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Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

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thompnickson2

Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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Steve Smith

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -

I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.

My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies, etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college, one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.

- Steve

Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Steve,

Your story, like so many of your stories, cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know what you (-all) think of that book.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -

- Steve

Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

It appears the title of the book is actually "Go Set a Watchman" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Set_a_Watchman).

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 4:27 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Steve,

Your story, like so many of your stories, cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know what you (-all) think of that book.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -
I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.
My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies, etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college, one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.
- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Yes, of course. Sorry. Thanks for the correction, Gary.

I seem to be suicidally error prone, today.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 3:44 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

It appears the title of the book is actually "Go Set a Watchman" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Set_a_Watchman).

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 4:27 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Steve,

Your story, like so many of your stories, cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know what you (-all) think of that book.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -
I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.
My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies, etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college, one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.
- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
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Steve Smith

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick -

I think I read Watchmen decades ago... it is a good addition to my reading list with Mary (she has mentioned it recently)... we read books together (how quaint). Right now we are on Victor Klemperer's diaries from the Nazi years in Germany as a Jewish man married to an Aryan woman, and the slow erosion and decline of their circumstances, his rights, and hers by association (in a time/culture where the man of the family had primary status, and yet the Aryan of the family had higher status in many ways). It is heartbreaking and very cautionary as we watch the norms of a society get eroded away on one side as a subset of ruthless and ambitious characters seduce and intimidate the populace into normalizing pretty marginalizing (and ultimately brutal) behaviour of one segment of population against the other. Spoiler alert - the time-period is 1934-1944 so you can guess "how it turns out".

Other (re)reads have included Moby Dick, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Woman at Otowi Bridge (Edith Warner), a biography of Maria Martinez (potter), the biography of Mabel Dodge-Luhan. Not only do these books read differently the second time around (decades later) but in the light of a new (2+ years) partner whose backround and perspective is radically different. Mary is much more attuned to the Civil Rights issues than I... she grew up in her own version of remote (a tiny college town, Chadron NE near the Pine Ridge Rez) with a mother who was a strong civic member and Democrat amongst mostly Republican farm/ranch folks... her father was probably a Republican if he voted... her brothers all rode to Sturgis, voted for Trump and are likely to again, etc. but/and she loves them, even if she won't speak her mind openly on those topics with them.

My sister who dated her African American friend for a time is now in her mid-60's asking her children, my children and even Mary and I for "something she can read to understand 'all that'"... She and her husband voted for Trump but probably won't again, and in her defense, lived out-of-country in Spain and Chile for most of their adult lives, as part of the colonialism of American Mining interests overseas. A previous boyfriend was of a Mexican-American family in the border town whose circumstance and status was somewhat higher than our own... most of the merchant and professional class were the grandchildren of Mexicans who lived there when it *was* Mexico (pre Gadsden Purchase). My parents had a similar (though more muted) reaction to him... that surprised me as well since well over half of our friends and classmates from 1st Grade has Spanish surnames. They may have also questioned her more Anglo-Normative boyfriends along the way, maybe they were just overprotective?

Rattling on about my sister and her family, they volunteer with Central American refugees in Tucson because they are both fluent in Spanish and just in the last year acknowledged that maybe Global Warming was real AND anthropogenic and maybe they should try to recycle or carpool or something (snarky, sorry)...so there is hope...

Yes to "context and perspective"...

- Steve

On 9/5/20 3:27 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Steve,

Your story, like so many of your stories, cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know what you (-all) think of that book.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -

I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.

My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies, etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college, one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.

- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Hi Steve,

You can’t have read Watchman “decades” ago because it only came out a few years ago. It puts Atticus in a whole new perspective.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 6:07 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -

Yes to "context and perspective"...

- Steve

On 9/5/20 3:27 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Steve,

Your story, like so many of your stories, cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know what you (-all) think of that book.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -
I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.
My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies, etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college, one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.
- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Steve Smith

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Hi Steve,

You can’t have read Watchman “decades” ago because it only came out a few years ago. It puts Atticus in a whole new perspective.

Why does that not surprise me? (that I would have made that mistake) I checked with Mary and the answer is she did recommend it for our "book group" in the last year and it would have only been Mockingbird that I read.

doh!

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 6:07 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -

I think I read Watchmen decades ago... it is a good addition to my reading list with Mary (she has mentioned it recently)... we read books together (how quaint).   Right now we are on Victor Klemperer's diaries from the Nazi years in Germany as a Jewish man married to an Aryan woman, and the slow erosion and decline of their circumstances, his rights, and hers by association (in a time/culture where the man of the family had primary status, and yet the Aryan of the family had higher status in many ways).   It is heartbreaking and very cautionary as we watch the norms of a society get eroded away on one side as a subset of ruthless and ambitious characters seduce and intimidate the populace into normalizing pretty marginalizing (and ultimately brutal) behaviour of one segment of population against the other. Spoiler alert - the time-period is 1934-1944 so you can guess "how it turns out".

Other (re)reads have included Moby Dick, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Woman at Otowi Bridge (Edith Warner), a biography of Maria Martinez (potter), the biography of Mabel Dodge-Luhan.   Not only do these books read differently the second time around (decades later) but in the light of a new (2+ years) partner whose backround and perspective is radically different.   Mary is much more attuned to the Civil Rights issues than I... she grew up in her own version of remote (a tiny college town, Chadron NE near the Pine Ridge Rez) with a mother who was a strong civic member and Democrat amongst mostly Republican farm/ranch folks... her father was probably a Republican if he voted... her brothers all rode to Sturgis, voted for Trump and are likely to again, etc.   but/and she loves them, even if she won't speak her mind openly on those topics with them.

