Tooting my own Horn

One of the things about dogs is that, like almost all animals, at the core they are a tube in which stuff enters at one end and exits at another. In the modern culture of dog ownership it is considered correct to pick up this effluence and deposit in an appropriate receptacle. I thoroughly approve of this social agreement as although it is a relatively unpleasant duty, it is better than stepping in it, smelling it everywhere or having your dog roll enthusiastically in it and then lie on your couch. So I pick up my dog's crap in plastic bags and put them away.

Human beings have a behavior called, "Social loafing." In this behavior people who have a task as part of a group in which they are not directly evaluated do less than they would if directly evaluated or entirely responsible for the task. With dog owners this consists of not picking up your dog's poop when not observed by others. Sometimes you just miss that your dog has eliminated while you are talking or paying attention to something else. Sometimes in December in Portland it is pitch black outside and the poop becomes invisible, thus providing some cover stories for those unwilling to do their part. It is sometimes comic to see people's brains churning over whether they have been observed adequately for them to be poory evaluated in this duty.

As a result there is crap from other dogs lying around in parks. Since I'm against this I often pick up the cold, canine fecal-matter I see around on the ground. But that's far from the only reason I do it. I also do it so that I can feel morally superior to the unidentified culprit. I also do it to absolve myself of the guilt that might arise from not finding my dogs kaka in the dark of the night. But mostly I do it for the warm feeling that results from the adulation I imagine getting from humanity as a whole for being such a good person. Which is why I have written this post, so you now have the opportunity to adulate me for my awesome goodness.

You are being evaluated, so no social loafing with the adulation. ADULATE ME NOW!

Thoughts in the Dark of the Night.

The last few nights it has taken me a couple of hours to fall asleep. In the past this would have been an unpleasant experience, a time of frustration. That frustration would have been somewhat reasonable in the past because with the deadlines of work an hour to get to sleep is an hour less of sleep. An hour less of sleep means a noticeable increase in the unpleasant nature of the following day. But these last few nights I have just lain in a ridiculously comfortable bed, safe, secure, with no rush to do anything and just let the thoughts come and go. Here are some of them.

Why is the word "Word" pronounced werd, while what you would expect to be the pronunciation of the word "Word" is how you pronounce the word "Ward"? And this isn't a regional dialect issue, this wackiness seems essentially universal in the english language. The problem with these sort of thoughts is that you end up reading these sorts of web pages: www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vangogh/555/Spell/trublspl1.html


Does it matter whether you can remember something or not? Let's say you get so drunk that you black out and can't remember what happened. If you had a really good time that night, does it matter that you can't remember it? Is the good time simply a good time regardless of anything else? If it isn't, and that the memory of an action validates it, then this means that once you are dead all of your life means nothing, or as you get older, none of the experiences that you forget have any validity. So, I uess things are valid only for what they are. An experience is only valid as an experience and a memory is only valid as a memory. I often wake up from a good night sleep somehow aware that I have just had a very pleasant experience without any memory of what that pleasant experience might be.

Am I the same person that I was twenty years ago? How would I be able to tell?

Medical Non-Miracles

I am disappointed in the medical miracle guys. It just seems to me as though they should have got some things worked out by now.

Why can't you grow new teeth? These are just teeth, hardly the most complicated things in the world. These aren't giant organs of great complexity, they aren't even toes! Grow them in a vat and get them plugged in, should be a doddle.

Why can't you just get cartilage injected into your joints? Don't these miracle workers understand that if they don't get this worked out soon they'll be creaking down the hallway and predicting the weather in no time? Just squirt some junk into your knees, brand new cartilage. Not having this is an embarrassment.

By the way, nice job on the robot eyes. And cancer looks complicated, I'm not going to give anyone a hard time on that for a decade at least.

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.