After Life

I like Ricky Gervais, but a little goes a long way. However, in this series, After Life, a lot is just fine. The series is funny (at times hilarious), tender, and humane. Such a lovely series. Three seasons, get on it.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80998491

Alice Cooper

 Um ... I really like Alice Cooper.

My Friend Leah—update 4

The transition to being home has been hard for Leah. Getting back into the rhythm of the day-to-day has had a slight destabilizing effect. We’ve had some rough nights, and she reports that there is switching going on frequently. I have noticed fewer switches; that is to say, in the log I keep I am having conversations with fewer “parts” than when she was away at the residential facility.

It’s important to bear in mind that switching is not necessarily a bad thing. One might leap to the conclusion that switching means she’s unstable. This is not the case. The goal is systemic balance or harmony. Her therapist is clear that the number of alters will likely not change; we just need them to work together. And some intermittently “coming to the front” is not a bad thing.

I had in interesting exchange with a part recently. Leah switched hard, and I got instant attitude. “Who are you?? Who the f*** do you think you are?” I replied, “My name is Gregory, I am a friend of Leah’s, and I care for her very much—that’s who the f*** I am.”

I was treated to condescension and disdain. I said, “You can drop the attitude, I’m not impressed or intimidated. If you want to play the ‘smartest person in the room’ card, you just hit a concrete wall; you’ve got the wrong guy.” I took a deep breath and reminded myself this was not constructive. I adjusted my approach: “Let’s have a conversation; I want to hear what you have to say.” They changed their tune quite abruptly.

They said they thought that was how one was supposed to talk to people. “I had bad role models.” I inquired about their name: none. I inquired about their gender: unknown. “Why do we have names anyway?” they asked. “Not sure, it just seems to be how humans interact with one another.”

Because the gender was unknown, I went for a gender-neutral name. “How do you like Blair?” They liked it (not real name). They liked it even more when I pointed out that Blair was the last name of an important author. “I like words.” “We’re going to get along just fine, Blair.”

I said they could be a big help steadying the ship and protecting Leah. “Do you know Bailee?” “Everyone knows Bailee.” And a couple nights later, right around bedtime, I got a text from “B&B.” They apparently formed a bond and are palling around together. Huh. Well done, Blair. That made me happy.

Speaking of Bailee, Leah was over for a visit. During this visit, she switched and Bailee came to the front. I didn’t realize the switch had taken place. “ We haven’t talked in person for a while,” she said. “Bailee??” She nodded. A little while later I was eating my dinner. I was on dessert; and I offered her a bite of pumpkin pie.

She made a face and said, “Gross.” I replied,”Have you ever had pumpkin pie??” Silence and a blank stare. “So, you do not like the food you have never had?—c’mon, try some!” I handed the fork to Bailee with a small bite of pie on it. She made another face and said yuck. “It’s not as bad as all that!” I protested. She then said, “Wait, this tastes like sweet potatoes.” I then replied, “Um … shit.” We both erupted into laughter, which brought Leah back. She was also laughing and asked, “So, which is it??” “I don’t know! They’re both orange!”

These updates are often lighthearted. And Leah and I do joke around a lot. But she is always in some kind of pain. She sent me this text the other night: “I don't want to have my recollection of each day split into pieces. I don't want to live in darkness. I don't want to be confused and distraught every day. I cannot do this anymore. It isn't a life.”

She frequently despairs. Talk of suicide is not uncommon; though she says talking about it makes it easier. The torment she suffered as a girl continues. The sadistic psychopath who tortured her as a girl does so to this day. The torment continues. She whimpers in her sleep. When I touch her—like to rub her arm while she’s taking a nap—she unwittingly and briefly convulses. (It’s the PTSD.) While sleeping she is not free from the pain.

Part of my job is to tell her I love her, remind her that there is much to do and therefore much to live for. The best I can do is be there for her. Tell her she is safe, remind her I am there. She’ll say things like, “Please don’t forget me.” This is hard to hear. She asked me to write her obituary. I said no, not until I have to, then I absolutely will do so. She replied, “You wrote yours!” “Yes, but that’s different: I just want my paperwork and affairs in order. You’re preparing, and I won’t help you do that.”

But I don’t want to end this update on a despondent note. A couple mornings ago, I called Leah on FaceTime. The camera was in the blankets, and I could not see anything. She said, ”I’m not sure what happened last night.” “How bad are we talking?” “You have to promise not to laugh.”

