Cafe 42 Blog

Parenting Social Media

by jcafesin, posted in addiction, ADHD, artificial intelligence, social media

Australia killed social media today for under 18. YEA AUZZIES!

My almost 24 yr old daughter came downstairs Saturday morning giggling with glee. She told my husband and I she was ‘so excited!’ Something ‘great’ had happened.

She was in a car accident 1.5 yrs ago that is resulting in a lawsuit, and I thought she’d talked to our lawyer and he gave us great news. Nope.

“I got an audition on The Button!” she said, pridefully. “It’s a really popular YouTube series.”

I went with her excitement. My beautiful daughter got an acting audition, or for her melodic singing. Or a baking show for her excellent macaron cookies!

“How many subscribers?” I asked.

“Millions! It’s a reality dating show.”

As her words registered in my head, so did dread.

“You sit at a table across from each other with a large red button between you,” she explained enthusiastically. “The show’s producers ask personal, intimate questions to push conversation.”

I bet they do. Build tension. Push the show’s platform of ‘Shaming Spectacle.’ Corrosive dread was quickly turning into explosive rage.

“If one presses the button before the other, that person is out of the game.”

“You mean rejected?” At this point, my rage was boiling over. My daughter was seemingly so addicted to her phone and social media she could not see the ugly, sick fuck piece of trash YouTube show she’d signed on for.

“Yeah. But if neither press the button, then you win a date,” she said, more cautiously seeing my expression.

My tolerance dam broke right then. “Are you stupid!? Why would you sign up for a show designed to SHAME YOU? Are people allowed to leave comments?”

“Yes, Mother, but it’s not like that.”

“What’s it like, then?” my husband asked. “How can this possibly serve you going on this show?”

“It’s not about that. It’ll be fun to be on a show I watch.”

She watches this crap!? But I didn’t voice it. “You’re supposed to be studying for your MCATs. Why do you want to go on this show that’s designed to make you feel shitty about yourself?”

“It’s just for fun,” she defended. “I probably won’t even get on.”

“And if you do, how are you going to feel with being rejected in front of millions? Or rejecting someone else?”

“Maybe I won’t be rejected.”

“And what? You’ll find Mr. Right on this bullshit show? You have MCATs in 8 wks, honey. What are you doing!?”

“I thought it would be fun to be seen by that many people,” she said flatly.

“But you won’t be seen,” my husband chimed in. “You judge everyone on the show when you’re watching. And millions will be doing the same to you.”

“Are you ready for negative comments about your looks, or things you expose when the asshole producers trigger you in front of millions?”

“I won’t read the comments.”

“Are you talking about the Red Button show?” our son comes in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” she said to her older brother. “Have you seen it?”

“Yeah. Couple times. It’s really brutal. A race to the bottom — who can push the button first. No one wants to be the one rejected. You like it?”

“Yeah. I think it’s funny.”

“She got an audition to do the show,” I filled him in.

“Your mom and I don’t think it’s a great idea.”

“Even to audition,” I said. “Won’t help your self image any if you get rejected for the show.”

“So, you don’t think I’m pretty enough to be on the show?” she asked, practically glaring at me. “You think I’m not good looking enough to get picked.”

“I see my beautiful daughter. But this isn’t about what I think. You’ve cried to me time and again you’re not pretty enough,” I manage more softly. “You’ve admitted you compare yourself with influencers, and how you feel ugly by social standards. You’ve told me you hate your nose. Don’t like your body shape. Breast size. Your face. How is this going to be ‘fun’ if you’re rejected, get bad comments, or even get a second date? At best, this show’s a distraction from your goal to get into med school. At worse, and more likely, it’ll make you feel even worse about yourself.”

“Not fun,” her brother added. “I wouldn’t do it J. Not smart,” he said as he left.

“I’m doing the audition anyway,” our daughter said, and followed him out of the kitchen.

—

Ever written a blog, personal essay, or even an email, and as you write it you realize something is fucked up with your reasoning — the point you set out to make?

I realized I may have shamed our daughter, just as the The Button is designed to shame its participants.

I wrote her an email this morning apologizing if she felt I did when I lost it after she told me she was auditioning for the game. I explained my intention was to protect her, educate her from the dangers of predatory online content. She clearly failed to understand the broader consequences of signing up for, or even frequently watching the exploitative game show.

‘Game show’ my ass. Nothing playful about The Button. I wanted to protect my beautiful baby from being publicly shamed.

Some raw facts (I didn’t iterate to our daughter, but likely should):

  • Social media addiction amplifies low self-esteem leading to higher rates of depression and suicide, especially in her age group.
  • Watching and engaging with shaming, bullying, predatory, and exploitative content increases low self-esteem, depression and suicide rates.
  • The development team of ignorant, arrogant, short-sighted, self-serving slime, AKA, the Cut: David Alvarez, Blaine Ludy, Marina Taylor (former), and Desmond Vieg, are making bank on what they call “a social experiment.”

‘Experiment?’ Get real! No science. No controls. These parasites are profiting from exploiting shame and destroying self-esteem of young people establishing their self-images. How ugly is that!

Regardless of my faulty approach of admonishing our daughter for signing up for The Button, my heart was in the right place. The Cut developers are clearly heartless. Would they entice their own kids into some twisted social ‘experiment’ for their profit? I pray they never have children. Narcissists generally make suck parents.

I’m ashamed, feel I failed as a mom that my daughter signed up to be on The Button, or even chooses to spend one minute of her life’s time watching it, essentially promoting it with her views. I thought I taught our kids to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Parenting the perils of the internet seems a constant work-in-progress now, coming up against social platforms luring kids in like the Pied Piper, and addicting them like Purdue Pharma with OxyContin.

The Cut founders are young, naive, arrogant, and ignorant in the extreme. (So is most social media, from Insta to Snap that blows away your life’s time). Ugly games like The Button teaches watchers and participants it’s OK to torment, mock, insult, shame people, for profit.

The Button creators get richer with every hit to their “mean‑spirited,” “cruel,” “superficial,” “shallow,” YouTube channel. And ‘Seen by millions’ if you join their cast of fools won’t make you rich like they’re becoming on you.

Modeling cruelty spreads it. When you View or Engage with The Button, or any online game, platform, or app that makes it acceptable, (profitable, and therefore admirable) to be cruel, you are participating in becoming so.

The Fundamentals of Effective Communication

by jcafesin, posted in communication

My husband was upset with our 7-yr-old Shepherd-mix pound-hound this morning. “Ellie won’t come with me to Frisbee anymore.”

He generally takes her to the park every weekday afternoon to play. I take Ellie Maze on the weekends. I stand at the top of the hill and hurl the disk as far as I can to get her running. She needs the daily workout.

“I had to take her in your car again to get her to go.” He paused, glared at our dog laying on her fluffy blanket near the kitchen table. She stared back at him then looked at me. “I get she wanted you to take her, not me.” His pout made it clear he felt dissed. “I take her 5 days a week and somehow that’s not good enough.”

My beautiful Maze is a brat, to everyone but me. Raised by four adults—two grown kids, my husband and me—all placate to her desires since we adopted her at just 8 wks.

“I don’t know why she gravitates to you,” my DH said. “We all take care of this dog, but you’re her Alpha. Clearly,” he added, looking down at El. “Is it just because you trained her?”

“I was on her more than anyone else, but we all trained her. Give a dog what they need, and consistently express what you need from them, and it’s really not hard to communicate.”

“For you. You’re like the Dog Whisperer,” he said, and still believes it.

“I’m not. All you gotta do is talk with them, like I do with you and the kids. Communication is the key, and easy with a dog. Dogs never ‘mature’ beyond toddlers. Expectations are simple, limited. Dogs want to please. So I wanna please them. Perfect synergy—mutual respect.”

“I talk to this dog all the time,” he defended.

I shook my head. “Not so much. You talk at her, give her commands, or praise her prowess or cuteness.”

“You do too!” he attacked.

“Yeah, I do. Who could resist that face?” I said, looking at Ellie, her rocket ears up, her big brown eyes fixed on me. “But at Frisbee, I talk to her—tell her where I’m throwing it, when to take off to get it, ask if she wants to wait before the next toss. And she does, a lot, especially after we’ve been playing a while. So, we wait. She stands by me or leans against me panting, and drooling.” I flashed a smile, but my DH didn’t acknowledge it, so I continued. “I’ve asked her to circle me when she’s ready for the next catch, and now she does. Didn’t take her long to learn. Frisbee’s her game. I let her lead, respond to her needs. That’s why she wants me to take her.”

“Last Sunday, when you couldn’t take her, she just laid on her blanket instead of going to Frisbee. I told her to come over and over but she wouldn’t move.” He looked at our dog and Ellie’s huge ears drooped. “She didn’t come, until you commanded her to go with me.”

“But I didn’t command her. I explained I’d hurt my back, and that I couldn’t take her, even though I usually do on weekends. I told her she wouldn’t get to play at all if she didn’t go with you. I looked her in the eyes, told her I was sorry and acknowledged her disappointment, as I would with anyone I let down.”

He looked at Ellie. She looked at him, ears drooping, then back at me, rocket ears up, her fixed stare connecting us. Then she got up and came to me for strokes of approval.

It is known that from birth until 8 to 10 yrs old our foundation is laid—our personality, patterns of learning, observing—how we interpret what we see, our identity are all established in early childhood.

Dogs imprint faster. In about a year most dogs are locked into behavior patterns they’ll carry into adulthood. Ellie’s been [over]active since we got her. Vet called her a ‘high-energy dog.’

I’m imprinted on El’s psyche as her Alpha, like I am on our kids’ because I’ve talked with them endlessly, sung to them, with them, constantly. Music is a fantastic conduit! Preschool through middle school, I picked them up daily, planned activities, camps, sports, scouts. We talked about everything, no holds barred, sharing details I’d never have told my mother. I was, and still am their Alpha.

Just like our dog.

Ellie Maze will never grow intellectually beyond a 3 yr old child, topping out. But toddlers feel and express compassion, assert independence, understand rules and words by their tenor, if not their direct meaning. They bond to family, as El has made us her pack.

Most Sundays I make breakfast while my husband reads the NYT aloud. In the column ‘Social Qs,’ 99% of Philip Galanes advice: TALK TO THEM. ‘Tell your partner/mom/friend/neighbor/[dog] how you feel, what you need, and why. Then listen to their point of view, and compromise if necessary to preserve the relationship.’

The desire to communicate, instead of just get your way, is paramount. I’ve raised three dogs and two kids. They’ve raised me too, helped me feel seen, heard, respected through constant communication. While El’s needs are simpler, we all share real feelings, desires, hopes, disappointments, even in one another.

We don’t Defend, Deny, Attack, Retreat (DDAR) when confronted. For the most part, we listen, anticipate and respond to each other’s needs/desires. We don’t shut down and leave when challenged. We talk it outuntil we harbor no internalized anger or resentment. While my feelings for and commitment to my kids is far greater than my dog, my love for Ellie is also without reservation.

Our dog does not DDAR when we rebuke her behavior. She learns, and adapts for the most part, as my kids do for me, and I for them. And while Ellie Maze may have stopped maturing at the age of most toddlers, we have established mutual trust and respect. Like the kids and me, Ellie and I are a safe harbor for each other. I’m still working on effective communication with my husband of 30 yrs.

Reaching Acceptance

by jcafesin, posted in grief

For anyone experiencing grief from loss…

The fetus inside me, my potential daughter, was diagnosed XXX from a tissue sample taken during an amniocentesis my 14th week of pregnancy. We’d named her Sierra, since she made it past the first trimester, after losing two of the triplets in utero the first month.

I’d had three pregnancy losses before the triplets. I was in my late 30s, maybe too late for kids I feared, which is a pedestrian way of saying I was scared out of my fucking mind I’d never have them. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted children. Sierra was wanted.

My 15th week of pregnancy another ultrasound showed us our daughter inside me. “The ghost in the machine,” my husband had said quietly. By then we’d decided raising a child — ill from birth who’d likely never survive to adulthood — was beyond our financial, parental, and emotional capabilities.

After the abortion my husband was driving us home on the icy road and I started shaking. Then I threw up all over myself, the passenger seat and the floor. We figured it was the anesthesia wearing off but it continued for days. I threw up most everything I ate. I hardly slept. I had a debilitating back ache — like someone was drilling a hole into my lower back with a power tool. And I could not stop crying.

I’ve been a staunch pro-choice supporter since I found out what it meant. Women must retain or be given back the RIGHT to control our bodies, especially since an est. 33% of men leave the woman to care for the child alone. Regardless, I’d never had an abortion, and the events of that day kept replaying, looping in my head — from crossing the line of protesters with the aid of private police hired by the clinic, to the procedure, which I was semi-conscious for throughout, and was as horrific as it sounds.

A week later my back was still killing me, waking me at night. I couldn’t sit still during the day. I figured I deserved the pain for what I’d done. The loss of my daughter was crushing. Regret consumed me. I didn’t deserve to have kids anymore. I’d wanted her so badly but was too afraid of losing her too young, of watching her suffer with little we could do to help her. I was afraid we couldn’t afford her quality care. I was afraid… And I hated myself for letting my fear rule me.

I cried waking each morning to my empty womb, then several times a day and into a restless night’s sleep through the holidays. I got up many times at night, and since I’m allergic to aspirin I paced the living room to assuage my back pain. I couldn’t sit in a car for long to go to family celebrations, and didn’t have the bandwidth to put on a face for them. Instead we stayed home and I painted an old army footlocker of my father’s in coat after coat of thick black lacquer. Took days after Christmas for the doctor to get back to my husband about the state of his wife. He prescribed me some pain medication for my back, and bed rest, and told me I’d start to feel better in a few days.

I didn’t. Days, weeks, months went by and I could not stop crying. I took the prescribed meds and it helped my back but not my state of mind. Several months after the abortion I went back to consulting and took on marketing campaigns, one of which was Toys R Us. I broke down in my car in the parking lot of the agency I’d just signed contracts, and cried throughout the two-week project in my home office. Work was not distracting enough for the self-loathing rhetoric inside my head.

Six months later and the Concord MA landscape was flush with greenery. It was my first full summer there and compared to the gray, cold winter, it was beautiful, but I didn’t really see it. It was humid, sticky, unlike California’s dry heat. It was buggy, full of mosquitos. It poured from thunderstorms and flooded our basement every time. Beyond my daily crucifixion, a gnawing hope lingered that I’d get pregnant again, so I continued working out to keep my body fit, but that was about it. We stopped going out to dinner because when I ate it was hard to swallow. I had no interest in going to the movies, seeing friends or family. Road trips stopped. Singing stopped. Listening to music stopped. If I got pregnant again, no matter what, I’d keep the baby.

I didn’t get pregnant again in the following six months. My husband and I looked into adoption. We attended a China Adoption With Love seminar, and left cautiously excited. Sort of. The black cloud did not lift. I still woke crying, and wept in quick bursts throughout most days, and often for longer in the night. My husband was rightfully concerned and asked me to see a therapist. I’ve seen many in my lifetime, starting when my mom sent me to one when I was 13. None have helped me [even remotely] to better navigate my world. I didn’t need to cry to some psychologist who’s job it is to be supportive. My husband, in his weird way, was trying to be. He’d experienced the loss of Sierra more as a matter of course — we’d decided to terminate. Move on.

I could not move on. I could not go back and do it different. Stuck in purgatory, I agreed to see a psychiatrist when my husband insisted I “do something.” I’d never seen one before, only LMHCs and LMFTs, none of which were doctors. Maybe they could prescribe something to help me stop crying all the time. Something safe for pregnancy…just in case.

A well-groomed, graying hair, bearded man in his early 60s shook my hand and introduced himself when I entered his office.

I sat on the leather couch across from his swivel chair. I’d had no contact with the man until right then as his front desk arranged the appointment. And I had no idea how psychiatry worked. Should I begin with my parents, or should I start with why I was there and what I wanted from the sessions, assuming there’d be more than one. Likely many, as therapists hope for.

“Tell me why you’re here, and what you hope to get from meeting with me,” the doctor said.

And I launched into my pregnancy with Sierra after losing three others in utero before the triplets. Took me half the session to get through the abortion since I was sobbing so hard. The psychiatrist wrote on his pad, and provided a box of tissues, but seemed unmoved by my hysteria. When I finally shut up and calmed down a bit he asked me again what I hoped to get from coming to him.

“An anti-depressant that’s safe in case I get pregnant again.”

“I’m not going to give you drugs,” he said flatly. “None are without risk if you’re trying to get pregnant.”

He gave me five, 45-minute sessions. I cried, a lot, at first. We talked about grief, about unfulfilled expectations, about loss of self, my growing thoughts of suicide — turn off, feel nothing ever again. Our last session started out as usual with me describing my week. I’d been crying less, which was good. But I continued to visualize methods to commit suicide, vacillating between a drug overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning.

“This is our last session,” the doc said, legs crossed, his pad in his lap. Expressionless.

I stared at him sitting ‘properly’ in his swivel chair with one foot on the ground. Assessing me. I’m not sure if I was glaring at him but I didn’t look away. He was just like therapists, albeit way less supportive, though more informative with studies and statistics. And he was ending our sessions when he hadn’t helped me at all! “But I don’t feel any better,” I blurted. Seriously, what was this guy’s benefit-add for his exorbitant hourly rate.

“I’m not a therapist, here to make you feel better.” He paused, and continued to watch me. “The hard truth is it’s going to hurt every time you recall the abortion, or think about the potential child you chose not to have. It is going to hurt. As we’ve discussed, you’ll never know if you’d have lost her in utero, like you have all your other pregnancies; or you’d spared her a lifetime of hardship. Regret and self-doubt will feel overwhelming at times. When she crosses your mind in the future, it’s going to hurt. Hopefully a bit less over time, but every time you remember the events of this period in your life, it is going to hurt.” He still did not look away. But I did.

“I know,” I whispered, bawling again. “But it’s been over a year and I’m still crying all the time. I don’t know how to let it go. ‘Move on,’ like my husband has,” I said bitterly.

“Each of us processes grief in our own way and time. Regardless how long it takes you to ‘feel better’ over this loss, you’ll likely face many painful events in your life. The trick is not to let them stop you from living. Being alive means feeling — happy, sad, good, bad, whatever. And feelings are transient, sparked by circumstance. You can leave here today, go home and hang yourself in your doorway. I certainly can’t stop you.” He paused, to let it sink in, I assumed. “Or you can go live your life forward, move through the process of grieving, and further away from this loss with each new experience. Biologically, you’re still fertile, and seemingly have no issue getting pregnant. If you do, may it be healthy,” he said softly, his eyes stayed fixed on mine.

“Doesn’t matter if it is,” I proclaimed through sobs, but to this day I can’t tell you that I fully meant it knowing the chances of chromosomal damage during gestation happening again with my advanced age. “I’m going to have kids. Either birthing them or adopting them, I’m going to raise kids,” I said definitively, and in that moment the black cloud began lifting.

“I believe we’ve gone as far as we can together.”

I never saw him again. Clearly, I did not commit suicide that day. I had two healthy children — our son ten months after that last session, and our daughter two and a half years after that. As devastating the loss of Sierra, the pervasive black hole inside has filled with the inconceivably humbling love I get to feel for my kids.

Painful events will follow joyful ones throughout this process of living. Twenty plus years later, the psychiatrist’s words still resonate, helping me get through the tough times in my life now knowing that beyond recurring periods of darkness there will be times of brilliant bright light.

What Makes a Believer

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Are you a FOLLOWER or INFLUENCER?

The 92 yr old mother of a friend is getting kicked out of her assisted living apt. Developers convinced the Seattle City Council they should be allowed to ‘update’ the residence of old people and turn it into ‘workforce’ housing for the tech industry. They are taking over hundreds, if not thousands of older folks’ homes, the apts they’ve lived in for over two decades.

What happened to us? When did we stop caring about anyone but ourselves?

I didn’t grow up this way. Born 15+ yrs after WW2, during the ‘Golden Age of economic growth,’ there was a 20 (or so) year respite where people actually cared about their neighbors, their community, this country. Not so much now.

Money. Money. MONEY is all anyone seems to care about. But why? What changed? What happened?

Housing was well constructed in the 1950s through mid-60s. American Lumber Standard Committee (ALSC) sanctioned 2 x 4” posts cut to 1½ x 3½” — a profit grab for the lumber industry — making new builds far less sturdy. Today’s contractors build post-frame as much as 18 to 24” apart, again to increase their already absurd profits. Earthquakes, fires, floods, severe weather, these new developments put up crap housing that require constant repair with even mild storms.

My mother-in-law turned 90 last April. She’s on Medicare, having Social Security taxes taken out of every paycheck for 60 years. These payments were supposed to give her medical coverage in old age. Since her 90th, Medicare will no longer cover her colonoscopies, or mostly any preventative procedure. Our govt wants her to die. Like NOW. She’s done giving up half her paycheck to SS, and our govt has no need for her. Our (not MY) president, and the majority of our congressmen and senators don’t care they OWE HER for the PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE they’ll get the rest of their lives.

Depressing? You bet! It’s going to get worse, so if you can’t handle the TRUTH go back to scrolling Insta or streaming Netflix, and stay blissfully ignorant pretending you’ll never get old and have to deal with the ugly, greedy TRUTH coming at ya.

Got parents? Even if you are not old, they’ll be getting there. What happens to them when they can’t afford assisted living, or there isn’t any because of the unrelenting greed of today’s development industry? Even better, what happens to YOU when you have to lay out your salary to cover your parents aging. Or is that out too? You’ll let ’em wallow in filth and neglect?

How did we get to this horrible greedy place, this place where half this country voted in the second coming of Hitler who made it very clear he only cares about himself and making the rich richer?

Have we always been this way — GREEDY and IGNORANT? According to Stanley Milgram’s study, we always have. While Self-interest is part of our nature — the greed — most of us are fundamentally followers. Influencers, like actors, models, musicians; and authority figures, like doctors, therapist, even politicians draw BELIEVERS. We accept, even participate in bad medicine, injustice, inequity, intolerance, racism, sexism, sometimes murder and even slaughter of millions following the status quo.

Shortly after WW2, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor did an ‘obedience’ experiment. (Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngGqBOLWaI)

Milgram was a Jew. He wanted to find out what motivated Germans to turn on neighbors. Why would 90% of German citizens allow the slaughter of children on the same soccer team as their kids? Or passively watch the displacement and murder of Jews they once shared meals, holidays, and special occasions? Why would Germans agree, and even support genocide, rape, disembowelment while still alive, torture beyond any sense of sanity? Milgram wanted to know.

The MILGRAM EXPERIMENT, as it’s now known, revealed some striking and profound truths about Germans, and all of us.

It PROVED that humans are SHEEP, highly obedient to authority figures and willing to harm others when instructed to do so.

Humans are sheep, follow the flock, the crowd, influencers, salesmen, priests.

We FOLLOW because it’s easier than THINKING.

We blindly follow our parents’ beliefs in fantasies like God, or Jesus, with no proof either exist, or evidence that Christ was ever born. None whatsoever, though tax rolls have been found at Christ’s (ostensible) time, without mention of Jesus at all.

We adopt behavior that even we don’t like — that’s not the best of us — with justifications like “everyone does it!” Engaged with your cellphone while driving today? Most who do, don’t THINK they’re really increasing their odds of killing themselves or someone else by upwards of 25%.

Intoxicants, from drink to weed will not cure cancer. Alcohol is toxic for the body. Smoking weed is carcinogenic — cancer causing. And mental ‘health’ pharms are addictive and eat the crap out of your liver, among a host of other side effects. Hey, but everyone does them, right?

What Makes a Leader?

While Milgram’s experiment revealed most humans are essentially sheep, following a herd, whether family, friends, priests, or govts, SOME PEOPLE, a few outliers, are not. In fact, they lead the human flock.

Hitler did. Trump does. Oligarchs, like Musk, are leaders to many who are delusional enough to believe they too can become a billionaire. On the other side, Susan B. Anthony, FDR, MLK all moved this nation towards a more equitable country.

Are you a SHEEP or LEADER? If you’re thinking: I’M A LEADER, you’re likely lying to yourself. Humans lie to ourselves (and others) a LOT! Like following, lying is part of our nature.

WATCH the Milgram experiment. The odds are you’d be one of the 65% who tortured an unseen man with electric shocks to death, simply because someone politely asked you to do so. Not threatening, not aggressive. Just “Please continue,” was what the admin in the experiment asked. And the 65% claimed they were just ‘following directions’ (sheepishly) allowing them to deliver shocks that were lethal.

What happened to us, to humanity to turn us into greedy, self-absorbed monsters?

Perhaps we’ve always been this way. Or maybe not. Maybe there was a time humanity worked for the benefit of the group instead of just the SELF. I don’t know. What I do know is Milgram’s experiment gave us a window into our own psyche that PROVES humans are fundamentally sheep.

Armed with this knowledge, we can recognize (THINK: examine) when we’re blindly going along with the flock. And we can choose not to.

 — 

Atheist in Christian America

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Atheists are worse than terrorists in USA…

I was finishing the morning dishes when I saw the strobe of police lights out my kitchen window as several cop cars pulled up to a house across the street from ours. I picked up my 19-month-old son out of the highchair, held him against my ballooning belly, and hauled my 7-month pregnant self out the front door to check out the happening.

A warm, sunny morning, I went down to the end of the cul-de-sac and met up with a few of my neighbors gathered there to witness the commotion. We had chosen our home in an East Bay suburb of San Francisco because it promised good public schools, and gave the impression of a safe, friendly neighborhood in which to raise our kids. We’d moved in a month earlier and no residents had come over to welcome us. I joined the group of three, introduced myself and my son, and then asked what was going on as I watched cops move in and out and around the house across the street like black ants.

“Robbery,” a small, plump woman with a bad blond dye job in her mid-40s said. “Shelly said they got their laptops, the Xbox, some jewelry, and all the guns, but that was it.”

“Bet they were going after the guns,” another woman, taller, but also with a bad blond dye job added. “Bill loved showing off his gun collection.” She pursed her lips and looked back at four kids all under 10 in front of the house at the end of the block, presumably one or more being hers.

There was a moment of awkward silence, then the remaining woman, with what looked like naturally auburn hair, asked me to repeat my last name.

When I told her again, she said, “Oh, you’re the Jewish couple then? I heard there was a Jewish family that moved in recently.” She smiled cordially and practically giggled as she stared at me in wonderment.

Now all the women were staring at me. They each wore a tight-lipped grin. It was clear that they were tickled by the idea of living near Jews. Unlike L.A. or New York, the Bay area’s Jewish population is comparatively small. Though our last name was often mistaken for Jewish, its derivation is German and isn’t always a Jewish moniker. The woman’s assumption was ignorant, but typical, especially in areas where Jews are a novelty.

“Actually, we’re Atheists. We don’t practice any religion.” I tried to sound casual in my reveal, as so often my lack of religious orientation is met with disdain.

Blank stares. Total silence. It was like I had just said that we were registered child molesters. My words hung like lead in the dead air until the auburn-haired woman broke the silence.

“You know,” she tried to sound casual. “I read this article in Cosmo the other day about Atheists. They’re actually supposed to be non-violent people. The writer pointed out that we never hear about Atheists killing or kidnapping innocents, bombing buildings, or hijacking planes.”

The vacuum that followed her comment made it clear that the new neighbors would have preferred we were practicing Jews, or Mormons, or Buddhists, or even Muslims at that point.

“You mean you don’t participate in the holidays?” the small blond woman asked, mortified. “Not even Christmas?” she said in a babyish voice to my son in my arms who stared at her like she was an off-world alien, then reached out and tried to grab hold of her straw-like hair.

“No. Not even Christmas.” I assured her and grabbed hold of my son’s tiny hand and kissed it.

“Well, Christmas isn’t a religious holiday,” she said with certainty. As absurd as her comment was, I hear it all the time. I refrained from reminding her that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, the very foundation of Christianity.

“We have five nights of winter presents which compensates quite nicely,” I explained. “And we celebrate birthdays, special occasions, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and so forth.”

She bobbed her head up and down, but I could tell I’d already lost her. She looked towards the kids with pursed lips of concern. And I got that she was afraid of me. I was the anti-Christ, the infidel, the soulless. Though her fear was unwarranted, there isn’t a religious, or even self-proclaimed “spiritual” person I can recall that I don’t get the same bounce from when I reveal I’m an Atheist. No God? No values. It’s common [religious] wisdom (rhetoric), right?

I didn’t set out to set myself apart. My brief stint in Sunday school was forced upon me at 6 yrs old until I was 13, when my parents had to acquiesce to my unshakable conviction that there is no God. My mother spent the rest of her life convinced that I would come back to religion when I ‘grew up,’ got married and had kids. But the certainty of a godless universe, one ruled by entropy, not empathy, has resonated with me as far back as I can remember, and has not altered since I declared my independence from religion at 5 when I assured my grandmother she was insisting I say nightly prayers to no one.

My husband and I have chosen to raise our kids without religion. Instead of the indoctrination we had to endure, we have given our children the opportunity to discover their own spirituality.

The cop cars left, one right after the other, my son now fidgeting in my arms, pulling at my hair and trying to grab the thin, 1” long gold bar dangling from the small gold loop through my pierced ear. I managed to evade his tiny hand, but the weight of him on my swollen belly was exaggerating the pressure of my daughter kicking me from inside.

“Well, I guess the show’s over,” the taller, athletic blond woman said, decked in dark gray leggings and a tight bright pink sleeveless T.

We exchanged departure pleasantries, and I took my son home. The next day I was gardening in the front yard and two kids, a boy and girl, maybe 7 and 9, came riding by on their bikes. My son ran to the curb, waving wildly to greet them. They pulled up close to where he stood, and then the boy kicked my son in the belly and screamed “Satan lover!” My son fell on his butt and sat on the sidewalk crying hysterically.

I was horrified. “Oh my god, are you crazy,” I yelled as I went to attend to my son. I saw them ride down the block towards the cul-de-sac and disappear into a garage next to the house that had been robbed.

I spoke to my husband about the event later that evening. At dinner, he suggested I go talk to the parents of the two kids on bikes since he didn’t see the interaction, and someone had to stay home with our son. I suggested he go since I was afraid I’d say something offensive in my outrage at their children’s behavior. Before either of us could leave, there was a knock on our front door.

The small straw-haired blond woman and her short, pudgy husband stood on our porch with pursed lips. “I hear you had an interaction with my kids today,” she said to me, her anger so visceral it felt like her eyes were shooting bullets into mine. “You cussed at them and called them ‘crazy,’” she said, now practically spitting as she spoke.

I was floored, literally drop-jawed unable to respond.

My husband invited them in to talk and calmly closed the door behind them, all of us now gathered in our small entryway. He invited them into the kitchen, led them in, and offered them something to drink but both of them refused. I followed, focusing on breathing and slowing my rapid heart rate.

“It is my understanding that your son kicked our son when he was riding by on his bike this afternoon, which is what likely provoked my wife’s response,” my husband said.

“My son would never do that,” the little woman insisted. “We are good Christians, and my kids are good kids, raised with sense yours sorely lacks when he goes running after them on their bikes.”

“Our son is a year and a half old,” I practically screamed at her over our dinner table that we were all standing around. “He’s not running after anyone. He was waving at your kids to say hello! And I never cussed at your kids. Your children’s behavior was disgusting, and you shouldn’t be here defending them. You should be at home disciplining them and teaching them wrong from right!”

“Don’t you dare tell me how to raise moral children,” the woman practically spat, “Like you would know,” she said and narrowed her eyes at me then stomped out of our kitchen, down the hallway, yanked open our front door, and left.

Her husband, silent until right then said, “I’m sorry,” to both my husband and I and followed his wife out.

A couple of years into living at our suburban home, we discovered most every household in our neighborhood attended the same church, as did the families at our kids’ elementary school. Both children and adult basketball, tennis, and baseball teams, and most neighborhood gatherings, from potlucks to local politics, were sponsored by this church. Over the years we’ve found their priests often influence the election of city officials by throwing their support behind their preferred candidate. They’ve ‘guided’ the decisions made by our mayor and city council members regarding the welfare of all 85,000 residents, Christian, and not. Proposed housing developments, to strip malls to the stores allowed in them are all monitored by this church, rejecting cannabis dispensaries but welcoming tobacco smoking lounges, sporting goods selling guns, and bars. Public school policies, from the books our kids get to read, to the subjects they study are influenced by this conservative church and its members. While these same churchgoers will loudly defend their 2nd Amendment right to ‘bear arms,’ none of them support or even acknowledge our 1st Amendment right to keep the church out of state and local affairs.

Every December several neighbors adorn their front lawns with scenes of Mother Mary birthing Baby Jesus. Christmas lights and displays go up in late November and stay up well into the new year on most homes. Santa on his sled pulled by five reindeer is attached to the roof of the small blond mom’s home. A speaker blaring, “Ho ho ho” fills the cul-de-sac from sunset until after 9:00 every night.

Since that first encounter over a decade ago, most of our neighbors have ignored me when dropping our kids off or picking them up from school. The moms and dads are curt with me when they see me volunteering at school events. They do not acknowledge me or my husband at the store or in local restaurants. They do not include our family in their neighborhood parties. Their children ignore our kids in passing and have excluded and bullied our kids in and out of school.

When we moved here, I didn’t stop to consider the religious leanings of the community. As an atheist, in a monotheistic society, wherever I live I’m on the fringe. I am deeply saddened that my children are being ostracized because of our lack of religious identity. In allowing them to define their own spirituality, I fear I have inadvertently set them up for rejection, and condemned them to the fringes, which is a very lonely place to live. But I do not foresee bringing religion into our home. My husband and I will not teach our children what we do not believe, and both find fundamentally corrupt, corrosive, and detrimental to humanity’s survival.

This upcoming holiday season, in a brief lapse of reason, I thought of throwing a Hanukkah party and inviting the neighborhood. If they needed us to be something, we could pretend to be Jewish. But the thing is, I am proud of who we are, and how we live — the moral compass that guides us. And I’m equally proud that we are raising our children with the freedom to practice any religion they choose, or none at all.

R.I.P. Information Hwy

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I’m watching The Politician on Netflix while working out. Deep into the second season, the scene unfolds on a teen and mom in their kitchen, arguing about which state senator to vote for in the upcoming New York election.

Teen is a first-time voter, just 18, and wants to vote for the 24 yr old male candidate running on the Green ticket, vs. the mid-aged female 20 yr incumbent, virtually unchallenged in every election till now.

“Boomer,” the child mocks her mother who is listing the contributions of the older incumbent against the sole climate platform the 24 yr old is running on. “The world is gonna end in 10 yrs, Mom.”

“I am barely a boomer, okay?” the mom defends. “So don’t throw that shit at me,” she says. “And the world is not going to end in 10 yrs, Jayne!” She goes on and lists all she does for her daughter, the vegan cooking, the composting, and even the hyper-vigilant recycling her child insists on. “And still, I am the problem, according to you.”

“Not YOU, Mom. People your age.”

Right about now I feel my body tense as I run on the machine. I AM her mother’s age.

“Let me tell ya something, Jayne. People YOUR age think you know everything and you are fucking naive. When I was your age, I thought I knew everything too.”

“We’re not naive, Mom. We’re INFORMED. You had, what, like two newspapers, three networks. I’ve got a SUPER COMPUTER in my pocket.”

She is, of course, referring to her cellphone, and, in fact, showing the viewer how naive this child really is.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t come back at Jayne. Mom doesn’t know (nor the writers of the show apparently) that the SUPER COMPUTER in both their pockets, well, isn’t informing them of anything but what they already believe. So, in effect, it is MANIPULATING this ignorant, yet rather arrogant child, and anyone else who believes they have a SUPER COMPUTER in their cellphone.

The cellphone you all carry around, (as I don’t have a smartphone, so really, it is all of you), is a RECOMMENDATION ENGINE. It isn’t INFORMING you, it is RECOMMENDING you read, watch, buy, and even think about what Google, Facebook, Instagram…etc., wants you to. Every social platform you are on, every YouTube vid you watch, every document you SEARCH for, shows you what they think you will be RECEPTIVE to. Marketing pros know that it’s off-putting to get information opposed to what we already believe, regardless of the truth in the information. And they want to endear themselves to customers, not piss us off.

Today’s internet is NOT unlimited access to unfettered information like the world wide web once was. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything through SEARCH that isn’t already somewhere in your belief system. Searching for anything now, you will only get back what Google thinks you should see, to manipulate you to buy the offerings, or into the messaging of their affiliate marketers. A crystal-clear example of this can be seen in the Netflix film The Great Hack. Russia paid Google and Facebook fortunes in ad campaigns pushing the conservative Republican agenda to get Trump elected.

Now, the internet is a MARKETING ENGINE to make these social media platforms money. Every time you log onto Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Google, they ‘scrape’ your posts, simultaneously putting ‘cookies’ on your mobile and laptop to follow you wherever you go on the net, and in real life. Your mobile has an accelerometer in them, which says how fast you are moving, and GPS to inform Google and their like where you are on the planet, revealing when and where you shop, what you buy, how much you spend, what you read, watch, glance at, or frequently visit.

Machine Learning, Natural Language Process, Deep Learning, AI, are all software processes that analyze all that data from trillions of posts, texts, IMs, and searches, and then CORRELATE that data for patterns of behavior through COLLABORATIVE FILTERING.

COLLABORATIVE FILTERS [à la] Wikipedia:

Collaborative filtering is a method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting preferences or taste information from many users (collaborating).

In other words, gathering and filtering your data from the net tells Google and Facebook what you (and those like you) will likely buy, or what rhetoric you’ll likely believe in the future. Then these social platforms slam you with marketing targeted AT You, not “For You,” as they claim.

They tell you it’s to HELP YOU find things you’ll like quicker. But this is a flat-out lie. They want to SELL YOU offerings and ideas supported by their affiliate marketers (like Russia).

Google SEARCH is the only way to find anything now, locally or globally, since phone books don’t exist anymore. But Google is ONLY returning the businesses buying the most ad space and spending the most money on their platforms. I used to get pages and pages of returns on any given subject 10 yrs ago. Now I only get a few pages before Google says, “We have omitted some entries very similar to those already displayed.” And while they do indicate you can search the omissions, this too is a joke. Google simply will not give you information that they feel you don’t need (and won’t serve their agenda), based on your internet and cellphone usage history.

My 19 yr old daughter, and most of her friends, are on the same page as Jayne in The Politician. They are simply ignorant of what it is they are addicted to, and how their phones are manipulating them to THINK, FEEL and ACT the way these social platforms and their affiliate marketers want them to. She is SURE that “no one is manipulating ME, Mom!” She “knows” when she’s being hit with ads, and she “just ignores them.”

BULLSHIT.

My daughter, you, me, can’t ignore them when we don’t even know they are happening while we IM through Facebook on our mobile.

Example:

Mary is IMing a good friend on Facebook, whining about her marriage “in crisis.”

Facebook’s algorithms are scraping her and her friend’s IM for SENTIMENT ANALYSIS to find out where Mary might be vulnerable to purchase something…anything really, as FB has advertisers that sell just about everything.

The next ad Mary sees on her mobile is for a singles dating site. The ad is targeted at divorcees, showing an older woman having fun with a stunning man, and the copy says, “Your second chance at true love.” In a few short sentences, the copy describes the relationship you’ll find on their site like a Cinderella story, the evil stepmom played by the partner’s spouse.

A while later, Mary goes on to YouTube, and the next series of ads she sees vacillate from singles dating sites to divorce lawyers. The ads appear on the side of her emails, and in her Instagram feed, and most anywhere she goes online.

Mary never mentioned divorcing her husband when IMing her friend. She’d not even thought of it, really. In fact, she’s frequently sounded off about her relationship to friends through IM, as many do. And it isn’t the first time Mary has gotten these dating and lawyer ads. It’s been going on a long time now, one ad after the other every time she even posts a back-handed joke about marriage in general, regardless if through her phone or laptop. And after this last fight with her husband, well, like the ads keep saying, Mary deserves more! Like the ads say, she can find someone better than her husband. And like the ads say, a divorce will, “Open her life to the possible!”

These ads appear whenever Mary is feeling vulnerable about her marriage. (Marketing is an iterative process.) And instead of looking to make it work with her husband, after a while all Mary wants to do is divorce and open her life up to new possibilities.

To Google, Facebook, Mary’s divorce is a WIN! Their algorithms and the engineers who code them don’t know they’ve torn apart a family, for their profit. The software did its job and rewarded their advertisers. Some lawyer who advertises on their site just got themselves a client. Some dating app that spends millions annually in affiliate marketing on their platform just got a new subscriber. Multiply that with the hundreds of thousands of businesses doing affiliate marketing on the net, and you have, well, today’s internet.

NOT a SUPER COMPUTER. And no longer, “The Information Highway.”

But simply a RECOMMENDATION ENGINE, a marketing tool in which YOU are a PRODUCT of the platforms you frequent.

We Are What We DO

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My 10 yr old daughter asked me what Ego meant, one of her vocabulary words for the week.

I laughed. “Good question. What do you think it means?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I knew, Mom.”

“Well, use it in a sentence, in context. You’ve heard the word enough to have an inkling what it means. And an inkling is as close as you’re going to get to defining an abstract like Ego.”

Her brows narrowed and I could see her pondering in the rearview mirror.

“My ego got hurt when Ms. Brown told me I was singing flat this morning.” She paused. “And she really said that.”

“Sorry. We’ll get back to that. OK? So, Ego is a feeling then?”

“Well, sorta, I guess. But not exactly. It’s more like how we see ourselves. To me, I’m a good singer. You can hurt my feelings by being mean to me. But you hurt my ego when you tell me I’m not how I think I am.”

“Do you think you were flat this morning in glee?”

“Well, yeah. When I listened, I wasn’t hitting the notes sometimes. I guess I’m not such a good singer.”

“Ah, but you could be.” I glimpsed her rolling her eyes in the rearview. “Being a good singer doesn’t happen inside your head. What is the only way to get good at anything?” (One of my many canonical refrains.)

“Practice,” she huffed.

I sighed. “My beautiful daughter, I think your definition of Ego is excellent — it’s how we see ourselves. Ego is an idea, even an ideal — who we want to be, but generally are not. We are what we do, my dear,” I repeat another of my refrains. “If you want to be a good singer, you’re going to have to practice becoming one.”

“So you don’t think I’m a good singer?” she asked woefully.

“We’re still defining Ego here, right?”

“Yeah. And my ego says I’m a good singer now, Mom. So is ego always fake, just pretend inside our heads?”

“You tell me. Do you think our ego ever gives us an accurate depiction — paints a real picture of how we operate, how we act, what we do in the real world?”

“Probably not.” She sighed, deflated. “Just cuz you think you’re good, or talented, or special doesn’t mean you actually are to anyone besides yourself, except if you’re famous. When you’re famous, it’s not just ego, you know you’re good.”

“Really? Let’s explore that. So, there’s a famous chef recognized for his delicious creations. As you noted, it’s not just his ego telling him he’s a good chef. He has a thriving restaurant, and 1.7 million dedicated Insta followers. He decides to create a new dish. And his customers hate the meal. The combination of flavors tastes just terrible. So, is the guy delusional that he’s a great chef—that’s just his ego talking?

My daughter considered my little tale carefully before answering. “Well, if he thought of himself as a great chef with everything he made, then that’s his ego thinking he’s good all the time, that everything he creates will be a masterpiece.”

“So then, is our ego ever an accurate depiction of ourselves?”

“I guess not. Just like there’s no such thing as smart.” She quoted another of my canonical refrains. Her bright smile in the rearview mirror lit up my world. “Smart is as smart does,” she mocks playfully. Yet another refrain we preach to our kids.

“It is not our potential, or what we believe, or believe in that defines us,” I said to my daughter as I pulled into our garage. “Regardless of what your ego says, you will never be more than the choices you make that guide the actions you take.”

We ARE what we DO.

SEX is just SEX

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

SEX is JUST SEX. It is a biological drive, a primal/base urge both genders possess (to varying degree between individuals. The urge is heightened from preteens through early 40s, and tapers with age).

SEX IS NOT LOVE, regardless of the portrayal in movies that the act of sex is profoundly loving, a spiritual meeting of minds, bodies, and souls. Having sex can be an action of love, but it isn’t with someone you’ve just met. Love takes longer and requires a lot more work than a quicky. And fucking on a granite counter top in the kitchen may look romantic, but seriously? Ouch!

AN ORGASM IS NOT LOVE. Dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, and norepinephrine — the brain releases a surge of feel-good hormones with orgasm. This Pleasure/Reward circuit that lights up our brains is encoded in our DNA — part of our evolutionary process — incentive programming to reproduce.

Consenting partners engaged in sex often equate these happy hormones with feelings of love. This is especially true for first crushes, but the notion that sex and love are synonymous is the gold standard in mainstream morality. It’s proselytized by religion, parents, and the media — ‘making love’ the climax (excuse the pun), consummating the canonical ‘happy ending.’

It is NOT an action of LOVE, in the ‘throes of passion,’ to break marriage contracts of fidelity. It is, perhaps, more egregious to nix the condom to heighten erotic stimulation without knowing the sexual health and history of your partner. These are displays of their lateral orbitofrontal cortex shutting down, blocking out all reason, abandoning all behavioral control to spark the Pleasure/Reward circuitry in the brain.

Kind of like a gorilla. (They have a hard time with complex reasoning, and predictive modeling — examining the possible consequences of their actions, like producing a child.)

Historically, men are more driven by their biology, claiming to require or desire sex 5 times more than women. However, when either gender is touched appropriately, we are equally hard-wired for stimulated free nerve ending nociceptors to trigger a flood of happy hormones.

SEX is NOT LOVE, no matter what your pastor, or TV, or your mother tells you.

LOVE is much harder to attain than an orgasm.

In fact, I can and do take care of my biological craving for intense pleasure all by myself. And heads up guys — I’ve asked hundreds of heterosexual women over the years if they have a more intense orgasm with a partner or without. It has ALWAYS been without.

From biblical times, humanity has made the act of SEX so much more than it is because the consequences can pass on disease, and create life. Even with the advent of birth control, sex is still riskier for women then men. Close to 42% of pregnancies in U.S. are unintended. Approx. 33% of children live in fatherless homes. Over 20% of dads have little or no involvement in their kid’s lives. Choosing adoption, or to terminate unwanted pregnancies — each carries their own weight, for life.

We all expect the primary parent to be the mother, even today. Common wisdom professes women are programmed to care for our children. True or social rhetoric, we generally don’t walk away, which is why women and men usually have sex for different reasons.

Women are looking for a deep[er] connection when we initiate or consent to sex. Even with hookups, most women are looking for an intimate bond, a mythical shared emotional space. Languishing with their loverin the afterglow of sex is more satisfying than the orgasm itself. We imagine the moment lasting, blossoming into a loving relationship.

SEX is just SEX. But if Desire — the expectation of happy hormones — is not satisfied, a predictable pattern of behavior generally emerges.

Sexually frustrated men typically withdraw, become more distant, passive/aggressive. They’re less malleable. Less likely to pay attention, be supportive — from helping with daily tasks, to engaging in dialog over concerns and issues. This behavior leads to further discord between partners, and less sex, perpetuating the implosion of the relationship.

Women generally don’t want to have sex when we’re upset with our partners, but most of us don’t ignore Desire. As mentioned, we simply satisfy ourselves. Infidelity is not about orgasms. They’re typically with a man who lavishes attention, praise, sometimes gifts — actions their partner is not taking — and commonly mistaken as romance.

SEX may be grounded in our biological drive to reproduce, but over millennium women have found it a useful tool, consciously, or not. (You can pretend it’s not true, but you’d be lying to you.) We’ve woven so much crap into coupling — equating fucking with love, making sex the pinnacle of romance, acceptance, and required for intimacy, we ignore the fact that these are myths. Mere social and religious constructs to mitigate the consequences of intercourse.

Rooted in biology, and our encoded Desire to evolve, SEX by no means need be 5% of the relationship when it’s good, and 95% when it’s not, as your church, temple, and social media tells you…

  • Over 18 and still a virgin?
  • You’ve been on how many dates, and you haven’t made it yet?
  • Together for X months and you only do it once a week?
  • Newlyweds? You should be humping like bunnies!
  • No sex for X means your marriage has gone stale.

Most loving, lasting relationships do not hinge on sexual frequency. Pressuring your partner to be sexually available at your whim should no longer be acceptable. Sexual Desire is dynamic — changing with circumstance, age, physicality. Over time, being there for the other andaccepting each other’s frailties garners trust. Trust generates intimacy — LOVE.

SEX can be an intensely pleasurable physical exchange between willing partners. It can be an expression of caring, a sharing, bonding experience for couples, but it will not make some rando fall in love with you. The dopamine rush from orgasm is not an emotional connection with your partner. It’s brain chemistry. More SEX will not save your marriage, or a dying relationship from poor communication. Having intercourse may defer but will not cure issues negatively affecting your partnership.

SEX is just SEX.

The Problem with 20-something Brains

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

According to Zuckerberg: “Young people are just smarter.” True or false?

I responded to an ad for a Traffic Manager position at an ad agency in San Francisco 25 years ago. Downtown, in one of those glass monoliths. Eighteenth floor. Made me nauseous being up there. I couldn’t stop thinking about an earthquake waiting for my interview.

An older guy, at least 20 years my senior, sat in the lobby with me. Mid-50s, receding hairline with only a tuft left on top, but the sides were still full, more salt than pepper. He wore a wedding ring, black slacks, and a white shirt under his gray suit jacket which did not conceal his slightly protruding belly.

We’d probably been sitting there five minutes, but it felt like twenty. Was the building swaying? Sure I must be delusional, I asked the older guy for a reality check.

“Excuse me. Hi.” I flashed my friendliest smile. “Do you feel the building…moving?”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “These buildings are designed to sway in the wind. And earthquakes too.” He gave me a shy smile, like he was sorry he brought them up when he saw my concern. “They have upwards of a five foot arch depending on height, and design, of course. Doesn’t sit well with some people. My son hates it. You one of the motion sensitive types?”

“You bet,” was all I could manage to avoid barfing.

He smiled. “Not me so much. I’m not the sensitive type. You here for the Traffic position?”

I nodded. “You?”

“Yup.” Then the guy went on a diatribe describing his education and work history, as if I was the one interviewing him. A few minutes into his years at a compact list of famous ad agencies, a young woman, maybe early twenties hiring manager/model called the guy in for his interview.

I watched them go into the all-glass conference room in the center of the open office maze. From my vantage point, I saw him sit at the end of the long table only after the woman sat. She had a tight build, silky auburn hair, and the milky skin of youth. She sat straight, but he seemed to wilt as the interview progressed.

But why? His experience was substantial, and in the exact areas required for the job. I’d been on the creative side and knew nothing about running Traffic in a large agency setting. I’d applied for the position hoping for an entree into their creative department.

Less than ten minutes later, the hot interviewer was escorting the pudgy older guy to the glass door. He gave me a basset hound nod as he passed.

I was called in next, and felt twitchy in the fishbowl of their glass conference room the entire time we were talking. I kept losing eye contact with the young Director of Digital Traffic, focusing instead on every passerby. She went through my resume with perky interest. Reviewing my portfolio, I described my primary roles in each campaign, hoping she’d get the hint and refer me to one of the impossible to reach Creative Directors on their staff.

“Are you aware you’re dressed the epitome of chic?” she asked me, which seemed very personal. I had no idea how to respond so I kinda laughed her off with a shrug.

“The black leather jacket with that maroon lace dress. Stunning. Really. Good choice. So, do you want the job, or what?”

And I would have said, ‘No, not really,’ and launched into why I was a better fit as a creative consultant, but then she told me the salary.

“$110,000 to start. Full medical. And for coming on board, there’s a $5,000 signing bonus.”

I was working my ass off for around $70k annually—getting the clients, hiring the teams, doing everything from the creative, to production, to accounting as a consultant, and paying over $500 a month for medical insurance. An annual salary over a hundred grand seemed easy money working for someone else, performing a single job function.

I told her I needed 24 hrs to think about it and I’d get back to her tomorrow.
“Well, I hope you join us,” she said as she walked me out. “I think you’d be a great asset to the team, and our agency.”

On my drive home across the Bay Bridge her words echoed. Why exactly would I be a great asset to their production team? Unlike me, the older candidate had the experience and education the agency’s ad asked for. And he surely needed the job more than I did, with a wife and at least one kid. I told the young director I’d only trafficed my own projects, but she didn’t hear that. She was too busy checking out my attire. She based my fit into the agency’s misguided ‘brand’ on my looks, and my age.

Fast forward 25 yrs…

I applied for a Marketing Copywriter position at Facebook a few years back. They rejected me. Bewildered, as I had every qualification required, I asked the HR woman why.

“We are looking for someone less qualified.” Her response.

Hmm…Less qualified. Why would that be? We’d discussed no salary expectations. The FB’s job post didn’t ask me for any. Someone at FB had looked extensively at my online portfolio, as I had a huge spike in page views, from one source, in Menlo Park. The HR woman began her personal rejection email with: “Your portfolio is amazing! However, we’re looking for someone with less experience…”

What she meant was, “We’re looking for someone younger.”

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, who is now over 40 yrs old, which, according to his own words at Stanford in 2007, makes him unemployable since “young people are just smarter.”

Why would anyone with half a brain say something so stupid? Oh, I know, at 23, he only had half a brain to work with. OK. I’ll give him ¾. No. ⅔. His parents were wealthy, and provided their kids with every opportunity for financial success.

The problem with 20-something brains— their neural connections aren’t fully established yet. Until our 30s, decision making skills, complex reasoning from navigating life experience, and regulating impulse control, are just a few of the skills young people generally lack. Additionally, different areas of our brain peak (and degrade) throughout our lives. Our brain’s raw speed data processor peaks around 19. At 23, Zucky’s was still 20-30 years away from the ability to evaluate other people’s emotional state, rendering him unable to process the complex ripple-effects of what he’d created.*

Well, our omniscient Zuckerberg built a global company, his converts proclaim. And that he did. He started FB (then Facemash) in 2003, at Harvard, copying the site Hot or Not, which put up pics of female students for others to vote which was hot, and not. As a woman, and mother of a daughter, WTF, Mark! As a purveyor of human behavior, I get that, much like teens, young adults are often still motivated by appearance, not the complexities of substance.

Mark was verging on 30 when FB became profitable through PPC advertising revenue. And Zuckerberg didn’t make that happen alone. Peter Thiel, at almost 40 yrs old, invested half a mill in 2005, and helped The Facebook 20-something founders get $13 million from Accel Partners a year later. And you can bet, Accel didn’t leave it solely up to Mark and his young, naive crew to make them billions.

Mark’s not proselytized this truth. He’s now old/smart enough to know that if you stroke the ego of the young, which is still fragile and forming, you’ll get them to work 24/7† for a 5th of the salary he’d have to pay experienced pros. Young people aren’t particularly gifted, talented, or brilliant. They’re cheap to employ, and easy to manipulate.

Facebook is the 8th largest employer of H1B foreign workers as of 2025. Not because Asian college grads know more, as tech is an emerging industry we are all learning dynamically, but, again, because they are a fraction of a U.S. worker’s salary and required benefits. Limiting hires to young (and immigrant) workers is shortsighted at best. Study after study show older employee’s productivity, creativity and reliability is higher than that of their younger colleagues.

Until the startup boom in the late 1990s, most corporations valued experience and skill, substance over looks and cheap labor. Zucky and his Silicon Valley friends like Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google), and Evan Spiegel (Snapchat) helped cement the lie that innovation comes from youth. Venture capitalists looking for “the next Zuckerberg,” reinforced the belief that younger = more disruptive.

We now know that ‘disruptive’ often leads to ‘destructive.’ Most apps and platforms were, and still are designed to addict users while stealing our private data to sell us more crap. Most middle-man SaaS apps and social media platforms have proven to be costly, unproductive, emotionally damaging wastes of our life’s time.

Hooray, to the youth who has invented, and keeps pumping out crap that’s creating personal and global meltdowns, not to mention getting fascists elected—from Trump to Netanyahu (PM of Israel). It’s made/making a few rich though, as if that’s all that matters.

  1. We are ALL born solipsists—our brain power so limited that our only awareness of others is how they serve our needs.
  2. We grow to narcissists in our teens—we gain awareness of others, but coming out of solipsism, we don’t care so much.
  3. We advance to maturity with age. Experience teaches us we serve a greater purpose than just ourselves. We recognize we are part of a family, community, planet, and our actions have consequences beyond just us.

Youth grows old, if you’re lucky. Wealth may provide a comfy life for the very few, but regardless if it’s millions or billions, their children’s children’s children may likely have no life at all.

We have the power to annihilate each other and most everything on this planet now. Along with disruptive, youth is generally arrogant and impulsive, their brains not yet fully-matured for controlling behavior. Humanity can’t thrive, and likely most won’t survive if the generations following Zuckerberg and his like continue repeating the same destructive mistakes by ghosting those with the experience and knowledge that only comes with age.

—

*The debate over the value of Facebook, Insta, all social media is ongoing. Its contribution to humanity is proven rather negative.

†Studies show working long hours does not improve productivity, and hurts a company’s bottom line.

The Problem with Today’s Parents

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

We play GOD when we give birth. With great power comes great responsibility…

There is a child in my daughter’s preschool that everyone dislikes. She hits, pushes, slaps, and throws a fit every time she doesn’t get her way. All the teachers at the preschool dread having this wild child in their class. Her mom has been notified multiple times in regards to her child’s poor behavior.

Speculation from parents and teachers alike ranged from ADHD to genetic disorders. I’ve often imagined the parents to be self-centered workaholics who had children as a matter of course, and then abandoned them to expensive daycare to manage their child rearing. This is somewhat typical in the area in which we live.

I met the mom recently at a class party and she shattered all my preconceived notions. We talked for quite some time and she was thoughtful and articulate. She worked only part time and mostly late at night so she could be there for her two kids. Her older daughter was in second grade and in her second year of GATE classes for gifted children. She spoke openly about the problems with her youngest, even seemed mystified, as her older daughter had always been easygoing and cooperative.

At my daughter’s fourth birthday party it became clear why her youngest daughter was so ‘challenging.’ We supplied crafts, a magic show, and a yard complete with a bouncy house, as well as a full-size playhouse with kitchen. But all this wasn’t enough for the problem child. Bored by the offerings, she went upstairs to my daughter’s room and proceeded to try on her clothes. Her mother and I became aware of this when my daughter came to me crying.

I immediately asked that the child take off my daughter’s favorite princess dress and return it to the closet. “NO! I don’t want to!” she screamed. Her mother stood beside me and sighed heavily but said nothing. Nothing. I repeated my request and the girl continued screaming that she wanted to play dress-up, that she wasn’t going to take the dress off, and I couldn’t make her. Her mother looked at me, sighed again and shook her head. In a nice, pleasant tone she suggested to her daughter that perhaps she could take the dress off and maybe play dress-up after the party was over. Still, the girl refused.

I couldn’t believe it. If it was my daughter, I would have instantly given her a time out, then demanded she apologize for speaking disrespectfully, and for using things that didn’t belong to her without permission. If she didn’t cooperate within one second, she would have lost privileges like watching TV. And every subsequent second that passed that she didn’t comply she would lose more privileges for longer periods of time.

I felt awkward disciplining the child with the mother standing right there but I didn’t know what else to do since the mother wasn’t doing anything. In a very low, gravelly voice, I informed the child if she didn’t take the dress off I would do it for her. By my tone the girl knew I was serious, and she acquiesced. She literally threw the dress at me and ran off to play with the other kids. And her mom let her. She didn’t chide the child for her poor behavior. She looked at me and shrugged as if to say, ‘See what I have to deal with?’ But instead, she said she was sorry. SHE was sorry. She didn’t have her daughter apologize.

It is no wonder her child is a raving lunatic brat.

I see this again and again — parents who do not consistently discipline their children and then wonder why their kids are out of control. They take parenting classes that are taught by psychologist who tell them with authority to be supportive and encouraging. And while this may work with easy kids who above all seek approval, it is not the solution to most children whose greater interest is pleasing themselves.

We are all born solipsists. We have to learn to consider the world outside ourselves, to cooperate, but this must be taught and constantly reinforced. It has been said that it takes a village to raise children. But I don’t want to be part of a village in which the parents are clueless, or more accurately — couldn’t care less.

I held a Cub Scout meeting at my home a few days ago. One of the mom’s came an hour late and her child missed the rocket craft. Her son was so angered by this he went up to his mom and slugged her, hard, in her shoulder. And SHE APOLOGIZED TO HIM for being late, and then turned to me and justified his rage with some lame excuse about how hard it was for him to transition. It took all my will not to step in, demand he apologize and then put the kid on time out.

I did not restrain myself last night at a Pack meeting with fifty other children, when the same boy became disruptive. Several parents stood in a tight circle scowling and complaining about the boy’s poor behavior. The child’s parents were too busy talking to other parents to notice. I got so annoyed at the boy’s constant goading of the kids around him that I took him by the hand and pulled him aside and told him to knock it off. The mom came over moments later and challenged ME for being overly strict. All the other parents looked away.

Offing your kids to daycare so you can pursue your muse/career or accepting solipsism from their child because the parent is too tired or too lazy to fight the necessary battles to raise conscientious adults, will not help our children learn create a thriving society. Twenty five yrs after the original writing of this essay, more parents than ever are raising self-absorbed brats, not only keeping humanity from reaching our amazing, creative potential, but reversing our progress! War. Poverty. Famine. Strife. These are curable if we raise the next gen, and the next, to CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER WAY BEYOND SELF. In other words, GROW THE FUCK UP — out of solipsism, (as all of us are born into), through the narcissism of our teens, and into adulthood. Adulting means expanding our awareness outside of self.

We play GOD when we give birth. With great power comes great responsibility. Parenting offers many rewards, but one of the least appealing aspects is constantly iterating the seemingly endless list of rules. And as hard as this is, it is mandatory. Social standards apply to all of us — if not, we have a society in chaos, and eventually no society at all.