Category: PSYCHOLOGY

INTELLIGENCE

After two or three chapters of Huston’s book, reader/listeners will likely complete it. The difficulty, as with all good advice, is following it.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

SHARP (Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science)

By: Therese Huston PhD

Narrated By:  Theresa Bakken

Therese Huston (Author, earned an MS and PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.)

Therese Huston is a well-known public speaker who has written a book that has appeal for those who wish to know what they can do to improve their memory and cognitive abilities. This is not a book some will be interested in either listening to or reading. Many presume they have a proscribed intelligence and memory largely determined by genetic inheritance. Huston infers there is some science-based truth in that opinion but that one’s memory, cognitive ability, and psychological health can be treated, if not improved, at any age.

Huston’s prescription for improved memory and cognitive ability requires effort.

Undoubtedly, we inherit much of our innate cognitive ability but whatever one’s genetic inheritance and age may be Huston argues cognition and memory can be improved. Huston discusses areas of the brain that are the base from which cognition and memory originate, are stored, and then called upon.

Huston notes the hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, neocortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia are key brain areas involved in cognition and memory.

The hippocampus is the primary location of memories, but the other five areas interact with one’s personal experiences in ways ranging from emotion, individual understanding, decision-making, reasoning, skill development, and formed habits. As we age, the way we process, store, and retrieve information deteriorates. We lose some memories, process information more slowly, and find it more difficult to process new information in the context of past experience.

What Huston explains is that exercise, visual, and tactical experience can improve memory and cognition at every age.

Staying active, experiencing the world in ways that stimulate the production of dopamine, and exercising effort to learn and do new things improves cognitive ability and memory. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the human body that regulates mood, focus and behavior. It is released by the body when it is stimulated by exercise, engaging experience, and learning new things. Huston offers advice on how one at any age can improve their mental health and care for themselves and others when they are troubled by various common and extraordinary events in life. Life’s events stimulate the release of dopamine which can illicit rage and bad behavior but also provide focus and beneficial behavior.

Huston suggests 14 generally simple ways of helping oneself and others cope with the stresses of life.

Many of her solutions are commonly understood, others less so. Not surprisingly, she notes exercise, proper nutrition, quality sleep, and deep breathing are important for maintenance and improvement of brain function and memory. Some more difficult and less understood aids to brain health and memory are 1) importance of social engagement, 2) learning new things from personal and other’s recorded experience, and 3) practicing ways of reducing the stresses of life in yourself and others you care about.

One who reads or listens to “Sharp” will recognize the value of Huston’s advice for improving memory and cognitive ability.

After two or three chapters, reader/listeners will likely complete her book. The difficulty, as with all good advice, is following it.

PSYCHOSIS

The imagination of Han Kang gives reader/listener’s an explanation of how a human being can become psychotic. Kang’s characters show how psychosis comes from many sources, a major one of which is family relationship.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Vegetarian 

By: Han Kang

Narrated by: Deborah Smith, Janet Song, Stephen Park

Han Kang (Author, South Korean writer, awarded the International Booker Prize for fiction in 2016 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.)

A listener/reader may be tempted to put this book aside with the thought that it is a titillating pornographic tale that is not worthy of one’s time. However, after an hour or two, one realizes this is a journey for something difficult to describe.

In Kang’s fictional story, two sisters are raised by the same parents. One is the older of the two and becomes a successful small business owner with a video artist husband; the other is a housewife who lives with a husband that seems to neither love nor respect her. Both marriages fail but for different but interlocking reasons.

The younger sister becomes a vegetarian later in her married life. She explains her vegetarianism is based on a dream she has about something that is not clearly defined. One gathers the dream has something to do with the source of meat that involves the killing of animals while vegetarian food comes from nature’s abundance. The husband reluctantly goes along with the change but becomes more and more unhappy in his life with the younger sister. The unhappiness grows to something greater when his wife begins to complain about how her meat-eating husband’ smells. The breaking point comes when the husband asks his wife’s mother, father, and sister-in-law to convince his wife to abandon vegetarianism and begin adding meat to her diet. At dinner in their house, the father forcefully demands his daughter to eat meat. She refuses and the conflict becomes violent. Her father pries her mouth open and shoves meat into her mouth. The daughter rebels and cuts her wrist with a knife in an act of defiance. Her brother-in-law grasps the younger daughter who is profusely bleeding and rushes her to the hospital.

The brother-in-law that rushed to save the vegetarian is a video artist.

