You Know I'd Be A Poor Man

But today I saw a bald eagle fly, It flapped slowly, and rather muscularly about thirty feet over my head. One of the greatest advantages of having a dog is that you go outside every day, and if you treat your dog properly, you go outside for hours every day. I've been enjoying sights such as flocks of geese coming out of the fog, volcanoes looming in the distance, shafts of winter light through rattling leaves.
I've had a fabulous couple of days, feeling comfortable in my own skin, feeling spontaneous. Sometimes I'm sad, but it's romantically sad, like Byron on a bender. Often I'm content, but mostly I've felt beautiful from the inside-out. Don't worry, I'm still a fat guy with no fashion sense and a bizarre, amish beard. what I mean is that the way I have felt over the last couple of days is like listening to a lovely piece of music, or seeing a lovely painting. The art of living, I suppose.
Yesterday while playing music with a group of sweet people, sitting around a coffee table singing songs and telling stories, our newest friend asked who wrote the song that we had just played. It was a nice thing to say, "I did" and have her reply, "really?"

And then the great thing is that in just a few hours the person who is most responsible for the way I have felt these last couple of days will come home for four days that we can spend in a quiet, restful cocoon. I love my wife, how great is that?
I also want to to tell my sister Emily and my father Ken that it was really special to talk to the two people in the world that really understand what's going on inside my head, because they have the same things going on inside theirs. The two of you were absolute delights on my trip home.

Adventure or Doom?

Christina was informed this week that her department is being transferred to Houston, Texas. Since money is still required to live this means that it is very likely that we will move to Houston. The question is whether this will result in adventure or a doom-filled litany of miseries.
I have never heard anything good about Houston, TX.
I have heard lots of warnings about never going to Houston TX. It will not be a pretty place to live and most of the people will be virulently different in their political and social beliefs. There will be not be the social amenities of mass transport, community organizations or even parks. The area that we are most likely to move to (Tomball) prides itself on being a place with good family values. For people like me "family values" are code words for bigotry and intolerance. I expect that almost everyone I meet will view my life-choices essentially with contempt.
On the other hand, if I view Houston as basically a new country then the possibilities of a great adventure unfold. I have never lived in a tropical climate, which is basically what Houston has. Perhaps the greatest thing for my personal development was coming to the United States, and there is little doubt that the differences between Salisbury and Ann Arbor, Michigan are greater than the differences between Portland and Houston. if I am to pride myself on tolerance then I must display it by being able to deal with people different than myself. If I am to have a life with adventure and excitement then I must go to places where I am not initially comfortable and try to adapt.
Finally, I think that people are people everywhere in the world, and that there will be good, kind, tolerant, funny, interesting people in Houston, if I make the effort to find them.

The Associative Squirt Theory of the Brain

After a long time of thinking about human brains I have come up with my theory of the brain which is entirely unoriginal, derivative, and a bit silly. It is, however, a useful way for people who otherwise would not think about how brains work to have someone give them a shortcut to understanding.

The brain comes with a basic system of squirts and anti-squirts. A squirt is a set of drugs pumped into your brain by glands within the brain that makes you feel "Good" subjectively, but mostly works in behavior by making you want to experience that squirt again. These drugs are dopamine, seratonin and norepinephrine, which are also neurotransmitters, the things that make your brain work. Basically the human brain likes doing stuff.

Everything you and everyone else have ever wanted to do is as a result of a squirt. Remember that is wanted, rather than ended up doing because otherwise things would be unpleasant. Wanting is the desire for a squirt, even if this is not conscious.
Anti-squirts are things that stop you from doing something, basically pain and anxiety (not necessarily two different things, and certainly interlinked.)

So, almost everyone is born with the capability to feel squirts and anti-squirts, but an important thing to remember is that these squirts and anti-squirts are in different amounts to different experiences because people are born as different from each other. So, if I take a drug the effect of it will be different in amount to others taking it. There are some people who get a huge squirt from nicotine and others that don't. The only reason I am not a smoker is because my brain doesn't give much of a squirt at all from nicotine. People's basic response to chemicals (even the ones their own brain produce) are different in extent (although I think not very different in quality).

But how does the vast array of human behavior and personality derive from basic squirts and anti-squirts? It is through the miracle of association. The human brain literally grows pathways of thought in response to situations. If you see a bunny rabbit and then someone stabs you in the leg, your brain will grow a pathway between the bit of the brain that represents bunny rabbit and pain. In the future a bunny rabbit will lead to the concept of pain (an anti-squirt) and therefore anxiety. The more intense the squirt or anti-squirt and the more often it happens the more powerful and immediate the association.

