You want to get bigger muscles, right? Well I got some news, hot off the presses for you. Exercise that does very little to stress your muscular structure, will not result in much if any gains. You need to constantly strive to go beyond what seems momentarily “impossible”. Low intensity effort will not produce muscle gains. Period.

It doesn’t matter how many times you workout a week. Maximum muscle gains in minimum time, can only be achieved if you are willing to push yourself to your “momentary limit.” This is how you build muscle fast without wasting time.

The vast majority of guys who lift weights, whether they call what they do bodybuilding or not, rarely if ever workout with enough intensity to produce significant gains. Instead, they try to make up for it by slugging their way though extra exercises. Using more exercises will not produce anywhere near the muscle gains that you can get from high intensity exercise. In fact, more exercise is just a blatant waste of time. Time you should be spending, kicking back under a palm tree somewhere.

Believe it or not, most guys you will ever meet, work out too often and too long. Such training only exhausts your recovery ability, and as a result, renders muscle growth next to impossible. It will take most of them years to achieve significant muscle gains. And, that’s if they see any at all.

So we can say if you are not connected properly with your own dream life, then you are liable to develop some kind of neurotic behavior. - Marie Louise von Franz

Here’s a fascinating paradox: Most sexual dreams are not literally about sex. Instead dreams with sexual images and experiences are more often exploring creative dilemmas: the process of creating new life, connecting to our passion and creative potential. For example, a good friend who had been intending to restart her art career for years, dreamt that she was trying to make love with her ex husband but could not quite do it because he couldn’t maintain an erection. Their marriage had ended long ago and they did not have any interest in getting back together. So my friend’s dream did not have any literal connection to her waking life at all except on a symbolic level. She told me that her former husband was in fact a talented artist. Her dream used sex, the act of creating new life, to show her that she was unable to get back into her creative life because she could not maintain her passion — the “erection.”

Because our dreams speak to us through images, symbols, and metaphors in contrast to our waking world’s language, we are always in danger of reducing a dream’s meaning in order to fit it into some theory or system — linguistic containers familiar to our waking experience. Hence the danger of sealing a dream figure inside any label: the child in our dream becomes an “eternal child,” another figure becomes the “wise old man,” while male and female are labeled as “anima” and “animus,” in Jungian psychology. Or we force the dream’s feet into “archetypal” or mythological shoes, saying that dream is about your Aphrodite nature.

Our dreams relentlessly identify those essential, extraordinary qualities that make us unique and authentic individuals. At the same time, dreams are ruthless and often shocking in exposing influences from others, from society, from family, from groups, from ideologies, that threaten or block our ability to live our own lives. Any technique of dream interpretation that ignores this powerful dream dynamic is like a child playing in the shallow end of the poolsafe and secure but missing something tremendous. Here’s an example:

Julie, in her early thirties, was the office manager for a law firm, a job she put up with to “pay the bills,” a job she described as “stressful, time-consuming, and anxiety-producing.” She had graduated with a degree in English literature, planning to be a writer and possibly a poet. That dream seemed long lost and forgotten. When I first met Julie as a client in my psychotherapy practice, she was discouraged and depressed; she had lost any hope of ever returning to her passion for writing. We began working with her dreams, which quickly focused on obstacles to her creative life. Here’s one example:

I’m in front of my college, the Student Union (we called it the “Hub”). It’s winter and I’m barefoot, going to a poetry reading. I had to walk through broken glass. The poet was sixty-ish with a beard. I had sex with the poet in the Hub. A woman tells me, “He’s serious!” But I dismiss it.

Julie’s dream made sense to her immediately. Her college represented the time in her life when her excitement and determination to be a writer were like a rising sun — “one of the best times in my life,” she explained. Walking through the “broken glass” to get to the poetry reading was like “going through something nasty, mean, dangerous, a barrier,” she said. “If I imagine being that broken glass,” she continued, “someone’s been careless, dropped something — my writing?”

I asked Julie who dropped it? Recalling her cavalier dismissal in her dream, she said, “The part of me that doesn’t take poetry seriously.” Julie’s dream had shown her an enormous boulder blocking her writing, an attitude about poetry that she knew came from her parents and a society that did not value poetry or poets as a serious life’s work. She realized that she had to banish those ideas and attitudes if she were to ever follow her passion and live her own life. This dream and others gave her the courage to restart her writing.

In Julie’s dream, having sex with the poet meant connecting to her own creative spirit. Her spirit is “serious,” but her dreaming ego dismisses it. An outside attitude, like a parasite, had attached itself to her psyche. Without active effort in her waking life to rid herself of this view about poets, she would never even be able to start. Starting, taking one small step, even if only a few minutes each day, moving her hand with the pen, became her first priority. Julie carved out serious space and time for her writing, establishing her own creative space in her home, and she began to write each day. Understanding her dreams and those small steps changed her life. Her first book of poetry was soon a published reality.

Dreams want the individual life to become a creative intervention in the social order; they intend to change not only the dreamer’s life, they mean to accelerate the evolution of the human spirit and change the world we live in.

John Goldhammer, Ph.D., is a psychologist and the author of three books. “Sexual Dreams are Not What They Seem” is adapted from his most recent book: Radical Dreaming: Use Your Dreams to Change Your Life (Kensington Publishing / Citadel Press). He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Website: http://radicaldreaming.com

Body, thought, and emotion are intimately blended through complex nerve networks, and function in concert to shape our awareness. Emotions interpret, arrange, direct, and summarize information received through the five senses. They color our perception of the world and we often unconsciously react to them. They are primary and universal survival tools that permit us to experience joy, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust, or threat. Since emotions are linked to survival, they receive neurological message priority. This article will provide insight into just how our feelings and emotions impact the quality of our learning.

Are emotions and feelings the same thing? The difference is that feelings are not linked to survival. Furthermore, they are context-specific responses shaped by the environment, culture, and society. Emotions can be measured through variations in blood pressure, heart rate variability, brain-imaging techniques, and electro-dermal response. Feelings are difficult to measure. Some examples of feelings are frustration, anticipation, jealousy, cynicism, worry, and optimism. In the present context, I have reason for being particular about this distinction, though most people lump these together for convenience.

Traumatic events and enduring stress can take a toll on a person’s physical and psychological health. The memory and accompanying negative emotions of a stressful incident or condition, at any point in life, can lay dormant for years. When triggered by some later stressful event, they can evoke negative beliefs, desires, fantasies, compulsions, obsessions, addictions, or dissociation. This toxic brew can inhibit learning and memory, and generally fracture human wholeness. Unless the person feels emotionally secure, it is almost impossible for the thinking parts of the brain (neo-cortex and frontal lobes) to function effectively.

All living things are created with built-in defense mechanisms. The human version is a fight-or-flight reaction to perceived threats. Stressors, whether sudden and unexpected or consistent and ongoing, trigger this natural effect. Most people are unaware of the common causes and the long-term effects of stress.

Stress is cumulative, and the effects of substantial stress are dissipated only after a period of twelve to eighteen months. Low-level consistent stress keeps the body in a constant fight-or-flight stance. This means that the mind-body is not able to operate at maximum performance. In order to maintain this steady defense mode, energy is diverted away from both the immune system and the brain. Stress and constant fear, at any age, create a chemical imbalance, which can confuse the brain’s normal circuits.

A person’s physical and emotional well-being is closely linked to the ability to effectively act, think, and learn. Long-term exposure to threat, conflict, or humiliation will damage self-esteem and may result in a condition known as learned helplessness. This chronic defensive posture is characterized by a vortex of negative emotions, self-limiting beliefs, apathy, anxiety, fear, mistrust, immature coping behaviors, and a diminished interest and ability to process information. This state is context-specific and can be triggered over and over by contact with a certain teacher, peer, subject, building, or memory.

An unusual physiological effect occurs during emotionally-stressful conditions. As a reflex response to a threat, the eyes move peripherally so that they can monitor a greater field of vision. This makes it virtually impossible for the eyes to track across a page of writing. Enduring stress will strengthen the muscles of the outer eye, making central focus and tracking a permanent problem. A condition of traumatized children is called wall-eye where both eyes are locked in a sustained distrustful peripheral focus. This condition can be overcome through whole-brain integration exercises.

There are many theories on emotions. According to Leslie Cameron-Bandler, author of Emotional Hostage: Rescuing Your Emotional Life, it is possible to experience 421 emotions, from rage to peace of mind. Emotion is literally energy in motion. Emotions and external behavior influence one another. Behavior, whether desirable or not, is often a manifestation of our emotions. And since the mind-body is one system, the reverse is true; emotion affects physiology.

Emotions influence perception and learning. In her book, Molecules of Emotions, Dr. Candace Pert wrote:

“The brain filters our perceptions to create our ‘reality.’ The decisions about what we perceive, remember, and learn are regulated by emotion ― the interaction of peptides and receptors in the brain. At the same time, emotions are a response to this filtered reality, memories, and learning.”

