WOULD SHAKESPEARE VOTE FOR TRUMP & VANCE? In a scene from Shakespeare’s first smash hit, Richard III, two professional killers are sent to murder Richard’s brother George, the Duke of Clarence. One of them says to the other that he is starting to have pangs of conscience about his work, while the other says that is a very bad idea if you are in the assasination line of work. They kill the Duke of Clarence anyhow. It’s not an important scene, but it does illustrate that Shakespeare can’t pass up the chance to illustrate the messiness and self-division of human life. We must make a living, but we also have a conscience. Both make demands of us, and there are no easy solutions. Trump and. Read on »
A Mindset List® for the Class of 1999 They were born in 1977 and entered college in 1995. Elvis Presley, Joan Crawford, and Bing Crosby have always been dead. Ye and Tom Brady have always been alive. The president’s younger brother has always had his very own Billy beer. The Force has always been with someone, somewhere, sometime. Spain has always been a democracy. The murderous Son of Sam has always inhabited the body of a black Lab in Yonkers, New York. Egyptian presidents have always been visiting Israel. There has always been a Department of Energy. Sarah Barasch has never confused Tom McBride with John Cougar Mellencamp. The Panama Canal has always been controlled by……..Panama. Shawn Gillen has always been a prcocious teen-ager in Chicago. Uranus has always had rings. An Read on »
THE OLD-COLLEGE-TRY LIST for the Class of 2028 The college and university class of 2028 will enter classrooms this fall. They were born in 2006. They have never shared the planet with Betty Freidan, Shelley Winters, Kirby Puckett, Abu al-Zarqawi, or Peter Benchley. “Friend” has always been a verb, and “tweet” always a click. Barack Obama was elected …to the Senate. Terrorists thrived from India to Iraq. You could watch a video on your wrist. People were still going to Blockbuster stores. People made lists and put them in buckets. Tony Blair was becoming the incredible shrinking prime minister. A meal in the college dining room that cost five dollars the year they were born now costs about $7.79 today. 1 They Read on »
The Make America Great Again movement is *Hyper-Traditional. Nothing more needs to be learned. American ideals about more perfect unions or created equal need not be updated to apply to minorities, immigrants, and homosexuals. *Instinctual. Praise is heaped on spontaneous instinct without reflection, action without rationale, and “telling it like it is” whether true or false, with or without evidence. *Hyper-Masculine. Guns and violent takeovers are highly valued; assaults against women are not disqualifications. *Super-Nationalistic. Fortress America needs no justification for its actions, and non-Americans of all sorts are not to be trusted. *Anti-Difference. People with brown, black, and yellow skins are a source of suspicion and a demographic threat; and different opinions that oppose the party line are not tolerated and Read on »
Bad Housekeeping: The Obsession with Cleanliness in American Political Life By Tom McBride I grew up with a couple of clean-freaks, and they would often say that their entire marriage was happy based on their mutual obsession with sanitation. They were also neat-niks, but this was just another version of their love for cleanliness. This is also an addictive theme in American politics and probably in politics overall. We’re all familiar with the struggle in American cities to rid New York or Chicago of corrupt political machines, with their dirty ward heelers and cops. Good government types, or “goo-goos,” as Tammany Hall derisively called them, were all for clean, transparent government–an emphasis on transparency that Windex itself would envy. But the drive for cleanliness Read on »
he Always-Never List for the Class of 2027 Born in 2005 (Please send comments/questions to mcbridet@beloit.edu) While this year’s new college students were being born, Johnny Carson and Rosa Parks were dying; ice caps at the North Pole were slowly moving towards what may be a summer devoid of ice; The 1918 flu strain was being revived in a lab; George W. Bush was preparing for what would prove to be a rocky second term; Hollywood was going nuts on sci-fi and fantasy flicks; the Chicago White Sox were suddenly unbeatable; Saddam Hussein sat helplessly in a courtroom; and a video called “Meet Me At the Zoo” was uploaded to an upstart new internet site called YouTube. This is all but Read on »
The Po-Mo Putin The alleged war criminal isn’t so bad once you see what he really is. Vladimir Putin would not like Post-Modernism, a trend from the decadent intellectual salons of France that quickly spread like a domineering blob to the rest of Europe and North America. He would see its slippery relativism as perilously consistent with non-binary-sexual preferences and other germs that America and the European Union wish to smuggle into the Motherland and that might be lurking, even now, in Nazi Kiev. He would not like this sort of thing. It is unclear whether or not he knows what it is. Less mysterious is what he would think of it. But can he do without Read on »
SECRETS: The Mindset List® of UNDERWEAR You ae likely wearing undergarments while you read this. What’s in an undergarment—mindsets, that’s what. The history of underwear is a history of mindsets—about outer versus inner, about discretion versus convenience, about civilization versus comfort, about sex appeal versus repression of same, and about men versus women. Go backstage with us now to consider, say, the Victoria’s Secret Mindset of Fruit of the Loom! 1 As he began his life of crime in Breaking Bad, Walter White found it so hot in the meth lab that he had to strip down to his jockey shorts—yes, they were white. 2 The loin cloth was the earliest type of underwear, but only the rich could afford Read on »
These poems trace days in the lives of such cats as Meo, Joe, Ophelia, and Big Boy. They also illustrate some lively feline wisdom. I’ve long thought that, the more like cats we are, the better off we will be, and will add to this verse at least once a week. –TM A BLIZZARD OF CATS We couldn’t tell even one from all the others, De-itemized by sheer numbers as they were. The wind blew them all from side to side. A very few motorists braved the storm. A Maine Coon or Siamese walloped their windshields. Eight lives remained. They blocked out the phone poles and swank cafes. An endless feline deletion Erased the prairies and the hills. They filled Read on »
Barbie’s Very Own Mindset List® All Dolled Up One of the great philosophical puzzles is called “Theseus’ Ship.” This ship over the decades has to be repaired so many times that finally there is not a single board left from the original vessel. Is “Theseus’ Ship” still THESEUS’ SHIP? It’s a question of continuity and identity—and it is relevant to the thousands of makeovers of Barbie Dolls over the past 6o-plus years. Is Barbie still BARBIE? You be the judge. Here’s a little list to help you decide! 1 Barbie is 64 but has never looked her age. 2 There are over a billion Barbies. 3 She has been on cable and streaming for nearly 20 years. 4 She and Read on »
Shakespeare’s Philosopher-Ghosts Tom McBride Ghosts all tell the same story: that what we thought was over and settled is not so; that miscreants can’t get away with their crimes and you can’t cut off and steal someone’s hand without their coming back as ghosts to claim it. The motto of ghosts is what Faulkner once said: “The past isn’t over; it’s not even past.” This is also the typical message of literary ghosts and part of the fun of ghost stories. The premise is that death settles nothing, in a way a comforting idea, and if you throw in the spookiness of ghosts, as long as we readers are safe from them, then the whole thing adds up to Read on »
