Tag Archives: mental health

July 26, 2017 · 6:50 am

Celebrities, Loneliness, And The Price Of Fame

We all love to dream about it. We all love to build an elaborate fantasy in our minds. It’s right up there with our fantasies involving Channing Tatum, Kate Hudson, and a pool full of premium lube. It’s that tantalizing idea that we, despite our unremarkable physical traits, limited talents, and lack of opportunities, could be a celebrity.

It’s not an unreasonable fantasy to entertain. Celebrities are constantly showing off how awesome their lives are. They live in big, opulent mansions. They have more money than most of us could ever spend in a lifetime. They’re surrounded by servants and assistants who cater to their every whim,  be it a sandwich or a threesome with a couple of Swedish bikini models.

Whether they’re a movie star, a TV star, or a rock star, we all envy their extraordinary lives. That’s why it’s always so shocking and confusing when we hear that a famous, accomplished celebrity has taken their own life. It’s a tragedy and one that evokes an outpouring of mourning.

It was just hard to imagine someone as beloved and cherished as Robin Williams taking his own life. Just recently, it was hard to imagine someone like Chester Bennington from Linkin Park doing the same. These men achieved a level of success that even other celebrities envy. Why would they make such a terrible decision to end their lives?

It’s a question that we find ourselves asking way too often. Celebrities have been taking their own lives with alarming frequency in the 21st century. Some, like Kurt Cobain and John Belushi, had well-documented issues with substance abuse. Some, like Corey Haim or Freddie Prinze, saw their fame and fortune fall over time.

Whatever the circumstances, the shock still resonates. The question still remains. Why would someone who achieved something so few achieve choose to end their lives? Some of these people came from poor, impoverished backgrounds. Why would they end it after achieving the kind of success that most only dream of?

These are impossible questions to answer because we can never know what goes on in someone’s mind when they decide to take their own lives. We can speculate, but we can never truly know. I certainly won’t claim to know what was going on inside Chester Bennington’s mind. That would be wrong, especially as his family, friends, and fans mourn him.

However, even if we can’t know, there is one way to gain some insight into this tragedy. It requires another thought experiment, albeit one of the more uncomfortable variety. Considering how uncomfortable some of these experiments have gotten, that’s saying something. Even so, I think it’s an important insight to have, especially when you’re trying to make sense of celebrity culture.

Picture, for a moment, that you wake up in an alternate universe of the world you know. Everything is the same, from the shape of the planet to the laws of physics to the annoying video ads you see before YouTube videos. The main difference is that in this world, you have none of the friends or family that you know and love.

Instead, you’re in a world surrounded by total strangers. Most act nice. Some even try to be your friend. However, you don’t know for sure whether you can trust them. These people and this world may seem familiar, but it might as well be totally alien, complete with little green men and anal probes.

Then, throw in another huge complication. Imagine you’re rich and famous. Everybody wants a piece of you. Everybody envies what you have. People you don’t know and never would’ve known in your old life just throw themselves at you. They want to be with you physically, emotionally, and often sexually, as is often the case with rock stars. They even claim to love you with all their heart, sometimes excessively.

Therein lies the problem, though. How can you be sure they actually love you? How can you even trust them when they make such bold proclamations? You’re rich and famous. They’re not. You have a lot. They don’t. They also don’t know you on a truly intimate level. They know the image of you, be it in the movies or on a stage, but they don’t know the kind of person you are when the cameras go off and the lights fade.

Maybe these people want some of your money. That does happen, especially with women looking to hook up with athletes and rock stars. Maybe these people want a piece of your fame. That’s where you get some of the crazy fans who will throw themselves at their celebrity crushes in a frenzy. Maybe they really just want to have sex with you because they get a huge thrill out of having sex with famous people.

There are way more possibilities I can list, but at the end of the day, you can never know for sure. You can never truly trust someone who claims to love you. You can’t even just walk down the street, make some new friends, and build new bonds from there. You’re a celebrity.

Your entire life is overly scrutinized. People only know the character that is you, but not you on a truly intimate level. It means that, even among those who claim to be your friends, you end up feeling alone. Add on top of that the everyday stresses of being a celebrity and your caveman brains will start to strain.

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Could you really function with that kind of mentality? Could you live the rest of your life not being able to trust anyone around you? Could you handle being in a world where nobody truly knows the real you?

Many think they can. Why else would there be lines around the block to participate in the next American Idol rip-off? I don’t doubt these people are sincere, but I doubt they’ve actually thought about the implications of celebrity life. I doubt anyone does, even if they were born into it.

There is a price for fame and fortune. It’s downright Faustian in its cost. Sure, you might be able to live in luxury, your every whim and desired pampered to at every hour of the day. However, you’ll still be isolated and alone. You’ll be stuck in a world where you can never be sure of who to trust. You can never know whether someone actually cares about you or the celebrity version of you.

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That kind of loneliness and isolation can be pretty debilitating. It’s also completely incompatible with the default settings of our caveman brains. We are very social creatures. We crave connection and bonding. I’m not just talking about the sexy kind either. Take that away from us and it really screws us up. That’s why solitary confinement is rightly considered torture.

When you feel things like that, you naturally want them to go away. This isn’t a headache, a broken bone, or chipped tooth, though. This is a very different kind of pain, one for which you can’t fix with a band aid and an aspirin. That’s why many celebrities will turn to drugs and vices.

I’m not just talking about heroin, cocaine, and orgies either. Some celebrities will go so far to alleviate that isolation that they’ll effectively cut ties with reality and try to live in their own fantasy world. We saw that happen with Michael Jackson. We’re seeing that with celebrities like Tom Cruise, who uses a sci-fi cult religion that’s famous for legal extortion to deal with these feelings.

At the end of the day, no matter how successful or glamorous they may be, celebrities are still human. They’re still wired like our caveman ancestors, even if they believe weird things. If they struggle to meet these very basic human needs, then it’s going to cause problems and some of them will end in tragedy.

That’s not to say it’s impossible to manage. There are plenty of celebrities who do an excellent job handling the fame, fortune, and attention. Celebrities like Hugh Jackman, George Clooney, Jennifer Anniston, Bruce Springstein, and even Weird Al Yanckovic regularly show that it is possible to survive that lonely world.

While these celebrities show it is possible for some to function, it doesn’t make the tragedies of those like Chester Bennington any less painful. It also wrongly convinces many that they can handle that world too. Nobody aspires to be a celebrity if they aren’t convinced they can’t handle it.

