Humans can be happy under the most unfavorable conditions and circumstances, or miserable under the most favorable. We’re very flexible.

I was born in the suburbs of Southern California in the fifties, right in the middle of the collective hallucination that was the American Dream. At least this is how we prefer to remember it today, like remembering a glorious deceased ancestor as a “great man,” politely ignoring the fact that he expired of syphilis and alcohol poisoning. For all its golden age qualities of better incomes, a growing middle class, a positive global presence, emerging civil rights, and the freedom for Americans to do what they wanted to do with their lives, not what they had to do, the fifties were the swan song of a sick and dying culture living in denial. The sicker it became, the more it demanded obedience to the very ideals that were killing it, extinguishing all ideas that did not conform to its demands. Krishnamurti put this problem in perspective when he said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”[1]

Nevertheless, this was the dream that my grandparents and great grandparents had come to America for, so it was only natural that my parents would reap the benefits of the fifties culture.

My father was born the younger of two sons in one of the many poor immigrant sections of Brooklyn and raised in a traditionally strict Scottish manner, which would account for his stoic, analytical, authoritarian personality. He served in the Korean War and came back to drive a truck. Through night courses, sacrifice and unwavering determination, he ended up as the president of one of the largest electrical component manufacturers in the world. He was the only survivor of a large family that drank themselves to death.

My mother was the only child of first-generation Italian immigrants who settled in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. She was a sickly, lonely, emotionally abandoned child of considerable intelligence. She was a creative type—novelist, poet, journalist, the first woman newspaper editor in the state of New Hampshire, union organizer, and political activist. She, like all her Italian family members, had a Latin temperament. She was also a bit mad. This is not to say my father was not, but his madness was a model for the American Man, as he was a self-made captain of industry.

In those days, an infant’s introduction to the world, following the nine months of gestating in a cocktail of amniotic fluid with a hint of alcohol and nicotine, was the nobly named, but gruesome, Cesarean section. If the child was a boy, that was soon followed by circumcision. The mother could comfortably convalesce in the recovery room where she could have a drink and a smoke, as those rooms came equipped with ashtrays that were there for the doctors as much as the patients. She could gain her composure while junior could get used to his new reality, alone, in an infant ward crib with a diet of synthetic fluoridated milk from a plastic bottle. Wisdom of that time said that breast milk was OK for animals but couldn’t hold a candle to the “scientifically improved” qualities of modern formula. Mothers understood that their simple, uneducated ideas about birth were no match for modern medicine, and they didn’t mind that their vaginas and breasts stayed youthful and attractive as a side effect of not being used as nature intended. A few pills to dry up the milk in her engorged breasts, and in no time she was cocktail-party ready. Even if these drugs did cause breast cancer years later, by then she would’ve lost her youthful glow. A mother could be confident that her child would grow up healthy because she’d made sure to have junior fully vaccinated and helped his body grow strong with every “new and improved” nutritionally fortified frozen, canned, preserved, instant, fast, food-like substance that got churned out by those smart folks at the Dow Chemical food science laboratories.

As a poster boy for the white middle-class American Dream family, I was raised in a bubble. The basics of life were always provided, and comfortably at that. I was taught that I should always be polite, that hard work was always rewarded, and that we should always be kind to one another. It was a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) fairy tale. For me, early childhood was an idealistic stroll through suburban paradise.

My earliest memory is of the day my mother walked me to the street corner near the school where I was to begin kindergarten. “Go there,” she said, pointing to the school entrance that, in my memory, appeared hundreds of feet away. She may as well have told me to kill my dog. There was no way I was going anywhere. I was happy where I was, and this new place I was being delivered to was filled with…other people! Was she crazy? Did she hate me? Was I being punished for something?

“Go. Go now. You have to go. Just start walking. You’ll be fine. I’ll see you after school.”

And there I was…alone in the world for the first time, lost between fear and cowardice. I don’t remember making that walk. The film in my head fades out and away on a small, scared boy alone on that corner left to fend for himself. There’s even a soundtrack. Of course, the reality of that experience was nowhere near that dramatic, nor that lonely walk so long, or my mother so cold, but the filmstrip in my memory had long ago been developed by the terrified five-year-old director in my mind.

During my time in school, I began to interact with the world around me. I saw and experienced that others in this world did not live in the same bubble as mine. To a happy five-year-old living in a perfect world, the reason was quite obvious: These unfortunate souls had somehow been misinformed about how the world really was, and clearly, I had been dropped off at the wrong school. Somewhere out there was the kindergarten of happy bubble children that I was meant to be with, but no one seemed concerned about this horrible mistake. They simply ignored my plight as if it was nothing more than a whiny child’s petulance. It appeared that I would have to deal with “the problem” on my own.

Eventually, in the spirit of “let’s all be happy together,” which was, and still is, fundamental to my basic nature, I made the best of it. I adopted a “live and let live” philosophy. All I wanted was to remain unmolested in my happy bubble, avoid the miscreants, and go about my day coloring pictures and pasting shapes. For me then, life was simple. Doing good things made me feel good; doing bad things made me feel bad. Just be a nice person and life will be good. So it was, until the day came when I began to learn that the world outside my bubble had its own agenda that I was not too happy with.

Many others may have felt the same way when they were first introduced to the greater culture outside their home, a culture that exposed us to a world that is made of winners and losers, of haves and have-nots. I instinctively avoided those who played along with these obviously unfair rules as best I could. They were unpleasant to be around, and I only wanted to be around pleasant things. This should have been the first clue I had “a problem.”

My earliest memory of how this inborn philosophy of “let’s all be happy together” rubbed against The System was in first grade. Mrs. Brown was my teacher. She was as hard and cold as she was beautiful, at least to my six-year-old sensibilities. She was also the first woman for whom I felt desire, in whatever way a six-year-old feels that, but it was intense and strong. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that she was also the only woman in my life besides my mother. Although I was only six years old, I was irresistibly drawn to powerful women. This, too, was a clue that I should have paid more attention to.

Mrs. Brown gave assignments as if she were the warden of a kiddie prison. One particular assignment was to color in the drawings of policemen, firemen and other symbols of authority, and then cut them out. I was not a coordinated child. It was difficult for me to color within the lines, nor did I have the desire to. It seemed like another one of those arbitrary rules I was seeing more and more of. Nevertheless, this was our task and Mrs. Brown made it clear she would be disappointed in us if we failed.

The situation was stressful. Needing to use a skill I didn’t possess to avoid being rejected by a woman whose approval I so badly wanted, forced me to come up with some creative problem-solving.

I can still see myself desperately trying to stay inside the lines and failing. However, I noticed that it was much easier to go over the lines rather than stay within them. This little detail showed me what the solution was. I would cover the entire page with the crayon color of choice, ensuring that the shapes would be fully filled, and then, during the cutting process, simply remove the areas of the page that did not matter, thereby removing the evidence of my horrible coloring job. I was betting my cutting skills were better than my drawing skills, but even if they weren’t, I was eliminating half the potential problem by ensuring my shapes were fully filled with the proper colors.

I felt like I’d just discovered fire! It was the perfect solution—I could perform my task faster and better. Surely, this would impress Mrs. Brown to the point of wanting to hug me, maybe even kiss me on the cheek in front of everyone!

While the other children worked extra hard to be careful to not cross over the lines, I began to scribble maniacally. My inspirational burst of creativity was broken by the harsh, judgmental voice of Mrs. Brown—“What are you doing?!”

I felt a wave of disappointment and, oddly, intense excitement at being challenged because I knew I could defend my stroke of genius with impunity. Unfazed and confident in the knowledge that she would recognize how wonderful I was, I explained my master plan.

My explanation fell on deaf ears and only caused her to castigate me more in front of my schoolmates. For a moment, I felt sad for Mrs. Brown. Something was wrong with her for her to be so “bad,” I thought. I saw her much like I saw someone with a physical disability: a poor victim of some unfortunate circumstance.

All I kept thinking and feeling was, if only she would see what is so obvious. I didn’t know how to manage the conflicting feelings of desire, oppression, and the need for vindication. My attempt to stand up for myself ended in humiliating defeat and I became an example to the rest of the class of the consequences of not staying within the lines. From inside my bubble I felt my defeat was a supreme act of self-sacrifice bordering on martyrdom, as it was only due to my self-effacing nature that I chose not to throw a tantrum. Here was the first indication that the bubble I lived in was perhaps more than simply one of a sheltered middle-class lifestyle.

I was at the first major crossroads of my life: Stand up for myself or gain approval from a woman I wanted validation from. Either way, I was entering foreign territory against my will. I was being pushed beyond myself—like it or not.

Mrs. Brown was one of the greatest influences in my life, but I didn’t truly appreciate her until decades later, after I’d pretty much relived that same scenario over and over again as her ghost reappeared in my life in the form of various authority figures. She was the first one who taught me to mix shame with desire; to follow orders or suffer the consequences; the importance of approval; and, of course, the art of lying and the value of deception. These lessons would lay the foundation for much of my life’s joy and suffering for the next thirty-five years.

Along with feeling the pangs of injustice were also the seeds of anger that, now planted, which would one day grow into a jungle of retribution. Apparently, this was not new to me, as my parents often told the story of when, at the age of two, I escaped my crib-prison by ripping out one of the bars and then, bar in hand, sought out my sleeping father to beat him on the head with it. They laughed when they retold that story, but beneath that laugh was the unspoken fear that perhaps I really did have a problem with people, with society, maybe even, God forbid, with morals and authority. As far as I was concerned, I was fine and had no intention of changing. I was an unruly, difficult, somewhat amoral child with my own well-delineated and growing sense of autonomy, yet a rather un-delineated sense of boundaries. My family, and those who had to deal with me, assumed, hoped, prayed that one day I would grow out of these traits. I was immovable in my perception, and I would soon make contact with an unstoppable force.

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Before we are eight years old, 95 percent of our personality is already written in stone. Any mother can attest to this fact, but it took a PhD student to prove it.[2]

The rest of our lives are spent trying to make our personality fit into acceptable cultural molds. We place layers and layers of habits and beliefs on top of our natural personalities to help us adapt to the demands of society. This is because our society is built upon the distinctly Freudian concept, and one that still prevails in many branches of psychology, that human nature must conform and adapt to society. This idea, perfected by the father of psychoanalysis himself, is the cause of so much of the twisted, literally insane thinking that shapes our world today. It is the basis of electroshock therapy, lobotomies, aversion therapy, and the use of shame, guilt, intimidation, and fear to alter one’s personality to fit society’s preferences.

I was not yet able to grasp that I was a foot soldier in training in the war for our brains, our ideas, our very neurology, but at age seven, I was at least beginning to see the opposing sides.