Science of the SpiritS


Blue Planet

Is the human brain hard-wired for rural tranquillity?

Ian Johnston
The Independent
Tue, 10 Dec 2013 09:52 UTC
rural
© Getty ImagesThe brain does less processing when looking at rural landscapes
Humans may be hard-wired to feel at peace in the countryside and confused in cities - even if they were born and raised in an urban area.

According to preliminary results of a study by scientists at Exeter University, an area of the brain associated with being in a calm, meditative state lit up when people were shown pictures of rural settings. But images of urban environments resulted in a significant delay in reaction, before a part of the brain involved in processing visual complexity swung into action as the viewer tried to work out what they were seeing.

The study, which used an MRI scanner to monitor brain activity, adds to a growing body of evidence that natural environments are good for humans, affecting mental and physical health and even levels of aggression.

Comment: More trees please! Want to enjoy a long, happy life? Live near trees
A subsequent study specifically looked at how walking in nature influences rumination - which has been linked to the onset of depression and anxiety - using fMRI technology to map brain activity. Participants took a 90-minute walk in either a natural or urban setting and had their brains scanned before and after the walk. They were also surveyed on self-reported rumination levels, along with other psychological classifications. Heart rate and pulmonary functions associated with physical exertion levels were taken into account. The results?
"[P]articipants who walked in a natural setting versus an urban setting reported decreased rumination after the walk, and they showed increased activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain whose deactivation is affiliated with depression and anxiety-a finding that suggests nature may have important impacts on mood." [source]


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Light Sabers

Belief hygiene: The best way to evaluate your beliefs is to engage with people who disagree with you

Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay
The Los Angeles Times
Sun, 21 Jul 2019 10:00 UTC
belief hygeine, engaging others differing viewpoints
© Anthony Russo / The TimesIf you don’t talk to people who hold different views, you will not know what they believe, and you won’t even know what you believe. Having conversations with people who hold beliefs different from yours affords you the opportunity to reflect — and only then can you evaluate whether your beliefs hold true.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard famously observed that if everyone is a Lutheran then no one is a Lutheran. What he meant is that if you're born into a culture in which everybody has a similar worldview, you don't have an opportunity to develop genuine belief because your convictions are not subject to scrutiny.

Put another way, if you don't talk to people who hold different views, you will not know what they believe, and you won't even know what you believe. Having conversations with people who hold beliefs different from yours affords you the opportunity to reflect — and only then can you evaluate whether your beliefs hold true.

Immigration. Abortion. Gun control. The seemingly impossible issue du jour is irrelevant. What is relevant: To justify your confidence you must sincerely engage people who have solid arguments against your position.

Over the last few years, Americans seem to have convinced themselves that not speaking to people who hold different moral and political beliefs makes us better people — even on college campuses where intellectual sparring has historically been part of the curricula. It does not. However, it does make us less likely to revise our beliefs and more likely to convince ourselves that others should believe as we do.

Over time, failure to have conversations across divides cultivates a belief myopia that strengthens our views and deepens our divisions.

Comment: John Whitehead: If Americans can't agree to disagree, censorship won't stop until we are ALL silenced
We've allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we've allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that we've bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean.

The result is a society in which we've stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.
Also check out: MindMatters: "Everybody Knows That!" - Mass Beliefs and the Ideas That Shape Them

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Magic Wand

Why corporations want you to shut up and meditate

Zachary Siegel
The Nation
Thu, 25 Jul 2019 00:01 UTC
yoga washington monument
© Jacquelyn Martin / APPeople practice yoga on the National Mall near the Washington Monument in 2009.
Whatever ails you — be it anger, depression, or wanting a career change — there is a book on how mindfulness and meditation can help you attain your goals while bringing about a sense of contentedness. Rooted in a centuries-old Buddhist meditation practice, mindfulness, like the religion it originates from, is based on the Four Noble Truths, the first of which loosely translates to "Life is suffering." What causes suffering? Things like desiring and craving the unattainable and humans' greed and drive for dominance. And yet the poster children of greed and dominance, corporations with ethically dubious track records, from Goldman Sachs to Google and Monsanto, have implemented mindfulness-meditation training programs across all their levels. In 2018, Google's mindfulness guru, Chade-Meng Tan, quietly stepped down from his role at the company after an investigation uncovered past inappropriate behavior.

