LADY MACBETH: MISUNDERSTOOD? PANPSYCHISM — DOES EVERYTHING HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS? IN LOVE, CHOOSE YOURSELF FIRST;SANTORINI ERUPTION AND EXODUS, ATLANTIS; FIVE INSIGHTS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE; DIET AND HUMAN EVOLUTION; HEALTH BENEFITS OF GINGER

Santorini: Two Boys Boxing

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ATLANTIS

We’re wreathed in robes of seaweed,
air bladders’ amber beads,
the hood of water
over the face of things.

Fish weave in rainbow veils.
Kelp sways like soundless bells.
we cannot tell one day
from a thousand years.

Here are our amulets, good-luck
crystals, diadems and crowns.
Here tilts the headless
statue of our god,

Lord of Mercy in whose name
we killed. Mudworm burrows
in the marble palaces.
Our purses fill up with silt.

We remember pine forests,
resin scent of the wind.
We remember having held
someone’s hand.

This glitter on the waves
like bent echoes,
those are our last words:
Hold hands. Hold hands

~ Oriana

I know that one of the Buddhist masters said, as his final message, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” My own version would be “Affection. Affection. Affection.”

Max Ernst, The Eye of Silence

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FUTURE LOVE DOES NOT EXIST

“Future love does not exist,” Tolstoy wrote in contemplating the paradoxical demands of love. “Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.” It is a difficult concept to accept — we have been socialized to believe in and grasp after the happily-ever-after future of every meaningful relationship. But what happens when love, whatever its category and classification, dissolves under the interminable forces of time and change, be it by death or by some other, more deliberate demise? In the midst of what feels like an unsurvivable loss, how do we moor ourselves to the fact that even the most beautiful, most singularly gratifying things in life are merely on loan from the universe, granted us for the time being?

Two millennia ago, the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) argued that the antidote to this gutting grief is found not in hedging ourselves against prospective loss through artificial self-protections but, when loss does come, in orienting ourselves to it and to what preceded it differently — in training ourselves not only to accept but to embrace the temporality of all things, even those we most cherish and most wish would stretch into eternity, so that when love does vanish, we are left with the irrevocable gladness that it had entered our lives at all and animated them for the time that it did. ~

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/epictetus-on-love-and-loss-the-stoic-strategy-for-surviving-heartbreak?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Oriana:

So true. When overcome with sadness that something is gone, try to shift your emotions to gladness for having experienced it. Life is not stingy. We only need to remember how much we have received. And then to pass it on to others. All the love and good luck we have received should in some manner be given back, recycled.


Epictetus

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LADY MACBETH

~ Seductress. Manipulator. Madwoman. The Fourth Witch. These are just a few of the more hostile descriptors that Lady Macbeth has been saddled with ever since The Tragedie of Macbeth (the full title of the Scottish play) was first performed 416 years ago. As a schoolgirl studying William Shakespeare's timeless tale of ambition, morality, betrayal and murder, my first impression was that she was all of the above: a straightforward, out-and-out villain. A wife who, after learning of a witches' prophecy declaring her Scottish general husband would become king, persuades him to commit regicide, take power and subsequently ignites a bloody civil war? Lady M is certainly no angel.

In act five, scene seven of the play, Macbeth's rival for the throne Malcolm declares her a "fiend-like queen," and that label has stuck. The fact that men played female roles in Shakespeare's day likely only compounded this unflattering caricature, but even after women were welcomed on stage, a narrow portrayal of the character has continued. "My experience of Lady Macbeth in the theater, to begin with, was quite difficult," Erica Whyman, Deputy Artistic Director of The Royal Shakespeare Company tells BBC Culture. "She's cast in the popular imagination as the instrument of evil and that then latches onto stereotypes of women through the ages. It's a caricature of a woman who seeks power through her husband; when you combine that with the idea that she goes mad, you have this toxic combination.”

Joel Coen is the most recent filmmaker to have a go at bringing the play to the screen. Released on Apple TV+ on Friday, The Tragedy of Macbeth is a faithful adaptation which keeps the original Shakespearean dialogue, though presents the story in black-and-white using a stylized German expressionist-brutalist aesthetic, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand playing the tragic couple. As Lady M, McDormand commands the screen with matriarchal authority. There's nothing hysterical or overtly 'evil' about her performance; rather she plays the character as someone who is determined that their murderous actions are for the good of her hard-working husband, until the guilt becomes too much to bear.

Contemporary feminist readings and criticism have similarly reappraised Lady Macbeth as a far more sympathetic figure than the one that has been traditionally depicted. She might not have been historically perceived as a tragic hero like her husband – and Shakespeare didn't give her as much stage time either – but the play's title speaks to more than just his devastating fall from grace. It speaks to hers too. With this in mind, films and theater productions have increasingly offered a deeper engagement with her, and with Shakespeare's progressive ideas about gender, motherhood and the patriarchy that are as relevant today as they were back then. "He would not have recognized what we mean by women's rights or what we mean by equality but what he did was treat every human being in his plays as though they had something to say that we should listen to," says Whyman.

The range of Lady Macbeths

One of the earliest portrayals of Lady Macbeth that broke the mold was delivered by Welsh actor Sarah Siddons in 1785 at London's Drury Lane Theatre. In an essay she wrote entitled Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth, Siddons viewed her as "fair, feminine, nay, perhaps, even fragile," which is why in her reading, Macbeth was susceptible to his wife's suggestion. "Such a combination only, respectable in energy and strength of mind, and captivating in feminine loveliness, could have composed a charm of such potency as to fascinate the mind of a hero so dauntless, a character so amiable, so honorable as Macbeth," she writes. 

Her depiction was "tragedy personified," as critic William Hazlitt put it, and starkly contrasted with fellow 18th-Century star Hannah Pritchard's earlier turn which clung to the "savage, demoniac" tradition. Siddons' influence would be felt a century later, in 1888, when stage star Ellen Terry, inspired by an imperative in Siddons' essay to "not hold by the 'fiend' reading of the character," took to the stage at London's Lyceum Theatre. As described by Michael Holroyd in his biography, A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families, Terry wrote on the flyleaves of her copy of the play that Lady Macbeth was "full of womanliness" and "capable of affection," adding: "she loves her husband… and is half the time afraid whilst urging Macbeth not to be afraid as she loves a man.”

He loves her right back; Shakespeare is always intentional with the words he uses, so when Macbeth calls her his "dearest partner of greatness", it indicates their marriage is bonded by both love, ambition and equality – he calls her his "partner", after all. In Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film Throne of Blood, which transposes the story of Macbeth to 16th-Century Japan, Lady Asaji's (Isuzu Yamada) love for her husband Lord Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) manifests as paranoia. She argues that news of the witches' prophecy would get back to their Great Lord which would paint them as a potential threat to the throne. "This is a wicked world," she says calmly. "To save yourself you often first must kill.”

Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth also shows a more affectionate relationship between its lead pair. Both in their sixties, the actors are older than your typical Macbeths, but that helps emphasize that the couple's lasting union is one built on years of trust and mutual support. In Lady Macbeth's opening scene, McDormand delivers the line, "Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness," with the casualness of a wife who knows her husband better than he knows himself – but her love is most ardent. A warm smile spreads across her sleeping face as she senses the morning arrival of her husband. When Macbeth then whispers "my dearest love", the words are tenderly caressing and the two lovingly embrace. Her expression is a far-cry from the grimace she wore the night before when commanding "spirits" to change her very nature as the couple plot to murder the doomed King Duncan. "Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts," she utters, looking to the sky and briefly to the bed upon which she sits. "Unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood; stop up the access and passage to remorse That no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose.”

Judi Dench performs this powerful act one speech far more dynamically in the filmed 1979 version of Trevor Nunn's legendary Royal Shakespeare Company production, in which she starred opposite Ian McKellen. Dropping to her knees with her hand outstretched, she begs for the constraints of her gender to be removed then suddenly jumps up with a squeak as though the spirits had answered her call. Returning to the floor, she completes her whispering invocation in climactic fashion: "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry 'Hold. Hold!’"

Though painstakingly delivered, Dench's version reinforces the sorceress-like stereotype of Lady Macbeth, as though she has conjured these spirits to help do her work. By contrast, McDormand's resolute poise and level intonation avoids making the supernatural metaphor appear so literal and refutes any interpretation she could be the Fourth Witch using dark magic to manipulate her husband.

Performed in this manner, the speech simply reinforces Lady Macbeth's commitment to Macbeth's desire to rule. It also lays bare the gender politics within the play's society. Femininity is seen as a weakness, masculinity is associated with cold ambition, and Lady Macbeth recognizes too much of the former in both herself and her husband. "'Unsex me here,' is this idea that her sex is not useful to her at this moment," says Whyman. "'Stop up the passage to remorse' is a peculiarly evocative image for a woman; to use this idea of not being an open vessel and instead be strong, closed and steely. She's got a conscience and is aware of the emotional and moral cost but thinks it's worth putting that to one side. That's always a terrible idea.'"

The notion that if femininity is removed from this world, bad things happen, is something that Whyman identifies as a recurring theme in the English playwright's work. "The feminine to Shakespeare means an understanding of compassion, and understanding that we need to live in a community and family, rather than each individual's ambition leading us towards the definition of success," she says. "He's constantly guarding against or warning us against eliminating the feminine – if Macbeth was allowed to be feminine, he wouldn't have killed.”

Another reading of Lady Macbeth's motivations is that of a childless woman seeking glorious purpose: if she cannot secure Macbeth's legacy with an heir, she can through the throne. The primary role for a woman was bearing children, and the child mortality rate in Shakespeare's time was around one in three, so it's unsurprising he heavily implied the couple lost a child. "I have given suck and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me," says Lady Macbeth in act one scene seven. When that death occurred is unclear, but filmmaker Justin Kurzel made the event literal in the opening of his 2015 adaptation, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, with a scene where the anguished Macbeths attend the funeral of their toddler. The fog of grief clouds their battlement and their judgement, something Kurosawa also suggested in Throne of Blood by having Lady Asiji give birth to a stillborn child which influences Wasizu's decision to assassinate both his best friend Miki and his son who "one day shall rule Spider's Web Castle”.

But in Kurzel's film, he emphasizes the theme of a mother's loss, in particular, to the point of turning Lady Macbeth's climactic sleepwalking scene in act five into a heart-breaking church confessional in which she speaks to a vision of her dead son. More overstated direction could have led to this moment merely affirming the perception of Lady Macbeth as a mad woman but instead Cotillard's delivery of her lines is restrained, showing that subconsciously or not, the passage to remorse has flooded open. She keenly feels the guilt for her wicked deeds but the ghostly presence of her child in this scene suggests she is also pained by her earlier declaration that she would have killed him to achieve their goal: "Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.”

Both in Coen's film and the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2018 production, starring Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack as the Macbeths, their loss appears less recent and Lady Macbeth is far past the point where she could conceive – which makes her appear more disposable within the world of the play as Macbeth begins to distance himself from his wife. "This brilliant, intelligent, quick-thinking, courageous woman is confined to a ceremonial role that comes through very strongly when it's an older couple," says Whyman. "Macbeth's in his prime, is at the top of his game, [whereas Lady Macbeth is perceived as past hers]. 400 years later, there's still a bit of that – we start to find women invisible. We don't notice their sexual charms so much and don't see them as sexual beings.”

By contrast, younger casting often goes hand in hand with an amping up of the passionate sexuality and desire in the Macbeths' relationship – but done right, that doesn't mean Lady Macbeth has to occupy the wicked seductress stereotype. In Kurzel's film, the Macbeths enjoy a sensual sex scene in which Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to carry out their treacherous plan. Had attention not been paid to her role as a mother, a partner and her mental health as a whole, Cotillard's iteration might have fit that reductive characterization. Whyman points to Saoirse Ronan's performance in the recent production at London's Almeida theatre as another fine example of a younger take on Lady Macbeth: "It was full of life and sexuality. I found it very moving because theirs was a love affair that was so damaged by violence. There's one decision, whatever the chain of events, that destroys that forever.”

That fateful choice, in Lady Macbeth's case, may be best understood as that of a woman navigating a strongly patriarchal world. If women had ambitions in early modern England, they mostly had to accomplish them through men, and there's a strong sense that Lady Macbeth missed an opportunity to achieve greatness both because of her sex and her husband – Macbeth might have status on the battlefield but has less so in court. Her questioning of his manly courage ("Art thou afeard?") cannot simply be viewed as emasculation but an indication that she could have married a man with more political power. 

"There is a really interesting theme that there's a different tragedy for Lady Macbeth when she's [played] older – she could have easily been queen," Whyman says. "[Shakespare is] consistently curious about what it is to be a female leader and he keeps putting these guys up with deep flaws, and then suggesting there's a woman close to them who could have done it better. Of course, he was also living through a time where the idea of a queen was very potent." Whyman points to Hermione in The Winter's Tale as another of Shakespeare's women who suffers at the hands of a weak-minded husband. The virtuous Queen of Sicily is falsely accused of infidelity by King Leontes and is forced to stand trial: "Queen Hermione is treated appallingly [but] she would have led the country brilliantly.

King James I might have been the British sovereign when Macbeth was published but his predecessor, Elizabeth I, was an obvious influence on Shakespeare. Upon her ascension to the throne, the monarch challenged gender roles; she refused to submit to marriage – arguing she was "already bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England" – while clinging to her feminine identity in her aesthetic and various speeches, describing her subjects as her "children" for example. 

But she also displayed the royal traits (considered masculine because of the traditionally male hierarchy) of active agency and decision making, and was referred to using royal male descriptors, like "princely" and "Prince of Light", as well as being classified as "king" in Parliamentary statute for political purposes. However, where Elizabeth I embraced political androgyny and reigned for 45 years, Lady Macbeth unsexes herself and loses her way. "She thinks the only way to get success is to follow a set of rules that are patriarchal," says Whyman. "She's not a kind of power-hungry, man impersonator – she's wholly in her skin, but she does think the only way to have agency in the world is to do this terrible deed and she's quite wrong about that. If she held onto her morals, to her femininity in that sense, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Shakespeare was miles ahead when it came to female representation and Lady Macbeth is a character that has too frequently been painted in a two-dimensional light. Had she been afforded more scenes in the play, her motivations might not have appeared so ambiguous to narrow-minded viewers. As it is, Lady M exits the play after her sleepwalking scene and in act five scene seven is reported as dead, evidently by suicide if Malcolm's comment that she "by self and violent hands took off her life"  is to be believed. 

But Coen complicates things by adding a sequence involving Lady Macbeth and nobleman Ross (Alex Haskell) that suggests even more foul play might be involved. Did she throw herself down the stairs – either because the guilt was too much or as an act of atonement – or was she pushed by Ross as revenge for her husband's order to murder his cousin Lady MacDuff? That's up to the viewer to decide. What is clear, is that Macbeth cares for his wife until the end and Coen presents this by having Washington's tragic hero looking down upon her laying at the bottom of the fateful staircase, staggering slightly as the pain washes over him. The one constant in this adaptation is their love for one-another.

McDormand joins a welcome list of women bringing enough depth and layers to this formidable character to combat 400 years of gross misunderstandings that say more about those interpreters than the multifaceted literary figure Shakespeare created. Lady Macbeth is a timeless, tragic heroine who should be cherished not scorned. "It's unhelpful to portray her as wicked or to suggest that because she hasn't got a child she's, in some ways, hollow and barren and inevitably evil," says Whyman. "She’s not a villain; she’s complex, she's curious – we should admire her.”

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220110-why-lady-macbeth-is-literatures-most-misunderstood-villain?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Oriana:

“Admire” is the wrong word. We should try to understand her: a "mere" woman who can exercise her ambition only through a man.

And yet, the Macbeths are Shakespeare’s only portrayal of a loving married couple. 

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth; John Singer Sargent 1889

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FIVE INSIGHTS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE (repeat posting)

I credit my depression-ending insight to reading the statement “You can practice falling apart, or you can practice being strong.” It was like a proverbial lightning hit. It rewired my brain. Later I was able to see that “ripeness is all” — I also had several minor insights along the way, which helped me to develop a desire to be rid of depression rather than indulge the perverse desire to go ever deeper into it.

The first time I had such instant change was dropping religion. A thought rose in my mind: “It’s just another mythology.” It seemed instant, but of course the moment of insight was preceding by preliminary steps and stages, including reading a certain crucial page in a book on comparative religion. Once I saw that the Judeo-Christian tradition was one of many mythologies, there was no going back.

The third such moment happened when a former partner wrote just one sentence in reply to a desperate letter from me: “Do only that which is in your best interest.” And just like that I was no longer willing to risk a disastrous marriage, or in any way subjugate my primary goals and needs to a man’s needs. It was my feminist moment, and it’s ironic that I owe it to a man. But that’s exactly what a typical man would do without any need for coaching — do only that which is in his best interest.

The fourth life-changing insight came from a woman friend to whom I complained how a  certain woman poet/teacher was mistreating me, not replying to me emails, breaking promises. My friend smiled and said, “You suffer because you want something from her.” I instantly knew that was profound wisdom. In my thoughts I repeated “There is nothing I want from X. There is nothing I want from X.” (X here stands for her name, which need not be revealed). Later, whenever I happened to be reminded of that person, I deliberately thought, “There is nothing I want from X.”

An interesting thing happened. Eventually a got a long, effusive, self-centered email from X, making no mention of the promise she’d made earlier. I replied with a brief and aloof email that made no request — I actually stopped needing anything from X. Her next email to me was friendly and respectful — but I was no longer interested in cultivating this friendship, so again I replied in a brief and aloof way. And that was the end of it, and good riddance, since the woman was an alcoholic, her promises like bad checks. Alcoholics are masters at making extravagant promises they don't intend to act on.

Ever since, I practiced saying to myself “There is nothing I want from X” [insert the relevant name] whenever trouble arose. It worked. I also remembered that my mother said that a schoolfriend taught her a similar method: when someone or something doesn’t work out, repeat to yourself “that’s not for me, that’s not for me.”

