Ed Dowding

Proof that older = wiser:

Age at marriage for those who divorce in America:

However, proof that we don’t learn from experience:

50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce.

Source: http://www.divorcerate.org/

I’ve just been watching ‘The World According to Monsanto’. It’s pretty compelling stuff. As one of the contributors says,

“Seed is more powerful than bombs, more powerful than guns”

and given that, you’d have thought that we’d be a little more careful about what we do it.

70% of the food in the USA contains bio-engineered ingredients. They are not allowed by law to label if a product contains GM ingredients.

Monsanto has repeatedly falsified studies, bribed, and spread misinformation, sometimes even allowing their agents to masquerade as scientists to run a smear campaign against those scientists who contest their studies.

This is simply bad science.

I’m not anti-GM crops, but I do think that progressing at such speed, with such scant and ambiguous positive evidence, is dangerous folly. This is, after all, the whole world’s food supply we’re talking about.

In fact this whole documentary is basically about bad science: tailoring interpretations to achieve economic ends.  It’s worth having a watch. It’s even conveniently divided up into bite-sized 10 minute chunks.

Summary of arguments against GM crops:

• Don’t do what they say
• Tested to only very low standards, riding on a ’substantial equivalence’ test (NB this similar to how Thalidomide occured)
• Can not be contained and can thus undermine the genes of related and non-related organisms.
• Create dependency on chemical companies
• Take from the soil without putting back
• Reduce biodiversity and encourage monoculture
• Contribute to the spread of antibiotic resistance
• Genes can mutate with harmful effect
• “Sleeper” genes could be accidentally switched on and active genes could become “silent”
• They impact on birds, insects and soil biota
• Transfer of allergenic genes, triggering reactions in humans and animals
• Mixing of GM products in the food chain
• Transfer of antibiotic resistance
• Loss of farmers’ access to plant material since keeping seeds it not permitted both by legal terms, and terminator and / or traitor genes
• Intellectual property rights could slow research

Sources: ‘The World According to Monsanto’ Online For Free. | The Good Human and  http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/focus/2003/gmo8.htm

Have you noticed how if the Government is thinking of doing something, it leaks the idea into the papers, see how it goes down, and then a few days later we get a policy statement?

Were you ever told by your driving instructor that if you’re heading towards a crash, look for the gap between the obstacles not the obstacles themselves? We tend to turn towards that which we’re concentrating on.

As Orwell put it, “Myths which are believed in tend to become true.”

So I wonder if the world would be a nice place if the Bible ran backwards? And that struggling through fire and torment, we finally work our way back to Eden.

How we consider our position in time effects our outlook on life. Much like our use of language, really. More confirmation that the world is what we perceive it to be, and very little else.

As Hamlet says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html

Why it’s not OK to promote the belief in mystic forces which go against all available evidence:

I can’t see clearly what is going on, but heavy smoke is rising from the ground and a horrible stench fills the air [...]

Suddenly an old woman breaks from the crowd, screaming for mercy. Three or four people go after her, beat her and drag her back, pushing her onto – what I can now see – is a raging fire.

I was witnessing a horrific practice which appears to be on the increase in Kenya – the lynching of people accused of being witches  [...]

I later discovered that the young boy who had supposedly been bewitched, was suffering from epilepsy.

His mother had panicked when he had had an attack.

Source: BBC News – Horror of Kenya’s ‘witch’ lynchings

WWIII Propaganda

A company in Ontario has developed an Electro Physiological Frequency Xrroid (EPFX) which aims to.. well, they put it best, so:

Simply put, the EPFX / SCIO is a high-tech complementary biofeedback device that assists health practitioners find stress and energetic imbalances occurring within humans and animals. [...]

During testing, the EPFX device resonates with thousands of tissues, organs, nutrients, toxins and allergens for one hundredth of a second each, and records the degree to which the body reacts. This type of rapid testing is known as the Xrroid process. [...]

Basically, the EPFX / SCIO reveals anything that is negatively affecting health. For example, if someone has digestive trouble, the EPFX / SCIO may show that person to have had some sort of food poisoning as a child, which is causing current health issues to occur. Or if a person is chronically tired, the EPFX / SCIO could show an acupuncture energy imbalance

from Vibrancy Inc.

Sounds kind of cool! Like the scanner in Star Trek where they can diagnose what’s wrong with you from a quick once-over.

Perhaps such one-hit scanners are getting closer. Machines and dogs can detect cancer with 99% accuracy, fMRI scanners allow very detailed scanning of the body, markers can travel through us and pick up reveal superb information. But such a scanner is simply not yet scientifically possible. I mean, if it were, you’d think you’d be hearing about it from someone other than me, right?  I should at least be able to link to some pretty excited news or science website links.

This sounds kind of familiar though..ah yes:

The belief is that the energy will flow through the practitioner’s hands whenever the hands are placed on, or held near a potential recipient. Some teachings stress the importance of the practitioner’s intention or presence in this process, while others claim that the energy is drawn by the recipient’s injury to activate or enhance the natural healing processes. Going further, the belief is that the energy is “intelligent”, making diagnosis unnecessary.

Which is startlingly similar to this:

Practitioners detect minute changes in electrical resistance through the body. Changes in the resistance helps locate problems. Once an area of concern has been identified, the practitioner asks the individual specific questions about it, in order to help them eliminate the problem, and tests again to confirm that the problem’s “charge” has been dissipated and it has in fact been cleared. As the individual progresses, the focus moves from simple problems to problems of increasing complexity.

There are obvious similarities with the EPFX above. But what are these descriptions of? Well the first is Reiki, and the second is a description of the E-meter used in Scientology.

So is there any credibility to this device whatsoever? Well here’s the small print from Vibrancy:

No claims are made of the EPFX-SCIO system or its results and nothing that the SCIO Practitioner does, diagnoses or treats any illness or disease nor replaces any other treatment.

And from the from the Church of Scientology (but only after a judge made them do it):

By itself, this meter does nothing. It is solely for the guide of Ministers of the Church in Confessionals and pastoral counseling. The Electrometer is not medically or scientifically capable of improving the health or bodily function of anyone and is for religious use by students and Ministers of the Church of Scientology only.

We could ask if Reiki should come with a similar disclaimer, but this is to somewhat miss the point, because  the disclaimers are largely about the machines, not the people.

The key question is “do any of these treatments confer a net benefit, psychological or otherwise?”

We human beans have a very strong sense of identity, and we don’t much like to be wrong about things we care about. Indeed, the more we have backed something, the more we don’t like to admit error, and the angrier we are if we are proven to be wrong. (Barack Obama has used this to great effect by mobilising the masses to give money – to literallly put their money where their mouth is – in backing him. This ties them emotionally, financially, and socially (if they tell anyone) to his success, which is great because it means that he has their support for longer, and through tougher times. However it also exposes him to some pretty collosal outrage if he errs from his stated course. If you think MPs expenses have been a fiasco… I mean, they still go on about Nixon…

But I’m going off the point. The more we invest in an idea, the more we associate with it, the more we are allied to it. From Barack Obama, to the coffee house lifestyle at Starbucks, to buying a new pair of expensive trainers to get us running, to buying our own yoga mat to dedicate us to practise, we frequently symbolise our belief with cash. And the more cash we spend, the greater our adherence.

This is something that Scientology has used to great effect. If you wish to move up the ranks, you have to pay more and more.

The Church of Scientology believes in the principle of reciprocity, involving give-and-take in every human transaction. Accordingly, members are required to make donations for study courses and auditing as they move up the Bridge, the amounts increasing as higher levels are reached. Participation in higher-level courses on the Bridge may cost several thousand dollars, and Scientologists usually move up the Bridge at a rate governed by their income.

Reiki also did the same thing in its early days. Takata, the woman who took it to America from Japan, insisted that there be a fee for treatments and teachings. This was an inspired and brave piece of marketing for a new movement, especially during the free-love 1970s. But it takes its place in a long tradition of financial gestures of faith, and worked a treat at getting people to literally buy into the idea.

Reiki has now grown such a following that it has adopted a more ‘open source’ model. Fundamentally people agree that the raw materials are available for free (it is universal energy after all), but it’s ok to charge for the service, because they’re basically billing for their time.

So the more we pay, the more vested interest we have, the more our egos are allied to an outcome, the stronger our faith in the idea. So far, so simple. But what if the treatment is free? Does that make a difference?

It’s not hard to displace ‘money’ with ’social credibility’ in this process above. If one’s peers are interested in something, it resonates, it grows, and all of a sudden one feels like one really should be in on this. It starts with crazes at school – pencil cases, bouncy balls, and such; progresses up through sports and crushes, bands one likes, activities… all finding our tribe / testing self identity to find out who we are stuff we all go through.  We find a tribe we resonate with, and we adopt the modes of the tribe. (Do you think it’s just a coincidence that homosexuals are frequently so fabulously Dale Winton / Graham Norton / Alan Carr stereotypes?)

Identity is conferred as much as it is discovered.

So it is that if our peer group adopts new beliefs, we tend to go along with it. Smoking, dot-com boom investments, beliefing there’s been an increase in knife crime, thinking shoulder pads are cool, acting on doubts about the MMR vaccine, and so on.

We’re not alone. History has given us Tulipomania, the South Sea bubble, Mormonism, the penchant for wigs, witch mania, Lourdes, and fairies at the bottom of the garden. Little memes which suddenly take off because.. “well everyone else is doing it, and it seems there are benefits, and I wouldn’t like to be left out…”,  “if I’m the only one not wearing a wig to work then…” to the far more insidious “but if I don’t say ‘witch!’ then they’ll think i’m in cahoots with her!”

So it’s easy to see that you don’t need to charge money to get people to have faith in something. If there’s enough social acceptance of an idea there grows a pressure:  “hey that kind of makes sense with a few things I think” urge;  an “I want to feel like that” pull; or an “I don’t want to feel like this” push. So one  brings oneself around to take a look, and once we delve sufficiently far in… well then we have the vested interests of self identity which reinforce the position.

These are then augmented by the “thou shalt not test the Lord your God” type statements from the more organised beliefs, to the hysterically emotive “but children are dying on the streets!” cries which paralyse and drown out attempts at reason.

I would suggest that empathy / awareness, accurate language, knowledge, and reason have the tendency make things clearer, and are intrinsic goods. Can you think of an example where a position has been made worse through the application of these? (In the long run, that is. Obvously one can create short term chaos by pointing out the Emperor has no clothes, or that triple-A ratings on mortgage derivatives aren’t all their cracked up to be.)

By way of example, think of conversations you’ve had about ‘love’, and how confused some people get about it. If we were aware that other cultures have many more terms for love, and we knew that they distinguished more easily between ‘friendly and profound admiration’ and ‘pure, ideal love’ and ‘erotic love’, then how much more informed our conversations could be! How much more self-aware we could be if we had the tools to think about our relationships more effectively.

So if these lights of awareness, accurate language, knowledge, and reason allow us to better understand ourselves, our families, our friends, and our world, then anything which denies these is getting in the way.

So back to the key question: do any of these treatments confer a net benefit, psychological or otherwise?

By deliberately and knowingly bringing nothing to bear on the situation (see the self-declared disclaimers offered at the beginning) these treatments are getting in the way of other solutions which are proven to help more effectively.

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There’s plenty more to say about the viability of folk-medicine placebos, especially in treating culturally specific problems, using the right treatment for the job and so on, (ie I’m saying Reiki may have a very useful role to play) but that’s for another post.

• Power distance – The degree to which a society expects there to be differences in the levels of power. A high score suggests that there is an expectation that some individuals wield larger amounts of power than others. A low score reflects the view that all people should have equal rights.
• Uncertainty avoidance - reflects the extent to which a society accepts uncertainty and risk.
• Individualism vs. collectivism - individualism is contrasted with collectivism, and refers to the extent to which people are expected to stand up for themselves, or alternatively act predominantly as a member of the group or organization. However, recent researches have shown that high individualism may not necessarily mean low collectivism, and vice versa[citation needed]. Research indicates that the two concepts are actually unrelated. Some people and cultures might have both high individualism and high collectivism, for example. Someone who highly values duty to his or her group does not necessarily give a low priority to personal freedom and self-sufficiency
• Masculinity vs. femininity - refers to the value placed on traditionally male or female values. Male values for example include competitiveness, assertiveness, ambition, and the accumulation of wealth and material possessions.
• Long vs. short term orientation – describes a society’s “time horizon,” or the importance attached to the future versus the past and present. In long term oriented societies, thrift and perseverance are valued more; in short term oriented societies, respect for tradition and reciprocation of gifts and favors are valued more. Eastern nations tend to score especially high here, with Western nations scoring low and the less developed nations very low; China scored highest and Pakistan lowest.

via Organisational culture, Wikipedia after reading Green Mars

It’s tempting to think that DNA databases are OK, because it’s just a way of uniquely identifying someone, just like a long number which no one else has, which is intrinsically linked to you.

If you believe that, I can see why you think you may have nothing to worry about.

But the problem is that we do not know as much about DNA as we’d like to think we do.

Not only are our ideas about the uniqueness of DNA false, but also we do not know what DNA is responsible for. There have been studies claiming correlations with depression, alcoholism, and homosexuality, and now there’s a new study which shows a correlation with violent crime.

“This gene is predicting gang membership, but it’s really predicting it for the very violent gang members,” Beaver says.

from ‘Gangsta gene’ identified in US teens, 19 June 2009, New Scientist

We don’t have to look too far back in our history (uh oh), or too far in our future, to ponder what kind of rules well-meaning governments will do with this information. It would take a Government with considerably more spine than those we have seen of late to not react to a Daily Mail headline of “Government does nothing to stop violent gang members”

Read ‘6 reasons never to give up your biometric data or DNA‘

One would have thought a book on how to live a better life would be more focused on words like ‘enjoyment, love, sharing, empathy, compassion, care, reciprocity, imagination, play, Eden, Heaven on Earth, nature, wisdom, knowledge, respect, responsibility’…

Instead this suggests that the Bible is not much more than a history of a bunch of hierarchy-sensitive people living in the Middle East, and their story of maintaining a sense of identity during a land dispute.

Source