Zac Parsons

One of the paradoxes of the curriculum at The Pacific Institute (and I mean that in a very complementary way) is the mandate to set a firm goal, and to be flexible with the process that gets you there.  Maybe its more of a misnomer than a paradox, because it’s often difficult to identify what is a process or step towards the goal, and what is a goal in and of itself.

I have a lot of goals.  One of them involves becoming a better facilitator.  Another involves becoming a better communicator.  Still another is about being a wise man.  A few months back, a local college preparatory school asked if I would be interested in substitute teaching.  I identified this opportunity as a process that would help me towards those first two goals, and even provide a little income on the side.  After meeting with the administration and learning a little about the school and its values, I agreed and began to substitute a few days per month, for various courses.

While I was there, a funny thing happened.  I LOVED it.  Now, I don’t mean that it was a pleasant surprise and a welcome change to my schedule.  I mean that I could feel something inside of me and around me as I walked through the doors into the hallway.  Now, it may be that they pump laughing gas through the air vents, but I think it is more likely that some vivid picture of life that I had in my own mind was being matched by something outside of me.  It was the realization of a goal that my subconscious mind had been teleologically fixed to, and I thoroughly enjoyed becoming aware of it.

Still, my goal remained to be a full-time Project Director and Facilitator with The Pacific Institute.  I was meeting new people, developing new projects, and collaborating with others for some exciting work in the coming months and years.  The goal was fixed, my affirmations were clear, and the plan was moving forward.

Then a door opened.

The head of the upper school called me to inquire if I would be available to fill in for a teacher for the rest of the school year.  Without even thinking, I politely declined, citing the amount of time I needed for my projects with The Pacific Institute.  Because my goal was clear, and I perceived this new information to be a threat to that goal, I shut the door.

But, as it sometimes does, opportunity knocked again.  This time, our conversation touched on the courses that would be on my docket.  Subjects like psychology, religion, history, and social studies.  She wasn’t asking for me to fill a hole as a warm body.  She was telling me that she had interviewed several interested applicants, and still believed that I was the best candidate for the position.  She was confident in the positive impact the position would have on me, and the students of the school.

So I did something that I should have done the first time around: I evaluated.

As I looked closely at the opportunity, I became acutely aware that I was not operating within a vacuum.  Taking responsibility for my choices and their consequences has been my modus operandi for the past seven months, but I often forget that almost every choice has consequences outside of me as well.  It’s another paradox, it seems.  I can’t focus just on my own choices and their consequences, and I can’t just be passive and let my life happen to me.  It’s a delicate balance, and I was leaning too much on the goal of being a successful Project Director.

But why did I want to become a successful Project Director?  Was it so that I could share my own experiences with others in a way that would help them to avoid the pain that I had experienced?  Was it to impact people in a meaningful way so that they would find something great within themselves because of something I did or said?  Was it to do my part as a citizen of the world to make it a better place?  When I took all of those things into consideration, the teaching position was offering me a process towards an even greater goal: not just to be a wise man, but to be a wise man with a legacy for my children.

In the end (or beginning, as it were), I gladly accepted the position and will begin on January 4, 2010.  Since I was a teenager, I have had the idea in my mind that I will have my act together (in some way) by the time that I reach 30.  If Jesus didn’t really get his game going until then, and Siddhārtha didn’t reach enlightenment before 30, why would I?  In February, I’ll reach that magical age, and while I’m not sure that I’m going to have my act together, this new chapter has me very excited about what life (and my students) will teach me as a teacher.

Continue Reading

The memorial service for those who lost their lives at the hands of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is being held in Ft. Hood today.  The President is scheduled to speak in honor and remembrance of the 13 fallen men and women from the deadliest incident to take place at an Army Base on U.S. soil in history.  It’s shaken up a large portion of the population and has brought the military back to the front page of the media machine from months of headlines regarding healthcare and the economy.

The incident itself may be newsworthy due to the unprecedented number of casualties, but two big wrinkles have given this story pretty long legs to run on.  As the story continues to unfold, we now know a few details from the assailant.  First, he was a licensed Army psychiatrist, someone professionally trained to help soldiers readjust to life after a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq.  Second, according to eyewitness accounts, he shouted “Allahu akbar” just before opening fire.  As you may know, this is an Aramaic phrase loosely translated as “God is great”.  It’s become a calling card of sorts for Muslim terrorists who believe they are acting on God’s behalf.  Let’s start with the latter.

Every major American Islamic organization publicly condemned the attack as immoral and anti-Islam.  A few angry members of the community in Ft. Hood took it upon themselves to call in death threats to area mosques, as if that would change the past or help the future in some way.  I agree with the sentiment of Arsalan Iftikhar, who wrote a fine editorial on the double standard of Muslim ties to terrorism and hate crimes compared to those who commit similar acts from a Christian upbringing.

Is religion the cause of this act?  It’s a fair question to ask, and it seems to come up every time there is a notable incident of murder in the name of God, be it Allah or Elohim.  But with the histories of nearly all major religious traditions involving some sort of divinely sanctioned homicide, should we be surprised when modern day believers act in such a way?  If it was ok to commit genocide on the Philistines, the Nephites, the infidels, or some other group in the past, because of the greater good that God had planned, is it so difficult to comprehend the state of mind of today’s “holy warrior”?

One of my favorite quotes from Lou Tice, Chairman of The Pacific Institute, is:

We act not according to the truth, but the truth as we believe it to be.

If someone believes that God is speaking to them, and that God has a plan much larger than current circumstances, then ANY moral beliefs can be compromised to achieve obedience to that plan, including the value of human life.  Our internal beliefs about something’s legitimacy have much more to do with our corresponding actions than any sort of external “proof”.  Unfortunately for those closest to the Ft. Hood community, Major Hasan believed that he was doing God’s will at the time of his attack, despite “proof” of the evils of murder that many in society simply take for common sense.

This is a pretty volatile topic, so let’s see if anyone is interested in discussing it further, here.  Just leave a comment and let’s talk about it!

Continue Reading

Although “Beau Lotto” sounds like a raffle game for hunky men, it’s actually the name of a visual scientist from London who specializes in the psychological impact of our sense of vision.  The video above is of his talk given at TED in the summer of 2009.  He has 18 minutes to explain the purpose of his research, and suggest the potential impact it has on us as individuals and as a society.  In fact, the front page of his site has a quote I was absolutely fascinated by:

Our hope is to engender a more empathic view of nature and human nature by creating spaces of understanding that are indifferent to the contrived boundaries between disciplines. (And people within those disciplines).

The Lotto Lab site has a great section on psychology about how our brains use past understanding of an experience to inform and translate what it is perceiving currently.  This, in effect, negates the idea of objectivity in many of the areas in which it is currently applied.  The world would be quite a different place if everyone treated objectivity as a myth and acknowledge their own biases toward self-interest.

Examples like this hopefully more than just fun for a few minutes time.  We use many optical illusions like this in our curriculum at The Pacific Institute.  Understanding how we understand things is key to the peace and harmony that world has been seeking.

Any thoughts on this video or this idea of our past memories informing our perception of the present?

Continue Reading

If you missed last night’s Letterman show, where he publically apologized to his wife for the pain that his infidelity has caused her, you can catch a clip here:

This CNN.com article tells more about the details of the extortion attempt, and the 15 years in prison that the suspect, Robert “Joe” Halderman, is facing if convicted.  It also speaks of the crowd’s response to his apology, which is what I would like to discuss here.

The overall sentiment of the audience seemed to be one of compassion and forgiveness.  There was only one quote in the article.  But judging by the crowd’s reaction to his comments, it seemed to be indicative of most present:

You could tell he’d been though a difficult situation and that he was sorry that he hurt other people, but he was also able to keep it funny, throw humor into it, too.

Now it may be too early too early to start judging this, but it is currently fresh in a lot of our minds.  Since the story just broke last week, it is interesting how quickly the public has been willing and able to forgive Letterman his transgressions.  It flies in the face of the adage:  ”Time heals all wounds”.

In the last week, we have talked about Roman Polanski, Jon Gosselin, and now David Letterman.  Three different men, with three different circumstances with females, and three different public responses.

Other than from his own peers, most of the public opinion (and some Hollywood opinion apparently) on Polanski is that he is guilty and should not be shown any leniency because of his age, celebrity, or citizenship status.  While his behavior violated a trust between two people, it also violated our laws to protect children, and the public outrage may be louder due the clear process of investigation and possible punishment that he is avoiding.  Still, the fact that Polanski fled the country and the situation did not garner much support then, and it would not now either.

Jon Gosselin’s affairs have been blasted on the front of nearly every celebrity magazine and website that exists over the last 9 months.  Whether he thought his private indiscretions would stay private, or if he was banking on the goodwill he gained as a “Super-dad” of 8 kids to counterbalance his actions, it’s pretty clear that he was wrong.  Although he made a half-hearted apology, public opinion on Mr. Gosselin is still decidedly against him.  He still hasn’t fully owned up to his actions, and forgiveness has not been offered in lieu of that.

David Letterman took a direct path to reconciliation and forgiveness, by taking responsibility for his actions.  Even the attorney for Mr. Halderman noted how quickly Letterman addressed this, saying:

He wanted to get out ahead of the story and that’s exactly what he did.

Whether it was an attempt to get ahead of the story or a sincere mea culpa, the effect is hard to dispute:  people value the truth.  When you are honest about your behavior, even if it is offensive, you are more likely to be accepted and forgiven by your peers or your society.  Well, unless you are not believed or trusted.  That’s another story altogether.

Thoughts?

Continue Reading

If you have never checked out the website www.mentalfloss.com, you are denying yourself the greatest internet experience of man’s recorded history.  Ok, that might be overselling it a little, but it’s at least worth giving a good look-see.  Check out some of the shirts they sell (Disclaimer:  I have no connection or relationship with the developers of this site.  If they make money from my links here… good for them!):

It’s a shame that the T-Shirt in general doesn’t make it into my wardrobe as much anymore, because I would love to stock it with these babies for sure.

The reason I wanted to bring the website to your attention today is because of an article that was featured on Yahoo News on Monday.  The title of the article is “Four People with Super Memory”.  It won’t take you more than 6 minutes to read the entire thing.  All four of these “Super Brains” have been involved at studies at Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine.  I’ve constantly wondered what would happen if I could remember everything that I had ever perceived and experienced…. instantly.  With some of the information from this article, I’m still not sure whether the ability would ultimately be a blessing or a curse.

Baron uses his super memory to win stuff. Although unemployed, he’s extremely resourceful and is constantly entering, and winning trivia contests.

Who's the big winner?

I’m pretty sure that Rick Baron would chalk up his memory skills as a gift.  I mean, if you asked this guy what he does for a living, he could honestly answer:  ”I’m the big winner!”  Its kind of interesting.  For whatever reason, businesses are willing to part with money or prizes in order to let people display their memory skills.  Admit it, if you don’t play those cheesy trivia games in sports bars, its probably because you aren’t interested in losing, right?  Because of the social and/or economic gain involved, we tend to enjoy sharing our memory with others.  Heck, others will even take time to watch us if we are especially adept at it, as evidenced by Brad Williams’s appearance on Jeopardy.  Which, by the way, doesn’t look to be his only brush with fame due to his memory:

“Growing up, I never really had reason to think I wasn’t like everyone else,” he has said. A feature-length doc on his life, titled “Unforgettable“, is presently in production.

Fame, by it’s definition, involves a perception of superiority or uniqueness in some regard from the rest of the community or the population.  It sounds sort of nice, but there are countless stories of the loss of privacy that occurs with fame (see exhibit A:  Jon and Kate Gosselin).  Williams may enjoy his status as a walking date encyclopedia, but if the majority of the people he meets greet him with a date in history and then wait for him to perform, I can imagine that becoming tiresome quickly.  He may loathe the idea of meeting new people who know him for his memory skills.

I can sympathize with Jill Price, who:

in her memoir, she describes super memory as a nuisance, partly because she can’t seem to forget painful events, like when someone she was crushing on rejected her.

Now, almost everyone over the age of 17 has experienced pain deeper than having a crush reject you.  Imagine if a single stimulus such as a date would bring you right back into the toughest pain of your life thus far.  In truth, our thoughts and feelings are just chemical reactions based on the perception of our senses.  Our sight is just our brains translating light reflecting off of objects.  Our memories can be jogged back to an experience in our past and it can vividly feel like living it anew.

The idea that “time heals all wounds” is true because of our lack of memory recall.

As we continue with life after a traumatic experience, new stimuli are perceived and our minds bring them to the forefront of our thoughts.  We usually give people a certain amount of time to grieve a loss, but eventually encourage them to “get over it” and “move on with life”.  We would never say something like that to someone immediately following a tragedy.  We know that perspective is often gained after contemplation.  This is an organizing of our memories and placing the new experience in it’s appropriate place in the story of our life.

As Sean O’Neil would tell you, everything that we have ever experienced is located somewhere in our minds.  It’s just a matter of finding the right stimulus to recall the details.  For many of us, it takes a number of different stimuli.  For Bob Petrella, it doesn’t take much:

when it comes to the Pittsburgh Steelers, his favorite team, you can show him a single freeze frame from most any game that he’s seen, and he can tell you not only the date of the game, but the final score.

It’s probably fortunate that this guy is not an Arizona Cardinals fan.  Honestly, you have to have a selective memory or rose-colored hind-sight glasses to be one of those.  ;)

Ultimately, I believe that the blessing or curse of  Super-Memory is determined by your overriding emotional view of life and the experiences of it.  While the kid in the room full of toys may complain, the kid in the room full of horse crap may keep digging through it looking for the pony.  In order for us to be responsible, we must still be able to choose what we think about or how we think about it.

I’d like to leave you with a picture of my favorite t-shirt from Mental Floss and ask you: how is your memory?

Continue Reading

When I looked through my news sources this weekend, my eyes were caught by a few articles about Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame induction speech on Friday.  The titles: “Jordan’s Night to Remember Turns Petty” and “On Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame Speech -- 48 Minutes of Hell” left little to my imagination as to how the night went down.  To be fair, the second article turned out to be the name of the blogger’s website (Which, if you like your sports with a healthy dash of snarky, I would recommend reading more of his content.), but the sentiment was the same around the world:  the speech was an air ball.

Because of Jordan’s relentless dismantling of my beloved Phoenix Suns year after year, I was smugly excited to watch his speech and point at him with disdain.  If it weren’t for Michael Jordan, I could be writing this article in a faded, purple and orange 1993 NBA Champions t-shirt that was autographed by Richard Dumas.  I mean, Jordan even owned us in his 40s when he didn’t even have to shave his head any more:

I began to prepare the article in my mind.  It would be a cautionary tail about how some people take their self-esteem and self-worth too far and begin to truly see themselves as different than others in an unhealthy way.  After all, where would Jordan be without all of his coaches, teammates, and even opponents along the way?  A successful person has a healthy understanding of their self esteem and self worth to be sure, but the reviews of his speech had made it clear that he had crossed that line into a place where he was superior to all.

I was excited to find the speech online, and to see which points of his speech would best illustrate my point about an ego gone wild.

So, I found it on youtube.  And I watched it.  And a funny thing happened.  It didn’t seem as bad as I had expected it to be.  He did thank his teammates.  He did thank his opponents.  Whether the entire speech was classy, respectful, or appropriately humble, I won’t comment.  But, I was struck by my own perception inhibitors that I nearly put on myself with the notion that the speech was a spectacle of arrogance and braggadocio.  I had put aside one of the key concepts of TPI’s education:

I am a selective perceiver.

In fact, we all are.  There are several great tests and games you can use to illustrate this point.  I just saw a friend’s status update on Facebook that spoke of a group of Christians sitting behind him at Starbucks trying to convince each other that Jesus turned the water into non-alcoholic wine.  Now, a quick visit to the entry for wine at reference.com describes the grape’s fermented juice as “alcoholic” in the first word of the definition.  In my opinion, their attempts to perceive and understand the first recorded miracle of Jesus are being heavily influenced by what they believe about the nature of alcohol.  Namely, that it is the devil.  ;)

We all journey through life with blind spots.  They don’t keep us from moving, but they have a good deal to say about what we will and will not perceive as we experience something new, or even something familiar.

“Attitude is everything.” is a trite and tired cliche, but I believe that it does point to truth.  How we feel about something or somebody will tremendously effect how we experience it/him/her.  We tend to move into the future in our minds first, and then walk into it with our bodies.  I’m not sure if this is good or bad, or something that we should try develop an antidote for.  Rather, I just believe that it is an important principle to consider when you feel the time has come to pass judgement on a situation.

It’s good to be reminded of one’s mistakes of prejudice.  I was absolutely positive that I would enjoy the film “Adventureland” recently released on DVD.  It features Ryan Reynolds as a amusement park maintenance man.  I would have bet large sums of money that this could not be screwed up.  I just ordered my copy of Ryan Reynolds reading the phonebook from iTunes.  How could this movie disappoint me?

…….

I’m still trying to come up with an appropriate synonym for disappointment.

How pure is your perception?

Continue Reading