Comfortably numb

I do things just to get them behind me and move on to other things ..so I can get those behind me too ..I don’t often see what’s in front of me .. I’m looking too far forward or backward. This morning I’m doing the dishes, while watching images of events gone by. I see Anne stopping by to say hi (from yesterday). Next, an image of my friend’s mother appears who suffers arthritis from washing dishes. That’s when I missed grabbing the knife by its handle and saw the blood in the sink. Pain arrived a split second later followed by a scream because my hands were numb from the water. Now my eyes are wide open and I’m thrashing around the bathroom cabinets looking for antiseptic and bandages ..swearing at myself for being so clumsy ..as well as the knife for being so stupid (!?). I drop by Prof Neal’s office for a chat and he interrupts me to ask why my hand is bandaged. I give him a brief explanation and shrug it off, but I see he’s not going to let it go that easy.

“Tell me what happened.”
“That’s all there is to it ..”
“Why don’t you take me back there.”
“Why ..?”
“Indulge me.”

Ok, so I give him a more detailed account ..leaving out the part where I called the knife stupid. Afterward, he tells me I’m interfering with the ‘binding principle’ when I do that. “Do what ..?” I ask “Drift away .. not enough light gets through for you to put together what’s in front of you.” He goes on to tell me that I probably grabbed the knife the same way I grabbed the last utensil because, while I’m drifting away ..my brain is computing the likelihood of the next event (knife) based on a set of light waves it received from a prior event (spoon). He goes on to say “While you’re out there creating one narrative ..your brain is constructing a counter-factual model of what’s at hand. Your observation didn’t come back to the dishes until the separation became too great for you to be in both places at once.” He lost me but I try to cover it up. “I suppose you’re going to tell me if I hadn’t cut myself ..I may have followed a narrative leading somewhere else instead of here.” He nods and goes "That’s right! You see, that’s what makes every moment worth paying attention to ..even when you’re washing dishes. You don't know where they’re going to lead.” I look around the office and go “OK, I’m buying this ..but can anyone else hear what we’re talking about ..?”

Priscilla Ahn

Future shock

During a 70’s era college course in social psychology, we were each given the assignment of predicting possible future events in society and presenting them next time we met. I predicted technology would make fixed workplaces obsolete. I’d be able to do my job while at the beach or in a coffee shop and transmit it over telephone lines to an employer at another beach or coffee shop anywhere around the world. I predicted fixed residences would also become obsolete. I figured if I weren’t tied to a workplace I would become geographically un-tethered. I could travel on motorcycle, or recumbent bicycle across the US and either camp or stay at youth hostels along the way. I predicted the same would be true of relationships ..I would form them as I went. Everyone would. The idea of marriage or monogamy wasn’t in the cards ..and I considered the possibility that they may not even be compatible with who we are as a species. I admit, I got a lot of my ideas from the book ‘future shock’, the ‘whole earth catalog’ and a broken home. I remember the girl sitting beside me going “Man, ain’t no way you got a girlfriend, cuz if you do I sure feel sorry for her..!” However, the guy sitting on the other side was in shock. He looked like ‘preppie’ from the movie Love Story. He started out by saying his forecast was definitely more reality-based than mine ..and went on to talk about marrying his high school sweetheart and making partner at a precedent-setting law firm. Senator Edward Kennedy would be president. Decency and Christianity would prevail ..student protest wouldn’t be tolerated ..we’d win the war in Vietnam ..and defeat communism wherever it appeared. The standard of living would soar in the US ..Monsanto would make life better through advances in chemistry (making me think of Tomorrowland at Disneyland). And they’d live in a Mediterranean-style house in Benedict Canyon where his wife would stay home raising their two and a half children. He got a laugh out of that and for a moment I thought I had misunderstood the assignment. Looking back, I admit ..my ideas may have been offbeat ..but I was only eighteen years old. Now I’m not so sure they were any more or less ‘reality-based’ than preppie’s.

Mel Gibson

Los Angeles DA Steve Cooley doesn’t consider extortion a crime when other attorneys do it. Its “hardball legal negotiations.” Only people outside the profession mistake it for a crime. “Lawyering is a tough business,” he says. So, if I secretly record my neighbor skinny-dipping with his girlfriend then threaten to show the video to his wife unless he pays me $ 20 million (because I know the damages his wife could bring are far greater) ..I’m simply practicing tough ‘neighborly negotiations’..? As long as I don’t make the threat ‘explicit’, according to Cooley. In other words I cannot be charged for an ‘implied threat’. Better make sure I say something like “Hey George, love the rack on your skinny-dipping partner. Oh and by the way ..can you help me finance the purchase of that mountaintop retreat I’ve had my eye on.” I should avoid saying “Hey George, if you pay me $ 20 million I won’t show this video to your wife.” Funny, in my profession ..context and prior information can quickly add up to turn an implied statement into an explicit one [link]. Like if you were to find out I secured financing from a previous neighbor the same way. However, that’s inadmissible according to legal guidelines. So here’s my point. Mel Gibson’s estranged girlfriend secretly recorded him making vulgar and racist remarks during a party they hosted at his home. Similar comments had definitely hurt his career once before. The recordings came up during a recent custody battle where her attorneys suggested they would like to resolve the couple’s differences ‘quickly and quietly’ if he would agree to “..care for his ex and their daughter in a more generous way.” Instead of $12 million they wanted $20 million. According to Cooley that’s not an attempt at extortion by attorneys. Doesn’t matter if the ex-girlfriend had secured a stream of income from a prior relationship with actor Timothy Dalton in a similar manner. Now I’m no big Mel Gibson fan ..but I do know that threatening someone with character assassination for financial gain is illegal. I’ve seen it on TV and looked it up on the Internet. There may be a fine line between extortion and ‘aggressive negotiations’ in the legal profession, but they’d definitely haul my ass to jail for dealing with my neighbors that way.

Nomad

Frank is a nomadic dumpster diver. He’s frequently blitzed on meth and it shows. His eyes bulge and quiver. and his hands shake.  “Why do you do it ..?” I ask. One voice tells him it’s his reward for two tours of duty ..says it’s OK ..it’s just a phase (he was never around the stuff before). A second voice tells him he needs something to obliterate the first one when it starts sounding like bullshit. He tried taking courses at the city college but discussions in his political science class left him feeling conflicted between the patriotism he felt going in and the alienation he feels now. “Nobody gives a shit around here.” He’d leave campus pissed ..go back to his tent in a field near the airport and watch planes fly away ..imagining himself flying away someday too. Reminded me of a song that used to go through my head when I was on the road:

“This old airport’s got me down / it’s no earthly good to me / I’m stuck here on the ground, as cold and drunk as I can be / You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train / So I best be on my way in the early mornin’ rain.”

Song for Japan

The prophesies of Charlie

I think Charlie is trying to convince me he’s a prophet. He doesn’t come right out and say so because he knows that might sound bogus (even though I’ve never denied the possibility of prophesy). So he is going about it indirectly. He begins to narrate a series of recent events, in a telling manner, hoping I will reach that conclusion myself. He knows suggestion is more powerful than direct assertion. First he tells me that his mother is psychic. When his sister lost her car keys in the park, his mother emptied her head of all preconceptions and strolled randomly through the park until she came to a stop. When she looked down by her feet, there were the keys. Now I don’t doubt this story ..but I do believe he’s planting the suggestion that he inherited psychic abilities. Earlier this week he goes into a psychic/head shop. When he asks the owner what time the next bus is due, a female customer overhears and offers him a ride home. It turns out she’s an aspiring actress and tells him she can foresee a future where he finishes writing his screenplay and they meet again. Astonishing, he says. He tells me he is actually planning to write a screenplay but never mentioned it to anyone. I believe he’s offering evidence of supernatural forces at work. The next day he enters a rare coin shop owned by a friend and buys an ounce of gold (for around $1,300.00). Before he leaves, his friend throws in an extra coin for free. “Man, nobody does that ..ever” he says “..unless they see the end of times.” He goes on to say “Bill, I think it would be a good idea for you to put more gold in your survival kit. ..you’ll sleep better at night.” Now he’s recommending that I act on these forces. Then he tells me not to be alarmed, but he has experienced a profound breakthrough recently. More like a series of epiphanies actually. He predicts a tsunami hitting the coast of California, much like the one that struck Japan. He tells me that, as a   “psychologist” ,  I must surely know that society treats its prophets like psychotics. He recommends I organize my neighbors in the canyon and begin sandbagging and building retaining walls in anticipation. I tell him I’ll think about it. Skeptic that I am. Interestingly enough, he never once said he was a prophet. Although I came away with the impression he did. Implications are far more convincing than direct assertions. He got me to conjure-up this one by myself.

Psychology of facebook

Presented to the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies

Part two

Continued from [part one]  Now I want to talk about ‘discourse analysis’ and what it reveals about communication over social networks. Discourse analysis is the branch of psychology dealing the way people process information from what they hear and read. I think it’s telling. Face to face communication is a probabilistic event. Language is a relatively narrow band of communication that can only suggest what the speaker has in mind. This presents the listener with a range of possibilities. Communication is successful only when the listener infers the most likely meaning intended by the speaker. Ordinary conversation is generally successful because we have context to help guide us along. We rely on facial expressions, intonation, emphasis, location and other visual and auditory cues. However, where ordinary communication is probabilistic, text messaging is a crapshoot. Text is cryptic. Context is lost and we rely on memory to supply the missing cues. However, memory is fallible. Research in discourse processing has shown that the biggest piece of missing information we supply is the intention of the speaker ..and it’s their intention that we most often get wrong. We perceive threat where none was intended. Offense at what may have only been sarcasm. By nature, the flow of conscious experience is displaced over social networks. This simply means it occurs outside the context of our immediate situation. That’s the beauty of the Internet. It allows us to share experiences that are ‘displaced’ in time and space with users from all over the world. It also places a heavy burden on text comprehension, which is much less developed than speech comprehension in the language centers of the brain. I believe this will provide a rich source of field-observation for the study of human consciousness for years.

