Our Ingrained Responsibility to Stay Informed

Most people do not really want freedom,
because freedom involves responsibility.

— Sigmund Freud

It has become quaint in American to believe in responsibility.

You can avoid taxes, dodge military service, abandon your children, snub your neighbors and rob retailers—all while shirking any responsibility.

You can cheat your employer, scam customers, rip off investors and fleece donors—all while shirking any responsibility.

You can even become president and shirk any—and all—responsibility.

But as Americans, I believe, we do have one ingrained responsibility, a responsibility that we cannot shirk: to stay informed.

It's a civic and a moral responsibility, no matter how we eventually might use it, to gather and digest accurate information.

To do any less—to remain content with a litany of lies, inanities, and propaganda—is to remain a chump, a sucker, an idiot, and an ignoramus.

We have far too many of these sorts of nincompoops—the so-called "low information citizens"—for our nation's wellbeing.

I for one am disgusted with them.

They're like spoiled little kids, afraid they'll be frightened or saddened by fairy tales that haven't already been read to them a hundred times or more. 

Jack Nicholson-style, they can't handle the truth—and are willing to forego freedom, rather than acquire and accept information when it runs counter to their fantasies.

Unable to discern fact from fiction, they're allowing their lives—and, worse, the lives of their fellow Americans—to be ruled by profit-seeking charlatans.

And even worse yet, these dunces are blind—oblivious to the real-world consequences of their willful ignorance. 

By supporting charlatans, they're unwittingly accelerating the erosion of human rights and civil liberties—rights and liberties our forebears struggled to gain for us. That blindness represents the very apotheosis of irresponsibility and poor citizenship; and an assured dead end for our democracy.

But asking these dimwits to "connect the dots" between their ignorance and its outcomes—to accept blame for the suspension of our personal freedoms—is a waste of time and energy. 

I'd sooner ask my cat to solve a quadratic equation.

Above: Battle Flag by Andrew Wyeth. Tempera on wood. 30 x 22 inches.

Vemödalen

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

— Ecclesiastes

A fellow artist expressed to me yesterday her disappointment that realist painters—even of the caliber of Monet and Van Gogh—never add anything original to our culture.

Photographers have a word for that wistful feeling: vemödalen.

Vemödalen—the feeling everything has already been done—was coined by the Swiss blogger John Koening, whose Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows defines "emotions we feel, but don't have words to express."

According to Koening, vemödalen is "the frustration of photographing something amazing, when thousands of identical photos already exist."

Those thousands of precedent photos turn mine into "something hollow, pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself."

By this definition, vemödalen (a word doubtless derived from the Swedish vemod, meaning "melancholy") is a kind of weltschmerz that mistakes every work of art as another flat-pack item from Ikea.

It's easy to understand where vemödalen comes from.

Unoriginality is baked into human existence, as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger proved in Being and Time.

Heidegger calls the self of our everyday being the "they-self" (Man-selbst).

The they-self is a conformist and unoriginal way of engaging with the world.

Heidegger claims that I am not myself as I go about the tasks that preoccupy me every day. 

I am, instead, the they-self, a worker among workers, a productive citizen, a member of the crowd.

The they-self, he says, represents "concerned absorption in the world we encounter. 

"The 'they' prescribes our way of interpreting the world."

In other words, I don't encounter the world: they do. 

"It is not 'I', in the sense of my own self, that 'am,' but others, whose way is that of the 'they,'" Heidegger says.

While being a they-self feels comfortable, Heidegger insists, remaining one is a choice: a choice to surrender your soul to the "dictatorship of the they;" to surrender, sheepishly, to conformity, mediocrity, practicality, and ingenuousness.

In a real sense, Heidegger says, we wear a disguise our whole lives: the disguise of the they. And that disguise—that inauthentic self—tricks us into believing "there's nothing new under the sun" when, in fact, everything under the sun is new every moment of every day, if only we open our eyes to it.

.
"It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die," Oscar Wilde once wrote. 

"Most people are other people. Their life is a mimicry."

Above: Orange. Oil on fiberboard. 8 x 10 inches.

How to Rein Regret

 

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

— Sean Covey

Like his six previous books, Dan Pink's latest, The Power of Regret, bundles decades of social-science research into a subject to draw a general conclusion.

In this case, the subject is remorse, the inescapable, rearview-mirror feeling that I could have done better. And Pink's conclusion is that regret, if tamed, is a powerful propellent to self-improvement. 

I highly recommend the 200-page book.

Pink shows over and over that he has a knack for finding obscure research papers and mining clear conclusions from them, while leading his reader along a complex train of thought quickly and gracefully.

The heart of the book is Part Two, where Pink reveals the four "core regrets," which he has unearthed not from others' findings, but through his own original research among 4,500 subjects—the single largest study of regret ever conducted. 

The core regrets are not what you'd guess.

First, there are foundation regrets, what Pink describes as "failures of foresight and conscientiousness." Most of these have to do with ignoring our education, health, and savings; in other words, with goofing off and living large.

Second, there are boldness regrets, past choices to "play it safe." Most of these regrets have to do with career, romance, and travel. Boldness regrets dwell on the "roads not taken." 

Third, there are moral regrets, big and small lapses in the way you treated lovers, children, friends, enemies, employers—even animals. We tend to agonize over these.

Fourth, there are connection regrets, which form the largest category of regrets. "They arise." Pink writes, "from relationships that have come undone or that remain incomplete." He tidily calls these regrets "rifts and drifts."

Pink's formula for taming regrets (Part Three of the book) comprises seven distinct elements:

• Apologize to those you harmed
• Find a silver lining in your lapse
• Admit your faux paus to others
• Develop compassion for yourself
• Accept frailty and move on
• Keep things in perspective
• Decide what you'll do differently in the future

Taking these actions, Pink says, will turn your regrets from morbid emotions into powerful goads to a better you.

My one complaint about The Power of Regret concerns an omission: Pink never once refers to "Step 9" of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alcoholics in recovery are emperors of regrets. In order to kick the habit, Step 9 demands that they "make direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure others."

By looking into AA's Step 9, Pink might have saved himself a lot of effort.

Folks have been there before.

Magical Thinking

Magical thinking is typical of children up to five,
after which reality begins to predominate.

— American Psychological Association Dictionary

Every day I encounter magical thinking.

It makes me cringe.

Here are three examples I encountered in only the past 24 hours:

• An executive coach told a young realtor, "If you just go to networking events, you'll be a millionaire." That's malarkey. 
  
  
• A keynote speaker at a conference told businesspeople, "When followers love what you love to do, the money will follow." That's also bull.
  
  
• A woman angry about last week's Supreme Court decision Tweeted, "Since women have no contractual rights, I need no longer pay my student loans." That's foolishness.

Our society is hip deep in magical thinking—the kind that ruins people's lives (remember when Trump said household bleach could cure you of Covid?).

We've always been surrounded by magical thinking—witness the 1990s' Beanie Babies Investment Craze—but things seem to have worsened of recent.

Magical thinking—the belief that your thoughts, words, or actions can shape events—assumes a causal link between the subjective and objective.

Of course, sometimes your words and actions do shape events. (Just tell your boss his hair plugs are obvious; or cross the street without looking.)

But most of the time events have a mind of their own.

Since the advent of science in the 16th century, we've tended to associate magical thinking with infants, religions, and "primitive" cultures. 

But magical thinking pervades popular culture, too.

Freud blamed magical thinking on the Id, which seeks favorable outcomes without regard to the "reality principle."

Reality aside, maybe magical thinking isn't magic at all, but only an instance of wishful thinking—the error in judgement known to philosophers as the "ought-is fallacy."

The ought-is fallacy assumes that the way you want things to be is the way they are, no matter the evidence.

Examples of the ought-is fallacy include the belief in angels and the healing power of crystals; the belief that trickle-down economics works; the belief that Trump actually won the 2020 election; the belief that hard work pays off; and the belief that no one is evil.

The next time you're confronted by someone's wishful thinking, ask him, do you believe in magic?

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

— George Ball

I belong to several Facebook groups that relish the past. 

"Abandoned Homes America," for example.

"Paperback, Pulp and Book Collectors Anonymous."

"The Golden Age of Hollywood."

These groups attract fellow aficionados: people avid about old houses, books and films.

But they also attract whiny weirdos who can't handle the here and now.

"As many of us get older, we might hearken back to simpler times," blogger Michael Kwan write in Beyond the Rhetoric. 

"We may look upon the present with a certain level of disdain. We might admonish 'kids these days' for ruining everything. But, are we all just falling victim to the golden age fallacy?"

Nostalgia, also known as the "golden age fallacy," insists we'd be more content in times gone by.

Nostalgia drives malcontents and misérables to look backwards for happiness.

Nostalgia a disease of longing. 

It's so crippling that philosopher Karl Jaspers blamed the most heinous sorts of crimes—murder, arson, and child molestation—on it.

Not every contemporary psychiatrist believes nostalgia is a mental disorder.

But I do.

That's why I'm disturbed by the relentless Facebook posts like, "We have too much today an overindulged society, as kids we ate what was on the table" and "Bring back Aunt Jemima, screw the woke crowd!" (both verbatim quotes taken from "The Golden Age of Hollywood").

I see those crabby statements and think, with Jaspers, "There's a potential child molester."

Michael Kwan calls wistful reminiscence a "flaw in the romantic imagination of people who find it difficult to cope with the present."

I think it's a much deeper—and darker—flaw.

A flaw in character.

Burning Bridges

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

— Goethe

Rarely do I remember my dreams. Last night's is an exception.

I dreamed that my wife and I had planned to stay at a B&B during an antique show that was being held inside the Brandywine River Museum. (That's an actual annual event which I ran between 2006 and 2010.) 

The B&B in my dream was owned and operated by the museum (that's purely imaginary).

For some undisclosed reason, we had to scrap our plans to attend the show a day or two out.

Given our late cancellation, the B&B refused to refund us the lavish deposit on our room.

Oh, well, I said to no one in particular, you win some, you lose some.

I swallowed the $800 loss.

About a month later, a second $800 charge by the B&B appeared on my credit card statement. 

I called the front desk immediately.

"What's this other $800 charge for?" I asked. "We didn't even stayed at the inn."

Lloyd Bridges and sons

The concierge was blasé.

"After you cancelled your prepaid room, we gave it for free to a VIP guest, the movie actor Lloyd Bridges," he said. "Unfortunately, Mr. Bridges died in the room."

"That's terrible," I said. "But what's the $800 charge on my card for?"

"The $800 covers the cost to the inn of removing his body."

I asked why Lloyd Bridges' famous sons, Jeff and Beau, weren't asked to pay for the removal of their father's body. 

"They're rich," I said. "They can certainly afford it."

"We asked them and they both refused to pay," the concierge said. "So our only choice was to charge you."

I grew instantly riled, but knew I couldn't say a word.

Maintaining goodwill with the museum was crucial to my career—as what, I was unsure. 

No matter my feelings, I could not burn this bridge. 

Then, I woke up.

Sigmund Freud would have a field day analyzing my dream.

He found that bridges routinely appear in our dreams. 

Bridges symbolize the sex act—naturally. (Hey, it's Freud.)

But bridges also symbolize crossings: the crossing from birth to life; the crossing from life to death; and, for that matter, the crossing from any of life's stages to the next one.

As such, bridges symbolize changes: transitions, passages, returns, and departures.

Changes—whether for good or ill.

You don't want to burn those bridges, unless it's absolutely necessary. And maybe not even then.

You want to take the bridges as they come.

As The Dude said, “Strikes and gutters, ups and downs.”

Cracked

The older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am.

— Roxane Gay

What failing do flat-earthers, antivaxxers and "big lie" believers share in common?

They all lack what psychologists call intellectual humility, the ability to admit you're fallible.

