Tag Archives: fear

Even imaginary monsters get bigger if you feed them

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Public domain image sourced from Wikipedia

Public domain image of Epictetus, sourced from Wikipedia

There’s a story about Epictetus infuriating a member of the Roman gentry by asking, “Are you free?”

 

(Background for those not into Greek and Roman philosophy. Epictetus was a Roman slave who gained his freedom to become one of the preeminent teachers of stoicism. Stoicism is a philosophy that tells us that it’s worthless to get tied up in emotional knots over what will, won’t, or has happened in life. For Stoics, there are two kinds of events. Those one can do something about and those that one can’t. If an event is of the former variety, one should put all of one’s energy into doing what one can to achieve a preferable (and virtuous) outcome. If an event is of the latter variety, it’s still a waste of energy to get caught up in emotional turbulence. Take what comes and accept the fact that you had no ability to make events happen otherwise.)

 

To the man insulted by Epictetus, his freedom was self-evident. He owned land. He could cast a vote. He gave orders to slaves and laborers, and not the other way around. What more could one offer as proof of one’s freedom? Of course, he missed Epictetus’s point. The question wasn’t whether the man was free from external oppressors, but whether he was free from his own fears? Was he locked into behavior because he didn’t have the courage to do otherwise?

 

I recently picked up a book on dream yoga by a Tibetan Lama, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Lucid dreaming has been one of my goals as of late. I wasn’t expecting to learn anything new about practices to facilitate lucid dreaming because I’ve been reading quite a bit about the science, recently. I just thought that it would be interesting to see how the Tibetan approach to lucid dreaming maps to that of modern-day psychology. Tibetan Buddhists are–after all–the acknowledged masters of dream yoga, and have a long history of it. Furthermore, I’ve been doing research about the science behind “old school” approaches to mind-body development, lately. At any rate, it turns out that there were several new preparatory practices that I picked up and have begun to experiment with, and one of them is relevant to this discussion.

 

This will sound a little new-agey at first, but when you think it out it makes sense. The exercise is to acknowledge the dream-like quality of one’s emotionally charged thoughts during waking life. Consider an example: You’re driving to an important meeting. You hit a couple long red lights. You begin to think about how, if you keep hitting only red lights, you’re going to be late and it’s going to look bad to your boss or client. As you think about this you begin to get anxious.  But there is no more reality in the source of your fear than there is when you see a monster in your dreams. There’s a potentiality, not a reality. Both the inevitability of being late and the monster are projections of your mind, and yet tangible physiological responses are triggered (i.e. heart rate up, digestion interfered with, etc.) It should be noted the anxiety isn’t without purpose. It’s designed to kick you into planning mode, to plan for the worst-case scenario. Cumulatively, one can get caught up in a web of stress that has a negative impact on one’s health and quality of life.  For most people, when they arrive on time, they forget all about their anxiety and their bodily systems will return to the status quo, until the next time (which might be almost immediately.) Some few will obsess about the “close call” and how they should have planned better, going full-tilt into a stress spiral.

 

Mind states have consequences, whether or not they’re based in reality. I’ve always been befuddled by something I read about Ernest Hemingway. He’d won a Nobel Prize for Literature and was universally regarded as one of the masters of American literature, but he committed suicide because he feared he’d never be able to produce works on the level that he’d written as a younger man. There seems to be more to it than that. Many others managed to comfortably rest on their laurels when writing became hard[er]–including writers with much less distinguished careers.  The monster may be imaginary, but if you feed it, it still gets bigger.

 

As you go about your day, try to notice your day-dreams, mental wanderings, and the emotional states they suggest. You might be surprised to find how many of them have little basis in reality. They are waking dreams.

An Unusual International Yoga Day Post: or, Dream Yoga and Fear Management

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"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" by Francisco Goya

“The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” by Francisco Goya

I awoke exuberant that I’d achieved lucidity in my dream and that I’d apparently slain a nasty character (picture Hans Gruber on a bad day)–a task that had seemed impossible before my eureka of “I’m lucid!” Only my exuberance was short-lived when I realized that Hans was also me. Do you have the courage to talk it out with your dream world nemesis instead of reacting from fear?

