Tom's Views

Dear [Mentat],

Books on fasting, suggest that if you’re going to do it for more than a few days, that you minimize all activities, both mental and physical. They recommend   fasting alone   and away from all civilization.  Fasting alone they say, allows the fast’s cleansing effects to work best. But I think they discourage work because they know how difficult concentration on any of it is while starving, when the body is truly deprived of food.  They know that the individual will be more tempted to break the fast, once he sees how difficult interacting with others can be while intensely hungry, particularly when those others are eating snacks at their desks, inviting the faster to lunch, and so on.  The serious faster it would seem, would be well-advised to conduct his fast alone.

Once in 1999, I conducted a water-fast for close to four days. That is, I ate nothing whatsoever, and only drank water. As the days accumulated without food, my hunger pains grow more and more pronounced.  Eventually, nothing except eating is an acceptable activity. I got headaches, the room spun, alertness faltered, and keeping thoughts of the refrigerator away became nearly impossible, particularly on the last two days.  Had I not been fasting alone, I’m sure that whoever was nearby would have attempted to talk me out of fasting, and as hungry as I felt by the third day, they probably would have succeeded. 

You may forget to eat for a short time, as many who completely indulge in their dream pursuits acknowledge. But have you personally ever fasted? Have you ever set out to avoid eating for more than a day or two?  It can be grueling I can tell you. In fact, I was probably so grouchy and grumpy when I fasted that I’m glad I lived in my own apartment.  That way,  I could fast alone.  I wouldn’t want to have snapped at anybody, nor have them try and talk me out of fasting alone.

So based on my own fasting experiences and how difficult it became to think about anything but food, I’d suggest that strong concentration only defers hunger for so long. Eventually though, once the body is truly hungry, such as we find in Africa, nothing else matters but acquiring sustenance. Maslow was right.  Thwart a man from satisfying his need for food, and before too long, all he’ll care about accomplishing, is obtaining sustenance.  This is one reason why Africa is so underdeveloped. The natives can’t have many social concerns while constantly so hungry.

But there may be advantages to fasting.  But if I was ever going to try it again, though this might be dangerous, I’d certainly fast alone.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

I would say that while   Viktor Frankl   was, at the time he wrote his   Man’s Search For Meaning   book, self-actualizing, I wonder if he was so while being held in the German concentration camps? I suspect not. It’s been six years since I read this book. So I don’t remember every detail of his captivity. But while he certainly held on to his sanity in spite of it all, I don’t recall him behaving any more heroically than did the other captives he described. He was just one of the oppressed who came up with his own ways of dealing with the confinement and threats of death, as did most of the rest of them.

What made Frankl stand out in our minds, I offer, was what he did with this information long after he was released. He took it and started the whole logotherapy movement. But while imprisoned, he did what he had to, to survive. Nothing more, and nothing less. After all, he didn’t write his book while his freedom and security needs were denied [referring here to   Maslow's hierarchy of needs   triangle]. It was only after those were restored that he did the bulk of his psychiatry work and writing. If we [could] go back to the 1940s and observe Frankl’s day-to-day life as a captive, would we see him behaving anymore like a self-actualizer than the others? His own account suggests that we wouldn’t. You might argue that his experiences at Auschwitz were necessary to his becoming self-actualized later. But I don’t think he was self-actualized during his captivity. So I’m not sure he exemplifies the destitute man who achieved self-actualization in spite of his deprivations, because his deprivation and self-actualization weren’t concurrent.

But I agree that we’d more likely find people gratifying level four and five needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than level three just because the higher levels offer so many more choices for fulfillment.

