Tag Archives: psychology

Seeing Things for What They Are

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I’ve been relying on the news feeds on my phone to keep track of current events, but lately it’s become apparent to me these sorts of news conveyance are duplicitous, intended to convey a message beyond the simple facts of the news. It would appear the need to reach the largest audience possible has developed a media culture that produces a narrative in sound bites intended to ignite strong reaction, feed oppositional inclinations, with algorithms feeding you information you’ll find most alarming in order to instigate an emotional response, in order, essentially, to keep one hooked. Even sports news feeds look to create controversy hinting at block-buster trade deals and disgruntled players likely to cost teams games.

The answer to this is, of course, to find a source of in-depth news coverage that provides multiple points of view and then take the time to read them.

Favorite Things

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I’ve been thinking about John Coltraine’s riff on ‘Favorite Things’: sixteen minutes of musical invention that captures the complexity of human emotion.

That’s what struck me the first time I heard it, but it occurs to me now that the way I am moved, the way the complexity of sound communicates a depth of meaning beyond words that I find so astounding, must in some way define the human condition.

No doubt, my life experience is nowhere near what JC lived, his alcoholism and growing up as he did in the 40’s and 50’s as a black man is so far removed from my white small-town existence, yet he communicates my sense of human experience so effectively I must bow to his genius.

Experiencing the Other

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How can we be limited to what we grasp through our senses?

I have a desire to reach beyond simple reality. The laws of nature can’t be enough to explain the beauty and complexity of the sensual world. Yet, as I think this, I know my intellect demands rationality. What must I do to accept the existence of both the sensual and super-sensual?

Many thinkers much brighter than me have, as Kierkegaard put it ‘leapt into the absurd’, grasped religious faith. Did the weight of physical existence lead them to sense a supreme deity, the underlying truth of existence? Whatever drew them to a belief in the super-sensible mustn’t have been a simple matter, an out may have been demanded. Blaise Pascal’s rational:’ I believe in the existence of God; if I am right in this belief I will be rewarded in the end. If I’m wrong it will be of no consequence’, reveals the uncertainty all believers (and most sensible non-believers) will always face.

The richness of possibility suggests the best answer.

The Sacred and The Profane

The Nature of Romantic Love

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I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of romantic interest. It’s pretty clear to me that the idea of ‘being in love’ has an awful lot to do with sexual attraction. The idea of ‘love at first sight’ suggests an hormonal impulse that feeds a normal heterosexual need to pair up, an action dominated by passionate desire that has little to do with intellectual of emotional compatibility.

The need for companionship in a spouse is slow to build and, as sexual desire wains, often a relationship ends before such is realized.

An unfair assessment of trivial youth? At my age I think I’m entitled.

Going Viral

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I’ve been thinking lately about our social natures, how compelling it is to share and have others appreciate what we think and do, producing, as we do, memes, an endless parade of memes on social media in the hopes of receiving attention.

Our interest must be to attract an audience, to perform before (thousands?) more than just our immediate acquaintances in order to solidify acceptance within the cultural realm.

I guess if one limits time to such endeavors it can’t hurt to boost self-confidence, assuming, of course, sufficient ‘likes’ appear.

Streaming through Soundbites

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I’ve been thinking lately about my daily consumption of the news. Anticipating, as I do, the discomfiting nature of what I’m likely to hear I rely on the feeds I get through my phone each morning. I’m realizing my perspective on things is being tainted by the sensational nature of these media soundbites.

As troubling as I find this realization, I will continue my sound bite consumption because I know I will find a more intensive investigation of current events to be more painful than worthwhile.

Morbid Thoughts

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Something about autumn, nature’s impending hibernation, that has me thinking about ‘the long sleep’, contemplating my ultimate demise. I heard recently about a man who, before his recent death, directed his family to have his cremated remains scattered about a favorite hiking location while a song of personal significance was piped into the woodlands.

It seems to me a nice idea. It has me thinking about what musical work I might choose for such an occasion. I do have in mind a perfect location for such an event.

All fun to think about but I’m not in the planning stages yet.

Harpies

Dystopia

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I’ve been thinking about the idea of a post-apocalyptic dark age: the economy has collapsed, goods of any sort are scarce, hostile elements, equally desperate, seek to exploit the Other, survival depends on courage and wits.

It’s the time of year, I guess, that seems to elicit premonitions of immanent disaster. What else can explain Halloween and the Day of the Dead? Add to these events the anxieties of the upcoming election and one can’t help but anticipate ominous times ahead.

Psychically numbing as the times maybe we rationalize it will end, equilibrium will reappear. The anxieties, though, will not go quietly.

Truth

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The richness of recognized beauty defies simplistic explanation. No ‘eye of the beholder’ or theory of color and form is sufficient to address beauty’s underlying truth.

What other subjective truths are there? Are our intuitive beliefs a reaction to fear of the Other? What can harm us if we stay in touch with the Truth the natural world provides?

Essence

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I’m wondering if species, creatures with life spans much shorter than ours, tiny beings with brains the size of pin heads, realize, given their brief existence, a rich and meaningful life.

Does a Wooly Bear caterpillar, struggling in moving water, feel angst, realize the probability of imminent demise while memories of hatching, eating and growing, the promise of evolution to flight slowly fades, the hope it’s brothers will survive to replenish the species and sensing these complexities while living a life that is only an instant of the life cycle we manage to waste away in insignificant concerns.

Such thoughts make me think I should pay more attention.