Pros & Cons of Constructivism Thinking Is Often magical

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Pros & Cons Constructivism & Postmodernism

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Pros & cons of constructivism & postmodernism expose the illogical, superstitious, & magical thinking as in the philosophy of Idealism.

“But this is only a form of the subjectivistic madness which is characteristic of most modern philosophy.” —Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy

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Pros & Cons Constructivism: Abstract

Constructivism is a beneficial paradigm that helps people to take responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and perceptions. And anything that helps people to take responsibility for more than just their actions is sorely needed.
However, extremist views and applications of constructivism lead to more problems than solutions. It is the absolutistic and dogmatic approach to constructivism that is the bane of constructivism.
Following is a list of pros and cons that is in their nascent form.

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THE PROS: Constructivism

Constructivism as a heuristic device allows us to peer into the formulations and structures of cognitions as distinct from the actualities that the cognitions are only about.
Constructivism can be used to help us to face the fact that we cannot and do not experience reality fully: there is always more going on than we can think about, name, or perceive.
Constructivism helps us to deal with the fact that what people actually experience is their own minds and not reality per se.
Constructivism can help people learn to cope more effectively by focusing people on the fact that they are reacting more to their interpretation of events than to the actual events themselves.
Constructivism can help people to become more open-minded by helping people to realize that if they change their minds, then their perceptions of reality also change.
Constructivism can help people become more responsible for their emotions and reactions by helping people to realize that their own thinking affects them more than any other variable.
Constructivism can help people to understand and accept the limitations of human perception, knowing, and understanding.
Constructivism can help people to accept the limitations inherent in the nature of human thought.
Constructivism can help people to face the subjective nature of human understanding, knowing, and perception.
Constructivism can help people to grasp the arbitrary and delusional nature of self-esteem styles of thinking by pointing out the inanity of ego constructions of self.

