Category Archives: Psychological Musings

Literally now can mean figuratively…really

Americana, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized

HTC-22

I heard on the radio yesterday, that the second definition of Literally is now figuratively. It is the first time I can remember that the misuse of a word – “It was literally raining cats and dogs.” – has become acceptable usage. I know it has happened innumerable times in the past, silly used to mean very  religious,  somehow flammable and inflammable came to mean the same thing, everybody knows what you mean when you say The fireworks were cool. but….this is the first time I have seen it happen, literally in front of my eyes.

Oh, the house above, we saw it while puttering about in Michele’s cousin’s boat, looking at tornado damage, around Greers Ferry Reservoir. The house was literally totaled.  Take that anyway you want.

Religion and violence

Psychological Musings, Religion

Maj General -1

Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson, 25th Inf. Div. (L) commander, addresses some soldiers in Iraq, before their departure to Mosul, where they will conduct combat operations for the upcoming Iraqi elections (Jan 05).

If god exists or not is a question I have given up asking. I live my life without a god and, with the possible exception of Sunday morning, the way I live my life doesn’t seem to be any different from the way most Christians do. I do live my life with a sense of Wonder; a sense that there is more to life than what we see and I like to call that Unknowable, the Divine.

I admire people who believe in a god…as long as they hold that belief lightly. I also admire people who do not believe in god and hold that belief lightly. What I do not admire is people who think they know god and know what god wants; people who know how god wants us to have sex or who know that god wants us to fly jets into buildings. But I also don’t admire people who want to blame everything on religion and believe the world would be peachy keen if we all lived like secular Americans with a separation of  church and state  (interestingly enough, it always seems to be somebody else’s belief that is the problem). I don’t admire people who think that life in the United States is the only right way of life and are willing to kill for it. Not kill to defend themselves when attacked like we were in WWII, mind you; but to go out and kill somebody because they don’t have our values of capitalism or the sanctity of life.

These thoughts were rekindled on this bright and sunny Sunday when I was directed to an article in The National Catholic Review through a post in The Dish by Andrew Sullivan & Co. The article said what I have been thinking and I want to pass it on because it says it much better than I can. Here are a couple of tidbits that catch a little of the flavor of the article but the entire article is very much worth reading (if you ever think about these sort of things).

Westerners are fascinated by the nexus of “religion and violence.” War on behalf of nationalism and freedom and oil and other such mundane secular matters hardly counts as violence at all. At the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar in 2007, nearly four years into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, David Satterfield, senior adviser and coordinator for Iraq in the office of the U.S. Secretary of State, gave a speech condemning those in Iraq “who try to achieve their goals through the use of violence.” As the journalist Rami Khouri sardonically commented, “As if the U.S. had not used weapons when invading Iraq!”

What is important for our present purposes is to see how the religious/secular divide functions in our public discourse about violence. It serves to draw our attention toward certain types of practices—Islam, for example—and away from other types of practices, such as nationalism. Religion is the bogeyman for secular society, that against which we define ourselves. We have learned to tame religion, to put it in its proper, private place; they (Muslims, primarily) have not. We live in a publicly secular and therefore rational society; they have not learned to separate secular matters like politics from religion, and so they are prone to irrationality. We hope they will come to their senses and be more like us. In the meantime, we reserve the right periodically to bomb them into being more rational.

Check it out.

ADD, ADHD…whatever

Family, Psychological Musings

Steve-0546I am not sure of the terminology here but I have been diagnosed with ADD (or ADHD, I am not entirely sure what the difference is or if there even is a difference). For awhile, I was more or less in denial driven by shame.

To start at the beginning, I was listening to a woman complain about her husband who, she said was ADHD and I thought, That’s me. So I went online to take a short test and I aced it.  Now the problem with ADD tests is that they are like Enneagram tests in that they are about self-identified behavior making it pretty easy to influence the answer in the direction you feel is right. Typical questions are Do you have an unusually acute sense of smell and sensitivity to touch? or Do you go off on tangents easily? Michele said Those tests mean nothing, if you really think you are ADD, you should talk to an expert.