Beloit From A to Z: Tom McBride Note: This list only tickles the surface of a Beloit College record abundant with colorful achievements. It will be edited from time to time to become as inclusive as possible. Suggestions are welcome at mcbridet@beloit.edu A: Aaron. Aaron Lucius Chapin was Beloit’s first president, a Congregational minister praised by Lincoln for helping civilize “the west.” Midway through his presidency, just after the Civil War, he said the new college was growing into what he called “lustsy manhood.” Folks talked differently back then. B: Beloit. Beloit, Wisconsin is the home of Beloit College and gave it its name. It was founded in the mid-1840s or about the same time as the college was. It Read on »
The Mindset List of Shrinking Attention Spans Tom McBride In the 1600s the philosopher Blaise Pascal said that the world was troubled because so few of its inhabitants could sit in a quiet room alone for an hour without interruption. By this standard, the world is in trouble indeed. The distinguished journal New Philosopher recently called “Distraction” a leading issue of our time and devoted a whole issue to it. Here is a quick & dirty overview of the issue: a conversation starter for the Age of All-Too-Shortened Focus. 1 2015: Citing a dubious footnote in a Microsoft study, leading media publications proclaimed that the average human attention span is now one-second fewer than that of the average goldfish—whose focus Read on »
The Mindset List of Throwback Technology Is it possible to go forward and backwards at the same time? The wisdom about advanced technology seems settled: it comes fast; new is always better; it makes us more productive but tyrannizes our time. And so: there is a reaction—a wish to go backwards with THROWBACK TECHNOLOGY. Some of this is a genuine preference for the older technology; some of it is sheer nostalgia; some of it is the design of an old-tech façade with new-tech convenience. Whatever it is, retro is in! THE MINDSET LIST OF THROWBACK TECHNOLOGY is a fast and lively look at this peculiar paradox. 1 It took seventeen years for the telegram to replace the Pony Express; it Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST OF MOLAR MECHANICS Or; Why You Should Hug Your Dentist! There are two common beliefs about dentists: that they grow rich and that they have high suicide rates. The truth is far more tangled. Although studies draw opposite conclusions about dentists’ suicide rates, there is ample evidence that they are more depressed and anxious, and feel more isolated than do members of the general population. Dental school is costly, and the debt incurred to go there, and then to set up one’s own business, can be huge. Dentists often strain their backs and shoulders to get into treatment positions, and the results can pile up to the point of serious orthopedic agony. Dental patients are nervous, and Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST OF MILLENNIAL MATURITY” Respect Is Overdue! Perhaps you’ve been watching TV lately and heard a recent college graduate say that he will not take any job with any organization that does not “value” him, and maybe you thought to yourself, “those selfish Millennials are at it again.” But you’d be wrong. Even the youngest Millennial has been out of college for several years now, and the oldest are turning 40. The Millennials were the first generation of digital natives. They grew up with the World Wide Web and social media and selfies. They were almost instantly branded as a discontinuous generation, the first gang of disrupters, with self-centered entitlement and an inordinate love of avocado toast. But Read on »
The Mindset List of America’s Greece and Rome Recently the Mindset List presented its list of “American Biblical Illiteracy.” But the Bible isn’t the only great American frame of reference: language we still use but origins we’ve forgotten. The other great pervasive influence—on our vocabulary, our phrases, our buildings, and our customs—is the ancient world of Greek and Rome. This is the realm of Socrates and Julius Caesar, of Plato and Nero and multiple others. It’s myth and history and architecture and literature. Without the background of classical Greek and Rome, America as it is now would never have existed, Our Founding Fathers knew the classics very well, and we ordinary Americans know a lot more about ancientGreece and Rome Read on »
The Mindset List of Naked America 2.0 In 1964 Vance Packard wrote a book about the loss of American privacy—which he called THE NAKED SOCIETY. He was worried about Americans’ vanishing right to be let alone in the face of photography and newspaper stories. Sixty years later few things are more important than the issue of privacy. Is Facebook a social media company or a surveillance company that sells our personal data to the highest bidder? How pervasive is government snooping on its own citizens? Is privacy a Constitutional right guaranteeing the choice to get an abortion, or is it something dreamed up by hippie liberal judges? What are we to make of a society where you can get as Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST OF SEXUAL REVOLUTION 2.0 In retrospect Sexual Revolution 1.0 seems to have been a pretty simple affair. A revolt against Victorian standards, in alliance with the birth control pill, made increased sex, in or out of wedlock, more and more acceptable and less and less risky. People, especially he young, took their clothes off, and pretty soon “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” were the reigning triad in Europe and North America. In time, however, the bill came due. Sexually transmitted diseases weren’t all curable by any means, and sexual aggression was out of sync with gender equality. Thus, SR 1.0 came to a somewhat whimpering end. Now we are in SR 2.0 but unlike SR 1.0 Read on »
The Mindset List of Queen Elizabeth Monroe: Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend They’ve never been together before—until now. They are arguably the two most iconic women on the planet after World War II. Nearly eighty years on, few on the globe would not recognize their images. They are both royals, albeit in different modes. They both proved, and continue to prove, the enduring truth that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, whether on the head or around the neck. 1 Both were born 40 days apart in 1926, the future British queen as Elizabeth Windsor and the future Hollywood queen as Norma Jean Mortenson. 2 Marilyn took as her surname the American president who declared an American empire in Read on »
the Biblical The Biblical In-QUIZ-ition: A Scriptural Ultra Sound Just for YOU! By Ron Nief with Tom McBride Nowhere in the Bible does it say you must KNOW the Bible in order to go to Heaven. But once upon a time in America people not only kept the Family Bible in a pride-of-household place. They read it daily. Above all, it was the linguistic sea they swam in. Hundreds 0f familiar phrases emerged from its tissue-thin pages. The Bible was a linguistic way of life. That was a while ago. How familiar are you with those days of yore? This little quiz—our own version of the old “inquisition” of the Late Middle Ages—is a quick and dirty way to find Read on »
