I shouldn't be writing right now; I should be resolving ambiguous genotypes into haplotypes and then writing my essay about free will (which I'm actually excited for). But alas if I don't write things down I forget them. My LTP seems more short-lived than most people's.
Anyway, thing number one:
I was working at one of our Amnesty International events tonight (I'm on the executive board). It was a human rights photo exhibition, but someone had also submitted a report about Uganda. Why, I am not sure, since she obviously wasn't going to win the photo award, and I'm fairly certain I was the only person that actually read her report. But it was fairly informative. After reading about the disasters in Rwanda and Sudan, I believed that Uganda was more of a model of the way an African country should be with decent health care and education and a government that isn't murdering all of the civilians. But apparently I am in the crowd of people that isn't fully informed about Uganda. The report was about the Lord's something-or-other rebellion group in Northern Uganda. I guess it was started by some spiritualist leader and then taken over by another. It's responsible for abducting children when they are very young and forcing them to serve in the army, making them kill their family and friends or given them to men as sex slaves. I always kind of shudder when I read about child soldiers, because I can't imagine ever having do to the things they make them do, or being that desensitized to violence at such a young age, and because I work on PTSD; I know what it can do to just a tiny rat. What can the most horrific acts imaginable do to a ten-year-old soldier? Anyway, what I found interesting was again the corruption of religion. I guess the group initially started as a way to fight for a government based on the Ten Commandments. When I read that in the paper, it made me wonder how people can possibly be so self-deceiving. The Ten Commandments include a lot of things that explicityl condemn raping small girls and making little boys chop off their friend's hands. Love one another? Thou shalt not kill? But most importantly, I suppose, is the "love one another." I mean, I know they've managed to convince themselves that kidnapping these children and putting them through hell is best for their spiritual enlightenment or some other perverse thing. But really, if spiritual growth involves violating the most basic rule of the rule of the most basic tenants of the religion and of the political activism, how can that be right? And how can the adults that are members of this group put up with the horrors they are committing in the name of God? It makes me sick. But I know it's not only happening in Uganda, or now. It has happened in so many places through all of history, this religious corruption. It's so alarming, taking something so beautiful like religion and twisting it into something so terrible.
Thing two: I saw the Dalai Lama today. I bought tickets to see him Saturday a few months ago because I wasn't sure I'd win the lottery for student tickets for the show today at my school. But lucky me I got a ticket.
He didn't talk that long because he was kind of late; I think he went over talking to the Center for Ethics people here becuase they were all late too. One thing he said that I liked was something like "inner disarmament is necessary for external disarmament, and until we have the first we cannot have the other."
The main body of his talk was about developing compassion that can provide secular ethics. He said that secularism wasn't the rejection of religion; it was the equal respect for all religions. In some ways, though, I think that definition then applies to the Dalai Lama himself, and he is obviously not necessarily secular, so I would revise the definition slightly if I were him. Anyway, I got the point. He talked about two kinds of compassion: biased, attached biological compassion for those that show compassion to us and a more complex, undirected compassion that develops from education and prayer and meditation.
By far the most interesting thing he said though was probably something not many people noticed, but I happen to be obsessed with the topic. He said (again, not exact quote): "I am Buddhist, so to me Buddhism is the best religion for me. But you may have a different religion that is the best religion for you." I think he was probably still talking about religious tolerance at that point, but I missed a lot of what he said immediately after this statement because it got me thinking.
It wasn't new, of course. I've read enough Buddhism (and also Hinduism; respect for other people's truths seems to be a pretty clearly Eastern thing) that it wasn't a shocker, the idea that it's possible for someone to be happier with a religion that isn't ones one, and that that religion oculd be *right* for that person, but not for oneself. I'm not sure why, then, I started thinking about it again when he said that. I guess becuase until now I've been making conjectures about Buddhism based on what I have read by the Dalai Lama and others, but now I had confirmation that what I had intuited about Buddhism or Eastern religion was correct.