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THE CONS: Constructivism

Constructivism is really nothing new. Constructivism has had many names in the past. Even today, constructivism has various names. For instance, constructivism is also known as post-modernism, new-age thinking, the law of affinity, the law of abundant return, mind over matter, the power of positive thinking, the law of harmonious vibration, and the law of attraction. However, post-modernism is really a misnomer as constructivism is really pre-modernism as it is a return to the style of thinking known as idealism, which occurred before both modernism and realism. See also nominalism: the enemy of idealism and Plato’s ideal forms.
Constructivism lends itself to superstition. How? By fostering a belief in causes as causes that are not causes. For instance, if I believe I have some part in constructing reality, then my worrying about a plane crashing helps to cause that plane to crash. Besides the self-destructive guilt that this leads to, it also leads to superstitious fears and behaviors. For example, the superstitious may avoid worrying out of fear that their worrying is magically destructive or worry more, believing that their worrying is magically preventative.
Constructivism is a return to the most primitive of thinking styles. For instance, a generally regarded form of primitive thinking occurs when people do not differentiate either their thinking or the causes of their thinking from their environment. For example, when people attribute to trees powers over hunting or to comets powers over harvests, that is primitive thinking. It is this very type of primitive thinking that constructivism can encourage a reversion to.
Constructivism can lead to the illogical and narcissistic conclusion that just because you changed your mind–you also changed reality.
Constructivism can lead to the illogical and grandiose conclusion that since your perceived reality is dependent upon what you think–then reality itself is also dependent upon what you think.
Constructivism can lead to the deification of human thought. That is, a person may believe that since they “create” their own world–that means they help create the actual world.
Constructivism can lead to the egocentric and narcissistic view that since all you can know is your own mind—then that is all that is either knowable or known.
Constructivism can lead to the delusion that since you are limited to your mind–that your mind is all that there is.
Constructivism can lead to absurd and foolish behaviors. For example, you may decide that if you jump off the New York Empire State Building, you will have a soft landing because you believe 100% that you will. Reality will interfere with that belief. Similarly, you may totally think that the interstate highway or the autobahn is a playground—but, nonetheless, you will get run over by reality.
Constructivism can lead to the illusion that if everyone in the world thinks one way, then that will change reality. But it does not matter if humans think the world is flat or that the sun revolves around the Earth. Reality is, fortunately, not determined by people’s collective opinions of it. A history of science is recommended for anyone who still doubts.
Constructivism can lead to self-worship as a co-creator of the universe just because you “create” your own illusions and delusions.
Constructivism can lead to the egocentric conclusion that since all of your perceptions of reality are either illusions or delusions—then Maya (illusion) is all there is.
Constructivism can lead to all manner of grandiosity and self-centeredness as people focus on their constructivistic tendencies as if they were godlike and powerful rather than human-like and fallible.
Constructivism leads to anthropocentric thinking. For instance, some humans think that they are co-creating the world for whales and elephants. They just first forgot to ask the whales and elephants if that was so.
Constructivism is highly limited when problem-solving. For instance, your descriptions of food will not help a starving person to get the nutrition they need. Nor will your telling the freezing to think hot thoughts help much. Better to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked than to preach positive constructivistic thinking to them.
Constructivism can be an excuse for a return to folk superstition. That is, if constructivism is seen as a replacement for realism rather than something to augment realism, then anything goes: amulets, charms, spells, witches, warlocks.
Constructivism can be used only to serve human vanity.
Constructivism can be used merely to reframe (reconstruct, suppress, rationalize, cover) problems away or as some advantage à la Brief Therapy. However, when dealing with air, water, and land pollution—let us hope that such an approach is not taken.
Constructivism exacerbates the tendency of humans to reify their thinking.
Constructivism leads to magical thinking. However, when you think of fire, your brain will not catch fire. Nor, when you think of a boulder, will your mind become heavier.
Constructivism leads to the problem of believing becoming seeing: believing is seeing. That is, you see what you believe and miss the rest of the story. This is also known as prejudice.
Constructivism leads to the non sequitur of believing that since human perception and thought are subjective that therefore reality itself is subjective.
Constructivism leads to the nonsense that since humans have many roles that then their self consists of these many roles, and that makes the self elusive and ever-changing. The obvious is disregarded for the obscure: the actor is not the action.
Constructivism can be used to bolster ego by declaring the fabrications of ego to be valuable protean, relational, and relativistic processes rather than the mere delusions that they are.
Constructivism can lead to the illusion that language constitutes reality rather than to the fact that language is either self-referential and so delusional or language is other-referential and so useful.
Constructivism can lead to blaming and damning “it” as the cause of your problems when “it” does not exist except in the fairy tales of ego mentality.

Read for the best understanding of why human thinking fails.

Quotations Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

“Actions speak louder than words.” —Aphorism

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” —Bruce Lee, Martial Arts Innovator

“And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” —I Corinthians 8:2

“And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” —James 2:16

“And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?” —Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?” —Luke 12:25-26

“But it is the words themselves that the world values when it commits them to books: and though the world values them, these words are worthless as long as that which gives them value is not held in honor.” —Chung Tzu

“But this is only a form of the subjectivistic madness which is characteristic of most modern philosophy.” —Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy

“Do not confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon.” —Zen saying

“Don’t just talk the talk rather walk the walk.” —Aphorism

“Easier said than done.” —Aphorism

“Eternal truths cannot be told in what men write or say.” —Lao Tzu

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” —Isaiah 55:9

“For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” —Galatians 6:3

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” —Matthew 16:25

“Identity is invariably false to facts.” —Alfred Korzybski

“If no attached thinking arises, then there is no error in things.” —Buddhist Third Patriarch

“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” —Gandhi

“Knowledge is an addiction, as drink; knowledge does not bring understanding. Knowledge can be taught, but not wisdom; there must be freedom from knowledge for the coming of wisdom.” —J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, First Series, p. 169

“Maya therefore does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly stated. The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature, instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing minds. Maya is the illusion of taking these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory.” —Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, p. 88

“Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.” —Matthew 5:36

“Of all words yet spoken, none comes quite as far as wisdom, which is the action of the mind beyond all things which may be said.” —Heraclitus

“Revere those things beyond science which really matter and about which it is so difficult to speak.”―Werner Heisenberg

“Sentimentality and emotionalism have nothing whatsoever to do with love.” —J. Krishnamurti

“Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.” —Wallace Stevens

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” —Matthew 6:34

“Talking about it is not doing it.” —Aphorism

“Tao is beyond words and beyond things.” —Chung Tzu

“The description is not the described.” —J. Krishnamurti

“The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another.” —J. Krishnamurti

“The map is not the territory.” —Alfred Korzybski

“The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find the man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.” —Chung Tzu

“The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.”―Werner Heisenberg

“The self of which you speak, whether it is the great self or the small self, is only a concept that does not correspond to any reality.” —Buddha, Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh, p. 38

“The thought is not the thing.” —Alfred Korzybski

“The thought is not the thing.” —J. Krishnamurti

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” —Matthew 6:25

“Though tight the net of words may bind, how surely truth slips out.” —Lao Tzu

“Watch what they do, not what they say.” —Aphorism

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”―Werner Heisenberg

“What you believe you experience.” —J. Krishnamurti

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” —William Shakespeare

“Whatever you say something is–it is not.” —Alfred Korzybski

“When one has an image about oneself one is surely insane, one lives in a world of illusion.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Flight of the Eagle, p. 57

“When we point out separately the hundred different parts found in a horse, we do not get a horse, but when a horse is tied in front of us, it combines all hundred parts, and we call it a horse.” —Chung Tzu

“Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” —Matthew 6:27

“Word is a shadow of deed.” —Democritus

“You cannot step into the same river twice.” —Heraclitus

Read for the best understanding of why human thinking fails.

Suggested Websites

For information on Kevin Everett FitzMaurice, visit:

https://kevinfitzmaurice.com

For information on Søren Kierkegaard, visit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Søren_Kierkegaard/

For information on J. Krishnamurti, visit:

https://www.kfa.org/

For information on Albert Ellis and REBT, visit:

https://www.albertellisinstitute.org/

For information on Alfred Korzybski and General Semantics, visit:

https://www.generalsemantics.org/

For an online translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, visit:

http://classics.mit.edu/Lao/taote.html

For information on ecology and pollution, visit:

https://saenvirolink.org

https://www.greenpeace.org/

https://www.envirowatch.org/

https://www.nature.com/subjects/ecology

https://www.netaid.org/

For an online copy of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, visit:

https://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

For action on human rights, visit:

https://www.amnesty.org/

Read for the best understanding of why human thinking fails.

More Quotations from Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

“A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.” —from the movie, Birdman

“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Belief creates its own experience; therefore, such an experience is not true.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume V, p. 334

“Constructivists are pretend alchemists.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Descriptions of food never satisfy the hungry.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Do not mistake the signpost for the destination.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Don’t just talk the talk–walk the walk.” —Aphorism

“In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.” —Lao Tzu

“Some blundering with what I set before you, try in vain with empty talk to separate the essences of things and say how each thing truly is.” —Heraclitus, Fragments

“Talking about it is not the same as doing it.” —Aphorism

“Talk is cheap.” —Aphorism

“The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” —Zen saying

“The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence; by asking this question one is merely admitting to a store of unsatisfied libido to which something else must have happened, a kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression.” —Sigmund Freud

“The proof is in the pudding, not the recipe.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“The recipe is not the cooking.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Things are not what they seem.” “Things are never what they look like.” “Things are not as they appear.” “Things are never what they first appear to be.” —Aphorism stated in many forms and styles

“Things never turn out the way you think they will.” —Aphorism

“Thinking can’t.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Though tightly the net of words forms, how surely truth slips out.” —Lao Tzu

“Well done is better than well said.” —Benjamin Franklin

“When constructivists can think rocks into gold, then we should consider their theories and methods.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“When you ask for help building your house, do you want words or deeds?” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” —Isaiah 5:20

Read for the best understanding of why human thinking fails.

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Pros & Cons of Constructivism

Pros & Cons Constructivism & Postmodernism

Pros & Cons Constructivism: Abstract

THE PROS: Constructivism

THE CONS: Constructivism

Quotations Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

Suggested Readings

Suggested Websites

More Quotations from Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

Related Pages of Free Information

Related Books

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