What's the matter with 'Shame'?

Lately I've seen some advertisements for workshops purporting to be in the service of banishing shame from people's lives.  The reasoning seems to be something like "If it feels bad, it must be bad".  I think this is a gross simplification, perhaps to help people or perhaps to provide a salable product. I propose to take a deeper look at shame and how it functions.  

Firstly, shame is a phenomenon that only exists in group settings.  If you were hopelessly alone on an island in the middle of an ocean, would shame be relevant to your experience?  Would you blush if you were nude in the open?  Would remembering some social gaffe you perpetrated earlier in your life embarrass you?  Probably not.  If you were giving a lecture to a hundred people and discovered that your fly was unzipped (assuming only for the moment that you are male) or loudly farted, would you be humiliated?

Shame appears when the unacceptable behavior is known to other people in your group.  To feel shame you would have to have done something others in your group would find unacceptable.  When you are a young adolescent, for instance, wearing the "wrong thing" can be catastophically shameful.  If nobody notices you would not be embarrassed.

Shame is experienced when we deviate too far from the norms of our group.  Partially it includes fear, fear of rejection in the form of being laughed at or jeered.  It is an emotion that operates to push our behavior back within the range of acceptance of our group.  It encourages conformity to our particular group norms.  Deviating from the norms of a group to which we do not belong is not shaming.  Something in us tells us that being excluded from our group is awful-bad-dangerous.  We are urged to change our behavior to fit in.  Think of The Scarlet Letter, for instance.

What happens in a world in which there is no shame?  There is nothing to encourage conformity.  There are few prohibited behaviors, and we can do pretty much what we want.  But do we want to live in a shameless society?  We would be confronted with behavior that is now strictly prohibited.  We would live in a world in which little is forbidden other than those things we prohibit by law.  Our behaviors would be wildly divergent. Breaking the law would still have consequences, but shame would not be among them.

It would be a lot like it is now, only more so, wouldn't it?  I leave you to decide if this is a good thing.

A request for rational thought in emotional times.

Much has been publicized about the way police officers differentially treat particular ethnic or other easily identifiable groups.  It is almost invariably implied that the differential treatment observed arises solely from the racial or religious (or other) biases of the police.  If group A is treated differently than group B, it is implied specifically that this is because of the attitudes of the police, not real differences between the groups.

This implication ignores the possibility that group A may behave differently than group B.  What if there is a higher rate of crime in group A than there is in group B?  Other factors may also make the groups actually different in their public or private behavior.  The police may of course be biased, and that can be a terrible thing.  The police may also be responding to legitimate and measurable differences between groups. 

In fact, of course, the factors of bias and behavioral differences may play into each other, each making the other factor more embedded and extreme.  We should also consider the important functions of “prejudice”, meaning, of course, to pre-judge a situation on a basis of incomplete data, as in to judge an individual solely on the basis of some group to which he belongs.  Nature seems to have intended prejudice as an emergency default judgment in a rapidly unfolding situation in which the data are not yet clear.  For instance, when a homeless stranger knocks on my door wanting to spend the night, my prejudices kick in instantly, based on the generalities I have in my head about homeless people.  Fair?  Of course not.  Pro-survival? Maybe so!  Certainly my first response is skeptical/distrustful, at least until I have thought through several scenarios.

Back to my original topic.  Police in particular frequently respond to a ongoing violent situation with little or no time to step back and rationally assess it.  Such situations invite, even demand, pre-judgment.  It is easy to observe that in video recordings of confrontations between police and groups of people that both sides display prejudice and over-generalization in their attitudes and behaviors, and this tends to intensify the irrational violence already beginning in the situation. In such situations, immediate distrust is not an irrational response, but it should not be the only factor.

Many questions need to be asked that are not being asked.  Instead we are encouraged to “take sides” without ourselves knowing all the facts.  Our responses are becoming more and more extreme and emotionally-driven.  Nobody asks if group A (or B) is actually more violent than the other, or asks if there are more crimes committed by group A than group B.  The society in which we live needs to look harder at how specific groups are treated.  If there is more violence or crime in group A than B, why is that?  We need to look at the systemic illness, not just the symptoms.  We need to address the illness itself, our systemic rationalization for the unfair treatment of various groups. 

Out of systemic unfairness comes rage against the system.  Systems don’t like to change.  We don’t like to change. Perhaps it takes rage to get us to pay attention, but rageful decisions are invariably exaggerated and extreme.  We need to think, not just feel, and think clearly and publicly about what we need to do differently.  Talk is cheap.  Change is hard, painful and anxiety-producing.  For change to last, it has to be studied and carefully planned. Immediate emergent responses are not a basis for real, stable solutions. We need to slow down and make our changes work.

More to follow.

A comment on Trump

I wonder whether the politicians who scream so loudly against Trump have ever paused to ask themselves what his appeal to the voters is?

It's clear he is crude, poorly educated in general, tasteless and oblivious to political (or even common human) decency.  But he is also blunt and direct.  He says what he means whether people/voters like it or not.  He is not clever, calculating and politically devious.  At least, if he is any of those things, he is good enough to fool me.

However, in a field of politically correct dishonest and devious candidates, he stands out for his directness.  He isn't a standard bullshit artist like all the professional politicians.  Sometimes, frequently in fact, he doesn't use even basic good judgment as to what he says.  Sometimes he could say the exact same thing differently in a way that wouldn't be so egregiously crude, vulgar and tasteless.

And maybe that is exactly his appeal.  We are so fed up with the dishonest, slick and devious politicians and their bullshit that his honesty and even his ignorance/stupidity look good.  Why don't the politicians read the handwriting on the wall?  When this many of the voters are fed up with their political crap that they will vote for a candidate like Trump, shouldn't that be a red flag to them?  How about the "career politicians" try saying what they mean and meaning what they say?  Don't they see they have almost totally lost their credibility?  They have caused Trump to be elected and probably re-elected in spite of his poor quality as a human being. Their quality is even worse because it is better hidden.

Trump is such a dumb-ass that even when he tries to be dishonest he gets caught.  He doesn't even know why he gets caught, because he is so lacking in common sense.  Doesn't it say anything to the politicians that he still looks better than they do?  We need a different kind of politician.

The function of shame

In recent years there has been somewhat of a movement in the direction of treating "shame" as a bad, neurotic, harmful sort of thing.  It is treated as an illness, something to be eliminated or to be recovered from.  It seems to me that this view of shame as a pathology ignores the positive and useful aspects of it.

What does "shame" do for us?  It seems to me that shame is a group function whose purpose is to emotionally motivate an errant or deviant member of the group to change their behavior so as to conform with the group norm.  Shame is an unpleasant experience, of course, that being its point.  It is perhaps the primary force intended to produce conformity.  (Conformity to a group's norms, of course, is one of the characteristic elements defining the boundaries of group membership).

It is frequently important to a group to establish its identity by publicly displayed behaviors or dress.  The threat that shame poses to an errant member is that of being expelled from the group.  The threat is not just to the errant behavior, but to the identity or self, and therefore is experienced as a depressive event.  As a result, the experience of shame has elements of depression as well as of anxiety.

When we try to imagine a "shameless" society, we picture a group of people whose behavior is totally without regard to the norms or standards of ours.  Certainly we are most likely to imagine a group whose norms are very different from ours.  We find ourselves "shocked" or repulsed by their behaviors.  Historically, when this has occurred, we have attempted to "shame" the others into conforming to our behavioral norms.

Instances of "shameful" (or aberrant) behavior by an individual may be defined by their group  as "sick" or "insane" or even "evil".  The norms that an individual violates usually have little to do with realistic limits, and are frequently irrational or unreasonable.  The shaming carried out by a group can be personal, aggressive or even violent, and may not be proportional to the offense.

Interestingly, people with untreated schizophrenia have great difficulty in understanding or conforming to the norms of the groups to which they belong.  An individual might dress or behave in a bizarre fashion and experience no discomfort from the disapproving or shaming behavior of others.   In fact, as such individuals get older, their behavior may depart more and more from the local norms, since they experience  no shaming force to cause them to comply by modifying their behavior.

Sometimes the norms of the group have (or had, at least at one time) a rational basis.  But the real motive force behind a group norm is to identify the group, keep it separate from other groups, and to make it readily identifiable.  There is nothing rational about clothing norms, for instance,  but they are highly important to specific groups of people.

Currently there has been a sort of rebellion against "body shaming".  People who are obese experience instances in which a group rejects or shames them for their body shape.  Ostensibly this shaming is based on health issues and sexual attractiveness, and is expected to provide pressures for the obese person to conform by losing weight.  It is rarely effective, however, and almost always painful to the object.

But without shame, why would we conform to the norms of our social groups?  We would have no manners, no etiquette, no rules for acceptable public behavior.  Many people would say we are moving in that direction fairly rapidly already.  Without shaming, there would be little to stop the drift into ungoverned public behavior.

However, while shame may have its uses in producing conformity and rules, it does so through producing discomfort and unhappiness in the person shamed.  When the shamed behavior is out of the control of the individual, the shaming is only damaging and hurtful.  For instance, "making fun" of an individual with a physical or intellectual defect is obviously a hurtful thing to do.  It can't produce conformity, which is not in the realm of possibility for the shamed person.

A more serious instance is in the case of the individual who shames themselves on the basis of what they consider unacceptable behavior.   As a result, they emotionally expel themselves from their group. What makes this more serious is that the group from which they think of themselves as deviant, from which they deserve expulsion, is the human race itself. They withdraw and isolate themselves and ultimately may become suicidal as their ultimate non-membership.

Individuals whose behavior or characteristics are the subject of shame may prefer to view their non-conformance as "not their fault", i.e. something out of their control and thus not be subject to shaming.  Sometimes that is true, but sometimes it is an attempt to justify behavior that the subject knows is aberrant and probably not acceptable to their group, so they believe they can be granted an "exception".

The more "exceptions", the less potent shaming can be as a force producing conformity in manners and behavior.  Too much shame has produced in the past societies with rigid and narrow standards of behavior.  And too little shaming produces a society whose standards are rude and "uncivilized".  Which direction do you think preferable?

Guns

Making it legal to possess weapons that are either automatic (or can be made so) is absurd to the point of laughability, if it were not so tragic.  How can anyone defend the use of an automatic weapon for hunting?  How many bullets are needed to kill a deer?  And 30-shot magazines?  Are people actually shooting down entire herds?  But the guns are not root causes of the problem, although they make it easier to do more damage.

Why do we not give people the right to own other kinds of weapons capable of large-scale destruction?  Hand-grenades?  Flame-throwers?  Bazookas? (Although I have to admit that many times when driving on the highway I would love to have a roof-mounted bazooka.) 

There are only two reasons for defending the power for civilians to own automatic weapons:  to provide us the power to defend ourselves against a totalitarian government, e.g. to rebel, and to have the emotional satisfaction of owning a powerful weapon, which of course is most satisfying to the least powerful.  It is, in fact, the least empowered people, such as adolescents or adolescent-minded adults, who want the automatic weapons.

However, I think there is a deeper and more basic cause, and it is a cause that can't be addressed with simplistic solutions.  We are, as a nation, fascinated by guns and are in love with violence, in particular fantasies of "revenge" and "fighting back".  We are apparently terrified of being powerless, and concomitantly we are in love with the idea of personally having the power to hurt those who might hurt us.  We love movies and television about people who are victimized fighting back and victimizing others.

We have to be "ready" all the time.  We don't need the guns, but we want them desperately because of our fear of powerlessness.  Our culture is largely about violence.  Look at our tv shows, our books and comic books, our movies.  What percentage of them are violent?  As a nation, we won't give up our fantasies about having weapons of mass destruction, even if we kill each other to exercise the fantasy.

Children learn solutions to problems by watching adults.  What they see is that we kill people who cause problems for us.  They see other solutions as well, but the most dramatically satisfying and frequently observed are those in which we use weapons to blow apart our opponents.  Our movies, books and televisions have always relied on violence as a dramatic solution, but over the past 20 years or so the violence depicted is increasingly gory and detailed.  So violence becomes a solution, and one which they increasingly have the power to evoke.  This is especially convincing to them when they watch their parents treat each other with violence.  How do you deal with a frustrating person?  You kill them, and as many of them as possible.