The main characters of the story and the substance of their conflict is now made clear to the listener/reader. The next portentous development is the older sister’s husband (a video artist) begins to fantasize about the younger sister whom he had rushed to the hospital. His fantasy grows to the point of asking the younger daughter to pose nude for an art video he wishes to create. She agrees. A listener/reader begins to understand the younger sister is slipping into a psychosis. Her brother-in-law paints her nude body with flowers that make her feel that she is becoming part of nature, i.e., something growing like the vegetarian diet upon which she relies. The brother-in-law’s sexual desire becomes more aroused by the video and his relationship with the younger sister.

The deepening psychosis of the younger daughter grows when the brother-in-law hires a nude male model to be a part of a new video.

The male model resists but agrees to pose with her but refuses to go beyond allowing flowers being painted on his nude body and a video of the two without clothes but with painted bodies. The brother-in-law’s sexual fantasy grows from this experience but is disappointed in the male actor who refuses to have sex with the sister-in-law while the video is being filmed. The male actor did not want to be viewed as a porn star.

The brother-in-law’s fantasy leads to the sister-in-law’s agreement to have sex with him on film as long as he allows her to paint flowers on his body that are similar to what he had painted on her body. They become sexually entwined at the sister-in-law’s house. The older sister discovers them in their sexual rendezvous where the video is being produced.

The younger sister has crossed a barrier between sanity and insanity. It is not a matter of remorse for the sexual relationship but from a reinforcement of her obsessive need for being a vegetarian as an integral part of nature. She refuses her humanity. She has crossed the Rubicon between sanity and insanity. She refuses to eat anything and only wishes to drink water to feed her growth as a plant. Both her husband and the husband of the older sister-in-law essentially drop out of Kang’s story. The older sister’s husband does not forgive her husband for his sexual transgression and the younger sister’s husband never loved the vegetarian in the first place.

This amazing book, “The Vegetarian”, offers a vivid portrayal of a human beings’ descent into psychosis.

The imagination of Han Kang gives reader/listener’s an explanation of how a human being can become psychotic. Kang’s characters show how psychosis comes from many sources, a major one of which is family relationship.

PUTIN & UKRAINE

Without checks and balances, autocratic beliefs inevitably lead to conflict and mutually assured destruction, Donald Trump notwithstanding.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

From Cold War to Hot Peace (An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia)

By: Michael McFaul

Narrated By: L. J. Ganser

Michael McFaul (Author, American academic and diplomat, ambassador to Russia 2012-2014, former Professor of International Studies at Stanford.)

Not since George Kennan’s brief time as Ambassador to Russia in 1952 has an American ambassador been denied access to Russia. Michael McFaul became the second in 2016. McFaul joins the pre- and post-Obama election to become Obama’s ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2o14. McFaul writes this book to explain his experience in the Obama administration, his understanding of Russia, and his tenure as Ambassador to Russia.

Interestingly, Condoleezza Rice recommends McFaul should join Obama because she was sure he, rather than McCain, would become the next President of the United States.

McFaul follows Rice’s recommendation and joins Obama’s campaign. Mcfaul’s grasp of Russian foreign affairs is insightful and relevant based on his personal experience. McFaul lived in Russia for a period of time when Gorbachev and Yeltsin attempted to liberalize Russia’s autocratic government. McFaul’s time living in Russia, his understanding of Russian language, and his study of Russian history at Stanford make his opinion in “From Cold War to Hot Peace” important.

Gorbachev’ biography shows he experienced the autocratic rule of Stalin’s U.S.S.R. as a young boy and found the courage to open the door to citizen’ freedom.

Mikhail Gorbachev was 22 when Stalin died. His ideal was to maintain the U.S.S.R. but with a system of government that rejected totalitarianism while freeing its citizens to improve their way of life. However, the shock of newfound freedom appeared an economic change too difficult and unfairly remunerative for the U.S.S.R. to survive as one hegemon.

A fundamental ingredient of independence is freedom.

When countries controlled by the U.S.S.R. were offered freedom, they looked to forms of democracy rather than autocracy. Gorbachev’s inability to accelerate economic growth to improve the lives of his country’s citizens doomed his goal to create a freer society within the U.S.S.R. Compounding his failure, Boris Yeltsin usurps Gorbachev’s power by arguing he has a better way of accelerating Russia’s economy to keep the U.S.S.R. together.

Boris Yeltsin talked the talk of democratic government but because of his inability to coopt the underlying authoritarian habits of former KGB operatives, he lost control of the government.

Yeltsin’s rise undermined the influence of Gorbachev, encouraged the departure of U.S.S.R.’ member countries, and gave an opening to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer. The KGB changed to the FSB in 1991 (along with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service) to become the right and left hand of Putin’s power and influence in the new Russia.

