I don’t understand why people are frequently insisting, “I don’t have any regrets.” Maybe others intend it as a polite social convention, like saying, “I’m fine. Everything’s perfect!” Maybe it’s a prudent way of avoiding the inevitable follow-up questions to admitting regrets. But I’m a literally-minded person who doesn’t get the point of saying things that are untrue.
Personally, not a day goes by where I don’t say or do something I regret. I’m constantly wishing I had given a better explanation, been more patient or empathetic, demonstrated more concentration, thought things through before acting or put forth more effort. I have big regrets too: ties with friends that I caused to be severed, work that I failed at, skills I should’ve acquired, relationships that I imprudently pursued, relationships that I ruined and places I shouldn’t have gone. I feel like I could list a thousand regrets before pausing to think. At the same time, I am also very grateful to have never made a truly idiotic move that got someone injured or arrested or whatnot. I am able to keep the perspective that the things I regret are relatively minor. Perhaps the most important aspect of making mistakes is minimizing the gravity of the consequences.
I dwell on regrets, too. Just yesterday I was thinking about the time I threw a vacuum cleaner part into the street and forgot to pick it up. That happened at least five years ago.
Often we say we regret doing something but then behave the same way the next time a similar situation arises. Sometimes we don’t regret what we did but regret getting caught. True regret involves understanding the direct consequences of your actions and wishing they had been different than what they were. I think they have to be specific actions, but maybe not. People will say things like, “That’s five years of my life I regret,” and that seems terrible to me. I realize that a regrettable decision on one day can lead to five years (or more) of turmoil, but if you regret the actions of one day and then the next day you regret those actions as well to a degree that you now have two days full of regret, it seems to me you really need to examine the choices you are making in life. Not everything is a mistake; forgetting the brilliant ideas and wonderful times just because there were lousy parts seems an unjust and unnecessary punishment to inflict on ones self.
Many things happen due to misfortune that no decision could have avoided. For example, someone might say, “I regret going to work that day because that’s the day I got into an accident.” That demonstrates a lack of perspective because there’s absolutely no correlation between the action and the consequence. This is the type of regret that there’s no point in having or pondering. Once self-pity is eliminated as an option, there is often nothing left but to accept your fate. It doesn’t make any sense to regret being born, because you weren’t given an alternative option.
I am of the opinion that criticism provides information to learn from while praise is essentially vapid. My main method for learning is by messing up. I’ve never been able or willing to take anyone’s word for anything. Anything everyone else says always seems nonsense to me until I discover for myself that they were right. I am a slow but thorough learner. I sometimes regret being stubborn, but I more often regret taking another’s advice instead of doing the research myself.
When we make a mistake affecting another, the first thing we are taught as children to do is apologize. As adults, we find apologizing excruciatingly difficult. We don’t want others to accurately accuse us of doing things we shouldn’t have done. We would much rather eschew responsibility, shift blame and make excuses. We do these things even when all another wants is an apology, because, ironically, we demand apologies all the time. We think that our shortcomings are justified: we boast of our phobias, using them to relinquish ourselves of duty, instead of using the opportunity to strive to overcome them. At the same time, we find the shortcomings of others ridiculous and inexcusable. We wonder why others are so inept at doing things we would never do ourselves. This is because we live in a society where we are wired to find opponents to destroy instead of relationships to build.
Some people are afraid of making mistakes. I really only have that problem when it concerns social interaction. Because of this, I have been forced (unless I wanted to become a crazy person) to ignore and overcome fear most days of my life. I suppose that is why I consider being afraid something to embrace instead of avoid. I’d rather regret doing something that I thought was the right thing to do than not doing something for fear of failure. Most of the time, I am over-confident and when I blow it am startled by the result, even when it should have been expected.
There’s a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt that goes something like, “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” People will mull over decisions even when there is literally no way of anticipating the outcome. I’ve witnessed others become completely overwhelmed by something as benign as choosing from a menu even though the only guaranteed way of knowing whether you like a dish or not is by eating it. One can either fight through this fear of the unknown or remain in a small, familiar world. For many, expanding knowledge and experience is less important than avoiding regrets, complications, embarrassment or disrespect.
Life can quickly become unbearable without maintaining our senses of humor and beauty. Your existence might be the most important thing there is, but you just can’t take it too seriously. Playing the “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” game gets tedious really fast. It’s prudent to remember that perceiving past mistakes is due to having gained an improved perspective- and improvement is a good thing. Hindsight is a bit like knowing the answer after it is given to you; it’s a lot easier than knowing the answer before it’s revealed but feels like you should have known it all along. It also gives the false impression that we know what the outcome would have been had we altered the past. The fact is we don’t actually know what might have happened had we done things differently.
I played football in seventh and eighth grades. Our team was terrible; we never won a game. There were twelve kids on the team, so another kid and I only had to participate in every other play. My job on offense was to go in from the sideline, relay the next play the coach had given me to the quarterback and then fill in as the weak-side tight-end. For two years, every single play was a running play. The other teams figured this out and would simply rush the quarterback at the snap, bowling over me in the process. Over at the sideline, I mentioned to the coach that the quarterback should throw me a quick screen pass. He decided that wasn’t a good idea. One time, just one time, I wish I had gone into the huddle and told the quarterback to throw me a screen pass, ignoring whichever running play the coach had given me.
Even this example begs the unanswerable question: is it more beneficial to have lived a life having called an audible or to have determined (without concrete evidence) that an audible should have been called? That’s the beauty of regret; it can be a powerful motivator and catalyst for change. If I were to go back and fix a mistake from early in life, when would I have learned to not make that mistake on a subsequent occasion? Another way of addressing the issue is realizing the incalculable influence of our assumptions on our behaviors. Would my distrust of authoritarian demands be as strong today had I opposed them back then, or has the assumption that I should have acted to change the situation been necessary for building my character? (Perhaps I’d watched enough Twilight Zone that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.)
“Time and tide wait for no man.” There is nothing more calming than watching the ocean, I think in part because it conveys the realization that there is nothing you can do but watch it. In its presence, we are but another grain of sand. The waves are relentlessly unconcerned with where they will land, and both build and destroy with impartiality and impunity. We are not the ocean, but neither are we the sand, for the sand does not care what becomes of itself. Insurmountable obstacles and regrets notwithstanding, we must persevere through life or it loses all meaning. For many, being better off than others is good enough, but basing your successes on the relative suffering of others is demented.
Trying to change the past begs questions; working to change the future finds answers. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but too many people refuse to admit them. When we don’t acknowledge when we’ve goofed and then work towards improving our future behaviors, we remain stuck making the same mistakes over again and wondering why bad things keep happening to us. The only two ways of not having any regrets are by lacking self-awareness or being perfect. Admitting regrets demands humility and courage; qualities underrepresented and undervalued in our society.
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014
The Importance of Elliott Smith
When I was an audio engineer, I had a subscription to Tape Op magazine. Around 2000, I read an interview with Elliott Smith which intrigued me enough to listen to his latest album. I didn’t like it. Another whiny white male, I thought.
I blaming my reaction on Coldplay, who had just come out with a terrible song called “Yellow,” that was wildly popular for some reason. The lyrics are stupid, trite and unironically nonsensical. Here’s a sample:
I take issue with people and things that are disingenuous. Males have established a long tradition of trying to get in girls’ pants by telling girls what they think they want to hear that really annoys me. The annoying part is that girls actually fall for that crap. So did he jump or did he swim? Obviously he’s flat out lying. When a guy is trying to woo you and instead accidentally calls you a coward and then gives an ultimatum, which he admits is cowardly on his part, my advice is to run away from him. But what do I know. I suppose being a songwriter with no grasp of language doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.
Another thing I don’t understand is chronic depression. What are so many people so sad about? Obviously there are a lot of bad things in life, but they are either within our ability to change or they aren’t, so your options in life are to be confident you can change and hopeful others will. See? There you go- I was just able to solve everybody’s problems with one sentence. With that attitude, it is understandable why white males sobbing over their presumably posh lives tend to annoy me. I am usually a very rational and objective thinker, so I tend to be incredulous that people can’t just get over their petty selves and strive on.
A few years after first dismissing Elliott Smith I heard him again, after moving in with a roommate whose two favorite musicians were Smith and Syd Barrett. I didn’t get the appeal of Barrett when I first heard him either, but just last year I was challenged to listen to the debut Pink Floyd album. I’ve never liked Pink Floyd- pretentious drivel is what I’d call it. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was actually pretty good, though, which caused me to revisit Syd Barrett and find him much more interesting than I’d remembered. It was through this circuitous route that I decided to give Elliott Smith another try.
Smith’s style fits snugly between late Beatles and John Lennon solo. He probably spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (1975). He doesn’t seem to be someone with an extensive musical library, but rather someone who has spent a lot of time shut up alone writing, rewriting and practicing. And that’s the thing about Elliott Smith- after listening to his music, you automatically assume you know everything about the guy. It’s funny to realize that, perhaps, he’s never broken up with a girl he loves; it’s just a topic he enjoys writing songs about. Smith’s songs are so utterly heartfelt, personal and convincing the proposal that they could be just stories seems preposterous.
I’ve had my heart broken by my fair share of girls, but would like to think I’ve never whined about it as much as this guy. In fact, I hope nobody’s taken a break up as hard as Elliott Smith. Holy Christ, dude, get it together. He alternatively blames self for his own inadequacies and spews anger towards his ex. Running together the lyrics from “I Didn’t Understand” and “A Question Mark,” both from XO (1998), makes it pretty obvious that Smith has some maladaptive coping strategies:
…
Even though the subject matter and instrumentation are the same, these two songs have completely different vibes- one is a cappella and the other features a full band, including a peppy baritone sax. It’s almost as if he’s cursed to keep writing on the same topics despite his uncanny ability to write songs that don’t sound derivative. Smith is not oblivious to how extreme his inability to let go and move on comes across. He not only perceives this, but responds to this criticism in a couple songs, including “Southern Belle,” from Elliott Smith (1995):
Smith tends to drown his vocals in either a sea of close harmonic overdubs or a Leslie organ speaker, giving the impression he must be uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice. One wonders whether he is insecure with his talents or in revealing the subject matter. Wrapping the words into this almost surreal cloud forces the listener not only to want to understand the lyrics but pay close attention in order to do so. In the end, the vocal effect provides an honest, distressed and soul-bearing atmosphere that effectively creates contrast on the rare occasion he reveals his actual naked, lonely voice.