I was thinking that I should do a post on yoga for International Yoga Day (June 21st), but what to write about? My answer came in the wee hours of the morning when I had a minor breakthrough in lucid dreaming–also known as, dream yoga. I know this seems like a stretch because, despite “yoga” being right there in the name, this practice is much more firmly associated with Tibetan Buddhism than Hatha Yoga. But my last couple yoga posts (which were a while back on my experience with RYT300 teacher’s training and teaching a Yoga Kid’s Camp) were fairly conventional, so I’m due one that’s out there. Furthermore, I promise to try to make clear the relevance of dream yoga to my hatha yoga practice. (If you read the aforementioned posts, you’ll see that the theme of freeing oneself by managing one’s fears and anxieties is a recurring theme across all these posts. And that is the crux of the relevance of lucid dreaming to unifying mind, body, and breath [i.e. yoga.])

 

What is lucid dreaming? It’s becoming aware that one is in a dream as one is dreaming. One can then exert influence over the course of the dream. Maybe half of you have had this experience at some point in your lives, and so what I’m saying will not seem far-fetched. For those who don’t actively practice lucid dreaming, it’s much more common among the young, so maybe you had such dreams as an adolescent but don’t have them anymore.

For the other half, the whole idea may seem like poppy-cock. I could easily have been such a doubter. Without following a practice, I almost never remember dreams–let alone dreaming lucidly. At best, I get disappearing fragments of dreams that are ephemeral and hazy. I’m one of those people who might claim that he virtually never dreams, except that I read the science, which suggests that each of us dreams every night that we sleep long enough to cycle through REM (rapid eye movement) mode (and commonly 4 or 5 times a night.) We just don’t recollect these dreams. [However, I have had lucid dreams on rare occasions, and so my skepticism on the subject was curbed.]

 

Why do I practice dream yoga? While it wasn’t part of my formal hatha yoga training, dream yoga isn’t as far removed as one might think. I have been trained in yoga nidra (yoga sleep), which is an exercise that takes place in a hypnagogic state (on the edge between waking and falling asleep.) Commonly, yoga nidra is used as a deep relaxation exercise, but it can also help one to access the subconscious (as is reflected in repeating a sankalpa [a resolution] in the yoga nidra state.) Lucid dreaming is another approach to assessing the subconscious in order to see what’s going on in there and to try to make changes as necessary. Curiosity about the subconscious mind and its–largely unseen–influence on my daily life is what drew me to dream yoga. It’s just another aspect of knowing oneself and trying to expand one’s capacities of mind and body.

 

How does one practice dream yoga? Hardcore practitioners set alarms to wake themselves up when they think they’ll be in REM sleep. This, as I understand it, helps them reconnect with the dream when they drift back and greatly speeds the process. As I sleep with a wife who would clobber me with a brick if I set alarms for random times in the middle of the night, I’m not among those hardcore. My practice consists of three main aspects. First, I make resolutions to remember my dreams and to dream lucidly as I’m drifting off to sleep. Second, when I’m not making said resolutions, I try to just observe the subconsciously generated imagery that pops up as a witness–rather than letting my conscious mind go into its preferred mode of planning for an uncertain future. [One can tell the difference because the subconscious images don’t make a lick of sense, and–for me–are devoid of any verbal/language element–i.e. it’s all imagery.]  Finally, I keep a journal in which I record any dreams or fragments that I can recall–sometimes with drawings to supplement the text (though my artisticness is lacking, to say the least.) The first and last of these are among the most common recommendations one will hear from experts.

I should point out that there are a number of books on the subject by individuals much more qualified than I. Said books give detailed guidance into how one can begin one’s own practice. One that I recently finished reading and would recommend is Charlie Morley’s “Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide to Becoming Conscious in Your Dreams.”  At some point, I’ll post a review of that book. Also, there is “Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction” by J. Allan Hobson, which I have reviewed.

 

As I wrote up the entry in my dream journal, I made a resolution to stop attacking the “bad guys” in my dreams and to try to understand them. Note: I don’t recommend this approach for dealing with real world axe-wielding maniacs, but I highly recommend giving it a try in one’s dreams.

 

Sweet dreams.

What RYT300 Taught Me About Fear

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I recently completed the RYT300 course at Amrutha Bindu Yoga to obtain my RYT500 yoga teacher certification. (i.e. The 200 hour course–which I completed a couple years ago–plus the 300 hour course are the primary requirements for the 500 hour certification.) The essay below is about one of the key lessons I learned in this phase of training.

 

I walked through the streets of Bengaluru barefoot and with not so much as a 5 rupee coin in my pocket. [If your response to that is “big whoop,” you probably live somewhere like Singapore, Helsinki, Kobe, or Calgary where the streets are immaculate and the rats aren’t so bold. If you’re familiar with what goes on in and near the streets in India, you may be wondering what the hell is wrong with me.]  It was an unconventional teaching tactic to be sure, but it ranks among the most valuable lessons of the training—surpassing no small revelations about postural alignment, pranayama methods, bandha technique, physiology, and yogic philosophy. It was even up there with the experience of advanced shatkarma (cleansing practices) that were completely new to me.

 

What’s the lesson?  If you’re going to teach yoga–particularly at the intermediate / advanced level that RYT500 is intended to prepare you for–you need to work on not being ruled by fear. That isn’t to say one must be fearless. We imagine fearlessness to equate to courageousness, but courage is action under fear. Neuroscience tells us what a fearless person is like. We know from individuals who’ve had the parts of their brains damaged that are responsible for the emotion—they are paralyzed by indecision. Our emotions provide a basis for choosing–at least as a tie-breaker when no clearly superior path exists. We need our fear, just like our other emotions, but if you can’t move forward because of it you may have a hard time keeping learning.

 

Not being ruled by fear isn’t just—or primarily—about being able to keep practicing advanced techniques until you can get a grasp on them.  Yes, mastering a handstand requires a fair amount of falling down (hopefully, in a controlled fashion), and that’s a lot of potential for anxiety, but there’s more at stake.  What precisely? One might start, as many do, with what Patanjali has to say on the subject, and one can start from square one. “Chitta Vrtta Nirodhah.” (Quieting the fluctuations of the mind.) Many of the fluctuations of the mind result from anxieties and our obsession with solving them. Our brains are wired to try to anticipate worst case scenarios so we can develop ready-made solutions for them. This can result in excessive pessimism, extended stress, and all the problems that go along with that stress.

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There’s a popular saying that goes, “money is the root of all evil.” But, I think it’s wrong. Fear is at the heart of all evil—not to mention a fair amount of run-of-the-mill pettiness.

 

So what is the path to anxiety management? Start small, and dispassionately observe your discomfort. Don’t try to squelch the emotion, just watch it while trying to avoid putting good or bad labels on it. Of course, sources of anxiety are personal. As far as prescriptive yoga practices, that depends upon one’s personal anxieties. For some inversions might do the trick, for others extreme back bends, for some external breath retention, for others it may be balancing. Then, of course, there are the advanced shatkarma practices I mentioned earlier–such as vaman dhauti (cleansing by vomiting) or poorna shankhaprakshalana (i.e. clearing out one’s digestive tract via massive ingestion of salt water.)

 

I recently finished teaching a Kid’s Camp (a post about that to come.) At the beginning of the camp, I was telling someone that the kids were fearless, but what I came to discover was that kids just allow their enthusiasm to swamp their anxieties. I had seven-year-olds doing pinchamayurasana (forearm stand) and vrschikasana (scorpion) within the first few days. That would be a hard sell for adults. [I don’t think I’ve ever taught those postures to adults.]  It’s not just that kids are bendy, they’re also ready to get up after they fall down. (And since they’re not stressed about the possibility of falling they don’t tense up and get badly injured.) Someone posted a great meme on Facebook recently. It said, “A child who falls down 50 times learning to walk, doesn’t go, ‘I don’t think this is for me.’”

Reflections on Vietnam

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IMG_0122I was five when Saigon fell. So I can’t say that I remember the war as breaking news. However, by the time I was coming into adulthood, Vietnam remained front and center in the American psyche. Many of the most prominent movies on the war came out when I was in high school or shortly thereafter (e.g. Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Bat 21 (1988), Casualties of War (1989), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).) Even films that weren’t explicitly or solely about the war often featured characters transformed by its crucible (e.g. Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump.)

 

It wasn’t just cinema. While many of the most prominent books on the war came out in the 70’s and early 80’s, bestsellers were still coming out during my early adult life (e.g. The Things They Carried (1990) and We Were Soldiers Once… and Young (1992).) Even once the war wasn’t news anymore, discussion of the aftershocks continued to grace news and talk shows. I do remember my father watching an episode of 60 Minutes  which showed footage of helicopters being pushed off of aircraft carriers into the sea as American forces steamed back home. I have no idea what that story was about (perhaps the ecological and environmental effects of the war,) I just thought it was too bad that they were destroying perfectly good whirly-gigs.

 

Terms like “the fall of Saigon” were etched into my consciousness before I had any capacity to understand them. It fell from what? To what? I didn’t know. It’s a city, right? How can a city fall? Balls fall. People fall. Dinner plates, unfortunately, fall. Of course, I’d eventually be taught what it meant, and would mistakenly think I knew what it meant for many years. I thought it meant the defeat of those forces that would keep Vietnam from becoming a totalitarian dystopia akin to the Soviet Union or, even more apropos, Kim dynasty North Korea. Sure enough, one side–the side that America had supported–had been defeated, but otherwise this “fall” was false.

 

IMG_0411As one walks around Saigon today, passing a few Starbucks, a Carl’s Jr, and innumerable Circle-Ks, it’s difficult to imagine how a victory by the other side would have resulted in a more entrepreneurial or vibrant Vietnam. The college kids at the dinner, largely ignoring the friends around them in favor of texting someone else on their iPhones, seem strikingly like their counterparts in Bangalore and Atlanta. They seem mirthful and exuberant. A tour guide lets fly little criticisms about the bureaucracy, and nobody sweeps in and throws a black hood over his head. People just don’t seem scared, brainwashed, or crazy, and–believe me–everybody who survives in North Korea fits one of those criteria. (While I’ve been impressed by cool, gregarious, and well-spoken North Korean diplomats; they’re always accompanied by a sinewy, mirthless “assistant” who I’m pretty sure has a syringe of strychnine in his pocket to silence the diplomat if he goes off script.)

 

I’m aware that it’s difficult to see the dysfunctions of a nation as a traveler or tourist. I also realize that–to twist Tolstoy– “All happy nations are alike; each unhappy nation is unhappy in its own way.” However, what Tolstoy’s quote doesn’t convey is that all families are unhappy in some measure–and the same is true of nations. However, it’s easy enough to see extremes of dysfunction. That’s why the Kims mostly keep foreigners out of the DPRK and carefully select and manage the experience of those they do let in. It’s difficult to imagine a degree to which things could be better in Vietnam that would have made the cost of that war worth it.

 

I also know that hindsight is 20/20, but where fear runs rampant foresight is 20/100 with a nasty astigmatism. In my International Affairs graduate program, I specialized in asymmetric warfare, writing a thesis entitled, “Playing a Poor Hand Well.” While my thesis didn’t focus on Vietnam, one can’t study asymmetric warfare without learning a thing or two about the Vietnam war. One learns that the mathematical, attrition rate-based formulas that analysts love are worthless in deciding a victor when one side is fighting in their backyard and the other is fighting in a place of marginal importance to a population who mostly couldn’t point said country out on a map. Will matters. What made America take on such a burden on the other side of the world?  Many feared a domino effect. If Vietnam was lost to the forces of communism, soon we’d be surrounded by tyrannical totalitarian states blaring “one of us, one of us…” through loudspeakers until we relented–or something like that. In retrospect, it seems like an astounding lack of faith in the appeal of democracy and rule of law, but that’s what happens when one stews in one’s fears.

 

What worries me is that I still see a desire to make mountainous threats out of mere ant hills.

 

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: Extreme Fear by Jeff Wise

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Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in DangerExtreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger by Jeff Wise
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Extreme Fear examines the science behind fear—particularly the fear of life and death situations. In doing so, the author presents findings from scientific research as well as cases that demonstrate the concepts behind those findings. People are often so close to their fears that they take them for granted, and feel that there’s nothing to be done about them. However, there’s a great deal to be learned about how fear operates and how one can improve one’s performance in fearful situations. By replacing the lens of shame with one of science, one can see what fear is objectively, and make the emotion more of a help and less of a hindrance.

A central idea in the book is that fear evolved to maximize one’s chance of survival against the age-old threats facing mankind. These pre-historic threats were relatively straightforward: saber-tooth tiger attacks, clubbing by members of warring tribes, fire, famine, flood, etc. Ancient threats often called for hauling ass, freezing in place, or getting stabby. The problem is that our present-day threats often call less for gross motor skills (run, kick, or throw) and more for creative or nuanced solutions to technological problems (i.e. sliding cars, falling planes, or malfunctioning assault rifles.)

Motor learning is one means by which this mismatch between what our brain tells our body to do in a stressful situation and what is called for in our modern world. Take the case of the infantryman with the jammed rifle. Without training, he might pick up the rifle like a club, intending to use it to unleash blunt force trauma. That is, if he’s still alive then the enemy gets into cudgeling range. Alternatively, the soldier may drop the rifle and run for his life. However, because he had a drill sergeant who made him practice clearing his weapon over and over, his body can go to that behavior while his conscious mind is blinking out.

