What You Can Change . . . And What You Can't*: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Martin E. Seligman
daring general. Moses, in fact, merely quotes God verbatim, as ordered. God says:
I will be with thy mouth, and with his [Aaron’s] mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. (Exodus 4:15)
Every step of the way, the good events are wholly the doing of God. When the situation improves, it is not by human agency but by God’s intervention. Indeed, this is the central message of the tale and why we are supposed to retell it every Passover.
Examine a different major event, one from Christianity—the conversion of Saul. Do you think that Saul rued his mistreatment of Jesus’ followers, was fed up with the old religion, understood with blinded insight the promise of Jesus, and decided to convert? This is what I thought until I reread Acts 9:
And suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:
And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go to the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. . . .
The Lord . . . hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.
Again, God is the actor and Saul is passively acquiescent. Saul merely inquires, but God commands. There is no decision making, not a wisp of thought or choice or insight on Saul’s part.
The Bible is almost devoid of psychology. 2 You will search the Old Testament and the New Testament in vain for feats of human intention—individual choice, decision, and preference. You will search in vain for some hero wreaking change by his own initiative in a world of adversity. You will search in vain for a character who thinks, weighs the pros and cons, and then acts. God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the son of his old age. Abraham, without a thought, saddles his ass and sets off. 3 So it goes with the entire dramatis personae of the Bible.
The Bible presents a stunning contrast with modern reportage. When any major event occurs today—an earthquake, the World Cup, a battlefield victory, an assassination, a riot in Los Angeles—reporters badger the participants with “How does it feel?” and “What was going through your mind?” It is anachronistic to wonder how Joshua felt upon toppling the walls of Jericho. This impulse was totally alien to those who reported the monumental doings from the time of Abraham to the time of Jesus. What happened—particularly if it was good, an improvement, an advance—was simply God’s intervention in human affairs. Human thought, decision, and intention played no role. The Scriptures militantly and uniformly nullify human agency.
This dogma of human implasticity pervades Western civilization from biblical times through the next two thousand years.
Cracks in the Firmament
This dour view of human advancement—that if things improve, it is only through God’s grace—went largely unchallenged through the Middle Ages. While the Middle Ages are no longer characterized as utterly stagnant, there undoubtedly was a great slowing of change in human affairs. For eight hundred years, individual character did not change, and the society did not change much. Sons largely did what their fathers did before them. Women were little noted. The poor remained poor. The rich remained rich. Knowledge, coming only from authority, did not accumulate. Except for astronomy describing the heavenly bodies’ movements, science did not progress. The Church was at the center, standing immutable on the Rock of Peter. The pace of change mirrored the ideology.
Then three cracks in the firmament appeared—liberty, science, and free will—and the dogma of human implasticity finally
I will be with thy mouth, and with his [Aaron’s] mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. (Exodus 4:15)
Every step of the way, the good events are wholly the doing of God. When the situation improves, it is not by human agency but by God’s intervention. Indeed, this is the central message of the tale and why we are supposed to retell it every Passover.
Examine a different major event, one from Christianity—the conversion of Saul. Do you think that Saul rued his mistreatment of Jesus’ followers, was fed up with the old religion, understood with blinded insight the promise of Jesus, and decided to convert? This is what I thought until I reread Acts 9:
And suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:
And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go to the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. . . .
The Lord . . . hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.
Again, God is the actor and Saul is passively acquiescent. Saul merely inquires, but God commands. There is no decision making, not a wisp of thought or choice or insight on Saul’s part.
The Bible is almost devoid of psychology. 2 You will search the Old Testament and the New Testament in vain for feats of human intention—individual choice, decision, and preference. You will search in vain for some hero wreaking change by his own initiative in a world of adversity. You will search in vain for a character who thinks, weighs the pros and cons, and then acts. God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the son of his old age. Abraham, without a thought, saddles his ass and sets off. 3 So it goes with the entire dramatis personae of the Bible.
The Bible presents a stunning contrast with modern reportage. When any major event occurs today—an earthquake, the World Cup, a battlefield victory, an assassination, a riot in Los Angeles—reporters badger the participants with “How does it feel?” and “What was going through your mind?” It is anachronistic to wonder how Joshua felt upon toppling the walls of Jericho. This impulse was totally alien to those who reported the monumental doings from the time of Abraham to the time of Jesus. What happened—particularly if it was good, an improvement, an advance—was simply God’s intervention in human affairs. Human thought, decision, and intention played no role. The Scriptures militantly and uniformly nullify human agency.
This dogma of human implasticity pervades Western civilization from biblical times through the next two thousand years.
Cracks in the Firmament
This dour view of human advancement—that if things improve, it is only through God’s grace—went largely unchallenged through the Middle Ages. While the Middle Ages are no longer characterized as utterly stagnant, there undoubtedly was a great slowing of change in human affairs. For eight hundred years, individual character did not change, and the society did not change much. Sons largely did what their fathers did before them. Women were little noted. The poor remained poor. The rich remained rich. Knowledge, coming only from authority, did not accumulate. Except for astronomy describing the heavenly bodies’ movements, science did not progress. The Church was at the center, standing immutable on the Rock of Peter. The pace of change mirrored the ideology.
Then three cracks in the firmament appeared—liberty, science, and free will—and the dogma of human implasticity finally
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