Civil courage...

taking a nap!!

I read something in "Rediscovering the True Self" by Ingeborg Bosch at page 143-144.

I think it was the physician Christina Doctare who pointed out in her book "Brain Stress" (came 1999, and I have a book with a dedication from her, but I didn't get it in person) from where "civil courage" origins? "Courage" comes from the French "coeur" which means "heart"... So civil courage to her means the heart or feelings are involved. About her at Wikipedia (only in Swedish).

Bosch writes Chapter 5, "Taking responsibility for our feelings":

"We usually live more or less impulsively [not an excuse for everything??], and when things go wrong we blame the other person, the world, fate or ultimately God [or ourselves].

Research by Jones and Nisbett has shown how we are all prone to this basic attitude. Actors tend to attribute their actions to external factors, whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to personal dispositions of the actor. /.../

[An] example is the Watergate scandal. '...Many of the participants in that affair maintained that they were simply following executive orders, while 'higher-ups' argued that they had acted out of a concern for national security. All the actors in short made external attributions. But by the summer of 1974, a majority of citizens - observers via the press - saw the participants as corrupt, power-hungry, and paranoid. The observers made internal attributions.' This is called the actor-observer effect."

At this site it stands about their ideas:

"Jones and Nisbett's (1971) proposition that actors favor environmental attribution and observers personal attribution was investigated. Subjects attributed causality from two perspectives (observer versus role-playing actor) for verbally-described behaviors which varied in desirability (low versus moderate versus high). The results suggested that motivational considerations mediated actor-observer attributional differences. While observers attributed more personal cause than did actors at all levels of desirability, this actor-observer difference was attenuated as behavioral desirability increased. Actor-observer differences were not evidenced on environmental attribution, suggesting that perspective differences represent a differential salience of personal causes for actors and observers."

It also struck me: what do our behaviours towards animals reflect? I could write a separate posting about this, as I grew up with animal and saw things (and probably didn't see things too) and have people in my family of origin working with animals (so I think I know them as persons too, but maybe I don't? I wonder if they are different when family-members aren't present??)... My dad and the two siblings coming after me (a brother and a sister) were/are agronomists with domestic animals as Major (huvudämne in Swedish).

And I wish I could relax as the dog Eskil!! (the dog and cat on the picture are not mine! :-))