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NADIA
I first saw you against monumental
statues of workers and peasants
flags and posters hammers and sickles
Marx’s beard in a blizzard
and you a miracle
in winter I’d cross
into your language
snowdrifts of Nadia Nadia Nadia
snow marbled our shoulders
jeweled eyelashes
Nadia here there are no blizzards
the world doesn’t turn
blank as paper
we live in a postcard Nadia
in a botanical garden
here the roads end
in eroding cliffs
the sky sails long ships of clouds
the wind doesn’t carry dry leaves
illegible letters from home
in permafrost of forgotten dreams
after the black ice of years
I remember your name means Hope
refugee of memory
guest and ghost of my mirrors
~ Oriana
*
THOMAS BROWNE, POET OF OBLIVION
Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and his wife, Lady Dorothy BrowneBack when the English language was still young and impressionable, a London-born physician who took up the pen as a gentleman’s hobby made quite a dent, fathering a dictionary page’s worth of words we still use and tend to think of as ageless — “medical,” “suicide,” “exhaustion,” “hallucination” and “coma” among them.
The handful of books and tracts in which these words first appeared was even more remarkable than the coinages, a body of work as strange and unclassifiable as any in English literature.
That this doctor’s name — Thomas Browne — no longer keeps company, at least in America, with those of Shakespeare, Chaucer and other architects of the language would have come as a great disappointment to a multitude of other authors who revered Browne and passed his writings along, generation to generation, like a kind of formula for the philosopher’s stone.
Coleridge numbered him among his “first favourites.” Emily Dickinson kept an edition of Browne at her bedside. Melville, whose style was deeply indebted to him, called him a “crack’d Archangel.” Virginia Woolf said he paved the way for all psychological novelists, and Borges, who translated him, once described himself as just another word for Browne (and for Kafka and Chesterton).
Browne was a reverent Christian who professed to care more about his place in the next life than his reputation in this one. “Urne-Buriall,” his most memorable work, is a field guide to earthly oblivion, a poetic compendium of his obsessively collected knowledge about death, decay, burial, burning and the cruel brevity of human memory. Even “grave-stones,” he wrote, “tell truth scarce fourty years.”
But the soaring ambition and style of Browne’s writing have always belied its pious humility, and it seems that he is now once again in the process of being exhumed and immortalized, as he almost certainly expected he would be. New York Review Books Classics is issuing a new edition of “Urne-Buriall,” paired with Browne’s other landmark, “Religio Medici,” both works edited and annotated by Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard and Ramie Targoff of Brandeis, husband-and-wife Renaissance scholars.
New Directions published an elegantly slim edition of “Urne-Buriall” in the fall of 2010, with a preface in the form of a passage from W. G. Sebald’s 1995 novel, “Rings of Saturn,” in which Sebald presents the factual Browne as a kind of fictional creature. (The New Directions book, with a cover by the designer Rodrigo Corral, looks like a Minimalist painting and has shown up in unlikely places; the store at the New Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan carries it, alongside books about contemporary artists.)
The most ambitious Browne enterprise in the works is a new edition of his complete writings, commissioned by Oxford University Press was published in 2017, the first such edition in more than 80 years.
Taken together the efforts represent the most sustained attention devoted to Browne since the 1960s. And though it’s probably too much to hope that he will become a household name, the revival might at least give him a shot at rejoining the list of literary monuments people complain about not having read, like Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.”
“The prose is decidedly not Hemingway — it can be a workout,” said Mr. Greenblatt in a joint telephone interview with Ms. Targoff, who grew more interested in Browne while working on a forthcoming book about the concept of posthumous love in Renaissance England. “But Browne is like this kind of wonderful half-open secret that runs through modernism,” Mr. Greenblatt said.
He worked on the introduction to the Browne book as he was finishing “The Swerve,” his best-selling 2011 history of the rediscovery of the Roman poet Lucretius, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. As subjects, Lucretius and Browne could hardly be less alike: One was an Epicurean and a stone-cold materialist whose influence steered philosophy and science away from religion; the other, an Anglican stalwart who believed in witches and who, in a letter to his son, once warned of the spiritual dangers of reading Lucretius, “there being divers impieties in it.”
But Browne’s cosmology led him at times by strange gyrations into Lucretian territory. He considered all things in the world — beautiful or ugly, ordinary or outlandish — to be equivalent expressions of divine will because he conceived of God essentially as an artist. “There are no Grotesques in nature,” he wrote.
Lucretius and Browne both took deep pleasure in the peculiarities of the natural world. Both were fascinated by what happens when we dream; both, for different reasons, took a dim view of romantic love and of human pride. (Lucretius: “Some wear themselves to death because they wish a statue or a title.” Browne: “In vain do individuals hope for Immortality, or any patent from oblivion.”)
