Some are more equal than others

I once filled a recurring substitute position teaching elementary level P.E. The teacher had left out detailed instructions for different games and activities for each of the  different age groups, from kindergarten through sixth grade.

The younger grades, the kindergartners, first and second graders I discovered were relatively easy to keep occupied and engaged, but somewhat more difficult to maintain any sort of order, so I eventually gave up.  In time, I resigned myself to the path of least resistance--scatter a few balls and other items around the gym floor, open the doors, and get out of the way.  The next twenty-five minutes was a healthy mixture of screaming, running around in circles and general chaos.

The upper grades, third through sixth grades, took meticulous planning and constant revision throughout each activity.  Common phrases that I heard repeatedly throughout different games included:  "That isn't fair," "She stepped on the line,"  "He touched the ball last," "Those two can't be on the same team," and more than a few times, crying.


With the younger grades, it was twenty-five minutes of play, an opportunity to run, jump, spin, bounce, dance, wiggle, all without restraint from any authority figure.  For the upper grades, it became a practice in equity and fairness, of rules and regulations, a system that needed structure and guidelines with black and white statutes that could be easily identified and understood.

It was exhausting.

What I discovered from this experience, is that developmentally, the early adolescent years is when children become very concerned with a world of rules and fairness.  While still rudimentary, it was very clear that the idea of thing being "fair" was paramount.  As their awareness of the world around them developed, along with it came the need for comparison with others, competition, and a keen insight into the hierarchy of power and justice. 

I'm just not sure if this need for fairness was about being fair, or about not being on the losing side, as the complaints usually came from the team that was weaker, or the individual that would benefit the most from the absolute fidelity to whichever rule was in play.  In fact, many times, the desire for something to be fair was overlooked if it was advantageous to an individual, and not noticed by the whole.  So, I do not think that it was necessarily about the righteous nature of the rules, or the need for equity, it was about establishing a system that could be taken advantage of when needed in order to further one's owns goals.

In On Household God's and Goblins, G.K. Chesterton writes, "For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy."  This growth from childhood to adulthood is often marked with a transition from a world view that is purely black and white, good and evil, or right and wrong, to a world view that consists of several shades of gray, levels of righteousness, and a spectrum of morality that is constantly in fluctuation and often subject to relative circumstances or scenarios.

This is not uncommon at any age, but the games become much more complex and usually entail higher stakes.  A driver who complains about getting pulled over and remarks "it's not fair, other people were speeding too" is also likely to wish for a driver that speeds past them the following day to be ticketed.  It is easy to justify a desire for someone else to get caught and face the consequences of their actions in the name of justice, yet difficult not to rationalize and make excuses for ourselves when we are the ones breaking the rules.  What is worse, is when we create something pernicious masked as something virtuous.

This ability to advocate for an action or process which for one reason, but under the guise of another is a dangerous process of thinking.  In its most harmless form, it allows a person to acquire personal gain with the appearance of helping another.  When we were kids, my parents would tell us that our ice cream cones were dripping and the only way to prevent that was for them to eat a portion of it to prevent it from making a mess. At it's most malicious, it can carry out ruthless practices which are protected by the shroud of morality.  Extreme examples include Jim Crow Laws and the Law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.

I wonder if we are always honest with ourselves when it comes to our own motivations, or if we are sometimes so frightened by our own selfishness or ill intent that we must masquerade them as something upright and righteous?  Are we at times so painfully aware that the blatant nature of our own avarice or malice will be so repugnant to another person that we plead its merit based on a shroud of ethical priority? Sometimes, sound reasoning can be the best disguise for ill intentions, even from the person who is creating them.

Human beings are complex creatures capable of a wide variety of actions, based on a wide variety of values and paradigms of thoughts, some of which are obscured even to the mind of the person behind the actions. We just need to make sure that we actually think what we believe.

A Jealousy of Stars

That star, the first one out, sitting haughtily on the horizon is not a star at all.  It's a planet.  It's Mars.  In Roman mythology, Mars was the god of war and second only to the god Jupiter, king of the gods.  Perhaps that is why Mars arrives so early in the night sky.  He is an impostor, a poser and a thief attempting to swell his own importance by greedily collecting the wishes of the lonely and desperate who come to him in error.

Unfortunately for those dreamers, their wishes fall on deaf ears, and in the time that it has taken those sad and forgotten few to voice their desires, the first star has appeared somewhere near the zenith, anxiously awaiting those hopes and dreams to be spoken, sadly disappointed to be overlooked.

If the planets were gods then surely, the stars must be something else.  Something above the gods, imbued with power to fulfill the dream of a troubled planet, yet angry at the stolen hopes wasted on a deceiving impostor.

Soon, the second star, followed by a third and fourth.  A handful will arrive followed by an army of stars that riot across the night sky.  Cloudless, endless patterns emerge where the many take the place of the few.  Eventually, the dream star, the wishing star, is nothing more than an unrecognizable dot amidst the ocean of light, lost to those desperate dreamers.

