Reform. Health-Care Style

A seasoned and well-respected politician went on record recently describing our new century so far as The Biggest Loser. In his opinion, because people lost money, possessions, homes, jobs, and health insurance, it should be scrapped.

Losing any of this is a harsh reality. Losing all of it at once is traumatic. I know, because I did, including and entire family. But I’m still here, and my enthusiasm about what people are creating around me couldn’t be better. I hunt daily for exciting transformations I can jump into and be part of, realizing I haven’t lost my future.

What this politician seems to have apparently lost is his awareness of the historic revolution occurring in our brains. All the inventiveness in cosmology, medicine, health, music, mathematics, physics, biology, environmental science, genetics, business, communication, and social networks is hard to miss. Even more disconcerting is the realization those we voted into office could be so inattentive. For his pessimistic view, there are a dozen optimistic ones to replace it, but the grades lately on the State of the Union seem to be D’s and F’s. Dread, Fear, and now, Failure.

This is one reason why I think many in our new century are so disenchanted and disconnected from their society and the political, governmental and corporate institutions they depended on for  health of their country and their survival. Many were born in time to experience the Great Depression, first Global Wars, Ecology and Peace Movement of the ‘60’s, and now the Digital Technology Revolution of the 21^st Century. Many could benefit from an upbeat report on our brain’s ability to change, expand, and improve our world in any way we choose.

A Body is a Terrible Thing to Waste

I view our national healthcare crisis a crisis of mental health. The perceived limitations of our body and brain and lack of awareness of the massive scientific accomplishments in the last ten years is a Silent Killer. It has resulted in a self-imposed alienation by a last century mindset that is distancing millions further from society and each other, the majority who will live much longer than they planned on.

Healthcare reform is galvanizing Washington right now, but what for and for whom? People want freedom from pain and disease, but as Deepak Chopra documented, cultures we want to emulate that are over 100 years old with lucid awareness and excellent health got there in ways most are unwilling to do. As long as there is on-demand affordable medical attention to fix the smallest of hurts, what’s the incentive? A video of a 102 year-old woman who never had a healthcare plan, carrying firewood up ten flights of stone stairs and then back down to carry up the great-great-great-grandkids, creates a shockwave of disbelief in many viewers.

The Dolphin Club, swimming out of San Francisco to Alcatraz and back daily are a bunch of “oldsters”, made famous along with others in “Growing Old Is Not For Sissies”. One of my 70-something bicycle-racing friends, who got me into racing, is still racing. He just returned from his annual group tour of 12 days of 80 to 100 miles of 7500 vertical feet daily, riding the best mountain sections of the Tour de France route. When I called him to confirm my estimates weren’t overblown, he was offended and crunched more impressive numbers for me out of his head. He also confirmed the others were younger and didn’t have to wait. His secret is not diet or medical insurance, which he barely uses. He just never gets off the bike.

The Lost Generation

In the ‘60’s, where massive opposition to an older generation ruled, the majority who were disrupting Town Hall meetings on health care reform last year were of “a certain age”. “Boomers” preparing to “retire”, targeted all they had left - their impending mortality and key politicians and lawmakers voted into office on the Internet that are younger and healthier.

Where have these revolutionaries and visionaries been all this time since they fearlessly disrupted their university campuses vigorously enough to risk their mortality and get themselves shot decades ago? Why didn’t they follow through on their altruistic agendas rather than tune in, turn on, and drop out? Are we not cheering them on because the voting majority doesn’t even know their team existed? Why did it take an ecology movement so long to get moving? Does this affect our confidence in their ability to create change? It’s tougher still, when the memorable local news on our influential elders is a 911 response to a retirement community because residents are rioting over other residents pirating their parking spaces. Do we view this as socially relevant? Is this the legacy they plan on leaving us?

When I ask someone why they are “retiring”, which is my version of getting a good night’s sleep after a five hour bike ride, they tell me they want to “stop working”. When I ask what they plan to start, I don’t get much back other than play with the grandkids and get a grip on that landscaping and the lawn. When they ask me what I plan to do, my first thought is I have to check Wiki for the definition of “retire”, because now I’m confused. I don’t plan to stop anything.

Those “retired” and planning to “retire” seem completely disinterested in communing with a younger, politically powerful, brilliantly savvy information rich generation who just might have keys to the car. Their effective lobbyists are “youngsters” right under their nose, who just pulled of a stunning revival of their discarded ecology agenda.

Generation gaps are nothing new. Older people know too much to listen to younger people who know too little. This may have sounded valid in the last century but it doesn’t now. My parents thought this way, and the exceptions are few. Isn’t this getting, uh, old?

In my local bank is a sign “donate a laprobe to the elderly”. My comment to the teller was “I thought it said donate a laptop to the elderly, and I have an extra one”. She told me she was sorry, retirement facilities don’t accept laptops. Somewhere though, R&D money is surfacing for the development of robotic teddy bears to keep company with our elders until their brains wear out, at a time when Alzheimer’s disease is an epidemic. And science has proven an active brain dramatically reduces the frequency of this catastrophic end to life. Nuns live longer and smarter because they just hang out playing complicated card games and doing crossword puzzles for entertainment.

