The Conscious Revolution is Catching

Mental capacity, and the lack of it, was much discussed in and around Ottawa last week.

 

The word "crazy" gets bandied about with alarming regularity, considering how poorly defined it is.  You can use crazy in the sense of nonsensical, bold, aggressive, reluctant, petulant, ignorant, dumb or even as a descriptor for an actual condition of cognitive impairment.  Given its vagueness of meaning, crazy is really a poor term to use as anything other than an insult.  If you want to actually give a situation, a condition or a person meaning, you need to refine your terminology a bit.

 

 

Hence, Rob Ford's functional fixedness is being considered through the lens of a recognized cognitive behaviour suite, obsessive compulsive disorder.  There are plenty of other politicians who could be diagnosed as having a "mental illness" and indeed, many have come forward, admitting to battles with neurologically-originated conditions like depression or alcoholism.  In fact, the study of the political brain has become trendy in science and journalism  Now, we're still in that phase of the game where we look to use labelling of cognitive ability as a stick to beat opponents with; there has been a lot written of late tying social conservative beliefs to our "reptilian" brain, with the implication being that one end of the political spectrum is dumber or less open to new ideas than the other. 

 

 

But there are a couple other things happening at the same time that, whether we see it clearly are not, are wholly connected to this phenomena.  One, the mental health crisis that, while not prominent on the radar these days due to the focus on our economic doldrums, still lingers.  It is the economy, though, that reigns supreme - along with questions like "how do you motivate innovation to grow new economic activity?"  Innovation, artistic creation and that nebulous concept of crazy are rightly intertwined; innovation is equally a function of our grey matter.  Then, there's health care, specifically the unsustainable nature of our existing model.  There's a huge mental health component to that Gordian knot as well.

 

 

Who makes decisions about our health care, our economy, our services?  Those people who get it into their heads that the world needs their leadership to function properly - a delusional belief if ever there was one.  Just because it takes a bit of delusion or narcissism to think you're that important doesn't mean that it isn't true; exceptional individuals, for better or worse, do change the world.  It's these outliers who, given the right opportunities in life, will build the better light bulb, cure cancer or develop a health care model that is adjusted to the realities of modern society and demand.

 

 

There is a lot of crazy in politics, but we need that crazy to move the ball forward.  Even if you're a status-quo libertarian who thinks of progress as inconsequential, you can't deny the historical reality of manic, motivated people developing followings and nurturing change.  It's just the way things are, the way they've always been.

 

 

In service use, in labour but especially in politics, we are beginning to peel back the layers; instead of simply accepting "that's just the way it is" we're asking "what makes them that way?"  In the days of colonialism, anthropology was a tool used to help Western powers understand (and better manage) those that they colonized.  The corollary of that process was the absorption of bits and pieces of indigenous culture into Western society.  Today, there's almost a reversal of that process emerging; through the studies of organizations like Samara or the information exposure efforts of Wikileaks or 404SystemError, it's now the average citizen who's peeling back the layers of political motivation, reverse-engineering the behaviour of our pols to understand it better.

 

 

As the public becomes increasingly inquisitive about the cognitive capacities or our pols - and as we have ever-expanding access to every breath they take, every move they make - there is more and more thought being given to how we can read, choose and motivate our political class better.  This trend ties in to the notion of managing cognitive labour to greater results, reducing external service dependence, de-medicalizing mental health and of course, getting more out of life.

 

 

This notion of maximizing human potential and of creative destruction in our society at all levels through systematic change is not a new one, nor is the idea of sudden bursts of civic activity, demanding more of society's leaders.  In fact, you could say it happens with startling regularity, with each iteration allowing people at all levels to climb the pyramid a bit further.

 

 

We're in the bust part of one of these cycles now; there will be hard times for those at the lower echelons of society that will trickle up, in degrees, to those above them.  As the wheel turns, though, both sides will realize that to reach their end goals, middle ground needs to be found.  It's that balance between executive function and systematic reaction that at some level, we are constantly striving to achieve. 

 

 

What all this focus on mental capacity at all levels does is allows to pursue that goal more consciously.

 

 

Waiting For Superman

You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They'll race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall. But in time, they will join you in the Son. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.

Max Landis, the brilliant writer of Chronicle, has done a hilarious rant about the enduring popularity of Superman.  Landis contends that Superman is boring because, in essence, he's perfect; powerful, wise, compassionate, constant.  He's unrelatable, says Landis, which is why he's not relevant to an audience that wants to see themselves reflected in their heroes.  This logic rings true; none of our heroes are perfect, no legend is without flaws.  The Greek and Norse gods were essentially Dawson's Creek with superpowers; every mythic character from Gilgamesh to King Arthur to Anakin Skywalker had their fatal flaws.  They've either died heroes, or lived long enough to see themselves become villains. 

That's why Game of Thrones makes for such compelling reading/viewing. 

Landis also rips to shreds the chintzy way DC killed Superman off for ratings, then just as quickly brought him back.  Superman didn't change, his world didn't change, the audiences felt ripped off.  The stakes going in seemed so huge, yet there were no consequences.  It didn't ring true; our mythic protagonists, be they of good character or bad, must change the world with their passing.  Whether heroes or villains, these icons must die if they are to be reborn as more than just men, if they are to become legends.  Giants do not walk the earth without leaving footprints.

It has been said that there are no giants any more.  The larger-than-life leaders who shaped entire nations with their great and/or terrible visions have been replaced with technocrats, tweaking away at the margins.  An aversion to risk has replaced boldness; messaging has replaced vision.  We actively tear down our icons, whatever the forum; in an almost Socratic way, we subconsciously seek out and exploit the chinks in their armour.  We mistrust superiority as an oppressive force that, because it must by its inherent nature be flawed, will lead us into temptation.

Yet, locked away in the deep recesses of our hearts lies hope that one day the perfect hero will rise, take our sins onto their shoulders or do away with challengers and show us the way to a better world.  It's one of the great contradictions of humanity; we crave assuredness and unwavering discipline in leaders, but know our leaders are only human and therefore fear the inevitability of their - our -  failure.  We know that when we place our faith in all-too-human unwavering confidence, we inevitably end up disappointed.  This is why we tear our icons to shreds; if they seem too good to be true, they probably are.  It behooves us to deconstruct their perfection and discover those fatal flaws before they are able to harm us.  The only leaders who can bring us to the promise land, truly, must be superhuman.

But there are no Supermen in the real world.  We're waiting for someone who's not coming.

Which is why we love come-back stories.  We feel as though flaws are ingrained into our nature; the only way to grow beyond our faults is by first succumbing to them.  As much as we want to destroy our icons, we draw inspiration when they rise from the ashes/shed the skins of their mistakes; in so doing, they provide us with hope that we too have that power.  Whether you look at religions (accepting original limitation and being reborn) or overcoming "personal weaknesses" (admit you're an alcoholic then strive to be sober) or any form of education (tests, coming-of-age ceremonies, graduation ceremonies, etc.) we have a habit of building rituals around the notion of personal transitions.  We need these moments of personal transcendence to be wrapped in contextualized significance if we're to accept them as having real social meaning.

It's no surprise, then, that we expect our heroes to fall down, spend time delegated to the wilderness and be reborn as role models.  It's through the process of failing that they learn to pick themselves back up and transcend normalcy into exceptionality.  If gifts are not earned, they are not respected and therefore, not to be trusted.

There's a lesson in this, one that we already know but most of the time choose to ignore.  Failure is inevitable; not something to be avoided, denied or trickled down to others, but sought out.  When we cut away (which is different than deny) all the doubt that holds us back and actively challenge ourselves, there's a bit of a multi-faceted hero in each of us.

Which is why the best leaders don't impose from without - they nurture from within. 

RELATED - saw this quote, had to post here: "They are like Superman emerging from the phone booth in times of crisis; their abilities to concentrate and solve problems go up."       

What We Write About When We Can't Write About Anything Else (The Atlantic Wire)

AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez

• Share
• Print article
• Share on emailEmail article
• Comment

Jen Doll 12:45 PM ET

 

When something like this happens, what happened in Colorado, the meaningless shooting of theater full of people there to do the simplest of things—watch a movie, be entertained, things we take for granted we will be safe and relatively comfortable doing for a couple of hours in the dark, among strangers—it's hard to know how to react, on the Internet or off of it. It all feels bleak, and so we start reaching for answers or for some way to feel a little bit less desperate and despairing. We read as much as we can, to find out what we know, but it's a breaking news story so what we know changes from moment to moment as facts are collected and dismissed, as new voices emerge to add to the chorus of information and disinformation.

As people on the Internet and as writers, of course, writers on the Internet especially, we're used to this ... we've seen how these things go. Sometimes we think we've gotten so cynical and jaded that nothing can affect us anymore, nothing can truly shock us. But something always can.

After we search for information and try to clarify the facts, we have to weigh in. There's a twisted thing happening, which involves us scanning and reporting and reiterating the news as a service and also trying to find new "ways in," because this is our job; our job is, in a tragedy as well as in happier times, about getting people to read what we say. That makes us feel a little ill always, but especially now. We justify this by thinking that in the wake of a tragedy—and I'm not sure we should call it that, it's a tragedy, yes, for the families of victims and for the victims, and tragic for the family of James Holmes, the 24-year-old who did the killing. But this was a willful act, not an accident, this was murder, this was a form of terrorism; he terrorized those people and he terrorizes us, too, in the images we see of bloody shirts and cell-phone videos of carnage and in our own imaginations of the horror. So, in the wake of this thing, we also reach for the stories that need to be told.

What "needs" to be told varies drastically in the eye of the beholder.

It might be a story about how we politicize events like this, so quickly, how politicians are keen to turn them to talk about what they want to talk about, to bolster their side. We do this too, of course. Gun control laws should be more stringent. Or, on the converse side, gun control laws should be less so, so that more people can carry guns to (allegedly) protect themselves. Or we talk about how this might impact the movie's bottom line (oof); or about a woman who was killed, a journalist herself, who recently narrowly escaped being involved in another shooting; or about children who die, far too young, about people who simply didn't need to die in this way, not at all. We hurt, so we talk.

The we turn to matters more practical: security measures in theaters, for instance, how the NYPD is doing this, in fact, for New Yorkers. There's religious and anti-religious talk of varying degrees of decent and horrible. We return to politics and perceived political connections, and early perceptions that, like most early perceptions, turned out to be incorrect. We bring up historical precedents, words like Columbine and Virginia Tech and Jared Loughner, names whose meanings changed forever after the events occurred. We talk about how we should have learned, but didn't, or even, more despairingly, how we're never going to fix this problem we have, that some humans want to kill others, for no apparent reason. We talk about why. Why would someone want to kill someone else, many others, in this brutal fashion? Was it violence he's witnessed, in movies, in video games, in comic books, in real life? Is there a connection to the movie itself? It's not the fault of movies, we say. Of course not, one man did this, a young man. Is it schizophrenia then? Mental illness?

We piece together his life, slowly but surely, trying to make sense of what went wrong, because something clearly went horribly, dreadfully, repulsively wrong. We want to know more about this person, this person who did this; we're fascinated at the same time we blame his family at the same time we grieve for them. And we think about ourselves -- how the simple act of walking into a movie theater has been suddenly, grossly changed. We wait for the president to tell us what to do, what to feel, to help us rally. Then, inevitably, we criticize him for not doing enough or for doing it wrong. Gun control, why are we not talking about gun control? No more attack ads, no more attacks. We talk about how awful it would be to share a name with the shooter. Shooter, what a vile word. On Merriam-Webster, other vile words are trending, shrapnel and terrorism, for instance, we are told. We're briefly surprised. We'd thought it would be tragedy. A tragedy. Everyone's reviews of this movie today were ruined, weren't they, we think, and then we hate ourselves for it.

Ourselves. We consider the story that last night we thought we would write today, a response to a piece about semi-colons—semi-colons! How it seems weak and pointless and silly, how every story we thought we might write today is an abject failure in light of this new darkness. With nothing else to do or say, we lay more blame. On others, for not writing the right thing, for not feeling the right things, for saying something we call wrong or rude or insensitive or callous or cruel or unrelated or oblivious, or for being too excited about their breaking story, about their chance to be a part of this national event. We lay the blame on ourselves, on everything: This abject failure of humanity.

But blame only gets us so far. We stop and look at photos of people hugging for a moment.

We always say this, after something like this: We'll do better. We'll try to do better. And then, 6 months later, it's as if we, or most of us, have forgotten completely, only to be reminded when the next awful thing occurs. But still we hope and maybe, if we're religious, we even pray, because if there's a time for ushering up good thoughts to a higher power it's a time like this, that we won't let this one slide away from memory like all the rest, into the great void of things we wish never would have happened, that never should have happened.

There will be a day for writing about semi-colons again. It just won't be today.

#Hashtags - a Window into our Collective Conscious

"What makes them unique is they describe your emotional state. In any networked environment it is difficult for you to get your nuances across, your tone of voice. They let you describe your tweet but they also enable you to turn it into satire or comedy or make an oblique point," Mr Walker says.

This is incredibly cool. 

Twitter hashtags have lost their practical usage, but have instead become an online "fashion statement."  Over elections, the press will debate which hashtags are being used - and those in political circles will vie to create the one that catches on.  You can gain fame or infamy from a #tellviceverything or a #newlabattcampaign.

Like all fashion statements, hashtags have become projections of our internal self-images; who we feel we are, how we want to be perceived or, on occasion, what just slips out unguarded.  More than saying what we want to share, our words are opening windows into our selves.

The Internet, and vehicles like Twitter in particular, have created what has been seen as a safe window of expression for people to share their feelings and opinions.  Angry diatribes or emotional duress could be expressed, as all feelings yearn to be, without social consequences/stigmatization.  At least, that was the theory.  In practice, nothing stays anonymous forever – online communication is increasingly holding each and every one of us to task for the things we say, wherever we say them.

The ultimate forum for free speech is organically forcing a social commitment to responsibility of speech, too.  Libertarians might decry any form of speech moderation as a breach of freedom, but this isn’t a government imposition – it’s a social reality.  Just as you can’t physically punch someone without expecting some form of response, you can no longer expect to be able to say or do whatever you want without consequence.  Far from an external imposition this organic, social accountability is incenting internal moderation – ownership of self, if you will.  The truth, as they say, will set you free.

With consequence comes accountability; with accountability comes reciprocity; with reciprocity comes empathy, which in turn leads to a more strategic, collaborative world. 

It’s where we’re headed; a Conscious Society.

Lineage and the Human Machine

Isn’t that the beauty of the human machine? We all share so many similarities yet we’re startlingly (and occasionally annoyingly) different. That’s emotional ink. We can’t undo what’s been done to us. What we can do, however, is choose how we’ll tell (and complete) the story.

There's more to the story than that, of course.  We are none of us an island; we're individual machines, but equally gears in larger mechanisms; family, community, jurisdiction, society, the ecosystem, the infinite.  We don't just exist in the now; we are the sum of everything that's come before, biological and social evolution as well as our own personal lineages.

But none of that undermines who are are as individuals; jewels in a crown, each shining separately, each complimenting each other.  We must be conscious of this.

Strong, independent individuals supporting a strong, collaborative society.

That's the way forward.

Seeing The World Through A Human Lens

If Panksepp is right, his rats could, in effect, be laughing in the faces of those scientists who, he says, still “deem the emotional feelings of animals to be outside the bounds of empirical measurement.”

Human being like the idea that we are somehow different and disconnected from all the other species on the planet.  As such, we have genetic superiority and moral authority over the earth and its creatures and are entitled to act as we please. 

Science is steadily disproving such notions.  In fact, the better we understand both human and animal brains, the more it seems we have in common with our fellow Terrans.  If anything, it's our unconscious need to distinguish that gives cause for our conscious tendency to label.

Have you ever noticed that we anthropomorphize animals to relate to them, naming our pets and calling them "part of the family":

And dehumanize people, taking away their names and calling them "vermin" or "dogs" or referring to them as children to mistreat them:

Wonder why that might be?