CHANGING OUR MINDS

Is there a universe in which supernatural events can occur?

2011-11-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

I had a dream last night that clarified for me a “thought problem” I have been considering. First, the dream: I am in Heaven as The Official who must ask each person who has left the earth for an accounting of what they have done. I am calm, dispassionate, unmoveable by threat or promise. God appears in the chair beside me. I feel a mild surprise, but after all, He has now left the earth and no longer has a part in human affairs. Thus it falls to me to question Him.
He sits facing another direction, smoking a cigar, looking bored. I ask “Will You answer my questions?”

He replies “I am God. Who are you to ask Me?”

With no hesitation nor emotion I say “You made the Rules. Will You abide by them or not?”

The dream ends, but the question remains.

Now the “thought problem” I have been considering. In the multiverse, in which all the “constants” that can vary may vary, each universe will be different. If the degree of attraction between opposite charges varies, chemical combinations may or may not form, or form in unimaginable ways. If gravity varies, planets and stars may form in some but not others. Perhaps even the speed of light or the rate of the passage of time can be different.
Each universe unfolds as it must. But what is the “must”?

Within our universe there are some laws that cannot vary, as well as many that can. The constant of gravity may change, but the acceleration of matter in a gravity field will occur, even if the rate of acceleration differs. Even if time runs “backwards” in any given universe, within that frame causes precede events. Entropy occurs on whatever time scale we consider. With a change in the speed of light in a vacuum, the relationship between mass and energy may change. “Constants” may vary, but the laws describing the relationship between constants cannot.

It’s interesting to consider what may change from universe to universe, as well as what cannot change. One thing that must be invariant is that within each universe everything is bound by the laws of that universe. There cannot be a universe among all the infinite universes in which events occur that are outside the bounds of the laws of that universe. Thus the existence of “supernatural” events is simply not possible either in our universe nor in any other.

The question as to whether God has to follow his own rules remains unanswered.

Uncle Charley on Self-Inflicted Wounds

2011-08-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

"How did Bobby Joe get himself so whacked up?" Charley asked as we left the hospital.

"He lost control of his motorcycle out on Highway 9. He wasn't going all that fast, he said, just hit a sandy patch. Good thing he's got insurance," I said.

Charley looked thoughtful for a while. Then he said "I have some problems with medical insurance".

"Don't we all."

"Nah, I'm not thinking about costs and stuff, at least not directly. Now with Bobby Joe, I'm glad he's got medical coverage. But he wasn't doing anything wrong. That accident was just something that can happen when you ride a two-wheeler. I sure wouldn't feel the same way about his situation if he'd have been drunk."

"Hmm." I said. "You thinking that if he'd been drunk he shouldn't be covered by his medical insurance?"

"That's exactly right!" Charley said with some emotion. "Why should we all have to chip in on his medical bills when he done it to himself? Because that's all insurance is, you know, just us chippin' in in advance".

"So maybe it should say on the medical policy that you're not covered if you weren't being reasonably cautious?"

"More than that," Charley answered. "Why should we pay for somethin' stupid you do, like drinking and driving? Or if you get lung cancer after smoking 2 packs a day for 50 years? You want to take the risk, that's ok with me, but why should I pay extra because you don't take care of yourself?"

"You got a point," I said. "Maybe if people knew they weren't going to get covered for stuff like that, they wouldn't do it in the first place."

"Right. I'm thinking about other stuff too. For instance, if you have an accident driving your motorcycle without a helmet, the costs should be on you, not on the rest of us."

"I think that some Harley drivers have a saying 'No Helmets On Harleys'. That's kinda macho but they have a right to ride the way they want. But I don't want my rates to be higher because they want to ride without helmets."

Charley thought for a while. "How about all the motorcycle riders who don't want to wear helmets have their own insurance program? That'd solve that problem."

I laughed. "Sounds good. The principle being that other people don't pay for your risky behavior. And how about people that eat themselves into being so fat their knees and hips won't handle the stress? They should have to pay for their risks and replacement joints too."

Charley smiled. "I can see it now. They got their own insurance program. Call it Health Care For The Obese. I like it. Heart attacks wouldn't be covered, or diabetes, or atherosclerosis. We don't want to limit their freedom, we just want to limit our costs."

"How about people that attempt suicide and don't quite make it?" I asked. "And what about smokers?"

"I guess people that started smoking after the Surgeon General posted those warnings knew what they were doing. So, no medical treatment for lung cancer or COPD for them, unless they have their own insurance group. Plus they gotta pay higher rates to cover family members that got hit with second-hand smoke."

"So our motto is 'Pay For Your Own Risks Or Don't Take Them'. They need Tobacco Users Insurance."

"Sounds great to me," Charley said. "Insurance companies need to limit their costs, and so do we".

Uncle Charley Versus The Stock Market

2011-08-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

I was standing in the shade of a sycamore tree near where Charley was repairing his fence. My job was limited to handing him tools, which was fine with me. It was hot, even hotter than usual for an Oklahoma summer, and there was almost no wind at all, which was certainly not usual for an Oklahoma anything.

"You read the paper this morning?" Charley asked, looking up from his work.

"Sure. What got your attention?"

"Been readin' about the stock market goin' up and down. Why does it do that, you think? Them companies don't change their value that much, but the stocks with their name on them sure go up and down like an elevator."

"No mystery to it, Charley," I said. "Stock prices go up when the buyers think they're going up, and stock prices drop when the buyers think they're going to drop."

"So accordin' to you them prices are all based on guess-work?"

"Yes, that's about how I see it."

"Well," Charley said, "that makes it just a form of gamblin', like Las Vegas with branch offices everywhere. Hold that post straight for me."

"I suppose that's true. When a new company starts up and needs money to get started, they can sell stock. The company gets to use the money, and the stockholders get to share in the profits, if there are any, and if he company fails, they lose their money. So that's a gamble, I guess, but it gives a company a chance, and without that, lots of good things wouldn't make it to the market."

Charley looked puzzled. "But after that, people just sell the stock back and forth to each other. That don't do anything for the startup company. That's just speculation."

"You got it," I said.

"All them people, actin' like they're doing something important, doing real business, they ain't doing anything but gamblin'. They don't make anything or produce anything themselves. They just want to bet on whether company stocks will go up or down. What do we need them for, anyway?"

"I don't think we do need them. They don't benefit anybody but each other, as far as I can see. Now, the start-up investors are doing something useful, because they give money to the company to help it succeed, and in return they hope for the company to succeed and pay them a share of the profits. But all the ones on Wall Street, the speculators, they're basically just parasites trying to make money without having a product or service."

"Tell you what, Harry," Charley said. "If I was Emperor I'd just shut 'em down. It's just gamblin' and pretending it's a serious business."

"Then they'd have to get jobs where they actually did something. Most of them don't know anything except gambling."

"Let 'em do it in Vegas and stop pretending that all them stock prices and the stock market are of any importance at all."

"OK with me," I laughed. "I figured out a long time ago that the only reliable way to make money is to work for it."

"Now that's a real unpopular idea, and I don't think it will ever catch on."

"It hasn't so far, that's for sure", I answered.

Charley and Paying Down the Debt

2011-08-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

We passed the bank on our way to the donut shop. A large sign on the front urged us to take out a loan for low interest rates.

"You owe any money to the bank?" Charley asked.

"No. Got everything paid."

"Wish our government did. All that debt.... We've borrowed trillions from China and spent it on government projects."

"I guess they're like the international bank," I said. "They keep us going".

"We're spending more than we're making, and we're borrowing from China and places like that to stay afloat. That seem right to you?"

"No, of course not. If I did that, the bank people would call me in and ask me how I planned to pay off my loans."

"Guess it would be nice if you didn't have to put up any collateral. The US don't have to put up collateral."

"That's right".

A pause followed. I could almost hear the little wheels in Charley's head going round.

"What would happen," Charley asked, stopping on the sidewalk outside the donut shop, "if the Chinese government called a meeting with the President and asked us how we're gonna repay our loans?"

"What a thought!" I said, laughing.

"Ain't no joke, really. They got a right to know what we're gonna do. There's no collateral they can collect, they got no protection for that loan. They could call the loan and force some kinda payment, but we'd collapse and they'd never get their money. I guess we could print a lot of worthless money and pay 'em with that, but that would cause the worst inflation since Germany in the 20's."

"Good point," I said. "They can't afford to collapse us. What would a bank do in that situation?"

"Well, they could demand a payment schedule where we pay the interest as we go and some on the principle. Give us a certain number of years, like 20 years. Like a mortgage. But there'd have to be a condition, that the payments would be tied to inflation, so if the government printed a lot of money to pay 'em with, it wouldn't get us out of debt."

"Where would the money to pay the Chinese come from, in this scheme of yours?"

"We could have a new income tax added to the old one. It would be a graduated tax, high at the top income levels and high for corporations, low for the poor. I read somewhere we would have to come up with almost $40,000 each. That's a lot, but spread over 20 years like a mortgage, we could maybe handle it."

"With money going out of our economy and into theirs, we'd get a lot poorer. There would be a depression, I suppose."

Charley nodded. "That's what happens when you spend your way into debt and don't have enough income to pay your bills. It'd be hard on the American people, but we've let this happen, and there really ain't no easy way out, 'cept to buckle your belt tighter, work harder, get another part-time job or something. And quit spending what we don't got!"

Teaching Critical Thinking

2011-07-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

It appears that most people have not been taught basic skills in thinking. They don't understand what constitutes "evidence" or "proof"; most have little idea as to what "logical errors" are, or the difference between "faith" and "knowledge". They are taught by television and radio ads to confuse feelings with thought. Many do not have any real idea as to how one goes about solving problems.

As a result, many grow into adults who are easily manipulated and led, who act on their impulses and feelings without thought, who are scarcely above the level of primitive primates in their thinking. Yet they are expected to deal with a very complex political and economic world. They are expected to know how to vote and on what to base their opinions, other than how they have been told to feel by others.

What if we taught a course in critical thinking in the schools? We could give them the tools to distinguish argument from demagoguery. We could teach them how to know when they are being sold snake oil or eternal youth pills and how to evaluate the evidence for a particular idea or set of ideas. They would learn the basics of the scientific method and how to apply those techniques to everyday problems.

We certainly have no hesitation in teaching children religious thinking, and expect them to accept as proof things they are told and for which there is no evidence. Why should we not teach them how to think critically? Critical thinking itself is not anti-religious, and it is not a "theory". It is a set of tools, like algebra, that have wide applications. Learning to question what we are told, how to look for the errors in arguments, learning how causality works and does not work, all these are important skills. Without them people are little wiser than herds, which may well be what the corporate world wants them to be.

Uncle Charley Supports An Emperor

2011-07-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

"I can't tell you how tired I am of listenin' to all them politicians lyin' and puttin' a spin on the truth," Charley said, handing me another beer.

"That's what's going on, though," I said. "I don't understand why they keep these transparent lies going when it's simple to tell the truth".

"Simple for you," Charley laughed. "You don't need any voter support."

"I think they lose more support than they keep when they hand out another line of politically correct baloney," I said. "That beer is good, Charley. Where'd you get it?"

"It's made locally at that little German restaurant up Sooner Road almost to Moore. No hops, hardly. And what would you do different?"

"Differently from what?", I said.

"Fer instance," Charley said with a laugh, "If you had been in Clinton's place when he got caught foolin' around with that young woman, what would you have said instead of 'I did not have sex with that woman'?"

I thought for a minute. "OK, how about this: 'Yep, I stepped out of the bounds of my marriage, and now I have a real problem, a personal one. How is it your business if I'm not faithful to my wife? The Chief Executive of this country is not required to make his private life public, as long as that doesn't affect his ability to do his job. Next question?'"

Charley laughed. "I like it, Harry. Course you're not married to Hillary".

"That's for sure," I said.

"What if you'da been Nixon when Watergate came crashin' down around his ears?"

"I don't believe I would have gotten into that situation in the first place. It's a lot easier to tell the truth when you're staying honest. But I wouldn't have said 'I am not a crook'. I might have said something like 'I did not behave ethically when I obtained information illegally. I stepped over the line. I will accept whatever consequences follow, but until my responsibilities change I will continue to do my job and try to be more of an honest man and less of a politician. Next question?"

"That's good, but not too practical. I get your point. People got a right to know that you're honest, and they got a right to know the things that you do or don't do as part of your job. But you don't think they got a right to know squat about your private life. Is that about it?"

"I think so," I said. "Some things you can't talk about publicly. No business or corporation can survive with all their plans open and public. But the United States is a business, a big one.
And the people in charge need to stand up and be truthful about what they are doing and what they have done as far as their job is concerned. I don't care if the President of the United States has sexual relationships with sheep, and it's none of my business, unless somehow it affects how he does his job."

"I agree. I think them reporters will tell anything to anybody if it helps 'em keep their jobs. Like them paparazzi sneaking around tryin' to take pictures of naked celebrities. It's just low class panderin' to the lowest level of curiosity." Charley took a drink from his beer.

"I think it would be interesting to see how the American people would react to a President who told the truth and who demanded that his personal boundaries be respected."

"I think people would love it," Charley said, finishing his beer. "I think they might make you Emperor if you did that."

"I'm willing to be elected by acclamation," I laughed. "Let's see if someone wants an honest man."

Uncle Charley Pays Off The National Debt

2011-06-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

I knocked on Uncle Charley's door. When he came to the door, I handed him the sack of peaches Elaine had picked up at the Farmer's Market that morning.

"Howdy, and thanks!", he said, looking into the bag. "Them peaches look real good. Don't know whether to eat 'em in a bowl with cream or make a pie with 'em. Come on in."

I followed him into his small and neat living room and sat down while he took the peaches into the kitchen.

"Tell Elaine I said 'thanks'," he said as he put them down on the kitchen table. "I appreciate her pickin' 'em up at the Market. Saves me a trip".

"Be glad to, Charley," I answered, looking at the pile of papers scattered over the desk. "What you working on?"

"Been thinking about that national debt thingie," he answered. "Them politicians keep saying we got to spend more money because we're in debt, and they got some economists who say we can pay it off. The same economists who recommended we get in debt in the first place."

"Doesn't sound reasonable, does it?"

"Nope. I got some ideas that would work, but they'd be real unpopular."

"I don't think anything we do that solves this mess is going to be popular," I said.

"Right. That's why they're not gonna solve it. They need the popular votes more than they need us to be solvent. Can't spend our way out of debt, nobody can. We gotta raise more money and spend less, and that's the long and the short of it."

"What do you have in mind?" I asked.

"Well, we can raise a lot of money if we can get the people who aren't paying income taxes to pay what they owe. You got any idea how many people don't pay taxes?"

"A lot," I said. "Lots of people work for cash only, most of them working people, not many of them well-to-do. But there are a lot of them. And a lot of illegal immigrants who do work that we can't get Americans to do at the price, and we still have to pay for their medical expenses and for putting their kids through school."

"That' s right," Charley said. "So getting them to help pay for the system that helps them is important for us.That's one part of my plan. Here's some more ideas: We let anybody who wants to come here to work do so, but they have to register and they have to pay income taxes. We legalize drugs, subsidize them and drive the cartels out of business, and un-employ all the young people who are living on the drug profits so they'll have to find work. We add a small national sales tax on everything but food, medicine and rent. We stop federal subsidies for everthing that can be put off for a couple of years, because right now we can't afford long-term investments. We switch to socialized medicine so that medical bills can't bankrupt us."

"A lot of people, probably most of us, won't have nearly as much money as we are used to now. There'll be a lot of unhappiness, anger, maybe revolts."

"Yep," Charley said. "It's gonna be bad. But if we don't accept bad times now, we're gonna have to accept terrible times later, so terrible that we might not ever recover. Like taking bitter medicine. I got more ideas, but they ain't any more optimistic."

"Geez, Charley. That's about as bleak a picture as you can paint."

"That's right, Harry. Here, eat a peach to take out the bad taste."

"Gonna take a lot of peaches."

"You got that right," he said cheerfully.

Uncle Charley and the National Budget

2011-06-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

Uncle Charley was reading the paper so intently he hardly noticed me as I sat down across from him with my coffee.

"You read the paper this morning?" Charley asked without preamble.
"A little," I answered. "Lot of politics, lot of bad news."

"Yep," he said. "Kinda proves my point".

"Which would be what?"

He put the paper down and looked straight at me. "No offense, Harry, but you don't read most of the paper, and you're an educated man. How are you supposed to form an opinion to guide your elected representative if you don't have any information?"

"In the first place, Charley," I answered, "the politicians don't seem to care what I think. And in the second place, the newspaper isn't a very good source of information. Mostly talks about local scandals and deaths."

"And that is my point", Charley said. "I'm thinking that we're looking at the coming failure of representative democracy. And by that I mean it's failing now. The politicians feather their nests, and when they do listen to their constituency it's just to figure out how to please them and get re-elected. So we got really a people's democracy, which is a bad idea, because it means that our country is more and more run by the votes of people even less educated than you. Here's the important thing: They vote for what they want, not what's good for the country."

"What's got you so pessimistic all of a sudden?" I asked, pouring another cup.

"No 'all of a sudden' to it," Charley answered with some bitterness. "But what's happening in Greece really got me to think harder about it. You know about the Greek situation?"

"I've read a little and heard on NPR a little more. I think if it weren't for Diane Reems I wouldn't know much at all".

"OK, let me give you a quick summary," Charley said. "They got real far in debt, and they got the EU to help them by buying a bunch of gummint bonds. Basically they got a long-term loan and they're trying to live on that money".

"I read that there's a lot of dissatisfaction with that among the Greek people."

"Oh yeah. Well, the gummint says they all got to cut back and quit living off the gummint and start paying off their debts. They call it a "austerity" program, which means they been living too high off the hog for too long, and now they gotta live within their means, even save some money so's they can pay their debts. Heck, we've all had that happen to us. It's not a big deal for us to cut back when we have to and live within the budget. But gummints don't seem to like to live that way. So the Greek gummint got itself way too deep in debt, and it borried a lot more money to bail itself out, which is kinda like usin' yer credit card to pay your debts."

"So now the people of Greece have to cut way back, and that's what they're protesting about, huh?"

"You got it. They know they gotta, and they don't wanta, so they're mad, and they expect the politicians to cave in and give 'em back their goodies."

"But they can't do that, can they?" I said. "The politicians let themselves get into a corner by pleasing the people, and now they can't get out without losing all those votes by people who are used to being taken care of."

"That's about the size of it," Charley said. "What the people want is what every spoiled child in the world wants. And it's bad for 'em if they get it,and they want it anyway."

"Sounds a lot like us," I commented. "We've been living beyond our budget for years, been borrowing money and going into debt to other countries, like China, and we just keep borrowing more."

"The politicians know what needs to be done, but they don't want to take action in an election year, 'cause all us spoiled brats will get mad. So the debt limit gets raised, and the reckoning is coming due. I'm afraid that when it does hit the fan, we're gonna have a collapse so big we may never be able to recover. It's happened before, but not on this scale. Hell, Harry, we owe most everybody in the world! How we gonna pay 'em?"

"Seems to me that sooner or later we're gonna have to go on an "austerity budget" like we should have been on all along. Our mistake was allowing a negative budget, where we spend more than we're making. That should never have happened. I can't even imagine what we're going to do."

"Probly just what the Greek people are doin'," Charley answered. "We'll go out and holler in the streets because we can't have as much of the goody-pie as we're used to. But tantrums don't solve problems, and even real loud whinin' and bitchin' doesn't make us entitled. Sooner or later, though, we got no choice."

"Charley, you got me worried."

"Yeah? Why weren't ya already worried? This isn't new, it's been coming on for 50 years or more, whenever we stopped stayin' inside our budget. Yer just gettin' worried now because you can see it coming in the near future".

"I hate it when you're right", I said, glumly.

"Bein' right is small consolation," Charley said, and got up to go.

I sat there for a while, but I didn't like what I was thinking, so I left too.

Uncle Charley and the Drug War

2011-06-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

"Great dinner, Elaine", Charley said contentedly as he pushed his chair back. "Could I have a little more coffee?"

I got up and got the coffee. Elaine brought her coffee in and sat down. "Charley," she said, "I've been reading about the drug war, and how expensive and unsuccessful it is."

"Yep", he said. "Prolly nobody ever thought it would work. It's just a gesture, I guess."
"Just a P C thing to do?"

"Would be my guess. We've tried all kinds of bans on stuff, and when has it worked? We banned liquor and created organized crime,and now we're back to selling liquor. England tried to stop opium back at the start of the last century, and that didn't work. We've been fighting drugs for the last 50 years, spent I don't know how much, and there's more drugs on the street than ever."

I leaned back in my chair. "Do you think we should just do what China did?"

"You mean just execute all the drug dealers and send the users off to a work camp or something? That might fly in China. They got a surplus of people anyhow. I don't see us putting up with that here."

"You always have some ideas, Charley," Elaine said. "What have you thought of this time?"

"Hmmm. Truth to tell, I have given it some thought. The problem is that drugs are a major money maker. Drug sales are among the biggest businesses in the U.S., and they don't pay taxes neither. All the "war on drugs" thing does is to cut back on the supply, then of course the prices go up, and it's business as usual. So it seems to me that the only thing that might stop drug sales is to make it unprofitable, like they did for heroin in England."

"How would we do that?" I asked.

"I have a thought, but I don't think you're gonna like it."

"OK, OK," Elaine said. "Spit it out. I'm out of coffee."

"Well, what if the gummint took over the drug business? Starting with something like cocaine and crack. We'd use that budget set up for the useless War On Drugs and spend the money on buying cocaine from the source. Pay 'em their regular price and everything. Then we'd give it away to everyone old enough to vote who wants it. What's gonna happen is that we'll drive the cartels and the gangs out of business. Can't get much lower price than free. Then there's nobody to push the drugs or get people hooked on them, and eventually the market would drop. Might take years, but you'd be able to see a steady decline in sales when you have to pick your drugs up from a gummint drug store. Why would you pay a lot of bucks on a street corner and risk being poisoned, when you can get 'em from the gummint cheap and clean and in the daylight?"

"What an idea," I said. "Some people will think it's immoral."

"What's going on now is immoral. The gummint ain't trying to build up a market for drugs. It would be tryin' to destroy the drug market by making it unprofitable. And think of all that money going to pay off cops and entire gummints in Latin America. Those people might end up with a gummint that ain't corrupt."

"Right now the US is a major source of income for some of the poorest countries," I commented.
"In Afghanistan the major cash crop is the opium poppy, and if we stopped sending them money they'd be in trouble".

"That's always the problem with countries with just one cash crop. They're always on the edge of disaster," Charley said. "Right now our citizens are sending money to the poor people of Colombia or wherever, and with the Uncle Charley Plan they'd keep on getting their money, so we wouldn't be hurting them. Just the gangs and the cartels, and you can bet they wouldn't like it. So if my little plan was proposed, it'd be right interesting to see which congressmen would agree with the cartels. And you know that some of them are taking dirty money. When there's that much dirty money out there, it's impossible to stop corruption and bribery. So the only way to get things cleaner is to make drugs unprofitable."

"I like it, Charley," my wife said. "I never thought I'd say that about one of your hair-brained ideas, but this one has some possibility. But what are you going to do about all those federal employees in the drug war, like the DEA?"

"Good question," Charley grinned. "We can have them manage the Gummint Uncle Charley Drug Stores! They would have to take a cut in pay, but at least they wouldn't be having gun battles with gangs. Now, I haven't figured out what to do about home-grown drugs, but where there's too much profit there's gonna be graft and corruption and violence. So any solution has got to involve taking away the profit margin."

"Give up profit?" I laughed. "Why, that's almost... un-American!"

"The more you feed the animal, the bigger it gets," Charley said.

"And that's the truth." Elaine added.

Uncle Charley Visits The Cemetary

2011-05-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

"It's Memorial Day," Uncle Charley said as he ambled up the walk.

"I know," I said. "None of my family is buried in the local cemetary, so I haven't been out there."

"Well, I was out there this morning," Charley sat down on the glider across from me, and poured himself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher.

"Hi, Charley," my wife said from the house. "Help yourself to a glass of tea."

"Thanks, Elaine. I just did."

"I know," she answered.

Charley grinned. "She knows me pretty good, all right".

"Yep," I said. "You been out to the cemetary?"

"Uh-huh. Got me to thinking."

"What a surprise," I commented.

"You know those places are getting flat crowded," he said after a pause. "I had a thought that could save space."

"Cremation?"

"Nah, too many people want to have a marker. You probly want a statue of yerself on a horse, and you ain't the only one."

"So what's your idea?"

"I had a couple, acshully. See, I was driving over here and on the way I saw a big old machine boring a hole in somebody's front yard so's they could put in a big tree. And this thought come to me: why not dig burial holes like that, like you would for a tree or a telephone pole, and then just put the body in feet first?"

I laughed. "It would save room, huh?"

"It would, it would! No question. And with the machine it wouldn't take all that long, either. Just dig the hole, 8 foot deep and 2 and 1/2 foot wide, and in you go. You could put the body in, like, a plastic cigar tube, only the right size, of course, and then to keep it secure pour in a foot or so of concrete and set a plaque in the top of it."

"You got this all worked out, haven't you?"

"I figured out that you could put 8 or more people in the same space that one takes now. Would be a bunch cheaper, too."

"Wouldn't it be crowded? Hard to find your relative in the group?"

"I thought about that, and I had another great idea."

"I'm afraid to ask", I said

"What would be the problem in putting a solar-powered gadget into the concrete, and have it have a little memory chip and a proximity-detector in it? Then when somebody walked by, the chip would say whatever the deceased wanted said. Could be just sayin' his name, or maybe a little poem or somethin' like that. Then a walk in the cemetary could be positively entertaining!"

After I stopped laughing, a thought occurred to me. "Charley, I know you've already thought of something. What do you want your solar-powered tombstone to say?"

"Oh, it might say 'Hi, Harry', 'cause I think you're the only one likely to drop by. Or it could say 'Come back later when I'm not so busy', or 'Ouch, yer steppin' on my head'". Maybe it could have a selection of things to say and pick 'em at random."

I was actually getting interested in his idea. "If you encased the whole works in clear acrylic, the weather wouldn't deteriorate it... it could last for many years."

Charley put his glass down. "I can imagine a time when going to the cemetary would be a downright entertaining and exciting event. As long as it wasn't a one-way trip."

Charley Weighs Tactics vs. Politics

2011-05-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Charley set the sack of groceries on the kitchen table. He pulled a packet of peanuts out of the sack, opened it and sat himself down.

"What do you think about that Osama bin Laden gettin' hisself killed?"

"What do you mean? Don't you think he had it coming?"

"Oh, sure," Charley said. "I ain't sheddin' no tears for him. But we coulda got a lot more mileage out of him if the President didn't need the political boost so bad.

"What kind of mileage are you talking about?" I asked.

"Well, now we got a dead terrorist. And they got a dead martyr. What would it have hurt if we had played it smarter? For instance, suppose we snuck his body out of the country without tellin' nobody, and once we had him back in the US we coulda said 'Hey, we captured bin Laden and we got him in jail in the US, and we're gonna question him for a while before we try him".

"I'm following you so far, you wily old coon-hunter."

"And maybe later we could say we convinced him of the error of his ways, and he's getting ready to rat out all his terrorist buddies. That oughta put the wind up. And we could always threaten to execute him if they was another terrorist attack."

"That all sounds good, Charley. Why do you suppose they didn't do that?"

"Oh, they're smart enough in the CIA to have thunk of this. My guess is that Obama needs the political boost what with elections comin' up in another year. Politicians don't think in terms of long-range anything, except re-elections."

"We ought to put you in charge," I laughed.

"They don't make enough money at the Mint to pay me to do that stuff. But I appreciate the thought."

Charley and the Afterlife

2011-04-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

“I been to church again,” Charley said as he plopped himself into the lawn chair.

“Good for you. I thought you were an atheist or agnostic?”

“Agnostic? Nah, I’m never wishy-washy, I got more pride than that. Of course I’m an atheist, but I gotta see what the other side is thinking about, don’t I?”

“Well, what are they thinking about?” I asked, knowing that Charley had his answers all prepared.

“They was talking about the after-life, you know. They got all these ideas that really don’t make any sense unless you already made up yer mind to believe ‘em.”

“Such as?”

“They say they’re gonna see each other, see all their old friends and family. Don’t say what they’re gonna see ‘em with. And they say we're gonna know each other. As far as I know, memories have to have something to be kept in, and we know all that physical stuff is gonna stay right here.”

“I think part of the reason people long for an afterlife is because they really can’t imagine not continuing on in some way or another. We’re pretty important in our own eyes. Surely we can’t just… stop.”

“Don’t know why not,” Charley said. “The universe has been going on almost 14 billion years, I read somewhere. Passed like a blink to me. I don’t think the next 14 billion years will be any slower. I really think that people think they’ll go on forever because they can’t imagine stopping, and at the same time the idea of going on forever is pretty darn frightening. I couldn’t stand being around my ex-wife for more than 5 minutes, and if I had to put up with her forever…”

“So what’s your theory about why we imagine an afterlife?”

“Lack of imagination, mostly,” Charley said. “Once you say there’s an afterlife, you have to come up with reasons for how it works and who gets to go there and what there is to do once yer there. Most religions have come up with a description of heaven that sounds a lot like what the rich people in their home towns already have. Sounds pretty arbitrary to me, but then I’m not plannin’ on going there”.

“Doesn’t that scare you?” I asked.

“Nope,” Charley said. “I’m not scared of going to sleep at night either. When my machinery ain't working or on stand-by, I’m not there to see it. Time don’t mean anything when the clock's stopped. I really think that people are mostly scared of somehow knowing they’re dead and stuck down there in the dark. The really good news is that they ain’t gonna be there. Or anywhere.”

“Maybe you’re right. I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to do for a million years.”

Charley laughed. “I think it’s gonna be nice to be off duty.”

Uncle Charley Doesn't See A Ghost

2011-04-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

Charley knocked on the front door.

"It's Charley," my wife said to me. "Taking your camera?"

I opened the door. "Hiya, Charlie, come on in. I'll get my stuff".

I started picking up my gear. My wife gave Charley a hug.

"Where are you two going this evening?" she asked.

"I thought we'd go out to that old cemetery that they're gonna build a hamburger place over," he said. "Might be some angry spooks or somethin'."

"Have fun and stay out of trouble," she said, shaking her head.

We put our cameras in the car and headed out. When we got to the empty plot of land that, according to legend, was a very early cemetery dating before statehood. It was somewhat rough, with a few trees darkening in the early dusk. There were a couple of bulldozers on a little access road. A small sign near the main road said "Future Home of Super Burgers".

"It looks real peaceful," Charley said, looking through his camera.

"It won't stay that way long," I commented, walking through the tall grass.

"It's a good location for a business, I guess", Charley said. "You think it was a cemetery?"

"Yes,", I said. "It was before the township was platted, and there are no official records showing anything, so there's no way of moving bodies, if anything were left to move after 120 years. Still..."

"Spook you a little?" Charley grinned.

"Maybe. Bad pun, Charley".

Charley moved off under the trees. "You believe in ghosts?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never seen any. I've watched a couple of those tv shows where they use equipment to see if they can detect anything ghostly. They never seem to come up with much."

Charley was kneeling down, looking through his camera. "You notice they always pick kinda scarey places to look? Wonder why they think there would be ghosts in castles or places like that, instead of battlefields or graveyards."

"Makes a better tv show, I guess."

"Think about it, Harry. They never find anything. Castles and abandoned buildings? Why, there's probly not many places in the world where somebody hasn't died. And died of everything imaginable, from car wrecks and wars to plague and executions. Think about battlefields and concentration camps. Why, there's more dead people than live ones, I suspect, millions and millions. So the question really is why ain't there more ghosts?" He took another lens from his bag. "If being a ghost was an easy thing, we ought to be up to our necks in ghosts. "

I found myself grinning at the thought. "You're right. Becoming a ghost must be tricky."

"Maybe you have to fail an Exit Exam at the Pearly Gates," Charley commented. "I read about a phantom dog in a graveyard. I wonder how dogs fail the exam? Maybe pee on the Pearly Gates?"

"Some stories about ghosts claim the ghosts had 'unfinished business' or maybe they got treated badly in life," I said.

"You think very many people die without having 'unfinished business'," Charley asked. "And how many people died mistreated or mad? The whole business don't make a lot of sense. Why, right where we are, there oughta be a bunch of ghosts all pissed off because we're gonna put a hamburger stand on their graves."

"Getting dark, Charley," I said. "Let's pack it up."

"Woooo," Charley said. "A ghost or two might make a good picture."

We looked around the peaceful area. "I like it better as it is," I said.

"Always need more hamburger places," Charley said. "Even if they're full of spooks."

Uncle Charley Discusses Prayer

2011-04-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Uncle Charley was over for dinner last week. "I just came from a prayer meeting", he began.

My wife gave me a look which clearly meant "Here we go again".

Trying not to provoke anything, I said "That's nice, Charley. Didn't know you were religious".

"I ain't," Charley said. "But I like to know what the opposition is talking about, in case I have to hang out with them."

"I'm guessing they were talking about prayer," I said as neutrally as possible. My wife gave a barely-audible sigh and reached for her wine glass.

"Well, they were asking God to save them from a calamity, like that tidal wave that hit Japan. And they were thanking God for the ones he saved."

"I know you have some kind of problem with that, or you wouldn't have brought it up. So what's your objection?"

"Let me ask you something," Charlie said. "You think those people in the meeting believe that God can intervene and save folks?"

"I'm sure they do believe that," I said. "They wouldn't be there if they didn't."

"So why didn't God save all those people in the first place? I mean, if they think God could save some of 'em, why didn't he save 'em all? Among them hunderd thousand or so people, there musta been at least some nice ones, kids and babies even, ... Didn't they deserve help?"

"Some of them did get saved," I answered. "I don't know why some and not others."

"You think the ones that died or got hurt deserved it?"

"No. I don't think that," I said.

"Seems to me you got a pretty basic contradiction in yer thinking. If God is responsible for saving people, which I guess is why you thank Him, then he has to be responsible for the ones who died or got hurt as well. They seem to be thanking God for not having been quite as bad as he could have been."

"Wait a minute..." I said.

"If God can save people, and he doesn't, then he should be held responsible. We sue people for not doing things they oughta do to save somebody."

"That's been a problem since people first started thinking about some kind of Supreme Being. The problem is how to account for evil or bad things that happen. Either just one boss is in charge of everything, including evil, or he isn't. So if you want a loving god, you gotta separate duties. Mostly people have decided that some other junior god must be in charge of evil."

"Well then," Charley said, "since there's a whole lot more bad stuff happening than good, the evil side must be mostly in charge. Because if God allows the Devil to do bad things, he's just as responsible as the Devil. It's called a 'criminal conspiracy' or somethin' like that. If God was here we'd have to arrest him."

I thought about it for a minute. "When the illogic of the whole thing is brought up, religious people usually give as an excuse that there are things we just aren't meant to understand, like God's reasons for things."

"That's just about as lame an argument as you could possibly come up with. We got brains that can think. We gotta judge what happens with the brains we were given, just simple old human brains. So in our human world, we got to judge things with the equipment we got. We'd never accept from some other mass murderer that we simply can't understand his reasons for killing a lot of people. To jail he'd go. So God is guilty by all the standards of reason I can think of."

I said, "The real problem, I think, is that we all need to think that the universe is governed by either God or logic or both. We don't want to think that things happen to us randomly, even though the evidence is overwhelming. When you try to force random things into a logical pattern, you get some weird explanations."

"On the idea that 'weird explanation' is better than none at all?" Charley asked?

"I guess so," I said.

Charley laughed, reached for his wine glass. He bumped the salt-shaker over and quickly set it upright."

"Oops," he said. He picked up a pinch of salt from the table and tossed it over his shoulder. "Fer good luck", he said with a grin.

Uncle Charley and High-School Dropouts

2011-04-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Charley and I were walking past the high school a few days ago. The young people were doing their usual horsing around like young people all over the world.

"Nice to see them having a good time," I said.

"See that little group over by the new Ford in the parking lot?"

"Sure," I said. "They're smoking, I think."

"Probably weed, if I ain't mistaken. Look again."

"I think you're right. Somebody needs to put a stop to that. How are they going to get an education if they're stoned?"

Charley laughed. "Yer just not thinking right. Why do you want for them to get an education?"

"How are they going to make something of themselves if they don't?"

"See, that's the point. They're making somethin' of themselves. Day labor! We need to be able to compete in the national day-laborer market. We need people who can stock groceries and wash cars and fix roofs, and right now people from other countries got the market on that."

"You're serious?" I asked.

"More serious than a brain tumor. Look, we need cheap labor. Those idiots over there in the parking lot signin' up for digging ditches. They're not gonna be running companies or even goin' to college. They're gonna be sacking groceries or working for Walmart or running for office. We need grocery sackers and garbage collectors! We need them to work real cheap! If they all go to college, whose gonna mow yer lawn?"

That stopped me. "Charley, that's... that's not...'"

"It's not liberal or somethin' like that. I know. You want everybody to be educated. You can lead students to books but you can't make 'em think. Some of 'em are too dumb to know they need it, and those are the ones I need to clean my septic tank. All they're doing in school is to hold the others back and wear out the teachers."

"I'll have to think about that one, Charley".

"I'm not talking about refusing to teach 'em. I'm just suggesting we let the ones that don't want an education go free. Maybe give them work to do in school, get 'em ready for the assembly line. I got a plan to keep 'em from voting too, but I'll tell you another time. When yer not so overcome."

"Thanks, Charley," I said weakly.

Uncle Charley As Inspector General

2011-04-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

Charley sat down beside me on the park bench and sighed.

"Oh, hello, Charley," I said. "You look troubled."

"Well, I am, I am. I been reading the newspapers again, and that always gets me upset."

"Don't like all the car wrecks and tragedies?"

"Nah, that ain't it. That stuff happens, and it ain't really interesting unless you knew the people involved. It's the politicians. They just frost my butt."

I laughed. "They frost everybody's butt. Haven't you got used to them yet?"

"Nope. And it ain't even their dumb votes or bad economics. It's the out-and-out dishonesty, crookedness, graft, whatever you wanta call it."

"Always been there," I pointed out.

"It's always been there because unless they do something really stupid and get caught at it, we don't really give a damn. God knows they got a tough job to do, I give 'em that. But I'm real fed up with them getting their noses too deep in the feed trough."

"We catch them and put them in jail, at least some of the time," I said, sipping from my paper cup of coffee.

"Not nearly enough. I got this thought, though..."

"What's that, Charley?" I laughed.

"I want to be the Inspector General of the U S of A. I want to have a staff of secret police whose only job is to find graft and dishonesty among our elected crooks. And I want there to be public trials for clear-cut cases of dishonesty. Just going to jail ain't enough, not when you defraud near 300 million people. I want to make it plum unpopular to be a crooked politician".

"That's a lot of power. What's to keep you from becoming a crook?"

"You got a point, kid. I'm thinking there ought to be a fairly short time limit on my term as Inspector General. Like maybe one year. I think I could hold out against corruption and sin about that long."

"With that kind of power, there ought to be some real checks and balances," I said. "Who watches the watchers?"

"I read that somewhere too," he grinned. "I reckon the Attorney General could supervise my ethics, but not my job as IG. See, he could make sure I wasn't getting crooked, but he's another politician, and he shouldn't be able to tell me who I could or couldn't go after."

"That makes sense", I commented. "What would you do with the crooked politicians you caught?"

"Anything from public floggings on national television up to life in prison, and I don't mean no Federal country club. I want people to see justice being done. And not only the bad guys get punished, but they or their estates gotta pay back every damn penny."

"Just don't expect any favors your own self," he added, looking stern.

"OK," I said. "I wouldn't expect it".

Uncle Charley Visits the High School

2011-04-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

Charley started before we were even out of the driveway.

"You mind if I talk to you about something while we're going to the hardware store?"

"Nope," I said. "I always enjoy our talks".

"Well, some things I think are probably not safe to say in public, so I figure, you're a relative, so what choice you got?"

"True enough," I grinned.

"OK, here's what started me thinking. I read in the paper not long ago that somethin' more than 9% of the kids in high school here in town have been threatened or assaulted with a gun, knife or bat within the last 12 months. And more than 5% admitted having brought a weapon to school."

"That's pretty bad," I admitted. "It was sometimes bad when I was in high school, right after the invention of the wheel, but I guess it's worse now."

"You got no idea," he said soberly. "I decided I wanted to see what it's like for the kids, so I arranged to stand around in the halls between classes and after school, and I just watched and listened."

"And?" i asked.

"I tell you what," he said angrily, "if people acted like that in the mall, we'd never put up with it. I heard young men and women using 4-letter words loudly, I saw the boys bullying each other, pushing and shoving. I saw young women being sexually groped and harassed. One guy grabbed this young, maybe 15 year old girl, and his buddy grabbed her breasts, and they walked off laughing. There was a teacher there too, did nothing."

"That's terrible," I said.

"What's terrible is that we grown-ups don't do anything to stop that crap. We make laws to protect us grown-ups from that kinda thing, and we enforce them, but not in the high schools! Those kids live in a jungle where the biggest apes get to do whatever they want!"

"That's bad. How can kids learn anything in a situation like that?"

"Grown-up teachers stand and watch without doing anything because they're afraid of the consequences, not only from the kids but from their parents, and they know they won't get any protection from their administrators."

"I think the threat of lawsuit paralyzes them to some degree," I said.

"It ain't just the lawyers or the scared school administration. The parents of those kids are no better than the kids, and they raise hell at the top of their lungs when somebody wants to make their little angels mind their manners and obey the law," Charley said.

"Maybe we ought to punish the parents if their children misbehave."

"Well, since we don't protect the kids, I guess they figured out that they gotta protect themselves. So that's why they're takin' weapons to school."

"Maybe we should put more police in the hallways" I suggested.

"Nah, our police have enough to do as it is. Maybe we should train and deputize a bunch of grandparents and give them the power to arrest people for breaking the law. I mean, there are plenty of laws against assault and sexual harassment already. We just need to make the kids realize that they have to obey the law like adults or face real consequences."

"I guess right now we're just teaching them the law doesn't protect them. No wonder so many grow up without respect for police or the law in general," I said.

"I think some of those kids need to get arrested and answer to a judge. Hitting somebody isn't a form of play. It's a damn assault. There needs to be consequences, and all the kids need to see that there is a law that can protect them and that they can respect." Charley said. "Doing nothing about wickedness is how it succeeds."

"That's what my grandma would have said."

"Mine too," Charley said. "But my grandpa just mighta gone down to the school and done something about it".

Uncle Charley Gives God a Performance Review

2011-04-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

"Thanks for having me over for Easter dinner," Charley said amiably. "That lamb was really good. Say, that's not a symbol for you or anything?" he asked with an innocent look.

"Don't go there, Charley," my wife said with a warning look.

"It being Easter, I just thought..."

"Charley."

"OK, ok, I was just funnin' you."

"Don't make fun of religion," she said. "It's important to lots of people. A lot of us need to believe that religion is good, that God is good."

"What would you do if you was God?" Charley asked.

"I'm not getting into that with you today," she said, and went into the kitchen, giving me a raised eyebrow as she went.

"How about you?" he asked me.

"What do you mean, Charley? Are you asking me what I would do different?"

"I was thinking, no matter how big the company, the CEO needs a performance review from time to time."

"You want to rate God, Charley?" I asked incredulously.

"Oh, I know it sounds funny," Charley said. "We don't have all the information, of course. But we got a lot of information just based on what we do know about. Here's an example, from what we were talking about last week, that Japanese tidal wave thing. Would you have sent that wave to kill all those men, women and children?"

"Probably not," I acknowledged.

"Why not?"

"I don't think there is any way they could all have deserved that."

"So I guess you're saying that God didn't show good judgment, or else he did have good judgment and just didn't care. And you yerself would be more forgiving and kind than God. Hmmm."

"Well, maybe there were reasons that we don't know about."

"Don't have to know the reasons behind a mass murder to know it wasn't good. So you'd give God a low rating on the tidal wave."

"Yes, I guess so," I said.

"Would you rate yourself higher than a mass murderer?"

"Charley, you're going pretty far!"

"Oh, yeah? Because I object to anybody killing a hundred thousand people or so? I remember you being pretty mad at Timothy McVeigh, and he didn't kill near that many. How would you go about believing in or worshipping a god that wasn't even as nice or kind as you? and that ain't saying much about you either. That always amazes me. People worship a god they actually believe they are superior to."

"Well," I said, "they don't think that way. They just figure that God has reasons they can't understand."

"That's a cop-out. If you were a judge trying a murder case, would you accept an argument from the killer that we 'just couldn't understand his reasons'?"

"No," I answered. "I think that for most people it's important to believe in some kind of reason in the universe, even if they can't understand it, and even if he (or she) lets bad things happen."

"I think it'd be pretty hard to worship a God who lets wicked things happen. Now, I ain't the most moral of men, but I believe I could do a kinder and more just job than the incumbent."

"If there's an election, Charley, let me know so I can be sure and vote".

"Thanks,Harry. I don't really care about who ya vote for, but I think you oughta give a lot of thought to your reasons And thanks again for the dinner."

"You're welcome," my wife said from the kitchen.

Uncle Charley and the Styrofoam Reef

2011-04-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

Uncle Charley handed me a beer as I sat down beside him on the front porch glider. I thanked him and settled down comfortably.

"Charley," I said, "I got a problem with my lawn".

"I don't want to hear yer lawn problem right now. We got a lot worse one I been thinking about. I'm older'n you and prolly gonna die first so I get priority".

"OK, what's your problem?" I asked, possibly a little peevishly.

"I been thinking about packaging. All that stuff we end up with after we're finished with whatever was inside... makes a lot of trash."

"Sure it does," I said. "So what?"

"So what? I'll tell you so what! You know who pays for getting rid of that stuff? We do! You know who ought to pay for getting rid of it? The company that put that stuff on." He paused and took a sip from his beer.

"It's worse than that," he said thoughtfully. "Some of that packaging never really goes away. I'm not talking about paper sacks or carboard boxes. We can burn 'em or we can put 'em in a land fill, and in a few hunderd years they'll just be part of the soil. But that styrofoam, that's a whole different story. That stuff never goes away. In ten thousand years we'll have beaches made of it."

"What do you think we should do?"

"How about this? What if manufacturers had to pay for the cost of making their packaging biodegradable?"

"You mean burn it?"

"Nah, ya poop-fer-brains. That only solves one problem while making a worse one. We got to find a way to make it a bad deal for manufacturers, and one they can't just ignore or take our a stupid ad like usual. I mean hit 'em in the pocket book. Make them pay for what it costs."

"They'll just pass the cost on to us", I said dubiously.

"Sure, Harry. But here's the real kicker. If I got to choose whether to buy a hamburger in a styrofoam box for ten bucks or the same hamburger in a paper box for 5 bucks, what do you think I'll pick?"

"Huh." I said, thinking about it. "You'd force the manufacturers to price their product including the cost of actually getting rid of the packaging. Not just the cost of the packaging, which is pretty cheap, getting rid of it appropriately. That's smart. It just might work".

"Even if it only kinda works, it's better than having the Great North American Reef in the Gulf of Mexico made 2 miles high of styrofoam."

"You got a point," I said.

Chats with Uncle Charley II

2011-04-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Charley came by to see me again the other day. It being a nice day, we set out in back on the porch.

"I been thinking," he began. "You work out there in the mental health, don't you?"

"You know I do", I said.

"Lots of people out there have some kind of mental disability?"

"Yes, some do. Many of them live pretty normal lives."

"But some of 'em feel too bad to work?"

"Yes, I guess you could say that. Medications don't work on everybody."

"Give me an example," he said.

"O.K. People with a bipolar disorder have mood swings that make them unable to function or think clearly some of the time. It's hard to hold a job when for 3 weeks every couple of months you can't be at work."

"I understand that," he said. "So they get some money to help them survive?"

"Yes. Not much money, and just barely enough to survive."

"But part of the time they can function, right? What do they do then?"

"Watch TV, I guess, take care of their kids."

"What do they give back?"

"We have to help those who really can't help themselves."

"Yep, I know. But you guys spend a lot of time helping them get the disability money. Why can't the state come up with jobs, even limited jobs, that they can do during the times they're able? There's a lot of wasted hours out there with people that're really able at times, and they could be doing something."

"I suppose you're right," I answered.

"What's the matter? That too much trouble? You rather just hand them the money? Listen, Harry, you oughta know, there's nothing worse for people than knowing they're useless. And you make that worse when they got a lot of time on their hands to think."

"I suppose you're right."

"Damn right I'm right. That's a work resource out there that needs to be useful and productive, and we don't go to the trouble to find stuff for them to do. Being disabled don't mean dumb. Some a them are real smart They can do editing or research or look things up for people. Even the slower ones can stuff envelopes or be elected to Congress."

"Thanks, Uncle Charley. You always give me something to think about".

"Devil finds work for idle hands, kid. See ya."

Chats with Uncle Charley I

2011-04-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I drop in to talk things over with Uncle Charley. He's pretty opinionated, and his opinions are certainly not in the mainstream of mid-American thought, but on the other hand, the perspective is frequently enlightening. Recently he read my blog article "No Help for Self-Inflicted Wounds", and he dropped by to give me his opinion. (He doesn't like to respond directly on the blog).

"There's nothing the matter with your idea of withholding payments for medical expenses for some half-wit driving his motorcycle into a bridge-abutment without wearing helmets and body armor. You just don't think it through far enough." His smile was a wicked one.

"What do you have in mind?" I asked, girding myself for something outrageous.

"Well, it's clear you think the human race might be better if the arrogant and stupid were allowed to take themselves out. But the number of people driving motorcycles AND who are able to become parents ain't that large. So, I got this thought..."

"And?"

"You probly want to set the bar a little lower. For instance, what if you issued all of the teenagers, and I mean every one of them, issued all of 'em a motorcycle and made it against the law to use a helmet?"

I was a little stunned, so my response was probably not very effective. "Huh?" I said.

"You want to get all them dummards to sort themselves out before they breed, you see. The ones who make it to 21 alive and mobile deserve to stay in the gene pool".

"Charley," I said. "You're not going to keep the smart ones alive, just the physically able and the lucky!"

"Yer stillnot thinking it through. The smart ones and the rebels will see that they need to disobey the law and wear their helmets anyway."

"I have some real doubts as to whether you could get that to pass," I answered.

"Course it wouldn't pass. Everybody thinks their own idiot child deserves to breed. Specially legislators. But it's always been survival of the fittest. We're not looking at fairness or punishment here, just self-weeding. And being lucky is also a good thing to keep in the human race".

"I wouldn't want to be the person who proposes your modest proposal," I said.

"Well, there's plenty of people who are dumb enough to do it, and we probly already elected them to something or other. Anyhow, good luck with your blog thingie".

"Thanks," I said. "Come by again".

"You can count on it".

The People Hive vs. Us Others

2011-04-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Visiting a step-daughter in the hospital with her first baby, I'm watching the relatives and friends come and go in the room. Most of them are using their phones to text and twitter and send photos to each other. And, gradually, I begin to get a sense of a huge web of people connected electronically to each other, not communicating ideas but rather the personal trivia of our lives, back and forth, constantly affirming that they are here connected with us, all the time. All the time.

There is a group awareness developing more and more. It's almost as if the members of this huge web don't really exist as separate, independent people any more. Their very identities are tied up with what other people know about them, what experiences they share, their immediate perceptions of the world. I think of this group awareness as like that of a hive of bees, all independently operating but at the same time linked to one another and part of a group awareness that is not self-conscious. This "hive" awareness has somewhat tenuous boundaries of varying intensity, and is also linked to other hives of interlinked people.

The hives haven't been around long enough for us to know about their life-cycles, beginnings and ends (if they ever end). The hive members can't even consider not being linked up every moment, communicating with one another. Their communications are not really about what they're having for dinner or who is going out with who. They seem for the most part to be really simple affirmations of presence and existence. As such the content of their messages can be almost anything. People tweet to each other while in the bathroom, having sex, walking.. privacy doesn't matter when you are a hive member. Hive members tell each other and show each other EVERYTHING, and this unwillingness to have boundaries and privacy helps create the hive awareness and the blending of selves. I get the impression sometimes that hive members are all simply afraid to be alone and disconnected.

And some of us are individual bees, flying along and minding our own business, increasingly on the outside of the growing hives who know all about each other but who are hardly aware of the presence of us singletons. We don't belong. We don't share. We cherish our privacy and our boundaries, while the hives around us blend more and more with one another. Perhaps the hives will themselves develop an identity and boundaries of sorts, even a sort of limited self awareness. If one thinks of the members of the hive as nerve cells and the cell phones as axons and dendrites, it's clear that right now there is little difference between the structure of a solitary brain and the hive brain. The hive can even look out through the eyes of the cell phone and perceive things as well as hear them.

I hope the hive doesn't decide there is no room in the world for solitaries.

No Help For Self-Inflicted Wounds

2011-03-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

I believe we should take care of our citizens who are unable to take care of themselves, as every civilized country does. In fact, one of the primary marks of civilization (in the highest sense of the word) is that willingness. We don't abandon our sick and helpless to the wolves of this world.
On the other hand, I strongly object to paying for the care of those who choose to shoot themselves in the foot, especially when they do so in the full knowledge of what they are doing.

For instance, I object to paying for medical treatment of people who have knowingly accepted the potential consequences of risky behavior, such as smokers. This category, which I call the Self-Wounded, includes people who ride on motorcycles, especially without helmets. It includes the morbidly obese, alcoholics with liver damage, people who are injured as a result of a wreck resulting from driving at excessive speeds or while impaired, people who poke themselves in the eye with a sharp stick, and probably a host of others with equivalent problems.

