Winter Sky

Put one word out there

"Cloud"

Put another next to it

"River"

Two nouns, it doesn't matter

a cloud river...

Next word, keep it going

word after word after word

river running 

the sounds continue ringing

if they're said out loud

even when vibrations have left

"the cloud river running west turns this way and that 

across the sky and into the distance"

becoming a sentence

Becoming a picture in the mind

one word, another, another

Bob is the neighbor. His dog is sick

Snow is expected and the birds seem to sense it

it might be a essay 

or become a story

telling about how this all began

"once" and "never again" 

how it will all end

kettle of soup and clouds of steam 

bubbling up in the kitchen

maybe a book 

that someone turns into a movie

with so many words

famous people saying famous words

And it too will tell a story all about the names 

names are nouns too

there is no where to go

nowhere to return from

no one to see

the crumpled paper with so many words written on it

drops to the floor 

the cloud river running west turns crimson orange

against a purple sky,

night approaches

the theater is dark

names scrolling on the screen

and a boat the shape of the moon 

rises in the east

traveling down the cloud river that is running west  

POEM

We live in turblent times

How well do you tread water in an ocean of negative emotion

Shame is a storm, welling up and approaching

...backstroke, kick kick, look up at the clouds,

The grey elephant with angel wings flows across the sky

...and the funny faces smiling back

Up and down,

The waves churning, 

With no land in sight

No compassion in sight, 

No one to toss us a peppermint lifesaver.

Toward a Scientific Definition of the Phenomena Known as "Consciousness"

My point here is simply, it is to ask the question, if we did not have the term "consciousness" to describe the phenomena under discussion, what might we otherwise call it?

Additionally, the "UN-" version of the term we substitute will certainly need to be understood to mean "the reverse of" the substitute word. 

un- 1

prefix

1 (added to adjectives, participles, and their derivatives) denoting the absence of a quality or state; not : unabashed | unacademic | unrepeatable.

• the reverse of (usually with an implication of approval or disapproval, or with another special connotation) : unselfish | unprepossessing | unworldly.

2 (added to nouns) a lack of : unrest | untruth.

ORIGIN Old English , of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Latin in- and Greek a-.

USAGE The prefixes un- and non- both mean ‘lacking’ or ‘not,’ but there is a distinction in terms of perspective. The prefix un- tends to be stronger and less neutral than non-. Consider, for example, the differences between unacademic and nonacademic,as in : his language was refreshingly unacademic;: a nonacademic life suits him.

un- 2

prefix added to verbs:

1 denoting the reversal or cancellation of an action or state : untie | unsettle.

2 denoting deprivation, separation, or reduction to a lesser state : unmask | unman.

• denoting release : unburden | unhand.

ORIGIN Old English un-, on-, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ont- and German ent-.

 Currently, this is not the case with consciousness, since "unconsciousness" is problematic.
 If we were to choice to stick with the current term of "consciousness", is science then willing to limit the definition of the "un-" version to mean, "the lack of" or "absence of?"  

If we do, this then presents us with the issue of needing a term for "the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the conscious mind but that affects behavior and emotions
"

Might this then be considered a part of consciousness too, with simply a lesser degree of awareness?

To press the point a bit further, I can suggest that we are only focusing here on human consciousness.

Christof Koch makes the claim that "consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system."

Koch: There’s a theory, called Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin, that assigns to any one brain, or any complex system, a number — denoted by the Greek symbol of Φ — that tells you how integrated a system is, how much more the system is than the union of its parts. Φ gives you an information-theoretical measure of consciousness. Any system with integrated information different from zero has consciousness. Any integration feels like something

It's not that any physical system has consciousness. A black hole, a heap of sand, a bunch of isolated neurons in a dish, they're not integrated. They have no consciousness. But complex systems do. And how much consciousness they have depends on how many connections they have and how they’re wired up. 

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/christof-koch-panpsychism-consciousness 

(Note that Koch does not address the part of "the system with integrated information" that is inaccessible in human minds, and how this may correspond to in other systems.)

What we can see in a human mind is that the phenomena referred to as "consciousness" does not “live” in a particular place in our brain but rather “arises from the mode in which billions of neurons communicate with one another.” 

  

Consciousness emerges from communication between brain areas (194 regions of interest were studied) and is mainly tied to cortico-cortical (left and center) and not subcortical and cerebellar areas (right) (credit: Martin M. Monti et al./PLoS Computational Biology)

Unfortunately, I cannot locate such scans of "un-conscious" thoughts. 

Martin M Monti adds "that without having a scientific definition of this phenomenon, it is extremely difficult to study,”   (Monti does not address the un-state of consciousness here except to observe the "off" state)

http://www.kurzweilai.net/is-a-scientific-definition-of-consciousness-possible

Where does this leave use: we cannot study what we cannot define, and we cannot define what we cannot study?

