The Free Self Project

A Few Recent Poems

2010-01-30T00:59:00.001-05:00

A recent step-up in my journaling has produced a great deal of poetry. I'm no poet, but I found these two samples to be very pleasing to me. I hope you enjoy them:

Winter Is Not Death

Winter is not death
Winter is the dark slumber
   that anticipates the spring.
Winter is the still blanket
   under which dreams of sun-kissed beauty
   find solace and rest, till better days arrive.
Winter is not death,
   but the promise of life renewed.
   And nature always keeps her promise...
   Every year, the spring does come again.
Winter will end one day,
   and the warm spring sun
   will wake and kiss me, too.

Solitude

In this sacred space of mind,
I search for life and yearn for love and
in this sacred space of mind,
I meet with you, and wish you well,
and promise always to be true to you, and
in this sacred space of mind,
I open my chest to you,
and bare my treasure to you, and
in this sacred space of mind,
I protect you and keep you safe,
and smile with you, and hold your hand, and
in this sacred space of mind,
I welcome your presence, and I wait for you, and
in this sacred space of mind,
I remember you, and I remember your pain,
and I remember your want, and I remember your hurt, and
in this sacred space of mind,
I belong to you, and I am free.

New York - My First Taste

2009-11-08T23:55:00.001-05:00

So, tonight completes my first full two weeks in New York. What do I want to say about New York? What hasn't already been said about New York? I guess I'll just start with the facts.

I left Raleigh on Saturday, October 24, 2009, with about $2k in the bank, and just enough personal belongings to fill a small bedroom. By the time I reached Richmond, Virginia, I was pushing my way through a wall of cold water and high winds. Anticipation and excitement drove the truck, but anxiety and terror drove my conscious mind.

Up until the day I started packing, I'd been feeling really relaxed, and really excited, fantasizing about what it would be like, and planning the things I wanted to accomplish here. But when the packing started, the fear took over. I think, from the moment I left Raleigh, to the moment I parked the truck in Manhattan, I was nearly completely dissociated.

I've never done anything like this before.

Well, thats not true, in a material sense. I quit a steady job in Chicago to spend three months in Europe. Thats pretty dramatic. Then, I drove around the country looking for a place to land afterward. Why I chose Raleigh is still something I am trying to understand, but first things first. This move to New York is different than those leaps, for a few reasons (not including the financial padding I had back then).

First, I wasn't moving toward something. I was moving away. I was escaping the orbit of my old life. I was leaving the old solar system behind. I was achieving a certain kind of freedom that rests on self-assertion and possibility. I was indulging myself, in a way I'd never dared indulge myself before. And it was entirely funded by years of self-denial in the past. So, the changes of 2007, while a challenge to my old self, were much different from today, because they didn't require me to live in reality. They didn't require me to make choices, to define my values consciously, to prioritize my needs according to any constraints of that reality. I could select anything arbitrarily, according to whim, and have it (within a certain limit).

Today, its different. I have to make choices that necessarily limit or restrict other possibilities. I have to consciously choose what I want very deliberately, and very practically. And every choice I'm making is a kind of assertion I am utterly not used to experiencing: it is a declaration of commitment to certain preferences and needs I am prepared to fulfill, to the exclusion of all others.

There are many reasons why that is terrifying to me, but I think I can narrow it down to two: First, what if I'm wrong? What if what I *think* I need really isn't true? Second, is the moral argument. How do I know I deserve it? In the first case, I've spent many years telling myself that I don't really need the things I was asking myself for.

All you really need is food and shelter and clothing, Greg. The rest is superfluous luxury. The rest is self-indulgence of the highest contemptibility. The rest is what everyone else does. You are not everyone else. You are different. You are better. You are stronger than the rest of them. You don't need those things because you are beyond all that. You look on what all others do and need, and you catalogue and evaluate and assess. You do not indulge. You do not dirty yourself with these things.

Over the last two years, I've worked hard to understand who that voice was, and why he was there. I know now, that he is a defense. A small boy trying desperately to fit into a hard, cold world, full of "guilty" pleasures, and family duties, and "callings" from God. A boy who learned that needs are punishable offenses. Preferences are contemptible. Desires are deadly things. To survive, he had to eschew them all.

And here I am - here in New York - nearing the end of that tunnel now, chasing preferences, pleasures, desires and needs, with a degree of aggressiveness I've never employed before. I don't think I properly respected the degree of difficulty of this task. You won't get far in this city, if you're timid or insecure. Adjusting has been a huge challenge for me. One I think I'm up to now, though.

This city is enormous. Anywhere else in the world, this city would be a whole country unto itself. Its incredibly more intimidating than Chicago, significantly more busy and dirty and cosmopolitan than London, and a world apart from my early life in the country. All big cities stretch skyward, and bulge to fill the land they rest on. But here, there is an extra dimension: both the buildings and the people press up against each other in competition for space, for attention, and for warmth.

Since my visit of major European cities in 2007, I've found myself more and more drawn to this kind of life - a life surrounded by people, filled with new experiences, and offering as much promise as can possibly be crammed into the latter half of life that I have left. I've been afraid to pursue it, though. Afraid of the struggle to survive, sure, but more so afraid of the responsibility it would place on me, for both defining, and going after what I want this half of my life to be about.

Hiding in the woods was a safe decision, because choices - and human contact - were incredibly limited. I could blame my small existence on my surroundings. I could lay my fears, my anxieties, my resentments, and my frustrations, all at the doorstep of "its not available out here". I was creating a reality for myself, that the voice was demanding: a world in which anything but shelter, food, and clothing was superfluous nonsense. Monks don't do responsibility.

Here in New York City, you can get anything you want, anywhere in the city, any time of the day or night. Everything from batteries to boats, candy apples to condominiums. I've seen more farmers markets and fresh hand-baked goods in the last two weeks here, than in the last 20 years of living in rural Illinois and Wisconsin. Its all here. If you can't achieve a goal or realize a dream in New York City, chances are, you're not going to realize it anywhere. I guess thats probably a lot of pressure to be putting on myself. But, then again, the clock is really ticking for me in a lot of different areas of my life, so I think some pressure is probably a good thing.

The first week was spent in "L" Hostel, on 118th and 7th avenue in Manhattan. Coming from the suburbs, I was expecting to be terrified of everyone and everything, after dark. In point of fact, though, I found evenings in Manhattan far less fearsome than the same time period in downtown Raleigh. Sure, there are plenty of homeless, an unhealthy amount of trash on the streets, and loads of people out milling around at times when visions of sugarplums should be dancing in all our heads, and sure, that makes those parts of the city uncomfortable at times. But I didn't feel threatened at all. In fact, for the most part, just about everyone I've approached for directions, for advice, or for recommendations, has been more than willing to help me out, and offer an opinion. I know some New Yorkers will cringe at this public pronouncement, but I've found this city to be generally one of the friendliest places I've ever lived.

During the day, in that first week, I was catching the subway to various locations to look at apartments, and in the evenings I hung out with friends, and research new potential homes. My original plan was to "swoop" in, find a place with multiple bedrooms, and rustle up roommates who would go on the lease with me. Not such a good idea, it turns out. Finding places was easy. Like I said, you can find just about anything, anytime, anywhere in this city. Apartments are certainly on that list. But where the plan broke down, was in the roommate department. Even in the friendliest place in the world, you really can't expect someone to cosign a lease with you, the day after they first meet you. I'm still not sure why I expected otherwise. I certainly wouldn't have expected that anywhere else I've lived.

