I have been rereading the Hidden Face of God. Last night, I read that the earth turns from west to east. I finally realized the sun goes down because the earth turns away from it. Now, I am not a flat earther. I have always understood that the sun does not move around the earth. Instead, the 'movement' of the sun is caused by the movement of the earth. However, now, I have a physical sense that I am on an object which is turning. It's like riding on a wonder wheel. It's just a conceptual difference, but it feels completely different. There is so much left to learn, so much left to understand that I thought I already knew. It amazes me that I can learn something new every day. Sometimes it's something mundane like how to squeeze the miso paste out of the package with the least amount of waste and the least amount of mess. I press the packet against the inside of the cup and use a spoon to squeeze it out. Look at that. Sometimes, it something monumental, like finally experiencing the earth as rotating sphere under my feet.
I called my friend Carol from Maryland while I walked. I hadn't been following her on Facebook. If I had, I would have known that she and John had gone camping and hadn't received their mail yet with the picture I sent them of Mike and me. It makes sense for Karin and Shivani not to have notified me when they received their packages; they're of that generation. However, Carol and John are of mine and let people know when they receive something.
When I got home, I meditated for an hour. I thought I would be good when I got up, but no. I was exhausted. I lay down for a nap. I certainly don't suffer from insomnia. I sleep like a baby. I got up in time for my Zoom tutoring session.
D. remembered the several multiplication facts we had been working on over the last several weeks, but not the one we included last week. So, we had to refresh that. Instead of telling him the steps in embedding something in his long-term memory, I asked him what the steps were after we got through them. The instructions were to listen to my voice in his head, saying the fact, instead of saying it himself. He remembered to push the save button and send it down into long-term memory. He did pretty well. I gave him a distractor first then, another multiplication fact, and then I gave him the new one. He was able to remember the first one.
When reviewing the before-after exercise with the numbers one through 4, he got two correct and then missed the third. I have taught him to associate after with his right hand and before with his left. When I told him he made a mistake, He said, "Oh, yeah, and raised his right hand." This is good. He is associating before and after in his body without needing me to remind him to do that. Eventually, maybe I will present the items in a vertical format instead of the horizontal one we have been using. However, I need to wait for one or two more sessions until his response is automatic and correct.
I taught D. a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words in the middle of the school year. Yet, each time he comes across a word that he gets wrong, I have to walk him through the strategy step by step by step.
It occurred to me that he may be rejecting the procedure because it doesn't feel good; he did that with the left-brain associative recall. He overtly rejected using his left brain. It wound up that he feared he would lose access to his right-brain activity. The left brain represented something colorless and static; the right brain represented flowing, colored streamers. When I told him, he could have more right brain activity if he strengthened his left brain. This produced a significant change. He is now using his left brain to remember his multiplication facts, which it is designed to do. However, learning the facts is going slowly because his left brain is underdeveloped. That means that the necessary pathway for memorization of abstract facts is still weak. I use only a few facts at a time because the goal is strengthening that neural pathway rather than learning multiplication facts. That will come once the path is sufficiently strengthened.
I asked him how he felt about following the decoding strategy I had taught him. He said he didn't like it. That makes sense. When he follows this procedure, he has to work slowly. This makes him look like a' bad reader.' Good readers, he knows, read the words rapidly. Yes, some students magically learn to do that; this child is not one of them. He has to use his conscious mind to train himself.
I told him that his conscious mind has to decide if the bad feeling, dictating avoidance sent out from his nonconscious mind, should be followed or not. For example, touching a hot stove is not a good idea. Following my directions to decode words is not dangerous. I pointed out that he had to learn to discern the difference between what to avoid and what not to avoid, even if they do feel bad at first. I told him that if he did that, he would find it hard to hold a job. He would not be able to follow directions for his boss and wind up not doing the job he was hired for.
