Why Powerful Women are Sexy and Have the Happiest Marriages

By Mark Sichel, L.C.S.W

Despite the popularity of books about men loving and marrying "bitches", it's really powerful and strong women that men love. We get turned on and not only want to bed powerful women, we want to spend the rest of our lives with them. It's not that we wouldn't take a roll in the hay with a woman we perceive as weak, but unless a man feels weak himself, he's going to look for a strong woman as a life partner.
When I talk about powerful women, I'm not talking only about women who hold their own financially. A woman can stay home and take care of children or get involved with charitable work or as Stephen Sondheim said it and Elaine Stritch sang it, be one of "The Ladies Who Lunch" and still feel and be powerful. As long as a man can't walk all over her and she is secure and doesn't need a man to give her an identity, a man will feel like he's won the prize. 
In my experience (personal as well as professional) it’s only weak men and women who perceive strong, skilled, competent and self-respecting women as devaluing and malevolent. The women I've known who allow men to treat them like a doormat, I don't find attractive, and a quarter century ago when I was single, women who allowed me to walk all over them led me to feel chronically guilty and I'd quickly get rid of them. I think that's the central reason why men don't end up falling in love with women who are compliant, passive, and meek. Guys who feel weak may enjoy a woman's submissiveness, but are not happy when he feels guilty about his behavior and the woman responds by being whiny, complaining, nagging and a shrew. When a woman becomes castrating and devaluing, she's actively being a witch and when she becomes whiny, complaining, and self-pitying she's passively being aggressive and evil. Whether a woman takes away a guy's manhood and self respect or she manipulates with helplessness or resorting to tears, a nagging and ill-tempered woman is definitely not sexy to a guy unless he is hiding the very same fear: that he is in fact weak and helpless and hides it with bravado or what we now refer to as narcissism. 
Weak women tend to fall for narcissistic guys who give the illusion of being strong. These are guys who need to be admired and worshipped to feel secure, and many women feel safe with a guy who demands adoration. This dysfunctional pattern became the title of my wife's dissertation in postgraduate training: "The Narcissistic Idealization and Devaluation Formulation." She explains that this is a modus operandi that dictates that if you don't treat me like garbage, I'll make rubbish out of you. The outcome is that the man then ends up feeling like he's sleeping with dribble and debris, and the woman feels and acts like she's diddly-squat. If she doesn't allow herself to be mistreated and devalued, a guy with pathological narcissism will run in the other direction and she becomes sexy and desirable to men looking for a life partner as opposed to a supplicant.
This formulation, by the way, is gender interchangeable; men who feel weak and allow themselves to be devalued by women will turn it around on the woman and act like a macho jerk or by being passively aggressive. Like the narcissistic men who treat women abusively, the narcissistic woman ends up disappointed and acts mean because she feels like she's sleeping with human refuse. She thinks that if she is degrading to the man it'll make her feel less badly about herself. What she really wants from the man, however, is true strength: kind but firm, gentle not wimpy, loving while not being needy. In reality we all want strong partners who feel good about themselves and both women and men with weak partners secretly and often unconsciously hope and pray that their partner will show strength and self-respect, because that's ultimately a pre-condition for good sex and love.

Does God Have A Future?

Does God Have a Future?

• Words from Deepak Chopra

March 23, 2010

Off and on for twenty years I’ve thought deeply about God and his chances of survival (for “his” you can substitute “her” or “its,” since an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present deity doesn’t have a fixed gender). But this Sunday, God’s survival became the subject of a debate before an audience at Cal Tech.
If you’re interested, the debate will later be televised on ABC’s Nightline. My debating partner was noted author and spiritual teacher Jean Houston. On the side representing atheism was Dr. Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, and Sam Harris, who wrote the bestseller, Letter to a Christian Nation.  (I’m writing this preview before the actual event, but the article will appear afterward.)
This won’t be the standard argument about whether God exists, with believers declaring their faith on one side and doubters declaring that there is no evidence for God on the other. Rather, both sides will look at the current state of science to see if we are getting closer to finding a supreme intelligence in the universe or further away.
In the past few years the camp of skeptics, atheists, and doubters has been emboldened to use science as a weapon to ridicule faith. The British evolutionist Richard Dawkins is associated with this attitude, and compared to his loud, disdainful voice, the efforts of scientists who believe in God, such as the eminent geneticist Francis Collins, have been relatively muted. As the head of the human genome project, Collins is far more credible about genetics than Dawkins, however, and he argues strenuously that evolution is consistent with a principle of intelligence in the formation of life. But no matter who wins any debate on a given night, the future of God is by no means settled.
Socially, God is waning in the developed countries, if you measure this by church attendance. The U.S. traditionally has had higher church attendance than any European country, but in both places the trend has been steady decline for at least four decades. Science has been viewed as the enemy of religion since the time of Darwin, when the Christian world was shocked to discover that Homo sapiens evolved from primate ancestors, thus turning Adam and Eve into a myth.
In the face of evolution, which serves as the bulwark of the atheist argument, the devout have been forced to fall back on faith. In a scientific age, faith is bound to lose out to facts in the minds of most rational people. Which is why millions of us are worried about God, even if the majority haven’t decisively renounced him.
My position is that advanced science has actually turned the tables, giving us new ways to defend, not God as a patriarch seated on his throne in the sky, but God as a field of intelligence that gives rise to evolution itself and all that goes with it: creativity, quantum leaps, time and space, and expanding consciousness. As we learn more about these things, we will reshape God into something new and far more powerful than the traditional Judeo-Christian conception.
In a word, the future of God depends upon human evolution. As we look deeper into our own awareness, we will meet the field of infinite awareness and intelligence that is our source, and on that path we will encounter God.
What supports such a view? First, there are a host of mysteries that current science, with its fixation on materialism, cannot remotely explain. Let me list a few.
1.  The Big Bang: Almost all physicists and cosmologists conclude that the universe began in a single moment referred to as the “big bang” 14 billion years ago. At that moment the universe burst forth into creation from an infinitely dense dimensionless point of pure energy.  The laws of physics operate after the first 10 ^{– 43} seconds after the big bang.  In the first 10 ^{– 43} seconds what happened is not only unknown, but unknowable as the laws of physics breakdown and don’t exist.  As the eminent astrophysicist Robert Jastrow said, “At this moment it seems that science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientists who has lived by his faith by the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Stephen Hawking commenting on the big bang states “it would be difficult to explain why the universe begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings just like us.”
2.  DNA: So far as we know, DNA is the most complex microstructure in the universe, surpassing by millions of times the next most complex organic molecule. To claim that the universe developed human DNA, with its three billion codons, at random is like saying that a hurricane can blow through a junkyard and create a Boeing 757. Francis Collins argues two things: We have no idea how the lifeless “prebiotic soup” of the early Earth developed the first DNA, and in fact such a leap, which produced a self-replicating molecule form which all life emerged, may be totally unknowable.
3. Human intelligence:  Science currently insists that the brain is the source of intelligence, but no one can identify where this mysterious component entered into us. The brain is composed of water, sugar, and proteins. Are we to say that these chemicals are intelligent? If so, then why isn’t a sugar cube equally intelligent? The most advanced neuroscience has not come close to explaining such a basic thing as memory. There are no chemical traces of memory inside any cell of the brain. In addition, no one can explain how separate areas of the brain “light up” simultaneously, involving billions of neurons, without communicating to each other the way we communicate on the telephone, by passing along messages. In the brain, neurons in different locations get the same message all at once. Also, new ideas crop up spontaneously, without reference to past brain activity.
But the most obvious flaw in brain research is that while it is obvious that we have organized thoughts, the action of atoms and molecules can not in any way explain subjectivity, or the mechanics of intention, free will, choice making, insight, intuition, imagination, inspiration, or creativity. There are neural correlates to our subjective experience, of course, but correlation does not mean causal relationship. Neural networks do not compose music or poetry just as your radio set does not compose songs.
4. The Self: We all know that we have a self, but science has never located it. There is no area of the brain where “I” exists. This has led materialists to claim that the self is an illusion created by the brain’s complexity.  But this leads science into a self-contradiction, because the very researchers who say that “I” doesn’t exist must themselves be an illusion.  This is a subtle point, and we must also consider the Buddhist position, which says that the ego-self in fact is an illusion because reality is consciousness itself, without boundaries. Trying to contain the self inside an individual mind and body is a mistake, because all of us are part of the same infinite field of consciousness.  This comes close to Erwin Schrodinger’s statement that “consciousness is a singular that has no plural.”
5. Evolution:  Francis Collins points out that Darwinism cannot be attacked for having gaps. As a model of how a multitude of life forms developed from the first strand of DNA, Darwinism seems elegantly true. But Collins also asserts that the impetus for such a perfect model requires an intelligent principle, giving rise to “theistic evolution,” as Collins dubs it.
The picture of creatures with selfish genes fighting for survival, with the fit passing their genes on while the unfit perish, is a leaky boat of a theory. There are countless examples of cooperation in nature that allow two creatures to survive by sharing the same food and shelter, the way squirrels and birds share the same tree and serve to warn each other of approaching predators.
Also, traits can be passed along from one generation to the next without new genes. The latest research indicates that it’s the action of our genes, whether they are switched on or off, that shapes us as much if not more than which genes we were born with. Behavior can be passed from parent to child without having to develop a new gene for that behavior. This undercuts the materialist notion that we are essentially zombies moving at the whim of molecules.
6. The Intelligent Universe: Although the Big Bang is considered the starting point of the universe no one knows why or how it occurred. However, a deeper point needs to be made – the universe has evolved, not simply expanded.  Swirling, superheated gases began to form complex molecules, and there has been no backsliding. One inexorable force called entropy leads to the cooling of the universe and the breakdown of complex forms into simpler components (the way a corpse decays after death). Entropy was supposed to be all-powerful, yet another force, called evolution, keeps defying decay by creating such complexities as DNA and the human brain.
Traditionally, highly evolved forms were considered anomalies, little islands of “negative entropy” that exist by accident. This seems unlikely, however, since the universe has been creating more complexity for 13 billion years, not less complexity. There is a strong implication that the universe may be aware of its own evolution. Mystical as that sounds, the opposite idea — that only human beings are aware, a trait we chanced upon by accident — is an arbitrary tenet developed through rigid faith in dogmatic materialism.
I’ve barely sketched in the many arguments that can be mounted against materialism. I haven’t used the word God, however. This is because no one can win a debate based on faith versus lack of faith. The only way to bring God back to life, and to give the deity a future, is to move beyond the superstition of materialism. Material objects even those organized as complex organic molecules can not process meaning, purpose, or the longing to know how we came into existence. Even an organ such as the human brain seems to function as a quantum computer that processes symbols that represent meaning generated in consciousness.
A revitalized God won’t look like the God taught in Sunday school. What will the deity look like? He/She/It will reflect our own state of evolution. Insofar as we understand our own consciousness, we will understand where it came from, which is God.

The Male Brain: More Complex Than You Think

The Male Brain: More Complex Than You Think

Wall Street Journal: 'Alternative' Medicine in Mainstream

In mid-February, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative are convening a “Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public.” This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not only medically effective but also cost effective.

President-elect Barack Obama and former Sen. Tom Daschle (the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services) understand that if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery.
Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer and obesity account for 75% of health-care costs, and yet these are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle. As Mr. Obama states in his health plan, unveiled during his campaign: “This nation is facing a true epidemic of chronic disease. An increasing number of Americans are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and HIV/AIDS, all of which can be delayed in onset if not prevented entirely.”
The latest scientific studies show that our bodies have a remarkable capacity to begin healing, and much more quickly than we had once realized, if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause these chronic diseases. These studies show that integrative medicine can make a powerful difference in our health and well-being, how quickly these changes may occur, and how dynamic these mechanisms can be.
Many people tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser or high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle — what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support — can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. But they often are. And in many instances, they’re even more powerful.
These studies often used high-tech, state-of-the-art measures to prove the power of simple, low-tech, and low-cost interventions. Integrative medicine approaches such as plant-based diets, yoga, meditation, and psychosocial support may stop or even reverse the progression of coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, prostate cancer, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and other chronic conditions.
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that these approaches may evenchange gene expression in hundreds of genes in only a few months. Genes associated with cancer, heart disease, and inflammation were downregulated or “turned off” whereas protective genes were upregulated or “turned on.” A study published in The Lancet Oncology reported that these changes increase telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. Even drugs have not been shown to do this.
Our “health-care system” is primarily a disease-care system. Last year, $2.1 trillion were spent in the U.S. on medical care, or 16.5% of the gross national product. Of these trillions, 95 cents of every dollar was spent to treat disease after it had already occurred. At least 75% of these costs were spent on treating chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes that are preventable or even reversible.
The choices are especially clear in cardiology. In 2006, for example, according to data provided by the American Heart Association, 1.3 million coronary angioplasty procedures were performed at an average cost of $48,399 each, or more than $60 billion; and 448,000 coronary bypass operations were performed at a cost of $99,743 each, or more than $44 billion. In other words, Americans spent more than $100 billion in 2006 for these two procedures alone.
Despite these costs, a randomized controlled trial published in April 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that angioplasties and stents do not prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients (i.e., 95% of those who receive them). Coronary bypass surgery prolongs life in less than 3% of patients who receive it. So, Medicare and other insurers and individuals pay billions for surgical procedures like angioplasty and bypass surgery that are usually dangerous, invasive, expensive, and largely ineffective. Yet they pay very little — if any money at all — for integrative medicine approaches that have been proven to reverse and prevent most chronic diseases that account for at least 75% of health-care costs. The INTERHEART study, published in September 2004 in The Lancet, followed 30,000 men and women on six continents and found that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90% of all heart disease.
That bears repeating: The disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable simply by changing diet and lifestyle. And the same lifestyle changes that can prevent or even reverse heart disease also help prevent or reverse many other chronic diseases as well. Chronic pain is one of the major sources of worker’s compensation claims costs, yet studies show that it is often susceptible to acupuncture and Qi Gong. Herbs usually have far fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals.
Joy, pleasure, and freedom are sustainable, deprivation and austerity are not. When you eat a healthier diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you think more clearly, have more energy, need less sleep. Your brain may grow so many new neurons that it could get measurably bigger in only a few months. Your face gets more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. Your heart gets more blood flow, so you have more stamina and can even begin to reverse heart disease. Your sexual organs receive more blood flow, so you may become more potent — similar to the way that circulation-increasing drugs like Viagra work. For many people, these are choices worth making — not just to live longer, but also to live better.
It’s time to move past the debate of alternative medicine versus traditional medicine, and to focus on what works, what doesn’t, for whom, and under which circumstances. It will take serious government funding to find out, but these findings may help reduce costs and increase health.
Integrative medicine approaches bring together those in red states and blue states, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, because these are human issues. They are both medically effective and, important in our current economic climate, cost effective. These approaches emphasize both personal responsibility and the opportunity to make affordable, quality health care available to those who most need it. Mr. Obama should make them an integral part of his health plan as soon as possible.
Dr. Chopra, the author of more than 50 books on the mind, body and spirit, is guest faculty at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dean Ornish, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. His most recent book is The Spectrum (Random House, 2007). Mr. Roy is a professor at Penn State and Arizona State University. Dr. Weil is director of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.

ChaChing! (Duh!)

MARCH 23, 2010, 8:05 PM

A Thin Line Between Hate And Love

Compare and contrast:

WSJ editorial, March 19:

This is what happens when a willful President and his party try to govern America from the ideological left, imposing a reckless expansion of the entitlement state that most Americans, and even dozens of Democrats in Congress, clearly despise.

Gallup, March 22:

Gallup

Actually, it’s not clear whether public opinion has changed all that much: a substantial fraction of those who disapproved of the reform did so because it didn’t go far enough. Anyway, true to form, one of the key talking points of reform’s opponents — that passing reform was an outrage because it denied the clear will of the people — turns out to be completely bogus.

Male Batterers Consistently Overestimate Rates of Violence Toward Partners, Study Finds

 

ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2010) — Men who engaged in domestic violence consistently overestimated how common such behavior is, and the more they overestimated it the more they engaged in abusing their partner in the previous 90 days, according to new research conducted at the University of Washington.

   Those men overestimated by two to three times the actual rates of seven behaviors ranging from throwing something at a partner to rape,, according Clayton Neighbors, lead author of a paper to be published in a spring issue of the journal Violence Against Women.
   "We don't know why men make these overestimations, but there are a couple of likely reasons. Men who engage in violent behavior justify it in their mind by thinking it is more common and saying, 'Most guys slap their women around so it is OK to engage in it.' Or it could be that misperceptions about violence cause the behavior," said Neighbors, now a UW affiliate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a professor of psychology at the University of Houston.
   "Another way of looking at this would be wearing a red shirt. If you think everyone is wearing a red shirt then it is okay for you to wear one too. Or if you wear a red shirt you might overestimate the number of other people who are wearing red shirts," he said.
   The work is the first to document overestimation of intimate partner violence by batterers and is consistent with findings about a variety of other harmful behaviors such as substance use, gambling and eating disorders. This line of research looks at social norms, or what is considered to be appropriate and inappropriate behavior in society.
"Social norms theory suggests that people act in a way that they believe is consistent with what the average person does," added co-author Denise Walker, a UW research professor of social work and co-director of the Innovative Programs Research Group.
   The research looked at 124 men who were enrolled in a larger treatment intervention study for domestic violence. The men, all of whom had participated in violence against a partner in the previous 90 days, were asked to estimate the percentage of men who had ever engaged in seven forms of abuse. These included throwing something at a partner that could hurt; pushing, grabbing or shoving a partner; slapping or hitting; choking; beating up a partner; threatening a partner with a gun; and forcing a partner have sex when they did not want to.
Data on the percentage of men who actually engaged in these abusive behaviors were drawn from the National Violence Against WomenSurvey, funded by the National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In every case the men vastly overestimated the actual instances of abuse. For example, the participants on average thought 27.6 percent of men had thrown something with the intent of hurting a partner while the actual number is 11.9 percent. Similarly, they believed 23.6 percent of men had forced their partner to have sex involuntary compared to 7.9 percent in reality.
"With sexual assault the more a man thought it was prevalent the more likely he was to engage in such behavior. If we can correct misperceptions about the prevalence of intimate partner violence, we have a chance to change men's behavior. If you give them factual information it is harder for them to justify their behavior," Neighbors said
   Walker added: "It is unclear if we can change perpetrators' behavior by correcting their misperceptions about intimate partner violence. However, work in alcohol use suggests that changing misperceptions about drinking changes drinking behavior among college students. Consistent with social norms theory, people are motivated to be 'average' in many ways, particularly if the behavior in question could be considered risky or taboo."
   Co-authors of the paper are Lyungai Mbilinyi, co-director of the UW's Innovative Programs Research Group and research assistant professor of social work; Jeffrey Edleson, a social work professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse; Joan Zegree, co-director of a domestic violence study and a UW adjunct assistant social work professor; Allison O'Rourke, former data manager of the Innovative Programs Research Group; and Roger Roffman, UW emeritus social work professor and founder of the Innovative Programs Research Group. The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the research.

"Empaths vs. Sociopaths"

This used to be a staple scene in action films, as I’m sure you know — a scary thing happens, and the woman the hero is in love with screams and freezes in helpless terror. Then the hero, cool as scotch on the rocks, steps in and vanquishes the scary thing and saves her. On to the kissing scene.

Many years ago I read a behavioral study that said, if anything, women are slightly less likely to panic and freeze in the face of danger than men are. And when you consider that men are something like ten times more likely to commit homicides than women — murder most often is an act of rage, I believe — you might suspect that men are at the mercy of their emotions at least as much as women.

But we can’t have hysterical men and brave, cool women in films because it doesn’t take us to the kissing scene nearly as easily, does it?

Also many years ago, I realized that when a man said his views were “logical” and mine were “emotional,” the word logical (used in context) meant “what I want,” or “what I believe,” with the underlying assumption that the wants and beliefs of a man are the correct, standard or default, wants and beliefs, and those of a woman are controversial, subjective and/or alternative. This was true regardless of the merits of the man’s position. The want or belief became “logical” by virtue of maleness. “Logic” was something like a trump card played by a man against a woman whenever he couldn’t think of a better argument.

I don’t see the male/female, logical/emotional dichotomy publicly expressed nearly as much as I used to, and younger women may not have run into it as much as I did. But it hasn’t entirely gone away, has it?

This correlates to the idea that whites favoring other whites is not ethnic bias, because whiteness is a default norm; what Publius calls the “invisible baseline” fallacy. In this view, bias occurs only when one deviates from the default norm.

Since the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, many arguments for and against her have turned on the question of whether a judge should have “empathy.” Yes, say some, because it helps her see how her decisions affect real people in the real world. No, say others, empathy and emotion are biases that blur the cold logic of the law.

But I say that if you step away and look at the question a little more broadly, the truth is that the decisions of every judge who doesn’t happen to be an out-and-out sociopath are being shaped by empathy. The distinction is, to whom is the judge feeling empathetic?

My view is that everything we think comes from a complex of psychological discriminations and impulses, little of which have anything to do with “logic.” The way we understand ourselves and the world begins to be shaped from the moment we’re born and continues to be shaped by the culture we grow up and live in. In other words, all of our understandings are biased. This is pervasive and inescapable. Often the difference between “logical” and “empathic” people is that an “empathic” person has at least a dim appreciation of his own biases, whereas a “logical” person is utterly oblivious to them.

This week Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about the difference between how liberals and conservatives relate to the world, and how much of these differences emanate from our prefrontal cortex, which “has more to do with moralizing than with rationality.” Our “logical” thoughts actually begin with the “moral” impulses. “It appears that we start with moral intuitions that our brains then find evidence to support.”

Human brains seem to be wired in a way that makes us want to join tribes and be part of an “us” that stands against an “other.” But if we get to know an “other” personally, they seem less strange and foreign and may cease to be an “other.”

“Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart,” Professor Haidt says. “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”

Thus persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public’s growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay.

Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games. When John Yoo wrote memos that rationalized torture, he was not being “logical.” He was playing a social game and empathizing with his tribe. When John Roberts makes decisions that are blatantly biased in favor of corporations over individuals, he is playing a social game and empathizing with his tribe.

You see the picture — to some people, empathy is only “empathy” when it’s being shown to people who are not the default norm, or the invisible baseline, or whatever you want to call it. Otherwise, it’s “logical.”

I know my fingers may fall off as I keyboard this, but in his column today David Brooks has a pretty decent description of how the “logical” decision-making process really works. Our conscious, cognitive understandings of things are based on internalized models of what we’ve been conditioned to believe is “normal.” We may be able to articulate our ideas and perceptions in a coolly logical way, but the process by which we arrive at our ideas and perception is “complex, unconscious and emotional.” This is always true, whether we want to admit it or not.

So it is that two different and equally intelligent people may look at the same set of facts in a case and apply the same set of laws and come to different conclusions. They are working from different internal models of what the world is supposed to be. From this their judgments about which facts in the case are critical and which are not may be entirely different.

Brooks asks if Sotomayor is able to understand her biases as biases. This I cannot know. I’d like to think that people who have been the victims of bias are more capable of recognizing their own biases, but in my experience that is often not so. However, I do think that people with a healthy appreciation for empathy may also have more appreciation for the genuine messiness of human decision making than those who — foolishly — see themselves as “logical.”

Going back to the hysterical women and cool-headed men in films, and how that is so not like the real world — my observation is that women may tend to be better at processing emotions than men. That is, when a woman is frightened, she is less surprised — caught off guard, if you will — at being frightened than a man might be.

This is a gross generalization that cannot be applied to individuals; lots of men process emotions more skillfully than lots of women. However, I think there is a tendency for men to be less accepting of and intimate with their own emotions, and this may be as much nurture as nature; cultural rather than physiological.

What’s critical about emotions is not whether you have them, but whether you let them jerk you around and make you act in ways that are not in your best interests. And by any objective measure I’d say men self-destruct at least as much as women do. Logical, my ass.


From Buddhist@ About .com / MahaBlog

A calling to "ragamuffins"

"Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time with people described in the Gospels as poor, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the hungry, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the captives, those possessed by unclean spirits, all who labor and are heavy burdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  In short, Jesus hung out with ragamuffins".                                                      From Brennan Manning's Ragamuffin Gospel.

"Follow your bliss...."

Deepak Chopra, bio

Time Magazine heralded Deepak Chopra as one of the 100 heroes and icons of the century, and credited him as "the poet-prophet of alternative medicine." Entertainment Weekly described Deepak Chopra as "Hollywood's man of the moment, one of publishing's best-selling and most prolific self-help authors." He is the author of more than 50 books and more than 100 audio, video and CD-Rom titles. He has been published on every continent and in dozens of languages. Fifteen of his books have landed on the New York Times Best-seller list. Toastmaster International recognized him as one of the top five outstanding speakers in the world. Through his over two decades of work since leaving his medical practice, Deepak continues to revolutionize common wisdom about the crucial connection between body, mind, spirit, and healing. His mission of "bridging the technological miracles of the west with the wisdom of the east" remains his thrust and provides the basis for his recognition as one of India's historically greatest ambassadors to the west. Chopra has been a keynote speaker at several academic institutions including Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Divinity School, Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Business School and Wharton.His latest book is"Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul."

"A Field Guide to Narcissism" (Psychology Today)

   There's the groom who wouldn't let his fiancée's overweight friend be a bridesmaid because he didn't want her near him in the wedding pictures. The entrepreneur who launched a meeting for new employees by explaining that nobody ever gets anywhere working for someone else. The woman who had such confidence in her great taste, she routinely redecorated her daughter's home without asking. The guy who found himself so handsome, he took a self-portrait with a Polaroid every night before bed to preserve the moment.

   As Ted Turner put it: "If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect."

   But narcissism isn't just a combination of monumental self-esteem and rudeness. As a personality type, it ranges from a tendency to a serious clinical disorder, encompassing unexpected, even counterintuitive behavior. The Greek myth of Narcissus ends with the beautiful young man lost to the world, content to forever gaze at his own reflection in a pool of water. Real-life narcissists, however, desperately need other people to validate their own worth. "It's not so much being liked. It's much more important to be admired. Studies have shown narcissists are willing to sacrifice being liked if they think it's necessary to be admired," says Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

   Deep desire to be at the center of things is served by extreme self-confidence, a combination that makes narcissists attractive and even charming. Buoyed by a coterie of admiring friends and associates—protected by the armor of positive self-regard—someone with a mild-to-moderate case of narcissism can float through life feeling pretty good about himself. Since they feel entitled to special treatment, they are easily offended, and readily harbor grudges. Yet narcissists are often very popular—at least in the short term.

   The beauty of being a narcissist is that even when disaster stares you in the face, you feel neither doubt nor remorse. In a study, researchers asked a pair of participants to undertake a task that was rigged to fail. Most people tend to protect their partner, sharing either the credit or the blame. "But the narcissists would say, 'It's totally the other person's fault.' They're completely willing to step on someone," says narcissism researcher Keith Campbell, associate professor of social psychology at the University of Georgia.

   Intensely narcissistic people often live tumultuous lives, as few people can tolerate them for long. But having a milder version of the personality type comes with many side benefits. Subclinical narcissists are happy. They are less likely to be depressed, sad or anxious, and rate their subjective well-being more highly. They're less reactive to stress, and recover more rapidly from it.

   Mild narcissism also seems to help people recover from accidents or other trauma—it gives them an unrealistic sense of their own invulnerability, and they believe that they will be able to handle whatever else life throws at them. As one researcher put it, being somewhat narcissistic is like driving a huge SUV: You're having a great time, even while you hog the road, suck up extra resources and put other drivers at higher risk.

   A narcissist can be hard to identify, in part because he is likely to be much more fascinating than you would expect for someone so self-absorbed, and in part because you wouldn't think someone with such self-regard could be so defensive and needy.

The Narcissist in the Conference Room

   Some of the country's most successful companies are run by narcissists. It's been said about the founder of Oracle: "The difference between Larry Ellison and God is that God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison." Running on a full tank of confidence and charisma, narcissists often thrive as salesmen, entrepreneurs, surgeons or in other ego-intensive, cut-throat professions.

   The downside? Temper tantrums, unreasonable expectations, shocking selfishness and a complete inability to engage in teamwork. "Every once in a while, someone would be in the bathroom in tears after one of her outbursts," Charlotte Tomic says of her former boss's behavior. Tomic, a media relations professional in New York City, says her narcissistic boss subjected her to endless discussions of her wardrobe and travel plans, and managed in total ignorance of either group effort or recognition. Unfortunately, short of quitting, Tomic could do little about it. You can't always escape the egomaniac in the cubicle next door, but a few techniques may help you endure the experience.

1. Butter him up. Novelist Candace Talmadge says her former boss was like a little boy stirring up an anthill with a stick. "His favorite practice was to come into our offices late on a Friday with a task that took up the entire three-day weekend," she says. "Then he wouldn't come in on Tuesday, or he'd just drop the whole thing." If you want to put an end to such wasteful behavior, try flattery, a time-honored way to manipulate a narcissist. Talmadge could have countered, "Can we start next week? Without your guidance, we're lost on tough stuff like this." Of course, you'd have to stomach your own servility.
2. Let her be the center of attention. Narcissists' self-confidence on the job has no basis in reality; in fact, one study shows that coworkers generally rate narcissists as below-average performers. However, they do tend to do well when all eyes are on them, and the opportunity to look like a star is ripe. Their immunity to self-doubt means that unlike most of the rest of us, they aren't afraid to be the center of attention. Stage fright isn't a big issue for these megalomaniacs. "For the average person, pressure gets in the way [of achievement]. But the narcissist is very happy in the moment of glory," says Baumeister. "It has to be glory, though. He's not going to be a team player." If you've got a Barry Bonds on your team, give him the chance to excel—and to be admired—and get out of the way.
3. Be clear on the quid pro quo. When a narcissist is in charge, he'll feel no compunction asking for a lot and providing very little in return. "He's totally focused on his vision for the project; it's all about him. Make clear the rules of the game, because he's not going to play fair," says Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst and business consultant who authored The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Perils of Visionary Leadership. That way, if you work 70 hours a week to hit a deadline, at least you'll be compensated for it.
4. Don't cross him. Entirely dependent on others' opinions, a narcissist can act like a cornered animal if he or she feels threatened. Research shows that narcissists become aggressive when they feel an ego threat—confronted with proof that they aren't special—or feel they aren't getting enough respect. In the lab, they are willing to punish other experimental subjects with a noise blast when they think they've been put down. If you have to tell a narcissist he isn't doing a good job, do it gently—and be prepared.
5. Keep a sense of humor. One upside: Narcissists can be entertaining, if you keep a sense of perspective. Frederick Rhodewalt, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, describes one assistant professor who joined the department softball team. Although he had no experience with a ball and bat, his background in tennis gave him enough of an edge that he won the batting title for the league. "And for a few months, every time I saw him in the office, he'd be carrying that trophy," Rhodewalt laughs.

The Narcissist In Love

   As bad as narcissistic behavior can be in a coworker, golf buddy or relative, it's worse in a romantic partner. Male or female, narcissists are the quintessential sharks: Self-confidence and charm make them highly appealing in the early stages of attraction. Since narcissists are very concerned about appearance, they're likely to be well-groomed and fashionable. "He was into nice things, the best brand names. Everything was about treating himself well," says Lynn, a 30-year-old consultant in San Diego, about her ex-boyfriend. "And he was totally charismatic. After we were going out for a while, I could see him turn it on and off when he wanted something."

   Lynn found out that her boyfriend was what Campbell, author of When You Love a Man Who Loves Himself, calls a "game-playing" lover. Campbell found that narcissists' need for power and autonomy leads them to shun commitment—and to cheat. Romantic relationships become just another way for them to pump up their own self-image. Narcissists look for mates with very high social status (for example, looks or success) which complements an inflated sense of self.

   Lynn's narcissistic boyfriend was a poker player, and she says now that the relationship was just like a sport to him. "He would figure out the landscape, and he was never willing to gamble more than he was willing to lose," Lynn says. "He told me I had qualities he was looking for, but also that he needed to see other women."

   After nine months, they broke up, also typical for narcissists, whose relationships don't last long. In Campbell's studies, "relationships with narcissists were more satisfying initially, and then dramatically less satisfying at the end," he says. The extreme example might be Scott Peterson, who was charismatic enough to attract a beautiful wife—and coldhearted enough to murder her when he wanted to move on.