Still, motor learning only takes us so far. Sometimes creativity is called for, and that’s a tall order in the face of where our body / brain want to put limited resources. In fact, Wise begins the book with the story of a pilot who was flying an old plane when the wing support broke and the wing flipped up, threatening to rip off. Somehow the pilot figured out—based on a vague memory and lots of experience—that he could flip the plane over and fly it upside-down and the wing would snap back into place. Then he had to figure out how to land: a.) upside-down crash, or b.) try to flip the plane over at the last second. The brain systems that this pilot smoothly accessed are among those that one doesn’t expect to be operating in life or death situations—e.g. those involved with long-term conscious memory and abstract problem solving.

The question of how some people can keep their wits about them, as the above pilot did, while others crash and die is the one that Wise really wants to answer. It turns out that it’s not such and easy question. During World War II, the military conducted studies to try to determine which soldiers could be counted on under life and death stress. The answer didn’t readily present itself. Among the problems in finding an answer is that courage and fearfulness aren’t as unitary or straightforward characteristics as one might think. Wise presents the case of Audie Murphy as a prime example. Murphy was at once one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War II—a man who’d taken on a company of Germans single-handedly—and a man of great social anxiety.

The book’s 13 chapters are divided into three parts. The first part presents fear and its effects. The middle section deals with various forms, aspects, and facets of fear, including: social v. life-and-death fear, choking behavior in sports, and fear of fear v. fear of an outcome. In the last part of the book, Wise suggests how one might achieve better performance in the face of fear.

I found this book to be informative and interesting. Wise did a good job of picking cases to illustrate the concepts discussed in the scientific literature. I’d recommend this book for individuals who are interested in the science of the brain and the ways to achieve ultimate human performance.

View all my reviews

How to Kill a “Cereal Killer” and Restore Halloween

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cereal killerI know what you’re going to say. Why would I want to murder a cereal killer, a taco belle, a holy cow, a pig in a blanket, a deviled egg, or any of the other bearers of bad Halloween punnery? First, you want to kill someone.  You don’t have to admit it to me and I’d advise against admitting it to the District Attorney, but at least admit it to yourself. Second, if you kill the person you really want to kill (e.g. your boss, the tax man, your personal trainer, or your hairdresser—sorry, low blow) you’ll be the lead suspect. Therefore, you need to find a way to vent your homicidal rage into productive outlets, and I’d argue that the killing of punsters is community service. You shouldn’t even think of it as murder. It’s more like culling the Halloween herd. Forest fires kill, but the next year the forest is more lush and beautiful than ever before.

 

Now let’s get down to the real reason to conduct your own Halloween killing spree. Because it’s the perfect time for the perfect crime. Think about it.

  • Anonymity: Except for the lazy people who wear a T-shirt with “Halloween Costume” printed in unimaginative block letters, everybody is in makeup or has their head stuffed in some stinking mask that five people have thrown up in within the last three years. This makes it almost impossible to identify suspects. The lazy bastards would be eliminated immediately anyway because it takes commitment to be a homicidal maniac.
  • Relative Inconspicuousness: You won’t be the only one who’s apparently blood spattered. Besides Marti Gras and full moons, what other nights can one say that. There will be large numbers of people wielding weapons and looking creepy. What better time to blend in?
  • Distraction: If I might be granted a brief diatribe. Halloween used to be the holiday of terror, but no more. Valentine’s Day may be the holiday of romance (or florists), but Halloween is the holiday of sex. However, you can use this trend to your advantage. There’s a great deal of distraction to be garnered from the proliferation of sexy nurses, sexy waitresses, and sexy actuarials. When the girl whose costume is painted on rather than worn walks through the room to get a single potato chip, that’s a good time to jab the hypodermic into the neck of the nearest drunk pun and get the hell out of dodge.

 

So how will you choose your target? First, as indicated, it’s best to pick someone who’s inebriated because no one will realize they’re dead–and not just passed out–until they begin to stink. Don’t worry, finding a drunk won’t be hard. At a given Halloween party there will be four designated drivers for the 150 people in attendance—so 148 people will be completely hammered. [No, my math is not that bad. Two of those designated drivers are cheating bastards. If you kill a pun who’s a cheating designated driver you’ve hit the trifecta—OK, maybe my math is that bad. At any rate, you get bonus points. ]

 

Next comes the question of determining whether the costume is a pun or not. This can be harder than it seems. Sure there are the easy ones I mentioned above (and others like Kevin “Bacon” [Kevin nametag on a meat vest], “Bat” Man [w/ Louisville Slugger], Down for the Count [Dracula with a blowup doll orally affixed to his crotch region], Spice Girl, Dust Bunny, Formal Apology [tuxedo-clad man with “sorry” written on his tie], etc.) that will be immediately obvious.

