Maggie Jackson, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (Guilford, CT: Prometheus Books, 2024).
"If you're open to ambiguity, you don't have tunnel vision, and things are not so set in stone" (Uncertain 23).
-routine experts versus adaptative experts
Adaptative experts "operate in the borderland that routine experts shun, where hope of ease gives way not just to an expectation of trouble but to a willingness to continually take on ever-greater challenges" (p. 21).
"Life's complexities demand an intense unassumingness that he [Keats] calls negative capability, a capacity to dwell in 'uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts' without impatiently leaping to conclusions." (p. 13).
"A pause is not a time where nothing happens" (p. xxiii)---Stanford University neuroscientist Vinod Menon.
"a key signature of the closed mind: intolerance of uncertainty" (p. xix)
"Those who shun the indefinite tend to see the world in shades of black and white, ignoring the gray. They are prone to jump to answers and are distressed by chaos and surprise. Their 'cognitive map' is narrowed to 'rigidly defined tracks,' wrote Frenkel-Brunswik" (xix)
"Our uncertainty is both a signal of possible danger and the state of mind that invokes the considered thinking needed to update a now-deficient understanding of the world." (xviii)
"the best of thinking begins and ends with the wisdom of being unsure" (xii)
"uncertainty as a path to progress is all the harder to imagine" (xiii)
"How could we find the clarity and vision so urgently needed by not-knowing?" (xiii)
"Uncertainty unsettles us---and that is its gift" (xiv)
"Yet a spate of not-knowing is not time wasted. Let go of the notion that answers are always at hand, wade into the wilderness of uncertainty, and new perspectives open to view" (xxii)
"we can discover uncertainty both as a remarkable cognitive tool---in effect, a skill---for good thinking and as a critical time and space that sets us on the fertile edge of what we do not know" (xxv).
"Not knowing is a permissive and rigorous willingness to [leave] knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result" (p. 57, Ann Hamilton)
"By letting our understanding percolate and working to catch up with its evolution, we learn firsthand that knowledge is not the bedrock we assume but rather a living realm of vibrant change." (60)
"Memory is not a dry storehouse of the past but rather the remarkable reflection of a 'ceaseless struggle to master and enjoy a world full of variety and rapid change,' wrote Bartlett in his seminal book Remembering" (p. 66).
"Memory is not a mere datastore but a process that entails the building and honing of understanding---sometimes for years" (p. 69).
"Recollection is no more a neat downloading than learning is rote replication. In remembering, the mind is haunting itself, reconstructing associations, replaying, and reconsolidating experience once again." (74)
"By engaging in fallow time, we can transform fresh experience into a dynamic architecture of vibrant detail, timeless abstraction, and new revelation. Then, by struggling to recollect, we can strengthen the connections, patterns, and contradictions of our growing stores of wisdom" (77).
"Memory is not a quick, easy process of preserving and retrieving a frozen past but rather a part of us---linked, honed, evolving---whose acquaintance we must continually endeavor to renew" (79).
"The more people stare into the distance when they are asked a complex question, the more detailed, imaginative answers they tend to provide" (100).
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the entire world" (quoted in p. 96; original from Einstein).
-"transcendent thinking" like daydreaming is necessary. p. 93.
-A youth who can muse on life's possibilities probably is 'going to be the most successful in overcoming obstacles'" (93). this is related to autobiographical memory.
-"80 percent of the brain's energy is consumed by inner events." (88).
*mental models, construct a past, prediction errors
"It is dangerous to live in a secure world" (Teju Cole, quoted in 107).
"Only by questioning ourselves as much as we ask others can we build heights of understanding beyond facile assumptions" (124).
"How easily does difference slide into opposition and bigotry?" (121).
"Prejudice begins with a glance but flourishes behind the walls that we build to silence and distance one another" (120).
*in-groups and out-groups; in-group bias (110)
"Look past a label and open up to the mystery of those we dismiss. See the other as worthy of investigation and begin an encounter tempered by remaining open to all views" (119).
"Where does prejudice begin? With a glance. The instant we cast our eyes on someone, we almost immediately sort them into "people like us" or not. From that cognitive fork in the road, all else follows" (110).
"Discord inspires collaborators to consider multiple perspectives beyond their shared view, then to take the crucial step of connecting the dots between them." (151).
"Dissent stimulates thinking 'that is wide and curious as well as deep and scrutinizing'" (151).
*Uncommon ground
"Liberated from the pressures of homophily and cohesion, groups with acknowledged differences became more willing to probe contested perspectives. Their disagreements were at times vociferous, their dialogue more open-minded" (149).
"Diversity is not about harmony but about unleashing creative dissonance" and what matters is our ability to "see the world in all its complexity" (149).
"The spark of difference shatters the persistent human expectation of similarity" (148).
"No one individual knows the whole of the truth, and no one individual fails entirely. Everyone says something true about the nature of things" --Aristotle (133).
*Socrates: knowing the limit of knowledge is important.