The fifth insight, like the depression-ending insight, arose from what I call “the power of OR.” (I mean the tiny but mighty word “OR, the slender axis of choice.”) This one I owed to a banker who was trying to induce me to invest a certain relatively modest sum of money over which I just gained sole autonomy. “What do you want to do with your money?” he asked. “Do you want to have it make more money?” He paused, and then asked what to me was a revolutionary question: “Or do you want to spend it?” And after a lifetime of being taught exclusively to save, save, save, and never having questioned the “virtue” of thrift, I surprised myself by saying without hesitation, “I want to spend it.” Of course the point was to spend it intelligently to improve the quality of my life — or to donate to a cause truly important to me.

Though this new willingness to spend seemed to come out of the blue, I realized that I’d been thinking about the stages of life. A parallel insight emerged: “I don’t want to die rich.” 

These five insights have changed my life for the better. I hope that perhaps one or two of them may prove useful to a particular reader. Why this relatively modest expectation? Because one needs to be ready. Much needs to fall into place, sometimes slowly, before the lightning of instant change can strike. 

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THE PRESSURE TO BE EXTRAORDINARY

~ If I called you ordinary, how would that make you feel? If I told you I had an average day at my ordinary job, and then went home to my ordinary family, would you think of me as unsatisfied? Unambitious? Unhappy even?

As author Rainesford Stauffer says, it's time to reevaluate the power of an ordinary life.
"The concept of the best life serves as a social script," she writes in her book, An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way in a World That Expects Exceptional. "Do these things in this order, and you'll end up happy or fulfilled or at the very least on par with the same kind of lives your peers are leading.”

"Ordinariness does not stand in opposition to having dreams or having a vision for your life," says Stauffer. Instead, "considering the value in our average, good-enough-as-is selves helps us reorient ourselves to the actual needs and desires we have.”

Focus on finding your own interpretation of fulfillment, instead of chasing "this myth that there's always more we need to be doing, that every struggle is our personal failing and every moment we don't know what we're doing signals that we're behind," she says. "It really is OK to not know."

How often have you been told to seek out a dream job or follow your passion?

The trouble with passion, says Stauffer, citing the work of Dr. Erin Cech, is "that kind of insidious mentality can actually keep us from critiquing the labor structure that we're existing in.”

So if you're considering an internship paying you with "exposure," or you neglect to clock your overtime because the boss has said funds are tight, Stauffer says pause and consider your values: Is this where you want to spend all of your waking hours? Are you being treated as a human being? Are you equating this job to your self-worth?

IN LOVE, CHOOSE YOURSELF FIRST

Each relationship can "teach us how to love someone, how to be intimate with someone, what we want out of a partner." Or, on the more negative side, can teach us about what we don't want, or the danger of not exercising our own agency with a partner.

"All of those experiences add up and they stay with you into adulthood," says Stauffer, so it's important to choose wisely. And "it is not just about someone choosing me. It is also about me choosing them. And that is an extension of me choosing myself," she says.

There's an endless amount of messaging today that says finding a perfect partner will make your life complete. To that, Stauffer says: "No, you're complete as is."

A partnership may enrich your life, but if romance doesn't fit right now, says Stauffer, "nothing is wrong with you, and you have a choice either way.”

HARNESS THE POWER OF THE ORDINARY

"I think the biggest thing we can do to find power in the ordinary is to decide that in spite of everything, in spite of capitalism, in spite of the timelines, in spite of the pressure," says Stauffer, "we're going to find ways to embrace our most ordinary selves.”

That can be as simple as logging off your computer 15 minutes early, calling a friend even if you still have items on your to-do list or being kind to yourself when you fall short of your own expectations.

"Being able to renegotiate what matters to you, solve problems, and learn to trust yourself are ordinary things with remarkable power for young people.” ~

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/14/1073158746/ordinary-life-rainesford-stauffer

Oriana:

Perhaps the best piece of advice in this article is “logging off your computer 15 minutes early.” Likewise, do not go straight to the computer the first thing in the morning. Do not start the day by diving into that ocean of distraction: email, news, the endless fragmentation of Facebook (I'm preaching to myself,  of course). Creative solutions arrive only if we have the mental space for them, and are not consciously trying, striving, pushing toward some goal. I call this trusting your unconscious, and trusting the creative process. The answer will come, in its own time. Once you have the clarity, the rest is just details.

When I was a free-lance writer, I discovered how easy it was to become a writing machine and lose the essential connection with the richness of life. Also, I finally made good money, but had to time to enjoy it. Perhaps life is not necessarily a school of hard knocks, but a school of hard ironies.

“In love, choose yourself first” is also excellent advice, especially to women. It reminds me of a question that startled me once: “Can you love yourself as much as you can love a man?” At a young age, I did not dare answer that question, but instantly sensed the answer was “no,” and that “no” was a mother of disasters.

Somehow no one would ask a man if he can love himself as much as he can love a woman. We naturally assume that a man puts himself first. Yet perhaps all these assumptions are too glib . . . and it’s OK to admit that wet don’t know. I suspect a lot depends on the stage of life. 

Mary:

Something my husband said to me before we were married, that I appreciate and treasure — “What I like about you is you're a plain person.” What he meant, in part, was I had no agenda, no plan for him, was direct and honest and without games. I don't think he meant I was plain in appearance, but I didn’t do much fussing about it..wore little make up and not often, wore functional non-elaborate clothing, and was sometimes known to forget to comb my hair...and wasn’t coy about it, or ashamed to admit it. I think there's a lot of respect and freedom in his words.

Not only should we not be constantly seeking the One who will "complete us" it is a doomed project. No one can complete you, you are already complete. The expectation that your partner will resolve your problems, fulfill all your needs and generally save you from an unfulfilled and empty life, puts an enormous weight on them, an unreasonable demand no one can fill. Such relationships are doomed to disappointment and failure.

Social demands for achievement, doing more, doing better, doing harder, are also a great source of dissatisfaction, stress, unhappiness and even desperation. I always felt myself sorely lacking in ambition. Never had aspirations to climb any career ladder, because the basic engagement in the work was complete and fulfilling in itself. My sense of my work as a nurse was all hands on, every step upward was a step away from direct patient care, into management, bureaucracy, desk work…farther and farther from actual nursing care. Going that way I would lose everything I loved about nursing.

In writing as well, all the pleasure, all the fun, is in writing itself, much less in making it a career, and I certainly have been slow in terms of career making. Simply not driven enough to produce publications, pursue recognition, garner prizes in any dedicated and determined way. Although I love an audience, much of the joy is private, and remains so, even with publication. Like with nursing, one on one, or small group interchanges are most important, most treasured, most authentic for me.

The idea of the value of an ordinary life rests in the ability to say This is Enough. Our society does not encourage that. We are constantly urged to do more, do better, achieve more, win big, be somebody. No one is encouraged to see themselves as already complete just in themselves, as they are. We have to Dream Big,  Reach our Potential, never settle, never be satisfied, never accept anything less than the biggest, highest, richest, most famous, smartest...anything less is pure failure. This is really a recipe for misery.

Sorry to go on but I have strong feelings about these false expectations that rob us of so much contentment and joy.

Oriana:

There was a time when I wanted to be a nationally recognized poet. I entered a crazy number of contests, and even won this or that award, but ultimately none of this was a “stepping stone.” And the worst thing was that I burnt out on po-biz, and sank into deep depression (the “career failure” wasn’t the only cause, but it was one of the main causes — I felt my future had been stolen away from me.

Recovery meant in part that I had to regain the joy of poetry itself. It’s been said a thousand times: work itself is the reward, not any external outcome. And to be able to spend time doing what you love doing is itself a miracle — seek no further.  



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PANPSYCHISM: CRAZY, BUT PERHAPS CORRECT

~ Common sense tells us that only living things have an inner life. Rabbits and tigers and mice have feelings, sensations and experiences; tables and rocks and molecules do not. Panpsychists deny this datum of common sense. According to panpsychism, the smallest bits of matter – things such as electrons and quarks – have very basic kinds of experience; an electron has an inner life.

The main objection made to panpsychism is that it is ‘crazy’ and ‘just obviously wrong’. It is thought to be highly counterintuitive to suppose that an electron has some kind of inner life, no matter how basic, and this is taken to be a very strong reason to doubt the truth of panpsychism.

But many widely accepted scientific theories are also crazily counter to common sense. Albert Einstein tells us that time slows down at high speeds. According to standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, particles have determinate positions only when measured. And according to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, our ancestors were apes [Oriana: not true: we and apes had a common proto-ape ancestor). All of these views are wildly at odds with our common-sense view of the world, or at least they were when they were first proposed, but nobody thinks this is a good reason not to take them seriously. Why should we take  common sense to be a guide to how things really are?

No doubt the willingness of many to accept special relativity, natural selection and quantum mechanics, despite their strangeness from the point of view of pre-theoretical common sense, is a reflection of their respect for the scientific method. We are prepared to modify our view of the world if we take there to be good scientific reason to do so. But in the absence of hard experimental proof, people are reluctant to attribute consciousness to electrons. [Oriana: and who can blame them?]

I maintain that there is a powerful simplicity argument in favor of panpsychism. The argument relies on a claim that has been defended by Bertrand Russell, Arthur Eddington and many others, namely that physical science doesn’t tell us what matter is, only what it does. The job of physics is to provide us with mathematical models that allow us to predict with great accuracy how matter will behave. This is incredibly useful information; it allows us to manipulate the world in extraordinary ways, leading to the technological advancements that have transformed our society beyond recognition. But it is one thing to know the behavior of an electron and quite another to know its intrinsic nature: how the electron is, in and of itself. Physical science gives us rich information about the behavior of matter but leaves us completely in the dark about its intrinsic nature.

In fact, the only thing we know about the intrinsic nature of matter is that some of it – the stuff in brains – involves experience. We now face a theoretical choice. We either suppose that the intrinsic nature of fundamental particles involves experience or we suppose that they have some entirely unknown intrinsic nature. On the former supposition, the nature of macroscopic things is continuous with the nature of microscopic things. The latter supposition leads us to complexity, discontinuity and mystery. The theoretical imperative to form as simple and unified a view as is consistent with he data leads us quite straightforwardly in the direction of panpsychism.

In the public mind, physics is on its way to giving us a complete picture of the nature of space, time and matter. While in this mindset, panpsychism seems improbable, as physics does not attribute experience to fundamental particles. But once we realize that physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of the entities it talks about, and indeed that the only thing we know for certain about the intrinsic nature of matter is that at least some material things have experiences, the issue looks very different. All we get from physics is this big black-and-white abstract structure, which we must somehow color in with intrinsic nature. We know how to color in one bit of it: the brains of organisms are colored in with experience. How to color in the rest? The most elegant, simple, sensible option is to color in the rest of the world with the same pen.

Panpsychism is crazy. But it is also highly likely to be true. ~ Philip Goff

https://aeon.co/ideas/panpsychism-is-crazy-but-its-also-most-probably-true

A reader’s comment:

Belief is not a substitute for evidence. There is no evidence here, just belief. ~ Paul Thompson

Another:

I wonder if anyone knows George Wald’s famous quip, “A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.” That could be interpreted as a kind of panpsychism, since consciousness becomes present in atoms once they become suitably arranged in an organism’s neural system.

(George Wald shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967 for his discovery of the role of retinal rhodopsin in converting electromagnetic stimuli into sensations of color.) ~ Mark Titus

Yet another:

Pansychism appears to me to be like a God of the Gaps. Because we can’t explain one thing physically, consciousness, we postulate that all matter has some further psychic property without evidence of its existence. As Carl Sagan said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

And on Galen’s point — It takes a “someone” to have an illusion. ~ Steven Brazzale

Oriana:

Somewhat on a tangent, we also have the fascinating results of split-brain experiments. We have two brain hemispheres with their own specializations (or call it “labor division”), and it seems there are two of us in one body. Sometimes it shows in something as simple as the answer to “How did you like the movie?” ~ “Part of me liked it, and part of me didn’t like it.” What does it do to the concept of one self, one “soul”?  Or do we actually have two souls (minds, personalities)? Or even several, a committee?


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CHINA: THE BEGINNING OF A SHRINKING POPULATION

~ Liu Yan is a mother of one in Beijing. Her days are packed between working at an internet services company and caring for her 6-year-old daughter. In 2016, the Chinese government abandoned its decades-long one-child policy and started allowing families to have two children. For Liu — who asked that we not use her real name — the policy change didn’t inspire her to add another member to her family.

“I already feel so exhausted raising our kid,” Liu, who is the primary caretaker, told Grid, “so I don’t want to start all over again taking care of a second child.” Beyond feeling drained, she is also worried about her family’s finances. Even though her daughter is still young, Liu says she has already felt pressure, in China’s hypercompetitive environment, to arrange prep classes and extracurricular activities. “If you don’t sign your child up for classes, you feel like maybe you’re not doing enough for them,” she said.

Liu’s feelings are mirrored by women across China. National statistics show that even after the change in policy, couples still prefer to have one child. In 2020, the birthrate continued a years-long decline to just 1.3 children per woman, well below the “replacement rate” of 2.1, and the lowest rate in China since at least 1950.

The current trends add up to a monumental turning point for a country whose population — its young workforce in particular — helped power an unprecedented economic rise. Based on preliminary data, some Chinese demographers say that China’s population may have begun to fall in 2021. After peaking, the population will decline — significantly, by some projections. A 2020 study published in the Lancet estimated that China’s population could be cut in half by 2100.

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As China has approached this precipice, the Communist Party has grown increasingly alarmed. Last May, the government announced it would start not only allowing but encouraging families to have three children, another dramatic shift from the old family-planning rules. In November, a commentary published by a state-affiliated media outlet argued that the country’s 95 million Communist Party members should follow the state’s exhortations and start having more children themselves: “Every CCP member should shoulder the responsibility and obligation of the country’s population growth and act on the three-child policy.” The post went viral and elicited widespread opposition from online commentators, according to the South China Morning Post.

It’s unclear just how serious the demography problem will prove for China, but experts agree that the situation presents profound challenges for the economy, from a shrinking workforce to a swelling group of elderly citizens who will need pensions and healthcare.

“People vastly overlook the level of domestic challenge China is going to confront,” Carl Minzner, a professor at Fordham University Law School who focuses on Chinese governance, told a September panel at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. “You just have to look at some of the other developed East Asian countries to realize exactly how severe the challenge is once your society rapidly ages.”

This demographic turning point has been decades in the making. China has been following a well-established global trend: As countries become wealthier and female education rises, birthrates fall. Wealthier Asian countries, most notably South Korea — which has the world’s lowest birthrate, 0.92 — have been prime examples.

In China’s case, the change was accelerated by one of the largest social engineering efforts in history. Introduced in 1979, the one-child policy was a poverty-fighting and economic growth policy, and it was broadly and rigorously enforced. Scholars have debated how much the policy contributed to the decline in China’s birthrate, but it certainly had an effect. The policy not only led to millions of one-child families, it also resulted in a greater gender imbalance as women had sex-selective abortions, and families even abandoned or killed female babies. So today there are also fewer would-be mothers than there would have been absent the one-child policy.

When the Communist Party began allowing families to have two children in 2016, the news made headlines worldwide. But in China itself, the change led to more of a baby blip than boom. The birthrate increased briefly in 2016 before dropping again, and the new three-child policy seems unlikely to change things. While the one-child restriction held back couples, broader social trends have changed behavior — perhaps irrevocably.

Surveys reveal some of the reasons behind the decline. To begin with, fewer young people, particularly women, even want to get married. In a recent survey of urban Gen Zers conducted by a research institute affiliated with the Communist Youth League, 44 percent of women said they either didn’t want to get married or weren’t sure if they would. The men and women surveyed cited difficulty finding the right partner and a lack of time and energy as reasons for not wanting to marry.

Meanwhile, many married couples are choosing not to have kids for the same financial reasons that worry Liu. In a survey conducted by the China Youth Daily, millennials cited a lack of child care options and financial pressures as their top reasons for not having a second child.

To better understand how women in China choose whether or not to have children, Ye Liu, a sociologist at King’s College London, has been running a study on the lives of 82 urban women born in the 1980s. She said many of those women found the three-child policy laughable: “If the two-child policy had any kind of, you know, rationale behind it, the three-child policy was just a joke to them.”

Why? For many of the women Ye interviewed, professional repercussions were top of mind. “Even if they got a good job, they face sexist and misogynist subcultures on a daily basis,” Ye told Grid, “and particularly when they got married, they faced moments of discussing their fertility plan with their line manager, and they were even asked in interviews [about it].” When women in her study were pregnant, Ye said, many had projects taken from them because they were deemed by their bosses to have “diminished capabilities.” In one case, a woman was demoted upon returning from maternity leave. There are no easy remedies in China for such treatment. For these women, having an additional child could mean further career setbacks.

As Ye said, “Generally speaking, they are still penalized for being a mother, for being pregnant.”

And it’s not just the urban elite who are reluctant to have more children. In rural China, too, couples are choosing to have fewer children due to rising costs. Huang Wenzheng, a Chinese demographer, told the South China Morning Post that a higher rural birthrate used to compensate for lower rates in cities, but that is no longer the case.

For Chinese families, having only one child may feel like the best decision, given all these social pressures and their own preferences. But for the Chinese government, the impending population drop is leading to a tangled web of economic problems.

A key concern is the size of China’s workforce, the juggernaut that helped propel the country’s remarkable, three-decade rise from poverty to global economic powerhouse. In recent years, that demographic tail wind has turned into a drag. According to a 2019 study, the aging of China’s population since 2000 has slightly slowed economic growth. And as the population shrinks and ages going forward, the economic impacts loom large.

The number of working-age people has actually been dropping since 2012, and as China’s population ages further, the decline will only accelerate. By 2050, the working-age group is projected to drop by 17 percent — an eye-popping 174 million people lost from the workforce — according to an estimate by the U.N. population division. The true figure may be even higher; some demographers say the U.N. scenario overstates the future fertility rate.

And as the number of workers drops, the number of dependents — children and the elderly, who contribute far less to the economy — will rise. The Chinese government is planning to raise the retirement age to expand the labor pool, but that move has been delayed by public opposition. And while some countries have relied on immigration to compensate for an aging workforce, the number of permanent foreign residents in China remains very low.

“Obviously, to what extent the demographic challenges will become a drag on growth depends on China’s own policy choices,” said Tianlei Huang, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There is no denying that what is in front of the Chinese policymakers is a very tough situation.”

The economic fallout of the demographic turning point looms as a critical issue for the party, particularly given the ambitious agenda President Xi Jinping and the party leadership have set forth. Xi has set a target of doubling the economy from 2020 to 2035, which would require a 4.7 percent annual GDP growth rate. In the short term, the lingering pandemic and China’s “zero-covid” approach are obstacles; the population numbers are a serious concern for the long term.

“The key to the Chinese Dream and China’s regime is economic development and its global ambitions,” said Ye. “The demographic crisis holds China’s economy back, and holds its global ambition back, so it’s definitely a real concern for the top leadership.”

A core part of that challenge will involve the elderly — and the job of dramatically reorienting social services to provide for an older China. The U.N. projects that the percentage of the Chinese population over 65 will increase from 12 percent in 2020 to 26 percent in 2050.

As Wang Feng, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a 2018 study, “while the broad macroeconomic implications of population aging are debated, the narrow fiscal implications are more straightforward.”

Wang and his co-authors forecast a sharp rise in the share of China’s GDP spent on education, health and pensions from 10 percent in 2014 to 15 percent in 2030, and 20 percent by 2050 — and that assumed no increase in benefits.

The study estimates that pension spending alone could burn up half the government’s revenue by midcentury. To meet the rising demand, the government will have to raise taxes, Wang said, particularly property taxes — something the party has been kicking down the road for years.

“Providing these kinds of safety nets, and social benefits, is at the core of their political legitimacy,” said Wang. But raising property taxes is “highly explosive politically.”

There may be no turning back the demographic trends, but the government remains hopeful that new policies may boost the birthrate now and improve China’s fortunes in the decades to come. In a May 2021 essay, Chinese feminist activist Lü Pin argued that the government needs to do much more to end discrimination against women in the workplace and uphold women’s rights more broadly.

In recent months, along with the arrival of the three-child policy, local and national governments have started implementing such reforms. In December, the National People’s Congress began reviewing an amendment to China’s foundational women’s rights law. The change would make much of the workplace discrimination Ye’s subjects described illegal. For instance, employers would no longer be able to ask female employees about their marriage or family plans, and firing women or cutting their pay after maternity leave would be outlawed.

In addition, Shanghai, Beijing and several provinces have increased maternity leave. 

Nationally, women are allowed to take 98 days of maternity leave, and Beijing and Zhejiang province have added an extra 60 days on top of that. The party is also trying to reduce the costs of raising children. By 2025, it aims to increase the number of day care centers by 150 percent and boost the number that are subsidized. And last summer, new rules were instituted that largely banned private tutoring, with the idea that it would help level the playing field for lower-income families who can’t afford to pay for extracurricular classes.

Lü and other feminists and scholars argue that while the government can help create supportive conditions for families who want children, that is where the party’s role should end. As Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told Grid, “The answer does not lie in pushing women to have more children.”

Leta Hong Fincher, a scholar of Chinese feminism, has documented how the party has adopted what she calls a “pronatalist” stance, even stigmatizing single females heading into their 30s as “leftover women” in a campaign that began in 2007. After the publication of the two-child policy, the People’s Daily, the party’s main mouthpiece, ran a headline that read “Having Children is Not Only a Matter of Individual Families but Also a Matter of the Nation.”

Ye believes these heavy-handed tactics reflect a fundamental political problem in China: Only 8 percent of party leadership is female. More female representation in government, she said, could help the party design policies that truly help women at home and in the workplace.

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It is important to note one glaring exception to the government’s push to grow the population. China has taken the opposite approach when it comes to Uyghur and other minority women in China’s western Xinjiang region. An Associated Press investigation published in 2020 found that the government has subjected hundreds of thousands of women there to forced sterilization, IUD insertions and abortions. The reporters also documented that parents were sent to detention camps for having too many children. In the midst of these campaigns, the birthrate in Xinjiang, which had been higher than the national average, has declined sharply.

The Uyghur Tribunal — an unofficial, independent commission established in the United Kingdom — recently determined that based on evidence of “the imposition of measures to prevent births,” the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang amounted to genocide.

Overall, China’s current demographic portrait reflects tensions and conflicts coursing through Chinese society more broadly, from the costs of urban living to workplace stress, from gender discrimination to the state’s repression of Muslim minorities.

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What the statistics alone don’t account for is what a pair of Chinese scholars referred to as China’s shift from a “quantity advantage” to a “quality advantage.” In other words, China’s young people today have a huge leg up on workers from previous generations: They are far better educated.

In a recent study, researchers looked at how this education bump could shape China’s future. Accounting for education and employment trends, they found that while the number of dependents in China’s population will rise, the higher education level of the young generation of workers could help compensate for the change.

“There is this view among others that there is going to be this cataclysmic future for China demographically,” said Gietel-Basten, one of the study’s authors. “But it also should be healthier, and it’ll be more highly educated. And if that can be translated into productivity, then it might be able to weather some of these demographic challenges.”

The potential of a younger, more productive cohort is reflected in the party’s economic strategy. The party has recently moved toward promoting high-quality growth, which emphasizes high-value job creation over the low-end manufacturing of the past, rather than simply targeting strong GDP growth. The government has poured state subsidies into supporting domestic research and development and manufacturing in such industries, from electric vehicles to semiconductors.

The success of this strategy will depend in part on young people’s willingness and training to do these jobs. While the government has funneled resources toward vocational schools to prepare them for these trades, some young people, feeling overburdened by the rat race of working life in many sectors, have joined the tang ping, or “lying flat” movement — essentially checking out of fast-paced life for a slower, less ambitious path. In an August 2021 speech, Xi took aim at the tang ping movement, reflecting the party’s concern that young people won’t step into their role as economic growth engines.

From motivating the young workforce to pushing back the retirement age to supporting families who want more children, adjusting to the new demographic reality will be a challenge for the government in the coming years. Having only one child may continue to be preferable for women like Liu Yan, despite the policy changes — no matter how hard the state tries to change that. And that means Chinese society may look very different by 2050. ~

https://www.grid.news/story/global/2022/01/12/what-happens-when-the-worlds-most-populous-country-starts-to-shrink/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Oriana:

That's what I expected: once people experience the less stressful situation of having only one child, many may not feel motivated to have more children — especially if they are not affluent enough to hire help, or lucky enough to have grandparents fill in. 

How low is the birthrate of 1.3 children per woman? For comparison, the US birthrate is 1.7; in the United Kingdom, it's 1.65; in India, 2.2; in Thailand, 1.5; in Italy, 1.27; in Spain, 1.24; Russia, 1.5 (2019 data); Germany, 1.54; in Taiwan, the estimated rate is 1.07 (among the lowest in the world). The replacement rate is 2.1, but no developed country is at or above replacement. 

If Taiwan has the third lowest birth rate in the world (Puerto Rico's is 1.04), can mainland China be far behind? Still, the move toward more affordable childcare may be a winning strategy; it seems to be working in France, where the rate is 1.87, the highest in Europe.  

Which countries have the highest birth rate? Niger, with 7 births per woman: Somalia, 6.1; and Congo, 6. In the US, Utah has the third highest birth rate: 1.99 (note that it has finally dipped below replacement), after North and South Dakota. The global birth rate is 2.5, a decline from 5 in 1968.

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THE SANTORINI ERUPTION AND THE BIBLICAL EXODUS

~ [Some] geologists are of the opinion that the eruption of the Santorini volcano is the basis of the twelve plagues depicted in the Exodus. Post-eruption, a vast neighborhood might have endured sufferings like deluge, drought, and firestorm. Not even cities located on higher platforms could escape the wrath of the devastating earthquakes. Molten magma ash in all likelihood would have completely blackened the atmosphere.

Scientists believe that most of the twelve plagues occurred as a consequence of volcanic activity. The mention of darkness in the Bible may be without doubt ascribed to the molten ash and pumice on the surface. Even the stormy winds were blowing to the southeasterly direction where Egypt was located.

Furthermore, according to renowned archaeologist Charles Pellegrino, high-velocity dust storms were supposed to have rained down in Egypt from the dust clouds, thereby turning days into nights. The Exodus story also mentions the plague and devastating fire upon Egypt. Charles Pellegrino compares the Santorini eruptions with that of Mount St. Hellen in Oregon as a burning example of what the Santorini eruption might have been like.

The plagues occurred due to the volcanic eruption and attracted hordes of locusts and there was evidence of erratic animal activity due largely to the alteration of air pressure and weather conditions. After the complete devastation of Egypt, the Jews were able to get away in spite of the Pharaoh’s soldiers in pursuit. In the Exodus, there is a quotation which goes like this: By day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light (Exodus 13:21). This state of biblical affairs can easily be related to volcanic eruption.

