PSYCHOLOGY BUSKING a la wordswords: WE ARE LOOKIN' GOOD! EXISTENTIAL AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY REVISITED

MY COLLEAGUE, SCOTT


KIM AND KARSTEN

KEVIN AND SHERRY

Brrrrrrr …

There is not much outdoor busking these days. Outside it is minus six degrees with blowing snow.

Brrrrrrr …

While portrait busking indoors, I've had extra time to just think about my favourite topics, of which two especially come to mind: EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY and EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY.

Please know, dear readers, that I oftentimes write from a pedestrian, rather than an academician point of view. I seem to be presenting that I’ve a choice in this – but I do not. I am really more pedestrian in nature and practice than academician. Having a Master’s degree in Psychology affords me the authority to peddle in my pedestrian ways. Having a doctoral degree in Psychology would certainly afford me the authority to peddle more as academician, but I am four classes and one thesis short. Being a pseudo-academic, my choice is simply the dilemma of either to be boorish and dull or to be pedantic and boring.

Whoever I may be, here is my spin on the skinny for each:

Existential Psychology is the understanding that we have free will, that we are participants, rather than observers, of our lives. Existential Psychology is the understanding that we try to be rational, even though we exist in an irrational universe. Existential Psychology is the understanding that we are infinitesimal, involuntarily breathers residing on a breath-taking blue planet, struggling to offer meaning to our lives and behave accordingly.

I must make a point about having free will. We do have free will, but only outside the confines of our inherent and collective archetypes, as presented by Carl Jung (fear of the shadows and fear of heights being a couple examples).

Evolutionary Psychology is the understanding that we are here breathing, representing the functional product of natural selection. Evolutionary Psychology is the understanding that all of our individual traits, be they mental or physical, have simply been genetically passed down through the ages in order for our survival. Evolutionary Psychology is the understanding that our sole purpose in life is simply to survive and procreate to continue our species.

Yikes! Peggy Lee might have been right when she sang,

“Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is … “

It is no wonder then, that in the part of the world where I hang out, people, basically, have prioritized two meanings to their lives: gluttony and glamour.

I shall be more specific beginning with gluttony. If, for example, I wrote to explain why I had sixty-eight pairs of shoes in my bedroom closet, people would imagine me as being eccentric. Or if I wrote that I had thirty-one sports jackets hanging in my closet, people would imagine me (again) as being eccentric. But … if I wrote about my financial strategies and convinced the readers that by shrewdly investing just a few hundred dollars a month over the course of the past decade I have acquired a portfolio fortune of a few million dollars, people would imagine me as being disciplined and conservative and moneywise. My point: there is no rule or regard for gluttony when it comes to acquiring wealth in a capitalistic environment. We arrive into this world acapella, and for reasons whatever, aspire to gain as many instruments as possible to accompany our sing-song satisfactions throughout the rest of our lives.

Now to glamour. According to most psychologists, most people around the planet simply just want to get along. However, again, in the part of the world where I hang my hat, people want more than just wanting to get along. People want to accumulate a zillion social media friends, while oftentimes at the same time, want their behaviours to be published for all and “liked” by all.

And so this is the skinny explanation why we fuss and preen and posture and fantasize about how we must fit into our marked me-me-me worlds. (Marked, by the way, for the purposes of its literary space in this and the preceding sentence, is pronounced mark ED, the accent on the last syllable.) Falling into the fallacy of inductive reasoning, I shall explain some of our Western world behaviours with examples that relate directly to moi-moi-moi (or in English translation, me-me-me).

Yesterday I walked downtown and got my haircut, a stylized razor cut. I also got my hair blanched. Factoid: Call it vanity. I prefer people to know that I color my hair platinum, rather than have them know that my real geezer color is (wisdom) grey. Strange but true.

Today I spent eighty dollars on my weekly private Muay Thai lesson. Muay Thai you say? Factoid: Call it vanity or call it narcissism, even though I will NEVER spar or pursue a physical confrontation, I prefer people to know that I am a trained martial artist. Being a trained martial artist provides a kind of social aura machismo, replacing the social aura of being a pseudo-academic!

Today I also did my laundry for the week. Not by happen-chance do I wear the same signature garb for both my work and my play. My costume for both is always a white or black long-sleeved shirt with a collar, always a pair of blue jeans, and always for pediwear, a polished pair of boots.

It just so happens that this evening I edited my hypnotherapy website, in order to emphasize my specialty/niche/forte to be exceedingly proficient in helping clients with their weight loss. I mean, really! Every chubby, plump, and pudgy embonpoint wants to lose weight to look good! Right? (My highest success rates with clients are, not-so-strangely, helping them to lose weight and so strangely, helping my clients with memory recall.)

Why do so many people want to lose weight to look good? Because in Existentialism we, and only we, have the power to behave in accordance to the meanings that we, and only we, have attached to our lives. And because we are the products of Evolution, our only meaning is to physically look good and behave in accordance to the traits that we believe will enhance our attractiveness to others.

When it comes down to it, our self-designer looks and self-styled behaviors all seem so very simple, as least very simple to me-me-me (pun and no-pun intended)! Yes, we are all shiny according to our looking- glass selves, as we admire our reflections in distorted fun-house mirrors, acting out our days in collective and deliberate delusional fashion.

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week, are some of the rich and famous I met while hobnobbing at the hockey rink: