Category Archives: Psychological Musings

Fear mongering

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Guns (1 of 1) More Americans had their backgrounds checked while buying guns on Black Friday than on any other day on record, according to F.B.I. statistics, New york Times.

A week or so ago, right after the San Bernardino shooting, I started to do a post on guns and fear mongering but I kept getting distracted by Trump’s rhetoric escalations. Guns are a big problem in the United States, but I don’t think that guns are our biggest problem, maybe they are a distant third. Not counting Global Climate Change, our biggest problem is the growing toxic environment of fear. Increasingly, we are unable to see reality because our fear induced anger in clouding our vision. While I think the biggest offenders are on the right, it is not just the right that seems to be blind with rage.

In what seems like months ago, I couldn’t imagine how ISIS could be an existential threat to the United States. Now I am starting to think that I was wrong. Roosevelt famously said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, I learned that in school, maybe in some Civics class, maybe in a High School History class, I don’t know, but I do know that I really didn’t understand the moral importance of that quote. I knew what the words meant intellectually, but not the emotional urgency. Now I am beginning to better understand the corrosiveness of fear as I am starting to see it play out in front of me.

For about six months, starting in late 1973, the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left wing terrorist organization, ran wild in California. They said the purpose of the mayhem was to get the police to over react turning the general population against what they saw as corrupt authority. The police did over react, in a way, with 400 police officers shooting about 9,000 bullets into a house where the SLA – as they were known, almost none of us knowing what symbionese meant – was holed up, but the populus never followed suit. To me at the time, getting the population to turn on the government, to, in effect, turn on itself seemed, fortunately, like an impossible goal. In the early seventies, the left was similar to the right of today except, of course, 180° out of sync. The SLA, however, was just too small a lever to move the country in any measurable way. I am worried that in our more polarized nation, a right wing terrorist organization, ISIS, may be a big enough lever.

When Trump says “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” it is not only an idiotic misstating of reality, it is bad for America because it excites fear. People are already afraid, for their jobs, for their kid’s job prospects, and I think, in the back of everybody’s mind is the spectre of Climate Change, so fanning that fear, finding and blaming scapegoats, as a way to get votes smacks of being ungentlemanly at the very least.

While it may seem unAmerican, in that way Trump is not any different than classic American fascists like the proNazi Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s. The problem is that hate mongering breeds conviction and self-righteousness, not only in the gullible listener but the cynical liars become believers, believing their own vile bullshit, stoking their own fire. When somebody of Trump’s stature and fame says bigotry is OK, that it moves the bar of acceptable behavior, Jeb! seems benign when he suggests almost the same thing in a more acceptable way.

But when Trump says he wants “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and when a governor, like Bobby Jindal or John Kasich issues an unenforceable executive order preventing Syrian refugees from coming to their state, it is worse than unAmerican, it is antiAmerican.  It is aiding and abetting the enemy and I don’t say that lightly. Trump et al are are smart enough to know that what they say they want, would create the same segregated and isolated  conditions that are causing Europe so much trouble. What we do better than anybody, is assimilate our immigrants – although it is a low bar – and it is in our best interest to keep doing so. What Trump et al say they want are more the conditions that make jihadis in the first place. That hurts more than our liberal sensibilities, it makes our world more dangerous.

Evil and the French killings

Psychological Musings

Street Art-

PARIS ATTACKS WERE AN ‘ACT OF WAR’ BY ISIS, HOLLANDE SAYS; TOLL IS 127 New York Times headline.

Friday brought the horrendous news from Paris, people with legitimate grievances and nowhere to turn lashing viciously out in the direction of their not exactly well-meaning oppressors, massacring innocents in retaliation for the endless massacring of their own innocents in endless cycles of inhumanity. Mike Moore

ISIS isn’t necessarily evil. It is made up of people doing what they think is best for their community. Violence is not the answer, though. candidate Dan Kimmel’s tweet that resulted in his withdrawal from the campaign.

The other day I parked in a garage that didn’t take credit cards and I didn’t have enough change to rent a parking stall so I went to the restaurant, where I was to meet Michele, to get some change. On the way to the restaurant, I passed a guy, impeccably turned out in a brown suit,  giving away The Watchtower. He was standing in the sun, sweating slightly, on a corner and as I was standing next to him, waiting for the light to change. I noticed how everybody looked away and I felt slightly embarrassed for him. On the way back to the parking  garage, I ended up waiting across the street watching him again and watching people ignore him, or actively look away, while he offered his magazine with an open smile.

On my trip back to the restaurant, I ended up next to him again and I struck up a short conversation by telling him that, although I did not share his beliefs, I admired his devotion, his willingness to stand there in the sun (although, I didn’t mention being ignored to him even though that was a major reason for my admiration). He gave me the one answer I didn’t expect, he said Oh, I enjoy it, it comforts people and they need comfort with the terrorists and everything. His enjoying it never occurred to me. The whole time I saw him, nobody else even looked in his direction and it seemed like an unenjoyable, thankless job to me, but it wasn’t for him. For the guy with The Watchtower, standing there brought a sense of Mission, of Worthwhileness. It brought Meaning to his life.

