Personal and Shared Feeling Comparison satisfaction through noting or seeing differences, better or worse, progress made, hardships or difficulties avoided, advantages, gladness, relaxation, enjoyment, sense of accomplishment and goal realization. The annoyance frame of reference can focus upon low status, hardships, worseness or comparative badness, disadvantages, in life. Each comparison of feeling good or bad can be made on a personal basis or on a shared feeling basis.
Satisfaction or annoyance depend upon the way in which you make comparisons. This principle dates back to Shakespeare. Psychologists from the time of Hoffding and James to Wallin and Wendal Johnson have devoted considerable attention to the principle of comparison. Proof usually involves comparison, in observation, experiment, or reasoning to show the better aspect of some object, idea, or method. Individuals unconsciously use comparison in making decisions and in thinking about the differences in things. Most of our everyday use of comparison, however, puts “the cart before the horse”. Instead of using comparison knowingly to see alternative ways to feel, we are prone -to use the principle to prove that one way is best. Betterness is a relative matter, and when we lose sight of the multiple use of comparison, it makes us a slave to certain feelings rather than conscious of many ways to see betterness. The point is that comparison yields a feeling of betterness, for instance, but in any situation there are a dozen or so different ways this betterness can be related to personal status. To see only one way is again to be a slave to one feeling. alternative-feeling orientation means to see many ways to make comparisons in any situation.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Confidence - You can see the way that your abilities,are better than some people, that some people have better abilities than yours. You can see either that you have much to be glad for and to enjoy or that you do not have as much as you ought to have and therefore feel inferior. You can feel confident that you can enjoy life and that you have enough (or more than necessary) ability to enjoy living. You can also see that you are worse off in conveniences and abilities, as compared to some people, so that you feel inferior, slighted, or at a disadvantage.
Again the alternate frame of reference (largely verbal value focus) determines which way or ways is appropriate. If you follow one clan of ideas you will see inferiority, indifference or boredom, or superiority, for example, and believe in your heart there is no other way,
Anger - You can see how people do not help you or respect you as much as they should, and you in turn feel bitter or angry. On the other hand you can consider the overall conveniences that people make available you, and the minor misunderstandings or inconveniences people cause are not grounds for anger but instead are exceptions which make possible a better appreciation of mutual helpfulness. Some people remain calm and unruffled in the face of seemingly direct insults. Some people rush into anger at the slightest provocation.
What is your verbal value focus? Do you know there are many ways to compare parts, causes and related events in any situation. Do you know the way you compare leads to a feeling? Most people hurt themselves rather regularly in some major walk of life by narrow comparisons. Such persons make blameful comparisons when appeal comparisons would be more productive. In this age of high material production, we always beat our last record, and of course a record is a comparison. Comparison can be used as a persuasive appeal, a challenge, or it can be used to “assign” blame and thus anger. Sometimes anger itself can be used as a shock appeal. Morgan and Webb have a chapter in their book “Strategy in Handling People” on the subject how to fight. Anger is more often morbid in its tone for both the owner and the listener. Do you want to feel bad? If so, use blameful comparisons . The fact to be remembered is that blameful comparisons lead to anger, boredom, discomfort, or bitterness just as often as to an intelligent understanding of the cause to be corrected. When blameful comparisons are allowed to snowball, which they often do, we are absorbed by the feeling of anger and resentment. Our minds are then are not free to notice minor things like causes that can be corrected. We attend to the wrong done and not how to correct the situation. There are many ways to focus one’s attention on the vital meanings of a situation, and so also there are dozens of ways to use comparison in a single situation.