Stripped of all ethical and religious tenets, mindfulness meditation has morphed into a market-friendly practice, adaptable into any context. Even the US military deploys mindfulness among its commanders and troops, teaching them how to focus on their breath as they pull the trigger.

Comment: See also:

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Nebula

How mindfulness privatised a social problem

Hettie O'Brien
New Statesman
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 00:01 UTC
mindfulness abstract photo
© SLAVEN GABRIC /MILLENNIUM IMAGES, UK


The £3.4trn industry encourages a preoccupation with the symptoms of mental illness, rather than their social causes.

In December 2008, while forcibly evicting tenants from a concrete high-rise in south London, Southwark Council pulled off a remarkable feat of complacency. Though residents didn't know it at the time, every flat in the development that replaced the Heygate Estate would be sold to foreign investors, despite the council's repeated promises of new social housing.

Recognising that people were "stressed", councillors hired life coaches and "spiritual ministers" to run workshops teaching residents how to progress emotionally. The company behind the workshop, the Happiness Project, was founded by the British positive psychologist Robert Holden, the author of Shift Happens! The firm's motto was: "Success is a state of mind; happiness is a way of travelling; love is your true power."

Comment: It's a nuanced subject. In a sense, some form of self-practice that serves to better oneself and be aware of our own flaws and thinking errors is beneficial for anyone who undertakes it. It encourages one to take responsibility for their own stuff. On the other hand, placing the responsibility for social ills on the individual is dangerously deceptive and no amount of 'mindfulness' is going to correct problems which fundamentally have a social cause.

See also:

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Question

How the question "Who benefits from this?" can change your life

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Tue, 30 Jul 2019 00:01 UTC
cui bono?
"Cui bono?" is a phrase you'll often see used on conspiracy-minded Youtube videos and discussion forums. It's Latin for "Who benefits?", and it refers to a perspective in legal analysis that the one who stands most to gain from a crime is often the perpetrator. It's the "motive" part of "means, motive and opportunity".

The term comes up in conspiracy circles a lot because motive is often the biggest plot hole in the official story promoted by the authorized narrative managers of the political/media class about a given event. The alleged Douma chemical attack last year, for example, had no discernible benefit to the Assad government whatsoever, but would have benefited the cornered Al-Qaeda affiliates in the city by provoking air strikes from the west, so there remains a lot of skepticism from those who don't automatically believe their government and the plutocratic media when they say that Damascus was responsible. Such skepticism is dismissively branded "conspiracy theory" by the establishment narrative managers, but it is fully justified.

So it's a useful concept for analyzing world events in a way that punches through the fog of imperial propaganda. But the question "Who benefits from this?" can, and should, be taken much further.
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Bullseye

The cult of the selfie: Me, Me, Me - the neurotic satisfactions of the selfie generation

Julian Rose
Waking Times
Tue, 23 Jul 2019 13:47 UTC
selfie generation
© Global Village SpaceWhat makes the selfie generation narcissistic and in love with itself?
We humans are rather curious creatures, I'll admit. So many sides to our nature, so many colours to our emotions, so many journeys of our imaginations. But the question must arise, do we learn any more about these traits by making ourselves the perpetual object of our own fascination?

One would certainly assume so based upon the cult of the 'selfie' which rages around the world at this particular juncture of human evolution. I am tempted to say 'devolution', but going backwards would at least stand the chance of putting us in touch with something tangible, earthy even - whereas to live life as a virtual reality experience with one's own photographic image as the central point of attraction - fails to provoke my sense of admiration for the human race.

Comment: Are we more narcissistic than ever before? The answer is yes!

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Alarm Clock

Smartphones and tablets causing mental health issues in kids as young as two


Daily Mail
Sun, 28 Jul 2019 13:29 UTC
screen kids
© 123RFLimiting your kids' screentime could do their mental health a world of good.
Children as young as two are developing mental health problems because of smartphones and tablets, scientists warn.

Just an hour a day staring at a screen can be enough to make children more likely to be anxious or depressed.

This could be making them less curious, less able to finish tasks, less emotionally stable and lowering their self-control, the DailyMail reports.

Comment: And this is without taking into account the deleterious effects of electromagnetic waves on the brain.

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Blackbox

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of....what exactly?

Steve Salerno
Quillette
Wed, 24 Jul 2019 06:51 UTC
smiley face
© Jason Leung / Unsplash
On June 28, the morning after her eyebrow-raising theatrics at the second Democratic debate, New Age high priestess-cum-presidential aspirant Marianne Williamson retweeted this:


While Williamson's candidacy is itself certain to disperse into nothingness, legible between the lines of the guru's flakiness is a profound insight about the most misunderstood and misguided totem in American life: the idea that positive and/or happy thoughts foster positive and/or happy outcomes. The same belief in "mind power" that elicits groans and derision when rendered in 280 characters is woven through the fabric of American life. American culture has evolved a unique view of the mind's relationship to the external world; not in the sense of an esoteric disquisition on the nature of consciousness, but rather in the sense of spoon-bending — a view of life wherein positive thinking enables us to bend life to our respective desires. Ergo:
  • The attitude is the action.
  • The belief is the behavior.
  • A happy outlook begets happiness.

Comment: See also:

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Galaxy

The comforting dreams and visions of the dying

Michael Prescott
Michael Prescott's Blog
Mon, 22 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
dreams of the those who passed
A New York Times article from 2016, "A New Vision for Dreams of the Dying," came to my attention recently through a Facebook post. It details the research into deathbed visions (primarily dreams) conducted at Hospice Buffalo under the direction of Dr. Christopher Kerr. (It appears that Hospice Buffalo is now known as the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care.)

The article is long and includes quite a few interesting stories. As they say, "read the whole thing." I'll just offer a couple of excerpts.
I was laying in bed and people were walking very slowly by me. The right-hand side I didn't know, but they were all very friendly and they touched my arm and my hand as they went by. But the other side were people that I knew — my mom and dad were there, my uncle. Everybody I knew that was dead was there. The only thing was, my husband wasn't there, nor was my dog, and I knew that I would be seeing them. — Jeanne Faber, 75, months before her death from ovarian cancer.
Another article offers a fuller version of this story:
"It was a good dream," she told the researcher ... "I know that was my mom and dad and uncle and my brother-in-law." Seeing her mother in that and other recent dreams was "wonderful," she said.

"I can't say that my mother and I got along all those years," Jeanne said, tearing up in a video recording. "But we made up for it at the end."
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Cassiopaea

Understanding and appreciating science can actually boost faith in spirituality and God

Chrissy Sexton
earth.com
Sat, 20 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
man and sky
© Shutterstock/Triff
While science and religion are considered to be conflicting subjects by most Americans, a new study from Arizona State University (ASU) suggests that an understanding of science can actually promote faith and religion. The researchers found that scientific facts can create a feeling of awe, which leads to belief in more abstract views of God.

"There are many ways of thinking about God. Some see God in DNA, some think of God as the universe, and others think of God in Biblical, personified terms," said study lead author Professor Kathryn Johnson. "We wanted to know if scientific engagement influenced beliefs about the existence or nature of God."


Comment: See: Scientists: Since DNA is the software of life, how can you have its incredibly complex programming without a programmer?


Study co-author and graduate student Jordan Moon explained that, even though science is often thought of in terms of data and experiments, it may mean more to some people.

The research team examined two types of scientific engagement - logical thinking or experiencing the feeling of awe - to get a better understanding of how they may affect an individual's religious beliefs.
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