About two years ago. I read that over 200,000 people volunteered to go on a one way trip to Mars with a Dutch nonprofit, Mars One – one way! – never to feel the warmth of our earth again. People want meaning in their life and some people are willing to do very difficult, uncomfortable, dangerous, things to feel needed and to feel their life is worthwhile.

Some people hand out The Watchtower, some people volunteer to go to Mars, and some people – more than some really, alot, and I was one of them – join the Army to put meaning into their life. And some people join the other Army for the same reason. Last Friday, some of those people who had joined the other Army, on an informal basis at least, killed 128 innocent people in Paris. It was a loathsome act and senseless in terms of any rational goal. Now France is striking back, like a hurt child, killing more innocent people in an effort to punish ISIS.

We keep trying to make These People Evil and some of them probably are, but most of These People, along with most of the French, and most of eveyone, are as innocent as the French concert goers.

 

 

Reading ‘Sapians’ while watching the Tahoe Iron Man Race

Americana, Psychological Musings, Religion

Iron Man (1 of 1)[As] human societies grew ever larger and more complex,while the imagined constraints sustaining the social order also became more elaborate. Myths and fictions accustomed people, nearly from the moment of birth, to think in certain ways, to behave in accordance with certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. They thereby created artificial instincts that enabled millions of strangers to coöperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called ‘culture’.
Sapiens A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harari

We went to Michele’s family cabin at Squaw Valley over the weekend just to have a change of pace. When we got there, we realized it was the weekend of the second annual – they call it Second Annual but it is the third year as smoke from fires cancelled last year’s event – what is billed as IRONMAN LAKE TAHOE. On Sunday, after mistakenly not recording the Singapore Grand Prix – in which Hamilton DNF’ed – and not liking the start of a bad 49er game, we walked along part of the course to the finish area. It was a warm day, probably in the low 80°s, and the air had the familiar dry smell of the East Side, atleast until we got to the golf course. It was a perfect day for a walk

The Tahoe Ironman starts with a swim in Lake Tahoe of 2.4 miles, then a 112 mile bike ride – it’s not really a ride ride, the contestants are the peddlers – and ends with a marathon. (In my old, out-of-shape opinion, any section would require an Ironperson.) The first finishers started drifting in a little after four in the afternoon, after starting with a 6:45 AM swim!, and they looked to be in shockingly good shape. The winner had a time of nine hours and thirty nine minutes and he did a little jig as he crossed the finish line. Ironman (1 of 1)-2

The most memorable moments – and by moments, I mean sights in time – were not the guys at the front of the race but the guys at the end of the pack. The marathon is two laps from Squaw to almost Tahoe City, on the bike path by the Truckee River, so there are people going both ways for a large portion of the race. After watching at the finish line for a while, we started wandering back to the cabin, stopping to admire the high tech bikes, Ironman (1 of 1)and then walking back to the cabin along the race route. It was getting towards evening and we watched one guy – who looked to be in great shape – ride in on his bike. That meant that he still had a marathon to run and it was almost 6.

As we walked, I began to watch the runners. It was impossible to tell if they were on their first lap with about sixteen miles to go or on their last lap with one mile to go and in my imagination I thought about how discouraging it must be to be that far back. It was getting dark and the runners left were few, they looked beat. In my imagination, they were discouraged by how much longer it took than they expected. It got darker and as we walked by the lonely water girls, Ironman (1 of 1)-3

something amazing started happening. Runners started putting on headlamps. My imaginary runner disappeared, replaced by the real runner who knew, when she started, that she would be running in the dark, in the mountain cold, on an almost empty course, on an almost empty tank. That takes an amazing spirit, I think more than the guy who won.

But that spirit is not enough because people are not equal – they are not born with the same abilities or have jobs that allows for equal training time – and an amazing spirit is not enough to overcome that.

I have been reading Sapiens A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harari and parts of it have rocked me. When Harari compares The Code of Hammurabi to the Declaration of Independence, by comparing If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. If one break a man’s bone, they shall break his bone. If one destroy the eye of a freeman or break the bone of a freeman he shall pay one mana of silver. If one destroy the eye of a man’s slave or break a bone of a man’s slave he shall pay one-half his price to all men are created equal, and then says that both positions are equally valid from a biological or evolutionary point of view, I am rocked. When he says neither is more moral, I think, How can that be?.

Years ago, I did a little bit of volunteer work on several Spiritual retreats for shell shocked, body bashed, veterans and their equally shocked families. During a break, a guy I was working, another ex E-5 type, said something like There is no morality without God. I wasn’t particularly shocked even though the group leader was a Buddhist, but I was a little offended. My world view does not include a God who makes rules about morality – or chemistry for that matter – and passes them down to mankind. But if neither biology or evolution make rules on morality, if the only natural rules are what works to pass on DNA, where do I get my rules? (And, man! do I have rules.)  Where do those rules, that I believe in the core of my being, come from?

