An Easter Mosaic

Ringing the bells in Prague after 9/11. I grabbed the photo in 2001, and I am not sure of the source.

I’ll get back to the psychology of “feelings” soon. In the meantime, here is an Easter interlude.

When the Trade Center Towers came down in 2001, I was living in Konstanz, Germany. I was up at the lab at Uni Konstanz. A sunny afternoon, and I was checking the New York Times site like I did most afternoons. There it was: a breaking story of a plane that had accidentally collided with one of the towers. I remember it as just a headline, but after a refresh there was a photo with a hole and smoke. Then the site slowed to a crawl, and apprehension set in, followed by the reveal of a photo showing that the second tower had been hit. That’s when I left the lab and rode my bike back home to be with my then wife and my daughters. There we huddled to watch the news on the television. The images of falling bodies. The gaping holes vomiting smoke. Another sudden jet crashing into the Pentagon in D.C., a scramble of reports about additional attacks, additional planes, firefighters rushing up stairwells, and the scrambling of military jets. And then, one after another, the two towers fell.

As much as I remember the vulnerability, shock, and fear for my young daughters, what I also remember is the immediate solidarity in the days that followed of ordinary strangers. German colleagues and students who checked in on me and my family. The city-wide moment of silence. The flowers left at embassies. The candle-light vigils. The tolling of bells.

Munich, Germany after 9/11 2001. Also an unknown source.

Over the years, Easter for me has come to signify an acknowledgment of sacrifice in the service of healing and renewal. It’s the doctors, nurses and healthcare workers who have thrown themselves into the breach of the COVID-19 pandemic. The parents and grandparents who cared for us when we were children, washing our clothes, wiping our noses, and massaging tightened calves in the middle of the night. Friends who have helped in moves. The ordinary workers in Konstanz, Germany who took a moment to stand quietly at noon in solidarity with those hurt and killed an ocean away in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Easter celebrates these behaviors: small, often betrayed, but load bearing. This after all was the soil of Christ’s ministry: the peacemakers, the persecuted outcasts, the mourners, the ordinary. And the lesson of Easter is that despite the mocking humiliations of the powerful — the taunts of “Freedom Fries” and “Old Europe” or the resistance to covering the medical bills of first responders — despite these attempts to silence and punish and deaden, the spring soil will continue to answer the sun’s call.

This particular poem I wrote as a sort of Easter mosaic, and it is dedicated to a couple, Juan and Ute Delius, who showed my family tremendous kindness when we lived in Germany.

Lazarus

(For Juan and Ute)

Draw thread through skin

numb & engraved in winter.

The grief-sung vertebrae

of wind chimes at night,

the ululations of church bells

over field and orchard — once

pear, plum, wheat and apple.

Come, then, senescence and hum your metal.

That sing-song gestern caught gaunt and callow

like moths circling the harbinger of heaven,

like constellations sirened numbly forward —

a music of nets in which the dolphins thrash

when the lines are drawn in, anchored, and pulled tight.

This heft of enwrapped waters,

draw upon convenient draw,

caught trumpet of consciousness

liquored like a dog at its wounds

or the way the white wake

of a plane, far above,

silently streams, spreads and splays.

A depth that contains the scattered flurry of vision,

arranged like pastels haphazard in the box.

The cargo of a former life carried elsewhere,

memories resting like water in the pitted roads

where birth gives way to the night-time swarms,

the jazz of corruption begat from reflected heaven’s breeding.

Each moment tapped,

pregnant and fitted,

as if laying stone

to make a road.

So many eyes staring

like a peacock’s bloom,

an exchange of wild flowers for a

a sunset spread red as wine

Produce in the church square

Potatoes Carrots and Apples

Kilo weights, raw and cold

Flesh from the butcher

sliced and jointed, jointed and drawn.

Too sweet for some,

Like a custard’s breath –

hard in learning,

awkward in fact.

Unbecoming’s active pursuit

like a pole to the shadow cast —

an anchored still to the sun’s pass,

that cloth that wipes over and over.

Over the ever-opportune weeds that burst,

yes, burst forth into their calling –

a pack of girls keen to see

upon whom the glance will fall.

Yes, with bracken

grows nettle. Wrappers

and peels. The plastic cups.

Gravy, puddings, ketchup.

Cars and trucks,

and cars and trucks,

and trucks and trucks.

24 7, death she moans this rush,

planted heavily and sucking breath,

while the three ladies, their buttocks sway

the gospel of fate, a necessity bellowed out,

rough ropes in hand, with each pull and release –

thus, they frog-grunt their imprints of industry.

Tongue-tasted,

coins swallowed

and the candle lit.

Night ember, social safe

and tucked in bed.

Now cargoed purpose sleeps,

The tethered morning chorus

guarded and groomed, mulched and clipped.

String of fate and string of rescue, spooled

and strung to where the delivery trucks come,

to where the workers call at the dock —

those many voices of dying, calling and calling

in their approach to the maze’s bloated point.

This, night’s new year.

A cast of sparks —

And then, percussive born.

And the bells beat.

And the bells beat

more flares of midnight

crackling out light

Roosted buildings, cobbled street.

Hollowed. Inverted.

Explosive moments.

Distant reports

For a city that wrestles drunkenly forth

in answer to the fireworks from across the water.

Red among yellow.

Red among green.

Sailboats laid upon the lake

hot air balloons above

the distant mountains

roaring fire and straining at ascent.

How loss becomes heartbeat

swaddled in such feminine hands.

How familiar dawn, stray thread comes

with the strangled raucous of crows,

hop-hopping, and lifted up

into the trees that buckle the graveyard’s fence.

Your eyes have been pocketed across an ocean of desire

bilk and seepage with the risen. Again, Lazarus, rise.

Rise frogs of spring.

Each season a thought —

patterned Nature’s pull.

Rise gravestones. Rise stars.

Constellations of dirt,

mausoleums of heaven,

risen ferment and fallen flame.

Rise the ants to work their mounds.

Rise the teller to auger her grounds.

Rise the children on their ways to school,

Lent back and hand-less, coasting bikes

before the rain that will spackle the lake.

Shutters shut. Eyes open. Rise Lazarus. Rise.

My daughter, Delphi, chasing a soap bubble when she was little.

On Being a Neighbor

The other week I was having lunch with a friend. This was just as fear of the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning its tidal flow here in the U.S. – an approaching moon’s gravity pulling at our collective conscious. My friend asked me what I thought it would mean to be a “good neighbor” during a pandemic. It’s a great question: what does it mean to be a good neighbor? Here is Mr. Rogers’ version of the question:

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,
I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So let’s make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we’re together, we might as well say,
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?

