The Story of the Math Cult

 "But they're just pants!"

Sara was frustrated. All of her friends had the new jeans, and they looked cute. For some reason, she thought her mom might understand this time and just see that new pants might make her daughter happy. But no, somehow, it turned into a math lesson.

"You already have pants, dear. These new pants are just trendy. They didn't even exist last year. In a few months, they'll be out of style. Not like math. I can solve a math problem and get the same answer today as someone else got a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. Even better, the answer is the same for me as for someone in China, India, or Africa. Math is true. Math is eternal."

Sara was sick of math. What was the equation for giggling? or hanging out? or even worse, making your daughter's life miserable? Just once, she would like to stay home on Mathday and watch T.V. (Mathday was the name her parents and other members of their math collective called Sunday. "It only makes sense to set aside one day a weak for the proper observance of the purity of mathematics.")

---

"What's this?" said her mom with a look of disgust on her face.

"That's my art project," said Sara. Her parents only agreed to let her take art if she kept to geometric shapes. Geometry always made her mom feel uneasy since there weren't any numbers or mathematical symbols involved, but Sara's dad showed the equations for various geometric shapes and how to calculate perspective, easing Mom's anxiety.

"It's not geometric. It's all curved and irregular," complained her mom with a strong emphasis on 'irregular'.

"It's a strange attractor from Chaos theory, which is a branch of mathematics," said Sara. She had done her homework. A simple internet search for What's the branch of mathematics that is the least like math? Her mom shuddered at the mention of Chaos theory. No one in her math group accepted that Chaos theory was actually math. Where was the certainty or the truth in Chaos?

Sara didn't dare bring home her other art projects. They were purely abstract, emotional expressions of how she felt inside. There was zero math. Oh, wait. Zero is a number in math. It was a math void. Damn it! Void is a math term. It was a nada math. Yes. A piece of nada math art.

---

"What pie do you want me to make for Pi Day?" asked her mom. March 14, or 3.14, was the holy holiday for the Math collective. Sara really wanted to celebrate the other holidays, like Halloween and Christmas, but her parents were purists. Those are just commercialized days for companies to sell more stuff. Sara thought about what her friend at school said about Pi Day. Pi Day was just invented by geeks to sell more math. Sara chuckled.

"Why are you laughing?" asked her mom.

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking about something. You know my favorite pie is apple," said Sara. 

Pi Day celebration at least had yummy pie. Most of the other math collective gatherings were nothing but math - theory, applications of math, and math self-righteousness. The adults gathered together, and from a distance, it seemed that they were talking about something interesting, like a new movie they saw. But when you got close enough to hear them, they were just geeking out on math. The kids all stood around eating their pie and rolling their eyes. Under their breaths, they talked about how boring their parents were and how much they hated math.

"I'm going to be a lawyer," said one boy.

"Do your parents know?"

"Yes. They said that I'd have to pay for college myself. 'Law is so ephemeral,' they said. 'We'll only pay for a true education. One that uses math.'"

Sara wanted to be an artist but never told anyone. Her art teacher said that she was good enough.

To be continued...

Don't Become Strangers

 A couple of years ago, my wife and I attended a wedding. The DJ had anyone married over 20 years come to the dance floor to dance. He gradually dismissed couples by raising the time married, "Married over 25 years, stay on the dance floor." Finally, he narrowed it down to a couple that had been married longer than anyone else. In front of all the guests, he asked this couple, "What's your secret to being married for so long?"

I don't remember what their answer was, but I've thought many times, "How would I answer the same question?" I felt anxious about it because I couldn't come up with a simple answer. One could give a long speech about everything it takes to make a lasting relationship work.

Recently, I found the answer:

Don't become strangers

The answer applies to any relationship, parents, children, siblings, old friends, etc. Unfortunately, I have let some people in my life become strangers. The result is both negative and positive. "When did they start thinking that way?" and "Wow, I've missed out on a lot of enjoyment not having them in my life!"

If you feel an unwelcome divide growing between you and someone in your life, do what you can to keep each other in your life. Talk to them about what and how they think. Be curious and non-judgemental. Don't treat them like a stranger. Show kindness and consideration.

Whatever you do, however you do it, make sure to nourish the relationships that you want to and should keep.

 

Moral Aloneness

 I came across the phrase "Moral Aloneness" in the book "Escape from Freedom" by Erich Fromm (I have to admit I didn't finish the book since it started hurting my head. A little too deep to read during a holiday break).

The idea is that you can feel lonely even when surrounded by people who don't share your views. This helps explain many experiences in my life. I tend to "look into things" for a deeper understanding, which results in me "seeing things differently" from others. It is frustrating trying to summarize countless hours of study during a casual conversation. It would be easy to assume my moral views are superior, but that's a dangerous assumption.

Sometimes, a moral position is less important than the relationship. I'm reminded of a couple of quotes:

"People are more important than the truth."

"It's hard when people sin differently than we do."

"Is that the hill you want to die on?"

Can "moral aloneness" explain the polarization in our world today? To avoid being morally alone, do people look for like-minded communities? If so, we need to adhere to our morals, even when resulting in "moral aloneness."  History is replete with examples of heroes standing on their principles. 

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

"How Emotions Are Made" and My Emotional Diversity Framework

TL/DR; 

The book "How Emotions Are Made" by Lisa Feldman Barrett resulted in a paradigm shift in my thinking about emotions and helped me develop a framework for processing emotions.

My New Understanding

We constantly use our senses to understand our environment and what is happening inside our bodies. Our brain creates an "affect" (a sensation or feeling) and then attempts to identify a past matching experience. The "statistically best-matched experience" influences our response. (I'm reminded of the Ellis ABC Model).

This can go wrong if we mistakenly match a wrong experience to the affect. Examples:

• As early newlyweds, we would fight, only later realizing we were hungry.
• When I let early childhood trauma make me feel insecure in social settings.

Learning to distinguish subtle emotional differences is a healthier way to process affect. 

My Emotional Diversity Framework

To help create finer emotional granularity, I've considered the many dimensions of the story we assign to affect. The dimensions are like the X, Y, and Z axes. An experience can fall anywhere along these dimensions, resulting in many possibilities.

The Three Poisons

This dimension has to do with the "verb" in the situation. For this, I use a concept from Buddhism called the three poisons. Longing for these poisons creates suffering.

1. Desire - Longing or wanting something. This could be food, drink, physical affection, affirmation, peace, safety, etc.
2. Aversion - Avoiding something. This could be pain, discomfort, harm, fear, anger, shame, guilt, hatred, etc.
3. Ignorance - This could be its own dimension. This relates to not knowing or understanding, either by ourselves or others in our story.

Familiarity

This dimension concerns the "who" in the story and how closely they relate to us. I call it the "Castle Model." A castle surrounded by a city wall defines regions, and our relations with the people in each region vary.

• Your chambers - Only your most intimate relations are allowed
• The Castle - Only trusted people are allowed inside the castle walls
• The City Walls - Inside the city walls is your community. Behaviors are governed by social norms, business norms, and common law. 
• Outside the City Walls - There is danger with outlaws and wild beasts.

Where do the people involved in this story reside? Are they friends or enemies?

Group Size

This dimension concerns the size of the "who": an individual, a couple, a family, or the whole world. Be careful with large groups and creating stereotypes, "You men/woman always do X!"

Concreteness

This dimension also relates to the "verb." How concrete is the action in your story? This ranges as follows:

1. Actions - A slap, push, embrace, or other more physical behavior
2. Verbal - Something was spoken or written (remembering that superlatives carry emotions and are not to be taken literally, e.g., "You never remember to ...").
3. Non-verbal sounds - A grunt or moan that carries meaning but can easily be misinterpreted.
4. Thought - You only know your own thoughts; don't try to mind read.

Time

Consider the dimension of time.

1. Speed - Instant (a surprise) to long (chronic).
2. Frequency - Is this a recurring problem resulting in you "waiting for the other shoe to drop?"
3. Duration - How long does this event last? 
4. History - When did it happen? Does a long past experience relate to our current experience?

Health

This dimension looks at the state of the "who." Are they tired, hungry, distracted, or not feeling well physically or emotionally? 

Use Case

Someone sends you a message: "We need to talk." You feel a tightening in your chest, and your face feels flush. Time to pause and evaluate.