What if retirees pooled some money after they mow the lawn and provide Wifi to nursing homes? Would helping an elder learn how to use my donated laptop to discover the world and socially network with other nursing home residents be one way to contribute to health care reform?

Do It Yourself

Self-advocacy, thanks to our new electronic world and social networks, is the gift we have given ourselves in a new century. Even now, my chosen primary care physician of many years still has the same response after a five-minute conversation. “Well, you probably know more about this than I do. Let me know what you come up with and we’ll go from there”. In no way do I view him as a clueless professional. He’s been around and still does his own research. I view him as a collaborative partner, and he goes with it because he knows I take responsibility to zero in on myself first. He takes responsibility for ruling over the final diagnosis and follows through if more is involved. It’s a win-win. We both learn, and I save a lot of money.

I don’t know anyone in my network community that doesn’t surf the Internet for answers to their illness, injury, and fitness. The load on physicians, surgeons, and diagnosticians is so huge, there is no way we can expect them to be current on everything. The minute they graduate, research as memorialized in a phonebook-sized PDR bought fresh out of med school is obsolete. Primary care physicians have dropped off the radar to make room for specialists in a thousand fields of fresh expertise, resulting in a committee required to figure out what’s wrong with us.

It’s a scientific fact many with disease recover, sometimes miraculously, through self-advocacy. By taking charge, they rocket their immune system into high gear. Refusing to be victimized by disease and not handing all the controls over to others is how humans have survived against tremendous odds. If you visit the Lance Armstrong Foundation website, there’s a miraculous story daily to prove how effective self-advocacy can be. Lance was invited on our training ride just before his disease, and even then, he was self-advocating and fearless. It’s in his blood. When people challenge me about his purported blood “enhancement”, I tell them, all he’s got in him is fearless blood. I think that alone is the key to his survival and success.

How do we patch all this? Maybe we don’t, whoever “we” are now. Too much agenda already. Live and let live. Like dinosaurs, adapt or face extinction. This is the world as we have known it, and many still don’t feel fine, so maybe it’s time for another approach. We’re smarter than dinosaurs. We’ve had some time to enhance our DNA. We’ve learned from lifetimes of experience. We’ve run out of excuses for just sitting this one out.

The Brain That Changes Itself

If decades researching science on the brain and my own experience has enlightened me on anything, it’s that we can change our brain, which is like any other muscle. It needs regular strengthening or it atrophies. Being athletic also helps enormously with the blood flow up there.  

Contrary to previous reports, we don’t use part of our brain capacity, we use all of it. Instrumentation shows every millimeter of the brain lights up with activity. We can activate all of it just by choosing to do so. There appears to be no speed limit or cap on the bandwidth of our brain. IQ tests indicate we just keep getting smarter, faster. Brains of all ethnicities, culture, and age, regardless of genetics add 3 IQ points every ten years. Since World War II, statistics add 12 more every ten years for a total of 15. Adding another 6 for being Dutch totals 21. If you live in the US, add about ten more for the heritable influences of a technology revolution approaching the speed of light, and 30 sounds like a brain revolution in action.

People want science to prove anything. We are addicted to the word. It dispels our uneasy feelings about belief, disbelief, and skepticism. It’s the new Comfort Food. “I was skeptical I existed until science proved it to me.“ If people want proof, now they have it in great supply, thanks to piles of data our brain has created through new forms of technology.

In “The Brain That Changes Itself”, Norman Doidge confirms changing how and what we think changes our brain and changes our lives. Our human vehicle is a miracle of science. We have a fully functioning R-complex, limbic system, pre-frontal cortex, and left and right hemispheric processors performing surgical distinction between calculative logic and full virtual perception, all with regenerative plasticity. We are a five dimensional, fully equipped cloud computing organism with renewable software capable of such synaptic orchestration and creative brilliance it will take another ten years for the Blue Brain Project to replicate all of it and potentially replace our brains. It’s making impressive progress, so if we’re slacking . .

As David Wilcock comments “This is not a cosmic ‘light switch’ that you sit around waiting for – it is an elective process where you either reach higher and higher states of inspiration . . .  or are further and further shaken to pieces if you cling to the riverbank in fear of who and what you are.”

