Category Archives: News

CAN A SAFETY PIN HOLD THE WORLD TOGETHER ?  DOUBTFUL, BUT IT’S DESIGNED TO TRY

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safety-pin

 

Safety pins, invented in 1849 by mechanic Walter Hunt, are so common we hardly think about them unless a piece of clothing needs temporary support. Some of their uses have fallen out of favor, such as holding together diapers on babies or attaching sanitary napkins to old-fashioned belts. British punks made them a fashion statement. One performer claims safety pins were used to remedy “the arse of your pants falling out”, but they quickly moved into body decorations where they pierced ears, noses, and who-knows-what else. Other uses have swelled in popularity, namely attaching four to a participant’s shirt to an athletic event number.

A recent use is as a political statement. Wikipedia puts forth a claim that the Dutch wore secret safety pins to symbolize unity during WW II, although this hasn’t been validated. After the 2016 UK Brexit vote, safety pins were used by people to show solidarity with refugees and other migrants.

Now this innocuous item is a response to the US presidential election.  By fastening a safety pin to their clothing, people hope they’re allying themselves with groups threatened and bad-mouthed by politicians. I hastened to pin mine on recently. But after a few days wearing it, I’ve removed it.

Why? Now it’s become yet another instance of how people use any circumstance to criticize and bad mouth one another. Or a topic that bloggers, constantly under self-generated pressure to produce writing (like me), can plumb. One blogger described the movement as “mainly self-serving and useless,” for people who agree politically to identify each other. Other people have taken to the net to launch attacks against wearers because the pins are a sop to white consciences.

I give up. Whatever the election accomplished, the brouhaha over safety pins has crowned. No more efforts by me to support what I in my naiveté have always done—support lost causes. I’ll take all my safety pins and simply use them to jab things.

By the way, I’ve seen no one else in my area wearing a safety pin.

Our Vigilante Society: Stating Your Opinion Is One Thing, but You’re Not Always Right (Part 2 of previous blog)  

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vigilanteI recently walked myself off a cliff by listening to the adamant opinion of a person on a committee with me. Despite lessons learned through personal experience and a thoughtful review of the situation and its facts, I thought my recommendations were wrong. The strength of her beliefs and her swift, smooth delivery seemed to trump my judgment. After following her instructions, complete failure threatened. Fortunately I had time to pull my irons out of the fire, which allowed me to implement my assessment and complete the project successfully.

            Goes to show, though, that just because someone thinks he’s right, he isn’t necessarily. Yet along with our obsession with stating our opinions constantly (see previous blog), we also think we’re correct in every thought, and all and sundry should follow our advice. If they don’t enthusiastically endorse our suggestions, we go overboard in our insistence about being right.

            According to the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance, humans experience psychological discomfort when exposed to contradictory beliefs, ideas. An individual exposed to inconsistency (dissonance) is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance—as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it. He often becomes more committed to his favorite, obdurate in defending it.

            The result contributes to a polarized society, a situation in which you’re either with me or against me, no middle ground. The result is laws that emphasize the dichotomy between interests, not their common ground. The result is stand-offs during discussions, not solutions. The most obvious result is failure of many political efforts. Rhetoric trumps intelligence.

            How have we gotten to this state? It’s been said students in the US are the most self-confident in the world. Notice, not the most knowledgeable or best-trained or smartest. Parents constantly receive advice to build self-esteem in their children.  Our laws and procedures and many leaders both political and social strive mightily to insure diverse opinions are given the credibility of a public forum, whether they make sense or not. Life coaches drone on about sending positive messages to ourselves.

            I’m concerned because I’m wondering if a surfeit of self-confidence creates a vigilante society. My local elist, to which neighbors can subscribe, exhibits this periodically. One person posts about a dark car parked on the street with someone sitting inside. Within hours, others have responded with similar spottings, advice, and demands for a police check. Another time, a poor couple strolling down the alley were targeted as potential thieves, suffering the discomfort of dozens of eyes tracking their every action. Fortunately, responses stopped short of calls for lynching.

            Another reason for a watchdog atmosphere is social media and the speed with which we can communicate. Colorado has one toll-free phone number to report child abuse and neglect 24/7. While the goals of this program are laudable, I wonder how often someone gets reported because of the appearance of abuse (think about how often a two-year-old falls and scrapes his head) or the groundless spite a neighbor might hold. A neighbor once reported us to the authorities for our efforts to control squirrels, perjuring themselves to claim we’d violated city ordinances.

            I’m guessing Big Brother watches because of a combination of the two. We’re accustomed to instantaneous communication plus many of us have the self-confidence to assume our every idea is correct and should be immediately implemented. WRONG. There’s something to be said about “measure twice, saw once;” and “look before you leap.” An advice columnist recently ran a letter from a woman who’d accused her niece of stealing some jewelry, wrote about it on social media, then found the missing piece in the pocket of her own coat. She would have spared herself massive embarrassment and kept her niece as a friend by using a go-slow approach.

            There can be more at stake than winning an argument or defending what we think is the truth. “Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.” Teddy Roosevelt

Adrift with no connections or support. How will I function? Am I addicted? Four days without the Internet.

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woman-screaming-at-computer-shutterstock_119635360Return with me now to the thrilling days of yesteryear. No, not the Lone Ranger, for those of you mature enough to remember that show. But to pre-Internet days.

For four days recently, my Internet connection was down. Frustrated? Yes. Unproductive, friendless, and isolated. No.

After I’d clicked on every piece of equipment in my possession designed to link me and the world at large, then discovered no signal, I panicked. What would I do? How could I work?

I admit pretty much every time I reached for a piece of information, be it a phone number, confirmation of a fact, or the weather report, and couldn’t get it instantaneously, I grumbled mentally. Particularly when I needed to confirm meetings with several people, or actually hold a meeting via Skype, my dissatisfaction increased. But I survived. I visited several locations with free Internet to catch up on essentials.

As I sought alternative methods to figure out when a snowstorm would hit, I wondered what people think Internet access is doing to us. Some are concerned that too much Internet reduces the deep thinking  that leads to true creativity. Was I more creative without the Web? I don’t think so. My connections always seem to spark more ideas and exploration. However, I believe I got more actual, productive work done during the hiatus.

Then there’s the theory people who are socially anxious are more likely to use electronic communication so they can avoid interaction. I don’t know if I qualify as socially anxious, but I definitely use email to avoid extended conversations and control the content. During the interruption, I had to use the phone which I hate to do. So only a few people heard from me, which probably was appreciated by all.

During times of crisis, such as the terrorist attack in Paris, I know I’d miss access the most. With television and radio, I can’t search for exactly what I want, and I feel inundated by uncontrollable floods of terrifying pictures and reports.

On the whole, my involuntary exclusion went well. I didn’t have withdrawal symptoms; it was kind of nice not to feel pressure to interact constantly. I missed little but the ability to look up word definitions immediately as I’m reading a novel, but little else. Still I felt out of sync with the rest of the world, disconnected. I was on the dark side of the digital divide, one, we’re assured, creates an unbridgeable gap and marks the adult needy as surely as a poor child is labeled by being eligible for free school lunches.

To avoid landing in the situation in the future, I know what’s inevitable, I’m forced to be dragged kicking and screaming into the next stage of my techie progress—perpetual connection via a smart phone.

Using Your Brain and Having Fun at the Same Time: How Reading Keeps Those Gray Cells Active

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family readingI always have to chuckle up my sleeve every time someone reveals—ta da!—how reading is good for you. Readers obsessed with books have known this forever. Still people regularly conduct studies, write articles, and send information out to the world on the subject. However, one I ran across recently, “This is your brain on Jane Austen—the neuroscience of reading great literature,” drew my attention because I’m a Janeite, a fan of all things Austen. I’m in favor of anything that can be done to increase her readership.

This particular research had a special slant. Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips, in collaboration with Stanford’s Center for Cognitive and Biological Imaging, studied readers’ brains when perusing pleasure reading and close reading. Close reading stimulates more areas of the brain than casual. So it could be that my ingesting dozens of romances as fast as my eyes can move for sheer entertainment isn’t as good for my brain as studying their plots and language in depth.

The “ah-ha” approach to brain research with its sense of discovery occurs every five years or so, especially in regard to kids and books. Since at least the 1980s, researchers have found children who are read to and familiar with books from infancy have a strong foundation, not only for learning in school, but also for personal adjustment and satisfaction. Yet we trot out statistics over and over, as if someone is arguing against us.

I guess what my father taught me to say as a tiny child is true: the ontogeny is the epitome of phylogeny. I didn’t know I was absorbing by rote Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation theory. The history of the egg is like the history of the race. Or the development of an individual to maturity resembles the growth over time of a group. In this case, yes, society must realize over and over that reading is good for the brain and the soul just as a person can have this discovery.

There’s more. Content of the reading material affects the brain in different ways. It activates sections related to movement and touch, as if people were putting themselves into the story. Smell, taste, sight are not exempt. Fantasy like Harry Potter seems to produce neural reactions that are above and beyond those created by other narratives. Interesting that the content of the reading material affects the brain in different ways.

I’m not sure what studies have been launched in regard to pornography, but we probably already know what it activates.

Hands Off! Laissez-Faire. Not My Problem. Do We Have Collective Responsibilities for the World Around Us?

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common good house buildingRecently I was biking along a park path when Mother Nature called. I spotted a city facility nearby, so off I hopped to make a visit. After I’d done my business, good citizen and supporter of public hygiene that I am, I flushed the toilet. Not a gurgle. Tried several more time to no avail.

Noticing several men nearby at work to set up for a public event, I approached them to tell them of the problem The first and younger one said he had no phone and didn’t know how to contact a manager anyway. The second and older had a phone as well as a manager’s contact info, but he informed me, a clogged toilet was “not my responsibility.” I suggested the restroom would quickly become his responsibility when five hundred angry party-goers were forced to duck behind bushes to relieve themselves.

I’ve always felt the collective good is something we all share a responsibility for. Not that we need to do back flips to help. Neither that we interfere in someone’s private interests. But something occurring in the great wide world that affects a number of us should be an item to which we pay attention.

Years ago a friend from Eastern Europe told me one problem with communism had been that no one felt answerable for anything because they felt no ownership. The government was in charge and to blame for anything that went awry. If your apartment needed repairs, you didn’t need to arrange for them. You simply stood around and complained. Since the collective was in charge, in fact no one was in charge.

A number of religions and philosophies urge us to take shared responsibility for the common good. I have to think a cooperative approach would benefit us most of the time. While repair of a broken lav comes nowhere close to the plight of millions of refugees in Europe, still the principle seems the same. If something’s busted, fix it.

Not everyone agrees with me. Perhaps they can convince 7.6 million Syrian refugees.