Unhappiness

By Richard Hart, PhD, at http://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com 22 Nov 2017

David McGilchrist’s article, 2012, The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning: Why are We so Unhappy? Kindle Edition, ISBN: 978-0-300-1902-1, explores why people are so unhappy. Again the answer is related to the bicameral brain. Right handed people do or act with the left brain. They unconsciously think with the right brain.

We do specific things. We can do without any thinking. Commands from God, a drill sergeant, or a police officer qualify. We can command ourselves by copying what others are doing. This can turn a crowd into a mob.

Or we can be introspective; using the right brain to bring into view the BIG picture and all of the ramifications of what “doing” may encompass.

The media has a good time reporting on specific “winners and losers” rather than presenting the big picture. Most people and sports teams end up losers.

Jeff gave me a neat example in money management a couple of days ago. A friend told him about asking an old Jewish gentleman about money. “You can do three things with money: spend it, save it, and invest it.” This is the big picture.

Money spent is gone. Money saved for 3-5 years buys larger things and covers unexpected expenses. Money invested for a lifetime provides a retirement. (It can take 3$ now to buy what $1 bought in 1980. Inflation encourages spending.)

Unfortunately credit cards were invented. You can now spend before you have earned. Jeff is like us; he pays off the credit card as he uses it. There is no monthly balance or bill or interest charge. He saves 1% to 2% on everything he buys. He is happy with it. A credit card balance makes one unhappy, especially if you cannot pay it off, and thus you create a self-imposed tax of around 18%.

He has split his income into the three buckets. He keeps a list of everything he spends, or plans to spend, money on. Everything. Needs come first. Everything else can wait until there is money in the spend bucket; or the savings is large enough to buy an item. Each specific item on the spend list is part of the external big picture that does not forget, as does the internal big picture. I want this now, but I see something on the list I would rather have when I have the money to buy it.

We may be unhappy in not getting something we could use a credit card for, but we can see how it fits into the big picture. We can wait. We can be happy in seeing progress. In time we may also be happy in not getting an item (My Hawaii fold-boat. I did learn to pilot an airplane).

If we operate at the level of just doing things, left-brain, there is no satisfaction; just an urge for doing more, getting more, and spending more. There is little internal satisfaction, as the left-brain is not designed to see the big picture.

We fall prey to the credit charge card, and now the loan charge card at the cash register. The cash register is morphing into a charge register.

I still believe the rule of three applies to happiness: 1. New, exciting, and different; 2. Compare; and 3. Confirm; or believe, know and understand; or learn, practice, and master. (And kids, grandkids and great grandkids.)

Happiness comes from confirming, understanding, mastery and kids. These all take time: patience.  The current culture in the USA is: doing – now -- in one act.

The November, 2017, issue of the National Geographic explores “The Search for Happiness”. Happiness is fostered in communities, “nations, communities, neighborhoods, and family households” that “give them an invisible lift, constantly nudging them into behaviors that favor long-term well-being”.

The key words here, to me, are “invisible” and “long-term”, when the first three communities are planning and controlling (Social Security and health insurance, for example). Money management is also the first factor mentioned below, and for the individual, must be very visible.

Six factors account for 75% of the potential for happiness: “strong economic growth, healthy life expectancy, quality social relationships, generosity, trust, and freedom to live the life that’s right for you. These do not come about by just “doing” something today. They may take years of carefully planned preparation.

Our brains are now set up, and our culture promotes us, to act now (left brain) and to be introspective (right brain), think about the consequences, later. This can be reversed by parenting and schooling. 

Meditation is becoming an important factor (See previous post: Radiant People). It appears to be the finishing step in brain, and mind, development from bicameral, to introspective, to optimized for the world we can now happily live in (Face Time and Face Book, for example).

Radiant People

By Richard Hart, PhD, at http://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com 21 November 2017

I first encountered “radiant people” when my wife and I became residents at Provision Living at Columbia, Missouri. Over the past two years, I have been of the opinion that these people were just lucky in picking their parents.

