In the next few months, you're going to hear a lot about a couple of very recent studies exploring how psilocybin mushrooms affect your brain after you've eaten them. It'll appear in all the same old places: NY Times, Scientific American, CNN.com. So I figured I'd beat them to the punch and explain what researchers have learned, and what it might mean.
Humankind's relationship with the psilocybin mushroom has been hypothesized to date back to the dawn of its transition into what we now understand as consciousness. It is speculated that the cubensis mushroom left its spore-prints on religion, modern technologies, philosophy, art culture, medicine, music, and even on science. It has been a sorted relationship, one in which human interest has reached peaks and valleys, yet the bond remains even after tens of thousands of years. The broaching of the 21st century has given way to a reinvigoration of that relationship. The thrill is not gone, and today's reincarnation of that bond has emerged most pronouncedly in medicine, and now science. A labyrinth of scientific questions lay before mankind now, as he attempts to understand the mushroom in a physical sense, and we can expect these first few reports to soon multiply rapidly. Many of us will digest these reports with tempered scrutiny of the reduction of so profound an experience to a physical level, but it is important to remember that all things exist in many forms, across many planes of reality. So as we encounter these reports, let us keep an open mind and an open heart.
In the first report, researchers wanted to know what regions of the brain undergo a change in activity when a person has eaten mushrooms -- or, in the case of this experiment, when a person has had psilocybin injected into their bloodstream. To observe changes in brain activity, they used a number of brain imaging techniques, including a technique called BOLD imaging, in which a functional MRI is used to visualize where oxygen is being consumed in the brain. Increases in oxygen metabolism indicate increased activity, while decreases in oxygen metabolism indicates decreased activity. What the researchers was found was somewhat surprising.
Soon after injecting the subjects with psilocybin, the researchers observed DECREASES in brain activity in brain areas that mediate some of the most basic and most complex human behaviors. Among basic brain regions where either technique observed decreased activity include the subthalamic nuclei (for the movement and coordination of both physical and mental activity), the putamen (learning about categories/rules, regulating dopamine, and coordinating motor activity) and the hypothalamus (coordination of basic survival functions, like breathing). Among higher brain regions whose activity was decreased by psilocybin were areas in the prefrontal cortex, which are evolutionarily newer brain regions responsible for higher cognition and emotional regulation. In sum, it appears that psilocybin decreases activity in parts of the brain responsible rules, inhibition, and movement.
Let's look into these structures a little more. Together, the subthalamic nuceli and the putamen work together with other brain structures to coordinate movement -- both in the body and the mind. More specifically, they contribute to a circuit that serves as something of a gain control for those movements -- information about moving comes in, and these structures help make sure that that motion is smooth and controlled, those thoughts organized and easily processed. These are the structures affected in Parkinson's disease, in which the loss of gain control causes uncoordinated movement (or trembling) and, eventually, uncoordinated thoughts (dementia). By decreasing the activity of these brain structures, one's thoughts become less pared down. That is to say, they are not made to be shrunken, simplified, and coordinated for easy use. That is to say, they are the raw, uncut version of thought patterns.
By allowing thoughts to be perceived in their unprocessed and complete form, the individual gets information that is typically streamlined for the sake of accessibility. In day-to-day life, simplifying information is incredibly useful. It allows us to use our thoughts with great efficiency. However, what it offers in ease of use, that process subtracts a lot of potentially important and life-changing information. And as we get older, and the process of reducing ideas gets more and more refined, we lose access to more and more information. Based on the findings in this study that relate to the subthalamic nuclei and putamen, it could be hypothesized that psilocybin gives us access to thought information that repetition masks from us.
The putamen also plays a part in how we learn. In particular, it contributes to the process of learning rules and categories. By regulating dopamine, the putamen helps to send reinforcement signals that indicate when something is governed by a rule or falls under a category. In the case of a stop sign, the putamen would send a reinforcing dopamine signal that stopping a red octagon is a good thing. Or, for example, the first time you went to a BestBuy, the putamen would help you learn that people in blue polo shirts can help you find what you need. On a higher cognitive scale, the putamen would help you learn more abstract rules, like people can be categorized by the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. By decreasing the activity of the putamen, incoming information is less subject to rules. People are no longer placed into categories, and therefore, one is free to experience the humanity of others without learned rules that separate them, and this might explain the sense of unity often felt during mushroom experiences. Moreover, the general decrease in rule learning allows information to be experienced in their full and boundless form. Hence, the idea that mushrooms dissolve boundaries.
The evolutionarily newest part of the brain is considered to be the prefrontal cortex, and it too showed a decrease in activity after psilocybin was administered. The prefrontal cortex literally sits on top of all of the other older brain regions, and from there it controls the output of many of them. For example, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for regulating emotional output. Emotion signals originate from older brain regions, and, by using experiential information, the prefrontal cortex can control how much of that actually gets turned into behavior. People with a damaged prefrontal cortex have issues with impulse control. The prefronal cortex also helps control memory by filtering out "unimportant" memories until they are absolutely necessary. By decreasing the activity of the prefrontal cortex, emotions and memories are free to arise without inhibition. That is to say that, feelings and memories can be felt in their fullest and most organic, albeit somewhat illogical, form.
Together, we see a profile wherein psilocybin decreases the activity of filtering mechanisms in our brain. These filtering mechanisms are crucial for maximizing our ability to survive and interact with an ever-changing and dynamic environment. However, a filter still reduces the information coming in, and oftentimes filters out information that could be important to things NOT related to survival -- things like spiritual fulfillment and perspective and compassion and understanding and self-awareness. And as we get older, these filtering mechanisms become more and more refined, filtering out more and more information unrelated to survival. Psilocybin appears to temporarily deactivate those filtering mechanisms to allow us to experience the world and ourselves in their uncensored form, and apply previously inaccessible information to ourselves. Also, by decreasing the coordination of physical movement, one is forced to sit and experience these changes -- as Terence McKenna would say, be "nailed to the ground".
It is particularly interesting that these researchers observed no INCREASES in brain activity. One would assume that diminishing the activity of regulatory brain regions would result in an increase in the regions that they regulate. However, the lack of increased activity suggests rather that psilocybin allows an individual to experience the content of energy-producing regions of the brain (those that generate memories and emotions and process incoming information energy) without limiting and simplifying that energy. In short, it widens the reducing valve (hey that's the name of my blog!).
While the neuroanatomical and neural systems perspective on these findings is very interesting and hints at a biological understanding of what psilocybin does, let us take a wider look at the implications of those conclusions. If indeed psychedelic mushrooms remove filtering and reducing mechanisms from the brain, to allow the ingester to experience their external and internal reality in their raw and unprocessed form, if they allow emotions and memories to be experienced in an organic and uninhibited manner, if they dissolve the boundaries placed on our thought patterns by years of learning and experience, then who is it that is experiencing that raw unfiltered information? And who was it that was experiencing the filtered form of that information before the mushrooms? And who is that person who experiences a new filter after the mushroom experience? Is they all the same observer?
The mushroom experience changes a person, even after the mushroom has left a person's body. After the mushroom leaves your body, your brain presumably regains its normal function of filtering out information, repressing emotion and memories, and coordinating thoughts into nice and easy portions. But something is different. Perhaps some of the old rules that separate people and behaviors into categories, enforced by the putamen, don't seem to apply anymore. Perhaps some of the thoughts and thought patterns that the subthalamic nuclei and putamen made so manageable and simple no longer seem so simple, but are wildly complex and beautiful. Perhaps emotions and memories that had been repressed or diminished by the prefrontal cortex flow more easily into consciousness. But who is that observer who changes?
I'm not sure that science will ever get to the point of explaining WHO is observing all of this reality and all of the self. That's pretty friggen awesome to me. Is that the soul? Is that god? Who knows? But it certainly seems pretty special.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Political translator
Any time you hear a politician say the word "jobs", there is a very good chance that you are being manipulated.
For example, “Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly. Americans rightfully expect to be fairly compensated 4 their work. I’m optimistic that we can reach compromise on PROTECT IP in coming week.”
But beware, even when you don't hear the word "jobs", you may still be inundated with half-baked monkey shit:
“Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy.”
And somewhere in the United States, where people do not respect American citizens, criminals who do nothing but peddle fetishized objects and services are smugly watching how the United States decided that it was not even worth debating how to stop criminals on their own turf from draining our economy by outsourcing American JOBS (am I manipulating you?) overseas.
Basically, what these a-holes are telling us isn't fair to the companies that laid off American citizens, and sent their jobs to India or China or wherever else, that those same citizens don't want to pay for those products, and that by not paying they are costing jobs.
What the fuck is going on?
For example, “Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly. Americans rightfully expect to be fairly compensated 4 their work. I’m optimistic that we can reach compromise on PROTECT IP in coming week.”
But beware, even when you don't hear the word "jobs", you may still be inundated with half-baked monkey shit:
“Somewhere in China today, in Russia today, and in many other countries that do not respect American intellectual property, criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy.”
And somewhere in the United States, where people do not respect American citizens, criminals who do nothing but peddle fetishized objects and services are smugly watching how the United States decided that it was not even worth debating how to stop criminals on their own turf from draining our economy by outsourcing American JOBS (am I manipulating you?) overseas.
Basically, what these a-holes are telling us isn't fair to the companies that laid off American citizens, and sent their jobs to India or China or wherever else, that those same citizens don't want to pay for those products, and that by not paying they are costing jobs.
What the fuck is going on?
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Bad Science and Cigarettes
I've been volunteering at this school in Philadelphia, helping middle school kids with these projects that they are preparing for a science fair. It's been a really interesting experience working with two students who I've been helping. As I was trying to motivate them to keep working and trying to teach them a couple things, one of the boys said that he didn't want to learn because "it would ruin his reputation." I've given a lot of thought to that over the last couple of weeks, wondering to myself why a young person should have an interest in their own education. Oftentimes the material is uninteresting, the teachers uninspiring, and for students in low-income areas there is little emphasis on the kind of learning that is done in a classroom. I myself have had my reservations about "learning" throughout my schooling, and wrestled with what to say to a kid who lives in an environment where book smarts are considered a demerit to one's peers.
What I've come to realize in these last couple of weeks of thinking about this, students such as the one I'm writing about should be encouraged to place a priority on learning how to THINK, rather than always emphasizing the importance of knowledge and repetition. While specific information must be learned and practiced, an emphasis on thinking and asking questions and analyzing information should always remain the top priority. Those latter skills apply in all situations, and I am reminded of this by a little article that was published last week in which researchers discovered that the tobacco company Philip Morris had tweaked data on the harmfulness of cigarette additives to make it seem as though they were not harmful.
The purpose of the study was to determine whether flavor additives -- a whole gamut that included, among others, menthol, vanilla, and molasses -- made a cigarette more harmful to one's health. To determine this, they used three different cigarettes: one that was entirely tobacco, one that was partially tobacco and partially additive, and one that was almost entirely additives. Then they measured a number of metrics of toxicity, including bacterial mutagenicity screen (Ames assay), a mammalian cell cytotoxicity assay (neutral red uptake), determination of smoke chemical constituents, and a 90-day nose-only smoke inhalation study in rats.
They report their findings as follows:
"The results of the smoke chemistry studies indicated a reduction in the majority of the smoke constituents and a few isolated instances of increases when compared to the control cigarettes. These smoke chemistry changes, while statistically significant, were not supported by any significant alteration in the biological effects of cigarette smoke normally seen with the bacterial mutagenicity assay, cytotoxicity assay or subchronic inhalation study."
Basically, they report no differences in the harmful effects of adding flavor enhancers to the cigarettes. That's at least what the information says.
If you look closer at the study, you may ask some questions. One of these questions might be: how does having less tobacco in the experimental cigarettes (which are partially or almost entirely made of additive), compared to the control cigarette (which is 100% tobacco), effect the experiment?
If you asked that question, you would find that it did have an effect, and it skewed their data. All of the cigarettes produced the same amount of smoke, but, because there was less tobacco in the additive cigarettes, they gave off less nicotine, and they also created MORE particulate matter in the smoke.
So let's say you're testing some new genetically-engineered extra pulpy oranges for toxicity, and you have three oranges: one that's a real orange (it has 10 units pulp), one that is half-and-half (it has 25 units of pulp), and one that is the pulpy mutant (it has 40 units of pulp). The oranges are all the same size, and you find that the more pulp the orange has, the more flavor it has.
In your toxicity study, you find that 40% of the animals that eat the full mutant get cancer, 20% that eat the half-and-half get cancer, and 10% of the one's that eat the wild-type orange get cancer, but rather than report that 80% of the animals get cancer, you decide to "normalize" the data to the amount of pulp, stating that, since we're trying to make ultra-pulpy oranges, its the pulp -- not the size or flavor -- of the orange that matters. And when you normalize the data by dividing the amount of pulp by the amount of cancer (10/0.1 = 100 , 20/0.2 = 100 , 20/0.4 = 100) you find that there's no difference between the oranges, and therefore the genetically modified orange is no more harmful than a wild-type one. Had you "normalized" the data to size or the amount of flavor -- arguably factors that matter MORE to orange-eaters -- you would have found large increases in the amount of harm caused by the genetically modified orange.
That's basically what Philip Morris did. Instead of normalizing their toxicity data to factors that matter to smokers -- nicotine content and smoke delivery -- they normalized their data to the Total Particulate Matter in the smoke, stating that what smokers really love is the tar. And since the additive cigarettes had more Total Particulate Matter, their data showed no differences in the toxicity caused by the additive.
So the ability to ask questions is as important as the ability to understand the answer, because there are people everywhere trying to deceive you with information. Especially people who have no concern for your well-being. You would think that science would be a safe place, but it's not. Take a look at this email record that they found from one of the principal investigators on the study.
The name of the journal, by the way, was "Food and Chemical Toxicology", a peer-reviewed journal. It turns out that one of the editors was being paid by Philip Morris.
Kids need education for their own safety in this world where information is used on a regular basis to deceive us.
What I've come to realize in these last couple of weeks of thinking about this, students such as the one I'm writing about should be encouraged to place a priority on learning how to THINK, rather than always emphasizing the importance of knowledge and repetition. While specific information must be learned and practiced, an emphasis on thinking and asking questions and analyzing information should always remain the top priority. Those latter skills apply in all situations, and I am reminded of this by a little article that was published last week in which researchers discovered that the tobacco company Philip Morris had tweaked data on the harmfulness of cigarette additives to make it seem as though they were not harmful.
The purpose of the study was to determine whether flavor additives -- a whole gamut that included, among others, menthol, vanilla, and molasses -- made a cigarette more harmful to one's health. To determine this, they used three different cigarettes: one that was entirely tobacco, one that was partially tobacco and partially additive, and one that was almost entirely additives. Then they measured a number of metrics of toxicity, including bacterial mutagenicity screen (Ames assay), a mammalian cell cytotoxicity assay (neutral red uptake), determination of smoke chemical constituents, and a 90-day nose-only smoke inhalation study in rats.
They report their findings as follows:
"The results of the smoke chemistry studies indicated a reduction in the majority of the smoke constituents and a few isolated instances of increases when compared to the control cigarettes. These smoke chemistry changes, while statistically significant, were not supported by any significant alteration in the biological effects of cigarette smoke normally seen with the bacterial mutagenicity assay, cytotoxicity assay or subchronic inhalation study."
Basically, they report no differences in the harmful effects of adding flavor enhancers to the cigarettes. That's at least what the information says.
If you look closer at the study, you may ask some questions. One of these questions might be: how does having less tobacco in the experimental cigarettes (which are partially or almost entirely made of additive), compared to the control cigarette (which is 100% tobacco), effect the experiment?
If you asked that question, you would find that it did have an effect, and it skewed their data. All of the cigarettes produced the same amount of smoke, but, because there was less tobacco in the additive cigarettes, they gave off less nicotine, and they also created MORE particulate matter in the smoke.
So let's say you're testing some new genetically-engineered extra pulpy oranges for toxicity, and you have three oranges: one that's a real orange (it has 10 units pulp), one that is half-and-half (it has 25 units of pulp), and one that is the pulpy mutant (it has 40 units of pulp). The oranges are all the same size, and you find that the more pulp the orange has, the more flavor it has.
In your toxicity study, you find that 40% of the animals that eat the full mutant get cancer, 20% that eat the half-and-half get cancer, and 10% of the one's that eat the wild-type orange get cancer, but rather than report that 80% of the animals get cancer, you decide to "normalize" the data to the amount of pulp, stating that, since we're trying to make ultra-pulpy oranges, its the pulp -- not the size or flavor -- of the orange that matters. And when you normalize the data by dividing the amount of pulp by the amount of cancer (10/0.1 = 100 , 20/0.2 = 100 , 20/0.4 = 100) you find that there's no difference between the oranges, and therefore the genetically modified orange is no more harmful than a wild-type one. Had you "normalized" the data to size or the amount of flavor -- arguably factors that matter MORE to orange-eaters -- you would have found large increases in the amount of harm caused by the genetically modified orange.
That's basically what Philip Morris did. Instead of normalizing their toxicity data to factors that matter to smokers -- nicotine content and smoke delivery -- they normalized their data to the Total Particulate Matter in the smoke, stating that what smokers really love is the tar. And since the additive cigarettes had more Total Particulate Matter, their data showed no differences in the toxicity caused by the additive.
So the ability to ask questions is as important as the ability to understand the answer, because there are people everywhere trying to deceive you with information. Especially people who have no concern for your well-being. You would think that science would be a safe place, but it's not. Take a look at this email record that they found from one of the principal investigators on the study.
The name of the journal, by the way, was "Food and Chemical Toxicology", a peer-reviewed journal. It turns out that one of the editors was being paid by Philip Morris.
Kids need education for their own safety in this world where information is used on a regular basis to deceive us.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
On SOPA/PIPA
Dear government officials,
I completely support measures to stop artists -- a loose term, considering how much crap is put out by "artists" (see: Nikki Minaj or Hangover 2) -- from having their intellectual and creative property stolen. However, with all the brainpower in congress, it shouldn't be hard to develop a better solution than this one proposed by the very corporations that wish to maintain control over a consumer population. I do not support giving corporate entities or governing bodies any more control than they have. The AFI Top 100 film "Network" (a real piece of art) describes how television, once co-opted, became an information transmission device owned by and used for corporate entities -- he who controls the device that transmits information, gets to decide what information is transmitted and how. Now it seems the same thing is happening to the internet. For the sake of children growing up in this internet world, let's let them develop in whatever semblance of freedom of information remains, and not have their minds taken over by whatever corporate body that wishes to hook them on products and ideas. For once, do something in the best interest of the real PEOPLE, and not the corporate individual.
Thank you,
MattYoung
P.S. Let's seriously find a better way to stop online piracy, though. The way I see it, Napster and torrents have basically given way to the popularization of crap. Basically, if people actually had to pay for that Rebecca Black song, or for whatever refried crap Jennifer Lopez was putting out, THEY WOULDN'T BUY IT, and we wouldn't be celebrating that garbage in any way. You know what the top two downloaded movies on PirateBay are? Real Steel and Johnny English Reborn. This whole piracy movement has retarded us, because we no longer have to choose where we put our money, and so we just fill our heads with whatever crap is loudest, shiniest, most colorful, and most talked about. It used to be that crappy product came out, died, and disintegrated back into the Earth (or into $1 bins or garage sales). Now, crappy product lives on into eternity and sometimes actually becomes HUGE or a meme (see: Rebecca Black). Let's stop the online pirates from giving life to crap.
P.S.S. In honor of today's protest against SOPA/PIPA, here's a clip from Network where Ned Beatty describes how information transmission, democracy, foreign relations, and domestic policy work. Cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. Wouldn't surprise me if corporate heads weren't blowing up like this today. Go ahead and click forward to 1:00 to get it rolling.
I completely support measures to stop artists -- a loose term, considering how much crap is put out by "artists" (see: Nikki Minaj or Hangover 2) -- from having their intellectual and creative property stolen. However, with all the brainpower in congress, it shouldn't be hard to develop a better solution than this one proposed by the very corporations that wish to maintain control over a consumer population. I do not support giving corporate entities or governing bodies any more control than they have. The AFI Top 100 film "Network" (a real piece of art) describes how television, once co-opted, became an information transmission device owned by and used for corporate entities -- he who controls the device that transmits information, gets to decide what information is transmitted and how. Now it seems the same thing is happening to the internet. For the sake of children growing up in this internet world, let's let them develop in whatever semblance of freedom of information remains, and not have their minds taken over by whatever corporate body that wishes to hook them on products and ideas. For once, do something in the best interest of the real PEOPLE, and not the corporate individual.
Thank you,
MattYoung
P.S. Let's seriously find a better way to stop online piracy, though. The way I see it, Napster and torrents have basically given way to the popularization of crap. Basically, if people actually had to pay for that Rebecca Black song, or for whatever refried crap Jennifer Lopez was putting out, THEY WOULDN'T BUY IT, and we wouldn't be celebrating that garbage in any way. You know what the top two downloaded movies on PirateBay are? Real Steel and Johnny English Reborn. This whole piracy movement has retarded us, because we no longer have to choose where we put our money, and so we just fill our heads with whatever crap is loudest, shiniest, most colorful, and most talked about. It used to be that crappy product came out, died, and disintegrated back into the Earth (or into $1 bins or garage sales). Now, crappy product lives on into eternity and sometimes actually becomes HUGE or a meme (see: Rebecca Black). Let's stop the online pirates from giving life to crap.
P.S.S. In honor of today's protest against SOPA/PIPA, here's a clip from Network where Ned Beatty describes how information transmission, democracy, foreign relations, and domestic policy work. Cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. Wouldn't surprise me if corporate heads weren't blowing up like this today. Go ahead and click forward to 1:00 to get it rolling.
Network Speech from Thomas Beatty on Vimeo.
Monday, November 21, 2011
What Do You Believe?
Early humans found truth in the idea of spirits. Individual conscious spirits, if only invisible to the eye, in some way determined the outcome of natural interactions, or were responsible for their existence altogether. The sky and water and food and grass and animals and people -- they all were controlled or created to some extent by invisible spirits. When people behaved in a certain way, or experienced a string of good or bad luck, it was believed to be due to the intervention of spirits. The universe in its known entirety was believed to be created by spirits.
Later, as these spirit cultures waned and monotheistic cultures arose, the idea of spirits persisted -- only now, all things could be explained by a single spirit, rather than many different ones. The universe was believed to be created by one god. People were believed to be controlled by that god, and the outcomes in their lives to be controlled only through prayer to that god.
The Enlightenment in the middle ages weakened the popularity of spiritual cults, and rational minds whose understanding of truth came from what they could observe rather than a belief in an omnipotent and omnipresent deity, paved the way for new cult of Truth: empiricism. Under this new philosophy of empiricism, technology began to grow rapidly as people tried to discover ways to increase the scope of their ability to observe, and to test the merit of their conclusions about those observations. Empiricism changed everything, including religion, and the cult of empiricism only grew as its technologies and observations gave way to an improved quality of life. The merits of empiricism should be no surprise, as it is a system honed to operate in the physical world in which we expend the majority of our conscious energy.
Now, while it is easy to point out the great benefits that the cult of empiricism has brought about, looking deeper reveals two problems. The first, is that it has driven us more and more exclusively into the empirical world. In today's empirical culture, the overwhelming majority of things that are worth conscious energy are those things that can be observed or measured. This empirical bias has led to the rise in voyeurism, saturation of "news" coverage, obsession with celebrity and fame, and a fundamental belief in statistical analysis that undermines its own purposes by passing off collections of approximates as accurate depictions of reality. "Information" has become one of the most valuable currencies in our society. How fast can you get info? What's the video resolution? How many bytes can you store? How in-depth is your coverage of a story? And much of this has served to de-humanize ourselves and one-another. People are seen more as vehicles for information and data, and less as human beings with feelings. It's hard to measure feelings, isn't it. And in a culture of empiricism, even if you could measure feelings, you could make them disappear by ignoring them.
The second problem that the cult of empiricism has caused is the loss of the spirit and, to some extent, creativity. Just the idea of me saying 'there is more to each of us than the physical and psychological characeristics that we can measure and observe empirically' makes me sound like a crackpot. But I maintain that there is so much more to us. Look no further than POTENTIAL. We each have the potential to be something that we currently are not, or to create something that does not exist. How do you measure that? Yet we all have potential -- an abstract, immeasurable aspect of ourselves that may have once been called "spirit". Yet we've distanced oureselves from our spirits. We've distanced ourselves from a fundamental aspect of ourselves, and it is leading us down a dangerous path.
The most peculiuar thing about this cult of empiricism is that it is leaving us without truth. As technology advances to create finer and finer resolutions of observation, it has also given way to means of faking truth. Video and photograph are no longer indisputable proof of truth. Official documents can be easily faked. Identities can be stolen. Works of art can be made fraud. And we all know these things, and they all cause us to doubt the things that we observe -- the very empirical things that we rely on to understand truth. And even in the world of science, where peer review protects us from fraud, people are discovering that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. Empiricism is bringing about its own demise.
I think that the weakening of empiricism is as necessary as the weakening of spiritualism once was. Any devotion to a system is dangerous and unhealthy. In order to better ourselves and our culture, we need to start giving some credence to the things that empiricism tells us not to believe.
Later, as these spirit cultures waned and monotheistic cultures arose, the idea of spirits persisted -- only now, all things could be explained by a single spirit, rather than many different ones. The universe was believed to be created by one god. People were believed to be controlled by that god, and the outcomes in their lives to be controlled only through prayer to that god.
The Enlightenment in the middle ages weakened the popularity of spiritual cults, and rational minds whose understanding of truth came from what they could observe rather than a belief in an omnipotent and omnipresent deity, paved the way for new cult of Truth: empiricism. Under this new philosophy of empiricism, technology began to grow rapidly as people tried to discover ways to increase the scope of their ability to observe, and to test the merit of their conclusions about those observations. Empiricism changed everything, including religion, and the cult of empiricism only grew as its technologies and observations gave way to an improved quality of life. The merits of empiricism should be no surprise, as it is a system honed to operate in the physical world in which we expend the majority of our conscious energy.
Now, while it is easy to point out the great benefits that the cult of empiricism has brought about, looking deeper reveals two problems. The first, is that it has driven us more and more exclusively into the empirical world. In today's empirical culture, the overwhelming majority of things that are worth conscious energy are those things that can be observed or measured. This empirical bias has led to the rise in voyeurism, saturation of "news" coverage, obsession with celebrity and fame, and a fundamental belief in statistical analysis that undermines its own purposes by passing off collections of approximates as accurate depictions of reality. "Information" has become one of the most valuable currencies in our society. How fast can you get info? What's the video resolution? How many bytes can you store? How in-depth is your coverage of a story? And much of this has served to de-humanize ourselves and one-another. People are seen more as vehicles for information and data, and less as human beings with feelings. It's hard to measure feelings, isn't it. And in a culture of empiricism, even if you could measure feelings, you could make them disappear by ignoring them.
The second problem that the cult of empiricism has caused is the loss of the spirit and, to some extent, creativity. Just the idea of me saying 'there is more to each of us than the physical and psychological characeristics that we can measure and observe empirically' makes me sound like a crackpot. But I maintain that there is so much more to us. Look no further than POTENTIAL. We each have the potential to be something that we currently are not, or to create something that does not exist. How do you measure that? Yet we all have potential -- an abstract, immeasurable aspect of ourselves that may have once been called "spirit". Yet we've distanced oureselves from our spirits. We've distanced ourselves from a fundamental aspect of ourselves, and it is leading us down a dangerous path.
The most peculiuar thing about this cult of empiricism is that it is leaving us without truth. As technology advances to create finer and finer resolutions of observation, it has also given way to means of faking truth. Video and photograph are no longer indisputable proof of truth. Official documents can be easily faked. Identities can be stolen. Works of art can be made fraud. And we all know these things, and they all cause us to doubt the things that we observe -- the very empirical things that we rely on to understand truth. And even in the world of science, where peer review protects us from fraud, people are discovering that there is more to the universe than meets the eye. Empiricism is bringing about its own demise.
I think that the weakening of empiricism is as necessary as the weakening of spiritualism once was. Any devotion to a system is dangerous and unhealthy. In order to better ourselves and our culture, we need to start giving some credence to the things that empiricism tells us not to believe.
Growing Up
A fundamental problem in our civilization is that it is largely immature. Watch how the potential leaders of this country behave as they jockey for position. Watch how we each revel in their missteps, and how the media bullies people who say silly things. Corporations and Wall Street are built for now, not for the future. Leaders have immature notions of invincibility, like that banks are too big to fail or that progress and growth can go on interminably. We use resources for what they can give us now, rather than considering what lies ahead in the future. Those behaviors are driven by the demand for immediate gratification -- to have things now, at all costs. We are self-centered, making decisions based on what serves us best, without thinking about how it affects others. We demand attention and recognition on YouTube and everyone has a headshot and a demo tape. We are stubborn, sticking to imaginary political teams, often blowing off reason just to win. We are immature -- our government, our corporations, our banks, our education system, our law enforcement, and each of us individually behaves immaturely to some extent. And what it seems the Occupy movement is demanding -- if only subconsciously -- is a maturation of the powers that be.
Throughout the course of each of our lives, we will mature to some extent. Let's start with myself. I am a 25-year-old male, and I really have very little to think about other than myself. I have my cats. I have my girlfriend. I have my family back home. I have my friends. But for the most part, admittedly, I am a self-centered person. I spend my money on me. I do what I want. I do dangerous things. I swear a lot. I stay out late and put substances in my body that are bad for me. I don't always recycle, and I definitely don't compost. It's all about me.
Someday, I may have a family -- a wife, and, more importantly, a child. And with the birth of that child, things will certainly change. I'll have a family to think about. I won't spend all money on me. I'll sacrifice what I want for what's best for the family. I won't swear around the kid. I won't stay out late anymore, and I'll take care of my body so that I can be there to watch him/her have his/her own kid. I'll want to compost because I'll want my child to live in a nice world. The big question at hand is whether our civilization will mature in the same way. Will the powers that control this civilization -- both the large bodies and the individual citizens who make up the populous -- begin to make decisions with the understanding that we are all a family on this planet, or will it drink, smoke, party, and consume itself into the grave? We will begin to behave like the father/mother, or will we careen over the edge of the cliff drunkenly on our motorcycle?
It's a big question indeed, and a question that has been asked time and again in the course of human history. Will we mature? Many a civilization has failed to pass the test, and in many ways we've learned from them. Yet, have we learned enough, or will we be just another failed cycle, paving the way for the next cycle of civilization to give it a whack?
In a couple of weeks, people are going to descend on the Capitol in Washington, DC to "Occupy Congress" -- to ask Congress if they'll start the process of making this civilization mature. But are we asking the right people? In the current paradigm that we understand, it makes sense to go to the government to change things. Yet, things have become far more complicated. There are lobbyists and corporate entities that have power in the government. They must asked to mature. There is the Federal Reserve who basks in the control over the conception of "money". They must be asked to mature. There's each of us, who continue to pass the buck, asking others to mature, when we too must mature. The fact is, we don't need more government. Last week I watched the same Congress that will be Occupied spend 30 minutes voting on what to name a post office in Massachusetts. But who else do we ask for help?
Much of the responsibility is on us. We bemoan the economic system, demonizing the Fed and corporations and the wealthy -- and certainly they are as much at fault as anyone -- but any Economics 100 class will tell you that economics is fundamentally based on how the humans in a civilization behave. The very concept of supply and demand is based on psychology. The things that we value, the things we "demand", create the system. Taking down the Fed, putting restrictions on corporations, and taxing the wealthy are all well and good, but the real problem is that our psychology is an immature one. And until we grow up, until we learn to treat the planet and one another as family, as each person as our own child, we're fucked.
Throughout the course of each of our lives, we will mature to some extent. Let's start with myself. I am a 25-year-old male, and I really have very little to think about other than myself. I have my cats. I have my girlfriend. I have my family back home. I have my friends. But for the most part, admittedly, I am a self-centered person. I spend my money on me. I do what I want. I do dangerous things. I swear a lot. I stay out late and put substances in my body that are bad for me. I don't always recycle, and I definitely don't compost. It's all about me.
Someday, I may have a family -- a wife, and, more importantly, a child. And with the birth of that child, things will certainly change. I'll have a family to think about. I won't spend all money on me. I'll sacrifice what I want for what's best for the family. I won't swear around the kid. I won't stay out late anymore, and I'll take care of my body so that I can be there to watch him/her have his/her own kid. I'll want to compost because I'll want my child to live in a nice world. The big question at hand is whether our civilization will mature in the same way. Will the powers that control this civilization -- both the large bodies and the individual citizens who make up the populous -- begin to make decisions with the understanding that we are all a family on this planet, or will it drink, smoke, party, and consume itself into the grave? We will begin to behave like the father/mother, or will we careen over the edge of the cliff drunkenly on our motorcycle?
It's a big question indeed, and a question that has been asked time and again in the course of human history. Will we mature? Many a civilization has failed to pass the test, and in many ways we've learned from them. Yet, have we learned enough, or will we be just another failed cycle, paving the way for the next cycle of civilization to give it a whack?
In a couple of weeks, people are going to descend on the Capitol in Washington, DC to "Occupy Congress" -- to ask Congress if they'll start the process of making this civilization mature. But are we asking the right people? In the current paradigm that we understand, it makes sense to go to the government to change things. Yet, things have become far more complicated. There are lobbyists and corporate entities that have power in the government. They must asked to mature. There is the Federal Reserve who basks in the control over the conception of "money". They must be asked to mature. There's each of us, who continue to pass the buck, asking others to mature, when we too must mature. The fact is, we don't need more government. Last week I watched the same Congress that will be Occupied spend 30 minutes voting on what to name a post office in Massachusetts. But who else do we ask for help?
Much of the responsibility is on us. We bemoan the economic system, demonizing the Fed and corporations and the wealthy -- and certainly they are as much at fault as anyone -- but any Economics 100 class will tell you that economics is fundamentally based on how the humans in a civilization behave. The very concept of supply and demand is based on psychology. The things that we value, the things we "demand", create the system. Taking down the Fed, putting restrictions on corporations, and taxing the wealthy are all well and good, but the real problem is that our psychology is an immature one. And until we grow up, until we learn to treat the planet and one another as family, as each person as our own child, we're fucked.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Night Out at SfN
Students from UPenn are have hooked up a space at the Bier Baron in Dupont Circle on Sunday the 13th. Come by and check out the spacious upstairs room, which will be opened for conference-goers and guests. Bring along your conference badge for an SfN drink special going on until 1pm. Come by at 10pm to finish off your first day at SfN the right way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
