Respect for Opinions.

In the country where I live there is a pervasive idea that everyone has a right to their opinion on any topic, that as a result opinions are essentially equal, that there must be equal time and respect for differing opinions.  This is most noticeable on news programs in which the most common method for the discussion of a topic is to get two people with different views and then give them equal time to give their opinion.  However, this idea has spread throughout society so that I frequently hear people with no qualifications in a subject knowingly declaim positions that are flatly at adds with the opinion of experts in the field.  Examples are:  support for protectionism (rejected by economists throughout the entire spectrum of political beliefs), rejection of global warming (supported by every national scientific body in the world), rejection of evolution (the scientific theory with the largest amount of supportive data).

To argue against these positions, particularly if you bring forth the problem of ignorance, that the person doesn't even understand the thing which they say is wrong, is considered rude.  However, to state your own opinion is fine, you are entitled to your own opinion.  This doesn't make any sense.  If you state an opinion that differs from another person's opinion you are stating the opinion that they are wrong.  In all the specifics that differ between two opinions each opinion is saying the other opinion is wrong on specifics.  If you say that you have your opinion based on what experts say, you are saying the other opinion is ignorant.  It makes no sense, but the framing of a position can change how it is perceived from harmless to deeply insulting without changing the position.

I suspect that this position is rooted in the concept of universal human rights.  Human rights are about treating everybody equally and I think you have to be a pretty awful person to be against the basic concept.  However, extending the concept of rights to everything can become ludicrous.  Does everyone have the right to be thought of as equally attractive?  Does everyone have the same right to win the 110 metre Olympic hurdles?  There is a difference between everyone having the right to think what they want and thinking that all thoughts are equally right.  The advent of modern communications has now vastly increased the validation for any idea.  On the internet you can find numbers of people who agree with you, regardless of how idiotic your opinion might be.

The scientific method has produced a greater number of truths, at a greater precision, than all the rest of humanity's intellectual efforts put together.  Essentially how the scientific method works is that someone produces an opinion about something and then a large group of other people try to find anything in that opinion that they can demonstrate is false.  Only once those efforts have failed is the opinion considered to be valid.  This stringency with regard to valid opinions is such that only people who have demonstrated through extensive work that they actually understand such opinions are allowed to comment on the subject.  In order to even rise to the level where an opinion can be considered for discussion it must be formulated in such a manner that it is supported by other valid opinions and a very large amount of data precisely quantified.  The scientific method is as far away from the concept that opinions are of equal merit as you can get, and it produces the largest amount of truth.

Opinions are not of equal merit.  This very post is not as valid an opinion as a published paper in a social science on beliefs about opinions.  Some people are more informed, more intelligent, and produce opinions that are actually closer to the truth.  This is so self-evident that the only way that I can understand this phenomenon, that "My opinion is as valid as yours", or "He's entitled to his opinion", is by thinking that it is more important to people to feel right than to be right.

If it hurts you to be wrong (and I think that is probably universal, it hurts me) then the idea of the right to an opinion is a way of lying to yourself to stop feeling bad.  It is self-protection through self-deception.  The anger and perceived insult of being told you are wrong is a reaction to the perception of being attacked.  Someone is making you feel bad.

So, it comes down to whether you care about the truth, or feelings.  Or does it?  We all have ways that we know we can improve ourselves.  One of those methods can be to try to be honest with ourselves, to admit when we are wrong, to realize that criticism is educational.  The method that I try to employ, with admittedly mixed results, is to realize that the greatest intellectual achievement a person can have is to change one's opinion.  It means that you have not respected your own opinion, have internally subjected it to testing and criticism, and found that it is wrong.  It is quite possible to feel a great sense of pride in having been wrong, as long as you acknowledge it.

Opinions should not be respected.  They should be treated with suspicion and assaulted with every honest thought available.  The ones that survive are almost always good opinions.  The opinions that are respected simply for being opinions are usually bad opinions.  I'm sorry, but some opinions are stupid, and if the truth matters it should be alright to tell people so, even if it is someone telling you.

Withdrawal.

When I was a teenager I was very shy.  I think this was mostly because I went to an all-boy's school and started puberty late.  I essentially lagged behind in becoming interested in music, fashion, coolness, sex, and therefore didn't fit in with cool people.  The other factor was that I lived in the countryside with no-one of my age that I knew within three miles.  There is also the English culture, which raises embarrassment to the most powerful social force.  The English love their eccentrics, those who manage to be brilliant and strange, but if you don't make it to brilliant then all of society will laugh at you.

Shyness is simply this fear of public humiliation.  All of us make predictions, models of the future, all the time.  These models range enormously, from predicting where the ground will be under our feet to what it will feel like to go on vacation next year.  They happen consciously and unconsciously, the vast majority unconsciously.  Shyness is what happens when your predictive models come up with humiliation as the most likely outcome.  If you think saying something will make you look like a fool you will become terrified of saying things, and will try not to do so.  If you think you will be rejected you will try not to meet people.  Of course, being shy is an excellent way of being rejected and making a fool of yourself.

When I first came to the USA if anyone wanted to talk to me, if the phone rang, if I thought someone was going to ask me a question, my heart rate rose, I started to sweat, adrenaline poured into my body.  I became frightened.  However, as a freshman with an English accent people wanted to meet me and talk to me as I was different and interesting based purely on being English.  Most 18 year old Americans have never met an Englishman.  As an aside, my accent was often called a "British accent" which is marvelously evocative of the ignorance many US people have about foreign parts.  The difference between a Glaswegian and a Cockney accent is greater than between any two accents in the USA.  Every American can understand any other American's speech, almost nobody can understand a Glaswegian, and a full-on Cockney isn't far behind.  The decline of the regional accent in the UK is a sad thing.

Anyway, as a freshman in college I would meet many people everyday.  This wouldn't be one person a day, but many people.  The numbers were enough that most days someone would say, "Hi' to me on the street, remember my name and start a conversation but I would have no idea who they were.  When you meet one Englishman a month you remember him.  When you meet 100 Americans a month you will not remember most of them.  After a very short time I realized that all of these people were interested in the same things, asking the same questions, finding the answers interesting, and trusting me implicitly to have the right answers.  This is about the most perfect way possible to develop confidence in meeting new people, have predictable conversations in which you will be interesting and have authority.  In psychological terms this is called flooding, and is an acknowledged treatment for some phobias.

As a result of this period I became a very confident person, very outgoing, very socially active.  I made friends easily, comfortably talked to strangers, and looked forward to new situations and new people.  This has been generally the case ever since.  That is until possibly now.

My social interactions in Texas have been generally poor.  Or at least any interaction that goes into any depth.  Superficially there is no problem.  I can smile at people in a store, have a brief exchange in a bar, or make small talk about sport.  However, as soon as the topic wanders away from these social niceties there becomes trouble.  I disagree with most people around here on everything from politics to religion, to art, to environment (both generally and the suburbs).  My exercise is different, my clothes are different, my education is different, my conversation style is different, how I think is different.  If there is one thing I have learned about Texas (or at least the bits I have encountered) it is that difference is not liked.

My other social interactions outside of the home have been on the internet.  The internet is particularly disposed to expressing opinions, and particularly disposed to people being displeased, upset and angry.  I can't remember the last time I was called a liar or dishonest in real life, but it happens regularly on-line.

This means that for the last couple of years my environment has taught me that social interactions are probably going to go badly.  I have been taught that I can either fake it, or be disliked.  I am bad at faking it, or at least I really, really dislike it.  Perhaps that is what makes me a "genuine person.  The result is the opposite process that happened to me my freshman year of college.  I am becoming more withdrawn, nervous at the prospect of meeting people, less interested in social interaction.  When I do meet people I am becoming less animated, less involved, less confident.

I can feel this process happening even with this blog.  This blog is supposed to be me expressing myself freely.  It feels like this has annoyed people that I know to the point that they don't wish to comment or even read it, hence my request for people saying "Hi" in the last post.  This impression might well be false.  I was just shocked to discover that this blog has had nearly 700 views this month.  I think that actually it is my feelings about social interactions that color this impression more than the actual situation.

I do not like this.  I think my greatest chance of changing this state is to move to a more supportive environment, a place populated by "my tribe."  Until then I should attempt to tell myself stories about my being an interesting, kind, empathic, intelligent person.  A person that interesting, kind, empathic, intelligent people would like to meet.  One thing Texas has taught me, it feels better to be confident and wrong than to be dispirited and right.

Chapter Six

It was while Alyami was sitting in the dust that he saw the great love of his life.  Sitting in the square of the caravanserai he had been trying, with meager success, to conjure up enough pennies to purchase a meal through the kindness of strangers and the playing of his rabab.  While there was money aplenty in the purses of the merchants striding across the square, the dust, the heat, and the noise rendered his playing a pretty tinkling in the background.