The crucial distinction is that the Self-Wounded knowingly chose to engage in risky behavior. I have no objection to this, of course. People should have the right to behave as stupidly and with as much risk as they wish. What I object to is their assumption that if something "goes wrong" and they are injured, the rest of the population should chip in to pay for their treatment. Should we expect the government (i.e. us) or insurance (i.e. us) to pay for medical treatment for conditions known to result from a specific risk?

I propose that Self-Wounded people assume the costs for the specific risks they knowingly take. For instance, I think medical insurance should exclude costs for lung cancer arising from cigarette smoking. For instance, I think medical insurance should not pay for head injuries suffered by motorcyclists riding without a helmet. For instance, I think that medical insurance should not pay for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver for alcoholics. For instance, I think that we should not pay for joint replacement for the morbidly obese or for their heart damage as a result of excessive fats in their diet.

By excluding such conditions from medical insurance or government medical benefits, people engaging in risky behavior would do so knowing that they, and they alone, assume the responsibility for the consequences. Spelling out the exact definitions of "risky behavior" would require some careful thought, time and attention. Clearly there is room for exception, so there would need to be an impartial committee or the equivalent.

I am fed up with paying for the foolishness and irresponsibility of others. It's expensive enough to pay for my own.

The Point System in Love and Marriage

2011-03-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you think that couples rarely keep track of good deeds and jobs well done by either party. Or maybe you believe that couples keep only enough of a rough balance so that chores and tasks don't get too lopsided. Well, in an ideal world that would be the case, But in this world there is a system that women use to track the affectional part of the relationship, which I call the Point System. Points are used to keep track of how loving the male partner is with his woman. If this sounds a little one-sided, that's because it is. Men don't track women's romantic attachment. They simply assume it is there.

Men are aware, however, that they are being tracked. Points are being counted. We have a general sense of how well or how poorly we are doing. Interestingly, relatively soon after the marriage ceremony, we begin to have a vague and uncomfortable feeling that we are not doing something right. This is correct. I will explain how this comes about, from having had years of marriage (to various women) and from years of listening to them as a therapist.

Women keep a mental account of how they are treated by us. When we do something that strikes them as a positive, loving thing, we get a plus point. When we do something that strikes them us uncaring or even unkind, we lose a point. So much is obvious. What is not obvious is that we lose points whenever we merely do the expectedly nice things. To gain a point or even to stay even we have to go beyond the call of duty.

For instance, on Valentine's Day, taking her out to dinner and giving her a nice and loving (not comic) card gets you no negative points. It does NOT give you positive points, because you have not gone above and beyond the expected. You have only done your duty, and that's a zero-point operation. We lose points whenever we might have done something especially nice, without having been hinted at or coaxed, and we didn't. As an example, a female patient told me that her husband had driven the car right past a road-side stand selling her favorite flowers, and he didn't stop. He lost points. Being loving and affectionate while expecting or hoping for sex later is at best a zero point operation, and if egregious enough, is a major point-coster.

It should be clear that we men will spend our lives with points steadily going down. By the time we have been together a while, the points are generally overwhelmingly negative, which results in irritated, caustic and resentful behavior by the women in our lives. This does not cost them points, of course. Responding to their negative behavior in an irritated way costs us points. Treating them nicely when they have said something caustic is just a zero-point option. Just reading this blog to her has undoubtedly cost me a bunch of points.

It's technically possible, I suppose, to have at some time a positive point balance. It is not possible, however, to keep it positive. It's just a matter of time.

The Old versus the Young (and vice-versa)

2011-02-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

We tend to see ourselves as belonging to one of only two groups, the Old and the Young. A philosophjy teacher once told me that the world is divided into two groups: the ones who believe the world can be divided into two groups, and the ones who don't. We do seem to have a tendency to simplify as well as to group together, so perhaps it isn't puzzling that the Old see the Young as all being alike, and the Young do likewise.

Muzafer Sherif, the famous social psychologist, pointed out that when we see any group as outside our "latitude of acceptance", we tend to see its members in a simplified and extreme manner. They are seen as all very different from "us" and all very alike to one another. The actual boundaries, if they exist at all, are vague and arbitrary. When I was 18 I saw anyone older than 30 as Old. At 30 I saw 50 as Old. Somewhere between 40 and 60 I wasn't sure where I belonged personally, but Old was somewhere north of 70. At 77 I see that while I'm... on the Old side, the Young now include anyone under 40.

In our minds we exaggerate the qualities that make the other group "different" from us. The Young see all us Old as pretty much alike, and as very different from themselves. I asked my grandmother, when she was about 80, what it was like for her to be Old, she said "I feel just like I did when I was 18, only I'm stuck in an old body". That was the most frightening thing I had ever heard to that point. Surely being old meant you lived in a different world than us young did. I did not want to think that there might be common experience between us or that, even worse, that being Old wasn't really different from being Young, and that someday I would experience this as well.

I didn't want to belong to a group that would become Old and die. I belonged to the Young! The Young were....different from the Old; the Old were ugly and wrinkled and alone, and were going to die, and I certainly didn't want to be a member of a group that did things like that! Sherif was right (as he was so often) in saying that we dis-identify from groups to which we don't belong. Dis-identifying gives us some protection from the thought that we might share the same basic feelings and fate as members of the "other" group.

Well, I see the Young as pretty much all alike. Their taste in clothes and music..they're all alike. Us Old are like Ents, and we see the Young as "hasty" and impulsive, led by their emotions and impulses, with no more judgment than we had when we belonged to their group. I'm still not going to die, though.

Psychotherapy religion vs. psychotherapy science

2010-11-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

While the conflict between religion and faith is not a new one, in the field of psychotherapy skepticism is as essential as it is in medicine. Theories of psychotherapy in their infancy or even still in gestation can be presented to the public as if they were already proven true. People depend on the "experts" to have the training to know the proven from the experimental and advise them competently. They have to assume that we are giving them the best available help and advice. Yet perhaps their lives and certainly their well-being depend on what we do to help them.

It's good that new theories and practices arise. Even when the new theories have not yet been tested, or are based on the wildest of suppositions, we have to start somewhere. When we try out new ideas that have promise, the explanations for how they work may lag by years. We can see if they appear to have any validity or if they can be modified so that they are more effective. We can test various aspects of them, keep the valid and dump the others. Then the theories can be changed to support the findings and to suggest new approaches to be tested in their turn.

As long as the people on whom we are testing out new ideas are clearly aware that they are taking part in an experimental treatment AND that they have other alternatives that are not experimental, there is nothing wrong with trying the new ideas out. They should have a right to try an untested or experimental treatment if they are fully informed. Out of experiment and exploration come the ideas that develop into superior modes of treatment.

However, many practitioners of experimental and un-evaluated modes of treatment don't tell their patients. They offer the "latest and best" even though there is not yet any experimental validation. Our patients believe, reasonably enough, that we are providing them the best and most effective treatments, treatments they are not themselves competent to evaluate. Providing them with untested modes of treatment without their informed consent is certainly unethical and in my opinion fraudulent.

Recently a friend who is trained and legitimately credentialed as a psychotherapist wanted to convince me that the newest treatment she had encountered was truly wonderful. She could not provide me with any experimental evidence or journaled research publications. However, her "personal experience" convinced her that "it worked". The theory behind this therapy has absolutely no construct validity. It relies on unsupported beliefs in "energy flow" and "visualization of personal space". There's no question in my mind that some (or all) of her patients experienced something positive and in some cases believed they were "cured". In her mind this and her own experience is enough to convince her that she has found something true and useful. She therefore belongs to the huge class of people who develop beliefs without corroborating evidence and is therefore a "true believer". There's nothing wrong with being a true believer as long as the belief is not presented as factual truth. Essentially her new kind of psychotherapy is a religion and is supported by faith and belief and her personal skills in using it. For some people, single events are enough to convince; personal experience trumps the accumulation of evidence tested rigorously.

Since she is practicing a psychotherapeutic "religion", logical argument has no weight with her. She thinks I need to "experience it for myself", and she believes that this should be enough to convince me. I find it impossible to explain to her why personal experience is not and can never be enough for validation of a psychotherapeutic approach. Every religion believes in unsupported techniques; whether they are spinal manipulation or rain dances or prayer. No satisfactory evidence has ever been found to support these religious practices, but they do not require support since they don't depend on evidence, but only belief. My chances of convincing my friend are about the same as for any member of any religion being swayed by logic.

Every religion works miracles. Some of the time. Every psychotherapy has successes. Some of the time. Every belief system, no matter how weird or in direct contradiction to physical fact, has adherents who will die to support it. All we skeptics have to rely on is evidence. Since everything works (some of the time) we account for the successes by citing the "placebo" effect. The placebo effect itself is a complex topic and is itself effected by a number of factors. The more convincing the "salesman" of the effect, the greater the placebo effect. I have watched many sick people being "cured" in my younger days by tent revivalists. There has turned out to be no evidence for the long-range outcomes, but I'm sure some people were cured. The ones who died had no public complaints to make.

There's an old joke whose ending involves a man saying to his wife (who has caught him with another woman) "Are you going to believe me or believe your lying eyes?" My psychotherapist friend is convinced by what she has seen. As an amateur magician, I'm glad to have a credulous audience, but I don't want credulous believers in charge of my treatment. I know better than to believe my eyes and my own experience. While personal experience can be convincing, for the helping professions it certainly should not be enough.

Photography contests

2010-11-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

I just read a book on how to win photography contests. It's well written, with lots of examples, maybe 200. Of all those, only one or two pass the "wall test". This test simply asks "Would I put this picture in a frame over my mantle?"

The criteria for winning a contest have almost nothing to do with the creation of art. While some of the principles are good ones ("Take pictures of what you love to see"), most of them have only to do with how to get a judge to look favorably on your particular photograph.

It has to have immediate appeal. It has to be an unusual point of view. Of course it should be technically perfect, or at the least be interesting in its imperfection. It should have as subject matter something that will appeal to the judges, who have seen every postcard photograph ever sold. It has to be composed well.

The prize-winning pictures certainly met these specifications. But were they art? Absolutely not. They were great postcards or pretty scenery or unfamiliar countries or unusual landscapes. But they were not "wall-hangers". After you look at them for 3 or 4 seconds you've seen everything you need to see. There's nothing more to look at. There's no depth or mystery or deeper meaning implied.

Then I look at some of the art that's in museums and it nearly universally recognized as "beautiful". A lot of it is simply pretty. Some is great, and that's because a deeper and more universal meaning is hinted at or implied. In Michelangelo's "Pieta" the universal sense of sadness and loss by a mother for her son, even the son of God, is poignant and powerful. However, the Rembrandt "Night Watch" is not. It's just a picture of a bunch of men who wanted their membership in a particular group recognized. We treat it as "a masterpiece" because the books all say it is great art. However, when I observed the people who came to look at it, after only a few minutes they lost interest. It was interesting and old, and that was about it. Even if I had a wall big enough to put that picture on, I wouldn't. It simply doesn't hold my interest.

I would have to agree with you if you pointed out that I simply am too obtuse or too tasteless or too uneducated to appreciate the quality of such work. How would I know that I'm simply artistically inadequate? On the other hand, how many of the readers of this blog note have copies of such great works of art on the walls of their dining rooms?

Just catching the attention of the viewer with a pretty piece of eye candy is not enough to treat the eye candy as serious art. Being an interesting photograph is not enough, or photojournalism would hang in people's living rooms. Where I struggle is with the issue of what the standards for genuine art in photography are?

Covert and Slow Suicide

2010-11-05T10:46:00.001-07:00

Suicide may be a long-term option in dealing with life impasses. Suicide doesn't always have to take the form of a sudden, dramatic event, such as shooting or hanging oneself. It can be a slow and deliberate, barely conscious plan carried out over a period of years. In this latter form it's very hard or even impossible to identify.

Here's a sample scenario: A 40-year-old woman in an impossible and abusive marriage has strong religious beliefs that make the deliberate taking of her own life intolerable. The same beliefs absolutely preclude divorce as an option. She believes she cannot bear the thought of living as she has for the rest of her life. So she begins doing things that will clearly shorten her life span, but will not kill her immediately. She smokes more heavily, eats a lot of fast food and gains weight. Her blood pressure gets fairly high. She is advised to exercise and lose weight, but she doesn't do that. Her physical condition continues to slowly deteriorate. She sleeps and naps a lot, complaining of "being tired". She drinks too much and sometimes (not often, perhaps) drives while slightly intoxicated. Her fights with her husband intensify, and she may be assaulted by him, but never follows through with a complaint. She knows he has a gun, but she does nothing to get rid of it.

She's not directly killing herself, but she knows as a fact that her life expectancy is pretty limited. If her husband doesn't kill her, her health will continue to deteriorate fairly rapidly. The stress of her life style increases the likelihood that she may die of a stroke or heart attack, or even in a car wreck. However, such a death doesn't count as a suicide either in her mind or in the collective mind of the family, her religious community and authorities. Nonetheless, her life is deliberately limited, even though she may never put this intention into words. She has found a way of acceptably solving her problem. If you asked her how long she might live, given her current life style, she would laugh and avoid the question, or answer it in a way that makes it a joke not to be taken seriously (gallows humor) or she may become defensively angry.

Another scenario: A middle-aged man hates his job, doesn't get along with his wife and fights with his grown children. He fantasizes about changing his life, moving away, even getting a divorce, but knows he will never do it. The thought of such major changes provokes a lot of anxiety. He begins to drink more, and his smoking becomes heavy, as much as 2 packs a day. He talks about trying to stop smoking, but nothing seems to work. He spends more and more hours per week at work in a fairly demanding and high-stress job. He gains a lot of weight and signs up for a gym, but never seems to have time to go there. He gets anti-depressant medication from his family doctor but seems to get little benefit from it.

We are all making choices regularly that will impact on our life span. Some choices are simply short-sighted; some choices make our lives better and others may shorten our lives. People carrying out a covert suicide, however, consistently make choices that are known to lead to an early death. They get angry or laugh it off when asked or confronted, because the whole intent is to get away with suicide without being forced to recognize the truth of what they are doing. Much of the time the decision to slowly shorten one's life is not verbalized or even a consciously thought. It's a passive way of dealing with difficult problems and is congruent with people who use passive-aggressive defenses.

While people in the covert suicide category can be treated successfully in therapy, they are not likely to be willing to deal directly with this issue, since a key part of its usefulness lies in its easy concealment/denial. They may ask for help in "getting over being depressed" and will be readily compliant with anti-depressant medication. However, they invariably misidentify their unhappiness as depression, and so anti-depressants don't work very well. What they don't want to do is to be faced with the underlying issue of a miserably unhappy and "trapped" life. The anger and denial they express when confronted is a give-away. They have found a solution for an impossible situation (as they see it) for which they cannot be blamed and which cannot be prevented.

Teasing and "Kidding"

2010-10-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

We all know teasing and kidding when we see it. Teasing and kidding in textual form are not so easy to recognize, since they depend for their interpretation on body language, facial expression and voice tone. In writing we might have to append "just kidding"in order to keep from being misunderstood.

Some forms of teasing are really forms of verbal abuse and bullying. I'm not talking about that kind of teasing now. For the purposes of this article, I'm referring to the kinds of things we say and do to people with whom we are friendly.

We want the teasing of friends not to be taken seriously. Frequently the content of a tease is on the edge of meanness or hurtfulness. In fact, it has to have the potential of being hurtful to meet the requirements for a tease. If a tease were totally irrelevant to the person being teased, there would be no point in it. In fact, the person being teased would be perplexed by it. A tease is an apparently hostile statement intended not to be taken seriously.

What are the rules and requirements for teasing, and what purpose does it serve in relationships? I'll start with the last question first. When we tease someone, we expect them to know us well enough to know we mean no harm. We rarely tease strangers.
Generally, the tease could literally be taken to be hurtful; it is the fact that hurtful intent is contradicted by the solidity of our relationship that makes it "funny". It is as if we were saying when we tease "You know I don't mean this because we like each other". In a way, the fact that one of us can tease the other reaffirms that our relationship is a positive one. Teasing is a way of increasing the trust in a relationship by reaffirming that we do not mean to hurt or cause harm. Sometimes teasing is a way of testing a new relationship in order to build it.

When we tease we have to send a duplex message (in the language of Transactional Analysis). The literal content of the tease is a critical statement. The covert content, carried by body language and tone or exaggerated content, is that we do not mean the message to be taken as true. The response, to be appropriate, must acknowledge that the recipient does not take the message to be true and is therefore not offended. The relationship has then survived a minor "test" and is shown to be a positive one.

The content must be relevant to the person teased, in the sense that it has to be a critical statement that could possibly be true. It has to have the potential to be harmful; the teasee affirms his trust in the teaser by not taking it seriously when he easily could do so. The relationship is therefore strengthened to a small degree. A tease that is totally irrelevant to the person being teased is simply meaningless.

Teasing may also be a form of flirtation. Sexual teasing is a way of indicating sexual interest in the other person which is at the same time plausibly deniable. If the person being teased isn't interested in a sexual relationship with the teaser, the teaser can easily retreat into the classic teaser position of "just kidding", or "I didn't really mean it that way". While it shares the overt intention of "strengthening the relationship" with regular teasing, the sexual tease is only aimed at strengthening the sexual aspect of the relationship, and if that is rejected by the person being teased, the relationship may well be weakened.

Some Thoughts About PTSD

2010-10-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an unique disorder in several ways. It can occur in people who are exposed to a highly stressful event, but may not in all those exposed. It takes two forms: the acute form, which develops quickly after the stressful event, and the chronic form, which develops months or years after the event. In my opinion, acute PTSD is a normal reaction to an extreme event. Chronic PTSD, I believe, is the response of a more "neurotic" character structure to an extreme event, and is not a "normal" reaction.

In some ways PTSD can be seen as a response to a sudden exposure to unpleasant reality. The reality is that we live in a very dangerous world, and we manage our appropriate anxiety through the rather primitive defense of denial. We drive on the highway at 70 mph, with cars going the opposite direction at 70 mph only feet or inches away. We have the illusion of safety, even invulnerability, in our air-conditioned and quiet automobiles. We also know, though we avoid thinking about it, that we are a fraction of a second away from a terrible death. We don't want to know how vulnerable we are; in some ways we really can't afford to know how close we are to disaster.

When something happens to shatter our sense of invulnerability, it may shake us deeply. It breaks the wall of denial and suddenly we are forced to be aware of just how near we are to death at almost every second. We lose our illusions of safety. In a sense, acute PTSD is a mental state closer to reality than our "normal" state of comfortable illusion. We want to retreat to our previous state of blissful ignorance, but find that impossible to do easily. We become angry that we have lost our sense of safety. How we adjust to this sudden onslaught of reality determines whether we come to terms with what has happened and the precarious nature of our lives or whether we become chronically terrified. The more protected our lives have been, the more disturbed we are when we suddenly are exposed to the often terrible reality. The story of how Siddhartha Gautama was suddenly exposed to death and illness (which started him on his search for the philosophy that became Buddhism) is especially enlightening.

The events that result in PTSD are life-changing events. However, instead of seeing our reactions to trauma as necessarily pathological, we should consider that our mental state prior to the incident was one of ignorance or deliberate denial, and that our recognition of the potential awfulness of life, as unpleasant as the experience is, is more healthy and realistic. Our reaction to the necessity of changing our belief about reality may be pathological, but react and change we must. Some people bitterly resent the imposition of change and/or the recognition that they are not as safe as they believe they should be. Some become self-pitying or resentful or victimized or helpless. None of those reactions are healthy, but the reactions are not caused by the traumatic event itself. They are the result of the impact of the traumatic event on the dysfunctional attitude and belief system of the individual to whom they belong.

A Critique of Modern Poetry

2010-10-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Poetry has been an interest of mine since high school, and while I have never lost interest, in recent years I have been occupied with other things. Lately, however, I found myself going back and re-reading poets who have kept my interest over the years. In the process, I have been reading some critical books in an attempt to increase my understanding of the poet and the poem.

I am beginning to look at poems in what is for me a new way. The most important thing is that I see that I have only understood poetry in the most superficial way. I have read poems for the beauty of the line, the vividness and economy of its images and its sound. Unless the meaning was obvious, I paid little attention to what the poem was "about". Archibald MacLeish once said "A poem should not mean but be", a thought which was not too far from my somewhat naive initial understanding. I now think that this approach is itself naive, in that it makes the assumption that a writer must make a choice between the "being" of a poem (its sound and images) and the "meaning" of a poem. Clearly a poem can and should have both elements.

However, this debate/argument has been going on for many years. In the early 20th century, the "Imagiste" movement focused only on the image in the poem. Poems in this category have their beauty but have not really achieved the first rank. Pound, for instance, wrote the following poem, tiled "In a Station of the Metro":

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Why this poem has not been "successful" is probably obvious. It's a simple image, clear and precise, with no meaning other than itself as an image. But there is no depth of meaning, no content to help us relate to it in a personal way, no poignancy. It fails (for me) to stir some more intense experience or emotion. Reading it is like looking at a photograph taken by someone else of a street scene on a rainy day. It might be mildly melancholy, but nothing more than that. It fails some quality of universality and communication beyond the image which should stir an idea or an emotion in me. (The article in Wikipedia on Imagism is excellent and need not be repeated here.)

Some poetry by T. S. Eliot fails me for the opposite reason. He has complex and multi-layered ideas which he attempts to express through his poetry. Some seems successful; some does not. He is also at times a master of the melodic and sonorous line. When the two come together, the poem is marvelous. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is an example of the good. "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" is an example of the failure of the union of meaning and image. The "meaning" of a poem should not be a puzzle to solve, nor should it depend on complex intellectual associations that are so unique to the author that no-one outside his head can connect the dots. Poems are not essays on religion or philosophy.

Pound's Cantos are another example of the latter failure. In spite of that failure, however, there are lines and images that are beautiful and powerful. In his earlier Translations Pound was able to translate meaning AND image from another culture and language into English. Perhaps because he could not depend on intensely and uniquely personal associations and recollections, he was forced to make the language simpler, and ultimately incredibly successful.

What are we trying to do when we write poetry? Recently I briefly took part in an on-line web site devoted to unpublished poets showing their work. Most amateur and unskilled poetry is written in the form of blank or free verse. One may presume that this is so that nothing can get in the way of the expression of feeling. But that's mostly what the poems were. They were adolescent outbursts of emotion with no discipline and little skill, though no one could doubt the intensity of the emotion. Each poem was written as if the author had never seen another poem and did not understand that their feelings were non-unique to the point of being trite. The occasional image or beautiful phrase might make itself noticed, but the meaning of all the poems I read was the same: "I and I alone have this FEELING! And it's important because I am the one who has it!" There is no suggestion among them that it is the universality of their feelings that can make it resonate with the reader. They did not want critical comment; they wanted praise and approval for their hothouse plant. They do not understand that the writing of poetry is a highly skilled task, demanding the utmost mastery of the language.

I too still find myself reading poetry in a simple and naive way, for the beautiful phrase and memorable image. The emotions being expressed are merely the context in which the language is placed. However, such a style of reading misses much of the content and simplifies or ignores the meaning. Still, I would rather read in that manner than read a scientific text or a sermon. So while image and sound are necessary for poetry, they are not sufficient for a poem to rise to the highest level.

What kind of “meaning” is appropriate for poetry? Considering that poems are not aimed primarily at the intellect, can we say they are aimed at eliciting emotions only? When Eliot describes the “objective correlative”, he refers to the attempt to elicit in the reader’s mind the same thoughts and emotions that were present in the mind of the author. But which is more important, thought or emotion? While there seems to be no limit as to the kinds of emotions expressed, some kinds of thoughts are clearly inappropriate, in the sense they can’t be easily expressed in such a format because they are non-verbal or abstract or even mathematical. Eliot attempts to express religious concerns and conflicts, and in that he owes much to the metaphysical poets of the 17th and 18th century. Pound tries to focus our thoughts on economics and politics throughout the centuries. In my mind, neither are successful attempts. I would rather find other ways to learn ideas.

Reading such attempts as the amateur in the local Poetry Society as well as the unsuccessful attempts by the famous helps clarify for me what it is that poems should do. An example of a successful attempt to universalize a loss and make it poignant and beautiful at the same time is found in the "Lucy" poems by Wordsworth. It can be done. We should know it when we see it. Wordsworth is not howling at the moon like a love-lorn teen. He is attempting (successfully, in my opinion) to speak to all who have lost someone of the universality of that loss and what it means to us. "A slumber did my spirit seal" is a successful blend of the emotion of loss with economy of line and with images that speak to us as well. I can find many poems who meet this criterion and am interested in those the reader of this essay can bring to my attention.

Why I Think Inheritance Taxes Are Good

2010-10-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

The only way to prevent money (=power) from accumulating in the hands of a family, especially a family member who has neither motivation or brains to earn it him/herself, is to impose a confiscatory inheritance tax. The children of a brilliant entrepreneur should have no right to money they have not earned. Do we need more Paris Hiltons?

There are huge problems with doing so, of course. What to do with the money collected is important. It is also important to prevent a profitable company from being forced out of business. People think it is important to be able to provide for their offspring, though this issue is a cultural one rather than a real issue. There is no real reason why adult, competent and educated adults should be "provided for" by wealthy parents. Nonetheless, many parents are strongly (and wrongly) motivated to dd this and will undoubtedly attempt to find clever ways to circumvent any attempt to bring their children "down" to the normal level.

In an egalitarian society, every child shoud have the same opportunities. No society in which parents raise their own children can be truly egalitarian. Wealthy families have richer cultural opportunities. So, while it isn't really possible to start all children off with the same advantages, they can certainly be "evened out" to a great degree. For instance, money collected from taxing inheritances can be earmarked to provide nearly equal educational rights to all. Scholarships can be awarded to children who show intellectual promise and who are economically disadvantaged. Money can be spent to raise the standards of "ghetto" schools. Just because such a system can't be made trick-proof doesn't mean it can't be made to improve the educational system.

The intent is obviously two-fold. It is desirable to prevent families from accuring such wealth that they become oligarchs, potentates of small or large empires. It is desirable to assure that children have a more equal chance at higher levels of education. Such a system may not be perfect, but it can be "good enough" to be a benefit.

A life-and-death problem in statistics

2010-08-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

Drugs are accepted or denied by the FDA on the basis of their efficacy. Efficacy is defined as the excess of "success" over what might occur by chance. A drug which, for instance, resulted in no change in the average outcome for the disorder at which it was aimed could never be passed because it appears to be no better than a placebo.

However, basing success or failure on averages is a flawed procedure, as it assumes that the results lie on the normal, "bell-shaped" curve. Sometimes, however, they don't. Here's an example: Bill is dying of cancer, with a relatively short and painful time-span ahead of him. But suppose there is a drug which, in X percent of the cases, results in death immediately, but in the remaining percentage the patient is cured. Let us suppose that the drug, on average, does not change the average outcome, so it is not and will not be approved.

But for Bill, if he takes the drug, he will either die immediately or be greatly improved or cured. For Bill, taking the drug is a no-brainer. Of course he will chance dying, since he's dying painfully anyway and there is no escape. But if he takes the drug, he may be improved or cured. The flaw in FDA thinking is that there may be bi-modal or even trimodal results, and "averages" do not reflect the importance of this distribution of data.

I would appreciate any comments by someone knowledgeable about statistical analysis.

War Economics

2010-08-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm puzzled about comments I've read from discussions on the topic of the costs of war. The implication is usually that war is expensive, that the money is "thrown away" in bullets and planes and materiel in general.

What puzzles me is this question: Where is the money spent? Is it not spent mostly in the US in factories that make the equipment soldiers use? The money doesn't leave the country. The products do, but they're paid for in the US, paid to workers and companies that produce things. When a bomb drops on Afghanistan, it doesn't cost us anything. It's already cost us the price of production, but that money went to US citizens for the most part.

So is it possible that one of the things that keeps our economy going at all is the artificial market caused by warfare? If we stopped buying munitions from our factories and planes and tanks and .. our economy would probably slump much further. A lot of people would be out of work. When we don't have a war to consume goods we can produce, the economy does poorly. I'm wondering if it's possible that wars are at times manufactured by our government to keep our economy going.

I recall reading, for instance, that the war with Japan in 1941 was deliberately provoked by our cutting their ocean supply lines for oil and gasoline. It appears we put them in an unsurvivable position and waited for them to take action against us, so that they were identified as the aggressors, even though we gave them no choices. Our economy at the time was terrible; we had just recovered from a depression caused by stock market gambling. WW II ramped us up big time, severely damaged our asian competition, and gave us control of the Pacific as well as a huge demand for military products, built in the US, of course.

I would appreciate comments or arguments. I wonder if my view is too simplistic or even naive.

Photographs as art

2010-08-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a book about entering photos in contests. While it is useful for that topic, it has increased my awareness of the difference between pictures that can win contests and those that are "wall-hangers", genuinely artistically interesting. (For the moment I'm setting entirely aside the category of photos that are "newsworthy".)

Some years ago I was browsing through a very large rental/sale art gallery, considering art I might want to own. The manager of the gallery gave me a piece of advice that was excellent at the time, but over the years has come to carry a deeper meaning. He said that I should not buy a picture that I found immediately attractive or interesting; those pictures, he said, don't always "wear well". He strongly suggested that I rent a picture I was considering purchasing, hang it in a prominent place in my house, and keep it for one or more months. His final comment was that the most satisfactory pictures were not necessarily those that grabbed you, but those that somehow got your interest and increased it over time.

It has been said that an "art" photograph takes an everyday object or view and makes us see, as if for the first time, how interesting/beautiful it is. Changing the scale to a larger size, as in Georgia O'Keefe's paintings, is an effective way to accomplish this. Or a dozen other "darkroom tricks" such as changing the color, can have the same effect. I recently saw a painting of a pear, easily 4 feet tall, which was quite good. Every subtle gradation of color and shape were brought out. I stayed interested in that painting for several days, but it falls short of the ideal in that it failed to draw me into it more deeply over time.

That really sums up my thoughts about photos as genuine art. They have to be more than pretty, more than interest grabbers. Somehow they must pull you deeper into the image and sustain your interest. Now, however, we get into the question of what it is that constitutes real art. Of course, there's no answer to that other than the cliche about knowing what we like. We want to make people like our photos, but more than that, we want their interest to continue and deepen. Just being able to win a contest isn't even in the ball park.

I would welcome any comments on this topic.

Discipline in schools

2010-08-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

We all know that disciplining children in schools largely stopped with the start of integration. As schools began mixing children from more economically different groups, the children themselves had come from more disparate backgrounds. Some came from homes with rules and discipline; others did not. At that time many of the non-white children admitted to middle-class public schools were from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and families. A higher percentage of these children were from single-parent families and had been "on their own" to a much greater extent than the average middle-class child of that time. These students, the majority of whom were non-white, presented a higher degree of disciplinary problems. School administrators did not want to be accused of being racially biased. They bent over backwards to avoid this eventuality; as a result, the standards of behavior were lowered for all students.

Teachers facing serious disciplinary problems were given less and less support in their attempts to impose behavioral limits, especially when the trouble-makers were non-white. School administrators feared the legion of lawyers eager to make bucks on racial conflicts, so they effectively disappeared. The teachers, left without adminstrative backup and fearing lawsuits or disciplinary actions themselves, adopted a "hands-off" policy toward all the students, irrespective of racial background.

Walk through any school hallway filled with 7th grade or higher grade students. The level of verbal and physical assault and sexual harassment is astonishing. If adults were to behave in this manner, criminal charges would be filed. But the young people in the hallways of these schools get no protection from frightened "authorities". There are few or no guardians to limit antisocial behavior. As a result, the kids live in a largely unpoliced jungle, where the bigger animals make their own rules. They turn to each other and form gangs. They lose any faith in the legal system or in the police. They are alienated from the system which does not, will not support and protect them. As adults they have learned that the only person who will look after them is themselves, and so they have no loyalty to the legal and political system.

Why should they? They depended on the adults to protect them, and we abandoned them to the lawyers and the gangs. We would never allow others to treat us in this fashion, but we do absolutely nothing to protect the children from their peers.

I want to be clear about this so that any argument is not based on irrelevant considerations: I favor school integration. I favored it when it happened and still do. This is not about race. I want all students of any color or background to be treated equally and equally required to obey the school regulations and society's laws. The disciplinary problem results from the sudden mixing of children from very different socio-economic backgrounds and not providing them with the protection from each other to which they were entitled. We have sowed the wind and we are reaping the whirlwind.

Mental Health and Public Relations

2010-05-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

One of the primary problems in presenting mental health issues to the public is that there are two very different problems combined under the same heading. On the one hand, "mental health" is about the seriously impaired people with various forms of schizophrenia who need support and medication simply to survive. On the other hand are the people with depressions and anxiety disorders; as many as 35% of the population (or more) will experience one or more episodes of these disorders. Lumping them together in the same category is like treating cancer and pneumonia as equivalent.

People with depression and anxiety don't want to be lumped into the same category as the people they read about in the paper who have hallucinations and delusions or who are so impaired they can't survive without help. The more dramatic images and news stories are about such people. Movies about mental health, no matter how well intentioned, focus on the dramatic and the disturbed: "The Snake Pit", "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", "Fatal Attraction" and the like come to mind.

People with depression and anxiety are just us; our disorders are not generally permanent nor disabling and we don't want to be thought of as "nut cases". We look and (for the most part) function just like everyone else. There are a lot of us. We all know people who have depressions and anxiety disorders, and they look like us because they are us. We/They don't want to be thought about as "insane" or "mentally ill". And that makes it hard for them to decide to get treatment. Many people with depression or anxiety never get the treatment they need because of the stigma. They may spend years enduring their discomfort simply hoping to "get better" by themselves, and many of them eventually do, but at the cost of greatly extended discomfort and limited function.

While we say we don't want to stigmatize the "mentally ill", nobody thinking about getting treatment for depression wants their employer to find out they have a "mental health history". Depressions and anxiety disorders, no matter how common, are not considered as simply illnesses; no matter what we say, we don't treat people with a history of mental illness like others. If people find out that you were treated for depression or anxiety, you may be refused a job. You lose any chance at political office. In the military you are eventually dumped, especially if you are an officer. Insurance companies in the past have refused to insure you or provide funds for your treatment.

My point here is that we treat these two very different classes of mental illness as if they were the same. Treatment for each group is very different. Schizophrenias and bipolar disorders are chronic illnesses which cannot, at the present, be cured. At best they can be ameliorated. Anxiety and depression are curable, for the most part, and have no long-term consequences. It seems to me that we need to see these groups of disorders as very different and separate.

Perhaps it would be best to separate these categories into "Mental Illness" and "Emotional Difficulty". They really are quite different.

Film color casts

2010-05-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Many of the reviews of the several available films make reference to "color cast" of the film. Ektar, for instance, is said to emphasize warm colors more than Velvia. This has always been true of films, and back in the days when we had to have them printed by professionals it mattered more than it does now. We were pretty much stuck with how the print came out, although when I printed my own color prints I was accustomed to changing the filtration to adjust color. Of course that is time consuming in the extreme; you can't know how a change in filtration has affected a print until after it was developed.

With computers we can see on the screen how the picture will look when printed, and we can instantly make changes to suit our own tastes. So it no longer matters what colors are "favored" by a particular film. I have Photoshop. I can adjust it any way I like. What matters most now are the sharpness of the film and its range of shading (or shadow/bright detail). I don't care how contrasty or not the film is, if the detail is present I can adjust the contrast just as I can the color. But I can't easily fix poor detail, especially in the shadows.

When I finish running my tests I will probably post results and samples of enlarged detail to this blog. Gotta say, though, dragging three heavy cameras (or 2 heavy and one light), the tripod, a spot-meter and minor odds and ends is kinda heavy going. So far I've really enjoyed returning to film shooting. I'd forgotten the pleasures of taking pictures thoughtfully and carefully, rather than just shooting a bunch and throwing away the obvious losers. It's a little harder to grab a shot with my Rollei, because I have to use the spotmeter to calculate the f/stops and shutter speed separately, then dial them in. However, different cameras for different uses; I wouldn't use the Rollei for action photos anyway. The Pentax 645 is plenty quick and fairly simple to operate (compared to the Canon 5D). I'd use the Canon for people shooting, lower natural light, indoor work, and save the Rollei for landscapes and other scenics.

Anybody else out there testing this idea out?

Film versus digital

2010-04-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

My friend George and I have been carrying on a running debate for the last six months on the virtues of film photography and digital photography. We've been taking pictures for a very long time with a wide variety of cameras. For film he has Hasselblads and Leicas; I have a Linhof view camera, a Rollei twin-lens and a Pentax 645 and 67. For digital we both have Canon 5D Mk2 cameras.

There is no question that the Canon 5D Mk2 takes superb pictures. It has a full-size 35mm sensor and an excellent lens. The pix are 23 megapixel pictures, which blow up directly into 16x20 and larger, and with Creative Fractals to almost any imaginable size, without any loss of sharpness or detail. What more could we want (besides talent), you may ask? Well, the Canon is large, heavy, and very complex. There are more menus than you can shake a stick at, more options than you can keep in your head, and all of them take a lot of time to change or shift modes.

George's Leica (from the late 50s) has an attached light meter, weighs next to nothing, feels wonderful in the hand, and there ARE NO MENUS! He can put it in his pocket and take pictures he can hang on a wall at almost any size. My Pentax 645 is similar, though bulkier and more heavy; nevertheless, taking a picture with it is quick and easy. The meter is built-in and there are a couple of adjustments on the top that are quick and easy AND optional.

We can send our exposed films to a lab on the West coast and get the films developed and scanned with a very high quality scanner and then sent back to us as developed film and a DVD with the large scans on it. We still do our own printing, but that's a pleasure and gives us considerable control over the outcome; even the professional labs do ink-jet printing because there is almost no-one out there doing prints and chemical development. So there's a delay in getting results back of maybe a couple of weeks. Not the instant gratification of dropping a memory chip into a slot and looking at the pix immediately.

I'm planning to make a set of identical photos, matching digital camera with film. I should be able to see if there is a quality difference fairly easily. But beyond that the issue of ease of on-the-spot use comes up. When you don't take the camera with you because it's too much trouble, you don't take any pictures. There's some kind of balance with quality and ease of use that has to be considered. George actually loves the process of using his Leica. He says he has begun to think of the 5d as more of a "chore" than a pleasure.

Well, we're not professional photographers, far from it. The digital camera has made life hugely better for wedding photographers and many professionals. No delays, no developing expense, and you can put the pix on a web site immediately. But we don't have the pressure of quantity production. What we're doing is something we do for the love of it, and for the occasional picture of which we are truly proud. So we have the leisure/privilege of just seeing which we like better.

I would certainly value comments or experiences in this area.

Why not decrease salaries instead of firing people?

2010-04-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

That really says it all. I think it's amazingly idiotic and short-sighted to favor firing X% of employees in an organization rather than to decrease salaries by a small and necessary percent.

This is clearly more appropriate when the organization sells services more than products. A declining market may mean less demand for the product, and as a result fewer employees are needed to run the company. However, when services are the primary product, cutting employees also means cutting services. It does not save money. It only reduces the services, and if the need for those services remains constant, everybody suffers.

For instance, in the field of state-supported mental health, the need for professional services continues to rise as the population increases and as the economy heads south. A "RIF" or reduction in force means that the population served will receive fewer and lower-quality services. Since at least some income is realized by providing these services, there is also a decrease in income.

Alternatively, expecting all employees of the Department of Mental Health to take a small percentage cut would accomplish the necessary reduction in expense, without reducing the quantity and quality of mental health services. We are quick enough, it seems, to demand increases in salary when the economy is booming. When the economy tanks, why not take a decrease rather than firing some percentage of the employees? I suspect the answer has to do with an individual's belief that the firings will be of "other people", so that's the gamble: a small chance (?) of being fired versus the certainty of a 10% decrease in salary.

Mental Health and the Legislature

2010-03-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

State mental health functions get as little money as the legislature can give them. Some state legislator will get stock ponds in his attic before any money will trickle down to the mental health workers. Oklahoma is the worst in the United States in providing care for the mentally ill. We send people out to die in the underpasses and beneath bridges in cardboard boxes rather than provide minimal care for them.

We have just closed down the only inpatient treatment unit for drug abusers, so they are no longer admitted into the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Something seem wrong with that sentence to you? Since we have not had any increase in personnel or hirings in ten years, while the number of people with mental health issues or substance abuse issues continue to increase, the number of staff decreases. That doesn't show much on the surface; we absorb the new patients somehow, but the quality of the services we provide decreases because there just isn't much to go around. The Center in which I work started with about 700 patients; now there are 2200, and there are NO additional staff.

It's not that the legislators don't recognize the problem. They probably do; it's that they don't care. The mentally ill are not frequent voters. They are more comfortably out of mind and sight and thought. They don't make a big noise. They don't have rallies of the mentally ill. I have this image of a lot of us showing up at the State Legislature with signs reading "Give the Mentally Ill some money or we'll come to your house to live!". How about "The Voices Said Give Us Money!" or "I vote for Mental Health ... and so do I!"

Better to joke than to cry.

Churches and Taxes

2010-03-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

One of our founding fathers said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. While this is true, we all submit to taxing ourselves. Clearly it is not in the government's interest to destroy us, because we are the only source of revenue. In order to accomplish this, a large number of rules and regulations have been established, in a language only known to CPAs, which limit how taxes are applied. The same argument can be applied to churches.

Because churches are not taxed, many of them get bigger. A lot bigger. In my home town (or "here", as I like to refer to it) one or two churches are larger than the library or the public schools. Granted, more people go to church than to libraries, more's the pity. However, the rooms in the larger churches are mostly empty during the week, used for receptions or small group meetings, or mostly not at all.

I'm moving on toward a point. It was never contemplated that churches would become huge and profit-making enterprises. The intent of excluding them from taxes was so that local communities could have a place to worship indoors and be able to collect enough from weekly gifts to keep it open and functioning. There is nothing the matter with this idea, per se. On the other hand, as citizens, we don't owe churches the opportunity to make a profit, to pay pastors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to buy and sell real estate, to compete in the marketplace with those of us who do have to pay taxes.

Why could we not require churches to divest themselves of all properties not having an immediate religious function? Why could we not tax them on ANY income not used in the payment of reasonable salaries and reasonable maintenance? We could exclude taxing excess moneys (what a concept!) that might be given to the poor, sick and needy, and just tax the churches for moneys not used for religious purposes? The Catholic Church is the single richest organization in the world. Isn't that amazing? In Oklahoma the protestant churches are rich and everywhere, with buildings bigger than college campuses.

I'm not interested in being punitive for their greed and anti-religious behaviors. I am interested in their excess profits being taxed like the rest of us.

Why God?

2010-03-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

I may or may not publish this comment. I know there are people who will regard any negative comments about religion as a personal assault. I know that there is no arguing with religious convictions since they are not rational thoughts but rather irrational beliefs. Clearly you can't dispute a belief with a rational position. They occupy non-interacting worlds.

Religious believers tend to want to equalize the playing field by treating genuine rational theories by simply asserting their beliefs, as if it should be self-evident that their position has logical merit. In fact, there is simply no logical merit to any religious belief system, and there cannot be, since belief systems are not based on rational assumptions in the first place.

Secondly, theories, such as evolution or quantum theory, are not belief systems. We should not "believe" in a theory. By definition, a theory is a working set of logical hypotheses that can be tested in the real world, at least in principle. I was asked recently if I "believed in evolution", as if I were a member of an antagonistic religion. The question itself is a contradiction in terms and can't be answered as asked. That fact alone should tell you something about the nature of the thinking process that gave rise to it. When a religious person wants to debate "theories", they do not have a right to assert their religious belief as a theory.

Nothing about any religion allows it to be considered as if it were a theory. I can and will change my theories about anything when contradictory facts of sufficient validity appear. But what religious person changes their belief system when such facts occur? A theory is not a tentative belief. It is an ongoing testable set of hypotheses. What religion has such things?

Besides the absurdity of attempting to place religion on the same level as science, I find myself wondering, as I get older and less afraid, why people need religion at all? And here I am speaking of the mythos of religion, not the ethos. Many religions have very good prescriptions for behavior; some of them work better than others, of course, but as guidelines they are certainly useful to society and help hold it together. But the mythos of any religion is basically absurd. Do we need to posit the creation of the earth via supernatural means when we can readily account for it by natural ones? Do we have to believe in the supernatural before we can adhere to a moral/ethical position? Do we have to posit an afterlife that makes up for the manifold injustices in this world, or should we better try to improve the world we live in?

It seems to me that when people talk about or debate religion, they focus on the supernatural aspects of it, and ignore the only part of religion that has any possible utility: the prescriptions for behavior. Perhaps some people are comforted by their belief in the "afterlife", but not all of us need to believe in fantasies and supernatural events, and perhaps their irrational beliefs in magic interfere with their apprehension of the real world. Why should we need irrational comfort to deal with the world as it is? It is difficult for all of us. We all have pain and loss of all kinds to deal with; believing in a fantasy afterlife doesn't return the dead to us, and funerals, even with all the trappings of religion, are not happy places with smiling people.

I certainly don't believe that we are rewarded or punished for our behavior in this world. We have only to read the daily paper to be disillusioned about the fairness of the universe. So what do I need a Big Daddy In The Sky for? Even for the believers, it must be horribly obvious that he or she isn't doing much of anything.

Christmas Unhappiness

2009-12-20T09:52:00.000-08:00

It's an "urban legend" that we have a nation-wide post-holiday depression. Whether it is true or not, in mental health centers all over the US there is a huge influx of new patients starting in December and continuing through February. Perhaps it's due to the winter season and spending more time indoors, but perhaps it's at least partially due to the Christmas gift-giving. We have a lot of pressure probably prompted by mercantile interests to buy "something nice" (i.e.expensive) to demonstrate to family members and friends that we love them. This is clearly not a function of the religion that gave birth to the custom.

It's also true that we are taught from childhood to expect happiness to come with the gifts. The build-up on tv and in legend is tremendous. Christmas morining is the most exciting morning of the year for most children. What presents could possibly match up with their expectations?

What we observe within a few hours is the inevitable let-down. Gifts may give us something to look at or to do, but they don't have the power to make us happy. Quite the contrary, in fact; the more things we own, the more the things own us, our time, our energy, our space. We have to take care of them, find a place for them, do something with them. After the first couple of ecstatic hours, we are already running down, losing our interest and beginning to wonder what to do next.

We expect too much. We are taught to expect too much, and the flood of advertising is designed to charge us up to the bursting point with lust for things. In the back of our minds we even equate getting gifts with being loved, and that there is a relationship between the cost of the gift and the amount of love.

In my opinion, Christmas is ultimately the unhappiest time of the year. But who wants to "spoil it" for others? Discouraging people in the traditional "bah, humbug" sort of way takes what pleasure they can find in it away from them. Christmas gift-giving and getting may be bad for them, but like chocolate pie, who wants to take their pie away, bad for them or not?

The Puritans Have Resurfaced

2009-12-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

"My right to swing my fist ends at your nose", said, I think, by Mark Twain, is a good statement of the rights and responsibilies in a maximally free society. I should be able to do what I want, but with due regard to the rights of others. The First Amendment expresses the same idea in relationship to verbal utterances. I have the absolute right to say whatever I want to say, short of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. These laws express the obvious truth that my rights are limited by my responsibility to others.

Two days ago the owners and employees of a locally owned heat-and-air business were arrested for selling oxycodone, an addictive and popular substance. In fact, 44 people were arrested, and presumably many of them will go to jail. They are accused of providing substances that the law prohibits. It's unlikely that anybody was forced to take the drugs. In fact, it seems pretty likely that the people who did the buying did so voluntarily.

So whose nose is hit? Who is harmed? At least, harmed to any degree at all greater than those who provide alcohol to voluntary buyers? Clearly we don't want people who are stoned on oxycodone driving our streets, but neither do we want drunks doing the same. Where did we get the idea that it was in our interest to prohibit voluntary actions that do not threaten us? Where did we get the idea that we even have a right to make such laws?

I don't take drugs, because I personally don't like them. I add this disclaimer to avoid sounding like an apologist for drug use. I do, however, feel strongly about the issues of governmental restrictions based primarily on a puritanical fear that somewhere, somehow, somebody is voluntarily impaired. We gave in to this idea during the era of Prohibition (of alcohol). This was an equally puritanical and stupid law that served only to fund criminal organizations and was ultimately abandoned because it was impractical. It was also out of place in a society that originally aimed at providing maximal individual freedom.

I would like to hear from anyone how I am being harmed by someone else's use of drugs in any way that does not apply to alcohol use. Clearly there are issues of lost work or harm to families, but these issues apply equally to alcohol. I would prefer that people don't use drugs or excessive alcohol, but that's a purely personal preference. I do NOT believe that there should be laws against it; I strongly favor the rights of individuals to go to hell in any way they choose that does not harm me. I think that the limiting of individual freedoms ought to have a consistent and compelling rationale.

An Inspector General

2009-12-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

The problem with any government is that eventually it becomes more corrupt. There's too much money just lying around, too much power, too many debts and too many friendships, for supposedly impartial legislators to resist. And of course we have to consider why anyone would want to become a politician. You have to have enough money to pay for a campaign, and the amounts are such that for any national office the costs are impossible for all those not already rich. So you either have to buy the office yourself, in which case you are remarkably unselfish, or you have to buy it having the prospect in mind of return on investment. The other prospect is that of being "given" money by foundations and companies, who you then owe big-time.

When Harry Truman stepped down from the Presidency, he refused all offers to sit on high-dollar corporate boards or in any way to profit from his presidential office. That hasn't happened since.

I have proposed before that at intervals this country needs an Inspector General, with many of the powers of an emperor, whose job it will be to clean up the government. The death penalty could be used for egregious fraud and corruption. For a brief period, rights to privacy for government officials would be denied and the IG would have unlimited access to information about any public official, elected or appointed. The IG might be elected via internet nationally or appointed by the Supreme Court, kept in office for several years, but only given full powers for a few months. This would give the IG time to collect information prior to his/her period of power. Those in office would know that the IG was watching all the time.

It's important that the IG be limited, and perhaps that the Supreme Court reviewed sentences involving capital punishment, as any essentially unlimited use of power leads over time to corruption. But it's possible for someone to resist that sort of temptation for at least a brief period of time, knowing that they themselves are subject to review by the Courts and by the subsequent IG.

I'd even like to expand the IG's power to include evaluation of corporate presidents who sack retirement funds for the workers, grant themselves a huge retirement, then sell the corporation after it's been looted. Hanging in public might provide a useful and edifying example.

The Drug Trade

2009-12-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

When a psychologist sees a repetitive pattern of behavior, one of the questions that should be asked is: "Is the behavior purposive? What does it actually accomplish?"

Many times the answer isn't an obvious one. A patient in a bad marriage who is "putting off" a divorce, may "accidentally" leave a opened condom packet in his truck where his wife can find it. When she does, the predictable happens, and the marriage comes to a hasty and messy end. Sometimes we refer to this as the "dynamite stick up the kazoo trick". The man professes shock and horror, and he is probably both shocked and horrified. But at the same time an important goal was attained and quickly at that. On some level the "accident" was purposive.

So with that prologue, we come to the drug trade. It is obvious that on the governmental level we want the drug trade to continue. As evidence, we protect the opium crop in Afghanistan. We could stop the importing of drugs in a variety of ways; the most obvious, of course, being to make recreational drugs legal and perhaps even free (or at least cheap). England has successfully accomplished this with heroin. We don't do those things. We are entitled to ask whether the behavior is purposive and what it accomplishes.

The most prominent feature is the flow of money out of the US and to some very poor countries. Historically, very poor countries have had very unstable governments, with an unruly populace prone to revolt. The flow of huge amounts of US dollars into those economies stabilizes them, raises their standard of living, and gives the poor something to lose. Here in the US the sale of drugs and their use functions as a political tranquilizer. Stoned people don't revolt and usually don't even vote.

Maybe it's simpler than that, and the motivation is just greed. Money travels a long way, and undoubtedly, as recent history has proven, some of it finds its way back into the pockets of the governing class. Whatever the real reason, we could stop it and we don't. We should keep asking why.

The dam broke and the money is flowing out

2009-12-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

With the weakening of the boundaries limiting the flow of money and goods outside the US a lot of changes are occurring which are obvious, foreseeable and unavoidable. What they are not is "surprising". In a supra-national economy, goods, money and services flow to the "lowest points", just as water does when the dam fails. The poorer countries in the world are getting more of our money injected into their economy, and the poorer people are getting at least some of that money. At the same time, we have less money per capita. What's so surprising about that?

We raise cotton. We ship it by rail to the West Coast, by ship to China. Cheap labor in China turns the cotton into blue jeans (or whatever), and they ship it to us AND to other countries. We buy back the jeans and sell them at Walmart. The money that in the past was spent inside the US in jeans-producing factories is now in China, where the labor is cheap and the money gets spread around. The workers and business owners in China have and spend more money, and their economy improves. Overall, perhaps (and I don't believe this) our economy improves, or is supposed to, although now we can see that it isn't. The laboring class of worker in the US has less work and less money. In effect, the flow of money outside the US has resulted in redistributing the money among the working class.

While the union movement in the US was necessary, it has resulted in the working class here pricing themselves out of the world market. We no longer produce steel, because steel workers had such high salaries that the price of steel became unreasonable, and we lost our market to those who will work for less money. One of the choices our workers had was to work for less money; they elected (through their unions) to lose jobs and close shops.

Money flows where the free market directs it, and as it does, it equalizes itself all around the world. It will continue to do so until it reaches its level. During the initial period (i.e. NOW), the amount of change is very large, as when the dam initially breaks. Eventually, as it approaches a general level, small differences in costs and income will result in small and continuing readjustments in the production of goods and services.

