Should Be Known

This is my most comprehensive discussion about principles of psychology - what they are, how self-deception is just one of them, and how different psychological principles interact and counteract each other to produce the actual outcome of human behavior, just as they do in the physical world. The tendency of most theorists, it seems, is to try to use their one principle to explain all of human be...

In this episode I talk about a few things: 1. Clarified from previous video that psychology is in the dark theoretically, though many in the field do good/helpful things (and also some bad things). 2. Talked about the price we pay for self-deception. Self-deception works great for supposedly justifying stuff, but then we're stuck with all kinds of false beliefs that don't serve us well (for exampl...

This episode is a kind of overview of the podcast, as it's been a couple of years since I was posting regularly. In the podcast we discuss self-deception, a huge psychological principle that has immense implications, yet is basically unknown to mainstream psychology. Self-deception happens whenever we act contrary to the truth/light that ultimately comes from God, which tells us right from wrong f...

In this episode I discuss the difference between the Light of Christ/Spirit of Christ (/Spirit of God/Spirit of the Lord - yes, all synonymous) and the Holy Ghost, having recently read a little book called The Spirit of Christ by one Daniel K. Judd. Basically the Holy Ghost is a member of the godhead, an actual personage, who has no body so that he can dwell in our hearts, which an embodied person...

It is apparent that one property of self-deception is a need to have others validate your wrong-ness (as right-ness). You can't be settled or peaceful about your untruthfulness, to use a term I like to use. You must constantly seek justification from others, or attempted justification, we might say, since it is not real and is never satisfied. The scriptures are filled with examples of people who...

I discuss the mechanics of willpower and choice in the face of temptation. Basically, #1, in the face of temptation, should you have gotten yourself out of the situation or otherwise avoided it in the first place, or can you now? When Joseph in Egypt found himself in a bad situation with Potiphar's wife, he "got him out". He has been described (by Niel A. Maxwell) as having had good legs. So first...

Abstract: Dogs, who are not accountable before God and do not have the capability to make choices regarding good and evil, nevertheless get angry/aggressive, can have anxiety, low self-esteem, fear, etc., like a human can. This to me tells us that emotional stuff we deal with such as depression and anxiety are not necessarily (if ever?) a result of our own moral choices. If a dog, or a young child...

Well the text below isn't super close to the words I actually uttered forth in my podcast, but here they are anyway. Enjoy and thanks for listening/reading! Monday, May 20, 2022 Offense a Conscious Choice? More on the idea that it’s not totally accurate to say that getting offended or getting angry is a conscious choice. (Or getting anxious or …) Friday, June 2, 2022 Insight vs. New Information an...

SBK039 Self-Deception is Not Necessarily Sin Transcript by Microsoft Office 365 dictate/transcribe – not super great, had to do tons of editing just to turn many many separated fragments on separate lines into sentences and paragraphs, not to mention the wrong words and everything, but here you go! *music* All right, good enough. Welcome to the Should Be Known Podcast, I am Clayton Pixton. If you'...

Monday, February 21, 2022 There’s still a huge gap. I understand depression involves a lie, and anxiety. I understand a little about self-deception. But as it turns out all ways we err involve self-deception, not just depression and anxiety. I don’t understand how people get depressed and anxious. I don’t feel like I can explain the whole thing. Gotta keep trying.  Maybe read some about it. I...

Where do we look for the true principles of psychology?  Why not the scriptures?  The concepts there are actually true, while those from the philosophies of men may or may not be.  I use the term "philosophies of men" to mean the ideas of the great thinkers of our time and times past.  They may be great thinkers.  But many of their ideas may be wrong.  On the other ha...

Sunday, January 17, 2021 So if the instant you cross the line you have to justify yourself, or in the instant you cross the line you are justifying yourself, then it's just like a property of being on the wrong side of the line.  And it's a trap, because you are deceived as to the fact that you are in the wrong and you are deceived as to the way to get out, and it sucks you in.  Maybe go...

Full Notes: You know this thing where you can’t tell the violation from its justification—do we just say that certain things go together - depression and failure to forgive oneself, sin and it’s attendant self-justification, uh, what else?  Basically everything where you’d say you do the bad thing and then you justify it by self-deceiving. That’s everything. So rather than one happening first, the...

