The Neurodivergent Professor

Because I grew up without religion, I always thought faith was something you only had for religion things. Later I came to understand faith is something we have when we don't have enough information. Or we don't know the outcome, but we desire a certain outcome. Faith is believing.

When I was becoming a scientist, I realized that faith even had a place in that world. Because science rarely proves anything, the people must decide whether scientific evidence means anything or not. We have to believe the evidence. We have to have faith that the evidence means what we say it means. It's a collective effort.

So I define faith as something individuals and groups have for things or ideas. That is, faith is the belief in things or ideas.

When I ran a small business I assumed every phone call or email was trying to get me to buy something. I didn't trust people very well. I assumed they had hidden agendas disguised as a sales pitch. I lost trust and became very pessimistic with respect to human relationships. I began to think everyone had a hidden agenda and didn't trust them.

I still struggle with trusting other people and wondering whether they have a hidden agenda (conscious or otherwise). But I have learned that trust is belief we have for individual people. 

This week I try to pick these two words apart and see what comes up.

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One of the things I think bout most often is how we have to have a job to earn money to buy the time we want to live our lives. It's like the life we're born with is secretly conditional upon participating in this loop.

I'm not angry about it anymore, but I used to be. This forced agreement seemed unfair. Not that I didn't want to work, I just felt violated having my life be conditional upon participation in someone else's system.

So after I calmed down, I started thinking about how we measure the value in our lives. Which led me to money. We see money as the ultimate indicator of all of the important things. Of all the THINGS in life that can make us happy, we see money as being the most important. But it isn't just about money. In fact, I was using money to leverage the other things I wanted. Most notably, TIME.

To me, time *should* come before money. It's part of the universe (or at least we think it is, as we understand what it is). It was here before us. It wasn't invented by humans. Time asks nothing, is consistent, and fairly equally distributed among species. And when it isn't equally distributed, awareness of time is enhanced instead of taken for granted. All I can really do with time is try and understand I only have so much of it. Which becomes painfully more and more obvious as I age. . . .

In addition to TIME, I also value LOVE in similar ways. As in, if I had all the time in the world, and no loved ones to share it with, time would have less value. So some measure of love in my life is also important. So it's also critical to my happiness to have love in my life.

And, sadly, if I had to rank my understanding of, appreciation for, and effort spent in pursuit of, I would have ranked money much higher than time or love for most of my life. It's only lately that I've realized I want to prioritize time and love over money. For the rest of my life (time).

Unfortunately, that deal we make at birth about money doesn't just go away. We still need a certain amount of money (and therefore lose a certain amount of time) in order to meet our basic human needs. There is a reason we rank money more highly than other things and that's because it is ESSENTIAL to meeting your basic human needs. There are fewer and fewer ways to meet your basic needs without working and earning money. So life becomes this game of either needing less money or earning more money to hopefully meet your time and love (and other) needs. Personally, I'd rather need less money than lose more time.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about these currencies, and others that you may value. 

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After my divorce I did some serious soul searching (and therapy) to figure out what happened. I accepted that both parties played a part in the divorce and wanted to understand what happened. Multiple lines of evidence support that my ex-wife became narcissistic and I became codependent. Now, I'm not saying 'she is narcissistic' or 'I am codependent', but our relationship brought out these personality traits and made them pretty severe. I think many people are affected by narcissistic and/or codependent tendencies, and the combination of the two in a relationship can be detrimental to both parties. 

Narcissism is said to be an expression of selfishness, but self care is an important skill. Codependency has been described as prioritizing others' needs over one's own, but boundaries are important. While making this Episode I realized that a 'healthy' person probably has a little of both characteristics. In other words, a healthy person can practice self care and get their needs met, but also be empathetic towards others and accommodate their needs.

We tend to say or think things like, "He's a narcissist" or "They're a codependent', but it's probably pretty rare to encounter someone who is entirely one or the other. Sure, there are exceptions out there and I think we'd all agree that an extreme expression toward either condition is not good. At the very least extreme cases of narcissism or codependency we usually don't want to be around or deal with.

My extreme codependency ended up with me being a door mat. And my ex-wife did end up being pretty narcissistic and self-serving (she had an affair and gaslighted me). But I think it was the combination of personality types in a struggling relationship that brought out the worst in each of us. I don't really know if she is a narcissist, and I am not a 'natural codependent'.

Since I can only really speak for myself, I will say I have codependent tendencies. I think this comes from how I grew up, some beliefs I formed as a child, but it's also a result of my empathetic nature. I tend to have pretty weak boundaries and am very aware of how other people feel. This often leads me to feel like I need to take care of people (and that's not really a good thing).

I don't really know what it's like for narcissistic people, but I can say that I am a bit jealous of people who know how to get their needs met - because I struggle to do that for myself.

I hope you enjoy the episode and get something out of my stories, my experiences, and observations. 

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Before I 'retired' to stay home with my kids I was an academic research scientist. I taught classes, advised students, and led a research lab. I was pretty successful. The only reason I share that is to say I feel like I've earned the right to explain what science is, and what it ISN'T. In Episode 1 I shared a bit about what science is, and now I want to talk about what it is not.

Science is very good at asking questions about things we can measure, but it isn't very good at addressing the unmeasurable things. Like emotions, intelligence (even though we try with the IQ), colors, music . . . Some things just don't fit into the scientific method. And that's OK! Some things, many things actually, are measured indirectly and sort of forced to fit into science, and that's ok, too. Take my former scientific field, ecology, for example. Many ecosystems can't be replicated (there's only one Earth), so ecology doesn't fit exactly into hypothesis testing and statistics, but we do it anyway. Science is pretty robust, but there are still things outside the realm of investigation via the scientific method.

So what do we do? Well, there's metaphysics, a field which I know little to nothing about. But I like the idea of metaphysics because it's 'beyond' physics. And physics is arguably one of the most advanced fields of science. So, metaphysics goes beyond physics but with an appreciation and understanding of the underlying principles of particles and such.

But I think calling it metaphysics, if I'm anywhere close to understanding what it is, is probably not necessary. I think we all understand, at least a little, that science can't do everything. So we probably also accept that there are other forms of thinking that are totally acceptable.

The major difference I see, between scientific thinking and 'other kinds of ' thinking, is the standardization procedures. If anyone can just 'think' their way through problems, how do you know what is accurate? How many hair-brained things have you heard people say? Are all of our ideas really just opinions? There has to be someway to filter through the crummy thinking to get to the good stuff. How do we determine what's good?

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WHO are you? WHAT are you? WHY are you? 

On some metaphysical level we are awareness. We occupy a body on earth that abides by the laws of physics and biology, but what goes on when we think?

When I meditate, or even when I'm just making decisions in my day-to-day life, I FEEL like 'I' (whatever 'I' am) comes from a spot in my head that encompasses my brain and my eyes. That's where I picture 'me' to be. But what is this? 

Some have called it the 'seat of consciousness' and I like that. I think of that brain/eye spot as being the drivers seat of my physical body. My awareness, and my Self, emanates from there.

Ok, but it gets weirder. The awareness in the seat of consciousness varies with my emotional state. Yeah, it's like I have multiple parts or characters that make up my 'self', depending on the situation.

If I'm fearful, the fearful me occupies the seat of consciousness.

If I'm sad, same thing. And so on for other emotions.

So I guess all these parts make up my self. 

BUT WHO AM I THEN? What is the self?

More like this in this weeks' episode. I hope you enjoy and please share with others you think might also enjoy.

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Do we have a soul? If so, what is it? Is it God? Is it Awareness?

Though I learned a lot recording this episode, I still don't have a definition. But I think that's because the Soul is beyond human comprehension. We simply don't have the sensory hardware nor the vocabulary to describe it. The Soul is beyond this Earth or these bodies.

But I find it SUPER fun to think about.

Making this episode took me on an hour long journey through my understanding of life and awareness. I used my Knowledge and Experience about biology and psychology and sprinkled in a little magical observation to reach, what I think, are some great jumping off points for further discussion. 

I hope you'll listen and be inspired to comment or email me your thoughts. This could be a long-term thought experiment, for sure.

I hope at the very least you enjoy this adventure.

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Have you ever felt like a slave to the 40 hour workweek? I know I never signed up for that, but I learned early on that to do the fun stuff I want to do I have to work for money to do it. Sure, I've had some hippie friends who tried a different tactic, and I even tried to pretend I could live on very little if I just didn't spend much. But, yeah, then I got married and had kids and, well, you know the story. Work is a 4-letter word for many of us, but the j-o-b pays the bills. We end up spending a lot of time working, and if the job sucks, it affects the rest of our life and cuts into our limited 'me' time to do all that fun stuff. Hell, a lot of us have so little free time that we kind of give up on the whole 'life' thing.

But I BELIEVE we can attain a work/life balance; do the fun stuff we want to do. Exercise. Meditate. Contemplate our naval. That stuff's important - it's part of being human. So we gotta learn to deal with the work side, either by tolerance, minimization, but also in learning to take advantage of what little time we have leftover to live our lives.

So here I talk a bit about people I've known and different approaches to balance. From maximizing work and making large bank, to combining work and life to 'live your passion', and some random ideas I came up with during the recording processes. Hope you enjoy and best of luck doing your own delicate balancing acts!

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As a parent this topic is always on my mind. Am I a good parent? What should I be doing with my kids? Are my kids alright? Parenting can kind of dominate your identify if you let it. Especially for primary caregivers. And if you're not a parent, you had parents. Or guardians who influenced you as a kid. So most of us had some sort of parental influence and might even be playing the influencer role currently or in the future.

I used to tell new parents that whatever you do is right. Now, that might not be entirely true, but it's pretty accurate for parents who mean well. All of us can complain about something our parents did that shaped our lives forever, but most of our parents did the best they could. It's an amazing relationship between 'parent' and 'child' and deserves a bit more out-of-the-box attention.

Here I share some of my observations about my parenting experience and my observations of other parents, non-parents, and kids. Turns out this is a huge topic and I barely scratched the surface. 

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I became sort of obsessed with the idea of quality after reading Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. Not that it matters but at one time this was the best selling philosophy book in the world. Which is kind of weird because it's really just a story about a guy who goes 'crazy' trying to define what quality is.

I'm not trying to drive myself or anyone else crazy, but I think the concept of quality deserves a bit more attention. Mostly because many people confuse quality with 'opinion'. 

Think about it. What makes one thing better than another thing? Price? Materials? Durability?  Can you even really tell? Do you understand how to, or have the resources to really assess an items' (or idea, emotion, etc.) quality? What makes one beer better than another beer? Or phone? Or TV? Vehicle? Think about this and I think you'll see how easily our opinions cloud our ability to really *see* an item or thought for what it is, rather than for what it does to/for us.

Here I argue that semantics matter and that quality and opinion or different things. I hope you find it useful. Thank you for your curiosity.

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Gratitude is touted as being able to improve an array of human problems. Anger, depression, anxiety, dieting, and other stressful issues have decreased in people who practice  out being grateful with some regularity. Psychologists, neurologists, and therapists suggest being grateful as part of any self-improvement plan. But what is it about 'feeling thankful' that produces calm, peace, and satisfaction where before there was anxiety, anger, and suffering? I'm sure I don't know, but this week I talk about gratitude and my experience with very brief gratitude practice.  In short, I think practicing gratitude, at the very least, shows us how we can manipulate our emotions ourselves. Asking yourself to be grateful is actually a practice in changing your perspective. Also, expressing gratitude feels good. I'm no guru, and by no means have mastered this technique but I am starting to believe it's more than snake oil.

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