The Mindset List of Anxious Adolescence: A Teen’s Brain on Social Media The great social media platforms permit teens, and the rest of us, to network, find interesting acquaintances, and share inspiring moments. Social psychologists and parents say that social media also makes teens anxious. Adolescence is a tough time anyhow—all those self-esteem and developmental issues—but social media platforms, combined with recession, pandemics, and political bitterness, make things even worse. Lots of kids do fine with Facebook and Instagram and all the others, but many will struggle and find social media a paradoxically addictive burden. Here’s the pubescent mindset of an incessant process that some experts think is becoming a national problem. 1. Our social sciences teacher said people our Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST OF HAVANA SYNDROME Other than UFO sightings, few unexplained events have gotten as much attention as has the so-called HAVANA SYNDROME, a series of incidents reported especially by American (and some Canadian) diplomats all over the world. These personnel and their families say that they have experienced a wide array of symptoms, including disorientation, imbalance, nausea, confusion, concussion, deafness, and fatigue. A few of them have been unable to return to work, and a Congressional bill, bi-partisan, and signed by the president, has supplied benefits for American government employees who experience brain and heart injuries, Havana Syndrome is a cause for alarm and mystery. But it has not happened in a vacuum but in a mindset. It maps onto Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST OF MICROMANAGING PARENTS There’s nothing quite like starting a 40year trend. And, even better, doing it quickly. By the end of Regan’s first term Stranger Danger, Play Dates, Bike Helmets, and Satanic Panic were all big cultural trends, and they have yet to exhaust themselves. By the 90s “Velcro Parents” and “Helicopter Parents” had entered the lexicon. They’re still growing strong, with children’s self-esteem and safety on the line, and a growing trend towards consumerism in daycare, summer camp, grammar and elementary schools, and even colleges and universities. So far, it seems, graduate and professional schools have escaped. Such parents and guardians have mindsets. Read on. 1 Stranger Danger has always been a thing. 2 A Play Date is rarely a bad idea. Read on »
THE MINDSET LIST OF AMERICAN BIBLICAL ILLITERACY By Ron Nief and Tom McBride (niefr@beloit.edu and mcbridet@beloit.edu) There was a time when bible stories were taught in school as literature. No more. Surveys confirm a dramatic decline in church membership and attendance, particularly among young people. Biblical illiteracy is up there with financial illiteracy. “People revere the bible but nobody reads it,” concluded a Gallup poll. Our concern does not relate to a decline in faith and morals. Our issue is that, today, with little exposure to the hymns and classic stories of Joshua, David, Paul, and Lot’s wife, generations are coming away with little understanding of important scriptural references that fill great literature and pop up in rock lyrics and Read on »
A TRIP DOWN CENTURY LANE: On Being a Teen-Ager in 1922 Suppose it were a hundred years ago, you were eighteen, and trying to get your life out of the blocks. Well, there was reason to be optimistic. Sure, Germany had hyperinflation and Italy had something new called “fascism,” but the major powers were disarming, the “movies” were getting longer, the presidents of the world were talking on something called “radio,” and Ireland and Egypt were free states at last. Edward, that dashing new Prince of Wales, promised to be a great king someday. That League of Nations would keep mega-destructive wars from ever happening again. And if you were an American, then your president was as handsome as a Read on »
Tom McBride and Ron Nief called them “Mindset Moments.” They are the settings in which you have made a witty point or perceptive observation, yet you have been met with blank stares. The message is clear that your inciteful observation has fallen flat. And your audience doesn’t know what you are talking about. These “moments” provided the impetus, 25 years ago, when Tom and I were still of sound mind at Beloit College, for the creation of the Mindset List and several books. It was a list we shared initially with faculty colleagues and, eventually, with audiences around the world with the warning: BEWARE OF HARDENING OF THE REFERENCES. An intriguing setting for these Mindset Moments today has come Read on »
THE TEENS-TURN-50 LIST Today’s New College Kiss in Thirty Years BY Tom McBride (mcbridet@beloit.edu) And Ron Nief (niefr@beloit.edu) Today’s high school graduates will have their adjustments cut out for them as we confront a period of sometimes wrenching change. As they set a course in life, they might well consider that in the next 30 years, as they approach middle age, they will find that…. 1 India will be the most populated country in the world. 2 Populations in Europe will be old, those in Africa, young, and the populations of Canada and other northern tier countries will have doubled and tripled. 3 Covid will have been forgotten as climate change, forcing people and animals to live closer and closer Read on »
It’s difficult to unteach old dogs old tricks, and this applies particularly to the creators of The Mindset List, Tom McBride (mcbridet@beloit.edu) and Ron Nief (niefr@beloit.edu). Each year about this time we just naturally start thinking about the world we know and how it compares to the world of this year’s high school graduates preparing to head off to college, voting booths, and other great adventures. Their’s is a different world from their mentors and even from those just a few years older. Therefore, we offer a few of our thoughts drawn from… THE 18-ER FILE If you were born in 2004 and turned 18 in 2022, THEN: You may be the last generation to prefer reality to the metaverse. You are Read on »
04/23/2023: What Might Confucius Say About the Trans-Gender Controversy? During a recent debate in the Montana State legislature, the gathered senators refused to acknowledge the body’s one trans-gender member, who represents 11,000 people in her district. Most of the members are anti-LGBTQ rights and felt that those who uphold these rights should not be called upon even if they have their hands up and are duly elected. In this context, some might think that they who would call upon the member for her remarks are “progressives” or “radicals” or “liberals.” But what if they are actually CONSEERVATIVES? Confucius and his followers have said, “Review the past in order to create the future.” What is the conservative (past) wisdom of acknowledging Read on »
09/20/2023: What ARE the Sounds of Silence Anyhow? Simon and Garfunkel’s famed song, “The Sounds of Silence,” illustrate a tricky problem. The idea of “silence” as a “sound” would seem to be a contradiction, but if a car backfiring is a sound, then its contrast of total quiet would also, by comparison, be a “sound,” too. Do we know tings only through opposites? Can we really know love unless we have experienced hatred? Or joy if we have never been sad? There’s a celebrated thought experiment about “Mary” in philosophy. Mary knows everything there is to know, in the abstract, about the color blue, but she has never seen it herself. She has never seen a red-white-and-blue flag, even if Read on »
The Mindset List for the Graduating High School Class of 1961 Authors note: For more than two decades the Beloit College Mindset List chronicled the experiences and event horizons of 18-year-old students as they entered college. Created by Ron Nief, director of Public Affairs at Wisconsin’s Beloit College and his Beloit College colleague, Prof. of English Tom McBride, the list was distributed internationally each August as the authors traveled the country speaking and doing interviews. It was initially intended as a reminder to those faculty facing first- year students to beware of “hardening of the references.” Over the years it became one of the most quoted “back-to-school” references and was cited by Time Magazine as a part of the “American Read on »
Only After Human Beings Vanish Can the Problem of Consciousness Be Solved Tom McBride 1 Connection If you follow popular science at all, you know that two common themes are when the sun will run out of fuel, and how we can solve the problem of consciousness. The two are rarely if ever connected. It is time that they were. Scientists know that in a billion years the sun will transition to a red giant and life on earth will be uninhabitable. Multiply a billion times 365 days and watch your calculator explode. You and I have nothing to fret about. Scientists are much less sure about consciousness. Alfred Russel Wallace, who co-founded the theory of evolution by natural selection with Darwin, once Read on »
SELMA AND AMERICAN AMNESIA
Selma and American Amnesia
By Ron Nief
The story is circulating that when many potential viewers of the new film about Martin Luther King Jr. heard it was called Selma and produced by Oprah Winfrey, they assumed it was a story about a woman and her struggles growing up in the South.
As authors of the annual Mindset List that looks at the world through the eyes and experiences of 18 year old high school graduates, we call situations like this “Mindset Moments.” They are the occasions when a comment by an adult to a young person, or sometimes vice versa, is greeted with a blank stare. They are generally inconsequential and even funny—calling a young piano student a “potential Liberace” or a politician as sounding like a “broken record.”
We were recently asked if we thought anybody would remember Elvis when some proposed 30 year bonds by Graceland came due. We maintain that there are some icons that are protected from the ravages of time and the weakness of memory.
But who is responsible for the failure to understand our own critical history, and the revolutionary role of a place like Selma. OK, every year about this time, we hear that there are students who assume Dr. King was buried next to Lincoln and at about the same time. King has been dead for almost 50 years and if you think of yourself at 18 or 20 and try to place an event a half century earlier, you would easily have been off by a bit.
But the key moments of the civil rights movement, even if they are ancient history, need to be understood much as we comprehend the founding of our country. Schools and parents and churches need to add this material into their curriculum and their conversations. There are still heroes of that movement, like Congressman John Lewis and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson still alive and functioning and telling the story.
The Jewish Defense League has a slogan—Never Again. And they realize that the only way to realize that goal is to keep confronting people with the horrific stories, showing the tattooed identity numbers and the barbed wire and the pictures.
African-American Ministers have talked to us of their frustration in the ignorance of their young members on the subject of the Civil Rights era. They talk of the need to teach the civil rights movement and the sacrifices because the churches were at the core of the movement, both in the creation of the goals and in the pews for sleeping.
We didn’t need to be on the Pettus Bridge or in the bombed out church in Birmingham or in the back seat of Viola Liuzzo’s car to understand the critical role they played in the history of this country.
For those who have forgotten it and for those who may never have heard the stories, the new film Selma is one of those important films for young people to see. Whether President Johnson or Dr. King are portrayed precisely, the spirit is there and the pain should be clear (it is a movie after all).
Business groups in New York and elsewhere have raised money to make sure that middle school students are able to see the film. Hopefully that spirit will spread.
And in case anyone is confused, the Freedom Riders were not a folk group.
Our Annual PARENTS’ ADVISORY (This Year: Class of 2037)
Our Parents’ Advisory for the Class of 2037
The annual watch is on, starting at midnight. For some, the real New Year’s fireworks will come with the arrival of the first baby born in 2015. News reports will cover the blessed events around the world.
But amidst all the celebrating, parents and grandparents might want to think ahead, because this child, born in 2015, will turn 18 in 2033, graduate from high school, and head off into the next chapter of his or her life. There will be a lot of questions that need answering about that time.
To help in preparing for the future, the authors of the Beloit College Mindset List, which looks at the worldview of students entering college at 18, provide some questions for us to start thinking about. Here are 20 for openers:
1. How did Iraq ever exist as one country?
2. When will this bandwidth rationing end?
3. Since I don’t want my job to be declared obsolete before I am 30, what on earth should I major in?
4. When did St. Petersburg change its name to Putinsburg?
5. Why does Gramps keep talking about all those old “tea parties” he used to go to?
6. Was Netflix one of the “three networks” you keep referring to?
7. Mom’s birthday is tomorrow—don’t you think you’d better have the dinner and cake delivered by Amazon Drone?
8. Is it true that people once trusted big banks as more secure than small local banks?
9. Do you mind if I print some new sweat smells on my 3-D–just for fun?
10. Now that New York City’s economy has surpassed France’s, do you think its application for observer status at the U.N. will be approved?
11. Is it true that Community Wellness Practitioners at Walgreen’s and CVS used to be called nurses?
12. Do you agree with President Lopez’s decision to establish an American embassy in North Korea?
13. How could you have called your old phone “smart” when it couldn’t do half of what my computer pendant does?
14. When did Ford start putting pedestrian detectors on their cars?
15. With these new space-based solar satellites, shouldn’t our energy bill go down?
16. Should I just skip college and pursue a 3-year masters degree internship program?
17. When did you get your first nonfat Big Mac served by a robot?
18. If I had a full wall monitor in my room wouldn’t I be able to watch my homework better?
19. How long have you been able to pre-select your car seats based on your size?
20. When did you have your first cannabis candy roll?
Ron Nief and Tom McBride, in addition to the annual Beloit College Mindset list, are the authors of The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think is Normal (Wiley, 2011), and The Mindset List of the Obscure:74 Famously Forgotten Icons from A to Z (Sourcebooks, 2014)
THE SHADOW AND THE SWAN SONG: REMEMBER WHEN?
Note: These two brief journeys down Memory Lane originally appeared in TODAY’S SENIOR Magazine as part of a continuing series.
Remember When “The Shadow” Knew?
By Tom McBride and Ron Nief
When we were kids—it was just yesterday, plus 60 years or so—our favorite radio program was The Shadow, a crime series about a psychic vigilante named Lamont Cranston, determined to prove that the fruits of crime were always bitter. Traveling through the “Far East” Cranston acquired a gift that “clouded men’s minds” so they could not see him.
This presented a real disadvantage to criminals, whom Cranston managed to scare and snare. He therefore put an end to their felonious deeds, every Sunday afternoon.
The Shadow himself was a truly scary character. He would open the show with a blood-curdling baritone that intoned, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” And then there would be a cackling laugh, the stuff of which little kids’ nightmares were made. But the show was irresistible.