The production sensibility is one way in which Smith informs the audience that the words must be personally meaningful. Another is by the unembellished frankness of the lyrics themselves.
This song in particular reads to me very much like a Charles Bukowski poem. Bukowski is the type of poet who can convince you the only solace in life is at a horse race, even though you’ve never been to a racetrack. One thing Bukowski is masterful at is putting details into poems that wouldn’t really make sense to be there unless they were true, and this is a concept that Smith also exploits. But while Bukowski is resolute and defiant, Elliott Smith is obsessed with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. He is a staunch pessimist.
I, on the other hand, am an optimist. Some might think I’m not because I tend to be overly critical, but that is precisely because I seek out the best of the best. I am wired to value productivity, and neither negativity nor dwelling on the past are useful. I dislike time-wasting and have never understood procrastinators. I’m easily amused and can entertain myself effortlessly. I'm a pretty normal guy. I don’t have much in common with Elliott Smith.
Figure 8 would be Smith’s final studio album. The first track from it makes us acutely aware that his mental issues may be far worse than we imagine:
This song, which is played in a haunting minor key and includes disorienting bridges, is downright frightening, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I like to read about serial killers because their mindset is fascinatingly unfamiliar. This distinguishes "Son of Sam" from perhaps my favorite Elliott Smith song, "Between The Bars," from either/or (1997). In this song, he makes the first person character a sort of tragic, desperate wanna-be hero trying to save the wrong person and making unkeepable and ill-advised promises.
I like this song because, unlike most of Smith’s work, I can actually relate to it. I bring this up specifically because I think one of the most wonderful things about art is also something we need to be wary of- we tend to embrace art we can relate to and reject art we can’t. And that’s why Elliott Smith is important- he is a veritable window into mental illness. He acts as a voice for millions of people battling depression especially and mental diseases in general. Despite the fact that I have a BA in psychology and have dated a couple crazies, I don’t know much about mental illness. As un-hip as it is to admit it, I’m relatively sane. While those of us that don’t struggle with these issues tend to imagine them not dissimilar to how we feel upon finding expired milk in the fridge, Elliott Smith tells us how it really feels- and we should all be taking notes and learning from him for the betterment of human kind.
People who feel like Elliott Smith have lost access to perspective. Programs utilizing psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers trained to help these people regain an undistorted viewpoint are severely under-funded in America. In fact, our mental health care system ranks last among first world countries. In many ways, we have simply written off mental illness as an inevitable and unavoidable part of our culture. As a result, millions suffering from mental illness end up becoming homeless, abused or violent.
Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest on October 21st, 2003. They were probably self-inflicted.
I blaming my reaction on Coldplay, who had just come out with a terrible song called “Yellow,” that was wildly popular for some reason. The lyrics are stupid, trite and unironically nonsensical. Here’s a sample:
I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
'Cause you were all yellow
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow
I take issue with people and things that are disingenuous. Males have established a long tradition of trying to get in girls’ pants by telling girls what they think they want to hear that really annoys me. The annoying part is that girls actually fall for that crap. So did he jump or did he swim? Obviously he’s flat out lying. When a guy is trying to woo you and instead accidentally calls you a coward and then gives an ultimatum, which he admits is cowardly on his part, my advice is to run away from him. But what do I know. I suppose being a songwriter with no grasp of language doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.
Another thing I don’t understand is chronic depression. What are so many people so sad about? Obviously there are a lot of bad things in life, but they are either within our ability to change or they aren’t, so your options in life are to be confident you can change and hopeful others will. See? There you go- I was just able to solve everybody’s problems with one sentence. With that attitude, it is understandable why white males sobbing over their presumably posh lives tend to annoy me. I am usually a very rational and objective thinker, so I tend to be incredulous that people can’t just get over their petty selves and strive on.
A few years after first dismissing Elliott Smith I heard him again, after moving in with a roommate whose two favorite musicians were Smith and Syd Barrett. I didn’t get the appeal of Barrett when I first heard him either, but just last year I was challenged to listen to the debut Pink Floyd album. I’ve never liked Pink Floyd- pretentious drivel is what I’d call it. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was actually pretty good, though, which caused me to revisit Syd Barrett and find him much more interesting than I’d remembered. It was through this circuitous route that I decided to give Elliott Smith another try.
Smith’s style fits snugly between late Beatles and John Lennon solo. He probably spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (1975). He doesn’t seem to be someone with an extensive musical library, but rather someone who has spent a lot of time shut up alone writing, rewriting and practicing. And that’s the thing about Elliott Smith- after listening to his music, you automatically assume you know everything about the guy. It’s funny to realize that, perhaps, he’s never broken up with a girl he loves; it’s just a topic he enjoys writing songs about. Smith’s songs are so utterly heartfelt, personal and convincing the proposal that they could be just stories seems preposterous.
I’ve had my heart broken by my fair share of girls, but would like to think I’ve never whined about it as much as this guy. In fact, I hope nobody’s taken a break up as hard as Elliott Smith. Holy Christ, dude, get it together. He alternatively blames self for his own inadequacies and spews anger towards his ex. Running together the lyrics from “I Didn’t Understand” and “A Question Mark,” both from XO (1998), makes it pretty obvious that Smith has some maladaptive coping strategies:
Thought you'd be looking for the next in line to love
Then ignore, put out, and put away
And so you'd soon be leaving me alone like I'm supposed to be
Tonight, tomorrow, and every day
There's nothing here that you'll miss
I can guarantee you this is a cloud of smoke
Trying to occupy space
What a fucking joke
What a fucking joke
I waited for a bus to separate the both of us
And take me off, far away from you
'Cause my feelings never change a bit
I always feel like shit
I don't know why, I guess that I just do
You once talked to me about love
And you painted pictures of a Never-Never land
And I could have gone to that place
But I didn't understand
I didn't understand
I didn't understand
…
I got a question mark
You got a need to always take some shot in the dark
I don't have to make pretend the picture I'm in is totally clear
You think that all things have a way they ought to appear
'Cause you know you know you know you know
You know you know you know you know
You know I don't
I dream
Don't know what you mean
Panic called you out and took you in
Giving you an easy game and letting you win
Giving back a little hatred now to the world
'Cause it treated you bad
'Cause you couldn't keep the great unknown from making you mad
'Cause you know you know you know you know
You know you know you know you know
You know I don't
I dream
Don't know what you mean
Said your final word, but honesty and love could have kept us together
One day you'll see it's worth it after all
If you ever want to say you're sorry you can give me a call
Even though the subject matter and instrumentation are the same, these two songs have completely different vibes- one is a cappella and the other features a full band, including a peppy baritone sax. It’s almost as if he’s cursed to keep writing on the same topics despite his uncanny ability to write songs that don’t sound derivative. Smith is not oblivious to how extreme his inability to let go and move on comes across. He not only perceives this, but responds to this criticism in a couple songs, including “Southern Belle,” from Elliott Smith (1995):
Killing a southern belle
Is all you know how to do
That, and give other people hell
It's what they expect from you too
But I wouldn't have you how you want
I don't want to walk around
I don't even want to breathe
I live in a southern town
Where all you can do is grit your teeth
But I wouldn't have you how you want
How come you're not ashamed of what you are?
And sorry that you're the one she got?
Ain't nobody looking now
Nobody nothing's said
No one's about to shout
Nobody's seeing red
But I wouldn't have you how you want
You're killing a southern belle
Killing a southern belle
Killing a southern belle
Smith tends to drown his vocals in either a sea of close harmonic overdubs or a Leslie organ speaker, giving the impression he must be uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice. One wonders whether he is insecure with his talents or in revealing the subject matter. Wrapping the words into this almost surreal cloud forces the listener not only to want to understand the lyrics but pay close attention in order to do so. In the end, the vocal effect provides an honest, distressed and soul-bearing atmosphere that effectively creates contrast on the rare occasion he reveals his actual naked, lonely voice.
The production sensibility is one way in which Smith informs the audience that the words must be personally meaningful. Another is by the unembellished frankness of the lyrics themselves.
"Clementine" from Elliott Smith
They're waking you up to close the bar
The street's wet, you can tell by the sound of the cars
The bartender's singing "Clementine"
While he's turning around the Open sign
"Dreadful sorry, Clementine"
Though you're still her man
It seems a long time gone
Maybe the whole thing's wrong
What if she thinks so but just didn't say so?
You drank yourself into slow-mo
Made an angel in the snow
You did anything to pass the time
And keep that song out of your mind
"Oh my darling
Oh my darling
Oh my darling Clementine
Dreadful sorry, Clementine"
This song in particular reads to me very much like a Charles Bukowski poem. Bukowski is the type of poet who can convince you the only solace in life is at a horse race, even though you’ve never been to a racetrack. One thing Bukowski is masterful at is putting details into poems that wouldn’t really make sense to be there unless they were true, and this is a concept that Smith also exploits. But while Bukowski is resolute and defiant, Elliott Smith is obsessed with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. He is a staunch pessimist.
“No Name No. 5” from Figure 8 (2000)
Got bitten fingernails and a head full of the past
And everybody's gone at last
Sweet, sweet smile that's fading fast
'Cause everybody's gone at last
Don't get upset about it
No not anymore
There's nothing wrong that wasn't wrong before
Had a second alone with a chance let pass
And everybody's gone at last
Well I hope you're not waiting
Waiting 'round for me
'Cause I'm not going anywhere, obviously
Got a broken heart and your name on my cast
And everybody's gone at last
Everybody's gone at last
I, on the other hand, am an optimist. Some might think I’m not because I tend to be overly critical, but that is precisely because I seek out the best of the best. I am wired to value productivity, and neither negativity nor dwelling on the past are useful. I dislike time-wasting and have never understood procrastinators. I’m easily amused and can entertain myself effortlessly. I'm a pretty normal guy. I don’t have much in common with Elliott Smith.