(Full Notes) Why would a person believe a lie, I ask again?  Cognitive might recognize that the thoughts are unhelpful and negative or whatever (it doesn't even know they're false), but it doesn't know why.  It doesn't know why a person would continue believing something ridiculous.  It doesn't know why it's sticky.  Doesn't only pride explain that?  Let's think here.&nbsp...

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 17, 2020 Sometime talk about Freud's subconscious and self-deception. Saturday, November 21, 2020 Without looking up what Freud said about the subconscious (it's been a long time), one thing I think that plunges certain things at least into our subconscious is self-deception.  Like when we do perverse things to ourselves and others, it's not the same as some aut...

(Full Notes) Tuesday, November 4, 2020 To the question, is there a different quality  of anxiety that is bad and one that is good or whatever, I say, the anxiety itself is indifferent. It’s not a quantity either that is bad or good. It’s that the bad contains a lie. It’s the lie that’s bad, not the anxiety itself. Something like that. Wednesday, Nov 5, 2020 Any time you talk about the “fine l...

You know how with that question the answer is something like "neither" or "both" - in any case it's not necessarily one before the other? (Kind of like the chicken and the egg question I suppose.) Well what if depression is like that? There's the abuse of the self as the act, you might say, and the feelings and everything that come along with depression as the excuse. Or you might say the giving i...

(Full Notes) Friday, October 2, 2020 Depression is hard.  Anxiety is hard.  Schizophrenia I'm sure is hard, and the list goes on.  Again, the thing is, self-deception results from our choices but it also results from not our choices.  And how do you tell the difference?  Who knows the choices a person has made besides that person and God?  Maybe somebody, but probably not.  Period. Sunday, October...

(Full Notes) Saturday, August 29, 2020 I said that it is a delusion that you're worthless.  It's correct that it's untrue.  But it's only untrue because God loves us with a perfect love, right?  If not for that, we'd be in real trouble, yes?  I think about all this stuff, if not for the atonement of Jesus Christ, we would be in real trouble.  There's a logical way in which...

(Full Notes) Wednesday, August 12, 2020 Just read in Bill Bryson’s book how chemistry got on a firm footing with the invention of the periodic table. Psychology needs one of those. Seriously. Can the principles of self-deception do this?  What are some indubitable examples of self-deception?  My first answer was depression and anxiety. But what’s easier?  From a distance those ones seem...

(Full Notes) Saturday, July 4, 2020 The thing with the learned behaviors mentioned in the last podcast is that it can be explained in terms of self-deception. Again about animals being used for experimentation for psychology.  I don't know.  I know I don't like it, and I'd far prefer to see how far we can get by studying self-deception, as opposed to the brain, personally.  Saturday...

(Full Notes) Saturday, June 13, 2020 I really think there’s something to learning attitudes and behaviors from parents in more subtle ways than we sometimes imagine. I would like to understand the mechanics of this. Why not try to describe this?  Surely someone has already. Tuesday, June 16, 2020? I've been reading from 'Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith'.  I don't know that I've rea...

(Full Notes) Tuesday, May 19, 2020 It is a choice or is it automatic?  When is it a choice and when is it not? Tuesday, May 26, 2020 Remember Jordan Peterson's two true perspectives?  The one is like a right-wing point of view.  And the second is like a left-wing point of view.  Surely this is the same as the objective vs subjective I kept seeing as an undergraduate philosophy...

(Full Notes) Sunday, May 3, 2020 Well it looks like as it went I just couldn't feel good about saying that anxiety is sin, and that depression is sin.  Couldn't feel good about it.  I guess that tells me I need to get off that track, don't be thinking that, or saying that.  So I won't.  And I want everyone to know that I can't feel good about it, so I don't want you to worry ab...

(Full Notes) Thursday, April 23, 2020 So apparently we can sin ignorantly (see the angel’s words to King Benjamin and President Benson and who knows who else.). And the atonement of Christ covers for it (“his blood atoneth for [their] sins”). What does that mean?  It means for one thing that a thing can be wrong to do whether we know it or not. The law exists independent of our knowing it.&nb...