I knew when she walked in the room

A love story in the brain

Most people on the planet can relate to the experience of standing in a crowded room full of dozens of intermingling conversations and suddenly becoming acutely aware of their name being said out loud or the sound of a familiar voice. Or of knowing when that special someone walked through the door as if cupid was tapping you on the shoulder.  

What is it that makes us notice that person, or our name, or to become overly conscious of anyone wearing a hat or t-shirt of our favorite sports team or band? Of all the thousands of individual stimuli that enter the brain on any given moment, why do some of them go unnoticed while others draw our attention immediately?  

The answer lies in the Reticiular Activation System (RAS) or Reticular Formation, a series of interconnected regions in the brain, located primarily in the brain stem that regulates the brain's level of arousal.  In other words, it helps the brain to decide what to pay attention to, and what to ignore.  This is the reason why we can fall asleep listening to music but wake up when we hear the front door open.  It is designed to focus our attention on potential threats, items of value, or people of particular interest.  

The RAS is constantly sifting through information and stimuli that passes through our senses into our brain, weighing out what requires our immediate attention and focus, and what does not.  It acts as the gatekeeper of our consciousness.

In Jewish lore, there are several references to a creature called a Golem.  Golems are creatures that were created out of inanimate matter and then magically imbued with life.  In one such version, there is a village that is surrounded by forest.  The villagers, afraid of unknown creatures that might be lurking in the wilderness, create a Golem to protect themselves from various dangers.  The Golem, tasked with protecting the villages, goes to work patrolling the forest.

Unfortunately for the Golem, and for the village, there were no real dangers to speak of, and the Golem, bored and without purpose, began to cause problems around the village until it became the very danger that it was created to protect the village from.

The villagers so desperately wanted there to be unseen problems, that they unwittingly created them; they believed their reality into existence. While this is myth demonstrates a principal of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the potential for this type of genesis is not without scientific basis.

In the 1960's a now famous series of studies were conducted and published by Robert Rosenthal, a psychology professor at Harvard University.  The basis of his work was the principal of self-fulfilling prophecies, or what was termed expectancy effects.  In one study, researchers gave an  IQ test to an elementary school class and reported the results to the teacher.  Twenty percent of the students were chosen at random and it was reported they had "unusual potential for intellectual growth."  At the end of the year, the students were tested again and it was found that those who were labeled as more intelligent showed significant improvement over their peers.

The teacher, expecting those students to be more capable, treated them differently than the rest of the students in the class.  Whether it was more encouraging words, higher expectations, more one-on-one instruction, or a myriad of other potential causes, the teacher's expectation of the students had a marked difference on their growth as a student.  Like the Golem, because they were focusing on a specific outcome, they in turn created it.

This principal became known as the Pygmalion Effect, based on the play by George Bernard Shaw which he titled after the Greek tale of a character of the same name. In the story, Pygmalion was a famous sculpture from Cyprus who had grown weary of the base nature of the women around him, many of whom were prostitutes. In his disgust, he set out to form the perfect woman.

The master sculpture went to work intentionally crafting her form, chiseling and polishing his work to perfection.  When it was completed, he named her Galatea and fell madly in love with his creation. Pygmalion would bring her gifts, kiss and caress her form, doting ardently upon her form.

The goddess Aphrodite, impressed by the depth and extent of his affection, took pity on the sculptor.  Upon returning to his home from the temple of Aphrodite, he found Galatea had been transformed from a form of cold marble, to warm flesh.  The hardness of her features had softened to the touch and she stood before him as human as the man who had tenderly brought her forth from stone.

In the instance of the Golem, those who sought after troubles, found them; while in the story of Pygmalion, the search for something greater was rewarded by the heights of love and joy.  In each case, the characters found what they searched for, because that is WHAT they were searching for.

For individuals, when the RAS is programmed to search out specific stimuli, for instance, confirmation that a student is incapable, it begins to filter out anything that does not fit that narrative, mistakes are viewed as proof that a child can not learn and less effort is put into teaching them. When the RAS is looking for evidence of a student's capability to learn, even mistakes are seen anomalies of thinking or even divergent thought or creative thoughts and be praised, encouraging the student to work harder. These opposing thoughts, over time, will create minor changes in the way the teacher works with their students and the way the students see themselves.

Students who have negative views of themselves will see criticism as proof of ignorance instead of corrective actions, while students seeking confirmation of their intelligence will see a teacher's rebuke as proof that they are held to higher standards. Over time, these minor difference can create significant differences in growth and development in the classroom.

The human brain is responsible for interpreting, evaluation, and filtering thousands upon thousands of pieces of information every single day.  It weighs out what is important and what is not, what is true and what is false, and what we should accept and what we should not. It will help us to find what we are desperately searching for, whether it be that special someone or confirmation of our darkest fears.  In a sense, reality is dictated by the filters of our consciousness.  We human beings will see the world as we choose to see it, and that will in turn, shape the world we live in, for better or for worse.