Anger – in American politics and deep in the mind itself.

Anger – in American politics and deep in the mind itself.

“This week’s episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the word ‘anger’.” It sure feels like that to me this week. Four things especially come to mind: (1) the exchange on anger from Donald Trump and governor Haley and all its many ripples and echoes (a phenomenon worth discussing in itself!); (2) the deeper discussion of anger in the human mind, including both brain and noosphere, at the Quaker discussion last Sunday (which included views from the Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology, a major outlet for Jungian thought); (3) Obama’s last State of the Union speech, intended in great part to damp down Anger; and (4) issues in Democratic debates which also reflect the anger issue. I see this as just one picture, but where to begin to do justice to all angles?

Let me start with the Quaker perspective, as it provides a kind of foundation and may be more novel to most people now.

I. 4 views of anger discussed at Quakers ********************************************************************************************************

Many people assume that anger is just a negative emotion and should be repressed or removed. (I suppose the State of the Union speech was influenced by the tacit assumption of that. When Trump complains about political correctness, part of his frustration is with the way our culture OFTEN – certainly not always! – grounds itself in that assumption). None of us on Sunday accepted that naive view. In a way, it was a continuation of our previous discussion of “peace of mind” which I discussed in another recent blog. It often happens that people go to extremes – in not liking fear or pain, they may even cut out the nerves which deliver pain, succumb to addictive pain-killing drugs. “Don’t shoot the messenger” is one of the very most fundamental maxims of sanity. It is also fundamental to authentic dialogue and to the hope of collective sanity in the noosphere (“in the spirit” where a level of sanity is possible not attainable in mundane human social organizations). I gave a five star review of the book of that title on Amazon (easily found by clicking there on me as reviewer name).

On Sunday, we discussed four deep ways of thinking about what anger is, and what its proper role is – the “neural network” view (as in the fundamental seminal book on Reinforcement Learning and Approximate Dynamic Programming, RLADP, edited by Lewis and Liu, from IEEE and Wiley), the Jungian view, the Freudian view, and the high Confucian view.

Ia. The Confucian View..................

Confucianism, like Buddhism (and Christianity and Islam and Daoism for that matter), is a complex zone of thought within humanity, which has a lot of variety of good things and bad things, deep things and shallow silly things, honest things and corrupt things – they are all like that. I was very happy this week when the “ friends’ book store” section had a copy of Fairbank and Goldman’s NEW history of modern China, a beautiful paperback for 25 cents – and even more happy when I saw how Fairbank, the leading Sinologist in US academia, learned a lot in the decades since I pored over his earlier book and attended his wonderful teas for the Harvard East Asian research center. (I have sometimes told the story of how a newspaper story about Mao and a discussion with a fellow student drastically changed my view of the human mind in spring 1967; that same student was probably the one who brought me to the Fairbank meetings.) The new book is far more sensitive to the complex reality of China than what I remember of the older book; the two sentences summarizing Daoism are really striking in how well they summarize a picture which it took me many years of visits to China to learn.

However, in discussing Confucianism, he summarizes a view by American scholars which is incredibly inaccurate and black-and-white, a result of projecting their own assumptions about the nature of like and the mind onto another group of people. In essence, those American scholars assume that all Confucianism is 100% mundane materialism, with no spiritual element at all. Having discussed this with the leaders of the prime Confucius Institute in Qufu, and read a couple of books by Fulan Yu, and visited many Confucian sites in China,  I know that this is a very huge and serious omission!! But even in China, practitioners of Chinese medicine often talk about “qi” as if it were nothing but some kind of medical phlogiston running in channels of water in the body; they often are unaware of the higher forms of qi (like “charisma” or “spirit” or “dao water” or “grace” or “mana”) which have been very fundamental to Confucianism. Still, speaking for himself (not for American scholars), Fairbank notes that a major fundamental aspect of Confucianism concerns HUMAN POTENTIAL, a fundamental fact of life much more reliable than the more specific and local short-term issues Chinese people had to cope with in past centuries under the rule of warlords and emperors. In Qufu, they told me I heard the true story from my old high school friend from Taiwan, who said that the word “integrity” is the real foundation of Confucianism, not the recipes for when to wear pink underwear (as stated in the Virginia state textbook on world history). They said the proper word for integrity in Chinese is “zhengqi” or “zheng qi”; the word zhengqi means integrity, a telling of truth by the self to the self, but “zheng” and “qi” refer to “correct channeling or direction” and “qi”. Zhengqi IS zheng qi, to make it real; this is not like the common old story where “ a seahorse is not a horse.”

