Regrets Only
Posted on March 8, 2014 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

I have made a
mistake
[as if anyone
can make just one
mistake]

and now I must make
amends
[as if anyone
can make just one
amend]

I must endure this
cold disapproval
[if one could touch it
the hand would shatter]

and I must drink this
bitter tea
[if one could taste it
the tongue would blister]

this host and chalice
I serve, to me

 

___________________________________________________________

I have meant to write on this topic since I started the blog over three years ago.  That it has taken so long says how hard it has been to tie strings together.  That I am writing it now does not necessarily mean that I have.  But pressing on, here are thoughts about mistakes, regrets, self-forgiveness and the self.

With respect to the poem above: it is not a cry for help.  It is just a depressing poem.

On Mistakes

We agree on various names for acts of bad behavior, depending on context and severity. When one violates the law of the state, society calls it a crime. When one fails to live up to the moral code of a religion, the church calls it a sin. When a politician gets caught, he calls it a mistake and he sets off on an orchestrated rehabilitation tour.  (The mistake he regrets most is that he let himself be caught.)

[wpcol_2third id=”” class=”” style=”background-color:#f8f8f8; padding:0px 0px 25px 0px;”]I have not committed any crimes and, as I reject religions, I don’t subscribe to sin.  But I have made mistakes.  Small ones, large ones, thankfully no life-threatening ones.  Don’t worry:  I am not going to inventory them here in some public act of penance nor will I ask to be forgiven.  I’m not quite that desperate or self-indulgent.  Not quite.[/wpcol_2third]

[wpcol_1third_end id=”” class=”” style=”font-size: smaller; margin: 0px 0px 12px 0px; background-color:#d8e8e8; padding: 8px 12px 12px 14px;”]To be accurate, smoking for thirty years should be called a life-threatening mistake, one that I stopped making long ago.[/wpcol_1third_end]

I could charitably categorize some of my mistakes as errors in judgment, but that would be a minority.  And while I still make social mistakes such as gaffes and faux pas, those have declined over time.  When I make mistakes now, it is typically because I have been careless and have stepped on someone else’s feelings.  These are the important ones.

I don’t go out of my way to hurt other people.  If and when I do, it is because I have been absorbed in myself or my agenda, poorly tuned into the person I am dealing with.

On Regret

[wpcol_2third id=”” class=”” style=”background-color:#f8f8f8; padding:0px 0px 25px 0px;”]I cannot just forgive myself for past mistakes and pretend they didn’t happen.  One of my oft-cited formulations is: just because you learn from them doesn’t mean they weren’t mistakes.  They were and will remain so.  You can’t self-forgive your way out of a wrong done to others, as if you had a key called regret that fits a lock named guilt. You can try to forget what you did, you can reconcile yourself to it, you can look for ways to rationalize it, but you simply do not have the authority to forgive yourself.  No matter what Deepak Chopra says.[/wpcol_2third]

[wpcol_1third_end id=”” class=”” style=”font-size: smaller; margin: 0 0px 16px 0px; background-color:#d8e8e8; padding: 8px 8px 12px 12px;”]Asking for forgiveness is not so noble.  Someone got hurt because at the time it was all about you.  You come to your senses, realize what an ass you were, apologize and ask for forgiveness.  The initial act and the final act, and much in between, all about you.[/wpcol_1third_end]

The unfortunate part of this is, if the person you hurt has forgotten about the incident or is no longer around to forgive you, then your act of poor behavior just hangs out there in history, indefinitely,  leaving you to pay penance with feelings of regret.  For as long as it takes you to forget.

[wpdiv id=”jesus” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 0px 6px 12px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]Which brings us to Jesus.  How could humanity not devise a being (let alone build an institution around it) that lets people shed their unforgiven wrongdoings and get on with their lives without all that tedious introspection.  No wonder Jesus is so popular.[/wpdiv]

Christopher Hitchens, from his memoir Hitch-22: “I distinguish remorse from regret in that remorse is sorrow for one what did do whereas regret is misery for did one not do.”  As much as I like Hitchens, I cite him only to disagree with him.  I am more partial to the findings of behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow:

Regret is an emotion and it is also a punishment that we administer to ourselves… The emotional state … is “accompanied by feelings that one should have known better, by a sinking feeling, by thoughts about the mistake one has made and the opportunities lost, by a tendency to kick oneself and correct one’s mistake, and by wanting to undo the event and to get a second chance.”

Kahneman cites studies to support his argument that people feel more regret from having taken an action than from having abstained from action.  I agree.  I review and judge my actions more carefully than I do my non-actions, and reasonably so: whereas one’s actions are countable, the acts one might have done but did not do are infinite.

I am sensitive to the wrongs I do — the problem often seems to be that I sense it too late, then the moment is over, and people have moved on.  Except for me.

[wpdiv id=”movedon” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 15px 6px 15px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]Are people really that good at moving on?  I still recall the hurt of consistently being picked next-to-last on the high-school athletic field, for no other reason than my good grades.  My wife remembers being accused of cheating by her math teacher because she did well on a test.  Both of us would be different persons minus those negative formative experiences.  As I said, no wonder Deepak Chopra is so popular.[/wpdiv]

Why do I look at old mistakes with such fresh regret, as if I had done my misdeeds this very day?  It seems that my brain has a knack for stamping the authority of memory on such events (as do the brains of the people I wronged!) precisely so that my brain can remind me of them and take me down a notch, when I am being too sure of myself.

My brain doesn’t care that I am not the same person in terms of maturity or values as I was when I originally screwed up.  No, neurons are heartless. (They have some nerve!)  My neurons remember what I thought and how I behaved way back when, no matter that I have changed since then.  It is as if I am doomed to see myself as the world’s worst PONG player, based on a few notable defeats at the college dorm, even though no one remembers or cares about PONG forty years later.  Game over, you loser.

Maybe I should donate my medial orbitofrontal cortex to science when I am done with it. (Yes, you may follow the link to see what I’m talking about, as long as you come back here when you are done.)

Forgiving and Forgetting

Think about this.  What a person remembers about you is their impression of your last encounter.  To that person, you are whatever happens to be his or her last memory of you,  unless or until you replace it with some other impression.  It is not the first impression but the last that really counts.

Among those I have known, there are some whose last encounter with me involved my being argumentative, or inconsiderate, or plaintive, or obnoxious, or otherwise not my best.  These people will ever remember me negatively, for reason.  How can I argue?   Should I expect them to do the mental accounting and add a certain number of years of wisdom to the person they last saw?  No, I don’t expect it — because I don’t do that kind of accounting myself.

[wpdiv id=”jesus” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 10px 6px 12px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]This is why I make it a point not to attend high-school reunions.  Those events are about reliving memories, not replacing them.  And those who I might see there — most of them thought I was a dork and a misfit if they thought of me at all.  Why remind them of that?  Why subject myself to the disapproval all over again?[/wpdiv]

People have long memories.  Just as I remember the junior-high and senior-high school bullies and jerks, my mistakes are preserved as memories in the minds of those I wronged, if they were to be reminded of them.  Forgiving and forgetting: two sides of the same coin.

I have no evidence that the people who treated me poorly in the past, for no good reason and without apologies, ever re-examined their behavior and feel regret.  The best I can do is forget them.  I have no use for grudges — a waste of emotional energy.  I hope those who I wronged but never apologized to have forgotten me and hold no grudges against me.  That too is the best I can expect.

On the Self

I am not nearly the same person now that I was at 14, when I went to the junior-high prom and as the evening went on I danced mostly with a different girl than the one I had invited to the prom.  (Is it narcissistic to think that my date was hurt and outraged by this but has now forgotten about it?  Yes.)  But how much ownership of my teen behavior and mistakes do I retain?  What is the statute of limitations?  What gives a person the right to selectively own or disown one’s past acts?  And how can a person logically wave away one’s youthful mistakes without also discounting one’s youthful achievements?

[wpdiv id=”abandon” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 10px 6px 12px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]I would never abandon my date today.  (My wife would strongly object.)  But that I did so 47 years ago still makes me feel a bit shitty about myself.  Thank you, ruthless neurons.[/wpdiv]

Maybe what lets us disown past mistakes while taking credit for past accomplishments is the act of admitting and renouncing mistakes and, more importantly, not repeating them.  A mistake repeated is a behavior; bad behavior ingrained becomes a personality disorder.  A mistake not repeated for a very long period of time can help rebuild trust in oneself and one’s character — though it means nothing to the long-ago wronged.

I always liked what “Red” had to say (thanks to Steven King) at his final parole hearing at Shawshank State Penitentiary:

There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret.  Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should.  I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime.  I want to talk to him.  I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are.  But I can’t.  That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left.  I got to live with that.  Rehabilitated?  It’s just a bullshit word.  So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time.  Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.

In the movie, after his eloquent speech, Red’s parole application was stamped APPROVED and he was released from prison.

This blog post was more self-revealing than truth-revealing.  I too am released, now free to go find that rock that has no earthly business being in that field, under that tree.

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On “Thinking Fast and Slow”
Posted on February 27, 2014 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

True to my word, I have finished this month’s book, “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics.  The work is a tour-de-force that unifies the main findings of Kahneman’s long career studying the psychology of decision-making.  It reminds me somewhat of Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach” not only in its breadth and depth but how much it reveals the mind of its author.

Since the book is essentially a distillation of Kahneman’s life’s work, I recommend that you not put it down for long periods lest you lose the tenor of his story.  The book offers much food for thought and must be read at a moderate pace to allow it to be digested.  A lot of books wear out their welcome after the first few chapters, but this one is not front-loaded: the later sections are as interesting and informative as the earlier ones, so be patient.

I am not going to review the book but I do offer a few excerpts that intrigued me.

_______________

For example, here is a simple puzzle.  Do not try to solve it but listen to your intuition:

A bat and ball cost $1.10.
The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

A number came to your mind.  The number, of course, is 10 cents.  The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing, and wrong.

_______________

Anchoring effects explain why, for example, arbitrary rationing is an effective marketing ploy.  A few years ago, supermarket shoppers in Sioux City, Iowa, encountered a sales promotion for Campbell’s soup at about 10% off the regular price.  On some days, a sign on the shelf said LIMIT OF 12 PER PERSON. On other days, the sign said NO LIMIT PER PERSON. Shoppers purchased an average of 7 cans when the limit was in force, twice as many as they bought when the limit was removed.

_______________

An experiment that Amos [Tversky] carried out … at Harvard Medical School is the classic example of emotional framing.  Physician participants were given statistics about the outcomes of two treatments for lung cancer: surgery and radiation.  [Long-term] survival rates clearly favor surgery, but in the short term surgery is riskier than radiation.  Half the participants read statistics about survival rates, [while] the others received the same information in terms of mortality rates.  The two descriptions of the short-term outcomes of surgery were:

The one-month survival rate is 90%.

There is 10% mortality in the first month.

You already know the results:  surgery was much more popular in the former [group] (84% of the physicians chose it) than in the latter (where 5o% favored [it]).  The logical equivalence of the two descriptions is transparent, and a reality-bound decision maker would make the same choice regardless of which version she saw.  But … 90% survival sounds encouraging whereas 10% mortality is frightening.  An important finding of the study is that physicians were just as susceptible to the framing effect as medically unsophisticated people (hospital patients and graduate students in a business school).  Medical training is, evidently, no defense against the power of framing.

_______________

[The following excerpt has been condensed from a much longer discussion of the illusion of skill in the financial industry — the chapter is well worth reading in its entirety.]

Some years ago I had an unusual opportunity to examine the illusion of financial skill up close.  I had been invited to speak to a group of investment advisers in a firm that provided financial advice … to very wealthy clients.  I asked for some data to prepare my presentation and was granted a small treasure: a spreadsheet summarizing the investment outcomes of [twenty-five] advisers, for each of eight consecutive years.  Each adviser’s score for each year was his (most of them were men) main determinant of his year-end bonus.  It was a simple matter to … determine whether there were persistent differences in skill among them and whether the same advisers consistently achieved better returns for their clients year after year.

… I was surprised to find that …  consistent correlations that would indicate differences in skill were not to be found.  The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.

… Our message to the executives was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill.  This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not… I have no doubt that both our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on just as before.  The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the industry… Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot.

_______________

Here’s a man I’d like to meet.  If you decide to read his book, let me know what you think.

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Channel This!
Posted on February 18, 2014 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

I noticed today that my DirecTV bill was a few dollars higher this month, so I set out to investigate.  Logging into my account, I found that the cost of my plan increased by 4% and my so-called 150-channel service has now shrunk to 140 channels.

As if!  As if I ever watch 140 channels.  As if most of them could even be called channels.  Most of the channels (italics used to indicate irony) that DirecTV offers its viewers are dedicated shopping sites or run infomercials the better part of the day.  If you are a cable or satellite subscriber, this is not news to you.

Dear DirecTV: Just for the record, here are the channels we watch, of the one-hundred-and-forty you so proudly beam down to us, for that sizable monthly payment of ours you so reliably collect:

  • The local ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS channels.
  • The local Fox Channel, three or four times a year, for a football game.
  • The CW channel, for Judge Judy reruns.  (Not my choice!)
  • CNN for a few minutes every month, when some important event takes place — until I remember that CNN doesn’t cover anything important anymore.
  • Comedy Channel.  The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  Essential.
  • MSNBC once in a while.  CNBC once in a while.  Non-essential.
  • C-SPAN (Book TV) when I am particularly bored doing a weekend workout.
  • HGTV for Property Brothers and Love It or List It.  (Not my choices.)
  • TV Land for Andy Griffith Show and The Waltons. (Ditto.)
  • Turner Classic Movies.  Stella Dallas.  The Bishop’s Wife.  Notorious.
  • AMC.  Mad Men and The Walking Dead.
  • Game Show Network, for Family Feud reruns when all else fails.

That’s all I can think of.  Sixteen channels that we even think of watching, six of which comprise 90% of our television viewing.  All this for $1200 a year.  What a bargain.

___________________________________________________________

The price of content keeps increasing.  It costs more every year to attend a baseball game or see a movie or watch ordinary television, all because content (and now bandwidth) is being marketed as a scarcity rather than as a commodity.  Historically, we have been accustomed to seeing items that were once considered luxuries (think anti-lock brakes and smartphones) become low-cost commodities — we are not so used to seeing traditionally low-cost commodities such as television being treated (and priced) like specialty items.  Yet that is what is taking place.  The price of content is destined to rise until the profits of the content-providers are maximized.   They will keep raising prices to see what their customers are willing to pay, month after month, until their revenues reach a plateau.

Now that this process has begun, the conclusion is inevitable.  Fewer people will be able to afford once-commonplace services, and those who can afford them will pay the difference and more.  This is what happens in an economic system that promotes income inequality.

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