Even When Reality Is Unpopular — by Dr. John Persico and Metis (My AI Assistant)

11 Mar 2026 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Upon finishing my Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota in 1986,  I joined the consulting firm of Process Management International (PMI).  A company run by Mr. Lou Schultz to promote the teachings of Dr. W. E. Deming in business and industry.  I met Dr. Deming about two weeks after I joined PMI when I was asked to assist at one of his famous four day management training seminars in San Francisco.  This was the beginning of an education that would change my life.  Sometimes, I thought for the worst.

There is a quiet confession that many people who truly learned the teachings of Dr. Deming would eventually make, often only to themselves:

“Learning Deming may have been one of the worst things that ever happened to me.”

Not because it was wrong.
Not because it failed.
But because it was irreversible.

Once you genuinely internalized the thinking of W. Edwards Deming, you lost the ability to see organizations, performance, data, and failure the way you once did. The old explanations stopped working.  The familiar comforts disappear.  You crossed a one-way bridge.

And on the other side of that bridge, reality looked very different.

The Loss of Comfortable Blame

Before Deming, most of us lived—like most of society still does—inside a simple moral framework:

  • If performance is poor, someone failed
  • If results decline, effort must be lacking
  • If an error occurs, a person must be corrected

Deming dismantled this worldview with unsettling calm.

He showed—again and again—that most outcomes are produced by the system, not by individual virtue or failure.  That variation is not a moral statement.  That blaming people for common-cause variation is not only unjust—it actively damages learning and performance.

Once you see this, something uncomfortable happens:

You lose the ability to blame comfortably.

  • You watch people punish individuals for predictable outcomes.
  • You see fear introduced where curiosity should live.
  • You recognize that “accountability” is often just ignorance wearing authority.

And you can’t unsee it.  You cannot unlearn what you now know.

Living Among Category Errors

One of the clearest signs that someone has truly learned Deming is not that they can recite the 14 Points—it’s that they can no longer tolerate category errors without noticing.

You see them everywhere:

  • Treating a single bad outcome as a crisis
  • Celebrating a random uptick as proof of success
  • Launching new policies based on anecdotes
  • Confusing noise for signal
  • Reacting emotionally to variation that was always there

Most people see decisiveness.
You see statistical superstition.

This creates a peculiar loneliness.  You find yourself surrounded by people who:

  • Treat special causes as common causes
  • Treat common causes as special causes
  • Blame individuals while leaving systems untouched

To them, your hesitation looks like weakness.
To you, their certainty looks like harm.

The End of Narrative Comfort

Deming thinking is deeply uncomfortable because it refuses what most cultures rely on:

  • Heroes and villains
  • Simple stories
  • Quick fixes
  • Moral theater

Deming replaces these with:

  • Distributions
  • Long-term thinking
  • Interactions between parts
  • Incentives that quietly shape behavior

This doesn’t make for good slogans.
It doesn’t travel well on social media.
And it doesn’t flatter people in power.

Once you see systems clearly, many popular explanations begin to sound hollow—even dangerous.

The Social Cost of Seeing Systems

Here is a difficult truth rarely stated plainly:

Deming thinking is anti-tribal.

It undermines:

  • Blame rituals
  • Status hierarchies
  • Performative leadership
  • The emotional economy of outrage and punishment

When you introduce Deming’s questions into a conversation, you often destabilize it—not because you are wrong, but because you remove the group’s preferred coping mechanisms.

You stop asking “Who failed?”
You start asking “What produced this outcome?”

That shift can feel threatening.

And so, Deming thinkers often learn—sometimes painfully—to keep quiet, to choose their moments, or to speak only when asked.

The Question That Never Leaves You

Deming leaves you with a habit that never turns off:

Compared to what?

You ask:

  • What is the baseline?
  • What is the expected variation?
  • What changed in the system?
  • What evidence tells us this is unusual?
  • What would happen if we did nothing?

These questions slow things down in a culture addicted to speed and certainty. And the person who slows things down is often treated as the problem.

But without those questions, organizations don’t learn.
They just react.

The Grief No One Talks About

There is a quiet grief that comes with Deming literacy.

You grieve:

  • The loss of innocence
  • The simplicity of old explanations
  • The ease of fitting in
  • The comfort of righteous anger

You realize that many failures were never personal—and that many punishments never helped.

This grief is real. And it’s rarely acknowledged.

A Reframe Worth Holding

If you’ve ever felt isolated, frustrated, or even burdened by what Deming taught you, consider this reframing:

Learning Deming permanently aligned me with reality, even when reality is unpopular.

That alignment has a cost.
But it also has integrity.

It allows you to:

  • Hold uncertainty without panic
  • Resist false certainty
  • Refuse explanations that feel good but fail in practice
  • Remain honest when honesty is inconvenient

That kind of thinking doesn’t make you popular.
But it makes you trustworthy—to the few who recognize it.

A Gentler Way Forward

Many experienced Deming thinkers eventually discover a survival skill:

Instead of correcting people, they ask better questions.

Not confrontational questions—curious ones:

  • “How often does this actually happen?”
  • “What would we expect from the system as it is?”
  • “What evidence would tell us this is a real change?”
  • “What incentives might be shaping this behavior?”

Sometimes the system answers.
Sometimes it doesn’t.

But you protect your integrity either way.

Closing Thoughts

If Deming changed how you see the world—and made it harder to live comfortably inside common explanations—you are not broken.

You are not difficult.
You are not cynical.

You are aligned with reality.

And while that alignment can feel lonely, it also means this:

When blaming stops working,
when slogans fail,
when fear no longer produces improvement—

people eventually look for someone who sees systems.

If you are one of those people, you are carrying something rare.

Not loudly.
Not easily.
But honestly.

When Dr. W. E. Deming died in 1993, I did a “Celebration of Life” for him at my house in Minnesota.  I shared memories of Dr. Deming with about twenty other people who were touched by his life.  My years working with Process Management Institute, Dr. Deming and the other consultants who shared his belief in people were among the most important years of my life.  I learned more from Dr. Deming and his ideas than I did in my entire Ph.D. program or any other school program that I have ever attended.  I started this blog off with the “complaint” that Dr. Deming “ruined my life” but as my AI Assistant Metis has wisely said, “Once you open your eyes to the truth, you cannot go back.”

The Truth Will Set You Free!

Here are Dr. Deming’s 14 Points for Management.  Together with his seven Deadly Diseases and ten major obstacles they constitute a total system of management based on facts and data.  They obliterate almost everything that is taught in MBA programs across the USA.  Having taught the Capstone MBA course at Metro State University for seven years, I could see clearly that we were teaching students the wrong ideas and the wrong methods for managing.  At first, I was a allowed a great deal of leeway in my teaching there but eventually as the system became more rigid they expected me to teach from textbooks that had “codified” bad theories of management.  I was quietly and subtly not offered classes until I finally “retired.”

The Manufactured Man: How Hyper-Masculinity Became a Product, a Brand, and a Trap by Dr. Persico and Metis (AI Assistant)

05 Mar 2026 33 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Six years ago, I wrote a piece arguing that machismo — the entitlement to dominate — was one of the most destructive forces in human behavior.  I still believe that.  If anything, the evidence has multiplied.  But something has changed, and it is not an improvement.

Machismo used to be a cultural expectation.  Now it is a commercial product.

You can subscribe to it, stream it, inject it, lift it, wear it, and vote for it.

We did not merely inherit a myth of masculinity.  We have industrialized it.

From Cultural Script to Sales Funnel

Masculinity today is no longer defined by responsibility, competence, or care for others.  It has been reduced to a performance: dominance, wealth display, sexual conquest, emotional numbness, and the ability to intimidate.

This performance is not accidental.  It is monetized.

First you are told that you are weak, that society has emasculated you, that you are a victim.  Then you are offered a solution: become a “real man.”  Buy the course.  Follow the influencer.  Take the supplement.  Join the tribe.  Hate the designated enemies.  In my early years, the comic books often contained stories about a bully kicking sand in the face of a guy on a beach blanket with his girlfriend.  When the guy did nothing, the girl went off with the bully.  The solution was to purchase a weightlifting program.  Within no time you could develop huge muscles that would help you to kick the bullies ass and get your sexy girl friend back.

Today it has become a business model but still built on male insecurity.

In quality management terms, we would call this a system that manufactures defects and then sells the repair kit.

