Chaogens, Pathogens

Children used to be sequestered, on the inside of stout defensive but selectively permeable walls made by women, to whom all humans owe life and fealty. And beyond the walls, the patrolling T-cell bands of men, not so useful in the home and at the hearth, but energetically and intellectually narrow-band enough to hunt and fight and kill random targets.

But these days, you see the children running wild. The curious psychopathology of our times is that the faster you give them adult freedoms, the better adults they will be. I think that's wrong. I think that the longer a sequestration you enforce, the more time you have to mould them and keep random influences out, the better adults you can make from children.

Yet there they are, running around, transmitting diseases to a vulnerable adult population. There they are, absorbing unuseful memetic material in exchange. And there they are, out of the control and/or responsibility of the adults who spawned them. Ugh. What a time we live in. What a time. What.

Thoughtless

It is possible to suddenly come out of a state of thoughtlessness knowing that you have not been thinking, but only knowing this because of the contrast. Thinking leads to discontent, and the discontented mind is a lot like a dyspeptic stomach; it is not itself, and would like to become so again.

But yet the stomach is made for dyspepsia (as long as it cannot be felt) and the mind is made for discontent (as long as it calls it by another name, such as 'ambition' or 'challenge'). So odd, we humans.

Monchies

The attitude some people have to eating odd things amuses me as a chemist. I call it the monchies, the idea that some things are monstrous to eat even in doses that the human organism cannot naturally detect.

Take for example the case of Starbucks and its strawberry frappés. Recently, it was leaked that the pink colour of those frappés came from cochineal, an extract from powdered beetles. This extract is converted to carmine, the aluminium or calcium salt of carminic acid, a completely natural and harmless product to the vast majority of humans (although some, as in the case of nearly everything else, might have dangerous allergic reactions).

Reality check: the deadly impurities in honey can be detected by human taste-buds. People with various sensitivities and allergies can be killed by honey. Honey is far less pure than refined cane sugar, or glucose powder. So why do we insist honey is healthier? Well, it contains trace impurities that would be useful in significant amounts (like if you consumed the whole jar of honey), and it tastes better. Honey is also less concentrated than sugar crystals (duh) being a supersaturated solution of impure sugar (which is why it can blanch or crystallize in the fridge).

Cochineal, however, has no discernible taste or effect on most humans at the concentrations used to colour food. It isn't carcinogenic, teratogenic or mutagenic. It is far less dangerous than honey. The only grouse people have is that it is a beetle product.

I have no idea why there should be biological or ethical considerations against consuming carmine. You can get it from plants and it would be chemically identical, but far more expensive. And beetles don't have the same sensations as higher organisms. They don't feel pain or suffering. They have far less awareness of life and death than lobsters (which don't have much to begin with) — as you can see from watching the many cases where adult male insects continue to fertilise their female counterparts while being eaten by them.

I'd rather eat carmine than soy products, actually. Those soy products are naturally dangerous to men, being full of hormones that make people sprout the wrong secondary sexual characteristics. OK, I'm exaggerating. But I speak nothing but truth when I say that cannabis sativa is the world's second most nutritious crop after soya beans — and what do 'civilised' societies do? They ban it.

Cocoon

Sometimes, I need a cocoon. I find that enjoy myself stuck in plane flights lasting longer than 16 hours. I don't like short flights. They make me feel like one of those badly-folded paper airplanes that come down to earth too soon.

I like the fact that I can do my own thing and not have to worry about what is happening for a while. Just eat. Drink a lot of juice — apple and tomato especially — sample wines, drink coffee. Get up, stroll around, visit the toilet, hang out at the back of the plane where the savvier flyers go to do their workouts.

Yes, I fly cattle class if I do fly. I feel painfully extravagant if I can stretch my legs while remaining seated. I am a plebeian. I like airline food. I like airline blankets.

(I also like small rooms where I have just enough space to stretch out, where all my belongings are not more than a lazy step away. I feel lost in large bathrooms. Maybe it's because there are more places for monsters to hide.)

I always get off planes feeling refreshed. I have had my sleep, watched my movies, done my readings. I have been in control of my schedule, I have negotiated with the inflight professionals. I am content.

Adam Smith and the Facebook Gnomes

Actually, I was going to call this post Adam Smith and the Facebook Gnomes: Productivity Theft and the Wealth of Nations but it was too long a title to capture anyone's attention seriously. The reason for this post is that the time has come for self-flagellation and sad introspection on the demerits of modern online life.

Adam Smith wrote, in his 1776 masterpiece The Wealth of Nations, "When [a worker] first begins his new work, he is seldom very keen and hearty... for some time he rather trifles than applies to good purpose. Rural workmen obliged to change work and tool every half hour develop slothful and lazy habits."

In other words, multitasking (the doing of many things in an intertwined way) is a productivity sink. Many studies have shown that quick distractions result in long-term time wasting as the brain attempts to reorient itself. Work breaks actually break work. It is better, for example, to develop the habit of working 4-6 hour stretches on one objective than to work an hour, take a breather, and return to work.

However, the personal experience of modern man is such that most people find it psychologically impossible to work for long stretches. Rather, we make a virtue of short attention spans and call it multitasking. This, as Adam Smith points out, reduces productivity and the quality of work.

On the other hand, there are some specific areas of work which require true multitasking — the seamless perception of reality and its manipulation towards multiple ends through common activity. True multitasking is about doing many things at the same time, not doing bits of things in quick rotation or succession. Most of these areas of work require multiple people: think of the way a restaurant (or an orchestra) works, for example.

I've been letting myself take Facebook breaks too often, I think. I spent a day monitoring my productivity and was aghast to find that a day without Facebook adds about five hours of work at least! Going out for lunch actually takes two hours unless you are very focussed — and further downtime may be added if you then feel dozy after a heavy meal. In one day, I realise that unless I am actually teaching, making notes while reading, or doing active and specific research (as opposed to flitting through the internet) I might be wasting up to eight (!!) hours of my 12-hour working day just doing nothing specifically useful.

Woe is me... I feel a sudden urge to take a good look at the dour Scottish Protestantism that made a virtue of hard and unstinting labour without distractions between sunrise and sunset.

I hear it got a lot less dour and more fun after sunset though.

Abraham the Hierarch

Over the last few days, I've been listening to people who tell me that Abraham the Hierarch's theory is only a theory, and not empirically true. It has caused me to recoil in horror and then look very carefully at what they've said and why they've said it.

First of all, empirical observations are empirical by definition. You see things. If your perceptual apparatus is biased or otherwise returning false data, then those observations are empirical to you but untrue. But based on what normal human beings do, it is quite clear that biology tends to trump sociology or theology for the majority of us. It is the rare human who spends more time praying than eating (not that there aren't such people, of course).

Secondly, even Maslow admitted that his theory needed greater scrutiny, as it was only a generalisation based on his observations of selected people. But there is very little opposition to his theory; about the only serious contenders are a) Max-Neef's theory of fundamental human needs, and b) the somewhat arbitrary idea that there is no real hierarchy at all.

The reason that this issue is important is that there's been a lot of attention paid to 'human rights' — women's rights, gay rights, the rights of the poor and the sick and infants and children and students and teachers and unfortunate burglars and so on. But in order to think usefully about human rights, one has to ask how those rights arise.

There are a lot of theories about that, but I find myself standing back-to-back with Maslow's hierarchy when thinking about the priority one should assign to various rights. I've not said much about these things before, but I remember that in this post I related the rights issue with the idea of professional roles, and in this post I wrote about law and government with respect to basic rights.

The key idea is that a right (whether you're with Maslow or Max-Neef) stems from the ontological condition of being human. From a biological and developmental perspective, some rights are potential to begin with and conferred by the state of being a human in a human society (e.g. the right to communicate freely), while some rights are actual from the beginning and created by the fact of being a living organism (e.g. the right to have adequate sustenance and the right to have protection from environmental hazards). These rights are not granted by natural laws (that is, there are no physical laws which prevent you from starving or being hit by lightning) but are based on the 'given adequate resources, we should maintain these' principle.

If you're a starving artist, I think I would prefer to feed you before you starve if I had to choose between giving you food or art materials. In fact, if I had only one choice or the other, and I chose to give you the latter, most societies would consider me a little negligent. A minority would argue that art is more valuable than life. Well, it seems true enough for some people, but I don't think it is true for a majority. That's not just opinion; the empirical fact is that humans (even little kids in the mall) fight about food more than about art. People who fight about art are almost always at least at subsistence level for food.

One comment I read was this: "At the end of the day, when it comes to the crunch, what really drives and motivates life are values and causes. Entire civilisations have come and gone because of them. Our continued survival on this planet depends on them."

I found this dubious. I think food and physical resources are primary motivators. Values and causes are secondary. Empire-building is tertiary. You're welcome to disagree, of course, but I suspect when you get hungry and tired enough, you will prefer to eat or sleep instead of argue with me.

Pain, Brain, Train

Just as the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, so also when we train we hear all the time, "No pain, no gain." But associations aside, it's actually hard to disentangle the brain from the pain when we train and so on.

It's very simple. The concept of mind that we have is a very iffy one. 'Mind' to us involves emotions (which are the result of your whole body's physiological changes) and reasoning (which often involves the immediate biasing effect of both internal and external environments). It gets even iffier when we look at the fact that physical action biases sensory and emotional perception.

In a recent experiment involving 38 subjects, Psychological Science reports that people who took four steps backwards before attempting a task did better than people who took four steps forwards. Similarly, in this month's Scientific American, another experiment showed (not for the first time) that the configuration of the mouth and lips affects how a person hears things; if you are smiling, you are more positive than when you are not!

The body's input to the brain's filters is significant. When I pull my shoulders back, I know I still feel pain, but the pain gets more bearable. In fact, it's easier to forget the pain when I breathe deeply and slowly and smile a lot.

For all those students of mine who wondered why I used to walk so stiffly upright and smile so much, well, that's one answer right there. Then again, I prefer to walk properly and I'm a generally happy person, so perhaps it's not the only answer.

Lords of Creation

In the last few weeks, I've been researching a topic called 'Humans and Other Species'. On closer reading, the curriculum calls for analysis of the ways in which humans interact with other animals, so I threw out the material on plants and fungi. It's interesting to see how in our long history humans have assigned various roles (implicitly or explicitly) to animals. I think I can identify almost a dozen such roles:

1. Predators: animals that eat humans.
2. Food: animals eaten by humans or which produce food (e.g. milk, eggs).
3. Vermin: animals that steal human food and do other irritating things.
4. Material Production: animals that produce useful materials on a continuous basis (e.g. wool, feathers) or on a single basis (e.g. leather, ivory).
5. Guards and Hunters: animals trained to stop predators or kill vermin.
6. Guides and Herders: animals trained to look after other animals or assist humans.
7. Transport and Labour: animals used to do work, or to move things and people faster.
8. Companions and Pets: it's hard to tell the difference, sometimes (even between humans).
9. Entertainment: ranging from caged birds to fighting fish and circuses.
10. Experimental Subjects: using animals to test technology where using humans is risky, costly or both.
11. Objects of Religion and Mysticism: in some cultures, certain animals are considered holy; sometimes, they are not worshipped, but their qualities are admired greatly and have special significance in a supernatural way.
12. Creative Subjects: animals as metaphors or as protagonists (and other things) in human creative works.

It's a curious list, and I'd be obliged if anyone out there could add to it.

At the same time, human tendencies towards anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism tend to create attitudes that impact these roles significantly. We kill 11,000 sharks every HOUR just because they have a single tasty part or because they look like threats. That's 100 million sharks a year. The shark is of course the most intelligent and highly developed fish — the latest research shows that it has at least some ability for introspection and a lot of capacity for learning — but that doesn't save it from mass extermination. And we don't even eat most of the meat; a typical shark victim can provide perhaps 200 kg of meat, but this is eaten only in some countries (Australia and India being key consumers). East Asian consumers eat mainly the fins (which at USD220 per kg are a pretty expensive food source).

On the other hand, rodents like hamsters and prairie dogs can be bred quickly and relatively cheaply. But most humans wouldn't dream of breeding them for food. They're too cute.

Illegal Operations

Over the last 35 months or so, I've become a lot more acquainted with the local penal code than I'd ever thought I would be after I put my dreams of law school away so very long ago. That has relevance to my current research as I look at the motivations and actions of many of the key players. You see, following on from my previous post in which I wrote about the punishment-reward and the altruistic motivations of the human brain, it only remains for me to make the connection between those concepts and the concepts of traditional virtue.

The punishment-reward motivation is dominated by the virtue called justice or fairness; the altruistic motivation is dominated by the virtue called mercy or grace. Each virtue has two faces.

In the former, two manifestations dominate: justice, in which people want everyone to suffer equally as some benchmark, rule or code allows; and fairness, in which people want everyone to suffer proportionally with respect to some other standard or benchmark. These manifestations can result in injustice or unfairness simply because the scale is actually bipolar and extensible in either direction; negative justice (in which not everyone suffers appropriately) is seen as injustice.

The latter also has two manifestations: mercy, in which an appropriate punishment is withheld; and grace, in which an inappropriate reward is given. 'Appropriate' and 'inappropriate' here of course are seen in comparison with the codes or laws implicit in what we have referred to as justice or fairness. In other words, mercy is unjust and grace is unfair, as far as strict legalistic approaches are concerned.

In practice, humans tend to temper one approach with the other. The problem is that as far as humans are concerned, overuse of one approach tends to corrupt the accuracy of the other.

This extends into the realm of explanations which people give for various phenomena. For example, consider the case of a man who has had a narrow escape from death. A justice/fairness explanation would be, "I survived because it would not be just or fair if I died just yet." A mercy/grace explanation would be, "I survived not through any personal virtue and I should be grateful."

In both cases, the man can rightly say that he has in effect a 'second chance'. It would be clear to observers exactly what kind of second chance he thinks he has from the way he behaves. If it is business as usual, then he clearly feels that he has the 'mandate', because of natural justice, to continue in his usual behaviour. If it is a radical change in favour of more qualitative approaches, then he clearly has a bit more of an altruistic approach.

It is of course not as cut and dried as all that. People are a lot more complex, and most of us will not adhere strictly to a code of rules or laws; neither will most of us totally scorn such regulations. Which brings us to the question of what an illegal operation is, given such a human context.

In computer science or mathematics, an illegal operation is one which is either proscribed by definition, or which has no definition at all. In medicine, I suppose an illegal operation would be surgery in which the release papers have not been signed or other conditions have yet to be met. The term 'illegal' can actually mean 'unlawful' as well as 'for which there is no law', unless it is in law, where 'illegal' means 'proscribed by the legal code'. In the more complex human context of occupational interaction, there are comparatively fewer clear-cut cases.

It's interesting though to see that for altruistic institutions, case-by-case illegalities tend to be more common. If the theory is correct, this is because an altruistic institution has to function more on a mercy/grace paradigm than a justice/fairness one. The problem is when the altruistic institution is no longer altruistic, but still retains the counterlegal paradigm. At this point, it become a hotbed of deliberately illegal operations justified by all kinds of wild claims about the greater good.

These last 12 months have been an education in that regard. I've had all kinds of illegal threats and manipulations observed and catalogued, with apparently no end in sight, within my research area. They don't fit into my dissertation, but they might one day fit into some beautiful paper on institutional dynamics.

States of Repulsion

Recently, a medical student I know posed a question about the undead. I can safely say that I understand the question, and also that I think I know the answer. That is, I am certain that I think I know the answer, but I am not so certain that I actually know the answer. You will immediately see the gap that I am using as a hedge.

His question was, "I wonder why we have such a deep seated primal fear about zombies. Is it an innate instinct to fear the Mindless Masses that humans can become in mobs?"

I think that part of it comes from the 'Uncanny Valley', that zone of human perception at which the close-to-known becomes the repulsive unknown. The unknown here is what the Hierophant would call das Unheimliche, that sensation of looking at the familiar and suddenly recognizing that it is not.

Here's an experiment you can try. I've done it many times before, and the capacity to successfully carry it out is a mark of the ability to successfully bisociate — that is, to bridge two similar states while recognizing they are not at all the same. It is a fundamental component of humour (and this concept was also part of my education thesis for the postgrad diploma in education, heh heh).

The experiment goes like this. Hold out your hand, palm down, slightly to one side. Stare at it so that almost your entire visual field is filled by the hand, with its fingers and extending as far back as your wrist. At some point, you will realise that your hand looks strange and unfamiliar. You may even begin to think of it as an alien structure. When you reach this stage, congratulate yourself for two things. You have achieved bisociational perspective, and you have also realised why knowing something as well as the back of your hand is not an easy thing.

But back to the 'Uncanny Valley'. Look at this graph, proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. Not everyone agrees with it, but it explains why animated films like The Polar Express met with such mixed reactions.

Now compare that graph to this one. Although this one is actually a graph of the interaction between two hydrogen atoms that are dancing into a covalent bond, there are obvious similarities. In the case of the robot (or zombie, which should be similar — haha), perfect similarity to a human would result in most normal affective response; in the case of the atoms, perfect similarity (i.e. overlap) causes most repulsion (since two atoms can't occupy the same space). It turns out that there are many such similar phenomena in the universe.

Displacement

Some distant chronicler will note that along the way, I left sealed notes concerning people with odd appellations. Who, for example, is Wolfberry? Who on earth was Trivandrum?

The answer to these questions, and many more, is that in some sense they are all figments of my imagination. I should hate to think that people might think of them in a way wholly informed by my strange imaginings. But, on the subject of 'strange imaginings'... well, I was once accused of using 'smearing innuendo'. Well, read through the whole blog and see if you can find any. No longer constrained by gentlemanly civility, I will say outright that there is none here.

Rather, I suspect that some people are prone to projection, a phenomenon in which people tend to attribute to others the habits of mind and body that they themselves possess. Then again, it might also be displacement, a phenomenon in which people tend to pick on harmless victims so as to disperse their rage (and other negative affect) towards objects which are dangerous or untouchable.

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Notes:

1. I have given many of my associates odd little names like 'Wolfberry' or 'Trivandrum'. I do this because I am genuinely fond of them despite my shortcomings and theirs. Haha. On the other hand, should I have accidentally referred to any specific person as 'Grand Inquisitor', I would probably not have meant it kindly.

2. This is my 1200th post! Wow, it's been a long journey indeed.

Ideal Gas

I think my brain functions like a gas. The hotter it runs, the greater the concentration in memes per volumetric unit, the greater the intracranial pressure. Like a gas, it needs a pressure valve. This I know from the throbbing in the support structures around my skull.

At the same time, it is a very non-ideal gas. Its contents are not easy to compress. Its particles occupy space and deny it to other particles. It is not susceptible to simple equations of state. It drive me nuts. Then again, since this is my brain we're talking about, it must be driving itself nuts. It must be carrying out some sort of Carnot cycle.

But it is also the apparent source of my creativity and my ideation. It spawns ideas. It shuffles them around and synthesizes new ones. Just as the mens rea gives rise to the real, so the mens idea must give rise to the ideal. Haha.

Illness

Ah, now I know why the existentialist introspective and consequent angst descended upon me in the last few days. Ha, I am down with the flu. Actually, I am quite certain that I am a totally different person when ill (which is itself a topic for philosophical debate). I sleep more. I dream more (or at least have more recall of my dreams). I think in monochrome with odd flashes of colour, and I hear odd sounds which I don't normally hear. I smell different. My senses alter in acuity, both positively and negatively. I forget to shave and I write longer sentences as well as shorter ones. I type in incredible bursts before coming to a stop appalled at what I have typed. Is this for good or for ill? And I am forced to conclude that good or not, it is from ill.

Out Of Mind

The beautiful articulation of my mind enables me to move, to flex, to wrap myself around ideas and pour myself over them. My mind gives me the ability to change the direction of an impulse, to shift my perspective, to display a kind of heterodoxy of thought. My brain is a defining factor, pyscho over physio, mobile over static, higher animal over barnacle or tree.

And on a cold wet morning, sometimes I'd rather be a tree. I have just come to realise that the bearings of my mind are not forever. The knowledge has always been there, especially since the time I went crazy and decided to do a PhD. But realisation, the event of something becoming real, is a different matter. I ache on such mornings. My mind is the main culprit. And being articulate is sometimes more of a curse than one might ever have imagined.

Wait. This reminds me of something I posted not too long ago.

Iron Man

Today was a good day. Met up with Tony Stark. We discussed wayward self-described father figures. He began a sentence with, "You know, those men who think they're your father, or who say 'father' when they mean 'master', and who therefore assume the right to..."

He noticed I was smirking. So I completed the sentence for him, "...treat you like a slave while calling you 'son'."

You should have seen his face. So I continued, "Yeah, I too have my own Obadiah Stane. Uses your technology behind your back as if it is his own, goes to the press, goes to the board, goes overboard... it's the same story, Tony."

That's how we became friends. Now all I have to do is get him to sign up with the Avenger Initiative. My name is Nicholas Fury, and I am Director of SHIELD.

Ha, got you there. You should always wait around for the end of the credits. You might learn something.

Malincompetence

It struck me today that some people are not malevolent in doing things that have negative effect or impact on you. It might seem so, and it may even seem directed. But after a lot of thinking and pondering on a long list of silly things, I have realised that quite often, it is not directed and of ill intent (and hence malevolent) but undirected and with wrong intent or with silly basis.

I hereby coin a new word, malincompetence. It is incompetence which produces evil and seems to be of evil intent. Its affective payload is negative, its effects are disastrous or look like sabotage. It produces ill-will or appears to be spawned from a grouchy and/or sadistic mind. It is also very common among some people.

Little, Big

That's the title of the immensely perceptive and World Fantasy Award-winning novel by John Crowley, who has been mentioned elsewhere here. What it taught me, many years ago, was that there are three kinds of things in our lives: the big things, the little things, and the unclassifiable, pointless or absurd things – and that sometimes, things can fit into all three categories at once.

There are some things far bigger than ourselves: the history of nations and of the world, the salvation and damnation of humanity; art, philosophy, education and science; war, poverty, famine and death. Yet, they are only as important to us, personally, insofar as they impact on us. We can be swept up in causes and lofty ideals, but that is just a projection of a particular philosophy into a world which might very well just get along fine without us.

It's like my itch to reform education. On the face of it, it is a grand endeavour, a stirring ideal. But I have no idea whether it will affect anyone if I do it. Sure, many people will say it is a good thing; some will say it is me being idealistic, and so on. But it is like spreading a gospel – you will never know, even if people assert that they do, how much you yourself have actually done. You might have run around doing things, speaking to people, eating many flavours of ice-cream or making a spectacle of yourself – but nobody actually knows what the ultimate effects of these things are.

Don't get me wrong: this is not some kind of postmodernist evasion of responsibility or meaning; it is not a claim that truth does not exist. I have much respect for the truth. But I do claim that we as humans cannot know the ultimate significance of our actions. We can assume a limited measure of knowledge about the immediate significance – the more immediate (i.e., in the strict sense of there being no mediating period of time between events), the more probable that we can know something.

Which leads to three kinds of responses from people: 1) why sweat the small stuff, look at the big things; 2) you can't affect the big things, deal with what you have at hand; 3) it's all nonsense (or absurdity, or chaos, or irrelevance) anyway. I think we all respond in these three kinds of ways, and often our responses in categories 1 and 2 fall firmly into 3.

At least two people have commented online that I seem preoccupied with my fractured toe (aha, is that 20 posts already, you of the not-green eyes?) The truth is that it is a great inconvenience in a practical sense, relative to my usual mobility. I rely a lot on walking faster than most other people, and it's a little frustrating to be limping around. But it's a small thing in the long term. It's not death, war, famine, pestilence, plague, the inexorable destiny of humanity or the inevitable chaos of perception.

But it is immediate. There is no mediating period or distance between the fact of my temporary disability and my state of mind. Whether Singapore education is in a parlous state or not, is not my responsibility. But the toe is mine. It is nobody else's responsibility, and nobody else's irritant in the immediate sense. I don't wake up in the morning thinking of the fate of badly-educated millions, or of war-torn and poverty-stricken nations, or of the spiritual health of the oppressed, or of the great and silly philosophies of our time. I leave that to God, and if I can help, that's nice. But you would be a liar, or severely odd, or having a transcendent episode, if the first thing you felt on waking up didn't have something to do with the more immediate needs of your body. Like taking a leak, or unkinking your back muscles.

And then, after dealing with the immediate, I can think about the mediated, the intellectual, the blogospherical, the 'higher' and more distant things. Which I probably have less impact on, and may not be within my grasp as something to be done with all my might. From navel-gazing to crystal-ball divination, I suppose. But me, I will look at my ice-cream, my fresh hot coffee, and gain revelation – revelation of the kind that says, "Wow, this is really good coffee. It makes me happy."

Which reminds me: I still have to finish off that second chapter on the woeful inadequacies of the education system, and what we know of it. Toedles... oops, associational slip there.

ADDing & Subtracting

A short time ago, I mentioned how the most favourable diagnosis of the most kindly psychonomist would probably still have diagnosed me with ADHD (minus the hyperactivity to some extent). That would have been true for me up till the age of 15.

And yet, I note that whatever Freud got wrong, the superego has a role to play. If I were left unchecked by my own discipline and will, empowered by what I know to be the Spirit (and what others might decide is the environment or something else), I would certainly still act ADHD. Traces of it leak out when I give lectures, for example.

But most of the time I don't. Some aspects of what people call ADHD are utterly controllable with practice and determination. Some are not. When you have subtracted the things which are controllable, you aren't left with much of a disorder. What are you left with?

1) I still sleep at will, and sometimes, by accident. All it takes is someone droning on without engaging my brains, and I will sleep. You can ask my boss, he's seen it and commented on it. You can ask my wife, who is envious. I tell her all it takes is a good conscience and this: '...for He grants sleep to those He loves. (Psalm 127:2). It is one of those things I cannot prove to be true, but I certainly hope is true.

2) I still get very restless unless obsessively engaged in a task. Sometimes, I have to work myself into an obsession before I can finish a task. When I have created the obsessive fixation, I can churn out 10-20 pages in one evening; maybe 10000 words or more. When I cannot find it in me to be obsessed, I'm lucky to get a tenth of that, if at all.

3) I have great temptations to jump up and down and call boring stupid people names. Thank God I have been blessed with a great reduction in those temptations (or a great increase in temperamental fortitude)!

4) I am still easily distracted by snatches of conversation, bars of music, interesting books, the idea of food, the need to experiment. Some time ago, one of my younger acquaintances made a small and messy fire which was pretty much a disaster. The funny thing is that I completely understood why he did it, and I might have done it too at that age.

It's my conclusion, however, that ADHD as a description of a problem with the holistic physical state is a lousy description. There are nine descriptors in Part A. You have ADHD if you have six of those. Simple math tells you that this is (literally) dozens of possible versions of ADHD. I would prefer my grandfather's answer to why kids behave badly: "Because their parents do."

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves...

And other such lawless characters, I suppose. This is of course the title of Cher's hit song first sung (I think) in the 1970s, although my memory is, understandably, a bit hazy. But I heard it tonight on the radio, and something made me think of my schooldays.

I've written before about what people call 'attention deficit hyperactivity disorder'. Yes, I do suffer from it. According to DSM-IV-TR, that venerable and interesting tome in which you may find any form of mental oddness known to American humanity, I have ADHD – Predominantly Inattentive Type. ADHD-PIT. Dear me. Of course, it was worse when I was younger and suffered from every one of the symptoms listed.

But what are the symptoms I suffer from? I suffer from all nine of the symptoms listed in Part A:

• does not give close attention to details and/or makes careless mistakes
• has trouble keeping attention on tasks – yes, I have been known to fall asleep in meetings that are not stimulating my brain
• often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly – yes, I've had to work on that, which is why I tend to stare deliberately at people who are talking to me
• often does not follow instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand instructions) – I'm notorious for this
• often has trouble organizing activities – which is why one should always marry a spouse who can
• often avoids, dislikes, or doesn't want to do things that take a lot of mental effort for a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework) – heh, probably why I find it repugnant to inflict homework on people
• often loses things needed for tasks and activities (e.g. toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools) – hence the need for shelves and organisers and spreadsheets and catalogues
• is often easily distracted
• is often forgetful in daily activities

Basically, I get bored easily. Tremendously, mind-numbingly bored. It has taken me 30 years to learn how to pay attention to people, and I still fall asleep in meetings. I even suffer from a few of the symptoms in Part B (as some of you know).

What does living with ADHD mean? Well, it's relatively easy to deal with through behavioural and pharmacological therapies (hence my interest in both). Most pharmacological therapy uses stimulants. I've found caffeine useful, and doctors have used amphetamines. The thing about stimulants is that they focus the mind, making it easier for the ADHD sufferer to pay attention in class and in general act normal. It doesn't make them much more physically 'hyper'.

And now we come to the controversial part: behavioural therapy. Well, everytime I was naughty I was caned. It made me very nimble, and more circumspect in my actions. The thing is that I wasn't beaten gratuitously, but enough to keep me focussed and aware of wrongdoing. When I got old enough to understand things, I learnt a few useful behaviours:

• look at people who are talking to you
• when you think people are boring you, do math in your head
• smile a lot
• sit down until you have written something or done one unit of work
• organise things in boxes and with labels
• write down lists of things to do and to buy (etc)

And so on. Very useful. I think the most important point for me is that ADHD could be beaten. I still took five years to complete my Master's degree (excuse: it was done part-time, haha), but I remember that in June 1999, just before the deadline, I wrote 30000 words in four days.

What does living with ADHD not mean? I learnt early on that being an ADHD sufferer was not a license to be rude, disruptive, violent, or discourteous. I was trained that way, with firm admonition and a few sharp strokes which marked but did not bruise me. These days, we tend to shy away from the 'hard' part of training, preferring to educate in some soft and human-respecting style. I think we should respect the fact that hard training, severe counsel, and pain are all important for the proper development of the individual. I learnt that way, and it made me better than I might have been.

Which brings me back to Cher, and Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves. Here's the refrain to that song:

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

As a student, I was called many things when young. 'Rogue' would probably have been one of the kinder and more decorous ones. I was a terribly disruptive kid in primary school. I was passive-aggressive from 12-13, then weird thereafter. I learned to restrain a tendency to violence by 15. After that, I think I was old enough to not show it, and having an effective brain was a bonus that helped me to disguise my inability to do work.

But for all you ADHD sufferers out there, just bear in mind: I was a hopeless student until I was about 30 years old. No wonder the Jews insist that manhood begins then. There is hope yet. All you have to do is work for it.

Split

Today's local newspapers declared that 1 out of every 100 young people suffered from schizophrenia (from Greek schizo, 'I divide'; and phrenos, 'mind') - a 'shattered mind'. I am now driven by my inner workings to look around the place I work and try to identify the 30 or so people who (statistically speaking) must be schizophrenics (or should that be schizophrenes?)

Schizophrenia is an interesting condition. I am not so sure it is an illness, although it is certainly considered to be a bad thing in the world we live in. It is commonly defined as debilitating, with onset during adolescence and resulting in bad misperceptions of reality and of human social interaction. Some say it is an emotional disorder; most consider it a psychotic condition. Some of it seems treatable with drugs or surgery – there is certainly some physiological basis for it.

The reason it is interesting to me is that this is a condition which, as described, seems present in many who are otherwise considered intellectually or spiritually enlightened. They see things differently from other people, and are strongly fixed in their views. They are often amenable to listening to reason, but reason seldom shifts their deeply-engrained positions. People have theorised that schizophrenia accounts for hallucinations of the divine, and that many of the world's religious people who claim to hear God speaking to them are actually schizophrenic.

At 1 in every 100, this seems plausible. That's not to say that God can't speak to you, or that schizophrenia is a gift designed to make it easier for Him. Either position seems dangerous, limited, or... well, schizophrenic. But really, I don't see the fuss. It would make sense that if you want to be able to communicate with the world beyond, you'd want to install a broadband connection in your house. In the era that most people were using telephone modems at 56 kbps, broadband connections were considered a luxury; before that, when the maximum speed was about 14400 bps, broadband users were thought to be insane.

I need to think more about this. It's always good to see more than one side to a problem. Hrrrrm.