A new book by the two people who struggled over 40 years to make meditation a mainline scientific study adds another side to the bicameral/introspective mind story. Goleman, Daniel, and Davidson, Richard J., 2017. Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body Kindle edition. ISBN: 9780399184406

The transformation from the bicameral to the introspective mind did not require the brain to evolve (to change over a short period of time, 1,000 years). But these two people found that, as a state, it does change in as little as 5 minutes, and as a trait about 10 years. Environment affects gene expression.

The activities director has held meditation classes 2-3 times a week for the past few months. A bit of meditation is also included in chair yoga and tic chi. The difference between real and symbolic views becomes apparent: breathing into your elbow.

The first classes were puzzling. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Where am I going? Is this safe? Will I get lost and never return?

On about the fifth session, a tap on the shoulder brought me back to reality at the end of the class. So relax. Just follow the instructions. This is closely related to hypnotism and the powers of suggestion (external and internal).

The authors downplay the effect of meditation on health and promote the development of the brain (and mind) beyond our current culture and education system. A healthy fully developed brain may result in better health.

Meditation is a way of developing control over one’s attention that then increases empathy (awareness) and then doing something positive about it (compassion). This is the behavior of a radiant person!

At some point, meditation results in uncoupling of the automatic responses to observed threats. Instead of people suffering burnout or “going to pieces” with knee deep water in some areas of the December 2016 flood of the building, they can calmly see the situation for what it is and take well practiced action. 

The original flight or fight responses and the “voices from God” intercepted by the last Old Testament prophets, that served us well in the past, to get us to the present, can get us in trouble now.

The constant stream of thoughts in our minds, that each trigger an unnecessary response (that we actually do not act on), have now been found to be debilitating. We really do not need them.

[I have yet to figure out how this stream of stressful thoughts is related to the “voices from God” generated under stressful conditions in Old Testament times (and by everyone earlier in bicameral times).] 

Our fitness classes include body (strength, balance, yoga, and tai chi) and mind (meditation). Meditation results in changes in attitude and behavior.

The health effects of meditation are a bit tricky. First, meditation cannot fix the biology related to the problem. Second, the placebo effect can be as strong as the treatment effect. Any new thing that promises relief will have some effect because the patient wants to believe it will have an effect.

I have now been through several cycles of: new exercise, marked relief, and then over a month, the pain returns in the same or another place. I am now ready to explore meditation seriously without worrying about it covering up a biological problem.

Serious means to not only attend the classes but to do daily meditations. The one I have selected is easy to do. The expected result from scientific studies, not from popularized hype, Is the uncoupling of automatic responses to the stream of thoughts spontaneously generated in my mind for all 24 hours in the day.

Scientific results show that the more time spent in meditation, the more the brain develops the ability to remain on task, attention, and to not ignore everything else, but to unconsciously sort through it, just incase there is something of interest: like an eureka event, for example. This situation is also related to a positive, sharing attitude.

How to:

1.    Sit up straight to prepare for staying in that position during the meditation period (5 minutes or more).

2.    Eyes closed.

3.    Count your breaths:            in            out

        1                      2

        3             4

        5             6

        7             8

        9            10

      4.  Start over if you error in your count and when you make it to 10.

      5.  Record your meditation time.

      6.  Breath normally or hold your breath after breathing in and/or breathing out. This develops fuller, deeper, slower, breathing.

What is happening:

1.    A count error indicates that your attention to counting was distracted. A change from breathing in on an odd count rather than in on an even count indicates you were distracted without being aware of the distraction.

2.    When you can sense the counting error as it happens you are then aware of your counting of things to be counted (being aware of being aware).

3.    Repetitive counts to ten show you have good control of attention.

4.    With more practice, you can recognize stray thoughts, evaluate, and dismiss them without your body reacting to them.

5.    In time your conscious mind becomes clearer and your unconscious mind is free, even during your sleep, of stray thoughts.

6.    You can expect to be become more emphatic, compassionate, sharing, happy, and perhaps healthier: a radiant person.

This is in contrast to the white nationalist, the rage that plagues black students, and the behavior of difficult persons.

It appears that meditation is a way of extending the development of the brain beyond introspective to that “naturally” designed for how it needs to work in the current cultural environment. The remaining scientific questions are related to how much meditation is needed, what kinds, and at what age should meditation be a normal part of pubic education?

I have noticed that I am more tolerant of people and conditions here at Provision Living than I have been. That has not made me less aware or blindly accepting of  this place (We often run out of ice cream).

After 3 years since we first surveyed residential care, we need to do the survey again, primarily because of changes in our extended family and in the health care industry. Third hand tobacco smoke is still an issue.

The Cost in Lives of Learning to Use Introspective Minds

By Richard Hart, PhD, at http://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com 17 Oct 2017

“The Cost in Lives of Learning to Use Introspective Minds” is a summary of eight books that I have read and reread in the past few months. It views history as a series of memes: ideas that perpetuate themselves, as do genes in the cells of our bodies. When they confer an advantage they survive.

Our distant ancestors traveled in small groups. The dominant male ruled. The dominant male reproduced his genes. Copying the observed behavior of group members, transmitted culture.

Groups split when the environment provided the resources locally or did not provide the resources locally. Groups competed for resources. This basic behavior applies to genes and to memes.

Those that reproduce survive. There can be nothing conscious or planned about this before the bicameral mind.

The first appearance of religion has been labeled pagan: a spirit in everything, and then multiple gods.

The evolving brain developed speech: words. This provided the basis for oral traditions: memes that could “infect” anyone who knew the language independently from their genetics.

The bicameral mind is assumed to function without a sense of consciousness of what it is doing. It just does. The left brain (doing and acting) follows the commands of the right brain (whole picture) as commands (voices) from God.

This evolutionary stage of development is traced through all groups on the planet. “Thus says the Lord” in the Old Testament. This is God, not the prophet speaking. The prophet may not even understand what he is saying to people or to a scribe.

Writing was invented. Now memes could be stored and transmitted externally to the brain and mind.

Words, however, turned out to be “messy”. Their usage and meaning change over time. Written words are poor substitutes for transmitting oral traditions.

With the break down of the bicameral mind, the internal voices from God ended for most people. The prophets (the last who heard voices from God) are recorded in the Old Testament. They mourn the loss of hearing the voices.

The oldest books of the Old Testament show the bicameral mind; the more recent the introspective mind. BUT the new introspective mind came into being infected with memes from the past.

Jewish tradition seems to handle change over time more easily than Christian tradition. [Or gives that appearance in response to the additional persecution.] For me, there are the mysteries of the 10 lost tribes and the use of the words: Hebrew, Jew, and Israelite.

Christ became the word of God in the flesh, by Paul (36-68), as recorded in the New Testament. Debate over the true nature of Christ, politics, and military actions led to the split of the Catholic Church into East and West in 1054.

Introspective minds and the invention of the printing press made the scriptures available to everyone in 1517. Everyone could seek God within and without self.

The memes related to organized religion now had to compete with those related to heaven and hell being right here on earth. Improve the human condition now rather than tolerate situations imposed by theologians (purgatory for example).

Our US constitution does not include the word God. Religion is a personal matter. Religion had led to bigotry and persecution, and still does. ["Under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance in 1954 to combat the communist threat. One feared meme forced a questionable change in another meme with unforeseen consequences.]

It has taken two world wars, among religious people, killing over 100 million in the last 100 years to produce the European Union (1992) with a common currency (1999). Only after such a severe spanking have nations stopped acting as pre-schoolers. Muslims are still being killed, mostly infighting, at 100,000 per year.

Introspective minds in ancient Greece reasoned that man was the center of concern (humanism), not Gods. This meme did not compete well with the multitude of Gods in fashion at the time and later with the new Christian religion.

The introspective mind was handed the task of being responsible for mankind, once the voices of the Gods no longer commanded human affairs. It has now taken over 2,000 years to learn how to do this as the old religious memes still prevail; they have been found useful in many ways in religion, commerce, and government that often were not well suited to the health of those infected.

The environment after WW1 set up the desperate conditions that resulted in WW2. The bicameral mind (follow orders without question, remorse or quilt) resulted in the death of about 4% of the world population at the time.

The 10 Hebrew Lost Tribes reappeared as the Aryans, the pure white race of Germany! The seminaries were converted to produce the brown shirts to staff churches in just a few years. The extermination of Jews (6 million) went full speed.

