Stupid Confidence and Brilliant Doubt

I’m smart.  And here’s how I know it:  I hardly ever feel like I know what I’m doing. 

Yep.  Self-doubt is a sure sign of brilliance according to Bertrand Russell, Father of Analytic Philosophy.  He said, “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”   

Applying a Socratic syllogism, as I frequently do, I concluded that my feeling unsure of just about everything I’m sure of signifies a high level of intelligence.  

Wow.  I feel brighter already.  I think I do anyway. 

That is to say, I’ll feel fine until an alternate view presents itself, again bringing uncertainty to the forefront.   

So it’s all good.  Right?  Right!?? 

Even Charles Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”  He seemed pretty sure of it. 

Admittedly, he was on rant against the peons who disagreed with his theories of evolution, but what did they know?  They were too sure of themselves to be believed. 

I just read an article about Adam Bryant, “the CEO Whisperer,” who writes a column for the New York Times called “The Corner Office.”  He’s now written a book by the same name in which he synthesizes what he’s learned from his interviews with top performing CEO’s on how they got to be so smug.  Excuse me, I meant to say how they got to be so good at being good. 

He says his own success as an interviewer springs from his understanding of the value of what he calls “good, dumb questions.”   

Well.  There you are.  I can ask dumb questions!  I do it all the time.  Sheesh.  If that’s all it takes to be brainy, I sewed up my position in the annals of acumen in fourth grade when I waited in line to ask my homeroom teacher if she would please take the staple out of my thumb.   

What worries me is another angle on aptitude stated by a couple of brainiac researchers out of Cornell, Dunning and Kruger, who also wrote an article.  Theirs is called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments.” 

Are you still with me?  Good - it takes a lot of smarts to power through a title like that!  

But there it is:  The dumber you are, the less likely you are to recognize your own dumbness.  Not only that, the duller you are, the more likely you are to rate yourself as sharp.   

It all started when Dunning read a news item about an incompetent bank robber named Wheeler who believed — mistakenly, it turned out — that coating his face with lemon juice would make him invisible to security cameras.  Duh!  Everyone knows that to be invisible you have to live with a teenager.  

But Dunning thought deeper and came up with a dumb question.  Er, a good, dumb question:  If the would-be bank robber was too stupid to be a bank robber, maybe he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, did his stupidity protect him from awareness of his own stupidity?  Profound, huh? 

And there’s a certain beauty to it, too, isn’t there?  Ah, to be oblivious in a world of know-it-alls.  It’s a strategy for living ulcer free.  Calculated cluelessness.  No worries. 

One can move about with freedom and even joy, knowing in her own unconscious way that all is well in her world.  People respect her opinions.  Her clothes flatter.  Her jokes amuse.  Associates hang on her words and await her insights.  Her stores of knowledge calm those less fortunate and those more accurate in their own self-assessments.

It’s a conundrum, though.  A pickle.  A mystery wrapped in an enigma floating in a sea of who really cares except the Republicans, the Democrats and the Tea Party:  When you finally secure some wisdom, irony comes around to foil those visions of perfection.  

Life is so much easier when you’re right all the time!  Then bam!  That sneaking suspicion that you understand nothing spoils it all.   

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt.”   

I can only wish I’d listened.

The vicissitudes of humility

I suffer from anticipatory funk.
 

It’s a disorder whereby I accept an invitation to an event – nothing threatening or weird.  Maybe even something I’ve always wanted to do. 

I mark my calendar and begin to make preparations.  I tell my friends and family who coo over me and tell me how they want to be just like me someday.  My self-esteem puffs up and my posture gets better. 

Then, behind the scenes, in a wadded up cranny of my perverse little brain, like the spore of a shitake mushroom, a contrary idea finds footing.  Really?  It says.  Really…you’re planning to do that?  Oh.  Well.  Good luck with that.  No, really.  Good luck. 

Oh sinister little fungi!  How you wheedle and wend you way into a person’s consciousness!  

It’s not long at all before my personal portabella field has proliferated.  It has grown from a niggling sense of nostalgia into full-blown trepidation.  From oh!  I’ll miss my husband and my kitties to I just don’t want to go!  I wish I didn’t have to go!  Why oh why did I ever say I’d go!? 

