The Golden Road to Limited Devotion

We all have opinions. Opinions are formed consciously, with reason and information gathered from our own and others'  experiences. In fact, opinions may be the only thing separating our species from the hoi mammoi, the rest of the animal world over whom we are supposed to have dominion. Scratch a human and you get an opinion - or three. These are our theories about what we see happening in the world around us.

At a deeper psychological level, our opinions mate to produce beliefs. Beliefs are systems that satisfy our need to understand not only what is happening around us, but our participation in it. HOW do we get on in our world and why? Beliefs are explanations we construct from the bricks of our opinions, and it is only a shame that critical thinking is no longer a cultural forté in the US.

While beliefs can and do respond to reason and enquiry, they are also susceptible to experience, so that they can be altered by new exposures, particularly one-on-one personal encounters that "prove" an opinion to be wrong. There is nothing like a good liberal education. This is how most cognitive dissonance starts clamoring; beliefs morph with information, enquiry, and experience to create the specific kind armour we wear in our lives. 

Beneath both of these conscious psychological levels lie our unconscious primary assumptions, our “takes” on living. Unaffected by reason or logic, this is the realm of Conversion, the emotional space that drives our beliefs. No amount of argument can "change their mind." No logic can bend the stupefyingly adamant assumption that people are basically good, or that they are instead randomly to be feared; Are we entitled to whatever we can get? or is it better to share what we have with others? Are people who look like us "better" than other tribes? Is the glass half empty or half full?

These basics of our personalities, in my own opinion, are the Captains our Fates. Instilled from early childhood – nurture - or part of your personality when you were born – nature, they shape our expectations of the world and point to paths with which our primary assumptions mostly resonate; new exposures that grow the twig as the tree is bent, in fact, directing those encounters and calling to themselves their own proofs, so each of us sees different things in the same phenomenon, those details that support our primary assumptions. In Roshoman fashion, every tale is unique and often contradicts the next: How can you think that proves there are alien space travelers, against How can you deny there is no other explanation but aliens? Close the doors to immigrants! What climate change?

Unavailable to reason, they are. But they ARE available to the odd experience that does NOT support the Weltanschauung, that clashes completely with assumptive expectation. Having more experiences invites Conversion, opportunities for change, in perhaps the only way to get it through our thick skulls. By seeing for ourselves, first hand, that what we expect cannot be true. Like a Bernie Sanders nomination.

Sincerely, Bernie

There have been boatloads of speculation about the success of Bernie Sanders in this election, so much that I no longer open any facebook post that has anything to do with him. I don't need convincing, and I am exhausted with the energy emanating from campaign youth. Yes, there are all of us who are disaffected and ready for any change; yes, there are Hillary haters looking for another path; and certainly there are those now becoming convinced that an old outlier Socialist might actually have a shot and have switched.

But none of that explains the quantum of youth, the young piling onto this bandwagon as if it were going to drive them right up to the White House doors! And I wondered about that, especially given the enormous disappointment these almost-same young people have experienced with their man Obama, who they shouldered into the Oval Office only to find that he never did put his money where his mouth was. That was a hard lesson.

I have not even really watched Bernie speak, because it didn't take long to see that I know who he is. I know where he came from, and I know what he fought for, then and now. He has been on the outskirts of my political awareness all these years as the outsider on the inside, one of us who hung in there, and it only took assuring myself that he had not been terminally purchased to make up my mind. Because, and this is what I think is so revolutionary to the Youth of America, he is sincere. It may be that they have never, ever, seen this on the national stage before. They may not have seen it at ALL before! I can count on one hand the times that I have, and I have lots more years than they do. SinCeriTy, a drug that has been out of fashion since Gordon Gekko.

