"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, every human
decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."
- Jeff Duntemann
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
"Taliban Officially Bans Production, Distribution, And Use of Narcotics"
In Full: The Taliban's first news conference from Kabul.
"Taliban Officially Bans Production, Distribution, And Use of Narcotics"
by Chris Black
"Bad news for the CIA and their friends: The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country, which means no more black-budget, and less people dying of heroin overdoses in the US and Europe. But hey, we now have dirt-cheap fentanyl from China, right? It will be okay I reckon, no worries CIA man. “We had brought narcotics production to a halt in 2001. That is something we will do. Afghanistan will be drug-free from now on. We need alternative crops, and we hope to bring this scourge to an end.”
"Afghan Lives Don’t Matter"
August 15, 2017
"Afghan Lives Don’t Matter"
by Bill Bonner
POITOU, FRANCE - "The financial news this week is overshadowed by the disgraceful fall of Kabul. On July 8, President Biden said a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely,” adding that there would be “no circumstance [where] you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.” And even if the Taliban did eventually take over, said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, it won’t “be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.” But that’s exactly what did happen. The Afghan troops that the U.S. trained, bribed, and supported for 20 years didn’t fight to the last man… They simply dropped their guns and joined the other side.
Incompetent and Unreliable: In all of military history, we can’t think of any defeat so quick… so complete… or so ignominious. Biden and Blinken were advised and informed by 17 different “intelligence” agencies – the CIA, the NSA, etc. – with billion-dollar budgets, thousands of big-head analysts, and all the latest spy technology.
How could they all be so incompetent? Journalist Glenn Greenwald reports that the Pentagon had long reported that the Afghan army, which outnumbered the Taliban 4-to-1, was both incompetent and unreliable. They didn’t make a “mistake,” said Greenwald, interviewed on Fox News by Tucker Carlson this morning, “they lied.” So add Biden, Blinken, and a few spook chiefs to the gallows list. Hang ‘em high as a warning to the others.
Corruption and Conflict: But today, we wonder: What else are they lying about? COVID-19 vaccines? Inflation? The economy? The green agenda? Yes, Dear Reader, it’s amazing what you can’t see when you’re paid to be blind. And for a long time – 20 years, in the case of Afghanistan – you can keep the fantasy intact. Then, in just a few days, it collapses like a punctured balloon.
Anyone could have foreseen the whole 20-year fiasco… all they had to do was read about Afghanistan on Wikipedia. The country was invented by Europeans. But it is inhabited by dozens of different tribes – Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Arab, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadat – each with its own language, religion, culture… and deep grudges against the others. Building a U.S.-style democracy was preposterous from the get-go. But who wanted to see that… when there was $2 trillion to be made by pretending not to see it?
The generals got their stars… their post-retirement sinecures at Raytheon… and their shares in WestExec, a private equity firm specializing in Pentagon boondoggles. Of course, it was not just the generals who were paid not to notice. The private sector collaborated with the military – and profited handsomely. A portfolio of “defense” stocks – bought at the beginning of the 21st century and held until today – rose 10 times, while U.S. GDP only doubled. How’s that for a pay-off? Trillions of dollars were changing hands. The corruption, the conflicts of interest, the temptation to lie, cheat, and steal were obvious.
Turning a Blind Eye: Here was some high-quality muck, in other words… But where were the muckrakers? Where was the press? Where were the guardians of truth… candor… and justice? As we saw yesterday, some leading reporters were on the military-industrial payroll. But the blindness was far more widespread than just a few newshounds who were paid to shill for the Pentagon. Instead, practically the entire press corps… so eager was it to not see the corruption… poked its own eyes out.
Yes, it could get worked up by the killing of George Floyd. That was someone else’s fault – the low-bred white supremacists. They were “racists,” and everyone knew it. All a reporter had to do was rant and rave about it; he might get a better job at The New York Times… invitations to Georgetown parties… and his name in the hat for a Pulitzer. But Afghanistan? 47,245 times more innocent civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers in the Hindu Kush than by Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. But heck… Afghan Lives Don’t Matter!