The Shadow was a frightening adult who turned out to be a good guy after all. Maybe that’s why we kids liked him so.
The big problem for us was that The Shadow came on the air Sunday afternoons. We’d almost invariably be visiting our grandparents, who bored us, and so we’d beg our parents if we could escape to the car, there to listen to The Shadow on the radio.
This presented a real dilemma for our parents. They knew we were bored and wanted to get rid of us for a while. But if they turned on the car radio without the engine running—an essential safety precaution—they’d run the battery down.
What should they do? Generally they risked a low battery. They were desperate to divert us.
Today kids wouldn’t even ask for permission to exit adult company. They’d just sit there and attach their earphones and watch or listen to whatever they wanted on their tablets or smart phones.
We were so low-tech back then—except for The Shadow, who could cloud men’s minds!
Ron Nief and Tom McBride are the authors of several books including The Mindset List of the Obscure:74 Famously Forgotten Icons from A to Z. (Sourcebooks, 2014). Check it out on AMAZON.
Firing on TV: It Didn’t Start with Trump
Tom McBride & Ron Fief
Firing folks on live TV didn’t start with Donald Trump. It started with a guy named Arthur Godfrey.
Godfrey was the biggest name in television in the 1950s, on the air five days and two nights a week. He had no dazzling talent, yet he enjoyed high ratings on a morning talk show, a weeknight amateur talent show (which once rejected Elvis Presley), and a weeknight variety show.
He came up the radio ranks in Washington, DC, and got his biggest break when, describing the funeral of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 for a national radio audience, he gushed, “God bless you, Harry Truman,” and broke up in tears. Godfrey had dared share with the national public his own overwrought state, which matched theirs. He was one of them.
What was Godfrey’s appeal? He could chat. He was the master of palaver. Observing that most radio announcers were stiff and formal baritones, he concluded there was a market for soft-speaking, neighborly tenors.
As a big TV star, he even made fun of his sponsors. When Paper Mate pens claimed their ballpoints could write through butter, Godfrey apologized on air for not having any butter around to ruin the ink. He displayed a Singer sewing machine, and when he could not figure out what one drawer was for, he insisted that this must be the place you hid a little bottle of scotch.
But the fame went to his head. He emerged as a nasty control freak, who liked humiliating his “little Godfreys” (the singers and announcers who were regulars on his morning show). And then one day in 1953, he fired one of his most appealing singers, Julius La Rosa, on the air. He announced “Julie’s swan song.” La Rosa had no idea this termination was about to come. Godfrey had become jealous of Julie’s popularity. The nation recoiled against their once-beloved Arthur, and his popularity waned
Thirty years later he and Julie tried to reconcile.
They started squabbling right away.
Ron Nief and Tom McBride are the authors of several books including The Mindset List of the Obscure: 74 Famously Forgotten Icons from A to Z. (Sourcebooks, 2014). It’s available at Amazon and at wherever they sell good books!
The FINANCIAL Mindset List®: Class of 2018
From the creators of THE MINDSET LIST®:
The FINANCIAL Mindset List®
For the Class of 2018
By Tom McBride and Ron Nief
Today’s entering college students have spent most of their teenage years in a recession that has left employment, homes, educations, friends, and relatives uncertain about the future.
Members of this year’s entering college class were born in 1996. If they are lucky and work hard they will graduate in four years with the class of 2018. In order to maintain the purchasing power of the dollar the year they were born, they will need to come up with an additional fifty-two cents. Since they were born, tuition and fees at public universities have gone up more than they did during the previous two decades.
As they contemplated going to college, some of them found for-profit universities tempting, despite warnings about ruinous debt deals. They enter the annals of higher learning with admonitions from some economists that student debt may be the next “under water” crisis to befall the American economy. A significant percentage of them will need to take a semester or three off and find work in order to continue paying tuition bills. There is more riding on choosing a major that will pay a good salary than ever before. Even students at elite colleges, it’s alleged, are more concerned with fast-tracking themselves in the economy than in becoming reflective human beings. And yet they must continue to wonder how they find a career that cannot be replaced by a high-tech algorithm, or by an information worker in Asia who will do the same job for much less pay.
Still, many of them are optimistic. Despite the challenges of globalization and the new economy, and the aftershocks of the Great Recession, they are oft sure that with high tech innovation and a bright idea, they can still do very well indeed.
Here are 35 items that will track where the economy has been during their eighteen years and what economic mindsets they are taking into the future.
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1. As offspring of the Great Recession they worry much more about money than about love.
2. Faddish fashions from Merry-Go-Round, electronic fantasies from Incredible Universe, and junk from Drexel Burnham Lambert have never been a temptation in their lifetimes.
3. They have seen the Dow swing over 10,000 points during the last five years, but for some reason they just don’t trust the stock market!
4. Shaq has always been a brand.
5. Times Square has never been a sleazy site of porn shops but a glittering jewel in an emerging entertainment economy.
6. Increasingly, they would far rather have the latest tablet than a new car—why drive when you can get there by Skype?
7. The Earned Income Tax Credit has always been trying to “end welfare as we know it.”
8, Wanting to pay as they go, there’s a 63% chance they don’t have a credit card.
9. During their lifetimes the price of a first-class stamp has risen 65%, but not to worry: they rarely write letters or pay bills with postage.
10. Asian Tigers have always been fast-growth countries, not dangerous if endangered felines.
11. As they were learning to crawl, 2% GDP growth for a quarter was seen as alarmingly low.
12. When they think “union,” they mostly conjure up public sector unions.
13. IBM, Harley, Coors, Microsoft, and Disney have always extended medical benefits to same-sex couples.
14. As they were newborns relishing their applesauce, all the experts agreed that the once great American company Apple would never see glory days again.
15. While they were busy getting born, competition in “death services”—corporate mergers of funeral homes—was never keener.
16. They’ve grown up with female action figures battling it out with the male figures at Toys R Us.
17. They’ve got a forty percent chance, at best, of graduating from college in four years, but the good news is they’ve got a seventy percent chance to graduate in six.
18. Starbucks has always been international and has never lived on coffee alone but also on Frappuccino.
19. Rent” is not something you pay every month but the gold standard for high-profit Broadway shows with minimal overhead.
20. Two things they don’t expect when they get a job: to stay with the same company for long or to have a lot of face-to-face conversations at work.