If they are only constructs and those constructs are no better than, say, a Afghan tribesman’s construct, let’s say a tribesman who is trying to sell his thirteen year old daughter who he owns, where does that leave me? It is hard to be morally superior if those morals are not morally better. Without God, where does that morality come from? It obviously isn’t self evident. If nature gives different individuals different abilities and different chances, who are we to say that people are equal and should thereby be treated equally? Where does the authority for the morality we know to be right in our very being – in our soul, if you believe in that sort of thing – come from? Surely it must be more than just culture.

Europe and the refugees

Psychological Musings
Photo from U.S. News & World Report
Photo from U.S. News & World Report

If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for Angela  Merkel

It seems to me that the refugee crisis in Europe is the biggest existential crisis in Europe’s post World War II history. In Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 , Tony Judt makes the case that admitting complicity in the holocaust is what makes Europe Europe. This was not always the case, right after the war European anti-Semitism was still rampant, everybody was a victim and the few people responsible for the holocaust were dead and gone.

The Germans were the first to accept their part in the holocaust. It was the most obvious, the hardest to hide, and the hardest to pretend that the past wasn’t their past. The German mea culpas opened the gates – and hidden records – until everybody had to face their part in the most inhumane act of the twentieth century.

Everybody likes to identify with the victim but there is nothing to learn there. When Europe admitted they were the victimizers and started asking How did we do that? How do we make sure we don’t do that again? they agreed that the answer was Universal Human Rights. That belief that people have Rights because they are human is the center of European identity.

How Europe collectively deals with the huge influx of Syrians, Iraqis, North Africans, and random other scared, desperate, displaced people, will define what being European really means.

The year of women living dangerously (in movies)

Americana, Film, Psychological Musings

Trainwreck

The game is a men’s game, all the rules are made by men, the feminine is not honored. A remembered, probably badly, quote from Coco Gonzo after seeing Mad Max: Fury Road (in 3D).

Michele and I saw Pixar’s Inside Out  last weekend. It was one of those children’s movies that are as much fun for an adult as for the intended audience. I thought it was excellent and, unusual for Pixar, the protagonist was female (for only the second time, the first being Princess Merida of Scotland in Brave, a movie I didn’t see). I say that the protagonist was female, but she – her name was Riley – could have just as easily been a boy. Her favorite sport was ice hockey and I’m not sure if there was anything particularly feminine about her.

A day before Inside Out, we saw  Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck. If you don’t know Amy Schumer, she is that girl from the television that talks about her pussy all the time – to quote from the opening sequence of the first video below – and she is pushing the limits of comedy and what is sayable in public (BTW, isn’t all  good humor pushing what is acceptable?) The two clips below are pretty typical of what she does and, if you haven’t seen her, these are a good place to start.

 

Trainwreck , is both a parody of a rom-com and an homage. It is also a string of joke set-ups that don’t always go together, but it is very funny. Amy plays the role of a womanizing heavy drinker, commitment-phobic and profane; it is the kind of role that would have been the man’s part five years ago (the body language in the picture on top of the post is a good demonstration). Bill Hader plays what would have been the woman’s part with LeBron James playing her best friend.

A couple of months ago, we saw Melissa McCarthy transmogrify from the Penny Moneyworth part to the James Bond part in Spy and before that it was Charlize Theron being the toughest sonofabitch around in Mad Max Fury Road.

Months ago, over dinner after Mad Max Fury Road, several of us got into a discussion over what makes a feminist movie and if Mad Max Fury Road was one (Mad Max and the other three movies pass the Bechdel test, BTW, if that was a question).  I think Mad Max is a feminist movie, but there was alot of disagreement and I am not as sure as I once was. Charlize Theron is the hero as well as the instigating agent in the movie but much of what she does is a woman acting as a man rather than through the feminine.

The operative words above is much, as opposed to all. Throughout the movie Theron is acting out of empathy for the Brides and she brings a humility and vulnerability that we don’t usually see from a man. When she talks about redemption, we sense it is because she almost lost her soul to become Imperator Furiosa. And Melissa McCarthy isn’t all testosteron either, she is reticent to step forward, a woman who has accepted her station. When she becomes the macha spy, she is still a team player, and – in the end – she shares the glory. In Trainwreck, Amy Schumer is only playing the man’s part in public, at home she is a softer, more feminine, Amy.

These four movies have got me thinking about women in a man’s world. When I say man’s world, I really mean the western, public, world in which the rules are men’s rules and the women have to conform. Both politics and business are basically run by men’s rules. They are combative, hierarchical, the rules are stable, and the main concern is for short-term gain. Women like Diane Feinstein do well because they, essentially, act like men.

What we need, it seems to me, are more feminine institutions (if that isn’t an oxymoron). Modern corporations measure success in how much they contribute to the top officers and big shareholders –  not in how much they contribute to the collective – and that takes perpetual and unsustainable  growth. What we really need today is a model for sustainability and that will require women engendering their feminine characteristics like coöperation and inclusiveness and long-term thinking.