Elite Con Job: Besides, the Afghanistan debacle was supported by Democrats and Republicans. It was a con job by the entire elite establishment, not the Trumpista yahoos or the make-believe “insurgents” who invaded the Capitol on January 6. The Afghanistan disaster was concocted in elite think-tanks. It was directed by elite Ph.D. experts… coming from elite universities. It was supplied by elite corporations… and boosted by elite lobbyists… And Hillary Clinton (then U.S. Secretary of State) and Antony Blinken (now Secretary of State) were in the White House Situation Room watching the action on TV when Navy seals murdered al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and members of his family.
Hidden Truth: Now, the truth about Afghanistan is out in the open. But what is still hidden? The truth about vaccines? About masks? About electric vehicles? About diversity and anti-racism training? About budget deficits? About the $2 trillion infrastructure bill… or the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” budget? About the Federal Reserve’s money-printing? Or about inflation? Tune in tomorrow…"
Why is there so much silence around the 47,245 lives lost during the Afghanistan war? What else is the elite hiding? Write us at feedback@rogueeconomics.com.○
Related:
"Mass Psychosis - How An Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill"
Full screen recommended.
"Mass Psychosis -
How An Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill"
by After Skool
"In this video we are going to explore the most dangerous of all psychic epidemics, the mass psychosis. A mass psychosis is an epidemic of madness and it occurs when a large portion of a society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions. Such a phenomenon is not a thing of fiction. Two examples of mass psychoses are the American and European witch hunts 16th and 17th centuries and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. This video will aim to answer questions surrounding mass psychosis: What is it? How does is start? Has it happened before? Are we experiencing one right now? And if so, how can the stages of a mass psychosis be reversed?"
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Related:
"Relax..."
"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to
TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing. "
- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"
"Tyranny"
"Tyranny"
by Jim Rickards
"I’d like to stop writing about COVID, but I can’t because it has such strong economic implications, which can’t be separated. And I’m afraid policies will be enacted that will only make things worse. We all know the Delta variant of the COVID virus (SARS-CoV-2) is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and Australia. Major outbreaks have also hit India and Brazil.
What has received less attention is the fact that the Delta variant is now also spreading in China. That’s ironic because the virus started in China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While the virus spread around the world, China quickly eliminated the spread inside China itself. Now, the virus has come full circle and is back in China in a new, more virulent form. There’s a huge difference in how China approaches the virus from a public health perspective compared to the U.S., Japan or Europe. China’s lockdowns are far more extreme.
Why China Enforces Extreme Lockdowns: China will quickly identify an outbreak and cut off all car, train and air services to the affected area. China will also quickly shut down major ports and distribution centers if even a single case appears. China knows that the spread of the virus is a threat to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. China cares more about Party loyalty and Party survival than it does about economic growth.
China is now imposing extreme measures, including canceling many domestic flights, closing ports and restricting vacation travel. China’s economy was already slowing before this new wave of the virus. Given China’s more extreme forms of COVID control, their economy will slow even further. That’s bad news for China – and bad news for the world. Global growth will slow noticeably in the months ahead, partly because of the extreme nature of China’s lockdown approach. That’s a prime example of how the virus and the economy are closely linked.
But how much do we really know about COVID? Can you really trust what the health authorities are telling you?
Science vs. Anti-Science: The essence of science is debate. One scientist will propose a hypothesis, which is then tested with experimentation. If the data from the experiment tends to confirm the hypothesis, it gains acceptance in a wider professional audience. If the data tends to refute the hypothesis, it can be abandoned in favor of another new hypothesis. If the data are unclear, the experiments can continue. At the same time, other professionals can question the hypothesis or propose their own. Different experts may question the experiments or challenge the interpretation of experimental data.
All of these ideas and results are published in peer-reviewed academic journals. The debate goes on until some consensus is reached. But even then, the consensus may last only until some even better view comes along. And, so it goes.
Anyone who says that the science on a particular topic is “settled” knows nothing about science because true science is never settled. It evolves. Just ask Newton, Einstein and Niels Bohr. They were three of the giants of science, yet each one revolutionized the work of their predecessors.
