We have been taught to chase the unattainable: to be more than what we are at any given point in time. We are a culture of idealistically naive strivers unable to be content with what is if only for a moment. This absurdly unrealistic goal (to be more than what we are at any given point in time) comes with the high cost of psychological dependence. Feeling chronically imperfect, we sell out for reassurance, validation and approval. Feeling chronically incomplete, we compete in consumption and stuff ourselves beyond measure.

This chronic deficit of self-acceptance becomes a matter of national deficit and undermines the socio-political independence of our society. Long-term sovereignty of a nation rests with psychological independence of its constituents. A nation of psychologically insecure denizens is at war with itself, and is, thus, divided.

On this 4th of July, 2010, and onward, I encourage you to proclaim your psychological independence - from a hollowing-out and incessant desire for more. Your individual psychological health is part of our collective wealth. Self-help, self-care, self-awareness and self-acceptance are patriotic. Stop waging war on yourself: you are doing your best, nonstop, all the time. On some level you know it. Make it official. And as soon as we do, as a nation, we will shift the paradigm from conspicuous consumption of goods and calories to the era of conspicuous compassion and moderation.

Proclamation of Psychological Independence

1.

We confuse perfection with imperfection

But there is no difference

Unless, of course, you compare what is with what isn't.

2.

If (at this very moment) I could be better, worse or other than what I am right now

I wouldn't be myself.

But I am, perfectly imperfect.

3.

It is always like that, not just during this now

But at any now that you are alive.

Present is perfect.

Proclamation of Psychological Independence Explained:

1.

We confuse perfection with imperfection but there is no difference (between these two) unless, of course, you compare what is with what isn't.

Explanation: what's real is real, what's not is not. Here's a brief inventory of what exists on this planet at any given point in time: the planet, of course; the animal kingdom; and you (the humankind) with its fantasies of what still could be. My point is this: there is no other reality at any given point in time aside from the one that actually is. We can now envision and imagine a theoretically better world and we can compare it to the real world that exists and we can say: "I don't want this actual world, I want that theoretical world." Suffering is borne out of this very comparison: the ideal always beats the pants off the real. In any comparison of what is with what isn't, in any comparison of reality to fiction, fiction always looks prettier. So, as we envision what still could be, we ignore what still is. But here's the existential glitch: there is only what there is at any given point in time. If we don't know how to be content with what is, we are stuck chasing the tail of desire, constantly optimizing, supersizing, perfecting. Bottom-line is this: perfection is a state that is beyond improvement; reality is the best that it can be at any given point in time (even if it had been better at some point in the past or if it can be still perfected at some point in the future); if so, then whatever is, at any given point in time, is the best that it can be, i.e. perfect. If this momentary reality (the one and only we have at any point in time) is perfect, then it is only not enough when we compare it with what isn't (i.e. our idealistic and naïve visions of still could be).

2.

If I could be this very moment better, worse or other than what I am right now I wouldn't be myself. But I am, perfectly imperfect.

Explanation: At any given point in time, you are what you are. That is self-evident. What this means is that at any given point in time (like right now) you are not less, not more, but exactly what you are, i.e. all you can be (right now). If you were in any way different right now, you wouldn't be you, but you are you, exactly as you are. What this means is that right now you are the best that you can be. Why? Because you cannot be any better right now. Sure you can be better at a later point in time, but we are talking about this moment, the one and only moment that there is, in which you are exactly what you are, not worse, not better, but just you. Doing the best that you can (at any given point in time) = being the best that you can (at any given point in time). I see this as inevitable perfection. You have arrived in this moment, perfectly imperfect, with nothing amiss and fully realized. Self-realization isn't when you are more than you can be at any given point in time; self-realization is when you realize that you are this real you, not the perfectionistic figment of imagination of what you should be right now. Understand this in your bones: you are what you are and that's enough. Accept your inevitable perfection at this moment and perfect the future if you still so desire. Self-acceptance isn't the end of striving (no, you can still strive, just without that overcompensating urgency and rushed desperation) but a beginning of psychological independence.

3.

It is always like that, not just during this now but at any now that you are alive. Present is perfect.

