Do the right thing

I remember Richard Dawkins talking about how humans generally want to do good, it is in our DNA, and there is a physiological reaction to a person in need not unlike sexual lust, a lust to do good. There is a perfectly serviceable evolutionary explanation which he tried not to go into, but after being pressed he had to explain. His point was it doesn't really matter what causes the lust-to-do-good feeling, we know the feeling exists regardless of our understanding. A lot of religious people would quickly tell you that God put that in us. Even though they don't have a biblical leg to stand on. They feel like it must be that way, so that solves it. (Dawkins explains that in our evolutionary history the human population was quite small, and seeing a fellow human in trouble or need was likely a relative and in helping them you help yourself by encouraging reciprocity, and keeping your family line alive and well. Fast forward 300k years and you still have the feeling but only for one person at a time...) I guess I have to get into this now.

There was an experiment and study mentioned in Sam Harris' and Richard Dawkins' Books. In the study they show people pictures of a single person in need. And you know the picture. These are the pictures used by christian charity organizations that say things like, "You can help this ONE person for 11 cents a day" or some such. They found 100% of responders in the study wanted to help the one person in need with 100% of their resources. The lust-to-do-good was strong, the strongest (100%). After that they showed the same people (and different ones for control group) pictures with the same little boy and his little sister. Now there were two kids in dire need of help. Amazingly they found 100% of the responders had a lack luster response, it was less than half the strength of the initial reaction (43%). The prediction for this part of the study was the same I would have predicted, that with two people in need the lust-to-do-good would feel twice as powerful, it seems to me that's how it should work out, but it was less than half. [side note: if more people in need increased the lust-to-do-good feeling it would disprove evolution and natural selection]

They keep going in this vein. Pictures of a family of kids, than an orphanage, than a village, each time the people in need increasing. They found the more people there were in need of help of any kind the more responders COULD NOT CARE. They could vocalize displeasure as in, "That's horrible," but when asked to donate money or help out in some way 100% of responders gave an unfavorable response hovering under 1%. These people were religious and not religious, men and women randomized. The study has been repeated to show this appears to be a universal human constant. All humans in all parts of the world care about one person a lot, even a stranger, especially a child, and their lust-to-do-good takes a steep nosedive with the inclusion of another person. I told you this for three reasons.

Firstly, Humans have a strong desire to be good, do the right thing and help out. The desire to help out and do the right thing alone ISN'T ENOUGH. You have to want to do the right thing, know what will help and than do that. Without understanding how to maximize well-being desire to do good can be very damaging or do nothing. What's that christian saying? "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Intentions alone aren't enough. I hope I don't have to give examples of this.

Ok I will, and I will pick on a seemingly innocuous non-religious entity. Breast cancer organizations, the pink ribbon, feel your boobies, etc champion a serious cause that kills a lot of women every year (though diarrhea, kills more women a year than breast cancer. It isn't as sexy though.) They take donations, give talks, go on walks, and 'raise awareness' which is where the majority of the donations go. It FEELS good to help. And lots of people do. But does it ACTUALLY help find a cure for breast cancer? Does it actually accomplish what it says it will?

No. In fact they are no closer to finding a cure now than they were before those non profit organization started popping up. If you read the fine print, about one cent per dollar actually goes to cancer research, (they don't say where, or who) which WILL find the cure for cancer. In other words walking around wont find it, talking in hotel lobbies and in parks wont find it, buying shirts, magnets and stickers wont cure it. Dedicated medical science and experimentation and study in a cancer lab is the most likely source of a cancer cure.

So here is a crazy idea: donate to that cancer research lab specifically. Than they get 100 cents of every dollar instead of one. Both the cancer lab and breast cancer awareness organizations have overheads most of the money they get goes there, followed by paying the staff. Than for the nonprofit orgs. comes raising awareness leaving a little bit for the cancer research center. Think about a hundred dollar donation to the Feel Your Boobies people. ONE whole dollar goes to a cancer researcher of their choice. Wahoo! [Side note: this means that a hundred dollar donation to feel your boobies and a one dollar donation to a cancer research center are the same to the cancer center. So a five dollar donation to the cancer research center directly is more money than they normally see. So YOU can help fight cancer for 11 cents a day! So why don't you?]

