Flag on the Play - Excessive Celebration

Today I heard such a sad story. A friend went to a monster truck show yesterday and reported that what he saw, "was big and loud."
"You're talking about people or things," I asked.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "there was this one really loud, big guy with his shirt off who got handcuffed."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing, really, that I saw. I think that he was just overly excited about monster trucks."

It wasn't like the poor guy was at Von's or in church. He was at a monster truck rally. And was cuffed for excessive celebration. Where else is he going to be able to freely express his passion for monster trucks?

I love baseball, but find it inane that when a guy hits the rare home run he has to act as if he's jogging out to take his position, showing minimal emotion. It used to be that football players at least knew how to celebrate scoring, but apparently the officials thought it bad form for a guy to get excited and they now throw a flag at a player who acts too happy.

I missed the official memo requesting more apathy. Maybe the pharmaceutical companies are behind this, knowing that in order for us to continually swallow our emotions we'll eventually need some sort of chemical handcuffs. Or maybe the real plot is to get us all to stop emoting so that when they begin replacing us with robots we'll be less likely to notice.

Time for Obama to Embrace the Irrational

Obama's administration faces a problem we've had 8 years to forget about: like many smart policy makers before them, they are at a loss about how to rebut the irrational argument.

Closing Guantanamo Bay is a perfect example. This matter of how to handle prisoners of war when you have no forecast cessation of the war and no enemy state is messy, but one most politicians have seemingly given up on explaining to constituents. There are lots of issues that could come up surrounding the closing of what has been a wonderful recruiting tool for terrorist. Obama's administration was ready for those arguments.

But of course, those are not the arguments that Republicans unveiled. Their argument? It is not safe to have these terrorists in our maximum security prisons. There is no way to rebut an argument that has neither facts nor logic behind it. Such an argument completely bypasses the frontal lobes and makes it way directly to the hypothalamus. It is all emotion and no reason.

Whether it is talking with enemies, dealing with climate change, or crafting financial bailouts, Obama has to confront emotional opposition that shows - not just ignorance of, but - disinterest in the systems involved. It is not enough to attempt understanding of these systems and then craft policy. Not in a democracy. One has to be mindful of keeping the support of people who don't understand these systems.

It seems to me that to sustain widespread support for his policies, Obama has got to be more sensitive to the need for crafting emotional arguments that depend little on reason. It is not enough to engage in reasoned dialogue around the table with peers; before unveiling a policy, the administration ought to first craft the purely emotional appeal.

It seems like the only rational thing would be for the Obama administration to embrace the irrational. I'm not sure there is any other way to sustain support once the nation's disgust with dubya fades. There continues to be a gap between what makes for good policy and what makes for good politics: the gap between emotional arguments and reason seems to account for most of this.

The Effect of Brain States on Learning, Memory & Identity

Here's a fascinating post over at Cog Sigh about how a brain state can reinforce itself and how similar brain states can create similar memories and associations.

Here's a quote from the posting:

In practice this means that, for example, when I am depressed I most easily remember episodes and information that I encountered during past periods of depression (by depression I mean a mood, not clinical depression). We've all experienced how our moods seem to feed themselves, but just think about it in terms of identity. Identity is essentially composed from a series of key memories about the experiences that we have had and what we have made them mean about the world. If I am building a definition of myself (to a certain degree) from my own memories, then my understanding of who I am when I am depressed is significantly different from who I think I am when I am happy or calm simply because I am constructing my identity from a different set of memories.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this is my daughter Jordan's most recent posting.)