Fifteen countries leave the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

  1. Estonia: August 20, 1991
  2. Latvia: August 21, 1991
  3. Lithuania: March 11, 1990
  4. Armenia: September 21, 1991
  5. Azerbaijan: October 18, 1991
  6. Belarus: August 25, 1991
  7. Georgia: April 9, 1991
  8. Kazakhstan: December 16, 1991
  9. Kyrgyzstan: August 31, 1991
  10. Moldova: August 27, 1991
  11. Russia: December 12, 1991
  12. Tajikistan: September 9, 1991
  13. Turkmenistan: October 27, 1991
  14. Ukraine: August 24, 1991
  15. Uzbekistan: September 1, 1991

Gorbachev effectively ended the cold war, but McFaul argues the cold war turned into a “…Hot Peace”. Gorbachev was the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. His effort to democratize Russia fails even though he fully champions Valdimir Putin to become president of Russia in 2000.

Putin took control of Russia as Prime Minister under Yeltsin in 1999. He later effectively became President of Russia for life.

McFall explains Obama became President of the United States in 2o09. Obama revised America’s relationship with Russia with what became known as the U.S./Russia “Reset” policy.

Obama’s “Reset” policy had some early positive effects. The relationship between America and Russia arguably improved despite their significant political differences. When they disagreed, they agreed to disagree. There were halting steps toward nuclear bomb limitation and greater cooperation on America’s actions in Afghanistan when the Taliban had shown support for Osama bin Laden after 9/11.

Putin rose to the presidency in 2011 and has remained effectively in control of Russia since 1999. Though not argued by McFaul, Putin’s intimate understanding of Russia’s secret service has given him the power to exercise dictatorial control over Russia. The history of U.S.S.R. since the 1917 revolution has been maintained by a secret service used to jail, torture, and murder any opposition to leadership of Russia. Today, that autocratic leader is Putin. There seems little reason to believe kleptocratic control of a massive secret service apparatus will be overcome without revolution. Every Russian knows of the threat the secret service has to any opposition to Putin who controls and has an intimate relationship and understanding of the organizational capabilities of the former KGB.

Gorbachev’s legacy is hope for a better form of government in Russia. Change is possible just as Gorbachev’s history as the secretary of the Communist Party from 1985 to 1991 proved.

One is inclined to believe change will come to Russia from a disaffected communist party leader who rises in the party and taps discontented Russians looking for change. If all one’s life is lived and raised in Russia, a Russian born change-agent like Gorbachev may, once again, be born

As one completes McFaul’s book, the threat of masculine blindness in world leaders is made clear. Leadership entails a power that corrupts leaders who think they know what is best for their citizens. Autocracies concentrate that power in singular human beings. Without checks and balances, autocratic beliefs inevitably lead to conflict and mutually assured destruction, Donald Trump notwithstanding.

AI TRANSITION

The potential of AI is akin to the Industrial Revolution, yet it could surpass it significantly if managed correctly by humans.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The AI-Savvy Leader (Nine Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work)

By: David De Cremer

Narrated By: David Marantz

David De Cremer (Author, Belgian born professor at Northeastern University in Boston, and behavioral scientist with academic studies in economics and psychology.)

“The AI-Savvy Leader” should be required reading for every organization investing in artificial intelligence for performance improvement. From government to business, to eleemosynary organizations, De Cremer offers a guide for organizational transition from physical labor to labor-saving benefits of AI.

AI offers the working world the opportunity to increase their productivity without the mind-numbing physical labor of assembly lines and administrative scut work.

Like assembly line production implemented by Ford and work report filing and writing during the industrial revolution, AI offers an opportunity to increase productivity without the mind-numbing physical labor of assembly line work and after-work’ analysis reports. With AI, more time is provided to workers to think and do what can be done to be more productive.

Arguably, AI is similar to the industrial revolutions transition to assembly line work. Assembly line work improved over time by changes that made it more productive. Why would one think that AI is any different? It is just another tool for improving productivity. The concern is that AI means less labor will be required and that workers will lose their jobs. De Cremer notes loss of employment is one of the greatest concerns of employees working for an organization transitioning to AI. Too many times organizations are looking at reducing costs with AI rather than increasing productivity.

The solution identified by De Cremer is to make AI transition human centered.

