crowd behavior

"A Different Universe: Revising Physics from the Bottom Down" by Robert B. Laughlin, a physics professor at Stanford and a winner of the Nobel Prize, fascinates me.  I found the book by accident about a decade or so ago and was intrigued by the title.  The book is about what is sometimes called "emergence" but could be called crowd behavior.  Not crowds of people, though, crowds of atoms.

I read through the book once before and felt that I understood about 15% of it.  The other day, a friend mentioned how much my use of the word "emergence" resonated with her.  This book by Laughlin and "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software" by Steven Johnson have fed an interest in patterns that emergence or are observable at one scale or zoom level but not in more close-up looks.  Laughlin's book is highly readable and draws me in quickly even though I often don't understand what he is saying.

The basic idea is that since the Greeks, thinkers and scientists have sought the basic particle of matter.  Once it became clear that atoms have sub-parts and the sub-parts, I gather, are not physical entities in the usual sense of being something, thinking got more subtle.  Laughlin relates much of his early discussion to phases of matter, like solid, liquid and gas.  I gather that the properties of a rock or a desk, the solidity and constant shape, is a matter of the behavior of masses of atoms, behavior that "emerges" from enough (a very great many) atoms being together.  A common saying among some people is that "more is different", I guess from an influential essay in 1972, that explained in many areas of the world, getting enough items together produces a result that is not inherent in any of them but emerges from the collection of a sufficient number.

Laughlin is witty and acerbic and says that many of his students have absorbed the idea that quantum mechanics and what goes on at the atomic and sub-atomic level is really weird.  But he says that it is all quite straightforward if you understand it and realize that aggregates are sometimes quite different from one or two individuals.  Statisticians and insurance companies make use of that idea every day but it can pop up in surprising places.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

L.I.F.E.

In our town, we have an organization named "Learning Is ForEver", a.k.a. "LIFE".  It was founded by retired university faculty and is about 10 years old.  I am a whole-hearted supporter of the group, which accepts proposals for presentations and field trips, organizing them into a schedule for members.  The group is about 10 years old and is parallel to similar organizations near other colleges and universities.  

I get to be around people over 60 quite often.  I have a personal rule that everyone over 60 has had some wonderful experiences.  Not everyone wants to go to the trouble of speaking or writing about their experiences or views but they all have them.  It is not difficult to find 'one-noters' who only want to talk about the dangers of climate change or the silver standard or some other fixation.  For me, they are usually not too much fun to listen to or read.  

But many retired men and women have knowledge of something I wish I knew about.  The better presenters can sometimes clear up an area with basic orientation comments that suddenly make engines or a disease or bluebirds much more understandable than ever before.

There is a ton of thinking and writing about the subject of story.  Humans probably have a special ability to relate to and remember a story, such of an adventure or the overcoming of a hardship or threat.  I love a good story, too, even though it seems that I get more persnickety about what story seems worth attending to.  Maybe I have heard too many.

Maybe not.  The other day, I was showing a woman how easy and fast it is to buy and possess a book on my Kindle.  I rarely read anything that could be called a romance but that category was handy and I opened it up.  The first book that I saw was something called "Jailbird" by Heather Huffman.  I pressed the wrong key and Bingo!  I had purchased the book for $3.99.  There are various hoops I could jump through to rescind the purchase but I figured a chance event like that might be worth following up.  I read the book over a couple of days and enjoyed the story.

But normally, I tend to concentrate on books that tell me neat stuff about all aspects of the world that I didn't know.  The Discovery channel and The Learning Channel and the explosion of the world wide web convince me that as people get older, they know more but they want to know even more.  We only have so many high school and college hours and there are always more subjects that we have time for.  Over time, our hormonal drives lower and we suddenly realize that there are many things we could understand but don't.  

Hearing from some of the retired local pros who have insight, freedom to talk and discuss and reveal is very fulfilling.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

longevity

We are back and happy to be home!

Next up on our mutual agenda is a presentation by the pair of us and our friend on the subject of longevity. Our friend read "The Longevity Project", a book by Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin that reports the results of an analysis of data collected in Louis Terman's gifted children work at Stanford University in the 1920's.  Terman gathered much information about the children in his project and kept gathering it all his life.  After his death, the information gathering continued.  Much of it is less that highly scientific but it does cover about 1500 people and does so for nearly their entire lifespan.

