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.
Much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the opioid crisis holds that virtually anyone is at risk for opioid abuse or addiction — say, the average dental patient who receives some Vicodin for a root canal. This is inaccurate, but unsurprising. Exaggerating risk is a common strategy in public-health messaging: The idea is to garner attention and funding by democratizing affliction and universalizing vulnerability. But this kind of glossing is misleading at best, counterproductive at worst. To prevent and ameliorate problems, we need to know who is truly at risk to target resources where they are most needed.
In truth, the vast majority of people prescribed medication for pain do not misuse it, even those given high doses.
Everybody may have a devil inside them, but the people we term "psychopathic" or "sociopathic" are outliers on the bell curve of human behavior. Sociopaths have habits of exploitation, deceit, cheating, impulsiveness, manipulation, rationalization, and often of cruelty. Clever sociopaths are masters of disguise and of acting. There is a genetic component.
Clever sociopaths can put on a "mask of sanity" and, if careful enough, make successful lives in some careers.
Most people have at least some degree of this potentially life-damaging fear. Oftentimes, the fear is justified because it is likely that many people will not find us interesting, appealing, or worthy of relationship (boo-hoo), but sometimes our fear is indiscriminate.
Faking confidence isn't a bad starting approach, but the real trick is to improve one's rejection tolerance and that can only be achieved by enduring rejection.
Life isn't fair. We all know that. We also know that everybody has "issues," from the mild to the severe. While I would advise most people to try to address their issues, my first advice would be to try to conceal them in public.
That starts with behaving "appropriately" at all times, dressing well, getting a good hair style or haircut or whatever, and, if a guy, shaving before going out in public. I've been out and about quite a bit lately and see some women going to work almost looking like bag ladies or schizophrenics and guys looking like alcoholics. Maybe they are, but they should not advertise it. Odd and unstylish (relatively-speaking) appearance is only a good idea on Halloween.
Whatever people have going on inside, looking together and making a good social presentation makes a big difference in life. I do not mean to be superficial but first impressions carry a lot of weight. Like Peterson's "start by cleaning your room and getting rid of old stuff", acting and looking like you have got it together is a good first step. If you or your living environment look a little "off," that's an unfortunate impression. It's off-putting.
Playing a woman's body like a violin? Wonderful. Bonded men and women ought to try to please each other as best they can in all sorts of ways. That is what it is about, partly. Fun, however, is no replacement for a spiritual emptiness.
Like many other animals, humans are napping creatures. Our Western society doesn't really take that into account, nor should it because we demand a lot from people.
In my workday, I schedule in a 20-minute catnap after a chicken-salad lunch. It does me a lot of good, since I do my daily workouts at 6 am. After my catnap I am good for another 6 hours of work or a drive to NH.
Mediterranean-based societies have siestas - especially Spanish and Italian. Naptime, or sex + nap. In many cultures, lunch is their dinner and I do not know how they handle work after a large meal. I don't know about Asians or Africans.
I do believe that some of what we term "sleep disorders," and diagnose at great expense and often treat with amphetamines, are simply due to a need for a power nap. People vary.
IQ is easy to measure, as an example, but many things which effect our reaching our goals are more difficult to measure.
I know that,when organizations consider people for hire or for promotion, they always consider the person's "intangibles." That includes things like amiability, appearance, dress, comportment, manners, sophistication, cultural knowledge, reliability, tone of voice, and so forth. Their "vibe." A good vibe is a sort of personal capital.
Another intangible which matters in life is social capital, something Charles Murray often speaks about. People obviously vary a great deal in the extent of their social connections and (cliche again) one can easily be lonely in a crowd. Many prefer to be isolated but I think there is a basic human need to be "in community," to have human connections of all sorts outside of family. We are tribal creatures. I feel sad for those who lack tribes with whom to touch base and reconnect during the holiday season. That makes it depressing indeed because it's supposed to be about fun fun fun and party party party, right?
There are many ingredients to constructing a satisfying life, but what a satisfying life means is different for everybody. However, I believe that to be in community, or really a part of multiple communities, is a key component. Some care about it more than others, for certain. With a little luck, the construction begins with an anchor solidly lodged in immediate or extended family, and extends, in separate but often-overlapping circles, out from there depending on what one does or decides to build.
And I do mean "build." Like career, community is never handed to you on a silver platter. I like to connect with interesting, intelligent, positive, and amusing people with interesting and adventurous lives. Who doesn't? On Saturday night, I met a gent, a retired banker, who covered the erection of the Berlin Wall for the New York Times when he was 21 years old. He had taken his grandkids to the Checkpoint Charlie museum in Berlin this summer. I want to include him, and his wife, in one of my circles.
Finding people with whom we have affinity and comfort is not easy especially for the shy, and seeking at least a few which go beyond the superficial is a wholesome and worthwhile life challenge. For example, I do not need any more friends who love to discuss handbags because my handbag interest is two minutes deep. Possibly three minutes.
I discussed the topic somewhat in my post Class, Social Capital, and Character Traits. Sometimes I ask patients to create a Venn diagram of the human communities in which they live and form relationships, beginning with family and extended family as the necessary and solid core - regardless of how one may feel about them at a given moment. It can be illuminating.
The categories (Venn circle diagrams) that I suggest include things like:
Family and the people who are "like family" Closest confidants, closest personal and family friends Old friends Spouse's buddies and closest pals Warm and friendly acquaintances, friendly neighbors, and friendly shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, and other life helpers Group connections (eg church, clubs, sports friends, favored activities companions, etc) Colleagues and work-related groups or organizations Local community-based organizations and volunteer organization associates and pals
and so on.
It can be a bit of a drafting challenge when there are plenty of overlapping circles. but that results when one has built "an established life," a well-rooted and integrated life over years. I drew one such diagram out for myself last year, and it was an interesting little project.
When people move, they risk losing quite a bit. I don't know how some people move or retire to South Carolina or Florida and rebuild a rich life from scratch. We could not do that, but we would not want to anyway.
While enduring an implant at the dentist ("implantologist") the other day I was distracting myself by contemplating similar situations of shame, vulnerability, or potential humiliation in which we sometimes must put ourselves. Usually, at the dentist, I distract myself with thoughts about sex or politics, so this was a different approach.
I'll lreveal some of my moments of unpleasant self-revelation or exposure:
- the Dentist. You sit or lie there helpless while some guy struggles with the most disgusting things he can find in your oral cavity
- annual physical. Take your clothes off while some guy or gal tries as hard as they can to find defects. Not to mention a Gyn exam...
- Pooping in a public bathroom. Sooner or later in life you just have to stop caring about your noises.
- Disrobing with a new lover. I can vaguely remember that.
- Psychological nakedness, as with a Psychiatrist. "Now, why not tell me the things about yourself that you don't want to tell me? It might save a lot of time." That is like "Take all your clothes off and the doctor will be with you shortly."
- Oral examinations. Not dental, real oral exams as in college or grad school. Being quizzed by a panel of profs is far more daunting than a paper exam because it's personal and feels - is - more exposing. In med school orals, they just pushed you on every topic until you said "I don't know." Their goal was to discover your limits.
The intensity of the female drive for sexual pleasure and release of sexual tension ("libido" is a puritanical medical euphemism) varies more across individuals, relationship, time of month, and age, than does the average male drive for sexual activity.
Still, the stereotype of males being always ready to go, and females always having headaches, is inaccurate. All females get horny too and it comes mostly from biology. There is no doubt that males have more sexual fantasies during a day, and it doesn't take much to prompt one. Seeing one charming girl is usually enough. What people seem reluctant to discuss is how strong the female need can be "to get laid" (to use the medical term) sometimes, regardless of context. I say it can be every bit as strong as that of men. Unlike First Wave Feminism, current feminism seems to minimize or deny the motives for female guile, seductiveness, etc., and the ordinary female physical need to be properly taken care of on a regular basis.
In today's era of openness and relatively casual and recreational sex, it is far more likely to hear females talk about their plain need for a sexual experience regardless of context (relationship, romance, etc). Frustrated women masturbate plenty, and the market for vibrators is big business. I have heard plenty of young women tell me that they went out Thursday night with the simple goal of getting some sexual fun. In men it might be termed predatory, and nobody uses the term "nymphomaniac" anymore. "Whore"? Sometimes, but I have heard always-horny young guys describe themselves as whores.
Studies often focus on what turns people on because it is impossible to directly measure the strength of a baseline biological drive in people. For example, subjective hunger is easily highlighted by a chocolate cake and reduced by the sight of vomit on a sidewalk. Similarly, sex drive can be exposed or enhanced by seductiveness or by alcohol (we call it "disinhibited" which may or may not be the right term). Guys talk about "beer goggles" but the sex drive is internally-generated, goes through psychological mazes, and can be externally-amplified.
Shy or gentlemanly men often seem unaware or in denial of female biological needs. If they did, they might not be so inclined to view themselves as the only ones in urgent need of a physical connection. True Romance might be more exciting, and love more important, but let's be more open about one aspect of the supposed mystery of what women want. At the most basic levels, we are animals and, even worse, apes. Semi-civilized with many complex life considerations to consider, but still apes. Even as apes, I think we humans get far more mileage from sex than the other creatures do.
Is marriage about happiness? Peterson is a realist with the tragic view. "If you think marriage is all about your happiness, you are a princess living in a gingerbread house."
"Voluntary" death, and the grey zone around it, have always gone on. Generally, it has been between doctor, patient, and family. "Time to let him/her go."
The idea of dying "when God wills it" is mostly obsolete, because the patient often would already have died on God's time. The reason such topics have become an issue is because of the power of medicine to sustain life, however terminal, painful, humiliating, or degrading. Fortunately, today we have things like DNR and hospice, but the old-fashioned way of "Let's make him comfortable" with extra morphine might have been (or still is) more humane.
I found it interesting that almost half of patients who were prescribed physician-assisted death never used it. That means to me that many just want to have some control over their fate, over pain, etc. Makes good sense to me. Nobody wants a lengthy death consisting of weeks of gasping for air, writhing in pain, and pooping in bed.
... what most “self-esteem” advocates fail to understand is that other-reliant “self-esteem” is a contradiction in terms. Far from building self-esteem, many of the counselors, teachers, and parents of yesteryear obstructed its growth by getting kids hooked on a spiritual I.V. drip of external validation. Instead of self-esteem, this created a dependence on “other-esteem.”
It is no wonder then that today we are faced with the (often exaggerated) phenomenon of young, entitled, high-maintenance validation-junkies in the classroom and the workplace. Their self-esteem has been crippled by being, on the one hand, atrophied by the psychic crutches of arbitrary authoritarian approval, and, on the other hand, repeatedly fractured by the psychic cudgels of arbitrary authoritarian disapproval.
These people are playing with fire. It is political, but probably enabled by ignorance. The countless crazy fantasies of youth can be sort-of interesting to some, but adults are supposed to be the ones with intact reality-testing. Grown-ups with decent reality-testing are the only buffers against the really hard and dangerous realities of life.
Peterson, for one thing, has a knack for framing large topics. That is a job of a teacher (or a preacher). He offers the listener a big frame, a map, in which to fill in the details. That is something which is difficult to do on one's own without expertise.
In my career as a student, I had a couple of History teachers and profs who never set the frame: Battle of Thermopylae? What, when why, how, and why should I care? Plenty of reasons to be interested, but it wasn't told so it was disembodied information.
Peterson's hypomanic lectures teach Psychology, Anthropology, Politics, Religion, Mythology, History - they are interdisciplinary explosions. It's all from the tragic, fierce, fact-facing view of the world.
With things around now like The Great Courses, and Peterson, for examples, any curious person in the world can get a high-level university education if they want it. Cliche though it is, a formal education is just a door to further learning for those who want it.
We'll continue to post Peterson's explosions, and to urge our readers to try out some of The Great Courses as alternatives to TV.
In this piece, he focuses on IQ as a limiting factor in pursuing goals, but makes the more important point that personality factors are likely more important in life choices and career success. Unfortunately, he ignores certain factors, like passion and interest but this is just a short segment.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of kyphosis, aka "hunchback"). It is due to a lazy, slouched or slumped sitting posture with the head too far forward and upper back too rounded, but in time it continues as a lazy habit while standing and walking: slightly hunched and with shoulders forward.
In medicine, this posture has been nicknamed "Scholar's Hump" and "Dowager's Hump."
It is bad for your back and terrible for appearance - adds years to your appearance. You can try to strengthen postural muscles by sitting tall with your shoulders back. You have to sit on your "sitz bones," aka ischial tuberosities" and not on your behind. You also have to get rid of the habit of neck-leaning, peering forward or downwards.
Another help can be a straight-backed chair, if you use the back of the chair and resist peering forward.
Another corrective could be a lumbar support cushion or pillow. They keep your spine in a natural position and remind you to sit properly.
If your postural kyphosis is bad enough, add some exercises to attempt to strengthen your core to make it easier to correct it. The best are planks, deadlifts, and weighted squats.
Ideally, you should be focusing on engaging your postural muscles all the time, regardless of what activity you’re pursuing. Whether you’re working out at home or at the gym, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting at your desk working, you should make it a point to keep your abs pulled in, your shoulder blades rolling down the back so that your chest is up and forward, and your spine in one line.
I doubt the answers to their curiosity will be found in a lab, but they persevere. That article takes almost all of the sexiness out of the topic: What do women want?
Humans are bio-psycho-social critters, too complicated for labs.
While enduring an implant at the dentist ("implantologist") the other day I was distracting myself by contemplating similar situations of shame, vulnerability, or potential humiliation in which we sometimes must put ourselves. Usually, at the dentist, I distract myself with thoughts about sex or politics, so this was a different approach.
The intensity of the female drive for sexual pleasure and release of sexual tension ("libido" is a puritanical medical euphemism) varies more across individuals, relationship, time of month, and age, than does the average male drive for sexual activity.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of