Anosognosic

Saaaaaaaay what?  I bet you think I made that word up.  You would make a poor gambler.

First of all, I must give all credit and praise to the New York Times online.  I have become an avid reader of their online edition, and invariably I learn a new word each day.  This week I was giddy with delight as their opinion section contained a five part series called “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma,” by Errol Morris.  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/

I urge you to read the five part series, and yet I will do my best to explain why I find this subject so fascinating.  First of all, it is difficult to explain.  So please bear with me, because part or most of this may not make sense.

My favorite example of what an anosognosic is comes from the article, and involves a man who robbed a bank.  The police and investigators were curious about this particular robber because he did something very strange.  He walked into the bank, and looked directly into the bank security cameras, and smiled.  He was not wearing anything on his head to disguise himself.  The police easily apprehended him, and asked him why he looked at the camera and smiled.  He replied that he believed himself to be invisible.

Why did he believe himself to be invisible? (you may be asking) Well because he had rubbed lemons on his face.

…

This man literally believed that if he rubbed lemons on his face, he would be invisible.  (By the way, I think this happened in Pittsburgh).  He had apparently tested his theory beforehand by rubbing lemons all over his face and attempting to snap a polaroid of himself.  The picture he took did not contain his face, but that was because he inadvertently took a picture of the ceiling.  Yet, this blank picture convinced him that the lemons worked, and that he could successfully rob a bank due to his newly acquired invisibility.

Contrary to what you may be guessing, anosognosic is not a fancy word for “stupid person.”  A French neurologist named Joseph Babinski coined the phrase “anosognosia”  in 1914 to mean “real or feigned ignorance of the presence of disease, particularly paralysis.”  The article also refers to Rumsfeld’s statement about “unknown unknowns” which is kind of an easier way to sum it up.  What I take away from it is a sort of unavoidable ignorance, that despite best efforts will never be lifted.

There was also an interesting analogy Morris gave to the story of Adam and Eve.  Here’s how Morris put it:

“When God created man (and woman), he gave them the ability to perceive the world, but withheld from them the ability to understand it.  We could come up with one cockamamie theory after another, but real understanding would always elude us.  It was mean-spirited on God’s part.  And to make matters even worse, God gave us the desire but not the wherewithal to make sense of experience.  One might easily foresee that this would lead to unending, unmitigated frustration and suffering.  But here’s where self-deception, anosognosia and the Dunning-Kruger Effect step in.  We wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything, but we would never be aware of that fact.”

I think that is so beautifully put, and there are so many things I want to talk about with this.  But perhaps I will also have to tackle this in a multiple part series.  I find this subject enthralling because it is philosophical inquiry into the extent our brains can reach.  The capacity of humanity to truly grasp the world we live in.  I have personally always found it comforting to know that there are some things I will never be able to understand, sort of a “some mysteries are best left unsolved” point of view.  This kind of relates to my post on perception, and how reality is different for everyone on some level.  https://sagaciousstudent.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/phantasm/

For the most part I am just intrigued, and am still trying to wrap my own brain around this five part series.

In other news, tennis is my favorite sport, and mainly because of matches like this one:

Legal Fun

**DISCLAIMER** In no way is any of the following to be used as legal advice.  Please read the following as it was intended…mainly for humor.  Thank you for reading this diclaimer, and for not holding me personally responsible for anything I am about to say.  Please enjoy!**

I have been studying for the Bar for about a month now.  So I thought I would share with you some crazy things I’ve learned, and some I still haven’t.

1.  According to the law (and the hypotheticals I have been practicing) a little ten year old boy could (theoretically) be liable for assault against a twelve year old girl if he held up an empty squirt gun and pointed it at her.

Mull that one over and get back to me.

2.  Defendants are almost always named Dan.

3.  There is such a thing as “larceny by trick.”

4.  Contracts as a subject can be summed up by the phrase “Armadillos from Texas play rap, eating tacos.”

5.  Another contracts related tidbit — should you ever decide to accept or reject an offer via mail, keep these things in mind.  If you mail an acceptance, it is effective when mailed.  A rejection is effective upon receipt.  BUT, if a rejection is mailed before an acceptance is mailed, then neither is effective until received.  So the lesson here is to make up your mind before you start mailing stuff in response to an offer.

6.  The latin answers are almost always wrong.

7.  There’s this thing called “ameliorative waste” and despite how it sounds, its a good thing.

Well, that wraps up this hour of “stuff you didn’t need to know in the first place that probably made no sense anyway.”  Don’t worry about it, that is why I am doing this and you are not.

Pollyannaism

Today I woke up singing a song.  Like I was dreaming the song, so when I woke up I just kept singing it.  It was Michael Buble’s song “Haven’t Met You Yet” in case you were wondering.  I’m still singing it to myself.

So I feel I must apologize to my devoted 2 readers.  I haven’t been posting that much recently, and there are several reasons for that which I won’t bore you with.  I ran across this word yesterday though, and knew I just had to blog about it.

Say it aloud.  “Pollyannaism.”  I know it looks like a foreign word, and it is a little intimidating because I found it while reading the New York Times (online).  If you ever want to ramp up your vocabulary, that is a good newspaper to use.  Anywho, it took me a second to realize what this word was.

Drum roll please ….

If you aren’t familiar with this little girl, I feel sorry for you.  Pollyanna is a classic Disney character from the movie “Pollyanna” which debuted in 1960 featuring the actress Hayley Mills.  Incidentally, she also grew up to play Miss Bliss, the teacher from “Saved By The Bell.”

But I digress.

Pollyanna, the movie, was about: A little girl who comes to a town that is embattled by feuds and intimidated by her aunt. By the time she must leave, she has transformed the community with her indominatable will to see the good side of even the worst situations and bring it out for the betterment of all. (Check out imdb.com for more).

Alright, so I’m sure you’re wondering why on earth anyone in the New York Times would include a word that references Pollyanna.  Well, if you think about it, it makes sense if you’re describing a situation where reality is not being addressed.  Pollyanna is an example of refusing to acknowledge a bad situation, and instead painting a silver lining on everything despite a total lack of any authentic silver.  Or as dictionary.com puts it, “unreasonably or illogically optimistic; or an excessively or blindly optimistic person.”

This is not to say that being optimistic is a bad thing.  As a kid, watching Pollyanna instilled the idea that people are fundamentally good and that usually there are circumstances that make them unhappy.  As an adult, it becomes more difficult to be so purely optimistic without constantly throwing in a grain of salt here and there.  It is so rare these days (for me anyway) to see anything as black or white.  Everything comes in so many shades of gray.

Ultimately, I think “pollyannaism” should just be thrown into your vocabulary at your next social function so that everyone will look at you like you’re crazy.