I suppose it was only a matter of time...

I was at the local wine shop the other night and the guy behind me in line was buying a beverage called Neuro Sleep -- it's literally a soft drink to help you sleep -- an anti-energy drink. I went home and googled it and it turns out that the Neuro Drink company makes beverages to tweek performance and mood in ALL areas of your life -- Neuro Gasm to improve sexual performance, Neuro Sonic for work, Neuro Trim to lose weight, Neuro Sport for exercise, and Neuro Bliss to manage depression I guess.

In fact, we've been using beverages to tweak mood for a long time -- various forms of alcohol to (poorly) manage depression, increase desire, or facilitate sleep; various forms of sugary beverages to manage mood and provide fuel during exercise; and coffee or strong tea to boost alertness at work. So I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that they could add the latest over-the-counter herbal supplements to beverages and then market them as tonics to manage specific neurological functions. But at the same time it all feels so "Brave New World" meets "Children of Men." Oh yeah, the guy behind me in line said Neuro Sleep works great and I should try it -- and the clerk and everyone else in line agreed.

Things that seem normal but aren't, part 4

Continuing my occasional series on things that seem normal but aren't...

8. How totally fucking unhappy most of us are at work. We spend 8, 10, 12 hours a day at work. Most of us are there for a reason -- a common purpose shared with others or just a common goal of wanting to earn a living to provide for the essentials of life -- shelter, food, and medical care for ourselves and those we love. And most of us are totally fucking miserable in our jobs. Employees hate their bosses and see them as selfish, willfully ignorant,and intentionally counterproductive to the mutual aims of all involved. Bosses see their employees as lazy, unproductive, unenlightened impediments to traversing the obvious path laid out in front of them. In spite of seemingly mutual aims between all involved, most workplaces are a total fucking mess.

In a four year undergraduate college degree, most students will take zero classes in management (and no, an undergraduate class in psychology is not very helpful preparation for human relations in the workplace). In an MBA program there are lots of classes on economics, risk management, and decision making but most students will take one class in the art of management at most. In teacher education programs there are lots of classes on pedagogy and curriculum, but very few classes on how we get along with others and successfully negotiate the academic politics around us. In seminaries, where our religious leaders receive their professional training, there are lots of classes in theology but few classes in management. It's really quite extraordinary that the one thing essential to our mutual happiness -- the art of people relating to people -- is almost entirely unstudied in most all of our professional training. There is a sense that most people, in their heart-of-hearts must regard the art of how we are to get along with one another as simply unknowable. But the fact is, there are techniques for how we can and should get along with each other. Some methods are better than others and all of these propositions are knowable, testable, and replicable. The fact that all managers and most employees don't spend lots and lots of time learning, developing, and perfecting these skills is really dumbfounding.

If you are looking for a place to start, I highly recommend, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone (and three other co-authors at the Program on Negotiations at Harvard). Hands down this is the most informative self help book I've ever read.

I also highly recommend Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande Even though the book is focused on how to improve workplace practices in a medical setting, I think his insights about checklists and processes could help improve both performance and satisfaction in lots of different workplace settings.

If you have other ideas for tools, techniques, and processes that you find helpful, I'd be eager to learn about them in the comments.

intimacy defined

In the midst of an otherwise thoroughly depressing article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine about the limits of marriage counseling, is this gem of a sentence that I will now carry with me (slightly modified so that it will make sense out of context):

Intimacy begins when one person expresses revealing feelings;
intimacy builds when the listener responds with support and empathy; and
intimacy is achieved when the (initial) discloser hears this support and empathy and feels understood, validated and cared for.

I think that is very well stated.

Things that seem normal but aren't, part 3

Continuing my occasional series, Things That Seem Normal But Aren't, I've got two more for you today.

