A family is more than the sum of its parts, or the relative densities of blood and water.

I'm pretty much thinking I never want to have kids.  And, while this is personal choice, I also believe it is a matter of faith.  I believe very strongly in zero population growth, even the negative population growth that comes from having no biological children of your own.  The least you could do with all the poverty and homelessness in the world is to adopt children who need families, and then you're not adding to the overall population of the world anyway.

In the event this raises questions in the validity of a family with adopted children, I would like to point out that family is not confined to your blood relatives; rather, it's a shared experience of living.  I live with three other girls, and I would consider them as much my sisters as my biological sisters (had I any).  But it doesn't even have to be the shared experience of living together; when I worked backstage in high school, I had a family in the people I worked with, spent time with, shared joy and frustration with.  Family is much more than a nuclear unit of Mom, Dad, Jane, and Billy.

I don't think it's responsible to suggest that some people you live with would have the same rights to you, your possessions, and your life as the family you grew up with.  I suppose that's the defining factor: growing up and coming of age.  Yes, there are all the legal definitions that [necessarily] allocate resources and responsibilities.  Those are important, too, in our society.

I write this thinking about families I know with adopted children.  It's no big secret to them, and as far as I know my friend has always known she was adopted.  She has had contact with her biological mother, starting when she was 18 (which I believe was the mother's stipulation).  And that's that.  The two other children in the family are biological, but she has no less claim to her parents' affection.

No, you can't blow up pineapples with your mind, but thinking happy thoughts doesn't hurt, either.

I know I just bashed positive thinking, so what I want to talk about today might seem a little hypocritical.  I could spend a paragraph (and I just might) telling you about how it's not (hypocritical, that is) but that would be a waste of words.  You're going to decide for yourself, whatever I say, and that's the beauty of being an individual.  But what are words for if not wasting, so yeah, there's a bit about why this is different than my rant on positive thinking.  Just roll with it.  Anyway, here I go...

Last night I had what you might call a revelation.

The night began with business as usual; I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to find a position that was comfortable for more than two minutes, and generally feeling horrible.  While most people (I presume) are able to drift into a vaguely comforting and blissfully thoughtless pre-sleep state in a timely manner (read: not two hours) after they get into bed, "sleepy-time" does not translate for my brain.  My thoughts do not slow down and I am not able to turn them to counting sheep or visualizing numbers 1-100 or floating in a void.  Most of what I do is worry.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I am a worrier, like my mother and my grandmother.  I try not to worry about what I can't control, of course; for the most part it works pretty well.  I would even suggest that I sometimes adopt a rather devil-may-care attitude.  However, all bets are off when I go to bed.  It's not that I worry about things I can do nothing about, but the opposite; I worry about things I would normally have a hand in but don't because I'm trying to go to sleep. Key word: trying. When you're in bed it doesn't do you any good to think of what clothes you're going to wear tomorrow or that the due date for your next tuition payment is coming up or that you have to read 100 pages for class in two days, because you're in bed.  It's like these things pounce on me when they see me mentally vulnerable, because there is one thing I worry about that I don't really have control over: getting enough sleep.  It's my very own encyclopedia illustration of "The Vicious Cycle."

So I was lying there listening to my classical music when I thought, "what if jI just eliminate "should" from my thoughts?"  So I changed every "I have to..." and "I should..." and "I need to..." to "I want."  And it worked.

Instead of "I should get up early and go to the gym tomorrow," I thought "I want to get up early and go to the gym tomorrow," and with that small substitution I felt better.

My worry about getting enough sleep was mostly coming from that, so instead of listening to classical because "I should listen to something quiet so I'll go to sleep soon" I changed my ipod to pop rock because "I want to go to sleep but I don't have to so I want to listen to the music I feel like listening to."  My mom always says, what's the worst thing that could happen if you don't go to sleep?  You're tired the next day.  Eventually, you're going to be tired enough (probably the next night) to go to sleep.

I do want to go a little bit into the difference between this and the positive thinking I was talking about earlier.  I feel like this whole "power of positive thinking" thing is way out of hand.  I see people expecting job prospects and other people's ideas and even actual physical realities to change just because they wish really, really hard on that star or believe everyone is born with an angelic conscience.  This is delusional.  Jobs will open up to you if you do the legwork, and a lot of the time even after that they don't pan out.  You have a chance of changing someone's mind if you argue your case convincingly, but even then it's like that person is an arbitrary judge with the final "yea" or "nay."  And influencing physical things with your mind?  Even now psychologists and physicians are undecided as to whether your thoughts influence your biochemistry or it's the other way around.  Influencing things outside your own body: forget it.  Delusional.

But your thoughts are all words; try to think of the last time you didn't have a spastic inner monologue (or dialogue, or poly-logue) continuously running through your mind?  Bet you can't.  The human experience is defined by language.  And before you protest, when you were a baby (without language) your thoughts and experiences were still framed with communication (probably, because it's not something we can really know).

So if words make up your mind and, by extension, your perception (which is really what we're talking about, because perception is reality and experience and emotion and thought), couldn't you affect your own mind through control of words?  Words and language have an intimate power, and since emotions are thoughts (perhaps unconsciously) and thoughts are words, then you can control (or at least shape) your emotions with words.

Okay, so in theory it works.  Try it with me. (I honestly have no idea if it'll have an effect on you.)  Pick something that stresses you out: impending exams; looming bills; that report you have to get to your boss by next week.  Phrase it with an "I have to" or an "I should," eg "I should study for my test next week."  Ugh, even knowing I don't have a test next week, that makes me feel all slimy inside.  Okay, now change it to "I want to."  eg "I want to study for my test next week."  Maybe add a "because," like "I want to study for my test next week because I want a good grade."  Look, another "I want."  We're on a roll.  Now, does that make you feel better?  I feel better.  Now, even though my test was hypothetical, I feel better about it and better about hypothetically studying for it.

I just wanted to share this with y'all, because I think it's so awesome.  I didn't necessarily go to sleep faster after that, but I am an insomniac...

Anyway, to finish up I just want to emphasize that this is not what I would call "magical" positive thinking.  As my parents have always told me, you can't change anyone's mind but your own.  In the same vein, you can't get a new car through wishing, Dad's Alzheimer's isn't going to go away even if you pray, and $30,000 isn't going to appear in your bank account just because it would be really, really awesome.

It would be awesome.  Oh well.

NB The title reference is from "Accepted."  Good movie.  I recommend it.

I Don't Mean To Suggest That I Think There Are Only 5 Elements...

Being a science major, I have learned quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.  However, I only call Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Spirit "elements" because, well, I haven't got a better name for them.  That means I don't classify my 5 "elements" with other elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and the like.  I'm not that crazy.

I was going to post these as a series, but I thought the task might be better served if I just bunched them together in a page (see top navbar) along with Multiverse and Triad.  That way I can mention them with indiscriminate abandon in my posts from here on out and y'all can refamiliarize yourself with what I mean as you see fit.  Thanks!

Does Technology Have an Impact on Family Interactions?

There's certainly less face-to-face interaction between members of families. But if a family really wants to spend time together, the members that are really serious will spend time together. On the flip side, technology connects people. I'm away at college and I talk to my mom almost every day and email my family all the time. My brother lives in North Carolina (I'm in NY) and I can talk to him because of tech like phones and computers. Granted, he is a bit of a--cough cough--luddite; he rarely checks his email and he and his wife never turn on the one cell phone they have between them. Sort of in that vein, technology also has the power to hurt family relationships. I (as a child of the '90s) am more comfortable with any sort of technology than are, say, my grandparents, or even my mother. I will be the first to admit that while I'm trying to teach them something about the computer, or the digital camera, or their cell phones I can be a bit short with them, and they, in turn, get fed up with me. Consequently, we sometimes have to avoid some subjects of conversation, because we'll all get annoyed with each other. Or like with my brother, who I have to call and actually talk to (so old-fashioned!) on the phone, I would talk to him a lot more if he would just log into his email more than once a month (*grrr*). Though (and not thinking of my brother (whose aversion to technology is baffling to me)) perhaps this disconnect between me and my grandparents is just the normal distancing of generations. Since we don't have a control scenario, we'll probably never know. So, good or bad? C'mon, you know I loathe such subjective and arbitrary classifications...

The Fallibility of Positive Thinking

As expected, school is severely curtailing my writing; be not afraid, because I'm still here!  I'll post at least once a week, when I find time.  And on that thought...

Words have power, as do emotions and ideas.  These things can influence others and even the world around us in ways we cannot comprehend.  But wishing will not always make it so.

Along the lines of "Smile or Die," too often we put faith in the power of reason or right.  "It'll all work out in the end," we assure ourselves.  We (at least, people my age) grew up with Disney princesses who were beautiful and just and always got the guy in the end while saving the kingdom, Power Rangers who were granted magical powers to do righteous battle with the slimy forces of evil, and our parents and teachers telling us "you can be anything you want when you grow up;" even Pokemon is a story about an ordinary kid beating the odds and saving the world from injustice.  And because we were kids the adults around us would have been foolish to let on that the world isn't always shiny and fair, because we would have thrown hissy fits.