Certain positive emotions and feelings act as catalysts to learning. Curiosity, appreciation, and calmness enable receptivity and inhibit resistance. High self-esteem and self-confidence boost the learning process. Our innate personality types can indicate how we are apt to deal with the range of situations that life offers, and in which environments we are most comfortable.

As George Bernard Shaw said, Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

International speaker, Dr. Brian E. Walsh, is the bestselling author of Unleashing Your Brilliance. For much of his 30-year corporate career he was involved in human resources, specifically training.

While living in the arctic, Brian studied anthropology and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), which prepared him for working with other cultures. He was then transferred to China where he served as his company’s GM.

After his return to Canada, he elected early retirement to further his earlier interest in NLP and hypnotherapy. He returned to formal study, and within four years had achieved his Ph.D. His dissertation, which focused on accelerated learning techniques, inspired his passion and his book, “Unleashing Your Brilliance”. Information is available at http://www.UnleashingBook.com

Dr. Walsh regularly conducts workshops on accelerated learning. He is a master practitioner of NLP, an acupuncture detoxification specialist, an EFT practitioner, and a clinical hypnotherapist.

Subscribe to his monthly eZine, “Enriched Learning” at http://www.UnleashingBook.com

“The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred by a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire.”

(Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of Diminishing Expectations, 1979)

“A characteristic of our times is the predominance, even in groups traditionally selective, of the mass and the vulgar. Thus, in intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualification, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable…”

(Jose Ortega y Gasset - The Revolt of the Masses, 1932)

Can Science be passionate? This question seems to sum up the life of Christopher Lasch, erstwhile a historian of culture later transmogrified into an ersatz prophet of doom and consolation, a latter day Jeremiah. Judging by his (prolific and eloquent) output, the answer is a resounding no.

There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so mainly by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and ideologies, emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes. In this sense, of (courageous) self-documentation, Mr. Lasch epitomized Narcissism, was the quintessential Narcissist, the better positioned to criticize the phenomenon.

Some “scientific” disciplines (e.g., the history of culture and History in general) are closer to art than to the rigorous (a.k.a. “exact” or “natural” or “physical” sciences). Lasch borrowed heavily from other, more established branches of knowledge without paying tribute to the original, strict meaning of concepts and terms. Such was the use that he made of “Narcissism”.

“Narcissism” is a relatively well-defined psychological term. I expound upon it elsewhere (”Malignant self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited”). The Narcissistic Personality Disorder - the acute form of pathological Narcissism - is the name given to a group of 9 symptoms (see: DSM-4). They include: a grandiose Self (illusions of grandeur coupled with an inflated, unrealistic sense of the Self), inability to empathize with the Other, the tendency to exploit and manipulate others, idealization of other people (in cycles of idealization and devaluation), rage attacks and so on. Narcissism, therefore, has a clear clinical definition, etiology and prognosis.

The use that Lasch makes of this word has nothing to do with its usage in psychopathology. True, Lasch did his best to sound “medicinal”. He spoke of “(national) malaise” and accused the American society of lack of self-awareness. But choice of words does not a coherence make.

ANALYTIC SUMMARY OF KIMBALL

Lasch was a member, by conviction, of an imaginary “Pure Left”. This turned out to be a code for an odd mixture of Marxism, religious fundamentalism, populism, Freudian analysis, conservatism and any other -ism that Lasch happened to come across. Intellectual consistency was not Lasch’s strong point, but this is excusable, even commendable in the search for Truth. What is not excusable is the passion and conviction with which Lasch imbued the advocacy of each of these consecutive and mutually exclusive ideas.

“The Culture of Narcissism - American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations” was published in the last year of the unhappy presidency of Jimmy Carter (1979). The latter endorsed the book publicly (in his famous “national malaise” speech).

The main thesis of the book is that the Americans have created a self-absorbed (though not self aware), greedy and frivolous society which depended on consumerism, demographic studies, opinion polls and Government to know and to define itself. What is the solution?

Lasch proposed a “return to basics”: self-reliance, the family, nature, the community, and the Protestant work ethic. To those who adhere, he promised an elimination of their feelings of alienation and despair.

The apparent radicalism (the pursuit of social justice and equality) was only that: apparent. The New Left was morally self-indulgent. In an Orwellian manner, liberation became tyranny and transcendence - irresponsibility. The “democratization” of education: “…has neither improved popular understanding of modern society, raised the quality of popular culture, nor reduced the gap between wealth and poverty, which remains as wide as ever. On the other hand, it has contributed to the decline of critical thought and the erosion of intellectual standards, forcing us to consider the possibility that mass education, as conservatives have argued all along, is intrinsically incompatible with the maintenance of educational standards”.

Lasch derided capitalism, consumerism and corporate America as much as he loathed the mass media, the government and even the welfare system (intended to deprive its clients of their moral responsibility and indoctrinate them as victims of social circumstance). These always remained the villains. But to this - classically leftist - list he added the New Left. He bundled the two viable alternatives in American life and discarded them both. Anyhow, capitalism’s days were numbered, a contradictory system as it was, resting on “imperialism, racism, elitism, and inhuman acts of technological destruction”. What was left except God and the Family?

Lasch was deeply anti-capitalist. He rounded up the usual suspects with the prime suspect being multinationals. To him, it wasn’t only a question of exploitation of the working masses. Capitalism acted as acid on the social and moral fabrics and made them disintegrate. Lasch adopted, at times, a theological perception of capitalism as an evil, demonic entity. Zeal usually leads to inconsistency of argumentation: Lasch claimed, for instance, that capitalism negated social and moral traditions while pandering to the lowest common denominator. There is a contradiction here: social mores and traditions are, in many cases, THE lowest common denominator. Lasch displayed a total lack of understanding of market mechanisms and the history of markets. True, markets start out as mass-oriented and entrepreneurs tend to mass- produce to cater to the needs of the newfound consumers. However, as markets evolve - they fragment. Individual nuances of tastes and preferences tend to transform the mature market from a cohesive, homogenous entity - to a loose coalition of niches. Computer aided design and production, targeted advertising, custom made products, personal services - are all the outcomes of the maturation of markets. It is where capitalism is absent that uniform mass production of goods of shoddy quality takes over. This may have been Lasch’s biggest fault: that he persistently and wrong-headedly ignored reality when it did not serve his pet theorizing. He made up his mind and did not wish to be confused by the facts. The facts are that all the alternatives to the known four models of capitalism (the Anglo-Saxon, the European, the Japanese and the Chinese) have failed miserably and have led to the very consequences that Lasch warned against… in capitalism. It is in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, that social solidarity has evaporated, that traditions were trampled upon, that religion was brutally suppressed, that pandering to the lowest common denominator was official policy, that poverty - material, intellectual and spiritual - became all pervasive, that people lost all self reliance and communities disintegrated.

There is nothing to excuse Lasch: the Wall fell in 1989. An inexpensive trip would have confronted him with the results of the alternatives to capitalism. That he failed to acknowledge his life-long misconceptions and compile the Lasch errata cum mea culpa is the sign of deep-seated intellectual dishonesty. The man was not interested in the truth. In many respects, he was a propagandist. Worse, he combined an amateurish understanding of the Economic Sciences with the fervor of a fundamentalist preacher to produce an absolutely non-scientific discourse.

Let us analyze what he regarded as the basic weakness of capitalism (in “The True and Only Heaven”, 1991): its need to increase capacity and production ad infinitum in order to sustain itself. Such a feature would have been destructive if capitalism were to operate in a closed system. The finiteness of the economic sphere would have brought capitalism to ruin. But the world is NOT a closed economic system. 80,000,000 new consumers are added annually, markets globalize, trade barriers are falling, international trade is growing three times faster than the world’s GDP and still accounts for less than 15% of it, not to mention space exploration which is at its inception. The horizon is, for all practical purposes, unlimited. The economic system is, therefore, open. Capitalism will never be defeated because it has an infinite number of consumers and markets to colonize. That is not to say that capitalism will not have its crises, even crises of over-capacity. But such crises are a part of the business cycle not of the underlying market mechanism. They are adjustment pains, the noises of growing up - not the last gasps of dying. To claim otherwise is either to deceive or to be spectacularly ignorant not only of economic fundamentals but of what is happening in the world. It is as intellectually rigorous as the “New Paradigm” which says, in effect, that the business cycle and inflation are both dead and buried.

Lasch’s argument: capitalism must forever expand if it is to exist (debatable) - hence the idea of “progress”, an ideological corollary of the drive to expand - progress transforms people into insatiable consumers (apparently, a term of abuse).

