I’m writing a book about reverse psychology; please don’t buy it.
The judge said I had to keep 6 feet away from my ex-wife. So I buried her under the patio.
Robert Buxbaum: the above 3 jokes are from Jack Rappaport — He sometimes sells jokes. April 13, 2022. The ones below are from Gahan Wilson, and the one at right, I don’t know.
These last two are from Gahan Wilson
There is a joke: what is the opposite of speaking?
It’s waiting to speak.
Most people find it uncomfortable to sit still and be quiet. Even listening is a pain. People sit brewing in their thoughts of what they are going to say. Silence is uncomfortable enough that solitary confinement for a few days is torture.
But what about a few minutes. Almost everyone can sit still and listen for 15 minutes as their friend drones on, especially if they are paid for it. Still, it’s uncomfortable, and a study set out to understand how uncomfortable. It turns out that a majority of men, 67% would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit and think or listen. Women, too find it unpleasant; some 25% of women preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than sit and think. You’ll find a brief review of this and similar work copied above, or you can read the full study: Wilson et al 2014, “The challenge of the disengaged mind“.
The effect of the COVID-19 lockdowns has been massive. Those involved in government discussions don’t seem to realize how massive, perhaps because they’re in constant contact with people, speaking and being spoken too. Most of us were not so lucky. We experienced partial isolation. A recent study suggests that almost every measure of happiness disappeared during the summer months of 2020: US agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness all declined dramatically, see data above. Decisiveness too; a lingering effect is an inability to make decisions. My hope is that government officials can resist the temptation for more lockdowns and mandates; mental health is health too.
If lockdowns do come, or if you are depressed for any other reason, you might consider exercise, or lithium, or counseling. At least decide to wake up at a fixed time every morning. Under COVID watch conditions, depression is the new normal. Here’s a joke on marriage counseling.
Robert Buxbaum, October 27, 2021
With the sun setting earlier, and the threat of new COVID lockdowns, there is a real threat of a depression, seasonal and isolation. A partial remedy is exercise; it helps fight depression whether you take other measures not. An article published last month in the Journal of Affective Disorders reviewed 22 studies of the efficacy of exercise, particularly as an add-on to drugs and therapy. Almost every study showed that exercise helped, and in some studies it helped a lot. See table below. All of the authors are from the University of British Columbia. You can read the article here.
For those who are willing to exercise, there are benefits aside from mental health. Even a daily walk around the block helps with bone strength, weight control, heart disease, plus the above mentioned improvement in mood. More exercise does more. If you bicycle without a helmet, you’re likely to live longer than if you drive.
For those who can’t stand exercise, or if exercise isn’t quite enough to send away the blues, you can try therapy, medication, and/or diet. There is some evidence that food that are high in lithium help fight depression. These food include nuts, beans, tomatoes, some mineral waters, e.g. from Lithia springs, GA. The does is about 1/100 the dose given as a bipolar treatment, but there is evidence that even such small doses help. Lithium was one of the seven ingredients in seven up — it was the one that was supposed to cheer you up. See some research here.
Robert Buxbaum, October 7, 2021.
My last post included a rather gruesome bit of poetry by Rudyard Kipling where he describes the Afghani women coming to kill the wounded British soldiers in the first Afghan war. It’s sexist, or anti-sexist, if you like. Since it reverses a stereotype of the non-violent, female home-body. Then again the Afghanis had wiped out an entire British army, killing virtually everyone including civilians.
What follows is The Betrothed, one of Kipling’s first published poems, appearing in “the civil and military gazette”, Lahor, India (near Afghanistan), November, 1888. Kipling was an assistant editor). It has a more traditional view of women, or of British women who do not go out murdering, but who do wish to control/ stop a British man’s cigar smoking. In a sense, such stoppage is murder. The inspiration was a breach of ‘Promise of Marriage’ case in Glasgow, August 1888, where a young woman, Maggie Watson, sued her fiancee because he continued to smoke cigars after she insisted he stop. Kipling explores the psychology of the choice between smoking and marriage. I think Freud would approve.
The Betrothed.
OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot, And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face.
Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.
There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay; But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away—
Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town!
Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!
And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar—
The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket— With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket!
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while. Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile.
Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?
Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried, And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?
Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,
This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return, With only a Suttee’s passion—to do their duty and burn.
This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.
The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.
I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.
I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.
For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between. The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen.
And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;
And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.
And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love.
Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew— Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse!
Robert E. Buxbaum, September 17, 2021. Kipling has a great sense of words, and an attractive sense of the subjects, great and small. For years he was the voice of his generation in Britain, but by the end of his life, his views were unacceptable. sexist. On the other hand, he remained staunchly anti-Nazi, anti eugenics, and anti Soviet. By comparison, George Bernard Shaw was a vocal fan of Stalin, of Hitler, and of the eugenic removal of Jews and other undesirables. Shaw’s words remain fashionable, while Kipling’s do not. Such is the nature of fame.
The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy some months ago, and I’d began this article as a project to discover what went wrong. They have gotten mountains of bad press amidst land sales and lost membership, and there is a class action law suit over sexual abuse. Everything about this suggested that scouting had lost its way, and I thought I explore what. My sense after some searching is that scouting is doing fine, serving its members despite its troubles and growing in part because of them.
The basic idea of scouting was to provide an environment where boys would d become men, learning to be prepared, and be helpful, decent, active human beings. Some details have changed, but the goal remains, and I’d say they are reasonably successful. But that’s getting ahead. I’m better off starting my story by describing two army scouts, one British one American, who met fighting the Boer wars in the late 1890s. The American was an Indian-raised cowboy, a US army scout named Fredrick Burnham. He joined the British in South Africa as a scout against the natives and Dutch (The Boers). He was good at it, gaining valuable information, leading raids, and blowing things up. Such activities made him a hero of boys of a previous generation, but leaves current sensitivities a bit on edge.
The other scout was his boss, lieutenant general Robert Baden-Powell, an excellent scout himself, but also and organizer, artist, writer, speaker, and spy. He’d run intelligence in India, and now ran it in Africa, spying on the Boers and leading others like Burnham to do the same. Burnham taught Baden-Powell survival techniques he’d learned from the Indians, including “woodcraft”. Baden-Powell brought organization and a positive, faith-based attitude towards difficult situations; “Be prepared”
Baden-Power also wrote a book on military scouting illustrated with his own drawings, it became a hit with young, male readers in turn of the century England. Retiring from the military, Baden-Powell noted the enthusiasm among boys and put together a military-style scout-camp for boys on Brownsea Island, UK. From there, scouting grew: in numbers, in properties, and in scope. Baden-Powell devised the oath: “On my honor, I will do my best; To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” It was the embodiment of a positive, active, masculine life — but it appealed to women too. A few years later “Girl Guides” were founded in England; Boy Scouts and “Girl Scouts” were founded in the US as independent, parallel organizations. So what went wrong?
It is clear that some of the military aspects of scouting are out of tune with current, non militarism, but that’s not something quite new. Perhaps, I thought, the current problems came because of gender dysphoria – -that active masculinity is somewhat out of fashion, as is the white-supremacy at the heart of the Boer war. Then I thought that, perhaps the problem was when the organization accepted women, and thus it wasn’t for boys, uniquely, or that it had dropped the physical requirements, or the belief in God. What was left. Perhaps the problem was poor financial management, or that sex-laws had become a minefield with #metoo and transgender. These are all problems, but not exactly new, and I no longer see them as problems with Scouts as such.
Boys still want to be active and relevant, and seem to still take to woodcraft even if they realize that woodcraft isn’t likely to be that useful. It is enough that woodcraft is sometimes useful, and that it’s fun and provides a training for other things. Though boy-girl interactions are fraught, I no longer see it as a problem. Scouting provides an avenue to maturity, and If the particulars of maturity have changed, the general attraction has not. That numbers are down is not a problem either. Some religious groups have left, particularly the Mormons, and some scouts have moved on to other activities: soccer, tennis, band, etc. Even with these other avenues, there are still some 4 million Scouts in the US including Scouts BSA and Girl Scouts. After 100 years, that’s not a failing organization.
A lot of the bad press comes, I think, from the fact that things changed fast in the US, far faster than in British version of scouting. In Britain, gay leaders were accepted in the 1980s; the US didn’t accept them till 2015. British scouting accepted girls in the 1970s, the Boy Scouts didn’t admit them till 2018, and didn’t accept transgender members till 2019. It was all so sudden. US scouting changed their name then and dropped the belief in God, also the need for wood lore and swimming. The rapid changes left older leaders dazed, but were probably for the best, and over-due. The law suits and bankruptcy also seems to have caused more trouble to the leaders than for the scouts; scout troops were always fairly autonomous.
As for the military aspect, some of it remains, and I get no sense that it’s resented. it seems to help distinguish the Boy Scouts (Scouting BSA) from the Girl Scouts; Girl Scouts focuses on economics and social activism, while Scouting BSA has been able to use the military preparedness to position itself as the more rugged alternative, and the more masculine, even if it accepts girls.
Some in management would like to go further away from Badden-Powell’s Boer-war outlook, to be more like the Girl Scouts. In Market Week, the Scouts’ director of communications claims to have …”positioned BSA to be the primary internet organization that serves diversity and deprived communities.” That sounds like a me-too to Girl Scouting, and the Girl Scouts have filed suit to prevent it.
In terms of predators and law suits, while one could claim that scouting should have done better, I think the troops themselves did well, though the upper management fell short, and tried to protect their own. Still, it is something of a defense to say you tried your best in an uncertain situation. There are no claims that leaders encouraged pederasts. The only claim is that they did not do enough to prevent them. While not everyone did their best, many did. Pederasts are drawn to kids organizations, and there is always be a tension between inclusiveness and protection. I’m reminded of the Be Prepared song (Tom Lehrer). it seems appropriate to the new scouting.
Robert Buxbaum, February 12, 2021