To the Romantics, who rediscovered Browne, and to many modern and postmodern writers, his eccentric antirationalism struck a chord, one mostly out of keeping with his time and his piety.
He was the kind of Christian thinker, after all, who could wonder whether Lazarus would have a legal right to reclaim his possessions from his heirs after he re-emerged from the grave. He could write with great verve about why most cultures buried their dead lying down, but some had the bodies standing erect; about the macabre practice of inhaling a dying person’s last breath; and about the even more disturbing one of drinking a loved one’s ashes (a custom revived and adapted by Keith Richards, who claimed to have snorted some of his father’s remains.)
As an amateur scientist and product of the early Enlightenment, Browne kept a menagerie of exotic animals in his home, and he traced the ubiquity of the geometric pattern known as the quincunx through plants, insects and crystals. But his research might be described more accurately as nature poetry than as science, and his greatest delight seemed to be in things that defied categorization — or, as Borges once wrote, referring to the distant past, “things that can enrich ignorance.”
Most unusual for a Christian who believed in resurrection, Browne seemed to suggest that individuality itself was a slippery concept, sounding like a meta-fictionist centuries before postmodernism.
“There have been many Diogenes, and as many Tymons, though but few of that name; men are lived over again,” he wrote in “Religio Medici.” He even seemed to have powers of prognostication, foreshadowing the strange fate of his own remains after his death: His skull, stolen after his coffin was accidentally broken open in 1840, was displayed under a bell jar in a hospital museum until its reinterment in 1921. (“To be gnaw’d out of our graves, to have our sculs made drinking-bowls and our bones turned into pipes,” Browne wrote, “are Tragicall abominations.”)
In the book’s introduction, Ms. Targoff and Mr. Greenblatt write, “Browne’s voice is the voice of a vanished world, a world utterly routed by our own conceptions of rational inquiry, scientific proof and common sense.”
Working on the book, Mr. Greenblatt said, was like going down a “magical rabbit hole.”
“My great hope — and it has everything to do with pleasure rather than virtue,” he said, “is that people who are not compelled to do it will stumble across him again.”
Browne probably hoped they would too, but he knew far too much about fate to count on it: “Oblivion is not to be hired; The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been.”
Ultimate reliance on the imagination is what has earned Browne admirers like Herman Melville, Jorge Luis Borges, and W. G. Sebald, all writers who shared his sense of endless wonder. Virginia Woolf wrote of him: “We are in the presence of sublime imagination; now rambling through one of the finest lumber rooms in the world—a chamber stuffed from floor to ceiling with ivory, old iron, broken pots, urns, unicorns’ horns, and magic glasses full of emerald lights and blue mystery.” That blue mystery began in Browne himself—“There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us,” he wrote in “Religio Medici”—and extended out to the natural world, a “universall and publik Manuscript” that he never tired of reading.
. . . Browne, who counselled with intimations of Ecclesiastes that “it is a vanity to waste our dayes in the blinde pursuit of knowledge” is an antidote to . . . doomsayers and optimists and all those who prey on the human need to understand. He knew very little. We should all be so wise.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/nyrb-classics-thomas-browne.html#ixzz2JPsbpgGy
Oriana:
I'm fascinated by Browne's introduction of many words to the English vocabulary. Here is a more comprehensive list:
'ambidextrous', 'antediluvian', 'analogous', 'approximate', 'ascetic',
'anomalous', 'carnivorous', 'coexistence', 'coma', 'compensate',
'computer', 'cryptography', 'cylindrical', 'disruption', 'ergotisms',
'electricity', 'exhaustion', 'ferocious', 'follicle', 'generator',
'gymnastic', 'hallucination', 'herbaceous', 'holocaust', 'insecurity',
'indigenous', 'jocularity', 'literary', 'locomotion', 'medical',
'migrant', 'mucous', 'prairie', 'prostate', 'polarity', 'precocious',
'pubescent', 'therapeutic', 'suicide', 'ulterior', 'ultimate' and
'veterinarian' (~ Wiki)
*
THE “GREATER EUROPE” (Misha Firer)
~ Vladimir Putin, a formerly atheistic member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an organized crime groups fixer who’s currently trying out the bloodstained mantle of Adolf Hitler, arrived at the Chkalovsky Airfield and presented a copy of the “Savior Not Made by Hand” icon to Russian military aviation. Putin gives away real icons only to his KGB buddy Patriarch Killkill.
Fake icon with a saint will provide spiritual air defense, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have shot down six Russian fighters over the past three days including Su-34 and Su-35 that Z-channels claim suffered from “friendly fire” of the Russian air defense.
Russian Defense Ministry vehemently denied those claims but the presentation of the icon proves once again that there’s no smoke from a falling warplane without fire.
A fake icon from the fake president to bless terrorist military to kill more fellow Orthodox Christians is the state of spirituality in Russia in 2024 (Satan bless!) ushered in by the oligarchic regime of Boris Yeltsin who hand-picked Vladimir Putin as an obedient and pliable attaboy.
“Mr. Clinton, this KGB officer set up the persecutor-general with hookers who was supposed to indict me on corruption charges and he withdrew his lawsuit.”
“Wow. This is a perfect president for Russia. A scoundrel just like me! You have my blessings, Mr. Yeltsin.”
A new bright dot shall appear on the night map of North Korea: Wonsan-Kalma Tourist Zone for Ruzzian Tourists (Nazis love alpine skiing). Construction is in full swing.
Soon, it will receive first vacationers from Russia.
The area is 2.8 square kilometer with 37 hotels, 29 shops and a four kilometer beach. It’s completely isolated from 25 million hungry people who live without electricity, central heating, plumbing and hospitals. Tour programs include “Feed a Hungry Korean,” “Shoot Your Security Agent,” “Survive a Day in Gulag” and most popular entertainment program “Squid Game.” The largest group of foreign tourists ever visited Masikroyan ski resort. Ruzzian tourists — for it was zem — complained that the slope wasn’t safe enough and that they saw people crashing into guardrails.
**
Real Pirates of the Caribbeans!
Two Russian tourists hijacked a million dollar speed boat in the Caribbean Sea and have spent the past five years taking tourists for a ride in Crimea.
Entrepreneurs were detained by Sevastopol customs officers because they hadn’t paid any transport taxes and were put on the international wanted list.
They were promised to be taken off the list if they bring another yacht from the Caribbean.
The FSB state security agency delivered instructions to teachers in schools across Russia on how to talk with kids about the interview of Tucker Carlson with Putin.
Russian children will study interviews of Tucker Carlson as part of their school curriculum. A true American and a Russian ̶s̶h̶i̶l̶l̶ patriot.
IS RUSSIA REALLY RUN BY GANGSTER OLIGARCHS?
~ Yekaterina Duntsova, a disqualified anti-war presidential candidate came to say goodbye to Putin’s archenemy Alexey Navalny, along with many thousands of people.
Traditionally, Russians formed a long line to suffer collectively. The line of folks, many of whom are young and were born when Putin was already in power leads to the Cathedral of Quench my Sorrow where the funeral service is being held.
In Russia, as you might have heard, you quench your sorrow with vodka.
The longer the line the more respectful, honorable, and spiritual the endeavor is and worthy of hardships.
Many flew from other towns to catch a glimpse of the dead body of the fighter against corruption who dreamed of the Beautiful Russia of the future.
Thousands of Russians marched the 1.5 mile distance from the cathedral to the cemetery after the hearse with the body of Alexey Navalny chanting: “No to war!” and “Putin is a killer!”
crowd at Navalny’s funeral
This is Mar’ino, a southeastern district of Moscow where Alexey Navalny lived with his family for many years in an apartment in one of these prefabricated bloc high-rise buildings.
Where there are crowds, there are riot police officers and police vans to detain the arrestees.
Women spontaneously hugged Lyudmila Ivanovna, Navalny’s mother outside, and said, “Thank you for your son.” ~
Elena Gold:
The country is burying its hero, because it couldn’t bury its tyrant.
Michael Woodman:
One thing tho’ — why would Puketin allow this funeral to proceed at all? Why didn’t he stick with his plan to have Navalny buried in some forgotten shithole north of the arctic circle?
Allowing the funeral go forward amidst massive amounts of publicity seems to indicate that Puketin felt forced to do so and that this was the ‘lesser evil’. But I can’t understand why allowing a public funeral (and burial) of your arch enemy right in the heart of Moscow, thereby giving the public a martyr to worship and a place to visit and remember him forevermore, is in Puketin’s interest? It would have been trivial for Puketin to block it.
Jay Stepen:
I don’t see it as Pootin gave in and let the family bury Navalny under pressure of public opinion. I think he just knows that people are too weak and two scared to do anything else but shout "Navalny!” a few times and that’s it.
Pootin just knows he’s untouchable, he can do anything to anyone and this funeral is the proof of it.
John Newey:
Very brave people DO exist in Russia after all. They came to say goodbye to another very brave Russian murdered by cowards, led by a piece of shit called Putin, who fear him and what he stands for.
Russia's Consulate in NYC:
As the hearse with Navalny's body was slowly proceeding towards the cemetery this afternoon, Muscovites lining the streets all along its route were throwing flowers at it, in a bravely and desperately defiant gesture of political disobedience and dissent.
One million people left Putin's Russia in the last two years, many if not most of them Navalny supporters, yet still the fascist regime in the Kremlin has not been able to stamp out completely the scattered embers of seemingly impossible hope for freedom simmering beneath the barren surface of societal silence in the land. For everyone among the thousands who came out to bid farewell to the murdered hero today, there are ten or twenty more of those who feel the same way but chose to stay inside for fear of being arrested. ~ Facebook, March 2, 2024
John Bligh:
"Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam" (his soul is at the right hand of God).
Aidan Stenson:
This makes me quite hopeful for Russia’s future.
Toneee:
Putin is doing his best to make sure that Russia doesn’t have a future!
Malcolm Berger:
Surprised no mention of an autopsy being carried out before burial. Was one asked for? So far have not heard the cause of his death.
Peter Roberts:
Alexey Navalny laid down his life for others.
Putin lays down others’ lives for himself.
THE BRITS HAVE DONE IT AGAIN
he Brits have managed to do it again and piss off Vladimir Putin.
Shortly after the death of Alexei Navalny on 16 February, the UK announced it had frozen assets of the six Russian prison bosses in charge of the Arctic penal colony where Mr. Navalny died. The six are also banned from entering the UK.
“It's clear that the Russian authorities saw Navalny as a threat and they tried repeatedly to silence him,'' said UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron. “That's why we're today sanctioning the most senior prison officials responsible for his custody in the penal colony where he spent his final months.’'
Putin responded by instructing the Russian embassy in London to accuse the British government of "trademark UK hypocrisy" and “paying lip service to the principle of sovereignty" while “intervening in Russia's internal affairs.” Someone grab a Ukrainian. They can explain “principle of sovereignty” and “intervening in internal affairs” to the Kremlin. Oh, and “hypocrisy”. ~ Izzy Luggs, Quora
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HOW GERMANY STOPPED BEING NAZI
Well, for one, by 1945, almost all the important Nazis were dead. Defeat in the Second World War was utterly total and completely destroyed the regime. Secondly, it left the entire country in ruins, hated internationally for crimes against humanity the extent of which was beginning to emerge. To look at this and think “I think the government responsible was actually smart and right” would require utter insanity.
Just in case this wasn’t enough, after the war “Germany” did not exist as an independent state, instead, it looked like this:
For years Germany was entirely occupied by four foreign powers. These powers may not have always agreed, but they did agree on one thing: They all absolutely hated Nazis. And absolutely not willing to see the dead movement resurge. ~ Alex Parker, Quora
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Lenin's statue in Yakutsk
Someone:
In midwinter there people generally avoid going outdoors insofar as this is possible. If they have to walk outside for any length of time they tend to walk sideways or kind of backwards because otherwise your breath condenses on your face and freezes into a sort of mask. But they don’t leave their cars on all the time. They’ve got heaters for the engine blocks like they do in Canada.
The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems within Russia, Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and his obsession with his own historical legacy. He wants to go down in history as “the conqueror tzar” and “the collector of lands.” ~ Alexei Navalny
You've been lied to. The real reason for the war is not NATO expansion. It's greed and ambition." ~ Yevgeny Prigozhin
TO BE HAPPY, LIVE LIKE A WOMAN OVER FIFTY
Happiness depends on how we deal with what we are given
Our culture presents us with a misogynistic version of who we older women are. We confront both ageism and gender-specific challenges. As we age, our bodies, our sexuality, and our minds are devalued. There are many negative stereotypes about older women, but my least favorites manifest as mother-in-law jokes. These jokes suggest we are nosy, bossy, judgmental, and in the way. My new book Women Rowing North begins a new conversation about our complexity, challenges, and gifts.
Contrary to cultural stereotypes, many older women are deeply happy. A 2014 Brookings Institute study on happiness and age found that people are least happy in their twenties, thirties, and early forties, and steadily gain an appreciation for life as they age. Indeed, most women become increasingly happy after age 55, with their peak of happiness toward the very end of life.
Dilip Jeste at the University of California, San Diego, found in 2016 that as people age they report higher levels of overall satisfaction, happiness, and well-being, and lower levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. The older the person, the better her mental health tended to be.
Women’s happiness ratings were consistently higher than those of men. Recent census data from the United Kingdom finds that the happiest people are women aged 65 to 79.
There are many theories about why women fare better than men. One is simply that we tend to be healthier and more active. We also are more likely to have close relationships with family and friends. We understand how to hold intimate conversations, talk about our own deepest emotions, and help others discuss theirs. We may have a long-term partner and often have decades-old friendships to support us.
