Positive Thinking is Social Control by Magonsdaughter

Being unable to currently watch the video, I predictably agree with the thread title.

Opiates of the masses, bread and circuses, whatever someone wants to call it, it's as valid an observation as it ever was.

I object to the idea that it was "invented" in the modern times though, if indeed that is what the linked video would like to assert. It's older than Rome, and probably as old as organized religion.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 8:26 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I had to go to the original on You Tube

to make it play.

Oh, I agree 150%. There is nothing that makes my stomache sicker than to watch someone who has been bullied into thinking it's all the victim's fault. There is a video clip of someone being paddled (originally from Animal House, but has become much much darker in my mind) who is forced to repeat Thank you sir! May I have another! after each whack.

And then being trapped in individualism, like a bug in amber, unable to effect even the smallest of positive changes.

I love Ehrenreich, BTW. I first encountered her in Witches, Midwives, and Nurses and later in Nickel and Dimed. More to say, but out of time. Thanks for the link, it was well worth watching.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 9:25 AM

Agreed, one thing that annoys me all to hell is acting like being pissed off at being screwed is some kinda mental disorder needing treatment.

Fuck. That. Noise.

Sometimes, being rip-roaring pissed is the correct and healthy response.

-F

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 10:42 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

I think its a brilliant video. Exposes the flawed logic inherent in popular memes around being able to manipulate the universe so you can be happy, healthy and wealthy and if you're not, its YOUR fault. That's why the poor and sick are treated with contempt in our society. They don't have the right attitude.

It's particular pertinent for me with current downsizing at work, and some of this shit going down. ie Those who have lost their jobs being told its 'an opportunity'. Opportunity my arse. How easy is it to lose your job and then have the necessary positive attitude to find work. It just sucks.

Byte, I think the cult of optimism (as opposed to being optimistic) seems to me to be fairly new, so I'm not sure to what you are referring.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 10:46 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

It's another version of - if you believe really, REALLY, REALLY!!!! hard you can fly.

If we had adults flapping their arms and muttering that, we would consider them crazy - especially if they were on a skyscraper's roof or on the Golden Gate railing. So why is it Ok to run a society that way, or an economy?

It reinforces my personal revelation that if someone can't provide a direct, concrete pathway from their assumptions to their claimed results, then they're selling you a religion. Or a con.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:01 AM

Quote:
Byte, I think the cult of optimism (as opposed to being optimistic) seems to me to be fairly new, so I'm not sure to what you are referring.

Well, still being unable to watch the video due to computer shortcomings and circumstances I thought this was more a generalized "positive thinking" thing, like everything will be okay, let's just watch rome while it burns or something.

But, as for a cult of "positive thinking" "I think I can I know it can" stuff, I direct your attention to the word "CULT" and still say religion did it first.

Pray it better, pray away the gay, pray for your blessings, and so on. Follow these rules and ascend to happy reward place/send your spirit to a passing comet after drinking the koolaide/ fly to the planet God lives on because you BELIEVE.

So in my mind belief that you can get something or fail just on the basis of how much you want it is the same issue really. It's all faith stuff. Just like people comfort themselves in the bad times or when they kill someone with "oh it was God's plan so it's okay."

This is the reason I do not allow unjustified cheerfulness or optimism in my laboratory, or at any time of the morning, day, or evening. It lends itself more strongly to self-delusion, whereas excessive negativity just creates self-fulfilling prophecies and worst case scenario is STILL more representative of reality than a positive attitude.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
It reinforces my personal revelation that if someone can't provide a direct, concrete pathway from their assumptions to their claimed results, then they're selling you a religion. Or a con.

The Dread Pirate Roberts seems to agree.

-F

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:10 AM

I would third the opinion that positivity is a con.

Humans are one of the few animals who bare their teeth for anything other than a threat display. Beware the person who smiles the most.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:11 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Life is pain ... anyone who says differently is selling something."

Well, ahem, I have to disagree with that to some extent. A LOT of life is effort, some of life is terror, uncertainty about survival, or pain. But some is good. Some is awe. To paint it as uniformly one thing ignores the data.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:18 AM

Everything that is "good" or "pleasing" becomes emotionally painful when taken to the furthest extent.

As such pain can derive from anything and everything. Therefore pain is the basic unit of emotions and behavioural response. It's also the most formative part of experience. Pain can even be passed down to offspring in the form of stress related genetic markers.

Pain is life stands as a valid assertion. However, I look forward to discussing the scientific merits of the claim with only mild cringing.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:29 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Nature has built-in both the carrot and the stick. We need to approach those things that continue us and the species, as well as avoid those things which threaten us and the species.

For example, it's not enough to feel hunger pains. Simply feeling internal pain can lead to a lot of undirected and unhelpful responses. We could curl up in a ball. We could jump off a cliff. If ALL we're doing is directed at dealing with or alleviating the pain by any means necessary, we many never stumble on the eating response. Eating itself is pleasurable. Seeking it out helps direct our actions in dealing with hunger pains.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 11:34 AM

Eat too much and you feel like you could die.

See? It's all pain. Even the reward system. Approach the things that seem to further us or the species, and it turns out they could also threaten/harm us or the species.

Of course, the nerves only really react one way. They're either on or off. Searing pain or nothing. It's just our mind tricks us into interpreting it a different way, or ignoring some of the alarm bells while boosting the others.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:14 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

i think if you watch the video, the speaker is advocating for realism, not doom and gloom. That is, you can see problems and choose to try and fix them.

I thought her summary of free market was excellent. I'm sorry you cant access the video, Byte. Here is a link to the transcript

http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/558916/RSA-Lecture-B
arabara-Ehrenreich-transcript.pdf

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:15 PM

MAL4PREZ

Yeah, good video. I don't have much to add to it, because it all just seems so obvious. Reality is the key. Living in reality, both good and bad.

Now, Byte, I know I'm already on your shit list, but I have to admit I thought about you while watching this. Especially the bit about how negativity is just as delusional as positivity. But you and I have been through this several times and the communication is clearly not happening, so I'll let it go at that.

Back to the video: one of my pet peeves is people telling me to smile. That is one thing that just invites a head slap. If I wanted to smile, I'd be f***ing smiling so get out of face. I really hate that.

I hadn't thought about optimism as a larger cult. I see the point of the video, especially regarding Wall Street and W (the drawing of him as a clown cheerleader was brilliant.) But I don't call that optimism. I have a different definition of the word, I guess. It certainly is delusional and denial, though, and it's dangerous.

And just an hour ago as I sat on the train I was thinking about how neocons' biggest problem is their inability to recognize/live in reality. [Just posted those thoughts in niki's science thread, where it fits better.]

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:23 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Eat too much and you feel like you could die.

See? It's all pain. Even the reward system.

That's biologically not true, Byte. Pleasure and pain are mediated through different neurological, neurochemical and biochemical pathways. The pleasure of eating goes away after a while through the satiation pathways like the hormones leptin and CCK, and through the increase of serotonin. Continuing to eat loses its reward. If you ignore the fact that it's no longer rewarding, you could eat to the point of pain. But the pain generated isn’t a lack of pleasure, it's a completely different mechanism generated through stretch receptors in the stomach.

You're smarter than this. You do know they're not the same, in survival function, in anatomy, in neurology, in biochemistry, in stimulus, in extinction - in any way

But I'm not going to discuss this further. It's an interesting thread and I don't want to derail it into a Byte-deology death spiral.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:33 PM

Different pathways, but the same basic function, and the same basic mechanism. That's where the "interpretation" part of it comes in, the neurochemicals responding to the signals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_and_pleasure

The same basic thing. One of my big problems is that I'm probably more sensitive to this than most people, so intense signal cascades with me tend to translate over as pain and searing heat, or not at all, instead of what you normal people might experience.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:37 PM

Quote:
But I'm not going to discuss this further. It's an interesting thread and I don't want to derail it into a Byte-deology death spiral.

Oh WHATEVER. I was willing to overlook the "You're smarter than this" Jab, but this is and continues to be uncalled for.

The moment I disagree with ANY of you, no matter how well founded my objections, SUDDENLY I'M THREAD JACKING AND CAUSING THE THREAD TO DEATH SPIRAL.

Well you know what? It's all YOU GUYS! I'm trying to have a conversation as it flows naturally, but you all, you keep throwing out these red herrings and ad hominem attacks!

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:55 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Byte

There is a lot more to neurology than a single WIKI page. Let me direct your attention to this: "If we stimulate that to about 20 hertz, in most people, then we can get them pain relief. ... if we - turn the stimulation up to about 50 hertz, the chronic pain comes back. But if we then, switch it up to higher stimulation frequencies, 1900 hertz, pain then becomes much, much worse ..."

Perhaps you aren't aware that the current (so to speak) thinking about how the brain works is that about 30% of cells have variable, even opposite, responses depending on how they're stimulated. I consider this a form of temporal multiplexing. Depending on input frequency, the same area can carry different messages and result in different responses. Note that they aren't the same response - they are indeed different responses to different messages. Just as you wouldn't say all the phone messages and all the callers and all the receivers are the same b/c they're carried on a multiplexed line, or all the computer commands and all the programs are the same b/c they're done by clock-driven time-sharing on the same CPU, it would be a mistake to claim messages are the same b/c they're carried by the same neurons - especially when you can show (and it has been) that the neurons are behaving differently over time, as they coordinate with different neurons both upstream and downstream.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, July 8, 2013 12:59 PM

MAL4PREZ

Sure Byte. And your extreme emotional reactions to anyone who disagrees with you has no effect whatsoever on how people treat you.

/done with that.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
It reinforces my personal revelation that if someone can't provide a direct, concrete pathway from their assumptions to their claimed results, then they're selling you a religion. Or a con.

Yes, this.

I hadn't heard there was such a movement toward making laid-off people are cheery. But then, I've purposely avoided corporate life. Shoveling sunshine at someone who was just fired seems rather shitty.

In my line of work, I find there is a tendency to reward students with cheery personalities. This disturbs me, but I also see some point to it. Cheery by itself is certainly hollow, but stupid and cheery is better than stupid and hostile. Also, it's hard to teach a brick wall.

I have to run now, but I'm going to ponder this and hopefully be back to expand on it later.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 5:46 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Different pathways, but the same basic function, and the same basic mechanism. That's where the "interpretation" part of it comes in, the neurochemicals responding to the signals.

The difference is that pain causes avoidance, while pleasure causes seeking. Dopamine, the AHA! chemical, is activated more for pleasure than for pain (for most people). Pleasure-seeking is not the same as punishment avoidance. Dopamine motivates action in the absence of pleasure, while avoidance activates action only in the presence of pain.

Quote:
The same basic thing. One of my big problems is that I'm probably more sensitive to this than most people, so intense signal cascades with me tend to translate over as pain and searing heat, or not at all, instead of what you normal people might experience.

I asked about this in the "TRUEST SELVES" thread, but not sure if you caught it. My question was: Have you ever been dx with something like autism? Many autistics are demonstrably hyper-sensitive to various stimuli. Some only to sound; some mainly to touch (for example, tags, seams, pockets, and stiff clothing become major irritations); some can't stand the "flicker" of fluorescent lights, but some to pretty much everything.

The processes in the brain which (in general) lead to survival at the most basic level are: Receive stimulous, link it to outcome, attach a value to it (good, bad, irrelevant), memorize, generalize the stimulous pattern sufficiently to be able to apply it to the future. Even slime molds do this at a basic level, by creating and leaving a chemical trail (memory) to where it has found food- or not.

I think, in the case of autistics, there is a problem with filtering irrelevent stimulous, in some or all sensory circuits. For you, it may be that you actually do not feel pleasure, or you COULD feel pleasure but the circumstances are so limited (not too much, not too little) that the time you spend in that state is almost nil. I think that others need to take into account that YOUR experience of pain and pleasure, altho just as real as everyone else's, may be unique. OTOH, I think you might need to take into account that most others on this board are describing an internal state which is real, and more readily communicated because it is shared.

So, for those who deal with Byte, please keep in mind that not everyone "works" the same way. I really got a feel for that in the TRUEST SELVES thread. Byte is probably providing an accurate description of her internal processes, so don't be so dismissive.

OTOH, BYTE, please also keep in mind that others are probably also providing accurate descriptions of THEIR internal workings. Don't try to negate everyone else's experiences by claiming that everyone's processes are really just like yours.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:28 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Okay, back to the thread.

There is nothing that makes me so deeply angry as enforced happiness. To me, it's a kind of rape, but one in which you're not even allowed to acknowledge what's happening. My teeth bare, and the hackles on the back of my neck go up. I can't tell you how deeply this disturbs me.

I was at an Xmas party more than 30 years ago, and there was some drunk bullshit middle-manager saying exactly the same thing back then. His point was that if he got a flat tire, that meant that somebody had a bad thought. Not that somebody "thought badly" and didn't check the tire pressure, or that someone on the assembly line was lazy, or that someone deliberately popped his tire, or that he inattentively drove over a plank in a construction zone and ran over a nail ... not THAT kind of "bad thought"... just a generic unrelated bad thought. What an absurd, surreal statement. I couldn't have been more flummoxed. It was if I had been dropped into a move by Luis Bunuel.

I won't go into the role of psychiatry in adjusting people to ridiculous circumstances, except to say that people who would be dx as "mildly depressed" are actually more accurate in judging probably outcomes than ppl who would be classified as "normal". Apparently even being realistic has been pathologized.

Nowadays, they dress it up to be more attractive than "Thank you sir! May I have another!. You can think your way to wealth and health (Promoted by some huckster who found HIS way to wealth by pushing a silly product on a bunch of gullible people.) I listen to a several public radio stations, and of course they have their fund drives and the usual "thank you gifts" for donations. None are so popular as the "think your way to wealth and health". This, from an audience that I would expect to be more aware than most. It didn't used to be that way. Twenty years ago, people were much more interested in real-world news.

What is so attractive about this mode of thought is that it gives people a sense of agency in their lives. Nobody likes to feel powerless. And nothing is so entrancing as looking in a mirror. So if a person succeeds, it's because they appplied their power of positive thinking; but if they fail, it's of course all their own fault. And this approach is so useful to TPTB, because by keeping people atomized and distracted in applying a bullshit philosophy to their individual lives, it means that people will never effectively seek REAL change.

It's not that I don't believe in thinking freely, or even changing a basic approach. In other threads, I've appealed over and over again for blue-sky ideas. There is (or should be) nothing freer than your own thoughts... why restrict them to only the practical, the proven, the safe? There is no cost to thinking wide and free. But when it comes to living your life, you can't LIVE in your world of ideas, you have to live in the real world, and that's where the power of negative thinking comes in.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 8:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There is nothing that makes me so deeply angry as enforced happiness. To me, it's a kind of rape, but one in which you're not even allowed to acknowledge what's happening. My teeth bare, and the hackles on the back of my neck go up. I can't tell you how deeply this disturbs me.

Cue back to that outraged scream from the Truest Selves thread and throw on a stack of "calling bullshit" cards thrown by a kid who never accepted societys little rationalizations, excuses and rose colored glasses.

Yeah verily, I was a very... unpleasant... kid to deal with, as once having lost respect for them, their society and most of all their unearned and pretended authority I became quite willing to verbally excoriate them for their moral and logical failings if pushed.... normally I'd say nothing at ALL, but that wasn't good enough for them, grr, well, they wanted it so bad, they GOT it, curse it all - and thus learned the hard way the merits of leaving well the hell enough ALONE.

Anyways, part and parcel of that is how bad it annoys the piss out of me when we take a kids honest, unfiltered perception of our world for what it *IS*, as they lack our excuses and denials and bullshit rationalizations, call it a distorted worldview and treat it as a mental illness, seriously what the fuck is up with that - even Vachss fumbles this one in his infamous speech regarding Lifestyle-Violent Juvenile Offenders.
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/lifestyle.html

Quote:
The second characteristic is lack of perception of the future. He has none. If you ask a kid like this, "What are you going to be doing next year?" you will get an absolutely blank stare. Not because he's stupid, but because he simply cannot conceptualize such a distance from right now. If you want to speak with this kid, you have to speak within his time frame, and that time frame isn't ever more than a few hours from the present.

This kid does not relate behavior to consequences. He does not see a causal connection between his acts and a response. What do I mean? To this kid, life is a lottery. Everyone rolls the dice, but not everyone pays the price. He has no perception as to how the dice will come up. In his world, everyone commits crimes. Everybody. Some smaller percentage of that number are arrested. A still smaller percentage go to court; an even smaller percentage go to trial. A smaller percentage still are actually found guilty (or "adjudicated delinquent" if you prefer), and a smaller percentage of that group are committed to a youth authority. Lastly, an even smaller percentage are actually incarcerated.

In his mind, everybody commits these crimes. He sees no connection between his acts and the consequences. He is marked by a chronicity of violence, usually an escalating pattern. Violence permeates his existence until it is his existence.

Let's face the hard cold facts of the matter - these kids don't have any concept of future because WE HAVE NEVER GIVEN THEM ONE, if they're not killed on the street, or pitched in prison by our fucked up so-called-justice system for naught more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, poor, a minority, or doing the shit they NEED to do in order to even survive, all they got left is looking down the barrel of work-work-work-die while those profiting from their labors laugh in their faces... it's a testment to human empathy and forgiveness that more of them do not hate us, despite our every seeming effort to make them do so, and frankly it surprises me that this itself has not blossomed into outright terrorism against us and our society, which is the eventual fruit of that dark seed.

Secondly, that's not at all an inaccurate assessment, there's so many laws on the books, many of them bullshit, mala prohibita or victimless lets-just-fuck-with-you crap that no human being can possibly exist without breaking several of them a day - the only lacking factor in this assessment is how social and financial status rig that "lottery", and frankly handing the kid that information wouldn't be helpful at all, would it now ?

And so, we ignore and pretend, we deny, we play oh-it's-not-that-bad and LIE to their faces while snickering up our sleeves at how clever we are, and they don't buy not a whit of it, cause they know we're lying.

Which is... where *MY* response to it all comes in, what one might call my mothers retaliation.
If the perception of our society as better than this is untrue - then we need, we MUST, then *MAKE IT TRUE*, instead of blaming these kids for seeing the reality of the situation, we need to change the reality of the situation itself, to match what it SHOULD be, not simply sit on our laurels and pretend it's there already, cause admitting that is painful and makes us face our own guilt for our complicity in such a horrible system.

Sure, on the great grand scale of things that ain't easy, but not everything has to be on that scale, that all-or-nothing mindset is for suckers with a black/white, on/off, yes/no binary mentality who cannot think beyond the bounds taught to them by people with a vested interest in the status quo - if you can make that difference even for a few, even for the ONE, and you have the ability to do so, there's a moral responsibility there, as a human being, is there not ?

But the pretense, the pretending, the willful blindness and denial, you see, that is what allows one to go on without ever acting on it, pretend it ain't their problem till it blows up in their face "out of the blue" some day when they run headfirst into the consequences they've blinded themselves to - this works on both an individual scale, and on the macro scale as a society and country, the pattern is repeated, thus working from the top down on the macro scale is like looking in a telescope backwards, as the proper step is to individualize it first then spread it like a virus.

And Empathy *IS* contagious, save for Sociopaths you'd never reach anyways, and without jackboots to carry out their orders they're no more dangerous than the average mugger, less so in that they're not the type to get their own hands dirty, and so by spreading empathy you deprive them of troops till they've no power left to harm anyone.

It's a damn simple concept, really.

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 5:23 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
And so, we ignore and pretend, we deny, we play oh-it's-not-that-bad and LIE to their faces while snickering up our sleeves at how clever we are, and they don't buy not a whit of it, cause they know we're lying.

That's where you and I part ways. I could never lie to a child like that, and I find it hard to believe that adults lie and snicker at their own cleverness, because I think most adults lie to themselves too.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:09 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I borrowed this from Cary Tennis. It his first-draft response to a person who felt compelled to accomplish goals to alleviate a sense of worthlessness.

Dear Lost 20-Something,

You matter. You matter regardless of your grades. You matter regardless of your accomplishments. You have worth and grace and divinity that cannot be taken from you and that are present all the time within you. You can contact your own worth and grace and divinity any time you want. You have already been in contact with it in the jungles and the forests, and when flying through the air on a bungee jump, and when sitting alone in the night around a fire.

Your divine nature comes alive when you give it a chance. It came alive recently when you went away. Being away from this society worked for you. Now that you have returned you are back in the very thing that you had to get away from. You have fallen back into the hole.

But there is nothing wrong with you. You are living in a warped, competitive, cold, punitive society geared to harness by force the labor of the powerless and harness by seduction and betrayal and bamboozlement the labor of the privileged. You have lived in this machine and have believed its blandishments; you have been led to believe that if you allow your labor to be harnessed in the right way, you will find the happiness and satisfaction you crave.

This is a lie. It is a lie told to millions. It is a lie that is partly responsible for your unhappiness.

This is not your fault. You didn’t create the surroundings in which you were raised. You didn’t create this cruelly competitive, vacuous society. You didn’t create the conditions under which wealth is taken from some nations by force and given to the people of other nations as if it were a gift. What we live on here in America is stolen goods.

You are innocent. You merely had the fortune to be born here. You didn’t cook up these schemes. You didn’t make this world. You are just trying to live in it the best you can.

You are innocent.

You don’t have to excel in this world. No one will come and torture you or put you in jail if you don’t make the right grades. You are safe in this world of privilege.

Nor do you need to excel to be loved. You don’t have to excel to be loved and to be a worthy person.

It was being away from this society that worked for you. It worked because this society has something wrong with it. Now, back in this society, you have fallen prey to the very thing that you knew you had to get away from.

It is hard to see the workings of the machine until you leave its grasp. That is what you did, for six months. You were out of the grasp of the machine. Upon returning, you find yourself in trouble. That is not surprising.

You returned without a conscious critique of the system you intuitively came to see was harmful and wrong.

The machine held you in its grip and had almost devoured you when you escaped. Right when it was about to take you into its mouth and swallow you, you escaped to Central America and lived a pure and sensible life for six months.

Then you came back. No wonder you feel shattered. No wonder.

Now you straddle two worlds. In one world you work for honest, moral causes and your work makes sense. In another, you are … chained to the same murderous, soul-killing, gladiatorial combat you fled.

It is OK to feel that life is too much and is slipping away. It is good to feel that. It is OK to feel that you want to do everything. It is good to feel that. But it is also good to feel that no matter what happens, you are loved. No matter what happens, you have a place in this world.

There is a spirit in you. You can reach that spirit when you need to, by finding quiet time and breathing, by getting out in nature.

That’s the “You are OK” part. Now comes the “Society is messed up” part:

It helps to have a critique of society. If you do not have a critique of society then you may think everything is your fault. But you were born into a certain kind of world that is not perfect and is not your fault.

So make peace with your past and make war on the society that has lied to you. I don’t mean go become a violent terrorist or something. I mean make war in the Blakean sense of “spiritual warfare.” Know that the society you grew up in is the enemy of your own spirit, your own true nature. Know that its solutions — of maximum achievement and superiority — will not work for you. What you need is to be loved and to love yourself. You will not be loved for your achievements. You will be loved for who you are and how you carry yourself with dignity and compassion. You will be loved for admitting that you are ambitious but not perfect. You will be loved for admitting, in a moment of confusion, that you don’t really completely totally know what you’re doing.

None of us knows. None of us knows completely what we are doing. So we turn to each other in kindness. We offer each other sandwiches. We are all bozos on this bus. It’s a long ride. We let people rest their heads on our shoulders. We try to keep out of the sun. We look for a comfortable spot where we can lay down our burdens.

Imagine being born in to a world that was on fire. Would you think, “Oh, I must have started this fire, this must be my fault”? Yet you were born into a world that is profoundly misshapen and lost. You were born into a world repressing its own genocide and racism and terror by diverting the attention of youth with technological tricks, like the tricks an uncle plays with a coin, making it disappear to delight the children.

There comes a moment of reckoning as you approach adulthood when you see that the world you live in has been hiding its true nature from you. You see that the rules you have been obediently living by will not bring you happiness. You see that the rewards you seek are not necessarily going to come no matter how well you do on tests. You see that the world is full of competition and willful misdirection. You see that the world is not fair. You see that you have been tricked just like a child who sees the quarter in the uncle’s hand and tries to guess where it has gone.

The world in which you were raised filled you with illusion designed to extract from you certain behaviors. This unprecedented whorl of persuasive, manipulative imagery, this advertising and technology sensorium in which you were raised has a purpose. It works to condition a vast population to behave in a way that maximizes the flow of money and goods. Unfortunately, those goods are not then distributed equally. They do not benefit society as a whole. The flow of goods your conditioned behavior enables mainly benefit a powerful class of business, government and technology managers and owners.

This machinery of advertising and media is unprecedented in scale. It was previously impossible to build such a thing but it now operates 24 hours a day around the globe. It must be the greatest propaganda apparatus ever constructed. Can you think of anything larger and more pervasive? If a god descended on the planet and set up an advertising shop could even a god have such a great reach? Even a god would have to buy network and server time — unless, being a god, he could write his tweets on the clouds — which, in all fairness, a god probably could.

But, I mean, short of a god descending from the heavens to make global communications, the world’s current media infrastructure is pretty near total.

And you grew up in this. And you had a hard time in your family and have looked around for the right way to address that. And it seemed to you that the best way to overcome these feelings of uselessness and valuelessness and emptiness was to achieve, to stand out in this great media arena, to show your stuff. To excel. To progress. To win. That will show them that I have worth, that I matter!

At least, that is the message one receives in the culture.

But it is not a true message. It is not going to work.

It is a message that serves the machinery, not the people. If all the unhappy souls of the world believe that working hard in this society will bring them the peace and happiness they crave, then this society will hum along nicely and will continue to do the destructive but profitable things it has been doing for many years.

Who questions the foundation of this system? We all need to.

The massive advertising and technology sensorium in which you were raised works to fill you with illusion. Advertising and modes of social control permeate our atmosphere; programs of persuasion attuned to individual consumption habits run by brilliant mathematicians with pinpoint accuracy resemble the diabolical ploys of comic book villains. And yet this system of persuasion and propaganda is real. It, in fact, is a major and respected part of our modern economy.

Who questions this? What prominent leaders question the foundation of this system? What intelligent commentators ask, for instance, when appearing on television or on the Internet, Isn’t there something fundamentally insane and murderous about the sensorium itself?!

Such reticence is understandable, since this sensorium pays the bills, supports the media we work for, pays the salary I make, pays for the equipment, the servers and office space and management that makes it possible for me to write this column every day.

Those of us whose livelihoods depend on the great advertising and media borg do not routinely question its existence or whether it is a moral good or evil or whether it can possibly be morally neutral. Duh.

You grew up in this vast, terrifying machine. It is still being built. We are falling into its maw. It lies to us. It promises us things. It is vastly diverting and I mean that in both senses, that it is both entertaining and also works wonders of ceaseless misdirection, like a brilliant magician.

It is the Great Machine.

It is hard to think when the Great Machine is running.

Young Americans are growing up in a world of illusory promises. Your task as adults will be to sift through the promises and do the painful, agonizing work of facing the fact that not all these promises can come true. You will have to face the fact that you have been lied to and that you have been accomplices in these lies because these lies have been sweet. You have been treated well but you have not been told the truth.

I can’t tell you all the truths you need to uncover. The depth of lies and deceptions you have been fed makes that impossible. Your task, over the next 20 years, will be to uncover these lies and set the world straight on what is possible and what is not possible, and to use your brilliance and your energies to solve the problems my generation has not been able to solve and has therefore left to you. They are not just technical problems. They are moral problems, problems of belief and perception and thinking style.

One of the chief problems will be fundamentally how to separate truth from fiction in a postmodern media sensorium. That is, how to seek truth. This didn’t used to be an issue. We knew how to seek truth. It was just a matter of deciding to do so. My generation learned truth-seeking methods in a different world. We had photographs that were true. We had a journalistic test of truth in which an utterance could be deemed true if it met certain criteria. I feel that tradition is being challenged and perhaps eroded by new modes of collectivist media that are not built with fool-proof checks for veracity. There will need to be new standards of truth. Perhaps new ways of perceiving what is true will evolve.

Now, as to your own personal history: Your abuse was real. Your adaptation to it is understandable. You want to show everyone. Once you show everyone you think you will feel better. But you won’t. You’ll always be trying to show everyone if that is your method. You will always be trying to show everyone and you will always be in pain.

For underneath that desire to show everyone is the pain you endured as a child. Now you are starting to feel some of that pain. That is good. It is good to feel the pain. The pain tells you what actually happened. What actually happened is that you were mistreated and abused. It was not your fault. You have done your best. But your whole being is now telling you that your course of absolute achievement and maximum effort in all things is not the best course. It is not the best course because it cannot be sustained. You are not superwoman. No one is superwoman. We are all flawed, limited creatures. We are imbued with divinity but we are not all-powerful. We are divine but only in our small ways.

So we exist in the world as we are. We adjust. We take stock of who we actually are — creatures that require rest and sunlight and air and water and food and the company of others.

It is understandable that anyone who benefits from this machine would hesitate to question it. We are all implicated, for we all benefit. I benefit.

So we must find ways, within this ravenous system of labor exchange, to live at peace with our own hearts and our own histories. How do we do that?

We spend time examining how we have reached this current moment. We find a wise person and a safe setting in which we can view ourselves with detachment and ask whether our received beliefs are true. We ask what we assume and question whether what we assume is true and whether it will bring us happiness. We do this over a long period of time because it is a slow and detailed process.

It sounds like that is what you are doing, or what you are beginning to do. You fell into a depression and had to seek help. The depression itself is a sign that what you are doing is not working. I fell into a depression as well, and had to seek help. And now I am on the greatest journey of my life. Now decades of dark, unexamined assumptions are peeling away and I am beginning to see many things about myself and the world I live in.

I will be 60 in December. When I was 18 I did not not expect to reach 30. When I was 20 I thought if I do not have a novel published by the time I am 21 I am washed up. When I was 25 I thought I still have time but better get to work. When I was 35 I thought I’d better stop drinking because falling down is no longer funny. When I was around 40 the beginnings of a novel came to me. When I was 45 I started work at Salon. I have been working at Salon and working on the novel and praying and meditating and figuring things out for a long time. At 56 I got sacral chordoma, a rare cancer for which I had major surgery and radiation that took a long time to recover from. The cancer has gone away and likely will not return soon. I think I will make it. I think things will work out. But certain periods of life, and certain projects and dreams which we assume are sprints turn out to be uphill marathons.

Life is long. So take care of yourself. Slow down and pay attention to what is happening in your therapy sessions. Do the things that matter. Let the rest go.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That's where you and I part ways. I could never lie to a child like that, and I find it hard to believe that adults lie and snicker at their own cleverness, because I think most adults lie to themselves too.

Well yeah, given that the first person we teach children to lie to is themselves - that said, I've seen it many a time, and one supposed Guidance Counsellor in particular stands out cause she KNEW she was shovelling a load, and felt shovelling it *credibly* was her job...

More recently was the stupidity of one of those encouraging Kira to "go talk it out" with an obviously sociopathic little bitch who was exploiting her promise to me to stop hitting people, which resulted in a pair of thankfully minor stab wounds from a pair of scissors, and me having to admit that yes there ARE people who could use a clobbering - I am still pissed about that, given that she was very fortunate to get off with naught more than mere scratches, a pair of scissors sharpened into a shank is no joke.

-F

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:31 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Byte

This is for you

Sensory Processing Disorders Have Biological Basis

Tue, 2013-07-09 10:51

The image shows areas of the brain that can be affected by sensory processing disorders. Using an advanced form of MRI, researchers at UCSF have identified abnormalities in the brain structure of children with SPD primarily in the back of the brain. (Source: UCSF)

Sensory processing disorders (SPD) are more prevalent in children than autism and as common as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, yet it receives far less attention partly because it’s never been recognized as a distinct disease.

In a groundbreaking new study from UC San Francisco, researchers have found that children affected with SPD have quantifiable differences in brain structure, for the first time showing a biological basis for the disease that sets it apart from other neurodevelopmental disorders.

One of the reasons SPD has been overlooked until now is that it often occurs in children who also have ADHD or autism, and the disorders have not been listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists and psychologists.

“Until now, SPD hasn’t had a known biological underpinning,” says senior author Pratik Mukherjee, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and bioengineering at UCSF. “Our findings point the way to establishing a biological basis for the disease that can be easily measured and used as a diagnostic tool,” Mukherjee says.

The work is published in the open access online journal NeuroImage: Clinical.

‘Out of sync’ kids

These brain images, taken with DTI, show water diffusion within the white matter of children with sensory processing disorders.
Row FA: The blue areas show white matter where water diffusion was less directional than in typical children, indicating impaired white matter microstructure.
Row MD: The red areas show white matter where the overall rate of water diffusion was higher than in typical children, also indicating abnormal white matter.
Row RD: The red areas show white matter where SPD children have higher rates of water diffusion perpendicular to the axonal fibers, indicating a loss of integrity of the fiber bundles comprising the white matter tracts. (Source: UCSF)

Children with SPD struggle with how to process stimulation, which can cause a wide range of symptoms including hypersensitivity to sound, sight and touch, poor fine motor skills and easy distractibility. Some SPD children cannot tolerate the sound of a vacuum, while others can’t hold a pencil or struggle with social interaction. Furthermore, a sound that one day is an irritant can the next day be sought out. The disease can be baffling for parents and has been a source of much controversy for clinicians, according to the researchers.

“Most people don’t know how to support these kids because they don’t fall into a traditional clinical group,” says Elysa Marco, who led the study along with postdoctoral fellow Julia Owen. Marco is a cognitive and behavioral child neurologist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, ranked among the nation's best and one of California's top-ranked centers for neurology and other specialties, according to the 2013-2014 U.S. News & World Report Best Children's Hospitals survey.

“Sometimes they are called the ‘out of sync’ kids. Their language is good, but they seem to have trouble with just about everything else, especially emotional regulation and distraction. In the real world, they’re just less able to process information efficiently, and they get left out and bullied,” says Marco, who treats affected children in her cognitive and behavioral neurology clinic.

“If we can better understand these kids who are falling through the cracks, we will not only help a whole lot of families, but we will better understand sensory processing in general. This work is laying the foundation for expanding our research and clinical evaluation of children with a wide range of neurodevelopmental challenges – stretching beyond autism and ADHD,” she says.

Imaging the brain’s white matter

In the study, researchers used an advanced form of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which measures the microscopic movement of water molecules within the brain in order to give information about the brain’s white matter tracts. DTI shows the direction of the white matter fibers and the integrity of the white matter. The brain’s white matter is essential for perceiving, thinking and learning.

The study examined 16 boys, between the ages of eight and 11, with SPD but without a diagnosis of autism or prematurity, and compared the results with 24 typically developing boys who were matched for age, gender, right- or left-handedness and IQ. The patients’ and control subjects’ behaviors were first characterized using a parent report measure of sensory behavior called the Sensory Profile.

The imaging detected abnormal white matter tracts in the SPD subjects, primarily involving areas in the back of the brain, that serve as connections for the auditory, visual and somatosensory (tactile) systems involved in sensory processing, including their connections between the left and right halves of the brain.

“These are tracts that are emblematic of someone with problems with sensory processing,” says Mukherjee. “More frontal anterior white matter tracts are typically involved in children with only ADHD or autistic spectrum disorders. The abnormalities we found are focused in a different region of the brain, indicating SPD may be neuroanatomically distinct.”

The researchers found a strong correlation between the micro-structural abnormalities in the white matter of the posterior cerebral tracts focused on sensory processing and the auditory, multisensory and inattention scores reported by parents in the Sensory Profile. The strongest correlation was for auditory processing, with other correlations observed for multi-sensory integration, vision, tactile and inattention.

The abnormal microstructure of sensory white matter tracts shown by DTI in kids with SPD likely alters the timing of sensory transmission so that processing of sensory stimuli and integrating information across multiple senses becomes difficult or impossible.

“We are just at the beginning, because people didn’t believe this existed,” says Marco. “This is absolutely the first structural imaging comparison of kids with research diagnosed sensory processing disorder and typically developing kids. It shows it is a brain-based disorder and gives us a way to evaluate them in clinic.”

Future studies need to be done, she says, to research the many children affected by sensory processing differences who have a known genetic disorder or brain injury related to prematurity.

The study’s co-authors are Shivani Desai, Emily Fourie, Julia Harris and Susanna Hill, all of UCSF, and Anne Arnett of the University of Denver.

The research was supported by the Wallace Research Foundation. The authors have reported that they have no conflicts of interest relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:36 PM

That's an epic bit there Kiki, thanks for sharing it, and if I were to be honest that's kind of the very definition of my core imperatives right there, in much better words than I could ever put it.

That said, lemme share this bit I wrote for a long since destroyed "Safe Harbor" online community - even though said destruction was in part my fault due to finding out the management was collecting and misusing user information to settle personal scores, which you can imagine did *NOT* go over well with me at all.

Quote:
Love is a Weapon

There's a war going on all the time, one that no one ever seems to see, one that no one seems to notice, or even realize their own participation in.

There are those who wish to do right by their fellow man, to help others, and practice peace, tolerance, and caring, living an ethical life by their own principles and no inflicting harm on any.

Then there are those who wish to exploit and destroy their fellow man for personal gain or amusement.

And worse, there are a great many of people who may claim to be the former, but are actually the latter.

No, don't bother telling me which one you are, or think you are, or pretend to be - I don't much care.

For every one of them that harms someone, there may be one of us, healing the hurt.

For every kid in gym class being mentally battered by the coach, there might be one of us teaching him geometry.

For every kid beat down by bullies, there might be one of us about to step in.

For every child abandoned by their own family, there might be one of us stepping into that role and teaching them better things.

You see, it's easy to build something physical - and just as easy to smash it down.

Friendship, knowledge, ethics, morality and most of all, Hope.
Hope that not everyone is out for only themselves at anyone else's expense - these are our 'weapons'.

You can take a mans wallet, but it's a lot harder to take his ethics from him, and you cannot take his knowledge.

And while the society we as a species have created fully caters to and supports those who live only for themselves, and act in a manner almost sociopathic...that society isn't going to last.

The foundation of any human (and therefore transient) society is in it's future generations, it's children...and while those who exploit, ignore, demean or harm them...may well convert them into the same, the tide is turning on them.

Many more children these days are learning that it is not necessarily a dog-eat-dog world, nor does it have to be, and are learning that they are the power that can change it.

And in turn, they will give this knowledge to their friends, and unto their children, and eventually, the exploitative, self-serving, socipathic nature of our society will change.

You can hurt someone in only a second, but it takes time to help them.

Our society is based on instant gratification and as a species we lack patience in our nature, therefore it is only the civilized amongst us that dare to overcome that nature and aspire to better themselves above the savage who would simply take what he wants, without care to the consequences.

Anything built with care and patience will outlast that which is not, and much that our kind builds is such work - one foul act cannot overcome years of friendship, one harsh word cannot overcome years of kind ones, it is our armor against your world, and it works very well.

We continue to grow, and grow unified, while they continue to cut each others throats for the sake of a lifestyle that leaves no legacy behind but a feeling of relief when they finally pass to whatever fate awaits them.

And some day, some day soon - there will be more of us, than them.

Some day there won't be any of them left.

Is that not something worth striving for ?

Most folks see only the rage, never looking deeper into the compassion which drives it.

Ironic to have this discussion, on this day, as one of our residents had a relationship implode in a fashion which is likely to result in a stalking/harrassment/potential violence problem, and requested such assistance as the management was able, in hopeless desperation...

I think we all know the truth of trying to have the local law enforcement or courts address THAT problem, given the former has already brushed her off and the latter immediately started with the runaround and lies, but unbeknownst to her I am very, very protective of "my people", and placed discrete cameras pointed at that unit and surrounding area - stalker jackass types almost never act out immediately, they work up to it, a little peeping here, leaving nasty notes there, and so on and so forth - something those cameras will handily document for when the time comes, cause I am NOT a cop, I do not NEED "probable cause", just the notion someone might be a damn problem and doesn't hold a lease here, yanno ?

Current scorecard for our security dept stands 0-to-3 for stalker assholes, and this ones gonna ring in at 0-to-4, believe it - perhaps it's above and beyond the paycheck, but a person has to believe in something, don't they ?

I believe in us, all of us, because the root of HUMANE... is human, isn't it ?

-Frem

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 6:47 PM