Science of the SpiritS


Attention

Danger! Stressful situations puts you at greater risk of missing threats and warning signs

Stress
When people are under stress, they pick up on every danger, both real and imagined, right? Wrong.
When people are under stress, they pick up on every danger, both real and imagined, right? Wrong. According to research from New York University, people have less flexibility to adjust to changing threats when they are preoccupied with a stressful situation.

"Stress does not always increase perceptions of danger in the environment, as is often assumed," says Candace Raio, the study's lead author, in a release.

Researchers say that our ability to anticipate threats around us is necessary to survival, but it is just as vital to be able to adjust our responses when new threats come into our environment -whether that is an out-of-control cyclist or a stranger following us to our car.

The authors carried out Pavlovian-type experiments to test threat responses to changing threats. Participants were asked to view certain images on a computer screen. They felt a mild electric wrist-shock while viewing some of the images ("threat cue"), but no shock with other images ("safe cue").

Comment: See also: Everybody is exhausted and it's not getting better


Bulb

Telling yourself the truth is doing the hard work up front

Sad and lonely woman looking at her reflection in the mirror
I've never lied to my kids. Sure, I've omitted some details and spared them information they aren't able to understand at their young ages. And no, this doesn't make me a better parent than anyone else-in fact, I'm sure my kids could have benefited at times from some good, old-fashioned scare tactics. But telling the truth-to others, but most importantly to yourself-is the fastest way to the life you want, and a crucial step in successful therapy.

Parenting can be exhausting, and telling some lies can make life seem so much easier in the short term. But when you start telling the truth, you do the hard work up front and spare yourself even harder moments in the future. For example, when you tell an unwelcome truth to children, it might result in a screaming fit or (often worse) having to bear their crushed expressions. But it's way easier than all the little hedges and adjustments you will likely have to make later. Not only do you teach them the valuable lesson of coping with disappointment or anger, they learn to trust you, and they witness strength in the face of reality. The reality is life lets us down sometimes and kids scream and cry and sometimes parents are the bad guys. Try to get comfortable early on with the simple truth that one of the roles of a parent is to be the disappointer; you will save yourself the long-term problem of raising a child who looks to you to smooth everything out for them.

Blue Planet

Pale Blue Dot in the Cosmos

When the Voyager 1 probe was 3.7 billion miles from Earth, Carl Sagan made a request.

He asked NASA to turn it around to snap a quick photograph. The result was a faint image of Earth surrounded by the vastness of space. The late astronomer would then use this picture to share his own reflections on what it meant and why it was important for us to capture.
Planet Earth from 3.7 billion miles
© Unknown
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Comment: Who isn't amazed by the beauty and vastness of the Cosmos? Here is another view of our planet's place in Cosmos.
Where are we in the universe? Most detailed map yet




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Scientific shamans, mutant mystics and God as a probability engine with Dr. Bruce Damer

Dr. Bruce Damer
If you asked people on the street "who do you think is going to help propel humanity out into outer space?" chances are many of them would say Elon Musk. Maybe someone would mention Jeff Bezos, or even Robert Bigelow; maybe one of them would even claim the true bringer of the new Space Age will be Tom DeLonge and his To The Stars team - in which case you should probably buy that dude a coffee, because chances are he's at least $200 poorer...

But if I were to say that perhaps the one name which will be recorded in History books as being heavily responsible for lifting humanity out of our Earthly cradle is Bruce Damer, most people would likely react the same way.

"...Bruce Who??"

Music

Why the sound of a voice is multisensory

Sarah Vaughan
© WikipediaSarah Vaughan by William P Gottlieb.
To make sense of human voices, we rely on senses beyond hearing. The songs of Taylor Swift can be sweet and soft. Lady Gaga's singing feels dark. Johnny Cash's voice was low and rough. That's because voice is not just sound: it can be seen and heard, but also tasted and touched. The sound we hear in voice creates 'multisensory images' - drawing in perceptions from many senses, not just one.

The phenomenon of multisensory perception can help us to understand why we assign metaphorical properties of softness, roughness or depth to voice. Think of a politician whose voice is flat. Flatness is a multisensory concept because it is both tactile and visual. We can recognise flat surfaces by either touching or seeing them. These sensory impressions inform us about the acoustic characteristics of voice, implying that it does not have variation in tone. Notably, flatness can also convey lack of sympathy and emotion on the part of the speaker.

Nebula

Taoist master Mantak Chia explains how negative chi affects us

Chi energy
The chi is the primordial life force.
They say that energy goes where attention flows. And in today's insane media universe, our attention is everywhere. Which means our energy is everywhere, and if it's everywhere, it's not where we need it most, contributing to our personal health and wellness.

This is especially true in times of crisis, when tragic events flood society-at-large with intense fear, anxiety, and worry, causing extreme stress. When human beings are operating in these states, our spiritual energy is drained, and physical and psychological health rapidly deteriorate.

There is more to this than just a feeling, it's the science of Chi, your life force energy. Taoist master and author of numerous books on personal energy development, Mantak Chia explains, Conserving, protecting and strengthening your chi is challenging today with so many distractions and with so many negative emotions in motion around us. Remarking in an article on Taoist Cosmic healing, Chia explains how negative chi affects us.

Shoe

Basic human skills the younger generation isn't learning

kids
There are many reasons to be thankful for the cushy existence modernity affords us. War and other extenuating circumstances aside, you probably don't fear for your life on a daily basis. You have clean water to drink. Food is widely available, and it's affordable. You survived infancy, childhood, and adolescence, which is quite special on a historical scale.

But there are downsides. Food has gone industrial. We increasingly live our lives in the digital realm and ignore the physical. Perhaps the most recent change relative to that shift has been the physical neutering of our kids. This has happened more broadly across all ages as countries shift away from manual labor toward more of an information economy, but it's become incredibly pronounced in the generation coming up. At least when I grew up kids still wandered the streets in search of adventure, testing themselves out physically, undergoing mental and physical challenges, breaking bones and straining muscles, and learning about movement from the best teacher of all-hands on experience. Now? The lucky ones will get gymnastics or martial arts or dance training a couple days a week. But most languish indoors, prevented from the kind of free-form exploratory play human children have enjoyed for thousands of generations.

Comment: Psychologists say: No play can make Jack or Jill a sick little boy or girl


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How 'skepticism' has gotten in the way of rationally asking the all-important questions of metaphysics

skepticism
I think we’ve found the source of the skepticism….
"Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love" - William Shakespeare
Whenever academics and the luminaries of the self-identified skeptic intelligentsia start talking about esotericism and "occulture" from a sociological perspective, it makes me a little queasy. It's like hearing an atheist recognizing the social utility of religion, by which they unsubtly mean, "society needs some kind of mechanism to control these morons".

So, skeptics are concerned. Skeptics are always concerned about something, but these days there has been a steady stream of books, articles, and web content bemoaning a remarkable rise in interest in strange phenomena, alternative history, conspiracy theories, the paranormal, the occult, and all those delicious subjects lumped together under the rubric "fringe".

Of course, the first point we can examine skeptically (see what I did there?) is the contention that there has been a groundswell in mainstream interest towards fringe topics, Forteana, and the various and sundry phenomena that defy natural explanation or contradict the accepted cannon of physicalist scientific inquiry. This is the skeptic equivalent of Chicken Little's falling skies, and loosely translated is meant to imply that people are getting stupider. Not that it isn't verifiable that the majority of the human race would float if dropped in a "bowl of clue", but that has been and probably always will be the case. But as any good marketer or propogandist will tell you, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. Preferably with a megaphone. And cool uniforms. And fancy titles. And learned outlets for the publication of scholarly tracts. And gosh darn it, get yourself some foundations and think tanks if you're really serious.

Brain

Very creative acts are induced by a special kind of brain activity

alpha waves
© Keerati Chinvoraratkanok/GettyThe stronger your alpha waves, the better your improvising
Need to get creative? A type of brainwave has been linked to creativity, and the more synchronised these are, the higher the quality of your creative output.

Joel Lopata at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues found this out by asking 22 pianists to listen to, play back, or improvise jazz melodies.

During these tasks, the team monitored the electrical activity in each person's pre-frontal cortex - a region of the brain that orchestrates our thoughts and goals. When groups of neurons send signals at the same time, this creates a wave of electrical activity that can be picked up using EEG caps. Different types of waves have been associated with different mental states - delta waves are detectable during deep sleep, for instance, whereas beta waves are a sign that someone is analysing something critically.

Alpha brainwaves, which have a frequency of around 7 to 14 Hertz, have previously been linked to coming up with creative ideas, such as answering questions like "name as many original uses for a mop". When the team analysed the brainwaves of the pianists, they found that these waves become more synchronised - more neurons fire at the same time - when a person is being more creative. But they only saw this in those who have had formal improvisation training.

Comment: Thankfully, there are a number of different tools that can be used to help stimulate one's own creativity:


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Professor Peterson: 'I don't want people falling down an ideological abyss'

Jordan Peterson during a lecture at the University of Toronto.
© Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty ImagesJordan Peterson during a lecture at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, is the author of the best-selling title, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. He's very active in public life: He lectures frequently, engages in televised debates, and produces YouTube videos on a range of political and cultural issues. This week, we spoke about contemporary politics, the psychology of school shooters, and human longing.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Comment: Thinking things: Interview with Jordan Peterson