Joan Jett -- The Most Iconic Female Rocker

“Hey, Mom and Dad, did you ever think that Christmas guitar would lead to this? I come from a place where rock ‘n roll means something. it means more than music, more than fashion, more than the pose. Rock ‘n roll is an idea and an ideal. Sometimes, because we love the music and we make the music, we forget the political impact it has around the world.”

--Joan Jett

Women rockers – true, outspoken, leather-clad firebrands – are a rare breed. Joan Jett is not only the female who pioneered the genre, but also the real thing, the authentic and enduring woman rock star. 

From the beginning of her career in the ‘70s all-girl band The Runaways to her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, Joan's always been a fighter. By fighting media-imposed-stereotypes and continuous rejection, she’s fought for the rights of women in music, for her own right to make and live by her rules, and for control over her career

“If you had to sit down and imagine the idea.female rocker, what would she look like? Tight leather pants, lots of mascara, black (definitely not blond) hair, and she would have to play guitar like Chuck Berry’s long-lost daughter. She wouldn’t look like Madonna or Taylor Swift. Maybe she would look something like Ronnie Spector, a little formidable and dangerous, definitely - androgynous, for sure. In fact, if you close your eyes and think about it, she would be the spitting image of Joan Jett.”

-- Jaan Uhelszki, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Joan Jett (born Joan Marie Larkin, September 22, 1958) is an American songwriter, composer, musician, record producer and occasional actress. She was a female rocker in an era when male singers dominated the genre, releasing colossal '80s hits like "I Love Rock and Roll" and "Bad Reputation.” Paving the way for future rock acts, Jett and her band the Blackhearts fused punk and glam with old school rock and roll. And when she started Blackheart Records in 1980, she became the first woman to own a record label. (Miley Cyrus said “that was only because the other major labels said there wasn't a market for this kind of music.”)

Jett has produced several albums for pivotal feminist, queer and riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill, The Germs and The Gits. She’s had books and movies dedicated to her and the bands she’s been a part of and worked with, and, in her “spare time” she’s an activist for animal rights and has appeared in several films and TV shows.

What other rock star has a resume like that? And, consider Joan was also rated Number 87 on Rolling Stone's list of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” Gibson actually manufactured a signature model of her Melody Maker, a white double cutaway with a zebra humbucker and "kill" toggle switch.

“In the early Runaways and the later Black-hearts, Joan played it straight ahead: No frills, all heart, no fucking around.”

How uncommon is this? Well, let's just say female artists still have to sometimes use urinals backstage because clubs weren’t built with women stars in mind. Jett explains,

“Oh, I get very friendly with cups. I mean, [expletive] a urinal. That’s not clean. I’m just in my dressing room, with a cup. Quick, easy, you don’t have to go anywhere. Try it next time! Solo cup. Check that Solo cup before you drink.” (Laughs)

"Girls can master the guitar. They can play rock & roll. What you're saying is society doesn't allow women to access their sexuality in relation to music ... Once they do that, they're whores, they're sluts, they're dykes."

– Joan Jett, 2019 interview

Fiercely independent, Joan Jett has never defined herself (“I’m not saying no, I’m not saying yes, I’m saying believe what you want. Assume away,” she once said to a reporter when questioned about her sexuality, but she never refers to herself as “gay” or “bisexual”), and Joan touts a lesbian sticker on her guitar while playing live. She simply refuses to talk about it saying, “I don't give a fuck about what you think.”

Jett has always brought danger, defiance, and fierceness to rock & roll. Make no mistake, she is all about the music. Joan says she loves “the onstage part, the connection part – you look in someone’s eyes, you connect. There’s something that passes between the two of you. It’s magic.” She doesn’t just love rock & roll; she honors it. Jett's devotion to music is unwavering.

“Whether she’s (Joan's) performing in a blue burka for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, working for PETA, or honoring the slain Seattle singer Mia Zapata by recording a live album with Zapata’s band the Gits – and donating the proceeds to help fund the investigation of Zapata’s murder – her motivation is consistent.”

What is Jett's message to females who aspire to excel? Miley Cyrus said this in Joan's Rock Hall induction: “Instead of changing for all those people, if you don’t like how the world is, change it yourself,” she said. “Joan Jett made the world evolve, her life and her success is proof that we can self-evolve. I want to thank you for fighting for our freedom, Joan, and I love you so much.”

So, you ladies who rock, assume that freedom and keep playing your rock and roll. The industry is still very much a man's world, but take flight. I'm not speaking of the diva craze and glittery star worship. I'm talking about raw, in-your-face music that punks, grungers, and old rockers alike love. We true believers still think it will never die. 

"You tell me one (expletive) record by a female rock artist that's hard that's played on the radio," she told her fan club in the 1990s. " Musically, those bands exist. There are so many punk, hard rock and heavy metal girl bands, but radio doesn't play them. When magazines publish these Women In Rock and Year of the Woman articles, it really gets annoying to see female artists misrepresented."

– Joan Jett, interview on occasion of her 60th birthday (2018)

White Males, Stockpiles of Weapons, and Racial Power

“The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male –

but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies,

the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.”

– Jeremy Adam Smith, sociologist and editor of Greater Good magazine

Guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.

Who is largely responsible for the surge in gun acquisition?

White males – particularly those less educated who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious – and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns.

Why?

Stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control. They are struggling to “once again be the heroes.”

“The gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about. Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency … put simply, owners who are more attached to their guns are most likely to believe that guns are a solution to our social ills. For them, more ‘good’ people with guns would drastically reduce violence and increase civility. Again, it reflects a hero narrative, which many white men long to feel a part of.”

