de-Coupling

As a kid, I looked up to my dad: tall, handsome, and well-groomed. I shined his shoes and fetched his coffee. From that vantage point (looking up from the floor), he was a towering figure. An Army discharged, he picked up a Sales/Collection job for various French business relics e.g. Grall Hospital or later Vietnam Airlines.

Hence, my young reptilian brain associated older with bigger (coupling).

Today, at the gym, this well-built guy (who looks like casted from Mad Max) came around to reclaim “his” spot. Oops! I thought there was no one using it.

Anyhow, it dawned on me: as time goes on, our early-life assumptions (coupling and connecting data) need de-coupling e.g. bigger is not older or more is not always better (more torture, anyone?).

Suggested “coupling” to be re-examined:

• beef, bell -> salivate (Pavlovian dog). Then, bell (no beef) -> salivate. Pair-association principle. Sell the dream (subscribe to credit card, then take the cover girl on vacation). Just up the road, you’ll, see? Like the Gold Rush, only those who sold tools and jeans were sure winners
• Stanford prison experiment (robe and ring, insignia and uniform showing ranks = authority figure, as in “Catch Me If You Can”) or gray hair gray beard, for those still in Confucius orbit: older = wiser = respectful (Madoff). Once in a gym, an older man exposed himself in the shower and motioned for me to join him for sex. At least he wasn’t in High-Church robe. Remember Penn State defensive coach? Or Baptist Pastor abuse scandal!
• Of late, the Pope denounced the Doctrine of Discovery (NPR piece April 1, 2023). Fake it until you make it – Santos Syndrome or Silicon Valley’s Out for Blood (black turtleneck as in Theranos = female Steve Jobs?).
• Billionaires give a lot back (coupling money and charity). Not all were Carnegie. If any, it’s their divorced wives and estranged kids (Johnson Johnson) who stood to gain. Bigger pocketbook does not equate with bigger heart. Conversely, the smaller the chips, the more the giving (Gordon Moore).
• Again, in “Confucius” system, teachers were always right (then why the chalkboard and eraser). You might as well inscribe lessons in stone, like Moses and the Ten Commandments: “Thou shall not lie” (to your students after pre-collecting their tuition which btw, direct deposited from student loan e.g. ITT).
• Turns out, it’s the teachers’ teacher who did not know left from right (back to de-coupling Number 2). Further reading: Hans Rosling’s Factfulness or Lies my teacher told me, by James W. Loewen. “All men are mortal” but when it came out of the mouth of Aristotle, it carries more weight. All in the branding. We’re taught to first learn good characters (unfortunately, it meant Never ever question the teachers. The results? rote learning.)
• High finance uses euphemisms e.g. institutional ‘investment portfolios like derivatives with hockey-stick graphs (bell rung with some bones tossed)…while de-emphasizing its hot-dog packed high-risk derivatives. Charts and data can lie when zooming in to lend bias for a period of time. Even Housing as of late, was not a sure thing (2008). So are some Valley banks (2023) or Cassava, the dementia drug company (kept NYT investigative reporter busy).
• So much emphasis on men being horny. Then why all the play tools made for women? Raped victims at times happened to be young boys or altar boys. With Hooters we ‘ve got Chippendales (Go Steinem). In Primary Color, Kathy Bate played a lesbian fixer who immediately picked a campaign volunteer staffer to be her playmate while “hush hush” our candidate past transgression
• Essential workers were hailed during the pandemic. For a while. Until inflation and interest rates did them in (a great scene in Margin Call when Demi Moore small-talked with her co-worker in an elevator, while a quiet janitor-lady caught riding in between at mid-night). Perhaps when more boomers need caregivers, we’ll see the return of Essential workers (Filipino nurses or robotic caregivers).
• Heroes and those who died in war were hailed. Then the opposition and revisionists called them dumb (for not letting others die in their places?) as in McCain vs Trump rivalry (as of this edit, still in print was his $99.00 coffee-table book). We need to assess context, intent, circumstance, and unintended consequences. No blanket rush-to-judgment! One of my heroes is still Lt Murphy from our PSU alumni pool
• Meanwhile, the Marines always charge – albeit Normandy or China Beach, leaving “just war” or “unjustifiable “one to civilian commanders and critics to debate. Hindsight always sees better i.e. more wars, more veterans, more homeless. Selective memories are always positive. It’s through those holes and cracks that light can sift through.
• No regrets? Daniel Pink came out with “the Power of Regrets”, moving forward by moving backward, or so. If so, to close out this “de-coupling”, perhaps my dad had done all he could, being a veteran, living still in war, yet managed to take care of everybody (three-generations under one roof). He was tall, slick and carried himself well.
• Now, they train us to trust a new authoritative figure, apart from family, school and religion. It’s the machine.

“It says here in the system, your scores are up this month” ….

Just as our political system is fragile, this new “authority” (AI) figure is rising, knowing us better than we ourselves (Predictive). Ménage a Trois = man + woman + machine (beds should be redesigned for machine to sandwich in between). Demi More in elevator, looking down to her phone.

That guy at the gym might have big muscles (I admire him for it). But he is much younger. My i coupling e.g. bigger = older was shot. I am back to digging, like a neuro archeologist. For my own sanity in a world that doesn’t seem to distinguish one from the other (keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result). No wonder, “you cannot be intelligent and be happy”, something of that nature, per Hemingway.

More is not always better. Faster does not equate with more accurate and better results (yet the engineers keep pushing the envelope), higher rating (herding) couldn’t be more wrong (Dominion voting machine settlement).

Forget Coupling for convenience. Stimulus – response. Ring the bell and “salivate”. Hail to the King! Wearing a crown (bell), he must be the Absolute (beef). The return of Royalty! (in the old days, in the Orient, foot soldiers like my dad would have to carry higher-ups sitting inside their “limousine”.

This reminds me of Le Chat Bote, a French bedtime story. about a good cat who set his master up to marry the King’s daughter (by fabricating a robbery, then by borrowing the King’s costume, to grift his master into royal court).

BTW, propaganda works best when we resist least per exhaustion, crowd surge, human waves, dehydration. conformity and contagion to herd hypnoses “I once was lost…wretched man that I was…”. De-individuation.

Typical “problem-solution”. Then “God the Father, Mother Mary”. The climax: we’re reduced to becoming mere orphans, thirsty, hungry and vulnerable to wooing and cocooning. Abandoned. In isolation (socially persecuted) then, the other shoe: a pre-meditated solution for a receptive audience (Moses in the desert, Christ in Heaven, Buddha in Nirvana, Allah in the Cloud, Jim Jones in Guyana)

No wonder Thoreau remarks: “all men live and die in quiet desperation” ….Unless they rise, resist and review those unexamined coupling. We decent “gradually then, per Hemmingway, suddenly.”.

It’s not entirely the emperor’s fault. It’s ours, for not:” Sir, you’re naked”. (The emperor has no clothes). Woe is man’s impulse to conform and compromise. For the sake of harmony and peace. Then, peace (the trigger) is just a dream. We mistook peace for predictability even when deep down, we know Change is the only Constant.

Keep moving and resisting. Then we may barely stay in place to enjoy our “norms”.

Time and chance got us all.

Wish I could fetch dad’s coffee and shine his shoes, just one more time. Looking up from my vantage point, he was quite tall, slick and into whose shoes I once wished I could grow.