Where we have forced a large disparity in costs through an artificial boundary, such as in the cocaine market, the money flows in exactly the same way. Our excess of money finds its way to poor countries where it becomes a major source of capital for other investments. Drug lords spend money, lots of it. That money is distributed, and at least some of it to the poor and laboring class. Even their luxury purchases like yachts and condos in Spain have to be built by workers, who ultimately get some of the money and in their turn redistribute it in their local economy. In its turn this increase in standard of living in Afghanistan or Columbia results in more stability in their government, which usually benefits us.

It's quite easy to predict how the economy is going to move over the next 50 years, always providing that the elements of the system remain about the same (e.g. no calamities, world-wide plagues, etc). The US will continue to get poorer as the money flows out. Eventually things will stabilize on a considerably lower level, but we will no longer be the "richest country in the world". In many ways this is the logical outcome of capitalism and free-market enterprise. The richer countries will be the ones who make and produce unique products and services for the rest of the world, not just for themselves. They will want more money coming in and more goods and services going out, and that will be the ONLY way a nation can enrich itself.

Just a rant about televised game announcers

2009-11-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

Why don't the announcers on televised football games shut the hell up? I can watch a game live and enjoy it without any commentary. Where do tv producers get the idea that we have to be talked at throughout a football game? As if any time without talk was wasted?

And the inane things they say. I can't say I would do any better, but I can say I wouldn't do it at all. They say things like (and I quote) "They'll have to make more touchdowns to win the game". Now, when there's been a tough call on the field, it's useful to have that explained and shown from various points of view. That's the sort of thing announcers at live football games do. I don't mind that. I just don't want any more talk than the live announcers make during a game. I don't want to hear about the high school team one of the announcers played on. I don't want to hear meaningless statistics from 3 years back. I don't give a damn about any of the announcer's personal history. I just want them to shut up.

"Going Green" Is Not a Solution

2009-11-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

Pollution is rampant everywhere. Condoms float down a stream, remnants of anti-cholesterol medication flood down the Mississippi. Millions of gallons of pollutants kill the life in the lakes. The simple lack of oxygen in the Mississippi results in a "dead zone" in the ocean of hundreds of square miles. Organizations form to fight these and many, many other problems, but they are not addressing the real problem but rather the symptoms of the underlying problem.

The real problem is that there are too many people. Lacking natural limits on our reproduction or population, there is no upper limit to the number of human beings we are capable of breeding and who survive to breed again. In animal populations without sufficient predators (like wild horses) disease is the limiting factor, and comes about when the density of the animal population is sufficiently high to allow rapid passage of viruses or other disease-causing bacteria. Animals inadvertently cause conditions that stop their over-abundance. Except for humans. On some level we know that either we will limit our reproduction or at some point a "swine flu" will appear that will limit things for us. We will fight that, but ultimately there are just too many people.

There will come a point where all of us just breathing out will cause an excess of carbon dioxide. How much methane can we produce ourselves and not be the cause of the problems? How many people can pee antibiotics into the water before everything dies? It's not plastics that are the problem. It's us. We can fight nature a long time, but ultimately we have to limit ourselves or the planet won't survive. The earth may limit us if we don't take the responsibility.

In addition, judging from the papers, many people having children should not be having children. The children are abused and molested and grow up to repeat their parents offenses. When are we going to require WORLD-WIDE training and licensing for parents and compulsory sterilization for those who will not or cannot pass the examination?

Death as a personal compass

2009-11-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

My wife feels I think too much about death. She doesn't like to think about it at all.

To be clear, I don't brood about death and dying. I'm generally cheerful and optimistic; I enjoy life while at the same time I recognize that death is inevitable and one of the foundations around which human life is constructed. Woody Allen said that he wasn't afraid of death, he just didn't want to be there when it happened.

I believe that thinking about death is an invaluable way to sort out your values and priorities. The idea of coming to the end of my life full of regrets and lost opportunities should be more frightening than death itself, because it would mean that I had wasted my chances and made the wrong choices. So I look at my awareness of inevitable death as a sort of lodestone, a standard against which I hold up the choices I make and the values I uphold, to help me see what my priorities truly are and should be.

Looking back on what has been important to me is another way of trying not to get trapped in the minutiae of everyday life. Will it have been more important to me to have never missed a day of work or to have gone with my children to the zoo or the movies? Which will I remember during my last moments? Getting the trash out to the curb or talking on the phone to my best friend? Mowing the lawn or reading an interesting book?

I don't mean that we shouldn't take care of the little responsibilities and tasks. We have to get the lawn mowed and the trash out. But we need to be careful not to let such tasks take over our lives. The knowledge of the shortness of time ahead of us can help us keep our priorities straight and remember what is truly important to us. Death makes us realize what is important and what isn't, and for that I'm grateful.

Art photography

2009-11-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Duh.

I feel somewhat slow to have figured out the obvious. In my previous postings re what constitutes a real wall-hanger piece of art from a large postcard, I went off on several side roads while missing the main one.

Beautiful photos of beautiful things are rarely fine art. They're nice, they are interesting to look at for a minute or even less, but how many nice photos of the Grand Canyon or a beautiful rose do you want to look at? With today's cameras, anyone can take them.

But when you look at photos that are obviously genuine art, what gradually becomes clear is that their subject matter is NOT obvious. In fact, the art in them is the skill to make a beautiful picture of a non-beautiful subject. To be able to find the beauty in a piece of junkyard metal piping is art; to take a portrait not of a model but of an ordinary person in a way that touches you is also art. A rainy street and an empty park bench can suddenly become beautiful when seen in the right way. Finding the non-obvious subjects and making them interesting and beautiful in their own way is the secret.

Ahem. The triumphant rediscovery of the obvious. That would be my middle name if the phrase were a little shorter. Anyhow, I'm satisfied with this first step in focusing what I want to do with my camera.

Bailing Out Corporations

2009-10-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I just want to add my two-cents worth to the increasingly heated national debate re the economy.

I listened to a debate on public radio about a recent decision by the "Wages Czar", who issued an edict that corporations who had taken bail-out funds from the government would have a cap on their salaries. The cap represented a sizable down-sizing of their income, on the order of a 90% reduction. The response by the debater (name unremembered) was that these executives had counted on their incomes and had incurred debts which they would be unable to pay after the downsizing; as a result, the pundit added, they would likely quit their jobs and leave the corporations in the lurch.

Losing income has happened to a lot of people in the US. I feel unable to muster up any sympathy for someone whose income decreased from 5 million to 5oo,ooo. But that's really missing the point, I think. The money being grossly overpaid to these CEOs, under whose frigging brilliant leadership their corporations were disintegrating, was not voted by the stockholders. Yet the money paid to the CEOs was money that could have been distributed to the stockholders, who were actually not only entitled to some of that money but who were disenfranchised of their right to limit the salaries of the CEO.

The captain of a ship who leads the ship into an iceberg doesn't get a reward. Perhaps going down with the ship is a viable alternative. I understand the argument that if the corporations collapsed the economy would be further damaged. However, please not that the economy was already damaged severely by the greed of the CEOs; we just hadn't "taken the loss" yet. There were and are other alternatives to bailing out failing operations. For instance, as in the Telco corporate problems, perhaps corporations could be split up or dismantled into smaller but more profitable enterprises. Let the CEO of a failed corporation be dumped without compensation and without stock options. They should not be rewarded for failure caused by poor judgment and greed. Too bad if they can't pay for the villa in Capri.

And let's not forget that we carry some responsibility for the current debacle. Many people bought houses that were grossly over-appraised, knowing the house was not worth the loan. People over-bought stock on the market expecting a never-ceasing increase in value. Some fought for raises from companies barely surviving, as in the aircraft industry, even forcing some companies that paid their salaries into failure. We've lost the steel business for the same reason; short-sighted greed carried out to the point of self-destruction. We lost the automobile business the same way; greedy people make high prices and lazy ones have poor workmanship. Result: business gone elsewhere. So it's not just the CEOs who are at fault.

We can't survive as an economy unless we produce. We are becoming a service-provider country, with few real products of our own. We don't even produce as much of the raw materials as we used to. We send out the money; we ship in the products. People in other countries are benefited, but we are poorer because we can't compete in the open market for goods or services. This creates a steady downward decline with corrupt managers and politicians attempting to profit on the way. I suppose they hope to make it to that villa in Capri before the catastrophe.

What makes art "art"?

2009-09-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

Theories abound in all fields of art. Some are simple and some more complex. We have a variety of criteria, mostly exclusionary; we have no positive defining characteristics. Even the intent of the artist has little to do with whether his/her output is perceived as "artistic"; many works of art now widely considered to be masterpieces were simply commercial ventures, things created to please the purchaser. From "Mona Lisa" to Mozart, the intent of the artist was simply to earn a living. Battles have raged among differing groups, yet no group has found a standard that cannot be contravened.

It has occurred to me after thinking about this topic most of my adult life that the failure in the attempted definitions of art arises from thinking of art as a property belonging to the artistic creation. All definitions of which I am aware focus attention on the work of art itself, attempting to ascribe its value as an artistic work to the shape, form, color, sound or skill involved.

I propose that the definition of art be focused instead on the relationship between perceiver and creation. When the creation has the power to evoke strong feeling in the perceiver, even negative feeling, the artistic creation has done something of importance. Unfortunately, such a standard is transitory; things that were highly evocative at one time may lose their power to stimulate response. What moves us and touches us varies from century to century, place to place, person to person. Many if not most people in the world are totally oblivous to the possibility of being emotionally moved by a series of sounds or shapes on paper or the written word.

And some insist that only certain feelings may be evoked. However, this is a weak argument and many instances can be found to be exceptions. Do we consider being moved to anger or disgust to be an artistic experience? How about impatience or contempt or amusement? Another problem with this definition is that it is very culturally specific. A Frenchman may be moved to tears by the sounds of the "Marseillaise", while a Chinese may not even find the sounds particularly interesting. People of all cultures tend to favor certain emotional states over others: sadness, longing, loneliness, love, tenderness, excitement and the like are universal favorites. Other feelings may not even have names, yet their effect is real and understandable. Some art is majestic, overwhelming, even glorious or tragic, but what do we call the feeling that rises up in us when we encounter it?

Still, we should consider that we bring ourselves, our personalities and unique histories, to the artistic creation, with all our prejudices and biases, and in spite of that, we find some creations to have the power to move us quite irrespective of where or when we live in relationship to it. I think an interactive definition is as close as we can come.

Abolish Deficit Spending!

2009-09-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

The current major fiscal collapse was largely triggered by the banks using a new formula which allowed them to loan money based on estimates of future inflated worth. Our government does essentially the same thing. In Oklahoma, for instance, the current budget can be based on estimates of next year's sales tax and income tax revenues!

The federal government's budget is not limited to expected government income. In this way we yearly spend money we do not have, which is the definition of deficit spending. They obligate future citizens to pay for it. How did we come to give the government permission to carry out such a foolish and dangerous policy? Isn't it obvious what a disaster is ahead of us? We got a taste of it when only the banks spent money they didn't have. What will happen when the entire economy is based on such inflated valuations AND THEY COME DUE?

Every year the mint prints more paper money, which is cleverly no longer based on a gold standard. Since there is no real formula equating (amount of paper money) to (gross national product), the value of a dollar bill is both arbitrary and decreasing. More money printed for the same value equals inflation, which is the decrease in value of each dollar bill. Such a decrease in value amounts to a hidden tax, costing each citizen the amount the dollar decreases in value due to inflation.

What if the government was prohibited from deficit spending? Our legislators would be limited in spending an amount based on last year's taxes, for instance. If some urgent project required more money than was in the budget, they would then have to do what all of us citizens have to do in such circumstances: get a loan OR raise their income. Getting a loan means to add a fixed repayment amount to subtract from next year's budget, just as all us citizens have to do. Raising their income would mean they would have to raise taxes for next year, and for that they should need a special vote from the general population of voters. We would have a direct say in what the government would be allowed to spend over its current income. If we said "No", they would have to abandon the project until such a time as it could be afforded. Just as we citizens have to do.

Our dollars would not be decreasing steadily in value. Our taxes would be clearly related directly to the things we as a people wanted our money spent on. Our government would be directly accountable for its fiscal behavior and would have to answer to us for what they spent. They probably won't want to do that. No, scratch the "probably".

I think we should demand that deficit spending be prohibited and that the government should live within its budget. I don't for ONE MOMENT believe that anyone in government will vote in congress assembled to limit their spending unless we force them to, and I don't really see how to do that. Any ideas?

Tying Votes to Taxes

2009-09-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

If we had a true democracy (which I hope will not happen) we could study each issue, see how much it would cost us, and decide about its usefulness. That would be totally impractical, of course. Have you even seen what a bill going to the legislature looks like? Thousands of pages and study results. The Health Care bill is hugely complex; can the average citizen read and comprehend the implications of all that material? Probably not. Most of us (at least those who actually can read) would never take the time or put out the effort to understand such a bill, let alone the hundreds that have to be considered each year.

So we have representatives do that for us. Actually, they hire assistants who read the bills, make summaries, look at implications and alternative, and make recommendations, and even that is overwhelming. Without all that information, we really have no right to an opinion except in the broadest of terms. I doubt if ANY of the most vocal critics/advocates of the Health Bill have read it, but they talk about its contents as if they knew what they were.

All right, we have to trust our representatives to do our studying for us, see the problems and spend our money wisely. Our only alternative is to refuse to re-elect them, but that is always a long time after the fact. With the internet, is it possible to find at least somewhat of a middle ground? Could we get the summaries provided by the assistants to our representative, and not be allowed to vote on an issue on which we have not done our homework?

And what if we had attached to each issue its cost, so that we could literally put our money where our mouth is? Example: "Are heart transplant costs to be included in universal health care? (Estimated cost for each voter: $5.00) (Total money you have indicated willingness to spend this far: $752.03)"

This would obviously work better if we had a flat tax or national sales tax; graduated income taxes are hard to figure.

I get tired of hearing self-proclaimed liberals voting for items that they are unwilling to pay for. At a recent meeting, largely populated by such liberals, I asked how many were in favor of the Health Care Bill. Every hand went up. I asked them if they were willing to vote for an additional compulsory graduated tax for every citizen which would cover the costs of such a bill. Suddenly there was a silence, and only one or two hands went up.

Amazing how easy it is to be humanitarian and liberal when you don't have to think of the cost as coming from your own pocket. It's for that reason that I think that people who don't pay taxes shouldn't be allowed to vote. No representation without taxation!

Earned Votes

2009-08-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

It's easy to understand why we have a representative democracy, rather than a true one. Reading and understanding the laws governing the United States is a full time job, and then some. We have had to delegate this task to others and pay them to spend all of their time trying to digest and understand the laws as they are proposed. It's really impossible, of course. In fact, our representatives have a full-time paid staff to help them understand the laws; the staff read and make summaries, which is a great deal to accomplish.

Things are changing, now, however, with the advent of the internet and increasing access to all the information anytime anywhere. It is conceivable that within the next few years we might be able to move in the direction of a true democracy, with each of us in our homes reading and voting on local and national issues.

Do we want to do this? I am imagining a country run by the masses of people, the majority of whom have no interest in national issues, nor the competence to understand them. Many can't reat, of course, but the real obstacle is lack of interest and will to take such an active stance. Another objection is the amount of time required as well as the complexity of the material. The sheer volume of words is overwhelming. Possibly the most damaging objection to a true democracy is that there is no ready place for bargaining.

On the other hand perhaps that last objection is really an advantage. Would it be a bad thing if each item proposed for vote had to stand on its own merits? Does pork-barrel bargaining really benefit the country?

Moreover, the laws would have to be written in a simple and precise way. Perhaps only the practical intent and application of the law would be all that is needed. However, there could be no unrelated amendments attached, which is how bargaining worked its way into the legislature. Each proposed law would have to be limited to a single subject, and written with a fair and brief explanation of its effects.

This presupposes that we all as voters would be capable of understanding the proposed legislation and its consequences, and I am not convinced that more than 30 or 40% of the public is actually capable. At the risk of sounding elitist, many of the people that I know and with whom I am friendly are not interested, willing and/or able.

So what about leaving voting to those who are 1) interested, 2) literate, and 3) able? Suppose that votes had to be earned through examination? In that past, literacy examinations for voters were simply a way of excluding certain classes of citizens who were not encouraged to be schooled and literate. However, those days are long past, and now it seems clear that anyone who wants to learn to read and write can do so. I don't want people voting who cannot understand what it is they are voting for.

And I don't want people voting on how to spend our money who don't pay taxes. Our motto should be "No representation without taxation!" It's easy for a welfare recipient to vote for more welfare; he/she doesn't have to pay for it. An important qualification for a voting card should be that the person pays taxes and earns a living if not disabled. Perhaps additional votes could be earned or awarded for community services. For instance, it's conceivable that combat veterans could earn an extra vote; perhaps the extra vote could be limited to areas in which the person has demonstrated especial knowledge or ability.

We might end up with an electorate who are knowledgable, honest, thoughtful and literate, who have earned the right to have an opinion and whose money finances the government. Scarey thought, isn't it. Do we think that a genuine democracy could actually work?

Licensing parenthood II

2009-08-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

In our culture, having babies seems to many people an inalienable right. Reproductive freedom is a given. Considering that raising children is the single most important job in the world, we seem to have no qualms about allowing everyone to raise them and in any quantity they desire.

We require people to get a license in order to drive. To get the license they have to show basic competence to know and understand the rules of the road as well as the physical competence to manage a car. But to have a baby all that is required is the urge and the opportunity. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, if you like the present situation. Just ask a DHS worker.

Might it not be a good idea to require people to get a license to have a child? It’s easy to see some advantages to such a proposal. We could require people to show minimal financial ability; we could require skills training, as we do for driver’s licenses. We could require refresher courses to cover various stages in a growing child’s life.

Low intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean disqualification (except in the extremely low range). After all, half the people in the world are below average in IQ. On the other hand, any parent has to have the capacity to understand and abide by basic parenting principles. The only grounds for disqualification for a parenting license would those behaviors or qualities that render a person demonstrably unable or unwilling to provide adequate protection and supervision for a child. Current recreational drug use or excessive alcohol abuse are obvious disqualifiers, as is a history of violence or abuse of others. If future research shows other clear connections between adult behavior and mistreatment of children, such behaviors might well also become disqualifiers.

A serious problem is how to deal with the children that are born to unlicensed parents or to parents who have become disqualified. Obviously we can’t put the parents in jail because they have to care for the child. We can’t abandon the child, either. Clearly we will still need foster homes, although to a considerably lesser degree.

Perhaps a better solution is to add some chemical to the water supply, that would render all of us temporarily or permanently sterile. On receiving a license to have a child, we could be given the antidote to the sterility medication. Essentially (in principle) children would thereby only be born to those qualified to have them.

Not only could you set at least a minimum standard for competency to have and raise children, limits on numbers of children could easily be established and enforced. It’s pretty obvious that overpopulation will lead to absolute disasters in the long run.

While this sounds a little extreme, especially for those of us who object to too much government oversight, it’s our government and our oversight. The situation is plainly out of hand, and the children who are raised by incompetent, uneducated and inadequate parents are the ones who are first to be hurt. We pay the balance of the costs, so we should have some say about what we are willing to pay for.

Licensing parenthood I

2009-08-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

Many of the human race are poor or terrible parents. Bad parents raise screwed-up kids who become screwed-up adults faster than the rest of us can therapize, teach or coerce them into a semblance of civilization.

In the last 4000 years or so during which civilization in roughly the modern form has existed, we apparently AS A GROUP have learned nothing. Individuals have become highly skilled as parents and teachers and therapists, but as a whole, we have not improved at all. We teach rage and greed and selfishness and religious bigotry; we raise criminals and killers and rapists and child abusers. We sow the wind; we reap the whirlwind. The human race, in spite of the knowledge of individuals, has chosen to remain on the first rung of parenting skills, if that. And even if we don’t know as much about positive skills in parenting as we should, we certainly know a lot of things that are flatly wrong and damaging.

I see people in my office whose parents started them on drugs or alcohol or sex before the children even knew what they were. Every day we see in the papers articles about children who were savagely beaten or killed by their parents. Girls are pimped out on the street at 10 or 12 to provide money for their parents’ drug use. These situations are, unfortunately, common; but what doesn’t often make the front page of the paper are the many instances of casual verbal and physical violence that don’t come to the attention of the authorities. The amount of psychological damage that ensues is impossible to measure.

Some young women pop out babies just to have money from DHS (Welfare, in Oklahoma); DHS pays out the money but has inadequate resources to insure adequate skills in the parents. People don't even have to know what causes babies to feel free to have them. Some young men think it is a mark of their "manhood" to father children they have no intention of helping raise. I recently saw a 20+ male wearing a lot of "bling" (real gold jewelry) who was proud of fathering 7 (at least) children whom he had seen once or twice and whom he had absolutely no intention of helping raise or support.

I'm quite sure that 3000 (or 30,000) years ago the situation was not significantly different. Perhaps the human race long ago was benefited by sheer numbers of people, regardless of quality. And that's the point: no matter what advances in science or psychology of parenting we make, we are not using them any more to raise our children than in our primitive pasts. We have increasing quantity and apparently decreasing quality.

The place to stop bad parenting is before bad or inadequate people become parents. We need to license and limit the production of babies. We need to stop human animals from breeding until they stop being animals.

What Jesus Did Wrong

2009-08-07T10:41:00.000-07:00

There are essentially only two approaches to presenting a new set of moral values or ethics. The Preacher can go out into the populace and present his/her ideas. The masses may not know anythng about the new ideas, and their interest in them, at least at first, is likely to be minimal or negative. OR the Preacher can stay in his/her place, become a Teacher, and wait for the interested people to come to him/her.

In the first instance, the Preacher reaches a larger number of people quickly, but attracts negative attention as well as positive. The short-range outcome will almost certainly involve conflict. The Preacher's approach is an aggressive one, which tends to create tension.

In the second instance, the Teacher's ideas may spread very slowly, among those who are already pre-disposed to react positively. This low-profile approach rarely involves much conflict. The Teacher is essentially passive as regards the promulgation of his/her ideas.

Jesus was a good example of the first approach. The conflicts he created by aggressively presenting his controversial ideas fulminated into an outburst, resulting in crucifixion. Siddhartha Gautama was a good example of the second approach. He lived a long and effective life, dying in advanced old age of natural causes, and loved by all.

It's interesting to speculate about the possible outcome had each of these two exemplars taken the alternative approach.

The Stock Market and Las Vegas

2009-08-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sure it's clear to many people that the stock market is simply a gambling establishment, appealing to the very same people that go to casinos. For some reason, this didn't occur to me until late in my life.

The value of a stock, as it is bought, sold and exchanged on Wall Street, has little or nothing to do with the value of the company on whose name it is based. When originally sold by the company owners, it was a way of raising money to improve the market share of the company, and the stock purchasers were thereby to receive a share of the future profits.

But as soon as the stock was sold, not by the orignating company, but by the most recent purchaser of the stock, its new value was now based entirely on the expectations and perceptions of the new purchaser. The purchaser was simply gambling that the value of the stock would change in a predictable way, so that it could be resold for a profit, not on the originating company's products, but simply on the expectation of exploitable change in price. Stocks go up and down in the amrket on a hourly (or shorter) basis; this clearly has no base in change in the company product value. People develop systems to predict stock prices, and they make public predictions, both of which change the expectations of potential stock purchasers and thereby the "value" of the stock.

It's a "get-rich-quick" scheme, and the suckers are those who think they can predict it. When the majority of potential purchasers believe the market is in a cycle of positive change, the price goes up, thereby proving the prediction. When the majority of potential purchasers think the market is going to go down, they act on their predictions, and lo and behold, the price goes down. The value of the company which issued the stock probably hasn't changed, but the stock value has.

I don't mind people gambling, in Las Vegas or in New York. I object to the pretentiouness, the pretense that "business" is going on there, that stock purchasers are contributing to the economy. Of course they are not. Making money on the stock market is a form of vampiristic feeding on the blood of those who actually produce goods or services of value. It's just gambling. There's nothing scientific or productive about it. It represents, as all gambling does, the hope of making money without having to work for it or produce something of value.

Perhaps it keeps the non-productive part of the populace happy and content with their hopes. I think they should just get a job.

Avoiding a rebellion

2009-08-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

As the fiscal crisis deepens, it appears that we as a nation are dividing more and more clearly into classes. The "poor" class is really getting poorer all the time, and the upper classes are getting richer.

If we want this state of affairs to continue (which I rather favor), we should be aware that throughout history the "have-nots" have eventually risen up in rebellion and overthrown the system, usually doing away with a large percentage of the wealthy. If we don't want that to happen (and I really favor it not happening), we have to find ways to keep the poor happy. The Romans did it with entertainment, the English during the period of industrialization in the 19th century did it with alcohol. We have an even better soporific available now: drugs like marijuana and heroin.

People using those drugs readily remain stable and happy, even if their lives are somewhat shortened. However, they are there to change our tires and stock our shelves, to empty the bedpans and man the machines. We need them there, and we need them contented and happy. Let's give them free marijuana! Rising up in rebellion becomes almost impossible. Even hunger and envy won't drive them to it. And they'll think we're doing them a favor!

National Health Care

2009-08-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

I'm astonished by the controversy over some sort of national Health Care insurance. The arguments about cost, who pays, who is entitled, go on and on. But surely it must be obvious that there is something profoundly wrong about this argument?

We are ALREADY providing health care for the indigent, the poor, the uninsured and the uninsurable. People without insurance simply go to the nearest emergency room and obtain treatment. Of course they don't go for routine examinations or really minor illnesses, but those issues are barely covered by insurance for anyone, if they are covered at all.

So the poor get free medical care. Free, that is, in the sense that they themselves don't pay for it. The hospital provides medication and facilities, physicians provide services. The hospital simply divides the cost up and raises fees for those covered by insurance so that the loss is absorbed. We pay for the indigent through higher fees to the hospital and to the physicans and nurses. Did we think that all those things were just either falling out of the skies or were being paid for by the benevolence of the hospitals?

The fees charged by hospitals and physicians will be higher in areas where more such services are provided to the uninsured. Border states, such as Texas, California and Florida, will charge higher fees than, say, Nebraska hospitals. In other words, all a national health insurance program will do is to redistribute the costs nationwide so that all medical insurance costs are coverfed more equally. That's a good deal for us border-state dwellers, not so good for those living in North Dakota.

Am I missing something here? Or is this largely a political farce?

Money, fame and corruption

2009-07-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes nearly unlimited money brings with it an upsurge of narcissistic indulgence, particularly in entertainers. The only real constraint on their behavior is from media exposure and lawsuits. As a result they get caught in a conflict between their desire for approval from others and their desire to engage in totally self-absorbed behavior, such as sexual exploitation of others.

