If Your Last Name is Erikson, Should Your First Name Be Erik? And Other Existential Queries

Filled in for my wife last night and lectured for her Intro to Psych course. It was the chapter on lifespan.

And of course it got me thinking. As if I need to prep for a lifespan lecture to over-analyze my life and my parenting style and if my kids are attached to me and if I am de facto in the middle of a mid-life crisis and did I leave the iron on?

But maybe you know about Erikson and his psychosocial stages of development and maybe you know there are conflicts at certain stages of life and that we, typically, resolve these conflicts positively or negatively.

And maybe you are a complete success in every facet of your life and don't worry about such inanity.

Bully for you but Ima (in the parlance of our times) share anyway.

Middle Adulthood:

Generativity vs. Stagnation:

Through child rearing, caring for others, productive work, and community involvement, the adult expresses unselfish concern for the welfare of the next generation.

or

Self-indulgence, self-absorption and a preoccupation with one's own needs lead to a sense of stagnation, boredom, and a lack of meaningful accomplishments. 

Sheesz, exclude the middle a little bit more there Erikson.

Where is the nuance my man? Where is the spectrum? You know a little bit here a little bit there, sometimes more than others.

Have you seen the next generation? They need a whole lot more than my unselfish concern. They might need breathable air and drinkable water.

And define meaningful. Some of my tweets are pretty profound!

Check Out The New Digs?

Digs is obviously a noun here.

Or is it?

Consider that everybody and their brother and sister and friend's dog walker is misusing "literally" to indicate surprise:

"Registration is literally tomorrow!"

Mmm, good times.

Rules schmules.

Anyway, tell me what you think of the new layout.

Bold! Too bold? Not bold enough? Does it clash with the drapes?

Say something!

The Information

Did you see the movie Sneakers?

I’m thinking about this facebook hullaballoo and how just a certain amount of information can, in theory, influence important matters.

Now the logician in me knows all about the fallacy ad populum or “if a million people jump off a bridge, are you?” Consider:

• 1     We can now hear the voices of a million people, easily. It’s called the internet.
• 2.    Size matters. From your quarter-pounder down to the number of Russian bots on Facebook and Twitter posting this and that to get you thinking one way or another.

Buyer beware you might say. Don’t believe anything you see on Facebook or Twitter you might say.

That is an option certainly but psychologist know about something called internal bias or “birds of a feather flock together” and so do the designers of the bots and their messaging and they know how to sneak “what you want to hear” in front of you.

And you my friend are as susceptible to internal bias as everyone else.

It gets worse.

But what will we do when technology can truly mask the giver of the information or simulate the authenticity of the giver of the information?

Here is what I mean:

Let us say your trusted news source is the NY times. What are you going to do when the bots simulate the NY times with the accuracy of a counterfeiter of money or art?

What if the trusted telly you watch can be counterfeited?

Don’t poopoo this idea. Technology will certainly allow for this. Certainly. Without a doubt.

So why did I lead off with the Sneakers query?

The plot of Sneakers revolves around a program (a box in the movie) that is capable of breaking the encryption of nearly every computer system.

Currently we are substituting encryption for biased messaging (based on data collected about you) and the amount of messaging. When you hear information that already agrees with your worldview, even if that information is factually incorrect (in the age of alternative facts) you act and behave a certain way. And vote a certain way.

Two scenes from the movie are important and prescient:

And more importantly:

Extemporaneous Scribbles

It all starts with a beginning. Yes indeed. Only at the finish can you end. But the process is what you will experience along the way. Because wherever you go, there you are. Broken bridges are in need of repair and you, yes you, are just the person to mend because you are a healer. Or, I, did I get that wrong. Do, they call you a heel. That’s right it’s all coming back to me now. They call you a heel. And  a dick. 

You can’t get peat from a tree.

Two brothers. Their story. From rags to riches and never back to rags even though they spent a ton of dough on hookers and coke. 

We’re all guilty…of something. But your crimes are the most heinous. Why? Because of the massive wake of destruction and terror and suffering you’ve left from coaching the Browns.

What’s so civil about war anyway but let me tell you something else, free writing isn’t so free. There’s ink costs, paper costs, neuronal circuitry upkeep costs, random access memory storage fees, and someone’s gotta pay for it and it isn’t going to be me. No way no how.

Middle age is a lot like a mid-life crisis but fatter.

You can get Pete from a tree though by pelting him with beer bottles. What the fuck is he doing up there in the first place?

Let’s say you are writing dialogue and you want to write about a brit talking about glottal stops. How would you do it?
                “Ey! Wha in the bluh-ee ell? Me glau-uhl stop is bluh-ee bru-al roigh?

                “Hey what in the bloody hell? My glottal stop is bloody brutal correct?”

There’s an old joke about a sailor but I’m not going to tell you the middle.

Speaking of jokes, did you hear the one about the sailor?

Like All Gamblers Know

In the future they will talk about god having a good run on planet earth. They’ll talk with erudition about supernatural causation and the transition to monotheism and the millennia of belief and faith and power. Moreover they will wax about the authentic “at bottom” that is s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n. But then they will talk about how things changed and why they changed and how little incidences like the selling of indulgences and the reformation and antisemitism and schisms and wars in the middle east and how the exhaustion of explanatory power over time couldn’t compensate for the inability for religion to improve life on earth. This was no doubt hastened by the natural disasters that befell the planet as a result of climate change. But still. The pews grew empty while the labeling and the classifying as “spiritual” exploded in the twenty-first century till eventually a world of naturalists created the greatest standard of living earth’s inhabitants would ever experience.
But like fashion trends, god came back around. The material world and the real reality of it all was just as exhausting as religion. Or maybe, even with the standard of living, life was b-o-r-i-n-g. Sure the day in and the day out were great but a malaise of routine and mundanity fell upon the species like a wet blanket and the only way to feel warm and good was to have a little danger and a little risk: Supernatural risk; risk that involves not only this terrestrial life but also eternal skin in the game. Like all gamblers know, life is a little more exciting when you are betting big and when you know there is a possibility Vinnie may chop off your thumbs with an axe if you can’t pay up.
Science has its place and naturalism has its place but for real excitement, for real eternal-existential-Vinny-is-a-metaphor-for-hell excitement, you need faith and god and all that bullshit. 

blue void

What of this softening of the species? What of these humans that used to torture cats for entertainment who now want women to be able to marry women; what with all of their emotional intelligence?

What if the species grows soft but also can’t focus.

What of the luddites and those who withheld from the phones and the google and the screens and the digital world for a world of paper and soil and fire and sheepshanks and bricklaying and all the matter that really matters? Their minds attentive for hours at a time, their focus honed and keen for the slightest drop or change or nuance…yes nuance; they don’t need to be hit over the head for they are finely tuned and attuned unlike us, you and me, staring into the blue void and the mindless swiping in a digital love that renders us blank and brain-drooling and so desensitized to the stuff of stuff and the matter that matters that we don’t…notice, never do…the differences that aren’t digital as we fall the down that ones and zeroes rabbit hole for hours and hours and hours at a time numb as we fall, our brains flitting like hummingbird wings from this to that mindless, truly mindless soundbite and substance-free meme and sugar-laden a la cart idea that we agree and agree and agree with and contrast becomes vile never neutral and it becomes alarming and threatening because we’ve tailored and tailored and pruned and selected from the hits only those things we want to hear and feel and eat and know, especially know, over and over and over and we will not fight personal bias. Will not look in a mirror, will not question…who has time? I just got a text and it agrees with me and me with it and it soothes me, waves me back in from the matter that matters…and I look and the blue void calls to me and knows what I think I need which is what I need because perception is reality now and what were those people thinking thinking otherwise?

I Have Seen The Enemy

Ah, the ole meditation and near death experience connection. Two peas in a pod as they say.

“…the transformative effects it had on their lives…”

Actually, this is not as preposterous as it seems.

Don’t get me wrong: somebody is selling something.

But aren’t we all selling something in the end?

We are.

But consider the time-perception work of David Eagleman.

To me, Eagleman is creating a pseudo near-death experience to tell us that TIME SLOWS DOWN.

Not yet 21 years old I just missed a bad car accident and I can still remember with great detail the moments prior - the maroon colored car, my friend Jimmy Bell yelling, his hands on the dash, the field in the distance, the chrome bumper -because it seemed to be going in a slow motion.

Can Eagleman and his work lead to treatments for mental illness?

Maybe.

Maybe it can be tied to athletic performance to SLOW DOWN the opposition or the baseball or…?

You see where this is headed...MONEY.

This isn’t to say Eagleman doesn’t have altruistic intentions. He may.

That’s not really important.

What is important is our relationship with time.

Consider this sentence from Proust and The Squid: “Reading changes our lives, and our lives change our reading.”

Why should time be any different?

Time changes our lives and our lives change time.

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Another thing I’ll never forget is my existentialism professor talking about time and how time will change for you when the doctor tells you its cancer.

Relativity isn’t the enemy folks. Be it time or ethics. Relativity is the truth that will set you free.

Something No One Could Take Away

I’m reading Proust and the Squid – The story and science of the reading brain and did you know that Socrates was worried about the written word?

He was worried about what it would do to memory; worried about the power of memory when there is the “crutch” (my word) of the written word as a reminder.

Sound a little inane to you?

Well this middle aged googled-brained sapien wants his memory back. I’m not talking anything major but considering the power of my memory in undergrad that allowed me to ace a perfect score on a Continental Rationalism Spinoza exam and with now and how if I get rolling in a conversation I can’t recall this or that actor’s name or the bass player on Kinda Blue (Paul Cobb? Mr. PC?) or yaddi yadda, it would be nice to not have to google things or IMDB them. (Just used IMDB as a verb)

Consider this passage from the book:

                Certainly my children’s eighty-six year-old Jewish grandmother, Lotte Noam, would flummox future generations. On almost any occasion she can supply an appropriate three-stanza poem from Rilke, a passage from Goethe, or a bawdy limerick--to the infinite delight of her grandsons. Once, in a burst of envy, I asked Lotte how she could ever memorize so many poems and jokes. She answered simply, “I always wanted to have something no one could take away if I was ever put into a concentration camp.” Lotte prompts us to pause and consider the place of memory in our lives, and what the incremental atrophying of this quality, generation by generation, ultimately means.

 And I complain about traffic. SMH. But...

Strong word: atrophying.

It is, your memory, atrophying.

One of the first songs I wrote that would be played in front of people went something like this:

Do you remember, when we were kids?
Life so easy and so carefree
take me back now because I need to see
Do you remember?
I remember
Do you remember?
I remember

From the oral to the written and from the written to the digital…the times they are uh changin’.

Maybe I’m just wistful.
Maybe I’m just scared for my kids.
Maybe I can still recall the definition of god – being consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.

Mode – that which the intellect perceives of substance as if constituting its essence.

Memory is essential, from the greek ontos – that without which a thing cannot exist.

Nice To Meat You

Is eating meat objectively wrong? To answer this we have to know what objectively means. Let’s start by pointing out that objective is understood as the opposite of subjective. Subjective basically means one person’s point of view.

So when we ask is it wrong to eat meat we can’t just go ask a dude or a gal because then our answer would only be subjective. Consider that said dude and gal may have different answers.

Things are getting tricky.

So how on earth can we know if something is objectively wrong or right if we can’t ask anybody? How can we know anything if we can’t ask anybody?

Don’t panic.

There are some, oh let us call them, for the moment, factoids that we consider to be true without asking anybody.

Like 2+2=4.

We don’t need Dude or Gal’s input here or anyone’s input. We don’t even need anyone to exist. If the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct and they’d opened up coffee shops and we kooky humans never existed, 2+2=4 would still be true. Right?

For now, yes.

But let us consider this “never existed” bit, because this is actually a good way to think about objectivity. Whenever asking if anything is objectively true or right or moral we can ask, even if people didn’t exist _____ .

Let’s try it:

Even if people didn’t exist, eating meat would be wrong.

*Cogitates*

So lions are morally in the wrong when they eat meat?

The Venus Flytrap?

Hmmm.

Maybe we need to instead ask is it objectively wrong for people to eat meat.

People may or may not be the worst but some do eat wurst, so we do need to know whether or not it is objectively wrong for them to do so.

How can we get “people eating meat is wrong” to seem like 2+2=4?

All the while minding our even if humans didn’t exist rule, ok fine, guideline.

Wait,

How can we talk about people eating meat while thinking about them not existing?

People are meat so we always, necessarily, have both at the same time. One can't be construed without the other.

This is getting weird.

It's getting meta...

wait for it...

OMG meta is an anagram of meat!

 Do you know what this means?!?!?