Category: Reflections

Translators: vital but unappreciated

translationIt’s one thing to learn to speak another language, quite another to really show mastery.  For example, a speaking vocabulary of the most frequent 2500 words along with a hundred or so primary phrases will likely enable you to converse adequately in every day situations.  Even more so, if you acquire vocabulary by way of topic categories you’re likely to use, say computer or  newspaper vocabulary.

If you really want to ease your way, though it takes considerable discipline and putting it to use, a vocabulary of the right 7000 words from daily life will give you ease, not only in speaking, but over most intermediate level reading matter in your chosen language.  There’s a good book out there you might look at:  Frederick Bodmer’s The Loom of Language: an Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages, which lists essential words in nine European languages.

By the way, the CIA and the military operate expedited, or crash programs, for quick acquisition of oral fluency, usually consisting of 6-8 hour sessions daily over a six month period for the more difficult languages like Chinese, Arabic or Farsi.

It’s quite another thing to be a translator, and here I’ve in mind two kinds:  first, the oral or playback kind you find in the UN General Assembly when you put on your headphone set and, bingo, there it is, instant playback in your own language.  There are schools for this kind of thing too, of which the Monterey Institute is among the most notable.

School can only do so much.  You need an excellent ear and ability to focus and retain, along with a nearly native facility requiring foreign residency for at least a year to get the real hang of the second language and, maybe, the plus of leaving your accent behind.  I remember meeting a sixteen year old Russian  girl at the prestigious Moscow State University doing precisely that as a result of a one year stint as a high school exchange student in Arizona.

If you do a really good job of it, you’ll have a leg-up on other applicants for positions with the government, courts, and medicine (e.g., patient interpreter), and in the travel industry and more.

The second kind of translating skill I’ll call “textual” in that it doesn’t require oral facility, but rather analytical skills and a huge range of specialized vocabulary for reading in a chosen area like medicine or law.  Again, this has its occupational value for auspices involved internationally such as government, banking and business.  After all, somebody has to put product directions into another language, nowadays usually Spanish in North America.

There’s a species here of textual translation that I’ll dub “literary,” or dealing with the literary arts and, I think, the most challenging form of language mastery.  Paradoxically, it’s under-appreciated by those benefitting most from it, not only readers, but publishing houses.

I started reading the classics as a youngster, reading through much of Hugo, Stendhal, Mann, and especially Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the latter two invariably translated by Constance Garnett, whose life story I’ll perhaps recount in a future post, since it’s quite remarkable.  While I devoured these writers, I took translators for granted, as nearly all of us do even as adults.

My awareness of the translator’s role, however, became an increasing corollary of my academic career teaching many non-English writers in translation.  My curiosity grew especially with poetry, for here we’re dealing especially with matters of rhythm, rime,  dictional resonance, and syntactical ordering.  How faithful is the English rendition to the artist’s conception in its native version?

I also became intrigued as to the inveterate number of translations contemporary English language poets were undertaking.  For example,  one of my favorite poets, W. S.  Merlin, is widely known for his translated renditions of Spanish verse.  Then there is Northern Ireland’s Seamus Heaney with his translation of Beowulf from Old English.  Did Heaney really master Old English, or did he simply draw upon extant translations and fashion a synthesis?

In all honesty, I don’t know the answer as to whether some translators simply transpose.  In short, do some “translators” cheat?

On the other hand, Garnett was genuine and put the Russian classics on the map for English readers.  And I suspect Merlin is genuine, given his academic training in Romantic languages and experience living abroad.  I could name others, especially with regard to translators of classical authors like Allen Mandlebaum.

But to my main point again, true finesse at literary translation requires consummate sensitivity to language as an almost organic entity with a life of its own.  Imagine the mountain a translator must climb to translate authors like Proust or Borges.  And the other way, too, like rendering Joyce into Russian, while remaining faithful to his stylistic innovations.  And even with a writer like Flaubert, for whom le mot juste was the bottom line of his aesthetic approach  along with cadence, and–voila–what a formidable challenge for the translator whose skill must always be measured in proportion to her fidelity to preserve not only his narrative, but the methodology that housed it, authenticating the individuality of the genius behind it.

To do this requires a similar creative capacity in the new language, for genuine translation is really about paraphrase and not word-by-word rendering, and even more than that.  True literary translators are indeed artists in their own right as guardians of their sacred texts, granting admittance only upon maximum surveillance.

In this, we’re a long ways from the increasing vogue for cut and paste technologies that give you an instant read-out of a foreign text.  Their fault lies in their absence of the human factor behind language use, with stilted language and sometimes absurd concoctions reminding us of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock with his “No, that’s not what I meant at all.” When it comes to literary translation, it may give you sense, but not the artistry of the source text.

In all of this, what boggles my mind is the talent required to translate well, compounded by the translator’s frequent absence from general regard even among our leading publishers who are likely to conflate translation with narrative, omitting the authorial presence that gave it birth.

By the way,  a good read into the exigencies of literary method is Edith Grossman‘s Why Translation Matters.  A renowned Cervantes translator,  she reminds us that “the grand goal of the translator” is to have “the readers perceive the text emotionally and artistically in a manner that parallels and corresponds to the esthetic experience of its first readers.”

In sum, the challenges are many for the dedicated translator and the payoff generally not financial but in a job well done.  Not a bad goal for any profession

Do good. Be well!

rj

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Love as a many splendored thing

Recently one of America’s favorite singers, Rihanna, reconciled with her on and off again boyfriend, Chris Brown.  You’ll remember he had beaten her up several months earlier.

In a similar vein, about a year ago I got to know a girl in her early twenties who complained of her uneasy, abusive relationship with her boyfriend. While she didn’t tell us of any violence, she made it clear she was undergoing daily verbal abuse.  All of us, puzzled by the dynamics, wondered why she didn’t bang the door shut on the guy.

When it comes to this kind of thing,  I can be pretty sensitive.  My mother, after all,  endured an abusive relationship with my father across the years that sometimes included violence.

The poet Sylvia Plath, shortly before her suicide,  wrote famously of the masochism underlying such manacled couples as “a love of the rack and the screw.”  As a professor who taught this poem for many years, I take it she had in mind the role of culture in nurturing feminine subservience in a patriarchal world, the “for better or worse” syndrome of  the traditional marriage vow.   Women, however, were the only ones taking it seriously, as may still be the case.

But I think Plath’s conclusion errs in its reductionism.  In those days, few women had access to employment and thus independence.  And then there is evolution’s maternal instinct that still kicks-in, the children to be protected at all costs.

Today’s scene, however, is vastly different and still changing as women have secured options earlier women perhaps never thought about, since they were precluded possibilities.  And yet a good many women, and some men, still cling to demeaning liaisons.

The truth is that many relationships should never have had their genesis.   We live in a culture that dilutes love by conceiving it falsely, with our movies, harlequin novels, and music playing out the theme of lovers “as the luckiest people in the world.”

Romantic love, or ”being in love,” has a fixity about it, a must have it now and abundantly; a possessiveness centered in emotional absolutes.  Root bound, it cannot grow and lacks a future.   At best, it turns habit.

“Loving,”  on the other hand, is like a fine vintage that gets better with the years.  Here lies the advantage of postponing life choices until the grapes are ready.  I was raised in a world that told me that first love was true love.  This may be so for some, but I think not for many.

Unfortunately, a good many relationships pose a latent psychological component, or dread, that the late psychiatrist Reuven Bar-Levan nailed down persuasively when he wrote that “what holds people in destructive  and humiliating ’love’ relationships, and what makes them plead and even beg to be ’loved,’ is extreme fear of abandonment.  The force of this fear is so great that people degrade and humiliate themselves to avoid it”  (Thinking in the Shadow of Feelings, p. 145).

This dread, overwhelming and prevalent, primarily traces back to our parents and whether they succeeded in making ourselves feel lovable.  When missing, it pursues us, like a shadow, all of our life and through mistrust we prove quite capable of driving genuine love away in wanting rather than giving, demanding and not allowing.

Again, authentic love lacks stasis or rigidity.  As such, it maturates and transcends love’s vicissitudes because, with time, it grows in wisdom, acknowledging flux in all relationships, and allows even for exits, since loving abounds in the context of freedom, or ability to sometimes let go.  Genuine love has its ending ultimately in our mortality if from nothing else; but whatever its source, its loss results in sadness, not fear or anger.  Free from fear,  love thrives.

Removed from anxiety, love is, indeed, “a many splendored thing.”

When media masquerades

Following Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, the Republicans delivered the customary rebuttal, this year, featuring Senator Marco Rubio as their spokesperson.  Then came the now infamous water bottle moment, washing away not only Rubio’s thirst and whatever substantive remarks he made, but possibly notions of his fitness to seek higher office in 2016.  Mind you, I’m not a Republican, nor a Democrat either, having voted the Green Party last November.  I do, however, have a sense of fair play and I found the media’s persistent, even gleeful replay of a human moment thoroughly annoying and partisan.

I don’t know  about you, but sometimes I prefer avoiding the mass media altogether, since it frequently seems to thrive on the negative and sensational to the point of hinting at animosity, or an underbelly of petty meanness analogous to an undercurrent of daily life manifesting itself in the personality that enjoys another’s fall, the venom of daily gossip with fondness for spilling confidences, speculation, insinuation, ridicule and invasion of privacy or creeping over every fence and peering into every window. Its dynamics, whether public or private, are worth exploring, since they have a human origin. The media likewise strays when it embraces advocacy journalism driven by concealed biases or panders to special interest groups or omits asking the right questions.

Like many of you, Karen and I have recently caught-up with Downton Abbey, TV’s highbrow soap opera that has hooked millions in Britain and America (second in viewers to this year’s Superbowl).  Weaving its spell through subtle intra-episode suspense played out in a facsimile of Edwardian elegance contesting with working class aspirations, its characters, all of them, major or minor, are remarkably chiseled into a sharpened relief, foregrounding their composite individuality, and avoiding stereotype.  As with Shakespere’s Iago, insinuation rather than outright deed works its scourge among some of them. Thomas and O’Brien come to mind as primary instigators, motivated by malice, fomenting innuendo.

As such, they’re not strikingly different from an errant press.  Appropriately, one of Downton Abbey’s other candidates for “dishonorable mention” is Sir Richard Carlisle, hard-ball, newspaper mogul who thrives on scandalizing adversaries, influence peddling, and unbridled intimidation.  He decides what makes or doesn’t make news, as his personal needs dictate.  We are not far from how real media works to manipulate opinion or affirm its biases or cast its critics into disrepute.

While I fervently believe in a free press, devotee that I am of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty), I’ve become wiser with the vintage of my years as to its capabilities for abuse as in outing a CIA operative and endangering intelligence sources in adversary nations; or of unbalanced reporting, whether by design or neglect; or of slanting the news through connotative nuance; or of a more sinister modus operandi of interpretive journalism pursuing an a priori agenda of prejudices.

I wish I had time and space to write more fully on the press, both as to its assets and liabilities; but suffice it to say, there lies a latent psychology underlying its behavior, since it’s so human in its making.  Putting ourselves on the alert, we diminish its power to manipulate us.

Be well,

rj

The folly of being in control

Often life can unexpectedly catch us in a high wave and we lose our balance and may even go down.  Not liking this, we try to lasso life’s randomness through structure or control and spare ourselves surprise.  Though this may help some, it doesn’t always work and, oddly, may even work against us when control assumes our identity.

Some of us are more prone to controlling than others, having been forced out of our nest early to look after ourselves.  I think of children of alcoholics, for example, who must not only escape, but prevent betrayal reoccurring.

Control is a ritual to relieve mistrust and smooth out the winkles.  All of us resort to defense modes from time to time to cope with an often aggressive landscape of human ignominy and nature’s caprice. There exists, too, an existential dread in us, or sense of our impotency against life’s vagaries, resonating vulnerability and whispering our mortality.

But to live this way daily filters life’s joy and shrinks life to a prison cell.  While we need to be wary, we should drop the reins when control becomes its own end and we become its prisoner and it hurts more than it helps.  Control, at its extreme, masks a latent masochism or inverted narcissism that feeds upon its wounds.

We cannot know what each day brings, nor always preempt its events, but changing our thoughts can help ransom our freedom in a world where the surety remains that flowers do bloom and there are people worth loving who will love us.  Experience affirms that we find love only when we extend  our hand to grasp the extended warm fingers of those around us.

I can’t say just how we find the switch that turns on life, nor assure its recompense when we do; but I know that abundant living begins with a giving of ourselves, and not withdrawing and yields release from the confines of our fears.

In sum, we become our choices and when we commit we find life gives back.  William James, one of America’s foremost early psychologists, said it very well:  “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings by changing the inner attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

How do we do that?  It begins with realizing the futility of our attempts to impose order on life, for life has a way of happening.  What matters is living in the Now, one day at a time, one step at a time, finding joy in each other, delight in the canopy of the stars, and the promise of every new day.

–rj

Trust me!

Wingswept FarmKentucky
Wingswept Farm (Kentucky)

I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”     –Frederick Nietzsche 

Karen and I were recently visiting our friends’ new horse farm when I spotted a mare and her two young saddlebred foal companions (see photo) and decided I’d saunter over and say hello.  Just wished I’d had some peppermints along.  I started with the mare and took her stillness beneath my hand as consent.  Of course, the foals wanted in on the action, too, though each time I’d reach out, ever so slowly, they’d flinch. In short, they hadn’t yet learned to trust, at least with regards to me. Trust, after all, is one of those life staples you must earn.

In our human world we can be skittish, too, when it comes to trust, especially if memories linger in us of its betrayal as in a broken promise, lying, infidelity, irresponsibility, abandonment and, alas for children, poor parenting.  It’s hard finding an antonym for trust, but deceit comes to mind.  For the great Italian poet Dante, it was the worst of human short comings and he classified its several types into betrayal of family, friends, and nation.

I wish I could say trust has the numbers, or upper hand, when it comes to humans, but I know better and so do many of you, and so I treasure it when, serendipity, I stumble on it.  Being from New England and growing-up along its coast, I think then of lighthouses, rock solid, faithful sentries shredding the darkness with their rotating beams of pulsating light.

I’ve always held the acute test of trust lies in the context of anonymity, or when we think no one’s watching.  If someone runs stop signs, they probably take other short cuts from honor as well, making up their own rules that serve their interests.  Deceit, if you will, is uppermost rooted in narcism, or satiating ourselves, damn our fellows.

Deceit or fraud gets frequently collectivized in power and money conclaves, with near daily sightings of their misdeeds in government and banking. The aftermath, of course, is the bruising recession fallout for the rest of us, instigated by CEO greed and spendthrift bureaucrats that jeopardizes our future.

I hurt when trust gets violated by manipulative charlatans.  I want to believe the ad tells the truth or a doctor’s new book isn’t a facade for making money or that my local car dealer is giving me the best deal.  I want to believe that my friend will keep his word, that my life partner will always love me and my children live honorably.

If love is life’s consummate grace, without trust it will prove tenuous, or like a house built upon the sand, succumb to time’s erosion.  Love may be life’s elixir, but to be trusted may be even better.

Idealist that I am, I want to believe, not doubt; to embrace, not shun.  Like the young foals, I don’t really want to flinch.

Anxiety is not a mental illness: reflections on psychiatry’s abuse

300px-Cover_of_Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_DisordersWell, that’s finally settled!  After months of vociferous debate the American Psychiatric Association has given its blessing to a revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical  Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5th edition), often called the Bible of psychiatric diagnosis.   A vital tool, it facilitates psychiatrists being on the same page.

Unfortunately, the DSM has often been fraught with opinion-based labeling, at times approaching the trendy and political, rather than drawing from established empirical data.  Casting a wide net, it can conceivably draw in most of us.  The inherent danger of psychiatry has always been its penchant for finding motive and making faulty inferences.  It loves labeling.

I’m reminded of a humorous rendition of this syndrome.  Two psychiatrists are talking to each other when a third party passes through the room and says, “Good morning!”  One of the psychiatrists then looks at the other and exclaims, “I wonder what he meant by that.”

Among some of the controversial changes in the revised DSM are the relegating of Asperger’s Syndrome to the expansive canopy of “autism spectrum disorder” (ASD). (No more Asperger Syndrome label.)

It also includes grief as a  clinical disorder, or variant of depression.   Many of us will find this a tough sell.

Better not be into loading-up on newspaper clippings, old photos (baseball cards?).  Hoarding, whatever that is, can get you into the psychiatric liturgy.

Ironically, sexual addiction gets left out.  Go figure!

Labeling is dangerous for its dead-end, stigmatizing write-offs.  An educator, I’m aware of the short-circuiting of a student’s potential when an impatient, frustrated teacher simply writes him or her off as essentially unable to learn.

Psychiatry needs to get at causes, not symptoms, often social (e.g., poverty, prejudice, abuse, etc.), and rely less on medication to address supposedly faulty neurotransmitters.  Increasingly, research has shown that much of the reported success of SSRIs and the like is mere placebo effect.

Lowering the threshold for DSM inclusion becomes reminiscent of the Pharisees with their penchant for jot and tittle inclusion or the sometimes purist application of Sharia law.

Next time you worry about something be careful not to share it with anyone, at least with a psychologist or psychiatrist.  Though anxiety per se is a fact of daily life and hardly rates as mental illness, count on it to land you a high rung in the DSM.

–rj

Who am I? Reflections on being an Introvert

Isabel Briggs Meyers
Isabel Briggs Meyers

Mary takes her lunch alone, sitting on a bench.

Johnnie stays in his room, reading as his friends go off to play.

Susie likes to sew by the hours.

Neil is glad the party got cancelled.

I’ve always been interested in personality dynamics, or the way we interact with others,  our environment, and even ourselves.  Then I came across Carl Jung’s notion of two selves resident in all of us: one Extravert; the other, Introvert.

Unfortunately, psychology often goes astray, treating one dynamic as sum total, when both exist in perpetual tension, though one will prove primary. Think of it in terms of being left or right-handed.  We’re born with a tendency, or preference, to use one hand over the other.  While we use both hands throughout the day, that preference reveals itself when we take to writing our signature.  If you’re right-handed, try writing your signature with your left hand, or vice versa.

It was Katherine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Meyers, however, who provided popular access to Jung’s personality archetypes, or modes, and built upon them through the eponymous inventory they developed.  Its advantage lies in its facility for speed, simplicity and scope in identifying sixteen distinct personality types.  The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is now routinely used universally, taking-on adjunct status in the business world as a screening tool for new employees or setting up work teams, etc.

The test measures four basic components comprising a personality type (see Tieger and Tieger, The Art of Speed Reading People [1998]):

1.    How we’re energized:  (E) Extraversion ——(I) Introversion

2.   How we access information:  (S) Sensing ——-(N)  Intuition

3.   How we make decisions:  (T) Thinking——(F)  Feeling

4.   How we organize our world:  (J) Judging——(P)  Perceiving

I remember taking the MBPI years ago and how accurate, despite its brevity, it turned out.  It was me!  INFP.  Like your fingerprints, it’s your fixed id when it comes down to what makes you tick. While you can’t put the MBPI under a microscope, we know empirically that it functions well in assessing personality dynamics.  It may even help you to better understand and relate to those around you or even to avoid relationships fraught with potential personality conflict.

What I’d like to do here has simply to do with Introversion, the canopy I come under, though I’ll also contrast it with Extraversion.

Introversion trademarks:  less talkative, more reserved; thinks first, then talks; slower, more precise conversation quietly delivered; focused; doesn’t mind being alone at times; shuns spotlight; cautious;  sequential in conversation, providing transitioning.

These traits are in marked contrast to those of the Extravert:

Extraversion trademarks:  noisy, enthusiastic;  talkative; thinks aloud; desultory  in  conversation; easily distracted; enjoys attention; impulsive; interrupts or finishes sentences.

In my school days I daily envied the football players who seemed always to hold their place in the sun, the focus of school assemblies, and loved by girls.  Older folks would tell me to enjoy this time as best ever, though I couldn’t fathom why.  Tall, gangly, pimple spattered and timid, I found shyness got me nowhere, except I compensated some through academics.

I can’t say life beyond high school made it any easier in a world enthralled with high profile athletes, movie stars, TV celebs,  charismatic politicians and other People Magazine types.

On the other hand,  I’ve found fellow soft-voiced Introverts with their reserve a relief to be around.  They tend not to dominate a conversation, or have need to gesticulate with their hands, or interrupt you at nearly every turn, or to stray in their attention.  There’s often a sincerity to them that one finds frequently missing with all-talk Extraverts.

Introverts are linear in their preferences. They shun the desultory, preferring to exhaust the topic before moving to the next and keep a steady gaze, unlike the perfidious Extraverts with their disconcerting, wandering eyes.

Extraverts draw strength by the numbers they keep.  They love Facebook and accumulating long lists of friends for validation.  They prefer doing over thinking, flamboyance rather than simplicity, the latest fashion, the flashy car, loud colors.  Introverts, not liking the spotlight, prefer simpler amenities, say a Prius over a Lexus; subdued colors, a less frenetic music.

Introverts are often strong people, able to find a pathway away from the crowd,  confident in their values while avoiding arrogance.  Revolution and social change begin most always with the Introverts, whom the Extraverts eventually follow.

Sometimes you can distinguish the two entities by way of the hobbies they keep.  If you like gardening or fishing,  reading or chess, sports like tennis or golf, you’re more likely to be an Introvert.  On the other hand, if you’re into team sports like softball, or enjoy card playing, or participating frequently in social networks, then it’s likely you’re an Extravert.

Extraverts and Introverts can be found across the job spectrum, so that generalizations can be faulty as to which occupations allure them.  Introverts, however, with their preference for fewer numbers, quieter spaces, and focused challenges, are often found in endeavors associated with medicine, college teaching, libraries, accounting, and computers.  On the other hand, Extraverts perhaps find greater contentment in occupations such as entertainment, marketing,  and public relations.

Introverts, as proponents of the inner life of the imagination, are often the Artisans, whether in painting, music or literature.  Extraverts, in their need for people, make for great actors.  We need both:  the Introvert to teach us to reflect; the Extravert, to make us laugh; the Introvert to broaden our horizons; the Extravert to make us feel good about ourselves.

But back to Introverts, per se, since this is my primary focus here.  We Introverts needn’t deem ourselves second-class citizenry in a gregarious world or be overwhelmed by the social pressures exerted on us in such a world.  I would even wager that overall we’re a happy, well-adjusted bunch, at peace with ourselves and proud of our contributions to making a better world.  I always remember that Steve Jobs was one of us.

Do well.  Be well!

–rj

Reflections on the psychology of lying

LanceArmstrong_620_011513I’ve always found it hard to understand how there are people who can look you in the eyes, never blink, and spin the biggest lie.  Of all the kinds of deceit, lying is probably its most common form.  My mind boggles at some of the big names across the years, not surprisingly, political:  Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; Washington mayor Marion Barry; and then there’s Bill Clinton (“I did not have sex with that woman”).

Lately, icons from the sports world have swollen their numbers, though like most liars, they’re often teflon coated when it comes to making the allegations stick. Think Bonds, Clemens, McGuire.  And now there’s Lance Armstrong and a confession–of a sort.

I probably don’t need to tell you that lying is also endemic to the business community.  It’s estimated that the average consumer is exposed to up to 200 lies daily via advertising.

But let’s not be self-righteous.  The truth is we all lie, so maybe our outrage is simply projection rather than seeing ourselves in the mirror.  Psychology Today (May 1, 1997) cites the 1996 study of lying  by University of Virginia psychologist Bella DePaulo, who found “most people lie once or twice a day.”

Lying sometimes comes with the territory, say law, politics, car sales.

Sometimes it may even seem the moral thing to do. Should a doctor tell every terminal patient his/her prognosis?

Sometimes lying may seem the only way to avoid being punished for telling the truth.  Should you tell your boss you were late because you got stuck in traffic rather than the truth you overslept?

Sometimes it may be wiser to tell your wife you like her new dress or hair-do than blurt out, “What were you thinking?

From another vantage point, lying can often be viewed as an ego prop for those with low self-esteem to boost themselves in the eyes of their beholders. The bigger the fish story, the better the payoff in admiration.

Lying is generally motivated by a desire to achieve a goal or to avoid responsibility for a behavior, e.g., overspending, drug addiction, etc.. There is, however, the  compulsive liar who does so inversely related to any goal.  Such behavior hints at a pyschiatric disorder, requiring treatment.  This also gets us into the criminal mind of the sociopath who can lie and even kill without remorse.  I think of Susan Smith (1994) who drowned her children, but initially claimed a black man had done it.

While granting that lying is an intrinsic human behavior, I still draw the line between the Lance Armstrongs who lie to mask their wrongdoing such as wholesale cheating or abuse of power and everyday Johns and Janes who lie to cover their embarrassment, or to prevent friction, or to opt for kindness.

What really arouses my disgust is when these self-serving schemers repeat their lies endlessly.  We had a decade of this in Armstrong’s case.

Ironically, we often reward our consummate liars. Though they didn’t make it into baseball’s Hall of Fame this year, Bonds and Clemens were candidates and drew over a third of the votes.  We also have two recently elected senators, one of whom falsely claimed service in Vietnam repeatedly; the other, to claims of Native American ancestry, presumably to take advantage of affirmative action. In reality, those who vote for such people share the same bottomline rationale of the end justifies the means.

The worst lies, the ones that grieve us and erode our trust, occur when we’re deceived by those we’ve invested our emotions in most, our family and friends. The medieval poet Dante assigned such people to hell’s deepest circle in The Inferno to keep company with the likes of Judas.

Liars are hard to detect because they ape sincerity, empowering their ability to manipulate the rest of us who want deeply to believe we’re being told the truth. This is why polygraphs aren’t always accurate, as they can’t readily filter out the feigner of sincerity.

Some have written in depth on the refined art of lying and strategies for its detection, the best of these being Paul Ekman’s classic 2009 book, Telling Lies:  Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage.  You’ll find his take on body language fascinating, although I’m dubious about this since body language can also be feigned.   Nonetheless, as an expert on emotions, he brings the closest thing to science on the subject, though he confesses the frequent difficulty, even then, of spotting the skilled liar.  Our best defense, in my own view, borrows from Reagan’s maxim:  “Trust and verify.”

We do know we resent people like Lance Armstrong, perhaps because he and others remind us of our own vulnerability to manipulation and the hurt we’ve experienced when our trust is violated

Finding joy

gigglingWhile joy is fundamental to our living life well, many of us can’t fully enter into it, given the stress of daily living.  It’s just plain hard to have joy when you’re out of work, ill, or facing problems in a relationship.  Each of us has his own stresses.  Often, however, perspective is everything, especially when you consider what others around you suffer.  I was reminded the other day of this while watching a 60 Minutes segment featuring a paraplegic woman completely dependent on loved ones for her care.  She was grateful to be part of an experiment in being fitted with a mechanical arm embedded in her skull.  Clearly, she was a woman who had joy despite her circumstances.

It’s important for all of us to look up, not down; to be grateful for what we have and each new day; in short, to think good thoughts, or as Buddha put it long ago, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.  When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Below I’ve listed several ways of finding joy, and I know you can add your own:

Friends:  You don’t need a lot of them and consider yourself blessed if you have that one good person in your life who listens, counsels wisely, and finds time for you.  Friendship is a two-way street, but when it’s on, wow, what a difference to find you’re not alone.

Family:  Throughout the years I’ve been close to my siblings, keeping in-touch despite the miles through letters, phone calls and occasional visits.  Families can be sources of stress, too, but when they function well, they’re our refuge in a turbulent world.  My greatest joy is my wife and daughter, my allies day in, day out.

Simplicity:  Joy is independent of money.  What matters is abundant living, or investing in those aspects that enhance being rather than possession. It’s giving priority to your needs, not your wants.  A 1500 square foot house may be less than what others opt for, but if it suffices, then go for it.  Addiction often keeps company with materialism, fed by a need to be validated, and so what we have is never quite enough.

Volunteering:  Helping others puts you on the fast track to finding joy.  And there is so much need.  The ethicist philosopher Peter Singer contends that if all of us gave just 5 % of our income to helping the poor or wiping out disease and the like we’d create a much better world.  If we matched our donations with just 3 or 4 hours of our weekly time, we’d move the goal posts still nearer and more quickly.

Awareness:  The French writer, Gustave Flaubert, made a comment I’ve never forgotten:  “Anything observed closely enough becomes interesting.”  Now you can have fun with this idea. Take out a sheet of paper, for example, and brainstorm all the delights you can come up with in association with little children. In addition to their innocent honesty, inquisitiveness, and trust, I think with fondness of their giggling, say when watching a puppet show.   Cultivate awareness.  Keep a journal.  Record your joy at seeing a pink tapestry sunset, first daffodils in bloom, the symphony of an early summer morning chorus of cardinals.  Look closely and in every nook.  Joy can be found in surprising ways, if were ready for it.

Focusing on the present:  Some folks find it difficult to free themselves from their past.  This, of course, helps psychologists feed their families.  We need to bury our dead–our resentments and regrets, follies and failures.  Some reach for the future to relieve themselves from the weight of the present. The truth is that the present writes our future.  We should live each day as though it were our last, thinking positively and doing well.  A day well spent is a day that gives joy.  Each day is an act of grace, an opportunity to begin again.

Reality thinking:  You’re unlikely to see this item among sources for joy, but I include it here as fundamental to all human happiness as joy can prove to be a double-edged sword.  Life is replete with loss, whether of our children moving far away, the loss of our mate, or of friends across the years. The price of joy is that it derives from what we ultimately forfeit, for sorrow slumbers in the same bed.  Knowing this should heighten our joy in what tomorrow may take away.

–rj

Global warming and its mockers, scoffers and deniers

Courtesy:yahoo.news: Destroyed home in Dunalley, Tasmania
Courtesy:yahoo.news: Destroyed home in Dunalley, Tasmania

I ran into a man in recent years, educated and professionally accomplished, who didn’t like a lot of my observations and beliefs. They were too liberal and sometimes he’d laugh or scoff.  It so happens that I believe in such things as  a woman’s right to sovereignty over her body, a more just system of taxation, dignity of death legislation, universal health care, gay rights, the priority of green living through simplicity, alternative energy, recycling and vegetarianism.  I voted the Green Party in the recent election.

The last time we conversed, more than a year ago, he admitted to global warming, but thought of it as cyclic rather  than human in origin. That’s ok with me, at least as far as a person’s right to a belief or opinion.  However, I’ve often found a lack of fair exchange when it comes to beliefs like my own, perhaps because I live in conservative Kentucky or no longer have daily access to a university campus where my views often enjoy majority status and poetry is still admired.  Perhaps views like mine simply make people feel uncomfortable with their resonance of gloom and doom, though I counter that acknowledging a problem begins its solution.

But let me confine myself to global warming at the moment. I find the facts are in:  It’s horribly real and its effects are happening universally and exponentially faster than many of our experts had projected.  Our hurricanes occur more frequently and grow more menacing; floods and drought devour our landscape.  In Europe, a prolonged heat wave this past year killed hundreds.  Storms of the century are now decade-ravages, with Katrina and Sandy coming to mind. Meanwhile, the accelerating polar meltdown threatens methane release, a component that exceeds carbon as a dangerous contributor to global warming. Sea tides are rising and coastal cities like New York have begun drawing-up contingency plans.

For another example of what’s going on, there is the current tragedy of bushfires in Tasmania, the result of prolonged drought, high temperatures, and persistent wind gusts.  As I write, 65-homes have been lost, hundreds displaced, and 110 squared miles of land scorched.  In its proximity to  a warming Antarctica, Australia is fast taking on the prototype of our global future, compounded by the increasing impotency of our technology to cope.

Southwest Australia, in particular, knows the scenario of diminished rainfall all too well.  Famed for its vineyards abetted by rich soil and ample rainfall, the region has experienced a 15% drop-off in rainfall since 1975.  Wheat, another regional staple, has been devastated, as seen in the current deluge of impoverished farmers.  Meanwhile, the metropolis city of Perth has seen a 50% decline in its surface water supply since 1975.  Sydney in eastern Australia, may face an even greater crisis if drought continues, despite having some of the world’s largest water reserves (Tim Flannery. The Weather Makers, pp. 127-129; 131).

Climate change does, however, have its ardent critics, so my ethics demand fair play.  In a recent Forbes article, Larry Bell, who comments frequently on climate and energy issues for the magazine, contends that “while most acknowledge that greenhouse warming may be a contributing factor, it is also true that a great many very informed scientists believe that any human contributions to that influence are negligible, undetectable and thereby grossly exaggerated by alarmists, while far more important climate drivers (both for warming and cooling) are virtually ignored.  Particularly consequential among these are long-and short-term effects of ocean cycles along with changes in solar activity” (“Global Warming Alarmism”).

Thank you, Larry, for just the right cough syrup for what ails us.  You wrote your article on May 28, 2012, and say at the very beginning that “global temperatures have been pretty flat despite rising CO2 levels since the big 1998 El Niño ….”. Are you not aware that we can track resilient CO2 particles over the centuries and it demonstrates a rise from 645 gigatons (billion tons) of CO2 prior to the Industrial Revolution, or 1800, to our approximate 869 gigatons currently?  I’m sufficiently aware that association doesn’t confer causality, but it should caution skeptics to reassess.  By the way, half of our present annual CO2 derives from burning fossil fuels.  God only knows the fate of our planet with world population continuing to rise and more coal-fire plants and more cars in the works.

Critics needn’t belly ache about alarmists.  They’ve got inertia on their side.  It’s near impossible, for example, to get rid of plastic bags in our stores, given corporate interests and the abstract nature of a threat seen more theoretical and distant, and thus problematical, by many consumers.  Besides, it’s just damn inconvenient to our comfort zone to change our ways. In a time of budget crisis, government is no help, deferring to present needs while defaulting on our children’s future, reminiscent of its widespread underfunding of pensions for future retirees.

Meanwhile, this just in from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA):

2012 was the warmest year ever recorded in the U. S., and second only to 1998 in the agency’s “extreme” weather listing.

It was also the driest year on record with an average rainfall of 26.57 inches, or 2.57 inches below normal.  Wildfires destroyed more than 9.2 million acres, the third highest number in our history.

Worldwide, it’s much the same.  According to World Meteorological Organizational Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, “The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records.”

As I conclude my post, fire has also swept across large portions of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, destroying forests, pastures and flocks along with many homes.  It’s summer down under, and like here, temperatures are at record highs.

–rj