Ib. The Modern Neural Network and Freudian interpretation of the Confucian View ............................

In my paper at www.werbos.,com/Mind_in_Time.pdf, I give and overview and citations to my neural network explanation both of zhengqi and of Freud’s core concepts of psychodynamics. In essence, both brains and the noosphere (the specific spiritual reality of which our individual “souls” are parts), streams of feedback are essential to the learning process which determines what behaviors and beliefs and perceptions we actually learned. Today’s “deep learning” AI systems all calculate this kind of feedback by using a method called “backpropagation” or “reverse adjoint method,” which I developed and published long ago (see www.werbos.com/Mind for links to some of the papers).  Of course, there are many Beltway Bandit types who try to maximize revenue by making it sound as if the math all came from the local psych department in the previous week, but common sense might suggest that new mathematics might come from another source, and that it might hook up to other new mathematics important to0 really understanding it (like the RLADP book). Still, even though IEEE and INNS have both recognized my primacy here via the Pioneer Award and Hebb Award, my 1974 PhD thesis (reprinted by Wiley but also at researchgate) went on to suggest that MODULATED backpropagation – backpropagation with some scalar multipliers introduced very carefully at various levels in the flow of information – is what the brain actually uses. I developed this new algorithm simply by TRANSLATING Freud’s theory of psychic energy INTO mathematics, and then proving the relevant general theorem to go with it.

The discovery of backpropagation is an important example of how creativity works in science. Instead of just ignoring that fuzzy old mystic old psychiatrist Freud, I tried to understand and then ARTICULATE or TRANSLATE the key issues into workable, functional mathematics. The idea of TRANSLATING between images in the mind, words, and mathematics is really crucial here. If we are CONSCIOUS and STRATEGIC about translation (and abut listening and understanding), we can solve problems in a straightforward way which undisciplined, less conscious people (like the new AD/ENG at NSF, listening to Lamar Smith) could never solve in millennia of funding.

In an effective intelligent system, whether a brain or a noosphere, the feedback signals or “qi” or “psychic energy” which drive our actions sometimes need to be positive and sometimes need to be negative. Some things justify hope, and some things justify fear. Some things have positive value to us, and some things have negative value to us. (A technical note: “value” here is NOT like the “value function” of RLADP.  I am very sorry about the screwed up terminology which certain people forced on the research community. Economists will tell you that “value” and “price” are more like “marginal utility” – but my papers on the web explain all that.) An intelligent system MUST have both hopes AND fears, and it must also have BOTH positive and negative feedback signals.

So – I didn’t discuss that math at Quakers. Simply: “yes, we MUST have both positive and negative flows of feeling, regardless of whether we call them “affect” or “qi” or “psychic energy.” Some things we just don’t like, for good reason. When bad things happen, we always have negative flows of emotion to respond to them, properly, and it is a lie and a violation of integrity to pretend we don’t. When millions of people get hurt by bad folks in the Middle East.. sanity does NOT mean burying your head in the sand!. Sanity of zheng qi requires that we get direct our negative emotions TO THE RIGHT THING!!! Don’t shoot the messenger.

What if something bad (like theft of a billion government dollars for something useless like the recent Ares rocket and its reinvention as SLS) was caused by a whole network of things, including a person who executes the theft (caused by a mix of greed and willful ignorance and lack of integrity), a set of lobbyists who pay him PAC money and local support, a phenomenon of coalition politics among such lobbyists driven in part by leadership from oil money, and lack of memory of how the American Republic was supposed to work from founders like Washington, Jefferson and Free Quakers? In such complicated cases... the mathematics says we should distribute “credit” all around, and be aware of the negative valence of all the variables which led to the outcome, but focus our energy on whatever strategy we can think of to make the real outcomes better. We don’t let up, but we FOCUS our energy where it can do some good. At Quakers, I probably said something simpler like: “Don’t hate the slave-owner but hate the whole SYSTEM of slavery, and focus on what It takes in reality to change the whole SYSTEM, in the most benevolent way we can that could actually work.”

Elementary stuff, but, like translation... the kind of elementary stuff we need to work to remain conscious of at all times. Remembering the basics is ever so fundamental here.

All this is related to a great, clear readable book on what causes human success and failure, in the empirical study by George Valliant... but today I should move on. Well: one point. One of the greatest, commonest FAILURES of the mind to attain sanity is what Valliant calls “the defense mechanism of denial.” Because human brains have only recently evolved the ability to use words at all.... it is no surprise that they lie to themselves a lot when they use words. In a way, zhengqi or sanity means “being true to yourself,” the exact opposite of lying to yourself. The discipline of sanity is a discipline of always consciously working to avoid lying to oneself, to be aware of temptations to fall into denial... which, as Valliant shows, destroys the values we truly care about. I add this as I start to write below, about American politics, where pathological denial is one of the most pervasive problems.

Ic. The Jungian View with connections to ancient Egypt

It was a great pleasure last Sunday to learn more about Jung’s view, from a leader of that tradition. I know a lot about the ideas of Freud; for example, I once worked a lot with Karl Pribram, whose review of Freud’s deepest concepts gets much deeper than the many other sources I have read. But with Jung... it has not gone so deep.

I was very happy to learn last Sunday that core, high Jungians pursue a basic concept of “wholeness” which can be seen as a kind of synonym for zhenqi or Freudian “sanity” (at least when we consider TOTAL sanity, including not only the mundane level but then extending to “Alchemical Marriage” and beyond). Having three different views of the same thing can be useful if we learn to fuse the three or four different viewpoints; this is like fusing the images from two eyes, which is basic to really seeing in three dimensions.

I was also intrigued to hear that core Jungians view “archetypes” (the psychological realities behind ancient “gods”, for example) as a positive force for the development of human potential and human wholeness. I had earlier heard of a warning from Jung, that folks who play too much with the real archetypes risk being blown away by energies they cannot easily control. (In ancient days I had effects like that, unintentionally, on a few girlfriends, before I learned to better control my energies. Oh is that a long and real story! Easy to look back on from a quieter less torrid height, as I approach prostate surgery, nothing I am proud of but nothing I rage against... like the old Chinese notion of four seasons..) Recently, when I came back from India, I had a tricky dealing with their monkey god archetype (a reality in the noosphere, just as Santa Claus and the devil are a psychological realities)... and I have mostly tried to avoid confusion by avoiding such things... but the Jungians have a point, that all of the noosphere has its proper role as part of us. “There is that of God in everyone,” say the Quakers, and I suppose I need to work on thinking of archetypes as well that way. But even so, they and I need to be especially careful to avoid confusion... the kind of confusion which even little learning machines can experience, when they waste time oscillating over feedback signals which have not been well modulated or properly sparsified. 

A few months ago, the great Progressive Spokesman David Brin really blew up at me, in a way worse than anything I have seen Trump do to people on TV, because of Great Sin of saying something nice about Orson Scott Card. Card himself has written newspaper editorials about Obama which substantially violate my standards of zhengqi and honesty, saying untruthful extreme negative things...  but he has also written very deep and useful things. As with Ayn Rand, the Bible, Freud, and Karl Marx, one can get great benefit from Card’s work, if one studies it carefully and focuses on learning positive things. (I said that to Brin, and that’s what put him over the edge!) In 2015, for example, I read Card’s “light entertaining teenage fantasy”, the Gatekeeper trilogy... which helped me understand and appreciate the Egyptian Book of the Dead much more than I ever was able to before. Many years ago, I noticed when H. Spencer Lewis, author of the Rosicrucian Manual, said: “To get a firm foundation here, you should all make sure to include the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead in your preparatory homework.”  By 2015, I knew the Tibetan side at a level few Tibetans ever do, but the Egyptian one had always left me cold and unappreciative. Orson Scott Card really brought it to life. In essence, the Egyptians, like the Jungians, REMEMBER that the noosphere is not ONLY made up of individual souls of animals like us. As in the brain, there are not only “neurons” but “matrix” in the noosphere, and nerves which connect to outside physical reality.  But there are neurons “like us” and also neurons like memory prototypes, like powerful cells for associative memory and other such assemblies – actually made up of neurons (as Card stresses at the end!). They are a part of who we are, and important to our achievement of spiritual self-consciousness, which I think of as the third level of zhengqi. (Mundane sanity is level one, and “Alchemical marriage” is level two).

A related matter – Annie Besant, who was Mahatma Ghandhi’s spiritual teacher (see the photograph of Ghandhi’s library and accompanying text in a previous blog post, also talked about “thought forms” in one of her books). It is essentially just another consistent image of the same thing. Was ba what got Ghandhi elected? We did track that... though I apologize to Arvind for my always being elsewhere lately... 

Id. Quick Comment on Level Three Zhengqi, noosphere wholeness

Before, in discussing Teilhard de Chardin’s view of the noosphere, Quakers reminded me of the very embarrassing and fundamental problem in his understanding of evolution. The local forces which Teilhard discusses would ultimately produce entropy, not evolution. Watching the state of the world today... the risk of entropy killing us all is very, very real. In my view, the EXISTENCE of the noosphere is unquestionable, given the huge empirical database in the totality of human experience and the lack of coherent alternative explanation... but Teilhard’s explanation for it simply won’t work. To find an explanation that works... and goes a bit further... I see no alternative except to assume there must exist MANY noospheres, just as there exist many planets even in our own galaxy. And I do not repress that memory. This year I resolved to try to remember the core experience I had at rest on a cruise ship last month – living at the fulcrum of four great forces of nature, the sun, the ocean – the ocean of life ,

the stars of our galaxy, and my wife. Let us always remember the stars and the galaxy in our mind, how real and how huge and how old they are...

Noospheres can exist and have decent lifespans only if their biological evolution in their niche of dark matter (or more? who knows...) has included evolution of something like the p52 cycle which explains the unusual longevity of human bodies. I have resolved not to say too much about the human biology here, even though my present health situation certainly reminds me of that and more. (I look at Congress and say “Hey, I really am planning to die for their sins!”) But what are the internal inborn filters in the noosphere, which give it some hope of greater wholeness and longevity than what we would expect from the terribly depressing conflicts and Mickey Mouse insanity we see all around the earth at present? I am just beginning to see in more concrete terms what is entailed.. it sure as hell is not so trivial as the hermeneutics of a bunch of .color-blind hired ulemas or talmud writers, working for corrupt Abbassid pleasure seekers... (though some of those Abbasid women were also great forces of nature to respect, just as much as the monkey god)....What is entailed... clearly links to the issue of zhengqi for the noosphere itself, that is what is fundamental here. And that is a matter of seeking a level of Truthfulness when in the noosphere... full truthfulness in the noosphere... the one ultimate commandment  which will drive whether we all collectively live or die, not only as a species but as an entire planet’s worth of consciousness and soul.

What does that have to do with Jesus’ two Great Commandments, which John Kerry rightfully reminded us of in a debate a few years ago against pharisee pseudo-Christians

like what Jesus once warned us about (“Many will come claiming to speak in my name...”)? In fact, there is a lace in the New Testament where Jesus offers us a RELATIVELY hopeful view of the future... where he says that in later days the Spirit of Truth is what can really save us. At a deep level in the human mind... maybe these are a kind of archetype, each articulating realities beyond the archetype itself... the spirit of truth and the spirit of love (and life)... well, it is crucial, again, to always remember what the fundamentals really are. Myself, I have always been a bit more of an avatar of truth than of love, but I do treasure my friendship with Yeshua of That Family, who has dedicated his life to channeling the equally important “spirits” of peace of mind and love. I have been more like the core yang, and he like the yin, but sanity entails a proper balance and cooperation of the yin and the yang. In my older life now.. for various reasons (e.g. the normal shift with age from what was insanely high testosterone to lower testosterone , see footnote at end), this year of my life I need to balance things out a bit more ... a week of anger for the world, perhaps, but a year of benevolence for me.

  

II. Anger in Politics -- especially US politics *********************************************************************************************************************************

OK, I am sorry that that was complicated, but these are important issues and it is important to bring them together. To be fully truthful – one should have some idea what anger is, before talking too much about it.

As the press has said, anger has become a really powerful force in the “American lobe” of the noosphere lately. It is powerful, important, to be respected, and also very dangerous – exactly what Jung said about archetypes, though this anger is a vast current of feeling, not an archetype.

There is so much anger out there. Where to begin?

First, Trump does have an important valid point: that suppression of well-justified anger and fear really gets in the way of actions needed to grow and survive. His making up with Governor Haley is almost a textbook example of how some hope may exist for humans. (Though Haley is Indian American... it amuses me that Haley is also a name from my mother’s Irish family, the folks who owned the bar where the Constitution was written. My father mentioned how they passed on the bar bills to him, signed by folks like Madison, which he then passed on to the Poor Richard Club of which he was a member and/or the Philadelphia Historical Society.)

What is there to be upset about? My other recent blog post, “global strategic intelligence meets historical dynamics” gives some summary. There is a lot to be upset about, from many directions, and our very survival is at stake. As Trump says, failure to channel strong negative energy against those bad things, to try to change them in a serious and determined way, would be a failure of sanity. It would be like the “affect free deadened schizophrenia” which many Freudians talk about, which is a valid diagnosis for many people in DC --- not just in the bureaucracy but in some lobby organizations which falsely claim to support human freedom or American interests. When Trump inaugurated his campaign with an appearance by Carl Icahn, discussing the need for a new Teddy Roosevelt, and played the music “We’re not going to take it..”  be sure that I added my energy to that, and was certainly not alone.

But: there is the matter of truthfulness, and the issue of who could actually take on the legalized corruption in Washington. Trump has not said much about that topic, and there is a lot of fuzzy vision, untruthful channeling of energy, and – above all – signs of confusion in his book, which do not look workable at this point. Yes, we need to fight our way out of the box... but not like that character in the new Star Wars movie who smashes his own headquarters in uncontrolled rage.  Yes, people want strong action... but if anger is channelled in the wrong direction, it can cause a lot more harm than good. We need it, but we need it channeled where it does more good than harm.

Most of the other Republican candidates either showed too little qi of any kind (like Rubio?), too much bland smiles like Obama’s State of the Union speech, or else energy misdirected in ways that would be harmful. As in: “We should show whose boss by showing how loyal we are to Cheney’s plans for American leadership, loyal to friends like sharia imams...”  It is very sad to me how little appreciation there was for the sane and nuanced approach of Kasich, who has a will to work with the Saudis but ALSO to have open eyes about where money comes from to finance the Moslem Brotherhood, and the need for balance. It reminds me that I took only one year of university study in international relations, for the M.Sc at LSE, where many old hands of the Empire laughed at the insane unending naivety of US “experts” in that field, who fail to appreciate such basic principles as the Balance of Power. How can anyone deplore the rise of ISIL in Iraq without realizing that the decision by Bush to support China and the Moslem Brotherhood to overthrow Saddam Hussein and give them a new base was the core of the problem, and that their new plan for a war between US and Israel versus Russia and Iran would be the very worst possible disaster a new President could get us into? If the US picks the kind of president likely to make that kind of incredible mistake (full of huffing and puffing and uncontrolled ego delusions)... the US will not be the only nation whose very existence will be put at risk. Some folks think that Trump was the craziest person on the stage last night, but I’d say that the soul-deadened schizos who would quietly and confidently create that kind of war are really the craziest. When folks like Christie assume they know what is going on.. and yet are 180 degrees out from knowing which way is up... their anger ends up worse than merely being frozen.

So – speaking of freeze, what of the Democratic side?

It was fascinating to see Obama, first, wisely realizing that this was not a proper time for a laundry list of legislative proposals. But then: “let’s calm them down.” I certainly remember my year on the hill, when PR departments of all kinds of offices felt that their job was to be sensitive to concerns of the public, and then, instead of making things actually better, do their best to make it seem they are already successfully doing everything which could be done.  Saying “all is well” is such a common theme. It reminds me of how the press in China has so often been ordered to make everything look good (so as to save face and avoid losing the mandate of heaven?), which stands in stark opposition for Mao’s call not to neglect self-criticism and Jesus’s plea “before you remove the splinter from your brother’s eye, first remove the beam from your own.” I was especially pained, in this effort at soporifics, to hear such great praise for the breakthrough represented by I-Corps, something I know something about. In the end, Truthfulness, human potential and real creativity in the US has long depended a whole lot on the US university system – “the last bastion of true free speech” and the envy of the world. Obama has cheered on reorganization of the NSF, the prime funding source of US universities, devised by Lamar Smith, reallocating money and attention from tough cutting edge “disruptive technology” to translational work... not unlike what TYny Tether did to DARPA or Carly Fiorina to Bell Labs. Tech transfer is certainly important, but if one pursues it by destroying the tech itself and by funding political favorites to waste time in useless cheerleading... it is more of a disaster than the world knows. Republicans and their lobby supporters can take credit for it, but Obama ... was playing golf? Believing their fairy tales? Whatever. I certainly remember attending an NSF workshop in the Gateway Hotel, hearing loud chanting from people paid to attend ICorp revival meetings next door. Just like Bo Xilai! It is Not that singing patriotic songs is bad, but it gets to be.... empty... when... IN PARALLEL... the real content is lost. But ... I have promised not to post the data on what matters, the content side, which goes very far. In my view, the legacy of Vannevar Bush has been as important to the US as that of Teddy Roosevelt and those earlier good folks...

And so: Trump said Hilary was “schlonged” in 2008, which is better expressed as “burned.” She was also burned by Benghazi – where folks in the Cheney world killed us, and she was guilty of not having controlled them early enough. But when someone is bittern by rats, the constructive solution is not to elect the same rats (or their puppets) as president!

Some people plan to vote for Sanders rather than Hillary because they feel Sanders is more angry... expresses their anger. But in fact... I have observed Hilary enough to believe she is actually a hell of a lot MORE angry with the kind of people who have personally burned her, mistreated her and hurt the US as a whole in all the ways Sanders complains about and more. Will she be effective enough to root out the criminals in the system? Maybe, maybe not, but she has a much better chance of getting into the world of hard reality than Sanders. Will she be truly sensitive and respectful and listening enough in communicating with all the many other people she needs to communicate with around this world, or will she be what Putin most fears (“Oh, no! Not the mother in law to the world!”). Well, she shows a lot more listening ability than those other characters, except when Kasich and Trump have good moments (hard for me to predict). She would have some very good help in those areas – better than what Sanders might fall back on if he gets frustrated (which would be predictable).

Some parts of the right wing, as deadened and complacent as they are, are back to wanting to push Sanders, as they once pushed Obama, in belief that he would be easy to defeat and no problem in any case. I hope they wake up to reality on both counts. Between a smiling Rubio (let alone Jeb) and an angry Sanders... caveat.   

 =============== clarification on testosterone

Oops! In a politically correct world, perhaps I should not even use the word testosterone since, like the words “God” and “soul,” it is so often so grossly misunderstood that one cannot even be truthful using it! If people hear things you do not mean to say... unfortunately, the most truthful thing to say out loud is sometimes nothing. But this blog does not pretend to be so politically correct, and when I use the word testosterone I am referring very simply to the actual physical hormone, known very well to anyone who studies the brain.

Let me just say that no one should extrapolate here to imagine I was saying anything else. I did not mean to use the word as a euphemism. In truth, when I was 7 or 8 years old, a local doctor injected me with testosterone or a testosterone, in response to something which did not require it. (Poison ivy or hernia, I forget which.) Extreme levels of that hormone have many effects, but having been raised in a Catholic household and later close to AngloSaxons proud of their moral values, I did not really express the most obvious manifestation until graduate school, when I was taken by surprise by an incredibly effective seduction technique used by a woman I was planning to marry in any case. I suppose that one of the major consequences before that was a great tension between the strong conscious “ego” and the “unconscious,” though the word “unconscious” or “subconscious” does not give anything like a correct picture of what went through my mind back then in that part of life.

I am very grateful for the conversations I later had with a beautiful world-class endocrinologist on some of the technical details and social science connections. Maybe I would have married her if I had met her at a better time, but testosterone can stimulate delusions of that kind in the male brain if one is not careful. Real testosterone is friendly, as was Jesus, in dealing with females at least, but that also tends to protect one from the coldest dead affect as well.. like some of the cold fish on display in parts of government. It is more like liquid eyes than like plug-ugly athleticism (and in fact it tends to inhibit growth of the long bones, much shorter in my case than close male relatives)... but yes, there is no question that Trump also exhibits many of the consequences (a mix of benefits and risks) of high testosterone levels. My endocrinology friend reported that testosterone levels tend to be highest in professions like engineering.. but there are other professions in DC which tend to attract softies, more and more as the years have progressed. (There is data on that.) The caste system substantially complicates all that, and it is extremely unfortunate how that has started to mess things up in DC as well. (Looking at Haley, my first question was: WHICH GROUP of Indian does she represent? They are ever SO diverse!)