Tom Hesley

References

• Man’s Search For Meaning   book by Viktor Frankl,  explanation on Wikipedia
• Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs   definition on Wikipedia
• Viktor Frankl   explanation of who he was on Wikipedia

Dear [Mentat],

Yes. But, not all occupations, particularly those in the private sector, take a no-deadlines approach to expected performance. It’s the nature of what’s expected of the monk that makes this such a care-free occupation. It’s much harder to fail after all, when you don’t have aggressive schedules to meet, or bosses threatening to fire you if you don’t meet them. So of course, since failure probably happens much less often in monkshood, then we’d expect to find less fear of it among candidates. No? It’s hard to make money, as most monks do not, when there’s nothing to do at which you can fail.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

I think you meant to say it the other way around. That is: Whether or not one accomplishes anything   should not   affect his sense of his own worthiness. This would jive with Ellis’s contention that worthiness is a birthright accorded to   all humans   just by virtue of [they’re being human]. Our accomplishments he suggests, should not affect how worthy we are. You would agree I expect, though you stated it oppositely, that self-worth does indeed has some influence over a man’s accomplishments, though how much it does we may contend.

We also cannot assume that someone reacting with depression when he misses a dear goal, is traumatized so because he lacks self-worth. Though pop psychologists blame low self-esteem these days for everything from failed successes to athlete’s foot, indeed there are many other reasons for disappointment when one fails, besides low self-esteem. One can have perfectly sound self-esteem (whatever that means) yet still suffer the depressing effects of constant thwarting of his basic needs. In fact, a high self-esteem may deepen his frustrations because he can’t answer the paradoxical question: I know I’m worthy, so why don’t others [treat me as worthy]?

Raising self-esteem, in and of itself, fixes very few patients of psychotherapy. In fact, Maslow does not say that self-esteem is a necessary precursor to meeting the basic needs below level four. On the contrary, the needs at levels three and lower are precursors to self-esteem. He also says that self-esteem is itself a basic need which, like all the rest of the basic needs, may only be truly satisfied through interaction with other people. That is, we can’t grow self-esteem in a vacuum. This would seem to contradict Ellis’s notion of self-esteem (or worthiness in general) being a birthright we should have independent of others’ approval.

Though this idea that the purest form of worthiness must come entirely from within, sounds good in theory, I’m [...] not convinced of its practical usefulness. I [...] side with Maslow on this because we humans are intensely social creatures since we require others to help us satisfy our basic needs. Today our very survival depends on cooperation with fellow humans, and their approval translates directly into a deeper sense of well being, greater material wealth, healthier and longer living, happiness in love, feelings of safety, and such, than one could normally attain when largely disliked.

You might argue that Madonna achieved her success by incurring disapproval with all her controversial antics. However, the   net sum   of the crowd’s opinion of her was demonstrably positive. If the millions of people who bought her music didn’t like her, they wouldn’t have purchased her CDs, wouldn’t have gone to her concerts, and she’d today be broke. Though we heard numerous nay-sayers speak loudly against her, especially when she did that sacrificial scene in her “Like a Prayer” video that ended up costing her the Pepsi contract, her boisterous critics actually spoke for few.

Though contentious, she couldn’t have become a pop diva unless large numbers of people liked what she was doing. To put it briefly: Other’s approval, and not their disdain, made her successful. Though sassy and temperamental, Madonna on the whole disappointed far fewer people than she pleased. Without this abundant approval, her dreams would have remained dreams. Though she openly scoffed at ‘the establishment’, I believe even she would agree that that establishment made her a very wealthy (and happy) woman.

External esteem therefore, would seem a necessary ingredient of maximal happiness particularly in the context of our highly communal, interdependent culture. We’d expect therefore, a blurring of the distinction you and Ellis make between self-esteem (self-worth) and others’ esteem of us (which I’ll call other-esteem or other-worth). That is, people often rate themselves in terms of how well they please others. How worthy they believe themselves to be is driven primarily by their assessment of how others value them. And why not?

This makes good sense. After all, self-esteem directly accomplishes little in the practical realms, because what does simply believing that we’re worthy really do? I can believe with all my heart that I’m worth ten million bucks. But unless I can demonstrate this to others, that belief won’t get me very far beyond the confines of my own mind. It surely won’t compel them to pay me ten million bucks! Self-esteem therefore might have more   intrinsic [and] spiritual   value. But other-esteem certainly has more   practical   value, and I’d say that others’ approval boosts more dramatically our self-esteem, than does our self-esteem raise outside approval. Again, we find this notion reflected in Maslow’s book:   Motivation and Personality,   where [he] describes in detail the peculiarities of the esteem needs (level four).

