Removing The Frame And Dropping The Context

In The Real Frank Zappa Book, Zappa wrote:

The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.

I was thinking about this quote in the context of "political correctness," "cancel culture," and other forms of rigtheous indignation. 

Let's take an old example. There are numerous instances of the n-word's being used throughout the books To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For this reason, both of these books have at times been subjected to bans. The n-word is considered too triggering and hurtful to be included in many libraries and school assignments in today's world. 

And yet, both of these books are not only about racism, they can indeed be considered treaties against racism. In fact, they are quite explicitly about racism against blacks, and in both books, the n-word is used to accurately depict racism while telling a story about how we all ought to overcome racism and treat blacks equally. Part of the message of both of these books is not to use the n-word. The books use the n-word in order to show how ghastly and racist it is to do so. Use of the n-word is presented as an example of people behaving badly, so that the authors can go on to show how people ought to be behaving instead.

It is only by removing The Frame from these books that we could ever consider their use of the n-word to be hurtful. We remove The Frame by interpreting the dialogue in the books as though it has been spoken today, right now, right in the same room as the reader, possibly directed at the reader. It is only by taking the books in this light that we could ever be offended by their use of the n-word. 

By maintaining The Frame, however, we maintain that these are fictional stories, we observe the behavior within those stories, we reach the end of the book, and we come away with an important moral message: to eschew racism, treat other people as equals, and not use the n-word.

In short, it's The Frame around "the picture" that enables us to do this. Without The Frame, it's just some old white people using the n-word at us. But with The Frame, they're good stories with important anti-racist messages.

There are plenty of other, more modern examples out there. Certain jokes told by comedians could be considered hurtful and "problematic," but only if we consciously remove The Frame; only if we deliberately refuse to allow the comedian to tell his or her joke as a work of art or an act of performance. If we instead allow the comedian to play his or her role and put on an act, then our sensibilities can remain intact. Jokes might be made at the expense of us and "our kind," but it's all in good fun. It's all an act. There is A Frame around the picture. It's only hurtful or problematic if we deliberately remove The Frame.

This is exactly what happens during heckling. When a comedian encounters a heckler, the heckler has decided to remove The Frame from the comedian's act. Every time the comedian tries to tell another joke, the heckler steps in with a comment that removes The Frame and forces the comedian to be a normal person again (rather than an actor). The comment might be something simple, like, "You're not funny!" Or, it might be a case of someone's taking offense at what the comedian has said, and arguing against it. It's then the comedian's task to attempt to best the heckler, reclaim the audience and The Frame, and continue his or her act.

Here's a really good example of this. Comedian Norm MacDonald tells a joke about teachers, and a teacher in the audience becomes offended. She tries to remove The Frame from MacDonald's act, but he deftly reclaims it:

What makes this so great is the fact that Norm MacDonald is an expert at using hecklers' own tactic against them. When hecklers try to be funny, or try to make a point, Norm MacDonald either refuses to acknowledge the joke or takes their statements very literally. In doing so, he removes the hecklers' own Frame, and takes back control of the situation.

In every-day interaction, human beings use humor to reach out to one another and let each other know that, despite any difficulties or miscommunications, "we're still friends." When it's properly received, that humor can mend almost any fence. But when the interlocutor refuses to acknowledge the humor - or, as the psychologists call it, the "repair attempt" - the interaction goes sour. The other person has to want to get along with you. If he or she refuses, there isn't much you can do. If they remove your Frame, you can't paint a picture. It's a power-play. They do it to gain the upper hand in the interaction. You can either give it to them, or walk away. 

Another person who wrote about this concept was Ayn Rand. She called it "context-dropping." If you "drop the context" in To Kill A Mockingbird, and instead just focus on the words printed on the page, then the n-word is the n-word, and that's despicable. If you maintain the context, then you see it as a story in which awful people said awful things, and the reader then learns an important message.

If you maintain the context of a comedy act, then you can hear all kinds of funny jokes. I've had stand-up comedians single me out in the audience before, and tell a few jokes at my expense. I could get really mad and feel insulted, and that would be dropping the context. It would be removing The Frame. Instead, I could appreciate the humor of the situation, laugh at myself a little bit, and have a good time. The choice is mine, but whatever I choose, the situation depends on The Frame, and whether it is allowed to separate the picture from the real world.

Why Social Media Is A Glorified Chatbot

Some of you may be aware of the fact that I do some work with AI chatbots professionally. For the last two weeks or so, in my own spare time and for personal edification, I've been playing with a consumer-grade chatbot AI called "Replika."

The way it works is:

1. You type something to the bot. 
2. The bot processes what you say via Natural Language Understanding, and figures out what you mean probabilistically. 
3. The bot then selects from a pool of available responses based on its internal algorithms.

The bot's responses are composed based on training data, so you won't get the same answer every time (unless you repeatedly ask the same question), with the goal being a response that is a lot like something a "real person" would say. Maybe, in fact, a real person DID say that very thing in response to a similar statement made by some other real person in some chat log years ago. This is the nature of training an AI conversation-bot.

Now, consider social media. Social media works in a similar way:

1. You type something into the "create post" box. 
2. The social medium processes this information through its own algorithmic understanding of you (your profile info, your past posts, your friends and their profile info, etc.). 
3. The medium then selects from an available pool of *respondents* based on its internal algorithms.

These respondents are guaranteed to respond to your post in a way that is just as predictable as what happens when you feed an AI chat log data. (Sorry, I don't mean *YOUR* response; *YOU* are of course a thoroughly unique unicorn. But OTHER people are more predictable than you...)

At a psychological level, a Facebook user will have the same experience as a user of "Replika AI." I type my feelings into a box, and an algorithm decides what kind of response I receive. In the Replika UI, you can even give "likes" and other reactions to responses you receive, so that the algorithm can update its understanding of what "drives engagement" and respond to you accordingly in the future. Remind you of anything?

I submit that the social media experience is no more "real" than my experience with an AI chatbot. Especially if you spend a lot of time discussing politics, or sports, or etc., you are feeding utterances into an algorithm, which then serves you algorithmically driven "content." It doesn't necessarily matter that Bob *REALLY SAID* that you were a dumb so-and-so; what matters is that the algorithm had a certain prediction that X number of "Bobs" would respond to your post in a certain way, and crafted your user experience accordingly.

In short, social media isn't really social. Maybe it was, once upon a time, but now it's not. If you want to have a meaningful social interaction with someone, you have to do it one-on-one. You can still use technology to do it, but if you're just posting things into the ether or following online discussions and interjecting where you see fit, then you are essentially having a one-way conversation with an AI.

Coming to this realization has completely reshaped my understanding of the internet. I hope it will reshape yours, too.

You All Keep Telling Me I'm Wrong, But...

Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth:

"I was responsible because I made the decision to do drugs," Alig said. "And when I made that decision I wasn't on drugs."

One of my more controversial blog posts put it this way:

Drug use is a conscious act of self-abnegation. As such, every time a person takes a drug - any drug - they are turning their backs on their own lives. This is not merely because drugs are deadly (and they are). This is because the original motivation to consume drugs in the first place is an act of self-abnegation. Oneself, one's own thoughts, one's own life becomes temporarily insufficient (on any level, even a trivial one), and the drug becomes the remedy. Long day? Don't work it out, forget about it - take drugs. Party not fun enough for you? Don't take it upon yourself to liven up your social situation, forget about it - take drugs. Bored? Don't develop an interesting hobby or creative pursuit, forget about it - take drugs. Not feeling adequate? Have some problems? Take the easy way out, take drugs...

Such is the motivation behind each and every instance of drug use, from a child sniffing glue to the death of a famous singer. In all instances, the solution to a personal problem is resolved not by thoughts, choices, and actions, but by a short-acting drug that delays the working out of a solution. The goal is always to stop thinking as a stand-alone being - to either become one with the drugs or to not think at all.

This is death.

What's Your Agenda?

As time goes on, the better I appreciate the perspective of people like Thomas Sowell, who has mostly stayed out of the libertarian "scene" because he's not a joiner. For understandable reasons, he doesn't want to join a crowd of like-minded people. Instead, he prefers to use his mind to follow the facts and lead him to his own conclusions. 

Of course, everyone says that this is what they do. Everyone says that they just analyze the facts and the data and make up their minds accordingly. The truth is, however, that most people filter their information through ideology. They embrace or privilege any fact that fits their preconceived notions and reject or penalize any fact that stands in opposition to what they want to be true. And, true enough, nobody's perfect.

