You Can't Make Mistakes.

First Annual.

Tomorrow, or more accurately, tonight is my birthday. I usually let these things pass me by. The last few years have found me on planes or by myself in a strange city or somewhere. This year, my friends in Cairo have quietly insisted on a party, and I am going to indulge them.

I don’t like birthday parties, particularly for people who are in their late twenties and early thirties. These events tend toward the externally happy/internally maudlin, and who has time for that? I don’t lament getting older, though I recognize that it is happening more rapidly than any of us is comfortable with. I like it. I typically like to “celebrate” this aspect of life with a quiet drink in a dark bar and a good long self-reflection followed by fitful sleep. This, however, does not exactly make a good environment for whatever is the opposite of depression. On thinking about it this morning as I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen floor waiting for my coffee to kick in, I realized that this might be another aspect of a childhood loathing that I carry with me even until today.

I hate kids. Hate them. I have since I was a kid, probably even moreso then. When I was a child, other children were mean, stupid, intentionally and willfully ignorant. They pretended not to know things and they were never interested in anything other than whatever everyone else was interested in. I didn’t get this. I don’t get it now. The kids I like are weird, peculiar little people. They say adult words in a tiny human voice. They ask questions that perplex the adults around them. They are also surrounded by adults, and tend to like it that way.

I wish I had known these kids when I was a kid. Alas, they tended not to be very visible, preferring adults. They hid away. They did not invite other weirdos around very often, and neither did I. What I never realized was that the others—the kids who didn’t spend all their time in their own heads—were actually interested in knowing me. I just didn’t let them for some reason.

When I was a child, I would have much rather spent time with my grandparents or my aunts and uncles than with other children. I even preferred to spend time with my parents, especially my parents, though I never let them know that. They all had stories, interesting stories. They had lived in places, jumped out of airplanes, gone to college, not gone to college, worked, built whole houses with their hands, cultivated plants, sewn clothing for their children, made bread, played softball, gotten in fights, swam in the south Pacific, flown on planes that had carried nuclear bombs, had cancer, and so many other things that my brain staggers to try to think of all the stories that they have told me.

Kids don’t have any stories, at least not those that I had to choose from as a kid. They liked video games, they liked playing soccer. I hated those things, and I hated them. I didn’t give them a fair chance. I didn’t realize that they probably found me as strange and upsetting—or as exotic and fascinating—as I found them.

As I got older, I think I realized this. I did things with people my own age. It took a while, but by that point we were becoming adults, whether we liked it or not. I could finally almost relate to my peer group. They read books now, and some of them even wanted to talk about it.

And then there were the shared experiences that we all thought our parents didn’t have any experience of. Suddenly we were inventors. We invented smoking that first cigarette on a cold Michigan day. We invented sex. We invented drugs and going to concerts. We invented reading books banned by our grandparents’ generation. Our parents stood by and let us go on about our business. They were worried. They still are. They wouldn’t be parents if they didn’t. I think that maybe they also realized that they had done stupid and brilliant stuff that they thought their parents didn’t know anything about.

I knew better. My grandparents told me stories from their youth, from their partying days. They were wild. They drank whiskey, got into bar fights, played cards, smoked cigars and went to weird places in strange cities. They saved the best for when I was older. They were rebels, and they didn’t even know it. They made us look like prudes, like amateurs.

So, now here we are: adults. We make the stories now. We get lost down back alleys and drink from unmarked bottles, smoke cigarettes sometimes and hang out with weirdos. We have power, we no longer require supervision. Sometimes we are the supervisors of those in need of it. I wonder what skewed view this next generation of children—and the one after that—will take of us? Will they think that we were strange, reclusive loners with nothing but idle time on our hands before they were born? I don’t know. Probably, if that is what we let them believe.

In the mean time, I am going to a party, ostensibly in my honor, and hang out with the rest of the weirdos. And to all of those with whom I did not spend your birthdays or who were not celebrating with me either, maybe you can tell me your stories someday. I’m dying to hear them sometime, now that we’re all old enough to know better.

Here’s to your inevitable political downfall!

I read this article about the respective public spectacles over Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin and it got me thinking about the spectacle that became Sarah Palin last autumn during the American presidential elections and her present attention-grabbing efforts. Her untimely resignation from the Alaska gubernatorial seat should be another nail in her political coffin, but apparently she is up in the polls with republicans. This does nothing to inspire confidence in her ability to lead—particularly considering that she has just stepped out of such a position in a fit of overly-self-confident irresponsibility. The GOP has backed some horrifying failures of late and continues in its ability to conflate “conservatism” with bigotry and fiscal liberality.

Perhaps this is the strangled choking death rattle of the GOP at last.

Somehow I doubt it, but it would be nice to think so.