I can’t say where this affliction originated.  Maybe it’s an offshoot of what I call the “Avatar” syndrome.  (I used to call it the “Sound of Music” syndrome, but I’ve lived long enough now that I’ve had to update the reference.  The dynamics are the same.) 

A new movie is released with enormous fanfare.  It’s the best movie ever!  Oh, the drama!  Oh, the laughter!  Oh, the special effects!  Movie making will never be the same!  OMG you MUST see “Avatar.”  

“Avatar” was good.  I’m not saying it wasn’t good.  But honestly, admit it; it wasn’t THAT good.  Was it? 

Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t listened to the hoopla.  No movie could measure up to the level of mental hype I generated.  Man I wanted to see that show! 

But I came out of the theatre humming that old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?”  (Please let me know right away if you know of a cooler, more current musical expression of disappointment.) 

I know it’s on me now.  I have to gear down and adjust my expectations.  I don’t like cultivating cynicism, but a tiny thread of doubt makes for pleasant surprises instead of colossal letdowns. 

On occasion I’ve let the funk take charge.  When an event swells in my field of vision I’ll make an excuse and duck out.  It’s almost physical, my reaction.  Fight or flight.  Something seizes me and I just turn and run!  It feels so good to escape.  Freedom!  No pressure.  No expectations.  Only a little guilt and that can be managed.  

Once I signed up for one of those “ropes” courses.  You know, the ones where you’re strapped into a harness and walk the high wire with your friends “on bole,” protecting you from falling and building a bond that surpasses all human bonds.  I freaked out.  Feigned a cold sore or something.  Didn’t go. 

And then, just like John Lennon warned, instant karma.  I regretted my cowardice.  I saw that that opportunity would not present itself again.  I had a chance to revel in a unique experience, but I stayed home in my pj’s.  What a wimp!  

No matter how good your excuse is, everybody knows you flaked out.  They’re nice to your face, but they know.  And of course, now they have the bond. 

So OK.  By the time you read this, I will have powered through my disability.  Like an agoraphobic in behavioral therapy I’ll have sucked it up and stepped into the open.  I can only hope I don’t look like Elvis squinting into the sun he seemed not to recognize after so much time in the basement of Graceland. 

I’ll be midway through the trip I’d begun to dread.  I’ll be having a great time, smiling, making new friends, learning things a person simply cannot learn by staying home, safe, at her keyboard.   

Of course the downside of success is the disorder that accompanies an adventurous spirit who sallies forth conquering the petty fears of the weaklings around her:  Insufferable competence.  Its symptoms – infuriating graciousness, knowing looks and strutting.   

I certainly hope I don’t succumb.   

Live Rich or Die Broke?

Breaking news:  Rich people are different from the rest of us. 

They’ve got a lot more money, for one thing.  

(Sorry.  I couldn’t resist.  That’s one of my favorite lines from “A Perfect Murder,” the 1998 remake of Hitchcock’s thriller, “Dial M for Murder.”) 

On the occasions when I ponder the subject of wealth versus reality, that piece of dialogue pretty well sums it up for me.   

Such musings typically surface when I’m in line to buy a Lotto ticket.  So you can imagine my chagrin when I read in an excerpt from Steve Siebold’s book, “How Rich People Think,” his list of 21 Ways Rich People Think Differently.  Item #3 – Average people have a “lottery mentality.” 

I beg your pardon!  Average!  Average!?  Why I’ve just been told this very morning that I’m wild, courageous and brilliant!  OK, it was in a shared post sent to about a bazillion people.  But average!?  I don’t think so.  Not where I live, here in Lake Woebegone. 

Yet there I was going and stopping, pausing and stepping among the run-of-the-mill.  My people.  All of us living out the distinction so coldly laid out by someone who wrote a book and therefore must be smart.  Smarter than we are, the ordinary folk with dollars in our hands. 

The really stupid thing I do is get in line to buy a Lotto ticket when the jackpot gets huge.  You know, when the media starts talking about the biggest payout in Lotto history and shark bites and lightning strikes and weight loss after 60. 

If the odds against hitting a Lotto jackpot aren’t already gargantuan, which they are, the odds against hitting the biggest jackpot in Lotto history are comparable to the odds of Republicans and Democrats shutting up and listening to each other.  You know nano-odds.  Microscopic.  Grain of sand on the beaches of the earth.  Slight. 

Then I saw a related piece of research on the Science Channel.  Lab geeks demonstrated that humans remain optimistic in the face of facts to the contrary.  In their experiment subjects were first asked to rate the likelihood that they would succumb to each of 80 negative life events.  For example, what are the odds you’ll have a broken leg in your lifetime?  The schmo at the keyboard enters 3%.  The computer comes back and tells her the odds are actually three times greater - 11%.  Next, she’s asked to estimate how likely it is she’ll develop high blood pressure.  She guesses 34% and the computer says no, it’s actually only 24%. 

Here’s the kick.  When she goes back through the list with her newly acquired information, she adjusts her thinking to match any scenario that’s rosier.   

But, if she started with a brighter outlook than the actuarial tables foretold, she kept it!  She didn’t change her expectations!  In spite of the facts, she held onto her more optimistic / less realistic view of her future.   

That’s my homies and me in the Lotto line.   

Siebold also says that the average person thinks money is the root of all evil, while rich people think poverty is said root.  Those of us who fight the battle of correcting long-standing and intractable misquotes know that it’s the love of money we’ve gotta eschew.   

Nevertheless your humble servant, moi, will stand with the fat cats on this one.

Ironically, that’s another thing separating me from the treasures I deserve – it’s the built-in guilt that rides sidecar with the money, and the belief that I’m supposed to make the world a better place.  Oh!  Poor, poor, middling me.  If only I’d been raised with that wealthy, airline-safety mentality:  take care of yourself first.  

That’s not greed, or selfishness.  That’s rich.  But all I want to do is share.  Oh well.  Too bad for me (and my husband) and for those who would be our beneficiaries.  They’re just not gonna get that much. 

So there it is – I’m not rich, and much as I’d like to maintain my rose-tinted view, I’m not like rich people. 

Still there are smart people who write books for common folks like me. 

Watch this space for an upcoming review of Pollan and Levine’s radical four-part approach to financial planning, “Die Broke.”

 

Heartbreak & Love on Facebook

Florence Detlor declined my friend request.  Yes, that’s her real name, Florence Detlor.  She seems like a lovely person but there it is.  I’m rebuffed and I don’t care. 

I did hear that she’s spending all her time responding to those on her wait list.  The wannabes, the hangers-on.   

Everyone who’s anyone wants to suck up to Florence. 

Surely you’ve heard of Florence Detlor:  At 101 she’s the oldest member of Facebook.  Had her picture taken with Mark Zuckerberg and everything; but I don’t care.   

So what if she’s the reigning Queen of FB?  I would still call her out for breaking my heart, but it appears that she didn’t turn me away.  Facebook did!  Facebook inserted itself into my affairs with a hollow apology and an abrupt declaration - Sorry, Florence has too many pending requests for her friendship.   

As I said, everybody and his dog.  

I guess Mr. Z is her social secretary now.  Just because she’s OLD.  Really!  I think he’s getting a little big for his britches.  Who’s he to say Florence has too many friends? 

All right, I’ll admit it.  I don’t know Florence.  I’m not an acquaintance.  We didn’t go to school together.  After all, she graduated from Occidental College before my parents even met. 

But I’m not one of those who just goes about adding “friends” to pump my numbers.  I'm selective.  I have standards.   

You won’t find me “sharing” at random either.  Oh no.  I see a lot of cute puppies in my newsfeed that you’ll never see.   

OK, look.  That sounds selfish and it’s not what I meant.  I’m not keeping the puppies all to myself.  I just mean that I don’t knee-jerk share because the caption says, “Share if you love puppies.”   

As it turns out, I’m a little sick of puppies cluttering my newsfeed because some “friends” with weaker constitutions cannot stand up to the hysterical dares to share.  They seem to think if they don’t re-post every snapshot of every pooch with pleading eyes and a tilted noggin it might look like they don’t love puppies.  We can’t have that. 

And what about those posts that seem to shake their heads in dismay, expressing sadness at how few will re-post this American flag.  You don’t even care enough to click the button?!  You don’t support our troops or love your country?  I see.