How to Define Consciousness?

George Miller wrote in 1962, "Consciousness is a word worn smooth by a million tongues."

I would like to address Prof. Oliver Carter's observations about my comments, specifically,

 "But I remain unconvinced for the most part that we are on the road that will lead us to a definition of consciousness.  A metaphor might be this: we are traveling down a road facing backward, conjecturing about where we are headed by describing where we have been.

Prof Carter is correct in questioning whether or not I intended to add the word, scientific, in front of "definition."  Upon further reflection, the statement I intended is," in our search for a scientific definition of consciousness I am convinced that we are  traveling down a road facing backward, conjecturing about where we are headed by describing where we have been." 

It's been pointed out that the dictionary is full of definitions, and many have evolved over time.  The definition of a word often adapts to mean whatever it is understood to mean through its usage.

I offer up the word "happiness" as an example.  It has been said that as it turns out, the word "happiness" is just not a useful word anymore, because we apply it to too many different things.

Isn't this true of the word "consciousness?"  The word "unconsciousness" is even a better example perhaps ( which there was some agreement on).

So let's ask then, "How is the word "consciousness" being used in scientific references?"

"When it comes to consciousness, a fundamental distinction is made between its contents and its levels. The contents of consciousness are our subjective experiences, such as the sound of a violin. "Levels of consciousness, on the other hand, have to do with outward signs of a person's...state of awareness." People with aberrant awareness are typically placed into one of three categories: having a coma, being in a vegetative state and being 'minimally conscious'. But based on recent research, those categories must now be reevaluated."

Here we find that we are measuring "subjective experience" and "awareness." We might reword this statement in such a way to eliminate the word consciousness altogether and just say that the boundaries of vegetative states are measured by a person's outward signs of their state of awareness, in relation to their subjective experience.  What was previously considered "minimal consciousness" becomes a measurement of brain activity.

We see that there really might be no need for the word at all, when it comes to science.

Let me close with a research paper that supports the notion that we are not ready for a definition of this phenomena referred to as "consciousness."

Abstract. Definitions of consciousness need to be sufficiently broad to include all examples of

conscious states and sufficiently narrow to exclude entities, events and processes that are

not conscious. Unfortunately, deviations from these simple principles are common in

modern consciousness studies, with consequent confusion and internal division in the field.

The present paper gives example of ways in which definitions of consciousness can be either

too broad or too narrow. It also discusses some of the main ways in which pre-existing

theoretical commitments (about the nature of consciousness, mind and world) have intruded

into definitions. Similar problems can arise in the way a “conscious process” is defined,

potentially obscuring the way that conscious phenomenology actually relates to its neural

correlates and antecedent causes in the brain, body and external world. Once a definition of

“consciousness” is firmly grounded in its phenomenology, investigations of its ontology and

its relationships to entities, events and processes that are not conscious can begin, and this

may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term. As our scientific understanding of

these relationships deepen, our understanding of what consciousness is will also deepen. A

similar transmutation of meaning (with growth of knowledge) occurs with basic terms in

physics such as "energy", and "time."

http://cogprints.org/6453/1/How_to_define_consciousness.pdf

Conscious States

Back in October of 2013, this was the research that was brought to my attention:

"UCLA psychologists have used brain-imaging techniques to study what happens to the human brain when it slips into unconsciousness.

Their research, published in the online open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology, is an initial step toward developing a scientific definition of consciousness, Images of the scan are shown and some connection strength across sections of the brain provided.  They raise the question at the end in the context of brain damage."

Since that time many of us have offered our various viewpoints of the question of whether a scientific definition of consciousness is possibly. While I've pondered this question for a while now,  I'm left asking myself whether the opposite question is a valid option; Is a scientific definition of unconsciousness possible?

It is beyond debate that unconsciousness can be observed, when it is referenced to as it is in the example provided above (anesthesized brain), but the term carries with it an inexactness of meaning, and in language; an ambiguity exists around the word "unconsciousness" because the term can also refer to the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the 'conscious mind' but that affects behavior and emotions, a state that is below the level of our observable awareness. 

How then do we proceed with finding a scientific definition of consciousness when the opposing state, unconsciousness, is ambiguous?   Are consciousness, and its alternative states, unconsciousness, non-consciousness, subconsciousness etc, various parts of the same of the same entity.  I will suggest this is the discussion we need to be having. 

What is Consciousness Anyway?

What is Consciousness Anyway?

While I was reading a few articles at the journal "Frontiers" website I discovered a link to this fine blog story that posed this question.
I will ad that my own current views are reflected in this excerpt.

Representationalism

"This is a rubric for ideas in which consciousness is an emergent property of the brain's role of monitoring the environment and the body's own internal states using virtual representations created in the brain. Combined with temporal memories of previous states (memory), and projections of futures states (imagination) and representing the observing subject as a virtual self, consciousness is the overall effect of these functions. This emerges particularly from the work of Antonio Damasio and Thomas Metzinger and is closest to my own understanding of what consciousness is or does."

http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-is-consciousness-anyway.html

HHere are some links to other papers on consciousness recommended to me by Robert Gregson.
Thanks for sharing these Robert.

 Limanowski and Blankenburg:

http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00547/abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3770917/

Hobson and Friston
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301008212000706

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3389346/

Do I dare to try and slip in one more?  Of course I will, I am a research junkie, and a long holiday weekend will allow you 'non shoppers' some 'Black Friday' reading time.

This collaborative paper (8 co-authors) is, I believe, the type of paper Mark Filippi was encouraging the Winter Chaos Conference to produce.    

http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00625/full 

"This joint article reflects the authors' personal views regarding noteworthy advances in the neuroscience of consciousness in the last 10 years, and suggests what we feel may be promising future directions. It is based on a small conference at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine, USA, in July of 2012, organized by the Mind Science Foundation of San Antonio, Texas. "

Intersubjectivity Theory

There is a telling remark that Eleanor Longden makes during here recent TEDTalk.

 "Fourteen minutes is not enough time to fully credit those good and generous people who fought with me and for me and who waited to welcome me back from that agonized, lonely place. But together, they forged a blend of courage, creativity, integrity, and an unshakeable belief that my shattered self could become healed and whole."

Without knowing it, Longden had just describe "Intersubjective Systems Theory" (IST). IST "proposes that minds are not isolated, unitary things that exist as individual entities, as though in a vacuum. Rather, minds exist within interpersonal and intersubjective relationships, beginning at birth (and even before) with the attachment bond to the mother, and they develop within interpersonal, intersubjective, relational contexts." 

George E. Atwood, Robert D. Stolorow, and Donna M. Orange are the core theorists of intersubjective systems theory.These theorists, all of whom are practicing psychoanalysts, have rejected the Cartesian version of self as a unitary, isolated entity, and have likewise rejected mental illness as an intrapsychic dysfunction. In their model, which relies heavily on phenomenological philosophy as its explanatory foundation, the patient's troubles (excluding organic disease or physical trauma) exist only within the experiential and relational contexts in which they developed. 
http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2012/05/intersubjective-systems-theory-in.html

http://intersubjectivite.com/drupal/files/Stolorow,%20Robert%20-%20Dynamic,%20Dyadic,%20Intersubjective%20Systems,%20An%20Evolving%20Paradigm%20for%20Psychoanalysis.pdf

Contrast this approach with the another therapeutic experience Longen describes"

"... I was part of a student TV station that broadcast news bulletins around the campus, and during an appointment which was running very late, I said, "I'm sorry, doctor, I've got to go. I'm reading the news at six." Now it's down on my medical records that Eleanor has delusions that she's a television news broadcaster."

Connected....but alone.

The TED Radio Hour recently featured this talk, along with the TEDTalk by Sherry Turkle, "Connected, but alone. During the talk,Turkle recounts a story about a elderly women in a nursing home that was given a robot Seal as a companion.

"We're developing robots, they call them sociable robots, that are specifically designed to be companions -- to the elderly, to our children, to us. Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for each other? During my research I worked in nursing homes, and I brought in these sociable robots that were designed to give the elderly the feeling that they were understood. And one day I came in and a woman who had lost a child was talking to a robot in the shape of a baby seal. It seemed to be looking in her eyes. It seemed to be following the conversation. It comforted her. And many people found this amazing.

"But that woman was trying to make sense of her life with a machine that had no experience of the arc of a human life. That robot put on a great show. And we're vulnerable. People experience pretend empathy as though it were the real thing. So during that moment when that woman was experiencing that pretend empathy, I was thinking, "That robot can't empathize. It doesn't face death. It doesn't know life. And as that woman took comfort in her robot companion, I didn't find it amazing; I found it one of the most wrenching, complicated moments in my 15 years of work. But when I stepped back, I felt myself at the cold, hard center of a perfect storm. We expect more from technology and less from each other."

Turkle adds, That woman, at the end of her life deserves a person to talk to.

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/25/172900833/do-we-need-humans

"Researchers... suggest that loneliness is becoming more common in the United States. When polled as part of a 1984 questionnaire, respondents most frequently reported having three close confidants. When the question was asked again in 2004, the most common response was zero confidants. This trend is unfortunate, since experts believe that it is not the quantity of social interaction that combats loneliness, but that it is the quality. Having just three or four close friends is enough to ward off loneliness and reduce the negative health consequences associated with this state of mind."

"Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone. It fine-tunes your brain's social instincts. It primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships. Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family. It enhances your empathy. It even makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about. Some people have even suggested we should snort oxytocin to become more compassionate and caring. But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin. It's a stress hormone. Your pituitary gland pumps this stuff out as part of the stress response. It's as much a part of your stress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound. And when oxytocin is released in the stress response, it is motivating you to seek support. Your biological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel instead of bottling it up. Your stress response wants to make sure you notice when someone else in your life is struggling so that you can support each other. When life is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you."

Another TEDTalk that was featured on the same TED Radio Hour was given by Abraham Verghese, a physician that makes the claim, "that when we shortcut the physical exam, when we lean towards ordering tests instead of talking to and examining the patient, we not only overlook simple diagnoses that can be diagnosed at a treatable, early stage, but we're losing much more than that. We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship."
 "I've gotten into some trouble in Silicon Valley for saying that the patient in the bed has almost become an icon for the real patient who's in the computer. I've actually coined a term for that entity in the computer. I call it the iPatient. The iPatient is getting wonderful care all across America. The real patient often wonders, where is everyone?"

http://www.ted.com/talks/abraham_verghese_a_doctor_s_touch.html.

I will offer that we are losing this "ritual," that Verghese speaks of, and this "intimacy," as Turkle puts it, in all of our relationships. The feeling that no one is listening to me make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.   We expect more from technology and less from each other. Turkle asks "Why have things come to this?"  I will ask, "What can we do about it?"  How do we  reduce the "negative health consequences" associated with being connected but alone?  How do we learn to expect more from each other, again?

You can also find the Sherry Turkle TEDTalk here:  http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html

Neurodegeneration vs Intergeneration: stress and epigenetics

In response to this comment on Google+

"Stanford neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky is highlighted in "The Great Divide: Status and Stress"   http://inter.ec/15WBC3D


When Sapolsky says, “Early-life stress and the scar tissue that it leaves, with every passing bit of aging, gets harder and harder to reverse,” says Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford. “You’re never out of luck in terms of interventions, but the longer you wait, the more work you’ve got on your hands.”
For a very long, and in depth explanation listen to "'Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences,'  but in a word, "glucocorticoids."
Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences


He might have referred to epigenetics.  "Early-life stress can extend to an infant in utero, where that lost "sense of control"  ("the stress that kills, ...characterized by a lack of a sense of control over one's fate, this “learned helplessness,” is the mother's or perhaps the grandmothers, since the effects of epigenetics is intergenerational.  The NY Times piece goes on to connect stress to poverty but it might also be linked to segregation, or the events of 9/11.
see the video, "The Ghost in the Gene."

Regarding stress in the general sense, this is an interesting TEDxTalk about the differences between "Stress" and stress.
"Acknowledging the Power of Positive Stress"
Acknowledging the Power of Positive Stress

"no American police department really has an excuse for engaging in practices that violate civil rights."

The New York Times

July 27, 2013

Some Chiefs Chafing as Justice Department Keeps Closer Eye on Policing

There are at least two sides to ever story, and this NY Times article attempts to report them all.

“The state of American policing is not where it should be,” Mr. Bratton said,  who as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 2002 to 2009. But, he continued, “there is a tension, and it is felt by police chiefs, between the constitutional policing that we’re obligated to provide to operate within the law and the obligation to provide public safety in terms of controlling crime and disorder.”

The Times story also takes police department nationwide for what the  the Justice Department calls a pattern of the use of excessive force—and civil rights violations. 

"Civil rights violations by police departments have been subject to investigation by the federal government since 1994, when Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. But federal intervention has become far more common and much broader in scope under the Obama administration, a development proudly highlighted on the Justice Department’s Web site." 

“In the year 2013, no police department should be in a position where it can be sued by the Justice Department.  The past records indicate what problems they need to be aware of and what to do about such problems if they have them.” said Dr. Walker, of the University of Nebraska, so many federal investigations have now been conducted that no American police department really has an excuse for engaging in practices that violate civil rights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/us/some-chiefs-chafing-as-justice-department-keeps-closer-eye-on-policing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

There is this 24 page report by TheRSA which I happened upon and that seems to address some of the concerns raised by the recent NYTimes story.

 "The report concludes that in order to improve community relations it would be helpful if police had a good understanding of the ways in which their minds work, and how they impact on what they do.

It recommends that there should be more institutional support for changing police culture – including integrating a package into police training regarding self-development, improving professional performance and taking more control over one’s thinking and behaviour."

http://www.thersa.org/action-research-centre/learning,-cognition-and-creativity/social-brain/reports/reflexive-coppers

"When discussing the influence of organisational culture, accountability and hierarchy, the police highlighted the militaristic metaphor: closed, bureaucratic,controlling and necessarily engendering ear in the public. On the other hand, when thinking about pattern so attention, communication, and gut feelings, the metaphor was more like a form of social work: open, personal, trust-based, and enjoying working with the public rather than against them." 

"My dad became a statistic"

I read that Goldhill had a book coming out based on his article publish a few years ago in "The Atlantic."  Then I happen to find this piece sitting in my draft file, so here it is.


