OCD

Obsessive-compulsive disorder. My wife, who has great insight into human behavior, likes to say I have some OCD going on. I looked it up in the DSM and I don't think so. But maybe I just have OCD with poor insight. I don't see the compulsive part at all, but you be the judge. We are often Strangers to Ourselves (the title of a great book by Timothy Wilson, which was the inspiration for Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, the latter of which I believe was legitimately criticized by Robert Burton in On Being Certain)....(I wish I could remember what that criticism was; this getting old stuff is not for perfectionists.)

Now, OCD personality disorder is another matter. "Shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion." Although I wrote several 50-60 page papers in grad school, I never finished my dissertation. My advisor kept telling me I didn't have to write a publishable book but I didn't really get it. Then I chose a topic that nobody could have written a coherent exposition of, Critical Legal Studies, because the movement itself was incoherent. Oh well. I didn't really want to be a teacher anyway and what else can you do with a philosophy degree?

Maybe that explains getting obsessed with the financial crisis and reading a gob of books and articles on it. Oh yeh, I did that with health care reform, too. Before that it was reading history. At one point, it was my work. Luckily, I didn't really want to be a lawyer, either, so I chose to specialize in one area which had interesting stuff about medicine--disability law. But the good thing about being OCD is that I tried to read everything and figure out everything about it. That is what a real education does. I know many lawyers who never try to figure things out. But they can fool a lot of innocent clients. Kind of reminds me of time-share salesmen.

Golf is another example. I played as a kid and then didn't take it up until age 43. Immediately got obsessed and improved greatly for a period of time before I actually started getting worse (golf is amazing that way). Or skiing. I didn't ski until I was almost 30 but then within a year ended up moving to Utah working in a ski resort and skiing every day. Despite having new skis and boots, I didn't ski at all this year.

Maybe I'll figure this out some day but I gotta go wash my hands.

9/18

I vividly remember watching the tv all day September 18, 2008. I had it tuned to CNBC, which I usually can't stand because they are lapdogs of Wall Street. Not to mention composed of obnoxious blowhards. But I was watching the financial sector go bankrupt. It was a combination of horror and curiosity, something like I felt on 9/11/01. We were leaving for Spain in a couple days and every night during the trip I was compelled to turn on CNN International to see what was going on.

As Yves Smith explains in enormous detail in Econned and continues to explain on her blog Naked Capitalism, it was "the greatest theft from the public purse in history." This came at the end of more than 30 years of manipulation of the rules of the game for the financiers, including extensive deregulation greased by a simple-minded philosophy. Not only had the banksters accomplished regulatory capture and capture of all the branches of government (including the law), they accomplished cognitive capture of the population, with the help of the economics profession.

The bill that will pass this weak will be a 1300 page watered-down piece of nothing. We better get used to it. As Yves says, "this campaign has been far too consistent and calculated to brand it with the traditional label, "spin."...Only when we the public are able to call the underlying realities by their proper names--extortion, capture, looting, propaganda--can we begin to root them out."

It is what it is. Have a nice week.

Empathy Lesson

Saturday was a beautiful day and I got together with three good friends to walk 18 holes at Bonneville golf course. The course surrounds a baseball field and a tennis center, and both were full. You could hear the crack of a bat and kids cheering at the ball diamond at various times. A road runs through the course and it is a favorite place for bikers, runners and walkers. Everyone was out enjoying the spring sunshine and a person would have to be a curmudgeon not to be infected by the joy.

My right shoulder and arm have been bothering me. I figured I overexerted myself in some silly way, like opening a jar for Tita. These things seem to happen more as I get older. Or maybe it is another residue of all my baseball-playing days. I would never tell the coach that my arm hurt because I never wanted to come out of the game...even when the arm was screaming in pain.

About the back nine everything began to hurt, especially my neck and feet. By the time we were done it felt like I was walking on my foot bones. It felt like my bones hurt. I was also stiff and fatigued. I almost missed the ball a couple times off the tee.

The other thought was that this could be a side-effect of the statins I have been taking. My doc warned me about "achiness." (It is amazing the terms the medical profession has for pain...such as discomfort.) My dad confirmed it for me today. He said that when he was taking Lipitor he got so he couldn't walk up the stairs.

I cannot help but wonder what those people who think we should get rid of Social Security think we should do with the old people and sick people who depend on its financial assistance. Throw them out in the streets?

When I was sick with ulcerative colitis I experienced the worst pain I ever had in my life. Only someone who has felt his intestines spasm knows at all what I am talking about it. Or how it feels to be shitting blood every half hour. Even if we try to empathize with someone else, we can never know what it is like. There are many painful disorders, some of which we somewhat understand the causal process, like cancer and pancreatitis. There are others that we don't. I have no doubt that some people who are diagnosed with fibromyalgia experience extreme pain.

I also found out how easily personality could be altered by brain chemistry when I was taking large doses of prednisone, which made me manic. I would never have slept without some powerful sleeping pills, and those only gave me 3-4 hours per night. And then I experienced clinical depression when I came off it.

Tita was sitting reading the paper this morning with her neck warmer on because she had a migraine, a fairly commom occurrence. I don't know what it is like but I am pretty sure it is not fun. Maybe we all should be a little more sympathetic to those who are suffering and thankful if we are not.

Continuation Day

I am having a fine anniversary of birthday, or as one of my buddhist friends says, continuation day. Tita took me out for dinner last night at a terrific restaurant www.log-haven.com and has something going in the crockpot while she is at work. I had curried pecan cauliflower soup and bison rib-eye steak. We have a snowstorm coming in early tomorrow so I got all the deck furniture stored in the garage yesterday. I couldn't stand watching the end of the Bears game they were so bad so I decided to accomplish something outside instead. Saturday we got in some golf but quit after nine holes after we got hailed on. Don't know how many days we have left of golf. One nice thing about this time of year is that Tita really gets into cooking. She has already planned what we are having Tuesday!! This is a new first in planning ahead meals. Usually we just go with the flow day by day (one of the traits I did not pick up from my dad). But she loves to cook and I love to eat...a win-win situation. Every time I buy her a new cookbook I get rewarded many times over. She says that when she retires she is going to become a gourmet chef and take classes. I don't think that this is just a means to get out of working anymore but you never know. Luckily, she also likes her job.

I have decided that I am going to be even lazier than usual today. My boss says I have to go in for a few minutes this afternoon but I don't have much to do (other than a brief that isn't due for four weeks). I might even go out and use the raincheck (or hailcheck) to finish my round of golf. Tom and I were chatting so much that I didn't bother to keep score, but then I know I didn't really do well enough for it to matter, so I didn't go back and figure it out.

I have been wasting an inordinate amount of time trolling the internet and now have a bunch of blogs I read. I really am going to start reading books again and even finished one on the misuse and abuse of history that I mentioned here earlier. I am actually reading a philosophy book called Justice by Michael Sandel, a famous philosopher. It is very clearly written and so far takes me through some of my own adventures in ethics and political philosophy. Also have a book called The Good Soldiers about the lives of a unit in Iraq that has gotten great reviews. Of course, I have many other unread books lying around, too.

We had a wonderful time in San Francisco and I learned some more very good stuff on VA law and ERISA. Looking forward to helping vets but not so much dealing more with insurance companies. We had incredible dinners every night and hung out for two days with my old friends Vern and Jennifer K. Pesces, Campton Place and R & C Lounge in Chinatown stand out. They had a car so we took a drive to Muir Woods north of the city on Saturday missing the turnoff and taking a scenic drive down highway one before we figured out we were lost after ending up in a hippie village called Bolinas. Luckily, we were able to find a gas station and then found Muir Woods where we did a great hike amongst the 250 foot redwoods and other beautiful plantlife.

Every day is a coninuation day so if you want to goof off, go ahead. You are adults and don't need permission.