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LOVE DOES THAT
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,
he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,
because love does
that.
Love frees.
~ Meister Eckhart
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“I was afraid of looking into my heart...afraid of thinking seriously about anything...I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved...” ~ Ivan Turgenev
Oriana:
Can any pain be greater than realizing we are not loved? I don't think we can endure the thought that no one loves us. That's a prelude to suicide.
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Oriana:
I like the concept of love as a force of nature. We are as wired for it at 66 as at 16, no matter the heartbreaks and the alleged "wisdom of age."
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WHEN DID AMERICANS LOSE THEIR BRITISH ACCENTS?
There are many, many evolving regional British and American accents, so the terms “British accent” and “American accent” are gross oversimplifications. What a lot of Americans think of as the typical "British accent” is what's called standardized Received Pronunciation (RP), also known as Public School English or BBC English. What most people think of as an “American accent,” or most Americans think of as "no accent," is the General American (GenAm) accent, sometimes called a "newscaster accent" or "Network English." Because this is a blog post and not a book, we'll focus on these two general sounds for now and leave the regional accents for another time.
English colonists established their first permanent settlement in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, sounding very much like their countrymen back home. By the time we had recordings of both Americans and Brits some three centuries later (the first audio recording of a human voice was made in 1860), the sounds of English as spoken in the Old World and New World were very different. We're looking at a silent gap of some 300 years, so we can't say exactly when Americans first started to sound noticeably different from the British.
As for the "why," though, one big factor in the divergence of the accents is rhotacism. The General American accent is rhotic and speakers pronounce the r in words such as hard. The BBC-type British accent is non-rhotic, and speakers don't pronounce the r, leaving hard sounding more like hahd. Before and during the American Revolution, the English, both in England and in the colonies, mostly spoke with a rhotic accent. We don't know much more about said accent, though. Various claims about the accents of the Appalachian Mountains, the Outer Banks, the Tidewater region and Virginia's Tangier Island sounding like an uncorrupted Elizabethan-era English accent have been busted as myths by linguists.
Talk This Way (Received Pronunciation)
Around the turn of the 18th/19th century, not long after the revolution, non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper and upper-middle classes. It was a signifier of class and status. This posh accent was standardized as Received
Pronunciation and taught widely by pronunciation tutors to people who wanted to learn to speak fashionably. Because the Received Pronunciation accet was regionally "neutral" and easy to understand, it spread across England and the empire through the armed forces, the civil service and, later, the BBC.
Across the pond, many former colonists also adopted and imitated Received Pronunciation to show off their status. This happened especially in the port cities that still had close trading ties with England — Boston, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah. From the Southeastern coast, the RP sound spread through much of the South along with plantation culture and wealth.
After industrialization and the Civil War and well into the 20th century, political and economic power largely passed from the port cities and cotton regions to the manufacturing hubs of the Mid Atlantic and Midwest — New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, etc. The British elite had much less cultural and linguistic influence in these places, which were mostly populated by the Scots-Irish and other settlers from Northern Britain, and rhotic English was still spoken there. As industrialists in these cities became the self-made economic and political elites of the Industrial Era, Received Pronunciation lost its status and fizzled out in the U.S. The prevalent accent in the Rust Belt, though, got dubbed General American and spread across the states just as RP had in Britain.
Of course, with the speed that language changes, a General American accent is now hard to find in much of this region, with New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago developing their own unique accents, and GenAm now considered generally confined to a small section of the Midwest.
As mentioned above, there are regional exceptions to both these general American and British sounds. Some of the accents of southeastern England, plus the accents of Scotland and Ireland, are rhotic. Some areas of the American Southeast, plus Boston, are non-rhotic.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Oriana:
But the true gem here is the information about the soft (almost mute) “r” versus the “hard” (or “rhotic”) “r.” Immigrants from countries whose languages have what I call a “ringing r” indeed have a difficult time softening their r’s enough so as not to have a heavy accent; in England, they’d hardly (hah-dly) have a chance.
I remember reading that the Southern dialect is the way English sounded in 17th century England. Whether that’s true or not, it’s fascinating to ponder the observation that before and during the American Revolution, both the British and the colonists pronounce the “r” — and Americans preserved that earlier pronunciation.
But as the article suggests, not pronouncing the "r" was regarded as "elite" and gained popularity in the East-Coast port cities and in the South.
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THE GREAT AMERICAN DIVIDE AND THE FEAR FACTOR: CONSERVATIVES SEEK SAFETY
~ “Anxiety is an emotion that waxes and wanes in all of us, and as it swings up or down our political views can shift in its wake. When people feel safe and secure, they become more liberal; when they feel threatened, they become more conservative.
According to the experts who study political leanings, liberals and conservatives do not just see things differently. They are different—in their personalities and even their unconscious reactions to the world around them. For example, in a study published in January, a team led by psychologist Michael Dodd and political scientist John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln found that when viewing a collage of photographs, conservatives' eyes unconsciously lingered 15 percent longer on repellent images, such as car wrecks and excrement—suggesting that conservatives are more attuned than liberals to assessing potential threats.
Meanwhile examining the contents of 76 college students' bedrooms, as one group did in a 2008 study, revealed that conservatives possessed more cleaning and organizational items, such as ironing boards and calendars, confirmation that they are orderly and self-disciplined. Liberals owned more books and travel-related memorabilia, which conforms with previous research suggesting that they are open and novelty-seeking.
“These are not superficial differences. They are psychologically deep,” says psychologist John Jost of New York University, a co-author of the bedroom study. “My hunch is that the capacity to organize the political world into left or right may be a part of human nature.”
The Fear Factor
Psychologists have found that conservatives are fundamentally more anxious than liberals, which may be why they typically desire stability, structure and clear answers even to complicated questions. “Conservatism, apparently, helps to protect people against some of the natural difficulties of living,” says social psychologist Paul Nail of the University of Central Arkansas. “The fact is we don't live in a completely safe world. Things can and do go wrong. But if I can impose this order on it by my worldview, I can keep my anxiety to a manageable level.”
Research conducted by Nail and his colleague in the weeks after September 11, 2001, showed that people of all political persuasions became more conservative in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, in an upcoming study, a team led by Yale University psychologist Jaime Napier found that asking Republicans to imagine that they possessed superpowers and were impermeable to injury made them more liberal. “There is some range within which people can be moved,” Jost says.
More practically, instead of trying to change people's emotional state (an effect that is temporary), astute policy makers might be able to phrase their ideas in a way that appeals to different worldviews. In a 2010 paper Irina Feygina, a social psychology doctoral student at N.Y.U. who works with Jost, found a way to bring conservatives and liberals together on global warming. She and her colleagues wondered whether the impulse to defend the status quo might be driving the conservative pooh-poohing of environmental issues.
In an ingenious experiment, the psychologists reframed climate change not as a challenge to government and industry but as “a threat to the American way of life.” After reading a passage that couched environmental action as patriotic, study participants who displayed traits typical of conservatives were much more likely to sign petitions about preventing oil spills and protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmentalism may be an ideal place to find common political ground. “Conservatives who are religious have this mind-set about being good stewards of the earth, to protect God's creation, and that is very compatible with green energy and conservation and other ideas that are usually classified as liberal,” Nail says.” ~
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/
Oriana:
Conservatism is so far from my temperament that I could never understand what it is that conservatives are trying to “conserve”: the mythical past, the Golden Age that never was? The subjugation of women? White supremacy? All oppressive hierarchies, including even a defense of slavery?
And I do wonder about the theory that conservatives are more fearful because they received less nurturing in childhood, while the children of nurturing parents feel secure enough to show openness and seek novelty, later being more likely to become liberal. As child rearing becomes less oppressive, as has been the general trend over the last few centuries, we can expect the growth of more accepting, liberal attitudes.
(This may be a tad off-topic, but caring about beauty may also be a sign of greater openness. I wonder about people in affluent neighborhoods who rip out all their landscaping [by the way, de-turfing is expensive] and fill their yards with nothing but rocks versus those who maintain gorgeous riots of scarlet and purple bougainvilleas and even — gasp! — roses.
And then there are those who maintain manicured front yards and have nothing but rocks and cement in the back yards — maybe they are the ones to be feared, or the ones who simply stop watering and let everything die. I repeat, I mean affluent neighborhoods, so the latter is rare, but you do see it. Such people never walk their dogs either. Is is a basic lack of a nurturing attitude?)
(Speaking of nurturing, my mother was the kind who didn’t allow the killing of spiders. She’d cup them and carry them outside.)
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WHERE DID THE TIME GO? HOW TO SLOW DOWN TIME
Seek out beauty
Studies show that experiencing awe, which is the feeling we get when we encounter something inspiring and transformational, like a stirring piece of artwork or the grandeur of nature, expands perception of time. In a series of experiments, psychologists found that prompting the experience of awe in the lab led participants to estimate that they had more free time available. Consequently, they were also less impatient, more satisfied with their lives, and even more willing to volunteer.
Unless we’re on vacation, few of us actively seek out experiences the promote awe on a regular basis. What this research suggests is that a monthly visit to the museum or the occasional nature hike can alter the way we perceive time while elevating the quality of our daily experiences.
Make fewer decisions
The more decisions you choose to make, the less attentional resources you have for focusing on the present moment. What’s more, continuous decision-making is mentally draining, causes stress levels to spike, and ironically, leads to poorer-quality decisions over the long run.
If you’re prone to overanalyzing every minute decision, consider this: research shows that the more options you weigh, the less satisfied you’ll feel about your eventual choice.
Taking the time to choose what not to decide can be a valuable investment, freeing up cognitive bandwidth and keeping you more in tune with the present. Just ask Barack Obama. He’s limited his suit collection to exactly two options—blue and gray—preserving attentional resources for more important matters.
Stop monitoring your email
By now, you’ve probably heard that multitasking diminishes rather than enhances your performance. Sure, simultaneously working on tasks feels more productive, but the attentional resources chewed up toggling back and forth leads to significantly poorer results.
Multitasking also comes with another cost—one that’s obvious when you consider the relationship between attention and time perception. It hinders the formation of new memories. By feeding our insatiable desire to get more done, we leave fewer resources available for consolidating new memories, prompting us to feel as if our lives are shrinking.
Embrace the new
New adventures are more memorable, especially when they’re emotionally engaging. Making new friends, experimenting with novel hobbies, and taking on challenging projects at work require more from us cognitively and focus our attention on the present.
Going away on vacation can similarly provide a mental marker between life events, breaking up the routine of everyday life. It’s when every Wednesday night consists of going to yoga, ordering sushi and watching Modern Family that the weeks, months, and years begin to blur.
Is Time Affluence the Secret to Happiness?
Studies show that people who feel “time-rich” tend to be happier and more fulfilled than those of us who constantly feel rushed. They experience fewer headaches and upset stomachs, and regularly get better quality sleep. And it’s not just people who are time-rich and financially successful. Studies show that time affluence is independent of income. Feeling less pressured promotes a happier existence, regardless of how much you earn.
And this is why there is value to slowing down our perception of time. The more we view time as plentiful, the better we are at savoring life’s essential moments as they unfold.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/glue/201408/why-the-last-5-years-your-life-have-disappeared?tr=MostViewed
Cat Jumping, Salford, 1957. Suspended in mid-air for the last 63 years. Photo by Neil Libbert
Oriana:
The stress of having to make choices has long been my special interest. More options = more stress = less happiness. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
And of course I'm very pleased that this article starts by recommending: "seek out beauty."
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ST. IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA’S ADVICE ABOUT DECISION MAKING
~ Ignatius, baptized Iñigo, was born into a noble family in the Basque area of Spain in 1493. After suffering a grievous leg wound during a battle with the French that affected his health for the rest of his life, Ignatius lay in bed for months reading and reflecting on his situation.
He realized that pursuing worldly honor was not as fulfilling as doing the work of God.
During the next year and half of reflection and prayer, he experienced a profound spiritual conversion with spiritual insights that would form the basis of “Spiritual Exercises,” a program of prayerful self-examination aimed at developing a deeper relationship with God.
He decided to serve God by becoming a priest and with two of his University of Paris colleagues, was given approval by the Vatican in 1540 to found the Society of Jesus also known as the Jesuits. The Jesuits are known for their work in education, with a network of schools and colleges, and for running guided retreats.
Perhaps lesser known is the fact that Ignatius also developed a method of discernment or decision-making that is still relevant today and that can be applied by people of all faiths and adapted to those who are not religious.
RELY ON REASON AND FEELINGS
Ignatius advises creating a list, but also takes it a step further by urging people to listen to their feelings as they consider the pros and cons for each option.
Emotions act as compass points to one’s deepest desires. So, he asks individuals to consider: Do some pros or cons stand out because they bring you a sense of peace, joy or hope? Or feelings of dread, anxiety or despair?
He advises probing the origin of the feelings to find out if they come, for example, from desires for power or greed, fear of what others may think, a desire to do good or to be selfless.
Ignatius teaches that freedom from attachment to a particular choice or outcome is essential. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step, even if you can’t see the whole staircase.”
Ignatius also advises that individuals share their deliberations with a confidant, advice that he followed when making his own decisions. Modern psychological science too has found that the process of sharing emotions with others helps make sense of our thoughts and feelings.
He also urged people to make decisions for the “greater glory of God.” How can non-religious people use this advice? I argue they can consider how their decisions will affect the vulnerable, the poorest and the most marginalized.
IMAGINATIVE REFLECTION
Ignatius offers three imaginative exercises if no clear choice emerges:
Imagine that a friend comes to you with the same situation. They describe their choices, pros and cons, and their thoughts and feelings about these proposals. What would you advise them?
Imagine that you are on your deathbed. Looking back at your life, and assuming you made the decision in question, how do you view it from that perspective?
Imagine a conversation with the divine. Those who do not believe in a God could have an imaginary conversation with someone they loved and trusted and who has passed away. What does this person say to you about your options? Would they be pleased, disappointed or neutral about your decision?
Imaginative reflections like these offer clarity to decision-making by providing another perspective to the decision at hand.
SEEK CONFIRMATION
Ignatius advises individuals to act on reason, feeling confident that they have invested their time and energy to make a good choice. But he also says that people should seek out additional information to see if reason confirms the choice. The emotions they feel following a decision, such as peace, freedom, joy, love or compassion, might give an indication if it is the right choice.
In today’s hurried world, a 16th-century Catholic mystics’ advice may seem quaint or his process tedious. However, many modern psychological approaches confirm the value of such reflective practices.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-a-16th-century-mystic-can-teach-us-about-making-good-decisions?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Statue of St. Ignatius at at Gesù Church, Rome Oriana:
I also like the advice given by James Hollis, a Jungian psychologist: "Ask yourself whether this choice would enlarge you or diminish you."