21. As they entered the brave new world, Netscape was the undisputed king of browsers.
22. To them, Yellow Pages have never been yellow or contained in a book.
23. Anheuser-Busch has always been out of the snack food business.
24. For most of their lives Alan Greenspan has undoubtedly been a genius.
25. HP has always been making home PCs.
26. They can figure out the correct change in their heads—it just takes them a little longer than previous generations, who had to do it much more often.
27. They’ve grown up in a world largely devoid of payphones, glass pop bottles, and bobby pins.
28. Since Mark Zuckerberg is a Millennial icon, they hope that, by stopping on the Information Highway with a great innovation, they too will become billionaires.
29. Financiers in Hong Kong have always been especially anxious, keeping a little real estate abroad.
30. Kmart and Target have always been moving in opposite directions.
31. They would rather share a ride, a flat, or a computer than suffer the exclusivity that comes with total ownership.
32. Having spent their teen-age years hearing constantly about income inequality, they might conclude that a rising tide lifts all yachts.
33. They have shaped their economic ideas with the aid of their favorite commentators, especially on The Daily Show.
34. Experts have long been predicting that Russia would develop—one of these days–into a “normal” capitalist country.
35. The Berlin Wall between investment and commercial banks (to Wall St. a Depression-era relic) has always been crumbling.
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Tom McBride and Ron Nief are creators of the annual Beloit College Mindset List® and co-authors of The Mindset Lists of American History (Wiley and Sons, 2011), and The Mindset List of the Obscure (Sourcebooks, 2014).
Check out their financial literacy guide to The Mindset Lists of American History (From IOUs to ATMs) .
The Mindset List®–of AMERICAN SPORTS–for the Class of 2018
The Mindset List®–of AMERICAN SPORTS–for the Class of 2018
Warning to Coaches: If you are out to inspire your young charges by references to Joe Montana or Steffi Graf, be prepared for the blank stares you will get in response.
One of the most common reactions we get to our annual Mindset List, which examines the world of 18 year-old entering college students, is “Are you guys trying to make me feel old?” Yes, eighteen years happens fast and brings lots of change.
This is particularly true in sports. Does it seem just yesterday that the Braves won the World Series and the Cowboys won the Super Bowl? Can you believe that when most of today’s eighteen year olds were born, Mike Schmidt was already in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Do you realize that interleague play and instant replay in Major League Baseball are as “normal” to them as the Milwaukee Braves were to their grandparents?
Just when you want time to slow down—so you can savor the time left—time seems to speed up, like Devin Hester running one back all the way for Chicago or Atlanta.
We hope you enjoy our Sports Mindset List for this year’s first-year college class, born in 1995-96: The Class of 2018.
1. Mickey Mantle, Bobby Riggs, Howard Cosell. And Pete Rozelle have never been alive in their lifetime.
2. Among members of their class are gymnast Gabby Douglas, swimmer Missy Franklin, and major league soccer player Diego Fagundez.
3. As they were being born, top high school athletes included Brian Urlacher and Kobe Bryant.
4. They have no recollection of the San Francisco 49ers as Super Bowl winners or the Atlanta Braves winning a World Series.
5. Pro football in Europe has always been routine.
6. Cal, Jr. has always been the Iron Man.
7. They will always remember where they were when Lebron said he was leaving Cleveland.
8. The trophy case of a US-based football team has always held a Grey Cup.
9. When they were born, Eldrick Woods was strictly an amateur.
10. They have little if any memory of Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf as giants of tennis.
11. They mainly know Rebecca Lobo as a color analyst.
12.. “Art” and “Modell” have always been cuss words in Cleveland.
13. A top-ranked Australian rugby player has always been publicly gay.
14. As they were mewling and screaming in their cribs, Susan Powter was trying to become their parents’ fitness trainer by urging them to “Stop the Insanity!”
15. Chris Evert has always been in the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Flo-Jo—Florence Griffith Joyner—has always been in the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame.
16. United States women have always won the team handball championship of the Americas.
17. There have always been “Air Swoopes” for extra agility and bounce, not to mention the fashion statement.
18. They’ve neither enjoyed Irv Cross’ football analysis on national TV nor had the pleasure of hearing Jack Buck call a Super Bowl.
19. Thirteen has always been old enough to win the senior title in American gymnastics.
20. Terry Bradshaw has never been on CBS Sports.
21. The first athletes they may recall from their Wheaties box include Mark McGwire, Brett Favre—and Tricia Dunn.
22. Michael Jordan has always been retired—from baseball.
23. Alas, they have grown up hearing about such trade names as Gym Candy, Pumpers, and Juice.
24. The percentage of kids participating in team sports has always been on the rise.
25. Mike Schmidt has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.
26. The year they were born, Cecil Fielder actually stole a base.
27. Unless they have Canadian cousins they’ve likely never heard of the Quebec Nordiques or Winnipeg Jets.
28. NBA players skipping college altogether has never been unusual.
29. Hulk Hogan has always been posing as a villain in the nWO (New World Order, a stable of pro wrestlers with the persona of street gangs.)
30. Women’s boxing, banned for most of the 20th century in European countries (but not the US), has always been making a comeback.
31. Joe Gibbs and Dan Dierdorf have always been enshrined in Canton.
32. Marge Schott has always paid the price for her “insensitivity.”
33. Michelle Kwan has always won world championship figure skating contests.
34. The year they were born, Magic Johnson un-retired yet again.
35. While they were still in diapers, Greg Maddux finally lost a road game after winning eighteen in a row.
36. As they were starting life, Lance Armstrong encountered the prospect of death in the form of testicular cancer.
37. Interleague baseball games have never seemed unusual.
38. The year they were hatched, “none of the above” were elected to the baseball Hall of Fame.
39. That the Big 10 has more than 10 members has never seemed odd to them.
40. They have no memory of the Chicago Bulls as world-beaters.
MANDELA 12, MADONNA O: Portrait of a College Class–& Their Parents
Mandela 12, Madonna 0
Tom McBride and Ron Nief
A quarter of a century ago the author Bill Bryson found himself back in his home state after two decades abroad, and—quite by accident—on the campus of University of Iowa. While there, he got quite a shock.
An old friend he was visiting in Iowa City explained to Bryson that these kids he was encountering around town, who to them looked to be about 14, were no longer “smoking dope” but were actually—wonder of wonders—“trying to get an education…so that they could become insurance salesmen and computer programmers…and make a lot of money so they can buy more penny loafers and Madonna albums.”
Bryson, who reported all this in The Lost Continent, was “terrified.” This was not his notion of “college students.”
Fast forward to the present. Today, these once surprisingly studious college students are in their mid-40s and sending their own kids to college. Are they as perplexed by their own children as Bryson was by them?