The Algorithm of Anger

What has changed in the past decade is not human nature but amplification.  Social media does not reward nuance.  It rewards outrage, humiliation, and certainty.  A calm, thoughtful man receives no clicks.  A furious, aggrieved man receives millions.

So, the system produces what it rewards.

When dominance theater gets attention, dominance theater multiplies.  When empathy is mocked as weakness, empathy disappears.  When complexity is dismissed as “soft,” thinking becomes a liability.  Men are told that women don’t like soft men with brains.  Women want hard men with muscles.  A six pack abs has become the new key to sexual prominence.

Deming taught us that every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.  If our culture produces angry, isolated, performative men, we should examine the system that is rewarding those outcomes.  It is a system in which the vast majority of men cannot live up to the stereotype.  Few men are John Wayne or Clint Eastwood tough.

The Pseudoscience of the “Alpha”

We are now told that human beings can be sorted into “alphas” and “betas,” as if we were barnyard animals.  This is not science.  It is mythology dressed in gym clothes.

Masculinity becomes a constant audition.  You must always prove yourself:

  • stronger than someone
  • richer than someone
  • more dominant than someone
  • less emotional than everyone

You are never allowed to arrive.  Only to compete.  A surrogate for competing is to watch every football game that tv offers.  Learn all the baseball stats.  Buy the hockey jerseys of your favorite enforcers.  Pretend that you are a big fan.  If your prowess on the field or court cannot be demonstrated than stand in front of a TV and scream at the umpires and referees.

These activities to not demonstrate strength.  They demonstrate a chronic insecurity that goes down to the soul of men today.  The irony is that a man who must constantly prove he is a man is not a free man.  He is trapped in a costume he cannot remove.  He is trapped in a performance that he cannot win.

The Estrogenic Culture

According to the new prophets of manhood — the ones broadcasting from leather chairs in rooms decorated like a bourbon advertisement — Western civilization is drowning in estrogen.

You will recognize these philosophers by their uniforms: tight T-shirts, studio microphones, and the haunted eyes of men who have turned their personalities into subscription services.

They inform us that men are weak because they cook, change diapers, express love for their children, and occasionally experience a human emotion not related to rage.  This, we are told, is how empires fall.

One of these digital Spartans I watched recently explained that reading books lowers testosterone.  This may be the first time in history that literacy has been classified as a hormone disorder.  Another one I watched introduced me to the concept of “Estrogenic” culture.  Karen even asked me what it was.  I had to look it up.  I now realized that I have been flooded by too much estrogen and it is making me soft and wimpy.  One solution is to buy more supplements.

The super macho purveyors of instant masculinity offer a  cure for this biochemical estrogenic catastrophe.  It is available online for $49.99 a month, plus shipping.  It involves waking at 4 a.m., lifting heavy objects, distrusting women, fearing vegetables, and referring to other men as “beta” — a term that functions primarily as a substitute for having an actual personality.

In this worldview, empathy is weakness, cooperation is surrender, and kindness is a sign that soy has finally conquered your bloodstream.

I have lived through wars, recessions, social upheavals, and the invention of disco.  Never once did I observe that the decisive factor in national survival was whether men felt comfortable discussing their feelings. The truly fragile masculinity is the one that cannot survive a salad, a conversation, or a competent woman.  If civilization can be destroyed by a man who knows how to do laundry, then civilization deserves to be replaced by a washing machine.

The Political Weaponization of Machismo

Hyper-masculinity is no longer just a personal identity.  It has become a political tool.  Strongman leadership, contempt for expertise, glorification of force, and the rejection of empathy are framed as “manly.”  We have a President who is a four time draft dodger, but who manages to position himself as a “tough” guy who takes no shit from the wimpy politicians and business-people who surround him.  His cadre of sycophants are infamous to the depths they will sink to.  Anything the Donald wants seems fair game if they can only stay in the Donald’s graces.  And they call this “masculinity.”

The world is turned upside down today.  Compromise becomes weakness.  Reflection becomes cowardice.  Care becomes softness.  Thinking becomes weakness.  Restraint becomes fearfulness.  We scale the same logic from the individual to the nation: domination over partnership, victory over cooperation, humiliation over understanding, bold strikes over careful deliberation.  Attacks over compromise.  Revenge over treaties.

We have seen where this leads.  History is not short of examples.  We have the disaster on two levels.  The first level is on the level of the individual.

The Hidden Cost to Men

Here is the irony.  The ideology that claims to defend men is one of the primary sources of male suffering.

  • Men are more lonely than at any time in modern history.
  • Men have higher suicide rates.
  • Men are less likely to seek help.
  • Men are taught emotional illiteracy and then punished for the consequences.

We tell boys not to cry and then wonder why men cannot express grief except through anger.

We call vulnerability weakness and then wonder why men die alone.

A system that forbids emotional expression produces emotional isolation.  That is not masculinity.  That is a design flaw.

The Damage to Relationships and Families

Hyper-masculinity not only impacts the man, it destroys relationships.  It does not produce strong families.  It produces hierarchy instead of partnership.  Control instead of cooperation.  Silence instead of communication.  The amount of domestic violence in our society is mute testimony to this phenomenon.

  • 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g., beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime. (It is not only men who are injured by a society that endorses violence over compassion.)
  • 1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
  • On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide.

A man who cannot change a diaper, express affection, admit fear, or ask for help is not powerful.  He is dependent on a narrow script that collapses the moment life becomes complex — and life always becomes complex.

Strength is not domination.  Strength is reliability.

What Real Strength Looks Like

Real strength is:

  • emotional regulation
  • keeping your word
  • protecting without controlling
  • teaching without humiliating
  • listening without needing to win
  • stopping when stopping is the right thing to do

Real strength builds.  It does not perform.

The strongest men I have known were not the loudest men in the room.  They were the ones who could be trusted — by their partners, their children, their colleagues, and their communities.

They did not need an audience.

A Systems View of Masculinity

If we want healthier men, we need healthier systems.   Teach boys emotional vocabulary as deliberately as we teach them sports.  Think of creating the opposite of a Spartan society where violence and cruelty are rewarded.  What if we rewarded kindness and compassion instead of vengeance and retribution?

I have two strong memories of my father.  While living in NYC, I was about 8 years old, and I had a fight with a neighborhood bully.  Bigger than me and older than me, he hit me several times in the face.  I went home crying.  When I walked in the door, my dad asked me what was wrong.  I told him that I had gotten hit by the neighborhood bully.  He told me to get my ass out the door and don’t come back until I had gotten even with the bully.  I was more afraid of my dad than the bully.  I ran down the block to where the bully was yakking it up with some friends.  The bully asked me what I wanted.  I punched him in the stomach, when he bent over I brought my knee up into his face as hard as I could.  I laid him out cold.

The next time I had a challenge from my father was about five years later.  I had been playing football with some friends when an older guy and his two buddies took the ball from us.  I had four friends with me, and we all just looked at each other.  I reacted.  I lunged at the bully and tackled him to the ground.  I had him around the stomach and started punching him as hard as I could.  He raked my face with his hands leaving several bloody scratches and claw marks.  Fortunately for me, my four other friends jumped in, and we gave the guy a good beating while his buddies ran off.  I went back to my house with my friends to wash up.  When I walked in, my dad was sitting on the sofa.  He took one look at me and said, “What the hell happened to your face?”  I was about to say something, but my friends jumped in and told him how I had tackled this big guy by myself and that I had been instrumental in winning a fight with this bully.  My father looked at me and replied “Good, but next time you win a fight, look like you have won it.”

I did not exactly grow up in a Spartan society, but I grew up in a family system where crying was weakness and emotions were only something women exhibited.  These teachings would come back to devil me many times over the next years.  If we are going to eradicate violence in our society, violence against women, violence against children and violence against the world, it must start with being the changes that (as Gandhi so wisely said) we want to see in the world.

  • Normalize caregiving as masculine.
  • Reward cooperation, not just competition.
  • Teach media literacy so young men understand how outrage is monetized.
  • Create male friendships that are not limited to drinking beer, watching sports, and avoiding looking too intellectual

Conclusions:

Machismo has always promised certainty: certainty that you will be dominant, certainty that you will be respected, certainty that you will be feared, and certainty that you will never be vulnerable.  However, it has never delivered on these promises.  These are all phantoms or myths that are part of the machismo narrative so many of us have been taught.  What it has delivered is violence,  isolation, and perpetual insecurity.   Perhaps the most notorious image of a real man is depicted by John Wayne in his movie persona.  A persona that bore little reality to the real life John Wayne.