"Could the chaos of poverty spur both a range of cognitive ills and unsung strengths?" (168).
*The answer is yes.
"What counted as beneficial were qualities of mind such as patience or sustained focus that might emerge despite adversity, not due to it." (169)
"People reared in more chaotic milieu tend to 'reallocate their cognitive resources to pressing needs'." (171).
"The upheaval of precarity can lead youths to become exceptionally attuned to their environment" (171).
*The amygdala, is "the seat of the brain's ability to detect and regulate environmental threats" (174).
*the prefrontal cortex
"Many young survivors of early adversity show advanced maturing of cortico-limbic circuitry and less of the high anxiety that typically follows such experiences" (175).
"We have a good sense of what reflection is and how it's related to the brain and how it develops" (187)
"Children with autonomy-supportive caregivers tend to be more successful, motivated learners who experience high well-being." (187)
"Hope is the story of uncertainty, of coming to terms with the risk involved in not knowing what comes next, which is more demanding than despair and, in a way, more frightening. And immeasurably more rewarding" (Rebecca Solnit, quoted in 191).
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*Corticolimbic circuitry is responsible for processing emotions and motivations. It allows for integrating cognitive functions with emotional states and plays a crucial role in regulating behavior and emotional responses. Essentially, it's how the thinking part of the brain communicates with the emotional part to produce appropriate actions based on a situation.*Prefrontal cortex: the furrowed outer layer of gray matter in the brain's cerebrum, associated with higher brain functions such as voluntary movement, learning, memory, coordination of sensory information, and the expression of individuality.
-re. Constructivism: "Constructivists, however, challenge this worldview [a single meaning], arguing that our reality is not objective at all. Rather it is entirely subjective, and our experience of events and our perceptions of the world shape our own personal realities. It is entirely possible for two people to go through the same event and yet to have entirely different experiences and perspectives on it" (Jesse W. Abell, "Interpretive Processes," 98).
"On their own, the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells are meaningless, for it is the way we define and interpret these stimuli that creates the meaning of our experiences." (100).
My view: It is like perceiving flowers in my way.
"Each person is made up of unique experiences, emotions, theories about the world, and thought patterns, and these factors cause everyone to interpret in their own way the events and experiences of the world" (101).
"A biblical passage does not contain a message waiting to be read, but rather the message is constructed as the audience reads the text in light of their experiences, emotions and beliefs. they construct a meaning for the text as they read the words of the Bible." (101).
*References: Soul and Psyche: The Bible in Psychological Perspective (Rollins, 1999); Psychology and the Bible (Ellens and Rollins, eds. 2004)
*My observation about constructivism is good in terms of a person's positive role of subjectivity (autonomy). However, constructivism may be arbitrary, uncritical, and naive. So, radical subjectivism must be balanced with other factors because the text itself may be understood variously and because reading the text involves multiple dimensions of dialogue.
Referring to "Personal development" (James M. Day, 121-126) in the above book:
I oppose the human developmental model based on a linear progression from heteronomy to autonomy, as Oser views it. James Fowler's faith development also follows this path.
I disagree with the attachment theory, which states that good always turns into good. The opposite may also be true. There is a way to overcome adversity; power or momentum can turn one's life around.
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Leslie J. Francis: One can change character (like pride in the case of a Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector), but one cannot change personality like extraversion or introversion. Predisposition is unchangeable. In "Psychological Types" (137-154)
Psychology of individual differences: using Jung's model; also MBTI: dominant mode within four bipolar psychological perspectives: two orientations (E/I), two perceiving functions (S/N), two judging functions (F/T), and two attitudes (J/P).
*My criticism: No clear, obvious, permanent dominance of one function exists. It may change over time or depend on the context.
Everett L. Worthington, Jr "Virtue Orientations," 155-173 in Jesus and Psychology
-two sets of virtues: "warmth-based virtues" (love); "conscientiousness-based motivations (self-control). (156). For example: in the former: love, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, gratitude, grace, and humility; in the latter: self-control, responsibility, accountability, duty, obligation, justice, and truth.
*My criticism: There is no clear-cut division between two kinds of virtues for a person. In other words, one may have both virtues to a different degree. They may work together to help a person.
"In the field of social psychology, there is a concept called sunk cost, meaning that the more time, effort, and resources you put into something or someone, the harder it is to walk away from or release it" (p. 42).
"A parable is a story cast alongside of life for the sake of leading the audience to see something differently" (Marcus Bog, Jesus: The Life, Teaching, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 259].
The parable is "can openers for the mind" (Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables, 8).
"Parables bring us to the very heart of Jesus' ministry"
--Michael Cook, "Jesus' Parables and the Faith that Does Justice," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 24.5 (1992):3.
"Parables ... raise in an acute and striking way the question of how concrete and specific was Jesus' own concern for justice" (Cook 4).
"In short, the parables invite us to live in mercy---to live with compassion and love in light of the reality of the reality of what Jesus called the 'kingdom of God'" (Matthew Gordley, Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus, 6).