Figure 8 would be Smith’s final studio album. The first track from it makes us acutely aware that his mental issues may be far worse than we imagine:
"Son of Sam"
Something's happening, don't speak too soon
I told the boss off and made my move
Got nowhere to go
Son of Sam, son of the shining path, the clouded mind
The couple killer each and every time
I'm not uncomfortable, feeling weird
Lonely leered, options disappeared
But I know what to do
Son of Sam, son of a doctor's touch, a nurse's love
Acting under orders from above
King for a day!
Son of Sam, son of the shining path, the clouded mind
The couple killer running out of time
Shiva opens her arms now to make sure I don't get too far
I may talk in my sleep tonight 'cause I don't know what I am
I'm a little like you, more like Son of Sam
This song, which is played in a haunting minor key and includes disorienting bridges, is downright frightening, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I like to read about serial killers because their mindset is fascinatingly unfamiliar. This distinguishes "Son of Sam" from perhaps my favorite Elliott Smith song, "Between The Bars," from either/or (1997). In this song, he makes the first person character a sort of tragic, desperate wanna-be hero trying to save the wrong person and making unkeepable and ill-advised promises.
Drink up baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do
You won't but you might
The potential you'll be
That you'll never see
The promises you'll only make
Drink up with me now
And forget all about
The pressure of days
Do what I say
And I'll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head
People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
Drink up baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there
With your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught
Drink up one more time
And I'll make you mine
Keep you apart
Deep in my heart
Separate from the rest
Where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot
The people you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
I like this song because, unlike most of Smith’s work, I can actually relate to it. I bring this up specifically because I think one of the most wonderful things about art is also something we need to be wary of- we tend to embrace art we can relate to and reject art we can’t. And that’s why Elliott Smith is important- he is a veritable window into mental illness. He acts as a voice for millions of people battling depression especially and mental diseases in general. Despite the fact that I have a BA in psychology and have dated a couple crazies, I don’t know much about mental illness. As un-hip as it is to admit it, I’m relatively sane. While those of us that don’t struggle with these issues tend to imagine them not dissimilar to how we feel upon finding expired milk in the fridge, Elliott Smith tells us how it really feels- and we should all be taking notes and learning from him for the betterment of human kind.
People who feel like Elliott Smith have lost access to perspective. Programs utilizing psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers trained to help these people regain an undistorted viewpoint are severely under-funded in America. In fact, our mental health care system ranks last among first world countries. In many ways, we have simply written off mental illness as an inevitable and unavoidable part of our culture. As a result, millions suffering from mental illness end up becoming homeless, abused or violent.
Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest on October 21st, 2003. They were probably self-inflicted.
“Oh Well, Okay" from XO
Here's the silhouette, the face always turned away
The bleeding color gone to black, dying like a day
Couldn't figure out what made you so unhappy
Shook your head to say no, no, no
And stopped for a spell
And stayed that way
Oh well, okay
I got pictures, I just don't see it anymore
Climbing hour upon hour through a total bore
With the one I keep, where it never fades
In the safety of a pitch-black mind
An airless cell that blocks the day
Oh well, okay
If you get a feeling next time you see me
Do me a favor and let me know
'Cause it's hard to tell
It's hard to say
Oh well, okay
Oh well, okay
Oh well, okay
Monday, July 14, 2014
Fishbone/Identity
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory."
-from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance
I arrived at the site of the all-day music festival early and looked around for a spot to claim for a hacky-sack circle where I could wait until my friends arrived. Hearing my name, I looked down and saw two girls sitting in the grass, making sideways glances at each other. Suddenly I seemed to be sitting next to one of the girls looking up at a nineteen year-old kid with shoulder-length hair parted down the middle, a goatee, blue-tinted circle-cut sunglasses and a distressed Levi jean jacket over a black Miles Davis t-shirt. “Hey, what are you doing here?” he dumbly asked, avoiding eye contact by looking at his shuffling feet.
Perspective shifted itself back to its normal state as Sarah answered, “Soothing Syrup of course.” Disoriented and confused, I struggled to remember that Phil, the drummer, and she were both music majors. “Yeah, Measure and House of Large Sizes are going to be good, too,” I responded in a ridiculous attempt at one-upmanship. Not much was said after that, and I wandered away, pondering what had just happened, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and proud.
It was the first time I’d seen Sarah since January, when I’d awkwardly brought her flowers in a failed attempt to apologize for not having spoken to her over Christmas break, during which I had been helping my dad build a house in Missouri that was several years removed from having a telephone installed. I thought back to the late nights the semester before, watching Kids in the Hall, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and whatever British comedy was playing on PBS. I sometimes still glanced at the rock I had kicked across campus between our dorms, which was still stashed outside the door of Dancer Hall, and realized if I was still making that trek I’d play keepy-uppy with my hacky-sack instead. Then again, I would have probably never learned how to play hacky-sack if we hadn’t broken up, because I would have never gotten bored enough to work up the courage to knock on Brad and John Paul’s dorm room door. One can only sit alone listening to the first two Zeppelin albums, Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and “Tupelo Honey” and John Coltrane’s “Kind of Blue” and “A Love Supreme” hoping for the phone to ring for about a month, it turns out.
It was now April 27th; in two weeks my second year of college would be over.
Brad, JP, Erin and Jacie finally arrived, along with three of their friends from Iowa City whom I’d never met. We started up a hacky-sack circle and the Iowa City guys were good, one of them amazingly so. I tried to copy his moves and failed miserably. After about an hour, the Iowa City crew got tired of playing and wandered off in search of other entertainment, taking the others with them. I couldn’t fathom this at all, thinking if I was as good as them I would never want to stop playing.
I spent the rest of the afternoon coercing people, including the Soothing Syrup members after their set, into playing hacky-sack while the music festival bands played in the background. The headlining band was Fishbone, who I’d never heard of. Since it was getting too dark to continue hacky-sacking, I got right in the middle of the mosh pit. This was something I’d never done before, and being someone who generally doesn’t like crowds, was surprised to find the experience exhilarating- for a while at least. I couldn’t really decide whether I liked the band or not. Most everybody else seemed to be loving them, and the band members were certainly not lacking in confidence. During at least one song, the singer stuck his mic out so that enthusiastic crowd-members could pretend they knew what they were supposed to be singing.
When the show ended, I finally found my friends and followed them back to Brad and JP’s room. I learned that, while I had continued playing hacky-sack, they had been hanging out with the Fishbone members. “You should have asked if they wanted to play hacky-sack,” I offered.
The dorm room was even busier than usual, and included two girls I’d never met on Brad’s bed in the corner giggling at each other while prattling off rap lyrics. I found them utterly obnoxious. I sat next to Brad as he repeatedly asked, “Who are these girls on my bed?” while rolling his head and chuckling to himself. I tried to reenact the occurrence from that morning and see myself from the girls on Brad’s bed’s perspective, but couldn’t, so I pondered it instead.
I wondered whether, even after all these months, my bond with Sarah was such that I could empathically enter into her mind. I quickly realized I had no idea what she was thinking or doing, especially after the months that had passed. In fact, I had been struck in that early morning moment by an awareness that I had completely changed since I’d last seen her. I hadn’t seen myself from another’s point of view- I had seen how I guessed I looked from another’s point of view. It was like watching a movie with someone and spending the whole time guessing what they thought of it. Or, if you knew what they thought of it, trying to attain that same feeling. Either way, the influence of company on a movie being viewed is undeniable, but in the end, everyone watches their own movie. A fondness for Monty Python, which had been cultivated by Sarah, was part of my identity now, even though I’d sort of forgotten about it. “Does anybody like Monty Python?” I asked aloud, starting a chain of conversation that I didn’t bother to follow because it was beside the point. They didn’t know Monty Python like I knew Monty Python.
An acquaintance from a few doors down was fiddling with something on the sink just to my left. He took a bill from his wallet, rolled it up and held it to his nose as the other end traced a line on the counter framing the sink. That was something I’d never witnessed before, and it was startlingly disgusting.
I was struck by a profound awareness of the present. I understood that everybody else was experiencing a reality that I couldn’t step into, and that I was experiencing a reality that only existed because of this encounter with others. I sat on the couch and absorbed everything, finally realizing my existence was a gestalt of the choices I’d made from the options I’d been given, and as such, it was of utmost importance that my choices were a reflection of my own convictions, standards, goals and desires. If my choices were based upon what I thought another would have me do, my being, which is all I could really ever own in this world, would dissolve into nothingness. "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." -Ibid.
I had to laugh at myself. While surrounded by chaos, here I was- remaining focused on some mental philosophical exercise. Why did I take everything so seriously? But that wasn’t it, exactly. I was only earnest about things that excited me. Half-heartedness was not in my psyche. I desired to excel at whatever I endeavored, not solely in the eyes of others, but also not solely in my own estimation. One thing I had learned from drumming was that I had thought I was really good at it as long as I had never paid attention to other drummers. Like drumming, hacky-sack gave immediate personal and public feedback regarding ones prowess at the improvisational and technical execution required, but unlike drummers, people who played hacky-sack were generally not dickheads. Hacky-sack also demonstrated that I wasn’t as un-athletic as my high school experience of sports had led me to believe. The thing I’d learned I appreciated about sport was its effectiveness at illustrating the maxim, “talk is cheap.” Unlike life, sport has a built-in measure of objective success.
In some class during college, I read an analysis of the myth of Narcissus that determined the vain hunter, after falling in love with what he thought was somebody else swimming in a river, needn’t die after refusing to take his eyes off his reflection or commit suicide after realizing the futility of loving something he couldn’t have, as the story is commonly told. Instead, he could evolve by incorporating his newly learned ability to judge himself objectively in all his contributions to the external world. After all, genuine self-awareness can be attained only after contemplating how our selves, including our actions, would be viewed by a neutral observer.
In another class, aesthetics, we spent one period with an artist and art professor analyzing his own paintings. The rest of the class was appalled at how much he loved the work he produced. I, on the other hand, was inspired to produce work I loved as much. "A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace." -Ibid.
