Category: rePosts

Frank Eippert from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf used a technique caled functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the backbones of volunteers as they experienced the placebo effect. Eippert heated the recruits’ forearms to the point of pain and he gave them cream to soothe the sting. The creams were all shams with no pain-relieving properties, but only half of the recruits were told this. The others were told that they’d been given lidocaine, an anaesthetic.
Sure enough, the volunteers who used the alleged “anaesthetic” felt about a quarter less pain than those who were aware that they were using an ordinary cream – the placebo effect in action. But Eippert also found that the activity of neurons in the spine (specifically an area near the back called the “dorsal horn”) was also strongly allayed.
via The placebo effect affects pain signalling in the spine : Not Exactly Rocket Science.

I’ve grapple with this constantly, whenever I have to explain this I am lost for words. It is like people believe their lives are compartmentalized.  As the person who wrote this said, being religious does not excuse acting like an asshole, being religious does not excuse you from not being a decent human being. Let us a accept that we are who we are 24/7. There is no churchgoing version of ourselves versus the ruthless work personality we have.

After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:
“I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God.”
I responded, “Why would you want to do that?”
Startled she says, “What do you mean?”
“Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”
“Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you’ve wronged?”
She thinks and answers, “Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God.”
Obviously, I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture. Specifically, when the student said “I need to work on my relationship with God” I knew exactly what she meant. It meant praying more, getting up early to study the bible, to start going back to church. Things along those lines. The goal of these activities is to get “closer” to God. To “waste time with Jesus.” Of course, please hear me on this point, nothing is wrong with those activities. Personal acts of piety and devotion are vital to a vibrant spiritual life and continued spiritual formation. But all too often “working on my relationship with God” has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being.
The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on. “Christianity” has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed “spiritual” substitute. For example, rather than being a decent human being the following is a list of some commonly acceptable substitutes:
Going to church
Worship
Praying
Spiritual disciplines (e.g., fasting)
Bible study
Voting Republican
Going on spiritual retreats
Reading religious books
Arguing with evolutionists
Sending your child to a Christian school or providing education at home
Using religious language
Avoiding R-rated movies
Not reading Harry Potter.
The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being. Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being. In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking. Many churches are jerk factories.
Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Never has a more well-dressed, entitled, dismissive, haughty or cheap collection of Christians been seen on the face of the earth.
via Experimental Theology: The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity.

A friend when asked why he did charity work, answered: “I do it because it makes me feel good. I do it for me not them”. I agree with him. In a sense he is at least honest to himself!

This meshes nicely with a self-signalling conception of morality. If part of the point of behaving morally is to convince yourself that you’re a good person, then once you’re convinced, behaving morally loses a lot of its value.
By coincidence, a few days after reading this study, I found this article by Dr. Beck, a theologian, complaining about the behavior of churchgoers on Sunday afternoon lunches. He says that in his circles, it’s well known that people having lunch after church tend to abuse the waitstaff and tip poorly. And he blames the same mechanism identified by Mazar and Zhong in their Dictator Game. He says that, having proven to their own satisfaction that they are godly and holy people, doing something else godly and holy like being nice to others would be overkill.
via Less Wrong: Doing your good deed for the day.

Rousseau didn’t believe the rights he called for existed in our natural state. They became necessary when we began to live in large groups. It is necessary to trust that men will have the same general values if we travel a mile from home, or a hundred miles. We hope not to be robbed or murdered. We hope a system of trade allows us to earn a living and obtain what we need. We hope those we find there treat each other, and strangers, decently. We hope our boat hasn’t landed us on the shores of a libertarian nation.
The ideas of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau led logically to the American and French Revolutions. The preamble to our Declaration of Independence could well have been dictated by any one of the three. Our revolution, like so many, is still underway. Universal health care happens to be its current battlefield.
I am naive enough to think that universal care is obviously good. I don’t say how it should be implemented or regulated. I say we should implement it and regulate it as well as we can, and improve it through our votes and our legislature. This is something we owe to the future. The United States is shamefully the only Western democracy without universal health care. All of the nations that we inspired by our revolution, including France, have moved ahead on us on this.
I am told we cannot trust the government. I believe we must trust it, and work to make it trustworthy. We are told the free enterprise system will sort things out, but it has not. When insurance companies direct millions toward lobbying and advertising against a health care system, every dollar is being withheld from sick people. When it goes to salaries, executive jets, corporate edifices and legislative manipulation, it isn’t going to Amy Caudle.
The fallacy of the free enterprise argument is that there is a faith that corporations are motivated to bring about the public good. Corporations are motivated to maximize profits for shareholders. That is the primary mission of all corporate executives, and they retain their jobs by placing the bottom line and the stock price above all else.
If you doubt it, I recommend a current documentary named “Crude,” by Joe Berlinger. It relates the story of a group of Indians who have occupied the Ecuadorean rain forest since time immemorial. They existed in unison with nature, living off the land and for the land, governed by themselves. They were, if you will, Noble Savages. Or perhaps they were an ideal libertarian state. They occupy the forest filmed by Herzog in “Fitzcarraldo.”
It was their misfortune that oil was discovered beneath their forest. Texaco, later called Chevron, moved in with the permission of the national government, which had previously ignored them. It laid waste to square miles of forest, struck oil, had an oil spill that blighted the river highway of the Indians, and pumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the river. One independent estimate is that remediation should cost Chevron $27 billion.
We meet a man whose little daughter went splashing in the river one day and was dead within 24 hours. The water is lethal to drink. Many others died. Vegetation was destroyed. Fish disappeared. The Indians are represented by a determined local lawyer and an American lawyer working pro bono. Chevron has deployed a legal team that prevented the complaint from even coming to court for ten years. There is still no resolution. The corporation is prepared to fight this forever.
via Roger Ebert’s Journal: Political Archives.