Upon finishing a tune he looked up, the dust and heat parching his throat, and there she was.  Their eyes met and nothing else mattered.  His chest thrummed and his eyes glistened.  It seemed that her eyes penetrated into his mind, through his eyes and into his soul.  She looked away, gave one more glance and scurried away, all grace and elegance under her robes.

She was part of the entourage of a particularly ostentatiously wealthy merchant.  A peacock of silks and gold, sadly bedraggled with the journey and the dust of the square.  Hulking bodyguards brooded and glared around the edges.  Clerks fluttered around their master like chickens, clucking for attention while terrified of receiving it.  At the back of this troop were the women, wrapped in dark robes, huddling together, only their eyes giving proof of their humanity.

Alyami was wounded.  All thought of hunger, or tomorrow vanished.  Those eyes!  Those eyes!  When he closed his eyes in sweet pain he saw them.  He saw them look right into his heart.  The pain swelled until there was nothing else.  He must see her again.

That night he wandered the halls of the caravanserai, looking for the merchant's party.  Through many a question, an outraged threat, a suspicious stare he wandered/blundered through hallways.  He knew he was earning a reputation as a probable thief, and wasn't it truly earned?  Was he not trying to steal love away from its rightful owner?  With the moral certitude of the young artist he told himself that this was false, certainly false!  You cannot cage love.  You cannot own love.  Love is given and taken freely, or does not exist at all.

Finally he saw a woman in robes hurrying across a hallway carrying a jug.  He noticed that the robes were the same as those in the square.  At last he had found where she, or wonderful she, was housed.  He turned and scampered down the hall, his heart full of joy and certainty.  He didn't even notice the hands moving to swords and knives.  What was a running man at night in the caravanserai but a thief?  The lack of cries was his only protection.

Alyami told the guards at the gate that he wanted to stroll in the night air, to play his music in the solitude of the desert.  While this was clearly the act of an insane man, it was well known that musicians were insane, and so he was permitted to pass.  After all, better to let a demon out of your abode should it wish to leave.

He wandered around the walls to the tiny windows of the apartments of his love's captor (or so he had begun to think of him) and quietly tuned his rabab.  He thought of what to play.  The Love Song of Prince Mahmoud?  Nehri's Dance?  The Gaoled Heart?  None seemed right, as they were the loves of others, and his love was special, the grandest and most beautiful love that had ever been.  He determined that he would let his heart guide his hands, and began to play.

The music uncoiled across the sands.  It yearned, it tempted, it pleaded.  It sang to the stars, it flew with the wind, it brushed the mind, the heart, and the skin.  Alyami knew that it was right, that it was pure.  If there was any truth or justice in the world she would hear his call and know that there could be no love like his.

Four hours later, exhausted and grimy, he returned to the gate.  The guards poked and prodded him, looked for horns or forked tongue.  They checked for potions, scrolls, and daggers that dripped poison. They uttered protections and incantations.  Finally they grudgingly accepted that this was but a human being and admitted him.  Alyami found a corner and collapsed and slept and slept.  For a musician must be used to late nights, disappointment and a hard bed.

For four nights he repeated his pleas from the desert.  For three nights he returned to his dusty corner.  For three days he searched for those eyes but only saw them when he closed his own.  On the fourth night, oh at last!  He heard a whispered call, "Demon, why do you try to tempt me into the desert?  I know better than to heed the call of the djinn."

"Fair lady, I am no demon.  I am the musician you see in the square.  I am here only because I love you, I yearn for you.  My heart is full of pain without you and so I pour it out into the sands."  Alyami was quite pleased with this.  He had rehearsed the last sentence in his mind for hours.  "Come out and see me and I will prove my love."

"I cannot leave the caravanserai, demon, nor would I if I could."  His lady was clearly no fool, and her voice was like nectar even through the croaking of her whisper.

"Then my love, name the place and time, and I will be there whatever the danger."  Alyami fell to his knees with his pleading.  He had hope, hope rising from the ashes of his despair.

"The east tower at midnight.  That is your chance demon,"  came the glorious words upon the desert breeze.

                                 ******

At the next midnight Alyami flitted through the shadows of the east tower in his best impersonation of an assassin.  It was such a poor effort, although whole-hearted, that the merest glance from a guard would have resulted in his imprisonment.  Nobody who moved like that could be involved in honest work.  Only years later would Alyami learn that the surest way not to be discovered is to walk in the open certain in the propriety of your action.

At the top of the steps his heart stopped as he saw a guard slumped by the door.  It beat again when the smell of alcohol and the sound of snores reached him.  His love was clever.  Well, of course she was, how could she be otherwise.

He opened the door with the impossibly loud creaking that all doors have in the middle of the night, and entered.  There she was, outlined in the moonlight, her in the flesh.  He stood, dumbfounded, rooted to the spot, his mouth dry and his hands clenched.

"Ah, demon, you are so young and pretty.  So daring.  Are you not afraid of being discovered?  They would remove that pretty head from those shapely shoulders."

"I love you.  The greater danger is to be apart from you for I cannot withstand it."  Alyami could say such things and mean them, as only the young can do.

"Then come here and show me your love, my brave, bashful lover."

As if in a dream he floated across the tower floor until her hands touched him; holding, moving, searching.  Her face rose and their eyes met.

"You aren't her!"  blurted Alyami in surprise.

"I don't know who she is, young lover, but I am truly myself, I am here, and the world is more than you know it to be."  She caressed his cheek, and then his thigh.  Suddenly Alyami recognized the wisdom in this woman.  He had been foolish and this marvelous woman had shown him the truth.  Over the next few hours and nights Alyami learned that there was much more to true love than the meeting of eyes across a square.  he also learned a great many other things that throughout the rest of his life were a delight to himself, and all of his many one, true loves.

A Cold

I have a cold.  Not as badly as Christina, and I get to stay home.

However, I am sick, and sickness makes me very tired.  Christina slept for twelve hours last night and was tired when she went to work.  I slept the same amount but stretched it out into different naps and snatches.  We have the most comfortable bed.  Sometimes I just lie in it and feel the comfort.

Sickness removes motivation, even the motivation to have empathy.  Christina is working while being more sick, and I really should feel bad for her but I am more focused on lying down and being comfortable.  I have these things I "should" do.  I should be writing interesting stuff.  I should be reading about the philosophy of the mind.  I should be playing music.

I am largely writing this so that I will have written something, a should completed.  A pass on a pass/fail grading system. It will actually probably be more interesting to people than most of my stuff.  It's a human interest story about a lack of human interest.

The wise men of the East (they do all seem to be men, even more so than in the West) advise to look at how animals deal with sickness.  They lie down and sleep a lot.  They don't feel like they should be doing this, or trying that.  They just rest and get better, without guilt or worry, and so sickness isn't as bad and recovery is quicker.  I'm not sure if they are right or not, but I'm going to give it a try.

If you repeatedly read this blog please say "Hi" in the comments.  It feels very much like everyone has gone away.

Chapter 5

While Little Mika's mother stamped on the last remains of the fire in the corner of the cottage, Old Nerwhal held Little Mika in his firm grasp while Little Mika sobbed his rage and fury at the injustice of it all.  The tantrum was prolonged and violent, Mika squirming and fighting and sobbing, with the stinging smell of smoke filling the room.  Old Nerwhal's dry, ancient voice whispered, "Hush, hush, hush Little Mika."

The screaming became sobbing, the sobbing became hiccups, and the hiccups became sulking.  The ashes and charred blanket were taken out of the cottage by a woman with the look of contained fury that only a busy mother can manage properly.  Finally Old Nerwhal asked, "Little Mika, would you like to hear a story?"

"Is, hic, is it good story?"

"Well, Little Mika, you will never know unless you hear it.  I like it, but I am old and you are very young.  I am old enough to remember when your mother was little like you and used to cause trouble just like you.  If you tell your mother I said that she will tear your arms off and make you eat them!  So let's have that as our little secret, OK?"  Little Mika grinned with evil delight and settled in for the story, transferring vast amounts of snot from his face to his hands.
"A long time ago, when my grandfather's grandfather was as little as you, things were very different.  Each of the villages had their own gods, and demons, and costumes.  They would look at the other villages and say, 'Look at those wicked people with their bad gods, and their wicked demons.  They must be very bad people, and bad people want to steal our women and crops.  Let us grab out spears and stop them before they do that to us.'"
Little Mika's eyes grew wide.  This might be a very good story, with stabbing and blood and killing.
"So, one day the men of the village of Nervwahla drank too much water-of-lightning.."

Little Mika chirped up, "You drink lots of water-of-lightning too!"

"Hmmph, well, um, there is the right amount of water-of-lightning, and then you can drink too much," extemporized Old Nerwhal.

