The Flag of the United Metaphors
The world has a new a moral paradigm
There is an alternative to the wars of faiths: it is understanding morality as a scientific phenomenon and religions as partial and complementary discoveries of science. These warring opposites are now integrated by the Moral Science into the Science of Conflict Resolution.
This science delivers insights on how individuals, prophets, and religions differ in how they resolve conflicts and manage power and how they may optimize peace. Examining Trump’s personality type in this forum helps his leadership to evolve insights in his approach and guide the world towards making corrective changes in attunement with the scientific principles of conflict resolution.
Religions have been metaphors as well as paradigms of conflict resolution. Now we have a science that interprets metaphors into formulas of physics and delivers clarity on moral values as the principles of science.
The world needs to evolve consensus on its moral values, rather than be divided by its metaphors. By generating insight for the world leader, who emerged to protect America from Islam as a combative individual, we have an opportunity to recognize diagnostic relational alternatives and how such evoke complications in perceptions and defensive choices. We have the case of our president to work with. We hope to generate insights in his mind and elicit from him initiatives to lead the world to self-corrections by introducing the science helping him and potentially healing the world. We demonstrate the theory’s relevance for helping the president and proceed hoping he will rethink the solutions for peace in the world by assuming three initiatives.
TRUMP’S Diagnosis: Contrasting DSM’s “narcissism” versus Formal Theory’s “relational modality”
Trump does not function optimally from the perspective of conflict resolution. He generates an excessive amount of personal and interpersonal conflicts; he is not a person who reduces disputes, but one who increases them exponentially. Although he is a well person, he is a conflict-inducing person, wildly distorting reality and overreacting defensively. His condition of antagonistic dominance is dangerous both as the leader and role model to an already deeply polarized nation and world.
Conflict resolution is defined as moderation, cooperation, and mutual respect; Trump’s disposition counters this even disposition with dominance, antagonism, and alienation. The world needs change. Trump illustrates what needs to be transformed. From the relational perspective, it is easy to diagnose Trump’s dominant, antagonistic, and disrespectful attitude, inciting conflicts rather than harmony. Instead of inspiring mutual respect, he is modeling divisiveness. Instead of being empathic, he is arrogant and self-righteous. He is dominant to the point of being tyrannical in his conduct and as president this antagonism reveals tremendous disregard to the principles of conflict resolution: moderation, cooperation, and mutual respect.
Below we contrast the alternative diagnoses and respective interventions:
|
|
DSM illness | Wellness relational modality personality type |
| Diagnosis
Assessment with metaphors |
Malignant narcissism | Dominant antagonistic power choices
Suitable metaphors: Pit-bull, cowardly lion, Paul Bunyan with Babe in the oval office |
| Traits versus relations | Grandiosity
Egocentricity Manipulativeness Paranoia Xenophobia Misogynist Liar Sycophantic |
Traits combined formally as six interrelated emotions:
Stress many sensitivities Response: aggression, anxiety: extreme paranoia, Defense: accusations Reversal: critical public Compromise: reading from Teleprompter, moderating judgments |
| Intervention | Incurable
But could use cognitive therapy |
Judicious actions as
1. Validation research on the Moral Science 2. Seeking accountability from religions in evolving moral consensus on values as moderation, cooperation and mutual respect. 3. Transformation of public education integrating the humanities and the sciences, teaching self-discovery, and clarity of moral values as power management. |
Pathology
Trump’s belligerence generates anxieties. His aggression-elicited paranoia is manifested in his conspiracy theories, which are unacceptable and dangerous to society as they lead to self-fulfilling paranoid fears as severe distortions of reality and massive defensive initiatives. He responds to his fears, creating defensive interpersonal conflicts escalating personal and societal dysfunction.
His draconian defensive policies, counter-phobic measures and decisions, generate social alienation compounding non-optimal, undesirable conflict-arousing developments. The ongoing escalation of his self-righteous conduct leads to our awareness of the pathology of the relational diagnosis. His pattern of antagonistic dominance manifests at the sociological level as escalating conflicts on the basis of religious differences.
Trump’s paranoid distorting of reality and related sociological disturbances represent the state of mental illness, and are bound to escalate into a state of warfare, as he has difficulty in compromising his dominance and related self-righteousness.
Psycho-education as Treatment
Could Trump learn from his journey? He has been slow in making changes; reinforcement of his transgressive conduct has enabled him to ignore public opinion. Despite the fact that Trump gives no indication of self-improvement, the American public may become alarmed on his faulty path to resolutions and on the need for sanity. Could Trump sit back and reflect, rather than just react?
It remains to be seen if our American hero, the reality showman, who thrived on telling people “you are fired,” will survive being dismissed from the position he earned through his aggressive campaign. If he manages to stay in the office he will have the opportunity to learn about moderation and grow to evolve strategies for humility, modesty, collaboration, cooperation, and mutual respect.
What Trump will accept is not therapy but education. As a world leader Trump needs to learn about the principles of power management. Trump is an excellent candidate for psycho-education by completing the Conflict Analysis Battery self-assessment, which is didactic, diagnostic, and therapeutic with or without a therapist. It is an emotional education without an authority figure dictating changes as it generates insights to the test taker, who evolves compromises on his own.