Unfortunately, none of the rules of real science seem to apply anymore. The “science” surrounding the COVID pandemic has been politicized, distorted, squashed and lied about to the point that citizens don’t trust their public officials – nor should they.
Censorship: One of the reasons the per capita rate of infection and fatality in Sub-Saharan Africa has been so much lower than was expected at the start of the pandemic is because Africans routinely take hydroxychloroquine to prevent malaria. Hydroxychloroquine is cheap and safe and seems to have excellent prophylactic properties against the COVID virus. Likewise, the drug Ivermectin, which is also cheap and safe, has had fantastic results in helping to mitigate a severe outbreak of the Delta variant of the virus in India. In India, Ivermectin may have stopped COVID dead in its tracks. 61 studies incorporating about 23,000 people revealed as much as a 96% reduction in death by taking Ivermectin.
Why have you not heard more about the role of hydroxychloroquine in Africa? Why have you not heard more about the role of Ivermectin in India? Why are both drugs not being more widely utilized to fight COVID? The answer is that Big Tech and Big Media have banned any discussion. If you type the word hydroxychloroquine on Twitter, your tweet will be shadow-banned, or your account will be shut down. If you post something about Ivermectin on Facebook, you’ll be slapped with a “misinformation” warning label or worse.
The main TV networks – ABC, NBC and CBS (and the leading newspapers) – won’t report on these drugs and others. The news is being censored with a view to forcing vaccination with the experimental gene modification treatments from Moderna and Pfizer.
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but you have to ask yourself why positive news about cheap, effective therapeutics is being suppressed. It never hurts to follow the money. It’s all about billions of dollars for Big Pharma and creating a nation that lives in fear.
Who Cares What the Science Says? Unfortunately, the pandemic will go on because the vaccines don’t work well and wear off quickly. And, that means economic growth will continue to face headwinds. The pandemic could be mitigated with some cheap generic drugs. But it won’t be because of censorship and simple greed. But that’s not stopping bureaucrats and politicians from demanding universal vaccination.
The COVID-19 vaccine mandate train keeps rolling down the tracks. The Biden administration said several months ago that there would be no national vaccine mandate. In the narrow technical sense, no federal mandate applicable to all citizens has been issued.
But, the spirit of Biden’s promise is now in shreds. Instead of a single nationwide mandate, Biden has issued a large number of separate mandates to specific groups and encouraged private businesses and institutions to do likewise. The result has been practically the same as a national vaccine requirement. The vaccine is now required for all federal officials and all government contractors. It is required for all military forces. It is required at most major universities for students returning to class. Major businesses such as Walmart, Amazon, Facebook and others require the vaccine for some or all of their employees.
Similar vaccine requirements have been imposed at the state and municipal level and by school districts, teachers’ unions and non-government organizations. Still, there are pockets of the population where the mandates don’t apply, and some individuals have been able to maintain their freedom of action.
Get Vaxxed or Live Like a Leper: Those pockets are the next targets of the vaccine pushers. Since some cannot be forced to take the vaccine, the latest tactic is to make their lives as miserable as possible until they agree to do so voluntarily. These tactics include being banned from indoor dining, concerts, sporting events, plays, movies and other social activities.
A new reign of terror being imposed on those who refuse to go along with the vaccine orthodoxy. Among the most chilling recommendations are requirements “mandating vaccines for interstate travel” and reducing Medicare payments to the unvaccinated who get COVID.
There are many legitimate reasons not to take the vaccine, including those who have already had COVID (about 35 million people with stronger antibodies than the vaccine itself produces), religious reasons, and serious doubts about side-effects and permanent changes to individual DNA genomes because of the vaccine.
None of that matters to the bureaucrats. The vaccine is being imposed whether you like it or not. Those who don’t get vaxxed will be forced into the basement of a two-tiered society and be denied access to public spaces and social interaction. Your choice is to get vaxxed or be treated like a leper."