It is an interesting statement. Because if you believe in some kinds of absolute truths (more true in Hinduism, but also true in Buddhism) that contradict another religion, yet you believe that for someone else that is a member of that other religion, that other religion is the best for him, and brings him the most happiness, then in a way you believe that that person's happiness is best served by- if not lies- untruths. Now Eastern religion has a way of becoming an amoeba and sucking up other religions so that if Christianity or Islam and Buddhuism were juxtaposed, there would be a lot more incongruities between Buddhism and Christianity from the Christian perspective than from the Buddhist perspective. This asymmetry, I think, is partially due to the lack of institutionalization in Buddhism. Sometimes I think people use institution as a way to externalize religion and make it into a negative dialectic rather than a positive dialectic like the eight-fold path or whatever it's called in Buddhism. But even given Buddhism's ability to adapt to differenes in religion, there are differences that can't be resolved from either end. For instance, belief in a contained God. That is something that Buddhism just can't claim. Or belief in Hell.
So in a way, if you are all hippie and Easterny and you believe that everyone is entitled to their own subjective notion of truth, but you still believe in objective truth, you are kind of condemning everyone to home the best truth is a religion other than your own to a less complete existence. Which is interesting to say the least.
That said, though, I really like that aspect of Eastern religion. If only Islam was more like that, then I think that a lot of the conflict in the Middle East would be nullified. Acceptance of others is a really important key to compassion, which may be why it seems a lot of people don't develop religious compassion for those of opposing faiths.
I think Christianity (and Islam, but I don't have my Qu'ran handy to quote anything) has a lot more asymmetries between doctrine and action than Eastern religion (sorry, I'm leaving out Taoism, but it's very similar in its behavior to Hinduism and Buddhism). For instance, consider two things that I read tonight:
1. "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
..."There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment. He that fearteth is not made perfect in love.'
(From 1 John, which is one of my favorite books in the Bible and which, I think, should be a sumamry statistic of Christianity)
2. (Link here) "The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did."
Now 4 in 10 versus 6 and 10 isn't a staggering difference, but I'm assuming it must have passed the t-test or whatever to make it to CNN.
It reminds me of something I've heard about in school several times, this experiment they did on these religious leaders (Catholic maybe?) at some university. They had the professors write a talk to give on the Good Samaritan and then staged some old man or something on the steps to the religious building to look as if he was fallen and injured or homeless or something (sorry, I'm a littly rusty on the details). Anyway, they found that I think if not every one almost every one of the religious leaders stepped right over the pleading man on the way to give their talks about the Good Samaritan. They varied a lot of things but the only thing that had an effect on whether people stopped was whether or not they were late to give their speeches (they were less likely to stop if they were late).
So that story, along with the torture story compared to the articles about love, is quite exemplary of the issues I think are inherent in Christianity these days. Maybe it's precisely because of the more regimented and institutionalized nature of Christianity when compared to Eastern religions, but people that are Hindu or whatever seem a lot more unified within themselves between their actions and their beliefs. Any rules are more cultural and less externally restrictive like the rules in my religion for instance (not saying the rules in my religion are wrong; I mean, obviously I believe in them, and there are a lot, but I will admit that they make it more difficult to follow my religion with unity of mind/heart).
Anyway, I really need to get back to my haplotypes... I'm still working out ways to generate money to volunteer in South America this summer and India next summer. I wish volunteering was less expensive. But maybe it's good to have that kind of sacrifice, like a screening for dedication. I really do want to help, though. Reading about Africa makes me realize how different the states of the world are. I'm going to have to agree with the analysis in Ken Wilberg's "A Theory of Everything" or something in which he hijacks the theory of Don Beck ("Spiral Dynamics") and applies it to government to explain the varying states of governmental/civilian evolution around the world. Too bad we aren't as synergistic as the socialist states in Europe. I mean, who wouldn't want to be like Sweden? :-) But Sudan for instance is lightyears away from Sudan. It's crazy. In a globalized world, civilizations are still falling way behind in technology just because they haven't figured out basic human rights. Too bad the UNDHR is basically useless and unenforcable.
The Ottoman empire fell in part because of it's inability to technologically compete with a developing Europe due to its isolationist tactics.
