The Body-Brain-World Connections

Transformation from the industrial age to the information age has transformed everything else about our culture, including the nature of mind.
The amount of knowledge I have is many billions less than store of knowledge in the world.
The amount of significant information that I have is many millions of times less than the store of significant information in the world.
The amount of power I have is loosely related to the amount and kind of information I have.
The amount of power I have is only exceeded by one sugar ant.
If you agree with what I write here, then you have probably been exposed to a certain amount of the same domains of the same infinitesimal amount of information that I have.
Please do not take offense, but you probably have relatively the same degree of power as I, as well.
Proceed with a questioning mind for this is meant to stimulate questions and inquiry.
A questioning mind would make your mind unique among contemporary humans.

THE WORLD: A General Sketch of Some of the Major Disorders of Our Culture

The Hierarchical System

Somehow, the masses, the common people, those in the military, the public schools, the corporate subordinates, have all been mesmerized and deluded into accepting the old axiom “Mine is not to reason why. Mine is just to do or die.” from the ”Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Unquestioning, they plod along happily living with an illusion of freedom and a belief fabricated for them that their highest, most meaningful, good would be to serve, to excel, to make their company a success, to fight for their country, and to die defending their freedom. A population of unthinking drones preserves the systems. On the other hand, being a conscientious objector means a long prison sentence or a soldier refusing to fight means possibly facing a firing squad. To refuse your bosses orders means being fired, with no workers compensation, and possibly blacklisted for future employment. To think for yourself in school[1] means a failing grade, failure to be promoted to the next grade level, possibly being expelled, and ultimately a life without academic credentials and lifelong substandard employment and poverty. Those dire consequences facing the citizens of democracy, the populace, the ‘commodities’ owned by the state, is what keeps the system’s engines rolling toward a distant apocalyptic destiny. Thus are three-hundred million persons secretly kept in their invisible harnesses, repeating the poem “Invictus,”[2] and brutishly plowing along without knowing that they, the land, and the crops are all owned by the company store.

There are so many interlocked parts of our diseased system.[3] Drop a pebble in and it ripples throughout the ecosystem. The class system, finance system, industry system, service system, labor system, education system, energy system, transportation system, communication system, entertainment system, health system, food producing system, export-import system, religion system, justice system, military system, and political system each are interlocked in this apocalyptic, super-eco-system. A bubble here sets off a bust there. A bobble in surveillance here, a surge there. Waves of fashion here, wakes (for the dead) are attended by people across the underdeveloped world. A seeming will-o'-the-wisp innovation here sets off a spiral of bankruptcies there. A Bill passed on the Hill ultimately means appallingly unintended consequences everywhere. Favors for the few redistribute labor, families, and wealth across the face of the earth. One winner among the contestants in one arena means disaster for teaming numbers of others who lost. No one cheers for and no one hears cries from the desperate casualties as the systems march inhumanely on like a blind and mindless death machine in a macabre procession.

The Communication System

Religion System

A minister, priest, rabbi or other leader, leads most religious organizations or congregations. One of the congregation leaders’ major purposes is to teach and preach sermons that express or conform to the doctrines and way of life or values of their unique group. Just as in education, the congregation members listen and read that which is consistent with the point of view of their religion. That point of view is called their orthodox point view. Those who deviate are pressured to return to the ‘truth.’ Consequently, with respect to their religion, people are directly or indirectly discouraged from thinking for themselves or experimenting with venturing into or converting to other religions. One of religion’s purposes, by consensus, is to help people in need. Two other main purposes for most religions are to give people a route to salvation and eternal life and to teach people a right way of life. An optional purpose, which is common to few religious congregations, is to create a ‘good’ society. Congregations with this purpose devote some of their efforts toward imposing their values on the rest of the society. Some try to do this by influencing governmental officials and even by trying to enact legislation that conforms to or promotes their values or even their religion. Together, these purposes serve promote conformity to and to preserve the core values of the larger society or nation.

The way almost all religious organizations and congregations get funds is mostly through contributions the largest share of which comes from their wealthiest members. The wealthiest members of congregations are almost always staunch supporters of the core values of the nation. Therefore, were the congregation’s leader to markedly depart from those values, one of two things would happen. The wealthy members would withdraw financial support or the more likely scenario would demand that the leader be terminated.

Religion, therefore, is another one of the many systems of the encompassing culture that is interlocked with the rest. It serves, like the other individual systems such as economic, politic, communication, education, social, justice, and military, to perpetuate the smooth functioning of all of the collective, interlocked systems. The wealthiest typically head free enterprise corporations or businesses that actually harm and exploit the populace. Everyone is dependent upon the success of our free enterprise, corporate culture in order to survive regardless of how inhumane their practices. Our ethos exempts the wealthy and these corporations from judgment by religious leaders as the people cannot make a living without their success. Therefore, religion rarely attacks this most demonic segment of our society. In addition to ensuring conformity to free enterprise interests and values, ironically, religion’s function of helping those in need helps to perpetuate the rest of the systems by dealing with the casualties falling out because of the way the rest of the systems operate. Foundations and charitable organization which are funded by the rich and which have no religious affiliation serve this same function of patching up the super-system’s flaws by caring for the millions of defects that it routinely ejects.

Economic System

Our economic system necessarily requires perpetual growth. This necessity and its handmaiden the media entice the populace toward consumerism. Payment on households’ debt is 14% of their income while savings is .5%. Keeping the unemployment rate above 5% is required to keep wages as low as possible. The size of the military helps keep a surfeit of the employable out of the market when productivity rises. If the US needs military bases in most of the countries in the world, threats or not, and if that is a part of the homeostasis we must maintain, then we need a drastic change in our homeostasis, no matter what a challenge to the economy, both corporations and labor. If those bases are needed to protect business interests, then we must alter whatever we need from their natural resources and cheap labor. http://thenaturalsystemsinstitute.org/IV National and World Politics and Economics/Mother Jones Domestic economy and Stock Markets S and P circa end of 2005.pptx

http://thenaturalsystemsinstitute.org/IV National and World Politics and Economics/the_commons_dilemma_versus_the_zero_sum_game_theory_as_a_model_for_our_economy.htm

http://thenaturalsystemsinstitute.org/IV National and World Politics and Economics/Bellwether for Our legislative Bodies' Commitment to the People and Planet.htm

The Labor System

Yet today, with the greatest efficiency and productivity ever and corporations glutted with surplus cash, we still have almost 10% unemployment with workers compensation skyrocketing. Moreover, with such a large number of unemployed, the rest of the economy suffers, especially the retail sector. Distribution of labor days and hours. http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/finder/deluxestockscreen.aspx?query=dogs+of+the+dow

In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, 39.8 million people, or 13.2 percent of the Nation’s population, lived at or below the official poverty level. In 2008, about 8.9 million adults were among the “working poor,” 1.4 million more than in 2007.

The Education and Training System

The Finance System

In Bush adm in 2003 there was a 25% increase in realtors, Bush pushed ownership society and particularly home ownership. Gave tax breaks to rich who overbought, home equity loans so even middle class bought homes and were given loans which were high risk to S & Ls who sold them as derivatives-undermined S&Ls and Investment banks –building boom – Iraq cost – defense budget up. kept employment high with military recruits and gov part time jobs. Tax revenues down. Trade deficit up and debt up. Outsourcing. crash faux Bush economic policies[5].

Loans and credit and selectivity of granting them in relation socio-economic status and location of residence ↓

Non-finance corporations sucking up to finance while huge profits in finance puffed up finance CEOs and bogus derivative loans lead them to the brink of bankruptcy as non-finance corporations suffered from inability to get credit. http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/03/collective-action-boardroom Health care, politics, and lack of support from corporate world.

The Horizontal System (see Parenting Section 2)

Health and Food Systems

Statistical analyses of the US population are an index to the pathological nature of its culture.[6] For example, statistics indicate that one in four people in the US have some form of mental illness. Thirty-nine million people are classified as below the poverty line.[7] One symptom of our disordered culture is the over forty-seven million people currently have no health insurance. A glance at the survey of health and illness statistics reveals an abominable state of affairs. One major cause is the unregulated health insurance corporations that keep both premiums and exclusions high to keep their profits high. On the other hand, a disordered culture that causes mental and physical illness is good for the pharmaceutical and medical businesses. A virtually unregulated food industry takes a laissez faire stance toward food advertisements on televisions. An ineffective, highly permissive FDA, that basically serves the interests of corporations, results in the populace consuming a diet that is severely deleterious to their health. A disordered culture with high rates of illnesses is good for those who advertise medications on TV and for the TV Channels. Ironically, advertisements targeting the poor and unfortunate victims of this system have made them long for and to be grateful for the treatments, services, and medications provided them by the very same system that exploits them and destroys their health. A disordered culture wherein high illness rates are profitable for health insurance, pharmaceuticals, television, and medical professions is very disadvantageous for non-health related corporations. This systemic circumstance results in vicious rivalries between these five commercial aspects of our culture that plays out as competition by their lobbyists for influence over legislators and to the great disadvantage of the populace. Human Services such as Welfare provide a costly safety net to catch the victims of this health and food systems of our disordered culture.

