Generalization, Discrimination and Discernment

There is always just me and the other.  I can call the other 'God' or I can call the other "it'.  When I'm afraid I tend to think of the other as "it' whereas when I'm filled with love I think of the other as God.
To discriminate against certain people I must consider them in a group rather than as an individual.  So I might think "Jews are bad".  Hitler thought that.  It would be convenient if the world was just black and white.  Jay Lifton described the black and white world of war politics.  Us and them.  But reality isn't like that.  I know really great Jews and only a couple of really bad Jews. One of my favourite and closest mentors was Dr. Jack Hildes.  He sits right next to Dr. Carl Ridd in my heirarchy of most influential humans on my life.
The Klu Klux Klan said blacks are bad.  My childhood doctor was a black man. He was good.  My Chicago friends are black and they're good. I know one incredible asshole who is black but he's probably the 'exception that proves the world".
I've Indians in my family and we grew up together summers hunting,fishing, hiking and doing stupid boy things.  Like competing pissing off docks and seeing who could fart loudest. They're great guys.   But I've heard people say Indians are bad.They're wrong.
They are as wrong as the people who say whites are bad.I'm white and on my worst day I've only been half bad though others say I exaggerate.  Mostly like most people I'm doing my best to be good.
Psychopaths aren't inherrently 'bad'. They just lack compassion, are so afraid they don't know the depth of their cowardice and can think of no one else but themselves because of their poverty and isolation of spirit.  Because of this they do bad things.
Sociopaths are groups that are at variance with the larger group and generally don't feel that the laws apply to them but are happy to be 'takers' and break the rules.  They're not bad.  They're more often sad.  Like racoons in the chicken coup. If you're raising chickens and have taken it upon yourself to provide and protect chickens and their chicks then you simply have to keep out the racoons or kill the ones that get in.  It's not so much 'good or bad' but just business.  Darwin had something to say about this but one does all they can to avoid killing because its wasteful unless of course you like eating racoon.  Personally I prefer chicken.
Alot of people are fooled into believing that individuals in groups are bad because they perceive the group to be bad. Hence we have the term 'banksters' which I use to refer to bad 'bankers'.  But my banker, Lloyd, was a great man.  He helped me immensely when I needed help.  Nigel Ferguson wrote about money and banks and did a fine job of dispelling the ignorance that so quickly falls prey to paranoia.  There's a lot of paranoia being parlayed about as reasonable these days.
I like to lump beaurocrats into a group and blame the problems of Canada for instance on too much dead weight in administration. I like to knock administrators too.  I do this and should be more ashamed of myself for it.  I'm actually an administrator in my own company and frankly I'm not very good at it. So here I am questioning those well above my pay grade when I haven't got my own affairs well in order.  My brother is an administrator and I highly admire his organization and ability to 'account' for his finances in a way I never had. He was the kid with the piggy bank growing up.  Later he'd have a filing cabinet in his bed room.  He counted his pennies and the dollars took care of themselves.  I'm still struggling to balance my cheque book.  I know too that those who are most critical of the money managers and administrators and bankers probably themselves are least competent with managing their own affairs.  I know alot of great 'spenders' who think everyone else should 'give' to them.
We tend to blame others.  We tend to externalize problems.
I like to blame lawyers alot too.  The trouble is I've got a whole collection of lawyers as friends. I went to school with some really great girls who became lawyers. These girls were the best thing next to home made pie. Really good people and they worked their lives as lawyers. So how can lawyers be bad.  Obviously some can but not all.
I know a judge today that couldn't find his ass with both hands. He's as stupid as the stupidist person I have ever met. He has no respect for money and was either intentionally or unintentionally acting utterly naive about corruption. He was so stupid I was left with the impression he just had to be utterly corrupt because I couldn't imagine a judge as stupid as he was.  He was an exception to prove the rule too. I've lunched with judges and known judges personally I would have trusted my dog with.  I don't trust my dog with just anyone and these men and women were the finest sort of people I could hope to meet snywhere.    And one bad judge doesn't spoil the barrel.
I've met three prime ministers, have a friend who is a congressman, know a few senators and several more politicians personally. They are all individually extraordinary and wonderful people.  No doubt they have their moments. As kids they probably competed in fart contests too.
I even know a good feminist and I think all feminists lack a sense of humor, take themselves too seriously, externalize all their problems , do more harm than good, are very angry and self centered.  The trouble is my feminist friend is a relative saint and her work for international women is as admirable as my other friend who works with a spy agency trying to keep terrorists from blowing up innocent people taking a bus to work.
I don't like communists either except that my communist friend is one of the funniest brightest most loving persons in the world. They are as troubling to me as my radical right wing friend who goes off the deep end when they get in the same room with the commie, the two of them almost at each others throats unable to speak or act civilly if the topic of politcs comes up.  Leave that out of the equation and the two are the best neighbours I know.
Generalizations are a way the mind tries to reduce the complexity of the world down to sound bites and bits that the little human mind can handle. The littler the mind the littler the bite sizes.  Discrimination depends on ignorance.  It depends on generalization.  It's driven by fear.
Discernment is the operation of love which says that I don't want a 3 year old driving the car but I can have Johnny who is 14 driving the tractor because Johnny is mature for his age and the rule about what age a person should drive is a generalization.  In a public space I will agree to such generalizations but in a private space I will use discernment to arrive at the judgements I need to make mostly about individuals, not groups.
I like to think Discernment is God centred too.  And by the way people who don't love dogs should be lined up and shot with toy water guns and beat with wet noodles till they see the truth.

Who do you defer to, Doctor?

I was asked the question, "Who do you defer to, Doctor?" by a lawyer in a court case.  It caused me to pause.  I was being asked about the care of my patient.  I was a generalist, a specialist and a sub specialist.  I knew that the lawyer seemed to consider some 'hierarchy' applied to doctors as it presumably does among lawyers and certainly is a matter in the military.
It probably pertained when I was an Assistant Professor at the University too.
But it wasn't relevant in that way to clinical medicine.
I said, "I don't defer to another doctor, unless he is willing to take responsibility for the patient and assume full accountability."
Indeed, that's what clinical practice is about. It's all in the relationship.
I thought about the question overnight.  Clearly I defer to God.  I defer to authority in a governmental sense but in regards to patient care, again it's different.
The lawyer asked specifically about someone who is high profile in the court system.  I found that interesting because again clinically the lawyer couldn't grasp that 'big guns' and 'little guns' weren't a matter of much substance in my clinical world.
I do have a constellation of characters who I admire and respect and would on specific questions seek their advice and probably accept this though in the end it would be a consultation. In a consultation I can disagree and go my own way with greater risk and responsibility once I'd asked for advise and chose not to follow it.
I have a host of doctors, though fewer as I've grown in years and experience, who I consider have more specific experience than I do in a particular area.
I am a psychiatrist in the general sense but am a subspecialist in the area of addiction with certification and extensive experience.  I routinely seek advise of colleagues who have more experience with a particular kind of patient. I have a half dozen doctors who are certified in addiction medicine, some of them psychiatrists even, but I don't think of them as 'superior' to me.  I think of their individual training as comparable in many instances as mine but think more about them in terms of numbers of cases diagnosed and treated.  I also think of their outcomes and most importantly the complexity of cases.
One fellow is particularly good with heroin addicts, but of two doctors I know one is more experienced with abstinence while another is more experienced with harm reduction therapies.  Another doctor has far more experience in sex addictions than me and there is one character locally and another in the next province who know more about gambling addiction than I can ever hope to know. Yet I don't think any of them know more about 'addiction' and the diagnosis and treatment of addiction than I do in my addiction psychiatry work.
In my psychotherapy practice I have subspecialised in trauma and especially with those in recovery, the 'dual diagnosis' group and don't really know another psychiatrist who shares my particular approach to this group, a mixture of 12 step facilitation, dynamic spiritual therapy focussing on the anxiety and isolation components.  I know others who work with a similiar population but their particular approaches to treatment are often different but I think they may get similiar results.
I have another niche where I am commonly sought for advise and that's where patients have major medical problems coupled with psychiatric disorders. The psychopharmacology of this subset of patients is particularly difficult.  Patients with head injury and an anxiety disorder or depression and a seizure disorder, kidney disease and psychosis.  These are a particular group of patients who I found that a colleague was also commonly seeing and I've benefitted from his specific insights.
I don't 'defer' to these colleagues in a 'deferential' sort of way except one lady doctor who has specialised in the treatment of pregnant patients with psychiatric disorder.  And come to think of it I would defer to her and do. It's an area of psychiatry that I really have limitted experience to hers.  There's definitely some areas in psychiatry in which I probably do 'defer' now that I think of it but they're areas like that.  Child psychiatry and Geriatric Psychiatry. The latter is a subspeciality area that requires more training certified geriatric psychiatrist would see far more patients over 75 years old than I do. Right now I only have a half dozen in my practice and may have seen less than a hundred in my lifetime.  In contrast my female colleague in geriatric psychiatry is not only a great clinician but she's my age and has being seeing old people as long as my other colleagues has been focussing solely on children.
So yes I do 'defer' in these cases and would surely and do surely defer to other specialists outside my own area of specialization. Hence I'm forever deferring to orthopods, surgeons, cardiologists, endocrinologists, rheumatologists, and urologists etc.  There are however some areas of overlap in neurology for instance. I do defer to neurologists commonly but there's some areas where my own experience and expertise cause me to feel that the area of overlap might be more in my peculiar bailiwick than that of a neurologist. This is true for pain specialists and occupational health specialists.  There are little overlapping territories where I acknowledge that the two of us might have equal expertise despite coming from wholly different backgrounds.
The matter of responsibility and accountability is always at play. There are commonly alot of 'adjunctive' players in the field but when the ball is dropped I'm very much aware of whether I'm going to be stuck holding the ball.  Alot of people who refuse to carry the ball really want to tell you how a ball should be carried. I'm more aware of these with age and experience.  Monday morning quarter backs and and arm chair philosophers.
The question was a good one. Lawyers are astute and I am thankful for the questions they raise and the opportunity their questions give me for self examination and further learning.  When personally I've need a lawyer I've been rather deferential to him or her though know that in the end I'm going to be the one who is ultimately accountable.

Stereotyping Lawyers, Beurocrats, Poor and Rich

I know a whole lot of really fine lawyers. They're friends, colleagues and teachers. Yet when I'm unhappy I sometimes actually blame my unhappiness on "lawyers'.  It's the same with women.  My mother is my greatest heroine. I've had women friends who are the finest people I've known. Most women I have known have been truly remarkable.  I hired a psychopath once. She happened to be female.  I knew a real scumbag and he happened to be a lawyer.  My friend growing up was Jewish and I've had so many Jewish friends in university and work.  One was a legitimate sociopath.  My First Nations friends are tremendous. We've hunted and fished and hung out together many a weekend. Yet I know a native man who is so lazy and complains all the time that no one will take care of him. I'm a Christian and yet I know some milk toast mealy mouthed Christians that literally give Christianity a bad name. I've a lot of immigrant friends and my grandfather was one of Canada's greatest immigrant yet I sometimes think I'm unhappy because the 'immigrants' are taking too much.  Same with the prisoners. I've known people who were unfairly imprisoned. I've worked in the jails myself and known 'there but for the Grace of God' go I but sometimes I think that the jails and prisoners are the reason I'm unhappy. It usually occurs that I'm thinking about some of these 'groups' as 'bad' when I don't feel I've got enough money for something I'm doing. Beaurocrats are another one of my bug bears.  When I'm down it's almost certain some beaurocrat is the problem. If it's not the beauorocrat then it's got to be the politicians.  Once it a while too it's the people on social assistance. If they weren't around I'd be doing better, for sure.  Otherwise it's the bankers though my own bankers are really fine people who I know and like and can't truly find fault with individually.  But it might be the rich then. However the truly rich people I know personally came by their wealth through hard work and intelligence and deserve the merits they've earned.  Generally it's administrators and overall usually any authority figure randomly picked on any day. It may as well be the weather man for all it's worth at times.
It seems that predjudice is tied in with 'self pity'.  Whenever I'm feeling self pity I like to blame it on someone.  Probably it's just because the sun isn't shining that day or I've got gas but I somehow like to link my discomfort with some external group in a kind of paranoid ecstatic revelation.  Aha, I say and of course it's these people.
The trouble is, it's rarely the folk I know. It's some 'thosepeople' as E.E. Cummings said.  The lawyers, politicians, beauocrats, women, immigrants, wealthy, poor, Christians or other, all are at fault even though this is logically impossible.
That's why in the end if it's not God it's the aliens that are undermining my personal existence.  And I have to tell you about it.  I have a clear argument in my journalistic brain that makes this clear.  Sometimes it's individually so true but when I speak in groups and 'thosepeople' I'm to be suspected. Not all Canadians are idiots at times like I am, just some of us. And the same goes for others too.

It’s Complicated

This chick flick with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Marten is marketed to bitter unforgiving women. Man leaves self obsessed woman for younger woman. Man comes back to now ex wife and has an affair with her. She thereby trumps the original marriage breaker.Old woman beats young woman. She then destroys the husband who has come back to her and their family. Such sweet revenge.

Finally, she's supposedly the good mother. In the end all her kids are with her. It looks more like fear than love. She has the big house and gets the architect. It's such a cold hearted superficial movie whose only redeeming feature is Alec Baldwin's sensitive portrayal of a three dimensional character. American woman at it's worst. Reminded me of the Guess Who song. It's only wrong if the man does it.

DNA evidence shows a third of children aren't their father's in the increasing patrimony suits. Affairs take two. Jesus said, he without sin, should throw the first stone. She is definitely a stoner in this movie that celebrate marijuania promoting it as the solution for the geriatric set. But it's all vengeance. Family and community are secondary to the self centered individual. The culture of narcissim at it's ugliest, disguised in a veneer of fine food, wealth and 'sex in the city' clothing.

The new world order – Hedonism becomes Shedonism :"You've come along way, Baby" - "She who has the most toys wins." Thank you Hollywood!

Lawyers

"I feel creepy when I'm around one." he told me. We reflected on the Communist Party rule in totalitarian states and how the lawyer was the new aparatchik.
"But I like lawyer's,"I said, quite surprising myself by my having positive feelings for glorified arts students. As a scientist I'm rather more fond of Engineers professionally.
"I was astonished to learn that so much of their work is done for free and costs to support a case were done out of pocket. The lawyers I know don't get paid from their suits until after the trial. They have to have a lot of committment and carry a tremendous amount of risk."
"Like dentists who have all that upfront investment in equipment and have to take out all manner of loan before getting a practice going."
"That's what bothers me about lawyers. The more I get to know them and the more I work with them the more I understand and appreciate where they're coming from. It pays to be paranoid and take a jaundiced view when you're putting up the money."
"So the lawyers we don't like are the 'politico's. They make the laws and fix the laws and then benefit from the laws. They're no different from the politicians who vote their own pay cheques. "
"Those lawyers are above the pay grade of the all the other lawyers. More commonly than not their 'connection' isn't just law but old money and old blood."

We talked a bit more about this. And no one made a lawyer joke. That was really odd.