I have an understanding of reward and punishment.  When I did a year long internship at the City of Miami Juvenile Justice Center I received my first IQ over 100.  Up until that time I thought 100 was the limit.  There is a correlation between elevated IQ and success in life (depending on how you measure success).  Likewise there is a correlation between low IQ and crime as I learned through a years worth of testing and a dissertation on psychopathy.

Over the following 31 years I found very successful people who had average IQs.  Their success came in understanding that other people might not figure out what is going on.  For example, I have a friend who believes in astrology and in energy fields.  That’s great.  I figured that we could exchange some ideas.

Well when she did not know he closest star to earth or the order of the planets let alone their moons, I  realized that she pretended to have an expertise.  When I was the newest faculty member at Florida Atlantic University I received the courses that everyone dreaded to take as well as teach.  These included Test Construction and Research Design.  I decided to make these courses interesting.  One thing I can say, I sure learned a lot.  These courses were fascinating.

How to trick people with test questions, how to ask questions in a manner that will end in a result you want, how to tell the truth but mislead.  Wow!  All the things that you see in politics and on the internet.

So I want to share some of these things with you.  I looked up Bloom’s taxonomy from my lectures and found his theory, that always fascinated me, to rekindle my desire to understand why people say or post such ridiculous statements.  In short the theory goes you can’t APPLY something you don’t COMPREHEND/UNDERSTAND and you can’t UNDERSTAND something you don’t KNOW.

I’m sure that asking a baseball player the physics of a curve ball might lead you to the conclusion that he could not possibly apply what he doesn’t know let alone comprehend.  But he hits the ball out of the park.  Does this prove Bloom’s taxonomy wrong?

Actually no.  The knowledge and comprehension are not limited to physics formulas. We tend to learn by trial and error in many things.  There is experience and practice that also lead to application.  So repetition with success and failure fine tunes the application of hitting the baseball, driving a car, or reading.

However there are some basic pieces of knowledge that must be addressed in any field.  Like the weightlifter who keeps lifting weights sees his muscles grow and this is verified by other weightlifters and an understanding comes into the literature from science that explains this phenomena.

This does not apply to astrology.  Although it may be true that the celestial bodies may influence personality, one would have to first know where the bodies are in relationship to one another.  Then one would have to be able to show the influence these forces had on one another and then as my teaching explained, one would have to set up an experiment and measure these characteristics in people.

OR you could just make it up and put in charts that have no meaning but convince people they do.  This begins my series on how to maneuver people.  Next we will learn how people are led to vote.  That is assuming that your vote is even counted.

I noticed that people retired here in Cuenca, Ecuador lead a relaxed life.  I am contrasting this relaxed life with a pace that is accelerated in the states.  For example, most North Americans here don’t have a car, in fact, you don’t need one.  The point being there is no demand for car insurance, gasoline, parking, garage and maintenance.  I see these luxuries in the U.S. as stresses.  We do not have these stresses.

We have a new stress.  The stress of not doing.  I believe anyone retired anywhere has this stress.  Lucky for some there are many things to do.  I see many gringos take on volunteer hobbies and activities. (this is an issue that must be dealt with in a future blog).  I hear of many marriages coming to an end either as a result of face to face after retirement in a strange culture or I don’t want to live here even if you do or I don’t like facing real life so let me go home and influence the kids.  There are more reasons but these top the list.

My point is that each age group has a different focus.  When not retired you focus on work.  When retired with money you focus on travel.  When retired without money you focus on survival.  When married your focus is different than single.  Regardless, the backdrop is a different culture.  Heating and A/C are an issue for some while a pleasure not to deal with for others.  Health concerns are an issue for all and magnified when exposed.  Language tends to be the major problem.

But in these differences, the North Americans tend to band together to offer support and comfort.  Some are pure entertainment as childish thinking and behavior always is.  I would like to share my experiences in each of the aforementioned topics.  However it would be from a single retired psychologist with a fixed income.  Those who are married with money will not see it this way.  My sister in Florida cannot understand why I just don’t buy a new one.  I learned to plan my meals and not pick up tabs anymore.

In all this change is ME.  I see how I react, I have no one but myself to discuss these issues and I am ALWAYS amazed at the response from others.  Ah but I learn.

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.

Two people said things that prompted my urge and surge to blog.  My dad possessed a very quiet demeanor which is to say my mother ran the show. (I sometimes feel bad that my parents were so good because I can’t claim bad child rearing as an excuse, I can’t garner sympathy and I can’t claim first hand experience in any of today’s maladies)  When my dad turned 65 he suddenly exploded in verbal communications.  He had opinions on everything.  He opened a piece of his inner make up with me during an Everglades fishing trip.  He said he had listened all his life to people telling him what and how to do things.  Now they can’t take away his job  (he retired) so he was going to say what was on his mind.  Boy had he stored up some things.  He expressed feelings and thoughts I never believed in him.

The second influence came from a friend who said that she would not get involved in a relationship because she feared the person would project in her his feelings of how he wanted her to be.  That statement has hammered my thoughts for several years.

I am 65 today.  I am going to follow in my father’s footsteps and unleash what I think.  My friend’s statement has opened many doors as I attempted to figure out what she meant.  I quit FaceBook and believe that her statement has something to do with that decision.

I would read all these Posts about love and sweetness and the sun shining and the butterfly changing and the Dalai Lama said.  These messages came in between the vitriole related to the politicians.  I realized that FB is graffiti for the elderly.  On a good day nothing made sense.  I never felt any of the love that they preached in fact the innuendo in many of the posts were filled with anger and dislike.

My friend, who believes that projected feelings are to be avoided, lost a friend because she voted for Obama.  I can surely see the anger in that exhibition.  It stems from a belief that your thoughts are right and another’s thoughts are wrong.  But all of FB is like that.  Somehow they call it social.

So my story begins here.  I write to clarify my thoughts and reserve the right to change my mind.  I also will keep the blogs short because of limited attention spans.  So tom

I just received two pieces of information about a cure for cancer.  These articles came right after an article on the Cancer Industry and how cancer is promoted.  Apparently all theses scientists work for the industry that profits from the disease cancer.

Lucky me because I then received articles showing how GMO s and vaccines both cause a list of 25 disorders.  One of the articles had a book I could purchase to help me fully understand the problem.  I hope the book helps divide some of the disorders as caused either by GMO or vaccination.  I wonder what FDR might say about vaccination?

Then like chatter from terrorist nations, I received an inordinate amount of information about financial collapse.  I read or watched the information up until the book sales or the limited time course discount.

Then I saw pictures that PROVED chem trails exist.  The Photoshop had high definition but the pictures did not allow for common physics principles.

Then I read about President Obama’s broken campaign promises,  Added to this I saw all the Monsanto former employees that now work for the federal government industries.  Then I read about the battle over financial spending.  Then I read the government agencies defense of vaccination.

All of these could be false but if you had to choose just one that could be proven to be true which would it be?