The Old Age Gang

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

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

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

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

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.