The Main Cause of Major Depression

Nearly everything I write about perceptual framing (here are all postings so labeled, in reverse chronological order) sheds light on depression (here are depression postings), though I haven't always connected the two directly.

What Depression Is
Depression is the ultimate result of frozen perspective; of the inability (really, the unwillingness) to reframe. You forgot you've been holding the remote control in your hand all along.

Frozen perspective is a kind of obsession. This unwavering mental lock-in is highly useful if you're composing a symphony or concocting a scientific hypothesis. But if you freeze into an unwavering outlook without any intention of producing a tangible end result - some sort of tangible creative output - that's depression.

The content of this obsession is just some indulgent scrap of mental drama, e.g. "Why must I die?"; "Why are people so cruel?"; "Why don't I ever get what I deserve?"; or "Why does everything suck so much?" You obsess, lavishing in the unceasing rumination until it becomes the more captivating universe - as this one fades to a distant shadow.

The same mechanism is used to generate great art: deep attention, total immersion, obsession. But depression is a misdirection of the creativity machinery toward malignant mental fluff without an exit strategy. You're not "working on something", you're just going through the motions of working; endlessly flicking your lighter knowing no flame will appear. Soon you've forgotten that it started with mere mental whimsy.

If you kindle this process stubbornly enough for long enough, you will develop and inhabit a separate internal universe...while your lights go out in this one (it's often confused with "sadness" or a lack of energy, but depressed people are fabulously energetic; they're spilling massive energy into a deep dark pit). Creative people, with their deep and tenacious immersion skills, are much more commonly afflicted. Depression may be thought of as a perversion of useful creative faculties.

I've already covered much of this here (it's essential to read that before reading on). This time, I'll zoom away from the mechanics of perspective to look squarely at the mental content. We humans are so naive about framing, depression - everything going on with our minds beyond rote calculation and recall - that we've failed to recognize the most common cause of major depression - the kind that grips for years.


The Impasse
We all have ridiculously heroic self-images. If you don't recognize that you do this, you surely have noticed it in others. Hardly anyone sees themselves as just some person, however modestly they present themselves (I've found, to my surprise, that quiet, unassertive folks often harbor the most titanic self-images). And, of course, none of us is as studly, magnificent, and Essentially Good as our inner narrative would have it.

The Big Problem is that, over time, contrary evidence builds. The world has a way of rubbing our noses in our non-studliness, unmagnificence, and not-so-goodness.

If you're reasonably intelligent you can't easily disregard this mounting evidence. Unless you're completely cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs, you can't deny or rationalize your way through it. It’s very hard to go a full 80 years without hitting the brick wall of reality re: who you actually are. So a huge segment of the population lives with a mounting internal conflict between the hero they imagine themselves to be and the run-of-the-mill shmuck the world mercilessly reveals.

That there is The Problem.


Options, We Got Options!
When evidence contradicts lofty self-image, and it gets increasingly hard to ignore, you have three options:

1. Shut Down
The truth is fundamentally unacceptable. I've spotted the approaching checkmate, and I don't wanna play anymore. Fuck y'all, I'm out of here (perhaps figuratively - via depression and/or addiction - or perhaps literally).

2. Anxiety
Fueled by existential fear, you muster your remaining energy reserves and you lash out. You scream and strive and slash and flail and holler and fight, turning it all up to "11". The gloves come off and you behave with shameless, remorseless selfishness - whatever it takes to put points on the board to prove, in cold hard stats (e.g. your bank account, your houses, your hot spouse, your kill list, and, most of all, praise or attention of any sort, no matter how fake and cheesy) that you're NO SHMUCK. You all are the shmucks! Not me!

This is not an irrational strategy, and it will immunize you from depression, but only at great cost. You will damage your world and your loved ones (aka victims). And the inner cost is high, as well. You’ll live in endless anxiety from the impossible task of sating infinite insatiability - of filling the bottomless hole where your soul once resided. Let’s call this the "Very Stable Genius" option.

3. Acceptance
Sanity! But also peril. More on this in a minute.


Acknowledging the Unacknowledgeable
Even if you're one of the few who recognize that you absurdly inflate your self-image, it's not something you feel in your bones every moment. It's a quirky foible you'll laughingly concede under the bright light of conscious thought, but it otherwise remains, unresolved, in the dim back room of your unconscious. So once depression has you in its clutches, you won't remember to look there for the reason. One of the most pernicious aspects is blindness toward the basis.

“Oh, I get it!” no one in history ever gushed; “I’m an egotist who's gradually been made aware of his un-specialness, and has shut down rather than accept the unacceptable truth that’s become starkly obvious: I'm actually just some ordinary shmuck!"

Yeah, no.

Instead, body and mind gradually grind down to a whimpering malaise, plunging you into a fog of bottomless misery, all stemming from the steadfast refusal to really see - much less recognize, much less admit - this incontrovertible-but-unacceptable truth. Having derailed your train to avoid a certain patch of track, you are unlikely to head there for a picnic, snapping photos and giggling at your silliness. It remains your psychic no mans land.

And that’s why no Slog reader will recognize her/himself in this, except perhaps in an intellectual, arms-length, cartoonish way, sidestepping gut-level recognition. You may acknowledge that others are caught in this mental trap, but it’s easy to neglect the Slog Mantra: spotting delusion doesn't mean you're sane; it just means you're observant.


Stuck and Bewildered
When the self-chronicle of your life drama hits this intolerable snag - you’re actually not the person you assumed you were - you could simply shift the narrative. In the words of my GPS, you'd RECALCULATE. Easy peasy if you're cognizant of your reframing latitude. You’d immediately embrace it, or self-forgive, or learn/change/grow, or behave better, or meditate, or relax into a less fervid strategy in the game of life. Or, best of all, mature into a recognition that you’re not the protagonist, and never have been.

But depressives have lost all cognizance of their innate ability to shift. It's like a constitutional crisis of the mind. With no viable way out, attention freezes and you live there, not here. One's creativity percolates a vast inventory of grim thoughts until a gristly full-blown world arises from within ("internal towers of brooding discontent" as I put it here).

You're likely to resort to excessive drugs, alcohol, sex, work, etc., to dull and distract yourself from broaching the unthinkable pain point (I’VE NEVER BEEN THE HERO IN THIS FILM). But even sober, it’s maddening how you can't quite make out the eye of the mental hurricane. Hey, how would you, after building worlds to avoid it?

Of course, this particular impasse is not the only basis for depression. Myriad obsessive loops, detours, and avoidances can spark and feed the condition. But this one's the biggie; the one that steals years and never completely ceases pulling, however far you've managed to drag yourself from its tightest grasp.


An Aristocratic Perq
Depression was never as widespread as it is now. Living outside the current First World, like 99.999% of historical humanity, you’d have been occupied with labor and/or peril all day, every day. Up until a couple generations ago, a lion might have eaten your kid at any moment, or an infected paper cut could have killed you. Oh, and the local landlord/warlord would like to rape your wife tonight, so pencil that in! There was no time to obsess over mental constructs or to cultivate heroic self-images. The world reframed our perspective for us unceasingly, like a perpetual rollercoaster ride.

The depression epidemic stems from the whimsically horrific mental conflict available only to those privileged with the spare time, energy, and attention to willfully and dementedly self-frame their dramatic narrative, aka Rich People's Problems (here’s why we do this).


The Third Option: Acceptance
Most people choose to shut down into depression and/or addiction, or to ramp up into anxiety. The move almost no one chooses is to fully recognize, embrace, and own one's flawed shmuckiness.

This is the basis for the old Catholic "miserable sinner wretch" meme that seems so odd from a modern perspective. It indeed is very, very odd, even with the religiousness stripped away (I’ll explain why in a moment). You needn't beat yourself with whips nor don hair shirts. It's sufficient to simply recognize that you're not the hero you've imagined yourself to be. It’s a framing choice, and no framing choice is harder than any other. We enjoy infinite freedom to shift perspective. The only resistance is caked-on habit...and forgetting that we hold the remote control.

From your perspective, having tried some acceptance, life becomes a delight. You've dropped your puffy illusions about what this story is and how it needs to be and how in control you are and how much it all matters, leaving you feeling deliciously light and free. The world's a ride, not an ordeal.

But from the perspective of Option #2 people - the anxious strivers (i.e. much of the non-depressed population) - you've damned yourself needlessly and repulsively. There’s something seriously wrong with you for not recognizing the existential peril and declining to fight the hysterical fight.

And from the perspective of Option #1 people - the shut-down depressed - you have just shut down. Way more than they ever did. At least they still have their self-respect!

Amid the pity and disgust, acceptance can start to feel repulsive even for those who've experienced its soothing catharsis (and so ought to know better)! It's hard to stabilize there without powering up the old drama engine and plunging back into depression. It’s a great peril.


The Peril of Acceptance
No one warns you about this central peril of the less-traveled path. I've never seen it articulated, which is why I repeat it a lot, in different terms and contexts. Here it is again.

Once you recover, even just a little bit, from narcissism (and nearly everyone's narcissistic, especially those who make a grand show of their selflessness), the initial burst of relief can be swiftly followed by a strong impulse to dramatize the un-dramatization. If you let yourself be caught up by that impulse, you'll go all the way back to square one, facing major depression. It's a loop.

In a posting titled "Two Points of Spiritual Progress", I wrote:

#1 (spoken in a bitter, self-pitying voice): All my hopes and dreams were just a bunch of empty drama! There's nothing to look forward to! This, right now, is as good as it's ever going to be!

#2 (spoken in a voice of bemused relief): All my hopes and dreams were just a bunch of empty drama! There's nothing to look forward to! This, right now, is as good as it's ever going to be!

It's important. Read more about this here and here.


Summary
If you manage to glimpse the impasse between self-image and Reality - and can resist blaming it on Reality - and you'd like to avoid major depression (or the alternative, haunted anxiety), the way through is easy:

1. Own your shmuckery (optional: maybe try to improve a little, just for kicks).

2. Beware of the impulse to weave this acceptance into some fresh bitter narrative, reigniting the silliness you just got done opting out of. Don't dramatize your un-dramatization! Resist the temptation and proceed unburdened, enjoying Paradise. The water's fine!

3. For bonus happiness/sanity, notice (really notice!) that what’s missing doesn’t matter.


Ironic Note
If you choose this route, you'll have an outside chance of becoming a hero after all, though it won't be any big fluffy ego thing, so you won't properly enjoy it. The first step to bona fide heroism is ditching egomaniacal delusion.


I'm working on a series of easy exercises to practice reframing (aka shifting perspective), making it easier to help yourself get un-stuck. Watch this space for more information.

NASA Tracks Asteroid - Could End Human Civilisation

In a January posting "Lunch Money and Asteroids", I suggested a thought experiment where you'd have a chat with your mid-2000s self, telling her/him that actually George W. Bush wasn't all that bad. I figured it would go poorly:

I'd suspect that your then-self would scorn you, insisting that, no, you greying idiot, Bush is The Absolute Worst (fwiw, my own then-self would have forcefully agreed). He's the devil incarnate. A blight and a scourge and a shame and an ignorant dick. One truly couldn't imagine worse.

This is how reframing works. We latch onto a framing until it's forcibly ripped from us. Getting your lunch money stolen by the school bully will no longer seem like the most traumatic possible thing once you've broken your leg playing softball, and that's instantly nothing if someone starts firing a gun, and even that becomes a mere blip when you've spotted the huge asteroid in the sky hurtling toward Earth.

Trump has broken your leg, leaving your lunch money indignation largely forgotten. So don't be a shmuck. Don't tempt the fates to send you gunfire, much less the asteroid.

And now, this. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I Drink the Wrongest Possible Coffee

I drink the wrongest possible coffee. I've been chewed out by baristas - one even snatched away my cup and insisted on starting over. Friends have made pukey face at me, questioning why they'd ever taken me seriously as a food/drink tastemaker. It's bad. Real bad.

The only reason I'm disclosing this publicly is because despite my deep shame, I suspect I may be on to something. Let's go ahead and tear the Bandaid quickly...

Here's what I do. I go to the best coffee place I can find, and order a single espresso to go, ensuring plenty of cup capacity (See? You're wincing in pain already!). I add a heaping teaspoon of sugar, and top off the cup with milk. So much milk. And that's it.

I understand the many reasons why this is disgusting and wrong and bad. The result's a couple notches on the wrong side of "lukewarm" - offering none of the kinetic jolt of a hot cup of coffee nor the refreshment of iced coffee. Just a thermally flaccid cup of mildly sweet coffee milk.

I've smeared ketchup on the steak. I've scraped the fish out of my sushi roll. I've sprinkled chili flakes on my corn flakes.

"You idiot," you might respond, "Just order a frickin' cappuccino. That's what you're doing anyway, and you'll get the benefit of delicious frothy milk. You get the kinetic jolt, whatever the fuck that is, and spare yourself the guilt of offending baristas and traumatizing friends!"

I like cappuccino. I actually like it a lot. But I'd dispute the notion that this is my ticket out of pariah status, because ordering cappuccino in the middle of the day (which is when I drink it) makes you a Philistine, bare minimum. And there's a fine line between Philistine and pariah.

Also: frothing the milk doesn't just yield hot milk. It changes the texture, the vibe, it's a whole other drink. You might say that it's a better drink, but here's something I know, in my shmucky naïveté, that you don't: how my way actually tastes. You've never tried it. Why would you have? It's the worst way to drink coffee! So you don't know! But I do! And that, reader, is why I'm writing this.

One huge advantage of my wrong way of drinking coffee is that it's the antidote to overly-roasted, overly-acidic coffee, such as, geez, I don't know, I wanna say, maybe...Starbucks? Heard of it?

There's almost nothing you can do to Starbucks coffee to mollify its signature sooty/smudgey acridity. Cappuccino masks it a bit, but it's like turning down the volume of a Sid Vicious record. The relative volume might be lower, but it's still raucous loud music. If it annoyed you before, you'll still be annoyed.

But my way balances it, even making a virtue of it. This is not the juvenile baby bottle pablum you'd imagine. The grind of the acidity/burntness contributes a pleasant dissonance within the immensity of milk (you don't get this with regular coffee). It's the only way to make Starbucks enjoyable for anyone not previously addicted to their scrapey scrape. It's like ingeniously setting a flawed gemstone to make it show its best. It's coffee jiu-jitsu

Finally, there's a consideration only a former starving musician would consider. Coffee isn't food. It provides neither calories nor nutrition. This quantity of milk is bona fide food, elevating coffee from an empty, cumulatively expensive vice. So tell me how disgusting I am as I ingest 8 grams of protein and a modest but useful 100 calorie boost - real energy to burn, as opposed to pure caffeine squeezing away at your poor besieged adrenal glands.

You can go chomp on some crappy protein bar, but I've downed delicious coffee milk with much the same nutrition for a buck less, and it keeps me awake, and it's the only way to make Starbucks taste good, and the flavor - which you've never experienced despite your superior sniggering - offers a pleasant dissonant grind within a balanced context, like beer. People like beer. Maybe you don't. Maybe you only drink straight vodka, 'cuz beer's too disgustingly dilute and your body has chemical needs. Mommy needs her medicine.

Also: I can slurp it down at any pace that suits. I won't burn myself nor brain-freeze myself. It makes itself generously available. Hell, it even quenches thirst. Can your straight espresso shot do that?

So...whose coffee's wrong again?


I do have a latte counterargument. Don't think I don't. But I can't ask you to read more than 750 words on this.

Another Juicy Apple Bargain

So Apple is down 16% from its recent high. Corona virus is a legitimate economic factor that will absolutely affect its bottom line (Apple stores are already low on iPhone batteries). The stock price must crater. A company can't face tangible adversity and not have its price go down.

So what's the chance it never recovers to $327? The corona virus will eventually abate, and, all things being equal, Apple will return to printing money and dominating the market. But of course all things aren't always equal. Any number of freak things might prevent Apple from ever regaining its former position. $275 may turn out to be its new cap; it may never rise from here. In fact, it may finally settle, permanently, a bit lower.

If so, and if you'd bought shares now, you'd fail to profit. Perhaps lose a little. Disappointing, but certainly not a disaster scenario. It's also unlikely. Most likely is you'd make an easy 16% on your money if you're patient to wait for the nearly inevitable recovery. And 16% is great! Try finding a non-speculative pathway to an easy (if not certain) 16% gain! Try finding one with as little downside risk as this!

Complicating things, you won't want to sell for a year (to avoid high capital gains taxes) and it could recover and then fall yet again by then. So timing's uncertain. But, either way, your most likely risk - which, again, is unlikely - is failure to profit. That's not much risk.

But what's the risk that from here the company tanks into toastville, never ever recovering, and rendering your investment worthless? Very, very low, as explained here. This would be the bad outcome, and it's vanishingly unlikely. You're betting on a blue-chip stock, the most profitable company that's ever existed, with over $200 billion-with-a-"b" cash on hand. Some nest egg!

I can't imagine why a person wouldn't buy here. I will, and will buy more if it drops further. And I will be patient. After all, I won't need recovery for at least 12 months! And if corona virus drives it lower, well, that just sweetens the deal for buying more.


I may wait a couple days to see whether it dips much lower, but my greed will likely force me to pay more. Markets are efficient. Everyone knows "corona virus is bad", that's why the stock dipped. Everyone knows it might dip more, that's why it already dipped a lot. Any smart thought you or I could possibly have about this situation was baked in to the stock price long before we even thought it. We shrimpy little shrimps enjoy only one edge: a patient long view (framing!).

Update: sure enough, in the time it took me to write this, it went from $273 to $284!

Are You Sure You'd Want to be Famous?

First of all, a person can't be famous, as I argued here.

But if you've read that and still dream of fame - i.e. to hear your name uttered widely, with or without the use of trained parakeets - then consider this.

I'm quietly friends with a major Twitter celebrity. You've likely heard of him. He's really, really, no, really busy and overextended, and I understand what that's like, so I pretty much leave him alone. I know he won't come to me much; I go to him, and only infrequently. If I delight him, he’ll return the best he can offer: a nano second of attention in the form of some ragged snatch of communication that sounds like it was composed in a war zone but contains a faint but detectable degree of Personal Touch that, from him, required herculean effort. It's the equivalent of a normal person cooking an ambitious banquet for your entire family, or shoveling your driveway after a blizzard. Everything's relative.

We're friends because we're both no-bullshit and we both Know Stuff. We'd never insult each other by expressing the obvious. I send him chancy stuff that would infuriate most people. Candid advice, feeder ideas, and criticism when he screws up, e.g. needs to work his stuff more diligently because frantic pace skewed his judgement.

I'm the only one who does this for him, and he appreciates it especially because of (not despite) the fact that I do so extraordinarily tersely and bluntly, respecting his time. His vast ocean of peeps indiscriminately adore everything he says or does, and he's smart enough to see the danger. I get it, and he gets that I get it. We have an understanding.

Some time ago, I sent a missive, and he didn't reply. He never doesn't reply. Like most super-saturated people, he usually gets back in milliseconds. It's the only way to stay ahead of the tidal wave. But this time...nada. I figured my message got past him. There's a point where even friends get filtered. I get it. But a few weeks later, I sent another and heard nothing. And I concluded that our friendship was over.

Perhaps I'd been overly blunt. Or he'd grown tired of the straight talk. Or I simply stopped being a person who passed his ever-tightening process of human triage. No problem. But I certainly wasn't going to try a third time. I'm not the most prideful person, but I am way too cool to join the mob of fans frantically vying for attention.

I was wrong, it turned out, though I only found out accidentally (again, he's not someone who's, like, checking in much). From his perspective, he just missed a couple emails. C'mon, man, I'm overwhelmed. You know this. Don't be so quick to give up! I thought we were friends!

He's right. But so was I. From my perspective, our friendship was already squishy. A real friend is someone you can send random goofy crap to and they'll put up with it, not someone keeping you (intentionally or not) on tenterhooks re: justifying precious access via judiciously infrequent extra-succulent offerings. Such a friendship seems tenuous to begin with, so if you throw in a couple non-replies, geez, what's left, really?

---

When Chowhound hit big, and I got mega-slammed, I stopped engaging in much goofy stuff. I grew terser, and became spottily incommunicado with friends, who were hair-trigged to assume I'd evolved into some unfathomable higher-level thing, ala Gary Lockwood in Star Trek. 

Depending on their own insecurity levels, I was somewhere between "Busy doing his thing and no longer accessible; oh well, g'bye!", or "The jackass who thinks he's too good for the likes of me." Few emailed a second time after non-reply, and none a third. They felt, understandably, too cool to join the mob of fans vying for my attention, so they "took the cue" and walked away. All are long gone. Some might be prodded to uneasily come out for a beer or a bite, exactly once, from sheer lookie-loo curiosity (maybe I'd show up in a Bentley with a uniformed driver or whatever; handing out shiny nickels to adoring children and evading paparazzi). But they've all moved on. It was a shock to discover this upon finally leaving CNET, with, at long last, some free time. Ready to hang out. Hey, where is everybody?

How'd you like everyone you know, and nice people you'd want to know, to be hair-triggered to walk away forever if you ever missed a text or two? Everyone else gets away with it. But if you're the least bit well-known, every move seems significant. You appear to send messages via your actions and inactions. One communications slip-up and folks feel dismissed and cross you off their list. And, of course, the tumult of fame (even the Z-list minor-league celebrity I once experienced), plus whatever blood-sucking monster generates your notoriety, ensures plenty of slips. Way more slips than most people. So many slips.

So are you sure you'd want to be famous?


By the same token, if you're famous and are the least bit not-totally-friendly-and-engaging to anyone anywhere ever, you'll forever be stamped as That Asshole. Other people can have bad days, but when eyes are tightly upon you, it's like NASCAR. They're watching and waiting for a bloody crash. They're thirsty for it. This is why big time celebs do that cheery hand wave and jump in the limo. Fans give them the willies.

Yet More TV Tips

For prior TV tips, see postings labeled "Television", duh.

Alan Sepinwall, now at Rolling Stone, is the best TV critic. He does episode-by-espisode recaps for some of these shows.

Justwatch tells you where practically any movie or TV series can be streamed, for free or for charge (interface problem: you need to choose "Movies" or "TV Shows" after initiating a search, when it looks like results don't include your search term).


Mr Inbetween
Just completed second season on FX (you can probably find on-demand)
Season 1 streams at Hulu

People aren't cartoons. People can be lots of things at the same time. The guards at Auschwitz went home every night to their families, and some were surely loving and lovely spouses and parents. The Sopranos felt fresh because never before had we seen villains as just people. But even the Sopranos was light brushstrokes and heightened drama and a bit broad. Show biz. So the creator/star of Mr. Inbetween tried to go all the way and produced a dead-realistic, thoughtful, non-judgmental portrait of a hit man who's a real human being (and great dad) who - like all of us - isn't entirely defined by his day job. It's not some cheap manipulative play of making us like/dislike the guy. And, no, he's not "trying to get out", because he's good at it. The whole thing is subtly superb and hugely entertaining. I can't recommend it enough.

The New Pope
HBO, now playing

I haven't actually seen this, but I recently rewatched "The Young Pope" (pretty much the same show in its first season) in preparation, and it was even better than I'd remembered. Profound and profane, surreal and earnest, sumptuous and earthy, and generally as elusive as a greased pig, it's not for everyone, but I consider it a mesmerizing and surprisingly deep masterpiece ala The Leftovers. And word is The New Pope is equally good.

Shakespeare Uncovered
PBS, done
Stream season 1 on Amazon Prime; buy seasons 1 and 2 on Amazon or Apple iTunes

I've started writing at least five postings about this series, but I can't quite crack the code of what makes it tick. I'll be brief: Everyone - everyone - has the idea of making Shakespeare accessible. Only this show actually does it. A big part of it is that they don't actually show the damned plays, with their archaic language, corny-seeming drama, and jokes and references opaque to anyone not wearing a bow tie. The "way in" is by having a different well known actor host each show, having selected his favorite play, and passionately explaining why, via unstilted personal language, and using a decent BBC budget to set mood. If Shakespeare always feels like vitamins to you, watch this (I particularly recommend "King Lear: with Christopher Plummer, "Hamlet" with David Tennant, and "Henry IV/Henry V" with Jeremy Irons). You'll have better luck with DVDs from UK Amazon. Best of all, cast a DVR "net" by setting a series record order and snaring occasional reruns on PBS.

Better Call Saul
AMC, now in penultimate season

Better than Breaking Bad.

McMillion$
In the middle of six episode miniseries on HBO

Yet another sensational true crime deep-diving miniseries. Who has time? But this, about a scam that intercepted practically all the big winning tickets in McDonald's Monopoly promotion, is an awfully good one, crammed with color and momentum. Good accompanying podcast, too.

Bojack Horseman
Netflix, now complete

You don't need me to tell you about this, but the last season's super good again.

Homeland
Showtime, now in final season

Everyone I know stopped watching Homeland soon after its sterling first season. The producers still keep shamelessly returning to an easy bag of tricks (Saul just got kidnapped yet again! I'm not even spoiling you, because that's obviously what happens to National Security Directors!), Claire Danes still Emmy-cries a lot while quivering her Emmy chin, and nothing makes a damned lick of sense, so don't think too hard. But you know what? It's the most entertaining show on TV. I don't mean hyperactive, I don't mean blowing-up-stuff. It just draws me in magnetically, and the reverse attraction of the showboating, repetition, plot holes, and illogic are nowhere near sufficient to repel me.

Succession
HBO, now on hiatus between Season 2 and 3

Probably the best show on TV. About a billionaire media baron family (nodding vaguely toward the Murdochs). Everyone's a dork or a prick - but also three dimensional and real. The repartee's breathtaking, you're brought to places you've never seen, the acting and writing are remarkable and multi-layered, and it's got every bit of the entertainment magnetism of mixed-bag Homeland. After each episode, thousands of us cluster on Twitter like dazed acolytes, endlessly repeating the best lines and plot points to each other. And I'm totally not usually that guy.

Rick and Morty
Adult Swim, currently in some weird holding pattern within Season 4
First three seasons on Hulu
Whole episodes from Seasons 3 & 4 free on Adult Swim's web site

The smartest, funniest, densest television show ever, by a wide margin. If you need to know about it, you surely already do.

Identification via Grouping

Believe the women! A woman would never lie, because women are honest and women are good. In fact, women are awesome, and that's why we need more women politicians. The men have really messed things up, as they always do, am I right? Time for something different! Time for a woman's perspective!

This is the trendy approach to victimized groups: "You say xxxx people are unworthy? Well, I say they're AWESOME!" Awesomeness, for some reason, strikes us as a precursor to equality and justice. It never works that way, but the fallacy is baked into many people's thinking.

Let me step out of my white middle aged ogre role for a moment and slip on a skullcap so I can go all Jewy (from ogre to awesome in one smooth gesture). Jews aren't awesome. Nor are we a scourge. Jews are just people. So while my "about-to-get-my-ass-kicked" apprehensions peak when folks start screaming "Round up the Jews, schnell!", statements like "Those people are SO GREAT WITH MONEY" come an awfully close second.

Of course that's a cliché, and we know to steer away from the old clichés, even if they seem positive. No woke American would ever flatter me with "great-with-money", or tout women's intrinsic expertise with housework. Those are BAD compliment clichés that make you BAD.

But fresh blanket clichés? Totally welcome! Women are more virtuous, more honest. Less of that TESTOSTERONE, you know? Of course, that doesn't make them passive, oh no. Women are WARRIORS. We need female soldiers on our front lines, because there's NOTHING a man can do that a woman can't! Except, that is, for lying, messing things up, and the rest of toxic masculinity. Mind you: women are NO DIFFERENT....aside from their sterling honesty and overall awesomeness. They're simply BETTER. And NOT DIFFERENT. And BETTER.

Sigh. Listen. No group is great or horrible. Groupings just don't work that way (unless, of course, you're specifically grouping for quality). "WOMEN SUCK" and "WOMEN ARE AWESOME" both stem from the same mistake. Extreme sexists/racists and extreme anti-sexists/racists actually think much alike (the Taoists nailed it with the observation that extremes inevitably morph into one other).

The big problem at the root of all this "-ism" stuff is fixation with group difference. Staunch avowal of superiority is just more of that pointless fixation. Jews aren't this or that. We can be terrible with money and we can eat wheelbarrows full of pulled pork (mmm....wheelbarrows full of pulled pork!). Most groups are ultimately granfalloons; arbitrary affiliations that don’t mean all that much.

My mind boggles, for example, when people talk about "The African-American Community", as if melanin were a basis for community. I'm just one guy, and the range of African-Americans I've known is far too vastly diverse for any meaningful bundling. However, a thin internal voice calls to us, whispering "C'mon...you know what it means. You know what black people are like. Don't pretend you don’t!" But that voice is the very epitome of racism! The "African-American Community" is a racist construct built by extreme anti-racists for political expedience. It's so horribly twisted up.

If you tell me how terrific it is that I'm Jewish, I don't care whether you use old ditzy clichés or brew up new ones. I know what you're focusing on, and it's not a healthy place to fix your attention, because I am not definable by ethnic/racial grouping. That's the basis for the whole problem: people can be categorized in so many ways that any one label is uselessly superficial at best.

I read Jim's blog because Jews sure are witty!

Transcending identification-via-grouping ought to be the goal. Statements like "Women don't lie" are not only absurd on the face of it (have you met women? So far as I know, every one of them is human in species, and humans lie their asses off). It's sexism in its purest form: again, identification by grouping.

I get it. There are legitimate goals to pursue; violence and injustice to eliminate and wrongs to right. But the ends don't justify the means. If you bugger truth to pursue your goal, any victory will be pyrrhic. Time after time we fail to learn this lesson.

Flattering labels don't make your labeling fixation okay. Blanket effusion doesn't make you super-extra non-sexist/racist. It doesn't work that way. You can't inoculate yourself against assholery by becoming the antithetical asshole (will we human beings ever learn to react to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism?). Why not try seeing people as multifaceted individuals?

As I wrote in "A Case Against Empowerment",

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. And the opposite of being a discriminated-against minority isn't becoming an empowered minority, it's pluralism. Boring old pluralism.

"Empowerment" language just heightens the preoccupation with labels and groupings. Furiously rambunctious monomaniacal figures like Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton set back the arrival of a Barack Obama more than they helped. No one voted for Obama because BLACK PEOPLE ARE TERRIFIC. That line of thinking never leads where people imagine it will.

Similarly, after decades of gay rights being championed by in-your-face dudes defiantly flaunting their nipple clamps, boring gay people made a measured case that everyone should be able to love whoever the hell they want, so long as it's consensual, and very swiftly won over a surprisingly huge swathe of the population.

The answer's out there, and it's been proven effective. But it's extremely hard for people to react to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism. That's because reframing is required, and few of us think to use that faculty (particularly when we feel something deeply at stake).


I once wrote that "Nationalism is always a noble-seeming mask for xenophobia. Show me someone who loves 'Us', and I'll show you someone who hates 'Them'."

This is true of any display of staunch group pride (however conditioned we may be to view that sort of thing as noble). There's inevitably a tinge of seething anger, and it's not, as many prefer to imagine, righteous indignation. It's something else. It's fiendish deja vu; an ugly poison you've seen before. There's no righteous time for poison. It is extraordinarily unhealthy for a society to deem certain hatreds (e.g. anti-Boomer) virtuous. Poison's poison. Why hate anybody?

Having been graced with Christ, Gandhi, and King - a trio many profess to revere, and who showed us a better way - we, alas, still choose to mire like pigs. 

Can’t we finally end the stupid perpetual color wars?

Why Do We Type LOL When We're Not Laughing Out Loud?

I'm replaying this posting from September, 2018.


Thirteen years ago a friend and I devised a surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating food (and other things) on a scale of one to ten. I continue to be amazed at how useful and effective it is. But there's one problem: "8" devaluation.

Here's how the system distinguishes 8s:

The problems began when I first found myself 8-ing without any actual vocal expression of pleasure. Over time, it's gotten worse and worse, to the point where now anything merely good strikes me as 8-ish. And "good" should be 7.

There's no such problem with 9. Either rational thought breaks down or it doesn't. But "Mmmm!" is a mental concept as well as a sound, and if you divorce the two, the concept becomes awfully slack. "Store-bought cookies! Mmmm! Of course, I don't literally mean 'Mmmm!' I'm not making that sound! But I'm typing 'Mmmm' just to express my general affection for cookies!"

Once 'Mmmm!' becomes more conceptual than literal, 8 starts devaluing until it covers anything decent.

This is surely the exact same process that makes us type 'LOL' even though we're not laughing out loud. Once the concept untethers from the physical act, devaluation begins. At this point bona fide LOLs likely account for less than 5% of all LOL reportage.

I've been straining to come up with more examples of this phenomenon, and came up with one:

You know how people in long-term relationships eventually start giving each other those perfunctory kisses? They're more gestural symbols than real kisses. Tepidly theatrical "Mwahh!" kisses never appear early in a relationship. It's where things devolve once love becomes more of an abstraction rather than an actual thing.

The first time an early girlfriend kissed me like that, I told her if she ever again kissed me symbolically, the relationship would be over. I was pretty uncompromising back then, but it's not like I didn't have a point.

When "laughing out loud" is an abstract label - something I would do, even if I'm not actually doing it - then anything vaguely amusing starts to fit that bill. Same for "Mmmm". And same for kissing. This is what happens when the actual dissolves into the conceptual, losing its gist and power.

So one sits stone-faced, munching a merely decent cookie while joylessly reporting "Mmmm!". Or barely cracking a grin at a minor attempt at wit while reporting uproarious laughter. Or cursorily pecking at some cheek with a tightly puckered mouth as a report of loving affection.

The Wrong Kind of Dislodgment

I mistakenly published a crude draft of my most recent posting, "Persuasion vs Dislodgment". If you already read it, please give it another whirl.

Persuasion vs Dislodgment

A reader commented on my posting, "Humor and Humorlessness" (also, I think, referencing my definition of art as being any human creation devised to induce a reframing of perspective) by saying that

Good artists produce art that agrees with one's worldview. Great artists create art that changes/challenges one's worldview from which one can never return. Humor is similar.

I replied:

The word "worldview" is doing a lot of work there

He replied:

Cause I hate writing weltanschauung [a particular philosophy or view of life]

And I replied (lightly edited)

Ha.

But I think framing is a much improved, uh, framing.

Worldview and weltanschauung are opinions; thought objects that can be thrust outward and categorized and examined. Framing is pure subjectivity; how you see things, rather than what you see. Framing is about the subject, not the object, so it's impossible to quantify. Framing's not "for" something. It's just a viewing angle; a perspective.

Your phrasing seems to urge artists to hector, coax, and irritate people into thinking some specific thing. I hate art that manipulates in this way. That's not art, it's something more in the realm of argument, salesmanship, and indoctrination.

Shifts of perspective happen at a far deeper level than mere persuasion. It's not movement toward an idea or opinion. It's movement, period. Dislodgement!

If humor and art are meant to dislodge, then any reframing is a success. There will be as many reframings as there are observers (that's how art always works, anyway, like it or not!). The mere fact of a shift - unfreezing creaky perspectives - is sufficient. Doesn't matter where it winds up. It's not about being persuaded (which is crass), but being induced to refresh one's framing (which is inspiring). 

An audience can be "moved", "transported", or "uplifted" (our language groks it better than our conscious minds do!). Such an experience is among the most beautiful delights of the human experience, and it's small-minded and grubby to try to leverage it by pushing audiences to move, transport, and uplift to some specific position. That's how authoritarian propoganda works, and it's effective. But pure inspiration loses much of its oomph when willfully channeled here or there. Manipulative art (e.g. the average multiplex film) earns well, but it's vastly less affecting than art that pays little heed to a targeted landing site.

Dislodgement/reframing is the basis for all elevation; of all the Epiphanies, Eurekas, and Inspirations. We each do our own framing, but it's contagious, and some have a talent for inducing it. Those who do so with an agenda are con men, manipulators, salesmen, and monsters. Those who do so benignly (not to some charming result, but, once again, without regard at all for result) are artists.

He replied:

I don't believe artists implore people to change their minds. An example would be the image of Van Gogh's room all askew with his table in view. After someone sees that it alters the way they look at the world. I don't think van Gogh was making propaganda. I almost believe artists are artists because they must express themselves, not because they want to convince others.

...and I replied:

I get the feeling you side with my perspective, but you're not quite grokking the distinction I'm drawing.

I don't want artists to express themselves. Ever. I want them to get the hell out of their own way and let their work sing. Artists who "express themselves" are the ilk I keep endlessly tossing spitballs at: singers who became singers because they wanted to be singers, not because they wanted to sing.

By declining to "express oneself" and remaining pure-heartedly open to the process of creating art, that's when the deep stuff happens and your deepest, wisest self expresses beyond your conscious volition. It's your subjectivity - deep awareness - not your prosaic thoughts and opinions. Not THINGS. As a fan of creative work who seeks elevation (i.e. reframing), I don't want to sniff anyone's THINGS. Kindly get your THINGS out of my face!

Perspective isn't a thought. Isn't an opinion. Isn't a thing. It's subject, not object. It's the part that chooses, that shifts, that pays attention, that FRAMES.