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REVENGE
But if it came to light,
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Likewise … I
But if he turned
Nazareth , April 15, 2006
~ Taha Muhammad Ali, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin
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WHY COMMUNISM HASN’T WORKED
~ Probably the biggest flaw in communism can be linked to the famous Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This describes a world in which everyone contributes 100% of their ability allegedly in exchange for having 100% of their needs met.
The problems with such an arrangement are myriad: humans are not equal in ability or need, and if only your needs — never wants — are met regardless of what you do, there's little incentive to do more than the bare minimum, let alone give it 110%. Thus, you wind up with productivity problems and a lack of innovation.
But beyond this, communism ignores human nature: the vast majority of people care more about themselves and their loved ones than others. That doesn't mean that people don't care anything for others — people pay taxes and donate to charities because they recognize that there are needs beyond their own — but human nature is such that if people are working hard, they want to be able to reap the rewards. A joyless system of perpetual sacrifice for the state gets old quickly for non-zealots.
Second, controlled economies are always teetering on the edge of disaster because the wisdom of a small in-group, no matter how intelligent, is less skilled at identifying people's highest use and anticipating need compared to the free market, and is less adaptive when there are misses. Thus, communism often struggles to meet even basic needs.
Finally, because of the issues above, end-stage communist nirvana has never been achieved, because it devolves into authoritarianism, an attempt to stop the complaining and do away with human nature at gunpoint. ~ Ty Doyle, Quora
Andrew Olson:
You, like almost everyone else, left off the prerequisite to ‘from each according …’
Which is a post scarcity economy.
Pete Smoot:
There’s also the practical problem that in order to transition to communism, 20th century experiments went through autocracies or tyrannies. The autocrats and tyrants never seemed to want to give up power and have a universally horrible track record of murder and human rights abuses.
Peter LaFond:
There is no concept of economic growth. American progressives have the same blind spot.
Richard Morris:
Great post. I want to emphasize your point about innovation. Communism cannot “reward” innovation. Rewards are needed to provide feedback for successful business practices. Without rewards a system becomes stale and complacent.
Murali Tumahai:
People espousing the benefits of these experiments never allow for the presence of narcissists and psychopaths in society.
Bill Lovell:
Plus the line that didn’t come from Marx, but should have: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
Lee Jacobson:
Even in small scale communism, such as the Kibbutz in Israel, eventually collapse due to this disagreement on distribution of the resources (i.e. to each according to his need) by a small cadre of officials. For example, “the Kibbutz has decided that your son is too stupid for us to support his university education”, and there is no appeal but leaving the Kibbutz. And so Kibbutzim have, for the most part, shut down.
Kibbutz Palmanin
SUSANNA VILJANNEN: THINK OF LIVING IN THE MILITARY 24/7
Communism fails because it does not take into account the innate, biological nature of human being and the human psychology. It assumes humans are collective animals (like ants or bees or termites) whose psyche is a blank slate, which is completely programmable, who have no individuality nor innate traits whatsoever and who are completely fungible.
The biggest failure is assumption that humans can selflessly work for the common good without self-interest. And alas, it doesn’t work that way.
In reality, humans are ba5tards. Ba5tard-filled ba5tards with ba5tard coating. We are selfish to the boot, and our traits are mostly innate — either inherited by the genes or triggered by the epigenetics. We are programmable only to an extent. And we act only on selfish interests.
The only way humans can act on unselfish interests for the common good is religion. It is the only way how humans can overcome their selfish interests and work altruistically for the common good. And Communism is utterly hostile to religion!
All secular utopian societies have collapsed in less than a century, usually latest at the third generation, due to internal disputes and chaos. Conversely, religious ideal societies can last for millennia. Monte Cassino monastery has been founded 529. Still functional. Likewise, Heian monastery has been founded 711. Still functional. We know the Hutterite farms in North America. Likewise, all the remaining kolkhozes in Russia and kibbutzim in Israel are religious.
Kibbutz Alonim
Communism is basically a self-defeating memeplex. It is based on wrong assumptions and wrong interpretation on input, so it will quickly turn chaotic.
Garbage in, garbage out.
The only way to impose Communism without religion is brutal discipline and coercion. This is the reason why all Communist regimes have eventually become little Soviet Unions. The horrible monolithic regime, coercion, ineffective and corrupt means of production, utter disdain on human decency and continuous lack of resources and means. This is what happens when the feedback loop between the control tier and the productive tier is too long; the system becomes unstable due to the impulse lag.
Capitalism is NOT self-stabilizing nor self-correcting (no system where there is at least one positive feedback ever is), but the feedback loop between the control tier and productive tier is much shorter and quicker. Therefore capitalism can react on any disturbances on the system much quicker and prompter and produce far more desirable results. ~ Quora
KARL VANBRABANT: NATURAL HIERARCHY OF LOYALTIES
Normally, to every person there is a system of loyalties that is partly based on self-interest. First comes the individual itself. Or as the German saying goes: first belly full, after that morality (“Erst das fressen und dann die moral”). After that comes family. After that the local community. After that the wider community or the area, and after that the ethnicity to which the individual belongs. only after that comes the state or a political party.
Communism wants to reverse all that: First the state, and all the rest will be placed at the same level. Since it can’t work if there are many parties with different ideas, this state will have to be a single-party state. This means people who don’t believe in this reversal of the loyalty system, either have to be persuaded , or they have to be suppressed and persecuted. This means a lot of people will think about themselves and their family first and play along. It will end with a grandiose charade that’s bound to one day collapse.
Add to that the fact that Marx was against religion. If you’d take the above loyalty system, the religion will always fit at almost every level. Marx simply wanted to do away with religion, but when you look at history, that’s a stupid idea: people have always worshipped something, even if it was the sun and the moon, or a mountain or whatever. It’s just human nature. However, religion can make it difficult to abandon the loyalty system, as it can be closely interwoven with it. That’s why religion prevailed in communist countries: people refused to place communism above their beliefs.
Mac Dara Mac Donnacha: TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT VERSUS NOT ENOUGH
~ Capitalism (by which I assume you mean a market economy) doesn’t really need much administration to work. If there’s a demand, odds are someone will meet it with supply. If demands change, supply changes with it. Now, absent administration, capitalist systems will inevitably lead to economic crashes (and even with administration, you can mostly just delay the crashes, or cushion the blow), but also inevitably the capitalist system will pick itself up, step over the bodies of the casualties of the crash, and move on.
So I’m assuming by communist you mean something like Soviet Style communism, or in other words a centrally planned economy. This is an economy in which the government makes decisions on production. Instead of being driven by the desire for profit, the economy is driven by the desire to do what is best for the country as a whole. On the surface this seems like a good idea, but the problem is in the implementation.
Consider for example that the government has deduced that there is a need for increased agricultural production, due to an increasing population. So they order the farmers to grow more food. But to grow more food, the farmers need more material — fertilizer, farming equipment etc. They ask the government to provide these things, and eventually the government agrees. But then when the food is produced, you need transportation vehicles, storage facilities, distribution facilities, and the staff for all of the above. And consider the requirements hidden behind each of those: if you want more trucks to move the food, you need to build more trucks, which means more materials for the trucks, possibly new factories, factory workers…
If the government fails to anticipate and provide for any of the steps in the above, the system breaks down a bit. Maybe there’s not enough trucks, or too many. Maybe food ends up rotting in a warehouse somewhere because there’s not enough workers to distribute it. Inefficiencies begin to creep in. And as the decades go by, they get worse. These can eventually be identified and fixed, but by then the necessities of the economy will probably have changed again, and you’re already behind.
In a capitalist system, such problems are almost inevitably spotted by someone and identified as an opportunity for profit. If there’s a need for more trucks, the price for trucks goes up as they get snapped up, and producers quickly build more. If there’s food waiting in a warehouse, someone will quickly hire staff to sell it. And if anyone spots a method to make any part of the process more efficient, they’ll implement it — for a price.
Now, to be clear: capitalism, if left to its own devices, is terrible. While centrally planned economies have their problems, it’s arguable as to whether they’re worse than a totally free market economy. For a market economy to not be a total shitshow, it requires careful regulation and plenty of government intervention.
There are certain services that the free market is terrible at providing — e.g. law enforcement, defense, healthcare, education — and you need government regulation to stop the formation of monopolies and other economic dead end phenomena that free markets otherwise eventually spit out. Most of these issues are what economists call ‘market inefficiencies’ (you can google a few examples), and they will lead to a Great Depression/Great Recession/Armageddon if you let them. ~
Don Callaghan:
Capitalism, in theory, allowed the greatest freedom and most diverse solutions. The problem is it leaves too many by the wayside.
Ke’Aun
Workers across the planet tend to associate far more strongly with their nation or state than they do their class. Few are as fervently patriotic, nationalistic, or ethnocentric than the world’s “workers and peasants” — the exact class the Communists want on their side.
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DIMA VOROBIEV: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM SPRANG FROM CHRISTIAN MONASTERIES
The cardinal flaw in Communism lies in the amazing fact that this collectivist ideology only seems to work for people who believe in individual salvation.
Communism is basically two things:
No private property. You share with other people the tools, land, trees, ideas, cars, works of art that make your living.
You contribute to the common pot what you can, you get out of the pot what you need.
The idea sprang from the Christian monasteries. People there who had enough spare time to pray and used little of it to enjoy themselves, sooner or later came to ask themselves and everyone around: why can’t the whole humanity live the same pious, quiet and spiritual lifestyle as us? There will be no wars, no angry people, no famines, no suffering.
Then Marxists came with a very practical answer: we can make it work if we mandate that everyone give up their private property. Everyone will work for everyone’s salvation. To top it, no one will need to die to get the Communist salvation: it all will happen in this world, not the next one!
In the XX century, Communists managed to organize themselves to grab power across much of the world. They met much resistance, but ultimately overcame it. The largest and the most populous countries in the world even became a clear and present danger to the most prosperous and strong Capitalist countries. Eat that, you bourgeois scum!
There turned up to be just one problem: humans are shaped by evolution to be a bunch of lazy, selfish, sneaky, predatory bitches. Only fear of pain, starvation and death gets us off our idle behinds to make ourselves useful. There are also a tiny minority of people who are driven of curiosity, vanity and the desire to make a difference. But they are a maddeningly selfish bunch. They prefer to do their own stuff and object strongly when other people tell them what to do.
There’s also a powerful unselfish thing called love. It can do wonders and prevail over everything. But the unselfishness of love makes it the most dangerous enemy of Communism: people eagerly sacrifice the common good for their kids, their lovers, their family and their friends.
There is only one thing that seems to be able to trump our (1) selfishness, greed, laziness and (2) our loyalty to the loved ones. It’s the love of God and faith in individual salvation. This is what the tale of Abraham and sacrifice of Isaac is about. For us common people, this means: God is willing to give us individual salvation if we are ready to betray for him our loved ones. (We have a Communist rendition to the Abraham’s test, “Who do you love more, the Soviet rule or your Dad?”)
The history of Communism shows that the idea of Marx about the ideal society requires the degree of individual discipline and self-policing that no totalitarian society can assure. You need a community of people who are obsessed with individual responsibility in the face of God. If you start mixing these pious creatures with lazybones, creeps and men/women in love with each other, the latter ones get a ginormous unfair advantage. They will be piggybacking, leeching and stealing for themselves wherever possible, while the self-sacrificing dimwits will be busting their backs to make everyone’s life better.
You may of course put the police, workers’ watchers, KGB operatives and neighbor informants on the task of enforcing Communist morals. What happens next is the lazybones, leeches and thieves find every possible hole to become the enforcers. This is exactly what happened in every single place from Soviet Russia, to the Red Khmer’s Kampuchea, to the Chavisto Venezuela.
Upshot to the story: you may make Communism work, in some places, for some time. For achieving that, you need (1) people who believe in individual responsibility before God, (2) a wall between them and people who don’t believe in God, (3) a preferential arrangement from the government in terms of property protection and economic incentives, because on even terms greedy people always outcompete selfless people.
The poster below “Protect your honor from young age!” sends a subliminal signal to new recruits in the Soviet workforce: if you don’t perform at the top of your capacity, pretty girls won’t date you. The girl disparagingly points to a poster that shames a “deviator from workplace requirements” where the lazybag looks confusingly like the young male worker to the right.
Charles Tips: FREEDOM TO BE CREATIVE
I moved to Berkeley in 1977 and met a few newly arrived Russian refugees. I was asked at one point, because I had a car, if I wouldn't show a just-arrived-the-day-before refugee around. He was late-20s like me and I found out that he was a welder, so I took him to the work studios down near the waterfront where artisans crafted unique items.
He was stunned. After a couple of welding shops, he confided that his true love was cabinet work; the state had mandated he be a welder. We found a studio where a couple of craftsmen were working on a table top, circular, maybe twelve feet in diameter with intricate inlays of several exotic woods. He talked in his broken English with them for almost an hour, and they invited him back to help for pay.
When we left, he thought he was in Heaven. The idea that you could choose your own profession, own your own tools--even your own shop, work your own hours, hire your own help (and do it so informally), create your own designs... this was unbelievable to him.
Djin Dueh Nuphen: INCENTIVES MATTER
Simple. Capitalism has a built in appeal to human nature: Reward.
In a capitalist system, if you are smart, work hard, maybe invent something you can succeed. By your success you can have things like food, shelter, etc. Those things, and the other fruits of your labors are YOURS. they belong to YOU. And those things tend to be distributed by the amount and the quality of your efforts to be a productive and contributing member of society.