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Related:
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
"Vaxxed To Death: Alarming Study Confirms Vaxxers Will Face Catastrophic Antibody Dependent Enhancement Injuries And Deaths"
"Vaxxed To Death: Alarming Study Confirms Vaxxers Will Face
Catastrophic Antibody Dependent Enhancement Injuries And Deaths"
by Mike Adams
(Excerpt) "For over a year, intensive research conducted by health experts like Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has brought to light increasing concerns about “Antibody Dependent Enhancement” (ADE), a phenomenon where vaccines make the disease far worse by priming the immune system for a potentially deadly overreaction. Also called a “hyperinflammatory response” to subsequent infections, ADE is well known to occur with coronavirus vaccines that have been tested in animal experiments. The big question has been whether it will emerge in the 2.4 billion people who have now been vaccinated around the world.
According to OurWorldInData.org, 31.7% of the world population has been vaccinated with one or more covid vaccines. That’s about 2.4 billion people.
In the United States, according to the CDC, 199 million people have been vaccinated with at least one dose.
Notably, all the 2.4 billion people who took this vaccine around the world have taken an unproven, deadly, experimental medical intervention that was intentionally formulated to contain spike protein biological weapons, or in the case of mRNA vaccines, instructions for the body’s own cells to manufacture those spike protein bioweapons. Thus, the depopulation globalists pushing this vaccine genocide have managed to inject about one-third of the world’s human population with biological weapons that are well known to cause injury and death.
Yet the question remains: Just how many of these people will die from vaccine adverse events, including ADE?"Please view this complete article here:
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Related, critically important:
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal, "Welcome to Vaxwitz, The Inoculation Proclamation"
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal",
"Welcome to Vaxwitz, The Inoculation Proclamation"
"'The Trends Journal' is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"Some Oddities..."
"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams
“The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease”
“The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions
Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease”
by Maria Popova
"I had lived thirty good years before enduring my first food poisoning - odds quite fortunate in the grand scheme of things, but miserably unfortunate in the immediate experience of it. I found myself completely incapacitated to erect the pillars of my daily life - too cognitively foggy to read and write, too physically weak to work out or even meditate. The temporary disability soon elevated the assault on my mind and body to a new height of anguish: an intense experience of stress. Even as I consoled myself with Nabokov’s exceptionally florid account of food poisoning, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming malaise that had engulfed me - somehow, a physical illness had completely colored my psychoemotional reality.
This experience, of course, is far from uncommon. Long before scientists began shedding light on how our minds and bodies actually affect one another, an intuitive understanding of this dialogue between the body and the emotions, or feelings, emerged and permeated our very language: We use “feeling sick” as a grab-bag term for both the sensory symptoms - fever, fatigue, nausea - and the psychological malaise, woven of emotions like sadness and apathy.
Pre-modern medicine, in fact, has recognized this link between disease and emotion for millennia. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Indian Ayurvedic physicians all enlisted the theory of the four humors - blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm - in their healing practices, believing that imbalances in these four visible secretions of the body caused disease and were themselves often caused by the emotions. These beliefs are fossilized in our present language - melancholy comes from the Latin words for “black” (melan) and “bitter bile” (choler), and we think of a melancholic person as gloomy or embittered; a phlegmatic person is languid and impassive, for phlegm makes one lethargic.
And then French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes came along in the seventeenth century, taking it upon himself to eradicate the superstitions that fueled the religious wars of the era by planting the seed of rationalism. But the very tenets that laid the foundation of modern science - the idea that truth comes only from what can be visibly ascertained and proven beyond doubt - severed this link between the physical body and the emotions; those mysterious and fleeting forces, the biological basis of which the tools of modern neuroscience are only just beginning to understand, seemed to exist entirely outside the realm of what could be examined with the tools of rationalism.