Explanation: You are doing the best that you can and, therefore, being the best that you can be, not just now, but always. Sure it might not seem so when you compare you to not-you (i.e. to some theoretical you that never exists or to others who are, by definition, not like you). But if you compare you to you, as you are, then you are always doing the best that you can do and, therefore, being the best that you can be, non-stop, without fail. Think this through until this becomes self-evident: there is no past right now nor is there any future in this moment, there is only this, this moment, this now, and it's always like that. You are always in some kind of now, in which you are only what you are, not more, not less, but just enough. Reality does not short-change us: there is no celestial lay-away in which the reality is withholding better versions of itself until a later time. Right now, which is always, there is only this, this moment, however it is, not less, not more, such as it is, perfectly imperfect. Look around for a moment: everything is what it is, if a door is half-ajar, it is half-ajar, if it is closed, it is closed, if it is open, it is open; if the sky is azure blue, then it is, if, however, it is overcast, then it is overcast. And so are you - in this moment, which is always, - all you can be, perfectly imperfect. Accept this ordinary, self-evident perfection of what you are in this moment and, if you still need to, perfect the future. Savor the new unhurried calmness of this continued self-optimization: when perfecting yourself from the platform of self-acceptance, you take your time living.

From Conspicuous Consumption to Conspicuous Compassion

Am I oversimplifying? Hell, yeah! My mind is still green (and I do hope it stays this way) but it does (fortuitously) know that the greener pasture on the other side of the hill is just an optical illusion, just the Jungian shadow of our insatiable, culturally-kindled appetite for more. I'll be writing and talking about all this jazz of self-acceptance and inevitable perfection as long as I breathe. My motive has nothing to do with altruism but self-preservation. You see, the world of self-rejection is a merciless jungle. If I can help you accept yourself, my guess is that you'll be kinder to others, which, in turn, will translate into a hopefully less hostile world all around. Self-acceptance means psychological independence, i.e. a world in which people mostly mind their own business, meeting their psychological needs in-house, without psychological blackmail or relational warfare, without surface-deep resource-intense contests of egos and psychological careerism. When we realize that we are doing the best that we can and being the best that we can, at any given point in time, eventually it dawns on us that everyone's like that and that, my fellow mind, becomes a platform for forgiveness and compassion. When you stop attacking yourself you automatically call a truce on the world at large. It is for this and only this reason that I keep jabbering about self-acceptance: self-acceptance powers compassion and compassion - at the end of the day - is just another form of self-care. On this July 4th and every day onward, be psychologically independent, even if you are in debt otherwise!

Now, somebody, toss me a veggie hot-dog and a couple of sparklers. Time to light up the sky!

Resources:

360° of Compassion

On to the review proper: the movie has eclipsed my modest expectations. Here's my spoiler-proof 10 point analysis of the movie that gives away nothing essential.

1. Movie begins with a psychologically astute and empirically sound review of the institution of marriage.
2. C30 Volvo hatchback hasn't been back. Ed still drives XC60 SUV. Bummer.
3. Jake is still Chippendale-"beautiful," the body a reincarnation of Marky Mark from Calvin Klein 90s, and just as good an actor.
4. Charlie (Bella's father) still cracks me up.
5. Edward almost has a tan.
6. However you slice it, straight guy, you are going to squirm a bit from the homoerotic tension between a bare-chested werewolf and a vampire, as the two play a game of intellectual chess, competing in romantic pseudo-altruism, with a sleeping beauty in between, while camped out on a mountain top.
7. CGI is tastefully understated.
8. Dialogue is neither on the nose nor improv-sloppy: just as it should be.
9. Speaking of "shoulds." Psychological punchline of the movie is Bella's stated dilemma: to be what she should be or to be what she is. She chooses to existentially affirm herself, and to ignore the dualistic distinction between life and death.
10. I still don't want to live forever.

Do you?

As I watched my brother resist being branded with the club's ink-stamp (on the grounds that the ink is absorbed by the skin and then has to be subsequently filtered out by one's liver, a valid enough point) I watched Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, the founder of Tinariwen (who at the age of 4 saw his Tuareg rebel father executed), walk through the door. There was no fanfare to his entrance: just a slim guy, with a characteristic afro, passing from one space to another. It was just early enough that the foyer was almost empty, with the exception of myself, my brother and the guy on the door looking for a way around the rubber-stamp issue. Ibrahim, with nomadic seamlessness, navigated right through the traffic jam that had been created by my brother and, I believe, having noticed me notice him, looked right through me, continuing to move. The all-too-familiar face from the album cover sliced through me almost unnoticed like an anonymous hand at a photo op in this town of pressing flesh.

As I turned around and followed Ibrahim with my eyes, I saw him cut an effective diagonal through the still empty space of the dance floor of the club and disappear out of sight, like a desert mirage. I tried to follow but my Western mind got immediately stimulus-bound by the "merch" stand. I bought a black t-shirt with a quote from Ibrahim that organized my consciousness for the rest of the evening.