This maneuver on Palin’s part is little more than her present attempt to get herself back in the spotlight of national political fame—and scrutiny. It turns out that the old marketing folk-wisdom approach—that both praise and criticism have equal value, as long as they turn heads—works as a strategy for political advancement in the United States now. Last autumn, Palin was roasted over and over again by critics, political rivals and comedians. Rather than taking any criticism seriously—and, though dismissive, it was serious—she soldiered on bravely, in the eyes of her supporters. The rest of thought that she did so foolishly. I often felt pity for her. She was placed in the public eye by the GOP essentially unprepared and then made a spectacle of. At the time, it seemed as though this was something that was being inflicted upon her. Now, however, her spectacular displays of incompetence and lack of judgment have proven to be self-motivated.

It is unfortunate for conservatives, particularly for women, to have to even give any thought to this rambling, silly woman as a viable candidate for anything, let alone the Presidency. It is also remarkable that the conservatives who support her, just as they supported President Bush, seem to do so uncritically, praising when she says something they agree with, ignoring the malapropisms and blaming her critics for their “meanness.” I say that it is remarkable because it demonstrates precisely the way that the American political machine has come to operate. Substance and form no longer matter, having been replaced by sentimentality and dogged devotion—probably driven by a desire not to be seen as backing a failure, fool, or asshole.

Perhaps this does represent the death rattle of the GOP after all. The Republicans would do well to leave some of their failures and garbage along the side of the road. If they don’t, they are likely looking at a series of very disappointing years before they figure out a way to turn the apathy and indecision of the Democrats against them again. So, here is to you Sarah, may you be taken out with the rest of the political celebrity trash. God help you until then. You’re going to need it.

Update:
10. July 2009 14:48

In case you needed another argument why we should let her go quietly into the night: here it is.

Testing… Testing. Is this thing on.

We are always, it seems, interested in measuring or coding personality. I read this article [PDF] this morning over my coffee and found it fascinating. The results aren’t necessarily fascinating, but the idea is.

The gist is: can we something about the personality of an individual based on their e-mail address? This is an age-old question, of course. The primary use of astrology, in this author’s estimation, has been to parse personality traits. For example, Virgos are particularly mercurial. Their interests wander and range vastly. Is this true? Well, it probably is, for some.

The difference between the former and latter types of personality profiling is that the former uses a trait generated by the individual in question, whereas the latter has very little to do with them, at least on the surface. Then again, perhaps there are more factors that we are not considering, such as weather, personalities of parents and mood/temper changes based on time of year. Who knows?

Then there is the personality inventory. I took my first one a few years ago as part of a study conducted by a counseling psychology student for her thesis project. She was testing the Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory. I’m not sure about the particulars. Regardless, the questions are tricky and vague, but their compiled results are supposed to tell you something about your personality. My test indicated that I either had a personality disorder, or was a genius. Now, I don’t think that I am a genius, not even a little, but it was the more comforting alternative. There was more to it than that, something about frequencies, blah blah. Boring stuff. Sort of.

It made me interested in these types of tests though. Do they really tell us anything about ourselves, and, if so, what?

A few years later, I took the Myers-Briggs test. This one I liked. The results are a bit more human-readable—not that psychologists are not human, but well, you get what I mean. Since taking this, I have always tested the same way, which is also interesting. The questions on different exams will vary greatly, but they are designed to indicate personality traits when answered in a specific way.

I am an ENTJ [Extraversion - iNtuition - Thinking - Judging], apparently.

You have the following traits as options: Attitudes—Extraverted or Introverted, Functions—Intuitive or Sensing, Thinking or Feeling, and Lifestyle—Judging and Perceiving.

Here are a couple of tests for your enjoyment. These are obviously just intended for online amusement, not for real use. These type of assessments are best administered by a professional. But, then, when have we ever cared about that. Each one takes about 4-5 minutes. If you have a few minutes to kill take one—or more—and post the results as a comment here. It would be interesting to see what sort of personalities we all have, wouldn’t it?

A general Myers-Briggs assessment

An assessment for programmers

An interesting assessment with sliders

Well, that should help you to waste about 15 minutes today. Try it out and post the results.

Not easily

My mood tends to reflect that of the people around me. If those around me are having a good time, then I will likely be having a good time. If those around me are upset, then I will be more likely to be upset. I realize the failure in this mode of being, but some things are built into us, and this is one of mine.

I recently underwent a type of hypnotherapy to make it easier to deal with above-mentioned situations. It was easy. Apparently, what it did was remove the buildup of negative emotions related to specific events which trigger the emotions of fear, anger, sadness, hurt and guilt, in that order. These buildups of emotion are called “gestalt” and have a significant effect on the way that we react to new situations which trigger these five emotions.

