Shamelessly stolen from Avitable and Karen Sugarpants.
Who lives in your head?
Category: Blogging
I am not an overly religious person, at least not any more, but the picture above is one piece of that life that I still hold onto. It represents a philosophy my dad holds dear, and one which I think would do the world good to embrace a little more.
Throughout our lives, we very often find ourselves in over our heads. Life can get hectic and turbulent, and it becomes difficult to juggle all the myriad responsibilities. Work and friends and bills and whatever other commitments are already straining enough, but add on top of that sickness, whether your own or a child’s or a family members. Any number of inconveniences–from minor to major–can be that proverbial straw that brings the whole load crashing down.
But, what if we, each of us, made a more conscious effort to help out when these inconveniences strike our friends of family? Sure, it may add to your own long list of things to do, but the idea is that other people are pitching in, too. It then becomes easy to help a friend, neighbor, relative through a difficult time. Even small gestures can add up quickly.
I don’t mean that you should drop everything of your own to come to someone else’s rescue (Just look at the picture!), but lend a helping-hand. It’s not about Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Pastafarian ideals. It’s about being a decent human being.
The painting was done by an artist from Cuba who my dad has met on a couple of occasions. The image itself comes from a graphic in an old study Bible. My dad took that graphic to the artist, and asked him to make 3 copies of it, styled however he wanted. The result was three unique canvases, all depicting this same scene. One hangs in each of our houses: mine, my brother’s, and my parents. It hangs by the door, reminding me every time I leave the house to go out and be a decent human being.
And lets face it, a reminder to be decent every now and them can’t hurt.
I’ve been reading some of these 30 Days of Truth posts around the web, and I decided I’d join in. I’m not going to be doing it 30 days straight, I’ll do it on Sundays, and maybe again during the week if I’m feeling particularly inspired about the prompt at the time.
The prompts are from here.
Here are the prompts:
Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself
–
Day 1: Something You Hate about yourself.
Avitable wrote about his inability to turn off his brain. When I first read the prompt, this was the first thing that came to mind about me.
My brain is always running. Creating and destroying worlds every minute. Before I have a conversation with someone, you can believe I have had the conversation dozens of times over in my head, plotting possible arguments, disagreements, etc and making sure I’m prepared for them. Generally, this would be a positive thing, as it means that I am prepared to defend my position no matter how the other person responds. While that sounds great, it generally only leads to my starting the conversation on the defensive, which is never beneficial.
Along these same lines, whenever I’m going to be confronting someone about a problem, or if I have a controversial question of some sort, I will play the conversation over and over again, always looking for the worst-case scenario. As a result, I go into the situation expecting rejection. But, of course, that’s when I even begin the conversation. Most of the time, I convince myself so thoroughly that the conversation is going to go poorly, that I never even bring it up. This has lead to untold losses in friendships, opportunities, or knowledge.
Perhaps, then, the thing I hate most about myself is not that I over-think things; rather, the thing I hate most about myself is that I lack the confidence to pursue something because it might go poorly or it might fail. Is that cowardice? I suppose so. That’s what I hate most about myself.
My dad sent me an article today by Loren F. Nordgren of Northwestern University and Mary-Hunter Morris McDonnell of Harvard Law school about the “Scope-Severity Paradox.” Standard logic would state that for the more victims a given crime has, the more severe it would be, and therefore the stricter punishment would be.
As they found in their studies, this was not really the case. Interestingly, in 2 direct studies they found that the exact opposite was the case: students who reviewed vignettes of cases with few victims in fact tended to rate the crimes as more severe than those students who reviewed vignettes of cases with many victims. For example, take two nearly identical cases: A fraudster cheats two people out of their money, and a fraudster cheats 20 people out of their money. Consistently, the first case was rated as more severe, and given harsher punishments than the second.
Weird, right? Observing the results, it’s difficult to grasp that such a thing can even happen, but they were able to document the same result with about 90 different students. While it seems to defy all conventional logic, the researchers were also able to find a cause: identifiably.
In a secondary study, the identifiably of the victims of the groups were increased. The small-group case studies were accompanied by names, occupations, etc. The large-group case studies were accompanied with a photograph of one of the many victims. In this study the severity and punishment scores were drastically normalized, with the differences being statistically insignificant.
While this is an oversimplification of their studies and results, it sufficiently demonstrates the effect, and quite frankly, it just blows my mind! To clarify a bit further, they didn’t just find these results in a lab: they also studied actual jury decisions on all manners of “toxic tort” cases (asbestos, lead poisoning, etc.). Juries awarded smaller judgments to cases with more plaintiffs, and larger judgments to those cases with fewer plaintiffs.
Where this becomes extremely interesting to me is how we all do this illogical thing all the time, without realizing it. I wonder how the actual legal system tends to skew these results as well. Particularly in cases of copyright infringement, especially dealing with the RIAA.
In these cases, the damages sued for are astronomical in consideration of the actual cost of a single song or album, and indeed, jail time for pirating one single song can often be longer (and with more severe parole stipulations) than rape or murder. How do these instances mesh with the findings of this article? Is an advocacy group more immediately identifiable than a murder victim? Or can the advocacy group more readily identify its victims to the jury because of the notoriety any given band already has?
As for how this knowledge can be used to change the world, it seems this article is the perfect explanation for why a martyr is so effective. A singular person is seen as being victimized by a faceless organization, be that a government, interest group, etc. So people are already predisposed to see the acts of the group as more severe (either positively or negatively) because it was just the one person victimized. So no matter which side of the issue you stand on, the martyr is more effective. From his side, he’s an individual victimized by a group. From the group side, an individual was victimizing many. So the predisposition is that the individual is either more powerful as an individual or more identifiable as a “this could happen to me” situation.
Fun stuff. If you would like to read the actual article, it can be found on the SAGE website. Unfortunately, only the abstract is free, unless you have either a personal subscription or a subscription through a school of some sort. If you can figure out a way to read it, I highly recommend it.