6. The sheer volume of vampire stories in film, TV, and books. Look, I could understand if a new vampire movie came out every 15 to 20 years. But it seems that a new vampire-themed media product comes out every other week these days. Conservatives love vampires (ahem, Ayn Rand), progressives love vampires, men love vampires, women TOTALLY love vampires, old people like vampires, young people like vampires, Americans like vampires, people around the world like vampires. As a media brand, vampire rule. Which is all very odd when you think about it. What makes a sickly pale white guy who sucks people's blood compelling let alone sexy?

I gotta figure that the enduring power of vampires in our collective consciousness stems from the fact that vampires are really serving as a sort of metaphor for something else. My hunch is that vampires serve as a metaphor for the ways that men mess up women's lives and the ways in which women sacrifice their own lives for desire. As Carol Gilligan points out, for much of human history (really up until about the late 1960s) desire (eros) and death (thanatos) often went hand in hand (desire led to sexual union which led to childbirth where a high percentage of women lost their lives). Even since the advent of the pill and even with improved maternal and infant mortality in childbirth, men still seem to find ways to make women's lives messy (as Rene Russo's character Catherine said so well in The Thomas Crown Affair).

7. Car chases in movies. Even though we've mercifully escaped the era of the Cannonball Run series there are still an awful lot of car chases in movies. Which is surprising given that there really aren't that many car chases in real life. Of course there is the occasional O.J. Slow Speed Chase or various police pursuits on the freeway covered by local news traffic helicopters. But those are usually covered on the local evening news. It's unclear why someone would also pay money to see such things in a theater. But I think the role of the car chase in modern movies is not to simulate reality. Rather, the movie car chase recreates the primitive animal sensation of pursuit -- both predator and prey -- that is hardwired into our limbic system through millions of years of evolution. I think the movie car chase, even though unrealistic and foreign to our daily lives, gives us the dopamine rush and subsequent sense of relief when the danger passes that makes us feel satisfied -- like we went on an intense journey -- as we leave the theater (or as is usually the case these days -- as we hit the "open" button on the DVD remote and walk to the fridge).

Immortality projects

A friend recently introduced me to George Monbiot's blog and it's excellent. Monbiot writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper in the UK and has written extensively on global climate change, corporate power, and environmental protection. He also has one of the finest posts you'll ever read on career advice for aspiring journalists.

In a recent post, Monbiot gave a great short summary of Ernest Becker's writing and I want to quote from it briefly and then riff on the ideas that came up in connection with this idea:

In 1973 the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker proposed that the fear of death drives us to protect ourselves with "vital lies" or "the armour of character"(10). We defend ourselves from the ultimate terror by engaging in immortality projects, which boost our self-esteem and grant us meaning that extends beyond death. Over 300 studies conducted in 15 countries appear to confirm Becker's thesis(11). When people are confronted with images or words or questions that remind them of death they respond by shoring up their worldview, rejecting people and ideas that threaten it and increasing their striving for self-esteem(12).

I think Ernest Becker is correct -- immortality projects drive so much of what we do on this planet. Capitalism and the pursuit of wealth are immortality projects, religion is an immortality project, family can be an immortality project, writing, careers, even really intense hobbies can become immortality projects. So much of what we do is an attempt to build a name or thing or idea that lives on long after we do.

It makes sense then that our fights over jobs or politics or religion are so fierce -- the other person who disagrees with me or who is blocking me from accomplishing what I want to accomplish -- is getting in the way of my immortality project and that cannot stand!

And then one day you realize that it is all so silly. In all likelihood there is no immortality to be gained anyway, so what exactly are we fighting for? Time swallows everything and appears to be merciless. One of my all time favorite passages in any book is this from Milan Kundera in the Unbearable Lightness of Being:

Tereza's dream reveals the true function of kitsch: Kitsch is a folding screen set up to curtain off death.

With even just a little honest examination, all of these immortality projects all become just kitsch. Capitalism is just a folding screen set up to curtain off death. Religion is just a folding screen set up to curtain off death. World's records, tall buildings, that cherished book project, is just a folding screen set up to curtain off death.

The path of the Buddhist monk then makes sense. To their credit, Buddhists are willing to take a long gaze at things as they truly are. Looking into the abyss, they come to realize there is really nothing to push back against and they slow down, stop, and sit still in silence for the rest of their lives. But then of course Buddhism can easily devolve into its own immortality project too so it shows just how difficult it is to escape from the clutches of kitsch.

Lincoln was really on to something when he said, "The world will little note nor longer remember what we say here..." In fact I wonder if the reason the Gettysburg address has become so famous is because of Lincoln's existential rambling at the beginning of the speech that really captured the frailty of the human condition.

But here's the thing, I think we need immortality projects in order to keep our sanity. Even if we know they are silly, even if we know they are untrue, I think we should do them anyway. I think immortality projects are the motorboat that keeps us one step ahead of the sharks of depression. When I'm actively, passionately pursuing my own personal immortality project, I'm really quite happy. Immortality projects are often the thing that gives life meaning and brings us into connection with others. And even if, as the Landmark Forum folks point out, life is actually empty and meaningless, so what? We should still pursue that thing that we think is important just because we think it is important. I think recognizing that our immortality projects are silly enables us to hold them more loosely, to back off when they start making us miserable. But at the same time, I think they should be pursued because they make us happy. And if we can do it lightly, then perhaps it can bring us into greater communion with our fellow travelers on this rock.

----

Footnotes from the first blockquote above:

10. Ernest Becker, 1973. The Denial of Death, pp47-66. Republished 1997. Free Press Paperbacks, New York.

11. Tom Pyszczynski et al, 2006. On the Unique Psychological Import of the Human Awareness of Mortality: Theme and Variations. Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 4, 328–356.

12. Jeff Greenberg et al, 1992. Terror Management and Tolerance: does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one’s worldview? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 63, No 2 212-220.

Capitalism is a wave form not a straight line

Continuing a theme today...

Interesting article a few months back in The New Yorker (subscription required) called, "The Secret Cycle: Is the financier Martin Armstrong a con man, a crank, or a genius?" by Nick Paumgarten (October 12, 2009). The paragraph that really stayed with me (and prompted me to write a blog post about it almost 3 months later) is this one:

"In the nineteen-twenties, Nikolai Kondratiev, a Soviet economist, concluded that capitalism was inclined to half-century cycles of boom and bust and boom again, rather than, as Marx believe, a single, inexorable march toward collapse. Wrong answer. Stalin had him imprisoned and executed. It was the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, he of "creative destruction," who called these cycles Kondratiev waves and popularized them in the West. "

I think that is it exactly. Capitalism is a wave form -- innovation followed by greed followed by collapse over and over again in 5 to 50 year cycles of boom and bust. [I could add: Capitalism is a wave form of innovation followed by greed followed by collapse -- followed by rebirth IF progressives are elected to clean up the problem, i.e. Franklin Roosevelt; OR fascism if conservatives are elected/seize power in response to the problem, i.e. Augusto Pinochet.]

I think the Wall Street guys know this too. They study the financial data more than anyone, they know that markets move up and down in waves. But the Wall Street guys never tell the general public that information. Rather, when they are selling stocks, 401(k) plans, and IRAs to the rest of us they always portray the market as a straight line of 8% returns year in and year out. ("Don't think about it," they say, "just give us your retirement savings and everything will work out fine. Trust us." Hard to imagine that not working out.) And it is precisely in the difference between the wave forms that Wall Street is riding and the straight line that they are selling to the rest of us that Wall Street makes all of its billions -- betting against the down times and riding the wave of succeeding bubbles.

Furthermore, the capitalist enablers in politics, Republicans, also sell capitalism to the public as an inexorable march of steady progress (profit), a rocket ship streaking ever onwards and upwards. And it is precisely this public lie of the straight line of capitalism by Republican politicians (and way too many Democratic politicians) that gives the Wall Street guys the cover they need to make money off of the actual peaks and valleys of capitalism.