I don't see any easy way to deal with this issue.  No law that can be passed (and we probably won't even do that) will solve the problem.  I have to admit reluctantly that I enjoy the same movies and the same television series.  I also note that after all the bad guys are killed, nobody seems to care.  The bodies disappear somewhere.  Nobody suffers.  Nobody mourns the loss of the dead.  The "heroes" of the shows don't regret the killings, apparently.  Death is basically trivialized.

Why would we think our kids would have any more respect for life and death than the heroes we give them to model themselves after?

How "belief systems" are born and developed

Looking around at the world, full of conflicts and wars, incompatible and irrational belief systems, it is important to look at the processes by means of which all belief systems are created.  How, living in the same world, did we come to have such widely discrepant belief systems, totally incompatible with one another and all believed to be totally right?  How did individuals grow up with such peculiar beliefs about themselves and the people around them?

We seem to have the inborn trait of curiosity and speculation about how the world works.  We want to know what influences what, what controls what.  We want to predict and control the future.  Where this trait arises is open to speculation.  How we use it is fairly clear.  Humans make theories about causation.

Two factors are important.  The first factor is the post-hoc fallacy.  This fallacy stipulates that when thing B happens directly after thing A, thing A "caused" thing B.  This is a fallacy because it is not always and invariably true.  However, it is true a lot of the time, and leads to our first discoveries of the laws of the universe.  Eating the fruit of a strange plant, followed by miserable illness, leads us not to eat that fruit again.  We don't know for sure that the plant was poisonous, but logical certainty is not as important as avoiding taking the chance.

The key phrase here is "not sure".  We form theories of connection or causality.  We think "A may have caused B".  Eating the fruit MAY have caused our illness.  How do we know?  We try it out, or at least observe carefully.  We look for evidence that our theory is valid.  It is important to our survival that we try to understand how things work and make guesses (theories) as to what might hurt us.  We have to accept probabilities, that is, relative proof rather than absolute. We have to look at the data coming in and allow it to strengthen or weaken our theories.

The second factor is called (by us psychologists) confirmation bias.  This bias tells us that when we think X theory may be true, we pay selective attention to  evidence supporting X.  We do NOT look systematically for evidence disproving X, at least not until the birth of scientific thought.  And even scientists trained in collecting data don't think scientifically most of the time.

For instance, someone who believes they are "unlucky" will selectively attend to "evidence" of unluck and selectively ignore evidence of luck. The "unlucky" person accumulates data over time that "proves" his theory about luck to be correct for him.  Someone who believes they are unlovable will collect rejections, and even invite them, believing rejection to be inevitable.  It is easy to see how religious and political beliefs are supported.

These two factors are sufficient to give rise to thousands, millions, of conflicting ideas and beliefs, many of which are so strongly held that people will kill to defend them.  Our beliefs tell us what to look for, what to believe, how to behave.  They define our civilizations, our religions, and our politics. They define which groups are "good", and which "bad".

In children the process is easier to observe than it is in adults, but adults function in pretty much the same way.  Suppose we are given a theory, such as: step on a crack and you'll have bad luck all day.  We then begin paying selective attention to cracks.  We try stepping on one or two, and then observing the following events, which by means of the post-hoc fallacy, we believe to be directly connected to the crack-stepping behavior.  A number of things happen, as they always do on any given day.  However, because of confirmation bias, we notice particularly the events that "confirm" our theory about cracks.  We discount or minimize those events that do not confirm it.  For at least a few days, while we are paying attention, the theory seems to be more and more true.  We do accept negative evidence, but it takes a lot more of it to disprove the theory than positive evidence to confirm it.

When events occur that have special emotional meaning to us, we try to find a theory that accounts for them.  We wonder what we did or observed that might have "caused" the event to happen.  We form a theory.  When we are young, our standards for a good theory are loose.  (Hopefully they get tighter as we mature).  A small child once asked me if her mother had died because the child had "bad thoughts".  The child is not capable of seeing the weakness of the connection between the child's thoughts and the mother's accidental death.  So all of our theories seem worth investigating, at least while we are young and not appropriately skeptical.

Many events can give rise to theory formation, but events with a lot of emotion attached are primary stimuli for theory formation. Theory: If I don't take a raincoat to work it will rain. Event:  If I don't take a raincoat and it does rain, the theory is supported. Event: If I don't take a raincoat and it does not rain, that doesn't count. So theories mostly find support and rarely find disproof.  They get stronger over the years as we collect more "supportive evidence" and continue to discount negative evidence.  

This pattern results in our changing beliefs about ourselves as we grow older.  Something happens to get our attention and we form a theory of connection.  We accumulate support for that theory, but not disconfirmation.  Suppose some event happens that causes us to form a theory about ourselves.  As an example, imagine getting a bad grade on a test in the first grade.  We might begin to form a theory, such as: "Maybe I'm stupid".  We then begin to look for evidence, but we pay most attention to the evidence that supports our belief in being stupid.  From then on we accumulate more evidence and become more convinced that we're "stupid".  

Religions get formed in the same way.  In the dawn of time, a loving parent falls to his knees and prays to the heavens for the return to health of his child.  The child recovers.  The parent forms a theory:  praying to the heavens results in blessings.  He tells his friends what happened.  They all begin collecting evidence that supports the theory and discounts the negative evidence.  When a parent prays for their child and the child dies, the parent discounts the negative evidence by forming a new theory:  one must have to pray in a specific way for it to work, and he must have got it wrong.  The future evidence is heavily weighted in favor of support of the future theory(s).

Some of the theories formed may be valid, others not so much.  But they continue anyway as if they were confirmed.   We still throw rice at weddings, even when we are not strongly in favor of immediate fertility.   A problem is that theories can never be absolutely proven or disproven.  There is always the possibility of getting more evidence.  We may find connections between event A and B that we didn't know before.  So our world is more and more full of divergent and supported (but not proven) beliefs.

We believe we are right.  We forget that "belief" is not proof.  We do not really question our beliefs unless something happens that forces us to reconsider.  That takes a lot of force.  For instance, many people believe the universe is "fair".  A cursory reading of the newspaper should be enough to cause doubts about that theory.  However, in order to keep the theory intact, people develop new "theories" as to why the universe appears unfair:  the people to whom bad things happen "must have deserved it" or "there must be some higher purpose we don't understand" or any number of theories designed to allow the old theory to continue in the absence of supportive evidence.

To overcome our own confirmation bias requires conscious attention and respect for new data, a conscious willingness to question your beliefs and an equal willingness to consider and evaluate new data on its merits.  For instance, to overcome your belief in being unlovable, you have to be willing to consider data that supports your being lovable. By challenging beliefs, you can become more aware of contradictory data, and vice-versa.  Perhaps you can't entirely eliminate beliefs that have accumulated "support" over the years, but you can weaken them over time.  (A central tenet of CBT).

I always value comments.

Brainless politics

Here we are again, heading for an election that has some real importance in our future.  The candidates, such as they are, have clearly decided that voters will vote on the basis of which candidate can generate the most emotional environment.  In the debates and the speeches, it's clear that the goal is to emotionally activate voters, to get them excited and angry, to get them suspicious and thoughtless.

The whole operation reminds me of a basic trick in stage magic.  You get the audience to watch the wrong hand, while the unwatched hand pulls the trick off.  In politics the illusion engendered is not sleight-of-hand, it's emotional discombobulation.  Excited and angry voters don't think.  They react.  They are not weighing policies and considering outcomes, they are choosing a personal champion with whom they identify, and whom they trust to be bigger, meaner, louder and more aggressive than their opponent.

Where is the thoughtful consideration of policies?  Economic plans?  Foreign relations?  Immigration policies?  Social security assets?

Of course you know the answer.  There is none.  None at all.  The political parties have read you and the rest of us correctly.  We don't understand all these policy thingies, but we know who we like and who we hate.  Thoughtful voters are not really predictable nor are they easily controlled, if they can be controlled at all.  Emotional voters are a piece of cake, easily manipulated with colorful language and over-the-top speeches. Emotional voters can be whipped into a frenzy and have the illusion that their vote is based on good thinking and good values.

What a laugh.  We don't really care about those things.  We like to be excited, to take part in a real soap-opera battle based on bad language, racial and sexual slurs, incitement to violence and distrust of the only political process in the history of the world that has ever even briefly been successful.

Don't vote your heart.  Vote with your mind.  If you don't know the policies of a candidate, don't vote for them.  How hard is that?

Bad statistics make a bad situation worse

The shootings of white police officers in Dallas is horrific and unacceptable.  It is also horrific that blacks have been treated with such violence and disrespect that many feel impelled toward violence as the only appropriate response to law enforcement.  I don't know the solution to this appalling set of events.  But I do have some understanding of the kinds of thinking that make this terrible situation worse and make resolution even more difficult.

In the aftermath of the Dallas shootings, lots of articles are popping up that cite statistical differences between blacks and whites in a variety of areas, including socio-economic levels, employment/income, and death rate.  So far every article I have seen indicates a serious lack of understanding about statistical differences.

I just read a "fact" of this kind published today. Marc Ambinder, in The Week today, said "There's overwhelming evidence that, in the heat of the moment, police officers are more likely to shoot black people simply because they are black. (If you're a black teenager, you are 21 times more likely to be the victim of a police shooting than you would be if you were white)". That's a horrific disparity, and undoubtedly, at least to a degree, reflects genuinely biased use of force against blacks.

BUT:  The ONLY way such a statistical fact can be valid is if EVERY other factor besides race were equivalent between groups.  To assume that it is entirely and only because of racial difference is to fall prey to the kinds of exaggerations that promote racial anger and bigotry.

Are we comparing, for instance, white teenagers in Minneapolis with black teenagers in Atlanta?  What about all the other differences?  Are the groups matched for education?  Socio-economic status?  Gang memberships?  Who kills the teenagers, white or black police? Other teenagers?  Are the groups equally engaged in lawful or unlawful behavior prior to the shootings?

Actually they are not matched for ANYTHING except race, which means the person quoting these "statistics" is finding what he was already looking for, racial bias by police.  We don't need to stir up the pot with misleading and misunderstood statistics.  It's bad enough, and responsible reporters and writers of articles should accept an obligation to be careful and accurate in their use of statistics.

I don't anticipate much interest in the above notes, though I think they are in fact important to understand.  But they are not exciting and they reveal that much of the statistical "evidence" cited to account for or explain or justify the shootings in Dallas is primarily emotional and a dramatic interpretation of statistics to exaggerate and justify the shootings.

Leaves versus boats

There are two ways to look at how you live your life.  Both have  strengths and both have drawbacks.  As a psychotherapist, I always lean to the side of having more choices, but that's because of the life style I have chosen.  If you have not made a conscious and deliberate choice (yet) about your style of life, then you have chosen the one with fewer choices.

The latter approach (with fewer choices) I call the "leaves on the stream" style.  It is by far the most common life-style.  In it we simply respond to the circumstances that present themselves, like leaves floating  on a slow-moving stream.  The leaves go around the obstacles with little hindrance (most of the time) and float all the  way to the ocean, where they disappear into the boundless blue water.  Such a person doesn't make active choices about direction, but only responds to those problems that present themselves.  "Leaf" people (most of us) make temporary choices and handle problems with as little effort as possible.  They become the product of the choices that fall to them, and so they are living examples of how "temporary choices" can become our lives.

Leaf people study whatever their school offers them.   They get jobs and do them, some times very well.  They may or may not like what they  do, but doing what they might like is either not available or not possible.  They cope with the problems life presents to them, doing what they need to do to keep floating.  They marry, have children, grow old and die without a lot of  thought as to whether there were (or are) other possibilities.  In many or most cases their culture may not allow for alternatives or choice-making.  Circumstances can cause people to have few or no choice, and as a result they just have to keep plugging along, trying to find  as much satisfaction and pleasure in their lives as they can. There's a certain nobility in just keeping on, doing the job, handling the problems and not giving up.  The world depends a great deal on such people.

I call the other style "boats on the ocean".  People navigate the streams, setting courses and goals, and going there.  Choices are made on the basis of how well or how poorly they fit the chosen directions.  Lives are measured by how closely People approach their goals.  They don't become anything "by accident".  They will give up immediate pleasures and ease for the sake of long-range goals.  They focus part of their energy on solving problems that have not yet occurred.  Of course unexpected obstacles pop up, and they have to deal with them, but they return to their course as soon as possible.

