Virginia Tech and the Bowl Haircut

Today marks the 10th anniversary of a shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech. The thing is, it was the second incident within five years, and the first incident was at that time most prolific shooting spree on a school campus resulting in the deaths of thirty-two (32) people and the wounding of seventeen others. (Note: there was another shooting near the VT campus involving someone who had escaped police custody, which resulting in VT suspending classes, etc. but the shootings did not occur on the VT campus.)

Facebook shows a history of posts made on that particular day in previous years, and it turned out that because the shooter in the first incident was of Korean descent, I posted a statement to the effect that when news broke out concerning the second shooting, Asian Americans were all sharing the same thought: "Please don't let me be another Asian (shooter)". 

I no longer remembered the context of my post, so I did a little research. This ends the prologue.

The shooter in the VT massacre was named Seung-Hui Cho, who was of South Korean descent. According various accounts, he was diagnosed with depressive disorder, anxiety disorder along with a team I didn't recognize: "selective mutism". Wikipedia defines the term this way:

Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder in which a person who is otherwise capable of speech becomes unable to speak when exposed to specific situations, specific places, or to specific people, one or multiple of which serving as triggers. This is caused by the freeze response. Selective mutism usually co-exists with social anxiety disorder.^[1] People with selective mutism stay silent even when the consequences of their silence include shame, social ostracism, or punishment.

I broached the idea of having the inability to speak up for one's self taken away and its impact on one's psyche in a blog post: https://samstabbed.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-minority-experience-bowl-haircuts.html  and I contemplate how this might have been magnified by the Korean concept of "Han": https://toisanboy.blogspot.com/2021/07/han.html  and I find myself  feeling sadness imagining how lonely and alone he must have felt while also recalling my own level of unhappiness during my high school and college years. I referenced that in a comment I made to that post ten years ago:

"the thing is, four years ago, i found myself thinking that my circumstances during college weren't all that different in terms of how estranged i felt from everything else at the time - except i preferred to make cutting remarks that left emotional scars. "

I still had my voice as an outlet to express my anger and frustration. Seung-Hui Cho with his selective mutism didn't even have that. And even though he received "treatment" for his diagnosed condition until his junior year of high school, it clearly wasn't enough.

The Good Doctor

is a television series (on ABC, to my great surprise, since they really haven't much of a track record recently for developing drama series) currently in their fifth season where the protagonist is a surgeon who happens who's been diagnosed with high functioning autism which has resulted in him having superior medical technical and diagnostic skills but limits his ability to relate to others in various situations. While the show is well written, I admit that the show generated an even higher level of affinity for me due to the unusually high percentage of asians in the cast and the show even features which might be the first ongoing interracial relationship in mainstream  network media featuring an asian male and a caucasian female. But the show is centered around the challenges encountered by the protagonist in navigating through his relationships professionally as well as romantically.

In the current season, the main story arc involves the hospital being bought by someone who places a high priority on patient/customer satisfaction, which includes ratings on doctor/patient interaction. Of course, the protagonist receives a number of poor ratings from treated patients despite the medical outcome, which results in the protagonist making efforts to improve his interpersonal skills, which have predictable results. Even so, despite his abrupt manner of delivery, the protagonist manages to communicate something that prompts someone else to alter their viewpoint (ostensibly for the better). It turns out that the protagonist's fiancee works in the IT department and has access to the patient feedback files, and she deletes a number of negative reviews, which results in an apparent improvement in ratings of patient feedback for the protagonist. In the closing scene, the protagonist concludes to his fiancee that the steps he's taken to improve his interpersonal skills have had a positive result and the scene ends with a shot of a neutral expression on the fiancee's face.

The scene clearly resonates with me on some level, though I can't tell you exactly why at the moment.

Roadrunner

is the title of the CNN movie/documentary about Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain committed suicide in 2018 and I was one of many Bourdain fans who grieved his passing. Actually, Bourdain was a hero to me, though I couldn't articulate why if you'd asked me. I suppose that if you had asked, I would have said that despite his being an atheist, his world view was in many ways similar to mine, food was a major constellation in his universe, we also share a certain degree of irreverence, but now as I look back, I can see that I also admired his search for truth. As I watched Roadrunner. it became apparent to me that, for all his success and accomplishments, Bourdain carried a sadness and void inside him that prompted his search for that truth. There were hints of that in some of his essays.