Under a communist system the exact opposite is true. Success is disincentivized. Nothing you produce belongs to YOU; everything you produce belongs to the COLLECTIVE. People who work hard get just as much as those who shirk. Or perhaps it is better to say those who contribute the least get as much as those who contribute the most. Worse than that, “the nail standing up gets the hammer”. If one is smarter, stronger, better, etc., that person is either a threat to the others in the collective, or is expected to be worked harder than one’s peers for the same pay. The more you produce, the more is taken from you.
When you set up a society based upon “From each according to ability, to each according to need”, you wind up with a lot of needy people incapable of doing much of anything.
Casey Jones: THE FREELOADER EFFECT
It has something to do with the freeloader effect. Capitalism provides incentive to work hard and guarantees that you will be able to collect the fruits of your labor if you do. It rewards exceptionalism and innovation and allows the best and brightest to rise to the top and bring everyone else with them. This is the reason why capitalism is so successful and has even been allowed in small doses in places like China.
Communism stifles creativity and forces the best and brightest to work in jobs that are below their capabilities. It also provides lazy and uninspired people additional opportunities to slack off and freeload knowing that the government will still provide for them. This is why communism has ALWAYS ended badly. Talented hard working people get frustrated, lazy people take advantage, and the whole thing falls apart, usually with disastrous consequences.
Harpo Veld: PEOPLE CARE MORE ABOUT THEIR OWN FAMILIES
Communism works fine in families.
In rare cases, it works in communities larger than a family, but still very small.
It has never been observed to work for any large group of people.
Capitalism works everywhere for large groups.
Even in horrendously corrupt third world shitholes, it works orders of magnitude better than any collectivist scheme. The reason is simple — nobody cares about others as much as they care about their own family. Collectivism is unnatural, and can only be established and maintained through violence.
Capitalism thrives because it depends on human greed. Socialism often doesn’t work because it depends on altruism. Communism almost never works because the “leaders” are self-appointed and have no responsibility to the rest of the population.
Peter McKenna:
There had never been an example of a country using pure capitalism or pure communism. The only systems that have thrived are a mix of capitalism and socialism.
Franz Kawabata:
There are no economic systems that work for everyone. Every economic system has had those for who it didn’t work for.
Most economic systems end up having a Pareto type distribution where 80 percent of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population. It doesn’t matter if the system is a market-based system or a socialized system or a communist system. 80% of the wealth will end up in the hands of 20% of the population.
A market-based system with some social safety nets seems to work fairly well for most people. But no system is going to work for everyone.
Joe: BOTH ECONOMIC SYSTEMS OPERATE IN A MACROECONOMY BASED ON CAPITALISM
Most people know about communism’s failures but ignore the malfunctions of capitalism. In the United States, people deny the failure of the free market to provide for the least skilled people. The homeless problem demonstrates the inability of capitalism to provide work for the least skilled labor. Labeled as lazy, alcoholics, addicts, or mentally unstable, the homeless remain invisible to those counting the unemployed. Another example is the lack of affordable housing.
Many examples of capitalism’s failure exist, beginning in the 13th and 14th centuries. American schools fail to teach the deficiencies of capitalism. We learn only about the one percent representing the most successful individuals in a free market system.
Maybe there is a difference in their production systems that has a significant impact. Comparing communism and capitalism as they work in the real world, we find that a factory in the USSR and a factory in the United States use very similar divisions of labor.
Below is an organizational chart depicting the organizational breakdown of the factory structure.
It displays the relationship between wage and rank. The higher-paid workers are at the top, and the lower-paid workers are at the bottom.
· Management
· Engineering
· Quality Assurance
· Machinist/mechanics
· Assembly (line-workers)
· Materiel handlers
Whether production is under a communistic or a capitalistic system, manufacturers sell their goods for a profit, and it depends on a growing market. Thus, both economic systems operate in a macroeconomy based on capitalism. Therefore, both economic systems must differ in dispersing their profits.
Neither says how they distribute profits equally. In both systems, wages are considered part of the production cost. Profit is the difference between the price and the cost of a product.
Communism argues that the state will distribute profit more equitably than a business, and capitalism believes the opposite is true. Neither communism nor capitalism provides for equitable profit sharing, and we need to discuss fairly distributing the monetary returns.
Maybe the most significant difference between the two systems is whether they operate under a dictatorship or a democracy.
Oriana:
In response to Joe's main point: Perhaps the most frequent statement about communism is that no country has ever been able to implement this utopian system. What we get instead is "state capitalism." The government tries to manage factories and stores; except for special cases like the postal service, law enforcement, first responders, and the military, we basically end up with inefficient capitalism. And for political reasons, under "communism," it's more difficult to find competent mangers, and even more difficult to fire one.
"The business of America is business" — that certainly seems true. But what exactly was the business of the Soviet Union? To create an earthly paradise for assembly-line workers? It's hard not to burst in laughter at any such answer. And those who live in officially capitalist countries have all been taugh that capitalism is the only system that produces wealth. It rewards business skills rather than loyalty to the boss.
I keep returning to this topic because I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in a very Catholic country, and saw that the church was more powerful than the state. The church had much better propaganda and made more attractive promises (one can’t really compete with the invention of heaven and hell). Even so, the similarities were inescapable. I speak about the past. At present the power of religion is declining, and yet many people, and not just the young people, long for something they could believe in, some ideals they could work toward — without having to believe a bunch of garbage, i.e. the supernaturalism of religion. 
So it’s back to working out one’s own limited happiness and meaning in life, and learning the hard lessons: not everything is possible. What works well for one person may be a disaster for someone else. Don’t attempt too much at one time. The Golden Rule — which I’d call the law of empathy — how would I want to be treated in a particular situation? — is the only principle that appears to work practically all the time (I say “practically” because another hard lesson is that there are exceptions to every rule, and you need a case-by-case approach).
I lean to the position that it’s a good thing that communism has been attempted — otherwise we’d always be wondering if such a system could work, and if so, what kind of paradise we're missing for lack of trying. And I also feel grief that untold millions of lives have been lost and/or made miserable because of that experiment. And, above all, remember that nothing is perfect.
“We manage best when we manage small.” Who said that? Linda Gregg, a poet who arguably never achieved greatness, but to whom I’m immensely grateful for that particular line. And to write even one line who helped one particular reader is already something rather than nothing.
Or to plant even one tree. Or to raise and love even one child. To help even one neighbor in his or her hour of need. To teach someone even one useful thing. I think best when I think small. But other people operate differently, and that’s fine. Tolerance. Respect. Empathy — or call it the Golden Rule — or just ordinary decency.
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Ideology is the curse of public affairs because it converts politics into a branch of theology and sacrifices human beings on the thoughts of abstractions. ~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
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THE FREEDOM LEGION: RUSSIANS WHO FIGHT AGAINST PUTIN ON THE SIDE OF UKRAINE
On the morning of March 12, 2024, several armed groups crossed the border with Russia in Kursk and Belgorod regions on pickup trucks and tanks, supported by mortar and artillery fire.
The shocked residents posted videos of tanks with blue flags passing through their villages.
The groups that crossed the border are the Siberian battalion, the Legion Freedom of Russia and the Russian Voluntary Corps. These regiments consist of citizens of Russia who fight on the side of Ukraine against the armed forces of the Russian Federation.
Russian citizens join these regiments to fight against Putin’s regime, for the freedom of Russia.
Lozovaya Rudka, a village near the border in the Belgorod region, is completely under the control of the RVC.
After a shooting battle, Tyotkino in Kursk region is also under control of the rebel forces.
On March 11, drones attacked Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tula, Nizhny Novgorod regions, Belgorod, Kursk, Oryol, and Voronezh in Russia.
Oil depots, refineries and other infrastructure facilities are burning after the hits.
In the Nizhny Novgorod region, a drone attacked a Lukoil oil depot. The main crude distillation unit was damaged in the attack.
At the oil depot in Orel, one of the fuel tanks was set on fire, which has been expanding for hours, destroying everything in its path.
In St. Petersburg, the Southern Thermal Power Plant is on fire.
As a result of explosions following a Ukrainian drone attack in the Belgorod region, power lines were damaged, leaving 7 settlements without power. Videos of drones freely flying over Belgorod are all over Russian social networks.
Su-27 plane was shot down over Belgorod region.
Another plane, transport aircraft Il-76 with 15 military personnel on board, crashed in Ivanovo region.
Meanwhile, Russian RIA News reported that “Kyiv is building up its forces near the Russian border.”
The Legion "Freedom of Russia" recorded an appeal on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
“Putin is planning to rule till his death. We won’t allow it! We are Russian citizens, just like you. We too have the right to express our will. And our will is to not recognize the bloody dictator as the president of Russia,” said the commander of The Legion.
“We will take our land back from the regime, centimeter by centimeter. Russians will sleep peacefully, they won’t be afraid of the doorbell, and will be able to say what they think without fear. Russians will vote for whom they want, and not for whom they should. Russians will live freely!” ~ Elena Gold, Quora
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MORE RUSSIAN REFINERIES ON FIRE
2 more oil refineries went on fire in Russia today. (March 16, 2024)
Drones attacked oil refineries in Syzran and Novokuybyshevsky, Samara region.
Notably, Syzran is 1,300 km from the border with Ukraine.
The governor of the region, Azarov, officially confirmed to RIA Novosti that fire broke at oil processing plants.
It’s already refineries #13 and #14 that suffered hits in Russia.
In response, Russia hit a residential building in Odesa, Ukraine, with a ballistic missile. And then Russia hit it with a ballistic missile again, targeting first responders – emergency services and medics, in an effort to obtain maximum civilian casualties.
20 people died as the result of the “double-tap” attack, more than 70 people wounded, several of them are in critical condition.
And to all these asking, “What did you expect?”, the answer is “Ukrainians expected to live their lives in their country without Russia or its useful idiots asking stupid questions”.
Ukrainian families experience pain and suffering every day. Only the complete destruction of the "beast from the east" will put an end to suffering.
Dmitry Medvedev (who always expresses what Putin wants to say but can’t) proposed the Russian version of “peace formula”: Ukraine must capitulate, the whole territory of Ukraine must become Russia, all Ukrainian officials must be removed, and Ukraine must pay a compensation to Russia for the Russian soldiers killed and wounded in the war.
So, we now have Russia’s “peace plan” — anyone who would like to suggest to Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, should be simply directed to Medvedev’s Telegram to read this remarkable plan in full.
Now any country should know: if Russia attacks you, this means they are going to keep killing your people and destroying your cities unless you surrender. And then they are going to annex your land and demand compensation for the inconvenience. And, of course, they are going to torture and kill the people who don’t love Russia, deport half of population to Siberia, and relocate Russians from Russia to live in the homes of deported locals.
This all had already happened before. The Soviet Union was attacking smaller countries and demanding capitulation, and when the governments signed capitulation, Soviets immediately began executions and deportations, and brought hundreds of thousands of their own settlers to change the ethnic composition of the annexed territories.
There is nothings that Putin is doing now that the leaders of Russia and the Soviet Union haven’t done before. That’s what they always do
This inhumane regime must be destroyed once and for all.
French president Macron stated that this war is existential for Europe. Putin can’t be appeased. Any appeasement only leads to increased appetites of Kremlin elders. The free world must unite efforts to help Ukraine put an end to the Kremlin’s genocidal war. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
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MISHA FIRER: INSIDE RUSSIA
~ Capitalism divides people into winners and losers. Possession of capital is viewed as the ultimate virtue by almost everyone in the society and lack of thereof as a cardinal sin.
The educated middle class abandoned Vladimir Putin after he staged his third, illegal term in office. His support base ever since have been the people whom the Russian capitalist system would characterize as losers if it were honest with itself, plus business and political elites who have benefited financially from this social contract.
Losers turned May 9, Victory Day street celebration, into a validation of their secret cravings for self-identification with the strong and all-powerful state.
All of them dressed up in Red Army uniforms, transformed their sets of wheels into flashy battle tanks and hoisted Soviet flags proclaiming that they are headed to Berlin to win BIG.
They didn’t want to fight. They cosplayed meat assaults of their grandfathers to boost their fragile egos with victories they couldn’t bring themselves to achieve within the framework of the new capitalist society.
Losers pretended to be winners for a day and limped home with a tail between their legs to the dreary lives of underpaid clerks, small business owners, mechanics , security guards.
And then, oh miracle! Putin had offered them an opportunity of a lifetime to join the actual WW2 style fighting against the new Nazis in Ukraine!
He called out for “partial mobilization” that was meant to recruit ONLY combat veterans and reservists of certain specialties, the very contingent who bought them by means of five year car loans big shiny Toyotas the size of their flats in prefab panel blocs, built in post-WW2 to house survivors cheaply, efficiently, and quickly.
You would expect the brave cosplayers (Hitler kaput! Russians are coming!) who pumped fists in the air and swore “we can repeat the march to Berlin!” and “Not a step back!” to form long lines outside the recruitment offices. To walk the talk. To put words into action.
In September 2022, I watched on a TV screen in my Moscow apartment men on bicycles crossing into Georgia and Kazakstan and couldn’t help laughing as I recalled vividly how those same morons dressed in fake military uniforms blocked roads and sidewalks with their stupid cars and bumper stickers that harped on how they all gonna defeat Nazis.
“There are Nazis at the gates! Your hero-dictator had told you! Where are you all running??”
In fact their grandfathers did exactly the same — when Hitler’s army crossed the border into Belarus, Red Army soldiers and officers skedaddled all the way to the outskirts of Moscow occasionally chucking hundreds of thousands of peasants under the well-oiled tracks of the German tanks hoping against all hopes that this would make Hitler change his mind and then burying the corpses in the common grave and later sticking a monument to the Unknown Soldier on top because nobody bothered to learn any names of the soldiers sent on a suicide mission…while leadership in the West from the Pope to Anglo leaders preached appeasement and invited everyone to lay down their guns and conform to the new realities on the ground.
However, to their credit not everyone had tried to skirt responsibilities of self-proclaimed Nazi fighters (although majority had to be baited with generous wages), and there were volunteers who joined the Russian forces to thwart momentum of the Ukrainian army that began to de-occupy swathes of land in the east.
Some of military cosplayers who believed that they fought like their grandfathers got captured. A few of them were deprogrammed and formed the Russian Freedom Legion and the Siberian Battalion with the set goal to change the direction of the march, from Berlin to Moscow!
“To Moscow!” was their new credo. Putin is the new Hitler and he must be defeated. But what flag to hoist on top of a real battle tank? A Soviet one can’t do, naturally.
What about a European Union flag?
A Russian woman woke up this morning and heard the already familiar sounds of thunderous rumblings.
She peered out of the window of her house in Shebekino, Belgorod region that borders Ukraine in the east and to her greatest horror saw a tank with a European Union flag on top.
In the gray hues of sky and bare early spring ground, bright blue fabric stood out like an invitation to a beheading.
“Baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, and Patriarch Killkill!” She exclaimed and crossed herself .
The cross border raid of the Russian freedom fighters fighting on the side of Ukraine followed a pronouncement from Ilya Ponomarev, leader of the Freedom Legion who claimed that if they cross into Russia with 100 troops, they gonna reach Moscow with 100,000 troops next day. So many volunteers would wish to join them!
He referenced the mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the mercenary army. He marched to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don in the south and managed to reach Kaluga, mere hundred miles from Moscow, at which point he stopped and decided not to engage in a battle with the National Guards.
The Russian army didn’t try to stop Prigozhin’s mercenaries at any time, apart from the botched attempt to blow up the convoy by the Air Force warplanes.
Deprogrammed Russian Freedom Legion believed that if the Russians see an EU flag they would think that they are being liberated from Putin’s regime by the good guys, too.
They mixed up narratives. It’s Ukraine that wants to join the EU. Not Russia!
Had Prigozhin hoisted an EU flag on his SUV, his own mercs would have shot him 236 times on the spot. And so the collective madness continues where conflicting narratives jive for attention, credibility and victory.
The winner takes it all. Loser has to fall. ~ Quora
Belgorod
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PUTIN’S PARANOIA
Putin is very paranoid when it comes to staying in power. But that is an uninteresting fact, despite being decorated by a host of prominent corpses.
It is far more interesting to speculate about national paranoia, which the phrasing of this question invites.
I’m probably going to depart from the expected script here and suggest that there’s very little actual fear of NATO or the Anglo-Saxon Kabal driving Russian foreign policy or resonating deeply with common people. It’s just a story that they’ve all agreed to parrot. Defending against an existential threat hearkens back to the Great Patriotic War and just sounds a whole lot better than ‘reconquering what we used to control.”
More than paranoia, I believe the national character of today’s Russians is constructed on an inferiority complex and fear of becoming an irrelevant (worse, economically subservient) apparition on the world stage. Like China, and like the anti-globalist movements in the West, Russia regards world trade as a zero-sum game, one that it is losing badly.
The solution—go back to what worked before: expansionism at the expense of weaker neighbors. It’s just too bad that this time there’s no power vacuum left after the collapse of an empire like the Mongols or Ottomans. Too bad that the rest of the world has moved on, and has figured out a way to protect sovereign countries, even if smaller. Too bad the former USSR satellites in Europe rushed to join NATO in their correct assessment that history will be repeated.
The reason Russia invaded all of Ukraine is that it viewed its eventual westward pivot as a condemnation of a way of life (which it was), a spurning of a sacred “origin” that can only be explained as a sinister manipulation by the West (it cannot be that our culture, our common roots, our shared destiny, are what is actually being rejected).
I think you probably have to be a Russian with some Ukrainian roots or a Ukrainian with Russian roots to truly appreciate what this bloody conflict is about.
Maybe we can come close if we picture an aging but vicious patriarch in a deeply religious family who wouldn’t mind seeing a young nephew beaten by his enforcers within an inch of his life and dragged back to the village in order to save him from a gay lifestyle in the corrupt, godless city.
In a certain very twisted way, the conflict is more about family than about paranoia.
~ Plamen Arnaudov, Quora
Victor Bennett:
I think you are overlooking the effect of Putin's ego in all of this. Putin appears to be obsessed with his popularity levels in Russia. After he stole Crimea his popularity went sky high but then began to drift downward over time. I think he may have convinced himself that a quick, three week conquest of Ukraine would send his popularity through the roof and he could then bask in the adulation of his adoring peasants.
Christopher Aspen:
Isn't it a bit rich to invade a sovereign nation, all because this nation is inching closer to the “decadent” West and Russian culture in Ukraine is becoming less influential and then expect the world to agree to your reasoning for invading it?
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“NO PERSON, NO PROBLEM”: SERIAL DEATHS IN THE RUSSIAN OIL INDUSTRY
Vitaly Robertus, vice president of the Russian company LUKoil, suddenly dead “of asphyxia” at the age of 53.
Robertus worked for LUKoil for all his life, joining the company after graduating from the university 30 years ago.
This is the 13th death of a Russian top manager since the beginning of 2022 — almost all of them worked in oil companies.
In LUKoil, it’s already death #5:
1.) May 2022: 44-year-old ex-top manager of LUKoil, billionaire Subbotin, died.
2.) September 2022: 67-year-old head of the board of directors of LUKoil Maganov died (fell from a hospital window).
3.) December 2022: 48-year-old head of one of the major LUKoil subsidiaries, Zatsepin, died.
4.) October 2023: 66-year-old Nekrasov (who replaced Maganov as head of the board of directors of LUKoil), died.
5.) March 2024: 53-year-old vice president of LUKoil Robertus died.
Obviously, it’s purely coincidental that in less than 2 years, 5 top executives of one of the largest oil companies in Russia died.
And it has nothing to do with turf wars among Putin’s “elites”, who are fighting for the shrinking pie of the Russian economy, using the simplest method they know since Stalin’s times: “no person, no problem”. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
Tim Weston:
Except the “person” who is the actual problem is still there, but with absolute, unchecked power. At that time it was Stalin, now it is Putin.
Franz Peter:
Stalinist methods have left their bloody imprint, for sure, and came out of hiding when Poo-tin took over.
Albina Graniute:
I can assure you that none of them is a good person and they all knew exactly what they were getting into when they took the job. Most of them probably have arranged assassinations of their competitors before, or at the very least, have threatened or harmed them in other ways. Nobody gets to be an executive in an oil company in Russia by simply being a competent specialist in the field.
Elena Gold:
They can’t escape Russia and can’t quit their jobs — Putin forbade execs to resign.
Kumar Narain:
Indians bought oil in Indian rupees, ha ha ! So they say. That is all theater to fool the world. Indians paid in dirty dollars too, sitting somewhere.
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DUNE, PART 2: THE SPACE MUSLIM
Let’s start with a positive review:
~ The word that will likely be used most often to describe Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” is “massive.” Expect a whole lot of variations on the words “epic” and “spectacle” too. Whatever big words you apply to the result, Villeneuve undeniably did not approach Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novel with modest aspirations, and it’s his ambition, along with the top tier of behind-the-scenes craftspeople with whom he collaborated, that have paid off in this superior follow-up to the Oscar-winning 2021 film. While that beloved blockbuster often felt like half a film, “Dune: Part Two” locates significantly higher stakes on Arrakis, while injecting just enough humor and nuanced themes about power and fanaticism to flavor the old-fashioned storytelling. More than a simple savior or chosen one story, “Dune: Part Two” is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.
“Dune: Part Two” picks up so closely on the heels of the first film that the Fremen are still transporting the body of Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) home again after he was bested in the fight with Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet). After the massacre of House Atreides, Paul chose to go with the Fremen, much to the consternation of his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Thinking both Paul and Jessica were taken by the desert and all hopped up on violence after destroying the Atreides interlopers, House Harkonnen amplifies its attack on the Fremen, leading to a few remarkably staged battles between the warriors and soldiers.
Villeneuve and his team deftly fill the first hour with battle sequences that counter the firepower of the Harkonnen military and the Fremen tribal combatants, who often literally emerge from the earth to destroy them. Bodies fall from the sky as enormous ships burst into flames in a way that feels nearly operatic. Amidst the chaos, Dave Bautista cannily sketches Rabban Harkonnen as a wartime leader who is in way over his bald head while Stellan Skargard leans even harder into a sort of blend between Nosferatu and Jabba the Hutt.
As the battle between the Fremen and the Harkonnens for control of Arrakis serves as the backdrop for “Dune: Part Two,” Paul’s arc from nervous young man at the beginning of the first film to potential leader plays out in the foreground. A Fremen tribal leader named Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is convinced that Paul Atreides is the chosen one that has been foretold among his people for generations. Even as so much of the mythology points to Paul’s savior role, the Emo King tries to blend into the Fremen, forming a relationship with a young warrior named Chani (Zendaya). Paul passes the tests put in front of him by the Fremen, takes on the tribal name of Muad’Dib, and vows vengeance against the Harkonnens who were behind his father’s death.
On another planet, an Emperor named Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) counsels with his daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) and a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling) on the state of Arrakis. It’s revealed early on that Shaddam basically sent House Atreides to its destruction, meaning he’s on that vengeance list that Paul’s been keeping, while Irulan serves as a sort-of narrator for “Dune: Part Two,” dictating some of the political developments into a device that’s really designed to keep audiences with the plot.
If the interstellar politics aren’t enough, writers Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts inject +Lady Jessica becomes a powerful religious figure of her own among the Fremen, guiding her son’s ascendance in a manner that feels nefarious and unsettling. “Dune: Part Two” is not a traditional hero’s journey in that it’s constantly questioning if being led by an outsider from another culture is the right move—Chani sure doesn’t think so, and Zendaya subtly finds notes to make viewers wonder what a happy ending would be for these characters. As Jessica and Paul learn more about Fremen history and culture, they threaten not to lead it as much as dismantle and own it. There’s a big difference.
While the plotting in “Part Two” is undeniably richer than the first film, its greatest assets are once again on a craft level. Greig Fraser, who won the Oscar for cinematography the first time, tops his work there with stunning use of color and light. It’s in the manner the sun hits Chalamet’s face at a certain angle or the wildly different palettes that differentiate the Harkonnens and the Fremen.
The browns and blues of the desert culture don’t feel arid as much as grounded and tactile, while the Harkonnen world is so devoid of color that it’s often literally black and white—even what look like fireworks pop like someone throwing colorless paint at a wall. Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-winning score felt a bit overdone to me in the first film, but he smartly differentiates the cultures here, finding more metallic sounds for the cold Harkonnens to balance against the heated score for the Fremen. Finally, the effects and sound design feel denser this time, and the fight choreography reminds one how poorly this has been done in other blockbuster films.
As for performers, Chalamet is likely to be the most divisive element, often feeling a bit flat for someone believed to be the Neo of this world. However, those choices add up in a way that makes thematic sense, enhancing the uncertainty of Paul’s rise. Zendaya is solid—although she lacks chemistry with Chalamet that would have helped—but it’s Ferguson’s slippery performance and Bardem’s playful one that really add flavors here that weren’t in the first outing. Finally, Austin Butler leans hard into the exaggerated role of Feyd-Rautha, playing the sociopathic nephew of the Baron with all the scenery-chewing intensity that a character like this needs to work, finding the emotional void to balance out against Chalamet’s tempestuous inner monologue.
“Dune: Part Two” has been compared to “The Empire Strikes Back” in the run-up to its release, and that’s not quite right. The better comparison is “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” another film that built on what we knew about the characters from the first film, added a few new ones, and really amplified a sense of continuous battle and danger. Like both films, a third chapter feels inevitable. Critics will have to come up with a new synonym for massive.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dune-part-two-movie-review-2024
and then I found this gem:
SPACE MUSLIM VERSUS CRUSADERS
"It has been (accepted) by all Muslims in every epoch, that at the end of time, a man from the family (of the Prophet) will without fail make his appearance, one who will strengthen Islam and make justice triumph," wrote Ibn Khaldun in The Muqqadamiah. "Muslims will follow him, and he will gain domination over the Muslim realm. He will be called the Mahdî."
In the Tunisian-born sociologist, philosopher, and historian's exhaustive 14th-century introduction to the Islamic world of theology, philosophy, ecology, economics, power and politics, there is no escaping just how influential it was on Frank Herbert's original Dune novel series.
The sci-fi series borrows and repurposes many of his observations about civilizations to build an Imperial universe set 20,000 years in the future.
From desert life versus sedentary culture, the rise and fall of dynasties and the diversity of religious practice, Herbert weaved these weighty historical concepts and themes into a sweeping narrative that delivers an epic critique of the Messiah Complex.
In the realm of Dune's Old Imperium, Paul Atreidis is his "Mahdi," albeit a reluctant one.
What's Dune Part Two about?
Having survived the devastating attack on House Atreides by rivals the Harkonnens in Dune — Part One, and the betrayal of Emperor Shaddam IV who supported the overthrow, Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are forced into the desert and taken in by Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem).
This is after Paul won a fatal duel against the Fremen Jamis and much of the 2hr 48 minute runtime is dedicated to his and Lady Jessica's assimilation into and ultimate leadership over this nomadic warrior people.
As well as lead a revolt against the usurping Harkonnens and the Emperor to claim control over the planet's spice production – the most valuable substance in the universe.
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One of Dune Part Two's successes is how acutely it wrestles with the scheming efforts of the Bene Gesserit and the false idolatry they've for centuries laid the groundwork for.
Jessica's superpowered matriarchal order has spent many generations manipulating the Fremen tribes into believing their invented prophecy of the Kwisatz Haderach (AKA the Mahdi/Lisan Al-Gaib) – an off-worlder who will lead them to their salvation.
