We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
It's a crazy subject, fraught with myth. Animals do not need to read articles about when to have a drink of water, but seemingly humans do.
Where I live most of the time, females go around with a plastic bottle of water. In the car, in the gym, on the tennis court, at the supermarket, as if living in the Sahara. There are hardly enough public bathrooms for them all.
A few points:
Coffee is not dehydrating. Beer is hydrating. When you work out hard, especially in the heat, a little water is good. There seem to be extremes: people who are insensitive to their thirst, and people who drink too much. If confused about one's needs for liquid, the frequency of peeing, and the concentration of one's pee, are good indicators.
I have had outdoor adventures when my fatigue was entirely due to a touch of dehydration, when I perked up like a wilted plant with a bottle of water.
Gloria Steinem once called sex differences research “anti-American crazy thinking.” Senior colleagues warned me as an untenured professor around the year 2000 that studying sex differences would be career suicide. This new book by Rippon marks the latest salvo by a very small but vocal group of anti-sex difference individuals determined to perpetuate this cultural myth...
It is always sad to see science politicized. Nothing good ever comes from it.
Furthermore, as is well-established now, being overweight is a major risk factor for dementia (#2 after genetic).
My view of overweight is Live and Let Live. Overweight people know all of the consequences, and accept them as adults. I do help pay their self-inflicted Medicare bills but that's life in the US today. As an outdoorsy, sporty, fitness person I feel that giving up on vitality is sad, but people must do what they want to and nobody needs to be like me.
If you care, it's easy to lose 1.5-2 lbs of fat/week in a healthy way with a smidgen of self-control. We have posted on that topic many times. Underweight is another issue entirely.
Rightly or wrongly, we reserved physical punishments for dangerous situations. For example, running into the road when told not to. For running into deep, wavy water before being adequate swimmers.
However, we were of the generation of gentle rather than authoritarian parents. Probably not the best. Now, I feel the youth need some fear of parents because it is parents' job to represent reality before the kids hit real reality.
The current socio-political meme is that men are pigs, sometimes but rarely aggressive pigs, when it comes to desire and sexuality. As somebody who is privy to male fantasies, I have no doubt about that. As Freud taught us, human apes are civilized and restrained at great cost.
But what about women? Wholesome women are libidinal too, if less aggressively so. All or most honest females will admit their needs for romance and exciting sex lives. It's biological that both men and women want sexual satisfaction as often as possible. Because of culture and moral demands, many keep it safely in the fantasy realm.
It's a challenge for women to keep their men charmed and enchanted by them, and vice-versa. Worth the effort, though. Besides trying to remain interesting and fun, it never hurts for guys and gals to look good naked.
The term has expanded in its use from the original idea of one person making another person doubt their sanity.
In current usage, it refers to any relationship abuse that seeks to distort reality to include things as far as, I think, major deceptions or major lying which puts a partner in another reality. Of course, in any given situation, either one or both people might actually be crazy or half-crazy but that is not about gaslighting.
Regardless of the extent of the sadism, narcissism, or destructiveness involved, it's a real thing and it is evil: Gaslighting.
However, there are many ways to be male, as many ways as there are to be female. During youth and adolescence, people develop what we term "ego ideals" - notions of what our best self might be. These come from family peers, from the culture, and from experience which teaches us what things are effective and what is not.
Our ideals for ourselves are often at variance with our genetics and with our potentials. Reality is the toughest teacher and toughest grader ever.
It's my experience that women prefer masculine men (however defined) but it rarely means brutal or unkind men. Men and women have ideals not only for themselves, but for partners and friends too. What is my ideal life partner? Strong mentally and physically, smart and savvy, athletic, brave and adventurous, high life-competence and adaptability, emotionally-reserved but open to friendship, and sexy and tender at times. I found one of those guys. The detail that he knows how to make money is just a bonus because I make a good living on my own.
nb: I am not a Psychologist. I am an MD, a Psychiatrist. But we're all interested in people and what makes them tick or not tick.
