Christopher McKitterick

Oppression! Religious zealotry! Multiple victimization by the state! Gotta love the Saudi system!

These are our closest allies in the region? Along with Musharraf's Pakistan? Oh, and Israel, our proxy and every Arab's friend. What a nightmare place to live, and the US is at least partially culpable for these systems staying in place.

Um, I have an idea: Let's get the hell out of the Middle-East entirely. That would require eliminating our additiction to oil. So let's do that, then let the Middle-East go ahead and destroy itself in whatever spectacular fashion they prefer. Or - hey, here's a thought! - leave them alone long enough so that the people living there realize that most of their problems are due to having religious-dictatorial governments. Maybe then they'd stop blaming the rest of the world for their problems and, y'know, actually change the system.

Just a thought.

Chris

A discussion over at cmt2779's LJ and here on mine got me thinking about my childhood today, specifically how the Cold War influenced my view of the world. Which made me wonder if my experience was typical of my generation the world 'round or if it was uniquely Midwestern US.

Here's a snippet from Survive the Coming Nuclear War:

"Over the past decade we spent $900 million on civil defense, while the Soviets spent $65 billion. One estimate is that in a nuclear war Russia would lose 4 percent of its people -- half what they lost in World War II. Ten of us would die to their one. In yet another estimate we would lose 60 percent of our population, while the Russians would lose 2 percent. Though these figures may vary widely according to which study you consult, the message is clear."

This - combined with the movie Red Dawn - helped shape the young person I was in 1980s Minnesota. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I was sitting in the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire library when the announcement came over the building's intercom (remember when government buildings had intercoms?). It's difficult to explain the mixed feelings I felt, elation and confusion, discombobulation and clarity for the future. I mean, everything I knew had been framed by the Cold War, and now that had ended. It was like lifting a blanket from the Earth so that we could see the stars again. A long-term future for the human race was possible to see again.

So a survey!

[Poll #1087330]
Best,
Chris

Tonight, rougewench turned me on to this story, "The Life and Death of Jesse James," about an online love affair gone horribly, horribly wrong and one man's heroic efforts to save his "friend" from an online... something: Predator? Not really. Freak, I guess.

Following up on various responses to it, I came across this critique of that story by legionseagle.

I was disturbed and felt dirty while reading Olson's original piece, and legionseagle put (his/her) finger on exactly why. Olson, too, victimized "Audrey" by trying to keep her the helpless victim, or at least cared more about his self-aggrandizing than he did about his "friend."

Why is schadenfreude so appealing to so many? Why have I spent an hour reading Olson's essay and legionseagle's examination of it and so many responses to this mess?

I sense some kind of insight into human nature that I'm not certain I want to face right now. I feel gross and tired after reading about this sick episode. But go ahead, read those pieces for yourself. Perhaps you'll be brave enough to look into the abyss and sense what stares back.

Chris

This makes me sick. I had no idea:

Millions of Iraqis are refugees of the horrible situation ravaging in their country. Each day, 50,000 refugess escape the terror they can no lnger face. That's 50,000 each and every day, more than 2000 per hour. They are escaping battle zones, insurgents, surprise bombings, and local dictators. A memorable quote: "Before the US invasion, we had Sadaam Hussein. Now we have 10,000 Sadaams."

Syria has accepted about 1.2 million refugees, Jordan has accepted 750,000, Egypt has accepted about 100,000, Iran has accepted many thousands, and Saudi Arabia has gotten a few thousand but is currently putting up a wall between their countries to stop the movement (sound familiar?). None of these are accepting Iraqis as immigrants, however, and cannot work or buy a place. They are sent home after a short time.

The Bushies who caused all this have declared that the United States will "do our part" to help "our Iraqi friends" with this refugee crisis - which is greater than in Darfur, by the way. However, so far we have accepted only a few hundred into our country. Last month, we accepted one Iraqi refugee. One. England is similarly negligent. If we are to "do our part," and we are largely responsible for what's happened to these people, then we should accept as many people as our adventure over there has displaced. But we accept fewer than one-quarter of the refugees who try to escape Iraq each hour.

The United Nations is not officially dealing with this civilian catastrophe, and no nations are officially assisting it. These millions of refugees are not living in UN refugee camps with resources and beds; they are dropping into the local nations on temporary visas and sent home as soon as they run out.

How can we as a nation destroy another nation and not do anything about the refugees? We must take responsibility for our actions, and the very least thing we can do for "our Iraqi friends" is allow them to shelter in our nation until theirs is stable again. Anyone out there work for a Congressional representative who might create a bill to start doing "our part"?

Story was on Up to Date on NPR.

Here's a story on this from the New York Times.

Chris

This just came up for me when talking with a friend. I called these "a couple of psychological truths"; anyone disagree or want to modify them?

. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. An example is an inner-city cop whose job it is to find bad guys. Unless you appear otherwise, he'll assume you're a bad guy and act accordingly.

. The thing we fear and loathe in others is often that which we fear and loathe most about ourselves. I think we've all experienced this one.

Here's hoping these aren't a big part of your life right now.

Hugs,
Chris

I'm thankful for you, my friends, whether we live near one another or we've never met in person. You make the world richer, warmer, and more alive. Though I often lose sight of it, you remind me that I love the human race.

Thank you for being you.

Love,
Chris

After watching the movie tonight and reading an entry in kijjohnson's LJ, I got to thinking about that momentary rush of... what is it? Connection with something greater, communion with genius or something; how it's always momentary, and once experienced one always seeks it again, but doing the same thing doesn't always stimulate the same response, at least not for me. I need to have all the elements in place. So it's not easily repeatable, and when one stops getting the same emotional reward, one faces the prospect of losing interest in continuing to seek that something magical.

For me, this happens when motorcycling: Once in a while, for no apparent reason other than everything in the universe of my mind is aligned just so, I feel this surge of pleasure, and the world is brighter and smells fresher and I feel alive. When I was first riding, every ride was ripe with excitement and rife with danger; I would ride for hours on the most uncomfortable mount imaginable, heading nowhere. Now I find myself forgetting the joy of the ride and often just hop on to go somewhere and hop off when I'm there. Also when skywatching: When I was a kid, I could feel in touch with the holy so much more easily than now; now I need to keep scanning the skies past the "I've seen a blue star before" until I find that something which offers the reward. I need to remember to ride, say, out to Target not to buy something but to enjoy the sensation of moving.

I have found that patience is more difficult to summon now than it was when I was younger, because then everything was shiny and new. Now it's not just about the newness - which, itself, can be a reward - now it needs to be about the thing that really matters, the thing that woke my sense of the numinous when I first learned that I loved the thing at hand: That's still there, still shining from behind every color of star and within the surprise puffs of nebula that I discover when my patience holds; those fleeting glimpses of storm-cloud detail in the clouds of Jupiter or snow-caps on Mars; that haze of the Milky Way which resolves into millions of stars, at least in my mind's eye, when that I open that eye. It's all there, just as magical as ever: As is typical for so much about humans, I'm the thing in my own way most of the time.

I often forget the pleasure I feel once I make an engine work again, or that jolt of transcendence when I write the perfect sentence, or engage in the perfect class. I think that this forgetfulness is what drives us to stop seeking those perfect moments. Perhaps that's what it means to grow old: To lose the desire to seek those moments of magic. I'll call this lack of desire by it's true name, "death." It approaches us by inches, sneaks up on us hidden in the shadows of time and our own blindness.

I realize now that this is one of the things that made me so teary-while-smiling while I watched "The World's Fastest Indian" tonight. Burt Munro was like that, a man who never forgot the beauty and power in going fast that got him going as a kid. He seemed to possess that same sense in his 80's that he had when he bought his bike back in the 1920's. That's rare and beautiful.

Do me a favor and remember to do something today something that gives you joy.

Chris

Some of you have heard this; it came up recently, so I define it here.

My theory is that suppressing something in one aspect of the self increases the pressure across the entire self. As with hydraulics, you cannot compress emotions, needs, fears, and so on: One of the properties of a liquid is that it can't be compressed, so too feelings, emotional needs, and so on. This is how hydraulic systems work: You apply a small amount of pressure in one place to move very heavy things in another place based on the size of the pistons and levers; picture a hand-operated hydraulic jack that can raise a car. So too emotions: If you push (suppress) a lot in one place, it can move you in other places you don't suppress. If there's no outlet for the pressure in a hydraulic system, liquids squirt out from weak spots like gaskets or joints. Similarly, emotions and psychological needs that are being suppressed squirt out in inappropriate places when there's no outlet.

Make sense?

Best,
Chris

Something tmseay wrote about today got me thinking about the emotional spiral that often presages and reinforces depression. It's something I've witnessed in those I love as well as in myself.

People who grow up having to deal with traumatic households develop keen emotional understanding of others (and often themselves), sensitivity, and capacity for sympathy. This is often a survival technique - not necessarily physical survival, but emotional survival; at the least, it's necessary for happiness in a chaotic or stressful situation. If you get to really understand how the (for example) drunk, abusive father will behave when he smells like X and looks like Y, you can avoid much trauma.

This also lends great skills for (for example) writing or politicking, as you can imagine.

The down-side is that such people often feel much more pain in life than those who didn't grow up in that environment; for some, seeing pain in others actually feels like pain. When Clinton said, "I feel your pain," he might have been talking literally. When I was young, I experienced a period of severe depression after some pretty normal personal problems... but those problems aren't what put me over the edge, it was discovering that the world is full of pain and suffering: I had learned that all of those close to me had experienced abuse, much of it really severe, and I had witnessed some of it. Experiencing their pain - witnessing it, especially - caused me such sadness that I could barely manage once my own life went to pieces.

Does that sound familiar to you? Those of you who don't feel this way, does this make sense to you?

Best,
Chris

Okay, this freaks me out a little and might explain a lot about how my brain works. stuology posted a link to this How Stuff Works article on the deja vu phenomenon. ( my experiences with time-dislocation )
Have any of you experienced this?

The brain is a fascinating thing.

Best,
Chris