I finished the Blue Brochure and copyrighted it in 1993. In addition to the foregoing the brochure presented the original STI's RaIse method--in schematic form--for increasing one's level of self esteem and selfishness by focusing on four psych(h)ological values--self awareness, self acceptance, self assertion and self responsibility--and integrating them into the hierarchy of one's own cardinal values.
The Blue Brochure today can serve--given its road map schematic to achieving authentic self esteem and authentic selfishness it can serve--as a kind of cheat-sheet in the process aspects of you yourself re-wiring your own psych(h)oepistemology for authenticness and ultimately, for happiness success.
That is, life goes on: authentic happiness is still the challenge. Psych(h)oepistemology is Psycho-epistemology is our own personal thinking MO in the area of choosing and validating our knowledge and values and it is the "thing" responsible for managing the degree of "tolerance" that we allow for contradictions in us in our relationship with ourselves and the world.
A degree that ranges all the way from "absolutely none, no, none, nada, zero tolerance" all the way to "of course square circles are possible, where have you been, look at quantum mechanics for proof of the notion that contradictions are the stuff of the universe."
Psych(h)oepistemology is the software of our mind. And Yes, it is software that is written by us consciously and subconsciously in every waking moment of our life. This is why a very helpful (Biocentric Psychology) mantra is to say: I take responsibility for everything I think and say and do (and ultimately of course, mean it).
Consciously we contribute directly to our own psychhoepistemological programming every time we make a choice--including the times when we choose to drift and not make a choice when a choice is possible--and subconsciously we do it via two basic methods. The first subconscious method is via standing orders issued from the volitional-conscious mind to the (obedient 'tell-me-what-to-do-and-I'll-do-it) subconscious mind (and Yes if we issue too many bullstuff orders the subconscious can and often does rebel). The second method is the method of absorption like a sponge from our greater culture at-large as we immerse our open minds into its vast--almost bottomless--pool of asserted rights and wrongs.
If our open minds are active-open then with the right philosophy we can deal with our cultural influences and accept the good and reject the bad. Of course if our open minds are not active, just open then we end up with lots and lots and lots of psychhological problems.
Psychhological problems of course that are very solvable but for right now this fact is beyond our scope. Our scope is to deal with this psychhological fact instead: psychhologically speaking everything we do counts.
Everything.
Formally, Psycho-epistemology is (per Dr. Nathaniel Branden, 1969, Psychology of Self-Esteem, Nash Publishing, HC, p.93) the study of the nature of, and the relationship between, the conscious, goal-setting, self-regulatory operations of the mind, and the subconscious, automatic operations.
For one example of a psycho-epistemology's goal-setting (get to heaven) and goal seeking (how? through good works or faith alone? or something else?) in action read the "Is morality without religion possible? lte here.)
If you are religious you probably can relate to the above example and can kind of see that perhaps Branden knows what he is talking about in his psycho-epistemology definition. Branden also knows what he is talking about in the area of psych(h)ology that he is best known for: helping individuals achieve authentic self esteem.
Dr. Nathaniel Branden--the laser sharp intellect who in my book is the mother of authentic self esteem (Ayn Rand--the razor sharp intellect--I view as the father of it)--has warned us against the cultural bromides that surround self-esteem as a legitimately high high psych(h)ological value because these bromides achieve the opposite effect--they undercut self-esteem's seriousness and make it seem instead like a "touchy-feely" (i.e. trivial) concern.
As an example of the modern day self-esteem guru Branden's laser sharp focus on ferreting out cultural bullstuff consider the following excerpt from his blog on the importance of definitions in self esteem:
Many clinicians, for instance, have discovered through experience that treating a client with acceptance and respect can support the client's struggle for a better self-esteem, while mere assurances of the client's worth are generally ineffective. Similarly, many parents and teachers have discovered - or learned from the late child psychologist Haim Ginott - that hyperbolic praise is likely to do more harm than good (Ginott, 1972). Many teachers have invited criticism for believing that a young person's self-esteem can be cultivated by having students sing or announce "I am unique." (It should hardly be necessary to point out that a hay sandwich is also "unique".)
After you read this and laugh out loud you might wonder had he not been the world's best psych(h)ologist Dr. Branden might have missed his true calling as a stand up comedian.
Hay sandwich! I love it.
You will notice in my Blue Brochure (1993) that I discovered the true "song or announcement" that is of the "I am X" form. That is, in my experimental investigations into my own psychhology I discovered the true value of X. It is the one I give in the Blue Brochure's Integration phase of re-wiring your own psychhoepistemology for happiness success. The X-value there is the real (true blue) one.
Gary Deering
PsycHHology Engineer
(helping phhilosophhy
build better humans)
08/30/12 (67 and counting--that is,
forty more to go)
PS
Yikes! I just noticed this misspell in the title: Breaking News: [scrolling] X-Factor Discovered ... Not thee X-Factor but a X-Factor--the one in the self-estreem mantra: "I am X." (It was in The Blue Brochure all along.)
... self-estreem as in streaming!?!? .... our self-esteem is a contiguous stream of mental action? .... or that is, is the branden slip sOs ... slip or slop? ... if slip then foregoing (is one possibility) if not then sloppy typing and title should be corrected to:
Breaking News: [scrolling] X-Factor Discovered ... Not thee X-Factor but a X-Factor--the one in the self-esteem mantra: "I am X." (It was in The Blue Brochure all along.)