Friedman and Martin report the results of the correlational data analysis.  It is frequently the case with humans that there is no way to conduct a double blind experiment where some people are designated to take treatment A and some are designated not to get the treatment.  So, lacking experimental data, correlational studies are often the best that can be achieved.  In a correlation study, the co-occurrence of two or more variables is studied.  Thus, if we find that heavier people are happier and lighter people are less so, we might conclude that weight has something to do with happiness.

Doctoral students are often quizzed on their understanding of the limitations of correlation. Both experimental and correlation research have limitations.  One of the most severe is the question of how the particular subjects (people) got into the study.  Were they all from the same city?  Were they all caucasian?  Were they volunteers?  We may find that people from some other city or physical group or who don't volunteer are quite different from those we studied but we might find this out later, after errors and mistreatments.  

The special shortcoming of correlation analysis is the problem of causation.  If one group smoked and one group didn't, if the smoking group is especially happy, we might conclude that smoking produces happiness.  In a correlation study, we take individuals and compare their level on two or more variables but we have no information on cause.  If the heavier people are happier, does weight produce happiness?  Does happiness produce weight?  Maybe there is a well-known third factor, one that we don't even know about, that produces both weight and happiness.

The strongest relation the researchers found between longevity and other variables was with "conscientiousness" .  Those in the study who were most conscientious over their whole lives tended to also be the people who lived the longest.  So, vote, keep your grass cut and brush your teeth if you want to live a long time.  (Maybe!)

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Like always: sometime content, sometimes not

It is not easy becoming less powerful, closer to death and/or disability, and yet more insightful all the time.  

As I think about my knowledge, I realize I have far more questions than answers, far more hunches than facts or proofs.  For instance, I vote, but I actually know very little about the difficulties the next elected person is likely to face nor what strengths have a high probability of helping that person make the best decision.

It is fun to see farther and know more, but those abilities reveal what a large part of my world is a myth, or a dream, or a supposition.  I become steadily more accepting of the world and of myself.  I am forced to do so really, both by external circumstance of aging and internal development that shows me what life is about.  I become steadily better adjusted and, in a sense, more content.  That means there is less and less to worry about but also less and less to care about or try to achieve.

Sometimes, I haul out my discrimination and ask if writing or exercising or reading or learning matter.  I ask of this program or that book or the tv show, is this worth spending my dwindling time on?  Sometimes, the answer is irrelevant.  I want to do the work or thinking or watching and that is all there is to it.  At other times, when I get peevish or lose some of my acceptance, I say "No" to one thing or another.  It can even reach the point where I say "No" to just about every choice or possibility that I know about.  I don't mind sitting in a sulk for a while, or just in neutral to see what emerges.  Emergence can produce some very surprising answers and directions.


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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Three notes

I keep a list of rough notions for a post and it has 135 ideas on it right now.  In some cases, I have forgotten that I posted about that idea but didn't delete the note.  But from time to time, I may post snippets of several ideas in an effort to clear some of my file.

Item #1 Afford Since we are targeted by such a steady stream of advertising and attempts to create desire in us, we often have reason to think of how much money, savings, saleable property and other wealth we have.  I was just shown today that for something like $230,000, I could buy a car with a cloak of invisibility around it.  I am not sure such a car would be a good thing nor how much the cloak works but that is not my question.  I want to know about it and many other things: Can I afford it?  I find that I and most people I know simply don't know what they "can afford".  

I can add the amount in my bank account and my wallet but should I try to get a loan for a desired item?  Should I try to launch a business to earn enough?  What I can or cannot afford is a slippery subject.

Item #2 - "Click here to learn more", often abbreviated to simply "Learn more".  This is typical wordng to invite me to pay attention to more content, wordsmithing, text, pictures including lovely little puppies or children, all aimed at getting me to attend to further explanation as to why I should do what someone wants me to do.  I am thinking about designing an app that will instantly change an link using the words "learn more" into a different link that will read "learn less".  The app will create a useable summary of the notion being pedaled expressed in few words and no pictures or sounds.

Item #3 - Curing phobias without understanding them  I read in Brian Christian's "The Most Human Human" that Dr. Richard Bandler, a scientist and hypnotist cures some phobias in some people without ever finding out what the person is afraid of.

Bandler is the co-founder of the controversial "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" school of psychotherapy and is himself a therapist who specializes in hypnosis. One of the fascinating and odd things about Bandler's approach—he's particularly interested in phobias—is that he never finds out what his patient is afraid of. Says Bandler, "If you believe that the important aspect of change is 'understanding the roots of the problem and the deep hidden inner meaning' and that you really have to deal with the content as an issue, then probably it will take you years to change people." He doesn't want to know, he says; it makes no difference and is just distracting. He's able to lead the patient through a particular method and, apparently, cure the phobia without ever learning anything about it. It's an odd thing, this: we often think of therapy as intimate, a place to be understood, profoundly understood, perhaps better than we ever have been. And Bandler avoids that understanding like—well, like ELIZA. "I think it's extremely useful for you to behave so that your clients come to have the illusion that you understand what they are saying verbally," he says. "I caution you against accepting the illusion for yourself."

Christian, Brian (2011-03-01). The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive (p. 78). Doubleday. Kindle Edition.



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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

three important mind tools

The age of science is sometimes called the age of analysis.  Teachers make use of a classification system that organizes educational goals and questions and test items into basic classes (often called Bloom's taxonomy)

1. memory - what does our text say?
2. application - How is this knowledge used?
3. analysis - take apart something into its components
4. synthesis - put things together to make something
5. evaluation - judge whether an idea or theory or something is any good

Those 3rd and 4th sections, analysis and synthesis, are two historically important tools that human minds have used over the centuries.  Modern physical science has been very successful at taking things apart and then taking those things apart, all the while studying the components.  Analysis is very important and is used all the time in all sorts of thinking, research and investigation.

As thinkers have looked over the recent 1000 years, the importance of analysis has stood out.  I read, probably in that very wide-ranging book, Brian Christian's "The Most Human Human", that Chinese physicians and medical scientists were deeply impressed when they watched a human body being dissected.  As the structure inside the body was revealed and compared to a Dutch textbook of the time. the drawings matched the body perfectly while a comparable Chinese text bore no resemblance to the actual structure.  Analysis of the body was a tricky and legally dangerous thing to do for several centuries.

Putting things together is certainly important for human activity and progress.  Often, a new component is created and immediately recognized for what it can do when inserted into a computer or a camera.  One fundamental aspect of synthesis is drawing a loop around an era, a plan, a planet and declaring "That's one", one era, one plan, one planet and looking at that whole or at alternatives to what has been labeled One.

A third major tool that doesn't appear explicitly in the Benjamin Bloom taxonomy is the "re-start", the do-over, the fresh start, the new beginning.  We all know that power when working on a puzzle or a computer problem or an essay in simply declaring "time for a re-try."  Jane Gardam's hero is named "Old Filth", after the British slogan applied to the late 1800's and early 1900's in London: "Failed in London, Try Hongkong" (FILTH).  If you make a try in London that doesn't succeed, move to Hong Kong and make a new try.

Our country's non-Native American population was mostly people who wanted to move to a new place and try again.  Even the Indians who walked across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska were on the move to something new.  Sure, tenacity and perseverance pay and maybe that manuscript needs more editing and sharpening.  But there is always the possibility of a new start.  It is very modern. 

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Easy when it's more difficult

Once when my great-grandson was dawdling over his spinach, his mother really wanted him to eat his greens.  She said,"I bet I can finish my spinach before you can finish yours." Zap! Zap!  All his spinach disappeared completely!

Dr. McGonigal in her blog "The Science of Willpower" (followed on my blog page) writes about a high correlation between effort and a feeling of benefit.  Sounds related to the idea that what you measure or otherwise attend to is what you "get" or "is what improves".  It is not easy to eat spinach or broccoli or whatever is supposed to be good for you but is not interesting or attractive.  One logical analysis says that if A is not easy, and B is not easy, then both A and B together will not be easy. Yet, my great-grandson ate his spinach AND won in the challenge offered by his mother when he was unable to just eat the vegetable.

Our lives are shot through with challenges and contests designed to increase motivation to reach goals that are lackluster or mundane.  Men and boys thrive on competition and love to see if they can win.  Some highly competitive guys will announce to others that they have won when nobody knew there was a contest going on.  Telling jokes in class?  I will outclown you.  Or, lacking jokes to use in the contest which I just invented, I will outclass you, draw more attention than you, with tear-jerking stories or dozens of push-ups.  Anything to win!  Anything to win in any way, any contest.  Why?  You know, if you have to ask.....  