But this is to ignore the fact that people create economic doctrines (and reality, according to Marx) - not the reverse. In other words, the consumers created capitalism to help them maximize their consumption. History is littered with the remains of economic theories, which did not match the psychological makeup of the human race. There is Marxism, for instance. The best theorized, most intellectually rich and well-substantiated theory must be put to the cruel test of public opinion and of the real conditions of existence. Barbarous amounts of force and coercion need to be applied to keep people functioning under contra-human-nature ideologies such as communism. A horde of what Althusser calls Ideological State Apparatuses must be put to work to preserve the dominion of a religion, ideology, or intellectual theory which do not amply respond to the needs of the individuals that comprise society. The Socialist (more so the Marxist and the malignant version, the Communist) prescriptions were eradicated because they did not correspond to the OBJECTIVE conditions of the world. They were hermetically detached, and existed only in their mythical, contradiction-free realm (to borrow again from Althusser).

Lasch commits the double intellectual crime of disposing of the messenger AND ignoring the message: people are consumers and there is nothing we can do about it but try to present to them as wide an array as possible of goods and services. High brow and low brow have their place in capitalism because of the preservation of the principle of choice, which Lasch abhors. He presents a false predicament: he who elects progress elects meaninglessness and hopelessness. Is it better - asks Lasch sanctimoniously - to consume and live in these psychological conditions of misery and emptiness? The answer is self evident, according to him. Lasch patronizingly prefers the working class undertones commonly found in the petite bourgeois: “its moral realism, its understanding that everything has its price, its respect for limits, its skepticism about progress… sense of unlimited power conferred by science - the intoxicating prospect of man’s conquest of the natural world”.

The limits that Lasch is talking about are metaphysical, theological. Man’s rebellion against God is in question. This, in Lasch’s view, is a punishable offence. Both capitalism and science are pushing the limits, infused with the kind of hubris which the mythological Gods always chose to penalize (remember Prometheus?). What more can be said about a man that postulated that “the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy”. Some matters are better left to psychiatrists than to philosophers. There is megalomania, too: Lasch cannot grasp how could people continue to attach importance to money and other worldly goods and pursuits after his seminal works were published, denouncing materialism for what it was - a hollow illusion? The conclusion: people are ill informed, egotistical, stupid (because they succumb to the lure of consumerism offered to them by politicians and corporations).

America is in an “age of diminishing expectations” (Lasch’s). Happy people are either weak or hypocritical.

Lasch envisioned a communitarian society, one where men are self made and the State is gradually made redundant. This is a worthy vision and a vision worthy of some other era. Lasch never woke up to the realities of the late 20th century: mass populations concentrated in sprawling metropolitan areas, market failures in the provision of public goods, the gigantic tasks of introducing literacy and good health to vast swathes of the planet, an ever increasing demand for evermore goods and services. Small, self-help communities are not efficient enough to survive - though the ethical aspect is praiseworthy:

“Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state.”

“A misplaced compassion degrades both the victims, who are reduced to objects of pity, and their would-be benefactors, who find it easier to pity their fellow citizens than to hold them up to impersonal standards, attainment of which would entitle them to respect. Unfortunately, such statements do not tell the whole.”

No wonder that Lasch has been compared to Mathew Arnold who wrote:

“(culture) does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; …It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere… the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time.”

(Culture and Anarchy) - a quite elitist view.

Unfortunately, Lasch, most of the time, was no more original or observant than the average columnist:

“The mounting evidence of widespread inefficiency and corruption, the decline of American productivity, the pursuit of speculative profits at the expense of manufacturing, the deterioration of our country’s material infrastructure, the squalid conditions in our crime-rid- den cities, the alarming and disgraceful growth of poverty, and the widening disparity between poverty and wealth … growing contempt for manual labor… growing gulf between wealth and poverty… the growing insularity of the elites… growing impatience with the constraints imposed by long-term responsibilities and commitments.”

Paradoxically, Lasch was an elitist. The very person who attacked the “talking classes” (the “symbolic analysts” in Robert Reich’s less successful rendition) - freely railed against the “lowest common denominator”. True, Lasch tried to reconcile this apparent contradiction by saying that diversity does not entail low standards or selective application of criteria. This, however, tends to undermine his arguments against capitalism. In his typical, anachronistic, language:

“The latest variation on this familiar theme, its reductio ad absurdum, is that a respect for cultural diversity forbids us to impose the standards of privileged groups on the victims of oppression.” This leads to “universal incompetence” and a weakness of the spirit:

“Impersonal virtues like fortitude, workmanship, moral courage, honesty, and respect for adversaries (are rejected by the champions of diversity)… Unless we are prepared to make demands on one another, we can enjoy only the most rudimentary kind of common life… (agreed standards) are absolutely indispensable to a democratic society (because) double standards mean second-class citizenship.”

This is almost plagiarism. Allan Bloom (”The Closing of the American Mind”):

“(openness became trivial) …Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness … has rendered openness meaningless.”

Lasch: “…moral paralysis of those who value ‘openness’ above all (democracy is more than) openness and toleration… In the absence of common standards… tolerance becomes indifference.”

“Open Mind” becomes: “Empty Mind”.

Lasch observed that America has become a culture of excuses (for self and the “disadvantaged”), of protected judicial turf conquered through litigation (a.k.a. “rights”), of neglect of responsibilities. Free speech is restricted by fear of offending potential audiences. We confuse respect (which must be earned) with toleration and appreciation, discriminating judgement with indiscriminate acceptance, and turning the blind eye. Fair and well. Political correctness has indeed degenerated into moral incorrectness and plain numbness.

But why is the proper exercise of democracy dependent upon the devaluation of money and markets? Why is luxury “morally repugnant” and how can this be PROVEN rigorously, formal logically? Lasch does not opine - he informs. What he says has immediate truth-value, is non-debatable, and intolerant. Consider this passage, which came out of the pen of an intellectual tyrant:

“…the difficulty of limiting the influence of wealth suggests that wealth itself needs to be limited… a democratic society cannot allow unlimited accumulation… a moral condemnation of great wealth… backed up with effective political action… at least a rough approximation of economic equality… in the old days (Americans agreed that people should not have) far in excess of their needs.”

Lasch failed to realize that democracy and wealth formation are two sides of the SAME coin. That democracy is not likely to spring forth, nor is it likely to survive poverty or total economic equality. The confusion of the two ideas (material equality and political equality) is common: it is the result of centuries of plutocracy (only wealthy people had the right to vote, universal suffrage is very recent). The great achievement of democracy in the 20th century was to separate these two aspects: to combine egalitarian political access with an unequal distribution of wealth. Still, the existence of wealth - no matter how distributed - is a pre-condition. Without it there will never be real democracy. Wealth generates the leisure needed to obtain education and to participate in community matters. Put differently, when one is hungry - one is less prone to read Mr. Lasch, less inclined to think about civil rights, let alone exercise them.

Mr. Lasch is authoritarian and patronizing, even when he is strongly trying to convince us otherwise. The use of the phrase: “far in excess of their needs” rings of destructive envy. Worse, it rings of a dictatorship, a negation of individualism, a restriction of civil liberties, an infringement on human rights, anti-liberalism at its worst. Who is to decide what is wealth, how much of it constitutes excess, how much is “far in excess” and, above all, what are the needs of the person deemed to be in excess? Which state commissariat will do the job? Would Mr. Lasch have volunteered to phrase the guidelines and if so, which criteria would he have applied? Eighty percent (80%) of the population of the world would have considered Mr. Lasch’s wealth to be far in excess of his needs. Mr. Lasch is prone to inaccuracies. Read Alexis de Tocqueville (1835):

“I know of no country where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property… the passions that agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political but their commercial passions… They prefer the good sense which amasses large fortunes to that enterprising genius which frequently dissipates them.”

In his book: “The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy” (published posthumously in 1995) Lasch bemoans a divided society, a degraded public discourse, a social and political crisis, that is really a spiritual crisis.

The book’s title is modeled after Jose Ortega y Gasset’s “Revolt of the Masses” in which he described the forthcoming political domination of the masses as a major cultural catastrophe. The old ruling elites were the storehouses of all that’s good, including all civic virtues, he explained. The masses - warned Ortega y Gasset, prophetically - will act directly and even outside the law in what he called a hyperdemocracy. They will impose themselves on the other classes. The masses harbored a feeling of omnipotence: they had unlimited rights, history was on their side (they were “the spoiled child of human history” in his language), they were exempt from submission to superiors because they regarded themselves as the source of all authority. They faced an unlimited horizon of possibilities and they were entitled to everything at any time. Their whims, wishes and desires constituted the new law of the earth.

Lasch just ingeniously reversed the argument. The same characteristics, he said, are to be found in today’s elites, “those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate”. But they are self appointed, they represent none but themselves. The lower middle classes were much more conservative and stable than their “self appointed spokesmen and would-be liberators”. They know the limits and that there are limits, they have sound political instincts:

“…favor limits on abortion, cling to the two-parent family as a source of stability in a turbulent world, resist experiments with ‘alternative lifestyles’, and harbor deep reservations about affirmative action and other ventures in large- scale social engineering.”

And who purports to represent them? The mysterious “elite” which, as we find out, is nothing but a code word for the likes of Lasch. In Lasch’s world Armageddon is unleashed between the people and this specific elite. What about the political, military, industrial, business and other elites? Yok. What about conservative intellectuals who support what the middle classes do and “have deep reservations about affirmative action” (to quote him)? Aren’t they part of the elite? No answer. So why call it “elite” and not “liberal intellectuals”? A matter of (lack) of integrity.

The members of this fake elite are hypochondriacs, obsessed with death, narcissistic and weaklings. A scientific description based on thorough research, no doubt.

Even if such a horror-movie elite did exist - what would have been its role? Did he suggest an elite-less pluralistic, modern, technology-driven, essentially (for better or for worse) capitalistic democratic society? Others have dealt with this question seriously and sincerely: Arnold, T.S. Elliot (”Notes towards the Definition of Culture”). Reading Lasch is an absolute waste of time when compared to their studies. The man is so devoid of self-awareness (no pun intended) that he calls himself “a stern critic of nostalgia”. If there is one word with which it is possible to summarize his life’s work it is nostalgia (to a world which never existed: a world of national and local loyalties, almost no materialism, savage nobleness, communal responsibility for the Other). In short, to an Utopia compared to the dystopia that is America. The pursuit of a career and of specialized, narrow, expertise, he called a “cult” and “the antithesis of democracy”. Yet, he was a member of the “elite” which he so chastised and the publication of his tirades enlisted the work of hundreds of careerists and experts. He extolled self-reliance - but ignored the fact that it was often employed in the service of wealth formation and material accumulation. Were there two kinds of self-reliance - one to be condemned because of its results? Was there any human activity devoid of a dimension of wealth creation? Therefore, are all human activities (except those required for survival) to cease?

Lasch identified emerging elites of professionals and managers, a cognitive elite, manipulators of symbols, a threat to “real” democracy. Reich described them as trafficking in information, manipulating words and numbers for a living. They live in an abstract world in which information and expertise are valuable commodities in an international market. No wonder the privileged classes are more interested in the fate of the global system than in their neighborhood, country, or region. They are estranged, they “remove themselves from common life”. They are heavily invested in social mobility. The new meritocracy made professional advancement and the freedom to make money “the overriding goal of social policy”. They are fixated on finding opportunities and they democratize competence. This, said Lasch, betrayed the American dream!?:

“The reign of specialized expertise is the antithesis of democracy as it was understood by those who saw this country as ‘The last best hope of Earth’.”

For Lasch citizenship did not mean equal access to economic competition. It meant a shared participation in a common political dialogue (in a common life). The goal of escaping the “laboring classes” was deplorable. The real aim should be to ground the values and institutions of democracy in the inventiveness, industry, self-reliance and self-respect of workers. The “talking classes” brought the public discourse into decline. Instead of intelligently debating issues, they engaged in ideological battles, dogmatic quarrels, name-calling. The debate grew less public, more esoteric and insular. There are no “third places”, civic institutions which “promote general conversation across class lines”. So, social classes are forced to “speak to themselves in a dialect… inaccessible to outsiders”. The media establishment is more committed to “a misguided ideal of objectivity” than to context and continuity, which underlie any meaningful public discourse.

The spiritual crisis was another matter altogether. This was simply the result of over-secularization. The secular worldview is devoid of doubts and insecurities, explained Lasch. Thus, single-handedly, he eliminated modern science, which is driven by constant doubts, insecurities and questioning and by an utter lack of respect for authority, transcendental as it may be. With amazing gall, Lasch says that it was religion which provided a home for spiritual uncertainties!!!

Religion - writes Lasch - was a source of higher meaning, a repository of practical moral wisdom. Minor matters such as the suspension of curiosity, doubt and disbelief entailed by religious practice and the blood-saturated history of all religions - these are not mentioned. Why spoil a good argument?

The new elites disdain religion and are hostile to it:

“The culture of criticism is understood to rule out religious commitments… (religion) was something useful for weddings and funerals but otherwise dispensable.”

Without the benefit of a higher ethic provided by religion (for which the price of suppression of free thought is paid - SV) - the knowledge elites resort to cynicism and revert to irreverence.

“The collapse of religion, its replacement by the remorselessly critical sensibility exemplified by psychoanalysis and the degeneration of the ‘analytic attitude’ into an all out assault on ideals of every kind have left our culture in a sorry state.”

Lasch was a fanatic religious man. He would have rejected this title with vehemence. But he was the worst type: unable to commit himself to the practice while advocating its employment by others. If you asked him why was religion good, he would have waxed on concerning its good RESULTS. He said nothing about the inherent nature of religion, its tenets, its view of Mankind’s destiny, or anything else of substance. Lasch was a social engineer of the derided Marxist type: if it works, if it molds the masses, if it keeps them “in limits”, subservient - use it. Religion worked wonders in this respect. But Lasch himself was above his own laws - he even made it a point not to write God with a capital “G”, an act of outstanding “courage”. Schiller wrote about the “disenchantment of the world”, the disillusionment which accompanies secularism - a real sign of true courage, according to Nietzsche. Religion is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of those who want to make people feel good about themselves, their lives and the world, in general. Not so Lasch:

“…the spiritual discipline against self-righteousness is the very essence of religion… (anyone with) a proper understanding of religion… (would not regard it as) a source of intellectual and emotional security (but as) …a challenge to complacency and pride.”

There is no hope or consolation even in religion. It is good only for the purposes of social engineering.

OTHER WORKS

In this particular respect, Lasch has undergone a major transformation. In “The New Radicalism in America” (1965), he decried religion as a source of obfuscation.

“The religious roots of the progressive doctrine” - he wrote - were the source of “its main weakness”. These roots fostered an anti-intellectual willingness to use education “as a means of social control” rather than as a basis for enlightenment. The solution was to blend Marxism and the analytic method of Psychoanalysis (very much as Herbert Marcuse has done - q.v. “Eros and Civilization” and “One Dimensional Man”).

In an earlier work (”American Liberals and the Russian Revolution”, 1962) he criticized liberalism for seeking “painless progress towards the celestial city of consumerism”. He questioned the assumption that “men and women wish only to enjoy life with minimum effort”. The liberal illusions about the Revolution were based on a theological misconception. Communism remained irresistible for “as long as they clung to the dream of an earthly paradise from which doubt was forever banished”.

In 1973, a mere decade later, the tone is different (”The World of Nations”, 1973). The assimilation of the Mormons, he says, was “achieved by sacrificing whatever features of their doctrine or ritual were demanding or difficult… (like) the conception of a secular community organized in accordance with religious principles”.

The wheel turned a full cycle in 1991 (”The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics”). The petite bourgeois at least are “unlikely to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven”.

In “Heaven in a Heartless world” (1977) Lasch criticized the “substitution of medical and psychiatric authority for the authority of parents, priests and lawgivers”. The Progressives, he complained, identify social control with freedom. It is the traditional family - not the socialist revolution - which provides the best hope to arrest “new forms of domination”. There is latent strength in the family and in its “old fashioned middle class morality”. Thus, the decline of the family institution meant the decline of romantic love (!?) and of “transcendent ideas in general”, a typical Laschian leap of logic.

Even art and religion (”The Culture of Narcissism”, 1979), “historically the great emancipators from the prison of the Self… even sex… (lost) the power to provide an imaginative release”.

It was Schopenhauer who wrote that art is a liberating force, delivering us from our miserable, decrepit, dilapidated Selves and transforming our conditions of existence. Lasch - forever a melancholy - adopted this view enthusiastically. He supported the suicidal pessimism of Schopenhauer. But he was also wrong. Never before was there an art form more liberating than the cinema, THE art of illusion. The Internet introduced a transcendental dimension into the lives of all its users. Why is it that transcendental entities must be white-bearded, paternal and authoritarian? What is less transcendental in the Global Village, in the Information Highway or, for that matter, in Steven Spielberg?

The Left, thundered Lasch, had “chosen the wrong side in the cultural warfare between ‘Middle America’ and the educated or half educated classes, which have absorbed avant-garde ideas only to put them at the service of consumer capitalism”.

In “The Minimal Self” (1984) the insights of traditional religion remained vital as opposed to the waning moral and intellectual authority of Marx, Freud and the like. The meaningfulness of mere survival is questioned: “Self affirmation remains a possibility precisely to the degree that an older conception of personality, rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions, has persisted alongside a behavioral or therapeutic conception”. “Democratic Renewal” will be made possible through this mode of self- affirmation. The world was rendered meaningless by experiences such as Auschwitz, a “survival ethic” was the unwelcome result. But, to Lasch, Auschwitz offered “the need for a renewal of religious faith… for collective commitment to decent social conditions… (the survivors) found strength in the revealed word of an absolute, objective and omnipotent creator… not in personal ‘values’ meaningful only to themselves”. One can’t help being fascinated by the total disregard for facts displayed by Lasch, flying in the face of logotherapy and the writings of Victor Frankel, the Auschwitz survivor.