My sister who dated her African American friend for a time is now in her mid-60's asking her children, my children and even Mary and I for "something she can read to understand 'all that'"... She and her husband voted for Trump but probably won't again, and in her defense, lived out-of-country in Spain and Chile for most of their adult lives, as part of the colonialism of American Mining interests overseas. A previous boyfriend was of a Mexican-American family in the border town whose circumstance and status was somewhat higher than our own... most of the merchant and professional class were the grandchildren of Mexicans who lived there when it *was* Mexico (pre Gadsden Purchase).   My parents had a similar (though more muted) reaction to him... that surprised me as well since well over half of our friends and classmates from 1st Grade has Spanish surnames.   They may have also questioned her more Anglo-Normative boyfriends along the way, maybe they were just overprotective?

Rattling on about my sister and her family, they volunteer with Central American refugees in Tucson because they are both fluent in Spanish and just in the last year acknowledged that maybe Global Warming was real AND anthropogenic and maybe they should try to recycle or carpool or something (snarky, sorry)...so there is hope...

Yes to "context and perspective"...

- Steve

On 9/5/20 3:27 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
Steve,

Your story, like so many of your stories, cuts to the heart. If you haven’t already, I recommend you read Go Call a Watchmen, the pre-written sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Scout discovers that, at least from seen from a Northern perspective, is actually a flaming racist. That perspective thing, as Glen keeps reminding me, is so important. I would love to know what you (-all) think of that book.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Nick -

I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes, or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.

My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day after school until it got to where she started being noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the first black person she had ever met and it was years later that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all* of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies, etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it" whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it, it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and other similar instances made me think that my parents were the least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had a small group of friends from college, one of who was African American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very sociable and interesting person (his father was career military and his mother had died when he was young and he and two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact conversations but it was clear that they were very much against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements, stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with junk like that.

- Steve
Dear fellow congregants,

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters. One expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?

I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer. I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the point – when they visited, they visited as such. Not that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a different category. And my education, in Massachusetts, in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody in any of these categories.

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of the old wise black man. Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it. Our conversations are based on a lie. He disappears from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic categorizations distasteful.

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing. Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction. This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions. So we need to design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public universities and armies – or conservation corps).

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes? Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Some might say it is the U.S. Constitution that defines America. Others point to liberty as the essence of America. I think that as a practical matter, we can agree capitalism is central to the experience of being an American. What is more American than a start-up? Consider how a start-up operates: They hire as a fast they can, and then hold on to the best employees for as long as they can. Inhale. Exhale. The nativists don’t support capitalism as they don’t support inhaling new talent nor exhaling the under-performing natives. With another four years of Trump this set of damaged individuals will be further excluded from the economy, and many of them would likely lose any health care they did have. I think it will be informative to let the cruelty of that scenario play out, if it comes to that.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 11:31 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Dear fellow congregants,

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

. With another four years of Trump this set of damaged individuals will be further excluded from the economy, and many of them would likely lose any health care they did have. I think it will be informative to let the cruelty of that scenario play out, if it comes to that.

Yikes, Marcus. Informative to whom?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2020 10:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Dear fellow congregants,

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

To the people that don’t vote, or vote the wrong way.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2020 10:11 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Yikes, Marcus. Informative to whom?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

Dear fellow congregants,

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Be careful what you wish for!

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2020 11:17 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

To the people that don’t vote, or vote the wrong way.

Yikes, Marcus. Informative to whom?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

Dear fellow congregants,

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

gepr

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

I realize you're mostly forming a rhetorical point. But there are two flaws that lead the reader down the wrong path:

- entitlement indicates progress, and
- meritocracy is a delusion

I often argue that the entitlement displayed by our snowflake children is a Good sign that society is progressing. If our children are complaining about higher 'needs' vs basic needs, then maybe we are doing our job. That goes for right wing children, too. The more side-shaved neo-Monarchists trolling the internet, the more it shows they have more free time and don't have to spend 12 hours a day hoeing dirt just to stay alive.

And the idea that start-ups exhale incompetence is a belly-laugh joke. Start-ups promote the gamers with the most game. Now sometimes employing a good gamer puts you ahead of your competition ... especially if the job of the gamer is to convince victims to buy shit they don't need, or sell their personal data for social media status. But for the overwhelming majority of start-ups, you end up with cubicles full of gamers, all super-skilled at buck-passing and hobbies like paddle-boarding.

On September 6, 2020 10:17:21 AM PDT, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

>To the people that don't vote, or vote the wrong way.
>
>From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of
>[hidden email]
>Sent: Sunday, September 6, 2020 10:11 AM
>To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
><[hidden email]>
>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
>
>. With another four years of Trump this set of damaged individuals
>will be further excluded from the economy, and many of them would
>likely lose any health care they did have. I think it will be
>informative to let the cruelty of that scenario play out, if it comes
>to that.
>
>Yikes, Marcus. Informative to whom?

--
glen ⛧

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Glen writes:

< And the idea that start-ups exhale incompetence is a belly-laugh joke. >

What matters is if the advocates for this definition of the American way is consistent about who ought to be exhaled and why. If markets are efficient, there is a meritocracy, etc. then those advocates should be all for letting in the fresh blood and deporting the dead wood. But that isn't the truth about conservatism in the U.S., which is really just about holding on to power by any means necessary.

