P o c k e t CT

I received this email called Nuevo California (at the bottom of this post for reference) twice after this last election, and about fifty times after the 2004 election. I felt the disenchantment so sorely after the 2004 election. How could we?, I mean even how could we get close enough for fraud to pull an election? As president Bush declared that he saw a clear mandate in this close close election I cried. I mourned for our reputation in the world, and for the continuance of what I considered poor choices and dangerous paths. I felt sore about the depth of the loss and I wanted to hide. The humorous yet derogatory emails contained an element of how I felt.

I looked at every state that winner take all made this happen with perplexity. I couldn’t understand about Red state mentality. I started to try.

So I have been thinking about this for a few years now. I spent hours on this state stats site confirming that yes it is true. It would seem that all of the larger morality, health and social problems are concentrated in the states that vote republican. Why? How? Can it be that people are voting to “protect marriage” because they see it is in danger more than their blue state counterparts with 22% less of a divorce rate? Is that it? Is morality a big issue in these states because they are surrounded with problems? It may be part of it but I don’t think that covers it entirely.

I was reminded of this again when I watched a TED Video on the difference between liberals and conservatives. (yes another one, I know. I am addicted)
This is a psychologist delving into the five ethical structures of humanity. Fascinating. The reminder of the 2004 election was that his presentation used this image as the usual reaction of liberals when trying to understand the red state mentality. Am I the kind of person who thinks that if someone doesn’t agree with me they must be dumb? Probably as long as the laugh lasts and then no, I want to look deeper.

This time I got only two emails and I noticed something very different. First off I have to say that I think that it is kind of crass to spout off like this. We own all the toys and we are taking them home to play without you.

What I noticed this time was about the resources listed here, particularly: fresh water, food, education and low-sulfur coal. Is this really that one part of the nation is wealthy in countless ways and opportunities and therefore educated and open to change and the other part is well *not.* Therefore the red states are filled with a lot of the problems of poverty – bad food, low education, less opportunity. Perhaps the higher alcoholism, teen pregnancy, porn consumption, obesity and everything else mentioned here is due to a larger poor population comparitively. Perhaps the educated and better off people of the red state more fear the “take” of their impoverished neighbors because there are more and the dole is bigger. Is this all really that the blue states are the haves and the red the have nots? I know this is not news here but it hit me harder this time. And it hit me harder how crass this email is because of it.

So this time “we” won the election. With the state of the economy and the talk of new deal style investment into our country perhaps we could learn from how it got this way and invest in the red states. Not just the military base investment that was done in the new deal but perhaps an investment that will equalize the resources and bit. Maybe in a while the wealth and empowerment will fix the problems that make the red states try to legislate morality. Wouldn’t it be nice if Alabama was our shining star of alternative energy creation instead of the lead of porn consumption per capita in the USA. If Texas was solar power central would the obesity naturally go down? Would Tennessee’s teen pregnancy rate stabilize if…

We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss. We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and
entrepreneurs. You get Alabama . We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90
percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their
projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We
get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico

Peace out,
Blue States

I have been amusing myself lately looking at physical symptoms of being in love. I watched this brilliant TED talk from Helen Fischer on the science of love and the future of women. This cinched my addiction to TED podcasts and got me thinking. Her thesis is that romantic love, rather than being an emotion is a three part drive. This trinity consists of lust, love and attachment. She approaches this talk through both the scientific and through literature. The talk was fabulous you should check it out. She put a mess of people into an MRI and scanned the brain activity of people who claimed to be in love. In this article she talked about the how love is biochemically indistinguishable from OCD. Happy news for the people popped in the MRI with the requited variety but the same obsessive brain patterns existed for the poor souls whose love scene was all awry.

So after that I have been thinking about the universal experience of being in love. In this presentation she talked about a few of the most common symptoms. That you have focus and attention on that person, that things have special meaning, that you are charged with incredible energy, she talked of craving, of sexual possessiveness and heightened motivation. I think of another book that I read that talked of the warped sense of time you get. The feeling that you have known the person for longer than in reality, or longer than you have actually lived. These all seem like universal “symptoms.”

