Dec. 9 (M,) 2024 Learning via sayings #107 No guts, no glory. A risky maneuver will pay off lucratively... /富貴險中求...

Nov. 6 (W,) 2024 The hind-sight "wisdom" meets with screwups. / 事後諸葛找戰犯

Zena Huang
The newly released election data show that the Dem lost 13 million votes while the Rep lost 2 million, compared to 2020... The 5-in-1 phenomenon was created with some good reasons...

June 13 (T), 2023 從 娑婆無間道 到 眾生有平等

Aug. 9 (M) 2021 Gold-n-shadows vs. Identification Defense Mechanism ( 追金 vs. 認同防衛機轉) - Reaching Human Potentials vs. Human Rights Issues

“Where there is much light, the shadow is deep.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

這幾天, 媒體上對過去幾年默默無名的小女孩兒 - 全紅嬋的一跳成名天下知的事情, 說得沸沸揚揚的. 當然啦, 主要談的是她的滿貫高分的超級表現, 一霎那風靡全中國, 連郭晶晶都迷得似乎比全紅嬋的年紀還更小. 接著, 由於她的天真率直洩漏 "天機", 引起多方的討論. 而我因為一直比較關注臺灣東奧運動員的重磅努力, 對中國的機械化選手的表演, 不宜避重就輕. 反正這個國家有14億人口, 按概率, 就是不用專制機械方式訓練, 也大概能產生幾項像樣的成績. 後來接著聽到這個小女孩的家世背景, 才引起我的社會心理學聯想, 與我小時候的記憶. 於是找了幾段正向反向片面報導的視頻看看, 以減低無謂的毀譽, 順道追蹤一點點她的心路歷程.

在此也貓尾續貂一下:

全紅嬋, 成為年紀最小的金牌得主 ,這當然逃不過中國, 以及全世界媒體的關注與爆炒. 這天大的新聞, 免不了的, 就是媒體的追蹤訪問. 在一個對準全球播放的視頻採訪中, 真是年紀小, 天真無邪啊, 還不了解中共外宣的可敬可愛處, 小小腦袋, 可能是沒有正式的被黨政加工釀造, 還是心有所思的淡定吧,  面無表情地道出自己的心願, “拿到金牌, 要賺很多錢, 給媽媽治病!” 這前兩句, 還可秀一下雄心萬丈, 為國要面子．第三句, 就完了! 把權貴的玻璃心, 打碎了一滿地; 讓高幹的腦片兒, 揪得是像要被扭乾的濕棉被 一般．
　
如果換成年紀稍微大一點, 受過黨國指導的耳提面命, 這樣的視頻恐怕不會出現. 要不然, 機關密部的重重再教育, 會讓崽子們深刻體認到 - 天大地大沒有黨的恩情大, 爹親娘親沒有權貴高幹的浩蕩皇恩. 受訪時說出的話, 要儘量像人話, 要保護好黨與領導, 千萬要讓他們的尊腹吃得飽, 玉體睡得香, 不用提心吊膽, 才是個好子民!

女孩兒可頂得半天邊, 可是這哪像是無產階級專政啊?

然後再看幾項她的跳水顯象鏡頭: 挺著瘦小身軀的女孩兒, 準備跳水時, 眉頭皺皺的, 心若有所思. 這些影像還被其他國家, 拿來大做文章. 說什麼揠苗助長, 機械式訓練出來的小孩, 是幼齡剝削, 摧殘不能為自己發聲的小心靈... 諸如此類的置疑詞, 反外宣, 或酸詞句. 總之, 就是專門為奪取金牌而製造的 - 沒有靈魂小機器人!

她說要賺更多的錢, 給媽媽治病這一段話, 真是觸痛人心. 從與她有關的片面視頻報導中得知一些基本訊息下. 這小女孩是成長在一個生活相當困難的果農家庭. 家中有5個小孩, 母親因為去工作遭遇車禍, 斷了幾根骨頭, 一直臥病在床, 加上他的爺爺也生病. 兩個病人, 把家裡的積蓄都用光了. 所以全家目前只靠她父親一個人的果農工作來支持全家. 這個小姑娘, 一心一意要賺錢幫助父親, 減輕負擔. 她是從7歲開始, 就被發現有跳水天份, 而參加跳水訓練, 14歲就得到奧運冠軍, 很多評論家都會用到 : 十年跳水無人問, 一躍成名天下知 - 來形容她的爆紅.

可是這個事實, 與從前的賣身救親, 或簽賣身契做長工, 又有多大的不同呢? 貧窮的孩子早當家, 沒傘的孩子跑得快, 雖是讚美之詞, 其背後反映的, 又是什麼樣不公不正的社會惰性與不良制度呢?

的確, 英雄出少年是美談, 但是, 這個台上一分鐘透紅背後, 十年如何磨一劍, 是如何下的老式苦功夫, 也就一點一滴的被披露了, 包括我在這兒寫的幾句話.

孩子有快樂的童年, 不是很多父母最大的希望嗎? 的確, 對廣大的貧下階層, 卻是奢望. 全紅嬋, 稚氣未脫地說到從沒有去過動物園以及兒童遊樂場. 她提及希望能夠去玩一玩.  

雖說有天份要提早栽培, 有多少父母, 忍心把小小年紀的孩子, 送去做類似成人
- 專制極權全套嚴格的訓練呢 ? 為什麼?

很多像她一樣年紀小小 (大多數來自貧困的家庭) 背後所承擔的超人式嚴格訓練, 以及她/他們所屬國家的意識形態與目的所造成的不能為人道的辛酸苦楚, 到底是怎麼一回事呢?  有人評論說, 這是給貧窮小孩了一個翻身, 提升向上社會流動, 改變家運的的機會, 應該感謝黨恩浩蕩. 但是讓貧困中長大的小孩便便宜宜地吃盡苦中苦, 讓黨國權貴階級高大上地成為人上人, 這種生意, 倒是挺好做的, 不是嗎? 至於童工法 (Child Labor Law), 或者相關的未成年人工作法 (Minor Labor Law), 是如何看待這類似的問題呢?

俗話說棒下出孝子, 不打不成器, 而且是要打鐵趁熱. 這些道理, 一般是立基於傳統專制威權性格的社會裡, 比較說得通. 但我們熟知的莫札特, 麥克喬登, 老虎伍茲, 李小龍, 約翰米爾等等天縱英才, 並非生於傳統權威性格的社會, 也是要經過非常嚴格的訓練, 才能開花結果. 所以這個問題, 就不外乎是生物基因與社會環境互動下的一個重要現象. 如何伯樂發現千里馬, 如何讓千里馬得以全力發展潛能, 不同的社會則有不同的理論與實踐.

比如有些社會, 視兒童無謂的玩樂嬉戲, 是浪費時間與效益. 孩子沒有所謂的快樂不快樂, 童年不童年的事兒. 一般中上階層, 孩子從小就被訓練成小大人. 被安排密密麻麻的訓練課程, 好讓在生命的起跑線上, 賣力地把別人家的小孩狠狠丟的在後頭- 離得越遠越好.  再者, 透過 一套既定的社會化過程, 模塑孩子的類別, 在上等社會, 就被積極栽培成為國家社會菁英, 在農工階級, 孩子更是重要的私人財產, 是廉價好使喚的勞動力來源之一.  所以不必和費希特 (Fichte) 黑格爾 (Hegel) 的國家理論相連結, 孩子就是家庭國家的資產, 所謂快樂的童年, 大概僅存在於權貴家庭偶爾有的點綴.

在原本共產/社會主義裡的觀念之一, 為了避免孩子成為資本主義父權社會下個人家庭的資產, 以及由於貧富不均所造成 的人性剝削, 對兒童的社會化過程, 陷下不平等發展的基礎, 因此對孩子的教育放置於國家社會之手, 以比較公平公正, 並且有效率地運用有限的社會資源, 培訓各種不同天才與人才. 比如中共過去的人民公社, 公共育兒堂, 一杯水主義等等, 根據馬克思恩克斯原本的理念, 計畫用國家的力量, 來發展兒童的不同天賦與潛力.

然而眾所周知, 中共是一個 "勇於實踐驗證真理" 的偽政權. 早期的革命熱誠, 剷除千年封建餘毒, 土豪劣紳/黑五類所造成的階級不平等, 替天行道的高偉貴使命, 終究熬不過權力的滋味, 抵不過財色的迷戀. 在過去革命與實驗的歷程當中, 比如1958到1960的大躍進實驗, 窮死餓死三千萬人口, 也不過是一時的灰飛煙滅. 一個擁有14億人口的專制集權國家, 拿人口, 老鼠, 做實驗, 會有什麼難處?  這也令我聯想到早期美國在1932到1972年的塔司基基悲劇 (Tuskegee Tragedy). 在此案件中, 美國阿拉巴馬州 600 個貧困黑人男性, 被選用做實驗梅毒疫苗的秘密醫學研究. 那是基於根深蒂固的種族歧視, 而間接產生的一個悲劇 (看看21世紀的 "厲害我的國", 對維吾爾人的集中營款待, 對法輪功學員, 和其他窮人, 坐監的人,活摘/銷售人體器官, 中共網壇女將彭帥, 被前副總理張高麗與其妻共同逼姦, 而投訴無門等等慘狀, 可是罄竹難書), 爾後, 因研究環境的品質提升, 人權意識高漲, 保護弱勢族群的聲音越來越響, 這個塔司基基的悲劇, 歷經多面向的嚴重批判, 於是有了IRB (Institutional Review Boards) 的濫觴, 來規範科學研究的人權問題.

