inhibition

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John Mazziotta pulled out a neurology textbook with pictures of a woman kneeling and praying next to a man who was also kneeling and praying. The woman, Mazziotta explained, had suffered brain damage and could no longer inhibit certain actions. She had not the slightest interest in kneeling and praying at that moment, but she could not stop herself from doing what brains want to do, imitate the action they see, like a monkey behind the glass at a zoo, making faces back at you.

Another thing to remember, Mazziotta said, is that many of the brain’s systems are running all the time. “Think of an airplane,” said Mazziotta. “Most people think that when it lands it has its engines on low and it’s just floating in. But that’s not always so; in landing, an airplane often has to be at full throttle in case it has to react quickly if something happens.” The brain, too he says, is set up to be whirring all the time. Even when we think of it as resting, its neurons are often firing at a low level, ready and waiting, so it can react in time before, for instance, it’s eaten by a bigger, quicker brain.

The brain is working constantly, and one of the tasks it works at is to inhibit itself from a variety of actions. It is striving to resist the urge to raise the coffee cup like the guy across the table, and striving not to do a number of things that might not be in its best interest. As the brain develops- in children and, science is now learning, in teenagers- it is this very inhibition machinery that is being fine-tuned.

“Development,” says Mazziotta, "is progressive inhibition.”

Barbara Strauch, The Primal Teen

the Mask of Guilt

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The fear of repeating a wrong or a fear of repeating past failures can produce an anxiety that can be mistaken for lingering guilt. Rising to meet even the simplest of expectations can be difficult. We become angry at ourselves and guilt-ridden. The bar is so low. Why can't rise above it?  But guilt isn't the culprit. Fear wears the mask of guilt, fooling us into wearing its chains.

Stephen Goforth

Love is Slow and Difficult

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It may be said that fidelity secures itself against unfaithfulness by becoming accustomed not to separate desire from love. For if desire travels swiftly and anywhere, love is slow and difficult; love actually does pledge one for the rest of one’s life, and it exacts nothing less than this pledge in order to disclose its real nature. That is why a man who believes in marriage can no longer believe seriously in ‘love at first sight’, still less in the ‘irresistible’ nature of passion…which is an alibi invoked by the guilty.

Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World

Black Swains

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We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world.

Seeing white swans does not confirm the nonexistence of black swans. There is an exception, however: I know what statement is wrong, but not necessarily what statement is correct. If I see a black swan I can certify that all swans are not white! If I see someone kill, then I can be practically certain that he is a criminal. If I don’t see him kill, I cannot be certain that he is innocent. The same applies to cancer detection: the finding of a single malignant tumor proves that you have cancer, but the absence of such a finding cannot allow you to say with certainty that you are cancer-free.

We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification.

Nissim Taleb, The Black Swain

a stone and a rusty nail

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How do we keep from developing judgmental attitudes? This used to be my big hang-up when I first started counseling. Whenever people shared their problems with me, I found myself thinking,

“If he had stay away from the wrong crowd, this would never have happened.”

“He should have known better.”

“A little common sense could have prevented this…”

“A good lecture show sort her out.”

One day I shared my difficulties with an older counselor, who said, “That used to be my problem, too- and this is how I overcame it.’

Reaching into a desk drawer he took out a stone and a rusty nail.

‘I keep these here,’ he said, "For a special reason. The stone to remind me of the text, 'Let him who is without sin.. be the first to throw a stone' and the nail to remind me what a Friend did for me a long, long time ago on a hill called Calvary."

Since then, whenever I counsel anyone who has gone astray, I say to myself, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

a Counselor

Digital Dating and Divorce

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You are three times more likely to divorce if you met online instead of face-to-face, according to researchers at Michigan State University. They also say online daters are nearly 30 percent more likely to break up in the first year. It might have to do with how each person first approaches the relationship. Nearly everyone who uses dating apps and websites immediately begins by looking for false information in their prospective partner’s profile. The researchers believe suspicion damages the relationship at an early stage. You'll find more details in the online journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

the Beauty of Evil

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Simone Weil said, “Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy as the good; no desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. But with fantasy it's the other way around. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied, intriguing, attractive, and full of charm.”

The media strikingly bear out Simone Weil’s contention. In their offerings it’s almost invariably Eros rather than Agape that provides all the excitement. Success and celebrity rather than a broken and contrite heart that are made to seem desirable.

Good and evil, after all, constitute the essential theme of our mortal existence. In this sense, they may be compared to the positive and negative points which generates an electric current; transpose the points, and the current fails, the lights go out, darkness falls and all is confusion.

So it is with us. The transposition of good and evil in the world of fantasy created by the media leaves us with no sense of any moral order in the universe, and without this, no order whatsoever, social, political, economic or any other, is ultimately attainable.

Malcolm Muggeridge

(in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in 1978)

Bridging the Generation Gap with Reading

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And then one day, she asked him what he was reading. He had just started “The Hunger Games,” a series of dystopian young-adult novels by Suzanne Collins. The grandmother decided to read the first volume so that she could talk about it with her grandson the next time they chatted on the phone. She didn’t know what to expect, but she found herself hooked from the first pages, in which Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister’s place in the annual battle-to-the-death among a select group of teens.

The book helped this grandmother cut through the superficialities of phone chat and engage her grandson on the most important questions that humans face about survival and destruction and loyalty and betrayal and good and evil, and about politics as well. Now her grandson couldn’t wait to talk to her when she called—to tell her where he was, to find out where she was and to speculate about what would happen next.

Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

She lost everything

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Those flames are shooting out of what was once my kitchen
Exactly one week after I moved out of my Atlanta apartment and drove to another state with all my belongings, the woman who took over my lease called me. She had lost all her everything in a massive fire that morning. The apartment was in an old house--which burned to the ground.

I didn't really believe her. I thought she was exaggerating. Until I spoke to my former landlord and saw a video posted online by one of the Atlanta TV stations. Flames could be seen shooting out of my kitchen window. There were shots of dazed tenants standing in the street watching firefighters snuff the smoldering remains. 

The fire started directly below where I used to sleep. Would I have been awake at six in the morning when it started? The woman who took my spot just happened to be awake at that early hour and got out before the blaze took everything she had—except for what she had in her hands.

If I had stayed another week in Atlanta, what would I have picked up as I rushed out of the house? And if I had been there and not woke up when smoke filled the apartment—was I ready for the end of my life?

Stephen Goforth