The important thing to remember is that associations can build upon each other into networks. These networks can be very complicated. Take jumping off a cliff into the Mediterranean. On one hand there will be lots of associations of falling off things and the pain resulting. But there will also be the feeling of the increased brain activity that results from the fear of the pain and exists beyond the point of the fear. Missing out on pain feels good because squirt chemicals last longer than pain chemicals. Jumping off the cliff will also be connected with the joy of telling stories about events, associated with beauty, with self-esteem and pride, with memories of other people having done it.
Standing on the side of a cliff over a clear blue sea will have a whole array of associations built upon associations all connected to the sensations of just a few chemicals in the brain. And those associations will be altered by the very experience of standing on the side of a cliff.

A wonderful illustration is the concept of phobias and the treatment known as flooding. Built into the human brain are some basic concepts, like fear of falling. In some people this connection between pain and falling is more powerful, and then some associations are built upon this that reinforce that association. In such cases standing in a high place, even when it is completely safe is directly connected to pain. People with phobias are in a form of agony when that phobia is triggered. Although I think it is ridiculous to be afraid of a one inch spider, I should remember that to the person with the phobia it feels as bad as being punched in the face.
Flooding is the treatment by which the phobia is confronted head-on in a completely safe environment. With heights you would put the person with a fear of heights in a high place that is absolutely safe. Everything that can be done to make that environment feel safe (that is to surround the person with things they associate with safety) is done, until new associations are grown between being in a high place and safety. Once enough associations are made with enough power the person is no longer afraid of heights.
But flooding often backfires because the power of the brain to associate things is astonishing. To a large extent the human brain cannot distinguish between an association and the real world. The association of fear and pain in a phobia is often as strong as actually feeling the consequences. The human brain has difficulty telling the difference between what it imagines and what is true. So, in many cases of phobia the experience of flooding is as bad as the actual event of which the person is afraid. Being in a high place for someone with a fear of heights can feel as bad as falling off the high place. In such cases flooding actually makes the phobia worse.

In summary, everyone wants to do things or avoids them simply based on squirts or anti-squirts. You can't do very much about your predispositions to squirts and anti-squirts. Built upon these basic responses are associations that are updated and developed throughout our lives, largely unconsciously. To a large extent the human brain experiences these associations as reality. If you associate green grass, a certain temperature of air and a certain light with a time of contentment in childhood, your brain will feel the same as you did in that situation. The sensation of the associations is the same as the sensation of the original feeling.

Why do I put this out? Because people don't use these concepts with regard to each other very much. People think heroin users do it because they are weak and stupid, rather than the real reason that for users heroin feels like the absolute most blissful time in your life. Could you voluntarily stop yourself from experiencing the top ten percent of the happiest times in your life? Like the moment you fell in love?
People think that other people are like themselves and that if they didn't do something why should someone else? The reason is that their brain set up and their associations that have been formed are such that their experience of such events is dramatically different. What seems to be the same situation is entirely different between individuals. I really enjoy going on a stage and performing. My wife is likely to throw up and pass out from the literal pain of the prospect. In reading this now she probably can literally feel the horror, (sorry sweetie). Our experience of the same event is entirely different.

So people don't do unpleasant things because they are trying to be bad people. And people don't do nice things out of some rational choice to be good. People do things simply because the associations they have developed produce a happy squirt or produce a painful anti-squirt. If you don't understand that basic concept, you don't understand people. If you want to change your behavior, or the behavior of someone else you have to work out what makes you or someone else have a squirt, and then find ways to associate the new behavior with that experience. If people want me to be less lazy, they have to make work feel better. Since my basic make-up does not provide huge squirts for conforming, or fitting in, or looking good in the eyes of others, or a job well done etc. but does get huge squirts from comfort, beauty, love, competition and booze, this makes things tricky.

Home.

What is home? Is it the place in which you live? Is it the place that you are from? Is it the place that you consider closest in nature to who you are as a person? For many people the question of what is one's home is not complicated, for it is all of the above. But increasingly there are people such as myself who live in one place, have come from somewhere else, and have become who we are through the effects of multiple places. What is home is complicated for me.



I have lived in Portland longer than in any other city in my life. I feel confident walking about the place. I understand the complex nature of the city, rapidly layered with different groups in different parts of the rapidly expanding and changing city. But every time I open my mouth it is clear that I am from somewhere else.

