Think Happy

“You are what I think.” B.F. Skinner

B.F. Skinner

B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) was a Harvard psychologist who advocated behavioral engineering and thought that people could be controlled through rewards and punishments. Human free will is an illusion, human action the result of genetics and nature. Farewell to free will. 

“Poppycock”, says Popeye, "I yam what I yam and tha's all what I yam." 

Distant memories of Psychology 101 at KU come back to me. Taught by a Turkish professor who regaled us with stories of his own revolutionary days as a student in Turkey; quite appropriate, I thought, for the times. Listen to everyone, I also thought, for they have something to say, but make up your own mind. 

Skinner’s debate still rages on in my head. I like to think, like Popeye, that I am what I think, that I can influence the future with positive thoughts. It is my own form of behavioral reinforcement. 


Make up your own mind. This is what I tell the next generation. It's empowering. 

So I say to you, in 2015 think happy thoughts in the coming year.

There comes a time

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation. W. C. Fields

Not right now and not with this bull, thank you.

No bull

Sometimes it Lasts in Love

And ... Sometimes it hurts instead

"Life's a bitch," the old man often says. He has had his own personal troubles, is tougher now, and made the stronger for it. But, when pain touches those near and dear to the old man, it hurts again.

Someone  Like You - Adele's second hit song, recorded in 2010 and released in 2011, was inspired by Adele's a break-up with an ex-boyfriend. It deals with the need to move on, as Adele explains, "When I was writing it I was feeling pretty miserable and pretty lonely, which I guess kind of contradicts Rolling in the Deep. Whereas that was about me saying, 'I'm going to be fine without you', this is me on my knees really."

Hear more...

Adele is now married, mother of baby Angelo, and happy as a kid in a candy store. And, who the hell is the ex? Adele isn't telling, saying only that she wishes him the best.

Life's a bitch, the old man knows, but then a new day comes, a new relationship, and life goes on. I wish you nothing but the best. And, may your dreams come true.


 

The way it was

Listen to Adele's the original video. The old man thinks the video's  film noir touch is more appropriate to a break-up. And the voice more bitter than sweet, but success changes things.

We're going to hell in a hand-basket

Every boy's favorite movie has got to be Stand By Me, Steven King's paean to the awkward years of growing up. Growing up implies a slow process of maturing, but there is always a seminal moment when it strikes us that something has changed. The change is forever and there is no going back.

I suppose that we don't fully understand the change that comes over us at that critical age. And our conversation is an odd mixture of profanity, humor, and budding philosophy. It is only years later, as an adult, that the change make sense.

Memories are rare. There are simply too many people and too many events to remember it all. We have to be selective in what we choose to remember. In the movie, Stephen King's omniscient Writer, speaks:  "It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant."

My growing up summer was long ago, but I can remember some of the details like it was yesterday. That summer's popular TV show for boys was Daniel Boone, starring Fess Parker as Daniel and Ed Ames as Mingo, his Indian companion. Boone and Mingo were blood brothers, having partaken of the ritual of cutting their forearms and mixing blood. My friend and I became spit-brothers. Not brave enough to cut ourselves with a knife, we still mixed a little saliva and achieved a similar, though less painful result. Funny, I can remember what Fess Parker and Ed Ames look like, I can't remember my friend's face or even his name. 

I was in sixth or seventh grade. My family was then living in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. My father went to the Army's War College, a kind of graduate school to the Army Command and Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, where we had been a couple of years prior. I was the middle child of five, I had four sisters who made my life miserable. Why not, we had nothing in common. In the two years we lived at Carlisle, my mother would give birth at some point to a sixth and final child, a brother. Too little, too late to make a difference in my isolated personality.

We lived along a street with a row of houses that are common to the military, two story red brick, all alike. In front of our house and all the houses were young sycamore trees. I remember them because the limbs were springy like a trampoline. Everyone in the neighborhood climbed the trees, and most fell from the tree at least once. Middle age is a time of dares. The big dare was to see who could climb the highest in the tree without falling. I remember climbing to the top and flipping upside down to get my toes just a bit higher than anyone else. I don't remember now why I thought that suspending myself upside down was an advantage. But then, not everything we did then made sense.