“In the history of civilization… vindictive gods give way to gods who show mercy as well and uphold the morality of loving your enemy. Such a morality has never achieved anything like general popularity, but it lives on, even in our own, enlightened age, as a reminder both of our fallen state and of our surprising capacity for gratitude, remorse and forgiveness by means of which we now and then transcend it.”

He goes on to criticize the kind of “progress” whose culmination is a “vision of men and women released from outward constraints”. Endorsing the legacies of Jonathan Edwards, Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, William James, Reinhold Niebuhr and, above all, Martin Luther King, he postulated an alternative tradition, “The Heroic Conception of Life” (an admixture of Brownson’s Catholic Radicalism and early republican lore): “…a suspicion that life was not worth living unless it was lived with ardour, energy and devotion”.

A truly democratic society will incorporate diversity and a shared commitment to it - but not as a goal unto itself. Rather as means to a “demanding, morally elevating standard of conduct”. In sum: “Political pressure for a more equitable distribution of wealth can come only from movements fired with religious purpose and a lofty conception of life”. The alternative, progressive optimism, cannot withstand adversity: “The disposition properly described as hope, trust or wonder… three names for the same state of heart and mind - asserts the goodness of life in the face of its limits. It cannot be deflated by adversity”. This disposition is brought about by religious ideas (which the Progressives discarded):

“The power and majesty of the sovereign creator of life, the inescapability of evil in the form of natural limits on human freedom, the sinfulness of man’s rebellion against those limits; the moral value of work which once signifies man’s submission to necessity and enables him to transcend it…”

Martin Luther King was a great man because “(He) also spoke the language of his own people (in addition to addressing the whole nation - SV), which incorporated their experience of hardship and exploitation, yet affirmed the rightness of a world full of unmerited hardship… (he drew strength from) a popular religious tradition whose mixture of hope and fatalism was quite alien to liberalism”.

Lasch said that this was the First deadly Sin of the civil rights movement. It insisted that racial issues be tackled “with arguments drawn from modern sociology and from the scientific refutation of social porejudice” - and not on moral (read: religious) grounds.

So, what is left to provide us with guidance? Opinion polls. Lasch failed to explain to us why he demonized this particular phenomenon. Polls are mirrors and the conduct of polls is an indication that the public (whose opinion is polled) is trying to get to know itself better. Polls are an attempt at quantified, statistical self-awareness (nor are they a modern phenomenon). Lasch should have been happy: at last proof that Americans adopted his views and decided to know themselves. To have criticized this particular instrument of “know thyself” implied that Lasch believed that he had privileged access to more information of superior quality or that he believed that his observations tower over the opinions of thousands of respondents and carry more weight. A trained observer would never have succumbed to such vanity. There is a fine line between vanity and oppression, fanaticism and the grief that is inflicted upon those that are subjected to it.

This is Lasch’s greatest error: there is an abyss between narcissism and self love, being interested in oneself and being obsessively preoccupied with oneself. Lasch confuses the two. The price of progress is growing self-awareness and with it growing pains and the pains of growing up. It is not a loss of meaning and hope - it is just that pain has a tendency to push everything to the background. Those are constructive pains, signs of adjustment and adaptation, of evolution. America has no inflated, megalomaniac, grandiose ego. It never built an overseas empire, it is made of dozens of ethnic immigrant groups, it strives to learn, to emulate. Americans do not lack empathy - they are the foremost nation of volunteers and also professes the biggest number of (tax deductible) donation makers. Americans are not exploitative - they are hard workers, fair players, Adam Smith-ian egoists. They believe in Live and Let Live. They are individualists and they believe that the individual is the source of all authority and the universal yardstick and benchmark. This is a positive philosophy. Granted, it led to inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. But then other ideologies had much worse outcomes. Luckily, they were defeated by the human spirit, the best manifestation of which is still democratic capitalism.

The clinical term “Narcissism” was abused by Lasch in his books. It joined other words mistreated by this social preacher. The respect that this man gained in his lifetime (as a social scientist and historian of culture) makes one wonder whether he was right in criticizing the shallowness and lack of intellectual rigor of American society and of its elites.

About The Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of “Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited” and the editor of mental health categories in The Open Directory, Suite101, and searcheurope.com.

His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com

Frequently asked questions regarding narcissism: http://samvak.tripod.com/faq1.html

Narcissistic Personality Disorder on Suite101: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/npd

by Susan Dunn, MA, EQ and Life Coach

What makes another person difficult? When we don’t understand where they’re coming from. They yell at us in an argument when we want to quietly reason; or they disengage when we want to talk it out. They say they want a vacation and then plan a full agenda while you it was sitting on a beach veging that you wanted. People don’t make sense. That makes them difficult.

The success of relationships depends how you deal with the other person’s “difficultness.” You can learn some action-points (when X does Y, do Z), in which case you’re basically book-bound, or you can learn how to figure out what’s going on at a deeper level, so that you can apply your knowledge to the myriad of situations you’ll be confronted with in real life that will never fit what you learned in the book or seminar, with the host of people you encounter, all of whom are difficult unless you have an identical twin.

I’ll admit I have an edge here. Not only because I study and teach emotional intelligence, but because I have an identical twin sister. Identical twins have the same genes. We tend to think of genes in terms of physical things, and IQ, but they relate to EQ as well.

We’re aware that genes determine that X can be a great basketball player. He’s over 6′ tall and athletic. Genes also allow Y to be a physicist. She’s got an IQ over 150, conceptual ability and a knack for numbers.

However, in perhaps the more important aspects of life, your personality and temperament, we’re talking about the emotional workings of the brain, or the emotional brain. The neocortex is where we think, analyze and reason, and our IQ is largely determined at birth. The limbic brain is the seat of the emotions, and if people’s IQs vary, so does their EQ - how they work emotionally. But our EQs are not set at birth; we can always develop our emotional intelligence.

Our understanding of the functioning of the brain has escalated tremendously in the past few years with the new research tools. We can’t peer into the brain and see cognitive intelligence, but we can see what happens when emotion happens in the brain. For instance, brain scans show that the emotional parts of a neglected orphan’s brain work differently than a “normal” baby’s, i.e., one that’s been well care for and had its emotional needs met.

That having been said, you aren’t likely to find someone who functions emotionally the same way you do. Close with an identical twin, but even then there are fluctuating hormones and individual past experiences (”nurture”) which influence our emotional makeup. And it’s emotion that motivates all our behavior.

So accepting that no one else works quite the way you do is the beginning. The unhappiest people I know - and I’m a coach who works with people around EQ - are those who think the world should be a certain way, the way they think is right, and that they can’t be happy until everyone does it that way, their way. It’s almost easier to be with someone insensitive and not tuned in, than the intense individual convinced they have a message for you, and you’d better listen up, right?

So what’s the same about everyone, and what’s different? We all want pleasure, and to avoid pain. The catch is, we all use different means for getting pleasure and avoiding pain, and we each define the concepts differently. That’s way to “relax,” Alison plays two sets of tennis, and Sharon goes to the day spa.

If you want to figure someone else out, then, you need to move to the meta level. We can understand “meta” better by examples than definitions. It comes from the Greek “with, after, or among.” You can see the problem already. It can also mean “change or transformation,” as in “metamorphosis,” changing shape, like the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. It also means “more comprehensive, or transcending,” and that’s what we’re after. (And in physics it means something else.)

Now in emotional intelligence, we work on applications: Learning the facts or theory, and the applying it to situations in your life non of which will ever have been covered in the lesson in class, if you know what I mean. For instance, let’s take “people want pleasure and not pain”. Why, then, does Emily spend 14 hours a day at work and then pursue a graduate school program at night and on the weekends? This would be your definition of “pain”. Emily has a different definition of “pleasure.” The plot thickens.

Here’s another example of getting it at the meta level.

Harry said when he retired he wanted to get away from it all. He retired to Comfort, Texas (great name isn’t it, and a place where many people retire), bought 12 acres of land and turned 11 of them into a natural habitat. He can see the stars at night, and hear the birds during the daytime. He putters around the house listening to music, reading, spending time on the Internet. His social life consists of his wife and occasionally his grown children. He rarely leaves his land.

Martha, too, wanted to get away from it all when she retired. She bought a house in an active retirement community in Alabama’s Gulf Coast, and bought a catamaran. She fills her days with volunteer activities, entertaining on land and on sea, daycaring her grandchildren after school, and taking commercial cruises every several months, traveling all over the world on group tours.

What’s up with that? Harry have been a primary care physician, his days filled with people, demands and crises since his medical school days. He wanted what he called “peace” - no people, nothing he had to do.

Martha had lived with someone like Harry, rather isolated as a full-time homemaker who did bookkeeping part-time from her home. She rarely saw people, and they entertained infrequently because of her husband’s demanding schedule and reclusive nature. In retirement, when her husband died, Martha wanted lots of people and activities, and getting out and going places.

They both said they wanted to get away from it all, yet one fled to exactly what the other was avoiding. The meta level would tell you they wanted to get away from - what they had been doing before. Since each “before” was different, each “after” was different. So while they were doing different particular things, at the meta-level, they were doing the same thing.

It’s the common thread. They both wanted to get away from it all, but they each had their own definition. Was it different from your definition? Each person’s definition is uniquely different; how different, you’d be surprised.

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but it’s more complex than that. Each of us lives in our own little planet, and it’s in our heads!

And by the way, if understanding what’s going on with other people doesn’t interest you, that’s a given as well. I find all the time in training EQ coaches, that some people are interested in insight and meta-cognition, while others aren’t at all. Some want only the WHAT, and not the WHY. Either route can take you to home base. However, getting the WHY allows you to navigate by the stars, while only knowing the WHAT keeps you map-bound.

It may be easier to accept that other people are different, that to accept that YOU are different. We’re all after the same thing, but our means of getting it, and the particulars of what it looks like, could hardly be more different. If you’re the kind of person who seeks to understand the “why” of other people, look to the meta level. Find the common thread.

When you see something different, ask yourself how it’s the same. And if you don’t understand at any given level, inquire. I remember planning a vacation with a friend some years ago. “And let’s not get a car,” she said. “I’m sick of all the hassle.”

At the time I had a job 20 minutes from my home where I sat at a desk all day, ate lunch in the building cafeteria, and then went home and stayed home, as my husband was on-call most of the time. It wasn’t until years later, when I took a job in marketing (which is what my friend did at the time of the vacation) and was in my car all day and night that I understood just what a hassle “a car” can be.

Now when someone asks me to take a “vacation” with them, I check it out. If I’m after Broadway shows and fancy restaurants and they want to climb mountains and wear Birkenstocks, we’re in trouble. Using your EQ means understanding the emotions that are our motivating factors and learning to work with them.

Sherlock Holmes had funny ideas. He actually believed that the brain can get full. So he ignored anything that was not part of his core business as an Investigative Consultant.

This zany character was invented by Conan-Doyle, as a failed medical student at the London Hospital who never attended the lectures unless they involved crime. Even when he has to share his lodgings with a disabled medic - Dr. Watson - in order to pay the rent, he refused to learn from him that the Moon goes around the Earth because it had nothing to do with crime.

The Conan-Doyle Holmes view of the mind is a LINEAR model. Everything takes up the same amount of space. However, I have long held the view that the mind is EXPONENTIAL in its function - that knowledge is held by association with other knowledge, and that each addition to the database multiplies the amount of knowledge gained.

Under such conditions, the space taken up would be the LOGARITHM of the entire data set. For very large repertoires of knowledge - such as an entire long life - the space-saving becomes enormous, and easily explains why we can contain it all in just a kilogramme-and-a-half (about three pounds) of grey matter. My researches into data-compression were aimed at finding ways of compressing repetitive data, such as in a machine-made poster, into the smallest possible space. I was ultimately to succeed at this, and the result can be seen at http://wehner.org/compress .

Human comprehension of comprehension itself has been growing over the last century or so. Hermann von Helmholtz studied the cochlea of the inner ear, and found that there is a basilar membrane that varies in its stiffness. High frequencies resonate at the small end of this membrane, and tickle the nerves to define the strength of high-pitched sounds. Low frequencies resonate at the wide and floppy part of the membrane at the mouth of the cochlea. The entire membrane is bathed in a damping fluid, itself in an exponential horn.

I described this in some detail in the section of my website concerning the science of the honky-tonk piano.

What is going on it that the pitch components of a sound are being pulled apart by mechanical resonance (frequency analysis). Then, in the pair of eighth cranial nerves, the components are matched up again. If the first component (the Tonic, also called Fundamental) occurs together with the second harmonic, the third and so on, then the source was just one shrill note. Otherwise, it is several sources. The ability to know this provides an important survival advantage.

However, between the two cochleas are the semicircular canals. These were once believed to provide the sense of balance - but it is not exactly so. A pilot was flying through cloud when his instruments misbehaved. He knocked his knuckles against the artificial horizon, but it continued to turn senselessly.

Then the cloud cleared, and the pilot saw that the ground was turning exactly as was the artificial horizon. He swerved the plane out of the spiral dive, and reported an air near miss.

Was he mad? No. The authorities did not send him to a psychiatrist (who deals with mad thoughts) but to a psychologist (who deals with the mechanism of the brain). The psychologist decided that whilst the plane was spinning, so was the pilot, so were his semicircular canals - and so also was the fluid within those canals.

With no differential motion between the fluid and the semicircular canals, the pilot could not be expected to feel the rotation. All pilots must fly by instrument, and ignore their feelings.

The psychologist decided that the semicircular canals measure the RATE OF CHANGE of motion. In mathematics, we speak of the DIFFERENTIAL. To regenerate the original positional information, the eighth cranial nerve pair must INTEGRATE the data from the semicircular canals.

This leads to the conundrum of the INTEGRATION CONSTANT.

Now we see why the nerves from the semicircular canals are bundled together with the nerves from the cochleas on each side. If a SOUND is heard to the left, or to the right, it will REINSTATE the exact positional information. So sound and balance work together.

In the cockpit of a plane, however, the cockpit, the pilot and the sources of noise are all moving together. It is only sound EXTERNAL to the cockpit environment that will be of use in determining absolute position.

The author was a member of the Stereoscopic Society in London when another member, Martin Wilsher, said “I have found the sixth sense, and it is not the superstitious kind”. The author had found that the sense of touch (from Aristotle`s “five senses”) has to be divided into two - into hard/soft and warm/cold. There is therefore another sense, which is that of TEMPERATURE. The author listened to Wilsher. What would this new sense be?

Martin Wilsher said that it is BALANCE, and the author`s mind flashed to thoughts about the semicircular canals. As there is an organ to detect movement, it had to be true.

The author investigated the thoughts of Aristotle, and discovered that the latter had considered that there might be a balancing sense - but as the eyes could see position, it would be redundant. It was on this basis that Aristotle rejected it.

In my study of the way in which hearing and balance are combined, I have shown the error that Aristotle made. It is hearing, not vision, that is most intimately connected with balance.

As Wilsher laid claim to the sixth sense, I will declare my own sense - temperature - to be the seventh.

Neither Martin Wilsher nor myself claims to have discovered these senses for the first time. Rather, it is a case of updating the classical literature to keep pace with modern discoveries.

What is going on in the various nerves of the brain is a process of refining, by which the data is made simpler and simpler. My 3D section describes how the visual cortex “reverse engineers” an image by extracting the colour information (the “chroma”), and finding the edges of the brightness information (of the “luma”). Data is reduced to a set of lines with their brightness and colour information.

So it is not just balance and sound, but also pictures that are simplified in readiness for comprehension.

Data streams into the brain, which compares CLUMPS of data with other clumps that have been experienced before. This is not theory. This is FACT. Indeed, the process that I discovered is so simple yet fundamental that it opens up an entire new science. This I call the (new) Calculus of Sets.

As the data flows in, the mind just has to say “OLD, OLD, OLD, NEW, OLD” and so on - in REAL TIME. That is to say, it must be recognized as it happens. There is no time to ponder.

The process I define as DIFFERATION because of its close relationship with the mathematical process of differentiation. However, the brain cannot - and does not - do mathematics. The proof of this is that we send our children to school to learn the philosophy of mathematics, and it is the philosophy that does the mathematics. Those who do not go to school - like cats and dogs - cannot do mathematics.

The brain simply MATCHES data against data by logical comparison. That is differation.

However, there is more to this. One CLUMP is matched against two old clumps or more. Thus, the size of the clump of data that can be coded grows exponentially. One recent clump might be two older clumps, which are four older still, and eight clumps that are even more old.

In 1982, Professor Noam Chomsky published his Universal Grammar. In the mind of a child, there is an awareness of things about him for which he has no name. However, with amazing speed the child will learn their names. It is as if the grammar was already there, and needed only the semantics to be attached.

Chomsky stated that the Universal Grammar is perhaps NOT GENETIC.

My research with simple exponential data-compression programs showed that even a few hundred bytes of code will do this. My programs found a sine wave, the edge of a picture, a row of pixels and so on.

There was not a single GENE, nor even a NUCLEOTIDE in the entire program.

I was beginning to understand how an ant can know that it is an ant. The simple compound eye has few pixels, but they are checked against each other to find a simplification. That simplification is then compared by differation with past experiences. In an ant-hill, swarming with ants, the formic mind becomes so swamped with ant data that eventually it cannot avoid knowing it is an ant.

A puppy is born with its eyes closed. Watch closely, however, and you will see its RNM sleep. That is like the REM sleep of humans. It is Rapid Nose Movement.