 

However, what if one sees a guy in a Grim Reaper costume with a bag of pot. Perhaps this is just someone who likes to imbibe. However, if the pot is dayglow green, then you may have a “the grass is greener on the other side” who desperately needs killing. The key is that one must pay attention to the details. Sometimes the costume will be poorly done. Imagine a fine “Tom the Cat” costume with three misshaped spheres feebly stapled to the crotch region. This is a “horny as a three-balled tom cat” who must die.

 

On the other hand, you should avoid reading too much into costumes. Say you see a girl who looks like a stripper. You shouldn’t engage in some Rube Goldberg-esque thought process in which you conclude that she is saying, “All that glitters is not gold–because sometimes it’s a stripper.” Said woman may merely be costumed as a stripper, or might be a stripper who just got off stage and didn’t have time to go out looking for a costume.

 

When in doubt, if the costume doesn’t seem to make a lick of sense, it’s probably someone’s sense of clever gone awry and you shouldn’t feel bad about friendly fire against a non-pun.

 

Finally, some general rules of thumb (BTW: feel free to kill anyone dressed in a giant mitten with a page of the tax code taped to the thumb):

  • Only kill one pun per party. Being a killer of puns is like being a Marine Sniper—except that it’s completely illegal and involves no honor whatsoever—my point is that if you loiter in place you’ll get pinned down by the Vietcong. It doesn’t matter whether the party in question has the best pigs in a blanket (i.e. the hors doeuvres, not the cutesy couple costume), the best DJ, or the sluttiest witches, maids, librarians, or geologists in town. Don’t get greedy. Get in and get out—well, you can grab a handful of those delectable pigs in a blanket on the way out, but then get out of the house!
  • Never wear the same costume to more than one party. The police call that a clue. You have to be like Kathrine Heigl in that 27 Dresses  movie—which I never saw. Do the quick change like Clark Kent between parties. That brings me to an alternative killing scheme whereby you can kill anyone who’s dressed as a character from a romantic comedy.
  • Don’t consume a lot of legumes, high fiber foods, beer, or Taco Bell before your outing. Just because no one will see your face inside that barf-splotched mask doesn’t mean they won’t be able to smell you. Plus the zippers in costumes are unreliable, and you don’t want a case of Taco Trots to hamper your evening’s fun.
  • Don’t wear a costume that’s too menacing. You want to be able to point to someone who is nearby, completely innocent, and who looks like a killer and say, “she did it.” Also, don’t wear the “Identity Thief” costume in which one has name tags all over one’s outfit with different names. First, it plants the seed of criminality in the mind of those around you. Second, it’s a bad pun and may result in your being stabbed. Which brings me to the ultimate rule:
  • Don’t wear a pun costume yourself, it may result in your being stabbed. I’m not saying that I once stabbed a prostitute with a Seeing Eye dog who turned out to be just another good-hearted Halloween killer because “love is blind,” but…

 

I hope this guide to perpetrating a Halloween massacre has been helpful. I think we’d all like to bring the fear back to Halloween like all the Saints who partied down on All Saints’ Day Eve intended. So, whether you’re a first time killer or you’ve been around the block (another potential costume cliché to kill), a few simple steps will keep you out of the hands of the slutty cops—or regular cops.

BOOK REVIEW: The Wild Life of Our Bodies by Rob Dunn

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The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are TodayThe Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today by Rob Dunn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Dunn’s book addresses a host of intriguing questions such as:

-Why are there diseases that disproportionately attack those in the richest parts of the world while being almost non-existent in poor countries?
-Why is obesity at epidemic proportions among modern humans?
-Why—while people have diverse tastes overall—do there seem to be universal preferences for sweet, salty, and fatty foods?
-Why are so many people’s lives wrecked by constant stress and worry?
-Is the Appendix really a vestigial organ with no apparent purpose?

As the subtitle suggests, this book is about the role that other species have played in human evolution and the way we look, behave, and think today. The message of The Wild Life of Our Bodies is that humanity’s proclivity to see itself as an island–uninfluenced by other species–has its cost.

