Catching up

[Murfreesboro]

Your description of Phoebe's interest in and compassion toward the younger competitors tells me that she really does have ethics and a strong character. I have no doubt that she is determined not to do to them what was done to her.

Sadly, Karl is not currently disciplining himself w/re/to diet and exercise, though he was once a model of dicipline on those scores. He is the one who suffered a psychotic break (twice) in his mid-20s, and he isn't exactly the same person now that he used to be. For one thing, the medications he takes made him gain 100 lbs in the first month. He was getting stretch marks like a pregnant woman and had no idea what they were. I know it was the medication, because he tried to ween himself off it over a period of several months, and the weight started to come off. Neither of us could believe that he needed to take medicine like that forever, but then the break happened again, and he was back in the psych ward. Now fear of returning there rules his life. He used to have normal interests, like sports and music, and dating, but now he mostly reads theology (although just lately he's been reading political philosophy and economics, seriously, like, teaching himself higher level math to follow some of the econ arguments). He left his grocery job at Gordon's a couple of years ago for higher pay and benefits at Walmart, but he got hired for a night shift (10-7), so now he does janitorial work and helps stock the produce when it comes in at night. I'd hoped he might work himself into a different type of position with normal hours, but he says he likes not having to deal with customers, even though, at Gordon's, he appeared to be a customer favorite. They were always giving him things and inviting him to their restaurants while offering him discounts.

He seems to have a very depressed and negative self-image now. He tends to assume that most people don't like him, even though I think that is far from true. He serms to magnify every negative thing that happens to him and completely forget all the good things. Once I made a list of all the encouragement and "attaboys" he'd received over the years, from mentors to teachers to bosses to peers. It was a fairly long list. He looked at it as if all of it were news to him, completely forgotten.

I knew nothing about mental health issues before all this happened to him. In some ways it's not too different from getting hit with cancer out of the blue. You can survive it, but it changes you.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

He seems to have a very depressed and negative self-image now. He tends to assume that most people don't like him, even though I think that is far from true. He serms to magnify every negative thing that happens to him and completely forget all the good things.

I knew a guy like that when I was working at Home Depot, I still know him, but he's a completely different person today. He was a few years older than me, and back then he was very antisocial, and didn't talk to many people, aside from the rest of us that worked the night shift with him. He would say that the only reason that we even talked to him was because we worked together, and when he talked with us he would stare at the floor instead of look at us directly. He was also very awkward around women, and thought that he couldn't ever go on dates because women wouldn't ever go for a guy like him.

But after about 2 years of working with us he decided to put some trust in us and hang out with us in the mornings after work at a coffee shop, and eventually he became comfortable socially and was able to start talking to women. He found a good woman that loves him, and today he's happy. His life changed for the better because he was willing to let us in and make some new friends, and once he did that his social circle, and self confidence grew. So there's always hope if you're willing to put the effort in.

although just lately he's been reading political philosophy and economics, seriously, like, teaching himself higher level math to follow some of the econ arguments

That's interesting, is there a specific reason that his interests pivoted in that direction so suddenly?

I think that economics, and the higher level math that he's learning could be a step in the right direction if he intends to get actively involved. Along with the political philosophy that he's expressed interest in, it could be something that gives him a sense of purpose if he was to pursue it. The way you talk about him sounds like he has a introverted personality, and he obviously isn't comfortable in social situations, but sometimes people with that issue can come out of their shell once they find a specific direction, and become very vocal and dominant people in those areas.

[Murfreesboro]

From your lips to God's ears. I do think he is the main one holding himself back.

I wouldn't say that Karl's interest in political and economic philosophy is sudden, because he's had periods like this before. Several years ago he was reading Machiavelli and Adam Smith. He also read Marx, but mainly The Communist Manifesto. He found Das Capital not worth the slog. This summer he's been reading Keynes pretty assiduously, also Aristotle's Ethics. But always in the background there's his obsession with religion. He doesn't really read theology, like Aquinas for example, but he seeks out and pores over every Biblical text he can locate. He's read whatever the Coptic Bible is, and Eastern Orthodox, and the Catholic Bible (Douay Rheims? Not sure I spelled that right), and the various English translations used by Protestants over the centuries. He can talk your ear off about the "filioque" dispute between the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. I guess he's just trying to make sense of the world, and he's going to religious, political, and economic thinkers in an effort to do that.

As a boy Karl shared a bedroom with his older brother, who was a super student, valedictorian, National Merit Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa in college (so was their sister a few years later). But Colin really focused in on math, to the extent that he taught himself calculus when he was a high school sophomore, and went.straight through school for a PhD. The boys have always been close, but I think Karl started out defining himself in contrast to his brother. Colin was doing math, so Karl did sports. I think Karl saw how much work it took to excel academically at Colin's level, and he decided it wasn't worth it. Now he reads and studies on his own as if he were a grad student, but he's seemingly not interested in pursuing degrees. He just wants to learn it for himself. I have mixed feelings about this. I respect his sincerity, but I also know his scholarship is unlikely to profit him professionally if he doesn't get the expected certifications.

[Murfreesboro]

Like me, Karl writes well and seems to be more comfortable on paper than he often is in person. As a teenager he used to write poetry and short stories, some of which were pretty good. He doesn't seem to have much interest in creative writing nowadays, but I could see him writing about philosophical topics. I've sometimes wondered, if he were to lean into politics, if he could be a speech writer

As an adult, Lydia is the one who has done more writing. During the pandemic she wrote several plays and even completed a novel she'd started in high school, completely revising it after she'd written the first draft. But she hasn't been writing much since she took her job at the bookstore, I think because the irregular hours and some interpersonal conflict with the staff have sapped her energy. She does keep a notebook of ideas, though, and she collects phrases she overhears in conversation that catch her ear.

[Andybev01]

The comedian Lewis Black has a bit about something that he overheard in a restaurant that begins " if it wasn't for my horse, I would never have spent that year in college." and he just takes it and runs.

Snippets of conversation can be wonderfully inspiring.

[Murfreesboro]

Yes, they can!

She had to do that as an exercise in creative writing class years ago. She used something I'd said that absolutely baffled her teacher. I think, in her version, I'd said that "They can't make daylight saving year round. Don't they know all the children will die?"

Of course I'd been talking about the experiment in year-round daylight saving during the energy crisis of the Nixon administration. So many school kids got killed waiting for busses in the black dark that TPTB couldn't wait to reverse that law. But of course, without that context, the statement made no sense.

I'd be very happy to give up spring forward/fall back, but I really wish that they'd opt for year round standard time. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person left alive who remembers that early '70s fiasco.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I apologize for not being around for the last few days, but I was finalizing the details on a business deal. I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Honestly, it sounds like Karl and I would have some very interesting conversations. As I have previously mentioned, when I was in my late teens to my early 20s I read about 20 different versions of the Bible, and the differences varied from small to drastically different between them. I know there are other people out there that have read the multiple versions, but I haven't ever met any of them personally, as they are usually upper class professors that would probably look down their nose at a guy that works in a restaurant.

Now he reads and studies on his own as if he were a grad student, but he's seemingly not interested in pursuing degrees. He just wants to learn it for himself. I have mixed feelings about this. I respect his sincerity, but I also know his scholarship is unlikely to profit him professionally if he doesn't get the expected certifications.

I understand what you mean, and I guess there are different ways to look at it.

On one side of it, our society puts a heavy emphasis on education, and the preconceived notion that the higher level of education that you attain, the better that your opportunities are to secure long term employment, and financial stability. While that is definitely true, and you won't ever hear me argue that fact, because you have heard me say multiple times that being educated is extremely important to success, and I want those same opportunities for my kids if they should choose to continue their education after high school.

On the other side of it, some of the smartest people that our society has known throughout history have been reclusive loners. While some of them have invented things, or shared their philosophies that have reshaped our world, there are others that search out knowledge for themselves, to expand their mind, and attempt to answer the questions about our place in creation. They don't do it for any profit or recognition, or to brag, but simply, to know, and they are perfectly fine going through life unknown to the world.

I think that I'm living proof that you can achieve success without any fancy degrees as long as you're willing to put in the hard work to get there. In my opinion, a degree is just a piece of paper to brag to the world about how great you are, and if you're going to waste years of your life to get a degree and then you just end up as some corporate yes man kissing some wealthy guy's a**, then what was the point? I don't need a piece of paper to tell the world how smart I am, or to validate myself to anybody.

Regarding Lydia and her writing, that's very impressive that she has written plays and a novel. What was her novel about, and is she published? Has she directed or overseen the production of any of her plays?

[Murfreesboro]

No, Lydia is not published. Her novel was a kind of mystery, with a midpoint turn and another surprise at the end. Originally she set it in Columbus, OH, a place she'd never been at that time, but when she revised it she set it here in Murfreesboro, so she was able to be very specific about the setting.

She has also written narrative poems in blank verse, and some of them are pretty good. As a theater major, she is most attuned to plays, and she's written 2 or 3 "responses" to Shakespeare. At one time thete was a grant available to people who did that, but it might have expired. One of those plays did get to a table reading (she got a group of local actors to read it together), but she never took it any farther. The play she chose for that reading was a comedy, but I preferred a different one she'd written, a response to Measure for Measure. She's also written at least one play based on the Biblical story of Achitophel.

[Murfreesboro]

I could write a lot more than I have time for right now about our society's attitude toward higher ed. For now I'll just remark that I think there may be a sea change going on about that. I think there may be a return to valuing people who work with their hands, and I foresee a boom in apprenticeships and vocational training.

[Murfreesboro]

Returning to the subject of higher education, there's so much to unpack about what you said that I could probably write for days, but neither of us has time for that in one fell swoop. I'll begin by focusing on what you implied about the innovations of self-educated people. There is no doubt in my mind that the brilliant self-educated have made some of our most important innovations. If you are familiar with the books of Walter Isaacson (sp?), he's made a career of writing biographies of people like that--Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci. Maybe I've forgotten some of them. But he is absolutely fascinated by the way in which brilliant people with limited formal education think outside the box, partly because they aren't taught to think conventionally. David McCullough's book about the Wright Brothers explores the same issue.

My mother had a brilliant mind but never went beyond high school. I remember being reminded of her when I was reading criticism of Mark Twain in grad school. The critic, I forget who it was, remarked of Twain that "He was a self-educated man, and, like all self-educated people, had surprising depths and shallows." I thought, "Oh, that's Mama." Those who follow their own interests and curiosities may miss knowing some of the things that college-educated people expect you to know, but what they know they really know, and usually much better than their college-educated peers.

George Washington was another self-educated man who had or developedcl an absolute genius for leadership. And of course most people know, or used to know, that Lincoln was also self-educated.

[Murfreesboro]

There used to be a rubric that people went to school for the three Rs, "Reading, Writing, and 'Rithmatic." That's comically expressed, but I'd say that it's actually true. If a brilliant, ambitious person has learned the basics in those areas, he has what he needs to learn on his own.