In Philly during 2000 and 2001, I asked over a thousand women to dance. By Ellis’s standards, my self worth was likely quite high. Yet in light of their rejections, that seemed quite beside the point. I don’t mean to suggest that self-worth meant nothing. Obviously I wouldn’t have asked if I felt unworthy of their consideration. But once there’s enough air to adequately oxygenate the blood, its relevance to how well we perform our daily activities becomes moot. The writer struggling with writers block for example, typically would not suspect an inadequate air supply as the cause. We need air, but only a certain amount. And once we have that, acquiring more benefits us not. The same is true of self-worth.

We need a certain amount of self worth to function cooperatively, in order to advance our social agendas. But more than that amount won’t help us further. In fact, excess self valuation (A.K.A. arrogance, egotism, overconfidence) can cause a backlash effect that stifles, rather than aids dream pursuits. Why? Because. Others require more proof than simple insistence of our worthiness to convince them that we are in fact, worthy. If they feel that we value ourselves more than they do us, then they resent, and actually devalue us. A modicum of self-esteem may equip us with the attitudes that enable us to reach out to others. It gets us to home plate if you will. But other-esteem puts food on the table, gives us power and authority, and goes far to ensure a reliable supply of help from others. It’s the pitcher that throws us the gopher ball. I’ll concede that self-esteem is definitely one step on the road to self-actualization. But other-esteem? Well, that’s another equally important step!

While some forms of motivation exist that do not involve risking psychical well-being, one wonders how motivating these can really be. How worthwhile are they? With none, or with reduced personal stake in success, there’s less compelling reason to strive for it and to achieve as much of it. Take away the compulsion of self-esteem threatened, particularly that component of it which derives from concern over how others view us, and you reduce the amount of work completed as well as its quality. While we may react more sadly to failure when our psychical well-being is at stake, we also feel better for it when we succeed. I can imagine many cases where anteing up with our psychical well-being as we begin endeavors is actually quite healthy for us, and society too.

Why would a carpenter for example, take the extra time to design a better bookshelf if customer satisfaction (approval) was meaningless to him? Once he completes the shelf and the customer takes it home, he’ll never see it again, and never benefit from his extra work in any other way except the repeat business and additional work that the satisfied customer generated by telling others of him.

If on the other hand, the carpenter does poorly by one patron, he’ll incur the disapproval of many (because people talk). He’ll lose business. Clearly, how people think of him determines whether he sinks or swims.

Now let’s say he’s a totally self-assured man and as such, is impervious to negative opinions others [might have of him]. Let’s also assume that he has family or some other significant financial obligations. If he fails his customers enough, he’ll soon fail to meet his obligations as well.

Does it seem right that he feel good about himself while not meeting his obligations? I say no. He should feel guilt. He should feel worthless, or at least, worth less. There should be some shame and consequence that hammers him at the center of his being, letting him know that he did wrong and discouraging him from doing wrong in that way again.

I’d argue that in people of good conscience, that   hammer   comprises reduced self-esteem and guilt. But guilt would be hard to generate when no psychical well-being is risked. While it might improve his mood to desensitize himself to others’ opinions, this would not, I offer, be good for society. To keep people functioning in a socially vigorous manner, I think we can’t afford to tell them that their worthiness is totally independent of how others evaluate them. Indeed, I doubt that this is even true.

Current-day success motivators seem to resemble a two-edged sword. On the one hand, we’re motivated to do a good job because of the accolades that quality work produces (approval).  On the other, we’re discouraged from performing badly because of the consequences of a poor reputation (disapproval). How conscientiously we perform directly affects the degree of our sense of self worth. The more we do that’s needed and the better we do it, the more valued we are. The more valued we are, the better we live. The less valued we are, the worse we live. This is a reality that Ellis et al attempt to soften through their instructions for dissolving the linkage between our internal self-worth and the worth that others think we have.

This sort of cognitive therapy may have some usefulness. But I fear it may open the doors of injustice further, enabling people to escape personal accountability for their actions by helping them feel good about themselves no matter what bad acts they commit. It’s been a while since I read Ellis. But I believe in one of his books that he argues that even the murderer is worthy. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know that we want to tell the murderer this, lest we send the message inadvertently that it’s okay that he killed. Also, Ellis and Burns seem to suggest that people deserve to feel good about themselves regardless of how they treat others. I don’t buy this either.