My Filipino gym teacher memorably said about 60 years ago that for every ten people who can stand adversity, there is one who can flourish in prosperity.  I took that as a challenge worth accepting.  So, when I have many compliments or lots of money or a good stock of books or hopes or whatever, I remember that I can just accept that good turn of events, that happy circumstance.

When the physical therapist tells me not to go ballistic, she means to accept the simple gentle exercise as the most beneficial one and not to try to improve on the prescription with extra effort or speed or number of repetitions.  I do try to remember and apply her idea, partly because it is a challenge to be able to do so.  But, sometimes it's easier when it is harder.


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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

The very bored lady

We walked through the Bellingrath Gardens and had lunch in their cafeteria.  One end of the dining area is a glass wall with glass doors, looking out on a sunny patio with a table and view of the gardens.  A little too buggy and sunny for a pair of northerners but very pleasant to look at while lunching - a bit different from the typical dining room decor, too.

Lynn invited a woman who was looking for a place to join us at our table.  We started talking to her and she said that she was down from a neighboring state so that her husband could have a chance to play golf but she didn't play and was struggling with serious boredom.

When considering boredom, any combination of these might matter:

• money - what opportunities, travel, trips, equipment, foods, can I afford?
• physical strength - am I up to travel, shopping, standing, walking, etc.?
• meditation - using this tool daily can improve one's ability to tease apart strands in the ties that bore
• prayer - praying for new ears, new eyes, new thoughts, new appreciations, renewed appreciation of what one has
• helping others - there are many others one could help by cooking, listening, writing, supporting, advising
• caught in conceptions - am I being too eager to label events as boring?  Am I getting into the spirit of activities or trying to prove that I can remain bored by it all?
• patience, acceptance, tolerance - sitting quietly and soaking up the boredom with patience can help as can purposely avoiding usual pastimes for a short time to refresh my interest
• fiction can enliven one's life as well as content such as Toohey's "Boredom: A Lively History"

Rocks laying among branches and dead leaves seem very accepting and well-adjusted to their environment.  As I become more accepting of my life and body, fewer things strike me as exciting or thrilling.  Does that mean that being totally well-adjusted equals being inert, impassive, stone-like?

What if boredom gave us deep pleasure?  What if we vigorously sought deep boredom? I wrote about Mr. and Mrs. Donnybrook whose strange case was invented and described by Ogden Nash.  These two "scoured the Five Continents and the Seven Seas in their mad pursuit of boredom".  We usually hear about people with money and some vigor madly seeking pleasure, not boredom.  That old reliable Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament tells a tale we hear about: trying out every pleasure we can think of, only to find that they all lose their lift and drift us into a state of boredom.  But what if we try over and over to dig deep into boredom?  Will we drift into excitement?  Would boredom become uninhabitable?

Lucretius wrote of wealthy Romans in ancient times who ordered their servant to hitch up a chariot and drive them to their country estate, only to tell them to return them to the city after an hour in the country.  Flaubert wrote of Madame Bovary seeking excitement in extra-marital affairs, only to quickly find each new lover very boring. It's even a problem for caged animals.

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Don't Overdo It!

Google has launched Google Play (play.google.com), an alternative to the iTunes/iPod,Pad arrangement by Apple.  It is a place to buy and hold movies, books and music, which can then be loaded into an Android device or a computer.  No doubt the Chromebook tablets and Android tablets will cooperate nicely with Play.  For today only (too late by the time this is posted but there will be other deals), there is an album of 20 pop songs available for 25 cents.  

One of those songs is "Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO.  I listened to some of it, trying to become a little more aware of what is going on in popular music.  Since the first two pieces I bought were Beethoven's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and his overture to King Stephan, you can see I am not that into what's hot.  

The song is sung by a male singer who is attractive to the opposite sex and is aware of that fact.  When I think of the delights of being attractive, I am surprised that anyone of either sex would want to be sexy to any very great extent.  Sure, being accepted by the person of your dreams, definitely important.  Very important.  But to be sought after too strongly by too many members of the others would be very unpleasant, it seems to me.

Some of my female friends have given me a glimpse of the amount of pleasure they get by being hooted at from a passing carload of guys and it ain't much.  Since men generally make offers and propositions and women generally accept or reject them, the usual picture is of an attractive woman being noticed and sought after by men, who compete to the only partner accepted by the lady.  However, if things get too hot, a frenzy might develop in which the males more or less ignore each other just to be close to that delightful woman.  

