This is Your Brain on Capitalism

Saw this today in the Post, and suddenly understood the shape of things to come.
Jim

This is your brain on capitalism

Robert Fulford, National Post Published: Saturday, November 28, 2009



Drugs that reshape our character could become the defining industrial products of the century.

When Theodore Dalrymple practised psychiatry in Britain a few years ago he noticed that many of his indigent female patients lived sad lives, and looked rather sad, but never once complained of sadness. Instead, they told him they were depressed.

They had learned to speak the language. As he explained in one of his excellent magazine articles, his patients knew he had a pill to give them for depression whereas he could do nothing for sadness except suggest they re-organize their lives. In many cases he might have suggested they leave the abusive and neglectful men who were spreading melancholy in all directions. His patients didn't want to hear that.

They wanted pills, which he was able to provide.

In a sense, they understood the future of medicine better than he did. As a therapist, he imagined helping them work through life problems but science, public health services and pharmaceutical corporations were all moving elsewhere, away from talk therapy and toward the blossoming field of psychotropic drugs and the unfolding marvels of neuroscience.

Old-fashioned therapists still find good work to do but neuroscience has usurped the prestige that psychoanalysis and related forms of therapy possessed during the twentieth century. The neuroscientists have -- as C.P. Snow said about scientists in general in a famous lecture 50 years ago -- "the future in their bones." They have taught the world to regard joy as dopamine activity in the brain's reward centres and melancholy as serotonin deficiency.

The implications are large enough to reshape society and create a new economy, "Neurocapitalism." That's the title of a provocative article by Ewa Hess, a Zurich journalist, and Hennric Jokeit, a Zurich University neuropsychologist, in Merkur, a Berlin cultural review (kindly translated for those who don't read German by the excellent online Eurozine).

Psychotropic drugs are moving beyond curing the demonstrably sick. Increasingly, they are used by mainly healthy people to alter "character virtues," such as self-confidence and trust. Hess and Jokeit report that current medical journals go much farther, describing neuroscientific research into "love, hate, envy, Schadenfreude, mourning, altruism and lying." The expectation (and the reason for research funding) is that whatever neuroscientists identify can be modified by pharmaceuticals.

As Hess and Jokeit see it, psychotropic drugs could become the defining industrial products of this century. They choose the term "neurocapitalism" because the new drugs, in theory, answer the need of capitalism for more effective human beings and the need of individuals to make themselves successful in the marketplace.

Researchers are manipulating the nature of the human animal and challenging the very "self " at the core of human life. Almost everyone who touches this field understands that it raises delicate moral issues. Unfortunately, almost no one knows how to draw a line separating legitimate medical needs from purely frivolous desires. Where in the continuum would we place "neuro-enhancers" that propose to add years to a pilot's career or change someone from a B-to an A+ student? Drugs in this category can be rationalized as "compensatory" or "moderate enhancement," comparable to glasses worn to correct eyesight.




Even if medical ethicists could determine which drugs are legitimate and which are not, how would their judgment be enforced? Nation by nation? Through international treaties? It seems unlikely.

Hess and Jokeit, who have their misgivings about neuroscience and show no enthusiasm for capitalism, nevertheless point out that the freedom of individuals (as well as corporations) is involved. Pharmacological intervention expands the autonomy of people "to act in their own best interests or to their own detriment." That may turn out to be the most popular guiding principle; certainly it will have the drug companies behind it. It may be that medical ethics, confronted by unprecedented discoveries, lacking any relevant principles from the past, will never cobble together a moral structure it can apply to this largely unknowable science. Perhaps it is already happening much too fast.

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

Corporations, and Serving the Common Weal

I sometimes get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of corporate propaganda that makes its way into the various media. The big drive now is to show how publicly minded various corporations are, by presenting them as major donors to community services groups and charities. Smoke and mirrors, folks.

