* Psychology - Masopher’s Mind

The root of it all…

A lot of blame is thrown around. I know that a lot of people blame investment bankers for the 2008 housing bust-up. Greedy bankers selling houses and selling mortgages and insuring mortgages and selling the insurance, and selling the insurance of the insurance. I have spoken to enough bankers to know that they blame people for what is currently happening. Stupid people buying houses they couldn’t afford, buying houses in hopes of flipping them to earn a profit, get on “the ladder” become rich overnight. Some boffins like I hold globalization accountable. News organizations talk about “confidence” others say, banks not lending to each other. Democrats blame Republicans, Republicans blame democrats, regulators blame deregulation, laisse faire economists blame regulations.

I blame myself.

I blame myself for putting myself in the situation that I have to give a shit. I could have set up a nice little farm for myself raising chicken, cows and corn, have an equally natural lady and 12 or so kids to help out on the farm and to take care of us in our old age, instead I am living here in a fictional world depending on fictional money indicated by a one dimensional line running across a screen. Its funny how at its most “advanced” life can be condensed to how much the S&P500, Dow Nikkei and FTSE move up and down. All those companies, all the workers all the people involved can be condensed down to an index. And suddenly the people stop moving the index; it is the index that is moving the people.

Sorry Sammy you are being laid off because our stock has gone down. People are uncertain of profitability because the stock market crashed. Half a million people lose the roof over their head because numbers on a screen were a lot less than they were a few months ago. Somehow people have become so dependent on numbers that things like eating, drinking, making love and laughing have become secondary to the weighted moving average of an aggregate of investments. Living has become secondary to the securitization and sale of mortgage guaranteed profits.

To me this is not a problem; to me this is nothing but a cleverly told fable by very very clever men and women. Instead of dragons and hobbits and lightsabers its derivatives and hedge fund managers and financial instruments. I agree, it is real, the emperor has the most magnificent gown on, it changes colour and sparkles with a million jewels, shimmering in a way that only the geniuses on former Wall Street, Canary wharf, and Brussels can understand.

The root of all evil, is the fallacy that evil exists, the root of a stock market crash is the fallacy that the money existed. The root of fallacy is the human mind. Without the human mind, evil and the stock market would not exist and therefore my friend the root of it all…

is you.

 

Posted in Psychology at October 8th, 2008. No Comments / Email This Post Email This Post .

Richard Dawkins and the real girl

Contrary to my belief when I bought the ticket to see “Lars and the real girl”, it is not a movie about a geeky perv with a blow up doll and the hijinks that ensue. Why I would buy a ticket under this impression is another story and beside the point. This story is about a man under a psychological delusion and a love story. Not between the hero and the object of his affection but between a community and one of their own who has somehow fallen out of step with the normal. It is a story about a psychologist’s role not only with people who think or believe differently but with us all. What the movie also illustrates to me is that there are delusions that we all live with. Delusions help us to cope and function. Delusions are rather benign when compared to the other psychological “illnesses” that professionals must deal with such as schizophrenia, psychosis and psychopathy. The psychologist in this story operates under no delusion that she is this man’s savior of that she is anything but a facilitator as he sorts out his own problems. She serves to educate Lars’ family about his condition rather than Lars himself.

The story is sweet and funny, emphasizing on family, community and individuals as they handle this disorder. But as the story progresses we start to see how normal this abnormality is. Lars hands a bouquet of plastic flowers to his woman saying, “They aren’t real so they last forever” and one remembers the sweet words that one whispered to another in the days of naivety. Did we all not think that love was like that? That it lasted forever? Is that not what we hoped vainly, as we embarked on new relationships; that the feelings would last? Similarly we capture moments on celluloid and in digital, so that reality is transposed onto facsimile forever, capturing something that cannot be captured. We also encourage our children to partake in delusions where stuffed toys and plastic figure become real life princesses, soldiers and tea party guests. Many of our young and older men and women are enthralled in fictional yet extremely complex worlds which really only exist once the computer or console is switched on. Even more adult games, like bowling, darts, athletics, competitive sports, are they not allegory for things that men and women do? The soap operas about non-existent characters, the fictional books and rumors and speculations which affect our financial markets: Is it then our place to destroy another’s delusion when we labor under so many delusions of our own?
I was not altogether surprised to note a few tears onscreen and even in the audience for the plastic ladies fate. Is this any more ludicrous that tears when a real life actor “dies” on screen? Is it any more ludicrous that we take up prime real estate and erect gravestones and to place over the heads of cadavers and corpses who decay away back to the earth? The gravestones aren’t there for them, funerals aren’t for the dead. They are for people to express feeling for people that no longer exist.

I end with a brief word on the most popular opponent of delusions, Dr. Richard Dawkins. I hope he would agree with me that feelings, like love and community spirit, for temporarily animated flesh is also a delusion, tricks of a selfish gene just trying to reproduce and improve itself. Lines start getting fuzzy when the flesh is no longer animated. They start to disappear if the flesh was never animated and confusion may begin to reign once matter and the laws of physics are ignored. Yet it is the delusions that helped Lars to make the developmental progress he needed to become a functioning member of his community. Delusions are helpful if not integral to the mind’s machinery and one may argue quite successfully that delusions are the basis of successful societies. Even professor Dawkins seems to labor under the delusion that it is a “God delusion” and not a complex matrix of human greed, population expansion and development, mis-education ignorance, poverty, politics and power seeking by almost all the parties that is the reason for almost any “religious” war he may care to mention. The Kenyan born, Berkley and Oxford educated gentleman should do well to remember his fellow Kenyans who were not afforded his opportunity to read Nietzsche, Socrates and Hobbes or travel the world professing something that greater men have discovered before him but were wise enough to keep to themselves . Religious delusion played no part in their recent unrest. As he mulls over a good wine or an erudite tome or perhaps his fan mail, may he reflect on the fact that for some people, delusions are all they have.

Posted in Psychology at March 31st, 2008. 1 Comment / Email This Post Email This Post .

Trust, Caution. Part III

The last point is just to echo some comments I heard in the House of Lords on this very matter: Where will it end? Laws have prevented the pastimes of Paki-bashing, gay-bashing, wife bashing and all manners of behaviours based on discrimination but are we being instructed not to discriminate? The wonderfully neutral phrase partner is now common, and we can’t identify a person by their gender or colour of their skin but will we be allowed to acknowledge the difference between a member of your family and a stranger? Will society continue to discriminate between a 10 year old sexual partner and a 20 year old sexual partner? A 40 year old employee and an 80 year old employee? Even more absurd: If I walk into a Lamborghini store and hand over half of my pay-cheque has the clerk discriminated against me because half of my pay cheque happens to be considerably less than half of Stellios’ paycheque? If I run a race and run as fast as I can, do I not deserve a gold medal as well? I exercise caution when viewing this seeming obsession with discrimination.
Psychology is a science of extreme complexity because we integrate chemistry and biology and other (downward) “natural” sciences with sociology, economics law and politics (upward “social” sciences). More so because we are trying to imagine or logically decipher the very tool we are using to imagine and logically decipher. This is akin to using a microscope to study a microscope. Once you realize that a microscope is a complex set of lenses and levers, we can use the microscope to examine lenses and levers to learn more about how microscopes work. So yes; human behaviour is complex if you want to imagine that human behaviour was born yesterday or 4000 years ago with the clap of ethereal hands. It is complex too if you think mankind doesn’t owe much of its behaviour to beings and even non-beings wholly divorced from what mankind defines itself as. But I dont see it as that.

Posted in Psychology at March 24th, 2008. No Comments / Email This Post Email This Post .

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