Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Rationality

In Friday's Wall Street Journal, there is an interesting article on aging and cognitive decline by Sharon Begley. Ms. Begley notes that cognitive training has not shown itself (by itself) to decrease the rate [emphasis mine] of cognitive decline as we age. It has been touted in numerous places that the "brain is a muscle too, use it or lose it" and we have usually accepted this as accurate: Exercise your ability to use your mind and your mind will last a lot longer as you grow older.

This "cliché" as it were is now proven to be wrong. It is true that mental training produces increased ability in the aging in that part which is trained; i.e., if you train by using crossword puzzles, you facilitate the ability to do crossword puzzles, but you may not enhance other cognitive functioning such as ability to solve other problems and that though you may enhance the ability vis-à-vis crossword puzzles, the rate of decline in mental functioning is just as steep as in the untrained but maybe from a higher starting point. Ms. Begley states:

Consider an alternative that is gaining scientific support. Say you enter old age (by which I mean your 30s, when mental functioning starts heading south, accelerating in your 50s) with a "cognitive reserve" -- a cushion of smarts. If so, you are likely to be able to remember appointments, balance a checkbook and understand Medicare Part D (OK, maybe not) well into your 60s and 70s. But not because your brain falls apart more slowly. Instead, you started off so far above the threshold where impaired thinking and memory affect your ability to function that normal decline leaves you still all right.

The Active study isn't the only reason scientists are rethinking the use-it-and-you-won't-lose-it idea. In the Seattle Longitudinal Study, older adults received five hours of training on spatial rotation (what would a shape look like if it turned?) or logic (given three patterns, which of four choices comes next?). As in Active, people got better on what they practiced.

But seven years later, their performance had declined just as steeply (though, again, from a higher starting point) as the performance of people with no training, scientists reported last year. That supports the cognitive reserve idea -- if you enter middle age with a good memory and reasoning skills you stay sharp longer -- not the mental-exercise hypothesis."

So, how do we apply some of this knowledge to the current political landscape. Looking at a number of our politicians we can safely say that many are past their prime. Does this necessarily mean that they shouldn’t be in congress (or other elective office)? Does cognitive decline which is a scientific fact differ markedly from what we have always heard that with age comes wisdom?

Vernon Cooper notes: “These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.� One would think then that as Cooper says if knowledge is of the past, than our current crop of aged politicians are full of knowledge for they, well the Democrats among them at least, are spouting off knowledge of how Iraq is like Vietnam, how this should have happened, etc. but no wisdom of how that can and/or should apply to the future. According to Cooper, one could surmise that wisdom can come at any age if one can apply the lessons learned in the past to the future, which is the essence of the exercise of wisdom.

Yet, one must perforce toss in an additional element, that of rationality; rationality in the understanding of Cooper’s “knowledge� in order to be able to apply “wisdom� to the future and map out where are we to go.

This post is essentially then about the irrationality of many politicians, in particular those who are identified with the left of the center aisle and most of them are Democrats. I’ll leave it to the liberal bloggers to attempt to describe any irrationality on the right. That ain’t my job.

In a number of very well laid out essays, Dr. Pat Santy writing as Dr. Sanity discusses rationality beginning with Command Hallucinations:

The American public is hearing voices. And like auditory hallucinations experienced by psychiatric patients, these voices whisper continual doom and gloom. They tell the American consumer that prices are too high. That the economy is tanking; that poverty is on the rise; and that everything is bad, bad, bad.

These voices are persistent and continual. They are unrelenting. They are often frightening. And like the command hallucinations that torment many of my patients, they are completely and totally untrue. You are bad. Life isn't worth living. They are trying to hurt you. Don't try, it's not worth it.

It is very rare for such voices to say anything at all positive. They have a specific goal--and that goal is the distortion of reality.

So why do patients believe them? Especially the one's that are bizarre and so obviously out of touch with any known reality? You know, the ones that say aliens have implanted electrodes in your brain and are monitoring your thoughts and things like that.
It is a triumph of false perceptions over reality. It is testimony to how profoundly and fundamentally people trust their perceptual faculties and let their perceptions rule, even when those perception come in conflict with common sense, truth, or reality.
We, the American people have come to have a similar trust in the voices of the MSM. Over the years, they have almost become an additional perceptual faculty that we rely on--simply because life has become too complicated and overwhelming, that the use of our ordinary senses is insufficient in the modern world.