“Wayne emanated what historian Kristen Kobes du Mez calls in her compelling work Jesus and John Wayne, “cowboy masculinity.” On the screen, he depicted what many considered to be the archetypal American man — a self-reliant individualist who never shows his feelings and never apologizes.  The type of dude who forgoes reflection for action; doesn’t ask for permission; who knows he’s a good guy and knows how to spot — and annihilate — the bad guys.  Both on and off the screen, Wayne modeled a mode of American manhood based on imperialist ideals, the superiority of whites, and free-market capitalism.” —- The Reveler, April 5, 2021.  Does this remind you of anyone that we know today?  A leader who sets the standard for everything a real man is not.

We are not condemned to this script.   Masculinity is not a biological destiny.  It is a cultural story.  And stories can be rewritten.   The bravest man is not the one who shouts the loudest, lifts the most, or dominates the most.  The bravest man is the one who no longer needs to prove he is a man.  That man is free.  And a culture of free men — men who do not need to dominate in order to exist — would be a culture with far less violence, far less fear, and far more humanity.

That is a future worth building.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank You, Gracias, Merci, 谢谢 (Xièxiè), Asante, ありがとう (Arigatō)

26 Feb 2026 10 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

Thank You!  Two words that can change the world.  And if you don’t believe me read on.

How many Thank-You’s do you get in a day?  Do you get as many as you think you deserve?  Do you get too many.  Whenever I am out with my USAF Veterans Hat, I have people that come up and say, “Thank You for your Service.”  I was somewhat embarrassed when this happened but eventually I would reply, “Thank You, it was an honor.”  Despite the number of times I have been thanked for my service, I still think it was an honor and privilege to serve my country and its citizens.

Each year for the past 43 years, I have attended a four day silent retreat at a Jesuit Retreat Center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.  Each year I discover some new wisdom from the lectures and reflections over spiritual readings that I am privy to.  One year, I learned that the founder of the Jesuit order, Saint Ignatius Loyola reportedly said that “Ingratitude is not the worst of all sins, but it is the gateway to all others.”  The more I reflected on this thought, the more I realized how true it is.  Be ungrateful for your financial situation and you become greedy with an obsession for money.  Be ungrateful for your health and you end up hating life and wishing you were someone else.  Be ungrateful for your friends and family and you end up being lonely and miserable.

The other side of ungratefulness is gratefulness.  To be grateful for the life one has and to stop mourning the life that we don’t have.  However, gratefulness is simply a state of mind.  As powerful as it is, it is not enough.  We need to put actions with our thoughts.  Wisdom, says “prayer to the Lord but row for the shore.”  Or “keep praying but move your feet.”  If we are really grateful, we need to show it.  The best way to show it is a simple “Thank You.”  For some people this is showing  gratitude.  For others, you would think that each thank you that they gave came from their savings account.

When I woke up the other night at 3 AM, I started to write this blog.  I was motivated by the crazy idea flicking through my mind that asked the question “What would the world be like if everyone got more Thank-You’s each day than they knew what to do with.”  Would people go crazy and want to stop saying “Thank You?”  Would the government put a ban on the use of the words “Thank You?”  Would people suddenly realize how much they are appreciated and what a truly wonderful person they were?  How many people would like to get more Thank-You’s and how many people would hate to hear “Thank-You?”  What would happen to society if more people gave out thank-You’s each day?  I decided to run this question by my AI assistant Metis.  Here is what she replied.  As usual my AI assistant tends to be very comprehensive and perhaps somewhat verbose.

What would happen to society if more people gave out Thank-You’s each day? 

Metis:

John, I think that’s a deceptively simple question with very deep system effects—very much in line with your Deming lens and your work on connectedness.

Here’s what I believe would happen if people routinely received more genuine Thank-You’s than they expected:

  1. Immediate Psychological Effects

You’d see a measurable shift in mood and stress levels.

Gratitude directed at someone (not just practiced internally) tends to:

  • Lower cortisol
  • Increase dopamine and serotonin
  • Create a short “reward loop” that reinforces prosocial behavior

In plain terms: people would feel seen, and being seen is one of the strongest antidotes to alienation.

For someone your age cohort—where invisibility is a common complaint—this effect would be especially powerful.

  1. Behavioral Reinforcement

From a systems perspective:

What gets recognized gets repeated.

If people are thanked for:

  • small acts of competence
  • reliability
  • kindness
  • showing up

you reinforce intrinsic motivation rather than compliance.

This reduces:

  • withdrawal behavior
  • quiet quitting
  • defensive routines

You’d see higher quality interactions without changing any formal policy—pure cultural shift.

  1. Social Contagion Effect

Gratitude is highly contagious.

One sincere Thank-You tends to produce:

  • reciprocal gratitude
  • increased patience
  • more cooperative behavior

In network terms, it increases positive signal density in the social system.

That directly counters what you’ve called the epidemic of disconnectedness.

  1. Identity Stabilization

Many people today derive identity from conflict, outrage, or status competition.

Frequent appreciation shifts identity toward:

  • contribution
  • competence
  • belonging

People begin to think:

“I matter because I help,”
rather than
“I matter because I win.”

That is a profound cultural pivot.

  1. Impact on Institutions

In organizations (including veteran groups, radio teams, quilting circles, consulting clients):

Regular unexpected appreciation would lead to:

  • Lower friction costs
  • Higher volunteer retention
  • Greater discretionary effort
  • Fewer interpersonal conflicts

You’d get quality improvement without a new program, which Deming would smile at.

  1. Political and Civic Implications

At the macro level, a culture of daily appreciation would:

  • Reduce zero-sum thinking
  • Increase trust in local relationships
  • Make dialogue easier

Gratitude humanizes the “other” before disagreement even begins.

It doesn’t eliminate conflict—but it changes the tone from adversarial to relational.

  1. Neurological Rewiring Over Time

If this happened daily for months:

People’s baseline expectations would shift from:

“No one notices me”
to
“My actions have value.”

That reduces anxiety and defensive postures.

You’d likely see:

  • fewer hostile interactions
  • more eye contact
  • more patience in public spaces

Small signals, big emergent outcomes.

The Key Variable: Authenticity

This only works if the Thank-You’s are:

  • specific (“Thank you for setting up the chairs”)
  • timely
  • sincere

Generic or forced gratitude has little effect and can even breed cynicism.

Conclusions:

Well, I was given more information than I expected.  Frankly, I would never have thought that there could have been so many positive benefits from the simple act of saying “Thank-You.” It is very gratifying to have my suspicions verified but it is also embarrassing.  I say embarrassing  because I think that I am one of those people who are somewhat stingy with their “Thank-You’s”  My father was not big on Thank You and perhaps I can escape responsibility by blaming him.  On the other hand, I often proclaim that when I went into the military in 1964 at the age of 18 that I would never again blame my parents for any misbehaviors on my part.

What stops us from saying “Thank You” more often?  Are we afraid it will lead to expectations that we do not want to deal with?  If I say, “Thank You,” will you think you are better than I am?  If I put your effort down, I can build myself up.  Instead of saying “Thank You Bob,” I can say “Not bad, but I have seen better.”  Or perhaps “You shouldn’t expect a Thank You for just doing your job.”

Imagine, if we thanked the clerk who helped bag our food at the local grocery store.  “Thank You for bagging my groceries.”  Why should I say that if he/she is getting paid to do it!  Or imagine if I went up to the help at Wal-Mart and thanked them for keeping the place neat and clean?  Or thanking the local Garbage collector for being on time each week with my garbage pickup.  Or the clerk at the Post Office for giving me my mail?  Where would it all stop?  Before you know it, everyone would be expecting Thank-You’s.

What kind of a world would that be?  People might really start feeling better about themselves.

Help me to change the world.  Say Thank-You more often.

Thank-You for reading this blog. 

 

 

Are Americans Brainwashed?  Revisiting Consumer Culture Through the Lens of “The Society of the Spectacle”  — By John Persico (with Metis)

16 Jan 2026 8 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Introduction

In 2018 I asked a provocative question: Are Americans brainwashed?  At the time, what I meant by “brainwashing” was a kind of conditioned conformity — an unconscious habituation to consumerism.  We buy, accumulate, and consume not because we need to, but because something deep within our society tells us that our worth, security, and happiness depend on it.

A few weeks ago, I encountered a work that reframed much of what I was trying to say: Guy Debord’s 1967 classic The Society of the Spectacle.  Debord, a French Marxist theorist and filmmaker, argues that modern capitalism doesn’t just sell goods — it sells images, identities, and perceptions of reality itself.  In doing so, it creates what he calls a “spectacle” — a world where representation replaces lived experience, and passive consumption replaces active life.

Today I believe the idea of “brainwashing” isn’t just a metaphor.  It is a lived condition of our society — one that manifests in our politics, our personal relationships, and above all, in how we see ourselves and the world.

But if we are to diagnose this condition accurately, we also need a prescription for how we might undo it.

I. The Diagnosis: What Is the Spectacle?

In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord makes a bold claim:
“The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

What Does This Mean?

  1. The Spectacle Is a Social Condition, Not Just Advertising

We tend to think of consumerism as simply “too many ads,” “too much marketing,” or “too much stuff.” But Debord pushes us deeper: the spectacle isn’t only the marketing — it’s the way we relate to reality itself through mediated images.

In other words:

  • It’s not just the billboard that matters — it’s that we now interpret our lives as if we were on billboards.
  • It’s not just the advertisement — it’s that we start to see ourselves as advertisements for our own lifestyle, identity, and status.

In the spectacle, images don’t just sell products.  They sell versions of reality.  They tell us what success looks like, what happiness looks like, what security looks like, and what a good life looks like.  And we internalize that script — often without realizing we’ve been cast in it.

  1. Consumption Replaces Experience

Debord argues that the spectacle replaces real life with representation of life.

Think about how often we:

  • Take pictures of experiences instead of experiencing them.
  • Check likes, shares, and comments instead of connecting.
  • Pursue prestige, status, or image instead of meaning.

We no longer live our lives in the fullest sense — we consume them, display them, and measure them.  This is not just consumerism — it is spectatorship.  We watch life, we watch others, and we are watched.  We are subjects of our own mediated narratives.

  1. The Spectacle Is Universal But Uneven

Debord notes that the spectacle isn’t just advertising or corporate marketing.
It includes:

  • Mass media
  • Entertainment
  • Social media
  • Politics
  • Consumer brands
  • Cultural norms
  • Public relations

In the society of the spectacle, everything becomes commodified, including our attention, our desires, and even our dissent.  Even counter-culture becomes a brand.

This is why Debord’s critique resonates with my original thesis: American society doesn’t just create consumers of products — it creates consumers of images, identities, and scripted realities.  We are persuaded not only to buy what we don’t need, but to define ourselves through those purchases.

II. Are Americans Brainwashed? A Reframed Answer

So, let’s revisit the question I asked in 2018: Are Americans brainwashed?

If by “brainwashed” we mean:

  • conditioned to think in ways that benefit corporate and political interests,
  • socialized to equate meaning with consumption, and
  • habituated to accept the spectacle as reality…

Then the answer is yes — to a significant extent.

But the spectacle is not an overt force with an agenda.  It doesn’t need to be explicit to be pervasive.  It works because:

  1. We participate willingly — we seek validation through consumption, clicks, images, status.
  2. We mistake representation for reality — what we see on screens or in ads becomes our standard for life.
  3. We rarely interrogate the source of our desires — we assume our wants are our own.

Debord writes that the spectacle is a form of alienation — where life is lived not directly, but through representations.  When we are alienated from our own experience, we are easier to influence because we are no longer anchored in our own desires — only in the images we consume.

III. The Mechanisms of the “American Brainwashing”

Let’s unpack some specific mechanisms by which the spectacle perpetuates conditioned consumption:

  1. Identity Through Consumption

Corporations don’t just sell products — they sell lifestyles, identities, and social status.

  • Owning a certain car means you are cool.
  • Wearing a certain brand means you are successful.
  • Posting the right image means you are interesting.

We learn to define ourselves through what we display, not what we experience.

  1. The Attention Economy

Modern media doesn’t just want our money — it wants our attention.
Attention becomes the rarest and most valuable commodity.  Algorithms are optimized to:

  • keep you looking,
  • keep you scrolling,
  • keep you craving more.

This amplifies the spectacle because it conditions instinctive reactions — not reflective thought.

  1. Social Media as a Spectacle Machine

Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube are engines of the spectacle:

  • They amplify images over ideas.
  • They reward emotion over reflection.
  • They privilege appearance over substance.

The result?  A world where image consumption replaces authentic engagement.

  1. Debt and Consumption as Fulfillment

Credit markets and consumer finance turn consumption into addiction.
Payday loans, credit cards, easy financing — all encourage buying now, paying later, and justifying desires as needs.

This isn’t just financial — it’s psychological:
We feel like we are fulfilling ourselves by spending, even when we are not.

IV.  What Brainwashing Is Really Like: Mindlessness and the Spectacle

Here’s where Ellen Langer’s work on mindlessness becomes useful.

Langer describes mindlessness as a state in which behavior is rigid and thought is shallow — where we act on autopilot.

How does this connect to Debord?

  • The spectacle thrives on mindlessness.
  • If people thought deeply about why they want certain things, how they spend their time, and what their values are, the spectacle would weaken.
  • The spectacle depends on unexamined life.

So, we might define the “brainwashing” of Americans not as overt coercion, but as collective mindlessness — not thinking deeply about how our desires are shaped, what we consume, and why.

Mindlessness and the spectacle are two sides of the same coin:
One is cognitive, the other is cultural.
Both detach us from genuine experience.

V.  The Prescription: How Do We Undo the Brainwashing?

If we’ve diagnosed the problem, the urgent challenge is: How do we counteract the spectacle and undo conditioned consumption?

Here’s a multi-layered prescription:

  1. Cultivate Mindfulness

Langer’s work teaches us that awareness is not automatic — it must be practiced.

Mindfulness in consumption means:

  • Asking why you want something before you act.
  • Not mistaking wanting for needing.
  • Reflecting on the social and psychological forces shaping your desires.

Mindfulness isn’t only meditation — it’s active awareness of your internal life.
It’s questioning your impulses rather than obeying them.

  1. Reclaim Authentic Experience

If the spectacle is a representation of life, its antidote is direct experience of life.

This means:

  • Valuing real human interaction over mediated interactions.
  • Experiencing events without first documenting them for others.
  • Rediscovering activities that aren’t commodified for Instagram or TikTok.

Experience should be lived, not posted.

  1. Reduce Passive Consumption

We live in a world designed for passive consumption:

  • Scroll feeds
  • Binge media
  • Buy products based on ads

Combat this by:

  • Setting intentional limits on screen time.
  • Choosing content that teaches, not only entertains.
  • Prioritizing creation over consumption.
  1. Examine Economic Structures

The spectacle is supported by economic systems that profit from:

  • Continuous consumption
  • Planned obsolescence
  • Debt accumulation
  • Attention monetization

Undermining the spectacle requires economic literacy:

  • Understanding how credit, interest, and consumer culture are connected
  • Questioning advertising claims
  • Supporting sustainable, local, and meaningful alternatives
  1. Build Communities of Critical Thought

Spectacle thrives in isolation and individualism.

Counter this by:

  • Forming discussion groups
  • Reading cooperatively
  • Sharing reflections instead of consumer gossip
  • Encouraging long conversations, not short clicks

Detroit philosopher Cornel West said, “We must refuse the politics of disengagement and nihilism.”  This means engaging deeply with ideas — not passively consuming them.

  1. Political Awareness and Media Literacy

Spectacle extends into politics:

  • Politicians perform for cameras.
  • News becomes entertainment.
  • Outrage replaces inquiry.

Undoing brainwashing means:

  • Learning to distinguish facts from spectacle
  • Examining incentives behind media narratives
  • Teaching critical media literacy
  1. Reframe Success and Identity

Finally, we must challenge the equation:

More stuff = more value.

Redefine success as:

  • Deeper relationships
  • Richer experiences
  • Intellectual curiosity
  • Community contributions

The self we cultivate should be internal, not a brand.

VI.  What the Spectacle Cannot Control

Here’s the hopeful part:

The spectacle operates through images and representations.
But it cannot fully replace:

  • Moment-to-moment consciousness
  • Genuine love and empathy
  • Deep reflection and insight
  • Meaningful community
  • Unmediated experience

These are areas where the spectacle fails — exactly because they cannot be commodified or packaged.

