Cross Country 47 - Two Things on My Mind

[Barrett Dorko]

It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…

Every trip provides me with something to write about, and I’ve come to feel that the tour isn’t actually complete until I do so. This week was no different.

The problem this week is that I have two ideas competing for prominence here and they seem both equally compelling and unrelated. Perhaps the writing itself will show me why one won’t leave.

About thirty miles west of Little Rock Arkansas is a large sign that simply says “Toad Suck Park.” I’m not making this up. Google it and you’ll see what this place is all about. Immediately I began planning how I might work this location into a lecture the next day.

I typically begin by sort of pretending that I don’t actually know where I am, thus indicating that I travel a great deal and that I’m responding to that with a mildly confused if not actually weary way of being. (I think there’s the underlying implication that therapeutic issues of pain are the same wherever you are because scientific principles have never been seen to vary in this universe, but I’m pretty sure no one else thinks of this. I keep quiet about that for fear of chasing the students off. After all, what I’m about to say is strange enough.) My first lecture dispels any notion the class may have had about my lack of clarity or passionate interest in the subject so they are bounced rapidly into the realization that though I may not know where I am, I know what it is I want to say. I think that this bouncing keeps people engaged, but sometimes I find even this doesn’t work. Maybe it works best on me.

Anyway, I had a few lines prepared I felt sure the class would find entertaining. Things like, “Is your clinic out near Toad Suck?” and “Your nervous system is so fragile that driving would begin to hurt you before you get as far as Toad Suck.” and my favorite, “I understand you’re the best therapist in Toad Suck.” I was saving that last one for a real troublemaker.

As it happened, I never said any of this. And it was only as I was packing after class that I realized that. It appears that my lecture/presentation has become so ingrained and automatic that I can’t change it significantly without a tremendous effort, especially if this change doesn’t really add to the educational value. I guess mentioning this location in Arkansas qualifies.

I’m wondering what else the solidifying of my workshop is keeping me from saying. I feel I have to work on this or I’m going to miss something important.

As far as those great lines go, well, I’ll be back in Little Rock next year – and I’ll be ready.

The other thing going through my head on the flight home was an exchange I had with a student early in the course one day. At one point I say, “Look, most of what I’m going to talk about is on television, at the movies and on National Public Radio.” A therapist in the third row said, “If you’re going to talk about TV I’m otta here.” Eventually, I dealt with this threat and implied criticism but I can’t forget her resistance to any real examination of today’s culture and how it manipulates our behavior. Her contempt for the subject was obvious and I had to explain this to her: “I’m not asking you to like what the culture teaches us, all I’m asking you to do is notice this and think about its power.”

Still, this disappointment in my less-than-scientific approach to the causes of pain isn’t all that uncommon and I know that there are those who would prefer I begin by just talking about some inherent weakness in human anatomy because this is something they can see easily and work to control. The culture around them? Well, they’d rather ignore that or just dismiss it.

But Herman Melville had this to say: They look not only for more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality than the real itself can show…it should present another world to which we feel the tie.

I’m pretty sure he was talking about all of us and our connection to television. Okay, maybe it was the nineteenth century version of that – the novel.

Finally, I try to remember this insight: Who knows in this life of ours what is really true and what is enchanting make believe?

Who said that, you wonder? I hope the woman who objected to my appreciation of television is reading this, though it’s unlikely.

It was one of my favorite philosophers - Zsa Zsa Gabor.

[Diane]

I firmly believe that it is always good to turn the compost regularly, mix it, aerate it thoroughly. Ruminating and seeking ways to "novelize"/ freshen one's presentation (even if only to oneself) can't be a bad thing. One can't always rely on mental earthworms to do the whole job.

(Having kept real worms at one time to make compost for several years of balconey gardening that once fascinated me, I noted that they loved some kinds of kitchen scraps better than other, would ball up inside overripe avocados for instance, leaving perfectly good carrot peelings til later.)

Furthermore, mental earthworms need oxygen just as much as anything else in the nervous system does..

[nari]

The problem with studying the effects of culture is that we are looking from inside -->out.
The part that is so interesting is the very part that we are embroiled in; impregnated with, without knowing. So our baseline is biased before we begin to look at its impact.
I thought the other day: What would happen to the world and its economy if coca cola and its rival were banned gobally? What would happen; would we develop a kind of cargo cult meme?
I can say this because I never touch the stuff.

Nari

[Barrett Dorko]

Diane,

I agree, of course. And Soma Simple has the best nutrition of any site for therapists on the web.

Nari,

While it's true that trying to look carefully at any culture while living in the midst of it is often difficult and confusing, outsiders often misinterpret one thing for another simply because they haven't lived within the context of the behavior. I guess that's why anthropology is such a large and fractious subject.

I like what Nietzsche said about examining ways of being in an effort to change them: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.

[Barrett Dorko]

Today I found two things about the nature of popular culture in a book I'm reading about professional wrestling, Slaphappy by Thomas Hackett.

“Critics and historians fail to understand the true temper of a people when they ignore popular (as opposed to official and elite) culture.”
Mikhail Bakhtin – Russian literary critic

And this from the author when discussing the amazing popularity of certain wrestlers in history:

“Probably none of these men gave much thought to what they represented. That’s not how popular culture operates. Meaning does not emerge by conscious intent. It surfaces when people find something, or someone, relevant to their needs.”

Anybody have an idea of how this relates to the nature of common practice for painful problems today?

[Diane]

Not sure if it's something that can be deconstructed in one post or one day.. but I'm reading Breaking the Spell right now, and just last night came to page 77. Dennett talks about how life and human behavior might look to a few Martians, here to study our planet. He says.
The Martians, having mastered the world's languages, will soon notice that there is a huge variation in sophistication among boatbuilders around the world. Some of them can give articulate and accurate explanations of just why they insist that their vessels be symmetrical, explanations that any naval architect with a PhD in engineering would applaud, but others have a simpler answer: we build boats this way because this is the way we have always built them. They copy the designs they learned from their fathers and grandfathers, who did the same in their day. This more or less mindless copying, the Martians will notice, is a tempting parallel with the other transission medium they have identified, the genes. If boatbuilders or potters or singers are in the habit of copying old designs "religiously," they may preserve design features over hundreds or even thousands of years.... This concept of cultural replicators - items that are copied over and over - has been given a name by Richard Dawkins (1976), who proposed to call them memes(...)

And something else came to mind, namely Jon's story of the woman who cut the end off the roast just because her grandsmother did, and her mother. So she simply assumed that was what one did without questioning why, until eventually she learned that the grandmother had been merely adapting roasts that were always too long to a pan that was always too short, unintentionally starting a family tradition.

Probably most if not all of the practices in PT, and for sure all the ones that pertain to pain problems, should be examined and disinfected for mindless meme replication/absurdity/outdatedness. Probably most if not all of the practices from outside PT which have become incorporated into PT should be as well, even more scrupuously.

[nari]

I suspect ALL practices within PT should be scrutinised with an intelligent eye and ear....but whose eye and ear?
Nobody would be brave enough to challenge all those memes; except yourself, Diane, and you could end up in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tasman Sea, the North Sea, or any number of seas...
Deconstructing PT memes would be like shooting cows in India.

Nari

[Barrett Dorko]

Nari,

I hate to correct you, but The Gulf of Mexico is for me. Diane gets the Everglades.

That aside, shouldn't the memes of therapy be examined regularly by everybody? It would help of course if therapists knew what the word meant. I occasionally mention this concept but rarely find any familiarity with the concept much less the word itself. Yet the memes in our profession are arguably more powerful than those in medicine.

Google meme today and you get 285 million hits.

[Diane]

Nari, it's not so hard, just start some new memes that make more sense, water them, watch them grow.. it's like farming, or gardening. It's a process and it takes patience and lots of weeding. Oh, and don't be pulling up any newly planted plants you aren't sure about. Get to know what they are and if possible, who planted them. If they don't make sense then go right ahead and pull them out if you need some room for a better plant. It's the mental equivalent of "guerrilla gardening." (http://publicspace.ca/gardeners.htm)

[nari]

You two are eternal optimists. ;) :)

I can see you both swimming in the Gulf, comparing reactions to memes.


Nari

[Diane]

Nari, I don't think I get to swim in the Gulf (where the sharks are). I get to wade (neck deep) in the Everglades (where the alligators are). Really, thanks, but I think I'll skip Fla altogether. :) The weather here is getting better by the day.

[Jon Newman]

I may, as is typical, be slightly askew here but I'll add my thoughts anyhow.

Dualism is the stuff of stories. While there has been much work breaking down the barrier of brain and body they are indeed different (anatomical) things. What emerges from the interaction is what we observe (mind in the former case). This interaction is repeated in numerous situations some examples of which include the conscious and non-conscious, the self and the masses, "this" culture and "that" culture, etc. The division into "this and that" are largely arbitrary (not senseless). What seems to tie all the "this and that" together is the way they interact, the way they relate. It is the interaction and what emerges that is so important, not so much the "this or that" itself. A simple short cut might be to study relations and interactions themselves as they are more likely to be helpful regardless of what "this" or "that" is. I don't know the best way to do that--reading stories perhaps. I guess another way to try to express my thought is that you can know everything you want about "this" but unless you understand "that" or how they influence each other your knowledge of "this" is essentially impotent.

How's that?

[Diane]

Jon, I'll be sure to add that to the compost. It should be ready in time for the next big guerrilla gardening adventure.

[Jon Newman]

My curiosity has not waned Barrett. How has the idea competition progressed? Remember that in the end, there can be only one.

Right Ian?


ps. This is a pop culture reference, lame as it may be.

[Barrett Dorko]

Jon,

I'm guessing The Matrix but may be wrong. If that's not it I'm kind of lost here.

It's not Lost is it? Wait...how about Wife Swap?

[Jon Newman]

Highlander.

[Barrett Dorko]

Oh. The one TV show I don't watch.