Giant cuttlefish, Australia, mating season. Cuttlefish are cephalopods with an internal shell (cuttlebone)**
DE MORTUIS
I saw the dead with their skin off their faces
so that their eyes could not rest. Their hands
knew no idleness
though they lay in gloves of iron
given by their medieval friends.
Grandfather pulled me close
to tell me the lessons he had learned
reading the dirt for a lifetime with a scholar’s
intent, not the ignorance of just any man
with a hoe. Watch the earth,
he told me, not puffed up
worlds of men, not women
with ice in their teeth.
Then he sent me back
as if to our old shack of a house,
for a bucket of water,
a dipper he could lift in the sun.
~ David Ray
The title means “about the dead” — an abbreviation of the Latin proverb, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est” — “About the dead, nothing is to be said except the good.” Or, more simply, “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” Imagine memorial services if we enshrined ruthless honesty instead. We might as well invite the Westboro Baptists to conduct the ceremony.
Still, a poem requires dramatic tension. It’s wise of David Ray to start by contradicting the idea that the dead are “at rest.” I especially like the idea that in the speaker’s vision the hands of the dead were not idle, “though they lay in gloves of iron / given by their medieval friends.” The dead are all of the same age, and if they visit us in dreams they usually do (or at least say) something rather than be “at rest.”
Note that the dead don’t just become part of nature — and of history (the medieval friends). They also become part of the psyche of the living. We get to the heart of the poem once the grandfather appears to convey “the lessons he had learned / reading the dirt for a lifetime with a scholar’s / intent.” A farmer reading the soil the way a scholar reads texts is a delightful analogy. What follows is at first predictable and didactic, but soon turns to something marvelously cosmic: grandfather sends the speaker for a bucket of water, “a dipper he could lift in the sun.” That juxtaposition of the poverty of “shack” with the immensity and radiance of the sun —now that’s what I call a Wow ending.
DOSTOYEVSKI: “EVERYONE SHOULD LOVE LIFE ABOVE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD — LOVE LIFE MORE THAN THE MEANING OF IT.”
“Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one's heart prizes them . . . I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha; I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most precious graveyard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that's all it is. It's not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with one's stomach. One loves the first strength of one's youth. Do you understand anything of my tirade, Alyosha?" Ivan laughed suddenly.
"I understand too well, Ivan. One longs to love with one's inside, with one's stomach. You said that so well and I am awfully glad that you have such a longing for life," cried Alyosha. "I think everyone should love life above everything in the world."
"Love life more than the meaning of it?"
"Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless of logic, and it's only then one will understand the meaning of it. I have thought so a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan, you love life, now you've only to try to do the second half and you are saved.”
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Oriana:
This is almost like “existence precedes essence.” The primal, visceral love of life — of the sticky new leaves and old graveyards — is the foundation, rather than “cogito, ergo sum.”
“It was the fascists who said, ‘everyday life doesn’t matter'. 'Every detail doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. All that matters is the message, the leader, the myth, the totality’.” ~ Timothy Snyder, historian, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Oriana:
Dostoyevski’s message was a complete opposite of that: even the sticky new leaves matter more than any ideology or leader. And an actual old woman matters more than any idea, to switch now to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. “If you think she is unnecessary, / you are a mass murderer." ~ Tadeusz Rożewicz
**
“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.” ~ George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature
Oriana:
I've been saying this for years: in Soviet-controlled Poland Catholicism was more totalitarian (and harmful) than Communism. And it's often been said that Communism and Fascism were secular religions. But only Orwell completed the equation: A totalitarian state is a theocracy.
“The spirit of Hitlerism won its greatest victory over us when, after its defeat, we used the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to develop.” ~ Karl Popper
The phrase “the spirit of Hitlerism” seems so applicable to what we see today — racism to the point of wanting to expel the “Other” from the country, obstinately refusing to see the contributions of various immigrant and ethnic groups to the building of America. And it's a drastic, chilling phrase, but we need to see the truth of it — that Hitler didn't entirely lose the war.
The revival of the "spirit of Hitlerism" reminds me that the American Civil War seems not to have ended either — the lack of reckoning with the issue of slavery, trying to white-wash the cause of the war as "state rights" — there has been a lack of resolution that stems from trying to falsify history and prop up white supremacy. The “spirit of Hitlerism” is one particularly vicious form of racism.
A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki
Mary:
When you speak of "the spirit of Hitlerism" and of how WWII and the American civil war seem not to have ended, I wonder if any wars truly end, or how long it takes for them to end. Think of how powerful the Crusades still stand in the minds of those in the Middle East, and it's been centuries.
