of Care which builds on the first book.
8:40
Some churches stress Cure over Care in terms of disability.
8:50
(Lisa) My visit to a church where the leadership was interested in healing my son from his non normative experience of the world.
10:00
The range of responses churches have when encountering people with disabilities.
The church’s “urge to cure” is better than outright exclusion, which plenty of families have encountered.
11:00
It comes from the the idea of remaking and fixing someone in a way that is more comfortable for non disable people and normalcy (what they consider normal). Not helpful or Christian.
12:00
About the church that didn’t want his son as a disruption and a church that did receive them.
13:00
“How can we help you?” was water for his parched soul. How the church accepted and welcomed the uniqueness of his son.
14:15
Hospitality vs. a narrow view of what is preferred.
15:00
The messiness of various kinds of people, in general, means we have to expand our view of grace.
15:30
Who gets to be a full-fledge member of the church community?
and the “mascot syndrome” for those with disabilities.
16:30 – 17:50
Levels and types of responses:
• Tolerate disabled, but they do not get to be a true part of the church.
• “Inclusion” sometimes means means the the “outsiders” get invites to the inside group based on the good graces of the in group, but are still treated as problems to be solved, or people that are to receive the gestures of charity from others (people for whom things are “done for (them”)”. Doing for instead of “being with”.
18:00
What is access? In is not just accommodations (i.e. ramps and special bathrooms) and alterations but ongoing…
Faith communities may be not expecting and not ready to receive those with disabilities.
18:30
It’s not an issue about outsiders, because disability extend to a broad range of issues, both visible and not visible, including mental health challenges that are already there.
18:50
Thinking of the word “BELONGING”
as in “to be longed for when you aren’t there in the fullest sense.”
John Swinton and belonging
19:40
Jean Vanier “In giving and receiving do we really thrive as people”
20:30
Unconscious bias that includes “fear of the stranger” and “fear of the stranger within”.
21:00
We fear weakness and vulnerability.
21:30
Before “mainstream”…the stigma of “retard”…and fearing and disposing weakness.
22:20
Nathan means gift. (Lisa) I learned that I had to recognize weaknesses (shortcomings) in myself the I saw reflected in my son…and communities can do the same type of thing unconsciously.
23:00
“The encounter with disability punctures the illusions of what we think of as our own strengths.”
23:50
The journey with a child with disabilities is isolating.
25:30
Societal epidemic that fears being vulnerable or perceived as weak or unable to perform in ways that are considered valuable by society.
26:00
We have to see what are myths about autonomy, independence, and productivity where are assume we are self-reliant and these qualities are prized so highly. “Able-ism” (The idea that being able in body and mind is normal and most vital which serves as the lens by which we see and judge the world and others outside those parameters as faulty.)
27:00
Tom’s latest work called “A spirituality of attentiveness”. Christianity: St Paul’s strength in weakness serves as a prophetic witness against a society that prizes the strong as the main thing of value. 1 Corinthinians pretense of strength undercuts our ideas of grace)
29:20
We are all only temporarily-abled. (Lisa).
31:00
On hearing “You must be so blessed to have a disabled person as a teacher.” Is this sometimes a reframing of the situation that spins the situation to be more palatable? A glossing with spiritual truths and making it about spiritual growth.
31:20
Instead, Chris’s life seeks its own flourishes, and he may at times function as a teacher.
33:00
Thoughts on intellectual ability (or inability) and belief in terms of Salvation.
God’s works God’s own path in different ways and in different capacities with people. This undercuts my arrogance (as a theologian), so I don’t think I can so easily map it out definitively and universal for all people in all places.
34:00
His son’s atheism (who is the God he doesn’t believe in)…and how that challenges our presuppositions about God.
34:50
“It is in the kind of relationships of mutual belonging that the full image of God is borne out.”
35:30
(Lisa) To my son I said, “when you see someone who is loving you, you are seeing God.”
(Lisa) On how I changed from thinking “right belief” as the way to understand God was central. Our intellectualizing what God has done is not salvific.
38:00
Martin Luther’s theology of the Cross:
The pretense that we know exactly where God is and how God works. Where God is most hidden is where God is most vividly revealed in saving ways.
38:30
“Who I am to declare that God’s grace only works in some ways? and the God’s capacity and God’s own mystery is limited to what I would deem and my community would deem adequate.”
39:30
What the practical theology of disability tells us about Grace with God and relationships with others.
40:00
“The longer I live and work as a theologian the more I realize the limitations of theology and the true infinite mysteries of God.”
Jesus was disruptive to religious pretense and suppositions. “You say this..but I say this…”
Theodicy – The question of why does God allow suffering and how should we think about suffering.
How Tom, as a theologian, answers the question,
“Why would a sovereign God allow a person to be born disable and encounter such suffering?” (This is great!)
The best is yet to come! Come back for part II next week.