After 5 straight days of pavement pounding and disappointments, I decided to find a sublet instead. It took me one day to find a sublet - and in an area that is only 20 minutes (subway + walk) from work, to boot. I tried to move in that weekend, but the exhaustion of the week had taken its toll, and I ended up dallying so long on Sunday (and then getting on the wrong bridge), that the storage place was closed before I got there.

Which reminds me, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friends Bill and Charlotte for their patience and their help. If not for their support and assistance, this whole adventure would have been a good deal more painful than I had already made it for myself. They are proof positive to me, both that this is one of the friendliest cities in the world, and that FDR works. We were able to negotiate with great success, what was best for me to figure out for myself, as well as getting the help I really needed, when I really needed it -- and when things got really stressful for either them or me, we were able to talk it out with RTR. In simpler terms, I don't believe any of this would have been a possibility for me, were it not for (a) the power of the ideas discussed at Freedomain Radio, and (b) the friendships I've learned to nurture in and through that community. Philosophy really does make all things possible.

My first full week of "living" in New York was spent on an air mattress (again, thanks to Bill for the help). The apartment is comfortable, and in a great location for me, but its a lot colder in here than I'm used to. Nights are typically around 58 - 60 degrees, and days are between 62 and 68. Those are INDOOR temperatures. The problem with air mattresses, is that the air in them does not absorb your body heat the way a standard mattress does. So, sleeping on the air mattress in a cold room, was like lying on a slab of marble in a drink cooler.

But those first few nights actually helped to make the days significantly more enjoyable to me. The first piping hot shower, and the morning's first hot cup of coffee - taken from a coffee shop on the walk to the subway - really got my core body temperature up in a hurry, and made the morning feel electric. I do that every morning now, to remind myself of that first morning. Its very invigorating, and I really enjoy having the comfort of that routine to look forward to every morning. It gives the day a real sense of forward momentum and purpose, for me.

The new job - the primary catalyst for this move - has been a mixed bag of curiosities, frustrations, possibilities, disappointments, and a whole range of new temptations and old yearnings. I really enjoy most of the colleagues I'm working with, and I'm especially enjoying the work environment. Its very open, very relaxed, and very goal focused.

There are some challenges, though. I don't have a clear understanding of the expectations for me, as of yet, and I'm also not sure the folks I'm working with have that either. While it has taken me a good 4 days to get my workstation completely set up for the work I've been asked to do so far, it only took them 4 hours to pull me away from filling out in-processing paperwork on the first day, to throw me into development meetings.

Still, I'm feeling really energized at the possibility of being able to do something intellectually challenging at work again. The contract work was draining me of my will to persevere, and seriously affecting my self-confidence. This job has the potential to be both a stable means to my career change plans, and a rewarding intellectual effort unto itself. For both those reasons, I am very eager to stay engaged, and the environment I'm working in is geared toward encouraging it. So, things should prove interesting on this front, over the next year or so.

The "DUMBO" district of downtown Brooklyn is gorgeous, comfortable, and friendly. That area of Brooklyn reminds me a lot of areas of London I visited in 2007. I get a great feeling being there - like anything is possible, but its ok if the only thing that does happen is that we find a good restaurant for lunch. The people on the street there, are purposeful and directed, but not to the extent that you might see in the financial district of Manhattan. No hyper-aggressive suits, or angry cab drivers. The whole area is like a movie set. I can see why they say this is one of the best places to work in New York.

Now, I am settled pretty well in my first apartment - just a sublet - and I am moving into my second full week of work. One of the things I'm particularly looking forward to, is connecting with like-minded folks here in the city, and more fully developing the friendships I've already established.

For all the benefits of living in a large city, I think the one that has attracted me the most, has been the potential for human connection. My experience, since starting this journey four years ago, has been that the more connected I have been to others, the more possibilities I have opened up for myself. Its quite true that you can be surrounded by people, and never experience that connection. In other words, the city doesn't guarantee you will find kindred spirits to share your life with. However, the life I was leading until I began this journey, was certainly guaranteeing the opposite - and the older I got, the more certain that guarantee became.

So, for me, coming to New York is a massively huge demonstration of commitment to my true self, that I genuinely want to change that. Not only because of the population density, but because New York puts me as close as I can get to (or conveniently able to access at some distance) as many of my friends as possible. In short, New York is about my relationships. To others, as well as to myself. And, as I said earlier, if I'm going to succeed at them, the best chance for that is right here and if I can't make it work here, then it was never going to happen anyway. As Stef puts it: best to hit the wall going 90MPH, so if you fail, you know for sure. New York City is just about as 90MPH as one can find anywhere in the world, when it comes to personal and professional growth....

Job Interview Preparation...

2009-10-11T20:51:00.001-04:00

Because of his experience in this area, and because of the great deal of value I've gained from my conversations with him over the years, I asked my good friend Stefan Molyneux if he wouldn't mind helping me prepare for a job interview I was scheduled for, a couple weeks ago.

He kindly agreed, and the following video is that conversation. My actual interview was a great deal more technically oriented than this role-play, but what really mattered, were the fundamental principles touched on at the core of this interchange.

Reconditioning myself to be honest, both with myself and with people around me, has been one of the most difficult undertakings of my new life. But, in every case like this, once I push myself past the wall of fear and anxiety around being rejected or disapproved, the other side is always so much easier, and so much more fun, than I thought it could be

I ended up getting the job, thanks in no small part to the help I got from Stef, in this prep, and I am certain that I will at least be starting off on the right foot, with my new coworkers. They are a great bunch of folks, who appreciated the sincerity and curiosity I brought to the table, and who reciprocated that in spades.

I highly recommend listening to this, if you're in the job market - especially, if you're in I.T. It's not going to tell you which language to learn next, or what technologies to be prepared for, or even how to "look". But what it will help you with, is finding the fundamental confidence within yourself, to be who you really are, and let the chips fall where they may...

A Nature Break...

2009-09-16T18:58:00.006-04:00

Here's a little treat for y'all who read my blog. I went hiking yesterday, and this is what I saw:

Poem: Coaxing Passion

2009-09-15T00:30:00.001-04:00

While trying to muster enthusiasm for a think-piece I am trying to write, the following poem burped up. I don't quite understand all that it means, but I felt profoundly content and relaxed after writing it:

Pictures that paint words
to the song in my soul
smiles and sunsets
tears and trains
the heavy feeling of memory
lost in the depths of my sinking heart
but not lost to the moment.

In tangles of torn thought
the hatchling lies nested
wriggling and squirming and calling out
for nourishment.

The sky fills
with wing and mother
and the cry of the past
and the call of the future
come together at twilight
to venerate the day
and beckon the coming night
with loving embrace.

Intangible thought
ethereal feeling
winding like smoke through my life
and I still cannot see
what you want me to see
the words incomplete and the pictures fading
into the transparency
of waning desire...

I hope you enjoyed it.

The Emergent Person - Carl Rogers

2009-09-10T17:20:00.004-04:00

The following is taken from excerpts of Carl Rogers' "On Becoming a Person". Car Rogers describes how therapy transforms an individual from a "mask bearing" false self, into the true self underlying the mask. Here is what he believes emerges from that process:

"What kind of person does [the therapy patient] become?" I would like to point out some of the characteristic trends which I see... I do see certain generalizations which can be drawn, based upon living a therapeutic relationship with many clients.

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE

....in this process, the individual becomes more open to his experience... it is the opposite of defensiveness. Psychological research has shown that if the evidence of our senses runs contrary to our picture of self, then.... we cannot see all that our senses report, but only the things which fit the picture we have.

Now, in a safe relationship of the sort I have described, this defensiveness or rigidity tends to be replaced by an increasing openness to experience.... He also becomes more aware of reality as it exists outside of himself, instead of perceiving it in preconceived categories. He sees... not all men are stern fathers, not all women are rejecting mothers, not all failure experiences prove that he is no good...