Things change for  both groups in middle age.  The "leaf" style of person expects to have fewer problems and obstacles, because they expect life to get less demanding. They look forward to "taking it easy" and drifting comfortably into old age.  Sometimes they are uneasy about what they "might have missed" or what might have happened "if".  Sometimes they begin to feel that life has passed them by, that life has lived them and they have not lived it.  They may wonder who they have become, and may have little sense of uniqueness or individuality.   Sometimes their pervasive sense of aimlessness leads to boredom and tedious and depressing self-evaluation.  Their battle cry is "What's it all about, anyway?"  Sometimes they revert to their 20s in a futile attempt to start over, which results in the "middle-age crisis" accompanied by red sports cars and a new spouse.  This only delays the inevitable.

The people in the "boat" category do very well if their goals were directions rather than specific accomplishments. Reaching a "goal" is a stopping point, and the directions as to where to proceed (if anywhere) after reaching it are not usually easy or available.  Having gone as far as you can go, you may find yourself in the same situation as the "leaf" people in middle age.  Having moved in your chosen direction, however, does not limit you to an arrival point.\ Directions are open-ended by their nature and not self-limiting.

It seems to me that  the "boat" style has  fewer built-in problems, but overall both life styles  can be quite comfortable for many years.  It's not the long fall that gets us, it's the sudden stop.

Then or Never: Critical periods in humans

In many, if not all, animals and birds there is a critical period shortly after birth in which certain events must occur for normal growth and maturation.  An early writer in this area, Konrad Lorenz, observed ducklings immediately after hatching.  He discovered they would follow any object of approximately the "right" size as if it were their mother, IF the duckling was exposed to the object immediately after hatching.  By the next day the critical period was closed, and such attachment (which he called "imprinting") could no longer occur.  Some photos exist that show Dr. Lorenz waddling along, crouched down, with a line of ducklings toddling along after him.

Dogs and wolves have been shown to have the same pattern.  If wolves are not exposed to and handled by humans within the first few days after birth, they become untameable and feral.  In dogs the critical period for socialization is considerably longer, and may be as long as 12 weeks, with 8 weeks common in certain breeds of dog. (My doctoral dissertation is in this area).

In humans there is known at least one critical period for language development. If children are not talked to or cannot hear language in the first 3 or 4 years of life, they will never be able to learn to speak.  (I have not looked up this period and am not sure whether the length of time I have cited is accurate.)

It has occurred to me that there may be a critical period in humans and other primates for belonging to a group or pack.  We are group animals, of course.  We seek out groups to which to belong.  This process can be seen in children somewhere before puberty usually noticeable at age 10 and later.  It becomes more and more important through the teen years.  In this period groups form, whether gangs or social groups or interest groups.  What group you belong to is increasingly important.

Group boundaries can be marked by clothing or location or by title.  Probably other methods of marking boundaries can be found.  Transgressing a boundary can be a life-threatening event.  What people wear becomes extremely important, sometimes puzzling parents, but when this happens the clothing items are boundary markers, and not having the right item can mean exclusion and humiliation.

In non-human primates being excluded is a life or death issue, and we probably have some genes that dictate this level of importance to membership.  It is obvious that membership is highly valued;  young people have accepted "beat-downs" or group rapes as the price of belonging to a particular group.
Adolescents have committed suicide because of group exclusion or rejection.  College students may accept "hazing", sometimes quite severe, as the price of belonging to a fraternity or sorority.

So the importance of belonging is clear.  We all experience it to a degree.  Even adults frequently find group membership highly important.  What is less clear is what happens to people who don't achieve group membership during what may be a critical period for group membership.

These people are seen by other adolescents as "weirdos", "geeks", "loners" and other pejorative names.  It appears to me that school shootings have been carried out entirely by loners, non-members of groups, who are filled with otherwise inexplicable rage at those who "belong".  Adults who were not accepted in groups during their adolescence are not comfortable with adult groups. They rarely join clubs.  In many ways they (we) don't seem to quite know how to belong.  They don't get the cues, wear the right clothes, have the right behavioral signals (i.e. "manners").  The tend to be loners their entire lives.  Even when they marry, their families tend to remain socially isolate.

This is particularly observable in military families, in which the teen=age children are moved several times during the critical period for belonging, i.e. the high school years.  As adults they tend to stay on the outside of groups and are isolated to a degree even in their neighborhoods.  They tend to think of themselves as "different", "un-social", and equivalent titles.  In my opinion they will never be able to overcome their sense of isolation.  In a funny sense, they (we) are feral as far as groups are concerned.

Human infants learn at a very early age (prior to 1) to mimic expressions on a parental face.  This "mirroring reflex" is automatic and apparently not accompanied by a specific matching feeling.  For instance, when the parent face is smiling, the infant "smiles";  when the parent frowns, so does the infant, but does not apparently feel badly.  Just the expression itself is mimicked.  Very specific neurons in the human brain (and in some primates) are involved.  I wonder if the beginnings of social isolation are found in a failure of the parent to provide such up-close and personal contact at a critical period as yet unidentified.

Certainly some of us on the autistic spectrum have difficulty recognizing and responding appropriately to facial expressions, tones of voice, body language and the like.  This makes us easily identifiable as potential social isolates.  Asperger's syndrome is an example.  However, intellectual understanding of social cues can help supplement or replace missing instinctual responses.  We can learn what a specific expression means and practice appropriate responses, which can conceal the genuine social awkwardness that underlies it.

It puzzles me that there has been so little research in this general area, which is obviously of considerable importance to understanding normal and aberrant human development.

Love or like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Belonging to groups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free will and addiction

The issue of whether or not human beings are able to exercise free will is as old as philosophy itself.  Are we simply the product of the various impulses and hormonal floods and conditioned responses?  Or are we capable of making decisions that are independent of our early experiences and that are truly an expression of free will?

It is quite possible, even likely, according to recent psychological experiments, that we only have the illusion of free will.  It is possible that our bodies and brains make decisions before our conscious awareness even weighs in.  Some studies have found that our choices are made several seconds before our conscious awareness is even involved.

But one answer to this problem continues to arise:  the consequences of believing that we do not have free will, of believing that we do what we do as a result of the operation of psychological and neurochemical operations about which we have no say, are quite  unacceptable.  Such an outcome means that as individuals we are not responsible for our actions.  It means that we are only able to carry out mechanistically determined choices. It means that as individuals we "can't help ourselves", that we are not accountable, that we have no choice but to act as we do, and that therefore punishment or consequences are equally useless in governing human behavior, which under this rubric is simply not governable. 

