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I wrote this during the hour before I turned 66. My thoughts:
I'm filled with gratitude for my health, the opportunity to be
productive, and for my good wife. We've been contentedly together for almost
43 years now. Oh, I must also mention my preternaturally loving doggie
Einstein.
Aware that most men my age are on the downswing, I'm working longer hours than ever. That's in the spirit of Isaac Asimov, who had written 450 books and was asked, "What would you do if you had six months to live?" His answer: "Type faster." Most people can't relate to this but, for me, the life well-led is about using as many heartbeats as possible being productive.
For a very long time, I've been afraid of dying and tried everything
to cure myself. What works best for me is simply to distract myself the
first moment the fear enters consciousness.
I'm very disciplined but not about eating. Ironic, I care so much about staying healthy and yet can't stop myself from overeating. I guess few of us are fully explainable by the rational.
Also ironic in that I used to be a committed liberal, I'm sad about the leftist bias of society's mindmolders: the schools, colleges, the media, and GoogleSearch. The relentless message is that Left is always right, that redistribution is justice. While I am liberal on many issues, I deeply believe that wisdom can be found across the ideological spectrum. Yet dare an idea veer right of center, it's censored or censured from society's major mind-molders. For example, Fox News, which, perhaps surprisingly, was found by Pew Research Center to provide the most balanced coverage, is dwarfed in impact by the leftist-biased New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, CNN, PBS, NPR, Time, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, etc., etc., etc. Ironic that the Left continues to harp on Joe McCarthy's censorship from the Right of 70 years ago while today it exerts censorship that's far more pervasive. I don't want to go into details here lest I be viewed as self-pitying but suffice to say that I have often been a victim of that.
Even if I were a leftist, I'd worry about how much control the aforementioned societal mind-molders have over policy. Whatever control the "military-industrial complex" had is dwarfed by society's mind-molders' power. That concentration of power cannot ultimately be good for humankind.
In closing, thank you for having read my writings. That adds much meaning to my life.
I wish the world focused more on its steak than its sizzle but charisma is key to influence, and it's learnable.
In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer tactics derived from our most charismatic leaders.
I believe the best idea I've ever developed is SuperCourses, an approach to reinventing education that would allow every child, worldwide, to receive an education far superior to the standard one. I lay it out in my PsychologyToday.com article today.
Despite a learning disability, a client of mine got a bachelor's degree in sociology from a prestigious public university.
That was 15 years ago. Since then, he's been a waiter and desperately wants a new career. In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I describe our first session.
I saw comedian Tom Devenport at the Napa Valley’s Lucky Penny Community Arts Center.
He closed with a bit that cut close to many of our bones. We lie and
get lied to so often—especially in an election year--that we don’t even
register common lies as lies.
Sure, a white lie for politeness isn't a mortal sin
but when fibs fall so trippingly from our tongues that we don’t even
recognize them as fibs, it suggests that maybe we could all use a little
consciousness raising. In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I list about 30 of our automatic lies.
Many men are attracted to younger women. Mainly it's a visceral,
physical thing although some men may value a younger woman because she
is more likely to look up to him if only because he may have advanced
more in his career.
But there are reasons men should consider older women as a potential marriage partner. I describe them in my PsychologyToday.com article today.
What might the planks of a Psychology Party look like? I describe them in my PsychologyToday.com article today.
At some point, we've all been reluctant to follow an expert's advice: "S/he's the expert but somehow the
advice just doesn't feel right."
Of course, there are times to trust the expert but the purpose of my PsychologyToday.com article today
is to provide some basis for not too quickly dismissing your own
opinion. It lists a number of consensus expert recommendations that have since given way to new ones.
Somehow, when the greeting card companies tell us to buy a Father's
(or Mother's) Day card we jump to, even if our fathers aren't so worthy
of an honorific.
What if a father had to earn his special day? We fathers can't turn
back the clock but perhaps one or more of these things I suggest in my PsychologyToday.com article today we could do now
might make us more worthy.
Many dads (stepdads count too) don't need another tie, gadget, or
bottle of booze. Even if they did, such gifts bear the odor of
obligation rather than of affection.
Even if your dad's far from perfect, as long as you'd like to express
some appreciation and/or build your relationship, Father's Day is a
natural opportunity. In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I suggest presents that These might help.
For time immemorial, discipline, responsibility (duty,) and impulse control have been key to improving humankind.
Today, alas, they often are deemed less important than creativity, celebrating difference, and questioning authority.
In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I argue that's reason for lament.
Come see my one-man show, Odd Man Out in Napa on Aug 6 at 7:00 PM.
For info, click HERE.
We're in an era that seems to value mercy over justice: Grade
inflation, bankruptcy laws, reduced sentences, the media's replacing
"hoodlums" with "under-served," even some psychologists blaming bad behavior largely on externalities.
Mercy feels good and is consistent with religion's valuing of forgiveness but does it yield a net good? In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I make the argument that it doesn't.
I've given only one commencement address, at Columbia College (MO.) Perhaps because it was my first, it was fairly conventional.
On reflection, I wish I had been brave enough to give different advice. The graduates have and will hear plenty of conventional
exhortations but perhaps not the ones I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today.
My PsychologyToday.com article today is a short-short story that looks at one man's life-and-death confrontation
with the truly least among us and the bigger ethical dilemmas that
encounter triggered.
I worry about the how-to article's pontification and aridity. So
in some of my recent PsychologyToday.com articles, I've genre-bended: I've attempted to embed a
psychological issue within a short-short story, for example, Unhinged and Should You Give Up on Finding Mr/Ms Right?
Today's offering looks at a man's confrontation with his aging and being out of step with the times.
A Google search today on the term, "closing the achievement gap"
yielded 363,000 results. Indeed, many public schools now focus on low
achievers.
That's one reason that many parents of average and
above-average-achieving children home-school them. That can be
especially enticing because private school tuition can, in high-cost areas, reach $35,000 a year.
So it's not surprising that the number of home-schooled U.S. kids has more than doubled from 850,000 in 1999 to 1.77 million in 2011, the most recent year studied.
But what about your child? Should you consider home-schooling? Perhaps the internal debate I wrote as my PsychologyToday.com article today will help clarify.
In previous posts, I've denigrated the artist's life. To restore a
measure of balance while not being pollyannish, in my PsychologyToday.com article today, I take my best shot at
describing the life of a typical artist who's not making much money but
is glad she has chosen The Artist's Life.
A silver lining in being a lifelong hypochondriac is that I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about life and death. In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I share my thoughts.
Most people, especially animal lovers, believe that animals can heal us.
But what does more rigorous analysis suggest? And where might animal-assisted interventions (AAI) be of greatest value?
To answer those question, on PsychologyToday.com, I interview two eminents.
Sooner or later, we all lose energy and drive. Now what? I explore that in a short-short story that's my PsychologyToday.com article today.
We're getting to that time of year when we have to decide what do during our vacation days.
Should you take a staycation? A quickie car trip to the relatives? Or fly off to some far-flung place?
Perhaps the internal debate I offer today on PsychologyToday.com will provide a bit of clarity.
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