I also told him that the purpose of this slow strategy is not to do it that way forever but to learn to read words quickly. Because he is a big video game player, I went through the stages of learning a new game or a new level of the game. When he made an error, he noticed what he did and tried not to do that again. He might make the same mistake a few more times, but he would stop making those errors. Then magically, he wouldn't make that mistake again without thinking about it. If he didn't go through that stage where he made a conscious effort to move differently, he would never have improved his game. He got it, but it didn't make him feel lots better. I assume it's because his slow reading has made him feel bad, probably ashamed.
We worked on the paragraph we read on Monday. He made fewer mistakes. We managed to finish that paragraph today. When he came across words that he didn't know, I directed him to remember the decoding strategy I taught him. He had to struggle to remember it at first, but he got better.
When our time was up, he said, "No,. I want to keep going!" That's great, but our time was up. I recommended that he read on his own.
The other day, his classroom teacher, who arranged for me to work with D, told me his mother called and said she doesn't have to work with him anymore now; she's satisfied with my work. I'm going to take that as a compliment.
After I was through with the tutoring session, I went out to finish cleaning the car. I got carried away. The car looks like new. I think I did a $300 detailing job. I had a blast. I have been looking at my dirty car forever, thinking I would like to clean it. I couldn't get myself off the dime, thinking it would be too much work. It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun. What is this procrastination about?
I didn't clean the tires because I needed a rest. Fresh Air came on, and I wanted to stay inside and listen to it. I decided I would clean the handles on my kitchen cabinets. I tried once before. I had used metal polish several months ago. It didn't do much for the handles, and it left a residue. Today, I used the stainless-steel cleaner a friend gave me and went over all the handles. Great! I cleaned the wood of the cabinets with Murphy's Soap Oil. I am going to have the cleanest house in Hawaii soon.
I washed the tile floors in the common rooms of the house. Then tomorrow, if it rains, Yvette's driveway yoga will be in the house. I love my Bissell vacuum cleaner. The suction may not be as good as on my Rainbow, but it is easy to manage. Therefore, I use it regularly and have a clean house. I am becoming a crazy housekeeper.
As Elsa and I took our evening walk, Yvette came around the corner. She was coming home from Bikram. Because the studio is closed and the heat on, I don't feel comfortable going for the time being.
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Musings:
I heard a program on the Hidden Brain about the 'us versus them' impulse. This impulse served us well when we were wandering the savanna as our primitive selves, but no more. Back then, we needed to bond to those around us or risk death. Of course, we don't need restricted bonds these days to survive, but the impulse is part of our evolutionary make-up.
The talk has generated a lot of thoughts. I guess the first one I want to address is the idea of the expanding/ expanded 'us.' It has to do with the size of the group we identify with.
On the savanna, we identified with those who supported our lives. It was a reciprocal arrangement assuring everyone's survival, and that created powerful bonds. The military comes to mind, where everyone in a unit is dependent on everyone else. We were designed to love that connection. Unfortunately, the full effect surrounding us, penetrating every nerve ending in our bodies, is only felt when we are in life-threatening situations or at rousing sports events. It is heightened by opposing forces. We bond together to fight the enemy. It is more challenging to feel that close bonding when it is peaceful , and there are no threats of a common enemy. Learning to embrace the subtler forms of connection is a challenge for our species. Learning to feel connected in a non-threatening situation with someone other than our very young children.
When they talked about expanding our sense of 'us' on the show, I got an image of concentrate circles with individuals in the center. For some, that radiating circle ends at the boundaries of their own skin. Some people are only in this life to serve themselves, the takers, the sociopaths; they are constant victims with no evidence of being victimized. The next is those nearest and dearest to us, our immediate family and closest friends. After that come members of a community with which we share an identity, a religion, race, nation, gender, or some distinguishing characteristics, like a handicap or a particular interest. It's moving beyond those boundaries that is a challenge to us. We are much more comfortable staying within our own group.
Does that mean we have to believe that our group is entitled to more, more life, more material goods, more health care, more justice, etc.? We live in a world that has become too large to not include everyone. We create groups of 'them' at our own peril. Everyone's life is affected by everyone else's life.