It means that his beliefs are not rigid, that he can tolerate ambiguity. He can receive much conflicting evidence without forcing closure upon the situation. This openness of awareness to what exists at this moment in oneself and in the situation is, I believe, an important element in the description of the person who emerges from therapy.

TRUST IN ONE'S ORGANISM

A second characteristic of the persons who emerge from therapy is... that the person increasingly discovers that his own organism is trustworthy, that it is a suitable instrument for discovering the most satisfying behavior in each immediate situation.

...Think of the individual faced with some existential choice: "Shall I go home to my family during vacation, or strike out on my own?", "Shall I drink that third cocktail which is being offered?", "Is this the person whom I would like to have as my partner in love and in life?"... To the extent that this person is open to all of his experience, he has access to all of the available data in the situation, on which to base his behavior. He has knowledge of his own feelings and impulses, which are often complex and contradictory... He has a relatively accurate perception of this external situation and all of its complexity. He is better able to permit his total organism, his conscious thought participating, to consider, weigh, and balance each stimulus, need, and demand, and its relative weight and intensity. Out of this complex weighing and balancing he is able to discover that course of action which seems to come closest to satisfying all his needs in the situation, long-range as well as immediate needs.

INTERNAL LOCUS OF EVALUATION

The individual increasingly comes to feel that this locus of evaluation lies within himself. Less and less does he look to others for approval or disapproval; for standards to live by; for decisions and choices. He recognizes that it rests within himself to choose; that the only question which matters is, "Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?"... To recognize that "I am the one who chooses", and "I am the one who determines the value of an experience for me", is both an invigorating and a frightening realization.

WILLINGNESS TO BE A PROCESS

The individual seems to become more content to be a process rather than a product. When the client enters the therapeutic relationship, he is likely to wish to achieve some fixed state: he wants to reach the point where his problems are solved, or where he is effective in his work or where his marriage is satisfactory. He tends, in the freedom of the therapeutic relationship to drop such fixed goals, and to accept more satisfying realization that he is not a fixed entity, but a process of becoming...

"This whole train of experiencing, and the meanings that I have thus far discovered in it, seem to have launched me on a process which is both fascinating and at times a little frightening. It seems to mean letting my experiences carry me on, in a direction which appears to be forward, towards goals that Ican but dimly define, as I try to understand at least the current meaning of that experience. The sensation is that of floating with a complex stream of experience, with a fascinating possibility of trying to comprehend its ever-changing complexity."

The Therapy Experience, According To Carl Rogers

2009-09-10T14:23:00.003-04:00

Carl Rogers walks us through the emotional experience of therapy, as he observed it in many of his clients. I offer it here, as an example of what to expect in therapy, as well as an opportunity to empathize ("I" is the client; "him" is the therapist):

I'm afraid of him. I want help, but I don't know whether to trust him. He might see things which I don't know in myself -- frightening and bad elements. He seems not to be judging me, but I'm sure he is. I can't tell him what really concerns me, but I can tell him about some past experiences which are related to my concern. He seems to understand those, so I can reveal a bit more of myself.

But now that I've share with him some of this bad side of me, he despises me. I'm sure of it, but it's strange I can find little evidence of it. Do you suppose that what I've told him isn't so bad? Is it possible that I need not to be ashamed of it as a part of me? I no longer feel that he despises me. It makes me feel that I want to go further, exploring me, perhaps expressing more of myself. I find him a sort of companion as I do this -- he seems really to understand.

But now I am getting frightened again, and this time deeply frightened. I didn't realize that exploring the unknown recesses of myself would make me feel feelings I've never experienced before. It's very strange because in one way these aren't new feelings. I sense that they've always been there. But they seem so bad and disturbing I've never dared to let them flow in me. And now as I live these feelings in the hours with him, I feel terribly shaky, as though my world is falling apart. It used to be so sure and firm. Now it is loose, permeable and vulnerable. It isn't pleasant to feel things I've always been frightened of before. It's his fault. Yet curiously I'm eager to see him and I feel more safe when I'm with him.

I don't know who I am anymore, but sometimes when I feel things I seem solid and real for a moment. I'm troubled by the contradictions I find in myself -- I act one way and feel another -- I think one thing and feel another. It is very disconcerting. It's also sometimes adventurous and exhilarating to be trying to discover who I am. Sometimes I catch myself feeling that perhaps the person I am is worth being, whatever that means.

I'm beginning to find it very satisfying, though often painful, to share what it is I'm feeling in the moment. You know, it is really helpful to try to listen to myself, to hear what is going on in me. I'm not so frightened anymore of what is going on in me. It seems pretty trustworthy. I used some of my hours with him to dig deep into myself to know what I am feeling. It's scary work, but I want to know. And I do trust him most of the time, and that helps. I feel pretty vulnerable and raw, but I know he doesn't want to hurt me, and I even believe he cares. It occurs to me as I try to let myself down and down, deep into myself, that maybe if I could sense what is going on in me, and could realize its meaning, I would know who I am, and I would also know what to do. At least I feel this knowing sometimes with him.

I can even tell him just how I'm feeling toward him at any given moment and instead of this killing the relationship, as I used to fear, it seems to deepen it. Do you suppose I could be my feelings with other people as well? Perhaps that wouldn't be too dangerous either.

You know, I feel as if I'm floating along on the current of life, very adventurously, being me. I get defeated sometimes, I get hurt sometimes, but I'm learning that those experiences are not fatal. I don't know exactly who I am, but I can feel my reactions at any given moment, and they seem to work out pretty well as a basiss for my behavior from moment to moment. Maybe this is what it means to be me. But of course, I can only do this because I feel safe in the relationship with my therapist. Or could I be myself this way outside of this relationship? I wonder. I wonder. Perhaps I could....

Rogers goes on to say:

What I have just presented doesn't happen rapidly. It may take years. It may not, for reasons we do not understand very well, happen at all...

For the most part, my own personal experience of therapy has been like this. And, as he says, it has taken me two years so far, to work through it. I'm still not done, but I feel I'm close...

Yearning To Be Honest - A Review of "Real-Time Relationships: The Logic Of Love", by Stefan Molyneux

2009-09-09T22:14:00.004-04:00

The following started out as an attempt to write a review of the book "Real-Time Relationships: The Logic Of Love", by Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio.

What it turned into, I believe, was an impassioned plea to myself. As the future would have it, I chose not to listen...

October 18, 2008:

Honesty. It's a deadly word. Everyone says they want it. Everyone says they hate a liar. Everyone says they despise the evading coward. Well, as Doctor House likes to say, Everyone Lies.

The stated goal of Real-Time Relationships is to equip the reader with the tools to deal productively with the emotional content of his relationships, and thus, achieve greater happiness and pleasure within them.

What one soon discovers, however, is that those tools are buried deep within a philosophical jungle thick with the vines of epistemological and ethical necessities that, it turns out, cannot be hacked away, without destroying the tools we seek.

The author, Stefan Molyneux, considers his previous book, "Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics", to be his most important and groundbreaking work, but quite frankly, I think it is this book.

UPB was certainly a controversial concept - a methodology, presented as a theory, which could itself be used to validate normative assertions - and it was certainly foundational to the work in Real-Time Relationships, but RTR seems to me to be a much more important work. Not just because it is a culmination of the psychological and philosophical work that Molyneux has done up to this point (how magnificent, for example, to find such a well thought-out definition of love and virtue!), but because RTR shows a vision of how the world could work - at the individual, personal, practical level - that far exceeds what human beings seem to have been capable of practicing throughout history.