I am someone who is comfortable talking to absolute strangers, someone comfortable in places where I don't know the rules, someone who knows that the essential similarities between pople are greater than their differences. I know this from my nine years in Michigan, where I was transformed from a painfully shy introvert, with a tendency to mope, and a general disdain for people, into someone who enjoys being on stage, the most optimistic person I know, with a belief in the goodness of my fellow woman. This transfomation took place through a psychological process called "flooding". The constant interest, and outgoing friendliness of hundreds of mid-west americans over several years is the reason for this change. But I don't consider Michigan my home.

I just got back from ten days in England and Wales. The very look of it is comfortable to me. The greenest of fields surrounded by hedgerows, with a stone farmhouse under grey skies is what beauty means to me. The accents of the british countryside, particularly the rhythms of banter in a country pub, are the sounds about which I do not need to think. It is how I think, the method by which I prefer to converse, the atmosphere that soothes my spirit. But this environment is disappearing, replaced by the convenience of driving and the internet. Replaced by specialization, and international plane flights, and exotic cuisines.

A nice man who was once a friend of mine (taken away by the cult that is Alcoholics Anonymous, and the threats of his wife) once said that I was a man with no country, that I would never be home. He was right, and the places that are the closest are slowly dying under the tender care of the wealthy retirees of England. But there is still enough of it left for it to make me smile with its beauty, to wax wistfully of its charms, and to feel renewed and inspired by seeing it once again.

Time for a spot of tea.

Sport.

Months and months of incessant whinging have gone by and no mention of sport. Sport has played a major part in my life. I cannot remember not being able to kick a ball well enough to play soccerball. I have played soccerball, the rugby football, the tennis, basketball, cricket, ice hockey, ping pong (probably the best one, honestly), golf (a good tantrum ruined by peaceful scenery in my experience), even softball. There is just something I have liked about a competitive effort that is directly physical, a visceral intensity of attention and effort that truly makes you feel alive.

However, what I have spent more time doing is watching sport. I have watched enough sport to have a favorite aussie rules football team, to hate all teams wearing orange (except the netherlands soccerball team and the Cleveland Browns), and to have an opinion on which is more boring between baseball and cricket (both are very boring, but cricket lasts for days). I spend several hours a day watching grown men desperately try to get inflated sheep bladders from one place to another within the confines of arbitrary rules. I am fully aware that this is rather an odd activity.

Why do people watch sport? For those that don't watch sport this is a real question, because it is a really strange activity, no matter how popular. I watch sport because it is the essence of myth, improvised before our eyes. In myth there is good and evil in direct conflict, winner take all. Myth explains who we are, what group we are a part of and which group we are against. In almost all cases myth climaxes with a battle, a struggle on the field of battle between the two forces. This battle is the point of the basic stories of our cultures. The shining heroes of our hope line-up to do their utmost against the dark, evil horde, their colours proudly displayed, pennants fluttering in the wind.

Sport is this exact scenario. A battle, a struggle beween us and them. Once you have picked a side (a vital component of watching sport for me, not caring about the outcome means you don't care about the activity) then the emotions run riot. It is family, clan, tribe under assault from the enemy. Then there is the emotion of becoming part of the mob, with your colours displayed, yelling, chanting, screaming. It is a basic part of humanity to feel part of something. It ennervates the entire psyche, grabbing all of your attention to hope for your side to be triumphant, to give you the release of pure joy.

I want to get across the point that sport is a replacement for bloody war and violence, rather than an encouragement towards it. I have thoroughly enjoyed smashing my body into another (enough that my shoulders will never be the same) within the framework of a set of rules. The opponent voluntarily agrees to take part in this smashing, also enjoys it, and will stop upon the sound of a whistle. You will not find a more immediate human connection than between those who have competed against each other to the point of pain, and who join together afterwards in a soothing beverage and to laugh about the smashing.

Like a great play can get you to feel love, anguish, joy, and sadness, a great sporting event can get you to feel all of the same feelings, but every game is different, you know that the storyline has not been fixed for the audience, and the entire event is improvised. That's why I enjoy watching sport so much.

If this doesn't stir something in you then I've just been spouting nonsense: http://http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BCn-8MB-v5U

The Ultimate Indignity

As a person with a liberal arts degree I have suffered the ultimate indignity. I have had my writing critiqued by an engineer. To further define my level of degradation the explanation for my failure to write properly is based on a psychological evaluation of my hemispheres. Here it is.

"Dan, you're overly logical left hemisphere has betrayed the right and made a binary decision. A lot more white space instead of some more white space. Instead of bullet points, perhaps artistic layout would help the reader. I presume your intent is to impart the content of what you write. Making your musing easy to read facilitates the transfer.