It seems the divisions that lead to war certainly persist no matter what brings active warfare, troops on the ground, to an end. Treaties cannot erase these historical divides, animosity and resentment that have long histories do not dissolve with cease fires. It takes social change and a lot of time before they are gone, and of course those who have gained and those who have lost power are not going to stop trying to keep it or get it back. In these cases time may be more than centuries, may approach millennia.
Oriana:
Here I take a bit of comfort when I think of the wars between France and England, and eventually France-Germany and England-Germany — and, earlier, the civil wars within those countries. At least those seem over for good, but then those countries are no longer the imperial powers they once were. And yes, it took many centuries, and the outbreak of WW1 showed how nationalism and sheer idiocy may prevail.
But why are the Nazis still around? Again, nationalism (expanded into white supremacy) and sheer hatred and idiocy just seem to go underground for a while, biding their time. Part of this blog is the continued exploration of the psychology of those movements. Something starts going wrong already in childhood, e.g. boys who feel abandoned find a family in an extremist group. Wholesome groups would be a good countermeasure. But, when it comes to societies’ investing in the psychological well-being of youth — “when will they ever learn?”
HISTORY, HISTORY, UP AGAINST THE WALL: WHO WAS THE GREATEST MONSTER OF THEM ALL?
~ “All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. Somewhere near the Stalinist ledger must belong the thirty million or more Chinese starved during the Great Leap Forward, as Mao followed Stalin’s model of collectivization. The special quality of Nazi racism is not diluted by the historical observation that Stalin’s motivations were sometimes national or ethnic. The pool of evil simply grows deeper.
As I have written in Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), where all of the major Nazi and Soviet atrocities are discussed, we see, even during the German-Soviet war, episodes of belligerent complicity in which one side killed more because provoked or in some sense aided by the other. Germans took so many Soviet prisoners of war in part because Stalin ordered his generals not to retreat. The Germans shot so many civilians in part because Soviet partisans deliberately provoked reprisals. The Germans shot more than a hundred thousand civilians in Warsaw in 1944 after the Soviets urged the locals to rise up and then declined to help them. In Stalin’s Gulag some 516,543 people died between 1941 and 1943, sentenced by the Soviets to labor, but deprived of food by the German invasion.
Were these people victims of Stalin or of Hitler? Or both?” ~ Timothy Snyder, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/03/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/
Oriana:
Snyder implies “both,” tossing in an interaction, and, as a kind of footnote, mentioning Mao as well. But perhaps comparing body count misses the point: that it was putting ideas ahead of human lives and well-being that led to the mass slaughter. Idealism pushed to an extreme always leads to a catastrophe. Wanting to build a Utopia ends up in the construction of hell.
Jeremy Sherman has suggested that it’s because practical difficulties interfere with the idealism, and psychopaths, offering quick solutions, take over. Whatever the underlying mechanism, we need to be aware that the road to hell is paved with ideals.
Let’s detox with humor:
BASIC INCOME IS AN ANTIDEPRESSANT
~ “In the 1970s, the Canadian government chose a town at random – Dauphin, Manitoba, a small town on the prairies – to conduct an unprecedented experiment. A large number of the people in the town were told something surprising. From now on, it was explained, we are going to give you the equivalent of $16,000 (in today’s Canadian currency). There is nothing you have to do in return for it; and there is nothing you can do that means we’ll take it away. You are a citizen of our country, and we want you to have a good life.
Then they stood back to see what would happen. Dr. Evelyn Forget, of the University of Manitoba, has carried out the most detailed research on this three-year experiment in a universal basic income. Many important things happened – there were significantly fewer low birth-weight babies, because mothers had better nutrition; people studied more and longer; hardly anyone gave up working, but some people turned down lousy jobs and held out for better ones, so overall work standards in the town improved. But the most important result? A big fall in depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental illness. In just three years, hospitalizations due to mental illness fell as much as 8.5 percent. Compare that to the past decade, where global depression rates have risen by 18 percent.
This requires us to think differently about how we respond to depression and anxiety. Dr Forget told me, after she interviewed many of the people who had been on the guaranteed income program, that it “works as an antidepressant.” Severe financial anxiety is one of several factors which has been proven to cause depression. Reducing that cause reduces the amount of depression. All over the world, I hunted for alternative antidepressants that should be offered alongside chemical antidepressants—and I kept seeing this key insight that had been discovered in Canada in the 1970s: the most effective strategies for dealing with depression are the ones that deal with the reasons why we are in such pain in the first place. This is why there is such excitement across the world that Ontario has now embarked on a new experiment in giving a guaranteed income to 4,000 people, to see the results.” ~
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/a3akm4/why-basic-income-is-a-mental-health-issue?utm_campaign=sharebutton
from another source: DISEASES OF DESPAIR
~ “In New York City, the Family Rewards program also improved self-reported mental health and hope. “Even if it isn’t a perfect measure, depression and mental health are neglected, crucial outcomes. The program enabled people to have better planning, sense of control, and better mental health, even though social policies rarely have a positive effect on how people feel in terms of self-reported health,” reported NYC study co-author Emilie Courtin.
Similarly in Colombia, the small monthly transfer of U.S.$16–34 significantly improved measures of self-reported health and hope among men, an interesting finding for a potential U.S. program, given hopelessness and increased death rates among men in the U.S. attributable to suicide, “diseases of despair” related to addiction, and other health conditions driving increased mortality in the U.S. It’s also important given the negative effects of scarcity. In other words, not having enough changes the way one’s brain works, be they a busy person making decisions about time, someone dieting making decisions about food, or a low-income person making decisions about money. Scarcity affects everyone, so apart from the challenges of meeting basic human needs, it’s important to try to address situations that limit humans’ abilities to have agency in their own lives.
Even when the Canada, U.S., and Colombia examples offered participants objectively small amounts of money, study results indicate it was still a relatively large, predictable part of participants’ disposable income. In the cases of the U.S. and Colombia examples, people received a regular income they could plan around for the first time, which affected their lives in significant ways.
As the evidence from new programs trickles in, it’s clear the biggest barriers to UBI may not be results, but politics. Not even Finland, a Nordic country that made news last year for piloting universal basic income, will continue with the project, despite its promising results. The reason? Widespread fear, despite a total lack of evidence to support it, that if people receive cash transfers, they will stop working. They’ve discontinued their UBI experiment and have instead begun to implement work requirements. For all the excitement around UBI, and positive findings far and wide, this is something that advocates and researchers outside Manitoba can’t get us past.
**
Oriana:
So far the pilot studies (pitifully few; studying the effects of basic income is mostly just beginning) have shown that receiving the basic income does not decrease employment. It does increase spending, which in turn stimulates the local economy. And the fascinating thing is that people have turned out to be more intelligent than anyone expected: they typically use the extra money not to buy drugs or frivolous luxury goods, but to better their lives in significant ways. The magic, I think, comes from increasing people’s sense of autonomy. When the money comes with no strings attached, no conditions such as “But you’re not allowed to buy steak,” people manage to figure out how to spend it productively.
The Manitoba study showed that only two subgroups receiving the basic income chose not to work for money: new mothers and teenage boys (who chose to finish high school instead).
Conservatives tend to see human nature as innately bad; progressives emphasize the basic human goodness. But in the case of basic income, the most relevant dimension might be simply a lowering of stress, which results in better brain function. For some people, this means being able to plan for the future for the first time in their lives.
As for the anti-depressant function of even a small amount of extra money, I think most of had the experience of walking on air after getting an unexpected (or long-awaited) check etc. At least for a while, it’s no more “Oh, no, the water bill, the electric bill.” So what if our celebratory meal is a mere hamburger. It's the empowerment that counts, the almost uncanny increase in the sense of autonomy and agency ("I can do it"). We’ll sleep better that night.
Sleeping Cupid, Ancient RomanHOW FASCIST POLITICIANS EXPLOIT FREEDOM OF SPEECH TO SOW CHAOS AND UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY
~ “Rightly or wrongly, many associate Mill’s On Liberty with the motif of a “marketplace of ideas,” a realm that, if left to operate on its own, will drive out prejudice and falsehood and produce knowledge. But this notion, like that of a free market generally, is predicated on a utopian conception of consumers. In the case of the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas, the utopian assumption is that conversation works by exchange of reasons: one party offers its reasons, which are then countered by the reasons of an opponent, until the truth ultimately emerges.
But conversation is not just used to communicate information. It is also used to shut out perspectives, raise fears, and heighten prejudice. The argument for the marketplace of ideas presupposes that words are used only in their “descriptive, logical, or semantic sense.” But in politics, and most vividly in fascist politics, language is not used simply, or even chiefly, to convey information but to elicit emotion.
The argument from the “marketplace of ideas” model for free speech thus works only if society’s underlying disposition is to accept the force of reason over the power of irrational resentments and prejudice. Language becomes a vehicle for emotion rather than meaning. If the society is divided, however, then a demagogic politician can exploit the division by using language to sow fear, accentuate prejudice, and call for revenge against members of hated groups. Attempting to counter such rhetoric with reason is akin to using a pamphlet against a pistol.
Mill seems to think that knowledge, and only knowledge, emerges from arguments between dedicated opponents. Mill would surely then be pleased with the Russian television network RT, whose motto is “Question More.” If Mill is correct, RT, which features voices from across the broadest possible political spectrum, from neo-Nazis to far leftists, should be the paradigm source of knowledge production. However, RT’s strategy was not devised to produce knowledge. It was rather devised as a propaganda technique, to undermine trust in basic democratic institutions. Objective truth is drowned out in the resulting cacophony of voices. The effect of RT, as well as the myriad conspiracy-theory-producing websites across the world, including in the United States, has been to destabilize the kind of shared reality that is in fact required for democratic contestation.
In devising the strategy for RT, Russian propagandists, or “political technologists,” realized that with a cacophony of opinions and outlandish possibilities, one could undermine the basic background set of presuppositions about the world that allows for productive inquiry. One can hardly have reasoned discussion about climate policy when one suspects that the scientists who tell us about climate change have a secret pro-homosexual agenda (as the evangelical media leader Tony Perkins suggested on an October 29, 2014, edition of his radio program Washington Watch). Allowing every opinion into the public sphere and giving it serious time for consideration, far from resulting in a process that is conducive to knowledge formation via deliberation, destroys its very possibility. Responsible media in a liberal democracy must, in the face of this threat, try to report the truth, and resist the temptation to report on every possible theory, no matter how fantastical, just because someone, somewhere, advances it.
The RT model is dangerous because it allows conspiracy theories to have a platform on par with reasonable, fact-based positions. When conspiracy theories become the coin of politics citizens no longer have a common reality that can serve as background for democratic deliberation. In such a situation, citizens have no choice but to look for markers to follow other than truth or reliability; as we see across the world, they look to politics for tribal identifications, for addressing personal grievances, and for entertainment. When news becomes sports, the strongman achieves a certain measure of popularity. Fascist politics transforms the news from a conduit of information and reasoned debate into a spectacle with the strongman as the star.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump repeatedly and openly lied, openly flouting long-sacrosanct liberal norms. The U.S. mainstream media dutifully reported his many lies. Hillary Clinton followed liberal norms of equal respect; her one violation, when she called some of the supporters of her opponent “deplorables,” was endlessly thrown back in her face. And yet again and again, Americans found Trump to be the more authentic candidate. By giving voice to shocking sentiments that were presumed to be unsuitable for public discourse, Trump was taken to be speaking his mind. This is how, by exhibiting classic demagogic behavior, a politician can come to be seen as the more authentic candidate, even when he is manifestly dishonest.
Such politicians would seem to be a breath of fresh air in a political culture that seems dominated by real and imagined hypocrisy. They would be especially compelling if they demonstrated their supposed authenticity by explicitly targeting groups that are disliked by the voters they seek to attract. Such open rejection of democratic values would be taken as political bravery, as a signal of authenticity. It was not without justification that Plato saw in democracy’s freedoms an allowance for the rise of a skilled demagogue who would take advantage of these freedoms to tear reality asunder, offering himself or herself as a substitute.” ~
http://bostonreview.net/politics-philosophy-religion/jason-stanley-what-mill-got-wrong-about-freedom-of-speech?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=30e77c471d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_04_07_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-30e77c471d-40729829
An interesting challenge to the idea of unlimited free speech, e.g. let's give equal time to conspiracy theories and all kinds of marginal opinions. Having grown up with propaganda, both religious and political, I can see how most use of language has nothing to do with reason and information. It’s about the manipulation of emotions.
For the moment I can't think of any other piece like this excellent article. Basically there is hardly anyone who dares say anything against unlimited "freedom of speech." The lunatic fringe — sure, they should be invited by major networks to freely present their nonsense and try to debunk scientists or other experts. That's why Russia supports *both* the extreme left and the extreme right — anything to introduce craziness and produce chaos.
The first time I saw some rebellion against this indiscriminate "freedom of speech" is when a few scientists said, "No, I'm not going to waste my time debating a creationist" or historians refused to be on media programs that paired them with Holocaust deniers.
The article points to John Stuart Mill as the origin of this problematic thinking. But it's America that made unlimited freedom of speech the holy of holies. And of course we should tread lightly when freedom of expression is involved. But lately we've seen that freedom abused by extremists and crazies — some of them financed by Russia, it turns out — the same regime that kills dissident journalists.
With all the fake quotations and false memes out there, at least some people are beginning to catch on that this is not about information but about the manipulation of emotions. Maybe Trump's shamelessness in this realm has actually helped some intellectuals see the light — but we need more articles like this one to wake up more people.
**
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” ~ George Orwell
Orwell's manuscript of 1984, completed in December 1948**
I think it's important for any serious relationship, not just marriage, to ask: 1) if not for sex, would you be friends with this person? 2) would you trust this person enough to be a business partner? If answers happen to be, say, 1) No, I wouldn't be friends -- we don't have any interests in common and/or 2) no way would I trust him with my money: he's a spendthrift and would only get into debt -- then it's time to consider Speed Dating for Seniors or whatever . . .
**
“I don't believe in life force. Force is a metaphor from physics. What's the pounds per square inch of life force? How about higher power? Is that a voltage?” ~ Jeremy Sherman
Oriana:
Lots of deities were presented as tossing lightning. Talk about voltage! Yes, this finally brings it all together for me.
THE FRACTURED CHRISTIANITY
~ “Off the top of my head I can think of several questions over which the church is divided:
1. How reliable is the Bible? Can the church disagree with it?
This question undergirded the Protestant Reformation and it never did get resolved. It’s not like the Protestants and the Catholics had a big conference and voted and decided on a common belief. The Catholic Church stuck with the Pope and the Councils, and the Protestants went their separate ways, insisting that the Bible alone would guide their theology (the Eastern Church wasn’t even invited to this discussion).
Except that’s actually impossible. Sola Scriptura may look wicked cool as a tattoo on a Calvinist dudebro’s forearm, but it’s logically impossible to pit that Bible against the Church since without the Church you’d have no idea which books belong in the canon and which ones don’t. I remember countless hours discussing this at the Reformed seminary where I did my graduate work, but even back then I understood that at some level it was an indefensible belief.
2. Do supernatural spiritual gifts continue in the church today?
You’d think this question should be pretty settled after two thousand years of working on it, but you’d be wrong. Charismatic churches are among the fastest growing churches in the world, especially in countries that are less economically developed. But huge portions of the Christian faith feel these churches are in error, and if you were so much as to raise a hand in church while singing, you could be shown the door by an elder or a deacon. You may laugh, but I know of churches that split over that.
Take speaking in tongues for example. If you’ve never heard it for yourself, it basically sounds like gibberish, like a Sims character on speed. Pentecostals believe everyone is supposed to speak in tongues when they get saved as a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. For them, if you don’t speak in tongues, then you’re not really saved. But non-charismatic churches feel that either a) this was never a valid supernatural experience, or b) it was only legitimate for a few years, maybe long enough to get the Bible written, after which time God shut that phase down and now it’s just a curious story from early Christian history.
Christians love to say they agree on all the essentials, but they can’t even agree on which things are essential and which things aren’t. You may not think that your belief about tongues is central to the gospel, but other Christians do. And every time one of you chimes in to tell me that #NotAllChristians see it the way the other guy does, you only remind me that y’all can’t agree on much of anything.
3. How does baptism work? What’s it for, and what’s the right way to do it?
People have been killed over this question. Wars have been started over the proper mode and membership requirements for baptism. European churches saw baptism as a way of welcoming new people into the church at birth, while later groups (along with a handful of dissenters, most of whom had to live in hiding) saw baptism as a sign of conversion. For them, baptism should only accompany an intelligible profession of personal faith, which would require letting the child get at least old enough to speak.
Some churches believe baptism, like communion, is only a sign of something spiritual happening deep inside. Other churches believe these aren’t just symbolic gestures, they are rites which actively accomplish things inside the person’s body. Catholics and Lutherans believe the bread and the wine they swallow actually changes into the body and blood of Jesus (eww) while most Protestant churches think that’s absurd.
Again, wars have been fought over which church is the right one, so these aren’t minor disagreements. They are the kind of disagreements which even to this day prevent people from worshiping together.
4. Does God choose who goes to heaven and who goes to hell? Come to think of it, is hell even a real thing? And what exactly is it?
Most writers in the Bible seem to have been writing from a strong sense of the sovereignty of God. They make him the active agent for everything that happens in the world, from weather events and major political upheavals all the way down to which sparrows fall to the ground and how many hairs are on your head.
But modern Christians chafe at the biblical language of sovereignty, presenting him instead as a reactive person who lets people make their own decisions, stepping in to intervene only after the consequences for those choices have come to pass. Except not all modern Christians go this route, because churches that follow the Reformation closely skew toward a Calvinistic reading of the Bible which sticks closely to the ancient way of seeing the world that originally produced the Bible.
The reason this matters is that Jesus said the unity of the Church would serve as evidence for the legitimacy of his ministry. According to the fourth gospel, Jesus prayed that his followers may be one even as the members of the Trinity are one (not that the word “Trinity” ever appears in the Bible but then that’s another thing churches have split over). He went on to say that the unity of the church would be how the rest of us would know that he was who he said he was.” ~
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2018/05/13/what-i-hear-when-you-say-not-all-christians/
Oriana:
For me the big eye-opener was not the argument over the meaning of baptism or other theological disputes, but this one verse in Psalm 147: “Happy is he who dashes the heads of your little ones against stone.”
DEPRESSION, REM SLEEP AND LACK OF DREAM RECALL (or poor recall; less detailed, bizarre, colorful dreams)
Rosalind Cartright: ~ “The more severe the depression, the earlier the first REM begins. Sometimes it starts as early as 45 minutes into sleep. That means these sleepers’ first cycle of NREM sleep amounts to about half the usual length of time. This early REM displaces the initial deep sleep, which is not fully recovered later in the night. This displacement of the first deep sleep is accompanied by an absence of the usual large outflow of growth hormone. The timing of the greatest release of human growth hormone (HGH) is in the first deep sleep cycle. The depressed have very little SWS [slow-wave sleep, Stages 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle] and no big pulse of HGH; and in addition to growth, HGH is related to physical repair. If we do not get enough deep sleep, our bodies take longer to heal and grow. The absence of the large spurt of HGH during the first deep sleep continues in many depressed patients even when they are no longer depressed (in remission).
The first REM sleep period not only begins too early in the night in people who are clinically depressed, it is also often abnormally long. Instead of the usual 10 minutes or so, this REM may last twice that. The eye movements too are abnormal — either too sparse or too dense. In fact, they are sometimes so frequent that they are called eye movement storms.
~ Brain imaging technology has helped to shed light on this mystery. Scanning depressed patients while they sleep has shown that the emotion areas of the brain, the limbic and paralimbic systems, are activated at a higher level in REM than when these patients are awake. High activity in these areas is also common in REM sleep in nondepressed sleepers, but the depressed have even higher activity in these areas than do healthy control subjects. This might be expected — after all, while in REM these individuals also show higher activity in the executive cortex areas, those associated with rational thought and decision making. Nondepressed controls do not exhibit this activity in their REM brain imaging studies. This finding has been tentatively interpreted… as perhaps a response to the excessive activity in the areas responsible for emotions.
Cartwright: ~ “I propose that when some disturbing waking experience is reactivated in sleep and carried forward into REM, where it is matched by similarity in feeling to earlier memories, a network of older associations is stimulated and is displayed as a sequence of compound images that we experience as dreams. This melding of new and old memory fragments modifies the network of emotional self-defining memories, and thus updates the organizational picture we hold of ‘who I am and what is good for me and what is not.’ In this way, dreaming diffuses the emotional charge of the event and so prepares the sleeper to wake ready to see things in a more positive light, to make a fresh start. This does not always happen over a single night; sometimes a big reorganization of the emotional perspective of our self-concept must be made — from wife to widow or married to single, say, and this may take many nights. We must look for dream changes within the night and over time across nights to detect whether a productive change is under way. In very broad strokes, this is the definition of the mood-regulatory function of dreaming, one basic to the new model of the twenty-four hour mind I am proposing.
Sleep is a busy time, interweaving streams of thought with emotional values attached, as they fit or challenge the organizational structure that represents our identity. One function of all this action, I believe, is to regulate disturbing emotion in order to keep it from disrupting our sleep and subsequent waking functioning.” ~
https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/13/the-twenty-four-hour-mind-rosalind-cartwright/
~ “Perhaps unsurprisingly, depressed patients report dreams with more negative mood and emotion than control subjects, as well as more failures and misfortunes (compared to schizophrenics). Patients with depression also experience more frequent nightmares. Further, depressed patients with a history of suicidal thoughts or behaviors report more death themes in their dreams. However, one study found that depressed patients reported less negative, but more neutral affect in their dreams; the authors interpret this finding to be consistent with the affective flattening seen in depression. Further, one study of bipolar disorder, found that shifts from neutral or negative dream content (as in depression) towards more bizarre and unrealistic dreams can predict alterations between depressive and manic states. This suggests that shifts in affective content of dreaming may occur congruently with vacillations in waking mood in depression.
Besides affective content, depressed patients have been found to play a relatively passive role in their dreams, along with reporting less bizarre dreams, lower dream recall frequency, and less detailed dream reports. One study repeatedly awakened depressed patients 5 minutes into REM sleep episodes, a period that typically promotes high dream recall, and found that depressed patients were consistently unable to recall their dreams. These findings altogether are suggestive of a relative inhibition or flattening of dream content in depressed patients.” ~
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-factory/201601/dreaming-in-depression-and-other-mental-illness
Oriana:
I always feel best on mornings when I wake up with vivid dream recall — even though the dream is typically mundane (oddly enough, in my dreams I'm never home; wait! in the most recent dream I recall, I was in my back yard — naked, naturally). I suspect feel-good neurochemicals are produced during dreams. I am fascinated by the author's theory that the brain processes negative events during dreams, mingling them with old memories, making them less toxic. Sounds plausible.
My most interesting experience with recurrent dreams happened to be the concentration-camp sequence. The odd thing about those dreams — especially later on — was that I didn’t real the terror, even if already lined up for the gas chamber. And eventually I started walking out of the camp, the gate open, the guard uninterested in stopping me. Those were healing dreams.
But going back to dreaming while depressed — the strongest finding seems to be the lack of recall. This is an interesting parallel to the lower recall that happens with aging. Women often report a dramatic lessening in recall of dreams after menopause (an event that could be regarded as abrupt accelerated aging).
wood stork, FloridaOn the function of dreaming, and dreaming in depression. When I was very young I had Apocalyptic dreams: the sun and moon fall out of the sky and burn up the world, the flooring in our house cracks up, and my dad gathers up the pieces as we walk to the door behind us, under the pieces--nothing, only darkness. When we get to the door we turn to go out, and the world is a wall of fire. I am in a long line of people slowly moving toward the place where each will bend over a block and be bludgeoned to death. All pretty much nightmares that I think may have been part of the mind's response to significant childhood trauma.
Later, through periods of severe depression, there were long vivid dreams that often had themes of violence and death. But also many that seemed to be attempting resolution of ongoing problems. Familiar houses where I discover unknown rooms, all beautiful, with windows opening on lovely natural landscapes. Gardens that seem to be small enclosures, but when you enter they continue to nearly infinite distance. Sometimes my beloved dead would be returned, beautifully whole. Once I dreamed of a joyous celebration that involved "sky dancing on electric roller skates”— (dreams have great imagination!) These would be interspersed with the uglier, harsher dreams, some obviously replaying current problems, some closer to nightmares, but always a sense of some thing I had to find a way to resolve, whether surviving a danger or meeting a challenge.
All of this dreaming was so real, so vivid, and so fully remembered it seemed I lived a parallel life in my sleep. Now, and for some time, when most problems have come to a resolution, and depression largely avoided for at least 10 years, my dreams are much quieter, and I remember them spottily, they are rarely, almost never, disturbing enough to be considered nightmares. It's very restful.
Oriana:
It was amazing to read about the violent dreams you had in your youth — my dreams exactly, back when I was in my twenties, thirties, or even forties — with somewhat different details. Lots of concentration camps. In one such dream I was already lined up for the gas chamber. Or nuclear missiles in the sky, approaching. Or finding myself in a post-nuclear landscape, walking on the freeway that’s already cracking, grass and weeds coming through. If I meet any people, it’s only women and children, and a few old men.
Once I mentioned those dreams to a boyfriend I had at the time, he was just astonished — no empathy or understanding. Aside from some poems (e.g. “Another Dream of My Execution” or a couple of particularly vivid dreams of hell that I simply had to write about), I confided only once more after that — to a young woman who happened to be an incest survivor. “Your dreams are typical of dreams of victims,” she said. This “hit,” though, with a single exception related to a bad relationship (though not one that inspired fear that was the puzzling part — the dreams so permeated with terror, completely out of proportion with reality), I couldn’t identify one clear particular problem — I certainly wasn’t a victim of incest. say. My best guess was that it was a generalized PTSD, a combination of past and present anxieties, of smaller and greater traumas and just life problems that were difficult to resolve.
It’s hard to resist the impression that during my early years my dominant emotion was fear.