Just this week, I have heard a flat-earther insist Earth couldn't be round, else we'd see it curve when we climbed a hill; an antivaxxer insist Covid-19 can't be defeated, because it's invisible; and a "big lie" believer insist big data indisputably prove Trump won.

Duh.

While it's tempting to dismiss these kooks as childish, uniformed, or just stupid, psychologists would have us look deeper.

People who lack intellectual humility, psychologists have discovered through seven decades of research, usually also have a screw or two loose.

People who lack intellectual humility may also lack the abilities to evaluate evidence, enjoy learning, tolerate ambiguity, brook disagreement, appreciate expertise, or recognize the boundaries between reality and their egos.

In other words, they're cracked.

People with intellectual humility—the majority of us—realize they're fallible, according to the research. 

They spend more time contemplating their beliefs, questioning their assumptions, and seeking out proof than those who lack intellectual humility.

People with intellectual humility in general are curious, inquisitive, tolerant, empathetic, forgiving, and cerebral.

People who lack intellectual humility, on the other hand, are self-absorbed, judgmental, dogmatic, over-confident, arrogant, combative, and carnal.

They're also—as we well know—less able to distinguish truth from hoax.

Fortunately, although lack of intellectual humility is partly inherited, psychologists say there's hope for sufferers through cognitive behavioral therapy, which seeks to undo the bad influence of parents and teachers.

But can the rest of us wait for that?

And what about the influence of world events on those who lack intellectual humility?

Sadly, psychologists have discovered that lack of intellectual humility worsens in the face of economic downturns, pandemics, wars, terrorist threats, and mass migrations.

Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen.

More and more crackpots are heading your way!

Know-It-Alls

No one wants advice, only corroboration.

— John Steinbeck

My vice is advice. 

I give it freely—often unsolicited.

People say it's due to my "executive personality," and always add their own advice—also unsolicited—about what I can do with it.

The English word advice, meaning a "worthy opinion," dates to the late 14th-century and was borrowed from the Latin visum, meaning "viewpoint."

Advice is simply another's viewpoint.

But no one welcomes advice.

No one.

The reason it is so detested, I believe, is explained by a remark of the late painter Malcolm Morley: "Any artist who asks advice is already a failure."

No one welcomes advice, because to do so is to admit to incompetence. 

And no one wants to admit to incompetence, even secretly.

Psychologists say that dispensers of advice are often "alpha personalities," know-it-alls who are assured of their views and assured of their right to dispense them.

Know-it-alls are also highly compulsive.

"If you know any unsolicited advice-givers," says psychologist Seth Meyers, "you know they can’t stop themselves from giving advice. At root, they are compelled to give it."

Advice-giving is a compulsion among alpha personalities—always anxious to solve everyone's problems.

They rarely, if ever, consider whether solutions are sought after. 

When they offer advice and are met with hostility, they're constantly surprised; even startled. What's the big deal?

Psychologists think that know-it-alls, at bottom, are power-mad.

Studies published in 2018 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

proved that people who dispense advice, whether welcomed or not, feel a strong sense of dominance and control afterwards. They give no thought to appearing a stuffed shirt know-it-all.

At the risk of appearing once again a know-it-all, let me offer advice to the recipients of unsolicited advice: Be patient with know-it-alls; they don't know they're annoying.

Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich said it best: "Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth."

All Shook Up

In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud lent his name to the parapraxis—the slip of the tongue—attributing this "verbal leakage" to a failure of the ego to repress a worrisome thought.

Psychologists today acknowledge the doctor was onto something when he identified the Freudian slip.

A parapraxis could indeed represent a failure of the ego to censor our unruly unconscious.

But what about the visual parapraxis?

The slip of the eye, which, although common, has no name in psychology.

My wife's frequent slips of the eye are a daily source of mirth in our home.

I could list them here, but I'd need a month. 

On occasion, I have slips of the eye, as well.

Yesterday, for example, I misread the ad headline "Learn to paint expressively" as "Learn to paint Elvis Presley."

