Opinions, art, debate
There’s been an episode of Dr Phil about a lawyer who was convicted of “hypnotizing” his clients and sexually abusing him. It happened in Ohio, but still, it’s bizarre that there should be a whole courthouse full of people who believe in “hypnosis.”
If the fellow in question really had the power to switch off people’s consciousness like that, why would he waste it on getting sex from old, fat, sad divorcees instead of becoming ultra rich and powerful?
Hey, everybody, thanks for the suggestions on the table foods. I’ve tried a few out, and they work great. Today, for instance, I gave her some blueberries, and it worked. I’d feared she’d gag on them (because that’s what happened with a piece of apple two months ago) but no, she realized that she needs to “chew” them up. What I should have kept in mind is that babies develop fast, and if she wasn’t ready 2 months ago, that doesn’t mean she still isn’t.
We’ll go to the store to look for cheerios tomorrow.
Chasing an 11-month-old around the house changed my definition of going to the gym from “the gym is exhausting” to “let me go have some rest at the gym.”
The religions that existed before the rise of protestantism were an obstacle to the formation of capitalist mentality. Capitalism is all about placing the satisfaction of human needs above all, and the dietary, sartorial, amorous, etc restrictions placed by religion stood in the way. Religious institutions were competing for power with capital, arguing that there is an authority that’s higher than the God of human “I want.”
The liberation from religious strictures first by protestantism and then by the Enlightenment forgot to ask the question “what is the end goal of this liberation?” The tyranny of religion was swapped for the tyranny of capital but the paradox is that people see the compulsion to buy – be it objects, identities, body parts, family members, or anything else- as the greatest freedom of all.
Rebellions against this tyranny are puny and pathetic. People who rant against “cultural appropriation”, for instance, desperately want to believe that there is something that is not entirely for sale. The same goes for people like me who are opposed to wombs for hire and to buying children. But these rebellions will fail until we dare to question the entire concept of the primacy of human whims over absolutely everything else.
María Lejárraga was born in Spain in 1874. She wanted to be a writer but . . . she was born in Spain in 1874, so she got married instead. As all writers, though, she couldn’t help herself and went on writing. Her lazy layabout husband who couldn’t write worth a damn published her plays under his name.
The plays became famous, and the loser husband started his own theater company in order to get actresses to sleep with him in exchange for parts. The arrangement worked: Lejárraga wrote, the husband has his own harem of actresses plus international fame (the plays were even used in Hollywood), and starlets knew what to do to get parts.
Finally, the husband settled down with one leading actress and started an illegitimate family with her. The actress wasn’t happy because having children out of wedlock wasn’t super prestigious back then but she knew he couldn’t leave Lejárraga. The fellow couldn’t write a postcard to an ailing grandma without her help, let alone a play.
Lejárraga, in the meanwhile, kept reading, writing, and thinking. Eventually, she realized that something wasn’t right in the arrangement where she did all the writing but the only fame she got was that of an idiot wife cheated on very publicly.
Lejárraga started writing passionate feminist treatises about the exploitation of women, and the loser husband went on signing them.
It is only in the 1950s, years after the husband’s death, that Lejárraga wrote an autobiography admitting her authorship. There were people who tried to deny it but it was useless because everybody in the theater had known plus the husband himself had admitted he couldn’t write.
Klara’s head teacher says it’s time to give her table foods and snacks. Problem is, I don’t know what they are. Does anyone have any ideas? All I could come up with so far are little boiled potatoes and hard-boiled egg yolks.
Normally, she eats vegetable and oatmeal + fruit purees that we make for her.
Here is a little exercise on measuring one’s psychological health. Make a list of your compensatory mechanisms, or things you do that might not look like the best use of your time yet are crucial to your getting through the day. Here are some examples:
As I keep saying, these are not bad activities. They are good activities in that they literally allow you to survive. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT try to limit these activities by applying willpower. It will only deplete your energy and make you need more of these mechanisms. Psychologically healthy individuals, a.k.a. lucky fuckers, also have their compensatory mechanisms but instead of the above, they do the following:
So once you figure out your compensatory activities from list 1, track how much time you dedicate each day to them and what triggers them. If cumulatively they take more than 10-15% of your awake time in a day, that’s a sign that your psychological health is not great. 7% to 10% is borderline. Under 7% is optimal. (List 2, of course, can and should be pursued for as much as one wants.)
The protracted use of the personal planner made it exceedingly clear to me that productivity is extremely dependent on:
The way you organize your labor is extremely important and productivity strategies are crucial. But the 3 aspects I listed above are what it all depends on.
Yes, these are completely obvious things but it’s important to see clear and tangible proof that the planner offered me.
It would be extremely cool to be a completely psychologically healthy person. If I were such person, I wouldn’t have freaked out like I did at the Philadelphia airport and spent an hour crying hysterically and saying “I just want to go home” to my reflection in the mirror at the Airport Marriott. I would have used that time instead to read and could have had a great time. But the mental resources weren’t there.
And large part of the reason that they weren’t there is that I haven’t been sleeping. And I haven’t been sleeping because I’ve been suffering from another cold. And the reason why that happened is that my psychological health is not great. It’s a vicious circle that needs to be broken.
In the next post I will publish an exercise that helps measure your psychological health at any given point in your life.
I. Submitted. The. Book.
As promised, readers of this blog are thanked in the acknowledgments.
Right now, I’m in that tiny window of time when I really like the book. Soon enough I’ll decide it’s profoundly flawed and will want to take it back.
Two of the books containing my chapters have come out this month, too. I’ve been writing non-stop for 3 years, and now I’m planning to take a two-month reading break. I’m currently making up a list of books I have urgently needed to read for years or even a decade. It’s very exciting because I have no idea which word or sentence in these books will turn out to be a thread that will lead me into the next project.
Hey, so what, the Senate actually voted to end coverage for preexisting conditions and to stop allowing children to remain on their parents’ insurance till 26? Didn’t even Trump say he wanted to preserve this part of the ACA?
This is the cost of the “I’m too pure to vote” and “Both sides are the same” positions. It’s a shame that the cost isn’t paid by the purists. It’s the innocent schmucks that suffer.
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