This year I experienced a vivid illustration of the happiness of older women. I switched recreational centers from the university where I have taught for many years to a gym geared toward older people. I noticed a great change in the locker room atmosphere. At the university, the young women were mostly stressed and unhappy. They talked on their phones or to their exercise partners about their weight, finances, studies, and relationship issues. Almost all of them hid their bodies by crouching as they undressed. Except for occasional happy talk about weekends or school holidays, conversation was generally gloomy.
On the other hand, in my new locker room, we older women walk around unselfconsciously naked or in utilitarian underclothes or swimsuits. Our bodies are saggy with plenty of stretch marks, wrinkles, and cellulite, but do we care? Not much.
We are more interested in each other’s faces, which reveal decades of joy and suffering and are often open and awake to the moment.
Older women do talk about their troubles, especially what we call the “organ recitals,” that is, conversations about health issues. Mostly, though, we discuss family, travel, books, movies, and fun. We joke around. For example, one day I heard a woman say, “The kinder you are to them the longer they last.” Another woman asked, “What are you referring to?” Then, one by one, the rest of us chimed in, “Your knees,” “Your bank account,” “Your swimsuit,” and “Your husband.”
How do we manage our many difficulties? I argue that neither our genetics nor our external circumstances determine our happiness. Rather, happiness depends on how we deal with what we are given. Even though we all suffer, we don’t all grow. Not all older women become elders.
Successful resolutions of our developmental challenges don’t just happen. We don’t become our wisest selves without effort. Our growth requires us to become skilled in perspective taking, in managing our emotions, in crafting positive narratives, and in forming intimate relationships. We develop the skills of building joy, gratitude, and meaning into every day. By learning these lessons, we cultivate emotional resilience.
We have the capacity to build happiness into our lives with humor, concern for others, and gratitude. Of course, we can’t do it all of the time. That self-expectation would drive us crazy. However, we can develop habits that make it more likely that we will respond in an upbeat manner. It’s critical to distinguish between choosing to live lovingly and cheerfully and living a life of denial. One leads to joy, the other to emotional death. I have learned from my work as a therapist that secrets, denial, and avoidance invariably cause trouble. To move forward requires seeing clearly.
When we lose a beloved or learn that our health is deteriorating, our natural response is full-body despair. We are likely to panic, go numb, and wonder if we can survive. As we emerge from shock, we feel all the other painful emotions as well. We don’t heal without hurting. For a while, the cure for the pain is the pain.
I don’t recommend controlling our emotions, but rather listening to them. They are delivering information that is vital to our recovery. We want to fully experience our emotions in both our hearts and our bodies. If we do this, we will gradually move toward healing and hope.
https://lithub.com/want-to-be-happy-live-like-an-woman-over-50/
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The
trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and
sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only
pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting. This is the treason of
the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible
boredom of pain. ~ Ursula Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters
*
COSMISM
In the 2009 documentary Transcendent Man, the American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil shares his thoughts on death. Although many philosophers and theologians accept mortality as an inevitable and indeed defining feature of human existence, Kurzweil refuses to accept this line of thinking. “Death is a great tragedy, a profound loss,” he declares in the film, haunted by the memory of losing his father at age 22. “I don’t accept it.”
Kurzweil would have found an ally in the little-known 19th-century Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, whose posthumously published text Philosophy of the Common Task made the at-the-time daring argument that death was little more than a design flaw — one which advancements in science and technology could help to rectify. Fedorov also believed that this goal of rectification — of achieving immortality — would unite social groups whose mutual fear of death had historically pitted them in opposition to each other.
“Our task,” Fedorov wrote, “is to make nature, the blind force of nature, into an instrument of universal resuscitation and to become a union of immortal beings.”
Fedorov’s writing never turned mainstream, but it did spawn a short-lived, visionary philosophical movement known as Cosmism. Materialized during the Industrial Revolution — a time of unprecedented societal change — the movement generally sought to redefine mankind’s relationship with technology and progress, with the ultimate goal of regulating the forces of nature so that humanity could achieve unity and immortality. The movement offered a more spiritual alternative to both futurism and communism.
Although the latter annihilated Cosmism before it had a chance to mature, its maxims have acquired new relevancy in the age of Big Tech. The following interview with Boris Groys, a distinguished professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University and editor of the new book Russian Cosmism, reveals why.
Into the crematorium
To understand Russian Cosmism, we must first look at other movements and ideas that arose during the same period. More influential than Fedorov’s Philosophy of the Common Task was interdisciplinary scientist Alexander Chizhevsky’s 1931 article “The Earth in the Sun’s Embrace,” which interpreted human history as revolving around the Sun.
Starting from the questionable proposition that revolutionary movements require energy and that energy in its most basic form is derived from solar rays, Chizhevsky listed some historical developments that lined up with astronomical developments. He noted, for example, that progressive governments in the United Kingdom coincided with periods of high solar activity, while conservative ones tended to appear when solar activity decreased due to sunspots.
Chizhevsky’s article profoundly impacted Russian avant-garde artists like the painter Kazimir Malevich. Malevich helped stage a futuristic opera titled “Victory Over the Sun,” which heralded the Sun’s eventual extinction and the world’s descent into chaos. Rather than dreading this disorder, the avant-garde welcomed it. “By the beginning of the twentieth century the embrace of chaos seemed imminent, as no one could be expected to believe any longer in the stability of divine or natural order,” Groys explains in the new book.
“The very idea of a stable order, be it religious or rationalist, appeared to lose its ontological guarantee to permanently replace, make obsolete, and ultimately destroy old things, old traditions, and familiar ways of life, thus undermining lingering faith in the ‘traditional world order.’ Technological development, subjected to the logic of progress, presented itself as a force of chaos that would not tolerate any stable order. The future came to be seen as the enemy of both past and present. Precisely because of that view, the futurists celebrated the future, as it held the promise that everything that had been – and still was – would disappear.”
This same sentiment can be found in the writing of the anarchist-futurist poet Alexander Svyatogor, who compared progress to the sudden eruption of a volcano: a violent outburst that destroys everything in its wake while fertilizing the soil to sustain new life. In his essay “The Doctrine of the Fathers’ and Anarcho-Biocosmism,” he rejects Fedorov’s idea that science and technology are agents of restoration – of recovering and preserving what has been lost.
CREATORIUM = CREMATORIUM
He argued instead that future generations “would knead with their own hands, like sculptors knead clay, the spirit and matter of the world, so as to create an absolutely new cosmos.” Crucially, he also relished in the fact that detractors referred to his intellectual group — the “Kreatory” or “Creatorium” –—as a “crematorium.”
“They are probably right to come to this conclusion,” he wrote. “Indeed, we need to burn quite a lot, if not everything.”
COSMISM FROM STALIN TO MUSK
Fedorov and Svyatogor represent two sides of Cosmism, which Groys writes never had a unified doctrine. Where adherents of the former viewed technology as a “force that would destroy the ‘old world’ and open the way for building the new from point zero,” the latter hoped technology would become a “strong messianic force” that could transmit knowledge from one generation to another.
Svyatogor likened progress to the eruption of a volcano.
Cosmists who believed in technology as a messianic force clashed not just with the Svyatogor camp, but also with the communists, whose guiding ideology of Marxism-Leninism was predicated on the dismantling of age-old social systems to establish a novel world order. Fedorov’s philosophy was especially irreconcilable with the concept of the “New Soviet Man,” the Soviet government’s campaign to physically and mentally rebuild its citizens into more obedient, self-sacrificing people.
While some Cosmists embraced communism, they opposed the notion that a socialist utopia should be built on the backs of generations who would never get to experience its benefits — commentary that put them at odds with Joseph Stalin and his purges.
Although interest in Russian Cosmism was quickly eradicated, the movement has acquired new life in the 21st century. In fact, it might be more relevant today than it was in the early 20th century. Fedorov and Svyatogor’s shared call for the colonization of outer space to protect humanity from earthly disaster, for example, is a direct parallel to Elon Musk’s promise to move people to Mars.
Thanks to climate change, Cosmism’s ambivalent and generally hostile attitude towards the natural world should also sound familiar. “Today it is fashionable to like nature,” Groys told Big Think, “but nature does not like us. It is a one-sided love. Cosmism’s central idea is that we can survive only under artificial conditions, if we create an artificial world to protect us.”
Fedorov’s writing, meanwhile, serves as a reminder that we should not let scientific or technological progress come at anyone’s expense, but rather strive to uplift the world in its totality: past, present, and future. “To be interested in the past is to be interested in ourselves,” Groys said, “because everything, including us, eventually becomes part of the past.”
https://bigthink.com/high-culture/cosmism-russia-future/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
*
“LENIN WALKED ON THE MOON” — RUSSIAN COSMISM
~ Count on Russian thinkers to formulate imaginative theories that no sensible person could believe. Proud of their distinctive style of doing philosophy, social theory, mathematics, and even hard science, Russians repeatedly breach the bounds of common sense. Sometimes they make important discoveries, but they more often produce sheer nonsense, closer to science fiction than to science.
Russia has given the world its greatest novels, but no one admires its economy. And as Michel Eltchaninoff observes in his recent book, Lenin Walked on the Moon: The Mad History of Russian Cosmism, it offers visionary schemes, not practical improvements. There is no Russian Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs. When was the last time you bought something made in Russia? When it comes to technology, Russia is weak, except for weapons and, at one time, space travel.