Aware of dynastic changes of rule, the Bene Gesserit secure bloodlines of Houses to maintain power in the universe but Jessica's self-serving plans for her first child by the fallen Duke Leto I have positioned Paul into that messianic role; a move that creates friction between mother and son as their paths diverge then realign in the third act.
Ferguson injects some of that Doctor Sleep/Rose the Hat eeriness into her performance; there's an increasingly disturbing glint in Jessica's eye as she becomes Reverend Mother and goes on a holy conversion mission to the South of Arrakis.
The ominous conversations she has with her pre-born daughter (growing in her womb) intensify the weirdness that Ferguson revels in. Searing visions, conversations about faith and divination with the Fremen and arguments with Jessica, lay the groundwork for the tumultuous voyage of the mind, body and soul Paul goes through under the influence of spice that shimmers across the vast desert dunes.
There's a rich interiority of these particular characters and Chalamet compellingly charts Paul's emotional evolution from unwilling savior to pragmatic leader. However, the biggest motivating factor for accepting this destiny is oddly underexpressed.
His relationship with Chani (Zendaya) also comes into clearer focus and the sweet-looking pair suits the somewhat basic YA romance filter applied to it; Paul's attempt to mansplain sand-walking to the Arrakis native raises a smile.
But changes from the book mean there isn't an equal exchange of knowledge between the two that truly cements their affections or the genuine depth of their bond to each other – save for an ambiguous headband that might hint at a key plot point that has been erased from this part of the story.
There's a dearth of character development as to who Chani is beyond a member of the Fedeykin (the Fremen's fearsome guerrilla fighter group), devout to her nation but sceptical of their faith.
In the novel, Liet Kynes is her father with Sharon Duncan-Brewster playing a gender-swapped version of that character; here, there's zero acknowledgement of that relationship. Chani is no damsel-in-distress but Zendaya's ability to connect us to her journey is restrained to a typical strong female characterization throwing a romantic spanner in the works for the male lead.
That superficiality is more widespread in the Fremen cast. Little time is spent in establishing these people and their culture beyond fighting, survival and religious fanaticism.
Little do the group feelings and traditions that make them such a formidable, connected community permeate beyond their Islam-inspired prayer rituals.
The casting of Swiss-Tunisian actress Souhelia Yacoub is a win for Arab representation in a film that restricts actors of MENA heritage to background players.
Playing a gender-swapped version of Fedaykin warrior Shishakli, she's shrewd, funny and delivers the Fremen language (Arabic that has been tweaked for the film) with a fluid ease her castmates don't share. Most of the Fremen accents are all over the place; Chani's American accent is jarring. I guffawed when one Fremen with a Scottish lilt said Mahdi like "mardy".
A nonsensical joke about Stilgar's accent coming from "the South" is a reminder that Bardem is cosplaying as a Bedouin Arab. Bardem offers a warm, frequently humorous performance but mostly at the expense of Stilgar's faith. A faith that makes mentions of Jinn and is depicted through costumes including abayas, hijabs and keffiyehs.
Cultural appropriation aside, there are too many characters to do them justice in a film more focused on the grandiose than the granular motivations of its side players or a more fervent exploration of imperialism and colonialism beyond "good vs bad."
Ferguson's Imazighen facial tattoos and headdresses hit home not just the cultural appropriation of Jessica once she becomes Reverend Mother but the film too. That we are not privy to the secret histories and traditions she has inherited (robbed!) through this ritual is another way the film denies the Fremen a more vigorous depiction.
On the other side of the conflict is the pseudo-European Houses Harkonnen and House Corrino which intensifies the well-trodden Christian vs Muslim themes.
A visit to the brutalist, monochrome world of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) introduces his sadistic nephew Feyd-Rautha, who wouldn't look out of place at Berlin's infamous Berghain [gay] nightclub.
Austin Butler does a decent enough Stellan Skarsgard impression and throws himself into the vicious role. In the Medieval England-inspired pastures of Kaitain, Florence Pugh offers a restrained turn as Princess Irulan while Christopher Walken's Emperor offers none of the playfulness we've long been accustomed to.
Han Zimmer's earthy score of heavy drums and ululating is once again oppressive. Some action sequences are thrilling and stylish; an early Fremen ambush on Harkonnen soldiers is gripping.
A later Fremen attack on a spice harvester in wide shots and intense close-ups is riveting. But the final battle between the Fremen and Outworlders, not to mention between Feyd-Rautha and Paul, feels rushed and anticlimactic.
Sure the main conflict of this book is somewhat resolved but a true resolution is not sufficiently achieved. After spending nearly six hours on Dune Part One and Part Two, I can say I had a better time with the latter. But as a whole, audiences deserve a far more satisfying return on their investment.
https://www.newarab.com/features/dune-2-review-flawed-space-muslims-v-crusades-masterpiece
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“If you want to control people, you tell them a messiah will come…they’ll wait for centuries . This prophecy is how they enslave us!” ~ Chani
Oriana: DUNE AND THE POWER OF RELIGION
This has finally clarified for me what Dune is about. It’s about the use of religion to manipulate people. Tell them that the Messiah will come and they’ll wait for thousands of years.
Not just centuries, no. Millennia. Generally you need to start indoctrinating at an early age, before the brain has the capacity for critical thinking. But once in a while, adult conversion also happens. Or a cynical opportunism, pretending to believe or even becoming a religious leader, all for the sake of holding on to power.
We talk about the power of love. True. But religious faith colonizes not just the earth and one lifetime, but eternity. Lack of evidence is not a problem. In fact not even the evidence for the opposite position is a problem. When Paul at first denies that he is the Messiah, it is taken as as proof of his great humility. He is so humble that he must be the Messiah — “as written.”
The unholy marriage of religion and political power goes back not centuries, but millennia. Think of ancient Egypt.
Karl Marx wrote about religion as a drug that keeps people subservient, but provided no solution. Historians saw it, great writers saw it — but there seems to be no solution. Humans have deep emotional needs, needs that will be satisfied in one way or another, no matter how destructive to self and others.
Yes, religion is in decline, but it will never disappear completely. There are those who simply must have it. And, as has been pointed out many times, an ideology such as fascism or communism has many characteristics of religion. Above all, you need to induce a climate of threat while all the time making attractive promises.
“A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” But the ground has been prepared by religion.
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The first "Dune" was fun; the follow-up no longer has the element of surprise and falls flat as a desert mouse getting steamrollered by a giant sand worm. ~ Mark Jackson, Epoch Times
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GIANT SOLAR FARMS COULD CREATE THEIR OWN WEATHER
In the United Arab Emirates, water is more valuable than oil. To support the needs of its desert-dwelling residents, the UAE relies on expensive desalination plants and campaigns of cloud seeding from aircraft, which spray particles into passing clouds to trigger rainfall.
But according to a new modeling study, there may be another way to stir up a rainmaker: with city-size solar farms that create their own weather.
The heat from large expanses of dark solar panels can cause updrafts that, in the right conditions, lead to rainstorms, providing water for tens of thousands of people. “Some solar farms are getting up to the right size right now,” says Oliver Branch, a climate scientist at the University of Hohenheim who led the work, published last week in the journal Earth System Dynamics. “Maybe it’s not science fiction that we can produce this effect.”
Branch works in an emerging field that studies how renewable energy, a key response to climate change, can in turn alter regional weather patterns. In a 2020 study, researchers found that implausibly large solar farms, taking up more than 1 million square kilometers in the Sahara desert, could boost local rainfall and cause vegetation to flourish. But the bounty would come with a cost, the researchers found: By altering wind patterns, the solar farms would push tropical rain bands north. “If you push those northward, that’s not good news for the Amazon,” says Zhengyao Lu, a climate scientist at Lund University and lead author of the 2020 study.
Branch and his co-authors wanted to see whether solar farms of more realistic sizes could alter the weather. To do so, they turned to a leading weather model, produced by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, that can account for land surface changes. They modeled the solar farms as nearly black fields that absorbed 95% of the incoming sunlight. When the solar farms exceeded 15 square kilometers, they found, the increased heat absorbed at the surface, contrasted with the relatively reflective sand surrounding them, appreciably increased the updrafts, or convection, that drive cloud formation.
Just hacking convection wasn’t enough, however: A source of atmospheric moisture is also needed. The model showed that moist, high-altitude winds from the Persian Gulf would suffice. When conditions were ripe, the model found, a 20-square-kilometer solar field would increase rainfall by nearly 600,000 cubic meters—equivalent to 1 centimeter of rain falling across an area the size of Manhattan. If such rainstorms occurred 10 times in one summer, they would provide enough water to support more than 30,000 people for a year.
The new work makes sense, and it’s “very stimulating,” Lu says. “They are targeting a real solution.” One concern, however, is that the simulated solar panels were darker than most manufacturers make them. Some current solar panels are even reflective, designed to cool their surroundings, Lu says.
Still, Branch is hopeful that the idea could at some point be tested in the real world. Solar farms coming online in China and elsewhere are nearly big enough, he says. If they were built in the right spots, it wouldn’t take much to darken the panels as much as possible, and to plant drought-tolerant darkening crops, such as jojoba shrubs, between panel rows.
The UAE funded Branch’s modeling, but whether it will try the scheme in the real world remains to be seen. The country “is committed to study the potential implementation of all robust strategies, such as optimizing convection,” says Alya Al Mazrouei, director of the UAE’s Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science.
But she adds that for now, the country is deeply committed to its cloud seeding program, carrying out some 300 missions each year.
Branch and his colleagues have identified other areas of the world where the scheme might work, such as Namibia and Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. They’re also trying to improve the realism of their model’s solar panel simulations by cross-checking them with field measurements at existing solar farms. Ultimately, he’s hopeful that the rainmaking potential of solar farms will encourage more construction. “If you can provide evidence that a huge solar farm produces rainfall,” he says, “that might give impetus to increase the size of them.” ~
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WHY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS SAW MOTHER TERESA AS A FRAUD
From one associate of an Indian Buddhist center:
An anecdote I tell whenever this comes up. When Teresa was still alive I was studying at a Vipassana meditation center in India when I met a young and idealistic Catholic nurse from Ireland.
She had volunteered to work at the hospice in Calcutta. but had left a few weeks later, shaken and appalled. She had been taken aback by the squalid conditions, the unhygienic needles, the lack of pain control, and the willful withholding of the most basic medical treatments. And when she met Teresa, she found her cold and uncompassionate. But the breaking point had been when they refused to give potentially life-saving treatment to a child.
By her account, they were buying conversions in return for giving the destitute and desperate a few mouthfuls of food. Once their eternal souls had been “saved” they had little interest in helping their human bodies… Indeed, they seemed to believe that the greater the suffering, the greater the spiritual benefit for their patients. She called it a death cult.
Naturally this is all in the context of the $100+ million that the order was hiding in secretive bank accounts around the world. In contrast to the patients, the nuns were very well looked after.
She was so disillusioned with the Church that she had come to the meditation center in search of a more wholesome path to follow in life. ~ Wolfgang Waas, Quora
Boo:
Apparently Mother Teresa thought it was beneficial to the human “soul” to SUFFER. So even though people would be dying of cancer, (and medications HAD been donated to her), she wouldn’t give the medications because…it’s good for your soul to suffer…
Peter Foulds:
When she got sick she was treated by the best money could buy. (Oriana: I was told that one of the medical facilities where she got treatment was UCLA Hospital.)
Tony Barry:
I also met doctors and nurses in Calcutta while Mother Teresa was alive (back in 1986). Many of these medicos were also Catholic.
Their experience was often harrowing (as your Irish nurse recounted). They found Kalighat (the home for the dying) to be an enormous hurdle to get over, as with Shishu Bhavan (the children’s home). The disparity between standard patient care in the West vs Calcutta, caused great distress to many people who had trained in medicine in the West.
But most of the doctors and nurses, while painfully aware of the desperate mess around them, did not lose the plot. These were the medicos who managed the situation, who worked with what was available, and made it work for good. I learned so much from these guys.
I was lucky — I had no medical exposure (just an electrical engineering background), was / am somewhat autistic, and being one of the Born Again made me quite unaware of the visceral nature of the desperation of Kalighat.
I was not excessively stupid, but it took a fair while for me to see what might have been going on — why some of the medicos did lose the plot; who railed against the Catholic church, Mother Teresa, the MC sisters and brothers … and why others did not.
From an engineering viewpoint, it can be seen as a gain — stability amplifier problem.
And although people are not amplifiers, for everyone Kalighat was a perturbation of enormous proportions. Some folk had better methods to deal with the affront, and some folk were overwhelmed.
They often externalized the chaos as a survival method, to deal with it before it wiped them out. The nearest handy items to externalize the focus on were the MC sisters and brothers. Then MT. Then the Catholic church. It was the their problem. And their behavior. And their heartlessness. And the fact that they continued to do what they could despite the fact that — for so many of the destitute — there was no hope.
I get it. It was more than forty years ago, and I can still see these decent, honest, kind medicos having a head crash at some awful example of man’s inhumanity to man. Not an active evil … just a sad reflection that there were too many poor people to help.
But what of the others? who were rocked but continued to function? Well, here is where I can offer some insight. You see, I was one of those guys who cracked during my time in Calcutta. It wasn’t a medical thing that broke my amp, because I was medically clueless. Ignorance is bliss, and a very handy thing at times.
For me it was a roadside distribution board near Sudder St in Calcutta’s tourist district, meant to offer a place where electrical supply can be routed to a submains. I walked past it and the doors were ajar … and inside, the busbars were glowing. Not dull red, but that nice cherry red which you get just before liquefaction. And explosion.
I shit myself. My companions at the time (two excellent guys from Britain) kind of laughed at my reaction, but did not understand why I was bouncing around. I tried to explain, and they just said, OK, let’s just move on.