His point is that organizations need to understand the human impact of AI on employees’ work process. AI should not only be viewed as a cost-cutting process but as a process of reducing repetitive work for labor to make added contributions to an organization’s goals. AI does not guarantee continued employment, but reduced manual labor offers time and incentive to improve organization productivity through employee’ cooperation rather than opposition. AI is mistakenly viewed as an enemy of labor when, in fact, it is a liberator of labor that provides time to do more than tighten bolts on an auto body frame.

AI is not a panacea for labor and can be a threat just like industrialization was to many craftsmen.

But, like craftsman that went to work for industries, today’s labor will join organizations that have successfully transitioned to AI with a human-centered rather than cost-reduction mentality. Labor productivity is only a part of what any AI transition provides an organization. What is often discounted is customer service because labor is consumed by repetitive work. If AI improves labor productivity, more time can be provided to an organization’s customers.

When AI is properly human centered, the customer can be offered more personal attention by fellow human beings employed by an AI organization.

Too many organizations are using AI to respond to customer complaints. Human-centered AI becomes a win-win opportunity because labor is not consumed by production and has the time to understand customer unhappiness with service or product. AI does not think like a human. AI only responds based on the memory of what AI has been programmed to recall. With human handling of customer complaints, problems are more clearly understood. Opportunity for customer satisfaction is improved.

De Creamer acknowledges AI has introduced much closer monitoring of worker performance and carries some of the same mind-numbing work introduced in assembly line manufacturing.

De Creamer suggests negative consequences of AI should be dealt with directly with employees when AI becomes a problem. Part of a human-centered AI organization’s responsibility is allowing employees to take breaks during their workday without being penalized for slackening production. Repetitive tasks have always been a drain on productivity, but it has to be recognized and responded to in the light of overall productivity of an organization.

AI, like the industrial revolution, is shown as a great opportunity for human beings.

De Creamer suggests AI is not and will never be human. To De Creamer AI is a recallable knowledge accumulator and is only a programmed tool of human minds, not a replacement for human thought and understanding. The potential of AI is akin to the Industrial Revolution, yet it could surpass it significantly if managed correctly by humans.

PSYCHOSIS

Psychiatric illness is disturbingly believable and terrifying. Human psychosis ruins lives if not properly diagnosed and treated.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Night Guest 

By: Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir

Narrated & Translated By: Mary Robinette Kowal

Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir (Icelandic Author, classical cellist, and composer –awarded an Academy Award, two Grammies, and an Emmy.)

The multi-talented Guðnadóttir has written a chilling tale of psychosis in “The Night Guest”. In one sense, it is a reflection of sexual equality, but it also reveals how complex and dangerous it is to be human. This fictional story is about an attractive single woman who is unable to peacefully sleep through the night. Every morning, she wakes up with a tiredness that sticks with her through the day. On some mornings she finds bruises or scratches on her arms and has no idea of why she feels so tired. She sees several doctors and finally finds one that takes her symptoms seriously.

Her doctor runs tests and finds nothing seems to explain the tiredness. The doctor asks her if she is depressed. The woman says she feels sad sometimes but not particularly depressed. The doctor recommends she see a psychiatrist, but she chooses to ignore the advice.

The tiredness, odd bruises, and scratches on her body continue to appear, i.e., after sleep and in the morning. She comes across an article that tells her of sleepwalkers that don’t realize they are sleepwalking at night after falling asleep. She is convinced that explains her symptoms and asks her doctor for sleeping pills. The doctor reluctantly agrees and provides a prescription. Initially, the treatment seems to help, and the young woman resumes her life, meets a new boyfriend, and begins to feel everything is okay.

The author explains the young woman is a lover of cats but notices that lately the cats in her neighborhood have become afraid of her.

When she approaches them, they hiss and raise their backs. She is mystified by their response. As the story progresses, listeners find she was involved with the owner of a company for which she works. He is married and the relationship is ended with some acrimony. The two avoid each other at the workplace but the still-married man tries to resurrect their relationship. The young woman is involved with another man and has no interest in resuming a relationship with a married man.

She returns to her belief that her sleeplessness is caused by her sleepwalking and decides to monitor her behavior with a video recording devise.

She reviews the recording to find she wakes up and leaves her bedroom for hours at a time. She is wearing a pedometer to measure the steps she takes and finds it is several thousand steps more than what it was at the end of her day. What makes her discovery ominous is that the recording shows a conscious and alert person that has to be her, but she feels that person is entirely different from herself.

The woman’s tiredness returns, and she finds one morning that all of her sleeping pills are gone. Her former married lover disappears. Her current lover tells her to never contact him again without an explanation. The denouement of the story is horrifying. Explanation of her psychiatric illness is disturbingly believable and terrifying. Human psychosis ruins lives if not properly diagnosed and treated.

M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)

The near assassination of Trump is a harbinger of a world unduly influenced by today’s technology and media influence.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Playing with Reality”

By: Kelly Clancy

Narrated By: Patty Nieman

Kelly Clancy (Author, graduate of MIT in physics with a Ph.D. in biophysics from U.C. Berkley.)

Kelly Clancy has a distinct point of view as a scientist. Her understanding of game theory and the mathematics of probability may steer reader/listeners away from her interesting book. “Playing with Reality” is less like playing and more like hard work, at least in the first chapters. Clancy begins by defining game theory and its permutations. Then she explains how it is a flawed tool for understanding human behavior. As one gets through the first chapters of her book, a reader/listener realizes Clancy is offering more than gaming theory history.

Clancy offers a detailed history of the growth of computer technology through the use of gaming programs designed to educate, entertain, and enrich private companies, public conglomerates, and individuals.

Clancy reveals the growth of chess playing gaming programs like Deep Thought, Big Blue, and Deep Blue to expose the battle line between human and artificial intelligence. Clancy is a skeptic of gaming technology–with a warning.

Clancy’s skepticism lies in mistaking game-theory’ studies as proof of predictive human behavior.

Clancy notes human behavior is not predictable for many reasons; one of which is human irrationality, and another is a human’s sense or understanding that he/she is being manipulated for prescribed responses. For example, in the first instance, a person may be irrationally afraid of all snakes even though there are no poisonous snakes in their State. In the second instance, a person who knows the theory of something like the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” can choose to modify their behavior and respond based on knowledge of previous experimental studies.

John von Neumann (1903-1957, Hungarian American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath.)

The troubling part (the warning) revealed by Clancy is that brilliant people like John von Neumann, an intellectual giant of the twentieth century, can have bad ideas. Clancy notes von Neuman considered preemptively nuking the Soviet Union because he reasoned it would (and it did) successfully create a nuclear bomb soon after America’s bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Neuman presumably considered this a rational option based on game-theory thinking.

Today, one wonders what Russia’s leader is capable of with nuclear weapons if he considers them just another tool of war.

Clancy notes Putin, like the President of the United States, is legislatively authorized to unilaterally choose to use nuclear weapons to protect what they believe is a threat to their countries. The gaming industry and the growth of A.I. are not the problem. Human nature is the problem. There are not enough checks and balances to keep well intentioned Presidents or bad actors from making bad decisions.

Clancy shows how the computer gaming industry has obscured the tragic consequence of violence by returning murdered life in a game back to life so they can play the game again. The game is not real, but the lesson is that gun violence is ok because it is just a game that can be replayed. Computer gaming has become a gateway to violence in the world. Easy access to guns is a problem in America but guns are instruments of violence, not the cause of violence. Among the causes are, poor education, poverty, mental dysfunction, and gaming that distorts reality.

Political position and power are dangerous in the face of human irrationality, a not uncommon characteristic of intelligent, ill-informed, or uncaring political leaders. In this age of computer drones and face recognition, three American citizens, one Iranian citizen, and an Egyptian’ Al Quada leader were killed by drone strikes at the order of American Presidents.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
Anwar al-Awlaki
Kamal Derwish
Qasem Soleimani
Ayman al-Zawahiri

These murders may or may not have been justified but they exemplify the danger of gaming, face recognition, and the future of artificial intelligence. Clancy tempers her assessment of gaming in the last chapters of her book, but some will come away from her positive comments with a sick feeling in their stomach.

The near assassination of former President Trump is a harbinger of a world unduly influenced by today’s technology and media influence.

FRANTZ FANON

Frantz Fanon decried colonization and racism to promote individual dignity and family reconnection in his psychiatric practice

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Rebel’s Clinic” The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

By: Adam Shatz

Narrated By: Terrence Kidd

Adam Shatz (Author, editor, professor at Bard College)

Adam Shatz introduces Frantz Fanon to listeners. Fanon was a Black Frenchman, born in the colony of Martinique, an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies. Fanon may be classified in many ways but first and foremost one understands he would want to be known as a Frenchman, i.e., a Black individual of French heritage.

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961, graduated from the University of Lyon in France.)

Shatz tells the story of Fanon’s life. Fanon is educated as a psychiatrist who was influenced by Aimé Césaire, a leader of a movement titled Négritude. Négritude was a protest against French colonial rule and assimilation in the early to mid-twentieth century. Fanon lives life by asserting himself as a Black Frenchman with a sense of Black cultural pride.