When I was growing up, people laughed at Russian claims to have invented almost everything. Only recently did I discover from the authoritative historian Loren Graham that there is something to these claims: believe it or not, Russians “did transmit radio waves before Guglielmo Marconi . . . they did pioneer in the development of transistors and diodes; they did publish the principles of lasers a generation before any others did,” and much more. What they did not do was bring these inventions to market or make them generally usable.
As Walter Isaacson observed in his biography of Steve Jobs, “In the annals of innovation new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.” Russians are bad at execution not only because great thinkers regard it as beneath them but also because the Russian social environment ensures that ideas are left on paper. For ideas to have a practical effect, society needs to value innovation, foster investment, secure property rights, and reward inventors. Politics and bureaucracy must not suffocate the new. Perhaps one reason Israel has been so amazingly successful technologically is that its many Russians work with people adept at turning ideas into practice in favorable circumstances.
It is not as if Russians are unaware of all this. Russian literary classics frequently describe dreamers or revolutionaries who disdain practical work. Very rarely do they offer sympathetic portraits of businessmen. The eponymous hero of Ivan Goncharov’s brilliant comic novel Oblomov (1859) spends all his time daydreaming—it takes him over a hundred delightful pages to get out of bed—and could not be more unlike his practical boyhood friend Stolz, who succeeds in almost everything except changing Oblomov’s ways.
As his name indicates, Stolz is not ethnically Russian. Doing things, it seems, is German. In Eugene Vodolazkin’s recent novel The Aviator (2015), the hero, suffering from a disease his doctors cannot cure, travels to a German clinic. “Expect no miracles from our clinic,” the doctor immediately tells him.
“That’s so there are no misapprehensions. We will do all we can.”
I felt that I was smiling broadly, showing my teeth:
“But it’s miracles I came for . . .”
“Miracles, that’s in Russia,” said [Dr.] Meier, his gaze growing sad. “There you live by the laws of the miracle, but we attempt to live in conformity with reality. It’s unclear, however, which is better.”
“When God wishes, nature’s order is overcome,” I said, expressing my main hope, but the interpreter could not translate that.
As the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron pointed out, Russians pride themselves on relying not on methodical planning, as Germans do, but on avos’, a term with no English equivalent. It means, roughly, sheer luck, a happy chance, a windfall, something desirable one has no right to expect, utter perhapsness.
Early in the nineteenth century, Pushkin referred to “our Russian avos’,” and from his time on Russians have regarded the kind of thinking it suggests as a distinctive national characteristic, responsible for both their greatest successes and most significant failures.
Chekhov saw it as a fundamental flaw, a form of laziness bound to lead to unnecessary suffering. Solzhenitsyn’s novels about the events leading to the Bolshevik takeover depict Russia’s real heroes not as revolutionists who disdain everything bourgeois and practical but as engineers who actually build things. In August 1914, General Martos knows that Russians must overcome their characteristic way of thinking if they are to defeat the Germans. He “could not tolerate Russian sloppiness, the Russian inclination to ‘wait and see,’ to ‘sleep on it,’ and leave God to make the decisions.”
Is it any wonder, then, that Russians have been inclined to utopianism, mysticism, and pseudoscience? In tzarist times, intellectuals commonly imagined revolution in millenarian terms, as a transformation not just of society but also of the universe.
When the anticipated revolution happened, many presumed that this political upheaval would instantaneously change everything else. Wealth would be abundant within days. Suffering would instantly become a thing of the past. And, before long, mortality itself would be overcome, just as the Book of Revelation promised, only without divine intervention. These atheists anticipated that strictly scientific laws, as outlined in Marxist–Leninist philosophy, would accomplish everything that mystics had foretold.
Science is traditionally understood as skeptical inquiry, in which ideas are tested experimentally against reality, which may not confirm them; when they prove mistaken, they are changed and tested anew. It isn’t enough for them to seem persuasive, let alone highly desirable. Since Francis Bacon, scientists have presumed that nature operates by efficient causes rather than providential goals.
But in Russia, science is often viewed—even by scientists themselves—as a kind of mystical insight or magic. According to Soviet philosophy, matter itself contains a dynamic guaranteed to lead eventually to Communism. Leon Trotsky was, by the standards of the day, one of the more down-to-earth thinkers, but even he presumed that the coming revolution would transform both the natural world and human nature.
These transformations would happen, Trotsky argued, because human effort would no longer be exerted “spontaneously” and at the whims of the market. No longer would people be subject to economic forces; they would be the masters thereof. In a planned economy, everything happens according to human will, so progress would be immeasurably faster. That reasoning applied not just to the economy, since in the society Bolsheviks were creating literally everything would be planned.