For nearly three centuries, the idea that our emotions could impact our physical health remained scientific taboo - setting out to fight one type of dogma, Descartes had inadvertently created another, which we’re only just beginning to shake off. It was only in the 1950s that Austrian-Canadian physician and physiologist Hans Selye pioneered the notion of stress as we now know it today, drawing the scientific community’s attention to the effects of stress on physical health and popularizing the concept around the world. (In addition to his scientific dedication, Selye also understood the branding component of any successful movement and worked tirelessly to include the word itself in dictionaries around the world; today, “stress” is perhaps the word pronounced most similarly in the greatest number of major languages.)
But no researcher has done more to illuminate the invisible threads that weave mind and body together than Dr. Esther Sternberg. Her groundbreaking work on the link between the central nervous system and the immune system, exploring how immune molecules made in the blood can trigger brain function that profoundly affects our emotions, has revolutionized our understanding of the integrated being we call a human self. In the immeasurably revelatory "The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions" (public library), Sternberg examines the interplay of our emotions and our physical health, mediated by that seemingly nebulous yet, it turns out, remarkably concrete experience called stress.
With an eye to modern medicine’s advances in cellular and molecular biology, which have made it possible to measure how our nervous system and our hormones affect our susceptibility to diseases as varied as depression, arthritis, AIDS, and chronic fatigue syndrome, Sternberg writes: "By parsing these chemical intermediaries, we can begin to understand the biological underpinnings of how emotions affect diseases… The same parts of the brain that control the stress response play an important role in susceptibility and resistance to inflammatory diseases such as arthritis. And since it is these parts of the brain that also play a role in depression, we can begin to understand why it is that many patients with inflammatory diseases may also experience depression at different times in their lives.
Rather than seeing the psyche as the source of such illnesses, we are discovering that while feelings don’t directly cause or cure disease, the biological mechanisms underlying them may cause or contribute to disease. Thus, many of the nerve pathways and molecules underlying both psychological responses and inflammatory disease are the same, making predisposition to one set of illnesses likely to go along with predisposition to the other. The questions need to be rephrased, therefore, to ask which of the many components that work together to create emotions also affect that other constellation of biological events, immune responses, which come together to fight or to cause disease. Rather than asking if depressing thoughts can cause an illness of the body, we need to ask what the molecules and nerve pathways are that cause depressing thoughts. And then we need to ask whether these affect the cells and molecules that cause disease.
We are even beginning to sort out how emotional memories reach the parts of the brain that control the hormonal stress response, and how such emotions can ultimately affect the workings of the immune system and thus affect illnesses as disparate as arthritis and cancer. We are also beginning to piece together how signals from the immune system can affect the brain and the emotional and physical responses it controls: the molecular basis of feeling sick. In all this, the boundaries between mind and body are beginning to blur."
Indeed, the relationship between memory, emotion, and stress is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Sternberg’s work. She considers how we deal with the constant swirl of inputs and outputs as we move through the world, barraged by a stream of stimuli and sensations: "Every minute of the day and night we feel thousands of sensations that might trigger a positive emotion such as happiness, or a negative emotion such as sadness, or no emotion at all: a trace of perfume, a light touch, a fleeting shadow, a strain of music. And there are thousands of physiological responses, such as palpitations or sweating, that can equally accompany positive emotions such as love, or negative emotions such as fear, or can happen without any emotional tinge at all. What makes these sensory inputs and physiological outputs emotions is the charge that gets added to them somehow, somewhere in our brains. Emotions in their fullest sense comprise all of these components. Each can lead into the black box and produce an emotional experience, or something in the black box can lead out to an emotional response that seems to come from nowhere."
Memory, it turns out, is one of the major factors mediating the dialogue between sensation and emotional experience. Our memories of past experience become encoded into triggers that act as switchers on the rail of psychoemotional response, directing the incoming train of present experience in the direction of one emotional destination or another.
Sternberg writes: "Mood is not homogeneous like cream soup. It is more like Swiss cheese, filled with holes. The triggers are highly specific, tripped by sudden trails of memory: a faint fragrance, a few bars of a tune, a vague silhouette that tapped into a sad memory buried deep, but not completely erased. These sensory inputs from the moment float through layers of time in the parts of the brain that control memory, and they pull out with them not only reminders of sense but also trails of the emotions that were first connected to the memory. These memories become connected to emotions, which are processed in other parts of the brain: the amygdala for fear, the nucleus accumbens for pleasure - those same parts that the anatomists had named for their shapes. And these emotional brain centers are linked by nerve pathways to the sensory parts of the brain and to the frontal lobe and hippocampus - the coordinating centers of thought and memory."
The same sensory input can trigger a negative emotion or a positive one, depending on the memories associated with it. This is where stress comes in - much like memory mediates how we interpret and respond to various experiences, a complex set of biological and psychological factors determine how we respond to stress. Some types of stress can be stimulating and invigorating, mobilizing us into action and creative potency; others can be draining and incapacitating, leaving us frustrated and hopeless. This dichotomy of good vs. bad stress, Sternberg notes, is determined by the biology undergirding our feelings - by the dose and duration of the stress hormones secreted by the body in response to the stressful stimulus. She explains the neurobiological machinery behind this response:
"As soon as the stressful event occurs, it triggers the release of the cascade of hypothalamic, pituitary, and adrenal hormones - the brain’s stress response. It also triggers the adrenal glands to release epinephrine, or adrenaline, and the sympathetic nerves to squirt out the adrenaline-like chemical norepinephrine all over the body: nerves that wire the heart, and gut, and skin. So, the heart is driven to beat faster, the fine hairs of your skin stand up, you sweat, you may feel nausea or the urge to defecate. But your attention is focused, your vision becomes crystal clear, a surge of power helps you run - these same chemicals released from nerves make blood flow to your muscles, preparing you to sprint.
All this occurs quickly. If you were to measure the stress hormones in your blood or saliva, they would already be increased within three minutes of the event. In experimental psychology tests, playing a fast-paced video game will make salivary cortisol increase and norepinephrine spill over into venous blood almost as soon as the virtual battle begins. But if you prolong the stress, by being unable to control it or by making it too potent or long-lived, and these hormones and chemicals still continue to pump out from nerves and glands, then the same molecules that mobilized you for the short haul now debilitate you."
These effects of stress exist on a bell curve - that is, some is good, but too much becomes bad: As the nervous system secretes more and more stress hormones, performance increases, but up to a point; after that tipping point, performance begins to suffer as the hormones continue to flow. What makes stress “bad” - that is, what makes it render us more pervious to disease - is the disparity between the nervous system and immune system’s respective pace.
Sternberg explains: "The nervous system and the hormonal stress response react to a stimulus in milliseconds, seconds, or minutes. The immune system takes parts of hours or days. It takes much longer than two minutes for immune cells to mobilize and respond to an invader, so it is unlikely that a single, even powerful, short-lived stress on the order of moments could have much of an effect on immune responses. However, when the stress turns chronic, immune defenses begin to be impaired. As the stressful stimulus hammers on, stress hormones and chemicals continue to pump out. Immune cells floating in this milieu in blood, or passing through the spleen, or growing up in thymic nurseries never have a chance to recover from the unabated rush of cortisol. Since cortisol shuts down immune cells’ responses, shifting them to a muted form, less able to react to foreign triggers, in the context of continued stress we are less able to defend and fight when faced with new invaders. And so, if you are exposed to, say, a flu or common cold virus when you are chronically stressed out, your immune system is less able to react and you become more susceptible to that infection."
Extended exposure to stress, especially to a variety of stressors at the same time - any combination from the vast existential menu of life-events like moving, divorce, a demanding job, the loss of a loved one, and even ongoing childcare - adds up a state of extreme exhaustion that leads to what we call burnout.
Sternberg writes: "Members of certain professions are more prone to burnout than others - nurses and teachers, for example, are among those at highest risk. These professionals are faced daily with caregiving situations in their work lives, often with inadequate pay, inadequate help in their jobs, and with too many patients or students in their charge. Some studies are beginning to show that burnt-out patients may have not only psychological burnout, but also physiological burnout: a flattened cortisol response and inability to respond to any stress with even a slight burst of cortisol. In other words, chronic unrelenting stress can change the stress response itself. And it can change other hormone systems in the body as well."
