that has revealed to me how Americans think.

I may just be a pompous ass or I may have come to an edge where I end and others interface with me and for the first time I see it clearly.  At least clear enough to write about it.

I left Facebook yesterday.  I found that being single and living alone has great advantages.  So long as you don’t spend much time on FaceBook.  Truly that is graffiti for the elderly.  Like all graffiti it represents a lonely, often disturbed, way of thinking that can only be expressed in meaningless short bursts.  The possibility of a meaningful discussion cannot take place where the objective is to prove oneself smart and correct.  Forget logic, forget facts, forget reality could be the mantra for FaceBook.

I worked as a neuropsychologist for over 30 years.  People would share their thoughts and their problems and I LISTENED.  I would return home to my world of friends and listen some more, although I did get to interact in a meaningful way.  If I learned one thing,incidentally, from all that therapy and evaluation it was action seldom ever matched verbal output.

Case in point as I cleverly bring you back to FaceBook.  A professional woman preaches love, respect and even has a course she teaches in the subject.  On FB she posts intolerance toward a group of people she does not agree with.  In the real world she tries to get local people here in a poor country to work for free.

You might say she is acting like a hypocrite.  But I am faced with the real issue.  That issue being that my patients escaped the U.S. and brought that culture of thinking here to Ecuador.  They post the need for higher wages but here they want a service for nothing or cheap.  They readily see this behavior in others but they act it out here differently.

If a person lies one time and I notice it I will look for a pattern of lies and I will still be friends with that person but will always know that meaningful dialogue would be a waste of time.  Here comes my pompous ass part.  If others see the lies and agree  with the person who promotes this behavior then I shy away from that group.  It becomes a herd mentality.  So I got off FB.

I am now living and conversing and befriending my former patients.  I found that being with other people who do not think like you is a rich and wonderful experience.  I call it the EDGE.  At this edge I want to know how they got to that way of thinking and behaving.  If I judge then the EDGE is gone.  I must accept their beliefs as plausible.  But what keeps repeating will be revealed in future blogs.