How much wiser then it would to have a public policy that understood capitalism as a wave form subject to inevitable booms and busts, than as a straight line around which we try to build rational incremental linear policies. Indeed the challenge of progressive politics is to take the wave form of capitalism and straighten it out through massive regulation, enforcement of white collar criminal statutes, and a social safety net that protects the most vulnerable in society from the vicissitudes of the market.

I think it is wonderfully liberating to see that the both the straight line down of Marx and the straight line up of capitalist apologists are incorrect. It liberates us to focus on the challenge of how to design public policy based on curves -- calculus rather than arithmetic.

Update #1: I probably should have spaced out my earlier post, "Men's desire is a straight line, women's desire is a wave form" with this one because even though they both talk about straight lines and wave forms, I don't think the two topics (the booms and busts of capitalism and the peaks and valleys of women's desire) have anything to do with each other.

Men's desire is a straight line, women's desire is a wave form

Sally Law in the latest issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating interview with Cindy Meston and David Buss, psychology professors at the University of Texas at Austin, about their book, "Why Women Have Sex." Here's the paragraph that jumped out at me:

[W]hereas men’s sexual orgasm tends to be fairly predictable and reliable in the sense of its occurrence, women’s sexual orgasm is highly variable. It's variable from woman to woman, and variable within the same woman from partner to partner, circumstance to circumstance, etc. Sexual attraction provides another example. Men’s sexual attraction tends to be based heavily on visual cues. Women’s sexual attraction tends to be far more nuanced. It’s affected by olfactory cues (how a man smells), personality of the partner (such as sense of humor and confidence), social status (how he is regarded in the eyes of his peers), other women's judgments of how attractive he is, and many other factors, in addition to the visual cues. The qualities women find to be sexually attractive in a man also vary across the ovulatory cycle, such as a shift toward finding more masculine features (faces, bodies, and voices) attractive at ovulation.

To put this simply, men's desire appears to be a straight line -- fixed, constant, predictable, cliched even (and often involves light blue eye shadow). But women's desire seems more like a wave form -- nuanced, varied, shifting over time. So why are men and women so rarely on the same page? Because the straight line of men's desire and the wave form of women's desire only intersect occasionally.

Now that may be putting too fine a point on it. But I think it is helpful to understand that men and women are not mirror images of each other, but rather seem to think about and experience desire in very different ways.













And of course Dr.'s Meston and Buss focused their research on heterosexual desire. It would be fascinating to replicate their research but focus it instead on homosexual relationships and those in which gender is more variable.

[Note: it's tough to write about this topic without slipping into using sex and gender synonymously. But as I pointed out in a previous post, sex is not the same thing as gender.

Also because I occasionally write on sex and gender (and use explicit language), it's interesting to see the keywords in the google searches that sometimes bring people to my site. Many many people who end up at my post, bleeding heart liberal, were not exactly looking for an exegesis on subconscious framing in political speech. But for the few dudes out there who were looking to get off, ended up here by accident, and maybe learned a little something new in the process, I guess that's to the good too.]

The global quest for an everything-is-gonna-be-all-right pill

You know what people would be willing to spend a bajillion dollars on? An everything-is-gonna-be-all-right pill.

Isn't that exactly what heroin is? And cocaine? And alcohol. And nicotine. Often people who use these drugs are portrayed as irresponsible hedonistic "pleasure seekers." And while that may be true in some cases, for the vast majority of people I don't think that's exactly what's going on. It seems to me that the reason that most people try these drugs in the first place, (in spite of the known dangers) and then go back again and again, is to try to feel the sensation that "everything is gonna be all right."

