“Hey look it’s Erik Erikson!”

“Wait, isn’t Erik Erikson a famous psychologist?”

“Yeah, I think so”

“Oh my god, what is he doing on FOX? Wait…”

Location Overheard: Pollock Dining Commons

In my senior year of high school, I took a semester-long introductory psychology course which pretty must just grazed over the major concepts of psychology and the famous psychologists within the field of study. It was pretty much a crash course of all things the human mind. So, along with Sigmund Freud and Ivan Pavlov, Erik Erikson was a pretty prominent figure.

Both of my godparents are psychologists at a college in Upstate New York called SUNY Cortland. In fact, my godmother just recently told me that when she would look after me when I was younger, I was often the subject of several benign psychological childhood development experiments. She would then use her experimental findings as examples in her Psychology 101 course. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure nothing major ever happened, at least not that I am aware of. Psychologically, thus far, I am pretty sure I am doing just fine. So, following the lead of Pavlov and his dogs, my godmother experimented with classical conditioning—such as taking a toy that I was initially scared to play with because of its loud noises and having me play with it until she had conditioned me to be unafraid of the thing. Anyway, moral of the story is that I knew who Erik Erikson was, but clearly, these two Penn State students were a little hazy on the subject, and when I heard that Erik Erikson was currently on Fox News, it more than just caught my attention.

Crash Course Erik Erikson Style

In case you’re not one of the thousand psychology majors here at Penn State, Erik Erikson (1902-1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. The man was best known for his eight stages of psychosocial development from infancy to adulthood. I won’t bore you with much detail, but here they are:

Now that you hopefully know who Erikson was, let’s transition back to the conversation above that took place at Pollock Commons one evening about a week ago. Who the girl had seen on FOX was, in fact, Erick Erickson. However, it wasn’t the Erik Erikson that she later realized she thought to be the long deceased, world-renowned psychologist. It was actually this man:

For some reason, seeing this man, with the name Erick Erickson plastered below his picture really just made her question whether or not the psychologist was back from the dead, discussing matters on FOX News. The slight difference in the spelling of these two individuals’ names is actually quite misleading as there is a drastic difference between them. This particular Erickson is a conservative American blogger and radio host.

After contemplating what she saw and what she had just said, it was moments later that this Penn State student realized that the individual displayed on the television, engaged in a heated political debate, was not actually Erik Erikson the psychologist. However, I am pleased to say that she soon recognized her mistake and we all shared a good laugh.

“I used to have a friend from Tibet. Yeah, he did mushrooms and I haven’t seen him since”

“Oh wow. Now I hear it’s all about LSD”

Location Overheard: Webster’s Bookstore & Café

I’d have to say, this was one of the more unusual conversations to overhear, really, in any public space. Two old men with graying beards, crouched over bowls of soups sat at Webster’s at a table adjacent to my own, enjoying a nice Sunday brunch. After hearing this one specific line I couldn’t help but continue to listen. Turns out, after listening to a bit more of their conversation, the man with the Tibetan friend served in the army, was a doctor in Japan, and was also a pimp for a brief moment in time. Interesting enough, this man seemed to have lived several lives in his one lifetime and now sat in a basement lined with used books in State College telling his story to his friend at a rather loud volume. In fact, he spoke so loudly that my eavesdropping could hardly be classified as that and should rather be considered as casual listening.

Anyway, after being fascinated by the Tibetan man who did mushrooms, I decided to do some research on Tibet and unearth his rather captivating culture. Disclaimer: this blog post will not feature any sort of analysis of the psychedelic drugs mentioned in the above dialogue. Let’s save that compelling conversation for another post.

Tibet is an autonomous region within China and is centrally located on the Asian continent, falling directly above Eastern India and Nepal. In 1913, Tibet’s spiritual and political leader, the 13th Dalai Lama, affirmed Tibet’s independence. However, by 1950 Communist regime in China had invaded Tibet, and to this day the nation remains under Chinese occupation. There are still remnants of tension between the two nations. In fact, this past year it was discovered that Google has been assisting China in creating a search engine named ‘DragonFly’ that will censor and limit Tibet’s access to certain information that is linked with words, such as “human rights,” “democracy,” “Dalai Lama,” or “Tibet.” It is set to be launched in 2019.

Tibet’s geography is unique as its Southern territory is bordered by the Himalayan Mountains. So if you are aware of where Mount Everest is located and the geography and climate that aligns with this particular region, then you probably have a good sense of what Tibet is like. Tibet actually takes home the award for the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 16,000 feet.

After a few articles in, I found that Tibet also has some interesting facts worth noting. Roughly 47% of the world’s population depends on the flow of fresh water from Tibet because of the Tibetan plateau, which is currently the third largest storage of water and ice in the world.

Also, Buddhism is essentially the foundation of Tibetan culture. You may have previously seen these colorful, rectangular pieces of cloth before. They are in fact called prayer flags and are often found strung alongside mountain ridges or suspended from the peaks of the Himalayas. Their primary use is to bless the surrounding countrysides. The flags are meant to be constantly blowing in the wind, and it is said that their movements will spread goodwill, peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom.

Color and order are essential to the layout of the prayer flags as well. From left to right, prayer flags are strung in the order of blue, white, red, green, and yellow and represent the five elements. Health and harmony are believed to be produced through the balance of all five elements.

Well, that concludes today’s brief lesson on Tibetan culture. Hopefully, the man’s friend from Tibet who took mushrooms and mysteriously vanished is doing alright. We may not know who he is or where he is, but at least we now know a bit more about his culture.