Won’t you please,
Won’t you please,
Please won’t you be my neighbor?

by Dr. François S. Clemmons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

The request to be a neighbor is a question of values, not beliefs. To answer Mr. Roger’s question in the affirmative is to choose a value, because to choose to be a neighbor is something independent of feelings. In fact values, as I am defining them, exist in spite of feelings. Let me explain what I mean.

In many of the posts I’ve put up on this blog so far, I have spoken of beliefs. I’ve suggested that perceptual illusions exist because of “beliefs,” and that reflexes exist as “beliefs,” and that emotions are “visceral beliefs.” When a doctor taps my knee, and my foot jerks forward, this behavior shows a “belief” that maps the stretch of a ligament with falling. When I see the Mueller-Lyer lines as being of unequal length, this judgment shows a “belief” that maps angles to depth. And when I feel fear or anger or disgust, these are visceral beliefs that map a situation to perceptions of particular types of risk and that elicit avoidance / elimination behaviors.

Here is an important distinction, though: beliefs are not the same as values.

A belief is a perceptual conjecture or a hypothesis about the causal structure of the world – one that originates from each individual’s unique set of experiences and/or our species’ shared evolutionary experiences. Beliefs are inferences updated (or not) from experience. Values, though, are aspirational. They are less a conjecture about the world, and more a hope for the world. This is a crucial point, especially when it comes to our emotions / feelings. So let me state it again: feelings (visceral beliefs) are not values.

We have visceral beliefs, i.e., “feelings,” that pertain to status, relative self-importance, relative need for resources, and so on. If I feel that I am of a higher status than another individual, I might also feel that my needs are more important, or that actions that harm that other person are justified. These beliefs are not so much chosen as they are free-floating in the contingencies of our environments. (Remember, “contingencies” refer to the selective forces of history). Just as we don’t choose to see a visual illusion, we don’t, in the moment, choose our feelings. They simply happen.

Feelings or values?
A group of teenage girls scream obscenities in front of their Montgomery, Alabama school against desegregation, 1963. (Photo by © Flip Schulke/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images). Used with permission.

Values, though, are those principles which we have self-chosen, from within the boundaries of our individual contexts, of course. They define how we would like to act. They are our ideals — the person we would hope to be.

Values might coincide with visceral beliefs (feelings) and/or they might conflict with these beliefs. It is easy to be gracious from a position of strength. Less so from a position of vulnerability. This is why Rambert in the section from The Plague says, “You two,” he said, “I suppose you’ve nothing to lose in all this. It’s easier, that way, to be on the side of the angels.” Rambert, remember, has been seeking to escape the quarantine of the plague in order to return to his love in Paris. He is stating that it is easy for the Rieux and Tarrou to courageously stay and take care of the sick because they have no cost. In this sense, their beliefs align with their values. For Rambert, though, the visceral love he feels for his wife is at odds with staying to help combat the plague. At the end of the section I provided in the last post he learns that he is mistaken.

I bring this up because crises trigger feelings – some heroic and some shameful. We have leaders inciting fear and directing it at others. So, we have President Trump speaking of the “China Virus,” we have Secretary of State Pompeo speaking of the “Wuhan Virus,” we have senators darkly hinting that SARS-CoV-2 was released from a secret Chinese lab, and we have accusations from Chinese officials that covid-19 was brought to China by the American military. Closer to home (for me, at any rate), we see individuals attempting to escape the horror of widespread, indiscriminate death by linking it to “positives.” So, the President of Vassar College recently tweeted out “How many lives has coronavirus saved in China due to less pollution? Ironic” (Tweet has since been deleted). To her credit she immediately apologized, and I suspect she regrets the feelings that motivated the original posting. Further, it is also quite possibly feelings that lead one to “smugly” point out that the “Spanish Flu” that killed millions world-wide in the early 20^th c. occurred in Kansas, or suggest that isn’t it ironic that the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 momentarily decreased oil consumption because of the aviation shutdown. As if this helps anything — raises one’s status or makes one appear more knowledgeable.

Again, to refer back to the quote from The Plague, it is indeed like a single record that gets played over and over and over. Blame. Diversion. Dry intellectualization. The desire to be “right.” However, I would be hesitant to judge any of these reactions. After all, although the the reactions are perhaps problematic, they are also tragically human — behaviors, comments, and tweets driven by the machinery of our Homo sapien psyches.

Here, after all, is the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Warning, the video shows individuals suffering…it also shows doctors and nurses doing their part to care for those who are suffering. And here is an image that shows a row of military vehicles lined up along an Italian street. Are they bringing in needed resources? No. They are carrying away bodies.

And here is an image of Dr. Li Wenliang, who died in the service Chinese patients, many of whom also succumbed from COVID-19. As Rieux says in The Plague, “There’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of righting a plague is common decency.”

These images evoke feelings, and some of those feelings are unpleasant, meaning our psyches recoil and search for ways to escape their input. Blame. Raise the drawbridge. Dehumanize. Ignore. Become wary. And these reactions may in fact align with one’s values. They do not, though, align with values that recognize every individual, regardless of status and tribe membership, as unique, valued and equally bounded by death. Values centered on healing, self-sacrifice, and the preciousness of our limited time, rather than self-protection and self-aggrandizement.

Does psychology have anything to say about this interaction of “feelings” and values? It does actually, and I’ll get to that in the next post.

The Plague

“Albert Camus” by DietrichLiao is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

One of the most powerful works of fiction I have read in my life is The Plague by Albert Camus. It was assigned as part of a Religious Studies course that I took in college. Thanks Professor Twiss!

The Plague describes the impact of an epidemic that sweeps through a city. Slowly members of the community begin to die, and then more become infected, and the city is placed under quarantine. Sure, the story may be read as an allegory for the spread of Nazi ideology across Europe. Or it may be read more broadly as the fundamental condition of being human. Death is our common, inescapable plague, and faced with it we have choices. I’m going to refer to it in the next post as an example of how “beliefs” differ from “values.”

In this excerpt three characters are meeting up at the end of the day. Rambert is a reporter who is seeking to escape the quarantine in order to be with his wife in Paris. Tarrou is someone who happened by accident to find himself in the city at the time of the epidemic. He is someone who perceives all murder, regardless of the cause, as immoral. Finally, we have Rieux, a doctor who throws himself at the disease with little effect beyond exhaustion.

