Automatic Thinking

Back in the middle of July I posted a somewhat lengthy entry on white privilege. As I am wont to do, I have found myself thinking back on it on a somewhat regular basis since. I feel the need to point something out that, in my then-indignant state of mind, I failed to mention at the time of that particular entry. Namely, the thing that most upsets me about seeing evidence of the sort of prejudicial and bigoted mindset on display in the open letter to the president by Dr. Jones (and, unfortunately, not the Dr. Jones who Short Round was talking to) is how easy it is for us to fail prey to that mindset. I do it.

The worst part for me personally about that mindset is how effortlessly I find it comes to me. There is a psychological phenomenon known as Automatic Thoughts which is a pervasive (and rather devastating) feature of anxiety disorders. Hey, look! The magical interwebs have provided a handy video to help you understand what I'm talking about! It also offers helpful strategies on how to deal with the problem! Yay, interwebs!




Now, you may be thinking, "But John, I don't have an anxiety disorder. How do automatic thoughts have anything to do with me?" Well, smarty pants, the actual psychological thingy-bopper may not technically apply to you in an anxiety disorder sort of way, and aren't you the lucky one for that fact? However, the basic idea still applies to my overall point.

We all have been conditioned over the course of our particular existences to think in certain ways about certain things. Sometimes, this conditioning is good and beneficial. For instance, let's say you see what looks like a tasty egg salad sitting on a table at a picnic or family reunion or (insert name of other uncomfortable social gathering here). Sure, it's a bit warm out, and you have no idea how long that egg salad has been sitting there. Maybe you're living in a parallel universe in which it's always the early 1960s, and people still make egg salad. Maybe you're at a gathering of hipsters, and the egg salad is ironic. I don't know. Regardless, there's egg salad. It's warm out. You feel lucky.

Well, you're not feeling so lucky after spending an evening with your new bestie, Mr. Toilet, and his sidekick, Mr. Strategically-Placed Large Soup Pot. And guess what? You've just been conditioned never to eat egg salad that has been left out too long again. Or maybe ever. Depends on how smart you are. Anywho, that's the good (albeit unpleasant) sort of conditioning. It keeps us from repeatedly making poor decisions.

Then, of course, there's the not-so-good conditioning we all experience. It's the sort of conditioning which, when left unexamined and unchallenged, leads otherwise respectable, often well-meaning people to be inveterate jackasses and presume to know a thing or two about someone they actually know very little about. It's the sort of thing which leads us to see someone who fits a particular stereotype in some way and make the leap to believing certain things about that person which we have no way of knowing without spending a significant amount of time with her. Or him. It's nearly always a her or a him, is what I'm saying.

So we end up seeing a woman who maybe reminds us of someone else we've met before, or at the very least reminds us of someone who has been described to us by someone we trust, and we assume we know her. Maybe she's a woman with expensive shoes, a pricey mobile phone, a couple of tattoos, and a gold tooth who also happens to be on Medicaid so we assume she's somehow defrauding all of society. Maybe she's a 20 year-old pop singer who's been a celebrity since she was a tween, and now she's behaving rather strangely (at least compared to how she behaved when she was a tween) while singing her hit on a television program infamous for featuring people behaving strangely. Or for behaving strangely while other people are not behaving strangely as they accept awards for something someone else thinks should be awarded to another person with the GREATEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME! No matter what else may be the case, we're absolutely certain we've got a good bead on who that person is.

See? It just happens without us thinking about it. Almost as if it happens automatically. So "automatic thoughts" isn't just a clever name. Except we don't have to give in to the habit of believing that just because a thought comes to us effortlessly and seems to fit perfectly that it actually represents reality. None of us—from the most famous to the person you pass on the street yet never notice—is so easily reduced to a single idea.

I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to allowing these sorts of assumptions to gain traction. There's a reason why, as I read the post on FB which lead to both my original entry and this one as well, I knew EXACTLY who Dr. Jones was describing. Because I've been conditioned to make the same assumptions he has. My privilege as a white male virtually guarantees that the Enigma machine in my brain is going to decode perfectly the message our doctor friend is sending, and it's going to happen so quickly that if I'm not extremely mindful my racism and my sexism filters are going to let it slide right by without a second glance. That doesn't mean that these sorts of messages which do get through also determine how I behave, but it does mean that I'm far more prone to making the wrong decisions about what to say and do based on the wrong assumptions at any given time. It means I have to work that much harder to be aware of the privilege I possess. And, perhaps most importantly, it means when someone who doesn't have my privilege decides to take a risk and point out where I've said or done something careless because I'm not really required to be careful I have to rein in my ego long enough to realize that whether or not that person is taking that chance to help me I still stand to benefit by listening.