Human Relations

Posted on May 30, 2022 by Professor Taboo

For many multiple unknown months now I have been having to think, rethink, assess, reassess, refine, modify, embrace, and discard many aspects of my personal life. A very large part of this time-energy redirection was caused by the onset of COVID-19 in late 2019 and early 2020. No surprise, the ripple-effects of the pandemic are still a lingering impact. That necessary and expanded “redirection” was further caused by my 82-yr old mother’s Stage 5 & 6 Dementia. That second, newly expanded “redirection” by dementia was further exacerbated by my sister’s drug-relapse this past May 16th and 17th and as a result her consequential homelessness then ultimate move-in with Mom and I.

When local and not-so-local friends—two or three very dear friends—recently asked about my well-being, how I was doing and how my Mom was doing, I was candidly honest with them. Some listened empathetically, some consoled me and helped me laugh, and others lectured me.

I’ve never been a fan of sugar-coating factual reality. Furthermore, being unabashedly candid with others, especially “closer friends,” is a True-to-Myself and thus true to others life-principle I live by. I will never sacrifice or betray that principle, ESPECIALLY if it only makes them feel good or myself feel good. I am not ashamed in the LEAST of this personality principle to which I hold to airtight. It’s healthy existence (protection?) for myself, is not designed for anyone else. After all, no one on this planet will ever be confused or slightly unsure of what Dwain feels, thinks, and does. And I firmly believe there is a ton of value with this principle and condition. Some/many do not or never fully recognize that value. Nevertheless, I give it out for the sake of integrity and dignity… for myself and for them; they deserve that from me. And yes, I expect it, or hope to get it, in (equal?) return. I think this is completely fair.

Therefore, I sense I need another brutally honest, introspective checkup. I want to further examine myself and the various components and subcomponents of this principle within human relations. You might call this blog-post a Principle Checkup, for me and perhaps anyone else who wishes to join. As a result, I’ve come up with these nine questions.

1 — What is the number one need in every human’s life, or the mental-emotional-physical needs?

Is it feeling and knowing you are loved, valued, irreplaceable? Personally, I would rank this need and its three subcomponents pretty high up the checklist, if not all the way at the top. PsychologyToday.com and Dr. Glenn Geher, Ph.D. has this to say, or rather what the antithesis of being and knowing you are loved, valued, and irreplaceable are:

While love often gets a bad rap as some nebulous experience that is really only for dreamers, all kinds of evidence suggests that, in fact, love is a real feature of our evolved psychology³. Love, which seems to encourage people to form deep connections and bonds with others, plays a powerful role in not only cultivating happiness, but in helping people to develop healthy alliances and communities that have the capacity to lead to all kinds of benefits. Further, love actually is represented in various neurological and hormonal processes⁴. In short: Love is a real thing.
In the human evolutionary story, forming close, trusting, and loving connections with others is a core feature of how we thrive at all levels. Love is, in short, a foundational element of thriving. And this fact is true for people across the globe⁵.
Dr. Glenn geher, ph.d. – state university new york; founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary studies program (evos)

But there are many forms of love, yes? Are some love forms better than others? Should we strive to obtain all of its forms during our lifetimes? Are some of us incapable of these forms, or certain love forms? Would that be a cop-out? More on this later.

2 — Is our need for three-component love clearly, proactively, and accurately expressed to others? Do others correctly interpret that/those expression(s)? Why or why not?

I will now reserve my own comments about these nine questions unless I feel they’d direct and/or pique and invoke some closer introspection.

3 — How many forms of love truly exist?

Since ancient Greece many modern anthropologists suggest a minimum of six basic forms of love existing in human relations. In their Greek form they are:

Eros
Philia
Ludus
Agape
Pragma
Philautia

For a detailed explanation of these six forms of love go to my February 2016 blog-post: Untapped Worlds – Maior Liberatio. Scroll down to the “Love and Compersion” section. On the subject of not striving and obtaining at least some degree of all six love-forms, I personally feel all six are absolutely reachable. In addition, all six most definitely contribute to a more fulfilling, more whole, more happy life and human relations. Period. I speak from first-hand experience.