Men often picture (vaguely!) being sought by many women.  However, for either sex, demand can get uncomfortably hot, even lethal.  The best picture I have ever seen of a woman sought by a mob of men is near the climax of the movie "Love Potion No. 9", written by the excellent Dale Launer.  A little gold-digger has been rummaging in the scientist's medicine cabinet and squirts what seems to be breath freshener into her mouth.  Yikes!  It is Love Potion No. 9.  The sexual equivalent of the Midas touch, it makes the squirted irresistible to all members of the Others if they heard that person speak.  Goldy speaks in a church and all the men charge her.  She flees down the street, yelling "Help!" all the way and steadily attracting even more pursuers.

Men are not immune.  The scenes of the ritual dismembering by hand of the fleeing man by the women who know it is for the good of themselves and the village to pull him apart and tear off things in the book "The King Must Die" by Mary Renault are impressive.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Seeing, hearing, enjoying better with poetry and word sensitivity

My own personal definition of poetry is "word play and sensitivity".  That may not distinguish it from other writings but it's my definition, after all.  I don't spend much of my time reading poetry but what I do flavors my life.  Being reminded of John Ciardi the other day, I started thinking about poetry.  I think of poems that I have enjoyed repeatedly for decades and think of these:

• Antigonish or The Little Man Who Wasn't There
• The King's Ring or This, Too, Shall Pass
• All the works of Odgen Nash
• Billy Collins - "Sailing Alone Around the Room", "Ballistics", "Horoscopes for the Dead", "The Apple that Astonished Paris" and anything else
• Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
• Wislawa Szymborska
• Lynn Kirby - especially "Time Islands" and "Warning

I read that English makes especially strong use of prepostions.  "Stuck up" and "stuck on" mean very different things.  The expert special agent Ziva in the tv show NCIS sometimes has trouble with English idioms using prepositions.  When Tony was teasing her too much about the same old thing, she said,"Back up, Tony"  He knew what she meant and helpfully supplied the alternative wording "back off".  

Listening to the sound file that Karen Maezen Miller directed her readers to, I heard Prof. James Shapiro list some of the many contributions to English made by Shakespeare. It was a surprising list to say the least and he emphasized that the Bard has a much longer list than he had time for.  Here is a link to a couple of posts on the blog Love of Words about Shakey's many wonderful word inventions.

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Aid for the shrunken

I never grew very tall.  Compactness can be a virtue in smartphones and pocket knives but many studies show that women are naturally attracted to tall men and so are voters.  I have never wanted too many women but a couple of dozen is a nice number when a guy is young and unmarried.  When I realized in jr. high that I had grown as much as I was going to, I was very disappointed.  I was already taller than my dad and many other people but I would have liked to be 6 ft tall, I think.  I have had many male friends who are that tall and taller and have heard all sorts of stories about the disadvantages of height but I think out of friendliness, they have only given me one side of the story.  

I haven't bumped my head much and I haven't sought votes but I never had much height.  Now, to make matters even less inspiring, I have actually lost height.  As a friend who has also lost height in the latter years said,"Where does the height go?"  Apparently some of it slides into one's waistline.

Having to look up to talk to friends who used to be eye-to-eye is depressing, isn't it?  So, I plan to soon start a fund for lightweight plastic footstools to be supplied to those of us who have shrunk some. I envision a product that will resemble a cane or walking stick but change form at the press of a button.  The user would then have a footstool that will add about 6 inches to that person's height.  As everyone got used to such device use, we may have to ask our Oriental manufacturers to supply some in pink, camouflage, spring green and other stylish colors.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

The tribes we have

Jesus said that I should love my neighbor as myself and I think he is right.  I do love my neighbor and I do love myself.  Of course, my neighbor is very much like me and if he weren't, I would move.  My neighbor and I are both in the same tribe, my tribe, our tribe, THE tribe.  John Ciardi (1916-1986) wrote about MY tribe and Your tribe quite a while ago:

My Tribe

Everyone in my tribe hates everyone in your tribe.

Every girl in my tribe wants to be there when we bring in anyone from your tribe. Our girls save faggots in their hope chests for you.

Every boy in my tribe has a peg from which to hang the scalp of anyone in your tribe. Our boys hone knives in their dreams of you.