THE ANGEL OF DEATH BECOMES A MESSENGER OF LIFE
And the paradoxes: one time, before a major surgery, I had a dream that would sound to anyone like a nightmare but I knew it was very positive. I dreamed I saw the chalk-white arm of the Angel of Death. Just the arm and the hand, with his long index finger pointing in parallel with the foot of my bed — not pointing at the foot of my bed, but somewhere beyond it, it seemed. I woke up a little freaked out, but reassured. I remembered a fairy tale from childhood in which the Angel of Death would appear to a certain physician; if the angel stood at the foot of the bed, the patient would live; if at the head of the bed, the patient would die. Since in my dream the angel wasn’t pointing at the head of my bed, I felt completely reassured! (Now it occurs to me that the angel was pointing at the door, as if to say, “Get out of this room!”)
One of Leonardo's striking angels. This one sits on the ground in The Virgin of the Rocks. *
And the dreams of “infinite houses,” whether as entrapping labyrinths or temporary refuge — ah, so many dreams about infinite houses! But that’s a separate story.
Eventually, the dreams began to change and show that my brain was healing itself. The concentration-camp dreams and execution dreams ended as I began simply to walk out — and the bored-looking guards didn’t try to stop me. As for the nuclear dreams, the last one I remember was rather funny to recall — there was a little A-bomb sitting on my bathroom counter, and I went to the gas-and-electric company to ask what to do about it.
So many bizarre dreams! And then there were none.
Or almost none. My final episode of depression, before I made the decision not to be depressed, was dreamless, to the best of my recollection. And that too was a loss — I missed the vivid dreams I used to have, even the bad ones. They were so dramatic — as you say, a “parallel life.”
Other women have confirmed that they could rarely recall any dreams once they were past menopause. Just a few times a year, perhaps, rather than morning after morning. Brain function definitely changes with age. Dream recall isn’t usually anything paid attention to in terms of the overall health, but it’s obviously a significant symptom. When I recall having dreamed (just “having dreamed,” not necessarily the content), I am overjoyed.
Mary:
I love your Angel of Death dream, telling you it's Not your time, thus reassuring rather than terrifying. That particular angel of Leonardo's is my very favorite angel, so incredibly beautiful!
It is amazing that we both had these apocalyptic dreams, and that they seemed part of a process that eventually worked its way to healing. Your final nuclear dream is priceless, fear reduced to a tiny thing you expect the utility company to take care of!
And I think you are absolutely correct that these are all due to a life filled with fear. Not any specific type of trauma, but the EFFECT of that traumatic experience--persistent and unrelenting fear.
I know as a child I never felt safe, and longed for safety more than anything else. I felt I had no reliable protection, no locked door or iron gate to keep me safe from harm. I had no way to avoid danger because it lived right there where I did. And just think of how many women and children live in just that kind of situation!!
Oriana:
So true. And it doesn’t have to be abusive parent(s). It doesn’t have to be sadistic teachers, priests and/or nuns. It can be siblings. It can be peers at school. There are usually multiple tormentors — and you're terrified to tell anyone because then you’d be called a sissy and a snitch. And you sense the adults don’t want to be bothered — they are so busy with their important, adult things. You’re not important: that's the first thing you learn.
Later they may ask you why you never said anything — but it was a daily cruelty, so you assumed it was normal. In fact, it’s not the bullies — a bully is always right — YOU are the the one whose fault it is.
Eventually, in adulthood, you may meet someone — an adult, for heaven’s sake! sometimes a big strong man! — who’s afraid of you and your judgment and condemnation the way you used to fear just about everyone else. Seeing that can be pretty enlightening. What?! Your very presence is threatening? After a certain kind of childhood, when you were constantly mocked and shamed, yes.
(Some adults remain non-comprehending and defensive forever: “But that wasn’t abuse! That was normal back then!”)
It takes years and years to start relaxing, recovering — decades after the abuse ceases. And dreams help us. Privacy helps us —not being watched all the time, since being watched and being judged and punished tend to become fused. And of course being loved helps enormously.
**
“When you’re young, you think everything is your fault. That’s why people don’t say anything.” ~ Emma Thompson (actress)Oriana:
I'm so glad she validated this for me. That’s one reason it’s important not to yell at kids, much less hit them — they are scared enough as is, feel guilty enough as is.
ending on beauty:
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
~ TS Eliot, The Wasteland
The surreal sequel of these lines is that London Bridge is now in Arizona (sold, transported, and reconstructed). That the bridge ended up in a desert seems to fit with "The Wasteland."
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