Archive for the ‘Human Behavior Lessons’ Category

We are not trained to think. In classical education–the kind engaged in by the ancient Greeks and those in later generations who sought to emulate them–the study of learning was nearly as important as the learning itself. Logic was taught, so that the educated could understand where they were apt to be wrong and avoid being so. The intellectual leaders who poured the philosophical foundation upon which the United States of America was built–Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Monroe–were inspired by the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, the rediscovery of whom ended the Dark Ages. Jefferson himself believed no education could be thought complete without a full reading of Homer and Virgil in the original Greek and Latin. Can you imagine such a thing being spoken today, even by a President? The Renaissance (literally "rebirth") was a replanting of the classical spirit of self-discovery, and the Catholic Church–by nurturing the bud back into bloom through patronage–boosted its own prestige but doomed itself to death at the hands of the very tools it had kept safe: reason, education, and art. No church can survive the application of reason, and once its robes are exposed by education as imaginary, art steps in to make us laugh at the nakedness.

The American founders had no respect for the Church, nor for the Protestant denominations which followed it, despite treading carefully so as not to offend them and lose the support of the superstitious people they hoped to elevate. Fortunately (unlike in modern America) they had only to make occasional token gestures to appease the believers, like putting "and nature's god" (originally uncapitalized and clearly a Deist statement, not a religious one) into the Declaration of Independence, because nearly everyone allowed to vote back then was educated. That time was called the Enlightenment, and its leaders were writers and thinkers like Paine, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Kant–men (and in rare cases, like Mary Wollstonecraft, women) who stood on the very edge of the Dark Ages and held up a light.

Bertrand Russell somewhat-famously said, "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." The men who stood at the edge of that darkness were the doubters; they stood up against centuries of certainty because the truth was more important to them than the comfort of what they already believed. In other words, it didn't matter what felt true, it only mattered what was.

Does Reality Matter Anymore?

Can you imagine such a test being applied to the debate over health care reform?

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Consider a long hallway. So long that in either direction, it fades into the distance. In the middle there is a walkway. On the right, like in an airport, is a conveyor belt moving forwards. On the left is a conveyor belt moving backwards. There are no handrails and it's easy to get on or off a conveyor belt.

You are walking along the walkway. People pass you going one direction or the other from time to time, sometimes passing you by, sometimes passing in the opposite direction. Sometimes you walk together a while with someone, sometimes you nod and wave and it's over in a moment.

You become friends with someone near you and begin to walk together. You enjoy your time, the company makes you happy. Sometimes your friend speeds up a little, and you have to speed up too to stay together, or the same happens but slowing down. It's the pace of life. More and more you walk together. Eventually you fall in love.

Then your friend wants to see more of what lies ahead, and suggests you both get on a forward-moving conveyor belt. You think it's a good idea and would gladly join her. But she gets on the conveyor belt going backwards.

All of a sudden she's moving much more slowly than you are, even though you haven't slowed down. Your friend speeds up some to try to match you, and says, "Where are you going? I thought you wanted to be together!"

You say, "I do, but you're on the wrong conveyor belt!" Your friend is hurt and says, "Don't criticize me." You are baffled. "I'm not," you say. "I love you and don't want to lose you. I'm not judging you–you're just on the wrong conveyor belt."

Your friend is hurt. Your friend reads a book and cries with her friends and tells you you need to take more ownership. "You say I'm wrong all the time." You don't want to fight; you slow down even more; but your friend keeps falling behind. Now your friend has to work even harder to keep moving forward with you. It exhausts her just to keep up. "It takes so much energy," she says. She tries her best to keep up, but all she feels is you pulling away. She slows; it all takes too much effort.

Your friend wants you to fix it; she sees how you aren't working as hard as she is. You share what you have with her–you give her food for strength, you sing her songs, you tell her you love her, you tell her not to quit; you give all you have. But she is demoralized and falls further behind. "I work so hard. I put in so much and you so little," she says. You try again to point out she's on the wrong belt; "I'm not placing blame, I swear," you plead. "How else do I tell you this isn't my fault?"

You are crying. You don't want to lose your friend. But you do not want to go backwards. You have been there already. You want to move forward, and you want to move forward with your friend. But you can't. It's not your fault, but you can't. You have to choose.

If you carry forward, your friend will call you cruel. Your friend will think you have walked away. Your friend's heart will be broken, like yours, but she will also feel betrayed. You speed up and down for the longest time, hoping eventually she will see, sometimes even getting on the belt with her for a time, to her great relief. When you get off again, she wonders why you've left her. You don't want to choose. You want her to get off the belt going backwards. You want her to see that it wasn't your fault. That it never had to happen. You try. She doesn't. You choose.

A couple of years ago, I played a joke on a new friend. Instead of laughing about it, she accused me of harassment and breaking and entering. Granted, it wasn't a very funny joke, but I wasn't aware the penalty for a comedian bombing was so severe. So I'd like to post a warning for any practical jokers out there: never, never play a joke involving somebody's car, house, or computer without getting notarized forms signed in triplicate that they're planning on getting the joke.

First, a little background. This was not the first time I planted a joke grenade on someone's computer. Allow me to describe just three prior offenses.

In college, back when "sound cards" were brand new and nobody but geeks like me knew how to record or play sound on computers, I changed my friend's computer startup sound. He was ahead of the technology curve himself and had managed to hook it up to his stereo, so the next time he booted his computer, he got blasted with a deep-voiced recording of God instructing him to fill his disk drive with potato chips. (For the record, he denies following the instructions.)

A couple years later, my girlfriend was running sound for a play that was being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I'd rigged up a system for them to run the sound cues off of a laptop computer–way ahead of its time back in 1997! When she got to Scotland and booted it up, the joke grenade deployed and she got a very cute romantic animated message from me.

A few years after that, I installed a widget on my brother's computer so when he booted up, he got HAL9000's eerie red light on his desktop, reporting loudly that all systems were functioning perfectly.

If you haven't detected the pattern yet, let me describe it bluntly: these jokes are not very funny.

But they're kinda cute in their own way. They're just stupid little joke grenades. They're mildly subversive, in a spirit of fun, and you wouldn't think someone would respond to one by suggesting she might file a harassment suit. Right? Then keep reading.

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I've started a new category called "Human Behavior Lessons." Follow it to discover amazing things about humans! Better understand humans and you will write better characters. Write better characters and you will write better screenplays.

I hope I haven't left you hanging too long, dear readers, but I've had to spend the last day and a half trying to repair my email system and address book due to a corrupted email synchronization, due to a computer intrusion. The repair failed so I had to restore my hard drive from a backup. Lost a day and a half of work.

Now, today's lesson: How To Prevent People From Telling You the Truth:

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