Malinda's Table: A Thinking Woman's Blog

Van Morrison and the Chieftains

Written by Malinda Muzi Malinda Muzi

Category: Music & Arts Music & Arts

Published: 24 June 2020 24 June 2020

 

Many years ago, my best friend Howard and I rented an apartment in Martha's Vineyard.  When we got there and entered the place, it was empty of all furniture.  Apparently there was a murder involved and we might have been homeless for the week.  The realtor offered us a lovely home on the bay as compensation for our inconvenience.  I sat on the porch of this beautiful house and listened to my favorite song over and over:  Van Morrison and the Chieftains singing, "Oh, Shenandoah.   Howard died twenty-five years ago.  Every time I hear this song, tears form in my eyes.  There is something about it ...

 

THE GREAT ALONE

Written by Malinda Muzi Malinda Muzi

Category: Books Books

Published: 20 June 2020 20 June 2020

 

If you are stuck in the house until Dr. Fauci says it's safe to come out, read The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah. You'll want to take off to the Pacific Northwest territories immediately after you get a coronavirus vaccine. 

WHO ARE THESE TRUMP PEOPLE?

Written by Malinda Muzi Malinda Muzi

Category: History & Politics History & Politics

Published: 19 June 2020 19 June 2020

Friends of mine ask me, as a psychologist, to explain why 35% of the people in the country still admire a sociopathic, immoral, imbecile who happens to be president of the United States.  The Trumpsters know he lies, has cheated on his wife, and betrayed the country by making deals with dictators.  So what's going on here?  There are two answers: 

One select group of Trumpsters care only about their finances.  They believe it is in their self-interest to accept as president a man they know is lacking in basic traits of humanity, such as caring about others less fortunate than themselves.  Some of them have contempt for the president but are concerned mostly about their own pocketbooks, even if they have enough money for two lifetimes.  They are almost as bad as Trump is.  This is probably 5% of the population. It is certainly most of the top 1% who control 99% of the wealth in the country and want to keep it that way. 

To understand the remaining 30% I direct them to the research of David Dunning and Justin Kruger, Cornell University social psychologists whose 1999 research answered this question.  The Dunning-Kruger effect refers to the cognitive bias in which people of low ability at a task overestimate their ability.  In other words, while smart people often recognize what they don't know, dumb people are ignorant of their dumbness.  To put it in nicer terms, incompetent people don't know they are incompetent, because they don't have the skills they need to recognize what a correct thought is. Some of these people suffer from "anosognosia," which is a neurological disorder leading to a deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person with a disability is unaware of having it.  Anosognosia results from brain damage, usually to the parietal lobe, sometimes to the front--temporal-parietal area of the right hemisphere. 

In a number of their experiment, Professors Dunning and Kruger tested undergraduate psychology students by giving them tests of logical reasoning. They then examined  the students' self-assessments of the results of these tests.  After learning their scores, students were asked to estimate their ranks in the class.  The competent students underestimated their class rank and the incompetent students overestimated theirs. In fact, students who scored as lost as in the 12th percentile in tests of their sense of humor, knowledge of grammar and logical reasoning, thought that they had scored as high as 62%.  This explains who many of my students who get low scores in their tests or papers argue that they have done better than they did.  Even when I give back papers for a do-over and better grade, they don't change a word. 

So from now on, when you are wondering about why people still follow the cretin who is our president say to yourself, are they rich or do they suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 

 

 

YOU KNOW THAT

Written by Malinda Muzi Malinda Muzi

Category: Leaving the Table Leaving the Table

Published: 11 June 2020 11 June 2020

CNN reporter Anderson Cooper was the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, an heiress to a fortune at 18 months of age (75 million in today's terms).  Instead of coasting through life on her money, Gloria became an artist, actress, and designer.  She was married four times and had four sons, one of whom committed suicide by jumping out the window of her apartment while she was there.  She lived to be 95, and to the end was a devoted mother.   “The last few weeks, every time I kissed her goodbye, I’d say, ‘I love you, Mom,’” Anderson said, after her death.  “She would look at me and say, ‘I love you, too. You know that.’ And she was right – I did know that. I knew it from the moment I was born, and I’ll know it for the rest of my life, said Anderson Cooper, what greater gift can a mother give to her son?” I hope my son is sure of the same. 

THE LADIES MENU

Written by Malinda Muzi Malinda Muzi

Category: Food Food

Published: 09 June 2020 09 June 2020

Who among us remembers the Ladies Menu, when upscale restaurants only listed the prices for men since it was assumed they paid the dinner bill when out with a woman.  I loved it, but as the Buddhists tell us, everything changes and ends.  This custom ended in mid-July, 1980, when a lady named Kathleen Bick wanted to treat her business partner, Larry Becker, to dinner.  She took him to an elegant French restaurant called L'Orangerie in LA, where she was handed a white menu to Mr. Becher's green one. The veal medallion was 28 dollars, which today would be about 82 dollars. The pair were so outraged by this quaint habit that they left the restaurant without eating.  They immediately called a lawyer, Gloria Allred, a well-known feminist attorney.  The restaurant was charged with discrimination and they demanded an injunction to end the dual menu practice.  They also wanted the state to revoke the restaurant's liquor license.   Ms. Bick said the restaurant experience made her feel "humiliated and incensed."  To make her point, Ms. Allred and her clients set up a table outside L'Orangerie, laid with a linen tablecloth, gold plates, silverware, and a vase with a rose in it. The restaurant of course caved in to the litigation and ended their wicked ways. The suit against L'Orangerie was dropped.  What troubles me most about the story is that there are so few elegant French restaurants around today. My favorite when I was a young woman was LaPanetiere and later Le Bec-Fin.  I got the price-free menu.  Which means I had great boyfriends. 

 

ROBERT ISN'T HERE

Written by Malinda Muzi Malinda Muzi

Category: Relationships Relationships

Published: 02 June 2020 02 June 2020

Have you ever notice how often people make life more difficult for themselves by complicating uncomplicated things?  How often you embellish a problem or situation, making it worse than it really is?   How often do you "read" things into an interaction?  Here is one of my favorite antidotes.  It's from Buddhist writer Silvia Boorstein's Don't Just Do Something: Sit There.  Silvia once called a monastery to arrange a retreat. The person who answered the phone said, 'You need to talk to Robert."  Sylvia left a message for Robert.  The next day Robert returned Sylvia's call but Sylvia wasn't home. A day later, Sylvia called Robert again.  He wasn't there. She explained the back and forth calls with Robert to the person who answered the phone that third day. She added, "Maybe this is a sign that I"m not supposed to do my retreat," complicating the situation.  The response was, "I think it's a sign that Robert isn't here."