4 — What type of relations with other humans do we have in our lives? What types have we had in our past? Which ones worked best and which ones collapsed? Why and why not?

PsychologyToday.com and Robert Taibbi, LCSW share the five most common types of relations: four bad, one good. Those five types, their climate, dynamics, and long-term effect are as follows, however, for the sake of time and space I will only post each with their long-term effect; maybe that will interest viewers to go read the entire article. It is well worth it, after all, recognition and accurate identification of problem-issues is the first step…

Competitive/Controlling — There’s a jockeying for power about whose way is better, who wins the argument, whose expectations and standards do we follow, whose career is more important. There are a lot of arguments that quickly turn into power struggles, battles over getting the last word.
—Long-term impact: These couples [or friends] get tired of battling and divorce [detach], or one finally concedes, or they both finally define their own turfs that they are in charge of.
Active/Passive — One partner [or friend] is essentially in charge and does most of the heavy lifting in the relationship while the other goes along. While some of these start out as competitive relationships with one conceding, more often this imbalance has been there from the start. There are few arguments, though occasionally the active person will become resentful for carrying the load or not getting enough appreciation. They explode or act out, but then feel bad and go back to the same role [routine trap].
—Long-term impact: The risk for the active partner [or friend] is that she/he will get burned out or resentful and leave. The partner left behind either needs to become more independent or find someone else to take over.
Aggressive/Accommodating — Here the power difference is not based on caretaking, but on raw power. One partner [or friend] is clearly in charge, and the other accommodates less out of passivity and more out of fear. While the intimidating partner [or friend] will easily blow up, there is little real conflict. There is emotional abuse and sometimes physical abuse.
—Long-term impact: Either the relationship continues, or the accommodating partner/friend finally gets the courage to leave/detach. The aggressive partner/friend will do what is necessary to try to pull the other back into the relationship. If that doesn’t work, the abusive partner/friend will likely find someone else to replace the other.
Disconnected/Parallel Lives — There is little arguing, but also little connection. They go on autopilot, with both having their own routines. The relationship seems stale, they have little in common; they are more roommates [distant acquaintances] than lovers [or close friends].
—Long-term impact: Midlife or older-age crises may cause one or both to feel that time is running out. This may precipitate arguing and efforts to either finally revitalize the relationship or leave. Or, they continue saying to themselves that this is good enough, or that they’re too old to change [then gradually wither away].
Accepting/Balanced — The couple [or friends] are able to work together as a team, complementing each other. They each recognize and actively accept the other’s strengths. They’ve got each other’s back, both are interested in helping the other be who he or she wants to be. They are able to revitalize the relationship when it begins to grow stale; they are able to solve problems rather than sweeping them under the rug.
—Long-term impact: Midlife and older-age crises may arise, but they are able to work through them.

5 — Were some of your past relationships or current ones similar/identical or a sub-form of a Black Hole in outer space?

6 — Were the expectations for the best or failed relationships reasonable or unreasonable expectations? Why and why not?

7 — Where do our blueprints-of-relations originate? Do they flex and/or adapt over time to everchanging conditions, both environmentally and amongst our human daily/weekly engagements? Why or why not?

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.”
h.g. wells

8 — Are certain man-made social-systems, ideologies, belief/faith systems flexible, adaptable, and sustainable from subatomic micro-levels to organic-human levels up to macro-levels of our Universe and the Cosmos? Why or why not?

9 — Given the above (honest!) answers, am I at a healthy juncture? Am I thriving, becoming a more whole human-being? Or am I in need of (serious?) change, redirection, and/or bigger better refinements?

