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Metacognition.

The ability to think about how you think.
Some people seem to lack that.

We've all seen it.  Someone has concluded that this chair will fit in that car, and is trying to put it in there.  They try through the door, through the hatchback, right side up, upside down, and sideways.  It doesn't fit.  Onlookers can see that it won't fit, and may tell the person so, but they keep trying.

Sometimes this is admired as "determination", but that's not what is going on.   It's difficulty in re-assessing.  This individual is unable to switch from making the chair fit to finding another way to get the chair home.  Sometimes, they will even resort to damaging the chair to follow their initial plan.  The important mental process of, "Could I be mistaken?" is not happening.

Once metacognition clicks in, problem solving can advance. 

Without metacognition, someone who has decided they like a particular person, political party, program or platform will continue to try to make their ideals fit into reality just as ineffectually as the sad case trying to cram a sofa into a smartcar.  They'll look just as stupid, and make as little progress toward their goals.

The ability and willingness to re-assess is crucial to survival.

Is the person you voted for last time still a good choice?  Have they changed?  Have the issues changed?  Are the decisions you made in March still wise in May?

Is your relationship really working?  Has the person you concluded that you love changed?  Have you changed?  Have your needs or their needs changed?

Is the career you chose in high school still a good fit for you?  Does that pile of "collectibles" still have any value?  Is alcohol still a good choice?  Are you sure that Nigerian Prince is honest?

Time to think about what you think.

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Anger is a malfunction.

Something or someone doesn't behave the way we expect, and we become angry.  It never helps.  Stopping to assess the situation, and moving to problem solving, is what is needed.

These people make us angry.  Does it help the situation to be mad at them?  Even if they could see our anger, would it change them?  Probably not.

If we look at this situation without anger, what DO we feel?

I feel pity.  I see that these people are afraid.

They are afraid that the rest of the world thinks like they do.

They despise "poor people".  They are afraid of becoming poor, because that would make them despicable. 

They are afraid of losing "their liberty" because they know how they treat disenfranchised people.  

They see their power and influence fading, and they are terrified, because they only know their own paradigm. 

Perhaps a better response to them would be to try to reassure them that we don't think like they do.  Perhaps we can try to see them as fellow human beings who need our emotional support.  They've gone mad, but they're not rabid dogs.  Hating them won't fix anything.

Getting angry and attacking these people will only more solidly confirm their biases.  They think we want to devour them.  We don't.  All we really want is for them to let us be.

How can we persuade them that the danger is not from us?  What can we do to reassure these people, so they will calm down, and go home?



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I have been trying to figure out how to explain to a friend why people get so mad at her when she helps.  She thinks people are just ungrateful.  (note: yelling at her to mind her own damn business is not "ungrateful", it's "totally pissed off")

Name changed to protect the guilty, here's a dramatization of  asking Mona to do you a little favor.
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You're hanging out with some friends, and talking about things to do, when Mona mentions that a friend of hers has this big portable grill that ten people could cook on at the same time.  You know a lot of people who think they grill the best burgers, and think it would be fun to have a cookoff in your back yard.

You say to Mona, "Could you ask your friend if I can borrow or rent that grill? I could set up a really fun weekend for everybody!"  She says she will ask.

You and your friends talk about this for a bit.  Everybody has ideas... maybe get a band, or belly dancers, a beer fountain, hire Chef Ramsey, ha ha... not really planning, just tossing ideas around.  Then conversation moves on.

When you get home, you look up all your grill fanatic friends, and tell them about your cookout idea.  They like the idea, and if you can get the big grill, are eager to come have a good time. 

You don't hear back from Mona for a few days, so you text her:

          Have you talked to your friend yet about me borrowing that big grill?

Plans have been falling through, but I found some performers.

          What?  I was asking about that big grill.  Is your friend willing to lend or rent it?

Oh, I spoke to him the next day,  he loves the idea, but he's so busy with this lawsuit about his neighbors' claim that he had sex with their cat, and the jugglers are vegan, but I'm sure we can work it all out, I'm going to look at the grill tomorrow.

          Ok, whatever you're planning sounds interesting, but I need to talk to this guy about the grill.

We're going to look at the grill tomorrow, you can come if you want to

By this point in the conversation, you are filled with a creeping dread.  Who is "we"?  What has Mona been doing and saying in your name?  Did she take all that batting ideas around seriously? Is Chef Ramsey going to turn up in your yard?  Why didn't Mona tell you right away that her friend was willing to lend you his grill?  WHAT IN MIDAS' GOLDEN BUTTHOLE IS GOING ON?

After much texting, and some phone calls, and mysterious paragraphs about her friend's lawsuit, and what really happened with the neighbor's cat, you extract contact information from Mona, and call the guy, now two weeks later.

          "Hello, I'm the person Mona spoke to you about borrowing your portable ten person grill."

"Oh, the grill isn't portable.  It's set in concrete behind my restaurant."

          "I see.  Sorry to bother you then, there has apparently been a misunderstanding."

"So you don't want to rent it after all?  If $2000 for the weekend is too much, we can work something out."

          "No need, it's not really suitable for what I had in mind.  Thanks for your time. Bye."

You disconnect the call with the quivery feeling of having climbed out of an arroyo just before the flood came down.  To make sure you are safe, you send one more text to Mona: I AM NOT HAVING A COOKOFF.  I DO NOT WANT TO BORROW YOUR FRIEND'S GRILL.

Later that night, as you are sinking into exhausted sleep, the full terror strikes you.  Sitting bolt upright, you wonder, what if you hadn't followed up?  What if, not hearing back from Mona in the first place, you simply decided to do something else?