Conclusion: Toward a Life Unmediated

So, are Americans brainwashed?
Not in the literal sense of having thoughts forcibly replaced — but in the structural sense that society conditions our perceptions of reality, desire, identity, and fulfillment.

Guy Debord’s spectacle framework helps us see that consumerism isn’t just about goods — it’s about how we see the world and ourselves.

Ellen Langer’s work reminds us that undoing this starts with awareness — moving from mindlessness to mindful life.

The good news is that mind, choice, and experience cannot be fully outsourced to images or corporations.  We can reclaim them by practicing mindfulness, re-centering authentic experience, and questioning the narratives sold to us every day.

The challenge is not only social — it’s deeply personal.
But once we begin to see how the spectacle shapes us, we can choose to look beyond the images and toward the real world — toward a life to live, not a life to watch.

America today is a deeply divided nation and a deeply divided people.  The brainwashing we get from the sources discussed have been major contributors to creating the divide we now live in.  Few people on either side of the divide are happy the way things are.  We yearn for the “good old days.”  Days reflected in Norman Rockwell pictures of America that portray a different country than we now see.

It is true that “Happy Days” never did not exist equally in this country for all people, but at least we had the ability to still talk to people who we disagreed with and sometimes see a new perspective.  We had a country where people once talked about morals and ethics.  Today, our perspectives and beliefs are like a wall of granite.  Rather than a divide, we have a stone wall that we have built.  The wall is almost impenetrable.  It seems impossible to get over it, under it or around it.  The problem with destroying this wall is that it exists in our minds and that is the hardest thing in the world to change.  Until we open our minds and hearts, we will be stuck behind a granite wall that separates our nation and people.

The Epidemic of Selfishness in America

24 Oct 2025 14 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Introduction:

We are living through a moral epidemic.  An epidemic of selfishness.  Selfishness has become the new normal — disguised as independence, celebrated as authenticity.  In the moral epidemic of which I speak, we are plagued by not one but several symptoms.  Selfishness is a disease that can be seen in many manifestations.  In this blog, I want to explore how ego, narcissism, ingratitude, denial of responsibilities, entitlement, demand for rights, and isolation are each contributing to a disease that is redefining the American character.  The remedy may lie in reviving gratitude, duty, responsibilities and connection.

A few nights ago, I went to a Hobby Lobby store with Karen.  She needed to pick up some quilt squares for her Thursday quilting guild.  Each week they have a contest, and the prize is a bundle of fat quarters provided by all the members.  They change the color of the fat quarters that members must bring to each meeting.  I left the store early and told Karen that I would wait for her in the car.  The parking lot was mostly dark and deserted.  As I walked to my car, I noticed that there was about a dozen or so shopping carts just randomly scattered around the lot.

I assumed that there were no cart bins available but upon further looking around, I noticed many bins where you could leave a shopping cart.  Instead, customers had just dropped the carts anywhere they wanted to.  As it was late at night, it would be really easy to hit one of these carts either by backing into them or hitting them as you tried to pull out of the parking lot.  This fact did not matter to the individuals who were TOO LAZY to just push their carts over to a bin and drop them off.

Karen is normally a very positive person.  When she came back to the car, I pointed the situation with the carts out to her.  I challenged her to find some “Good Reason” that these customers could not just push their carts over to an available bin.  My suggested reasons, “They were in a hurry and had to get to an emergency ward.”  “They needed to get to the airport, and they were late.”  “They did not have time to find one of the available bins to put their carts in because the football game was starting.”  “They were being chased by predators who wanted their Hobby Lobby stuff.”   “They were blind, or it was too dark to see the bins.”  These were my facetious reasons.  Karen laughed at my lame attempt at humor.  My conclusion:  Lazy and Selfish.    

Ego:

The age of the collective has given way to the empire of the self.  Every opinion feels sacred, every desire urgent.  Technology, consumerism, and politics all whisper the same message: “You deserve everything, instantly”.  But when self-interest becomes the ultimate good, the moral commons collapses. “You do your thing, and I do my thing” was part of the famous Gestalt prayer by Fritz Perls that became popular in the 70’s.  The attitude behind this prayer has morphed into the epidemic we see today where “shopping till you drop” and “he who has the most toys wins” now defines our National character.  A character suffused by obsession for buying things to help build our egos up.  But it is not enough to have more, our toys have to be bigger and better.  Better is defined by the brand name stamped on the purchase or the neighborhood that you live in.  Bigger is a 60-inch color tv or a car with 900 hp or a house with five bathrooms or a  Wendy’s Pretzel Bacon Pub Triple with 1530 calories.

Narcissism:

Narcissism is the psychological heart of the new selfishness.  My friend Bruce has mentioned this a million times to me whenever we discuss Trump and his followers.  I concede that it now exists and is more pervasive than at any time in history.  “I matter more than you do.”  “I am more important than you are.”  The unflattering title of a “Karen” (my wife’s name is Karen) is depicted in thousands of short videos and TV shows such as “Bridezilla” where a would-be bride is screaming “It’s all about me, it’s all about me.”  This has become our national motto, “It’s all about me.”

Narcissism feeds on admiration but rejects intimacy.  The narcissist seeks reflection, not relationship — an audience, not a community.  Social validation replaces self-knowledge, and performance replaces sincerity.  We have built a society of mirrors where no one truly sees anyone else.  In Greek mythology,  Narcissus was a strikingly beautiful young man who rejected the love of others.  He sat all day looking at himself in a pool of water and thought how beautiful he was.  He fell in love with himself.  Punished by the gods for his vanity, he wasted away out of despair because he could not be with his love.  Our country is wasting away from a virus that seems to be pervasive.  A virus of narcissism.  But it is only one of several symptoms killing us.

Ingratitude:

It took me over thirty Jesuit retreats to finally notice a quote by Saint Ignatius Loyola.  Loyola said that  “Ingratitude is the sin most offensive to Heaven.  It is the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes as it is the forgetting of God’s blessings and gifts.”  He described it as “The most abominable of sins”. 

The more I reflected on this thought, the more I realized exactly what he meant.  Ingratitude corrodes the soul from within.  It blinds us to the gifts of others, the sacrifices of those who came before, and the simple blessings of daily life.  When we stop saying “thank you”, we begin to believe that everything owed to us was earned — and that no one else deserves the same.  Gratitude is the soil of empathy; ingratitude is a cancerous rot.

I try to remind myself each day of the need for gratitude.  It is not always an easy virtue to arouse.  In these challenging times, it can seem to me that I have little to be grateful for.  I would never have believed forty years ago that I (WE) would have had to deal with Climate Change, a major Covid Epidemic, Trumpism and now heart problems, all in my seventies.  I once thought that like any good cowboy or cowgirl, I would simply ride off into the sunset after years of a peaceful meditative retirement.  Added to my woes is the fact that our national character seems to be eroding and replaced with a desire for a despot who would be king.

Denial of Responsibilities:

Freedom divorced from responsibility is not liberty; it is chaos.  We live in an era where accountability feels like oppression to many people.  People say that they hate the government. “Too much big government” is a rallying cry for right-wing fanatics.  Civic, moral, and even legal obligations are dismissed as optional, or outdated.  How many people do you see running green lights or ignoring posted speed limits these days?

Thus, we have the movement for “Less government.”  Let’s obliterate the agencies and organizations that might hold us responsible for something.  But something is always overlooked when it is convenient to make money or power.  How many people have ever been prosecuted for the preventable disaster that we call “Climate Change?”  Denial of responsibility led to continued use of fossil fuels which accelerated any potential changes in our global climate.  Denial of responsibility breaks the invisible threads that hold society together: trust, reliability, and mutual care.  “I don’t care what my thirst for money does to you as long as it benefits me!”

Entitlement:

“Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants.  When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.” — ― Criss Jami

Entitlement is selfishness institutionalized.  It is a step beyond responsibility.  Now I am not only irresponsible, but I am entitled to be irresponsible.  I have a legal right to be irresponsible.  It is my right to leave my shopping cart wherever the hell I want to.  I bought a product at this store.  This entitles me to do whatever I want with this shopping cart.  It is the conviction that one’s desires are moral imperatives.  The entitled person measures fairness by outcomes, not effort; comfort, not contribution.  When entitlement becomes culture, excellence disappears — because effort no longer earns respect.  It is taken for granted that some people are born superior and effort has nothing to do with success or failure.