May I suggest you write as you always have. When your done, consider its layout. Perhaps a single space between paragraphs, on long posts perhaps grouping paragraphs with subtitles. Inserting an occasional enhancing graphic, etc.

Thinks of it as complementary parts of exposition. Verbal and visual. Distinct skill sets. The cleaver thing would be to integrate the pair.

...jgk"

Calumny!
Now, I feel I must defend myself against this vile calumny. For a start, the accusation that my left hemisphere is overly rational is quite hurtful. I mean, that's what that hemisphere is for. However, the notion that it has overidden my right hemisphere in making this a binary decision is actually the opposite of the truth. As laid out in my post the reason for my opposition to the advice (and therefore the sabotage of it through excess white space) is from my irrational hemisphere, a position based on emotional autonomy rather than ease of reading.

The second error on the part of my vicious attacker is in saying "Instead of bullet points," when my point is that restricting the size of paragraphs and spacing them out on the page creates bullet points. Smaller paragraphs reduces the amount you can say on a subject. Creating space between paragraphs distances the point of each paragraph from another. Increased white space automatically leads to an effect closer to bullet points, this is inescapable.

The next point is my intent. It is interesting to note that those in favor of a different layout have been a technical writer and an engineer. Those in favor of my normal wordiness have degrees in psychology, art and history. In engineering and techncal writing the intent is to as simply as possible convey information. In art the point of writing is very different. It is to be beautiful in and of itself. It is to convey a depth of multiple meanings. It is to create an emotional environment. A good technical manual has simple sentences, short paragraphs, spaces between those paagraphs. Anna Karenina has long, complex sentences. It has long, dense paragraphs filled with equivical meaning, the point of Anna Karenina only becomes apparent after tens of thousands of words. My intent is somewere between these two extremes.

Shocked!
The thing that has really shocked me about all this is the connection made between spaces between paragraphs and reading comprehension. Are people serious? Is it really true that people cannot understand the exact same information, with the same words, in the same order, without having headings or spaces between paragraphs? Have people become unable to read novels? I read a 600 page novel over the last couple of weeks that had white space only between chapters as per convention. Would people have had trouble understanding this novel as a result?

The Painful Truth
What I think has happened is a combination of two things. First, the internet now dominates daily reading. White space on the internet is free. In print is costs money. The denser the writing on paper the cheaper is the cost of providing it, with the internet it makes no difference. However, in print there is not really an immediate alternative for a reader who becomes bored with what they are reading, while on the internet any moment of boredom can result in the reader goin elsewhere. So people have become accustomed to small paragraphs, in a bullet point style, packing as much emotional content into as few words as possible, exactly in the manner of cable news.
Second, there is a convention that has sprung up as to how blogs should be written. There is literally no reason why different blogs should all look the same. Rather, it seems to me that blogs should represent the views, character, personality and interest of the person writing them.

Summary
If I change the way I write this blog, then it won't be me writing it. Do you really want me to be a different person? Am I not good enough for you, Jim?


Epilogue
If you couldn't tell, this entire post should be read with you tongue shoved firmly into your cheek.

Advice

This last weekend I received my first piece of advice on this blog, in person at a party. Coincidentally I received the first piece of advice in a comment section from someone named Mark, his first comment since April. Welcome back Mark.


The piece of advice at the party was from a good friend of mine, Dade, a highly intelligent man with excellent writing skills who has his own blog. Here's his post on the party in question, http://dadecariaga.blogspot.com/2008/10/jene-verrckte-deutsch.html


Clearly Dade Cariaga is an excellent writer, with a well presented blog which I take great pleasure in reading. His piece of advice was to use more "White space," to not have such long paragraphs and to have space between them for ease of viewing. Dade was clear that he thought this would be better even if none of the words were changed.


My initial reaction was what everyone who knows me might expect, I simply said I wouldn't. As I have said before in this blog (http://hopefulmuser.blogspot.com/2008/04/few-words-on-religion-and-childhood.html) "I think my natural personality abhors not having autonomy, being under the power of others, and that was present from a very early age." Even something as simple as changing a format of a blog on the advice of a fine writer feels like giving up autonomy, as if someone else has decided something for me.


Coincidentally (perhaps) the last time Mark commented on my blog was in that April post. "More white space" and "Incessant windbag" having more than a little in common, I have used this blog to try out this more-white-space approach.


My initial reaction is that I detest it. It fragments my thinking, grinding it down to the simplest possible statement, removing associative thoughts, paring down the subject matter to bullet points or a power-point presentation.