When the two friends entered Rambert’s room that night, they found him lying on the bed. He got up at once and filled the glasses he had ready. Before lifting his to his lips, Rieux asked him if he was making progress. The journalist replied that he’d started the same round again and got to the same point as before; in a day or two he was to have his last appointment. Then he took a sip of his drink and added gloomily: “Needless to say, they won’t turn up.”
“Oh come! That doesn’t follow because they let you down last time.”
“So you haven’t understood yet?” Rambert shrugged his shoulders almost scornfully.
“Understood what?”
“The plague.”
“Ah!” Rieux exclaimed.
“No, you haven’t understood that it means exactly that, the same thing over and over and over again.”
He went to a corner of the room and started a small phonograph.
“What’s that record?” Tarrou asked. “I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s St. James Infirmary.”
While the phonograph was playing, two shots rang out in the distance.
“A dog or a get-away,” Tarrou remarked.
When, a moment later, the record ended, an ambulance bell could be heard clanging past under the window and receding into silence.
“Rather a boring record,” Rambert remarked. “And this must be the tenth time I’ve put it on today.”
“Are you really so fond of it?”
“No, but it’s the only one I have.” And after a moment he added: “That’s what I said ‘it’ was, the same thing over and over again.”
He asked Rieux how the sanitary groups were functioning. Five teams were now at work, and it was hoped to form others. Sitting on the bed, the journalist seemed to be studying his fingernails. Rieux was gazing at his squat, powerfully built form, hunched up on the edge of the bed.
Suddenly he realized that Rambert was returning his gaze.
“You know, doctor, I’ve given a lot of thought to your campaign. And if I’m not with you, I have my reasons. No, I don’t think it’s that I’m afraid to risk my skin again. I took part in the Spanish Civil War.”
“On which side?” Tarrou asked.
“The losing side. But since then I’ve done a bit of thinking.”
“About what?”
“Courage. I know now that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of a great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”
“One has the idea that he is capable of everything,” Tarrou remarked.
“I can’t agree; he’s incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he’s incapable of anything really worth while.” He looked at the two men in turn, then asked:
“Tell me, Tarrou, are you capable of dying for love?”
“I couldn’t say, but I hardly think so, as I am now.”
“You see. But you’re capable of dying for an idea; one can see that right away. Well, personally, I’ve seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don’t believe in heroism; I know it’s easy and I’ve learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.”
Rieux had been watching the journalist attentively. With his eyes still on him he said quietly:
“Man isn’t an idea, Rambert.”
Rambert sprang off the bed, his face ablaze with passion.
“Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love. And that’s my point; we, mankind, have lost the capacity for love. We must face that fact, doctor. Let’s wait to acquire that capacity or, if really it’s beyond us, wait for the deliverance that will come to each of us anyway, without his playing the hero. Personally, I look no farther.”
Rieux rose. He suddenly appeared very tired.
“You’re right, Rambert, quite right, and for nothing in the world would I try to dissuade you from what you’re going to do; it seems to me absolutely right and proper. However, there’s one thing I must tell you: there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of righting a plague is common decency.”
“What do you mean by ‘common decency’?” Rambert’s tone was grave.
“I don’t know what it means for other people. But in my case I know that it consists in doing my job.”
“Your job! I only wish I were sure what my job is!” There was a mordant edge to Rambert’s voice. “Maybe I’m all wrong in putting love first.”
Rieux looked him in the eyes.
“No,” he said vehemently, “you are not wrong.”
Rambert gazed thoughtfully at them.
“You two,” he said, “I suppose you’ve nothing to lose in all this. It’s easier, that way, to be on the side of the angels.” Rieux drained his glass.
“Come along,” he said to Tarrou. “We’ve work to do.”
He went out.
Tarrou followed, but seemed to change his mind when he reached the door. He stopped and looked at the journalist.
“I suppose you don’t know that Rieux’s wife is in a sanatorium, a hundred miles or so away.”
Rambert showed surprise and began to say something, but Tarrou had already left the room.

Leap Day 2020

Leap Day!! Since this day only happens every four years, I can’t let it pass without a post. So how about something on games?

Last weekend, my buddy Matt drove down from Nashville for Con Nooga. Con Nooga is one of these alternative culture conventions: cos players, board gamers, fantasy & scifi fans, steam punk fans, comic book aficionados, roleplaying gamers… That kind of thing. I’ve always loved the idea of these sorts of gatherings. On one level it’s a big middle finger to the tut-tutting of puritanism. I consider myself a christian, but definitely more in the Matthew 7, verses 1 – 2 camp. Sure, what could be more “frivolous,” than writing fan fiction for Buffy the Vampire Slayer or spending months sewing and putting together a steam punk outfit or min/maxing the statistics of an imaginary character? None of that activity is going to put food on the table or get you ahead at work or mitigate global warming.

Someone decided that they needed to build this.

On the other hand, imagine a society in which everyone was passionate about something and those passions involved participating in creation. That’s what these Cons, at their best, remind me of. People doing things, not to make a buck or to exert dominance over someone else, but simply because they are excited about the opportunity to give voice to their imaginations. Sure, in the U.S. everything has been commoditized, and that goes for imagination. Disney is a company built on the commoditization of imagination. Also, some of the grossest displays of rampant consumerism I have ever seen take place at another con I’ve attended, GenCon. There, crowds of con-goers (many dressed up as elves, pirates, and Storm Troopers) stampede to buy things in a way that is no different from the worst Black Friday crowds. Walk the halls, and there are times when it feels like a scene from an opium den – individuals collapsed against the walls of a hallway in a sort of orgiastic bliss, surrounded by piles of purchased comics, games, figurines, and books.

That’s the stereotype, I suppose, and yet it’s apparently acceptable to get excited about the Super Bowl every year, and really, how is that any different? Talk about a monument to consumerism. And at least no one who is excited about Star Wars is rioting after a loss or running around beating up fans of other films.

Anyway, like I say, for me, being a fan of something – whether it be bread making, gardening, democracy, fantasy fiction, board games, being a dad – it’s all about the act of participating in creation. Imagining something, and then trying to turn elements of that imagination into reality. There’s something kind of glorious about that attitude.

As far as Con Nooga, though, Matt and I pretty much stuck to playing board games. We started out with Forbidden Desert. Forbidden Desert is a cooperative game, in which players have been marooned in desert. A sandstorm is raging, and the players need to discover the pieces of a flying machine, assemble it, and escape before dying of thirst / running out of time. The players either win together or all lose together. It’s a cute game. Each player has a special trait (e.g., clear sand faster, move diagonally, carry more water, etc), and as a team it’s important to make the most of each other’s strengths.

Southern Start Blue Plate special of the day.