Demand for Rights:

I want my rights.  I want my rights!  It is my right!  I know my rights!  Everywhere you look today someone is screaming about their rights.  I learned years ago (I wrote a blog about this issue) from Sister Giovanni of Guadalupe Area Project, that for every right there is a responsibility.  Have you heard anyone screaming for their responsibilities?

The modern cry is for rights — to speak, to choose, to consume, to be seen — but rarely for the responsibility that sustains those rights.  Rights without duties are like currency without value.  When everyone demands and no one contributes; liberty itself becomes unsustainable.  A functioning democracy requires not just the assertion of rights, but the acceptance of responsibilities.  See the short film on “Indigenous Rights vs Responsibilities” for a refreshing view of the two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43j30S1yDI

Isolation — The Logical End

Isolation and loneliness are epidemics of their own in America today.  A Cigna Group survey from June 2025 found that more than half (57%) of Americans are lonely.  Data shows that the amount of time the average American spends alone has increased significantly over the past decades, while time spent socializing with friends has decreased — “Why are we so lonely?”— by John Wolfson, Winter 2024, Boston Magazine

When ego, narcissism, ingratitude, entitlement, and denial of responsibility take root, the harvest is isolation.  When I count and you don’t count, I become estranged from you.  When I live in a community where there are insiders and outsiders, I become distant from humanity.  Back porches have replaced front porches in America.  I can walk down a village street or sit on my front step and not see anyone come by for hours.  We may live side by side with so-called neighbors, but we feel profoundly alone.  Digital life gives us constant connection but no communion.  Isolation breeds despair, polarization, and apathy — subtle diseases beneath our prosperity.

Conclusion — The Return of the Connected Self

The cure for selfishness is not suppression of the self but expansion of it — seeing the self as part of a larger whole.  To belong but not to a group of xenophobic fanatics.  To see the value of Inclusiveness not exclusiveness, diversity not homogeneity.  To see all people as equal before the law.  The foundations of DEI which seem so despised by people on the right .  We rediscover meaning when we give, not when we grasp.

Jesus gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Sermon on the Mount to remind us to take care of others.  It is still better to give than to receive.  In the New Testament of the Bible, (Acts 20:35), the apostle Paul recalls these words of Jesus.  “In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'”

To rebuild our moral ecology, we must learn again the language of gratitude, duty, humility, and compassion.  You can start by reading any of the following works by the late Pope Francis: Whether you are Christian, Atheist, Buddhist, I think you will find some useful ideas in these writings.

  • The Name of God Is Mercy
    • Pope Francis emphasizes that God’s primary attribute is mercy, not judgment. He encourages the Church to become a “field hospital” for the wounded, emphasizes human sin, invites humble openness to forgiveness, and urges believers to extend compassion and reconciliation to all.
  • Fratelli Tutti – (All Brothers):
    • Published in 2020, this encyclical addresses fraternity and social friendship, calling for greater solidarity on a global scale.
  • Laudato Si’ – (Praise Be to You):
    • Published in 2015, this encyclical focuses on environmental issues and our responsibility to care for the Earth
  • Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future
    • Pope Francis’s “Let Us Dream” urges readers to see crises—like the pandemic—as opportunities for moral renewal and solidarity. He calls for compassion, social justice, environmental care, and inclusive reform, inviting humanity to rebuild a more equitable, sustainable, and spiritually grounded world guided by conscience and the common good.

The age of the isolated self and the Disease of Selfishness can end only when we remember that: “When I am not the center of the universe, people become human.”

PS: This Epidemic of Selfishness is the heart of the leadership and its cult of followers and sycophants that is leading the USA today. There will be no turning away from the direction that they are taking us, unless the citizens in the USA reject the elements that I have described in the above blog. We must return our country to a place where fear and greed do not guide our actions but instead we are motivated by love, kindness, charity, mercy and compassion. Not just for our friends and relatives and social circle but for everyone in the world. My God is their God as well.

Reflections on Humanism: A Father and Daughter in Conversation

26 Sep 2025 19 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This year, after my 42nd silent retreat at Demontreville, I found myself reflecting over a different kind of lesson — one not from the retreat master, but from a conversation with my daughter.

My daughter Chris and I could hardly be further apart politically.  I lean toward policies that support immigrants, the poor, minorities, and the sick.  She supports Trump and the Republican agenda, which I believe diminishes those very groups.  Our conversation was brief, but it revealed something that I have been mulling over ever since.

When it comes to personal interactions, my daughter is tactful, gracious, and considerate.  She knows how to get along with people, soften conflict, and maintain civility.  I, by contrast, am often blunt and confrontational.  When I disagree, I rarely hide it.  I leave enemies in my wake since I have little tolerance for greed and immoral people.  She accuses me of being harsh, even inhumane, in my manner.

And yet, when I step back, I see an irony.  My brusque words are often in service of a vision of justice for the many.  Her gentle tone exists alongside a commitment to policies that, in practice, withdraw support from those most in need.  In fact, the Trumpian policies she supports will result in starvation, disease and death for millions.

This tension raises a deeper question: what does it mean to be a true humanist?

Is it the ability to show kindness in the moment, face-to-face, even if one’s broader commitments bring harm to many unseen lives?  Or is it the willingness to fight for systemic justice, even if the style of delivery offends, unsettles, or disturbs?

I think of Christ, who could be gentle with the broken and the poor, yet fierce with the powerful and the hypocritical.  He healed with a touch, but he also overturned tables.  His humanity was both intimate and systemic.

Perhaps that is the lesson I am being given now.  Humanism is not one thing.  It asks us to be kind in the small circle of our relationships but also bold in the larger circle of society.  Without the first, justice grows cold.  Without the second, kindness becomes complicity.

I wonder if my daughter and I — so different in politics, so different in style — are each holding half of a larger truth.

Yinandyang GIFs | Tenor

The Perfect Day When Everything Went Right!

20 Jun 2025 6 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Did you ever have a day when “everything” went right.  A day when you got up on the right side of the bed.  The phone rang all day with calls from good friends instead of spam and telemarketing messages.  Everyone just called to chat, and no one had any problems or issues to face.  A day when the sun was shining and the weather was perfect.  There were no bugs or mosquitoes to be found anyplace in your town.  You felt like a million dollars with no aches or pains.  No one you knew was going  to the doctor for cancer treatments or therapy of any kind.  It was as the younger generation like to say “Perfect.”

Now as you are reading this, you are probably thinking “He must be daydreaming, such days do not exist.”  Or maybe you are thinking that it is my birthday.  I concede the possibility that such days are perhaps rare, but then again should they be any more rare than days where “Everything that could go wrong” did go wrong.  Or is it just our perspective which is goofed up.  We are more likely to remember the days when our dog disappeared or when the doctor told us to come in and see her as soon as possible than days when our dog reappeared or the doctor called to tell us everything is fine.  Cognitive scientists have a term for our propensity to remember the bad more than the good.

“Negativity Bias” is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency to remember negative events and information more vividly and with greater impact than positive or neutral ones.  I will not bore you with the reasons for this propensity.  I am sure that you recognize that it exists.  Thus, if the Yin/Yang of the world is an accurate theory of our existence, we should have at least as many of the Perfect Days as we do the Shitty days.

I ask you to stop reading this blog for a few seconds.  I challenge you to see if and when you can remember the last perfect day that you have had.  Now I would like for you to describe that day in my comments section before reading the rest of this blog.  Think of the happiness you will bring to me as well as the rest of our readers.  What if the news carried as much good information as they do bad information?  What would your world be like if you only remembered and had perfect days.

At this point, you are probably ready to skewer me as some deranged Pollyanna or Don Quixote. A nutcase who sees everything through rose colored glasses.  Someone who is madly optimistic that there is hope for a better world.  That Donald Trump will not get a statue on Mount Rushmore and that he and his sycophantic followers will soon disappear in the abyss of forgotten history.  I assure you that I go to sleep every night praying to a god that I do not believe exists that these latter events will happen while I am still alive to witness them.  Instead, I wake up every morning to more bad news from the front line of the independent media I subscribe to. Thus, either giving me less hope for humanity or making me feel guilty by asking me for more money that I do not have.

