Mind over matter
Many of my concentrations recently have focused on the concept of the mind being a very important factor in determining the experience you have in any given situation.
IT HAS BEEN WELL documented the effect of a given mindset on the outcome of the treatment of a patient. This so called ‘placebo’ effect is now so well known that it features prominently in the scientific studies. The placebo is defined as the use of ‘inert therapy in a clinical context which causes a psychological or physiological improvement in condition’. This as a statement is completely ridiculous,
Some people, who think they are getting better, get better solely because they think they are getting better.
Now the placebo effect has not been studied very thoroughly and so not much is known as to why it works or how complicated a disease it will cure. Nevertheless the phenomenon works in pain settings amongst others. This is clearly an example of mind over matter. I have also heard a statistic stating that patients who feel they have more to live for have greater rates of survival in risky surgery (although I cannot find any confirmation)
Another example recently I have seen of mind over matter is involved in ageing. A recent horizon documentary detailed investigations into the elderly. One specific experiment involved taking elderly men (over 79), and recreating the environment around them to be that of the 1950′s. The logic was to reset their mind-sets to those of themselves as twenty year olds. Although the program did not go into most of the details of the experiment it was clear that some of the participants had improvements in their sight, hearing and mobility. The mind-sets needed to be created in such as strong way that the participants lived in a specially fitted home. The take home message seems to once again be that the mental attitude that a person takes towards any situation determines not all but a good majority of the outcome.
This principle is further illustrated in this lecture found on YouTube , in the lecture several experts detail similar placebo effects in the world of digital audio. One interesting example is the ‘EQing’ of an instrument on a sound desk only to discover that they were not actually having any real life effect. The knowledge that you were changing something seems to be enough to convince yourself that is it changing (even though it is not).
This does not bode well for black and white thinkers like me. It raises many questions as to the validity of truth etc. If something thinks something it can become true simply by their thinking of it, removing a lot of objective viewpoint. I think the solution is relatively easy. Give a poor man a break. Here are 3 simple rules that I think black and white thinkers could do with thinking about as some provocation for thought.
1.Given that people hear what they want to and see what they want to, what am I reading in situations that are not there?
2. If I come into conflict with people around me, what mind-sets are they carrying into this situations that means they will not spot my ‘right answer’ even if it whacks them in the face?
3. Have I got answers I am looking for before the questions have even been asked?
These 3 simple questions help to paint a picture of what is going on around you knowing that peoples mind-sets will probably carry more than you can ever say in any given situation. Do not underestimate the power of the mind for both positive and detrimental effects. Whether you create a positive attitude for someone to change the way they interact with a situation or you understand a negative mind-set to circumvent a person in another situation understanding the mind can be a key to unlock your problems.
The power of the ideology
Why is it that the people who are most successful are the ideologists and why do they fall so far from their ideal?
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro
First and foremost you may, or may not, have noticed that the blog recently changed its name to ‘the thought foundation’. Previously the title had just been a placeholder but in this new name I think there is a reflection of what I am really interested in writing about. The thought foundation is about this blog being a place to produce thoughts, a place that earth can be washed to reveal rough diamonds. It isn’t a place where the final answer can ever be found. It is the beginning of the conversation and not the end.
As well as the new name there will be a slight change in writing style (if I can achieve it). Hopefully there will be far more first person writing and far more of a personal style. It will obviously be on a trial basis. Expect more conjecture, expect more philosophy and expect more drivel.
It seems to me, anyone who really did anything had an ideology. Whether it was a revolutionist or a political reformer, I think what drives people to seek ultimate authority is the power to implement an ideology. I know for my own experience the times when I look to put myself in a position of power it’s because there are things I wish to change. I think successful people (in terms of leaders) are bigger picture thinkers which means that they like to take a root and branch approach to life. Editing the small things in life does not work if you are looking to implement big change. Therefore we have the basic need to develop an ideology.
Think of a tree, if it produces bad fruit you look at the roots. If a house is falling to bits the first thing you look at is the foundations. This is where ideologies come from. An ideology is simply the world-view that seeks to apply a whole ‘ground up’ approach. Ideologies like the green movement say that from the ground up it is important to value the earth and its resources. Political ideologies like socialism say that you build your world-view based on treating everybody with dignity and respect.
The trouble is, we have to ask ourselves are ideologies tenable. Is it possible to build a government using green ideology. Is it possible to build a society around socialism for example.
I think it is.
I think it becomes harder and harder, I think you only have to look at communism to see where people have tried to build a socialist society but failed. I think that the effort you need to put in at day one is nothing compared with the effort you need to put in at day one thousand but I still think it’s possible.
I think that there are some ideologies that are worth fighting for and they can be realised without the need for compromise.
I guess we fall so far from the original idea when we become too lazy to fight. With the exception of ideologies that include racism or other negative qualities as central tenants I’m not sure that anyone sets out to be malicious. Yet it seems when people reach power they struggle to do everything they can to hold onto it and never realise their ambition. In that respect I guess that is what happens when you put the weak in charge. They don’t have enough strength to hold onto their idea and so they let it go and seek other things to motivate them with power itself becoming the primary idol.
I guess ultimately it has to be about the idea and not about you. It has to be bigger than you and to has to be self selling.
You cannot be the idea.
Martin Luther King was not equality. Neither was Nelson Mandela. I guess in some sense it is only worth fighting for an ideology that doesn’t need fighting for. If your ideology is too complicated or difficult for people to understand and agree with you are either a genius or you are wrong. The thoughts we think, if they are worth thinking, should be able to stand on their own. This does not mean we do not justify them. Without explanation our thoughts are meaningless to both ourselves and society and we should strive to explain ourselves as much as possible for our own refinement and for the broadening to those we converse with.
I guess we need to be people with an ideology, people who have thought about what we want the world to look like. I do not believe it is justifiable to not have a world-view, pragmatism is just another way of saying mentally lazy. If you are not thinking you are not choosing to live in this world but merely just to exist. If we do not wish to change the world we see then there is something wrong with us. Let’s start with an ideology that is worth fighting for and be strong enough to hold on.
Synaptic Community
Synaptic Community | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
With increases in the proliferation of social networking media such as Facebook and twitter and the creation of the ‘internet profile’ it threatens to redefine community (or at least what people are willing to accept as community).
SOUTHAMPTON UK, Facebook give us the opportunity to watch ourselves socially interact with the world, we can see our friends in organised lists and even read the transcripts of our conversations. Twitter lets us see who has been following our comments, again we can stand to one side of reality and judge the worth of our contributions to society through our musings be they comedic, political or whichever slant we may take.
With this increased focus on what could be described as the quantifying of social community we have lost touch with the qualitative element of social interaction and the effects that has on community. Blogs (such as this one) highlight a trend in the change in the value of opinion. Commentators can be anyone and everyone regardless to the value added to the societal conversation. In this way the internet has driven the rise of the individual. From a community relying on a journalist to present opinion on political matters we can now all be the expert regardless of the investment we have put in.
Electronic communications are both brilliant and yet tragic at the same time. Their brilliance in found in their cost and ease of use. Previously unattainable collaborations are now possibly resulting in incredible promise (such as the online Google library). Scribd is a website for social publications. Many large organisations such as universities publish alongside individual authors in this sodium medium which is enriching the conversations society has (in theory). It allows a greater openness in the process academia goes through to determine to way forward for knowledge advancement.
The tragedy however is so much worse. The tragedy is that it that electronic communications have the potential to produce a generation who think that communication (and therefore community) can be reduced to characters on an electronic display.
The thing about internet based social communication (and it could be argued any non-face-to-face communication) is that what makes it so attractive makes it so flawed at the same time. It is cheap, both in the monetary sense but also in the moral value sense. The value of communication is really in the cost and the sacrifice not in the ease of access. There are situations where electronic communication is incredibly useful but it is never the ideal situation. For communication and therefore community to work it must be an investment, it must cost something to mean something.
The idea of having a digital community, a community without ‘presence’ in a tangible way is a 2D model in a 4D world. The intangibles of community, seemingly things of very little performance and importance, are the things that make it real. It is the unintentional accidents which makes life and community beautiful. Without the weaknesses there are no strengths.
The film the matrix describes the human condition in a very interesting way. In the film one of the main characters tells another how the artificial intelligence tried to create a society for human minds to live in. This society, the character says, was perfect and yet the human minds could not function in it. They could not accept perfection, in fact they found it so intolerable they ‘lost a whole crop of minds’. This is a theme we see clearly reflected in the arts and music we treasure as society. Very far from perfection, evidently flawed and yet to us it represents beauty. In fact we knowingly strive after imperfection and tell ourselves that it is in search of creativity. We do not accept art/music that is mathematically correct or structurally symmetric. Why is it then that we accept a society such as facebook, a society so clean and defined? A society with a reset button and with no sense of space to breath is a society that has lost its way in the algorithms of life and has forgotten about the flaws which make it so wonderful.
Yes there are many wonderful advantages to being able to communicate at the touch of a button, but they are inferior to what we had before. In some circumstances it is electronic communication or no communication. Maybe we have to choose to value the personal interaction, maybe we have to prioritise it over any other form of communication. Perhaps the quality of a society is built on the quality of its communications, how high do face-to-face conversations rank in your world?
Acceptable Culture
Film & Television | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
More and more of today’s film offerings feature graphic violence and scenes of a sexual nature and the question we now face which generations previously have not is, how much is too much?
