What's So Funny 'bout Legalized Marijuana?

In the past 25 years working in the mental health field, I have worked closely with a half dozen psychiatrists and a handful of nurse practitioners.  Not one has been in favor of legalizing marijuana.  I could quote research that associated cannabis use with late-onset psychosis, anxiety disorders, and (possibly) amotivational syndrome.  But you wouldn't believe it if you were not so inclined.  The bulk of my career has also been in corrections, especially county jails, in which I regularly see people coming off various substances, including methamphetamine, heroin, bath salts, alcohol, cocaine, opiates, benzodiazapines, and marijuana.  Though marijuana does not present the most acute withdrawal syndromes, marijuana use can present the most prolonged and insidious symptoms over time.  (The major exceptions would be cocaine or stimulant induced psychosis, as well as pseudo-parkinsonian symptoms caused by stimulants and cocaine.  I suggest that several examples of the latter might be Michael J. Fox, Robin Williams, and Anthony Bourdain--tragic.)

Back to marijuana.  Although the substance may seem relatively innocuous, the body struggles to clear cannabinoids, which are not water-soluble and thus do not clear through the kidneys.  It seems to take the mind even longer to clear from marijuana.  For example, it may take six months to regain baseline digit-span retention, a simple measure of intelligence.  Increasingly, due to legalization and the barrage of pro-marijuana propaganda, I am seeing more and more people using marijuana to self-medicate conditions such as bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, seizure disorder, opiate dependence, and other disorders.

I can say emphatically that marijuana does not help people with bipolar illness.  It makes them worse.  A lot worse!

Nor does it help people with borderline personality disorder.  I have even seen people who once carried a borderline diagnosis, after an extended period of abstinence, lost the diagnosis of borderline.  (That's not supposed to happen!  I suspect there may be a phenomenon of pseudo-borderline associated with cannabinoid use.)

My jury is still out regarding marijuana and seizure disorders.  I no longer fully trust most diagnoses.  Especially in prisons and jails, one never really knows what is a seizure, factitious disorder, or something else.  Also, I should note that a differential diagnosis of seizure disorder is well above my pay grade and expertise.  But I am skeptical.

Using marijuana as a replacement or harm reduction strategy for opioid or even stimulant use disorders might actually make sense.  I have talked to hundreds of people who have been on Methadone management and hundreds more who have been prescribed Suboxone.  I've also talked to several dozen people who switched from hard drugs to marijuana (arguably also a hard drug, nowadays).  Methadone management is not a lifestyle I would wish on my greatest enemy.  The second generation opioid management drug, Suboxone, is a bit better, but fundamentally the same.  And the drugs that do not get the addict high, such as Naltrexone, which treat cravings, anecdotally seem to work mainly for the highly motivated, such as recovering professionals.  So, that mainly leaves marijuana as an alternative to Methadone and Suboxone.  Clearly, marijuana would be less of an addictive task-master than either of these.  But maybe it is the task-master aspect of these drugs that works as an opiate replacement?  I do not know of any data suggesting that marijuana works as an opiate replacement.  Like I said, I've talked to at least a dozen anecdotal success cases.  However, their marijuana use was not without significant side-effects, as evidenced by their legal consequences, partly a sampling error due to where I work.  Furthermore, the use of marijuana as a replacement drug is very complicated because it is also the most likely to show positive on a urine drug screen.  Besides, ethically, marijuana is ultimately just another drug.  It seems that many, perhaps most, drug addicts need some type of psychological crutch.  They have a need to stuff their emotions by getting high on something, and marijuana could be the least harmful of these strategies.  But, in reality, even marijuana use is just a cop out.

Other problems do not get better from marijuana use.  Anxiety disorders--of course not.  Intellectual disability--even further exacerbates acuity.  Insomnia--maybe for a while, then makes it worse.  Depression--exacerbates.  Anger--what a joke.

Another interesting thing that has occurred is the development of CBD oils.  Marijuana contains two psychoactive chemicals, in varying degrees of intensity, CBD and THC.

First, CBD is the mellowing  agent that gives marijuana users a restful sensation.  CBD has become the new snake oil.  Who knows, it may have some medicinal value?  Caveat emptor.

Second, THC is the stimulating substance that makes the user high and stimulated.  Long ago, back when I was in Junior and Senior High School, marijuana was classified as an hallucinogen.  If you've ever read Baudelaire's Hashish Papers, you would see how very large quantities of cannabis, ingested, can lead to hallucinatory experiences.  But I somehow doubt that was the intent of classifying marijuana as an hallucinogen.  I think the intent of classifying marijuana as an hallucinogen related more to the propaganda coming out of the 60s, in which marijuana was considered a mind-expanding and insight-inducing substance.

Interestingly, some of the hallucinogens, lately, psilocybn mushrooms, have shown some oddly promising results in the treatment of alcoholism.  Of course, these studies have all been done with very small doses and in controlled laboratory conditions with a psychotherapist to guide the process.  The suggestion is that, under properly guided circumstances, these hallucinogenics can be helpful in breaking through walls of denial.  Alcoholics are highly repressive creatures.  The psilocybn, for example, floods the brain's neurotransmitters and, under the guidance of a skilled psychotherapist, the alcoholic experiences a flood of emotions that breaks down the ego defense mechanisms, especially denial.  For example, the alcoholic experiences the overwhelming emotions about how he has disappointed his family, feelings he would normally repress or deny.  Once the alcoholic has experienced this insight, which he has previously blocked from consciousness, sobriety becomes a possibility.  Of course, it does not guarantee the alcoholic will take the necessary steps to get or to remain sober, but this form of hallucinogenic treatment has been a first step in some case studies.