People snark that Psychologists are not known to be the most manly guys or the most feminine women, but I wonder what readers think the APA is really trying to say?
A solidly above-average IQ is handy for complex and especially abstract tasks. Also for difficult academic tasks. AVI muses on the topic here.
But let's leave aside things like SATs and IQ for a minute and consider the highly-adaptive, or maladaptive, character traits which can support or interfere with the pursuit of life goals regardless of IQ. That's where Psychology's Big 5 enter the picture. Briefly, they are:
- Openness to new experience (curiosity, adventurousness, risk-taking, inventiveness) - Conscientiousness (dutifulness, energy, self-discipline, etc) - Extraversion (taking some pleasure in others) - Agreeableness (playing nice with others, making yourself welcome company) - Neuroticism (being odd, difficult, etc. rarely helps unless a genius)
Is it true that "character is destiny"? Jordan Peterson always emphasizes something he terms "competence," along with some physical attributes to his list of advantages in life pursuits along with IQ and the above considerations, like attractiveness, fitness, and social skills.
Back to IQ, here Prof. Peterson discusses IQ and "the Jewish question" (yes, Ashkenazi Jews average one standard deviation above other Europeans. That's a lot.)
Loneliness is a tough problem. We live in a world full of all sorts of people, but connecting beyond a superficial level takes a special and complex combination of factors, circumstances, serendipity, and opportunity. Another problem is that we aren't necessarily all that appealing to many people, but we can hope we are appealing to a few people who appeal to us. We all reach out to people who we enjoy, and sometimes it works.
As the article points out, loneliness can spiral into excess neediness, or avoidance, distrust, and isolation. That's not a happy life.
I have only heard Scott Adams discuss "talent stacks" in reference to himself or to Donald Trump. (By the way, he is not a Trump supporter, just an admirer of his skills.)
Adams' point, if you have not heard him, is that there can only be one Tiger Woods who possesses a single world-beating talent, but you can move towards your hopes and dreams quite well if you have a good-sized talent stack of "pretty good" talents and abilities.
By "talents," he seems to mean mainly natural gifts like social skills and social instincts, IQ, appearance, curiosity, comfort with novelty and adventure, adaptability, interpersonal style, sense of humor, athleticism and physical grace, observational skills, communicative skills, and so forth, as they are matched and combined with acquired skills.
We also noted that Adams does not discuss flaws. Sadly, we can be blessed with a decent talent stack but be cursed with a few unfortunate or even one fatal flaw which act as anchors on our lives. People have deficit stacks too, but they are not fun to talk about.
There is a thing called "complicated grief," but I feel all grief is complicated. I do not believe that grief ever heals.
I think griefs scab over, but it doesn't often take much to knock off the scab. A long-term incapacitating depression after a loss is another matter, but I do not even think that a lengthy mourning is pathological. There is a lot of pain in life. It's part of the deal.
That's the title of this post, but I do not mean to restrict this little discussion to the workplace. The issue is that, wherever men and women congregate regularly, "chemical" attractions occur commonly.
These of course range from very mild to intense. It is difficult for people to focus on what they intend to do when there is a powerful attraction to a nice person of the opposite sex who is in regular proximity and contact. I have had people say to me "Is there anything you can do to help me get rid of this crush on so and so? It's messing up my workout/job/tennis game, etc."
A colleague and I were talking about this recently, and he (jokingly) suggested that people in that situation should just jump into bed together and eliminate the romantic/sexual tension and eliminate the mystery. "Get it over with. It's just biology." And of course their are rules about these things in the workplace.
In my view, such things are not necessarily a sign that a person is in a lousy relationship. Could be, but humans are designed to experience these things.
If a close friend confesses to you that some guy or gal at work or somewhere else is driving them nuts with desire, what would you say to them? Would you say"Grow up!"?
The current socio-political meme is that men are pigs, sometimes but rarely aggressive pigs, when it comes to desire and sexuality. As somebody who is privy to male fantasies, I have no doubt about that. As Freud taught us, human apes are civilized and restrained at great cost.
In one way or another, most books are about human nature. This one is now a best-seller: