Some Canadian researchers have gained insight into the nature of self control, and I find their conclusions fascinating. In a nutshell what they have found is that as humans, our capacity for self control is limited and shallow.

These researchers concocted an experiment where they made the subjects watch animal snuff movies, and one group was told to control their expressions and emotions, and another group was not directed in any way. Afterwards they were given a rapid colour matching test that requires a controlled response. What these researchers found is that the group that were told to suppress their emotions did poorly on the test, compared to those who simply watched the movie.

Apparently though, self control is like a muscle, and we can be trained to get more of it. Just like running a marathon might make it hard for you to walk right after it, it will have a positive effect on your overall endurance.

The interesting thing about this study implies about consumerism and addiction. In the case of consumerism, it suggests that marketers should work harder to test the limits of self control, and put people in a state of "self-control fatigue", as such people will be more prone to impulse buys. This then means that we can expect even more tests of our self control to happen as marketers use this to their advantage. The question then becomes: will we become stronger from a constant overload of self-control tests, or weaker? Sure a runner who runs every day will become stronger. But how about a runner who is forced to run all day, every day?

In the case of addiction this has all kinds of interesting implications. It means that one can work on the general case of self control through simple, measurable exercises, and then use that to apply to the task of overcoming ones object of weakness. This seems like a much stronger, and much more sustainable policy of dealing with addition, rather then through some kind of zero-tolerance style.

Finally, if self control is workable like a muscle, it means that if you work on it daily, you can increase your leel of self control. This of course, takes self control! It's a win-win proposition. Maybe in the future, I'll bblog about tools I have found that help one in such a venture.

(Source: The Futurist)

From this article in ZDNet UK:

Search giant Google has been accused of being the "biggest threat to genetic privacy" for its alleged plan to create a searchable database of genetic information.

Google was presented with an award as part of the Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy in Curitiba, Brazil, this week. The organisers allege that Google's collaboration with genomic research institute J. Craig Venter, to create a searchable online database of all the genes on the planet, is a clear example of biopiracy.

Biopiracy refers to the "monopolisation of genetic resources" according to the show's organisers. It is also defined as the unauthorised use of biological resources by organisations such as corporations, universities and governments.

So wait, by making genetic information searchable and free, suddenly they are bio-pirates? I mean, the whole concept of intellectual property applied to genetics of murkey enough. But jesus fuck, making geneic information searchable is not evil like Monsanto evil. It hardly counts as bad. Who is the J. Craig Venter institute?

The Institute’s areas of scientific focus include: genomic medicine with an emphasis on cancer genomics and human genome resequencing and analysis; environmental genomic analysis with an emphasis on microbial biodiversity, ecology, and evolution; use of molecular and genomic methods to develop biological sources of clean energy; synthetic genome development; and policy research on the ethical, legal, and economic issues associated with genomic science and technology.

Well that seems respectable.

Though, if I was big pharma/agriculture, I'd be worred about google cutting into my "intellectual property" territory.

The New Scientist has an article on how scientists are examining how Branding effects the brain.

The researchers scanned the volunteers’ brains using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect enhanced blood flow in various brain regions – the greater the flow, the greater the neural activity in those areas.

They developed a Pavlovian-type association by flashing a geometric shape on a computer screen and giving a squirt of juice into the volunteers’ mouths. However, the volunteers did not realize that they were being conditioned in this way – they were simply told to press a button to indicate on which side of the screen the shape had appeared.

The team measured how the volunteers had become conditioned by measuring their anticipation of the juice squirts following an image by measuring the dilation of their pupils.

Whoa. And the results, predictable, but interesting none-the-less:

“Stronger neural responses occur in these regions to a cue that is associated with a more preferred food,” said Doherty. “This shows that when you see a cue that is predictive of a reward, you are able to access information about your subjective preferences.”

Now that sounds like a crazy fun little test to experience. Where the hell do I sign up? I'll be a human guinea pig!

But on a serious note, the social ramifications of this kind of neuroscience are pretty staggering, and raise a few questions. How ethical is it for advertisers to utilize (and even fund) this kind of research? Do corporations have our best interests in mind when performing this research? (Yes, yes they do! Don't you know that Shreddies are an important part of this delicious breakfast?) What effect will this have on our culture? These kinds of questions are important, and to some degree, moot. Their importance should be self evident. But they are rather moot because, and I hate to be defeatist, it is already happening, and it is going to happen anyway.

We're getting into the territory here of brain hacking. What happens when we can all hack each others brains? The more we learn about the deeper structure of the brains, the more we as a culture, as a subculture or even as an individual, we will be able to hack our own, and each others, brains. In Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson hints at this kind of thing with the "metavirus". In his novel, it is a small cabal that controls the back doors into peoples brains. Is it a good thing or a bad thing if a small cabal holds this knowledge? Do we really want to know how to control, and alter the way we think? Is it too late to stuff that genii back in the bottle?

So we need to take this kind of neuroscience out of the lab-rat-ory, out of the marketing division and into the hands of "The Common Man". In fact, this is what a lot of "magick" is. Magick is auto-neuro-programming (or meta-programming) that is dressed up in symbols, mythology, spookery and kookery. It is analogous to when you are first learning how to program—or even use—a computer. You start off with only a vague understanding of what is going on; things like lambda (or the control panel) look more like incantations and alchemical symbols that perform magick, rather then an anonymous function or a method to configure how your computer works. As you get more involved you get a deeper understanding of what is going on but the symbols retain their meaning. Even though you understand that, for instance, that lambda creates an anonymous function which is really just a collection of machine instructions that blah blah blah blah blah, you don't stop using lambda to build an anonymous function. Similarly with magick. Once you figure out that invoking thoth is just a shorthand for a whole lot of complex neural activity, you still use the short-hand.

I've always thought of psychology, psychiatry and sociology as the alchemy of todays age. Neuroscience is changing these disciplines, making them more scientific. Perhaps one day we can finally start to see a bridge between, for example: Mazlows hierarchy of needs and the underlying neural action that expresses it. Maybe even we can find a bridge between a work of octerine magick and neuroscience.

DIY Brain Hacking sounds coo.

There is a great article at Anthropik titled: Shamanism is Masturbation. As a brief it talks about what Shamanism is, and contrasts it with the Neoshamanism packaged, branded and sold to our culture.

This reflects what I have been pontificating for the past while about shamanism and Buddhism (Zen in particular) in western culture. I am definitely interested in both, but I am more interested in the transplantation of the core ideas and concepts of both, and application inside of our own culture. Alan Watts has a theory that the reason why we go to other cultures as a source of inspiration is that our own stories are disjointed, and don't speak to us the way they used to. If you look at the flow of western culture it is a series of transplantations, and cultural clashes. In fact, "Western Culture" seems to me to be a concept that is completely devoid of meaning. It seems to me that we can talk about Zulu culture or Maori culture as discrete units, but western culture is a mishmash of various sub-cultures whose stories do not mesh in the slightest. A western Buddhist, a subgenius, an atheist and a fundamentalist walk into a bar one day...

There is a bit of a battle going on between the various sub-cultures in our meta-culture. First off, there are the various sub-cultures that are entrenched in their holy wars. Be it Pastafarians, Scientologists or Fundamentalist Christians, there is a real battle to find out who has the right world view. On top of all this, there is this facade-of-culture which is the primary driving force. This facade is what could be termed "Corporate Culture". It is the part of our culture that tells us to consume Starbucks Coffee in the safe confines of our H2 Hummer (or ecologically correct hybrid for that matter). This culture is based in the goal of trying to increase shareholder value, which for now means selling people as many Starbucks coffees and hybrid vehicles as they can purchase. The thing is that "Corporate Culture" holds most of the cards. They tell the stories, from The Matrix to Super Nanny, 50 Cent to Amy Grant, Ian Koonts to Danielle Steele. It is not that our cultural output has no redeeming value, but that its redeeming value is measured in how many dollars it generates, ultimately going back to shareholder value.

In this background, of course it is difficult to create your own culture. It is far easier to appropriate the culture from another source. That being said, I think it is reasonable to use another cultural source as a guide for fleshing out our own. Tibetans, Hindus, Peruvians and Native Americans all have some interesting and relevant things to say. But I think that the thing to do is to understand the gist of what they are saying, and mesh it with our own culture instead of appropriating the surface level of their beliefs and think that we are achieving something.

Discordianism is a good effort at such an attempt. It really captures the flavor of Zen but fits it into our cultural framework and context. It is also free as in beer and free as in speech. The important pieces of our culture should be freely available for anyone, especially now. If you have to pay $5000 dollars for a spiritual shaman retreat just to find your place in your community (or even find your community) something is wrong.

Not that I am advocating Discordianism. It really isn't for anyone. The Joke/Religion//Religion/Joke dichotomy is not for everyone. I personally find that there is an over-emphasis on the joke aspect, and get turned off by a lot of self styled Discordians who are busy parroting the funny aspects, without really looking at what is trying to be said. Do you really understand the law of 5s? What does it mean when everyone is a POPE? (Do I even understand these? Let me be honest, and say resoundingly... NO)

I'd really like to have something thunderous and chock full of epiphanies to close with. Some sort of pointing-of-the-way that would allow us to dig deeper then pure consumption, and get us to our spiritual roots without having to reject the very useful models of the universe that science has shown us, but I got nothing. Culture is Hard. Where is my Kleenex?

Once the internet got smaller, and I realized that no one was going to rape me; I started using my real name.

-- Shell