Regaining Community

There is an epidemic of loneliness in our country that is reflected in the statistics of suicide and opioid abuse. [Why are Americans so Lonely?} For many people, family has disintegrated and we have fewer friends.

Humans are by nature social animals, but we are rapidly losing our social support network.  Our children are becoming fewer in each generation and many them will move away to be seen again only rarely. We do not know our neighbors.

 For many of us in this mobile and materialist society, the nuclear family is lost and cannot be restored.  We instinctively need the protection and nurturing provided by our granny and cousins who have known us all our lives.  We are like ducks that flock and cattle that herd.  Without contact and communication with our own kind, we feel anxious and afraid

Perhaps politics could help, put currently politics is poisonous.   Personal loneliness and isolation find an enemy in the the other political side.  But politics is not to blame.  It is just a mirror of how unhappy we are feeling as a people.

Depression and loneliness have been converted into political anger and hatred, what is being called political tribalism.  But politics will not make us feel better.  We need people who understand us and care about us.

We have lost community, but we need it.  I think we will have to create it.  There is a long history of conceptual utopias or intentional communities, and now the digital revolution has opened the possibility of redesigning all of society.

The Anniston Star has been at the center of the local community since 1883.  It has served as the paper of record for local government and other activities.  It has always been where you find sports results, obituaries, and entertainment events.  Political issues have been debated in the paper, and the Star has a noble tradition of progressive, humanistic thought.

A digital newspaper will allow much more community input.  Local experts in sports, politics, and news can submit commentary and video logs.  Newspaper editors would serve to recruit and mentor community journalists.  Although news sources are now phenomenally fragmented, our local newspaper has the identity, the brand, that can form the basis for a meaningful community.

We all want to know how the high school team did, what the city council is up to, what music is in town, what crimes were committed, who went to whose party, and we would like to be able to find it in one place.  The Anniston Star website can become that place.  Citizens can submit information and events, and express their thoughts.  It can be a town square.

The governments of all the local cities and counties are disconnected, but the digital newspaper could provide the core structure of a larger sense of citizenship.  Governments have emerged haphazardly and they are awkward and inefficient.  An engaged community could move toward simplification and consolidation of government.

Our community has a troubled history and we still have terrible problems, particularly involving race, poverty, education, and healthcare.  All of those problems can be addressed through concerted thought and effort.  The key is getting people to feel involved in what happens in our community.


Anniston could become the center of a model virtual community, and the Anniston Star can be its journalistic voice. Our beautiful geographic area has great resources and potential, but we need something to tie us together.  We have more needs in common than differences that divide us. 

On Futurism

I am trying to detach from writing about politics.  I find it distressing and futile.   What I write is not as eloquent as many liberal voices, and I believe that persuasion is hopeless.  In particular, writing about Donald Trump is useless.  I have thought that I have some specific ideas based on my personal and professional experiences that might add to the discussion, but there is no discussion, no dialectic, only entrenchment.

I am reading Mein Kampf, and I am stunned to see that Trump's tactics use Hitler's propaganda techniques as his playbook.  I am reading Madeleine Albright's book, Fascism, and have discovered that Hitler learned those techniques from Mussolini.  Insulting those taken in by those techniques is worse than useless.

I have thought about trying to correct liberals who refer to Trump as stupid or mentally ill.  Speaking as a career clinical psychologist, I am certain that he is neither.  He is intellectually lazy, and morally bereft, but he is very bright and can read and write.  As communication, his tweets are phenomenally effective for his purpose.

Many who think as I do say repeatedly that the current situation is unprecedented and unbelievable, but it is not.  It is a real sociological phenomenon.  There are reasons it is happening, and certain things have to change for that reality to change.  I have concluded many times that the stage is set for significant change ... but maybe not.  Our current political schism did not start with Trump.  He merely engaged those forces with the skills and techniques learned from Mussolini and Hitler.

I hope to back out and take a broader view, accepting that society is as it is.  I have learned that there is an academic discipline and a science of how to change society for the better.  The first step of that science is to eliminate preconceptions and objectively analyze social facts.

In my training as a psychologist, not just as a therapist but with an understanding of the underlying science, I learned that psychology is not just an art or a talent.  Effective techniques can be assessed by experiment.  Some things work and some do not, and that can be empirically proven.  A prime example is Applied Behavior Analysis, a discipline that has been of great help to those working with cognitive impairments such as autism.