See, you thought I was going to write some really optimistic idealistic treatise that would make you feel like your existence meant something and life was worth living.  Instead, I refer you to Ecclesiastes from the Bible:

Everything Is Meaningless

1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”

    says the Teacher.

“Utterly meaningless!

    Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors

    at which they toil under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go,

    but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets,

    and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south

    and turns to the north;

round and round it goes,

    ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea,

    yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from,

    there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome,

    more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing,

    nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 What has been will be again,

    what has been done will be done again;

    there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say,

    “Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago;

    it was here before our time.

11 No one remembers the former generations,

    and even those yet to come

will not be remembered

    by those who follow them.

However, I refuse to finish this blog on a nihilistic note.  I want to finish on a crescendo of hope and faith and happiness.  A belief that one idea, one word spoken, one action taken, one step forward can change the course of humanity.  We can look back to the past and find untold mistakes and failures that have eclipsed the sunlight of joy for the world.  But we can also look forward to a future that we can create because the vast majority of human beings are decent peace-loving equality seeking individuals.  The Negativity Bias blinds us to the positive outcomes that prevail every day in our lives.  At the end of each day, we seem destined to remember the bad things that happen in the world.  This effort is reinforced by a negative biased media which thrives on horror and destruction and pain.  I love the words from this song by Peter Paul and Mary,  “Light One Candle”

Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice

Justice and freedom demand

And light one candle for the wisdom to know

When the peacemaker’s time is at hand

 

Don’t let the light go out!

It’s lasted for so many years

Don’t let the light go out!

Let it shine through our love and our tears

 

Light one candle for the strength that we need

To never become our own foe

And light one candle for those who are suffering

Pain we learned so long ago                                                                                                               

Light one candle for all we believe in

Let anger not tear us apart!

Light one candle to bind us together

With peace as the song in our heart

 

Don’t let the light go out!

It’s lasted for so many years! (lasted for so many years!)

Don’t let the light go out!

Let it shine through our love and our tears

We need to counter this tendency for negative bias by reinforcing the positive “perfect” days of our lives.  Here is a checklist that ChatGPT created from my query:

It is a printable daily practice checklist to help overcome negative bias.  You can use it as a daily or weekly tracker to build habits that shift your mindset toward balance and resilience.

🌞 Daily Practice Checklist: Overcoming Negative Bias

Practice Done Today? ✅ Notes or Reflections
1. Morning Gratitude: List 3 things you’re grateful for. ☐
2. Reframe 1 Negative Thought: Catch a negative thought and reframe it positively. ☐
3. Notice the Good: Write down one positive thing that happened today. ☐
4. Kindness Practice: Do one kind thing for someone else. ☐
5. Mindful Moment: Spend 5+ minutes in meditation or quiet reflection. ☐
6. Move Your Body: Take a walk, stretch, or exercise. ☐
7. Limit Negative Input: Avoid or reduce exposure to toxic media or conversations. ☐
8. Evening Reflection: What went well today? What did you learn? ☐

🗓️ Weekly Reflection (Use at the end of the week)

  • What patterns of negative bias did I notice?
  • What helped me shift my mindset the most?
  • What’s one small thing I want to improve next week?

The End Folks. 

Hope you enjoyed this blog.  Let me know what your perfect day was. 

It’s the most Stressful time of the year

07 Dec 2024 6 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I decided to do a little take off on the classic Andy Williams song “The Happiest Time of the Year.”  Did you know there are more suicides in December than any other month in the year?  Actually, that is not true. Suicides peak in the Spring.  It is a myth held by many people that suicides peak at Christmas time.

( https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/suicides-dont-spike-around-holiday-season-americans-think-they-do)

One major study of suicides done Internationally found that suicide risk was highest on Mondays and increased on New Year’s day in most countries. However, the risk of suicide on weekends and Christmas varied by country and territory.  This study stated that:

“Public holidays seem to provide a protective association with suicidal events, however, several studies have reported an increase in risk in the immediately following days.812 However, a few other studies reported no strong linkage between suicide and general holidays.”1314

“The broken-promise effect theory has been widely adapted to explain short term temporal variations in suicide. It states that individuals may postpone committing suicide due to the hope of a “new beginning” when the cycle ends (e.g., weekends and the end of the year),810 while people may be prone to suicidal reactions when they encounter a sense of hopelessness from a new cycle” (eg, Monday and New Year). —- Association of Holidays and the Day of the Week with Suicide Risk.  A Multicountry Study.  BMJ 2024; 387 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2024-077262 (Published 23 October 2024)

This is probably much more technical than you wanted to think about today.  Perhaps my song will cheer you up.  Grab a cup of eggnog, dump some rum in it, put on your favorite Christmas carols and be lulled to sleep while humming my song.

IT’s the Most Stressful Time of the Year. 

It’s the most Stressful time of the year

With the kids out of school

Everyone expecting you to be of good cheer

It’s the most stressful time of the year

It’s the worst season of all

With fake holiday greetings

So called friends come to call

Relatives you can’t stand

It’s the worst season of all

There’ll be Christmas parties for finding gifts

Artery clogging Junk foods for getting obese on

Than slogging out to shovel the snow

There’ll be old family stories

And boring tales of the glories of

Christmases long, long ago

It’s the most stressful time of the year

There’ll be much flues and colds

And phones will be chiming

When loved ones get sick

Just to tell you they’re not coming

It’s the most stressful time of the year

There’ll be parties for pay for

Crowds to fight through

Numerous debts will be accrued

With bank accounts depleted

There’ll be worries about spending

Endless pleas for donations

And advertising never ending

It’s the most stressful time of the year

There’ll be much grousing and moaning

For who to buy presents

And how much to spend

For gifts to throw in their garbage bin

It’s the most stressful time

Yes the most stressful l time

Oh the most stressful time

Of the whole fucking year

My Apologies to those of you who love Christmas

My Final Will and Testament – Regrets – Reflection #11

11 Jun 2024 2 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Last year at my 40th Demontreville Retreat, one of the exercises that we were given by the Retreat Master included a very challenging set of thoughts.  The worksheet for the activity was labeled as “A Testament.” I took the worksheet and instructions home with me.  It had fourteen tasks or reflections to complete.  I did not desire to complete them during the retreat.  It is now almost a year since my retreat, and I have decided to make the mental and emotional effort necessary to complete this “Testament.”

The worksheet started with these instructions:

Imagine that this is the last day of your life on earth.  In the time that you have left, you want to leave a “Testament” for your family and friends.  Each of the following could serve as chapter headings for your “Testament.”  This is Reflection Number 11 on the worksheet.

  1. These are the things that I Regret about my life.

I would rather not write this section, but I am going to anyway.  I have thought about it for several weeks now.  I dreaded when I would reach this reflection.  I had one friend who said he had “No regrets” before he died.  How I envy that perspective.  I still wonder whether he was telling the truth or whether there was something wrong with him.  Perhaps, if he is telling the truth, he may someday be canonized as a Saint.

There will be no sainthood for me.  I have more regrets than I can count.  Some days, I feel like my entire life is one big series of regrets.  Instead of being a serial killer, I am a serial regreter.  If I could go back into the past and try to undo some of the things I did, I would not know where to start.  I have decided to lump my Regrets into three categories.  Each category has some common traits.  The first is Regrets due to a lack of patience.  The second is Regrets due to a lack of compassion.  The third and final category is Regrets due to a lack of kindness.

Let us get started on this task of sorrowful confessions.  In my defense, I hope I have learned over the years many things to mitigate making the same mistakes that I did when I was younger.  I would like to think that I am a very different person now than I was forty years ago.  Many of my Regrets are in the past.  My biggest Regret is that I cannot go back and rewind the past.

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Regrets Due to a Lack of Patience:

A lack of patience may just be one of the most destructive traits that anyone can have.  You can defend it if you want to, but I have too often been impatient to see much virtue in it.  Most good things come to those who, if not willing to wait, at least have the patience to persevere in a task or mission that could take years.  We keep reminding ourselves that Rome was not built in a day but neither did it fall overnight.  History is replete of antecedents to subsequent events proving that most of the problems of today actually started many years if not decades or centuries earlier.

There are certain calculations I should like to make with you,

To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true;

And remember, ‘Patience, Patience,’ is the watchword of a sage,

Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age.  