The opening act, I believe, the Geologist, was a perfect juxtaposition for what was to follow. One guy, a mixing station, a sonic universe of intriguing electronic complexities. As if startled by the magnitude of the juxtaposition himself, Geologist didn't excavate too long and shortly left the stage. The cyclically empty space of the club finally filled up, out came Tinariwen, in all its indescribable Saharan rhythm-and-flow, and the mostly standing crowd started rippling with dance moves and self-transcendence.

The Friday evening ended - as they all do - with the night, which, in its turn, was followed by this Saturday morning. As I cut my way through the six lanes of the infamous DC beltway, I popped in a CD of Tinariwen (which by the way means "The Empty Spaces") and thought about the endless self-importance of this District of Complexity with its never-ceasing stream of tumbling political weeds, Ibrahim's quote glaring in white on my t-shirt-black chest. Which was: "Simplicity is freedom." Short enough for a constitution, heh?

I generally don’t like saying “no” to reality but in this case I’ll break my own pattern and resist a trend.  But before I get in the way of this pendulum swing, some context.  The ouroboros snake of architecture, that’s been chasing form with function and function with form, is once again shedding its skin.  In Cathleen McGuigan’s Newsweek article “Starchitecture: A Modest Proposal” we learn, from the mouth of Rob Rogers, a partner at Rogers Marvel in New York, that the profession of architecture is on an economic diet and “has to cut back, regrow, and reimagine what it is we’re all supposed to do.”  McQuigan explains that “the Bilbao Effect,” the trend of building “extravagant, eye-popping” trophy buildings, is over.  The pendulum of architectural change appears to be swinging from form to function, from iconic, identity-building architecture towards more functional, more sustainable building.  In sum, “In: clean and green.  Out: all those pointless pointy tops.”

I have a bit of a problem with this either/or (either form/or function) mentality.  Let me, first, state this loud and clear: I am all for “clean and green.”  I am just not so sure about the presumed pointlessness of the pointy tops.  Let me explain.  I believe that “the Bilbao Effect” is a bit misunderstood.  “The Bilbao Effect” is pattern-interruption architecture, i.e. architecture of awakening.   You see, mind thrives on clichés, patterns, stereotypes and schemas.  Mind likes the same reality cereal for breakfast.  So, when  the mind stumbles upon the unfamiliar, it chokes and wakes up.  Intentional pattern-interruption, as a method of therapy or architecture, surprises the mind-curmudgeon, and, in so doing, leverages presence and mindfulness.  Understood as such, Bilbao-effect buildings, in general, and Frank Gehry’s buildings, in particular, aren’t iconic but iconoclastic, not just pointless slippery slopes of architectural excess but arrestingly provocative challenges to our incessant search for the point of something.  Gehry-like architects are daring rascal sages that  use form to organize sublime head-on collisions with essence.  I don’t really know if the Gehrys of architecture consciously operate as the zen masters of landscape but I know this:  each Bilbao, on some level, is an architectural koan, and just like a koan, its pointlessness is the very point  at which form meets function. 

Elsewhere I read that Gehry “declared his independence from the angular” and that he “embarked on adventurous architecture of […] forms that had no precedent.”  Good for him and good for us.  Independence from the architecturally angular is independence from psychologically linear.  Architecture of adventure is architecture of openness.   Sure, “green and clean” is logistically pragmatic.  But what is emotionally pragmatic is a bit of freedom from pragmatism.  Consider Bilbao-effect (not necessarily, Bilbao-style) buildings not as pointless architectural excess but as existentially relevant topographical alarm-clocks for urban consciousness.  Indeed, when you look at a building and you don’t see one, you see the seer, the witness, the very you in the process of making sense of seeming architectural nonsense.  Admittedly, Bilbao-effect, like all meditation, is a means to its own end, an essential opportunity for a rats-race mind to chase its own tail of self-referencing introspection. 

Here’s my own immodest architectural proposal: each borough needs an architectural ouroboros.  No, not some eye-popping dinosaur obelisk of size-worship but something mind’s-eye-popping.   Stated differently: “Out: mindlessly-conspicuous consumption of form.  In: mindful marriage of form, function and pattern interruption.”

In sum, I heartily welcome the “green and clean” vision of future architecture.  But might we also preserve the invaluable culture of pattern-interruption architecture that, upon encounter, wipes the mind’s slate of preconceived notions clean?  Economically-responsible clean-up of the environment best begins with mind-detox.

