Sunday, February 28, 2016

Social media and relationships

As we have allowed more and more of our previously "private" lives become public, we are  more and more vulnerable.  Not only are our "secrets" becoming known, we are more open to attacks by others which can be highly personal.

It's much easier to be cruel when we don't have to face directly the object of our cruelty.  "Trolling" has become much more common, and people  say things  on websites that they would never say face to face.  It's easier to believe whatever we want to believe about someone when we don't have all the information.

Typed information is more abstract than face to face contact.  We don't have facial expressions  and voice tones;  we don't have the immediate feedback that comes from a direct reaction to something we have said or done.  It's easier to harm others when we don't actually see them being harmed.  A number of psychological experiments have confirmed this idea.

The cruelty of war becomes easier when we don't actually see those we hurt.  Over the years our weapons have allowed us to be at a greater and greater distance, physically and psychologically, from our victims.  They become "targets" or "casualties".  We dehumanize our victims.  Could we have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima if we had seen all the faces of those we killed, knew their histories, how much their mothers loved them, how their partner's hearts were broken?

Now we see the same behaviors on small scale on  the internet.  We attack, we try to hurt, we urge people  to kill themselves, we encourage damaging behaviors... it's all "out there", it's not real, they are just targets in a video game.

Positive relationships conducted via computer are equally biased and distorted.  Fantasies about others, positive and negative, flourish best in the absence of specific information.  Anybody can be flawless and wonderful if they choose to be so, and if the person to whom they are providing information chooses to believe them.  Fantasies don't like reality.  Nobody belches or passes gas in a fantasy.

People  even decide to  get married based on a series of internet conversations.  People  choosing to believe what they are told via computer are easy marks, both financially and emotionally.  Not only is a sucker born every minute, as  Barnum  allegedly said, someone is out there to take advantage of the sucker.

I myself am going to be a multimillionaire soon.  I have to make my bank account open to this Prince from Nigeria and he's going to give me millions of dollars.  I can hardly wait. 

Friday, February 26, 2016

Love or like

The best predictor for longevity in marriage is not romantic love.  The best predictors are liking and respect.  Marriages based on liking and mutual respect tend to wear well. Over time, with respect and like "romantic" affection increases.  Many years ago, marriages were frequently based on convenience and reliability.  Many were arranged by families or "matchmakers". Many couples met for the first time on their wedding day.  Western cultures, as a whole, did not see "love" as a necessary requirement.  It is only with the dawn of fiction in literature and other media that "love" was even a desirable emotion; more often it was seen as leading to disaster.

Attachment is a naturally-occurring phenomenon.  When couples are in close proximity over a period of time, and when feelings are discussed and treated with respect, attachment and mutual affection grow naturally.  This is sometimes referred to as the "Stockholm syndrome", but it simply refers to this basic fact of human nature.  We naturally become attached to others when we share feelings, goals and respect.

So if a marriage is based on respect and liking, affection grows naturally.

However, movies, tv and fiction have emphasized the importance of "romantic" love.  Such love is dramatic, fierce and passionate.  It makes a better story and better movie.  Unfortunately, being based on fiction, it does not last. In a movie or book it only has to last a few hours. But real life is different.  Fantasies don't survive real life.  The bubble pops, usually sooner rather than later.

 The current divorce rate is evidence of that.  Romantically-based marriages only last if over time another basis is found, one based on respect and liking, and the honest sharing of feelings, good and bad.  Romance may get us into a marriage and keep us there for   few months or a few years, but it alone will not and cannot keep us in a  marriage. We need the Stockholm syndrome.

We expect too much from marriage.  Earlier in history the marriage partnership was based on expediency, usefulness, even help in surviving.  How the partners felt about each other was no more important than in any other business partnership.  Business partners did not need to hold hands or cling together in the moonlight to the sound of violins.  They needed to trust each other, to respect each other and value the other person as a person, which meant that how the other felt was important and deserved respect.  Usually affection between the partners  grew over time, although it is true that sometimes it did not.

People are now encouraged to believe that their marriage should be permanently exciting and emotionally fulfilling, with all (or essentially all) of their needs being met by their partner and their relationship.  This is a huge burden of expectation and demand.  None of us can meet every need or fulfill every dream for our partner, and our marriages should not stand or fail based on fulfilling this impossible expectation.  Hopefully what we do gain from a healthy relationship  is far more  satisfying than our ability to mutually act out one another's romantic fantasies.

Love, like every other emotion, comes and goes.  It never remains constant, except in fiction.  In real life we love one another more at one time than another, and it is rarely a symmetrical emotion.  The Stockholm syndrome insures it will return if we continue to respect and communicate with one another.  Commitment should not be a decision based on the sand of emotion.  It should be based on the rock of respect. 



Wednesday, February 24, 2016

A possible solution to our drug problem

Not only do we spend a great deal of money on drugs, but a lot more is spent as a result of the huge amount of petty crime carried out in order to pay for drug usage.  Most of the money spent directly on drugs leaves the United States, and ultimately improves the standard of living for people in other countries at the cost of our own.

What if the government  took over the drug business?  Suppose that the US government bought directly from the drug manufacturers at their price, and distributed the drugs in the US to whoever wanted them for free and without legal consequences?  Drug kiosks could provide marijuana, cocaine, crack, heroin, opiates to anyone of age who wanted them.  The money would come from the huge amounts allocated now to fight drug importation and use.  And it would come from the reduction in prison costs and rehabilitation costs and reduction in drug police
.
Since there is no cost there is no profit.  The gangs that control, distribute and sell  drugs  would go out of business.  The crime that supports drug habits would stop since it would be unnecessary.  There would be no motivation to encourage drug use or to  expand a drug market since there would be no drug market.

What would be the consequences?  Some people would probably overdose and die.  Many of them would eventually in any case, but there might well be an increase.  Fewer  people would die of contaminated or adulterated drugs since they would be pure.  Fewer people would die in gang wars over turf, which is always a war of the marketplace to some degree.  Fewer law enforcement people would be killed and fewer employed.

Whether or not drug usage would ultimately stop is not an answerable question.  People have always sought substances that provide certain experiences and sensations,  and there is no reason to think that easy access would change that.  But they would be healthier in the process and not at all  likely to descend into crime to support what would be a free product.

Would a drug craze sweep the nation, that is, more than it already has? In fact people already have nearly unfettered access to drugs now.  Does anyone doubt that they could obtain any drug they were interested in within the next few hours?  Free controlled access would only mean that there would be some ability to limit sales to the very young, but there is no way to prevent sharing of drugs once out of the drug kiosk, and there is no way to prevent inappropriate sharing, just as  happens now with alcohol, marijuana, and ... wait.   That happens now.

The problem would be that we are supporting drug manufacturing organizations in other countries.  Of course, we are now.  But it is possible that competition for our huge business would drive costs down over time.  Perhaps eventually drug manufacture would be no more of a major business that the manufacture of tennis shoes.  More money would stay in the US.  We would have a little more say about the quality of product.

There really is no way to predict a long-range outcome.  But what we see before us now is not very favorable, and seems to be getting worse.  What problems do you see with this proposal

Monday, February 22, 2016

Belonging to groups

Psychologists rarely talk about the importance of "belonging" to a group, or that there is apparently a critical period in us primates that strongly motivates us to start finding a group to belong to.  We all know  this period because we have been through it and so has every adolescent in the world.  As  parents we recognize its occurrence when suddenly our children find what others think of them as hugely more important that our opinion or acceptance. We remember the dangers  of  humiliation even while recognizing the triviality of the issues that lead to acceptance or rejection. We are aware that adolescents will make totally irrational and even dangerous choices in the process of learning to belong.

This age appears to begin in early adolescence and continues through the early adult years, although the most important for later healthy development occurs between 11 and 18.  Adolescents form groups and struggle to  learn and comply with the rules that govern membership.  They watch intently for the signal behaviors, attire, mannerisms, attitudes and values that  characterize their group.  They know that wearing the "wrong" color or type of clothing can result in humiliation. They find that even talking or spending time with someone in another group can result in  ostracism.

Initially the group seems to  be fairly large, perhaps all the children they know, but as time passes the size of the key groups, i.e. the group or groups they most want to join, becomes smaller and the boundaries become more specific and clear.  Later still the importance of belonging to a small  and specific group decreases.  The "critical period for belonging" in which skills for belonging must be  learned is largely over by the time we are  in the middle 20s.

Adolescents will accept  a physical beating to join a group.  Some will commit suicide if they are not accepted. They will frequently try to join a variety of groups, some  of which are potentially or actively harmful, in order to be a member somewhere.  It's  as if they feel they do not have an identity without belonging to something, and they identify to each other with  their various memberships.  In early adolescence they have fairly simple groups, such as the geeks, the "soshes", the athletes, the dopers, the brains, etc.  Later they develop more complex groups, such as  fraternities, military groups, groups oriented around educational goals, church or religious groups. Even later are various "adult" groups, such as Rotary or political groups.