point 2: without understanding what actually helps humans, one feel-good reason is as good as any other. And this is where average religious person sits, you know, not the easily dismissible zealots we can all agree are bad like the, "Pope who’d tell Africans not to use condoms to protect themselves from AIDS, or a nun who would tell teenagers at a Catholic school that masturbation is evil, or a Mormon who would start a TV campaign in response to Prop 8 about how The Gays are out to corrupt our children. Or for that matter, a Muslim who would fly a plane into a building." No, the average christian, the one who wants to do the right thing (without knowing what that is) who hears an interpretation of a story, he is told, exemplifies how he should act, what he should do, how he should think. That guy, or girl IS A PROBLEM to the rest of us humans as a whole. Often if they do something right that helps people it is by accident. There is a right way to do this, to help people. Quick example: prayer.

Prayer has been tested and studied by science. In regards to people recovering from a common surgery. In every case it has done no better than chance/wishing/voodoo/sugar pills. And It actually harms people, believers most of all. It causes them to require more time to heal than people who were not prayed for, or people who were unaware they were being prayed for indicating it is in the mind of the believer. This means a lot of things, most importantly it means prayer is harmful to people in recovery. When my brother had chest surgery my religious uncle came to him and wanted to tell him that he and his church were praying for him. Kevin cut him off before he could say that and told him not to pray for him. And if he did to keep it to himself because he doesn't want to be recovering any longer than he needs. My uncle was hurt, but I am sure he prayed on his own.

thirdly: Sometimes doing the right thing is counter intuitive, or feels wrong. In some medical procedures causing pain helps people feel better sooner than letting them heal untouched. I suppose my overall point is sometimes wisdom from the superstitious people of bronze-age Palestine isn't wisdom. We can do better now and we should. Thank you.

**steps down from soap box**

Loo's Tonsils part 2 the yawn thief.

"It hurts so bad," Loo said between sobs. It was day four of her tonsillectomy post-op. I could do nothing for her to stop the pain.

I hate this feeling. This impotence. I could only watch her suffer. No. Had to watch her suffer. It was my duty to watch her in pain. I felt like if I looked away it would hurt her more, as though I was saying 'you are on your own,' which I could not do. So I looked into her submerged blue eyes rimmed in red. And she looked back, seeming to plead with me. 'Make it stop,' they said. 'I can't' mine said.

"Together," I said, " we can get through this." I poured the last teaspoon of liquid codeine that looked and smelled like cough medicine into a plastic measuring cylinder-spoon. A liquid medicine measuring device I hadn't seen or used since I was seven years old. She opened her mouth, eyes sealed tightly, anticipating the agony that would follow. I knew if I poured the medicine a certain way it would stick to her tongue and travel down her throat the right way. I knew that capillary action would keep the medicine on her tongue and travel down her tongue without touching the back of her throat and it would minimize the pain. I did not know that at first, but in trying to find ways to not hurt her I figured it out. The medicine slipped down her tongue, down her throat and she swallowed it. Her hand shot out and gripped my arm. Her nails dug into my bicep. It hurt. I wanted to pull my arm away. Instead I held her as she cried, wracked with pain. I watched her as her nails dug deeper into my arm. Sweat leapt to the surface of her fair and freckled face, her skin turned red, the strained veins swelled beneath her skin, a delta of emerald rivers pulsing underground.

"Fuck!" she would yell.
"I know" I would say. What else could I say?
"Fuck bear, that hurt so bad," she said opening her eyes. Bear is her nickname for me. Not because I am furry, because I am not. But because, well, it's a long story. Suffice it to say she renames a lot of things. The dog park is now referred to as the bark park. Song birds are tweeters, chipmunks are chippies and so on.

She described the pain in her throat as the most pain ever. She had to drink a gallon of water a day and take oral medication every four hours. Mealtime immediately followed medication. The medicine took the pain away enough that she could eat. Small bites, chewed thoroughly could sometimes be swallowed. Other times they could not and though she was hungry she couldn't eat another bite. I ate those.