Their money gives them the illusion of privacy; behind closed doors they believe they are able to indulge their most secret desires. When the illusion is broken they may suffer a severe narcissistic break in the form of depression, often deep enough to result in suicide. As members of the audience, we are willing to tolerate the most unacceptable behaviors as long as the perpetrator of those behaviors is willing to continue to entertain us. By continuing to buy tickets, we condone and even encourage those behaviors. It's as if child-molestation (for example) is tolerable if we like to watch the molester dancing or singing.

Like the Romans 2000 years ago, we will encourage and pay for savage or uncivilized behavior as long as it keeps us entertained. As a result, our society seems to have lost the power to reject those who deserve rejection the most.

Spending public moneys

2009-06-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

This is a proposal format for ALL future ballots that involve the expenditure of public funds.

It is proposed that we fund the following project:
Emergency room treatment for indigent patients will cost $X billion for one year, beginning in January. Each year this proposal will be remade with the current costs per year attached.
I, (name here), a taxpayer in the United States, Social Security No. --- -- ----, am willing to have my income taxes increased for next year by X%. This amount is fixed and cannot be exempted and will be added to other scheduled taxes.

The above is pretty much self-explanatory. It's easy to give money to needy people, when it's in the abstract or it's other people's money. Because spending seems to be a solution to all problems, it is important that we recognize what we are doing and take responsibility for it by recognizing that the funding comes directly from us, no matter how worthy the cause. We shouldn't vote for something we're not willing to contribute to.

The Old Age Gang

2009-05-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

When will I get "old"? Is there a line I cross without knowing it, only to look around later at a new country with old inhabitants? What are the hallmarks and identifiers of old age?

We all have images of what "old age" is like. In our minds we think of "old age" as a special group of people with common qualities. They have their own group. They associate with each other. They eat, drink, walk, communicate and share tastes with their own kind. By thinking of them as a group, we imagine group boundaries. We imagine ourselves outside those boundaries, as NOT a member of their group. We do this to distance ourselves from "them".

We know, of course, that one day.... but not now. Not yet. Whatever "old" quality I find in the mirror, I deny that it is a defining characteristic. I have not yet joined the group.

Using Facebook or Twitter

2009-05-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

I can see that I no longer belong to the "knowers", those of us who know things and understand them and thus are "in". I thought that I would always be one, and that getting old would not suddenly make me become stupid or out of touch. Short, that is, of strokes and Alzheimer's.

I don't get it. Why do people put comments on Facebook or Twitter about minor, uninteresting aspects of their daily lives? Why would they think anyone would care or be surprised to find they are "looking forward to the weekend" or "buying tomatoes at the grocery"? Clearly they are not discussing ideas, and equally clearly they are not describing the events or thoughts that might allow a degree of understanding or support or intimacy. They don't mention the fights they are having with their partner; they don't mention what the doctor found out during the exam. It's cabbages or lunch time or the current tv program.

I am coming to the conclusion that these media are not for the exchange of personal information or for better contact with friends or loved ones. Facebook and Twitter seem to be the container for the noises the tribe or pack make to stay in earshot of each other. The message is not really about the cookout, but really "I'm here, right here", and the rest of the tribe moves about their little clearing feeling reassured. And it's nice, I suppose, to think that others might care that this is true.

Sometimes I wonder if the twittering noises passed up and down our electronic synapses are the beginnings of a group consciousness, a mass mind struggling to become awake, like the random thoughts produced by our brains on the edge of consciousness. Maybe we're on the way to becoming a hive mind. If so, you'll be glad to know I just finished wastering the plants.

The Hope Addiction

2009-05-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

We all know that the world we live in is largely fictional Behind the abstractions we are fed by politicians and corporate sales, there is very little of substance. We follow after the rainbows that are only painted on curtains, and like the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, there is nothing behind the curtain. We buy the sizzle, not the steak, the zoooooom, not the car. We rarely think of what these dreams cost us in actuality.

The stock market is a good example of a fictional world. Stocks go up and they go down, their prices mostly based on what people think other people are going to think tomorrow. People don't invest in companies because of their value, but rather because of their value in the eyes of others. The stock market is a large and more serious version of Las Vegas. People hope to become rich without effort or skill, purely because they are lucky and buy a stock that is going up and then sell it before it goes down. They tell themselves that this is because they are clever or knowledgeable, but luck is really the only factor. What they are buying with each stock purchase or sale is hope, hope for a big break, some life-changing event.

An even better example is a gambling casino. We all know the mathematics of gambling: the casinos make more than they lose, and that money comes from the gamblers. Many of the most persistent gamblers are those who can least afford it, the hard-working poor. Who can blame them for wanting to win a bunch of money? In their hearts they know that most of the people in the casino will lose some or a lot of their money, but they cling to the hope that they are "special", "lucky", "have a system", and thus will win. Even when they win they don't take their winnings home. They gamble some more. The money is not the object; the chance of winning “big” is.

Gambling is not about winning. Gambling is about the hope of winning. Working people, stuck in low-paying jobs, bills coming due, kids needing things, may see no hope in their day-to-day life of finding a way to manage. However, the casino offers them the chance, no matter how small, that a “Good Thing” can happen and all the problems can be solved. The gambler would rather lose a little money and keep the hope alive that something can change. The hope is all they have to escape despair.

Religions sell two basic things: They offer the rules for living, and they offer the hope of some after-life reward. People pay lip service to the importance of religious rules, although they rarely live by them. What keeps the horse moving forward is the carrot on the stick. What matter that the reward is never achieved or witnessed? that Heaven is never visited or photographed? The hope for Heaven is what matters, just as the hope for winning matters more than money won.

Hope keeps us waiting, rarely patiently, and keeps us tolerating ways of life that would quickly be abandoned were it not for hope. What would life without hope be like? While that may sound frightening, the thought of waiting indefinitely in misery for a promise that will almost certainly not be kept should be more so. Without hope, we would have to live in the here-and-now. We would have to pay attention now to what we do and how we do it. We would have to make each moment pay. We would ask the real price of things more often. We could still have goals and hope to attain them, but not by magic or without effort. We wouldn't wait to start having a life for Santa Claus to come.

Two right wings

2009-05-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

A report published yesterday by the Pew Institute states that their survey showed that 62% of conservative/evangelical Christians in the US approved torture of Islamic militants in order to get information. This compares to less than 50% approval by the general population. We might expect that evangelical Christians would be less tolerant of torture and mistreatment and more accepting of others and their differences. Instead, it seems that we find the opposite. How can we make sense of this?

Christian religions teach tolerance but conservative Christians appear to have little tolerance. This is not peculiar to conservative Christians. Nany religions (including Islam) profess tolerance while their followers frequently behave with intolerance. Their behaviors are not congruent with their professed beliefs. This conflict in values can occur because intolerance is a general characteristic of all groups, regardless of the values they profess.

Intolerance results from the anxiety provoked by the threat of change in values due to exposure to conflicting values. In recent years exposure to other values has been provided by the ubiquitous electronic media. The more rigid the values, the more intolerant its followers are. Exposure to tolerant, humanist values frightens extremists because of this vulnerability. Radical Islam began being faced with an onslaught of exposure to Western cultural values, values totally different from the traditional radical Islamist position. We showered the world with television, with products, with commercials, with travel and tourists destroying isolation and separation. Intolerance can only thrive when it is sheltered from alternative values. The extremist Islamists such as the Taliban saw their young people being seduced by new images and ideas.

As the radical Islamists saw their values and beliefs being undermined by our liberal and multicultural ones, they became more anxious and ultimately angry. The "9-11" attack, like the many smaller ones before it, were not intended to destroy us. Instead, their attempt was intended to polarize us against "them" and to unify the Muslim world in a last ditch attempt to protect their toppling power and religious structures. They wanted then and they want now to provoke a religious war, which they see as their only chance to preserve their power and religious ideals.

What group in the West is most threatened by Muslim attacks? Just what you would expect: those people, religious or not, who are most intolerant and threatened by different beliefs, just like the Taliban. Our religious right was not directly threatened by Muslim beliefs; they hardly knew that Islam existed. So the Taliban (as a type) had to bring the conflict to them, which they have done by the kinds of terrorist acts which most oppose our tolerant beliefs. They behead people, they stone women, they torture prisoners, AND they release videos showing this. Why publicize these atrocities? Precisely because they will provoke the most reaction from the extremists among us. It is the very unreasonableness of their behavior that garners our attention. Like watching a magician, we see what we are meant to see.

The more they can encourage the West to polarize against them, the more able they will be to get support from the Islamist moderates. While their behaviors are repugnant to most of the Islamist moderates, that doesn't matter in the long run, because the Islamist extremists believe that as the holy war becomes more immanent, the moderates will finally pull together with the extemists. The Taliban hopes the moderates will line up behind them at last.

Religion has ultimately little to do with this. It is our tolerance and acceptance of others they cannot bear, not our religious beliefs. The beliefs of the majority of the Western world includes loving our neighbors, tolerance, returning good for evil, and so on. As we become more frightened and angered by the Taliban, we move away from our beliefs into attitudes and values that mirror theirs. Ironically we become more like those we fight.

Perhaps we should just give them more television sets and more media machines.

Showing remorse or guilt

2009-05-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

It's not enough to acknowledge error or fault and to correct it. That should be enough but it doesn't seem to be. When I was a small child and had done something wrong, I remember my grandmother turning to my mother and saying, "Well, at least he has the grace to be sorry".

I'm also remembering how I dealt with such issues with my own children, many years ago. I had learned that being sorry was not enough, that the expression of regret or remorse was frequently a "cop-out" that stood in place of actually changing one's behavior. But while being "sorry" isn't enough, neither is just changing one's behavior, which ought to be enough in a rational world.

Judges come down hard on offenders who don't show remorse. As adults, when harmed by someone's behavior, we need to hear from them that not only will they change their behavior, they feel badly about what they have done. We seem to need both parts.

It's easy to see what the rational plan for behavioral change does for us. So why do we need so much to hear the expression of regret? It occurs to me that from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, we NEED to hear regret or remorse from the young ones. Their ability to feel and show remorse signals us that they have genuinely internalized the "rules" and their importance, that they are not simply opportunists who have been caught, but people just like us, with the "right" rules.

A child of 6 who shows no remorse for bad actions is potentially a danger to us all. We fear the presence in our midst of a "psychopath", one who, to us sheep, is like a wolf, one who does NOT adhere to our group values and boundaries. When someone breaks a rule AND IS SORRY, we are reassured that they are not psychopaths. Judges look for exactly the same thing. Our little tribes cannot tolerate a psychopath within our group; they present a danger against which we have little protection.

What my grandmother probably meant was that when she was convinced I genuinely felt regret for my mistake, she was greatly reassured that my heart was "in the right place", that I had indeed internalized the values of our little tribe and did not present a danger to our survival.

When people don't express the "proper emotions", we become uneasy at the prospect that they may not share important human boundaries and values; the unease we feel goes directly to survival issues.

Photography as fine art

2009-04-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

I've been an ardent amateur since I was 16. I've sold a few prints, but that only makes me a sort-of semi-pro. I've read a zillion magazines and books on photography and seen and taken another zillion photos. Okay, maybe not a zillion. More like bazillion.

What is it that makes a photograph one you would want to put on the wall in your living room where you could see it every day? Of course, the same question applies to any kind of art. Just being technically good or well-composed isn't enough. And clearly there is one's personal taste, which is probably predominant as a factor. But many that make the magazines and the books, while beautiful, are not enough to sustain one's attention over a longer period of time. I find myself paging through the books and magazines, thinking, "That one's nice/interesting/attractive", but rarely seeing one I would put over my mantel even if someone gave it to me for free.

With the advent of computer-chip controlled cameras, anybody can take a technically well-exposed picture. Technical skill was once a major part of professional photography, but not any more. What can capture and hold the interest in any picture?

How many perfectly photographed pictures of the Grand Canyon do you want? It's clear that simply photographing (however perfectly) any tourist attraction is of little interest, now that it's relatively easy to see them, and the number of good photos of interesting places and things is huge.

I find pictures that I really like and would hang on my walls proudly. Some of them are of people; some are of unusual scenes which can give real objects an abstract design quality. A picture of moss on a tree might make it. I don't know how to define what it is that I'm looking for. I hate to fall back on the old cliche about "not knowing anything about art, but I know what I like". Yet the cliche is true in the sense that if you have to know about something to appreciate its beauty, it's not that great. Knowledge can add to your appreciation but can't turn a mediocre photo into a great one.

Sometimes I think there needs to be a quality of mystery in the picture. Not a puzzle, but rather a sense that the art or photo goes somewhere and does something beyond the frame, a sense of deeper connection than is on the surface.

If anyone has an opinion about this subject, particularly if you have photos to illustrate your point, please contact me. Maybe we can post some on this blog and debate them a little.

Obesity and disability

2009-04-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Don't misunderstand me. I work with people with a variety of disabilities, more or less serious and chronic. I have no problem with the state providing financial aid and medical care; in fact, I'm proud that we do not let them "fall through the net".

I do have a problem with people who have a variety of bone and joint problems AND who are grossly overweight or obese. I see them walking with great difficulty and or managing with a wheelchair or canes. It's clear their obesity adds great additional stress to their joints, and increases their disability. I understand that they may have few other pleasures in life besides eating, but it seems to me that they should be doing everything they can to have a life, a job, a volunteer position helping others, or something, rather than making themselves worse.

Paying them for their self-aided disability is like forgiving a man who has killed his parents on the grounds of being an orphan. How much of the day must they spend stuffing food down their gullets? Since when is a physical disabilty grounds for endless self-indulgence?

I just don't feel any sympathy for self-inflicted wounds.

Guilt and Shame II

2009-04-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Embarrassment, as an emotion, belongs to the "shame" family of feelings and is an interpersonal rather than "solo" feeling. It is related in structure, as is shame, to depression more than anxiety, but certainly has anxious overtones.

Recently, in a therapy group, a member began to cry quietly, and immediately became red-faced and embarrassed. On analysis of her feeling state, she reported thoughts such as "I'm weak, and everyone knows". "People should not cry where others can see." Part of the focus of her embarrassment was her belief in how other members of the group then present would see her. She would almost certainly not be so embarrassed by the same behavior had it been in private.

In her mind she was breaking a group rule whose origins were in her original family. Breaking this rule did not result in exclusion from the group, but did result in group condemnation. The threat of exclusion was real to her as a child, though probably represented less of a threat than she thought. The threat was catastrophic, but came with a prescriptive plan that would avoid the threat being carried out. As a result, the anxiety was limited.

In embarrassment, the focus is a particular behavior which is expected to be changed. It was what she did or might do in the future, not who she was; the negative stroke was for behavior rather than self. As such, it was more limited because it was conditional. She was in effect being warned that exclusion could possibly result if she did not change her behavior. However, the feeling of being "weak" did strike at her sense of worth and self, and became an ever-present threat.

When group members were supportive and even encouraging, she was considerably relieved and less "embarrassed"; it was clear to her and those present that her embarrassment was self-inflicted. Other members of the group were certainly not thinking what she feared. The transferential nature of her feelings and reaction were obvious and could be dealt with as such.

Structure of guilt and shame

2009-04-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Depression and anxiety are solitary emotions, in the sense that someone raised entirely in isolation from others could be expected to feel them. Guilt and shame, on the other hand, are based on group membership and group boundaries. Someone living in total isolation, on the proverbial desert island, for instance, could behave in any way they wished without guilt or shame.

Guilt and shame are different in important ways. Guilt seems to be based on one's awareness that one has transgressed important group rules, and may as a result be forced out of the group. The anticipation of this expulsion is guilt. Since the expulsion is a catastrophic expectation that rarely actually occurs. guilt is a form of anxiety. The specific form is the fear of rejection/expulsion. Since one can't be expelled from a group prior to belonging to that group, guilt requires group membership.

Every group has "boundary rules", which separate members from non-members. The rules may be complex or simple, but they tend to be rigid in many groups. Teen-agers present good examples of rigid and frequently trivial boundary rules. Something as simple as wearing the "wrong kind" of tennis shoes can result in expulsion from the group. Every group, no matter what kind, seems to have one or more boundary rules that if broken will always result in group rejection. The fear of being rejected may be so great that a person may be willing to do literally anything to avoid rejection.

The first group we can belong to is the mother/child dyad. Doing something that might cause the mother to reject the child is cause for severe anxiety in the child. Remaining safely in the mother/child dyad is necessary for survival, so the threat of expulsion is genuinely catastrophic. The usual anxiety-reducing tactic, that of "making a plan", can't apply here as no plan can be adequate to protect an expelled child.

Shame consists of the awareness that one has broken a boundary rule, AND that the breach of rule is known to other group members. The "catastrophe" has occurred, and the rejection has either already occurred or is about to occur. Shame is accompanied by a severe loss of self-worth, at least to the extent that the person's self-worth was closely tied to group mambership. The more central to one's self-image the group membership is, the greater the loss of self-worth when one is rejected. Shame does not occur when the loss of group membership is essentially trivial to the boundary breaker. For a highly patriotic person, being found to have committed treason can result in suicide or severe depression. For someone who was only simulating patriotism, having committed treason is relatively unimportant other than for the actual consequences.

As guilt is related to anxiety, shame is related to depression. Guilt is the fear of loss of self-worth; shame is the awareness of the actuality of it.

It is interesting to consider the effects of early rejection or failed attachment on the later development of guilt and shame. One can easily speculate about the possibility that some forms of antisocial (not psychopathic) behavior may be more likely when there is a failure of attachment in the mother/child dyad. It should be noted that our individual social history is one of successive group memberships. After belonging to the mother/child dyad, we belong to our families; later we belong to our friendship groups and other peer groups, and thence to ever larger groups. It may be the case that early failures in belonging may have effects on subsequent attempts to belong.

I would be interested in hearing other thoughts about this.

Green propaganda

2009-04-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

I'm in favor of green solutions, where possible. What I strenuously object to is the notion that we need some major technological advances or scientific breakthroughs to have a "green solution". There are very simple and easy things to do right now that would make a huge difference.

Here's a for-instance. I live in a middle-size university town of maybe 150,000 people. Like most towns without geographical features to limit or concentrate its growth, it spreads out over a substantial distance. Maybe it is 5 miles by 4 miles, but it's a little hard to tell because of the way subdivisions sprawl and put out pseudopods. We have some bike riders, but not a lot, because the streets are not safe for bicylists. So we drive everywhere. 8 blocks to the nearest grocery, closer than that to drugstores and cleaners, but it's worth what my life is worth to bicycle consistently.

Why is that, you ask (and well may you ask)? Because our fair city doesn't designate bicycle routes or paint safe lanes. Unlike European cities which are full of bicycles and mopeds and scooters, we have so few of them that we are not used to looking out for them. Some of the more redneck types nearby seem to think it funny to nearly miss cyclists or even just to take them out. So we have a chicken and egg problem; we need more cyclists to increase awareness of safety issues, but we can't have more cyclists until it gets safer.

So the first measure we should take would be to thoroughly designate safe cycling lanes, and then fine the shit out of any motorist crossing into them at any time, cyclists present or not. And keep doing that until we get used to staying out of the safe lanes.

Second measures even for metropolises are not that difficult. Arrange a safe parking area (or many of them) outside of town, make scooters and bicycles cheap and easy to rent, and ban all non-commercial vehicles from within the city itself. Or of course busses could go to and from town center and parking areaa.

How much could all this cost? Well, paying for the rental vehicles (which could also be electric) would cover much of the cost. How much does it cost to enforce safe biking lanes? So why don't we do something like this instead of the incessant yammering about batteries and butane or natural gas-powered vehicles or instantaneous teleporting or whatever? You can find the answer by simply obseving who opposes such moves and who profits by the opposition, and in addition one should note equally carefully the politicians who support them. Not that hard, is it?

Religion and conflict

2009-03-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

In recent book (The God Delusion), Richard Dawson takes a hard line as not just an atheist but as an anti-theist. He regards religious beliefs as dangerous in themselves for a variety of reasons which need not be considered here.

He seems to think the world would be a better place without religion. He would regard religion as a source of the worst conflicts, the poorest quality of thinking and the cause of the prevalence of non-humanist values. He might well think we would have fewer conflicts in a more skeptical world. I think he is an optimist. As a psychologist I understand that conflicts between groups, sometimes in the name of religion, result in widespread conflict and war. I don't agree with him that religion causes these phenomena.

Instead I think intergroup conflicts are an essential part of human group conduct. Religion, like politics or race, can be enlisted in the aid of group formation and inter-group conflict. In my opinion we would have precisely the same conflicts without religion, under different heading and flying different flags. Conflict is what we humans do to establish our membership in our group. The existence of other groups is necessary so that ours can have conflicts to strengthen our boundaries. We use religion to justify this set of boundary operations, but we can and do use lots of other justifications.

In my opinion, the presence or absence of religion has little effect on intergroup conflict, which is part of the human condition, at least in this stage of our development. Religion, in fact, is essentially irrelevant even though it sometimes promulgates benevolent ideas. It's unfortunate that the majority of people professing religious beliefs don't act on or embody those beliefs, so their religion is just something to make them feel more comfortable personally. The people who talk the loudest about the religious life and religious values don't seem to have any better moral sense than non-religious people. From my standpoint religion is pretty silly, and I'm sorry to see money wasted on religious items (such as churches) when such funds could be put to much better use helping the poor or improving medical treatment or research.

If we didn't kill each other in the name of religion, we'd just find some other excuse.

Passive resistance

2009-03-03T07:53:00.000-08:00

"I forgot".
"I was busy."
"I didn't feel well."
"Huh?"
"You never told me to.. like... do it."
"You didn't tell me what you wanted".

We call this behavior "passive-aggressive", and in past years treated it as if it were a psychological disorder. People who did this a lot were described as "passive-aggressive personalities", or even "passive aggressive personality disorders". Over a period of years, however, we began to recognize that such behaviors, while immature in manner, are part of our regular repertory of behavior, and that we all use passive-aggressive behaviors at certain times. As a diagnosis, it's not included in the current DSM.

When do we observe passive-aggressive behavior, with its characteristic body postures, voice tone and facial expressions? The first and most obvious examples are easily seen in most teen-agers. Whatever they were told to do, they didn't do it, and they have a "reason" for not being compliant. The reasons are transparently dishonest in adolescents, but when adults use them they are not so transparent.

Passive-aggressive behavior is also easily observed in a variety of situations with adults. In jails and penitientiaries the prisoners use such excuses to the people in power. The guards use them with their bosses. Office workers may use this behavior with supervisors. Soldiers use this with their superiors.

What do these situations have in common? In all of the above there is a perceived strong power differential between the person giving the "order" and the person receiving it. This power differential includes the power to punish, and the person receiving the order does not feel able or willing to openly resist. The resistance, as manifested in passive-aggressive behavior, is indirect. It is designed to provide an "excuse" so that the non-compliant person doesn't get punished or have to directly oppose the person in power. In situations in which the "power person" is reluctant to punish or is ambivalent about punishing, the "excuse" plays on that ambivalence to give the power person an "out".

In couples counseling I often see passive-aggressive behavior on the part of one of the partners. A great deal of resentment builds up in both members of the partnership. Usually the passive-aggressive partner is reluctant to deal with the issue, and for exactly the same reason they are passive-aggressive: they fear retaliation, physical or emotional.

Passive-aggressive behavior is specific to a particular relationship or set of relationships. The same person who is passive-aggressive toward his wife may not be so toward other adults. The p-a behavior is in response to a perceived power differential, in which one partner is seen as having most of the power, even as being a bully. "Bullying", in this context, may mean physical mistreatment or emotional mistreatment in the form of rage, temper tantrums, tears, threats, or withdrawal.

The problem to solve is not in attempting to change the passive-aggressive behavior. It can only be solved by directly addressing the perceived power differential and confronting it. It is surprisingly difficult to get this issue to the surface, as cultural norms do not allow adults to admit easily that they fear being bullied, especially emotionally, by their partner.

Mid-life crises

2009-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

While we are young, we lack the imagination to see ourselves at the end of our lives. Our parents and teachers inadvertently teach us a rosy picture of the future: They tell us we are capable of endless achievement and unlimited options. If we work hard and do right, finally we will be rewarded with happiness. The reward at the end of the rainbow is the pot of gold that keeps us striving without too much thought about our day-to-day lives. We are on the tracks leading to a golden sunset, and all we have to do is keep on keeping on, hang on through difficult times, keep our heads down and cope with problems as they come to us.

Many of us, as we reach the latter part of our lives, become increasingly restless. We are more and more aware of the passage of time, and of how little time remains to us. We begin to see the arc of our lives, and instead of going upward forever we see it levelling out, and even glimpse the downward sweep to the end. The promise of limitless possibility no longer exists. We are forced to recognize the limits of our accomplishments. We find ourselves thinking, "Is this all there is?" Where is the pot of gold? Where is happiness and when will it be granted to us?

Even more importantly, we recognize how unimportant our lives are in the "grand scheme of things', and that we, like everyone, must end the same way, facing the dark, knowing that we leave nothing of importance behind. We fear or deny finality, limits, death, loneliness, meaninglessness, while at the same time our recognition of their reality becomes more and more unavoidable.

To avoid this awareness we thrash about, sometimes desperately and frequently unwisely. We want off the tracks down which our personal train is traveling. This is the time of life when people have affairs, not because our sexual drive has increased, but because we desperately long for new possibilites, a different life, a different outcome. We imagine or buy the famous red sports car or something else captivating to the child within us, something to calm our fears and distract our minds. We seek distraction through sex or a religion that seems to offer us an escape from the finality of death. Some chase fame or recognition, hoping to make a mark on the sands, all the while knowing how meaningless and brief such marks are.

Our existential despair is real and is frequently accompanied by anger. We have done all the "right things" without having given much thought to our alternatives. We have lived on automatic with our eyes fixed on the future without much thought. Suddenly the end of the line looms ahead and we feel cheated of our promised rewards. Where is the happiness we sought? How did we miss our opportunities? Were there other roads we could have taken that would not lead here?

There is no cure for the limits of life. Whatever path we take leads to the same terminal. We all grow old, we lose our health and our friends. We realize how little and unimportant our contributions have been, and we die. Much of our anger comes from the realization that whatever joy and happiness we have were on the way, not waiting at the end of the road.

The thoughtlessness, the automatic choices we made all along, make us realize how little power over our lives we have actually exerted. We didn't make conscious choices, and as a result we feel powerless and cheated of our opportunities. Even at this point, we can consciously begin choosing our lives, and recognizing and owning our past choices. We can recover our sense of ownership and power, even though we cannot change the end. We can know that even when we were on automatic pilot, we were making the choices that created our lives, and that we have shaped them all along. Whatever happiness and satisfaction we have, we have ourselves created. We stop being disappointed because we no longer carry the illusions of eventual reward. Our lives are our creation. They belong to us and to no-one else, and that has to be enough.

Boundary exceptions

2009-01-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

“Rules” are values which prescribe or prohibit certain behaviors. We grow up with rules, but as adults few of us follow them rigidly. For the most part we follow our rules, but we sometimes allow ourselves to break them under certain conditions and engage in behavior that we might not normally condone. Of course, such exceptions determine the actual boundary of the rules.

Even in the law, rules are never completely rigidly enforced. Instead of mechanically imposing a consequence on a breach of rules, a human being such as a judge can consider the particular circumstances. For instance, we have a rule forbidding murder. Courts have held, however, that under certain conditions the consequences of breaking the rule can be modified or an “exception” made. Such a condition might be that the murderer was experiencing a strong emotion, such as passion, anger or fear. While we may punish a premeditated or "cold-blooded" murder to the fullest extent, a murder based on strong emotion might be assessed a lesser penalty. The rule forbidding murder may be granted an exception under these circumstances.

I chose this particular example because the “strong emotion exemption” to laws is based on a common to many cultures. We tend to excuse to some degree an otherwise illegal act if it was motivated by sufficiently strong emotion. We believe an emotion that is strong enough may justify a temporary exception to our rule. The “strong emotion” exception is of particular importance in understanding human behavior.

It's as if we said to ourselves "I will never do X", and then privately to ourselves, we add "…unless I'm very angry/frightened/depressed/sexually-aroused”. As a result, the test of all our rules is whether there is a hidden or at least unspoken "exception". As a psychotherapist, I want to know the exceptions to someone's rules and boundaries; I want to know under what conditions they are willing to make an exception to a rule they espouse. Often people are unaware of their own exceptions to their rules, or they may take it for granted that “strong-enough” emotion” automatically grants an exception.

We talk about strong "justifying" emotions as if they were something that "comes over us", that overwhelms our judgment, as if they were something outside of our control. There are truly moments like that, such as in catastrophic events or in combat, but these are fortunately rare. Other than in such emergent or catastrophic situations, much of our extreme emotion is self-induced. We increase or sustain an emotion by going over and over a series of thoughts justifying our emotions. We call this tactic “ramping”. With each repetition of these thoughts our emotion grows stronger until we stop it or until we allow it to reach the level of intensity that "justifies" breaking the rule.

A patient of mine, "Fred", who was driving on the highway was "cut off" by another driver, in what Fred felt was a rude and inconsiderate way. He was outraged. He followed the driver almost sixty miles, all the way "steaming" over his mistreatment. He pulled in behind the other driver in a parking lot, went over to the man's car, opened the door and pulled him out, with the intention of "teaching him a lesson". However, the man obviously didn't even know what Fred was talking about, and was frightened. Fred suddenly recognized the inappropriateness of his own behavior, let the man go, went back to his car and drove off. Later, in my office, Fred said "I drove 60 miles, enraged, ready to hit this guy, and he didn't even know he had done anything! That's just crazy! I don't know what's the matter with me. I would never hit another person."

Of course Fred would hit another person. His rule against hitting has an exception in it. He doesn't mention the exception because he doesn't like to think of himself as a person who hits others, but his exception is clear. If Fred feels sufficiently wronged, he goes over and over his “wrong” thereby becoming increasingly “righteously angry”. When angry enough, he allows himself an exception to his "no hitting" rule. A more precise description of what occurred shows that at the time of the “infraction”, Fred decided almost immediately that he was angry enough that he was justified in hitting the other driver. While he was driving, by going over and over his grievances, he was keeping his anger “ramped up” so that his anger could overcome his rule and allow him to strike a blow. It took a lot of energy to keep his anger going for an hour.

In the parking lot Fred realized that the offending driver was totally unaware of his driving infraction.. Another of Fred’s rules which conflicted with hitting someone popped up: "It's not right to hit someone who doesn't even know they've done anything wrong". His anger dissipated as he recognized that he had been wrong in his thinking. He no longer felt “justified” in breaking his rule. As a result, he stopped ramping his “righteous anger” to the exception point.

We can increase any emotion by ramping up in this way. Whatever the thoughts we have which create or renew our feeling, we can continue cycling through them over and over. Sometimes the rule we are considering breaking simply doesn’t fit our self-image. Someone who is normally proud of “self-control”, for instance, might mentally ramp up sadness in order to justify wallowing in self-pity or simply withdrawing for a while. In a more extreme (but not unusual) instance the self-pity might justify substance abuse or a suicidal gesture. A person who thinks of himself as “brave” might ramp up fearful thoughts in order to justify running away or “backing down”.

We might conceal our unspoken exceptions in order to hide our real intentions or plans. A depressed patient, for instance, might state that he would "never kill himself", but when pushed to state the "exceptions", said "… unless my wife left me... I couldn't stand that". Sometimes the exceptions are so clearly dishonest that the person doesn't admit them even to himself until after the exception has occurred. A married patient admitted to having sex with his wife's best friend, but commented that he "had had too much to drink, and besides, I didn't think my wife would ever find out." He would never have admitted his rationalization PRIOR to the unfaithfulness. It’s interesting to speculate what a marriage service would sound like if the prospective partners had to announce the exceptions to their vows.

The "ramping up" process is a familiar one in cognitive therapies. We use it to whip ourselves up emotionally in order to justify our breaking a rule/boundary. When we do so, we manipulate our own emotions in order to “motivate” our own behavior, rather than making a more rational and cognitive decision. Such apparently impulsive decisions, being dictated by a more primitive and emotional part of ourselves, tend to be of more or less poor quality. We may find ourselves doing things that at a less emotional time we would find unacceptable.

Stopping ourselves from “ramping” is easy to describe: We simply recognize cognitively the cyclic pattern of our "ramping" thinking and choose to break it. By doing so we stop creating more emotion and thereby protect ourselves from arriving at the point where our boundaries have exceptions. Without using strong emotion as a justification for action, we must make behavioral choices based on intellect and logic. Unfortunately, for many if not most of us, intellectual and logical choices do not provide very strong motivation. We may not be so accustomed to making choices coolly by an act of the will. However, by acting on our more mature values we strengthen them and our own emotional maturity. Knowing and admitting our exceptions is an important step in limiting or eliminating them, and every time we are able to do this, we move in the direction of greater emotional maturity.

Self-deception

2009-01-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

We can understand why people lie to each other. They lie for some sort of advantage, personal or financial; they lie to avoid disharmony or disagreement, to impress, to mislead. Why do we lie to ourselves?

As a psychotherapist, I spend a lot of time listening to people lie to and about themselves. Generally we lie to ourselves to maintain an image of ourselves more or less false to fact. We reassure ourselves that we are stronger, braver, more able to tolerate pain than we really are. We present to ourselves the image of ourselves we would like to have others see. We deny our age, appearance, weight, sadness, disappointment and grief. As when we lie to others, we lie to maintain a stable and manageable world, one in which we do not have to adapt nor change.

On a deeper level, we always know when we are lying to ourselves. It takes energy not to know what we know. Turning a blind eye to ourselves in spite of all the evidence is effortful.

I think it was Fritz Perls who said that change begins with who we are, not with who we want to be. We have to be willing to let go our fantasies of ourselves before we can recognize what we can or cannot change. So our conversations with others are full of dishonesty and pretense, as we try to present ourselves in accordance with our self-delusion. Others pretend to be deceived because it is easier, more comfortable, and certainly more socially acceptable to be dishonest. Besides, when we accept the dishonesty of another we have a sort of bargain that they, in turn, will accept our dishonesty in return. In this way our social and internal psychological systems remain stable and predictable.

People who promote instability and change in relationships do so by being honest and hopefully kind as well. Psychotherapists make a living by doing this, but loving friends can also serve this purpose. It takes a strong relationship to withstand much honesty, but any relationship that embodies honesty promotes change and growth. Kindness is optional in the encouragement of growth, but as I get older it seems to be a more and more important option.

Dreams in psychotherapy

2009-01-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

Many therapists, trained in the psychoanalytic tradition, have regarded dreams as a "royal road" to the unconscious mind. Much time has been spent in the clever and creative analysis of the dreams of patients. Patient dreams are said to be the production of some inner unconscious and highly creative voice, whose stories and creations cannot be understood by the dreamer but which seem to be couched in language understandable by the therapist.

Interestingly enough, the dreams seem to be tailored to the therapy. For instance, the patients of Jungian analyists have dreams full of Jungian symbols; patients of Freudian analysts have Freudian dreams, and so on. It appears that the dream is a communication specifically aimed at and couched in the specific language most meaningful to the receiver/analyst. From whom is the meaning concealed? The patient himself. So the patient has found a way to provide information to the therapist without having to understand it him(her)self.

It's easier to understand a dream as a somewhat dishonest form of communication in which the sender does not have to recognize nor take responsibility for the content. Such deception results in the therapist knowing more about the patient than the patient knows, and the therapist is thus cast in the expert/parental mode in relationship to the therapist.

Transcripts of early sessions of dream-oriented psychotherapy leave little doubt that the therapist can eaily train the patient to speak the therapist's professional language. Patients then become extraordinarily able to express themselves without having to recognize what it is they are expressing, leaving the therapist to translate for them.

How is the patient benefitted by this indirect form of communication? By keeping the dream symbolic and indirect, the patient is in a position to deny responsibility and ownership of the content of the dream. The all-knowing therapist (like the Sibyl of Greek times) can explain the content, unscrew the inscrutable, and have his/her position of authority confirmed.

I think it better to discourage the recounting of dreams in a therapy session. The time is better spent developing a relationship in which patients can become comfortable with their own inner life and with the therapist, enough, at least, to be able to tell their secrets more openly. Honesty and directness are attainable goals, and they bring lasting benefits of increasing self-honesty to the patient. In a good therapeutic relationship, there should be no areas that are too uncomfortable to be discussed.

Therapeutic relationships

2009-01-04T09:58:00.000-08:00

Back at the beginning of my practice as a psychotherapist, a patient once asked me why I was a therapist. I thought of several answers. Helping others is a good thing, I thought, an answer that would have pleased my grandmother. Bill, a therapist who was my consultant, laughed and said "Bullshit. It's an easy way to earn money sitting down". I thought at the time that his answer was both honest and clever. It certainly minimized altruistic and "helping" sorts of motives, both of which I was beginning to distrust. I now recognize that his answer was only partially true and in fact trivialized an important question: What does the therapist get out of doing therapy? Is it just money? Is there something wrong with enjoying one’s work?

Why had I learned to distrust altruism? Painful self-examination in my consultant’s office showed me how often other more selfish and personal motives were concealed behind the altruistic label. When I gave the "helping others" answer, I was concealing from the patient AND from myself the pleasure I got from imagining myself in a "superior" and knowledgeable position, of being the helper to a less wise person than myself. I liked the idea of being admired, of being thought of as wise. One of the problems with being paid off with admiration and humble gratitude is that there is no way to enforce being paid in that coin. My self-worth was entwined with the patient rewarding and reassuring me with gratitude. So the patient would gradually become aware that he or she owed me more than money, and that our contract had been somewhat dishonest from the beginning.

Bill's point, poorly made but valid, was that the patient owed us no reward of any kind other than money He meant we had no right to exploit patients who rely on us. The idea that the patient owes us something besides the fee, such as gratitude or admiration or even love, is a betrayal of the trust we rely on for conducting therapy. But we're not just in it for the money; Bill was wrong when he said that it was easy work. It's hard work, in fact. There are many easier ways to make money, but there are intangible rewards for me in addition to the money, even though those rewards don’t come directly from the patient.

On a surface level, it's important to me to believe that I help people, that in some way I help them diminish their suffering. On a more primitive level, I am rewarded as well by having the opportunity to gratify my interest in solving puzzles. Every time I see exactly how a patient’s previous life experiences, choices and thoughts give rise to present puzzling and complex behaviors, I have a sense of satisfaction. I see once again that there is after all a logic in human behavior. Behaviors that appear to be puzzling and even self-destructive are meaningful, sometimes in a primitive way, but they can be understood. No matter how irrational or even bizarre, they are not random. They are the direct outgrowth of decisions and choices the patient has made in the past. When the patient and I recognize this we have a sense of things falling into place and making sense. The patient recovers his sense of autonomy and power and feels less controlled by forces out of his awareness.

Patients begin the therapeutic relationship experiencing much of their own behavior as puzzling, illogical and painful. They have lost some of their sense of autonomy in their lives, and yet they do not see how they can behave differently. They experience important aspects of their lives as out of their control, and their self-deception conceals from them their own responsibility and their power to change. I often feel frustrated and alienated from them as their friends and families must be. I feel distanced by the apparent impossibility of understanding their behavior and feelings. Intellectually I am curious, then frustrated by their unwillingness to behave “reasonably”. The conflict appears to be initially between the patient and me, but is really inside the patient even though not clearly a part of their awareness. I struggle to understand them; they struggle to communicate with me more clearly, and in that struggle issues begin to clarify and emerge. The need to be honest, as honest as we can be with each other and ourselves, and at the same time to be understood by another human being, makes the therapeutic relationship more intense than others.

As time goes on and as the struggle continues, I begin to understand the patient more. Their behavior begins to make sense to me and to them. As we begin to see how the previous habitual and only partially conscious choices the patient has made have led them almost inescapably to where they now are, they begin to feel the freedom to make new choices. At the same time, I see increasingly how much alike we are, how human and essentially simple we are, and I feel re-connected to both the patient and the human race. Our struggle and attempt to be honest with each other reinforces and teaches us how to be connected.

I was recently re-reading Irv Yalom’s excellent book of therapeutic vignettes, Love’s Executioner. In particular I was struck by the recurrence of one theme: his finding a way to like and show liking to people who were not easily likable. More and more I notice that the patients who do the best in therapy, who make the most profound changes in their lives, are exactly the ones I find that I like. My liking for my patient grows with my understanding of the patient’s life. I wonder frequently if this capacity to find a way to like difficult people is something that characterizes competent therapists. Perhaps people only feel the freedom and confidence to change in an atmosphere of genuine liking and mutual respect.

In therapeutic relationships there is a built-in imbalance that is not tolerated in regular (i.e. not paid-for) relationships. In normal healthy friendships and within the intimate conversations that accompany them, there is a certain balance in the flow of revelation and honesty. We expect to share thoughts. We expect to take turns listening to one another. We need to experience mutual respect and equality of power or status in the relationship. The flow of help, understanding and tolerance must generally be two-way and over time it also must be in balance.

Therapeutic relationships, by their nature, are unbalanced. We need to find balance and reciprocity in our relationships, and when they are more one-sided, where the flow is predominantly one way, they can become toxic. Partners in unbalanced relationships experience increasing resentment and feelings of exploitation or alienation. The money or other value that changes hands serves an important role in maintaining the balance in therapeutic relationships, without which they eventually become toxic.

So Bill’s clever response has an important element of truth in it. What the patient owes me is only money. Money is an OK thing, but there are many ways to get it. What I get from the relationship (not the patient) is the chance to practice my craft well, the opportunity to grow in understanding, to solve riddles, and to become more connected to my own humanity and that of others. And it feels good to like people.

How Christmas creates unhappiness

2008-12-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

My strong opposition to Christmas is totally unrelated to its religious meaning. Christmas as it is popularly celebrated has little to do with religion but everything to do with merchandising. From the standpoint of Buddhist philosophy it is the worst day of the year, not on "moral" but on practical grounds: owning things makes us unhappy.

Especially in the U.S., people have been lead to believe that happiness and a good family life are tied up with the purchase of all kinds of goods. Yet the reality is that after Christmas we have a sizable increase in depression and unhappiness, as the promise we believe in fails to come true. We are not happier after Christmas. In fact, the more we have, the less likely we are to be content and happy. This outcome is totally unrelated to over-spending and debt, which only adds to and perhaps conceals the real problem.

I'm not encouraging poverty and abstinence. I am discouraging the belief that owning things has anything to do with happiness. We already know that when we own things, they own us as well. Not only do we have to make payments initially or over time, we have to take care of the things, store the things, dispose of the things, and wait in vain for the happiness to start. We have to deal with the disappointment and disillusion that follow in greater or lesser degree.

But there's always next year, while we look for storage space for our happiness-makers.

Terrorism as a "Kick Me" Game

2008-11-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

In Transactional Analysis we note a pattern of interpersonal behavior which is (unfortunately) quite common, called the "Kick Me" game. In TA a game is defined as a limited and predictable series of moves with a reaction and payoff. Without going into technical details and analysis, imagine the following sequence of events: Person A makes irritating comments, sarcastic remarks and mildly hurtful statements over a period of time to Person B. The goal of this irritation is to provoke a response from Person B that is "out of proportion" to the most recent irritation from A. When B reacts strongly, A is able to cast B in the role of villain. A has been "kicked". This is the goal of the game. A is now (comparatively) the good guy, and B is the bad. People do this all the time, in many circumstances, from playground to boardroom, in their attempts to get someone else "in trouble".

It's easy to see that terrorist attacks all over the world are operating by the rules of the "Kick Me" Game. They threaten, frighten, provoke, cause small-scale tragedies and deaths. They hope for a large, dramatic response from those they attack, thus enabling the terrorists to characterize those who respond as villains. These terrorists then become the Victims, through their own actions. As a tactic, when it works, it unifies both sides and simplifies the conflict. "Sides" are taken, people are polarized into opposing groups. Small splinter groups of terrorists benefit by such unification, validating their position and even raising funds for future attacks.

In reality, there is little the terrorist groups can do that is actively so harmful or dangerous that an entire nation is endangered. Their attacks are painful and people die, which is not a minor issue, but there is no chance that their attacks can cause the fall of a nation. By not responding, we minimize their effectiveness, even while mourning the dead. It has always been possible for people to hurt other people, and rarely is there any way of stopping it; war has not been particularly successful in reducing pain and conflict.

Taking Things Personally

2008-11-22T09:21:00.000-08:00

Lately, in our therapy groups, Elaine (my wife and co-therapist, an LCSW) and I have been considering the cognitive structure of "taking things personally" or "getting one's feelings hurt". Much of the conflict in close relationships seems to start with this issue. Some time ago we realized that we had taken this expression at face value and focused our attention on the conflicts and difficulties that followed, rather than on the starting point.

Let me begin with an example. Maxine has had a difficult day, and comes through the front door with a slam and a muttered curse, having just realized that she left some important papers at her office. Her husband, George, looks up and sees her angry face as she looks at him. Immediately he says "What's the matter? Have I done something wrong?"

Maxine, whose mind was on the missing papers, replies with considerable irritation, "No!". She goes into the bedroom to change clothes and prepare to drive back to the office. George, following her into the bedroom, feels defensive and on guard. "Are you sure?" he asks uncertainly. Now she is becoming irritated with George. "Didn't you hear me say so? Just leave me be!"

George is now sure she is angry at him, and he is not sure what he has done wrong, but he has been looking forward to her return and is now frustrated as well. "I'll leave you be, all right," he replies, and stamps out of the room. He retires to his favorite chair and sulks. Both George and Maxine are angry and primed for a fight.

It's interesting to consider in detail the thought processes involved in the initial stages of the interaction. Maxine is not even thinking about George as she enters the house. He sees her frustration and out of his anxiety constructs a worst-case scenario, i.e. that her anger is about him and some failure on his part. He adds a further extension to this catastrophe with his fear that their relationship is in trouble and that somehow it is his fault. His only plan is to ask Maxine to explain. At this point he becomes another frustration for Maxine, and her anger turns to include him. Her tone of voice confirms his fear, i.e. that she is angry at him about something. He responds with a veiled threat and retreats to sulk, since he has no idea what the "fight" is about. His "sulk" is intended to communicate to her that this is her problem and that he is ready to fight or to just withdraw.

Why does George assume that Maxine is angry at him? George is frequently anxious, which means that he is in the habit of "catastrophizing" every event, looking for the worst possible outcome so that he can prepare for it. For him, the worst case scenario he has constructed to account for Maxine's anger involves him. This particular scenario has at its core the fear that he is failing in some major way to be the partner Maxine needs and that the relationship will break or end. His readiness to believe this possibility is based on earlier failed relationships. He is ready to blame himself for any potential failure, and at the same time to defend himself against any such blame.

Nothing hurts us unless we are prepared to believe in its truth. No accusation or attack can wound us without our consent; we have to believe that there is at least some truth in the attack or we dismiss the attack as meaningless. Think, for instance, of the things that people could say that would hurt you, and you will note that they are all things that at some time have concerned you about yourself. Then think of some totally inappropriate and untrue accusation. In the first instance, the things that people could say that might hurt you are things you "worry" about, that you consider to be possibly true. In the second instance, you would experience the attack as basically futile, because you do not fear that it might be true. This kind of attack is equivalent to telling a Nobel Prize winner that s/he is stupid; the person would not be so much hurt as puzzled at the inappropriateness of the comment. But calling an overweight person “fatty” is guaranteed to result in unhappiness.

Our internal Parent/value structure is the gateway through which accusations have their power. For this reason, people who know us and our secret doubts and guilts can more easily damage us that strangers can. Attacks aimed at our known “triggers” are usually successful (in the sense that they result in our being hurt or angry). This is why battles between intimate partners are so likely to be taken personally. In a sense, we collude with the attacker in attacking ourselves, or we do not and thus take no harm. In the example above, George is ready to believe that he has done something wrong, and thus is vulnerable to the interpretation of her frustration as somehow his responsibility. She did not attack him, but in a sense, George attacked himself. Even in the instance in which the other person deliberately does in fact attack the other person in the relationship, the "consent" of the victim is required for damage to the ego to occur, and the damage, in a sense, is self-inflicted with the active encouragement of the other person.

It is instructive analyze an instance of taking things personally between you and a loved one. List all the actions, thoughts and behaviors that were elements in the conflict. Being careful to be as honest as possible, look for the moments of self-doubt and fear and the content of your thoughts.

“No-suicide decisions”

2008-10-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

The problem with having an option to kill oneself is that it is effective in reducing anxiety without solving the basic problem. The suicide option is a plan of action, and like all action plans, functions to reduce the anxiety that arises from having a problem with no easy solution. A reduction in anxiety also reduces the motivation to find another and better solution. Making a “no-suicide decision” will sharply increase the anxiety-level. The increase in anxiety motivates us to find a new solution to life’s problems

Recently a battered wife whose alcoholic husband regularly threatened her life told me she could stay in the marriage because “if it got too bad, I can always kill myself”. The thought of having a “way out” through suicide reduced her anxiety at the thought of being “trapped” and made it possible for her to continue living in that situation. The effect of making a no-suicide decision is fairly obvious: 1) her anxiety level is going to rise sharply since she no longer has “a way out”; 2) the rise in anxiety level should trigger other solutions that do not involve suicide.

Imagine yourself for a moment in her position. You can find the situation barely tolerable by reminding yourself that if the situation “gets too bad” that you can always kill yourself. Your counselor tells you that if you make the no-suicide decision, you may have another 30 years in that situation.

The counselor then asks “Can you imagine enduring your situation another thirty years or so?”

You reply “Absolutely not!”.

This vignette illustrates the power of the no-suicide decision to provoke a new decision to change things.

The no-suicide decision has been described in other articles by myself and others, and is quite simple to describe technically, if somewhat more difficult to put into practice. A person who indicates their willingness to make such a decision is asked simply to read the following words from a piece of paper or from a blackboard: “I may feel like killing myself AND I will not.” The person making the decision should be told not to change the wording. Note that the statement deliberately separates feelings from behaviors. It is important because patients frequently feel they are unable to control their emotions and thus would be making a “false promise”.

The therapist then points out that only the client can tell whether or not the statement is true. The client may be asked to read the statement without meaning it, in order to clarify the difference between commitment and insincerity. The person can be invited to “Say it again and mean it”, but more often the patient will spontaneously carry out this action. I always ask the patient if they felt “solid” with the decision or if they were not sure if they meant it. If they indicate uncertainty, I suggest they spend some time thinking about it and discuss it with family, and at a later time with me. It is not useful to bring pressure to bear on the patient, since inducing some kind of insincere compliance is counterproductive.

It is important to emphasize that this decision is NOT a contract of some kind. It is not an agreement between client and counselor. It is not a “promise”. Contracts and promises can be broken. The no-suicide decision is not between the client and anyone. It is not dependent upon anything. Sometime their heightened anxiety causes them to look for “loopholes”. I suggest they add the following: “If I find a loophole in my decision, I will not take it”.

I am intrigued by the fact that making such a decision is so difficult without the presence of another person. Why can’t I tell what I mean when I’m simply thinking to myself, or even talking aloud while driving alone? I do know that the moment such thoughts are expressed to another person actively listening whose opinion I respect, I can tell whether I am being truthful or just playing with thoughts.

Bear in mind that the no-suicide decision is not for the benefit or reassurance of the therapist. It is to allow the patient to force him/herself into a position in which s/he will be under pressure to make changes rather than continue temporizing. Patients sometimes want to engage in pseudo-philosophical discussions rather than actually make a commitment. These tend to be the same patients that talk and talk in therapy without actually doing anything. “Talking about” for them is instead of taking action, rather than preparatory for action. I have been known to suggest suspending therapy for a period of time to “give them time to think things over”.

I strongly believe that patients in therapy with open suicidal options will do very little except talk. If therapy is a place in which people wish to change, an open suicidal option precludes that possibility. In early stages of therapy clients are often involved in philosophical exploration, rumination, self-examination. They are not ready to change; they are in what Prochaska calls “pre-contemplation”. I want to be clear that no-suicide decisions are necessary only in the stage of therapy in which change is the goal.

A more serious technical difficulty is in the timing of suggesting a no-suicide decision. Very early in the therapy, when the relationship of therapist and client is still new and tenuous, it is easier for the client to terminate rather than face the anxiety and discomfort of change. By suggesting the no-suicide decision too soon, the therapist may be asking the patient to give up a tactic that for some time has provided the only “way out” of a difficult or impossible life. Why should the patient believe the therapist is competent and has something to offer that is better?

Clients would not come to therapy if they were simply and purely suicidal. They would be dead. They are in therapy because, whether or not they know it, they are significantly ambivalent. They want to have a life but fear it. They fear they won’t be competent to solve their important problems. They fear that a solution to their problems may require a radical rethinking of their values and beliefs. They may not be ready; they may not be able; they may lack the courage.

A caveat: Therapists who have open suicidal options themselves will be generally ineffective in getting no-suicide decisions from patients.

Suicidal Life Styles

2008-10-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

Some suicides happen impulsively. Some suicides are deliberate and result from a rational decision to end physical suffering and pain. Many people have occasional suicidal impulses and do not act upon them, and some people endure physical pain and suffering for lengthy periods of time without seriously considering suicide. In this article I want to examine the frame of mind in those for whom suicide IS an option, whether or not such people actually kill themselves.

A surprisingly large number of people have an open “suicide option”. This option is a conscious willingness to consider death as a legitimate solution to a difficult problem. If you ask whether suicide is an option for such people, they can give you a direct answer, because it is always a conscious choice. They see suicide as a legitimate and reasonable solution to life’s problems, at least under certain circumstances. I have for a long time been interested in the developmental histories of people with suicidal options, and I have noted certain consistencies, both in their historical development and in their subsequent life styles.