Misreadings aren't the same as mondegreens, mishearings of song lyrics (for example, hearing Elvis sing "A midget like a man on a fuzzy tree" instead of "I'm itching like a man on a fuzzy tree.")

Misreadings, psychologists believe, can be due to any number of causes, including stress, distraction, exhaustion, bias, and good-old Freudian ego-failure.

My theory is that misreadings are a form of dissociation, those brief out-of-body experiences we all suffer (for example, when we daydream).

Misreadings, in fact, may constitute a form of Ganser syndrome, also known as "balderdash syndrome."

Balderdash syndrome is characterized by episodes of "pseudodementia," where you show show signs of dementia—including speech and language problems—even though you don't in fact have dementia.

In other words, when you're all shook up.

What slip of the eye did you last have?

On Top of the Hill

I feel a change comin' on
and the last part of the day's already gone.

— Bob Dylan 

Retirement guru Bob Lowry, whose wide-roaming blog I recommend, struggled this week to define "success in retirement."

Success before retirement is easy to define, he says. 

If you're an employer, success means you never need to shutter your business. 

If you're an employee, success means you never get fired.

Success after retirement, on the other hand, is much harder to define; so much harder, Lowry can't do it.

"The whole idea of success in retirement is so singular that I can't offer my opinions or thoughts on the subject," he says.

Lowry offers instead the well-known poem "What is Success?" as a working definition.

I'm less reticent to offer an opinion. 

I think success in retirement means, like a pippin rose, you just keep blooming.

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, who studied personality growth in the 1950s, described retirement as the eighth and final stage of an individual's development, the stage of "ego integrity."

According to Erikson, in retirement, the healthy person, because he has "adapted himself to the triumphs and disappointments of being," blossoms in the fruit of experience.

As he mulls over his life—a compulsion at this stage of ego development—the healthy person enters into "comradeship with the ordering ways of distant times."

The healthy person comes to realize that, when all is said and done, he lived his life with dignity; served humanity in some small way; and did so to the very best of his abilities.

He realizes "it was okay to have been me."

The healthy person, moreover, accepts that he's near the end of life, and, satisfied with past contributions, seeks out ways to make new ones while he still has time, further increasing his satisfaction with life.

The healthy retired person, Erikson says, isn't over the hill, but on top of it.

How about you? Feel a change comin' on?

Forever Young

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Psychotherapist Carl Jung called him the puer aeternus.

The eternal youth.

The adolescent who never grows up.

Peter Pan.

Bro.

Jung warned against the puer aeternus.

Living the couch surfer's life, and without an inner senex (old man) to tell him to check his childish impulses, the puer aeternus soon becomes the slacker, the hooligan, the terrorist, and, eventually, the fascist destroyer of societies.

Jung had two pieces of advice for these neurotics: get a job and deal with your mommy issues.

Meantime—as the neurosis reaches epidemic proportions—what will we grownups do?

Death in the Afternoon

Anxiety is there. It's only sleeping.

— Martin Heidegger

I'm amazed people watch Hallmark Christmas movies in July—or any time of year.

Psychologists agree these sappy romances release dopamine, but that doesn't wash for me as an explanation.

Psychologists also agree our pattern-seeking brains savor the movies' carbon-copy plots. That sounds better, but doesn't go far enough.

Why do people watch Hallmark Christmas movies in July?

To keep death at bay.

As Sigmund Freud observed, death threatens us from three directions all the time: from our own bodies, doomed to dissolution; from the external world, rife with destruction; and from other people, prone to violence. 

On top of those things, we harbor an unconscious "death wish" that compels us to take foolish risks.

In the face of the threats, we're driven to escape, to experience Nirvana or what Freud calls the "oceanic sensation" of eternity.

And that, I believe, explains the appeal of Hallmark Christmas movies.

They all take place in a delusional fairytale land where no one suffers, no one dies, and nothing ever changes (except the casts, and they all look alike).

I recall from childhood devout Catholics who attended mass every day in hope of earning "life everlasting." 

In its unwavering consistency, the Catholic Order of Mass is like a Hallmark Christmas movie. But for the cast, nothing ever varies.

But old-fashioned exuberance for church-going has become quaint. 

In fact, church attendance in all denominations is cratering.

Now to keep death at bay we just turn on the Hallmark Channel. And we do so with urgency.

"If you think it through," Martin Heidegger said, "life can beautifully be called 'urgency.' But you must then agree that life's essence comprises desire, sorrow, and death—all at the same time."

When you acknowledge death is inevitable, your existence is torn in two, Heidegger believed. 

While you enjoy life's little pleasures, you can't help but be aware that time is finite and that your will has limits—even though your desires do not. 

So you waste time in flight from your awareness of death: you dissociate, daydream, drug, drink, overwork, overeat, overpost... or just dial up the Hallmark Channel. 

Then things aren't so dismal.

Comparing

Look for the similarities, not the differences.

— Alcoholics Anonymous

AA members believe "comparing" is the sure path back to the bottle. 

Comparing leads the drunk to minimize his problem-drinking ("I was never as bad as he was") and exaggerate his ability to control his drinking ("He drank every day; I'll only drink on weekends").

Instead, the drunk is supposed to "identify" with fellow members—accept that he's also an alcoholic and admit he can't control his drinking (it controls him).

My experience working with hundreds of different businesses has taught me that comparing—in AA's sense—is one of executives' worst habits—and an equally certain path to self-defeat.

I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time an executive told me "we're different" (a statement often followed by "we're the industry leader").

Business strategists would call that attitude "optimism."

I call it drunk-think. 

Executives who believe "we're different" are drunk, drunk on a special flavor of Kool-Aid known as "Cheery Red." 

Drinking too much of it causes comparing.

For a decisionmaker, that's a terrible self-handicap.

Drinking too much Cherry Red, like drinking too much alcohol, blurs vision, slows cognition, and impairs judgement. 

And, like drinking too much alcohol, drinking too much Cherry Red can bring on denial—even deliria.

You hear examples of drunk-think in businesses every day. 

"That's unnecessary."

"That's untested."

"That can't be done." 

"We tried that, it doesn't work."

"That's too expensive." 

"That's too risky." 

"That's fine for other companies."

"That's for start-ups."

"That's for losers."

"That's irrelevant."

"I've never heard of that."  

"That's not how we do things here."

Drunk-think distorts reality because it's always way-too overconfident. 

Like the abusive drinker who believes he's different—that he can control his drinking—the executive afflicted by drunk-think believes that, compared to others, he is awesome—he can pull it off. He's peerless, after all, exempt from the ordinary constraints all his competitors suffer; exempt from the laws of economics, too. He has no need to rock the boat; challenge the company status quo; look outside for new ideas; or adopt others' proven strategies. He only needs to stay calm and carry on.

Eventually, drunk-think will take its toll on the executive. 

He may not destroy the company car, but he's sure to destroy the company's value.

Pleasant Valley Sunday

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, charcoal burning everywhere.

— Gerry Goffin

Facing a $1.3 billion defamation suit, Donald Trump's wormy shyster Sidney Powell now says "no reasonable person would conclude" her claims of election-rigging "were truly statements of fact."

Yet, thanks in part to Powell, 64,829,709 adult Americans believe Trump won and are backing bills in 33 states designed to suppress Democrats' votes in the future.

What's wrong with them? How can they be—to borrow Powell's defense—so unreasonable?

A logician would say they're guilty of the fallacy known as the argument from incredulity.

These 65 million adult Americans claim that, since they can't believe Trump lost, to say he did is simply false. 

Their flawed reasoning looks like this:

1. We can’t explain or imagine how this thing—Trump's loss—can be true.
   
   
2. If we can't explain or imagine how the thing is true, then it must be false.
   
   
3. Therefore, this thing is false.

Their second premise is clearly unsound. (I can't explain or imagine, for example, how a paper cut can be worse than a knife cut; but I don't therefore deny that it is.)

Why 65 million adult Americans can be so patently illogical is mystifying—until you consider the Pleasant Valley pseudo-reality in which they live.

As conceived by philosopher Josef Pieper, a pseudo-reality is a deliberately maintained "fiction," a pathological interpretation of reality. 

A pseudo-reality allows anyone who lives in it to shape the world to suit his biases, and to accommodate others who, like himself, can't accept the world as it is.

A pseudo-reality is, in effect, a playground for psychopaths. It can persist, Pieper says, only as long as the kids outside the playground—in other words, the normal kids—don't challenge it.

Writing in the 1970s, Pieper's prime example of a pseudo-reality was Nazism. 

Today's prime example is the GOP. 

Its members are all delusional psychopaths, water-carriers for a destructive lie. As such, they cannot be logical. 

Because logic only applies to the real world.

Sunday Painters

If people call me a Sunday painter
I'm a Sunday painter who paints every day of the week.

— L. S. Lowry

Thanks to the critics, Winston Churchill and Bob Dylan share the label "Sunday painter."

A label neither deserves.

Lacking degrees from accredited art schools, both took up painting in their late 30s, when they were already celebrities. Both sought a new field that challenged them afresh, because celebrity had failed them. Both were determined to succeed.

If those are shortcomings, tell me where to sign up. 

No one who studies painting in earnest wants to be called a Sunday painter—a hobbyist, a dabbler, a dilettante, a wanna-be. 

Even if useful, in a world of ready critics and trolls the label can lacerate the very thickest of skins.

Fortunately, like Churchill and Dylan, the late-blooming painters I've encountered aren't put off by critics and labels. 

And, like Churchill and Dylan, the late-bloomers I've met have these things in common: they're self-confident, having already flourished in another career; they so love what they're doing, they can't be deterred; and they're vigilantly self-critical.

These late-bloomers also share what developmental psychologist Carol Dweck calls the "growth mindset," the belief that competence in any endeavor increases with effort and repetition.

There are Sunday painters, to be sure; unabashed optimists who are blind to their faults, deaf to advice, blissfully ignorant and content with gaucheness.

They're in it for fun, not to sweat over details.

And, more often than not, they'll move on once another "bright and shiny object" crosses the path.

The rest will keep trying and failing and trying and failing... until one day they don't.

How Can They Believe This Crap? Episode V

Fifth in a series wondering why Trump still has adherents

In Episode I, I suggested Trump's supporters have been brainwashed by their betters; in Episode II, that they simply find him entertaining; in Episode III, that they sympathize with him; in Episode IV, that they believe he's a useful idiot.

I have one more theory.

The 70 million Americans who voted for Trump this week don't believe in Trump, because they don't believe in anything.

Like Trump, they're narcissistic solipsists. They believe nothing exists outside their own minds.

NOTE: It's tempting to ask. "What's wrong with America?" But realize only 2 in 10 Americans voted for Trump. The rest of the population—80% of Americans—did not. 

Flow

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

― Robert Louis Stevenson

Not a few friends of late have suggested pot, now that it's legal, but I have still-life painting to turn me on.

Even when the outcome is fish-wrap―as it routinely is―painting guarantees all the flow pots does, without the attendant risk I'll gobble an entire Entemann's.

Flow―what Confucius called wu-wei—is total absorption in a task. 

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “Me-high Cheeks-send-me-high”) was the first scientist to isolate flow, calling it a privileged "zone" where we leave tedium behind and become rapt with "the time of our lives."

A lecture on secularism by Carl Jung inspired Csikszentmihaly to study the origins of happiness, the end that eludes so many.

Csikszentmihalyi soon discovered that happiness was less an end than a state, spontaneous and temporary; a state people entered when they pushed themselves to work at a difficult task.

He interviewed hundreds of artists to learn how they felt when they worked. 

They told him they felt the art simply, effortlessly flowed from them; and that they felt ecstatic while working.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s words, flow is a "state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter."

"Krazy Kube" by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas. 16 x 12 inches.