Wehr in the World

One (wo)man projects

2012-01-28T22:24:00.000-05:00

I feel pretty strongly that someone should compile a catalog of impressive things that were created by one person.^{obligatory philosophical footnote}

Its purpose would be to make us feel awful about ourselves so that it will induce enough existential dread that we will get off of our asses and DO something.

I had that feeling this afternoon when I read in Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue about Samuel Johnson’s project, his Dictionary of the English Language:²

The English-speaking world has the finest dictionaries, a somewhat curious fact when you consider that we have never formalized the business of compiling them. In the English-speaking world, the early dictionaries were almost always the work of one man rather than a ponderous committee of academics, as was the pattern on the Continent.

Samuel Johnson, who lived from 1709 to 1784, was an odd candidate for genius. Blind in one eye, corpulent, incompletely educated, by all accounts coarse in manner, he was an obscure scribbler from an impoverished provincial background when he was given a contract by the London publisher Robert Dodsley to compile a dictionary of English.

His Dictionary of the English Language, published in two volumes in June 1755, is a masterpiece, one of the landmarks of English literature. Its definitions are supremely concise, its erudition magnificent, if not entirely flawless. Without a nearby library to draw on, and with appallingly little financial backing (his publisher paid him a grand total of just £1,575, less than £200 a year³, from which he had to pay his assistants), Johnson worked from a garret room off Fleet Street, where he defined some 43,000 words, illustrated with more than 114,000 supporting quotations drawn from every area of literature.

He had achieved in under nine years what the forty members of the Académie Française could not do in less than forty. He captured the majesty of the English language and gave it a dignity that was long overdue. It was a monumental accomplishment and he well deserved his fame.

What’s your excuse?

---

^{obligatory philosophical footnote}Of course, nothing is ever created by only one person, because if (s)he used some materials in the process, then in all likelihood those materials were created by other people. And to get even more philosophical on your ass, I think we could fairly say that his ideas are not really “his.” Ideas don’t emerge in a vacuum; they are always and inevitably a product of ideas that came before.

²This passage was seriously trimmed. I left in the glowing parts but much of it was about Johnson’s pretty ridiculous errors.

³I worked that out to be about $40,000 a year.

I have a rule

2012-01-28T15:51:00.000-05:00

I will not buy from any company that dresses people in costumes and puts them on street corners.

Unless, that is, it's hilarious.

Won’t you share my experiences?

2012-01-26T03:26:00.003-05:00

I find that one of the most frustrating things about being human is that I have a strong desire to have people share in my experiences while at the same time an inability, a lack of capacity, to have them do so.

Take music, for example. Music dominates me. No other medium has even close to the same level of emotional effect on me. Some songs are, for me, as close as it gets to sacred. And I treat them as such, i.e., I refuse to listen to them over computer speakers, I scoff at the idea at covers, and I listen with lights off or eyes closed. These are intensely emotional experiences, meaning that I intensely want to have someone share them with me, but how do you do that—tumbleblog the shit?

In case you’re dumb, posting your favorite songs on tumblr is unlikely to induce much empathy in your followers. We humans just don’t work that way. Oh you like that song? Good for you.

On the one hand, we want to believe we are unique and different, that certain traits or preferences make us special. On the other hand, in some ways it’s horribly lonely to think that the feelings or experiences we have are different. And in fact the feelings probably aren’t different – our emotions are probably manifested in very similar if not identical ways – but we experience the feelings in response to different things, in response to different songs or different chords or lyrics within a song. And that’s what makes it frustrating. And lonely.

---

P.S. – This is why I think dating sites based on music preferences or sense of humor are not such a bad idea.

I just want to be acknowledged, dammit

2012-01-26T02:23:00.000-05:00

Per a commenter’s recommendation (and probably per a quest to justify my lack of a lady), I am reading Anthony Storr’s book Solitude: A Return to the Self.

I liked his point that maybe the capacity for attachment is no more important than the capacity for being alone:

Attachment is not the same as dependence. If we call an adult dependent, we imply that he is immature. But if he has no intimate attachments, we conclude that there is something wrong with him. Extreme detachment from ties with others is usually equated with mental illness. Chronic schizophrenics sometimes lead lives in which relationships with others play virtually no part at all. The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldom taken into account.

Viewing intimate attachments as the hub around which a person’s life revolves does, in my view, less than justice to the importance of work, to the emotional significance of what goes on in the mind of the individual when he is alone, and, more especially, to the central place occupied by the imagination in those who are capable of creative achievement. Intimate attachments are a hub around which a person’s life revolves, not necessarily the hub.

This has gotten me interested in trying an experiment where for a few days or a weekend I take my reclusiveness to another level, where I don’t communicate with anyone at all, ever—not through email, not through buying groceries, and maybe not even through reading books or blogs. Total isolation from other people’s words. Might be interesting, or maybe just depressing.

Most compelling to me was Storr’s point about the understated significance of less-than-intimate relationships.

The modern assumption that intimate relationships are essential to personal fulfillment tends to make us neglect the significance of relationships which are not so intimate. Schizophrenics, and other individuals who are more or less totally isolated, are rightly regarded as pathological; but many human beings make do with relationships which cannot be regarded as especially close, and not all such human beings are ill or even particularly unhappy.

Many workers, for example, are reluctant to abandon a familiar setting even if offered more rewarding opportunities. The fact that a man is part of a hierarchy, and that he has a particular job to carry out, gives his life significance. It also provides a frame of reference through which he perceives his relation with others. In the course of his daily life, we habitually encounter many people with whom we are not intimate, but who nevertheless contribute to our sense of self. Neighbors, postmen, bank clerks, shop assistants, and many others may all be familiar figures with whom we daily exchange friendly greetings, but are generally persons about whose lives we know very little. These persons offer mutual recognition, acknowledgement of each other’s existence, and thus some affirmation, however slight, that each reciprocally contributes something to life’s pattern.

It is generally accepted that most human beings want to be loved. The wish to be recognized and acknowledged is at least as important.

Grammar snobbery

2012-01-26T01:20:00.002-05:00

In The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson points out the absurdities of English grammar using the case of the split infinitive. (A split infinitive is when an adverb comes between to and a verb, as in to quickly look.)

I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an infinitive.

1. Because you feel that the rules of English ought to conform to the grammatical precepts of a language (Latin) that died a thousand years ago.
2. Because you wish to cling to a pointless affectation of usage that is without the support of any recognized authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant, and patently contorted.

And it’s not just split infinitives. A lot of our grammatical rules are baseless or even dumb.

There are no officially appointed guardians for the English language, so who sets down all the rules? The answer, surprisingly often, is that no one does, that when you look into the background of these “rules” there is often very little basis for them.

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin—a language with which it has precious little in common. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It’s a patent absurdity. But once these insane notions became established grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies. One authority, F. Th. Visser, found it necessary to devote 200 pages to discussing just one aspect of the present participle. That is as crazy as it is amusing.

I can tell you why I am (sometimes) a grammar snob: Pride. I feel like I’m part of an elite club who knows when and how to use “whom” correctly, for example. “Whom” has a thick whiff of pretentiousness, and yet I use it because it makes me feel smarter than 72% of the population.

On the other hand, there are other grammatical rules that I ignore just because I feel like it. Using “one another” for more than two people instead of “each other,” I just won’t (usually) do it, because “one another” feels way too polite and British.

Then there are other grammatical rules that I despise, like not using a word that isn’t in the dictionary, or using a word in a way it wasn’t intended (e.g. using a noun as a verb or an adjective as a noun). To me those violations are the most exciting part of language, and any grammar snob who says differently will get smacked if they come within my striking range.

Saving face

2012-01-24T02:34:00.001-05:00

My company’s parking lot is gated, meaning that I have to stop and roll down my window to get in. Meaning that I have to turn my music down to save face.

It’s not a conscious decision. When you listen to the kind of music I do, it becomes an unconscious habit to preserve dignity. Sometimes I even catch myself switching to NPR just for effect.

This morning was different. A Destiny’s Child song was playing that I am only moderately embarrassed to admit that I love (“Lose My Breath”).

I reached for the volume button as usual, but then stopped myself. What’s the point, Dawg? (Yes, I call myself Dawg.) Are you going to be “discovered” and then ridiculed by work acquaintances? Is this going to affect your performance review? Are the VPs going to quietly discuss your musical preferences behind closed doors and decide that your employment should not only be terminated but also made fun of?

