Transition, But First, Going Away

I am pretty sure that I am finished being a hands-on, face to face psychotherapist.  I cleaned out my desk.  The office is being rented to someone else.  I have kissed all of my patients good-bye. 

It was difficult, kind of earth-shattering in a very personal way, but now it’s done.

I did this gradually, over a two year period, so I think it went as well as possible.  It also gave me time to transition to the next phase.  I have worked with so many people who needed to navigate through difficult transitions,  They had many different reasons: job loss, death of loved ones, illness, accidents, divorce, recovery, new job, new move, new partner. I tried to help them develop new skills. Now it’s my turn.

What I seem to be doing, just by having the time now to do so, is to step back and look around. I had been focused on so many individuals who each had to deal with unique situations. Now I want to look up at the sky.  I want to try to put everything in some kind of perspective, to see how everything ties together. The world is changing very rapidly.  It is creating a great deal of excitement and hope, but also disruption and fear.  You can se e that in the politics that are in such turmoil.

I also see so many educated, dedicated, creative, caring people who are doing exciting, transformative, world changing things in so many areas, such as genetics, brains science, communications, space exploration, immunology, business management, sustainable energy, product development, medicine, food science ….. on and on in almost every field, even psychology.

I guess what I’d like to do is help everyone take a moment to step back and see how all of these changes interact with each other, and what kind of a new world we are creating. How do electric cars relate to genetic editing, to transgender marriages, to sustainable energy, to drone warfare, to on-line education, to a mars landing, to guided meditation?

Is all of this taking us where we want to go or is it just keeping everyone busy and making some people very rich?

I have become very aware that everyone’s lives will be very different in just twenty five years.  I have also become very aware that, if I’m here, I will be 96 in twenty five years.(WTF?)

Therefore, before I ask the two hundred basic questions I have been thinking about, and try to generate a discussion about how we should all participate in designing our future, I will be going away.  Far away, to the other side of the world.  Got to do this while we can, ya know.

When I return we will begin the next phase, unless I decide that it’s enough to just play Shoots and Ladders, Pony, trains and ball.

See you in month or so.

Enjoy the summer.

We Build Machines

            Part of what makes humans special is that we build machines.  There are a few other creatures that make tools, but only humans make machines.  We’ve gotten better and better at it over the last two hundred years; and really super at it in the last thirty.

            These machines have helped us build even better machines.  They have helped us explore all the fields of science in ways that could not even be imagined forty years ago.  Think about all we’ve learned about genetics, or how the brain works.  The Super- Collider; that’s kind of special.  I’m impressed that this post will be read by people all over the world.  I even get a map of where they live as Google tracks us all.

            It’s amazing stuff to a guy like me who once had to climb up three stories on a fire escape and sit outside a window to watch a new device called television, and be able to see a little puppet sing that it was “Dootie Time.”

            Is there a downside?

            Of course there is.  We all have learned that there are always trade offs in life. Even the best medication has side effects.  Every change brings unanticipated consequences.

            I’ll take two examples that I read about in yesterday’s paper.  The first was a review of the new movie, Ex Machina.  I haven’t seen it yet, and it may not be the kind of thing I want to take my wife to, but it is a highly over-dramatized version of what people are becoming afraid of: that machines will begin to be smarter than we are, psych us out, replicate themselves and being running our lives.

            That movie seems to get all involved with the sex thing, which is kind of creepy but will certainly attract a crowd.  I am also not really as worried about  “Ava” or HAL becoming President as I would be about Ted Cruz, but there are other real fears.

            One fear is the one I got when I read Nicholas Kristof’s column that described how badly American kids do at math.  Mr. Kristof didn’t talk about machines; he just said that most Americans can barely make change, and that we are terrible when dealing with more complex numerical situations (Boastful Disclaimer:  I solved all of his problems, even his last one, and I’m proud of being good at 8^th grade math).

            Bit I relate America’s lack of numerical skills to its accessibility to machines for a few reasons.  First, doing math requires people to think slowly.  You have to add this, divide by that, watch out of the signs, think about the ratios, and check to see if the answer makes sense. Yes, many people can do it really quickly, but those are people who do it a lot and have developed all the good habits.

            Most people, partly because of machines, are expecting everything to come with one flash and one click and don’t have the patience to think slowly.  Also, we all have access to those kinds of machines.  I just asked “Siri” for the square root of 6789. It took literally two seconds for it to tell me 82.39538822.  I could have done it the long way and actually gone to the calculator app, but why go through all that trouble.

            Also, the same phone (hand held computer) has a GPS system.  That gives me pretty exact directions to almost anywhere that has a road to it.  I use it often.  But I try not to use it if I go back again.  I want to know where the place really is and have that in my mind.  I want to know how it is attached to the rest of the world.

            I know, from recent developments in brain science, that if we don’t learn and use these skills, then certain areas of our brains just won’t develop and the skills not only won’t be there when we need them, we will limit the way we think about almost every thing we do and almost every situation that confronts us.  If we don’t know ratios, and connections and locations, and relative strengths, and causes and effects we won’t be very successful at feeding ourselves, finding a safe place to live and getting along with a mate.

            If we can’t do that very well then machines will do it for us. Then we may reach a state in which we won’t even be able to tell if the machines are doing a good job.

            That may still be better than following Ted Cruz, but not much.

Eating Health: Can't or Won't

Brain science keeps rolling along -- much faster that psychotherapy science I'm afraid. I rad a study this week about some researchers in Montreal found that both children and adults seek out high calorie foods, even when they understand the concept of obesity.

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/eating-healthy-vs-your-own-brain.html

We are programmed to eat to stay alive.  We are programmed to grab what we can before it runs away or before winter sets in.  Perhaps that's especially true in Canada.

But what the study also makes clear is that we are hardly aware of all the factors that go into our decisions.  Our brains are wired to help us act quickly and in our best interest. Or at least in the best interest of where are way-back ancestors lived 200,000 years ago.  That was before Domino's had a pizza delivery app.

Eat healthy my friends, (and drink wisely too).

ADHD in Today's NYT

            The lead article in today’s Review section of the NY  Times is by Richard Friedman, who is a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/a-natural-fix-for-adhd.html?_r=0

            For a short piece he gives a good over-all look at what ADHD is and isn’t.  What I was most impressed with is the wide range of factors he cites, as well as all the new machines that are used in these studies.

            The studies he cites use things that were not available twenty, ten and in some cases even two years ago.  These include PET scans and fMris to look at brains, but also macines to examine genetic differences.

            Dr(?) Friedman also puts ADHD in a social and cultural context.  He talks about how schools now demand greater concentration and conformity.  He also mentions that video games are so stimulating and can seem so exciting compared to sitting in a class, trying to listen. You shouldn't blame or stigmatize a kid for something he can't do.

            With all of this new machinery we can now see differences in brains and genes that we couldn’t even imagine ten years ago.  But a different brain is not necessarily a bad brain. Differences can show the world how to improve and differences are what help humans evolve and adapt.

            But still, it’s not fun to have your four year-old rip apart everything in his room and throw his toys out the window.  There are multiple causes for that kind of behavior, not just fewer dopamine receptors.