New Year’s Resolution - I won't be a Sofer

Yes, I know. On the top of your list is to get in shape this year. Again.
There’s a fancy word for mental resolve that fizzles out – recidivism. Sounds a lot better than wimping out, doesn’t it?
"I’m not wimping out, I’m just recidivising my resolutions".
Yeah! That ought to get them off you and send them packing to Wiki so you have time to strategize getting off the sofa and out of the fridge by the time you have your next conversation . .
What is it about the brain’s miraculous ability to make us wimp out on our New Year’s resolutions? A recent article by Jonah Lehrer, an Oxford University Rhodes Scholar, neuroscientist, and contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Scientific American, and NPR’s Radio Lab, gave me a clue. Like me, Jonah is a fan of the brain. He considers resolutions exactly the wrong way to change our brain’s behavior. "Develop respect for our feebleness of self-control", he says. It’s normal for the brain to be stubborn.
But here’s where it gets weirdly interesting. Jonah reports many experiments with willpower were identical to working a muscle. A bicep has limitations. Ask it to lift a load too heavy and the load drops to the floor. The same is true for the pre-frontal cortex, which, as I have written before, hasn’t developed in evolution like other parts of our brain. It hasn’t expanded enough to handle the load we expect it to carry. Experiments indicate after a long day at the office, most will eat and drink more after work. The "cognitive load" from an all day workout reduces self-control just like it reduces the strength of an overworked muscle.
"Most of us consider lack of self-control a character issue" Jonah says, "But this research suggests that willpower itself is inherently limited, and that our January promises fail in large part because the brain wasn't built for success."
One experiment he describes seems very relevant to this post, as well to my own experience. A group was asked not to think of a white elephant for five minutes and given another task to do with numbers. The control group didn’t have a white elephant to worry about forgetting. Next, both groups were asked to test a new brand of beer, after which they knew they would have to drive home. Sure enough, the white elephant group drank more.
Now here’s the irony for me. I was trying to lose a whopping 35 pounds on a five-foot frame after a year hitch-hiking in Europe. Those who picked me up insisted on buying me a meal before dropping me back off on the road. Back in the US, it never failed. Go to lunch with some people from the office. I order a salad. If they’re a little on the heavy side, "is that all you’re going to order? You’ll starve, etc.". Now I have to forget the "white elephant" menu staring back at me. And you know the rest.
After a year of this, I got smart. In my brain. I decided to lighten the load on my pre-frontal cortex. "Is that all you’re going to order . . . 
"Uh, yeah. I had huevos rancheros for breakfast (or lunch, a snack, or both) and I’ve got a brick in my stomach". Bam. Silence at the table. The dogs had backed off my pre-frontal cortex and the white elephant was gone. I trimmed back down to 100 pounds fast.
The same worked with my cycling training. "You’re doing 100 miles today? Are you crazy? (not an athlete speaking) . . "Yeah, haven’t ridden in a month. My muscles are twitching, can’t sleep, got pulled over for speeding and if I don’t get this out of me I’ll take on another waitperson . . ." 
Silence. I roll out the door. I only did 50 yesterday. Today to make up for it, I do 100. Brains and muscles can do amazing things.
Jonah’s conclusion? Willpower requires real brain energy. Here are a few ways he thinks we weaken our brain muscle:
Task overload – you decide to cut down on eating then do an 80 mile ride then pay the bills then do the laundry then make the dental appointment . . .
Skipping brain snacks - brains need healthy fuel.
Sit and stand up straight - this discipline alone leads to more success with other brain disciplines according to Jonah.
Delay gratification - research by Walter Mischel at Columbia University and others has demonstrated that "People who are better at delaying gratification don't necessarily have more restraint. Instead, they seem to be better at finding ways to get tempting thoughts out of their minds." Not only that, high delayers get higher SAT scores "because they know that willpower is weak. They excel at controlling the spotlight of attention. When faced with candy, they stare at the carrots."
Jonah’s final suggestion is the use of distraction:
"The lesson is that the prefrontal cortex can be bulked up, and that practicing mental discipline in one area, such as posture, can also make it easier to resist Christmas cookies. . . when a dangerous desire starts coming on, just remember: Gritting your teeth isn't the best approach, as even the strongest mental muscles quickly get tired. Instead, find a way to look at something else."
Writing is tough discipline. I’m angry today because I won’t get out and ride on a cold rainy day, pay the bills, go the hardware store . . . So, today I do something else I equally enjoy. I write. That's it for today. The next ride will be an explosion of pent-up energy and too much fun. White elephant gone.
Your next refrigerator post? Stand and sit up straight . . .