After a meal at Southern Star with my folks, it was back to the con to play Quartermaster General. Quartermaster General is a WW II-themed game. Three axis countries (Germany, Japan, and Italy) take on three allied countries (UK, U.S.A, and the Soviet Union). There’s a board that pieces get played out onto, but mainly the game revolves around playing cards. Each country has a unique deck of cards that allows for units to be built, for units to attack, responses to be cued, and so forth. The trick is that only a single card can be played per a country’s turn. So the Soviets might have a response that they would like to cue up (e.g., “If an axis country attacks Ukraine, block the attack.”), but meanwhile they really need to send more troops into Russia which just lost all of its troops to a German attack. Also, once a card is played, it’s likely never coming back because a country’s deck is only gone through once. So, maybe it would be best to hold off playing a particular card, and to save it for later. If you are in to “battle”-type games, Quartermaster General is a very tight and compelling game. In Matt’s and my game the Axis countries ran out to a big lead in points, and the Allied countries only managed a last ditched victory on the final turn of the game with the last few cards of their decks.

Getting ready to start the “third age” of 7 Wonders Duel.

On Saturday, after the Chattanoogan Hotel failed to give Matt hot water (as it did for the entire weekend), we returned for more gaming. Con Nooga has a small but nice gaming library. Check out a game for free, and go play it. So, Matt and I checked out 7 Wonders Duel. Over on Boardgame Geek, I once wrote a review of 7 Wonders that you can read here. 7 Wonders Duel is a 2-player version of 7 Wonders that plays out in a quick 30 minutes. Basically, each player drafts cards into a tableau that represents their “city.” Some of the cards will produce resources (clay, stone, etc.). Some are “cultural” and give victory points, and some are “wonders” that provide a one-off or on-going benefit (e.g., take another turn, get a big influx of coins, etc). Like all games of this sort, there is a bit of learning about the iconography of the game. Symbols on the cards provide a sense of how the card can be used, and Matt and I got confused about this in our first game. But after that, man, this game is fast and enjoyable. I think we ended up rattling off three games in a row.

After 7 Wonders Duel it was time to break out Pandemic Legacy. Matt’s son, Hank, had given him this as a gift, and given the coronavirus news, we had to play this. We played twice and basically got crushed both times (although a misunderstanding of the rules in the first game allowed us to win). Ominous? Pandemic Legacy is like Forbidden Desert in that it is a cooperative game. Players act as a team and essentially try to defeat the game. In this case, the game is a cruel god. Viruses sprout up around the world, outbreaks spiral out to nearby cities, and the players run around the board trying plug up an increasingly “leaky dike.” Since this is a “legacy” game, the rules and boards change from one game to the next, and the game tells a story over plays. For example, in the middle of the first game, we learned that one of the viruses was now impervious to all vaccines. And before the second game our characters formed relationships with one another that allowed for special in-game tactics.

Anyway, after getting kicked around by viruses for a few hours, our brains were hurting, and it was off to Community Pie for some pizza. We came back later for one more game – Memoir ’44. Memoir ’44 is another WW II “dudes on a map” game. As far as these types of games go, Memoir ’44 is pretty rules light. The game board has three zones, and each player draws a hand of “orders” from a common deck. On any given turn, a player puts down a single order (e.g., “move and attack with a single unit in each zone”), draws back up a full hand, and that’s basically it. What makes the game shine are the scenarios…that and the fact that a game never lasts for more than about an hour. The scenarios refer to a particular historical battle, but in game terms, present a tactical puzzle for each player. In Matt’s and my case, we played the Operation Cobra scenario. For the Allied player, the puzzle is all about dislodging the Axis units that are well covered in the hedgerows. There’s no easy approach that isn’t going to leave units out in the open, and armor’s strength is hard to bring to bear. For the Axis player it’s all about stalling the Allied units and managing covered retreats. In our game the Axis looked like it would achieve a quick victory, but ran out of crucial orders for the right flank. The Allies then managed a sudden (and lucky) break through on their own right flank that led to victory.

And that was Con Nooga. Matt stayed another night at the Chattanoogan (again with no hot water), and after a breakfast at Rembrandt’s café, he headed back up to Nashville. All in all, a really nice weekend, and what gaming is all about as far as I’m concerned – goofiness, thinking through things, and catching up with friends.

Chattanooga Sabbatical: start of winter

Maps, not modules

Among certain psychologists, there is a belief that the mind is composed of “modules” that have been designed by evolution to account for very specific tasks. This kind of thinking has also been linked to the assertion that the mind is a computer, resulting in the natural rhetorical extension that “modules” are essentially equivalent to the “apps” we have on our phones. Just as your digital device has apps for banking, socializing, navigating, and finding restaurants, your mind has “modules” for tracking resources, socializing, and foraging, or so the argument goes. My own approach to and training in psychology is highly comparative and mechanistic. So, I am sympathetic to the “brain = computer, mind as modules” approach to psychology. I don’t think it is correct, though.

Let’s think this through – and not in an overly academic way. First of all, the brain is not a computer. Both might be machines that deal with inputs and outputs, but many systems deal with inputs and outputs. The solar system, is a collection of matter that handles inputs and outputs in a particular way. A hammer is a system that handles inputs and outputs in a particular way. This does not make the solar system or a hammer computational systems, at least not in any profound way. Similarly, sure, brains and computers share some descriptive features. Both make use of “memory,” both are energy intensive and need a regular replenishment of resources, and both transform information in particular ways. But this does not make brains and computers the same thing. Brains are not computers, even if the brain computes. Ultimately, computers are tools designed by humans for particular tasks. Brains are tools for… well, we’ll get to that.

Secondly, the brain is not composed of modules, even if it is modular. Sure, as we learned in the last post, perception is assembled from “products” that have been created in different areas of the brain. In other words, perception is a distributed process. However, it is a distributed process of shared networks. Just as we discussed with reference to supply chains, different visual “products” do not come from isolated modules. There is no “face” module or “chair” module. Instead, there is a system of shared networks that assemble faces or chairs.

Still, one strength of taking a modular approach to psychology is that it emphasizes the adapted qualities of our psyches. There are indeed deep currents given to our psyches by natural selection. We do seem predisposed to detect cheaters, learn languages, use tools (at least more so than other animals), see and hear a particular range of frequencies, have a sensitized disgust response during the first trimester of pregnancy, and on, and on, and on. Even the most religiously inclined must come to terms with the animal in which each soul resides. Through natural selection, our bodies and minds have been designed to encounter and assemble their worlds in particular ways. This is where the utility of thinking in terms of modules comes in. It allows mind scientists to cleanly carve up their subject matter into the traits and adaptations that allow for research. Every science needs its units, after all.