How about this one - I love my kids more than life itself.  I will be there for them anytime, anywhere, no matter what.  Share if you love your kids and would do anything for them.

Oh man. 

That’s some sophisticated psychological bullying.  And it’s hard to resist.  Better to go ahead and “share” than to be thought an un-American bad parent by the 687 friends of the friends I’ve forgotten were on my friend list.  Right? 

Wrong! I’m just contrary enough to make this resolution:  If it says, “Share if...” I won’t share it.  You can’t make me.  

I confess it feels a little weird to be so defiant.  I’ve always been a good girl. 

But once, as an adult, I visited a church of the same persuasion I attended as a child back in Oklahoma.  The sermon, titled “Satan Wants You Dead,” reminded me of the myriad reasons I left that denomination to begin with – all the talk about what a bad person I am.   

In the lobby after the service, the minister and his wife greeted me and asked if I’d had a chance to sign their guest book.  “Yes, I did,” I replied, meaning I’d had the chance, but chosen not to.  I was glad I didn’t succumb to the pressure.  But now I understand how they must have felt when they checked the book later to find I declined their request.   

So I think I could deal if Florence herself chose not to add me to her long list of admirers.  I just wanted to be among those showing appreciation since she appears to be a life-long learner and a classy dame.  It’s OK.  I’m not hurt. 

But wait!  What’s this?!  Florence accepted my friend request?!  I was in line after all!  I’ll be her friend #1446!   

Thanks Mark, wherever you are.   

Share if you love Facebook.

Chocolate and the Suggestible Mind

My newest buddy whom I’ve never met, Charles Duhigg, journalist and author of The Power of Habit:  Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, has the best idea I’ve heard in a while that could go wildly awry:  He says to form a good habit, we need only deceive our brains with chocolate. 

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m squarely behind a belief in the brain’s gullibility and the deceptive powers of chocolate.  In fact, I’m a pioneer in the field.  I’ve completed concentrated semi-scientific studies in my own private laboratory.  I’ve applied the concepts and replicated my experiments.  And now that we have a new champion, in the interest of fairness and forward thinking, I’ll don the lab coat again. 

Oh yes.  I’m down with the hypothesis that forming good habits requires chocolate and tricking your brain.  My brain is already so tricked.  And I don’t mean like a teenager’s ride. 

I haven’t told my brain the truth since Spanx.  Or “skinny jeans.”  Or fat free fruit loops.  Having been off the truth train for many miles of track, my brain might not even be able to distinguish fact from pie-in-the-sky fantasy.  Pie?  Where?  I don’t see any pie! 

See what I mean?  

Given my brain’s current state, I don’t think trying to slip chocolate past the gray matter is going to be all that challenging.  I majored in rationalization at the school of Really, Who Knew?  Therefore, my hopes are high for the prospect of deluding myself into a new life-altering routine starring my favorite downfall from See’s.   

Let’s explore. 

Duhigg (Don’t you just want to pinch his cheek and call him Doohickey?) says the formula for creating a “good” new habit to replace the lifelong familiar self-defeating habit you’ve theoretically extinguished through application of undisclosed self torture is this:  Cue - Routine - Reward.   

In the dark days of bad habits, the formula played out something like this:  Cue – Oh my goodness!  It’s 10am.  Time for my bonbon!   

Routine – locate said confection and consume delicately.  Repeat until shame, guilt or good sense sets in.   

Reward – yumminess. 

When I set about becoming perfect evermore by making resolutions and gritting my teeth, I find that I’m skilled at Step 1, cues.  They’re not that difficult, after all – look at the clock.  Set the alarm.  Gracious me!  It’s already midmorning!  Time for my rejuvenating, healthful workout.  

I’ve even managed Step 2 with reasonable ease and established an exercise routine:  I go to the gym and workout madly for the prescribed 55 minutes.  I get red-faced and sweat.  I stand around after the U-Jam class in my stretchy pants; mop my brow; walk with an athletic swagger and relish the intrinsic value of the workout.  Oh yeah.  I’m good. 

So why does my doofus brain dread the routine and invent every lame excuse to avoid it? 

According to Thingamabob it’s in Step 3, the reward.  I wander afield in cementing the new, more desirable, life-affirming habit because I’ve essentially skipped the reward!  Or, more accurately, I’ve tried to bully my brain into believing that baked banana chips and tofu are rewarding.  No wonder my enthusiasm fizzles!  No yumminess. 

Even the most naive brain can see that eight glasses of water and a celery stalk do not constitute a reward.  All the gold stars and atta boys in the weight room cannot compete with chocolate.  What was I thinking? 

Whatchamacallit says that we need to give ourselves a real reward.  One our brains will recognize as desirable.  Something we already love, like chocolate. 

Instead of a salad, he says, after a workout reward yourself with a small piece (of course small, you nut!)  of chocolate.  That is, if you like chocolate.  If not, then maybe a thimbleful of beer.  Even a Hershey’s Kiss should be enough to make your workout something your brain hopes for. 

According to Dofunny, even though we know the exercise doesn’t cause the chocolate Kiss to appear, like a lab that fetches forever in happy anticipation of his chewy treat - our childlike minds form the association nevertheless.   

After as few as 10 days of repeating the Cue, Routine, and Chocolate Reward, voila!  You’re hard wired for a new life. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Me and Mulder, We Believe

On the “X-Files,” I stood with Mulder.  His motto, my motto:  I want to believe.


In fact, I do believe.  I love the mysterious and the unexplainable because so many events in my life fall into those categories.  Accepting that sensation of ‘something more’ in my daily existence adds a personal ‘God particle.’


And for me, Scully and her skepticism constituted buzz kill wrapped in a wet blanket.  Come on Scully!  Don’t you see it?  The beauty and hope of the enigma. 


It doesn’t take too much to keep me convinced that there’s more to life than the superficial, the mundane, and the rote.  I love knowing who’s on the phone before I answer. Or when I dreamed about the long-lost friend before she called.  


It made me smile when I felt my mother, gone since 1977, urging me to pick up Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red Headed League” at the library.  Of course I knew she was a red head, but my grandma didn’t tell me until later that mom was an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes.


At a recent dinner party I sat near a lovely woman, “Ms. Jones.”  She’s a retired teacher, so we had our education backgrounds in common.  We chatted and got comfortable.  Then, as though compelled, she told me a story that floated in the halls of her consciousness: 

At home in the mode of creating order and eliminating the superfluous, she found herself sifting through boxes and stacks of papers and pictures and books, making decisions about what could stay and what must go. 

In the process, she ran across a book by Dale Evans Rogers (Roy’s wife of 51years).  The book, Angel Unaware:  A Touching Story of Love and Loss, told the story of the Rogers’ daughter, Robin, who lived less than two years. 

My dinner companion puzzled over the find.  She didn’t recall acquiring the book.  She vaguely remembered the story of the Rogers’ heartbreak, but…?  How did this book find its way into her home? 

On opening the cover, the mystery deepened, for there she found Dale Evans’ signature.  A signed copy!   

She leafed through the pages and saw that the story is told from the viewpoint of the child as she looks back to earth from heaven.  Her sweet voice recounts the trials and trauma of coming into the world with multiple devastating birth defects.  The intended ‘take away’ is that throughout their ordeal, little Robin brought joy to her parents, pulled them closer to each other and enhanced their lives in myriad ways. 

My dinner companion shook her head, unsure what to make of her discovery.  The story, while touching, had no special significance for her.  Still, without reasoning why, she knew she would keep it.  She found a spot on her bookshelf and tucked it in, then moved on to the purging at hand. 

Later that week with order restored in her home my new friend received an invitation to the 40^th year reunion of students she’d known in her classroom.  She prevailed upon her husband and they attended the event. 


She felt honored and happy to be among her former students and to find them doing so well.  Many of them approached her with hugs and fond stories of their adolescence and her contribution to their successful lives.  

As the evening drew to a close a final alum came toward her saying, “Remember me, Ms. Jones?”   In fact, Ms. Jones didn’t have a strong memory of this student. 

“I’m the one who lent you that book….Angel Unaware.  Remember?” 

Well of course she remembered, now.  She studied the face before her and listened to her former student’s story of the troubles in her life.  Remarkable.   

And the book had been a loan!  Of course, Ms. Jones made arrangements to return it to the one who now needed its comforting message. 

Now tell me, Scully, how was it that Ms. Jones unearthed that forgotten book and gave it a ‘safe’ place in her bookcase just in time to be reunited with its owner?   

Coincidence?  Sure, Scully, I’d like a neon sign saying ‘a merging of the cosmic consciousness created this meaningful episode of seeming serendipity.’   

But even without it, I believe.

To Mars ~ Kicking and Screaming

I would have moved to TEXAS.  That should give you an idea of my sweet, loving, altruistic nature.  I was willing to forsake my Okie sensibilities and relocate to TEXAS if my husband’s job required it. 

OK.  I’ve quit gritting my teeth.  My fingers have unclenched and I can type again.  I can go on.

My point is I can embrace change if I must.  I’ll drink lemonade all day and carry a sow’s ear purse.  TEXAS is one thing.  But I don’t know if I could move to Mars.

Oh, don’t kid yourself.  Ever since they navigated the rover Curiosity onto the surface of the red planet, NASA scientists have been talking right out loud about Mars being the next home for civilization.

As you know, Curiosity is the Hummer-sized robot now snooping around near the Gale Crater, at least 36 million miles away, on Mars.  Curiosity’s stated mission: not only to see if Mars could ever have supported small life forms called microbes, but also to determine if human beings could survive there someday!
In fairness, the last time I encountered a new colony of any significance, it was in my son’s bedroom. 

He was thirteen at the time, a critical age for glandular development and unintentional science projects.  A good kid, but he was unencumbered by attention to detail or – to his way of thinking – superfluous habits of hygiene.  Suffice it to say that contraband snack food, wet towels and gym socks produced a simulated Petri dish next to his laundry basket, complete with a thriving culture of unknown bacteria.  

So, objectivity requires effort.

But in spite of this, in the spirit of adventure and anticipating the inevitable, just as I did when it looked like we might have to move to TEXAS, I’ve done some advance reconnaissance.  The NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s website provides an animated interactive geek, “Dr. C., Your Personal Mars Expert,” to answer questions for those of us bold enough to ask.
Dr. C.'s social skills however, mandate a safe distance from actual living beings.  When I asked if it’s true that we will someday colonize Mars, he took an uppity attitude right out of the gate, prefacing his comments with “If you mean will humans ever colonize Mars…”  Who did he think was asking the question, Wall-E?

Totally uncalled for.  But I held back.  I took the higher ground.  If a cartoon needs to make itself feel important by talking down to me, well!  Where would that argument go anyway? 

He went on to say, “On this site, we prefer the idea of ‘establishing communities’ on Mars as opposed to ‘colonization.’”  So, even self-important line drawings have to be politically correct.

But establish communities we will.  In fact, Dr. C. spends the next few lines telling me what a lot of work it will be to accomplish such a task.  We’ll need liquid water, he says, and oxygen at the appropriate pressure for humans to breathe. 

Duh.  I could have been a nerdy interactive animated cartoon scientist stating the obvious.  That’s always been one of my strong suits.  But when he went on to say that in order to live on Mars, we’ll need 'comfortable' temperatures and protection from Martian dust, an idea began to form in this Tulsa girl’s mind.

There’s liquid water and oxygen in Oklahoma.  In fact, from April to October, they come packaged as a two-fer in the form of mold-inducing humidity.  That’s thanks to the ‘uncomfortable’ temperatures - read 'blazing heat' - that Okies have endured since God made goat cheese.
And as for protection from dust, Martians should take a lesson from Dust Bowl Okies!  We know dust.  Our dust is red too!  Just like Martian dust. 

And you’ve seen those pictures; there’s not a lick of shade on Mars. 

Just like Oklahoma…Hmmm…

This whole community-building concept is starting to smell like a sham, a cover-up, a pretense to relocate Okies from earth to another flat, dusty, humid, twangy colony of fried food and mosquitoes!  Not me buster!

My momma didn’t raise any fools in Oklahoma!  No!  You’ll have to roast a lot of roosters to find me sleepin’ at dawn. 

I ain’t goin’ to TEXAS; and I sure as shootin’ ain’t goin’ to MARS!