While the impact of everyone's life on ours has become obvious to everyone, I think it has always been that way. My father raised me to believe that even if I couldn't do something to help someone on the other side of the world, I shared the responsibility of what happened to that person. My mother had a very different perspective and hated that I felt concerned for people, basically, other than her. She was a wounded animal.
My 'us' included every human being, even as a child, and I started including animals when I was introduced to Buddhism. Some branches of Buddhism make it impossible for people to walk on the ground for fear of crushing some insect. I would say that is an overly expanded version of 'us', which verges on excluding the 'me' from the mix. This is what makes this whole theory so complicated. Whether we're overly 'us' oriented with a small exclusive group, maybe of only one person, or overly 'them' oriented, excluding the survival of the self, either is out of whack.
An ad that ran on TV many years ago just to mind. It doesn't do much to illuminate my point of view, but I thought it was funny. It was for the Yellow Pages, for those of us who remember the days of the paper telephone book. Some clever soul made up these incredible images. The only one I remember was the one for 'vanity cases,' referring to a piece of furniture you could find in the Yellow Pages. They were two people talking. One talked a great deal about himself and then said, "Enough about me. What do you think of my tie?" or some item of clothing. A vanity case! It was a scream. But that gets back to someone's idea of being us meaning those who serve me and not also those I serve.
I think the problem comes in with those who emphasize the 'them' part of the equation. For these folks, those who belong to the 'them' group are less than, at best, and downright evil or nonhuman at worst. Those are the ones who scare me; those who believe the members of their own group are genuinely superior to those who don't belong to their group.
While I can see the downside of too much emphasis on the limited 'us', there is no doubt that there is also danger on those who overemphasize the universally expanded 'us.' I have learned in my lifetime, there is nothing that can't be perverted to the cause of evil. Too bad. It would be nice if there were a simple solution.
Here's mine. I think there is value in a limited 'us' and an expanded 'us.' We each have our role to play in this drama. If we play it with 'love' as our primary commitment, we cannot do too much harm. Note, I said, 'not too much harm." Some damage is inevitable. We remain human.
Is it possible to go to combat against an opposing group and not hate? It makes combat action more difficult. How much easier it is when our fight is fueled by hatred—Yay for adrenalin! Sometimes we have to do harm to others to preserve ourselves. The question comes up about how much I need to survive. Do I need a five million dollar a year salary to feel that I'm worthwhile, as I heard some of the bankers who had to take pay cuts to only one million a year said during the banking crisis? What do I really need? Do I need others to suffer so I can have/ be what I want to be? There are situations where the answer is yes. It may really be my survival versus another person's. But making that judgment is no easy matter. If it is fueled by hatred for the other, I say that judgment is in question. Do we have the right to our five million while others go hungry because we judge them worthless?
Mike would talk about people as having moral imaginations and those who don't. Many live around with a template in their heads handed to them by their families of origin. That worked on the savanna. That worked well. But as we live in a world where we are increasingly exposed to people who are different from us, and we have to make moral decisions, the old rules don't work as well. Just because someone doesn't look like us, speak like us, value the same things we do, are they worthless human beings? I'm not asking if we shouldn't fight them on issues we think are moral., like the overconsumption of rhino horn for a bogus remedy. The question comes up does someone's consumption of rhino horn makes them a worthless human being. I'm sure those who consume rhino horn have something to say about my lifestyle, my values. I can understand conflict, but I do hope they don't say that I'm worthless.
The program introduced a couple that represents two points of view on the topic. It was both the difference and the similarity which bonded this pair. The similarity was their concern for morality and ethics. Their differences! She is an 'us' person. Your first commitment is to your immediate family. He followed Peter Singer's Utilitarian ethics: good is what is best for the greatest number of people and would put a group of strangers before his own family. You think this out on a statistical level, not just intuitive.
Neither of these folks mentioned hating a group of 'them.' It was just who you help first. Who do you give your support to? For the wife, it was clear: those near and dear to her. For him, it had to do with numbers, the greatest number of people that would benefit.