Sometimes I think back to the time when I was undergraduate, and read an article in New York Times magazine about progesterone used in pregnancy back in those days, Since the male half of the babies ended up more or less neutered, it is not surprising that the practiced ended fast. But it intrigued me to hear how babies of BOTH sexes ended up with an average 20 points higher IQ, presumably because of how the hormone stimulated the motivational system which underlies human learning. Maybe it was only PARTLY a coincidence that my learning of math and science suddenly became so Faustian starting when I was 8. (Lots of stories... like an attractive babysitter who left me her paperback book “algebra made simple.”) I have wondered...now that people can IDENTIFY gender in the womb?.... And the image of females with a combination of high IQ and high hormones together...  certainly left a powerful, enduring imprint on my “subconscious mind” (what a misnomer!).  As with the research on decorticate cats... it has an enduring impact even past prostatectomy and age... but no longer the kind of serious risk that improperly channelled qi can sometimes have.

Still, even without such injections... there is a new wave coming into the world, which I hope I live to see. Lack of predictability does not diminish curiosity. 

 =============== clarification on testosterone

Oops! In a politically correct world, perhaps I should not even use the word testosterone since, like the words “God” and “soul,” it is so often so grossly misunderstood that one cannot even be truthful using it! If people hear things you do not mean to say... unfortunately, the most truthful thing to say out loud is sometimes nothing. But this blog does not pretend to be so politically correct, and when I use the word testosterone I am referring very simply to the actual physical hormone, known very well to anyone who studies the brain.

Let me just say that no one should extrapolate here to imagine I was saying anything else. I did not mean to use the word as a euphemism. In truth, when I was 7 or 8 years old, a local doctor injected me with testosterone or a testosterone, in response to something which did not require it. (Poison ivy or hernia, I forget which.) Extreme levels of that hormone have many effects, but having been raised in a Catholic household and later close to AngloSaxons proud of their moral values, I did not really express the most obvious manifestation until graduate school, when I was taken by surprise by an incredibly effective seduction technique used by a woman I was planning to marry in any case. (When she broke off that engagement, it was certainly the darkest and most painful period of my life, depriving life of color and requiring at times that I operate my body like a puppet to forcibly keep it alive, motivated by curiosity.)  I suppose that one of the major consequences before that was a great tension between the strong conscious “ego” and the “unconscious,” though the word “unconscious” or “subconscious” does not give anything like a correct picture of what went through my mind back then in that part of life.

I am very grateful for the conversations I later had with a beautiful world-class endocrinologist on some of the technical details and social science connections. Maybe I would have married her if I had met her at a better time, but testosterone can stimulate delusions of that kind in the male brain if one is not careful. Real testosterone is friendly, as was Jesus, in dealing with females at least, but that also tends to protect one from the coldest dead affect as well.. like some of the cold fish on display in parts of government. It is more like liquid eyes than like plug-ugly athleticism (and in fact it tends to inhibit growth of the long bones, much shorter in my case than close male relatives)... but yes, there is no question that Trump also exhibits many of the consequences (a mix of benefits and risks) of high testosterone levels. My endocrinology friend reported that testosterone levels tend to be highest in professions like engineering.. but there are other professions in DC which tend to attract softies, more and more as the years have progressed. (There is data on that.) The caste system substantially complicates all that, and it is extremely unfortunate how that has started to mess things up in DC as well. (Looking at Haley, my first question was: WHICH GROUP of Indian does she represent? They are ever SO diverse!)

Sometimes I think back to the time when I was undergraduate, and read an article in New York Times magazine about progesterone used in pregnancy back in those days, Since the male half of the babies ended up more or less neutered, it is not surprising that the practiced ended fast. But it intrigued me to hear how babies of BOTH sexes ended up with an average 20 points higher IQ, presumably because of how the hormone stimulated the motivational system which underlies human learning. Maybe it was only PARTLY a coincidence that my learning of math and science suddenly became so Faustian starting when I was 8. (Lots of stories... like an attractive babysitter who left me her paperback book “algebra made simple.”) I have wondered...now that people can IDENTIFY gender in the womb?.... And the image of females with a combination of high IQ and high hormones together...  certainly left a powerful, enduring imprint on my “subconscious mind” (what a misnomer!).  As with the research on decorticate cats... it has an enduring impact even past prostatectomy and age... but no longer the kind of serious risk that improperly channelled qi can sometimes have.

Still, even without such injections... there is a new wave coming into the world, which I hope I live to see. Lack of predictability does not diminish curiosity.