RTR, at it's core (and thanks to UPB), is a manifesto for consistently achieving the Aristotelian "Life of Virtue" in a sustainable way in your life, right now. What's more, it's a logically consistent masterpiece that demonstrates how the Life of Virtue - as revised and refined in this book - is indeed the only real path to happiness.

But I can practically guarantee you are not going to want to have anything to do with it.

Why do I say this?

Because, as Doctor House says, everybody lies.

Human societies worldwide have adopted some variance of the Epicurean view of happiness: comfort, or more precisely, the mere absence of pain. The way this manifests itself in the West, at least, is in the principle of anxiety avoidance. EVERYTHING is sacrificed to it, including our distaste for violence. In fact, as Molyneux explains in this book, we are so committed to the core principle of anxiety avoidance, that the sacrifice of all other principles (like non-violence) in the service of it, is redefined as THE ONLY REAL virtue.

In short, we lie to ourselves regularly, in order to avoid painful truths, and in so doing, condition ourselves into the belief that lies are more valuable than the truth. How? Because it feels better when we lie - and the number one goal is to not feel bad.

Molyneux makes it plainly clear that if you put the principles in his book into practice, they will not feel good. Not even remotely positive. At least, not at first.

This is not because he is trying to sell some sort of masochistic religious purification doctrine. Rather, it is simply an empirical and logical acknowledgment that, if we've all had our feet bound at birth, then we're all going to suffer some discomfort - perhaps excruciating at times - if we choose to unbind them so that we can walk as nature intended.

I have been involved in Freedomain Radio from very early on. I can attest that the principles laid out in this book have been available to me through the example of Stefan Molyneux and others there, from the very beginning: moral standards are only moral, if they're universally applicable; positive obligations only exist where virtue is present; virtue only exists where choice is present; love (the ultimate positive obligation) is an involuntary response to the presence of virtue; and, honesty is the first virtue.

Which brings us back to the real heart and soul of this book.

This book is about making a commitment to honesty.

But when I write that, I know it can only be misunderstood. The honesty spoken about in this book is not the kind of honesty wherein you get to tell your wife she looks fat in those jeans.

It's the kind of honesty that exposes us bare, helpless, shivering, and vulnerable to the world. It's the kind of honesty that could only come from a place so primordial in us, as to precede our very first painful experiences of this earth. A place so whole-heart and whole-body committed to the joy of life itself, that fear of pain isn't even a conception yet.

It is an honesty so saturated and absorbed in love of self and in the potential of the human soul, that doctrines of the iniquity of existence and the corruptions of the flesh need not be repudiated, because they are simply out-shown, washed-away, left behind to shrivel in the desert of nihilistic hatred and shame.

It is an honesty that I have not been capable of.

At least, not consistently.

And that is how I know you will more than likely not want to have anything to do with this book. I know who you are. I've lived in your world. I've been drinking your poison for decades - and for many of those years, I even liked it.

It has taken me nearly three years of isolation, self-reflection, and study to even begin to regard myself as someone capable of honesty, capable of happiness, capable of love - and STILL, after all that work, I periodically choose to drink the poison; to lie to myself; to inflict the poison on those around me, struggling to escape the same fate.

That is how I know you will hate this book.

Because you, the you who is reading this, is not you who yearns to be free of the poison.

The you who yearns, is buried, somewhere in there, deep down, bound and gagged, struggling to cling to what little vitality is left, desperate for a chance to stand naked in the sun - tender pink flesh scarred by years of binding and sensitive from years in the darkness of the inner dungeon - desperate to breath the cool, crisp, clean air of an Earth free from fear and shame.

If you want to live, you need to stop drinking the poison, and come with me.

The State Is Anti Social

2009-09-05T22:25:00.001-04:00

There is no rational justification for the irrational... this video is a fantastic summary of why...

Carl Rogers: 14 Significant Learnings

2009-09-02T23:08:00.000-04:00

These are taken from "On Becoming A Person", Chapter 1. The reason I am posting them, is that they run almost directly parallel to my own search for the essential virtues of happiness. I think Rogers just stated them in a different way. I found reading this portion of the book deeply gratifying. I hope you do too:

1. In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I were something that I am not. It does not help to act calm and pleasant when actually I am angry and critical. It does not help to act as though I know the answers when I do not... It does not help to act as though I were full of assurance, if actually I am frightened and unsure... most of the mistakes I make in personal relationships, most of the times in which I fail to be of help to other individuals, can be accounted for in terms of the fact that I have, for some defensive reason, behaved in one way on the surface level, while in reality my feelings run in a counter direction.... [this is HONESTY]

2. I find I am more effective when I can listen acceptantly to myself, and can be myself. I feel that over the years I have learned to become more adequate in listening to myself; so that I know, somewhat more adequately than I used to, what I am feeling at any given moment -- to be able to realize I am angry, or that I do feel rejecting toward this person; or that I feel very full of warmth and affection for this individual.... One way of putting this is that I feel I have become more adequate in letting myself be what I am. It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function... It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.... we cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change comes about almost unnoticed.... [this is CURIOSITY]

3. I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand another person... Is it necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think that it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements which we hear from other people is an immediate evaluation, or judgment, rather than an understanding of it.... I believe this is because understanding is risky. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And, we all fear change.... it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual, to enter thoroughly and completely and empathically into his frame of reference... my understanding of [my clients] permits them... to accept their own fears and bizarre thoughts and tragic feelings and discouragements, as well as their moments of courage and kindness and love and sensitivity. And it is their experience as well as mine that when someone fully understands those feelings, this enables them to accept those feelings in themselves. Then they find both the feelings and themselves changing. [this is EMPATHY]

4. I have found it enriching to open channels whereby others can communicate their feelings, their private perceptual worlds, to me. Because understanding is rewarding, I would like to reduce the barriers between others and me, so that they can, if they wish, reveal themselves more fully... I am enriched when I can open channels through which others can share themselves with me... I have frequently asked for "reaction sheets" from students - in which they can express themselves individually and personally regarding the course.... To open myself to these sharply different feelings has been a deeply rewarding thing. I have found the same thing is true in groups where I am the administrator, or perceived as the leader. I wish to reduce the need for fear or defensiveness, so that people can communicate their feelings freely. [this is HUMILITY]

5. I have found it highly rewarding when I can accept another person. I have found that truly to accept another person and his feelings is by no means an easy thing, any more than is understanding. Can I really permit another person to feel hostile toward me? Can I accept his anger as a real and legitimate part of himself? Can I accept him when he views life and its problems in a way quite different from mine? ...it has come to seem to me that this separateness of individuals, the right of each individual to utilize his experience in his own way and to discover his own meanings in it -- this is one of the most priceless potentialities of life. Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense; and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself. So find that when I can accept another person... I am assisting him to become a person... [this is GENEROSITY]

6 The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in to "fix things". As I try to listen to myself and the experience going on in me, and the more I try to extend that same listening attitude to another person, the more respect I feel for the complex process of life. So I become less and less inclined to hurry in to ficx things, to set goals, to mold people, to manipulate and push them in a the way that I would like them to go... [this is PATIENCE]

7. I can trust my experience. One of the basic things which I was a long time in realizing, and which I am still learning, is that when an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing, it is worth doing. Put another way, I have learned that my total organismic sensing of a situation is more trustworthy than my intellect alone. All of my professional life I have been going in directions which others thought were foolish, and about which i have had many doubts myself. But I never regretted moving in directions which "felt right", and even though I have often felt lonely or foolish at the time... I have found that when I have trusted some inner non-intellectual sensing, I have discovered wisdom in the move... As I gradually come to trust my total reactions more deeply, I find that I can use them to guide my thinking. I have come to have more respect for those vague thoughts which occur in me from time to time, which feel as though they were significant. I am inclined to think that these unclear thoughts or hunches will lead me to important areas. I think of it as trusting the totality of my experience, which I have learned is wiser than my intellect. [this is COURAGE... also, it's THE MECOSYSTEM!]