The younger generation has a way of shaking us up. College staff and faculty know this best of all. These young people do seem to keep getting younger. And no, they just won’t conform to our beau ideal of what they should be like. Any conversation that starts, “When I was your age,” may well end badly.
After all, as our Mindset List for the class of 2018 reminds us, theirs is a generation that has always seen HIV cases go up while AIDS cases have always been going down. The incidence of diabetes has also always been rising, and not coincidentally they’ve been told to “eat healthy” all their lives, with notably mixed results.
If their parents wanted to earn a lot of money, they themselves are just hoping, post-recession, to find any decent entry-level job, and they are unprecedented in how often they have heard about what majors pay off and what majors don’t.
If their parents didn’t smoke dope as much as the previous generation did (a trend Bryson’s buddy attributed to the Regan-era “war on drugs”), these new students, whether they smoke it or not, think it should be legalized. “Multi-cultural” and “gay marriage?” These are not, exactly, things they tolerate. For many of them, they are just “normal.”
An older generation would have been puzzled by ads that warn, “No text is worth dying for”—isn’t the Bible a text worth dying for? But for this generation it’s a dire admonition about the dangers of multi-tasking. For their once-terrifying parents, “multi-tasking” consisted of reading a textbook while on the commode.
Did the parents of the Class of 2018 ever earn enough to buy oodles of Madonna albums? Did they ever dream, back then, that they’d be paying so much tuition for offspring who, today, have barely taken notice of Madonna, except to perhaps note her daughter among their classmates at the University of Michigan? Meanwhile, during their kids’ lifetimes twelve actors have played Nelson Mandela, while not a single one, other than Madonna herself, has played Madonna.
Someday, in about 2040, today’s “kids” will be sending their own children to college, with their Madonna-loving grandparents looking lovingly on. And then it will be their turn to become terrified.
Meanwhile, the goals of education—knowledge, perspective, judgment, and wisdom—remain the same. And the meaning of these words, and the means to achieve them in practice, will always be under review.
Meanwhile, what do you think of when you see wire-rimmed glasses? If it’s John Lennon and not Harry Potter, you need to think again. When are you going to get with the program?
Tom McBride and Ron Nief are co-authors of the Beloit College Mindset List, and of the forthcoming Mindset List of the Obscure (Sourcebooks, 2014), on sale September 2nd.
THE BELOIT COLLEGE MINDSET LIST®: Class of 2018
Author contacts:
Ron Nief (608-770-2625)
niefr@beloit.edu
Tom McBride (608-312-9508)
mcbridet@beloit.edu
Beloit College releases the Mindset List for this year’s entering class of first-year students, the Class of 2018
Beloit, Wis. — When the Class of 2018 arrives on campuses in the coming weeks, they will come with a view of the world quite distinct from their mentors. Most born in 1996, they have always had The Daily Show to set them straight, always been able to secure immediate approval and endorsement for their ideas through “likes” on their Facebook pages, and have rarely heard the term “bi-partisan agreement.”
Each August since 1998, Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones and experiences that have shaped the worldview of students entering colleges and universities in the fall.
“Behind the light humor of the Mindset List there are always some serious issues about the future of the class and their role in the future of the nation,” notes the List’s editors Ron Nief and Tom McBride. “The digital technology that affords them privacy from their parents robs them of their privacy amid the “big data” of the NSA and Google. How will the absence of instant online approval impact their performance in the classroom and work-place?”
“Between the medications and the social media this generation is able to do what, once upon a time, only celebrities could do: advertise their self-designed personalities. Will that keep them from ever finding their authentic selves, or will they go through life with a ‘virtual’ identity?”
The Mindset List was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be wary of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing perception of each new generation as they make an important transition.
Additional items including commentaries and guides are found at www.beloit.edu/mindset.
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The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2018
Students heading into their first year of college this year were generally born in 1996.
Among those who have never been alive in their lifetime are Tupac Shakur, JonBenet Ramsey, Carl Sagan, and Tiny Tim.
On Parents’ Weekend, they may want to watch out in case Madonna shows up to see daughter Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon or Sylvester Stallone comes to see daughter Sophia.
For students entering college this fall in the Class of 2018…
- During their initial weeks of kindergarten, they were upset by endlessly repeated images of planes blasting into the World Trade Center.
- Since they binge-watch their favorite TV shows, they might like to binge-watch the video portions of their courses too.
- Meds have always been an option.
- When they see wire-rimmed glasses, they think Harry Potter, not John Lennon.
- “Press pound” on the phone is now translated as “hit hashtag.”
- Celebrity “selfies” are far cooler than autographs.
- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has always been the only news program that really “gets it right.”
- Hard liquor has always been advertised on television.
- Ralph Nader has always been running for President of the U.S.
- They never sat glued to Saturday morning cartoon shows but have been hooked on FOX’s Sunday night “Animation Domination.”
- The water cooler is no longer the workplace social center; it’s the place to fill your water bottle.
- In their lifetime, a dozen different actors have portrayed Nelson Mandela on the big and small screen.
- Women have always attended the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel.
- FOX News and MSNBC have always been duking it out for the hearts and minds of American viewers.
- Pepsi has always refreshed travelers in outer space.
- Hong Kong has always been part of China.
- Courts have always been overturning bans on same-sex marriages.
- Joe Camel has never introduced one of them to smoking.
- Bosnia and Herzegovina have always been one nation.
- Citizens have always had a constitutional right to a “dignified and humane death.”
- Nicotine has always been recognized as an addictive drug requiring FDA oversight.
- Students have always been able to dance at Baylor.
- Hello Dolly…cloning has always been a fact, not science fiction.
- Women have always been dribbling, and occasionally dunking, in the WNBA.
- Ads for prescription drugs, noting their disturbing side effects, have always flooded the airwaves.
- Hell has always been associated less with torment and more with nothingness.
- Whether to embrace fat or spurn it has been a front page debate all their lives.
- Parents have always been able to rely on a ratings system to judge violence on TV.
- They never tasted the “texturally enhanced alternative beverage” known as Orbitz.
- There has always been “TV” designed to be watched exclusively on the web.
- The Unabomber has always been behind bars.
- Female referees have always officiated NBA games.
- There has always been a national database of sex offenders.
- Chicago, a musical about a celebrity getting away with murder, has always been popular on Broadway.
- Yet another blessing of digital technology: They have never had to hide their dirty magazines under the bed.
- U.S. major league baseball teams have always played in Mexico.
- Bill Gates has always been the richest man in the U.S.
- Attending schools outside their neighborhoods, they gather with friends on Skype, not in their local park.
- While the number of Americans living with HIV has always been going up, American deaths from AIDS have always been going down.
- They have no memory of George Stephanopoulos as a senior White House advisor.
- The PGA has always offered golfers with disabilities a ride—reluctantly.
- “African-American Vernacular English” has always been recognized as a distinct language in Oakland.
- Two-term presidents are routine, but none of them ever won in a landslide.
- The family has always been able to buy insurance at local banks.
- One route to pregnancy has always been through frozen eggs.
- They have probably never used Netscape as their web browser.
- Everybody has always Loved Raymond.
- “Salon” has always been an online magazine.
- The rate of diagnosed diabetes has always been shooting up during their lifetime.
- Affirmative Action has always been outlawed in California.
- Boeing has never had any American competition for commercial aircraft.
- U.S. soldiers have always been vaccinated against anthrax.
- “Good feedback” means getting 30 likes on your last Facebook post in a single afternoon.
- Their collection of U.S. quarters has always celebrated the individual states.
- Since Toys R Us created a toy registry for kids, visits to Santa are just a formality.
Copyright© 2014 Beloit College
Mindset List is a registered trademark
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Media resources:
The Sonic Foundry Mediasite webcast
Headshot—Mindset authors Ron Nief (left, bowtie) and Tom McBride (right)
Downloadable Beloit College video: The Mindset List for the Class of 2018 (available Aug. 26 at 12:01 a.m.)
About the authors:
Ron Nief is director of public affairs emeritus and Tom McBride is professor of English emeritus, both at Beloit College in Beloit, Wis. They are the co-authors of the annual Mindset Lists and two books: The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generation of Americans Think is Normal (John Wiley and Sons, 2011) and The Mindset List of the Obscure: 74 Famously Forgotten Icons From A to Z(Sourcebooks, 2014).
LEARN SWAHILI AND SLOW DOWN TIME: Some Mindset List® Pointers
Learn Swahili and Slow Down Time!
By Aarti Chawla and Tom McBride
Can we control the passage of time? No—but, once we understand how time “feels,” we can influence how we experience it.
Among the millions of people who respond each year to the Beloit College Mindset List, many report shock in learning that various events, which seemed to happen just yesterday, actually occurred nearly twenty years ago. When the co-creators of the List state that for an entering college class “Carl Sagan has always been dead,” older respondents say the death of Sagan (or Kurt Cobain or Princess Diana) seems to have happened last month, not two decades ago.
A well-known factoid is that time speeds up for people as they age. In 1890 William James attributed this phenomenon to a decrease in novelty. When we are young, he suggested, we confront all sorts of new things—all sorts of “firsts” from learning to read to learning to bike—and the cognitive complexity gives the whole experience a long-drawn-out feeling. As we age, there are fewer and fewer firsts in our lives, and thus commonplace events become routine, an occurrence known as ‘neural adaptation.”
Time passes quickly—and this can be discouraging if you are getting old and would like for your remaining years to pass by more s-l-o-w-l-y.
For a five year old, a year is 20% of her life thus far, while for a 50 year old it’s only 2%. It seems natural that the elder would think of a year as a much smaller unit and that it would fly by.
James’s theory isn’t the only one. Time perception, one’s subjective notion of time, exists in a field between psychology and neuroscience. Some researchers attribute the illusion of time’s passing quickly, or slowly, to brain chemistry. Children with ADHD, for instance, have been found to think time is crawling while Parkinson’s patients and those suffering from schizophrenia have difficulty estimating time. Dopamine, a key neurotransmitter in the brain, has been linked with this inability to gauge time accurately, and this may stem from chemical alterations in a person’s working memory. In fact, expressions of dopamine receptors and transporters decrease over time. This reduction could play a role in altered time perception of the aging brain.
And then there is the factor of stress. While we are in the midst of meeting an impending deadline or trying to react quickly to being in a car accident, time appears to speed up (the deadline seems to be getting closer and closer) or slow down (to those in danger car crashes seem to happen in slow motion). From an evolutionary viewpoint, having a deadline and feeling that time is galloping towards it, makes sense, because such a perception sparks us to get the job done. And from an evolutionary perspective, being in a car accident–and seeming to have eons to respond wisely to this frightful event–makes sense.
Memory also plays a role. Time and memory are neurologically linked. The amygdala, an almond-shaped area in the brain, is responsible for the processing of emotion, memory, and decision-making. But during a high-stress situation, the amygdala’s primary role is devoted to decision-making. As a result, different neural circuits are free to devote enormous attention to memory, and this may result in memory becoming embedded “deeper” in the brain. One consequence of this more “profound” recall is that the decision-maker’s perception of time is slowed perceptibly.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing if subjective time speeds up? It could be a good thing. If time slows when you experience certain strong emotions—those in the grip of fear report that time and space go into slow motion—then the fast passage of time, over the years, may suggest that your life has gone pretty well. There have been no deep valleys or great crises.
On the other hand, experiences of great joy may also slow time. So perhaps if you’re one that believes Carl Sagan or Kurt Cobain died just yesterday, it means your life, over the last twenty years, has been rather…meh. Thus, if you’re an older person worried about the perception of very limited time left, you might want to slow it up by bringing into your life a “joyful crisis”–as paradoxical as that might seem.
What is a “joyful crisis?” Well, it might be something like learning Swahili. It will be difficult for you—that’s the crisis part, as you’ll get fretful when you don’t make immediate progress—but as you get better you’ll experience joy. And the whole thing will seem like several lifetimes, even if it only takes you a year or so.
Don’t you feel better already?
Tom McBride is professor emeritus of English at Beloit College and co-author of the Annual Mindset List and the forthcoming Mindset List of the Obscure (Sourcebooks). Aarti Chawla is a neuroscience graduate student at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a 2009 graduate of Beloit: for her and her class Andy Warhol has always been dead and it feels like she has been in graduate school FOREVER.
You can follow the Mindset list and Aarti Chawla on Twitter @themindsetlist and @aartichawla87 respectively.
*James, William, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter XV. Dover, 1950.
*Levy, F., Swanson, J. Timing, space and ADHD: the dopamine theory revisited. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2001; 35: 504-511.
*Dreher, J., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Kohn, P., Berman, K. Age-related changes in midbrain dopamine regulation of the human reward system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2008: 105 (39): 15106- 15111.
Eagleman, D. Brain Time. Edge (6.23.09) http://edge.org/conversation/brain-time