But now I see people my age and older buying into the childlike delusion that "everything will be alright."  I don't mean to sound pessimistic; there is good in the world (I suppose depending on how you define "good"), and most people could benefit from a little positive thinking.  I accept the evidence for the placebo effect, and I believe that the right attitude can help you fight disease.  Well, its effectiveness has been demonstrated.  Many forms of Eastern Asian medicine talk about chi.  I call it the fifth element.  But if you have chronic bronchitis, or stomach cancer, or hepatitis, it's not a miracle cure.  Just thought I'd mention this.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you wish on that shooting star and click your heels together and imagine a better world, the world is not going to get better unless you get up and do something about it.

More thoughts on positive thinking (no pun intended)...

Help charity: water

What can I say: when it comes to the interwebz, I'm sort of a joiner.  Anywho, it's really easy to help support the cause of clean water for developing countries: just click the button and complete the task.  Simple, right?  This cause is important to me because of my interest in public health and infectious disease; a lot of water-borne pathogens could be easily avoided by simple sanitation measures, sometimes as simple as not digging a well near the public "toilets."  I am also particularly interested in parasites, so I'm well-acquainted with disease through drinking water.  Two of the most vicious parasitic diseases that could be controlled, even eradicated by a bit of sanitation are Guinea Worm and Schistosomiasis.  Visit the charity: water site to learn more.  I just read an article too about how digging deeper wells to try to get past the pollutants actually pushes the pollutants farther down, so that they're in the new wells anyway.  Please click on the button to help for free!

Brought To You by PSY 101

I'm not terribly impressed with the American Psychological Society, and the motives behind its formation.  Science is supposed to help people.  Yes, there should always be research.  How else would we get anywhere at all?  But the application of the knowledge gained through research (among other methods) should not be underappreciated, nor its impact underestimated.  If you need to tie everything back to gain, research would flounder if people who did not appreciate research for the sake of research were to disappear.  A project needs simple, tangible things to proceed; resources such as money, labor, and materials must be procured, and by someone who wants to study that particular area.  Resources will not be forthcoming if no one wants the research done, and the people with the most money (usually businessmen and/or governments) don't really care about research for the sake of research.  They want results; they want profit, or power, or prestige, or sometimes, as I elaborate on later, they want to "help people."  There are "real- world" repercussions of research, and therefore research must spring from the "real world."  If for no other reason than to perpetuate research, practical application should be given its due.

Describing science, any science, as "the study of…" only accurately describes one aspect of it.  The point of science is to further knowledge and understanding of a subject, but for a purpose.  Always, there is a purpose.  A motive.  In a way there is no "pure" science.  The gain, not necessarily monetary or financial, or for prestige or power, is always there.   Nothing is done without potential for reward.  Isn't that a tenet of psychology itself?  Perhaps just behaviorism.  But it is relevant to all the disciplines.

Humanism is kinda, sorta, um… crap.  (I said it! Oh, oh, burn!)  I will repeat: nothing is done without the potential for reward.  And this is the basis of my own personal philosophy.  Oooh, I shudder to call it that.   Okay, perception of the world and reality, and whatever else is relevant.  Nothing is magnanimous.  In my first draft of this piece, I wrote completely magnanimous. But I think now that I'll just leave the "completely" out entirely.  Because I put it in, I suppose, as a concession to the ideas of people before me and people around me.  Now I can finally identify this… weakness (don't I sound like a fanatical control freak?) as humanism.  Which I consider completely bunk.  (Haha! There's the "completely!")

I have removed the "completely" because (and now I'm back to my main point) my own perception of this topic leaves no middle ground.  Magnanimity is an illusion, sort of like free will.  I dislike extremes, and when there is no spectrum leaving room for doubt, but I see no way around this.  It's a yes/no thing.  An on/off switch.  And the magnanimity switch is off.  Stuck in the "off" position, in fact.  Everything is self-serving in some manner.  This is not necessarily a "bad" thing.  It seems nature or some god (in the form of evolution and natural selection) has built reward into the concept of "doing good."  When a person does something "good," e.g. giving money to charity, he receives a reward.   He feels good about himself, and is fulfilling his need for self-validation.  Or if he is pressed by an individual or individuals he cares about, he feels good about pleasing his loved one(s).  Or if the act is for a public image, he is released from the scrutiny of the aforementioned public.  Etc.