The hard truth is, though, that precious few people can pay the price that comes with fame and fortune. Fame and fortune may make for an eventful life, but it doesn’t make us any less human. It doesn’t make loneliness and isolation any less debilitating.

Chester Bennington, Robin Williams, and countless others struggled with that loneliness. They endured that struggle on top of whatever personal pain they also carried with them. No amount of fame and fortune can make that struggle less agonizing. For some, it’s just too much.

It’s a feeling that few outside the celebrity world can understand. When everyone wants a piece of you and everyone wants to tell you what you think you want to hear, there’s no way to know for sure who you can trust. In the end, it leaves even the most talented and gifted among us feeling lost. In a sense, that only doubles the tragedy when a celebrity takes their own life.

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July 25, 2017 · 7:00 am

The Death of Chester Bennington, Linkin Park, And A Piece Of My Youth

I was going to write about this sooner. I intended to put a pin in everything I’d been working on so I could talk about this still-developing story. I had to step back and give myself a few days because it was just too hard. As much as I value writing about feelings within a particular moment, some just can’t do justice to the feelings behind them.

By now, many have already heard the terrible news that TMZ broke last week. Chester Bennington, the lead singer of Linkin Park, is dead. His death has been ruled a suicide. For fans of Linkin Park and the music world, as a whole, it’s a terrible loss.

Bennington, whose suffering from the scars of child abuse and various forms of substance abuse is well-documented, used his powerful voice to put into words a pain that is unique, but profound to all those who hear it. For those who came of age in the early to mid 2000s, having listened to the raw, unbridled passion of their music, the loss cuts much deeper.

I know because I was among those who grew up listening to Linkin Park. Their music came along at just the right time. I’ve talked before about how messed up I was as a teenager. I was socially awkward, depressed, and constantly struggling with my insecurities.

Linkin Park, and the powerful voice of Chester Bennington, made those feelings tangible and real. It made it feel as though I could grasp these painful feelings. They became less overwhelming and less distant. It put into words the thoughts I could not process. It also rocked in ways that defined a time, a place, and a feeling.

Their first two albums, Hybrid Theory and Meteora, have a special place in my heart. Even though my life has gotten a lot better since those dark days of my adolescence, the music still resonates with me. It reminds me of what I felt, what I went through, and how it made me stronger.

That’s why the death of Chester Bennington really hit me hard. Compared to the issues he endured, mine seemed so minor. For a man to have that kind of voice and that kind of passion requires a special kind of talent. That talent, mixed with his own personal pain, helped define a generation. For that, I will be forever grateful to Bennington and Linkin Park for giving that generation a voice.

To Chester Bennington and his family, Rest In Peace.

To anyone out there who is dealing with pain, be it emotional or physical, please seek help. As part of Linkin Park’s ongoing effort to help those dealing with suicidal thoughts, they are spreading awareness of suicide prevention. So if you, or someone you know, is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.

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May 31, 2017 · 7:46 am

What I WISH I’d Learned In School

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I’ve said it multiple times and in multiple ways on this blog. Expect me to say it again in many other ways there is and even a few some thought impossible. High school sucks. I hated it with a passion. When I look back on my life, I’ll always see high school as one of the bleakest, most miserable experiences I had.

There are so many reasons I hated this point in my life, too much to list in a single blog post. Hell, I’d need a whole series of novels to adequately convey the misery I felt every day I had to endure that rancid swamp of standardized tests, cafeteria food, and adolescent hormones. The most I ever learned from high school was never wanting to be that miserable again.

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I like to think I learned that lesson well. My entire outlook on life changed for the better the day I graduated high school. Everything I did after high school, from going to college to getting my first book published, feels like a step up from where I was. Sure, it helped that I got into shape and fixed my horrible acne problem, but that shift in outlook still shaped a significant part of my adult life.

Even though I feel like I’ve done fairly well with that life, there are times when I look back at high school in ways that don’t give me night terrors. Other than not wanting to be so miserable, a lot of what I learned in high school hasn’t really helped my adult life.

I’m not just talking about quadratic equations or knowing what the hell T.S. Elliot was talking about either. A lot of the meaningful lessons I’ve learned came from experience, family support, and internet access. These are all things I could’ve learned without gym class, exams, and stale pizza. High school never really prepared me for adult life. It only ever prepared me to pass a goddamn test.

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With that in mind, as well as the knowledge that many kids are eagerly awaiting the end of the school year, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on all the lessons I wish I’d learned in high school.

These are lessons that would’ve helped my adult life in so many ways. I worry that the kids preparing for summer won’t know just how important these lessons are until it’s too late. Some have to do with life skills. Some have to do with understanding how the world works. In any case, these are the lessons that I wish high school had taught me.

Lesson #1: How To Start A (Non-Awkward) Conversation With A Stranger

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This is something that should come naturally. Having a conversation is one of the most basic elements of non-sexual communication there is. Other than a handshake, it shouldn’t need to be taught, right?

Well, this is where high school, ironically enough, gives teenagers too much credit. It’s half-true that most people know how to start a conversation. The problem is that for most of our lives, to this point, all the conversations we’ve had are with family members, relatives, or childhood friends that we’ve known so long that we remember the brand of diapers we used.

Starting a conversation with a friend is easy. Starting one with a total stranger that isn’t awkward is much harder. It’s also an important skill when it comes to making new friends, working with others, and even finding a lover. The hardest part of any new connection is starting that conversation.

Some high schools do teach social skills, but still give a higher priority to reading Shakespeare and passing a math test. I’m not saying those things aren’t worth learning. I’m just saying that better social skills will help people make friends, improve teamwork, and get them laid. No math test can ever do that.

Lesson #2: How To Tell Someone That You’re Romantically Interested

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A big part of what makes high school suck is loneliness. Unless you’re an athlete or an exceedingly beautiful girl, you’re going to feel lonely. On top of that, puberty is rewiring your brain to make you want to kiss, hug, and hump others in ways you thought were gross as a kid.

Teenagers may be melodramatic and prone to emotional meltdowns over a lost shoe, but they still have genuine feelings. They still feel love for others. Having that love and not knowing how to express it makes for some pretty awkward situations, some of which can be downright traumatic.

I had more than my share of crushes in high school. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to actually talk to these girls to let them know. For this one girl, I actually wrote a note and put it in her locker. I never heard from her again. That’s a clear indication that there’s room for improvement.

