Archives for category: Psychology

Am crescut in Giulestiul anilor ’60 – ’70 asa ca am vazut, si baut, multe.

Am primit repartitie la Filipestii de Padure, intre Campina si Moreni, in anii cei mai nasoi ai comunismului, ’86-’89.
Mancam la cantina fabricii si daca ratam o masa singura sansa mai era circiuma din sat. La alimentara se mai gaseau doar carlige si rafturi metalice. Sa nu va inchipuiti ca la carciuma aveau mancare – snitzelul de parizer era considerat delicatesa dar se gasea foarte rar. Cateva conserve cu tocana de legume, rar de fasole si din cand in cand se milostivea carciumarul de noi: improviza o tocana de cartofi cu slanina adusa de acasa de la el. Deh, eram clienti importanti…ingineri…

Pana fierbeau cartofii gustam si noi, cateodata la insistentele celorlalti musterii care se simteau datori sa ne ‘cinsteasca’, din ce se afla prin rafturile ‘barului’: RDD (rachiu de drojdie), RDV (rachiu de vin) sau, daca eram in bani, INOX. Adica vodca. I se spunea asa pentru ca era ‘curata’ ca inoxul si nu manjita cu tot felul de coloranti ca restul trascaurilor. Iar atunci cand nici una dintre acestea nu erau disponibile, nici macar bautura nu se gasea tot timpul, ne multumeam cu matrafox. Adica alcool etilic de contrabanda amestecat cu apa si cu sirop de mure. De unde provenea alcoolul…nu interesa pe nimeni pentru ca era ieftin. Stiam ca era sigur pentru ca bea si circiumarul. De ce era amestecat tocmai cu sirop de mure? Probabil ca n-o sa stiu niciodata!

Ce mi-a venit sa povestesc toate astea? Simplu. Matrafoxul ala era destul de dulce ca sa nu-i simti taria si baietii se imbatau crita. Cum noi ajungeam mai tarziu – ei veneau direct de la fabrica, noi treceam intai pe la camin sa ne spalam un pic, pentru noi era in drum, pe ei nu-i mai lasau nevestele – ei aveau doua-trei pahare avans. Si gura deja sloboda. Uite asa am aflat tot felul de chestii, care mai de care mai confidentiale dar care ne interesa … de loc. Mi s-a reconfirmat totusi ca bautura poate fi un bun prilej pentru a mai afla ceva.

Si iata ca la 25 de ani dupa acele intamplari matrafoxul isi face o intrare triumfala pe scena politica romaneasca, adus acolo chiar de purtatorul de cuvant al guvernului. Altii ar spune ca ‘baut de presedinte’…Ma rog…

Ce semnificatie sa aibe toata aceasta intamplare?

Conspirationistii vor spune ca Mirel Palada, sociolog de meserie si – sub pseudonimul Turambar – scriitor de talent face parte din corul de denigratori ai presedintelui.
Fetele mari vor sustine ca nu se cade ca un purtator de cuvant al guvernului sa se refere in felul acesta la ‘seful statului’ (?!?, nu exista asa ceva in Constitutia Romaniei!).
Obsedatii de amanunte vor spune ca Palada a asociat matrafoxul cu presedintele doar pe Facebook, nu ‘in public’ si nici ‘la o ora de maxima audienta’ si ca abia ‘presa’ a facut mare caz din toata aceasta tarasenie…probabil ca mai degraba in cautare de rating decat de dragul de a aduce informatii pertinente in fata publicului…

Eu prefer sa vad fenomenul in ansamblul sau. Traim intr-o tara in care:
– cel putin o parte din public se amuza si este de acord atunci cand despre presedinte se spune ca ‘era matrafoxat’;
– in care purtatorul de cuvant al guvernului este atat de disperat/scarbit de ce se intampla in jurul lui – iar noi putem doar sa banuim cam care or fi acele lucruri – incat rabufneste in felul acesta;
– sau, ipoteza contrara, in care purtatorul de cuvant al guvernului se preteaza sa faca un joc atat de murdar…(nu cred ca aceasta ipoteza ar avea vreo sansa de confirmare, am enumerat-o doar de dragul demonstratiei)
– iar cealalta parte a publicului a dat un al doilea mandat si a votat impotriva demiterii unui presedinte care… completati voi, n-are rost sa continui.

Acum intelegeti de ce mi-e mie frica?
In atmosfera asta de suspiciune dusa la extrem si de lipsa totala de consideratie pentru ‘celalalt’ nu se poate construi nimic. Iar daca nu ne apucam odata de treaba ne va prinde ‘iarna vrajbei noastre’ fara acoperis deasupra capului!

2023
Pentru cei care nu tin minte ce s-a intamplat atunci, recomand Google.
Basescu, matrafox, Palada. Si veti afla!
Ca de atunci si pana acum nu s-a schimbat nimic. Nimic in bine…

Modern day feminism baffles my wife the same way it baffles me: “I don’t want to be your equal! I just want us both to be considerate of each-other and to do our respective ‘bests’ towards our common goal: for our entire family to be as happy as possible, as long as possible!”

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To me ‘equality’ is indeed important but I never forget it is nothing but an idea that needs people to put it into practice and I always remember that the results of its implementation rely heavily on the individuals involved in the process.
On the other hand ‘justice’ has a very powerful practical side. “Fiat justitia ruat caelum” is supposed to mean “let justice be done though the heavens fall”. I strongly disagree with this interpretation. Romans were extremely practical people and I’m sure they meant “let justice be done OR the heavens will fall”.

Back to feminism. My first real problem with it arose when I kept the door open for a lady (?!?) in New York and she hissed at me: ‘Move or I’ll scratch your eye-balls, you misogynistic perv!’ (Please note that I am a Romanian living in Bucharest and even if communism has done a lot to improve the status of women relative to that of men – while lowering both – we didn’t give up common courtesy).
So are women equal to men? Some say yes – I somewhat tend to agree, at least with their intentions – while others deny it vehemently citing, among others, differences in size, stamina, etc…and sometimes even differences in how our brains work or how we respond to what is happening to us. I find this arguments to be very flimsy. If anything women should be considered superior to men because they need only a small amount of sperm to give life to another human being while all we man can do about this, after donating the sperm, is to help them in raising the offspring. So yes, we work a lot better in tandem but if push comes to shove a single woman is able to fend for herself (and for her children) a lot better than a single man would be.

The hard reality is that we function differently and we do this for a very good, if overlooked, reason: we are wired differently. Having different sexes means a lot more than being programed for different reproductive roles, it means that we transmit differently genetic information to the next generation and I’m not speaking exclusively about the genes that determine the sex of the child.
There are chances that you have already heard about ‘mitochondrial DNA’  (If not this is about some genetic information that regulates not only the way the human cells generate energy by oxidizing glucose but also other important processes).  Now the funny thing about this is that even if we men believe ourselves to be the ‘more energetic gender’ we inherit the ‘software’ that determines how we generate and use energy exclusively from our mothers. Weird, heh? So men, contrary to the widespread belief that they contribute with half the genes of their offspring, have in reality nothing to do with an essential part of the metabolism of their children while women pass along this kind of information to both genders alike.
But wait, there is some more. Some people would jump to say there is a similar situation with the Y chromosome, the one that differentiates man from woman and which comes directly from the man, right? Well… not so fast. Having a Y chromosome helps but does not guarantee maleness while having two X chromosomes does not always insure feminity. It seems that each and everyone of us are not only wired differently but also our fate is heavily in debt to the particular environmental conditions that surrounded our development.

Now that we reached the subject of the ‘environment’ lets see how it has evolved in the last 100 000 years or so.
No, don’t worry, I’m not going to ramble about the global warming, this is about the social environment. You see, by the time we are born there are about 1.06 boys for each girl, when we get near to the 20 years mark the numbers are roughly equal while as we get older the sex ratio is skewed in the favor of women. And the fact that “the percentage of men aged 65 and up grew faster than the percentage of women aged 65 and up, according to the 2010 census” suggests that there is nothing wrong, biologically, with men only they tended to live more riskier than the women.
So humankind evolved while the norm was for two generations – parents and children – to be present at the dinner table at one particular time while a third generation, the grandparents, was a rare exception and it was not uncommon for a widow to raise its offspring, maybe with some help from the relatives or from the older children. The proportion of single women rising children tended to rise shortly after major wars.
And these things are not without consequences. Social change is, in general, slow but increases its pace after great wars. Yes, probably the driving force behind the change may have been people’s dissatisfaction with what had just happened but i’m convinced that the change was facilitated by the fact that the single mother who had to provide for her family had less time to interact with its children so she had less time to pass over to them the ‘values’ and customs valid for those times. And so it was easier for the young generation to effect change because they were less imprinted with the ‘good old ways’. Another thing. Who were the most conservative sections of the society? The better off-s? Surely because the status quo was beneficial for them! Yes, probably this was the driving force but the fact that wealthy people had a tendency to live long enough to meet their nephews was also helpful: the grand parents contributed to the imprinting of the younger generation.

So what am I driving at? That women should stay at home and raise the kids in the shadows of their almighty husbands? Not at all, no way Jose. Restricting half the population to domestic chores only cripples a society, it is a waste to stifle the creative capacity of so many people.
I just propose for us to understand that even if we are able to survive, to a degree, separately it would be better to work as a team. Also we should accept that our innate abilities are different, even if they overlap considerably, and therefore we should not insist as much on ‘equality’ but rather on mutual respect and cooperation.
Also that we should teach our children to use their heads for thinking autonomously instead of memorizing like a parrot our already ‘old’ ideas. It is better for them to be able to discern what worked and why than to try to remember which is the pertinent ‘tradition’ for every problem they encounter. This way revolutions that happened because the society became stuck will eventually give way to peaceful and continuous fine tuning  – evolution that is.
And one other, and last – at least for now, thing. We should never stop defending our freedom. Subordination has nothing to do with cooperation. (I am speaking now about the cooperation between genders, sometimes subordination works in other areas of human interaction)

http://www.money.ro/bancile-europene-au-cheltuit-77-miliarde-de-dolari-pe-avocaprc-c8prc-9bi_1255950.html

Something nagged me back to school some five or six years ago so I took up sociology at the Bucharest University.
When faced with the hard decision ‘you need to write a thesis as part of your final exam, what will it be about?’ I had no problem in coming up with ‘the fate of a system is shaped by the way pertinent information is passed between the successive generations of decision makers relevant for that system’ (unfortunately this version is in Romanian but I’m currently working on a revamped one in English).

It seems that I was up to something.
Ghost Whisperer, a television drama about how unfinished businesses between successive generations might influence the destinies of the survivors.
Merlin season 5,  episode 3, “The Death Song of Uther Pendragon” a passionate exchange about what ‘preserving the legacy’ means.
The roiling discussion about home schooling and about what higher education means today.
The renewed interest in ‘values’ that need to be passed over to the next generation.

And so on.

I can’t make up my mind.
Should I be proud that I belong to a species that is able to produce such technological marvels? And I don’t mean just the trucks themselves. High speed miniature cameras, the Internet, etc., etc….
Should I be sad because we go to such (unnecessary?) great lengths just to prove our prowess?

Why am I so confused about all this? Just because there is a woman involved in this stunt?

PS. Please notice that guy’s credentials: “Precision driver”.

“Most of us want to believe that automation frees us to spend our time on higher pursuits but doesn’t otherwise alter the way we behave or think. That view is a fallacy—an expression of what scholars of automation call the “substitution myth.” A labor-saving device doesn’t just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job or other activity. It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people taking part. As Parasuraman and a colleague explained in a 2010 journal article, “Automation does not simply supplant human activity but rather changes it, often in ways unintended and unanticipated by the designers of automation.”

and

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. “The project is datafication. Like those other infrastructural advances, it will bring about fundamental changes to society.”

Some of the changes are well known, and already upon us. Algorithms that predict stock-price movements have transformed Wall Street. Algorithms that chomp through our Web histories have transformed marketing. Until quite recently, however, few people seemed to believe this data-driven approach might apply broadly to the labor market.

But it now does. According to John Hausknecht, a professor at Cornell’s school of industrial and labor relations, in recent years the economy has witnessed a “huge surge in demand for workforce-analytics roles.” Hausknecht’s own program is rapidly revising its curriculum to keep pace. You can now find dedicated analytics teams in the human-resources departments of not only huge corporations such as Google, HP, Intel, General Motors, and Procter & Gamble, to name just a few, but also companies like McKee Foods, the Tennessee-based maker of Little Debbie snack cakes. Even Billy Beane is getting into the game. Last year he appeared at a large conference for corporate HR executives in Austin, Texas, where he reportedly stole the show with a talk titled “The Moneyball Approach to Talent Management.” Ever since, that headline, with minor modifications, has been plastered all over the HR trade press.

Google says it has a diameter 12 756.2 kilometers but this is not what I have in mind.

Size is always relative. You can either comprehend it – and then it matters to you – or not. And this is why you ignore it.

When we were monkeys – at least my forefathers were – ‘size’ didn’t have much meaning for us. We ate when hungry, soiled the earth when we felt like it – specially when we lived up in the trees – and when a specific place became too dirty, devoid of food or both we moved forward.

Then something happened. As we morphed from monkeys into apes our bodies grew so we could afford a bigger brain which enabled us to process an increased quantity of information – a big competitive advantage, until now at least. But it also meant we could not venture anymore on the topmost branches of the trees because they couldn’t support our increased weight. Suddenly our survival became linked with our ability to gauge the thickness of branches. Evaluating distances  – between trees before a jump for instance – was important since the day we first climbed into a tree but at those times we did it ‘instinctively’; now, being helped by our now bigger brain, we started to become aware of the whole process.
Something else happened at about the same time. Because our body frame had become bigger we started to spend more and more time on the flat surface of the Earth – it was more efficient energy-wise and we could afford it because our increased mass meant better defenses.  This way we started to perceive the world in a completely different way than we did when hanging from a limb.
Let me suggest you a small experiment. Climb into a swing and look around. As long as you remain still there is no difference but as soon as you start moving , in a way that comprises vertical and horizontal displacement, things look completely different. Before, when you stood still or moved horizontally, it was like the world stood still and it was you that moved inside it. You sense the motion with your internal ear but you evaluate the movements mostly by visually checking on ‘landmarks’, the things that surround you. When being caught up in more complex movements, like in a swing, the inner ear takes precedence over your eyes and you feel the movement more with ‘the seats of your pants’ than with your brain. (Btw, this is why sea sickness appears, your eyes tell you that you are standing still – if you are reading or something like that – while your inner ear tells you you are moving. Get on the deck and look at the horizon or at the waves, this way your eyes will confirm to your brain that ‘yes, we are moving’.)
And all this has immense consequences. When we were moving from a branch to another we sort of lived in a bubble we carried around with us while when moving on a surface we feel ‘naked’ and, as a consequence, we pay a lot more attention to what is happening around us. That includes becoming aware of the dimensions of the things that surround us. This way we found out that falling from the top of a tree is completely different than jumping from the lowest branch and that if we cross that creek in search of ripe figs our chances to encounter that rival troop of baboons increase dramatically. So we became aware not only of dimensions but also of boundaries and consequences.

We were one step away from becoming conscious. That happened when we felt, instinctively at first, that being sheltered from the elements is better than weathering them. So we came back to the shelter, night after night. Until the place became unusable because we had soiled it ourselves with our excrements. And this is how we had the first inkling about being responsible for the consequences of our own actions.

Unfortunately our understanding of this is still incomplete. First of all because our cognitive capacity is inherently limited, secondly because most of the time we rationalize instead of behaving rationally and thirdly because, until now at least, we could get away with it. The world was big enough.

At first we moved from place to place, as hunter-gatherers and later as nomadic pastoralists.
When we invented agriculture there were enough forests to burn down if we needed more land.
When things became ‘hot’ in Europe we started to conquer the other continents. Even now the misfits, the adventurous and the malcontents move around the face of the Earth even if confronted with great personal risks.

But how long will we be able to continue like this? Pollution,  scattering of natural resources, soil erosion due to agribusiness, deforestation, overfishing… will be considered jokes by the next generations if we continue on the current track.

In fact our main problem is the way we treat our ‘neighbor’. Not only that we haven’t fully understood yet that by throwing ‘garbage’ indiscriminately around us we are polluting our very front yard and the stench is already creeping into our bedrooms but we also hadn’t understood yet that by constantly alienating the ‘guy next door’ we’ll end up living in a world too close  to a SF/dystopian prison-planet for our comfort.

I’m speaking here about corruption in it’s many forms: political, economical, moral…

So what do we have here?

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135 000, and growing, people gathered to convince a government to take action against an individual who isn’t breaking any law!

Does this seem right to you?
To me it doesn’t!

Let me explain myself. First of all I don’t think that hunting for sport makes any sense. One could stalk wild animals armed with a camera instead of a gun. But this is my opinion and just as I don’t like others to impose their opinions on me I don’t try to impose my opinions on others. So as long as the hunted animals do not belong to any of the endangered species and the hunt is organised legally…
And if my argument seems lame to you what if I start a petition against eating flesh? Or against vegan-ism? Why? Just because I have this notion that eating flesh (or not eating any) is bad for you….and that I have a responsibility to bring you back on the right track!

Femeile mai sunt batute si din vina lor

Cu asta sunt si eu de acord.
Da, cei care isi bat partenerii de viata – sunt si barbati batuti sau batjocoriti de femeile cu care traiesc – nu au nici un fel de scuza pentru comportamentul lor.
Dar asta nu inseamna ca cei ‘batuti’ nu au si ei partea lor de vina!

De ce ‘stau’? De ce accepta sa fie tratati in halul acesta?

Si mai ales de ce accepta sa transmita copiiilor lor mesajul subliminal ca e acceptabil ca unul dintre membrii unei familii sa fie terorizat de celalalt?

Cititi articolul din Adevarul.ro.
Cati ani o fi rabdat femeia aia? Cati copii si nepoti or fi crescut crezand ca asa ceva e daca nu normal atunci macar acceptabil?

Cand eram mic am citit povestea asta sub o alta forma.
Astazi am gasit-o in mail.
Sa fie oare o coincidenta cu ce se intampla acum?

“De aici s-au inspirat românii !

Targovetul cu mere.

Într-o dimineaţă, stăpânitorul unei cetăţi fu trezit de nişte strigăte care se auzeau din piaţă:

“Hai la mere! Mere dulci cum n-aţi mai gustat!”.

Ridicându-se indispus din pat şi privind pe fereastră văzu un târgoveţ ce vindea într-adevăr mere, înconjurat de o mulţime de muşterii.

“Trebuie să fie tare bune merele alea” , îşi spuse mai-marele cetăţii şi, făcându-i-se poftă, îl chemă pe primul său sfetnic şi îi porunci:

“Ia cinci galbeni şi mergi în piaţă să cumperi mere de la târgoveţul acela”.

Primul sfetnic îl chemă pe paharnic şi îi spuse:

“Uite patru galbeni , du-te şi cumpără mere”.

Paharnicul se adresă , la rândul său , stolnicului:

“Poftim trei galbeni , de care să cumperi mere de la târgoveţul acela”.

Stolnicul îl chemă pe primul străjer îi dădu doi galbeni şi îl trimise în piaţă.

Acesta dădu un galben unui străjer din subordine, iar acela se duse la târgoveţ şi îi luă la rost:

“Hei, ce tot strigi aşa? Ai tulburat somnul mai-marelui cetăţii, iar drept pedeapsă mi-a poruncit să-ţi confisc căruţa asta cu mere”.

Zis şi făcut.

Întors la şeful său , străjerul se lăudă:

“Am făcut un târg nemaipomenit. Cu un galben am cumpărat o jumătate din căruţa cu mere a tărgoveţului”.

Primul străjer merse la stolnic:

“M-am târguit şi , cu cei doi galbeni pe care mi i-ai dat am reuşit să cumpăr un sac cu mere!”.

Stolnicul – repede la paharnic:

“Cu trei galbeni am luat o tolbă întreagă cu mere”.

Paharnicul dosi jumătate din cantitate şi apoi merse la primul sfetnic:

“Iată , cei patru galbeni mi-au ajuns doar pentru o jumătate de tolbă cu mere”.

Iar primul sfetnic se înfăţişă dinaintea stăpînitorului cetăţii şi glăsui:

“Măria ta , iată , am îndeplinit porunca. Numai că de acei cinci galbeni n-am reuşit să târguiesc decât cinci mere”.

Mai-marele cetăţii , muşcă dintr-un măr şi cugetă:

“Hmmm. Cinci mere pentru cinci galbeni. scump, foarte scump!

Şi, cu toate acestea, târgoveţul acela avea o mulţime de cumpărători.

Înseamnă că lumea o duce bine, are bani.

Ia să măresc eu birurile!”