Confident, informed and independent people are useless to those with something inferior to sell. The only thing a truly self-reliant person needs others for is friendship, and that isn’t a sellable commodity. Competition, not cooperation, drives capitalism. Winning is lauded at any cost, and is defined by our ability to convince others we’re better than they are. In its demand for us to try and impress it, society tries to beat the integrity out of us. The important thing is not the validity of our claims but our ability to convince others they are valid. Because of the “Halo Effect,” the phenomenon which causes us to trust those we find attractive, outward beauty becomes crucial in this effort. To keep the individual powerless, our culture stresses an absurd notion that when we look at ourselves, we shouldn’t like what we see. It convinces us to conform by teaching us to loathe ourselves. The ignorant and vulnerable are easily manipulated, and so we are raised to look for and obsess over our flaws, weaknesses and imperfections while revering an unrealistic ideal. We survive by pointing blaming fingers while eschewing responsibility, which only deepens our guilt. In the end, power is split between those fitting society’s definition of beauty and those most willing to destroy the self-confidence of the masses.
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
-from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
April 27th, 1996 remains a seminal part of my life. I wouldn’t trade that day of playing hacky-sack for anything. I’d only have a couple years of hacky-sack playing left before it would become impossible to find anybody to play with. In five years, I’d end up meeting up with Fishbone at a recording studio in San Francisco where I was working as an intern, but there was nothing memorable about that occasion. Today, one of those girls on Brad’s bed I contemplated from the couch and futilely tried to switch minds with remains one of my oldest, dearest and closest friends.
-from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance
I arrived at the site of the all-day music festival early and looked around for a spot to claim for a hacky-sack circle where I could wait until my friends arrived. Hearing my name, I looked down and saw two girls sitting in the grass, making sideways glances at each other. Suddenly I seemed to be sitting next to one of the girls looking up at a nineteen year-old kid with shoulder-length hair parted down the middle, a goatee, blue-tinted circle-cut sunglasses and a distressed Levi jean jacket over a black Miles Davis t-shirt. “Hey, what are you doing here?” he dumbly asked, avoiding eye contact by looking at his shuffling feet.
Perspective shifted itself back to its normal state as Sarah answered, “Soothing Syrup of course.” Disoriented and confused, I struggled to remember that Phil, the drummer, and she were both music majors. “Yeah, Measure and House of Large Sizes are going to be good, too,” I responded in a ridiculous attempt at one-upmanship. Not much was said after that, and I wandered away, pondering what had just happened, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and proud.
It was the first time I’d seen Sarah since January, when I’d awkwardly brought her flowers in a failed attempt to apologize for not having spoken to her over Christmas break, during which I had been helping my dad build a house in Missouri that was several years removed from having a telephone installed. I thought back to the late nights the semester before, watching Kids in the Hall, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and whatever British comedy was playing on PBS. I sometimes still glanced at the rock I had kicked across campus between our dorms, which was still stashed outside the door of Dancer Hall, and realized if I was still making that trek I’d play keepy-uppy with my hacky-sack instead. Then again, I would have probably never learned how to play hacky-sack if we hadn’t broken up, because I would have never gotten bored enough to work up the courage to knock on Brad and John Paul’s dorm room door. One can only sit alone listening to the first two Zeppelin albums, Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and “Tupelo Honey” and John Coltrane’s “Kind of Blue” and “A Love Supreme” hoping for the phone to ring for about a month, it turns out.
It was now April 27th; in two weeks my second year of college would be over.
Brad, JP, Erin and Jacie finally arrived, along with three of their friends from Iowa City whom I’d never met. We started up a hacky-sack circle and the Iowa City guys were good, one of them amazingly so. I tried to copy his moves and failed miserably. After about an hour, the Iowa City crew got tired of playing and wandered off in search of other entertainment, taking the others with them. I couldn’t fathom this at all, thinking if I was as good as them I would never want to stop playing.
I spent the rest of the afternoon coercing people, including the Soothing Syrup members after their set, into playing hacky-sack while the music festival bands played in the background. The headlining band was Fishbone, who I’d never heard of. Since it was getting too dark to continue hacky-sacking, I got right in the middle of the mosh pit. This was something I’d never done before, and being someone who generally doesn’t like crowds, was surprised to find the experience exhilarating- for a while at least. I couldn’t really decide whether I liked the band or not. Most everybody else seemed to be loving them, and the band members were certainly not lacking in confidence. During at least one song, the singer stuck his mic out so that enthusiastic crowd-members could pretend they knew what they were supposed to be singing.
When the show ended, I finally found my friends and followed them back to Brad and JP’s room. I learned that, while I had continued playing hacky-sack, they had been hanging out with the Fishbone members. “You should have asked if they wanted to play hacky-sack,” I offered.
The dorm room was even busier than usual, and included two girls I’d never met on Brad’s bed in the corner giggling at each other while prattling off rap lyrics. I found them utterly obnoxious. I sat next to Brad as he repeatedly asked, “Who are these girls on my bed?” while rolling his head and chuckling to himself. I tried to reenact the occurrence from that morning and see myself from the girls on Brad’s bed’s perspective, but couldn’t, so I pondered it instead.
I wondered whether, even after all these months, my bond with Sarah was such that I could empathically enter into her mind. I quickly realized I had no idea what she was thinking or doing, especially after the months that had passed. In fact, I had been struck in that early morning moment by an awareness that I had completely changed since I’d last seen her. I hadn’t seen myself from another’s point of view- I had seen how I guessed I looked from another’s point of view. It was like watching a movie with someone and spending the whole time guessing what they thought of it. Or, if you knew what they thought of it, trying to attain that same feeling. Either way, the influence of company on a movie being viewed is undeniable, but in the end, everyone watches their own movie. A fondness for Monty Python, which had been cultivated by Sarah, was part of my identity now, even though I’d sort of forgotten about it. “Does anybody like Monty Python?” I asked aloud, starting a chain of conversation that I didn’t bother to follow because it was beside the point. They didn’t know Monty Python like I knew Monty Python.
An acquaintance from a few doors down was fiddling with something on the sink just to my left. He took a bill from his wallet, rolled it up and held it to his nose as the other end traced a line on the counter framing the sink. That was something I’d never witnessed before, and it was startlingly disgusting.
I was struck by a profound awareness of the present. I understood that everybody else was experiencing a reality that I couldn’t step into, and that I was experiencing a reality that only existed because of this encounter with others. I sat on the couch and absorbed everything, finally realizing my existence was a gestalt of the choices I’d made from the options I’d been given, and as such, it was of utmost importance that my choices were a reflection of my own convictions, standards, goals and desires. If my choices were based upon what I thought another would have me do, my being, which is all I could really ever own in this world, would dissolve into nothingness. "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." -Ibid.
I had to laugh at myself. While surrounded by chaos, here I was- remaining focused on some mental philosophical exercise. Why did I take everything so seriously? But that wasn’t it, exactly. I was only earnest about things that excited me. Half-heartedness was not in my psyche. I desired to excel at whatever I endeavored, not solely in the eyes of others, but also not solely in my own estimation. One thing I had learned from drumming was that I had thought I was really good at it as long as I had never paid attention to other drummers. Like drumming, hacky-sack gave immediate personal and public feedback regarding ones prowess at the improvisational and technical execution required, but unlike drummers, people who played hacky-sack were generally not dickheads. Hacky-sack also demonstrated that I wasn’t as un-athletic as my high school experience of sports had led me to believe. The thing I’d learned I appreciated about sport was its effectiveness at illustrating the maxim, “talk is cheap.” Unlike life, sport has a built-in measure of objective success.
In some class during college, I read an analysis of the myth of Narcissus that determined the vain hunter, after falling in love with what he thought was somebody else swimming in a river, needn’t die after refusing to take his eyes off his reflection or commit suicide after realizing the futility of loving something he couldn’t have, as the story is commonly told. Instead, he could evolve by incorporating his newly learned ability to judge himself objectively in all his contributions to the external world. After all, genuine self-awareness can be attained only after contemplating how our selves, including our actions, would be viewed by a neutral observer.
In another class, aesthetics, we spent one period with an artist and art professor analyzing his own paintings. The rest of the class was appalled at how much he loved the work he produced. I, on the other hand, was inspired to produce work I loved as much. "A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace." -Ibid.
Confident, informed and independent people are useless to those with something inferior to sell. The only thing a truly self-reliant person needs others for is friendship, and that isn’t a sellable commodity. Competition, not cooperation, drives capitalism. Winning is lauded at any cost, and is defined by our ability to convince others we’re better than they are. In its demand for us to try and impress it, society tries to beat the integrity out of us. The important thing is not the validity of our claims but our ability to convince others they are valid. Because of the “Halo Effect,” the phenomenon which causes us to trust those we find attractive, outward beauty becomes crucial in this effort. To keep the individual powerless, our culture stresses an absurd notion that when we look at ourselves, we shouldn’t like what we see. It convinces us to conform by teaching us to loathe ourselves. The ignorant and vulnerable are easily manipulated, and so we are raised to look for and obsess over our flaws, weaknesses and imperfections while revering an unrealistic ideal. We survive by pointing blaming fingers while eschewing responsibility, which only deepens our guilt. In the end, power is split between those fitting society’s definition of beauty and those most willing to destroy the self-confidence of the masses.
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
-from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
April 27th, 1996 remains a seminal part of my life. I wouldn’t trade that day of playing hacky-sack for anything. I’d only have a couple years of hacky-sack playing left before it would become impossible to find anybody to play with. In five years, I’d end up meeting up with Fishbone at a recording studio in San Francisco where I was working as an intern, but there was nothing memorable about that occasion. Today, one of those girls on Brad’s bed I contemplated from the couch and futilely tried to switch minds with remains one of my oldest, dearest and closest friends.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Why We Don't Learn
While I was in college, my grandpa asked what I planned to do with my education. “I don’t know, I’m just going to college to learn,” I announced.
“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Act Up
“I think that we're showing the proper compassion and concern, so I can't tell you where [the widespread feeling that our administration is not doing enough about AIDS is] coming from, but I am very much concerned about AIDS and I believe that we’ve got the best researchers in the world out there at NIH working the problem. We're funding them- I wish there was more money, but we're funding them far more than anytime in the past.... So I think the appeal is, 'Yes, we care,' and the other thing is, part of AIDS it’s one of the few diseases where behavior matters, and I once called on somebody, ‘Well, change your behavior- if the behavior you’re using [is] prone to cause AIDS, change the behavior.’ The next thing I know one of these Act Up groups is out saying, ‘Bush ought to change his behavior.’ You can’t talk about it rationally!” - George Bush, first presidential debate, 1992
I grew up in a Pentecostal church, which surrounded me with dedicated people holding strong convictions. I also grew up in America in the 80’s, when millions of lives were being lost to the AIDS epidemic. At that time, my church and my government had the same policy: AIDS wasn’t the problem, homosexuality was.
My church preached that AIDS had been allowed by God as a punishment upon immoral sinners. The only cure was for these sinners to turn from their wicked ways and accept Jesus as their eternally loving and forgiving savior. Church-goers prayed, not for the disease to be cured, but for homosexuals to stop being gay.
It seems absurd that I should even have to explain how this is totally psychotic.
I don’t know how many of these people ever got to know anyone with full-blown AIDS. I have, and let me tell you, the symptoms of the disease are absolutely appalling. You don’t sit at their bedside and think, “I hope they don’t die.” Instead, you mortifyingly find yourself thinking, “How aren’t they dead yet?” and realize death isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The experience is profound, sad and humbling. AIDS is a disease you want not wish upon your greatest enemy… unless you were totally heartless.
Heartless is a term we use the way we do because Aristotle thought the heart controlled our sensory-perceptions and movements (and that the brain regulated blood temperature), and consequently our heart both evaluated our environment and determined our actions. In fact, the single reason why Western medical practices didn’t evolve for centuries was because of a persistent, unquestioning faith in Aristotle’s works on anatomy and medicine, which, it turns out, were completely wrong. When a solution to a problem is presented by a highly regarded source, it never occurs to most to question or validate that solution, even when it is completely unfounded or doesn’t actually solve anything.
The constitutional government of the United States of America, being a direct result of the Age of Enlightenment, understood this, and was designed with a system of checks and balances in order to force it to question itself and not rely on any single authority, including religious authority. In fact, the First Amendment forbids any law to be made as a result of religious bias and grants all individuals the right to practice whatever religion they choose, as opposed to officially declaring one superior to another. There is a very simple reason why this is a good thing, and it was incidentally stated by my mother when I mentioned I was writing this: Religions do not offer the possibility that they can be wrong. This explains both why religious people don’t understand how everybody doesn’t agree with them and why non-religious people don’t understand how religious people are so persistent. (It is worth noting that the framers of the Constitution were understandably less concerned with authoritarianism than in another rebellion. Hence, it was also designed to avoid mob rule.)
There is nothing greater to be feared than an entity that does not concede the possibility it can be wrong, except for those willing to unreservedly accept its teaching. Blind obedience to authority is the quickest route to committing abominable acts, because when we are simply following orders, we do not feel as culpable for our own actions. This is not simply my opinion: it is a well-researched psychological fact demonstrated, for example, by the Milgram experiments.
Pickpockets don’t steal by distracting you from your valuables; they do it by drawing your attention to something seemingly more important than your valuables. We are incapable of perceiving things outside of our focus. The simplest method for bringing about human cruelty is to distract humans from empathy by presenting something seemingly more important.
There is a documentary by Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, the premise of which is to ask his daughter the same five questions on each of her birthdays. This seems innocent enough, except this was being done during a time when it was illegal to shoot home movies in the Soviet Union. Mikhalkov justifies his subversion because he is convinced of the importance of an honest, uncensored understanding of how government policies affect the views of (at least one of) its citizens. At one point, however, he begrudgingly scraps the project, realizing it could be putting his daughter in danger. His explanation of this decision is sublime: “No idea is worth life of child.”
I feel the most important thing for everyone to understand is that none of our beliefs, ideologies, notions, actions, activities, pursuits, assumptions, theories, etc. should ever be considered more important or valid than any single living human being. When a human life is in the balance, every opinion is always less important than that life, and that life takes priority over every opinion. You don’t have to approve of a lifestyle, relate to a culture or agree with a point of view in order to evince unconditional respect and solidarity for humankind.
I recently heard contempt defined as displaying moral superiority, and that is precisely the person I find most contemptible. (Interestingly, the judicial use of contempt refers to someone who blatantly disregards authority.) This is a paradox I find myself struggling to reconcile, because I would have to honestly admit that I feel I am morally superior to those who feel they are morally superior. Perhaps this demonstrates a truth that we should all be wary of: everyone is capable of not only justifying but actually committing atrocities. None of us are immune to conviction’s ability to blind. I don’t know whether evil exists, but I am convinced its antonym is informed empowerment.
Dogmatic, socially conservative and exploitative people, to name a few, tend to fear education. Unfamiliar culture, art, literature, language, music, sport and food are avoided and disdained by those who want to maintain the status quo. This sort of egocentricity should never be trusted, because it is always guided by ulterior motives. It is, in fact, NOT a small world, but a diverse and complicated one, and that scares the crap out of a lot of people.
Judging the American generation that came after the baby boomers as having no wars to fight is skewed. The reality is that the privilege to choose whether or not to join in the battles their generation faced was offered to a wider percentage of Americans, especially white, middle-class, non-socialist, heterosexual males. There will always be those whose greatest concern is to avoid confrontation. There is a word for those people: cowards. This does not apply to subversives who skillfully avoid getting caught. Tact is an admirable trait that appreciates the importance of understanding the appropriate time for action. Too often, however, days, weeks, years, decades and even centuries go by with nary a person riling against a wrong. Cowards are those who feel every problem can be circumvented by patting themselves and others on the back and saying, “good job!”
Heroes, on the other hand, are those in groups like Act Up, who, in defiance of authority, sought out and negotiated ways to expedite the search for AIDS treatments, ultimately saving millions of lives.
I grew up in a Pentecostal church, which surrounded me with dedicated people holding strong convictions. I also grew up in America in the 80’s, when millions of lives were being lost to the AIDS epidemic. At that time, my church and my government had the same policy: AIDS wasn’t the problem, homosexuality was.
My church preached that AIDS had been allowed by God as a punishment upon immoral sinners. The only cure was for these sinners to turn from their wicked ways and accept Jesus as their eternally loving and forgiving savior. Church-goers prayed, not for the disease to be cured, but for homosexuals to stop being gay.
It seems absurd that I should even have to explain how this is totally psychotic.
I don’t know how many of these people ever got to know anyone with full-blown AIDS. I have, and let me tell you, the symptoms of the disease are absolutely appalling. You don’t sit at their bedside and think, “I hope they don’t die.” Instead, you mortifyingly find yourself thinking, “How aren’t they dead yet?” and realize death isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The experience is profound, sad and humbling. AIDS is a disease you want not wish upon your greatest enemy… unless you were totally heartless.
Heartless is a term we use the way we do because Aristotle thought the heart controlled our sensory-perceptions and movements (and that the brain regulated blood temperature), and consequently our heart both evaluated our environment and determined our actions. In fact, the single reason why Western medical practices didn’t evolve for centuries was because of a persistent, unquestioning faith in Aristotle’s works on anatomy and medicine, which, it turns out, were completely wrong. When a solution to a problem is presented by a highly regarded source, it never occurs to most to question or validate that solution, even when it is completely unfounded or doesn’t actually solve anything.
The constitutional government of the United States of America, being a direct result of the Age of Enlightenment, understood this, and was designed with a system of checks and balances in order to force it to question itself and not rely on any single authority, including religious authority. In fact, the First Amendment forbids any law to be made as a result of religious bias and grants all individuals the right to practice whatever religion they choose, as opposed to officially declaring one superior to another. There is a very simple reason why this is a good thing, and it was incidentally stated by my mother when I mentioned I was writing this: Religions do not offer the possibility that they can be wrong. This explains both why religious people don’t understand how everybody doesn’t agree with them and why non-religious people don’t understand how religious people are so persistent. (It is worth noting that the framers of the Constitution were understandably less concerned with authoritarianism than in another rebellion. Hence, it was also designed to avoid mob rule.)
There is nothing greater to be feared than an entity that does not concede the possibility it can be wrong, except for those willing to unreservedly accept its teaching. Blind obedience to authority is the quickest route to committing abominable acts, because when we are simply following orders, we do not feel as culpable for our own actions. This is not simply my opinion: it is a well-researched psychological fact demonstrated, for example, by the Milgram experiments.
Pickpockets don’t steal by distracting you from your valuables; they do it by drawing your attention to something seemingly more important than your valuables. We are incapable of perceiving things outside of our focus. The simplest method for bringing about human cruelty is to distract humans from empathy by presenting something seemingly more important.
There is a documentary by Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, the premise of which is to ask his daughter the same five questions on each of her birthdays. This seems innocent enough, except this was being done during a time when it was illegal to shoot home movies in the Soviet Union. Mikhalkov justifies his subversion because he is convinced of the importance of an honest, uncensored understanding of how government policies affect the views of (at least one of) its citizens. At one point, however, he begrudgingly scraps the project, realizing it could be putting his daughter in danger. His explanation of this decision is sublime: “No idea is worth life of child.”
I feel the most important thing for everyone to understand is that none of our beliefs, ideologies, notions, actions, activities, pursuits, assumptions, theories, etc. should ever be considered more important or valid than any single living human being. When a human life is in the balance, every opinion is always less important than that life, and that life takes priority over every opinion. You don’t have to approve of a lifestyle, relate to a culture or agree with a point of view in order to evince unconditional respect and solidarity for humankind.
I recently heard contempt defined as displaying moral superiority, and that is precisely the person I find most contemptible. (Interestingly, the judicial use of contempt refers to someone who blatantly disregards authority.) This is a paradox I find myself struggling to reconcile, because I would have to honestly admit that I feel I am morally superior to those who feel they are morally superior. Perhaps this demonstrates a truth that we should all be wary of: everyone is capable of not only justifying but actually committing atrocities. None of us are immune to conviction’s ability to blind. I don’t know whether evil exists, but I am convinced its antonym is informed empowerment.