But let’s not forget that the assembly that is done by our minds is done for a particular reason. Fundamentally the psyche is designed to locate the organism within a problem space. Where am I within this space, and what do I need to do? These are the questions that the psyche faces at every moment of its limited existence. And to answer these questions, the psyche is composed not of modules, but of maps. Perception is essentially a means of creating landmarks, directions, and layers of information on maps. Yes, the supply chains of our perception assemble “percepts,” but on some level, all supply chains, themselves, are mappings of inputs onto outputs. We are not “modules all the way down;” we are maps all the way down. It is not a collection of goods that give our psyches meaning, but directions. Our psyches are composed of, and designed to assemble maps, and in doing so, our psyches search for and achieve meaning.

Our minds are composed of maps, not modules, even if those maps show modularity. Maps locate the organism in problem space, and it it through this that we define meaning.

Perception and Supply Chains

Neurons as supply chains. This image shows somatosensory neurons of a mouse that have been imbued with a a green flourescent protein. The bright blobs at the bottom are cell bodies, and the rising strands are apical dendritic bundles. In neurons, dendrites are the cell structures that receive inputs from other neurons.
“new_20x” by Robert Cudmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Since it’s been a while, I’m going to rehash some ideas and then weave in few more concepts: supply chains and maps. We’re still dealing with perceptions and beliefs in all of this.

So, in a recent post, I introduced the idea that emotions and motivations might be more accurately thought of as “visceral beliefs” – a category of perception that originates within the body, and which is built up from basic processes and learned expectations. We call these things “feelings” (I feel angry. I feel hungry. I feel curious. I feel tired…). In each case there is no such thing, really, as say anger. Rather there is a perception originating in our body that we term “anger.” One thing to realize, though, is that even if “you are not feeling it,” this does not mean that your emotional machinery isn’t nonetheless whirring away and influencing your behavior. Not all perception reaches our awareness, just as not all perception is universal. The logic is the same as what is applied to “normal perception” – sight, taste, touch, and so on. So let’s remind ourselves of some of the principles underpinning “normal perception.”

Shipping as neurons, and yes, I’d like you to associate this image with the first image of the post. Paths of shipping in the San Francisco bay. The solid, dark grey areas are land, while the lavender / purple areas are ocean. See this post at Mapbox.Com in order to learn more about how this visualization was created.

Perceptual Machinery

Psychologists long-ago established that perception isn’t a passive transcription of external sensations, but rather involves both a direct construction and an active interpretation. The result of these bottom up and top down processes gives us many of the furnishings and rooms of our psyches. The direct construction is done by the machinery at hand. We have been imbued by evolution with machinery such as rods, cones, chemical receptors, and hair cells that react to a particular range of environmental energies and that turn those inputs into patterns of neural firing. Do all animals, or individuals for that matter, use the same machinery? Of course not. Some birds possess machinery that allows them to “see” the earth’s magnetic fields. Some fish possess machinery that responds to electric fields, and honeybees can see patterns of polarized light that can be used to navigate. As Hamlet would say, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The dimensions of our perception are but a sliver of all possible dimensions, and humility (and wonder and a certain arrogance) goes hand-in-hand with doing good psychological science.

Further, even within a common assembly line of perception, e.g., vision, different tools allow organisms to handle different ranges of resources. Our own visual system cannot “handle” electromagnetic spectra from the ultraviolet bands, but honeybees would respond to management’s request to process UV light with “bring it on.” For honeybees ultraviolet inputs are part of their normal experience, while longer wavelengths (i.e., the color “red”) are not (see page 138 of provided link).

To use a crude metaphor, the machinery of perception is like a supply chain that assembles the lived-in environment of the psyche. Depending on the desired product, different supply chains make use of different resources. The supply chain for a rocking chair is quite different from the supply chain for an iPhone. Similarly, the supply chain for a melody will differ from one that produces the smell of cinnamon.

Supply Chains and Perception

Let’s go ahead and push this analogy between supply chains and perception because it will allow us to intuit some general principles of perception.

Part of the supply chain map for Jansport’s Big Student Backpack. Click through to the original interactive supply chain here. The site provides a very cool set of interactive maps for the supply chains of different products.

Here is a map of the supply chain for the Jansport Big Student Backpack. Be sure to click through to the original site, because each of the nodes can be clicked on for further information about the specific factories. Among other things, in this visualization we learn that there is a thread supplier in Malaysia, a yarn manufacturer in India, dying facilities in Thailand, rubber, zipper and yarn facilities in China and Taiwan, and an assembly facility in Indonesia that puts together the final backpack (along with many other products such as shoes, windbreakers, umbrellas, etc.) before shipping it to a primary distribution center in California. This distribution center then introduces the backpack into consumer awareness by placing it on the racks of a store or in the pages of a catalog. The consumer “sees” the final backpack, not the undergirding supply chain that makes the backpack possible.

Our own perception works according to similar principles. Dedicated areas of the brain specialize in “producing” vertical lines, horizontal lines, colors, visual movement… , and yet other areas receive these inputs and assemble them into larger products. At some point these perceptual products enter our awareness, but there is a considerable amount of assembly and processing that has already happened prior to this point. Below, for example, is a crude diagram showing the “supply chain” for visual information in Homo sapiens. Interrupt that supply chain at different locations and particular visual goods will no longer be available.

A map representing the supply chain of vision in humans. It is an adaption of Figure 4 from Behnke’s *Hiearchical Neural Networks for Image Interpretation*. Notice that visual supply chains classically separate into two crude pathways: one that assembles WHAT something is, and one that assembles WHERE something is. For our purposes, prosopagnosia could be thought of as involving disruptions to the WHAT supply chain. Blindsight, on the other hand, involves damage to the V1 area of the supply chain…a critical choke point for conscious perception of visual information. Nonetheless, in many blindsight patients visual factories are still hard at work in the SC, pulvinar, and from the inter laminar portions of the LGN. Additions to Behnke’s diagram are based on a number of readings, but anyone interested could start with Cowey 2010 and Fulton’s *21’st Century Paradigm Describing the Neural System* (p. 129). The latter is kind of eccentric, but for this post you only need to worry about the visual circuitry diagram on page 129. Basically, we now have a better understanding of the pathways from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and pulvinar nucleus that by-pass the V1 area of visual processing. Also, this diagram is still extremely crude. Not shown, for example, are the many feedback pathways that are known to exist among the different cortical areas.