Avatar

My laptop notes on the two recent conferences I attended in LA might be scary stuff for many people - artificial intelligence, immersive digital gaming, genetics and DNA manipulation, human enhancement technology, mind control, androids, robots, personal avatars . . .
Scary enough for me to attend, as mentioned in my previous blog entry. Another big conference buzz was the upcoming film “Avatar”.
So I went to see it when it opened.
I prepared to be subliminally programmed and blasted with more “Matrix” and “2012” conspiracy theory on mind control and The End of the World. I was sitting in the back row. Through it all, the number of people who had to take off their 3-D glasses, squirm out of their seat in a sold-out theater and sprint to the lobby was staggering. . . popcorn, the restroom, their texts . . . My view was constantly interrupted.
How do you explain this in Marin County, home of ILM (George Lucas) that created the digital imagery for this film? What was nervy to these people no other ILM production and story line seemed to deliver on an opening night? Most didn’t even wait for the credits, another big no-no for locals.
I checked out some movie reviews later. Several reviewers accused Avatar of being a re-purposed “Dancing With Wolves”.
Sure, the Na’vi on Pandora looked rather native, and the White-Guy-turned-treasonist hero could have been You-Know-Who, but to me, that just described a movie reviewer who had to get up for popcorn, the restroom, text . . .
Is that all they got out of it? That’s too benign, considering the behavior of the audience at the first public showing. Is it possible many reviewers and movie-goers are unaware of our amazing technological present and our even more amazing future? Is it time, after throwing away the TV to throw another one again and find out what's really happening?
The plot for this film is vanilla sci-fi and a good dose of operating reality so far on Planet Earth. There are giveaways like the "military industrial complex", conquering space, taking down alien civilizations, and like the hero in "Indiana Jones" grabbing The Big Goodie.
The simplicity of the White Guy's predicament is what allowed me to see everything else going on in this film. His spine, blasted to pieces in an unpopular war leaves him a paraplegic. The Military transports him to a rehab Mother Ship, but he’s now worthless as a fighting machine. They decide to use him as a disposable Avatar on planet Pandora to infiltrate the Na’vi and find their “unobtanium”. (the one funny morpheme in the film).
His brain is transported to this fantastical utopia Trekkie-style, and our hero has an “out-of-body” moment on Visit One. As his new Avatar-double, he discovers he’s not only super-human, he’s got his legs back.
They can’t control him. Knocking down the furniture and everything else, he escapes his orientation military camp in a state of euphoria, running his superhuman legs and heart out.
The film has a happy ending. He dumps his paralytic reality and chooses his Avatar reality (well, what would you do?). His Pandora Squeeze, who has been assigned to him as a guide by the clueless Na’vi, demonstrates in her spare time how to do just about everything fun, including mastery of a wildly fantastic horse and a spactacularly raptor-esque bird, reminiscent of the strategic creation in the animated "Ants".
Of course this is all sci-fi. Maybe. After these conferences, I’m not so sure.
Still searching for a clue, I opened my file on brain science a week later to write a piece on Avatar. I found a torn-out article from MensVogue I bought in an airport a few years ago written by D.T. Max, a Harvard graduate and book reviewer. The title “Wired for Victory. Can a bunch of electrodes and a computer screen help you swim faster?” got my attention.
Now I’m reading it again. This sounds like the White Guy/Avatar. Max mentions “the zone” and biofeedback performed on athletes like Katy. Connected to biofeedback, she is described by her evaluator as “looking at nothing and everything”, “emptying out her brain”, and “a suspension of doubt” that results in her optimal athletic performance.
Aha. The White Guy/Avatar.
Max, at the end of his article, mentions a Morgan Stanley manager who, after biofeedback had a tennis game performance “that soared”. And after biofeedback, Max, a swimmer, was in the pool on a lap swim when he felt “a familiar light joyousness” in his body. When the pain of his messed up shoulder came up, he envisioned “speeding waves of alpha” carrying him along. Enjoying his liberating mindlessness, “I felt I was no longer alone. A dolphin was leading me. My body began undulating like a brain wave. I followed my friend with pleasure. He was always ahead of me.”
Max was describing his instant “knowingness” how to swim like a dolphin. He forgot his shoulder, the pool, time . . .
“Every so often, I would hear a distinct “ding” in my brain. The positive audio reinforcement that rewards open concentration during neurofeedback. I got out of the water. The dolphin was gone. I looked at my watch. I had broken my previous best and my shoulder hurt like hell.”
Our White Guy hated returning to the Military Mothership planning its assault on Pandora. He needed a wheelchair. He hurt like hell. Only on Pandora could he best his human self every time.
I didn’t get at all this film was another “Dancing With Wolves”. I think the reviewers totally missed the point, and maybe half the audience.
The White Guy was in The Zone, and his brain transported him there. With a little help from science.

Smacking down Santa, astrology, and myth

I have been recently checking out the hundreds of asteroids discovered by cosmologists near 1997 who were apparently unconsciously naming them after more Greek mythological gods and goddesses, like the planets in our solar system. What could be the significance of this?
Participating in the third dimension involves the playing out of The Game (I love Florence Scovel Shinn's take on this) through mythology, legend, ritual, and storytelling. When we do this, we honor our ancestry by initiating the new ones (cultural respect).
I don't doubt realities like "Indigo children" and those born with a new wired brain. These incarnates are less inclined to participate in ritual and myth because they were born with different frequencies and resonance that allow them to remember instantaneously what The Game really is.
I do think however, if we are to own our responsibility to help others through this shift of awareness, we need, as a traditional saying recommends "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".
The I Ching infers this in the hexagram "The Wanderer". When we want to learn and influence, we cross borders. We explore with the intention to enlarge ourselves through empathy. We will be diminished however, if we are responded to as if we are an alien (even if we are!). In fact, there are those who believe “extraterrestrials” will not walk the planet with us until we stop with the alienating behavior toward aliens.
Many are wanderers now, disenfranchised from all kinds of indigenous cultures, family, lovers, careers, heritage, and shaken from the harshness of diaspora.
Few of us have a village of origin now that we remain in for long. Our survival requires us to be vigilant in our awareness of our current environment. We must learn the local language and customs if we are to be effective in our influence. We must differentiate between those who want to be our friend rather than our enemy. It is to everyone's advantage we are accepted by those who come to hear our message.
My view of astrology is one of validation. The original physicists and astronomers were called astrologers, and they did a darn good job of downloading some cosmic realities it has taken Hubble to validate centuries later. They also did a great job of developing myth as a tool for understanding and linking third dimensional reality to other realities.
Many people in this dimension will always need "science". They will always need "God". And they will always need ritual, myth, and a little help coloring inside the lines. Right now, they need Santa!
I think the more we maintain our sense of humor about The Game and all its oddities and amazement, the longer we will live successfully with each other, no matter what dimension or game we choose.
I choose to believe every dimension needs to laugh at itself for perceived weaknesses, guilt, fear, or whatever incompleteness is chosen. Free will is a choice, not a default, so give Santa half a chance!

