Dr. Lane’s Thoughts LXXI

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Dr. Lane’s Thoughts LXXI

1) Clarence Thomas (among one of the darkest of well-known Black people) has finally had his moment of glory doing away with Affirmative Action.  I am sure that he is happy with himself.  No one person hated Affirmative Action more than Clarence Thomas; no one!

From what I have read, SCOTUS judge Thomas has always had a problem with Affirmative Action.  He feels that it undermines the merits of truly intelligent people who are not White Anglo-Saxons Men; this means disabled people, Blacks, Latinos, etc).  (Did I mention that Judge Thomas was admitted under Affirmative Action?  This infuriates him so keep it quiet).  Oh hell, just shout it from the rooftops!  Clarence Thomas was admitted to Yale Law School as an Affirmative Action candidate!

The real problems in his life started when he left Yale Law School and tried to get hired at law firms and none of them wanted a dark-skinned Black man from Yale Law School born in Pin Point, GA. No matter how smart he was, he felt that the invisible “branding” of being accepted under Affirmative Action was what kept him from being accepted into the best that White America could offer.

Any other Black person would have moved on from having to use a program meant to assist them to get an equal footing in the world of education and a legal career and found a way to prove themselves as equal or better than their former classmates (probably whispering to themselves or talking openly with other Black people, “Fuck White America” and internally felt that White America missed out on their intelligence and nice personality by being blind to their uniqueness and only caring about their skin color). 

Being the brilliant man that Clarence Thomas was, he decided the blame was on Affirmative Action for branding him with the classification that he wasn’t accepted to Yale Law School based on his excellent credentials but on his race.  The odd thing was – that is exactly what he had to use because White America had no interest in anyone who did not look like them.  Affirmative action was the only means for him to be given his well-deserved equal chance at an Ivy-league legal education!

Let’s say it together now – “Bad, bad Affirmative Action – how dare you diminish the merits of this fine young Black man?!”  You made that bastion of white privilege (YALE) accept Clarence based on his…merit?  You made this Ivy League school ignore his… skin color?  I hope we have shamed you to see how awful you were to this brilliant Black man!  You diminished him by giving him a chance to prove himself in a time when acceptance of anyone but WASP males was rare.

I guess that we are supposed to write something here like “how dare you, Yale” .  You…ah…put aside…your…’standard credentials’ of race…and let him into your school?  i am lost here so if anyone can think of what I what I should write be sure to inform me because from my view in 2023 I can only see good things for women and BIPOC from Affirmative Action.  I guess that I am blind to the glaring issues of ‘evil’ that Clarence Thomas sees.

I am not certain what Clarence was insulted by but it was something like that.  He wanted to be accepted into law school based on his superior credentials and not based on his skin.  He went to Yale Law School from 1971-1974, the early years of Affirmative Action, which became law in 1965 but needed time to ‘ramp up’ into the mainstream.

Clarence (may I call you Clarence?) you are very smart but you do lack wisdom.  Affirmative Action required schools to give you some measure of respect, even if it was based on the color of your skin.  Without Affirmative Action you would have not been accepted to any school only based on the color of your skin.  Generations of Black people (many as smart or smarter than you) were subjected to being ignored based on skin color and the ONLY REASON that you had a chance to get as far as you did in order to abolish the system that helped you was because of this system.

Now you get to keep other Blacks away from the same opportunities available to you and your “White kin”.  Sorry, I meant your wife’s kin – you really don’t like other Black people.  I should write “obviously” since you don’t seem to have another Black person you will be seen with on camera.  There are plenty of Black rich people but you seem to be alone from them anytime you are seen on camera – nothing but old rich White people with inherited wealth as far as the eye can see.

I guess you see them as ‘your people’ but I guarantee that they see you as a Black man (and possibly the only one that they associate with who isn’t a servant).

Clarence, you are so far gone from reality and what has happened to Black people and any of the history that has happened to anyone dark-skinned that it is difficult to believe that you have ever acknowledged it.  Make no mistake – you are a very dark Black man.  You have had it all done to you (prejudice and avoidance) and still you want to believe that you made it on your own (or should have been allowed to make it on your own).

A decent man would have done his best to pave the way for the next generation of Black people; you chose to burn that way for others.  In many ways, the people who really hate Black people found their greatest voice in you!  You say their words from the face of the people they deeply hate.  Dave Chappelle could not have written a skit like your life without getting censors angry.

You have done away with a system that you feel has forever disgraced you so that other people of color (Black, and Brown) can be ignored, legally, by schools without the fear of being accused of discrimination.  

Good-bye ‘others’ and welcome all those children of alumni (‘legacy’), White boys, and girls and any other wealthy people who can pay the price tag.  Clarence Thomas has answered your prayers and now in the classrooms of Yale and other schools it is just going to be Whites and Asians as far as the eye can see.

2) According to Dr. Roizon on the subject of the benefits and dangers of eating salmon: “Salmon and other swimmers that are loaded with DHA omega-3s, the risks [of mercury and other contaminants] are small and the benefits enormous. An analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association calculated that if 100,000 people ate farmed salmon twice a week for 70 years, the extra polychlorinated biphenyls intake could potentially cause 24 extra deaths from cancer — but would prevent at least 7,000 deaths from heart disease. Also, the levels of chemicals such as PCBs in fish are similar to levels in heart-damaging foods many folks eat all the time — meats, dairy products, and eggs.”

3) t would seem from what I have read about what people consider to be their idea of ‘problems’ is the universal theme (that everyone agrees with) as is, as Sartre wrote “people are hell”.  The sad acknowledgement is that other people are a necessity but a horrible one. A difficult necessity to tolerate; but a necessity nonetheless.  We all universally acknowledge that other people make us miserable.

The middle ground is that we all want to escape to where we can be alone and venture out purely for tasks. Of course, we want to be undisturbed by other people,  and that goes without saying.  We all like other people in theory but the people we have to deal with – family, friends, coworkers and others – make us deeply unhappy much of the time.

We all want to run away from our families, friends, marriages, coworkers, and governments who stop us from being happy; except those are also the same things that make isolation tolerable. This is an idea I have coined as “STFU and give me my money” where ‘money’ is whatever we must have to continue to survive, hopefully with less time spent with the people giving us this ‘money’.

Except for the last item all the others can be replaced by a version of AI. 

“Others’ are people who we feel intentionally act as a problem or obstacle but their independent needs define that they will always be a problem (since they are the same as your problems). Everyone is talking, no one is being heard, but everyone believes that they are being heard. 

[No, this will not be on the exam.]

To be honest, it is probably not everyone who you wish would disappear from your life; it is probably just one person who just drains your time and patience in some way.  Just consider that this same person may be a drain to everyone else – the problem is not unique to you.  Perhaps we should think about making the world better for all of us by doing something about that one person.

Or maybe it is only you that feels victimized.  Lastly, it may be you who drains other people.  Think about that one – this could be all you.

4) The real meaning behind the title “Catcher in the Rye”. Salinger wrote this book during his time serving during World War II.  He saw horrible things because it was a war and that is never a fun place to be.  He probably felt useless as a constructive force in the world and he reflected this in his character of Holden Caufield.

Holden expresses his desire to help children who are running in a rye field near a cliff, unable to see the edge because they are small and can’t see above the tall stalks of grain.  He sees his usefulness as being the person who can catch them if they go too near the edge of the cliff where the rye grows.

Holden sees himself as being useful in a world that he rejects by helping the innocent who he feels can still be redeemed because they are only children.

5) “Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.”


— Stephen Covey


6) Sizing of clothes – is there any ‘real sizes’ any longer?  How do companies figure out a men’s “L” or “XL” or “2XL”?  Any of these sizes could fit me depending on the company I am buying from.  This is not such a problem when buying in the store (or is it?  More on this later) but online = getting the wrong size and now I need to return it – and what happens to the clothing I returned?

Yes, the returns from online purchasing will probably get landfilled!  No company is prepared to clean the clothing item and repackage it to be sold again so it will get landfilled!  Yes, that $160 shirt or $200 pants (really a markup for an item that cost $5 to manufacture) goes to a large reseller (TJ Maxx or Marshall’s or Burlington) who will decide what they can get for it or whether they should shred it and landfill it.

OK, so you want to keep the clothing item because it ‘fits’?  Or does it fit, really?  Once you wear it it then needs to be washed and…anything can happen!  It may shrink or it may stay true to the size you received.  Whichever result happens will lead you to make a decision about it again as to whether you need to return it or keep it.

I am not naive – the issue with sizing has to do with peoples’ perception of what they want their size to be (versus their actual body size) so manufacturers have learned to lie with sizing to tell people what they want to see their label say – you are a small man but your label says “XL” or you are a big guy and you want your label to say “L” [please note that I am writing about men’s sizes; forget any hope for honest sizing with women and the psychology of what that means to women to get one size or another].

Of course this problem is the bane of all women’s clothing so the mall is the only place you can go to get your clothes which leads to the perception that women shop ‘all the time’ and women respond with , “do we have a choice?”

7) I liked the movie BARBIE.  I thought that it was a thoughtful and observant movie that reflects a great deal about our society. Barbie wrestles with her flawed purpose as a toy meant to represent the ideal woman; Ken, created solely to be Barbie’s arm candy, gets his first taste of power by observing humans, and misunderstands what he sees.  There are real limits that can be done with a movie based on a toy but what was created had both a message and a fun way of seeing the world.

The movie has a simple message: you can realize yourself through your own effort no matter what your obstacles and, certainly, without being a reflection of another person.

8)  Having an active role in a religious life has decreased in the US for many decades.  This is a problem in that participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life, higher financial generosity, and more stable families—all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency.

I understand some of the core issues which have to do with the moral failings of the leadership that so many people trusted. Religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. 

More than this, places of worship have an unwritten code made prominent by their most eager congregants who dictate the kind of people that they want to have there in the place of worship.  Often these people need to be devoted to the faith, have a great deal of free time to do activities related to the congregation, and, many times, have a great deal of expendable cash to look a certain way.  Many of us do not meet any or all of these criteria; we just want to feel closer to our faith (or the faith we grew up with).

When the idea of attending the church or shul seems too overwhelming an enterprise because of all the scrutiny we must endure it just defeats itself.  What we need to attend more is “Welcome, we are so glad to see you!” and not “Look who it is!  Where have you been?  Why haven’t’ we seen you”?

We all get it.  Religion often is tied with judgement and this is something we accept.  Still, the judgement we accept is in terms of the faith and its teachings and not from the other parishioners! 

Life does get in the way of attendance of any religious congregation.  We must feel that they want us to attend when we can and accept us when we can be there, in mind and spirit.

9) Researchers found that the ideal position for taking pills is reclining, while leaning to your right side. This speeds up absorption of the pill by about 13 minutes, compared to simply staying upright. Leaning to the left, however, was found to slow absorption by more than an hour.

10)  I ponder about the issue of the basis of morals or shame in our society only in that I observe a certain recklessness in the way people treat each other and their responsibilities to other people generically.  Is it that we see more poor behavior because of rampant social media depicting the worst behaviors or because it was always there but invisible to most people not present at the event?

Is it the constant need to outdo each other with items that are more outrageous because the ‘ordinary’ rude behavior has become mundane or, even, customary?

Or could it be more than that, venturing into a subtle anger that we are not being treated in the way we feel we deserve so only inappropriate behavior will get the results we seek in social settings?

Moral formation comprises three things. First, helping people learn to restrain their selfishness. How do we keep our evolutionarily conferred egotism under control? Second, teaching basic social and ethical skills. How do you welcome a neighbor into your community? How do you disagree with someone constructively? And third, helping people find a purpose in life. Morally formative institutions hold up a set of ideals. They provide practical pathways toward a meaningful existence: Here’s how you can dedicate your life to serving the poor, or protecting the nation, or loving your neighbor.  

Basically, along with the social constructions that indicate your teachings from your parents (and their own upbringing) we are supposed to enter the world prepared to work cooperatively and socially to reach common goals that both reward us and assist others so that they will want to work with us again (by ‘work’ I mean engage with us in the future because they find us accommodating and friendly).

What we see in our social feeds from many sources is that the demanding and aggressive get what they want and the pleasant and cooperative can, at best, get revenge on these same people {the “Karens” get their comeuppance, the dangerous get arrested or a socially-approved beat-down].

When people can’t get their nerve to enter this world of constant negotiation they become isolated which may explain the many people living alone; it may seem safer to just be by yourself than learn how to engage with people who want their needs met and have learned from TV and movies that being meek will get you stepped on and abused – perhaps it is best to just look after yourself.

What is the message about the things that used to be met, largely, by the social group (which also set the standards for our behavior in groups and families)?

Dating: Men are sexually aggressive and women are looking for someone to take care of them.  Is this true or does it just seem like that is all we hear about?

Shopping: Stores demand that you do your own checkout but constantly accuse shoppers of theft while many shoppers have tried to find ways to steal from stores using this self-checkout (after all, no one is looking)

People learn right or wrong by the visual sense more than in schools looking at books and learning rote instruction.  When kids and adults play video games they are only taught that to win they need to kill something to both get their needs met and to win the game.  This may be fun and a distraction but when it is the only diversion people have and, especially, when these games are introduced to younger people (mainly boys but some girls) then what does the outside world look like other than a place to practice these skills you trained for in the video game?

So many TV shows about surviving on an island or in the tundra support cooperation to some degree but, in the end, exalt the winner who turns on everyone and only looks after themselves – the direct opposite of what moral formation suggests we do to be a member of society.

Parents, teachers, and religious authorities may try to counter this disposition but they represent a world of past thinking and older mores that do not recognize the world that younger people live in – one where it is harder to meet their own needs by working pleasantly with others and following rules – after all, it is the renegade who wins by overpowering the weaker and kinder.

If you think that by this point I would have a answer I am sorry to disappoint. I live in this world as well and I am in middle age – my world is also in the past and my set of rules to live by have already served me, successfully or not.  I observe and I write and am left with only hope for what comes next.

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