Prosopagnosia, for example, is a phenomenon in which individuals lose the ability to “see” faces (click here to read an article about potential treatments). prósōpon = face, a = not, and gnosis = knowledge. Prosopagnosia usually results from damage or congenital alterations to a brain region known as the fusiform gyrus. Individuals with prosopagnosia might be able to describe the components of a face just fine: the nose is bulbous, the eyes are brown, the hair is curly and black. However, despite possessing the components of a face, they simply don’t possess the ability assemble those components into a face.

The condition known as blindsight also illustrates how disruptions in the visual “supply chain” are not an all-or-nothing thing. Blindsight is characterized by a functional blindness in which individuals nonetheless possess abilities that are dependent on vision. (If you have access to online articles, here is one that provides a nice overview and here is another.) An individual with blindsight might not be able to see a baseball, but could potentially catch one tossed their way. They might not consciously know that an object is present, but nonetheless could correctly guess as to the direction of its movement. In general the reason for the blindness of blindsight involves damage to area V1 of the visual cortex. This is an area at the back of the brain that receives the bulk of input from our retinas. However, as the figure above shows, several inputs from our retinas are sent in parallel to other brain regions (the superior colliculus and the lateral geniculate). It is thought that these inputs allow for the “sight” of blindsight. Conceptually, though, we can think of this with reference to our supply chain analogy. If we lose our “distribution center” or our “assembly factory” certain types of perception might never reach our awareness. Nonetheless, this does not stop the thread, zipper, or fabric dying factories from producing their goods – goods that can be used in other supply chains, as needed.

Figure from “To See, But Not to See.” A nice representation that uses the supply chain analogy to describe how disruptions along one pathway still allow for “deliveries” to take place along other pathways. It just so happens that only one of these pathways involves conscious awareness (the one indicated in blue).

Issues in supply chains don’t only have to do with the loss of resources such as we “see” in individuals with blindsight or prosopagnosia. For example, what would happen if a supply chain began to include inputs of colored fabric to an assembly factory that normally only received black fabric? We might end up with rainbow colored backpacks! Synthesia resembles just such an outcome. This syndrome refers to a phenomenon in which some individuals experience the stimulation of multiple sensory pathways when only a single pathway is objectively stimulated. Numbers and sounds might be “seen” to have particular colors; observing another individual’s hand being touched, might produce a sensation of touch in the observer. It should be noted that synesthesia is not an imagined or arbitrarily conjured sensation. Rather, the synesthete simply and consistently perceives a mixed sensory experience relative to what others experience.

I don’t want to push the analogy between the machinery of perception and supply chains too far. After all, it’s just an analogy. Computers aren’t the same things as brains and supply chains are not the same thing as perception. However, there’s one more point I’d like to squeeze out of the supply chain / perception analogy, and that’s the concern with balancing resilience and efficiency.

When will these goods enter consumer awareness? When does a face become recognized as a face?
“Distribution centre” by Nick Saltmarsh is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Efficiency, blooming and pruning

A central issue faced by the management of supply chains involves balancing efficiency and resilience. For example, the coronavirus outbreak has made news for disrupting supply chains through China, and many green technologies currently face vulnerabilities in their supply chains that might affect their ability to scale up. In order to handle these issues capable managers need constantly to grow and prune their supply chains in ways that minimize costs while maximizing resilience. Extra supplies need to be maintained, backup factories need to be kept at the ready, and of course all of these contingency plans impose costs. If the world were perfectly predictable, these costs would be unnecessary. But the world is not predictable. Storms, viruses, political unrest, new technologies and competitors all impose costs. Such is life.

Supply chain or brains? In this case it’s neural networks, but conceptually the figure originates from work that seeks to emulate the synaptic pruning observed in brains. Taken from Singh (2019). Pruning deep neural networks.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the machinery of perception deals with similar demands for resilience and efficiency, and the way that our brains manage these demands shapes the environs of our individual psyches. For example, the development of our brains is characterized by an overproduction of connections, followed by a pruning of these connections. This “blooming and pruning” occurs in different areas of the brain at different times in our lives. Below, for example, is a figure showing the approximate developmental time course for several brain regions along with their hypothesized functions. What it shows is that our visual and auditory “supply chains” are crudely mapped out with a hodgepodge of connections that are then tightened up over the first three years of life. Areas involved in speech production, on the other hand, have a later “blooming” that is followed up by a pruning that occurs until approximately age 7. [Remember: these are averages and say nothing about what is happening in the brain for any single individual.]

Figure 1 from Thompson and Nelson (2001). Developmental science and the media: early brain development. *American Psychologist*, 56, 5 – 15. The curves estimate the number of synapses in different brain regions at different times in an individual’s life. The central point is that waves of “blooming and pruning” are a regular part of brain development across (at least) the first 20-odd years of life.

The pruning of pathways in our brains is crudely guided by a “use it, or lose it” maxim. Connections that are repeatedly stimulated are strengthened and maintained, while those that are rarely stimulated are deleted. The result is that our perceptual supply chains are made more efficient at delivering the products that we apparently need. If you do not need to distinguish between “l” and “r” sounds, then your brain will eliminate the wasted circuitry that produces the perception of these two distinct sounds. Simultaneously we become worse / better at associating particular lip movements with particular sounds. Similarly, as I brought up in another blog post, if you do not need to distinguish between faces that have particular racial characteristics, then your brain will eliminate the “wasted” circuitry that produces the perception of these differences. In extreme cases, experimenters have even been able to create environments in which animals lose the ability to perceive horizontal or vertical lines. Again, use it or lose it. If the world does not need you to “see” vertical lines, then your brain is not going to waste the supply lines necessary to create a perception of vertical lines. In psychology this phenomemon is termed perceptual narrowing and it is the result of synaptic pruning , but conceptually perceptual narrowing and synaptic pruning are no different from what supply chain managers do every day.

Summing up the Supply Chain / Perception Analogy

All right, the main principles to draw from our analogy between supply chains and perception are:

Just as supply chains construct products by integrating and orchestrating a network or factories, the machinery of perception constructs our psychological world from many distributed areas in the brain.

Just as a zipper or yarn factory can help in the assembly of many different goods, perceptual “factories” can provide outputs that are used for many different types of percepts (e.g., faces, objects, animals, etc.).

Just as much of a supply chain is invisible to the consumer, much of the machinery of perception is invisible to our consciousness.

Just as supply chains are molded by concerns for efficiency and resilience, our brains mold the machinery of perception by balancing physiological costs and environmental demands.