Sexuality, Part Deux

I attended a couple conferences this past weekend dedicated to the latest technology and developments in all things humanly enhancing. Genetics, robotics, mechanical surrogates, artificial intelligence, computer systems that replicate the human brain, biomimicry, longevity, dystopic science fiction, empathetic game development, N-dimensions . . .
I made a list of words to websearch from this huge table of goodies after I left. One out of four failed spell-check. This is how rapidly our language is changing to suit our desires.
From these conferences, I realize we now have numerous choices for sexual expression. Either enhancement through immersive media (a.k.a. “digital sex”) enhancement through human partnered frequency acceleration (a.k.a. “great sex”), celibacy (a.k.a. a challenge to auto-eroticism), or asexuality and old age (a.k.a. “I don’t care - anymore”). Because the biological imperative to replicate overpowers all other third dimensional synaptic processes, we can’t make sex go away, so we continue to invent new forms of entertaining ourselves. We just can’t find a cure.
To most of us, the proliferation of human sexual expression cannot be enhanced in currently perceived reality without consciousness rituals or chemicals. Either our brain chemicals or chemicals we ingest or inject. If chemical, we still have control of our free will - how often, with what, and with whom we enhance our sexual response, if admitted to or not. Fortunately, we have the professional race car industry and the aging population to thank for bringing that one out of the closet. The first wave of human enhancement.
We can also choose to immerse ourselves in real-time human interaction to maximize our innate capacity to trigger synapses in our brains. This however, involves a lot of discipline, practice, and awareness. Many of us know the extent the Japanese, Hindu, and other cultures ritualize sex to an impressive degree. When I was at Baktapur in Nepal, the temple friezes were littered with carved depictions of every imaginable sexual interaction humans could have with each other to reach a state of bliss. The Nepalese have added to the business of reproduction inventive forms of transcendent states of consciousness, a highly valued commodity.
Innovative virtual technologies offer us more choice. Not much practice involved here. Just an admission ticket or the expense of enhancement toys, surgical procedures, genetic re-mapping, virtual immersion, or embedded chips. Many of these enhancements can affect our free will however. We may turn ourselves over to be manipulated or altered so our limited human development of our senses are stimulated and enhanced. Then we just go along for the ride. Or so it seems.
What was interesting at these conferences however, was the still-present hushness about “digital sex”. It was mentioned maybe twice, and fast. Just a quickie. No formal presentations on the program. Even more interesting, the word “consciousness” was practically banned. Two conferees referred to it as the “C” word after a few others smacked it down. They may as well have tried to pull off the same thing with the “S” word.
Once paired with another human, sexual experience is either overt or covert. Chinese society is more direct about sex than Americans are. Their political controls of how humans interact with each other or the digital electronic media world are potent. Although the number of children born to a family is restricted, and the recent expose about the subjection of humans to electro-shock therapy to cure video game addiction was a shock, the Chinese culture covertly allows sexual behavior with another human as an enhancement to monogamy. It is not “penalized”.
I have always found the term “penalize” in our society oxymoronic. It implies our relationship with the aggressive part of passive-aggressive sex is a negative expression of human behavior and needs to be punished in some way.
The United States is one of the few nations with an expectation of monogamy. Humans however, can demand more input from their monogamous partner than is deliverable within the limits of human expression. This dilemma is rarely expressed openly in our society. It is tethered to endless forms of psychoanalytic, therapeutic, and religious devotion to maintain an enhancement-free experience. Tabloid news feeds on infractions of monogamy, and humans are the victims of the poison called Shame. Lack of discipline. Lack of acceptable performance. Lack of gender commitment. Lack of anything.
In my opinion, enhancement through immersive media is becoming the compromise we could make to maintain monogamous agreements with other humans and salvage our self-imposed shame. Sex is so contentious, so loaded, so complicated, and so messy to most humans, many of us are more than ready to opt out of the human experience for the virtual one. How are we to penalize humans for participating in or enhancing themselves for a virtual sexual experience?
“It’s not what you think Dear. I just spent Friday night at the FullDome Immersion Multiplex. Look at our kids. They live in that computer with their games night and day. No big deal.”
The Ultimate Safe Sex. No touchy-feely.
So, is this where we are? It’s easy to make sex a dirty word, but now we must add consciousness too? What’s next on the hush list in our brave new world?
We do like the term “chemistry” to describe that rare event with another human where some kind of bliss is experienced in sex. It's one acceptable option to a "natural" experience. But, chemistry can also make us complete idiots. Zombies. Even killers of other humans. We forget to pay the bills, and if sex isn’t consummated with our significant other, we stupidly leave crumbs all over the place so we will be, yep, you guessed it, penalized. Our life will never be the same when we are found out.
“Hi, my name is Shame, and this is my first meeting. I am a blissaholic.”
What I’m curious about regarding all this emerging technology in human enhancement of experience and body image is the pay-off. And, the potential sacrifice in our complex human arena with each other.
Your call.