Also, in Africa's defense, Europe really screwed it up. The problems in Rwanda for instance are very reminiscent of European influence. The Hutus and Tutsis used to live in relative harmony until Europe came in and really messed up all of the stabilization in it's attempt at colonizing the country. Same with Uganda. Europe just screwed everything up. Colonialism is a very bad thing sometimes. How are we to know in our fancy countries the delicate balances of sophistication and power in little countries in Africa? And knowing how complex the world really is, what in the world made the Europeans (or the Americans earlier last century) thing that meddling was a safe bet? Now look what we've created. And we've left them to the mess, refusing to donate enough money to really stop genocide or conscription of child soldiers into rebel groups. This is what happens when you try to introduce government without allowing a natural local evolution. Which is maybe also why Iraq didn't really work, and why as a general rule democratization doesn't work in countries that just aren't evolved enough to cope with it. And like in Rwanda, biases are inevitably introduced that really throw of equilibrium.
Okay, now I really, really have to go. I could probably drone on forever about these sorts of things, but unfortunately in my life the haplotypes currently are prioritized above mass killing in Uganda or asymmetries in Christianity as opposed to Eastern faith.
Me, I stick with my Bah'ai-tinted Mormonism.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
why i can handle my job
A few weeks ago at a talk about humanitarian work and microfinancing in India, I heard a story about Mother Theresa. The story was that some woman really wanted to meet her, so she traveled a long ways to talk to her. When she finally got to her destination, they told her Mother Theresa was at the orphanage. They gave the woman directions.
The orphanage was just a room full of tiny, orphaned babies, row upon row, hundreds. When the woman arrived, she saw that Mother Theresa was walking along the row picking out babies and giving them to the woman volunteers who then went to rocking chairs and rocked the babies. The woman went to talk to Mother Theresa, but instead of saying a word, Mother Theresa picked up a baby and handed it to the woman and walked out of the orphanage.
The woman stood there, confused, holding the tiny baby. She turned to one of the volunteers who gestured that she should go sit in one of the few rocking chairs where the women were rocking the babies Mother Theresa selected.
"But you can't possibly rock all of them!" the woman said.
"No," the volunteer responded, "But Mother Theresa can tell which babies will die tonight, and there are enough of us to rock those babies every night, because Mother Theresa believes that no human being should have to die without feeling love."
The woman took the baby and rocked it for hours in the rocking chair, and sure enough it died that night. She said that even though the baby died, she understood that she'd made a difference.
Now there are a lot of meaningful things that I get out of this story, including the reasons for humanitarian work with people as hopelessly ill as those afflicted with leprosy in India (after seeing The Motorcycle Diaries I understand, a little, how devastating leprosy really is, and how it's not just a disease in the pages of my Bible). I like that Emily Dickinson quote that says something like "If I have saved one life from pain, I shall not have lived in vain," which is saying something since I'm not normally much of a Dickinson fan. So I really do get a lot out of that story that you will consider more meaningful than what I'm going to talk about now (and I do agree with you, that it is more meaningful, but right now in my life this is my application).
I have mentioned before how difficult it was for me to take my job. I cannot express to you the pain I first felt upon seeing a rat crumple in a jar of isofluorine only to be put, numb and asleep, into a guillotine. The only thing that made it bearable for me to watch that first descent of the blade was to know that I could do nothing to stop it (my boss was performing the sacrifice), and though that was horrifying, in a way it was really comforting too. But I really, really, very strongly believe in the sanctity of life. There are two things that I find of penultimate amazingness about this world: 1. the simplicity and symmetry of physics and 2. the complexity and functionality of life. You can't be a biologist and not appreciate life with a really great respect. Or at least I can't. The same way you can't be a physicist and not appreciate the way that the universe is held together. Or at least I can't.
So here is what I do with the rats. People told me not to get close to them, not to name them, not to love them, but that is something I cannot help. I love them with all of my heart. I believe strongly that they have a soul, and I believe strongly in some Buddhist notion of the rebirth of their soul in another life. So I really can't help loving them, even unconditionally, the way that I love people. Even if one of them went berzerk and tried to bite me and gave me some lethal disease (very unlikely, given how screened lab rats are), I would still love it, even if it caused my death. I sense their innocense.
