From: mseedwards@shaw.ca
Subject:
Date: June 12, 2009 4:54:10 PM PDT (CA)
To: WriteToMe@MattTodd.ca

You Suck ….You act like a child that got no icecream ……………..i wish i never heard of you …………GO away…………………

signed ..happy you lost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What ultimately determines rights and wrongs… all of our rules are a combination of law and the social ideal. And that’s always all over the map. Once upon a time, the law and social ideal said that blacks should be slaves and women shouldn’t vote.

– Ron MacLean

Quoted from The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos Video Podcast February 11 2009

You can’t do what I do if you’re worrying about how people view it… you know, people who don’t understand everything about what you’re doing; who don’t have as much access to the facts as you do. And so, from early on, I always said, particularly as it related to articles and commentary, don’t pay attention to the good because it’s never as good as they’ll say, and don’t pay attention to the bad because it’s never as bad. You have to do what you think is right. And that’s what you have to live with because you’re always going to have critics.

– Gary Bettman, NHL Commissioner

Quoted from The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos Video Podcast February 05 2009

The secret of politics is this: tell people the lies that are consistent with their own self-deception [that is, the lies that people tell themselves]. If you can do that, you’re a successful politician. So, we’re not really that concerned about politicians lying to us. If we were, we would be horrified at every bit of political campaigning because it’s mostly all bullshit.

– David Livingstone Smith,
University of New England

The experts say our faith, our trust, that leaders are telling the truth has been eroding for years. Now it’s become commonplace to see our leaders in business, entertainment and sports face disgrace in front of the television cameras. And then, often, life seems to go on pretty much as it did before: our heros reduced and returned to us, our respect replaced by cynicism and satire. But is this spectacle changing how the rest of us behave? Experts say there is no evidence that we’re all lying and cheating more; it may just look that way because television and technology allow us to see it more, to catch our leaders in the act.

Finding the truth about liars begins with accepting some facts: We all lie; We’re going to have to continue lying if we’re going to get along.

If your spouse says to you when you come home from a party, was I the most attractive woman there? And you say, no there were three other that were prettier. Well, that might be the truth, but that would be rather cruel. And what’s the point, what’s the gain?

– Paul Ekman, Psychologist

All the research leads to one conclusion. To truly understand how lying plays out in our daily lives, we have to give up a comfortable piece of self-deception; the belief that we’re always honest and truthful beings. We’re not.

Look, you’re a liar and I’m a liar. It’s OK. We need to accept that. If we’re concerned with truth, we need to accept that.

– David Livingstone Smith,
University of New England

But in the end, looking for lies in every face is no way to live.

You’ve got a choice in life as to whether you’re going to be trusting and risk being misled, or you’re going to be suspicious and risk disbelieving a truthful person. If you’re not a policeman, don’t act like one. Be trusting. You’ll be happier in life. You’re much better off with your friends and family members to risk being misled than to risk disbelieving them when they’re truthful.

– Paul Ekman, Psychologist

Routine is God’s gift to the unimaginative.

Conversely, the artistically gifted tend to be restless, constantly seeking new form and structure in their work.

 – Dr. Robert Burton

The rational mind usually does not decide what emotions we “should” have. Instead, our fellings typcially come to us as a fait accompli. What the raiontal mind can ordinarily control is the course of those reactions. A few exceptions aside, we do not decide when to be made, sad, and so on.

A Symbolic, Childlike Reality

The logic of the emotional mind is associative; it takes elements that symbolize a reality, or trigger a memory of it, to be the same as that reality. That is why similes, metaphors, and images speak directly to the emotional mind, as do the arts.

If the emotional mind follows this logic and its rules, with one element standing for another, things need not necessarily be defined by their objective identity: what matters is how they are perceived; things are as they seem. What something reminds us of can be far more important than what it “is.” Indeed, in emotional life, identities can be like a hologram in the sense that a single part evokes a whole. As Seymour Epstein points out, while the rational mind makes logical connections between causes and effects, the emotional mind is indiscriminate, connecting things that merely have similar striking features.

There are many ways in which the emotional mind is childlike the more so the stronger the emotion grows. One way is categorical thinking, where everything is in black and white, with no shades of grey.

This childlike mode is self-confirming, suppressing or ignoring memories or facts that would undermine its beliefs and seizing on those that support it. The beliefs of the rational mind are tentative; new evidence can disconfirm one belief and replace it with a new one – it reasons by objective evidence. The emotional mind, however, takes its beliefs to be absolutely true, and so discounts any evidence to the contrary. That is why it is so hard to reason with someone who is emotionally upset: no matter the soundness of your argument from a logical point of view, it carries no weight if it is out of keeping with the emotional conviction of the moment. Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and “proofs” all their own.

The Past Imposed on the Present

When some feature of an event seems similar to an emotionally charged memory from the past, the emotional mind responds by triggering the feelings that went with the remembered event. The emotional mind reacts to the present as though it were the past. The trouble is that, especially when the appraisal is fast and automatic [which is inherently the process of the emotional mind], we may not realize that what was once the case is no longer so.

If the feelings are strong, then the reaction that is triggered is obvious. But if the feelings are vague or subtle, we may no quite realize the emotional reaction we are having, even though it is subtly colouring how we react to the moment. Thoughts and reactions at this moment will take on the coloration of thoughts and reactions then, even though it may seem that the reaction is due solely to the circumstance of the moment. Our emotional mind will harness the rational mind to its purposes, so we end up with explanations for our feelings and reactions – rationalizations – justifying them in terms of the present moment, without realizing the influence of the emotional memory. In that sense, we can have no idea of what is actually going on, though we may have the conviction or certainty that we know exactly what is happening. At such moments the emotional mind has entrained the rational mind, putting it to its own uses.

State-specific Reality

The working of the emotional mind is to a large degree state specific, dictated by the particular feeling ascendant at a given moment. How we think and act when we are feeling romantic is entirely different from how we behave when enraged or dejected; in the mechanics of emotion, each feeling has its own distance repertoire of thought, reaction, even memories. These state-specific repertoires become most predominant in moments of intense emotion.

One sign that such a repertoire is active is selective memory. Part of the mind’s response to an emotional situation is to reshuffle memory and options for action so that those most relevant are at the top of the hierarchy and so more readily enacted.

Mastery in the emotional domain is especially difficult because skills need to be acquired when people are usually least able to take in new information and learn new habits of response – when they are upset. Coaching in these moments helps.

“Anyone, adult or fifth grader, needs some help being a self-observer when they’re so upset,” Jo-An Varga [Self Science teacher] points out. “Your heart is pounding, your hands are sweaty, you’re jittery, and you’re trying to listen clearly while keeping your own self-control to get through it without screaming, blaming or clamming up in defensiveness.”

 – Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, pg 266

I was a players coach and it got me fired, but they’re the best. And if you don’t have the players going for you… as Napoleon said, if you don’t have morale, you’ve got nothing.

 – Don Cherry

Quoted from The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos Video Podcast December 15 2008

GS: I heard you once say, nothing you say, you haven’t thought about. So, if you ever get fired because you say something, you know exactly when you’re crossing the line.

DC: Absolutely. I can’t say, “well, just slip of tongue” because when I say it, I mean it. And if I go, I go. But I can’t say, “well, gee, I didn’t mean that.” So, I know what I’m saying.

Quoted from The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos Video Podcast December 15 2008

Free market capitalism is as much a fantasy as Marxism. And it’s fascinating to talk to people who believe in free markets — it’s exactly like talking to a Marxist — because when everything’s screwed up, it’s because it wasn’t pure enough; The free markets were a disaster because they weren’t free enough.

 – Larry Beinhart

Larry Beinhart is the author whose book became the movie Wag the Dog.

Quoted from The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos Video Podcast December 11 2008