We can’t make it unless we do*
From Passage of Power by Robert Caro. Explaining (one of the reasons) why LBJ was so firmly behind creating a "War on Poverty." (As always in the book, he lays out a number of reasons. )
But part of the explanation was, as always with Johnson, something more, something that had to do less with strategy than with memories. The ranch, with the pathetic frame house and the road across the river, was, after all, an appropriate setting for him to be thinking about poverty. And allusions in his conversation both in person and over the telephone-sentences, phrases, reminiscences-allusions that started to be heard as he chatted on the plane ride down to Texas, and that continued to sprinkle his speech during the two weeks on the ranch, show now fresh his youth was in his mind during that time. Talking to reporters on the plane about the federal budget, he had suddenly stopped and begun talking about himself. "T've always been an early riser," he said. "My daddy used to come to my bedroom at four-thirty in the morning when I was workin' on the highway gang, right out of high school, and he'd twist my big toe, real hard so it hurt, and he'd say, 'Git up, Lyndon, every other boy in town's got a half hour's head start on you.' " Making an early-morning call to an old Hill Country ally E. Babe Smith of Marble Falls, he said he hoped he hadn't woken him up-and then said he was sure he hadn't because Smith had been "a poor boy," too, and therefore must have been getting up early all his life, as he himself did. "That's the only way we can keep up," he said. "Otherwise, they're too far ahead of us." Other old acquaintances recall similar early-morning calls from the Johnson Ranch that vacation. "We always get up early, don't we?" he told Fredericksburg attorney Arthur Stehling. "We can't make it unless we do." And at the age of nine and ten he had worked beside his cousin Ava, hauling the heavy bags of cotton, their backs stooped over in the burning sun, Ava to whom he had whispered as they worked, "Boy, there's got to be a better way to make a living than this. There's got to be a better way." Asked by the author twelve years after that Christmas trip what she and Lyndon had talked about that Christmas, Ava said she didn't remember, except that they had reminisced about their youth, and about the cotton picking. Whenever she and Lyndon reminisced, that subject came up, she said. "We always talked about the cotton. We just [had] hated that so much." (542-543)
I chose this because it shows both the importance of early life and memories (by this point, Johnson was a multi-millionaire). It also shows the sense of union/affiliation he has with the poor. And that the solution was not IQ nor craftiness but hard work, labor. That sense of hard work overcoming problems is one of the key threads that runs through the biography.
Hypnosis
Dr. David Spiegel - Tim Ferriss - link
First, from the end of the interview: But it’s this misunderstanding that the body is just like a broken car, you’ve just got to incision, ingestion, or injection, you’ve got to do something to the body rather than teach the person to use the control system that we’re all born with, this three-pound object at the top of our shoulders that is connected to every part of the body and helps to control it. And why on Earth shouldn’t we be able to use that better? It doesn’t come with a user’s manual, so you’ve got to figure out how to do it, but it makes a huge difference.
Here's the hypnosis
So get as comfortable as you can. On one, please do one thing. Look up all the way up high as you can. Two, do two things slowly. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. And three, do three things. Let the breath out. Let your eyes relax, but keep them closed and let your body float. Imagine you’re floating somewhere safe and comfortable, like a bath, a lake, a hot tub, or floating in space. And then take your right hand and stroke the back of your left hand, starting with the tip of your left middle finger —
Tim Ferriss: In my lap?
Dr. David Spiegel: Or you can put it on the table. That might be better. Now stroke the back of your left middle finger down along the back of your left hand, past your wrist to your elbow. And as you do that, develop a sense of tingling and numbness and lightness, and let your left hand float up in the air like a balloon. Feel the tingling. That’s good. And let it float up. You bend your elbow and you can rest your arm lightly on the table. And please describe what physical sensations you’re aware of now in your left hand and arm.
Dr. David Spiegel: And I’m going to give you this instruction. If you pull your hand back down to the table with your right hand and then let go, it will float right back up to the upright position to see what happens. That’s good. So you’re putting it down, now, let go. I see you smiling. What’s happening?
Tim Ferriss: Well, it feels like it’s floating. Number one. I’m also second-guessing myself because I wonder if I’m doing this to conform to the exercise, if that makes sense. But it feels like it’s floating.
Dr. David Spiegel: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Dr. David Spiegel: And as you do that, let your left hand remain upright. Later, when I ask you to touch your left elbow with your right hand and let go, your usual sensation and control will return.
How would you rate the discomfort level right now on that zero to 10 scale?
Tim Ferriss: 0.5, one out of 10.
Dr. David Spiegel: One out of 10? 0.5 to one. Okay, good. So already notice how you’ve been able to change sensation, not just in a neutral part of your body, your left hand and arm, but in a part that has been problematic. Now I want you to imagine now that you’re lying on your belly, maybe with a roll under you and feel a pleasant, tingling numbness in your lower back as if it were cooler or warmer, or you were changing it from warmer to cooler. Feel a pleasant, tingling numbness and let it filter the hurt out of the pain. Each breath deeper and easier. Now again, with your eyes closed and remaining in the state of concentration, please describe how your body’s feeling right now.
Tim Ferriss: It does feel cooler.
Dr. David Spiegel: Good.
Tim Ferriss: It feels a little dissociated, if that makes sense?
Dr. David Spiegel: Can you describe that a little more?
Tim Ferriss: Feels like it’s very similar to two tequilas.
Dr. David Spiegel: There you go.
Tim Ferriss: Or a low dose of ketamine, which I don’t recommend, but I mean, as a dissociative anesthetic, I’ve always struggled to put words to the dissociative experience. There’s a lightness and there’s a conscious awareness of the body without being as identified with the body.
Dr. David Spiegel: Exactly. So you can observe it, but it feels different. And would it be fair to say that it’s not as annoying as it usually is?
Tim Ferriss: It’s not as annoying.
Dr. David Spiegel: Good. So notice how you’re able to filter a lot of the discomfort and displeasure out of the usual pain situation by detaching from it, by experiencing it differently. It’s not a sentence you have to endure, it’s a sensation your body is giving you that you can interpret in different ways.
Tim Ferriss: Now, for people who might wonder if this is compartmentalizing in a way that is long-term harmful, I’m not saying that’s what it is, but is this just taking a different vantage point? How would you encourage them to think about this?
Dr. David Spiegel: Yes, I would say it’s reinterpreting the sensations and signals that you’re getting from that part of your body and you’re uncoupling them from the usual sense of annoyance and limitation that tends to actually make it worse.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, it a hundred percent makes it worse.
Dr. David Spiegel: Yeah. And instead you’re saying, “Okay, it’s there. I don’t like it, but it’s not bad.” And that capacity to reframe, to reprocess the signal is a powerful way of better managing pain. You’re filtering the hurt out of the pain. Now please take your right hand and touch your left elbow and then let go and see what happens to your left hand and arm.
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And as I mentioned, there are studies that show you can turn down activity in the anterior cingulate, you can turn down activity in somatosensory cortex. So the brain is saying, “This is not as bad as I initially thought it was, and I don’t have to pay as much attention to it. It doesn’t have to hurt me as much.” Because very often we amplify pain rather than diminish it by being so annoyed that it’s happening.
and it was on my pediatrics rotation at Children’s Hospital in Boston. The nurse says, “Spiegel, your patient is in room 342, she’s in status asthmaticus, she’s been hospitalized every month for three months, and she’s back again, and she hasn’t responded to epinephrine twice, and we’re going to maybe give her general anesthesia and put her on steroids.”
So I walk in the room following the sound of the wheezes down the hall, pretty 15-year-old girl bolt upright in bed struggling for breath, knuckles white, mother standing there crying. I didn’t know what to do, but I had taken a hypnosis course. So I said, “Well, would you like to learn a breathing exercise?” She nods. So I get her hypnotized and then I break into a sweat and I think, “Wait a minute, we haven’t gotten to asthma in the course.” So I said something very subtle and clever. I said, “Each breath you take will be a little deeper and a little easier.” And within five minutes, she’s lying back in bed. She’s not wheezing anymore, her mother stopped crying, nurse runs out of the room.
And if you think about the dynamic of that, I mean, it was stunning to me, I couldn’t believe it. But each time she tried to breathe and had trouble, she got more and more anxious, she thinks, “I’m going to not be able to breathe,” it’s very frightening. So you have her anxiety building like a snowball rolling downhill on top of the physical sensations. So in comes my intern, and I thought he was going to pat me on the back and say, “Good for you.” He said, “The nurse has filed a complaint with a nursing supervisor that you violated Massachusetts Law by hypnotizing a minor without parental consent.” Kid you not. And Massachusetts has a lot of dumb laws, but that is not on the list. Furthermore, her mother was standing next to me when I did it. He said, “Well, you’re going to have to stop doing this.” And I said, “Oh, really? Why?” He said, “Because it could be dangerous.” And I said, “You’re going to give her general anesthesia and put her on steroids and my talking to her is dangerous?” I don’t think so. So I said, “Tell you what, as long as she’s my patient, I’m not telling her something I know isn’t true. So take me off the case if you want.” So, he storms out of the room, he finds the chief resident and the attending and they have a council of war. And they came back with a radical solution. They said, “Let’s ask the patient.” I don’t think they’d ever thought of that before.
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