Monday, November 4, 2019

     I found three (3) books in the library last night. Bonanza!  

     After Bikram, I went to the physical therapist. My primary physician ordered 12 sessions. I wasn't optimistic that the PT would have anything to offer me. I have worked with a few other PTs and haven't been exceptionally pleased. This one was an eye-opener. She did a thorough evaluation of my whole body. She checked my spine. As she did her evaluation, she shared her findings with me. I learned so much about my body today. Then, she carefully watched me as I did the exercises she gave me and observed that I was doing them correctly and not harming myself. I was so pleased that I wroteto my primary physician to tell her.

      I went directly to school after that. I started with Mrs. B's room. K continues to make progress. D needs to keep doing the basic exercises I gave him to continue improving. I can understand why he doesn't. He wants to be read like everyone else but can't yet. 

It is hard to convince him that he has to go through these laborious procedures to learn to read like everyone else.

     Then I switched to Mrs. D's room. B has made some progress, but it's not enormous. N's word recognition skills are much better, but he needs to work on comprehension. He doesn't make sense of the sentences as he reads. With R, instead of working on sight words, I switched to using materials rooted in phonics. The first story is loaded with -at words: cat, sat, mat, pat, and rat. Her decoding skills are good at this low level. The problem is how to get her to remember the words she sees. I showed her her name. I asked her if she figured it out every time she read it. She said no. She just recognized it. Question: How do we get her mind to remember? I told her what the objective was. Is it possible that she doesn't 'just remember' because she thinks she's supposed to decode every word? Is that assumption blocking her from using her memory? It's certainly worth a try.

    I went home after school, packed some more food in anticipation of the tenting and fumigation on Wednesday, and played FreeCell.

I had planned to make a defrosted steak. Then, I would give the steak and the other one I had in the freezer to Judy to serve for dinner on Wednesday. I finally got hold of her. She had slept late after taking care of Luke the night before. 

     He is a restless sleeper. I have recently learned that babies can develop a predictable sleep pattern after 4 months. Since Luke is missing so much of his brain matter, it seems unlikely that he will ever reach that point of development. This means he wakes up every 15 minutes and cries. 

These parents are brave and committed beyond words. Judy, the child's grandmother, is giving beyond words.

     She agreed to serve the steaks on Wednesday night. I walked them up to her house when I walked Elsa. We sat around for a while and talked. Elsa hung out with Judy's dogs. She did just fine. That's good because Elsa and I will be staying there Wednesday through Thursday while our house is being fumigated.

Elsa and I went home. Because Judy's house is on the 2nd floor, they installed a chair lift to make it bearable to get groceries up. While Elsa has no problems going up the stairs, I was worried about her ability to go down them without falling. 

     Therefore, I rode the chair down while Elsa sat in my lap. Unfortunately, the chair got stuck 2/3 of the way down. Judy tried pushing various buttons, but nothing got it started again. Elsa and I disembarked, and she was just fine running down the stairs on her own.

     I prepared dinner and continued reading Junker's book, Tribe. I love it.

After dinner, I went to do some work in the library. I had some paperwork to do. I also worked on packing the box of books I had already found. However, when I got up, my back was hurting. Damn! The books will have to wait.

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Musings:

      Junger's book also echoes my theory about the need for sociopaths in society, at least prosocial ones. He describes how men responded when the Spring Hill mine in Nova Scotia collapsed in 1958. "Almost immediately, certain men stepped into leadership roles. While there was still lamplight, these men scouted out passageways to see if they could escape and tried to dig through the rockfalls blocking their path. When they ran out of water, one man went in search of more and managed to find a precious gallon, which he shared with others. These men were also instrumental in getting their fellow survivors to start drinking their urine or trying to eat coal. Canadian psychologists who interviewed the miners after their rescue found that these early leaders tended to lack empathy and emotional control, were not concerned about the opinions of others, and often associated only with one or two men in the group. Their physical abilities far exceeded their verbal abilities. But all of these traits allowed them to take forceful, life-saving action where many other men might not." Tribe pp.60-65

     There is such a thing as a prosocial sociopath. Neuroscientist Jim Fallon studied the minds of killers to see if he could detect a brain pattern for sociopaths. As part of his research, he had brain scans made of everyone in his family, including himself. He identified one person's brain as having the pattern of a sociopath- his. He had led a moral life; he married a woman he met in Kindergarten, never strayed, and had never broken the law. However, he got feedback from family and friends, "Oh, yes. We knew you were a sociopath." I think he was considered one because he didn't respond to the needs of others. He wasn't a bad person; he didn't set out to hurt anyone, but he did ignore conventional ideas and the needs of others. He said once he understood who he was, he made more of an effort to conform.

    The qualities of a sociopath are a lack of empathy and a lack of concern about others' opinions. This frees these people to take action and even think of thoughts others might not. They're not afraid to be the lone wolf in the pack. That allows them to make contributions to their group that others might not. This is the function of the prosocial sociopath. Why do some become antisocial and destructive? That I don't know. But I understand why the sociopathic brain was allowed to survive into modern times. 

The prosocial sociopath is necessary for the group's survival. When we were hunter-gatherers, no sociopath could go rogue that easily. They would be quickly taken in hand and, if necessary, killed. Nowadays, they have too much liberty and can run loose.

     Howard says sociopaths reproduce at a greater rate than the rest of the population. It reminds me of a boy I met while working in Trenton. He was one of fifty (50) children his father had produced. Egad! 

That man's ego was invested in something below his waistline. Can you imagine going around bragging that you sired fifty children out of wedlock? Sounds like an antisocial sociopath to me.

Every major political figure has to have something of the sociopath in him, hopefully only the prosocial kind. How else can they live with the decisions that have to be made that affect the lives and deaths of so many people? But we know fullwell that we haven't always been that lucky to have prosocial presidents.