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

In my near 6-decades of living, these are questions I have sometimes asked myself when my circumstances and those immediately around me take a noticeable, significant, or life-changing shift. Some are like trimmers, others like an earthquake. To me this 9-point litmus test on say the pitch, roll, and yaw of my airplane’s performance, has to be a regular, maybe even frequent introspection and raw honest maintenance routine. Seriously, what’s the consequences of not doing it? How obtuse of me, right? 😉

No surprise, I’ve been going through these checks—a few of them new—these last 3-5 years. But inescapably these last 9-months. The process damn sure has its annoyances, its frustrations. It’s painfully exhausting sometimes. Yet, one predictable, consistent outcome after doing it is…

I eventually find my balance and my buoyancy returns in order to handle my ship’s rudder or airplane’s stick. And so I know the next inevitable shift or storm I will have gained more treasured experience to cope, survive, and hopefully find calmer, pristine Seas of Living Tranquility.

Eh, or I won’t. Hah!

What about you? Might this litmus test help or has it, in your own version? Share it if you like, or as much or as little that works and doesn’t work for you. 🙂 Also, I’d enjoy reading your answers to some or all of my above questions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://professortaboo.com/contact-me/.

Clockwork Closing

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Professor Taboo

About three weeks ago in Clockwork, I asked my blog Followers and any visitors to select one of four statements that best represents yourself, life around you, and within our Universe. Those four choices again were:

I am a cog in a Clock.
I am a Clock among Clocks.
I am my clock Winder & Minder.
I am the Time Guardian.

I also asked that you explain why you chose the statement, and then explain why not the other three statements as your choice. There were several good answers and elaborations, a few were comical and lighthearted, and others very intriguing and that I would not have expected.

It is probably wise for me to say “there isn’t a correct or wrong selection.” That might disappoint one or two of you, and others not at all. Think of it this way: Do we witness any of the four statements and their implied meanings in other humans we know? I know I do, regularly. In fact, I’m bewildered to the point of chuckling when I hear or read (essentially) #4 by someone!

I don’t care how wealthy or famous—or evil, or megalomaniacal(?)—or intelligent they might be or they think they are, but “no man is an island, entire of itself” as John Donne famously coined. And furthermore, we did not enter this life from the womb completely independent of anyone or anything, did we? And at some point late in our life—hopefully a very fulfilling, whole life at that—we will return to an existence of dependence. Perhaps complete dependence on family and/or friends. In this, none of us has a choice; embrace it we must! Therefore, I personally think #3 is quite audacious to claim and not entirely true, at least not at birth nor in our final weeks alive. And with that said, I personally might even say #2 is pretty bold to assert, but not as much as #3 or near as omnipotent and omniscient as #4.

As I mentioned in one or two of my replies to comments, this came about when a dear friend of mine told me, pompous and quite full of herself, that “You create your own happy successful world, life, and experiences.” We had known each other intimately for over five years. During that time both of our lives were effected in large ways by not only each other, but also by several others in our spheres including immediate and extended family members. Some of those events and family were effects on us in massive ways which changed the course of life/lives, personally and in extended external ways! However, none of these events I allude to include severe weather phenomena that wreaked havoc on us, some of it permanent, nor do they include how COVID-19 effected our lives, obviously. None of us can choose our biological parents or the zip code(s) they’re born into; maybe all throughout their life. Many humans, through various forces, are propelled into painful, unbearable situations in life, impossible to avoid.

These many varying life conditions I mention still must abide in every way by Laws of biology, physics and Quantum Mechanics within our entire Universe, which certainly effect this “tiny Pale blue-dot of a planet,” to borrow Carl Sagan’s iconic prose, that we much tinier beings must coexist with, but not as commander or Time Lord, and maybe only as a clock Winder & Minder, temporarily as it will be.

From COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey

Hence, for me personally, I’m not completely comfortable asserting number two. I have some reservations with it. If I’m perfectly honest, today March 2, 2022, I am much more comfortable simply with #1, and I am very fine with that. In Somewhere I Have Never Travelled,Gladly Beyond, the fourth stanza, E.E. Cummings speaks of a lady or lover, but what about life, our individual lives (clocks, cogs?) as the Lady or ourselves?

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing.
-- e.e. cummings

For those of you who participated previously in Clockwork, any final thoughts? Any final questions? I won’t promise I have the answers, but I promise to wonder, contemplate, and be a travel companion with you. 😊

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Listen Close – Learn Always

Clockwork

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Professor Taboo

I am curious and would be grateful for you indulging my curiosity.

Choose one of the four statements below that best represents yourself, life, and the Universe. In your comment at the bottom explain why you chose it, and then please explain why not the other three statements as your choice.

I am a cog in a Clock.
I am a Clock among Clocks.
I am my clock Winder & Minder.
I am the Time Guardian.

*Brain activity on an EEG monitor **before** physiological & muscular action*.

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Listen Close – Learn Always

Greatest Love Stories

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Professor Taboo

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

Fair warning to all readers and my Followers who might get uncomfortable or nauseated when a man gets sappy, romantic, and emotional. I am about to bear my heart and soul as if this were my private journal. BEWARE you anti-romantics, you cold-hearted corpses and anti-passionates to uncontrollable love! I am getting this off my chest, out of my heart and head… and out there for the world to read. I don’t care one way or the other what comes of it because THIS is therapy for me!

My Ridiculous Obsession with Fiery Passion

Beginning in 2002 those were three principles (at the top) I began living by no matter what. I have tried to maintain the courage they require every day and every night. To mean it and live it in their purest and most honest form. They are sometimes intense, and they are frank (perhaps blunt? overwhelming?) emotions from a man and his lifestyle that can make some uncomfortable and others liberated. In some cases reborn and other cases scared shitless. Either way I live my life deeply, sucking out as much marrow as possible as Henry David Thoreau wrote. For me, it is the best way to live and only way to live fully. This is one of those times.

The last two or three weeks I have suffered once again the crushing abandonment of a remarkably special heart, mind, and soul. Unfortunately, she became overwhelmed by the purest, rawest, most honest, wide open, liberating energy she had ever experienced. Her words. After three years she freaked out, unable to reconcile me with her previous life and so slowly withdrew in utter fear.

Safe mediocrity is a powerful, hypnotizing, binding influence on some, especially if children are involved. However, there is a side to rare, atypical passion and love that is not shown, hidden from children, to their (lifetime?) detriment. It’s terribly sad. How else will they recognize atomic, re-energizing love, passion, and commitment if their own parents don’t live it and model it in pure raw honesty? I am baffled by this. Timidness puzzles me when it comes to life’s beautiful experiences. It is one of humanity’s most enduring connections. Why be so scared to let it happen and let it fill you!?

Alright, alright, you may be asking what am I really talking about? I’ll tell you. Some people and friends can’t fathom what I am describing here. They might be too afraid that a human connection can feel like a hypnotic drug. But that isn’t all of it. For me, when intense soul-mate/twin-flame chemistry is choked, drowned, repressed, or removed it feels like the most insurmountable betrayal and ripping-out of life’s marrow one can ever hope to experience. It’s a hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. But I know freak-outs, for whatever reason, are always based in fear. Fear that is fabricated like the Great Wizard of Oz behind his green curtain. Ironically, everyone survives in the end and life goes on.

Because I have less and less fear, and more and more courage to travel this crazy, rocky love-road of a minefield and have done it a number of times, each time gaining more wisdom and more boldness, more confidence, I can keep being exactly, unabashedly who I am! It gets easier each time. When things take an unexpected leap off the cliff, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. Why? Lord Tennyson answers with profound perfection:

“‘Tis better to have loved [fully] and lost
than never to have loved [fully] at all.”
—Lord alfred tennyson

Truer words have never been uttered or written. As we’d sometimes repeat in the world of athletic competition, you can’t become a world-class footballer (soccer) while sitting on the bench or spectating in the stands. You must get in the game! You’ll win some and you will lose some, but you will improve every time. Maybe, just maybe you’ll become world-class if you are a Starter each game, every season, and not quit, and keep learning, keep improving. That’s the only way you become world-class—without fear or self-doubt.