The book is popular science–approachable to a layman but with the usual disdain for gratuitous assertions and shoddy reasoning that define the scientific though process. That being said, Dunn does put some editorial opinion out there in ways that might appear as fact in a slipshod reading. The most prominent example being Dunn’s suggesting that what best defines humanity is not our intelligence or ability for abstract representation (or even our physical appearance), but that we are the only (first?) species that has killed other species off not purely of self-defense or for food, but to exercise control over our ecosystem. I doubt this would strike a majority of impartial scientists as a fair and unbiased way to define humanity. Granted, this point not what The Wild Life of Our Bodies is about, and whether one thinks this it is fair or not is not critical to whether one will find the book to be of value. However, the idea (and the fact) that humans have zealously killed off other creatures is certainly relevant to the discussion at hand.

If “terraforming” is the term for how an alien race might environmentally engineer Earth to make it suitable for them to live here, perhaps we could call humanity’s assault on other species “bio-forming” of the planet—choosing a roster of species that strikes our fancy. All the time humans were trying to make ourselves more comfortable by getting rid of inconvenient species, we remained ignorant to the downside.

Dunn covers a broad range of mismatches between who we are evolutionarily and how we live in the modern world. The Wild Life of Our Bodies suggests that, like the pronghorn antelope, humans are in many cases over-designed because of the loss of species (parasites, predators, symbiotes, etc.) that helped to make us who we are today. (One question that once puzzled biologists was why pronghorns were so much faster than every species they faced.)

While it sounds good to be over-designed (at least relative to the alternative), it’s not without cost. In our case, we had guts that were supremely adapted to having parasites, but the lightning fast (on an evolutionary timescale) elimination of those parasites has left us with bodies that attack a non-existent enemy and this has resulted in a number of new diseases. We are used to diseases that succeed in the poorest—and, hence, least hygienic areas– but disease that mostly attacked in the cleanest places on Earth have puzzled us for some time. Crohn’s disease is a prime example. “Rewilding” (i.e. putting parasites back into) the guts of Crohn’s patients has shown positive results.

Dunn lays out a couple of the theories as to how the loss of our intestinal bacteria may result in a number of first-world ailments. Interestingly, some of these diseases aren’t even digestive in nature, and might seem to have no logical connection to gut bacteria. However, our body’s systems are a system-of-systems—i.e. they are integrally linked. One issue is that some parasites have been able to mask their presence, and our bodies have learned to present a heightened response to account for this veiled threat. Today our systems can’t tell the difference between our squeaky clean guts and a gut full of these sneaking parasites so it drops the immune system version of an A-bomb.

This is one example of why some diseases don’t exist in the third-world where the body knows what parasites it’s up against. One might say, “Yes, but these ailments of over-reactive systems can’t be as bad as the effects of the parasites.” That’s often not true. Most people with internal bugs (we all have them to some degree), don’t even realize it. The fact that people with Crohns’ are willing to have predators implanted in them speaks to this issue.

There has been concern for years about downside of the rampant use of anti-bacterials, antibiotics, and antiseptics, and this is a topic Dunn addresses as well. For example, there seems to be little evidence that such agents in soap do any particular good, but they decidedly do bad (encouraging drug resistant species.)

Perhaps the single greatest change in the nature of homo sapiens life resulted from the agricultural revolution, and Dunn delves into how this seminal event changed our bodies. With paleo-dieting all the rage, it will come as no surprise that there have been some major changes to the human diet since our hunter-gatherer ancestors roamed the Earth. Once again, we have bodies built on an evolutionary timescale, and they don’t necessarily cope well with our new diets.

One problem is that we have strong hardwired drives for foods that were a rarity in our species’ past, but which we now produce in abundance. For example, we eat far too much refined sugar because our bodies are wired to love sweet, but that kind of food was rare to our pre-agricultural ancestors. Hence we have the existence of diabetes, and its greater prevalence where high-sugar diets are common. Many people are also saddled with an evolutionary advantage to store fat because their ancestors come from a clime where food was not abundant year round. The problem is that now there’s a grocery store on every corner and this once great advantage is contributing to burgeoning waistlines.

I gave this book a high rating on the grounds that it presented a lot of food for thought, and that’s what I most value in non-fiction. Some of the theories may turn out to be incorrect, but this book offers one a lot to think about and clear explanations of the bases for what can otherwise seem a little outlandish. There is also some wit in places that contributes to heightened readability.

View all my reviews

How to Kill a Rogue Yard Gnome, Part 1

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Attribution: Colibri1968

Attribution: Colibri1968 (Is this gnome too sexy?)