Clumps of smell-data enter the mind. Just as a human child may say “Look, Daddy, Car”, and then again, “Look, Daddy, Car”, so the puppy is noticing a smell, and then another smell.

Everything to the newborn is new, so the differation process has few “OLD”s and many “NEW”s. The canine mind is learning to build a repertoire of smell-recognition, which becomes the BASIS of its mind.

After a while, the ears begin to move. The puppy is associating SOUND with the smells. Finally, the eyes open, and IMAGES become differated in conjunction with the other senses.

So the canine mind has vision put on top of hearing put on top of smell. The fundamental preoccupation of a lifetime - the canine interest in smells - has been laid down.

And birds? Often, when hatched, they have closed eyes. However, the sense of smell comes from tiny nose-holes just above the beak. It is the sense of HEARING that is important to birds.

Why? Because of BALANCE. Having learned to recogise absolute position, and to link the rate-of-change of position to it, the bird has built a BALANCING psychology as needed for flight. Then the eyes open, and the bird relates all that it sees to the prepared sense of balance.

Bees need to recognize patterns, such as the shapes of flowers. Recent research showed that when a photograph of a certain human face has a drop of sugar-water attached at one corner, the bee will hover in front of a series of human-face images, trying to decide whether the pattern is the one that has the sugar-reward. There was a high rate of success with this apian human-face recognition, and still much better that 50-50 after two days.

So the system of awareness is to look at clumps of past data in the memory. Clumps are clumped with other clumps, to see if they match the incoming data. If they do, only a single pointer is needed to the superclump.

The subconscious mind is that part of the brain where the data is thrown once it has been recogized. The conscious mind is the point of comparison of the real-time data inflow with the stored clumps in the subconscious.

The Universal Grammar grows out of data-clumping, and is automatic. It needs no special apparatus, so even the simple brains of ants and bees can build a grammar of nouns from the environment, against which to recognise their world.

The earliest data-clumps are the foundation of the psychology. The sequence in which the senses open up determines the data-awareness priorities of the animal.

Experiments with homing pigeons showed that they get lost when a magnet is strapped to the neck. It seems that pigeons at least, and probably other birds, have an eighth sense - a sense of magnetism.

Experiments with ants show that when a large sheet of polarizing film is held above them, and slowly turned, the ants turn in the same direction and get lost. It seems that ants, and probably other insects, have a sense of the polarization of light.

Such is the abundant variety of Nature`s tricks.

Charles Douglas Wehner

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references:

http://www.wehner.org/3d/towne/

Hermann von Helmholtz “Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage fuer die Theorie der Musik”, 1863, 1870.

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/051209_beesfrm.htm

http://www.wehner.org/compress

http://www.chomsky.info

Remember the Labour of Hercules involving the Hydra. As Hercules chopped off one head with his sword another 3 grew back in its place.

As Hercules chopped off the head, he cauterised it with the Sacred Fire, and thus the heads grew no more. This is the secret of many ancient meditations.

The Hydra symbolises the mind. Its heads the many thoughts we have which need to be dissipated through meditation.

To Stop The Mind, We Must Defeat The Hydra and more, cauterize the head with the sacred fire. The Fast And Speedy Way To Enlightenment!

Excerpt from the E-Book -The Energy Enhancement Book, available by download. This technique of Energy Circulation and Grounding is referred to in the 12 Labours of Hercules.

Ancient teachings taught now in many different cultures, here in the form of a mythical stories, thousands of years old, which enable “The Son (Hercules) of God (Zeus or Deus)” to get married to the daughter of the king of the underworld.

To integrate the Crown Chakra with the Base Chakra or how to become enlightened. All ancient myths refer to hidden levels of meditation. For example, Freud learned much from the Myths of Oedipus and Electra.

Throughout history, simple stories and symbols containing many levels of meaning have usually not been destroyed by the prevalent Religion as have been the competing religions temples and texts. In particular The Herculean Labour of the cleaning of the Augean stables refers to the cleaning of the Base Chakra with a River of Energy. The Fifth labour of Hercules.

This Labour of Hercules involving the Hydra. As Hercules chopped off one head with his sword another 2 grew back in its place. The Hydra symbolises the mind. Its heads the many thoughts we have which need to be dissipated. To stop the mind. To Stop the World!! The Dragon/Hydra always Symbolises Kundalini Energy.

The method of Energy Circulation is an ancient and hidden technique preserved in Taoism and Hindu Kundalini Kriyas.

It is the most gentle and effective tool for all those who want to increase their energy, their evolution, their genius.

The same energy circulation meditation… Ancient Egyptian spiritual technology - The Alchemical Meditations of Hermes Trismegistus from the Emerald tablet or from the Alchemical Sufi Dun Nun, the Egyptian, he who took, “The Path of Blame” symbolized by the Sufi Naqsbandi Fountain at the Alhambra at Granada in Spain.

The same meditation… The Five Elemental Paths of the Qi of Chinese Alchemical Taoism and the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbits symbolized in the Yin Yang Symbol.

The same meditation,… “The point from which a Man cannot err.” .. From the Freemasonic ritual creating the Master Mason and the “Entry into the Crypt” of the Royal Arch.

The same energy circulation meditation… “With This Technique, Your Evolution Will Increase With Every Energy Revolution To Create A Revolution In Your Evolution.” - Paramahamsa Yogananda On The Kriyas Of Kundalini of India, of Kriya Yoga, of Babaji, the 2000 years old sage in the Himalayas, of Sri Yukteswar and Lahira Mahasaya.

The Energy Enhancement Apprentice Level One Course - Gaining More Energy - Meditation, Shaktipat, Energy Circulation, The Kundalini Kriyas, The Five Elemental Paths Of The Chi Of Chinese Alchemical Taoism, The Grounding Of Negative Energies, V.I.T.R.I.O.L, The Art Card Of The Thoth Tarot, Access To Kundalini Energy, Strong Psychic Protection, Learn The Merkaba, Pyramid Protection, Power Tower Protection, Create The Antahkarana, Soul Fusion, Monadic Infusion, Logos Infusion. The Painless Removal Of Stress, Trauma And Negative Emotion.

Fear of the unknown is a very universal fear. Fear of the unknown hospital is a very universal fear among the mentally ill. Actually, many people have a fear of hospitals even if they are not mentally ill. Even without a harrowing experience, most people don’t view the hospital as somewhere they want to visit, unless they’re there to visit another patient. Add to that the horror stories of generations gone by and the imagination of Hollywood and it’s amazing that the psychiatric hospitals have any voluntary patients at all to treat.

Fortunately, times have changed and so have most hospital environments. Sure, a few archaic practices still exist, as do a few unenlightened doctors, but the overall philosophy of confining patients to a hospital for years, or even a lifetime, has evolved into a philosophy of helping patients become productive members of society. The concept of transforming the mentally ill into productive, functioning members of society is not a new one but actual implementation really only began in the 1960’s. Today, with the limits most insurance companies impose, treatment is often limited to a few weeks of in-patient hospitalization per year. Hospital staff and the psychiatrists must medicate, educate and reintegrate patients back into the community in the quickest manner possible.

Now, the hospital itself is usually not the root of our fear. Who’s afraid of four walls, some worn out furniture, old magazines and games, maybe a television, a community phone and a counter that the staff gathers behind? For me, the fear was being confined to a place and not being allowed to leave when I was ready. The locked doors and windows can easily bring on a panic attack in even the calmest of sane folks, no less the mentally ill. For some, the fear of being away from family and friends makes the hair on the back of their necks stand up. For others it’s the reaction of family, friends or even co-workers that makes them nauseous. Some fear the loss of a job. Some fear the social stigma that still exists in the smallest of minds in cities and towns across the nation. Whatever the fear is, it will not subside until it is confronted head on and beaten into oblivion with the facts.

Each hospital has its own unique procedures and funny rules, but some guidelines seem to be consistent from place to place. Even though I’ve only been hospitalized three times, you hear all the stories about other places from the patients who are comparing notes. The following is a list of things that I have seen firsthand and have heard others mention as well.

* Absolutely no “Sharps” except the few things allowed which remain locked up and can be checked out during an appointed time. “Sharps” are: razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, shampoo, comb, brush, blow dryer, curling iron (if allowed), soap, make up, lotion, glasses, contact solution, etc. Perfume, after-shave, scissors, tweezers, etc. are not allowed. If the substance abuse program is part of the unit, some facilities will not allow any products with alcohol.

* Clothing is a whole issue in itself. Some only allow a certain number of pairs of underwear and socks. They require that you wear a bra if you are a woman, but some will not allow the under wire type (unless you are like me and they don’t make my size without an under wire). You must have sleeping attire that consists of a top and bottoms. You are usually not allowed in the common areas in your sleeping attire. By the way, no shorts or sweats with a draw string. I’ve heard some places don’t allow shoelaces either. No ripped or holey clothing either.

* The first day and night you are usually on what is referred to as “SPs” (Suicide Precaution). This means that someone must check on your whereabouts every ten to fifteen minutes to make sure you aren’t trying to end your life prematurely. They do this while you are trying to sleep too, which usually wakes you since you are too scared to get any decent sleep the first night. As long as you remain on SPs, you cannot check out your sharps alone. One of the staff must be with you while you are brushing your teeth, taking your shower and doing your hair. Facilities that have a separate cafeteria area will keep you confined to the unit for meals as well. The psychiatrist takes you off SPs as soon as they are sure you won’t be stealing anyone’s shoelaces to inflict bodily harm on yourself.

* Smoking is a considerable issue for some patients. Some facilities do not allow smoking and some have a designated enclosed area. Even though I’m not a smoker, I enjoyed being able to go outside into the little enclosed courtyard and see the sunshine or the stars and hear the birds chirping. Plus, the smokers always had all the scuttlebutt from the unit. It was also interesting to hear the ravings of the patients who were experiencing psychosis and they always seemed to come outside and share their latest vision or message from God.

* The community phone is always an interesting situation. One unit I was on had two phones but that seems to be rare. Usually there is a time limit on phone calls and one person who always seems to abuse it. The phones usually allow calls in as well as out. During the day when there is therapy or classes being conducted the phone will most likely be taken off the hook. And just so you know, the staff does not take messages!

* Speaking of therapy and education…it seems to vary tremendously from unit to unit and from facility to facility. The first hospital I was in provided only the very basic information. It was so elementary that a 7-year-old would have been a capable instructor. The second hospital I was in about two years later was far more advanced with their program. They had numerous therapists, verses only one like the first facility. They taught useful things like coping skills and effective anger management. They promoted group discussion, unlike the first hospital that merely lectured to you until you nodded off from the drone of their voice.

* Eat, drink, eat some more and be merry! That seems to be an overall philosophy among the psychiatric community in general. If they’re mentally ill give them all the food they can eat and don’t be chintzy on the drinks (non-alcoholic, of course). The units I’ve been on have always had really good food as well, so you wanted to eat. One unit had a great salad bar. They both had a refrigerator that was stocked with juice, milk, chocolate milk, jello, pudding, fruit and some sandwiches. There was also a microwave and plenty of popcorn and instant soup. They also stocked those cereals that come in their own bowl. So, not only do most of the meds make you hungry, they supplied enough sustenance to outgrow your clothes while you were there. They also keep track of how much you eat, although you won’t see them doing it openly. I think it’s kept under wraps for the most part, although I cannot imagine why.

* On to the issue of medication. Most of your conflicts seem to be centered in this area. There are patients who refuse to take the prescribed meds. You have the right to do this, although I personally don’t suggest it if you want to get better and get out.

Overall, I felt like I was at camp. I’ve been somewhat lucky in the fact that all of my hospitalizations were positive experiences. I went in wacky and came out with a corrected medicine regime and a renewed attitude towards life. Of course, I’ve never gone in against my will and I’ve always been one to follow the rules. Each patient has a choice about the attitude they adopt when it comes to being hospitalized. You can choose to learn something during the course of treatment or you can close yourself off to anything positive, convinced that you won’t get better. I realize it’s tough to be positive sometimes, especially during an episode of depression, and some people are natural pessimists. The course of recovery is up to us as well. There isn’t a cure for mental illness yet.

Maybe someday soon there will be a cure or at least a more exact method of prescribing medications. Until then, if you have a mental illness you owe it to yourself to fight, to the best of your ability, to increase your control over your disability. This means finding a competent psychiatrist with knowledge of your illness to treat you and administer your medications. It means going to therapy and changing your flawed ideas of life and its many challenges. It means reading, investigating, asking questions, building a strong support network, making changes, taking courses, talking and yes, it means enduring a stay at the hospital, if that’s what it takes.

Terry J. Coyier is a 37-year-old college student studying for an Associates of Applied Sciences degree. She is also a freelance writer who writes about bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. Terry was diagnosed with bipolar ten years ago. She lives with her son in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex. Terry is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers and her personal portfolio can be viewed here.

Depression can be a matter of life and death, so help from others is of vital importance. Since depression affects millions of people each year, chances are you may know someone who suffers from this terrible illness.

Helping someone with severe depression can be frustrating at times. Many depressed people don’t want to be helped. It’s as if they feel they can benefit from being depressed because no one expects anything from them. Some even go as far as to feel that being depressed is easier than dealing with life’s problems and trying to improve them. It’s important to realize however, that not ALL people who suffer from Depression feel this way.

Many people suffer from depression needlessly all because they won’t consult with a Doctor. If you know someone like this it’s important that you do what you can to convince them to seek professional care. Let them know that you care and just want to make sure that they are okay. Sometimes if the person won’t take the initiative, you may have to make the appointment for them and make sure they get there. Be kind but at the same time, be firm. Helping a friend or relative who suffers from Depression is no easy task, but it can be lifesaving. At times, just knowing you care makes all the difference in the world.

Many people who suffer from Depression feel like they are a burden not only to their family and friends, but also to themselves because they feel as if they are helpless and can’t get past their depression. Some even feel ashamed and humiliated. So, instead of getting help, they isolate themselves some more and in turn drift further and further away.

In order to help a person who suffers from Depression, you first need to have empathy for that person. In other words, try to identify emotionally with them. Be sensitive to their feelings and realize that they really are in emotional pain. What they are feeling is real so try to be understanding. NEVER ever tell a depressed person to ’snap out of it.’ This simply cannot be done.

Other ways to help a depressed person may be to encourage them to talk. You never want them to keep everything bottled up inside them. Avoid judgemental and critical critical comments. Remember, most depression sufferers have very low self-esteem, so try to restore it by reasoning with them. Ask them why they feel the way they do and really LISTEN when they talk. By showing them this attention you are showing them that you have a genuine interest in wanting to help.

If you are married to someone who suffers from Depression don’t automatically assume that you are the cause of the depression. Depression isn’t ALWAYS caused by a bad marriage. However, it can be brought on by friction, guilt or a strained or isolated relationship. Always remember that if you are married to someone who suffers from depression and they lash out at you, don’t take it personal. Remember the emotional pain they are in. Also remember that in most cases, YOU are not the one they’re mad at. Remembering this can help you respond to them in a mild way.

If it’s your wife that suffers from depression, take the initiative by helping cook and clean. If there are kids in the family, help by tending to them instead of your wife having to do it. By doing this you are helping in more ways than you know.

So, if you know someone who suffers from Depression, always be patient, show empathy and assist them in any way you can. Be encouraging and let them know you are thinking about them and you care. Send them a letter or card in the mail. Give them a call on the phone, or better yet, pay them a visit, even if it’s for a little while. All these little things can mean the world to a person who is depressed. Don’t expect someone with depression to get well overnight. It can be a slow process at times. So the best thing to do is to try to prevent it.

If you suffer from Depression and want to prevent or fight it, start by getting plenty of exercise, get proper rest and eat a well balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables. Avoid the ‘depressing foods’ like chocolate, caffeine or other sugars. Don’t build your sense of worth on the love of others, on money, power or your job. Avoid drugs and too much alcohol. Always do the best you can but don’t try to be perfect. There is no such thing. And the number one thing you have to remember is to recognize the early symptoms of depression and seek help immediately. By doing these things you can have more success in conquering your depression.

For more information on depression visit Anna’s Depression Website at: www.depressionadviceonline.com/index.html or visit her Depression Blog which contains helpful articles that are updated daily: depressionadviceonline.blogspot.com/.

Baldness in guys affects 7 million in the UK, the most common sort of baldness is genetic male pattern hair loss. The baldness can start as very young as 21 and develop emotional distress. Discover the latest hair loss techniques from Carl Howell from Advanced Hair Studio, home to hair restoration.

Hair loss is frequently genetic and can often hit gents as well as females. The hair loss appears due to the hair follicles on the head getting smaller and the hair strands falling out altogether. Baldness regularly follows a balding pattern around the hair line and furthermore at the middle of your head.

Hair loss is not a deadly disease and does not directly affect your actual health, although your emotional health will often become affected through the stress of the loss.

There are three wonderful big league treatment methods for loss of hair, Minoxidil, Finasteride and Strand by Strand from Advanced Hair Studio. The first big league treatment is a topical lotion that goes on the head and can be bought from hair loss clinics. The hair loss treatment Minoxidil works through slowing the speed of baldness, simply fantastic. Finasteride works by minimising the conversion of the hair loss hormone. The terrific Strand by Strand hair restoration method from Advanced Hair Studio, also known as AHS, uses the very latest hair loss medical technology and involves new hair regrowth growing on the head strand by strand over a short time. With both the Minoxidil and Finasteride treatments they need to be consistently applied and taken for the effects to keep working.