"How much is too much?" asked Little Mika in that disconcerting intelligent way children have of getting straight to the point.

"Listen to the story Little Mika and you will find out,"
"So, the men of Nervwahla drank much too much water-of-lightning, not a sensible amount like a wise grandfather, and decided they would go attack the neighboring village, which was Atvwahla, and kill the men, and take their crops, and maybe the nicer women."
"Do you remember the village Atvwahla, Little Mika?"

"Is it the one by the river with the funny fish?" 

"No Little Mika, that is a different story.  Wait, how did you hear that story?  That isn't a story a little boy should hear.  When your mother tells you to stay in bed, you do what she says!  I don't want to see you having to eat your own arms."

"Not little boy," grumbled Little Mika with infinite resentment.

"Atvwahla is the village where He From Whom Our Blessings Come was born.  Remember the tiger?  Anyway, the men of Nervwahla thought the men of Atvwahla were very wicked people who had stolen their crops instead of grown them through hard work, and the men of Atvwahla thought the same thing about the men of Nervwahla.  So they both thought it was a good thing to kill the bad men, take what they had stolen, and rescue the nice women from that horrible place."
Little Mika nodded in satisfied agreement.  He thought this was a very good idea indeed.  Maybe when he was big he would go kill all the bad men and steal their stuff, although girls were icky, and his sister was really icky, so they could stay in the horrible place.
"So, the men of Nervwahla grabbed their spears and set off in the afternoon, because they had been drinking in the day, not like a sensible grandfather who drinks in the evening, and went to go surprise the village of Atvwahla.  But!  The men of Atvwala did not trust the men of Nervwala and so had a lookout ready.  He saw the men coming and ran as fast as his legs could go back to Atvwahla and told all the men.  They gathered up their spears and went to meet the men of Nervwahla."
This was very good news for Little Mika.  This might be one of the really good stories, like the ones he heard the men telling when they had drunk the right amount of water-of-lightning at night when dumb people said he should be sleeping.  Silly, dumb people.
"There on a mountain meadow, with the snow of the Roof-of-the-World in a ring around the bluest sky, the two villages met each other.  Oh how they yelled, and taunted, and stuck out their tongues, and showed their naked bottoms to each other."

Little Mika giggled, "Bum.  Ha ha!  Bum!  Bum!"

"Stop that now, Mika, stop that!  Listen to the story.  I'm warning you, if you don't stop saying that right now I'll send you to your mother and your bum, I mean bottom, will be as red as um, well, really really red."
"Sometimes you are just a very naughty boy.  Well, hhmmmppphh, the two groups of men taunted each other.  Taunted means being mean like you are when you tease your sister.  Yes you do tease her.  No she doesn't deserve it.  She is not icky!"
"Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, finally one young man from Nervwahla plucked up his courage (because young men talk much more about being brave than actually being brave), ran up and threw his spear."
Little Mika wriggled in excitement.  This was a really good story.
"The spear hit a man in the shoulder and he fell down, and it hurt him very badly.  You don't like it when something hurts you, do you Mika?"  Old Nerwhal was determined to make a point but only managed to get a frown and discontented muttering.
"The men of Atvwahla were suddenly really angry.  They roared and yelled so loudly, grabbed their spears and got ready to charge at the men of the other village.  Just then a seven year old boy walked out of the woods carrying some flowers he had been collecting for his mother, because he was a good little boy and everyone was nice to him all the time and he never got a spanking.  Do you know who that was, little Mika?"

"No,"  grumbled Little Mika, who could pick out a giant hint when it was dumped on him.

"It was He Who From Our Blessings Come when he was a little boy. He walked out onto the meadow carrying his bunch of flowers, and he walked right between the men of the two villages, and he wasn't afraid at all.  The men of both villages stopped and looked at the boy.  'Why are you fighting?' He asked them in his beautiful voice.  'That man is hurting, and you will hurt each other a lot if you fight.  Isn't hurting bad?'"
"The men of both villages suddenly felt silly.  They looked at each other across the meadow and saw that the men of the other village were men just like they were.  They dropped their spears, and felt much, much better.  Why would they hate each other when they could be nice to each other?  The young man of Nervwahla who had thrown the spear felt very sad and ran to the man he had hurt.  He pulled out the spear and wrapped up the wound and said, 'I'm sorry, so sorry' and the wounded man forgave him.
"The men of the two villages sat down in that meadow together.  The men of Atvwahla brought water-of-lightning and the men of Nervwahla brought meat of the mountain goat, and they had a big feast and laughed and sang and had a great time.  They promised never to fight again, but to be friends and help each other out when they needed it."
"Since then they have never tried to fight each other again, or steal from each other.  Each summer they meet in that same meadow and have a great feast.  That is why the Blessed Ones travel around from place to place and when they come to your village you must invite your neighbors, have a big feast and promise to be friends forever."  Old Nerwhal took a breath.  It seemed almost as tiring to tell Little Mika a story as to be in one.
"So Little Mika, what did you think of that story?"  asked Old Nerwhal, with just a little spark of hope in his heart.

"Stupid story.  Should have stuck spears in each other."  and Little Mika slipped out of Old Nerwhal's grasp and ran out of the house, looking for something to burn, break, or tease.

Inanity

I live in a situation where I have very little direct contact with people.  I don't hang out with friends.  I have my wife, and right now with her in Portland for a week I have had an excellent chance to see what that means to me (I function, but I am just treading water, not flourishing), but not really anybody else with whom I can have a conversation.

To ward off loneliness I have The Face of Evil, which works surprisingly well as loneliness doesn't care whether other people are evil or dumb, and the internet.  I spend more time than would be healthy otherwise on forums and facebook.  I repeatedly try to reduce my time on these places in favor of self-improvement, but find it very difficult to do so.  Basically the internet works to reduce loneliness.  As long as you can have a conversation, some contact between minds, there is a social interaction.

The difference between the internet and real world interactions is that with the internet you get time to think about your response, there is a flawless record of what was said to which you can refer, and there is distance.  By distance I mean that there are no other emotional clues other than words.  There is no intonation, no facial expressions, no body language, no chemical messages.  We all know that you can say the same words and have two completely different meanings, and that in person those different meanings are obvious to everyone but the woman you are in a relationship with who wants to have a fight that will somehow be your fault.

I was raised in an environment where discussion meant that there was an idea that was talked about.  An academic environment where disagreement was interesting and agreement was dull.  Or more accurately, that environment was extremely available, which may explain why my sisters and I didn't talk a whole lot once I became a teenager.  I have discovered that this is a really weird environment.

On the internet people express their opinion about something.  It is very rare that I exactly agree with a position, when I do I say so and that is very brief.  More commonly I differ in some way, and I have a tendency to say so.  For me this is a starting point for conversation, or a pleasant diversion, a useful means of exchanging ideas and information.  How it is usually taken is as a personal attack, often it is explicitly said that I am uncaring, or ignorant, or someone out to hurt people for fun.  Basically I never actually insult someone, although after a while I may demean their particular opinion when they don't listen to me (nobody has to agree with me, they just need to understand what I am saying).  In practice this distinction means nothing.  To express a different opinion and continue to express it in the most convincing way possible is to viewed as attacking someone.

The other thing people do on the internet is safe updating, inanity.  They discuss the weather.  They say whether they have a cold.  They say they are pleased to go on vacation.  They show a picture of their children.  Basically they are saying they are human, having ordinary experiences, but mostly they are just confirming they are part of a group.  Part of being in a group is making noises without real meaning other than to reassure people that they are part of a group.

When I first came to the States people kept asking me "How are you doing?"  I would answer this question honestly, telling them if I was happy, or sad, tired, etc..  I remember always getting these pained, baffled looks.  It took me about eighteen months until I understood that people weren't interested in the answer, it was a meaningless piece of politeness, the same as saying, "Hello."  the correct answer, under any circumstances is, "Fine."  When I would point this out to Americans they were generally unaware of this, and about half said it wasn't true.  After all, to ask how someone is doing and then not care would be terribly rude, if you were actually asking that question.

In summary, what people want is to be able to say what they think and have people agree with them.  Or they want to say inane things to get along.  I am very bad at these things.  There are few things more excruciating in my regular life than to go to a social event because "We should" rather than because "It will be fun" and then spend the time ensuring we talk to everyone "We should" without saying "Anything that might upset them."  The most fun portions of those events is to find the other people who hate it so as to talk about anything else.  I am terrible at keeping my mouth shut when something is wrong.  When someone says, "That socialist government health care is stupid, the government can't get anything right" I just cannot stop myself from saying "The French live longer and spend half as much money on health care."