– Paul Froese, Baylor University sociologist

For many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order in a chaotic world, suggests a study published 2018. Steven Shepherd and Aaron Kay, found “in situations that are inherently chaotic and disorderly (i.e., shootings), liberals see the introduction of another firearm (i.e., an armed citizen) as introducing more disorder into the situation, whereas conservatives see armed citizens as providing more order to the situation.”

(Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay, "Guns as a Source of Order and Chaos: Compensatory Control and the Psychological (Dis)Utility of Guns for Liberals and Conservatives," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 3, no. 1. January 2018)

Sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, which exploded after President Obama was elected. She says …

“When men became fathers or got married, they started to feel very vulnerable, like they couldn’t protect families. For them, owning a weapon is part of what it means to be a good husband and a good father.” That meaning is “rooted in fear and vulnerability – very motivating emotions.”

But Stroud another prime motivation: racial anxiety. About this manly “anxiety,” Stroud explains …

“A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’”

These white men feared Obama’s presidency would empower minorities to threaten their property and families. The insight Stroud gained from her interviews is backed up by many studies.

A 2013 paper by a team of United Kingdom researchers found that a one-point jump in the scale they used to measure racism increased the odds of owning a gun by 50 percent. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control.

“The reason guns cannot be regulated in the USA is because of the violence, not in spite of it. The violence is necessary to maintain the fear, and the fear is necessary to maintain white male privilege. The idea that white men can and do shoot people causes every interaction with a white man to carry a tinge of threat: If you disrespect him, or merely fail to please him enough, he just might explode.”

– James Fallows (2018), staff writer at The Atlantic

That insight was echoed by another study published last year. Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and F. Carson Mencken created a “gun empowerment scale” designed to measure how a nationally representative sample of almost 600 owners felt about their weapons. Their study found that people at the highest level of their scale – the ones who felt most emotionally and morally attached to their guns – were 78 percent white and 65 percent male.

This gun empowerment also drives political affiliations: A 2017 study in the Social Studies Quarterly found that gun owners had become 50 percent more likely to vote Republican since 1972—and that gun culture had become strongly associated with explicit racism.

Nathan Wuertenberg, author of Demand the Impossible: Essays in History as Activism and founder of the online journal The Activist History Review, reports that white men make up the largest percentage of gun owners (and are ahead of people of color and women by double digits). In the NRA, the breakdown is even more stark, with white men accounting for twice the proportion they do in the general population.

What are some deadly effects of a heavily armed modern populace?

Rates of gun injury and death, including dramatic rises in gun suicides are spiking.

According to Jonathan M. Metzl – who directs the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University – reports white men comprise about 31 percent of the U.S. population but 74 percent of firearm suicide victims. Recently released CDC data found that the overwhelming majority of Americans who ended their lives with guns in 2017 “were white (91 percent) and male (87 percent).”

A white man is three times more likely to shoot himself than a black man—while the chances that a white man will be killed by a black man are extremely slight. Most murders and shoot-outs don’t happen between strangers. They unfold within social networks, among people of the same race.

A gun in the home is far more likely to kill or wound the people who live there than is a burglar or serial killer. Most of the time, studies show the dead and wounded know the people who shot them.

A gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed by her husband. Everytown for Gun Safety Support reports …

“Every month, an average of 52 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Nearly 1 million women alive today have reported being shot or shot at by intimate partners, and 4.5 million women have reported being threatened with a gun. In more than half of mass shootings over the past decade, the perpetrator shot a current or former intimate partner or family member as part of the rampage.”

Every week in America, 136 children and teenagers are shot – and more often than not, it’s a sibling, friend, parent, or relative who holds the gun. For every homicide deemed justified by the police, guns are used in 78 suicides. A study in JAMA Internal Medicine (2018) shows restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other.

Whatever the view of the appropriate scope of the Second Amendment, it should extend to all equally, without regard to race; however, the government has rejected research into potential agents of violence, how people acquire weapons, and whom they may target. For more than two decades, the CDC has been barred from researching the effects of gun violence. This has only served to make citizens less safe.

White male insecurity has prompted the belief that if other kinds of people achieve a measure of political power, there’ll be less (or none) for the men who always had it. These men want a feeling of impregnability they feel they were promised and believed their kind once had. They see their power waning and it terrifies them, so they lash out. They attack and blame a scapegoat with unequaled American derision – blacks.

If you doubt the target and reject the racism involved, let's turn that reality 180 degrees. Imagine this fantasy scenario:

Right now in the U.S. black males, the majority population, are stockpiling guns as they prepare to regain their own racial masculinity. They see these weapons as a solution to their social ills. After centuries of oppression, black males – many of whom with genuine feelings of aggression – find it necessary to arm themselves “to the teeth.” They are joining the NRA in record numbers as their need for control and finding their place in this chaotic world drive their lust for weapons.

In that America, I see white Americans in outrage. White males would be calling for arrests and gun control. These same white men would likely abandon the NRA and protest its unfair policies and politics. Cries of redress for black racial domination would surely fill the land.

The same social, economic, and political pressures that created the slave culture also created the gun culture. In fact, the nation was founded on violent action. The founding fathers gave people the right to own guns so militias could handle defense in lieu of a standing army. Our frontier expansion required guns to protect settlers and eliminate native resistors. And so the necessary militia stance became part of the national consciousness.

James Fallows speaks of “a national persona that developed lauding the rugged individual, who takes matters in his/her own hands … The idea that white men can and do shoot people causes every interaction with a white man to carry a tinge of threat: If you disrespect him, or merely fail to please him enough, he just might explode.”

