Hello everyone!! First sorry it has been a couple of weeks since I updated my blog, I've been insanely busy with school and all...so hey I have an excuse maybe not the best haha but still an excuse...Well next week I'm done with summer term! yay! I am super excited to finally rest from the crazy schedule I've been having. That doesn't mean that I won't do anything all day long! I can't do that I'm too ADHD for that haha. It means that I will have time to do the things which I have been postponing due to hw and whatnot. I will have time to properly study for the GRE test - I have been slacking and neglecting on this hehe - I will be able to get my UT drivers license and my social security number. Not to mention that in a few weeks my entire family will be here!!!! I am SO SO SO excited!! I haven't seen them since January.They're coming here because my little brother is finally coming to BYU. I can't believe that! He is my little baby so it is quite unbelievable that he is already coming to college. I'm not complaining that will give me the opportunity to see my family reunited again! I feel so incredibly blessed to have a family that stays close together at all situations. It would take me a lifetime to thank each one of them individually for everything they have done for me; however, all I can really give them is my love as my eternal family.
As said there will be no rest for me haha....This weekend is going to be a huge and long roadtrip to Chehalis to see my sister. Brian and me are going over there to be at Blakes and Martha's wedding in Portland, Oregon. It is going to be a long ride but hey that's ok, I'll be done with school and I'll make some sandwiches or something for the way haha....I'm excited for that as well as I'll get to see my sis, Mike and my little nephew Christian who gets cuter and cuter everyday! It will be an intense weekend but oh well for a good cause haha.....
I know I said that I'm so happy to be done with school...and I really am...but last week we had the privilege of having Dr. Richard Williams in class which was such an interesting and uplifting experience. We were talking about the Methodology that psychology uses. You must really be passionate about psychology and believe what it could do rather in what has been done. If you do not hold to that thought and motivation it is really easy to choose another major because the news are definitely not good. Our entire methodology is based on the older one that physics used about 200 years ago! The method is solely based on the scientific inquiry - and here lies the problem. We have method before the theory. We try to describe humans instead of understanding them. The scientific method so efficiently eliminates context, culture and in so many cases - neuroscience and cognitive - leads to a clear determinism with naturalism. This Cartesian Dualism is the biggest problem psychologists are facing. We can see everyone knocking the door of neuroscience, but no one knocking on an ethical phenomenology or hermeneutics. If we could only consider another ontology we would see that we need the whole in order to understand the complexity of what it means to be a human being, instead of trying to place universals in such a rich existence.
This is exactly why I don't lose motivation and hope that some psychologists will try to change this big error and try to make a difference in a way that it impacts the life of human beings for good and not just a solution with a "pill." This discussion lead to the obvious issue of agency that psychology has been struggling for the past 50 years with the notion of cognitive psychology and now neuroscience which seems to place the human being in a atomistic way - like a self contained machine. The discussion was quite interesting here are some of my insights: Often, we talk about agency as though it were merely the ability to choose. Yet the word agency suggests that it is more than that. If we are “agents,” what are we agents of? To simplify, we shall here say that what we “choose” is to be an agent either of Truth or of non-truth. Let’s assume we prefer being agents of Truth. To be an agent of the Truth is to know the Truth and live the Truth. If Truth is a being - Jesus Christ- then our knowing the Truth is not knowing about the truth, but a relationship with the Truth. But each one of our lives is unique, which means each one of our relationships with Truth is unique as well. That means that to be an agent of Truth differs from person to person. When I act, I act on behalf of the Truth, and my actions bear - or should -witness of the Truth. In this way, I testify of Christ and He is universal in that he is in relationship to everyone. But the truth for others, or their relationship with the Truth, will differ because their context is different - no matter how fine the distinctions.
This is precisely what psychology is missing those fine - but yet - fundamental distinctions between each one of us. If we could only grasp the complexity and the richness of what it entails to exist and to experience, or as a Hermeneutics would say, "to add meaning to things," our approach towards understanding people would be absolutely different. As said before, I do not lose hope because I know that even though there are few psychologists that are willing to take this different ontology and apply it, a few are always better than none. As I conclude my undergraduate degree towards the Master's program I want to keep this notion in my mind at all times, never forgetting why I'm doing what I'm doing: to make even the slightest difference, to bring people to the Truth and hopefully make their lives better.
PS. Sorry for the LONG post, I just had so much to say...plus I got excited :)