Just about the perfect way to lose friends is to not to use small talk (because then you don't care) and to want to have a discussion with different views (because then you are rude, aggressive, insecure etc.).  The perfect way to keep friends is to agree with them, tell them how capable they are, and never say anything that means anything significant.  Of course, I do care about people, one of my problems is getting trapped in bars fixing the lives of perfect strangers at their request.  I open my mouth to have discussions that are fun and interesting with people I think smart enough to learn and teach.  it doesn't matter.

There are groups of people where my style works.  They are academics, and at my level of knowledge of any particular subject, usually students.  I think basically I never grew up.  I have the moods, and the earnestness, and the desire to learn and then tell people what I have learned that college freshman have.  Let's change the world, let's find out new things, let's really think hard about what we know, let's question orthodoxy, let's share what we know.  The person I love more than anyone else has independent ideas, is smarter than I am, independently finds things out, and proves to me that I am wrong more than everyone I have ever met.

One of the goals in our plan, that seems to get more distant as time goes by (but probably isn't), is to live in a community where there are students.  Students are more intelligent, more creative, more challenging, and have more energy than the general population.  Mostly, they are more like me than most people.  Until then I have to try to practice inanity, look for things to discover (TED talks, most interesting thing ever) and use this blog to express my thoughts.  I don't expect to do well at this.

Unpopular Opinions

There are opinions I almost never advance, because of their unpopularity.  It is weird that I do this with some things, but not with others.  After all, my experience with the internet, and many friends I have had, is that I tend to speak my mind too much.  Why not all the way?  Why not much less?

Anyway, here's a couple of my least popular opinions.

The first involves the military.  I don't applaud the military for their service.  I think the military in the countries that I have lived are people who have decided to be trained to kill people they don't know in other parts of the world for money.  The difference between this and a mafia assassin is difficult for me to determine.  The USA has not been attacked by a military force since the time that my parents were born.  I understand the concept of defending oneself, and one's country, from outside aggression.  I am not a pacifist, or against the idea of a military.  However, if you join the US or British military you know that by far the most likely use of your talents is to be part of an organization that goes to a place full of poor people who couldn't attack you if they tried and kill lots of them.

I think this is horrendous for those who go and do it, as I expect being a mafia hitman is awful.  I wish both groups would get all of the care they need, but I wish that of anyone.  I think the reason for the flags, and the parades, and the talk of heroes, and the great sacrifice, and the concept of protecting our freedoms, are all devices used to get people to do this stuff.  If you just looked at the job description nobody would dream of accepting the job.

My second is about children.  There is a concept so universal within our culture, and almost every culture around the world, that children are more special than adults.  It's a great tragedy if a child dies, a lesser thing if an adult dies.  Hitting a defenseless child is worse than hitting a defenseless woman, and a man who can't protest himself is likely to be held in contempt.

Now, I agree that children are less capable of taking care of themselves than adults.  I agree that children have less skills.  If a child comes up to me and asks me to help them get home I will do so without question.  If an adult asks me to help them get home they are going to have to come up with a pretty good reason why they need help.  I agree that children need more protection, just as disabled people do, and for the same reasons.

I also agree that we should all chip in to help to educate children.  I will have no children but have willingly paid thousands of dollars to educate the children of other people.  In fact, I willingly pay more than others to do so (we do not fight our property tax assessment as is usual here).  This is because educated children become educated adults, and produce a better, wealthier, healthier, safer community.  However, I would just as willingly pay for graduate degrees for thirty year olds, for the same reasons, while this is far less popular generally.

However, what I really object to is the idea that because other people have decided to have children that this then requires me to do anything.  The casual nature with which parents (with notable exceptions) have told me to look after their child, get them this, be wherever at whatever time, has always struck me as appallingly self-centered and contemptuous of me.  There is an assumption that because someone has decided to have children that I must then help them or be considered a bad person.  If I don't want to hang around watching Barney so that children won't stab themselves in the eye then I don't feel like I should have to.

I understand there is a thing that happens to the brains of parents, and for excellent evolutionary reasons, that their children are the most important things in the world.  What I object to is the idea that if I disagree I am an awful person.  Children are very pleasant and interesting in small amounts.  Most of the time they are deeply unpleasant.  If they weren't we wouldn't need to spend so much time teaching them how to behave.  You would never in a million years dream of having a friend who acted like a three year old.  I have no objection to children, and am actually pretty good with them.  They are simply not my responsibility because I didn't choose to have them, and thinking so does not make me evil.  However, liking this song does.

The Greatest Force for Social Change in the World

I like the grandeur of the title of this post.  Sometimes I delight in pomposity, a word that has a music of its own.  Still, I think I'm on to something here.

OK, we'll start with the idea that there is something we wish to change about society.  The elimination of racism is a good example.  what is the best method of going about it?  What really works to change the opinion of society?

I think the answer is shame.

I have already talked about a number of things to do with human motivation.  I have spoken that, in the case of most people, putting forward a rational argument for your position based on evidence and logic does not work.  In fact, it often strengthens the beliefs of the other person because they feel under attack.  People tell themselves stories, and those stories strengthen group cohesion, self-esteem, and definition of the inferiority of the other. 

If you told white people in the 1850's that back people were fully human, with less hereditary differences (if you count DNA, not morphology) between the "races" than between a troop of chimpanzees on one hill in Africa (this is true) and that the difference in intelligence between white and black people was less than the average difference between white people, they would have dismissed your claims.  Why?  Because it would require them to change a belief held by everyone within their group, it would have raised the qualities of those thought of as "other," and it would have meant that they had been awful people.

However, the majority of people in the USA believe all of that today, or something close to it.  How did things change?

I think the method is that there are two groups of people who are very important.  There is a group in which the defining in-group characteristic is making rational decisions based on evidence.  These are scientists/intellectuals.  They may not be that good at making these decisions, but they identify with making these decisions.  They also are required to find out or think up new stuff. Those who don't do so are expelled with shame from the group.  Being a disgraced scientist makes you an outcast, and would be very high on the list of concerns for such a person.  The other group are young people who haven't made their minds up yet.  Young people identify with their peers while growing up, not with their parents.  To identify with a group you need to have characteristics which are different.  It is not hard to see this in the interactions between teenagers and their parents.

So, we have a group of people who find out what is true, and find out new things.  They then tell each other this information, and as many other people as possible.  There aren't many scientists or intellectuals who find out something new and amazing who then don't bother telling as many people about it as possible.  It is, after all, how such people achieve status.  We then have another group of people who don't have fixed opinions and want to define themselves in opposition to established beliefs (to some extent).  If those who find or think of something new can get the information to young people, there is a decent chance that young people will believe it as a group defining belief.  Most of the time this won't happen. 

In groups with a defining belief you can either believe that belief or be shunned, disgraced, expelled.  The shame of being different is an extremely powerful force in the lives of young people.  Just remember high school for about thirty seconds and you will remember this.  We then get groups across the country who shame others for their stupid belief.  This is why new social movements happen in geographically centered locations (women's rights groups didn't spontaneously appear simultaneously in Bombay, Johannesburg, and San Francisco) and in the areas with the greatest concentrations of differing groups with the greatest amounts of information (cities).

Over time, given enough groups of young people and the right idea, this idea will spread until it reaches a point where the majority of people in a culture believe something to be right.  In the 1950's old people thought big band jazz was great and rock and roll was simply noise.  By the 1980's most people couldn't name a big band jazz musician and the idea that rock and roll wasn't the greatest genre of music ever would have been laughed at.  It's simply happening again with hip-hop.

Why do people change their minds?  It's because young people want new ideas.  There are people who are paid to produce new ideas (fashion, music, science, authors, entertainment).  Young people want to define themselves in a new way, and they want that way to be smart, cool, new, but mostly in a way that makes them look good to other people.  Those who don't conform are shunned, meaning that those who care less about opinions than being part of a group (almost everybody) will go along with having that opinion.

The fear of shame, of being different, of being laughed at and sneered at is the greatest force for social change.  Try being against racism in the 1850's and you would be laughed out of society.  Try being racist today and the disgrace will be unrelenting.  Given the right ideas in the beginning shame can be just about the greatest force for good on the planet.

The Litany.

This is a post that I have been thinking about for a long time.  That isn't because the subject requires great thought, it is simply a list.  I have been thinking about this post because the subject matter is something that I would prefer not to think about but cannot prevent myself from doing so.  I hope this post is therapeutic for me, that is my intention.  Of all the posts that I will write this is probably the only one in which to a very large extent I wish people would not read.  That particularly goes for my wife Christina, there isn't really anything new here for you and you have already been such a massive help to me with this.

On Sunday night I found myself unable to sleep.  I snatched a few moments here and there when complete exhaustion overcame me.  I had memories and feelings and visions of things that have damaged me, one after the other, and I sobbed in pain through the night.  This used to happen very often to me.  For a while it happened at least weekly, and often in public.  It hasn't happened in many months, long enough that I can't remember when.