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Episode 5 – The god of Wine and re-thinking the nature of creative process
Today’s episode is about the Greek god of Wine and rethinking our ideas about the process of creation, and a better understanding the notion of “creative genius”:
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wine segment
What the Greeks thought about wine is reflected in the god of wine that they worshiped. (I don’t recommend worshiping the god of wine, or any god except the benevolent Creator.)
• Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and grape harvest
• The only god to have a mortal parent. Born from Zues’ thigh. That’s because his mother burnt to a crisp when Zues showed himself to her in his glory. Whoops.
Symposium means “drinking together”.
Additional note: These originally-small gatherings were for upper class men and with carefully imposed rules about consumption. They occured for leisure and thoughtful discussion.
• I will be offering a symposium-stlyle web-event where we will all have a glass of wine at the same time and discus a topic–possibly in July. Only patrons will get to come. This is your invitation. :)
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• Most of the great Greek plays were initially written to be performed at the Spring feast of Dionysus. . . .when the buds of grape leaves start to open. It was a most sacred festival.
• Dionysus was a patron of the arts!
For Greeks, Dionysus was credited with creating wine and spreading the art of viticulture (the horticulture of grapes).
• He had a dual nature; on one hand, he brought joy and divine ecstasy; or he would bring madness, brutal and blinding rage–a good depiction of the dual nature of wine.
• He was brought back to life…like grape vines that undergo brutal pruning and look dead, but then burst back to life.
• Blood and red wine are often linked for the ancients.
(Blood gives the body life, wine has powerful bodily effects.)
“All the products of a man’s genius may be temporal and corruptible, but the creative fire itself is eternal, and everything temporal ought to be consumed in it. It is the tragedy of creativeness that it was eternity and the eternal, but produces the temporal, and builds up the culture which is in time and a part of history. The creative act is an escape from the power of time and ascent to the divine…”
Today we’re thinking of the creative process as re-imagined and being “divinely co-operative”.
We (commonly) think of genius as applied to us in a personal way like a characteristic. A natural capacity, but the Greeks seem to have a much healthier view of what the process of creation is truly like…
• For the Greeks …divinity is always present.
• A genius = an unseen guardian, or custodial and protecting spirit…who gives a human inspiration: For the Greek, we each have one. (It’s not us; but it will help us.)
Three reasons why depersonalizing our part in the creative process is helpful:
1. Failure is not personal
2. Success shouldn’t cause arrogance
3. Patience and giving up control (not forcing it) will reinvorgate your creativity
What do you think?
Is the creative process a “divine cooperation”?
In the next episode we will cover “the proper rites of friendship” and skinny on “wine spritzers”.
What a HUGE temptation to be self-satisfied as we acquire knowledge.
We soon secure a kind of confidence (or inflation) when we know things others don’t. Too little does our increased knowledge humble us as we recognize all the many things we do not know.
Our opinion of ourselves may intensify and improve, despite not using our gain for the benefit of others. It’s a strange irony. And I’ll bet it’s far easier to see this in others than in ourselves. What do you think?
It reminds me of the fish you see here. The porcupine fish (often confused for the pufferfish) have the ability to inflate their body by ingesting water or air, and swelling up. At 2 times their size vertically, they try to avoid death by scaring off smaller-mouthed predators. Their pointy spines, distend outwards when the fish is inflated, and some species are poisonous. A tetrodotoxin resdies in their internal organs, such as the ovaries and liver. This neurotoxin is at least 1200 times more potent than cyanide (from wikipedia).
One downside to furthering education is the routine bypass of true humility once some comprehension has been achieved. Knowledge ends there, perhaps. We like it because it helps us somehow comfort ourselves. It gets ingrown and fetid. Too often it is used to showoff, or deflect others when we are threatened, or to feel superior inwardly. Too often it is not united to wisdom, which should be our true goal. In wisdom, knowledge and maturity converge to bless others. Wisdom helps our knowledge to give back, and reproduce goodness in kind.
Knowledge without mindful experience won’t produce wisdom. A wise one is continually teachable, and can learn from any other person. A solely knowledgeable person compares themselves to others, and feels confident or insecure depending on who they are stacked against.
It’s not that education, knowledge, and learning is negative, on its own. It is the way we use our new understanding and expertise that is the issue of greatest import.
Paraphrase of I Corinthians 13:2b. “…If I can comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, and even possess mountain-moving faith, but disregard love, I am of no good use.”
I have to keep a close watch that my knowledge does not trap me into a foolish corner where wisdom cannot be found. I have to be mindful that I bless and not oppress others through gained knowledge. My God grant me his grace and nature to do it.
Who in your life has impressed you with his or her humility coupled with knowledge?
For me, I find Jesus a great example here. Also some of my learned professors have had incredible humility coupled with awing intelligence and academic achievement. It is a beautiful display of the Fruit of the Spirit.