When I first “fell in love” 1980 Halloween night, I was 17-yrs old and felt like the world was my oyster and I had found my precious pearl. Yes, seventeen years very young and so very inexperienced.

Wow, did I have a boat-load to learn!

There is a large difference between self-confidence bordering on audacious, and refined wisdom and eloquent technique gained through honest hard lessons and precision refinement, let me tell you. At seventeen—well hell, even 18 through 30 years of age—I was about as smooth, refined, and romantic as Pepé Le Pew the deluded eccentric skunk of Warner Brothers cartoon fame.

Now over 40-yrs later I have actually come a very, very long way to exquisite refinement in matters of amore, if I can say so myself and generally have all my Ladies, past and present, also chime in. With no doubt, in the Game of Amore, I am certainly not “on the bench!”

Those three above initial quotes at the very top are the only way one has a chance of finding their true, natural soul mate(s), in my opinion and experience. It is not reckless. It is not insanity. It is simply honest and raw. It is about accepting the fact that people YOU LOVE fully without fear will hurt you, intentionally and unintentionally. That’s life. That’s human nature. The real question is how will you learn from it, how to keep living, keep loving fully better, learning to fail better at times, and keep moving forward with courage, staying true to yourself without flinching… every single time. That’s how you live Tennyson’s words and those above quotes.

But enough about my abilities, understanding matters of the heart and libido, and vast experience gained. Let’s get to the Greatest Love Stories, shall we? Or at least those stories on cinematic celluloid.

Here are my Top Four Love Stories on film:

#4 — Silver Linings Playbook (2012):

#3 — Her (2013):

#2 — Out of Africa (1985), sorry, ignore the subtitles:

#1 — About Time (2013):

There are several other scenes I absolutely adore and crack-up about in this exceptional love movie and seizing the moment, seizing the present invitations for the fullest life led and sucking its marrow out completely. But I reluctantly and happily chose the single above scene. There’s at least 4-5 more great, profound scenes. But oh well.

What are your four all-time favorite, Greatest Love Stories… on film or in literature? Share them below.

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

Still Something More

Posted on November 2, 2021 by Professor Taboo

Are you familiar with the Drake Equation? Do you know what it “equates”?

If you don’t know, here is a brief explanation by Space.com:

The Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in our galaxy, or more simply put, the odds of finding intelligent life in the Milky Way.

Note that the definition states only or strictly inside the Milky Way, our very own galaxy. And how many more galaxies are out there? According to the Hubble Space telescope scientists and mathematicians and their subsequent estimations, roughly 200-billion just within the OBSERVABLE Universe.

Basically, as there is indeed more than dust we see with our naked eye and beyond that more than just molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, and probably more than even Quarks, there is just as likely “Still Something More” out there in interstellar space. It certainly stands to reason.

It is because of these above concepts and verifiable principles/proofs that today I can give you song; song that speaks VOLUMES without my words, but with musical notes and lyrics… which speak, which pronounce that truly there is and excitingly always will be…

“Something More!”

There is always something more. If one cares to discover more, to stop, listen, observe, examine, absorb, and TRULY understand all, all the nuts and bolts. By doing so then there will be… more! A lot more!

Yet, this begs our rat-race society a question, or more… How much time/effort do we commit to, set aside to actually DO those six things I listed? Are you hasty, have no time, too shallow to stop and observe? Or do you really slow down, apply those six attributes in your life with other people? This begs another question, Do you spend irreplaceable time WITH other humans doing those six things or spend irreplaceable time doing NON-human activities?

I ask you genuinely, honestly, truthfully to think about it! Pay close attention to the following lyrics as you listen to the apropos tune. Then, if you like, share your thoughts below.