Sigmund Freud was a comedian...

[jchl]

This week I was entertained by Freud’s concept that all of our decisions are pre-consciously determined. As a person who was once at the complete mercy of my id, I can attest, that for the most part the concepts of *control* and especially *choice* are largely manufactured by our culture. The choice between Pepsi and Coke creates the illusion of free-will and bounty, but both are brown caffeinated sodas that we choose for emotional reasons, not because there is a significant difference between the two. Even the more significant choices that we make, don’t apply to the majority of human beings. Which college should I go to? Is not a question that is asked by a large percentage of the people on earth. Much of where we end up is determined much more by our status at birth than we would like to admit. It is interesting to look back on choices that we feel we made and realize that most of the time we had nothing to do with the outcome, and we had very little control over the results. In fact, he more important the issue is, the less control we will have over it.

This week we had the parent-teacher conference from hell. My son’s teacher doesn’t like him. I always thought that people were being a little bit crazy when they said that a teacher didn’t like them or that a teacher didn’t like their child. Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes and it’s pretty ugly. That was pretty draining, but fortunately for my boy she put some of her insanity in writing and now she’s being assessed by the principal and the staff. Whew…

jchl