A bit ago Jan asked me “Are you in love” and for several reasons I said “Ummmmm” and changed the subject. But now I am looking at this in this Helen Fischer scientific way. So I start looking for a complete list of symptoms to see about this both dreaded and sought after mental state.

I google with a little luck. Many are teenie-booper-ish. This one seems very 20s. This one has the symptoms of being in love may actually be a debilitating medical condition and is very funny. You might not be in love, you might be schizophrenic or you might have Parkinson’s disease. Why would we seek out something that mirrors symptoms of mental illness? Oh yeah Dr. Fisher claims it is a drive like thirst and self preservation.

Then I ask Jan.
Do you think there are physical symptoms of love?
     Yes of course
and they are?
     eating more/less depending, euphoria
here are some I have read: energy surge (less need for sleep food etc) time shift of length of knowing the person (like you feel like they have been in your life forever) hard to imagine life before
ocd symptoms, heightened attention, that there is huge beauty in small things
(I have had that one since I turned 26, non stop) also that there is a feeling of awe and transcendence about the world
more?
     yes also, all of the above but if you don’t feel those things does it mean you are not in love? because by those standards Stricken section—forgiving peoples faults more easily accepting them.

All this was interesting but is this all of them? So maybe I’ll just ask you. Are you in love? Do you have any other common symptoms of love to add to my list?

Dark Flow

This last week I had a dream about my mom. I am a little sketchy about the exacts of it, basically she was telling me that she was going to go to Europe for a month. I was happy for her plans. I was so incredibly glad to see her. When I woke I wanted to crawl back into my dream to a place where the missing her can hold off for a bit. It is the same place where I am not dreading the aspect of having the holidays come and figuring out how to have them without her there.

The next morning Christopher was telling me of his dream which was of him driving a bus and having a cat which he decided to stick on top of the bus in a straw nest he made. Then he lost the cat, which held some heightened dream significance. The dreams have merged in my head. The bus is now one of those touristy double-decker jobs and my mom is out looking for the cat for him. I hope she finds it because then even if it is only a dream mash up I can say “hey Mom this is Christopher, he is really neat, reminds me a lot of you actually” and “Christopher, this is my Mom, she is awesome.”

One of the days in LA, I was sitting at Le Pain Quotidien having an amazing breakfast of steel cut oats and organic bread with Claudia. We are talking about about Claudia setting up shop in LA, about bigger things people want out of life, about people wanting fame and glory and what that does to the rest of what you want out of life, about how wanting to have children impacts other things you want out of life. You know usual light breakfast conversation.

Claudia is then talking about an unhealthy distraction she gets periodically sucked in to. She is musing about how it sometimes keeps her from how she wants to live. So I ask her if she writes what she wants down as a reminder. I ask her to make a list on the spot.

“I want have a healthy life. I want to make the time to work on my practice. I want to eat good organic food” at the last statement she laughed like it was the silliest thing in the world to say.

“Why did you just laugh?”

“It isn’t exactly a lofty goal for life. ”

“Umm. Eat well is absolutely on my list. Actually, it is pretty up there too. What is wrong with having a non-lofty happy well balanced life.”

But we were in LA and would probably pass forty people before the morning was out who are striving for a narrow focused movie acting fame. Lofty goals. People want to have big careers, huge success, stellar levels of fame, save the planet, be in the history books. However, the people in my life that have the loftiest goals are really the most miserable I know.

Then I showed her Christopher’s list. I noted that number 4 is “Sleep enough, exercise, eat well.” Can you save the planet after a cheap and crappy McDonald’s meal, doubled over with a rock in your gut? Unlikely. Can you add peace to the world without your own peace? Can you take care of others, neglecting yourself, without building resentment?

I have a friend who was in town for a funeral of her very dear friend and my coworker. He was 48 and it is stunning to lose someone so young. We had dinner and she was talking about how hard it was at his house. She mentioned that they had found a similar list. She shared a few items on his life list and they tore at my heart. In the end did he feel he was able to live to his list?

Dave has a list of things to do before he dies that he won’t add anything to until it is done. I think it is grand.