Five nights ago, coming home at days end, nosing my car into the drive, I startled. Where my headlights should have roamed over a patch of bare grass, instead the light glared off of the white beard and ruddy cheeks of one of my three lawn gnomes. I braked and swung the wheel hard to avoid grazing the gnome with my bumper. I could have sworn that gnome was always much closer to the house.

Somebody must have moved it.

By the light of the next morning, a ring of flattened, brown grass confirmed my suspicions from the previous night. I had no time to consider who might have moved the gnome.

No harm, no foul.  

*

Four nights ago, coming home, the gnome was not at the edge of the drive where it had been. I assumed that whoever had moved it put it back where they found it. But it wasn’t there either.

Rummaging through a drawer of loose tools and hardware, I grabbed a flashlight. I went through the front yard, swinging the beam of light in wide arcs, intent on finding the missing gnome. It was then that I noticed that the others were missing. I was considering whether it was worth calling the cops for the theft of a few cheap yard gnomes when I turned and my light reflected off something white in the side yard.

I rounded the corner cautiously, not wanting to piss myself if some prankster youths jumped out from my shrubs. There were no youths, just the three errant gnomes. The trio faced into the center of a circle as if they were conversants at a cocktail party. I looked around, in case this prank was being caught on some sort of candid camera. Not that I would be able to see the conspirators in the darkness, for I didn’t want to go shining my light into the neighboring properties. So I shrugged and went back in the house leaving the gnomes to their silent cabal.

The next morning, the gnomes were back in what— as far as I could tell— were their original positions.

*

Three nights ago, I came home hoping the prankster had gotten it all out of his system. But when my headlights washed over the front lawn, I gulped. One of the gnomes lie on his back. The other two stood gazing into each other’s eyes, one at the downed gnome’s feet and one at his head.

This is getting to be enough already, I’d thought.

Given the ominous tone of the latest prank, I didn’t venture outside to reset the gnomes that night. I had a largely sleepless night, wondering if this was more than a prank, if it was some sort of dire message. I put my sleepless night to good use devising my plan.

In the morning I found that two of the gnomes were back in their original positions and the third was missing altogether. That sealed it. I would move forward with my plan.

*

Two nights ago, I came home later than usual, having stopped at an electronics store to buy a video camera with night vision and a tripod. You’ll not be surprised to learn that one of the two remaining gnomes was smashed to shards while the other stood casually at its feet.

Anger now trumped fear, and I was prepared to catch the culprit in the act. Without turning on the light in the front room in order to avoid alerting my tormentor, I set up the tripod. In my bedroom, where nobody could observe me, I made sure the camera worked. I recorded the cat yawning and played it back. I cut the lights and made sure the night vision worked. I confirmed that I had sufficient memory for the entire night. Returning to the front room, I trained the camera on the gnome and gnome remnants. I checked and double-checked the power, memory, and the settings. Confident that all was set to capture the ne’er-do-well, I retired to bed for a sound night’s rest.

The next morning, I strode into the front room. I could see through my front window that the gnomes, broken and whole, were both gone from where they had lain, and that the camera’s red light was still showing recording in progress. I stopped the camera, confident I had captured the scallywag on video. I would call the police, and I would have the evidence I needed.

I pressed “play” and watched the green grainy video. There was nothing but stillness and the occasional branch trembling in the wind. In the interest of getting to work on time, I fast forwarded. When I was at eight times (8X) speed, I noticed there was and impression of movement, an inexplicable gradual shift of the standing gnome. The gnome shards also seemed to become faint, as if they were dissolving. I thought my eyes were playing tricks. At 32X speed, the standing gnome migrated itself out of the frame while the shards seemed to dissolve into thin air. No person or animal — other than a common squirrel– ever entered the frame.

Leaving the house that morning, hoping that the evil was now at an end, I was shocked to see that the remaining gnome hadn’t liberated itself from my property. It was right where I had set it years before. Unsettled and convinced that something wicked had taken up residence in my front yard. I grabbed an aluminum baseball bat from my garage and I swung hard into the gnome’s ear. The head flew off, revealing its hollow core. I must have looked like a madman to my neighbors as they went to work, gawking at me as I smashed the gnome to shards and then the shards to dust.

So you must be wondering why this is Part 1 and why there is further writing below. I just told you how to kill a rogue yard gnome. Did I?

*

Last night I came home to find a gnome sitting indignantly in the place of the gnome I had smashed that morning. It looked very much like the one that I had dashed to smithereens eleven hours before; except that instead of a big, beaming smile, its face was a scowl.

TO BE CONTINUED