Significantly, the awesome Plinian column created by the Santorini eruption might have afforded cloud cover by day and would have become visible like fire in the night. One must also take into consideration the division of the Red Sea which might have drawn waters thereby shaping the caldera.

Moses too would have crossed over thereby making things that much more difficult for Pharaoh's soldiers. Biblical stories can be interpreted in many different ways like legends and myths. The Exodus dates back to 1447 BC, but this is by no means exact due to the fact that it is an anthology of stories. Historians have no clue to the Pharaoh who ruled during the era of Moses which in itself is regarded as the most authentic timing of the story. ~

https://www.greeka.com/cyclades/santorini/sightseeing/santorini-volcano/biblical/?fbclid=IwAR0wnQIbgvVbDI9xF2XGqxlB42lNxo6kmI5JcxKIINorCpxEqcdZxnYhGhg#:~:text=The%20Exodus%20depicts%20the%20great%20escape%20of%20the%20Jews%20from%20Egypt.&text=Geologists%20are%20of%20the%20opinion,deluge%2C%20drought%20and%20firestorm%20etc

Santorini, Akrotiri: a bronze-age fresco
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ABOUT THE SANTORINI VOLCANIC ERUPTION

~ In 1646 BC a massive volcanic eruption, perhaps one of the largest ever witnessed by mankind, took place at Thera (present day Santorini), an island in the Aegean not far from Crete. The explosion, estimated to be about the equivalent of 40 atomic bombs or approximately 100 times more powerful than the eruption at Pompeii, blew out the interior of the island and forever altered its topography. Possibly as many as 20,000 people were killed as a result of the volcanic explosion. Just as happened at Pompeii centuries later, a settlement on Thera known as the town of Akrotiri was buried under a thick blanket of ash and pumice.

For more than 3,500 years the ancient Bronze Age community lay hidden-- one of Greece's many secrets of the past. Then, as is often the case with various heritage sites, the town of Akrotiri was accidentally discovered. Quarry workers, digging out the pumice for use in the manufacture of cement for the Suez Canal, chanced upon some stone walls in the middle of their quarry. These eventually proved to be remains of the long-forgotten town. Archaeologists from France and later from Germany did some preliminary excavation in the second half of the 19th century but it was not until 1967 that systematic excavation began at the site in earnest. 

Spyridon Marinatos, supported by the Archaeological Society of Athens, soon began to uncover the remains of the ancient town. It was not easy. Not only were the buried buildings two or even three stories tall, the original building materials (clay and wood) had been damaged by earthquakes, fire and the hands of time. It was necessary to proceed slowly and carefully. Work on the project has now been on-going for almost four decades and it is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

The site has yielded some surprising information. Most startling of all is the fact that no human remains have been found at Akrotiri, unlike Pompeii and Herculaneum where the dead were buried in the midst of their daily activities. At Akrotiri, it was obvious that people had begun to do some repair work to their dwellings, probably in response to minor earthquake or volcanic damage. However, before the major eruption at least some of them had the time to pack up their families and most valuable possessions and leave. Huge pottery containers and large household furnishings were abandoned in their haste to depart but it seems clear that most people got away safely, were buried elsewhere or were swept away by the tsunami waves that might have accompanied such a massive eruption. ~

https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/greece/gr1040e.html

from Wikipedia:

The eruption of Thera and volcanic fallout may have inspired the myths of the Titanomachy in Hesiod's Theogony. The Titanomachy could have picked up elements of western Anatolian folk memory, as the tale spread westward. Hesiod's lines have been compared with volcanic activity, citing Zeus's thunderbolts as volcanic lightning, the boiling earth and sea as a breach of the magma chamber, immense flame and heat as evidence of phreatic [steam-driven] explosions, among many other descriptions.

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Spyridon Marinatos, the discoverer of the Akrotiri archaeological site, suggested that the Minoan eruption is reflected in Plato's story of Atlantis.

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Geologist Barbara J. Sivertsen seeks to establish a link between the eruption of Santorini (c. 1600 BCE) and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the Bible.

In The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Exodus Story, geologist Barbara J. Sivertsen seeks to establish a link between the eruption of Santorini (c. 1500 BC) and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the Bible. 

Other than the Bible, there is no historic evidence of any Jewish exodus from Egypt, at least not from the Egyptian sources. 

A 2006 documentary film by Simcha Jacobovici, The Exodus Decoded, postulates that the eruption of the Santorini Island volcano (referred to as c. 1500 BC) caused all the biblical plagues described against Egypt. The documentary presents this date as corresponding to the time of the Biblical Moses. The film asserts that the Hyksos were the Israelites and that some of them may have originally been from Mycenae. The film also suggests that these original Mycenaean Israelites fled Egypt (which they had in fact ruled for some time) after the eruption, and went back to Mycenae. The Pharaoh of the Exodus is identified with Ahmose I. Rather than crossing the Red Sea, Jacobovici argues a marshy area in northern Egypt known as the Reed Sea would have been alternately drained and flooded by tsunamis caused by the caldera collapse, and could have been crossed during the Exodus. 

Jacobovici's assertions in The Exodus Decoded have been extensively criticized by religious and other scholars. In a 2013 book on this connection, Thera and the Exodus, a dissident from the consensus Riaan Booysen, tries to support Jacobovici's theory and claims the pharaoh of the Exodus to be Amenhotep III and the biblical Moses as Crown Prince Thutmose, Amenhotep's first-born son and heir to his throne.

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In the controversial bicameral mentality hypothesis, Julian Jaynes has argued that the Minoan eruption was a crucial event in the development of human consciousness since the displacements that it caused led to new and important interactions among communities.


The volcano's caldera is now under water.

Oriana:

I admit I'm fascinated by this stuff: an asteroid wiping out Sodom, the Egyptian "plague of darkness" caused by volcanic ash; column of cloud and a column of fire, and more. The natural explanation is, to me, more interesting by far than the religious one.

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MILLENNIALS ARE LEAVING RELIGION AND NOT COMING BACK

~ Millennials have earned a reputation for reshaping industries and institutions — shaking up the workplace, transforming dating culture, and rethinking parenthood. They’ve also had a dramatic impact on American religious life. Four in ten millennials now say they are religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center. In fact, millennials (those between the ages of 23 and 38) are now almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christian.

For a long time, though, it wasn’t clear whether this youthful defection from religion would be temporary or permanent. It seemed possible that as millennials grew older, at least some would return to a more traditional religious life. But there’s mounting evidence that today’s younger generations may be leaving religion for good.

Social science research has long suggested that Americans’ relationship with religion has a tidal quality — people who were raised religious find themselves drifting away as young adults, only to be drawn back in when they find spouses and begin to raise their own families. Some argued that young adults just hadn’t yet been pulled back into the fold of organized religion, especially since they were hitting major milestones like marriage and parenthood later on.

But now many millennials have spouses, children and mortgages — and there’s little evidence of a corresponding surge in religious interest. A new national survey from the American Enterprise Institute of more than 2,500 Americans found a few reasons why millennials may not return to the religious fold. (One of the authors of this article helped conduct the survey.)

For one thing, many millennials never had strong ties to religion to begin with, which means they were less likely to develop habits or associations that make it easier to return to a religious community.

Young adults are also increasingly likely to have a spouse who is nonreligious, which may help reinforce their secular worldview.

Changing views about the relationship between morality and religion also appear to have convinced many young parents that religious institutions are simply irrelevant or unnecessary for their children.

Millennials may be the symbols of a broader societal shift away from religion, but they didn’t start it on their own. Their parents are at least partly responsible for a widening generational gap in religious identity and beliefs; they were more likely than previous generations to raise their children without any connection to organized religion. According to the AEI survey, 17 percent of millennials said that they were not raised in any particular religion compared with only five percent of Baby Boomers. And fewer than one in three (32 percent) millennials say they attended weekly religious services with their family when they were young, compared with about half (49 percent) of Baby Boomers.

A parent’s religious identity (or lack thereof) can do a lot to shape a child’s religious habits and beliefs later in life. A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that regardless of the religion, those raised in households in which both parents shared the same religion still identified with that faith in adulthood. For instance, 84 percent of people raised by Protestant parents are still Protestant as adults. Similarly, people raised without religion are less apt to look for it as they grow older — that same Pew study found that 63 percent of people who grew up with two religiously unaffiliated parents were still nonreligious as adults.

But one finding in the survey signals that even millennials who grew up religious may be increasingly unlikely to return to religion. In the 1970s, most nonreligious Americans had a religious spouse and often, that partner would draw them back into regular religious practice. But now, a growing number of unaffiliated Americans are settling down with someone who isn’t religious — a process that may have been accelerated by the sheer number of secular romantic partners available, and the rise of online dating. Today, 74 percent of unaffiliated millennials have a nonreligious partner or spouse, while only 26 percent have a partner who is religious.

Luke Olliff, a 30-year-old man living in Atlanta, says that he and his wife gradually shed their religious affiliations together. “My family thinks she convinced me to stop going to church and her family thinks I was the one who convinced her,” he said. “But really it was mutual. We moved to a city and talked a lot about how we came to see all of this negativity from people who were highly religious and increasingly didn’t want a part in it.” This view is common among young people. A majority (57 percent) of millennials agree that religious people are generally less tolerant of others, compared to only 37 percent of Baby Boomers.

Young adults like Olliff are also less likely to be drawn back to religion by another important life event — having children. For much of the country’s history, religion was seen as an obvious resource for children’s moral and ethical development. But many young adults no longer see religion as a necessary or even desirable component of parenting. Less than half (46 percent) of millennials believe it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. They’re also much less likely than Baby Boomers to say that it’s important for children to be brought up in a religion so they can learn good values (57 percent vs. 75 percent).

These attitudes are reflected in decisions about how young adults are raising their children. 45 percent of millennial parents say they take them to religious services and 39 percent say they send them to Sunday school or a religious education program. Baby Boomers, by contrast, were significantly more likely to send their children to Sunday school (61 percent) and to take them to church regularly (58 percent).

Mandie, a 32-year-old woman living in southern California and who asked that her last name not be used, grew up going to church regularly but is no longer religious. She told us she’s not convinced a religious upbringing is what she’ll choose for her one-year-old child. “My own upbringing was religious, but I’ve come to believe you can get important moral teachings outside religion,” she said. “And in some ways I think many religious organizations are not good models for those teachings.”

Why does it matter if millennials’ rupture with religion turns out to be permanent? For one thing, religious involvement is associated with a wide variety of positive social outcomes like increased interpersonal trust and civic engagement that are hard to reproduce in other ways. And this trend has obvious political implications. As we wrote a few months ago, whether people are religious is increasingly tied to — and even driven by — their political identities. For years, the Christian conservative movement has warned about a tide of rising secularism, but research has suggested that the strong association between religion and the Republican Party may actually be fueling this divide. And if even more Democrats lose their faith, that will only exacerbate the acrimonious rift between secular liberals and religious conservatives.

“At that critical moment when people are getting married and having kids and their religious identity is becoming more stable, Republicans mostly do still return to religion — it’s Democrats that aren’t coming back,” said Michele Margolis, author of “From the Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” in an interview for our September story.

Of course, millennials’ religious trajectory isn’t set in stone — they may yet become more religious as they age. But it’s easier to return to something familiar later in life than to try something completely new. And if millennials don’t return to religion and instead begin raising a new generation with no religious background, the gulf between religious and secular America may grow even deeper. ~

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/millennials-are-leaving-religion-and-not-coming-back/

Oriana:

Forty percent of millennials have no religious affiliation? That means it’s possible that still within my lifetime, the majority of the younger generation will be “nones” — those without a religious affiliation. And that’s good news for women’s rights, for instance, and bad news for the military, which, I’ve been told, encourages religiosity.

There used to be a Catholic Left, but now religion is identified more and more with right-wing mentality and being a Republican. Religion has always been divisive, but it’s sad to see the rift becoming an unbridgeable abyss.

Religious observance was once the center of life, especially in smaller towns and villagers, simply because there was little else to do. Now with plenty to do on a weekend, attending a religious service does not appear especially attractive. Men in particular would rather watch sports than go to church.

Also, Buddhism and other Eastern religions have emerged as an interesting kind of competition to Christianity. Thus, those with a religious temperament and curiosity about  religious practices may be drawn to meditation centers. Yoga too can be practiced as a spiritual path.

The modern world simply offers too much variety and freedom for traditional Christianity to re-establish itself again — not unless it changes in a significant way, dropping judgmentalism and eternal damnation, emphasizing loving kindness, and presenting a more attractive portrayal of the divine. Now, Christianity has been slowly evolving in the direction of being more kind and less punitive, but the pace of that evolution has been slow, and obstacles such as the centrality of the crucifixion ("the bloody ransom") and the afterlife may be too great to overcome. 

Nor are people as willing to describe themselves as sinners. They'd prefer a more positive self-image.



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HOW DIET MAY AFFECT EVOLUTION

~ As our evolution continues, the crucial role of diet hasn’t gone away. Genetic studies show that humans are still evolving, with evidence of natural selection pressures on genes impacting everything from Alzheimer's disease to skin color to menstruation age. And what we eat today will influence the direction we will take tomorrow.

GOT MILK?

When mammals are young, they produce an enzyme called lactase to help digest the sugary lactose found in their mothers’ milk. But once most mammals come of age, milk disappears from the menu. That means enzymes to digest it are no longer needed, so adult mammals typically stop producing them.

Thanks to recent evolution, however, some humans defy this trend.

Around two-thirds of adult humans are lactose intolerant or have reduced lactose tolerance after infancy. But tolerance varies dramatically depending on geography. Among some East Asian communities, intolerance can reach 90 percent; people of West African, Arab, Greek, Jewish and Italian descent are also especially prone to lactose intolerance.

Northern Europeans, on the other hand, seem to love their lactose—95 percent of them are tolerant, meaning they continue to produce lactase as adults. And those numbers are increasing. “In at least different five cases, populations have tweaked the gene responsible for digesting that sugar so that it remains active in adults,” Hawks says, noting it is most common among peoples in Europe, the Middle East and East Africa.

Ancient DNA shows how recent this adult lactose tolerance is, in evolutionary terms. Twenty-thousand years ago, it was non-existent. As of 2018, about one-third of all adults have tolerance.

That lightning-fast evolutionary change suggests that direct milk consumption must have provided a serious survival advantage over peoples who had to ferment dairy into yogurt or cheese. During fermentation, bacteria break down milk sugars including lactose, turning them into acids and easing digestion for those with lactose intolerance. Gone with those sugars, however, is a good chunk of the food's caloric content.

Hawks explains why being able to digest milk would have been such a boon in the past: “You're in a nutrition limited environment, except you have cattle, or sheep, or goats, or camels, and that gives you access to a high energy food that infants can digest but adults can't,” he says. “What it does is allow people to get 30 percent more calories out of milk, and you don't have the digestive issues that come from milk consumption.”

A recent genetic study found that adult lactose tolerance was less common in Roman Britain than today, meaning its evolution has continued throughout Europe's recorded history.

These days, many humans have access to plentiful alternative foods as well as lactose-free milk or lactase pills that help them digest regular dairy. In other words, we can circumvent some impacts of natural selection. That means traits like lactose tolerance might not have the same direct impacts on survival or reproduction that they once did—at least in some parts of the world. 

“As far as we know, it makes no difference to your survival and reproduction in Sweden if you can digest milk or not. If you're eating out of a supermarket, your dairy tolerance doesn’t affect your survival. But it still makes a difference in East Africa,” Hawks says.

WHEAT, STARCH, AND ALCOHOL

These days, it isn’t uncommon to find an entire grocery store aisle devoted to gluten-free cookies, bread and crackers. Yet trouble digesting gluten—the main protein found in wheat—is another relatively recent snag in human evolution. Humans didn't start storing and eating grains regularly until around 20,000 years ago, and wheat domestication didn't begin in earnest until about 10,000 years ago.

Since wheat and rye became a staple of human diets, however, we've have had a relatively high frequency of celiac disease. “You look at this and say how did it happen?” asks Hawks. “That's something that natural selection shouldn't have done.”

The answer lies in our immune response. A system of genes known as the human leukocyte antigens take part in the fight against disease, and frequently produce new variations to battle ever-changing infections. Unfortunately, for individuals with celiac disease, this system mistakes the human digestive system for a disease and attacks the lining of the gut.

Yet despite the obvious drawbacks of celiac disease, ongoing evolution doesn't seem to be making it less frequent. The genetic variants behind celiac disease seem to be just as common now as they've been since humans began eating wheat.

“This is a case where a selection that is probably about disease and parasites has a side effect that produces celiac disease in a small fraction of people. That's a trade-off that recent evolution has left us and it wasn't an adaptation to diet—it was an adaptation in spite of diet,” Hawks says. Unintended trade-offs are common in evolution. For example, the genetic mutation to red blood cells that helps humans survive malaria can also produce the deadly sickle cell disease.

Other examples of our continuing evolution through diet are intriguing but uncertain. For instance, amylase is an enzyme that helps saliva digest starch. Historically, agricultural peoples from West Eurasia and Mesoamerica have more copies of the associated gene. Were they selected to digest starches better? “That makes a compelling story and it may be true. But biology is complicated and it's not totally clear what's at work or how important it is,” Hawks says.

More than one-third of East Asians—Japanese, Chinese and Koreans—have a flushing reaction when they metabolize alcohol, because the process creates an excess of toxic acetaldehyde enzymes. There's strong genetic evidence that this was selected recently, during the last 20,000 years, Hawks notes.

Because its appearance in the genome may roughly coincide with rice domestication 10,000 years ago, some researchers suggest that it stopped people from over indulging in rice wine. The timelines aren't precisely determined, however, for either the mutation or rice domestication. It has also been suggested that acetaldehyde offered protection from parasites that were unable to stomach the toxin.