PPS
But notice I didn't change/correct the scrolling title because I believe it is slip not slop. As slip it contains a lead to something I've been trying to understand for decades. And it has to do with my inability (up 'til now) to integrate my Mechanical Engineering concept of "state"--as in states of matter: liquid, solid, gas--with states of consciousness--e.g. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy.
Consciousness--qua human capacity--is a thing-like-thing that to be understood must first be owned.
And the price of ownership is: respect.
Consciousness to be owned must be respected.
But even before this you must want to own your own consciousness.
At birth your consciousness is a gift of nature and you automatically own it, or rather at birth and some distance beyond you are not, metaphyscially are not capable of disowning it.
But developmentally--once beyond that distance--you can loose it so you have to maintain ownership by choice.
There are many forces in the world to get you to disown the self (which is mostly your mind which is your consciousness as developed by you into a particular, that is, a particular developed, programmed consciousness we call--our particular--mind) but you do not have to succumb to them.
If you do succumb you have to reverse the disowning process and reown your own consciousness.
Have to that is, if you want the benefits of ownership.
(You have no choice in experiencing the negative consequences of disowning--other than to repress them if they are too much for you to handle, but then you can't escape the negative consequences of being repressed.)
So, consciousness to be owned must be respected and based on my own first hand experience I assert: to be reowned and/or retained it must be obeyed.
As I've asserted elsewhere: self acceptance, self assertion, self awareness and self responsibility are very important psychhological values for us to have (again see The Blue Brochure).
Also as I've asserted elsewhere: everything has an ultimate.
Consequently, I conclude the following.
The ultimate degree of self acceptance is self owning, which is autonomy .
The ultimate degree of self assertion is selfishness.
The ultimate degree of self awareness is not yet known.
The ultimate degree of self responsibility is ... to get to H(OE) ... that is ... Heaven ... ... (On Earth) ... while you actually live and breathe.
Have a nice day.
To be continued (somewhere) in the f.u.t.u.r.e.
PPPS
The discussion herein about consciousness represents a view of mine that I think is relateable to the Ayn Rand/Objectivist assertion/Principle about nature: nature to be apprehended must be obeyed which is itself related to the famous 16th Century English philosopher-scientist who established the scientific method in science Francis Bacon who identified this fact about nature, quote: "Nature to be commanded must be obeyed."
As a career Engineer I know only too well (I've experienced it first hand) how true the Bacon quote is.
That is, I know and trust the Bacon assertion because of first hand experience and hence by analogy and extension I suspect that the Ayn Rand one--including my discussion about consciousness--could be just as true too. (I already of course have some first hand experience about the validity of the Objectivst assertion as well as my consciousness discussion but I need more in order to put it in the same status in-my-mind as the Bacon one.)
{{{ As an aside here ... the foregoing paragraph is an example of my psychhoepistemology in-action-in-real-time ... }}}
I need to do this "discussion" here as placeholder for f.u.t.u.r.e writing ... state of consciousness is analogous to state of matter via other concepts beyond the one or two I now know about (albeit not revealing here) that I didn't know about decades back. Consequently, since this needs more development, I plan to deal with it in the f.u.t.u.r.e (perhaps in the Theoretical PsycHHology Handbook I plan to write some day).
FPS
H(OE) for us a-theists is a lot different than is H for god-believers. H--that is, Heaven--for god-believers is a reward after the term ceases to have meaning. H(OE) on the other hand is a reward here and now while we actually live and breathe, that is, while the term has meaning.
H(OE) and H are similar in that both require expenditure of time and energy to get to its "pearly gates"--albeit, for H(OE) you can actually get there but for H you cannot--metaphysically cannot as there is no experiential nor logical reason nor evidence of any kind whatsoever TO CONCLUDE that there is a literal heaven. (Yes I know this is where Faith comes in and now you know it too and hence know one reason why faith is sooooooooooooo'oh bad for you. If you accept faith as your "reasoning" method then your psychhoepistemology--which should be reason based--suffers near irrepairable damage figuratively speaking after the fashion of an internal vital organ that has been infected with cancer.)
There is however, a literal heaven on earth and it is a state of consciousness. The one we call happiness: Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy, which, when it is achieved, is a state of consciousness. (Not a state of mind but a state of consciousness--"heaven" can be a state of mind but not of consciousness whereas happiness is a state of consciousness which can only be achieved and experienced of course in a particular mind--be it mine and/or yours and/or other human beings.)
Since the only way that I know of to get to Heaven on earth is to: honor your self and happiness, I suggest you do so.
So I guess then that the ultimate degree of self responsibility is ... to honor your life--which is your self--and your authentic happiness--which is your achieved states of non-contradictory joy.
That is, my new working hypothesis is, Ho: the ultimate degree of self responsibility is to honor your life and happiness.
Which means for me--as an Objectivist sympathizer--I have come full circle.
Back in the '70's Ayn Rand convinced me that I, qua human being, am a hierarchical integrate of needs and values and as such I have needs in the serious sense of the term: survival needs. And further that my need of philosophy and my need of a moral code rank at or near the top of my human needs.
And finally she convinced me that the correct (objective) moral code is the one that has life as its standard and personal happiness as its purpose.
Voila! I am ... ... no you don't, you aren't going to get me to reveal the X-factor. If you want to know what it is CBR The Blue Brochure. (Click-Buy-Read)
