There are many schools of philosophy that advocate refuting perceived phenomena, for example:
- Taoism: the bad equals the good, why be afraid or avoid the bad ones?
- Science: before proving it right you must prove it wrong first; everything can be, and should be, explained
- Evolution: being hurt is an opportunity to mature and become flexible
- Skepticism: there is nothing we can be sure of
- Postmodernism: talking about meaning is meaningless; everything is just a language game
Under the right conditions and personalities, they may add unnecessary tensions to interpersonal relationships, and encourage maladaptive thoughts. Here are some of mine:
- Constantly "misunderstanding" others to help them appreciate the opposite
- Being guilty for stating what you feel, or doing the urgent thing because of not having a solid understanding of the subject
- Deliberately worsening a bad situation in order to learn something new, or to test how adaptive and flexible you are
- Wondering about something that you know that you know very well
In general, is there a study on how schools of philosophy interact with personalities? Because sometimes the desire to be flexible and adaptive may be inflexible and maladaptive, not because you have unfortunate life events in your childhood. It's still basically basic cognitive therapy, but the core beliefs/automatic thoughts can be so complex that it would take a lot of time and money to pay for a therapist; and usually they can't even understand it anyway. I don't think wanting to capture the ultimate truth is mutually exclusive with maintaining a healthy relationship.