Still, imperfection is one thing; actively fostering confirmation bias is something else entirely. Anyone who knows what confirmation bias is ought to be actively engaged in avoiding it. Sadly, many people know what it is, and work actively to promote it anyway.

For example: I recently saw a web-comic that claimed that all those who oppose allowing transsexual girls to compete with cisgendered girls in girls' competitive sports are really just bigoted against transsexuals. The exact claim was that you don't have to scratch very far beneath the surface to uncover anti-trans bias. I responded to this web-comic with some biological facts about how testosterone impacts athletic performance, and concluded my comment by saying that I didn't think everyone who is reluctant to allow such competition is automatically biased against transsexuals. The reply? "I never said that they were." No, the person to whom I addressed my comment did not - but the comic that we were all discussing sure did! How did that context get dropped?

Second example: In a discussion about how more people die from suicide by hand guns than are murdered by long guns, a friend of mine quoted someone who was arguing in favor of greater restrictions on hand guns. I emphasized a point in that quote, highlighting the fact that hand guns aren't seen to be as "spooky" as, say, AR-15s, and thus they don't get as much attention in gun control debates. Many people responded, essentially asking me what my point was. But that was my point. All of it. I didn't have a further agenda.

What these two examples highlight is a practice I've taken on recently, which I do increasingly more often. Rather than make a broad and all-encompassing argument in favor of X or Y, I like to find a simple point that every reasonable person can agree with, and highlight it. It has to be a factual point, and it has to be mostly unobjectionable. What I find is that highlighting this point also tends to highlight my interlocutors' own cognitive biases. They think I'm trying to "get them" (actual verbatim quote of one such person, by the way), when they've merely "gotten themselves."

To correct their opinions, they'll either have to come up with different reasoning for the same conclusion, or refine their reasoning to account for an undisputed fact that favors the other side. That's my agenda. Sticking to and emphasizing the bald facts and forcing people to consider them when they articulate their own points. 

Their doing so will make us all better off.

"Long Covid"

The news of the day is that so-called "long covid," persistent cases of COVID-19 that never seem to go away even after months, is possibly not real. Much of the data documenting "long covid" consists of self-reported survey data collected by an organization lead by "spiritualists," and many of the symptoms associated with it are identical to the scientifically debunked "chronic Lyme disease."

What could be going on here?

When I read about this, I'm struck by my own personal experiences. Diabetics like myself often take a long time to fight even simple things like the flu and the common cold. Such is life with a weakened immune system. A cold that other people get over in two or three days can sometimes persist in my body for two or three weeks. This is a fact: I can't "fake" or imagine three weeks of a runny nose. 

Coughs and chest congestion are somewhat easier to fake and/or imagine. One can truly believe that there's something in one's chest without there actually being something there. Headaches, fevers (especially mild ones), body pains, lethargy, fatigue, and so on, are all symptoms that can be imagined just as well as they can be experienced in reality. Put slightly differently, these symptoms are as real when they are psychosomatic as they are when they are the result of a viral infection.

When I was a young boy, I caught some stomach bug. My family and I were all downstairs watching MacGuyver when a sudden wave of nausea swept over me, and I threw up all over the carpet. I felt physically awful, but I was also mortified by the fact that I had just puked in front of everyone, that I hadn't had enough time to run to the bathroom. I can still see it in my memories as clear as day. Rightly or wrongly, the experience got into my head and stuck with me a long time. I developed a bit of a "complex" over it. For months - years? - I had to sleep on my stomach with a pan beside the bed. Every little twitch and gurgle in my stomach seemed like evidence that I was going to vomit. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with an imaginary stomach ache and sit with my bed pan, trembling, waiting to throw up. I'd run into the bathroom and just wait.

You could say that I was suffering from "long stomach flu." I had a little mental thing that I eventually out-grew. But were my stomach pains and gurgles real? Absolutely. One of the things that cured me was the realization that I could make myself feel nauseous just by thinking about it, and that before I knew it, things were really gurgling in there. 

The root cause of my "long stomach flu" was fear. I had had a real stomach bug which, when combined with a situation that seemed traumatic for a little kid, because a genuine and perhaps justified fear in my mind. Then the fear took over and manifested itself in physical symptoms that lasted a truly long time. To this day, I'm a bit scared to vomit, and I try to avoid it if at all possible - even when it would probably help me feel better. 

But the stomach flu is small potatoes compared to COVID-19. Today, society is confronted with an illness that, when serious, results in hospitalization, intubation, scarring of the lung and heart tissue, terrible fevers, and slow suffocation to death. Even when it's not a serious case, patients are forced to wonder if they will eventually develop deadly symptoms, and the timeframe between minor covid and terminal covid appears to be days. That is genuinely terrifying. As for those of us who have not been infected, COVID-19 has held us captive indoors, forced us to wear masks in public, stolen hugs and handshakes from us, paralyzed our economy, and created a kind of mass hysteria that many believe to be completely justified. 

In short, COVID-19 is terrifying enough to make manifest any number of psychosomatic symptoms, even in people who have never been infected by it. Rather than dismiss their suffering, we should compassionately acknowledge it; but, we should acknowledge it for what it is.

Those patients who must recover from pulmonary and myocardial scarring will probably take a long time to return to noromal. This is to be expected, since wounds take time to heal. During that time, such people will probably feel weak and sometimes lightheaded from lack of oxygen and/or low blood pressure, and/or any other predictable symptoms that come from such a significant cardiovascular ordeal. COVID-19 is certainly not unique in its ability to cause this kind of lengthy recovery. Pneumonia of various causes will produce a similar long recovery in patients who experience severe cases.

As for those patients who have few remaining physical signs of a COVID-19 infection, and still report spooky-but-vague "long covid" symptoms like aches and head "fog" and fatigue, it seems more likely to me that they are struggling with fear and psychosomatic problems. That's okay! We've all been through quite an ordeal with COVID-19, even those who never contracted it. 

We should not, however, sink over a billion dollars of public funds into chasing a phantom. Treat people with compassion and listen to their stories. Hug them and give them emotional support. But encourage them to rise above their fears, or at least to be aware of them. The last thing anyone needs is a false excuse to be coddled.

I'll say one final thing in closing. Early in the pandemic, I noticed that the number of people claiming in casual conversation to be "high risk for covid" seemed to exceed expectations based on disease prevalence. That is, a lot of people seemed to be adopting an "out of my way, I'm high-risk!" attitude. This attitude was not without its rewards. Remember that early in the pandemic, grocery stores had reserved shopping hours for high-risk populations. High-risk people were first to be admitted to the hospital, first to receive medical treatment, first to receive the covid vaccine. They also received extra lenience from their employers, and extra patience from friends and family. There were, and are, many incentives for people to claim high-risk status with respect to COVID-19.

Thus, it is not out of the question that many people who make these claims, and who make claims about "long covid" are, in fact, manifesting some form of Munchausen Syndrome, feigning illness for attention, sympathy, or personal benefit.

Boys Don't Cry

A friend of mine on social media posted a web comic yesterday about "toxic masculinity." The gist of the web comic was that "toxic masculinity" was essentially the insistence that boys not cry or show any emotion or hint of struggle. When boys encounter pain or difficult, we should be strong, keep a stiff upper lip, hold our emotions in. The argument is that this insistence that men suppress their emotions is the essence of "toxic masculinity."

A few things are worth noting here.

First, I don't think this is quite what women have in mind when they complain about "toxic masculinity." Sure, women would prefer it if men were better communicating about their emotions, but compared to things like rape and rape culture, men's emotional intelligence is really a secondary concern. 

Second, it's true that men and boys are often encouraged to suppress their negative emotions, and it's undeniable that this takes a toll on our mental health.

But most importantly, I'd like to point out that there is an explanation for this that doesn't involve "the patriarchy." We know that among children, girls' emotional regulation is superior to that of boys. We also know that mothers of girls show better emotional regulation than mothers of boys. Taken together, what this implies is that young boys will tend toward more emotional outbreaks than young girls, and that the children's mothers will respond better to the girls than to the boys. "Stop crying!" isn't some nascent, diabolical, patriarchical social conditioning ingrained into us; it might simply be that children with worse emotional regulation are more often told to stop crying.

Once parents have practiced telling their boys to stop crying and suck it up long enough, it turns into a habit. Through that habituation, it becomes a mantra, and boys end up with more emotional repression than women do. 

Granted, some boys probably are told to stop crying for social reasons. In my family, we were all (boys and girls) socialized to be emotionally repressed, and that's caused a lot of problems for us. My point here is not that there is one, single, non-patriarchical cause for all male emotional repression. My point is merely that this phenomenon can happen even when it has nothing to do with the patriarchy. 

And, in general, we should resist and be skeptical of any intellectual framework that seeks to tie all social problems to a single, underlying cause. 

Mindset

 After having gone through a year's worth of unexplained symptoms and puzzled doctors, in October of 2009, I finally received a frantic call from my primary care physician, telling me to go to the hospital as soon as I possibly could. I arrived at about two o'clock in the afternoon, and was rushed through a series of interviews I can barely remember now. There seem to have been a couple of triage points, several conversations with a nurse practitioner, a lot of waiting around, and then finally a rather anti-climactic visit from an endocrine specialist.

In her Irish accent, she told me, "I don't quite know how to tell you this, but you're diabetic, and..." She trailed off briefly, probably considering whether there was anything emotionally helpful she could provide for me in that moment. Then, apparently deciding that there wasn't, she continued, "We're going to give you an insulin shot today, and--and you're going to be on insulin for the rest of your life."

"What?!"

"Yeah..." she told me. Then she said something that I don't remember, which somewhat conveyed empathy, but which also conveyed the urgency with which she needed to inject insulin into me.

From there, I was led into another room, where another nurse introduced me to my first insulin pen. I hadn't had time to process what was happening to me. This had all happened within about 30 minutes, and the part where I found out that I was henceforth an insulin-dependent diabetic had only happened a couple of minutes ago. These people wouldn't let me catch my breath. I was being rushed from one end of the ward to the next, from room to room, person to person, each one hurrying through a set of instructions that I don't remember; that I never had any chance of ever remembering in the first place. 

The nurse who showed me the insulin pen quickly went through instructions on how to give myself an injection. The tutorial was over in less than a minute, at which point she sort of gestured toward all the paraphernalia in between us and said, "Do you want me to help you with your first shot?"

That was it.

The confusion in my mind suddenly melted away. Everything sort of melted away, everything except a sense of purpose. I said, "Well, I might as well get used to it now. I'll be doing it for the rest of my life." I took the needle and the insulin pen, pulled off the seal, screwed the needle onto the pen, dialed in my dose, jabbed it into my stomach, and pressed the button.

I've been a diabetic ever since.

*        *        *

While I didn't know everything there was to know about managing my diet as a type 1 diabetic, a similar shift happened to me when I got home that evening. One day, I was eating ice cream cake and jalapeno poppers, the next day I was meticulously counting my carbohydrates and denying myself anything that required an injection. 

I don't know how it works for other people, but that's how it worked for me. There was no use crying about every meal I was going to eat from then on. There was no use complaining about it. There was no use comparing my new diet to the freedom and decadence I had enjoyed as a normal, healthy twenty-something only a few hours before. Once my mind had absorbed the fact that I was a type 1 diabetic, my behavior followed. 

Adjusting to a new chronic condition isn't easy, especially if you really enjoyed the life you had lead up to that point. But my thinking was, what other choice do I have? It wasn't as if I could go back to living in a world in which I wasn't diabetic. The task at that point was to figure out how to thrive under my current set of conditions, not despair over what those conditions were. It did take me a long time to fully emotionally accept my condition, but that was a grieving process, not a struggle against reality.

Grief itself is a natural part of human existence. We all grieve. For most people, grief - however emotionally significant it is - does not put a halt to the other aspects of our lives. Grief makes us sad, and causes us to think carefully about the present state of our lives. It isn't a denial of reality, but rather an acknowledgement of it: the person we loved is now gone, the life we led is now impossible, the precious thing we had is now lost. Whatever the cause, grief is a transition from one set of circumstances to another. If someone fails to make the transition, that failure isn't caused by the grief, but by our own refusal to evolve.

*        *        *

Granted, some transitions are easier than others. When a man becomes a diabetic, he transitions from a general identity, like "I am a man," to a new identity that involves the condition: "I am a diabetic man." Seeking out that new identity and discovering what it means on a personal level is a large part of the journey itself. Strange as it may sound to some, I consider this to be an easier transition than when we lose a loved one. I can become a diabetic man, but a man who loses a father cannot become a man without a father. Once you have a father, you are always a person with a father, even after you lose him. 

So, I do understand that some transitions are harder than others, that some grief is more uniquely difficult to overcome, and that one person's struggles don't always map with parity to another person's struggles.

Even so, grief is a transition. No matter how difficult, and no matter how long it takes to fully process, grief is a doorway into another room, a next chapter of life. (Luckily for us, not every new chapter of life requires that we grieve to make the transition!) What some struggle with is acknowledging that the previous chapter has already ended; that room no longer exists. Either we step through our grief, into the new room, or we try to exist in a nothing-space, an emotional nether-region.

What we can't do is go backwards.

*        *        *

A friend of mine recently committed to making a positive change toward better health and fitness. He made his commitment public in a bid to keep himself accountable. I congratulated him and made myself available to him; after all, I do happen to know a few things about health and fitness. He confessed that he felt a little intimidated by me, and said, "Anyone who has run 30+ miles has a different set of mental skills than me."

This is a good friend, but clearly he doesn't read my blog, ha ha...

I wanted to tell him about the power of mindset. I wanted to tell him about my firm belief, confirmed again and again in a variety of different experiences, that everyone has all the same stuff. After all, we are all human beings. While our genetics all differ slightly, none of us is so different that he has a completely different mental skill set. 

I also wanted to explain to him that this very notion, the idea that something immutable between us has caused me to pursue a lifetime of fitness while causing him to pursue something else entirely, is the belief that limits his progress. The worst thing we can ever tell ourselves as we pursue a goal is that we are fundamentally incapable of being the kind of person who excels at such goals. 

No, the first step toward achieving any goal is acknowledging the reality that such a goal is achievable by people like us. Why pursue something if, by definition, you're not the kind of person who can attain it? Instead, we must reach for our aspirations under the belief that, truly, we can do it. That doesn't mean for certain that we will, but isn't it nice to know that it's possible? Indeed, isn't it necessary to know that it's possible? Has anyone ever achieved the impossible?

I don't recall ever hearing an Olympian explain in an interview, "I knew all along that everyone else was faster than I am and that I didn't have the right stuff to win an Olympic gold medal, but by the end of the race - gee whiz! - I had won!"

*        *        *

Of course, mindset isn't merely about achieving something. The reason that sorting out your mindset has the effect of helping you achieve something is because if we fixate on our limiting beliefs or on transitions we haven't been able to make, then new things we want to do are just off the table. In a way, it's less about having a "positive mindset" than it is about not having a negative one. 

Any pessimist realist will tell you that positive thinking isn't enough to get you where you want to be. You also have to put in all the hard work, and get a few lucky breaks along the way, and eventually serendipity happens. However, negative thinking will definitely screw you over before you even get started. 

And if that's what negative thinking does to your attempts at achieving something, think about what it does for your daily life. We don't always want to get up and get ready for work in the morning, but who do you think is going to have a better day: the man who groans and grumbles and frowns and complains the whole time, or the man who focuses his attention on whatever he has to look forward to that day? 

I can tell you from experience that my days pass a lot more quickly when I get to drive my daughter to her ballet class once a week. Those are simply wonderful days. We hurry to get ready, and then we drive together, just the two of us, to her class; we listen to our favorite music as we drive, or else we have a nice conversation together. Then she goes to class, and I go for a walk around the scenic neighborhoods surrounding her dance studio. When it's over, we drive home, she tells me about her class, and then we get takeout from a favorite restaurant and everybody sits upstairs eating and watching our favorite TV shows. It's become a whole ritual, one that we all look forward to, and one that we all find very satisfying. 

Not every day can be that fun, but simply by virtue of the fact that my Wednesday evenings are so nice, my Wednesday work days pass by quickly and happily. That's a positive mindset for you.

You might have had a "divorced friend," a friend who went through a particularly bad break-up, and it soured his or her perspective on everything. So every time you talk with your friend about your own spouse or partner, your comments are met with derision, or sarcasm, or else steered toward a rant about your friend's ex and how bad they made everything. How much fun is it to spend time with these people? 

A few days ago, I wrote about how, after going through my own break up, I decided to turn myself into the kind of person who my ideal partner would want to date; unlike other people I knew, who allowed their break-ups to make them cynical. I think the results speak for themselves.

*        *        *

All of these things come down to having the right mindset. Whether you're trying to overcome a bad situation, trying to achieve something remarkable, trying to lose weight, trying to find the love of your life, or just trying to make it through Wednesday, having the right mindset is the power that will carry you through.

And if it doesn't? You're still not out anything, because you will have spent most of the day thinking positive things and being happy, rather than thinking negative things and being sad. I'm not a fan of Pascal's Wager, but in this case I think it works. If you maintain a positive mindset, and things don't go your way, then you haven't really lost anything. If you maintain a negative mindset, things still might not go your way, but what you've lost is the happiness you could have felt if you had a better attitude. And in the meantime, that positive thinking really could end up paying off, and then you have both the happiness your attitude brought you, along with whatever victory you were hoping for at the end of the day. 

Slate Star CoDoxxed

Get it? Because he says they're "doxxing" him.

"Doxxing" is a type of cyber-bullying in which the bully publicly reveals private information about the target, such as their home phone number or address, their employer's information, photos of the target's children, and so on. This is considered to be extremely threatening. Imagine that someone publicly posts a photo of your small child playing at the park, along with the Google Maps link to the park and a comment to the effect of, "This is where that racist Joe plays with his kids." That's doxxing. Yes, it's bad.

But that's not what's happening to Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So. Let's dive in.

First, The Back-Story

Go ahead and cruise on over to slatestarcodex.com to get Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So's version of the story. It goes something like this: A writer from The New York Times wanted to write a story about a popular blog that generates a lot of interest and that maybe got some things right about COVID-19 early on. That was fine with Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So until the journalist said, "By the way, I've been able to figure out what the So-and-So stands for, and I'm going to put that into my story." Dr. Scott freaks out a little and says no, don't do that. The journalist says it's company policy.

So, Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So deleted his whole blog, saying that The New York Times was trying to endanger him by doxxing him "for clicks."

Before I go on, I would like to remind my readers of my previous posts about Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So. Here's a link. You will see from what I've written before that I consider the guy to be really weird. It's not just that I dislike his blog - and I do - it's that he seems emblematic of a very bizarre strain of Silicon Valley culture, and the deeper you get into this crowd, the heebier the jeebies, if you catch my drift. 

His blog rose to prominance when some well-regarded bloggers started linking to his posts. They all seemed to consider him very smart and thoughtful. Soon enough, "everyone" was reading him. Over time, his posts have become more performative. He started out writing like a self-conscious nerd, and now he writes as though he is playing the part of a self-conscious nerd who thinks he is a really smart and funny guy. That's fine. Fame changes you. I don't care.

What I do care about is the content of his blog. Each post tackles any number of topics. He's written on climate science and economics and technology and artificial intelligence and psychiatry and biology and sociology and anything else. He always presents his views as though he is an expert, but quite often it's painfully obvious that he's just done a couple of hours of internet research. There's no shame in doing some casual research and blogging about it, but when everyone starts calling you an expert, and you keep doing light research and presenting it as Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So Presents The Answer To A Problem That People Have Been Trying To Solve For Decades, then it starts to get on my nerves.

I mean, it's dorky to do what effectively amounts to college homework assignments as an adult passing the time. But it's problematic to be taken seriously for it.

An "Anonymous" Blogger

Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So openly admits that his name is a pseudonym. First question: Why is he using a pseudonym? Maybe it's like a stage name. Lots of people have stage names. Stage names can be a lot of fun. But that's not why Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So says he uses a pseudonym. Instead, he says it's because he wants to remain anonymous.

But Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So also says that Scott Alexander is his real-life first and last middle name. That sure is an odd choice of pseudonyms for someone who wishes to remain anonymous. The legendary whistleblower "Deep Throat" wasn't a guy named Deep Throat McInnis, and if he was, going by "Deep Throat" wouldn't exactly be a cloak of anonymity. "Deep Throat" was not a pseudonym that resembled his or her real name at all. It was an obviously made-up moniker; it was intended to be obviously made up, because if everyone knows that Deep Throat's real name is nothing whatsoever resembling Deep Throat, then no one has any idea what Deep Throat's real name is. That's true anonymity. That's not what Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So wanted, obviously. If he wanted that kind of anonymity, then he would have chosen a pseudonym more like "Deep Throat," or "Alone" (the pseudonym of the writer of The Last Psychiatrist blog), or "Slate Star Codex Guy" or something.

Pretty much everyone knows that Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens. Samuel Clemens didn't choose "Mark Twain" as a pen name because he wanted to be anonymous. He chose it because he thought he could sell more books under the name "Mark Twain" than under the name "Samuel Clemens," and he was probably right. Mark Twain sounds way better. But when the press discovered his real name, Samuel Clemens didn't delete all his books and complain about being doxxed. He just did what any normal person using a pen name would do: He said, yep, but I write books under the name Mark Twain. And there was no issue.

The matter was slightly different with "Publius," or "Publicus," or whatever name they were using to write The Federalist Papers. In that case, they had to be anonymous because they could have been killed for treason. Notice again how "Publius" bears scant resemblance to "John Jay" or "John Adams."

It gets worse, of course. Not only did Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So choose a "pseudonym" that was actually just his real name, he published many old links to all his old blog posts, in which he discussed personal details of his life. He discussed the experiences of the patients he saw in his clinical psychiatric practice. He held public meet-ups, advertised on his blog and on his social media accounts, where he agreed to meet with pretty much any old person who happened to read his blog or follow him on Twitter. He didn't meet strangers with a cloak and a mask, either. He met them using his real face and his real name and as his own, real, self. In short, he presented himself publicly as Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So, Please Don't Use My Last Name Because I Want To Be Anonymous, Honest.

Not exactly the behavior of a man who seeks anonymity, is it?

Playing At Being Famous

But okay, maybe he was just naive about the matter. That could be the explanation, right?

Still, fifteen years of naivete over the course of progressively building internet fame seems to strain credulity. Once you start getting calls from The Times, wouldn't you reconsider your willy-nilly attitude toward divulging personal details? I mean, if it mattered to you that you remain anonymous, and you started to become famous, wouldn't you then quietly cull your blog of all references to your real life and real identity, and then just stick to publishing bi-weekly homework essays? Wouldn't you cool it with the public meet-ups and stuff?

You would indeed, if you cared about anonymity.

So, another possible explanation here is that Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So liked being famous and well-regarded for publishing homework essays on the internet. He liked being able to organize meet-ups and watch strangers show up, wanting to meet him. He got a taste for fame, and decided he wanted to keep up with it. That's find and dandy, too. I don't fault a man for wanting to be famous. Lots of people want that. 

Then, this feature in the New York Times should be his big break, right? Finally he gets his big spotlight in the press. Finally he can divulge his true identity, set up a Patreon account, publish a book, and maybe secure a regular writing spot at Slate Magazine, or Vox, or The Atlantic or something. If you wanted to be a famous public intellectual, isn't that what you'd do? That's what I would do. I would work hard for my big break, and when it finally came, I would try to make the most of it. I'd try to capitalize.

But that's not what Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So would do. What would he do? Delete his whole blog and complain that he's being persecuted. Weird, right?

Another Possibility

I'm just going to float this theory. I have no idea if it's true, and no skin in the game one way or the other. But it's a theory that makes sense to me.

Imagine you did homework essays for fun. Imagine you were kind of a nerd who lived with ten other people in the same house, you've gone on record saying that you don't have much luck with women, and you're basically just a clinical psychiatrist somewhere. Then imagine one day a lot of genuinely smart public intellectuals start reading your homework and say, "Hey, look at this guy. He seems smart."

So then imagine that you decide to keep up with the homework. People are reading your posts. You feel well-regarded. Heck, you are well-regarded. You get a taste of fame, and you decide you enjoy it and you want more of it. So you keep at your homework, and people keep reading you and linking to you.

And it's all pretty nice because it comes easy to you. You can do a couple of hours of internet research and write about it, no problem. So that's what you do. But at the bottom of it all, you know you're not really solving any problems. You know that your lengthy essays aren't really all that meritorious. You don't think you're all that smart, but everyone keeps saying that you are anyway. Thus, you enjoy the position you're in, you love the fame and the accolades, you like the meet-ups, maybe you even get more romantic attention than you did before.

But you don't have what it takes to capitalize on your fame because, at the bottom of it, you only have the willingness to do a couple hours' internet research per week. You know that people who write books - people like Malcolm Gladwell and James Altucher - actually spend a lot of time and money on research and interviews and collecting information. You know that it's their full-time job. And you know that, while you'd love to give a TED Talk and be interviewed by Tyler Cowen, you don't actually want to spend all your time researching the information you write about.

You know that because you've done enough internet research to understand that there is a HUGE difference between really knowing something and just sounding like you know something. And you know that your expertise is in the latter, not the former.

So things are going well. You have lots of readers, including some incredibly smart people who say nice things about you. When occasional readers point out the flaws in your arguments, you now have a legion of fans to do the additional legwork for you. All you have to do is sound kind of plausible, and there will be enough grains of truth in what you write that your fans can fill in the blanks on their own. In this way, you get them to do the legwork on your most controversial claims, and you get credit for it without having to do the hard work.

Well, that sounds a bit phony, doesn't it? Isn't that what fakers in the business world do? They get really good at sounding good, and then they pass off all their work to underlings, taking all the credit for themselves, and scaling the corporate ladder without ever having to do the hard work. This is classic charlatan behavior.

And when charlatans in the business world get caught, what happens next? They usually quit the job in a blaze of glory, finding a way to spin it such that they get a similar job elsewhere, hopping from job to job until they either get promoted or outed as a fake. And the story is always the same: "I did this amazing thing and that amazing thing, and then someone tried to take credit for my work, so I left." It's always that somebody set them up or something.

So, if you were a faker, if you were this kind of charlatan, only instead of being in the business world, you were in the world of internet blogging... imagine this. Imagine that a real reporter, a real professional writer, asked you for an interview and hit you with some hard-hitting questions that you couldn't answer because, let's face it, you're not who everyone says you are. Imagine that these hardball questions were difficult enough that you started to fear that if your fans got to read your poor responses, the veil would come off and you'd no longer be seen as Mr. Smart Well-Regarded Blogger.

What would you do?

Some people might delete the whole blog, in a blaze of glory, and claim that the reporter was trying to cause you personal harm.

I've seen similar things in the business world. I won't say for sure that this is what happened to Dr. Scott Alexander So-and-So, but it's a story that is consistent with a particular and plausible set of circumstances.

We shall see how it pans out.

Politics As Hyper-Sensitivity

It's natural, reasonable, and to some extent a showing of good faith, to assume that other people are similar to oneself. And I think that people generally tend to do so. When thinking about what constitutes a reasonable perspective, or a reasonable expectation, or when evaluating the various "shoulds" we encounter in life, I think many of us try to think about other people as being more alike than different to ourselves. I certainly do.

The good thing about this is that it minimizes the more insignificant differences between us, i.e. sources of bigotry. If race isn't related to the matter at hand, then assuming people are more like us than different allows us to easily avoid conscious or unconscious bias.

Unfortunately, sometimes our differences really are relevant. For example, if a white man like me assumes that everyone's experience with the police is more or less like mine, he'll be more likely to overlook the very real problems of police brutality, and especially racially motivated police brutality and ethnic profiling.

This is all obvious enough. What's less obvious is that sometimes the political statements and arguments we see and hear are addressing people who bear little resemblance to ourselves, even though they may agree with our preferred policies.

One example of this might be the issue of corn subsidies. Both economic libertarians and environmental activists oppose corn subsidies, but for very different reasons. Libertarians oppose distorting market incentives with economic rents, while environmentalists oppose rewarding farmers for devastating the environment. On the issue of wind power subsidies, by contrast, economic libertarians still oppose the subsidies, but environmentalists often believe subsidizing wind power is an important step toward reducing society's carbon footprint.

What if you're browsing online opinions or memes, and you see something like this:

People oppose subsidizing wind power because they don't care about reducing our carbon footpring! I hate people who can't understand the science of climate change!

One thing you might think, if you're an economic libertarian like me, is, "My opposition to wind power subsidies has nothing to do with opposing climate science or reluctance to reduce atmospheric carbon. My opposition is entirely due to the economic damage caused by government subsidies." If I were to respond with those thoughts, however, I'd be pitting economic policy against climate policy in theory, something that I don't think would serve my position well.

The problem here is that people who argue against "climate-deniers" are not arguing against those of us who oppose subsidies on economic grounds. By participating in an argument against "climate-deniers," we're unwittingly carrying their water. What we should do instead is not assume that we're being spoken to. There are "climate-deniers" out there who oppose wind power subsidies on those grounds. If someone wants to argue against such people, that's none of my business, because I'm not one of them. If someone wants to argue against what economics says about subsidies, well then, that's my fight. But the climate-denial thing is not my fight.

At least for me, it takes an extra step to remember that someone might be arguing against a real argument that some less-informed person made, but that that less-informed person might actually be real and really made those arguments.

(Note: I do not claim here that people who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming are uninformed. I'm only using this as an example of people who make arguments that I don't make, whether or not they are true.)

This holds true for any issue. I often hear political arguments against conservatism, against libertarianism, or in favor of socialized medicine or any number of things I oppose. It's tempting to assume that anyone who shares my beliefs does so for the same reasons or with similarly well-reasoned arguments. But the reality is that most people are engaged in arguments that I would never personally choose to have. But, hyper-sensitive as I may have been in the past, I have grown accustomed to thinking that people are making bad-faith arguments about my beliefs. After all, I'm against wind-power subsidies, and I believe that anthropogenic global warming is real.

So from now on, I'm going to try to remember to only fight fights that are relevant to me. I can make arguments against subsidies. I can make arguments in favor of reasonable economic policies. I can make ethical arguments informed by psychology. I can argue against the illusions we hold and the defense mechanisms we employ. I can make these arguments because they are personal to me, and because I know something about them, and because they are involve my actually held beliefs.

But if someone wants to argue against something I never said, from now on, I'll just assume that they're talking about someone else, a real person who really does hold those beliefs, and try not to mix my beliefs up with some people who probably don't share my own thoughts. I'll be less hyper-sensitive and stick mainly to my own positions.

A Belated Thank-You

Yesterday, while running, I thought back to an old experience I had as a teenager.

Like many teenage boys, I suffered from Osgoode-Schlatter syndrome, which is basically a severe case of "growing pains." It's worse than it sounds. The overactive growth plates in my knees were producing so much bone tissue that they swelled up painfully, and I was unable to run for almost a year. My legs were constantly in pain. To this day, I still have lumps of bone on my knees as a result of my condition.

In Autumn of the worst year of my Osgoode-Schlatter syndrome, I had big plans to run on the high school cross-country team - or at least with the team - despite my being only in the eighth grade. The pain dashed my hopes, but my sister was still on the team, and so I still found myself attending all the cross-country meets and watching my friends run and have fun on the team. For a young man whose only connection to joy was running, it was difficult to watch.

One day, at a cross-country meet, it became a bit too much for me, so went back to my parents' car, sat down in the passenger's seat, and cried. I just wanted to be alone and cry. To my chagrin, the head cross-country coach - an incredibly gentle and kind-hearted man - saw me crying in the car and came to console me. He put a hand on my arm and did his best. I don't remember saying anything. I think I was trying so hard to hold back my tears and make it look like I wasn't crying, that I couldn't do much but make monosyllabic grunts to everything he said. He stayed with me a long time, then caringly said good bye with a few more words of encouragement and went back to the team.

This got me to thinking about another coach at my high school. He was a football coach, and I didn't play football, so I only knew him as my history teacher. He was a very witty guy, and always seemed happy. I enjoyed his history class a lot, and I figured he must like me okay, mainly because I laughed at all his jokes. But one day, at a parent-teacher conference, he very seriously and very meaningfully told my mother that if she ever wanted me out of the house, she should send me to his.

I don't know why my mother told me about that. I also don't really know why he said that, what he could have seen in me that would give him any indication that that was something that ought to be said. At the time, I found the whole situation confusing. But now, with 25 years of hindsight serving me, I'm overcome by that man's kindness.

The truth is that I was slipping further and further into depression when I was in high school, a depression that would stretch across the next decade of my life. When you're suffering from something like that, and especially when you're a teenager suffering from something like that, it's common to scapegoat your problems. Thus, at the time, I ascribed all of my "depression" (I didn't call it that back then) to the rather oppressive religious-conservative community and their relative inability to relate to a somewhat eccentric, differentiated person like me.

As I had it, "people hated me." A look back with better hindsight, though, proves otherwise. Here are two important members of the community who could see how much I was suffering, and who did reach out to make my life better. The truth is, my community could have been there for me, if I had only allowed them to be.

Of course, that would have required a more complete understanding of my situation. I was emotionally stunted and ill-equipped to have normal social relationships of any kind with any person whatsoever. I was a broken human being. I needed years of personal growth to achieve whatever semblance of normalcy and mental health I've managed to achieve. (I am certainly no longer depressed, and haven't been for a long, long time.) It's too much to ask of my teenage self to recognize what was being done for me, on a completely kind-hearted and unsolicited basis. I didn't have the emotional tools required to recognize it.

But I recognize it now. Furthermore, I recognize that these two examples I've provided aren't the only examples. Many people would have helped me, if I could have been helped. It's not their fault that I couldn't be helped at the time. All the same, 25 years later, I appreciate what they did for me. It stuck with me. I'm thankful for it. And I'm very sorry I couldn't see it then and avail myself of the support that was being offered.

I'm sorry that I wasn't the person then that I am now. But to those who ever extended a hand and tried to help a young man who needed it, but couldn't see it, I offer you a belated and very heart-felt thank you. Thank you.

Life In A Global Pandemic, Part 9

In Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises describes how the foundation for a Nazi takeover of Germany was laid in part by large groups of unemployed men hanging around in militias. They say idle hands are the devil's playground, and that is probably true.

As of this writing, there are close to 40 million newly unemployed - or should I say disemployed? - people in the United States, thanks to "lockdown" or "quarantine" policies that we now know were far too draconian than they needed to be, given the severity of COVID-19. What have all those idle hands been up to lately?

*        *        *

No one knows what was going through Derek Chauvin's head when he knelt on top of George Floyd in broad daylight, with cameras rolling, as the latter man begged for mercy and finally died. Chauvin and the four other officers involved in the killing were fired. As protests erupted in Minneapolis over the systemic mistreatment of blacks in the US criminal justice system, charges of third-degree murder were ultimately brought against Chauvin; although it's fair to wonder if the killing really was third-degree murder, and not second-degree murder as most reasonable people have concluded.

What an odd name, Derek Chauvin. Chauvin, get it? Like chauvinism.

And so protests erupted. Soon video emerged of white men, dressed all in black, wearing gas masks, and carrying umbrellas in the sunshine, systematically breaking windows with hammers and lighting things on fire before quietly walking away. On the videos, the peaceful black protesters try to stop them, but they can't. It is suggested by the various publishers of these videos that these disguised white men are the ones who turned the protests into riots.

Who were these men? The mayor of Minneapolis suggested that they were white supremacists from out-of-state. They might also have been members of "Antifa," which is not really an "organization," per se, despite news that the White House wishes to label them as a terrorist organization. Antifa is an ideology more than an organization. Those aligned with Antifa often show up at left-leaning protests and cause trouble. They ostensibly wish to fight anything they view to be "fascism," but their ideological agenda is a Marxist-Leninist one. So were those who started the riots in Minneapolis "members" of Antifa? Who knows?

*        *        *

Within hours of the riots, the sympathetic left on social media took to their news feeds, their tweets, their status updates, and their stories to urge "people" not to condemn the riots, but to instead seek to understand why black victims of systemic racism in the United States would wish to riot in the first place.

I find this reaction to be odd.

It's odd because no amount of police brutality justifies a violent mob attacking innocent bystanders and looting private businesses. An argument could be made that Black America has a legitimate moral cause to destroy government buildings, court houses, police precincts, and the like. But stealing TVs? Such actions can only be morally justified on Marxist-Leninist grounds, i.e. according to the ideology of Antifa and its ilk. Private property is, according to this belief system, yet another tool of oppression, and it is fair and right, and perhaps even erogatory, to destroy it.

Of course, no one participating in a riot has spent any significant amount of time seeking epistemic moral justification for their actions. All they're really doing is seizing the opportunity. When "everyone else" is looting and destroying, you may as well get yours, too. Whoever started the riots knew this to be true of mobs, in fact they were counting on it. You only try to start a riot when you believe that the mob will follow-on with whatever destruction you've chosen to initiate. That's the whole point of inciting a mob.

It is for this reason that people should not seek to understand the rioters. Violent mobs don't have a cause. Violent mobs don't have a modus operandi. Violent mobs are breakdowns of social order, in which any terrible thing can happen. Looting and vandalism are comparatively modest outcomes here. The real dangers of a violent mob are murder and rape. Anyone who has any experience with a dangerous, teeming hoard knows this to be true.

Peaceful protests and violent mobs are in two entirely different categories. No, we should not seek to understand a mob. We should run for our lives, and then morally condemn them in the strongest ways available to us.

*        *        *

I'm a 40-year-old American man. Sadly, this is not my first race riot. I am old enough to quite vividly remember the LA riots that broke out in the wake of the verdict in the Rodney King beating. Then, members of the Los Angeles Police Department were acquitted of using excessive force on Mr. King, despite the beating having been captured on video. If you're young and you've never seen the video, or if it's been a while since you've seen it, I recommend you remind yourself what was on that video. Watch it again, and keep in mind that the courts found the police not guilty of using excessive force.

When you're done watching that video, watch Rodney King's public statement to the media on the riots. Rodney King himself, a well-spoke if not particularly eloquent man who was quite nearly beaten to death by the Los Angeles Police Department, observed the ensuing LA race riots and spoke out against rioting, famously imploring people: "Can we all get along?" Watch the video. You can see the horror, the confusion, and the sadness on his face.

Then, imagine being beaten nearly to death, imagine successfully bringing a trial against the monsters who almost took your life, imagine losing that trial, and then imagine watching all of your supposed "supporters" burn your home to the ground, taking many African-American-owned small businesses with it.

Finally, imagine seeing all that and sympathizing with the mob. That is what today's woke social media leftists want you to do.

*        *        *

Of course, it's impossible to sympathize with a mob. The mob will turn on you. You do not control a mob. All you can do is follow the mob wherever it goes, and if the mob chooses to drag you down, the mob will do so, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

On social media, a woman suggested that my decision to speak out against violent riots "speaks volumes" about my supposed racism. On the contrary, however, I think it speaks volumes about the far left in today's society that they endorse the mob. Their memories are too short to remember the LA riots, and certainly too short to remember the race riots of the early 1960s. It has been utterly fascinating to contrast the ideological responses to racial violence then and now.

Perhaps if George Floyd had lived, he would have served as a cooling voice during today's riots, as Rodney King did almost 30 years ago. I don't know, of course. I know nothing about George Floyd other than that he was an innocent man murdered in broad daylight in front of a camera, and that American society has grown so accustomed to seeing such videos that we no longer consider them to be shocking.

*        *        *

There were protests, which sadly turned violent, and there are think-pieces and social media updates. Everyone is navel-gazing about this, and while they do, they urge high-minded thoughts about the state of race relations in America today. Whites are urging each other to check their privilege and to learn about the black experience in America.

All such commentary is self-indulgent silliness.

While it's always a good idea to engage in self-improvement and to become a less bigoted person, white racism did not kill George Floyd. Police brutality killed George Floyd, systemic police brutality, fed with dollars from the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. A narcissistic, emboldened police force with near-immunity in the courts and one of the most politically powerful labor unions in the country killed George Floyd. A corrupt and unassailable criminal justice system that has financial incentives to murder and/or imprison blacks and latinos killed George Floyd.

You're not going to solve that problem by reading about Martin Luther King. You're not going to solve that problem by allowing more black voices a chance to be heard. You're only going to solve that problem by dismantling the police state.

It's natural for human beings, when confronted with an unsolvable problem, to assume instead that they are confronted with an easier problem, and to solve the easier problem instead.

Thus, and somewhat incredibly, we see that there is at least one problem in America that is a more unsolvable problem than racism: The police.

Cleaning Your Room

For many years, I was the sort of man who believed that the path to success and the solution to every problem was to simply work harder and become the best at whatever it is he happened to be doing. While a strategy like that bears sweet fruit in the teenage years, the so-called real world has a way of making mincemeat of it.

So it was one morning, when I found myself sinking into the earth-toned cushions of an old, uncomfortably squishy sofa at the far end of a psychiatrist's office. He was an incomprehensibly thin man with a patch of white hair bursting from the top of his head like water from a lawn sprinkler; his shirts were always plaid, and always of the same earth tones as his sofa; he spoke with earnestness, but I could always tell that he left too much unsaid, usually in response to something I had said -- a terrible quality in a psychiatrist. He also kept two small dogs on the premises with them; they, at least, were a soothing presence in the office.

I found my way into his office by route of my career: No matter how hard I worked, and no matter how good I became at my work, the assignments got worse, the company struggled, and the attitude in the office got darker and darker. A level-headed man could take such things in stride, but this was my first venture into the world of not being able to turn the beat around when the song started to drag, as it were. And this song, to be sure, had become a funeral dirge.

I hadn't much experience in therapy, so like most folks, I went into it with preconceived notions. We would talk about my feelings, I thought. The good doctor would identify some problems with my way of thinking, and help me correct course. Before long, my attitude would be adjusted, and I could go back to doing my work with the kind of pep and ambition I longed for.

In the long run, it didn't quite happen that way. After making weeks of appointments, I eventually figured out the solution to my own ennui. I told the doctor at my final visit that I wouldn't be making another appointment, since it didn't seem necessary. He asked me then, "Would you mind telling me what worked for you?" I told him was something he said -- focus on the things you can control -- that made all the difference. I did that, and life got better. He seemed puzzled.

What brought the old doctor to mind this morning was the sad story of Jordan Peterson, and the memory I had of my first visit to a clinical psychologist.

Sitting in that earth-toned tar pit of a sofa with a small dog rubbing its wet nose against my dangling fingertip, my doctor asked me whether I'd considered antidepressant medication. I told him no, and that I would like to avoid doing so. He accepted my wishes, but first went on a brief soliloquy about the virtues of psychoactive medication. He told me that when he first started his practice, he, too, was skeptical of medication, but eventually came to see it much the same as taking an aspirin. We take an aspirin when we have a headache, and we think nothing of it; the doctor's position was that we ought to think similarly of antidepressants. He delivered his monologue in a pleasant and reasonable way, with calm and academic vocality. I did not come away with the impression that he was either arguing with me or trying to push medication on me. Instead, it seemed as though he wanted his office to be a safe place to discuss the therapeutic benefits of short-term psychoactive medication. But I did not pursue the matter any further, and so neither did he.

Yet, I can't help but wonder what a less thoughtful -- or more deeply troubled -- patient would have done in the face of such a calmly put suggestion by a qualified mental health practitioner in a time of need. It's not difficult for me to imagine that the marginal patient could be persuaded to fill a new prescription for psychoactive medication. In some cases, this might be entirely justified; in others, it might indeed be the wrong course of action. We trust our doctors to make that determination for us, but maybe we shouldn't.

The psychiatrist I saw that day was both an academic working at a university and a practicing clinical psychologist. Jordan Peterson can also make that claim. I point this out to venture a guess that perhaps these two men, similarly aged and of similar pedigree and professional background, held similar views on medication.

The National Post reports that Peterson began taking his medication "to treat anxiety after what [his daughter] described as an autoimmune reaction to food." This is a familiar issue to me: I once suffered anaphylaxis in response to eating a Brazil nut, and for years dealt with the fear of accidentally eating a nut and dying. Such fear is a very real and very palpable thing, and I would never minimize it. Still, it would never occur to me to address a problem like that with anti-anxiety medication, much less with hefty compounds like benzodiazepine tranquilizers.

But perhaps a man like Jordan Peterson, educated in accordance with modern of psychiatric medicine, would think almost nothing of it, just as we don't think twice about taking aspirin for a headache. If so, it would be a terrible lesson to have to learn the hard way.

I'm fond of Jordan Peterson's philosophy of life. I think it's a difficult road to follow, but a very worthwhile one for those capable of doing so. It saddens me to see such a strong advocate of living a deliberately moral life come face-to-face with his own moral failings in such a painful way, a way that risks such terrible long-term neurological damage, and in so public a fashion. The weaker thinkers among us, and those with a taste for schadenfreude, will (and have) pounce on this opportunity to denigrate a man who simply advocated that we live life according to our own moral compasses.

As hard as it will be for the critics to understand, Jordan Peterson's moral compass didn't actually fail him. He most likely took tranquilizers because he genuinely believed that they were the correct way to treat his anxiety. He most likely arrived at that belief through his own scientific expertise in psychology. When his addiction became obvious, he submitted himself to treatment. These are, simply stated, correct moral decisions. Unfortunately for Peterson -- and for all of us -- the world of psychology has not yet caught up with what the rest of the world already knows about tranquilizers.

Jordan Peterson nearly got himself killed. On the wrong day, for the wrong person, at the wrong doctor's office, it could have plausibly happened to me, or to you. Let us remember this episode, then, and learn another important thing from Dr. Peterson. Psychoactive medications are no mere aspirin, to be taken as for when we have headaches. They are powerful, dangerous substances that can leave a lasting and negative impact on your life, even on your legacy.

Be careful out there.

Book Review: The Proper Care And Feeding Of Husbands

"Dr. Laura" Schlessinger rose to fame during what one might call a golden age of conservative talk radio, in the 1990s. Compared to today, this was a very different time. Angry talking heads had not yet been completely discredited, and traditional media still ruled the roost. Everyone got all of their information from major, corporate news conglomerates. Conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh represented a sort of "underground," where overtly conservative viewpoints could be discussed. Perhaps best of all, every-day listeners could call in and interact with those ideas in a way that didn't happen on, say, CBS Nightly News.

Dr. Laura, of course, was not a conservative political commentator. She was a practicing marriage and family therapist who ran a call-in radio program to help people sort through their ethical dilemmas. But her traditional approach to organizing the family, coupled with her firm take on human morality, found a ready audience among the listeners of conservative talk radio, who then fueled her fame.

As tends to happen with famous conservatives, mainstream media found plenty of offensive-sounding quotes and private scandals in Dr. Laura's past, and amplified them. There is nothing the liberal media likes more than a conservative hypocrite they can parade around and lampoon. Dr. Laura's core fanbase was able to accept her explanations at face-value and her apologies as genuine, but I definitely have the sense that media attacks prevented Schlessinger from rising quite as high as similar 90s talk icons, like Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil.

Published in 2006, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands hit bookstore shelves at a time when Dr. Laura was still quite popular, before she moved her website to a subscription-based model, and before she moved her radio show to Sirius XM. While I believe it is a successful book (in terms of book sales), it has a terrible reputation for being "anti-feminist propaganda."

To be sure, some women who read the book will end up feeling attacked. These women have probably never heard Dr. Laura's radio program, or if they have, find it to be highly offensive for its non-feminist bent. Also to be sure, there are plenty of passages in the book that directly criticize the prevailing views of feminism circa-2006. Anyone who sympathizes with those feminist views will probably object to the book from start to finish.

I, however, committed to reading the book with an open mind. I'm tolerant of people with so-called "black-and-white" moral views, mostly because I, too, lean toward the belief that there is a mostly objective moral right and a mostly objective moral wrong. I believe that it is right and important to "judge" in the sense that judging human behavior helps clarify one's own moral beliefs. Consequently, reading or listening to someone else's view of concrete right and wrong serves the same purpose for me -- it helps me better understand my own moral philosophy.

What I found from reading The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands is that its ideas -- even the non-feminist ones -- have aged remarkably well.

For one thing, Dr. Laura's view of marriage is founded on the belief that men and women simply think and act differently. This was a stark and unpopular contrast to the 2006 feminist view that sex is a social construct. Even so, subsequent research has proven increasingly clear and robust; there are unambiguous cognitive and psychological differences between the sexes, and those differences are precisely the ones that common sense would suggest. Dr. Laura was right.

For another thing, the central principle that permeates the entirety of the book, if only openly stated a time or two, is that people can derive great and profound meaning in their lives from the act of tirelessly dedicating oneself to one's marriage. That dedication, in Dr. Laura's view, should come first and foremost, ahead of all other things. One's commitment to marriage should come before career; it should come before good times, before girls-only weekends, before fatigue, before one's commitment to one's parents, and sometimes even before the children. Such a commitment is obviously difficult, but Dr. Laura's position is that it is worth it. When one commits to the marriage ahead of all other relationships, then that enables people to better raise their children, draw better boundaries between themselves and their friends and family, and most importantly, find profound joy in the bedrock relationship of our adult lives: our marriage.

This notion of meaning found in living a better life at home certainly presages the ideas of Jordan Peterson, although the target demographic is obviously quite different.

Another aspect of the book that might raise liberal hackles is Dr. Laura's approach to sex. Her belief is that men only really find a meaningful bond with their wives through the act of sex. This idea rings true to me, and anyone who has bothered to listen to Schlessinger's radio program can attest to the vast number of men who have thanked her profusely for saying so. The truth is, Schlessinger has a keen understanding of what physical intimacy means to a man, and she incorporates it into her marriage philosophy. Where others might object is when she advises women to try to please their husbands even if they're "tired" or otherwise not in the mood. While a feminist objector could protest quite loudly at that, it's important to understand it in context. Dr. Laura's advice is for wives who are married to loving husbands; it's for wives who have good lives, but who have let their relationships deteriorate through the inertia of a hectic, modern life. So, when she writes that women can often find themselves in the mood if they just get started with their husbands, she's pointing out that two people who love each other can ultimately have a lot of fun, and grow closer together, if the "tired" wife can simply get herself started, even if grudgingly.

I hasten to add, as Schlessinger herself adds at the outset of the book, that her advice is not intended for women who are genuinely abused. In fact, she refers to what she calls "the three A's" throughout the book: adultery, addiction, and abuse. Any of these three A's are, in her view, grounds for divorce.

What's left is a book full of practical tips for wives in less-than-perfect marriages on how to improve the quality of their marital bond. That is, Dr. Laura wants women to take responsibility for and control of their lives, and argues that in doing so, they will be happier and have more profoundly meaningful lives than they ever imagined. Despite its conservative bent, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands is a manual for empowering married women.

This brings me to my main point: The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands occupies a very unique space in the world of ideas, because it articulates a philosophy of conservative sex-positive feminism. Conservatives, as you know, are not typically known to be either feminist or sex-positive. The fact that Dr. Laura seems to be all three things highlights the fact that concepts have far more potential for overlap than our polarized world would like to believe.

If today's feminists could manage to do so with an open mind, I believe reading this book would greatly expand their understanding of what feminism could be. Meanwhile, conservatives have their own lessons to learn from this book, lessons about practicing what they preach, lessons about the importance of sex in a committed relationship, and lessons about putting one's spouse ahead of one's meddling extended family.

It's an excellent book, a very short read, and I highly recommend it.

Envy

Almost fifteen years ago, I started working on a small technical team at a large company. My boss collected some personal information about me and introduced me to the team. Inevitably, one of the personal details he revealed was that I was an avid runner. This was especially relevant because one of the other members of the team was also an avid runner. We had running in common, therefore we had something to talk about, therefore we had a way to bond with and get to know each other.

The only problem was that, each time I tried to talk to him about marathon running, he hastened through the conversation without saying much. It was disappointing for me, because I heard him having fun running-related discussions with other coworkers. With me, though, he was always very brief; not curt, exactly, but brief.

After many months of failed attempted conversations, he finally "admitted" to me that he had "only" run one marathon. That didn't matter to me; I just wanted to talk to him about running. The way he told me, though, gave me the strong impression that he had been caught in a lie, as though I was a "real" runner because I had had a pretty good amateur running career, whereas he was -- what, exactly? -- something less because he had "only" run one marathon. 

It was confusing to me. I didn't care how many marathons he had run or how fast he was, or even how many miles he ran per week. So why did he?

*        *        *

I was thinking about this old coworker of mine today after reading an old post at MarathonInvestigation.com about a social media influencer who calls her self "RunGiaRun." Apparently, Gia had given her Boston Marathon bib to a friend, who ran in her stead. This is against the rules at the Boston Marathon, mostly because what's to stop me from paying Meb Keflizighi to run the Boston Marathon with my bib and chipset, therefore logging a very good time for me. I get to bask in all the accolades -- and perhaps some lucrative coaching fee income -- without having to put in the work required to actually run well at the Boston Marathon. Everyone wins, except the integrity of the Boston Marathon, I guess.

So, Derek at Marathon Investigation once again "catches" middling housewife social media influencer breaking the rules, and his work results in a lifetime ban from the Boston Marathon. Good work, I guess? An anonymous comment left at MI reflects my views on the subject (comment reformatted for readability):

I've never run Boston as I only ever ran one marathon on a lark and ran 3:18 when the qualifier was 3:11. However, I was a serious runner with PRs from 9:11 for 3000 to 56:11 for 10 miles so had I focused I'm sure I could have. 

I would never run as a charity runner because I think that is cheating your way in as well. 

All of that said… Is this really the best use of your time? Getting all worked up about 3:30 marathoners?

Throughout my dive into the world of Marathon Investigation, I've been left scratching my head over why all these slow runners care about equally slow cheats. What does it matter? Why all the vitriol? Why does the word "cheat" send these people into a sputtering frenzy of indignation? Why does all this eat at people so much?

Derek, for his part, appears to be relatively stoic about it all. That can't be the whole story, though, because he's reached the point where he owns a website dedicated to catching middle-of-the-pack road race cheats. He obviously cares about this enough to pursue it with a lot of his free time. As for the commentariat, well... sputtering frenzy.

Here's a sample of the replies to that anonymous comment:

Anon, congrats on being a very fast runner. Not all of us are as fast you apparently are. I, personally, think 3:30 is a damn good marathon time. I've hovered around the 4:00 mark. Faster runners should support slower ones, not belittle their speed with comments questioning why people are "getting worked up about 3:30 marathoners," as if those runners are not important to the sport... [ed: comment continues for a couple of paragraphs]

 Suddenly, I understood what people were getting worked up about.

*        *        *

One way to interpret this indignant response to the comment about 3:30 marathoners is to realize that Gia Alvarez wasn't cheating against the dude who ran a 3:10 practically in his sleep. No, she was cheating against the dude who hovers around the 4:00 mark. She was cheating against the runners who "think that 3:30 is a damn good marathon time." Who cares about middling marathon cheaters? Middling marathon runners, of course! They're vying for a spot that Gia Alvarez cheated to get. How dare she?

Still, though, why do they care? There are literally thousands of runners who run faster than 3:30 in any given major marathon, and tens of thousands more runners who can do it in their sleep, like that anonymous guy. I'm diabetic and haven't run a marathon in more than ten years, and I could probably do it without thinking twice. With so many people in the world who regularly run faster than that, why do these people care so much that Gia Alvarez cheated?

It starts to make sense when you see their indignation for what it really is: painfully sharp jealousy. Envy.

These runners would love to be able to run faster than they run. For whatever reason -- lack of time, lack of understanding about what it takes to get faster, lack of proper coaching support, whatever -- they're unable to crack the 4:00 marathon mark, and certainly unable to qualify for a major marathon like Boston.

It's not that they want to be as fast as Gia Alvarez, it's that they want everything that comes with it. They want the social media following, and the appearances in fitness magazines. They want the glamorous social media photos...

They want to be what my old coworker was before I arrived: The person everyone in their circle associates with running. When someone cheats against the top-down rules of a game, it doesn't really matter much. But, when someone cheats against the identity you wish you had, that's much more serious. That is, in fact, a narcissistic injury, fueled entirely by the envy of middling people who wish they were more than middling.

I don't think Derek at Marathon Investigation really gets this. I think he probably sees himself as someone who is protecting the integrity of road racing. I don't think he puts two-and-two together when it comes to paying attention to his audience is.

If you provide content for a bunch of sputtering rage-mongers who wish they were Gia Alvarez, it might be pertinent to ask yourself why your content appeals to so many people like that. You can tell a lot about your own thoughts by paying attention to who they resonate with. Aspirational marketing and social media influencing are the kind of activities that appeal to society's envy. Road race cheating is the other side of that same envy.

I, personally, can't fathom the thought processes of people who dream of being Gia Alvarez, rather than Deena Kastor. If you have dreams, why not dream big? If you wish you were someone, why not wish you were someone genuinely amazing? What is it about Gia that makes her life more envious than Deena's?

I think it's because, if you're Deena Kastor, you don't stand around the water cooler giving your coworkers tips on how to run or telling them stories about the zany cheats in the Boston Marathon. If you're Deena Kastor, you spend your time with other great athletes, or you write articles or give TV commentary to news agencies like ESPN. Gia Alvarez, by contrast, probably gives a lot of advice at the water cooler, or the PTA meeting, or wherever it is she gives advice. She lives an attainable sort of fame, the kind you wouldn't have to try very hard to get.

Except, of course, that you do have to try hard to get it. You have to spend your time cheating in the Boston Marathon. What a mess.