Conservative whites have taken over one of the two major parties in this country and made it subservient to their retrograde whims. Ryu Spaeth, features editor of The New Republic explains …

“Guns, for them, are not about hunting or self-defense or the frontier spirit or any of the other fig leaves that are brandished every time their true agenda starts to show. It is about asserting the primacy of a group identity, protecting it from threats both real (inexorable demographic change) and imagined (invasions of Hispanic rapists and murders).”

This protective and heroic? view is entwined in the history of America. Read this letter of December 27, 1860, from Stephen F. Hale, Alabama's commissioner to Kentucky. Institutions, group identity, and a hero narrative exist in this nineteenth century parallel to modern times. I close with this look back into history …

To His Excellency B. McGoffin, Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky:

“Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions – nothing less than an open declaration of war – for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one.”

The Truth ... and Nothing ... (But the Truth?)

“I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a lie.

I did cut it (the cherry tree) with my hatchet.”

--George Washington

When a six-year-old Washington accidentally damaged his father’s beloved cherry tree with a new hatchet, George was driven by his conscience to own up to his actions. This was the story told to me by my grade school history teacher. And I, along with the rest of my gullible classmates, believed every detail to be true.

George Washington, the father of our country, could not tell a lie, and we all knew good children of the 1950s must learn from George and apply that important lesson of veracity in our lives.

However …

Fact and legend are often confused. Imagine my surprise when I learned Mason Locke Weems, a clergyman and one of Washington's first biographers, based this story on hearsay. Weems was a moralist who wanted to create a role model for young people like me, a boy all too eager to absorb an idealized version of American history.

In fact, Weems’s The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington was first published in 1800, but his anecdote about the cherry tree was not added until the book’s fifth edition, which hit the shelves in 1806. Weems claimed he had heard the story from an elderly friend of the Washington family, but there is no evidence to support his claim. Nevertheless, Weems confidently related how the value of honesty was firmly inculcated in Washington by his father. I guess most of us gullible children just accepted the tale and understood it to be part of a lesson to praise the value of the truth.

What About the Truth?

The truth? What about role models? Now I am almost sixty-nine years old, and I fear the inherent value of this virtue is almost extinct. I hear people say: “There's your side. There's my side. And there is the truth” as if lying or stretching the truth is perfectly acceptable behavior. In the present partisan climate, Americans accustomed to “the slant” and “the spin” value honesty less and less. Gone is integrity. It has been replaced with “what I can get away with.” I think lies are so much a part of the culture now that children see little value in truth telling.

Oxford Dictionaries’ International Word of the Year for 2016 was “post-truth,” defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The use of the word in English language text spiked 2,000 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year. Oxford said in its news release that the spike was driven “by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment.”

In a post-truth world, alternative facts and fake news compete on an equal footing with peer-reviewed research and formerly-authoritative sources. Even though they are aware that the process of arriving at the truth can be slow and even fallible, most people tend to reject the rigid discipline of conducting unbiased investigation, preferring to put credence into opinions that support their own predetermined prejudices.

We live in a time when many belittle science and expertise in order to oppose traditional democratic institutions. People these days love theories, conspiracies, and crackpot ideas. When the facts conflict with their sense of identity or political ideology, then, to them, the facts – and, of course, the truth – are disposable.

Commonly Accepted Ignorance

“Epistemology,” is the study of knowledge. This field helps define what we know and why we know it. However, on the flip side of this is “agnotology,” or the study of ignorance. The word stems from the Neoclassical Greek words agnōsis, "not knowing," and -logia, “maxim.”

Agnotology is not often discussed because studying the absence of something – in this case, the absence of knowledge – is incredibly difficult. More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before. This study of ignorance has increasingly become an effective political tool.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

—Isaac Asimov

Powerful people often use ignorance – agnotology – as a strategic tool to hide or divert attention from societal problems in which they have a vested interest. For example, conservative think tanks such as The Heartland Institute work to discredit the science behind human-caused climate change.

Combine the influence of ignorance with research that says most people lie at least some of the time, and truth loses intrinsic value. There, in the dark and validated by agnotology, people don’t think lies are that serious or of any real concern. Even when they acknowledge someone has been caught lying, they readily dismiss the offense. This has become part of the slow death of the truth.

Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. They care not about the truth.

Author Tom Nichols – professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and adjunct professor at the Harvard Extension School – calls this “the death of expertise.” This execution of evidence is not just a rejection of existing knowledge. Also, it is fundamentally a rejection of science and dispassionate rationality, the very foundations of modern civilization.

Thus, Nichols believes any inherent truth suffers from an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. Nichols says …

“This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.”

The search for truth and the subsequent application of its attainment are noble moral and educational practices. I believe the decline of ethics and religion has made lying more acceptable. And, the death of expertise surely has fueled this great indifference to the truth.

When parents tell children that “honesty is the best policy,” but display dishonesty by lying or adhering to principle supported by agnotology, such behavior sends conflicting messages to their children. Parents' dishonesty must eventually erode trust and promote dishonesty in their children. As we know, it actually becomes easier to lie with more practice.

Lying triggers emotional arousal and activates the amygdala, but with each additional lie, the arousal and conflict of telling an untruth diminishes, making it easier to lie. Scientists (2026) have also found that the amygdala became less active mostly when people lied to benefit themselves. In other words, self-interest seems to fuel dishonesty.

Senior author of the study Tali Sharot, PhD. explains ...

“When we lie for personal gain, our amygdala produces a negative feeling that limits the extent to which we are prepared to lie. However, this response fades as we continue to lie, and the more it falls, the bigger our lies become.”

The “danger flags” in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are no longer fictional symbols. Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism …

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

If a novelist had concocted a villain like Trump – a larger-than-life, narcissistic, prejudice demogogue, she or he would likely be accused of witless flights of fancy. Michiko Kakutani, writer and literary critic for The Guardian, (2018) says …

“However, the president of the U.S. has set the nation on the path of monumentally serious consequences with his constant assault on truth and the rule of law, and the vulnerabilities he has exposed in our institutions and digital communications.”

The overriding fear – already largely realized – is that Trump, in his kingly manner, says so many thing that aren't true, that he and his gullible and emotional believers will occupy a parallel universe of falsehoods in defiance of any other interpretation or logical challenge. In his alternate reality, Trump continues to gaslight the nation, blurring fact and fiction.

According to The Washington Post Fact Checker …

“In his first 869 days as President, Donald Trump said 10,796 things that were either misleading or outright false, Do the math and you get this: The President of the United States is saying 12 untrue things a day.”

The steady erosion of truth continues from the top down, and now the abrasion threatens the broader idea that we, as humans, have things on which we all can and should agree. So many “cherry trees” have been laid to waste in complete and false denial that their untold branches obscure a functioning political landscape. Even if we do tell a child a mythical legend about truth and an ethical future president, the moral of the story is now lost in the times. That young person only has to open his eyes and ears to the hypocrisy to dismiss the virtuous behavior.

The Mighty Power of Forgiveness

Forgiveness

by Emily Dickinson

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!

Forgiveness is generally regarded as a positive response to human wrongdoing. It is a conceptually, psychologically, and morally complex phenomenon involving the cease of resentment or claim to requital.

Much of the understanding of the response of forgiveness is grounded in what the process is not – forgiveness does not involve condoning, overlooking, forgetting, or even pardoning an offense. In fact, the act is done without conditions and does not seek an ounce of justice. And, the person who forgives must remember that forgiveness never changes the past.

Forgiveness does involve a decision to release the bitterness, resentment, vengeance, and anger toward the person who has hurt you. As you truly forgive, you are intentionally embracing mercy and grace. You are letting go of your right to punish for the offense in the future. You are basically saying, “I will not bring this incident up again and use it against you.” Perhaps, most importantly, forgiveness means you step into your present rather than anchoring in the past.

From the ancient Greeks through the Hebrew and Christian bibles to the present day, forgiveness has typically been regarded as a personal response to having been injured or wronged.

The Greek word translated as “forgive” in the New Testament, aphiēmi, carried a wide range of meanings, including “to remit (a debt), to leave (something or someone) alone, to allow (an action), to leave, to send away, to desert or abandon, and even to divorce.”

In fact, the Greek word appears 146 times in the New Testament, but it is translated in most English versions as “forgive” only 38 of those times. Considering the entire range of meanings of this word gives us some indication of what “forgiveness” might have meant to listeners in Jesus’ first-century context.

Most of all, forgiveness in its origin was an action rather than a feeling, and so contemporary ideas about forgiveness as an emotional state must come from sources other than the biblical text.

Although there are a variety of definitions of forgiveness, research has suggested they all have three common components:

1. Gaining a more balanced view of the offender and the event.
2. Decreasing negative feelings towards the offender and potentially increasing compassion.
3. Giving up the right to punish the offender further or to demand restitution.

Esteemed Professor of Philosophy Charles L. Griswold posits …

“Consider its (forgiveness) genesis in the interpersonal context: one person wrongs another. Forgiveness is a response to that wrong, and hence to the other person as author of that action. Forgiveness retains the bilateral or social character of the situation to which it seeks to respond.

“The anger you feel in response to having been treated unjustly is warranted only if, in its intensity and its target, it is fitting. After all, if you misidentified who did you wrong, then forgiving that person would be inappropriate, indeed, insulting. Or if the wrongdoer is rightly identified but is not culpable, perhaps by virtue of ignorance or youth, then once again it is not forgiveness that is called for but something else – say, excuse or pardon.”

Research praises the benefits of forgiveness. Forgiveness is literally good for your heart. Elizabeth Scott, MS in her article “The Many Benefits of Forgiveness writes one study from the Journal of Behavioral Medicine (2019) found forgiveness to be associated with lower heart rate and blood pressure as well as stress relief. This can bring long-term health benefits to your heart and overall health.

Scott also related that later study found forgiveness to be positively associated with five measures of health: physical symptoms, medications used, sleep quality, fatigue, and somatic complaints. It seems that the reduction in negative affect (depressive symptoms), strengthened spirituality, conflict management and stress relief you find through forgiveness all have a significant impact on your overall health.

A third study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that forgiveness not only restores positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward the offending party (in other words, forgiveness restores the relationship to its previous positive state) but the benefits of forgiveness spill over to your positive behaviors toward others outside of the relationship. Forgiveness is associated with more volunteerism, donating to charity, and other altruistic behaviors. (And the converse is true of non-forgiveness.)

In the poem above, renowned poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – May 15, 1886), a powerful and persistent figure in American culture, speaks of forgiveness as the narrator of her poem realizes “all human love and hate find one sad level” – the burial place. There in the graveyard, the speaker is overcome by a tide of “common sorrow sweeping her pride away” and leaving her “trembling in forgiveness.” The sad tone is evocative and final in its stark revelation.

I agree with Rubin Khoddam, PhD and clinical psychologist, who says …

“Forgiveness is the cornerstone of any relationship, romantic or otherwise. We assume people see life the way we see life. However, there are as many perceptions as there are people in this world. Our lack of understanding of other people's perceptions can create gaps built on miscommunication, anger, animosity, and emotional disconnection. However, our relationship with forgiveness can help bridge these gaps.”

Forgiveness involves a difficult process, but one involving necessary steps for those who seek to reach acceptance. When we don't forgive, it's easy to stay in the anger. However, when we stay angry, we can avoid going into those harder places that involve the impact of the betrayal.

Oprah Winfrey said …

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."

I do not believe it takes a practicing Christian to grant forgiveness. To me, any keen observer of human nature – as Emily Dickinson affirms – should engage in the practice. Unconditional forgiveness breaks the bondage of offended feelings. After all, hating someone, holding an offense, or harboring a grudge causes many negative effects. The person who allows such attitudes in his life becomes joyless and sour.

And, plenty of people suffer from long-held grudges built from the erroneous material of their imaginations. They hurt for no good reason. Yet, with their stubborn egos, they hang onto anger and resentment that eventually only cripples and debilitates them and their relations with others.

With all of the energy wasted on animosity and anger, those who refuse to forgive fail to acknowledge that both “wronged and wrongdoer find one sad level in the common grave.” In the end, pride and grudges are meaningless. A person without forgiveness gains no favor. Any animosity that remains serves to hinder those left behind and to enable a hideous cycle of abuse.

Imagine a God without forgiveness. If you won't forgive others, how in the name of heavenly equality and justice, do you expect mercy from God? Suffice it to say that all believers seek forgiveness for their untold sins on earth. Why would a loving God want you to live without embracing the tenet of forgiveness yourself? You must forgive as an act of obedience letting God carry the burden. It is a blunt message with a direct obligation.

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

People who forgive are not weak but strong enough to walk their path without those who’ve hurt them. The qualities associated with forgiveness – love, peace, happiness – are fast, high, empowering vibrational energies. On the contrary, the qualities associated with unforgiveness -- resentment, anger, hatred -- are slow, low, disempowering energies.

In forgiveness, you show that you are above the actions of another person because their actions are a reflection of their issues and have nothing to do with you and who you are. You acknowledge imperfection, the human condition. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

I firmly believe ideas need actions to give them meaning. Actions bring ideas to life and effectively induce change – both personal growth and world change. As you consider necessary forgiveness, allow me to add a particular note: I have never regretted forgiving any wrongdoing; moreover, I have never regretted making an apology for any of the incalculable mistakes I have made. If accepting forgiveness and seeking it are weaknesses, I confess I strongly embrace those two frailties in my own life.

To me, elasticity is perhaps the greatest quality to possess. Rigidity of belief and expectations can be a person’s undoing. I believe we must be constantly open to change and new understandings. I need forgiveness. Without it, I would be a shell of myself. In the mind of one of the greatest American writers, I would stink …

"Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."

–Mark Twain

Loving Material Possessions -- The Story of a Consumptive Scarlet Robe

Consider these statistics:

• The average American home size has grown from 1,000 square feet to 2,500 square feet.
• Personal storage generates more than $24 billion in revenue each year.
• Reports indicate we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago.
• All while carrying, on average, nearly $15,950 in credit-card debt.

Do our new and seemingly bigger and better possessions really make us happy? In our chase of finery, why do we spend so far beyond our means? Do we find our greatest satisfaction in material possessions?

Have you ever heard of the Diderot Effect?

Allow me to relate the account of its origins.

Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784) was a famous French philosopher who lived nearly his entire life in poverty. In the eighteen century, he wrote an essay entitled, “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown,” in which he described exactly this phenomenon.

Here is the story related in that essay …

When Diderot was fifty-two years old, his daughter was about to be married, but he could not afford to provide a dowry. Despite his lack of wealth, Diderot’s name was well-known because he was the co-founder and writer of Encyclopédie, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of the time.

When Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s financial troubles, she offered to buy his library from him for £1000 GBP (approximately $50,000 USD). Suddenly, Diderot had money to spare.

Shortly after this lucky sale, Diderot acquired a beautiful, new scarlet robe. It was a seemingly simple purchase, but he immediately began treating his expensive robe with new-found respect.

In doing so, Diderot even realized that his new scarlet robe placed new constraints upon him. If one of his books were covered with dust, he used to wipe it clean with his old dressing gown. But he didn’t want to get his new robe dirty. If ink used to thicken on his pen, his old dressing gown was waiting to wipe it clear. But, again, his new robe seemed too beautiful for this task. Whereas his old robe was marked in these ways, with dust and ink, reflecting a life of “the litterateur, the writer, the man who works,” his new gown gave him “the air of a rich good for nothing. No one knows who I am.”

And something else transpired …

The philosopher soon felt the urge to buy some new things to match the beauty of his robe. The robe was so overwhelmingly impressive that Diderot quickly became aware, by virtue of comparison, how old and relatively shabby the rest of his “old rags” possessions were. He said …

“All is now discordant. No more coordination, no more unity, no more beauty.”

He wanted his home to be as luxurious as he felt while wearing the gown, so Diderot went on a massive spending spree. He decorated his home with beautiful sculptures, expensive paintings, a bronze and gold clock, and an elaborate kitchen table. He replaced his old straw chair with an armchair covered in Moroccan leather and so on. When he was done, it was a complete makeover – inside and out – save one old,worn item of which Diderot wrote …

“All that remains of my original mediocrity is a rug of selvage. I can feel that this pitiful rug doesn’t go well with my newfound luxury. But I swore and I swear, like the peasant transferred from his hut to a palace who keeps his sabots, that Denis the philosopher will never walk upon a masterpiece of la Savonnier. When in the morning, covered in my sumptuous scarlet, I enter my office I lower my gaze and I see my old rug of selvage. It reminds me of my beginnings and pride is stopped at the entryway to my heart.”

A humble and appreciative man? Nowhere near. An irony of obtaining the expensive possessions was eventually revealed. Diderot came to realize that his old furnishings were just as good, if not better, than his new. Diderot wrote:

”I was absolute master of my old dressing gown, but I have become a slave to my new one. Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain.”