Why shouldn’t our self-respect be so linked? When one commits an offensive act like the murderer, I’d suggest that the resulting drop in self-worth, which itself results from group disapproval, is the prime motivator for us to avoid doing it again. I remember in sixth grade when I got lazy about taking daily showers. After the third straight day without one, [Willard] said of me in front of ten kids and house parents, “You know, you can always tell when Tom Hesley is around because you can smell him.” Well, I was devastated, embarrassed, and wanted to crawl away and die. I wondered if the girls would ever have anything to do with me again, and would not blame them if they didn’t. I felt worthless, like no one would ever want me as a friend again.

Yes, that lasted a few days and I went through a bit of depression too. But much good came of it too. I tell you, I never missed a daily shower after that at school. Though I hated [Willard] at the time, and for some years afterward in fact, I’m eternally grateful to him now for setting me straight. Because I was sensitive, because I believed his implication about my worth, my over-all self-esteem went up, for had he kept quiet, I’m sure that some pretty girl would have rebuked me sooner or later, and that would have been even more disheartening and thus, had a much more profoundly negative impact on my self-worth.

Tough love works sometimes. So perhaps it’s bad if people destroy this bond of self-worth to other-worth, and in so doing make themselves insensitive to group opinion. Had I disregarded [Willard's] sentiments, had they meant nothing to me on a deeply personal level, I might still today be a [smelly] pig. If people acquire the ability to truly numb themselves to what others think of them, and thus, eliminate the potent consequences of disapproval, then we lose an important tool that keeps people from breaking more laws than they do. Antisocial behavior would be far more prevalent. Indeed, what reason would we have for forming societies at all?

While we needn’t suffer to evolve as Morissette sings, this raises the question of whether such a pain-free evolution, like pursuing goals without risking the psychical well-being, is meaningful. Though we can evolve to some degree without opposing our proclivities and thus avoiding pain, again, I’d suspect that such growth would come in minuscule clumps compared to that characterized by   some   suffering. Indeed, the price for many of life’s most profoundly-mind-altering lessons, is intense suffering. Suffering motivates us to find new ways, instilling an urgency unsurpassed by pain-free challenge. By reducing what we risk, we also reduce what we gain, in my humble opinion. Without the suffering of our forebearers, I think it safe to project that we’d enjoy far less civility today.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

Yes, people often waste thier brain power accomplishing too little, by spending too much time engaged in mental thrashing.  They work one task for a short time, then switch to another, and then another, and so on.  Of course, the switching itself takes time for the person to “ramp down” from the first task, and to “ramp up” on the next one.  Consider that if we switch tasks too frequently, then we end up accomplishing very little work in any of them, and spend more of our mental energy doing this mental thrashing than actually completing the jobs at hand.   

In fact, mental thrashing is similar to a term found term in computer technology literature, known basically as   thrashing. To understand how computer thrashing very closely resembles mental thrashing in humans, consider that the switching of context from one program to the next in the computer requires a certain amount of overhead. It requires memory to remember where it last executed in the previous program, and where to resume execution in the next program once the context switch is completed.  Put simply, the code to be executed next must be loaded into main memory from the paging file.  The stack and CPU registers must be properly initialized or restored to what they were the last time this program ran.  Then the program counter must be set to point to the next instruction to execute in the newly loaded program pages. Once all this is done, the next program finally runs.

Now without going into detail about all the reasons that program execution stops so the CPU can execute other programs, suffice it to say that each program executes for a rather small period of time (called a   time slice). When it’s time to jump to the next program in the run queue, the CPU has to switch context again, and again incur the same overhead just described, to get the next program running. The shorter the amount of time that the CPU spends actually running programs before it must switch, the more of its time it spends switching. Hopefully it’s clear that when programs run for very small slices before relinquishing control, that the amount of real work done by the CPU on each program’s behalf can approach zero. When the CPU spends too much time switching context and very little actually executing programs, we refer to this condition as thrashing. Needless thrashing is undesirable in computers because it can excessively burden the CPU and drastically impede the computer’s real-work potential.