However--and this is a huge however--this experimental hallucinogenic treatment must be done in extremely controlled conditions and under the direction of a skilled psychotherapist.  It is very easy to see how such an experiment could easily go awry.  Furthermore, this experiment would be done perhaps only once.  Hallucinogenics are extremely dangerous drugs, and the brain's neuro-chemistry is a precarious balance.  Regular use (and in some anecdotal case one use) of hallucinogens leads to, um, hallucinations, the main symptom of the very serious mental illness, schizophrenia.  These experiments are very dangerous and potentially unethical.

The success of these few experiments using hallucinogenics, in my opinion, points to the real danger of legalizing marijuana.  Let's take at face value the propaganda from the 60s claiming that marijuana was a mind expanding substance.  Exactly what did they mean?  I suspect they were pointing to a similar phenomenon observed in these hallucinogenic experiments on alcoholics breaking down defense mechanisms such as denial.  The difference is that, without restraint, marijuana can quickly become a substance the user regularly ingests.  Over time, it would be easy for today's strains of marijuana to far exceed the levels that the French poet Baudelaire consumed.  As this occurs, the user gradually undoes the defense mechanisms that protected the user's ego or consciousness.  To a sophomoric student of Psychology, having no ego defense mechanisms might sound like a good thing.  Indeed, some of the popular Psychology in the 60s espoused this kind of breaking down the doors of perception.  In reality, having few or no ego defense mechanisms remaining would be a terrible thing.  Over time, the person who had dismantled all of his ego defenses would become a puddle of emotions, with no self-confidence, a crippling cynicism, and limited social skills.  With chronic use of marijuana, which builds up in the body over time, I believe the users experience this crippling loss of ego defense mechanisms.  Ultimately, after years of abuse, they have no ego left to defend.

And that is what's not-so-funny about legalized marijuana.