What if she hadn't been stopped...

And Mona wonders why people scream at her.  

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Two thoughts just collided in my head.

One:  The crisis of China not wanting our trash any more. We haven't actually been recycling stuff, just selling it to someone else.  Millions of tons of it.

Two: The crisis of landfills filling up.  If you think about it, this translates to "We're running out of holes in the ground." 

Collision results:

If our trash is worth shipping to the other side of the planet, it's worth shipping somewhere closer. 

Like, some place that still has holes in the ground. 

So we can put the carbon back in the ground where it came from.

EXACTLY where it came from.

Commentary:  I don't know if I'm brilliant or stupid this morning.  I'll finish my coffee now.

There's a reason why cis people don't understand what trans people get so upset about pronouns.

I'm here to break that, so we can stop hurting people. 

Now, before you cis types get all defensive, saying, "But I don't mean to be rude, it's just a hard habit to break." let me tell you this.  Misgendering someone by accident makes it worse.

If you have read any of my other posts on social issues, you know that my prescribed cure for ANY ignorant attitudes is to get to know people.  Get out there, meet people, talk to them, and especially, listen to them.  

I have gotten to know some wonderful people, who don't fit any stereotype, he, she, they, mugwump, and more.   I concentrated on using correct pronouns to be polite.   That's the wrong reason to get the pronouns right.   It's not about being "polite".  Listening to trans people talking among themselves, I hear them objecting to pronouns, not because of the implied social role, or a sense of discrimination, but something much deeper. Let's dive.

When we try to understand someone, we look for a point of contact. We do this by asking ourselves how we would feel in a similar situation.

"How would I feel if I wasn't allowed to marry the person I love?"

"What would I do if someone wouldn't hire me because I have freckles, and the courts backed them up?"

"Could I cope if all my tax forms were in braille, and I couldn't get them in plain text because nearly everone else could read braille?"

So, we naturally ask ourselves, "How do I feel when someone calls me by a pronoun I don't identify with?"

But that's the wrong question. 

The cis answer to that question varies from "Can't that idiot see I'm wearing a dress?", to "How dare they call me a girl!"   Most often, though, it's not an extreme reaction. 

But, the trans folks I know feel very deeply about it.  These aren't hysterical people.  They're not the sort to freak out because someone bumped them, or demand free coffee because their name wasn't spelled right.  These are just regular people, who get along as well as anyone else.  Seeing a trans man tear up when he tells how his "supportive" family still refers to him as "she", I have to find the right question. 

When someone tells me I can't fix a car because I'm a woman, they're not denying I'm a woman.  When my doctor dismisses my pain because I'm fat, they're not denying I'm fat.  What similar situation then, can I imagine for transgender?  

Calling someone by a word they know in their soul does not apply to them...

How about, if someone snaps their fingers, or whistles to get my attention, as though I were an animal?

I think that is the right question a cis person should ask themselves about pronouns.

"What if everyone talks to me and about me as though I were a dog?"

That's why cis people don't get so upset by pronouns.  We haven't been treated to a constant background of this sort of treatment.  We get misgendered once in a while, by individuals we can easily dismiss as assholes or idiots.  Trans people have been misgendered constantly, by the entire world.  Even though the message might be "Good dog!" it's still the wrong words. 

Which gets to why doing it accidentally makes it worse.   

Once someone has told you their pronoun, they have basically told you they are not a dog.  If you use the wrong pronoun in the future, even though they keep correcting you, you are essentially saying, "Of course you're a person you cute little doggie!"  

I want to thank all the patient trans folx who put up with my cis shit, you're good friends, I love you all dearly.

I know I'm approaching wisdom, because I feel really, really stupid right now.

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First, the source of the question.

part one: I complained to my eye doctor about a twitching eyelid.  She asked If there was any pain, and I told her there wasn't.   Examining my eye, she found an eyelash growing downward, scraping across the surface of my eye, causing ulceration and scarring.  She plucked the hair out.  I would have sworn I was not feeling pain, but I felt the relief immensely.  

Part two: I have been diagnosed for years with depression, the symptoms being crying randomly, and lack of motivation or physical activity.

The Question:  I am aware that emotional issues can manifest as physical pain, is it possible for that to work the other way?

In other words, is it possible that my "depression" is actually physical pain from something I am percieving as a mere annoyance, like the eyelash? 


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"We have a choice of whether we are hurt by words."

I heard someone say this about an hour ago. 

I see their point... but the idea makes me uneasy.

There are certainly times when it's pretty clear that the speaker did not intend to hurt.   Forgetting that a name or status has changed.  Misreading someone's social flagging. Customary word usage that means something different in another culture.*  Those are cases where there is certainly a choice of whether or not to take offense. 

But, some words are meant to hurt.  They aren't just a slip or an error, they are a deliberate poke.  Surely the choice is different in those cases.  If someone calls me a "***", should I just blow it off?

 I don't think so. The choice would be what to do about the insult,  not whether to be hurt.

This is what bothers me about the idea.   I tell the toxic person not to call me a "***".  They then fall back on, "well, it was your choice to be hurt about it." or "I didn't mean that as an insult, it was supposed to be a joke."  They can then feel righteous, while I have been insulted a second time by being accused of being over-sensitive.

It's the difference between someone making punching motions with their fists into the air, and someone actually punching you.   One, you can laugh at, but the other really does hurt, and you really need to do something about.  At the very least, put that person on your "do not call" list.
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* There was an interesting kerfuffle when a British friend offered to "come 'round and knock you up"