Mary: THOUSANDS OF TRIVIAL CHOICES
Decisions, decisions! We seem to be overwhelmed with demands for decisions at every turn, leading to a perpetual sense of distraction and pressure, of never enough time to even take a breath, much less stop to watch the movement of clouds across the sky, or study the beauty we have only to look up to see all around us. The insidious part is that almost all of these decisions are truly of only trivial importance, choices that are manipulated to appear both truly important and a kind of opportunity for self expression but are actually neither...rather they are a feature of the marketplace imposed on us...thousands of choices that promise many things, including the fulfillment of desire, but can deliver nothing authentic or truly satisfying.
In striving always for growth and more growth, the marketplace continues to multiply products in an actual frenzy of invention..not only brand after brand, but more and more different types within each brand of each product. Dozens of different types of toothpaste, soap, deodorant, breakfast cereal..the shelves in the supermarket stretch on and on, as if all of our time should be devoted to finding an exact match for our particular need. Of course these needs, these particularities, must be invented, and we must be convinced of them, that this profusion of "choices" is not a ridiculous invention but somehow a recognition of our very special individual tastes and needs. No one needs all this stuff, that is basically all the same, with little changes, little added tweaks to convince us it's "All New" and will be better and more satisfying than all the rest. It's enough to give you a headache, and certainly enough to distract you and occupy your mind and time to the exclusion of other, far more important, far more necessary things...including the enjoyment of beauty, the contemplation and creation of art, and even the cultivation of both the life of the mind and the connections of persons to each other and to their larger community.
We are assaulted by manufactured needs and inauthentic choices constantly, by the marketplace and advertising...you can even see this at work in the area of pharmaceuticals, where a new drug may dictate naming something a new "disease" we can find relief from by asking for this new drug. I am thinking in particular of the "skimpy eyelash syndrome" that can be remedied by the new drug "Latisse." I realize this is a particularly ridiculous example, but there are many more serious ones attested to by the steadily incremental growth, for instance, of the DSM...more and more "illnesses" added with every new round.
And I can't help but think this trivialization of decision making is detrimental to the process of making the truly important authentic decisions in our lives. We don't have a guide like St Ignatius to help clarify the process, to encourage the use of both reason and emotion, to advise the assistance of another to help define your choices. We are left, often, to fumble about without direction...and to feel lost. Why else all those thousands of self help books, for everything from diet, to parenting, to love and career?
Time for me, I think, to watch the clouds passing, to take some deep breaths, and be glad I have come this far back to strength. I think we all have some hard choices coming soon.
Oriana:
St. Ignatius couldn’t imagine this scenario — that the first and most difficult step would be to figure out which decisions are worth making. Otherwise we waste ourselves on trivial agonies over the shade of lipstick or, indeed, breakfast cereal — a processed junk food that should never pass our lips. Big Food is fattening us up like livestock, with the diet industry and then Big Pharma waiting to provide expensive treatment options for obesity-related disorders.
I guess that St. Ignatius was trying to help with decisions such as “Should I become a priest? Do I really have the vocation?” Or maybe “Should I confront X about his unjust behavior toward me”? Or, “Is my fear about becoming a missionary justified?” In such instances, the examination of one’s emotions is especially relevant. Personally, I find Marie Kondo’s question “Does it spark joy?” quite helpful. I also like James Hollis’s “Which choice makes me a larger person?”
A former Jesuit told me that Loyola invented a kind of talk therapy before the concept existed. If a person seeking help felt depressed and discouraged, for instance, he and the spiritual advisor were to read the Gospels together, the advisor watching for what the “patient” showed the liveliest response to — what “hit home.” That story would then be discussed further, and used to provide guidance.
I can easily imagine the use of great literature in general, and certain movies, for therapeutic purposes. Which story resonates with us? What can we learn from the character we identify with? Can we come up with an alternate ending? The point is to reach sufficient clarity to take the first steps.
I also think it’s important to narrow the question, to go from “what should I do?” to “should I do X or Y?” Sometimes just narrowing the question will lead to an automatic answer, since only one of the alternatives will make sense and “spark joy.” On the other hand, considering too many options may lead to paralysis, or less contentment with the choice we ultimately make. Simplify, simplify!
But these days there is so much noise that we may not even realize which questions need to be answered. The quiet and orderly life in a monastic order seems not a prison but a liberation.
Not that we literally need a literal monastery. We can create an inner place of quiet where the voice of wisdom can be heard and emotions fully felt.
Joe: THE LASTING INFLUENCE OF ST. IGNATIUS
St. Ignatius has had a lasting influence on me. I had forgotten his decision-making process, but you can see echoes of it in most self-help articles. When I was considering the seminary, the first place I visited was the Jesuit seminary in Michigan.
My first choice was the Jesuits because, in the eighth grade, I had read Ignatius’s biography. He was shot twice in his leg with a cannonball. The second time they had to break his leg and reset it so he could walk. While he recovered his only reading material was the Bible. He decided to form a spiritual army for Christ.
As I became a poet, my teacher, Glover Davis, lent me a copy of The Poetry of Meditation by Louis Martz. One of the most influential essays stated that Ignatius developed a procedure for meditation. The early Protestants followed it as did the Metaphysical Poets Donne and Herbert. Following them, American poets like Roethke used the meditation process to write their meditation poems.
There are different types of meditations. The Buddhist system comes to mind, and there are others. My graduate program taught me that a meditative poem looked at an object from all sides. That is Ignatius’ system. His meditation style comes into his decision making with imaginative reflection.
That was the principal element in meditative poetry practiced by Donne and Herbert. To focus on one biblical message, until an epiphany occurred. I learned his meditation system in the seminary. I think of the priest-poets whose work affects me: Gerald Manley Hopkins, Thomas Merton, and Ernesto Cardenal.
When a writer truly finishes the poem, they feel emotions such as peace, freedom, joy, love, or compassion, and it gives them a sign their work is complete. As well thought out as Ignatius’s theory of decision-making is, I find it didn’t help me when I was choosing the seminary to attend.
Of course, I was seventeen and reacted more emotionally. The reason I didn’t attend the Jesuit seminary is because of the interview. The priest impressed my father, but he wanted me to commit to being disciplined mentally and physically. The physical part is what my father thought I needed to motivate me.
By that time, I had learned that an imposed physical and mental discipline was abusive. I didn’t want that. My second choice was the Maryknoll fathers. I liked them because they worked with the poor who were disenfranchised. I didn’t choose them because the councilor tried selling me that they were closer to sainthood than the other orders.
My best friend was twenty years older than me. He became a Benedictine priest. As he prepared for his ordination, I would visit the Benedictine seminary. It was five miles from my house, and I spent a whole summer there. He invited me to his ordination, which I attended. I would have joined except that the seminarians were too happy whenever I was around.
I had an eerie feeling that when they shut the door at night, things changed for the worse. It did convince me that I should attend a seminary. The Precious Blood worked for me because, during my interview, the priest said, “We only ask that you work hard.” He didn’t try to sell me on holiness or fun or discipline.
It was a straightforward and clear statement. That made me feel it was honest. Rather than following a decision-making prescription, I made my decision on the appearance of honesty. As it turned out, that was the right place and time for me.
Even though I didn’t attend the Jesuit seminary, the fathers taught the Ignatius decision making and meditation process. I must admit his teaching has influenced me for the better because they place you in a mental calmness when you are considering the spiritual and secular problems.
Oriana:
Thank you, Joe, for sharing this fascinating story. I feel that St. Ignatius does indeed have something timeless to offer, and I wish I had learned more about him and his methods when I was young and badly needed to learn to moderate my intense emotions. Fortunately I loved books; in retrospect I think a dog would have also been been great therapy.
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WHY WE NEED STAR TREK — HUMANIST MORAL VISION
~ I was raised on Star Trek. This is not hyperbole. Some of my most treasured memories are sitting with my mother watching episode after episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The crew of the Starship Enterprise feel like extended family to me, their stories parables which have indelibly marked my moral outlook. The ethical discourse Star Trek presents – discussion about what it means to be human, how to be good in a strange and hostile universe, where to find grace and hope when confronted with moral complexity – led me to my current career, as a Humanist clergy person.
This is by design: Star Trek is Humanist scripture. It was conceived and written by Humanist Gene Roddenberry as a vehicle for the ethical edification of our species, its starships vessels for our hopes and dreams. Their names alone make this clear: Enterprise, Voyager, and now Discovery. Gene Roddenberry believed in people. He believed in our potential – despite our divisions and our baser instincts – to be better than we are today, to boldly build a better world. Star Trek was the means he used to convey his vision. Just as religious leaders throughout history use narrative to convey their teachings, Roddenberry couched his moral vision in the language of science fiction, disguising radical social teachings under the imaginary cloaking device of aliens and future technology.
But the teachings were very real, and they are vital. Star Trek says we never fire first, but seek first to understand. Star Trek says that learning is a higher good than acquisition. Star Trek says that skepticism is a virtue, and that we should not trust in faith alone. Star Trek lauds evidence and reason – while appreciating the vital role of our emotions. Star Trek says we can cooperate across radical lines of difference, and that peace is always possible. Star Trek exalts diplomacy above warfare; intellect above ignorance; the open mind above the closed. Star Trek says no to rigid borders and boundaries, offering an expansive view of our species and our capabilities. Star Trek says “We can, if we work together.”
Now, more than ever, we need Star Trek‘s ideal of a hopeful future, in which people – despite our differences – work together for a brighter future. Star Trek: Discovery is more than a television show: it is a parable, a scripture, a cry of yearning from the Humanist soul. Star Trek‘s return to the screen comes at a time when all of Roddenberry’s cherished Humanist values are under threat, and it looks increasingly likely that we may annihilate ourselves through warfare or ecological devastation. We need stories right now, stories which give us something to hope for, something to fight for. “Resist!” is a powerful slogan, but it’s not an end-goal. Star Trek provides an end-goal. It may be campy, and twee, and unrealistic, but it’s something to hope for. We need that now. ~
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/templeofthefuture/2017/09/need-star-trek/
OSTEOCALCIN AS A “MASTER REGULATOR”; NOT JUST FOR BUILDING BONES
~ Gérard Karsenty was a young scientist trying to make a name for himself in the early 1990s when he first stumbled upon a finding that would go on to transform our understanding of bone, and the role it plays in our body.
Karsenty had become interested in osteocalcin, one of the most abundant proteins in bone. He suspected that it played a crucial role in bone remodeling – the process by which our bones continuously remove and create new tissue – which enables us to grow during childhood and adolescence, and also recover from injuries.
Intending to study this, he conducted a genetic knockout experiment, removing the gene responsible for osteocalcin from mice. However to his dismay, his mutant mice did not appear to have any obvious bone defects at all. “For him, it was initially a total failure,” says Mathieu Ferron, a former student of Karsenty who now heads a research lab studying bone biology at ICRM in Montreal. “In those days it was super-expensive to do modification in the mouse genome.”
But then Karsenty noticed something unexpected. While their bones had developed normally, the [osteocalcin-deficient] mice appeared to be both noticeably fat and cognitively impaired.
“Mice that don’t have osteocalcin have increased circulating glucose, and they tend to look a bit stupid,” says Ferron. “It may sound silly to say this, but they don’t learn very well, they appear kind of depressed. But it took Karsenty and his team some time to understand how a protein in bone could be affecting these functions. They were initially a bit surprised and terrified as it didn’t really make any sense to them.”
Almost 15 years later, Karsenty would publish the first of a series of landmark papers that would revolutionize our perspective on bone and the skeleton in general. We used to view our skeleton as primarily a mechanical structure whose main role is to serve as a scaffold for the rest of the body. But our bones are very much live organs, which we now believe play a role in regulating a whole range of vital bodily processes ranging from memory to appetite, muscle health, fertility, metabolism and many others.
“The idea that bone is just a simple organ that’s separated from everything else as a mineralized tissue, and that doesn’t communicate – that’s changed,” says Thomas Clemens, professor of orthopedic surgery at the Johns Hopkins Center for Musculoskeletal Research. “Karsenty has ushered in the idea that bone is involved in communicating with other tissues in the body that wasn’t really understood or investigated before.”
We now know that bones communicate by participating in a network of signals to other organs through producing their own hormones, proteins that circulate in the blood. Karsenty’s mice eventually led him to realize that osteocalcin was in fact one such hormone, and understanding its links to regulating so many of these functions could have future implications in terms of public health interventions.
“The idea that bone could produce a hormone affecting metabolism or even your liver initially came as a bit of a shock,” says Ferron. “People did not expect that. But other scientists have since replicated the results, and even discovered new hormones also produced by bones. It’s opened up a completely new field in bone research.”
Reversing age-related decline
As we age, all of us inevitably lose bone. Research shows that humans reach peak bone mass in their 20s; from then onwards, it is a slow decline that can eventually lead to frailty and diseases such as osteoporosis in old age.
Over the past decade, new findings have suggested that this reduction in bone mass may also be linked to the weakening of muscles – referred to in medical terms as sarcopenia – as well as the memory and cognitive problems that many of us experience as we grow older. This appears to be connected to the levels of osteocalcin in the blood, through its role as a “master regulator”, influencing many other hormonal processes in the body.
People who are very active tend to have less of a cognitive decline with age than sedentary people; exercise stimulates the production of osteocalcin
“Osteocalcin acts in muscle to increase the ability to produce ATP, the fuel that allows us to exercise,” says Karsenty. “In the brain, it regulates the secretion of most neurotransmitters that are needed to have memory. The circulating levels of osteocalcin declines in humans around mid-life, which is roughly the time when these physiological functions, such as memory and the ability to exercise, begin to decline.”
But intriguingly in recent years, Karsenty has conducted a series of experiments in which he has shown that by increasing the levels of osteocalcin in older mice through injections, you can actually reverse many of these age-related ailments.
“Osteocalcin seems to be able to reverse manifestations of aging in the brain and in muscle,” he says. “What is remarkable is that if you give osteocalcin to old mice, you restore memory and you restore the ability to exercise to the levels seen in a young mouse. That makes it potentially extremely attractive from a medical point of view.”
Scientists have also found that for humans, one way of naturally maintaining the levels of this hormone in the blood, even as we age, is through exercise, something that makes intuitive sense, as physical activity has long been known to have anti-aging properties. Ferron is hoping that these findings can be used to support public health messages regarding the importance of staying active through middle age and later life.
“If you exercise regularly, then it stimulates your bone to make more osteocalcin, and that will have these beneficial effects on muscle and brain,” he says. “From epidemiological studies, we know that people who are very active tend to have less of a cognitive decline with age than sedentary people. With time, maybe people will be more aware of this connection, and think of their bone health as being just as important as other aspects of staying healthy.”
Ongoing research in this area also suggests that exercising more during the teenage years and early adulthood can continue to have a protective effect on bone and other aspects of health much later in life.
Utilizing bone hormones to develop new drugs
Osteocalcin is not the only bone hormone to have caught the attention of scientists, however. At the Mayo Clinic, Sundeep Khosla has been studying a hormone called DPP4, which is made by cells on the outer layers of bone, called osteoclasts, and appears to play a role in how bone regulates blood sugar.
Khosla is particularly interested in this hormone because the drug denosumab – which is clinically prescribed to osteoporosis patients to try and slow down the rate of bone loss – seems to have a positive effect on DPP4 as well. In a study of osteoporosis patients taking denosumab published earlier this year, he noticed that those also suffering from diabetes experienced an improvement in their symptoms.
“This shows that maybe this drug can treat both osteoporosis and diabetes at the same time,” says Khosla. “We’re now looking to follow up on these observations and test this through a randomized control trial.”
However, osteocalcin, with its potential to prevent many aspects of age-related decline, remains the major topic of interest in bone research. Given that so many people ignore public health guidelines regarding exercise – in 2017, the British Heart Foundation reported that around 20 million adults in the UK are insufficiently active – Karsenty is working on a means of artificially increasing the levels of osteocalcin in the blood and has even filed a patent on using it to treat cognitive disorders.
“This is not easy, but what we are hoping to do is to deliver osteocalcin perhaps through developing a molecule which regulates osteocalcin,” he says. “We’re exploring various ways of doing this, but the idea would be eventually to have something which could be used to treat age-related diseases such as sarcopenia and memory decline. This is really going to profit the elderly the most, but anyone with a decline in muscle function, because of a hip fracture or another condition, could also benefit from this treatment.”
Ferron says that such a treatment would differ from current medications designed to improve bone health in osteoporosis, as they only work by blocking bone loss. A drug targeting osteocalcin would aim to achieve wider health benefits through stimulating bone gain.
However, there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome. For example, simply injecting a form of osteocalcin is unlikely to be sufficient to achieve a therapeutic benefit in humans.
“Treatments like that tend to be more costly and more difficult as protein injections don’t have a very long half life,” says Ferron. “My lab is developing a stabilized form of osteocalcin so it can stay longer in the body, but the best solution would be to have some sort of small pharmacological molecules that could be put in a pill to target the receptor of osteocalcin to stimulate its activity. So that’s the idea I see for the future.”
But Karsenty’s findings have also led scientists to ponder a somewhat profound question: how did bones develop the ability to produce hormones such as osteocalcin in the first place?
The scientist himself believes that the answer lies deep in our evolutionary past. “I think that evolution has invented osteocalcin as a survival hormone,” he says. “Because to escape predators, you need your bones to be able to signal to your muscles to run, which is mediated by osteocalcin. To survive, you also need to remember where to find food or where a predator was an hour ago, and such memory processes are regulated by osteocalcin. More and more, we think that it evolved as a hormone to help animals escape danger.” ~
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jul/04/does-the-key-to-anti-ageing-lie-in-our-bones
Oriana:
And not a word here about Vitamin K2, which is essential for the function of osteocalcin, a Vitamin K-dependent protein. Perhaps it’s because there isn’t much money to be made promoting vitamin K, which is just as important as Vitamin D — in fact the two work together.
But all this is minor next to the discovery that the skeleton is in fact yet another endocrine organ! It produces hormones. True, we have long noticed the parallels: when bone deteriorates, everything else seems to worsen as well — but we didn’t begin to suspect a causal connection. It was Karsenty’s groundbreaking discovery that a hormone secreted by the bones had profound effects on glucose levels, energy metabolism, brain function, and even testosterone production.
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IS MODERATE DRINKING TRULY BENEFICIAL?
~ The scientific debate over moderate drinking dates at least back to the 1970s, when researchers in California noticed that teetotalers seemed to have more heart attacks than people who drank moderately. In the decades that followed, many observational studies looking at large populations documented what is known as a J-shaped curve between alcohol and mortality from all causes, especially heart disease: Mortality rates dipped for moderate drinkers compared to nondrinkers and then climbed higher among people whose intake exceeded one or two drinks daily.
But observational studies can show only correlations, not causation. And they have other limitations. One major confounding factor is that socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of health and life span — and it tracks closely with drinking levels. Studies show that compared to heavy drinkers and abstainers, people who drink moderately tend to be wealthier and have higher levels of education. They tend to have better health care, exercise more, eat healthier diets, and have less obesity.
