The Stories Of Old Antonio And Popular Psychology
People try to give rational explanations for other people’s behavior. In turn, in doing so, we act like psychologists, although most of the time like bad psychologists. We practice what is called popular psychology.
A psychology contaminated by all the heuristics that our mind uses and extracted in most cases from a very small number of experiences. This small amount makes them insufficient to carry out an inductive exercise and generalize the conclusions that, for us and in our circumstances, were valid.
The lion within
One of the stories that tells old Antonio, an old man with great capacity when it comes to giving advice, tells that he hunted a mountain lion. While he was tanning the skin he relates: “ The lion is strong because the other animals are weak. The lion does not kill with its claws or fangs. The lion kills with his eyes. The other animal looks at looking at the lion, looks at fear. And, in the fear that he looks at the lion looking at him, he is afraid ”.
He says that there is an animal that does not look at what the lion sees and is not afraid. Mole call that animal. He says that the mole was blind from looking inward, instead of outward as the others did. This practice was habitual of the gods so, as punishment, they forced him to live underground.
The moral of this story is none other than whoever looks at the heart does not see the strength of the other and is capable of facing him without fear.
After recounting the story, old Antonio is asked about how he killed the lion, if he looked into his heart or what kind of born of his psychology as a hunter he used. He replies that he did not remember the heart, he only looked through the sight of his shotgun.
After giving the lion’s skin, old Antonio tells his companion: “I give it to you so that you never forget that the lion and fear are killed knowing where to look. “
Popular psychology
This story, taken from the mouth of old Antonio and the pen of Subcomandante Marcos, gives us an iota of those incorrect interpretations that we make in our daily lives. When he related the story, many thought that the essential thing was to look inward, to oneself, and they drew interpretations of it, taking their own situations as an example. The conclusion they drew was that to kill the lion, old Antonio looked at himself, but no.
In the end, the real moral proved incomprehensible in the first place, it was not to look at yourself, but to know where to look. We cannot allow ourselves to be guided by interpretations, and try to generalize the part of knowledge of psychology that has been born exclusively from our experience.
We have to go further and look for other possible alternative interpretations that can guide the actions of other people, understand their psychology from science. As the saying goes, in an iota of hypocrisy, do the opposite of what you think and you will be right.
