The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

ByJohn Brown

After this year’s presidential election I emailed my sister, a smart, super-competent, true-blue, bleeding-heart, save the weeds and snails liberal, who volunteered to do campaign work for Hilary Clinton in Colorado during the 2008 Democratic primaries and, of course, voted loudly for Obama in this last election.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “How can anyone who doesn’t have a carrot for a brain want more of the same? I don’t get it. Obama? How can so many Americans be that gullible? I’m totally baffled.”  And that puzzlement wasn’t rhetorical. I was seriously baffled.

“Are you kidding me?” she replied. “Mitt Romney? How could anyone vote for Mitt Romney?  Talk about baffled.”  She went on a rant listing all of Romney’s supposed deeds and positions of sooper evil and stupidity. Then she questioned how anyone could support that Hitler in his Mormon clothes.

Okay, she didn’t say “Hitler,” but she did claim he was “evil” and “despicable.” And when I think of evil, my first thought is always of folks like Mitt Romney.

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, leader of the Juarez drug cartel, which is responsible for hundreds of gruesome murders each year and . . . Mitt Romney. Oh, yeah. They’re like brothers. In fact, wasn’t Romney’s dad born in Mexico? And, hey, one of Romney’s sons even knows Spanish. That boy wasn’t on a church mission there. No, he was making connections with the jefe!

Sonia Montoya-Cadena, the one who ran a human trafficking ring in Denver exploiting young girls for sex and . . . Mitt Romney. Yeah, Romney’s just like that. If he could run slave brothels, he’d do it in a minute to make a buck. In fact, doesn’t Bain Capital own a couple of slave brothels in Greenland?

I wanted to unload. I was prepared to destroy her with fiery analysis of the first order.

Thundering analysis.

Mountain crushing logic.

She was so freaking blind.

Except,

She had never actually considered what I had to say in any of my previous emails. It never mattered how powerfully vast my brilliant logic was. She’d demonstrated wax ear time and again. All of my intellectual might never made a dent in her liberal force field. I brought blood and thunder, and it always seemed to bounce off her like bullets made of styrofoam.

Nevertheless! Clinton? Obama? Save the gerbils?

I made a comment that sent Smart Sister into DEFCON 5. Foolish me. Eventually, her liberal ire cooled and she decided to order comrade Putin to stand down and not push the big red button.

Meanwhile, I started to think.

I noted that if things didn’t change, the Republicans wouldn’t be winning the presidency any time soon. If they couldn’t beat Obama when the economy was in the tank, then there really was no hope. Which meant we are going to end up like Greece, with continuing inflation (which is not only an intentional, government-led annual pay cut on the disgustingly rich, filthy rich, and annoyingly rich, but also on the middle class, poor, destitute, and various and sundry hoboes everywhere), huge debt, stupid taxes, ridiculous health care, Soviet-style redistribution, blah, blah, blah.

I asked myself, like all Republicans did, what could we conservatives do differently? Follow Obama’s example and improve our operations to get the vote out? Build up a conservative La Raza? Do the right thing with the children of illegals? Get someone willing to land more blows on the opposition (Romney could have decimated Obama in debates two and three, but he didn’t; he totally failed to define his opponent).

Maybe it was in the messaging. Maybe what we needed to do was develop something that actually changed minds.

At this point a faint ding sounded in the distance in my mind. A small light bulb suddenly flipped on and illuminated a dark cubby of my mind.

Hadn’t I just read about studies showing how a soap opera in Mexico, a radio play in Tanzania, and sitcoms in America actually changed viewer attitudes and behaviors about literacy, HIV, and abortion? Didn’t I already know about the power of concrete and vivid storytelling? Not sermon-telling, but storytelling.

Why, yes. Yes, I did.

Had I not witnessed the use of storytelling on U.S. television for, what, fifteen years by those wanting to build sympathy for homosexuals? (A good thing, even if I disagree with some of the gay agenda.) And the cheapening of sex by others? (A bad thing.) And the clearly conscious promotion of many other attitudes and beliefs via various media programs?

I determined there was something to this.

If people were going to vote for fiscal responsibility in Washington, something like this was going to have to be done. It wasn’t going to happen in flame wars.

About this same time I was browsing through the recent Radio West programs. I saw one called “The Righteous Mind.”  It was an interview of Jonathon Haidt about his new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Hey, wasn’t that addressing my question?

The program blurb states: “Monday, our guest is the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose latest book sets out to explain the root causes of the divisions in our society. At the heart of his argument is the idea that the human mind is designed to “do” morality. But when we separate into tribes – say political affiliations or religious denominations – we focus on different moral foundations. Haidt joins us to explain why he says we need the insights of liberals and conservatives to flourish as a nation.”

I listened. And loved the program.

Haidt shared a number of deliciously insightful things about how our mind works and how we choose our affiliations. He shared so many insights that I immediately requested his book at my library. The library ordered a copy for their collection. I, of course, was first in line to read it. I just finished the book.