A Declaration of Hope

A post in honor of the Christmas season. If all goes to plan, I’ll have more to say in the coming year about “declarations.” I encourage any readers to come up with their own. Principles to reflect upon and hold up as a compass or perhaps a challenge. Hope can be a habit, an emotion, a value, or even a perception. In other words — a belief. Too often, perhaps, it borders on fatalism. The hope of my own believing is more active and defiant than that. What’s more punk than hope? Not much.

Habits learned in darkness

Took this photo at Beacon Dia. For the life of me, I can’t recall the artist (and the Dia website isn’t any help). Isn’t it amazing how the spray of white paint on black is all you need to see curves and shape?

The problem with being –“etre” — is that you are lots of things you don’t want to “etre.” Passive, often afraid, insecure, a little bit lazy, and more than a little bit angry. Avoiding. That’s what you are doing. Like a beach that fools itself into thinking it is building something by letting the tide repeatedly wash over it. You can point to many instances in your life when you ran away from what was possible or watched yourself inhibit what was possible. Maybe you were waiting for salvation and simultaneously hoping it would go away: hoping for a message, a sign, that would clarify, absolve and unify your life, thinking, “I can’t do anything now, but I will be able to accomplish something grand as soon as it comes,” that thing which is an answer.

While you wait for it to come, you stay in the dark. But you’ve been in the dark so long, waiting, that your eyes have had time to adjust and you realize that it is possible, in fact, to see in the dark: the darkness is not as absolute and unqualified as you thought at first. At that point, you say, “This isn’t so bad, I can see my way through this cave while waiting for the light,” the answer, which may or may not be at the entrance/exit. But how much do you have to believe in the light to keep waiting for it when you can see well enough to survive where you are?

And what is the dark, anyway? It’s all of your habits and fears and weaknesses: I just wasn’t meant tos; faith predicated upon things not working out; wishing for external, effortless, even inherited legitimacy — all the while knowing deep down that true paths to self-value aren’t simply given.

Living in the dark one can’t avoid fantasies of escape. They spring up like dreams, both beautiful and nightmarish. Thoughts about suicide… coming in waves, but never do you think in terms of what might be missed (after all, why would you miss the dark?), more along the lines of release, a way out, a well-reasoned evasion strategy. And then there are addictions: Hoping that another person can lead you to the light, or show you the escape hatch, or become the escape hatch. Writing words and words in order to avoid, taking walks in order to escape, chalking up “accomplishments” all in an effort to crow-bar yourself away from the reality of darkness. Addictions that are seductive and frantic and desperate and “passionate:” despair instead of sadness, enduring suffering instead of acting bravely, collapsing inward instead being resolute. Like buying a cup of coffee from the departmental coffee machine and drinking it on the way to class instead of taking the time to acquire good beans, make an espresso and pour warmed milk into it.

The worst part about the cave is sensing the light, but not feeling capable of moving towards it. Maybe sometimes you even feel you’re on the verge of making a change (or at least that’s the story) and then something happens to show you how, frankly, impossible change is for you. And maybe you wonder, “Who am I kidding by doing the math — counting years, reworking the budget, making the checklists? This is it, man. This is who I am. If I haven’t done it by now, what are the chances?” It’s like that horrible feeling of the clock ticking down and ticking down while you remain in a situation that is being dictated by someone else. Or maybe you can’t even sense the light, but you can remember it. You know it existed once. Is the darkness payment for once being in the light? You say, “Everything has a price: the going price of beauty is health; satisfaction costs exactly one life.”

So maybe this explains why you can’t quite believe in the light. Could it be that waiting for all these years, desiring an “ultimate answer,” is really just a trick to convince yourself to stay put, to maintain the life of darkness and shadows in which fantasy can still be believed in and regret over past decisions can sap all available energy?

The revelations of vision

Maybe the cave would be enough. Maybe fantasy and endurance and the fetal position would suffice if the cave were only darkness; if reality were only, purely darkness; if you could convince yourself that the memories of light were not real, or even if they were real once, the light is gone now, irretrievable. Time to grow up and be responsible. But like an itch, there is a pinprick of light: turn away, or cover your eyes, it remains, interrupting sleep, ending fantasies, requiring active avoidance. The light refutes — no, actively changes — the darkness. Fantasy becomes cheap, and there, way off in the distance, there is the possibility of something different. The light is true, and it is demanding, so much so that you sometimes think you can’t take it anymore, that you want an easier and more convenient life. But at the same time there is a part of you that is excited because the light is there, and it is beautiful and it lets you, finally, see.

Vision brings with it the possibility that you can act and you can move — reach instead of hope for the lucky stumble. You see that, indeed, goals are external things not achieved by the internal states of dreams and fantasy. It’s like realizing after many years of college that the key is just to go to class, or realizing that the goal in a race is actually to cross the finish line as fast as possible. Simple realizations. Maybe obvious to some. And no doubt you’ll use these thoughts about how easy it is for others to stay in the dark. But the “damage” has been done. You can’t help but become suspicious of your sealed fate because now you can see that light is found and achieved and lost. That you’ve had to work to not notice the light, just as you have to work to see it. You know now that strength is more than passive endurance. What used to be hoarding “Good Things” to make the dark more bearable becomes a commitment to try to act in accord with that which is good. The light, you see, changes not only the external world, but the internal one, as well.

Of course, this is no Hollywood movie. All those habits, acquired over years, do not just fall away. And you are bound still to stumble — you are still in the dark, after all. Nonetheless, this first choice — to get up, to stand, to move forward — now that is a leap and it does terrify. “You’re in danger, you’re exposed, you’re weak!” is the voice of your mind. All you can answer is, “I trust the reality of the light.” And you realize that the light has engendered your body. You see now that you really are a woman; you see now that you are a man, not just in fantasy, but in fact. And in a way, all of this new information requires a new kind of acceptance, a different kind of passivity. You know by now that passivity is dangerous, that it is something you need to fight against so that it doesn’t take over, but this new passivity is wonderful because it’s only possible with trust. As a heart is the body of a soul, and around a heart beats a physical life, you begin to see that it is possible to be reformed from the inside out.

Right now your only goal is to move toward greater illumination. So, you set up schedules and come up with rules: Set money aside. Avoid dissipation of purpose whether that purpose involves exercising, staying in touch with friends, listening to music. Value the finish more than the initiation. Get through the drudge. Strength — that is what you want, and need, because the cavern still surrounds you, even as you walk. You know that to reach the entrance of the cave, you have to be resourceful. You can’t be wasteful. And this in itself is a new sensation. It is something to be grateful for. And only in this way is living in the dark neither bleak or doomed because it makes you attentive and sensitive to the light. For the first time you see the surrounding rock of the cavern for what it is so that when you do stumble you understand that good and bad things happen, but they really are independent — that living is experiencing/feeling both the good and bad things fully. This is also why it doesn’t make sense to go looking for signs. Being open to their possibility, though, is a different thing. Signs are not destiny or judgment or the word of God. They are more about the meaning that goes along with action or potential action, and that meaning can be accepted or rejected.