In fact, the reason that drugs lords control entire countries (Myanmar, Afghanistan) and huge swaths of many other countries (Mexico, Colombia, the United States) is because they control the supply of everything-is-gonna-be-all-right sensation-producing plants. Global illicit drugs sales are estimated at $320 billion a year. [$300 billion is a fascinating number too because it is roughly equal to the estimated cost to end world hunger and equal to about half the amount of the U.S. annual military budget].

Interested to horn in on a portion of this huge market, global pharmaceutical sales of antidepressants reached $11 billion in 2008. But it seems to me that Eli Lily and Pfizer are just selling an everything-is-gonna-be-all-right pill too, no more no less.

Furthermore, isn't that what every major religion, new age guru, self help book, and revolutionary movement is selling -- an everything-is-gonna-be-all-right pill or process or methodology? [I remember being in Nicaragua around the time of the 1990 elections and the Sandinista campaign slogan was, "Todo será mejor" everything will be better. On the one hand, anyone who came up with that slogan should be fired for political malpractice. But on the other hand, it is understandable why someone would be drawn to saying something like that in a political campaign in the midst of a war.]

People seem to like pleasure, but they would be willing to give anything for the feeling that everything-is-gonna-be-all right. In fact, isn't that how American Beauty ends, the main character is murdered but he dies happy because he has realized that everything-is-gonna-be-all-right. Isn't that the Christ story: one who loses his life but this ultimate loss has no sting because he is firm in the knowledge that everything-is-gonna-be-all-right?

I guess the reason I'm so interested to riff on this topic is that all of the above suggests that many many people, much of the time, apparently do NOT feel that everything is going to be all right. Which if true, would be a fascinating statement on the human condition. Great literature and film sometimes portrays this feeling, this absence of everything-is-gonna-be-all-right. But it seems to me that the news media usually stays away from talking about this, even though the attempt to escape this feeling appears to be the motivating factor behind many of our daily decisions, and many, perhaps most, of our problems as a society (and internationally).

Understanding long term chronic pain symptoms from minor motor vehicle accidents

I'm reading, "The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease (Second Edition)" by Robert Scaer, MD and it is completely fascinating. Dr. Scaer, an expert in chronic pain, attempts to unravel the mystery of why people often develop long term chronic pain following even minor motor vehicle accidents. He makes a compelling case that the body interprets even minor motor vehicle accidents as an "existential threat" which triggers a flood of the fight or flight hormone cortisol in the brain. But because there is nothing one can do in the situation -- often neither fight or flight is possible in the moment -- the excess cortisol is never discharged and wrecks havoc on various brain systems leading to chronic pain syndromes.

I want to quote at length from the book and then share my reflections on what Dr. Scaer's research also might tell us about other forms of dissociation we often see in society.

First, the money quotes:

Those of us fascinated by animal behavior in the wild love to watch shows on TV devoted to observation of animals in this setting. Many of these TV specials relate to the prey/predator experience, and sometimes display this in graphic and even grisly detail, at least to our civilized eye. If one closely watches the details of pursuit of the prey by the predator, one will see that the fleeing prey will often collapse and become limp even before being seized by the predator. An example is a film that I saw involving a gazelle pursued and run to the ground by a cheetah. At the moment that the cheetah caught the gazelle, it struck the gazelle lightly on the flank, at which point the gazelle collapsed and lay inert on the ground in the freeze or immobility response. In another example, after fighting off a pride of lions for more than half an hour, the lone water buffalo was knocked off its feet, at which point it became limp, immobile, and frozen. In other words, when fleeing and fighting are no longer physically possible, and the prey animal is in a state of helplessness, it will frequently enter the freeze, or immobility state, a totally instinctual and unconscious reflex. This behavior is common in most species including insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Since most such reflexes have evolved as a means of perpetuating the species, the freeze response clearly is of critical importance for survival. (Robert Scaer, The Body Bears the Burden, page 16.)