Enjoyment and Happiness - you can either focus your attention (by verbal comparison) upon what you have to be glad for by comparisons to your father or grandfather, or upon how you are worse off than some people. Enjoying a movie or a soda or a roast beef dinner can be creatively intensified by comparisons which draw the joy to awareness, or you can make comparisons which expose faults, imperfections and relative worseness. Enjoying a game, a conversation or a vacation trip is subject to the same morbid pitfalls of fault finding comparisons or blameful comparisons. The spirit of family cooperation can be completely disorganized and ruined by a few fault-finding comparisons which, while actually unimportant, take the joy out of life
Verbal comparison focus is the tricky process It works havoc or exposes the glory of living. Pure observation unaided by deliberate comparisons is a very crude process. Comparison enables us to see within the structure of things, to see fine differences, and to become aware of small parts, causes or operations which are hidden from spontaneous awareness. Verbal-focus is the critical issue for the development of interest, and satisfaction, as it is with the doctor who diagnoses a malady. When we know that comparisons expose vital mean in patterns that feelings usually result, we can recognize self-harming comparisons and curtail them. We can choose to make comparisons which promote good feelings, interest, and cooperation. The truth we see outside of us is only one third the whole. Another third is the value to human beings and the new meanings and combinations which thus arise. The remaining third is the consequences to ourselves and others which is a point of view that many times bestows or inflicts upon us. It is merely an evolutionary joke that many times we choose the unhappy life. 'We become so intellectually objective that we make our comparisons primarily unfavorable to ourselves and live thenceforth under a condition of self-torture.
Who wants, to see and dwell upon only annoying and morbid comparisons? In thousands of cases the writer has yet, to find a voluntary case:-Instead the cry goes up against reality, life is unfair, people are unfair and thus emerges the grand illusion that accounts for involuntary slavery to boredom, ill-a--at-ease, bitterness or confusion. The choice of values is overlooked. and above all, the consequences of the point of view are over looked. It is ourselves we have to live with for many more hours each day than with anyone else. If we are bored who do we punish and where is the hurt? When we fault compare and destroy the pleasure of the home, who suffers? When we make blameful-comparisons and pick out all the bitter imperfections of people, who must endure the torture? I do -all of them - if I do not analyze the consequences and thereby choose my patterns of comparison knowingly.
The emptiness of uncompared reality progress and imperfection are knowable only through comparison. Definition of structure (see D. zone) also plays a part, but in the end there is no point in quality without reference to improvement. What do we mean by saying it is a nice day? - of course, we mean yesterday it rained, was too cold or too hot., etc., etc. Good food, good houses, good fishing, a good night’s sleep, good shoes, good friend, good profit, good engineering, good doctor, good trip, good results - what is there left if we eliminate all reference to comparison? We would have to get along without words such as many, much, marvelous, more, money, mad to consider only a few words that begin with “M”. We could only make a weak attempt to justify any of these on the basis of pure functional satisfaction or all notion of comparison be eliminated. What do you mean by good health - it is easy when we can say freedom from illness, injury, and freedom from mental and physical discomfort. Comparison comes to our rescue in supplying meaning to most of our daily experiences.
We probably use comparison several thousand times a day, each time we make a decision and possibly a dozen times each time we think. The point is, do we use comparison blindly or knowingly. If we use it blindly we may fall into a mental trap. Unwittingly we may enslave ourselves by painful comparisons. Work is both satisfying and annoying in terms of the comparisons you make. People have many interests in common and yet only a few deep mutual interests. There is great difference 1n the resulting feeling and ability for the individual who believes common interests are only a few. He feels there is little to talk about, and feels ill at ease with people. Conversational ability, instead of being inspired by positive trials and dramatic presentation of his own experiences is dampened and dried up for want of confidence is like the fisherman who would like to fish but does not believe there are any fish in the lake.
The process of comparison is subtle and there are some dangers of a different kind. The music pupil sees the first stages of progress as sufficient, and there is a plateau or a standstill period in the development of skill. With comparison, if the goal is too high, discouragement sets in. If the goal is too low, there is no challenge, the field seems too easy and a consciousness of effort may emerge: .The boy who plays carelessly with matches does not make vivid comparisons (or they are not made for him) of what might happen with fire. The young man who ran away from home in resentment against his parents, discovered his love for them when he broke his leg and had time to think in a hospital five hundred miles away from home. Too bad such comparisons must be endured in their harsh form when people know not of the role that comparison .plays. Appreciation frequently comes from suffering, but this is because people do not think of the alternative-comparisons beforehand so as to taste fuller enjoyment, friendliness, and human trust which could be theirs average.
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