Let's get back to our review of The Matter With Things, which we can say without fear of contradiction is the longest book we'll ever read on LH / RH differences.
And while I wouldn't want to be one, I am certainly grateful that there are specialists in this world, from neuroscientific researchers to cardiologists to... to any human being who knows his stuff about anything -- electricians, plumbers, mechanics, you name it. They always make me feel a bit unmanly. I don't think it's any coincidence that most psychologists are girls, both literally and figuratively.
Thank God my cardiologist doesn't have the attitude to cardiology that I do to psychology, which ranges all the way from Borrr-ring to Get over it.
Can one specialize in generality? Asked the right brain.
It seems that, just as this world is not built for lefthanders, nor is our culture built for rightbrainers. It sounds like a generalization, and it is, but our job as we grow up is to identify some niche in the vast leftorium and pretend we're happy with it.
Again, I wouldn't want to live in a world without LH brainiacs, even though I could never be happy being one. Sunday I had a conversation with a tech in the hospital, and even the word tech connotes the leftorium.
We were talking about the new canard that one should Dream Big and Follow Your Passion, and all that, but I said that this is generally impractical advice, since those types of careers are few and far between. Tell some kid to follow his dream of being a successful actor, athlete, or artist, and you're just setting him up for disappointment. It is how you end up a frustrated tech in a big hospital.
Rather, I suggested that for most people it makes sense to turn it around, and work in order to make it possible to pursue one's passions away from work. This is what I've always done, and indeed, am doing right now.
When I told him I was a psychologist, he said -- as most people do -- something to the effect that it must have been great, or cool, or interesting. They're always surprised to hear, Nah, not really. I just sorta fell into it, but at least it freed me to focus on my real and abiding interests away from work.
Now, at the other end of the spectrum, I was pacing back and forth in my room, waiting for the leftorium to cut me loose, when in wandered the hospital chaplain, who turned out to be a well-informed Orthodox Christian. We had the most wide-ranging conversation, in which he was able to keep up with my most far-out meanderings. It must have been due to an RH <--> RH harmonization.
And what, of all things, is an RH generalist doing in the leftorium? Why is he even there?
The question answers itself: he's there because you're surrounded by LH brainiacs, and there's no one else there for the RH to talk to. I would guess that even a Jewish or Protestant RH will have much more to say to an Orthodox RH chaplain than it will to an LH x-ray tech or phlebotomist.
And now that I'm thinking about it, this is pretty much what I did as a psychologist: lure people via empathy into an RH <---> RH harmonization, and then put their vague RH thoughts and feelings into LH words. Frankly, it worked almost every time. I was pretty good at it, but I was just built that way: an RH misfit in an LH world.
We all need this translating service. It is why -- among other reasons -- religion is here. For me, the church is an RH hospital, just as the hospital is an LH church.
Now this post is getting way out there, because last night I had a dream in which someone came to my house who was fascinated with all things Gagdad -- some kind of super fan who had just recently found the blog.
I asked him how much he had actually read, and he said 10,000 posts! But that wasn't enough. This slightly creepy guy was flipping through family photo albums, playing with my dog, and wanting to know everything about my life.
What could it mean?
That you have an unhealthy fascination with yourself, and you need to get outside yourself a bit more often?
Shut up!
15 comments:
This essay touches on our subject: "on the model of divine revelation, we should envision all human communication as a self-communication that invites others into communion. Thus the tragedy of plagiarism, of simply going online and copying things, is that what’s missing is you."
"You may have a glimmering of a thought, but without the words, it’s just a ghost. You need to 'in-flesh' that thought in actual words."
Sounds like the creepy fan was not wearing a coonskin hat, which makes him a fraud in my book.
Glad you're feeling better and escaped the medical prison system!
It's not that the robots are coming, more like the persons are going.
There's actually a specialist there called a "hospitalist," but it seems like her job is just to synthesize all the other leftoids. Only the chaplain is a true RH.
He's simultaneously utterly useless and the most important. Like me!
"It's not that the robots are coming, more like the persons are going."
That's a bingo!
There's a book out there I haven't read called Bullshit Jobs, which is more about all these administrative and managerial jobs that serve no real purpose. It seems the key what makes a job useless is ultimate purpose, in which the uselessness fits the LH world, and less so for the RH world (which is much smaller and pays less).
Not sure I fleshed out that point well, but you get the useless point.
I’m curious about your little “The left ruins everything” mantra. As some of you may know, in other quarters “The right ruins everything” as well. Does this mean that centrists are the only good guys?
Around here, it’s often implied that sin runs so rampant that no human organization can ever be trusted for long (except for conservative news/entertainment organizations of course).
Wouldn’t it be easier to just proclaim that “Sin ruins everything”? ...and then target the sin wherever it occurs so our children don't wind up as depressed wage slaves wearing opposite sex clothing?
Breaking news from Genesis 3.
This slightly creepy guy was flipping through family photo albums, playing with my dog, and wanting to know everything about my life.
An old Sting song comes to mind. Ha - the video even starts with a dog.
Also reminds of a dream from way back around the time I stumbled in here. My guardian angel was in my house, dressed like a soldier; creeped me out at first, but then I understood why he was there.
Sometimes in life, you get to be the slightly creepy person.
As a teen, when my church minister tapped me to be his acolyte for a couple months I did so dutifully but my last remaining pew buddy left the church since he didn’t like sitting alone. This was back in the days during that fad when church-going wasn’t cool in my town. Sadly for me this meant that after my tour of acolyte duty was over, I now got to sit alone. Nobody wants to sit alone in church. Because you’re implying that you’re a slightly creepy person that nobody wants to sit with. And I'd even made reasonable attempts at glomming onto families for the purpose of not sitting alone.
So I tried sitting with my sister and that minister’s daughter. Both were pretty and popular and liked talking about boys a lot and didn’t want some brother sitting with them. So they wound up ditching me. Ya know, sat in different places or inside crowds or wherever I they thought I couldn’t find them. That’s when I quit going to church.
Interestingly, sis and friend doubled down on treating me like a slightly creepy person pretty much up to the present day, even after I made numerous attempts at presenting myself as a perfectly pleasant nice person who others liked (at least out in meatspace), even trying out churches elsewhere.
Both girls married well to these big jock guys who made lots of money in businesses which are good at extracting wealth from people, where I was more of an honest player so that might have had something to do with it. People like that are good at rationalizing their wealth and consumption as absolute proof that Jesus thinks them cooler and less creepy than the lone pew sitter. And so they tagged me as being “jealous”. It was bad enough that I was a lone pew sitter, but now I had to be jealous of their wealth which Jesus had given them.
So I’d gone from being my sister’s primary go-to substitute for her little babysitting business whenever a big jock guy suddenly asked her out, to being a creepy person who’s jealous and therefore not allowed to be left alone with her children no matter how nice and normal I tried to be. Because nobody likes a creepy person who’s also jealous. A lot of horror movies out there about jealous creepy people and children.
I’ve tried chalking it all up to the nuances of sin. Satan can be one tricksy and false Genesis 3 bitch. But others are telling me that human anthropology is providing better answers.
From the linked essay "A robot is writing the papers, a robot is commenting on them, no humans are involved. So why do it? Wouldn’t it be better not to perpetuate the illusion of education? Except schools indulge this illusion all the time. So I suppose ChatGPT is the appropriate tool for the culture we’ve created."
And that's a bingo too, the benefit of ChatGPT might just be that we figure out that "getting good grades to get a good job" in the age of robots who do the robotic work we used to do, but better, that an education whose point is not educating you, is worse than worthless. If enough people realize that, we might find people getting the heck out of our schools and getting educated again.
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