I don't know if these memories are especially hard.  I suspect they are, at least among our modern Western culture.  It may well be that, as my sister said to me this summer, I am simply too sensitive to the world.  Here is what I call The Litany.

I remember the sound my mother made when her rib was broken.  A deep "Whhoooff" of surprised pain.  But not surprised enough not to try and keep the sound inside, to keep it away from her children.  I found out what had happened and how years later, but somehow I had always remembered the sound.

I worked at a rehabilitation center for children in Michigan.  The Saint Louis Center.  There was a child of fourteen who lived there, among a small group of young children with brain illnesses, or damage.  This child of fourteen was the size of a six year old, unable to talk, who spent much of his time on the floor like an infant who could not walk yet.  He was physically unable to tell when he was full, when his hunger was satisfied, and so he was constantly desperate for food.  When this hunger became too much he would smash his head into the ground, over and over again, in order to get what his body told him it needed.  The protocol was to ignore this behavior as to reward it with food would be to reinforce it.  So, I had to stand in the room while this child smashed his head repeatedly into the floor and screamed.

Another child in this facility could not talk.  Or perhaps would not talk, I always suspected he was intelligent enough to do so.  He was in a group of six children, but he wanted the emotional attention and love of an only child.  To get this attention he would destroy his room, throwing his feces at the walls.  There was a small window in the door to his room, so that we could check on the children.  When in one of his tantrums he would stare through the window at me.  Every few seconds he would smash his head against the window, look me straight in the eyes with the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen, and if there was no reaction he would do it again.  he would do this until there was a large lump on his forehead.  He also would bite people, because then he would be restrained by an adult.  Restraint consisted of being held, enveloped in the arms and legs of an adult.  I am certain that he worked for this, that being held in restraint was the most like love he felt there.  I learned that when he would bite me, if I looked at him in those amazing blue eyes and pushed my arm into his mouth a bit, offering it to him in a gesture of trust, he would not bite.

There was third child there, a creature kept alive through religious dogma and a lack of courage.  This child was a late teenager, but had an IQ just about adequate to stand, and push food into his mouth with his hands.  He understood no words but could grunt with desire or moan in distress.  One of my tasks was to bathe him, stripping him naked and soaking him in water and scrubbing and drying him.  Throughout this procedure (and it was a procedure, medical in its necessity and manner) he would moan and turn away, flinching, frightened and confused by it all.  Frightened and confused by being bathed every day for his entire life.

When I first came to Portland I got a job with United Cerebral Palsy.  Generally the only trauma here consisted of intense workloads, rushing around Portland to serve the needs of the disabled in the most respectful way possible, understaffed and with a schedule down to fifteen minutes all day, every day.  On one occasion I was on emergency call and in the evening went to the house of Kasumi.  Kasumi was nearly a quadriplegic,  born with legs that simply flopped, and hands that moved so slowly and imprcisely that they were nearly useless.  She had a grip like iron.  She could barely speak, you could see her strain like a weightlifter to get out each monosyllable.  She was a seventy year old woman, born into a Japanese family within a culture that held the disabled as a cause of shame within a family.  I have never met any person who laughed so much in my life.  She was, without doubt, the person with the strongest will I have ever met.  the call was to her house because she had been ill with bronchitis and she seemed in great distress.  I carried her into the emergency room, with her coughing and wincing, and they asked her to point to the rainbow chart with numbers to describe her pain.  "Ten" was her reply, the highest number.  I remember the x-ray technician trying to force her twisted body into a position from which a useful x-ray could be taken.  The look on her face was what I remember, such pain.  She had broken her rib by coughing over and over in her bed, unable to move, unable to do anything but endure.

My last job was at Park Tower Apartments in downtown Portland.  An apartment block funded by HUD (Housing and Urban Development) for those classed as "very low income" with priority given to the disabled and seniors.  One of my jobs was to check on the well being of people we hadn't seen for a while.  I would head up through the elevator, down identical hallways with the same carpet and walls, like a scene from a David Lynch movie.  I would knock on the door, call loudly, and if I received no answer I would unlock the door with my master key and look within.

Some time in my first few months I walked down such a hallway and smelled a distinctive smell.  Somehow sweet and sour, the smell of rot.  I opened the door and there was the old gentleman face down in front of me, wearing just his underwear, unmoving.  His flesh was mottled and blackened by the rot beginning in his skin and pooling, dried blood.  The stench was intense and deeply disgusting, and it somehow inspired an animal fear.  Something far below my unconscious prevented me from moving closer.  I now know the root from which all our feelings of disgust originate.  He was a gentleman.  A quiet, soft-spoken man, who always treated me kindly and had a ready smile.  I had never really thought that death would affect me so, but it shook me powerfully.

After this I performed a good number of "well checks" as they were known, at least once a week.  Usually the person was home and well, or simply out and about, but I never knew this before my check.  Sometimes I was greeted with smiles and gratitude and sometimes by irritation and abuse.  A few weeks after my first death I opened a door to see a man apparently asleep in his bed, lying on his back in the dark.  I called to him repeatedly but with no response.  I looked closer and it seemed that breath was coming from his nose in little bubbles.  I went over and placed my hand on his shoulder, felt the chill of it, and realized that the bubbles was the gas from his decomposing lungs.  When the light came on I saw his face in an expression of shock, the face of someone right before the car accident.  He also was a gentleman, self-sufficient and understanding of my job.  He never wanted to cause anyone any trouble.

The third death was a mean old bastard, who wore a stinking lumberjack's shirt and showed contempt for all around him.  He would see the Raam a janitor and then deliberately spit on the floor and smile.  To get into his room the maintenance supervisor Harold had to take the door of it's frame.  We looked at each other, both knowing what was next.  I said, "It's my job" went in and did the formality of touching his shoulder to see if he could be jarred awake.  He was stiff, a heavy weight, lying alone in his filthy apartment, in that filthy shirt, in a filthy bed.  I felt empty, not devoid of feeling, but as if who I was had been poured out through a hole in my chest, leaving just a shell.

The fourth death I heard about from Raam, in a panic.  He said that he thought a resident had killed himself, thrown himself out a window.  He was one of the very few married people in the building, someone with schizophrenia and his wife had been in the hospital for a week with her own issues.  We went to his apartment and rushed in.  He wasn't there and I saw the broken window screen.  I looked out of the window, six floors down and saw him lying on the concrete roof of the neighboring building.  He was lying in the classic position you see in television shows of the chalk outline, his body smashed.  The force of the blow had broken the concrete around his body.  Raam said that he heard him as he fell yelling, "Oh no!"  His delusions had got him without his wife around to help.  The hardest part for me was calling her to give her the news.

Telling people the news might be the hardest part, because it takes an act of will, you must decide to do it.  The person is dead whether you check on them or not, you don't cause their death.  But when you tell someone that a loved one is dead you have shattered their heart with a few words, and their life will never be the same again.  There is nothing you can say to make things better, nothing you can do to try to help, and they cry, and cry.

The first time I told a mother that her child was dead I walked up the stairs in dread, hoping that she would not be home.  I told her as simply as I could, completely without any idea of how to soften the blow.  Her face crumbled and she asked me what had happened.  I could tell she was searching for an error, some mistake.  I told her about an accident that a sheriff in another town had related to me on the telephone, not knowing the sheriff, the town, the daughter, or the mother.  The mother told me, a nearly anonymous stranger bringing this news, "Thank you, you have been very kind."

The second time was somehow worse because I knew what it was like.  I have felt that the more times you experience something tragically sad it gets harder, not easier.  It's as if you only have a certain amount of protection, or resources, and they get used up.  I believe I developed essentially a phobia towards these experiences.  Knocking on doors became harder and harder.  When I returned to visit after I had left the job, it took me three times to walk in to the lobby.  The sight of the carpet made my heart race, and I felt the urge to run, and I did run.

The second mother was a one-legged woman wrapped so deeply into her faith that it was a part of every moment of her speech.  She was obsessed with the color red, and wore it at all times, and wrapped it around her crutch.  Red and the crucifix were with her at all times.  I told her that her daughter had died from a very sudden illness.  I had not been told which illness, and simply had a telephone number written on a scrap of paper.  She cried, "My baby, my baby, my baby's gone!"  It turned out that this was her second child to have died before her.  She thanked me profusely, and worried about how hard it had been for me.  She said I had been so good to have done this.  Apparently I have a knack for breaking this news.  It seems the best method is to stand there witless, broken apart, with nothing to say but "I'm sorry" from time-to-time.