A poster for the 2006 Scorsese film.
Directors such as Scoresese and Tarrantino have been gradually pushing back the boundaries of acceptable cinema for the last decade or more. We’ve seen films about football hooliganism and we’ve seen films about Mafia. We’ve seen films that make you want the bad guy to win and films where it seems like everyone is a bad guy. The question we must ask ourselves is, are these films art?
If we can answer yes then as horrific as the contents are they have a place in the culture of society. They are there as a provocation to thought, and an exploration into the social and cultural impacts of the themes expressed in the film. They give insight into the situations they show and they shed light on previously shunned area’s of life. They are useful in the understanding of topics not covered by textbooks or teachers, which could lead to a greater effectiveness in dealing with elements featured in the films. Art is the artists way of presenting their world view through a skilful medium, it is this element of skill that lends authority to the message. Art without skill has no cultural authority to present its message and therefore no message to give. It is in the pretext of appreciating the skill element of art that we are challenged to think about and feel the thoughts and emotions the artists would have us do so.
If we have to answer no then what we are paying to watch and thereby funding is one man’s venture into the world of violence for entertainments sake. For many the appeal of violent films is the violence, something which we as a society have chosen to condemn and yet there is something in it which gives an instant pleasure to many in the audience. They do not watch to be challenged and provoked into thinking but merely to draw gratification from the things they see on the screen.
Film being art is important because it allows us to take a moral stance over it and yet still engage with it. We have no rights to criticise a morally debasing film with no deeper message if we choose to watch it. If we can critique the films we choose to watch we can can stimulate healthy discussion and debate. If all we can do is consume the films as entertainment we become morally and culturally fat and unhealthy.
Things to think about…
1. What do I happily watch as ‘entertainment’ and what does that say about me?
2. Do I miss the greater message behind films as art because of my superficial view?
3. Have I thought about what I find acceptable levels of violence/swearing/sex that justify watching a film?
The NHS
Politics | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
A society should be judged not on how they pamper their rich but how they care for their poor.
Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari, a portrait by Jerry Barret
RECENTLY IN AMERICAN POLITICS the issue of universal health care has come to the floor once again. It raises the age old question of the governments role between the doctor and the patient. It is an issue that has been settled in Europe for many years, the only remaining discussions are how to fund such a system. I think it goes beyond a simple cost issue, it portrays the very nature of American ideology. America is founded on the idea that you can have the best regardless of how this may negatively affect those around you.
It is a response to an aristocratic society where power was handed down, what is has produced however is the very same society that allows the few to trample on the many only this time the few didn’t start out privileged. The basic nature of American health care is a refusal to subsidise those who cannot afford it, it is a system based around the individual not the collective. According to the Independent Newspaper 47 million Americans have no insurance, that figure represents 1 in 6 people who have to pay the for all procedures from their pocket (some basic google research suggests a broken arm could cost anywhere from £400-£1000 given the current exchange rate).
The NHS in the UK is one of the countries greatest acheivements, whilst it might not be able to claim the highest quality care on the world rankings it is able to treat far more people. It is a system founded in 1946 through a country that had come together to defeat facism and racism. It is a country that had fought and suffered loss for fellow humans in poland, france, holland, belgium and many other places for which our only link was that they too shared the earth that we live in. It is a system that is bourn out of the idea that every man, woman and child is worth something in a community.
I feel more than content waiting in line for treatment and being placed on waiting lists knowing that someone somewhere is feeling the benefits of a health care system they could not even dream to be able to afford. It would be a dark day if the NHS ever ceases to function it is original role.
Notes.
The NHS is founded on the following three principals.
1. that it meets the needs of everyone
2. that it be free at the point of delivery
3. that is be based on clinical need, not ability to pay
A story within a story
Learning | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
Breaking down a problem into managble chunks.
I was recently watching a BBC 4 program about the history of maths featuring Marcus Du Sautoy, the professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University (a position previously held by Richard Dawkins).
One of the interesting concepts he explains is how in maths many problems are solve by breaking things down, in the area of geometry particularly. A famous Egyptian text (the rhind papyrus) shows how the area of a circle can be calculated by breaking it up into smaller more familiar shapes (approximately).
This highlights a fundamental approach that mathematics takes to problem solving on many levels. In its very nature it breaks things down. When problem solving in a non-mathematical world there are still lessons to learn. Most problems, even if appearing otherwise on the surface, can be manipulated and rearranged into a series of smaller problems more easily solved.
Another unique lesson that mathematics teaches us is the building of shortcuts, most maths methods are shorts to longer, more complex methods saving both time and effort. Once a watertight shortcut has been found it can be applied in the strict settings that it is appropriate, the proof for the shortcut (or formula) can be very long. It is better to be sure of the shortcut that to shortcut the shortcut and end up having to take the long route every time.