My dissertation research regarded a social psychology theory called Objective Self-Awareness.  The main point of the theory was that people will change their behavior when provided with clear feedback reflecting social disapproval, not lecturing or chastising, but simply and honestly showing.  Some early studies videotaped drunks coming into jails.  Later, in court hearings after they were sober, they were shown the videotapes.  Instead of denial and repression, they were emotionally impacted by the naked truth of how they looked when booked into the jail.  Another study demonstrated that college students cheated less if sitting with a mirror just in front of them.

My study was with behaviorally disordered juveniles.  I conducted group therapy with them, with a hidden video camera.  They were often very disruptive and aggressive.  The following day, I met with them individually, played the videotape, and simply asked them to talk about what they saw on the tape.  Many covered their eyes in embarrassment, and the study demonstrated significant behavioral improvement.

There is a similar scientifically based approach to societal change.  Throughout my career working in prisons, I was involved in numerous studies of how to restructure corrections with a goal of improving effectiveness.  I argued against the still-common approach of retribution and debasement and for a clear-eyed analysis and study of a huge and costly social problem.

Emile Durkheim

My approach overlapped with the discipline of sociology, and the father of scientific sociology is Emile Durkheim.  He is probably most famous for his analysis of social conditions that lead to suicide.  He demonstrated that there are socially based reasons for suicide.  It is not purely a weakness of the individual.  One important concept was that of anomi, the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community. A large number of people feel they have no place in society.  The United States is experiencing an epidemic of suicide, as well as depression and anxiety, and that feeling of uselessness is a core problem.

I returned to reading Durkheim because of a puzzling thought I have been having about the interaction of religion and politics. I was having trouble understanding why devoted Christians continue to support such an immoral president. Members of a small church in Alabama stated that, “I believe God put him there.” Also, "Love thy neighbor meant 'love thy American neighbor.'”
Durkheim's final and most masterful work is The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. He argued that there is a deep and innate need in human society for faith, a need that is stronger than rational consistency and science.  Religion develops organically in the most primitive civilizations and is elaborated and refined as civilizations become more complex.  An ordered and supportive religion is helpful to people.  However, religion is on the decline, and many people can find no suitable substitute for that support.

I began this line of reading after a relative of mine contacted me to talk.  I knew her as a beautiful, bright little girl but had very little contact with her over many years.  In the meantime, she had problems with drug addiction, went to prison, and currently has a very unstable living situation, as well as severe health problems.  She said that a church group might help her financially to move to a more stable living situation.  She was planning that night to be baptized, and she hoped that those changes might set her on a better path.

I had met thousands of people in similar circumstances in prison.  She, like most people who end up in prison, had not been able to find a path forward for her life.  She has never been a criminal in the sense most people conceive of when thinking of prison inmates.  Imprisonment did not help her problems, it handicapped her further.  I'm not sure how to encourage her.  Like her, I hope this will help.

I believe in a Star Trek future.  At the time of James Kirk, Earth society had united and grown past war and poverty, but then along came the Klingons to present bigger challenges.  The League of Nations and the United Nations were the first attempts to achieve a stable world civilization.  Perhaps those efforts have helped, but there is clearly a long road ahead.  My question is how to get there from here.

That is the subject matter of the study of futurism.  Al Gore notably pursued those ideas, but there is little discourse or serious study of how to achieve such goals.  There is a sizable literature of the subject of Utopias, my favorite being H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia.  Emile Durkheim laid out the groundwork for scientific study, but theoretical sociologists are few and far between.

America's form of capitalism has created a huge number of socially surplus people who feel they have no purpose, and that number will only grow with automation and artificial intelligence.  Support from the primary family unit is disintegrating.  Religion does not do what it once did to hold people together.

Donald Trump will come and go.  He truly aggravates me, but I will try to spend more of my mental energy on ways to address the real problem, how to improve society.

What I learned from Matt Dillon

I planned to write something a little lighter today.  I began La Tercer Edad in order put together some ideas that had been percolating in my mind for many years.  An original subtitle was "A few things I wanted to say before I go."  But I find my mind, here in July 2018, filled with shit on a daily basis.  I apologize for the crudity ... I might have said bullshit, but I actually have a great fondness for bullshit, that is the real thing.  I love it on my garden.

I have lists of literally hundreds of topics I want to write about ... deep thoughts to helpful hints ... but the terrible things that the United States government is doing dominate what I read and talk about.  I wake up every day and turn on my computer, hoping that finally the dam has broken and the waking horror of what my country is going through will begin to end today.  A criminal, fascist traitor is causing daily damage to our norms and institutions, but more importantly he is intentionally inflicting suffering on decent, innocent people.  He is abetted by truly horrible people ... politicians, unholy preachers, sycophantic toadies.  The perfect exemplar of that is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III.   I cannot call him Jeff, that is too friendly.  This man smirked and invoked the words the Apostle Paul to justify taking babies from their mother's breasts and locking them in cages.  The silent do not get a pass.  Paul Ryan and anyone who still supports this situation will live the rest of their lives with the guilt of Himmler and of Judas.

I began this blog mainly for myself.  I wanted to think through what I have learned.  I began life knowing nothing.  Childhood, the first age, was a time to be a child and to learn how the world works.  The second age was to do the burdens of life, to earn a living. I finally finished school and then spent 30 years earning a living.  Most of that time, I went into prisons daily, my main duty being to help keep a lid on things, defusing violent situations, preventing suicides, and caring for the seriously mentally ill who were put in prisons because society could not think of anything else to do with them.  I made enough money and saved enough money to finally bring my second age to a conclusion.

Yesterday I watched hours of the repulsive spectacle of Trey Gowdy, et. al., harrying an FBI agent, all clearly an effort to protect the Benedict Arnold of our times.  For endless weeks and months now, one outrage has followed another.  When I sit down to write my thoughts in my third age,  I find myself pulled every day to that shit being shoveled into my brain.

The subject I wanted to write about today is what is called 'old time radio.'  Radio is called a warm medium.   Perhaps I can talk about Marshall McLuhan later.  We interact with radio, our imaginations are more involved than with television or the internet. Who cannot picture the blank stare of the television addict.  Often nothing they see sticks, the brain disengages.  Currently there is a resurgence in  learning through auditory information.  Podcasts and audio books are exploding in popularity.

What many don't know about is the golden age of radio ... detective stories, mysteries, westerns, comedies, serious dramas ... that were broadcast between the 1930's and the early 1960's.  Much of that material was preserved and there is growing interest and availability.  I have sought out copies of these programs for years.  I used to buy cassette tapes of Sherlock Holmes and The Green Lantern in truck stops because they were popular with long haul truckers.  More recently the Internet Archive has made available masses of recordings for streaming and download.

Finding those programs has now become simple.  I wanted to focus on a favorite source, the podcast Boomer Boulevard.  Disk Jockey Bob Bro has been collecting radio programs for years and has packaged them in a convenient and entertaining form.  He currently has available about 100 two hour packages, each including three or four individual shows.  He is a stickler for audio quality as well as artistic value.  He has a number of favorites, including Dragnet, Philip Marlowe, Jack Benny, Night Beat, but he is especially fond of Gunsmoke.

I recently had the opportunity to binge listen to Boomer Boulevard for four days while losing ten pounds on the Montezuma Diet.  I drifted in and out of sleep, but the sound was soothing and when I was awake, the stories were diverting.  Listening to radio shows is nothing like watching television when you are sick.  There are no flashing lights, and you can close your eyes and fully understand what is going on.

D.J. Bob Bro has no commercials, he does not even ask for donations.  It is a labor of love.  He sees the golden age of radio as a lost art form and he is providing easy access to people who remember them from their youth and to newcomers.  He intersperses the shows with music and commentary.  He does hours of research for each two hour segment.  The packages are professionally produced, and Bob Bro is a bright and perceptive, and seems to be a very kind person.

As I said, he is particularly fond of Gunsmoke.  Many of these short plays are literary jewels.  Like a good short story, they can bring tears to your eyes, chills to your backbone, and make you think about your own life.  The core of all the Gunsmoke stories is Matt Dillon.  Although there are some lighter stories, most place him in situations of great moral pressure.  He has to decide who to arrest, who to counsel, and who to shoot.  He is alone in those decisions and he is often bitterly opposed by outside forces.  There is a reason this was called the first adult western.  Many of the situations are agonizingly stressful.

Matt Dillon was a territorial U.S. marshal, a representative of the oldest national law enforcement agency.  He had broad latitude in his authority.  There was no supervisor to call.  His touchstone was keeping the peace and carrying out the law with judgment and integrity.

Of course, he is a fictional character, but his job is little different from any police officer on the beat.  The radio shows put you in his shoes, incidentally, far more effectively than the television version.  You feel the pressures, the loneliness, the fear.  You wonder if you could stand up as well.

Another of Bob Bro's favorites is Joe Friday of Dragnet.  Although his character became somewhat cartoonish late in the television years, during the radio series, he was a full fleshed human trying to uphold his code and his oath. Police departments nowadays are rightly criticized for incidents of violating that code and oath, but anyone who knows a lot of police officers knows that most are remarkably moral and admirable people.  The exceptions are painful to the honorable majority.

The recent obscene grilling of James Comey, Rod Rosenstein and Peter Strozk intruded on my intention to write about old time radio and Boomer Boulevard in particular.  In my career as a forensic clinical psychologist, I met dozens of FBI agents, and I recognize these guys.  They are straight arrows.  They follow procedure, they are honest, they would give their lives to carry out their responsibilities ... very much like Matt Dillon and Joe Friday.  They are being smeared by small, nasty and selfish men.

Our military personnel are the same way, as are most police officers.  One does not become an FBI agent simply by signing up.  The qualifications are rigorous, and their lives are examined thoroughly before being accepted.  When I was hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, my background was investigated by the FBI.  After many years, that thirty page report was released to me, and I was stunned to know how much they knew about me.

In my youth, the FBI had a serious reputation problem, primarily because a Machiavellian cross dresser was given too much personal authority from 1924 to 1972.  He ordered investigations of Pete Seeger, John Lennon, even Dave van Ronk, an affable Greenwich Village hipster. That is not the FBI of today.  They are the best of the best.  They are the example that police departments emulate.  Many of them as kids admired Matt Dillon and would appreciate the comparison today.

So, this was not such a light subject after all.  I just wanted to talk about how radio, a somewhat overlooked art form, is worth a fresh look today.  Donald Trump and his crowd put all the rest of this in my mind.  I want to write about ideas about overpopulation, environmental degradation, the beautiful messages of Christ and Bob Dylan.  I want to flush Donald Trump right out of my head.

What I Learned From Anthony Bourdain

I began this piece several weeks ago because I was so impressed with his current television work.  I essentially wanted to write a review to highlight his growing contribution to the betterment of the world by improving communication and understanding between peoples.  Before I finished the article, he committed suicide, alone in a small hotel in rural France.  He was scheduled to film in nearby Strasbourg the next morning.  Friends were puzzled that he did not come down to dinner that evening.

Anthony Bourdain had became an icon, and a very unlikely one at that.  His reputation was of a hipster-punk anti-chef who became a foodie travel guide.  In later years, though, he became something else -- something of a national treasure.

He rose to fame by writing about the gritty inner details of New York City restaurants. In Kitchen Confidential the tagline is "a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine." He attacked the pretensions of fine dining while clearly showing his love for food and his respect for the profession of food service.

He then moved on to a series of travel shows featuring exotic and adventurous locales with an emphasis on food.  Over the past fifteen years, he  produced 284 episodes of A Cook's Tour, No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown.

His shows have always been fascinating, but in recent years, they took on a sharply political, philosophical and spiritual edge.  In 2006 in Beirut, his film crew was caught up in Israeli-Palestinian fighting.  He visited every conceivable destination on all continents, and many that are far off the beaten path. His shows address conflict, political repression and poverty along with the sights and the food.

The quality of production  also progressed.  Originally shown on the Travel Channel, Bourdain took full control of production after moving to CNN.  Since then he  won 5 Emmy Awards, garnered 11 nominations for writing, sound mixing, editing and cinematography, as well as a 2013 Peabody Award.

One of Bourdain's persistent messages is the value of travel, particularly for ethnocentric and uninformed Americans. He also emphasizes meeting ordinary people and learning about other ways of living. The United States is wealthy and powerful, but most citizens are profoundly ignorant of the outside world.  Few speak any language apart from English.  Many see the outside world through a lens of fear.

I was particularly impressed with Bourdain in Marseilles. Marseilles is the second largest city in France,  on the Mediterranean.  It has a reputation for being dangerous, and is a melting pot of ethnic groups.  There is much concern about a rapidly increasing Muslim population.  Many people, even in France, advised Bourdain not to go there.  His response -- 'sounds like the kind of place I will like.'  One pleasant clip from the Marseilles show is a dessert cheese tray -- Bourdain finds pleasure in a cheese cart.

Bourdain's television shows have inspired me for years, and I have always been awed by his energy and ability to cope so well with the stresses of travel.  I began to think of extended and distant travel in a different way -- that is of a series of homes.  I would like to visit Marseilles, Thailand, Kenya, and so on, and not stay in city hotels or resorts, but in small towns in pensiones or short-term apartment rental.   

The Last Thing He Taught Me 

I was a psychologist for thirty years and I dealt with many suicides, but this shocked and bewildered me.  Like many people, I thought I sort of knew him.  If he had such pain, I wish I could have helped ... or someone could have helped.

