Tag: psychology

Is That All There Is?

Rilaly2 Comments

We expect things to be different. We don’t know if it’s going to get better or worse, but the human mind is built on expectation. We fail at times, and we succeed in others, but we never let these moments get us too high or too low, because we expect the opposite is hiding in a bright or dark corner. There’s always despair, there’s always hope, and there’s always something more to life. There’s always some extraneous force that counters and balances our current situation. We’re in a perpetual state of looking around the corner for the next event to fulfill our expectations. We look forward to the weekend, to vacations, to moving, to promotions, retirement, and the afterlife. Eager beings like us look forward to tomorrow because we know it will be different than today, for better or worse.

In this quest for a greater tomorrow, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller write that we are frequently disappointed. The song, written in November 1969, is called Is That All There Is? The song’s lyrics detail the nature of expectations and the revelatory disappointments of life that begin in childhood. The song uses the circus as an example. The moment that circus began, we thought we would experience one of the greatest moments in our life. When they do it right, there’s something magical about the circus. Those who do it right appear to engage chaos in their presentation, but when you sit there long enough, you begin to see the patterns and rhythms, until you began to see the orchestrated chaos. You figured it out, and that’s what brought a warm smile to your face. 

There is a smell endemic to the circus. It might take you a while to source the smell, but you soon realize it’s animal dung, both horse and elephant. Anytime you smell horse and elephant dung, you smile that warm smile, because it makes you feel five-year-old again, the first time you went to the circus. Couple that smell with the warmth of the room under that incredible large and tall tent, the taste of that stale, overly salted popcorn, and the pageantry of the pre-game show and we’re giddy again, as giddy as we were when we were five. No matter what age we are, we’re not quite six when the first clown makes its appearance. We pretend that we’re laughing with them, but we feel some sort of strange, internal glow we cannot push back down. We laugh wildly at everything the clown does, even though nothing a clown does is really adult funny. If they did the same thing without makeup, would we even smile? We laugh because for one brief spot in time, we are five-years-old again, and our laughter and that warmth are borne of expectation. When we saw the magnificence of elephants walking around, yards away from us, our little faces just beamed with awe, but they usually didn’t do anything to meet our expectations. They just walked around in circles and occasionally did painfully slow tricks that were supposed to impress us, but we were kids. We didn’t know how much it took to make an elephant stand on one foot on something. We know now, but we remember when we thought different. We saw a beautiful lady in pink and green tights flying high above our heads, and we cringed with the expectation that she might fall, and then she didn’t, and then it was over, and we walked out of from under the tent disappointed that our incredibly high expectations weren’t met. We couldn’t help but think that we missed something. Is that what everyone was talking about? “Is that all there is to a circus?”

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

PJ Harvey

Sung by Peggy Lee (later PJ Harvey) Is That All there Is? moves to more depressing matters as the song progresses. It talks about how the most horrific moments in life, even fire, can end up a little disappointing when one is all hyped up with horror. When the afterlife is discussed, the lyrics detail how we don’t want to die, because we fear that final disappointment. The theme of the song, as evidenced by the above refrain, is that if that’s all there is to life, let’s live life to the fullest. Let’s break out the booze and let’s keep dancing if all these overhyped joys and horrors turn out to pale in comparison to what are supposed to be life’s greatest joys and horrors.

When we talk about the power of America in the world today, we talk about how she has the ability to shape the world in its status as the world’s lone superpower. When we talk about the technological advances she has made in her 200+ years of existence, we talk about it being the lone beacon in the world for individual achievement. Even after acknowledging this ingenuity and creativity, we are still vulnerable to insecurities that lead us to notion that there is something bigger, brighter and more powerful out there just waiting to expose us as frauds. We don’t know what that is, but we know that we can’t be all there is in the world.