   Obviously, most narcissists aren't killers, but they do tend to be very unsatisfying mates. If he's had a string of relationships, if he can't stop talking about how much people admire him, if he gets easily riled when he doesn't get what he wants—he may not be just another commitment-phobic man. He's a narcissist.

   Unfortunately, anyone can be seduced by a narcissist. One misconception is that only those with low self-esteem date someone who's so self-centered, but people with normal self-respect can also end up involved with a narcissist. They have decisive, take-charge personalities in a society that shuns wishy-washiness.

   And after all, they're experts at making people admire them. Best-case scenario: when narcissists date each other. That way, both can have a self-confident, impressive and shallow mate—and leave the rest of us in peace. Heaven help the children they have, if they are to marry!

The Care and Feeding of a Narcissist

   Nobody knows for sure how someone becomes a narcissist. The expert consensus is that genetics plays a huge role. Overly permissive moms and dads who lavish their children with endless praise also seem to contribute. Parents who set boundaries in terms of acceptable behaviors have an endless battle and, because they are dealing with a narcissistic child, are always devalued and demoralized, because the narcissistic child is always allergic to even helpful criticism.

   Some researchers believe more men are narcissistic than women, while others counter that since many key traits—being self-centered, competitive, disinterested in intimacy—are more socially acceptable in men, women may be equally narcissistic but less visible as such. Female narcissists might install themselves at the center of a circle of friends, for example, rather than seize the stage at work. Similarly, some studies show that Westerners are more narcissistic than people from Asian cultures. Others posit that people "self-enhance" in every society—it's just that in a more collectivist culture, such as Japan's, narcissists are subtler, since self-aggrandizing behavior isn't rewarded or respected.

   It stands to reason that if narcissism can be fostered, it can be treated as well. For years, personality disorders were thought to be essentially incurable. That thinking is changing, but narcissists may be among the hardest cases to crack. An unhappy narcissist generally believes that his main problem is that other people don't treat him as well as he deserves. When you think you're the greatest—and when other people mostly defer to you—why would you want to change?

   "Narcissists are either dragged in by someone who is having trouble with them—a spouse or relative—or they show up because of feelings of emptiness," says Rhodewalt. "Why, they wonder, if they're so accomplished and wonderful, does life seem so empty?" When you've built a life on falsehoods, it's hard to grapple with questions that everyone faces, like the meaning of life. The needle's stuck on "I'm wonderful," and your personality doesn't allow you to grow—to change your behavior or attitudes in response to life's challenges.

Your Inner Narcissist

   You're pretty pleased with yourself. And that's a good thing. Studies reveal that most ordinary people secretly think they're better than everyone else: We rate ourselves as more dependable, smarter, friendlier, harder-working, less-prejudiced and even better in the sack than others. "The paradox about narcissism is that we all have this streak of egotism," says Mark Leary, chair of the department of psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "Eighty percent of people think they're better than average."

   Psychologically healthy people generally twist the world to their advantage just a little bit. If we do well on a test, for example, we're likely to congratulate ourselves. If we do poorly, we'll claim the test was badly written, unfair or wrong. It's normal, perhaps even necessary. By telling ourselves that our faults are universal but our strengths are unique, we can get through life's trials without losing faith in our own abilities.

   These biases are only faint echoes of the serious distortions that a narcissist creates. A narcissist can't see anything wrong about herself, even when her world is crashing down all around her. "Negative emotions are often functional. They tell you when things need to change about the environment or yourself," Leary says. So the narcissist does, after all, have an Achilles' heel—being blind to her own faults. And that's perhaps the only way to console yourself when you've been subjected to the blunt edge of a narcissistic personality. Rather than admiration or fury, narcissists may in fact deserve our pity...but from a very safe distance.

The Hollywood Cure

We love movies in which a raging ego is tempered by challenges. Dropkicking a character out of their grandiosity is a cherished plot twist. All the same, don't expect these tricks to work for the narcissists in your life.

• Relive one day a thousand times. (Groundhog Day) Self-centered, striving weatherman Phil (Bill Murray) finds emotional and spiritual growth after being trapped in a space-time anomaly.
• Get shot in the head. (Regarding Henry) A confrontation at a botched burglary transforms Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) from a lying, cheating, bullying corporate attorney to a charming innocent.
• Bond with your autistic brother. (Rain Man) Greedy go-it-alone Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) learns that he shouldn't exploit his autistic-savant older brother.
• Undergo hypnosis. (Shallow Hal) Hal (Jack Black) dates a string of beautiful vixens, then falls for an overweight woman while under Tony Robbins' spell.
• Be trapped by a sniper. (Phone Booth) Brash Stu Sheppard (Colin Farrell) is a philandering PR rep who learns what life is really about while in the crosshairs of a killer's rifle.