Everyone in my tribe is proud of our boys and their dreams, our girls and their trousseaus.

Our lives have dear goals across which we will all finally kick all of your heads.  We are united.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Popularity versus quality

Amazon can tell you what rank a book has among its sales.  The book "Bestsellers: A Short Introduction" discusses best-seller lists, their history and impact.  In this time of election jockeying, popularity among voters, readers, fans, etc. is a subject that gets attention.

A few years back, we spent a week in a cabin beside the upstate Finger Lake of New York called "Cayuga"  At the southern end of the lake is the town of Ithaca, home of Cornell University and the world famous Moosewood Restaurant, home ground of Mollie Katzen.  Katzen is the author of "The Moosewood Cookbook" and "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest".  Also, co-author with the well-known nutritionist, Dr. Walter Willett, chair of Harvard's Nutrition Department of the book "Eat, Drink and Weigh Less".  Visiting the Moosewood Restaurant made clear to me what I had read before: anyone can turn on an oven and produce a delicious roast.  But if you want real flavor and variety, you have to have fresh vegetables and you have to know and use seasonings.  We knew about Mollie Katzen's restaurant before going to Ithaca and we didn't realize that was the location.  When we saw the restaurant, we knew we had struck gold.

Still after a couple of truly excellent meals there, we wanted alternatives.  There are many in that college town but somehow driving through nearby Trumansburg, we noticed the Hazelnut Kitchen.  We tried it and were blown away.  Truly wonderful and then some!  We had not heard of Trumansburg or the Hazelnet Kitchen but we remember it and how truly excellent it was.

So, once again, popularity can be a guide to high quality or high quality can be tucked away on the side or in the back.  Maybe I'll be lucky enough to come across it.

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Understandable but still strange and quirky - takes getting used to

Not too many months ago, a young boy said,"I bought this perfume to make Mom more attractive to Dad".  It was just an offhand remark and didn't seem to indicate much in the way of tension or Oedipal or anti-Oedipal drives or anything else.  It is just one step in the slow and steady process of a youngster getting a grip on the strange and quirky way that animals create additional animals.

When I think of amoeba or spiders or duckies or chipmunks, it doesn't seem at all surprising that they have ways of making new members of their group.  I can see that there are always mechanics involved, sometimes referred to as slot A and tab B. Sometimes, the mechanics involve no body contact, as when one sex lays down a layer of eggs on the ocean floor and the other one sprinkles fertilizing sperm bits over that layer.

But looked at from the inside, where I actually live, and looking around among groups of 70+ year olds, it is easy to see the connections between who we are, who we think we are, and drives built deep inside us.  Most women at that age do not feel that they are beautiful although there are plenty of men around them who think those women are indeed beautiful and find themselves uplifted by those women's faces, voices, mannerisms, ideas and reactions.

The process of becoming a fully-accredited member of one's gender group clearly involves social and religious learning but it also involves learning to wear new glasses that are especially built to find and highlight members of the other group. It looks to me that attraction to some members of the other group never ceases. 

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Dealing with difficulties

Dealing with difficulties

1. Suffer them.  I can handle them.
2. Expect them.  They happen all the time.
3. Be aware that a different view of a difficulty may lessen or change it of a gift. Consider other possible view of the difficulty.

Be aware that even if a difficulty is painful or bothersome, it may still be a doorway to something new and better.  Our friend remarked that the daily contemplative exercises which come along are not always attractive.  But she finds that quite often that the ones that seem candidates for skipping are the ones that turn out to have the best payoff.

Consideration of a difficulty can be extended with an attack of questions.  Why me?  How long is this problem likely to be around?  What have other people said about this difficulty? (Those who have it; those who used to have it, if any; those whose loved ones have this difficulty.  There may be even some who feel that such a difficulty is the fault of the person who has it.

When I think of careful thinking about a difficulty, all the great philosophers from all ages, sexes, nations and religions come to mind.  So does the simple, direct work of Byron Katie, a woman who uses basic questions about an irritant to try to put it in a more helpful light.  Click this link to see her simple, quick and inexpensive steps that help many people including herself.

http://thework.com/thework.php

Try this link to see her work on a stage in public with a young woman.

http://www.byronkatie.com/2012/02/the_work_of_byron_katie_he_owe.htm

Notice the part that writing ideas down on paper plays in clarifying one's thinking and viewpoint.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety