California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

What do the Pope and Ted Kaczynski Have in Common?

by John Lawrence

Recently the Pope delivered a strong condemnation of the western lifestyle in Laudate Deum. In his writing, which was all about our failure to address climate change sufficiently, he decried our "technocratic paradigm" which basically is the worship of technology as a false god whose premise is that technology in and of itself will solve all the problems of the human race especially in terms of artificial intelligence (AI). The implication is that the new religion is technology. Kaczynski railed against "industrial-technological society" which he felt reduced the free exercise of human potential. The Pope decried spiritual poverty; Kacynski decried psychological poverty. In both cases the authors felt that humanity had lost its soul.

It's easy to see why. As the Pope observed, consumption equals fossil fuel emissions equals climate change. The more consumption, the more climate change. Kaczynski was also anti-consumption, but his gripe was more with the lifestyle required to live a life of consumption as opposed to getting by with less so one could opt out of "the system." The American way of life is surely one of high consumer values. Advertising to get people to consume more is relentless. People work to acquire things as opposed to just working enough to supply one's basic needs leaving the rest of your time free to pursue more life affirming pursuits. While Kaczynski focused almost exclusively on the negative psychological results, the Pope focuses on the long term effects that climate change can have on people especially poor people who are suffering and will suffer disproportionately although they are not the main perpetrators of fossil fuel emissions. One could also mention that many of the consumable products that rich nations favor also pollute the oceans and have negative health effects in general. All of creation including animals suffer as a result of the high consumption lifestyles of rich nations, rich nations that have been most responsible for inventing the technologies that are driving climate and ecological destruction.

What Kaczynski failed to do and what the Pope is doing is to relate the high consumption technology driven lifestyle to the destruction of the earth's resources and the environment. The Pope expressed this very well in his writing:

"This is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life. The Bishops of the United States have expressed very well this social meaning of our concern about climate change, which goes beyond a merely ecological approach, because “our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together. Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community. The effects of climate change are borne by the most vulnerable people, whether at home or around the world”. In a few words, the Bishops assembled for the Synod for Amazonia said the same thing: “Attacks on nature have consequences for people’s lives”. And to express bluntly that this is no longer a secondary or ideological question, but a drama that harms us all, the African bishops stated that climate change makes manifest “a tragic and striking example of structural sin”.

A spiritual life, a psychologically healthy life is very much at odds with the American high consumption lifestyle. A high consumption lifestyle driven by advertising is not only bad for us as individuals, it is bad for the planet as well.

Off the Top of My Head

Is Seduction Consensual Sex, or an Unwanted Sexual Advance

by John Lawrence, October 17, 2019

Youth wants to know! In light of the #MeToo movement the rules have changed for men. So now there are new rules unless you want to get into trouble due to your sex life. Rule #1 - Don't cheat on your wife. For all the men who have been accused of unwanted sexual advances, hardly has it been mentioned that mostly they were married and were attempting to cheat on their wives who were really the injured party in these situations which is hardly ever mentioned. Rule #2 - Establish a dating relationship with a woman first before you have sex with her. Then it would be pretty hard for her to accuse you of nonconsensual sex. Most men who are cheating on their wives are not at liberty to establish a normal dating relationahip with a woman. That's why they want to have sex in their office or on the casting couch, anywhere but at their homes where their wives and children are living.

Advice to women. Rule #1 - If you've been raped, file a police report and establish a rape kit. If you don't want to do that, at least make a do-it-yourself rape kit. It was Monica Lewinsky's self administered rape kit in the form of a stained blue dress that nailed Bill Clinton. Rule #2 - Don't wait 20 years to accuse someone of unwanted sexual advances. There's a statute of limitations for everything else. There should be one for sex too. Many women wait until a man becomes rich and powerful to accuse him. If he hadn't attained that status, she probably wouldn't have brought forth accusations against him. Rule #3 - Don't have consensual sex with a man, and then decide the next day that it wasn't consensual. One night stands or relationships that don't continue as expected lead to sour grapes in some situations, and consensual sex in some womens' minds turns into nonconsensual sex soon thereafter.

A man can protect himself from accusations of unwanted sexual advances by establishing a relationship first that is not just a friendship but a relationship in which both parties are in agreement about what they want out of the relationship. In other words what their intentions are. In this way there should be no misreadings or misgivings if both people go into it with the same understanding. If it doesn't work out, at least consensuality will have been established especially if other friends know about the relationship. Some legitimacy for the relationship will have been established no matter what happens in the long run.

Since men have traditionally been the first ones to make advances, sometimes the advances are unwanted. How does the man know ahead of time whether they are unwanted or not? A man needs to read the tea leaves and feel the woman out about what kind of a relationship she does or doesn't want to have. That will minimize misunderstandings. As far as seduction goes, it is not a good idea in the light of the #MeToo movement. In the past it may have been considered a legitimate form of a sexual relationship, at least one in which a woman couldn't accuse a man of unwanted sexual advances the next day, but at the present time, a man cannot be too careful about getting involved especially if he doesn't want to be accused of sexual impropriety.

The more honorable thing to do if a man wants to have sex with someone other than his wife is to have sex with a prostitute. This was Jimmy Van Heusen's (nee Chester Babcock) solution. He was Frank Sinatra's songwriting buddy, composer of "Swinging on a Star," "All the Way," "Come Fly with Me," "Here's That Rainy Day," "Nancy with the Laughing Face" in honor of Frank's daughter, and many more. He was a single man most of his life, and had relationships mostly with prostitutes. During one period, according to biographies of Jimmy and Frank, he would line up a couple of girls in LA for himself and Frank, fly them to Palm Springs to Frank's estate for the weekend and then take them back to LA after the weekend was over. He paid the prostitutes, but didn't have to pay the aspiring starlets. Sex was understood to be part of the deal. No woman ever accused either Frank or Jimmy of unwanted sexual advances.

Suzy Favor Hamilton was a married track star from Wisconsin who ran in 3 Olympics. In 2000, Suzy was the fastest middle distance runner in the world and was named USA Track & Field's Female Distance Runner of the Year. She later became a prostitute in Las Vegas as detailed in her book Fast Girl. She enjoyed it immensely making $600. or more per hour. After the weekend she flew back home to her husband in Wisconsin. She wasn't "trafficed". It was her personal decision. She only quit being a prostitute when someone recognized her as the former track star and exposed her. Then she decided that she did what she did because of a mental condition. After her prostitution became public, the Big Ten renamed its award for Female Athlete of the Year which had previously carried her name.

Well, it's safe to say that some women enter freely into sexual relationships with rich or famous men. Some regret it later when it becomes evident that the job or marriage opportunities they once thought would come their way have vanished. Some become resentful. Women need to be aware that there are a lot of men out there who want to cheat on their wives and take precautions if they don't want to be part of that. Otherwise, c'est la vie.

My Theory of Pain

by John Lawrence, September 30, 2019

Pain is ubiquitous in human life - both mental and physical pain. Being human is to have pain in your life. Coping with pain can take different forms - both positive and negative. The body has natural ways that pain can be alleviated. These involve the secretion of different chemicals like dopamine that cover up the pain or take it away. There are various ways to get these chemicals to activate, the easiest being to ingest some substance like drugs or alcohol. The harder way to do it is by exercise. Runner's high is known to reduce pain. Other forms of physical and perhaps mental activities like meditation can also do it. Running or other strenuous physical activity can induce the body to produce the drugs which overcome pain. The problem is that these activities are painful in and of themselves and require a high form of motivation to get them started and self-discipline to persist.

Continuing major efforts to reduce pain both positive and negative can lead to addiction both positive and negative. The problem with negative addiction is that the ingestion of drugs or alcohol is limited by tolerance. It requires more and more of the substance to get the same beneficial results unless a person is very self disciplined in their consumption. There is only a certain fountain of dopamine available, and this gets depleted as the substances used to release it are taken repeatedly. Less and less dopamine being released means that more and more of the substance used to release it needs to be ingested leading to addiction. Finally, as in heroin addiction, the person is using heroin not to feel better but just not to feel worse.

On the other hand activities which strengthen the mind/body and require self discipline and even pain such as running or weight training result in a release of dopamine which actually makes you feel better when the activity ceases and strengthens the body and that part of the body which creates the dopamine in the first place. The body, which is weakened at first by the activity, builds itself back up to a higher level because of the activity which reduces the source of the pain. As time goes on, pain is reduced not only from the dopamine releasing activity, but also because the body has reduced the source of the pain because it has become stronger.

Negative addiction is so common because it requires no self discipline. Activities which can lead to positive addiction require actual work, and this turns off many people who succumb to negative addiction because it is so much easier to relieve pain that way AT FIRST. As time goes on, however, using substances to overcome pain only makes the pain worse in the long run and reduces the fountain of dopamine which is necessary to overcome it. William Glasser wrote a book entitled "Positive Addiction." According to this article in Psychology Today there are six characteristics of positive addiction:

1. It is something noncompetitive that you choose to do and you can devote approximately an hour per day;

2. It is possible for you to do it easily and it doesn’t take a good deal of mental effort to do it well;

3. You can do it alone or rarely with others but it does not depend upon others to do it;

4. You believe that it has some value (physical, mental, or spiritual) for you;

5. You believe that if you persist at it you will improve—but this is completely subjective—you need to be the only one who measures the improvement; and

6. The activity must have the quality that you can do it without criticizing yourself. If you can’t accept yourself during this time the activity will not be addicting (emphasis original). 

Positive activities require self discipline and even the experiencing of some pain as they are undertaken. They result in the diminution of pain only over the long term. They may or may not result in instantaneous gratification whereas drug use is usually instantaneously gratifying until the dopamine fountain is used up or until tolerance sets in. Tolerance occurs when the person no longer responds to the drug in the way that person initially responded. Stated another way, it takes a higher dose of the drug to achieve the same level of response achieved initially. Tolerance increases with negative addiction, but is reduced with positive addiction. In other words positive addicts increase the body's ability to release dopamine over time, but negative addiction does the opposite.

Nevertheless, if managed properly, addictive substances can be used at least by some persons in a temperate manner without their leading to the worst effects of drug addiction. The jazz musician, Art Blakey, was a heroin user most of his life, and he was also a cigarette smoker. He died at 71 from lung cancer probably from the effects of cigarette smoking rather than from heroin usage. Two of his proteges, Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan, weren't so lucky however. Both died young and suffered from the ravages of drug addiction. A lot of the negative effects of substance abuse can probably be ameliorated or offset by positive activities as moderate use of drugs doesn't seem to cause people to be dysfunctional or debilitated.

Off the Top of My Head

Some Thoughts on Evolution

by John Lawrence, August 10, 2019

A more evolved being is to human beings what human beings are to cats. That's it in a nutshell. We know a cat can't do algebra or calculus, but the human mind is capable. Logic would tell us by extrapolation that there might be possibly a more evolved being, whether they exist right now somewhere in the universe or nor, whether human beings could evolve into them or not, whose mind was capable of things which are utterly impossible for human beings to comprehend just as a cat can't possibly comprehend higher math.

Clever Hans was a hose that his owner supposedly had trained to do math. Apparently Hans could add, subtract, multiply and divide. The horse would tap his foot four times, for example, when his owner asked him to add 2 plus 2.The horse was even able to understand German! He belonged to a man called Herr Wilhelm von Osten. Von Osten was a teacher who taught math at a school. He was an amateur horse trainer. Von Osten took his amazing horse around the country demonstrating that he had been able to teach the horse math. Scientists became interested in Clever Hans. The psychologist Carl Stumpf got a group of people together to study what was happening. His assistant Oskar Pfungst was the main investigator. It was discovered that the horse could sense when the owner wanted him to stop tapping as long as he had eye contact with the owner. The conclusion was that the horse didn't really understand math!

So what would a more highly evolved human mind be capable of? Clairvoyance, precognition - extra sensory perception (ESP) in general. Perhaps some humans have already had a mutation in their genes which gives them some of these powers. Edgar Cayce was the most documented psychic of the 20th century. For more than 40 years of his adult life, Cayce gave psychic "readings" to thousands of seekers while in an unconscious state, diagnosing illnesses and revealing lives lived in the past and prophecies yet to come.

Later in life, Cayce would find that he had the ability to put himself into a sleep-like state by lying down on a couch, closing his eyes, and folding his hands over his stomach. In this state of relaxation and meditation, he was able to place his mind in contact with all time and space — the universal consciousness, also known as the super-conscious mind. From there, he could respond to questions as broad as, "What are the secrets of the universe?" and "What is my purpose in life?" to as specific as, "What can I do to help my arthritis?" and "How were the pyramids of Egypt built?" His responses to these questions came to be called "readings," and their insights offer practical help and advice to individuals even today. Cayce accurately diagnosed many peoples' medical problems and either referred them to a doctor or advised a cure. He didn't need to be in the same room with them. He only needed to know their address.

So maybe Cayce had a gene flip that enabled him to have a "universal consciousness." If this mutation spread throughout the human race, we might assume that humans will have evolved to a higher being in the same way that certain gene changes spread among the higher apes which allowed them to evolve from apehood into humans.

The book, "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain," details much of the research the Russians have done on this subject of paranormal and parapsychological events. The authors present six new chapters of post-Cold War activities. They offer evidence indicating that the Russians have been successful in harnessing psychic energy and show how Russian scientists advised Pentagon officials on controlling the thoughts of David Koresh during the 1993 Waco, Texas standoff. Well, let's ask the psychics how we get rid of war and get universal peace and prosperity. Or how do we solve global warming? That would be really an accomplishment for "universal consciousness."

So while there are individuals capable of harnessing psychic abilities, these abilities have not spread into the gene pool of the whole human race just as, I suppose, that the gene for language was manifested at first only in a few individuals before it spread to encompass the whole human race. It might even be possible for a cat or a horse to evolve into a hypercat or hyperhorse that was capable of doing math. Evidently some hyperevolute humans exist or have existed (Cayce died in 1945 although there is still an institute bearing his name). At the present time most humans simply are incapable of answering questions like "What happens after I die?," What is the ultimate fate of the universe?," What existed before the universe came into being?," and so forth and so on just as a cat is incapable of doing calculus.

Off the Top of My Head

Girls Can Be Boyish, But Opposite Not True

by John Lawrence, April 16, 2018

There's nothing girls can't do any more and be looked down on for it. For instance, they can engage in traditional boyish sports like baseball, basketball, even martial arts. They can wear boys' clothes. No big deal. They can go into the military and fight on the front lines. They can have a career as a boxer. The reverse is not true, however. Boys cannot wear girls' clothes without being frowned on. They cannot play with dolls. They cannot do flower arranging without being considered effeminate.

CNN did a wonderful article on this. It's by a mother whose son wanted to wear a My Little Pony sweatshirt to school. His mother had to explain to him that he would be looked down upon, maybe even bullied, for doing this. The little boy thought it unfair because girls could wear boys' clothing with impunity. The article goes on:

Meanwhile, there's still not a single traditionally feminine thing a boy can do that wouldn't raise eyebrows. A boy who likes wearing jewelry or makeup, twirling in a tutu or caring for baby dolls is at best the subject of conversations conducted sotto voce. At worst: a bully's target.

The tomboy phenomenon is more than 400 years old and has gone from outsider to aspirational to anachronistic over the course of the 20th century; the tomgirl remains a nonstarter. Describe a boy with a phrase that includes the word "girl" in it, and you're likely to make his parents' spines quiver, including those of many of the feminist dads I know

Parents are increasingly giving their daughters boy names like James and Finn; few among us would dare give our sons a girl name, because pity the boy named Jenn or Sofia. Girls fought and won the right to join the Boy Scouts; I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for boys to gain entry to the Girl Scouts.

So boys and men are still locked into toxic definitions of boyhood and manhood. It's still not OK for a boy to be girlish, but it is OK for a girl to be boyish. It's OK for a girl to have a "take charge" attitude. In fact it's encouraged. Girls are encouraged that there is nothing that they shouldn't aspire to most of which have traditional male values associated with them. They can be captains of industry, CEOs, Generals, Admirals, superheroes. However, it is still frowned upon for boys to be nurses or caregivers or flower arrangers, traditional girlie occupations. The key to the difference here is that traditional girl values, including playing with dolls, manifest the caring and loving attitudes that we traditionally associate with girls and women. Child rearing, clearly associated with women while the man "brings home the bacon", is associated with love and nurturing, not traditionally male values.

Women aren't having that any more. Instead of caring and nurturing children and people that need help like old people, girls are encouraged to enter the traditional male occupations that require aggressiveness and competitiveness. They are encouraged to be as ruthless as men. Men are still required to be as ruthless as they've always been so that the world we're creating is mono polar in terms of values. Only traditional male values shall prevail for both boys and girls, men and women.

This is especially true in the US which leads to the whole society espousing guns, fighting and warfare as solutions to every problem. May the best man or woman win. No one sticks up for the traditional feminine values of love and compassion and peace. American movies are all about violence and aggression. Wonder Woman will take out the bad guys just as well as any man could do it. The article states, "Girls have been told that they can do anything, be anything, and they largely can, without judgment. However -- and here's the catch -- that's true only if they are physically strong and career-oriented and eschew most of the traditional trappings of femininity. In short, they will gain respect if they act like boys."

Raewyn Connell, author of "Masculinities," said many teenage boys still feel as though they must avoid any signs of weakness or femininity. This, in turn, feeds homophobia, because gay men are associated with the parts of themselves that they feel they must suppress.

"With teenage boys, the search for respect and recognition often results in exaggerated displays of dominating masculinity: the football hero, the first guy in the peer group who smokes, the playground bully, etc.," Connell said. This is often accompanied by "a stark rejection of 'girl things.' "

Redefining masculinity would encompass making it manly to be nurturing, loving and care giving. It would make peace a dominant characteristic instead of war. It would encourage diplomacy and conflict resolution instead of fighting. In short it would require men to exhibit and display more of the traditional feminine attitudes. If girls can be more masculine and fierce with impunity, boys should be able to be and should be more understanding and accepting of themselves and others, less willing to fight as a means of resolving conflict. If the world is to become more peaceful, girls and women should stand up for the traditional feminine values instead of adopting male values and boys and men should be able to adopt a more traditionally feminine value system. Then maybe we can have peace in the world.

 

Off the Top of My Head

ESP: Is It Real or Fake?

by John Lawrence, March 24, 2018

CBS Sunday Morning ran a show on the mind, and part of that was a segment on ESP - Extra Sensory Perception. They covered Uri Geller, an Israeli Psychic who supposedly could bend spoons just by thinking about it, and a woman who located a fugitive. She claimed he was in Lowell, Wyoming. They actually found him in Lovell, Wyoming. Pretty close. However, the show said nothing about Edgar Cayce, a psychic who could diagnose diseases in people which baffled doctors. He did this without ever meeting the person. He just needed an address.

There was also a book, "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain." The Soviets were intent on exploring psychic phenomena using scientific methods. They did things like having subjects guess the outcome of a dice throw. They knew how many they would get right due to chance alone. Some subjects scored much better than chance, and these were thought to have some psychic abilities. Of course the US and Russia were both concerned about getting one up on the other in a sort of psychic arms race. It was thought that, if Uri Geller could bend spoons, he might be able to interfere with some of the delicate electronics in missiles, for example.

Of course there are the skeptics that say that any claim of psychic ability is fraudulent. It's all just magic which seems miraculous, but really there's always a trick to it. Various claims have been made for so-called psychotronic devices. Pyramids like the Great Pyramids of Egypt are said to have special powers. Wilhelm Reich, author of the "Mass Psychology of Fascism", claimed that he could channel a special energy he called orgones in an orgone accumulator which was shaped like a pyramid.

I think ESP should be studied and experimented with. It's not hard to imagine that there may be phenomena in the universe that exceed the human mind's natural ability to understand or deal with them in the same way that a cat or a dog is hardly aware or could ever be aware of Einstein's relativity theory or the vastness of the universe. Animals cannot possibly understand concepts like those because of their intellectual limitations. Perhaps there are things that are beyond the comprehension of the human mind, but still could be rendered comprehensible.

If the only applications of ESP, however, are to warfare, perhaps it is better that the human mind is not able to comprehend them. If the phenomenon of atomic energy hadn't been discovered by the human mind, the world might just be better off especially if nuclear bombs had never been developed.

Off the Top of My Head

Parents Can't Apply the Same Formula That Worked For Them to their Children

by John Lawrence, January 19, 2018

My parents were great people. They had a certain approach to life that worked very well for them. Of course they encouraged me to follow the same approach. Call it a formula for success in life. The only problem was that their formula didn't work for me. I had to find my own formula. Their formula was basically the Protestant ethic: work hard, delay gratification until later, get ahead. It is the view that a person's duty is to achieve success through hard work and thrift, such success being a sign that that one has found favor with God.  First work hard in school. Go as far as you can go in the educational system. Then get a good job after which you can start enjoying life.

In his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence of modern capitalism.

In the mid twentieth century a counterculture developed exemplified by the hippies that rejected this view of life. Life was to be lived in the moment not put off to some distant future after working hard and delaying satisfaction for most of your youth and childhood. Work was not the most essential part of life. Life was, and work was only incidental. After all with the wealth that had already been accumulated by mid twentieth century, what was the point of working hard and delaying gratification?

In my case I'm psychologically unlike my parents in my basic make-up so I eventually found a formula that worked for me after much trial and error. It involved rejecting the Protestant Ethic and much of the capitalist system including materialistic accumulation. I needed to live my life in the moment to keep my head above water psychologically. Different strokes for different folks. Some parents find this hard to understand - that their kid could be so unlike them - but it happens. The human race is made up of a large diversity of psychological types. That's why tolerance and understanding is so important. Forcing everyone into the same mold doesn't work either for individuals or nations.