I went to a Neurologist who has ADD and is an expert and he tested me. The expert also gave me a book about ADHD to read. One of the things the book said, in the preface and then the first chapter, or so, is something like, If you are ADHD, you probably won’t finish this book but you should read Chapter 11 and take the test in Chapter 4. Humm, the not finishing the book did sound like me and the stories even more so. After not finishing the book, I went back to the expert.

He prescribed Bupropion. Now I am not entirely sure that I even believe in ADD just like I am not entirely sure I believe in the Enneagram. But, I am sure that I am a Nine on the Enneagram, that I am not sure I believe in, and I am sure that my behavior is ADDesque.  But, when the expert prescribed Bupropion, I really went into denial. I have seen too many movies when somebody says Watch out, he is off his meds, and the whole thing sort of reminded me of Ann Hathaway just getting out of rehab in Rachel Getting Married or Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook. To say that there is a high level of shame involved, is an understatement.

According to the expert and the book, some of the symptoms of ADD are “zoning out” without realizing it, even in the middle of a conversation and struggling to complete tasks, even ones that seem simple. Over the years, I like to think that I have been good at covering up these symptoms, but I know they are there. Another symptom is a tendency to overlook details, leading to errors or incomplete work and I know that is the reason I had failed the so-called Louisiana literacy test. Both the expert and the book said that these symptoms could be alleviated by the Bupropion and hope and curiosity have led me to give it a try.

I figured, while I am at it, I might as well quit all intoxicants, none of which are supposed to help. So, here I am, a clean and sober, out of the closet, ADDer on  Bupropion.

Steve-0407

Happy Summer

Around home, Photography, Psychological Musings

Russian Ridge-0554

On the Solstice, we went to a lovely party at Beth and Howard Dunaier’s Kenwood home. They asked everybody to bring pictures of summer for a collage. It is a great idea and hard for me  because almost all the pictures represent events or happenings of summer, not  actual summer. I look at a picture of the beach and I think Going to the Beach or Ahh, Southern California, not Summer. I see a picture of a Fourth of July Parade and I think Fourth of July, not Summer.

I see a picture of cars racing and I think of the cars even though Summer is the prime racing season.

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I think that, even though I am a photographer, summer is not about images. For me, anyway. Summer is about feeling. It is about feeling the soft afternoon air while walking across a Sierra meadow still slightly green from the summer snow melt.

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It is about the feeling of the cooling fog coming in over the Santa Cruz hills after a hot afternoon.

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It is about sleeping with the windows open and the smell of dry grass. It is about golden light.

Russian Ridge-2596

 

Syria

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

syria2

I remember a story – during our intervention, along with several NATO allies, in Bosnia and Herzegovina – about United States Army Forward Operating Base Cobra. This was  in 1995 or so, after the majority of the fighting was over. FOB Cobra – if I may be so familiar – was the biggest American base around and it was surrounded by a plethora of concertina wire backed up by as many motion detectors as the supplier could talk the Army into. This was during the time when American soldiers going into town were required to wear helmets and body armor (other NATO troops wandered around in their uniforms with berets or other soft headgear).

Anyway, there was a farm nearby and the farmer had two teenage sons. They spent their teenage summer seeing how close they could get to FOB Cobra proper. When the teenagers were spotted by an motion detector, the lights would come on and sirens would go off. The base would go to Defcon One – or its local equivalent – with the entire base coming up to full attack defense status: all defensive positions were manned, the helicopter gunships were scrambled, and everybody was up and at their battle stations.

The thing is that after the first couple of attacks, everybody knew it was the kids but FOB Cobra couldn’t help itself. Every time the motion detectors were tripped, it reflexively reacted.  Not  in relation to a threat, everybody knew it wasn’t a threat, sort of like a reflexive knee jerk. I feel the same way about the United States and somebody else’s war. Somehow, we have to intervene.  We just can not help ourselves. Obama ran on a platform of staying out of stupid wars like Iraq, and, he knows better, but he can’t help himself. Our body politic won’t let him.