It's Not My Dog

I’m descending on the bike from the top of Mt. Tamalpais north of San Francisco, and the November wind chill is to-the-bone. I break out my emergency stash of produce section plastic bags and roll them up each arm under my windbreaker for a vapor barrier. I have on my neoprene gloves and arm warmers and foot warmers and head hood with just my nose and eyes exposed. I have everything on, and still wondering why I’m the only one out here doing this in a frigid wind.
At the Depot book store in Mill Valley, I’m done with the descent and its warm and sunny with no wind. Customers are parked outside at tables in parkas with their lattes, soaking it up. Inside, I window-shop the desserts.
“Just give me that large slice of cherry pie on a napkin, no plate please”.
“To-go box?”
“Nope. It will be eaten as of, right now”.
I’m back outside. The brick pavers are warm. My pie is warm. I sit on the pavers. A dog that may be some kind of Border Shepard/Collie mix circles me. Not on a leash. Great. I’ve got irritating company. He stops with two feet between us and stares at me, then my pie. I’m ready to jump.
“Don’t even think about it”.
He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there looking at me like I am already boring him.
Fine. I keep eating. And he just watches me, then my pie. Me, the pie. Me, the pie . . . whatever. The minute I cave and give him a crumb, an owner will pounce and tell me not to feed human food to their dog off a leash.
I split off a piece of crust and hold it out in my hand. I don’t care. This is the most civilized dog I have ever met, and sure enough, he clamps down on it with the expertise of a famous brain surgeon. Nice try, but he won’t do that again now that he knows there’s butter in the crust.
Who trained this dog to have such amazing table manners? He doesn’t have any signs of dominance by an Alpha Human. I look around. No one is watching us.
“Sit.”
“Sit.”

“Lay down.”
“Sit.”

No action. Maybe he speaks French. I give him another crumb, then another. He’s so good at common courtesy, why stress him out?
Now I’m up to the second group of people passing by and checking out this delicate ritual.
“Is that your dog?”
“No.”
“You dog is so well behaved!”
“It’s not my dog.”
“Whose dog is it?”
“I don’t know.”
By the time a third guy asks me about my very civilized dog, I have been doing some thinking. What if I could behave like this in a meeting? Or waiting my turn to impress the speaker just down from the podium? Or at the checkout when they open another checkout line?
“So far he’s got all my crust. I was just thinking, why can’t I be like this? Just stand there. They all know what I want, but I’m not rushing them. I’ll out-wait them. What would I have to lose? So far this dog is scoring Big-Time.”
He laughs. “Yeah, interesting point.”

The pie is gone. I show my admiration for his character. I let him lick the napkin clean. He parts the crumbs from the paper napkin like the aforementioned brain surgeon. I fold up the napkin, he backs up, and walks off. Game over. Just like that.
I’m a little stunned. He circles the plaza two more times in hang-out mode. I get back on my bike and roll out. There he is again at the end of the plaza, no owner in sight. Stopping to water a light pole, he then trots up the street.
He’s got tags. He’s got an owner. He looks taken care of. But he’s going slow. He’s an old dog.
But, this is no ordinary dog threatened by a dog catcher just screaming to jail anything off a leash in a county very tough on vagrants. He’s a long time local with no incidences. And knows how to score. It’s obvious. They leave him alone. Who wouldn’t?
This was a great day for a ride.
Why can’t people be like that, which includes me? Next time I’m in line for something or can’t get what I want . . .

Take Your Brain to the Gym

The Best Workout Ever Invented
On a national website where I am featured, I posted a version of this blog post last month. Apparently, the inquiries about what I wrote surprised the website creator and myself. I didn’t realize so many were interested in the organ we understand the least – our brain.
Recently, I've noticed most everyone I am aware of is confused with their view of reality right now, admitted to or not. Our return to the Age of the The Healthy Body is coming along nicely, but our ability to communicate with others seems to be in crisis. Almost every conversation I hear starts with a "sniffing" routine to establish familiar reference points like dogs on a walk . Handshakes are out, sniffs are in:
"How OLD are you?"
"Four and a half"
"Thirteen next month"
"Twenty-something"
"A certain age"
The following fifteen second Bashing Session of all those less old and more old than we are define the safe haven for the rest of the conversation. Why are we not moving past this strangeness? We have an all-out effort to move past racial, marital, gender, environmental, religious, and political bias. We're not doing well with some of these, but no one seems to be at all interested in moving past the massive walls we have built between us and others who had the unfortunate luck to be born at another time than we did.
So, what’s going on, and why? Why don't we exercise our brains so we can have healthy conversations with each other?
Many have asked me why I talk about the “new brain”. Most don’t understand why there may even be a “new brain”, and if so, is it an organ donation, new computer, or video game? Did something show up since Darwin when we weren’t looking?
Why did I think this might be of interest, only to find out the interest appears to be huge?
There are as many psychological, analytical, mythological, esoteric, mystical, religious, and spiritual interests out there as there are stars, galaxies, and asteroids in our cosmos. We've had plenty of time throughout civilizations to come up with amazing concepts about all of this.
But, here we are in a new century with new cravings for understanding the physical human machine. DNA mapping and new information about how our brain (the driver of our machine) operates has become almost more fascinating than what we eat and where we live.
I am one of those people that can’t get enough feedback about our brain. So, if I want to comment on something as gigantic as a three pound brain, maybe I should be prepared to defend myself.
There is plenty of revolutionary new science that supports the concept we came into existence wired for what reality we experience. The “tabular rasa”, or blank page of a brain from birth doesn’t get much of an audience anymore. Even atheists and theologians are thin on explanations based on conjecture, but not much science. Astrophysicists, Biocosmologists, and even NASA scientists are acknowledging our solar system is being blasted with accelerated energy from the Cosmos, which is affecting our brains as well.
In our new electronic age, our brain might also be described as an “operating system” with software we might choose to use. Version 1.1 may seem to work for some, but it doesn’t seem to be operating that well right now for others. Software updates are available, but those of us who haven’t downloaded them regularly are getting some interesting surprises in life.
Where and from what/whom would these updates be coming from? Who really knows, and why analyze it when we could just download some of those updates? Scientific instrumentation has proven we use all of our brain, not just a portion as previously assumed. Every part of our brain will light up when stimulated.
Consider the possibilities of this. If we stimulate parts of our brain by introducing new stimuli, what could we experience we haven’t yet? If this is possible, what is real or true to us now that might not be later after we stimulate the parts that are craving a little workout?

It Already Exists
Plenty of recognized authorities since the beginning of our existence believe information on everything already exists. Maybe everything is in our brain already. We are just “remembering” what we already “know”, and many of us are realizing these “updates” are critical to our survival because they trigger our remembering and “aha” moments. All we need to do is be receptive to the signal to get the message. No different than using a cell phone to get a signal from a tower. Its like missing out on the lottery because you have caller ID block. You don’t want to be bothered because you don’t approve of the messenger before you hear the message.
Many have stated the gift of these times is total recall no matter what level of awareness we came in with. But now its fast-track time, and the Universe is accelerating. We may be getting overwhelmed by new information, and recent updates might be the tune-up our brain’s hard drive needs right now.
We got comfortable knowing about the usual stuff – how much money in our bank account, names of our friends, status of our relationships, that trustworthy first-issue Mac, when to take out the garbage . . . But way down the list seems to be what we know about our brain. Part of knowing ourselves is also knowing our brain, how it evolved, and what it might be now and in the future.
So, what is a “new brain” and what is an “old brain”? The "animal" back brain (old) is our limbic system and reptilian complex (stimulated by a good portion of the video game craze). It maintained the survival of all kinds of species that apparently resulted in human species that walk upright and have a very large forehead to accommodate a very large frontal lobe.
The frontal lobe (new) blew onto the evolutionary stage in what may have been the "missing link" described by evolutionist Charles Darwin.
Bam. A newly minted “brilliant human species”, very much over-domesticated and not all that good at survival.
When our “animal” back brain was overwhelmed by this whopping frontal lobe, it became the Gatekeeper, controlling messages from the back with our personal jury verdicts and anyone else we decided had more smarts than we did, which dumbed down our ability to survive.
Carl Sagan wrote about this in his book "The Dragons of Eden", and so did R. D. Laing in "The Politics of Experience". The film “King of Hearts” was a fascinating production about incarcerated humans with misunderstood brains who were freed after an earthquake shattered their prison. They had the opportunity to act on messages from the back part of their brain and transform an entire town and everyone in it with the front part. Because they were also gifted with the ability to actualize messages from the right and left hemispheres of their frontal lobe simultaneously, the world they created without a jury is still a utopian fantasy. Our best shot at this only lasts for a week out of each year in a hostile desert environment with no water far away from juries. The Burning Man Festival continues to thrive in the thousands who carry it all out there, build a utopian city, and leave without a trace in the dust.
The frontal lobe has a right and left hemisphere, each with different “operating systems”. The left runs on logic and linear thinking software (do the math, balance your checkbook). The right runs on the perceptual and sensate present (Goodie! Sex! Cool art!), which is about as close to the back brain as we can get with our jury in place. Add the back brain to the frontal lobe with two hemispheres, and we have an operating system we are still discovering.
Dan Pink’s bestseller "A Whole New Mind" gives us hope however. Unlike the linear processing of the left side, the right side is just what we need now to multi-dimensionally manage our new reality in our new century. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, whose brain stroke took her on a journey of her own right and left brain operating systems, describes it as a “stroke of insight”.
If you want a brain journey you won’t forget, check out their videos on TED talks.
Many do not consider the brain some new evolutionary development, but a repository of information that has always been there since the Earth cooled off (or we were place here by others). Those lucid dreams some may be having could just be rememberings of past lives, or according to some like scientist Craig Venter, embedded in our DNA.
Many researchers think this accelerated cosmic energy is rewiring our brains, somewhat like a patching of frayed wires that carry bites through a ‘fat pipe” information highway, lost in translation when, like a clogged artery, the flow slows waaaay down.
The more we focus on remembering, the more we patch our wiring and open the main artery to our awareness of what we already know, as well as parts of the brain we aren’t giving attention to.
It doesn’t take science to notice young children seem to be getting smarter every minute one of them is born, but science is what it is taking to prove it. Evolution on steroids, one could call it.
This is one reason why the Head Start Program was invented decades ago before children started “elementary” schooling or what was called “kindergarten”. IQ testing was thrown out. Aptitude testing was thrown in. Out. In. Out. In. We remain so confused about what our brain is we have lost most of our kids to video games, where they can use both sides of their front brain freely without our constant interruption on which side to use. And they are way ahead of us, unless we have been paying attention to our updates and downloading them so we can keep up with them and understand what they are trying to tell us.

