Near Misses vs. Remote Misses

[Anonymous]

I was reading in Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, David & Goliath, and I came across an interesting psychological study about the effects of the Blitz during WW2 that I think parallels how different people respond to new negative information about their faith. On the surface, it’s like the saying “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but it’s actually just a little more complicated than that. Whatever nearly misses you lowers your morale and makes you vulnerable when more negative information comes, and whatever remotely misses you makes you feel invincible and less empathetic to people who were hard hit by negative stuff.

http://www.wheatandtares.org/13597/belief-morale-and-near-misses-round-three-on-atheism-disaffection-mormonism/

[Anonymous]

I really liked the blog entry, Hawkgrrrl. Lots of good parallels there to FC and Gladwell’s take on how close (or far) something hits us. I especially like the assessment of those who have “optimism” and those who have “empathy” based on life experiences….makes me consider how I’ve responded to certain things differently than other people’s responses. And how that, in turn, caused a serious rift between us. Thanks.

Again, it was a great read and thoughtfully written.

[Anonymous]

I happened to read that book just last week . I realize this is a bit off topic, but the book is also about how perceived disadvantages can sometimes be big advantages and vice versa. It got me thinking about how being a mormon from a small town – and all the accompanying disadvantages – helped me be more successful. Halfway through my career in a fortune 50 company and having some level of success, I think being a mormon has taught me hard work, persistance, and not being discouraged with the occasional negative attitude towards mormons.

[Anonymous]

I know someone who says that there is no such thing as a near-miss, you either hit the target or you don’t.

I disagree – if you get close, then that’s near enough to be a cause for attention.

The idea that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is a common one, but not a generally true one. I believe it is a misquote of Nietzsche. To give a mundane example, intestinal worms will not kill you, but they certainly won’t make you stronger. Likewise one of my relatives is an amputee. I don’t think he is “stronger” as a result. Having a shell land extremely close to you, as you mention, is going to shred your nerves as much as anything else.

That said, sometimes when we do go through challenges, we do come out stronger and more confident.

[Anonymous]

I like it. The comment made by the guy named Howard was spot in with most physiologist had talked to me about.

This outside of FC, which is just a small part of a greater whole of life experienced misplaced or broken trust and asymptote world views being changed from the life experiences. Near misses often don’t cause someone to challenge their as unitive works view. A direct hit or multiple direct hits in my case caused a drastic shift from what I has been taught.

When worlds colloid. But I have noticed that some people get a direct hit and go on by pretending it nevertheless happened so as to try to go on in their life as it was before. Sometimes it worked, most times it just came down crashing harder.

For my own family probably the most destructive thing was the hardcore teaching of enduring to the end to keep your eternal family. That drove my parents nuts tying to be perfect and the constant reinforcement of that from the church and local leadership to get things done(there we’re a lot of things needed to be done and pressure to conform or face not being with your family for eternity if you don’t conform). Lead to a ton if everyday pressure, led to a ton of everyday high volume yelling at imperfections that possibly might led to a non eternity family. Led to high anxiety everyday to conform led to physical abuse. Led to my multiple suicide attempts. The answers from the leadership to pray more, read more, and to “lengthen your stride” (man I hate that now.). Made everything more high stress and even worse, despite that they still kept to that line even after the complete family break down and almost takening my life from the constant stress and feeling of unworthiness. This teaching of lengthen the stride and endure to the end or you won’t have an eternal family so do what ever the leaf ship says or needs… Will forever change how I view both those teachings and placing full trust in authority.

I will never be the same, time hasn’t healed this wound. I still have to face similar things in a semi weekly basis.

But I take away as much good from my new lessons as possible and I try to always be there for people in need. It changed me forever. I can no longer give my full trust to people or authority, even if they mean well and insist that I do because it’s really trust in god. I no longer will ever see it that way. I now steer clear of teaching bearing bad fruit in my life no matter what some people insist I do because of future promises in the next life.

There is good an adapting new experiences. I can now throw out what isn’t working and take what is and throw it out when it stops working very fluidly and daily if the need occurs. I couldn’t before, I was to beholden to tradition and pleasing others.

It’s a blessing to be able to objectively look at the evidence now and seeing if it is bearing forth good fruit now, instead if bad fruit in exchange for the promise of future good fruit.

I hope to help others out or to help prevent going down the same road though if they want the help.

That is the good of the direct hit.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for sharing your experience Forgotten_Charity. I feel strongly that people matter more than programs. I too came to my conclusions as a result of personal experiences.

Thank you for writing this article HG,

I agree with much of what you wrote. For me I believed strongly in my ability of agency, free will, self determination. I remember looking at good faithful Mormons with wayward children and thinking that they had been lax in their childrearing. Seeing “remote misses” increased my resolve that it wasn’t going to happen to me and that I was in control.

Of course this all changed for me. Now the specter of the uncontrollable is always there. Sometimes it leads to anxiety … but it also makes me much more empathetic with others who face struggles.

I liked one of the comments:

Quote:

You actually bring up another good point (that I blogged about on my own blog) — I think that Hawkgrrrl’s model works pretty well for “lived” crisis points — the church’s present heterosexist and sexist institutional policies, for example.

I agree with this. Surely the list of why people disaffect from the church would be much too broad for any good generalizations. This model works best with “lived” crisis points – but even here people are very complex. Even in comparing the reaction of people who lose children to death I see a variety of responses. I would not feel comfortable saying that if these people came through with their faith intact then it was a “remote miss.” There needs to be a better way to objectively quantify near misses and remote misses. Otherwise it could be claimed that if your faith is strong enough everything becomes a remote miss.

Quote:

Why does new information create deeper conviction in some but put others on a completely different path? Is it the nature of the information, the nature of the individual, the support structure, the circumstances, a mix of these, or something else entirely?

These questions are so intriguing to me. I can only imagine that the truth lies in “a mix of these” and more. The only thing that I am sure of is that many of these variables are outside the control of the individual.

[Anonymous]

I love this.

[Author]

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