Are We Really the Most Intelligent Species?
Intelligence is not only difficult to define, some people claim that it is a construct with no validity in nature. Albert Einstein himself claimed that all babies are born geniuses, then we overcome that potential in the following years of childhood.
- Bill Allin, Intelligence and Unhappiness: Likely, But Not Inevitably Linked
Depending on the literature you read or the media sources you use, you may find yourself assaulted a few times each week by statements claiming that humans are the most intelligent species on the planet. I say "assaulted" because they happen so frequently.
We are brainwashed into believing that we are the most intelligent species. But are we?
The sources of this information are ourselves. Our sources never give evidence because none actually exists. It’s a tautology: we are the most intelligent species because we are the only species that can say we are.
Speaking of saying, we partly determine the intelligence of other animals according to the number of human words they can understand or speak or otherwise communicate. How many words (or other method of communication) of another species of animal do you speak (or concepts can you communicate)?
For that matter, what can you do better than any other animal does as part of its regular life habits? Pick an animal, any animal, think about something it does, then consider if you could do it better. The answer inevitably is "No." We can’t do anything that any other animal does that is not part of regular human experience.
Science generally agrees that dolphins are very intelligent. But not quite as intelligent as us, most say. They can’t carry on a conversation with us. But then, we can’t carry on a conversation or any other form of extended communication with dolphins either. But we claim we are smarter.
Dolphins live in a water environment, yet breathe air as we do. We can swim under water, but only briefly. At this point, we are incapable of living in any environment that lacks air, or even lasting for more than a few minutes. [NOTE: It is technically possible for our lungs to take oxygen from water, but it’s not something you should attempt.]
We understand that ants and bees have their own forms of intelligence. But we excuse them from the intelligence competition because they are exclusively a social species--their collective intelligence is shared among all members of the hive or nest. According to science, shared intelligence is different from individual intelligence. Why? Because it’s convenient for us.
Now, about individual intelligence. Are humans intelligent as a species, or is it true that just a limited few are as intelligent as we claim our species is as a whole? Remember, it’s only the most highly educated and (likely) those with the highest IQ among us who claim our superiority.
Next time you go to a supermarket, stop for a few minutes and observe people shopping in the aisles. Or looking for a parking space in the lot. Or trying to find their car in the lot after they have finished shopping. Did any of those people have anything at all to do with the organization or the technologies they use in those situations? Some need to use their remote devices to make their car horn sound just so they can find their vehicle.
When it comes to IQ (Intelligence Quotient, the most common measure for human intelligence), does it seem right for us to claim intelligence as a species because a few of us excel at taking IQ tests, or at publishing university study papers?
Though we still hear about IQ once in a while, the concept has little recognized value these days (unless you happen to be a member of or qualify for membership in Mensa). The Stanford-Binet test of IQ was written by educated white men of the middle class, where questions that applied best to the lives and experiences of educated white men of the middle class could best answer them.
Lo and behold, when the test was administered to everyone else, including those from different cultures and with different forms of education and people whose first language was not one in which the test was created, they performed at lower levels on the scale. This served the racial prejudice of educated white middle class Europeans in the early 20th century well.
In general, the form of intelligence evaluation preferred by any one person tends to be one composed by the same language and cultural group as that person. And they stick to it as if were religious gospel or political idealism. In other words, my way is best; other ways are not as good because......my way is best.
Those who perform well on IQ tests give little credit to EQ (Emotional Quotient intelligence) or any of dozens of other forms of tests of personal knowledge, talents or skills because the test which gives them the highest scores is their favourite. That includes tests for happiness, on which highly intelligent people tend to score lower than some other groups (who often have lower IQ scores).
In conclusion, those with the highest scores on any test of intelligence will be among the group into which fall those who composed the test.
[Side note: I just asked my cat about which is the most intelligent species. She told me to get back to work cleaning her litter box and vacuuming up the fur she left on the furniture where she slept. Of course I obeyed, isn’t that what the most intelligent species would do?]
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers, parents, anyone who wants kids to grow up without experiencing anti-social problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Friday, December 23, 2011
She’s A Stupid Old Fart
She’s A Stupid Old Fart
She’s an annoying old thing. She sleeps much of the day, but when she is awake she can’t be satisfied.
She seems to want only the basics of life that please her, satisfying both ends of her digestive system, getting constant attention while she’s awake, being left undisturbed when she is asleep. And treats, she loves her treats.
She has some problems with bowel movements, but she is somehow aware enough to eagerly take her laxative each day. Some part of her natural brain endowment is still working.
Sometimes she acts stunned, frozen in place in the middle of a room as if she can’t remember what she was doing or why or where she wants to go. Give her some food and she may begin to eat, turn away, then ask for more food without even looking at her plate to see that she hasn’t finished what she had just been given.
I get frustrated. I don’t know what to do to please her. I have a better understanding of elder abuse now that I have an elder with dementia to look after. It’s easy to let your emotions and thoughts go wild when you don’t know what is happening in the brain of another. I don’t strike out. I don’t shout, though I grumble my frustration sometimes. She doesn’t seem to care.
Her name is Lucy. Who names anyone Lucy? Well, in this case, my long deceased mother-in-law, but that’s another story.
At least I don’t have to physically feed Lucy. She feeds herself. Cats don’t use forks and spoons. Yes, Lucy is a senior feline with dementia. (A UK survey found that one in ten cats develops dementia as it gets well into its teen years.)
Though the lifespan of cats is normally much shorter than that of humans, their behaviour during their lives often matches that of humans to a shocking extent. Cats and humans do not speak the same verbal language, though both have had thousands of years to learn from the other.
Having studied cats intensively for the past two decades (my background is in sociology and education), I have observed only one marked difference between the behaviour of cats and people: when a kitten or cat wants something, it does everything within its power to get it. Human children, sadly, do not, so often miss out on much of the adult attention they desperately want.
OK, if you want to get technical, people don’t clean their behinds by licking, as cats do. But cats have almost germ-free mouths, while people can have billions of bacteria and viruses in theirs. There’s a lesson there, but I’m not sure what it is.
Every cat has a certain level of "talkativeness" some are always quiet and purring, some meow about everything. The change seen with senior dementia is one of increased or excessive vocalizations, and not just a simple meow. They may appear confused and not totally sure of their surroundings while vocalizing, and this behavior is more common at night, often waking up the household.
- Janet Tobiassen Crosby , DVM, veterinarian and author of materials about small animals
As in humans, dementia leaves [cats] confused and distressed...Researchers from the University of Edinburgh now believe half of all cats over the age of 15 and a quarter aged 11 to 14, are suffering from "geriatric onset behavioural problems".
-Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent, The Telegraph
Feline dementia is very similar to dementia in humans. Here’s the killer: dementia is the most avoidable disease known in either species. Yes, dementia is avoidable, if those in charge of a cat or a child begin early enough.
Cats in the wild live about ten years. Indoor cats often live twice that long. The older they get, the more likely they are to get a disease of old age.
The difference between a cat or a person who will eventually get dementia and one who will not is curiosity or creativity in childhood. Both, in the early years of life, require lots of attention and opportunities to explore, to learn, to satisfy their natural curiosity.
Curiosity, so the old saw goes, killed the cat. But cats have nine lives, so another goes, so they have resources people don’t. When a cat lacks stimulation and inspiration for enough years, it becomes dull. When a child is denied sufficient stimulation and inspiration for its first few years, then again in the primary grades of school, it will stop being curious. As an adult, that child will join the legions of stupid people you see around you, almost everywhere you go.
Have you walked down the hallway of a nursing home that caters to the frail elderly? They sit outside their bedroom doors, staring blankly, hoping for something or someone to pass by to relieve the monotony. Dementia is the last stage of what began as a bored child, then developed into a stupid adult.
If dementia is avoidable, what can we do to help ourselves and others to avoid it? To begin with, you will not likely develop dementia because you were curious enough to read this article. Curiosity is the key. Curiosity doesn’t come out the end of a hypodermic needle or in table form.
Curiosity is, in effect, a desire to learn. A constant desire to learn. It doesn’t seem to matter what a child or even a middle aged adult wants to learn or to explore, so long as it’s new and requires learning. Try something new. Embrace change. Get used to something different. Explore, even if it’s only at your local library. You will never see a demented adult in a library.
Now you know something that could change lives. You, being curious yourself, will not likely suffer from dementia in your later years. But what you know now could prevent someone else from suffering that fate. You could change the life or your grandchild, or your child.
You could change the life of a complete stranger, if you care enough. Consider this: how might the life of a homeless person change if they had a drive to learn, to improve themselves, to change for the better? You might not be able to help that way directly, but you could join an organization with that as its primary objective.
Bill Allin in the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to ensure the kids they know continue to exercise their curiosity throughout their lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
She’s an annoying old thing. She sleeps much of the day, but when she is awake she can’t be satisfied.
She seems to want only the basics of life that please her, satisfying both ends of her digestive system, getting constant attention while she’s awake, being left undisturbed when she is asleep. And treats, she loves her treats.
She has some problems with bowel movements, but she is somehow aware enough to eagerly take her laxative each day. Some part of her natural brain endowment is still working.
Sometimes she acts stunned, frozen in place in the middle of a room as if she can’t remember what she was doing or why or where she wants to go. Give her some food and she may begin to eat, turn away, then ask for more food without even looking at her plate to see that she hasn’t finished what she had just been given.
I get frustrated. I don’t know what to do to please her. I have a better understanding of elder abuse now that I have an elder with dementia to look after. It’s easy to let your emotions and thoughts go wild when you don’t know what is happening in the brain of another. I don’t strike out. I don’t shout, though I grumble my frustration sometimes. She doesn’t seem to care.
Her name is Lucy. Who names anyone Lucy? Well, in this case, my long deceased mother-in-law, but that’s another story.
At least I don’t have to physically feed Lucy. She feeds herself. Cats don’t use forks and spoons. Yes, Lucy is a senior feline with dementia. (A UK survey found that one in ten cats develops dementia as it gets well into its teen years.)
Though the lifespan of cats is normally much shorter than that of humans, their behaviour during their lives often matches that of humans to a shocking extent. Cats and humans do not speak the same verbal language, though both have had thousands of years to learn from the other.
Having studied cats intensively for the past two decades (my background is in sociology and education), I have observed only one marked difference between the behaviour of cats and people: when a kitten or cat wants something, it does everything within its power to get it. Human children, sadly, do not, so often miss out on much of the adult attention they desperately want.
OK, if you want to get technical, people don’t clean their behinds by licking, as cats do. But cats have almost germ-free mouths, while people can have billions of bacteria and viruses in theirs. There’s a lesson there, but I’m not sure what it is.
Every cat has a certain level of "talkativeness" some are always quiet and purring, some meow about everything. The change seen with senior dementia is one of increased or excessive vocalizations, and not just a simple meow. They may appear confused and not totally sure of their surroundings while vocalizing, and this behavior is more common at night, often waking up the household.
- Janet Tobiassen Crosby , DVM, veterinarian and author of materials about small animals
As in humans, dementia leaves [cats] confused and distressed...Researchers from the University of Edinburgh now believe half of all cats over the age of 15 and a quarter aged 11 to 14, are suffering from "geriatric onset behavioural problems".
-Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent, The Telegraph
Feline dementia is very similar to dementia in humans. Here’s the killer: dementia is the most avoidable disease known in either species. Yes, dementia is avoidable, if those in charge of a cat or a child begin early enough.
Cats in the wild live about ten years. Indoor cats often live twice that long. The older they get, the more likely they are to get a disease of old age.
The difference between a cat or a person who will eventually get dementia and one who will not is curiosity or creativity in childhood. Both, in the early years of life, require lots of attention and opportunities to explore, to learn, to satisfy their natural curiosity.
Curiosity, so the old saw goes, killed the cat. But cats have nine lives, so another goes, so they have resources people don’t. When a cat lacks stimulation and inspiration for enough years, it becomes dull. When a child is denied sufficient stimulation and inspiration for its first few years, then again in the primary grades of school, it will stop being curious. As an adult, that child will join the legions of stupid people you see around you, almost everywhere you go.
Have you walked down the hallway of a nursing home that caters to the frail elderly? They sit outside their bedroom doors, staring blankly, hoping for something or someone to pass by to relieve the monotony. Dementia is the last stage of what began as a bored child, then developed into a stupid adult.
If dementia is avoidable, what can we do to help ourselves and others to avoid it? To begin with, you will not likely develop dementia because you were curious enough to read this article. Curiosity is the key. Curiosity doesn’t come out the end of a hypodermic needle or in table form.
Curiosity is, in effect, a desire to learn. A constant desire to learn. It doesn’t seem to matter what a child or even a middle aged adult wants to learn or to explore, so long as it’s new and requires learning. Try something new. Embrace change. Get used to something different. Explore, even if it’s only at your local library. You will never see a demented adult in a library.
Now you know something that could change lives. You, being curious yourself, will not likely suffer from dementia in your later years. But what you know now could prevent someone else from suffering that fate. You could change the life or your grandchild, or your child.
You could change the life of a complete stranger, if you care enough. Consider this: how might the life of a homeless person change if they had a drive to learn, to improve themselves, to change for the better? You might not be able to help that way directly, but you could join an organization with that as its primary objective.
Bill Allin in the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to ensure the kids they know continue to exercise their curiosity throughout their lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, January 23, 2011
I Could Have Killed Someone
I Could Have Killed Someone
If you want to know your past, examine your present conditions.
If you want to know your future, examine your present actions.
- Buddhist saying
I woke up this morning ready for a fight. The slightest provocation might have set me off. More than that may have resulted in such rage that I would not have hesitated to do anything--absolutely anything--to end the irritation. I felt ready with every fibre of my being. I was in control of my emotions, or so I thought, but only because nothing came along to provoke me.
Not long after, I had fed our cats, made coffee and was sitting sipping and chatting with my wife when my strange mood vanished as quickly as it had come.
My life testifies to my devotion to non-violence, even to the extent of allowing myself to be beaten up psychologically and emotionally sometimes because I refused to fight back. I won't even fight back with words because: (a) you can never win an argument with an irrational person; and (b) I will never have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. In this case, I didn't have an opponent, to my great relief, after the fact.
Why, I wondered, had I experienced this sudden rage with the potential for violence? As a student of human behaviour, I required some introspection. Does a devil hide within me, as some religions might claim? Did I experience a moment of temporary insanity, a defence argument used in some murder cases in courts in the USA? I didn't care for either explanation. Something else was going on inside me.
Something had made me, in effect, a different person for a short period of time. What could do that? And why? As I pride myself in my ability at mind control (over my own body), why had that ability failed me when I needed it most? I really didn't like that other person. That other person would have been a social pariah. That person was dangerous. That other person was me, but not me. I was, briefly, my own anti-me.
The explanation for my temporary antisocial behaviour revolves around imbalances in brain chemistry. In my case, perhaps in untold others who are behind bars or in psychological confinement facilities today, has to do with my adjustment to a new level of thyroxine supplement for my hypothyroidism. Under the careful watch of an endocrinologist (a specialist in hormones), I hasten to add. (Those inside institutions may not have been so lucky.)