It’s one of the best books I’ve read all year.

Haidt explains why my sister and I were both baffled by people who voted for the opposition candidate. He explains how human morality works. How our reason does not lead us to make the judgments we do, but instead more often acts like a lawyer to justify our positions to others.

As soon as he explained that I saw how I had done that time and time again. For example, in this election cycle I blamed Obama for the economy. In the Bill Clinton re-election I vigorously argued that the President doesn’t have any effect on the economy and is lying if he takes credit for it. I’m not saying that Obama didn’t do things that might have hampered the recovery, but how did I know his actions exacerbated our problems? What evidence did I really have?

Haidt explains that there are six basic moral bases then points out which ones drive liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, and how we can use that knowledge to disagree more constructively. He provides strong insights into how our reason and intuitions and judgments work, the evolutionary function of our morality, and how our wiring for group affiliation affects it.

I didn’t agree with some of his conclusions. He sometimes takes his points too far. For example, he seems to suggest that people in cities are pre-disposed to be liberal. And that’s why they live there. Um, no. That’s not why they live there. They live in cities because that’s where the jobs are. The agricultural revolution made sure of that, remember? In his effort to explain the smaller biological basis of our beliefs, he also downplays the larger effect our families and groups have. But despite these excesses, he shares so many fresh and exciting ideas that they don’t matter. And he shares them all in such a fun and clear way that I couldn’t help but stay up late a number of nights reading this book.

Do you know how much I wanted to trash Obama to my sister?  That Soviet-style central planner.  That drunken sailor spender.  That choom wagon pot head.

And yet, you and I also know that will never work. I now know better why. Because of Haidt, I think I see a better way. I certainly see how I have done exactly what drives me mad about those who have drunk the opposition candidate’s Kool-aide. I see that I have my own conservative force field that deflects liberal bullets (and perhaps even blinds me to the truth sometimes). And why I need to watch my reason, that cunning lawyer part of my brain, as well as my intuition.

Haidt, a liberal, has given me, a conservative, a great gift. I intend to use it. If you are interested in the two taboo topics of politics or religion, if you enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink or the Heath brother’s Made to Stick, if you want to find a better way to influence than flame wars (as fun as they can sometimes be), then I think you will enjoy the wonders Haidt shares in his fine book.

Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to the Radio West program http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/righteous-mind for a taste of what awaits you.

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  • Gandhi & Waiting for Superman

    ByJohn Brown

    Enthralling History

    The miracle of Netflix means that no movie or television show becomes unavailable. And there are so many produced over the last fifty years that are so very good. I recently re-watched the 1982 Gandhi with my family and have to say it is one of those fabulous movies that’s amazing every time I watch it. Not once did the production feel dated. And even though I’d already seen it, I found myself enthralled with the events and the character played so well by Ben Kingsley. No wonder it won eight Academy Awards.

    The movie portrays the last 50 years of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. It starts in 1893, when Gandhi, educated in the UK, is thrown off a South African train for being an Indian and traveling in a first class compartment. Gandhi decides to start a non-violent protest campaign for the rights of all Indians in South Africa. Quite an undertaking in those years. He’s arrested and finds himself in a number of dicey moments, but ultimately brings change.

    Gandhi is then invited back to India, where he is considered a national hero. Leaders there urge him to take up the fight for India’s independence from the British Empire. Gandhi agrees and mounts a non-violent campaign of unprecedented scale. Nothing of this magnitude has ever happened in the recorded history of the world. Which is why it’s a rough road all the way to the end.

    There’s suspense and humor and heartbreak in this movie. But it goes far beyond entertainment. This movie will move you. It has power to change. This movie is what history should be. If you haven’t seen Gandhi, or haven’t seen it in a while, let me recommend you get it this week and sit down with friends or family to enjoy a wonderful experience.

    Education and Teachers Unions

    I find it interesting that teachers in Utah, one of the most conservative states in the union, send almost three million dollars each year to the National Education Association. That’s the $165 in NEA dues for each of the roughly 18,000 union members in Utah. This is interesting because the NEA, the largest labor union in the United States, is one of the biggest supporters of the Democratic party.

    For example, the NEA spends roughly 85-90% of its direct candidate donations on Democrats. The NEA is quick to point out that those direct candidate donations do not come out of the three million Utah teachers send to them, but from additional donations to one of their political action committees. It’s illegal, in fact, to contribute directly to candidates with money received from union dues. However, there are a lot of other ways to support candidates and causes in addition to direct donations. 

    Mike Antonucci, a teacher’s union observer, explains just how that works in his article “How Much Does the NEA Spend on Politics”. The upshot is that the NEA can spend as much as they want on politics with their dues. And the lion’s share of that spending goes toward liberal causes. ACORN, for example, has been a beneficiary of NEA grants.

    Now, I don’t see anything wrong with that. People should be able to donate to whatever cause they think is important. The NEA has just as much right to make their voice heard as anyone else. I just think it’s interesting that so many conservatives have been led to donate their cash to these causes. And it’s not just in Utah. About 60% of NEA members identify themselves as conservative or independent. And yet they donate to these liberal causes via the union. What’s even more ironic is that most of them probably do not personally donate anything close to that to conservative candidates and causes. It’s not like teachers have tons of extra cash.

    It’s a neat trick to get conservatives to donate so much money to liberals. And perhaps some teachers feel it’s the price they have to pay for the services they want from the union. I would think it would be better to start another union, but that’s me. However, this is not the only kink teachers unions have introduced into the education system.

    I’m not going to argue that teachers unions are evil. These unions arose in a time when female teachers were heavily discriminated against. They do some good things. But mixed in with the good is, well, you’ll have decide for yourself if it smells.

    A great place to begin is with the documentary Waiting for Superman. You should know this movie came out of the gate with a huge strike against it in my mind–it’s produced by Davis Guggenheim, the same guy who did An Inconvenient Truth. Good grief, that’s all I wanted was another two hours of Chicken Little running around saying “sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

    But I didn’t find any of that in the film. For example, the film doesn’t say all American schools are awful. It doesn’t say teachers are terrible. Contrary to what the movie’s critics claim, including the NEA and its many state and local affiliates, the film doesn’t suggest charter schools or standardized testing are the silver bullet answers to our issues. I simply didn’t encounter the sensational propaganda others claimed would be there.

    No. What the film does is examine some of the issues in our current system, which put so many children at a disadvantage, and the role the teacher unions play. It does not, as some critics claim, go on to suggest any solutions. It presents a problem, experienced by real parents and children right now, then poses a question: what can be done?

    I found it eye-opening and thought-provoking. I think it’s a must-see. If you have children or grandchildren in school, if you’re one of our many fine teachers or school administrators, you’ll want to watch this movie and then ask yourself that same question. What can be done? What works? What’s best for the children? And does the current way our unions operate work in any way against those interests? For those who elect not to go into immediate union-attack or union-defense mode, I think this film will introduce some valuable points to the discussion about education.

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  • La Brea Bakery Breads Cookbook, Very Young Girls

    ByJohn Brown

    Divine Nature

    I became a fan of bread when I lived in Europe. But not just any bread. I’m talking about the kind of bread with a crust that crackles and is chewy. With an inside that’s soft. Bread that doesn’t need anything on it, but makes you sing when you eat it with soup or a thin smear of butter. Alas, I came home and could not find such bread. It was all Wonder Bread nonsense and its many sandwich bread relatives.

    Luckily, I married a gal who had lived in Europe as well. And who, for a few years, actually had some time to bake. It took some time to find a cookbook with recipes that worked. It took some practice. But she was finally able to recreate that crackle, chewy, soft (not the shattering, roof-of-mouth cutting stuff either). And we enjoyed great bread for a few years. Then she took a job outside the home and we’ve been relegated to American sandwich bread again.

    Enter four daughters. Three of whom are working through a church program like the Boy Scouts that’s meant to help them develop key virtues. Each of the virtues requires they complete a number of tasks to educate them about that virtue. When they’ve completed the tasks for a virtue, they are to devise and undertake a ten hour project to help them practice what they’ve learned.

    Recently, I sat down with my oldest to see where she was and found to my surprise that she still had a number of things to complete. As I reviewed the requirements with her, I pointed out that she’d fulfilled the requirements for all of these virtues many times over. But she refused to count her activities that might apply because she didn’t perform them at the time with the intent to fulfill the requirements. She wanted her accomplishment to be purposeful. She’s focused on the intent of the program, not the award for the award’s sake. (Where do such children come from?) I saw her point, applauded it, and went back to work trying to help her brainstorm what she could do.

    We came to the virtue called Divine Nature, which states: “Be partakers of the divine nature. Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” Many of the activities revolve around womanhood and family. But it was the big project she needed to complete, one that “will help you practice what you have learned. This should be a significant effort that will take at least ten hours to complete.”

    Some of the suggested projects had to do with service in the community, others with talents. Then I read: “Develop a skill you could use in your future home, such as cooking, sewing, making repairs, organizing, or designing.”

    Cooking?

    My bread soul stirred.

    Cooking?! Baking is cooking.

    Memories of crackling crust and soft centers filled the mind of my bread beast. “Bread!” I declared.

    Luckily, Daughter Number 1 had also eaten her mother’s bread and missed it. “Bread,” she agreed. And we pulled the book out that my wife had found so useful, and began.

    The book is Nancy Silverton’s Breads From The La Brea Bakery. Silverton is a master chef.  She owns and operates the Campanile restaurant and the La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. Her bread is sought for all over the nation. Her breads and the breads she shares in this book are all made with a sourdough starter that she teaches you to make from scratch with grapes. Actually, you don’t make it, but feed it. Because it’s a living thing. And after a while it becomes almost like a strange family pet growing on the counter and in the fridge.