Dogmatic, socially conservative and exploitative people, to name a few, tend to fear education. Unfamiliar culture, art, literature, language, music, sport and food are avoided and disdained by those who want to maintain the status quo. This sort of egocentricity should never be trusted, because it is always guided by ulterior motives. It is, in fact, NOT a small world, but a diverse and complicated one, and that scares the crap out of a lot of people.
Judging the American generation that came after the baby boomers as having no wars to fight is skewed. The reality is that the privilege to choose whether or not to join in the battles their generation faced was offered to a wider percentage of Americans, especially white, middle-class, non-socialist, heterosexual males. There will always be those whose greatest concern is to avoid confrontation. There is a word for those people: cowards. This does not apply to subversives who skillfully avoid getting caught. Tact is an admirable trait that appreciates the importance of understanding the appropriate time for action. Too often, however, days, weeks, years, decades and even centuries go by with nary a person riling against a wrong. Cowards are those who feel every problem can be circumvented by patting themselves and others on the back and saying, “good job!”
Heroes, on the other hand, are those in groups like Act Up, who, in defiance of authority, sought out and negotiated ways to expedite the search for AIDS treatments, ultimately saving millions of lives.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Paradoxical Viewpoints
While the two people I hung out with most in junior high are two of the most generous and caring people I’ve encountered, it chagrins me to admit that the three people I spent the majority of my time with in high school are utterly despicable. I mention this not to speak ill but to ponder why I didn’t notice. They would criticize how I have changed, but I perceive my own character back then as deficient. I blame this in part on a typically teenage combination of wholly self-assured and utterly confused, but also on a fundamentally skewed view of reality.
One insight into my high school mindset is an occurrence I remember in one of Bob’s classes. (Bob was the teacher: his name was Mr. Roberts, but everybody called him Bob, because he allowed them to do so.) One of his assignments was to write a character sketch of him. I essentially wrote, “Bob adheres to New Age beliefs,” and turned it in, proud that I had so succinctly captured his persona. It came back with a failing grade and the comment, “You didn’t follow the assignment, which was to describe my personality.” I was genuinely confused by this. It seemed like he was suggesting there was something more to him than which religious stereotype he most resembled. Perhaps there was a religion I was unfamiliar with which better reflected his ideology? Perhaps he wasn’t privy to the accuracy of my insight? I thought about challenging the grade I’d received and get to the bottom of this obvious misunderstanding on his part, but decided against it.
The whole affair seems utterly strange to me today, especially considering the only thing I know about New Age is that it somehow involves crystals and John Tesh, and have no idea how I related these to Bob. I can’t figure out how I presumably didn’t understand that people have unique traits and qualities separate from any ideology. I can only surmise that I didn’t see them because I didn’t know to look for them. I just assumed everyone was either going to heaven or hell when they died, and it was best not to get to know the ones that were going to hell because they were bad influences. This heavily suggests that I was a major tool, to use parlance that, as far as I know, didn’t exist back then.
All life would be tragic if we weren’t provided the opportunity to learn, change and grow; but even more unfortunate is the life of someone who refuses that chance. I’ve long held that our lives our guided foremost by our priorities; that the things we value the most affects our perception of everything we encounter. I propose that even if we understand our own priorities, egocentrism makes it difficult to discern the motivations of others. For instance, I’ve long scratched my head at those prone to declare, “You’re just jealous,” as it seems ridiculously dismissive reductionism. But I’m not at all a jealous person, and perhaps that is why I’ve never considered it a valid motive for any pronouncement.
I’m notoriously impatient, and that bad habit prevents me from paying enough attention sometimes. I think of replies while others are still speaking, can be easily frustrated by communication failures and never see the point of beating around the bush. I’m prone to attack a sentence before heeding the clarifying or qualifying follow-up. My hurriedness tends to cause me to neglect affability and embrace crass bluntness. Our society is generally more comfortable with pretense and niceties than frankness, and perhaps rightfully so. Honest opinions tend to either offend or infuriate. Others are prone to informing me, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” to which I respond, “It’s not what you hear, it’s what you’re listening for.”
Oh, the irony. What am I listening for?
I find the nature of reality both fascinating and important. Sadly (from my perspective), this puts me in the minority. I’m constantly struggling to see things objectively and from multiple angles. This translates into a fondness for debate. While I strive to understand, often by exposing untruths (following Sherlock Holmes’ famous maxim), I’m often seen as argumentative. In actuality, I don’t at all like to argue and find it counter-productive.
Because some might retort that the difference between argument and debate is only semantic, I want to address what I see as a key difference: in argument there is always disrespect or the feeling of being disrespected whereas in debate both parties attempt to find mutual respect. Debate is sometimes impossible; one can only argue with a grocery store employee explaining store policy or a driver trying to run people off the road. Argument is the expression of one’s own bias causing frustration at another’s perceived faults. Debate, on the other hand, seeks accuracy and avoids assumption.
For some, the goal of debate is to trick another into a corner from which they cannot get out. This makes sense if you’re a prosecuting attorney or simply want to humiliate someone, but often results in chasing red herrings. I prefer to stay on topic.
Perhaps the greatest result of any debate is to come to a mutual understanding and appreciation for why divergent opinions are held, but this is only possible when both viewpoints have validity. When I don’t perceive this to be the case, I am strongly inclined to try and talk some sense into another. Although I might optimistically strive to change another’s mind, usually the best I can hope for is to promote further reflection or exploration on a topic. My debate tendency is to attempt to introduce concepts and variables as well as point out assumptions and fallacies pertaining to a conviction that perhaps another hasn’t considered. Unconsciously, I tend to assume refusal to accept facts is due to stubbornness. But after reflecting on some similarly confusing conversations and encounters with others through the years, I’m realizing some conversations never get anywhere precisely because their priorities, motivations and goals are fundamentally incompatible with mine, resulting in two separate conversations taking place simultaneously.
Some see stubbornness as a virtue. In this framework, the person who most refuses to concede is seen to have more conviction in what they believe, and through some fallacy of logic conclude that this validates those beliefs. Facts are considered a crutch for those who fail to “feel it in their heart.” In lieu of valid evidence, these people will tend to recite quotes echoing their position and metaphors explaining them. They will boast of their faith-based beliefs, not realizing that term was originally intended as a mocking antonym for fact-based beliefs. Rigidly hoping does not lead to truth, but (to state a tautology) it does sustain hope, and that is the highest of priorities for many. For me, as already stated, futility is found in a life refusing change, so what others perceive as retaining hopefulness I view as hopelessness. Eureka.
The Christian ideology I grew up with emphasized humility, devotion and long-suffering. My cynical self now realizes this as a successful scheme to keep subjects blithe, passive and obedient. However, there is another Christian angle that venerates success, prosperity and accolades because those things are granted by a higher power only to those deemed worthy enough to have them. This latter twist is so foreign, my inclination is to approach it with incredulousness, but both concepts are right there in the same compilation of books. Just as piety can be thought to bring success, success can be thought to prove piety.
There are yet others who esteem dominance, intimidation and oppression. They adhere to the premise, “might makes right,” and for them, the goal of debate is to display the most strength. This chauvinist mentality will admit making mistakes but not that they’re wrong. They seek out perceived weaknesses, such as compromise, modesty, frustration and empathy, and attempt to exploit them. They epitomize schadenfreude. One way in which their assumption of another’s weakness can be detected is in bizarre attempts at inducing guilt. They talk loud, interrupt and use unnecessarily arcane words.
Again, this prioritizing of bravado over reasoning seems to me so patently flawed, it is very difficult for me to accept that it’s how some people think. However, upon reflection, we all tend to assume docile creatures, like cows, are dim-witted. Further, it is convenient to assume that this perceived dumbness makes us inherently superior to them, and this perceived superiority seemingly justifies our opinions and behaviors over theirs.
Another motivation that I’ve discovered others to have is the desire for affirmation. Some become crazed when their viewpoints go unacknowledged. My assumption would be that these people suffer from low self-esteem, and was surprised to find it is in fact a major symptom of narcissism. Like an over-inflated balloon, narcissists’ exaggeratedly self-important egos are highly fragile. They will criticize others of the same traits they justify in themselves. They love to boast of their possessions and accomplishments while hypocritically underestimating and devaluing others. Narcissists are often envious of things belonging to others since they see themselves as more deserving. They hold grudges. From my perspective, the most frightening trait of narcissists is that they see themselves as having or even being the cure for all that is wrong with the world.
However, it should be considered that seeking approbation can also be due to a desire for respect; which is justifiable considering without respect all debate is doomed. Disrespect is rooted in lack of empathy, and lack of empathy is the root of all kinds of evils. It is the common thread between those motivated by both dominance and narcissism. Without empathy, people are compartmentalized with labels and lumped into prepackaged categories, exactly as I had done with Bob in high school. The feelings and experiences of others, being considered less important than loftier, purer ideals, can be dismissed. Only those beliefs which personally affect that individual’s life matter, so, for example, a man will not value women’s rights.
While my goal here is to understand the perspectives of others in order to find common ground from which more productive dialogue can be generated, I’m at a loss how to see eye to eye with the trait of lacking empathy, as it creates a conundrum. I suppose the best we can do is find other characteristics or qualities within a person which make communication possible. We must look beyond the ease with which we can write someone off as a sociopath, for example, and gain awareness and understanding of each person as a fellow human being. We must strive to remain empathetic even when it seems others are being wholly selfish. In the end, it is not our ability to successfully debate but our humanity that prevents us from destroying ourselves.
One insight into my high school mindset is an occurrence I remember in one of Bob’s classes. (Bob was the teacher: his name was Mr. Roberts, but everybody called him Bob, because he allowed them to do so.) One of his assignments was to write a character sketch of him. I essentially wrote, “Bob adheres to New Age beliefs,” and turned it in, proud that I had so succinctly captured his persona. It came back with a failing grade and the comment, “You didn’t follow the assignment, which was to describe my personality.” I was genuinely confused by this. It seemed like he was suggesting there was something more to him than which religious stereotype he most resembled. Perhaps there was a religion I was unfamiliar with which better reflected his ideology? Perhaps he wasn’t privy to the accuracy of my insight? I thought about challenging the grade I’d received and get to the bottom of this obvious misunderstanding on his part, but decided against it.