I like lists. I don’t commonly prioritize them or color code them but they serve me well. I remember when I was heartbroken to have to leave Italy I made a list of everything I was looking forward to in New England: corn, fall, family, skinny dipping, ginger ale. I’ve made pie graphs to see if my life is in balance. At one point my uncle told me to make a list of 100 qualities I wanted in a romantic consort and I would meet someone stellar. It took me a while to make the list and was an interesting process. I have mundane lists and lofty lists.

I feel like I should share a list with you to go with this but I will only share a start. In no particular order here is what I want to keep focus on in my life at the moment.

pursue happiness
balance life (work-play-romance-humor-generosity-health)
take care of myself, eat fabulous food
live in a financially sound way
continue to declutter (brain, home, car, life)
learn things
be conscious of environmental footprint
be great at my job(s), work hard, create, mentor, teach, and communicate well
love freely
be good to my family, friends, community and world
give without regret or resentment, learn not to give if resentment or regret are plausible
create -allocate time for creative endeavors
contribute to the world
learn to receive better
think about maybe someday addressing the judgmental monster in my brain
revel in moments of awe or transcendent experiences
appreciate people, even the hard to take ones

Want to share a list of your own?

About a month ago a coworker sent me the following article from American Psychological Association – Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

It is worth a perusal if only for the story of the bank robbing moron who thought that lemon juice would hide his face from surveillance cameras. The gist for those of you who might not want to click through is in the header paragraph

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

In a nutshell if you are really really bad at something you lack the part of the brains to know that you are really bad at it.

Well it all makes perfect sense but I have never thought about it before. I am hoping that this information now nested in my brain will mitigate the frustration I have with the incredibly dumb. Specifically the ones that delusionally think they are irreplaceable and brilliant. Instead of spinning my wheels making new similes to express their profound ineptitude like this person is dumb as a fence post or that person has the IQ of a protozoa, I can be more empathetic. When I receive the crass mass email from my brother that it titled “Fw: Politically accurate joke SAD, BUT TRUE!!!” and has the following anecdote that he believes wholeheartedly has merit, I will be kinder in my head.

A Russian arrives in NYC as a new immigrant to the United States. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, “Thank you, Mr. American, for letting me in this country, giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care, and free education!”

The passerby says, “You are mistaken, I am Mexican.”
The man goes on and encounters another passerby. “Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America!”
The person says, “I not American, I Vietnamese.”
The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, “Thank you for the wonderful America!”
That person puts up his hand and says, “I am from Middle East. I am not American!”
He finally sees a nice lady and asks, “Are you an American?”
She says, “No, I am from Africa!”
Puzzled, he asks her, “Where are all the Americans?”
The lady checks her watch and says…”Probably at work.”
IF YOU DON’T PASS THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, TOMORROW AT 11:30 AM YOU WILL RECEIVE THREE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ABSOLUTELY FREE.

Kinder. It would do no good to talk about the statistics of working hours of first generation Americans vs third (which we both are.) I think that a correction on this assumption that immigrants don’t work would be received with the thought that I obviously haven’t a clue. Academically he couldn’t be more wrong, but hasn’t got a speck of capability to assess that. Now instead of thinking wow my brother is a total idiot, I can think poor guy he can’t even realize how stupid he is showing himself to be.

I get email forwards from him regularly that make me groan. Racist, mean, sexist here is another one that he thought that his single, independent, feminist sister would get a big kick out of.

One day, long, long ago…….
there lived a woman who did not nag or bitch.
But this was a long time ago…….
and it was just that one day.

The End

I got disparaging cartoons about Obama the day I donated to his campaign. If I can’t be entirely kind about it, at least the emails have some positive effect.

Since this study looked at four different aspects of assessment: grammar, humor, and logic, I am wondering if this is compartmentalized. What things that I think I am stellar at where in reality I totally suck? There are only a few things I think I am really good at so hopefully this doesn’t apply. But there is probably some skill that I am so bad at I would have not an inkling of my ineptitude. I am wondering what it is and will I believe you when you tell me?

Commenters: keep in mind that I can make fun of my brother but I might be sensitive if you do. After all he is my brother – so be nice even if I am not.