Those who are not successful in being accepted during this phase of their life seem frequently to be permanently marked by their failure.  They tend to think of themselves as "loners" and live more isolated lives. They are rarely (if ever) comfortable with belonging and are always prepared to be rejected. Some accept their alienation and become comfortable with it.  Others seem to carry a burden of resentment and bitterness which can result at striking out at other groups.

There seems to be an ancient part of our brain that demands we learn how to belong to our tribe.  It tells us that exclusion or rejection from the group can result in death.  The fear of humiliation (i.e. rejection by your identified  group) is one of the most powerful motivations for humans.

Recently on television I watched an episode of"Blue Bloods".  In this particular show the adolescent daughter is driving her friends (her  social  group) when the police stop them and find a package of cocaine in the car, in an amount that would result in a felony conviction with permanent life changes for all of them.  No one admits to the ownership of the drugs, so they are all charged.  None of them will expose the one of their group who actually owned the cocaine, because that would be "snitching", which is cause for ejection from the  group and humiliation.

They are actually prepared to accept a felony conviction rather than "snitching", even though they know whose drugs they were.  The person who owned the drugs will allow all of them  to go to  jail rather than take the blame, but they don't really consider that.  He is in their group.  That is where their loyalty lies. The adolescent daughter will have to give up her plans to have professional career or be accepted in a prestigious college; her life goals will be destroyed.

In the episode she never came to terms with the importance of putting her own life ahead of the momentary membership in a temporary (but important to her) group.  Instead this issue is bypassed cleverly.  The daughter then goes to her mother and says "I don't ever want to disappoint you", and thus re-establishes her primary loyalty to the family group.

It's hard to find any literature, movie or play of  any kind that does not have a central concern about group membership and the conflicts between how people belong or move in and out of groups. It's surprising to me how little awareness we bring to this central issue.  It has also occurred to me that the reason I notice it so keenly is due to my own failure to become an accepted group member during my adolescence.  I can look from the outside at how all these groups function more readily because I do not  experience myself as actually in them.

Friday, February 12, 2016

My Super-Powers!

Super-powers are not limited to comic strip characters.  We all probably have them, but don't recognize what a gift they are.

At my advanced age (which I probably ought to write in Roman numerals for appropriateness) I have found I have 2 such powers, and they are mighty  powers that contribute greatly to my comfort and happiness.
The first is Ignore-ance.  This is the power to simply not attend or recognize undesirable objects, people or thoughts.  Actually I haven't found any thoughts I want to Ignore. Yet.  So when someone gives me unpleasant and/or unwanted advice or directions, I simply use my superpower to negate their very existence.  I was doing ok before the unwanted events, and I will probably continue to do ok.  Ignore-ance can be blissful, especially in comparison to the effect really unpleasant news can have on you.

For instance, I never watch the local news any more.  It's all bad, crude, mean-spirited, stupid and violent.  I don't need it.  If it comes on, I use my superpower.  My life is doing just fine without knowing some idiot in a slum put his mother in a woodchipper. I don't need that news.

And that leads me to my second super-power, that of Indifference.  This is the power of not caring at all, not giving a damn.  Refusing to sob when I see a hurt puppy.  Refusing to go sleepless until all the trees in the rainforest are replanted and healthy.  Refusing to get excited over anything politicians say.  (They don't mean it anyway).  I am now considering which charities I want to use my superpower on.  Actually, I'm trying to think if there are any I don't want to use it on.

You can see that Ignore-ance and Indifference are great powers, and when combined even more so.  I can think of some family members (or former family members) that I will mentally obliterate as if they had never existed.   I hope to be able to not know about entire countries and maybe even continents.  I hope to live as if they don't exist.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Some of them, the stupider ones, might even invade us.  Ho hum.  After they have been destroyed they will fall under my superpowers even more readily.

Give some thought to what superpowers you might already have!  Don't be wasting your time thinking about the impossible.  If you could fly the government would make you tattoo numbers on your butt for easier recognition.  Not a good thought.  And it's cold up there.  No, stick to the things you could actually have. It's even better if others don't know you have them.  Then they can be, like, secret weapons! 

So. good luck to you.  And don't be a pain or you will cease to exist, at least in my world.