So I turned it up. I might’ve even sung along. I can’t be sure.

My first observation is that I survived with no recognizable ill-consequences. My second observation is that I’m never going to do that again, because that was intensely uncomfortable.

I’m not saying the discomfort is rational. It clearly isn’t. I’m just noticing that my body feels it has some sort of status or appearance that it has to uphold, and it’s a weird combination of feelings to witness how powerless I am against it (amusing, annoying, existentially frustrating).

The pain of independence

2012-01-23T23:47:00.004-05:00

There’s something about rejection. We humans are unique in our ability to be dumb enough to jump naked into frozen lakes and to squeeze massive baby heads out of our vaginas – we can do pain – but we’re also unique in our ability to dwell over hints that someone doesn’t like us.¹

WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ME? Can’t you see I’m special and friendly and just generally a pretty cool cat?

If you reflected on all the things you really wanted to want to do (second-order desire) but didn’t do, and then tried to figure out why you didn’t end up doing those things, I’d bet you’d find that 94% of the time, it was a fear of what I just heard called “the pain of independence.”

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”

The quote was in reference to a problem with brainstorming, but it’s so much more broadly applicable than that.

AJ Jacobs said that “probably 90 percent of our life decisions are powered by the twin engines of inertia and laziness,” but I’d like to suggest that the engine is actually a triplet, with the third engine being fear of independence.

The fear of independence is not the same as the fear of being alone. In fact, I think they are nearly opposite. I think that we often choose to be alone as a kind of defense against the fear of independence. They can’t reject me from my couch.

Inertia, laziness, fear of independence. These are not traits we typically hold in our minds positively. These are impurities to be expunged through force of self-pep-talk.

Watch out, because I’m about to get irreverent on your ass.

I have a theory that one of the reasons mothers love their babies so much is because it hurt so much to push that fucker out. It’s not unlike the feeling of sweet relief after holding in your pee for a long time, but to a much greater degree. Mothers associate the sight of their newborn with the sweet relief. And good thing they do, because otherwise it might be hard to have a level of fondness necessary to keep alive that slimy, noisy wad of flesh and poop.

I think there’s a similar story with the pain of independence. But this post is long enough, and I have a private blog to attend to, so I’ll let you figure it out yourselves.

---

¹I’m pretty sure this is, in fact, unique to people. I just tried an experiment with my dog. “Khan, I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” and then I walked out of the room. He wasn’t offended. I added, “In fact, I think you smell.” Still nothing.

Life at the little

2012-01-22T03:55:00.001-05:00

A year ago I wrote a post suggesting that a good mantra to live by is Don’t be good at trivia. Reading that post again, although I cringe a little, I still mostly agree with the sentiment, even after reading a chapter in William Deresiewicz’s book A Jane Austen Education that convincingly argues that trivia is what life is.

We both need to explain ourselves. I’ll let Deresiewicz go first. Here is the meat of his argument:

By eliminating all the big, noisy events that usually absorb our interest when we read novels—the adventures and affairs, the romances and the crises, even, at times, the plot—Austen was asking us to pay attention to the things we usually miss or don’t accord enough esteem, in novels or in life. Those small, “trivial,” everyday things, the things that happen hour by hour to people in our lives: what your nephew said, what your friend heard, what your neighbor did. That, she was telling us, is what the fabric of our years really consists of. That is what life is.

The important lesson was that “trivial” everyday things are not just the filler between plot twists. If you look at life that way, then you probably see yourself as a protagonist navigating the mundane on the way to extraordinary world-changing triumph. The gentle term is “idealist.”

And this recognition, he said, allowed him to take life, for the first time, seriously:

Being asked to take seriously the everyday lives of ordinary people, which matter for the sole reason that they are lives, made me finally begin to take my own life seriously.

Not that I hadn’t always taken my plans and grand ambitions seriously—of course I had. Hadn’t I always worried about the big issues—politics, social justice, the future? Didn’t I spend a lot of time arguing about them with my friends, deciding how everything should be? But ultimately, all that talk was just theoretical, not real in feelings. Austen taught me a new kind of moral seriousness—taught me what moral seriousness really means. It means taking responsibility for the little world, not the big one.

Some literary critics have claimed that Austen’s 400 page books of trivial un-extraordinariness are really epics in disguise—that behind the mundane events there are tales of heroes and villains and triumph. Deresiewicz’s response is much kinder than mine would’ve been:

This utterly misses the point of what Austen was trying to do—even, in a sense, disparages it. We don’t need to pretend that Austen’s novels are really epics in disguise in order to value them as highly as they deserve. She didn’t need to play the same game as the big boys. Her small, feminine game was every bit as good, and every bit as grand. Austen glorified the everyday on its own terms. What she offered us, if we’re willing to see it, is just the everyday, without amplification. Just the novel, without excuses. Just the personal, just the private, just the little, without apologies.

The ladies seem to have us pretty flatly beat in this regard. What we males often dismiss as petty gossip while we write on our blogs about “important” topics like politics and economics and education is in fact women taking an interest in the life they live.

If I was slow to catch on to all this, there was, of course, a very good reason. I’m a guy, after all. We aren’t exactly taught to pay attention to “minute particulars.” Gossip, we’re told, is for women. The very word is feminine, derogatory, trivializing. It is women who are supposed to spend hours gabbing with their girlfriends about every little thing. We are expected to preserve a manly silence, or speak only of impersonal matters—in other words, girls, gear, sports or, if we take ourselves very seriously, politics and public affairs.

That paragraph came at a good time for me because I was feeling my own masculine doubts as I started writing on my private blog about “petty” stuff such as how someone phrased an email. Thank you, Mr. Deresiewicz, for affirming that it’s okay to be interested in this stuff. That it’s okay – reasonable, even – to consider it “important,” even though I have a Y-chromosome.

+++

I’d edit the Don’t be good at trivia point this way:

Being good at *pop* trivia – the kind at bar competitions where you try to win free beers – means that you are probably thickly engulfed in narratives of heroes and villains and triumph and tragedy. That stuff, like candy, is okay in small doses, but it’s pleasurable precisely because it allows us to pretend that we’re somebody else and that life is somehow bigger and more coherent and more compelling and attractive and in general just more entertaining than it really is. This is as true of the evening news and CNN as it is of Hollywood movies.

The other kind of “trivia,” however – the “minute particulars” of your own life – well, that’s pretty much what life is, so you should probably try to be good at it, even if it won’t win you free beers.

+++

The one thing that makes me uneasy about this post and about Deresiewicz’s chapter is that it seems a bit on the preachy side, as in “look, here is what life is; this is how you should live it.”

We’re all primates scrambling around trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. If the best option you’ve found is writing about political ideas on your blog, fine, go for it.

Neighbors

2012-01-21T18:17:00.009-05:00

I’m not as close to my neighbors as I would like. And it seems to be getting worse instead of better. I was reminded of that today when the little neighbor girl came knocking, looking for a donation to the heart disease fund so that she could win a soccer ball. (“Your money will help cure heart disease and stuff.”)

I used to chat with this little girl semi-regularly, along with some other residents of the hood, but things have noticeably slowed down since my ladyfriend stopped coming around. The ladyfriend, being the sweet, personable girl she is, was my lone defense against seeming like the neighborhood weirdo whom nobody should let their kids near.

This got me thinking about my next door neighbor, Miss Gerry, who passed away in November. I remembered that I had written about my first encounter with her back when it happened two years ago, but never got around to posting it. I’ve cleaned it up and put it below, along with a postscript at the end.

---

Today I came home to a surprise. Skipping up to the door (yes, I skip), I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. It was my 77 year-old next door neighbor, Miss Gerry, waving her arms over her head, sprawled out on her driveway.

Apparently her waving was not clue enough as I instinctively yelled “DO YOU NEED HELP?,” as if a 77 year-old woman hangs out on her wet driveway for pleasure.

The snow from a couple days earlier was melting in the 50 degree weather, but areas hidden from the sun remained snow-covered, and, in places, icy. This explains why she was “hanging out” on her driveway.

I shook off my stupid question and sped over like an Olympic walker.

Up to this point, I hardly knew Miss Gerry. The extent of our relationship consisted of polite waves from a distance. Miss Gerry, I later learned, is a Durham native, raised on a tobacco farm, and has lived in this same house next to mine for most of her adult life. Her husband passed away 21 years ago, and she has been getting by on her own, with occasional visits from her son in Norfolk.