8. Evaluation by others is not a guide for me. The judgments of others, while they are to be listened to, and taken into account for what they are, can never be a guide for me... In later years it has sometimes jolted me a bit to learn that I am, in the eyes of some others, a fraud, a person practicing medicine without a license, the author of a very superficial and damaging sort of therapy, a power-seeker, a mystic, etc.... But I have not been too much concerned because I have come to feel that only one person... can ever know whether what I am doing is honest, thorough, open, and sound, or false, and defensive and unsound, and I am that person. I am happy to get all sorts of evidence regarding what I am doing and criticism and praise are a part of such evidence. But to weigh this evidence and to determine its meaning and usefulness is a task I cannot relinquish to anyone else. [this is PRIDE/Self-Esteem/Self-protection]

9. Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research -- neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience.

10. I enjoy the discovering of order in experience. It seems inevitable that I seek for the meaning or the orderliness or the lawfulness in any large body of experience. It is this kind of curiosity, which I find very satisfying to pursue, which has led me to each of the major formulations I have made.... It has enticed me to construct theories to bring together the orderliness of that which has already been experienced and to project this order forward into new and unexplored realms where it can be further tested. Thus I have come to see both scientific research and the process of theory construction as being aimed toward the inward ordering of significant experience.

11. The facts are friendly. Every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads on that much closer to what is true, and being closer to the truth can never be a harmful or dangerous or unsatisfying thing. So, while I still hate to readjust my thinking, still hate to give up old ways of perceiving and conceptualizing, yet at some deeper level I have, to a considerable degree, come to realize that these painful reorganizations are what is known as learning, and that though painful they always lead to a more satisfying because somewhat more accurate way of seeing life.

12. What is most personal is most general. I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves.

13. It has been my experience that persons have a basically positive direction. In my deepest contacts with individuals in therapy, even those whose troubles are most disturbing, whose behavior has been most anti-social, whose feelings seem most abnormal, I find this to be true. When I can sensitively understand the feelings which they are expressing... I find that they tend to move in certain directions. And what are these directions in which they move? The words which I believe are most truly descriptive are words such as positive, constructive, self-actualizing, growing toward maturity, growing toward socialization...

14. Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed. I am at my best when I can let the flow of my experience carry me, in a direction which appears to be forward, toward goals of which I am but dimly aware.... Life is guided by a changing understanding of and interpretation of my experience. It is always in process of becoming... I can only try to live by my interpretation of the current meaning of my experience, and try to give others the permission and freedom to develop their own inward freedom and thus their own meaningful interpretation of their own experience... If there is such a thing as truth, this free individual process of search should, I believe, converge toward it. And, in a limited way, this is also what I seem to have experienced...

My Life As An Atheist

2009-08-27T11:00:00.001-04:00

I published this over at Lost Liberty Café:

My Life as an Atheist

I have taken some time to get acquainted with the “Atheist Movement” in America (and elsewhere). In that time, I’ve read lots of accounts and testimonials describing individual journeys into atheism. I think my main goal in that search, was to try to gain an understanding my own personal experience, through an exposure to others’ experiences. But the more I’ve read, the less related I’ve felt to my intellectual brothers-in-arms. This disconnect isn’t because I haven’t been able to find other atheists to love and admire (there have been quite a few, actually). It’s not even because of the statism many atheists still cling to as a substitute for their lost religion. The disconnect I’ve experienced – the gulf between us – I believe, has been centered specifically around the journey itself.

I hope you find it useful....

Today's Parents 'Not To Blame' For Teenage Problem Behavior

2009-08-25T07:06:00.001-04:00

From ScienceDaily (August 2, 2009)

Poor parenting is not the reason for an increase in problem behaviour amongst teenagers, according to research led by Oxford University.

A team led by Professor Frances Gardner from the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford found no evidence of a general decline in parenting. Their findings show that differences in parenting according to family structure and income have narrowed over the last 25 years. However, the task of parenting is changing and could be getting increasingly stressful, particularly for some groups.

Parents and teenagers are choosing to spend more quality time together than 25 years ago, with 70 per cent of young people regularly spending time with their mothers in 2006 compared to 62 per cent in 1986. For fathers, the figure had increased from 47 per cent to 52 per cent.

This research follows a Nuffield-funded study in 2004, which identified an increase in both adolescent conduct and emotional problems over the last 25 years.

Despite the rise, this latest study shows that today’s parents are more likely to know where their teenage children are and what they are doing than their 1980s equivalents. The proportion asking what their children were doing has increased from 47 per cent in 1986 to 66 per cent in 2006.

Differences in the monitoring of teenage children, according to family type and income, have narrowed. For example in 1994, 14–15 year olds from single parent families were more likely to be out late without their parents knowing where compared with two parent families, but by 2005 this difference had disappeared.

Professor Gardner said: ‘We found no evidence for declining standards of parenting overall, and this leads us to believe this factor does not generally explain the rise in problem behaviour.’

Parents of teenagers are increasingly likely to report symptoms of depression and anxiety themselves, particularly one-parent families and those on low incomes. For example, the proportion of parents from the most economically disadvantaged group who reported symptoms of depression and anxiety had increased by more than 50 per cent between 1986 and 2006.

The research highlights a different set of challenges for parents compared with 25 years ago. Young people now are reliant on their parents for longer, with higher proportions of 20–24 year olds living with their parents. Many more remain in some kind of education or training into their late teens. In addition, the development of new technology, such as mobile phones and the Internet, has created new monitoring challenges for parents.

'Today’s parents have had to develop skills that are significantly different and arguably more complex than 25 years ago, and this could be increasing the stress involved in parenting,’ Professor Gardner said.

The research, commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation for a briefing paper, Time trends in parenting and outcomes for young people, was authored by Dr Ann Hagell, Head of the Nuffield Foundation’s Changing Adolescence Programme.

The research team reviewed published evidence, and analysed two sets of UK nationally representative data. The first was the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), with annual data on parenting reported by teenagers and their parents from 1994 onwards. The second data source comes from a related Nuffield-funded project, led by Dr Stephan Collishaw, to study causes of trends in youth mental health.

What is friendship?

2009-08-24T21:36:00.003-04:00

I was recently asked this question, in an email. I thought y'all would appreciate my answer. I think it sums up the fundamental yearning of humanity, pretty well:

For me, it all starts with a love of the truth: a commitment to reason and empiricism, and a willingness to act on the core virtues - honesty, curiosity, courage, generosity, humility, and compassion. Each of these, I find, often has a very different meaning for most folks than I have for them. "Honesty", for example, isn't the crass capacity to tell someone they're fat. It's the commitment to being open and vulnerable about your own emotional experience in the moment. A friend of mine defines "love" as an involuntary response to virtue. I think this is a great way of describing it at it's core, and the best way I've ever heard of defining it. But I don't think it's complete. Because we don't "love" abstract notions of goodness. We love the people who exhibit those good things, for exhibiting them. To me, this is the meaning of friendship: the willingness to share in the expression of virtue with each other. In this way, "making love" is not really just about sex (though that is not excluded), it's about cooking and cleaning and laundry, and going to the park for lunch, and moving furniture, and offering a lift to the store, and laughing at a comedy, and helping to change a flat, and offering encouragement and help for that university class, and listening to music (or singing!) together, and sharing thoughts about books and talking about ideas, and yearnings, and hopes and dreams.