And I moved on. It was too hard to get anyone to fix the problem. I did not speak the language (Bengali). I did not know who to speak to; and as my mates said, this happens every day in Calcutta, the power is only one half the time and it’s way overloaded.
I felt the same hopelessness as the nice Irish nurse. And it’s really not good. The place is absolutely fucked. I can’t do anything to unfuck it. It’s a disaster. The medicos see their humanitarian disaster. I see this engineering disaster. Everyone who turns up at this shithole sees their own version of whatever their disaster specialty is.
And the crazy thing is that MT started giving cups of cold water to dying people in this dump, and we who were there saw it as a futile gesture of compassion that wasn’t futile at all. It was the stuff of legends. Because in that hopelessness, love still works. Even when it doesn’t.
That’s why MT got the Nobel Prize. And that’s why the nice Irish nurse hates Catholicism.
It all comes down to amplifier instability near the supply rails. Some of us survive, and some don’t.
Joseph George:
A majority of Indian nuns in Mother Theresa's order were from well to do families who joined her out of idealism and missionary zeal. That the mother was a religious fundamentalist and a zealot and that her ultimate aim was conversion of Indians to her church and making money for her church, is a fact. In this way she was evil.
Ian Babineau:
She was raising millions for the Chatholic church (the richest organization in the world), and giving a tiny percentage to those she used as publicity for her fundraising.
If you look at that and say “at least she was giving them something”, I think you are getting the wrong message.
I feel if she told people “2% of your donations will go to help starving children and 98% will go to the richest organization in the world” many of them would have donated to another charity.
Jo M:
This is all well documented and appalling. In India in the 80s I met people who'd volunteered and left quickly for similar reasons. Squalor, lack of any kind of medical treatment etc.
Lee H. Christof:
This is true of almost all popular culture saints like Mandela, MLK and Gandhi. The truth is way different than the way they are portrayed by historians and the media.
*
THE PREDICTED DECLINE OF ISLAM
~ In a hundred years, Islam’s empire of conformity will have crumbled. It is already starting.
Mecca will still be a holy place, and the hajj will still be a thing — but atheism will continue its rise in Muslim countries; women will demand equality; and imams will find it harder and harder to raise crowds of mindless rioters and murderers for Allah.
We are a couple generations from the tipping point, but it is coming.
Poor backward Muslim places like Afghanistan and Somalia will remain poor and backward and Muslim — but Cairo and Jeddah and Jakarta will be converting their mosques to condos.
A race is on: will Islam conquer the west or will the west conquer Islam? My belief is: Islam makes noise and commits hate crimes and has a coercive community structure, so it gains some influence in the west that way — but all the screaming imams have less potency than the western ideas being exported into Muslim nations. ~ Angeli Adeen, Quora
Baruch Cohen:
Maybe Islam Reformation is on the horizon? It s time to change from the 7th century ideals to something more in conformity with reality.
Steve Dutch:
I’d love to believe this, but Islam is not the problem. The culture is. The male misogyny and obsession with female sexualty is really fear of emasculation.
Young Muslims don’t need to be killing Israelis and Westerners. They need to kill their imams and family elders. Those are the people who are really oppressing them.
Angeli Adeen:
Agreed.
Islam is just seventh-century Arab tribal beliefs dipped in Jewish and Christian myths. With “Allah” to unite them and Mohammed/Quran to anchor them firmly to the seventh century, they have not budged in centuries.
But now there are new forces at work in Muslim countries:
Modern Western ideas, including atheism and female equality. These are spread by the internet and Hollywood and migration.
Reaction against modern Western ideas: the Old Guard cracking down.
The modern Arab construct of “We are divinely-appointed conquerors and we are superior to all — but Oh! Woe! we are victims!! Victims of the Zionists and Crusader West and White racists who deny us our place at the top of the food chain.. Conquer the West, for Muslim pride!” This has been embraced by some of the youth.
The desire of dictators to wield Islam as a uniting force for their people, while also suppressing Islamist movements that threaten their power.
How it will all shake out is unclear. BUT: if you google atheism in Arab countries (as measured by confidential surveys, since atheists are not safe to speak up), the number is slowly rising and is now about 5 percent. I consider this the tip of a wedge that is slowly getting thrust into Muslim countries, like a wedge into a log. Eventually the wedge will shatter Islam’s violent coercive hold in some of these countries — and out will pour the long-suppressed voices of loud proud irreligious people who have too strong a voice to continue being silenced with threats and murders.
To mix my metaphors: some Muslim nations are pressure-cookers, with a slow-building pressure to abandon the seventh century — and only the locked lid above (societal and government control) and the danger below (death threats and murders by local Muslim terrorists) are keeping the pot from blowing up. That is not a situation that can last forever.
Obelix:
Social media is killing this outdated stupid religion.
George Dunn:
But that's the major thing the imams are screaming about: the insidious advance of Western values weakening their medieval authority.
At bottom, every jihadi atrocity is an attempt to hold back the tide of reform.
Christianity looked solid 100 years ago.
What guarantee does Islam have which Christianity did not have?
*
WHY MEMORY IS MORE ABOUT YOUR THE FUTURE THAN YOUR PAST
~ Whenever we remember something, we alter that memory with our needs, beliefs, and perspectives.
According to neuroscientist Charan Ranganath, this and other aspects of how memory works keeps our thinking nimble and flexible.
If we want to keep our memories more vivid, we should pay attention to what makes them distinctive.
Certainly it would be better if our memories were a perfect record of everything we encountered, right? Not necessarily. According to Charan Ranganath, neuroscientist and the author of Why We Remember, humans evolved the memory system we did because it helps us stay attentive to what is important.
Big Think recently spoke with Ranganath to discuss how memories form, how they help keep our thinking quick, and what we can do to connect more with the memories that matter most to us.
Big Think: What’s wrong with the common assumption that memory is a recording stored in the brain?
Ranganath: Although it’s understandable that so many have that assumption, there are a few things off with it. The first thing is that we’re supposed to remember everything. The second is that when we remember, it’s an exact replay of what happened. Neither of those is true scientifically.
People retain only a fraction of the experiences they have. That’s true of everyone I know of who has been quantitatively studied. People also embellish their memories. They can distort them; they can make inferences.
I always say my phone has a photographic memory. I store lots of photos on it, I rarely go back to them, and if I want a particular one, I spend a long time searching for it. [Conversely], the brain is about quality over quantity. It’s designed to carry what you need so that you can be nimble and agile and find what you need when you need it.
Big Think: How do we alter memories when we remember?
Ranganath: There are two schools of thought. One school is that you form a new memory when you are remembering. The other school is that you actually alter the original memory. It doesn’t really matter which explanation is correct, subjectively speaking. The act of remembering changes the way you’ll remember an event later on.
In neurobiology, people talk about a phenomenon called reconsolidation. After a memory is activated, there are all of these chemical changes that effectively make the memory more vulnerable — that is, the connections between the neurons that help bring that memory to life become a bit unstable. Things can happen that can alter that memory at that point.
We can see this when remembering past events. When we tell the same memory over and over, it becomes less detailed and more rote. It reflects a kind of story rather than a re-imagining of what happened.
Big Think: How does imagination play a part in memory embellishment?
Ranganath: A memory is not only the things we saw and heard; it’s also our thoughts and our feelings. That means that when you remember something, it’s not just what happened. It reflects your interpretation of what happened.
For instance, if you’re tired of work, you might remember a beach vacation and think, “That was so great!” On the other hand, if money is tight and your family is bugging you to take another trip, you might look back on the same vacation and think, “We stood in line forever at the airport, and we all got sick after we came back.”
Both are true, but the way we imagine it can be very different depending on your goals, perspectives, and beliefs.
Through no fault of one’s own memory
Big Think: So, can our memories be described as “faulty”?
Ranganath: If the goal was to store everything in some mental vault, then from that perspective, memory is faulty. But if the goal is to use the past in meaningful ways, combine different experiences creatively, or consider new possibilities, then our memory is doing exactly what it should be.
For instance, the brain is optimized to process information quickly and then generate a prediction about what’s going to happen next. The value of that predictive processing is not only that it’s fast; it also optimizes the information you get. Even when our predictions are wrong, that orients us to where the new, important information is.
Keeping memory in the picture
Big Think: What should we expect from our memories, and how can we get the most out of them?
Ranganath: We can expect that our memories can be fragmentary, and they’re definitely going to be incomplete.
While there are many tips for memorizing particular kinds of information, a basic principle of memory is that memories compete with each other. That’s not necessarily intuitive. We tend to think that people have a memory, it goes into this mental slot, and then you pull it up. In fact, that thing you’re storing in your memory is competing with all these surrounding memories.
The analogy I like is that of a cluttered desk covered in standard yellow Post-It notes. If I want to find the note with my bank account password on it, it’s going to take forever. On the other hand, if I wrote the password on a hot pink or fluorescent green Post-It, it’s easy to locate because it’s different from everything else.
So, the principle for having something be memorable is to attend to what’s distinctive about it. The more you can attend to what is distinctive and be mindful of it, the more vivid the memory.
[For instance], we’re constantly taking pictures and then throwing them on social media. But this is the ultimate form of electronic amnesia. You’re cheating your experiencing self because you don’t connect with what’s happening, and you’re cheating your remembering self because you’ve deprived yourself of a great memory.
So instead of taking pictures of every moment of your vacation, pay attention to what makes a particular moment distinctive. Ask yourself: What is going to be most memorable in each picture I take? How can I compose the picture to focus on the vivid details that will bring me back to this time and place?
That’s when pictures become valuable — when they force you to pay attention to the things that are important to you in that moment.
Big Think: Anything you’d like to add?
Ranganath: I would like people to change their expectations about what their memory is and should be for. That may help us be more forgiving of ourselves and others.
It can also be important for the expectations of how we learn. A lot of kids struggle in school, and we tend to view struggle as bad, but one of the messages in my book is that struggling is a sign of learning under the right conditions. The process of working through something is a learning process.
The last thing is that memory should give you more options, not fewer. Memory can sometimes leave you with a narrow worldview if you become stuck in the same beliefs, looking for the same information that confirms what you remember to be true. That’s when memory leads you to get stuck in a corner.
Instead, you should use memory to strategically think of things that can help you in the present or [generate] future possibilities — giving you the options that will help you be more flexible, creative, and imaginative. ~
https://bigthink.com/the-learning-curve/why-memory-is-more-about-your-future/
HOW SEA CUCUMBERS PROTECT STAGHORN CORAL
Over the years, Cody Clements, a marine ecologist at Georgia Tech, has planted over 10,000 coral fragments across the South Pacific.
"You can just break off a branch from a coral, plant it into the sandy bottom, and it will grow into a whole new coral," explains Clements. “I have corals out there that I've planted and they were the size of my pinky — and now they're the size of a basketball.”
As he was gearing up for an experiment in 2018 in French Polynesia off the island of Mo'orea, something caught his attention. It had to do with sea cucumbers — marine invertebrates that are distantly related to starfish but resemble soft pickles.
"They come in various shapes, colors and sizes," says Clements. "Some of them are very large." They're slow-moving scavengers, and collectively they hoover up truckloads of sand to feed on algae, microbes, and organic matter. (On a single seven-square-mile reef in Queensland, Australia, researchers previously found that the sea cucumbers there are processing the equivalent of more than five Eiffel Towers of sand each year.)
At the reef in Mo'orea that Clements was studying, there were quite a few sea cucumbers. Clements decided to clear them all from his study site to make things uniform for the experiment.
But a few days later, "I started seeing that the corals were starting to die from the base up," Clements says. "And I was just like, 'OK, this is pretty abnormal.’"
Clements wondered whether relocating the sea cucumbers had had something to do with it. And in new research published in Nature Communications, he and his colleagues demonstrate that when they removed sea cucumbers from a study patch, tissue death of Acropora pulchra, a species of staghorn coral, more than tripled. And mortality of the whole colony surged 15 times.
The reasoning, says Clements, is that sea cucumbers are like "these little vacuum cleaners on the reef that are cleaning things up," digesting and eliminating microbes that can lead to coral disease and demise — threats that are exacerbated by a warming and increasingly polluted ocean.
Back in 2018, when Clements first suspected that clearing out the sea cucumbers may have triggered the mortality of the corals, he rang up his supervisor at the time — Georgia Tech marine ecologist Mark Hay.
Hay recalled an etching he'd seen years earlier in the Fiji Museum depicting an old sailing vessel transporting perhaps hundreds of tons of dried sea cucumbers. It's an amount nowhere near what he's observed in the modern ocean where these squishy animals have been harvested as a delicacy to near oblivion.
"And so they must have been super abundant at one time," says Hay. "And so we had wanted to [ask], 'OK, if there were that many of them, what were they doing? And what's their real role in the world?’"
With so few sea cucumbers in most places, however, there'd been no way to answer these questions. But off the island of Mo'orea where Clements was working, there were a few bays with enough of the critters to run a simple experiment.
This was the approach: The team would identify natural patches where sea cucumbers hung out. In some, they'd remove the resident sea cukes. In others, they'd leave them alone. In both, they'd plant corals and then watch what happened.
coral sea cucumber
The question they were hoping to answer about coral health was this, says Clements: "Are they more likely to get sick when we've taken the cucumbers out?”
And so the study plan was hatched.
A rough and bloody start
In early 2022, Cody Clements was three hours into his field season. He was examining a large coral colony when a searing pain tore through his right hand. Clements looked down to find a giant moray eel had bit down and wasn't letting go. Instead, it was thrashing.
It all happened so fast, Clements recalls. And before he knew it, the eel — uncharacteristically — let him go. Clements thought he might bleed out, but fortunately he made it back to his boat and then to shore. The local hospital patched him up the best they could, but ultimately he went to Tahiti where a top-notch hand surgeon managed to reattach his thumb.
"He did a really great job! I mean, compared to what it looked like the day of," says Clements.
Ten weeks later, he was back in the water to begin his experiments anew. The rest of the field work went off without a hitch, and the results left no doubt. Wherever sea cucumbers were removed, there was "15-fold more death" of the whole corals, says Hay.
They ran a similar experiment in Palmyra Atoll — a small island about a thousand miles south of Hawaii with what Hay calls “no permanent human population.”
"You have to get special permission to go within 50 miles of it," he said.
The reefs of Palmyra differed from Mo'orea in important ways — they're more isolated and therefore more intact.
"I remember getting in the water at this site that's called Crazy Corals," says Clements. "I literally gasped. I was like, 'Oh my god. I've never seen corals like this.'" Some were as large as buildings. Clements was immersed in a pageant of underwater life. "There aren't many places like that left in the world.”
Clements and Hay found a similar result, though less pronounced, among the corals in Palmyra Atoll. "Part of the difference is that our time on Palmyra was limited," says Hay, "and the experiment did not run for as long." And of course, the Palmyra corals as a whole seemed to be in much better health.
Still, tissue mortality more than doubled without the sea cucumbers.
A slow-burning fuse
Hay thinks the reason for the increased mortality at both the Mo'orea and Palmyra reefs may be related to the vast volume of sand that sea cucumbers process.
"We think of these sea cucumbers as little Roombas that run around and take sand in," says Hay. "They digest microbes out of it. And so the waste that would otherwise accumulate on the bottom — it's not being left there to heat up and grow microbes, many of which could be pathogenic."
The idea is that fewer microbes mean less disease, which translates into healthier coral. But ocean warming and pollution encourage more microbes and more disease, especially as sea cucumbers have been overexploited.
Hay likens it to a slow-burning fuse that we lit 100 to 200 years ago when the massive harvests of sea cucumbers were well underway. What we may have been doing for decades, he argues, is removing these pudgy custodians of the reef at the same time we've introduced a barrage of other threats. "And all of a sudden," he says, "it's blowing up on us. We've lost huge amounts of corals in the last several decades.”
"I have children that are in their mid to late 30's," Hay says. "I can't show them [a reef] anywhere in the Caribbean like when they were born.”
Hay says a considerable amount of the global loss of corals is due to disease. The role that sea cucumbers play in suppressing coral mortality has been "just a missed part of the ecosystem that we didn't understand was important," he argues.
Kaylie Pascoe, a coral reef biologist currently in a PhD program at the University of Arizona, said the design of the study was elegant.
"We know sea cucumbers are the filters of the sea," says Pascoe, who wasn't involved in the study. "But putting the two together — looking at coal disease and sea cucumber abundance — I thought was really unique."
Pascoe appreciated that corals were planted for these experiments, but she'd like to know the impact that sea cucumbers have on corals growing naturally. Still, she says the research brings to mind a possible solution — the Hawaiian custom of "Kapu," which basically means a no-harvest time.
"Maybe that sort of practice could be applied to sea cucumbers," she says, to allow them to grow back and do their job — "filtering sand and microbes and bacteria for the coral's health, creating the habitat for all the marine organisms."
It's an idea that resonates for Cody Clements, especially for Holothuria atra, the particular species of sea cucumber that he examined in this study, which he and his colleagues argue has little economic value on its own.
"Sea cucumbers provide an extra level of insurance against the things that are causing coral decline," says Clements. "Doesn't mean it's gonna fix everything, but we want to give them as much of a fighting chance as we can.” ~
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237026196/the-lowly-sea-cucumber-may-be-helping-to-protect-coral-reefs-against-disease?ft=nprml&f=1002
Mary:
The relationship between the sea cucumbers and coral is not only fascinating, and could help with coral restoration and preservation, it is a reminder to approach natural ecosystems as just that — systems. Seeing a system only as a collection of individuals is inadequate and misleading. Think of what happened when the apex predators were removed from the ecosystem in places like Yellowstone. Major changes in not only wildlife but vegetation and watercourses, that only became visible when the wolves were allowed return, and the ecosystem was restored.
*
METHANE AND GLOBAL WARMING
A new satellite will measure global methane emissions, but why does agriculture's contribution remain so elusive?
The team behind the world's most advanced methane-monitoring satellite, MethaneSat, are keen on metaphors about cleaning. "About the size of a washing machine," was how environmental scientist Steven Wofsy, described the orbiting object at a press conference ahead of its launch. "Like a push-broom," was his phrase for its capacity to scan the surface of the Earth.
The metaphors are apt. Methane is a particularly dirty greenhouse gas, driving about 30% of the heating the planet has experienced so far. It breaks down in the atmosphere in just 12 years, which is much sooner than the centuries taken by CO2 – but it is also around 80 times more powerful over a 20-year time span.
With 60% of global methane emissions coming from human activities, reductions are essential to reaching the world's climate change targets. Equally, if not addressed in a timely way, it could contribute to the passing of dangerous tipping points that lead to rapid and irreversible change around the globe.
MethaneSat aims to help by providing an independent source of methane monitoring, with a primary focus on methane leaked from oil and gas fields – such as the recent, months-long mega leak in Kazakhstan, which resulted in the release of 127,000 tonnes of the potent gas. By supplementing existing satellite data with even more precise measurements, MethaneSat hopes to provide a near-comprehensive view of global leaks.
The new MethaneSat aims to detect methane leaked from oil and gas fields around the world
Yet the oil and gas industry is also far from the only source of human-caused methane emissions. Agriculture is in fact the largest human source of methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, at almost 40%. Energy is in second at around 37%, and waste in third.
Within agriculture, flooded rice fields account for 8% of total human-linked emissions, but belches and manure from livestock are the biggest contributors, with cattle the biggest single offenders. In California, the non-profit coalition Climate Trace found that one single cattle feedlot produced more methane than the state's biggest oil and gas fields.
"If we don't reduce emissions from the food system we won't meet the 1.5C target," sums up Mario Herrero, a professor of sustainable food systems at Cornell University in New York, who oversaw the methane calculations used in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
"Animal numbers are increasing like crazy, thus methane is increasing. We have to reduce emissions from livestock.”
So why is farming's methane taking the back-seat in terms of global attention? And what can be done to address this climate-action blindspot?
Monitoring Methane
The rationale for focussing on oil and gas activities is that easy wins should be tackled first. "If you're looking to have the biggest impact and make the biggest difference, it's reasonable to focus on oil and gas first," according to Mark Brownstein, a senior vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the environmental non-profit funding MethaneSat and working in partnership with Google on the project. "There's fewer actors involved than in agriculture," he told reporters. And "there's also the resources there to solve it”.
Conversely, agriculture's methane output is more elusive. Aerial remote sensing measurements, such as those taken from aircraft or drones, can capture methane leaks, says Aaron Davitt, principal analyst on remote sensing for the non-profit WattTime, but these technologies can only be deployed in limited regions for limited amounts of time.
Plus, even knowing where to direct remote sensors or satellites to look in the first place can be fraught, adds Sam Schiller, chief executive of Carbon Yield, a firm that helps farmers adapt to climate change. "In most parts of the world, public datasets of livestock facilities are hard to come by.”
So can more precise satellites help? "In the last five years, satellites have revolutionised our knowledge and understanding of methane emissions for the better," says Antoine Halff, chief analyst and co-founder at Kayrros, an environmental intelligence company. "Thanks to satellites, we can not only track the large emissions events known as 'super-emitters' with great accuracy, but also measure overall emissions at the basin or country level. Importantly, we can do so in a way that is completely independent and verifiable."
According to Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, a biogeochemical scientist at National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, who is leading MethaneSat's agricultural research, that capacity will only increase in relation to agriculture too. The new satellite's ability to map methane at a precision of 2 ppb (parts per billion) means it will be the first satellite well suited to measuring agricultural emissions, she says. "That number might not mean a lot to your readers, but to me it is the same precision I could get from an instrument on the ground – which is extraordinary.”
There are still technical limitations, however. In terms of methane from livestock, small groups of animals pose problems for satellite monitoring, as do farms in places where agriculture is not the primary emissions source. "I'm also not sure how well we will be able to do sheep, which have smaller emissions than cows," Mikaloff-Fletcher adds. On rice production, meanwhile, satellites cannot see through cloud and nearby wetlands can complicate the data: "It is going to be more challenging," she says.
There are also limitations as a result of policy. A Global Methane Pledge to reduce emissions by at least 30% by 2030, agreed at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, does not include an agriculture target. The agreement only talks about providing farmers with "incentives and partnerships", rather focusing on "all feasible reductions" that the energy industry is tasked with, says Nusa Urbanic, chief executive at Changing Markets Foundation, a campaign organization.
This reluctance to confront agriculture's emissions problem can be seen at a national level too. The US has a provision that exempts farmers from giving detailed emissions accounts. The EU recently removed a target for agricultural methane from its new 2040 climate goal.
Why the reluctance? According to Halff, while fossil fuel companies are "treated as certified carbon villains", there is a "different aura around farming" where small family farms can sit alongside larger, corporate operations.
There are some positive moves from industry to tackle the problem. A Dairy Methane Action Alliance has seen six of the world's largest dairy companies sign up to reducing their output, says Marcelo Mena, the former environment minister of Chile and now chief executive of the philanthropic Global Methane Hub. The meat sector, however, "has not shown the same level of commitment, and needs to do a lot more”.
The key to further progress, Herrero emphasizes, is "less but better" production of livestock. Methane from enteric fermentation – especially cow burps – is tricky to solve, but new breeding and feeding techniques could help.
Experiments with red algae in dairy-cow's feed suggest it may achieve reductions in methane, Herrero says. Meanwhile, in Japan, over 35% of food waste is recycled as pig feed, helping create a more circular food economy.
But human diets may still be the ultimate blind spot holding up methane reduction. Of various measures that the EU could adopt to reach the UN Environment Program's recommendation of a 40-45% reduction of global methane by 2030, a Changing Markets report found that 50% of consumers would need to eat less meat and dairy.
More information on the extent of agriculture's methane problem could help shift this reluctance, for politicians and consumers alike. And here, once again, more independent monitoring and reporting will be key, says Herrero.
Not just satellites are needed, he says, but methane sensors in individual barns. Plus a global methane observatory to coordinate the data. If contributing to the latter was part of the Paris Agreement and nations' individual pledges on climate action, it could help "ensure continuous monitoring”.
Ultimately though, Herrero reflects, "we can't wait to have the perfect monitoring system to act on methane.
"We need to keep trying things, even though our knowledge is imperfect.”
*
A VACCINE FOR DEPRESSION?
One sunny day this fall, I caught a glimpse of the new psychiatry. At a mental hospital near Yale University, a depressed patient was being injected with ketamine. For 40 minutes, the drug flowed into her arm, bound for cells in her brain. If it acts as expected, ketamine will become the first drug to quickly stop suicidal drive, with the potential to save many lives. Other studies of ketamine are evaluating its effect as a vaccination against depression and post-traumatic stress. Between them, the goal is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of mental illness itself.
Depression is the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 30 percent of Americans at some point in their lives. But despite half a century of research, ubiquitous advertising, and blockbuster sales, antidepressant drugs just don’t work very well. They treat depression as if it were caused by a chemical imbalance: Pump in more of one key ingredient, or sop up another, and you will have fixed the problem.
But the correspondence between these chemicals (like serotonin) and depression is relatively weak. An emerging competitive theory, inspired in part by ketamine’s effectiveness, has it that psychiatric disease is less about chemical imbalance than structural changes in the brain—and that a main cause of these changes is psychological stress. “I really do think stress is to mental illness as cigarettes are to heart disease,” says Gerard Sanacora, the psychiatry professor running the ketamine trial at Yale.
The theory describes stress grinding down individual neurons gradually, as storms do roof shingles. This, in turn, changes the nature of their connections to one another and the structure of the brain. Ketamine, along with some similar molecules, acts to strengthen the neuron against that damage, affecting not just the chemistry of the brain but also its structure.
Mental hospitals don’t usually see patients until they break: a brain shaped by vulnerable genes, wrecked by the stress of loss or trauma. This isn’t how it works with other sicknesses: heart disease, cancer, AIDS. Detected early, these conditions can often be managed. Crises averted.
If Sanacora and like-minded researchers are right, we may be on the cusp of a sea change that allows for a similar approach to mental health. The new approaches may prevent mental illness before it hits, by delivering a vaccination for the mind.
The need for progress could hardly be more urgent: Of all illnesses, neuropsychiatric diseases are estimated to put the heaviest burden on society. Nearly half of Americans are affected by some sort of mental disorder at some point in life. Suicides, 90 percent of them among the mentally ill, take 40,000 Americans every year—more than murder or car crashes. Since 2005, the suicide rate among U.S. war veterans has nearly doubled; in the first half of 2012, more service members died by suicide than in combat. Few medical failures are more flagrant than psychiatry’s impotence to save these people.
At the same time, treatment can be woefully ineffective. Less than a third of depression patients respond to a drug within 14 weeks, according to the 2006 STAR*D trial, the largest clinical test of antidepressants. After six months and multiple drugs, only half of patients recovered. Thirty-three percent don’t respond to any drug at all. When the pills do work, they are slow—a deadly risk, given that people with mood disorders kill themselves more often than anyone else.
Our treatments work so poorly in part because we don’t really understand what they do. Serotonin, the most common target for current antidepressants, is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries messages in the brain. But it was first found, in 1935, in the gut. Serotonin’s name comes from blood serum, where Cleveland Clinic scientists discovered it in 1948, noting that the chemical helps with clotting.
One sunny day this fall, I caught a glimpse of the new psychiatry. At a mental hospital near Yale University, a depressed patient was being injected with ketamine. For 40 minutes, the drug flowed into her arm, bound for cells in her brain. If it acts as expected, ketamine will become the first drug to quickly stop suicidal drive, with the potential to save many lives. Other studies of ketamine are evaluating its effect as a vaccination against depression and post-traumatic stress. Between them, the goal is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of mental illness itself.
Depression is the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 30 percent of Americans at some point in their lives. But despite half a century of research, ubiquitous advertising, and blockbuster sales, antidepressant drugs just don’t work very well. They treat depression as if it were caused by a chemical imbalance: Pump in more of one key ingredient, or sop up another, and you will have fixed the problem.
But the correspondence between these chemicals (like serotonin) and depression is relatively weak. An emerging competitive theory, inspired in part by ketamine’s effectiveness, has it that psychiatric disease is less about chemical imbalance than structural changes in the brain—and that a main cause of these changes is psychological stress. “I really do think stress is to mental illness as cigarettes are to heart disease,” says Gerard Sanacora, the psychiatry professor running the ketamine trial at Yale.
The theory describes stress grinding down individual neurons gradually, as storms do roof shingles. This, in turn, changes the nature of their connections to one another and the structure of the brain. Ketamine, along with some similar molecules, acts to strengthen the neuron against that damage, affecting not just the chemistry of the brain but also its structure.
Mental hospitals don’t usually see patients until they break: a brain shaped by vulnerable genes, wrecked by the stress of loss or trauma. This isn’t how it works with other sicknesses: heart disease, cancer, AIDS. Detected early, these conditions can often be managed. Crises averted.
If Sanacora and like-minded researchers are right, we may be on the cusp of a sea change that allows for a similar approach to mental health. The new approaches may prevent mental illness before it hits, by delivering a vaccination for the mind.
The need for progress could hardly be more urgent: Of all illnesses, neuropsychiatric diseases are estimated to put the heaviest burden on society. Nearly half of Americans are affected by some sort of mental disorder at some point in life. Suicides, 90 percent of them among the mentally ill, take 40,000 Americans every year—more than murder or car crashes. Since 2005, the suicide rate among U.S. war veterans has nearly doubled; in the first half of 2012, more service members died by suicide than in combat. Few medical failures are more flagrant than psychiatry’s impotence to save these people.
At the same time, treatment can be woefully ineffective. Less than a third of depression patients respond to a drug within 14 weeks, according to the 2006 STAR*D trial, the largest clinical test of antidepressants. After six months and multiple drugs, only half of patients recovered. Thirty-three percent don’t respond to any drug at all. When the pills do work, they are slow—a deadly risk, given that people with mood disorders kill themselves more often than anyone else.
Our treatments work so poorly in part because we don’t really understand what they do. Serotonin, the most common target for current antidepressants, is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries messages in the brain. But it was first found, in 1935, in the gut. Serotonin’s name comes from blood serum, where Cleveland Clinic scientists discovered it in 1948, noting that the chemical helps with clotting.
When Betty Twarog, a 25-year-old Ph.D. student at Harvard, later found serotonin in neurons, she wasn’t taken seriously. At that time, brain signals were thought to be purely electrical impulses that leapt between cells. Twarog called this old idea “sheer intellectual idiocy,” as Gary Greenberg reports in his book Manufacturing Depression. Working at the Cleveland Clinic in 1953, she found serotonin in the brains of rats, dogs, and monkeys.
Twarog didn’t know yet what serotonin was doing there, but a clue came soon from D.W. Woolley, a biochemist at Rockefeller University, in New York. In 1954 Woolley pointed out in a paper that lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, is chemically similar to serotonin and is processed similarly in the brain. Since LSD “calls forth in man mental disturbances resembling those of schizophrenia,” he wrote, another drug affecting serotonin might be used to treat schizophrenia.
Twarog’s original paper would take years to percolate through the male-dominated field, but her work and Woolley’s would become accepted as evidence of how important chemicals like serotonin could be to brain signaling. The discovery was a breakthrough for neuroscience—but it also birthed a misleading, long-lived belief about mental illness. “The thesis of this paper,” Woolley wrote, “is that … serotonin has an important role to play in mental processes and that the suppression of its action results in a mental disorder. In other words, it is the lack of serotonin which is the cause of the disorder.”
Around the same time, other researchers stumbled on the first antidepressants, iproniazid and imipramine. Intended to treat tuberculosis and schizophrenia, respectively, these drugs also happened to make some patients “inappropriately happy.” Researchers found that the drugs elevated levels of serotonin, along with related neurotransmitters. This began a huge search to find chemically similar drugs that worked better as antidepressants.
Iproniazid was the first of a class of medicines that block an enzyme from breaking down serotonin, as well as dopamine and norepinephrine, two other neurotransmitters. The chief downside of these drugs, called monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), is that they require a strict diet: no aged cheeses, wine, beer, or cured meats. Combined with these foods, the drugs can cause deadly spikes in blood pressure, a hassle that often inclines patients to ditch them. (The novelist David Foster Wallace took an MAOI for decades; in part to escape the food restrictions, he got off the drug months before his suicide.) On the other hand, tricyclic antidepressants, like imipramine, work by blocking the re-absorption of serotonin and norepinephrine. The cost is a host of side effects, from dry mouth to weight gain to erectile dysfunction and loss of libido.
The next generation of drugs focused on fine-tuning the same mechanisms, and had somewhat improved side effects. A new class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, arrived in the ’80s, bringing huge commercial successes like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil. Since SSRIs are more specifically focused on serotonin, they were heralded as cleaner options; but they are not much more effective at lifting mood than the older drugs.
We often take for granted the diabetes analogy for depression: If you are depressed, it is because you need serotonin, just as a diabetic person needs insulin. Drug companies often say that mood disorder is caused by a “chemical imbalance” in serotonin or a signal like it. One ad for Zoloft, the blockbuster antidepressant, featured a sad white circle crawling cutely beneath a gray cloud; the voice-over boasted that depression may be “related to an imbalance of natural chemicals in the brain. Zoloft works to correct this imbalance.”
But the evidence for this story is slim. Prozac raises serotonin levels within hours, yet doesn’t change mood for weeks. When scientists deplete serotonin in healthy people, it does not make them sad. And when doctors measure serotonin levels in the cerebrospinal fluid of depressed people, they do not find a consistent deficiency; one 2008 study even found increased levels of serotonin in depressed people’s brains.
The drug tianeptine, discovered in the late ‘80s, decreases serotonin levels yet relieves depression. And studies have shown that people falling in love show lower, not higher, levels of serotonin.
Serotonin is clearly not just a feel-good chemical. If a serotonin-based drug like Zoloft makes you happier, it works in some other, indirect way. As psychiatrist Ronald Pies, editor of Psychiatric Times, put it in 2011, “The ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”
Meanwhile, as serotonin falls far short of explaining depression, a more likely candidate is emerging.
Stress in moderation is not harmful, but motivating. Cortisol, a stress hormone, cycles daily; synchronizing with sunlight, it helps arouse us for the day. In health, the hormone spikes when we need to pay attention: a test, a job interview, a date. Studies on rodents and humans confirm that brief, mild increases in stress are good for the brain, particularly for memory. During these spikes, neurons are born and expand in the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped finger of tissue responsible for forming new memories and understanding three-dimensional space, and rodents learn better. The student who gets stressed while studying is more alert and remembers more than the one who feels no urgency—up to a point. The problem comes when stress is either too intense at one moment, as in a rape or violent attack, or too sustained, as in long-term poverty, neglect, or abuse.
Stress changes brain architecture differently, depending on how long it lasts. After chronic stress, like childhood trauma, the effect of hormones on brain cells inverts: Neurons in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for mood and impulse control, start to shrink, while those in the amygdala, the almond-shaped seat of fear and anxiety, expand like overgrown shrubbery. But people are differently vulnerable, depending on genes and on prior life experience. “If you take two people and subject them to the same stressful event, for one of them it will be harmful and for the other, no,” says Maurizio Popoli, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Milan. “It is because they perceive the stress differently.”
Stress hormones’ most important effect is to flood parts of the brain with glutamate, the brain’s “go” signal. Used by 80 percent of neurons in the cortex, this key neurotransmitter drives mental processes from memory to mood. Glutamate triggers neurons to generate sudden bursts of electricity that release more glutamate, which can in turn trigger electrical bursts in nearby neurons.
This cellular signaling is called excitation and is fundamental to how information is processed in the brain. Like sexual excitability, it ebbs and flows; a “refractory period” follows each neural firing, or spike, during which the neuron cannot be excited. Other neurotransmitters, like serotonin, are called “modulatory,” because they change the sensitivity of neurons that secrete glutamate (among others). Less than 1 percent of neurons in the cortex signal with these modulators. As Popoli puts it, these modulators are “very important for fine-tuning the machine. But the machine itself is an excitatory machine,” driven by glutamate.
Glutamate moves like a ship between neurons. The sea it sails is called the synapse, the shore it departs from is the presynaptic neuron, and the destination, on the synapse’s far side, is the postsynaptic neuron. Another component, called a glial cell, works to remove glutamate ships from the synapse and recycle them.
The glutamate system is affected at each of these points by stress hormones: They push the first neuron to send more ships, interfere with the glial cell’s recycling, and block the docks on the distant shore. All of these changes increase the number of glutamate ships left in the synapse, flooding the cell with aberrant signals. Indeed, depressed people’s brains, or at least animal models of depression, show all three of these problems, leading to long-lasting excesses of glutamate in key portions of the brain.
This superabundance of glutamate makes a neuron fire sooner than it should and triggers a cascade of signals inside the cell, damaging its structure. Glutamate binds to the neuron and allows in a flood of positively charged particles, including calcium, which are vital to making a neuron fire. But in excess, calcium activates enzymes that break down the neuron. Each neuron has tree-like branches, called dendrites, which are used to communicate with other neurons. When overdosed in glutamate, this canopy of branches shrinks, like a plant doused with herbicide. First the “twigs,” called spines, disappear. After prolonged stress, whole branches recede.
This harmful process, called excitotoxicity, is thought to be involved in bipolar disorder, depression, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s. In depressed brains, many areas are shrunken and underactive, including part of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. The brain changes that cause mood disorders, Sanacora and his colleagues believe, come in part from chronic stress overexciting neurons with glutamate.
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Ketamine works faster than any other drug, and for up to 65 percent of patients who don’t respond to existing treatments.
We usually think of our brains’ adaptability as a good thing. Just as neurons grow during development, the wiring in the adult brain can change. After strokes or other brain injuries, neural signals re-route themselves around damage, allowing even very old people to re-learn lost skills. Psychotherapy and meditation can change patterns of brain activity in ways that persist after treatment.
But the neuroplasticity hypothesis of mental disorder highlights the drawback of such neural liberalism: The human brain’s flexibility allows regeneration, but also renders it vulnerable to being altered by stress. Subjected to the trauma of war, a bad breakup, or a bout of homelessness, a person with a genetic predisposition may find his mind stuck in a loop of chronic fear or depression.
The mood drugs in wide use now focus on modulatory neurotransmitters like serotonin. Ketamine, however, works directly on glutamate signaling. If ketamine is tapping into the root of the problem, this might explain why it works faster, better, and more often than more popular antidepressants.
Not everybody accepts the idea that glutamate and stress are central to depression. Some experts see the effects of stress as downstream effects, not the root cause of mood disorder. “The mechanism of action of a good treatment does not have to be the inverse of a disease mechanism,” says Eric Nestler, an expert on addiction and depression at Mt. Sinai Hospital. Serotonin drugs and ketamine may affect depression indirectly, without a serotonin or glutamate abnormality at the root of depression. Nestler also points out that depression probably includes a diversity of subtypes, without any single cause. He treats depression not as a unified disease, but a constellation of symptoms, each with discrete neural roots.
Even so, we do know that ketamine works faster than any other drug, and for up to 65 percent of patients who don’t respond to existing treatments.
If ketamine turns out to be a psychiatric savior, it will be one with a surprising history. Since 1962 it has been a go-to anesthetic for children in emergency rooms, because it kills pain, muffles consciousness, and rarely causes breathing or heart problems.
Children given ketamine enter “a trance like state of sensory isolation” free of pain, memory, and awareness, as one review put it. Emergency room doctors rely on ketamine to make sure kids have no awareness or memory of, say, the trauma of having a shattered arm set back into place.
On the other hand, ketamine is a well-known recreational drug with potential for abuse. The dissociative trip caused by a moderate dose of ketamine has made it popular in clubs and raves since the 1970s, especially in Asian cities like Hong Kong. Its sedative effect made “special K” a date-rape drug. Doctors, patients, and the government agencies that fund research are often suspicious of a drug known to cause hallucinations, as they have been of psychedelics like psilocybin and ecstasy, despite their potential for treating depression or anxiety. Each tends to show fast results after a single dose, like ketamine.
In 1999, the same year ketamine was declared a controlled substance in the United States, Yale researchers happened upon its antidepressant power. A team co-led by Dennis Charney, now dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, in Manhattan, and John Krystal, now chair of the department of psychiatry at Yale, used ketamine to study glutamate: Since ketamine was known to block glutamate receptors, it might show what role the excitatory neurotransmitter plays in the depressed brain. To their surprise, they found that the drug made patients feel better, often within hours. A single dose, much smaller than what’s used for anesthesia, tended to last for weeks.
Since 1999, a dozen studies have replicated the results, often on patients who failed to respond to other drugs. Ketamine also works for bipolar people in depressive phases, without triggering mania, as classic antidepressants sometimes do. The majority of depressed people studied have responded to ketamine. For patients who are often suicidal, this fast response can be lifesaving. Some 50 doctors in the U.S. now offer ketamine infusions for depression.
The first evidence in humans that ketamine might work to prevent mood disorder came from the battlefield.
Many leaders in the field see the emergence of ketamine, and future fast antidepressants based on glutamate, as a great leap forward for the field. “In my mind,” Sanacora told NPR recently, “it is the most exciting development in mood-disorder treatment in the last 50 years.”
Ketamine and the old antidepressants both result in fuller neural “trees,” but by different routes, at different speeds. Prozac and other serotonin-based drugs take four to six weeks to kick in. A landmark 2003 Science study by Columbia University’s René Hen and Ronald Duman, now at Yale, found that serotonin-based antidepressants only work if they spur birth of new neurons in the hippocampus.
These new neurons take four to six weeks to mature, roughly the same amount of time that conventional antidepressants take to lift a depressed person’s spirits. A 2010 paper argued that SSRIs like Prozac may work by dampening glutamate release in response to stress. So even old-school antidepressants, when they work, may act on the glutamate system.
Ketamine, on the other hand, seems to act directly on mature neurons, fertilizing them to grow branches more robustly, or protecting them against damage. Ketamine’s key effect is to block glutamate receptors of one type. This causes less calcium to flow into the neuron, reducing the risk of the neuron shrinking or self-destructing.
Today ketamine is offered by psychiatrists and anesthesiologists, at prices ranging from $300 to $1,000 per dose, for people who are morbidly depressed or have chronic pain. Insurance doesn’t usually cover the cost of an infusion, because even though it is FDA approved as an anesthetic, it has not been approved as an antidepressant.
Each new use of a drug requires multiphase clinical trials for FDA approval, usually funded by pharmaceutical companies, which have little incentive to invest in a drug they can’t monetize. Ketamine got its original patent in 1966, and that expired long ago. So even if drug companies steered ketamine through the expensive approval process as an antidepressant, doctors could still prescribe the cheap, generic versions already available for anesthesia instead of pricier, patented versions intended for depression. This is an old story. Lithium carbonate, which also acts on glutamate receptors, is still one of the most reliable drugs for treating bipolar disorder. But lithium, which is an element, can’t be patented. So, despite their effectiveness, these generic pills do not attract many corporate dollars.
One tough truth about mood disorder is that not all forms may ever be curable. Brain-imaging studies have shown structural differences between the white matter in healthy versus bipolar brains. Differences in personality and sleep patterns also persist in bipolar people, even between manic or depressed episodes. The structural changes likely have genetic roots, and once they arise, are difficult or impossible to reverse.
Nevertheless, if a drug prevents a mood disorder from manifesting, it might prevent harmful anatomical changes from ever taking place. Just as a vaccine triggers the body to arm itself against a particular virus, a drug like ketamine, given before the crisis that triggers a breakdown, might protect the brain against the effects of stress. Like a vaccine, the drug might only need to be given once for lasting resilience.
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The first evidence in humans that ketamine might work to prevent mood disorder, not just treat it, came from the battlefield. U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq were treated with various anesthetics, including ketamine. Since ketamine can cause hallucinations, surgeons worried that it might make trauma worse: Scary combat-related hallucinations could put soldiers at higher risk of mental illness.
But they found the opposite. Out of 25,000 service members wounded in Iraq between 2002 and 2007, the data showed, veterans treated with ketamine for burns had lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. Among civilians and soldiers hospitalized for burns, as many as 45 percent end up with PTSD. But soldiers treated with ketamine on the battlefield got PTSD about half as often—even though they had more severe burns requiring more surgeries and longer hospital stays.
Rebecca Brachman, a neuroscientist and recent doctoral graduate from Columbia University, and her supervisor, Christine Denny, tried giving ketamine to mice and then exposing them to stressors. The researchers tested several types of stress, including one in which subject mice are “bullied” by more aggressive mice for two weeks. After this daily hazing, mice ordinarily develop the rodent equivalent of PTSD and depression: freezing in a new space, refusing to interact with other mice, and not moving in a forced swim test.
But the mice “vaccinated” before the bullying fared far better: They didn’t act depressed afterward. Brachman and Denny found that the protection from a single dose lasted for weeks, even though ketamine only stays in the body for a few hours. Though they haven’t tested it yet, it is possible that, like a vaccine, this protection could last for much longer. Their rodent research suggests ketamine may work even better as a prophylactic than as an antidepressant.
Denny says that we may eventually routinely use ketamine to prevent PTSD in combat veterans, rape victims, or survivors of car crashes or mass shootings. Ketamine seems to be most strongly protective in mice when given before stressful events, Brachman says. Since we can’t predict most traumatic life events, this would limit the drug’s utility. But if injected after a trauma yet before the psychological damage sets in—as with the burned soldiers—ketamine may still be protective. Denny is investigating this possibility now.
And in some situations, violent shock is predictable. “You don’t know when an earthquake will happen,” Brachman says, “but we do know when we’re about to send U.N. workers into an area devastated by a disaster.” When people know they are going into an acutely traumatic situation, she imagines, a preventive drug given ahead of time might protect their brains from the long-lasting effects of stress. Think of earthquake aid workers, fire fighters, or rescue workers in Syria, dragging mangled people from rubble.
The idea that a single injection could prevent mood disorders is a radical departure from current psychiatric thinking. But there are some precedents: Talk therapy and mindfulness meditation have long focused on building resilience to stress. Bipolar patients take “neuroprotective” drugs like lithium not to treat current symptoms, but as a protection against future breakdowns, for instance.
Not everyone is confident that ketamine is a safe bet, to be sure. Ketamine’s long-term safety is not known, says Nestler. No lasting ill effects are seen in anesthesia patients, who take much larger doses, but they haven’t received routine treatments, the way it is administered as an antidepressant.
Plus, ketamine’s reputation as a street drug is tough to shake. Many doctors consider the hallucinogenic an unacceptable risk for patients, who they fear may develop a taste for the high. Yale’s Sanacora points out that patients in his trial, who are screened for drug or alcohol abuse, often find the trip feeling unpleasant or disturbing. The psychedelic experience is surreal, he points out, not the mellowing pleasure of a drug like alcohol, Xanax, or heroin. Extreme ketamine trips, referred to as falling in a “K-hole,” are often compared to near-death or unsettling out-of-body experiences; they hardly sound like fun to most people.
But since the antidepressant dose is far lower than the one taken to get high, many patients don’t even notice. Drug companies are also competing to develop a less trippy alternative. Johnson & Johnson is testing a nasal spray form of esketamine, a version of ketamine with less psychoactive impact. A company called Naurex has finished phase II trials of Rapastinel, an injected drug that partially blocks the same glutamate receptors as ketamine, but is not psychedelic.
The ketamine pioneers emphasize that their prevention research is the beginning of a new road, raising hopes, rather than offering an immediate cure. Brachman and Denny stress that ketamine may not be the drug that ultimately makes it into widespread use; like the anti-tubercular drugs in the 1950s that spawned the antidepressant era, it is the first to trail-blaze this new class of psychiatric prophylactics. “What this work shows us is that we can intervene beforehand and create some sort of self-reinforcing stress resilience,” Brachman says. “We didn’t know that before; that’s what’s important. Everything else—should we use it, how should we use it—that all comes later.” ~
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/ketamine-depression-research/
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THE CASE FOR VIEWING DEPRESSION AS A CONSCIOUSNESS DISORDER
Depression involves changes in subjective experience that are hard to explain in psychiatric or scientific terms. A new hypothesis explains depression as an altered state of consciousness.
According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the core symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder include depressed mood and a markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities. These can be accompanied by changes in appetite and weight, sleep disturbances, fatigue, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, a reduced ability to think or concentrate, and sometimes suicidal ideation.
Beyond these clinical symptoms, depressed patients seem to experience the world differently from others. This is reflected in terms used to describe a depressed state, such as feeling “blue” — and there is indeed some evidence that depression alters sensory perception.
Depressed patients also report that their conscious experience has changed or been disturbed such that they feel detached from the world and other people. This aspect of depression is impossible to quantify. Psychiatrists have struggled to understand it.
A new hypothesis seeks to explain the experiential aspect of depression.
In a paper published in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Cecily Whiteley of the London School of Economics describes depression as an altered state of consciousness. Whiteley suggests that thinking about depression in this way has important implications for a neuroscientific understanding of the condition and the emerging field of psychedelic psychiatry.
According to Whiteley, depression involves entrance into a distinct “global state” of consciousness, which involves a major change in the range and quality of a subject’s conscious experiences. It can be regarded as a state of mind similar to dreaming and the psychedelic state, as well as disorders of consciousness such as minimal consciousness and vegetative states.
Thus, depression involves shifting from one global state of consciousness to another. When an individual becomes depressed, they shift from the normal state of wakefulness into the depressive state.
This shift entails a change in conscious experience and mental life, according to Whiteley. It alters the individual’s experience of their body, causing them to feel numb and lethargic and diminishing their sense of agency or control. It distorts their cognitive functions and their self-narrative, reducing their ability to concentrate or think hopefully. It also changes their perception of time, making the future feel closed off. Finally, it alters how they relate to others, making them feel estranged and disconnected.
According to Whiteley, thinking of depression as a global state of consciousness could help understand why no satisfying explanation of the disorder’s mechanics exists. Since we still know so little about how the brain gives rise to any global state of consciousness, the neural mechanisms underlying depression lie well beyond our reach.
Can psychedelics beat depression?
Whiteley further argues that her proposed depressive state of consciousness helps to explain the apparent successes of psychedelic psychiatry.
Although still in its infancy, research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has already yielded some positive results. In particular, psilocybin and ketamine show potential benefits for patients with depression and other mental disorders.
Psychedelics are well known to produce profound changes in consciousness, and they may do so by triggering a transition from one global state of consciousness to another. In the case of depression, they might be able to shift patients from the depressed to the psychedelic state, eventually reinstating the normal state of wakefulness.
Although largely hypothetical right now, Whiteley’s thesis could have clinical applications. For example, perhaps neuroimaging techniques could distinguish between different global states of consciousness by measuring the complexity of long-range connections in the brain. If, as Whiteley claims, depression is one such global state, this method could provide an objective diagnostic test.
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/depression-consciousness-disorder/
Mary:
Oriana:
I've experienced both chroniic and agitated depression; some experts say that agitated depression is the equivalent of the manic state in bipolar disorder, just without the happy, elated feeling. I'd call agitated depression a negative manic state: the brain spewing increasingly more delusional negative thoughts, as if on some horrific version of "speed" (the street drug). In my younger years I tended more to stuporous depression; after monopause, to the agitated kind.
My miracle was finally choosing not to be depressed. In order for that to have happened, I had to understand that for me depression was a behavior: sitting motionless for hours (in my younger years) or indulging in extremely negative thoughts, and having crying fits. And then one day, standing not far from my computer, I realized (with the help of some reading) that I was training myself to fall apart faster and faster (the key was the phrase "I am a total failure") -- and that I could choose not to say that, to suppress the crying fit, and to do some work instead. And I could spend the dwindling rest of my life being miserable, or I could at least do some work.
Feeling happy at will wasn't yet possible. I couldn't remember happy things either, except for "I wanted to live in California, and I do live in California." There may have been a couple more positive things that I could summon with great effort. So it wasn't really happy thoughts that saved me -- I was a good two months or so from being able to feel happy over anything. What I still had, and what saved me more than anything, was my ability to write -- as long as it wasn't about myself. I could analyze poems, for instance -- that worked beautifully. I could write book reviews.
I was terrifically lucky to have something to jump into, keeping my brain busy at a high level, leaving no space for depression. The entrance door simply disappeared -- I felt a kind of jolt of electricity go through me when the brain started rewiring itself. So the recovery was both sudden (the moment of decision) and gradual (keeping busy, even compulsively busy, until I felt a return of positive memories and ability to enjoy music, food, the beauty all around me, good books, the many blessings in my life).
There have been a few times when I came close to getting depressed again -- and again, I decided not to. I said to myself, "I will not cry" -- and I didn't cry, just to keep my promise to myself. I gloried in my new strength (for some odd reason, I never lost the self-image of being a strong person -- never mind that I was simultaneously also a total failure in life). Different techniques work for different people; for me it was choosing not to be depressed and choosing to do productive work instead.
Later it turned out that my best friend, years ahead of me, also ended her depression by making a choice not to be depressed, mainly for the sake of not huring her family. Then I met a man who pretty much did the same thing, but for him it was also enormously important to decide that he did marry the right woman after all, and was very lucky to be married to her. And I know that for some choosing to engage in intense physical exercise can lead to healing.
In all these cases, it could be said that we did our own cognitive therapy on ourselves, and chose not to indulge in garbage thoughts and suicidal imagery. And we were also lucky, having somehow found enough strength to pull ourselves away from the edge. Even now, I sometimes remind myself that if I commit suicide I won't know what happened next -- and I'm always curious about happens next. So add curiosity to the things that saved me.
Would it be better with ketamine? I'm not sure I would have gained the wisdom. But if ketamine works for some, that's great. I still feel the main thing is to want not to be depressed, not to hide in that dark lair of self-pity and catastrophizing rather than engage with life -- both its struggles and its joys.
One last thing: I agree with a woman who casually said, "All mental illness is paying attention to the wrong things." And blessedly I knew that it is possible to be selective about things we pay attention to. We can count, over and over, the mistakes we made in life, or we can count our blessings. The choice is ours, and it's always getting late -- too late to be wasting what life remains.
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ending on beauty:
WHEATCHILD
When I was so new I was let
run naked, I’d step
into wheat. The stalks closed
above my head.
Laughing I would enter
It sways above me still:
the soul has no past tense.
Laughing I step out,
a child clothed with the sun,
into the arms of the world.
~ Oriana
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