It's strange how stuff seems to arrive in bunches, after long periods of time of relative smoothness. Like, first Haiti, then Chile, out in the geographic world.
The private world seems like that too, these days. I received news on Sunday that the receptionist (in Vancouver) would be resigning, then the very next day (yesterday) I received word that my locum replacement was resigning as of June. That's pretty much my old life in Vancouver finally down for the count. I shall have to dismantle the practice officially, sign papers etc, I suppose. Kill the legal entity. It's not a rumination I really need right now, yet at the same time some little part inside of me feels slightly more free, so that's good, I guess.
The third thing was that this morning I sat down to work on my presentation for Brazil, and discovered the mouse was dead. Very very dead. At times like this, with three big whammies in a row, it's hard not to feel a tad superstitious about life. Superstitious, as in, "what is this all supposed to mean?" The rational part of my brain says, weird coincidence. We move on. We deal. The emotional part of my brain is reeling around in shock and dismay and wants to clutch at straws - "How do I have to live my life differently to avoid experiencing all this stress?"
Long walks help. I've been out doing that quite a bit these days.
Postscript: I started to get ready to go out to buy a new mouse. The more I thought about it the more I thought I should check to see if the problem was to do with the keyboard, not the mouse. I had a spare (new) keyboard anyway, what could it hurt to test it? I did, and taDAH! the mouse isn't dead - it works fine with the new keyboard. Just a bump, not a huge slam into the boards. All is well. Back to business.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
When apprehensiveness is a Virtue (and a Moir)
I seem to be on some sort of roll today, maybe because of that wonderful ice dance last night won by "Canada," a concept momentarily inhabited by the wonderful young ice dance couple, Moir and Virtue, who in their unbelievably fabulous performance managed to successfully downregulate any negative nervousness and upregulate every particle of their well-honed strength and grace to take the gold in a most transcendent manner. I think they managed to navigate "even keel" through several different potential realities, toward victory. I think their sturdy sea-going vessel was "apprehensiveness." Let me explain:
If there was ever a word to describe human primates in general (perhaps me in particular), I think it would be the adjective "apprehensive." It ordinarily conjures up a sense of suspicion, nervousness, or anxiety, which I think is a negative social meaning that has accrued to it because of how extroverted people like to downplay sensible precaution; in fact, there is way deeper meaning to it than that.
"Apprehensive" means many different things: let's take a look:
1. quick to understand
2. mentally upset over possible misfortune or danger or consequences
3. in fear or dread of possible evil or harm
4. anticipating something with anxiety or fear
5. quick to learn, intelligent, capable of grasping with mind or intellect
6. the cognitive condition of one who understands
7. from Lat. (ad, "to"; prehendere, "to seize"), a term applied to a model of consciousness in which nothing is affirmed or denied of the object in question, but the mind is merely aware of ("seizes") it
8. (as verb) to legally seize or arrest
It was wonderful to hear Tessa Virtue thank her physiotherapist during a post-win interview. She's had injuries, for sure.
Well done, you two. You have made us (Canadians) proud and have entertained us all (wherever we are on the planet) absolutely beautifully and dazzlingly. So pleased you were able to "apprehend" the possibility, "apprehend" each other sufficiently to get the job done, let your combined brains "apprehend" gravity and other physical forces, "apprehend" correct responsiveness in each nanosecond in perfect poise, then "apprehend" the opportunity, and that medal, with all weight of its attached symbolism, graciously smile the whole time, and allow a sense of relief, joy, pride and connectedness to race throughout Canada and likely all round the world. Well done. Well apprehended.
Thank you (as a Canadian) also to the coaches (one from Russia) and the host rink (in the US, I think). It was a great moment to "apprehend" while putting in time in this Big Waiting Room called "life."
If there was ever a word to describe human primates in general (perhaps me in particular), I think it would be the adjective "apprehensive." It ordinarily conjures up a sense of suspicion, nervousness, or anxiety, which I think is a negative social meaning that has accrued to it because of how extroverted people like to downplay sensible precaution; in fact, there is way deeper meaning to it than that.
"Apprehensive" means many different things: let's take a look:
1. quick to understand
2. mentally upset over possible misfortune or danger or consequences
3. in fear or dread of possible evil or harm
4. anticipating something with anxiety or fear
5. quick to learn, intelligent, capable of grasping with mind or intellect
6. the cognitive condition of one who understands
7. from Lat. (ad, "to"; prehendere, "to seize"), a term applied to a model of consciousness in which nothing is affirmed or denied of the object in question, but the mind is merely aware of ("seizes") it
8. (as verb) to legally seize or arrest
It was wonderful to hear Tessa Virtue thank her physiotherapist during a post-win interview. She's had injuries, for sure.
Well done, you two. You have made us (Canadians) proud and have entertained us all (wherever we are on the planet) absolutely beautifully and dazzlingly. So pleased you were able to "apprehend" the possibility, "apprehend" each other sufficiently to get the job done, let your combined brains "apprehend" gravity and other physical forces, "apprehend" correct responsiveness in each nanosecond in perfect poise, then "apprehend" the opportunity, and that medal, with all weight of its attached symbolism, graciously smile the whole time, and allow a sense of relief, joy, pride and connectedness to race throughout Canada and likely all round the world. Well done. Well apprehended.
Thank you (as a Canadian) also to the coaches (one from Russia) and the host rink (in the US, I think). It was a great moment to "apprehend" while putting in time in this Big Waiting Room called "life."
Navigating "even keel" between uncertain death and uncertain death, toward certain death
Life, if we are realistic, is just a waiting room in which we amuse ourselves before we can go through a door with a sign on it, upon which is clearly written, DEATH. Lucky for us, the waiting room is huge, big enough to encompass entire oceans, full of brightness, infinite distractions, lots of other people, most of whom are merry, many useful and interesting ways to spend time together or alone.
"Even keel" is a metaphor. It stems from the many centuries, I like to imagine, when humans traveled by ship to visit each others' cultures, trade, conduct war, all those human things. Thinking about "even keel" takes up quite a bit of my personal hard drive. Not only have I learned how to be even keel in my own life (am not finding myself blown sideways by it or capsized as often anymore, that is..), when I am at work I focus on how to help brain parts in another person' nervous system get along better together, or at least I imagine that's what I'm doing. Like an engineer fixing systems in a building, or in a computer. Except, I don't really do anything, I just add bits of provocation and wait for feedback to tell me I'm on the right track. Most of it has to do with waiting for then seizing moments. But I'm geeky enough to want to know everything I can, anyway, about the systems I work with, even though human primate social grooming is really quite instinctive.
"Even keel" applies to nearly everything on any level in human life. I made a little picture (thank you photoshop) out of other little pictures to illustrate the old Greek story about the sea monster and the whirlpool that I first read about in James Willis' excellent essay by the same name. In his essay, the two-headed sea monster represents pseudo- and anti-science, which he does not want to steer too close to in his work as a doctor. The whirlpool represents scientific reductionism, tyranny by protocol. He doesn't want to become sucked into becoming a protocol zombie. Instead he wants to be able to steer his own boat, stay even keel between two extremes, retain his own locus of control within his treatment relationships.
I decided to steal his metaphor, practically intact, for my own work as a human primate social groomer. My sea monster has two heads too - one is anti-science and the other pseudo-science too, although, some days their names change to myofascial release and craniosacral therapy. The whirlpool is orthopaedic manual therapy, which (at least in Canada) is almost a Byzantine religion with its own high priests and devotion toward evidence-based regimented protocols, ostensibly to keep therapists safe from harm or blame, keep them "pure" and untainted, keep the money of society flowing toward our profession. But when I look at OMPT in Canada, I see huge flashes of tooth fairy science as described so succinctly by Harriet Hall. In Beyerstein's excellent essay on pseudoscience (50-page pdf) he stated that in his expert opinion, any "science" which doesn't take neuroscience into account is pretty much, by definition, pseudo. I have never sat in an ortho training workshop in Canada and once heard the slightest whiff of anything to do with neuroscience, not even physical nerves which slide past the beloved joints upon which ortho-lovers are so transfixed. In the workshops I attended they taught that you can actually feel movement in joints and improve movement in joints with fancy pressures at precise angles. From outside the living human body. Maybe this has changed in the last few decades, but judging by the kinds of ortho-esque "studies" I see done... somehow I doubt it.
Anyway, enough rambling on about that. "Even keel" is what each human, regardless of what one ends up doing in the Big Waiting Room called "life" prior to going through the door called DEATH, tries to achieve. We each have a life to navigate and moods to manage. How we each end up doing that and whatever success we manage to demonstrate in the process, has a lot to do with luck and circumstance in terms of genetic makeup plus upbringing, nature/nurture. I found a nice paper today, Psychosocial and Neural Correlates of Resilience, which is open access, at least for now. (Thank you to Integral Options blog.) In it I found:
Gee, I like to think I'm resilient, even keel, or at least have learned how to be, even though I ended up with a human mother who did not believe much in pleasant licking or grooming. Somehow, even though this happened to be my personal fate, in the big waiting room of life, I was drawn, explicitly and implicitly, to work which is all about (metaphoric) licking and (actual) physical social grooming! The complete and utter simplicity and rightness of it, the naturalness of it to me as a human primate, is the wind that fills my sails, rows my boat, has helped me attain/remain "even keel."
That is pretty much all that is at the core of what I find mysterious in my own life. It's not earth-shaking or dramatic or life-threatening, it's just a story, likely a boring one. But it's my own little one. And I don't mind putting it here, where very few will probably ever find it.
"Even keel" is a metaphor. It stems from the many centuries, I like to imagine, when humans traveled by ship to visit each others' cultures, trade, conduct war, all those human things. Thinking about "even keel" takes up quite a bit of my personal hard drive. Not only have I learned how to be even keel in my own life (am not finding myself blown sideways by it or capsized as often anymore, that is..), when I am at work I focus on how to help brain parts in another person' nervous system get along better together, or at least I imagine that's what I'm doing. Like an engineer fixing systems in a building, or in a computer. Except, I don't really do anything, I just add bits of provocation and wait for feedback to tell me I'm on the right track. Most of it has to do with waiting for then seizing moments. But I'm geeky enough to want to know everything I can, anyway, about the systems I work with, even though human primate social grooming is really quite instinctive.
"Even keel" applies to nearly everything on any level in human life. I made a little picture (thank you photoshop) out of other little pictures to illustrate the old Greek story about the sea monster and the whirlpool that I first read about in James Willis' excellent essay by the same name. In his essay, the two-headed sea monster represents pseudo- and anti-science, which he does not want to steer too close to in his work as a doctor. The whirlpool represents scientific reductionism, tyranny by protocol. He doesn't want to become sucked into becoming a protocol zombie. Instead he wants to be able to steer his own boat, stay even keel between two extremes, retain his own locus of control within his treatment relationships.
I decided to steal his metaphor, practically intact, for my own work as a human primate social groomer. My sea monster has two heads too - one is anti-science and the other pseudo-science too, although, some days their names change to myofascial release and craniosacral therapy. The whirlpool is orthopaedic manual therapy, which (at least in Canada) is almost a Byzantine religion with its own high priests and devotion toward evidence-based regimented protocols, ostensibly to keep therapists safe from harm or blame, keep them "pure" and untainted, keep the money of society flowing toward our profession. But when I look at OMPT in Canada, I see huge flashes of tooth fairy science as described so succinctly by Harriet Hall. In Beyerstein's excellent essay on pseudoscience (50-page pdf) he stated that in his expert opinion, any "science" which doesn't take neuroscience into account is pretty much, by definition, pseudo. I have never sat in an ortho training workshop in Canada and once heard the slightest whiff of anything to do with neuroscience, not even physical nerves which slide past the beloved joints upon which ortho-lovers are so transfixed. In the workshops I attended they taught that you can actually feel movement in joints and improve movement in joints with fancy pressures at precise angles. From outside the living human body. Maybe this has changed in the last few decades, but judging by the kinds of ortho-esque "studies" I see done... somehow I doubt it. Anyway, enough rambling on about that. "Even keel" is what each human, regardless of what one ends up doing in the Big Waiting Room called "life" prior to going through the door called DEATH, tries to achieve. We each have a life to navigate and moods to manage. How we each end up doing that and whatever success we manage to demonstrate in the process, has a lot to do with luck and circumstance in terms of genetic makeup plus upbringing, nature/nurture. I found a nice paper today, Psychosocial and Neural Correlates of Resilience, which is open access, at least for now. (Thank you to Integral Options blog.) In it I found:
"In experiments by Meaney and colleagues, the offspring of female rats displaying more nurturing behavior (high licking and grooming compared to low licking and grooming) had less methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene in the hippocampus, resulting in higher GR expression, lower anxiety-related behavior and better HPA axis regulation. In addition, research by Nestler and colleagues has delineated molecular mechanisms underlying resilience to a social defeat stress paradigm in rodents, including the induction of gene expression changes only seen in resilient mice."
Gee, I like to think I'm resilient, even keel, or at least have learned how to be, even though I ended up with a human mother who did not believe much in pleasant licking or grooming. Somehow, even though this happened to be my personal fate, in the big waiting room of life, I was drawn, explicitly and implicitly, to work which is all about (metaphoric) licking and (actual) physical social grooming! The complete and utter simplicity and rightness of it, the naturalness of it to me as a human primate, is the wind that fills my sails, rows my boat, has helped me attain/remain "even keel."
That is pretty much all that is at the core of what I find mysterious in my own life. It's not earth-shaking or dramatic or life-threatening, it's just a story, likely a boring one. But it's my own little one. And I don't mind putting it here, where very few will probably ever find it.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
It gives me grief and makes me mad
So.. It's high time, my brain has decided, for a bit of a rant.
My last sporadic post was about thinking I probably had chronic contemplation syndrome, and went sideways into being distracted by the Olympics, etc.
This post is about a few reasons why I seem to have chronic contemplation syndrome.
Lately I stumbled across this blogpost on Twitter: Infant Dies After Craniosacral Therapy: Therapist Gets Off Scot-Free. Something inside me seemed to galvanize just a little - I could feel it. The action I took was to post it to my Facebook page and let it sit there, as testament to wrong thinking, and how important it is for manual therapists to move away from piss-poor treatment concepts onto more science-based ones. Naturally there was a hue and cry and protest from a few who apparently thought I ought not mention such a scandal or whose "belief system" I had besmirched somehow. Was the therapist a PT or not? How is craniosacral therapy different in the Netherlands than in N. America? Surely it must be different, the kind "we" use "here" safer. I steadily asked questions, sent out feelers, got more links, as more information came along from those who speak/understand Dutch and are more familiar with the issue posted on the thread about it at SomaSimple.
How I feel about stuff like this, manual therapy memeplexes which are just plain indefensible or which can do real harm, is no secret - I wrote about it here, and here. What's different is that my life is organized such that I'm in a position to really be outspoken about it on many levels. I have time to write, to think, to organize, to present. I've been invited to speak at two separate venues about research I'm doing, opportunities to refute such ill-formed and misleading treatment concepts. I've worked like a Trojan online and offline to study, think, redesign my own brain, mesh the physicality of human primate social grooming with the neuroscientific and pain science basis, context, in which it all starts to make sense. It's a great opportunity.
But I'm mad at myself. For watching TV, for being disorganized, for not knowing how to find my own files on my own desktop, for having a messy bookmark list, messy messy messy, my life feels like it's still in a mess and like I still don't have a clue how to proceed. When I'm not mad at myself I easily get mad about stuff like what happened that poor Dutch therapist, stuff that happens because of very poor thought processes, because of not thinking something through first, because of adopting memeplexes that some extrovert dreamed up out of thin air then sold in a confident manner to gullible hungry-for-info people in a workshop who trusted whatever he said, applied it, then killed a baby. It makes me scream with anger. All of it. Then I look at myself again, and think, OK, I'm not gullible, I'm careful, I know that a stray thought here or an assumption there can make a big difference downstream, I've always sifted things carefully, always chucked out ideas that don't make legitimate sense without a second thought. But to DO that, to be that careful, takes a lot of inner stillness, which I'm now so good at that it feels like my brain has neuroplasticized itself into quite a rut, and when I add my ordinary introversion to it, it feels like I'll never be able to say what I want the way it needs to be said while at the same time smoothly managing to persuade the entire profession over into thinking about manual therapy in a new way, toward science and away from dangerous baseless mesodermal explanations for things. It's like I feel responsible for changing the world, all by myself, and I know that's a crazy unrealistic thing to be thinking. So I feel like screaming. Which is not a solution, just a feeling, so I rant for awhile instead.
My last sporadic post was about thinking I probably had chronic contemplation syndrome, and went sideways into being distracted by the Olympics, etc.
This post is about a few reasons why I seem to have chronic contemplation syndrome.
Lately I stumbled across this blogpost on Twitter: Infant Dies After Craniosacral Therapy: Therapist Gets Off Scot-Free. Something inside me seemed to galvanize just a little - I could feel it. The action I took was to post it to my Facebook page and let it sit there, as testament to wrong thinking, and how important it is for manual therapists to move away from piss-poor treatment concepts onto more science-based ones. Naturally there was a hue and cry and protest from a few who apparently thought I ought not mention such a scandal or whose "belief system" I had besmirched somehow. Was the therapist a PT or not? How is craniosacral therapy different in the Netherlands than in N. America? Surely it must be different, the kind "we" use "here" safer. I steadily asked questions, sent out feelers, got more links, as more information came along from those who speak/understand Dutch and are more familiar with the issue posted on the thread about it at SomaSimple.
How I feel about stuff like this, manual therapy memeplexes which are just plain indefensible or which can do real harm, is no secret - I wrote about it here, and here. What's different is that my life is organized such that I'm in a position to really be outspoken about it on many levels. I have time to write, to think, to organize, to present. I've been invited to speak at two separate venues about research I'm doing, opportunities to refute such ill-formed and misleading treatment concepts. I've worked like a Trojan online and offline to study, think, redesign my own brain, mesh the physicality of human primate social grooming with the neuroscientific and pain science basis, context, in which it all starts to make sense. It's a great opportunity.
But I'm mad at myself. For watching TV, for being disorganized, for not knowing how to find my own files on my own desktop, for having a messy bookmark list, messy messy messy, my life feels like it's still in a mess and like I still don't have a clue how to proceed. When I'm not mad at myself I easily get mad about stuff like what happened that poor Dutch therapist, stuff that happens because of very poor thought processes, because of not thinking something through first, because of adopting memeplexes that some extrovert dreamed up out of thin air then sold in a confident manner to gullible hungry-for-info people in a workshop who trusted whatever he said, applied it, then killed a baby. It makes me scream with anger. All of it. Then I look at myself again, and think, OK, I'm not gullible, I'm careful, I know that a stray thought here or an assumption there can make a big difference downstream, I've always sifted things carefully, always chucked out ideas that don't make legitimate sense without a second thought. But to DO that, to be that careful, takes a lot of inner stillness, which I'm now so good at that it feels like my brain has neuroplasticized itself into quite a rut, and when I add my ordinary introversion to it, it feels like I'll never be able to say what I want the way it needs to be said while at the same time smoothly managing to persuade the entire profession over into thinking about manual therapy in a new way, toward science and away from dangerous baseless mesodermal explanations for things. It's like I feel responsible for changing the world, all by myself, and I know that's a crazy unrealistic thing to be thinking. So I feel like screaming. Which is not a solution, just a feeling, so I rant for awhile instead.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
"Chronic contemplation syndrome"
niclucas.com, on "chronic contemplation syndrome."
I'm guilty of this. Or else, my brain is still in recovery from being in the dark for decades, living in rainy Vancouver. While watching the Vancouver Olympic torch run/celebrations on TV yesterday, I kept seeing the pouring rain and thinking, so glad I don't live there anymore. Nice job, though, extroverts. It was a very nice series of moments all strung together serially through TV time, like a string of happy pearls.
So sorry about the luge guy. And the perpetual rain. And that one chunk of cauldron that got stuck/wouldn't lift up. The rest was GREAT! The infinite boundless free-wheeling bright feeling of the prairie vignette was on the mark. Loved the First Nation dancing and diversity. Loved the edgy punky fiddler/dancers, so different from Don Messer days of my childhood. Loved the poet from the North West Territories, riotous colors of fall, whales swimming across the floor, the lit maple leaf motif toward the finale. Loved that you included sonorous Donald Sutherland (who voiced-over in many of the Olympic ads) in the ceremony, one of my all-time favorite actors. Loved that the announcer didn't notice that the torch carried by Wayne Gretzky was smoothly traded at least twice on the way to the outdoor cauldron, causing him to wonder aloud why the Gretzky torch was so long-lasting compared to the normal torches...
But I digress. Back to chronic contemplation syndrome... and for now, chronically contemplating... Having a name for it will help my brain work on a way to overcome it. Just a teeny shift - that might be all it takes, to change the course, the outcome, the direction of accumulation of small efforts over time that amount to a life lived more rather than less successfully. Thank you for that, Nic Lucas.
I'm guilty of this. Or else, my brain is still in recovery from being in the dark for decades, living in rainy Vancouver. While watching the Vancouver Olympic torch run/celebrations on TV yesterday, I kept seeing the pouring rain and thinking, so glad I don't live there anymore. Nice job, though, extroverts. It was a very nice series of moments all strung together serially through TV time, like a string of happy pearls.
So sorry about the luge guy. And the perpetual rain. And that one chunk of cauldron that got stuck/wouldn't lift up. The rest was GREAT! The infinite boundless free-wheeling bright feeling of the prairie vignette was on the mark. Loved the First Nation dancing and diversity. Loved the edgy punky fiddler/dancers, so different from Don Messer days of my childhood. Loved the poet from the North West Territories, riotous colors of fall, whales swimming across the floor, the lit maple leaf motif toward the finale. Loved that you included sonorous Donald Sutherland (who voiced-over in many of the Olympic ads) in the ceremony, one of my all-time favorite actors. Loved that the announcer didn't notice that the torch carried by Wayne Gretzky was smoothly traded at least twice on the way to the outdoor cauldron, causing him to wonder aloud why the Gretzky torch was so long-lasting compared to the normal torches...
But I digress. Back to chronic contemplation syndrome... and for now, chronically contemplating... Having a name for it will help my brain work on a way to overcome it. Just a teeny shift - that might be all it takes, to change the course, the outcome, the direction of accumulation of small efforts over time that amount to a life lived more rather than less successfully. Thank you for that, Nic Lucas.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Letter to another Un-happy INtrovert
This excerpt is from a letter written by me, several months back. It has been edited slightly to protect the recipient's identity.
"I think, like the skin horse, we just get more real over time. It's inevitable. We probably get finally as real as can be, one second before our lights go out forever. That would be the last joke life has on us: Haha, guess what, all those little things you thought were so important and fought so hard to swim upstream for, they are nada.
So, you're an Unhappy INtrovert. Doesn't surprise me (the Unhappy part) - the world, the social world, the everyday interaction of the human primate troop, is made by EXtroverted people and reflects their sunny ways, so it becomes the measure against which we non-happies automatically fail. Which I guess is good.. what a rained-on parade introverts would make if we were in charge of setting the overall tone of life. So, us introverts or unhappies or whatever we are have to do double duty figuring out what is, what we are, how to relate to a rear-view mirror image of ourselves while we learn to drive ourselves forward. It seems like a lot more work, so it's kind of a good thing there are endless combinations and permutations available for neuroplastic social adaptation. It has taken me two-thirds of a life time to become even remotely even-keel, let alone consider myself capable of making any kind of contribution beyond one-on-one. What a long process.
I do envy social effortlessness as displayed by extroverts/apparent "Happies". They seem to have so many fewer issues. Maybe they are less transparent to themselves or just fake it better or maybe they feel better just being around someone/anyone else to the point where they placebo themselves automatically, a brain mechanism that others of us (like introverts) must construct consciously instead. It isn't like they aren't smart or don't think, because they do. And they have sadnesses, which they mostly hide, which I used to think meant they were superficial. I misjudged their consideration for the feelings of others in the human primate troop, and their apparent jolliness in being connected and chatting and social, as outright behavioural lying. I didn't realize it was brain food for them, that they absolutely depend on it, crave it every day. Since I've aged, I'm a lot more nuanced about how I judge others' social motivations. We are all total liers, because of how troop-y we are as human primates. No one knows which side is up, because of all those built-in perceptual biases that fool us continually. We are all here, doing the best we can to get along and help each other. Stepping away from troop situations which become, or that we finally realize are, uncomfortable or incongruous with our centroversion.
I decided long ago to hitch my wagon to science, learned to aim for mere "contentment" in life. For me "contentment" is practically synonymous with "containment," in every aspect of life but writing, over which I have temporal and environmental control, i.e., feel safe. Safe enough at least. Steam valve writing."
"I think, like the skin horse, we just get more real over time. It's inevitable. We probably get finally as real as can be, one second before our lights go out forever. That would be the last joke life has on us: Haha, guess what, all those little things you thought were so important and fought so hard to swim upstream for, they are nada.
So, you're an Unhappy INtrovert. Doesn't surprise me (the Unhappy part) - the world, the social world, the everyday interaction of the human primate troop, is made by EXtroverted people and reflects their sunny ways, so it becomes the measure against which we non-happies automatically fail. Which I guess is good.. what a rained-on parade introverts would make if we were in charge of setting the overall tone of life. So, us introverts or unhappies or whatever we are have to do double duty figuring out what is, what we are, how to relate to a rear-view mirror image of ourselves while we learn to drive ourselves forward. It seems like a lot more work, so it's kind of a good thing there are endless combinations and permutations available for neuroplastic social adaptation. It has taken me two-thirds of a life time to become even remotely even-keel, let alone consider myself capable of making any kind of contribution beyond one-on-one. What a long process.
I do envy social effortlessness as displayed by extroverts/apparent "Happies". They seem to have so many fewer issues. Maybe they are less transparent to themselves or just fake it better or maybe they feel better just being around someone/anyone else to the point where they placebo themselves automatically, a brain mechanism that others of us (like introverts) must construct consciously instead. It isn't like they aren't smart or don't think, because they do. And they have sadnesses, which they mostly hide, which I used to think meant they were superficial. I misjudged their consideration for the feelings of others in the human primate troop, and their apparent jolliness in being connected and chatting and social, as outright behavioural lying. I didn't realize it was brain food for them, that they absolutely depend on it, crave it every day. Since I've aged, I'm a lot more nuanced about how I judge others' social motivations. We are all total liers, because of how troop-y we are as human primates. No one knows which side is up, because of all those built-in perceptual biases that fool us continually. We are all here, doing the best we can to get along and help each other. Stepping away from troop situations which become, or that we finally realize are, uncomfortable or incongruous with our centroversion.
I decided long ago to hitch my wagon to science, learned to aim for mere "contentment" in life. For me "contentment" is practically synonymous with "containment," in every aspect of life but writing, over which I have temporal and environmental control, i.e., feel safe. Safe enough at least. Steam valve writing."
Friday, January 29, 2010
Exactly backwards
I had a chance last weekend to travel to Saskatoon and visit the PT school there for a few days, talk with a few of the profs, plan a tentative future. My (not very) lofty goal is to somehow gain permission to dissect, photograph and map out, in broad visual terms, the extensive forest of rami that project out to skin from the numerous cutaneous nerves that run along parallel to and beneath skin - even if I have to suck it up and do a Master's. My friend Angela, who characterizes herself as an obstacle remover, has been extraordinarily kind and generous with her time and hospitality toward me. She and I have completed a research project together, yet to be written up.
Everyone was kind, lent me their ear, but the impression I have come away with is that there is an invisible wall I could sense, that I may never be able to unlock, between what my profession has turned itself into, and what I think it could be.
Take, for example, the nervous system.
I had an opportunity to sit in on a two-hour neuroanatomy lecture, with permission; it occurred to me that these first-year students are getting more information handed to them in one day than I ever did in a year. In the space of two hours, the lecturer covered the embryological origin of the brainstem, its organization, an intro to each of the nuclei within it, all the spinal cord tracts that move rostrally through it and descend through it, the medulla, the cranial nerves and what each does and how each can be affected by traumatic head bangs, the branchial arches and neural crest, and which muscles were formed from which arch, and which cranial nerve was associated with each arch. It's a lot for first-year students, probably.
My question is, Why should they care? How hard would it have been to put an overall frame around that headfacethroatbrain zone, as neurological core sensor, effector, consciousness producer, and (according to some, like Jaak Panksepp, emotion initiator), plus metabolic engine for the entire organism, breathing and swallowing, able to operate bi-directionally?
The prof was kind enough to meet with me for an hour or so following. My impression was that the only real teaching he does regarding the peripheral nervous system is that it is segmented, each spinal nerve innervates all the stuff coming from a particular segment, and that the main important thing about its role in the body is that there are muscle spindles and sympathetics. Other than C fibers and A deltas, the sensory aspect was irrelevant to him, it seemed.
While all that is true, there is so much more to it than that!
But I was reminded yet again, about how physiotherapy, in order to gain permission to evolve as a profession, pretty much focused its awareness of neural matters entirely around motor output, and has been stuck there ever since, child as it is of the greater touch-phobic society into which it is embedded. We are licensed to touch people, but we are not permitted, it would seem, to examine, comprehend, conceptualize or even be taught anything about how our touching might be an interactive source of brain food for the recipient brain. Too .... sexy or something, maybe. Thar be monsters, or something. This potential pitfall could easily be bridged by a single class in transference/counter-transference, a standard issue that must be dealt with up front by the psychoanalytic community. Why let it remain in the subconscious of my whole profession? Why not deal with it up front? A preemptive strike? Forewarned is forearmed.
The profession has structured itself entirely around motor output, and a gaping void exists where understanding of how the brain and PNS reads and responds to kinesthetic input should be. To be fair, it was probably easier in the beginning to follow Cartesian divisions - you bunch of therapists go deal with the mind, and us, we'll stick with the body. Neuroscience has put this idea into total eclipse: there is no separation whatsoever.
Yet, emphasis on the INput side of the nervous system, and learning to understand it, is precisely, according to me, where becoming not just a good therapist, but a great therapist, lies. These are totally uncharted waters for our profession. We could be great therapists if we hadn't got our conceptual trajectory exactly backwards. We have been looking in through the wrong end of the telescope, all along. But we no longer have any excuse for continuing to do that. Not if we look at what neuroscience can tell us about ourselves in a body, and about ourselves treating other embodied people. Other humanantigravitysuits. (We DO have that word "therapist" in our name, not just the word "physical"...)
I'm doing my very best, but may never succeed in making a big enough noise about it to be able to make any difference in the status quo whatsoever. I have to realize this yet not allow it to defeat me.
Oh yeah, he's also an OMPT. Forgot to mention that.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Taking stock
A convergence of sorts has occurred in the new year: today a friend sent me a link to this excellent essay, written by Frank Wildman, on the sad, rather shabby, rather scientifically disjointed state of PT. He was thinking of U.S. PT, I think, and he had his Feldenkrais goggles firmly duct taped to his head while writing, but I'll forgive him for that, because he makes many many good points. I like the way he compares the state of PT to the state of general science before Darwin came along with the unifying theory of evolution. This essay still seems topical, even though it is 22 years old: Learning: The Missing Link in Physical Therapy.
Lately, a New York Times article by Gina Kolata, Treat Me, But No Tricks Please, provided the reading public with a glimpse into the hall of distorting mirrors that is current, American at least, PT. This story has raised comment on a few PT forums/blogs:
1. NY Times: Physical Therapy Useless?
2. Yes, Gina you can tell if your physical therapist is "voodoo less"
There isn't a whole lot to come back with, though.. Frank is still right, I'm afraid.
This short video, "Myofascia," was constructed by a PT student, determined to be a PT who embraces rationality. It's very succinct and immediately was shared by several Facebookers. Facebook really is a networking site, because through it I met a fellow who wanted to counter the video and share that he is helping to organize an entire conference about fascia. He seems like a very nice guy. We struck up a conversation, shared who we are and what we're about. I won't divulge anything about him, as that would be improper, but I'll put here what I told him about me:
Lately, a New York Times article by Gina Kolata, Treat Me, But No Tricks Please, provided the reading public with a glimpse into the hall of distorting mirrors that is current, American at least, PT. This story has raised comment on a few PT forums/blogs:
1. NY Times: Physical Therapy Useless?
2. Yes, Gina you can tell if your physical therapist is "voodoo less"
There isn't a whole lot to come back with, though.. Frank is still right, I'm afraid.
This short video, "Myofascia," was constructed by a PT student, determined to be a PT who embraces rationality. It's very succinct and immediately was shared by several Facebookers. Facebook really is a networking site, because through it I met a fellow who wanted to counter the video and share that he is helping to organize an entire conference about fascia. He seems like a very nice guy. We struck up a conversation, shared who we are and what we're about. I won't divulge anything about him, as that would be improper, but I'll put here what I told him about me:
"Your enthusiasm for the topic (fascia) is palpable! [/manual_therapy_joke].
Congratulations on helping organize a conference! That's no small task!
I'm a manual therapist too, born and raised in Canada, of physiotherapy descent. ...
Anyway, I moved (grew up in Sask), now have colder weather but WAY more sun, which at my age I need. My interests include deconstruction of faulty treatment concepts, passion for the neuroanatomy, physiological function, understanding, and care and feeding of the human nervous system, and writing. I helped start the Pain Science Division of the CPA. Currently I am on the exec. and run the coast to coast online directory for PSD members/PTs who want to be in it, and for patients who want to find a pain therapist. In my private PT life I have taken what I know about manual therapy, and what I know about neuroscience, and have called the result, "dermoneuromodulation." It's basically skin stretching but with an entirely neurological treatment construct, no mesodermal derivatives involved whatsoever. I've done a pilot research project on this, along with Angela Busch at U. of S, not yet written up. I've done an initial cutaneous nerve dissection (at UBC), took lots of pictures, wrote it up but have failed to have it accepted so far. I'll be talking about dnm, and about Neuromatrix model of pain, at a congress for manual therapists in Brazil in May. Then (hopefully, don't know yet) in St John's at CPA Congress. My life goal is to help develop vast crowds of rationally thinking, compassionate PTs/manual therapists who care deeply about pain and choose to help their patients overcome it in ways and with treatment constructs that are scientifically bullet-proof. Down with woo, IOW. To help that happen my next ambition is to get ensconced in an anatomy lab somewhere and map out the entire cutaneous nervous system so that therapists of the 21st century can realize and visualize and develop treatment constructs around what they are actually touching, and what's actually responding, in the person/body they are handling. I call this an 'interactor' model rather than an 'operator' model. Many therapists learn to do this, but implicitly rather than explicitly. I want self-aware consciousness AND scientific impeccability AND simultaneous, seamless treatment construct. Not too much to ask, is it?..
I run a page here, Neuroscience and Pain Science for Manual Physical Therapists, if you'd like to check it out some time. I also help admin a skeptical PT site/discussion forum called SomaSimple. You are welcome to come, join, discuss there too! We welcome everyone who wants to learn to think more clearly about what we do or who might have light to shed.
Diane"
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Grooming behaviour
Insights into primate social grooming. Yeah. That could be why I was attracted to becoming a manual therapist/HUMAN primate social groomer. I don't like fighting. I'd rather preemptively groom instead. Gives me some sort of illusion of control over a boundary between me and others in my troop who are much bigger/stronger. It makes sense in certain ways, especially if it works. Why it's not considered "smart".. I do not know. I'd call it social intelligence which has been underestimated.
Primates’ Social Intelligence Overestimated: Primates Groom Others If Afraid They'd Lose in a Fight With Them
Primates’ Social Intelligence Overestimated: Primates Groom Others If Afraid They'd Lose in a Fight With Them
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Getting the shot
Yesterday I got the H1N1 vaccination, previously discussed here. I hadn't had any shots since traveling about 25 years ago, and wasn't really looking forward to the poke, but as it turned out, that part was fine..
I will digress for a moment: health care/medical insurance in this province is completely free. Just get a health care card by showing proof of residence, and voilá, you're in the system. I had to get a health card in order to get a vaccination. I needed to get one anyway, but due to an application which had to be downloaded, printed, filled out and sent in, a broken printer, procrastination about getting a new one hooked up due to a case of acute (but not terminal) technophobia, which came at a time of psychological fray... this process was all delayed for awhile. Suffice it to say that my BC coverage lapsed, and I was actually, officially, uninsured for a few weeks. I won't go into how that felt.. let me just say I was glad when that little Sask card arrived in the mail, early December.
There were a series of vaccination clinics downtown, where I live, but for one reason or another, mostly my own disorganization, I missed them all. On Dec 22 there was one scheduled according to the internet, but when I got to it, it wasn't at the mall a few blocks away - it had been moved to the Public Health office, out of prairie winter walking range, where the Weyburn Mental Hospital used to stand before it was completely razed. (I've always thought it odd to call leveling a building down to the ground "razing" it, but that's a different topic for another day.)
Yesterday the clinic was open for H1N1 vaccination, and my mother agreed to drive me over. It was cold and snowing. The clinic is a few miles away. There are no buses in Weyburn. There are taxis, but because I'm not working for a living right now, I've learned how to be cheap.
It was typical Weyburn, a waiting room full of people, smiling and quietly chatting, a couple bored and antsy young children, only one nurse, I was told, in absolutely no hurry apparently, therefore a long wait. There was a long-ish form with a blank for me to write in my new health card number to complete, only three people ahead of me, but it seemed that each shot took a good 15 minutes. I fumed quietly to myself, thinking of how much of my life was getting sucked away sitting there, how in Vancouver this whole process would have been way more streamlined and way more people would have been processed much more quickly and the receptionist would automatically have filled out the health number to lessen the chance of error. I thought of my mother sitting outside in the cold, in a warm car, but still.. Finally I went out and told her it was going to be at least another 45 minutes. To my surprise, she wasn't fussed at all. I was the one fussed.
When it came my turn, I was given a nod by the receptionist who was wearing a cool, hightech headset thingie, through which she communicated to people not in the room. I walked down a long long hallway as directed, turned right to walk down another hallway, and entered a large room, empty of people except the nurse. What a laid-back place, I fumed silently to myself. The nurse collected my form and asked if I had ever had any reactions to any shots. I told her that the only reaction I'd ever had was a swollen, hot, red upper arm that had lasted a week, from a typhoid shot long ago.
Eventually I got my jab, and realized that the hold-up was that the nurse loved to chitchat with her patients after. I expect that what she was really doing was keeping people talking so she could scan them for reactions or something. There was certainly a great deal more focused attention than I remember from 25 years ago..
The shot itself was swift and relatively painless. Today I have a sore arm, but only at skin level - I can move my arm anyway I like. I feel fine. No Guillain-Barré, so ordinary genes must have made my peripheral nervous system. I have done my part for herd immunity.
I will digress for a moment: health care/medical insurance in this province is completely free. Just get a health care card by showing proof of residence, and voilá, you're in the system. I had to get a health card in order to get a vaccination. I needed to get one anyway, but due to an application which had to be downloaded, printed, filled out and sent in, a broken printer, procrastination about getting a new one hooked up due to a case of acute (but not terminal) technophobia, which came at a time of psychological fray... this process was all delayed for awhile. Suffice it to say that my BC coverage lapsed, and I was actually, officially, uninsured for a few weeks. I won't go into how that felt.. let me just say I was glad when that little Sask card arrived in the mail, early December.
There were a series of vaccination clinics downtown, where I live, but for one reason or another, mostly my own disorganization, I missed them all. On Dec 22 there was one scheduled according to the internet, but when I got to it, it wasn't at the mall a few blocks away - it had been moved to the Public Health office, out of prairie winter walking range, where the Weyburn Mental Hospital used to stand before it was completely razed. (I've always thought it odd to call leveling a building down to the ground "razing" it, but that's a different topic for another day.)
Yesterday the clinic was open for H1N1 vaccination, and my mother agreed to drive me over. It was cold and snowing. The clinic is a few miles away. There are no buses in Weyburn. There are taxis, but because I'm not working for a living right now, I've learned how to be cheap.
It was typical Weyburn, a waiting room full of people, smiling and quietly chatting, a couple bored and antsy young children, only one nurse, I was told, in absolutely no hurry apparently, therefore a long wait. There was a long-ish form with a blank for me to write in my new health card number to complete, only three people ahead of me, but it seemed that each shot took a good 15 minutes. I fumed quietly to myself, thinking of how much of my life was getting sucked away sitting there, how in Vancouver this whole process would have been way more streamlined and way more people would have been processed much more quickly and the receptionist would automatically have filled out the health number to lessen the chance of error. I thought of my mother sitting outside in the cold, in a warm car, but still.. Finally I went out and told her it was going to be at least another 45 minutes. To my surprise, she wasn't fussed at all. I was the one fussed.
When it came my turn, I was given a nod by the receptionist who was wearing a cool, hightech headset thingie, through which she communicated to people not in the room. I walked down a long long hallway as directed, turned right to walk down another hallway, and entered a large room, empty of people except the nurse. What a laid-back place, I fumed silently to myself. The nurse collected my form and asked if I had ever had any reactions to any shots. I told her that the only reaction I'd ever had was a swollen, hot, red upper arm that had lasted a week, from a typhoid shot long ago.
Eventually I got my jab, and realized that the hold-up was that the nurse loved to chitchat with her patients after. I expect that what she was really doing was keeping people talking so she could scan them for reactions or something. There was certainly a great deal more focused attention than I remember from 25 years ago..
The shot itself was swift and relatively painless. Today I have a sore arm, but only at skin level - I can move my arm anyway I like. I feel fine. No Guillain-Barré, so ordinary genes must have made my peripheral nervous system. I have done my part for herd immunity.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Gratitude
Dawkins and Dennett, great conversation. About 50 minutes. How improbable our existence. Where and how we fit. Humanity as the nervous system of the planet. Gratitude for a chance to be here, even for a little while. Unedited.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Discovering Lawrence Krauss
This morning on Facebook I found this less-than-a-minute-long video, posted by DJ Grothe:
Best video of the last week of the first decade of the twenty-first century I have ever encountered.
Best video of the last week of the first decade of the twenty-first century I have ever encountered.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Nucleus Accumbens
There is not very much written about this particular brain region, nucleus accumbens, in any of the four volumes of the massive Encyclopedia of the Human Brain.
It seems to be a bit of brain involved, importantly, in staving off depression, or as Heller notes, in the PNAS open access paper (6-page pdf), Reduced capacity to sustain positive emotion in major depression reflects diminished maintenance of fronto-striatal brain activation,
Any structure that can help stave off "Major Depressive Disorder" is one I want to know more about. There was a look taken at "the fronto-striatal network in anhedonia" also.
Also:
Sounds like depressed people can kind of fake it for a little while, but their/our nucleus accumbens tuckers out easily, can't continuously rejoice over life's simple pleasures. From the paper:
Sheesh, you can say that again. Mine feels as though it is perking up fairly well with the help of increased photons in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Still a fairly long way to go however.
It seems to be a bit of brain involved, importantly, in staving off depression, or as Heller notes, in the PNAS open access paper (6-page pdf), Reduced capacity to sustain positive emotion in major depression reflects diminished maintenance of fronto-striatal brain activation,
"While up-regulating positive affect, depressed individuals failed to sustain nucleus accumbens activity over time compared with controls."
Any structure that can help stave off "Major Depressive Disorder" is one I want to know more about. There was a look taken at "the fronto-striatal network in anhedonia" also.
"These findings support the hypothesis that anhedonia in depressed patients reflects the inability to sustain engagement of structures involved in positive affect and reward."
Also:
"Our study examines the ability of depressed patients to sustain engagement of the NAcc while enhancing positive affect in response to positive images embedded within a stream of stimuli that included both positive and negative images."
Sounds like depressed people can kind of fake it for a little while, but their/our nucleus accumbens tuckers out easily, can't continuously rejoice over life's simple pleasures. From the paper:
"...in everyday life, individuals do not generally encounter uninterrupted positive stimuli. Negative experiences often intermix with positive ones, and the ability of individuals to heighten and maintain positive affect in the face of negative stimuli is vitally important for health and well-being."
Sheesh, you can say that again. Mine feels as though it is perking up fairly well with the help of increased photons in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Still a fairly long way to go however.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Equanimity
Boxing day 2009 - I think I've finally achieved this elusive state. In order to get here, I had to spend nearly 30 years in the dark cave of Vancouver, going with low photon levels in exchange for useful tools and skill sets that are coming in very handy as I navigate life with mom, life in a small city where boundaries are very different than what I became used to, yet eerily familiar at the same time. Who said you can't go back home? I did, and feel much better for it.
Yesterday, I went to my mother's condo at her invitation for a Christmas dinner and present exchange. I gave her, she who loves Christmas bling, a Christmas floral arrangement, professionally produced and delivered locally, way last Monday, on Solstice day. This was my way of spreading the festivity out a bit more so that something important to me (solstice, photons etc.) would be symbolically included in a gift extended by me to her; so that the connection, the buried verb lying within my reach outward to her through a present, could be meaningful to both of us. It was a low montage of cedar and other coniferous greenery, red and white carnations, with a tall red candle sticking up out of the center. She thought it was beautiful and was glad to have it come a few days before Christmas so that she could enjoy it as part of her anticipation of the whole event. Win win.
We ate turkey breast cooked in the oven in a casserole dish, nestled in a bed of stove-top stuffing, to which she had added mushrooms (real, not from a can, she pointed out), onions, butter (not margarine like they put in the stuffing at the Wheatland, she pointed out); it was tasty for sure. Baked potato, half an acorn squash. Ice cream and apple-pear crisp for dessert. Some chokecherry wine. A lovely meal. Over the meal she reminisced about trips she had taken, funerals she had attended, music she liked, a cremation ceremony she'd been to recently. I noticed something in my brain not just nodding along dutifully, politely, but actually listening for subtext from her. "Do you want to be cremated?" I asked. "Yes," she said unhesitatingly, and laughed. "The church lets people do that now. None of this cold six-feet-deep needed if you're just ashes. At the graveyard the undertaker and the daughter together lowered a little square box into a shallow hole in the ground and put a piece of turf over the top." This led into a long side-topic about how dad used to tease her about how she parked. "He used to say, "You always like to leave a way out for yourself, don't you?"" And then she laughed again at the memory. Her way of parking is to leave a huge space beside her and whatever big four-by-four she has to park beside, even if her car sticks out a foot into a laneway, over-riding, or even parked squarely on top of, do-not-obstruct yellow hatch marks in the parking lot. She simply ignores yellow hatch. When it comes to parking, she appears to be yellow-hatch blind. And ticket-proof! The woman takes her space. Always has. I think she feels a touch claustrophobic at the thought of being in a coffin, buried...
Her boundaries have always been thick and tough. My experience as her only child (for the first 3.5 years at least), with her as my mom, was that approaching her was like approaching a large invisible deflector shield, one I bounced off almost every single time I ever tried to get close. After awhile I didn't bother trying anymore. She was never as approachable as she tried to portray herself as being. She wanted contact only whenever she wanted contact, and I was forced to accommodate myself to her. I was treated as her project, part of her bling collection, something she could dress up and curl the hair of and take out and show off. The rest of the time I was to be quiet and unobtrusive. I learned nothing of how to be a truly social human from her, not really. Anyone reading this will be relieved to learn that I did my therapy time and that this is all "water under the bridge," a phrase she likes to use, and that I won't bore readers with too many details.... long ago I asked for, and received in writing, an apology for her physical abuse dished during my childhood, but to try to explain any maternal emotional dearth she might have also dished is something she would find totally incomprehensible. She is confident that she did just fine, thank you very much. I turned out OK, didn't I? Is that not proof? So we go on.
What can I say, except that I need photons, especially in winter? I did not really need to be around my mother. At least huge parts of me did not. However, that having been said, I'm not one to pass up any last chance to understand, maybe, in retrospect, how life came to feel so pointy and sharp my whole way through it. While I'm here enjoying the feeling of having my personal brain photon tank slowly filling up again, I am cautiously exploring this old, painful, resurrected relationship with the one person in the world to whom I owe everything and nothing, depending upon which side of myself perceives her.
Anyway, so far, so good. Exercising psychic integration could feel worse. Whether my mind frames it as dragon-slaying or merely as sedate familial adjustment, I'm sure it will all be of personal benefit at some point. Something in there is feeling successful about something, and just now that's all that matters.
I opened up a gift from her, a huge box, inside which was packed a slow-cooker. Perfect, because I usually get distracted and burn things when I cook, which is irregularly. Thanks mom. Also, she gave me a set of 24 Sharpies with fine tips. She had seen me admiring them in Walmart. I make a lot of doodle drawings. I go through a lot of Sharpies. So this was a great present.
I gave her a big shiny green gift bag full of edible things - a Christmas pudding, a box of Christmas cake, some candied ginger, some halva (which I remember her enjoying from when I was a child), some boxed truffles, and a set of one-handed salt and pepper grinders I have had for absolute ages, complete with little bags of extra salt chunks and pepper corns for refill. She thought this was all too much. Maybe it was. I've given her nothing but a card for years and years and years, and for a long time before that, nothing, not even a card. So it didn't seem extravagant to me, not for a first Christmas spent together in decades, and just her and me to boot. But I may have over-compensated. Maybe there is still a pocket or two of buried, unearthed guilt to deal with. I'll find and deal with it consciously, rather than continue to buy her too many Christmas presents after buying her nothing for decades.
She was anxious to open a large box from my sister that had arrived addressed to both of us. We opened it up, and it contained a necklace for her, a framed photo for her of my sister and her husband, and for me a large plastic recycle bin and some home-made chutney. On the card attached to the recycle bin, she had written my name and that it was one of the "plunge buckets" she had used to help her foot feel better, after fracturing a few bones in it last summer, at my urging to do contrast foot soaks. Mom called her, and we each talked to her for awhile. It had a nice connecty family feel to it.
About 9:30PM, the evening wound down, and I packed up my things for the walk home just up the block.
Yesterday, I went to my mother's condo at her invitation for a Christmas dinner and present exchange. I gave her, she who loves Christmas bling, a Christmas floral arrangement, professionally produced and delivered locally, way last Monday, on Solstice day. This was my way of spreading the festivity out a bit more so that something important to me (solstice, photons etc.) would be symbolically included in a gift extended by me to her; so that the connection, the buried verb lying within my reach outward to her through a present, could be meaningful to both of us. It was a low montage of cedar and other coniferous greenery, red and white carnations, with a tall red candle sticking up out of the center. She thought it was beautiful and was glad to have it come a few days before Christmas so that she could enjoy it as part of her anticipation of the whole event. Win win.
We ate turkey breast cooked in the oven in a casserole dish, nestled in a bed of stove-top stuffing, to which she had added mushrooms (real, not from a can, she pointed out), onions, butter (not margarine like they put in the stuffing at the Wheatland, she pointed out); it was tasty for sure. Baked potato, half an acorn squash. Ice cream and apple-pear crisp for dessert. Some chokecherry wine. A lovely meal. Over the meal she reminisced about trips she had taken, funerals she had attended, music she liked, a cremation ceremony she'd been to recently. I noticed something in my brain not just nodding along dutifully, politely, but actually listening for subtext from her. "Do you want to be cremated?" I asked. "Yes," she said unhesitatingly, and laughed. "The church lets people do that now. None of this cold six-feet-deep needed if you're just ashes. At the graveyard the undertaker and the daughter together lowered a little square box into a shallow hole in the ground and put a piece of turf over the top." This led into a long side-topic about how dad used to tease her about how she parked. "He used to say, "You always like to leave a way out for yourself, don't you?"" And then she laughed again at the memory. Her way of parking is to leave a huge space beside her and whatever big four-by-four she has to park beside, even if her car sticks out a foot into a laneway, over-riding, or even parked squarely on top of, do-not-obstruct yellow hatch marks in the parking lot. She simply ignores yellow hatch. When it comes to parking, she appears to be yellow-hatch blind. And ticket-proof! The woman takes her space. Always has. I think she feels a touch claustrophobic at the thought of being in a coffin, buried...
Her boundaries have always been thick and tough. My experience as her only child (for the first 3.5 years at least), with her as my mom, was that approaching her was like approaching a large invisible deflector shield, one I bounced off almost every single time I ever tried to get close. After awhile I didn't bother trying anymore. She was never as approachable as she tried to portray herself as being. She wanted contact only whenever she wanted contact, and I was forced to accommodate myself to her. I was treated as her project, part of her bling collection, something she could dress up and curl the hair of and take out and show off. The rest of the time I was to be quiet and unobtrusive. I learned nothing of how to be a truly social human from her, not really. Anyone reading this will be relieved to learn that I did my therapy time and that this is all "water under the bridge," a phrase she likes to use, and that I won't bore readers with too many details.... long ago I asked for, and received in writing, an apology for her physical abuse dished during my childhood, but to try to explain any maternal emotional dearth she might have also dished is something she would find totally incomprehensible. She is confident that she did just fine, thank you very much. I turned out OK, didn't I? Is that not proof? So we go on.
What can I say, except that I need photons, especially in winter? I did not really need to be around my mother. At least huge parts of me did not. However, that having been said, I'm not one to pass up any last chance to understand, maybe, in retrospect, how life came to feel so pointy and sharp my whole way through it. While I'm here enjoying the feeling of having my personal brain photon tank slowly filling up again, I am cautiously exploring this old, painful, resurrected relationship with the one person in the world to whom I owe everything and nothing, depending upon which side of myself perceives her.
Anyway, so far, so good. Exercising psychic integration could feel worse. Whether my mind frames it as dragon-slaying or merely as sedate familial adjustment, I'm sure it will all be of personal benefit at some point. Something in there is feeling successful about something, and just now that's all that matters.
I opened up a gift from her, a huge box, inside which was packed a slow-cooker. Perfect, because I usually get distracted and burn things when I cook, which is irregularly. Thanks mom. Also, she gave me a set of 24 Sharpies with fine tips. She had seen me admiring them in Walmart. I make a lot of doodle drawings. I go through a lot of Sharpies. So this was a great present.
I gave her a big shiny green gift bag full of edible things - a Christmas pudding, a box of Christmas cake, some candied ginger, some halva (which I remember her enjoying from when I was a child), some boxed truffles, and a set of one-handed salt and pepper grinders I have had for absolute ages, complete with little bags of extra salt chunks and pepper corns for refill. She thought this was all too much. Maybe it was. I've given her nothing but a card for years and years and years, and for a long time before that, nothing, not even a card. So it didn't seem extravagant to me, not for a first Christmas spent together in decades, and just her and me to boot. But I may have over-compensated. Maybe there is still a pocket or two of buried, unearthed guilt to deal with. I'll find and deal with it consciously, rather than continue to buy her too many Christmas presents after buying her nothing for decades.
She was anxious to open a large box from my sister that had arrived addressed to both of us. We opened it up, and it contained a necklace for her, a framed photo for her of my sister and her husband, and for me a large plastic recycle bin and some home-made chutney. On the card attached to the recycle bin, she had written my name and that it was one of the "plunge buckets" she had used to help her foot feel better, after fracturing a few bones in it last summer, at my urging to do contrast foot soaks. Mom called her, and we each talked to her for awhile. It had a nice connecty family feel to it.
About 9:30PM, the evening wound down, and I packed up my things for the walk home just up the block.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Light-hearted on Dec 25th
This was posted over a year ago, but it's new to me, and I like it a lot, so here goes:
This afternoon I'll be going to my mom's house, where we will have a day together, eat (she's cooking) and exchange presents. She plans to go kneel for awhile at her Catholic church this morning, whereas I sit here typing and adding a topical, a-religious video to my blog. Hey, we each have our own way to mark the day, and we still get along. That's what's great about having clear boundaries. Forward Hohoho.
This afternoon I'll be going to my mom's house, where we will have a day together, eat (she's cooking) and exchange presents. She plans to go kneel for awhile at her Catholic church this morning, whereas I sit here typing and adding a topical, a-religious video to my blog. Hey, we each have our own way to mark the day, and we still get along. That's what's great about having clear boundaries. Forward Hohoho.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Zeitgeber
Learned this new word today: Zeitgeber. My definition: a recurring clue from one's environment around which one's brain can develop synchronized optimized neuroplasticity.
So, this week is solstice, a week marked by collective yearning for more light expressed in many ways by many cultures, and often religiously.
I must say, I feel pretty good this year. I've failed to note any of the usual drag on me and my mood, function, no urge to hibernate, no letdown, no dread, no anxiety... Nothing. I feel "normal". Back in Saskatchewan where my brain matured in bright sunshine year round. How it is enjoying its revel in photonic bliss, even while the rest of me still looks for ways to adapt to new surroundings and people and wonders what it will do with the rest of my life.
One thing I know is that the long rest and exposure to real light "cure" will help the rest of me figure it all out as time goes along. So I'm not particularly stressed about any of it. I'm content to just wait and see what reveals itself during the cold time fast approaching. Yeah, it will be shockingly cold, but I'm pretty sure I can adapt to it swiftly. I have marvelously thermo-efficient outerwear and a new pair of those wire rigs that provide increased traction to help people walk on ice - when it gets windy I expect they will help a lot.
Further reading:
Sensorimotor modulation of mood and depression: An integrative review.
So, this week is solstice, a week marked by collective yearning for more light expressed in many ways by many cultures, and often religiously.
I must say, I feel pretty good this year. I've failed to note any of the usual drag on me and my mood, function, no urge to hibernate, no letdown, no dread, no anxiety... Nothing. I feel "normal". Back in Saskatchewan where my brain matured in bright sunshine year round. How it is enjoying its revel in photonic bliss, even while the rest of me still looks for ways to adapt to new surroundings and people and wonders what it will do with the rest of my life.
One thing I know is that the long rest and exposure to real light "cure" will help the rest of me figure it all out as time goes along. So I'm not particularly stressed about any of it. I'm content to just wait and see what reveals itself during the cold time fast approaching. Yeah, it will be shockingly cold, but I'm pretty sure I can adapt to it swiftly. I have marvelously thermo-efficient outerwear and a new pair of those wire rigs that provide increased traction to help people walk on ice - when it gets windy I expect they will help a lot.
Further reading:
Sensorimotor modulation of mood and depression: An integrative review.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
'Tis the season?
In a blog connected to an Australian osteopath I know of, appeared this post from almost a year ago. There was always something about pain and religion. It discusses a study in which a specific example of religious imagery was found to help the brains of those who had been imbued with those particular images to downregulate pain. The post is clear on the point that an entrenched belief system is at work, that the picture itself has no "power" over pain.
It seems an appropriate time of the year to consider the information contained therein. Personally I've always found religion to be more rather than less of a pain, but maybe that's just how I happen to be wired. That having been said, it makes more sense to me now why people are so "devoted" to acquiring, harbouring, growing, and propagating the memeplexes involved - it looks like they operate on the human population as a convenient drug-free pharmaceutical.
It's perhaps less of a mystery to me now why people can be so angsty when someone comes along to challenge said belief system, or maybe any belief system - how is this reaction not like that of a junkie threatened by separation from the next fix? I am reminded of Robert Burton's book, On Being Certain. Dopamine pathways are involved in the generation of the feeling of being certain.
I get an image in my head that's hard to shake - billions of human minds born free of nonsense, reaching up and waving like vine tendrils, hoping to find something to cling to, finding nothing, so inventing something (anything) to latch onto to help haul self through life as painlessly as possible. It fits with why religion seems to be so ubiquitous, still.
My own mind somehow ended up not needing to acquire this particular adaptation. I am definitely not free of belief, but I examine things I believe in to make sure they have foundation in fact, not fiction. Oh well. And about pain? I deal with pain in myself and others the old-fashioned way, one by one, by handling nervous systems and trying hard to not create more pain for the people embedded inside them in the process. I haven't bumped adversely into very many belief systems in other people along the way, in 40 years. However, I think I'm at a stage where all this personal life trajectory, how I balance my own against others', where my personal values stand now vis a vis my cultural context/current-entirely-changed social context, is up for retrieval and update. I expect the values are sturdy - I tried to build my "self" that way, but I have often observed there are surprises too - life is full of those. So we shall see.
It seems an appropriate time of the year to consider the information contained therein. Personally I've always found religion to be more rather than less of a pain, but maybe that's just how I happen to be wired. That having been said, it makes more sense to me now why people are so "devoted" to acquiring, harbouring, growing, and propagating the memeplexes involved - it looks like they operate on the human population as a convenient drug-free pharmaceutical.
It's perhaps less of a mystery to me now why people can be so angsty when someone comes along to challenge said belief system, or maybe any belief system - how is this reaction not like that of a junkie threatened by separation from the next fix? I am reminded of Robert Burton's book, On Being Certain. Dopamine pathways are involved in the generation of the feeling of being certain.
I get an image in my head that's hard to shake - billions of human minds born free of nonsense, reaching up and waving like vine tendrils, hoping to find something to cling to, finding nothing, so inventing something (anything) to latch onto to help haul self through life as painlessly as possible. It fits with why religion seems to be so ubiquitous, still.
My own mind somehow ended up not needing to acquire this particular adaptation. I am definitely not free of belief, but I examine things I believe in to make sure they have foundation in fact, not fiction. Oh well. And about pain? I deal with pain in myself and others the old-fashioned way, one by one, by handling nervous systems and trying hard to not create more pain for the people embedded inside them in the process. I haven't bumped adversely into very many belief systems in other people along the way, in 40 years. However, I think I'm at a stage where all this personal life trajectory, how I balance my own against others', where my personal values stand now vis a vis my cultural context/current-entirely-changed social context, is up for retrieval and update. I expect the values are sturdy - I tried to build my "self" that way, but I have often observed there are surprises too - life is full of those. So we shall see.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
May your days be merry and bright
This has to be the most stressful time of the year for social and symbolically afflicted animals like us, when we are trying to change our way along. But I am pleased to be able to say that this year the stress is much less.
I went to a party last night, 16 people, a catered turkey dinner at the senior drop-in center where I go and volunteer, peel potatoes etc., the local good churchwoman (best friend of my mom) said grace, there was a party afterward in my mother's living room, most of the people there in their 80's, some corny games, some Christmas carols accompanied by one of the 80-somethings on a portable piano, a present exchange, three people (women) wearing identical red vests (- I was one - guess I'm blending in well around here, the kid of the bunch at not quite 60 yet). It all feels a weird combination of surreal (this is not my life, surely) combined with acceptance (really, it's not so bad, a bunch of older folk all living independently, manufacturing for themselves and apparently enjoying simple social pleasures, keeping each other going and cheered up in a safe, humble little prairie community). There were four men and a lot of widows. My own father checked out 9 years ago.
It's a nice gentle way to be passing time, hanging out with advanced seniors. Which is odd, because at younger ages I would have been bored out of my mind by this sort of repetitive socializing for the sake of socializing. I would have felt myself trying to burst out of invisible cages.
Instead I feel very welcome and nurtured by this group. Its members find lots of little ways to let me know that they like and appreciate my being there with them. I find myself open to accepting this without feeling uncomfortably vulnerable at the same time.
I have what I consider to be my "normal life," which to them is strange since none of them use computers, lived virtually, being online, studying, thinking, conversing by email/writing. The inner world of me.
I have this weird (to me) and yet oddly comfortable outer life now, my only peer group at the moment comprised of people my mother's age or close. Preferable IMO to living in an increasingly nasty urban jungle, full of darkness, lack of sun, fighting every day just to make myself stay there. I seem to have created a symbolic "child" world again, and my own mother is actually still physically present in it, part of it. I can feel long-lost parts of me lapping up this nurturing environment like thirsty camels lap up oasis water.
It slowly is dawning on me that it barely matters anyway, what I am or what I make or don't make of myself in the world. I never thought I'd see the day when personal existential angst would appear to comfortably recede or dissolve. Maybe it has to do increased light levels. Maybe with having managed to revisit "child" mode once again for a little while. Maybe a combination. Whatever. I remain acutely aware that one day I'll just slide right out of existence, but I feel detached about this in yet another new way for now, even as I anticipate attending many funerals in the coming years. Which won't involve fun probably. So for now it seems important to just relax, support these people and their gentle socializing for all the camaraderie and fun it seems to bring them, all I can, just for now. It's what is right under my nose at the moment. I can always go back to paid physical human primate social grooming, later.
I went to a party last night, 16 people, a catered turkey dinner at the senior drop-in center where I go and volunteer, peel potatoes etc., the local good churchwoman (best friend of my mom) said grace, there was a party afterward in my mother's living room, most of the people there in their 80's, some corny games, some Christmas carols accompanied by one of the 80-somethings on a portable piano, a present exchange, three people (women) wearing identical red vests (- I was one - guess I'm blending in well around here, the kid of the bunch at not quite 60 yet). It all feels a weird combination of surreal (this is not my life, surely) combined with acceptance (really, it's not so bad, a bunch of older folk all living independently, manufacturing for themselves and apparently enjoying simple social pleasures, keeping each other going and cheered up in a safe, humble little prairie community). There were four men and a lot of widows. My own father checked out 9 years ago.
It's a nice gentle way to be passing time, hanging out with advanced seniors. Which is odd, because at younger ages I would have been bored out of my mind by this sort of repetitive socializing for the sake of socializing. I would have felt myself trying to burst out of invisible cages.
Instead I feel very welcome and nurtured by this group. Its members find lots of little ways to let me know that they like and appreciate my being there with them. I find myself open to accepting this without feeling uncomfortably vulnerable at the same time.
I have what I consider to be my "normal life," which to them is strange since none of them use computers, lived virtually, being online, studying, thinking, conversing by email/writing. The inner world of me.
I have this weird (to me) and yet oddly comfortable outer life now, my only peer group at the moment comprised of people my mother's age or close. Preferable IMO to living in an increasingly nasty urban jungle, full of darkness, lack of sun, fighting every day just to make myself stay there. I seem to have created a symbolic "child" world again, and my own mother is actually still physically present in it, part of it. I can feel long-lost parts of me lapping up this nurturing environment like thirsty camels lap up oasis water.
It slowly is dawning on me that it barely matters anyway, what I am or what I make or don't make of myself in the world. I never thought I'd see the day when personal existential angst would appear to comfortably recede or dissolve. Maybe it has to do increased light levels. Maybe with having managed to revisit "child" mode once again for a little while. Maybe a combination. Whatever. I remain acutely aware that one day I'll just slide right out of existence, but I feel detached about this in yet another new way for now, even as I anticipate attending many funerals in the coming years. Which won't involve fun probably. So for now it seems important to just relax, support these people and their gentle socializing for all the camaraderie and fun it seems to bring them, all I can, just for now. It's what is right under my nose at the moment. I can always go back to paid physical human primate social grooming, later.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Wheatland jigsaw puzzle mountain
In case anyone does not believe me...
Many of them not here - they're out, spread out on someone's dining table, being put together. Some people knit, I do these..
Winter blue and white in Weyburn
Here is why I moved back. So beautiful, what clear dry cold air does to moisture on trees. Taken today.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Winter, Neurevolution, and Nicolas Wade
This morning there was a definite cloak of white spread out on the street below, and resting upon branches and twigs. The day is Dec. 1/09, and the light level is fabulous - beautiful blue sky. So refreshing to be back in the land where winter colors are blue and white instead of dark grey and dark green.
I found two tweets today to bring here. The first one is from Neurevolution blog, Cingulate Cortex and the Evolution of Human Uniqueness. Apparently there is a small region in the human ACC not present in oft-studied monkey brains. The author, while refraining from making any direct claim, and acknowledging the difficulties inherent in directly studying human brains, suggests that neuroscience in general might want to not gloss over this issue. My interest in ACC stems from the idea that it's an area of the brain that come to be known as part of the "pain matrix" as it it usually lit up in people with persisting pain. It seems, metaphorically speaking, to be the zone in the brain that has trouble making up its "mind", the brain's worrier.
Deciding what I have to do is not something I ever found particularly hard - rather, determining the shape of the problem to be solved is something I've always found much harder. This requires a lot of time and examination, and is a very difficult thing to do when there is nothing actually concrete to handle or measure or weigh or consider or interact with, just vague feelings to deal with and try to sort, like the recent long climb back up out of a depressed state. I feel like my ACC has had a real workout in the last few years.
The other piece is an NYT story, We May be Born With an Urge to Help, by Nicolas Wade.
I really appreciate Nicolas Wade. Had he not written his excellent NYT article on Seth Grant's work, I wouldn't probably have picked up on it at all, and would not have become excited enough about Mo's interest in the topic and concurrent blogpost about it to have been able to interest Ginger Campbell of the excellent Brain Science Podcast into doing an interview with Seth Grant, and wouldn't know the first thing about synapse evolution. I feel I might have gained an IQ point just following along, attempting to grasp the enormity of what it might mean, as a real breakthrough...
But that is all history now - this new article by Nicolas Wade is about a topic also important to me but at a much different level - intrinsic helpfulness in babies and small children, practical suggestions on how to cultivate it instead of snuffing it through inadvertently bad parenting. Looks like we're here to help each other, helping shows up early, and frankly, I think we'll go on doing this as long as we continue to be a species. Personally, I do not like cultures or societal or religious institutions that have stifled this urge, have distorted or perverted it to meet more selfish interests or objectives - i.e., their own, but that is a whole other topic for some other time or place.
I found two tweets today to bring here. The first one is from Neurevolution blog, Cingulate Cortex and the Evolution of Human Uniqueness. Apparently there is a small region in the human ACC not present in oft-studied monkey brains. The author, while refraining from making any direct claim, and acknowledging the difficulties inherent in directly studying human brains, suggests that neuroscience in general might want to not gloss over this issue. My interest in ACC stems from the idea that it's an area of the brain that come to be known as part of the "pain matrix" as it it usually lit up in people with persisting pain. It seems, metaphorically speaking, to be the zone in the brain that has trouble making up its "mind", the brain's worrier.
Deciding what I have to do is not something I ever found particularly hard - rather, determining the shape of the problem to be solved is something I've always found much harder. This requires a lot of time and examination, and is a very difficult thing to do when there is nothing actually concrete to handle or measure or weigh or consider or interact with, just vague feelings to deal with and try to sort, like the recent long climb back up out of a depressed state. I feel like my ACC has had a real workout in the last few years.
The other piece is an NYT story, We May be Born With an Urge to Help, by Nicolas Wade.
I really appreciate Nicolas Wade. Had he not written his excellent NYT article on Seth Grant's work, I wouldn't probably have picked up on it at all, and would not have become excited enough about Mo's interest in the topic and concurrent blogpost about it to have been able to interest Ginger Campbell of the excellent Brain Science Podcast into doing an interview with Seth Grant, and wouldn't know the first thing about synapse evolution. I feel I might have gained an IQ point just following along, attempting to grasp the enormity of what it might mean, as a real breakthrough...
But that is all history now - this new article by Nicolas Wade is about a topic also important to me but at a much different level - intrinsic helpfulness in babies and small children, practical suggestions on how to cultivate it instead of snuffing it through inadvertently bad parenting. Looks like we're here to help each other, helping shows up early, and frankly, I think we'll go on doing this as long as we continue to be a species. Personally, I do not like cultures or societal or religious institutions that have stifled this urge, have distorted or perverted it to meet more selfish interests or objectives - i.e., their own, but that is a whole other topic for some other time or place.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The "verbiness" of terms for describing pain
From a discussion thread on Somasimple, the difference between kinds of pain:
Perfect. Pain as verb, not noun. Pain as a natural process (i.e., something that moves along) for which adverbs might be helpful, not as some static something requiring scads of ever more clashing and diametrically opposed, mutually exclusive adjectives, like "normal" and "abnormal."
Thank you John.
Adverb:
1. a word that modifies something other than a noun
2. the word class that qualifies verbs or clauses
Adverbial: a word or group of words function as an adverb
"I tend to think in terms of "persisting" and "resolving". - Sebastian Asselbergs PT
"Aha. I'm starting to get it. Conceiving of pain as a condition like alcoholism where the diagnosis of it being a "problem" can only come from the person experiencing it makes sense.
This is helpful to me. Assisting a patient towards resolution will be more effective if I have an appreciation of how their pain may be working for them. Only when they admit that the pain's not working, and become willing to change whatever behaviors are contributing to its persistence can they start towards resolution. This sounds like the movement from a pre-contemplative to contemplative stage of behavioral change.
Cognitive behavioral therapy principles come in to play here because patients may think their pain is working, but they are often mistaken. They don't see the whole picture, or are not reasoning effectively...because of the pain. Obviously, pain clouds jugdment(sic) and reasoning abilities. It also robs one of options- and the ability to imagine other possibilities.
I like the "verbiness" of "persisting" and "resolving." Conceptually, this supports a more interactional as opposed to operational mode of providing therapy.
I don't want to be a hero for my patients." - John Ware PT
Perfect. Pain as verb, not noun. Pain as a natural process (i.e., something that moves along) for which adverbs might be helpful, not as some static something requiring scads of ever more clashing and diametrically opposed, mutually exclusive adjectives, like "normal" and "abnormal."
Thank you John.
Adverb:
1. a word that modifies something other than a noun
2. the word class that qualifies verbs or clauses
Adverbial: a word or group of words function as an adverb
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Parrot provides a bit of novel sensory-discriminative input to a cat
Thanks to Javed Alam at Brain, Mind, Consciousness and Learning blog for this. Such a tender little video.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Canadian Pain Physio Directory
I'm pleased to announce the launch of the Canadian Pain Physio Directory, an initiative of the Pain Science Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. A permanent link has been added to this blog, at the top.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Light, let there be.
I need to rave on a bit about how much I am enjoying the light levels here in Saskatchewan. My own particular very bossy suprachiasmatic nucleus loves being "home" again. Let me try to explain. This first picture is my view of the sky, looking west, about 5:15 PM. We don't change the clock in Sask. That's just point 1.
Where I live is situated 1850 feet above sea level. It's like living at the top of a very very large hill. When the sun comes up, or goes down, the light changes ever so gradually. There is nothing abrupt about this process the way it is at sea level. The sky takes a good half hour or longer to brighten or dim, both before and after the sun has come or gone. I think this gradated dimming/brightening, the slowness of it, the gentleness of it, the non-abruptness of it, is crucial - at least to me. I think it might be why the big fake sun-lamp stopped working for me. My particular suprachiasmatic nucleus took all this for granted the first 33 years of its existence. Then for the next 26 years or so, it had to put up with sudden light changes. They really are more abrupt when there are mountains and sea level blocking light as my brain had become accustomed to it, a brain used to a sky that faded or brightened slowly, so slowly, from very dark to very, very bright. And big. Huge. Dome. Sky. Sky that actually dips down on all sides below the horizon line, letting the sun smoothly illuminate it even when it isn't directly visible. How cool is that? This second picture was take at around 6 PM! There is still enough light in the sky to take a picture without any fancy equipment, just a handheld camera. Not much, but just enough.
Halfway through November, and no SAD. Not one bit of it. Just greater and greater decompression noted each passing week.
More about flu
I wrote a bit about this just yesterday. A number of years ago, while researching what life was like in the early part of the last century, trying to feel the context of the birth of physiotherapy as a profession in the world, I read all about the flu pandemic of 1918, and I must confess, it scared the bejeebers out of me. I don't scare easily - it's just that this thing killed such a huge percentage of the population of the day, and there was no stopping it then like there is now. Like most everything in nature that moves, it came in waves.
There were no flu shots available way back then. It was AFTER, and likely BECAUSE of the 1918 pandemic, which scared the bejeebers out of the entire world, that Centers for Disease Control developed, and vaccines were developed, to try to keep something like this from ever slowing us human primates in our various troops, down, ever again.
I want to grab Bill Maher (and others like him) (gently) and shake him, ask him to wake up, and go to, look at, read the following links. Try to understand the deal here. Ask him to set an example of the right sort.
1. Images
2. Wikipedia link
"The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish Flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1."(H1N1 - did you see that?)
3. Modern strain similar news story
4. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic from Stanford, somewhat scholarly treatment of the issue
5. Mother of all Pandemics
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Conversation re: flu
So, this morning I arrived at the Wheatland bright and early to help peel spuds for a catered dinner later today. There were the two main caterers, Ruby and Helen, and Helen's husband John. John already had the potatoes in the sink, had quite a few peeled, so I donned an apron and joined him, with a peeler I brought with me from home, originally purchased at IKEA in Vancouver. It's a great peeler, sharper than most of the ones I've tested at the Wheatland.
Anyway, I asked Ruby how things were going for her. "I'm not going to get that flu shot," she announced, which made me think that she had been thinking about it that very moment. Which one? I asked. "H1N1" she replied. Oh. How come? I asked. "Because I don't think I need it. By the time we get the vaccine here, the flu will have come and gone anyway," she replied. "I'll get the seasonal flu shot though," she added. She continued ripping up several heads of iceberg lettuce for the large salad she was building in an enormous clear plastic rectangular tub, enough to feed 60.
"That's interesting," I remarked as I fished a gigantic potato, a good three pounds, up out of muddy sink water, a potato that still had half a farmer's field stuck to its side, which I set out to remove before trying to peel it. "I came to exactly the opposite strategy after thinking about the whole business. I'm willing to become part of 'herd immunity' for H1N1, because, well, while seasonal flu does kill people, it's usually the really weak and sick that die from it, whereas H1N1 is picking off healthy people, kids. I'm more interested in not being a breeding ground for something that kills healthy people than I am in not being a breeding ground for something that is mostly not dangerous for healthy people." I managed to chop up the three-pounder into about 6 large chunks, each of which I could peel more easily with my small hands and wicked sharp peeler from IKEA.
Ruby replied, "But those people who die from H1N1 must have a weak immune system."
"Actually... my understanding is that they don't, that the virus actually provokes their immune system into over-reacting, and it's their own immune system response that does them in."
Silence. Then, "How are those potatoes coming along?"
"Good. How many pots-full will we need?"
"We'll need about two and a half small pots full, but we'll cook them all in just the big pot. There are only 60 people coming to this. It's not like a regular supper with a hundred and 20 where we need the big pot full and two small pots as well."
"OK then, I think we'll have enough with these four big potatoes we have left to peel here."
Long pause.
Then Ruby said, "I don't know.. I think I'll just go with what the doctor said. He said he thought that by the time the vaccine got here, the flu would have already come and gone anyway.."
I waited an appropriate length of time, then said, "Well... I was thinking about that 1918 flu. I think it arrived in waves. I think it can go away for a bit then come back again... I wouldn't want to be someone who worked for the Center for Disease Control, tracking viruses and whatnot, trying to figure out how to advise as I tried to understand what was happening around the country.. That 1918 flu took out a huge chunk of the population. In those days there were only 2 billion people on the planet, and the flu took out 50 million, something like that.. that's a big percent of the population, and there were no shots for it, no Center for Disease Control, nothing. People died like flies in those days from all sorts of things, but for sure that flu made a big impression..... Do we have enough potatoes peeled now, do you think?"
"Yup. That should do it. Let's go have coffee."
Anyway, I asked Ruby how things were going for her. "I'm not going to get that flu shot," she announced, which made me think that she had been thinking about it that very moment. Which one? I asked. "H1N1" she replied. Oh. How come? I asked. "Because I don't think I need it. By the time we get the vaccine here, the flu will have come and gone anyway," she replied. "I'll get the seasonal flu shot though," she added. She continued ripping up several heads of iceberg lettuce for the large salad she was building in an enormous clear plastic rectangular tub, enough to feed 60.
"That's interesting," I remarked as I fished a gigantic potato, a good three pounds, up out of muddy sink water, a potato that still had half a farmer's field stuck to its side, which I set out to remove before trying to peel it. "I came to exactly the opposite strategy after thinking about the whole business. I'm willing to become part of 'herd immunity' for H1N1, because, well, while seasonal flu does kill people, it's usually the really weak and sick that die from it, whereas H1N1 is picking off healthy people, kids. I'm more interested in not being a breeding ground for something that kills healthy people than I am in not being a breeding ground for something that is mostly not dangerous for healthy people." I managed to chop up the three-pounder into about 6 large chunks, each of which I could peel more easily with my small hands and wicked sharp peeler from IKEA.
Ruby replied, "But those people who die from H1N1 must have a weak immune system."
"Actually... my understanding is that they don't, that the virus actually provokes their immune system into over-reacting, and it's their own immune system response that does them in."
Silence. Then, "How are those potatoes coming along?"
"Good. How many pots-full will we need?"
"We'll need about two and a half small pots full, but we'll cook them all in just the big pot. There are only 60 people coming to this. It's not like a regular supper with a hundred and 20 where we need the big pot full and two small pots as well."
"OK then, I think we'll have enough with these four big potatoes we have left to peel here."
Long pause.
Then Ruby said, "I don't know.. I think I'll just go with what the doctor said. He said he thought that by the time the vaccine got here, the flu would have already come and gone anyway.."
I waited an appropriate length of time, then said, "Well... I was thinking about that 1918 flu. I think it arrived in waves. I think it can go away for a bit then come back again... I wouldn't want to be someone who worked for the Center for Disease Control, tracking viruses and whatnot, trying to figure out how to advise as I tried to understand what was happening around the country.. That 1918 flu took out a huge chunk of the population. In those days there were only 2 billion people on the planet, and the flu took out 50 million, something like that.. that's a big percent of the population, and there were no shots for it, no Center for Disease Control, nothing. People died like flies in those days from all sorts of things, but for sure that flu made a big impression..... Do we have enough potatoes peeled now, do you think?"
"Yup. That should do it. Let's go have coffee."
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The Red Albatross
Finally, the red Persian rug is gone. I took one last picture of it today, lying in a semi-rolled up heap in the middle of my living room, just prior to the arrival of two men who carted it away, off to the Wheatland Center, where it will either live on the floor of the puzzle room, or else be raffled off as a fund-raiser, a more recent idea Helen, the administrator, hatched. Either way, I'm glad it's gone from my life where it had become a burden, and will have a new life with someone (or someones) else, who will give it a nice home and enjoy it. Plus, if the Wheatland makes a goodly sum of $ out of it, all the better.
Sure is nice to have it gone. A weight feels as though it has lifted. Bye-bye rug, hello more simplicity.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Writing
Mo at Neurophilosophy Twittered a link to a blog called Inside Higher Education: Career Advice, about writing a dissertation, by Peg Boyle Single. It seems she has a book out.
The column is also full of good advice about writing in general. Part 1, A Regular Writing Routine, is a layout of the mechanics. Write whenever you have a chance.
Part 2 is What the Research Says. The first item recommended is to develop "deliberate practice."
It sounds like training for anything sounds. Start with twenty minutes a day and build up to 4 hours/day. Neuroplasticity will develop the brain. Pattern recognition is enhanced, etc.
Please, if you want to be a writer, read the entire posts carefully, especially if you have to write something academic. I can attest to how hard it is and how easily one can be chewed and spat out. My first and only (academic) paper so far was a disaster, swiftly rejected by the one and only journal I sent it to. I could not figure out what it was reviewers wanted - if it was a failure merely of style, or if I was simply inept at delivering written content, or if they hated the content itself. I'm still baffled. I could definitely have used this advice a year ago.
I can hardly wait for the next two columns in the 4-part series. Thank you Peg. Thank you Mo.
The column is also full of good advice about writing in general. Part 1, A Regular Writing Routine, is a layout of the mechanics. Write whenever you have a chance.
"Motivation in writing comes from prewriting, prewriting, prewriting. Motivation occurs when you have done the necessary planning steps so that when you sit down to write prose, you have had time to subconsciously play around with the ideas and you only have to retrieve and type down the ideas, not to think them up. Motivation occurs when you have a very detailed long outline, filled in with citeable notes, by your desk that guides your writing."
Part 2 is What the Research Says. The first item recommended is to develop "deliberate practice."
"So what is deliberate practice? It is not inherently fun nor is it intrinsically rewarding. It is work. Deliberate practice is effortful practice with full concentration and includes a mechanism by which the results of the practice can be evaluated and improved upon in future sessions. Often a coach or master teacher oversees the deliberate practice, chooses individualized training tasks, and evaluates the results of the training. Experts more often engage in deliberate practice during the morning; research has supported that we have the greatest capacity for sustained, engaged and demanding cognitive activity during the morning. Research has also supported the many anecdotal accounts that four hours is the length of time that deliberate practice can be sustained."
It sounds like training for anything sounds. Start with twenty minutes a day and build up to 4 hours/day. Neuroplasticity will develop the brain. Pattern recognition is enhanced, etc.
"Novice writers tend to focus on the word or the sentence as the unit of creation or as the unit of analysis. Expert writers focus on the whole and on the paragraph as the smallest unit of creation or analysis."
Please, if you want to be a writer, read the entire posts carefully, especially if you have to write something academic. I can attest to how hard it is and how easily one can be chewed and spat out. My first and only (academic) paper so far was a disaster, swiftly rejected by the one and only journal I sent it to. I could not figure out what it was reviewers wanted - if it was a failure merely of style, or if I was simply inept at delivering written content, or if they hated the content itself. I'm still baffled. I could definitely have used this advice a year ago.
I can hardly wait for the next two columns in the 4-part series. Thank you Peg. Thank you Mo.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Selves and selves and selves
By happy fluke a friend, Jon Newman, posted a thread on SomaSimple about Sandeep Gautman's blog, The Mouse Trap, and links to several posts about the many selves we each carry around. I was delighted to learn that someone has bothered to study their existence, hypothesize their functions - I don't have to do it all by myself (haha, lame joke).
Listed below are the particular posts Jon found, and thought were compelling enough to bring onto a physical therapy board. They are compelling, because even when we are tootling along in a well-integrated, functioning state, working for a living providing services to health consumers, etc etc., we are dealing with psyches which might seem glued together on the outside but which might feel shattered to pieces on the inside. I've preferred to see this shatteredness as merely kaleidoscopic, interesting and even lovely, but I can appreciate that a sudden plunge into the depths of self/selves might feel shattering to people at first exposure to it. It was that way for me at first, too.
Anyway, for those interested:
1. Development of Infant Consciousness
2. Splitting of the self: "me" and "I"
3. Five kinds of self/self/knowledge
I had no idea there was a field called Philosophical Psychology, with its own journal, but there is. Someone named Ulric Neisser wrote a paper way back in 1988 and delineated Five kinds of Self-Knowledge. In his blog, Gautman has outlined them:
No mention in there of the over-extended self.. which women end up becoming a lot of the time.. I think (with my private self) the over-extended self may house a bunch of the subselves which can cause trouble. Perhaps it depends on the sort of "specific and familiar routines" in which one engages. I think it's the one our "role" is housed within. Of all of them, it's the one that changed itself right under my nose, and seems like is busy plotting a coup with my conceptual self these days.
Also, no mention that I can find of how each of the discretely labelled selves experiences time passing. I have a hunch that a key to re-integrating them is to get them all back on the same clock again somehow.
As an aside, recently neuroscientists found brain cells that keep track of time with extreme precision in macaque monkeys. Everything gets a time stamp. See MIT news story, A Head of Time.
If the brain is an oscillator, predictor and simulator, I can see how easily one's sense of self/selves can develop a few timing problems and need "tune-ups" on occasion.
Listed below are the particular posts Jon found, and thought were compelling enough to bring onto a physical therapy board. They are compelling, because even when we are tootling along in a well-integrated, functioning state, working for a living providing services to health consumers, etc etc., we are dealing with psyches which might seem glued together on the outside but which might feel shattered to pieces on the inside. I've preferred to see this shatteredness as merely kaleidoscopic, interesting and even lovely, but I can appreciate that a sudden plunge into the depths of self/selves might feel shattering to people at first exposure to it. It was that way for me at first, too.
Anyway, for those interested:
1. Development of Infant Consciousness
2. Splitting of the self: "me" and "I"
3. Five kinds of self/self/knowledge
I had no idea there was a field called Philosophical Psychology, with its own journal, but there is. Someone named Ulric Neisser wrote a paper way back in 1988 and delineated Five kinds of Self-Knowledge. In his blog, Gautman has outlined them:
•The ecological self is the self as perceived with respect to the physical environment: I am the person here in this place, engaged in this particular activity.
•The interpersonal self, which appears from earliest infancy just as the ecological self does, is specified by species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication: I am the person who is engaged, here, in this particular human interchange.
•The extended self is based primarily on our personal memories and anticipations: I am the person who had certain specific experiences, who regularly engages in certain specific and familiar routines.
• The private self appears when children first notice that some of their experiences are not directly shared with other people: I am, in principle, the only person who can feel this unique and particular pain.
• The conceptual self or ’self-concept’ draws its meaning from the network of assumptions and theories in which it is embedded, just as all other concepts do. Some of those theories concern social roles (husband, professor, American), some postulate more or less hypothetical internal entities (the soul, the unconscious mind, mental energy, the brain, the liver), and some establish socially significant dimensions of difference (intelligence, attractiveness, wealth). There is a remarkable variety in what people believe about themselves, and not all of it is true.
No mention in there of the over-extended self.. which women end up becoming a lot of the time.. I think (with my private self) the over-extended self may house a bunch of the subselves which can cause trouble. Perhaps it depends on the sort of "specific and familiar routines" in which one engages. I think it's the one our "role" is housed within. Of all of them, it's the one that changed itself right under my nose, and seems like is busy plotting a coup with my conceptual self these days.
Also, no mention that I can find of how each of the discretely labelled selves experiences time passing. I have a hunch that a key to re-integrating them is to get them all back on the same clock again somehow.
As an aside, recently neuroscientists found brain cells that keep track of time with extreme precision in macaque monkeys. Everything gets a time stamp. See MIT news story, A Head of Time.
If the brain is an oscillator, predictor and simulator, I can see how easily one's sense of self/selves can develop a few timing problems and need "tune-ups" on occasion.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Looking after me
Once in awhile, a little, formerly struggling part of myself surfaces and breathes, then disappears again for ever-lengthening periods of time. It surfaced this morning, and we took a look at our life together. I found I could understand and look at life from its perspective better than I could before.
It is the anxious part. It's the part of me I fought to stay married to, the part I turned my whole physical existence upside down and inside out to accommodate. I didn't blame it when it threatened to explode - I listened, stayed connected, tried to understand, then analyzed, and then acted. I thought things through while in Hawaii. I related to this part of me.
I do happen to view my "self" as a committee comprised of different characters, a choir of different voices, a community of selves apart from the one I normally inhabit as "me." I'm not sure this is pathological, although it might seem a bit odd. I have always seen my"self" this way, as a group of individual proclivities and interests, some of which can interfere with others at times. I've always seen my "self" as a collective comprised of "selves" of different ages and capacities and likes and dislikes and abilities and inclinations. I do feel like I have to actively integrate all of it ongoingly, most of the time, and need a lot of alone time to deal with it. I do sometimes resent the disproportionate amount of time this seems to take me, compared to how easily others seem to hold them "selves" together, but usually don't allow it to particularly bother me.. I just plug along with whatever I've got going on at the time. I do wonder about aging, how this process will be affected. Will it get easier or harder? Maybe every person feels like a whole tribe on the inside. Maybe others have brains that do this integrating effortlessly and non-consciously (it seems that way from the outside, at least..). Maybe this is way more information than anyone else needs to know about what goes on in my particular head.
Whatever the case, back to the anxiety "self":
It poked itself into my conscious awareness today, to announce that it feels better now, thank you. It noted that it is Hallowe'en today, which means that it's nearly November, a time when life would normally be dark and rainy and foggy, that it would ordinarily be fixated on the weathercaster's daily announcement of time of sunrise and sunset, would be poking me frequently, as daylight shortened and darktime lengthened. It noted that here, in the new place, in the 'land of living skies', the land of planetary hemisphere-size sky, it could care less, pointing out that it has paid almost no attention whatsoever to weather reports. It doesn't care anymore. It has more light and that's all it ever wanted, so thanks. It doesn't feel it needs to intrude on me anymore about light level issues. I agreed. The thank you was mutual. Both of us love the fact that we do not have to re-set the clock, now or forever more, if we don't want to. Saskatchewan very sensibly did away with this noxious stress-producing, imposed from without, jet-lag producing practice many decades ago. Such a relief.
Meanwhile, there are other internal fires to fight... The part I normally regard as the working part of me is still healing from the rippage away of what was once ordinary existence, and sets of daily habits. It has yet to find a new rhythm in life that is as productive as life used to be, but slowly it feels better and better. It knows that the only way to get through the rest of this year will be to get through the rest of this year, doing little more than attending to each moment as a suspended entity, experiencing life as a crawl by.
The part that had been longing for a sabbatical now has one, but experiences time as whipping by too fast to be enjoyed. It's the part which, if I allow, thinks it needs markers, things to weigh time down, to slow it down. Material objects and bought items, "stuff", money-wasting burdensome symbols of ownership, permanence. I've put a stop to most of that. It will have to find some other way to express itself. I cannot even buy a book right now - the wounds of having had to scuttle almost my whole library are still too fresh. I am firmly convinced that, on the whole, simplicity is preferable, but the acquisitive "self" is having a few issues with me over that. So, I might take it out today to purchase some winter boots, get it a flu shot, buy a bottle of aspirin to feed it, one per day, so it feels provided for and I will have simultaneously reduced the statistical probability of this "self" giving us both/all of "us" a stroke.
What I once felt was a somewhat budding and growing intellect is dormant for the time being. I'm still tending it, but it is ignoring "me" at the moment - it seems to need to compost for now. I hope it springs back to life someday. I see no reason why it won't. It's time for engine maintenance, is all.
It is the anxious part. It's the part of me I fought to stay married to, the part I turned my whole physical existence upside down and inside out to accommodate. I didn't blame it when it threatened to explode - I listened, stayed connected, tried to understand, then analyzed, and then acted. I thought things through while in Hawaii. I related to this part of me.
I do happen to view my "self" as a committee comprised of different characters, a choir of different voices, a community of selves apart from the one I normally inhabit as "me." I'm not sure this is pathological, although it might seem a bit odd. I have always seen my"self" this way, as a group of individual proclivities and interests, some of which can interfere with others at times. I've always seen my "self" as a collective comprised of "selves" of different ages and capacities and likes and dislikes and abilities and inclinations. I do feel like I have to actively integrate all of it ongoingly, most of the time, and need a lot of alone time to deal with it. I do sometimes resent the disproportionate amount of time this seems to take me, compared to how easily others seem to hold them "selves" together, but usually don't allow it to particularly bother me.. I just plug along with whatever I've got going on at the time. I do wonder about aging, how this process will be affected. Will it get easier or harder? Maybe every person feels like a whole tribe on the inside. Maybe others have brains that do this integrating effortlessly and non-consciously (it seems that way from the outside, at least..). Maybe this is way more information than anyone else needs to know about what goes on in my particular head.
Whatever the case, back to the anxiety "self":
It poked itself into my conscious awareness today, to announce that it feels better now, thank you. It noted that it is Hallowe'en today, which means that it's nearly November, a time when life would normally be dark and rainy and foggy, that it would ordinarily be fixated on the weathercaster's daily announcement of time of sunrise and sunset, would be poking me frequently, as daylight shortened and darktime lengthened. It noted that here, in the new place, in the 'land of living skies', the land of planetary hemisphere-size sky, it could care less, pointing out that it has paid almost no attention whatsoever to weather reports. It doesn't care anymore. It has more light and that's all it ever wanted, so thanks. It doesn't feel it needs to intrude on me anymore about light level issues. I agreed. The thank you was mutual. Both of us love the fact that we do not have to re-set the clock, now or forever more, if we don't want to. Saskatchewan very sensibly did away with this noxious stress-producing, imposed from without, jet-lag producing practice many decades ago. Such a relief.
Meanwhile, there are other internal fires to fight... The part I normally regard as the working part of me is still healing from the rippage away of what was once ordinary existence, and sets of daily habits. It has yet to find a new rhythm in life that is as productive as life used to be, but slowly it feels better and better. It knows that the only way to get through the rest of this year will be to get through the rest of this year, doing little more than attending to each moment as a suspended entity, experiencing life as a crawl by.
The part that had been longing for a sabbatical now has one, but experiences time as whipping by too fast to be enjoyed. It's the part which, if I allow, thinks it needs markers, things to weigh time down, to slow it down. Material objects and bought items, "stuff", money-wasting burdensome symbols of ownership, permanence. I've put a stop to most of that. It will have to find some other way to express itself. I cannot even buy a book right now - the wounds of having had to scuttle almost my whole library are still too fresh. I am firmly convinced that, on the whole, simplicity is preferable, but the acquisitive "self" is having a few issues with me over that. So, I might take it out today to purchase some winter boots, get it a flu shot, buy a bottle of aspirin to feed it, one per day, so it feels provided for and I will have simultaneously reduced the statistical probability of this "self" giving us both/all of "us" a stroke.
What I once felt was a somewhat budding and growing intellect is dormant for the time being. I'm still tending it, but it is ignoring "me" at the moment - it seems to need to compost for now. I hope it springs back to life someday. I see no reason why it won't. It's time for engine maintenance, is all.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Addicted to information?
Scientific American has this little item: The Chemistry of Information Addiction: A new experiment reveals why we always want to know the answer
Dopamine reward pathways appear to be involved. This ties in with Robert Burton's ideas in his book, On Being Certain. Certainty becomes a rewarded cognitive behaviour, and voilá, becomes an end in itself.
Excerpt:
So here's a thought, based on something else I read today, Scientists Locate Literacy In The Brain With The Help of Former Colombian Guerrillas, which I think ties in.
(Why they kept referring to the subjects as Guerrillas, instead of referring to them as formerly-illiterate subjects learning to read, I'll never know. Of that I am quite certain.)
Anyway, language is intrinsic. Children left to themselves soon figure out some sort of "language" in which they will be able to communicate. Even deaf children. Such made-up languages will have grammar, structure, meaning, etc.
Reading, on the other hand, is tuition-intensive learned behaviour. It changes the brain. Excerpt:
In lots of other posts here I've taken a close look at this idea, that the brain is a simulator, plays a predictive role based on previous experience. It is the standard science-based working model of the brain.
My thought is, "making stuff up" to satisfy information hungry and addicted pathways, would likely represent the default human capacity.
Science and learning to think scientifically, like acquiring literacy, requires much more input and effort, initially.
However, the acquired skill is self-rewarding, in the same way as reading is.
Reading has become the norm. Like reading, science must be taught, conveyed, and ultimately learned. It's a transmission of "information" between two people, a teacher and a learner, like any sort of information exchange is but more formal - the people are in roles. Effort expended to either learn or teach is considerable.
Something is wrong with how science is taught these days. Perhaps teaching science as a "tool" seems boring and laborious to a child or teen. Perhaps the teachers themselves find it boring to teach science, or can't quite see the point of trying to pound science into what seem like thick heads.
Does anyone else think science could or should be reframed as an exciting, cognitive, future self-rewarding behaviour?
I will lay odds that if teachers took on their task of teaching science as enthusiastically as they take on teaching basic reading, fueled by the same motive, soon there would be a leap forward in percent of population able to steadily access their own information-seeking/gathering reward pathways. New habits of thinking would emerge. Culture would change. There would be no more need in life to support institutions that "make stuff up" just so they can feel they can help people get by - everyone would be interested in investigating the truth as closely as scientifically possible.
Additional Reading:
1. Harriet Hall's review of On Being Certain
2. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes about the book, Episode 42
3. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes, interview with the author, Episode 43.
Dopamine reward pathways appear to be involved. This ties in with Robert Burton's ideas in his book, On Being Certain. Certainty becomes a rewarded cognitive behaviour, and voilá, becomes an end in itself.
Excerpt:
QUOTE
"It has long been thought that there are two levels of decision-making: a conscious level taking place in the cerebral cortex and an unconscious level in the basal ganglia. The story is not so simple, he says, because these two systems are connected via the midbrain dopamine neurons. Perhaps future work will reveal how our conscious and unconscious decisions are influencing one another, all due to this very busy population of dopamine neurons.
It’s often remarked that “ignorance is bliss.” However, when you look at ignorance from the perspective of the brain a very different picture emerges. Our brains, and the brains of other animals, have evolved to find information rewarding. In fact, not knowing is stressful, which is why we strive to decrease that uncertainty whenever possible. We want the information and we want it now!"
So here's a thought, based on something else I read today, Scientists Locate Literacy In The Brain With The Help of Former Colombian Guerrillas, which I think ties in.
(Why they kept referring to the subjects as Guerrillas, instead of referring to them as formerly-illiterate subjects learning to read, I'll never know. Of that I am quite certain.)
Anyway, language is intrinsic. Children left to themselves soon figure out some sort of "language" in which they will be able to communicate. Even deaf children. Such made-up languages will have grammar, structure, meaning, etc.
Reading, on the other hand, is tuition-intensive learned behaviour. It changes the brain. Excerpt:
"Previously, it was thought that the angular gyrus recognised the shapes of words prior to finding their sounds and meanings. In fact, the researchers showed that the angular gyrus is not directly involved in translating visual words into their sounds and meanings. Instead, it supports this process by providing predictions of what the brain is expecting to see."
In lots of other posts here I've taken a close look at this idea, that the brain is a simulator, plays a predictive role based on previous experience. It is the standard science-based working model of the brain.
My thought is, "making stuff up" to satisfy information hungry and addicted pathways, would likely represent the default human capacity.
Science and learning to think scientifically, like acquiring literacy, requires much more input and effort, initially.
However, the acquired skill is self-rewarding, in the same way as reading is.
Reading has become the norm. Like reading, science must be taught, conveyed, and ultimately learned. It's a transmission of "information" between two people, a teacher and a learner, like any sort of information exchange is but more formal - the people are in roles. Effort expended to either learn or teach is considerable.
Something is wrong with how science is taught these days. Perhaps teaching science as a "tool" seems boring and laborious to a child or teen. Perhaps the teachers themselves find it boring to teach science, or can't quite see the point of trying to pound science into what seem like thick heads.
Does anyone else think science could or should be reframed as an exciting, cognitive, future self-rewarding behaviour?
I will lay odds that if teachers took on their task of teaching science as enthusiastically as they take on teaching basic reading, fueled by the same motive, soon there would be a leap forward in percent of population able to steadily access their own information-seeking/gathering reward pathways. New habits of thinking would emerge. Culture would change. There would be no more need in life to support institutions that "make stuff up" just so they can feel they can help people get by - everyone would be interested in investigating the truth as closely as scientifically possible.
Additional Reading:
1. Harriet Hall's review of On Being Certain
2. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes about the book, Episode 42
3. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes, interview with the author, Episode 43.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Weather
It's excellent novel stimuli to this brain that houses me.
Brain food.
Today, outside my window, a blizzard! a real, honest-to-goodness prairie blizzard! ...rages.
Maybe it's the exciting descriptors that pull me so much into this situation, back to living in a little prairie city that has nothing much to distinguish itself.. where any architecture the least bit interesting dates back to the 40's, or 30's.. 20's..
No matter - the weather is wild, the weather is fresh, the weather is waking my brain back up. I do not fully understand why I feel like a coma survivor - I just know that I feel something waking up in here. I'm going to go walk around a little bit out there.
Brain food.
Today, outside my window, a blizzard! a real, honest-to-goodness prairie blizzard! ...rages.
Maybe it's the exciting descriptors that pull me so much into this situation, back to living in a little prairie city that has nothing much to distinguish itself.. where any architecture the least bit interesting dates back to the 40's, or 30's.. 20's..
No matter - the weather is wild, the weather is fresh, the weather is waking my brain back up. I do not fully understand why I feel like a coma survivor - I just know that I feel something waking up in here. I'm going to go walk around a little bit out there.
Friday, October 09, 2009
First snow
I feel like a kid again. Just for this feeling, it was worth moving back to Sask. Snow fell last night and this morning, not much - just a skiff, but it feels good. I can feel my sympathetic system stirring after a long long time of not having been stimulated kinesthetically in this way, expecting to have to struggle just a bit. The light levels are strong. So the accommodation reflex of the parasympathetic system of the pupils is back in charge, telling the sympathetic system to not dilate pupils. What a kick this is, light-wise. My brain likes this.
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