The beneficial impact of the assessment on the recipient is eliciting introspection. The testing leads to the development of insights through recognition of self-defeating patterns and the need for changes, self-correction, simply through modification of one’s power management. Self-knowledge entails inner changes to avoid unpleasant personal and interpersonal experiences.
Dominant people need reassurance and firm clarity of boundaries; the suggested direction for changes spontaneously volunteered by the dominant test-takers are moderation, cooperation, and mutual respect.
Leadership in resolving conflicts
This form of structured emotional education is necessary for Trump to become self-aware by himself. Then he can become an effective leader. There are good attributes in his modality for leadership. He can use his arrogance to introduce changes in the world system that no one else could consider. His dictatorial character is capable of bringing about real transformation – if he only has the insights regarding the needed changes for the world to resolve its universal power management conflicts.
The world needs a scientific moral paradigm
The Moral Science has pioneered a rigorous conceptual model that integrates psychology and morality. This integration reconciles the religions as partial and complementary discoveries of conflict resolution, thus granting them respect, but also making them accountable for causing divisiveness rather than delivering peace.
And here is where Trump, the demagogue and dictator, could be instrumental in facilitating the path to peace. He could neutralize the power of religious puppeteers, inspiring people to fight each other over dated moral paradigms. Only a man with the size of Trump’s ego could bring psychologists and religious people, academia and clergy together to make them responsible for normative changes. Such an initiative could be a much more effective act of leadership than putting immigration barriers to Islamic countries, trying to destroy ISIS, and bombard egomaniacs, like the leader of North Korea.
If Trump is clever and wants to be remembered as a great leader, he will recognize the opportunity for modeling global leadership founded on the principles of conflict resolution. He is dreaded and he needs to prove himself as the greatest president ever. This intervention would be a welcome way to rehabilitate himself from being the worst ever.
- Can he change education to make it effective for all?
- Can he improve mental health without needing professional services?
- Does he want to disarm rebels without water-boarding them?
- Can the world evolve a scientific moral paradigm, integrating the humanities and the sciences, promoting consensus on moral values and readily available technology for self-knowledge?
All these leadership initiatives are at his disposition on the path to greatness. This is Trump’s chance to adopt sanity rather than madness in being remembered as a milestone in the history of the world.
Three steps to enlightenment and peace in the world
THE FIRST STEP for an enlightened Trump is validating the Moral Science. Research could serve to evolve consensus on the nature of the conflict-resolving premise arising from the unconscious quest for balance.
This intervention should encourage academia to research the notions advanced by the Formal Theory. Academic approval of Moral Science will assist the religious establishment to the validation of moral reasoning and evoke respect for religions as partial and complementary discoveries of science, thereby the world converging to the exaltation of the principles of conflict resolution as the unified approach to morality.
Validation of the Formal Theory from legitimate sources would undermine fanaticism, the beliefs on the metaphysical nature of morality, and diminish the divisive power of faiths. It would also serve to enhance the public’s awareness of the innate and scientific principles of conflict resolution as the universal moral values: moderation, cooperation, and mutual respect.
THE SECOND STEP is making changes in education, introducing the moral paradigm on the nature of the mind by reconciling the humanities and the sciences, enhancing self-knowledge, promoting moral values as principles of science, and recognizing religions as discoveries of the science.
THE THIRD STEP
The Moral Science has the impact of Galileo’s findings of the cosmic universe; once again people may confront religious dogma and question what it means that their Gods are not the center of the universe. The Moral Science inspires consensus that could bring people together for peace based on natural laws rather than divisive moral laws.
An inspired Trump policy can place religious institutions in roles of responsibility for the current conflicts. Trump could identify theologians and clergy to evolve a unified moral paradigm reconciling religious practices guiding the public. Peace in the world requires a clear understanding of psychology and morality. The Moral Science inspires adopting the scientific moral paradigm, unifying the social sciences and the religions.
As a pioneer educated leader, Trump could become the hero of rethinking everything, inviting representatives from all of the humanities to confer on the global lack of moral consensus. He may also give permission to the public to rebel at partial truths decreed by institutionalized faiths; he could ask religious leaders to behave morally in seeking to resolve conflicts, rationally rather than being engaged in metaphysical warfare. The responsible moral leaders might listen.
Religions indeed need help. This initiative would entail to assemble religious leaders, asking them to collaborate, addressing the fact that religions are the cause of this world upheaval and that they must confront their self-righteousness in view of the Moral Science. They should evolve representation and enter in conferences to solve their differences as parties made accountable for our world’s dysfunction. Religions need to negotiate with each other towards a unified view of moral order.
Religious leaders need to seek resolutions to the conflicts generated by their misleading the world and generating wars. They need to negotiate with each other for self-awareness.
Trump can become America’s Paul Bunyan, provided he can harness the Formal Theory as his Babe.
Albert Levis, M.D.
3 May 2017
Manchester, Vermont
Educating Trump 