WE WERE UNITED, THEN WE WEREN’T

For the days immediately following the gruesome death of George Floyd, the nation was united. With one voice everybody on the right and on the left said, “Enough is enough, that is not right, no policeman should ever do that.” The justice process went into gear— the men were immediately fired and within a couple days, the chief perpetrator of the unjust violence against an unarmed man was arrested and charged with murder. So far, so good. Immediately also the president of the United issued an executive order to expedite the pursuit of justice. Even better!

Immediately there were protests and they were fine— they were respectful and peaceful. But after two days of protests something happened. Riots. Not respectful and not peaceful people (hoodlums) hijacked the protests and when darkness came— out came their darkness as they set fires, looted, threw stones, started fights, attacked the police, destroyed 100-plus businesses, and many other criminal acts, felonies and after two weeks, several people were dead, including police who were there to provide security and protection.

What kind of thinking —or lack of thinking(!)— engenders that kind of barbarity and chaos? Obviously lots of cognitive distortions (childish and primitive thinking) amplified by fear, anger, hatred, etc. People over-generalized that “all” police are the same. False. People judged, blamed, and mind-read ulterior motives and drew false conclusions. Wrong. People personalized and awfulized one (or a few) outlier events. Dysfunctional. [See Neurons #26, Cognitive Distortions Among Protesters.]

The kind of thinking that creates such chaos and hatred also included multiple kinds of Cognitive Biases such as unjustified assumptions like “systemic racism” which is nonsense when you consider that the Police Department in almost all of the major cities with the riots are made up of a majority of minorities. [Neurons #29]

Then there is the group-think bias. This social bias occurs within nearly every group and is an occupational hazard for a highly cohesive group. It leads to ethnocentricity bias, the bandwagon bias and lies at the heart of mob mentality. Why is it, or how is it, that individuals will do things, unethical things, immoral things, things they would never consider doing—then they are caught up in a mob. How is it that, in those moments, they lose their individuality and the mentality of the group takes over?

It usually occurs at night. When darkness comes and people’s voices rage in chants and calls for mindless, thoughtless ideas — people then get into state, perhaps a state of anger and rage, perhaps a state self-righteous revenge and destructiveness. Curfews are designed to limit things so people don’t get more and more stirred up until they are in an irrational and out-of-control

state. So resisting the curfew is passive aggression and soon becomes full-fledged aggression. Then businesses burn, neighborhood communities are destroyed, more violence and injustice is perpetuated and the cycle continues.

We were united, then we weren’t. Some city counsels, mayors, and governors took the route of trying to appease the rioters (not the protestors). Others mayors and governors took a stand for law and order and established a firm stance against looting, shootings, burnings, etc. Now we became divided all over again, this time about how to handle social unrest and riots.

The irrationality of “defunding the police” foolishly assigns blame to those trying to solve the problem. 99% of police are not like Derek Chauvin. 99% disavow what Derek Chauvin did and would never do such. One bad apple is exactly that— a bad apple. We have bad apples among therapists. Every year there are therapists who are exposed having physically or sexually violating a client. That doesn’t mean every therapist is the same. Every year the same thing happens among doctors, lawyers, politicians, and every other profession. An exception does not create a rule. One or even several outliers does not create a pattern. They are exceptions.

In all of this we are failing to think— to truly think critically, scientifically, and creatively— when we allow thinking distortions and biases to contaminate our thinking. Such prevents clear reasonable thinking. Blaming all police for what a corrupt policeman does is inadequate reasoning. A more reasoned approach is to identify how the violent policeman got that way, how he wasn’t confronted by his peers and supervisors and disciplined to prevent the tragedy in the first place. If that means reform in law enforcement practices— then we need to do that. If it means more and better training— we need to do that.

It is time to think— to think more clearly and this is where overly intense emotions, especially fear and anger, do not help. It doesn’t help at home domestically, it doesn’t help in the street. It is also a time to get training in how to think clearly ... which is the domain of Neuro-Semantic NLP.