One of the most profound such changes affects the reproductive system - extended periods of stress can shut down the secretion of reproductive hormones in both men and women, resulting in lower fertility. But the effects are especially perilous for women - recurring and extended episodes of depression result in permanent changes in bone structure, increasing the risk of osteoporosis. In other words, we register stress literally in our bones.
But stress isn’t a direct causal function of the circumstances we’re in - what either amplifies or ameliorates our experience of stress is, once again, memory. Sternberg writes: Our perception of stress, and therefore our response to it, is an ever-changing thing that depends a great deal on the circumstances and settings in which we find ourselves. It depends on previous experience and knowledge, as well as on the actual event that has occurred. And it depends on memory, too.
The most acute manifestation of how memory modulates stress is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. For striking evidence of how memory encodes past experience into triggers, which then catalyze present experience, Sternberg points to research by psychologist Rachel Yehuda, who found both Holocaust survivors and their first-degree relatives - that is, children and siblings - exhibited a similar hormonal stress response.
This, Sternberg points out, could be a combination of nature and nurture - the survivors, as young parents for whom the trauma was still fresh, may well have subconsciously taught their children a common style of stress-responsiveness; but it’s also possible that these automatic hormonal stress responses permanently changed the parents’ biology and were transmitted via DNA to their children. Once again, memory encodes stress into our very bodies. Sternberg considers the broader implications: "Stress need not be on the order of war, rape, or the Holocaust to trigger at least some elements of PTSD. Common stresses that we all experience can trigger the emotional memory of a stressful circumstance - and all its accompanying physiological responses. Prolonged stress - such as divorce, a hostile workplace, the end of a relationship, or the death of a loved one - can all trigger elements of PTSD."
Among the major stressors - which include life-events expected to be on the list, such as divorce and the death of a loved one - is also one somewhat unexpected situation, at least to those who haven’t undergone it: moving. Sternberg considers the commonalities between something as devastating as death and something as mundane as moving: One is certainly loss - the loss of someone or something familiar. Another is novelty - finding oneself in a new and unfamiliar place because of the loss. Together these amount to change: moving away from something one knows and toward something one doesn’t. An unfamiliar environment is a universal stressor to nearly all species, no matter how developed or undeveloped.
In the remainder of the thoroughly illuminating "The Balance Within", Sternberg goes on to explore the role of interpersonal relationships in both contributing to stress and shielding us from it, how the immune system changes our moods, and what we can do to harness these neurobiological insights in alleviating our experience of the stressors with which every human life is strewn.”
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Related:
"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
"Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent"
By Melanie Curtin
By Melanie Curtin
Full screen recommended.
"Everyone knows they need to manage their stress. When things get difficult at work, school, or in your personal life, you can use as many tips, tricks, and techniques as you can get to calm your nerves. So here's a science-backed one: make a playlist of the 10 songs found to be the most relaxing on earth. Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one's health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions.
Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. The study was conducted on participants who attempted to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible while connected to sensors. The puzzles induced a certain level of stress, and participants listened to different songs while researchers measured brain activity as well as physiological states that included heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing.
According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. In fact, listening to that one song- "Weightless"- resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants' overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. That is remarkable.
Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created "Weightless", Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener's heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
When it comes to lowering anxiety, the stakes couldn't be higher. Stress either exacerbates or increases the risk of health issues like heart disease, obesity, depression, gastrointestinal problems, asthma, and more. More troubling still, a recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found health issues from job stress alone cause more deaths than diabetes, Alzheimer's, or influenza.
In this age of constant bombardment, the science is clear: if you want your mind and body to last, you've got to prioritize giving them a rest. Music is an easy way to take some of the pressure off of all the pings, dings, apps, tags, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, and deadlines that can easily spike your stress level and leave you feeling drained and anxious.
Of the top track, Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson said, "'Weightless' was so effective, many women became drowsy and I would advise against driving while listening to the song because it could be dangerous." So don't drive while listening to these, but do take advantage of them:
10. "We Can Fly," by Rue du Soleil (Café Del Mar)
9. "Canzonetta Sull'aria," by Mozart
8. "Someone Like You," by Adele
7. "Pure Shores," by All Saints
6. "Please Don't Go," by Barcelona
5. "Strawberry Swing," by Coldplay
4. "Watermark," by Enya
3. "Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix)," by DJ Shah
2. "Electra," by Airstream
1. "Weightless," by Marconi Union
I made a public playlist of all of them on Spotify that runs about 50 minutes (it's also downloadable)."
Dan, iAllegedly PM 8/17/21: "Everything Just Feels Wrong with the Economy. You Need to Get Ready"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 8/17/21:
"Everything Just Feels Wrong with the Economy.
You Need to Get Ready"
"There is so much happening in the economy today. All signs point to trouble as they try to tell us that everything is OK. From rent moratorium, pandemic unemployment ending to forbearance problems. It’s all getting worse by the week. Now retail sales have utterly dropped to the floor."
Gregory Mannarino, AM/PM 8/17/21
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/17/21:
"Retail Sales Plummet With Personal Debt Surging,
An Economy In Freefall"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/17/21:
“Very Important Updates”
Must View! Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/17/21, "A Paycheck Away From Hell"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/17/21:
"A Paycheck Away From Hell;
America Closed For Business; You Could Be Homeless;
Great Depression Imminent”
Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"
Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial circle. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of the expanding nebula's 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image,indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a (American) football-shaped cloud of glowing gas.
The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star, now a tiny pinprick of light seen at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,500 light-years away."
Free Download: Albert Einstein, “The World As I See It”
"The World As I See It:
Albert Einstein's Thoughts on the Meaning of Life”
by Paul Ratner
“Albert Einstein was one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers, influencing scientific thought immeasurably. He was also not shy about sharing his wisdom about other topics, writing essays, articles, letters, giving interviews and speeches. His opinions on social and intellectual issues that do not come from the world of physics give an insight into the spiritual and moral vision of the scientist, offering much to take to heart.
The collection of essays and ideas “The World As I See It” gathers Einstein’s thoughts from before 1935, when he was as the preface says “at the height of his scientific powers but not yet known as the sage of the atomic age”.
In the book, Einstein comes back to the question of the purpose of life on several occasions. In one passage, he links it to a sense of religiosity. “What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it many any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life,” wrote Einstein.
Was Einstein himself religious? Raised by secular Jewish parents, he had complex and evolving spiritual thoughts. He generally seemed to be open to the possibility of the scientific impulse and religious thoughts coexisting. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," said Einstein in his 1954 essay on science and religion.
Some (including the scientist himself) have called Einstein’s spiritual views as pantheism, largely influenced by the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Pantheists see God as existing but abstract, equating all of reality with divinity. They also reject a specific personal God or a god that is somehow endowed with human attributes.
Himself a famous atheist, Richard Dawkins calls Einstein's pantheism a “sexed-up atheism,” but other scholars point to the fact that Einstein did seem to believe in a supernatural intelligence that’s beyond the physical world. He referred to it in his writings as “a superior spirit,” “a superior mind” and a “spirit vastly superior to men”. Einstein was possibly a deist, although he was quite familiar with various religious teachings, including a strong knowledge of Jewish religious texts.
In another passage from 1934, Einstein talks about the value of a human being, reflecting a Buddhist-like approach: “The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”
This theme of liberating the self is also echoed by Einstein later in life, in a 1950 letter to console a grieving father Robert S. Marcus: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
In case you are wondering whether Einstein saw value in material pursuits, here’s him talking about accumulating wealth in 1934, as part of the “The World As I See It”: “I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?”
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Freely download "The World As I See It", by Albert Einstein, here:
"The World Rests In The Night..."
“The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb-time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.”
- John O'Donohue,
"Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom"
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“On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.”
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John O'Donohue was an Irish author, poet, philosopher and former Catholic priest. He was born in County Clare on January 1, 1956. He died suddenly on January 4, 2008. He is best known for popularizing Celtic spirituality and is the author of a number of best-selling books on the subject.
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