One study that compared nondrinkers to moderate drinkers — defined as having two drinks daily for men and one for women — found that 27 out of 30 well established risk factors for heart disease were “significantly more prevalent” among nondrinkers. Rather than causing better health, in other words, moderate drinking may be a marker for higher socioeconomic status and other lifestyle factors that promote a longer life.
Another problem with observational studies is selection bias. In some large studies, people categorized as “nondrinkers” may actually be former heavy drinkers, or they may have health issues that cause them not to imbibe. Studies have found that nondrinkers have higher rates of physical disabilities, psychiatric problems and pre-existing illnesses. When rigorous studies take these factors into account, they find that the protective effect of moderate drinking disappears.
One way to get around these limitations is through genetic studies. Some people carry a genetic variant that disrupts their ability to metabolize alcohol, causing them to develop skin flushing, irritation and other unpleasant symptoms when they drink alcohol. As a result, they tend to abstain or drink very little. If alcohol was good for heart health, these people should in theory have more heart disease compared to others. Instead, as one large analysis published in BMJ in 2014 found, they have “a more favorable cardiovascular profile and a reduced risk of coronary heart disease than those without the genetic variant.”
The study concluded: “This suggests that reduction of alcohol consumption, even for light to moderate drinkers, is beneficial for cardiovascular health.”
Not everyone agrees that the health benefits of moderate drinking are illusory. Alcohol has blood-thinning properties, and red wine in particular contains polyphenols that have beneficial effects on the microbiome, said Dr. Erik Skovenborg, a family doctor and member of the International Alcohol Forum, an international group of scientists who study alcohol and health. Alcohol also raises HDL cholesterol, often referred to as the “good” kind, though recent studies have cast doubt on it being cardioprotective.
Dr. Skovenborg said the observational data makes it clear that moderate drinking is more than a marker for a healthy lifestyle.
“In these studies you have many participants that have all the healthy lifestyle factors,” he said, “and if you add moderate alcohol consumption on top of that, it increases the benefits regarding longer life and fewer health problems.”
Dr. Skovenborg said his general advice to patients who drink is to follow the Mediterranean tradition: Have a little wine with your meals, drink slowly, enjoy it, and don’t drink to get drunk. Exercise regularly, avoid smoking, eat nutritious foods, and maintain a normal weight. “It’s a pattern of things you should be doing, not just one thing,” he added.
Showing definitively that moderate drinking protects heart health requires doing a lengthy clinical trial, one that randomly assigns some people to have a drink daily and others to abstain. In 2014, the National Institutes of Health launched a clinical trial designed to do just that. But it was shut down in 2018 after a New York Times investigation revealed that N.I.H. officials had lobbied beer and liquor companies for funding and suggested that the results of the trial would support moderate drinking. As it turns out, experts have long raised concerns about industry influence on alcohol studies.
Members of the advisory committee declined to comment on their recommendations until their report is released. Dr. Stockwell said he agreed with the one-drink-a-day recommendation but he would word it slightly differently. “I’d probably say seven drinks a week for men and women and no more than two drinks on one day,” he said. “I would have a little flexibility.” ~
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/well/eat/should-we-be-drinking-less.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR35fWbE_RoVI2o1z_dmbJaG-OX2i9dVx2gadAwxKBFU1lPqlosg-5ltlrM
Oriana:
I’ll never forget the interview with a Los Angeles coroner that I saw on TV a long time ago. He said, “The cleanest arteries I’ve ever seen were those of skid-row alcoholics.”
So yes, there is an effect. However, you apparently need to consume so much alcohol that its harmful effects would greatly outweigh this benefit. And the newest view that, considering the harmful effects such as increased cancer risk, less is better, and none may be best, especially for women.
There are other ways to make one’s arteries cleaner: exercise and fasting (or at least significant calorie reduction). With my limited mobility, I can’t rely on aerobic exercise — although stretching is apparently effective in making the blood vessels more elastic.
What excites me is that there is a way to decalcify one’s arteries (and kidneys, and muscle and other organs). Vitamin K-2, especially in the form of Menaquinone, or M-7, the kind abundant in natto (fermented soy beans) and now available as a supplement. Enough of it may indeed reverse harmful calcification, taking calcium out of the places where it doesn’t belong. One noticeable effect would be an increased amount of urine as the kidneys start working better, detoxifying the body. And, let’s face it, as circulation improves, everything improves.
(At the same time, in some cases alcohol can help save your life. It can very rapidly dilate your arteries, stopping chest pains. I've never forgotten what a biochemist told me: "Nothing dilates those small arteries as efficiently as alcohol.")
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ending on beauty:
Speak softly, God! It could mean to someone
that the trumpets of your kingdom called;
for their sound no depth is deep enough:
then all times rise out of the stones,
and all the long-lost appear
in faded linen, brittle skeletons,
crooked from the weight of soil.
That will be a miraculous return
into a wondrous homeland.
~ Rilke, “The Last Judgment”
Luca Signorelli, Resurrection, Orvieto Cathedral
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