Corporations need universal health care just as much and the people do but fear upsetting health care corporate bedfellows.
Health and evolution: But here is my theory. The earliest humans ate fruits and vegetables but the main course was meat. Cholesterol and other fat derivatives are necessary for the production of choline which is transformed into the brain's acetylcholine and cholinesterase. (Acetylcholine was the first neurotransmitter discovered and is the major neurotransmitter in the peripheral nervous system (the only other peripheral neurotransmitter being norepinephrine). Acetylcholine is usually (but not always) an exitatory neurotransmitter — in contrast to the monoamine neurotransmitters, which are nearly always (with a few exceptions) inhibitory. Acetylcholine in the brain is produced from acetyl-CoA, resulting from glucose metabolism, and from choline, which is actively transported across the blood-brain barrier. Most dietary choline comes from phosphatidyl choline, the major phospholipid in the membranes of plants&animals (but not bacteria). The acetyl-CoA & choline are independently synthesized in the neuron cell body and independently transported along the axon to the synapse where they are conjugated into acetylcholine.

There are comparatively few acetylcholine receptors in the brain, but outside the brain acetylcholine is the major neurotransmitter controlling the muscles. Body muscles can be divided into the skeletal muscles system (under voluntary control) and the smooth muscles of the autonomic nervous system (controlling heart, stomach, etc. — not under voluntary control). The autonomic nervous system is further subdivided into sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. Direct innervation of skeletal muscles is due to acetylcholine, as is the innervation of smooth muscles of the parasympathetic nervous system. Direct innervation of the sympathetic nervous system (except for sweat glands) is due to norepinephrine (or both epinephrine & norepinephrine in the case of the adrenal medulla.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylcholine

Necessary for brain and muscle functioning, primitive man ate a lot of meat and fatty meat. Those men who were the best hunters and fighters were best at synthesizing choline. Strongest minds and muscles! So, today men with that prototypical genetic tendency are typically capable of being both the best mentally and physically. However, since we no longer hunt and fight like primitive men millions of years ago, what happens to excess production cholesterol in the blood. Athletes get heart attacks and strokes when they retire and people in mentally high stress occupations do as well. The very top in the corporate world have health coaches and programs and sports like golf and handball to keep their cholesterol and lipid and triglyceride level low. But where does that leave you and people like you with no diet and exercise coaches and exercise regimens? Well, aside from diabetes being related to excess weight, high cholesterol is as well. The only recourse for people like us is to study and learn how to manage these handicaps inherited from ancestors millions of years ago.

The Justice System

US demographics reveal that poverty and crime go together as do crime, poverty, race, and where a person lives. FBI Annual Crime Report collects demographically delineated statistics that list the most frequent crimes such as theft and violence against persons and property; victimless crimes such as illegal drug use; and those of less frequency such as rape and murder. These crimes are circumscribed, that is to say that they affect one or a few persons. Their cost to victims is small in terms of dollars. Their cost to the justice system, such as prosecution and incarceration, are very high. Today, most metropolitan police departments use ‘Comm Stats’, or maps showing frequency and type of crimes by location. If you were to examine the distribution of jails you would see that most, having been built one hundred years ago, give or take a quarter of a century, are centrally located, as are courthouses. On the other hand, probation and parole is relatively recent but, nevertheless, their offices tend to be only a little less centralized than the old county and municipal jails. They are typically located in low crime districts and some in County Commissioners District buildings. Once intended for rehabilitation, today probation and parole mainly have a monitoring or supervisory function. Of course, the caseload of a probation officer can be from one hundred to several hundred and that basically means that modern probation and parole, while less costly, is a farce. Ironically, police beats (the routes in the city they are assigned to patrol) are in high end residential and commercial districts. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in 2005 that about 45% of parolees completed their sentences successfully, while 38% were returned to prison, and 11% absconded. These statistics, the DOJ says, are relatively unchanged since 1995.