The New Century
The technology revolution has created an out-of-control appetite for any electronic message. Our schedule is full of social networking like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Second Life, etc. And just as fast as they are invented, they go out of favor like restaurants.
Backlash. Now the “people movement” has a mysterious urge for human vs. virtual company. We now want more enduring, results oriented, and meaningful experiences in life and with each other. And evolved human souls know this is where the route can take a sharp turn in favor of real-time social communities and networks in our favorite third dimension of the five senses and material stuff. Top-tier management in business with, as Dan Pink describes it “carrot and stick reward” has been proven to reduce productivity, not improve it. What delivers better results is self motivated, individual contribution to a mutually agreed upon goal. When this enhances the group experience, the creative and innovative pace surges.

The Multiple Dimensional Now
Do we have a choice or free will in what or how many awarenesses we choose to experience? I think we do, and science is improving on my opinion every 24 hours. Hang out in the third dimension or spend more time in the fourth, etc. where alternate realities can replace or keep company with the third. Or hang out in more than one. Similar to the movie “Back to the Future”.
Got a headache yet? Analyze this - which is more complicated and time consuming for you? Your latest computer virus attack or your latest relationship? Your choice, since I do believe we have free will and free access to multiple dimensions (again, do your science homework). You think this sounds like a video game? You’re close. Want to stitch together this and the last century seamlessly? Download updates and take you brain to the gym.
This split between a human brain reality and a virtual reality will become more polarized in the next few years, and by 2050 a new definition of "life" here on our little planet will be clearly and for some, harshly defined. The “Transhumanists” are already eager to transcend the density and appearance of their body, disease, brain limitations, dysfunctional relationships, and death, but they seem unclear what to do with the inconvenience of a human soul, it’s "imperfections", and Dang! Those feelings we stuff constantly.
I think this dissonance among our five senses and how our brain synchronizes them is causing major chaos right now.
Sure, chaos has been here since The Big Bang, but us humans seem to be raising the bar on winning and losing battles started out of chaos here on Earth.

Ethics in the Future
I don’t think this is about religion, politics, law, stem cell research, birth rights, gender rights, artificial intelligence rights (yeah, that exists too) - and so on. It’s about the struggle to comprehend the changes to our brain wiring that is occurring, and how to play nice with others that have different wiring.
Right now, computer language code writers who don’t want consensus are battling with each other. Corporate wealth and market share is at stake. And within a year, android communication devices that use a universal code language that is on a free platform (think countries without borders, language, and currency differences) will grab that wealth.
The rest of Life As We Know It may follow in the same footprint.
I think this is how hungry we all are for ending chaos. We are worn out by insisting on our way of viewing and interpreting our world, choosing our friends, and running our countries.
As a favorite lecturer of mine commented “You think you’re unhappy because your kids are dating a naturally conceived human that is a different color, religion, gender preference, etc.? Wait until they tell you they plan to marry a virtual or robotic Cyborg they created.”
When she stated that, many in the audience audibly demonstrated their shock by gasping at even a tiny possibility of this. They thought the presenter had lost her brain.
We will all need athletic, flexible, adaptable, attentive, and maybe even soul-based brains. Soon.