Peggy Lee

We fear China. While few would say we have nothing to fear from China, our overhyped fear of them is borne of expectation. They are a very secretive country. If they were superior to all countries on earth, wouldn’t it be counterintuitive for them to keep that a secret? If that’s not the case, what’s the alternative? Do they enjoy our overhyped fear? Do they enjoy remaining the unknown? They number into the billions, they speak a funny language, and they’re a very industrious people. In our greatest fears, we portray their people, their citizens as almost machine-like. Their government has less regard for their lives and their suffering than we do. They pay their workers peanuts, and they rip off our creativity and ingenuity, but does this equate to superiority? If we were to construct a line-by-line comparison, we might find that they are not superior. They have their areas, of course, and we have ours? How about in the future? Ah, there’s the rub Skippy! The future is the unknown quality. The Chinese may be more organized, they may be better at math and engineering, and they may be so disciplined that they can they march in lockstep? But, are they superior? We don’t know, and our insecurities are driving us nuts.

We fear aliens from outer space for the same reasons. Aliens are superior to us. According to all speculation on this topic, they have technological advances we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Some claim that their culture may be thousands of years older than ours, so they must be thousands of years more advanced than we are. Some even claim that we base our comparatively little technological advancements on that which we’ve learned from alien visitations. There is one small problem with all of these assumptions: aliens may not exist. They may not exist, but if they do they’re superior to us. At least with the Chinese, we have tangible evidence for our fears, but the fear of aliens from outer space is a manifestation of our insecure belief that we’re limited by human constraints, and we can’t compete with them, and their superior intellect and machine-like abilities. The fact that we engage in these hypothetical fears is all is built on the expectation that this can’t be all there is.

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

What would we do if we learned of an alien visitation from an individual who claimed the aliens who visited him were not as superior as we were led to believe? What if he said, “They might have been exceptions in the species, but I think I just got visited by a couple of alien hicks. When they stepped out of their incredibly advanced flying saucer, I think they were drunk. If they weren’t drunk, they appeared as drunks do in Buggs Bunny cartoons. They were drinking something, and they appeared to be belching. Then, there was the way they talked. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, but their rhythms made me and Todd think they were swearing. Then, when they violated us, I think they were laughing while they did it!” Would we believe this person, or would their story violate our theories on alien superiority so much that this would be the lone alien visitation story that we didn’t believe? How convincing would this the poor person have to be to override our need to believe that there is something spectacular out there that we have yet to experience?

Alien visitation stories also feed into fears of our ultimate destruction. The subject of the visitation usually relays information from the overlord, alien visitors that suggest that our reliance on war and technology will have an ultimate price if we don’t stop now. Most aliens also appear to be anti-corporate peaceniks. Due to the fact that aliens are superior, we know that they’ve seen the horrors technology can have on a society, so we could do a lot to stave off our Armageddon if we’d just put our iPods away and go back to a more primitive nature. The advice the aliens give us tend to follow the subject of the visitation’s political philosophy, and it’s usually advice that is as simplistic as the subject appears to be. “When ordering from a fast food menu, lay off the Biggee portions they’re not good for you,” the wizened alien says in his alien tongue that has been translated to English by the subject. “Stop driving SUVs, and lay off the cigarettes. Doobies are fine, but the nicotine and tobacco cigarettes are killing you Tony.”

The rational must accept the fact that we cannot be the only lifeforms in the entire universe, but does that mean they’re superior? If some are superior, isn’t it just as likely that some of them are inferior? If we met an alien dignitary, we assume that they would only send their best and brightest, their version of Earth’s astronauts, but what if a couple of drunk, alien hicks stole and hijacked their aircraft and decided to give Earth a visit? That would bring us back to square one if we didn’t witness their technology and believe that theirs is thousands of years more advanced than ours. Most people who indulge in alien folklore don’t even question alien superiority or inferiority. For these people, the evidence is in, and their fundamental belief system is based on ALF superiority. This is based on their frustrations with life on Earth. This is based on the fact that they don’t make a whole of money in a job that they hate, their family hates them, and they don’t have a lot of friends. They need something to believe in, and believing in a God just isn’t cutting it for them anymore. They need something bigger, better and brighter than the stuff their stupid parents taught them, and they expect to be right.