I have noted the effects of this therapy in two distinct and significant ways.

First, I didn’t know before that I was afraid of the dark. But, I was.

Now, for all of you naysayers, it is not like regression therapy where you dredge your past mental states to drag stuff up that may have happened in reality or may have happened in your mind, but had the same cognitive weight. No.

What I noticed, after having time-line therapy, was that I would walk down the hallway, or down the stairs, in relatively total darkness without turning on a light. In the past, I would have always turned on a light at some point, which doesn’t make any sense. In the situations that I am referring to, I have lived in a place for some long amount of time; I know the landscape; I will not trip over the ottoman; and yet I still would always turn on the light when I walked through a darkened room, if possible.

Now, in the same situation, I will just walk through and get and do what I need to do and then continue on: light or no light. If I know the terrain, it doesn’t make a difference.

It felt odd when I realized what I was doing, and what it meant.

The second way that this has affected the way that I move through the world is that I no longer immediately engage during a situation motivated by fear, anger, hurt, sadness or guilt.

It used to be the case that if someone pissed me off, they were in for a rough ride. I would escalate and escalate, always trying to outdo the the emotional level of my opponent. Now, I don’t. If someone starts down a road with me where I would have formerly escalated, I will generally remove myself from the situation. This is the case, unless, I feel that it is something worth fighting for. The problem that I have found, of late, is that there are about 6 things that I can figure are worth fighting for, and most of them are a far shot uglier than anything that the chumps that I hang out with can muster. So, as a result, I generally will just walk away from situations motivated by fear, anger, sadness, hurt or guilt, and wait until everyone has calmed down—or sobered up, as the case may be—to deal with whatever the problem was. Most of the time, there is actually no problem.

Regardless, I was just thinking that there are two types of people—HA!—in the world: the people whom I care about a great deal, and those whom are not really of any great consequence.

Now, of course this is a false dichotomy. But, come on, we can all relate to it.

The reason that I realized that there are people that I care about so significantly and people who don’t hold any bearing on my emotional state is that I recently have been able to catalog a difference in the ways that I react in given situations. It turns out that with the people who I care the most about, or believe—mistakenly or not—care about me, I become upset when I am confronted with unreasonable or illogical emotionally-based responses.

Now, I realize that I sound like a robot right now, but I am serious. The folks that I love the most have the most emotional sway in my emotional inner-life. Those who don’t, well, don’t factor. In those cases, I step aside, out of the picture, or disregard the things that would have pissed me off had they come from someone who mattered more significantly to me.

Regardless, it works out in the end. I am not attributing any of this to some sort of weird therapy, but I think that it might have helped me get there. I can’t deny that.

Now: the point.

I left a situation this evening in which someone feared that they may have offended someone else. Did they? Likely. Did I react defensively and try to right the injustice of my offense? No. Why? Honestly, because it was easier to leave, not worry about it so much, and go and write a blog post about it. It is better to remind myself that we are all just doing the best we can with the resources that we have at our disposal than get worked up about why someone or other hasn’t sorted themselves out.

Is this healthy? Well, I didn’t get into an argument or a fight with anyone over something that before would have incited that particular response or another equally emotionally escalated situation.

I would have to say: Yes. It’s fine by me. I’m happy with no black eyes or hurt feelings. Not to mention: a smile on my face.

Think about these things the next time someone pisses you off. Is it worth it? Why are you pissed off? Is the person whom you are angry at doing anything other than their best, considering their current situation and resources?

If the answers are anything other than: “No,” “I don’t know,” and “No,” then you may have a case. Otherwise, think about it again.

Not like you might think

I used to get nervous getting on planes.

I don’t really anymore. Years of conditioning myself to know how to feel on a plane by taking a pill or two and a pre-flight beer took care of that. I no longer fear the idea that the giant, heavy thing that I just sat down will force itself into the air and then through the skill of a pilot, a little luck, and whatever other unseen forces, land safely on the ground safely several hours later.

What I fear now about air-travel is threefold: delays, other passengers freaking out, lost luggage—in that order. I suppose that this is not unreasonable. I have been subject to all three in the past, though thankfully not all at once. My luggage was lost coming to Egypt once. I have been so delayed in the past that I have missed flights or had to run through the airport like a madman.

Don’t even get me started on other passengers. Top three worst:

1. Awful woman who refused to put her seat up on landing because the intercom had gone out and no one asked her personally. How could she have known otherwise?
2. Toy Daschund/Boxer stowed under the seat two rows ahead of me. His owner kept taking him out of the carrier so that he wouldn’t be scared. Seriously.
3. Little girl who screamed every minute or so sitting on her mother’s lap next to me. She would do this and then laugh riotously while her mother smiled sheepishly at me like it made a difference. I got her back by sitting there reading Arabic. It made her really nervous, especially when the—oddly—Egyptian flight attendant asked me about it and we had a conversation in Arabic. Ha friggin’ ha, lady.