Positive and Negative Speech in Politics and Religion, the 62/38 Rule

     Too much negative speech pushes people away.  In politics, negative smear campaigns lead to voter (or more accurately nonvoter) apathy.  The current negativity is so pervasive that less than 50% of eligible voters make it to the polls (forgive my negligence for not looking up this well-known statistical trend--it's probably worse!).  Negativity can also lead people to vote for the opposing side.  Likewise, in religion, too much rules-based scrupulosity pushes people away from church.  I read a Pew poll about five years ago that found the average length of stay in Evangelical Christianity is five years.  For most Evangelical Christians--simultaneously the fastest growing and fastest shrinking religious group--they may be initially attracted to the "God is love" sentimentality and the structure of an external adherence to religious norms and rules, but over time they sour to moral pressure and expectations.  The children of Evangelical Christians seldom continue in the Faith, almost as badly as the children of modern Catholics.  Overall, whether in politics or religion, negativity is an alienating force that repels people.
    The popular solution to the problem of excessive negativity is to espouse 100% positive speech.  This approach seems to make sense, and I think most people wish this approach were more prevalent among both politicians and clergy.  They wish that politicians would take the moral high ground and avoid mud-slinging at their opponents.  They also hope that ministers would focus entirely on the love of God and avoid controversial topics.  Such a 100% positive reinforcement approach was even espoused by B.F. Skinner (1948) in Walden Two, who likened his understanding of operant-conditioning to Christ's message of love.  But is such a 100% positive message more idealistic than practical?  And does it work?
     The short answer is that trying to be 100% positive is too idealistic, impractical, and ineffective.  As much as people hate them, negative political campaigns win races.  Likewise, a judicious amount of fire and brimstone can fill the pews or the revival.  In recent years, working in the criminal justice system, I have been well-acquainted with multiple individuals who have run for local office.  In every case, the individuals who refused to go negative lost.  They lost in spite of each of their candidates having glaring negatives. The trouble was that, though people who worked in the system knew the real story, the county voters did not.  Each of these candidates had an easy lob and they could have slammed their opponents.  But they took the moral high ground.  And lost.  Likewise, from that same Pew survey, the churches that espoused the 100% positive approach of inclusion, unconditional forgiveness, beyond Heaven and Hell, and social justice were hemorrhaging parishioners or congregants.
     The same Pew survey showed that Evangelical churches were the most dynamic, with people coming and going at the highest levels.  By contrast, mainline Protestant (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and so forth) as well as post-Vatican II Catholic Churches were experiencing an exodus from the pews with no new arrivals (with the possible exception of Catholic immigrants).  The 100% positive message seemed to only have staying power with the elderly, who either continued to attend from force of habit or who experienced the afterlife as a more pressing problem.  For those of us with two feet still above the dirt, the purely positive message may sound appealing, but it is not realistic, practical, or effective.
     The problem of positivity and negativity has perplexed me for more than two decades.  I first became acutely conscious of it in group counseling and church-groups.  I observed an expectation that interactions were supposed to be 100% positive.  These excessively positive group members viewed any criticism as "controversial."  At the same time, I noticed that groups that were relatively free of controversy were stagnant or dwindling.  Meanwhile, groups with a fair amount of controversy were vibrant and growing.  Yet, it was also clear that groups that were excessively negative would quickly fail.  A former Philosophy major, I pondered this phenomenon at length.  Clearly, the goal was to achieve a balance between positive and negative speech.  The 100% positive espousal represented something like an over-simplified understanding of Christian ethics.  It's a lot harder to be consistently positive than negative, and since most people will fall short of the mark, the goal is to strive for 100% positivity.  By contrast, the Greek philosophers tended to focus more on a balance, "nothing in excess." In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discussed ethical decisions as a balance between extremes, in which one pole was typically easier than the other.  I think Aristotle would surely admit that it is more difficult to be positive, but the goal would be to achieve a balance between positive and negative.  But what is the balance?  How much positive and how much negative speech is most efficacious?
     This past year, I ran across an article by Kendall, Howard, and Hays (1989) that I felt provided a provisional answer.  As a recently graduated, I am no longer a student, and I no longer have access to the full article.  So I have to go by the abstract and from memory.  Kendall et al. (1989) were cognitive therapists concerned with the balance of positive and negative thinking.  They administered a test that measured positive or negative self-referent speech to three groups:  depressed, overly optimistic, and normal.  Not surprisingly, they found that the depressed group reported the most self-critical speech, the overly optimist group was the least self-critical, and the normal group was somewhere in between.  I should say something about what the researchers might have meant by overly optimistic.  Seligman (1990) talked about the importance of optimism and the dangers of too much optimism in his book Learned Optimism.  Basically, Seligman's point was that certain occupations, especially sales, required a high degree of optimism lest the person become overwhelmed by the preponderance of failure.  Like a professional baseball player who bats 300 (very good), the salesman may fail to get on base 70% of the time or more.  Optimism--or in this case positive self-referent talk--would be essential for staying the course.  But Seligman (1990) also found that people with too much optimism were also prone to questionable moral decisions.  At the extreme, think of the bank robber who never believes he will get caught, or the young people who try Heroin thinking they are impervious to addiction.  Again, clearly there is a balance between optimism and pessimism.  Kendall et al (1989) provided a provisional answer that the balance is 62% positive to 38% negative, or a 1.6 to 1.0 ratio.  Again, I'm going partly by memory, but it seems to me they also cited athletes, and the highest achievers attained this 62% to 38% ratio.  In other words, if you are an Olympic figure skater, it behooves you to be positive most of the time as you will encounter set-backs, bad rounds, and difficulties.  But the goal of being 100% positive would also be counterproductive.  To perform at a higher level, one must also be accurately self-critical in order to improve performance.  To me, this 62% positive and 38% negative ratio was a watershed idea.
     If you take the 62/38 rule and apply it to political speech, it also makes sense.  Seligman (1989) found that optimism was a strong predictor of success in political races.  People are attracted to optimistic candidates.  However, we also know from observation that negative campaigns work and purely positive campaigns do not.  Politicians spend a lot of money on polls and marketing firms.  If negative ads did not work, do you really think they would run them?
     Think of this problem like an English teacher.  If I write an essay and tell you exactly what I want to say, but I do not clarify what I am not saying, then my essay might be confusing.  For example, if I say I like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, you might just assume I like country music.  Conversely, if I tell you that I am NOT saying this and NOT saying that, you might ask, "Exactly what ARE you saying?"  To follow up with the previous example, if I say that I don't like Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley, you might ask, "Well, what DO you like?"  However, if I say that I don't like Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley, but I do like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, then you have a pretty good idea that I only like classic country music.  The point is to find a balance and talk more about what one is saying and not as much about what one is not saying.  The 62/38 rule likely applies to good writing.
     Part of the frustration with the current debate over politics is that it seems so negative.  And as a result, I am hearing lots of people yearning for a purely positive approach.  I agree that such an approach may sound good.  I also concur that there is a real contemporary problem with negative speech.  But the desire for 100% positive politics is naive.  Refusing to go negative, especially when there is an real issue worth informing the voters about, is not an effective way to run a campaign.
     The same 62/38 rule applies to religion.  Overall, people want a religious faith that is internal and positive, but they also yearn for external structure and rule compliance.  In other words, if God is all forgiving and everyone goes to Heaven, then what's the point?  I might as well live however I feel like living.  People turn to religion for structure and moral norms.  People yearn for external compliance with the letter of the Law.  Though external compliance with the Law is only 38% of the equation, it is still a vital part of the formula.  Without the concept of sin, religion becomes superfluous.  The external compliance to the Law complements the internal relationship with God.  Otherwise, all that is left is a religion that is like a warm sweater; it provides comfort, but it does not substantially change the way one lives.  Again, such a positive religion might provide comfort for the aged, especially if church attendance has been a part of their lives.  But the warm sweater religion is hardly attractive to others, especially not the children of such churchgoers.  Their children see right through the vacuity of the 100% positive approach to religion, just as much as they might be repelled by an overly negative approach to religion.
     They say the two topics to avoid in polite conversation are politics and religion.  They probably have a point.  But the two things that interest me the most are politics and religion.  Perhaps the problem is not talking about politics or religion per sae, but talking in too negative or maybe too positive a manner, speaking in an unbalanced way.  I must admit, I find obsequious religious talk to be almost as annoying as judgment and condemnation.  Likewise, I sometimes find the 100% positive approach to politics to be insulting to my political convictions.  I am sometimes even annoyed by the Pollyanna condescension toward people whose views I otherwise oppose.  At least the opposite side of the isle has convictions.
     And so on...

     At this point, I have a confession to make:  I have no idea how to end this essay.  I think you get the point.  I'll leave it at that.  Thanks for reading.