I talk to them. My boss has essentially pushed all of the rat-care duties onto me, because that is what undergraduate research assistants are for, slavery, of course. But I really don't mind, because I do love taking care of them. I love changing their cages and giving them warm new wood pulpy stuff; I love feeding the ones that are on food restriction. In a way that I could never grasp when I was young and always in trouble for failing to feed my turtle or change the bedding for my guinea pigs, I really love caring for them. And every day that I work I have to hold each of them in my arms. I'll confess I do have my favorites, despite everything that people warned me, and I'll confess that I really am attached to all of them. Every day as I hold them, alone in the animal holding room, I rock them, I talk to them. I talk to them about their lives. I talk to them about how they are going to be shocked, and it will hurt, but it won't hurt as badly as life hurts for human beings. I tell them that their pain, and ultimately their deaths, will not be in vain. I explain to them that their suffering will be used to alleviate this greater suffering. I want them to understand how noble their lives are, and how sorry I am that they have to go through terror to help us. I know that after being held for so long, they trust me. I feel better if I explain to them that I am going to betray them. Then it is not so much of a betrayal.
I know I probably sound insane, but I do believe that some part of them listens. I do believe that some part of the, their soul, really feels how much I love all of them, how much I care about them and the quality of their lives. Even if they sometimes aren't thrilled with being held and try to scramble away, I like to think that they can at least tell that I'm not trying to hurt them. I know given all of their instincts that they may never feel totally safe in my arms, but I want them to feel comfortable. Last week, for instance, my favorite rat actually fell asleep in my arms. Which is really a big deal for an animal driven by fear instincts.
When I am working on the days that they die, I sit in front of their cages beforehand and try to explain again to them what is going to happen, and why their lives matter. I ask them if there is anything they want. Of course they never answer, but I think they deserve the question. I put my hands on their cages so they are encased (the way I held my fish as he died this year but cupping my hands around the fishbowl, even when it was so painful to watch him drown- yes my fish drowned; his swim bladder popped, and betas need to breathe air; he couldn't get to the surface; it was the most terrible thing I've ever seen).
So what I'm saying is that the reason I can do this, love them and then watch them die, love them and then kill them, is that I really believe that they have a soul, and I believe that Mother Theresa's story applies to them too. I believe that somehow they will be happier in the life to come, and all of their lives to come, if they were truly loved, and not detested or run over or killed with rat poisoning. I believe it will make a difference.
I know most of the world will think that's absurd, but I know it's not. I see them every other day. I know how beautiful they are compared to many people. And I know that there's something in them that really deserves love the same way any baby deserves love. And that's why I can handle my job.
The orphanage was just a room full of tiny, orphaned babies, row upon row, hundreds. When the woman arrived, she saw that Mother Theresa was walking along the row picking out babies and giving them to the woman volunteers who then went to rocking chairs and rocked the babies. The woman went to talk to Mother Theresa, but instead of saying a word, Mother Theresa picked up a baby and handed it to the woman and walked out of the orphanage.
The woman stood there, confused, holding the tiny baby. She turned to one of the volunteers who gestured that she should go sit in one of the few rocking chairs where the women were rocking the babies Mother Theresa selected.
"But you can't possibly rock all of them!" the woman said.
"No," the volunteer responded, "But Mother Theresa can tell which babies will die tonight, and there are enough of us to rock those babies every night, because Mother Theresa believes that no human being should have to die without feeling love."
The woman took the baby and rocked it for hours in the rocking chair, and sure enough it died that night. She said that even though the baby died, she understood that she'd made a difference.
Now there are a lot of meaningful things that I get out of this story, including the reasons for humanitarian work with people as hopelessly ill as those afflicted with leprosy in India (after seeing The Motorcycle Diaries I understand, a little, how devastating leprosy really is, and how it's not just a disease in the pages of my Bible). I like that Emily Dickinson quote that says something like "If I have saved one life from pain, I shall not have lived in vain," which is saying something since I'm not normally much of a Dickinson fan. So I really do get a lot out of that story that you will consider more meaningful than what I'm going to talk about now (and I do agree with you, that it is more meaningful, but right now in my life this is my application).