Bourdain lived a life most of us would love to be able to emulate: travel the world, try all those different and exotic cuisines, and uncover truths none of us would have known otherwise. But that success came with a cost. Being on the road 250 days out of the year cost him his marriage and contributed to his sense of inadequacy about being a good father. And when he *was* home, his celebrity prevented him from doing a lot of the things he wanted to do without being approached by fans/strangers anywhere he went.

I won't go into the details, but Roadrunner provides some insights that suggest Bourdain's suicide was motivated by an apparent romantic betrayal. To be fair, I got the sense that the other person had some avoidant attachment issues and Bourdain's behavior could be classified by some as a bit clingy motivated by being head over heels about this woman. The bottom line is that it recalls a quote from someone who I really respect, who observed that the loneliest moment in life occurs when you've given your all to something - and it lets you down.  I perceive that Bourdain spent his life looking for something he could believe in and give his life to - and when he thought he'd found it, it let him down.

To Females I've Known

If you're reading this I figure that you're either just curious, or this is actually addressed to you and there's something left unresolved between us important enough that you're here.

To any of my exes: if I met you in person today, I hope I'd retain enough composure to express the following thoughts, in roughly this order:

1) Hi! Well, this is awkward. 

2) I hope that you're well.

3) I know that things didn't end well and that the way I acted hurt you. I would have hurt anyone I was with at the time we were together. I was carrying a lot of pain and anger at the time and my behavior was my means of coping with it. Still, I chose my behavior and I take responsibility for everything I've done. If you haven't already, forgive me.

4) I don't want to make any more of this about me. If you have anything you want to say to me, I'll listen. 

To anyone who was interested, threw out hints that I didn't respond to, I apologize. It's quite possible I was attracted to you but I couldn't believe you were interested in me that way. It's taken me a long time to become comfortable with who I am.

Another World View

I've been focusing on the differences between the two cultures I've been exposed to all my life, and must concede that I never considered the idea that at least one other distinct world view exists. I find myself seeking to find terms to use to describe the categories that don't involve region/race/religion or anything else that might cause any sort of polarization or implication that one is superior or inferior. But I'm not sure that I can find these terms, because of the differences between the views, and also because the origin of the descriptions will probably reflect a bias of the describer. My stance on that is that everyone has a bias, and the issue is the level of denial about their bias.

I find no difficulties in choosing the terms linear/individualistic for what others describe as 'western', that is to say, largely European/American, and the terms circular/community for what others describe as 'eastern' or predominantly Asian. But I struggle with the third category because it reflects a view that embraces the supernatural, which seems to be a polarizing issue. 

Since this third world view includes acknowledgement of the supernatural, I have no problem adopting a construct I like that comes from within a Judeo-Christian world view.  The construct attempts to describe the differences in terms of how people tend to view/interpret events in their lives, and suggests that every individual has their own blend of these three world views. It uses these descriptors, followed by my attempt to boil it down to what drives one's behavior:

1) Guilt/Innocence: People ask: is my behavior fair or unfair?

2) Shame/Honor: People ask: does my behavior benefit or hurt the overall community?

3) Fear/Power: People ask: Will what I do offend/please someone/something that has influence over my circumstances?

The third category includes those for whom supernatural interference from the spirit world is a common occurrence, experienced and accepted by the entire community and these cultures are predominant in some parts of Africa, Latin America, Oceania, parts of Asia, and even in parts of North America.

Walking in Two Worlds 1-3: Shame and the Community based culture

The concept of shame is often confused with the concept of guilt. Rather than give you a Reader Digest description of the differences, I'll borrow one that I found online:

"We feel shame when we violate the social norms we believe in. At such moments we feel humiliated, exposed and small and are unable to look another person straight in the eye. We want to sink into the ground and disappear. Shame makes us direct our focus inward and view our entire self in a negative light. Feelings of guilt, in contrast, result from a concrete action for which we accept responsibility. Guilt causes us to focus our attention on the feelings of others."

