Black and White Thinking?

You may or may not have heard this term before but it just means a person is very judgemental about everything. IN other words "Something is either right or wrong in every situation and then they are angry about this one way or another.

However, being a Californian we tend to pride ourselves in being able to see clearly (Both sides to any situation. This is very very different than how people tend to think on the East Coast, especially people who have grown up Blue Collar.

I guess what I might be saying here is in California white and black thinking doesn't exist as much as in other places simply because we pride ourselves on seeing all sides and all arguments to any situation. We tend to view people who cannot view all sides to every situation as being somewhat ignorant.

Of course this is a college prejudice where you have studied literally all points of view and so you understand why each person has that point of view.

Blue collar people often have one point of view and have not studied any other point of view and can get quite violent at ANY other point of view other than their own.

However, to Californians this might be a sign of ignorance more than any other thing. So, I guess it is a prejudice of the college educated against people who have not traveled the world and had to survive whatever was there. If you have been abroad and have survived to come back here you know exactly what I mean by all this.

The other day we had an overwheming day with our 20 year old college age daughter in San Francisco. Nothing was wrong we just hadn't seen our daughter in almost a month so it was a little traumatic for both my wife and I.

My wife said, "I can't just sit here in the hotel room I need a beer (but this later turned out to be a mistake for her) but not for me.

For me, I was tired and wanted to either blog or Watch TV and then I found "Hocus Pocus" which seemed like a fun thing for me to watch for Halloween (the next day) but my wife said, "No you have to watch that with me tomorrow at home." I said, ,"Ok" and we took an elevator up to the 12th floor where there was a bar and a restaurant. But, the restaurant was close. I was a little sad about the restaurant being closed but the bar was still open so we sat down at the bar and only one lady was there (even though several people up to a dozen came and got drinks for their rooms at the hotel.)

So, my wife ordered a beer and I a milk because he had some to settle my stomach because I prefer not to drink because I'm allergic to alcohol. If I drink more than a few sips of wine or alcohol my personality changes sort of like Dr. Jeckle to Mr. Hyde. So, I don't drink. My father and grandfather had the same problem which I think is great because I had zero chance of ever becoming an alcoholic because of this ever.

So, as my wife drank this beer the bartender obviously East Coast Blue Collar and maybe ex-marine starting getting really upset about teachers raping students in school and thought that they shouldn't do this and was upset that women who raped or seduced boys 12 to 15 were just as bad as men who did this to girls and should be put away into prison as much as the male teachers were.

My thoughts about all this was sort of like: "Are you really going to go there now?"

And so my California self that wants to get along with everyone sort of kicked in. So, I shared Incest stories I knew about from people I've met during my life so everyone might have more clarity in how a lot of this stuff comes about.

I could see how the bartender was blown away but also satisfied somehow that I didn't confront his logic and in an oblique way I added to his thoughts about how children shouldn't be raped or molested.

I told a story of someone I met who was at the time a beautiful blonde from Southern California and how her father molested her from about age 9 and the whole family blamed her as the seductress for causing their father to rape her again and again.

Though this sounds really unbelievable this was an upper class family in Los Angeles and this story really happened. I got to know this beautiful lady very well in her 30s and I knew it was a true story but something like this today likely would be fairly unbelievable out of the context of the 1950s and early 1960s.

I was trying to illustrate that often this kind of thinking comes from incest in families that people don't get therapy for and that often this can go generation to generation in various forms harming generation after generation.

And unfortuately the more religious the family the more often there is denial for a variety of reasons.

This is why it has taken so very very long to address the problems of Priests in the Roman Catholic Church molesting boys and girls ongoing the last 2000 years or more now. But, this happens in all religions around the world. It is not specific to the Roman Catholic Church and all of you should be aware of this.