The meme for a pure white race is still with us on the Missouri/Arkansas line: the Ozarks. This meme motivated Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Federal Building in Oklahoma. Desperate people use desperate means.

The fearful resistance to federal control has cost Missouri millions of dollars in grants that other states have received. Missouri is/was the last state to pass legislation to register abused drugs, for example. This year expectations are there will be more deaths from drug overdoses in Missouri than from car accidents!

On the other hand, humanism, by use of the introspective mind, is again surfacing, in part by people becoming tolerant nontheist. We no longer need to convert or kill, to suppress religious memes (unless in self-defense).

Our culture and education determine the development of each person's introspective mind. We then have the choice to use it or just function with an unquestioning copycat bicameral mind.

For me, the questioning started 70 years ago. It is only now that I have the time and the new resources that I can go from believe, to know, to understand. I can still choose to believe as well as understand. My wife, in memory care, can continue to believe.

Religion is at its best as a personal matter; shared with others of similar belief, and also tolerant of different beliefs. We need to encourage the memes for compassion, sharing and multiculturalism; and root out the memes for extreme domination that yield fragile,  non-resilient cultures that litter the past from city states to the present.

“I believed it is time, once again, to promote a national narrative of inclusion, equality, justice, and peaceful coexistence.” By Dr. Larry Brown (30 Oct 2017).

Consider: is “doing it ourselves” rather than waiting for God, perhaps God’s will? We have been given the introspective mind that is designed to do just that; just as we were given the bicameral mind earlier in preparation for taking charge.

Resources:

Brown, Larry, 13 Nov 2017, White Nationalism On The Ozark Landscape: The Rise of the Christian Identity Movement. Tucker Hall, MU, Columbia, MO. The Department of Religious Studies Religion in Missouri Lecture Series.

Brown, Larry, Fall 2017, Faith In The Face Of Tyranny: The Life, Times, and Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. MU Extension Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Brown, Larry, 30 Oct 2017, White Nationalism: New Voices with an Old Message. First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, MO (I did not attend.)

Armstrong, Karen, 2001. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, 442 pages. “Fundamentalism cannot be defeated … they tend to downplay compassion … the primary religious virtue …  At the root of fundamentalism are nihilism (the destruction of all existing political and social institutions, by acting on an impulse to destroy; my understanding), hopelessness, and despair.” page 448. This use is different from when used as a "fundamental" Christian faith. ISBN: 0-345-39169-1

Armstrong, Karen, 2006. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, 565 pages. ISBN: 978-0-385-72124-0

Armstrong, Karen, 1993. The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 460 pages. ISBN: 0-345-38456-3

Jaynes, Julian, 1990. The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind, 491 pages. ISBN: 0-618-05707-2

Kuijsten, Marcel, 2016. Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes, 312 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9790744-3-1

Cohn, James, 2014. The Minds of the Bible: Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness Kindle Edition, 78 pages. Kindle review:

Two developments in the history of the Bible are deeply related, and not merely coincidental. One is the lamentation of the loss of the experience of hearing God’s voice. The other is the rise of the language of introspection: an interiorized subjective dialogue with oneself. 

Click Kindle Edition, above, for full review. 

McGilchrist, Iain, 2012. The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning: Why are We so Unhappy? Kindle Edition.  ISBN: 978-0-300-1902-1 (What the left and right brain sees.)

Ackerman, Diane, 2004. An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, 300 pages. ISBN: 0-7432-4672-1 (Emotions and the pursuit of happiness.)

Bible, King James Version, PDF searchable.

Yet to Read:

Armstrong, Karen, 1983. The First Christian: St. Paul’s Impact on Christianity, 192 pages. Amazon

Ackerman, Diane, 2000. Deep Play Kindle Edition, 258 pages.

Goebbels, Joseph, 1999. Adolf Hitler-A Chilling Tale of Propaganda Amazon ISBN:158-279-0310

Ullrich, Volker, 2016. Hitler Ascent 1889-1939 Kindle Edition.

Neibuhr, Reinhold, 1932. Moral Man and Immoral Society. Kindle Edition. Influenced Obama and McCain.