一個文明國家的指標, 難道不外乎是, 具有自我反省批判 (self-policing) 的勇氣與能耐, 尊重人權, 保護動物與地球權?!

沒有那長期醞釀, 涵養落實的人本思想人道主義根深氛圍, 哪得在山貯雲, 出山為雨的功夫? 用偷吃步, 吃緊弄破碗, 積水不厚, 可不是載舟也無力呀...

接著, 國家/民族主義, 是具有相當的正功能, 然而, 反功能與潛功能也待勢而發. 一旦過度或偏態的發展, 或義畸形地伸張, 這發現與發展兒童天資與潛能的培訓, 就大有可能變了質. 在專制獨裁的國家, 更易流於以百姓為芻狗, 以成就掌控權力者, 與其核心集團的意志.(套用毛先生一個老掉牙的典故: 核戰有什麼可怕的?! 炸掉一半的江山, 我還有好幾個億人口可以用著呢 !) 無論是極左或者極右派, 國家民族主義, 是極其有效的意識形態工具, 以國家神聖的招牌, 來達成掌權集團的目的. 希特勒的納粹黨, 雖掛名國家社會主義工人黨, 而實質上卻是個極右派的集極政黨.

現在社會與學術界有很多育兒理論, 如何讓孩子有個好品質的童年, 也就是身心健全自由快樂又能接受嚴格培訓的兩全其美良方, 我是外行, 所以就不多談.

現在把上面嚴肅的話題轉到現實的層面: 提到她的家, 霎那間, 本來灰灰黑黑一片, 門不可羅雀的住戶, 頓時車水罵龍雞犬不寧: 媒體炒作者, 老中青粉紅, 維黨恩者, 攀龍附鳳者, 追星者, 莫名其妙騷擾者, 獻金貢銀者等等 - 真個罄竹難舒, 全都湧到她的住處. 當地的領導, 在她無意間透露出的一絲絲百年難遇的 - 真消息- 之後, 不得不一夜間, 把小姑娘的家, 粉刷整頓一番, 門前的淤泥雜草, 也全給清了. 高級領導也立刻宣布她的娘跟爺爺的病, 醫療一切免費. 還有一些開發商的產家, 要送房送屋. 有一個視頻亮出一個商家, 掏出20萬人民幣, 要給他的父親. 他父親堅決不接受.

然而更令人心酸的, 是她的母親, 在不經意的閒聊當中, 說到嫁到這個全家來, 完全不知道有這麼多從未謀面的遠親近戚, 都上門來沾親帶故. 在貧病交迫的時候, 無人聞, 無人問, 讓一個 小女孩, 一心一意要拿到金牌, 賺到更多的錢, 來為家人治病. 這也是令人心疼的地方. 

俗話說的- 貧居鬧市無人問, 富在鄉間有遠親, 一點也不俗! 透過一個國家經常上演的浮世繪 - 很摩登!

歷史上類似如此的被人前倨後恭的例子很多, 最有名的, 大概就屬戰國時代, 身佩六國相印的蘇秦吧? 而描寫世態炎涼人心可畏, 最活靈活現的, 可能莫過於清代小説家吳敬梓創作的儒林外史中的范進中舉?

現摘錄一段蘇秦發跡之前, 連家人都看不起的落魄景象:

眾所周知, 蘇秦與張儀同出自鬼谷子門下，學習縱橫之術。學成後，外出遊歷多年, 卻是不見重用. 身無分文, 衣著破爛地回到家鄉. 回到家的時候, 他在織布的老婆連頭也不抬, 父母也不和他說話。尤其是那嫂子, 指著對他說, 我們飯都吃完了, 沒留你的份兒.

“過幾天，蘇秦父親過生日。他哥哥端了一大杯酒去祝壽，父親接過了酒, 很高興地讚歎說, “這酒真是甘美啊!” 輪到蘇秦, 他也端了一杯酒去向父親祝壽, 父親沒什麼嚐, 就大聲罵道, “這個酒, 那麼酸!” 於是蘇秦趕快從哥哥那邊, 借了一大杯酒, 再向父親祝壽, 然而他的父親仍然罵道, “這個酒這麼酸, 能喝嗎?” 蘇秦很不服氣地申辩, 這可是從大哥那邊借來的酒啊. ” 父親回罵一聲, “再怎麼好的東西, 經過你的手都會被你糟蹋了. “

之後, 蘇晴決心更加的用功, 常常讀書到三更半夜，想睡覺時，就拿一把錐子，一打瞌睡， 就用錐子往大腿上刺一下 (這與孫敬的懸樑, 合成這句耳熟能詳, 激勵莘莘學子的成語: 懸梁刺股), 這樣繼續發憤圖強, 精研縱橫術。"後來遊說六國，合縱成功，身掛六國相印。功成名就後，有一天蘇秦路過洛陽，回故鄉一趟。這次，他的兄、弟、妻、嫂對他皆側目而不敢正視，俯伏侍奉飲食。蘇秦見狀，於是笑著對他嫂子說, ” 為何前倨而後恭呢？” 他嫂子又怕又羞，跪在地上以頭叩地說：' 見叔叔位高多金。'   蘇秦聽了，不禁感嘆地說, '貧賤則父母不子，富貴則親戚畏懼，人生世上，勢位富貴，蓋可忽乎哉！' " (史記． 卷六九． 蘇秦列傳).

至於范進中舉中, 吳敬梓對一向瞧不起范進的岳父胡屠戶, 在女婿中舉前後截然不同的態度, 有著生動鮮明, 令人捧腹噴飯, 唏噓慨嘆的刻畫, 不下於蘇秦的狀況, 在此就不再贅敘.

(可參閱 http://203.71.212.37/school/guowenke/new_page_371.htm.)

前面提到全紅嬋受訪問時, 談到心願的景象, 令人心痛. 也想起以前某人A, 因為一個獎學金, 就在他鄉異地唸書, 有一天A的妹妹送了一個 email 給A, 說, ‘”真巧啊, 這裡有一部電影, 女主人翁的故事, 很像你喔…” A說, “真有這回事啊, 是哪部電影?” A的妹妹說, “叫做油麻菜籽. “ "不錯喔", A說, "好像以前有聽過這一部小說."  後來呢A也找到這個電影, 看了一下, "的確, 有一部分情節, 蠻像的."

那幾十年以前的童工雜工歷練, 以及一切為了母親的境遇, 似乎, 還永無止息的在這個世界裡被遺忘的一些角落, 重複的上演…

至於欺貧重富, 巴結權貴, 是人性的普同現象, 尤其是在貧富懸殊特別嚴重的社會. 因為財富名利 是稀有的貴珍, 有人是生來就擁有的 (不過看官也可持平的說: 創業維艱, 守成也不易); 有些人, 則要極其努力, 或賣命賺來些成就的. 那些生來就擁有的, 是金字塔階層頂端的的1%人口. 靠著個人努力與社會連帶賺來的, 大概也是階層上面的5%人口, 所以一般平凡而有著不同程度努力的85%人口, 對這稀有的名利權勢, 一般來說會持有隱隱約約的羨慕與渴望 (當然啦, 也可能有很多例外), 對吧 (用個外國人的語氣)? 但是對於無法獲得, 或難以滿足的失落憂慮, 如何自我療衛呢? 還好, 人的心性是個萬能的機構, 為人類製造出一種叫做 "認同防禦機制", 如果運轉得當, 具有相當的自行調理的功能.

最早提出的這個心理學上心理自衛機轉專有名詞的學者是 Laughlin. 他於1979 pointed out that identification was an ego defense or mental mechanism through which an individual in varying degree made himself or herself like someone whom s/he identified with. This results in the unconsciousness that takes over various elements of the identified person.” 簡譯: 人的各式各樣的自我心裡防禦機制當中, 有一種叫做認同防禦的機轉. 一般是透過對一些特別人物, 加以認同的現象, 來達到心理上的滿足感. 例如追星哈星, 熱情粉絲, 或者對名人英雄的崇拜或追隨, 分享他們的光環, 認同他們的成就, 在心理上或潛意識裡, 視同是自己的一般, 以產生內心微妙的滿足感.



適度的心裡認同機制, 對平衡身心, 有所助益, 避免因為達不到獲不得, 產生不良的心理現象, 而危害個人或社會. 但是有些社會文化中的個人, 對於擁有美色權勢名利地位的人物, 過度阿諛奉承, 巴結討好, 例如水滸傳, 官場現形記, 拍案驚奇, 儒林外史等等警世諷世著作中, 有許多活生生地刻畫出人性陰暗面, 赤裸裸地道盡世態炎涼, 令人唏噓的描述, 可能會導致有些人對人性的置疑; 正向地來說, 或者有些憂心社會者, 會致力於加強社會化過程中的環境與制度之導進.

話說回來, 過度的認同機制, 多少顯示出不健康的心態. 就近一點的來說, 比如當前在媒體上的炒作, 明星抖出的比基尼, 運動襪子, 貓貓, 狗狗, 都會被按上百萬個讚, 為他們瘋狂癡迷. 至於捐款救災, 記錄生靈塗炭的貼文, 則少有人關注. 還有像攸關你生機的老闆, 掌控你成績的教授, 以及歌星影星運動健將, 伶牙利嘴長袖善舞的閃亮政客之類的的芝麻綠豆渣事, 下屬, 學生, 星迷, 影迷, 政迷, 立馬按讚恭維, 尤其是對權富個人或集團, 傾訴違心之論 - 迎逢巴結, 恐落於人後. 總之, 給他們來個神不知鬼不覺, 秘密式的自我認同一下, 以自我心裡療衛一番.

蘇秦與范進等輩, 大概也歎: 前見古人, 後視來者, 念天地之悠悠, 資訊時代恐有過之而無不及?

如此過度認同的狂熱 (cult-like), 反映出多少社會發展的偏態? 如何在個人社會化的過程當中, 減少諸如此類的不良社會環境誘因與刺激?

在此, 我貼上幾張不久之前做的雜記, 作為本文的結尾:
(A few posters done before were attached as parts of the conclusion.)

--------------------------------
Here are some relevant info posted on my facebook (Aug. 11 (W), 2021):

Can these be a part of Human Rights abuses, or for the sake of discovering, cultivating, reaching human talents or potentials?

Sun Huang
Controversial! Developing potentials vs. insane training on little kids (the youngest, 3 years of age). Most of them come from underprivileged families. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNOLuCQDeyk

YOUTUBE.COM
Insane Shaolin Kids Training Insane Shaolin Kids Training

Sun Huang
Life is precious. Children are hope of mankind. But, the old politico-economic questions exist: are children assets, liabilities, or somewhere in between in the individual families?
Where is the fine line between a propter discipline, cultivation of ability, and a wholesome childhood?

Sun Huang
Children - a nation's property vs. a darling of family.
How do different philosophies and practices (e.g., Hegelian-nationalism, utilitarianism, capitalism, socialism, individualism...etc.) affect children's (surely, family's and a nation's ) destiny?

Sun Huang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvLs38CCA9Q  

YOUTUBE.COM
Shaolin Kids in training Shaolin Kids in training

Sun Huang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pPu-gSf-Tg 

YOUTUBE.COM
Young Chinese Shaolin monks display amazing feats of flexibility Young Chinese Shaolin monks display amazing feats of flexibility

Sun Huang
How many Bruce Lees-to-be can be trained?
How to create a "super" race physically, and economically utilize limited resources, for what purposes, for whose benefits? "Art for Art's Sake?"
They are recipes - available !!! How about just programming the robotized species?

Sun Huang
https://www.latimes.com/.../la-xpm-2008-aug-26-fg...


LATIMES.COM
A high price for Chinese gold A high price for Chinese gold

Sun Huang
https://min.news/.../27ac55f683fcb16dfc5cdc757f54ecf7.html


MIN.NEWS
Germany criticizes Quan Hongchan's 14-year-old championship with a problem! China hasn't spoken yet! Why didn't Japan do it? - MINNEWS

Dec. 17 (T), 2019 Eros, Vitality, and Morality

While reading an article, I stumbled upon some info regarding the womanizing issues related to Albert Camus (1913-1960 c.e.).

Most of the social thinkers, philosophers, academics, or other similar professions and social statuses tend to come from an intellectual family, aristocracy, or resourceful conditions.  The cultivation of the mind is quite different from the training in physicality.  The latter can be done within a designated period of time to see the effect, while the former, is life-long learning and investing process in fostering the invisible mental power.

The external resources and opportunities are facilitatory conditions to provide nurturing grounds for scaffolding knowledge development, particularly, in liberal, rational, and critical thinking capacity, in addition to the internal/personal endeavors or talents.  These either necessary or sufficient cultural-economic-social capitals in enriching an intellect, you don't find in Albert Camus' situation which makes him special. For, class matters, in his unique case.

Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in a working-class neighborhood in Mondovi, in French Algeria. His mother, Catherine Hélène Sintès Camus with one ear deaf, was of Spanish-(Balearic) descent. Camus's father, Lucien Camus, a poor French-Algerian agricultural worker died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I. Through his life, Camus never knew his father. He was a second-generation French immigrant to Algeria.

In Oliver Todd's new biography - Albert Camus: A Life, he reveals that this slum kid, Camus, at the age of 43, became the second-youngest Nobel Prize winner, who was also an obsessive womanizer.

Most of us recognize the moral high ground that Camus stands for in fighting against social injustice. He articulates and revolts against any kind of oppression, or whatever disrespects the human condition. His legacies left in the novels and philosophical essays (e.g., The Stranger, The Plague, The Reflections on The Guillotine, The Guest, Jonas or the Artist at Work, The Fall, The Rebel...), are still read, studied and influential today. In 1960 Camus was killed in a car accident, leaving behind two unpublished novels, The First Man and The Happy Death.

Though the term "manizer", might have not been officially created, yet, the word, "womanizer", is quite popular in the recent on-growing sensational court cases. Depending on the nature of protagonists' gravitas, this old question can be asked again: Do personal affairs (particularly, related to marital, sexual events) affect the great achievements which are beneficial to mankind, such as those of the Super-Nova Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell;  the superstars Elvis Presley, JFK, etc. ;  the secondary stars of the rest of the social-cultural icons, and the "morality" they believe in?

Here is another article with more info regarding "Brilliant men always betray their wives" - by Telegraph Reporters,  13 JULY, 2006. My input begins at the end of this article.

"Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872-February 2, 1970) had four wives and numerous affairs.  CREDIT: REX FEATURES

Einstein's affairs should surprise no one, says Desmond Morris. It is all in the genius's genes.

So Albert Einstein, did not, after all, spend all his waking hours chalking up complex symbols on a blackboard. According to letters newly released this week, he devoted quite a bit of it to chasing the ladies. And with considerable success.

To many, the idea of Einstein having 10 mistresses does not fit the classical image of the great, remote genius. Why was he wasting his valuable time with the exhausting business of conducting a string of illicit affairs - affairs that would cause havoc with his family life, damaging especially his relationship with his sons? The answer is that he, like many other intensely creative men, was over-endowed with one of the human male's most characteristic qualities: the joy of risk-taking.

Every creative act, every new formula, every ground-breaking innovation, is an act of rebellion that may - if successful - destroy an old, existing concept.

So every time a brilliant mind sees a new possibility, it is faced with a moment of supreme risk-taking. The new formula, the new invention, may not work. It may turn out to be a disaster. But the man of genius - such as Einstein - has the courage to plough ahead, despite the dangers, both on and off the intellectual field. Not that Einstein is by any means an isolated instance. Indeed, far from being the exception, he is closer to the norm where great men and sex are concerned.

During a presidential visit to Britain, John F. Kennedy once shocked an elderly Harold Macmillan when he complained to him that if he didn't have sex with a woman every day he suffered from severe headaches. Kennedy was insatiable and impatient. He was reported to make love with one eye on the clock and to be through with a girl as soon as he had had sex with her in three different ways. If possible, he preferred two girls at once and seduced almost every young woman he met, from starlets to socialites, secretaries to stewardesses. Oh yes, and not forgetting strippers.

But then the compulsion in dominant males to take the highest of risks - a compulsion that seems to be innate - is one that dates back to prehistoric times. Our arboreal relatives, the monkeys, simply fled up into the high branches when danger threatened and, while feeding, all they had to confront was a fruit or a berry. But when our early ancestors came down to live on the ground, they had to give up scampering aloft to escape and also had to face dangerous competitors and prey when turning to meat-eating as a new way of life.

To become successful hunters required a new personality trait - bravery. If the primeval hunters were to survive as carnivores they had to be courageous and take serious risks. The females of the tribe were too important to expose to these dangers - their vital reproductive role ruled them out. But the males were expendable. If, inevitably, a few of them were killed, the others could easily maintain the reproductive rate of the still very small tribes. So it was the males who evolved into the pack-hunters who would become genetically programmed as risk-takers and whose job it was to bring home the bacon.

Today, going to the office or the factory, or working on the farm - the modern equivalents of the ancient hunt - are far less hazardous, but the deeply ingrained urge to take risks still remains. Proof of this comes from the fact that men today are much more accident-prone than women. Throughout life, women are less likely than men to die of a violent accident. By the age of 30, males are 15 times more likely to die of an accident than females. For special males - the most adventurous ones - there are two choices.

Either they can engage in risk-taking of the physical kind - join the SAS, get launched into space, or trek to the South Pole -or they can explore new ideas, create new art forms or invent new technologies and thereby change the way we all live. Men with brilliant minds, whose creativity brings them enormous success, sometimes find themselves in a curious situation. They are so highly rewarded by society for their achievements that they are unable to limit their curiosity to new problems in their special fields. It starts to spill over into other areas.

Novel sexual experiences, for instance, suddenly seem irresistible. It is not the mating act itself that is so important - that varies very little. It is the thrill of the chase and the excitement of a new conquest that drives them on. Once the conquest has been made, the novelty of the affair soon wears off and another chase is begun. Each illicit episode involves stealth and secrecy, tactics and strategy, and the terrifying risk of discovery, making it the perfect metaphor for the primeval hunt.

Aiding and abetting these erotic adventures is the fact that the fame, power and wealth that these especially brilliant men have received as rewards for their achievements make them very attractive figures to the opposite sex. They may have a face like an angry hippopotamus but, thanks to their high status, they somehow manage to ooze sex appeal, much to the disbelief and dismay of the handsome failures who carry out menial tasks for them.

The great philosopher Bertrand Russell, who for all his undeniable intellectual brilliance could never have bedded a woman on looks alone, was described as suffering from ''galloping satyriasis". He claimed he could not see a sexual partner as sexually attractive for more than a few years, after which he had to make a new conquest. He had affairs with a long line of women, a few of whom he later married. They included a young secretary, an MP's wife, the daughter of a Chicago surgeon, a researcher, an actress, a suffragette, several teachers, the wife of a Cambridge lecturer and his children's governess.

His private life was described by one biographer as ''chaos of serious affairs, secret trysts and emotional tightrope acts that constantly threatened... ruinous scandal''. This was risk-taking of the highest order.

Picasso was also a sexual glutton, described by a friend as being obsessed with sex. There was a long procession of women in and out of his life: Fernande and Eva, Olga and Marie-Therese, Dora and Françoise, Alice and Jacqueline, and many more. He was quoted as saying: ''There's nothing so similar to one poodle dog as another poodle dog, and that goes for women, too.''

Similarly, his great friend, Gauguin, abandoned his family and moved to Tahiti where he was able to indulge in his passion for sexual adventures by welcoming a different local girl into his hut each night. Sometimes, he had as many as three in one night. And he continued his sexual odyssey even after his body was visibly disintegrating from syphilis that killed him.

That genius of the cinema, Charlie Chaplin, was an even more active sex addict, capable, he said, of ''six bouts a night''. Whenever he was bored he would set about seducing a girl. He had four wives (three of them teenagers) and an endless procession of mistresses, some of them alarmingly young. His greatest thrill was the prospect of deflowering a virgin. When one of his virgins became pregnant at 16 he was forced to marry her. That marriage lasted only two years, during which time he enjoyed the company of five mistresses.

As a young man he visited brothels, but later was attracted to talented and important women and managed to seduce a cousin of Winston Churchill's, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, actresses Paulette Goddard, Mabel Normand, and Pola Negri, and William Hearst's girl-friend Marion Davies. However, his sexual risk-taking eventually led to his downfall and he was driven out of America as a '' debaucher'', his legacy forever tarnished.

But then men with great talent or power, from Elvis Presley to Bill Clinton, Toulouse-Lautrec to John Prescott, will, it seems, more often than not put their careers or family lives in jeopardy in order to satisfy the primeval hunter's thrill. It is, sadly, simply a by-product of the human exploratory urge, and one of the prices we - and wives the world over - have to pay for being the most innovative species on the planet."

-------------

The above writing focuses on smart, brilliant men with supreme stamina embedded in risk-taking behaviors to seek females for satisfying the joy of hunting thrills. Beyond this bio-genetic reality,  here is another way to look at it - from more than one sex-gender perspective - and my own explicit and implicit biases might not be avoided.

In reality, it is not always a one-way desire or intention of the shining males.  These successful men, whether earning their prestige, power, wealth from brawn-brain, genetic-endowment, and/or heritage/legacy, can also easily become the targets of certain females (though, not so many as the male counterparts) with hypergamous/hyper-relational purposes and ambition, as if these counter-seekers are not fully blindly-awed, over-enamored by the dazzlingly mystified demi-gods. Socialites, on the other hand, may pursue a circle of the multiplied effect for fame, vanity, or opportunities. The well-known "Groupie Phenomenon" is another example, originating from the fan of a particular musician, celebrity, or musical group, who follows the star or band around, usually in hopes of getting more attention and interaction. Thus, the groupie is young women who hope to establish a relationship by offering sex to their fascinating males.

Philosophy and social psychology provide some insights to decode part of these human psyches from the perspectives of the Halo Effect, the Cult of Personality/Hero-Worship, Inferiority-Compensation of the death anxiety, and the defense mechanisms of Identification and Projection. In a real-life example, you might hear about the enamored fans who would not want to wash their hands accidentally touched by their demi-gods during the screaming, howling events, such as by the Beatles. When turning from the revolutionary desperado into the National hero, Mao Zedong was elevated into a demi-god status. Even during his old age, many charming Chinese women wished to get any meager chance, offering sex to satisfy the elderly political icon's favorite needs. They felt that was the supreme glory, honor, and pride to serve a man like a god. Other familiar cases are Charles Manson, the religious cults of James Jones' People's Temple, David Kerosh's the Davidian Branch, and the rest of famous tragedies in which, females tended to be the worshipers, or hypnotized into love trance to serve sex to their male gods. In these specific human conditions, morality/deontology as a code of conduct might require the interpretation from a particular philosophy, religion or culture. Among myriad branches of the modern science of morality, these phenomena are closely tied to the concepts of sociocultural evolution. Some evolutionary biologists, for example, sociobiologists, state that "morality is a product of evolutionary forces acting at an individual level and also at the group level through group selection." Some of them argue that the set of behaviors that constitute morality evolved largely "because they provided possible survival or reproductive benefits". Thus, humans evolved "pro-social" emotions. Heroes model righteous behaviors, promote positive psychology and satisfy the mass' imagination (though, hero-worship, most of the time, ends up in mere illusions).

The sexual appeal of females (the intellectual seduction of women does happen, but rare), to resist, is futile in most males' cases, partially, due to the bio-genetically ordained fact in males. Here is a long list of these events, since Alexander Hamilton to present:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_scandals_in_the_United_States  Will you be wondering this is just a tip of an iceberg?

Familiar facts of the bio-evolutionary research, sexual and mating patterns, the male tends to seek youthful and sexually attractive females. As to the female who selects robust, resourceful, and protective traits of males is due to the ramifications of the womb if the courtship behaviors are intended. Surely, males with wealth, power, status, like tigers with wings (如虎添翼),  have more abundant assets and at-hand access to the desirable females than those who don't. Nevertheless, when females with certain bargaining chips, such as beauty, charms and the rest of male's favorite qualities, plus ambitions, the capturing acts are simpler than that of the males. A proverb goes this way, "Male chases female, like climbing a rugged mountain, while female to male, grabbing a piece of lace. 男追女隔重山, 女追男隔層紗".  Historically and cross-culturally speaking, many successful families tutelage their young male offspring to be cautious toward the "gold diggers" or "fame-wealth-power-opportunists" who meticulously seek for "ready-made" success through males' build-ups when a time, fewer females got the opportunities to earn their own glories, while simultaneously, they encouraged their daughters to be hypergamous for advantageous conditions. The movie "Crazy Rich Asians", though fictional without avoiding a great amount of exaggeration and stereotypes on Asian cultural traits, it does tell some truth in this regard.

Voluminous cases show how slim the opportunities are for the common yet talented, ambitious, career-oriented, not to mention the plain female in fighting for a morsel of success under the male-dominant world throughout HIStory. A few opportunities are given to a small group of privileged females coming from prominent families with a well-educated upbringing, who tend to own a renowned husband, high-up parents, and/or established, well-to-do grandparents with an economic-politically resourceful lineage.  The other opportunities happening to females, frequently occur in the entertaining and business enterprises where sex as the bargaining chip in the Quid-Pro-Quo silent transaction, female's gods-given-irresistible-tool is luring and oftentimes, works. The double-standard practice of the ubiquitous gender ideology supporting institutional hidden codes, on one hand,  nurtures super/male's insatiable risk-taking behaviors, on the other hand, it also provides room for female's submission to the sexual exploitation.

Another fact shows when females possess power with which they are enabled to reverse the traditional norms of sex and gender thinking and behaving. For example, the harsh gender roles imposed on conservative Asia, the first empress Wu (武則天, 624-705 c.e.) of the Tang Dynasty, not only changed the politico-economic rule based on the cultural context at that time, but also reversed sex, gender, and family structure. She personally owned as many as she wanted of the male concubines and ruled as cruel as their counterparts, not different from the deeds of a typical emperor. Her daughter went even wilder than she, and Wu's daughter-in-law intended to replicate her dynastic mode, yet, failed, though. These extremely rare, capable women wielded tremendous power which, nevertheless, was derived either from powerful husbands, fathers, or mothers.

This is one of the main reasons explaining the subsequent dynasties, stringently reinforcing the exclusion of female royals in involving their males' politics. In the civilian households, the mother-in-law is always on high alert to guard against her daughter-in-law's influence on her sons and grandsons. This mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law conflict is rampant in most of the genderized families throughout History.  Ironically speaking, how women become the executioner of gender oppression! As the saying goes, “When people have been oppressed for so long; they become immune to it. They sometimes see oppression as an alternative means to oppressed others.”

Though in the 21st century, more females than males attend colleges and more jobs (ya, 79 cents per dollar of male) are available to females than ever before, still, some females look for luck or quick success via beneficial marriage or relational advantages to climb up the social ladder, whether intentionally, subconsciously, or necessarily. Conversely, we also find, though less, the reverse courtship and mating patterns in males who seek mature, resourceful, and successful females to be their partners or spouse-to-be. Indeed, sex, marriage, and family, are the immediate factory of the power generator, the most essential social institution among economy, politics, religion, education, health care, media, and technology, prevalent throughout human history - from the Monarchs to the civilian households.

In the social exchange theory (Thibaut, Kelly, Homans, Blau, and Levi-Strauss) - based on the capacity of rational calculation, stating the social behavior in the interaction of two parties engages a cost-benefit analysis to determine risks and benefits. Social exchange theory suggests that these calculations occur in various types of relationships: romantic, friendly, professional, and ephemeral. Social exchange theory claims that if the costs of the relationship are higher than the rewards, such as time, efforts and/or money invested in a relationship and not reciprocated, this could lead to psycho-economic imbalance. We know some marriage, or relational issues end in hostility, separation, divorce, abuses, abandonment, even into violent homicides when the gives-and-takes, or exchanging features appearing fissure, then widening into an unbearable imbalance, each side feels being victimized based on each one's unconscious calculation.

Regarding those successful men with tremendous power, fame, and/or wealth in the above-attached article, definitely, possess the Super Upper-Hand in rendering the risk-taking behaviors and the potentially unexpected and dysfunctional consequences. Their exchanging behaviors have a much higher degree of Freedom and Power than those of their counterparts who tend to be powerless, but not without having their own motives consciously or unconsciously. For example, in the recent sensational legal cases of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, they kept many females under control, who have myriad reasons to remain silent. It took a long period of time to expose their misconduct and even longer time for them to be convicted.

In short, another article regarding sex, gender, and power-structure would be a good sequel to this writing.

Wealth, power, and status act out human History! Sex/Eros, instinct, and emotion are the vital undercurrent of the species' thriving energy. "Man's world in accordance with the Life Instincts, in the concerted struggle against the purveyors of Death", Marcuse wrote, in his Eros and Civilization (1955). However, like the absolute power inviting corruption, with the excessive fame, power and/or wealth in the risky-sexual adventures tend to generate high prices to pay if prosecuted and convicted - as a proverb goes from Laozi " 天網恢恢, 疏而不失 - Though, the heaven net is cast loosely, nothing cannot be caught", or " 夜路走多了, 終會遇到鬼 - He who enjoys working things out in the dark, may not avoid the visit of the ghosts ". Some super-stars can be overwhelmingly above the Law, while others, in the long run, got caught, such as Al Franken, Bill Cosby, Bill O'Leary, Charlie Rose, Eliot Spitzer, Harvey Weinstein, James Rosen, Matt Lauer, Tavis Smiley and the rest in the growing long list.

From another perspective, if these men were not wealthy nor powerful, or just a Joe-six-packs, perhaps, females, media, and legality are less likely to cling to them for no immediate or indirect benefits or values. The outliers of Homo Sapiens lead the protagonist roles of human dramas which, in turn, need trivial roles, the commoners, and audiences as their background. Thus, a show can be completed.

"Industrialization demanded erotic austerity?" Or, just be mundane and safe? Maybe because of being the six-pack-joe, they are also less likely to attract certain seductive distractions and temptations that stimulate the high-risk takers' desire to play the most sensational hunting game. Perhaps, someday, a universal reversal of the gender role playing might happen to alter the current realities – with an opposite or different version of the game?

Now, returning to the onset of this writing, in real life, there is a non-Camusian type of womanizer who is also narcissistic, disguising themselves with a multi-faceted superior-inferior complex:

Dec. 6 (F), 2019 You deserve it !!

Xena Crystal LC Huang

~ This time; Social Psychology Series#1~ (my new poster series).
Interesting to look into this popular phenomenon:

Marcie Bakker Yes, “things happen for a reason!” Dislike.

Also folks saying they were blessed because their child survived cancer, diseases, etc. So the children that died were not blessed? What?!


Xena Crystal LC Huang Doesn't this "Almighty Force" go beyond our 8 senses (not just only 6)?
I am an agnostic in this regard.

Aug. 21 (W) 2019 Some classroom stories behind the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Aug. 21 (W) 2019  Some classroom stories behind the Implicit Association Test (IAT)

On my Facebook:

艋舺臺灣   Enjoy an exciting and interesting article - free!

(Padding on my own shoulder: What an accomplishment of today!!!!!)
IAT, IAT, IAT! Do you like to know some stories behind the IAT??
The new article of mine- " Some classroom stories behind the Implicit Association Test (IAT)" was
published on my blog: https://ci8395.blogspot.com/…/aug-22-w-2019-story-of-studen…

艋舺臺灣 If you are interested in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) - though, not without controversies, here is the link provided by Harvard University. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html.

艋舺臺灣 Just added an episode to the above writing (an hour ago).
Long and meandering, again, beyond 280 words, absolutely violated the Twitterature spirit
 - very "exciting", isn't it? :)!
Testing your patience- free of charge. No pains, no reads.

艋舺臺灣 Do you watch James Town on PBS (Thursday nights from 9 to 10 pm. Wisconsin schedule)?  (Strangely speaking, the last 2 episodes were not on the air? Any friend knows what's going on?) I am addicted to it.
This year is the 400th anniversary (based on the year of 1619).
Project 1619 is available. Here is a brief:
https://www.cbsnews.com/.../the-1619-project-nikole.../
CBSNEWS.COM
"The 1619 Project": Nikole Hannah-Jones on confronting the truth about slavery
----------------

The following casual (non-academic) writing is a reminiscence of assignment activities related to a learning competency: Examine the impact of bias and behavior on relationships (personal and group) of my Diversity Studies classes.

A while ago, in my Diversity Studies classes (face to face, online, blended/hybrid, and the night class), one of the assigned readings was titled "Blink in Black and White" by Malcolm Gladwell.[1] A student jokingly responded with a quick question, "Another race article, again? Can I choose a different theme?" (See, can this be counted as an example of instant "Explicit" Association? You will know what I meant if you are able to continue browsing through this meandering writing.) 

Here is a note to explain the undertone of this student's request (I suspected some other students having a similar question). There are six major diversity themes in this course: race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability and their intersectionalities. Among them, the race theme is the least favorite across all the classes, throughout all semesters.

I learned a lesson about why I had to assign some of the 59 readings in the book, in particular, regarding the race and class themes. About twelve years ago, I started teaching this course. As semesters went on, I realized most students, if let them choose their "favorite articles" to do assignments, approximate 50% of students would choose "disability" theme, about 30% related to gender theme, 10% sexuality, the rest of 10% spread over Race/ethnicity or Class, not to mention the intersectional topic, even though most of the main theme intersecting with other hidden themes which were not easily detected by students.

The lesson-learned told me that I had to assign some readings related to race and class which almost interface with each other in most human conditions in the US. However, they are so easy to "be neglected", whether "explicitly" or "implicitly" skipped through students' minds. Apparently,  there are several reasons embedded in students' prior knowledge, experience, and upbringing to understand why these two themes are so "unpopular". This article is getting too long. I need another writing to explain it from my observation. Stay tuned.

The student's question prompted me to realize the title of this assigned reading, obviously tagged with a heavy-contrast of “Black and White” which might immediately associate with racial issues in students' minds. I needed to do a quick brief about this reading. I emailed everyone to broadcast that it was an interesting article going beyond human consciousness. It was about the implicit association test (IAT). Then, I gave a brief introduction before they tackled this assignment.

The IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998) is a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person's subconscious association between mental representations of objects/ concepts in memory. It is commonly applied to assess implicit stereotypes held by test subjects. The test's format has been expanded and used to investigate biases in different situations, such as racial groups, gender, sexuality, age, and religion, as well as assessing self-esteem.

It was developed by social psychology researchers Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji in 1995. They pointed out that the idea of implicit and explicit memory could apply to social constructs. Memories inaccessible to awareness can influence actions. Its associations can also influence attitudes and behavior. This enables researchers to understand attitudes that cannot be measured through explicit self-report methods due to a lack of awareness or social-desirability bias. Nevertheless, the IAT is the subject of much controversy regarding the validity, reliability, and whether test results are an accurate representation of implicit bias.[2]

With this basic understanding, I suggested students that there be a full test available https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. After completing the assignment worksheet, if they felt interested, they could take it, in addition to the simple experiment provided by the article.

The outcome of this assignment was complicated but was not unexpected. I will share it after the following episodes are delineated with an aid of psychology/social psychology.

The main reason that I started assigning this reading during that time was also triggered by my Contemporary American Society class. A discussion regarding the death of Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida brought forth heated debates. Though that was not a conflicting event between the police force and civilians, it caught the media’s attention. All my Sociology, Diversity classes paid attention to it. The discussion turned into quite sensitive with regard to the racial contents.

Here is a brief of Trayvon Martin event. He was a 17-year-old African American high school student. The shooter, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man was the neighborhood watch coordinator for his gated community where Martin (with a hoodie on) was visiting his relatives at the time of the shooting. Zimmerman shot Martin to death for an unclear suspicion. Martin was unarmed, with a physical altercation between the two, Zimmerman injured. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted.

Having been teaching Diversity Studies for more than a decade at a 98% white/Caucasian faculty-student-body Technical College setting, I understood the pedagogical challenges related to where students came from and their learning conditions. Facilitating with balanced information was a must, which never lacked disputes. For rendering the Confirmation Bias was challenging. How did you detect that? Surely, most of them were implicit, and the main source to find them was from the writing assignments with an occasional discussion in the classroom or online. Since being "politically correct" became part of the no-harm awareness, some learners quickly adopted the "norm", no matter how I emphasized the first amendment and a safe-n-warm, respectful learning environment which was meticulously nurtured.  This condition made some "straightforward, say-what-I-believe" students valuable for teaching and learning, yet vulnerable.

As aforementioned, most students were white (so as the faulty body, 98%), coming from working-class backgrounds, mostly, supported by government financial aids. As mentioned above, adopting information to fit one's own belief system was a common phenomenon reflected in some students’ writing assignments (doesn't it also exist in most people's mindset, including myself?) On the issue of police and African Americans, I naively hoped the concept of implicit biases could help explain at a deeper level of understanding to reduce or ameliorate the emotional charge implicitly or explicitly, and “save the messenger”.

After Trayvon Martin event, later, Eric Garner in New York City was choke held by an NYPD officer and then dead. Less than a month later, the unarmed teenager Michael Brown was killed in the police shooting at Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s tragedy set off numerous protests and demonstrations across the country. They caught the nation’s attention regarding police force vs. minority issues. But before Martin, Garner, and Brown, tragedies started earlier with fewer media’s attention.

To understand why learning theories and practices of implicit biases might help further policy-making and training to ameliorate the severity of the problems, let me trace back the controversies with a timeline[3] regarding some major conflicting events:

July 5, 2011, the 37-year-old mentally ill and homeless man Kelly Thomas, beaten by police officers, 5 days later, on July 10, he died. In a video shown in court, he was seen laying on the ground being kicked and punched by the officers as he screamed for his father and help. Both officers, Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli were found not guilty of second-degree murder and were acquitted of excessive force and involuntary manslaughter.

October 6, 2012, Gil Collar, an 18-year-old student shot to death under the influence of drugs. A University of South Alabama police officer, Trevis Austin was cleared of wrongdoing due to self-defense and did not bring up any charges.

October 22, 2013, the 13-year-old boy Andy Lopez Cruz was shot dead due to a deputy sheriff in Santa Rosa, northern California believing that Cruz was carrying a real rifle.
It turned out Cruz only holding a replica of a rifle. Police declared that Erick Gelhaus shot Cruz for “fearing for his own life”.

July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed after a New York police officer used a banned chokehold technique to restrain him, despite being unarmed. Garner was complained about selling loose cigarettes illegally. In a viral video, the black 43-year-old said: "I can't breathe". Daniel Pantaleo, the only officer that was investigated by a grand jury, was not charged.

August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was an unarmed black teenager shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer on the street Ferguson, Missouri. Some said he had his hands up in the air and the shooting led to protests and some violence for 10 days. In November, a grand jury said the officer should not face criminal charges in the case that led to a nationwide discussion about the treatment of black people by white police officers.

August 11, 2014, Ezell Ford, a mentally ill 25-year-old was shot to death by two Los Angeles police officers despite being unarmed. According to an LAPD statement, the officers tried to stop him but there was a struggle. Police said that Ezell tried "to remove the officer's handgun from its holster". In December, Charlie Beck, chief of LAPD, said the investigation was continuing after the release of the autopsy report.

November 22, 2014, the 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by Ohio police in a public park as he was playing with a BB gun. He died on November 23. In the lawsuit, the family accuses officers Frank Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann of acting recklessly and failing to provide first aid and also name the city of Cleveland as a defendant.

December 23, 2014, a black teenager Antonio Martin, was shot and died on December 23 in Berkeley Missouri after police said he pointed a handgun at a white male police officer. The police added that the suspect was “known to them" but in the aftermath of the shooting, protests took place as relations between the black community and police deteriorated further.

February 6, 2015, Sureshbhai Patel was beaten by police in Alabama. His family said that he was left partially paralyzed after the beating. In a video released by police, it shows an officer throwing Sureshbhai to the ground after officers stopped him. The police officers tried talking to Mr. Patel who spoke little English. Larry Muncey, Madison Police chief, announced last month that officer Eric Parker would be fired, and he has pleaded not guilty to assault. His trial would be continued.

After these highlights of conflicts involving the police force and minority civilians, we might question why things happened this way. Observing from the classroom and students' assignments, a sense of supporting police's actions was slightly over sympathizing with African American victims. I still vividly remember one student who was a faculty member taking courses as part of the teaching-contract requirement. This student strongly accused the media's biases on issues which were no sensational values to be reported when black suspects attacked white policemen. Obviously, news reports (both from the conservative and the liberal camps) were revealing just a tip of an iceberg. As an "instructing educator" (I tend to call myself, just an educator), even being neutral might not be perceived as objective.  Did some police officers deliberately discriminate against African Americans and the rest of the minority, or were there other invisibly rooted issues unrecognized by the mundane eyes and mind? Were these policemen outliers of this profession, or was it a pattern of such an occupation? If so, what were the remedies to reduce such tensions and conflicts? What were perceptions and reactions of the minority when confronting the police force? To what extent was the racial profiling understandable by most people, and why?

Being a racial minority myself (Asian, speaking with a cute accent which differentiates the American born Asian and the non-native English speaking "Alien" Asian), I did experience some “manageable", "unintended/implicit” biased events as a sociologist and artist, if not self-accused of being sensitive. More importantly, I would be able to decode it "sociologically and artistically" without being a "coward",  and "laugh it off" without making a fuss, since you were the only Asian minority faculty in this school.

As human beings, we are still evolving. Our roots were not fully truncated from the animal kingdom. Like most mammals, human beings have two lima bean-sized neural clusters, called the amygdala, in charge of fear, rage, and aggression, in coordinating with the rest of the neural activities in the whole brain. Fear of uncertainty, unknown, strangers and threat from outsiders (others) is part of human emotions.  This bio-psychological reality, indeed, makes thrilling movies, tyrannical oppression, law-n-order (most of the time), and the political fearmongering not just possible, but appealing.

Psychology explains that fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger. It is part of the human evolutionary process. “If people didn’t feel fear, they couldn’t protect themselves from legitimate threats, which in the ancestral world frequently resulted in life-or-death consequences”. [4]

Without adequate human interactions or social contacts, when encountering different races, genders, sexuality, faiths, languages and the rest of Others, individuals may react with suspicion, discomfort, unconscious fear, distrust, or even hostility (either explicitly or implicitly). There are numerous cases studied by sociologists and psychologists regarding abused, isolated children who were detoured, or missed the crucial importance of social experiences, show irreversible emotional and behavioral problems.  With inadequate socialization processes and proper socialization agents. personality development was jeopardized. Most of them endured hardship and were unable to properly function in society.

In contemporary society, the social-fear goes beyond the bio-psychological aspects where the stakes turn into different forms. Not like the precarious struggles in ancient times against the voracious beasts, natural calamities, and power domination,  the body and brain may still sense different types of threats continuously existing as lethal as long as resources are limited. From today’s perspective, as population incessantly increasing, people fight for scarce goods and services, or desirable assets, such as lands, jobs, opportunities for better educations, health care, leisure, fame, wealth, power, etc. "Unwanted and undesirable" competitions may trigger fight-flight-or-freeze responses when people perceive Others coming to share or fight for limited chances, opportunities, and resources. “As a result, people may find themselves avoiding challenges that could benefit them in the long run or hanging back during social interactions for no good reason”.[5] In society, it is not difficult to find people fantasizing about the "good old days", or desire to keep the "status quo".  For the Others "cutting into line", no matter what reasons,  is intolerable and have to be "curbed" in the name of improper skin color, gender, sexuality, class background, nationality, languages, accents, religions, ancestries, and the rest of non-mainstream bio-cultural attributes.

When people enjoy what is used-to-be part of the "good old time",  privileged, or Haves group, the new competitive condition may engender threats. Thus, avoiding the new interactions can be adopted as an approach, because interacting with the new condition does not bring in short-term gains to themselves. In history,  prolonging segregation, apartheid, or prohibition of interactions in friendship, marriage, business and the rest of human communications was sustained by a belief system, by laws, or by practices. The long term sheltered privileges, on the one hand, turn into invisible, not being aware, or taken for granted. On the other hand, it might gradually deteriorate the thriving vitality to compete. The long term invisibly privileged "Affirmative Action", may, one day, require to be over the surface and to be legalized for protection. Some stories related to the above mindsets were vividly depicted in the book: Strangers in their own land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right, 2016.

Fear, rage, and aggression are part of the human bio-mental state. But to differentiate human beings from the rest of animals is far beyond the bio-psychological scope of explanation and understanding.  Sociology emphasizes the impact of socialization processes happening in families/communities, politics, economic systems, religions, and the rest of social institutions and the roles and functions of the significant socialization agents. As nurture to nature, so is an experience to biology. Nurture works on what nature endows, so human beings can gradually walk out of the animal kingdom to create a culture and manifest in civilization. Competition, conflict, corporation, and integration constantly happen in human societies. Without these dynamics, stagnation is a death toll, and among these interactions, human societies thrive on corporation and integration.

“No one is born with hatred or intolerance”. I shared the above photo with students of Diversity Studies and Sociology classes. Some research in psychology (Kelly et al, 2008) examines that three-month-old infants demonstrate preference of the facial structure that is racially similar to them, but the study also points out that it is part of the first three months' learning outcome, for it does not occur in the newborn. 

It may sound idealizing the easiness of human interaction and understanding.  History witnesses how segregation, apartheid, alienation, unfair treatment/discrimination provoke more violence and destruction than ever. They jeopardize the proper functioning of the socio-economic and cultural development in human societies. For the long-term benefits for human species’ survival, genuine social interactions, pedagogy, and lessons supported by educational policy need to be encouraged, if not reinforced.

The following viral video may shed some light on this phenomenon, whether you question the research methodology and its validity. It is fun to watch, though.

Now, I am switching the gear to the outcome of Blink in Black and White reading-reflecting-writing assignment as I promised at the beginning of this writing. Not unexpectedly, around 90% of students vigorously defended themselves that they were not “racist” after having done the assignment, taken the experiments in the book, and tried the Implicit Association Test (posted here again, if you are interested in this test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).

About 5% of students were suspicious of the purpose in this type of test which made them feel uncomfortable or forced the sense of guilt. Approximate 1% of students questioned the legitimacy, validity and reliability of the test. In fact, I was glad to know a couple of students resonating to the controversies regarding the survey method, reliability, and validity after the IAT was published.

Generally speaking, class morale was quite low related to this assignment and the relevant learning activities. Keep in mind: the "unpopular, or challenging" assignments tend to drag down the positive outcome from students' evaluation of your "teaching professionalism"!  Teaching, supposed to be a high-art created by the artistic endeavors, nowadays, turns into to compete with flowery-speaking politicians, talk-show mouthpieces, video games, and all sorts of artificial performances...  Immediately, I provided more information in addition to the aforementioned IAT research project to emphasize this Unit's learning competency: “ Examine the impact of bias and behavior on relationships (personal and group)”.

So far, Blink in Black and White was quite a proper learning material (could be an "implicit bias" of my own?)  and related learning activities for the homework to meet the competency. In more details, Implicit Association Test (thought, without controversies as mentioned) was designed to examine the role of unconsciousness or implicit association playing out in our belief system and behaviors. Because people make the connection much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in people’s minds than those between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar to them. As mentioned at the beginning of this writing, students associated the title "Black and White" with racial issues initially. In fact, before I knew about IAT, my first browse at the Table of Contents of the newly arrived textbook, the title of this reading was immediately associated with the racial theme to me as well. 

In short, the Implicit Association Test result typically reveals two levels of consciousness. The first level is our conscious attitudes which is what we choose to believe and act. It is part of our "waking consciousness".

In psychology, consciousness is our awareness of ourselves and our environment. Consciousness assembles information from various sources, enabling us to reflect on our past and plat for our future (Exploring Psychology, 2015). We try to fit in, conform to the normalcy, being “politically correct”, not to slip the tongue and the rest of “appropriate” behaviors reflecting the waking-consciousness of thinking and behaving. This condition was shown in most students’ assignments. They expressed how open-minded they were, and condemned prejudice, discrimination, and racism as immorality.

But, IAT also measures the 2nd attitude on an unconscious level – the immediate, automatic associations that lurch out before we have even had time to think. “We don’t deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes”.[6] So, what is unconsciousness?

Not all students of my Diversity Studies and Sociology had taken Introduction to Psychology to understand its definition. So, a brief explanation might be helpful.

It was through observing his patients, Freud discovered the unconscious. He questioned that some neurological disorders had psychological rather than physiological causes. Freud assumed that was a chain of mental dominoes connecting patients’ distant past to the troubled present. Through free association, he believed patients could retrace that chain of effects. He developed psychoanalysis and the associated treatment as a part of his theory of personality. He proclaimed that most of the people’s mind was hidden. Our conscious awareness is like the tip of the iceberg. Below the sea level is the much larger unconscious regions containing thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories, of which we are unaware. He stated that some of these thoughts we store temporarily in a pre-conscious area, from which we can retrieve them into consciousness. What interested mostly to Freud was the mass consciousness block which contained unsettling events which we were not consciously aware of them. But those hidden and/or repressed unconscious feelings and ideas powerfully influence us.[7]

Most students agreed that attitudes revealed the two levels of operations. And their conscious thinking and behaving might not be consistent with those of their unconsciousness. However, most students denied that they were a biased or prejudicial person. For students' unsettling feelings, I immediately explained to students from the sociological perspectives that the test result did not intend to expose the negative aspects of being a bad person since most students reported the shocking test result which was against what they believe about themselves.

Now at this moment, how about taking a look at this crash course video, and reflect what you have followed so far:



In addition, the assignment was intended to help us understand the power of unconsciousness or the implicit biases which grow out of individuals’ upbringing affected by different social institutions and economic-political socialization processes, such as social class, race/ethnicity, gender, family, religion, locality and the rest of contributors to the human diversity. The following two videos might shed some light on the power of the socialization process via significant social institutions and socialization agents.

The first one is an old and "blunt style" of racism. In modern time, racism has been evolving from its raw fashion into reverse racism, aversive racism, and current cliche of microaggression:



The second one is the well-known Westboro Church's religious and familial power in influencing its family members and followers. Though this is not a common practice of most churches, here is to serve as an example regarding the power of social institutions (in this case, mainly, family and religion) and its agents in shaping individual's implicit belief system:



In short, implicit biases come from a myriad of sources and most people are not aware of their existence.  Furthermore, the vast territory of the unconscious mind is still waiting for further exploration.

After the feedback to students about their assignment, I shared the following videos to illustrate
False Consciousness/ideology, which was covered in the previous competency as examples regarding how ideology is formed, shaped, and "nurtured".





After reading, writing, discussion with applications, seemingly, most students got a further awareness toward the contents of implicit biases which had the roots in the evolutionary psychology, bio-psychological and sociological/ideological aspects of an interdisciplinary understanding. But I was not sure if I could evaluate how much critical thinking could overcome the implicit emotion attached to their unconscious level of attitudes. The fact was that the writing assignment was done through their waking consciousness.

--------------------------------
[1] Students were encouraged to read the whole picture from his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It is about how people think without thinking. It is about choices that seemed to be made in the blink of an eye, which, in fact, aren't as simple as they seem. Why do people make good or inept decisions and hard to verbalize to others? How do our brains work differently under different settings? Yes, it is related to consciousness and unconsciousness.
[2] Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998, 74 (6): 1464–1480)
[3] Raziye Akkoc (2015) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11446472/A-timeline-of-police-attacks-in-the-USA.html
[4] Refer to https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/fear.
[5] Ibid.
[6] "Blink in Black and White" by Malcolm Gladwell
[7] David Meyer, 2015 Exploring Psychology. Chapter 12, Personality.

------------------------------------
At the end of the above writing, I recalled an adversary meeting that I was required to participate in April 2018. I am thinking to add more vivid, real-life stories related to Implicit Association to enliven the above dry-and-cut writing. This event was posted on my Facebook on April 18, 2018, titled “What happens when the hands-on and minds-on are asymmetrical”.

(This Surprised me as well: I did not expect to go beyond 280 characters -thanks to Twitter’s generous conditioning on the parsimonious style of writing. Unfortunately, I violated this digital posting golden-rule on Facebook. Just a kind alert!)

Today’s meeting began at 7:00 am. and ended at 8 am. on April 18, 2018. So, I had a full agenda: my next class began at 1 pm, followed by office hours and then a night class from 6 to 9 pm.

Faculty D and I chatted about implicit biases for sharing right after the meeting. Because of this, I found an empty lab to send some relevant info to her from my last week’s lesson plan and partially intended for a break to reserve some energy for the rest of today’s activities. Who knows - the lesson plan elicited by such a short conversation between her and me brought up the following random thoughts? I found it might interest you. So I shared:

As a faculty teaching art and social science at a Technical College (sounds oxymoronic- even with a Learning Technology background?), and member of different Advisory Committees of the College, attending and contributing to the Advisory meetings become imperative to emphasize the importance of general education to the hands-on/occupational degree programs from the humanity, social/ behavioral science perspectives. After all, during a time when courses engaging with the mind are constantly subject to being eliminated or reduced, such an imperative deserves to be paid attention to.

This is not the news anymore: the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point has proposed dropping 13 majors in the humanities and social sciences — including English, philosophy, history, sociology, and Spanish — while adding programs with “clear career pathways” as a way to address declining enrollment and a multi-million-dollar deficit. So as University of Wisconsin-Superior officials have decided to drop similar to Stevens Point’s, nine majors, 15 minors and a graduate program due to lack of “interest”, whereas, UW- Stout Math-Science department has the highest percentage of the diversity of hiring the non-native born mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists.

The democratization process of using hands to substitute for the minds/brains has been transforming the edutaining-business-technological complex. Liberal art studies tend to be deemed with the positive labeling as the extra-curriculum of the arm-chaired learners, the leisure-class, aristocrats, the brainy, and are beneficial of being the transferable credits, saving credit cost, as well as being a good candidate for the MOOCs/online delivery. Surely, it never lacks the not-so-nice perceptions, such as the target and/or the lamentation of the math-science-phobic, the undecided, the moratorium, the job-market pragmatists, the digital nation, and the “required: otherwise-I won’t- graduate”.

Knowingly, the modern era of rapid economic and technological change has expanded the role of the dual education system in the labor force, in particular, the continuous vocational educational training. Countries such as Germany, Austria, and other similar countries, dual education may help them adapt more quickly to ongoing economic transformation. But the ideal model of hands-on and minds-on is not exactly like the aforementioned dual educational system. So the old question pops out again- - WHO and WHY should study liberal arts? How can liberal art studies enhance human material productivity? Or simply put, as one of my students “challenged” me in one of the early weeks of this semester, “I just want to be a policeman. Why do I need to take Diversity Study which is nothing to do my future career?”

Indeed, to cultivate a well-rounded potential employee and citizen, both hands-on and minds-on programs should be "Equally" emphasized - ideally. Nevertheless, in reality, the learning outcomes of the hands-on programs tend to be tangible, measurable, and quantifiable, that earn much attention, success, and recognition for extra resources or rewards. Whereas, the minds-on subject matters (liberal art learning), face quite a challenge to see those intangible factors ingrained inside learners' mindset brought to the school (even some faculty members as well, including myself...) confounding the liberal art contents and pedagogy. This phenomenon is nothing new over centuries across the globe. Thus, you might question - To what extent can liberal art studies be taught/facilitated? What and how to authentically assess/evaluate the liberal art learning outcomes when so many confounding factors tied to learners’ upbringing (class, gender, race/ethnicity, the rest of identities/ideologies, and their intersectionalities), in addition to those of instructors’/facilitators’, circumscribed in the Technical College environment?

The missions of most Tech Colleges are to provide applied education that supports the regional workforce in the fast-changing economy and empower students for life- long learning to succeed in a global economy. The dual functions manifest in the integrated hands-on and minds-on educational and training curriculum and pedagogy - what a NICE TO HAVE idealism!! But do we have the luxury to HAVE TO HAVE? As so many Advisory committees that I have attended, this morning, no exception: the meeting began at 7:00 to 8 am. for the Dental Hygienist Advisory Committee. At the tech colleges, the partnership with local businesses is a big deal. On the agenda sheet, you see that 50% of the attendees are representatives of local businesses, in this case, such as Eau Claire Periodontics, Oakwood Hills Family Dental, Oral Surgery Associates, Masefield Dental Clinic, Clear water Dental, Menomine Street Dental, Pediatric Dentistry, and the rest are school administrators, department faculty, student representatives and the relevant body.

This type of serious collaboration has its symbiotic significance. Local taxpayers provide a great amount of support to the tech collages, and the big taxpayers' businesses need well-” trained” (vs. educated?) employees to provide community daily services and generate profits. The faculty body is based on the enrollment to offer quality education (often time, “Training”), while administrators rely on the needs of society and recruit capable faculty and adjuncts to engage in high-quality pedagogy with the recruited learners, and the school Board manages the budgets and fulfills the needs of the community and development, briefly speaking.

During the meeting, I was quite quiet. Keep in mind, if there is nothing nice to say, then just keep your mouth shut. But these days I have been reading more in details about W. E. B. DuBois, his philosophy, sociology, politics, activism, poems, writing, speeches...etc. in short, his soul, related to the domestic and global problems in an epitome of "racial line" existing long before his birth, and after his death, still to the present time. In the meeting, at the moment, the dual goals of missions that I care so much seemingly fading into the secondary scene.

I thought about the deeply rooted, conditioned, and reinforced racial ideology presented in the various social institutions, unsurprisingly existing in the academic disciplines, not to mention in the mass society, reiterated by DuBois all his life spotted on my heart when the program director was mentioning the soft skill issues during the middle of the meeting. I talked to my imaginary self: in this very white society, I shall never reveal any vulnerable part of me (not including my skin color and the “cute” accent) and pretend as well act out as tough and strong as possible for being a racial category beyond black and white. Then my thoughts switched back to the dual roles of the Tech College - regarding how DuBois critiqued on Booker T. Washington's thoughts and practices that are still so vividly resonated in contemporary society.

The meeting was going on. As usual, 99% of today's talking and discussion was about the technical training and relevant issues which, in fact, is the "Most Significant" component of the Technical education (or properly speaking “Training”), whether due to necessity, or the common practices. “How Booker T. Washingtoneaque it is !!!”- not just for the default black, but for the increasing working-class white and other colored population as well! (Having said so, I respect Washington’s assimilation ideology based on his slavery background. But I respect DuBois even more, ironically, for his not being the direct victim of slavery, and just because this, his great compassion, keen observations/sensitivities, perseverance, and emphatic capacity truly enlightens and inspires generations to come.)

I don’t like to think of myself as an arm-chaired faculty in many situations, but my thought was still lingering on the last night's read about a particular poem of DuBois when the meeting was close to the end. I thought this would be a smooth and nice meeting, but then I felt like speaking for "DuBois" as an "interrupting urge" to relate to the “soft skill” issues if nothing else was important enough in my mind at that moment. For, suddenly, the light-ball hit the Starbucks' event regarding arresting 2 African Americans popped into my mind. These two black men walked into a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia on Thursday, April 15 afternoon (2018) and sat down. Officials said they had asked to use the restroom but because they had not bought anything, an employee refused the request. They were eventually asked to leave, and when they declined, an employee called the police.

Some of the happenings were recorded in a video that had been viewed more than 8 million times on Twitter. It was even described by their own chief executive of Starbucks as “very hard to watch.”

Later on the Saturday Starbuck announced that they would treat anyone who walked into one of its cafes as a customer, whether they bought anything. It was the latest step the coffee company was taking as part of its ongoing response to the public outcry over the arrest of these black men.

Things kept on evolving more. In the next month of May 2018, Starbucks was in the high profile again after an employee wrote a racial slur on a customer’s cup. In October, two community board members in Brooklyn complained after they saw a coffee shop employee give Halloween candy to white children, but not black children.

Then, another event happened. A video emerged showing a white man verbally abusing a woman who was wearing a niqab at a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf store in Riverside, California. Staff refused to serve the man.

All these events ignited widespread criticism on social media, incited anger among public officials and prompted investigations.

I brought up this current event regarding why Starbucks CEO proposed of an Implicit Bias training for his 8.000 franchised stores to this early morning Advisory committee when the Explicit Bias was still part of the invisible reality.  Now is a huge leap into the unconscious mindset which is targeted to be "Trained".  Having said so, it is still a hope whether, goodwill, a lip service, business rhetoric, or a piece of a long-overdue-need-to-be mended patchwork...

Before finishing this writing, practically, I would like to share two old videos (can be controversial to students of different upbringing, faiths, class, sexuality…) that I used to show in classes as examples to business management relevant degree programs and the rest of other majors regarding why Diversity matters. It might help or hinder  “making profits” in their future endeavors (not in the theoretical sense).






Finally, I would like to share the following well-reviewed documentary - Beyond Our Differences, released in 2008.

Though the film is long and from religious perspectives (not intended to exclude atheists or agnostic faiths), I focus on the good episodes which show how people are working together to enhance human understanding. From a myriad of social interactions and communications, the implicit bias might expose itself to tunnel light. Then, we won't be shocked by this unconscious package, which can be unpacked, learned, and understood. From there, unnecessary harm thus can be reduced.

Being the bridge, not the barrier, is our last resort to continue humanity toward a better future.