This part blew me away:

In a surprising number of cases, the attack of the predator may be fueled by the instinctual response to movement of the prey rather than by hunger, in which case the freeze response of the prey may abort the attack of the predator and result in survival of the prey. The freeze response mimics death, sometimes fooling the predator enough to leave the scene of its "kill" and gather its offspring without delivering the tooth and claw coup de grace, thereby allowing the prey to recover and escape, as in "playing possum." In addition, the freeze response, analogous at least in part of dissociation in humans, is associated with additional release of endorphins, rendering the animal relatively analgesic. Whether this analgesia has survival value, or is a gift from a greater Being to prevent a painful death is open to debate. Another purpose of freeze analgesia may be to inhibit self-ministering behavior, such as wound licking, which would impede escape of the prey animal in the case of arousal from the freeze. (p. 17)

If the animal was in a state of high sympathetic tone -- fighting or fleeing -- for a period of time at the onset of the freeze, its autonomic nervous system will be in a state of "the accelerator on full, but with brakes on" during the freeze... In this freeze state, the focused and alert mind becomes numb and dissociated, at least in part due to high levels of endorphins. Memory access and storage are impaired, and amnesia may be expected for at least some of the events occurring during the freeze.... In mammals the freeze response is indeed a perilous state. (p. 18)

But unlike humans, other animals apparently have instinctual ways to discharge this flood of fight or flight chemicals in the brain.

In most cases, the frozen prey animal does not need to deal with the presumably unhealthy state of the freeze response -- it becomes another animal's meal... In some cases, however, the frozen prey animal survives the period of immobility without being killed... In virtually all such instances, the animal will arouse and begin to tremble. This may be as imperceptible as a shudder, or as dramatic as a grand mal seizure. In some cases analyzed by slow-motion video, the trembling will resemble the last act of the animal before freezing -- the act of running... The animal at this point will usually arouse fully, regain its feet, often stagger a bit, shake itself, and then run off, apparently none the worse for its life-threatening experience. Long term observations of such animals do not seem to show any harmful effects on behavior, health or other measures of survival. It would appear from these observations that animals in the wild possibly possess an instinctual means of dissipating autonomic activity stored and accumulated in the freeze response. They also seem instinctually to tend to "complete" the act of escape through the freeze discharge. (p. 19)

So what does this have to do with humans in motor vehicle accidents?

People who report symptoms of shock and numbness after a traumatic event [like a motor vehicle accident], and exhibit symptoms of dissociation, are actually in the freeze response at the time. In fact many of the post traumatic symptoms that occur often for years after the unresolved trauma are characteristic of dissociation, or recurrence of the symptoms of freezing. (p. 20-21)

And here's where he brings it all together:

Acculturation of the human species has resulted in an increasing pattern of urban living in closely confined habitats that intrinsically may inhibit the instinctual capability to flee or defend oneself under threat... The state of intense proximity and cultural interdependence may also act to inhibit the natural discharge of autonomic freeze energy in such cases...

If we do not discharge or complete the freeze response, our brains will literally be fooled into thinking that the memories of the traumatic event that inevitably periodically reemerge represent events that are actually in the present and not actually in the past. When they emerge, we go through all of the experiences of that event, emotional, cognitive, and autonomic as if it were actually happening again. Retention in procedural memory of this experience may serve as an internal cue for recurrent arousal patterns, alternating with numbing and dissociation, constituting the basically bipolar and self-perpetuating nature of PTSD. Until that act of flight or self defense has been completed, therefore, the "survival brain" may continue to perceive that the threat continues to exist, and is unable to relegate it to memory as a past experience. (p. 22)

So to summarize: a motor vehicle accident, even a minor one, is perceived as an existential threat by the human body -- much like a gazelle being chased down by a cheetah. That triggers the freeze response whereby the body is flooded with fight or flight hormones. Unlike the animal kingdom, once the danger has passed for humans, we seem to have forgotten or repressed the freeze discharge instinct that we see in animals. As a result, the sensation of "the accelerator on full, but with brakes on" becomes imprinted on the brain such that an event that was in the past is experienced over and over again in the present, akin to the experience of people with PTSD.

It's a pretty compelling case I think.

I'm also encouraged by the way that this diagnosis also points to treatment options. Indeed, one of the mysteries in psychology is why the wacky steps involved in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) are so incredibly effective at treating PTSD. Dr. Scaer's theory suggests that EMDR is effectively precisely because it reawakens and plays out the sort of freeze discharge instinct that we see in animals. I wonder too, if taking self defense classes after an assault are helpful not just because they provide an additional level of protection against future attacks but because they also help heal the brain by "completing" the act of escape thereby discharging the autonomic freeze response?

It seems to me that this model also may explain learning disabilities. Little kids put on the spot at the front of the classroom by a teacher very well may experience that as an "existential threat." Indeed, from the outside many of these children (and adults) appear to freeze, much like the gazelle in the example above. People with learning disabilities describe the experience of taking a test or being called on in class as a flooding in the brain complete with loss of short term memory, blurred or jumpy vision, cognitive fogginess, and difficulty focusing -- all symptoms that match the freeze response of people in motor vehicle accidents as well. Encouragement, praise, and a more relaxed school setting (all characteristic of Montessori of Waldorf educational approaches) I imagine then would do wonders for reducing the flooding associated with learning disabilities.

Finally, I'm fascinated by the ways in which this model also explains military strategy. The displays of overwhelming force characteristic of both the Nazi Blitzkrieg and the current U.S. strategy of Shock and Awe appear specifically designed to trigger the freeze response in an entire population thereby disabling their ability to fight back. Displays of overwhelming force are literally attempts to get an entire population to believe that is about to be annihilated so that they freeze (much like the gazelle), unable to respond (which actually is what appears to have happened in France in WWII and Iraq during the first Persian Gulf War and the current Iraq War.) All wars lead to high levels of PTSD in both the military and civilian population. But it would follow that nations subjected to Shock and Awe would display even higher levels of PTSD in the general population as a result of this strategy (which actually makes rebuilding much much more difficult I would imagine).

So, sorry for the long post. I don't imagine this post will do much for my blog traffic or my "average time on site" statistics. But for the one person out there who might be helped to understand their situation just a bit better -- whether you are suffering from chronic pain; PTSD; flashbacks, depression or dissociation as a result of trauma or abuse; or even just a learning disability, this one is for you. And if you are experiencing any of those symptoms, I highly recommend reading, The Body Bears the Burden. The life you save may be your own.

Twitter is turning you into a dopamine addict (so is your iPhone, Blackberry, Google, & Facebook)

I came across three articles this week that suggest that our always on, 24/7, Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, Blackberry social media society is doing some seriously bad things to our brains:

Psychology Today, "Why millions of brains love (and hate) twitter." Money quote:

The problem is that the type of reward you get from Twitter seems to activate a kind of scattered, jumpy feeling... If I have something to write, I'd much rather just hang out on Twitter and look around a while first. And when I then try to write, I find my brain isn't in the right gear, it's overly stimulated... It does indeed feel, after time on Twitter, like I haven't slept and can't focus on harder tasks.

Slate.com, "Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous." Money quote:

We actually resemble nothing so much as those legendary lab rats that endlessly pressed a lever to give themselves a little electrical jolt to the brain. While we tap, tap away at our search engines, it appears we are stimulating the same system in our brains that scientists accidentally discovered more than 50 years ago when probing rat skulls.

In 1954, psychologist James Olds and his team were working in a laboratory at McGill University, studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction. One day they unknowingly inserted the probe in the wrong place, and when Olds tested the rat, it kept returning over and over to the corner where it received the shock. He eventually discovered that if the probe was put in the brain's lateral hypothalamus and the rats were allowed to press a lever and stimulate their own electrodes, they would press until they collapsed... Later experiments done on humans confirmed that people will neglect almost everything—their personal hygiene, their family commitments—in order to keep getting that buzz.

[Perhaps you remember the story of the South Korean video game player a few years back who literally died from playing a video game too long -- 50 hours straight. The official cause of death was said to be, "heart failure stemming from exhaustion." But we could just as easily list the cause of death as dopamine addiction, just like the lab rats in the example above.]

Finally, here's the article that will blow you away: "Abuse of technology can reduce UK workers intelligence." It's from a research study conducted by Hewlett Packard in the UK in 2005 and it suggests that the machines are really starting to interfere with our productivity. Money quote:

LONDON , 22 April, 2005 – New research , commissioned on behalf of technology experts Hewlett Packard, reveals that 62% of adults are addicted to checking messages out of office hours and whilst on holiday. Half of workers will respond to an email immediately or within 60 minutes, and one in five people are “happy” to interrupt a business or social meeting to respond to an email or telephone message.

Perhaps more worrying is the effect of Info-Mania on workers’ IQ. Far from making workers more productive, the findings of a new scientific experiment reveal that those who "over juggle" and who constantly disrupt meetings and important tasks to read and respond to messages, significantly reduce their IQ. In a series of tests carried out by Dr Glenn Wilson, Reader in Personality at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, an average worker’s functioning IQ falls ten points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming emails. This drop in IQ is more than double the four point drop seen following studies on the impact of smoking marijuana. Similarly, research on sleep deprivation suggests that an IQ drop of ten points is equal to missing an entire night of sleep. This IQ drop was even more significant in men who took part in the tests.

Incredibly, these troubling findings on internet addiction are from 2005 -- BEFORE Twitter even existed (and before Facebook had gained such massive penetration in the market). I imagine if a similar study were done today the results would be dramatically worse.

Let me just speak to my own experience for a moment. I find that e-mail and Facebook can easily lead to a sense of overwhelm. (And I don't even own a Blackberry or iPhone so I'm not tempted to check it even when I'm away from my computer.) But Twitter is a whole 'nother thing entirely. I find that after an hour on Twitter I'm dizzy; the frontal lobe of my brain -- where short term memory is stored -- feels foggy; I literally feel like I'm drunk. And then it takes another 45 minutes to an hour until my brain is back to feeling "normal" again.

Now your experience very well may be different. But I'm interested that the author of the piece in Psychology Today reported similar feelings in his head after too much time on Twitter. It's not the layout, it's not even the amount of information that is the issue. It's the way that constant "seeking" activity stimulates dopamine production in the brain that causes the problem. Other studies are starting to show a link between internet addiction and depression and ADHD in teenagers. I'm also interested by the apparent differences between men and women in the HP study where men had even more severe impairment from "over-juggling" than women.

Interestingly, after feeling repeatedly overstimulated and completely zonked out after using Twitter several times this week, I've returned to meditation for the first time in years. I've been following the meditation instructions of Reggie Ray in his CD series, "Meditating with the Body: Six Tibetan Buddhist Meditations for Touching Enlightenment with the Body." Quite literally, the 3 hours I've spent listening and doing the exercises contained in Meditating with the Body are the only time I've felt at peace all week. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the constant pace of information overload, I strong recommend that you turn off your computer and spend a few hours meditating with Reggie Ray [okay so the cover art on the CD is kinda whacked out -- but the content is the best meditation instruction I've ever heard. It's non-violent, earthy, feminine and very effective.]

















Let me say one last thing. A friend on Facebook reported this week that he had just learned that one of his friends had committed suicide. If you are depressed or suicidal -- do NOT turn to Facebook or Twitter for social interaction. It will make things much much worse. It will overstimulate the seeking centers of your brain (blowing out your dopamine receptors) without producing enough of the pleasurable reward your brain is seeking. Turn off your computer and find real people. Call anyone, visit anyone, chat with or just be in the company of other people. We are social animals. Real human contact will always have a redeeming quality that cannot be matched by a computer.