Rambling Nonsense

I remember telling my mother this when she turned 55. She thought it was funny.

Age gives you perspective. Some days I just want to scream, ” You’re an idiot”, but usually I don’t.

From the beginning of the US economic downturn there has been a steady drumbeat about “kitchen economics”. All the ranting heads keep talking about cutting deficits and balancing budgets. News Flash. Macroeconomics doesn’t work like that. We demonstrated that in the 30’s. It isn’t working in the US, it isn’t working in Europe. Liquidity, government stimulus, and psychologically learning that the largest fear is fear itself are the cogent facts of macroeconomics.

At work, I am dealing with people who speak in the latest business babble about added value, and becoming a leader in the field. There are no shortcuts in life. You get there by offering a superior product, having a well trained staff, and good marketing. These things are interrelated. You don’t get there by creating convoluted spreadsheets or firing people to show you are an effective leader. Having staff meet minimum requirements is fine, but firing staff when you have a backlog of work, and an unwillingness to pay top dollar for newer better staff, doesn’t get you there, either.

Amsterdam is now planning to make it illegal to buy pot in cafes for tourists. I’m curious what they think their big tourist draw is, or how this will stop the sales of weed there? Maybe the windmills will do it. In the responses to the article, one poster stated that very few people smoke pot after 40, and asked why? The answer is it is illegal, you will be labeled a pothead and unfit for advancement in most careers. The truth is that weed is much less intoxicating, addictive and problematic than alcohol, if it were legal and socially acceptable. People that smoke pot past 40 tend to be intelligent and less judgemental than those that smirk at childish pot head jokes. Go figure.

My mother was still very active at 55, she ended up dying at 69 from colon cancer. She had complained of bowel issues to a doctor, but that doctor did not follow up with diagnostic tools. She later had surgery and the surgeon made it clear that Chemo probably wouldn’t work. She chose to fight. The last year of her life, she slowly faded. I lived a thousand miles away and visited her when I could, but I should have moved closer. I regret that. At the funeral people talked about her bravery. What choice did she have?

I have sclerosing cholangitis and cirrhosis of my liver that is linked to my long term ulcerative colitis. My liver will likely fail in 10-12 years. I don’t see much promise in a transplant. The inflammation problem that is at the root of the diseases will likely continue and worsen. The five year survival rate for transplants is something like 70%, but less than 50% for 10 years. At that age (mid sixties) recovering from major surgery seems like a not to great existence. I suspect the doctor I discussed this with saw me more as a revenue source than patient. It’s OK though, I’m just another stupid patient.

I’ve had several people try to explain to me that science can be applied to religion, and that Christian or Muslim beliefs can be explained in a way that jibes with science.

Not really. Either they don’t understand science or secretly don’t believe the nonsense of religious teachings and are trying to convince themselves it makes sense.

People build up all sorts of myths to justify their behavior. People like to see themselves a moral, smart, sexy, and needed. Sometimes they do this by putting people in categories that are inferior to their own. Then when they do something immoral, stupid and ugly, it’s O.K. “Those” people deserve their lot.

I’ve noticed that very intelligent people sometimes fall into conspiracy theory traps. The world is a complex place. Yes, there are often things afoot we do not know about, but that doesn’t make a conspiracy.

My father was instrumental in teaching me to be grounded in reality, but that was a thread of thought through many of my relatives. Sadly, my father descended into such crackpot ideas as he got older. It became impossible to have an intellectual discussion with him, due to these obsessive thoughts.

In my twenties, I struggled with depression and read a book called “Feeling Good” by Dr. David Burns. It dealt with the obsessive thoughts associated with depression. It made me realize, I had fallen victim to my own internal thought processes without a basis for them in reality.

I stumble into intelligent people on the internet, in engineering and other areas that seem to have convinced themselves of something they cannot possibly know or verify. They resist attempts to steer them to rethink this. I see this a lot in political discussions. Intuitive thinking, while invaluable for getting an idea for something to pursue, is not rational thought. It’s a guess. Understanding the difference between facts and logical leaps is an important part of parsing crazy thoughts from rational ones.

While we cannot know every subject, there are lots of resources to explore and learn from. Choosing well established sources is the best starting point. If you want to move on to the extrema of ideas after getting a grip on the subject, that’s fine.  Just remember to take everything with a critical eye and grain of salt.

Spouting a paranoid fantasy doesn’t make you look knowledgeable. It often makes you appear foolish.

Sometimes I get annoyed with people that are constantly espousing the idea that every thing is just a matter of focusing the mind, believing something WILL happen, and having a positive attitude.

No, it isn’t. There is this thing called reality, that no matter how much you believe otherwise, that will hit you like a brick wall, if you refuse to see it.

Steve Jobs had a form of cancer that had high potential for cure, if treated early. Luckily he discovered it early. Unfortunately, he chose to avoid surgery and opted for ‘holistic’ approaches to treat it, that are mostly wack-job nonsense. The brick wall of reality hit him head-on and he died.

My father taught me the importance of being realistic, and being informed enough to make the distinction between the noise and nonsense of the BS artists and hard nosed facts. That is something I cherish.

I hear this stuff in business all the time. Over the years the buzz words have changed, but the message is the same. The truth is there is no substitute in business for being smart, treating people decently, and persistence. Lately, the focus on language such as saying, “I will do this or that” rather than “I’ll try”. Truthfully, the latter is more honest, if you are not sure that you can meet a deadline, or know all the variables involved.

The thing that leaders understand is power. If you force people through language or beating them with a whip, you can get more work from them. One method may be more palatable than the other, but there are great similarities. The fad of “Action Plans”, “Mission Statements and “Responsibility” has warped into mental imagery, commitment and stake holders. While these mental gymnastics have some utility in teaching people about how to get things done, and making an extra effort, they mostly are nonsense affirmations to a boss that his job and contributions are important. They are. Ignore him or point out the hypocrisy of some of his own methods, and you will be headed for an unemployment line.

I have learned that being laid back, but sincerely advising people on the problems that they may be creating and offering to assist (to some degree) them in overcoming these issues usually gets more loyalty and effort. If it doesn’t work, I try to be honest and simply say we cannot continue to have these issues and let them go. No diatribe about what crap they are, just wish them well and move on. Some people do look for a daddy. They want a magical leader. That, in my opinion, is a set up for failure. Some people look for socially moving up the food chain, or just want to topple the guy above them. It’s the herd mentality of man at work. A lot of human society is about that.

Be honest, to the degree people can handle it, be a good friend, and know what you are doing. That is the key to success, or at least liking yourself. However, being sharp, shady and phoney and hiding your real agenda may be an even better key to financial success. That’s reality. Sometimes it ain’t pretty. It is what it is. Don’t beat yourself up about it.

These are just a few random thoughts i was having today.

When one approaches the end of one’s life, or at least is faced with a terminal illness, you begin to look at success and failure in a different light.

If you are not providing for descendants, money doesn’t really matter.

The truth is, though, it never really has meant much to me. The friends and women that are in your life because of money aren’t really all that valuable themselves, they come and go. I don’t even mean fast women. We have an odd culture in America, that turns marriage into an institution not unlike prostitution. Marry a doctor and the woman is successful. A woman I know told me a few years ago that women that got married were the “winners”, the alpha females. They are superficial because of what motivates them. Perhaps that is why we are moving away from that institution. It’s very true that raising a family requires full time attention. Many couples work together and the wife still works, but so often I see the women surrender to the task of child rearing, who then becomes fallen behind the women her age who worked. It’s a rude awakening for many of them.

Live for Today, was a popular song and idea in the late sixties. I thought most of my life it was a rather naive sentiment, but have come to see it as rather valuable advice. 

It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t worry about consequences, just that one should not depend on one’s ability to predict the future, and that one should live his life fully in the moment, fully present, not lost in thought about what may never happen.

Religion seems to me a rather self centered act, designed to give yourself a greater importance than you may feel in the noise and confusion of real life. Christopher Hitchens made fun of the idea of a God who demands your worship and surrender of self, or he will “unfriend” you and send you into perpetual torture. I’m not sure most religious people actually think out the rather odd ideas about God in religion, however. It’s also a desire to have a Mother or Father figure to guide you. There are a lot of hard and ugly realities in life, and many simply do not want to or cannot face them. There is a difference between being soft hearted ( generally good) and soft headed ( generally bad).

I had a discussion with my Family Practitioner Friday. I am frustrated that there seems to be little coordination going on between the various doctors I am seeing, but at least she understands that I am not willing to spend hundreds of thousands of my money or anyone else’s for a few extra years. My internist noted that a transplant was simple. Lots of livers, since people die in car accidents all the time, he suggested. That doesn’t explain why you have to go on a list, though. “You simply have to take another pill.”, he said. While five year survival rates are somewhere around 70-80%, 50% of those die in the first year after transplant. The ten year survival rates drop to around 50%. Age and health are determinants. I’m 54. I have an auto immune condition (they think) that likely caused my cirrhosis, ulcerative colitis, removal of my gallbladder, and primary sclerosing cholangitis. I also have asthma and damage from a heart attack. By the time I’m eligible for a transplant, I’m likely to be 60, an age they used to use as a cutoff for eligibility. None of my doctors have engaged me in this discussion.

My internist seemed to be selling me something. He comes off as aloof, and doesn’t even think about cost. That bothers me. The Family Practitioner advised me that Memorial Hospital charges more than other clinics in the area, and that many people complain about that. My internist’s name is on a list of people who are invested in Memorial, which I thought was a non-profit. The list was posted on a reception desk when I checked in for my Gallbladder surgery. It is supposed to be non-profit.

As with most things in psychology, it’s a matter of degree.

All of us have psychopathic tendencies. It’s in our DNA. It’s an animalistic instinct. The difference is whether it dominates your personality, is well hidden or “controlled”, and whether it is reckless. It also depends on circumstance. In wartime, societies that win, accept the psychopathic behaviors of soldiers and generals. In politics, the rough and tumble of elections or power grabs are filled with psychopathic behaviors.

Recently, someone published a book describing the psychopaths in business. Of course there are psychopaths in business. They are all around us. It is a part of human nature to be aggressive, cunning and self centered. The difference between the diseased behavior and normative tendencies is partly the situation, and whether the pain inflicted on others is discovered, or accepted.

This is the nature of socialization. How we internalize societal norms, and interact within a group defines us to the group.

Some people have reacted to the idea of sociopaths or psychopaths in business as a description of the current source of economic woes. Well, of course, some of it is exactly that. Some of it is herd mentality. They do it, so should I. Today I read a reaction to that idea that was filled with repulsion, and then merrily went about blaming it on psychopaths in government. The guy posting that reaction is highly intelligent and capable of good analysis, but he seems completely oblivious to the stupidity of both ideas.

This is the kind of sophmoric thinking that drives me up a wall. There are differences in our abilities to problem solve and conceptualize ideas. Mostly it is a learning issue. It’s a failure to understand critical analysis. Until we can educate people on the differences between poor logic, poor generalization, “them or us” thinking and sound analysis, I see us repeating cycle after cycle after cycle. To quote Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare and Company, died. I didn’t know his name, or anything about him really, except he established a store in Paris. Dallas had what I assume was a related bookstore in the Galleria. I used to live close by and would spend many weekends and evenings in that wonderful store.

It often reminded me of the years as a teenager and child I spent in the Greene County Library. It was a ancient building, and small. Yet, despite the tens of thousands living in Greene County was rarely crowded. This was where I really recieved most of my education. My father encouraged us to read, and introduced us to the library. I loved the small room filled with poetry, and the ladder you had to climb to hide between the stacks of books in the upstairs. I would ofter ride my bike the mile or so to spend a day in the library and get lost in the words of the authors.

I still read a lot, I couldn’t imagine a world without access to the brilliance and ideas of others. Book burners of yesterday, and SOPA of today are antithetical retreats into ignorance. When people ask me about where I learned about this thing or that thing. I tell them is no substitute for reading. I wish everyone could know that. The fact that the library was often nearly empty is a sad thing, even though it made it a secret pleasure for me.

I recently had some surgery, and post op took some Vicodin to alleviate pain. Vicodin is a combo of hydrocodone and a form of Tylenol. It was effective but caused my digestive tract to slow to a crawl and made me very drowsy.

Hydrocodone is a synthetic opiod.

I only took it for 4-5 days, but noticed my dreams began to become very realistic and even blurred with my awake state. In other words, I would wake up and realize I was only dreaming, but the memory of my dreams seemed very real.

I have smoked marijuana and even taken some LSD years ago, and never really experienced the dream like state of this drug. I’ve read that opium was popular at various times for the sense of pain free well being it induces and the vivid dreams. Of course it is highly addictive, in the true sense of the word.

I guess I can understand someone wanting to escape into a dream world, but today one would have to be an idiot not to be aware of the addictive problems associated with opiates. Idiots like Rush Limbaugh. That should scare anyone away from it.

I saw Dr. Drew the other night talk about maijuana and his stance for legalization. He went on to say it was addictive. In my opinion, this is pure Bull Shit.

 I did some google searches trying to find some serious discussions about this. It’s hard to find. I really didn’t. I did find one article that said the latest DMSO ( a psychiatric definition book) was going to clarify the distinctions and overlaps between obsessive compulsive disorders and psychological addiction.

Many people experience a pleasurable effect from smoking ( ingesting THC) pot. This can lead one to become habituated to seeking for this pleasurable effect. That is the essence of psychological addiction. But there is more to it than that.

Many people find a pleasurable effect from eating ice cream. Based on the above criteria, ice cream is also addictive.

Marijuana also can distort thinking. Ice cream generally does not. The question is whether there is a persistent distortion that occurs. I don’t think it does. There are studies that purport to show brain changes, but they do not show the causal effect to be pot. The changes could well be associated with mental disorders such as OCD.

One of the reasons that I listened to Dr. Drew is that he is touted as an addiction expert. He runs a rehab unit and has become a famous TV personality with several celebrity based shows. While I think this makes a mockery of rehab, and his off the cuff diagnosis of celebrities he has no personal knowledge about is nothing short of quackery, he continues to be sought after for his opinions.

We have a problem in this country with addiction. Actually, we have two problems. The courts see addiction as a crime. They call it possession or distribution, but they basically lock people up for clear medical issues. The second problem is a rehab industry. While purporting to be for the benefit of addicts and society, they are mostly simply money making machines for doctors needing more yachts. They try to define a variety of issues as addiction in order to boost their business. And people and courts buy into this crap.

We have a problem in our culture with obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD) because we don’t educate people about the long term problems that this behavior can cause. We actually promote this in a success driven culture. One discussion I have repeatedly with immigrants to this country is how we in the US work all the time and have no time for a family or social life.This is an issue the Presidential candidates should be discussing. You don’t need a McMansion to be secure

People see that antibiotics and other drugs can be dramatic in solving medical issues, so they continually look for “cures” to their problems with drugs or treatments. Some reject that completely and think everything should be natural. Neither attitude makes much sense. Both are obsessive in nature. To study something, one needs to look at it with a disinterested and critical eye.

The continual blather of people with emotional problems and addictive issues about how rehab saved them is all over TV and the internet. They terrify ignorant parents about the dangers of drugs, and lure kids into thinking that drugs are the bestest party favor ever. Are these really the best people to listen to for advice? They screwed up their own lives, and likely are still screwed up. Parenting involves teaching children, having ground rules, and SPENDING time with your kids and listening. Quality time is quantitative. If you run away from being a parent by working all the time, or have your own social issues, work on those, so you can educate your child. That is the best cure to raising a well balanced and sane adult who can think for one’s self.

I grew up in a working class suburban mid-west household of the sixties. My mother did not work outside the home, she was relatively passive in making family decisions. My father was domineering, like many men of that era. He was highly intelligent, but showed serious deficits in some areas such as psychology and healthy relationships. His family line has a history of some psychological problems. His mother was a bit obsessive and constantly was in spats with her sisters. His aunt and his sister committed suicide in their older years. His father abandoned the family, was accused of alcoholism, although I have reason to suspect this accusation. I offer the above as evidence of the denial in my family of mental disorder tendencies.

American culture has changed regarding rearing of children. Most educated adults of my age did not punish their children by hitting/spanking them. Most educated adults and TV promoted ideas of equality of women and different races/ethnicity. These shifts in psychological norms are a good thing.

Mental/personality disorders are still viewed today with cynicism as is psychology. It is a source of shame and psychology is often viewed as rationalization to excuse personal failings.

While people will commonly tell you about how they have struggled with physical disorders and diseases, they tend to hide any mental issues. They draw a sharp line of distinction between the physical and mental. Of course, we know that this simply isn’t true. Mental and physical ailments are intricately intertwined.

We see similar psychological labels used to describe underclasses as lazy and financially successful people as go-getters.

We live in a era where narcissistic personalities become famous and successful. Dick Cheney and Bernie Madoff recently have offered rationalizations for their behaviors.
Cheney created a fiction to justify invading Iraq, and Madoff lied to accumulate wealth, and justifies it because of a culture on Wall Street. People suffered greatly in the wake of their actions. TV aggrandizes “reality” stars who have learned to dramatize their lives to make cheap entertainment.

It seems to me, it is well past time for Americans to begin to understand the value of strategies like cognitive therapy and balance in one’s life, rather than the obsessive monetary success driven culture of today. We seem to have developed a completely unhealthy political climate, and a culture of extremist focus on issues. These psychological shifts are bad things.

Barry Goldwater did not win the presidential election of 1964, in part because he was labeled an extremist. “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” We seem to have lost that balance, even though we seem to have advanced somewhat in family rearing ideas. We did elect a moderate in the last presidential election.

I have learned about dealing with my reactions to stress, which commonly is exhaustion and depression. Taking a break, and mostly learning to abate the obsessive internal dialogue that cognitive therapy addresses, is key. Some see that as laziness, or interpret it as a sign of addiction, because I advocate a reform in drug laws. I think the drug laws, particularly marijuana, are based on ignorance and bigotry, as well as the continuation of a justice/police/penal system that profits from it. I have never advocated abusing drugs. We have a medical culture that promotes drugs as a solution which is often quite true, but also sometimes is a shortcut to a more holistic approach. The use of statins and some psychoactive drugs are based partly on a belief, by some in the medical field, that patients cannot make changes in lifestyle.

I have several afflictions besides a tendency toward depression and obsessions about perfection. They include heart disease, obesity, asthma, arthritis, and ulcerative colitis. They all have relationships to my mental state. If I am stressed, they tend to become more symptomatic, and conversely when they are symptomatic, they affect my mental state.

My mother always slept well. My father rarely did. He complained of a variety of disorders and always spoke about how he suffered more than others. He did have allergies and developed diabetes. He died at eighty. My mother died at 70 from colon cancer.  I still tend to sleep well.

I have used my diseases to avoid being overly stressed at work in the last few years. I used to never talk about them. They are worse now that I am older. I know how to ignore them and meet goals, but I don’t always believe that is the healthiest choice.

My father could never admit that he manipulated people to try to gain sympathy and avoid responsibility. The truth is people learn this trick at a very young age. The truth is we all use this in varying degrees whether we paint ourselves as stoic and selfless or weak and vulnerable.

When you’ve known someone a very long time, you often know how they use these tools in their life. I posted an article about Chronic Fatigue research in the UK that suggests there is a psychological component to many of the cases, which resulted in threats of violence against the researchers. A sure sign of obsessive thinking and defensive behavior. While it’s important to not dismiss people’s claims of suffering, one should take reasonable  precautions against buying anything hook, line, and sinker. A need is a need, a disorder is a disorder whether it is psychological or physical. Most disorders are both.