References 

available upon request (I'm not writing for college credit)

Presidential Election, 2020, a Behavioral Perspective

Presidential Election, 2020, a Behavioral Perspective

Before starting, I'd like to pay tribute to the life of Michael Palmer, Ed.D., Licensed Clinical Psychologist, who died of cancer last year.  He was 69 years old.  I have been fortunate to have many excellent mentors over the years, mostly psychologists, but Dr. Palmer was the longest and most influential.  He and I met for 2-3 hours a week for 8 years, and I knew him from staff meetings for 6 years prior to that.  A behaviorist, Dr. Palmer had a concise way of looking at things.  He also possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Psychology.  Perhaps most of all, he prided himself for his carpentry and construction skills, which he passed on to his sons.  In a parallel way, he looked at Psychology as akin to carpentry or Engineering.  Although he was a somewhat religious and very spiritual man, he was especially enamored with the material behaviorists, Joseph Wolpe and B.F. Skinner.  He looked at human problems the way an engineer might think about diagnosing and fixing a piece of machinery.   He scoffed at many of the post-modern developments in counseling as "a bunch of hooey."  He was also about 70% skeptical of Psychiatry.  For me, he was a reliable source of fresh perspectives.  For example, he once remarked that the sole purpose of staff meetings was "to reinforce the pecking order."  Initially, I found his comments to be humorous, original, and surprising.  Over time, though, I came to realize that he was not just trying to be plucky or rebellious.  He analysed situations and problems, and then provided unblinking commentary and guidance.  He gave me his dusty books from the 60s and 70s, which I have slowly read and tried to absorb.  Often, he talked about things I struggled to understand.  For example, he often talked about "extinction loops."  From my own education, I knew about "extinction," the gradual fading away of a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus, i.e. Pavlov's dogs slowly losing the salivation response to the bell.  Or, from an operant-conditioning perspective, "extinction" would be the gradual fading away of the influence of a reward or punishment. But I had never heard of an "extinction loop," and I struggled to understand what he meant.  Lately, I have been thinking about the developing presidential election, and I realized this is an example of an "extinction loop." 

My limited understanding of behaviorism assumed that all repeated behaviors are either rewarded or punished.  I did not understand that there was a third alternative, "the extinction loop."  For example, from my limited understanding, a behavior that ostensibly did not seem to have a reward or punishment meant that I simply was not looking hard enough.  Or, I needed to broaden my perspective on what was a reward or punishment.  Thus, the acting out child who seems to work against his own self-interest would be responding to negative attention.  Normally, children respond to positive attention.  However, if no positive attention is available, they may instead seek negative attention.  In other words, what we normally think of as punishment--spanking, for example--might be reinforcing for some children.  The children thrive on the negative attention.  In Dr. Palmer's words, some children are "addicted to negative parental attention."  The same could be said for the children who enjoy the notoriety of regularly going to the Principal's office.  But that's not the whole story.

Often, when a person experiences the removal of the reinforcing response, the person responds with even more pronounced behaviors.  The obvious example would the the Heroin addict who strives in vain to recreate that first high.  She uses more and more of the drug, but never achieves anything like the initial dopamine rush.  Over time, the addictive behavior becomes more and more extreme and, if it weren't for tolerance the difficulty in obtaining the drug, would almost inevitably result in death.  Another example, perhaps less obvious, might relate to hair styles.  For a young person, some long or short haircuts can illicit a lot of positive reinforcement.  With age, however, the frequency of positive reinforcement for the long or short hair decreases.  For us older folks, a long or short haircut is no longer quite as cute.  One would think that the normative response would be to regress toward the mean, having either less long or less short hair.  But that is not what happens.  In a futile effort to regain that positive reinforcement, the hair becomes either progressively longer or shorter.  Perhaps in a similar way, the extreme hair styles of punk rockers or hippies might not be best accounted for by reinforcement, but as an "extinction loop."  They make incrementally more extreme attempts to gain reinforcement for a hairstyle that once garnered positive attention.  Also, in some cases, punk rockers or hippies may have a strong aversion for mainstream culture, which even further fuels their extreme appearance.

For ethical and simplicity reasons, behavioral research tends to use animal subjects.  Many of the studies on extinction loops used pigeons.  For example, Gerry (1971) measured a phenomenon called "pitch shift differential" in pigeons who learned to distinguish between two pitches, one lower and one higher, in response to the reward of a food pellet.  The study involved two very hungry pigeons that researchers trained over an extended period (36, 3 hour sessions) to respond to the higher pitch but not the lower one, from a range of pitches provided by an occilator.  The researches rewarded the pigeons responding to a narrow range of pitches around the target frequency; in 3 sessions, the researchers also aversively trained one of the pigeons with a mild electric shock in response to the lower pitch.  The result was that both pigeons responded in a rough bell curve to the pitches around the target frequency.  Then, the researches removed the rewarding food pellets from both subjects; they also removed the electric shock condition from the second pigeon.  The result was a marked change in both pigeon's responses, and the pitch shift differential was even more pronounced in the pigeon that had received the aversive conditioning.  In fact, especially with the added aversive conditioning, the bell curves of their response rates no longer overlapped with the bell curve from before. The pigeons came to respond to pitches in a range that no longer corresponded with the target pitch that would have resulted in a reward.  In other words, if after a period of extinction response, the reinforcing food pellet were reintroduced at the target frequency, the pigeons would no longer respond at that range.  They would have to be re-trained to respond to the target frequency.  The pitch shift differential was even more pronounced when the aversive condition of the electric shock was part of the conditioning.

What does this have to do with the current election?  Well, much to the dismay of Democrats, Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.  In other words, the Democrats were not rewarded by having their candidate win.  As a result, they are experiencing an extinction response.  Despite their best efforts, they were not rewarded by a victory.  What happened next was interesting.  Rather than take a hard look at why they might have lost (not appealing to middle-class voters, ignoring the rust-belt, and pushing for a globalist agenda), they sought to blame the other side.

This approach is not all bad (save that topic for another blog), but the overarching approach of the Democrats and most of the news media since November 2016 is to aversively condition the American people into hating the President.  Metaphorically, the news media and Democrats are repeatedly attempting to show you a picture of Donald Trump coupled with a electric shock.  In short, CNN, MSNBC, the networks, and NPR are in the process of aversively conditioning the American people to hate the president.  But here's what is interesting.

For the most  part, the Democrats are preaching to a choir of Democrats.  The people who have become the most aversively conditioned to the President are fellow Democrats.  Further, even though they gained some seats in the mid-term election, they have not completely changed their circumstances as the Senate is still under Republican control.  Here's where pitch shift differential enters the scenario.  Two things are happening simultaneously.  First, the Democrats are not in a position of power as they sorely lost the 2016 Presidential election.  Second, they are creating an aversive training condition regarding the opposing party's candidate.  This is creating a pitch shift differential.  The net result is that the Democrats are moving further and further away from the center and toward extreme left-wing positions--late term abortions, medical coverage for undocumented aliens, open borders, and socialism.  These are all losing issues, alienating to most mainstream Americans.  And the more they push to demonize the president, via impeachment inquiries and the Muller report, the more left-wing their platform becomes.  The Democrats are not acting in their own best interests, and the result is an alienation of the voting public.  Sure, they may bring out their base, but the majority of Americans will either vote for Trump or stay at home.

Of course, behaviorism in itself has no political agenda.  One could say that the whole Newt Gingrich, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh phenomenon of the 90s was aversive conditioning against Bill Clinton.  And not coincidentally, the Republicans moved markedly further to the right in that time, resulting in the Tea Party movement.  So this phenomenon can cut either way.  It makes sense that the see-saw effect of most Presidential elections changing parties every 4 to 8 years could relate to an extinction loop.  En mass, people seldom act as rational determinants of their own destinies.

Prediction for 2020:  As a rule, in Presidential elections, the more centrist candidate wins.  I don't think any of the front-runners, even Joe Biden, understand this.  The only candidate from the Democrats who could win is Tim Ryan from Ohio, but I don't think he has the name recognition yet.  He would make a good VP candidate, though.  (Personally, I don't like him, but I think he could win under the right circumstances.)  Considering the Democrats mass migration to the left, Trump is more centrist than almost all of the Democrat field, with the possible exception of Ryan.  I even think Trump is arguably more centrist than most of the Republicans from 2016.  This is a tremendous strength for him.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are falling off the left side of the map.  Trump will win in 2020.  Tim Ryan has the potential to re-emerge in 2024. 

I Want to Have a Pet Peeve

In sequence, each of our oldest three sons has reminded me of the first writing assignment of my Freshman year of college.  I suspect the rest of the children will do likewise as they reach adolescence.  I remember that assignment because, I believe, the professors designed the topic to awaken the adolescent mind from its idealistic slumbers.  Even at 18, I was unprepared for that English 10 assignment--not just because I did not know how to write, but more because I knew so little about life.  That assignment required me to tap into a reserve I did not, yet, know I had. Now, as each of my sons has reached the teenage years and regaled me with his idealism, I remember that Freshman English paper.  And I chuckle.  The scenario goes something like this:  My wife or I complain about something that really annoys us, a pet peeve.  Some examples are using a different glass for each drink, water all over the bathroom floor, or sleeping on beds without fixing the sheets.  Well, in response to my wife or me voicing aggravation, our teenager says, "Oh, Mom/Dad, you don't need to have a pet peeve?  Just chill out.  Calm down."   (Advice for teenagers:  Telling parents to calm down generally results in the opposite effect.)  Each time one of our oldest sons has made this type of retort, I have remembered my own struggles with pet peeves in that first assignment from English 10: "Write a 3-5 page paper about your pet peeve."

If memory serves, the professor I had for English 10 was very old.  In other words, he was about the age I am now, 51.  Certainly, he had taught the class countless times before.  So the professor knew what to expect.  He warned that "people who have pet peeves" was not an acceptable topic.  But try as I might, I couldn't think of anything I had in that vast repertoire of an 18-year old brain resembling a pet peeve.  So, I ignored his advice and wrote about the thing that annoyed me most, "people who have pet peeves."  I had a different title, legalistically avoiding the banned topic.  No matter, I think I got a C-.  I should have gotten an F.

The assignment was actually rather clever.  American youth culture is defined by one overriding concept, "cool."  And the opposite of "cool" is having a pet peeve.  To my adolescent brain at the time, having a pet peeve seemed trivial and angry.  The assignment was asking me to dig, to see, to admit, and to confess an unpleasant emotion regarding something important like tartar sauce or uncooked hamburger meat. I could not stoop so low!

Occasionally, usually during long car rides or boring seminars, I re-write that freshman English paper in my mind.  Truth is, I have so many peeves it is hard to figure out which one is my biggest.  But I think I've narrowed all my annoyances down to one.  So here goes:

Stephen Willmot

English 10, PSU

This paper is 32 years late.

My Biggest Pet Peeve (redundancy left in, for authenticity)

Some people have already made up their minds.  About everything.  But mostly, they have one issue that they are especially intransigent about.  And they spend the rest of their lives finding things that support what they already believe.  For example, if they are politically conservative, they might spend hours reading Red State, watching Fox News, or listening to Rush Limbaugh.  Or, just as likely, if they are liberals, they may pass hours reading the Daily Kos, watching MS-NBC, or listening to Jeneane Garofalo.  Either way, they have made up their minds.  What they believed at 18 is the same was what they will believe at 81.

Don't get me wrong.  I like people who have opinions.  I especially like people who can passionately defend their points of view.  But I'm not impressed by people who simply call people names or slap on labels.  I admire people who can state facts (even if I don't completely agree with their facts) and argue using sound reasoning from those facts. I especially like people who can respond to challenge and lively debate.  I'd like to think that I meet those criteria.  (Though some claim I do not.)

For me, this process started in earnest when a philosophy professor challenged the prevailing view of McCarthyism.  He said, rhetorically, "No one stops to think that McCarthy was right 98% of the time."  This statement was like a slap across my face.  How dare he?  Senator Joseph McCarthy was a bully.  He blacklisted people like Robert Oppenheimer.  Affronted, I remember talking about this statement during a break in the seminar.  Most of the participants in the class were actually graduate students auditing the course.  The guy I talked to that day was, coincidentally, also teaching English 10.  He told me a story.  His students were supposed to write an argumentative paper, pro or con, regarding censorship in the music industry.  (This was during a congressional hearing on censorship.)  The gist was that he told his 20 students that he would give them an A if they wrote a paper arguing for censorship.  Well, it turned out that every single student, all 20 of them, submitted a paper arguing against censorship.  The students could not even consider the pro position, not even rhetorically.  As a result, the highest grade he gave was a B+, and the students were incensed. Likewise, the statement my philosophy professor made was not to defend McCarthy, but an exercise in free thinking.  Something like a deBono exercise in thinking outside the box. Apparently, most of the people McCarthy accused of being communists or communist sympathizers were, in fact, communists or communist sympathizers.  Even those rare few who were innocent had done something to invoke suspicion.  So, the contemporary use of the word, McCarthyism, as making wild and wanton accusations, is somewhat of a misnomer.  Yet this accusation is bandied about so frivolously that most people who accuse someone of McCarthyism are themselves guilty of McCarthyism (as currently understood).

Principle #1:  Do not be afraid to entertain the absurd or ridiculous.  It may not help you to become popular, but it will help you to be an independent thinker.  And just entertaining an idea does not mean you endorse it completely.

My pet peeve extends to other subjects and whole areas of study.  When I first got my master's degree and started working in the substance abuse treatment field, I had a mentor.  She was a woman who had worked a number of years in the treatment field, and she was very generous with her time, resources, and experience. For that I am forever grateful.  But I learned a few things rather quickly:  One, she was a recovering alcoholic and, for her, AA trumped any scientific inquiry.  I was an early admirer of W.R. Miller's research, and the mere mention of his name invoked hatred and disdain.  Two, she was a staunch feminist, and her views on anything from abortion to divorce were etched in stone.  I mentioned the book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and nearly got my head bitten off.  (I know, pop psychology, but Gray did have some serious research, his doctoral dissertation, underneath his popular rendition.)  Though tremendously competent and conscientious, my first mentor was dogmatic in her beliefs and practices.  I did not realize it at the time, but her dogmatism would be more influential on me than anything she taught me.

I first started to realize this when my wife had our second child, left school, quit her job, and followed me to another state for a new job.  She was burnt out from working and going to school all the time, rarely seeing our first child, and having little to show for her efforts.  At least in part, she was relieved to stay at home, breastfeed, and focus on our then two children.  Also, economically, her going to work prior to completing her education made little sense.  We would barely break even.  So the decision for her to stay at home was fairly natural.  Nonetheless, a product of my education and the culture, I was curious what the science had to say about daycare.  I went to the university library and did some research.

The first thing that I discovered was that it was nearly impossible to find research on daycare or any other social issues like divorce, single parents, or dual career families.  In the scientific journals, there were plenty of opinion pieces, but there were almost no well-controlled scientific experiments or surveys.  I had run into this before, while researching substance abuse treatment.  Especially in American social science journals, opinions were plentiful, but genuine research was scarce.  Eventually, though, I did run across some good research on daycare sponsored by the Scandinavians.  They found the children exposed to many hours of daycare, especially boys, were less attached to their mothers and more prone to physical aggression.  The effect was worse the earlier the boys started daycare and the more hours of attendance.  The conclusion was that it was ideal for mothers (or perhaps fathers) to care for their children at home for the first three years of life.  After that, the children could gradually transition into preschool and kindergarten.

Oddly enough, that Scandinavian research concluded the exact opposite of what is currently being forced down the throats of the American people.  We are constantly bombarded with messages that children learn the most in the first three years of life, and therefore failure to enroll your child in early daycare could delay your child's intellectual development.  Time out!  The Scandinavians have the highest ranked schools in the world.  Clearly, the Scandinavian practice of long maternity leave has not hurt their children's intellectual development.  In fact, the Scandinavians start formal schooling far later than anyone else, around age 7 or 8. So if the American research about the importance of the first three years is correct, then maybe the conclusions and recommendations are wrong.  Maybe the most critical way for children to learn during those first three years is at home with their moms (or dads, perhaps).  And daycare from ages 3 to 7 needs to focus not on alphabets, math, and reading, but on various forms of play.  This is not to say that Scandinavian women stay at home and forego a second income.  Rather, most Scandinavian women take a few years off to stay with their small families, then return to work once the children are old enough.  It may not be perfect. Supporting these mothers is expensive for the taxpayers, but it does seem to pay off in educational and societal functioning.  Of course, the Scandinavian model is only one alternative to the status quo in America, which clearly is not functional.

Over the years, I have looked over various research (as much as I am able), and I have come to one overriding conclusion.  By and large, we are living in a post-scientific era.  The problem is not only various dogmatic positions taken by the APA and other organizations, but the bulk of the research is sponsored by organizations that have agendas and published in journals that foist those agendas.  No American journal of daycare and development (to make up a random name) will ever publish an article critical of the daycare industry.  No pharmaceutical company will ever allow publication of research that does not support the efficacy of its product.  No car seat manufacturer will ever publish research suggesting that, beyond a certain age, car seats are no more effective than safety belts.  No women's studies journal will ever publish research showing that women may be able to have either a career or a family, but tend to struggle with having both. No gay studies journal will ever suggest that gay marriage is any different than heterosexual marriage.  And so forth.  In theory, science is an objective and disinterested pursuit of the truth.  If that is the definition of science, then science no longer exists.

Principle #2:  Genuine scientific research is of the utmost value, but more rare than the finest jewels.  The peer review process has a stranglehold on scientific progress.

Practically, scientific journals are not yet completely obsolete.  A reasonable solution would be for the intellectual property rights of all scientific research to expire after five years.  Then, all scientific research--the good, the bad, and the ugly--would all be published on the internet.  Let the trolls and the stalkers review the literature.  They cannot possibly be any worse than tenured professors.

Principle #3:  There is no room for orthodoxy in the disinterested search for the truth.

The problem is not just whole areas of endeavor that are agenda driven and biased.  The other problem is a scientific purism that fails to account for the existential, political, spiritual, and cultural implications of accepted science.  Take, for example, the endless debate between the creation scientists and the evolutionists.  If ever there were a proof of Kant's antinomies, it would be these debaters who cannot hear the other.  Ironically, it is academic or intellectual science that keeps this debate alive through a narrow or purist form of epistemology.  My suggestion would be to turn it over to the internet.  The conflict would be solved by attrition.  Sooner or later, both sides would bore themselves to death.

I would also suggest that universities resurrect the study of rhetoric and high schools elevate the debate team to the status of the football team.  This leads to the last aspect of my pet peeve.  I am an opinionated and passionate person.  Get over it.  I have no tolerance for political correctness.  I do not much care if someone finds me "offensive." I am more interested in the following:  Am I correct?  If not, why?  And be specific. Do not just call me names or quote some supposed authority.  Does my argument have merits?  Is it plausible? Heck, is it well-written?  I do not try to be offensive, nor do I try to avoid being offensive.  Besides, perceived offense is largely a choice of the reader.  I just try to tell the truth.  Not my truth or your truth.  Not a partial truth that does not hurt your feelings.  Not an incomplete truth that enables me to avoid controversy. Not the Absolute Truth as I am not God.  These are essays, in other words, attempts at the truth.  But I try to take my best shot at a truth that transcends ordinary experience.

 Anything less.  Well, that is my pet peeve.

A Dog for All Ages

Okay, so I haven't written for several weeks, and, no, I haven't had writer's block.  What I did have was a lot to do.  And this blog wasn't priority...

STOP!  I should be honest, here.  What I said above was very true.  I have been busy.  But that's not the whole reason I haven't written.  Truth be told, I started a blogpost several weeks ago that I just couldn't finish.  I knew what I wanted to say.  If I had forced myself to sit down at the keyboard, the words would have flowed eventually.  But writing takes courage.  I just couldn't muster up the nerve.

And maybe that's a good thing.  Perhaps my doubts prevented me from posting something that I might later regret.  Or just something that was off-message, or not mine to write.  So I'll put that post aside for awhile.

Besides, life and my muse had other plans.

THIS HAS BEEN A BAD WEEK.  Did I mention that my dog died?

Let me start over.

 

No, I'm not a sentimental animal lover.  Sure, I like dogs and cats.  But frankly, even though I have some good friends who are animal lovers, I am wary of people who exhibit an excessive affection for animals.  When I hear that a person is an animal lover, my next question is:  "Are you a vegetarian?"  If the answer is, "Yes," then that's two strikes.  Think of it this way:  Hitler was an animal lover; he was also a vegetarian; it's not a long stretch from animal lover and vegetarian to mono-maniacal psychopath interested in genocide and world domination.  Did I mention that I'm not sentimental about my pets?

Catholic dogma states that dogs do not have immortal souls, but only material souls.  This makes perfect sense to me.  Dogs may seem to experience human-like emotions, but most of those feelings are just emotions that we project upon them.  What makes dogs so special is that they are such willing participants in our anthropomorphism.  Thus, the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven is, from a strictly Catholic perspective, heretical.  But before you start your bonfire or call the Grand Inquisitor or--worst of all--write a chain letter on Facebook, you should be aware of one important caveat on the Catholic position of dogs and heaven.  While dogs lack immortal souls and cannot be saved, they can and do make it to heaven.  This is because heaven is a perfect place, and the presence of some dogs would be necessary for heaven to be a perfect place.  From this logic, it follows that Lassie is probably in heaven and Cujo is not.  This leads me to believe that, if my children, wife, or I ever make it to heaven, then Rex will probably be waiting there for us.  He was that kind of dog.  Did I mention that I'm not sentimental about my pets?

Rex came to us via a friend who volunteers at the local animal rescue shelter and who agreed to show my teenage son what she does.  That Saturday, our cellphones were abuzz with photos of all the dogs at the shelter.  My son's heart went out to all the dogs, but he finally settled upon the funny, medium-sized tan dog.  The next week, he was home with us.  I lost out in the naming process (nobody else liked the name, Elvis), and the name Rex was chosen.  Soon he was Rexie, Rex Roy, Rextopher, Rooner, and Roon-dog.  But my personal favorite was my wife's uncle who called him the "Weiner Hound."

We don't know exactly how old Rex was, but the vet guessed about one year.  He seemed like he was still a puppy when we first got him.  Three years later, he still acted like a puppy.  So, it's hard to say how old he really was.  At first, there was some doubt about what mix of breeds he was, but the vet was quite sure he was a designer dog, a Ba-Shar.  That made sense.  He had the body of a Basset Hound and the wrinkles of a Shar-Pei.  The idea of coupling those two breeds was to assuage some of the extreme defects of both breeds.  Basset Hounds' drooping ears tend to get infected and their long torsos cause strain on their backs.  Shar-pei's wrinkles can lead to skin irritation, odor, and infections.  Rex had a good mix of traits from both breeds, except his body shape, which was pure Basset Hound.  This turned out to be his fatal flaw.

A friend of mine who is crazy about Basset Hounds once asked, "Does Rex have a sense of humor?"  This struck me as an odd question, but I read about Basset Hounds.  Bassets can be very playful.  I also knew from past observation that Bassets are remarkably patient with small children.  Combine this with the Shar-pei's love of running and wrestling, and he was a wonderful pet for children.

Looking back on my life, I've had quite a few pets.  It strikes me as odd that, when I remember each one, I don't recall the good times as much as the troubled times that accompanied the life of that pet.    This is not a coincidence.  People confide in their pets.  Pets help us to cope with loneliness, discord, despair, and grief.  Dogs and cats--dogs especially--are like perfect Rogerian psychotherapists, sans the "What I hear you saying..." bologna.   Rex was a good listener.  In many respects, I will never be as good at counseling as Rex was.

We've never been a dog family.  Part of that dates back to the days when both my wife and I worked, when caring for a cat was just easier.  Another aspect was that my wife and I both liked the independence, assertiveness, and sleekness of cats.  But Rex whittled his way into our hearts.  At first, he was afraid of my wife and women in general.  And brooms.  Reminded me of that movie we used to watch every year in grade school about the wandering dog who was afraid of brooms.  But Rex softened to my wife and lost the fear of brooms.  These last couple years, he was her baby.

The children, of course, loved Rexie Roy.  With a full house of kids, ages 21, 18, 12, 9, 7, 4, and 2, Rex always had a playmate.  He was gentle with the baby, played dress-up with the little girls, rough-house with the older boys, and took long naps in between, sometimes with a child using him as a pillow.  He was all things to all people.  Sure, he was a little needy at times.  But he became like a linchpin in our family, keeping everyone together in his own way.

I wonder if Rex had a patron saint, and if it wasn't Saint Simon the Cyrene.  Rex was eager to carry everyone's cross.  In his own way, he took on each of my children's pain.  He helped them to overcome fear.  He gave them courage.  He helped them through troubling times.  He gave them an ear and never repeated a word they said.  And then one day, his tail became limp.  We took him to the vet. The next day, he couldn't move his hind legs.  He became incontinent.  We took him back to the vet.  He had lesions all up and down his spine.  It was a congenital problem common with Basset Hounds.  Couple his extreme body shape with the spunk of a Shar-pei, and Rex's spine just wore out.  I like to think that he was congenitally predisposed to carrying everyone's cross, and eventually he just gave out.

The vet could have operated.  We could have spend thousands of dollars, and it probably wouldn't have helped.  Besides, I'm morally opposed to heroic measures on animals when many humans in this country lack proper medical coverage.  So, we opted to put him to sleep.  That's not to say the decision was easy.  My 21-year old son and 9-year old daughter went with me to the vet to say good bye.  When the vet brought him into the room, Rex was very sad, a shadow of the dog he had once been.  Obviously, he was in a lot of pain.  But he was glad to see us.  And we think that he knew he was dying.  In a couple days, the paralysis would have reached his lungs.  I led my daughter back out to the waiting room, and returned to the exam room.  My oldest son said good bye and Rex quietly went to sleep as the medicine reached his heart.  He was courageous to the end.  I don't believe that he was concerned about his own welfare.  Frankly, I think he was relieved of the pain.  I think he was, most of all, concerned about my son.  Worried that he was crying.  Worried that he would be okay.

The vet, who had encouraged us to make our own decisions all along, said afterwards that she felt we had made the right decision.  She also said that Rex had "a really sweet disposition."

Sweet disposition is an understatement.  This might contradict Catholic dogma, but if there beatification of animals, Rex would be a saint.  Saint Rex, the Cross-bearer.