Mental thrashing likewise, has the same wasteful effects in the brain.  Too much switching from one thought to the next as you point out, impedes one’s ability to effectively solve problems. If you have to constantly remember where you were the last time you worked on a particular problem, you have to repeatedly refresh your memory, just like the CPU does when it restores context of a program it’s about to resume executing. This excessive refreshing (or mental thrashing) can be frustrating and debilitating. So yes, the longer we can concentrate on a single issue before being interrupted by a more urgent other one, the more effective the work we can accomplish, within limits of course.  To maximize our effectiveness as workers we must ensure that we do not allow our mental thrashing to get out of control and consume too much of our daily mental bandwidth.

But in the quest to eliminate mental thrashing, becoming too single-minded can impede our mental productivity as well.  Again, allow me to draw on the computer example.  While it’s good in the computer to assure that the CPU spends   sufficient   time executing each program, too much time spent in one has a detrimental effect on the rest of the programs in the system. We used to see the bad effects of this in older versions of Microsoft Windows, where insufficient safeguards allowed one program to completely take over the CPU so that the rest of them were starved and did not execute at all. This swamping would appear as system hang-ups, non responsiveness, slow responsiveness, or strange responsiveness.  It would typically require a reboot to clear. But nowadays, with the obsolescence of the 16-bit real mode programs, and with the emergence of the 32-bit protected mode programs, it’s much more difficult for errant software to overly dominate the system. 

Indeed, there would be negative impacts of concentrating too long on a single problem in the brain as well. But as you say, very few people likely ever encounter these [this extreme single mindedness].      They are more likely to suffer the effects of mental thrashing instead.

Your analogy is a good one, yes, particularly since in it, you, though perhaps you didn’t realize it, described the basic principles of operation behind the time-shared computer systems such as found in Windows, UNIX, and most any other multi-tasking operating system.  In fact, if the brain indeed resembles a computer CPU, then to maximize the real work it does, we should avoid mental thrashing where possible but keep in mind that periodic task switching is also a good thing, so long as we do not overdo it, and allow it to degenerate into the wasteful condition of mental thrashing. 

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

I agree. But allow me to offer just a point of clarification: When I described the idling CPU, perhaps I should have paid more verbiage to what actually goes on in that “infinite loop.” I gave the impression that nothing worthwhile is accomplished in this loop, which may be true enough if you’re looking at the computer from the outside as a black box. However, I haven’t examined the code for the idle process, and so cannot say precisely what goes on.

But one thing I omitted is that when in this idling state, the CPU, by virtue of its hardware construction (nothing to do with Windows per se) monitors its 16 interrupt lines for requests. As you probably know, each of the important devices in the computer is tied to one or more of these IRQ lines (mouse, sound card, USB card, network card, disk drive, RAM memory, and so on). Should such a device require service (such as when the mouse is moved or the sound card needs more sound data sent to it while playing a file), it sends a signal down its IRQ to the CPU. When the CPU receives this, it puts aside its idle activities and executes the interrupt handler routine associated with the IRQ line. For the sound card wanting more data to play for example, its interrupt handler copies more data from the sound file into the sound card’s buffer. This routine is usually provided either by the operating system, the BIOS, or some third party. At any rate, IRQ routines are usually found in software driver components.

Also, while executing the Windows OS idle code, the CPU periodically checks what they call the system message queue. In Windows, anything that happens from the opening of a new window to a mouse click or movement, generates a sequence of one or more _events_ . Such events include things like MOUSE_MOVE_UP, MOUSE_MOVE_DOWN, MOUSE_LEFT_CLICK, WINDOW_FOCUS_IN, WINDOW_FOCUS_OUT, WINDOW_MINIMIZE, WINDOW_MAXIMIZE, NEW_MAIL_NOTIFICATION, and hundreds of others. When such an event is received, the CPU, once again, is diverted from the idle activities, and executes what they call an event handler routine. The event message is discarded when its handler finishes.

Events are much like interrupts except that they’re entirely generated and handled through software, and they do not require interrupt lines and associated specialized circuitry in the hardware. Now an interrupt is usually translated by the device driver into a string of Windows events, such as when we click the mouse. When the CPU receives the mouse interrupt request, it executes the mouse interrupt handler in the mouse device driver code. That routine figures out what sort of mouse action happened – MOUSE_MOVE_UP, MOUSE_MOVE_DOWN, MOUSE_LEFT_CLICK, MOUSE_MOVE_WHEEL_UP, KEYBOARD_KEY_DOWN, KEYBOARD_KEY_UP, and so on. Then, it inserts appropriate event messages into the system message queue. When the CPU returns to idle from the interrupt handler, it checks the message queue and finds the events just added, and then executes the appropriate event handlers to cause the mouse pointer on the screen to move according to the actual mouse action. A MOUSE_MOVE_UP event causes the pointer on the screen to move one or more pixels up for example.  Thus even when idle, the CPU is still quite busy. 

Thus, even though the CPU is in an infinite loop while idling, it is accomplishing the meaningful task of monitoring the system for interrupts. So I was wrong to say that absolutely nothing is accomplished in this loop.  Indeed, there’s much utility activity that happens as the CPU executes the idle process; activity that may not be meaningful to the outside world, but that is necessary to accomplish proper system monitoring.

The brain’s neurons are similar to the CPU in that they must fire periodically to perform internal brain maintenance and bodily monitoring activities such as dreaming, subconscious organizing of new data, monitoring the blood for homeostasis and then taking corrective action if imbalances are found such as when the blood is too warm or cold, has too much or too little sugar or salt, and so on. The maintenance activities keep the CPU as well as the brain busy but do not completely utilize its maximum potential.

I hope that this amended description of the CPU and the idle process shows better the similarity between the brain and CPU I wanted to illustrate in the last post. While much of the activity in the idle process could be rightly dubbed as meaningless, wasteful activity, there are nonetheless necessary things that happen there as well, just as in the idle brain. Indeed, the idle brain is still quite busy. 

Yes, I know how difficult it is to silence the mind chatter when trying to “get into the zone” and focus fully on a specific task or problem.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

I would say that people without partners often have issues that reduce their abilities at sustaining other social relationships as well. These difficulties suggest that they might be less well adjusted than those who acquire and preserve successful relationships. Not always of course. Just quite often. Now I know you’re going to take issue with this. But let me explain.

While there’s nothing inherently less productive about short people for example, they are turned away from jobs sometimes because they might have Short Man’s Syndrome. This appears as paranoia that anything off-putting that befalls the short person, happens because they’re short. Often, they’re seen as troublemakers because many have challenged the prevailing yet unfair thinking. They don’t handle criticism well because they believe it’s offered as a form of put-down rather than a genuine aid to foster better future performance .

Not only does this occur with the small, but within any group attempting to buck prevailing societal prejudices: Blacks in the 60s, women in the 70s, gays in the 80s, and Muslims in the 90s. Many of them have anger, believing the world is ignorantly prejudiced against them. Whether that anger is justified or not, its very presence would make them appear less sociable. You remember how [our angry lady friend] used to throw tantrums over how non-disabled people regarded her as being so helpless? Her and [her husband] did much to   prejudice   the sighted world against the Pittsburgh blind. It’s easy to realize how after a few encounters with people like her, that folks might think that if you’re blind, you’re probably not well adjusted socially.

The whole 9/11 affair happened due to, among other factors, collective anger within the Muslim world that the West oppresses their beliefs, and treats them as second-class citizens in world endeavors. An interesting note about the hijackers: The National Geographic Channel just aired a 9/11 special, which I watched. Unless I missed it, only one or two of them had girlfriends and families. So far, I haven’t been able to find any evidence on Google that any of them were ever married. And to date, none of their wives or lovers has come forward to western media to discuss what went wrong. Given their years of preparations, they probably didn’t have time for romantic involvements, especially since they planned on dying anyhow. By western standards, these nineteen were clearly anti-social, or put another way, not well adjusted. With their minds so full of anger and hatred, I doubt they would have been loving people to women. Even if they had wives, they probably would have beat them. Again, not very well-adjusted behavior.

Consider also the Columbine massacre, its perpetrators described as loaners who involved themselves little in school and communal activities, who were also angry, bullied, excluded, and tortured souls. They were not popular among the ladies and had trouble maintaining friendships with others than themselves in their little anti-social twosome. Rather than being out among friends, they spent much time playing violent video games and listening to rough rock music. In fact, ladies’ spurns may have contributed to the final blast of anger that fueled the massacre.

Whether people excluded them because they were weird, or they got weird because people excluded them is academic. Their social withdrawal from friends and lovers, whether cause or effect, preceded their attack on the school. This pattern is found in so many crimes of passion, where the actor displays at-first harmless anti-social behaviors, that later grow into devastating ones.

Of course, not everyone who likes being off by himself commits violent crimes eventually. And spending lots of time alone in self-absorbed pursuits is not always considered anti-social behavior, particularly when the fruits of such [solitude] are periodically made public such as in the case of the writer who writes, or the artist who sculpts. However, when such crimes do occur, a look back into the actor’s history typically reveals a lifestyle of seclusion and alienation from the rest of society, including lovers. After criminals like the Unibomber, Harris and Klebold, and the 9/11 hijackers, folks are more sensitive to the possibility that the person who does not surround himself with friends and loved ones might be maladjusted, and as such, a potential threat.

In this way, the desire and ability to keep a love relationship going may indeed be a meaningful measure of social adjustment. While the so-called pillars of the community are not immune to turning anti-social, I believe it relatively rare that such people quickly transform into deviant angry souls who kill on mass scales, without some sort of prior indications in their relationships. It’s much more likely for the loner to do it, or for the person who becomes a loner first.

Of course, I realize that not everyone has the desire to be in relationships, and that it’s possible to be among the best-adjusted individuals without them. But given the prevalence of the need for love throughout our music, literature, art, movies, and culture in general, I’d say that the love lust is nearly universal. Practically everyone has it, and most people chase it to fulfillment. I’m sure it gets frustrating for the person who wants not for love, as well as for those do but to whom love has been denied, like me. Take a peak at the soc.singles newsgroup sometime, and you’ll find numerous posts from such people. They’re either upset because they can’t find love, or dismayed because they’ve decided to live alone but others are always on them to get hitched. Either life choice has its share of frustrations.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Effects Of Unrequited Love Needs
• We Don’t Live Happily Without Love
• We Must Love For Total Happiness

Dear [Mentat],

A revered hallmark of priesthood is sacrifice, and sacrifice by definition, implies hardship, a yoke if you will, that is towed by the priests throughout their careers. It wouldn’t really be a sacrifice if we wanted to do without, now would it?

People admire the priest or monk who appears celibate; because they recognize the chronic and profound physical and emotional discomfort he’s agreed to shoulder. By refusing to ever take lovers, and carrying the resulting ache, he demonstrates a deep belief in God, and desire to serve unswervingly, thus moving his followers to make sacrifices of their own (their money, time, and effort). His implicit message is, “Hey, if I can give up sex and love and being rich forever, you ought to be able to give up some of your lesser treasures for God.”

But don’t think for a minute that his longings have vanished. Swearing that he’ll never have sex by no means eliminates his sexual desires. They remain, unless becomes a eunuch. Even then, total cessation of sexual craze is not guaranteed. Such feelings just can’t be cast off by publicly denouncing them. Rather, they persist and confuse him, burdening him with temptation throughout his life. So it’s not easy to be a priest. And it’s this unfulfilled longing that makes his work all the more difficult. So I don’t see how we can revere such people for the high degree of fulfillment they’ve attained, because the very nature of their occupation involves lacking fulfillment.

To me, the priest acquires admiration through this ongoing struggle. He is revered, not because he’s managed to rid himself of love lust, but rather, because of his victories in his repeated battles against it. His resistance is tested every day, especially when those pretty female parishioners come to confess their own sins of the flesh.

You’ve heard that courage stems not from lack of fear, but instead, an ability to act in spite of fear. That is to say: One who acts courageously need not be fearless, and one who acts fearlessly need not be courageous. In fact, while we might think that the two adjectives mean the same thing, they can in fact, be semantic opposites. The man who acts without fear is not a courageous man, and a courageous man cannot be a fearless one. An ignorant one perhaps. But not a courageous one. Action in and of itself, is not a sufficient condition for courage.

[Indeed,] fear is a necessary ingredient of courage. Acting in the presence of danger, when we aren’t aware of it, or when we’re too immature to appreciate the magnitude of the danger, demonstrates little valor. The true hero on the other hand, takes actions he knows to be dangerous. In light of the risk, he decides to press on, realizing that he’ll likely suffer some profound consequence. He knows full well all the noteworthy ramifications of that consequence. It is when he is in this enlightened state of mind, that his willingness to act, rightfully takes on a truly selfless, laudable meaning of renown, fully deserving of respect from all.

Like the courageous man who is not fear-free, neither is the virtuous, virgin priest free of longing. Just as courage cannot exist without fear, meaningful reverence cannot exist without temptation. In order for a priest to truly deserve our esteem, he must continually wage and win the battle against temptation. Many priests lose this battle, as has happened in the Catholic Church and PTL. And I suspect that many more have lost it besides.

Who exemplifies greater willingness to give himself entirely to the Lord? The eunuch or the intact man? Certainly not the eunuch! Let’s assume for a minute that castration definitely eliminates mating desires (though I’m not convinced of this. But let’s assume this is indeed true for the sake of this discussion). In that case, even though agreeing to be castrated would appear to be a profoundly selfless act in the eyes of the Lord, after it’s done the eunuch no longer has such desires, and so would not thereafter be plagued with carnal urges. It would be easier for him therefore, to be a wholly dedicated servant of God than a man with testes because once his privates heal, no more will he have distractions from them with which to contend. In theory, the eunuch could achieve maximal fulfillment as a priest, because he’s been relieved of his sexual longings – albeit brutally.

Also, most eunuchs have been indoctrinated with the ways of church leaders from very young ages, are intentionally shielded from other ways of thinking and feeling, and so are often agree to castration without ever really understanding what they’re giving up. In this way, maximal fulfillment would be possible, but only after what amounts to brainwashing and radical physical alterations. No, the true test of an admirable servant of the Lord doesn’t allow cult-like indoctrination or physical modifications. It’s the man with his body left whole, and his mind understanding of opposing views that exemplifies excellence in the priesthood. The eunuch makes one big sacrifice when castrated but then it’s essentially smooth sailing from there. But the whole man makes ongoing sacrifices.

With sacrifice so central a theme in priesthood that it is, unfulfilled desires characterize the priest, because sacrifice means to part with something important. That which is sacrificed therefore, is always missed, at least in the beginning.

But when sacrificing the gratification of the human urge for procreation, then I’d think that the feelings of missing never really stop in most anyone. There would be the unfulfilled fantasies, the unrealized dreams, and the wonder about what love is like, to stain the otherwise clean slate of maximal fulfillment. Nope. It’s hard to be completely happy without fulfillment in human-to-human love.

Who’s to say that our sexual vigor declines with age due to reduced hormone production? Is it really the aging itself that makes us less interested in sex, or the experiences that accompany aging that do it? Consider that many folks crave sex less when they get older because they realized their fantasies while younger. The act of sex is not quite so wonderous once you’ve done it a couple hundred times.

But if you haven’t, the highly alluring appeal of sex remains I think. Consider that the lifelong priest can’t reduce his desires through sexual fulfillment, and yet keep his vow of celibacy. So, his unfulfilled desires rage on.

In fact, the very presence of sinful longings could spur him to direct even more of his energies to the church. I put it to you therefore that whatever greatness he accomplishes might well be because of his unfulfilled desires and his interest in avoiding them [and not in spite of them]. In order to keep himself honest, he takes on thought-intensive projects like spreading God’s message as Jesus did.

So while you might site the great accomplishments of spiritual leaders as evidence of self-actualization without sexual gratification, I’d say, well, maybe. But maybe not. Probably not.

Tom Hesley

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