I found myself very protective of her at this point. I couldn't do very much, but what was in my power to control I did. I took it upon myself to mitigate the pain every chance I could. Beverages and food were presented at the perfect temperature, conversations were cut short, topics of conversation I knew would turn into long arguments between her family and her were avoided, sometimes nimbly, elegantly, other times not so much. I didn't really care though, avoidance of pain was my focus. The niceties of everyday interactions and conversations were overlooked. People might have said I was terse, annoying, or something else. I could not care. I would not allow pain to get my Loo.

Sometimes we would communicate with text messages standing two feet apart. Sometimes pointing and gestures were easier. We used my dry erase board for a bit. A few days later she could start talking again, but certain words were difficult to say. Our roommates dog Cody was called Hohy because the c and d sounds hurt her throat. Cody came to this name anyway, the tone was the same, which I what dogs recognize. Than came the yawns.

Oh the yawns. The first yawn caught her off guard. Her hands went up suddenly and fluttered, flapping like a bird. She yawned. Than she screamed and cried. I held her, asked what happened.

"The yawn," she said, "wors.pain.evah."
"Oh," I said.
"Rememmer tha hime you yawn and I diggs you and you lose it?"
"The time you jabbed me in the side when a yawn was coming and it went away like you stole it?"
She nodded.
"What about it?"
"When I gib the signal I wan you to sdeal my yawn by smakin me."
"I don't want to smack you."
"Please," she said pleading.
"I dont want to hurt you," I said.
"I order you. No more yawns," she said. Tears filled her eyes and she whispered, "Neber again. Neber again."

I thought about it. I didn't want to strike her like she wanted me too, but I didn't want her to experience the worst.pain.ever. I was reading a book then, still am now. The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. In it he describes a lot of things that are counter intuitive that actually help, and we should focus on ameliorating pain rather than doing what feels right or good, because that can mislead us. We get caught up in feeling good about doing something, rather than doing something good that doesn't feel so good. An example he gives is when they first started doing the colonoscope procedure to detect cancer in its operable stages before anesthesia. It hurt quite a bit, as you might imagine, but they found that the procedure, while painful, was lifesaving. Also, if they yanked the colonoscope out after they were done it hurt the most, a painful cherry added to the already horrible pain-sundae. It was such a painful experience people would not come back. But, some doctor, I forget his name, decided to leave the colonoscope inside the body for some time after the procedure which produced a dull pain. In fact it added to the total amount of pain. But the person only remembered the dull pain, and forgot the excruciating pain prior to that. They returned for future colonoscope procedures decreasing death by cancer in the human population. Everybody wins. The Doctor accomplished it by increasing pain.

Six hours later she made a sharp pleading moan. I had learned her moans very well by this point. This one was the pre-yawn signal. I knew what I had to do. I swiped my hand at her and struck her in the shoulder and hand, a stinging sensation tingled my palm. And though she shook her hand afterward she thanked me profusely. We both felt good, her for dodging the yawn and me for not having to strike her in the face or body. The hand I could do. And would do. Sometimes it took multiple strikes. She would let me know when the yawn passed when her hand stopped flapping. So I would strike and slap and pinch and punch until her hand stopped flapping.

At first I felt bad, striking her. I made a promise to myself not to strike girls when I was seven. And on some gut level it felt wrong to me. Now that I am 27 I have to amend that promise to myself. I promise not to strike a woman unless she asks me to and only if it will help her.

After days of stealing her yawns, repressing my own and turning her away from the yawns of others it became second nature to smack her and steal her yawn. We went and saw the new X-Men movie, First Class (awesome movie, best x-men movie I think). As the credits rolled by and the lights came on I saw her hand flapping her hand toward me, the other on her throat. Instinctively I struck her all over until the yawn was gone. I hadn't given any thought to how this might look to others. What they might think, what they might do. I heard murmurs, whispers and hushed conversation and the guy behind me scowled. I prepared to duck a blow. and stood up quickly. What could I say? She made me do it? She told me to? It's her fault? I'm trying to steal her yawn? Nothing could be said, so I left with her quickly. Not that quickly, because she is still recovering form surgery, but quicklyish.

Loo's Tonsils part 1

Ten days ago Loo had her tonsils removed. Never having experienced anyone losing their tonsils I didn't know what to expect. The procedure itself, the surgeon told us, would take ten minutes. Loo would be under general anesthetic and it would take at least an hour before she came to, and another hour after that when she would be coming in and out of consciousness. I was familiar with that when my brother was recovering from chest surgery about a year ago. Consciousness than was a short order cook in a slow diner, moving between busy and calm on a whim.

The anesthetist told us she would be out for a couple hours. Having been to the hospital with Loo in the past I knew her to be resistant to local anesthetics, narcotics and other medicine. Vicodin has no effect, local anesthetics do not work, Novocain might as well be water. I felt like it was my duty to tell the anesthetist about this.

"I don't know if it is relevant to you or not," I said to the anesthetist, "but, she is highly resistant to anesthesia and narcotics."

The anesthetist, an older, wiry, tall man in surgical greens looked at me in a way that made me feel stupid. It was a look I might have given customers at the tire store that told me to simply bolt the spare tire onto their mid 90's corvette after the news that their tire was no good and not safe to repair. (90's corvettes and newer do not have spare tires, relying instead on run-flat tires)

The anesthetist said, "She will be under general," as if that obviously cleared everything up.

"Kay," I said. He smiled, it looked forced to me, and he walked out.

The surgeon entered the room next. She was an attractive young woman with mascara, brown hair and fair skin, straight teeth and a big smile. She asked the question we had all anticipated.

"Do you have any questions for me?" she asked. I should have said earlier that the room was occupied by Loo, her mom and myself plus the surgeon. For whatever reason Ma dislikes and distrusts our baby dinosaur Bup (a one year old Savannah Monitor) and she got it into her head that Bup would be dangerous to Loo during recovery. Something about reptile to human germ transfer.

"I have a question about pets during her recovery," Ma said.

"That has nothing to do with this," said the surgeon, "but go ahead."

"She has a monitor lizard," Ma said.

"Yeah?" said the surgeon. she seemed to search for the relevance.

"Isn't it unsafe for her to recover around that?" Ma said while nodding.

"No. Not at all. Reptiles are very clean and have few germs that are transferable to humans. Dogs are the ones to look out for. Dogs lick their wounds, and a dog will smell her wound and try to lick her to make her better. Dogs have fewer germs in their mouths than we do, but they are bad, bad guys you do not want in your mouth. So no dog kisses."

"But a lizard is bad, right?" Ma asked nodding her head.

"No," the surgeon said shaking her head, "Lizards are fine."

"See," Loo said.

"Ok," Ma said.

"But," said the surgeon, "Good question, that is an exotic pet. It's good to make sure." I agree with that, even when the sixth or seventh doctor says it, as it comes up every time it can. After that the surgeon had some information about recovery.

"Right after surgery you should go to wendy's and get a frosty and fries for her. Dip the hot salty fries into the frosty and eat it. Doctor's orders."

I think we all thought she was kidding. She continued on. "Seriously, the salt is good at killing germs, and helps hold onto water, which you will be drinking, a gallon a day," she said pointing at Loo, "And for the nerves, the temperature signal takes precedent over the pain signal. The hot and cold occupy the nerve so that it has no room for pain. So fries dipped in chocolate. Doctors orders."

They came and took her then. I prepared to wait a long time. I had my computer and my books and looked forward to catching up on some reading and writing.

Nine minutes from when they rolled her away the surgeon told us the surgery was a success and Loo was in recovery.

We prepared for the two hour wait. I got settled into the waiting room sofa chair. I mean really hunkered down. It wasn't 5 minutes later that we were told she was ready to go. I packed everything back in and walked back there.

Loo was sitting upright eating sherbet. As I walked in she waved at me. She gave no indication of feeling dopey or drugged. She had to take an IV bag of fluids before she could go. All the nurses and people were very surprised Loo was awake and ready to go so quickly. I repressed the "I told you so," I wanted to tell everyone.

She walked into the family van, and we went to Wendy's for fries and a frosty. It was surprisingly tasty.

"I feel fine," Loo said, "I think this is going to be good and easy." She pointed to her frosty dipped fries, "I could get use to this."

"doctors orders," I said. I was relieved she was healing so well. They said the pain would be bad for ten days. Day one at this point was no sweat.