Some fear UFO people, some fear the Chinese, and some fear God. Some believe in some form of astrological control of destiny, and others believe that with the correct federal government legislation on the books we can all avoid total failure. Most of us have some belief in a controlling authority that directs our fate, our daily lives, and our failures and successes, and some psychologists suggest that is actually be quite healthy. They say that because believing in things gives us some distance from our failures, and it gives those of us who have had our expectations damaged some hope that things will get better, or if they don’t, then we have someone, or something, to blame for it. We might read, and reread, that definition of healthy with a skeptical, furrowed brow, but what’s the alternative? The alternative could lead to a psychological blackhole in which the patient implodes in on themselves with the knowledge that most of their fears and beliefs were overhyped and they break out the booze and dance to try to forget that this is all there is.

The Mythology of You

RilalyLeave a comment

“Who are you? Who Who? Who Who?” –Pete Townshend of The Who.

Has anyone ever told you a lie? Have you ever told a lie? When we lie, most of us don’t tell whoppers. We fib. We exaggerate. We tell meaningless lies that don’t harm anyone, but lies are lies, and they have a way of piling up. When the lies of other begin to pile up, we feel compelled to confront them and set the record straight, and we gather other friends to corroborate the truth, as we know it. We then receive a look from the liar that informs us that they’re shocked at the details we’ve gathered. Our purpose was to confront the liar after their lying reached a point where we could no longer tolerate it, but at some point it dawned on us that they didn’t intend to lie, and this is made all the more evident when the confrontation is over, and they continue to lie, fib, and exaggerate.

Why do we lie is a question I asked myself, especially when some of the lies are so obvious and easy to refute. When someone tells me an obvious lie, I feel trapped. Should I out them on the spot, thus informing them that they shouldn’t try this anymore, or will I feel worse than they should for telling the lie. Some lie so often that I can’t help but think they’re trying to make me feel guilty for knowing the truth.

My personal research, conducted through extensive reading on this fascinating subject, coupled with revelatory, related experiences, has led me to believe that most liars are not intentionally deceiving their audience. They may have been exaggerating a truth to cast themselves in the best light possible, but their intent was to create a better result for themselves. Their intent was not to deceive anyone. At some point, between the event in question and their exaggerated account of what happened , they created a truth that they believed. What’s the difference? I didn’t think there was one, until I began delving into the psychology of “misremembering” that some psychologists equate to the problems inherent in eyewitness testimony.

We all seek comfort in a world of truth, but we also manufacture a world of delusions for greater comfort. The difference between the two causes equal confusion for both parties.

Most of us don’t care for our narrow definition of reality, so we’ve come up with a number of definitions that suit us better. This is our mythology, and if we have enough belief in it, we might be able to sell it to others so often that we begin to believe it too.

The Protons and Neutrons 

To make this complex algorithm understandable, let’s put the discussion to a visual display, the model of the atom. The protons and the neutrons, in this model represent the reality of who we are. The protons and the neutrons contain the positive and negative experiences we’ve had and the “in the moment” reactions to those experiences. This is a very limited, and limiting, definition of who we are, and we’re often so unhappy with our reality that we would rather not focus on it. We’ve all made mistakes, and those mistakes have shaped us, but most of us maintain a certain degree of mental health by focusing on the orbital region that exists outside the nucleus.

The Electrons 

In the orbital regions that exist outside the nucleus are the mythologies we have of who we are. This orbital region contains electrons that are the ideas we have about who we are and who we could be. The electrons are the illusions and delusions we have of ourselves, and the potential we believe we have to accomplish great things. Every electron in this region perpetuates this mythology. The lies we tell ourselves are not whoppers, for we would have as much trouble buying into those lies as anyone else. The lies we tell ourselves often have a semblance of truth to them, and we connect the dots after that. The lies can be negative, if we’re seeking sympathy, but they’re often positive electrons that we use to shape how others view us, and how we hope others view us.

The lies we tell ourselves may be unconscious measures employed to stave off the depression that we might fall into if we allowed the protons and neutrons of our reality to overwhelm us. The unconscious measures we use can be interpretations of misdeeds that we employ to maintain the idea that we are good people regardless what we’ve done.

Walk through any penitentiary, and you’ll hear a number of qualifiers and excuses for the things these men and women have done. Are the inmates lying in the truest sense of the word? Ninety percent of them may be, but that is the obvious answer. The less than obvious answer goes to what we might consider a more comprehensive explanation. If the state convicted this criminal with an airtight case, why would they continue to lie to the person who can recite the numerous elements of their conviction? They might want you to believe they’re not bad people, but it’s far more important to them that they convince themselves of their virtues. If they are unable to do so, their guilt might lead them to think that their life is not worth living.

Among the most pervasive electrons we have, floating around in our orbital region, contain the beliefs we have in our own potential. There’s nothing wrong with believing we have potential, of course, until that belief supersedes our desire to do anything about it. For some, the belief in their potential is the reason they wake up in the morning with a smile, ready to greet a new day, but acting on that belief might result in failure and a comprehensive diminishment of one’s belief in themselves. Acting on that belief may also reveal to others that we’re not as capable as we once thought. To thwart that we enjoy reveling in the mythology we create for ourselves.

The Cheaters 

Most of us are honest with whom we are, but we do cheat. When we go out on a first date, or a business luncheon, we may tip a service industry worker a little more than we would have if we were alone. It’s a white lie, that doesn’t harm anyone, and it may bolster our perception, but is it possible that we’re making an investment in our mythology for others to see, and if we do it often enough, it becomes true on a certain level. If we lay that tip on the table, to paraphrase Babe Ruth, it ain’t lying. We done it. It’s only a lie, if we don’t believe it. If we believe it, it can be an investment in our mythology.

Our culture forces celebrities to engage in this lie whenever they go out. Those who stand to prosper from the mythologies of the celebrity encourage them to lay a huge tip on a table, but no one stands to prosper more from a positive mythology than the celebrity does, so their tips are often extravagant enough to make an impression. An inadequate tip could do damage to the mythology they’ve worked so hard to create after all, and if the mythology is real, who’s to say the perception isn’t?

Some of us begin to cheat by building mythologies so often that we can no longer see through the cloud we’ve created, and when this happens we may need professional psychiatric, or psychological, help when something goes wrong. We’ve cheated so often, and created so many mythologies, that we can’t achieve enough objectivity to see our way through a problem. We need to pay someone to let us talk about our past. We need someone cold-hearted to stop us in the middle of our tale and say that some of the details we’ve added are not true. Their cold-hearted nature might shock us, but if we strive for mental health, we’ll drop the façade and work from the new premise. We’ll recognize that those around us have enabled us to live certain lies, because they don’t want to be so cold-hearted. We’ll also recognize that these professionals are doing their best to help us achieve some sort of clarification about who we are and why we do what we do. We can’t work through this cloud ourselves anymore, because we’ve loaded our minds with such positive clutter that we can’t see through to the truth of our existence anymore. We thought we were somewhat happy, yet we were also very unhappy, and we were left with a feeling that life isn’t as fulfilling as it was when we thought we had it all figured out.

Publicity and Charity 

“I live every day trying to convince others of the lies I tell them,” a friend of mine said in jest. One of the primary lies we tell ourselves is that we’re wonderful people, and we’ll take any and every opportunity to prove it. A wonderful person is someone who does things for the sole purpose of attaining a wonderful perception, as opposed to one who actually does wonderful things. A wonderful person might perform certain actions for the publicity it gains them, but truly wonderful people do what they do to help others.

“You’re doing this for yourself,” a sick man, lying on a deathbed, says to a female that is caressing his hands and whispering sweet nothings to him. This crass and heartless man should enjoy the comfort the woman provides, but the greater question is was he calling her out for being a wonderful person as opposed to one who did a wonderful thing? What will she do in the moments that follow his death? Will she tell people about it, or was this a truly selfless act by the woman. Who cares, some would say, as long as she did it.

We have wonderful memories of our school days. We remember running and playing on the playground. We remember some of the studying we did, and some of the questions we answered in class, but for the most part, we choose to remember the fun we had, and some of the aspects that led to our current maturity in life. Those weren’t the only events that occurred in our lives, of course. If we dig back, with professional assistance, we may learn that those days weren’t as great as we remember them, but our selective memory has made us who we are today, so why do we bother with all of those awful memories?

“I had a wonderful childhood, which is tough because it’s hard to adjust to a miserable adulthood.” –Larry David

As we age, we experience the lot life has to offer, and after a while we begin to think we have a decent grasp on who we are based on those experiences. When we select those character-defining moments in our lives, however, which memories are we selecting? Are we selecting protons and neutrons, or electron memories, and what do those selections end up saying about us? Most studies state that for our mental well-being, we often choose positive life experiences to define who we are. If we stumble upon a negative experience, as noted, we find a way to rewrite that memory in a manner to make us appear better than we might have otherwise been in that particular situation. We’ll also qualify that negative experience in a manner that excuses us from the worst part of our involvement in those instances. The memory selection, coupled with harmless delusions that accompany them, form the mythology of who we are, but what if, to paraphrase my friend, we live every day trying to convince others of the lies we tell them that we end up convincing ourselves of these lies, and what if this effort results in us becoming better people? Would it matter if we based this eventuality on a big lie, or a series of meaningless, little delusions? I believe wholeheartedly in the philosophical axiom “Know Thyself”, and I pride myself on being as brutally honest with myself as I can possibly be, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. The natural reaction one could have to those that live a life diametrically opposed to that effort is, “Who cares how or why they got there they’re living a lie.” That might be true in some cases, relative to the scale of the lies, but what kind of person would they be if they strove to live a more honest life?

I’m Disgusting, He’s Disgusting, She’s Disgusting, Wouldn’t You Like to be Disgusting Too?

RilalyLeave a comment

I considered the national obsession with hygiene a well-played, well-timed joke that we were all in on, until I witnessed two grown men form a friendship based on shared demands for hygienic excellence. In their conversation, they set up a standard of behavioral traits intended to define them as the next step in the evolutionary process that they believed might place them in a pseudo superman, or Übermensch, status beyond the inferior, basic hygiene practices of the common man and woman. I considered their hygienic standard so high that I thought they were exaggerating it for humorous effect. By the time their bond was sealed, however, I realized that this newfound friendship was based not only on respect for the other’s demands for excellence in this regard, but for their hygienic superiority.

I loved the brilliant television show Seinfeld as much as anyone else. I found the main character’s obsessive demands for hygienic excellence so funny that when these two friends of mine began the list of requirements they had for their fellow man an impulsive laugh escaped me. After spending so many years laughing at Seinfeld’s obsessive quirks, my laughter was almost a conditioned reflex, but they weren’t laughing. They had smiles on their faces, but the smiles they shared were not of a sly variety that concealed a clever joke. Rather, they were kind, appreciative smiles, and a recognition that they finally found a likeminded soul in one another.

In the space normally reserved for laughter, they further detailed how the common hygienic habits of their fellow man were gross, and they both agreed that one particular person, our mutual acquaintance, was emblematic of those common habits. Without saying these exact words, they suggested he deserved all the shame that persons of modernity should cast upon him. I spoke with the two men separately a number of times, and they were well versed in the cultural norms, the belief that all men and women are created equal and we should accord them a degree of respect we require of them–unless, apparently, that person decides to leave the bathroom without washing their hands.

The implicit suggestion nestled within this discussion was that as the representative of one with common hygienic practices, I was supposed to recognize that I was gross and completely disgusting, and if I had any designs on becoming friends with either of them, I would have to seriously up my hygienic practices. I was to fear adding input into their conversation for that that might lead to an examination of my hygienic practices and a revelation that my habits were closer to our mutual friend’s than I ever knew. We might also find that what I considered an acceptable hygienic standard to be so disgusting and gross as to be worthy of some sort of public flogging in the public square to set an example for anyone else who might consider basic hygienic standards acceptable.

✽✽✽

“If you’re disgusting and you know it, clap your hands,” is the ostensible mantra of a major news network website that a number of my co-workers visit on a daily basis. The overarching milieu of this site is news, but the regular visitors of the site that I know are aware of little to nothing of the news of the day. Yet, they always have some nugget of information about how we can all improve our hygienic standard of living a little.

“Your kitchen counter is covered with more germs than your floor,” one of my co-workers said when he approached our lunchroom table. “Your dishrags and sponges are cesspools. Using them on a continual basis doesn’t rid your kitchen of germs. It only spreads them around.”

The idea that this particular purveyor of hygienic knowledge was male did not strike me as odd because I considered it less than macho to be hygienic, but he was the first man I met who would prove so obsessed with it. His warning would prove to be the first of many signposts to signal that the obsession I once believed indigenous to the female demographic had now crossed income brackets, social stratifications, and genders.

“Install a lighter-colored counter-top so you can see germs better.”

“Stainless steel is the best defense against the spread of germs.”

“The most germ-ridden room in most homes is the kitchen. Your cutting board can contain up to 200 times more fecal bacteria than your toilet seat.”

“Your fingertips can spread more germs than any tool in your kitchen.” 

The best way to avoid germs, it appears, is to avoid the kitchen, the bathroom, and your fingertips. They’re gross! The bathroom is obvious, but what about your bedroom? Furthermore, if you have any thoughts of going into the basement, you might want to consider investing in a gas mask and a Tyvek suit with hood and boots. Your basement is a cesspool teeming with pathogens no one can pronounce! It’s gross! Disinfect everything! Sanitize! Sterilize! We need more government research on this matter! We could get sick! We could die!

Our mothers taught us that the best way to avoid pathogens is to clean, but modern scientific research dictates that cleaning might be nothing more than a good start. Our mother didn’t know that the optimal way to avoid germs is to religiously and fastidiously clean the cleaning products to the point of sterilization. She used the same sponge and dishrag for more than a week without dipping it into a solution that contained one part bleach to nine parts warm water, and she used the same cleaning products for more than one task with no knowledge of cross contaminants. She didn’t know. 

CBS News reports, “If you’re cleaning up appliances, counter- tops, tables, etc., it’s almost mandatory that you use different cleaning agents. There should be different designated sponges for each function. After you clean up the debris from the meat carcass, place your sponge in this cleaning solution for about a minute or so. That will kill all the potential pathogens.”[1] 

Mom didn’t know.

Mom didn’t consider the idea of placing an industrial air shower to divide the kitchen from the rest of the house, because she was born in a generation that didn’t know anything about these hygienic standards of excellence. She might not have considered putting an industrial-strength anti-radiation shower in her kitchen for the sake of better health practices and greater avoidance of accidental pollination by pathogens. Mom didn’t have the information we do today, so how can we blame her? She didn’t know that it’s best to stay out of the kitchen altogether. Her generation wasn’t privy to the kind of scientific research that discovered that it’s probably safer to stay out of the house, unless that means going outside. The dangers inherent in leaving the house are so obvious that it’s not even worth exploring. We all know that the air outside is just teaming with pathogens, but our mom allegedly had no idea about this. She might have thought it was safe to send us outside to play, but she didn’t have the ubiquitous news sites clamoring for clicks, or the search engines that provide the latest tidbits of science in proper hygiene.

One of the worst conversations the creators of the Seinfeld show, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, brought to American life involved this obsessive level of hygiene. Conversations about hygiene occurred before the Seinfeld mindset began invading our culture and corporations began adding antibacterial agents to our soaps and body washes, but in the aftermath of that great show, it seems that every fifth conversation we hear now involves some form of obsession over cleanliness. We all thought Seinfeld’s obsessions were hilarious, but we had no idea how influential this mindset would prove to be. People now claim, with pride, that they don’t just wash their hands. They use a paper towel to open the bathroom door. “Oh, I know it,” the sympathetic listener proclaims with pride, “that handle is gross!”

No one has a problem with better practices that aim for cleanliness or those that strive for greater hygienic practices, but some, like my two friends, are so obsessed with it that they tip the scale of hygienic standards discussions toward superiority versus inferiority. When they spoke of our mutual acquaintance, the hygienic heretic, their disdain for him sealed whatever bond they needed to declare a friendship based on some kind of perverse superiority they felt regarding the man’s inferior habits.

✽✽✽

A Psychology Today (PT) by Rachel Herz piece details this perversity, stating that some obsessives even avoid shopping carts that have crumpled paper in them.[2] Why do they avoid those shopping carts, because they’re gross? A crumpled piece of paper is evidence that someone else used the shopping cart, at some point, since its creation. We know someone has used this cart before, of course, yet we regard visible evidence of it repellent. Supermarket and department store chains throughout the country have addressed this concern by putting antiseptic wet wipes near the shopping cart area, but that does not address the trauma of spotting a crumpled store ad in a cart. The only remedy for that is selecting another cart, but why should we be forced to select another cart? Why doesn’t someone address our concerns better? It would be one thing if the cart was home to a soiled piece of tissue paper, but what crime against humanity did the crumpled store ad commit? It’s evidence of other people, germs, pathogens, and a general lack of uncleanliness on the part of the store. It also initiates in us, “a desire to keep that which is outside from getting in.”

An interesting note about the emotion of disgust that Ms. Herz adds is that it’s both learned and selective. If a hygienic person with obsessive characteristics happens to see the person who left the crumpled ad in the cart and they find that person somewhat attractive, the potential cart user will not be as disgusted by the crumpled ad and the subsequent use of that cart. If they judge that previous cart borrower to be gorgeous, they will be even less disgusted. To take this idea to its logical conclusion, if the hygienic person with obsessive tendencies sees that the previous cart user was an attractive celebrity, that customer may feel privileged to use the cart regardless the celebrity’s hygienic practices. They might even save the crumpled ad and brag to their friends and family that the gorgeous celebrity touched it. If the previous cart user was somewhat overweight or of foreign descent, however, customers are more apt to select another cart, regardless that person’s hygienic standards.

Those who engage in obsessive hygienic practices also tend to be less inclined to be friends with those with physical disabilities, for images of frailty or illness lead us to avoid having anything to do with that person.

If those obsessed with hygienic practices had someone force them to share a toothbrush with someone, they would be more inclined to share it with a relative, rather than the mailman. This makes sense, because we are more familiar with our family members, and we assume we share some of their immunities.

What doesn’t make as much sense to those who believe their disgust has philosophical purity is the decision-making process that concerns those outside our immediate realm. We view our boss, for example, as a stranger who exists outside our immediate realm. We may interact with our boss daily, but this is not with the same level of intimacy we share with relatives. Our natural inclination is to place that boss below our family members, but the study also suggests we place our boss below the weatherman on the list of people with whom we would forcibly share a toothbrush. If our overriding concern were hygiene, why would we prefer to share a toothbrush with a weatherman we’ve never met to a boss we interact with on a regular basis? A weatherman is often better looking. The weatherman is often better-looking, clean cut, and better dressed. Moreover, there’s a greater possibility that we personally dislike our boss.

“Our attraction toward someone,” the Herz writes, “can override our qualms about sharing body fluids.”

There is one point of inconsistency in the PT article: “Those who avoid objects touched by strangers report fewer colds, stomach bugs, and other infectious ailments,” it states in one place, yet in another it offers, “Exposure to benign bacteria stimulates the immune system so that it is better able to fight bad bacteria.” Perhaps the explanation resides in the word “benign,” but other than that, the two purported facts appear to be contradictory.

The Origin of Disgust

Contrary to internet myths and our own preconceived notions on the subject, disgust is not an innate emotion based on self-preservation. Disgust is, rather, a learned behavior that we learn more about every day, exacerbated by every news report and website we read. Despite the fact that a baby might twist up his face in disgust when force-fed strained squash, his expression does not have a direct link to disgust. Studies suggest that the baby doesn’t really know disgust until they’re 3 years old. “If we were to make a look of disgust to a baby, say when we take out the garbage,” Rachel Herz writes, “the infant is more apt to think we’re mad at them for something than to associate the look with disgust, until they’re three years old.”

This is why babies have no problem eating whatever they find on the floor. It is also why they have no problem crawling through what we consider disgusting debris. They have no understanding of what they should find disgusting and what is not, no matter how often we tell them. It’s the reason my brother and his wife had to keep my nephew away from the dog dish, because he didn’t recognize the difference between the liquid his parents served him in a bottle, and the liquid we place in the dog’s dish.

“Even after we achieve three years of age,” Herz writes, “we don’t have a total understanding of disgust. It is the most advanced human emotion that requires reasoning, thought, and deduction. Humans are the lone animal with a brain advanced enough to process the complexity of disgust, and that knowledge occurs with experience and over time. It is also something we learn more and more about every day, and we get more and more grossed out by what could be deduced as minimal when it comes to actual infection.” 

Those of us who used to think exaggerated obsession with hygiene was nothing more than a brilliant characterization and one of the best recurring jokes to support that joke, now know how wrong we were. We’ve learned that these characteristics can aid in the pursuit of psychological dominance, and they can form friendships with fellow travelers on the road to hygienic excellence.

“You’re all just silly,” I told the two men that formed a friendship based on their hygienic standard. “You’re obsessed with all this.”

“Hey, better safe than sorry,” one of them said. I received that response before from the obsessed, so I expected it. I didn’t expect him to expound on that typical response, “If more people were as obsessed as I am, as you say, I wouldn’t have to be the way I am.”

“I guess,” I’ve responded, “but you do recognize that all these reports about pathogens and sterilizing sponges and counter-tops hit home with some people, until they’re afraid to enter their homes or anyone else’s or go outside. I don’t know anyone who takes all these reports seriously, to the point of adjusting their habits accordingly, but I’m sure there are some. If you met such a person, wouldn’t you consider them silly?”

“Well, yes and no.”

I was disgusting and I didn’t know it, until I met these two. I knew I wasn’t disgusting, but group thought can be difficult to thwart when the one in the minority hasn’t studied the subject in question. The idea that these two men were extreme was not lost on me, of course, but I needed an extreme from the other pole to counterbalance their subtle condemnations. For that, I turned to comedian George Carlin:

“I never take any precautions against germs. I don’t shy away from people who sneeze and cough. I don’t wipe off the telephone, I don’t cover the toilet seat, and if I drop food on the floor, I pick it up and eat it! My immune system gets lots of practice! It is equipped with the biological equivalent of fully automatic military assault rifles, with night vision and laser scopes … and we have recently acquired phosphorous grenades, cluster bombs, and anti-personnel fragmentation mines …. So, when my white blood cells are on patrol, reconnoitering my blood stream, seeking out strangers and other undesirables, if they see any—any—suspicious-looking germs of any kind, they don’t [mess] around. They whip out the weapons, and deposit the unlucky fellow directly into my colon! Directly into my colon! There’s no nonsense. There’s no Miranda warning, there’s none of that three-strikes-and-you’re-out [mess]. First offense, BAM! Into the colon you go.

“Speaking of my colon, I want you to know I don’t automatically wash my hands every time I go to the bathroom, okay? Can you deal with that? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. You know when I wash my hands? When I [mess] on them! That’s the only time, and you know how often that happens? Tops, tops, two to three times a week … tops! Maybe a little more frequently over the holidays. You know what I mean?

“And I’ll tell you something else my well-scrubbed friends… you don’t need to always need to shower every day, did you know that? It’s overkill, unless you work out or work outdoors, or for some reason come in intimate contact with huge amounts of filth and garbage every day, you don’t always need to shower. All you really need to do is to wash the four key areas; armpits, [anus], crotch, and teeth. Got that? Armpits, [anus], crotch, and teeth. In fact, you can save yourself a whole lot of time if you simply use the same brush on all four areas! [3]

[1]http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500178_162-697672.html?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody 

[2]Herz, Rachel. “The Cooties They Carry.” Psychology Today. August 2012. Pages 48-49.

[3]https://www.lingq.com/lesson/george-carlin-fear-of-germs-235986/