Now the only variables which have matching values in these three different scenarios—aside from the obvious: on a plane, in a seat, eating peanut-replacement-salty-snacks because everyone has an allergy to peanuts now—is that these were all American domestic flights. And, all of the above-mentioned individuals, as well as their pets and children, were Americans. Hmmm?

These are all average, normal experiences.

Right before I am about to cross the Atlantic, for whatever reason, it seems like something weird, or awful happens right beforehand. In this case, it was the disastrous opening of the Heathrow Terminal 5. Who knew that it could have gone so wrong?

Luckily, I have a stopover at Heathrow this week on my way to DC. Superb. If, I’m really lucky, they will let me check one of my pieces of hand luggage at the gate, and then lose that as well. Then, they can ship all of it to Milan, and I will never see it again.

Maybe I should just take a backpack.

Anyway, these are just pre-travel jitters. They are easier to handle than the other kind. They all have to do with people, and can be rationalized. Fear of planes and flying, on the other hand, are more difficult to rationalize. I will take this type, any day.

I’ll still take a couple of Xanax, though.

Is that “inshallah for real,” or “inshallah, it’s never going to happen?”

I recently stumbled upon this article about the possible induction of “inshallah” into the English as a side effect of the occupation of Iraq by the United States military. It seems that soldiers and evern high-level diplomats are now using this phrase—which is often misconstrued as a single word—as a part of their everyday speech.

What will come over us next?

I caught this article this week on Reuters. Apparently, it has become a bit of a problem in Jerusalem that while people are there visiting holy sites and relics, something comes over them, causing odd behavior, spontaneous preaching and the perceiving of visions of prophets and messiahs. This phenomenon has been termed “Jerusalem Syndrome.” However, this label is reserved for pilgrims who have no prior mental disorders. I will leave that completely alone.

The topic of religious experiences is an interesting one. William James argued that they were somehow simply a part of the human psychological structure. As humans, he said, we have mystical experiences as a normal part of our development. The degree to which this has an effect over an individual, of course, varies greatly from individual to individual.

I have always taken the stance, as a hardcore materialist, that these experiences are physio-neurological events which our brains cannot interpret rationally. Rather, when such an event occurs, we go outside the normal rational structure which we have developed since childhood and unconsciously search our minds for some explanation, which generally results in something which appears more like a dream rather than your average experience of external phenomena. Some part of the process confuses the interpreting mechanism in our brains and we interpret these events as though we are perceiving and processing sensory data from external sources.

Mamoon Yusaf, my friend and a London-based NLP coach, confirms that this perceptive shift is also possible to produce synthetically using tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Since our perception of sensory data from external sources is actually processed by the same parts of our brain as our internal representations, human beings can actually alter their emotional and physiological state through simply meditating upon and reproducing visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues in our minds. Conversely, when a human being alters his physiology—by, say, smiling—his internal representations will change considerably.

So, imagine this scenario: you go to Jerusalem. You carry a bunch of internal representations with you regarding feeling inspired by religious text, artifacts, sites. You walk into [insert place of religio-historical significance]. Your brain starts mulling over the fact that you are standing in the place where [insert important religio-historical event here] happened. You feel a sense of inspiration. Your body feels tingly or light, you head starts to swim a little bit. You begin to look around and imagine the places that [insert religio-historical figure here] stood, talked, laughed, spoke, performed a miracle, etc. These stories have a great deal of significance for you. You, standing in this place, seeing these things in your mind, contemplating the mysteries and significance of this event/place, have begun to confuse your perceptions of the world outside of your body with the vivid, emotionally charged pictures/sounds/feelings in your imagination. You are physically standing in a spot of religio-historical signifcance. You are emotionally seated in that place in your mind. At this point, for your brain and your body, your outer and inner perceptive mechanisms are the same, and you shift into that place/time.

This is the only explanation of “Jerusalem Syndrome” that makes any sense to me. We can argue about where the inspiration comes from or what has made these things significant to the point of causing a “mystical” experience, but that will tell us nothing. This would be an interesting topic to study with the help of neuro-psychologists and neuro-linguists. Perhaps I will conduct such a study in coming years. I believe that this model can be applied to my particular field of study—Sufism—though I feel like it would be pretty significant if we could find data that suggest a wider application of such a theory.

Fun times ahead for the scientific study of religious behavior! In the mean time, I hope that you all see Jesus, Buddha, one of the 99 names of Allah, or something spiritually significant to you on your toast, tomatoes, lambs, or fishsticks and have a good weekend.