I suppose that I should next define what I mean by a community based culture and I will attempt to do do by contrasting the thought processes of both. In a 'western' based culture, the world is assumed to operate by discernible and stable rules, contradiction is a problem to be resolved, and entities are viewed as relatively independent agents. Context and relationships between people and objects are relatively downplayed—or, when they are examined, are assumed to operate under parsimonious rules. But with dialectical or holistic (or community based) thinking, a framework more prevalent in East Asian societies, involves greater attention to context and relationships, assumptions of change rather than stasis, and acceptance of contradiction. Analytic thinking is useful for science and daily life. But sometimes dialectical thinking results in more accurate conclusions or pragmatically useful decisions than analytic thinking.

How might this play out? Simply put, western based thinkers see things in straight lines (linear) while community based thinkers see things as circles. Going forward, I'd prefer to use those two terms to describe the world views. These differences map onto more basic differences in attention to context and relationships. In one study, American and Japanese participants were shown cartoon animations of underwater scenes. When reporting what they had seen, Americans tended to start their recollections with mention of the most salient fish in the scene. Japanese were twice as likely as Americans to begin their reporting with the context. Overall the Japanese participants reported 60% more background details and discussed relationships with the background about twice as often as American participants. People from a linear-based culture would be more likely to describe a single fish, while people from a circular-based culture be more likely to describe the pond/lake/ocean.

The values that derive from a circular view aren't necessarily articulated overtly. For example, in Chinese, there are specific terms used greet family members depending on the relationship, and the degree in specificity is much more precise. Brother/sister in English is translated into elder brother/sister or younger brother/sister. Distinctions are made between patriarchal and matriarchal  when referring to grandparents, aunts and uncles - and in the case of the latter, terms also identify whether they are older or younger than one's parents. The point is that the specificity of terms reinforces the idea that one is part of something larger than themselves - the family/community - and that one knows their position within that community.

Some of the social norms found within the community world view include a lack of sense of individuality. To borrow from Star Trek, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one. As a result, individual strengths are often suppressed, as achievement sets a societal norm that everyone else is expected to match - and for those who can not, it represents a weakness that reflects poorly on the community and typically results in a sense of shame, as it also reflects on the honor of the community. This leads to a sense of abandonment by the community, which then typically leads to depression. As a matter of fact it's been posited that a major if not the major cause of depression is shame and the loss of community.

I would submit that most people who are shamed as part of their childhood do not recognize it as such. While they may acknowledge the emotional toil, they typically rationalize the results of overachieving as a consequence to be a good thing. I was aware of my sense of shame in my 20's and I recall trying to explain my shame to the equivalent of a camp counselor at the time, but I was unable to articulate the depth of it, and he understood it to mean guilt and his attempt to address my issues wasn't much help at the time. I remain skeptical that people who have not experienced shame at this level can fully appreciate how devastating it can be. 

Walking in Two Worlds 1-2

There's a book written by a professor at my alma mater (Go Blue!) called The Geography of Thought. It addresses how significant differences in culture result in different ways of thought. The author, Richard Nisbett, posits that people actually think about—and even see—the world differently because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China.

Initial reviews - written by Westerners - were skeptical of Nisbett's "proofs", but as a child of immigrant Chinese parents raised in the U.S. I embrace the work as I immediately was able to identify the source of a lot of the internal conflict I had trying to reconcile the differences between American and Chinese culture. Here's an excerpt from Chapter 3:

"...the social organization and practices of modern Asians resemble those of the ancient Chinese and the social organization and practices of modern Europeans resemble those of the ancient Greeks. In this chapter we’ve seen that modern Asians, like the ancient Chinese, view the world in holistic terms: They see a great deal of the field, especially background events; they are skilled in observing relationships between events; they regard the world as complex and highly changeable and its components as interrelated; they see events as moving in cycles between extremes; and they feel that control over events requires coordination with others. Modern Westerners, like the ancient Greeks, see the world in analytic, atomistic terms; they see objects as discrete and separate from their environments; they see events as moving in linear fashion when they move at all; and they feel themselves to be personally in control of events even when they are not. Not only are worldviews different in a conceptual way, but also the world is literally viewed in different ways. Asians see the big picture and they see objects in relation to their environments—so much so that it can be difficult for them to visually separate objects from their environments. Westerners focus on objects while slighting the field and they literally see fewer objects and relationships in the environment than do Asians."

Here's an example of how this plays out - it's never overtly taught, but the Chinese language itself reinforces holistic/community world view in its greetings within the family:

- brother and sister in English translate into the terms for: older/younger brother, older/younger sister;
- grandmother/grandfather translate into mother's/father's grandmother/grandfather; 
- aunt and uncle translate into terms that not only identify mother's/father's side but ALSO whether they're older or younger than one's parents;

The point is that one is taught to understand that they are a small part of something bigger than themselves - and they know exactly what their place is in relation to everyone else. The result as described from the book - when asked to describe what they see when looking at fish in a pond, a westerner might point out the largest or most brightly colored fish, while an asian might say that he/she sees a pond. 

Another way that I've personally experienced is in the western concept of causality. I tutor test prep (ACT/SAT/ISEE/HSPT) and I've tutored students from community based cultures where both "A" and "not A"  are not mutually exclusive; if anything, with yin-yang "A" actually *proves* the existence of "not A" and there is no cognitive dissonance with mutually exclusive facts or concepts. Events occur in cycles instead of in a linear fashion.  So as they've struggled with making inferences and drawing conclusions and despaired of being intellectually incapable, I've been able to reassure them by explaining the differences in thought process and describing linear thinking like forging a chain one link at a time and witnessed how my students were able to embrace this as a consequence of culture rather than one of intellect - and improve their ability

Another big difference is the aspect of shame and its impact on individuals is much more severe in community based cultures than in western/individual based cultures. This topic deserves its own dedicated post.

The Tower Of Babel

 It seems to me that anyone of faith who grapples with the issues associated with a multi-ethnic community/congregation/what have you should as part of their due diligence study the origin of racial diversity as it has been recorded in the Scriptures in the account of the Tower of Babel. I personally have reached no definitive conclusions, but I will try to address pertinent facts as I recognize them. 

After the Great Flood, the descendants of Noah were one people with a common language. And they decided to build a city that included a great tower, referred to nowadays as the Tower of Babel. There have been speculations on motives behind building the tower and the tower's purpose. Some suggest that the tower would prevent people from dying in the event of another Great Flood, even though God promised that He would never cause another Great Flood.  Others suggest that this tower was to be the first ziggurat, with the physical elevation somehow facilitating a connection between heaven and earth. Others suggest that the main issue was the primary motive "to make a name for ourselves" reflecting what was considered by God to be mortal pride. 

I honestly have no clue what it was that God considered blasphemous, though the NIV version puts it this way:

"Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them."

Perhaps it was the start down we nowadays refer to as the slippery slope? "this is only the beginning of what they will do". The bottom line is that God chooses to destroy their ability to reach a consensus by having them speak in different languages. (I submit that this action also resulted in creating very different world views, something I've referred to in other blog posts.)

The question: Was it the ability to reach consensus what God was addressing? Or was it the consensus "to make a name for ourselves" which is the result of pride, the mortal sin that caused Lucifer to fall? Or was it something else altogether?

It seems to me that if we don't agree on this, we can not agree on any solution addressing the issues that result from a multi-ethnic society- or whether we should even try - at least not if God is not part of the equation, as faith should transcend ethnic culture.  This is ironic because God Himself had His own 'tribe' - the people of Israel. And the story that the Pilgrims first came to America seeking religious freedom is actually a myth. The Pilgrims who came to America had left England ten years earlier and had lived and worshipped freely in the Netherlands under lenient Dutch rule. The move to America was done out of fear that their children would adopt Dutch culture and ways.

Interestingly, the Bible does address the concept of the sojourner (foreigner) and I once did a word study involving every occurrence of that word in Scripture and what I found was fairly consistent: sojourners were expected to obey the local laws - and they were not to be restricted from any rights or privileges granted to local citizens. And the expectation (or fear) was assimilation into the prevailing culture - but then, the people of Israel were God's tribe, and the main fear was loss of faith... and different faiths were incompatible.

Again, I have made no definitive conclusions - but it seems to me that at least within the church, there should be a common consensus - but that consensus should be derived from the faith, and not from secular prevailing cultural values.   
  

Comfort II

I was thinking about the concept of grief and the process of grieving and the word comfort came up. The word is (at least it is for me) associated with the idea of relieving/minimizing pain in some way. It's the concept I embraced with I left the work force twenty years ago and lived off my savings for fifteen years. I still managed to encounter conflict, like when I got sued by someone for alleging incurring a concussion during one of my monthly dance parties, but that's a story for another time.  

The thing is, that is not the primary definition of the word,  which is apparent from a simple analysis of the prefix com "with" and the root "fort" from the latin: strong. To be comforted results in the ability to go forth with strength.

The implications are clear: we are in need of comfort when we are incapable of going in strength. A relief from pain may be a result, but it is NOT the ultimate goal. Comfort is a means to an end. Comfort is not an end in itself; we are expected to get up and get back into the fight.

And I now better understand the quote from C.S. Lewis, although I suspect that he (somewhat surprisingly) was defining comfort as a relief from pain and suffering, but he was describing my life during my sabbatical:

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

The Blessing

As described in the Old Testament of the Scriptures, a blessing was typically bestowed from fathers onto their children acknowledging their passage from adolescence to adulthood. The content of such a blessing typically included elements such as a prediction/expectation of that child's future. These predictions were based on the father's perception/understanding of the unique strengths of that child, which were identified as part of the prediction/prophecy.

The part about identifying, focusing on and commending each child's uniqueness/gifting intrigues me; shaming typically involves identifying and focusing on shortcomings where an individual's talent/skill falls short when compared to some other individual (chosen for the purpose of emphasizing the degree to which the original person misses the mark). Moreover, the strength of this shaming message is enhanced by emotional abandonment, and the effect is again enhanced for those who live according to a holistic/community world view, because the message is not only have they failed as individuals, they have failed the community/family to which they belong, appealing to a sense of honor.   

Simply put, a blessing affirms each individual's uniqueness as a strength while shaming condemns uniqueness by reframing the perspective so that uniqueness reflects how an individual falls short in some way and this is considered an irreconcilable fault. 

This is particularly relevant to me as I received a lot of shaming messages throughout my life and that took its toll. I spent the vast majority of my life being painfully aware of how many standard deviations I am from what's considered the mean of mainstream in terms of aptitude, interests, ethnicity, etc. - which prompted my 15 year sabbatical from life seeking a life sheltered from the pain I'd been carrying, and it wasn't until I ran out of money and was forced to re-enter the world that I learned to be comfortable with who I am and to begin to strive for things I want. (If only I'd had less money?)

The point is that for those of you who've never been blessed by your parents, and never will be, there are ways to recover from that lack in your life and become able to move forward. Those of you who *are* parents, you may want to examine what you've been emphasizing and take steps as needed. If you haven't emphasized a lot of comparisons, that's great, but if you also haven't emphasized much affirmation of a child's unique strengths, omission is as bad as commission. It will never be too late. 

Tribalism

Perhaps this could be titled: The Motives of the Pilgrims Part II as it addresses the fact that the Pilgrims had found the religious freedom they sought after moving to the Netherlands from England. Their primary motive for coming to America was to prevent their children from becoming too "Dutch" instead of retaining their own culture. So they were essentially creating their own new tribe. Nowadays the word tribalism often carries a pejorative sense when it's used to describe the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group. There's usually a desire to maintain some sort of tribal purity, which makes it almost synonymous with the concept of provincialism which is typically regarded being unsophisticated or narrow-minded.  The problem is that the actions of a lot of people tend to corroborate the association. I'm guilty of this when it comes to food and the concept of 'authentic' ethnic cuisine. I have little doubt that it is in large part a response to a lifetime of being told by (sometimes) well-meaning friends and acquaintances things like: "I love Chinese food, especially lemon chicken" "I hate Chinese food. It's so slimy!" and I still catch myself sneering at anyone extolling the virtues of places such as Panda Express for getting Chinese food.

It's become my take that the person most offended by having the word tribal or provincial used to describe themselves is likely to be the most provincial or tribal in contrast to the person using the word. If you are familiar with Star Trek, these people have no idea that they are the Klingons. Or they're Miss Caroline responding to Scout Finch trying to explain why Willie Cunningham won't accept her quarter. Someone I really respect has spent time in Hawaii and he once told me that rather than come in and immediately start suggesting ways to improve the seemingly odd customs, traditions and behavior, the best thing to do there is to shut up, watch and listen, and the reasons behind any behavior we may initially find incomprehensible will become obvious and more importantly, perfectly reasonable. The behavior of the "ugly American" in other lands typically includes the expectation that the natives will speak English, as well as the tendency to speak louder one word at a time, as if:

"DO?   YOU?    SPEAK?    ENGLISH???!!!!!"

is going to increase the level of comprehension on the part of the native.

It seems to me that part of the reason for this behavior is some sort of need to be right, to be incapable of considering that there are alternative ways of doing things which do not incur some sort of moral judgement. But I submit that there's also an issue of focus in how we view others. I'd describe it as choosing to be more aware of the differences instead of the commonalities. I'm not saying that the differences are irrelevant. Sometimes they're very relevant - and they're not reconcilable. But if more people elected to place more emphasis on *finding* commonalities, they'd be less likely to focus immediately on the differences.

The Motives of the Pilgrims

I'm still binge watching the series The Affair, now into season four (4). The plot arcs include a married couple where the wife is an undocumented alien from Ecuador who come to the states when she was 10. There's worry that the powers that be will eventually discover her situation resulting in her deportation. There's additional angst due to there being a stepdaughter involving shared custody with the ex-wife. This contributes an overall unease that the marriage is somehow unbalanced - she's essentially subjugated her entire life/culture to be a housewife in a small tourist town in white bread America. 

Her situation prompted a train of thought about the immigrant experience, and I decided to do a little research. I confirmed what is commonly held to be true about the Pilgrims, that they come to America motivated by the desire for religious freedom. But that wasn't the primary motivation for coming to America; they had already achieved religious freedom, having lived in Holland for ten years, worshipping as they wished under lenient Dutch rule -  according to an account found of the official website of the Mayflower Society:

"Fearing their children were losing their English heritage and religious beliefs, the resumption of war and their inability as non-citizens to find decent jobs, a small group from the Leiden church made plans to settle in Northern Virginia" 

I suspect most people aren't aware of that part of the story: the original immigrants' primary motivation was to preserve their native ethnic culture and beliefs. The idea of America becoming some sort of melting pot which originated in the late 1700's was not part of the original intent of the first settlers.

The reality is that it's not possible to integrate certain ethnic cultures because their world views are mutually exclusive. A backlash to the concept of the melting pot led to development of multiculturalism. While it does repudiate the assimilation that I associate with the concept of the melting pot, the problem is that at any given moment, one world view has to dominate, which means some people will be somehow unhappy or dissatisfied with any given choice that affects everyone. 

So it comes as no surprise that there is polarization in America, and I am compelled to conclude that the global tendency towards tribalism is going to affect America as well. I'm not sure how I feel about this. 

Comfort

I work for a couple of places as a tutor. I was working with a student earlier today (this was true when I started this post, now it's a couple of days ago) and while working through one of the assignments, a student asked for clarification on an unfamiliar word and the subsequent discussion went off on a tangent to the word 'comfort', which prompted me to google the word which produced the definition, and I also found myself going through a webpage that had quotes on the topic of comfort.

The thrust of these quotes were about the lure of comfort, some quotes acknowledging how comfort dictated their choices, while others spoke against the lure, touting the importance of leaving one's 'comfort zone' in order to truly live/enjoy life. A quote by C.S. Lewis went quite a bit further in this direction. I've read of lot of his writings, but I'd never seen this quote before:

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

The modern definition of comfort has two distinct meanings, and Lewis addressed them both:

noun 

1. 1.

   a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint.

   "room for four people to travel in comfort"
2. 2.

   the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress.

   "a few words of comfort"
   

The meanings share a common goal - a relief from pain. 

Given the timing since the last post about truth, this doesn't seem like a coincidence. Exposure to truth is often uncomfortable. If this is the first post in my blog you're reading, then I need to mention that I took a fifteen (15) year sabbatical from meaningful work, which would have been longer except I ran out of money (and I lost $50k learning how to trade foreign currency (FOREX) - and I actually know how to do it, but my limited universe of facts at the time compelled me to make the same kind of bad choices over and over), and it took another five years to reach a point of relative financial stability. I've never had a good explanation for why I did it, but now I can see that it was a response to all the pain I'd been carrying, and I sought to create a refuge from all of it. 

This is a choice we all have to face - deal with the unpleasantness that comes with some truth, or try to seek comfort. 

Someone wrote something that's always resonated me, although it now seems even more profound, even though I can't quite clearly articulate why quite yet. Unfortunately I need to paraphrase it and I suspect that something will be lost in translation: When you find yourself lying there bleeding at the bottom of the pit, you instinctively will want to stop the bleeding. Resist that instinct.

The Affair

is a TV series that aired from 2014 to 2019 (or so). I discovered that it featured two actors/actresses whose work I'd admired in series such as The Wire (Dominic West) and Luther (Ruth Wilson).  I started watching it and I'm currently still in season one. 

The series explores the emotional impact of an affair between two people married to other people. A uniqueness in this series is that episodes were often divided into two parts, with each half being told from the very different perspective of characters involved in the same incident, which allowed viewers to reach their own unique conclusions based on their own personal biases. Of course, there's also the personal bias of the head writer, who admitted that the genesis of the series came out of the writer having just ended a bad relationship, so it's not unreasonable to infer that the plot includes elements of the writer's own personal story. The writer gives us free rein to speculate, she said about the series:

"there is no objective truth on this show – there’s only peoples’ truthful interpretation of what happened. And it’s up to the audience to bring their own biases and perspectives to viewing the story – to weave through the differing accounts and figure out for themselves, individually, what they believe. So, in a way, each viewer comes away having watched a slightly different show. I built the show that way, because that’s how life works. We experience things, we talk to people we trust, and we all come away with different versions of collective narratives. In the case of The Affair, what follows is my perspective on the experience."

I confess that this disclosure made me itch. So I've stopped to scratch.

Part of it comes from my enjoyment of the writer Kazuo Ishiguro, as a lot of his works explore the concept of selective memory which had its genesis in his experience with the homeless, an experience that mirrors mine in that the stories the homeless tell about themselves often deviate from the actual historical truths about themselves. But the real target of their deception is not us, but themselves. So this also draws from M. Scott Peck's (better known for The Road Less Traveled) (IMO) seminal work People of the Lie which explores the lengths people will go to avoid facing truths regarding themselves by creating a web of lies often forcing falsehoods upon others concerning their own self worth. 

And I've boiled it down to the great divide between the concepts of absolute truth and personal truth. It's been my experience that 'personal' truth is often influenced by trauma coupled with a response that includes denial. And in coming to grips with the insanity of the person who nearly ended my life by severing the anterior branch of my carotid with a box cutter, motivated by a desire to attack a 'church group whose teaching were sodomizing religion' along with a desire to drink my blood, I have embraced the concept of insanity described in the essay "The Maniac" by G.K. Chesterton in his work Orthodoxy. Simply put, those who are insane have not lost their reason, but rather, reason is the only thing that they have left. What causes the insanity is a limited universe of truth. With that limited universe of facts to draw upon, the insane can only reach the same flawed "insane" conclusion over and over. And this is possible when people embrace the concept of personal truth, which might be described as trying to avoid dealing with things that makes us uncomfortable. 
 

I can relate to that viewpoint. I embraced it when I took a fifteen year sabbatical from the real world, where I didn't work and lived off my savings until I was completely broke. My personal truths at the time I made this choice included (among others) the ideas that I was fundamentally unlovable, and that any risk could be expected to end in failure, and my talents would forever go unrecognized.