To carry out a decision to kill oneself the suicide option has to be actually open. A close friend of mine, facing a certain and painful death from cancer, decided quite rationally to end his life. When the moment came, however, he discovered to his own surprise that he was quite unwilling to actually do it. Another psychologist friend (who had been in therapy for many years with little change) told me that “knowing I can always kill myself is the only thing that keeps me going.”

For a suicide to take place, there must be as a minimum an open suicidal option. Some people have this option, and others do not. Where does it come from? Many psychotherapists have asserted that the decision to die is made in childhood, when it is seen as a solution to an intolerable and inescapable situation (Haiberg, Sefness and Berne, 1963; Boyd, 1972; Drye, Goulding and Goulding, 1973). It is unfortunately not difficult to find instances of deliberate suicides carried out by children.

Children have a limited capacity to understand the real nature of death. They also have a very limited ability to deal with difficult or even unbearable situations, such as a brutal or sexually predatory parent or total abandonment. They have few choices in reality. They can’t move away or seek shelter from other sources; they are in fact helpless. Their resultant anxiety can be overwhelming when they see no way out of their suffering.

One way they may find of reducing anxiety is to make a plan that they can actually carry out. This decreases the feeling of helplessness that makes the pain so unbearable. When children discover that suicide is a choice they can make and actually carry out, their anxiety is relieved, though the subsequent depression and sadness is not. The price of that decision (which I will discuss later) is not obvious. It is important to note that the function of the suicidal decision/option is an immediate reduction in anxiety.

Holloway (1973) described the suicidal decision in children as an “escape hatch”. It takes the form “If things get bad enough, I can always kill myself”. People with this escape hatch frequently find this thought passing through their minds. It becomes something of a crutch, used consciously to decrease anxiety in a difficult situation. As such, it is reassuring and rewarding, a reaffirmation that the person is neither powerless or helpless.

It is necessary to understand how important the suicidal “crutch” is in decreasing anxiety. As an anxiety reducer, the suicidal decision is constantly reinforced, even in situations not in themselves critical. It is actively seen as a solution to many of life’s problems. There is a price, however. Keeping this option open requires that the person be able to see life as something that can always be left. To get too attached, to love too deeply, to become too successful, to be too happy, make leaving life more difficult.

Many times I see people (including clients) back away from positive experiences, avoid intimacy and love, sabotage success, but tolerate a mediocre and lackluster and “safe” existence. They do so to protect their “solution”, because reducing their anxiety is more important to them than chancing success and failure. They seem to live as if they cannot move too far away from the graveyard or the “safety” of the grave. To be ready to go on a trip, one must keep one’s bags packed. They seem to believe that real happiness would somehow leave them trapped, a thought they find unbearable. Death becomes a security blanket, a promise of escape. But it is also an escape from life, an avoidance of any passionate commitment to make things better.

Others allow themselves more happiness and success, but in their minds they attach a condition for continuing to live. They remind themselves that “if things go wrong”, meaning if they lose their money or their life-style or their loved partner, they can exercise their suicidal option. There is a tentative quality to their happiness and success; their willingness to continue in life is based on the chance that life will continue to meet their demands. No one with a suicidal option, placed in the situation of the Swiss Family Robinson, would have the endurance or will to create a good life from disaster. If life becomes overly painful, they neither make things better nor endure them with grace. People associated with them are frequently aware of the tenuousness of their commitment to life.

The result of this half-hearted life style is that the person with the suicidal “escape hatch” is very prone to depression. They are frequently aware that there is something missing, that somehow their happiness and love are incomplete and unsafe. Their marriages, their careers, their education, their therapy all have the mark of limited commitment. Because of this failure to commit, they have a sense of alienation from others, a distance from life that isolates them.

So we see four kinds of consequences for keeping the suicidal option open:

1) A general failure to commit wholly, to connect to others wholeheartedly;

2) A basic passivity toward the ills of life and an unwillingness to commit oneself to correct them;

3) An overall pessimism about life sufficiently intense to make the fantasy of death an effective reliever of anxiety;

4) A willingness to trade the anxiety over being helpless and abandoned for a general mild and predictable depression and alienation.

In the next part I plan to discuss how one gives up the suicidal option. The references cited in this note are available on request.

Values clarification as a psychotherapy

2008-09-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

There are a wide variety of values in the Parent ego state, ranging from primitive to sophisticated. When the values in the Parent conflict with one another, there seems to be no built-in sense of discrepancy. Something has to bring the values together to be considered in the Adult. Events, conversations, information, education, experience... any of these things can cause the person to become aware suddenly that they have conflicting values, and therefore conflicting behaviors.

When the majority of the values present in the Parent support one of the conflicting values, it's fairly easy and quick for the person to make a choice and reinforce that value. The conflict may still exist, since there is no way to erase Parent beliefs and values. But the person will experience decreasing conflict as the person begins to act on their chosen value. However, when there is no clear weight of value and choice on the side of one of the conflicting values, the situation does not readily resolve, and the conflict in fact becomes more acute since it is now more conscious (i.e. within the purview of the Adult).

Moreover, when the person attempts to resolve their internal conflict, they are limited to the problem-solutions about which they already know. If their repertoire of problem-solutions is limited, their ability to change behaviors and resolve their internal values conflict in a new way is equally limited. This is why people with personality disorders are so rigid and inflexible in solving new problems.

The job of the growth therapist seems to be that of bringing the person's awareness to conflicting values, and to assist them to find new solutions to the conflict. This frequently is a very difficult and painful process, especially when the person has a great deal of emotional investment in the "wrong" value. It is not usually effective for the therapist to take sides, but sometimes it's the only way the patient can find a way to move on.

Another look at Growth Psychotherapy

2008-09-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

As clients talk with me about their behaviors, and perhaps more importantly, their desired behaviors, they reinforce the value systems that support the desired behavior. When the desired behavior is not carried out, the discrepancy between the two value systems increases. This results in an increasing degree of conflict internally. As the clients become more uncomfortable, their motivation to resolve the conflict increases, and the likelihood of changing their current behaviors to conform with the desired value system increases.

However, when the client has a limited repertoire of tactics with which to solve problems, the attempts to change behavior patterns often fail. Even with a very limited set of tactics (e.g. a client with a "personality disorder") if the tactics available are adequate to deal with the problem, the client can succeed in resolving the conflict fairly readily. But when the tactics available are inadequate to solve the problem, the discomfort rapidly becomes more acute.

In this latter case, the therapist must find ways to demonstrate or teach the necessary tactical skills to solve the problem The therapist cannot solve the problem directly, of course. But successful therapists are able to teach the techniques for competent problem solving so that the client can ultimately deal with the conflict.

Therefore it appears that this form of therapy has at least two stages: one in which the client becomes more uncomfortable with the discrepancy between their actual behaviors and their desired behaviors, and a second stage in which the client may have to learn new techniques with which to change their behaviors and find new solutions.

This approach to therapy is not aimed at symptom reduction, as cognitive-behavioral therapy is, for instance. In fact, increasing discomfort may be a sign of the efficacy of the therapeutic approach. Sometimes we have to become unhappy with ourselves to develop the desire to change who we think we are.

Presidential un-choices

2008-09-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

There needs to be a way in which US voters can express their dissatisfaction with the choices they have been offered. Rarely has there been a better instance of this need than in the upcoming presidential elections.

Of course we can simply not vote. This, however, plays into the hands of the political machine, giving them even more power. The political managers would probably welcome our abdication from the machinery.

I would like to propose that we develop a system whereby we can responsibly express our unwillingness to accept the situation they present. For instance, ballots could have "None Of The Above" as a choice. Or a constitutional amendment could require that a majority of registered voters vote in the election and the election be declared invalid if that majority is not present. There are a number of ways this can be accomplished that would insure that elected officials really are the result of a majority of the electorate.

On the positive side, the political machine would have to pay attention to the voters in a new way. They would not want an expensive election to result in a recall. A new slate of candidates would have to be proposed and more importantly, a LOT of new "deals" made with the people who provide the money. On the negative side, the amount of time and money that a brand-new election would cost creates a real management problem. There's no way to predict how long the replacement/revote process would take.

Personally, I want to take a positively negative action. It's not enough to simply not vote. I want my discontent with my choices to register directly. I want to vote against inadequate or incompetent potential managers. I don't want a choice between kinds of crap. I want to directly reject it and force political parties to recognize how badly they serve the American people, and even for them to pay for their mistakes.

In other posts I have suggested the presidential process is corrupt from the onset, in that no candidate can possibly raise the funds for a winning campaign without taking money from organizations that have an agenda not in the interests of the general public.

When do I get to vote against and express my extreme dissatisfaction with the current process?

Another Modest Proposal

2008-07-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

People are living longer, and they have more medical bills. This is generally a good thing, especially for older people like me. However, the funds for the available medical help are limited, and there are many instances in which people are denied medical help that might save their lives because there are simply insufficient funds.

I object to using public funds to provide medical assistance to people who don't deserve it. It seems to me that when people engage in behavior which they know will cause illness or death, they should not be covered for medical expenses by Medicare. Examples are easy: Smokers should not be covered for illnesses that are the direct result of smoking, such as emphysema or lung cancer. Motorcyclists who ride without helmets should not be covered for head injuries sufferred in a motorcycle accident. Drug abusers should not receive coverage for drug-related illnesses. And so on.

I don't object to people being irresponsible. I object to being required to subsidize the medical problems caused by their irresponsibility. I object to responsible people being denied medical services because the money that those services would cost have been spent on people who voluntarily undertook the risks of their behavior.

We are going to have to deny some medical services because of fund shortages anyway. I am only proposing that we handle this proactively and decide that we can't afford to subsidize self-destructive habits and hobbies.

The fallacy of romantic love

2008-06-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

We had several marriages in the family in the last year or so. Grown children, grandchildren, all in love, all getting married. It's charming and even touching to watch. They promise to love and honor one another. They clearly feel passionately about one another. They announce that they will love each other forever.

From that last sentence, you might easily think that love has something do with getting married and with staying married. We're in an age of romance. We like the idea of passionate feelings sweeping inhibitions away. We like the fantasy that such feelings can endure "forever". People "fall in love" and get married on the basis of such passion and frequently expect to stay married on that basis. The success rate for that belief system is not very high. We have begun to recognize that romantic love is not a good basis or predictor for a lasting marriage. In fact, we might find ourselves singing "What's love got to do with it?"

Part of our difficulty, as usual, lies in the multiple meanings of the word "love". Romantic love is a feeling, and like all feelings, waxes and wanes with time. Usually it includes a fantasy of a perfect union, a closeness unmatched since before our birth. It thrives on mutual admiration and on the capacity to ignore or discount flaws in the other person. Being thought lovable, even being thought perfect and wonderful, was (and is) a pretty intoxicating experience. In particular, when the participants had previously fairly low self-esteem, being in a "romantic" relationship in which they were seen as flawless and perfect had a disproportionately huge effect on their ego. That kind of love, romantic love, can be addictive in the extreme. When romantic love is combined with sexual passion it is one of the most exciting and gratifying experiences one can have.

However, romantic love is not only a feeling that passes and changes as feelings always do, it is based on a fantasy of perfection and mutual adoration that can't be sustained in the real world. It doesn't take long until the image of perfection begins to show signs of damage. When marriages are based on total mutual admiration, they eventually (and usually sooner rather than later) fail. Small wonder that when reality re-enters the picture and the illusion of personal perfection is lost, the person may find him/herself looking for a fix elsewhere. The result is frequently infidelity or perhaps divorce and serial monogamy. The search for the fantasied ideal romantic partner can go on episodically forever.

People in a romantically loving relationship don't necessarily really love each other as individuals, flawed and human. They love the admiration they receive, and they are passionately grateful to the other person for loving them and for the huge ego-boost that such admiration causes. When one or the other person begins to focus on the flaws in their partner, the fantasy of being perfect in their eyes is destroyed, and the disappointment and accompanying anger is sometimes surprising and sudden. All relationships based solely on romantic love are doomed to failure. There is nothing wrong with romantic love. It is simply a terrible basis for an enduring, long-term relationship.

There are other kinds of love than "romantic". It's a shame we use the same word for both unhealthy ("romantic") relationships and the most positive and healthy relationship two people can have. The confusion causes many wrecked lives and much misery. Healthy forms of love have been described many times and in a variety of ways, which I won't bother repeating here. It suffices to say that when we use the word "love" in a healthy relationship, it includes the willingness and even desire to put the other person's welfare in a place of equal importance to one's own. Healthy loving relationships are intimate, trusting and affectionate. Healthy love involves a commitment, not a temporary feeling, and because commitments can be permanent, can remain constant. Loving feelings come, go and return in a healthy relationship but the committed relationship remains constant.

In our romantic age, "falling in love" seems to be a prerequisite for marriage. However, it wasn't that long ago (in my grandparents' youth) when couples married first and developed a lasting relationship later. Many or most of those marriages lasted the lifetime of the partners. "Arranged marriages" didn't require romantic love. They were working partnerships in a difficult world that helped both partners survive on a higher level than they could have achieved alone. The workload was divided between them. In many cases the partners developed a strong, respectful and genuinely loving relationship over time. In other cases, the partners sought the romantic love to which they felt entitled in other relationships outside the marriage.

Among other things, successful marriages are business partnerships. As in all partnerships, workloads must be balanced and rebalanced. Mutual trust and respect is required and have to be earned as well as given. Happily married partners have open-eyed, realistic love AND like for each other, and such liking is harder to find than romantic love by a long shot. Liking one's partner, as I am considering it here, is something that necessarily develops over time. When couples have a romantic love to start their relationship, perhaps the fantasy can buy them the time it takes to fall in "like" with their partner, and then the relationship has a chance at enduring. However, romantic love is a weak reed to lean on; it has an expiration date somewhere in the near future.

The Buck Stops Where?

2008-06-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

I remember when the then President of the United States had a sign on his desk that read "The Buck Stops Here". Harry Truman recognized that no matter who gave him information or how he obtained it, the final responsibility for acting on that information was his, and his alone. He did not rely on the doctrine of "plausible denial". The buck simply stopped there.

Now we have a President who acted on flawed and erroneous information. It seems likely that he knew the information was unreliable at best, but for whatever reasons, he used the WMD idea to defend the aggression against Iraq. Now his support staff are acknowledging that their information was wrong, wrong to the point of raising issues of criminal culpability. Why does the buck not stop with Bush?

Having made a major error that cost many lives, he can, of course, dump the blame on his staff, his support staff, CIA and the like. He undoubtedly will, having neither the integrity nor honor of Harry Truman. But. HE acted on that information. It seems clear that a more honorable course of action would be for him to resign. I would prefer to see him impeached with the potential of criminal charges being placed against him. A resignation, however, would restore at least a trace of honor and the remnants of dignity to an increasingly tarnished and tattered office.

Perhaps it is time to begin thinking of reorganizing the election process. The Electoral College system is certainly inequitable and no longer an appropriate means. A four-year term of office allows a President whose reputation and effectiveness are damaged beyond repair to stay in office, like a corpse in a wheelchair, for far too long. Perhaps we could have a system, like the English (in some ways) that would allow for a popular vote of no-confidence, that would require the current government to step down and new elections to be held. If we had such a procedure in place, how long do you think Bush would have been able to remain in office?

Time and past time to resign, Mr. Bush. The best thing you can do for the country, your party and yourself, is to leave office now.

Death rates in Iraq vs. US

2008-06-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

Suppose the following imaginary study: A cohort of American men and women living in the US are chosen to match the characteristics of the equivalent group of soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan. Over a one-year period the death rates of the two groups are compared, and it is hypothetically found that the death rates of the US-bound cohort are actually higher than that of the group in Iraq. The US cohort had a higher death rate due to drugs, car accidents, shootings, and the other usual issues that abound among the young everywhere.

So it might turn out that there are FEWER deaths in the military overseas than in the equivalent group in the US, meaning that military service might prove to be safer than young people left on their own here. If that were the case, would your (or my) position regarding the "war" in Iraq change? In other words, would your position regarding the appropriateness of the Iraq war change if it developed that young people were actually safer there than here? Why would it? Or why wouldn't it?

Religion and Magic

2008-06-03T13:29:00.001-07:00

It seems pretty obvious that people who profess to be religious fall into several categories. For some, the way of life prescribed by their religion is important in its own right. Their religious beliefs are also an ethical and personal stance. The supernatural part of their belief system is not central to them; they rarely spend much time or energy attempting to make sense out of a supernatural world-view which exists independently of the physical laws of time and space.

For others, religion is simply a socially-acceptable way of believing in magic and the supernatural. This group of people believes that they are individually or as a group "special" and have some kind of entitlement to transcend the laws of reality. They believe they get "special dispensation" and that they can work magic on the universe, causing it to behave as they want it to. No matter how rarely that works, it works by sheer chance often enough that their belief is reinforced. When their prayers or magical chants are not answered as they want, they believe that they have done something wrong or that God (or whoever they believe is "in charge") is refusing their request.

In any case, the magical believers have a special relationship to the universe. They pray for rain, for health, for blessings, for success, for their personal (and frequently petty) little wants and desires. They pray that they will get a job, that someone will get fired, that they will win the lottery, that they won't get caught at whatever they're doing. It's magic, just simply magic. It has NOTHING to do with religious belief. They don't understand that prayer is not about changing the universe to fit their personal needs, that instead prayer is a behavior intended to put them in a proper frame of mind to deal with what comes next in their lives.

It seems to me that the vast majority of people professing religious belief belong to the latter group. They are essentially still primitive in their moral and ethical beliefs, still naive about how the laws of nature work, feeling special and "entitled". Most of them don't even pretend to live according to the rules of their religion, because for them religion is about getting what they want, not about living "right." They are the same people who buy lottery tickets, who gamble at Las Vegas, who believe in their hearts that since they are "special" they will get a better deal than the rest of us. It's amazing that in spite of all the evidence they never seem to get discouraged.

Placebos

2008-05-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

The last post, regarding experimental design and placebo effects, got me thinking about all the "cures" that have been superseded throughout medical and psychiatric history with newer and presumably "better" cures. I recall reading of instances in which schizophrenia was "cured" through psychotherapy or re-parenting or...

Of course, schizophrenia results from a genetic predisposition. It is a physical condition, not a psychological illness. Still, there are reports of people recovering from schizophrenia. One of the few longitudinal studies that spanned over 50 years (my recollection is not perfect here) showed that almost 30% of accurately-diagnosed schizophrenics were eventually no longer schizophrenic. The concordance rate of schizophrenia between identical twins is around 90%, and that's with identical genes. So there is (or are) additional factors that enable the gene to express or to stop expressing, and, of course, we don't know what they are.

Setting aside, for the moment, the issue of how genes get activated or inactivated, people throughout the centuries have reported themselves (or been reported by others) as "cured" of a variety of illnesses and disorders that we KNOW were not treated effectively. "Bleeding" people as a medical technique had many adherents for centuries, and there were many people who believed they had been successfully treated in this manner.

The fact is that we do not know, even remotely, how the body cures itself from otherwise major or deadly diseases. We read about someone recovering from a 100% fatal cancer and living for many years, but we have no idea what the mechanism for this might be. The human body has mechanisms and modes of operation we can't consciously call upon. "Hysterical strength", in which someone under the right kind of circumstances can exert forces normally totally out of our range of function, has been known for a long time.

The "placebo effect" includes our ability to function in these extraordinary ways, and it is apparently fueled by belief or conviction, even mistaken beliefs and erroneous convictions.

2008-05-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent the following:
Harry, I'd be interested in a skeptical take on the following: I stand face toface with someone, an arm's length apart. He puts his arm straight out from the shoulder, palm up, resting his wrist on my shoulder (his right wrist on my left shoulder). I tell him I am going to try to bend his straightened arm, and he is to resist as much as he can. I cup my hands from both sides of his arm over the inside of his elbow and pull down hard, trying to get his elbow to bend downward. Depending on the person's size and strength, I have to use more or less force, but I can always get the elbow bent at least 60 degrees, usually more.

We then reset in exactly the same position with the same task as before. This time, however, he is instructed to visualize 'energy' flowing up from the earth, through the soles of his feet, up his trunk, into his arm and out through his fingertips and beyond, like a five-nozzled fire hose shooting out water under high pressure. He is told not to focus on resisting, but simply on maintaining the visualization. Once he indicates he is ready, I try again to bend his elbow, and I can't, no matter how much pressure I put on it.

I have done this dozens of times, with all kinds of people, with myself and/or others as subjects. Aside from whatever psychobabble and metaphors are used to describe what happens, the result is the same every time.The only "objective" difference is that the person is apparently thinking differently from one trial to the next; how does that make them (apparently) stronger?

This is a great example of the kind of incomplete thinking for which scientfic rigor was invented. Imagine that you wanted to test the hypothesis that some kind of "energy" could be used by some sort of"mental control" as described above. The null hypothesis is that there is no such effect apart from that produced bythe belief itself. To test this and eliminate experimenter and subject bias, you would want to have a double blind experiment. This would be one in which neither the subject nor the "tester" would know what exactly was happening.

If the effect was only produced when both parties to the experiment knew which experimental condition was in place, you would know that the effect was the result, not of the experimental condition, but of the belief/credulity of the parties in the experiment. That is, of course, exactly how the experiment described by my friend works. What you observe,therefore, is NOT some mystical and unexplained force occurring through some sort of equally ill-described mental energy, but the "placebo" effect itself. The amount ofenergy difference in the two conditions described is exactly the definition of the amount of energy produced by a belief system itself.

My friend has come upon a perfect demonstration of the placebo effect. What you believemakes a difference, not in the way the universe operates, but in how you operate. Occam's Razor states that when there are two hypotheses that explain the same data, you should be biased in favor of the simplest. It is usually stated in the form "Do not multiply complexities". In practice I think this means that a higher standard of experimental proof is required for an hypothesis that requires a radical change in the way the world is viewed. Sometimes that needs to happen, and our world-view is wrong and needs to change. But the level of proof needed is still a high level of proof. In the example given by my friend, the standard of proof that is offered is just the willingness of the participants to believe that "something" is happening. That standard of proof gets us belief in the supernatural, the phlogiston theory, humours, astrology, and the endless pantheon of silly and ill-informed beliefs that seem to constitute proof for much of the world.

Rationality may not seem to be enough, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place. Just because a ready explanation isn't available doesn't mean we should leap to an irrational one.

Election frustration

2008-05-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

We all know that we are not told enough valid information for us as individuals to have an opinion on political matters. Bush told us that war in Iraq was necessary because"they" had "weapons of mass destruction". What other information did we have?

Do we think we have more information about the war in Afghanistan? Do we think that opium/heroin has anything to do with it? and if so, what? How are we supposed to have a valid opinion when we are not given information that is worth a fart in a windstorm?

That's why we have a representative government, rather than a true democracy. We vote for people that we have to trust to get all the information, even the information that is not available to us, so that they can vote as they think we would want them to. That's the theory. What's the checks-and-balances on this system? We have no way of knowing whether they voted in a way that represented their constituency. Essentially we have to trust them, trust the integrity, honor and sense of duty of our elected representatives.

Do other people have the same failure of trust that I do? If so, the problem is not a simple one, one in which electing different people will solve it. The problem is that there is no way to know whether a politician is voting as he believes we would vote if we had all the facts. We have to guess from outcomes and newspaper/tv articles.

So, what have we accomplished in Iran? Do we honestly believe that we can impose a representative and democratic government on people who want to follow religious leaders blindly? In the last 2000 or 3000 years, how many democratic governments have there been?
Particularly in the middle East, which in most relevant ways is still peopled by tribes battling for territory and water rights, where national boundaries are relatively recent and still relatively unimportant, where a winning tribe celebrates by killing as many as possible of the losing tribe, where there are no rights for those not members of your group, it is impossible to see how representative government would work. It doesn't even work that well here. And what gives us the right to try to impose our form of government on people who are not interested in democracy? What do we care what form of government they have?

The answer has to be that fighting for "democratic governments" in the middle East is the same as fighting against "weapons of mass destruction" in the Middle East. That's not why we're there, it's just why we're TOLD we're there. How much faith do we have that the secret reasons we are in the middle east and Afghanistan are good and valid? It's not so much that our leaders lie to us. There are probably good tactical and strategic reasons for doing that. It's that without ever, even eventually, knowing the REAL reasons, we can't decide whether our elected leaders are doing right or not.

I no longer believe that national elections serve a useful purpose. Changing from one set of dishonest and corrupt politicians to another is only marginally better than keeping the original group. Representative government is purely and simply an act of faith, and I seem to be in increasingly short supply of that item.

Accumulating feelings as evidence

2008-05-04T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's not good for us to "save up" bad feelings in order to justify an eventual explosion. When we do that, we accomplish nothing except to vent. The person we "explode" at simply sees us as being "emotional" and easily becomes defensive. No problem was ever solved while people were attacking and defending emotionally. Problems only get solved by thought, not by explosion, as far as I know.

But we notice when someone persistently and consistently criticizes us. When the issue remains the same over weeks or months, it is a specific single issue which is important and must be dealt with. On the other hand, when the criticism is constant but its content varies, the issue is not about a particular issue but is about us personally. In Transactional Analysis language, we begin to experience the criticisms not as "doing strokes", that is, negative strokes for specific behaviors, but as "being strokes", or criticisms of the whole person. There is a critical difference between the two kinds of strokes: "doing" strokes are limited to the behavior and gradually dissipate over time; "being" strokes are relatively permanent.

So when we begin to infer or guess that the negative comments made by the other person are about how we are as people, they become much more damaging to the relationship between us. It's one thing to gripe at someone because they forgot to get something at the grocery store; it's quite another to accuse them of being "thoughtless and inconsiderate". The former, a negative "doing" stroke, is fixed when we go back to the store, or is forgotten over a period of time. The criticism is not a personal one, and is really simply a request for a change in behavior. The latter stroke, that of being "thoughtless and inconsiderate", is a relatively permanent and attributive critism of the person to whom the comment is made. It has a permanent impact on the relationship and on one's expectations for future strokes.

As a result, in any important relationship, we are more attentive to "being" strokes than to "doing" strokes. When the negative comments and criticisms are for a variety of different behaviors, we begin to sense a deterioration in the relationship and a more and more toxic quality to the comments. When we "blow up", we are beginning to acknowledge that our relationship has become more toxic. We hope that this is not true and that "things can be fixed", but we are beginning to experience negative "being" strokes which in the long run are fatal to intimacy.

Relationships in which we are not liked are toxic. No one can live in an atmosphere of perpetual disapproval without emotionally withdrawing. Intimacy is not possible in such a relationship. It's important that we be careful with what we say to each other. We can and should listen to and sometimes give negative criticisms of behavior, but we should be careful in the extreme not to give negative "being" strokes, which leave permanent marks on the relationship and the person to whom they are given. And when we consistently criticize the other person for a variety of things, they begin to experience negative "being" strokes.

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but they will heal. Words can cut us deeply and can leave marks that simply never go away.