After an affair with Michele Weyer in college, a daughter is born. The daughter becomes Mirelle Fanon Mendes-France.

Mirelle Fanon Mendes-France (Born in 1948 to Michele Weyer and Frantz Fanon.)

Fanon later marries Marie-Josephe Duble in 1952. Duble was an intellectual, a journalist, and liberation fighter who died in 1989. Fanon and Duble have a son named Olivier who is thought to be engaged with his father’s legacy. Weyer’s and Fanon’s daughter is a scholar and member of the Frantz Fanon Foundation who also works with a United Nations Working Group on African Descent.

Fanon marries a Marie-Josephe Duble. Duble, aka Josie, married Fanon in 1952.

Shatz explains how much more Fanon was than a psychiatrist. Some suggest Fanon was a Marxist because of his anti-colonial beliefs but Fanon’s philosophy extended far beyond Marxist belief in society as an economic class struggle. Fanon was equally concerned about sexism, racism, and colonialism. He embraced a form of humanism. Fannon believed in self-identification as an acculturation process. He considered himself a Black Frenchman, born on a French colonialist island in the West Indies. His life experience as a minority in a colonial country led him to become a practicing psychiatrist in Algeria.

In the 1950s, Algeria was largely populated by Muslim Arabs with a minority of European nationalities.

Arabs in Algeria were poorly treated at a hospital Fanon joined in 1953. He gradually improved their treatment by opening doors to their ethnic identify. Algeria began a fight for independence in 1954. The movement was for social democracy within an Islamic framework that would offer equal citizenship for all citizens of the country. Fanon did not align himself with any religion in what became a violent conflict between French colonization and those who identified themselves as Algerian.

Fanon conflated imperialism and colonialism with racism by institutionalizing control over another based on cultural and/or racial bias.

Shatz shows who Fanon became in the way he treated his patients in Algeria. Fanon argued mentally troubled patients needed to be reconnected to their families and community rather than institutionalized.

Fanon’s focus was on the psychological impact of human torture and the tit for tat revenge of French occupiers and the Algerian resistance.

Fanon was sympathetic to the Arab desire for freedom and independence for citizens of a country searching for its own identity. Shatz shows Fanon abhorred colonization and its social restrictions. Shatz infers he equally abhorred the revolution’s leaders and followers who tortured and murdered non-combatants, including children. What happened in Algeria reminds one of today’s daily slaughter of children and non-combatants in Ukraine and Gaza.

WAR IN UKRAINE
WAR IN GAZA

Algeria became an independent nation in 1962 with its own government, culture, and identity. Its ethnic and cultural identity remains the same today as then. It is considered a Muslim country with a majority being Sunni Muslims whose practices play a prominent role in their daily life.

Frantz Fanon dies at the age of 36 from leukemia in 1961, 7 years after the Algerian uprising.

An interesting point in the biography of Fanon is that he recognizes himself as Black in a country that does not commonly describe themselves as people of color but as Algerian Arabs, Berbers, or Europeans. Fanon grows to believe he is Algerian but identifies himself as Black. Black is a broader category of race that makes his story applicable to a wider world but magnifies real-world discrimination based on the color of one’s skin rather than the truth of equal humanness. Of course, as the author notes, the color of skin in Africa is predominantly black and became a frontier for colonization between 1884 and the 1960s.

AFRICA BECAME THE FRONTIER FOR COLONIZATION BETWEEN 1884 AND THE 1960s.

Shatz infers Fanon fought the good fight. He decried colonization and racism to promote individual dignity and family reconnection in his psychiatric practice. He wrote about and aided people who were different, underserved, and underrepresented. He wrote two books about his life experience to explain why colonialization and racism were culturally wrong and socially destructive. “Black Skin, White Masks” was published in 1952, and “The Wretched of the Earth” in 1961.

SAPIEN RELATIONSHIP

There is much to be learned about human behavior and relationship from Leary’s lectures.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior” 

By: Mark Leary

Great Books Lecture: Professor Mark Leary

Mark Richard Leary (Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.)

Professor Leary offers an introduction to the psychology of who we are and why we act the way we do. Leary takes a Darwinian, as well as clinical, view of human nature. He attempts to unravel the mystery of personality, why humans are different, what self-esteem is and why it is important, and how understanding psychological process may help us become more self-aware, and emotionally healthy.

Homo sapiens have only been on earth an estimated 300,000 years on a planet estimated to be 4.6 billion years old.

Leary suggests the psychology of homo sapiens is probably not much different today than when they first became sentient. The inference made is that our emotional and intellectual framework evolved from ontological experience and genetic inheritance. The history of human nature is written in our genes and the memes created by the nurturing of human life. Our nervous system evolved through Darwinian natural selection intent on preserving itself. Along with genetic evolution of the human neurological system, social and emotional responses to the environment were formed by inherited memes. (Richard Dawkins, an evolution biologist, defined “meme” as an inheritable behavior.)

Leary explains fear, fight, or flight responses are heritable behaviors.

Dawkins suggests they are inherited memes and Leary suggests they are why most humans fear snakes, the dark, approaching strangers, and the unknown. Leary goes on to explain emotional responses like embarrassment, stress, and hurt feelings are inheritable physiological responses to inter and intra social relationships. He also explains more people, more noise, more urbanization subliminally affects human behavior.

Interestingly, Leary notes hurt feelings are shown to stimulate portions of the human nervous system that literally register physical pain.

That pain can make mountains out of mole hills and cause disproportionate physical response and verbal abuse. He notes human’ self-control is often difficult to exercise when feelings are hurt.

Somewhat bizarrely, Leary notes California tried to legislate self-esteem in school curriculum.

California reasoned feeling good about oneself would instill confidence and self-worth. The mistake is that self-esteem does not mean the same thing to everyone. It is not like gas that powers an automobile. Self-esteem comes from the many experiences children have with parents, teachers, other people, and personal accomplishment. Government cannot legislate all of the interactions in one’s life. It is not that self-esteem is unimportant, but it comes from broad societal experience and personal accomplishment. A classroom education is only a small part of life’s experience, let alone accomplishment.

Memory is not a photograph but a reconstruction of events for most, if not all, people.

Leary touches on memory and why we forget. Humans see an event but only recall events by reconstructing their occurrence. In that reconstruction, details are often manufactured rather than accurately recalled. Reconstruction rather than precise memory is the reason for mistakes made by eyewitnesses to events, and more particularly, crime.

There are many more insights to human behavior in Leary’s lectures.

He suggests dreams are not a source of discovery but a way of clearing one’s brain of errant, inconsequential fragments of synaptic events. A surprising lecture suggests there is experimentally proven existence of humans having psychic abilities. There is much to be learned about human behavior and relationship from Leary’s lectures.

A REWIRED GENERATION

“The Anxious Generation” is a much-needed warning to America and the world.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Anxious Generation” (How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness)

By: Jonathan Haidt

Narrated by: Sean Pratt & Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt (Author, American social psychologist, Professor of Ethical Leadership NY University Stern School of Business.)

“The Anxious Generation” is a well-documented and disturbing analysis of the impact of the internet on American children. It undoubtedly reflects a similar but undocumented impact on children with internet access around the world.

Anxiety is defined as apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness that exhibits itself either physically and/or mentally.

The internet is an information vehicle that can create anxiety in every human being, but Haidt shows its generational significance in the young, i.e., those of 18 years of age or younger. Haidt argues the internet is particularly harmful to girls but suggests it has significant social consequence for boys. Whether male or female, the formative years of children are significantly changed by the ubiquitous presence of cell phone’ internet access.

Misogyny is evident throughout the history of the world, just as it is in America.

Haidt implies the role of girls in American society is particularly affected by the internet because of social inequities between the sexes. Physical appearance for women is weighted with more significance than other qualities of being human in America. The point is that rather than innate human capability, perceived beauty becomes a dominant desire of most young American girls.

Haidt notes the internet offers a constant reminder of how one looks to others.

Young American girls are bombarded with internet information about how they look and what others think of their looks. Heidt argues the barrage of information from mobile phone’ access to the internet creates extraordinary anxiety among girls. They become anxious about how others measure their appearance. Some become depressed. Some exhibit anorexic behavior. Some choose to cut themselves. Some withdraw from society. At an extreme, some commit suicide.

Additionally, Haidt notes the allure of internet sexual predation of young girls by men who use the internet to lure young girls and women into compromising pictorial positions by appealing to their desire to be recognized as desirable and beautiful. Added to this sexual predation is the power of the internet to demean, ridicule, and abuse young girls concerned about their place in the world.

Haidt argues boys are also deeply affected by the ubiquitous internet, but their anxiety is caused by growing isolation. Rather than making boyhood friends, participating in sports, attending parties, they become addicted users of the internet who are driven to improve their scores on Fortnite, Halo, or Call of Duty. At the same time, the availability of porn exacerbates misogyny and reinforces a distorted view of society. Their growing isolation in imagined worlds interrupts their psychological growth in the real world of success and failure. Computer gaming reduces social connection. Haidt speculates the availability of free porn decreases boy’s interest in risking the complications and potential of dating. Young boys have the risk of being turned down when asking a girl for a date. There is no risk of being turned down by a free porn site.

(One wonders if young boys associate success in gaming with success in life without understanding the importance of education and gainful employment for socially recognized identities. Without an education and employment, a spiral of homelessness and despair consumes young men’s lives. This is not a Haidt conclusion, but it seems plausible.)

Haidt suggests increases in suicides for young men is caused by the early life’ allure of the internet age.

Haidt explores the possibility of a loss of faith or spirituality as a consequence of internet addiction. Haidt speculates distraction of the internet replaces the camaraderie created by religious services. This seems reasonable in one way but too speculative in another. History shows religion has been as much a cause of social destruction as social benefit.

In the last chapters of Haidt’s book, he addresses constructive ways of dealing with cell phone ubiquity and the negative consequence of internet addiction.

The most reasonable suggestions are for cell phone programing to include internet restrictions based on the age of the user. He goes on to argue cell phones should be placed in lock bags or secured by school administrations during classes. The burden of age verification should be put on internet providers and phone manufacturers with penalties for failure to comply with mandated requirements.

A fundamental point of Haidt’s book is that free play time is an essential part of childhood development.

That play time should be for socialization, not internet exploration. A fundamental flaw in Haidt’s prescription is in the need for better parent supervision when many families are broken, or too burdened by gainful employment to reasonably care for their children. This is not to argue Haidt is incorrect in identifying what should and could be done to address the negative impact of cell phone addiction. “The Anxious Generation” is a much-needed warning to America and the world.

MEMORY & INTELLIGENCE

Total recall does not make humans more intelligent or necessarily more informed about the world.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Moon walking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything“

By: Joshua Foer

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Joshua Foer (Author, freelance journalist, 2006 USA Memory Champion.)

Joshua Foer offers an interesting explanation of human memory. Foer became the 2006 USA memory champion. Foer explains how he achieved that distinction. What is interesting and surprising about Foer’s achievement is that he argues extraordinary memory is a teachable skill.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

Fans will remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’ explanation of Sherlock Homes’ prodigious memory technique called the “mind palace”.

Foer explains the idea is not a fiction but an historically proven method for improving one’s memory through association. “Mind palace” is traced back to ancient Greece as a memory tool of the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. The idea is to associate facts with familiar features of a house in which one has lived, or of which one has intimate knowledge. The idea of memory being associated with something is not revelatory to anyone who tries to remember someone’s name. Many people, particularly good salespeople, use association to remember a customer’s name. They might remember Fred as a “red” tie or Monica as a “harmonica” and so on.

Foer suggests nothing is forgotten but only stored in one’s mind.

The problem is recalling a mind’s recorded information. If one makes a point of associating a fact with something that is familiar, say like a space in your own house, it is more likely to be recallable. Foer notes experimental studies show human brains record memories of events but may be unable to consciously recall details. In “show and tell” experiments, humans show evidence of a recorded memory by expressing familiarity, if not specificity. (“MIT research explains how our brain helps us remember what we’ve seen, even as visual information shifts around within our visual system.” See MIT NEWS Feb. 8, 2021.)

Foer suggests the history of memory began naturally with tales told and re-told before writing became a way of record keeping.

Foer explains history shows that philosophers like Socrates rejected the idea of recording information as a way of revealing truth. To Socrates, truth comes from conversational exploration of nature as it is. Foer suggests society is fortunate that Plato and Archimedes partly disagreed and chose to provide a written record of Socrates thought.

A larger picture of Foer’s view of memory and recall implies a leveling of knowledge in the world.

From an oral tradition to the written word to radio to television to the internet of things to microchips in one’s brain–the recall of facts become more widely shared. The complication of improving “knowledge leveling” is in how recalled facts are assembled by the brain of the receiver.

Foer illustrates how much effort must be put into memorizing information if one wishes to excel as a technologically unplugged person who wishes to recall more facts. It requires concentrated effort to create a mnemonic device like rooms in a house to associate a series of facts or numbers that can be recalled. On the other hand, advances in technology could make that exercise moot.

In the near future, recollection from an implanted human chip could improve correlation of facts for thought and action.

This is not to diminish the accomplishments of the author in training his mind to recall facts better than others. In the near future, recalling and collating facts may be more efficiently managed by an A.I. microchip that complements human thought and action.

Having eidetic memory or technological total recall does not make humans more intelligent or necessarily more informed about the world. Recall of facts is only a means to an end that may as easily destroy as improve society.