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Dienstag, 17. September 2019
Unavailability
ahc, 08:35h
[Crumbs]
„By aiming at making world available, the world encounters us postmoderns as a ‘point of aggression’ or as a series of points of aggression, i.e. as objects that need to be known, to be reached, conquered, controlled or used, and precisely in this way, ‘life’, that, which accounts for the experience of liveliness and encounter – that, which enables resonance-, seems to elude us, which in turn leads to fear, frustration, anger, yes even despair, which then, among other things, is reflected in impotent political aggressive behavior.” (transl. ahc)
Rosa, H. (2019). Unverfügbarkeit [Unavailability]. Wien: Residenz Verlag.
„By aiming at making world available, the world encounters us postmoderns as a ‘point of aggression’ or as a series of points of aggression, i.e. as objects that need to be known, to be reached, conquered, controlled or used, and precisely in this way, ‘life’, that, which accounts for the experience of liveliness and encounter – that, which enables resonance-, seems to elude us, which in turn leads to fear, frustration, anger, yes even despair, which then, among other things, is reflected in impotent political aggressive behavior.” (transl. ahc)
Rosa, H. (2019). Unverfügbarkeit [Unavailability]. Wien: Residenz Verlag.
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Freitag, 12. Juli 2019
Many disorders related to mismatch of life conditions
ahc, 10:46h
[Crumbs]
So-called “mismatch diseases” are “defined as diseases that result from our Paleolithic bodies being poorly or inadequately adapted to certain modern behaviors and conditions” (chapter 7).
According to David Lieberman, many non-infectious mismatch diseases are mental disorders, like
Alzheimer’s disease
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Depression
Eating disorders
Fibromyalgia
Hypertension
OCD
and possibly many more (Table 3).
Lieberman’s elaborations neatly fit into the organismic self-regulation within an organism/environment space. The author gives many examples about how exactly our evolutionary-shaped bodies get in trouble with modern ways of living (“having paleolithic bodies in a post-paleolithic world”), including topics like cancer, wearing shoes vs. running barefoot, disuse of mental capacities, overweight, overexceeding hygiene (“just because we can live lives of exceptional cleanliness and comfort doesn’t mean they are good for us”), diabetes, short-sightedness, etc.
For example, about sitting in a chair (chapter 12):
“When you sit in a standard chair, your hips and knees are flexed at right angles, a position sitting can permanently shorten the hip flexors. Then, when you stand, your shortened hip flexors are tight, so they tilt the pelvis forward leading to an exaggerated lumbar curve. Your ham-string muscle along the back of the thigh then must contract to counter this curvature, tilting your pelvis backward, leading to a flat-back posture, which hunches your shoulders forward. Fortunately, stretching effectively increases muscle length and flexibility.”
Concluding that “hunter-gatherers use their backs moderately–neither as intensively as subsistence famers nor as minimally as sedentary office workers”.
Another fascinating result is the possibility that painful wisdom teeth may be related to not chewing enough during early childhood (leading to the development of smaller jaws that then cannot provide the necessary space). Yet another, that bone strength seems to be mainly determined until age 20-25 based on a “no strain, no gain” principle (“[a]fter then, there is little you can do to make your bones bigger, and soon thereafter your skeleton starts to lose bone for the rest of your life”; chapter 11)
Lieberman, D. (2013). The story of the human body: Evolution, health, and disease. New York: Pantheon Books.
So-called “mismatch diseases” are “defined as diseases that result from our Paleolithic bodies being poorly or inadequately adapted to certain modern behaviors and conditions” (chapter 7).
According to David Lieberman, many non-infectious mismatch diseases are mental disorders, like
Alzheimer’s disease
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Depression
Eating disorders
Fibromyalgia
Hypertension
OCD
and possibly many more (Table 3).
Lieberman’s elaborations neatly fit into the organismic self-regulation within an organism/environment space. The author gives many examples about how exactly our evolutionary-shaped bodies get in trouble with modern ways of living (“having paleolithic bodies in a post-paleolithic world”), including topics like cancer, wearing shoes vs. running barefoot, disuse of mental capacities, overweight, overexceeding hygiene (“just because we can live lives of exceptional cleanliness and comfort doesn’t mean they are good for us”), diabetes, short-sightedness, etc.
For example, about sitting in a chair (chapter 12):
“When you sit in a standard chair, your hips and knees are flexed at right angles, a position sitting can permanently shorten the hip flexors. Then, when you stand, your shortened hip flexors are tight, so they tilt the pelvis forward leading to an exaggerated lumbar curve. Your ham-string muscle along the back of the thigh then must contract to counter this curvature, tilting your pelvis backward, leading to a flat-back posture, which hunches your shoulders forward. Fortunately, stretching effectively increases muscle length and flexibility.”
Concluding that “hunter-gatherers use their backs moderately–neither as intensively as subsistence famers nor as minimally as sedentary office workers”.
Another fascinating result is the possibility that painful wisdom teeth may be related to not chewing enough during early childhood (leading to the development of smaller jaws that then cannot provide the necessary space). Yet another, that bone strength seems to be mainly determined until age 20-25 based on a “no strain, no gain” principle (“[a]fter then, there is little you can do to make your bones bigger, and soon thereafter your skeleton starts to lose bone for the rest of your life”; chapter 11)
Lieberman, D. (2013). The story of the human body: Evolution, health, and disease. New York: Pantheon Books.
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Dienstag, 25. Juni 2019
How sensory awareness skills may deteriorate
ahc, 10:12h
“The family is playing an informal game at the dinner table. It’s the Christmas season, and the centerpiece is a candle-lit Weihnachten Carousel (aka windmill carousel or pyramid carousel): the updraft from the candles turns a balsa wood windmill which rotates carousels on the three levels of the pyramid. On these carousels is a Nativity scene: Mary, Joseph, the crèche, the wise men, the angels, the animals, and so on, all brightly painted and gaily rotating within the wooden framework. The game is a version of I Spy. 8-year-old Peter is ‘it’; he has ‘spied’ an item on the carousel, and the rest of the family takes turns asking yes/no questions to try to guess which item Peter has selected: Is it moving? No. Is it made of wood? Yes. Is it white or partly white? Yes. The children love this game, which they have made up and elaborated over the years. Eventually the family gives up and requires Peter to tell what he has spied; he says it is the balls that sit on the fence posts around the base of carousel. ‘Peter! There isn’t any white on those balls! They’re totally red!’ And they are: the balls are, objectively, uniformly red painted, not a speck of white paint on them. The family has a light-hearted conversation about how much easier it would have been had Peter given the correct answer to his brother’s ‘Is it white or partly white?’ question. Peter doesn’t enter into this conversation.
However, a more careful look at the red balls reveals that each has the reflection of the two adjacent candle flames on it, two tiny spots of experienced white on the objectively uniformly red-painted balls. The spots are tiny, and they don’t count as ‘white’ for anyone except Peter, who may be more sensorially aware than anyone else in the family. But they are indeed, looked at closely, experientially white. Peter has been punished (mildly, to be sure) for his sensory sensitivity, and he doesn’t have the confidence to defend himself.
We speculate that inner experiences (sensory awareness, inner speech, inner seeing, etc.) are skills that may be acquired across development. Peter has learned a small lesson: that sensory awareness doesn’t count; that talking about your sensory awarenesses will get you punished. We speculate that a long series of that kind of event— in the family, in the classroom, eventually in the workplace — may cause Peter’s sensory awareness skill either to atrophy or to go underground: he will not talk about it, even to himself; he will be embarrassed if he is somehow cornered into talking about it (as was Ephraim); he will deny that he has it; he will not really identify the fact that he has it in his self-narratives.” (p. 248f)
Direct citation from:
Hurlburt, R. T., Heavey, C. L., & Bensaheb, A. (2009). Sensory awareness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16(10-12), 231-251.
However, a more careful look at the red balls reveals that each has the reflection of the two adjacent candle flames on it, two tiny spots of experienced white on the objectively uniformly red-painted balls. The spots are tiny, and they don’t count as ‘white’ for anyone except Peter, who may be more sensorially aware than anyone else in the family. But they are indeed, looked at closely, experientially white. Peter has been punished (mildly, to be sure) for his sensory sensitivity, and he doesn’t have the confidence to defend himself.
We speculate that inner experiences (sensory awareness, inner speech, inner seeing, etc.) are skills that may be acquired across development. Peter has learned a small lesson: that sensory awareness doesn’t count; that talking about your sensory awarenesses will get you punished. We speculate that a long series of that kind of event— in the family, in the classroom, eventually in the workplace — may cause Peter’s sensory awareness skill either to atrophy or to go underground: he will not talk about it, even to himself; he will be embarrassed if he is somehow cornered into talking about it (as was Ephraim); he will deny that he has it; he will not really identify the fact that he has it in his self-narratives.” (p. 248f)
Direct citation from:
Hurlburt, R. T., Heavey, C. L., & Bensaheb, A. (2009). Sensory awareness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16(10-12), 231-251.
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