Our American society is enduring an epidemic of mental suffering including suicide, drug dependence, and pervasive isolation and alienation.  Anthony Bourdain's last lesson to me was that money, fame, or admiration by millions are not enough to ease some kinds of pain. 

His death immediately reminded me of the suicide of Richard Manuel, a musician with The Band, at the age of 42. At the time I worked as a prison psychologist.  That day I was presenting a class to the staff on suicide prevention, and I brought up Richard Manuel's death as an example.  The point I was making was that if you are concerned that someone might commit suicide, it is best to ask them if they are thinking of hurting themselves.  You will not be giving them the idea to kill themselves.  Rather, you will be opening a door to talk with someone about what is troubling them..

After the class, a music loving staff member talked with me and was brought to tears by his personal feeling of loss and bewilderment at the death of Richard Manuel.  A celebrity suicide is no different than any other suicide, except that millions of people are affected by it and try to understand it at the same time.  Most recently, Robin Williams did the same.  All three of these  talented and beloved men died alone, with a bathrobe cord around their necks.

We live in a society with epidemic loneliness.  Not everyone is dangerously lonely, but many are.  Family unity, the most basic need after personal survival, has gone with the wind.  Two parent incomes result in children raised by institutions. Mobility to pursue better jobs results in disintegration of the family unit.  Our youth are becoming barren because of ... as Dylan said ... "the fear to bring children into this world."

Since Bourdain's death, I have read a lot of commentary.  One lady said in response to a Facebook post, "I never met him, but I love him and I will miss him."  Someone responded to that, "That's ridiculous, you can't love somebody you don't even know."  Someone else responded to that, "Isn't that the point?  Aren't we supposed to love others"?

I will try to learn from this loss to observe more, to reach out more.  However, to do anything about the loneliness epidemic, society must be changed.  I put little hope in diplomats and political parties.  They focus on holding and gaining power.  The key issue is enlightenment, but that is a subject for another day.

La Tercer Edad

La Tercer Edad is a phrase often used in Spanish meaning the third age of life. There are similar phrases in English but they generally emphasize the losses that come with aging. A Wikipedia article on aging summarizes as follows...

Old people often have limited regenerative abilities and are more susceptible to disease, syndromes, injuries and sickness than younger adults. The elderly also face other social issues around retirement, loneliness, and ageism, concluding "it is clear that always and everywhere youth has been preferred to old age." In western thought, "old age is an evil, an infirmity and a dreary time of preparation for death." Furthermore, death is often preferred over "decrepitude, because death means deliverance".

The article then lists dozens of physical and mental limitations that come with aging, but does not mention any benefits of aging. The Golden Years are short and with a foreboding dread of suffering and deterioration. Throughout my life, I have seen it that way. The aged in the United States are put away in poor or wealthy institutions. They are seen as useless, demented and unpleasant reminders of the fate waiting for the young.

Since moving to Mexico, I have learned that there can be another view. Here, and perhaps in other cultures, the aged are loved, respected, and even revered. Entire families walk together in the parks at the pace of the oldest. Just today on a collective bus, everyone stopped and gave aid to a very old woman who slowly climbed down the narrow steps. Her daughter and granddaughter stepped out and held both her hands. The rest of us passengers were not impatient with her decrepitude, but deeply admiring of her character and dignity.

I learned that in Mexico La Tercer Edad is a term of genuine respect and affection. A person of that age has wisdom and perspective. The third age is a time to pass the labors of life to the younger and stronger, and to teach the lessons of life to the grandchildren. Even after death the elders are sought for in the cemetaries throughout the night on the Day of the Dead.

I have felt here that same kind of respect and affection, even as a foreigner. I am seventy years old, and I have learned, I think, many things in that time. Here, people assume I have intelligent opinions and useful knowledge. In the United States, I usually feel old and in the way.

La Tercer Edad in Mexico is the time for making sense of the first two thirds of your life. I decided to adopt the concept and that is the reason for this blog. I have thoughts and ideas that I think may be useful and perhaps even wise. Before beginning the blog I have accumulated lists of those ideas ... hundreds of them. Now, here, in the third age of my life, I will try to put some of those ideas into words.

I think about the beauty of the culture of Mexico and will say much about that. I think a lot about societal progress, especially what the United States can learn from other cultures. I think about the core nature of rationality and morality. I wonder if we can make civilization better than it is. These days I think a lot about American politics, but currently those thoughts are more emotional than rational.

I plan to write a couple of pieces a week and chip away at that long list of ideas that have intrigued me through my first seventy years. My purpose is to pursue if not capture dignity and some wisdom.