— From  Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse

I was not a patient person.  I had a great many talents but foolishly I thought that these talents gave me the right and ability to circumvent practice, dedication, training and experience.  I wanted everything today or at least by next week.  I expected that my brains and intellect gave me the privilege to neglect what all the great writers, artists, musicians, athletes and other talented people know.  There is no greatness without hard work and discipline.

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Regrets Due to a Lack of Compassion:

I grew up believing that emotions were somehow evil.  Thinking and brains and knowledge and intellect were everything.  Emotions led us astray.  Somewhere in life, I learned that unless you suffer the same emotions as other people do, you cannot empathize with them.  Until you experience what pain and heartbreak and sorrow and Regret, and joy and love feel like you cannot understand what other people are going through in their lives.  Without empathy, there is no compassion.  Without compassion there is no forgiveness or mercy.  You end up becoming hard like a rock but with about as many feelings.  You protect yourself by eliminating feelings, but that process creates an unscalable wall between you and other human beings.

You eventually are doomed from this lack of feelings to acquiring perhaps the most horrible feeling of all.  That is the feeling of absolute loneliness.  You are no longer part of the human race or anything else.  You exist in a vacuum.  You neither care about anyone nor does anyone care about you.  Loneliness kills.  There is evidence that dying early is linked to loneliness and social isolation.  Suicides due to loneliness are well known to be one of the major causes of death in the USA.

“A meta-analysis of 90 studies examined the links between loneliness, social isolation and early death among more than 2 million adult.  They were followed for anywhere from six months to 25 years.  Participants who reported feeling lonely were 14% more likely to die early than those who did not.  People who experienced social isolation had a 32% higher risk of dying early.”  —  Kristen Rogers CNN, December 24, 2023

“Men who often experienced loneliness, or those who were lonely and living alone, or with a non-partner, were found to have three times higher risk for death by suicide compared to those who were cohabiting.”  — How living alone, loneliness and lack of emotional support link to suicide and self-harm

Loneliness has been found to be different by the generation we are born with as well as by race and gender.

Generation Z (ages 18-22) is the loneliest generation, with 79% reporting feelings of loneliness according to a study by Cigna.

Millennials (ages 23-37) also report high levels of loneliness, with 71% saying they feel lonely at times in a survey by YouGov.

According to a study by YouGov, women are more likely to report feeling lonely than men, with 72% of women saying they feel lonely at times compared to 60% of men.

According to a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Black Americans report feeling lonely more often than white Americans, with 44% of Black adults reporting feelings of loneliness compared to 37% of white adults.

Looking back on my life, I see many people who I pushed away because I would not let my feelings show.  Over the years, I have lost friends and relatives because I did not care enough about maintaining the relationships to reach out and “touch someone.”  It was often easier for me to just ignore my feelings and assume others would do likewise.  I have written several blogs where I say, “Don’t wait.”  “Tell them you love them now.”  “Tell them you admire them.”  “Tell them how important they are to you.”

Do it now.  Don’t wait until you are full of Regrets.

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Regrets Due to a Lack of Kindness:

Kindness is not the same as compassion.  Though I think without compassion there can probably be no kindness.  I might be wrong here but I think kindness (at least physical kindness) like opening doors for people or letting another person sit down first can simply be good manners.  A robotic reaction taught by habit and custom and enforced by upbringing that might have little or nothing to do with compassion. Kindness of whatever stripe involves action.  You must demonstrate kindness by your behavior towards others.

I do not think that emotional kindness can exist without empathy and compassion.   Emotional kindness is a nurturing of the spirit whereas physical kindness is a nurturing of the body.  I think I have always been good at the latter but seldom good at the former.  As I think more about the matter, my regrets come from the emotional and spiritual harm I have done to others by ignoring their emotional and spiritual needs.

For instance, when my daughter was growing up, I took her skiing, bicycling, swimming and camping.  All activities where I spent time in physical empathy with what I assumed were fun and enjoyable needs of my daughter.  As for her emotional needs, I cannot say that I ever really recognized any.  Mores the pity, because that is where I did the damage.  Like a bull in China shop, I treated her in ways that I can reflect back on now and realize led to a suicide attempt and two failed marriages for her.  On the few times in the past years that we have been together, I can see that she is a hard person.  The kind of person I thought it was great to be.  A person who could (to paraphrase Hamlet) “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”

I did not realize that sometimes a person needs a shoulder to cry on more than they need arms and arrows.  Could I go back and be a different dad, I would do so in a heartbeat.  Alas, I have not found the time machine to take me back to undo the many hurts I caused by trying to ignore feelings.  I wish I could say that I never do so anymore, but that would make everything in my final will and testament “One Big Lie.”  If nothing else, I want to tell the truth.  Perhaps the truth that I tell can set someone else free.

Next Reflection:    

  1. These are my life’s Achievements

My Final Will and Testament – Life’s Lessons – Reflection #8

24 May 2024 1 Comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Life Lessons sign with sky background

Last year at my 40th Demontreville Retreat, one of the exercises that we were given by the Retreat Master included a very challenging set of thoughts.  The worksheet for the activity was labeled as “A Testament.” I took the worksheet and instructions home with me.  It had fourteen tasks or reflections to complete.  I did not desire to complete them during the retreat.  It is now almost a year since my retreat, and I have decided to make the mental and emotional effort necessary to complete this “Testament.”

The worksheet started with these instructions:

Imagine that this is the last day of your life on earth.  In the time that you have left, you want to leave a “Testament” for your family and friends.  Each of the following could serve as chapter headings for your “Testament.”

  1. These are the lessons that life has taught me.

Ironic that the greatest Lesson I have learned in life is one that I have not mastered.  I have been (and probably still am) one of the most impatient people in the world.  I hate lines.  I hate regressions.  I hate delays.  I hate redundancies.  I hate process inefficiencies.  I hate waiting for Trump to get his just deserts.  I hate waiting to see his sycophantic followers crying in their beer when he goes to jail.

Martin Luther King said that, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  I wish every day that I could speed the arc up.  I eat fast.  Brush my teeth fast.  Get ready fast.  But I am working on slowing down.  A good friend of mine once told me while we were canoeing to, “stop and smell the roses more often.”  Patience is one of my seven cardinal values.  I devote time each week to reflecting on and thinking about patience.  I certainly need as much practice as I can get with being patient.

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Patience is a prerequisite for a happy and healthy life.  I say it and I believe it even if I don’t always manage to practice it.  Patience is the foundation for everything we ever achieve in life.  I know this is true and I know I will probably be working on patience for the remainder of my life.  But please do not let my inconsistencies and lack of progress rob this virtue from your consideration.  Don’t take my word for it.  Here are some others, much wiser than I am, who have extoled the virtues and benefits of patience:

  • “He that can have patience can have what he will.” — Benjamin Franklin
  • “The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” — Leo Tolstoy
  • “A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.” — George Savile

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Perhaps the second most important Lesson I have learned in life is that if you speak out against injustice, if you stand up to injustice, if you rage against unfair and hypocritical institutions, you will not be safe.  Bernadine Dohrn famously said, “You can say whatever you want in America, until someone starts listening to you”  Once you start being heard, you will be viciously assaulted.  You may lose your job, lose your prestige and even lose your life.

Today, protesters against the genocide and murders taking place in Gaza are being labeled as terrorists, unpatriotic and of course Anti- Semites.  The establishment (including most of the Democratic Party) is attacking the integrity and courage of these young student protestors with some of the worst slander and insults to free speech that I have heard since the Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests.  Dohrn also said “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”  It is obvious that this is not believed by Biden and his supporters and most of the Republicans in office.  My lesson here is to have the courage and integrity to speak your truth but don’t expect a standing ovation.

I have learned many other Lessons in my few years on this earth.  Here are some that I believe are important.  I may have already talked about these in other reflections:

  • Time is more valuable than money.
  • Kindness is more important than knowledge.
  • Love makes the world go round but it won’t pay the bills.
  • Power corrupts but money is a more powerful drug.  Money can destroy you even faster than any drug will.
  • If you want to be healthy, keep moving.  Have an exercise plan and work it.  Never give up but adjust to your circumstances.
  • We choose our attitudes. I can wake up mean or I can wake up kind.  I can go to bed mean or I can go to bed kind.  God has nothing to do with my attitude.
  • I need to be grateful, thankful, and charitable to all for the life that I am living.

  Next Reflection:    

  1. These are the influences (people, events, experiences, books) that have shaped me.

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