Marcus
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gepr

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Yep. I totally agree. If the result *informs* those deluded about the existence of efficient markets, then the cruelty might be worthwhile. But what's more likely is the entitled 'libertarian' children will stay deluded and continue blaming the underclass of some kind of laziness or moral failure.

On September 6, 2020 2:15:10 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

>Glen writes:
>
>< And the idea that start-ups exhale incompetence is a belly-laugh
>joke. >
>
>What matters is if the advocates for this definition of the American
>way is consistent about who ought to be exhaled and why. If markets
>are efficient, there is a meritocracy, etc. then those advocates should
>be all for letting in the fresh blood and deporting the dead wood.
>But that isn't the truth about conservatism in the U.S., which is
>really just about holding on to power by any means necessary.
>

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Hi EricS,

It’s a classist designation, that refers (I suppose) to white people who make their living working out of doors. I suppose it to arise from the fact that many of the original settlers of the south were of Scottish / Irish descent, and so ill prepared for bright and high southern sun.

It’s hard to talk about evil without participating in some of it. If we are to defeat trump (and more importantly, the Trumpism that will endure after we defeat him) we are going to have to talk about this stuff. Own up.

Anyway, I’ve probably done enough damage for one weekend.

Good to hear from you,

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 3:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

It’s interesting you should have ended your email with that term, Nick.

I just (in a different medium) learned the meaning of it a few weeks ago. But a more complete source is

https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/05/20/is-west-virginia-s-coal-history-a-goldmine-mine-wars/

It complicates the sense of what you should be concerned about responding to.

Eric

On Sep 7, 2020, at 4:43 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric (in your capacity as the one who inspired me to write) and others,

You can write about “Nick” just so long as you are writing about the Transcendental Nick, not the actual one. Is that clear? Glen, and I are having a discussion on this very point, off line. Just who is it that we are writing to when we write to a list?

Look, everything you say is true about elephants. And you are right, I don’t get to declaim that there are no elephants, as long a single person is behaving as if he sees one. But remember I was writing about Trump and trying to get my head around somebody who forgives Trump for being a liar by asserting that “He tells it like it is!” What could that possibly mean?

When Trump stands by a Vietnam-era soldier’s grave, in the presence of that soldier’s father, and says, “I don’t get it; what did they get out of it?” something in me responds, that I have a hard time talking about.   I cannot imagine sending my grandchildren to war, particularly not any of the wars we have fought in my lifetime. So, odious as Trump’s expression was, in the context in which it occurred, it speaks for a part of me. Trump tells the truth about these nether impulses that some of us harbor. He speaks truthfully of my inner redneck. He tells it like it is.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 12:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. "

Nope, nope, nope. Anyone else on this list gets to say that, and maybe I would even agree with it coming from anyone else, but Nick Thompson does not get to say that. Nick must concede that there is something those people are responding to, and does not get to assert "there are no elephants." Nick must concede, both as a New Realist and as the type of New England Liberal he strives to be, that there is a point of view from which there are elephants in the room, and that he has some obligation to meet the people at the place where that view is, especially if he wants to try to talk those people into moving somewhere else. And he can't do that while also making a blanket declaration of the non-existence of the elephants.

Nick could be fully consistent with what I have said above while also believing that the elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) some sort of unstable equilibrium, and that those people would change when exposed to additional aspects of the world -- whereas Nick's own non-elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) a much more stable equilibrium, robust to the effects of wider-world exposure.* The problem comes when Nick wants to assert that in a mythic future, when the dust of investigation settles, and everyone has experienced all there is to experience about the world, the elephant-seeing view will be gone, and only the non-elephant-seeing view will remain. (With that being what we are shaking our stick at with claims regarding "truth" and "real".) But if psychology works like the other sciences, that is not what will happen. Rather, in that mythic future, we will have mapped out the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations in which it does not.** This is just as the chemist maps out situations in which a given chemical reaction occurs and situations in which it does not, and just as a mathematician maps out the postulates combinations that lead to certain mathematical phenomena. In the end, when the dust of investigation settles, we will understand the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations under which it does not. And when we find ourselves in a world that meets elephant-seeing conditions (among the concaphone of conditions present at any given time), we must admit that there is a place to stand from which elephants will be seen!

* That is, of course, an empirical assertion, and as Nick tries to share aspects of the world with them, those other people will no doubt try to share with him, and the robustness of both sides will be tested.

** I hope it is clear that "situation" is being used in the broadest sense of the word, to include the developmental history of those involved, among other factors.

P.S. I know Nick doesn't like it when messages over the FRIAM list get overly personal, but I hope you will all indulge me on occasion, as the issues seem pertinent to several past and present discussions on the list.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 1:25 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric,

The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. When Trump speaks, they get to say, “Oh, you see elephants, too! I am not the only one!”

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 11:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name."

It will probably not surprise you to know that I find this narration baffling. You definitely could say that to him, at any time. There is nothing "liberal" about feeling trapped to not discuss something like that. If you felt trapped for a bit, not saying anything seems wise. However, at some point, you just say it, or give up on the idea that you actually have a problem with it. Personally, I'd stay away from an Uncle Remus reference, but the whole point here is that the two of you are old, so it might make sense in your world. At any rate, the worst case result will be that you have been honest with him, and he never spoke to you again. Which is, IMHO, a better outcome than your not being honest with him, and he never spoke to you again, which seems to be where you are now. Sometimes, certainly not always, but sometimes, when I make moves like that in a conversation, you later express admiration and/or envy.

I think this relates to the larger question of what some people see in Trump. They see him as constantly pointing out what they (his fans) see as the "elephant in the room." Sure, he says a boat load of other things, and lots of those things are not true, but those aren't the important things. "Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?" is a great example of a perceived elephant. "There are good people on both sides" is another, as is the recent dust-up about "anti-racist" workshops. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) See I was right not to risk saying that myself, because my supposedly friendly, supposedly open-minded neighbors would have attacked me just for saying it, and maybe even tried to get me fired, because apparently they think my kids should go hungry if I think something they don't like. 2) Thank God someone had the guts to ask the question! 3) What kind of crazy country do these libs want to turn us into, with all these elephants wandering all around the room, and it's not even enough to not say anything, because now you gotta be worried about getting fired if they think you might even have looked at one? 4) If I could be me, but also have the guts to talk about the elephants, I would be A Better Person. He talks about the elephants, so he is A Better Person.

Did that comparison hold together? It felt like it did.

P.S. Add on top of that that a huge chunk of the "lies" are puffery, which amounts to telling his supporters that it is ok to feel good about themselves and good about their country. This started in earnest with the claims about inauguration attendance and continues, for example, with any suggestion that we might be doing anything half-decent with our Covid response. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) I guess the libs really do want us to feel bad about our country. 2) They really think it would be horrible if I felt good about myself for even a minute. 3) They are ok judging me when they know nothing about me.
On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 11:19 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
My solution is to elect Biden and to use Trump as an example of the kind of person to never elect again. But that's just me.
Sounds like a partial lobotomy. I'm game for this... but not sure it is more than "a good start", which of course is, in fact, a good start.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020, 8:15 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yes, you could say that government in general and especially lawmakers
> are our superego. The best common word synonym for superego is
> conscience. Since a lot of people have lacunae of their own superego
> we need laws and law enforcers.

So right now we are in the midst of a collective id/ego/superego that is
experiencing a dissociative episode, both governmental and social?

to the extent the analogy holds, what is an exit/recovery strategy?

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David Eric Smith

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

So now I am confused, Nick.

I had always assumed just what you say, that it referred in particular to farmers, who out in fields for endless days, bent over ploughs and such, get sunburned.

It was the guy who goes by Beau of the Fifth Column who recited that little thing about the West Virginia Miner Revolt as the origin of the term as a meme. Then that museum also claimed it.

So, understood that it is normally used as a classist designation now. But from a philological perspective, I am now curious how it became a thing.

There is a different post on what this whole thing is that got distilled in the RNC convention. I think it is about what people become under a lust for power. But to make that argument requires time I cannot permit for the time being. Of course everything else in life gets entrained once something like this is going on, so I am accepting making an oversimplification to try to get at the thing driving the train.

Who wants power, why they want it, whether they are legitimate in wanting it, and the whole question of how the legitimacy of an aim is related to the effect on the human character, what it means to lust for something, and why that is a term of opprobrium in careful society, and in particular what lust becomes when it is for power.

But as I said, I can’t. Besides, just my attempt to make sense of a thing that won’t yield to sense. Maybe all empty.

Eric

On Sep 7, 2020, at 6:18 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi EricS,

It’s a classist designation, that refers (I suppose) to white people who make their living working out of doors. I suppose it to arise from the fact that many of the original settlers of the south were of Scottish / Irish descent, and so ill prepared for bright and high southern sun.

It’s hard to talk about evil without participating in some of it. If we are to defeat trump (and more importantly, the Trumpism that will endure after we defeat him) we are going to have to talk about this stuff. Own up.

Anyway, I’ve probably done enough damage for one weekend.

Good to hear from you,

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 3:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

It’s interesting you should have ended your email with that term, Nick.

I just (in a different medium) learned the meaning of it a few weeks ago. But a more complete source is
https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/05/20/is-west-virginia-s-coal-history-a-goldmine-mine-wars/

It complicates the sense of what you should be concerned about responding to.

Eric
On Sep 7, 2020, at 4:43 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric (in your capacity as the one who inspired me to write) and others,

You can write about “Nick” just so long as you are writing about the Transcendental Nick, not the actual one. Is that clear? Glen, and I are having a discussion on this very point, off line. Just who is it that we are writing to when we write to a list?

Look, everything you say is true about elephants. And you are right, I don’t get to declaim that there are no elephants, as long a single person is behaving as if he sees one. But remember I was writing about Trump and trying to get my head around somebody who forgives Trump for being a liar by asserting that “He tells it like it is!” What could that possibly mean?

When Trump stands by a Vietnam-era soldier’s grave, in the presence of that soldier’s father, and says, “I don’t get it; what did they get out of it?” something in me responds, that I have a hard time talking about.   I cannot imagine sending my grandchildren to war, particularly not any of the wars we have fought in my lifetime. So, odious as Trump’s expression was, in the context in which it occurred, it speaks for a part of me. Trump tells the truth about these nether impulses that some of us harbor. He speaks truthfully of my inner redneck. He tells it like it is.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 12:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. "

Nope, nope, nope. Anyone else on this list gets to say that, and maybe I would even agree with it coming from anyone else, but Nick Thompson does not get to say that. Nick must concede that there is something those people are responding to, and does not get to assert "there are no elephants." Nick must concede, both as a New Realist and as the type of New England Liberal he strives to be, that there is a point of view from which there are elephants in the room, and that he has some obligation to meet the people at the place where that view is, especially if he wants to try to talk those people into moving somewhere else. And he can't do that while also making a blanket declaration of the non-existence of the elephants.

Nick could be fully consistent with what I have said above while also believing that the elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) some sort of unstable equilibrium, and that those people would change when exposed to additional aspects of the world -- whereas Nick's own non-elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) a much more stable equilibrium, robust to the effects of wider-world exposure.* The problem comes when Nick wants to assert that in a mythic future, when the dust of investigation settles, and everyone has experienced all there is to experience about the world, the elephant-seeing view will be gone, and only the non-elephant-seeing view will remain. (With that being what we are shaking our stick at with claims regarding "truth" and "real".) But if psychology works like the other sciences, that is not what will happen. Rather, in that mythic future, we will have mapped out the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations in which it does not.** This is just as the chemist maps out situations in which a given chemical reaction occurs and situations in which it does not, and just as a mathematician maps out the postulates combinations that lead to certain mathematical phenomena. In the end, when the dust of investigation settles, we will understand the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations under which it does not. And when we find ourselves in a world that meets elephant-seeing conditions (among the concaphone of conditions present at any given time), we must admit that there is a place to stand from which elephants will be seen!

* That is, of course, an empirical assertion, and as Nick tries to share aspects of the world with them, those other people will no doubt try to share with him, and the robustness of both sides will be tested.

** I hope it is clear that "situation" is being used in the broadest sense of the word, to include the developmental history of those involved, among other factors.

P.S. I know Nick doesn't like it when messages over the FRIAM list get overly personal, but I hope you will all indulge me on occasion, as the issues seem pertinent to several past and present discussions on the list.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 1:25 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric,

The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. When Trump speaks, they get to say, “Oh, you see elephants, too! I am not the only one!”

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 11:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name."

It will probably not surprise you to know that I find this narration baffling. You definitely could say that to him, at any time. There is nothing "liberal" about feeling trapped to not discuss something like that. If you felt trapped for a bit, not saying anything seems wise. However, at some point, you just say it, or give up on the idea that you actually have a problem with it. Personally, I'd stay away from an Uncle Remus reference, but the whole point here is that the two of you are old, so it might make sense in your world. At any rate, the worst case result will be that you have been honest with him, and he never spoke to you again. Which is, IMHO, a better outcome than your not being honest with him, and he never spoke to you again, which seems to be where you are now. Sometimes, certainly not always, but sometimes, when I make moves like that in a conversation, you later express admiration and/or envy.

I think this relates to the larger question of what some people see in Trump. They see him as constantly pointing out what they (his fans) see as the "elephant in the room." Sure, he says a boat load of other things, and lots of those things are not true, but those aren't the important things. "Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?" is a great example of a perceived elephant. "There are good people on both sides" is another, as is the recent dust-up about "anti-racist" workshops. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) See I was right not to risk saying that myself, because my supposedly friendly, supposedly open-minded neighbors would have attacked me just for saying it, and maybe even tried to get me fired, because apparently they think my kids should go hungry if I think something they don't like. 2) Thank God someone had the guts to ask the question! 3) What kind of crazy country do these libs want to turn us into, with all these elephants wandering all around the room, and it's not even enough to not say anything, because now you gotta be worried about getting fired if they think you might even have looked at one? 4) If I could be me, but also have the guts to talk about the elephants, I would be A Better Person. He talks about the elephants, so he is A Better Person.

Did that comparison hold together? It felt like it did.

P.S. Add on top of that that a huge chunk of the "lies" are puffery, which amounts to telling his supporters that it is ok to feel good about themselves and good about their country. This started in earnest with the claims about inauguration attendance and continues, for example, with any suggestion that we might be doing anything half-decent with our Covid response. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) I guess the libs really do want us to feel bad about our country. 2) They really think it would be horrible if I felt good about myself for even a minute. 3) They are ok judging me when they know nothing about me.
On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 11:19 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
My solution is to elect Biden and to use Trump as an example of the kind of person to never elect again. But that's just me.
Sounds like a partial lobotomy. I'm game for this... but not sure it is more than "a good start", which of course is, in fact, a good start.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020, 8:15 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yes, you could say that government in general and especially lawmakers
> are our superego. The best common word synonym for superego is
> conscience. Since a lot of people have lacunae of their own superego
> we need laws and law enforcers.

So right now we are in the midst of a collective id/ego/superego that is
experiencing a dissociative episode, both governmental and social?

to the extent the analogy holds, what is an exit/recovery strategy?

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thompnickson2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

Sorry, Eric,

Dumb error on my part. I didn’t look at the link.

That alternative explanation for “redneck” looks really good; I had never heard of it. Of course, the one may be a reference to the other. But my interpretation smacks of Northeastern snootiness, so I suspect the bandana explanation is correct.

Thanks for persisting.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 4:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

So now I am confused, Nick.

I had always assumed just what you say, that it referred in particular to farmers, who out in fields for endless days, bent over ploughs and such, get sunburned.

It was the guy who goes by Beau of the Fifth Column who recited that little thing about the West Virginia Miner Revolt as the origin of the term as a meme. Then that museum also claimed it.

So, understood that it is normally used as a classist designation now. But from a philological perspective, I am now curious how it became a thing.

But as I said, I can’t. Besides, just my attempt to make sense of a thing that won’t yield to sense. Maybe all empty.

Eric

On Sep 7, 2020, at 6:18 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi EricS,

It’s a classist designation, that refers (I suppose) to white people who make their living working out of doors. I suppose it to arise from the fact that many of the original settlers of the south were of Scottish / Irish descent, and so ill prepared for bright and high southern sun.

