Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Cardinal, Hunter Hill, End of Winter

Cardinal, Hunter Hill, End of Winter, originally uploaded by James S. Oppenheim.

Sunday, March 6, 2011 -- heavy rain. A day indoors, a few minutes looking out the window, waiting, gathering . . . .

Click here to view additional photos in the series..

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Facebook Excerpts - Criticism: Bipolar Behavior, Language Medieval, and Politics

Species: Peacocks!

Subspecies: bipolar disorder.

I've had the extaordinary experience this year of encountering in three friends an illness that may be more prevalent and telling about the roles of delusional thinking, hyperbole, and lying in language; about cruelty, energy, irresponsibility, and mood; about messianic ego and social chaos. One friend has been on meds for 25 years--you would never guess; in another, untreated, "wild ass" by his own account and some minor troubles with the law, but, hey, that's what we call "a character"; and the third -- crashed his 50k Mustang, transiting fast, possibly with the help of a boot, out of six-figure job, deep in debt, sinking fast, talking about "creative financing" (believe me, I don't want to know about it).

One or two out of three sound like anyone you know?

Black and white reasoning, magical thinking, extraordinary egotism, chaotic states of affairs, Big Talk, uncontained emotions -- here is a nexus not to be missed in behavior, language, politics, and psychology.

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I am certain within the context of the Islamic Small Wars that conflict need not be confined to viewing through the prism of mutual contempt. 

Hussein, you know "One scholar is more powerful against the devil than one thousand worshippers"; my co-religionists know that valid and reliable data may yet belie a false hypothesis, and we consequently needs must approach the development of knowledge and testing of theories from multiple directions.

Islam in its bipoloar aspect and medieval character may be wrestling with four critical language issues: 1) prevalence of and possible preference for biased, patronizing, and restricted information, often officially endorsed, plus inexcusable and widespread illiteracy (Pakistan after 62 years--50 percent); 2) rejection in speech of culpability and responsibility for internal fault; 3) consequent assignment to "dirty kaffir American Zionazi Dutch cartoonists", among others, for all that can't, doesn't, and won't work in policy; 4) disengenuous hyperbole, "big talk", speech so passionately self-serving as to lock its promoters into untenable personal and political positions.

In Somalia alone, about 1,000 Islamist zealots and 9,000 "foot soldiers" with them have through their manner of language, violence, and equally merciless and thoughtless martial behaviors and hardline policies driven some 1.25 million Muslim souls from their homes and dumped them into refugee camps in Kenya and around Mogadishu.  If any can come up with a western, Asian non-Muslim, much less Israeli equivalent to Al Shabaab's energetic version of wholesale contemporary barbarity, rape and rapine, do tell.

Add to the sorrows of Somalia those of Sudan (Darfur), Pakistan (especailly in the NWFP), Afghanistan (south), etc.

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March 3, 2011 -- you may imagine the subjects of interest in Facebook conversations that prompted the above responses, one withheld from the community, the other posted.

The more one looks over the often bizarre rhetoric, ad hominem attacks, and "advocacy journalism" (I think we used to call that "propaganda") of far left ranting, the more certain characteristics repeat themselves.

The hardline Palestinian press, for example, seems unable to back off its trumped up olive grove perrenials or its latest wild accusations about "lethal teargass" that have been soundly dispelled.  Sir Thomas More with his own head held high in the Catholic heavans -- as well as low beside the executioner's block -- would have stood against the cynical manipulation of language and law by men for ultimately profane ends: how it is that Palestinian Muslims won't stand up to their own raving lost Muslim persecutors in similar fashion, I don't know.

In the Palestinian mind, the lone alleged victim of "lethal teargas", Jawaher Abu Rahma who died in the wake of a Friday afternoon protest in Bil'in on the West Bank will be for a day or a generation (I hope not longer) a martyr useful to the familiar cause.

In the Israeli mind, also the minds of the doctors who attended her, the IDF investigators who got to a sensible story, the western readers who read critically and expect their news to hold up with all the elements hanging together, Jawaher Abu Rahma will have been killed by an overdose of Atropine administered in the hospital after misdiagnosing her condition.

In the United States, bipolar disorder affects about 2.6 percent of the population or 5.7 million people (NIMH: The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America).  (A study involving one HMO found that of the population so diagnosed, 42 percent received treatment for it -- NIH: "The treated prevalence of bipolar disorder in a large staff-model HMO" 1998).

One may wonder what percentages may apply elsewhere, not only with "country" as the universe but perhaps also "political movement" as a unit of interest.

My first fast web search in the area defined by "bipolar disorder and politics" has produced scant relevant results, suggesting that here is a dim region in the contemporary efforts of English-speaking pundits and scholars.

As you watch this piece (source link), keep in mind personalities like Libyan dictator Quaddafi and crashing Hollywood star Charlie Sheen:

Bipolar Disorder and Substance Abuse
Uploaded by PromisesRehab. - News videos hot off the press.

Here is a thought that could stand methodical disproving: cultures and subcultures that encourage or favor one characteristic "cognitive style" over another may well load themselves with a character type that then becomes their character in aggregate. 

How else start to account for the extraordinary egoism and messianic zeal so reliably prevelant in the Hollywood star population, the "mondo" pundits of the left, and the hardline gangs and tyrants who have severely constrained, controlled, and exploited the lives of constituents across a broad swath of Islam?

Right away, I would not make bipolar disorder the psychological complex that would make sense of everything having to do with autocrats and autocratic government.  However "bipolar disorder in politics" may be worth a deeper look. 

How is it that certain personalities rise to nearly unassaillable power in certain societies encouraging them in their madness? 

For any interested in behavior, conflcit, culture, language, psychology, and politics it is a perfect, open question.

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Cyberspace Realspace Real Time Management

I've never been so busy nor less productive in my fields -- editor, writer, photographer, musician; emphasis: composition; ancillary: research, analysis and intuitive-creative development.  Here, I thought I would take just a minute or a few to map out a few of the social and environmental variables bearing down on the latest in desktop-anchored Netizens.

Cybersocial Energy

A. Cyber: Acquaintances, Associates, Friends, Frenemies, Prospects, Clients

B. Realspace: Acquaintances, Associates, Friends, Family, Clients, Prospects

C: Combined Cyber-Realspace Acquaintances, Associates, Friends, Frenemies, Family, Clients, Prospects

X

1. Breadth of Interests (encyclopaedic requirement)

2. Relationship Scope (activity repertoire)

3. Frequency of Contact

4. Depth of Engagement (e.g. light chat to deeply research correspondence)

5. Intensity of Engagement / Level of Involvement

For those who have come of age prior to common broadband Internet services, the expansion of the scope of relationships in total and demands for competence and flexibility in topic availability (things we'd like to talk about), selection, and pursuit has been as burdensome as it has been revolutionary, for each person x topic x conversation x frequency x depth alters demands on intellectual focus, energy available for reflection, the development of insight, and expression, and, ultimately on real time expended on behalf of the interaction.

Should you embark on a conversation with the world via Facebook, you may find not only the world demanding but the research overviews and excursions required for contribution time consuming in and of themselves.

Without a tight focus or well defined purpose, while one reads, formulates, chats, and posts online for a wide audience and with catholic interests, much may be neglected offline. 

Calls may be missed too and call-backs put off for longer intervals.

The dishes will wait in the sink as will the dust bunnies beneath the beds, the soiled laundry, the books and magazines piling up on whatever surface happened to be available when they were put aside.

Skype

Text-based thread chat --> e-mail --> instant messaging --> audio contact --> audio-visual contact form the mileposts between anonymity and intimacy in cyberspace.  It's one thing to drop a comment in a communal thread-of-interest; quite another to establish through-the-webcam eye contact plus a sudden introduction not only to a correspondent's voice and face and manners but also, tellingly, the remote environment from which that person communicates online.  For that, I have today in memory the experience of distant living rooms, garages, workshops, and offices, and I may expect to see much more before I am out of Skyping time forever.

With Skype, some 6,492 kilometers of separation evaporates between webcams.

Of course, also with Skype there are yet some senses missing--taste, smell, touch--but hearing and sight seem primary by comparison, and they are powerful arbiters of what we accept as compelling and engaging.  Flirty typing may have its charms in social dramas that may go on a while or be cut short, but live conversations held at length beg for the invention of personal policies having to do with the creation of peer-to-peer obligations, the setting of boundaries, and, back to theme, the management of one's time.

Few things may bring this home like sitting down at the computer, looking into someone else's living room, and watching their television with them.

A new creature roams the earth: Cyberguest!

One of my earliest experiences with Skype--my phrasing makes it sound like "years ago" but it has been only months since I installed the software--involved editing artwork sent to my desktop as a PDF file via Gmail.  I'd look over the work, talk about its elements with the artist, and await revision, perhaps fixing a cup of coffee for myself in the kitchen down the hall, but with the eerie sense of having a disembodied somebody in the office nagging the return to my desk to resume live conversation. 

Given the pleasant injunctions of the Jewish Sabbath, I have at least one lofty excuse for closing for a day (make it two) the computer-enabled broadband pipeline (for good measure, I may turn the cell phone off too, just checking every few hours for messages). In any case, close the communication channels, and apartment's atmosphere changes, growing quiet as the cooling fans cease, perhaps too quiet, but also organic again, restful, and after rest, promising.

One needs to know today not only when to stop looking out on the world through Windows but also how to disappear from the constant view and access by others established by them.

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