Parallel Parking

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in Driving 1 Comment

Living in San Francisco, I see lots of people who don’t have a clue how to parallel park. Sure, I make mistakes sometimes, but it’s clear there are some basic techniques people are missing.

Here it is. It should be in all the driver’s handbooks.

When parking in a spot on the right-hand side of the road, don’t look over your right shoulder when backing in. This is the lame way to do it. It’s based on trial and error and getting to know your car space. When you have to park someone else’s car, it’s a different size and you’ve got to figure it out all over again. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but look over your left shoulder or in your left hand mirror. Cut the wheel to back in and when you see the first glimpse of the left side of the car behind you, that’s when you straighten out and back in. This works for all cars regardless of size.

Try it out. Works like a charm! I never scrape my rims, ever.

Homelessness Part 3

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in Homelessness 1 Comment

I’m learning. That’s for sure. People have passionate responses to this subject. Especially people who are homeless. The psychological experience that supersedes and subsedes the experience is illuminating to me. I knew I was missing the details of individual experiences. I have never ever ever lost my home to circumstance and no addiction has ever taken me. How can I have compassion for the individual experience if I don’t know the experience? I think this is where the line is on ambivalence towards homelessness (at least those who don’t want to be a homehaver).

I have found that compassion has to be a large piece of it. If one chooses that homeless people don’t have feelings, then the whole picture is missing completely. It’s a human experience. There’s a large online community of homeless people telling their stories.

The shunning of the homeless from the homehavers can really be crushing.

In my next post, I will be outlining my process of thinking to show how it’s evolved on homelessness. I suspect that it reveals a hierarchical matrix of thinking where more information leads to higher levels of thinking. I also suspect that others on the homehaver side fit into this matrix at different levels depending upon how much awareness they have.

Stay tuned. This has potential to change the conversation. Instead of going back and forth with someone on how to proceed with a helping homeless policy, we can stop the discussion and say, “Listen, right now, you are on level 2 thinking and you more need information. Once you get this info and have some time to absorb, let’s talk again.”

You know when you tell someone something and they get mad, but they’re really mad at something else?

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in Friendship 1 Comment

I think I’ve figured something out.

I think I’ve seen the underbelly of the diatribe. You know when you tell someone something or bring up a topic and they get irritated and just “go off” on you?

It’s interesting. We’re remodeling our bathroom, work is really busy, the kids have lots of needs, and the Bush Administration is making decisions we don’t agree with. All these things don’t have anything external in common. However, they are crucially linked because they are internal to me or someone in my family. They are common internally in that each one causes irritation or displeasure.

The interesting part is that a comment on either one of these topics causes the emotions to fire and each topic can bring out the other. If you are on the listening end of this (and the expression is verbal and no hammers are used) it can seem quite unrelated.

So, imagine you are on the listening end of someone going on a rant and they are bringing up things left and right. None of these things have related and it appears the speaker is shifting context left and right. If they seem unrelated, just remember the common link is the person experiencing them all.

I’ve often stopped people from pouring their emotional content all over me because it seemed disconnected. Now, since I understand this emotional “bubble”, I believe it’s best for the person doing the diatribe to just let it out.

I wonder if there’s a psychological term for this. Seems the effect is really social. Is there a sociological term?

Jail creates irresponsibility

Posted by abraham.williams@gmail.com on in Politics 1 Comment

Our system of Jail is meant to punish people for wrong doing. I think everyone would agree on that. This punishment is also meant to be a deterrent. However, I think what the Jail system really is trying to solve for is responsible people. In our society, we need people to behave. Otherwise, getting along and living would be quite difficult. We need people to behave, to be responsible.

However, I don’t think Jail creates responsibility. It just punishes. However, I think it punishes more than just the offender. In fact, I think it does just the opposite of creating responsible people. Let me illustrate how our Jail system creates irresponsibility.

1. Once an individual is convicted, they no longer have to pay a mortgage, rent, or make money of any kind. They are prevented from taking part in society.
2. Clothes are provided to them.
3. Food is provided to them.
4. Shelter is provided to them.
5. Medical care is provided to them.

They are not responsible to provide any of these things. They are not even held responsible in any restitutional way to anyone who they wronged. (Sometimes, people do pay restitution…it depends on the crime.)

The message this sends is that they are no longer responsible. This is a big point. This is an ongoing operating mechanism that drills into their heads that they don’t have to be productive and provide value to our society.

Once their time is completed, there is a huge transition back to responsibility…having to pay rent/mortgage, make money, provide themselves food and medical care, etc. This creates a strain further as they now need to be “integrated” back into society.

What we need is a system that is focused on producing responsible people. I don’t think Jail cuts the mustard. What we need is a program where convicts are put into an environment that requires responsibility. Dollar figures could be put to crimes where people would be indebted to the entity(s) they wronged. (This would have to be done through work productivity and could not be paid in advance to prevent wealthy flagrance.)

Any expert comments?