Spin Easy Time!: Cognitive Dissonance And The Damage Done

Three people have somehow hit this post within the last few days. I suppose it comes up in some Google search or other. I just had fun reading it again. Maybe you will, too!

Spin Easy Time!: Cognitive Dissonance And The Damage Done: I write in a serious mood. I am distressed about the state of my country, and my society, less so but still distressed about the state of th...

The Kinks - So Mystifying

I was a bit suspicious about the Beatles right from the get go, but a lot of great music came along on their coat-tails.

The Kinks always sounded like straight fun, no chaser. I hadn't listened to this LP in ages, probably in two dog's ages. I put in on the YouTube the other day and I was right back there, just like the old days, having fun.

Oddly, it seems that these old Kinks records are very popular with Spaniards on YouTube. Lots of postings; lots of comments. If anyone can explain that phenomenon to me, I'd deeply appreciate it.

The Trick Question

Here’s my favorite trick question:

(Disclaimer: this is not meant in any way to be funny, but only to draw attention to a common misconception.)

Question: how many German Jews were murdered in the Holocaust?

Answer: about 165,000 (One Hundred and Sixty-Five Thousand).*

The remainder of the six million Jews to be murdered by the Nazis came mostly from Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine. Jews from Russia, France, etc. were also murdered, but the overwhelming preponderance came from those first three countries.

Someone involved in one of the presidential campaigns recently mentioned the “six million German Jews” that the Nazis killed. It’s an annoying mistake.

Hitler came to power in 1933. There were only about 400,000 Jewish Germans at the time. By the start of the war, in 1939, that number had been reduced by more than half through emigration. Those that remained in Germany were ultimately murdered.

While I have on my academic mantle, allow me to put in a good word for the Roma (Gypsies). Quite a lot of them were murdered by the Nazis as well, and for very similar racial reasons. It isn’t fair to leave them completely out of the equation. “The Holocaust” has become a Jewish-only event, I believe, and I’m not complaining about that. We should remember the poor Gypsies, though. They suffered and died in much the same manner.

We needn’t worry as much about the non-Jewish Germans who were consigned to concentration camps. They were sent to work camps, which were certainly no walk in the park, but their survival rates were high. They were not sent to extermination camps, like the Jews were. This group included homosexuals, political dissidents, and other groups deemed “undesirable.” They suffered, and many died, but most lived to tell their stories. (To be fair, the "Pink Triangle" prisoners seem to have fared worse than the political prisoners. Worse than some, but not as terrible as the fate of the Jews.) 

So, to be clear, I am not in any way denying that the Holocaust actually happened, nor am I disputing the figure of six million Jews exterminated. To believe, however, that the dead were “six million German Jews,” works a mischief on history and is a grave injustice to the true identities of the victims.

*Figures, and information in general, from “Bloodlands,” by Timothy Snyder. 

Lloy Price - Stagger Lee

Just to reference the first version that many of us heard.

Did he just say, "two men who gamble-ate?"

Just for the lesson, go and listen to "Just Because," by the same Lloyd Price. Boy's got life in him, it'll stay there all the while we listen to these songs. If the life's gone out of him by now, I'm sorry about it.

Did I just say, "boy?" That shit's not allowed. Please excuse me. But look at that picture! Sure, anyone forty-something years younger than me is a boy.

Mississippi John Hurt - The Ballad Of Stagger Lee

I just love these songs about Stagger Lee. There must be thousand of them.

This is a great one. Great story telling . . . great guitar playing.

Is it still a cover if no one can recall who wrote or sang the song in the first place?

Other Possible Pasts

In early life we are simply the people that we are. I don’t recall thinking about identity at all. Later on we may wish to modify ourselves a bit, either by encouraging more ambition in ourselves or by seeking to add new skills. Much later, if we are lucky, we may begin to accept who we are. Or we may not. That last project may prove difficult for some of us.

We all have a temperament and a personality. It may happen that we wish that we could have been dealt different temperaments or personalities in the first place, but, as my ex-mother-in-law used to say, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” I believe that she meant that wishing for things is a waste of time. Wishing for a different temperament or personality would certainly be a waste of time.

Any of us might have been different people, but what would that have looked like?

I might have been one of the tough boys; that could have happened. There’s a powerful strain of it in my family. In every generation of my family with which I am familiar, there was at least one tough boy, one boy who frightened the other boys. It always continued into adulthood, where they continued to frighten the other men. No particular physical attributes are required, all that it takes is the present intention to hurt the other boys or men if the situation calls for it. Or even sometimes when the situation doesn’t call for it at all. It helps if you enjoy it. That’s the part that scares people.

I could have managed it, if I were so inclined. I was strong enough and quick enough. The inclination is part of natural selection somehow, it must be. My grandfather (father’s side) was a very rough and tumble sort. He would have been played by Jimmy Cagney in a movie of his early life. He was taken out of school at twelve, simply because his father, a widower, felt like it was time to go to work. “Well, Bobby,” he is reputed to have said, “it’s time for the free ride to stop.” He worked in factories for a time, worked as a trainer at the racetrack, and later as a jockey. He even tried his hand at boxing. (At five feet, two inches tall, he was a fly or a bantamweight.) He was briefly a conductor on the Long Island Railroad before drifting back into factory work. He helped to build Pierce Arrow automobiles in Queens, and it was there that he learned to be a machinist. That turned out to be a very nice salary. By World War Two he was a heavy machinist for the Todd Shipyard in Brooklyn. He was slow to smile and quick to take offense. Any wisecracks about his height were dealt with immediately. He was knocking people out well into retirement.

So it’s in the family history.

I had an Uncle Jack who was something of a terror in town. He went on to a career in the merchant marine, where he evidently continued as a terror for the National Maritime Union and the world in general. I heard a lot of stories. Knives were sometimes involved.

One of my cousins might have been the real terror of the bunch. He is nine years older than me, and I knew him well when I was young. His reputation in the town survived into my own era. He seems to have had the enjoyment part of the equation down pat. He was one of a group of teenagers who sought out fights like thirsty people in a desert seek water. If they couldn’t find a fight, they fought with each other.

Why does one boy go that way and another boy go this way? Does it happen at conception? In the womb? At an early age? If it’s in the genes, it can come out at any time, like a ruddy complexion or curly hair. Why does it come out in this boy but not that boy?

More generally, what is it that makes us the people that we are? Whatever it is, it made me into a fearful boy who was desperate to get along and avoid trouble. It’s probably some combination of nature and nurture. Being one of the tough boys might have provided me with certain life skills that I lack. It would have represented a disposition to action at least, as opposed to my strong preference for inaction.

Tough, however, wasn’t my style; that shoe couldn’t be made to fit. My cousin was kind enough to teach me how to fight when I was twelve, after I complained to him about rough treatment around town. It was a good course of lessons, enthusiastically taught. It helped me a lot, partly because it was very realistically pursued. I had to take a good deal of being thrown around; I had to learn to fall. I fought my way around the town for about a year, and I did succeed in elevating my position in the pecking order. When guys started leaving me alone, however, I simply returned to leaving everybody alone. I still much preferred to avoid trouble.

In the alternative, I might have been one of the ambitious boys, the competitive boys. You don’t have to be a star athlete to excel at competition. My own father was a supremely competitive boy, and man. After being stricken with childhood (and lifelong) arthritis he concentrated on mathematics. In high school, he was in the “Hundred Percent Club” for math, never scoring less than one hundred on a math test for four years. He was admitted to the Cooper Union and went on to a MS in engineering and a very successful career.

For that matter, my cousin the terror was quite ambitious himself. Also competitive, maybe that was a component of all of that fighting. His life was another great education and successful career. 

But those things were also denied me. My personal style was cut in stone by the time I graduated from grammar school. All I ever wanted was to keep my head down and not draw any attention to myself. I only wanted to make it through the day and try to enjoy the evening, one day at a time. I’ve never been completely comfortable outside of the sleep period. The evenings could be spent reading, listening to records, wandering around the town with groups of boys my own age, perusing (redacted) magazines, or listening to the radio. I avoided fighting and competition with equal vigor, and I did not have an ounce of ambition in my body. In fact, I avoided everything.

It turns out that one of the possible alternative Freds would almost certainly have made more of a success of his life. It turns out that if you want to be successful, you must do things to get ahead, you must expose yourself to criticism and possible failure, and you must go out and engage with people. Well excuse me, but I’m not that guy. Some measure of success would have made my life easier and more pleasant, but it just wasn’t in the cards.

So if the main task at this stage of life is accepting oneself, I could be in trouble. I’m beginning to have my doubts about ever accepting myself. Honestly, I have major doubts about getting that one together. The habits of a lifetime are difficult to change. But I won’t be the first poor M.F. to fail at that job. Look for the good! Pretty soon none of it will matter anymore. 

Big Youth - Touch Me In The Morning

Forgive me, but I'll be on vacation starting on Wednesday, so I'm front loading this thing. (It's Monday evening.)

I'm pretty sure that this is the most successful cover of all time. Makes it his own, doesn't he? Man, that Big Youth, he had style, all the way style, style to spare, in spades.

I should check the other postings of this song. Check the lengths, you know. Maybe there's more gold out there!