I have mentioned before how difficult it was for me to take my job. I cannot express to you the pain I first felt upon seeing a rat crumple in a jar of isofluorine only to be put, numb and asleep, into a guillotine. The only thing that made it bearable for me to watch that first descent of the blade was to know that I could do nothing to stop it (my boss was performing the sacrifice), and though that was horrifying, in a way it was really comforting too. But I really, really, very strongly believe in the sanctity of life. There are two things that I find of penultimate amazingness about this world: 1. the simplicity and symmetry of physics and 2. the complexity and functionality of life. You can't be a biologist and not appreciate life with a really great respect. Or at least I can't. The same way you can't be a physicist and not appreciate the way that the universe is held together. Or at least I can't.
So here is what I do with the rats. People told me not to get close to them, not to name them, not to love them, but that is something I cannot help. I love them with all of my heart. I believe strongly that they have a soul, and I believe strongly in some Buddhist notion of the rebirth of their soul in another life. So I really can't help loving them, even unconditionally, the way that I love people. Even if one of them went berzerk and tried to bite me and gave me some lethal disease (very unlikely, given how screened lab rats are), I would still love it, even if it caused my death. I sense their innocense.
I talk to them. My boss has essentially pushed all of the rat-care duties onto me, because that is what undergraduate research assistants are for, slavery, of course. But I really don't mind, because I do love taking care of them. I love changing their cages and giving them warm new wood pulpy stuff; I love feeding the ones that are on food restriction. In a way that I could never grasp when I was young and always in trouble for failing to feed my turtle or change the bedding for my guinea pigs, I really love caring for them. And every day that I work I have to hold each of them in my arms. I'll confess I do have my favorites, despite everything that people warned me, and I'll confess that I really am attached to all of them. Every day as I hold them, alone in the animal holding room, I rock them, I talk to them. I talk to them about their lives. I talk to them about how they are going to be shocked, and it will hurt, but it won't hurt as badly as life hurts for human beings. I tell them that their pain, and ultimately their deaths, will not be in vain. I explain to them that their suffering will be used to alleviate this greater suffering. I want them to understand how noble their lives are, and how sorry I am that they have to go through terror to help us. I know that after being held for so long, they trust me. I feel better if I explain to them that I am going to betray them. Then it is not so much of a betrayal.
I know I probably sound insane, but I do believe that some part of them listens. I do believe that some part of the, their soul, really feels how much I love all of them, how much I care about them and the quality of their lives. Even if they sometimes aren't thrilled with being held and try to scramble away, I like to think that they can at least tell that I'm not trying to hurt them. I know given all of their instincts that they may never feel totally safe in my arms, but I want them to feel comfortable. Last week, for instance, my favorite rat actually fell asleep in my arms. Which is really a big deal for an animal driven by fear instincts.
When I am working on the days that they die, I sit in front of their cages beforehand and try to explain again to them what is going to happen, and why their lives matter. I ask them if there is anything they want. Of course they never answer, but I think they deserve the question. I put my hands on their cages so they are encased (the way I held my fish as he died this year but cupping my hands around the fishbowl, even when it was so painful to watch him drown- yes my fish drowned; his swim bladder popped, and betas need to breathe air; he couldn't get to the surface; it was the most terrible thing I've ever seen).
So what I'm saying is that the reason I can do this, love them and then watch them die, love them and then kill them, is that I really believe that they have a soul, and I believe that Mother Theresa's story applies to them too. I believe that somehow they will be happier in the life to come, and all of their lives to come, if they were truly loved, and not detested or run over or killed with rat poisoning. I believe it will make a difference.
I know most of the world will think that's absurd, but I know it's not. I see them every other day. I know how beautiful they are compared to many people. And I know that there's something in them that really deserves love the same way any baby deserves love. And that's why I can handle my job.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
more on free will
I first want to say that I find the arguments for randomness based on quantum physics rather stupid, because there are all of these principles showing that despite the disorder of quantum systems, somehow as you zoom out order arises. It's not like the world is completely unpredictable. Maybe we can't predict quantum entanglement or position or anything, but we can predict where the sun will rise and the trajectory of a rocket ship. So I think that arguing for randomness based on quantum physics is rather stupid.
Anyway, I was thinking about the fact that as time goes on, we are unearthing more and more evidence of the neurological basis of... everything. I have realized all along that my belief in dualism is somewhat threatened by my simultaneous belief in the physical basis of mental illness. It seems, however, that that is a small enough discrepancy to overlook. However, what do I do when more and more evidence arises from genetics and neuroscience that really begins to eliminate any idea of a separate, non-physical, accountable self?
I read this article for my lab meeting last week or so about the neural connections between addiction and PTSD. I can't remember the exact structures, so this is going to be a vague description, but the circuitry for PTSD and the circuitry for addiction seem related. For both there is an activating system and an inhibitory system. There is evidence to believe that when you active one, you activate the other, and these changes create marked changes in the physical structure of the brain, like enlarged or shrunken parts of the brain. So for instance if you get lasting neurological damage from a tramatic situation which leads to PTSD (has something to do with dendritic retraction; I haven't looked into it enough), it can either activate the system activating addiction (which is I think the core of the accumbens) or it can deactivate the inhibitory system (which I think is input to the shell of the accumbens). Experiments on rats that are both fear conditioned and bar-pushing trained have shown a lot of correlation between the two.
Anyway, this is very nice, and very convenient for people like my uncle that came back from a traumatizing war with severe PTSD and fell hopelessly into substance addiction, but really it is beginning to erode at the personal responsibility we hold dear. I mean, the legal system really revolves around the idea that people have responsibility for their own actions. The insantiy plea is a little... um... hairy, but for the most part, we as a society or as a world believe in agency. The more we find out about the deterministic nature of neuroscience (which is large enough, I'll tell you, to escape the thorns of quantum uncertainty), the more our conceptions of human responsibility are being slowly shattered. However, we welcome such revelations with open hands because they could mean effective treatments for PTSD and addiction. But what about the self, this self we experience as being independent of these addictions and problems? What happens when the jaws of discovery chew away everything, and all that is left is this self, and then that is gone too, prey to deterministic nueronal circuits and deterministic gene expression?
We are obviously still a long way from this since there are reasons to believe that we are incredibly complex systems affected by initial genetic compostion, by environmental factors that physical change us and physical alter gene expression, by the ever-changing circuits in our brains. Even so, it is beginning to become clear that there are things that are undisputably deterinistic, or at least deterministic disadvantages, such as the propensity for addiction after having PTSD. Obviously not everyone with PTSD develops addictions, but the fact that the higher incidence can be physically explained is kind of scary to me (as well as really cool, I'll admit it).
I don't know, I'm still clinging to my Cartesian soul, and nothing I learn in neuroscience can really affect my belief in my religion since I believe science is a hierarchy nested within religion, and thus it has no essential power over religious truths.
There was this interesting idea we were learning about in philosophy a few weeks ago by this guy called Frankfurt I think, and I think it is an idea that is reflected in a lot of theories about free will. His idea is essentially that free-will arises from multiple-order desires, perceptions, actions, etc. If we have a first order desire to smoke, and we smoke, we don't have free will; we are prey to that addiction. But if we have a second order desire to desire not to smoke, and we identify with that desire, then we are suddenly moral agents. I think it's an interesting idea, and I actually really like a lot of Frankfurt's ideas about holistic desires, but I think it doesn't really solve the physical problem. I mean, what if a second order desire is just a more complicated neural circuit? I know it seems ambiguous sometimes which level of desire will win out (to smoke or not to smoke), but I'm sure that if we knew everything about the universe we could explain these variations physically. And again, that bothers me.
I suspect that at the end, even if we figure out we don't really have free will becaouse our brains are determined, we will be forced to act like we do. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I think that is a really funny paradox. Forced to believe in free will. My what a crazy species we are.
Anyway, I was thinking about the fact that as time goes on, we are unearthing more and more evidence of the neurological basis of... everything. I have realized all along that my belief in dualism is somewhat threatened by my simultaneous belief in the physical basis of mental illness. It seems, however, that that is a small enough discrepancy to overlook. However, what do I do when more and more evidence arises from genetics and neuroscience that really begins to eliminate any idea of a separate, non-physical, accountable self?
I read this article for my lab meeting last week or so about the neural connections between addiction and PTSD. I can't remember the exact structures, so this is going to be a vague description, but the circuitry for PTSD and the circuitry for addiction seem related. For both there is an activating system and an inhibitory system. There is evidence to believe that when you active one, you activate the other, and these changes create marked changes in the physical structure of the brain, like enlarged or shrunken parts of the brain. So for instance if you get lasting neurological damage from a tramatic situation which leads to PTSD (has something to do with dendritic retraction; I haven't looked into it enough), it can either activate the system activating addiction (which is I think the core of the accumbens) or it can deactivate the inhibitory system (which I think is input to the shell of the accumbens). Experiments on rats that are both fear conditioned and bar-pushing trained have shown a lot of correlation between the two.
Anyway, this is very nice, and very convenient for people like my uncle that came back from a traumatizing war with severe PTSD and fell hopelessly into substance addiction, but really it is beginning to erode at the personal responsibility we hold dear. I mean, the legal system really revolves around the idea that people have responsibility for their own actions. The insantiy plea is a little... um... hairy, but for the most part, we as a society or as a world believe in agency. The more we find out about the deterministic nature of neuroscience (which is large enough, I'll tell you, to escape the thorns of quantum uncertainty), the more our conceptions of human responsibility are being slowly shattered. However, we welcome such revelations with open hands because they could mean effective treatments for PTSD and addiction. But what about the self, this self we experience as being independent of these addictions and problems? What happens when the jaws of discovery chew away everything, and all that is left is this self, and then that is gone too, prey to deterministic nueronal circuits and deterministic gene expression?
We are obviously still a long way from this since there are reasons to believe that we are incredibly complex systems affected by initial genetic compostion, by environmental factors that physical change us and physical alter gene expression, by the ever-changing circuits in our brains. Even so, it is beginning to become clear that there are things that are undisputably deterinistic, or at least deterministic disadvantages, such as the propensity for addiction after having PTSD. Obviously not everyone with PTSD develops addictions, but the fact that the higher incidence can be physically explained is kind of scary to me (as well as really cool, I'll admit it).
I don't know, I'm still clinging to my Cartesian soul, and nothing I learn in neuroscience can really affect my belief in my religion since I believe science is a hierarchy nested within religion, and thus it has no essential power over religious truths.
There was this interesting idea we were learning about in philosophy a few weeks ago by this guy called Frankfurt I think, and I think it is an idea that is reflected in a lot of theories about free will. His idea is essentially that free-will arises from multiple-order desires, perceptions, actions, etc. If we have a first order desire to smoke, and we smoke, we don't have free will; we are prey to that addiction. But if we have a second order desire to desire not to smoke, and we identify with that desire, then we are suddenly moral agents. I think it's an interesting idea, and I actually really like a lot of Frankfurt's ideas about holistic desires, but I think it doesn't really solve the physical problem. I mean, what if a second order desire is just a more complicated neural circuit? I know it seems ambiguous sometimes which level of desire will win out (to smoke or not to smoke), but I'm sure that if we knew everything about the universe we could explain these variations physically. And again, that bothers me.
I suspect that at the end, even if we figure out we don't really have free will becaouse our brains are determined, we will be forced to act like we do. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I think that is a really funny paradox. Forced to believe in free will. My what a crazy species we are.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Happy Easter
I hope that today you took a few minutes to remember being young, and what it used to feel like to wake up on Easter morning to chocolate and plastic grass and dyed eggs hidden all over the house, how exciting that use to be.
I hope you took time to tell the people that you care about that you love them.
I hope you felt happy enough and went slowly enough to notice the spring, to see the way the flowers are pushing out of the trees slowly but steadily.
I hope you didn't let yourself believe you're too old to dance in the rain.
I hope you watched your child laugh, or someone else's child laugh, and really appreciated that for the miracle it is.
I hope that you did something you were afraid of and are stronger for it.
I hope that you didn't give up.
I hope that you found a lot of reasons to get out of bed in the morning. I hope that there were still reasons when you climbed into bed tonight to believe in tomorrow.
I hope you gave someone some part of yourself today, even someone you didn't know.
I hope that you believe in yourself.
I hope you laughed until you cried, or until milk came out of your nose, or until you couldn't stay standing, and I hope it made you feel young.
I hope that for once, even an instant, you felt innocent again.
I hope that you love yourself.
I hope you took a minute to realize how beautiful and amazing life is, even the smallest leaf growing out of the smallest tree.
I hope you know that even though we'ver never met, and evne though I really need to go to bed now, I love you. I truly do.
I hope this is your every day.
I hope you took time to tell the people that you care about that you love them.
I hope you felt happy enough and went slowly enough to notice the spring, to see the way the flowers are pushing out of the trees slowly but steadily.
I hope you didn't let yourself believe you're too old to dance in the rain.
I hope you watched your child laugh, or someone else's child laugh, and really appreciated that for the miracle it is.
I hope that you did something you were afraid of and are stronger for it.
I hope that you didn't give up.
I hope that you found a lot of reasons to get out of bed in the morning. I hope that there were still reasons when you climbed into bed tonight to believe in tomorrow.
I hope you gave someone some part of yourself today, even someone you didn't know.
I hope that you believe in yourself.
I hope you laughed until you cried, or until milk came out of your nose, or until you couldn't stay standing, and I hope it made you feel young.
I hope that for once, even an instant, you felt innocent again.
I hope that you love yourself.
I hope you took a minute to realize how beautiful and amazing life is, even the smallest leaf growing out of the smallest tree.
I hope you know that even though we'ver never met, and evne though I really need to go to bed now, I love you. I truly do.
I hope this is your every day.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
RAIN 04-06-09
Is it that in rain we find
that the cleanest part of ourselves
has been rusting away all this time
in its Nautilus chamber,
and we never knew until the water swept away
enough grayish sludge to trace the edges?
What is it that dies in us
when we see the truth of the loss of our innocense
swept clean by summer rain?
It becomes apparent that the seasons are changing,
the flowers are kissing the drops
with fat, hungry lips,
but somehow that place inside of us
that once stretched and throbbed
with every snae-toungued fork of lightning
has now begun ot fail?
Oh, how we fight in the rain
for the humanity we sold so cheap.
Oh, how we ache with its resonance
when before we felt no indication of is absence.
When the sies are gray and the sound explodes
of small things making a difference
only in mass integration,
there is suddenly the knowledge,
frigid, immutable,
that somehow we never noticed
that exact, precarious moment
when we no longer cared.
What is it about rain
that makes us feel so small,
that makes us remember happiness
the way a veteran recalls a phantom limb,
that makes us so aware of how old we have become
without noticing the wrinkles?
What is it about the storm
rthat reminds us of people we could have been,
lovers we could have loved,
smiles we could have cradled,
and makes us with its frozen embrace
not clean- no- but finally aware
of our nakedness?
Is it that in the rain we find
the cleanest
part
of
ourselves
and we
never
k
n
e
w...
?
that the cleanest part of ourselves
has been rusting away all this time
in its Nautilus chamber,
and we never knew until the water swept away
enough grayish sludge to trace the edges?
What is it that dies in us
when we see the truth of the loss of our innocense
swept clean by summer rain?
It becomes apparent that the seasons are changing,
the flowers are kissing the drops
with fat, hungry lips,
but somehow that place inside of us
that once stretched and throbbed
with every snae-toungued fork of lightning
has now begun ot fail?
Oh, how we fight in the rain
for the humanity we sold so cheap.
Oh, how we ache with its resonance
when before we felt no indication of is absence.
When the sies are gray and the sound explodes
of small things making a difference
only in mass integration,
there is suddenly the knowledge,
frigid, immutable,
that somehow we never noticed
that exact, precarious moment
when we no longer cared.
What is it about rain
that makes us feel so small,
that makes us remember happiness
the way a veteran recalls a phantom limb,
that makes us so aware of how old we have become
without noticing the wrinkles?
What is it about the storm
rthat reminds us of people we could have been,
lovers we could have loved,
smiles we could have cradled,
and makes us with its frozen embrace
not clean- no- but finally aware
of our nakedness?
Is it that in the rain we find
the cleanest
part
of
ourselves
and we
never
k
n
e
w...
?
please be true... i need it to be true...
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...
Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