References:

“Starchitecture: a Modest Proposal,” Cathleen McGuigan, Newsweek, June 21, 2010

“Great Buildings of the World,” Time, 2010

So, a couple of days ago I am watching Jon Stewart interview Tim Pawlenty about his possible presidential ambitions. At a glance, I liked the guy. He struck me as well-informed, fast on his thinking feet, not without a bit of defensiveness, laconic, a decent listener, and, generally, a bit Obamesque. Jon Stewart took enough interest in the guy to have him stick around for a couple of rounds of "unedited" prying. So, when asked once again about whether he would consider running, Pawlenty shares that to run for a president in this country you have to be rich and/or famous and/or have a "shtick." Pawlenty's shtick-size aside, I agree, with a minor addition: you also have to be psychologically healthy. I think it's about time we have presidential candidates undergo a series of psychological evaluations. My reasons follow.

Leadership into Unknown

Presidential candidates part-time as fortune-tellers. But can future be known? You see, everyone currently alive is alive in the same exact "now." We are all at the exact same time: not a single one of us (out of almost 7 billion) is a nanosecond ahead. What this means is that no one, not you, not me, not the next presidential candidate, knows a thing about the future that doesn't yet exist. The next moment of time hasn't happened yet for any of us to experience it and report it as a fact. And anyone claiming to know the future or promising you a particular version of the future is exaggerating their existential mandate. Presidential campaigns begin with definitive statements of visions. This future-telling naiveté is frankly laughable.

Voters are promise-shoppers. They are interested in the promises that support their values and in guarantees. Any presidential candidate who definitely, categorically guarantees this or that outcome, plan, agenda must have earned his/her political stripes in virtual reality. Just check the events of 2010: plumes of volcano smoke over Europe, plumes of underwater oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Reality renews every nanosecond without consulting anyone. And anyone gung ho enough to lead three hundred million plus people, blind, into the unknown, on nothing but a vision, on some level, must be intoxicated with his/her own ego. Maybe not anyone, but you have to wonder...

Question of Priorities

Presidential candidates, however different they are in their platforms, seem to have one common political denominator: they run on the good ol' political octane of family values. Let's pause to look at the absurdity of this. Presidents are uninsurable. President of the U.S. is, perhaps, the most dangerous job in the world. Thus, the life-long security detail for the president and president's family. Who, I ask you, in their psychologically healthy mind, would on one hand proclaim family values and on the other hand so blatantly and irreversibly jeopardize the wellbeing of their own family? This isn't a rhetorical question. In our voting neediness for validation and mirroring, in our voting thirst for identification and for a way to relate to any given presidential candidate, we fail to ask ourselves the following: what psychologically healthy person would be willing to put their own family in such harm's way? Would you do it?! Can you relate to putting your loved ones in harm's way? Of course, a common but poorly thought out objection would be that presidential candidates are self-sacrificing heroes. Give me a break: a hero (e.g. Jack Bauer) understands the necessity of acting alone and minimizing all collateral relational damage. Any married/parent presidential candidate, as far as I am concerned, has failed the test of family priorities. Should we automatically disqualify fathers of two and mothers of five from the presidential mandate? I don't know. I am not in the business of issuing "shoulds." Not my shtick. But I am certainly interested in raising this question as we approach another season of political football.

Rule Out Character Pathology

The question that Jon Stewart didn't ask, but, I hope, will with the next presidential wannabe is the "why?" question. As I see it (and I've been almost non-stop wrong in my life on just about everything) there are three types that rush to the throne: moralizing/proselytizing control freaks, idealists, and peer-pressure marionettes. What psychologically healthy person would want to assume the ultimate responsibility for the wellbeing of a nation, for its nuclear arsenal? Who, in their right mind, would want to play god so much that they'd be okay with an endless series of zero-sum scenarios in which they will be deciding matters of life and death pretty much every day of their working life for four or eight years? Do you, the reader, have that much ego, that much arrogance, that much unbridled confidence, that much operational callousness to play god for, arguably, measly living, while all along gravely reducing your own and your family's literal physical wellbeing? Which of you is so attached to your ideas of how the world should be that, if given a chance, you'd test your favorite socio-economic hypothesis on a sample pool of three hundred plus million not necessarily willing subjects? If you are reading this and thinking "I'd do it," I encourage you to check yourself in the mirror for a martyr's halo.

As a psychologist examining psychology of presidential ambition, what's running through my head is a series of clinical rule-out hypotheses: "ego," manic phase, narcissism, sublimated sociopathy, pathological approval-seeking. Now, I am not pointing fingers at any given candidate and saying that he or she is psychologically unhealthy. No. I am pointing my generic clinical finger at the entire presidential pool and saying to you, voter: do you see the necessity of psychological screening for this kind of job?

Don't get me wrong: I am not actually proposing a "psych eval" for presidential candidates. I don't think that this idea actually stands a chance of realization. Even if this kind of psychological evaluation were to be somehow voted into the process, there'd be endless debates about how to do it and the partiality of the interviewers. And I'd be the first one to be skeptical of its outcomes. In politics, with enough money, everything can be fudged.

But here's a brief list of some intuitive "rules of thumb" to my fellow voting guinea pigs as we shop for a shepherd.

1. Whoever is trying the hardest to win (psychologically, politically, or monetarily), is too desperate to win, and is, therefore, most for sale. Look for a politician who is the most reluctant and noncommittal, for the one who is asking for a huge raise as opposed to spending his/her own money to work (day and night, literally) for, essentially, nothing, when you factor in the lethality risks.

2. Whoever is the most categorical and definitive is the most naïve. The first guy or gal who scratches the back of his/her head the most and confidently, without self-deprecation, says "dunno" the most is the most epistemologically sober and life-seasoned to issue childish guarantees about the future that doesn't yet exist. For example, when Obama says "complicated" (as mocked by Jon Stewart) he is essentially saying "I don't know." That's existential courage in my book. When Tim Pawlenty said that he didn't have that much of a "shtick" (even though that came with unexpected erotic connotations), he won a point or two in my voting mind. Look for authentic humility rather than for high school coach bravada.

3. Whoever first "confesses" that he or she has been in long-term (preferably, psycho-dynamic) therapy, is able to openly talk about what he/she had worked on in therapy, and is able to articulate a no-nonsense meditation practice (not just prayer), is likely to be more emotionally self-regulated and better self-aware.

4. Finally (I have a longer list in mind but I don't want to bore you, it's Saturday night after all), whoever has the least to lose (in the way of spouse, children, dogs) and checks out on the above three points, is probably in the psychological ballpark.

You might say: but what about whether a given presidential candidate is a democrat or a republican? These, my fellow reading-writing-thinking minds, are quickly becoming just two politically archaic words without much meaning. Put simply, I'll take a psychologically healthy person over a party zombie any day. How about voting wisdom or, at least, psychological health?

Hmm…  This little bit of “good news” is offered without any explanation.  Could it be, perhaps, from all the coke that’s been snorted with the help of US currency?  After all, according to CNN, 90% of all US bills carry traces of cocaine, which happens to be an analgesic.  Or are we just that turned on by sullied paper? 

Pay-day is a pain-free day, indeed.

Story

There are many different time-points to start a story. For the protagonists of this story, this story started about 11, 500 years ago. For me - this story started yesterday - when I read Newsweek's "History in the Remaking: A Temple Complex in Turkey That Predates even the Pyramids is Rewriting the Story of Human Evolution." The known facts are simple: archeologist Schmidt is working an ancient dig in Turkey, called Göbekli Tepe, which is full of massive Stonehenge-style T-shaped stone slabs marked with so-far un-deciphered pictograms and pictures of animals. The complex is estimated to predate Egyptian pyramids by 7000 years!

De-contextualizing

As bewildering as this fact is, it is the interpretation of it that intrigues me. The spin is on: the future history of this historical find is already being written: the site has been already called a temple; the find has been already semantically placed in a religious context. How do we know that this complex was not, say, a Neolithic museum of natural history, a kind of pre-agricultural pictorial information-exchange between the generations of hunter-gatherers? How do we know that this wasn't a stone-age equivalent of MoMA or the first open-air night-club?

This kind of religious zoning of a massive archeological site is an understandable speculation that is based on the seeming correlation of size and meaning. As a civilization we have, indeed, invested great cultural resources into architectural celebration of contemporary values (e.g. the Pyramid Arena in Memphis). But just because many of the monumental buildings in the history of humanity have been of devotional and religious nature, it doesn't necessarily mean that the first had to be a church.

According to Schmidt, the site, for an unknown yet reason, was deliberately buried over with dirt about 3000 years after it was built. Schmidt suggests - you guessed it - a religiously motivated interpretation: the new world (the world that followed the civilization of Göbekli Tepe) might have failed to incorporate the cultural meaning of the complex and opted to bulldoze the old culture: "when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones." As you can see the meme of Göbekli Tepe as a temple has begun to fractalize.

So, here's a word of interpretive caution before it's too late. While it might take us years to decode the original cultural purpose of the Göbekli Tepe complex from its pictograms, I'd like to borrow a bit of semantically contextualizing advice from another ancient source: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). As the world's historians work to incorporate this amazing archeological find, let us not get lost in the murky business of hypothesis-confirmation bias; let us, at least, for once, not rush to bury facts with interpretive fiction lest we end up worshiping word-gods.

References:
Newsweek, March 1, 2010 issue