People who claim to be addicts of one kind or another are claiming that their errant, illegal or inappropriate behaviors are not their responsibility.  They are asserting that they do not have the capacity to make choices other than the ones they make, to do drugs, to commit crimes, even to engage in sexual activities of various kinds.  To someone attempting to hold them answerable and accountable for their "addictive behaviors" they respond "I can't help it", which is the philosophical equivalent of "The devil made me do it." 

Even when others, including the law, their spouses or their victims (in some cases the same things) do hold them accountable, in their minds they are the victims of forces over which they believe they have no control.  Thus, they are also blameless victims, no matter the cost to others.  The hormones, the impulses, the fates themselves have determined the outcomes, and the "addict" is just another victim. 

It is useful to notice the circularity of the above argument, which can be summarized easily in the following statement:  "An irresistible impulse is an impulse one chooses not to resist".  How do you know an impulse was the result of an irresistible addiction? Because you didn't resist it.  Could you have resisted it? If you claim you could not, you claim it because you did not.  Have you ever had an impulse belonging to your addiction that you did resist?  Then you can resist it.  You can't have it both ways.  If the impulse is irresistible, there is nothing to resist and no point in trying.  If it can be resisted, then resist it.

With such logic you can do anything you like, claim that you didn't like it but couldn't  help it, and reap the benefits (such as they are) of being an irresponsible child who is at the same time immune from consequences and punishment.  The world in which "addicts" live is uncivilized, animalistic, brutal and exploitive.  How can it be otherwise? They "can't help it".

This is an unworkable model for a civilized world.  Quite apart from whether or not  addiction is a valid concept, a world in which people are not considered to be in control of and accountable for their actions is not one in which we would choose to live.  The proof of the above statement is easily tested by simply observing and evaluating the world in which addicts live.

It is because their irresponsible, impulse-ridden and animalistic world has to exist in the same world as that of the rest of us that the conflict between us exists.  Those of us who are responsible and answerable for our behaviors have to deal with those who do not, and the results for both groups is what amounts to war.  The citizens have to protect themselves against the lawless, but no less do the lawless have to protect themselves against us.

The only way for coexistence to occur is for physical separation.  The addicted and their suppliers need a place of their own that has limited intersection with ours.  They need some things civilization can supply and the humanitarian principles that characterize civilization requires we help them with those things, such as medicine and food.  There is nothing they can easily give us in return,  but their absence improves the situation for both groups and probably saves money for the civilized to boot. 

Let's give them an island.

The dangers of absolute rightness

The art of politics is compromise.  Compromise makes adjustments so that the maximum amount of benefit accrues to the maximum number of people.  At least, that is the ideal use of compromise.

Religion does not value nor even tolerate compromise.  When someone or some group believes they have been given instructions from some form of divinity, how can they even consider compromising?  For that reason all religions have splintered into smaller groups from time to time, as various members get a different set of instructions which cannot be reconciled with the previous ones.  There is no “sort of” in “revealed truth”.

Obviously religions, as a general domain, do not value compromise;  in fact, they see it as sinful because it finds changes in the inerrant word of God(s).

When political compromise is useful, religion can block it.  When the political leaders value religion strongly, they become less and less willing to compromise.  Instead of compromise, one side must win, and that side, by definition, will have been the “correct” side.  According to the winners, at least.  

The mixture of religious thinking with political pragmatism results in wars and terrible tragedies, all in the name of unprovable beliefs.

 

Religious thinking is not restricted to deism or theology.  It is based on the quality of absolute rightness.  History teaches us that there are political beliefs that are identical in structure to religious beliefs with the exception that deism is not a necessary quality for absolute rightness.  The early days of fascism come to mind, as does the Soviet regime in the middle of the last century.  Many other examples come to mind.  No state based on absolute values can be a healthy nor happy state, and the people in it will have neither. 

The problem is not religion, per se, though that is a prime and clear example of absolutist thinking.  It is the absolutist thinking itself that is the disorder.  Unless the absolute value includes human life and the quality of that life we could expect to be trampled and crushed between absolute "rights" that do not value us as human beings.

When several states are absolutist, conflicts become inevitable, and since the absolute values do not include human life or happiness, they war with each other, and their people suffer and suffer terribly.

But how can there be compromise with absolute rightness?  We know the answer and we know the cost.  But we tolerate such thinking, because, of course, it is right.

Whatever happened to the social contract?

Reading about the reluctance of otherwise intelligent (or at least educated) people to have their children vaccinated for measles and the like brought into highlight a major and increasing shift in our civilization.  Less and less do people recognize that the goodies we get are paid for by our willingness to carry out our part of the social contract.  These people act as if they were entitled to the benefits of civilization and owed nothing in return.

This is the exact equivalent of expecting running water and electricity without paying taxes.   But such benefits as roads and running water are only part of the social contract.  We owe each other certain considerations, even though they are not as specific and clear as city services.  Living in a group requires that we consider the rights of others and can expect them to consider ours. We make some laws to exact consequences when  basic rights are not respected.  We try not to step on someone's toes or touch strangers unnecessarily.  We try to keep our voices down in public space, such as theaters and busses. We understand that an article in a bag in someone's lap "belongs" to them and we expect not to touch it or take it.

Living together demands that we give up some freedoms in order to live with some comfort and consistent expectations.  In a word, we all owe each other.  Without that social contract life in close contact with others would be unbearable. that is, "nasty, brutish and short".

It seems clear that the social contract is weakening.  People live more and more as if there were no other people on the planet.  They talk loudly on their smart-phones about intensely personal things and they do so in public places.  They spit on the sidewalk, they pick their noses while driving their cars and talking on their phones, as if they were exempt from the requirements of the social contract.  They apparently do not realize how dependent they themselves are on that contract for any kind of  survival.  They apparently do not care about our mutual obligations, though they are quick enough (and loud enough) when people do not respect theirs.

The examples are, unfortunately, endless and apparently increasing in quantity and volume.  The refusal to allow their children to be vaccinated is an excellent example.  Younger people who have grown up without worries about infectious diseases don't seem to recognize that the reason they have not seen them is vaccination.  So they think of these illnesses as unimportant.  When somebody raises the question that it might be possible for vaccinations to cause an illness, they see that risk, no matter how small the data indicate that risk is, as easy to avoid.  No vaccination to their children.