David Goldhill wrote, "My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.  He wrote this in 2009.  Why do we not hear more about this since then?
In 2008, there were 37,261 traffic accidents with 11,773 fatalities, but organizations like Mother Against Drunk-driving are will throw $26 million annually, to fight for harsher sentencing laws and stricter enforcement.  This stricter enforcement resulted in the arrest of almost 1.5 million people in the U.S. in 2008.
The deaths that occur thorough the spread of infection in hospitals do not result in any arrests but may be just as criminal since they are preventable but there is no enforcement, and no organizations with big budgets to lobby for legislation.  In fact, there is just the opposite.  
The question becomes:  "Why do we pay hospitals for treating people they make sick? Where is the incentive for them to change practices if we do?"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/

There is at least some hope that this will change at somepoint.
"There’s a new tool for tracking the spread of infections and diseases in hospitals. Developed by the Canadian company Infonaut, this tool tracks the movements of health care workers in hospitals, including if they’ve washed their hands or not! Toronto General will be the first hospital in the world to use this technology. Dr. Michael Gardam is Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the University Health Network in Toronto, and he explains why the data collected will be invaluable, and how they’re ensuring this won’t be a “big brother” type surveillance situation."

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2012/03/spark-176-march-18-21-2012/

Trusting the Research

I quote a lot of scientific research, a LOT.  So, I wanted to acknowledge a problem that was brought to my attention by a fellow TEDster about fraud in science research.  The website that was originally brought to my attention was this one:

http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/owner-of-science-fraud-site-suspended-for-legal-threats-identifies-himself-talks-about-next-steps/

But Forbes.com picked the story up also and supported it with an article from "Nature". It is obviously a huge problem. 

"Fraud, plagiarism, cherry-picked results, poor or non-existent controls, confirmation bias, opaque, missing, or unavailable data, and stonewalling when questioned have gone from being rare to being everyday occurrences. Just look at the soaring retraction level across multiple scientific publications and the increasingly vocal hand wringing of science vigilantes. Hardly a prestigious university or large pharmaceutical company is immune, with the likes of Harvard, Cal Tech, Johns Hopkins, Ohio State, University of Kentucky, and the University of Maryland recently fingered byRetraction Watch."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/01/09/a-barrage-of-legal-threats-shuts-down-whistleblower-site-science-fraud/

"A surge in withdrawn papers is highlighting weaknesses in the system for handling them."
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/478026a.html 

A third related story puts an interesting twist on it. 
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/22/study-indicates-that-scientific-fraud-may-have-a-male-bias/
"The data seem suggest a certain laxity in behavior that might accompany tenure and a stable academic job. At the same time the findings may again illuminate the intense pressure and battles for funding that often tempt academic scientists to stray from the righteous path. Ultimately, studies like this may put the spotlight more on the dysfunctional aspects of our current academic research system rather than simply on gender bias."

This was what I found note worthy:
"What was also interesting was that the misconduct depended on the rank of the researcher; it seems that 88% of faculty members committing fraud were men, compared to 69% of postdocs and 58% of students."

Poetry

I have poems that I have written scatter all about.
This seems like a good place to deposit them when I run across them.

 1)

butter on my roll, before you go

 

 lying on clean sheets 

I wrestling with fat pillows

That will not hold me back

The water's drip & drip, wet outside the window

 drips that count a time

the wind blows in the ruffled curtains

   in and out

 

I am lying to a woman

and she wants to wrestle on clean sheets

with big pllows. and have curtains like these.

Curtains that fly

   in and out..to the breeze of the moon.

 I am lying with the woman

    and she is wrestling with choices 

    she has clean sheets and the freshest breezes

    that blow in off the ocean 

tonight, take off your shoe and dance

pick out a song we all know, sing along

 

 she orders chocolates and green tea

 the birds will sing if we are quiet.

    and the branches will sway  

smoke spins around in my head

Turn the stars on. the sky is charcole.

Drink more wine. I will draw you

2012 

2)

Do not count the time 

The time does not matter

It is always now

The stars are always in the sky

Even in the day.

The sound of the ocean is still 

In every shell upon the beach

The reflection is of the world

Held on every drop on rain

Things are lovelier this way

Wait for the flowers to come again

They have not gone so far 

Winter is a tired army

Let it March away

Play your drum as you will

And do not count the time. 

Big Aeroplanes

There were dreams

that all had wings

I flew them like a kite

They came to me

in the evening

and left before daylight

the rest is complicated

so foggy and so dense

There is no house

no dog, no swing

No white picket fence

Between the sheets

 the darkness

is everything I own

a tire lump of flesh

so naked and alone. 

The dreams have turned

to memories

its there that we still dance

I drink some wine 

and smile....

fixed, as if in a trance

Yes, I do still think of you

every time it rains

every time I hear that song

or see big aeroplanes.

Re: The Illusion of Psychiatry

These comments first appeared on TED.com as part of a question I posed to the TED community.
The Ted Community did contribute to the discussion and there comments can be found at:
http://www.ted.com/conversations/13829/does_psychiatry_have_a_financi.html

Does psychiatry have a financial interest in expanding the definition of mental illness?

Does both the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatry profession have strong financial interests in convincing the public that drug treatment is safe and the most effective treatment for mental illness, 

The National Institute of Mental Illness reports that currently only 36 percent of those who suffer from mental illness actually seek and receive treatment but they would still like to expand the definitions. What and why should be a concern to everyone. 
There is no question that among the medical profession, psychiatry is the most scientifically primitive. The latest revision to the America Psychiastric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) has drawn strong criticism. "Owing to criticism over the perceived proliferation of diagnoses in the current edition of the DSM, David Kupfer, M.D., who is the DSM-5 Task Force chair and is shepherding the DSM's revision, said in an interview: "One of the raps against psychiatry is that you and I are the only two people in the U.S. without a psychiatric diagnosis." 

Dr. Daniel Carlet, an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University admits, "We are no more than the most rudimentary understanding of the pathophysiology of mental illness and we have resorted to tenuous and ever-shifting theories of how ..treatments work." 


 "Psychiatry had a powerful weapon that its competitors lacked. Since psychiatrists must qualify as MDs, they have the legal authority to write prescriptions. By fully embracing the biological model of mental illness and the use of psychoactive drugs to treat it, psychiatry was able to relegate other mental health care providers to ancillary positions and also to identify itself as a scientific discipline along with the rest of the medical profession. Most important, by emphasizing drug treatment, psychiatry became the darling of the pharmaceutical industry, which soon made its gratitude tangible." Dr. Marcia Angell

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/illusions-of-psychiatry/?pagination=false

"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders

To use the medical model, I think that we are asking, "What is wellness?" We are all in a degenerative physical state, but we all learn to cope with our developed conditions. Wellness is therefore relative.
Health is very personal, and we usually get to make the choices regarding our quality of life, and this means that we get to make bad choices as well This is not true of mental health which is more socially driven, where one can be medicated against one's own will. 

I state that psychiatry is "scientifically primitive," but medicine has an obligation to "do no harm." Can psychiatry's answer to the question of whether its practices meet this obligation pass the straight face test?

So if we were to look at this in a non-linear manner, what's actually broken: What are we not adjusting to that we need to medicate? Big Pharma is merely the commercial side of the equation. The War on Drugs is really a war against people who feel the need to self medicate, and if this does multiple the problem somewhat because the problem of addiction, from both drugs and alcohol, is probably hidden mental health issues as well.

My suggestion to the question, "What is broken?" is that we are social animals and yet we have allow he bonds of social institutions to break down. We put our children into Day Care and our elderly into nursing homes, we feel no real sense of belonging, we fear what will become of us 
As Sherry Turkle notes in her TED Talk that we would rather text than talk. She says, "I believe it's because technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control. But we're not so comfortable. We are not so much in control.

Is this the roots of some of our mental illness, I believe it is, and medicating will not make things better for us. Real human interactions will. but there is no societal pill for us to swallow that will make it all better. We'll need to learn to be more authentic, more caring, more nurturing and more compassionate toward one another. Big Brother is not the government, it is your neighbors.

"Disability," as it applies to mental health, is a term that can define both cognitive disability, and emotional and behavioral disability. So let's ask, "How did depression, which was once viewed as an episodic illness become a chronic and disabling condition?" 
The issue that I am raising here is that psychiatry has moved away from analysis and talk therapy, and one of the main motivations for this is that it is that it is just to easy to prescribe drugs. I think we have all seen the advertisement there suggest taking an additional medication,"ABILIFY," if our depression medication isn't doing enough for us. Does this make any sense? Should it even be allow to be advertised to us in all its cartoon wonderfulness? "I'll take the pills that surround me with sunshine and butterflies please"
http://www.abilify.com/pdf/treating-depression-hcp.pdf 

Additionally, there is a general divide between the psychiatrist and the neuroscientist and we would do well to ask who is building the between the two. Your comments raises an important issue, that we should make the distinction between neurological disorders and psychological disorders, and that the two sometime overlap. The mind and brain can both be described as being based in the physical world, but explaining the mind, or mental illness, purely in physical terms, may not always be appropriate or useful. Do if we cannot identify medical causations for psychological condition that others views as a disorder, are we not just substituting being medicated and all its side effects with actual wellness?

There are several different points here to address: 
a) the DSM is currently being revised, DSM-5, see the following for some explanation of the controversies surrounding the revisions:
"Bereavement, which has always been excluded from the mood disorders, will become a mental disorder. Mild forgetfulness will become a mental disorder ("mild neurocognitive disorder"). Your child's temper tantrums will become a mental disorder ("disruptive mood dysregulation disorder"). "
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rethinking-depression/201110/the-dsm-5-controversy

2)Prozac should have taught us something. Placebo works. But in America, unlike Europe, it cannot be prescribe.

3) regarding criminally and mental illness, I can recommend the book by David Eagleman, "Incognito." There is also an recent this article by Eagleman from, "The Atlantic." 
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/308520/

Butter On My Roll, Before You Go

 

 ...lying on clean sheets 

I wrestling with fat pillows

That will not hold me back

The water's drip &drip, wet outside the window

 drips that count a time

the wind blows in the ruffled curtains

   in and out

 

I am lying to a woman

and she wants to wrestle on clean sheets

with big pllows. and have curtains like these.

Curtains that fly

   in and out..to the breeze of the moon.

 I am lying with the woman

    and she is wrestling with choices 

    she has clean sheets and the freshest breezes

    that blow in off the ocean 

tonight

take off your shoe and dance

pick a song we all know, sing along

 

 she orders chocolates and green tea

 the birds will sing if we are quiet.

    and the branches will sway  

smoke spins around in my head

Turn the stars on. the sky is charcole.

Drink more wine

 

I will draw you

100,000 die....

David Goldhill wrote, "My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy."
He wrote this in 2009.  Why do we not hear more about this since then?
In 2008, there were 37,261 traffic fatalities, of which 11,773 were due to a BAC of .08, roughly 12% of the number that dies due to infections in hospital.  But organizations like Mother Against Drunk-driving are willing to throw $26 million annually, to fight for harsher sentencing laws and stricter enforcement.  This stricter enforcement resulted in the arrest of almost 1.5 million people in the U.S. in 2008 which add to these costs.
The deaths that occur thorough the spread of infection in hospitals may be just as criminal, since they are preventable as drunk-driving, but they do not result in any arrests, and there is no enforcement efforts because that are no laws, and no organizations with big budgets to lobby for new legislation.  In fact, in is often the taxpayers that get stuck with the cost of treatment in cases where the patient is elderly and on Medicare.
Perhaps the big question becomes: Why do we pay hospitals for treating the people they make sick, why are the hospitals not liable? Where is the incentive for them to change practices, to self regulate, if we to not demand action?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/

There is at least some hope that this will change at somepoint.
"There’s a new tool for tracking the spread of infections and diseases in hospitals. Developed by the Canadian company Infonaut, this tool tracks the movements of health care workers in hospitals, including if they’ve washed their hands or not! Toronto General will be the first hospital in the world to use this technology. Dr. Michael Gardam is Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the University Health Network in Toronto, and he explains why the data collected will be invaluable, and how they’re ensuring this won’t be a “big brother” type surveillance situation."

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2012/03/spark-176-march-18-21-2012/

The World is Crazy.....

There are a series of excellent discussions at "To The Best of Our Knowledge" titled "Stories of You."  They explore the notion that "If we are only a collection of stories about ourselves... what's the truth of who "we" are? "  The discussions are both surprising and enlightening.

http://ttbook.org/book/story-you

The interview with neuroscientist and researcher Julian Keenan,  "You & Your Brain"  raises two interesting points for me.

1.  @ 9:12   "We use to think that people with clinical depression didn't see the world realistically they saw it in an overly negative light. Well, it turns out that they're seeing it quite realistically" and it is others that are seeing it in an overly rosy light.  Others are the ones not in reality

2.  @ 9:33  "So the purpose of therapy is to learn to be better at lying" (to ones self, for the purpose of fitting in)? The response by Keenan is " Absolutely!"

Before this point in the interview Keenan says we are always "molding reality not so that it is real, but it is palatable".  This is what everyone does in a self deceptive way.
Jonathan Alder, in his part of the discussion says, this is changing the narrative about the way we view the events.
Keenan then adds a twist, this is not just about how we see the story, but it is also about how we think others think about our story.  By adding the Theory of Mind to the mix we end up thinking about what your thinking about my thinking about your thinking. (@ 6:11)  And we somehow do all of this thinking while avoiding knowing that others are seeing events in a less than realistic way.
The implication is that social psychology, and the influence of a social network, has a larger influence on our individual psychology than our therapist would have us believe. But then the therapist is not devoid of  this rosier than reality thinking either.

It is as if we are being told,  "The world is crazy-deal with it"
Now that's depressing.

Enough Love

Here's an original poem for Valentine's Day:


Enough Love

I'd like to have enough love
To save some for a rainy day
I'd have some to share in this moment
And still have some to give away

But I'm a fool who suffers
Where wiseman fear to tread
Rushing in with heart in hand
instead of using both heart and head

So is there any love in knowing
Ourselves in such a way?
Can we be in need of love
And still have some to give away?

How I Write: “I Still Do Not Write”

This is a comment I wrote as part of an online college course on "Connectivism."  (#CCK11 #ELTchat)
I originally  posted it at the blog: "profesorbaker.wordpress.com"   But I also ran across it again at a web page called, "The Yoon Soo Lin Daily." 


 Theodore A, Hoppe says:
February 4, 2011 at 8:42 pm

I have to admit that I still do not write.

If it were not for the computer, I would not create written text. I compose in words, a challenging concept to describe: type sentences, shift them around, reread, cut and paste, re-read, add sentences, spelling check, dictionary lookup, and so forth. Typos are always there, still. So I'm constantly re-reading to re-edit is needed, always. And still they slip in, cemented forever on the wed (haha-”web”)

Many, millions, perhaps even most, are not oriented to the written word. Even though we read, it is not the same as the challenge of writing.

This is the source of much shame, when it is actually a process deficiency of an intelligence type. Learning assumes a singularity of process, when language is but one of many processes.

Here I will reference Howard Gardner: Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals.

This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Howard Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence.

Regarding the reply:  Professor Baker aka "Thomas" was very very kind in his comments, and it is with this encouragement that I continue in my attempts to combined words in a way the create meaning.

profesorbaker says:
February 5, 2011 at 5:21 am

Hi Theodore,

Thank you for this incredible story that you share with me here. You began, in medias res, with a powerful, attention grabbing statement: (quote) “I have to admit that I still do not write”. (end of quote)

I read this, started to answer, and then left it, wanting to reflect, deeply, before answering. I will quote a second statement, if you will be patient with me: (quote) “This is the source of much shame.”

And now I quote myself: (quote) “Writing is a skill that requires a lot of practice to do well. It’s not easy.”

Here is a final quote from you: “If it were not for the computer, I would not create written text. I compose in words, a challenging concept to describe: type sentences, shift them around, re-read, cut and paste, re-read, add sentences spelling check, dictionary lookup, and so forth. Typos are always there, still, so constant re-reading to re-edit is needed, always. And still they slip in, cemented forever…”

Theodore, to sum up, you have my deepest admiration for your writing ability. You admit it’s difficult for you, painstaking, time-consuming. This causes you personal discomfort. For others, blessed with the linguistic intelligence described by Gardner, it is a matter of applying their linguistic gift to the writing task.

I would like to point out that you describe perfectly, in a comprehensive manner, the writing process. If my students would apply themselves to their writing, as diligently, and as purposefully as you do when you write, I would be a highly contented teacher of English.

Finally, I’d like to leave you with the words of Dr. Peter Elbow, regarding spelling and grammar: (quote) “Many, many good writers are not good with spelling, not good with grammar, but they know how to get the help they need.”

My friend, as defined by Dr. Peter Elbow, you are a good writer. Your words impacted me today, and will influence the way I go about teaching writing to my students, who have the disadvantage of writing in English as a foreign language.

The writing process, as you describe it here, going forward, then backward, editing, re-editing, re-ordering, cut and paste, and finally, when all is said and done in this process, the final product is ready.

In my book, that’s good writing, any day, rain or shine. That’s all it is, good writing…

Thank you for your valuable interaction here with me. I owe you a debt of gratitude for what I learned today.

Best regards,
Thomas

Theodore A, Hoppe says:

February 5, 2011 at 7:01 am

Encouragement!
Thank you Thomas. It is always welcomed. In the need to express ourselves, we overcome much.
Here is a link to some of my well edited written thoughts.
http://www.ted.com/profiles/comments/id/242907

But I will also share with you this.

We live in turblent times-
How well do you tread water in an ocean of negative emotion
Shame is a storm, welling up and approaching
Backstroke kick kick, look up at the clouds,
the elephants with angel wings and the funny faces smiling back
Up and down the waves churning with no shore in sight.
No compassion in sight….
No one to toss us a peppermint lifesaver.

Best,

Theodore

profesorbaker says:

February 6, 2011 at 4:59 pm

Hi Theodore,

I found this to be powerful, which you have written on your “TED, Ideas Worth Spreading”, main page:

Here I quote you: (Quote) “The future of education has been the focus of the discussions I have been having with others. I love this quote and it seems to capture the essence of what TED is about: “Continual learning is the only skill that enables people to meet the challenge of expanding complexity wrought by expanding technology. Learning is a mental process that integrates intelligence and communication in the architecture of human thought . As the 21st century unfolds, technology must aim to avoid continual bumbling by strengthening literacy through continual learning using a process of intelligence that enables proactive concurrent discovery, rather than allow the future to merely arrive with increasingly disastrous consequences. ” Rod Welch. I am also very interested in the concept of eGovernance and how social networking analysis might lead to public-networking.” (end of quote)
…

It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Theodore.

Kind regards,
Thomas

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