IN MEMORY OF FREE WILL (AND MOTHERS DAY)

It amuses me how the notion of free will remains at the edge of our collective concern, yet never quite manages to escape the shackles of our proprietary conviction. Prior to losing my religion I was resolute, alone and afraid that the sins of the people I cared for would amount to me ascending to Heaven all by myself. The little free time I had left after 'doing the Good Lord's work' I preferred to keep by myself. Any fun to be had was suspect as pleasure was the playground of Satan, a fact that I kept reminding my pre school teachers and the toddlers I was forced to play with.

In my fervor to enter the Pearly Gates of Heaven I regularly attended Sunday Services by myself, always stayed behind for Sunday School, sang in the Church Choir, and went on Christian Youth Camps over the holidays. I was hell bent on spending myeternity in Heaven and remained steadfast in my belief until I was assaulted by the Deacon's outside the church, and  denied confirmation of my faith with my peers on behalf of my sexual preference. 

Blighted by my unwitting attraction and ashamed of my illicit desire I withdrew from society and buried my nose in my books. to men I distinctly remember my peers ook my religion to heart and went to great lengths care alone held dear around me that I would have to and cursed by bithe idea was nothing more than a romantic notion born of the belief in a mythical spirit that reside in all living things, no less in reverence to the day that I would be free from this mortal toil of our daily lives.

The notion that existence is a force of Nature that exist independent of our meddling, and realization that but for the incessant injury we bear on the environment the ecosphere is perfectly capable of curing the destruction of our discourse. 

Much like all the people I know I was resigned to abide by the hand I was dealt with and determined to play for the win even if I had to fake it for a chance at living life well. Unlike most people I know I was always more concerned with the reason why people needed the reason than the reason itself. Thanks to my chancing on changing convention by living life with the single conviction we share regardless I have been able to free myself from living life to appease some else's deluded expectation. I must confess my subsequent discovery that living life well takes two to Tango was, well, disheartening to say the least, but it got me thinking about the reason why you and me are like two peas in a pod, deliberately appropriate, mutually relevant, and yet bound to express two distinctly different life force experiences. With a life long interest in figuring out how things are constructed and construed themselves the notion of free will was thrust upon my beleaguered conscience, and highly unlikely in the event of a vexing global pandemic of fear and doubt. With scientific evidence that clearly show how emotions besiege our present sense and the present proclaiming a haunting litany of lament in lieu of the petty lives we've lost it bears reminding that such as it was, life before #lockdown was hardly worth living. And given that science has found that the intent we share in present sense and mutual relevance manifest the present we share regardless it behooves me to proclaim that as much as we want to return to normal life, the life we were living was never normal to begin with.

One of the songs I remember my mother and me used to sing was Que Sera, and knowing that in me she is as much part of the present as when she was still alive comes to mind as it does during trying times like these.

"What will be will be..."

In loving memory of the woman who made me the man that I am.

Understanding our need for emotional connection

Image via Wikipedia

According to a recent article in the NYTimes, our ability to make an emotional connection when we communicate is a way to establish social exchange.

...people subconsciously mirror each other’s surprise, disgust or delight — and, in effect, interpret the emotion by sensing what’s embodied on their own face. Interfere with the ability to mimic, these studies suggest, and people are less adept at reading others’ expressions (and) in a series of studies, psychologists have found that social bonding between conversation partners is highly dependent on a rhythmic and usually subconscious give and take of gestures and expressions that creates a kind of shared good will. “Part of that could be the buying in on the interaction itself,” Dr. Chartrand said.

But the latest research on the little understood subject of communication show that this important nonverbal communication technique is more complex than we previously believed. Some psychologists say the evidence from people with facial paralysis suggest that there may be several mental processes that contribute to our ability to tune in to the emotional state of mind of someone else.

“The idea is that if we could learn what the best nonverbal communication techniques are, we could teach those to people who are socially awkward for any reason.”

It seems that the simple principle of monkey see, monkey do could be the latest breakthrough to shed some light on the often mysterious way that our minds work, and how that translate to our ability to effectively communicate with the people around us.

Originally posted on the 5th of  Footnote 17/11/11: In light of my own social awkwardness I beg to differ, or maybe that's just me. The only way that I manage to cope with my own terror towards social interaction is through emotional detachment, constant effort, brutal honesty and charm. While mimicking social good-will may improve conversational skills, I doubt it's enough to change the ugly duckling into a swan...

But that's just me I guess...

Science and self-expansion

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

In a recent article by the New York Times, The Science of a Happy Marriage, scientists explore what it is that make marriages work and by a synthesis of recent research on relationships, they came up with some surprising conclusions.

it may not be feelings of love or loyalty that keep couples together. Instead, scientists speculate that your level of commitment may depend on how much a partner enhances your life and broadens your horizons — a concept that Arthur Aron, a psychologist and relationship researcher at Stony Brook University, calls “self-expansion.”

And lo, we face the bedrock of fundamental truth, about consciousness and our ability to choose, about emotion and our capacity to feel, about love and our reason to live.

Now if we could only build on this idea of marriage to expand beyond the boundaries of polygamy and into the realm of spiritual unity its only a hop, skip and a jump away from a Zeitgeist coup de grace, universal sanity, and total world domination!

T shirts and bumper stickers available on request.