At first, the walking is difficult. How many years were you fetally curled? You don’t know. Yes, walking is difficult and you are not even sure if you remember how to do it: you try out anger, telling the world, “Fuck you, I’m doing exactly what I want, when I want it.” Or maybe instead you think in terms of sacrifice — that you will make your life a bit harder than it has to be and that will make you virtuous, where virtue means bringing yourself into the light. But then you see these mental tricks for what they are. It’s not about selfishness or sacrifice: it’s about feeling like you are enough so that you don’t have to mediate between yourself and how you act in the world. There’s no need to self-censor or to put up guards to protect yourself. It’s about chipping away at the middle conscientiously, in mind and in practice, all along, experiencing life healthy enough, safe enough, confident enough, trusting enough — so that living becomes automatic. It is like traveling alone in another country. Or going out with a friend, drinking just a little too much beer and talking about philosophical things. It is swimming in the lake in the summer, hiking in the mountains and skiing in the winter. Appreciating the food, and the way it is eaten, prepared and sold. You see that it is possible for your life in the light to be miraculously easy…easy not because the demands are easy, but because those demands are seen to be so clearly right in spite of their costs.

Then a strange thing happens. You have been moving toward the light, scrabbling over rocks, taking detours, all under the impression that to do so was a leap of faith. And it was. Like driving a car and focusing down the road versus looking at each painted line. The light is the answer. It is a demanding and overflowing thing that you want to experience as clearly and as often as possible. But now that you are moving, you realize that to move is no longer a leap, but a choice of one existence over another. And the choice is not between good and evil, between right and wrong; it’s not that simple: it’s more like choosing right over less right. Only in the light can you see the finer distinctions between things: justice is more right than beauty, the life of earth and of land is more right than the life of commerce, a community centered on healing is more important than one centered on consumption. You choose justice over beauty at every turn and earth over commerce in every act of living. And even though the choices are right, they don’t eliminate fear or pain. There is no way to get around the pain of any choice — either guilt and terror or sacrifice and terror and defeat and bitterness. But you trust your choice, just as you trust the light.

At the entrance: the life of sunlight

So, on you go. The light brightening more and more of the rock around you, revealing more and more of what a cavern is when shadows are pulled back. And maybe your steps begin to falter. Yes, you’ve become accustomed to light, but what is actually outside the cavern? What are you really moving towards? Might it not be best to camp out right here, the light pouring in from the entrance that is still a ways off? Isn’t it possible to live in the warmth of the light and the safety of the shadow? Just enough reality and just enough fantasy. Well, that’s the thing. You can only guess what the world is like outside the cavern. You can only hope. What comes next? Etre, strength and mystery. All “shoulds” fall away. All guilt and all shame. You will be compelled to incorporate without fear (which is different from “consideration”) of any other’s reaction. Become…What? That is the mystery. Being through faith. Those are the words, but there is no way of knowing if they are true or not, at least not while you are still here. What you do know is this: that part of you will be brought into the light of day, and that this is a choice, and you know, even, that you made this choice long ago. You chose light. You choose light. Every step is as preposterous as the last. Yet they happen. It was and is true. Maybe you can’t figure out what awaits. For certain you can’t. It is the stone thrown that never reports its landing. But that is true of every step taken. You might not have planned it or puzzled it all out — the possibilities were given to you by the confluence of darkness and light — but you were prepared, you did plan and you did choose to walk into the light.

Inspiration Miscellany

A challenge worth pursuing…

Here is a quote from A.O. Scott in a column about the best movies of 2019:

You know what’s cool? Movies that offer something more than the sullen pseudo-politics of “Joker” or the elaborate pro-status-quo theatrics of “Avengers.” Movies that, rather than fetishizing self-pity or sentimentalizing domination, illuminate the cruelty, the comedy and the grace of the human condition. Movies that treat you as something other than a passive spectator or an obedient, presold “fan.” Movies that are actually worth arguing about, and thinking about.

Replace “Movies” with “Living,” and you’ve got a challenge that might be worth pursuing. “Living that, rather than fetishizing self-pity or sentimentalizing domination, illuminates the cruelty, the comedy and the grace of the human condition.”

A YouTube channel to get you thinking

Nerdwriter1 posts an eclectic mix of short videos. His analysis of Donald Trump answering a question is brilliant, and check out this analysis of an Emily Dickinson poem. However, I especially enjoy his analysis of art and movies.

Susan Rice

I personally had never really given Susan Rice much thought, but I saw her interviewed a couple of times a month or so ago. Man, what an articulate intellect! In a column she wrote in the NY Times Rice wrote:

This combination — being a confident black woman who is not seeking permission or affirmation from others — I now suspect accounts for why I inadvertently intimidate some people, especially certain men, and perhaps also why I have long inspired motivated detractors who simply can’t deal with me.

Yep.

Deep fakes, disinformation, and belief

One of the reasons that I started this blog has to do with concerns I have about the origins of our beliefs. I don’t mean religious beliefs, although those certainly need occasional challenging. No, I mean beliefs that devalue other individuals who simply want a slice of dignity. Beliefs that lead some to charge into pizza parlors with guns. Beliefs that lead some to disregard mountains of data about global warming. Beliefs that lead to visceral declarations of “I just don’t like them.” Anyway, everyone should be aware of the forces out there that are trying to influence their beliefs. Here is a collection of a few articles that deal with that issue.

I think that at this point, most folks know that the content they are interacting with in social media has been planted by governments. However, be aware that this planting of information also concerns opinion pieces that you read in your newspaper as well as letters to the editor.

More information about Russian government attempts to influence U.S. politics. You Reddit users, be aware that platform has its trolls, too.

Here’s an interesting article about how telecommunication companies faked millions of comments to the FCC. This was part of a campaign to get “net neutrality” revoked. It worked, and they paid no penalties that I am aware of.

Want an online game that let’s you play at planting disinformation? Here you go.

Deep fakes refer to video that has been doctored to make it look like someone is doing something they didn’t do. These things are coming. What if we had video of Donald Trump taking money from Putin? What if we had video of Hillary Clinton giving money to a bunch of Ukrainians? How many people would want to believe their lying eyes? Many.