Each of us has a thyroid gland which produces a hormone that somehow affects (gives orders to) almost every organ of the body, even including the skin and the brain. As a thyroid ages, it may produce less hormone than it used to, or it may produce more if it gets out of whack. Producing too much hormone is called hyperthyroidism, which is not pretty, not comfortable, in fact it can be terrifying.
Family doctors have an "average" range of acceptability (as "normal") in results of blood tests of the thyroid stimulating hormone. In general, a patient's TSH level may be brought within range by prescription medication. Low thyroid prescription is nothing more than a supplement of what the thyroid should produce itself.
What I learned the hard way is that a supplement that brings my TSH level into the normal range causes my body to react as if I am hyperthyroid, the opposite of what I am naturally. As I said, that's terrifying because it messes with brain chemistry. My family doctors for years had said "You must test within the normal range, if I give you a supplement that is too low my medical certificate could be at risk."
When I could no longer stand the symptoms of hyperthyroidism (Google it to see what they are, grit your teeth and hang on when you find out) and my doctor refused to back off my prescription, I refused to take any supplement. I quit cold turkey. A few weeks later my doctor became so upset (this guy's going to kill himself this way) that she hurriedly secured me an appointment with the specialist.
The specialist said "It's okay to not be normal." The heavens rumbled, the earth moved, the sun finally dawned. Not being normal is okay? Every doctor I had met before this said that I must be made (with medication) to conform to the norms. Now this expert was telling me it was okay to not be normal, that we are each different in how we react to things such as medications.
The specialist started me on a low dose of thyroxine supplement and raised it each week for a month, then let it level off. It was still well below what a family doctor would have prescribed. Adjusting to a new level of thyroid medication can take from six to eight weeks because so many parts of the body have to agree to not misbehave, to react inappropriately. That includes the brain, which counts on signals from the thyroid before secreting its own proteins which affect many parts of the body.
The brain also controls itself. My "not normal chemically" brain has fought the change in thyroid messages kicking and screaming. In practice that meant the equivalent of waking nightmares or anxiety attacks in the second half of my time in bed each night. By morning my wife might have coffee with the normal sweet husband she knows or she might wish I was still a bachelor in transit to Mars. Neither of us had any way to know what I would be like each morning.
In my bad state I had a hair-trigger temper, flying into a rage over the most insignificant matters. They even included errors or oversights I had made myself. My "stupidity" at something insignificant I had done caused me to be angry with myself (and none too quiet about it either). Sometimes I wished I would not have to live out the rest of my day. That's serious.
I won't bore you (or over-excite you) with details that deserve to be confidential. Let's just say I never became physically aggressive or violent, nor did I become verbally abusive. Loud and nasty, yes. Let's also say that the bad moods never lasted more than a few hours at most. Let's add that I hated myself every second I suffered with the bad mood because I was incapable of acting like the me I knew myself to be. I knew I was out of control, but lacked any ability to change myself.
People with faulty thyroids do not carry around flags advertising the fact so others can see them and recognize a person with a problem. Many with a thyroid problem may know nothing about their problem. What's worse, even a person whose blood tests show their thyroid level to be in the average or normal range may be anything but, in the real world. Medical tests are guides, not laws by which we all must live.
As my endocrinologist said, "We will find the right level for you, for your life." Good. The adjustment was hard. Too bad it didn't come 20 years ago when I was first identified as hypothyroid.
Norms and averages in medicine are for textbooks, not for people. In real flesh-and-blood cases such as you and me and those we know and love, each of us is very different. "Unique" would not be an out-of-place descriptor.
If you believe you are different from the norm from a health standpoint, speak up to your doctor. You don't live in a textbook. You live inside your own skin (your doctor doesn't). You want to continue to do so for as long as possible.
That may mean you have to tell your doctor you believe he is wrong, that you need different diagnosis and treatment. The doctor may need to see the same things, but differently. It may mean seeking other medical opinions. It may make you somewhat unpopular with your doctors, who have their own biases to cherish and dogma to follow. Too bad for them, not you.
Remember, your doctor does not live inside your skin. You do. Try to keep it that way.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who develop socially and emotionally in healthy ways, as schools rarely address those developmental needs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Friday, June 25, 2010
The Driver Behind You May Be Unconscious
The Driver Behind You May Be Unconscious
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
- Bruce Barton, American author, advertising executive, politician (1886-1967)
Almost all of us believe that something inside us is superior to the circumstances of our lives. It's what keeps us sane and away from killing each other. Not so many of us accomplish something splendid. The reason may be a disconnect between what we are capable of and what we believe we are capable of.
Hold that thought for a moment while we check out that driver behind you.
Have you ever fumbled with your car radio or to take something out of your glovebox or even had a conversation with someone in the car you were driving and suddenly realized that you had absolutely no memory of driving the past few minutes? Technically you were unconscious while driving.
Unconscious? Doesn't that mean in a coma or dead, or at least asleep? Yes, but not exclusively. To be conscious means to be fully aware of your surroundings. As you were obviously not fully aware of your surroundings while you drove in our example, you could not have been conscious. So what were you?
Social science has given up on the idea formerly called the "subconscious." Mostly because there is no evidence for it. One dictionary describes "unconscious" as "that part of the mind wherein psychic activity takes place of which the person is unaware." In this example you were aware of your radio search or your glovebox search or your conversation. But you were also aware in some very different sense--psychically--of your driving.
Could you be driving "mechanically" as some used to say young adults did after a few years of driving experience? Let's put it this way, would you be comfortable driving on a highway at full speed surrounded by people who were driving only "mechanically"? The ugly truth is that many of us do. That guy behind you may indeed be driving mechanically, or unconsciously, meaning that he may not be able to apply his full attention to any emergency that may arise (such as you having to come to a sudden stop because a dog wandered onto the highway).
You dream with your unconscious mind. When you dream many of the functions of your brain you normally consider part of your waking life are shut down. The frontal lobes, for example, those brain parts that allow you to distinguish between right and wrong and that keep you on "an even keel" when you are awake, don't function. That's why dreams can be crazy sometimes, because the brain's normal control mechanisms are shut down when you are asleep.
Science doesn't know for certain why we need sleep, though recent research suggests it help us to review our activities of the previous day so we can embed them in longer term memory--that is, we need sleep to consolidate our daytime learning. You, very likely, do not know how you managed to pilot your car down the road without being aware of what you were doing while searching for a different radio station. But you are certain you weren't asleep. But were you conscious?
Any activity of the brain that does not involve the full application of all critical brain functions is an activity you do while, technically, unconscious. While unconscious your body may be in bed resting or in a hospital room in a coma. It may also be doing--indeed parts of your brain may be doing--something other than that of which you are fully aware.
What do you think when you hear an argument in a murder case that the defendant was not fully aware of what he was doing when he killed his wife? If you are involved in a collision while you are technically unconscious, the investigating police officer will consider you just as liable. We all assume that we do everything consciously. Science says otherwise, though we all hope that part of science doesn't take the stand in a court case.
Murder cases and car collisions are extreme cases. Most of our lives are lived away from extremes. Yet people sometimes do little things they may not be aware of--things that annoy you greatly or that inconvenience you--without being fully aware (conscious) of what they are doing. You don't want them imprisoned for their faults because then you would have to be behind bars for doing similar things. So, what to do?
The human brain and consciousness are, as you can see, subjects that bear much more study. We understand very little about them. Yet they govern our lives, and the brains and consciousness of others impact our lives, every day. As much as they mean to us and as much as they affect our lives, we know almost nothing about them.
We accept that we are all imperfect beings. Now you have a clue why that is. It may not solve any mysteries for you but it may help you to understand why people do or say things that simply don't seem right or in character for them, things that seem out of place.
As with many human behaviours it's best to ignore the extremes because they do not represent who these people are. Who they are when they are fully conscious. They, in turn, can be expected to forgive your extremes of behaviour.
But, just in case, if the driver behind you seems distracted, maybe you should pull over and let him or her pass before something happens you may find messy and uncomfortable. You can still drive fully conscious.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know how their children can develop socially and emotionally in concert with their intellectual and physical development.
Learn more at http://billallin.c/om
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
- Bruce Barton, American author, advertising executive, politician (1886-1967)
Almost all of us believe that something inside us is superior to the circumstances of our lives. It's what keeps us sane and away from killing each other. Not so many of us accomplish something splendid. The reason may be a disconnect between what we are capable of and what we believe we are capable of.
Hold that thought for a moment while we check out that driver behind you.
Have you ever fumbled with your car radio or to take something out of your glovebox or even had a conversation with someone in the car you were driving and suddenly realized that you had absolutely no memory of driving the past few minutes? Technically you were unconscious while driving.
Unconscious? Doesn't that mean in a coma or dead, or at least asleep? Yes, but not exclusively. To be conscious means to be fully aware of your surroundings. As you were obviously not fully aware of your surroundings while you drove in our example, you could not have been conscious. So what were you?
Social science has given up on the idea formerly called the "subconscious." Mostly because there is no evidence for it. One dictionary describes "unconscious" as "that part of the mind wherein psychic activity takes place of which the person is unaware." In this example you were aware of your radio search or your glovebox search or your conversation. But you were also aware in some very different sense--psychically--of your driving.
Could you be driving "mechanically" as some used to say young adults did after a few years of driving experience? Let's put it this way, would you be comfortable driving on a highway at full speed surrounded by people who were driving only "mechanically"? The ugly truth is that many of us do. That guy behind you may indeed be driving mechanically, or unconsciously, meaning that he may not be able to apply his full attention to any emergency that may arise (such as you having to come to a sudden stop because a dog wandered onto the highway).
You dream with your unconscious mind. When you dream many of the functions of your brain you normally consider part of your waking life are shut down. The frontal lobes, for example, those brain parts that allow you to distinguish between right and wrong and that keep you on "an even keel" when you are awake, don't function. That's why dreams can be crazy sometimes, because the brain's normal control mechanisms are shut down when you are asleep.
Science doesn't know for certain why we need sleep, though recent research suggests it help us to review our activities of the previous day so we can embed them in longer term memory--that is, we need sleep to consolidate our daytime learning. You, very likely, do not know how you managed to pilot your car down the road without being aware of what you were doing while searching for a different radio station. But you are certain you weren't asleep. But were you conscious?
Any activity of the brain that does not involve the full application of all critical brain functions is an activity you do while, technically, unconscious. While unconscious your body may be in bed resting or in a hospital room in a coma. It may also be doing--indeed parts of your brain may be doing--something other than that of which you are fully aware.
What do you think when you hear an argument in a murder case that the defendant was not fully aware of what he was doing when he killed his wife? If you are involved in a collision while you are technically unconscious, the investigating police officer will consider you just as liable. We all assume that we do everything consciously. Science says otherwise, though we all hope that part of science doesn't take the stand in a court case.
Murder cases and car collisions are extreme cases. Most of our lives are lived away from extremes. Yet people sometimes do little things they may not be aware of--things that annoy you greatly or that inconvenience you--without being fully aware (conscious) of what they are doing. You don't want them imprisoned for their faults because then you would have to be behind bars for doing similar things. So, what to do?
The human brain and consciousness are, as you can see, subjects that bear much more study. We understand very little about them. Yet they govern our lives, and the brains and consciousness of others impact our lives, every day. As much as they mean to us and as much as they affect our lives, we know almost nothing about them.
We accept that we are all imperfect beings. Now you have a clue why that is. It may not solve any mysteries for you but it may help you to understand why people do or say things that simply don't seem right or in character for them, things that seem out of place.
As with many human behaviours it's best to ignore the extremes because they do not represent who these people are. Who they are when they are fully conscious. They, in turn, can be expected to forgive your extremes of behaviour.
But, just in case, if the driver behind you seems distracted, maybe you should pull over and let him or her pass before something happens you may find messy and uncomfortable. You can still drive fully conscious.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know how their children can develop socially and emotionally in concert with their intellectual and physical development.
Learn more at http://billallin.c/om
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Blind In My Mind's Eye
Blind In My Mind's Eye
"All the exams the scientists gave [study subject] MX confirmed his claim that he was missing his mind's eye."
"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about MX is that he did not need years to develop this new skill [of routing visual information through other brain parts than the mind's eye in order to develop an intellectual concept to replace the mind's eye images he lacked]...Perhaps his blind imagination was always available to him, ready to be used."
- Carl Zimmer, Discover, March 2010
"In your mind's eye..." has been spoken to me only a few times in my life, but I have read it on several occasions.
Unlike MX, who lost his familiar and much appreciated mind's eye suddenly at the age of 65, I never had one. Rather, it might be more accurate to say that my mind's eye is nearly blind.
Do a little experiment with me. Picture in your mind, one at a time, each of the following:
(1) the face of your mother;
(2) the face of your spouse (if this is not appropriate, the face of your father or one particular friend);
(3) your favourite pet in your life (if this is not appropriate, the face of your doctor).
Were you able to bring those faces up as you read them? I can't. When I try it's as if I have a blind spot where the face should be, yet I can get a general idea (not clear) of what I would see with my periphery vision if I were looking at these people with my real eyes.
As I write this my wife is on a different floor of the same house as I am sitting in, yet I cannot picture her face in my head, in my mind's eye. I could pick her out of a crowd of thousands of real people, yet I have no image of her face in my head.
Though my dreams have people in them, I can't recognize any of them. They have no faces to me. I dream in thoughts, not in images. I may have the odd image flash through my dream, but it's nothing like a movie.
Moreover, when I have wakened I can't remember my dreams. Even when I wake up knowing that I have just been dreaming, I have only experienced remembering what I dreamed about a dozen times in my life.
If you can do these things as part of our experiment, you have an active mind's eye.
Who cares? Science now knows that when you sleep you consolidate and fix in your brain your experiences of the previous day. Which experiences you choose to review while asleep determine which you can draw upon easily the following day or days.
When you studied, as a student, during the days before an exam, you created an easily accessible place you could get to if that information were requested on the exam. You created those quick-access locations in your sleep on the days following when you studied.
But...study? What's that? What does it mean? I honestly don't know. It did me no good to study before exams because by the time I had the exam booklet in front of me I had forgotten what I studied. Even when I sat with my notes in front of me, studying meant little because I couldn't remember what I had read a few minutes after reading it.
That bit of consolidating and fixating of recently read material for later retrieval may well be one of the functions of the mind's eye. It's not used just when you are asleep, as our little experiment showed.
The great sculptor Michelangelo, when asked why he pounded so hard on a large rock, allegedly responded "Young boy, there is an angel inside of this rock and I am setting him free." Michelangelo could see David inside the rock. I would only ever see rock.
As a child I dreaded those rare occasions when we had art class. Art class always meant painting, where a large blank piece of paper was placed in front of me. While my classmates happily created their masterpieces, I continued to see only blank paper. No image ever came to mind that I could transfer onto the paper.
An image would have had to be in my mind's eye. It wasn't there. Ever.
Study subject MX lost his mind's eye at age 65. Before that he used to lie down in bed before going to sleep and review the events of his day, like watching a filmstrip or movie clips. When he lost that ability, he quickly adapted by using other parts of his brain to accomplish formerly mind's eye tasks.
I never had a mind's eye. Yet I always felt the need to create in my mind, something, so I could make sense of my world. MX had a mind's eye, lost it, then used other means to compensate.
People who have all the physical connections for sight, yet are blind, often have what is called blindsight or blindimagination. Though blind, many can navigate their way through a room crowded with furniture, for example. Do we all have blindsight or blindimagination ability but not use it? Or do we use it in ways we have not yet discovered?
The researchers who studied MX, Adam Zeman, a neurologist at Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England, and cognitive scientist Sergio Della Sala, of the University of Edinburgh, continue to study how the brain manages visual information. In this field of study, it's still early days.
My experiences, those of MX and the studies of Zeman and Della Sala clearly demonstrate that children need to be offered a variety of learning styles because of the differences in their ways of learning. In education, a one-size-fits-all style of teaching means some children will miss out. Innocent and unknowing children will be blamed for being at fault for not learning as they should. Some schools address the need for different learning styles, most do not.
I couldn't even count on all my fingers the number of times "not working to his potential" appeared on my report cards, nor the number of times my mother was told in parent-teacher interviews that I was lazy. The schools I attended as a child had ways to assess my intellectual potential, but lacked the means to put it to use.
To my teachers I was lazy. Except in physical education where I was also weak and uncoordinated, which somehow also got to be my fault. The role me lack of a working mind's eye played in any of this will not be known for some time.
Suffice to say, I managed to work around the detours to reaching my intellectual potential, though many years after completing my formal education. I still can't throw a baseball straight or walk a balance beam without falling, even when cold sober and in the best of health. Maybe the brain can only adapt around one detour and has to choose which will take top priority.
At age 67 I am no longer called lazy. However, some people still don't appreciate why I sometimes can't follow simple spoken instructions or written directions. I have solved some of the most profound mysteries of life, yet I still can't find Waldo.
No one today wants to teach a man who is smart enough to have found evidence of what God really is and what the afterlife means. He's scary. Yet no one wants to teach a man who is so dumb he can't put together a child's puzzle. They are the same man, same brain, different abilities.
My education continues to be based on my own initiative. As a student, I am still a dunce, an oaf who is "too lazy to learn." Other adults, many of them, may not have the motivation I had to learn. So they don't. You meet these people in stores, or driving the streets with you, or at voting stations.
When people have trouble learning because what they need to know is presented in ways they can't understand, many just give up. Teachers need to recognize learning differences before that happens to their students. More importantly, teachers need to be trained on how to recognize the needs their students have for different learning styles. They have to understand and have the skills before they can put them to use on their students.
Before the kids drop out of school, and sometimes out of socially accepted behaviour.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a fancy sounding title for a book of ideas and solutions everyone can understand and teachers and parents can use.
Learn more about the book and the TIA project at http://billallin.com/
"All the exams the scientists gave [study subject] MX confirmed his claim that he was missing his mind's eye."
"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about MX is that he did not need years to develop this new skill [of routing visual information through other brain parts than the mind's eye in order to develop an intellectual concept to replace the mind's eye images he lacked]...Perhaps his blind imagination was always available to him, ready to be used."
- Carl Zimmer, Discover, March 2010
"In your mind's eye..." has been spoken to me only a few times in my life, but I have read it on several occasions.
Unlike MX, who lost his familiar and much appreciated mind's eye suddenly at the age of 65, I never had one. Rather, it might be more accurate to say that my mind's eye is nearly blind.
Do a little experiment with me. Picture in your mind, one at a time, each of the following:
(1) the face of your mother;
(2) the face of your spouse (if this is not appropriate, the face of your father or one particular friend);
(3) your favourite pet in your life (if this is not appropriate, the face of your doctor).
Were you able to bring those faces up as you read them? I can't. When I try it's as if I have a blind spot where the face should be, yet I can get a general idea (not clear) of what I would see with my periphery vision if I were looking at these people with my real eyes.
As I write this my wife is on a different floor of the same house as I am sitting in, yet I cannot picture her face in my head, in my mind's eye. I could pick her out of a crowd of thousands of real people, yet I have no image of her face in my head.
Though my dreams have people in them, I can't recognize any of them. They have no faces to me. I dream in thoughts, not in images. I may have the odd image flash through my dream, but it's nothing like a movie.
Moreover, when I have wakened I can't remember my dreams. Even when I wake up knowing that I have just been dreaming, I have only experienced remembering what I dreamed about a dozen times in my life.
If you can do these things as part of our experiment, you have an active mind's eye.
Who cares? Science now knows that when you sleep you consolidate and fix in your brain your experiences of the previous day. Which experiences you choose to review while asleep determine which you can draw upon easily the following day or days.
When you studied, as a student, during the days before an exam, you created an easily accessible place you could get to if that information were requested on the exam. You created those quick-access locations in your sleep on the days following when you studied.
But...study? What's that? What does it mean? I honestly don't know. It did me no good to study before exams because by the time I had the exam booklet in front of me I had forgotten what I studied. Even when I sat with my notes in front of me, studying meant little because I couldn't remember what I had read a few minutes after reading it.
That bit of consolidating and fixating of recently read material for later retrieval may well be one of the functions of the mind's eye. It's not used just when you are asleep, as our little experiment showed.
The great sculptor Michelangelo, when asked why he pounded so hard on a large rock, allegedly responded "Young boy, there is an angel inside of this rock and I am setting him free." Michelangelo could see David inside the rock. I would only ever see rock.
As a child I dreaded those rare occasions when we had art class. Art class always meant painting, where a large blank piece of paper was placed in front of me. While my classmates happily created their masterpieces, I continued to see only blank paper. No image ever came to mind that I could transfer onto the paper.
An image would have had to be in my mind's eye. It wasn't there. Ever.
Study subject MX lost his mind's eye at age 65. Before that he used to lie down in bed before going to sleep and review the events of his day, like watching a filmstrip or movie clips. When he lost that ability, he quickly adapted by using other parts of his brain to accomplish formerly mind's eye tasks.
I never had a mind's eye. Yet I always felt the need to create in my mind, something, so I could make sense of my world. MX had a mind's eye, lost it, then used other means to compensate.
People who have all the physical connections for sight, yet are blind, often have what is called blindsight or blindimagination. Though blind, many can navigate their way through a room crowded with furniture, for example. Do we all have blindsight or blindimagination ability but not use it? Or do we use it in ways we have not yet discovered?
The researchers who studied MX, Adam Zeman, a neurologist at Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England, and cognitive scientist Sergio Della Sala, of the University of Edinburgh, continue to study how the brain manages visual information. In this field of study, it's still early days.
My experiences, those of MX and the studies of Zeman and Della Sala clearly demonstrate that children need to be offered a variety of learning styles because of the differences in their ways of learning. In education, a one-size-fits-all style of teaching means some children will miss out. Innocent and unknowing children will be blamed for being at fault for not learning as they should. Some schools address the need for different learning styles, most do not.
I couldn't even count on all my fingers the number of times "not working to his potential" appeared on my report cards, nor the number of times my mother was told in parent-teacher interviews that I was lazy. The schools I attended as a child had ways to assess my intellectual potential, but lacked the means to put it to use.
To my teachers I was lazy. Except in physical education where I was also weak and uncoordinated, which somehow also got to be my fault. The role me lack of a working mind's eye played in any of this will not be known for some time.
Suffice to say, I managed to work around the detours to reaching my intellectual potential, though many years after completing my formal education. I still can't throw a baseball straight or walk a balance beam without falling, even when cold sober and in the best of health. Maybe the brain can only adapt around one detour and has to choose which will take top priority.
At age 67 I am no longer called lazy. However, some people still don't appreciate why I sometimes can't follow simple spoken instructions or written directions. I have solved some of the most profound mysteries of life, yet I still can't find Waldo.
No one today wants to teach a man who is smart enough to have found evidence of what God really is and what the afterlife means. He's scary. Yet no one wants to teach a man who is so dumb he can't put together a child's puzzle. They are the same man, same brain, different abilities.
My education continues to be based on my own initiative. As a student, I am still a dunce, an oaf who is "too lazy to learn." Other adults, many of them, may not have the motivation I had to learn. So they don't. You meet these people in stores, or driving the streets with you, or at voting stations.
When people have trouble learning because what they need to know is presented in ways they can't understand, many just give up. Teachers need to recognize learning differences before that happens to their students. More importantly, teachers need to be trained on how to recognize the needs their students have for different learning styles. They have to understand and have the skills before they can put them to use on their students.
Before the kids drop out of school, and sometimes out of socially accepted behaviour.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a fancy sounding title for a book of ideas and solutions everyone can understand and teachers and parents can use.
Learn more about the book and the TIA project at http://billallin.com/
Monday, November 30, 2009
How Smart Are We Humans Really?
How Smart Are We Humans Really?
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
- Abraham Flexner, American educator (1866-1959)
If an alien from a planet unimaginably distant from here were to come to earth with the objective of studying life forms, what do you think he should do?
If he were to study the most abundant life on the planet he would have to look at microbes. We, for example, have more microbes in our own bodies than we have cells we can call our own--that is, that carry our unique DNA.
If he decided to look at life forms more advanced than a single cell he would likely look at algae or plankton in the oceans. If he looked for something more mobile, he would have to study insects. There he would find some well organized and advanced societies if he looked at ants or bees.
Maybe he would want to communicate with another being. For that he might choose a chimpanzee. Or a dolphin.
Dolphins can understand and speak back, especially if given the opportunity to learn a new language. Chimps can't talk because they lack the physiology to form most sounds we consider essential to language.
Why doesn't he study us, you may ask. We live in more parts of the land world than any other creature--at least more than any other large animal, maybe not more than the cockroach. We are certainly the most destructive, which makes us the most powerful.
Surely a being from another world who travelled may light years to reach earth would want to speak with the most powerful creature on the planet. Or would he?
What language would he use? Remember, most of us know only one or a few human languages. Not one of us can communicate more than a few hundred words with any living being on earth other than humans.
We, who seek extraterrestrial life on distant planets, do not have the ability to communicate well with any other species on earth other than ourselves. Our solution to that problem, it might seem to an impartial observer, is to render other intelligent life extinct.
Now that's power.
But why would an intelligent space being admire the power we use to destroy each other and other beings on our own planet? Only 20th Century science fiction had space aliens invading earth to kill everyone or enslave us. It doesn't take much thinking to see that the "destructive space alien" scenario simply doesn't make sense.
Are we really the smartest creatures on the planet? Sure, just ask us.
I'm going to ask you something. Two things, but they're related.
(1) Do you think that if you asked 1000 people you meet randomly on the street in the next few days any of them would admit that they are stupid? Even one?
(2) Have you considered the behaviour of people you have seen and thought they "must be stupid"?
The most intelligent minds among us evaluate how brilliant we humans are, using human testing methods (we haven't a clue how to test otherwise) and human result standards (such as IQ) have decided that we humans are the most intelligent creatures on earth.
Isn't that a bit like asking an Olympic athlete who he believes will win the gold medal in his event? Or like asking a religious person which religion he believes is the best? The results couldn't be more biased.
Assuming we could be shrunk to the appropriate size, could you survive and thrive in a bee or ant colony? Assuming you can swim and even given diving equipment, could you live the life of a dolphin? Or, make it easier, could you fit into a colony of chimpanzees well?
Why not? If we are so smart we should be able to adapt to different living conditions. But we can't. Because there are things--many things--that ants, bees, dolphins and chimps know that we will never know. That we can never know. That we have no way of finding out.
As our quote says, we are the species that borrows billions of dollars for war (trillions in the case of the USA at present), but seldom borrows much to fund our education systems. We borrow money to kill each other, but scrimp when it comes to educating ourselves.
How smart is that? Chimps only fight to see who dominates, not to kill each other. Dolphins squabble over mates. No, wait, we don't even know that much about dolphins. They may be smarter than us, we would never know. No, they live in the water, so they can't be as smart as us.
So we say.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to know what to teach children to aid their intellectual, social and emotional development and when to teach it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
- Abraham Flexner, American educator (1866-1959)
If an alien from a planet unimaginably distant from here were to come to earth with the objective of studying life forms, what do you think he should do?
If he were to study the most abundant life on the planet he would have to look at microbes. We, for example, have more microbes in our own bodies than we have cells we can call our own--that is, that carry our unique DNA.
If he decided to look at life forms more advanced than a single cell he would likely look at algae or plankton in the oceans. If he looked for something more mobile, he would have to study insects. There he would find some well organized and advanced societies if he looked at ants or bees.
Maybe he would want to communicate with another being. For that he might choose a chimpanzee. Or a dolphin.
Dolphins can understand and speak back, especially if given the opportunity to learn a new language. Chimps can't talk because they lack the physiology to form most sounds we consider essential to language.
Why doesn't he study us, you may ask. We live in more parts of the land world than any other creature--at least more than any other large animal, maybe not more than the cockroach. We are certainly the most destructive, which makes us the most powerful.
Surely a being from another world who travelled may light years to reach earth would want to speak with the most powerful creature on the planet. Or would he?
What language would he use? Remember, most of us know only one or a few human languages. Not one of us can communicate more than a few hundred words with any living being on earth other than humans.
We, who seek extraterrestrial life on distant planets, do not have the ability to communicate well with any other species on earth other than ourselves. Our solution to that problem, it might seem to an impartial observer, is to render other intelligent life extinct.
Now that's power.
But why would an intelligent space being admire the power we use to destroy each other and other beings on our own planet? Only 20th Century science fiction had space aliens invading earth to kill everyone or enslave us. It doesn't take much thinking to see that the "destructive space alien" scenario simply doesn't make sense.
Are we really the smartest creatures on the planet? Sure, just ask us.
I'm going to ask you something. Two things, but they're related.
(1) Do you think that if you asked 1000 people you meet randomly on the street in the next few days any of them would admit that they are stupid? Even one?
(2) Have you considered the behaviour of people you have seen and thought they "must be stupid"?
The most intelligent minds among us evaluate how brilliant we humans are, using human testing methods (we haven't a clue how to test otherwise) and human result standards (such as IQ) have decided that we humans are the most intelligent creatures on earth.
Isn't that a bit like asking an Olympic athlete who he believes will win the gold medal in his event? Or like asking a religious person which religion he believes is the best? The results couldn't be more biased.
Assuming we could be shrunk to the appropriate size, could you survive and thrive in a bee or ant colony? Assuming you can swim and even given diving equipment, could you live the life of a dolphin? Or, make it easier, could you fit into a colony of chimpanzees well?
Why not? If we are so smart we should be able to adapt to different living conditions. But we can't. Because there are things--many things--that ants, bees, dolphins and chimps know that we will never know. That we can never know. That we have no way of finding out.
As our quote says, we are the species that borrows billions of dollars for war (trillions in the case of the USA at present), but seldom borrows much to fund our education systems. We borrow money to kill each other, but scrimp when it comes to educating ourselves.
How smart is that? Chimps only fight to see who dominates, not to kill each other. Dolphins squabble over mates. No, wait, we don't even know that much about dolphins. They may be smarter than us, we would never know. No, they live in the water, so they can't be as smart as us.
So we say.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to know what to teach children to aid their intellectual, social and emotional development and when to teach it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Journey: Yours, Mine, Ours
Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
- William James, American psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)
The Journey: Yours, Mine, Ours
Join me on a journey. An unusual journey in that it will be one of the mind, prompted by my words and filled by your imagination.
Yet not unusual in that every experience we have is of the mind. The rest of the body has no means of recording or evaluating experiences. The brain records but has no inherent ability to critique, nor reason to do so, unless it is prompted by other experiences of the mind.
Our lives are of the mind, not of the body. Come along to learn more as we travel.
Our journey will take place over water. We will travel together, more or less, but each in separate boats. We may link together our watercraft, some of us. From time to time we will separate from each other, then link with others. Some of us will grieve the separation, others welcome it. We will all welcome the company of others, though some may not know how to show their pleasure in social interaction because they simply don't know how. They may remain alone more often than not.
So many of us will be on this journey that we will never meet everyone. Some will say that the ones we don't know are bad, stupid, simple, or evil, will plot against us given the chance. We don't know. The more we realize how little we know about the others we don't know and have never seen, the more likely we are to believe unfounded rumours about them. In all likelihood, they are just like us, but why take the chance?
We will meet relatively few others on our journey, compared with the total of us. We'll base our opinions and thoughts about them and what they are like on our own experiences with the few people we know. Many will not realize that if we think they are like us based on our experiences with those we know, it doesn't make sense to believe the people we don't know are any different from the ones we know.
Some won't like us. They will judge us based on their opinions about our boats, the looks, the component materials, the shape, the paint job, our own attire for the trip, our apparent ability to pilot where we want to go. There will always be people to tell us we should go another way, their way, even though they don't know where they are going either.
We're not sure of our destination. Some will say the destination doesn't matter, that we should make the best of what we have on the trip. Others will say that we should deprive ourselves on the voyage so that we will have an abundance once we reach our destination. Oddly, many who recommend depriving ourselves here believe that we will have abundance when we get to our destination. It may not make sense, but it's human nature. Still, nobody knows for sure what our destination is.
Some say that if we don't conduct ourselves on our voyage the way they say, our destination will surely be dire and tragic, eternal tragedy. They claim that if we follow their path the destination will be glorious. Strange how people who don't know a thing have the insight for forecasting what anyone's destination will be like. "It's in the book," they will say.
Some say they know the way and the destination because they heard of a man who had done it before and reported back. Others will say that man never existed. Many will admire the life that man led, according to reports they have read and heard, and will pay homage to the advice he gave. But few will actually follow that advice because it doesn't make them happy.
Many we meet along the way aspire to be happy. They haven't a clue about how to actually be happy, but they have read about their right to pursue happiness and it sounds really good. They will keep trying to buy and trade with others what they have for happiness. They will get thrills. The thrills pass, a bad period follows, then they will try again to buy or trade for a new kind of happiness. Like a good drug trip followed by a bad recovery. But they keep trying as if the routine will change by itself.
No one is sure what happiness is. So many hold happiness up as the greatest goal of life. They keep chasing happiness, but they can't ever achieve it because they can't buy it or trade for it. Yet they have been told that hard work and wealth buys happiness, and they believe it to a large extent.
What they know how to do best is to buy and trade their efforts for bargaining power. Acquiring, they have learned, is the way to happiness. That lesson, reinforced by every medium they know, has been taught to them since childhood. What you get and what you do will make you happy. That's the lesson.
Yet each joy or thrill passes. Happiness, it seems, never wants to stay.
A few people seem to enjoy some sort of joy that stays with them. They don't seem to necessarily be happy, just content all the time. Some say these people are delusional. Others that they are emotionally unbalanced, socially not "with it."
They are suckers by the standards of most. They spend far more time helping others along the voyage than they do acquiring for themselves. They don't seem to understand that they can't give and get at the same time. If the objective is getting--and almost every social norm suggests that's what is desirable--then they will never be happy because they keep giving so much they can never build up a sufficient treasure to be happy. Still, they seem to mysteriously enjoy life far more than most people. They don't experience as many thrills though.
Only the delusional, unbalanced, socially "different" people who give to others, who help others, who work with others along the way, seem to have some kind of inner joy that lasts, that stays with them no matter what trouble they endure along the way. The "suckers" can't be happy because that's not how most of us define happiness.
Some will look around and see multitudes of others in nearby boats, yet still feel lonely. They think that the others want to ostracize them or they feel isolated from the others because of something social abhorrent about themselves, while the others simply ignore them because they act invisible. They may just lack the social skills needed to make friends. Or they may be looking too much for what others can and (they believe) should give them while not concerning themselves about what they can give to others.
Some will be sick, weak, lack body parts that allow them to move through the water like others. Somehow they manage to move along the same route as the rest of us. We don't know how. They must have some scary secret remedy or formula that allows them to manage when they aren't "whole" like most of us. Most of them can't afford the same thrills as the wealthy ones. But they don't experience the same depressions either. Weird.
Some won't seem mentally "right" at times. They get angry, act out, get into battles with others. Some have periods of depression. Others periods when...they act strange. We try to ignore them. We may have something they need. We may even be able to help them. But we don't know what it is they need or how to help them. It's easier to ignore them, to pretend they don't exist for a while. Best keep them at a distance.
Some beg from others. They gain such skills at begging--they may call it by some other word--that we wonder why they don't apply the same devotion and effort at learning skills that will better benefit them so they can be more self sufficient. They won't learn. They admire their own skills at begging.
Some believe they are totally alone, with no one to help them. They move through the water by paddling with their hands while leaving the oars within reach sitting unused. They can't see what is obvious to us. We don't point this out to them because they are likely stupid and we don't want to seem socially intolerant. One must be correct, mustn't one?
Many will wonder what the purpose is of the voyage. "Why are we even doing this. All we ever see is the same old water." When told by the old ones that they once left solid land to make this voyage, they will be suspicious. When told the purpose is to learn something that will help them once they reach the new land, they will be suspicious. All they can remember seeing is water.
Maybe water is all there is. Maybe there was no land we once left and there will be no land to establish a new life after we reach a new shore. Maybe it's just water, water, water. What can you do with water? Better get as much as we can from others to make this endless voyage bearable.
Some will believe there never was land. Some that there never again will be land ahead. Some will say that land is a myth, that the only true way to define anything is according to the conditions of the present. If they can't see it, feel it, touch, smell or hear it today, it doesn't exist.
They will say that having faith that something existed in the past and will exist again in the future is self delusion. They ignore the argument that water must be supported by land underneath it, instead claiming that only what they can sense and "prove" today actually counts, actually matters.
Here's the Catch-22 of this story. Now that you are on the voyage, you must stay on it. Sorry, I kind of forgot to mention that earlier, before we launched.
Oh, and I have to leave you here because I promised to join with others away from here. I hope you don't mind. You will have to figure out the rest of the voyage for yourself.
You can do it. Think it through. Remember the kind of future you want so that you don't get stuck dwelling on the endless water around you. The better you plan the rest of your voyage, the likelier it is that you will reach the destination you hope for.
It's a voyage. Voyages end eventually. That's how they work. What may differ is the destination you reach. There are many to choose from.
But plan where you want to get eventually. If you don't, you may spend eternity paddling around in this same old water.
Good luck! See you around.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to know how to make their lives and their communities better. It all begins with teaching children what they need to know, when they need to know it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- William James, American psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)
The Journey: Yours, Mine, Ours
Join me on a journey. An unusual journey in that it will be one of the mind, prompted by my words and filled by your imagination.
Yet not unusual in that every experience we have is of the mind. The rest of the body has no means of recording or evaluating experiences. The brain records but has no inherent ability to critique, nor reason to do so, unless it is prompted by other experiences of the mind.
Our lives are of the mind, not of the body. Come along to learn more as we travel.
Our journey will take place over water. We will travel together, more or less, but each in separate boats. We may link together our watercraft, some of us. From time to time we will separate from each other, then link with others. Some of us will grieve the separation, others welcome it. We will all welcome the company of others, though some may not know how to show their pleasure in social interaction because they simply don't know how. They may remain alone more often than not.
So many of us will be on this journey that we will never meet everyone. Some will say that the ones we don't know are bad, stupid, simple, or evil, will plot against us given the chance. We don't know. The more we realize how little we know about the others we don't know and have never seen, the more likely we are to believe unfounded rumours about them. In all likelihood, they are just like us, but why take the chance?
We will meet relatively few others on our journey, compared with the total of us. We'll base our opinions and thoughts about them and what they are like on our own experiences with the few people we know. Many will not realize that if we think they are like us based on our experiences with those we know, it doesn't make sense to believe the people we don't know are any different from the ones we know.
Some won't like us. They will judge us based on their opinions about our boats, the looks, the component materials, the shape, the paint job, our own attire for the trip, our apparent ability to pilot where we want to go. There will always be people to tell us we should go another way, their way, even though they don't know where they are going either.
We're not sure of our destination. Some will say the destination doesn't matter, that we should make the best of what we have on the trip. Others will say that we should deprive ourselves on the voyage so that we will have an abundance once we reach our destination. Oddly, many who recommend depriving ourselves here believe that we will have abundance when we get to our destination. It may not make sense, but it's human nature. Still, nobody knows for sure what our destination is.
Some say that if we don't conduct ourselves on our voyage the way they say, our destination will surely be dire and tragic, eternal tragedy. They claim that if we follow their path the destination will be glorious. Strange how people who don't know a thing have the insight for forecasting what anyone's destination will be like. "It's in the book," they will say.
Some say they know the way and the destination because they heard of a man who had done it before and reported back. Others will say that man never existed. Many will admire the life that man led, according to reports they have read and heard, and will pay homage to the advice he gave. But few will actually follow that advice because it doesn't make them happy.
Many we meet along the way aspire to be happy. They haven't a clue about how to actually be happy, but they have read about their right to pursue happiness and it sounds really good. They will keep trying to buy and trade with others what they have for happiness. They will get thrills. The thrills pass, a bad period follows, then they will try again to buy or trade for a new kind of happiness. Like a good drug trip followed by a bad recovery. But they keep trying as if the routine will change by itself.
No one is sure what happiness is. So many hold happiness up as the greatest goal of life. They keep chasing happiness, but they can't ever achieve it because they can't buy it or trade for it. Yet they have been told that hard work and wealth buys happiness, and they believe it to a large extent.
What they know how to do best is to buy and trade their efforts for bargaining power. Acquiring, they have learned, is the way to happiness. That lesson, reinforced by every medium they know, has been taught to them since childhood. What you get and what you do will make you happy. That's the lesson.
Yet each joy or thrill passes. Happiness, it seems, never wants to stay.
A few people seem to enjoy some sort of joy that stays with them. They don't seem to necessarily be happy, just content all the time. Some say these people are delusional. Others that they are emotionally unbalanced, socially not "with it."
They are suckers by the standards of most. They spend far more time helping others along the voyage than they do acquiring for themselves. They don't seem to understand that they can't give and get at the same time. If the objective is getting--and almost every social norm suggests that's what is desirable--then they will never be happy because they keep giving so much they can never build up a sufficient treasure to be happy. Still, they seem to mysteriously enjoy life far more than most people. They don't experience as many thrills though.
Only the delusional, unbalanced, socially "different" people who give to others, who help others, who work with others along the way, seem to have some kind of inner joy that lasts, that stays with them no matter what trouble they endure along the way. The "suckers" can't be happy because that's not how most of us define happiness.
Some will look around and see multitudes of others in nearby boats, yet still feel lonely. They think that the others want to ostracize them or they feel isolated from the others because of something social abhorrent about themselves, while the others simply ignore them because they act invisible. They may just lack the social skills needed to make friends. Or they may be looking too much for what others can and (they believe) should give them while not concerning themselves about what they can give to others.
Some will be sick, weak, lack body parts that allow them to move through the water like others. Somehow they manage to move along the same route as the rest of us. We don't know how. They must have some scary secret remedy or formula that allows them to manage when they aren't "whole" like most of us. Most of them can't afford the same thrills as the wealthy ones. But they don't experience the same depressions either. Weird.
Some won't seem mentally "right" at times. They get angry, act out, get into battles with others. Some have periods of depression. Others periods when...they act strange. We try to ignore them. We may have something they need. We may even be able to help them. But we don't know what it is they need or how to help them. It's easier to ignore them, to pretend they don't exist for a while. Best keep them at a distance.
Some beg from others. They gain such skills at begging--they may call it by some other word--that we wonder why they don't apply the same devotion and effort at learning skills that will better benefit them so they can be more self sufficient. They won't learn. They admire their own skills at begging.
Some believe they are totally alone, with no one to help them. They move through the water by paddling with their hands while leaving the oars within reach sitting unused. They can't see what is obvious to us. We don't point this out to them because they are likely stupid and we don't want to seem socially intolerant. One must be correct, mustn't one?
Many will wonder what the purpose is of the voyage. "Why are we even doing this. All we ever see is the same old water." When told by the old ones that they once left solid land to make this voyage, they will be suspicious. When told the purpose is to learn something that will help them once they reach the new land, they will be suspicious. All they can remember seeing is water.
Maybe water is all there is. Maybe there was no land we once left and there will be no land to establish a new life after we reach a new shore. Maybe it's just water, water, water. What can you do with water? Better get as much as we can from others to make this endless voyage bearable.
Some will believe there never was land. Some that there never again will be land ahead. Some will say that land is a myth, that the only true way to define anything is according to the conditions of the present. If they can't see it, feel it, touch, smell or hear it today, it doesn't exist.
They will say that having faith that something existed in the past and will exist again in the future is self delusion. They ignore the argument that water must be supported by land underneath it, instead claiming that only what they can sense and "prove" today actually counts, actually matters.
Here's the Catch-22 of this story. Now that you are on the voyage, you must stay on it. Sorry, I kind of forgot to mention that earlier, before we launched.
Oh, and I have to leave you here because I promised to join with others away from here. I hope you don't mind. You will have to figure out the rest of the voyage for yourself.
You can do it. Think it through. Remember the kind of future you want so that you don't get stuck dwelling on the endless water around you. The better you plan the rest of your voyage, the likelier it is that you will reach the destination you hope for.
It's a voyage. Voyages end eventually. That's how they work. What may differ is the destination you reach. There are many to choose from.
But plan where you want to get eventually. If you don't, you may spend eternity paddling around in this same old water.
Good luck! See you around.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to know how to make their lives and their communities better. It all begins with teaching children what they need to know, when they need to know it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
How Science Lets Us Down
The purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone they become no more than beasts.
- Saint Sophia, 2nd century Rome, whose daughters Faith (Pistis), Hope (Elpis) and Love (Agape) were slaughtered in front of their mother for their devotion to their God
The Roman emperor Hadrian had Sophia's daughters slashed, stretched and eventually beheaded and burned to get them to renounce their beliefs, all in front of their mother. As he could think of no worse punishment to Sophia that to live out the rest of her life knowing that her only children had died horrifying deaths, he spared her. She gathered the bodies of her children, buried them and died three days later.
Were they all martyrs? Were they all stupid to die before their times instead of saying the words Hadrian wanted (albeit blasphemous words because he wanted them to acknowledge him as their god)?
In the 21st century we have come to respect science more than at any time in the past. Science originally was the means by which humans could better understand the works of God. Yet science gained such power and authority over its respective cultures that it now sees itself as a kind of god.
Nothing that cannot be manipulated by humans or that cannot be rationalized as originating according to natural order exists, according to the materialist view. There can be no God because no one can describe God, no one can prove the existence of God, no one can manipulate God.
Furthermore, the gods of the popular religions of today can be shown to be human inventions or hand-me-downs from earlier pagan religions.
Yet materialists cannot explain dreams in terms that do not make dreamers seem insane at night. They cannot explain visions that people have, or vision quests that change people's lives.
They cannot explain ESP (extra-sensory perception). They cannot explain how patients who are legally dead on an operating table can have out of body experiences where they can later describe exactly what was going on in the operating theatre until surgeons restarted their hearts, brains and other organs.
Materialists cannot explain self or mind other than in ways that make us seem like advanced forms of dogs or dolphins.
In short, if materialists can't grasp their minds around a concept in such a way that they can explain it in human terms, they deny it exists. They expect our reality to be limited by the perimeters of their minds. Or I should say brains because they don't believe in the mind as being separate from the brain.
How does that fit with quantum physics where a particle can be in two places at once, where in fact if you look for it in one of those places it will automatically be in the other? How do they explain that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points only on a global scale, not on a universal scale where time and space bend, can even fold back on each other?
Multiple dimensions, they say. We can only detect four dimensions, but string theory stipulates that all this mysterious stuff makes sense if we accept that reality has eleven dimensions.
Science asks us to believe that some day it will show that all the mysteries of physics, of space larger than we can imagine and space smaller than we can imagine, will be explained and proven as truths. It's called Promissory Science. Science promises that it will prove these mysteries some day.
At the same time science denies that God or any of the other mysteries it cannot explain, phenomena and experiences that you and I may have many times in our lives, will ever be explained because they don't really exist. Science says we should believe its promises, not the promises of non-scientists.
How does science say we invent these things? It's all in our minds.
Oh, wait! They don't believe in the mind. It's all in our brains.
But apes, dolphins, wolves and many other animals have brains similar to our own, some even larger than ours, yet they don't seem to have supernatural experiences. If a brain can create fantasies, should a sophisticated brain such as that of a dolphin or a chimpanzee not be able to do the same?
So far, only humans have been shown to have extrasensory experiences. These can easily be explained by the coexistence of both brain and mind. But materialist scientists can't grasp the concept of mind because it's too difficult to study. It denies the mind exists, in many cases.
Are they not, despite their protests, what Saint Sophia called "no more than beasts?"
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are well balanced socially and emotionally as well as intellectually and physically.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Saint Sophia, 2nd century Rome, whose daughters Faith (Pistis), Hope (Elpis) and Love (Agape) were slaughtered in front of their mother for their devotion to their God
The Roman emperor Hadrian had Sophia's daughters slashed, stretched and eventually beheaded and burned to get them to renounce their beliefs, all in front of their mother. As he could think of no worse punishment to Sophia that to live out the rest of her life knowing that her only children had died horrifying deaths, he spared her. She gathered the bodies of her children, buried them and died three days later.
Were they all martyrs? Were they all stupid to die before their times instead of saying the words Hadrian wanted (albeit blasphemous words because he wanted them to acknowledge him as their god)?
In the 21st century we have come to respect science more than at any time in the past. Science originally was the means by which humans could better understand the works of God. Yet science gained such power and authority over its respective cultures that it now sees itself as a kind of god.
Nothing that cannot be manipulated by humans or that cannot be rationalized as originating according to natural order exists, according to the materialist view. There can be no God because no one can describe God, no one can prove the existence of God, no one can manipulate God.
Furthermore, the gods of the popular religions of today can be shown to be human inventions or hand-me-downs from earlier pagan religions.
Yet materialists cannot explain dreams in terms that do not make dreamers seem insane at night. They cannot explain visions that people have, or vision quests that change people's lives.
They cannot explain ESP (extra-sensory perception). They cannot explain how patients who are legally dead on an operating table can have out of body experiences where they can later describe exactly what was going on in the operating theatre until surgeons restarted their hearts, brains and other organs.
Materialists cannot explain self or mind other than in ways that make us seem like advanced forms of dogs or dolphins.
In short, if materialists can't grasp their minds around a concept in such a way that they can explain it in human terms, they deny it exists. They expect our reality to be limited by the perimeters of their minds. Or I should say brains because they don't believe in the mind as being separate from the brain.
How does that fit with quantum physics where a particle can be in two places at once, where in fact if you look for it in one of those places it will automatically be in the other? How do they explain that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points only on a global scale, not on a universal scale where time and space bend, can even fold back on each other?
Multiple dimensions, they say. We can only detect four dimensions, but string theory stipulates that all this mysterious stuff makes sense if we accept that reality has eleven dimensions.
Science asks us to believe that some day it will show that all the mysteries of physics, of space larger than we can imagine and space smaller than we can imagine, will be explained and proven as truths. It's called Promissory Science. Science promises that it will prove these mysteries some day.
At the same time science denies that God or any of the other mysteries it cannot explain, phenomena and experiences that you and I may have many times in our lives, will ever be explained because they don't really exist. Science says we should believe its promises, not the promises of non-scientists.
How does science say we invent these things? It's all in our minds.
Oh, wait! They don't believe in the mind. It's all in our brains.
But apes, dolphins, wolves and many other animals have brains similar to our own, some even larger than ours, yet they don't seem to have supernatural experiences. If a brain can create fantasies, should a sophisticated brain such as that of a dolphin or a chimpanzee not be able to do the same?
So far, only humans have been shown to have extrasensory experiences. These can easily be explained by the coexistence of both brain and mind. But materialist scientists can't grasp the concept of mind because it's too difficult to study. It denies the mind exists, in many cases.
Are they not, despite their protests, what Saint Sophia called "no more than beasts?"
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are well balanced socially and emotionally as well as intellectually and physically.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, August 22, 2008
How To Know If You Have A First Rate Mind
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority.The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority.The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
- A.A. Milne
The third rate mind never goes anywhere because it is constantly being led by the nose, always follow the behind of those who lead. Think politics, religion or the products of big corporations (as a consequence of constant unrelenting advertising).
The second rate mind always feels that it is going against the flow, which it is. In this case, the minority usually believes that its way is better than the ways of the majority. These people believe that their way is better for humankind, whether morally, politically, religiously, ecologically or any other -ly. It is comforted in knowing that, though a minority, they think alike with their fellow believers.
The first rate mind usually thinks alone. He or she knows that their way of thinking goes against the trends of humanity, but takes comfort in truth rather than in comradeship. He or she is used to being thought of as wrong or as kooky or as a bit too far off base.
The first rate mind sometimes wonders if he or she is weird, a social misfit or the result of some form of genetic mutation. Any are possible, but the real reasons may commonly be found in their unusual upbringing in their first few years of life.
The first rate mind may be sociopathic or totally benign and peace loving. He or she may be a criminal, a drug addict or an inmate in a psychiatric hospital. Or a teacher, firefighter or member of any occupational group. The ones suffering from anti-social behaviours may result from bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, of good decisions made that go against the law or social norms or of being thought so different that he or she doesn't know how to cope with problems in their personal life that others just plug through but that he or she take as unsolvable or intractable.
The third rate mind is always appreciated at the moment for being "average," in synch with the majority way of thinking.
The second rate mind is usually considered to be inept by the majority because they just don't "get it," but cool among his or her group.
The first rate mind is always appreciated more after their death than before, even if they are recognized for their genius while they are alive.
For the third rate mind, perfection is being with the majority.
For the second rate mind, perfection is elusive, but possible if enough people could just see how they have been thinking the wrong way.
For the first rate mind, perfection is not a consideration because it cannot be reached. Each success is a plateau, a step leading to the next challenge. Every step of progress brings with it its failures, which lead to new challenges, which result in new projects.
To the third rate mind, society would be much better if the radicals would just get onside.
To the second rate mind, society is made up largely of third rate minds who can't tell their whatchmacallit from their thingamajig.
To the first rate mind, everyone is insane, differing only in their degree of insanity and their preferences for ways of showing it.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who have no trouble telling their whatchmacallit from their thingamajig. And who know right from wrong at the right times.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- A.A. Milne
The third rate mind never goes anywhere because it is constantly being led by the nose, always follow the behind of those who lead. Think politics, religion or the products of big corporations (as a consequence of constant unrelenting advertising).
The second rate mind always feels that it is going against the flow, which it is. In this case, the minority usually believes that its way is better than the ways of the majority. These people believe that their way is better for humankind, whether morally, politically, religiously, ecologically or any other -ly. It is comforted in knowing that, though a minority, they think alike with their fellow believers.
The first rate mind usually thinks alone. He or she knows that their way of thinking goes against the trends of humanity, but takes comfort in truth rather than in comradeship. He or she is used to being thought of as wrong or as kooky or as a bit too far off base.
The first rate mind sometimes wonders if he or she is weird, a social misfit or the result of some form of genetic mutation. Any are possible, but the real reasons may commonly be found in their unusual upbringing in their first few years of life.
The first rate mind may be sociopathic or totally benign and peace loving. He or she may be a criminal, a drug addict or an inmate in a psychiatric hospital. Or a teacher, firefighter or member of any occupational group. The ones suffering from anti-social behaviours may result from bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, of good decisions made that go against the law or social norms or of being thought so different that he or she doesn't know how to cope with problems in their personal life that others just plug through but that he or she take as unsolvable or intractable.
The third rate mind is always appreciated at the moment for being "average," in synch with the majority way of thinking.
The second rate mind is usually considered to be inept by the majority because they just don't "get it," but cool among his or her group.
The first rate mind is always appreciated more after their death than before, even if they are recognized for their genius while they are alive.
For the third rate mind, perfection is being with the majority.
For the second rate mind, perfection is elusive, but possible if enough people could just see how they have been thinking the wrong way.
For the first rate mind, perfection is not a consideration because it cannot be reached. Each success is a plateau, a step leading to the next challenge. Every step of progress brings with it its failures, which lead to new challenges, which result in new projects.
To the third rate mind, society would be much better if the radicals would just get onside.
To the second rate mind, society is made up largely of third rate minds who can't tell their whatchmacallit from their thingamajig.
To the first rate mind, everyone is insane, differing only in their degree of insanity and their preferences for ways of showing it.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who have no trouble telling their whatchmacallit from their thingamajig. And who know right from wrong at the right times.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, July 11, 2008
Go Ahead, I Dare you
Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of bodyand mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to getrid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstancesdrive them to do.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)
Checking the dates of birth and death of Harriet Beecher Stowe we can see that what seems to be a condition of modern times has existed for at least well over a century.
In her day, wars were common, more common than today, such that most people experienced at least one war during their lifetimes--usually one per generation--and were either conscripted or volunteered to fight in one. It may have been unhealthy, as war zones then had environments similar to the most polluted cities today. It may have been risky, but young men went to fight for "freedom" or to prevent being attacked by "the enemy," so the risks were deemed worthwhile.
Though they didn't sleep well or eat properly, they got a steady and dependable pay envelope, which was more than could be said at home for many. For young men who didn't want to use their brain much, war offered excitement they couldn't get at home. The average lifespan of men was just over 40 years in those days, so risking their lives for some pretty lively excitement seemed worth it. Even if they died in battle, they would only die a few years younger than the average man in their society.
Today we have young people who would rather die of a drug overdose than do a job that required them to expend physical energy. Even taking drugs itself shows how little they use their brains to learn that both their physical and their mental health could be affected.
Are we naturally lazy or do circumstances drive us to it? As an educator and student of human behaviour, I would have to say the latter is more correct. Only those with physical impairments--many of which go undiagnosed for years--are lackadaisical as children. Those who develop chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia later in life were often not terribly energetic as children, though this has not been studied much.
Most kids are very active both physically and intellectually. Don't two year olds and three year olds have a reputation for asking enough questions to drive their parents to distraction? Asking questions is an indicator of an active mind. Their play tends to be fairly physical in nature at that age, perhaps because they don't have the intellectual development to engage in more mindful pursuits.
Somewhere along the way most people stop asking questions. In fact, it has become so common that it's considered a sign of incompetence in some business communities to ask for help or to ask questions that might annoy or embarrass the boss. If you don't know, at least don't let everyone know you don't know, just shut up, is the rule of thumb.
So we produce a society made up largely of intellectually stunted adults. The thinkers are considered the weirdos, the troublemakers, ones who could possibly be dangerous if given their way.
Intellectually stunted adults who just happen to have a cultural tendency towards obesity, mostly due to the fact that they embrace any activity that requires little physical effort and as little mental effort as possible.
To ensure that the adults produce children with the same preferences, we create a fear of having our children out by themselves where they might learn something other than that prescribed by school and the family. So the kids stay at home, play video games and visit porn sites or chatrooms on the internet, if they aren't participating in some sort of social networking system such as YouTube.
Yet it has become not just the social norm, but social and even legal requirement that kids should be tended by adults all day, every day, such that they can never learn anything not on their required community curriculum. The intellectually and physically lazy adults don't need to teach the kids to be lazy because the kids pick it up from their role models who are required by law and social norms to force their children into social conformity. In so doing they become mentally and physically docile themselves.
Go ahead, dear reader, get angry about this. I dare you. Use your intellect and emotional energy to give me example after example to show that I am wrong.
That would require you to think critically. Are you up for it?
I am. Do it.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are not bound to social norms that will make them into fat, lazy, unthinking consumers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)
Checking the dates of birth and death of Harriet Beecher Stowe we can see that what seems to be a condition of modern times has existed for at least well over a century.
In her day, wars were common, more common than today, such that most people experienced at least one war during their lifetimes--usually one per generation--and were either conscripted or volunteered to fight in one. It may have been unhealthy, as war zones then had environments similar to the most polluted cities today. It may have been risky, but young men went to fight for "freedom" or to prevent being attacked by "the enemy," so the risks were deemed worthwhile.
Though they didn't sleep well or eat properly, they got a steady and dependable pay envelope, which was more than could be said at home for many. For young men who didn't want to use their brain much, war offered excitement they couldn't get at home. The average lifespan of men was just over 40 years in those days, so risking their lives for some pretty lively excitement seemed worth it. Even if they died in battle, they would only die a few years younger than the average man in their society.
Today we have young people who would rather die of a drug overdose than do a job that required them to expend physical energy. Even taking drugs itself shows how little they use their brains to learn that both their physical and their mental health could be affected.
Are we naturally lazy or do circumstances drive us to it? As an educator and student of human behaviour, I would have to say the latter is more correct. Only those with physical impairments--many of which go undiagnosed for years--are lackadaisical as children. Those who develop chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia later in life were often not terribly energetic as children, though this has not been studied much.
Most kids are very active both physically and intellectually. Don't two year olds and three year olds have a reputation for asking enough questions to drive their parents to distraction? Asking questions is an indicator of an active mind. Their play tends to be fairly physical in nature at that age, perhaps because they don't have the intellectual development to engage in more mindful pursuits.
Somewhere along the way most people stop asking questions. In fact, it has become so common that it's considered a sign of incompetence in some business communities to ask for help or to ask questions that might annoy or embarrass the boss. If you don't know, at least don't let everyone know you don't know, just shut up, is the rule of thumb.
So we produce a society made up largely of intellectually stunted adults. The thinkers are considered the weirdos, the troublemakers, ones who could possibly be dangerous if given their way.
Intellectually stunted adults who just happen to have a cultural tendency towards obesity, mostly due to the fact that they embrace any activity that requires little physical effort and as little mental effort as possible.
To ensure that the adults produce children with the same preferences, we create a fear of having our children out by themselves where they might learn something other than that prescribed by school and the family. So the kids stay at home, play video games and visit porn sites or chatrooms on the internet, if they aren't participating in some sort of social networking system such as YouTube.
Yet it has become not just the social norm, but social and even legal requirement that kids should be tended by adults all day, every day, such that they can never learn anything not on their required community curriculum. The intellectually and physically lazy adults don't need to teach the kids to be lazy because the kids pick it up from their role models who are required by law and social norms to force their children into social conformity. In so doing they become mentally and physically docile themselves.
Go ahead, dear reader, get angry about this. I dare you. Use your intellect and emotional energy to give me example after example to show that I am wrong.
That would require you to think critically. Are you up for it?
I am. Do it.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are not bound to social norms that will make them into fat, lazy, unthinking consumers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Just How Dumb Can We Get?
Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.
- H. Mumford Jones, US critic & educator (1892 - 1980)
Not just your age Mumford, the present one as well.
Many people have an odd fascination with machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Two generations ago the most popular Christmas gifts for girls were talking dolls. A generation ago people flocked to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to hear the computer Hal conduct conversations with the spacecraft's crew members. The Star Wars franchise brought R2D2 and C3PO (a near-android) and audiences loved them.
Today people scoop up for gifts anything automated, including video games and toys with robotic capabilities. A programmable cordless vacuum cleaner that looks like a shortened curling stone and gathers floor litter without human hands operating it is another immensely popular gift. Sony's walking robot remains an expensive dream for most kids.
So popular are automated things, especially those that use computers or computerized chips are their hearts that Microsoft is about to launch a new all-encompassing operating system that will tie together the computerized systems in many different household appliances, some of which have not yet been released to the marketplace.
We look forward to the day when our computers and computerized robots do some of our thinking for us. Are we not afraid that they will eventually replace us and become effectively the heads of our households? Though we should, apparently we do not have such a fear.
We believe that technology will not only make our lives easier, but it will also prevent itself from taking control of our lives. Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction writer and co-author of 2001 (with director Stanley Kubrick), warned us with Hal, but the lesson didn't stick. If anything, Hal (a metal box with an actor's voice-over) prompted even more research into AI and its uses to assist humans in their daily chores.
The modern world population, those who have easy and constant access to the Information Highway which gives us more information that we can absorb, has become essentially a race of stupid animals. As writer Stephen Vizinczey said, "We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them." Yet that culture wants machines that can think. think for them, we must assume.
Are we really stupid? The so-called post-modern world requires expertise in many fields, which in turn requires our best educated people to specialize in one field of study so intensively that they know less about most subjects than a high school dropout. We don't repair anything broken any more, we buy a new one. We don't fix broken equipment in our homes because we don't know how. We toss it and buy new.
We hope for casual conversations with colleagues because strangers might want to talk on subjects we know nothing about. Small talk about nothing of significance has risen to an art form.
We pollute our air with half a million chemicals, warming it unnecessarily with coal-fired electricity generating stations, drive huge SUVs that emit many times as much CO2 as smaller cars, and we drive as much as we can our vehicles that use fossil fuels rather than putting pressure on science to deliver alternative energy sources. And we know we are doing it. That's stupid.
But, as H. Mumford Jones said, we are suspicious of those who think, speak or write along any train of thought that differs from what our politicians, our industries and our pop scientists tell us is the right way to think. In fact, we often socially ostracize such people, cause them to lose their jobs or find ways to imprison them or otherwise silence them.
Perhaps we need Artificial Intelligence to compensate for the lack of intelligence we exhibit ourselves, in our personal and our public lives. Though our public lives are getting smaller as we turn our civic responsibilities over to politicians and their agencies, even to the extent of staying away from the polls on voting days.
Before you go thinking that I believe we are bound for hell in a handbasket or are dumbing ourselves down to the intelligence level of dirt, remember, we will soon be able to have transplants of brain tissue, whole brains or artificial brains.
We'll know it has already begun when we find a revival of the name Hal for newly born babies. Or C3PO.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to be able to think as adults, including the tools, resources and plan to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- H. Mumford Jones, US critic & educator (1892 - 1980)
Not just your age Mumford, the present one as well.
Many people have an odd fascination with machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Two generations ago the most popular Christmas gifts for girls were talking dolls. A generation ago people flocked to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey to hear the computer Hal conduct conversations with the spacecraft's crew members. The Star Wars franchise brought R2D2 and C3PO (a near-android) and audiences loved them.
Today people scoop up for gifts anything automated, including video games and toys with robotic capabilities. A programmable cordless vacuum cleaner that looks like a shortened curling stone and gathers floor litter without human hands operating it is another immensely popular gift. Sony's walking robot remains an expensive dream for most kids.
So popular are automated things, especially those that use computers or computerized chips are their hearts that Microsoft is about to launch a new all-encompassing operating system that will tie together the computerized systems in many different household appliances, some of which have not yet been released to the marketplace.
We look forward to the day when our computers and computerized robots do some of our thinking for us. Are we not afraid that they will eventually replace us and become effectively the heads of our households? Though we should, apparently we do not have such a fear.
We believe that technology will not only make our lives easier, but it will also prevent itself from taking control of our lives. Arthur C. Clarke, the British science fiction writer and co-author of 2001 (with director Stanley Kubrick), warned us with Hal, but the lesson didn't stick. If anything, Hal (a metal box with an actor's voice-over) prompted even more research into AI and its uses to assist humans in their daily chores.
The modern world population, those who have easy and constant access to the Information Highway which gives us more information that we can absorb, has become essentially a race of stupid animals. As writer Stephen Vizinczey said, "We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them." Yet that culture wants machines that can think. think for them, we must assume.
Are we really stupid? The so-called post-modern world requires expertise in many fields, which in turn requires our best educated people to specialize in one field of study so intensively that they know less about most subjects than a high school dropout. We don't repair anything broken any more, we buy a new one. We don't fix broken equipment in our homes because we don't know how. We toss it and buy new.
We hope for casual conversations with colleagues because strangers might want to talk on subjects we know nothing about. Small talk about nothing of significance has risen to an art form.
We pollute our air with half a million chemicals, warming it unnecessarily with coal-fired electricity generating stations, drive huge SUVs that emit many times as much CO2 as smaller cars, and we drive as much as we can our vehicles that use fossil fuels rather than putting pressure on science to deliver alternative energy sources. And we know we are doing it. That's stupid.
But, as H. Mumford Jones said, we are suspicious of those who think, speak or write along any train of thought that differs from what our politicians, our industries and our pop scientists tell us is the right way to think. In fact, we often socially ostracize such people, cause them to lose their jobs or find ways to imprison them or otherwise silence them.
Perhaps we need Artificial Intelligence to compensate for the lack of intelligence we exhibit ourselves, in our personal and our public lives. Though our public lives are getting smaller as we turn our civic responsibilities over to politicians and their agencies, even to the extent of staying away from the polls on voting days.
Before you go thinking that I believe we are bound for hell in a handbasket or are dumbing ourselves down to the intelligence level of dirt, remember, we will soon be able to have transplants of brain tissue, whole brains or artificial brains.
We'll know it has already begun when we find a revival of the name Hal for newly born babies. Or C3PO.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to be able to think as adults, including the tools, resources and plan to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Albert Einstein: Behind The Scenes With Science's Superstar
Without doubt, Albert Einstein stands as the only true superstar of science. Most educated people admire Socrates, Plato, Copernicus, Isaac Newton and others, but no one can dim the glare of fame that has developed around the name Einstein. It's known in every culture of the modern world.
Mild mannered, shy and, like many highly intelligent people, socially fairly inept, Einstein was more at home with his equations in his study than with people.
Mention the name Einstein and the first thing that pops into everyone's mind is his most famous equation e = mc2 Yet Albert wasn't the first to publish the equation. That dubious honour goes to Austrian physicist Friedrich Hasenöhrl.
So why isn't Hasenöhrl a household name, like Einstein? Hasenöhrl failed to connect the equation with relativity. In other words, in Hasenöhrl's hands the equation went nowhere.
Speaking of relativity, Einstein didn't. He disliked the word. In his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies he never used the word "relativity," instead preferring to call it "invariance theory" because it looks the same to all observers, no matter where they may be. Nothing relative there.
Einstein had his own ideas about relativity. In his words: "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Albert was photogenic from his earliest photographs. Even in his elder years girls were attracted to his pictures. He described himself as a young man to his cousin, Elizabeth Ney, as having a "pale face, long hair, and a tiny start of a paunch, In addition an awkward gait, and a cigar in the mouth..But crooked legs and warts he does not have and so is quite handsome."
His first paper about special relativity, published in 1905, may have had undisclosed help from his first wife, Mileva. He wrote "I need my wife, she solves all the mathematical problems for me." Some believe Mileva even did the heavy lifting for the theory. She was known for her brilliant mind as well as for her beauty.
By 1914 his feelings toward her had changed. He ordered her to "renounce all personal relations with me, as far as maintaining them is not absolutely required for social reasons." Albert and his second wife, Elsa, didn't have children, but they stayed together until parted by death. His offspring, all with wife Mileva, all had problems with social or emotional adjustment.
Another term associated with Einstein is space-time continuum. That's not his either. The concept of time as the fourth dimension began with Hermann Minkowski, one of Albert's professors, who once called him a "lazy dog." That may have been because he skipped so many classes, borrowing notes from his friend Marcel Grossman so he could pass the tests.
Einstein scribbled many of his notes for his 1905 paper while working in the Swiss patent office as a clerk. He wasn't exactly a lazy clerk because his mind never stopped. He crammed his notes into his desk whenever his supervisor came by.
Though Einstein was a lifetime teetotaler, when he completed his 1905 paper he and wife Mileva drank themselves into a stupor, at least enough to mess with their own concepts of space and time.
Albert was unhappy with the consequences resulting from his theories. Though he believed them to be true, he didn't like what they forecast. He said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light, yet immediately after the Big Bang whatever was expanding must have gone faster than light for at least a short period of time in order that the universe be as big as it is today.
He also didn't care for what came of his work with quantum mechanics. Nothing, he thought, should be able to be in more than one place at a time, then choose to be in another place when someone wants to look at it. "God doesn't place dice with the universe." However, quantum mechanics predicts some pretty strange stuff that would have Newton rolling over in his grave. Black holes, an expanding universe and entangled particles among them.
Speaking of graves, Einstein didn't have one. The pathologist who autopsied Albert Einstein's body removed the brain and the eyes. The rest was cremated and the ashes spread in an "undisclosed location," at Einstein's request. Thomas Harvey kept Einstein's brain for years, taking it with him on his travels in Tupperware so he could show special friends.
In recent years Harvey sliced off and distributed more than a thousand portions of Einstein's brain for scientists to study. The results? He had a thinner than normal cerebral cortex, a greater density of neurons than normal, decreased "interneuronal conduction time," which might have allowed him to think faster. Within each parietal lobe he seemed to be missing the parietal operculium, which may have accounted for his having more interconnections in the inferior parietal region.
The inferior parietal lobes--the areas related to visual imagery and mathematical thinking--were about 15 percent wider than a control group. In the part of the brain that managed language and mathematical skills he had 73 percent more glial cells per neuron than average.
However, Einstein's total brain weight tipped the scales at a mere 2.7 pounds, notably less than the normal weight of 3.1 pounds, indicating "that a large brain is not a necessary condition for exceptional intellect," according to neuroscientist Sandra Witelson, of McMaster University, who did a major study of her portion of the brain.
Einstein's eyes had features that may have allowed him to see and understand things quicker than average.
Special relativity, the central theme of Einstein's 1905 paper, deals with objects moving at a constant speed. General relativity, the focus of his paper a decade later, deals with accelerating objects and it explains how gravity works.
At the time of Einstein's death in 1955, science had little evidence to support his theories, at least general relativity. However, so much evidence has accumulated in the past 50 years that it's now used to calculate the mass of galaxies and to locate distant planets by the way they bend light passing around them.
Finally, that famous picture of Albert with his tongue stretching down over his chin was taken on his 72nd birthday. A photographer asked him for a "birthday pose." That picture along with the rest of the Einstein iconography earn his estate an estimated US$18 million per year, making him the fifth highest paid dead celebrity in the world in 2007.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a handbook for parents and teachers who want to understand child development and to know what to teach kids and when.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary source: Discover, March 2008]
Mild mannered, shy and, like many highly intelligent people, socially fairly inept, Einstein was more at home with his equations in his study than with people.
Mention the name Einstein and the first thing that pops into everyone's mind is his most famous equation e = mc2 Yet Albert wasn't the first to publish the equation. That dubious honour goes to Austrian physicist Friedrich Hasenöhrl.
So why isn't Hasenöhrl a household name, like Einstein? Hasenöhrl failed to connect the equation with relativity. In other words, in Hasenöhrl's hands the equation went nowhere.
Speaking of relativity, Einstein didn't. He disliked the word. In his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies he never used the word "relativity," instead preferring to call it "invariance theory" because it looks the same to all observers, no matter where they may be. Nothing relative there.
Einstein had his own ideas about relativity. In his words: "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Albert was photogenic from his earliest photographs. Even in his elder years girls were attracted to his pictures. He described himself as a young man to his cousin, Elizabeth Ney, as having a "pale face, long hair, and a tiny start of a paunch, In addition an awkward gait, and a cigar in the mouth..But crooked legs and warts he does not have and so is quite handsome."
His first paper about special relativity, published in 1905, may have had undisclosed help from his first wife, Mileva. He wrote "I need my wife, she solves all the mathematical problems for me." Some believe Mileva even did the heavy lifting for the theory. She was known for her brilliant mind as well as for her beauty.
By 1914 his feelings toward her had changed. He ordered her to "renounce all personal relations with me, as far as maintaining them is not absolutely required for social reasons." Albert and his second wife, Elsa, didn't have children, but they stayed together until parted by death. His offspring, all with wife Mileva, all had problems with social or emotional adjustment.
Another term associated with Einstein is space-time continuum. That's not his either. The concept of time as the fourth dimension began with Hermann Minkowski, one of Albert's professors, who once called him a "lazy dog." That may have been because he skipped so many classes, borrowing notes from his friend Marcel Grossman so he could pass the tests.
Einstein scribbled many of his notes for his 1905 paper while working in the Swiss patent office as a clerk. He wasn't exactly a lazy clerk because his mind never stopped. He crammed his notes into his desk whenever his supervisor came by.
Though Einstein was a lifetime teetotaler, when he completed his 1905 paper he and wife Mileva drank themselves into a stupor, at least enough to mess with their own concepts of space and time.
Albert was unhappy with the consequences resulting from his theories. Though he believed them to be true, he didn't like what they forecast. He said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light, yet immediately after the Big Bang whatever was expanding must have gone faster than light for at least a short period of time in order that the universe be as big as it is today.
He also didn't care for what came of his work with quantum mechanics. Nothing, he thought, should be able to be in more than one place at a time, then choose to be in another place when someone wants to look at it. "God doesn't place dice with the universe." However, quantum mechanics predicts some pretty strange stuff that would have Newton rolling over in his grave. Black holes, an expanding universe and entangled particles among them.
Speaking of graves, Einstein didn't have one. The pathologist who autopsied Albert Einstein's body removed the brain and the eyes. The rest was cremated and the ashes spread in an "undisclosed location," at Einstein's request. Thomas Harvey kept Einstein's brain for years, taking it with him on his travels in Tupperware so he could show special friends.
In recent years Harvey sliced off and distributed more than a thousand portions of Einstein's brain for scientists to study. The results? He had a thinner than normal cerebral cortex, a greater density of neurons than normal, decreased "interneuronal conduction time," which might have allowed him to think faster. Within each parietal lobe he seemed to be missing the parietal operculium, which may have accounted for his having more interconnections in the inferior parietal region.
The inferior parietal lobes--the areas related to visual imagery and mathematical thinking--were about 15 percent wider than a control group. In the part of the brain that managed language and mathematical skills he had 73 percent more glial cells per neuron than average.
However, Einstein's total brain weight tipped the scales at a mere 2.7 pounds, notably less than the normal weight of 3.1 pounds, indicating "that a large brain is not a necessary condition for exceptional intellect," according to neuroscientist Sandra Witelson, of McMaster University, who did a major study of her portion of the brain.
Einstein's eyes had features that may have allowed him to see and understand things quicker than average.
Special relativity, the central theme of Einstein's 1905 paper, deals with objects moving at a constant speed. General relativity, the focus of his paper a decade later, deals with accelerating objects and it explains how gravity works.
At the time of Einstein's death in 1955, science had little evidence to support his theories, at least general relativity. However, so much evidence has accumulated in the past 50 years that it's now used to calculate the mass of galaxies and to locate distant planets by the way they bend light passing around them.
Finally, that famous picture of Albert with his tongue stretching down over his chin was taken on his 72nd birthday. A photographer asked him for a "birthday pose." That picture along with the rest of the Einstein iconography earn his estate an estimated US$18 million per year, making him the fifth highest paid dead celebrity in the world in 2007.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a handbook for parents and teachers who want to understand child development and to know what to teach kids and when.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary source: Discover, March 2008]
Monday, March 31, 2008
How You Can Make Your World A Better Place
If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.
- Norman Vincent Peale (1898 - 1993)
It's almost too simple to imagine that we live in a world we create for ourselves within our own mind. But it's a fact.
Few would disagree that there are real things in the real world, stuff made of matter and energy. The more scientifically savvy might say that we should include dark matter and dark energy. Fair enough.
How do we know so well that these things exist? We see, hear, taste, touch or smell them, or we see evidence of their existence such as we do when we detect that gamma rays have been somewhere we have a detector.
How do all these senses and cognitive processes work together? They're all conduits of information for the brain. The brain, in turn, acts on some of them by sending out messages through the same conduits to nerves and muscles so they will act according to the brain's wishes.
Work with me here while we try an analogy. Let's say that we substitute NASA's Mars Rover staff for the brain and the rovers themselves for the senses. We accept that the rovers are mechanical robots of sorts. They sense light and have other equipment that performs similar functions to our own senses.
The NASA staff act like the brain for the rover robots, receiving messages from the robots and sending messages back to the robots to act according to NASA's wishes.
What do the NASA people know about current conditions on Mars if the rovers refuse to send or receive signals? Nothing. What does your brain know about the real world around it if your senses refuse to send to or receive signals from your brain? Nothing. In the absence of input and the ability to send signals to their remote slaves, neither the brain nor the NASA staff know a thing.
Do you remember when the first rover landed on Mars and began to send signals back? Pretty exciting, as I recall. Not long after signals began to be exchanged, the rover captured an image that looked as if there was some sort of life form or manufactured object in the form of a face. Everyone at NASA and many who watched from home on their TV sets had a guess of what the "face" might be.
People had all sorts of guesses, including speculation about alien life on Mars, either then or in the past. You may have had an opinion as well because that's what our brain does, draw conclusions based on input. Using the same "sensory" input, or reality, many brains reached many different conclusions. Some of them were outright fanciful, if not borderline crazy.
Every time you see, hear, taste, touch or smell something, your brain reaches a conclusion about what's out there in the world around it. Other people's brains, given the exact same input, could easily reach different conclusions. What, then, is real?
"Real," to us, is what our brain says it is. Our brain doesn't give a whit what other brains think, it stays with its own conclusions. What it "saw" through its senses and concluded from the input is what is real to the brain.
That applies to many things in our lives. In truth, to almost everything. No two brains see the same reality. So what's real?
What's real is what your brain says is real. So why not, as Dr. Peale suggested, have your brain sense a bright and happy world?
That's not reality, you say. Some bad stuff goes on in the world. Just read a daily newspaper or watch television news to see some of it. Fair enough. But what is your source for good news, for happy and bright events that would more than counterbalance the bad stuff we get fed constantly? Most of us don't have that source for positive input or feedback.
So our feeble brains reach the only conclusion they can, based on what they have to work with. The world must be a terrible place with lots or dreadful stuff going on. Who could blame a brain for thinking that way?
With that as a starting point each day, what's to stop your brain from going deeper, from making more dire conclusions and predictions based on the same input day after day? Surely life would become depressing.
Some people couldn't cope with that level of depression, from constant, unrelenting negative input. They might turn to alcohol or drugs. They might fight with and kill a spouse. They might rob a convenience store when they need money to pay off bad debts or drug dealers. They might adopt any of numerous emotional illnesses we commonly call neurological disorders. They might commit suicide.
Who could blame a brain for that? It acts on what input it receives. If the input is all bad, constantly, maybe it eventually loses control. Maybe it causes its slave senses to turn a car into a lethal weapon or to rage at other drivers, co-workers or children.
You can see how this works. Fill your brain with what you want it to conclude about your world (it's world) and your brain will respond accordingly. It's that simple.
Fill it with good and helpful thoughts and the world will be good and helpful. You know how it works now. It's not deception. It's working with what you have around you.
A brighter and happier you will make those around you happier as well. Bonus. As they get happier, others they meet will be happier too and eventually it will spread farther. Around the world maybe. Another bonus.
But there's more. Call within the next 15 minutes and you can have your brain give itself a dose of feel-good neurotransmitters, like dopamine and serotonin.
All for the same low price. The time you took to read this.
Act now. Before you get to a newspaper or television.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have bright and happy children grow into happy and healthy adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Norman Vincent Peale (1898 - 1993)
It's almost too simple to imagine that we live in a world we create for ourselves within our own mind. But it's a fact.
Few would disagree that there are real things in the real world, stuff made of matter and energy. The more scientifically savvy might say that we should include dark matter and dark energy. Fair enough.
How do we know so well that these things exist? We see, hear, taste, touch or smell them, or we see evidence of their existence such as we do when we detect that gamma rays have been somewhere we have a detector.
How do all these senses and cognitive processes work together? They're all conduits of information for the brain. The brain, in turn, acts on some of them by sending out messages through the same conduits to nerves and muscles so they will act according to the brain's wishes.
Work with me here while we try an analogy. Let's say that we substitute NASA's Mars Rover staff for the brain and the rovers themselves for the senses. We accept that the rovers are mechanical robots of sorts. They sense light and have other equipment that performs similar functions to our own senses.
The NASA staff act like the brain for the rover robots, receiving messages from the robots and sending messages back to the robots to act according to NASA's wishes.
What do the NASA people know about current conditions on Mars if the rovers refuse to send or receive signals? Nothing. What does your brain know about the real world around it if your senses refuse to send to or receive signals from your brain? Nothing. In the absence of input and the ability to send signals to their remote slaves, neither the brain nor the NASA staff know a thing.
Do you remember when the first rover landed on Mars and began to send signals back? Pretty exciting, as I recall. Not long after signals began to be exchanged, the rover captured an image that looked as if there was some sort of life form or manufactured object in the form of a face. Everyone at NASA and many who watched from home on their TV sets had a guess of what the "face" might be.
People had all sorts of guesses, including speculation about alien life on Mars, either then or in the past. You may have had an opinion as well because that's what our brain does, draw conclusions based on input. Using the same "sensory" input, or reality, many brains reached many different conclusions. Some of them were outright fanciful, if not borderline crazy.
Every time you see, hear, taste, touch or smell something, your brain reaches a conclusion about what's out there in the world around it. Other people's brains, given the exact same input, could easily reach different conclusions. What, then, is real?
"Real," to us, is what our brain says it is. Our brain doesn't give a whit what other brains think, it stays with its own conclusions. What it "saw" through its senses and concluded from the input is what is real to the brain.
That applies to many things in our lives. In truth, to almost everything. No two brains see the same reality. So what's real?
What's real is what your brain says is real. So why not, as Dr. Peale suggested, have your brain sense a bright and happy world?
That's not reality, you say. Some bad stuff goes on in the world. Just read a daily newspaper or watch television news to see some of it. Fair enough. But what is your source for good news, for happy and bright events that would more than counterbalance the bad stuff we get fed constantly? Most of us don't have that source for positive input or feedback.
So our feeble brains reach the only conclusion they can, based on what they have to work with. The world must be a terrible place with lots or dreadful stuff going on. Who could blame a brain for thinking that way?
With that as a starting point each day, what's to stop your brain from going deeper, from making more dire conclusions and predictions based on the same input day after day? Surely life would become depressing.
Some people couldn't cope with that level of depression, from constant, unrelenting negative input. They might turn to alcohol or drugs. They might fight with and kill a spouse. They might rob a convenience store when they need money to pay off bad debts or drug dealers. They might adopt any of numerous emotional illnesses we commonly call neurological disorders. They might commit suicide.
Who could blame a brain for that? It acts on what input it receives. If the input is all bad, constantly, maybe it eventually loses control. Maybe it causes its slave senses to turn a car into a lethal weapon or to rage at other drivers, co-workers or children.
You can see how this works. Fill your brain with what you want it to conclude about your world (it's world) and your brain will respond accordingly. It's that simple.
Fill it with good and helpful thoughts and the world will be good and helpful. You know how it works now. It's not deception. It's working with what you have around you.
A brighter and happier you will make those around you happier as well. Bonus. As they get happier, others they meet will be happier too and eventually it will spread farther. Around the world maybe. Another bonus.
But there's more. Call within the next 15 minutes and you can have your brain give itself a dose of feel-good neurotransmitters, like dopamine and serotonin.
All for the same low price. The time you took to read this.
Act now. Before you get to a newspaper or television.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have bright and happy children grow into happy and healthy adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, March 18, 2007
A Glimpse Into The Mind of a Deep Thinker
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
- Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
I find the term "religion of solitude" a bit unsettling bcause of the multiple meanings of "religion." I choose to interpret the phrase to mean a deep respect for time to be alone.
Do people with powerful and original minds welcome and respect the time they spend alone because they appreciate the relief of not being comfortable in social settings for which they are unprepared due to their social immaturity? Despite how common it is for people with powerful and original minds to be underdeveloped socially, making them uncomfortable in many social settings even if they look comfortable and happy, I would answer "no" to the question.
A powerful and original mind needs time to think. Originality demands a solitary gestation period and birth.
Deep thinking requires time for the mind to mull over multitudes of information, experiences, thoughts and inspirations without the mental clutter of non-relevant thoughts about.
Though I have no scientific evidence to support this theory, I suspect that deep thinking activates many of the same parts of the brain that dreaming does, plus some others. Deep thinking is like travelling through a land you have never visited before, without a map and with the path ahead strewn with random thoughts and impressions. It would be frightening for the average person who has not experienced it. Much like a bad dream.
Deep thinking is not highly organized thought, at least in the beginning. Organized thought requires the same levels of restriction and discipline used in ordinary thought in everyday life. That kind of barrier forbids original thought. Deep thinking can't exist within barriers, at least those of the intellectual or emotional variety.
It requires a mind to float free of the body, of the rigours of daily life, of time and place. Yet to forge on through the morass of thought bits to find something unknown.
It requires a certain amount of courage to take such a mind trip because its results are often not welcomed by others when the thinker returns. Original thinking, almost by definition, is resisted if not outright rejected when first presented. Being original oftentimes forces the thinker into a lonely, "outsider" position. Yet that does not impair the interest of the creative mind from searching further. There is a certain mental "high" to discovery.
Deep thinking is hard work. Studies have shown that it requires 31 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference (69%) is easily made up because deep thinking tends to be constant whereas heavy lifting is usually intermittent. Great thinkers are more apt to be slim than pudgy due to the effort required in their thought.
Deep thinking is not for the faint of heart, or the faint of mind. It needs time alone to build something worth considering by the rest of the world.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light on some unusual parts of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
I find the term "religion of solitude" a bit unsettling bcause of the multiple meanings of "religion." I choose to interpret the phrase to mean a deep respect for time to be alone.
Do people with powerful and original minds welcome and respect the time they spend alone because they appreciate the relief of not being comfortable in social settings for which they are unprepared due to their social immaturity? Despite how common it is for people with powerful and original minds to be underdeveloped socially, making them uncomfortable in many social settings even if they look comfortable and happy, I would answer "no" to the question.
A powerful and original mind needs time to think. Originality demands a solitary gestation period and birth.
Deep thinking requires time for the mind to mull over multitudes of information, experiences, thoughts and inspirations without the mental clutter of non-relevant thoughts about.
Though I have no scientific evidence to support this theory, I suspect that deep thinking activates many of the same parts of the brain that dreaming does, plus some others. Deep thinking is like travelling through a land you have never visited before, without a map and with the path ahead strewn with random thoughts and impressions. It would be frightening for the average person who has not experienced it. Much like a bad dream.
Deep thinking is not highly organized thought, at least in the beginning. Organized thought requires the same levels of restriction and discipline used in ordinary thought in everyday life. That kind of barrier forbids original thought. Deep thinking can't exist within barriers, at least those of the intellectual or emotional variety.
It requires a mind to float free of the body, of the rigours of daily life, of time and place. Yet to forge on through the morass of thought bits to find something unknown.
It requires a certain amount of courage to take such a mind trip because its results are often not welcomed by others when the thinker returns. Original thinking, almost by definition, is resisted if not outright rejected when first presented. Being original oftentimes forces the thinker into a lonely, "outsider" position. Yet that does not impair the interest of the creative mind from searching further. There is a certain mental "high" to discovery.
Deep thinking is hard work. Studies have shown that it requires 31 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference (69%) is easily made up because deep thinking tends to be constant whereas heavy lifting is usually intermittent. Great thinkers are more apt to be slim than pudgy due to the effort required in their thought.
Deep thinking is not for the faint of heart, or the faint of mind. It needs time alone to build something worth considering by the rest of the world.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light on some unusual parts of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, March 15, 2007
If You Are Extreme, You Don't Matter
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
- Susan Sontag, author and critic (1933-2004)
(or, what I see is not what you painted)
This applies as much to writing or any other art as it does to painting or sculpture.
Sometimes it shocks me how a reader can find the least important part of something I have written, misinterpret it in such a way that in seems to mean the opposite of what I intended, then assail me for being such an idiot.
Name-calling aside, it is nearly impossible to write something that someone with malicious intent can't misinterpret and use against the writer. It's like tearing off someone's leg, then beating him to death with it.
When I write something of the length of this article, my overarching objective is to get readers to think about the topic and the overall effect the article has had on them. However, some people can't see big pictures. They can only see small pictures, like watching a movie by viewing only a few frames at a time.
Recent research suggests that the brain changes as we age so that older people are able to see the big picture of some situation, whereas younger people are more inclined to only be able to see individual parts of it. These are generalities, not absolutes. But they are part of human nature. Some people can't ever see big pictures, so things like wars, the United Nations, the AIDS pandemic and global warming mystify them.
If writing can be misinterpreted when every part of it should be laid out and clear, then individual actions and ill-considered words can easily be misinterpreted as well. A close friendship of many years might disappear when one friend does something the other doesn't understand, then misinterprets the motives of the first and makes the split.
What is the overall message of this article? Ignore the extremes of what people do, say or write and examine the vast majority of words and acts that comprise the middle section of their behaviours. If all behaviours were put onto a bell curve, we could look at the high parts in the middle and ignore the extremes at either end that might not be valid or typical anyway.
Each of us exhibits extreme behaviour once in a while. We deserve to be forgiven for it if we have been moderate most of the time.
I will ignore the cranks who hate this piece as well as those who want me to contribute to a sperm bank because of it to save something so special. I'm just an average person trying to get you to think about the mysterious world of human nature.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the mysteries of life a bit easier to understand.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Susan Sontag, author and critic (1933-2004)
(or, what I see is not what you painted)
This applies as much to writing or any other art as it does to painting or sculpture.
Sometimes it shocks me how a reader can find the least important part of something I have written, misinterpret it in such a way that in seems to mean the opposite of what I intended, then assail me for being such an idiot.
Name-calling aside, it is nearly impossible to write something that someone with malicious intent can't misinterpret and use against the writer. It's like tearing off someone's leg, then beating him to death with it.
When I write something of the length of this article, my overarching objective is to get readers to think about the topic and the overall effect the article has had on them. However, some people can't see big pictures. They can only see small pictures, like watching a movie by viewing only a few frames at a time.
Recent research suggests that the brain changes as we age so that older people are able to see the big picture of some situation, whereas younger people are more inclined to only be able to see individual parts of it. These are generalities, not absolutes. But they are part of human nature. Some people can't ever see big pictures, so things like wars, the United Nations, the AIDS pandemic and global warming mystify them.
If writing can be misinterpreted when every part of it should be laid out and clear, then individual actions and ill-considered words can easily be misinterpreted as well. A close friendship of many years might disappear when one friend does something the other doesn't understand, then misinterprets the motives of the first and makes the split.
What is the overall message of this article? Ignore the extremes of what people do, say or write and examine the vast majority of words and acts that comprise the middle section of their behaviours. If all behaviours were put onto a bell curve, we could look at the high parts in the middle and ignore the extremes at either end that might not be valid or typical anyway.
Each of us exhibits extreme behaviour once in a while. We deserve to be forgiven for it if we have been moderate most of the time.
I will ignore the cranks who hate this piece as well as those who want me to contribute to a sperm bank because of it to save something so special. I'm just an average person trying to get you to think about the mysterious world of human nature.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the mysteries of life a bit easier to understand.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, March 09, 2007
Sleep Can Affect Every Part of Your Life
[Sleep is] the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
- Thomas Dekker
No one knows for certain why we need sleep. Obviously we need to rest our body and our mind, as they can't go on indefinitely without aperiod for recuperation. Or can they?
It's not certain why even that is necessary. Within each cell of our bodies is, in effect, a biological engine. It consumes fuel and expels waste, just like a mechanical engine that we might expect to be able to work endlessly (except for periods of downtime for maintenance and replacement of parts).
Why sleep and not just rest? So far as anyone knows, essentially the same types of recuperation could take place whether we rest or sleep. In fact, some people who live in considerable pain have little more than a few minutes of light sleep each day. The cause of their pain may get worse, but it doesn't seem to be as a result of not sleeping.
Dreams have always presented opportunities for people to speculate as to their meaning. Can dreams be interpreted or not? Recent research suggests that dreams consist of parts of our brain at work without connection to other parts that deal directly with reality. That is, without the active participation of the frontal lobes that keep us on track as members of a functioning society.
For that reason, dreams have no connection with morals or societal norms, because these are known to be functions of the frontal lobes. In other words, dreams must be considered to be amoral. If we had only the same parts of our brain operating when we were awake as are in gear when we dream, we could likely be considered insane.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who lead active intellectual lives in their waking hours, ones requiring a great deal of thinking, may have relatively mild dreams. Those who have few mental demands during their waking hours tend to have more active dreams, like adventure or horror movies. This may be more the brain getting exercise or relaxing while dreaming, as needed, rather than doing something warranting our attention as prophesy or warning.
Several kinds of animals--sharks and dophins would be two examples--have two sides to their brains, as we do, but they must continue swimming day and night or they would die (either suffocating or drawning, depending on the animal). To accommodate the necessary brain function to continue swimming, they rest one side of their brain at a time, usually for a couple of hours each side before switching off the active side and switching on the sleeping side of the brain. Some migrating birds are known to do the same in flight.
Some people believe that humans do the same thing at certain times. Have you ever tried to adjust your car radio and drive at the same time? You can be in complete control of your car as it moves along the road, but also give attention to your fiddling with the radio until you find the station you want. Then you may have trouble remembering driving but you will retain full memory of what you did with the radio.
The two sides of our brain can therefore function separately, even if they do so seldom. Do we sleep with one side of the brain awake and dreaming while the other is asleep and resting? Research says no, there is no evidence of "sidedness" when we sleep or dream.
Dreams occur as deep in the middle of our brain as we can imagine.
Compared to the full size of our brain, very little is used when we dream. At this stage of research, no one knows what the rest of the brain is doing when the few small parts are dreaming.
The brain is easily the most mysterious and complex organ of the body.
Moreover, it almost totally controls the health of the rest of our body.
Even when we sleep and are not dreaming, it continually sends messages to the other body parts that control our autonomic systems, such as breathing and blood pumping. Cells get fed 24/7.
But cells can't work 24/7. Even while they continue to eat from blood supplies, they take rest while we sleep so they can perform when we are awake. Hair and nails grow more when we sleep than when we are awake. But these are the least sentient parts of our body.
As Dekker suggests, we may not know exactly how sleep works to keep us going, but our bodies don't work well indefinitely without enough of it.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic SocialProblems, striving to make sense of some of the mysteries of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas Dekker
No one knows for certain why we need sleep. Obviously we need to rest our body and our mind, as they can't go on indefinitely without aperiod for recuperation. Or can they?
It's not certain why even that is necessary. Within each cell of our bodies is, in effect, a biological engine. It consumes fuel and expels waste, just like a mechanical engine that we might expect to be able to work endlessly (except for periods of downtime for maintenance and replacement of parts).
Why sleep and not just rest? So far as anyone knows, essentially the same types of recuperation could take place whether we rest or sleep. In fact, some people who live in considerable pain have little more than a few minutes of light sleep each day. The cause of their pain may get worse, but it doesn't seem to be as a result of not sleeping.
Dreams have always presented opportunities for people to speculate as to their meaning. Can dreams be interpreted or not? Recent research suggests that dreams consist of parts of our brain at work without connection to other parts that deal directly with reality. That is, without the active participation of the frontal lobes that keep us on track as members of a functioning society.
For that reason, dreams have no connection with morals or societal norms, because these are known to be functions of the frontal lobes. In other words, dreams must be considered to be amoral. If we had only the same parts of our brain operating when we were awake as are in gear when we dream, we could likely be considered insane.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who lead active intellectual lives in their waking hours, ones requiring a great deal of thinking, may have relatively mild dreams. Those who have few mental demands during their waking hours tend to have more active dreams, like adventure or horror movies. This may be more the brain getting exercise or relaxing while dreaming, as needed, rather than doing something warranting our attention as prophesy or warning.
Several kinds of animals--sharks and dophins would be two examples--have two sides to their brains, as we do, but they must continue swimming day and night or they would die (either suffocating or drawning, depending on the animal). To accommodate the necessary brain function to continue swimming, they rest one side of their brain at a time, usually for a couple of hours each side before switching off the active side and switching on the sleeping side of the brain. Some migrating birds are known to do the same in flight.
Some people believe that humans do the same thing at certain times. Have you ever tried to adjust your car radio and drive at the same time? You can be in complete control of your car as it moves along the road, but also give attention to your fiddling with the radio until you find the station you want. Then you may have trouble remembering driving but you will retain full memory of what you did with the radio.
The two sides of our brain can therefore function separately, even if they do so seldom. Do we sleep with one side of the brain awake and dreaming while the other is asleep and resting? Research says no, there is no evidence of "sidedness" when we sleep or dream.
Dreams occur as deep in the middle of our brain as we can imagine.
Compared to the full size of our brain, very little is used when we dream. At this stage of research, no one knows what the rest of the brain is doing when the few small parts are dreaming.
The brain is easily the most mysterious and complex organ of the body.
Moreover, it almost totally controls the health of the rest of our body.
Even when we sleep and are not dreaming, it continually sends messages to the other body parts that control our autonomic systems, such as breathing and blood pumping. Cells get fed 24/7.
But cells can't work 24/7. Even while they continue to eat from blood supplies, they take rest while we sleep so they can perform when we are awake. Hair and nails grow more when we sleep than when we are awake. But these are the least sentient parts of our body.
As Dekker suggests, we may not know exactly how sleep works to keep us going, but our bodies don't work well indefinitely without enough of it.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic SocialProblems, striving to make sense of some of the mysteries of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, February 19, 2007
Can Cancer Be cured Without Drugs?
All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming data. And you have to be really self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data.
- William Gibson, science fiction writer (1948- )
What is he talking about? Does Gibson mean prescribed drugs or illegal drugs?
He means both. Medical doctors know and everyone else should know that all medical science does is to help the body do what it doesn't do for itself. Furthermore, the brain controls virtually all activity in terms of protecting the body from invaders and ridding the body of invaders that manage to pass its primary defences.
Most drugs that a doctor prescribes tweak some part of the brain to get it to do what it should have done without the drug, but did not. Usually this involves the immune system, but often it involves other organs that have not produced enough of some kind of chemical to defend the body against something that doesn't belong inside of us.
Anyone with enough control over their own brain should be able to coax the brain to do what it should do without taking medication. The catch is that most of us do not have this much control. Some people can control their heart rate and blood pressure, for example, while most of us cannot.
Could we control cancer within our own bodies? Some say yes, but medical science won't admit to anything that almost everyone can't do without much effort. In other words, we may have the power within us to cure our own cancer, but since everyone can't tap into that power (and the power itself does not require any pharmaceuticals) it's unlikely that we will learn much about this power in the near future.
When it comes to illegal drugs, the mind-altering kind, they simply provide an excess of one or more chemicals that the brain provides for naturally. Again, anyone with enough knowledge and control of their own brain could produce the same kinds of effects that mind-altering drugs do. Few do. Pharmaceutical companies will suppress or vigorously oppose any initiative to teach us how to produce our own versions of what they sell for profit.
Runners and those who do strenuous exercises develop a state known as "runner's high" which mimics the effects of marijuana and other feel-good drugs. Nuns deep in prayer to God (a state likened to a trance) have been found to have brain activity in the reward centre, meaning that the brain has provided the kind of relaxation and feeling of well-being that some drugs give. Their communion with God is a natural high.
It is possible to make our own brain work for us to do what it hasn't necessarily been required to do before. That requires considerable study and practice.
This is not to suggest that doctor-prescribed rugs have no value. On the contrary, prescribed medications do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves, given our present circumstances. Most of us don't know how to use our brain effectively to make ourselves healthy.
Gibson wonders if we should be "satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data," meaning in an artificial way by taking drugs. It might serve us better to learn how to tweak our own brains to get them to provide the full services for which they were designed and are capable.
On the other hand, Gibson, American-born but living in Canada for nearly four decades, best known for his novel Neuromancer , as a science fiction writer might be suggesting that we take our natural brain abilities and enhance them ourselves to become something more than we are now.
Coiner of the term cyberspace and father of the cyberpunk subgenre of scinece fiction, Gibson knows that our brain is the least understood and most underutilized part of our body. He sees its potential but doesn't want that potential destroyed or depreciated by drugs.
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet," he said. The future won't become widely distributed by our increasing dependence on drugs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the potential of the future a little clearer than it is with drugs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
- William Gibson, science fiction writer (1948- )
What is he talking about? Does Gibson mean prescribed drugs or illegal drugs?
He means both. Medical doctors know and everyone else should know that all medical science does is to help the body do what it doesn't do for itself. Furthermore, the brain controls virtually all activity in terms of protecting the body from invaders and ridding the body of invaders that manage to pass its primary defences.
Most drugs that a doctor prescribes tweak some part of the brain to get it to do what it should have done without the drug, but did not. Usually this involves the immune system, but often it involves other organs that have not produced enough of some kind of chemical to defend the body against something that doesn't belong inside of us.
Anyone with enough control over their own brain should be able to coax the brain to do what it should do without taking medication. The catch is that most of us do not have this much control. Some people can control their heart rate and blood pressure, for example, while most of us cannot.
Could we control cancer within our own bodies? Some say yes, but medical science won't admit to anything that almost everyone can't do without much effort. In other words, we may have the power within us to cure our own cancer, but since everyone can't tap into that power (and the power itself does not require any pharmaceuticals) it's unlikely that we will learn much about this power in the near future.
When it comes to illegal drugs, the mind-altering kind, they simply provide an excess of one or more chemicals that the brain provides for naturally. Again, anyone with enough knowledge and control of their own brain could produce the same kinds of effects that mind-altering drugs do. Few do. Pharmaceutical companies will suppress or vigorously oppose any initiative to teach us how to produce our own versions of what they sell for profit.
Runners and those who do strenuous exercises develop a state known as "runner's high" which mimics the effects of marijuana and other feel-good drugs. Nuns deep in prayer to God (a state likened to a trance) have been found to have brain activity in the reward centre, meaning that the brain has provided the kind of relaxation and feeling of well-being that some drugs give. Their communion with God is a natural high.
It is possible to make our own brain work for us to do what it hasn't necessarily been required to do before. That requires considerable study and practice.
This is not to suggest that doctor-prescribed rugs have no value. On the contrary, prescribed medications do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves, given our present circumstances. Most of us don't know how to use our brain effectively to make ourselves healthy.
Gibson wonders if we should be "satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data," meaning in an artificial way by taking drugs. It might serve us better to learn how to tweak our own brains to get them to provide the full services for which they were designed and are capable.
On the other hand, Gibson, American-born but living in Canada for nearly four decades, best known for his novel Neuromancer , as a science fiction writer might be suggesting that we take our natural brain abilities and enhance them ourselves to become something more than we are now.
Coiner of the term cyberspace and father of the cyberpunk subgenre of scinece fiction, Gibson knows that our brain is the least understood and most underutilized part of our body. He sees its potential but doesn't want that potential destroyed or depreciated by drugs.
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet," he said. The future won't become widely distributed by our increasing dependence on drugs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the potential of the future a little clearer than it is with drugs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
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