Dr. Lane’s Thoughts LXX

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Dr. Lane’s Thoughts LXX

1) I have to admit that the kids’ shows geared to Tweens and Teens that depict parents as clueless idiots easily outwitted by their mentally superior children has the effect of teaching kids that they are the real leaders in the house being cared for by adults who are little more than ancient servants; the equivalent of Homo Sapiens Sapiens with Neanderthal parents.

Like most adults with teenagers I have had my share of interactions with my teens that indicate that they are the improved version of humans while my wife and I are only allowed to gaze at them with awe, wonder and an internal sense of both inferiority and requisite subservience.

In fact, while we keep our mouths shut to avoid conflict it is quite the opposite.  My daughter wouldn’t know which end of a sponge to use while doing dishes for the simple fact that she has never done them.  Cleanliness is something to hope for while making no effort to reach it, like climbing Mount Everest or exploring the Mariana Trench, a divine goal only approachable by deep discourse in Theology and abstention from all things worldly.

Like most teens she is profoundly disturbed by the many things that she ‘lacks’ when compared to other teens (really, this only means the teens that she knows) and, of course, the actors she sees on the scripted shows she believes.

The real world is not television.  It is also not as fun or exciting.  This is the only reason that we do not inflict it on her now.  It will catch up to her and she may realize that my wife and I deserve praise and not just manipulative compliments for the sole goal of getting something from us.

2) I had a DOT driver in my office for a mandated DOT drug screen for pre-employment purposes.  While he was waiting I brought up the topic of CONCENTRA – a med-clinic of questionable ethics.  They are well-known in this area but they may not be everywhere in the USA.  If you have ever wondered what happens to medical school graduates who do not seek board certification this is probably where they end up – just regular people with an MD at the end of their name.  

Unlike many doctors who seek this career to be free of severe corporate oversight, these doctors work for the CONCENTRA organization which dictates their performance and their output.  While this may seem to be a well-paid job like any middle-management profession where a person does their 9-5 for a paycheck there is a twist: CONCENTRA almost exclusively works for employers who send their employees to the CONCENTRA offices for ‘free’ exams and medical treatment.  In turn, CONCENTRA is free to pass this information on to the employer for their use in deciding the employment status of the employee.

I have always felt free to inform my DOT patients about this truth and warn them to be careful with CONCENTRA doctors, as well as anything that is noted as ‘free’ (‘if the service has no cost to use the product then you are the product being sold’).

This young male driver became argumentative with me about what I said (making it clear that I was only saying what I did because they were my competition for DOT medical exams) and I finished by telling him he was free to hear what I have said and disregard the warning.

This young man wanted to continue to speak his mind and was clear that he wanted me to listen to him and not walk away.  My walking away ‘hurt his feelings’ he said to my female employee.  

This is where I bring up my second point in this essay: men do not tell other men that their feeling were hurt, especially people who are basically strangers.  To be clear, I have daughters and a wife who talk about their feelings.  Whether we ascribe to this next notion or rale against it to our dying day, MEN DO NOT DISCUSS THEIR FEELINGS.  Sorry, but those are the unwritten rule of manhood, at least in the USA.

How did this guy miss this lesson?  Does he have no friends, male role models, a father (or fathers)?  has he never watched a movie or television program that depicts men?  Isn’t he a DOT CDL holder?  Has he ever been around other men?  This is not my wild idea open to retort or to be argued on a higher level – this is plain truth.  Do we need to ‘discuss’ that being kicked in the balls hurts?  It is something that has happened to all men so we know it at its base as a truth.

This young man is not going to last at that trucking company or as a trucker.  The field is decidedly masculine/male and this men are not big on opinions or talking.  They hear what you say but offer no counter-argument if it has nothing to do with their decision-making.  I have probably offered my opinion / warning about CONCENTRA hundreds of times to other men and if any do not agree with me I have never heard about it.  Most men just agree with me because of their own interactions with the corporation.  Those that do not agree probably couldn’t care about what I have said about the place.

Do you want to test my assumption?  Go ahead and talk to other men and demand that your voice be heard on some unimportant topic and see what happens.  

On the other hand, if you have a few hours to kill just go to a bar that serves a lot of truckers.  Be sure to be sitting down with your beer before turning to the guy next to you and saying , “damn Concentra”.  For the next 4 hours every trucker there will be wanting to share his story about CONCENTRA and how badly he got treated there.

What you will learn is GUY Rule #1 – shut up and do some work.  No one cares what you have to say.  No one cares about your feelings.  No one.

3) About the guy I mentioned in #2, I have another reason to doubt his continued employment around other men: he was very reluctant to urinate for his urine drug test where al the other men urinate (a converted back hallway we use that has only lights on the wall.  It is not pretty but functional).  This guy asked to be taken to a nearby public toilet our office shares with the rest of the building).  

Sorry but Guy Rule #2: we pee anywhere and everywhere.  Men do not worry about the atmosphere or ambience of where we urinate.  I think most men think that a concern about the place where we pee is unmanly or, at least, effete.  We do not care about something we consider to be a topic of the feminine world.

Basically, I think that guy is not well-suited to the world of truckers.

4) “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.”

— Lao Tzu


5)  Hate brings people together; love is a vaporous illusion that lets people live alone in their thoughts.  Racism is a good binder of various people with little in common except for their hate.  Hate is always aggressive and it gives the heart a workout so people feel invigorated by hate; love is calming so it doesn’t make the heart feel utilized (despite the hearts and flowers idea of romantic literature). It is natural for people to feel useful when they hate.

Hate can almost feel instinctive in an ‘us versus them’ mentality and it appeals to our most base and animal ideas but it is not civilized or useful in the long-run for the simple reason that hate needs to be heeded and fed while love and tolerance needs to only be informed and allows for cohesion based on common functional goals (if it is used for anything).  Hate is territorial and love is shared space.

Hate demands our attention and love works in the background.  Hate is all about ‘a call for action’ and ‘war on the other side’ and words of direct action.  It is difficult to get people who talk about love to call or create excitement about their causes.

6) A college / university education is a necessity to do a job; it is not just a place to have fun.  Many jobs require the extra skills from the training higher education offers.  Many jobs are off-limits to those without the proper education.

In the end, many people (including me) sought to get more education so that we could do our JOBS.  Please be clear here: what we do is a job for a paycheck to live our lives.  Being a doctor is a very long trade school with the intended goal to earn a paycheck for performing a service; the education is the only means you can utilize to have this job.

Higher education does not give you the privilege to get the diploma and put our feet up to relax while others toss money at our feet.  We now have the means to get employed and earn money; albeit at a higher level than if we stopped at high school.  There is no joy in having more to lose financially because we took on this extra training and educational debt.

The US has a lot to learn from Europe (besides the obvious stuff about healthcare being a social necessity and not a privilege, as well as other things that are decried as SOCIALISM here) which is that a university education is a public good.

6) Everyone is right all the time.  That is an expression I use to explain the motivations of other people.  Factually, it is inconceivable and not possible for ‘everyone to be right all the time’ but ‘truth’ is not what that expression means; it has more to do with psychology: people feel that what they do is unbiased and pure and, if understood from their vantage point, the only correct way to think and act.

Before I use an example, I want to point out that what people do is centered on their belief that even if they are told that they are wrong, that what they are doing is selfish or even cruel that they steadfastly hold to their truth that they are pure and clean in their actions and it is only the outcome and the perception by others of that outcome that is the problem.

Take any topic going on, crypto for example.  It is really just a Ponzi scheme based on the idea that worthless coins could have value if everyone believed in them and gave them a value.  Crypto is not tied to anything (US currency is a kind of Ponzi scheme but it is, intrinsically, based on the value of the US and its possessions.  In the old day it was based on the value of gold).  The problem with crypto is that its lack of actual value makes it ripe for exploitation of its believers.

The people who create crypto do not see themselves as criminals or even people with unintended criminal intent; truly they see the world as not ready to take what they do on faith and that they only had the best of intent and visions of a world that could exist.

Young people who steal cars.  There is a victim in the crime of theft but they see themselves as business people obtaining and selling an item of value for the purpose of earning money.  They see the world as expensive and their needs as primary so the goal is to meet the same primary needs we all have: shelter, food, entertainment, and the possibility of an uninterrupted future.  They also feel that they are intelligent and using their skills and courage to get ahead in life.  They see themselves as the victim, not the person who owns the car.  If only other people saw them as they see themselves all of their problems would go away.

Other examples are obvious (or maybe obvious to you in your daily life interacting with people) but the basics are a worldview centered on the selfish self.  There is also the environment that there are needs to be met, perhaps financial or economic but probably psychological but always greater than any one person can meet, especially people who are younger but also people who feel that they have utilized all their resources and have no more to obtain.

Now they need a means that even they know may be questionable: endorsing a product of dubious value, taking something that doesn’t belong to them, and so on.  All they need now is a mindset that makes it clear that the chasm that stops them from success is their own way of thinking, usually based on an upbringing or socialization that crossing that chasm is ‘wrong’.  Instead of agreeing that being a part of society means that they should follow these shared restrictions they make the fateful decision that what is ‘actually’ holding them back is a lack of courage or a ‘fear of failure’.  

In the end, it is only the rest of the world that doesn’t understand  them or can’t see their vision for success.  Also, they scold us for not seeing our shared world the way that they do; it is not their ‘fault’ if the rest of us could just see things their way.  In the end, they are innocent and uncorrupted.  Finally, the important point is that they are not being self-deceptive or even psychologically biased – they truly believe that they are not wrong and have done nothing wrong.  Perhaps they see other people as having a safety net of resources so that the actual ‘loss’ is only temporary one for the victims but the gains are truly great for themselves.

Even the victimization of siblings or parents or people they know or associate with: the others have so much more and have so much more emotional or financial support and “I need this” – and, to them, their reasoning is sound and without blemish or corruption.  It is not but they think it is.

7) Communism is a bullshit economic model favored by people who want to do the least and be supported by anyone stupid enough to do more.  Countries that use this model either fail or have to use strong police or military organizations to keep the peace from people rising up in protest.  They offer free education and medical care for the most part.  It is favored by totalitarian countries (Russia, China, Cuba, and others)

Socialism is a very decent model used by many countries in Europe.  It is a capitalist economic model except that the people are given free medical care and other social goods expected of a country trying to support its citizens.

The USA in the pursuit of a purely capitalist model offers only a handful of the social goods offered by much of Europe and allows a constant flow of bullshit about socialist model by letting orators state that Socialism is the same as Communism, which it clearly is not.  

With the same brush of tainting socialism by declaring it communism these same people fight anything that suggests a grouping together of people to create a single voice, as much as it may concern employment.  This means unions, which are (for the most part) good for the people they serve.

Socialism is for helping the citizens of a country succeed.
Communism is for exploiting the people of a country through a repressive leadership intent on its own survival above all else.

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