So, the purchase of this one dressing gown led to a cascading series of purchases across the rest of his life that did not lead to coordination, unity, and uniform beauty. In the process of his quest, he ran himself right into debt.

These reactive purchases have become known as the “Diderot Effect.” The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption which leads you to acquire more new things. As a result, we end up buying things that our previous selves never needed to feel happy or fulfilled.

The term was coined by anthropologist and scholar of consumption patterns Grant McCracken in 1988, and is named after Denis Diderot.

The effect comprises two ideas:

1. The first idea posits that goods purchased by consumers will be cohesive to their sense of identity, and as a result, will be complementary to one another.
2. The second idea states that the introduction of a new possession that is deviant from the consumer's current complementary goods can result in a process of spiraling consumption.

Possessions do not define a person or his/her success. Deep down, we all realize excess and ornamental material possessions also do not really enrich our lives. In truth, as desire takes over our judgment, excess debt chokes our freedom and lifestyle. Intelligent consumers free their lives and resources for more important pursuits than material possessions. Besides, shiny new things fade with time. Unpaid credit card bills don’t.

It's much too late to ask Denis Diderot about all of this, but he left an old expository essay with a timeless moral deserving of our utmost attention. In Diderot's words …

“Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles.”

My Mental Illness -- Therapeutic Reality

“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn't.” 

--John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

Approximately twenty years ago, I struggled mightily under the crushing weight of mental illness. In my twenty-seventh year of teaching, I had completely burnt out as clinical depression and OCD had totally debilitated me. Still employed and struggling with the illness I had been fighting for seventeen years, I felt as if death would be a welcome relief from the continuous suffering. I was helpless, hopeless, and increasingly suicidal.

I was at the end of my teaching career and daily taking up to six medications, whose own side effects were part of my erratic behavior. Psychiatrists had adjusted this drug cocktail time after time during numerous past flareups. However, suffice it to say nothing was working now, and the disease plus the lack of sleep and guilt I felt for failing to conquer my own infirmity made things far worse. I can't tell you how often I prayed that some physical, not mental, handicap would have afflicted me. I knew others saw me as crazy or simply unable to “buck it up” and get over it.

Then, there were those who believed I was somehow “faking it.” They did not see my behavior as an illness at all. Instead, they concluded I was suffering from lack of trying – a sign of weakness as a major character flaw. I even felt that for awhile until I admitted I was not in control of anything.

I can't really remember all the struggles and complication that led to my final decision to accept disability, a condition pronounced by my doctors and those of the Ohio Education Association. At that point, I was so depressed that I felt as if any relief was my last chance for sanity. I knew I had failed my teaching and family obligations – in brief, I was damaged and ashamed. The failure then defined my existence.

Somehow over the coming years – although punctuated with two more major setbacks, each an even deeper dive into insanity – I have found long-term stability. I now function well, and I no longer feel the crippling effects of my illness. Do we say a mental illness is in “remission”? I don't know. At any rate, my life is normal as long as I take my meds and follow the doctor's orders. I realize the conditions for my normality.

It is very important for me to acknowledge both the stigma of mental illness and the victory over the affliction. Sometimes I worry depression will return and render me completely helpless, yet I know all I can do to guarantee a happy existence is to remain under medical care. My dependence upon drugs can be viewed as a lifelong dependency, and finding relief in pharmaceuticals has caused me to understand how fortunate I am to be a survivor – albeit one beholden to pills.

My friends realize the state of the “real me,” and, upon inquiry, I refuse to bury details of my condition. I share with them my story. Still, I am certain some people think permanent damage has rendered me different, even permanently unstable – a “nut case.” And, to those who contract mental disease I say: “Figure out why you are reluctant to get professional help. Do not worry about what others may think, and take the first scary steps to recovery.”

I vividly remember my first visit to the psychiatrist. I reluctantly walked to his office in the snow. The dark, winter conditions intensified my sadness and uncertainty. I felt as if I was entering a place inhabited by kooks and deranged loons. Little did I know how many others shared my disease. I just about turned back several times, but something made me continue. When the doctor took one look at my physical condition and evaluated my state of mind, he said: “You are one of the most depressed individuals I have ever seen.” I felt his concern and understanding. It was then that I began my long journey out of the deep pit that had swallowed my life.

We all pay heavy dues during our feeble existence, and it is my brain and nervous system that demands its timely settlement. Call it “chemical imbalance.” Call it “psychiatric behavior.” I call it “disease.” Those, like me, who suffer from mental illness understand how although we are enslaved by our condition, we must fight to keep the illness from making us its slave. We are no different from others even though some would see us that way. We are not inherently “crazy.”

I want to say this …

I feel well and fine. I feel capable of doing anything my sixty-nine year-old body and mind will allow me to do. I am capable of reasoning, thinking, and making good decisions. In all of those respects, I feel as normal as you. I now love my life.

However …

I understand how mental illness, without proper care, can limit your life and even completely debilitate you. I understand the terrifying reality of accepting your infirmity and becoming a needy psychiatric patient. For your family and friends to accept you in this state, I believe you must be both transparent and exceedingly gracious for their love and support. I know I couldn't have lived without them.

And, I feel one more realization must be met. Mental illness not only induces a patient's suffering but also creates tremendous hardship for their loved ones. The suffering incurred by all makes life miserable during treatment. However, love and care help overcome the illness. Ups and downs must be expected. I pray I can reciprocate some of the love I received now.

Describing my illness to those who have never experienced it is difficult. Suffice it to say, I have had broken bones and other physical ailments that hurt much less than depression and totally unbalanced OCD. I say this in no attempt to minimize the pain of any physical ailment. I simply confirm my own experience.

In an effort to clarify an understanding of my struggle with clinical depression, allow me to use quotes from others who have felt similar anguish.

“When I’m in the absolute depths of depression everything is an effort. Everything. From something as big as going out and facing people to something as small as just moving. When I’m at that point, I don’t want to live but I don’t have the energy to do anything about it. It’s actually when I start to feel things again and get a tiny bit of motivation that I’m in the most danger.”

– Anonymous

“I think JK Rowling has it right. The dementors are such a great image, its like a creature sucking out the best and happy memories while telling you you’re rubbish and making you relive the bad. It then uses the bad as an attack against your self esteem to make you believe you don’t deserve better. Eventually you just become numb and disconnected.”

– Katie Prieto

Note: Dementors “glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them,” according to a description in the book “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” They can suck good feelings and happy memories out of their victims, and were drawn from the author's own battles with depression.

“It is like someone came along and stole all the pleasure in my life. The things I used to enjoy become empty and meaningless and it is a struggle just to exist. Every ounce of strength goes on just getting to the end of the day and I feel like a battery the never gets enough time to fully recharge before I am using the energy again.”

– Sheena Mays

“I had terminal numbness. I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t think clearly. My head was in a black cloud and nothing in the outside world had any impact. The only relief that came was through sleep, and my biggest dread was waking up knowing that I had to get through another 15 hours before I could sleep again.”

– Graeme Cowan, author of Back from the Brink: True Stories and Practical Help for Overcoming Depression and Bipolar Disorder

More Than a Riff -- Iconic "Satisfaction"

“Satisfaction” is defined by Webster's as “fulfillment of a need or want.” Long ago, the Rolling Stones' grammatically unstable, double negative affirmation of failing to achieve a measure of self-gratification – “I can't get no satisfaction … oh, no, no, no” affirmed my own teenage conundrum of an allusive search for satiation.

I won't elaborate on all the reasons for my personal frustration, but, suffice it to say, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards made sure that sad sentiment of denial was planted indelibly in my brain in 1965. Their signature song literally rocked the world.The list of countries in which “Satisfaction” topped the charts reads like a geography lesson.

It ruled in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bermuda, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the UK, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the USA, and Yugoslavia.

“(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones is listed as the #1 greatest rock song of all time by VH1 (based on a poll of 700 music-industry movers and shakers). Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it #2 behind Dylan's “Like a Rolling Stone” in their evaluation of the “500 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time.” The song was eventually added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2006.

To me, “Satisfaction” is the best rock song ever. With its simple yet original guitar riff, defiant lyrics, and “feel the need” exultation, the iconic recording hit the establishment in the face. What other rock anthem addresses anger over corporate control, sexual frustration, and blue collar alienation in one three minute, forty-five second groove? This is the rock song that broke the models of rickety jump rhythms and puppy love lyrics of early rock & roll into rock.

“Satisfaction” had tremendous impact and established enduring appeal. The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts in America in the week ending June 12, 1965, remaining there for 14 weeks. While in its eighth week on the American charts, the single was certified a gold record award by the RIAA for shipping over a million copies across the United States, giving the Stones their first of many gold disc awards in America. Later the song was also released by London Records on the album Out of Our Heads.

With an instantly recognizable guitar hook (Richards) and distinctive vocals (Jagger), “Satisfaction” hit a raw nerve” in the soul of rock music fans. According to Rolling Stone, Richards' "primal temper," Jagger's "sneering" vocals, and the "avenging strut" of the rhythm guitar, bass, and drums all combined to take rock and roll beyond the comparative innocence of its early years. Edgy and filled with attitude, this was "the sound of a generation impatient to inherit the earth"

(Rolling Stone, 9 December 2004, 68). 

Jagger commented on the song's appeal:

“It was the song that really made the Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band ... It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it captures a spirit of the times, which is very important in those kinds of songs ... which was alienation.”

To me, the original Rolling Stones' recording is the paragon of all the versions of the song. “Satisfaction” is a concert staple in the long career of live performances of the Stones, yet, I believe no other version captures the rhythm, the dynamics, and the muscle of the tune like the '65 studio recording. There is so much more to the original recording than the simple three-note ostinato (continually repeated) riff, the three-chord progression, and the confronting vocals.

I feel the Stones typically perform the song as a hastily perverted cover of their own inventive sound. I have seen performance after performance of the song – to me, each perfunctory rendering pales in comparison to the original recording. Some renderings simply drone the signature riff to absurd lengths, losing all other more subtle structure of the composition. What a pity. What magic ingredient(s) have become lost in replication?

Was it something special about the recording or was it the contributions of Brian Jones and Jack Nitzsche that bolstered the song's composition and lasting appeal? Was it Chess Studio? I can't adequately verbalize the definitive elements; however, my ears remain convinced there is only one classic recorded version – that of May 12, 1965.

The story of the song is well-documented. In 1965, the Rolling Stones were in the middle of their second U.S. tour as headliners. The band had already scored two Top 10 hits – “Time Is On My Side” and “The Last Time” – but in the ranks of the British Invasion, they were still a notch below Herman’s Hermits. (Oh, how dated that sounds now.) They needed a defining single that would put them over the top.

Sources vary as to where this all took place, but here is the most common explanation …

During the early morning hours of May 7, 1965, in his motel room at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, Keith Richards had a dream. He woke up, grabbed a guitar and a cassette machine, and he played the run of notes from his dream once, then fell back to sleep.

Richards said years later …

“When I woke up in the morning, the tape had run out. I put it back on, and there’s this, maybe, 30 seconds of ‘Satisfaction,’ in a very drowsy sort of rendition. And then it suddenly—the guitar goes ‘CLANG,” and then there’s like 45 minutes of snoring.” This was the birth of what would later become known as “the riff heard 'round the world.”

“He only had the first bit, and then he had the riff,” Jagger recalls. “It sounded like a country sort of thing on acoustic guitar—it didn’t sound like rock. But he didn’t really like it, he thought it was a joke… He really didn’t think it was single material, and we all said ‘You’re off your head.’ Which he was, of course.”

Jagger wrote most of the lyrics (reportedly by the pool in Clearwater). Richards had already come up with the line “I can’t get no satisfaction.” And, indeed, it was the lyrics that later drew the most heated discussion of the song. Shmoop Editorial (2008) describes the lyrics …

“The song begins with a critique of ad-driven consumerism: radio shills peddling 'useless information,' television hacks hawking whiter shirts and brand-dependent manhood, and so on. But then, the song shifts abruptly to a more visceral theme, as Jagger's Madison Avenue dissatisfaction gives way to his international girl-chasing frustration.”

“I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no girl reaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no”

The anti-commercial rant rubbed some folks the wrong way, but Jagger's blunt recapitulation of his failed attempts to "make some girl" was the real problem. Although manager and record producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, decided to bury it in the mix, some radio stations hesitated to play the song.

“When I'm ridin' round the world
And I'm doin' this and I'm signing that
And I'm tryin' to make some girl
Who tells me baby better come back later next week
'Cause you see I'm on a losing streak”

Ironically, the most graphic line of “Satisfaction” was seldom questioned. The dissatisfied narrator having to “come back later next week 'cause you see I'm on a losing streak” refers to a woman being on her period. Jagger labeled that the “dirtiest” line in the song, but defended it by saying: “It's just life. That's what really happens to girls. Why shouldn't people write about it?”

Critic Paul Gambaccini stated:

"The lyrics to this were truly threatening to an older audience. This song was perceived as an attack on the status quo.”

When the Rolling Stones performed the song on Shindig! in 1965, the line "trying to make some girl" was censored, although a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 13, 1966, was uncensored. Forty years later, when the band performed three songs during the February 2006 Super Bowl XL halftime show, "Satisfaction" was the only one of the three songs not censored as it was broadcast. Times do change, don't they?

A Magical Record(ing)

The Stones took the song into the Chess studios in Chicago just three days later on May 10, 1965. Chess was home to some of their biggest influences – Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters, so that studio seemed the perfect location to lay down their new song-in-progress. In fact, some critics claim Chuck Berry’s song “30 Days” was an undeniable inspiration …

“If I don't get no satisfaction from the judge
I'm gonna take it to the FBI and voice my grudge
If they don't give me no consolation
I'm gonna take it to the United Nations
I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days”

Others claim Muddy Waters recording “I Can’t Be Satisfied” was drew the muse …

(Chorus)

“Woman I'm troubled, I be all worried in mind
Well baby I just can't be satisfied
And I just can't keep from crying”

The Rolling Stones completed “Satisfaction” on May 12 after a flight to Los Angeles and an 18-hour recording session at RCA. There, Richards hooked up an early Gibson “Maestro” fuzz box to his guitar and recorded the recognizable riff giving “Satisfaction” its distinctive, iconic sound. He’d initially envisioned that riff being played by horns. The song's success boosted sales of the Gibson fuzzbox so much that the entire available stock sold out by the end of 1965.

Note – Richards had no intention of using the Gibson Fuzz Box sound on the record, but Gibson had just sent him the device, and he thought the fuzz box would create sustained notes to help sketch out the horn section. The band thought it sounded great and wanted to use the sound because it would be very unusual for a rock record. Richards thought it sounded gimmicky and did not like the result, but the rest of the band convinced him to ditch the horn section and use the distorted guitar sound.

Some say the guitar riff modeled itself after the horn arrangement from Martha & the Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run” and had Richards succeeded in adding brass to the song, it would’ve sounded even more similar.

Of “Satisfaction,” Keith Richards admits:

“If I’d had my way, ‘Satisfaction’ would never have been released. The song was as basic as the hills, and I thought the fuzz-guitar thing was a bit of a gimmick … I never thought it was anything commercial enough to be a single.”

Richards wrote in his 2010 autobiography, Life …

“The fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that’s the sound that caught everybody’s imagination. As far as I was concerned, that was just the dub. [But] ten days on the road and it’s number one nationally! The record of the summer of ’65 … I learned that lesson – sometimes you can overwork things. Not everything’s designed for your taste and your taste alone.”

Like most of the Stones' pre-1966 recordings, "Satisfaction" was originally released in mono only. In the mid-1980s, a true stereo version of the song was released on German and Japanese editions of the CD reissue of Hot Rocks 1964–1971.

The stereo mix features a piano (played by session player Jack Nitzsche, who also provides the song's iconic tambourine) and acoustic guitar that are barely audible in the original mono release (both instruments are also audible on a bootleg recording of the instrumental track).

For the worldwide 2002 reissue of Hot Rocks, an alternative quasi-stereo mix was used featuring the lead guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in the center channel and the acoustic guitar and piano "split" left and right via a delay effect.

“Satisfaction” set the seal on the Jagger/Richards writing partnership, and also confirmed the band’s movement away from the leadership of Brian Jones. Keith has commented how Jones lost interest in the guitar, experimenting instead with the likes of the harpsichord and dulcimer. Next would come the Mick Taylor influence, then the Ronnie Wood changeover. The Stones remain a working band to this day.

A dream? A riff? A gimmick? A cover? Whatever the case, “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” became a humongous international hit song. It remains instantly recognizable and wildly popular. Maybe an extensive analysis of this tune is not really warranted.

After all, who really thinks about the specifics of the recording upon hearing that opening guitar salvo? Instead, people just relive the groove and mouth the simple lyrical negation. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”