    Some might hear “sour” and turn away, but Silverton explains how to keep the starter from becoming too sour. The result is a crackling, chewy, soft bread with a light tang that’s delicious. In fact, Daughter Number 1 just made bagels from the recipe in the book. There’s no tang at all. They’re the best bagels I’ve had. She’s also made the regular loaf, pancakes, and waffles from this same starter. They’re all delicious.

    The book starts off with a lesson in bread making then shares about 60 recipes, everything from baguettes to whole-wheat sandwich bread to sourdough onion rings. The only downside to the book is that I wish it had more pictures. An illustration, for example, in the section on rolling bagels would have been helpful. But we found one on youtube, and it sufficed. And I will confess that I didn’t think once about pictures when eating the bread.

    BTW, we’ve stopped calling this bread. Now, when it’s time, one of us will say, “I think it’s time to make some divine nature.”

    Our Young Girls

    I was recently reading about organized crime and their main activities.  In the section about what ties such groups have to prostitution, the authors reported that it’s estimated that 20% of all prostitutes are street walkers. Another 15% are call girls or escort service workers, and the remaining number, 65%, work in an establishment of some kind—massage parlors, brothers, bars, and hotels.  

    The authors reported that most street walkers have a lover or companion relationship with their pimp. This didn’t make sense to me at the time. But after watching Showtime’s Very Young Girls, I now understand what they’re talking about.

    This film is a documentary about teenage girl prostitutes in New York City and the GEMS (Girls Education and Mentoring Services) that helps them to find a new direction, which is not always easy.

    One of the awful statistics the film reveals is that the average age of entry into street walker prostitution in the United States is just thirteen.

    No, that’s not a typo. It’s thirteen. THIR-TEEN.

    The film introduces us to Rachel Lloyd who dropped out of school and became a teenage stripper and hooker. But she got out. She changed her life and then started the GEMS program to help young girls who found themselves in situations like the one from which she escaped. Lloyd began the program in her apartment and eventually got funding to open a recovery center where girls can seek shelter while they’re trying to redirect their lives.

    The film profiles a number of the girls working through the program. Some of these kids are kidnapped off the street and forced into the “life” as they call it. Some are lured away by pimps who initially act as if they want them to be their girlfriends, flattering them and showing them a good time, and only after they’ve been sleeping together for a while do the pimps then explain that they need to make some money.

    Many of these girls come from broken homes. Many have grown up believing the sexual messages portrayed by the media. The girls are beaten and given drugs.

    Some have been so psychologically manipulated by their pimps that they feel compelled to return. Others have successfully broken with their pasts.

    And all of them are just kids. KIDS!

    This is a movie that’s hard to watch. It’s not graphic in any way. It’s simply the subject matter. It’s also eye-opening and, while the problem is huge, does provide some hope. Thank the Lord for people like Rachel Lloyd. And for people everywhere who live upstanding lives and by kindness and good teaching save their children and others in their communities from this terrible waste. Rent this movie on Netflix. I think you’ll find it’s well worth the time.

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  • Cranford, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Nebo Grotto Falls

    ByJohn Brown

    Cranford

    For those of you who love stories like Pride and Prejudice, have I got a TV mini-series for you—the BBC’s five-part Cranford.

    The series is set in the 1840’s in England in the fictional village in North West England and focuses primarily on a handful of the town’s single middle-class ladies who are forced to deal with lace-eating cats, marriage prospects, and prank valentines, as well as death, loss, and a changing culture. There are also two stories about the male inhabitants woven in as well—one about a new doctor and another about a young boy of the lower class who has a chance for something better.

    I will confess that when I saw this arrive in the Netflix envelope, I wasn’t at all excited. The cover’s too cold–all blue with a bunch of sour-looking women. In fact, I decided not to watch it. But the laughter of my wife and daughters lured me back upstairs to the TV, where it took about seven seconds for me to revise my earlier decision. The characters are delightful. In fact, some of their lines are such a joy to listen to, we had to rewind many parts to watch them again and again.

    The series is based on three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, a British novelist, which were published between 1849 and 1858. The sets made us feel as if we where there. For example, one of the things I noticed was the lighting. Incandescent bulbs weren’t invented until the late 1800’s and took many more years to find their way into most houses. So the directors, instead of making it feel all Hollywood, seemed to rely heavily on the light at hand, as those inhabitants would have. When a scene was in a house, it felt as if they were only using the natural light coming in the windows or the candles being burned. Of course, this is just one of the many details that made this series an excellent period piece.  

    The best news of all is that I just found out there’s more–a two-part special called Return to Cranford. I can’t wait until it comes in the mail. Don’t let the cover fool you. This is a wonderful mini-series. It has poignant and sad moments, but is also full of humor and wit.  And the ending is perfect.   

    Kroger’s Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing

    I love balsamic vinegar and oil on bread. But I never think to make it. And I never thought of what else it might go with. That was until a relative left behind a bottle of Kroger brand Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing.

    I just happened have a homemade bagel handy, squirted out a bit onto a plate and dipped.  Lovely.  So then I tried it on salad and even splashed some on tomato or turkey sandwiches. It’s delicious. Only 80 calories for a whole tablespoon. In fact, it was so good we bought four more bottles because I don’t want to run out.

    Kroger, of course, is a grocery conglomerate. In Utah, it owns the Smith’s, and that’s where you’ll find this delight.

    Nebo Grotto Falls

    The mountains and canyons of Utah are literally desert oases. That’s where our clear streams run, the forests grow, and the wildlife congregates. In the summer, the canyons are a refreshing source for cooling winds. All this meant that, as I grew up, “forest” and “refreshing” became intertwined in my mind. Only when we moved to Ohio did I learn that some forests can also be muggy and hot and not at all refreshing to a desert boy perishing in the humidity.

    Because I love Utah’s canyons so much, we hike and walk them all throughout the summer.  We recently went down to enjoy the Stadium of Fire and the heat (yes, I love dry heat) in Provo. However, we didn’t just hang out in the city. We made time to hike a few trails in the surrounding canyons.

    We love Rock Canyon (just above the Mormon temple in Provo), Hobble Creek Canyon (Springville), as well as Mapleton and Santaquin canyons.  However, there’s another special place that you’ll want to visit should you find yourself in the Provo area. It’s a short little hike just off of S Canyon Road (also known as Nebo Loop Road) which runs from Payson south through the Mt Nebo Wilderness area to Highway 132.

    The trail head is just a few miles into the canyon south of Payson and is marked with a simple sign that says “Grotto.” There’s a little bit of parking on the side of the road. The hike is 0.6 miles along a wooded stream.  The grotto itself is more than worth it.  You can find directions here: http://www.utah.com/thingtodo27245.htm

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    Writing Update: Curse, trebuchets, CONduit, book industry, & Robinson Wells

    ByJohn Brown

    As of 5 PM this last Saturday I have finished 15,000 words of the climax of Curse of a Dark God. I think I have another 10,000 to go and the book will be done. I’m so close to the end of this draft! So don’t let the progress bars fool you. The ending is coming together fabulously–lots of spectacle, big reveals, and major heroics. At least, I think so.

    While working on this, I had to spend a number of hours finding out how strong a wind must be to pick up humans and stones. I also needed to know the destructive forces of various classes of tornados and hurricanes. Why would I need to know such things? I write fantasy, for Leroy’s sake!

    (Yes, that’s good English; I’m a writer, and one of my prerogatives is to make up silly versions of common expletives using the names of friends and enemies.)

    Here’s why: I just can’t write if I don’t believe in what I’m writing. And when I’ve got monsters (skir) that can generate winds that will be used in a siege, well, I had to know the terminal velocities of what these creatures could throw, and what that might mean for fortress defense. I had to know the limitations and ramifications.

    I won’t rehearse all the fascinating details (and it WAS fascinating), but all that research did lead me to a wonderful documentary. It’s called Secrets of Lost Empires 2: Medieval Siege and was produced by Nova in 2000. You can get it on Netflix or Amazon.  In the film, fifty carpenters worked day and night to create and test what they dubbed “the fourteenth century version of the atom bomb”–the trebuchet (tre-byou-SHAY). The trebuchet as the most popular throwing machine in Europe during the middle ages. If you love the history of medieval war, you’ll love this film. You might want to add to it a reading of the excellent Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons by Konstantin Nossov, which you can get via the inter-library loan program.

    I’ll share two cool factoids for you history fans. “Catapult” means “shield-breaker,” “cata” meaning break or penetrate and “pelta” being the name of the shield used by the Greek light infantry. The original catapults were NOT big spoons–they sped arrows and balls along a track like a crossbow. However, instead of using the spring force of a bow, they used torsion-springs, which is what you get when you twist fibers that want to be straight. In the case of catapults the fibers were ropes made out of animal sinews or hair (horse or human, a woman’s hair being considered the best) and soaked in oil. Click on the image to see a larger picture. 

    A modern example of a torsion-spring are those balsa wood airplanes with propellers attached to a rubber band that’s hooked to the belly of the plane. To fly them, you rotate the propeller round and round, twisting the rubber band. Then you let the propeller go. Because the rubber wants to be straight, it reverses the twist, spinning the propeller the opposite way you twisted it. 

    You might think these torsion-spring engines were weak. But one catapult was reported as being powerful enough that an arrow shot from it broke through a shield, and the armored warrior standing behind it, at a distance of 400 yards! Hence, the name.

    The other factoid is that “trebuchet” comes from the French term meaning to overthrow. If you saw Return of the King, you’ll recognize them as the engines used on the towers of Minas Tirith. Trebuchets are simply an evolution of the staff sling. When it came to breaking castle walls, there was nothing more effective until the cannon appeared. Of course, in my book I use them a bit differently. You’ll see.

    One funny thing. I watched the movie with my oldest who was just as fascinated with the engines as I was. When she was telling my wife about the film, she kept referring to trech-uh-butts. Which, I guess, is as fair an attempt at “trebuchet” as any. However, my wife kept picturing buttocks and couldn’t figure out what the heck my daughter was talking about–“You were watching what with your father?!”

    The French make things so hard . . .

    ***

    The Monday after CONduit I left for work in Mexico and then Vegas. I didn’t get back until this week. So I just wanted to say I had a great time at the con. Loved chatting with all the folks there.

    It was great to see the Larry Correia, Paul Genesse, Jessica Day George, Isaac Stewart (and his brother Dan), Mette Harrison, Eric James Stone, Darren Egget, Julie Frost, Sandra Tayler, LE Modesitt, Josh Perkey, Nicole (whose husband is an Orem cop and I lost his number), Daniel Who-I-Sacrificed-to-My-Editor, and the Dungeon Crawlers Radio guys.

    It was also nice to speak with Julie Wright who was one of the initial judges for the Whitney Awards. She’s always nice to chat with, but this time it was especially nice since she said reading Servant of a Dark God was like eating chocolate. I’ll take chocolate praise any day.

    I also met new author Janci Patterson who just sold a YA with a great premise. It’s called SKIP and is about a young girl whose parents are divorced. The girl has to go stay with her dad who lives in a trailer and is a bounty hunter. I’m a sucker for bounty hunter stories. Especially this one, because she goes out with him and falls in love with one of the guys her dad has to haul in. I’ve slaughtered the pitch, but I got that good old writer’s envy when she told me about it. Can’t wait to read it.

    I also got to see Barbara Hambly. I was at LTUE when she was there like 20 years ago. We loved her stuff. She suddenly dropped out of the writing scene in the early 90’s and now I know why–it appears Del Rey dropped all their midlist authors except for Anne McCaffery and someone else. Hambly was one of the causalities.

    ***

    After Hambly’s main address, I sat with a few authors and had a brief discussion about the book industry where it was suggested the industry was shrinking–fewer readers, fewer sales, doom, doom, doom. But that is exactly opposite all the data I’ve seen.

    1. Book sales have an annual average growth over the last seven years of 1.1%, adult paperbacks are growing 2.9% http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/indStats_02.htm or http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/documents/S12009Final.pdf . Now, this doesn’t show units sold. So it could be that they sold fewer units for more money per unit. Still, it shows at the very least that $$$ aren’t shrinking.
    2. The New Book Titles report here shows an increase in the number of titles: http://www.bowker.com/index.php/book-industry-statistics — 80% increase from 2002 to 2009.
    3. Reading rates are actually on the rise: http://johndbrown.com/2009/03/literary-reading-rates-on-the-rise/
    4. Finally, I contacted Bookscan for their numbers for an ALA conference I did last summer. This is just juvenile fiction, but the numbers are in units. Now, I don’t know if they added more sources to their database and so that caused a rise, but I explained to them what I was trying to do—see trends over time—and this is the data they provided. According to their numbers, more juvenile books are being sold now than in 2004. Click on the graphic below. This means we have more and more readers rising up through the ranks! One author asked how much of that was Rowling and Meyer. During that period books by those authors accounted for an average of 7-10% of all juvenile fiction. Bookscan categorizes “juvenile” as everything for kids. That means from Go, Dog Go up through what we consider Young Adult. R&M accounted for an average of 33-36% of what Bookscan categorizes as science fiction, fantasy, or magic within the juvenile mega-category. What all that means is the growth is across the whole category, not just with their books.

    So I’m very sanguine about the book industry’s prospects. Today’s youth seem to be able to play computer games AND read in great quantities.

    ***

    Finally, one last bit of news. Robinson Wells was the one of the main ones to start the Whitney Academy and the Whitney Awards. Well, he just got some fabulous news. Here’s the announcement from Publishers Marketplace: “Robison Wells’ YA debut dystopian thriller VARIANT, a modern-day LORD OF THE FLIES, set at a boarding school where not everything is as it seems and every day is a fight for survival, in a significant deal, in a three-book deal, to Erica Sussman at Harper Children’s.”

    For those of you who don’t know, here are the PM deal categories.

    • “nice deal” $1 – $49,000
    • “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000
    • “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000
    • “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000
    • “major deal” $500,000 and up

    Oh, baby. Someday. Someday. Of course, I’m nothing but happy for Mr. Wells!

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  • Peak

    ByJohn Brown

    peakbyandersericssonHow many pushups can you do in a row?

    10, 20? Could you do 100?

    And you’d have to be a freak if you could do 500 in a row, right?

    Well, no.

    You’d just be human.

    In 1980 Minoru Yoshida of Japan did 10,057 pushups nonstop.

    In 1993 Charles Servizio of the good old USA did 46,001 pushups in 21 hours and 21 minutes.

    In 2016 David Escojido of the USA did 2,298 pushup in 1 hour.

    You might think that these folks must be oddities. They must be gifted. They must have some weird thing in their DNA allowing them to do these things.

    But you’d be wrong.

    None of these people were born that way. In fact, what researchers are finding is that most of the folks that we think are prodigies—folks like Mozart, Tiger Woods, chess masters who can play 20 games at once without even looking at a board—the biggest thing that separates them from the rest of us isn’t DNA.

    Anders Ericsson, a researcher at Florida State University, has spent the last 30 years studying what gives experts their edge. And he reveals in Peak: The New Science of Expertise that he and other researchers have found that while there are some physical traits like height and size that definitely make a difference in some physical activities (notice how all the top gymnasts are short), what really sets people apart is how much of a certain type of practice they’ve done.

    Not just practice, but a certain type of practice.

    Practicing “hard” doesn’t do much for you. Putting in a lot of hours doesn’t do much either. Instead, you need to practice in a way that has been shown to lead people to actually improve their performance. You still have to put in a lot of time practicing—there is no shortcut—but only the type of practice he explains in the book seems to lead to the increase of performance.

    Is he saying that anyone can do anything?

    No. When I first looked into his research, one of my big issues was that it seemed he was claiming anyone could do anything with 10,000 hours of practice.
    But he’s not saying that.

    Is he saying genetics has no influence?

    It can, but what he’s found is that it doesn’t have the role we normally think of when we think of top performance. And, most importantly, we place artificial limits on ourselves by thinking people are born to this or that activity.

    There is far too much to post here. What you need to know is that what he shares in this book is fascinating, compelling, and surprising. I’ve been training people for over thirty years. And I found myself enlightened. If you’re at all interested in education, or getting better at some activity (from parenting to golf), or helping your kids get better, you’ll want to read this book. Highly recommended.

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  • |

    Brain Nazis and Feeling Good by David D. Burns, M.D.

    ByJohn Brown

    Have You Got a Brain Nazi?

    If you’re conscious, you’re monitoring your environment. You have to. It’s how you survive. This is not something you can turn off. It’s just one of those systems that runs automatically, like your liver. You’re always appraising the situation.

    And as soon as you encounter something that’s likely to be of importance to you or yours, your monitor kicks off a physical response to prepare you to deal with or take advantage of it.

    The problem is that sometimes a Nazi propagandist worms his way into the monitoring station. And like any good Nazi, he distorts reality.

    Sometimes those distortions lead to burning resentment, sometimes to unwarranted shame or anxiety, sometimes to eating disorders, sometimes to grave depression. When I heard of the tragic suicide that occurred in our community a few months ago, my heart went out in sympathy to the girl, her family, and friends.  I’m not a doctor. I don’t know the situation. But I’m positive she was dealing with one of these villains.

    I wished I’d been able to share something that’s been a literal life saver to me. Now, it might not have changed anything. But hopefully it can change things in the future for you and others you know who may have to deal with a Nazi in the brain.

    And you will have to deal with a brain Nazi at some time.

    This is not something that affects a miniscule portion of the population. In any given year you can expect more than 15% of a population to experience some form of this [1]. That’s roughly 238 of the estimated 1,592 people 18 years and older in the little county where I live [2]. Rates for teens are similar [3]. Besides, you don’t have to have a full-blown case of a depression for distortions to affect you. How many of us haven’t made faulty comparisons with others? “Oh, she’s so thin and has such great hair; I’m so dumpy.” “Oh, he’s doing so well, and I’m not. I’ll never be a success.”

    The question is not whether you or someone important to you will have to deal with it. The question is how prepared you’ll be when you do. Everyone deals with distortions now and again.  Which means everyone can find a little more enjoyment in life by showing their brain Nazis the door.

    So how does it all work? How do you show the villain out?

    I’m going to summarize it below, but I’ll tell you right now that the book that saved my life was Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD. This isn’t positive mental attitude. It’s not neuro-linguistic programming. It’s not the mumbo jumbo of Freud and Jung. This is practical and proven. It is the most prescribed intervention for dealing with these issues in the current medical community. It’s prescribed because it works.

    Your Brilliant Appraisal-Emotion System

    To understand this, you have to understand how emotions work. As I said before, you’re always monitoring your situation. You hear a buzz and see a rattlesnake on the path two feet away. Your monitor immediately responds. Alarm, adrenaline, increased blood flow–all of that to get you ready to deal with the situation. Your monitor writes “alarm” on your face to communicate it to those around you–to warn and ask for help. This happens in less than a blink of an eye.

    But this doesn’t just happen with danger. It happens when we encounter unfamiliar things. When we encounter positive things. You see a great friend who makes you laugh all the time. Boom, your monitor responds. You smile. Feel. Focus. You do so because you not only want to avoid dangers, you also want to seek out the things that make you happy.

    Our emotions prepare us to fight, flee, seek, and pitch woo. Our little monitoring and physical response system is brilliant.

    But there’s more. We don’t rely on just the automatic subconscious monitoring. We also have a cognitive (conscious thinking) part. Let’s go back to the rattlesnake. You walk out into the garden, step on a slither, and immediately go into alarm mode. Then you look, consciously see the slithery thing is not a snake, but the garden hose. You relax. Laugh.

    The quick subconscious appraisals keep us alive, because with snakes and other things, if you’re slow, you’re dead. We don’t have time for thought. If you touch a hot stove, you want an immediate reflex. You don’t want to ponder it for a second or two. On the other hand, the cognitive appraisals help us further appraise a situation. They bring more of our resources to bear on the situation.

    How Does the Nazi Get In?

    So there are three parts of the appraisal-emotion system: the subconscious appraisal of the situation, the physical response, and the cognitive appraisal. Each of the three parts affects the other two. And when things are running smoothly, we don’t have problems. But sometimes we get a distortion mucking up the works. We make a faulty appraisal of the situation. And therefore have a faulty physical response.

    For example, you’re a mother. You’ve had a hard day. The kids make a huge mess with flour in the kitchen. You yell, freak out. When they’re cowering in their rooms and you’re cleaning up the flour, you think, “There I go again. I’m a total failure. I can’t stand it! I never do anything right! I’m a terrible mother.” These thoughts make you even sadder.

    And that’s the propaganda. That’s your brain Nazi with his all-or-nothing thinking, telling you that you either perform perfectly or you’re a failure.

    But is that true? No, it’s not. You might be a B+ mother, filling the lives of your kids with all sorts of goodness. You might have just had a great time reading with the kids not thirty minutes before. But the brain Nazi tells you to forget that. “Vatch dis film,” he says, “und see de horrors of vut you are!”    

    And the all-or-nothing thinking gambit is just one of ten common weapons he uses. Furthermore, this happens so quick that we often don’t notice it. In fact, we’ve often repeated some of these distortions so often than they’ve become almost automatic.

    Mr. Nazi, Meet Mr. Bazooka

    The good news is that you can pull the lid off the lies. You can open the door, spot the brain Nazi that slipped in, and take him out. You can do this because one of the three parts of the system is our cognitive appraisal. This means you can consciously stop the movie, pin the distortion on the wall, and uncover the truth. Once you do that, it’s like the rattlesnake scenario above—oh, it’s a hose, we realize, not a snake, and the appropriate emotions immediately follow.

    But you need to know how to stop the movie. You need to know how to spot the lies. David D. Burns, MD tells you exactly how to do this in his book Feeling Good. (By the way, DON’T get this book confused with his Feeling Good Handbook–you DON’T want the handbook; you want Feeling Good, the book.)  In the book, Burns talks about the theory, the results, and then gets right down to the practical techniques used to blow the brain Nazi to kingdom come.

    A few years ago I hit a bad patch with a brain Nazi that had taken up residence. A very bad patch. He’d been there for quite some time. This book and a good counselor saved me. I thank the Lord for that. By the time I went to see a medical doctor to assess whether chemical issues might be playing a role, I was stable. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but I had opened the lid and found the villain at the controls. I used the techniques Burns gave me, and I’m happy to say that while the brain Nazi still comes round every once in a while, I can spot him. And I can take that sucker out.

    Go to the library and check out the book and take the assessment test. If you, or someone you know, scores in the mild range, maybe you’ve just experienced a very sad event. But maybe you’ve also got a villain in residence. Get the book. Read it. Be happy. Nobody needs to live with a Nazi at the controls.

    For Authors

    By the way, fiction authors should pay special attention to this stuff. Not because we’re more susceptible to brain Nazis than others, although we do have to deal with our fair share as we develop and share our stories. No, we should because the emotion process is exactly what we’re trying to tap into. Knowing the principles can be very useful indeed. Let me recommend you read the books on emotion listed on the Learning With Pros page.

    Sources

    1. 1. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
    2. 2. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49/49033.html (find your state and county and see how many folks are likely dealing with a brain Nazi in your area)
    3. 3. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/youthDepression/youthDepression.htm
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2 Comments

  1. This book has been recommended to me by a lot of friends, all of them left-of-center people, so I dismissed it as their attempt to diagnose me with some malady that explains my political beliefs. Now that I’ve read your review; however, I’ll have to give it a chance. It does sound interesting.

    I was pretty disappointed with the President’s reelection, not because I think he is so terrible as much as because I think Mitt Romney was such a qualified candidate to lead during our present-day economic situation. He probably won’t run again, and I can’t help but feel we missed our opportunity to have a truly decent man with an extraordinary skill set, guide the nation’s course back to prosperity.

  2. I hear you. And, surprise surprise, we’re right back into the same fiscal wrangles we were before Oh, well. I think you’ll like the book.
    Sometimes Haidt didn’t capture me as a conservative as well as I would have liked. It seems he suggests sometimes that harm and fairness don’t matter to me, which they do very much. You read the other issues I had with the book. But the framework he presents, I think, is a good one.

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