There was a woman who lived high up in the building.  Her color was purple, and she had a strange way about her and spoke with an oddly formal manner.  She had an aura of something like a Harvard educated witch.  She called me up from my office in the basement bowels of the building, a place with no natural light, no weather, no trace of the world outside.  She apologized but she needed to be taken to the hospital.  This wasn't my job, I didn't provide services but connected people to them.  There were over four hundred people for whom I had responsibility.  She said that she had no-one else to take her, and that it was an emergency.  It turned out that her son, a charming young man, was serving time for a plea-bargained count of sexual child abuse.  It transpired that this woman had gone blind over the course of a few hours in the morning and so I led her as she held my arm so tightly, with a running commentary of where she was and where we were stepping next. 

I led her into the hospital where she sat, straight backed and calm.  So dignified.  She asked me to remain in the consulting room with the specialist, who after a brief examination informed her that a blood vessel feeding her optical nerve had burst, killing it.  In one morning she had been struck irrevocably blind, out of nowhere.  In her total darkness she took this like a slap, but immediately gathered herself, calmly thanked the doctor and asked me to take her home.  To my knowledge she never left that apartment again.  Never learned how to get around, or where to get books on tape, or tried to be a part of any community.  She rejected all help but someone to clean her apartment and get her groceries.  She just waited there in the dark, waiting to die.

I remember sitting in another filthy apartment watching a man cry.  He was a Vietnam veteran, a patient using the VA.  He was a heroin addict, and had been since he returned from Vietnam.  He wasn't a stupid man, not someone trying to wallow in decadence.  He said that he used heroin because it was "the only thing that stopped him remembering what he had done."  He had tried medication, other drugs, drinking, but nothing had worked.  More than thirty years had passed and still his memories were intolerable.  Only now was he faced with a choice.  The VA had implemented a policy of drug testing, and if you failed the drug tests you could not receive medical treatment from the VA.  If you were covered by the VA you could not receive other government health assistance.  He was faced with the choice between no healthcare for his damaged organs, or living with his intolerable memories.  He briefly thought of a third way out, suicide.   I was there because he was asking for help, for another way out.  I was helpless.  I had nothing to give but understanding.  It hurts so badly to see a man weeping because he is haunted, agonizingly haunted and with no way out.

That is The Litany.  My list of things that keeps me awake in the night, that had me sobbing in public at times, that broke my heart.  It is the reason that my wife convinced me to leave my job, my career, even though I knew that I was good at it, that I did great good, that there are people dead because I have left.  I take a small measure of pride that this list is not a list of those who have done me wrong, of those who lied, cheated, and wronged me.  I have had those experiences too, but they have faded into the backdrop of the past.  The Litany is a list of tragedy, nothing more.

In an explanation given by someone who had been a friend who no longer was as to why we were not friend was included the words, "There is a darkness in you Dan."  I would cry, rage, castigate, and demand the right to live my pain.  This is all true.  I was never asked why I was like that.  In fact I don't think anyone has ever asked me about it, although I have been asked how I was doing, and people have been sympathetic when I would tell them.  My darkness came through the uncontrollable scourge of depression, coloring everything grey and painting everything in hopelessness.  But it also came from the grinding pain of helpless tragedy, that caused me to howl into the uncaring world.

Maybe these aren't anything special.  Maybe I am just sensitive, or self-involved.  Maybe these are experiences we all have in our lives, I am certain there are people who have worse.  It's what I have to deal with in the darkness of the night, and although it is getting better, it is still there.

Side Effects and Update

It is very rare for a drug to not have side effects.  I mean, drink too much water and you can kill yourself.  I have been taking Lamictal (lamotrigine) for nearly five months, and there are some side effects.  Here are the ones I have noticed so far.

1.  Caffeine used to have an enormous effect on me.  Not so much any more.  I can now drink coffee in the evening and fall asleep without a problem.

2.  I get dizzy spells of a very, very short duration.  Always less than a second, and dizzy isn't quite right as I don't feel like I have lost my balance.  They are more like tiny moments of confusion.  I think these are probably very small seizures as Lamictal was initially an anti-seizure medication.  Don't worry, these happen in over half of those taking the medication without it causing extra problems.  They don't even last long enough to effect my driving.

3.  More dreams.  I either have more dreams or I remember then more when I wake up.  I don't think my dreams are more vivid, or extreme, or frightening, I just have more of them.

4.  I may have made up this last one, but I believe that I have an improved sense of smell.  It is well established that women smell things better than men.  However, recently I have noticed more smells (and even unfamiliar, subtle scents) that Christina has not noticed before I point it out.

Overall I can report that it is working very well.  If I could describe the results is that my happiness level has generally been increased, but there is still some cycling.  Essentially my "normal" is really pretty darn happy.  I'm now one of those borderline-irritatingly cheerful people, always looking on the bright side and smiling a lot.  My wife is somewhat disturbed by this new me.  Now, on a pretty regular basis I have my "down" periods.  These consist of me being where my old normal used to be.  I feel fine.  These periods happen about once a month for a week, but the difference between this and my new normal is pretty small.  My mood can change based on good things (we scored!  yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!) and bad things (something broke in the house again?), so I am not a tranquilized zombie.

Poem Fragment.

Gracious goddesses of ancient times were naught beside my Chrissy,
And when she sees her name so writ, cometh apocalyptic hissy.

Building a Brain.

I have talked about the likelihood that within my lifetime it will be possible to download ourselves into computers and so create new, personal realities for ourselves.  While this seems absolutely crazy at first glance, my prediction just assumed that current trends will continue.

In my tiny blastula of a novel I suggest that this first happens in 2049.  Well, science has already been thinking about this well enough that it seems likely that my prediction is too conservative, that this achievement may well happen before then.  It is virtually certain that an analog human brain will be created before this.

Why do I say that?  Because Henry Markam has already managed to do it with a substantial portion of a rat's neo-cortex.

Insight From "The Most Important Psychologist Alive Today"

This is a short interview with David Kahneman, a Nobel laureate in Economics despite being a psychologist, by Sam Adams.  David Kahneman is "The most important psychologist alive today" according to David Pinker, who himself is no slouch with regard to the human mind.

The entire interview is packed with useful information if you want to know how and why people do things.  However, this is the bit that most interested me.

 I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness. I eventually concluded that this view is not tenable, for one simple reason: people seem to be much more concerned with the satisfaction of their goals than with the achievement of experienced happiness....

... There is a road to convergence, but few will want to take it:  we could suggest to people that they should adopt experienced happiness as their main goal, and be satisfied with their lives to the extent that this goal is achieved. This idea implies the abandonment of other goals and values, which is surely unappealing.

So, one of the foremost scientific experts on human happiness states that there are two sorts of happiness, experienced happiness and life satisfaction.  Experienced happiness is how happy you feel from moment to moment, and life satisfaction is how satisfied you feel about your life, usually how well you feel you have met your goals.  It is asserted that these are essentially irreconcilable, that since they use different methods and standards you will get different results.

However, a solution is given, that experienced happiness be your goal.  That is that your life's goal is to experience happiness from moment to moment as best you can.  Kahneman correctly states that people don't do this, in fact their goals are given greater priority than their experienced happiness.  For most people it is more important to feel satisfied with what you have done than to have felt good while you were doing it.  Does this not seem largely accurate, and yet really weird?

However, what Kahneman is describing, this synthesis of life's goals and experiential happiness, is exactly what the philosophies/religions of Asia are all about.  The major psychological goals of over half the world's civilizations by population have been this precise goal, the one that seems untenable to almost all of us, and even to such an esteemed psychologist.

I think I was sixteen when I decided that the important thing in life was to be happy.  To be happy has been my goal, and any other goals I have had have really been about being happy.  I haven't done particularly well at it, but I don't feel bad about that, and I feel quite happy right now.  My goal for tomorrow is to be happy.  The same thing for next week, next year, next decade...

Is deciding that your life's goal is to be happy from moment to moment, as best you can, untenable for you?  Is abandoning your other goals and values unappealing?

On Relieving The Frustration From Other People

For most people, people are the source of their greatest frustration.  While things can be difficult, at least we understand that things aren't trying to be difficult, they just are difficult.

Have any of you spent time going over the actions of another person over and over in disbelief, or bafflement at the actions of another person?  Have you asked yourself, "How could they be so stupid?"  Or, "Why would they be such an awful person?"  Or, "Why are they doing that to themselves?"  Do you find that these thoughts keep re-occurring and perpetually cycling through your mind?  I do, and it's really frustrating to be there, and is very bad for my happiness.

Now, I don't think we are likely to change our minds about the stupidity of the other person's actions.  I simply cannot even begin to suggest that all people continually do smart things.  I can suggest that all of us do stupid things.  What I can suggest is a different method of understanding how and why people do things.

I'll start by presenting a psychological test.  Having told you that it is a test I expect you will do much better than the unwitting general public at it.  For the best use of the test I ask you to get to your answer as soon as you can, which is the manner that people usually use with regard to other people.

Linda is a single 31-year-old, who is very bright and deeply concerned with issues of social justice. Which of the following statements is more probable: a) that Linda works in a bank, or b) that Linda works in a bank and is active in the feminist movement?

Most people pick b).

If you picked b) go back and just take a moment and you will pretty quickly see why the answer is a).  Now, why do most people pick b)?  It is because it makes a better story.  People think in stories and the story of the a) is that Linda is concerned about social justice and works in a bank.  There doesn't seem to be a story here, it just seems to be a flat statement, and one that our prejudices think seems unlikely.  Our intuition therefore rejects this.  It's a bad story.  However, Linda being concerned about social justice and working in a bank, but is active in the feminist movement is a better story.  Here's a person with deep convictions working towards her goals while suffering the implied contradiction of working in a bank.  You could write a decent novel about that.

When given the choice between a good story (one with personality characteristics, a plot, and motivations we understand) and an accurate factual statement, in a snap decision most people will take the story.

This is a very powerful insight into how people work.  It is a great tool for answering the questions that frustrate us, and actually answering the unspoken question, which is why do we ask these frustrating questions? 

The first thing to remember at all times is people are doing things based on their story, and their stories with regard to other people.  These stories do not have to be based on real facts, simply perceived facts, which are essentially assumptions.  The base for these assumptions are the culture in which people were raised, and that other people think the same way that they do.

If you grew up in a culture where in high school good looks and going along with the crowd were important and doing well in class was perceived as arrogance, then a person who doesn't concern themselves much with their appearance, has some different interests to yours, and tries to help you to understand things will be seen as an arrogant know-it-all, who thinks they are better than you, and is trying to put you down.  Once this story has been produced it frames everything in those interactions from that point on.

What else are these stories based upon?  These stories are based on the almost universal human traits of being part of the group, intensifying the loyalties within that group (by demonizing the other), promoting one's own status within that group, and protecting one's own self-esteem.

So why does that guy just repeatedly do stupid things without asking for help, or admitting he doesn't know what he's doing, blaming me for it, and then gets rewarded by their boss?  It's because they have told themselves that they are competent, that those who say they aren't are out to get them by trashing them in front of their boss, and the boss is part of that group and so believes it.  Why is that when I smile at people at my wife's work I get looks of terror?  It's because I am not dressed like an employee, and so I must be a thief, or a bum, or someone out of the tribe, and what am I doing there? and what am I after with that smile?

The other thing to remember is that you are telling yourself those stories too.  When you bring your proposal forward you are doing it because you think you know more than other people about what is the right thing to do, you want to demonstrate your competence, and there's a really good chance you are trying to make sure that moron doesn't screw things up by getting things his way.

So, the next time that you become frustrated about the idiocy, evil, mean spirited nature of someone, try to work out what their story might be.  Remember that their meanness comes from things most of us share, fear, self-esteem, distrust of difference.  Remember that they probably come from a different environment but don't understand that you do too.  Remember that their idiocy is probably something they are mostly unaware of and yet terrified of its existence.  I remember my father, a man flown around the world for his intellectual authority on sophisticated matters, telling me that everyone in the world feels like they are faking being an adult, and that scared that everyone is going to find that out.

It doesn't stop you from thinking they are being dumb, or that the results of their actions are nasty.  However, it does reduce your own bewilderment, your own judgment that they are just plain evil, and it gives you an excellent method to predict what they might do next.  This reduces your frustration and gives you more time to watch butterflies wander through the flowers.

Studying Spanish

For about two months now I have been studying Spanish through the use of the Rosetta Stone computer program.  At some point I therefore expect to be able to write a blog post in Spanish, although it will be brutally simple, and horrifically littered with errors for anyone who actually speaks Spanish.

I don't actually expect to be able to really speak Spanish, after all language is an incredible complex thing that changes all the time.  All of us have spent a lifetime learning our language, and all of us get it wrong some of the time.  What I hope to achieve is to be able to go to a Spanish-speaking country and get around as a tourist using their language rather than requiring people in their own country to speak mine.  To me, being a visitor and not at least trying to speak their language is simply rude.  I don't think you have to be good at speaking the language but I think the effort is a requirement for politeness, and I think the effort is greatly appreciated.  I find those who simply speak louder and more angrily when faced with a communication problem to be among the most boorish people around.  I cringe in sympathy for the person subjected to it, feel embarrassed on the behalf of the boor, and feel sad that someone has missed out on the multilingual future.

I study the amount that people refer to as, "trying to study an hour every day."  This means in practice that I study for somewhere between twenty minutes and an hour three or four days a week.  I can tell that this is significantly faster than the program expects of me and at my present progress I should be finished with the entire program some time in the summer.

What I really want to talk about is the experience of studying a new language using the program.  Rosetta Stone claims to teach languages in the same way that we learn languages, and I can see what they mean.  Instead of learning grammar rules and vocabulary lists there is a constant combination of pictures and spoken words.  The program revolves between vocabulary, grammar, speaking, and listening, combining these different components in what are essentially constant tests.  Like a small child you are shown objects, given the name of the object wherever possible, and asked to repeat it until you understand and remember the word or phrase.  There is a constant barrage of questions in which the correct word, phrase, or sentence is left out and you are given praise (a happy tone and a green check mark) or a sense of failure (an orange cross and a disappointed tone).

Mentally this is the hardest thing I have done in a long time.  It is very reminiscent of the exhausting, almost physical, effort of doing sudoku puzzles for the first time.  I can literally feel my brain straining to solve the puzzles, remember the words, make some sense of what is going on.  The program functions essentially by starting you off in almost complete bewilderment for each new section.  There you are, lost in sentences combining words you know and words about which you have no idea.  As you take stabs in the dark the program says "Fail, fail, fail" until you start getting the right answers simply by a process of elimination.  At least it feels like that although I still get the majority of the answers right at these points.  There is something very powerful about being told you have failed.  I understand very keenly the frustration of a child trying to get the right words out without knowing them.

Next the program goes over the different parts again, in slightly more detail, but with more clues.  The tests become somewhat easier as a result.  Then there is my favorite feature, Adaptive Recall.  This consists of reminders from past lessons, repeated at different times over a period of days, weeks and months.  So you find yourself moving between crushingly hard mental steps and very basic answers.  It is only at this point that you really understand what you have learned, that "El tren sale a la cinco y veinte-cinco de la tarde" (or something close to that), means that the train leaves at five twenty-five in the afternoon, and realize that this could be a life-saver when abroad.  That bewildering, painful, frustrating effort at the beginning transfers into understanding.

Studying Spanish is not really fun in the usual idea of fun.  It actually reminds me quite a lot of playing really competitive sport.  In the actual moment it is hard, exhausting, draining.  When you have finished and realized what you have achieved it is uplifting, exhilarating.  The other day I was cruising through the cable listings and simply read one of the Spanish program titles, and realized that I understood it.  I listen to Mexican music stations down here (often just to feel more like a tourist rather than someone stuck in suburban Texas) and I can pick out words here and there.

However, most of the time as I slog through this process I remain mired in the belief that I will never understand Spanish, and any attempt to speak it is simply embarrassment in waiting.  It takes effort to see that I am trying to learn an entire new language in less than a year, that of course that is hard.  retaining motivation takes reminders that even now, after only ten weeks of study, I am enormously better equipped to get around in Costar Rica.  I can ask how much something costs, where the bus station is.  I can tell my right from left, and say I want a cup of coffee.

It may take ten thousand hours of mental work to master any skill, and I don't think I will ever master Spanish (at my present rate of study it would take about sixty years), but I am doing something worthwhile, soemthing useful, something about which I can be proud.  But it is bloody hard work.

Experiment.

I hear quite often the idea that this generation is the first one in America's history to be worse off than their parents' generation.  Sometimes this is a prediction, or a fear that this will be so, and sometimes just a statement of fact.  In what I hope is the spirit of scientific exploration I offer to those who may think this is true the following experiment.

Average age for first time mothers is now 25.  So generations are about 25 years apart at the moment.  So let's look at incomes over the last 25 years.  it is very difficult to find the exact data that would be most useful, but I have found this chart.

I'm sorry it's a bit small, and it is broken off at both ends.  Here's a bigger picture.  However, I have seen data at both ends and incomes for the bottom four quartiles have ended up in a similar place to where they were in 2004, perhaps one or two percent lower, and 1986 numbers are a little lower than 1989, so it should even out.  This chart shows inflation adjusted income by quintile.  This is the closest method I can think of to comparing what you personally would make in 1986 to what you make now.  You can look at your income on the left and see which percentile you are now, and then go back to the beginning and see where you would be before.  As a hint, you would be making a little bit less money regardless of your percentile.

So, my suggestion is that you work out what your disposable income is now, and work out the percentage difference in income from now to 1989, divide that by 52 and you have how much disposable income you would have in 1986, one generation ago.

Then go for a week living off this disposable income, but restrict yourself to only using things that were available in 1986, or doing things that you could do in 1986.  So, everything must be paid in cash or checks.  You have to get your money from inside the bank.  You have to leave your cell phone at home plugged in to the charger, and I don't remember answering machines being around then so you can't check voice mail.  You can use 128k of your computer.  You get your news entirely from network and local news and newspapers.  Before you eat ask yourself if the food would have been available in 1986.  And so on.

On the other hand think about what was available in 1986 that isn't around now.  I must admit nothing springs to mind, but there must be some things.  See if you can find ways to do that stuff if you wish.

Now, this won't be perfect.  Some things have gone up in price and others have gone down.  Most of the things that have gone up are essentials, non-disposable income stuff, so it shouldn't matter much.  Also there are some things that were available in different forms.  You can't get a 1986 car to drive around.  You won't have an old tv, or cassette tapes, so just use your modern stuff.  i think you get the idea.

OK, try that for a week, living like the previous generation, and then from your experience you can decide whether this generation is better off or worse off than the previous one.

Musing on the Point of Musing

I keep writing this blog.  I keep returning to a small number of topics, looking at them from different views but generally bashing away at the same few themes.  I would say those themes are happiness, tolerance, and the questioning of assumptions.  Basically I am trying to help people be happier by questioning their negative views, trying to open minds to other ways of thinking and understanding, and trying to demonstrate that there are good reasons to be happy and optimistic about the world.

My thesis is basically that it is possible to make yourself happier.  To do this you must open yourself up to other ways of looking at things.  This makes you a more tolerant and understanding person.  This makes you a more compassionate person.  Being more compassionate makes you happier.  Happier people tend to be more grateful and optimistic, and more open.  This then loops around in a circle.  There are other versions of the circle (e.g. openness - learning techniques for happiness - happiness - compassion - tolerance - openness) but once you get on the circle it tends to keep going round.

The hardest part of this circle is getting on it.  It takes a certain amount of faith, that it is at least worth trying to see if you can be more happy by trying something different than your habits.  Or even more, that it is possible to start this process.  Many people believe that they are simply who they are and always will be.  The second hardest part is keeping the momentum going, as with all movements there is friction that must be overcome by putting energy into the system.

My musing today is first whether this is astonishingly arrogant of me?  I'm just a guy, who do I think I am to be telling other people what they should do with their lives?  After all, if there is something I hate, it is being told what to do.  I know I'm pretty smart.  I know I've had more motivation than most to investigate happiness because of my bipolar disorder.  I know I've had a very large amount of time giving advice to people in difficult situations.  I know that I have a psychology degree and am fascinated by how people work.  I know that I am certain that I have made myself happier through this process.

On the other hand, I'm not an enlightened Buddhist monk.  I am not a trained psychotherapist.  I'm not Jesus.  I am not a saint.  Anyone who knows me is aware that I can be a thundering jackass.  Who the hell do I think I am?

Well, isn't helping other people to be happy what we should be doing?  Don't we all know that what we should do is try in our own way to make the world a better place?  I think I know some things that can do that.  If I can live a happy, beautiful life and maybe shift a few other people a little in that direction isn't that not just a worthy thing, but a beautiful thing in itself?  Wouldn't it be wrong if I didn't try?  Wouldn't it be true that if all of us learned how to be happy, and learned how to help other people to be happy it would be just about the best thing possible?

In the end, isn't it better to be a little like this guy, Jeremy Gilley, who with no qualifications had a crazy and beautiful idea that was essentially certain to fail, but went for it anyway, and has consequently saved thousands of lives and brought massive buckets of hope into the world.  I beg of you to watch this video.  Please, please, please watch this.

I have been wondering what this blog is for.  On one hand it lets me express my views on topics.  On another it lets people who care about me check up on how I am doing, which I think is perhaps the most common use of this blog.  To a certain extent it then doesn't really matter what I say.  Perhaps I make people think?  Is that a good thing?  I hope so, but as I have expressed before, that doesn't really matter if it doesn't change what people do.  Has any of these 243 posts actually got someone to change what they do?  Have I convinced anyone of anything?  I think probably one or two people a little bit, a very small bit.

In the past I was someone who would have dismissed Jeremy Gilley.  I would have dismissed the idea of being able to help make people happy.  I would have thought that it wasn't worth trying to understand people who I thought were wrong.  I would have thought being compassionate was largely opening up oneself to pain.  I would have thought that you were stuck being who you are, and that I was better than most people.

I don't think that way anymore.  I'm not sure I'm a good person, but I am a better person.  Being a better person has made me a happier person.  I have jumped on the wheel and I am trying to keep it moving.  Even if I fail at convincing anyone of anything, I would much rather be a bit more like Jeremy Gilley and fail than successfully convince people to be like the person I used to be.

I believe that may be the most convincing argument I have.

Sheeple

The term, "Sheeple" is now a part of the lexicon.  It is freely used and generally understood.  Sheeple are those who don't think for themselves, are spoon-fed what they take as the truth, and are generally apathetic.  It is, of course, used entirely with scorn.

Who are the sheeple?  Well, for a start, they aren't me, I, us.  They are they, them etc..  I have never seen anyone refer to themselves as sheeple.  I have, however, seen both left wing people and right wing people use it towards the other side.  The left say sheeple get their marching orders from Fox News and the Daily Mail, and the right say sheeple get their marxist thought control from MSNBC and The Guardian.  Each side then returns fire with the idea that the view of themselves being sheeple is just an idea implanted into the brains of the automatons from the left/right by their overlords.  Conspiracy theorists are addicted to the concept.

Of course, it would be hard to ignore the largest political unit in the US (with a minimum of 37% of eligible voters in every presidential election for the past 67 years), and one of the larger political segments in the UK (with a low of 16% and a high of 40% over the same period) those who don't vote.  As a group of politically uninterested, unthinking, apathetic people, this group is hard to beat.

My question is whether this term is accurate, useful, or should even be thought of as a term of scorn?  Perhaps the sheeple have made the best choice of all?

Is it accurate?  Well, if the use of the term defines its accuracy then sheeple describes almost anyone.  To not be classed as sheeple a person would have to be viewed as a widely informed, independent thinker by everybody.  I'm not even sure such a being exists.  So, is there an objective standard for sheeple?  I would say that getting information from a very small number of sources, and those sources being of a similar philosophical bent would qualify.  That's almost certainly a large proportion of those who don't vote (more on this later) but I would imagine it is also true of those who vote one way or the other.  How many people who vote for the right get their news and opinion from a couple of newspapers and a couple of tv shows with which they agree?  Most of them I would imagine.  How about on the left?  I think most of my tiny audience are lefties, and I bet they get most of their information from NPR, The New York Times, The Daily Show, MSNBC, The Nation, and The Huffington Post.  When you go to Google News do you pick equally from the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal?  I think probably most people, wherever they are on the spectrum, are sheeple.

Is it useful?  Well, has anyone ever been convinced by being called sheeple?  Has it ever advanced the cause of humanity?  No.  Has it ever motivated someone to increase their efforts for the greater good of the planet?  No.  Calling people sheeple is simply a term of contempt, dismissing the views of others, the life of others, basically reducing people to objects.  We are never sheeple in our own minds, but we sure can identify them in the general public.  Ironically, calling people sheeple is likely to make you more sheeple yourself, as you are blindly dismissing the ideas, information, and conclusions of a whole swathe of people.  Of course, those people might be ignorant buffoons, but you'll never really know that unless you consistently listen to their points of view and consider them.  The final point is that you might be sheeple.  I might be sheeple.

Then, how about a term of scorn?  Let's take the platonic ideal of sheeple.  This person barely has a concept of the news, couldn't name anyone in their government, watches mainstream TV more seriously than they do anything else, and is fine with just not caring.  They never vote, don't care how the government works and can't understand why someone would.  To them the whole exercise is pointless.  OK, are they wrong?  If they are generally happy with their lives and don't cause harm, why should they watch the news?  What's in it for them?  If they don't like watching the news surely it makes sense not to do so.  If they like mainstream reality TV then they should watch it, it makes them happy.  How much difference does their voting make?  Absolutely none if the election isn't separated by a single vote.  If their vote doesn't count why should they pay attention to the government, it's just going to do what it does regardless.  It is actually quite sensible to believe that an individual person's involvement is completely pointless. If your involvement is pointless and you like doing other things, it is only rational not to care.

So, perhaps being one of the sheeple is the best choice of all.  Then why do I feel the need not to be sheeple so badly?