I've maintained a blog dealing with the aftermath of the attack I referred to earlier in this post. I re-read the blog in its entirety earlier this week, and damn, but (as I expressed in a blog post), I've come a fucking long way.

I've toyed with the idea of creating something similar to Einstein's concept of a grand unification theory to describe "wholeness" (whatever that means). I think I've come up with fundamental postulates.

Truth is absolute. The concept of personal truth is a response to avoid dealing with discomfort, which can be a response to some sort of pain, or the realization that something about us is displeasing. 

Discomfort is not to be ignored or suppressed or denied. This sense of discomfort is a signal to us that something is damaged and needs to be addressed.  Granted, there is needless discomfort - and that is clearly something to be avoided and or eliminated. More needs to be said about this, but not here.

It requires a lot of strength and discipline to embrace the idea that things about us are in some way displeasing, which is why few do. Those who can not are not to be looked down upon, nor is it anyone else's job to force someone else to acknowledge truth.

I think that's enough for now.

Pig

is the title of a new movie featuring Nicolas Cage. This post contains serious spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and plan on doing so, you should stop here and go see the film.

First off, it's Nicolas Cage, and at this point of his career, he's choosing intriguing roles in smaller films and using what I'd describe as the Stanislavski technique on steroids to play the roles he's chosen. And it's as much the other roles he's played throughout the years that helps define the strength of his performance in this film. There's a fine line between subtle/nuanced and lacking, and Cage treads the line very carefully, whereas restraint is not an adjective that would be appropriate to describe many of Cage's past performances. In this case, less was so much more. The plot is ostensibly about a hermit truffle hunter seeking the return of his truffle pig, and the behavior and actions taken prompt a suspension of disbelief, but it begins to make sense about three quarters of the way into the film that the actions apparently motivated by the theft of his pig is transference of the grief over the loss of his wife, an event that prompted Cage to leave his position in the culinary firmament, abandon his restaurant, and move into the woods where we find him fifteen years later. 

As Cage begins to deal with his grief, Cage's character also responds to the grief he observes in the people around him and addresses their losses in ways only his character could do: recreating the only meal that gave the antagonist's (man who who paid to have the pig stolen) wife joy before she committed suicide; building up the reputation of the antagonist's son who's spent his entire life living in the shadow of his father, whose dominance of the culinary scene is most likely an expression of trying to find something that would restore the spirits of his otherwise chronically depressed wife whose only moment of joy came after having dinner at Cage's character's restaurant before Cage's wife dies.

Just about every character in the film is dealing with loss in some way - even the characters in a scene that's part fight club except that food industry workers pay to beat up other people in the industry that have done them wrong somehow. But it helps illustrate how people cope with loss in unique ways.

And there will be those who think it merely a quirky story about a weirdo looking for his stolen pig.  And so it is.  

Girl

 I'm reading a book with that title written by Edna O'Brien. The story is a fictionalized first person account of a Nigerian girl kidnapped by the Boko Haram. It's not a comfortable read, but it's powerfully written. It's all the more amazing as Edna O'Brien is an Irish woman around 90 who has lived almost all of her life in the UK. It's a tremendous work. One reviewer put it this way:

"Fiction does not pretend that having written or read about some calamitous subject the writer or the reader has now lived that experience. But as, in both its creation and experience, fiction is an act of daring imagination — it gives readers the tools to imagine a faithful simulacrum of the emotional and psychological contours of the particulars it describes."

However, I can imagine the voices of those I've come to describe as the professionally indignant suggesting that is somehow an affront that an Irish woman somehow dare to imagine what it was like to be kidnapped by the Boko Haram.  "Write what you know" has evolved to: "Stay in your own lane." and not doing so is now an act of arrogance, bigotry or theft. "Only those who are like us are like us Only those who are like us can understand us - or even try."

To be fair, cultural appropriation probably has taken place when someone claims to speak for any group to which they do not belong. But should an attempt to communicate about things of value outside one's own direct experience fail in some way, let's assign any blame to be assigned to the lack of skill of the communicator, not on the motive. But the tribalists will not let it be so. And tribalism in the world continues to grow. And the world grows smaller as a consequence.