So, for me, friendship is ultimately about love, and about sharing my life in a way that makes existence a real pleasure for myself, and for everyone with whom I choose to share it.

Now, I would like to ask you all to answer the same question, in whatever form or medium you choose: What would you describe as a good friendship? What sort of expectations do you have of a person you might call "friend", in the serious sense? What criteria is there to earning the love of friendship, in your view?

An Enumeration of Values - Or, Putting Virtue Into Context

2009-08-14T16:45:00.001-04:00

Someone on twitter posted a link to an online GTD-oriented website, called http://www.lifetick.com/

I'm absolutely in love with this site. I've always had trouble with the offline, two-dimensional-table approach to "task list management". That always felt so arbitrary and regimented to me. I had trouble staying motivated to "grind" through the lists, first because the box on my desk at home is the least convenient place to deal with "to dos", and second, because it always felt so pointless because I had no central focus to what I was doing. The lists were always just tasks related to "impulse" generated projects. Once the impulse subsides, so does the motivation to execute the tasks.

This site takes a a more wholistic approach, asking you to first define what your core values are. That really piqued my interest, because values - and what it means to live them - has really been waying heavy on my mind lately. This site really helped me to focus my thinking about them - and how to distinguish them from fundamental virtues. Stef always says, "reason = virtue = happiness". I agree with this. I've always appreciated this mnemonic for its simplicity. It makes it easy to remember what I believe in. But, for me, it's always felt a little "incomplete". His definition of love - an involuntary response to virtue - does add the necessary connection to finding inner peace, as well as respect from others. But I still wasn't satisfied that I had a clear picture of what it was I was trying to understand.

After all, I value those six virtues I always talk about. So, how is it they aren't values? Why aren't virtues and values the same thing? The core value feature in Lifetick highlighted what was missing. Turns out, they are values. Core values - at least, for me. But they're not the only values. They are components of just one of five core values I have. Identifying what those are, has also brought an additional insight into sharp relief for me: how I know what my core values are, and how do I know that I am living them?

I abhor lists, but found myself making one during a brainstorm session today, in order to isolate the themes under which all the things I valued might fall. I did this, so that I could keep my "core value" pie chart on Lifetick down to an easily readable image - and as a side-benefit, it's given me yet another mnemonic device I can use to easily remember what they are, and keep them in the front of my consciousness. Forgive the 'catch phrase' triteness, but this is what I ended up with:

CHARACTER - In other words "Virtue". This value includes self-knowledge and wisdom. It is all of the virtues. This value means taking care of my moral character. It involves the fundamental sciences, as well as psychology and philosophy. I've written extensively elsewhere about the six virtues that I believe are most important, so I'll just mention thm quickly here:

* Honesty - This is a willingness to commit to integrity to the truth.
* Courage - This is a willingness to pursue that truth, in spite of your fear.
* Curiosity - This is a willingness to explore and learn and understand oneself, and the world.
* Empathy - This is a willingness to be compassionate and curious of others.
* Generosity - This is a willingness to offer a helping hand, and to be patient.
* Humility - This is a willingness to commit to actualizing one's will in reality.

CONTENTMENT - In other words, "mental health". This category includes the acquisition of knowledge, and the pursuit of intellectual pleasures. It means taking care of my mind and my heart. It includes the sciences of psychology and philosophy, and for me, the arts of writing, drawing, and music.

CONSTITUTION - In other words "physical health" - this value includes hygene, diet, and exercise. It means taking care of my physical body. It includes the science of physiology, the art of sport, and satisfying basic needs such as Food, Water, Shelter, and Clothing.

COMPANIONSHIP - In other words "social health" - this core value includes friendships, romantic partnerships, acquaintencships and group affiliations. In some ways, this value cannot be acted upon unless the previous three have been. It means taking care of my relationship needs. It involves the science of psychology and sociology, and the art of negotiation and personal relationships.

CREATIVITY - In tother words, "vocational health" or "productive freedom" - It's central feature is freedom. It is the willingness to act, and to accept the consequences of those actions. It is the absence of the restraints of tyranny, as well as the absence of the anasthetic of avoidance and evasion. Without freedom, we cannot experience reality as it truly is, or express our selves within it, to our fullest extent. This is where my career goal lies. The pursuit of mediation is a culmination of all of these values, and as such, is the most creative expression of freedom I can think of, for myself.

My entire life - and everything I desire of it - can be summed up in these five categories of values. It's not a perfect list, and there are lots of overlaps and gray areas, and it is not a "concrete" list either - I can change it any time I want. But what it is helpful for, is providing the focus and direction I feel I need for deciding what projects to pursue, for prioritizing those projects, and for staying motivated to pursue the tasks in each one. The over-arching goal and direction for all of this, of course, is Happiness. The central theme, the heart of this work, has been learning to properly care for myself.

I hope this has been helpful.

Seth Godin On When To Pay Attention To Critics

2009-08-13T11:28:00.001-04:00

Seth's Blog: Critics that matter

...Some critics matter. (Your biggest customer, for example). Some are merely loud. Others are just difficult.... In our desire to please everyone, it's very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre. Far better to please the right people.... The challenge is in figuring out which kind of critic is worth paying attention to... [more]

Great bit of advice from the American Express OPEN Forum

2009-08-13T11:22:00.001-04:00

You Aren't Crazy, You're Just an Entrepreneur - American Express OPEN Forum

Martha Beck, O Magazine columnist and author of Finding Your Own North Star, has a very useful framework for describing the cycle of change experienced by new entrepreneurs. I explain it at least once a week to reassure my clients that “nothing is going right and it feels like the universe is conspiring against you, but you are not insane for thinking of starting a business, and once you get through this rough patch, things really will get better.” See if you can identify which square of change you are currently in according to Beck’s framework... [more]

Happy Birthday To Me

2009-08-09T22:12:00.000-04:00

("Cave man" lays out following sentence in Scrabble stones: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?")

Arthur: Six by nine? Forty-two? You know, I've always felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe.

(Faint and distant voice:) Base thirteen!

"It was a joke! It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story." ~~ Douglas Adams

In Math:

A base-13 number 42, therefore, is the same as four 13s plus 2, or decimal 54. So "six by nine" (six times nine) or decimal 54 is, in base 13, 42. For the mystically inclined, 42 in base 13 is the same as 110110 in binary (base 2).
Forty-two is an abundant number; its factorization 2 · 3 · 7 makes it the second sphenic number and also the second of the form { 2 · 3 · r }. As with all sphenic numbers of this form, the aliquot sum is abundant by 12. 42 is also the second sphenic number to be bracketed by twin primes; 30 also rests between two primes. 42 has a 14 member aliquot sequence 42, 54, 66, 78, 90, 144, 259, 45, 33, 15, 9, 4, 3, 1, 0 and is itself part of the aliquot sequence commencing with the first sphenic number 30. Further, 42 is the 10th member of the 3-aliquot tree.
42 is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester's sequence; like the first four such numbers it is also a primary pseudoperfect number.
It is the sum of the totient function for the first eleven integers.
It is a Catalan number. Consequently, 42 is the number of noncrossing partitions of a set of five elements, the number of triangulations of a heptagon, the number of rooted ordered binary trees with six leaves, the number of ways in which five pairs of nested parentheses can be arranged, etc.
It is the reciprocal of a Bernoulli number.

In Science:

The angle at which light reflects off of water to create a rainbow is 42 degrees.
Two physical constants in the universe are the speed of light and the diameter of a proton. It takes light 10 to the minus-42nd power seconds to cross the diameter of a proton.
The atomic number of molybdenum.

In Computing:

In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order.
In the reiser4 file system, 42 is the inode number of the root directory.
The GNU C Library, a set of standard routines available for use in computer programming, contains a function—memfrob()—which performs an XOR combination of a given variable and the binary pattern 00101010 (42) as an XOR cipher.
42 is the result given by the web search engines Google and Wolfram Alpha when the query "the answer to life the universe and everything" is entered as a search.
Advanced Micro Device's One off Overlocking CPU was named Phenom 42, with the number being partially from the book:The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

In Religion:

There are 42 steps to the Ancient Egyptians' embalming process (how to prepare a mummy.) Also, according to Egyptian texts, when a person dies, before going to the "duat" (underworld/netherworld), the soul must pass through the Halls of Amenti. This is where the soul is judged or weighed against 42 truths. Check out "The Fingerprints of the Gods" or "Message of the Sphinx" by Grahm Hancock and Robert Bauval if you want to know more about the origins of the sacred number we call 42.
There are 42 generations (names) in the Gospel of Matthew's version of the Genealogy of Jesus; it is prophesied that for 42 months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5);
42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabalistic tradition. In Kabbalah, the most significant name is that of the En Sof (also known as "Ein Sof", "Infinite" or "Endless"), who is above the Sefirot (sometimes spelled "Sephirot").[7] The Forty-Two-Lettered Name contains four combined names which are spelled in Hebrew letters (spelled in letters = 42 letters), which is the name of Azilut (or "Atziluth" "Animation").

In Law:

US TITLE 42—THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE
CHAPTER 42—NARCOTIC ADDICT REHABILITATION

In Sports:

In baseball the number represents oppression being lifted and the number 42 is universally retired because of Jackie Robinson's incredible story from breaking the color barrier in America's greatest past-time. Robinson's story of overcoming adversary and becoming one of the most influential players to ever dawn any uniform in any sport is one that is admired all around the world.

Miscelleneous Trivia:

Napoleon Bonaparte graduated 42nd out of 58 in his class at the Military School of Paris
The amount of cells in the classic board game connect four you ask? Well the answer to that astonishing question would be, you guessed it... 42!
A barrel holds 42 gallons.

I feel profound now. ;)

Profiles of the Godless...

2009-08-09T08:35:00.002-04:00

From: Newsroom | Center for Inquiry

The best statistical portrait yet available of atheists, agnostics, humanists and other nonreligious Americans, based on data collected from nearly 6,000 respondents, has just been published in Free Inquiry magazine (Vol. 29, No. 5, pps. 41-45).

Click here for a PDF copy of Galen's Free Inquiry article.

Click here for a PowerPoint slide show of Galen’s study.

Matt Reveals the Hoax is a Hoax at MacWorld

2009-08-04T23:18:00.001-04:00

This is priceless. Matt virally detonated his own viral success. Watch this for some genuine serious laughs. The army of animatronic robots is the best!

Relationships and Game Theory

2009-08-04T08:31:00.001-04:00

Google Reader (518)

Mark Colyvan: Mating, Dating, and Mathematics: It’s All in the Game (pdf, 8 pages)
Why do people stay together in monogamous relationships? Love? Fear? Habit? Ethics? Integrity? Desperation? In this paper I will consider a rather surprising answer that comes from mathematics. It turns out that cooperative behaviour, such as mutually-faithful marriages, can be given a firm basis in a mathematical theory known as game theory. I will suggest that faithfulness in relationships is fully accounted for by narrow self interest in the appropriate game theory setting. This is a surprising answer because faithful behaviour is usually thought to involve love, ethics, and caring about the well being of your partner. It seems that the game-theory account of faithfulness has no need for such romantic notions. I will consider the philosophical upshot of the game-theoretic answer and see if it really does deliver what is required. Does the game-theoretic answer miss what is important about faithful relationships or does it help us get to the heart of the matter? Before we start looking at lasting, faithful relationships, though, let’s get a feel for how mathematics might be employed to help in matters of the heart. Let’s first consider how mathematics might shed light on dating to find a suitable partner.

The Free Market Always Works

2009-08-04T08:19:00.001-04:00

This comes from one of the myriad mediation blogs I read, but I think this belongs over here in my personal blog, because it's a supreme example of how, in a free society, EVERYBODY WINS:

CKA Mediation and Arbitration Blog » Blog Archive » Win-Win Thinking on YouTube
Win-Win Thinking on YouTube

Mediators often speak of the win-win: parties working together to make the pie larger or construct a settlement or agreement that allows both parties to benefit. This is often a difficult concept for many people to work, especially in the world of intellectual property. The IP rights holder wants desperately to control the dissemination of the property, be it a patent, a film or in the case of the current You Tube viral sensation, the Chris Brown song “Forever”. They believe that they can only maximize profitability by limiting access or usage.

Upon learning that a YouTube video contains non-licensed music, most record labels will contact You Tube and demand that the offending video be removed for infringement. Chris Brown’s label or his publisher could have easily done so with the wedding video making the rounds.

Instead, they recognized an opportunity when the saw it and included a Click-to-Buy link within the video encouraging users to buy the song on Amazon or iTunes. As a result, over a year after its release, Chris Brown’s “Forever” has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list.

That’s creative win-win thinking.

This is why I think IP is really just a tempest in a teapot. If more people took this approach, the world would be a lot richer and a lot happier.

The Nonsense That Passes For "Philosophy" Today...

2009-08-03T09:40:00.000-04:00

The following is NOT an Onion article. It's a review of an ENTIRE BOOK of musings about the "obligations" we have to counter-factual realities. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this sort of thing anymore, but it still takes my breath away:

Roberts and Wasserman on Harming Future Persons : Ethics Etc
What are our obligations to persons who have not yet, but eventually will, come into existence? Can we harm them? Can we wrong them? Can the fact that our choice means that a worse off person will exist in place of a better off but “nonidentical” person make that choice is wrong?

Mediation Content Gets A New Home...

2009-08-02T22:57:00.002-04:00

FYI, for those of you who've been reading my mediation studies content. I'm breaking that out into it's own blog, so that I can continue to devote this to my own personal development.

The Independent Mediator Notebook is now live, and I'll be updating it regularly, as my study and research continues.

Why Blogger, when so many other more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing alternatives are available? Well, in a nutshell, because my focus is no longer on how fancy, feature-rich, personally customized, self-developed, or technically sophisticated I can make my sites look.

My focus is on producing quality content of my own - with as few distractions as possible - and learning as much as I possibly can about the nature of human conflict and the power of voluntary and compassionate relationships in human life.

The folks at google are doing a fine job of helping me make that possible.

Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink in Iraq

2009-07-23T11:59:00.000-04:00

Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink in Iraq by Michael Tennant

Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink in Iraq
by Michael Tennant, July 23, 2009

Iraq War proponents should be blessing the day Barack Obama took office. With his continued disastrous attempts to “fix” the economy, the front pages of mainstream newspapers are mercifully free of stories such as this one from McClatchy Newspapers:

BAGHDAD — The stench of human waste is enough to tell Falah abu Hasan that his drinking water is bad. His infant daughter Fatma’s continuous illnesses and his own constant nausea confirm it.

“We are the poor. No one cares if we get sick and die,” he said. “But someone should do something about the water. It is dirty. It brings disease.”

Everybody complains about the water in Baghdad, and few are willing to risk drinking it from the tap. Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, 36 percent of Baghdad’s drinking water is unsafe, according to the Iraqi Environment Ministry — in a good month. In a bad month, it’s 90 percent. Cholera broke out last summer, and officials fear another outbreak this year....

It is difficult to imagine that anyone’s antebellum definition of success in Iraq would have included the inability to provide safe drinking water in Iraq’s capital six years after the invasion, yet today the war’s cheerleaders would have us believe that as long as Iraqis have the right to vote, only a member of the “blame America first” crowd would point out that failing to meet one of the minimal requirements for a functioning, civil society just might be a sign of failure.

I blame the U.S. government first, last, and everywhere in between for the lack of safe drinking water in Baghdad. The problem is at least a quarter-century old, and for that entire quarter-century, the U.S. government has been the prime, if not the sole, cause of the worsening potable water situation in Iraq.

As the McClatchy report notes, “Baghdad's water network was due to be upgraded in 1984, but Saddam Hussein went to war with Iran instead.” What the report doesn’t point out is that a major supplier of weapons and other support to Iraq at this time was the United States, whose government had decided that Iraq must win the war at all costs, including turning a blind eye to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. Had the United States not been so heavily backing Iraq, it is entirely possible that Saddam would not have felt emboldened to undertake an invasion of Iran, thus sparing lives and money that could have been used to upgrade the Baghdad water system, as originally intended.

During the Gulf War (an unnecessary war if ever there was one given that Saddam had only invaded Kuwait with the Bush administration’s seeming consent) the U.S. military, based on a report from the Department of Defense, deliberately set about destroying Iraq’s water-treatment system, which the report noted was dependent on the importation of specialized equipment and chemicals — items that the Iraqi government was trying to obtain, in violation of cruel UN sanctions, in order to preserve its already fragile system. As Scotland’s Sunday Herald reported in 2000:

During allied bombing campaigns on Iraq the country’s eight multi-purpose dams had been repeatedly hit, simultaneously wrecking flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities — 20 in Baghdad, resulting in sewage pouring into the Tigris. Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq.

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: “It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” and includes foodstuffs, livestock and “drinking water supplies and irrigation works.”...

Water-borne diseases in Iraq today are both endemic and epidemic. They include typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio (which had previously been eradicated), along with a litany of others.

A child with dysentery in 1990 had a one in 600 chance of dying — in 1999 it was one in 50.

After the Gulf War the U.N., largely at American insistence, maintained a policy of sanctions against Iraq, denying it the ability to import the equipment and chemicals needed to repair its infrastructure since such items were considered “dual-use” materials, i.e., ones that could be used for the purpose of manufacturing weapons rather than purifying water. This led directly to the deaths of perhaps half-a-million Iraqi children, a “price” then-UN Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright in 1996 infamously declared was “worth it” to oust Saddam Hussein from power — an outcome that the sanctions, of course, never effected.

This brings us full circle, back to the current Iraq war and occupation; and no one but the U.S. government bears the blame for that war, seeing as how every one of the premises on which it was based has been totally discredited.

With the water supply already in a disastrous state, the invasion only made matters worse. McClatchy again:

The U.S.-led invasion six years ago led to wide looting of offices and the abandonment of purification systems.

During the sectarian and terrorist strife that followed, it was impossible to start improvements or repairs, much less complete them. Baghdad had to hire security personnel even for water projects. The U.S. military’s troop buildup starting in late 2007 also took its toll: One water pipeline was delayed for nine months because the U.S. built a blast wall across its path.

Since 2003, 500 city engineers have been killed, suspending hundreds of project plans, according to Hakeem Abdulzahra, Baghdad’s chief spokesman. Finding personnel to replace the dead also is never easy, he said.

During the war, displaced people flooded the capital, constructed shoddy new homes or camped out in abandoned government offices. They dug down and tapped city pipes, often using pumps to find water supplies. As a result, 6 million people use Baghdad water daily, but only 5 million of them use it legally....

In the absence of adequate sewers, squatters run pipes from their bathrooms into the street, turning it into a standing cesspool. The water lines are poorly sealed, and as the pressure goes down, raw sewage mixes with drinking water, not only for the squatters but also for anyone who relies on that water main....

The city has a 10-year, $6 billion plan to fix the problem, which involves shutting down the squatters' settlements. However, there's fear that shutting down the settlements would force families onto the street and reignite sectarian fighting; the settlements are a recruiting ground for Shiite Muslim militias.

Every bit of this must be laid at the feet of the U.S. government. For 25 years our government has, either directly or indirectly, been responsible for ever-worsening conditions in Iraq’s water-treatment system. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis have become seriously ill or died because successive presidents and congresses couldn’t mind their own business and, in fact, felt compelled to visit evil upon an innocent populace.

You don’t suppose any young Iraqis might come to hate America for this and decide to undertake terrorist attacks against us, do you? Nah, they only hate us for our freedom, as every good red-state patriot knows.

Michael Tennant is a software developer and freelance writer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Send him email.

Birth Order and Personality

2009-07-23T09:48:00.000-04:00

Birth Order and Personality | World of Psychology

Birth Order and Personality
By Diana L. Walcutt, Ph.D
July 22, 2009

Quick! Tell me what order you are in the family and what that means to you. Were you the youngest, the baby, who was taken care of, protected (perhaps spoiled) and not left to make your own decisions? Were you the oldest, who had all the pressure and demands placed on you to “set an example?” Or were you a middle, or lost child, who kind of fell through the cracks? You weren’t really special on either end of the spectrum, were you? You may have even been the peacemaker as the middle child, trying to maintain the calm in a family that was otherwise a little chaotic.

Some experts believe that birth order is an important tool in shaping how you turn out as an adult. It determines how you see the world, how you expect the world to treat you, and how you treat others. If you are the baby, you will probably marry a firstborn. Why? Because they already know how to take care of you.

It’s not a conscious decision, this. It’s believed by some to be innate. Middle children may either marry the oldest or the youngest, for different reasons. For instance, the oldest again will know how to take care of you. The youngest will allow you to be the one who takes care of them. “Only” children have another problem. They are accustomed to being the center of attention (good or bad) and this may be hard to overcome later on in life.

Psychiatrist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) first proposed a theory on the effect of birth order on personality. (Personalities are the way that we deal with all the tasks of life, including our professions, friendships and even ways that we entertain ourselves). Adler said that the firstborn children are “dethroned” when the next child comes along and that they may never recover from that.

One must also consider the spacing between children, the demographics or social status, changes in the household over the years, and the number of children that grow up in that house. If there is a gap larger than 6 years, you’re looking at two different generations. For instance, if you have a sibling that is spaced at least that far apart from you, think about the different things that the two of you discovered growing up—different music, technology, even world events. If you are living in the United States, you have seen many different presidents, different problems, and different celebrities. It’s almost like you don’t have a lot in common, other than your family.

Family size also matters. If there are 12 children, the “middle child” can be any number of kids, or none of them. The youngest, depending on the years between children, may always be the baby, but the oldest one may change as gaps occur in the birthing.

Another theorist, Frank Sulloway, proposed that birth order has strong and consistent effects our personality traits. For instance, he wrote that the firstborns are more dominant, less open to new ideas, and more conscientious than later-born children. Another author, Delroy Paulhus and his colleagues have written that later-borns were more rebellious, open, and agreeable.

We believe birth order has such a profound effect because we see the same characteristics in the adult child as we saw when the child was young. This is not always true, however. Events such as a parent’s early death, a divorce or remarriage can profoundly affect a child’s development. The same holds true if a parent has mental health or substance abuse problems.

Other theorists disagree with the importance of birth order. Judith Rich Harris proposes that we may be affected by birth order within the family, but that it doesn’t have an effect on our personalities.

I will be writing more about these ideas in the near future. In the meantime, I invite you to share your own theories and experiences with us. There are lots of different families out there, and lots of different ways of growing up. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.