The whole affair seems utterly strange to me today, especially considering the only thing I know about New Age is that it somehow involves crystals and John Tesh, and have no idea how I related these to Bob. I can’t figure out how I presumably didn’t understand that people have unique traits and qualities separate from any ideology. I can only surmise that I didn’t see them because I didn’t know to look for them. I just assumed everyone was either going to heaven or hell when they died, and it was best not to get to know the ones that were going to hell because they were bad influences. This heavily suggests that I was a major tool, to use parlance that, as far as I know, didn’t exist back then.
All life would be tragic if we weren’t provided the opportunity to learn, change and grow; but even more unfortunate is the life of someone who refuses that chance. I’ve long held that our lives our guided foremost by our priorities; that the things we value the most affects our perception of everything we encounter. I propose that even if we understand our own priorities, egocentrism makes it difficult to discern the motivations of others. For instance, I’ve long scratched my head at those prone to declare, “You’re just jealous,” as it seems ridiculously dismissive reductionism. But I’m not at all a jealous person, and perhaps that is why I’ve never considered it a valid motive for any pronouncement.
I’m notoriously impatient, and that bad habit prevents me from paying enough attention sometimes. I think of replies while others are still speaking, can be easily frustrated by communication failures and never see the point of beating around the bush. I’m prone to attack a sentence before heeding the clarifying or qualifying follow-up. My hurriedness tends to cause me to neglect affability and embrace crass bluntness. Our society is generally more comfortable with pretense and niceties than frankness, and perhaps rightfully so. Honest opinions tend to either offend or infuriate. Others are prone to informing me, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” to which I respond, “It’s not what you hear, it’s what you’re listening for.”
Oh, the irony. What am I listening for?
I find the nature of reality both fascinating and important. Sadly (from my perspective), this puts me in the minority. I’m constantly struggling to see things objectively and from multiple angles. This translates into a fondness for debate. While I strive to understand, often by exposing untruths (following Sherlock Holmes’ famous maxim), I’m often seen as argumentative. In actuality, I don’t at all like to argue and find it counter-productive.
Because some might retort that the difference between argument and debate is only semantic, I want to address what I see as a key difference: in argument there is always disrespect or the feeling of being disrespected whereas in debate both parties attempt to find mutual respect. Debate is sometimes impossible; one can only argue with a grocery store employee explaining store policy or a driver trying to run people off the road. Argument is the expression of one’s own bias causing frustration at another’s perceived faults. Debate, on the other hand, seeks accuracy and avoids assumption.
For some, the goal of debate is to trick another into a corner from which they cannot get out. This makes sense if you’re a prosecuting attorney or simply want to humiliate someone, but often results in chasing red herrings. I prefer to stay on topic.
Perhaps the greatest result of any debate is to come to a mutual understanding and appreciation for why divergent opinions are held, but this is only possible when both viewpoints have validity. When I don’t perceive this to be the case, I am strongly inclined to try and talk some sense into another. Although I might optimistically strive to change another’s mind, usually the best I can hope for is to promote further reflection or exploration on a topic. My debate tendency is to attempt to introduce concepts and variables as well as point out assumptions and fallacies pertaining to a conviction that perhaps another hasn’t considered. Unconsciously, I tend to assume refusal to accept facts is due to stubbornness. But after reflecting on some similarly confusing conversations and encounters with others through the years, I’m realizing some conversations never get anywhere precisely because their priorities, motivations and goals are fundamentally incompatible with mine, resulting in two separate conversations taking place simultaneously.
Some see stubbornness as a virtue. In this framework, the person who most refuses to concede is seen to have more conviction in what they believe, and through some fallacy of logic conclude that this validates those beliefs. Facts are considered a crutch for those who fail to “feel it in their heart.” In lieu of valid evidence, these people will tend to recite quotes echoing their position and metaphors explaining them. They will boast of their faith-based beliefs, not realizing that term was originally intended as a mocking antonym for fact-based beliefs. Rigidly hoping does not lead to truth, but (to state a tautology) it does sustain hope, and that is the highest of priorities for many. For me, as already stated, futility is found in a life refusing change, so what others perceive as retaining hopefulness I view as hopelessness. Eureka.
The Christian ideology I grew up with emphasized humility, devotion and long-suffering. My cynical self now realizes this as a successful scheme to keep subjects blithe, passive and obedient. However, there is another Christian angle that venerates success, prosperity and accolades because those things are granted by a higher power only to those deemed worthy enough to have them. This latter twist is so foreign, my inclination is to approach it with incredulousness, but both concepts are right there in the same compilation of books. Just as piety can be thought to bring success, success can be thought to prove piety.
There are yet others who esteem dominance, intimidation and oppression. They adhere to the premise, “might makes right,” and for them, the goal of debate is to display the most strength. This chauvinist mentality will admit making mistakes but not that they’re wrong. They seek out perceived weaknesses, such as compromise, modesty, frustration and empathy, and attempt to exploit them. They epitomize schadenfreude. One way in which their assumption of another’s weakness can be detected is in bizarre attempts at inducing guilt. They talk loud, interrupt and use unnecessarily arcane words.
Again, this prioritizing of bravado over reasoning seems to me so patently flawed, it is very difficult for me to accept that it’s how some people think. However, upon reflection, we all tend to assume docile creatures, like cows, are dim-witted. Further, it is convenient to assume that this perceived dumbness makes us inherently superior to them, and this perceived superiority seemingly justifies our opinions and behaviors over theirs.
Another motivation that I’ve discovered others to have is the desire for affirmation. Some become crazed when their viewpoints go unacknowledged. My assumption would be that these people suffer from low self-esteem, and was surprised to find it is in fact a major symptom of narcissism. Like an over-inflated balloon, narcissists’ exaggeratedly self-important egos are highly fragile. They will criticize others of the same traits they justify in themselves. They love to boast of their possessions and accomplishments while hypocritically underestimating and devaluing others. Narcissists are often envious of things belonging to others since they see themselves as more deserving. They hold grudges. From my perspective, the most frightening trait of narcissists is that they see themselves as having or even being the cure for all that is wrong with the world.
However, it should be considered that seeking approbation can also be due to a desire for respect; which is justifiable considering without respect all debate is doomed. Disrespect is rooted in lack of empathy, and lack of empathy is the root of all kinds of evils. It is the common thread between those motivated by both dominance and narcissism. Without empathy, people are compartmentalized with labels and lumped into prepackaged categories, exactly as I had done with Bob in high school. The feelings and experiences of others, being considered less important than loftier, purer ideals, can be dismissed. Only those beliefs which personally affect that individual’s life matter, so, for example, a man will not value women’s rights.
While my goal here is to understand the perspectives of others in order to find common ground from which more productive dialogue can be generated, I’m at a loss how to see eye to eye with the trait of lacking empathy, as it creates a conundrum. I suppose the best we can do is find other characteristics or qualities within a person which make communication possible. We must look beyond the ease with which we can write someone off as a sociopath, for example, and gain awareness and understanding of each person as a fellow human being. We must strive to remain empathetic even when it seems others are being wholly selfish. In the end, it is not our ability to successfully debate but our humanity that prevents us from destroying ourselves.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Obsessions
I was on my second day of writing an essay in my head about my brother’s uncanny cleaning abilities before the realization that I’d been making a living because of my cleaning abilities for the past several years set in. Writing essays while I clean is a common activity. My “24-hour memory trick” is that I continuously repeat a paragraph in my head until I am content with the construction of it. Then, I add another paragraph and continuously repeat both. Finally, I stop repeating the first paragraph but instead add a third paragraph and repeat it with the second. This process will yield about two pages of type-written material that, for whatever reason, will reappear in my head when I wake up the next morning. If it is longer than that, I only remember bullet points and type those instead. Then the essay vanishes from my brain similar to how you remember a dream when you first wake up but forget it soon after.
This ability was useful for getting me through college, but it is frustrating to consider how smart I would be if it didn’t have a built-in lifespan. In order to preserve the information longer, I would need to continue to repeat it in my head, which seems unnecessarily tedious since I can just write it down. As it is, I can simply re-read what I’ve written and think, I don’t remember writing that! Physical activities, however, can’t be written down, and that might explain why I spent about 10 years of my life practicing drums a minimum of 6 hours a day. And that, in turn, might explain why I got really into the process of recording music for awhile, and why I often experienced a sense of surprise and excitement upon hearing my drumming on a recording and thinking, I don’t remember playing like that!
It’s really weird to discover something consistent or fundamental about one’s own personality. It’s even weirder to realize it’s clinically diagnosable.
Most people know about the condition called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, in which people obsessively repeat an activity. Lesser known is an altogether different condition known as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, or OCPD, which is also called Anankastic personality disorder. (It is different than but sometimes confused with the more publicized of late Asperger syndrome.) OCPD is a genetic disorder that occurs in males more than females. The nutshell difference between OCD and OCPD is that, in the former and more familiar condition, a person mindlessly repeats a behavior they don’t find desirable, while in OCPD a person willfully adheres to a lifestyle that they consider laudable. Those with OCPD wouldn’t say that they “suffer” from it, precisely because from their point of view, others suffer from a lack of it.
One of the primary manifestations of OCPD is a preoccupation with remembering minute details which usually includes list-making. People with OCPD have what I would call a fear of losing, forgetting or overlooking details. I save my work after the completion of every single satisfactory sentence. (I just typed that sentence, hit Control-s, noticed I had left the “t” out of “sentence,” fixed it, and reached for Control-s again but decided to add this editorial first.) I’d suggest the overwhelming feature of OCPD is a profound annoyance with imprecision.
Starting a task can be intimidating because of the awareness that once you commit to doing so, you are going to fastidiously obsess over aspect of the job until it is completed. It is next to impossible not to become completely fascinated with a project or conviction. I’m sure I’m not the only one with OCPD that hates jigsaw puzzles because once one is started I can’t stop until every piece is found and put in its place. The other day I was talking to a friend about how when I see a movie I really like, I usually proceed to watch every movie that director made, and she replied, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Hers is a completely different mentality than mine.