Edward Abbey stated the problem succinctly when he said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Corporations finance the election of governments, and, in turn, those elected serve not the people, but the corporations.
Corporations have decided to put chemicals in our foods so that the foods last longer, improving their bottom line, but playing havoc with the health of the world.
Corporations, once public outcry demanded it, removed DDT from use in the developed world, only to sell it in vast quantities to the developing world.
Corporations, not permitted to sell asbestos in Canada, still sell tonnes of the stuff to the developing world, and the Canadian government supports it.
Our fish stocks are decimated due to "corporate fishing," and our cattle and milk are so full of hormones that our daughters develop years earlier than previously.
Corporations sell us drugs, fast-tracked through the FDA and the oxymoronic "Health Canada" machine, whose lists of side effects are more dangerous than the ills they cure.
Corporations, using the propaganda machine of corporate television, tell us to consume, consume, consume, and never mind fiscal responsibility.
Corporations have left Canada and the USA to produce offshore (read China) where safety, and content, standards are non-existant, and our governments ignore the end products until public outcry forces them to chide, not the corporations, but the Chinese for permitting it. Corporations monopolise third world farming, forcing GM seed stocks upon farmers whose initial seed stocks were diverse and sustainable, resulting in a crop that needs more pesticides, and more chemicals to add to a depleted soil.

Renewal and sustainability is the way, folks, and yes, it is going to be difficult for us all. We will not be able to continue to live simply as consumers: we are too numerous, resources are too limited or dwindling, and we are taking toxic loads of pollutants into our bodies, through food, air, and water. Consider the following article that I lifted from the Web...google it yourselves. --

"What is the average life expectancy of Americans? For a long time it has been the low seventies for men and upper seventies for women. So it comes as a shock to learn that the average life expectancy for Americans has dropped to 69.3 years, according to the America's Health Rankings report, issued at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting.

This figure is exceeded by 28 other countries, including Britain, France and Germany and is about five years less than the life expectancy in Japan. According to Dr. Reed Tuckson, this dismal number reflects increasing obesity, fewer people quitting smoking (although only 20.8 percent of Americans smoke today, down from almost one-third in 1990), and increasing numbers of people without health insurance.

Officials made no mention of the increasing consumption of processed foods containing refined sweeteners, processed vegetable oils and toxic additives, and certainly did not allow even a whisper about the almost complete absence of nutrient-dense foods such as organ meats, shellfish and butterfat and eggs from grass-fed animals from the American diet."

Sigh! Time for the intellectual revolution, people. The industrial revolution has failed, and is killing us all.
Read the labels!
Follow the corporate money trails!
Time for a government of the people, for the people.

All of this is, of course, in the opinion of one tired old man, who regrets that it has taken him so long to read between the lines, to look beyond the advert, and to recognise that what a government does is not measured by what it says, but by what it does.

End of rant. Must adjust my meds.

A Meditation on Quantum Entanglement

"For almost a century, physicists have had in hand "the" theoretical framework of the known world—quantum mechanics. But whereas the world clearly comprises large complex systems, quantum mechanics is usually associated with the microworld of atoms and elementary particles, and is hardly ever considered as an underlying feature in our daily life.

This is even more pronounced for some of the seemingly weird predictions of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement, which asserts that the quantum state of physically separated objects is mutually and inextricably connected". -PhysicsToday.org

"Hinduism rejects the biblical account of divine Creation and instead accept forms of pantheism. Hindus believe that only Brahman exists, and all else is illusion (maya), including all creation. According to Hinduism, there is no start or finish of creation, only continuing successions of life and death. The soul (atman) of man is a "spark" of Brahman trapped in the physical body. Repeated lives or reincarnations (samsara) are required before the soul can be liberated (moksha) from the body. An individual's present life is determined by his efforts in previous lives (the law of karma), and the physical body is ultimately an illusion (maya). Bodies are usually cremated, and the soul goes to an intermediate state of punishment or reward before rebirth into another body. Reincarnations are experienced until karma has been removed and the individual soul is reabsorbed into Brahman. Freedom from infinite being and final self-realization of the truth (moksha) is the goal of existence. Yoga and meditation (especially raja-yoga) taught by a religious teacher (guru) is one way to attain moksha. The other paths for moksha are the way of works (karma marga), the way of knowledge (jnana marga), and the way of love and devotion (bhakti marga). Hinduism's fundamental goal is to escape the cycle of reincarnation, and thereby to erase the illusion of personal existence - eventually becoming one with Brahman".
http://www.allaboutreligion.org/transcendental-meditation.htm

A Meditation on Quantum Entanglement

Aum.
Flowing wisps of Self
dissolve:
egocentricity recedes,
lost in the Cosmic Now.

A vibration,
a pulse,
a profound sense of Balance,
of inclusion:
the arrival of Truth.

Within the peaceful vastness
the growing awareness
of Light:
countless tiny flames
acting as One,
coalescing,
joining,
uniting,
growing.

Awareness
of countless Chakra chimes
vibrating as One,
resonating with the Whole.
Belonging.
Becoming.
Being.
Now.

Darkened Horizon

In cosmology, the Hubble volume, or Hubble sphere, is the region of the Universe surrounding an observer beyond which objects recede from the observer at a rate greater than the speed of light, due to the expansion of the Universe. –Wikipedia

Darkened Horizon

With the hubristic narcissism
typical of our species,
we long considered ourselves
the centre of the universe.

We invented gods,
each of whom
focussed solely
on this cosmic speck.

Wars we fight,
again and again,
slaughtering millions
in each “war to end all wars.”

Some small portion of us
consume, use, and pollute
most of our shrunken resources,
while billions starve and die.

Corporations rule
through callow political surrogates,
while compliant media
tell us all is well.

Common sense, and altruism,
within reach of a younger world,
have fled, receding from our memory,
beyond our Hubble Sphere.

Fractal Universe

-->

In physical cosmology, fractal cosmology is a set of minority cosmological theories which states that the distribution of matter in the Universe, or the structure of universe itself, is fractal. More generally, it relates to the usage or appearance of fractals in the study of the universe and matter. A central issue in this field is the fractal dimension of the Universe or of matter distribution within it, when measured at very large or very small scales.

Fractals are encountered in both observational and theoretical cosmology, make an appearance at both extremes of the range of scale, and have been observed at various ranges in the middle. Similarly the use of fractals to answer questions in cosmology has been employed by a growing number of serious scholars close to the mainstream.... –Wikipedia

Fractal Universe

It is of no consequence
whether our questing focus is within
or without:
Mandelbrot decrees
that the pattern reduces or increases
forever.
Slight variations may occur,
but make no change to mathematical
perfection.

Logical and natural progression
I accept, and seek to find my place
in the Pattern.

A Day in the Life

Part of the "Quantum Shift" series.

"The multiverse (or meta-universe [metaverse]) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes. The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered."



"Trans-world identity
A metaphysical issue that crops up in multiverse schema that posit infinite identical copies of any given universe is that of the notion that there can be identical objects in different possible worlds. According to thecounterpart theory of David Lewis, the objects should be regarded as similar rather than identical."



A Day in the Life

The thunderheads, growling down
from the mountains,
put wings to his heels.
The alpine meadow was flat,
with no shelter, no haven.
Deafened by the roar,
he never saw the raw energy
that was his epitaph.

...wings to his heels.
He stopped, relieved to see the storm
pass to the south,
giving his valley a wide birth.
He stopped to drink at the stream,
then paused, puzzled by the rumble
of the flash flood that was his executioner.

...wings to his hooves,
as the slavering beast
halved the distance between them.
The cliffs loomed before him,
and he launched himself into the air,
embraced, and destroyed, by the red breakers
of an angry sea.

...wings to her fins,
as the sheer joy of her passage,
sped her home, through crystal depths,
to her family, pod, and students.
She was old, but others of her kind
lived long and productive years,
after their genetic duties were done.

...wings in his mind,
haunting him, and driving him to heights
of thought, of speculation,
of despair.
Thousands of feathers pounding
their insistence that he break,
and finally rest, covered with their down.

...wings of the rampaging god,
ravenous and eager to accept
the sacrifice of his body.
His tentacles writhed on the black stone alter,
as the fire god screamed acknowledgment.
Fear overcame pride, near the end,
but he did not flinch.

...wings of the seagulls,
gliding on updrafts above his hill.
The wind, from a bay bejewelled by autumn sun,
swept through his pines,
and moved the frost-stiffened grasses.
He sipped his coffee, smiled at the patient dog,
and thought of other realities,
        and peace.

The Observer Effect

“In physics, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. This effect can be observed in many domains of physics....
A common layman misuse of the term refers to quantum mechanics, where, if the outcome of an event has not been observed, it exists in a state of 'superposition', which is akin to being in all possible states at once. In the famous thought experiment known as Schrödinger's cat, the cat, in a closed box, is supposedly neither alive nor dead until observed. However, most quantum physicists, in resolving Schrödinger's seeming paradox, now understand that the acts of 'observation' and 'measurement' must also be defined in quantum terms before the question makes sense. From this point of view, there is no 'observer effect', only one vastly entangled quantum system.” –Wikipedia

The Observer Effect

We are taught,
from birth, to be aware
of our surroundings;
to be careful before crossing streets;
to beware of strangers bearing candy.

We are conditioned
to set our sights
on a distant horizon
where dawns success,
comfort, and satisfaction.

Our religions demand
we obey the Higher Voice,
made audible by those
who purport to speak for It:
the promise of eternity.

Yet as we age, our linear lives
seek direction;
our focus turns inward,
and our introspection changes us
in ways we could not have imagined.

By virtue of observing ourselves
we transform...
and finally began to understand
that Schrödinger's cat is not important:
it is the nature of the Box
that determines
who we are.

Bubbles in the Quantum Foam

"Quantum foam, also referred to as spacetime foam, is a concept in quantum mechanics, devised by John Wheeler in 1955. The foam is supposedly the foundations of the fabric of the universe, but it can also be used as a qualitative description of subatomic spacetime turbulence at extremely small distances of the order of the Planck length. At such small scales of time and space the uncertainty principle allows particles and energy to briefly come into existence, and then annihilate, without violating conservation laws. As the scale of time and space being discussed shrinks, the energy of the virtual particles increases. Since energy curves spacetime according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, this suggests that at sufficiently small scales the energy of the fluctuations would be large enough to cause significant departures from the smooth spacetime seen at larger scales, giving spacetime a "foamy" character. However, without a theory of quantum gravity it is impossible to be certain what spacetime would look like at these scales, since it is thought that existing theories do not give accurate predictions in this domain. However, observations of radiation from nearby quasars by Floyd Stecker of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have placed strong limits on the possible violations of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity implied by the existence of quantum foam." – Wikipedia.

Bubbles in the Quantum Foam

Poverty. Borrowed tin plates
serving sparse meals.
Three stark rooms
sparingly furnished.

Explosion. No work.
Relocation,
youthful confusion,
resentment.

A new reality,
of alcoholics, and the mildly deranged:
fellow students in a new school
with a very different curriculum.

Mining camp fights,
where freedom
carries its own route
to oblivion.

Repeated relocation,
and imposed regimentation:
new skills, and travel thrills
in my own personal globe.

Planes, capital cities,
acquired graces
and horrid gaffes:
progression through confusion.

Discovery, in Sri Lanka,
of alternatives,
of freedoms linked
to grave responsibility.

Cobbled streets of Bucharest,
no hope, no direction,
no love. Lost,
then brilliant redemption.

High Commissioner’s table
in Delhi, with conversation
to soothe philosophical soul:
intellectual signposts to Dharma.

Tranquillity, on a hill
above the Atlantic,
with Cosmic wind in the pines,
enhancing Brahman’s Spark.

All slices of Being:
bubbles in the Quantum Foam,
unexpected, unexplained.
When is happening Now.

Event Horizon

“In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime, most often an area surrounding a black hole, beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. Light emitted from beyond the horizon can never reach the observer, and any object that approaches the horizon from the observer's side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon, with its image becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. The travelling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time.”
–Wikipedia

Event Horizon

As individuals we build personae,
complex and byzantine,
for others to peruse.
Adjustments, both minor and major,
occur regularly
as our image of self,
and our perceived life-objectives
change and develop.

As we age, the logarithmic acceleration
of time is frightening,
and we become less concerned
with how others perceive us.
We seek solace, in religion,
in medication, in self-pity,
or in a manic rush
of “look-at-me-I’m-still-the-same” activity
that denies the increasing and relentless pull
of our own,
and very personal,
Event Horizon.

Singularity

Unique,
and nothing has ever been
or will ever be,
     perhaps,
quite like this.

All Realities merge
in this magical place,
and logic is suspended
in the light
     of glaring Truth.
All directions are as one,
and all times are Now,
as endless possibilities
project infinite cycles.

Time shifts, and in the peculiarities
of this strange and singular phenomenon, 
remains mostly the same,
but with subtle and endless variations
that rehearse their roles
in each and every
     bright
            new
                   Day.