Psychology of facebook

Presented to the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies

Part one

Anthropology:   I’m going to start with what I know about anthropology, which isn’t much but I feel it’s relevant. In my view, facebook is a fairly tame and nontoxic community – unlike others I’ve been in (such as high school, workplaces, dinner tables, neighborhoods, yahoo chat rooms). Without a constitution or written protocol, congeniality prevails. I think this says something about human nature.  Social networks are tuned to the way we are wired.  Like taking the first step out of a cave and into a larger community where there’s no anonymity – it’s best not to offend anyone. Privacy is a recent development. Tribal villages are more typical of human existence. Just look at the indigenous people of the Amazon. They live in circular settlements with one wall surrounding the perimeter, but no walls on the inside. They’re never alone and everyone can see what everyone else is doing. It pays to be on-guard and congenial otherwise you risk offending others and being banished from the tribe. In the Amazon, that means certain death. I believe that’s where the fear of abandonment comes from. I’m not talking about some trendy catch-phrase from pop psychology. It’s built into our constitution because it was essential for our survival. The threat of death-by-banishment is no longer real but the feelings certainly are. So, on facebook ..we tread carefully.

Behavioral science:   Psychologists have known for a long time now that there are few things more rewarding in life than validation from our peers. It beats television and ice cream and it’s the motivation underlying most communication. That’s why Twitter is so widely popular. Without let-up, it provides a constant stream of validation for every thought that crosses our brain. Buddhist practice is aimed at countering a very active function of the human ego: impression management. We put a lot of effort into presenting the right ‘persona’ .. or the way we want others to see and remember us. There’s nothing spontaneous going on there. The messages we broadcast are anxiously crafted to make us look the way we want to be perceived. Don’t believe me ..? Look no further than politicians approaching an election year. Newt Gingrich recently found religion because it sends the right message to Christian conservatives. Mitt Romney has ‘reinvented’ himself to look stupid and appeal to the average voter. What people choose to share on facebook in no way presents the whole picture. It’s not our nature.

Part two continued here ~>[part two]

Superstitious behavior

Apparently the American public believes in superstitions that are no less primitive than those of natives living in the rainforest or suicide bombers of radical Islamic sects. Members of a Midwest Baptist church claim that U.S. service men are dying overseas “..in divine retribution for American decadence and tolerance of homosexuality.” Now, I don’t have a problem with the Supreme Court defending their right to free speech. What bothers me is when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. goes on to imply that their beliefs represent those of American society. According to Roberts: “The content of Westboro’s signs plainly relates to broad issues of interest to society at large regarding the moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, and the fate of our nation.” In addition, he says their beliefs “reflect matters of public import” [link]. Now if I’m to believe what I’m hearing from the highest-ranking justice in the land, then Americans are indeed a superstitious group of people. “Thank God for IEDs ..Thank God for dead soldiers” .. (!?) Forget federal funding for schools. No amount of education in the world is going to counter that type of savage thinking.

Extraterrestrial adaptation

Robert Sapolsky

If an alien creature invaded earth by entering the brain of human beings, hijacking their nervous system and driving them to engage in high-risk ventures sure to lower their chances of survival .. you’d think some of us might notice something. Yet something disturbingly like this may be happening without notice. When mice get infected with toxoplasmosis, an alien bacterium, the toxoplasmum goes dormant inside the amygdala of their brain and reduces their fear of cats [link]. Cats eat the reckless mice and ingest the toxoplasmas where they wind up in the intestine mingling with others of their kind. Toxoplasmas reproduce sexually only in the gut of the cat, so suppressing the fear response in rats and mice is a sure way of gaining entrance into the cat intestine. Neuro-practitioners call this ‘adaptation by behavioral manipulation’ [link]. A parasite learns to manipulate host behaviors that enhance their own chances of survival. In other words, these alien bacteria learn to perform brain surgery in order to get rides to wild parties where they can exchange DNA and procreate!

Apparently these clever little creatures have found their way into people too. Nearly one third of all humans have dormant toxoplasmas sleeping inside their amygdala. Since people are pretty high up in the food chain ..the only real threat comes from themselves (or perhaps an unsuspecting bear or mountain lion). Chances are, infected individuals will start acting recklessly and wind up getting killed in a car accident involving excessive speed. So they only appear in the traffic section of the paper, or the actuarial tables of an insurance company. Otherwise, symptoms appear close enough to schizophrenia that they wind up in a psychiatric population and are never heard from again. I think I would call this a successful alien predation.