My strangest memory is what the mother of my closest friend said. I don't remember much of my friend now even though we built tree forts and rafts together, and, like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, we were often to be found in the woods on adventure. In time, he became like one of those many busboys in a restaurant a distant figure.

But his mother said something one day that has stuck with me ever since.

It was a normal day. It must have been summer for it was the middle of the day and we were not in school. The two of us, my friend and I, were going in and out of the house, annoying everyone with our rowdy behavior. Then, on one of the trips in or out, it matters not which direction, we ran into his mother who was standing at the door. She was tall and had brown hair. She wore Capri slacks and a white blouse with the sleeves cut off. Her brown hair was short. I remember her as a sort of Jackie Kennedy look alike, but who knows how accurate that is. She might have been carrying in the groceries, but I don't remember. All I remember is that she had the air of one who was busy.

She was like all mothers and fathers of that era. They lived in a parallel universe. We kids had little interaction with them, only at breakfast and dinner would we sit down together and exchange forced pleasantries.

What I do remember is that she said to the two of us something that was strange at the time. "We're going to hell in a handcart, and I am pushing the cart." There was no context, no reason to make the remark that I can remember. Perhaps, I had said to her, "How are you doing Mrs. SoAndSo?" And, this was her way of being flip. The world stopped for a moment as I processed this strange comment, and then it went on its way.

The phrase has taken firm root and like an oak tree stood the test of time. I can't be sure of the exact words, for the colloquialism should be, "Going to hell in a hand-basket." This is generally translated to mean, things are slowly coming apart at the seams. This might describe the mess we kids were creating, but, I remember her phrase slightly differently, and that she assured me that it was she who was one driving.

That, I think, is why the phrase has stuck in my mind. It was different. It was my first inkling of an existentialist philosophy. No matter where life takes you, be in charge.

Reality Distortion Field

Is Summer really here? Not quite, but it seems like it. School is out for the kids. The weather is unseasonably warm. Cranky Old Man's grass is already turning brown despite his best efforts to keep it watered. The hot dry Kansas wind turns the yard into a virtual Gobi Desert - dry and dusty.

Summer is really a great time to pick up a book; and among the books Cranky Old Man is reading is Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs is most famously known as the creator of the Apple computer, along with Steve Wozniak. But there is a lot more to Jobs than that. Famously fired from Apple, he went on to create NeXT, fund Pixar, and then recreate Apple when it was on its death throws.

Personally, Steve Jobs came across to those he came in contact with as an arrogant assoholic. Isaacson in his biography tries to tell why. In the process Isaacson gives us a unique look at how Steve Jobs saw the world.

Steve Jobs was adopted. For most of his life he did not know his biological parents and when he did find out later in life, he had nothing to do with his father. His abandonment by his parents is the one significant psychologically factor that defines his personality.  Rejected by his biological parents, he was alone in the world. Thus, it is not surprising that he would be, at the same time, both controlling and suspicious in all his relationships.

Chapter 11 of the book is titled The Reality Distortion Field, Playing by his Own Set of Rules. Isaacson defines this through Jobs' co-workers as the ability to conform reality to your own means. One co-worker explained, "In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he's not around ..."

So, what about those tinted sunglasses? If you wear a blue pair of sunglasses, does that really make the world somber and blue?

The name reality distortion field comes from a Star Trek episode in which the aliens create their own world through sheer mental force. But the idea is not unique to Star Trek's writers. Albert Einstein observed,“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”  Douglas Adams similarly speculated, “Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.” And one can go back to Socrates and Descartes for the same idea - We create the world around us. We are what we think we are, even if we aren't.

It is a confusing idea, but not if you accept it.Your perception is your reality. "I think therefore I am." Descartes says. And the Old Man would reply, I am what I think. Don't like who you are? Change your story, change your perception, change your life.

We distort reality to make the world seem a little more pleasant place in which to live. Objective reality sucks. The world is full of crime, betrayal, and misery along with the beauty, love and hope. Why not focus on the good and not the bad, the beauty and not the ugliness? Be a positive force for change and not a Negative Nancy.

Cranky Old Man likes this idea. After all, it is at the heart of all self-help books. To make something happen, you first have to believe it yourself. Then, it will come true. So whether it is a new way of making a computer, or a new health regimen, a job, or a relationship, you have to set your mind to the task and do it in spite of everyone else. Steve Jobs in 1985, fired from Apple and wondering what he was to do next in life while standing on a bridge in Paris with his girlfriend commented, "I am a reflection of what I do." The Old Man fashions himself a writer.

"The problem" Cranky Old Man thinks, "is that reality distortion can become impractical and harmful." Take schizophrenics for example, their reality is a paranoid delusion. That is hell on relationships. Instead, we need the ability to go back and forth between our personal reality field and what is really happening out there. You have to get off the bench to play in the game, but you can't see the game unless you are sitting on the sidelines.

Image is reproduced from the cover of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It has been digitally modified to create an inverse image as background. The image is used under the Fair Use Doctrine of 17 U.S.C 107. 

How do we see the world as it really is? Or, should we say, How do we see the world as others do? The Old Man thinks this requires the empathy gene. You have got to walk in someone else's shoes, see the world through their eyes, feel their pain. Cliches, boring as hell, still help us to understand something that is outside our own reality. But most people would acknowledge that Steve Jobs was not a caring understanding soul. No something else drove him. And this was his ability to see the final end product. Success drove Steve Jobs to see what needed to be done. Success is, in a way, like the Law of Natural Selection, what works stays, failures are soon forgotten.

Maybe, the Old man thinks, reality is what works.

Change is a Sublte Thing

Just returned from a five state tour of Middle America - Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and North Carolina.The ostensible reason for going was to attend the 23rd Annual Arts and Crafts Conference in Asheville, North Carolina.

The real reason was that I needed to get away and see things a little more clearly. My daughter would say, "Remove the veil of ignorance." I like to say, "Going to the balcony." Either way, it is a metaphor for stepping away from the field of battle, another metaphor, so that you get a better perspective of who you are and of the people around you.

Your question as to whether I have changed is intriguing. Change is often a subtle thing. We are so easily caught up in the tumult of life's events, that it is difficult to see how life's events affect us. No, that takes reflection which is better left to a time when one has the luxury of a cup of coffee and an easy chair.

Of the people I observed in my travel, there is too much to express in one essay. One thing I can say is that despite the infinite differences, we are pretty much the same. The only real distinction is in one's attitude to life. Perhaps it is best summarized in the statements of two people. The first in Elizabethton, Tennessee I asked, "What does one do around here for fun?" and her reply was, "Just work." The second a woman who left Houston Texas and moved to Cadiz, Kentucky, a town of 2,000. She now volunteers to run a non-profit community art museum, Janice Mason Art Museum. On the current exhibit of art by the local junior and senior high school, she says with heart-felt enthusiam, "Isn't their art amazing." We all struggle to pay the bills, to work out personal conflicts, and search for meaning to the changes taking place. To those who enjoy the process, it is exhilarating, to others, just work.

If I have changed, it is in my appreciation of the little things in life.

The games people play

"It's like kids playing house: 'You play the father, I'll play the mother.' ... You know, you dress up, you play, they pay, you go home. It's a game — acting's a game."
                                 — Robert Duvall

I think Shakespeare said it first, life is but a game. It is the the basis of at least two of his plays -  first in , A Midsummer Nights Dream and then  As You Like It. The monologue that expresses the thought best is by melancholy Jaques, who says:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." — Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Enough of Shakespeare. If we can't live in the future, let's at least live in the present.

Listen to Robert Duvall, whose acting career spans roles from To Kill a Mockingbird and Apocalypse Now to Lonesome Dove and most recently Crazy Heart. The NPR podcast is coming, but here is the link to his thoughts on the subject of acting and living. Acting and living are really the same things, aren't they? So, if you could be someone else, anyone in the world, all you have to do is close your eyes, act it out, and imagine it.

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Are you a hedgehog or a fox?

Among the surviving fragments of lines of the Greek poet Archilochus (680 B.C. - 645 B.C.) is the following saying: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." These cryptic words have encouraged writers to debate the meaning behind the words, which may mean no more than that the cunning fox is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense.

One famous interpretation of Archilochus' saying is Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953) in which Berlin attempts to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through a single lens of one defining idea and foxes who draw on a variety of experiences and for whom the world is not so simple. Examples of the former include Plato, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Joyce, Sartre. Examples of the foxes might include Aristotle, Erasmus, Shakespeare,Voltaire, and Franklin, and Whitman.  Berlin's essay focuses on Leo Tolstoy arguing that he has taken on the mantle of the omniscient, observing life as both hedgehog and fox. One example will suffice to support Berlin's claim.

In a famous passage dealing with the state of Moscow in 1812 Tolstoy observes that from the heroic achievements of Russia after the burning of Moscow one might infer that its inhabitants were absorbed entirely in acts of self-sacrifice – in saving their country or in lamenting its destruction, in heroism, martyrdom, despair – but that in fact this was not so. People were preoccupied by personal interests. Those who went about their ordinary business without feeling heroic emotions or thinking that they were actors upon the well-lighted stage of history were the most useful to their country and community, while those who tried to grasp the general course of events and wanted to take part in history, those who performed acts of incredible self-sacrifice or heroism, and participated in great events, were the most useless.

As Tolstoy observed, Archilochus's broad classifications of foxes and hedgehog can apply to the ordinary day to day activities of individuals as well as politicians, businessmen, and thinkers. Do we focus on the task at hand or on the broader implications of our actions? There is both an immediate effect of our actions and a long term effect to what we do. Again, a simple example suffices, a cigarette may gratify a craving for nicotine, but one day lead to lung cancer.A more positive example is that today's education leads to better paying jobs in the future.

Surely, Archilochus must have thought that we all have a role to play - fox or hedgehog. Each animal is successful in its own environment. Each animal has stood the test of time. Thus, in the long term it is not better to be one or the other. The occasion determines which personality is called for. In this sense Tolstoy was right. When war presented itself, the citizens of Moscow went about their lives doing what needed to be done in defense of their capital and country. When Napoleon was defeated, then Tolstoy could observe with dispassionate reflection the many roles of the participants that lead to victory.

A paradox exists in playing the dual roles of fox and hedgehog. Sometimes the basic need to survive conflicts with the altruistic need to spread kindness and goodness throughout the world. Tolstoy himself confronted this dilemma when he chose giving away his worldly possessions over the desires of his family. Hedgehog or fox, we can not always reconcile the role we must play and must resign ourselves to the inevitable conflict.

Also read Steve Wang's article about how the internet is turning the world into a pack of foxes.

Leaves of Grass

The Russians have a proverb that the tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut. Still, it is in our nature to grow. The sun and its warm light draws on. We strive to stand apart from the other blades of grass, all the while knowing that by doing so we risk our very existence.

One American writer who symbolized self growth was Walt Whitman. His Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, represents a new realism in American literature and a celebration of the self. For example in Songs of  Myself, Whitman expresses the thought, “In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself  I say of them.”

We are one, and yet, we are but one. This paradox expresses the thought that we are a part of the whole, the multitude and the cosmos, and yet, we are still individuals striving for self-expression.“It is you talking just as much as myself…I act as the tongue of you.”

This same idea runs through all our relationships - parents, friends and even acquaintances. It is thus better to recognize that these relationships should be positive and constructive rather than the reverse.