To prevent being overwhelmed by everything needing to be thoroughly finished, I am very good at breaking tasks into mini goals. When I reach the mini goal, I then have to muster the energy to continue with the overall task. I also have a strange habit of beginning several projects at once and then running back and forth trying to complete them all simultaneously. This is because it’s impossible to remain focused on one task without being distracted by the knowledge that there are others to be done. I’d wager OCPD is readily found amongst chefs.
Over-zealous cleanliness is actually a symptom only found in some with OCPD and is not a diagnostic criterion.
Another major symptom of OCPD is those with it are inflexible in their beliefs; in other words, dogmatic. I’m highly opinionated and value the ability of forming opinions. I can’t comprehend those you just say they “like” everything. But I’m always striving to perfect my opinions to be as accurate and precise as possible, which dogmatism doesn’t allow. In fact, I strongly believe in not being dogmatic, so go ahead and try wrapping your head around that paradox. It may be due to that quirk that, compared to most of my family, I seem to have a relatively mild case of OCPD. I do highly value integrity- being true to one’s word- which is perhaps another way of looking at the same thing. I am also incredibly punctual, loyal and stubborn. I don’t take advice on principle and can’t stand being micro-managed. I am also persistent- I don’t like last-minute changes in plans, never see the point in having or making back-up plans and will either refuse to quit or immediately quit entirely. I generally feel that my way of doing things is better than everyone else’s, unless it is a task that requires more expedience than precision, in which case I am jealous of others who can pull that off.
I love understanding and dissecting rules and I have spent countless hours researching rule nuances in various games and sports. I think one thing I appreciate most about sports is there is always, in the end, a winner and a loser. Dogmatism is commonly found in sports fans, and I am an obsessive soccer and baseball fan, but even then I don’t think my team is always superior to all others- I just want them to be. I can, however, be a bit of a grammar-Nazi (I deplore the gratuitous use of the word “Nazi,” finding it offensively trivializing, but can’t think of an appropriate substitute; striving to be as precise as possible).
Other common traits of OCPD are miserliness and hoarding tendencies. I don’t possess these nearly as much as others in my family, who tend to have refrigerators virtually empty except for old and rotten food. Then again, I can’t fathom those who don’t eat leftovers. I do have a tendency for collecting like items, but nothing trivial, which is again typical of OCPD. Incomplete, expensive or easy to obtain collections are too annoying. I’ve long wondered why everyone else doesn’t peruse every neighborhood thrift store once a week; it never occurred to me to wonder why I do. Also, I despise losing things, and could make a fairly complete list of everything I’ve ever lost. I took up disc golf a couple years ago, and it is similar to drumming in promoting an effort to control and perfect muscle mechanics with the added bonus of seeking to buy, used or on cheap on EBay, backup upon backup of discs I like in case one goes unfound after hours of searching.
People with OCPD are also often controlling, but I consider myself laissez-faire. I don’t have the energy to begin to analyze and critique every detail in somebody else’s life. I consider attempts to change others to behave like ourselves a surefire sign of insecurity. Being controlling also seems a waste of time, considering I tend to judge others on a continuum from uncommitted to lazy. I generally view most others as unreliable, and I can see how that could encourage a controlling nature in those that thought they themselves were reliable, but I’m skeptical of my own decision-making abilities. While I can be somewhat of a perfectionist, I don’t believe in perfection, and so it isn’t something I’d ever demand of anyone else.
People with OCPD tend to have few friends. In my case, I think this is because I don’t see the point of casual conversation and idle chat. And also because I generally come across as an overly-opinionated asshole. There is not much casual about me. I find the concept of relaxation befuddling. Why would anybody want to do that? I’m basically either passionate about something or ignorant of it.
Do obsessive people attract? I think they do, and I personally find my life has been filled with others with OCPD. I think it relates to the fundamental notion that people with OCPD believe their behaviors are desirable, and also because we have trouble relating to those without our convictions. Crazy like me is a good thing!
This ability was useful for getting me through college, but it is frustrating to consider how smart I would be if it didn’t have a built-in lifespan. In order to preserve the information longer, I would need to continue to repeat it in my head, which seems unnecessarily tedious since I can just write it down. As it is, I can simply re-read what I’ve written and think, I don’t remember writing that! Physical activities, however, can’t be written down, and that might explain why I spent about 10 years of my life practicing drums a minimum of 6 hours a day. And that, in turn, might explain why I got really into the process of recording music for awhile, and why I often experienced a sense of surprise and excitement upon hearing my drumming on a recording and thinking, I don’t remember playing like that!
It’s really weird to discover something consistent or fundamental about one’s own personality. It’s even weirder to realize it’s clinically diagnosable.
Most people know about the condition called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, in which people obsessively repeat an activity. Lesser known is an altogether different condition known as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, or OCPD, which is also called Anankastic personality disorder. (It is different than but sometimes confused with the more publicized of late Asperger syndrome.) OCPD is a genetic disorder that occurs in males more than females. The nutshell difference between OCD and OCPD is that, in the former and more familiar condition, a person mindlessly repeats a behavior they don’t find desirable, while in OCPD a person willfully adheres to a lifestyle that they consider laudable. Those with OCPD wouldn’t say that they “suffer” from it, precisely because from their point of view, others suffer from a lack of it.
One of the primary manifestations of OCPD is a preoccupation with remembering minute details which usually includes list-making. People with OCPD have what I would call a fear of losing, forgetting or overlooking details. I save my work after the completion of every single satisfactory sentence. (I just typed that sentence, hit Control-s, noticed I had left the “t” out of “sentence,” fixed it, and reached for Control-s again but decided to add this editorial first.) I’d suggest the overwhelming feature of OCPD is a profound annoyance with imprecision.
Starting a task can be intimidating because of the awareness that once you commit to doing so, you are going to fastidiously obsess over aspect of the job until it is completed. It is next to impossible not to become completely fascinated with a project or conviction. I’m sure I’m not the only one with OCPD that hates jigsaw puzzles because once one is started I can’t stop until every piece is found and put in its place. The other day I was talking to a friend about how when I see a movie I really like, I usually proceed to watch every movie that director made, and she replied, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Hers is a completely different mentality than mine.
To prevent being overwhelmed by everything needing to be thoroughly finished, I am very good at breaking tasks into mini goals. When I reach the mini goal, I then have to muster the energy to continue with the overall task. I also have a strange habit of beginning several projects at once and then running back and forth trying to complete them all simultaneously. This is because it’s impossible to remain focused on one task without being distracted by the knowledge that there are others to be done. I’d wager OCPD is readily found amongst chefs.
Over-zealous cleanliness is actually a symptom only found in some with OCPD and is not a diagnostic criterion.
Another major symptom of OCPD is those with it are inflexible in their beliefs; in other words, dogmatic. I’m highly opinionated and value the ability of forming opinions. I can’t comprehend those you just say they “like” everything. But I’m always striving to perfect my opinions to be as accurate and precise as possible, which dogmatism doesn’t allow. In fact, I strongly believe in not being dogmatic, so go ahead and try wrapping your head around that paradox. It may be due to that quirk that, compared to most of my family, I seem to have a relatively mild case of OCPD. I do highly value integrity- being true to one’s word- which is perhaps another way of looking at the same thing. I am also incredibly punctual, loyal and stubborn. I don’t take advice on principle and can’t stand being micro-managed. I am also persistent- I don’t like last-minute changes in plans, never see the point in having or making back-up plans and will either refuse to quit or immediately quit entirely. I generally feel that my way of doing things is better than everyone else’s, unless it is a task that requires more expedience than precision, in which case I am jealous of others who can pull that off.
I love understanding and dissecting rules and I have spent countless hours researching rule nuances in various games and sports. I think one thing I appreciate most about sports is there is always, in the end, a winner and a loser. Dogmatism is commonly found in sports fans, and I am an obsessive soccer and baseball fan, but even then I don’t think my team is always superior to all others- I just want them to be. I can, however, be a bit of a grammar-Nazi (I deplore the gratuitous use of the word “Nazi,” finding it offensively trivializing, but can’t think of an appropriate substitute; striving to be as precise as possible).
Other common traits of OCPD are miserliness and hoarding tendencies. I don’t possess these nearly as much as others in my family, who tend to have refrigerators virtually empty except for old and rotten food. Then again, I can’t fathom those who don’t eat leftovers. I do have a tendency for collecting like items, but nothing trivial, which is again typical of OCPD. Incomplete, expensive or easy to obtain collections are too annoying. I’ve long wondered why everyone else doesn’t peruse every neighborhood thrift store once a week; it never occurred to me to wonder why I do. Also, I despise losing things, and could make a fairly complete list of everything I’ve ever lost. I took up disc golf a couple years ago, and it is similar to drumming in promoting an effort to control and perfect muscle mechanics with the added bonus of seeking to buy, used or on cheap on EBay, backup upon backup of discs I like in case one goes unfound after hours of searching.
People with OCPD are also often controlling, but I consider myself laissez-faire. I don’t have the energy to begin to analyze and critique every detail in somebody else’s life. I consider attempts to change others to behave like ourselves a surefire sign of insecurity. Being controlling also seems a waste of time, considering I tend to judge others on a continuum from uncommitted to lazy. I generally view most others as unreliable, and I can see how that could encourage a controlling nature in those that thought they themselves were reliable, but I’m skeptical of my own decision-making abilities. While I can be somewhat of a perfectionist, I don’t believe in perfection, and so it isn’t something I’d ever demand of anyone else.
People with OCPD tend to have few friends. In my case, I think this is because I don’t see the point of casual conversation and idle chat. And also because I generally come across as an overly-opinionated asshole. There is not much casual about me. I find the concept of relaxation befuddling. Why would anybody want to do that? I’m basically either passionate about something or ignorant of it.
Do obsessive people attract? I think they do, and I personally find my life has been filled with others with OCPD. I think it relates to the fundamental notion that people with OCPD believe their behaviors are desirable, and also because we have trouble relating to those without our convictions. Crazy like me is a good thing!
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