I recall with some embarrassment a moment in a bad Cheech Marin movie when I realized that sincerity had disappeared from public discourse altogether (barring some scathingly funny comedians without whom I might have given up altogether). 1989's Rude Awakening follows the return from exile of two old hippies on a mission to save a world they don't, after 20 years, even recognize.  Taken to a coke-fueled movers-and-shakers party by his old girlfriend, Eric Roberts tries to "talk" to guests, who run screaming from this mode, which, even in a bad comedy, was more than familiar to someone who was there.

I teared up, noticing for the first time in my own busy life that my generation's attempt at real communication, however flawed we were, was a shining artifact of the past. People no longer wore their colors, afraid to show, much less say out loud, who they really were. The hippie ideal of sincere action had been refuted, overturned, rejected, and in fact stomped to death in the stampede for money and power. Greed is good. Clothes make the woman (if she has the right corporate logo on her ass). It's just business. My tears were for our loss.

So I wonder at the fascination and devotion this old man fires in the hearts and minds of the young.  I wonder if the Sanders Youth of America are on SCT? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head? 

The Conversation

When I first became interested in the issues of aging, I was in my fifties. It seemed to me that the writing was on a fast-moving wall, and I needed to read it. The topic became the gossip and a good friend and I began to explore what advice was available - certainly with the internet, there must be others concerned with the same issues who would have words of wisdom, outlines and approaches, research and information.

We were appalled to find pretty much a dead end. There were some gentle thoughts on aging from ancient Greece, verses from a few poets who survived long enough to think about it, data about housing shortages, and scary futuristic predictions from the social sciences; but mostly we found advertising.  Adverts for vanishing creams and nose jobs, jaw line removal and liposuction, crow's feet eliminators and hormones, botox and Viagra, the implication being that you can be young forever.  What a lot of horseshit!

Ten years later the internet has been transformed, retirement freeing up what seems to be hoards of us willing and eager to write about old age, the Third Stage. Others than us shared the same interests, because now hundreds of sites, most of them blogs but many of them websites from organizations that have taken up the cause of conscientious aging, vie for our attention. Boomers have done it again, populated themselves into every nook and cranny of what is now a gloriously open discussion, an easy-access support group, and a trend-setting awakening for today's marketers: the same don't-grow-old ads are still out there, but they are increasingly joined by sellers of comfortable clothes, travel destinations, and books that take us seriously.

My own small contribution to the larger conversation, how to become the Belledame, grew from a need to live an examined life and a desire to focus my energies so they would not splinter and be lost in end-of-life crashes. My techniques are Musing, or moving the body while daydreaming; Symboleering, or using metaphor and analogy to develop personal signs and symbols; and finally Simple Elegance, a developmental stage where our experience and tolerance (or lack of) begin to add up to quicker decisions, less second guessing, and more satisfactions. Simple Elegance is an easiness born from our long and intimate association with our own selves, requiring a confidence based on years of practice. It is a true benefit of the Third Stage.

experience and tolerance (or lack of) begin to add up to quicker decisions, less second guessing, and more satisfactions. Simple Elegance is an easiness born from our long and intimate association with our own selves, and when I recognize it happening, I am delighted. - See more at: http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2016/04/how-our-thinking-changes-as-we-age.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TimeGoesBy+%28TIME+GOES+BY%29#sthash.5BeSq7Fm.dpuf

experience and tolerance (or lack of) begin to add up to quicker decisions, less second guessing, and more satisfactions. Simple Elegance is an easiness born from our long and intimate association with our own selves, and when I recognize it happening, I am delighted. - See more at: http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2016/04/how-our-thinking-changes-as-we-age.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TimeGoesBy+%28TIME+GOES+BY%29#sthash.5BeSq7Fm.dpuf

experience and tolerance (or lack of) begin to add up to quicker decisions, less second guessing, and more satisfactions. Simple Elegance is an easiness born from our long and intimate association with our own selves, and when I recognize it happening, I am delighted. - See more at: http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2016/04/how-our-thinking-changes-as-we-age.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TimeGoesBy+%28TIME+GOES+BY%29#sthash.5BeSq7Fm.dpuf