China’s graduate glut grows
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING – Feng Danya studied foreign languages. She had hoped to be part of a growing local company and grow with them, she said. But her timing was wrong. She graduated in the summer of uncertainty for the global economy and many Chinese start-ups.
“I now work in an Italian deli shop, selling meat and cheese,” she said. “I’m trying to keep my English up with the foreigners who come to shop here from time to time. I tried many other places where I could at least use my degree, but nothing came through.”
Feng is at least employed. With a monthly salary of 1,400 yuan (US$205) and accommodation shared with her parents, she can continue to look for something better while earning a modest living. But many of her university friends are still without jobs, scouring job fairs and talent recruitment centers.
An explosive report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in September said earnings of graduates were now at par and even lower than those of migrant laborers. The news came as a blow to many high-aspiring parents and youngsters in a country that has for centuries prided itself on cultivating elite Confucian intelligentsia.
via Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business..

I’ve sadi that war is not an option, sadly I may backtrack on this. Some people deserve what is coming to them.
Body of beheaded Jolo principal found
Rest of remains dumped near military camp
By Julie Alipala
Inquirer Mindanao
First Posted 16:05:00 11/09/2009
Filed Under: Kidnapping, Crime, Education, Acts of terror, The Southern Campaign, Mindanao peace process
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines — The body of murdered public school head teacher Gabriel Canizares was found near a military camp in Patikul town, Sulu, on Monday, five hours after, and two kilometers away from the place where his severed head was found.
Canizares’ head was found near the Jolo police station in Sulu on Monday morning and his body was found near the main gate of a military camp in Patikul town.
Canizares was abducted by armed men suspected to be Abu Sayyaf bandits on October 19. But his case got less media attention as it was overshadowed by the kidnapping of Irish priest Michael Sinnott in Pagadian City on Oct. 11.
Chief Insp. Amil Bahing Banaan, acting spokesperson of the police in Sulu, said Canizares’ head was found inside a backpack, which was owned by the victim, and was left near a gasoline station in Jolo town at around 5:30 a.m.
The gasoline station, just a few meters away from the victim’s residence in the village of San Raymundo, is just across the Jolo police station, which is beside the Jolo Municipal Hall.
At around 11 a.m., the rest of Canizares’ body was found dumped near the gates of the 3rd Marine Brigade headquarters in the village of Gandasuli in Patikul, or some two kilometers away from where his severed head was found.
“We are all having these mixed feelings– we are very angry, we are very sad, we are very afraid, we feel so hopeless and helpless when we learned about the brutal killing of our colleague,” Eufremio Canaria, Sulu’s education department supervisor, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone.
Canaria said the victim’s “only fault” was to “dedicate his whole life to teaching, to education even in the areas where everyone is afraid to go and teach.”
Canaria said prior to the killing, the victim’s family and co-teachers had, for several times, received calls from the kidnappers demanding P2 million as ransom.
Canaria said the victim’s family, co-teachers and friends were able to raise only P150,000.
via Body of beheaded Jolo principal found – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

Sometimes lying can be good because there are things that are really hard to get used to, we need to gradually make ourselves be ok with whatever it is that is hard for us to accept. I try not to do this, But I accept it’s validity.
As a general rule I believe that we must try to exhibit or adopt a personality that accepts surprise, change, difficulty and the like. A personality like this would help us not lie to ourselves more, because life can throw anything at us and we would still have that quite belief in life/ourselves.

This experiment is neat because it shows the different gradations of self-deception, all the way up to its purest form, in which people manage to trick themselves hook, line and sinker. At this level people think and act as though their incorrect belief is completely true, totally disregarding any incoming hints from reality.
So what this study suggests is that for many people self-deception is as easy as pie. Not only will many people happily lie to themselves if given a reason, but they will only look for evidence that confirms their comforting self-deception, and then totally believe in the lies they are telling themselves.
Explains a lot, don’t you think?
via The Truth About Self-Deception | PsyBlog.