They don't recognize that our protection from infectious illnesses is a group protection, depending on the vast majority of the members of the group being immune and thereby not carriers of an illness.  The non-vaccinators benefit from this protection without recognizing any corresponding obligation to the others in their groups.  Once the number of non-vaccinated  individuals reaches a certain percentage, the disease can and will spread.  Not recognizing the social contract and relying on the universe to continue to treat them as special will have its cost.

The same idea applies to the social contract.  As the number of "entitled people" who consider themselves excused from  obligations to others reaches a certain percentage, society will collapse rapidly as the percentage of entitled grows.  No obligations  to others?  Just look out for what I want and the hell with the rest of you? Civilization is  not unlike a herd immunity which protects against savagery and other uncivilized behavior.  When enough members are no longer immune to savagery, the herd loses its protection and civilization (like health) will fail.

How to stop being angry

I have written before about chronic anger and its consequences. Our readiness to fight, both as individuals and as a country, has cost us dearly, both financially and in terms of personal unhappiness and loss.

In this brief note I would like to consider how and under what circumstances we might be willing to stop being chronically angry. We should also give some thought to the real-life consequences in our personal lives of simply stopping being angry as a response to every situation.

Anger is always a response to frustration. On the most primitive level it is a way of giving notice to our caretakers that something is wrong that we ourselves cannot correct. The hungry or wet baby demanding attention is the simplest example. We learn at the very earliest stages of our lives that rage can bring resolution, comfort and relief at the hands of something or someone outside ourselves.

That same mechanism endures through life. Exactly how we express our rage and frustration varies in its sophistication, but never departs from its basic nature: a demand that the external world arrange our relief or satisfaction. It is also an acknowledgement of our own experienced helplessness. We demand that others/the universe relieve our pain and grant our needs, and in the act we acknowledge that we ourselves are unable to provide that relief.

Sometimes the very expression of our frustration, intended to bring us relief, itself stands in the way of our getting what we want. Screaming at your mother when you are hungry works fairly well when you are one, but much less so at age 16. It is the expression, however, that requires modification; the underlying need remains the same as it always did.

I recall stubbing my toe on a rock as a child, and the anger I felt, which led me to first kick the rock, which hurt worse, and then to throw the rock as far as I could. My anger was at an uncaring universe which I could not control. My powerlessness increased my anger, and I reasserted my power by first kicking and then throwing the rock. I doubt if all of that prevented my toe from hurting, however.

We get angry when people and things don't do what we want. In the primitive parts of our brains we expect that anger itself to result in changes to meet our needs. Rarely does that work. But how do we drop the anger reaction and find more effective ways to get what we want? Sometimes the anger is at situations or people who no longer exist. In my work,  being angry at an abusive parent or ex-partner who no longer is alive is a distressingly frequent example. We cannot turn a dead abusive parent into a loving one.

One of the key elements in dealing with chronic anger is that it contains hidden at its core an element of hope. Anger is our earliest form of magic, and we never quite believe that it will simply not work. Hidden inside us we believe that the anger will cause the other person (or thing) to change, especially when we don't have a clue as to how to make it happen ourselves.

A friend once confessed to me that he was often (or chronically) angry at his girlfriend because she was unaffectionate and unromantic. However, when he expressed his frustration and anger things did not get better, but rather worse: she kept her distance and avoided his company for a while. On the one hand he understood that his anger and sulking did not make him more attractive or desirable. It certainly didn't spark any romantic feelings on her part. At the same time, he felt that not letting her know how he felt meant that she wouldn't know he wanted her to change. He felt helpless to get what he wanted. He recognized that her feelings about him were not in his control, and to some degree not even in hers. But the element of  hope he felt encouraged him to keep trying, in spite of its futility.

We know when someone important to us is showing anger or resentment toward us it is because they want something from us. It's easy to feel defensively angry in response. We can get caught in our helplessness. What's the alternative?

Sometimes we have to give up hope that we can get what we need. That's not an easy decision to make, but without it we cannot grieve for what we are missing or have lost and begin to move on. Our anger can be an avoidance of grief. Indeed anger is considered one of the early stages of grief, even though it is clear that it is a separate emotional response. We don't want to accept our loss.

But perhaps some losses should not be accepted. Accepting loss and grieving for what we don't have is not always a good answer. Grief involves a acceptance of an unchangeable circumstance, but passivity is not always useful. Sometimes we need to be assertive and even angry to fight for what we want, nor just accept the situation. America would still belong to the British Empire if we had not done so.

It's hard sometimes to accept that there are important things in our lives that we cannot change. It's hard to know which things should be fought for and which should be let go. This latter is a discrimination that can only be made cognitively, not emotionally. "Moving on" always requires grieving.

Group Prejudice

I believe that much "racial" prejudice is not racial at all.  It seems much more likely to me that there is developing an increasing conflict between socio-economic classes, specifically the middle- and working class people and the "gangsta/rebel" groups.  I say groups because they are belong to all "ethnic" groups in all kinds of neighborhoods.

The gangsta-rebel groups function like all groups.  They emphasize differences between those within their groups and everyone else.  These differences are deliberately exaggerated and are intended to antagonize those in other groups.  Their language, dress and behavior are deliberately well outside the bounds of what the middle-class groups would find acceptable.  Even their music flaunts vulgar language and concepts which are alienating to those outside their groups.  Consider "rap" music, droopy pants, caps worn at a specific angle, public language in songs and on stage, and public behavior:  all designed to antagonize and alienate, thus emphasizing their refusal to belong.  They feel that they refuse to belong rather than that they are denied admission.

In general all groups tend to emphasize their differences from other groups.  The "gang" mentality existed long before gangsta garb and behavior was so public.  If you can't belong to a desirable group, you can refuse to belong, and in that way take more control of your life.  "I don't want to belong to your group" is better than "I'm mad because I can't get it".

There are larger and larger segments of our population that are excluded from middle-class socioeconomic culture because of the economy and the difficulties the impoverished have in obtaining a decent education and well-paying jobs  Yet they like all of us need to belong.  The less they have, the more they "need" each other.  The more different and antagonistic they are, the more the middle-class have reasons to exclude them. The more they are excluded, the more difficult it is for them to get the education and jobs they need.

The system becomes self-sustaining.  I need to be different because I can't belong;  I can't belong because I am different.  The middle-classes exclude them because they are rebellious and "different. And so the alienation and antagonism grows.

The police are seen as the enforcers and hirelings of the middle classes.  They are more the "enemy" than the protectors.  The lower classes become more excluded and powerless, and the groups within them become more important and stronger.

The saddest part is that we attribute this group rivalry to ethnic issues rather than seeing the rebellious and resentful issues that group rivalry itself causes.  The gangsta groups tend to be associated with the ethnic groups to which a majority of them belong.  We mistake consequence for cause. We lose sight of individuals for the suit they are wearing, which is at least in part what they wish.

The Disappearance of the Unconscious (Sorry, Siggie)


The original concept of the unconscious involved a part of the mind hidden from conscious or verbal awareness but which contained all the primitive, childish drives and wishes.  It was able to influence our behavior without our verbal awareness.  Our irrational and animalistic impulses remained comfortably apart from our image of our own character.  Over time the concept took on even more potency to run our lives.

Nowadays, as we watch television, read the papers and books, and watch movies, we see behavior that seems quite primitive even to us.  To the people of Freud's day, in the first half of the 20th century, it would seem animalistic, shocking and outrageous.  We watch it with some amusement and interest. They would have left the room and had bad dreams.

If we had an 'unconscious', what would we bother to bury in it?  We don't bury those impulses anymore.  We are not shamed by them. Actually, we seem to enjoy them at least vicariously. So what has happened?  The unconscious seems to have largely disappeared.
Yet it still appears in peculiar and unique circumstances.  People with rigid and limited self-images or self-concepts find themselves behaving in ways that surprise them (though not those who know them well).  People who are very naive, uneducated or "innocent" seem also to fall prey to "unconscious" impulses.  People from cultures who have a very narrow and limited range of acceptable behaviors or strong religious prohibitions also seem to have problems with their unconscious.

It seems that the "unconscious" is not so much universal as it is a function of denial and repression in certain personality types.   Those behaviors and impulses that are "forbidden" or have been shamed strongly are relegated to the non-verbal sections of the brain.  I imagine this process as being like that of a child shamed by a parent for displaying aggressive or sexual impulses, whose shame strikes at his very self-concept and sense of self-worth.  The child does not want to verbally acknowledge those impulses or admit to them in any way.  However, this does not mean that the impulses will not be acted upon.  It means that the child can express the primitive and instinctual behavior without having to acknowledge that they are a part of his actual self.

So we develop an "unconscious" in situations or circumstances in which an important and emotionally strong impulse is shamed and denied.  Since less and less seems to fall in this category, the unconscious seems to be relegated to those limited circumstance described previously.  No shame or denial equals no unconscious.  We may choose, however, to limit our awareness in order to preserve our "proper" sense of self.

No Help For Self-Inflicted Injury, Part 2

The number of people injured or killed in automobiles as a result of the usage of cell-phones to text while driving is increasing.  We all know that there is a much greater likelihood of having an accident while driving when we are distracted.  According to the Daily Oklahoman today, the chances of having an accident while texting are 23 times greater.

The Highway Patrol and the local police agree that making texting while driving illegal is not a practical solution to the problem, as it is almost impossible to detect the presence of that kind of distraction prior to an accident.  Why arrest when you can't prove in court that the driver was actually texting while driving?

I would be in favor of allowing texting while driving if the drivers killed only themselves.  Why not eliminate the dummards from the gene pool, and earlier/younger better than later?  But they kill people who aren't doing anything stupid and who deserve to be protected from the criminally stupid.  So the following solution suggests itself:  Why not excuse insurance companies from paying for damages caused by texting while driving?  Perhaps the victims of the accident could still be covered, but certainly the texting driver at fault should not be covered.  And perhaps criminal penalties could also be involved if the law were written properly.

By the same line of reasoning,  insurance should not pay a drunken driver for causing an accident.  It's important to add that the victims of the accident who were not the cause should not be penalized financially. 

The principle idea remains the same in this small series of blogs:  People who knowingly and willfully assume a risk should be financially and personally responsible for the outcome of the risky behavior.  It's impractical to assume that police can stop all irresponsible behavior before it has a tragic result.  But we can make the self-injurious pay their own bills, and perhaps that will discourage at least those few who can count.

A good way to start would be to contact your insurance agent and tell him/her:  "I don't want to pay extra for people who take unnecessary risks, like driving and texting or drinking.  Please contact the company and tell them I'm looking for insurance that doesn't reward deliberately reckless behavior."  You could also contact the Insurance Commissioner in your home state and share the problem with him/her.

Facebook and tribal chatter

It doesn't take long for us older members of the human race to get terminally bored with Facebook.  Facebook is a storehouse for the relentlessly and shamelessly trivial.  The level of intellectual content could hardly be lower.  Hours on end (literally) sending pictures of uninteresting activities by people who can only be thought interesting by close friends and families...  and talking about recipes and where you ate lunch and what you had to eat and the funny thing your son said and a really nice picture of your cat or of yourself and where you might meet to find a mate (temporary or permanent) and ... and...  So why do the younger primates (and you know who you are) find it so endlessly fascinating? 

Back when our ancestors lived in trees (and I'm old enough to almost remember that) I imagine the level of chatter between treetops in the evening covered much of the same subject matter.  A lot of it was about the same things talked about on Facebook now.  We told each other about food and good water and interesting potential sexual partners.  An important element of every message was simply "Here I am!  Don't forget about me!  I'm in the pack!"  It was probably an expression of our need to keep our tribal bonds intact and strong.  We talked because we needed to feel contact and to know we belonged.  Facebook is just another expression of the endless urge to "connect" constantly with our tribe.

So now I'm in the same tribal position as the "silverback".  Too old to win mating battles and bored with the endless mindless chatter of "Here I am!  Look at me!", no longer interested in dominating our tribe or expanding our boundaries, I wander off into the jungle looking for more interesting things to do.  All that talk was once interesting, but now I'd rather go look for an unusual rock or maybe even a mountain. And I'll just sit there and enjoy the silence.