By 1951, all the states in the United States of America had a working probation system and ratified the Interstate Compact Agreement.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 43 percent of the felony probationers and 62 percent of the parolees will be rearrested within three years after beginning community supervision. Read more: Probation and Parole: History, Goals, and Decision-Making - Origins Of Probation And Parole, Changing Goals Of Community Corrections, Neo-classical Models, Probation And Parole Decision-making http://law.jrank.org/pages/1824/Probation-Parole-History-Goals-Decision-Making.html#ixzz0iXZfbKSa

Furthermore, to keep the rest of the exploited, desperate or outraged masses at the bottom of the class system subdued and contained, our culture has an insensate, mass production justice system that is fully furnished in noticeably extravagant ways that is backed up with well-indoctrinated and rewarded enforcers, the police. To add a gothic touch, there are grotesque, austere, crowded human cages, rimmed with armed and dangerous guards at the ready. These are portrayed on television as crowded with vicious, rapacious inmates. Further intimidating, images of these hellholes are repetitiously paraded before the populace in tantalizing TV crime and incarceration shows. As a point of fact, the criminals depicted in the “CSI” and “Law and Order” shows represent a tiny percentage of criminals. But, nevertheless, these shows achieve their goal of intimidating the public though, ironically do not serve as a deterrent to crime. Most criminals and poor, uneducated, of low IQ, often brain damaged, and convicted for drug violations, robbery, other such, but very few convicted for murder. These washouts from our disordered socio-economic, education, welfare, and health systems and victims of our unregulated commercial systems make the majority of those in our prisons. Furthermore, most prisons are not like those exhibited in the “Lock Up” shows. Those that are like that do not have to be so gruesome and terrifying, as my work with adult and juvenile prisons dramatically demonstrated.[8]

In my own work with the justice system, my programs in both my adult and juvenile correctional facilities resulted in less than a sixteen percent recidivism rate. I was informally involved with a community center in Houston, TX that provided programs for juvenile and adult parolees and probationers, as well as mutual self-help programs for the poor, elderly, those without health insurance or Medicaid, the unemployed, single working mothers who needed daycare for young children, afterschool programs for youth, and social activism programs for concerned citizens. This center was entirely self financed, no governmental funding at all, and nevertheless was extraordinarily successful.

On the other hand, the US crime statistics are woefully lacking with respect to white-collar crimes, or crimes committed by the highest office holders and high ranking businesspersons, thereby exposing a glaring bias favoring the well-to-do in our crime census statistics. Crime specialties such as toxic waste dumping and other EPA violations; domestic and international illegal weapon sales; insurance frauds; illegally false and misleading advertizing; political corruption such as taking bribes or blackmail; corporate use of sweatshops, slavery, and child labor; high dollar Wall Street swindles that dispossess the unsuspecting around the globe of their life’s savings; and politically sanctioned acts of slander and libel that unnecessarily destroy people’s lives, are all impudently under reported in US Census and FBI statistics. So why are the annual FBI statistics so silent with respect to these white-collar crimes while so accurate and comprehensive with respect to crimes committed by the poor? These statistics stand out as glaring highlights in the picture of our disordered culture.

To manage our disordered culture, the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The courts are jammed with the unwanted, vulnerable, and powerless. Discrimination on fashion, race, poverty—thus reinforcing the idea that wealth is equated with being a better, more morally upright and law-abiding citizen. This herding of the lower classes and lower middle class into the justice system causes a huge demand for hidebound, depersonalized, adversarial lawyers. To administer these courts, we have our black-gowned, over-inflated, despotic judges who are put there either through a bogus electoral or a patronage system. These haggard, money-grubbing attorneys and cynical, jaded, misanthropic judges occupy crowded, shabby courtrooms that once upon a time were sanitized, solemn, hallowed halls of justice. They rapidly and perfunctorily dispatch cases with little ado or concern for the particulars or causes of the more or less petty crimes or even the typically victimless crimes committed. Many who are jailed and about to be jailed are released to Bondsmen on Bail. Many cases are decided based on plea-bargaining and Bail. If the suspects jumps Bail and are caught, they have to pay the full amount of the Bail. Bondsmen receive a portion of the Bail money as a surety. If the suspect ‘jumps’ Bail and does not show up for court, and is not caught by the police, then the Bondsman gets to keep the surety. This pattern means that being a Bondsman is a very lucrative profession. Of course, Bondsmen are categorically included as members of a unique, elite group of white-collar criminal professions that incongruously are also leading members of the justice systems. This is a description of the nature of the typical justice system and of what routinely passes through the courthouse corridors.

Ironically, the cost to the courts and prisons for dealing with this type of criminal is far greater the cost to the people who were targets of the crimes. Passing through the revolving door of the justice system does not send a message to potential future criminals. Nor does it change the behaviors of those convicted. In fact, the convicted are most likely to repeat but to do so with worse offenses the next time. Nor is any thought given to the consequences to their families. Everyone is worse off with our justice system; the convicted, their families, and their neighborhoods. If making neighborhoods safer were the objective, our justice system is a dismal failure. However, there is a free enterprise benefit to all of this. The more they convict, the more are put in privatized prisons. That means an increase in profits for privatized prisons as well. It is becoming well known now that some judges get kickbacks for sending the convicted to privatized prisons. “Crime does not pay” but for some patronage pays and, for the well-heeled, obedient, beneficiaries, crime pays very well. The lofty ones atop the courts’ pillars of pillage are well compensated for impersonally dispensing orders to the groundlings below. From the heights, what happens down and ground under the wheels of misfortune to all of the groveling vagrants at the bottom is out of sight and out of mind. These are just a few of the many disordered parts of our vast self-sustaining, diseased cultural system. What a woeful picture this paints of our culture.

The Military System

peer pressure, low level of maturity, redneck, prejudice, body narcissism, machismo, ROTC and schools and poor students and do as you are told pedagogy

http://thenaturalsystemsinstitute.org/IV National and World Politics and Economics/Nuclear_Double_Standard_Redux.htm

National and International Political System

Balance of Power http://thenaturalsystemsinstitute.org/IV National and World Politics and Economics/balance_of_power_among_nations_of_the_world.htm

The Interlocking Nature of the Super-System and Homeostasis

It requires a delicate balancing act to maintain an economic homeostasis in a growth based economy. The nation has certainly seen this after trying to return balance to an economy thrown off kilter due to the faux Bush economic policies[9]. War is necessary to keep the defense industries from going bankrupt and disrupting the entire economic system. On the other hand, these death-oriented war and defense budgets gobble a lion’s share of the national budget thus sacrificing the life-oriented budgets. In addition, on the home front, our status driven, and maniacal consumer culture devours resources and then it defecates the exorbitant waste and pollution resulting from this psychotic, ravenously growth-oriented culture into our atmosphere, in toxic waste dumps, rivers, and along our shorelines. Together, all appointed watchdogs seem to have blinders on that prevent them from seeing that they are destroying the planet. Nonetheless, to maintain that homeostasis with our kind of economy and culture is a recipe for apocalyptic, super-eco-system, disaster for the future of earth and humankind. These are just a few additional highlights glossing up our disturbing portrait.

Altogether, these trends, and their statistics portraying the culture at large, are correlated with the statistics, cited in the beginning, on excessive rates of mental illness; national and personal economic crises; high poverty rates; shameful lack of health insurance; escalating physical illness rates; substandard education; high crime and incarceration rates. Beyond the mental grasp of the lowly majority, stands the haughty elite orchestrating the entire super-eco-system that is our culture. I propose that there is not just a direct statistical correlation, but also a causal relation, between the various aspects of our disordered culture and the emotional, behavioral, health, and economic problems of the individual person, in summary of both the whole nation and, as will be the focus in the next section, the whole personality.[10] From the perspective of a different modality, what we have here is a sketch of a highly disordered culture, a Pollockesque, somberly drawn silhouette, in sundry shades of gray, with tiny isles of white prominently strewn about. One has to use a figure-ground reversal to switch focus back and forth from the welter of the larger, super system’s parts and people filling its millions of positions to the tiny few who organize and conduct all of it. In conclusion, the purpose of this essay is to explore these “Body-Brain-World Connections,” to try to find ways for the individual to survive in this disordered culture, and then to consider how to begin trying to change the super-system into a new order to permit survival of the whole of life on earth.

THE BODY

Emotion Spectrometry as a Starting Point for Self-Assessment

Let us say that there is an emotional gradient from black depression to pessimistic and the blahs to the blues to sad to ennui or bored and listless moving from the 1 to 5 end of the scale below. Next, the gradient goes from a 6 of feeling merely well or OK to 7 engaged in activity to 8 content and somewhat optimistic to 9 cheerful and thoroughly involved and then all the way up to a 10 of extremely enthusiastic and eager.

The Loadstar of the Body – the Frontal Cortex (Left Orbital) of the Brain

Now, let us say that 1 represents a total lack of activity in the frontal cortex and 5 is minimal and infrequent, intermittent activity there while 6 to 8 represent degrees of increasingly greater frontal cortex activity corresponding to observed or reported preferred, motivated, goal orientation while 10 represents intense, sustained, high frontal cortex activity over a long period.

Negative Emotions and Health

I would predict that descending from 5 to1 a person would have increasingly more severe psychogenic illnesses[11] such as heart problems, ulcers, obesity, diabetes, skin disorders and such; more psychosomatic illnesses[12] such as allergies, impotence, digestive disorders; as well as a tendency to fall ill to serious diseases such as colds, flu and cancer. In addition, when depressed or plagued with other negative emotions, these emotional illnesses can be exacerbated by diseased physiological processes[13].

The Paradox of Positive Emotions

On the other hand, while a 10 has a feeling of extreme well being and omnipotence, such intensity wears the body’s organs and immune system[14] down making it prone to sudden attacks of catastrophic illnesses[15]. Our culture has an extreme emphasis on competition and winning and beating at any cost; on ruthless competition in business; extreme promotion of gambling of many kinds; on extreme, violent, even life and health threatening sports; on creating unnecessary rivalry and jealousy among school students through its policy of grades and therefore ranking some as better and most as failures; and the notion that anything less than number one is a failure. To keep one’s rank as the best or the winner, a person must maintain that intense level of a 10. All of these circumstances create pressure that result in pathological behavior and stress related diseases. On the other hand, those who are focused on their own progress and the process they are engaged in typically maintain a level of 7 through 9 frontal cortex activity which is accompanied by greater overall health.

The Paradox of Negative Emotions and Substance Abuse and Dependence

At the same time, with frontal cortex activity from 5 to 1 and related negative emotions, a person is increasingly likely to become addicted to and to abuse substances, even prescribed medications. Yet, again, as 10 is approached, with maximum frontal cortex activity and related negative, depressed emotions, a person is increasingly more likely to have to rely on uppers such as methamphetamines and to resort to sleep medication, downers, or alcohol in order to relax.

Psychiatry and Pharmaceutical Companies Capitalize on the Suggestibility of TV Audiences

I must caution the reader that reports on causes and treatments of emotional problems presented by modern psychiatry and psychology have been warped by the commercial interests of these professions, industries, and the research departments studying such problems within the last half century, particularly within the last few decades.[16] A recent survey of general practitioners found that they were so forcefully pressured by their patients to prescribe medications that they seen advertized on TV that they felt they had to give in even while knowing that it would be bad for their patients’ health. Next time you go to an appointment with your doctor, notice how many pharmaceutical representatives visit the doctors.

The Art of ‘Moderation’ and Its Influence on Body-Brain Health

Learning the art of moderation is essential for a physically healthy life. Pursuing preferred goals keeps the frontal cortex active. The benefits are often even greater when one engages in these goals and activities with an amicable group. Generating laughter with one another while engaged in these activities is an extra bonus to the body. Pursuing a relaxing or non-competitive, non-cerebral recreational activity decommissions the frontal cortex and that is also good for one health. This is especially true for taking naps and getting a good night’s sleep. A good night’s sleep comes easier after vigorous, satisfying activities are over and one winds down. This kind of rest or napping during the day and ‘calling it a day’ at night gives the body parts and immune system a chance to repair and rejuvenate. Developing healthy eating habits such as not over eating, eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and avoiding trans fats and saturated fats, and drinking plenty of water is essential for good health. Exercise in moderation is essential for good health as well. As the ancient Greeks said the way of ‘All things in moderation’ is the key to a healthy life.

THE BRAIN (aka Mind)

Worldviews, Memories, and Their Influence on the Emotion Spectrum

In a different fashion, one’s worldview can go from extremely negative to Pollyanna positive. One can go from dwelling on extremely depressing memories to extremely, possibly embellished positive memories. Most Americans abide by conventional beliefs about what is sinful yet most Americans routinely violate these conventions and consequently suffer a guilty conscience. These so-called sinful acts are seldom harmful to oneself or others. On the other hand dwelling on the guilt can be severely, emotionally, and interpersonally harmful and even harmful to one’s physical health. The moderate position would be an acknowledgement of the reality that dwelling on guilty memories does more harm than good. Yet one can learn from the negative memories by considering how to do things differently next time. Occasionally dwelling on memories of good times and successes can be both satisfying and healthy. A good habit is not to take oneself too seriously and to be able to laugh at one’s foibles and shortcomings. When we see scenes and are told about terrible things happening around the world we can develop a very negative picture of the world that stays with us and keeps us in a bad, angry, or fearful moods. It is wise to take a second and objective look at your own view the world, of your culture, and determine whether you really want to be negatively influenced by the worldview the has been imposed on you. On the other hand, it is unwise to ignore negative aspects of one’s world. Taking a stance of finding out what one can do to change the negative in one’s world and acting on that cannot just empowering and healthy to oneself but to the rest of one’s fellow humans as well. Once again, it is a positive goal orientation along with a sense of responsibility for the quality of one’s neighborhood, community, and nation that promotes an overall healthy life style.

Learning to Re-evaluate Early Lessons on Beliefs about Life and Lifestyles

A major psychological re-orientation to life can come from re-evaluating the negative lessons that one was taught as a child. Family and authorities teach most children, directly, or through modeling, myths and taboos about what the world and other people are like and how to conduct one with respect to them. Children are also taught how to conduct their own lives. As an adult, it is important to take stock of and reevaluate all of the messages like you ‘have-to’, ‘can’t’, ‘must or shouldn’t be’, and all of the other ‘oughts’ and ‘ought nots.’ Typically, persons will only be aware of these when related situations arise. When that happens, it is helpful to try to determine if there really is any merit to these injunctions and prohibitions. In all cultures, most of what is taught to children about life, how you should live it, and provincial belief systems are mere arbitrary products of social evolution.

Get a globe of the earth and point to any inhabited spot on it and you will find that at each of them children are being taught different mandates, prohibitions, and beliefs. Review what has been taught at any of the ages past and you will, likewise, find differences. Nevertheless, at each locale and stage in history these lessons are taught as thought they are absolute and universal for all time. Considering the vast differences among all of the millions of such lessons or doctrines and the millennia they span, are they all right? Are those you were taught as a child right just because they happened to be customary to your pinpoint on the face of the earth and within the many millennia of recorded history of humans?

When faced with social and moral mandates and prohibitions and the negative repercussions can come from disobedience or nonconformity to them, one can always ask “So what?”, “What difference does it make?” and “What do they matter in larger, longer-term scheme of existence?” At first, it can be unnerving to take the creation of one’s own worldview, belief systems, ethics, and lifestyle into one’s own hands. On the other hand, you have one life and simply to live by what others have told you is merely to exist, like an existential drone, animal, or even a meaningless thing. You might as well be a robot guided by someone else’s remote control. The responsibility and vulnerability of deciding for yourself may seem risky but, if you do, then you definitely know you are fully human and you are making your life meaningful.

Learning to Manage the Way You Focus

A person can focus on the minutia of their surrounding and inner self; can focus on a broader and constructive awareness of one’s social context; and even can focus on a broader aspects of the culture, especially those that are positive versus those that are disordered and require remediation. A person can merely critically dwell on their personality and on their behavioral trends and habits, or they can engage in self-evaluation and look for alternative, positive, corrective agendas for self-improvement. I am reminded of the famous Scottish poet Bobby Burns quote, “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursel’s as others see us!” Adopting a policy of listening to and even asking for the opinions of others on how they see us can be boon toward efforts of self-correction.

However, it not just the way we perceive ourselves that typically needs correction. By far the more important addition to our repertoire of modes of focus is how we perceive the world. Am I wrong in suspecting that most people look without seeing the world around them? Make a habit of taking a second look and see the world afresh. Question the way we see the ‘other’ and the familiar places we cruise past daily. Go to see in order to learn what is beyond our little cognitive cove. Ask what is like to be the ‘other’, to live in those other places, to work and live under those other conditions. Even further, try to educate yourself to see what is not ‘there’ and to listen for what you do not hear.

Try watching your favorite TV shows, the dramas, the news, etc., and try to do so not to be entertained or informed but to try to understand why ‘that’ is being shown and not something else. Ask what is missing, what is not being talked about. Ask how what you are seeing and are being told is molding your mind and how it may be molding the minds of the others. You cannot see a factory that is employing child labor, you cannot see genocide in Africa, you cannot see the history and genocide of Native Americans and the decimation of the Buffalo, you cannot see what is going on in the Board Rooms of the largest corporations, and you cannot see the huge exchanges of cash from lobbyists to legislators. What are most difficult of all for people to see are patterns that relate systems and the parts of the various systems, especially patterns across time. You cannot see these and many other things, yet, if you were there, and you did see and hear, if you did remember, if you did study reliable historical records to discover patterns, how might you feel about the consequences of these diseased systems for people just like you? Looking for what you do not see and listening for what you do not hear may be the most important art you will ever learn.

Learning Ways to Manage How You Adjust to Hedonic Tones in Your Environment

A person can let himself or herself be trapped in an environment full of very painful stimuli or make a decision make major changes or moves. A person can teach himself or herself to adjust to the unavoidable discomforts on the one and on the other to make the relative minor adjustments to living conditions that can make life more pleasant. FOOD AND BEVERAGE AND SMOKES

Becoming Aware How You Envision Your Future

Another major psychological re-orientation to life can come from taking stock of how one tends to envision one’s future and what you envision versus what you passively accept as your inevitable future. Reassessing one’s short and long-term goals can bring a welcome epiphany. On the other hand, envisioning new goals will be ineffectual without plotting plans, paths, and strategies for their realization. It is especially important to take into consideration time factors. A pitfall to be avoided is to think one has a fixed identity, can only play a narrow range of roles, or that one is condemned to the ruts of long established habits. If you try out new identities and roles within your, or a, group, you may find that this is a highly effective way to make positive behavioral and emotional changes. In addition and very importantly, it is more than helpful to step back, review this process, and try to view it from different perspectives. When a goal and plan has been decided upon, simply consider it as an experiment and subsequent reevaluation may likely result in massive revision. Taking stock of external barriers and personal limitations is also important but one should not shy away from attempting to overcome, surmount, or deviate, even if that may mean looking awkward and foolish. Remember “So what?” and “What difference does it make?”

Becoming Aware How You Envision the Future of the World

And now, we are back to the first paragraph. In my opinion, almost all of the emotional and behavioral problems cited in the beginning are a product of cultural disorders. Of course, only a few individuals with, or without, such disorders are capable of addressing this larger issue. However, for those of us who are able, we must begin a massive re-evaluation of our culture and the structures and systems of our culture. We must begin the arduous challenge of analyzing how these structures and systems have evolved to the contemporary stage in which they sustain or perpetuate each other. We must further try to determine the extent to which they are the ultimate cause of the ills of individuals and the broader ills of the populace and the still broader damage they are causing to the natural environment.

The Body-Brain Benefits of Undoing Cultural Determinism

Standing up to, speaking out against, and acting in such a way to bring about extensive, methodical, systematic change in our culture will have two major benefits. This engagement may not bring about immediate health to you or your world. Nevertheless, one major benefit will be that such courageous, selfless, magnanimous action will surely give you a sense of bonding with your fellow humans and our natural world. Another major benefit will be that it will also give you a sense of empowerment that most probably will improve your health more than just a skosh.

Dealing with Realization versus Anticipation

After you envision a new goal, you will most like foreshadow, in your imagination, what accomplishing the goal will look like and feel like. Inevitably, the realization will not be exactly like the foreshadowing of it. When there is disappointment over this, it may signal that you either must revise your inner criteria for fulfillment or your goal, plan, or strategy. It will rarely signal that you should quit, give up, or surrender. If you invest in the process, in the doing of it more than the final product, you can easily pick yourself up and begin again with your revision. Eventually you will master this new life style you are attempting and, just as the whole process is becoming second nature, you will find that you are now prepared to move up to higher criteria for fulfillment, more idealistic visions, yet more realistic goal, and your transcendence will probably turn out to be more beneficial to all.

RE-ORDERING THE ORDER OF BODY-BRAIN-WORLD CONNECTIONS