To my great relief, Miss Gerry looked in good spirits. Her white pants were dirty, but the smile on her face matched that of the snowman on her bright red sweater. She had slipped on a thick sheet of ice on her way to the mailbox, and landed flat on her bum. She had scootched away from the ice, but with her history of knee replacements, was unable to help herself up. She had been sitting out there for 40 minutes waiting for someone to notice her.

Then came the hilariously awkward part: helping her up. She prepped herself by putting her feet flat on the cement and taking a deep breath. “Are you sure you can lift me? I weigh 160 pounds.” She was afraid I would throw out my back or something. She instructed me not to pull; she would do the pulling. I took my basketball stance with knees bent and butt out. She pulled with all her might but could not get lift. After a few seconds she had had enough, and reclined for a breather.

A couple minutes and a few of my obnoxious questions later she was ready to go again. This time she would try to pull herself up using my leg. If it worked, I thought, this would be both the most miraculous and most hilarious lift-up in the history of Durham County. Her tug was weak and came nowhere near the force necessary for lift off. I felt pathetic not knowing what to do with my hands as this woman weakly grappled at my leg. Anyone watching must've felt pity for both of us. I didn't know whether I should be offering soothing encouragement or delivering an impassioned pep-talk. Neither seemed likely to help. I gave her a hand to pull on, but still, nothing. She reclined again, trembling and frustrated, and my mind raced for solutions.

Next Miss Gerry instructed me to grab a chair from the kitchen. I, too, thought that would be a good plan since she would probably need to sit down immediately upon standing. Miss Gerry repeatedly advised caution as I crossed the ice to the kitchen. It was damn slick. I nearly ended up on my ass along with her.

Immediately after setting the chair next to her, she started tugging on the bar underneath the seat, trying to help herself up. This could not go on, I thought. I could not stand here watching this poor woman struggle so mightily. I was either going to call for help or do it myself.

Then it finally occurred to me that I did not know the reason why she had instructed me not to pull. So I asked, "will you let me pull you up?" She questioned again whether I could, but she eventually obliged. Apparently she was just being polite in asking me not to pull – she did not want me to hurt myself.

A couple of seconds later she was on her feet, looking dizzy but relieved. We both were. She sat on the chair as I cleared the ice with her 4 year old virgin shovel.

I am now forcibly taking over her mail-gathering duties, and I will visit her every day hence. I checked with her again tonight and she is doing OK – a bruised bum, some soreness and dizziness, but majorly thankful and lucky to not have broken a hip or some other bone. She keeps promising lemon and/or pineapple cake once she feels better. Pineapple cake would be great, but the real prize I’m hoping for is getting to know my next door neighbor, sweet Miss Gerry.

# # #

Postscript:

Okay, back to modern day. Miss Gerry made good on her promise of pineapple cake. And I made good on my promise to visit her every day… for a while.

I learned about all of her kids and grandkids. I learned about the history of the neighborhood, and about how the previous resident of my house, a woman who was a friend of Gerry’s, died in what is now my living room. No ghost sightings yet, unfortunately or fortunately. I learned about Gerry’s many health ailments, including graphic detail about the one that was giving her the most trouble, her bladder cancer.

And that last part is probably the reason why I stopped visiting her. I am a pretty intensely squeamish dude, and so visiting her became almost as fraught with distress as visiting an emergency room.

And then inertia set in. I hadn’t visited her for 3 days, 8 days, 3 weeks, 5 months, 1 year, and the awkwardness of the imagined re-encounter kept building. If I go over and see her now, how the eff do I explain myself? And so I didn’t. My stomach sank every time I looked in the direction of her house.

Miss Gerry, for a while, was like my stand-in grandmother. My actual grandmother, the person whom I loved and adored so dearly, who was having health issues of her own, was 600 miles away in Ohio. Taking care of Gerry was my way of vicariously taking care of my grandmother.

I regularly talked about Grandma with Gerry and about Gerry with Grandma. They never got to meet, but my grandmother regularly commented on how sweet it was that I was helping out my neighbor lady. That meant more to me than she knew.

Wehr's Private Parts

2012-01-19T22:12:00.001-05:00

I count six (6) people who have recently said (referring to this blog) something to the effect of “less goofy garbage, more personal stuff, please.”

I expect that from Bob, but from other people it came as a bit of a surprise. What twisted reasons do you have for wanting to hear about my shit?

Here’s the thing: If you really want to hear about my shit, I’d actually like to tell you about it. Well, some of you. And that’s precisely the problem.

The problem is that a lot of the personal stuff either (a) directly or indirectly involves other people, and so it would be more than a little uncouth to write about that stuff publicly, or (b) is not stuff I’d be comfortable having certain people read.

So the workaround I’m going to try is a private blog. (Motto: “A personal blog so personal it’s private.”) If Wehr in the World is my heady, intellectual, nerdy blog, this private one is going to be my emotional, introspective, wimpy blog. It will allow me to ramble on about what the eff I’m doing with my life and what the eff life is doing with me without feeling like a jerk for airing my laundry where random people can smell it.

No faceless audience allowed. I get to choose who’s allowed to read it, and that’s only going to be an elite few.

Most people who write personal blogs are writing for their family and (real-world) friends. I want to do just the opposite. Mom and Dad, I love you, but you’re not invited. Same goes for pretty much anyone who knows me in flesh. I wouldn’t be able to complain about you if I knew you might be reading. I’m (mostly) joking, but seriously, you people who know me in flesh are pretty much the definition of my life, and it’d be hard to write about life if I knew life was reading.

If you want in (and honestly it’s hard for me to understand why you would; this is going to be oppressively petty stuff), plop your email address in the box below. This is no guarantee that you will be granted access (in fact, assume you won’t). If I don’t recognize your name/email, then you’ll probably want to explain who you are and why you want access, because I’m not going to give it to any random sailor.

Loading...

Big Guy

2012-01-19T00:50:00.002-05:00

This morning I got called “Big Guy” four (4) times in a span of 1.5 minutes, and it might’ve changed my relationship with one man forever.

“Big Guy” is rarely used among males with the intention of expressing awe at one’s bigness, and this was no exception. For context, I’m pretty tall but also pretty wimpy and young-looking, and the gentleman who was calling me Big Guy probably has a solid 2 inches, 90 pounds, 10 years, and 6 tattoos on me. He works in my company’s cafeteria and he is a white guy (you were assuming, weren’t you) whose name might or might not be Mike.

I think “Big Guy” is usually used in a way to suggest that a fellow is cute without having to use the word “cute.” Not cute in a romantic way but cute as in aren’t you pathetic and cheek-pinchingly adorable. I regularly call my dog Big Guy, for example (“Bigs” for short). It’s my way of lovably saying that he so does not intimidate me.

So I wasn’t sure what to make of this rapid-fire Big Guy action. Should I be insulted? Should I throw something? Should I display my manhood by puffing my chest and challenging him to a match of table tennis?

But he seemed in a good mood. I didn’t sense a disparaging or condescending tone. It seemed like he was just trying to be friendly and informal. And he was making my scrambled eggs, so I wasn’t going to bristle.

But when it came time to express my gratitude for the scrambled eggs, I wasn’t going to use my typical adieu of, “Thanks. Have a good’n.” Special occasions call for special adieus.

Him: “Here ya go, Big Guy.”

Me: “All right, Chief. Catch ya on the flip.”

It was hard to tell from his facial expression but I’m pretty sure in that moment our relationship was either firmly solidified or utterly destroyed.

“You shouldn't want to change the person you are with”

2012-01-18T22:53:00.003-05:00

Here is part of a comment from Harriet May:

You shouldn't want to change the person you are with. A fixer-upper is something acceptable to look for in a house, not a relationship. Personal growth is one thing, but it has to be desired and internal.

This is a really tough issue for me.

This was a big topic of discussion with my previous ladyfriend. (I don’t think she’ll mind me saying this.) We had long, emotional “philosowalks” talking about this very thing. My last post was about how I’m of the interestingness-over-betterness opinion, but back then I was all about personal development. I wanted to get better and I wanted her to want to get better—at diets, at TV consumption, at emotional regulation, at pretty much everything that is annoying to hear people talk about.

My theory was that if you truly love someone, then you’ll want the best for them, and you’ll do what you can to help them get better, even if that means being an irritating prick.

And so I was an irritating prick.

We were together for ~3.5 years, if you can believe it.

I’m not going to say that being an irritating prick “worked,” but I am going to say that it wasn’t necessarily counterproductive. She did make some big changes. Some might even consider them “improvements.” She got really into healthy eating, for example. And she stopped watching lame TV shows and started reading economics books, eventually entering a PhD economics program (this having had no previous background in econ).

I made some huge changes myself, but I credit that mostly to the culture I was consuming at the time; she wasn’t an irritating prick and didn’t need to be. The point is that we changed. We “improved.” And by “improved” I mean we satisfied more second-order desires—the things we wanted to want, e.g., being active and healthy and productive and whatnot. I’m glad we did. But at the same time I have big regrets.

My biggest regret is that I was so arrogant and pig-headed that I assumed I knew what was better for her. I assumed that One Tree Hill was a waste of her life and economics books were a good use of her life. Maybe she would have agreed with that, but I didn’t stop to ask. I didn’t think I needed to, because I knew what was better. If you’re not cringing right now, you should be.

The theory that I used to justify this behavior? That if you truly love someone, then you’ll want the best for them, and you’ll be an irritating prick if you have to to see to that end? I actually don’t disagree with it, but I think it’s missing something important. Besides wanting what’s best for them, you’ve also got to drop the pig-headedness and recognize that they have their own consciousness, that their idea of “best” doesn’t have to match yours.

That’s so painfully obvious, but it wasn’t to me back then.

+++

This respect-their-consciousness logic can be taken too far to something like “don’t try to change them and just let them be themselves in all their self-actualized glory.” That’s dumb for a couple of reasons, but I’m going to stick to one main one: People have things that they want to change about themselves and that they want help changing.

I, for example, want to be good at listening. My grandmother was an amazing listener, and it’s pretty clear to me that there is no better/more important skill than that. It’s also pretty clear to me that, compared to my grandma, I have, to put it delicately, room for improvement. This is something I care about, and so I want/expect a ladyfriend to help me get better.

It’s fitting that I mention listening, because I’m pretty sure that’s what it comes down to. Listening is probably the chief symptom of love. You listen because you care about what they care about, because you want to help them change what they want help changing.

And the masterful kind of listening, the kind my grandmother was capable of, is not just learning about what they care about, but helping them learn what they care about. It might mean asking probing questions like “is that really what you want, or is what you want to stop wanting it?” or “is that really what you care about, or is that what you think you should care about?” But more often than not, it means shutting up, giving them your full attention, and letting them figure it out themselves.

Here’s William Deresiewicz:

Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask.

Interestingness vs. Betterness

2012-01-17T23:31:00.001-05:00

Here’s part of a comment from David Hayes:

I came across this quote from the Indian writer/philosopher Krishnamurti, and was wondering how you felt about this definition:

when the things that prevent happiness are gone, when anxiety, frustration, the search for one’s own security have ceased, then happiness is there, you don’t have to seek it.

I think a large part of your unwillingness to accept the value of happiness is that you're using common definitions--things like "When I have a wife I'll be happy"--when I understand the word to mean something like Krishnamurti uses there. When you're no longer waiting for something to let you be happy, you can be. What happiness I seek is just the absence of that nagging feeling that things could be better, that next week it'll be easier to feel completely at ease.

I do find your/Krishnamurti's/Bob’s version of happiness much less revolting than the traditional let’s-get-a-jet-ski-for-extra-pleasant-feelings type. I don’t find your version revolting at all. It seems like a very reasonable thing to pursue.

But at the same time – personal preference – it’s not something that currently appeals to me. It doesn’t appeal to me to get rid of as many nagging feelings as possible, or to be as at ease as I can possibly be. Rather than conditioning my brain to be at ease (“Inner Peace”), I’d rather let life build an Inner Cesspool of anxieties and frustrations, and then simply notice them. Not fight them, not even accept them. Just notice them. That’s good enough for me.

There’s nothing “right” about noticing, just like there’s nothing “right” about overcoming or accepting. That’s just my preference at the moment. I could try to justify my preference with explanations like “I’m experiencing life as it was intended” or some crap, but the bottom line is that it’s just a personal preference, one that will probably change.

Sometimes I am going to want to overcome anxieties and frustrations, just like I want to lift my hand off a hot stove. But most of the time anxieties and frustrations are of the mellower type, where I don’t feel the need or compulsion to do away with them. That doesn’t mean I’m glad they’re there; it just means they are not so detrimental to my existence that I feel the need to fight them off. And given the options to (a) try really hard to get rid of them, or (b) be absorbed in my monkey brain asking why they’re there and how they affect me and what they mean, I’m going to take “(b)” 96% of the time. Maybe a better way of saying it is that I (currently) value interestingness over betterness.

I’m not on a mission to rid myself of mental toxins. Nor am I on a mission to do the right thing as often as humanly possible. I’m not on a mission. Like everyone else, I pursue different goals at different times in different contexts. If there’s one that stands out, if there’s one goal that’s the most “Me,” then I’d say it’s probably that I want to be interested—not because I’ve gone through all the possibilities and logically concluded that this one’s the best, but because that’s what I, ahem, notice myself doing, for whatever weird reasons.

+++

And here’s part of a comment from Bob:

When you express yourself in this blog - when it's not just sharing something someone else has said that you appreciate or that intrigues you - you are as often as not describing a phenomenon in your life that puzzles you and with which you are not entirely satisfied. You implicitly (and often very explicitly) invite input from your readers as to how they deal with, prevent, etc. such situations.

I welcome thoughts about how to deal with / prevent undesirable situations, just like I welcome thoughts about why it’s there and what it means and how other people experience it and how it affects them. I want to know these things because they interest me, not so much because I want to overcome as many undesirable situations as possible.

+++

Here’s David again, from the same comment:

That most people don't have any idea what they're doing with their life is such a valueless thing to say. The fact that other people are confused or deluded doesn't justify people who know there's another way's not following it. And even while much of what you say is true, I think there are some universals. The Dalai Lama says that all people everywhere want less suffering and more pleasure or happiness. I find that hard to disagree with, but I'd love to know if you do.

I agree that there are certain preferences that are pretty close to universal, such as preferring more life over less, more resources over less, more pleasure over less, more meaning over less, etc. etc. But I maintain that there is nothing “right” about those preferences, and that pretty much everyone (another universal) is pursuing different goals at different times in different contexts. That may make us “confused,” but I’d say it’s fair to be confused given this mess of a life we live.

Marriage duty

2012-01-16T23:53:00.001-05:00

Happily Married for efficiency advantages.

Over on Datingwise, Anna made a suggestion that I took umbrage with. She said that the trait you should seek in a spouse is conscientiousness, because according to a study it is the trait most broadly associated with marital satisfaction.

Conscientiousness to me means attention to detail, doing the little things you’re supposed to do and doing them reliably. In short, it means being good at fulfilling duties.

It’s a nice trait to have for sure, but I got umbraged out for (as best as I can tell) two main reasons:

(1) The suggestion makes relationships seem job-like, as if fulfilling duties is the primary responsibility of a spouse. I recognize that there are certain duties and expectations that go along with marriage, but if those duties and expectations are treated as the primary value you bring to the relationship, then I want out. I want my wife to be my best friend, and only very secondarily or tertiarily a “business” partner. If you’re primarily looking for a good duty-fulfiller, then what are you getting married for, the efficient allocation of dish washing?

That was my rational and some might even say romantic explanation. Here’s my realer explanation:

(2) I perceive myself to be weak in the conscientiousness department. I do all right if it’s something I care about and am interested in, but if I am operating merely out of a sense of duty, then my attention to detail is sometimes sorely lacking. If conscientiousness is important in a husband with regard to things like picking out the right can of beans from the grocery store, then I’m in trouble. In short, I don’t want to believe conscientiousness is important because I don’t want to believe I’d be a bad husband.

+++

Anna added an interesting twist this afternoon in a post called “Conscientiousness is not enough”:

A romance starts with the spark of passion that can lead to marriage or die out after a brief blaze. Granted, it may not last forever and it certainly should not be the only quality taken into account when deciding to make a lifetime commitment. But if a marriage isn’t sparked by that quality the marriage may be very dry indeed.

Wow, so he’s got to be conscientious *and* you’ve got to be madly in love with him? And even that’s “not enough”? Sheesh, Anna, are you telling us that you want a shirtless guy on horseback with a day-planner in his back pocket? I’ll look around for you but I’ve gotta be honest, I’m not feeling optimistic about this.

+++

Okay, it’s easy for me to argue and poke fun, but if I’m going to be a good sport I’ve got to make my own case for what’s important to look for in a spouse.

Back in May I posted these rules of thumb.

(1) Where does my mind tend to go when I’m not concentrating on anything in particular? The best way I know to understand what I want from the Universe / what the Universe wants from me – and this applies to more than just romantic relationships – is to notice trends in my mental driftage.

(2) Do I see things in her that other people fail to notice? Like what?

(3) What is it that I admire most about her? Is it her boobies? Is it her miraculous intelligence? In either case, I’m probably being deceived—I’m attracted to some show of fertility or competence. If I am, that’s fine – that’s good – but the ideal spouse probably requires more than that. If this is The One (at the moment), then I will probably find myself swooning over things as mundane and ordinary as her sneeze.

(4) How does thinking about her make me feel? Does it bring me a warm glow? Does it bring me a profound sense of longing? A sort of lustful curiosity? If it’s any one particular feeling, then it’s probably not love, because love is far more complicated than that. Love is probably best thought of as a combination of seemingly conflicting emotions.

I think these are nice ways of identifying whether you are in love, but what I’m less sure about is whether and to what extent being in love is important for long-term marital satisfaction. I’m not even sure that being in love pushes long-term marital satisfaction in the positive direction, because the drug-like hypnosis of being in love doesn’t last, so you’re at risk of a majorly rude awakening. This much I feel pretty sure about: It’d be unwise to get engaged/married while you are still thickly in the “in love” state, because you’ve got to know what it’s like when you come down from that.

I think probably a better (and maybe even the most important) quality to look for in a romantic partner is how well you get along, which is based on calmer feelings like how well you like, respect, and appreciate the person, rather than how passionately in love with them you are. It’s necessary that you be physically attracted to them, but it’s not necessary (I don’t think) that you swoon over their sneezes.

I had to stop myself from advocating experiments just now. I was going to suggest that you take a vacation and see how well you do in each other’s faces for days on end, or that you try to put the two of you in a miserable situation, like, I don’t know, the DMV, but I don’t want to experiment and I don’t want to be experimented with. If we’re going to turn dating into an interview process, then we might as well throw in some reference checks and some multiple choice tests as well. The bottom line is that I really find it distasteful – almost disgusting – every time we get too close to suggesting that relationships are like jobs.

Fortunately, multiple choice tests needn’t be given, because if you spend enough time with a person you’re likely to get a good sense of how well you get along, how deeply you like, respect, and appreciate them.

Then if you can just get that person to carry a day-planner on horseback, you’re golden.

Politics according to astronauts

2012-01-16T23:01:00.002-05:00

The epiphany representative of an astronaut: (Quora via Ben Casnocha)

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.

Four reactions:

(1) What’s preventing us from having this same awe-filled experience from an IMAX seat? Scary movies can seem very “real” to us, and moving pictures can induce the whole range of emotions, so I don’t see why dragging politicians into space is necessary to get the same sort of effect. The effect probably wouldn’t be as strong, but on the other hand, with the right technological enhancements and especially with the right sounds, I could conceivably see an IMAX experience being more powerful than one Edgar Mitchell experienced.

I truly believe that. What I don’t believe is that putting politicians in an IMAX theatre or even in space is likely to make a bit of difference. This relates to the next point.

(2) How long did Edgar Mitchell’s “epiphany” last? I’m guessing he’d tell you it never went away, but I’d believe him about as much as I believe a couple who’s been married for 30 years saying that their in-loveness is as strong as Day 1.

I buy that Edgar Mitchell had this magical almost out-of-body experience that seriously changed his perception of the world (for a bit), but I don’t buy that once he got back thickly into the world of nail clipping and oil changes that the effect remained with even 1/1,000th of the intensity.

We experience a similar effect albeit on a smaller scale when we see an emotional movie. For 5 or so hours afterwards we are noticeably more people-oriented and less interested in what we perceive to be petty things. Yep, for about 5 hours or so. The problem is that we can’t really absorb these facts of the universe. They hit us hard for a short while, but it’s logarithmic decay from there.

It’s certainly possible that Edgar Mitchell’s behaviors changed lastingly after the experience, but that would only be because he willfully developed some new routines, not because this experience blew up some part of his emotional brain. His mind is no more capable of absorbing the facts of the universe than anyone else’s, and he is bound to the same inertia as the rest of us.

(3) Even supposing the effect was everlasting and with equal intensity, is this something that all people could/would experience if we were “dragged a quarter of a million miles out”? Here’s Xan:

When one person goes into space, he sees the insignificant sphere of pettiness below. When everyone goes into space, the sphere of pettiness expands. Individuals can escape from society but society cannot escape from individuals.

So my answer is, never. We will never see what Edgar Mitchell saw.

(4) I sometimes have Edgar Mitchell-like feelings myself. Sometimes when I see foodies complaining about their swiss chard pancakes being too heavy on salt, I want to grab them by the scruff of the neck, pull them into space and say, “can’t you see that you are a tiny, insignificant primate on this mess of a planet and it is some kind of miracle that you even get the chance to complain about salt quantities?”

But then I remember that I don’t have a space shuttle, and that even if I did the effect would last about 5 hours, tops, and that sometimes I get mad about salt quantities, too.

I think there is a temptation to view the astronaut’s perspective of the world as “right.” But right according to what? Does he who takes the biggest-picture perspective win? Why? Why would bigger be righter?

Sometimes when I look at my dog and his entire universe is the lady dog in front of him, I think, damn, that makes at least as much sense as the astronaut’s version of a universe.

Please notice

2012-01-16T01:43:00.006-05:00

It occurs to me that some regular readers of this blog might have read more of my words than they have of any other person, period.

Please pause to digest.

I post a lot, and my posts are pretty long. Just going back 2 months, for example, to November 16, I have posted 46,994 words. That’s longer than some novels. And that’s not even counting the comments. For those who read most posts, and for those who have been reading for a long time, chances are they’ve probably read dozens of books worth of material.

Please pause to digest.

Even if I am not at the top of your list, chances are I’m in the top 50 or top 10. Please ask yourself, is that something you’re comfortable with?

Is that something *I* am comfortable with?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not humble. I don’t think I’m a bad writer and I don’t think I’ve got nothing to say. But I’m also not so arrogant to think that I am in the top 50 or top 500,000 of people worth reading.

I take a “Why not?” approach to blogging. I write a lot because I like to, or, more accurately, because I feel a biological urge to empty my psychospiritual colon. And since I’ve got all these words written down, I think why not take (a lot) of them public? It encourages me to think about what I’m writing more carefully, and I am lucky enough to have some very smart readers who aren’t shy about telling me when I’m being dumb or just missing something important. I’ve even made some friends through this.

But those are selfish reasons. What’s in it for you? The feeling of having pretended to learn something? The feeling of having a one-way relationship in which you are an optional participant? Deep, penetrating insights about the Universe? Some mild amusement during your lunch hour?

I’m not forcing or really even encouraging anyone to read my goofy garbage, so I can’t be fully blamed for their choices, but I also can’t help but feel that I’m “enabling,” or something.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop posting goofy garbage. I’m not. I’m too selfish for that. I just wanted you to be fully informed of what you are doing.

P.S. – There’s a bite-sized alternative.

The problem with science

2012-01-15T17:09:00.011-05:00

Does this pointer make me look sophisticated?

Seth Roberts said that science is like single ants wandering around looking for food. His point was that science relies on randomish discoveries by individuals rather than a collective process of solve-the-riddle-by-committee.

I’ll quibble: Science is like an ant carrying a piece of food back to the nest and then a committee of nerdy ants swooping in to analyze it to death.

Science, people forget, has two parts. The rigorous testing and analyzing of ideas is one of them, and that’s the one that gets all of the attention, but the first and arguably more important part is the speculative and often casual generation of ideas to test.

I think Seth’s ant analogy is great for describing the generating ideas part. Single ants wander out in search of food, sometimes randomly, but typically informed by past successes or pheromone trails of other ants. If they’re lucky, they stumble upon a decent-sized and relatively edible piece of food. But then once they bring it back to the nest, hoo boy, here come the nerds.

These ants are amazing critical-thinkers. It only takes a few of them to expunge all life from an idea. It doesn’t take them but a few pointed questions to find faults with the forager’s sampling technique, for example.

The ants seem to take a peculiar pride in examining the idea from every angle, as if they earn status points for every blemish they identify. The ants want to subject the idea to magnifying glasses, statistical tests, and repeated trials. They are determined to find blemishes. Their status depends on it. If they don’t find (m)any blemishes, they assume they haven’t looked hard enough. More tests!

What most of the ants don’t seem to realize is that food is for eating, not analyzing. The question is not whether an idea is valid, but whether it is useful, whether and to what extent it contains calories and nutrition. And you can’t know that until you take a bite, until you try it on.

+++

I suspect that the fundamental problem with science is that, for most people who practice it, it is a profession.

Professions are based on status.
Status is based on seeming smart and sophisticated.
Seeming smart and sophisticated is based on criticism of others’ work and using fancy, complicated methods for your own.

The result is a proliferation of barely-readable and barely read publications, an overemphasis (to put it mildly) on accuracy and testability, a dearth of “fringe” ideas (for fear of losing reputation points), and perhaps worst of all, an education system grounded in critical-thinking.

Food is for eating, not analyzing. We should be asking whether ideas are useful, not true. Our ideas – our theories – are not descriptions of reality but simplifications of reality, and it is precisely that simplification – that imperfection – that makes theories useful.

The sad part is that as long as science is (mostly) a profession, ideas are going to be presented unintelligibly and they are going to be analyzed to death, because status and promotions are won through fanciness and identifying faults, not through identifying usefulness. The sadder part is that the forager ants know that, and they have their own reputation to worry about, so the ideas they bring back to the nest are going to be relatively “safe.” And by “safe” I mean uninteresting, unrevolutionary, and close to paths other ants have already traveled.

+++

Boy this post is a downer, isn’t it? I invite and encourage you to tear it apart, because I’d like to feel some optimism about this.

To be fair, status-seeking probably encourages scientific progress in some ways, like more publishing and more clever experiments, but I think those advantages are pretty minor. I maintain that status-seeking is, on the whole, poisonous, and the main reason is because it switches the emphasis from simplicity and usefulness to fanciness and accuracy. (And in doing so it puts science almost exclusively in the hands of nerdy elite who have titles behind their names and who get their panties in a wad when their unintelligible papers are reported in newspapers in a way that might suggest their conclusions actually mean something.)

Assuming status-seeking is the problem I make it out to be, what’s the alternative? Would it even be possible to reduce or eliminate status-seeking?

Yes it would. Two examples:

(1) Fund scientists with vested interests in discovering useful answers. For example, someone with Crohn’s Disease is going to be much more motivated to find useful solutions than some pointy-headed researcher who is high-mindedly evaluating the accuracy of every little theoretical detail in order to avoid losing status points. (There could be some perverse incentives with this, but I’m ignoring that for now.)

(2) Give more Macarthur-like grants, but on a much larger scale. Identify creative “geniuses” and give them a hefty sum of money over a long period of time, where the money comes with no strings and cannot be revoked for any reason except if the scientist is being a lazy bum. That would allow them to search for whatever answers they wanted in whatever ways they wanted, and since they don’t need to worry about having their grant renewed, they’d be less concerned with impressing their colleagues or clients.

These are testable hypotheses, by the way. This ought to at least be tried on a small scale to see if scientists with vested interests or scientists with big, Macarthur-like grants result in considerably better (more useful) scientific output.

I’m betting it would. And if I’m right, then there is something seriously wrong with the way we currently do science.

# # #

Another problem with science: Causes are hard (impossible?)

"Your mind is yours; own it and operate it accordingly."

2012-01-15T14:54:00.001-05:00

Here is part of a comment from Bob:

As for "believing in yourself is not fully up to you," gotta disagree in the strongest possible way. If it's not then nothing you think or do is really up to you, so you might as well just panhandle under the overpass. Your mind is yours; own it and operate it accordingly.

I fail to see the logic. I’m trying to be charitable and understand your statement to mean that if we don’t have control over our minds then we don’t over our actions either. I think it can get semantically messy trying to figure out what we mean by “control,” so let me try to approach it another way.

Your mind/body has conscious parts and unconscious parts, and the unconscious part is most of “who we are.” The unconscious part is pretty much by definition something that we can’t do anything about because we don’t know it’s there.

I think you understand that and that’s why you are such a proponent of getting to know yourself and being aware and whatnot, so that we can recognize more of the unconscious parts and condition our minds to change them. What I hear you saying is that it’s not easy, but it’s worth doing, and it might even be the *only* thing worth doing. Shit’s going to happen that I don’t like, and if I let the unconscious side of me rule, it’s going to destroy me. That’s why I’ve got to prepare for it.

This seems to be the fundamental part of our disagreement, Bob. You credit it to my age, and you may well be right. You want to have some control over how you react to stuff, and what you “allow” into your mind. I, on the other hand, just want to accept that the biggest part of who I am – who we all are – is unconscious and uncontrollable, and rather than “conditioning” myself to be more conscious and in control – which I agree with you is possible at the margin – I’d prefer to just notice it and be in awe of it. That may make me a zombie, but it doesn’t limit my options to panhandling.

Life is a diagnosis, not a definition

2012-01-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

Over on Carl Zimmer’s blog, evolutionary biologist David Hillis gives the most satisfying answer I’ve heard for why we don’t have a good definition for life. I have trimmed and revised it below.

It is not sensible to define life using a list of characteristics. It is only sensible to “define” Life (capitalized because it is a formal taxon) by pointing to it, noting when and where it began, and following its lineages from there.

You could define a class concept called life (lowercase because not a formal taxon), but then that concept would clearly differ from person to person. So, I’d say that I can point to and circumscribe Life, and that that is the appropriate way to “define” any biological taxon. A list of its unique characteristics is then a diagnosis, rather than a definition.

Defining Life is like defining other particular historical entities. We don’t “define” LeBron James or Detroit by listing out their attributes. Instead, we point to their origin and history. The same should be true for Life. If we ever discover Life on another planet, we’ll have a new origin and history to point to.

Three chicks at the same time

2012-01-13T02:43:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that I’m not nostalgic enough. I want to spend more time recounting events of yore. Memories, I know, are wildly inaccurate, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun inaccurately recalling them.

First up is a true(?) story of my romantic prowess in 4th grade.

---

Three chicks at the same time. You heard right.

Somewhat remarkably, in the 4th grade class of 1995 at Whitehouse Elementary, I was the most popular boy in school. I credit my popularity to the fact that I was best friends with the most athletic boy in school, a farmer kid who dominated Track and Field Day but happened to be painfully shy. Athleticism buys you popularity, but not if you won’t talk. I was shy, too, but not as shy, and I was goofy enough to make kids laugh, so I managed to soak up the popularity he should’ve had.

In case you’re dumb, popularity is how you win chicks. Popularity just means that other people like you, respect you, or otherwise hold you in high-esteem, and what I’ve deduced from 26.5 years of experience is that, even going all the way back to 4th grade, the thing femmes find most attractive in a guy is simply being held in high-esteem by his peers. (So stop posting pictures of your abs on Facebook, please.) It’s another one of those dumb heuristics forced upon us by Nature. For guys, we use heuristics like waist-to-hip ratio and hair quality to judge attractiveness. For femmes, it’s whether and to what extent other people seem to admire him.

Being at the top of the 1995 Whitehouse Elementary 4th grade class primate pyramid, I pretty much had my pick of the female litter. And why stop at one?, I thought.

Five seems a bit excessive. Even four could become a headache on Valentine’s Day. Three, though, that seems reasonable.

If I remember correctly, the way you enter a romantic relationship in fourth grade is by whispering hints through intermediaries followed by direct note-passing and then, if all goes smoothly and you can tolerate all the lame pink hearts on her notes, it culminates in hand-holding during roller-skating parties.

I don’t know whether the girls knew about each other, but I imagine if they didn’t it was willful ignorance. The entire village of Whitehouse had about 1,000 people, so you can’t not know about who’s holding hands with whom. But I don’t recall getting an ounce of flack for it. They tolerated it. And it was awesome.

Of the three, I had a clear favorite. Major crush on this chick. I’m pretty sure hers was the first butt I found intriguing. She was the best student in school, the best female-athlete, and the prettiest. She had dimples the size of a fruit rollup, and she had a trademark hot pink windbreaker that was so… hot.

With the other two chicks, I was content to just hold hands and be done with them. I wasn’t going to hang around and pretend like I cared about the weird stuff going on in their female brains. Chrissy, on the other hand,… well, okay, I wasn’t interested in her female brain either, but I definitely liked to look at her.

Chrissy induced in me for the first time in my life the masculine urge to display my affections through the gift of shiny metals. It wasn’t really optional. This was my future wife, most likely, and she had to know I was serious about it.

I distinctly remember the day. It was the last day of classes and we were standing outside of school saying goodbyes and boarding buses and whatnot. Chrissy was in her trademark hot pink windbreaker, looking hot.

That’s actually all I remember. I don’t remember exactly how the gift was delivered or received. There may have been a hug involved, or maybe a smile, but I think it’s more likely that this was one of those situations where you walk up to her, plop it in her hand, and then head for the minivan. Summer awaits; no time for chit-chat.

(You might wonder where a fourth grader finds jewelry for his “girlfriend.” Answer: On his big sister’s dresser. )

***

Postscript

I don’t have Facebook, and the reason is because I don’t feel like it. The most reasonable explanations I can give for why I don’t feel like it are because (1) the envy would destroy me, (2) I worry about my inability to avoid impulsively clicking stuff, and (3) I prefer to remember people in this form. I want to remember Chrissy as the amazing hot pink windbreaker-wearing girl with the enormous dimples, not as the girl who got married after high school and now has a couple of kids and a mortgage. Facebook would pollute my romantic notions of childhood, and that might be the last frontier of romanticism I have left in me.

Large men moving nimbly

2012-01-13T00:19:00.009-05:00

Shane Battier is unimpressed.

I’m about to describe a feeling that may be unfamiliar to you unless you get off on unusually large men moving unusually nimbly.

Sometimes this thing happens to us sports fans where we’ll be innocently taking in a game when all of the sudden there is some swift movement that violates expectations to such an extent that it causes us to make a loud noise which usually sounds something like “HOOOO” followed by uncontrollable laughter, shaking our heads like we have water in our ears, and perhaps a single large clap or two. It’s a quite strange behavior, really, and you know it by the look on your dog’s face.

Basketball seems like it’s a game intentionally designed to induce this behavior in certain vulnerable males, and in fact it was basketball that got me last night. It got me so intensely that I was still feeling a little goosebump-y when I woke up this morning.

LeBron gives me at least a minor version of this feeling pretty much every time he jump steps past three defenders with the force of a linebacker shot out of a cannon and then softly lays it home. But last night it wasn’t something LeBron did; it was something someone did to LeBron.

LeBron, if you didn’t know, is an amazing defender. Most people want to see what LeBron can do with the ball in his hands and the game on the line. I can tell you what he’s going to do: He’s going to take a jump shot from 18+ feet away and 62% of the time he’s going to miss. Not that interesting. To me it’s at least 180x more interesting to watch him play one-on-one defense in end-of-game situations, and that’s because what typically happens is that he not only humiliates the offensive player – the best offensive player on their team, by the way – but he emotionally violates them. As the offensive player dances around trying to get fancy in an attempt to find fresh air, LeBron effortlessly glides along in front of them, keeping his big bearded grill mere inches away from theirs, presumably staring into their soul with a silent but also very loud message of “I Dare You.” The end result 80% of the time is a terribly awkward-looking jump shot where instead of following through they snap their hands back as if to demonstrate innocence.

That was just to give you context, because last night LeBron got absolutely victimized. At this point I wish I could shut up and just give you the video, but I searched desperately for it last night and came up empty.

Probably the reason why I can’t find video is because Chris Paul missed the shot, but I tell you the way he got open made me scream. It was less of a “HOOOO” and more of a shriek.

There were 3.5 seconds to go in a tied ballgame, Chris Paul had the ball about 30 feet away, and LeBron was in his grill as usual. Then certain events transpired which I am still unable to wrap my brain around and so cannot describe them to you except to say that somehow through a couple of unfathomable changes of direction Chris Paul ended up taking an open jump shot from the free-throw line with LeBron standing behind him and to the side, too far away to even make an attempt to alter the shot.

My reaction was such that Khan woke up, stood up, shook off, and kind of irritatedly made the 10 feet trek across the living room to make sure the world had not descended into chaos. I couldn’t help it, I told him.

Update: I found the clip, but I’m afraid it’s going to be terribly disappointing in the context of a YouTube video narrated by a couple of bored dudes. It starts around 2:18.

I think I’ve experienced this feeling in response to only two sources: sports and nature docs. What’s the point of it? Why is my brain designed to get so intensely excited when one large man makes a nimble move on another large man? Or when a cat in a nature doc does something crazy unexpected like snatch a flying bird out of the air? Is this a byproduct of something else? If so, what? Or is my brain just trying to learn some new tricks in case I should ever need to make a nimble move on an unusually large man?

On the one hand, it seems random and absurd. On the other hand, the feeling can be so intense that it’s hard to believe it’s there by mistake.

In summary, I’m confused. But I also want more.

Ignore what I said about graduate school

2012-01-12T23:50:00.000-05:00

I trust Kerry’s judgment on this more than the panelists I listened to, and her perception is that graduate schools truly are just looking for deluded sheep:

I've just come from a university setting, so take this with a grain of salt...I only have one data point (and maybe a bit of intuition from my own student experience).

Regardless of what the brochure may say, admissions people don't give a fluff about personal statements and letters of rec for some degrees (a lot of masters programs). It's largely a numbers game where a system generates a thumbs up and acceptance letter if GPA + GRE > random cutoff. Several people (3-5%?) are then put on the bubble, and depending on revenue goals / supply of classrooms / supply of instructors, their applications may be looked at by a panel. What do these panels look at? Basically the same things...GPA and GRE. There may be a closer look at the transcript to see that you got a merciful D- in differential equations.

2 years in, 2 years out, write us a few big checks and be on your way. Schools are absolutely targeting deluded sheep (some career paths monetarily reward people once they receive a master's degree [I'm looking at you, teachers and MBAs].) These programs are huge revenue generators.

PhD programs, on the other hand, are probably different:

By the way....just the opposite is true of PhD programs. Faculty are highly selective of candidates because there is a continuing relationship between teachers and students (I'm sure we can all name people who have been in PhD purgatory (10+ years in program with ABD)). The trick there is to select happy, productive weirdos (think more Scott Adams weird and less Amy Bishop / Ted Kaczynski weird) who aren't left-handed.

Stop believing in yourself, dummy

2012-01-12T02:46:00.007-05:00

Ignite your future.

Here is part of David Hayes’s response to the “Let’s improve our weaknesses!” post.

I actually just finished Carol Dweck's Mindset, which is probably more relevant to the topic than either of the things I mentioned in my first comment. In a sentence, the point of the whole book is that the old Henry Ford saw "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right" is right. Though she never uses that phrase, she makes the point repeatedly that people's abilities are often constrained by what they believe they're capable of.

Praise a kid for things he knows and he'll start to fear failing. Praise a kid for how hard he worked on a project and he'll start to welcome work and failure as necessary steps on the road to success. She uses the terms fixed and growth mindset to delineate between the effects they observe in experiments between kids told that brains can change and kids who believe their abilities are fixed forever. Practically her whole career she's been doing studies showing that this basic divide is both real and powerful. (Here's a video is her explaining it herself.)

Who’s ready for another inspirational message from JW? Okay, here goes:

I agree that believing that something is possible means you’re more likely to achieve it. But I don’t think we can conclude from that, “Believe!” Two reasons:

(1) The logic can easily be taken too far to imply that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. We’re only talking about probabilities, about improvements at the margin. Believing in oneself is not magical, even with regard to that which we have a decent amount of control over. Say that Shaq managed to convince himself that a FT% of 100% was possible. Would he have achieved it? Err, I hope I don’t need to answer that. That added self-confidence might’ve bought him a few extra percentage points, but we’re not talking extraordinary gains here.

In many areas, especially in those where we want to believe we have more control than we actually do (e.g., physical health), I’d argue that too much belief in belief – too much emphasis on positive thinking – is more likely than not to be harmful. Evidence.

(2) Believing in yourself is not fully up to you—like with the research on kids, it’s about who praises them and how. It’s about context. Unless we're a cat with extraordinary mental powers, we can’t just stand in front of a mirror and convince ourselves that we’re capable of anything. We can convince ourselves that we believe we’re capable of anything, but that’s different from actually believing it.

Point being that even if self-belief is magical, it’s not something we have much control over, so it’s not terribly meaningful advice.

A positive thinking groupie might counter, “But the only reason you don’t have control is because you don’t believe you do!” To which I’d say, shut up.

Graduate School (don’t be a deluded sheep)

2012-01-11T22:25:00.003-05:00

This is what I look like when I dance.

Today I listened in on a panel about selecting and applying to graduate schools. It induced two very conflicting feelings. But before I get to that, I’ll share the main take-aways:

Selecting grad schools:

You need to know what it is that you want—how you want to spend your 9-5’s. The worst reason to go to grad school is because you think it’s something you *should* do.
Do you prefer to have your hands in the research or do you prefer to be conceptually leading the ideas? Master’s if the former, PhD if the latter.
Financial aid is more important than getting accepted to a program. Research in advance which departments have more money/scholarships available.
Top-tier schools do have a reputational advantage that affects employment opportunities. But it can be just as good to go to a lower-ranked school if there is a well-respected professor you can work with.
Online degrees are pretty lame. The biggest benefit of grad school is the people you get to know. Learning is secondary.

Applying to grad schools:

Grad schools just want you to be “good enough,” and after that it is mainly a matter of goodness-of-fit—how well your interests map to what the department does.
You want a goldilocks level of focus: Specific but not too specific. You probably have the right level of focus if there are 2-6 faculty members in the department whose research areas map to your interests.
If you have any blemishes (GRE scores or bombed courses), then you should address them.
Keep your Personal Statement short and treat it as a writing sample to display how clearly and succinctly you can present your ideas.
No cheesy quotes, and no emotional stories about how your grandmother died.
Use a professional and straightforward tone.
The kiss of death for a letter of recommendation is “he was my best student.” Instead, you want them to comment on the specifics of your interests and abilities. It’s got to be someone who knows you well.
The Writing Sample is truly just about how well you can write—they don’t care about the content.

I think I can summarize the last 8 bullets in two words: BE NORMAL (and stop blogging about vaginas for chrissake)

The overwhelming sense I got – and when I think about it, it makes perfect sense – is that grad schools mainly just want to screen out weirdos and deluded sheep.

By “deluded sheep” I mean people who think that life is a series of hoops that you jump through, where you move from one thing to the next because that’s what you are supposed to do.

How do you stand out from a crowd of hundreds of people trying to stand out? By looking normal. It’s like online dating in that sense—there are so many profiles of so many people trying to look smart and clever that it’s refreshing to find someone who’s giving it to you straight, who is applying to graduate school for seemingly the right reasons, who is applying to this particular department for the right reasons, who seems grounded and flexible and relatively low on narcissism quotient.

###

Skip this section if you don’t care how I feel about grad school.

On the one hand, listening to this panel got me a little excited to apply for grad schools. I felt like I understood “the game” and I’d be able to play it to not only get admitted to some highly-ranked grad schools but also to get a pretty fat financial aid package. An enticing challenge. It fired up my masculine “I Can Do This” drive. But then I remembered that that’s exactly the wrong reason to apply for grad school, and that the admissions counselors are only a Google away from discovering that I blog about vaginas.

The excitement was counteracted by a bottom of the stomach sickening feeling that may or may not have had anything to do with breakfast. (Scrambled egg x3 + cheddar.)

At first I thought it might’ve had something to do with the BE NORMAL part. Those institutional bastards are trying to make us normal! Mm, no, not really. For good reason, the admissions people are biased to look for more normality, but that doesn’t mean that they want you to be normal and average once you get there. They’d probably prefer that you be interesting and different so that you can do some interesting and different things that will make them proud to associate with you. They just don’t want you to be deluded and sheep-y, on a mission to climb ladders without any concern for where those ladders lead.

I suspect the sickening feeling was mostly the feeling of confusion. This is not a new feeling for me, but I think it was heightened when I all of the sudden felt excited about applying to grad schools. The next four paragraphs are a sample of that confusion.

I’ve worked in research for long enough that the romantic notion of sitting in a professorial sweater and playing with ideas all day has been thoroughly debunked—I know that the playing with ideas part is dwarfed by the “business” side of proposals and analysis plans and internal review boards and conference calls. I’m not excited about research. I’m not excited about teaching. I’m not sure whether excitement should be a criterion for career-selection.

I’m not sure that Higher Ed won’t totally collapse while I’m in there, and I’m not sure that a degree will still be worth a damn even if it didn’t. I’m not thrilled about my livelihood being based almost exclusively on the federal government.

I like the idea of hanging out with a tight circle of smart and interesting people, but I’m not sure that the type of people you find in Higher Ed are necessarily any more “interesting” than average, and I’m not sure the investment would be worth it even if they were.

I have a nagging *should* feeling that I should get a graduate degree because I’m youngish and relatively free of obligations and perfectly capable, but at the same time there’s not a research question or a department or even a damn field of human knowledge that is calling to me. Probably this isn’t for me, but then I’m not sure what is.

###

You had to know this was coming. It’s time to get existential on your ass.

What’s the point?

No panelist offered any answers, but I think I can infer it from various things they said:

The point is to (a) earn some barriers to entry and (b) establish some professional contacts

so that you can (a) get more money/status and cozier working conditions, and (b) with your contacts, have an easier time finding those high-paying/status, cozy jobs

so that you can feel successful and sophisticated and very much not like a primate

so that you can feel something like “pleased” or probably more accurately “not-uncomfortable” with your life

so that your nucleic acids can get on with the business of attracting a similarly demonstrably high-quality set of nucleic acids

so that they can you-know-what

so that the species can continue

for no reason at all.

As usual, that’s said in half-jest. But only half.

Anti-Anti-Feminism

2012-01-11T00:05:00.007-05:00

A couple weeks ago I had a night of transfixedly staring at women on YouTube bashing feminism. (I blame David Hayes.) See here, for example. I can’t explain exactly why I found it so fascinating, but there was something strangely amusing about watching rather primped-looking women saying things like “women are the most pampered creatures on the planet.”

Here is, I think, a good and reasonable summary of the anti-feminist perspective: (Haley's Halo via Anna)

[Society] today tends to view men as morally inferior to women and that men must work hard to remain in women’s good graces. This is a byproduct of the wider cultural acceptance of feminist ideology, in which women’s imperatives are good while men’s are bad and need to be corrected to be more like women’s. Men are taught that they need to be more sacrificial, more humble, more romantic, more supportive, and more understanding of women. They need to be better listeners. They need to man up. They need to step up to the plate. They need to stop playing video games. They need to apologize more. They need to be friends first. They need to see women’s inner beauty. They need to not judge women for their sexual history.

Meanwhile, women are precious daughters of the King who deserve to be loved for who they are!

In summary, men are unfairly expected to be more like women. Women need to stop being such royal jerks!

Not that I disagree, but... well, okay, I disagree. I hereby declare myself an anti-anti-feminist. (Which is different from calling myself a feminist; I’m not that either.) What it comes down to is this: Why are those cultural expectations there? Is it because a tribe of mean females somehow obtained power and now are dictating cultural expectations to the masses based on their own selfish interest? (I’ve got my eye on you, Hillary.)

I actually buy a lot of the anti-feminist rhetoric that there is somewhat of a cultural expectation that men become more lady-like in certain ways, and that men, perhaps more than women, are expected to put the woman’s needs and desires and safety ahead of their own.

Here’s what I don’t buy: This sucks – More Equality!

If this is persecution, then I don’t mind it. I actually kind of prefer it. I want to put a woman’s needs and wants and safety to some extent ahead of my own. Maybe it’s some relic from the savannah that no longer applies to a modern society where all women are royal jerks, but it’s there nonetheless, and I don’t see any reason why we should try to smoosh all cultural expectations into Perfect Equality. I don’t even see any evidence that cultural expectations can be smooshed.

(But I’ve still got my eye on you, Hillary.)

###

Back when I was doing online dating, there were a lot of women who were sporting feminism on their profiles not just as part of their identity but seemingly as a screening criterion, as in, “This Is Who I Am—can you handle it?”

I found that pretty funny, because it was stated as if I should care, as if this intellectual conviction of theirs was in some crucial way going to affect the way we feel about each other or our ability to inhabit the same living room.

The thing is, it really doesn’t bother me whether you believe that men and women should be treated exactly equally, or whether you believe that all animals should be freed from zoos, or whether you believe that all bacon should be served with a healthy serving of butter. It tells me very little other than that you have some convictions that you’ve latched onto. That in itself is a mark against you more than any particular belief you purport to hold.