Having someone to love and to share your emotions with is healthy, regardless of whether you’re a teenager or a grumpy old fart. Knowing how to explore and express that love with someone goes a long way towards tempering that loneliness. For those enduring the rigors high school, less loneliness can only help.

Lesson #3: How To Spot A Scam

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As teenagers, our understanding and assumptions of the real world is painfully limited. That’s unavoidable because teenagers haven’t been on this planet long enough to have any real idea of how it works. Most of what they know comes from media, their family, or ugly rumors circulating around the cafeteria. To say that’s an imperfect perspective is like saying Kanye West is slightly eccentric.

In the real world, there are a lot of liars and frauds that will exploit the hell out of anyone’s imperfect understanding. When I was in college, I noticed a lot of school email accounts got bombarded with those Nigerian Prince scams. Some actually fell for those scams and lost real money because of them.

Beyond the scams in spam email, there are other elaborate frauds like work-from-home gimmicks, fake lottery winnings, multi-level marketing, and online dating scams. Those with limited life experience are especially vulnerable to these schemes and falling victim to them could ruin your life. Just ask anyone who invested with Bernie Madoff.

It wouldn’t be too hard or take too much time for high school to teach us the basics of scams and how to spot them. Teenagers are already cynical, by nature. Learning how to spot cheats and hucksters won’t just help them save their money. It’ll help them avoid being conned out of their faith, their trust, and their panties.

Lesson #4: How To NOT Freak Out When You Watch The News

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This is something I’ve brought up before. It’s a lesson I learned in college, but one I really wish I’d learned sooner than that. In the age of the internet and smart phones, it’s easy to get bombarded by all sorts of weird news stories that scare people into thinking the CIA put fluoride in their water to control their minds. For hormonal teenagers with limited life experience, it’s even scarier.

The world the news presents us is not the same as the world around us. The news can only ever highlight tiny bits and pieces of a much bigger picture. Most people don’t realize that until they’re adults. If they’re unlucky, they learn the hard way and spend too much of their lives hiding in a bunker, hoping that the Illuminati doesn’t send assassins.

Perspective is an important thing and teenagers struggle with that. As I said before, their life experiences are limited. They just emerged from childhood and began making sense of the world. The least any public school can do is help them.

That means telling them that the news rarely tells a complete story. It also means reminding them that the reason why something is news in the first place. These horrible stories we see every night are news because they’re rare. The world and the people the news describes are only brief glimpses at best and click-bait at worst.

Lesson #5: How To Craft A Resume (And How To Pad It)

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A major part of learning, be it in high school or pre-school, involves acquiring skills that will help you find meaningful work later in life. It’s not just enough to know how to read, write, and do basic math. Most people can learn how to do that for free these days, thanks to online services like Khan Academy.

To give you a better chance at finding a job, it’s important to develop other skills. Unfortunately, the only skill high school ever really teaches you is how to pass a test. That may help you get a driver’s license, but it won’t help with much else.

Even if you have skills, putting them together in a resume is a skill most people have to wing. I’ve actually taken classes that help with crafting resumes and none of those classes were offered in high school. I had to find those in college and after I graduated.

It’s a simple fact of modern life. To find a job, you need skills and you need to sell your ability to make those skills useful to others. That’s what will help you get a job. That’s what will help you find a lover. That’s what will help you get laid. Some skills don’t require college. Others may require a master’s degree. Learning how to seek and market those skills is far more valuable than just filling out a test form.

Lesson #6: How To Invest In The Stock Market The Right Way

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This is a topic I don’t blame high schools for avoiding. When most people, including highly educated people, talk about the stock market or the economy, it usually flies over everyone’s head. I would go so far as to say only a small part of the population is even wired to understand investing and finance.

However, there are few skills in life more important than knowing how to manage and invest your money. Anyone can just go into a bank and open an again. Knowing how to actually manage that money so it grows over time and isn’t undercut by inflation is a skill that’s often overlooked.

A teenager’s limited perspective of the world makes the stock market too complicated to understand. However, most teenagers do understand the value of making money. Why else would they make such a big deal about getting an allowance or a part-time job? That understanding, though, will only take them so far.

Contrary to popular belief, investing in the stock market isn’t just fairly easy. It’s actually pretty effective at building future wealth. It doesn’t just beat inflation. It beats nearly every other investment out there.

I didn’t learn anything about stocks in high school or college. Everything I learned came from a small booklet that a relative gave me. That booklet only had one real tip. Unless you’re going into the financial services business, the only real investment you need to make is in index funds.

Despite what the Jim Cramers of the world may tell you, nobody can beat the stock market. Nobody knows what it’s going to do today, tomorrow, or a year from now. You can’t beat, but you can make it so you don’t lose to it either. In some parts of life, not losing is just as good as winning. With money, it’s one of those lessons you don’t want to learn the hard way.

Lesson #7: How To Find The Job That Best Fits You

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This might not be something that can fit into a typical high school class. While most high schools have guidance counselors and career counselors, a lot of what they do is just sell you on the idea of going to college. They’ll help you find an education path. They may even help you find a career path. Finding a job that fits you, however, is not exactly a priority.

It happens all the time. People will make it through high school, go to college, and get all the right degrees for a certain career path. Then, they find out that the job they thought they wanted didn’t fit them. They either end up miserable working a job they don’t like or overwhelmed at the prospect of starting over. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

That’s why I think it’s more important to help teenagers figure out the kind of work that fits them. Some like making things with their hands. Some are more creative. Some are analytical. Some have personality traits that make working in a cubical akin to a prison sentence at Alcatraz.

I’ve worked more than my share of jobs that I hated. A lot of people endure that, even famous celebrities. Finding a job that actually fits someone’s skills and makes them want to do that job is a lesson too valuable to overlook. High schools are in a perfect position to help teenagers do that. The fact they don’t only makes the situation more tragic.

I know it’s too late for me to salvage my high school experience. It was a long time ago and I’ve since learned a lot about life, namely how to not be miserable.

However, I still feel like I started way behind the curve and have only recently caught up. How far ahead would I be now if I’d learned these lessons in high school? It’s impossible to know. All I know now is that high school still sucks and it’ll always suck for me. I’m okay with that. Hopefully, future generations will not know such misery.

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May 24, 2017 · 7:00 am

A (Distressing) Thought Experiment On Gender Double Standards

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Whenever I pose one of my thought experiments, I do so with the hope of inspiring novel, entertaining ideas that get people thinking for all the right reasons. Ideally, these ideas are fun and enlightening. If they make people horny in the process, then that’s just a bonus.

Every now and then, however, it’s not enough for an idea to be enlightening or sexy. Sometimes, for a thought experiment to work, it needs to make people feel uncomfortable. It needs to create some sort of mental distress.

I know that’s something most people avoid. I’ve even pointed out how our brains are wired to do anything and everything to avoid mental distress, even if it leads to outright hypocrisy.

Well, as uncomfortable as it is, mental distress has a purpose. It forces us to contemplate an idea that highlights a major problem in the world. It’s often one of those problems we know is there on some level, but avoid thinking about because it’s too daunting. For this particular thought experiment, it’s not so much that the idea is overwhelming. It’s more that it reveals something about our attitudes that we don’t often scrutinize.

So with that in mind, here’s the experiment. Think back to any action scene in any major action movie of the past couple decades. Given the glut of superhero movies and “Die Hard” rip-offs out there, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Specifically, think of a scene where a female character was kicking ass. Given the rise of strong female characters, that shouldn’t be too difficult either.

A good example comes from the memorable Black Widow fight scene in “Iron Man 2.” By any measure, it’s a wonderfully entertaining scene. It has Scarlett Johanssen kicking ass in a skin-tight outfit. What’s not to love about it? Most people who watch this scene, especially comic book fans and people who find Scarlett Johanssen sexy, would be rightly entertained.

Here’s where the thought experiment comes in. This is where it gets really uncomfortable. Watch the scene above once as you usually would. You don’t need to know the context too much. This is just Black Widow beating up the hired goons of Justin Hammer, the primary antagonist of the movie. Use that first reaction as a baseline of sorts.

Now, watch the scene again. This time, though, reverse all the genders of the characters involved. Make Black Widow a man. Make Justin Hammer’s goons women. Let it play out in your mind, this lone male character beating up all these women. Does the scene evoke the same reaction? For most people not named Chris Brown, it probably makes you sick to your stomach.

This goes beyond the typical double standards between men and women, which I’ve talked about before. It even goes beyond strong female characters, which I’ve also touched on in various ways. This is one of those dynamics that has always been there right in front of us. We just don’t take the time to scrutinize it.

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We can watch scenes of James Bond beating the crap out of a bunch of SPECTRE henchmen and be entertained. We can also watch scenes of Black Widow, Sarah Conner, and Furiosa do the same and be entertained. Swap the genders, though, and it becomes extremely distressing. We don’t see powerful characters kicking ass anymore. We just see a man beating up multiple women.

Find a scene like the one above from “Iron Man 2” and do the same thought experiment. Look for a scene where a woman beats up a much of male thugs. Then, swap the genders. Chances are, the feelings it evokes are just as distressing.

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For a greater sense of context, I came up with this thought experiment after reading an article on Cracked.com about the way Hollywood treats men. I’ve cited Cracked before because and while I don’t always agree with them, they’re good at tackling serious topics in a humorous way, even sexy topics. This one, however, had a hard time being funny.

6 Backwards Ideas Hollywood Still Has About Men

Some parts of the article were more inane than others, like pointing out how every leading man has to be at least a half-foot taller than the average guy or how tortured men are somehow compelling. Some of those details are just quirks, blatant examples of style over substance.

Beyond the quirks, though, there are some genuinely disturbing dynamics at work. We find such entertainment in women beating the crap out of men. We also find entertainment in men beating the crap out of men. However, when it’s men beating the crap out of women, context doesn’t matter. It always makes us feel disgusted and repulsed.

The thought experiment I just posed highlights that. However, it goes beyond violence as well. Rape is one of those super-sensitive issues that’s impossible to make funny or sexy. However, if you put it in the context of prison rape where men rape men, then that somehow changes things, so much so that jokes about rape will even find their way into an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

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Then, there are the cases where women rape men. Yes, that does happen in real life. Women are capable of domestic violence against men. However, it’s still okay to joke about. Christopher Titus has even worked it into his standup. It even finds its way into cartoons that air on prime-time.

The best example of this is the “Futurama” episode, “Death By Snu Snu.” In that episode, the cast encounters a planet populated by big, hulking, hostile Amazonian women, albeit not of the Wonder Woman variety. Through a series of hilarious antics that are entirely appropriate for a show that has a hard-drinking, sociopath robot, the male characters end up captured.

This is where the line between hilarity and distress blurs if you dare do the same thought experiment. Once captured, the Amazonian women decide to “torment” their prisoners with “snu snu,” which is their alien verbiage for sex. The reaction of Fry and Zap Branigan is a mix of horror and intrigue.

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Granted, it’s presented in a funny way, but that doesn’t change the actual substance of what happens. The women rape these men. They rape them and it’s portrayed as humorous. I’m not going to lie. I did laugh somewhat at how the episode played out. Most people with a healthy sense of humor would.

However, if you do the same thought experiment with the Black Widow scene in “Iron Man 2,” it takes on a very different context. Watch the episode again, but turn the hulking Amazons into men. Then, turn Fry and Zap into women. Suddenly, that scene takes on a much darker undertone.

It would push the line even for the most hardcore porn. Think about how that would play out, a group of warrior men taking a couple of women who just stumbled upon their world and deciding to rape them to death. It wouldn’t just be rated NC-17. It would be outright banned and subject to protest from every women’s group in the world.

What does it say about our attitudes, our culture, and our standards when we’re okay with one gender dynamic and not the other? Now, there are inherent differences in those dynamics. Human beings are a sexually dimorphic species. That means there are inherently different traits within the genders that are impossible to overlook completely.

However, the sheer breadth of the disparity here is cause for concern. If flipping the genders of a story or scene evokes such a different reaction, then that’s a serious disconnect that’s worth scrutinizing.

That’s not to say that the scenes in “Iron Man 2” or “Futurama” are wrong or not entertaining. There’s just something inherently revealing about ourselves when we flip the gender dynamics and react to the same scene. We may not like what that reveals, but it’s not something that can or should be ignored.

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April 29, 2017 · 8:27 am

The (Hopeful) Features Of My Future Brain Implant

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In talking so much about the possibilities and implications of brain implants, like the ones Elon Musk wants to build with his new company, Neuralink, I’ve strained my own brain trying to grasp the bigger picture. I don’t know if that counts as irony, but it feels oddly appropriate.

It’s an exciting topic to write about and discuss. The idea that we may one day think beyond the limits of our crude, error-prone caveman brains is so intriguing. So many of the problems we face today, both as individuals and as a society, can be attributed in some way to our collective brain workings. What will happen to us an those around us when those workings are tweaked?

It’s hard, if not impossible, for us to know for certain. I’m sure someone like Elon Musk knows more than an aspiring erotica/romance writer like me. I’m sure he sees the same societal conflicts we all do and understands that his company, Neuralink, will be the first step towards transcending them.

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Having contemplated the bigger picture and all the implications that come with it, I thought I’d take a step back and try a different mental exercise. Hopefully, it’s one in which other regular readers of this blog can participate. It involves a much simpler, less mind-bending thought experiment. If you can make a Christmas list, you can participate.

It involves a simple question. If you could create your own advanced neural implant to tweak/enhance your brain, what kinds of features would it have? Take yourself 30 years into the future. Put yourself in a Neuralink clinic. Someone has kindly paid for the best, most customization neural implant on the market. What would you want it to do?

There are so many aspects of our lives that our brain controls. Everything from our attitudes, our competence, our happiness, and even our capacity to love others begins in our brains. Every skill we have or want to have requires some aid from the brain. Any effort to tweak or enhance that is going to affect all of those features.

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To get things started, I’ll share my own personal wish list. It will likely be different than everyone else’s to some extent, but I’m sure there will be some similarities to. So here’s Jack Fisher’s top features for his future neural implant. I hope Elon Musk is taking notes.

  • The ability to remember, recall, and comprehend anything on demand, ensuring nothing is forgotten.

  • The ability to do advanced math in my head so I can calculate complex financial decisions on the spot and/or check the claims made by others.

  • The ability to read over vast quantities of text, be it a novel or a user agreement, and retain the information at greater speeds.

  • The ability to revise and edit large quantities of text quickly and efficiently.

  • The ability to process emotions faster and read the emotional queues of others with far greater efficiency.

  • The ability to focus on a given task and not be easily distracted.

  • The ability to learn or download new languages on demand to facilitate communication with others.

  • The ability to learn or download new mental or physical skills on demand.

  • The removal of any prejudicial inclinations or irrational assumptions when encountering a new person or situation.

  • The ability to minimize the need for sleep and improving the quality of sleep.

  • The improvement and enhancement of sexual function, including the ability to perform and sustain sexual arousal, as well as the ability to experience more intimate sensations.

  • The ability to communicate directly with the minds of others with a similar neural implant in order to share experiences, thoughts, and emotions.

  • The ability to search the internet for new information with only thoughts.

  • The ability to link my mind with a computer and turn my thoughts into text or images.

I know this is a long list of reasons, some of which are more feasible than others. I’m sure features like memory and math skills will be among the first major features of neural implants. I imagine features that improve sexual function will be next. If any technology can improve sex, then that’s going to have priority. That’s just an inescapable fact.

Other features like downloading knowledge and skills will probably be trickier. I imagine we won’t have that ability for decades. However, there are still plenty of smaller, more subtler abilities that would definitely enhance our everyday lives. Just being able to focus better without the aid of dangerous ADHD drugs is a pretty big deal.

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That’s just my list though. What about everyone else? What would you want your advanced brain implant to do? How would you improve the functioning of your caveman brain? Please share your wish list in the comments. If you want to open up this discussion even more, let me know. I’ll be happy to expand it because it’s just that interesting/sexy.

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January 7, 2017 · 9:45 am

When Obsession Becomes A Crime

Ever feel like you’re being watch? No, I’m not talking about the kind of watching that those in tin-foil hats and poor mental health talk about. I’m talking about the feeling of actually being watched by someone who isn’t a CIA agent, a lizard person, or an agent of the Illuminati.

This isn’t a spy movie or a conspiracy theory. This is an extension of the whole love vs. obsession discussion I began yesterday. When I started writing about this topic, I realized quickly that one post was not going to be enough. There are just so many aspects to this issue that it’s hard to capture everything necessary to convey the message I want to convey. Even this part will only convey part of that message.

When you break down the fine, but obscure line between love and obsession, you enter a strange part of human emotions that borders health and unhealthy attitudes. Love is probably one of the healthiest things you can do for your soul. There’s a good reason why those who marry and form stable, loving relationships live longer than those who don’t. In some sense, sexual healing is a real thing.

Obsession, on the other hand, is not going to increase your lifespan. It’s not going to help your social life either. Obsession at a certain level becomes a symptom of mental illness, be it crippling depression or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It’s hard to know where that level is, which is why it’s so hard to know the difference between love and obsession.

There is, however, one clear line that becomes painfully apparent once crossed. It’s a line that represents the endgame of sorts in the love vs. obsession conflict because it turns emotional upheaval into an actual crime. That crime, in this case, is stalking.

Unlike obsession, stalking is a crime and can be prosecuted as such. It takes obsession, dips it in napalm, and throws it into a furnace to create a perfect raging firestorm of emotional unrest. It’s the point where any and all potential for romance fades, becoming instead a case-study in what happens when emotions go haywire.

To make matters worse, the age of the internet and social media makes a stalker’s job so much easier. It’s no longer a matter of just asking the Yellow Pages to not list your address and phone number. If you have an internet presence of any kind, someone obsessed enough can exploit it. It’s scary as hell, but that’s the age we live in.

For most of us who don’t have a vindictive ex-lover, we don’t have to worry about being stalked most of the time. It’s not a passing concern, which is why the whole love vs. obsession conflict kind of flies over our head. For celebrities, though, the concern is real and so is the harm.

So in the interest of providing perspective in what happens when obsession goes too far, here’s a video by WatchMojo detailing some of the most disturbing cases of celebrity stalkers in recent memory. They don’t include cases where the stalker was intent on murder, as that kind of skews the issue. This is just about people who took their love and obsession too damn far.

I admit these cases are extremes. The people involved have serious mental issues and I’m not just talking about the eccentricities of the celebrities either. This is what happens when emotions go haywire and become so unhealthy that it leads to real harm. For an erotica/romance writer who wants to tell stories about healthy romance, it’s an important lesson to heed.

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November 22, 2016 · 6:40 am

Breaking Down The “Creepiness” Factor

Have you ever had a man or woman in your life that makes you so uncomfortable that you wish you’d go out of your way to be in a different time zone? What was it about them that made you so uncomfortable that you were poised to become an Olympic sprinter if they got within 10 feet of you? Would you describe them as “creepy?”

Chances are, calling them “creepy” would probably be the most polite way to describe such people. Everybody’s concept of “creepy” may be different to some degree, but like bad porno, we all know it when we see it. In biological terms, it’s our “fight or flight” instinct going into overdrive for reasons that have nothing to do with facing a hungry grizzly bear.

Even if we all have an idea of what constitutes “creepy,” it’s one of those ideas we don’t scrutinize that much. Again, it’s one of those “I know it when I see it” type feelings and unlike bad porno, it can affect our lives in pretty profound ways. It’s led to a plague of creepy clown sightings. I’d say it’s more serious now than it has ever been in recent years.

What does it mean to be “creepy” though? This is one of those concepts for which a dictionary just doesn’t do the trick. It’s so subjective and personal that one person’s phobia is another person’s fetish. Those who are into clown porn probably understand this more than most.

It’s also a serious question for a guy like me. Recently, I talked about some of the strange looks I get when people find out I’m in my 30s and still single. While I don’t dress like a clown and collect hairs of young women, that does evoke a certain “creepiness” factor for some people. They see a single guy in his 30s and a part of them thinks that’s just wrong somehow, even if there’s nothing on the surface that comes close to clown makeup.

At its core, our revulsion to those we deep creepy is an extension of our gag reflex. When it comes to protecting our frail, fleshy forms, nature can’t be gentle. It has to make the process of vomiting or wanting to vomit so debilitating and uncomfortable that it drives us away from distressing situations. Without that sort of gag reflex, what would stop us from swimming in a pool of elephant poop too cool off on a hot summer day?

As is often the case with nature, our gag reflex tends to be overly broad and for some people, it severely overcompensates. That means the things that make us gag don’t always involve seeing a dead horse floating around in a pool. They can involve how and why we avoid certain people.

Sometimes those people do have a reason for being avoided. I’ve walked by homeless people who clearly have issues that go beyond just being homeless. Some of them do a lot more than just ask for money. Some will go out of their way to tell you that there’s a fairy on their shoulder who refuses to scratch their butthole. That’s usually going to trigger a gag reflex for most reasonable people.

However, those situations are the obvious ones. The situations that effect most people, including some people like me, are a bit more subtle. We all have traits and quirks that set us apart. We can’t always control when someone sees those things and calls them “creepy.”

For some people, my love of comic books and infatuation with sexy superhero women counts as creepy. For others, it’s a reason to hold a major convention in New York City. One person’s creepy obsession can be another person’s passion.

Then, there’s the added bit of overcompensation that we as a society heap on all things creepy. What does that entail? Well, most kids who attend a public school these days get a crash course in something called “stranger danger.”

When I was in school, it was a big fucking deal. We would have assemblies in the middle of the day to hear counselors and police officers tell us about the danger of talking to strangers. Never mind the fact that the amount of dangerous strangers is a tiny sub-set of most strangers. Never mind that a good chunk of crime and abuse comes from intimate partners and not strangers. We need to keep kids from getting kidnapped, damn it!

I get it. This is a big fear for parents and communities. It’s not an unreasonable fear, wanting to protect kids from creeps, but urging the to stay away from strangers can have side-effects. It can make kids mistrustful, paranoid, and even xenophobic. Later in life, these kids will become the adults that wants to kick minorities and foreigners out of their country.

We’ve already seen recently how this can have some pretty serious impacts on society. I won’t go into details, but I think recent trends in wall-building enthusiasts speak for themselves.

Now I’m not going to say that we should ignore the things that spike our “creep” factor. Again, that feeling is there for a damn good reason. Until we become superhuman cyborgs, which may happen one day, we need that reflex to remain. However, we also need to avoid pushing people to the fringes of society who don’t deserve it.

This might just be the hugger in me, but we do ourselves no favors by focusing on the “creepiness” in everybody. We all have our quirks. So long as those quirks don’t involve mutilation, exploitation, or clowns, we should give people a chance. If they mess up that chance, then that’s their problem and not yours at that point.

We want to be safe. We want to protect our kids. However, it is possible to overdo it. We can be doing more harm than good to those around us. Let’s not assume the extremes of creepiness outright. Until they put on clown makeup, let’s give people the chance they deserve.

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November 21, 2016 · 6:20 am

Being Single At My Age: Should I Worry?

A while back, I was walking through a mall, as I often do on a nice weekend. This particular mall happened to have these kiosks where people would walk up to you and try to sell you anything from beauty products to exotic vacations to cult membership. I’m usually pretty good at ignoring them, but one in particular got my attention.

This woman was selling some sort of fancy skin care product. She did her pitch. I listened, trying to find a polite way to brush her off. Then, she said this product would make a great gift. She asked if I was married. I said no. She then asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no. Then, she asked me something that kind of struck me.

She looks at me strangely, gives me this cock-eyed glance with her eyes, and asks, “Are you gay?” I said no and I laughed it off. She laughed too and after that, I had a good reason to walk away. However, something about that conversation really struck me. As time goes on, it strikes me even harder and not in the way most BDSM enthusiasts would enjoy.

It’s one thing for a guy in his early to mid 20s to be single. Society really doesn’t look down on that. We see a young guy in his 20s who is single and think:

“He must between girlfriends. That or he’s just humping everyone and everything he can to get it out of his system before he settles down. That’s okay. I will not shame him. He’s a valuable part of the labor force so it’s probably not a good idea to bust his balls.”

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what we think when we see a young 20-something single guy, but it’s a close approximation. The point is that when a man is young, society is okay with him being single and unattached. We don’t look at that as anything strange or suspicious.

That all seems to change when a man crosses that special, magical threshold otherwise known as “turning 30.” I’m over 30 and I’ve been over 30 for a while now. I try to stay healthy. I made it a point several years ago to be healthier in my 30s than I was in my 20s. I like to think I’ve kept that promise to myself.

However, no matter how much I work out or how healthy I am, I can’t change the number of days that have passed since I was born. That also means I can’t change the fact that I’m single and over the age of 30. For whatever reason, that’s the age where being single suddenly becomes an issue.

It’s another one of those lesser-known double standards. I’ve bemoaned many of the double standards plaguing women and men, but this one affects me personally. It may very well affect my ability to find love, interact with the public, or work ahead in my career. It’s a serious issue for me and one that I don’t know how to address.

It may sound like a trivial, first-world problem by current standards, but it is there. We’ve made a lot of societal progress. We no longer arrange marriages for our children and force them to stay in passionless, abusive relationships. I say that counts as progress in my book.

A byproduct of this progress, though, is that we’re going to end up with a sizable population of men and women who either lag behind or never really catch up in the end. It’s true. There is a stigma to being single these days. I’m not just talking about a stigma that amounts to the “creepy guy” factor either.

When we find out someone like me in their 30s is single, society has these strange set of assumptions that are somewhat understandable within a context. I’m not saying those assumptions are right, but there is a context. So when people find out a man is over 30 and single, there are sentiments like:

  • He must be gay or something
  • He must be some kind of pervert who can’t get a woman
  • He must have some kind of mental health issue
  • He must have some sort of gross habit that repels women
  • He must be a serial killer or a child molester in the making
  • He must be abusive or selfish to an extreme degree
  • He must be some kind of man-whore who only sees women as disposable tissues
  • He must be terrible with kids
  • He must be broke and have nothing to offer

These are all harsh assumptions. Some are more extreme than others. Again, there is a context though. For most of human history, we lived in small tribes. Men and women often paired up out of necessity and convenience at young ages. If someone, male or female, became distant from the tribe, that was inherently harmful to the tribe. In that sense, the stigma is understandable.

Here in the modern era, the circumstances have changed, but the caveman logic hasn’t. A single man in his 30s is often seen as a sign of a larger problem. It’s still seen as a failing of sorts. Even in this more progressive era, men are expected to be married or in some form of relationships after a certain age. They’re expected to be locked into some sort of social bond. When they don’t meet that expectation, that’s cause for concern.

This has a real impact that goes deeper than just creepy glares and accusations of being gay. Some of these impacts affect men much more than women as well. It means that when I see a cute kid and play around with that kid, it’s going to come off as creepy to some people. A single man in his 30s playing with a kid? That makes some people shudder for reasons I don’t think I need to describe.

It also has an economic impact. If you’re a single man over 30 and you’re working full-time, you can expect to make less than a single woman the same age. Society does, and understandably so, reward those who are married and in relationships. I can understand society wanting to incentivize those in relationships, but sometimes incentives can have a snowball affect.

I worry that as I get older, the stigma will become harder and harder to avoid. With each passing year that goes by without me getting in a relationship, people are going to start making more and more assumptions. As a result, people will also keep their distance from me. For someone like me, a natural hugger, that can be pretty damaging.

It’s a self-reinforcing cycle, one that will make things worse in the long run. It’s a cycle that may drive me to enter a relationship for the wrong reasons and I don’t want to put myself, or any woman for that matter, through such an experience.

I do want to find love. I do want to forge close, intimate relationships with others. I just worry that my age and the stigma that comes with being single will work against me. I hold out hope that I’ll find someone to share my life with one day. I just hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

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September 18, 2016 · 9:41 am

Jack Fisher’s Top 5 Simple Pleasures

I’d like to get less elaborate and less controversial for once. It’s Sunday. There’s football to watch, pizza to eat, and beer to drink. The fact that I can do all these things without my pants on is just a nice bonus. This is one of those days where you just sit back, put your feed up, and enjoy the simpler pleasures of life. With that in mind, I’d like to get a little personal again to cap off my weekend.

I’ve found that getting personal on this blog is a lot of fun. It may even be therapeutic. I’ve admitted that I sleep naked. I’ve admitted a great fondness for foreplay. I’ve even told a very personal story about my circumcision. I dare anyone to get more personal than that. This time, I don’t intend to get that personal. For a nice, warm Sunday afternoon, I’d like to reflect on those smaller, lesser known pleasures in life.

I admit it’s somewhat jarring for an aspiring erotica/romance writer. A great deal of my stories revolve around some of life’s most powerful and endearing pleasures like love, lust, and indulgence. These are themes we see in all sorts of literature, going all the way back to ancient mythology and epic poems. There’s a place for these sorts of stories, but there’s also a place for the pleasures that’ll never get their own epic.

With that in mind, here are Jack Fisher’s Top 5 Simple Pleasures for your Sunday Morning.

Number One: Sleeping In on a Rainy Morning

This is one of those underrated pleasures that feels like a confluence of luck. For one, you have to be in a position to actually sleep in. These days, that’s a challenge in and of itself. As Dennis Miller once put it, “The only reason we’re living longer is because we can’t fit death into our schedule.” Despite this, every now and then we find a day to sleep in and when that day comes on a rainy, dreary morning, it’s downright magic.

You see, it’s usually hard to sleep in when the sun is beaming in through your window, loudly proclaiming, “You don’t get to catch up on all the sleep you missed! I won’t let you! Mwhahahaha!” When it’s raining though, that proclamation is muted. Instead, you get the soothing sound of rain pounding against the window. It triggers this instinct to just curl up under the sheets, purr like a kitten, and sleep. It’s just special in ways that words cannot describe.

Number Two: The Feeling of a Freshly Shaven Face/Leg

Here’s one with a slight gender variation, but not a major one. I come from a long line of burly men with thick beards and wild hair. The men in my family kind of pride ourselves on that look. We take pride in our manly facial hair and how manly it looks. The problem is that if we don’t shave for a few weeks, we look like a creepy mountain man who just choked a bear.

So when I shave my face, that smooth feeling is very fleeting. Naturally, that makes the feeling all the more precious. I don’t know for sure that women feel the same way when they shave their legs, but I think that feeling of smooth skin appeals to everyone on some levels. We all like smooth things, whether it’s our coffee or our flesh. That makes it a feeling worth appreciating.

Number Three: Drinking Hot Chocolate and Wrapping Yourself In Warm Blankets on a Cold Winter Day

Ideally, there will come a day where I’ll be such a successful writer, that or I’ll become the personal gigolo to a rich woman, and I’ll retire to a tropical climate. I’m not a fan of winter. I’m not a fan of cold weather, shoveling snow, and not being able to sit on my porch with no shirt on. That said, winter does create opportunities for certain particular pleasures.

Warm blankets and hot chocolate are the alpha and omega of these feelings. I’ve had days where I’ve spent one too many hours in the blinding cold. I’m shivering. I’m sore. I’m in no condition to do anything. So I brew up some hot chocolate, get some extra blankets, and curl up in front of my TV. It’s a special feeling that warms me up in more than one way.

Number Four: A Satisfying Ending to a Book/Movie/Video Game You’ve Been Enjoying

Let’s face it. It’s rare that our expectations are met, let alone exceeded in this world. We all have to learn at some point that the world isn’t fair and it isn’t going to cater to our whims. Some learn this lesson slower than others, but there are times when it feels like the world throws us a bone.

I feel it whenever I’ve reached the end of a long, satisfying book. I feel it when I see a really good movie for the first time. I feel it when I reach the end of a video game and feel that every bit of effort is worth it. I felt that the first time I saw the Deadpool movie. I felt it the first time I played games like Mass Effect 3 and Final Fantasy X. It’s like reaching the top of a mountain. It’s a great feeling and the fact it doesn’t happen often makes it all the more enjoyable.

Number Five: That First Bite Into A Freshly Baked Cookie/Doughnut/Slice of Pizza

We all have to eat. We all need food to survive. Some enjoy it more than others. Some enjoy it too much. It’s a lot like sex in that respect. Some see it as just a biological process and some turn it into a goddamn religious experience. Also like sex, food has certain situations where it’s extra blissful.

For me, that involves the first bite. We all know that feeling. It’s when we’re at our most hungry. It’s when the food is at its most fresh. It’ll never be as savory and we’ll never want it more before that bite. When it comes, it just feels special. It feels like jumping into a pool on a hot summer day. Sure, we’ll finish our meal and fulfill our basic needs for survival, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the hell out of it.

So those are my Top 5 simple pleasures. I’m sure there are dozens more. I’m sure my list is very different from that of others. So if you have your own list, please share it! What do you consider to be a great simple pleasure that just makes your day a little better? I’d love to know. Life is complicated enough. Simple pleasures are a good way to make it meaningful.

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September 15, 2016 · 6:02 am

Solitary Confinement: The Ultimate Torture?

To those of you out there who think you’re having a bad day, this may lift your spirits in all the wrong ways. To those of you who consider themselves huggers who are fond of intimate contact, as I most certainly do, this will be an exploration of your worst nightmare.

I’ve argued before that our current culture makes it painfully difficult for human beings to be intimate with one another. We have technology that puts screens between us, cultural taboos that prevent us from seeking each other out, and religious dogma that will make up elaborate myths to keep people from seeking satisfying intimacy. As bad as it is, it could still be much worse.

Enter the practice of solitary confinement. For those who consider themselves huggers, this is right up there with waterboarding and power tools in terms of torture. It’s one thing to inflict pain on someone. As anyone who has experimented with BDSM knows, the right kinds of pain can actually be enjoyable. With solitary confinement, however, that potential isn’t there. If anything, it does everything possible to nullify that potential.

According to the ever-reliable sources on Wikipedia, solitary confinement is defined as:

A form of imprisonment in which an inmate is isolated from any human contact.

On the surface, it doesn’t sound nearly as bad as being shanked to death or having fingernails ripped out. However, as is often the case with the worst forms of torture, it’s not the wound that kills you. It’s the festering scar that gets infected and kills you slowly that makes it really nasty.

Solitary confinement is the absolute antithesis of what it means to be a social creature. This is very important to consider because human beings are very social animals. Our brains are hard-wired to seek contact and coordination with others. From the time we’re infants to the time we’re senile old geezers, we naturally seek to be around one another.

First, it’s our parents and siblings. Then, it’s our friend and fellow neighbors. Then, it’s our lovers, our children, and our extended family. At every stage in our biological and social development, intimate and casual contact with other human beings is vital.

Using my favorite tool, caveman logic, this makes perfect sense. Unless we’re Arnold Schwarzenegger on meth, we have no chance of taking down a sabretooth tiger. If we work with other humans, creating tools and forming strategies, then we can do more than just hunt down animals. We can actually hunt them so well that we drive them to extinction.

Being effective social creatures is pretty damn important from an evolutionary standpoint. That’s why simple gestures like hugs have so many physical and mental benefits. It’s also way, according to Health.com, people who socialize more tend to live longer. It’s pretty much beyond dispute. Social interaction is good for us on some basic level.

The practice of solitary confinement kicks that concept in the balls and lights it on fire. It takes people, including those who may not be mentally healthy to begin with, and sticks them in a situation that drives a knife into the core of their psyche. It’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. It’s death by a billion paper-cuts. It’s bad is what I’m saying.

Now in the interest of balance, let me acknowledge that there is an element of cold pragmatism to solitary confinement. There are indeed individuals in this world whose brain function is so damaged, so dangerous, and so deranged that putting them around other people is a problem. As bad as solitary confinement is, there are times when it’s the best of the worst possible options.

The primary use of solitary confinement is to isolate these deranged individuals from others. In the past, it was even seen as a more human alternative to flogging and hanging. That may have been true for a certain period in history, but we’re not in that time period anymore and the non-Taliban crowd of the world doesn’t wish to go back.

As a society, I feel we should treat progress the same way I treat my aspiring writing career. We should always strive for improvement. Let’s not let ourselves stagnate or get complacent. There are just some things that are worth improving and this is one of them. We stopped hanging people. We stopped flogging them. We stopped using duels to settle legal disputes. Why can’t we do the same with solitary confinement?

There are organizations out there who classify solitary confinement as torture. The ACLU is one of them and their position on the practice is pretty clear.

With no evidence-based research of its effectiveness, solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment that has been overused and abused. According to the experts, the massive expansion of solitary confinement in America is a failed experiment of the late 20th century.

In recent years, a concerted effort has emerged to combat this practice and seek alternatives. According to the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, multiple states have passed legislation to curtail or regulate the practice. More legislation may follow and as a self-professed hugger, it can’t come soon enough.

Now there will be opponents who argue that not everyone suffers the same horrific effects of solitary confinement. There is even some research to back this claim. Even if this research is valid, this doesn’t justify the practice. Just because some people can handle being tortured and go onto live normal lives doesn’t mean it should be permitted. Not everyone is James Bond or Jack Bauer.

Whatever future research may or may not conclude, we don’t need to wait for the test results on certain aspects of human nature. We’re social animals. We hug, we interact, and we make love. It’s part of what makes us the most successful species on this planet. Solitary confinement is a kick in the balls to that success and I say our balls need not be subjected to such punishment.

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