1. The Three Poisons - You are experiencing aversion, including fear, shame, or guilt. However, you are also ignorant as to the subject of the discussion.
2. Familiarity - What is your relationship with this person? Do they have power over you?
3. Group Size - It appears one-on-one. Will others be present? How will that change your reaction?
4. Concreteness - This message is definitely verbal, but there is no information about the subject or the other person's thoughts.
5. Time - 
1. Speed - The message was a surprise.
2. Frequency - How many times have you received this message before?
3. Duration - You don't know since you haven't had the conversation yet. This is part of your ignorance.
4. History - Are you assigning meaning from the distant past when you got a similar message?
6. Health
1. Are you tired, hungry, or feeling well? How about the person sending the message?

If you talk with the person and they just want to include you on some elaborate project that you are excited about, then it was inappropriate for you to have an aversion or relate it to a scolding you got from a parent when you were a kid.

Conclusion

We can evaluate the stories we associate with affect using the above framework. This can give us finer granularity when identifying the correct experience to match our feelings. Instead of fighting with the love of your life, you can say, "I think I'm hungry. Let's get something to eat." Instead of freezing in a social situation, you can tell yourself, "I'm not a child anymore. I'm an interesting adult."

Pickler on the Roof

 Latest Pickleball Remix Story.

The Little Pickler

 My latest Pickleball Parody

The Little Pickler (Pickleball Remix)

Gender Identity: My Journey in Understanding Gender

In the Beginning...

When I was a little boy, gender identity was easy: girls had long hair, and boys had short hair. The school made this easier since girls weren't allowed to wear pants. Girls had long hair and wore a dress or skirt, while boys had short hair and wore pants. This became more complicated when the dress code changed around 1972, allowing girls to wear pants. Also, boys started growing their hair long.

For the most part, confusing genders wasn't an issue for me. I do remember saying something to my older sisters about having a "pee-pee," and they told me girls didn't have a "pee-pee". That was a surprising revelation that there's more to gender than just outward appearance.

Baby X

In high school, I read the book "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" by Lois Gould published in 1978. It's the story of a child raised as part of an experiment to keep its gender unknown to everyone but its parents and the scientists conducting the experiment. 

Since the parents hid its gender, Baby X was able to do all of the fun activities from both genders, like playing football and baking cakes. It was a very positive story revealing the limiting beliefs of parents and society at large. I loved the story but don't remember exactly why it resonated so much with me. Maybe it's because I loved my sisters and couldn't imagine them being limited. Or maybe it was because my brother was a talented artist, and I saw him bullied.  

Whatever it was, I decided that when I became a parent, I would try not to limit my children. So when I finally had children of my own, I taught my daughter to catch a ball, and I gave my son an easy bake oven. 

One day my oldest son was sitting in the high chair. We put a slice of bread on the tray for him to eat. We were surprised when he ate away part of the bread to make it the shape of a gun. Then he held it in his hand and said, "Bang-bang". We didn't have anything in the house that resembled a gun, and he watched only children's shows on the television. It appears that the Baby X story forgot to mention that some people may naturally align with gender stereotypes.

My wife has mostly feminine traits, and I have mostly masculine traits (though she does like trucks more than I do). One very strong gender difference is how she interacts with her lady friends. Their behavior is innately feminine.

Gender Traits

I find it interesting that many languages assign gender to words. How is "table" feminine while "heart" is masculine? Somehow, society has also made many things gender appropriate: 

• Clothing
• Hairstyle
• Career choice
• Hobbies
• Personality
• Character

While some people may follow clear gender stereotypes, reality is fuzzier. For example, look at height. "Men are taller than women." But if you look at the data, there are men that are shorter than the average woman and women that are taller than the average man. And that's for a trait that includes no choice.

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For traits and activities that include choice, why limit those choices?  Aren't the boundaries fuzzier in these cases? I think we should have a meritocracy that is blind to gender.

Transgender

I have limited experience with transgender people. First hand, I know a couple of coworkers who have transitioned. Second hand, I've talked to family members and associates of trans people. I want to tread lightly here out of respect.

Let's consider two examples.

Example 1: I was considering applying for a position in another group at work so I met with a coworker that had worked in that group. This coworker had recently transitioned to a woman. I noticed that she was thoughtful and provided good insight.

Example 2: My wife was on a committee comprised of women. What united this group was the trauma they experienced from a patriarchal organization. A trans woman joined the group and didn't follow the social norms of the group. She was a bully and harassed the leader of the group.

I'm sure it is difficult for trans people to know if they are interacting with an ally or a bigot, so we should provide understanding and compassion. 

I recommend reading "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" as it helps reveal some of the ways that we might be biased and can be more considerate of others' less-than-binary gender identity.