“It mattered in some way, to past populations, because it wasn't common and now it is,” says Hawks. “It's a big change, but we really don't know why.”

MORE IMPORTANT THAN WE THINK?

Even the color of human skin may be shifting, at least in part, as a response to diet (other factors, studies suggest, include sexual selection). The current diversity of human skin colors is a relatively recent development. The standard hypothesis focuses on the prevalence of UV rays at equatorial latitudes. Our bodies need vitamin D, so our skin produces it when soaked by UV rays. But too much UV can have detrimental effects, and darker skin pigments are more effective at blocking them.

As humans moved into darker, colder latitudes, the idea goes, their skin no longer needed protection from too much UV and lightened so that it could produce more beneficial vitamin D with less sunlight.

But DNA studies comparing modern Ukrainians with their prehistoric ancestors show that European skin color has been changing over the past 5,000 years. To explain this, another theory suggests that skin pigmentation could have been under the influence of diet, when early farmers suffered from a lack of vitamin D their hunter-gatherer ancestors once got from fish and animal foods.

Nina Jablonski, a skin color researcher at Penn State University, told Science that new research “provides evidence that loss of regular dietary vitamin D as a result of the transition to a more strongly agricultural lifestyle may have triggered” the evolution of lighter skin.

It's difficult to see evolution in action. But new technologies like genome sequencing—and the computing power to crunch massive piles of data—are making it possible to spot tiny genetic tweaks that can add up over many generations to real evolutionary shifts. Increasingly, databases of genetic information are also paired with information like medical histories and environmental factors like diet, which may allow scientists to observe the ways they interact.

Hakhamanesh Mostafavi, an evolutionary biologist at Columbia University, authored one such genome study that analyzed DNA from 215,000 people to try to see how we continue to evolve over the span of just a generation or two. “Obviously our diet is radically changing today, so who knows what evolutionary effect that may have,” Mostafavi says. “It may not necessarily have a direct selection effect but it may interact with genes that control a trait.”

Mostafavi's genetic research also revealed that some variants that actually shorten human life, like one that prompts smokers to increase their consumption above smoking norms, are still being actively selected against.

“We see a direct effect of that gene on the survival of humans today,” he explains. “And potentially you can imagine that diet might have the same kind of effect. We have so many recent dietary changes, like fast food for one example, and we just don't know yet what effects they may or may not have.”

Fortunately, thanks to the work of scientists like Mostafavi and Hawks, it might not take 20,000 years to find out. ~

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-cheese-wheat-and-alcohol-shaped-human-evolution?utm_source=pocket-newtab



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HEALTH BENEFITS OF GINGER

Gingerol is the main bioactive compound in ginger. It’s responsible for much of ginger’s medicinal properties.

Gingerol has powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, according to research. For instance, it may help reduce oxidative stress, which is the result of having an excess amount of free radicals in the body.

GINGER APPEARS TO BE HIGHLY EFFECTIVE AGAINST NAUSEA

It may help relieve nausea and vomiting for people undergoing certain types of surgery. Ginger may also help chemotherapy-related nausea, but larger human studies are needed.

However, it may be the most effective when it comes to pregnancy-related nausea, such as morning sickness.

MAY HELP WITH WEIGHT LOSS

A 2019 literature review concluded that ginger supplementation significantly reduced body weight, the waist-hip ratio, and the hip ratio in people with overweight or obesity.

A 2016 study of 80 women with obesity found that ginger could also help reduce body mass index (BMI) and blood insulin levels. High blood insulin levels are associated with obesity.
Study participants received relatively high daily doses — 2 grams — of ginger powder for 12 weeks.

A 2019 literature review of functional foods also concluded that ginger had a very positive effect on obesity and weight loss. However, additional studies are needed.

Rats and mice who consumed ginger water or ginger extract consistently saw decreases in their body weight, even when they’d also been fed high fat diets.

Ginger’s ability to influence weight loss may be related to certain mechanisms, such as its potential to help increase the number of calories burned or reduce inflammation.

CAN HELP RELIEVE THE PAIN OF ARTHRITIS

One literature review found that people who used ginger to treat their OA saw significant reductions in pain and disability.

Only mild side effects, such as a dissatisfaction with the taste of ginger, were observed. However, the taste of ginger, along with stomach upset, still prompted nearly 22% of the study participants to drop out.

Study participants received between 500 milligrams (mg) and 1 gram of ginger each day for anywhere from 3 to 12 weeks. A majority of them had been diagnosed with OA of the knee.
Another study from 2011 found that a combination of topical ginger, mastic, cinnamon, and sesame oil can help reduce pain and stiffness in people with OA of the knee.

MAY DRASTICALLY REDUCE BLOOD SUGAR AND IMPROVE HEART DISEASE RISK FACTORS

This area of research is relatively new, but ginger may have powerful anti-diabetic properties.

In a 2015 study of 41 participants with type 2 diabetes, 2 grams of ginger powder per day lowered fasting blood sugar by 12%.

It also dramatically improved hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), a marker for long-term blood sugar levels. HbA1c was reduced by 10% over a period of 12 weeks.

There was also a 28% reduction in the Apolipoprotein B/Apolipoprotein A-I ratio and a 23% reduction in malondialdehyde (MDA), which is a byproduct of oxidative stress. A high ApoB/ApoA-I ratio and high MDA levels are both major risk factors of heart disease.

However, keep in mind that this was just one small study. The results are incredibly impressive, but they need to be confirmed in larger studies before any recommendations can be made.

CAN HELP TREAT CHRONIC INDIGESTION

Chronic indigestion is characterized by recurrent pain and discomfort in the upper part of the stomach.

It’s believed that delayed emptying of the stomach is a major driver of indigestion. Interestingly, ginger has been shown to speed up emptying of the stomach.

People with functional dyspepsia, which is indigestion with no known cause, were given either ginger capsules or a placebo in a small 2011 study. One hour later, they were all given soup.

It took 12.3 minutes for the stomach to empty in people who received ginger. It took 16.1 minutes in those who received the placebo.

These effects have also been seen in people without indigestion. In a 2008 study by some members of the same research team, 24 healthy individuals were given ginger capsules or a placebo. They were all given soup an hour later.

Consuming ginger as opposed to a placebo significantly accelerated emptying of the stomach. It took 13.1 minutes for people who received ginger and 26.7 minutes for people who received the placebo.

MAY SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE MENSTRUAL PAIN

One of the traditional uses of ginger is for pain relief, including menstrual pain.

In a 2009 study, 150 women were instructed to take either ginger or a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) for the first 3 days of their menstrual period.

The three groups received four daily doses of either ginger powder (250 mg), mefenamic acid (250 mg), or ibuprofen (400 mg). Ginger managed to reduce pain as effectively as the two nonsteroidal  anti-inflamatory drugs.

More recent studies have also concluded that ginger is more effective than a placebo and equally as effective as drugs such as mefenamic acid and acetaminophen/caffeine/ibuprofen.

MAY HELP LOWER CHOLESTEROL

High levels of LDL  cholesterol are linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

In a study from 2008, people who received 3 grams of ginger powder (in capsule form) each day also saw significant reductions in most cholesterol markers. Their LDL cholesterol levels dropped by 10% over 45 day.

These findings are supported by a study in rats with hypothyroidism or diabetes. Ginger extract lowered LDL (bad) cholesterol to a similar extent as the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin.

Participants in the 2008 study, as well as the lab rats, also saw reductions in their blood triglycerides.

MAY HELP PREVENT CANCER

The anti-cancer properties are attributed to gingerol, which is found in large amounts in raw ginger. A form known as [6]-gingerol is viewed as especially powerful.

In a 28-day study of individuals at normal risk for colorectal cancer, 2 grams of ginger extract per day significantly reduced pro-inflammatory signaling molecules in the colon.

However, a follow-up study in individuals at a high risk for colorectal cancer didn’t produce the same results.

There’s some evidence, albeit limited, that ginger may be effective against other gastrointestinal cancers such as pancreatic cancer and liver cancer.

It may be effective against breast cancer and ovarian cancer as well. In general, more research is needed.

MAY IMPROVE BRAIN FUNCTION AND PROTECT AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S

Oxidative stress and chronic inflammation can accelerate the aging process.

They’re believed to be among the key drivers of Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive decline.

Some animal studies suggest that the antioxidants and bioactive compounds in ginger can inhibit inflammatory responses that occur in the brain.

There’s also some evidence that ginger can help enhance brain function directly. In a 2012 study of healthy middle-aged women, daily doses of ginger extract were shown to improve reaction time and working memory.

In addition, numerous studies in animals show that ginger can help protect against age-related decline in brain function.

CAN HELP FIGHT INFECTIONS

Gingerol can help lower the risk of infections.

In fact, ginger extract can inhibit the growth of many different types of bacteria.

According to a 2008 study, it’s very effective against the oral bacteria linked to gingivitis and periodontitis. These are both inflammatory gum diseases.

Fresh ginger may also be effective against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common cause of respiratory infections.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/11-proven-benefits-of-ginger

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ending on beauty:

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.

~ William Blake, The Divine Image