She adjusted the phone, and I beheld what can be described as Leah as a Star Trek character. Sometime in the night, she must have leaned or fallen into a paint palette. Because she touches her face a lot while she sleeps, she smeared oil paint—not water-soluble acrylic, mind you—all over her face. Yeah. One for the books.

We exchanged Christmas gifts right before Thanksgiving. I, gentle reader, am now the proud owner of an iPad Air. And Leah is fully ready for winter, including (but not limited to) a smashing scarf by Paul Smith. I felt it was time.

Philosophy and Being Educated

I took an Intro to Philosophy class with Prof. Frank Lubarski in 1991. Frank was a lovely guy, but I would not call him the most dynamic or entertaining instructor. Nevertheless, I very quickly decided: “I’m going to major in this.” Gregory had found his thing.

Twenty-two years later, I began teaching that subject and have been for 13 years. Funny old world.

In Karl Marx’s work, Theses on Feuerbach, he says, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” I believe this wholeheartedly. I decided three things day-one of teaching: (1) I would not swear in the classroom, (2) I would be myself and not go into professor mode, and (3) I would make educating my students the first priority.

Thirteen years later, I have never wavered from my three principles. (I do say “damn” and “hell” occasionally.) But I take the third point the most seriously. I want my students better educated after 16 weeks than they were at the beginning of the semester.

One of my inspirations is Socrates, as presented in Plato’s Apology. Socrates was committed to rousing his fellow Athenians from their doze. He wanted to wake them up, educate them, get them to think more analytically. And for his trouble, the “gadfly” was arrested and put to death. I suspect I’ll meet a similar fate at some point.

My approach to philosophy in general is to learn something. I find thinkers like Husserl and Heidegger intellectually fascinating, but they don’t tell me much about the world or the human condition. My focus is political theory. It’s Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith on my end. That’s my crowd. When I read those thinkers, I learn something. And I go back to them again and again.

There are some people in my field for whom philosophy is a set of intellectual puzzles. They love fussing and problematizing. Essentially, they’re nerds. That’s all philosophy is for them. They read their Heidegger, and their Derrida, and their beloved “theory,” and have zero interest in the model set forth by Socrates. They are quite likely good liberals, listen to NPR, and don’t move a millimeter to the left of the New York Times.

This is largely why I despise the intellectual culture in this country. Its cravenness and cowardice are appalling and finds expression in how they approach their own subject matter.

In my classes, we cover a lot of material. In the Introduction to Philosophy classes, for example, we cover the main branches of the field. The students learn about Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant. They learn about free will, qualia, some philosophy of the mind, some philosophy of religion, innatism, some very basic linguistic theory, and a bit of art philosophy. We pack it in.

But I’m talking to people—young ones. They need to take inventory of their opinions, worldviews, and prejudices. Where’d you get all that stuff? Did you author those views? Or did you pick them up from the ambient culture like mud on your shoes? Or did you get them from your father?

• What is racism?

• What is race for that matter?
• If you grow up in a racist society, are you a racist?
• Where is the liberal center?
• Is liberalism at the center?
• When you talk to someone who is dying, what’s on their mind?
• What’s not on their mind?
• Why are you here—like this college classroom?
• Why are you majoring in your chosen subject?
• Are you trying to win your father’s respect?
• If you don’t have it now, you never will.
• What’s culture?
• Not what is an example of culture, but what is culture technically?
• Can one thing be better than another?
• Are all opinions of equal value?
• Is it okay to like bad things and dislike good things?
• You say you hate modern art, but do you know what modern art is?
• Is the population responsible for the state of things?
• If the government is a national disgrace, is that our fault?
• Gen Z has a lot going for it, but where does it fall down?
• So, your sister is smart and therefore you’re dumb? Huh.
• Why do you worry about what people think of you when you cannot ever know what people think of you? Seems silly, no?

So, yes, I think it’s important to be familiar with Descartes’s contributions. Absolutely. But when are students going to have these conversations? In their biology classes? In their computer science classes? In their marketing classes? Nope. So, when would be a good time? These young adults are starving for discussion and understanding of these topics. And professors who present philosophy as some abstract intellectual exercise—which it is for them—then I feel they’re cheating their students.

Now, for sure, some students do not like this approach. They do not like being told what they don’t want to hear. Nor did they come to college to learn and have fun. Go ahead. Read all about it on RateMyProfessor.com. It’s comical.

Quick anecdote: I had a student years ago at a community junior college I teach at. He was a superb student. We talked about RateMyProfessor.com and were laughing, and he said that he read all the negative reviews of me and thought to himself, “This guy’s gotta be good.” Hilarity ensued.

All my students are now warned on the first day of class: I get off topic. We will go down side streets. I teach beyond the syllabus. And if this sounds like it will not be a good fit, just tell me, and I will personally help you find another section of this course.

What do I mean by educated? I mean you can locate yourself in culture and history. You’ll need to know what culture is, and you’ll need to know something about history. The goal is to see your present context and hopefully achieve some critical distance so you can inspect what you’re soaking in. This is what it means to be educated.

Expertise don’t count. Acquired work knowledge doesn’t count. Those will make you proficient in your line of work, yes, but they will not make you educated.

My friend Leah (always with this Leah character!) recently asked me for a reading list. She is a beast of a reader—and annoyingly probably reads twice as fast as I do. So, I gave her the list and she replied, “In what order?” [sigh] … I therefore ordered the list. (She can be very demanding.) I thought I would include the list here if folks were looking for such a thing:

• Noam Chomsky, How the World Works
• Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist
• Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins
• Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
• Gregory Harms, No Politics, No Religion?
• Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
• Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics
• Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow
• Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct
• Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara

Godspeed. If you have a thought: gharms@gmail.com

My Friend Leah—update 3

So, I called Leah on FaceTime sometime last week, and she was sitting next to her pal Kaiden (not real name). I got the feeling something was off, and “Leah” was smiling in a strange way. I suspected a switch.

I therefore said to Kaiden, “Kaiden, could you maybe give us a minute?” Then Kaiden gestured toward “Leah” and said, “This is Bailee.” I said, “Um … okay … never mind.” So, Bailee has “gone public” and was chatting with everyone. This filled me with delight. This is a major step forward.

We kept chatting, and I said to Bailee, “I do not mean to embarrass you in front of Kaiden, and I have not told you this today, but I love you.” Bailee then yelled, “Hey, Kaiden, come here!” I said, “Wait, I thought he was sitting right there.” Kaiden then came over and Bailee asked me to repeat what I had said. I then repeated the “I love you” part. Then there’s a long strange pause, and Kaiden says, “… Me??” We exploded with laughter.

Leah is coming home, finally. Her stay was cut a bit short because her team here felt it was time. Why is this? Because as nice as the facility is, they are ill-equipped to provide Leah the care she needs. She does not need coping strategies for Christ’s sake. There were other indications that the facility has advertised services they could not deliver.

The counselor—who studied acting—at an “alumni night” brought attention to Leah’s DID in a group. He turned her into the bearded lady and made her disorder into a party trick. Others joined in. This deeply saddened Leah and seriously angered me. This is why I am protective of Leah. She is not an oddity or curiosity. This counselor has only dealt with two DID patients. Two?? I know more about DID than he does.

There was also the instance of coercing her into taking medication to inhibit switching—by the same person. This ignored the treatment plan that was put together by other qualified staff—the whole reason why she was there. Inhibiting switching is not the point at all. Leah will always have the parts that she has. The goal is to get them to coordinate and balance the ”system”

Despite saying daily that she wanted to come home, she is sad to leave. She feels on some level that it is her fault. It is not. And I have explained this to her on a number of occasions. There were some good things that took place there. But the minus column won out. Leah must say goodbye to her goats and pigs.

But it will be a joy to have her home. I have Christmas gifts for her. She says she knows what they are. “No you don’t!” “Yes, I do!” “Do not!” (You know the routine.)

When she gets back we’re also going to White Fence Farm to eat. This is one of my happy places. I love WFF. Sure, the fried chicken is superb, but it’s the “relishes”: the cottage cheese, pickled beets, bean salad, coleslaw (made with vinegar), and their legendary corn fritters. So, we’re headed there. And they have goats and alpacas! Sadly, no pigs.

And for Christmas I have a couple nights reserved at the Peninsula hotel. I had reservations at the Ritz-Carlton, but the Peninsula is more my scene. (Once a year, I must stay in a luxury hotel; I just have to scratch that itch; some people go to Florida or the Wisconsin Dells, I go to five-star hotels.) Leah’s family is going to come up and swim. I don’t look forward to much anymore (awww!), but I am looking forward to that. It’s gonna be a gas.

But mostly, I’m just eager to see Leah. I miss her. She has become such a central figure in my life. The universe usually has a middle finger in my face, but it did me a solid when it arranged my collision with Leah. Thanks, universe.

I told her, if she did guess my presents, to just act surprised. I’ll know, but I’ll appreciate it.

[Photo by Leah]

Dissociative Disorder

Given my friendship with Leah, dissociative identity disorder has become part of my life. Like my other preoccupations (e.g., the Middle East), the ignorance on the subject is shocking and ubiquitous. Please watch this video, and pay particular attention to the vocabulary.

I really like the lead interviewee, Amanda. And the warmth and humanity of this video is a joy to watch.

Just wonderful.

Intelligence

I tell my students: “I don’t care how smart I am, so it’s safe to say I don’t care how smart you are.” And I don’t. I could not care less.

I also tell them the best students in the university—as a cohort—are the nursing majors. Now, is this because nursing majors are the smartest people on campus? There is no reason to conclude that.

It’s because nursing majors—again, as a cohort—work the hardest. They come to class prepared, the PDF is printed out and highlighted in three colors, they take reams of notes, they ask questions, they’re engaged.

I have had students with stratospheric IQs who couldn’t think their way out of a cardboard box—if it was open. Sure, they can do marvelous things in the physics department, but give some of them an excerpt from Plato’s Republic, and they have nothing to say.

What matters is hard work and a sense of curiosity.

IQ is a thin segment on the intelligence spectrum. It means you’re good at math, probably chess, and you do well on standardized tests. And that’s about it. It does not mean you’ll master the violin quickly and well; it does not mean you’ll become a good painter or artist. Maybe it will help with language acquisition.

However, I know a retired professor who can barely do simple math. If you asked him to add a small list of single-digit numbers in his head, he would likely begin sweating. But he taught himself Greek so he could read Plato in the original; and he also taught himself Russian so he could read Dostoevsky in the original. He also knows French and Italian. So, he’s not smart because he can’t do math? You try learning Russian to the point that you can read The Brothers Karamazov in the original, and then send me an email telling me how long it took you.

Intelligence is a spectrum that allows for myriad abilities. I know a gent who, in a thirty-minute conversation on the phone will five times get me to think, “Holy shit,” because he just combined Aristotle with a potato chip commercial and created a novel insight into the human condition. He’s lousy at chess, by the way.

For that matter, so am I. My strengths do not lie in math, or chess, or standardized tests. I know my strengths, and I play to them. I don’t much care about what I suck at—which is a very long list of things. My IQ is probably not very interesting.

And this used to bother me. Why did it bother me? Because in this culture, IQ = smart. If you crush the ACT or SAT, congratulations, you’re smart. It’s official. And as a young man, this really ate me up. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the difference and how my strengths lie elsewhere on the spectrum. Now I’m relaxed and do not care about intelligence at all.

It doesn’t enter into my thinking. Sure, what geniuses can do is really interesting—and again, this includes an array of abilities. Michael Jordan was a genius. Simone Biles? Genius. Are they geniuses the same way Isaac Newton was? No. Or Noam Chomsky? Or Bobby Fisher, for that matter?

In my sweet, short 53 years, I have met one—one—genius. I had the privilege to sit with Noam Chomsky in his office at MIT. He is not normal. Intellectually, he could bury me a hundred feet deep. He can read faster than I do. He’s got a better memory than I do. He’s analytically sharper than I am. He’s analytically faster than I am. All down the line. He has both intellectual intelligence and a high IQ. He’s got both and lots of each. Like I said, he’s not normal.

But what makes him fascinating is his work ethic and his moral precision. His sense of justice is nothing short of inspiring. One could say his moral intelligence is as high as his other ones.

This is not to say “Everybody’s smart!” There’s a spectrum, so just pick where you are on it, and hurray, you’re smart! Nope. This is next door to the book smart/street smart distinction. This is also another case of “Everybody gets a trophy!” You just pick your flavor of smart, and Bob’s your uncle. No, sadly some folks are just intellectually unremarkable. Some folks are strong, some are not. Some are really good looking, some are not. God doesn’t deal with both hands. So, if you are intellectually less than vibrant, maybe you’re really handy at something else. You are. Everyone’s good at something. And I believe that to my bones.

But what I do not buy is that IQ is the measure of a human being. This is utter nonsense. “Mensa takes no stand on politics, religion or social issues,” they proudly trumpet on their website. Wow. Curious that an organization built on self-congratulation announces to the world their cowardice and low moral intelligence.

If we attend to the writings of antiquity—Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, et al.—we learn again and again that what matters is what kind of person you are and how you live your life. One might also consult the teachings of Jesus, the early Jewish scholars, the Muslim hadith, and the founding gurus of Sikhism. They all say the same thing: live an upright life, show compassion, and care for your fellow human beings.

As to how smart you are? I categorically don’t care.