This blog, we are a changin'

Artist: Dorothy Stevens

I listen to a young Bob Dylan as I write this post. "Come senators, congressmen,/Please heed the call/... For he who gets hurt is he who has stalled/...For the times they are a changin'."

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DGList/DGlist.expanded.htm

While these times feel far distant from Dylan's folk anthem of the 1960s but change is no less imperative. I am a far different person from that impressionable grade schooler whose older brother burned his draft card and fought against Vietnam. In the 1960s and '70s we all heard such clarioon calls to action: End this meaningless war! Equal rights for women! Equality among all people, no matter what their race! These were inspiring to an impressionable young girl just reaching adolescence.

Today there is no unifying ideal although the needs for social, political, environmental and economic justice are just as compelling, if not more so. We are living in a state of high anxiety. There is no common vision for a better world? Where are the voices of those fighting violence, discrimination and injustice, or driving change? Young people today may be called to action--or lulled to inaction--in myriad ways, through the echo chamber of Facebook pages where all the voices reflect their images back to each other or through the Twitter feed into the ether. The voices are fragmented and momentary.

Unlike the youth of the '60s who decided to take power into their own hands, those seeking change seem to have ceded their power, the better to deny any responsibility for the dire state of our world.

Occupy Wall Street At Times Square, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

Climate, food supply, terrorism, gun violence -- these are the crises we face, ever present. Stress, anxiety, poverty, addiction and disease epidemics that can jump the globe as tracked by Twitter: these have led us as a society to paralysis.

Our world is in crisis. The same old ways aren't working any more. Where are new remedies emerging? Who are the people willing to reframe the questions and try out new responses.

Is There a New Story Waiting to Be Told?
 However close new channels for communication and engagement in a world that is so closely interconnected, the power to make a differences seems far-removed. What is the call to action today? How can we answer? Who should we answer to?

In looking at old problems in new ways, can we drive innovation? Pass the Talking Stick seeks to tell our new story. How can we reframe crisis as opportunity? How do we use the science of story to illuminate solutions?

To begin, a few questions:

• Can we examine what stories we have been telling ourselves to see whether these portray our personal, social and political realities accurately? Are there other stories that are not being heard?
• Is there evidence that the brain retains information differently in story form than when presented through factual evidence? And if so, how to present statistics accurately yet with impact?
• People are hungry to learn. How do we teach researchers and technical subject matter experts to share their discoveries in multiple media and social media channels in plain language?

Senators, congressmen, mothers and fathers, we are shaping the world through the stories we tell ourselves, our children and each other.

Pass the Talking Stick
In fact, it is not just storytelling, but story sharing that makes us human; we all have something to say, but without an audience, it is all just babble.

So let's use this forum to tell a new story, not just about what has always been, but about what we can create. Together we can explore and realize a world in common.

The dire story of threat and fear of decline has created a world of anxiety, scarcity and uncertainty. Primitive passions appeal to the override mechanisms in our brain, awakening our default urge to run, freeze or fight.

But we know more than ever before about how our biological default mechanisms work for better and for worse, and we are discovering the tools to use planning, thinking, logic and awareness to shape a better human response.

Now is the time to use our enhanced awareness to evoke a more careful - or cared for - legacy for our children and theirs.

I suggest that if we have a new call to action today, it could be Tell-and-Listen. To tune in to each other through the power of story. What change can we put into action that will lead us to a less reactive, more conscious way of living?

Maybe the folksingers that spawned a generation of protesters was prescient in calling us together to "tune in and turn on." Today, Dylan's words may call us together as, collectively, we begin to shape this new story, buoyed by science.

"Come gather 'round people/Wherever you roam..."

CyberMonday and all that Spam

Dear Friends,

Among other interesting activities, I moderate comments on a health blog. While the blog is popular and, on any given day, we may receive 10-15 comments, in this very special time of the year, we are averaging more like a comment a minute.

While, in the main, no one objects to the blog's new found popularity, I might point out that most of these contributions seem to be unintelligible. Often, these are thinly disguised as actual comments to posts -- "Specifically where there is married life with no romance, you will have romance with no married life"-- is one I  noted as particularly irrelevant on a blog devoted to preventing teen drug abuse and addiction. Although one must also admire the daring of those discount pharmaceuticals attempting to peddle generic prescription drugs on a blog warning of the dangers of addiction!

Attention all spammers: I appreciate most those messages that demonstrate are outright selling as opposed to layering a thin veneer of commentary over an otherwise blatant spam. Nike's, Christian LaBoutain, Burberry, NFL jackets and Uggs are among the most popular, judging by the entries to-date. But social bookmarking and link building are also appreciative, though lesser known as brands.

But for those really inventive resellers, you cannot beat the creativity of wrapping a clearly fictitious article about the Israeli prime minister resigning and the PLO representative's reaction around the charade of selling pens and sunglasses:

        Israeli Defense Ecclesiastic [montblancpensonlinesale] Ehud Barak announced his acclimatization Monday, saying he inclination quit civil affairs in January to lavish more time with his family.

      His resigning mont blanc comes at a warmly delicate time for Israel, which is observing a tenuous cease-fire with the hostile Palestinian unit Hamas after an eight-day tiff that killed more than 160 people — the mind-blowing majority of them Palestinians in Gaza.

      Barak, who is married and the shepherd of three children, [montblancpensonlinesale] said Monday at a word talk in Tel Aviv that he will proceed as defense assist for the next three months, as elections are apposite in January. He said he won’t debate the elections.

     Hanan Ashrawi, a fellow of the Palestine Unshackling Consortium’s executive body, weighed in on the announcement.

     “I contemplate this signals identification [lunettesdesoleilraybans] of the futility of the military overtures in the adoption of fury as means of dealing with the Palestinians,” she said. “If it is for intimate reasons, we cannot opine, but if it’s recognition that his complete tear was based on the military proposition to public existence, then this demonstrates the recognition of the futility of militarism and violence.”

     Some Israeli factional commentators had speculated ahead of the commercial that Barak was planning to quit the government of Prime Churchman Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new center-left party.

A bid for Ehud Barak's shepharding a peace process in the Sinai, perhaps?

For all of the above, helpful links to the products abound, and in many languages: Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, English, and variations given fractured sellers helpers from Eastern Europe, not to mention the ever-present Spambots that must rely on Google algorithms and half-baked translations for their creative message management.

And the festive holiday season has just begun!

Question to the blogosphere: how are you managing this season's Spamalot? Surely there are better ways to see that actual questions and comments are addressed without succumbing to brand-name Season's Greetings!

And question to brands and their resellers: do you think your messages of cheerful consumption or comments wrapped around irrelevant stories are the most effective way of reaching consumers? Or is it just cheap and easy and you're thinking, "Couldn't hurt to cover all bases?"

I am curious to know...
Sincerely,

Robin Stevens Payes, Principal

Creating and Implementing Marketing Strategies
Health Communications and Social Marketing

WordsWork Communications LLC

Sleeping to Remember—And Forget - Dana Foundation

New research in neuroscience shows how cues during sleep can interrupt, or reinforce memories. Through functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), researchers can measure where in the brain these memories are stored, and what neural (or brain) pathways are involved in remembering specific events or people associated with the memory. The implications for learning are fascinating, as is the potential to disrupt triggers for stress and trauma.
Sleeping to Remember—And Forget - Dana Foundation

What do we really know, after all?

I went to see Candide last night – a musical opera based on Voltaire’s famous satirical novel (“All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”) set to Leonard Bernstein’s music. It was a fabulous production by The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Bernstein decided to undertake the adaptation in 1953 upon the advice of his friend, playwright Lillian Hellman. At the time, Hellman was one of many artists, scientists and intellectuals under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, the noted McCarthy hearings against alleged Communists. Hellman was one of many artist victims of this modern day witch hunt. Voltaire's 1758 satire of the institutions that held enormous sway over public opinion in his time - from the Catholic Church to the emperors, from physicians to philosophers - were intent on trying to impose their dogma, and control on the public. Even when the facts didn't line up with teachings - the inconvenience of the Inquisition being a notable breach of Christian spirit, for example - it was all for the best!

In a contemporary parallel, some politicians of our day insist that our country's Founders had God and right on their side in the original framing of the U.S. Constitution -- and that they are the special people who can read he Founders intentions correctly and prune our laws of anything that the framers and their successors didn't really intend, except those parts that don't suit their current ideology. No hypocrisy there!

As the French themselves are fond of saying, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
What struck me about the "philosophy" behind Voltaire’s mocking words was how the best knowledge of his day had much of the science wrong. The best medicine then promoted bleeding (leeches) to cure disease, the auto-da-fe to “purify” religion, and Optimism as a philosophical explanation for every Job-like tragedy that befell the world and poor Candide, including earthquake, war, plague. What do we "know" today that will lead the scientists and philosophers 300 years from now to conclude that our best practices are equally misinformed?

It would seem that skepticism - questioning what is generally accepted as fact - is actually a healthy approach to counter the conventional wisdom. Candide's teacher, Professor Pangloss, tenaciously holds to his optimistic philosophy ("All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds") despite suffering these personal trials and tribulations: war, poverty, beatings, earthquakes, Auto-da-fe (the Inquisition's infamous public heretics "trials" which inevitably ended up in conviction and public execution), hanging and, finally, destitution. Equally, today, we might be skeptical of the absolutists who claim to "know" what is best for our country, for our children and for our future.

Fortunately, technology, communication, transportation and a healthy public debate in our democracy promote ever greater tools to engage in public skepticism. Through the Internet, television, social media, ever-more transparent government and the free press, Americans now have more power than ever to question, debate, learn and challenge the status quo.

Still, it is tempting to stay out of the debate and "cultivate one's garden", as Candide concludes at the bitter end of his story. By this time, Candide's one true love, the Lady Cunegonde, has lost her station, her beauty, her youth and her wealth. To engage in the conversation - to challenge conventional wisdom publicly - may leave one subject to ridicule or worse. But, as in Voltaire's time, satire can be a biting tool that, on the face of it, seems to endorse the authorities whose knowledge is "beyond question" while mocking their hypocrisy. A musical highlight of Candide is the lovely Cunegonde's famous comic soliloquy, "Glitter and Be Gay", lamenting that a lady of high nobility stripped of her title, wealth and family should become the sexual object for everyone from Catholic Cardinals, to the City of Lisbon's wealthiest and most influential men in exchange for baubles and expensive clothes. True to the teachings of Professor Pangloss even in the most horrific circumstances, Cunegonde searches for the best in the situation. The aria is here performed by the incomparably comic and gifted acress Kristen Chenoweth. Her high E-flat is a Wicked feat!

Shoutout: Get the Facts on Drugs

Today launches the first National Drug Facts Week challenging teens and adults who care about them to "shatter the myths" and learn the facts about drugs and addiction. In what may be a coincidence of timing, over the weekend, my daughter and I caught the Kennedy Center performance of the 2009 Tony award winning revival of the musical Hair, the myth-making 1968 Broadway musical that rocked the country with its portrayal of America’s rebellious youth. With its “peace, love and pot” philosophy, and youth revolt against the war in Vietnam, Hair captured a sense of American values gone off-track and a growing "Generation Gap" between young people and their parents.

In 1968, for the first time on stage, theatre-goers witnessed drug use onstage to the accompaniment of the drug anthem, “Hashish”, in what may be the most comprehensive musical index of illicit substances known at the time:

Hashish

Cocaine

Marijuana
Opium
LSD
DMT
STP, BLT
A&P, IRT

APC, alcohol

cigarettes, shoe polish, cough syrup, peyote
Equanil, dexamyl, camposine, chemadrine,
Thorazine, trilafon, dexadrine, benzedrine, methedrine,
S-E-X Y-O-U WOW!

It was a time of innocence and ignorance over what repeated drug use could do to your health - beyond sending users into psychedelic spasm. And, since this was an era before the emergence of the AIDS virus, no thought to what health risks might come from engaging in sex under the influence of drugs. The world of the ‘60s was a very different place from today.

The drug culture is still with us in 2010, and, arguably today doesn't have much to do with freedom, love or rebellion against the establishment. The stresses in our world, our schools, our families and communities, contribute to an atmosphere where "escape" sounds like an easier choice than facing stressful realities. In a media culture that invades our brains 24/7, young people need only tune into MTV or iTunes to hear – and experience - ample drug-inspired references composed to a rap, rock or pop beat.



A big difference today is that we know so much more about drugs, how they influence the brain, how young people’s brains are developing, and the effects that drugs can have to hijack healthy brain development.

Unfortunately, in the 21st century, growth of prescription drug abuse – opioids (painkillers) and stimulants (prescribed to treat the symptoms of ADHD). These drugs are often found in family medicine cabinets, or bought, begged or stolen from friends who use them safely under a doctor’s care. Though not "illegal", they also alter the way the brain functions. When used as prescribed, Rx drugs are safe and effective. When you use them in ways your doctor hasn't sanctioned -- say, to stay awake, study, party, or relax -- the effect can be quite different and lead to abuse and addiction.

The famous Harvard Professor and Psychologist Timothy Leary's crafted a catchy message to young people of the '60s, "Turn on, tune in and drop out," by experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, and so creating the drug myth that recreational use of drugs was a plus. But today, we know so much more about what drug abuse can do to disrupt people's lives.

This week, you have the opportunity to get smart about what drugs might do, before you act. Learn the facts about drugs and addiction, then think twice.

Your Brain on Art

Imagine riffing on a mini-keyboard while immobilized in a tube that’s taking pictures of your brain. That’s what jazz bassist Mike Pope and other musicians have been doing to participate in Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist Dr. Charles Limb’s novel experiment to capture the brain on jazz.


Call it intuition, creative instinct, or "getting into the zone", but science is finding that artists brains work differently when they are in the creative act, and that they may, in turn have a feel for how their art will resonate in people's brains.

Call it instinctive neuroscience creative people seem attuned from the outset to tap into a social reserve of emotion and universal understanding. With artists holding such a head start, where do neuroscientists find the neuroagency that can help advance understanding of where we find creativity in the brain and what purposes it serves?

That was one underlying question during a lively converation with jazz musicians Pat Metheny and Mike Pope and otolaryngologist Dr. Charles Limb participating in a unique conference on "Perceptual Neuroscience and Aesthetics” on October 20 in Baltimore. The conference, at the American Visual Arts Museum, was filled to capacity with more than 300 attendees curious to explore how – and why – we respond to art, music, dance and drama. And to learn a little more about the brains of those people driven to create.



Are our brains hard-wired for Beethoven? What about Dr. Dre? Do mirror neurons attune to faces, such as the larger-than-life canvases by painter William Stoehr, and what emotions does it evoke in people? Stoehr pays most attention to the eyes of his models - reproducing them to draw us closely into the mind of his portraits. He highlights these black and white images with a splash of red, a touch of yellow. And much of the rest of the painting is more suggestion than explicit representation. Yet, he notes, that people who see his work believe that the eye, the ear, the chin is complete. The viewer's eye fills in what it expects to see, even when there is merely hinted at, in fact.

The former National Geographic photographer is exploring this theme on Facebook

The science of creativity
Science, technology, engineering, math and medicine – form a core of what might be called “left-brained” occupations – society recognizes the value of these roles through investment in education and reward in the workplace. Those possessing these functions in high degree are highly valued members of society: finding root causes and statistical bases for societal problems, creating living and working environments, curing disease. All these advance evolution of our species: inventing new treatments, technological advances, shelter, safety, defense. In short, these capabilities are fundamental to human survival.

Ars Artis
Bach might not save a life. Picasso never built a house. Although Doris Lessing, in a prolific career that has continued her publishing well into her 90s, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, it is doubtful that her most notable works, including The Golden Notebook, ever cured a reader. Throughout the millennia, artists have been alternatively ostracized and embraced, reviled and worshiped. But always, they have been seen as “different”, or outside the norm.


To glean art's ancient roots,listen to the tone of a 9000-year old Chinese flute here: http://www.shakuhachi.com/Sound/K-9KYearOldFlute.mp3

Poets, musicians, artists and writers, on the other hand, serve no noticeable function in preserving the species. The results of creativity serve less as tools of physical survival, but more in evolving the social and emotional capacity of society.

Neuroscience advances have begun to demonstrate that areas of the prefrontal cortex linked with self-expression and inhibiting censoring brain functions are active in artists in the process of creation, showing much different brain activation during periods of intense creativity, like improvisation. Measuring perception in the brain – vision, hearing, processing information – ties the neural output of the creative process into the realms of scientific understanding.

Science can illuminate art through its own creative explorations of what makes us pursue and consume art – is art its own reward?

What’s going on here?
In addition to an unusually articulate complement of left-brain and right-brained speakers, the conference drew from a disparate group – scientists, teachers, artists, writers, architects and musicians, all of whom might speak distinct languages. The stovepipes in our culture keep artists in their studios and scientists in their labs, and rarely the twain shall meet. Yet with the vernacular of hearing and seeing - the universal languages gleaned through the arts and beginning to be understood by neuroscience, each group might draw understanding to enhance their own work.

Is there a way to keep the channels open and engaged? How can we sustain such cross-fertilization of ideas in a society structured to reward specialization? What does the artistically creative mind conceive of during the act of creation? How does science measure the output? How does the process - from idea to output – unfold? What role does intuition play? Knowledge? And what are those teachable insights – where we can infuse science with creativity and art with measurement? These are only a few of the questions that began to emerge in the conversations that ensued.

Perhaps the poets have intuited all along the metaphysical expression in their craft:

To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. -William Blake

10 Reasons 2010 Will Be Better: True or False?

10. The worst of the financial meltdown is over.
9. We are out of the war in Iraq.
8. The world has not ended.
7. Health care reform is about making healthcare more affordable and better.
6. Education reform is about giving every child the opportunity to improve their learning.
5. We can conquer the challenges of climate change before it's too late.
4. There is no climate change challenge.
3. Happiness is a state of mind.
2. We can improve our state of mind.
1. We should all resolve to be happy in 2010.

Reading a fascinating book by Robert Burton, On Being Certain or How We Know What We Know, which challenges us from a scientific point-of-view to check our assumptions at the door. Is my "pink" the same mixture of red-and-white that you see when you think of pink? Do I believe that science will one day reveal evidence for the rational view that all we see is random? Is "reason" the answer over "faith" because it is based on facts that can be proved?

Or do all these facts that we take for granted (I would say, "hold on faith", but that would be too ironic) only true until we find something "truer" that invalidates what we've deduced? And even if we can answer these questions, is there still a larger question about what set the random universe we inhabit (which is not even to tackle "knowing" multiple universes or multiverses and different understandings of time and space relative to other positions outside our tiny vantage point of knowledge) in motion?

Mind-boggling, no? What do you think?