She continues in a number of posts here, here and here.

Charles Krauthammer is of course the originator of Bush Derangement Syndrome discussed by Dr. Sanity. Krauthammer says BDS is:

the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.

And by the way, Charles Krauthammer is not only a very good columnist but he is also a psychiatrist. That's two!

One of my very favorite sites and someone who has become a friend is Shrinkwrapped. Another psychiatrist who takes on the oft irrational left and the "delusional" media. From one of his posts:

In John Godfrey Saxe's ( 1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend, 6 blind men approach an elephant and try to describe it by touch alone. One touches its flank and declares an elephant is like a wall; the second touches its tusk and declares an elephant is like a spear. After all six proclaim their sense of what an elephant is, the poem concludes:

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

It seems to me that much of our Media commentary on the war in Iraq suffers from a form blindness that is akin to the blindness of the 6 Indian men.

Shrinkwrapped also notes that there is a significant irrational quality in the Democratic left, especially around the "Bush Lied" meme and the movement towards impeachment of the President. Shrinkwrapped has an excellent prescription - let every candidate stand up and announce publicly if they are in favor of impeachment of George W. Bush, or not. He states in this post:

Further, we have an excellent chance to examine our prejudices in the light of day before the next election. While both extremes are problematic, it has been clear for quite some time that the right-wing extremists tend to be marginal in the Republican party. (I would be delighted if anyone can send me a reasoned argument showing me how I am wrong rather than the typical invective more common from the left; as a general rule, "Bush Lied" is not an argument.) Unfortunately, the core of the Democratic party is ruled by just such emotion. Here is my suggestion. Let us have all political bloggers, left and right, join together in requesting (if you prefer to demand it, feel free) that all candidates for the House of Representatives and Senate for the 2006 elections publicly declare and debate the proposition that George Bush should or should not be impeached. Let us settle this once and for all. Clearly, the Democratic base wants this. If Bush is indeed a fascist, if he lied and broke the law, if he is attacking our civil liberties, then his impeachment is an obvious remedy. Let us have those pressing for impeachment make their best case and leave it to the great bulk of moderate Americans to decide whether or not the partisans can make the case. If they win, so be it; if the Democrats lose, they can then reasonably be asked to re-think their fundamental positions and rejoin the political process as a responsible opposition party. With any luck, this question can be settled before the posturing for the 2008 elections goes into full swing.

Sounds to me like an antidote for the irrationality of the left. That's three!

I am struck, however, about the extent of the "meanness" of the so called Angry Left. The use of attack messages and vulgar language when speaking of their political opponents far exceeds that of the so called Angry White Male and other conservatives after the 1994 elections. The MSM adopted the Angry White Male meme with gusto and spread it far and wide. In fact, it was not anger at what the MSM wanted you to think of, namely "non-Whites and women in government, business, media, education, and other institutions" it was anger at the proclivities of the Democratic Party and those results showed in a major upheaval giving Republicans control of the United States House of Representatives for the first time in more than 40 years, control that continues twelve years later. That loss of power, let alone the loss of face for the Clintonites bedevils the Democratic Party today.

The Bush Derangement Syndrome has led them to fight not for what is right, though that is what they say they are fighting for but to fight for a return to power. Indeed, looking at their leadership, Reid, Pelosi, Dean, Kerry (The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam to borrow James Taranto’s delicious phrase) and listening to their pronouncements as to why they do what they do can lead a rational person to arrive at a single conclusion. They're nuts!

So far, I've quoted three psychiatrists, all of the same persuasion, that the Democrats in general and their arm the MSM have been increasingly irrational. I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor, but I stand with the three and have contributed my own bit here.

For the record, I'm very unhappy with the Republican party today and have noted so in a couple of recent posts here, and here. I'm not sure I'm willing to vote for any Republicans in Texas at this point, but I can be convinced if they are willing to get off their backsides and govern the way they said they would when we elected them. And yes, this means I may spend Election Day sitting at home, or I may vote libertarian or I may write in votes or I may go fishing - it is up to the Republicans what I do, but I can tell you this for sure, I won’t be voting for any liberal Democrats or conservative Democrats who don’t have the guts to go against their liberal masters and from what I’ve seen, that would be all of them with the possible exception of Joe Lieberman and I can’t vote for him anyway.

Posted by GM Roper at April 22, 2006 07:59 PM | TrackBack