SATYRIASIS

We tend to think of infants as little human lumps to be loved, coddled and made much of yet, they are really tiny observing and learning machines. At six months, or so, they can distinguish between the races though they do not yet have the language to think about them. Also, they catch on to sex differences pretty quickly, I mean the differences between mom and pop are physically and behaviorally quite apparent. As part of that understanding, they also start to pick up sex related behaviors. Our parents, after all treat them according to their gender; boys get blue and girls pink, girls get frilly stuff and boys not. They are described differently, boy babies are reputedly more boisterous than girl babies, etc. Shirley, as a joke describes herself as “delicate,” and often did so with her grandson. An unintended consequence was that he began to call himself delicate; but his parents put an end to that pretty quickly. Delicate boys are outside the pale.

Some few years later, boys hang with boys and girls with girls. They play different games and even when the game is the same, they never play on the same team. Every now and then there is a hoorah when a girl wants to play football or wrestle. Tradition and god are invoked, usually two unbeatable arguments in the face of rationality. I mean, if a girl can make the team, why not? But, boys almost never try out for a girls team, I have never heard of it, it seems unfair. I mean, what boy says I am too weak to compete against boys, competing against girls is what I can do. Rational, yes, but too horrible to contemplate.

In the process of reaching puberty, boys and girls face increasing pressure about involvements with each other. AT some point, early on, brothers and sisters may not share a bedroom, much less a bed. Even though neither group has much enthusiasm, they know they will have to confront each other in the no so distant future; I don't know about others, but that scared the hell out of me. But, yes, hormones and social pressure guarantee intermingling (except for a few oddballs such as me) and lust becomes part of the equation. Well, the process continues and sexual activity becomes more intense, often culminating in “doing it.”

“Doing it” almost always satisfies the boy but somewhat less so the girl. Still, what society and hormones have pressed upon them has been satisfied; there is some sense of pleasure in doing it, after all it's a marker for maturity and independence.

Everything settles down. The rate of such activity varies as the participants grow older. Boys catch on there is more to girls than their breasts and vaginas and girls discover that boys can be nice. Without noticing it, they become, more or less, sexually mature.

Well, some don't. I think I mentioned a patient who had sex four times a day, his wife in the morning, once with a girl friendat noon and again with his wife at night. All participants were pleased with this arrangement. Another, a married man, had his sister as his noon-time bed partner but whether his wife knew or not I have no idea. Others, much more common, give up sex early on partially accounting for affairs and prostitutes.

And, then there is Mick Jagger, Wilt Chamberlain and others of that ilk. Jagger has boasted that he has done it with four thousand women. I don't have the figures to calculate how many per year (I guess about 100) and how often with each one. Still, to me it seems a heroic number as if he has competed with other men for some sort of prize. Will the man with the most get to heaven, or enjoy the benefits of hell? Does he ward off fear of his own sexual incompetence? Is it that women, tearing their clothes off simply leap at him in such manner that no hetero could resist? Inquiring minds … etc.

It's pretty clear that he doesn't get emotionally involved with them and I imagine he pays many of them. As far as I can tell, he does it for penis pleasure and if that's the case, he simply masturbates with woman’s bodies.

So, keep it up, Mick. You, I hope, are happy and surely most of that four thousand are at least pleased with themselves. My daughter knows a woman whose claim to fame was that she did it once with Paul McCartney. That act, I assume it is true, makes her a minor celebrity at the annual Beatles-fest. I guess pride is where you find it.

If in excess you find it worth doing

I mean random uninvolved screwing

It is a good bet

That you'll never forget

Well, if too many there's really no knowing.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Bertram Rothschild

To: bertr2@comcast.net

Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2012 3:30 PM

Subject: for the blog

EMPATHY

7-30-12

When I was a lad, Marshall Dillon was one of my sort-of heroes. His show always had him, on the streets of Dodge outdrawing a bad guy, all very satisfactory. In the body of the story, he usually killed someone and in my younger years that always seemed right. Well, the show has returned on the western channel and while nicely written the killing continues. What is most noteworthy: the shot is fired, the man drops and the dialogue continues as nothing momentous has occurred. Cold? Brrrr!

In this morning's paper was an article about drone pilots, the pilots, all men (are there any women?) spoke their feelings about what they do. Some are former combat pilots, others trained specifically for the task of killing designated people, bad guys we hope. They often watch a specific area for days looking for a chance to do their mayhem and in that process become familiar with families living there. They get to see them in their daily, mundane activities, parents interacting with their children, husbands and wives dealing with this and that so there is a sort of intimacy that develops.

Lest they kill promisculously, they try to do the job when the target's family is away. But, alas, unintended targets are often killed. Many justify thjeir behavior by correctly identifying that they are just doing their job. Others have bad feelings, at least if the army's concern to beef up mental health capacity for their pilots is evidence.

Lest you think this is a Marshall Dillon syndrome, the battle of Cannae produced the slaughter of about 45K defeated Roman soldiers. Reasonably, there was no way for Hannibal take that many prisoners so it was kill 'em all; in the event, it took asbout 8 hours to complete the deed. No doubt, after the fact, the Carthegenian troops felt exhausted and there is no mention of emotional distress.

All this tells us there is a flaw in the human animal which is exemplified by Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.” Our capacity for empathy is limited and fragile; it is so easy to toss aside that it must have become separated from its evolutionary purpose. In less populated times, proto-humans and what finally became us lived in small groups probably led by a male who had the capacity to forstall challenges to his authority. With rather few people in his band each one would be precious to their somewhat precarious economy. For the good of all, incapacitated members had to be cared for, the prompt being the vicarious experience of their misery. Clearly, if you idenrtify with another's humanity you are unlikely to harm her/him, instead, would want to do some sort of repair. In mental health, this is somewhat disparagingly called a rescue fantasy.

With the agricultural revolution, the human population increased significantly and the more people (remember we evolved in small groups), the more strain on on the empathic impulse. Instead of resolving differences, warfair was invented and to go to war to kill the enemy required that impulse be rejected. Early Judeans said, “Thou shalt not murder,” but through mistranslation it became not kill. And, that was a problem because Christians took the commandments seriously and refused to join the army, and hat produced a hardship because of the multitude of religious wars. Finally, Augustine I think, had to define “just war” in which it was copacetic for Christians to join the slaughter.

It is curious, in our society with all its high tech communication that we seem to be losing our capacity to communicate. Our working vocabularies have diminished from 6,500 words to about 3,000 perhaps ultimately to be replaced by a sophisticated form of grunting. Social networking produces a multitude a “friends” as if that word is appropriate to the long-distance truncated sorts of relationships that are as empty as a used candy wrapper.

The less empathy, the easier it is to slaughter. Do we follow Cain's defense: “Am I my brother's keeper?” or do we heed John Donne: “Send not seek for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

If you want to be a good soldier

Toward others you must become colder

Do not let yourself feel

What to them is quite real

And get on with your job, which is slaughter.

ARE HUMANS REALLY HUMAN?

7-23-13

The Boy Scouts are an odd lot. They provide us with training for young men on the cusp of adulthood; I was one and remember learning about porn, getting a merit badge in carpentry, learning that masturbation is evil and learning to hate overnight camping. Others do better than that but it is clear their outcomes are a mixed bag. Now that a person's sexuality becomes more open, they had a problem with their no-queer policy. Neither a gay boy or scout leader could scout with the rest of the crowd. Recently, they had a meeting to determine if they might change their policy, essentially to get rid of their noxious rules. Brilliantly, they said no. I say “brilliantly” because against all odds, they stuck to their guns. Are they heroes … or what?

They never offered an explanation, but clearly they believe that LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexul, transgendered) folk are morally and behaviorally impaired. LGBT folk have always been besmirched with such nonsense and further, the calumnly that they would always try to seduce the innocent into their culture. There are ugly parallels. When eighteen, at school in Florida I tried to visit a schoolmate in the private home where he rented a room. At the door, when I rang the bell, was a truculent woman who refused me admittance because she knew I was Jewish and would steal from her. And surely, African Americans and Latinos belong on the list. Or, the wisdom of the plains: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” There are many more examples around the world but time and space limit me to just a few.

Some people just know the capital T Truth and act on it. They know that those people, whomever, are not properly human. Even our god given constitution defined African-Americans as three-fifths of a white person and so justified slavery. Oh yes, they also quoted the bible as evidence that god was on their side.

Knowing the Truth is half the equation. All one needs to add is rage. Do lynchings come to mind? How about killing abortion doctors? How about, as in Norway killing people because the Muslims were infiltrating Norwegian society? How about Columbine and our latest, the Batman killer.

Make no mistake. Whether or not he is legally insane, he surely has a loose screw. There is no way he could have planned and executed his mayhem without defining people as lesser beings who deserve death. Rage and anger and the freedom to purchase killing devices were all he needed. He even turned his apartment into a killing machine, what a guy.

It is very likely that such people have a brain disorder though I doubt there is yet sufficient evidence to make that point. I knew a man who was convinced that the whole of humanity was divided into two warring camps and he was the only neutral extant. Of course, that made him fair game for anyone so he became violent with anyone he met. Nothing like knowing the Truth … it shall set you free to kill.

It is almost impossible to identify such before their vicious acts, but we surely can make their weapons impossible to get. The NRA says no! What do we say?

If you want to have truck loads of fun

Nothing better than a quick-firing gun

The minute you shoot

It goes rooty-toot-toot

Bodies fall - fewer lives in the sun.

WORDS: Are we coarser?

7-9-12

You know the old conundrum, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, has it made a sound?” As a kid, my friends and I pondered the deep philosophical significance of that question; but of course we found no solution. Now that I am older, the answer is obvious: No! What happens when a tree falls is that in the process air is disturbed, and that's it. Only if there are ear-drums present can the organism find meaning in the event. The disturbed air is called a sound and the brain makes a guess about what caused it. So, this obviously tells me that I am smarter than I used to be. Huzzah!

Now that I've established that point, I can segue on to the gist of this essay. The other day, in the Post, there was an article which described the reality that some of our elected officials have publicly used so called foul language. Even though the offending words were exed out, from the context I deduced the word, shit. The author decried such use and quoted some experts, though in what I have no idea (perhaps they were ethicists, a bogus enterprise at best). The consensus, to quote one of them is that such language is “evidence that our society is “coarsening.” Absurd!

When I was a lad, certain words and situations in movies were absolutely forbidden by the notorious Hayes Committee. That idiot organization appeared because movies til then were thought to be too ribald for the general public and, heaven forfend, a child might get to see one! The words virgin, pregnant and damn could not be used in polite company and the twin bed industry got a boost because husband and wife never ever slept together and they wore, not quite coveralls but highly opaque garments. And, when two people kissed, always a man and woman, the screen faded to black. When young, I assumed they then had a snack or listened to music.

A movie, “The Moon is Blue,” broke the rule when one character called another a “professional virgin.” I had no idea of what that meant, but I knew something worth an oooh had occurred. By the time Rhett Butler (Gone With the Wind) said, “Madame, I don't give a damn,” I was a jaded fifteen year old who knew and understood every thing in the world. How long did it take for women on TV became pregnant?

George Carlin, that magnificent humorist had a list of taboo words which he used in his act and by and large, they remain somewhat proscribed. Still, the word fuck has become more prominent. Most don't want their children to use or even know the word but almost any movie will teach it to them.

What am I getting at? This: Spoken woerds have no intrinsic meaning. They are like the falling tree, agitations of the air; it takes a listener who interprets the agitated air and has a reaction. I suppose everyone reading this has some reaction to fuck, but there is a good chance that each one had an idiosyncratic response. And, we are each responsible for our own interpretations. Let me repeat, we are each responsible for our own interpretations. When that fellow said that a politician using the word shit coarsens our society, what he said has no objective meaning. Do you live in a coarser society now that virgin and pregnant are publicly acceptable? Is it coarser because married people in the movies sleep in the same bed or wear somewhat scanty clothing, if any? I don't think so.

Those who pontificate about such miss the reality that the Greek philosopher who said you can't step into the same river twice was right. Everything always changes. Our acceptance of such language simply means that things have changed. We used to laugh at the Brits because the word bloody was not permitted. Why did we laugh? Because that word, absent British meanings, sounds benign; what's the big deal? And even the Brits have figured that out.

Life would be a lot more interesting if people were willing to assume personal responsibility for their reactions. The accusation, “you made me love you” would change to I love you because I love you. Now, isn't that nicer?

If you beg the heavens above

To strike you with feelings of love

Keep clearly in mind

You never will find

That the heavens can give such a shove.

WORDS: Are we coarser?

7-9-12

You know the old conundrum, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, has it made a sound?” As a kid, my friends and I pondered the deep philosophical significance of that question; but of course, we found no solution. Now that I am older, the answer is obvious: No! What happens when a tree falls is that in the process air is disturbed, and that's it. Only if there are eardrums present can the organism find meaning in the event. The disturbed air is called a sound and the brain makes a guess about what caused it. So, this obviously tells me that I am smarter than I used to be. Huzzah!

Now that I've established that point, I can segue on to the gist of this essay. The other day, in the Post, there was an article that described the reality that some of our elected officials have publicly used so-called foul language. Even though the offending words were blanked out, from the context I deduced the word, shit. The author decried such use and quoted some experts, though in what I have no idea (perhaps they were ethicists, a bogus enterprise at best). The consensus, to quote one of them is that such language is “evidence that our society is “coarsening.” Absurd!

When I was a lad, certain words and situations in movies were absolutely forbidden by the notorious Hayes Committee. That idiot organization appeared because movies till then were thought to be too ribald for the general public and, heaven forefend, a child might get to see one! The words virgin, pregnant and damn could not be used in polite company and the twin bed industry got a boost because husband and wife never ever slept together and they wore not quite coveralls but highly opaque garments. And, when two people kissed, always a man and woman, the screen faded to black. When young, I assumed they then had a snack or listened to music.

A movie, “The Moon is Blue,” broke the rule when one character called another a “professional virgin.” I had no idea of what that meant, but I knew something worth an oooh had occurred. By the time Rhett Butler (Gone With the Wind) said, “Madame, I don't give a damn,” I was a jaded fifteen year old who knew and understood everything in the world. How long did it take for women on TV became pregnant?

George Carlin, that magnificent humorist had a list of taboo words that he used in his act and by and large, they remain somewhat proscribed. Still, the word fuck has become more prominent. Most don't want their children to use or even know the word but almost any movie will teach it to them.

What am I getting at? This: Spoken words have no intrinsic meaning. They are like the falling tree, agitations of the air; it takes a listener who interprets the agitated air and has a reaction. I suppose everyone reading this has some reaction to fuck, but there is a good chance that each one had an idiosyncratic response. And, we are each responsible for our own interpretations. Let me repeat, we are each responsible for our own interpretations. When that fellow said that a politician using the word shit coarsens our society, what he said has no objective meaning. Do you live in a coarser society now that virgin and pregnant are publicly acceptable? Is it coarser because married people in the movies sleep in the same bed or wear somewhat scanty clothing, if any? I don't think so.

Those who pontificate about such miss the reality that the Greek philosopher who said you can't step into the same river twice was right. Everything always changes. Our acceptance of such language simply means that things have changed. We used to laugh at the Brits because the word bloody was not permitted. Why did we laugh? Because that word, absent British meanings, sounds benign, what's the big deal? And even the Brits have figured that out.

Life would be a lot more interesting if people were willing to assume personal responsibility for their reactions. The accusation, “you made me love you” would change to I love you because I love you. Now, isn't that nicer?

If you beg the heavens above

To strike you with feelings of love

Keep clearly in mind

You never will find

That the heavens can give such a shove.

6-13-11

TWO WEEKS IN MY LIFE – YAY!

In the two weeks that you last saw me, I was struck by a veritable whirlwind of irksome changes. I might not have complained about myself in the past, but now”s the time. At first, I thought it was a tornado of life changes but in calm contemplation I have concluded that irksome does not qualify; whirlwind suffices. What follows is in chronological order.

Part one: I have known that my hearing has slowly deteriorated, that it has become harder to understand discussions in restaurants, that TV dialogue often degenerates into a series of mumbles and that I keep asking people to repeat themselves. “Say again,” had almost become my mantra. My daughter, in particular, speaks to me while engaging in tasks and I often have to ask for a repeat and she, in her sweet friendly way says, “Will you please get a hearing aid.”

The truth is that I knew the day was coming because of prior hearing tests and so, reluctantly, I scheduled another one; the chart showed that my high pitched hearing ability is essentially lost. I no longer have the capacity to hear upper registers; in other words, I am half-deaf. Kaiser has a hearing aid shop and there I went and after much fiddling with this and that I ordered a pair. I gathered from the woman who helped me that two hearing aids are astonishingly superior to one so that's what I did, I ordered two one for each ear.

When they arrived I learned about batteries that last a week, domes and wax traps, all possible sources of malfunction. There was also the problem of sticking the thingies into my ears. For the first week, they kept falling out. Batteries died and the wax traps trapped wax and now I carry around a supply of each. I had to learn when to adjust the volume: raise it in noisy places but not so high that it sounds like a tinny when breathing.. She explained to me that wearing them trains the brain and that sounded exotic until I realized that the brain learns to ignore the oddness of the sound. I often forget them; I have not yet integrated them into my life style. Having them, caring for them is a shlep. I am still in the try-out period but I think the benefits marginally overwhelm the irks. Remember when I told you I had lost interest in music? I turned the radio on as I usually do at breakfast and heard glorious sound; I can hear what I've been missing and music is back in my life.

Part two: As part of my body existing through time, certain changes occur of insidious onset and that has happened to my kidneys. Over the years, they have slowly been losing their capacity to filter my blood and finally my doc figured it was time to check with an expert, a nephrologist. OK, I saw him and he told me that I have kidney disease of unknown origin, told me to give up dairy products,chocolate and nuts and so it goes, a bereft lover of milk chocolate and other such. There are some sacrifices too terrible to contemplate except if my kidneys get worse I become a candidate for dialysis, a much more terrible outcome then changing my diet. So, you will no longer see me scarf down almond filled kisses. But, worse, much worse, he said that one of my diabetes meds is bad for sick kidneys and must give it up. OK, says I to my PC doc, what's plan B?

Part 3: Plan B is sticking myself with an insulin laden syringe every night.

Now, that's fun. I was given a hundred of the stickers, a bottle of insulin, shown how and where to do it and sent off to be more or less healthy. Now mornings and bedtimes are devoted to fiddling with hearing aids, glucometers and syringes as well as ingesting the multifarious medicines that keep me ticking.

As noted above, it is all somewhat irksome, particularly for a young man. Still, it is doable and has to be done so it shall be.

(This was written about a year ago and all the above has become so routinized that I hardly notice the talks. Yeah.)

My hearing has grown pretty bad

Like my diabetes and kidneys, so sad

Am I now become old?

Do not dare be so bold

That I breaths still makes me feel glad.

CHAOS: What fun!

June 25, 2012

Evolution created us to be hunter-gatherers. Homo sapiens lived in caves and traveled around looking for game and searching for whatever flora fit for their needs. The women stayed at home taking care of the children and sweeping the floor. I suppose there were those who were more successful than others at finding food and it is at least plausible they survived and passed on their genes; the less successful didn't get here.

What does it take to be a successful hunter-gatherer? There are the usual attributes such as courage, skill and strength in the face of uncertainty. Where would the food animals and vegetation be found? What seasons made certain ones more likely than others. How to anticipate the appearance of sharp teeth and claws and adjust accordingly? Obviously, such information would favor survival; absent such information they lived in a chaotic environment. Everything would seem unpredictable, chaotic and most of life is like that.

Chaos is the bug-a-boo, the destroyer the cause of much misery. Chaotic events must be transformed into time-lines, after this, that, and patterns. Our ancient forebears understood cause and effect and did their best to get control. Absent control, they accounted for events with supernatural explanations . . . and denial.

Dear friends, the reality is that most of life is chaotic; but most of the time it moves in slow-motion providing the facade of stability and predictability. But, all too often it rears up and maims or kills us, or our loved ones. I know a young man who, while sitting in a car with a friend was shot by a random gunman. Was he killed? No but he became a quadriplegic. The police never found the shooter nor have they established a motive. He was quite religious before the event and now he is profoundly religious. God's plan is simply a denial of reality. Viet Nam veterans said, “Shit happens.”

We have medical science, laws, police, a military, politics and greater comprehension of the universe all designed to get chaos under control all under the under the illusion of at least partial success. But the core understanding is that all things are probabilistic. The young man was unlikely to get shot and surely unlikely to become quadriplegic. Pedophiles are unlikely to assault your child, The airplane is unlikely to crash. We are embedded in such improbable events and clamor for greater sophistication and better laws and, in truth, the appropriate people try hard but the reality that probability statements are the best we can do belies most of their efforts.

If we accept that our lives dangle from a thin thread how shall we find comfort in living? There is no certainty we will live long in comfort and die peacefully even though we strive for some version of that hope. What seems most reasonable is to accept the reality that the universe is not designed with our preferences in mind so that when chaos crosses the moat around our defenses we do not react with surprise and rage or mourning. Accepting what is bad is a pretty good way of making things better . . . until you die.

“The moving finger writes and moves on.

nor all thy piety and wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line

nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

All of us want to be certain

To live well before closing the curtain

Our motives are pure

But, we cannot be sure

That chaos won't provide a demotion