It’s hard to talk about evil without participating in some of it. If we are to defeat trump (and more importantly, the Trumpism that will endure after we defeat him) we are going to have to talk about this stuff. Own up.

Anyway, I’ve probably done enough damage for one weekend.

Good to hear from you,

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 3:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

It’s interesting you should have ended your email with that term, Nick.

I just (in a different medium) learned the meaning of it a few weeks ago. But a more complete source is
https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/05/20/is-west-virginia-s-coal-history-a-goldmine-mine-wars/

It complicates the sense of what you should be concerned about responding to.

Eric
On Sep 7, 2020, at 4:43 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric (in your capacity as the one who inspired me to write) and others,

You can write about “Nick” just so long as you are writing about the Transcendental Nick, not the actual one. Is that clear? Glen, and I are having a discussion on this very point, off line. Just who is it that we are writing to when we write to a list?

Look, everything you say is true about elephants. And you are right, I don’t get to declaim that there are no elephants, as long a single person is behaving as if he sees one. But remember I was writing about Trump and trying to get my head around somebody who forgives Trump for being a liar by asserting that “He tells it like it is!” What could that possibly mean?

When Trump stands by a Vietnam-era soldier’s grave, in the presence of that soldier’s father, and says, “I don’t get it; what did they get out of it?” something in me responds, that I have a hard time talking about.   I cannot imagine sending my grandchildren to war, particularly not any of the wars we have fought in my lifetime. So, odious as Trump’s expression was, in the context in which it occurred, it speaks for a part of me. Trump tells the truth about these nether impulses that some of us harbor. He speaks truthfully of my inner redneck. He tells it like it is.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 12:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. "

Nope, nope, nope. Anyone else on this list gets to say that, and maybe I would even agree with it coming from anyone else, but Nick Thompson does not get to say that. Nick must concede that there is something those people are responding to, and does not get to assert "there are no elephants." Nick must concede, both as a New Realist and as the type of New England Liberal he strives to be, that there is a point of view from which there are elephants in the room, and that he has some obligation to meet the people at the place where that view is, especially if he wants to try to talk those people into moving somewhere else. And he can't do that while also making a blanket declaration of the non-existence of the elephants.

Nick could be fully consistent with what I have said above while also believing that the elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) some sort of unstable equilibrium, and that those people would change when exposed to additional aspects of the world -- whereas Nick's own non-elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) a much more stable equilibrium, robust to the effects of wider-world exposure.* The problem comes when Nick wants to assert that in a mythic future, when the dust of investigation settles, and everyone has experienced all there is to experience about the world, the elephant-seeing view will be gone, and only the non-elephant-seeing view will remain. (With that being what we are shaking our stick at with claims regarding "truth" and "real".) But if psychology works like the other sciences, that is not what will happen. Rather, in that mythic future, we will have mapped out the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations in which it does not.** This is just as the chemist maps out situations in which a given chemical reaction occurs and situations in which it does not, and just as a mathematician maps out the postulates combinations that lead to certain mathematical phenomena. In the end, when the dust of investigation settles, we will understand the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations under which it does not. And when we find ourselves in a world that meets elephant-seeing conditions (among the concaphone of conditions present at any given time), we must admit that there is a place to stand from which elephants will be seen!

* That is, of course, an empirical assertion, and as Nick tries to share aspects of the world with them, those other people will no doubt try to share with him, and the robustness of both sides will be tested.

** I hope it is clear that "situation" is being used in the broadest sense of the word, to include the developmental history of those involved, among other factors.

P.S. I know Nick doesn't like it when messages over the FRIAM list get overly personal, but I hope you will all indulge me on occasion, as the issues seem pertinent to several past and present discussions on the list.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 1:25 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric,

The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. When Trump speaks, they get to say, “Oh, you see elephants, too! I am not the only one!”

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 11:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name."

It will probably not surprise you to know that I find this narration baffling. You definitely could say that to him, at any time. There is nothing "liberal" about feeling trapped to not discuss something like that. If you felt trapped for a bit, not saying anything seems wise. However, at some point, you just say it, or give up on the idea that you actually have a problem with it. Personally, I'd stay away from an Uncle Remus reference, but the whole point here is that the two of you are old, so it might make sense in your world. At any rate, the worst case result will be that you have been honest with him, and he never spoke to you again. Which is, IMHO, a better outcome than your not being honest with him, and he never spoke to you again, which seems to be where you are now. Sometimes, certainly not always, but sometimes, when I make moves like that in a conversation, you later express admiration and/or envy.

I think this relates to the larger question of what some people see in Trump. They see him as constantly pointing out what they (his fans) see as the "elephant in the room." Sure, he says a boat load of other things, and lots of those things are not true, but those aren't the important things. "Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?" is a great example of a perceived elephant. "There are good people on both sides" is another, as is the recent dust-up about "anti-racist" workshops. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) See I was right not to risk saying that myself, because my supposedly friendly, supposedly open-minded neighbors would have attacked me just for saying it, and maybe even tried to get me fired, because apparently they think my kids should go hungry if I think something they don't like. 2) Thank God someone had the guts to ask the question! 3) What kind of crazy country do these libs want to turn us into, with all these elephants wandering all around the room, and it's not even enough to not say anything, because now you gotta be worried about getting fired if they think you might even have looked at one? 4) If I could be me, but also have the guts to talk about the elephants, I would be A Better Person. He talks about the elephants, so he is A Better Person.

Did that comparison hold together? It felt like it did.

P.S. Add on top of that that a huge chunk of the "lies" are puffery, which amounts to telling his supporters that it is ok to feel good about themselves and good about their country. This started in earnest with the claims about inauguration attendance and continues, for example, with any suggestion that we might be doing anything half-decent with our Covid response. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) I guess the libs really do want us to feel bad about our country. 2) They really think it would be horrible if I felt good about myself for even a minute. 3) They are ok judging me when they know nothing about me.
On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 11:19 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
My solution is to elect Biden and to use Trump as an example of the kind of person to never elect again. But that's just me.
Sounds like a partial lobotomy. I'm game for this... but not sure it is more than "a good start", which of course is, in fact, a good start.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020, 8:15 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yes, you could say that government in general and especially lawmakers
> are our superego. The best common word synonym for superego is
> conscience. Since a lot of people have lacunae of their own superego
> we need laws and law enforcers.

So right now we are in the midst of a collective id/ego/superego that is
experiencing a dissociative episode, both governmental and social?

to the extent the analogy holds, what is an exit/recovery strategy?

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

I doubt this will shed any light on the etymological question but this is a Country classic that is, or was, heard from the Central Valley of California to the Hollers of West Virginia to the honky tonks of Texas:

https://youtu.be/4N3iVHxP8FQ

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020, 5:19 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Sorry, Eric,

Dumb error on my part. I didn’t look at the link.

That alternative explanation for “redneck” looks really good; I had never heard of it. Of course, the one may be a reference to the other. But my interpretation smacks of Northeastern snootiness, so I suspect the bandana explanation is correct.

Thanks for persisting.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 4:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

So now I am confused, Nick.

I had always assumed just what you say, that it referred in particular to farmers, who out in fields for endless days, bent over ploughs and such, get sunburned.

It was the guy who goes by Beau of the Fifth Column who recited that little thing about the West Virginia Miner Revolt as the origin of the term as a meme. Then that museum also claimed it.

So, understood that it is normally used as a classist designation now. But from a philological perspective, I am now curious how it became a thing.

There is a different post on what this whole thing is that got distilled in the RNC convention. I think it is about what people become under a lust for power. But to make that argument requires time I cannot permit for the time being. Of course everything else in life gets entrained once something like this is going on, so I am accepting making an oversimplification to try to get at the thing driving the train.

Who wants power, why they want it, whether they are legitimate in wanting it, and the whole question of how the legitimacy of an aim is related to the effect on the human character, what it means to lust for something, and why that is a term of opprobrium in careful society, and in particular what lust becomes when it is for power.

But as I said, I can’t. Besides, just my attempt to make sense of a thing that won’t yield to sense. Maybe all empty.

Eric
On Sep 7, 2020, at 6:18 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi EricS,

It’s a classist designation, that refers (I suppose) to white people who make their living working out of doors. I suppose it to arise from the fact that many of the original settlers of the south were of Scottish / Irish descent, and so ill prepared for bright and high southern sun.

It’s hard to talk about evil without participating in some of it. If we are to defeat trump (and more importantly, the Trumpism that will endure after we defeat him) we are going to have to talk about this stuff. Own up.

Anyway, I’ve probably done enough damage for one weekend.

Good to hear from you,

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 3:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

It’s interesting you should have ended your email with that term, Nick.

I just (in a different medium) learned the meaning of it a few weeks ago. But a more complete source is
https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/05/20/is-west-virginia-s-coal-history-a-goldmine-mine-wars/

It complicates the sense of what you should be concerned about responding to.

Eric
On Sep 7, 2020, at 4:43 PM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric (in your capacity as the one who inspired me to write) and others,

You can write about “Nick” just so long as you are writing about the Transcendental Nick, not the actual one. Is that clear? Glen, and I are having a discussion on this very point, off line. Just who is it that we are writing to when we write to a list?

Look, everything you say is true about elephants. And you are right, I don’t get to declaim that there are no elephants, as long a single person is behaving as if he sees one. But remember I was writing about Trump and trying to get my head around somebody who forgives Trump for being a liar by asserting that “He tells it like it is!” What could that possibly mean?

When Trump stands by a Vietnam-era soldier’s grave, in the presence of that soldier’s father, and says, “I don’t get it; what did they get out of it?” something in me responds, that I have a hard time talking about.   I cannot imagine sending my grandchildren to war, particularly not any of the wars we have fought in my lifetime. So, odious as Trump’s expression was, in the context in which it occurred, it speaks for a part of me. Trump tells the truth about these nether impulses that some of us harbor. He speaks truthfully of my inner redneck. He tells it like it is.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 12:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. "

Nope, nope, nope. Anyone else on this list gets to say that, and maybe I would even agree with it coming from anyone else, but Nick Thompson does not get to say that. Nick must concede that there is something those people are responding to, and does not get to assert "there are no elephants." Nick must concede, both as a New Realist and as the type of New England Liberal he strives to be, that there is a point of view from which there are elephants in the room, and that he has some obligation to meet the people at the place where that view is, especially if he wants to try to talk those people into moving somewhere else. And he can't do that while also making a blanket declaration of the non-existence of the elephants.

Nick could be fully consistent with what I have said above while also believing that the elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) some sort of unstable equilibrium, and that those people would change when exposed to additional aspects of the world -- whereas Nick's own non-elephant-seeing point of view is (developmentally speaking) a much more stable equilibrium, robust to the effects of wider-world exposure.* The problem comes when Nick wants to assert that in a mythic future, when the dust of investigation settles, and everyone has experienced all there is to experience about the world, the elephant-seeing view will be gone, and only the non-elephant-seeing view will remain. (With that being what we are shaking our stick at with claims regarding "truth" and "real".) But if psychology works like the other sciences, that is not what will happen. Rather, in that mythic future, we will have mapped out the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations in which it does not.** This is just as the chemist maps out situations in which a given chemical reaction occurs and situations in which it does not, and just as a mathematician maps out the postulates combinations that lead to certain mathematical phenomena. In the end, when the dust of investigation settles, we will understand the conditions under which elephant-seeing occurs and the situations under which it does not. And when we find ourselves in a world that meets elephant-seeing conditions (among the concaphone of conditions present at any given time), we must admit that there is a place to stand from which elephants will be seen!

* That is, of course, an empirical assertion, and as Nick tries to share aspects of the world with them, those other people will no doubt try to share with him, and the robustness of both sides will be tested.

** I hope it is clear that "situation" is being used in the broadest sense of the word, to include the developmental history of those involved, among other factors.

P.S. I know Nick doesn't like it when messages over the FRIAM list get overly personal, but I hope you will all indulge me on occasion, as the issues seem pertinent to several past and present discussions on the list.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 1:25 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:
Eric,

The truth he tells is that he sees elephants. There are no elephants. But there are a lot of people who see elephants, and they are weary unto death of pretending that they don’t see them. When Trump speaks, they get to say, “Oh, you see elephants, too! I am not the only one!”

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2020 11:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

"Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined by it. ”

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name."

It will probably not surprise you to know that I find this narration baffling. You definitely could say that to him, at any time. There is nothing "liberal" about feeling trapped to not discuss something like that. If you felt trapped for a bit, not saying anything seems wise. However, at some point, you just say it, or give up on the idea that you actually have a problem with it. Personally, I'd stay away from an Uncle Remus reference, but the whole point here is that the two of you are old, so it might make sense in your world. At any rate, the worst case result will be that you have been honest with him, and he never spoke to you again. Which is, IMHO, a better outcome than your not being honest with him, and he never spoke to you again, which seems to be where you are now. Sometimes, certainly not always, but sometimes, when I make moves like that in a conversation, you later express admiration and/or envy.

I think this relates to the larger question of what some people see in Trump. They see him as constantly pointing out what they (his fans) see as the "elephant in the room." Sure, he says a boat load of other things, and lots of those things are not true, but those aren't the important things. "Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?" is a great example of a perceived elephant. "There are good people on both sides" is another, as is the recent dust-up about "anti-racist" workshops. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) See I was right not to risk saying that myself, because my supposedly friendly, supposedly open-minded neighbors would have attacked me just for saying it, and maybe even tried to get me fired, because apparently they think my kids should go hungry if I think something they don't like. 2) Thank God someone had the guts to ask the question! 3) What kind of crazy country do these libs want to turn us into, with all these elephants wandering all around the room, and it's not even enough to not say anything, because now you gotta be worried about getting fired if they think you might even have looked at one? 4) If I could be me, but also have the guts to talk about the elephants, I would be A Better Person. He talks about the elephants, so he is A Better Person.

Did that comparison hold together? It felt like it did.

P.S. Add on top of that that a huge chunk of the "lies" are puffery, which amounts to telling his supporters that it is ok to feel good about themselves and good about their country. This started in earnest with the claims about inauguration attendance and continues, for example, with any suggestion that we might be doing anything half-decent with our Covid response. When Trump gets hammered for saying such things, they take away 1) I guess the libs really do want us to feel bad about our country. 2) They really think it would be horrible if I felt good about myself for even a minute. 3) They are ok judging me when they know nothing about me.
On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 11:19 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
My solution is to elect Biden and to use Trump as an example of the kind of person to never elect again. But that's just me.
Sounds like a partial lobotomy. I'm game for this... but not sure it is more than "a good start", which of course is, in fact, a good start.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020, 8:15 PM Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yes, you could say that government in general and especially lawmakers
> are our superego. The best common word synonym for superego is
> conscience. Since a lot of people have lacunae of their own superego
> we need laws and law enforcers.

So right now we are in the midst of a collective id/ego/superego that is
experiencing a dissociative episode, both governmental and social?

to the extent the analogy holds, what is an exit/recovery strategy?

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gepr

Re: Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

In reply to this post by David Eric Smith

I like his video essays, but finally unsubbed his youtube channel because all he does is talk to the camera [⛧].

Here is more info on him (at least I think it's him):

https://justinking.org/about/
http://www.digitaljournal.com/internet/profile-of-a-digital-journalist-activism-fuels-justin-king/article/398161

[⛧] I prefer content with some eye candy. This one is fantastic:

What’s On The Other Side Of A Black Hole?
https://youtu.be/T4oYvSH6jJ8

It's difficult to criticize anyone who puts effort into their videos. But compare that one to this one:

Wormholes Explained – Breaking Spacetime
https://youtu.be/9P6rdqiybaw

PBS Spacetime really does a fantastic job. Politics is more difficult, of course. As someone commented before, ContraPoints' videos (https://www.youtube.com/c/ContraPoints/featured) are sometimes so visually startling it can get in the way of the message. And Philosophy Tube (https://www.youtube.com/user/thephilosophytube) is similar. We're in Hell (https://www.youtube.com/c/BlackGoat666/featured) and Three Arrows (https://www.youtube.com/c/ThreeArrows/featured) strike a nice balance.

On 9/7/20 3:34 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> It was the guy who goes by Beau of the Fifth Column who recited that little thing about the West Virginia Miner Revolt as the origin of the term as a meme. Then that museum also claimed it.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen