DIY: the Fool emerges--again

00 the Fool, Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, Wikipedia

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The image of the Fool stepping off a cliff got stuck in my mind again today. In an effort to find out what was brewing there under the surface, I first looked at the fool archetype, then archetypes in general, then Jung's archetypes, specifically. There's a lot of substance in Jung's ideas about archetypes, but little about what they mean to an individual. Putting one's self into a labelled box is somewhat self-defeating.

After accumulating all these lovely references, I began looking for something more associated with life meaning. And found Mark Manson's 7 Strange questions that help you find your life purpose. His strange and oddly beautiful questions are quoted below.

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Jan Matejko, Stańczyk(Jester), Wikipedia

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First, there's the Fool. Wikipedia has an article about the wise fool. Fallen Angel at StOttilien has an article titled Crazy Wisdom – the Archetype of the Fool, the Clown, the Jester and the Trickster. Myths-Dreams-Symbols describes Jung's Trickster Archetype thus

The trickster is a very important archetype in the history of man. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the wise-fool. It is he, through his creations that destroy, points out the flaws in carefully constructed societies of man. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates convaluted [sic] schemes - that may or may not work - plays with the Laws of the Universe and is sometimes his own worst enemy. He exists to question, to cause us to question & not accept things blindly. He appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded needs to be torn down built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds at the same time the savior of us all.

Carl Jung "understood archetypes as universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct (Wikipedia)." One interpreter of Jung's ideas on archetypes is Carl Golden at SoulCraft. An interesting view of archetypes is presented in 12 Best Character Archetypes For Film: Part 1.

You can find a varied list of articles on the Finding Meaning page at Huffington Post.

But for real self-help take a look at these 7 strange questions posed by Mark Manson.

1. What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive?
2. What is true about you today that would make your 8-year-old self cry?
3. What makes you forget to eat and poop?
4. How can you better embarrass yourself?
5. How are you going to save the world?
6. Gun to your head, if you had to leave the house all day, every day, where would you go and what would you do?
7. If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?

-- Marge

Psych: romance and choice

Breathless Books, Assent Publishing

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It's likely you don't choose a romantic partner the same way you choose a car. True? Me, I go out into the world and whoever clicks, clicks. Most of the time I go home alone. Aaron Ben-Zeév, Ph.D., writing in Psychology Today says:

We have 3 common approaches, but 2 are fatally flawed.

His article also says:

One important aspect of choosing a romantic partner is the weight we give to bad (negative) and good (positive) qualities. Although we tend to focus more on the partner's bad qualities at the stage of choosing a partner, it seems that in the long run, positive qualities become more important and eventually outweigh the negatives.

Social psychology has an idea that relationships are based on rational choice and cost-benefit analyses. To quote Wikipedia:

If one partner's costs begin to outweigh his or her benefits, that person may leave the relationship, especially if there are good alternatives available.

For more on the Social Exchange Theory, take a look at these articles at Boundless and Psych-it.

This theory may be true near the end of the relationship, but (seems to me) at the beginning the choice is relatively irrational.  It happens that how and what we decide to buy has been the topic of intense study by those selling for some time now. Just google "Studying people’s buying habits." There's more about buying decisions at Buying decision process and Rational choice theory on Wikipedia. And, when we choose someone, aren't we really "buying" what they have to offer?

Again, I personally think romantic choices are irrational, because that's how I make them (then rue the day). There's an interesting article about irrational choices from Daniel McFadden's paper "The New Science of Pleasure," published by the Atlantic. In his paper he says:

...The popular psychological theory of "hyperbolic discounting" says people don't properly evaluate rewards over time. The theory seeks to explain why many groups -- nappers, procrastinators, Congress -- take rewards now and pain later, over and over again. But neurology suggests that it hardly makes sense to speak of "the brain," in the singular, because it's two very different parts of the brain that process choices for now and later. The choice to delay gratification is mostly processed in the frontal system. But studies show that the choice to do something immediately gratifying is processed in a different system, the limbic system, which is more viscerally connected to our behavior, our "reward pathways," and our feelings of pain and pleasure.

How do you choose?

-- Marge

Is it lust, love, natural selection, or just spring?

Jacques-Louis David, "The Love of Helen and Paris," Wikipedia

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An old saw now, Tennyson's assertion in "Locksley Hall" that

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love

may be scientifically true. In the New York Times this article by Natalie Angier "Seasons Sway Human Birth Rates" says

In the new study, the scientists scrutinized birth records of 166 countries, representing tens of millions of births. Studying the United States and Europe and the other countries of the temperate zone in the Northern Hemisphere the researchers found there are two annual conception peaks, which continue today but were especially notable before the era of extensive industrialization.

One statistical spike occurs around the spring equinox, in March, resulting in a spate of births in late December or early January. The second arrives in autumn, around October or November, leading to a slight glut of babies arriving in mid-summer.

A member of the study team, Dr. Roenneberg, adds that "The effects of climate and day length are becoming less effective in the modern world, because we're always indoors, and the lighting and temperature are controlled." You can find a summary of the article at SAGE journals.

This study, and others, raise the question: are we in control of our own passions or controlled by factors outside ourselves? Personally, I would say that few control his/her passions. What we desire just is and you either go with it or run in the opposite direction. Just my opinion.

But if you find you can't stop thinking of a special one, it's probably time to ask yourself--is it lust or love? Dr. Judith Orloff gives some practical advice in "Tips to Identify the Difference Between Love and Lust."

If it is lust, why this particular person? And why am I so confused? Dr. Helen E. Fisher, writing at Dana Foundation, asserts "Brains Do It: Lust, Attraction, and Attachment."

If all this is just too cerebral for you, blame your fatal attraction on Darwin's theory of natural selection. This interesting discussion is taking place at a thread under Reddit's explain like I'm five: If being attractive is an important aspect of sexual attraction, why hasn't natural selection turned us all into super models?.

-- Marge