“Communist life will not be formed blindly, like coral islands, but will be built consciously,” Trotsky memorably explained. “The shell of life will hardly have time to form before it will burst open again under the pressure of new technical and cultural inventions and achievements.” Nature will be shaped according to human desires:
Through the machine, man in Socialist society will command nature in its entirety, with its grouse and sturgeons. He will point out places for mountains and for passes. He will change the course of rivers, and he will lay down rules for the oceans.
Is it any wonder that the USSR became an environmental disaster?
People will also redesign themselves, Trotsky continued. They will bring the unconscious and semiconscious processes of the body, like breathing, circulation of the blood, digestion, and reproduction, under conscious control:
The human race will not have ceased to crawl on all fours before God, kings, and capital, in order later to submit humbly before the dark laws of heredity and natural selection!
Socialist man will master his own feelings and learn “to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby create a higher social biological type or, if you will a superman.”
In short, man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler. . . . The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.
According to Bolshevik philosophy, these predictions are not mere hopes but are entailed by science itself, especially the science of sciences, Marxism–Leninism.
In Western Europe, socialism settled down into social-democratic parties of the center Left. In Russia, it became a mystical communion with the materialist divine, a pseudoscientific realization of Biblical promises.
The philosophy now called cosmism, which was born a century and a half ago, infused its spirit into Marxism–Leninism and now competes with Eurasianism and other ideologies to replace it. Unlike most Russian visionary schemes, it has actually influenced prominent Americans, particularly the “transhumanists” of Silicon Valley.
Eltchaninoff points to the role that Russians like Sergey Brin (the cofounder of Google) and Robert Ettinger (the inventor of cryogenics) played in developing New Age thinking and its technological successors. He cites an impressive list of people, including Elon Musk, Michael Murphy (the founder of Esalen), Max More (the author of such essays as “The Philosophy of Transhumanism”), and many more who have been inspired by one or another of the key cosmist thinkers: Nikolai Fyodorov, Vladimir Vernadsky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Alexander Chizhevsky, Vasily Kuprevich, and Danila Medvedev.
It all began with Fyodorov (1829–1903), the supremely weird librarian of the Rumyantsev Museum (now the Russian State Library). As did so many inspiring Russian thinkers, Fyodorov attracted hagiographers who all but canonized him. He was said to know the location and contents of every volume in the library, so that if a reader requested a book on some topic, he would receive a few more he had not known about.
Fyodorov, we are told, lived a totally ascetic life; owning and eating almost nothing, he slept on a packing crate. Contemptuous of bodily discomfort, he refused to wear an overcoat even during the coldest days of the Russian winter and yet was never ill. When he was at last persuaded to don one on a particularly frigid day, he caught cold and died!—in a hospital for the indigent, of course.
Deeply disturbed by the “unbrotherly state of the world” characterized by human “disrelatedness,” Fyodorov traced these maladies to the separation of the “learned” from the “unlearned,” among whom he strangely counted himself. The learned pursue knowledge for its own sake while forgetting about human welfare. Instead of working together to eliminate evil, they dissipate effort into ever more fields and subfields. In short, “there is division [among people] only because there is no common task.”
The learned must unite to perform that common task, which is important both in itself and for joining people to accomplish it. The task Fyodorov proposed was not just one desirable project among many, but, in his view, the only proper goal for humanity: “There can be no other obligation, no other task for a conscious being.”
That “common task” was raising the dead: humanity must set aside all other concerns and discover the technology to bring our forefathers back to life. Otherwise, Fyodorov opined, we resemble children dancing on the graves of our “fathers.” Fyodorov was an illegitimate child who bore the name not of his father but of his godfather, and so it is more than curious that he writes as if the world consisted entirely of men. He was not exactly a misogynist, because misogynists are supremely conscious that women exist.
We never hear from Fyodorov about resurrecting our mothers, and when he faulted the learned for inventions that foster “the manufacturing industry” (which is “the root of disrelatedness”), he accused them of “effeminate caprice.” By the same token, he regarded childbearing as a sign of our enslavement to the laws of nature.
Like the most enthusiastic Bolsheviks, Fyodorov imagined that humanity could overcome natural laws if only they were guided by a single, conscious will. Raising the dead entails our liberation from the dictatorship of nature. Only when it takes place will people truly regard each other as “brothers” (not brothers and sisters) and eliminate war along with all other strife. In this way alone can the world overcome “stateness” (gosudarstvennost’) and achieve “fatherlandness” (otechestvennost’). Altruism, the paltry goal of today, involves helping and favoring a few people, but the common task of raising our forefathers unites all.
A religious man, Fyodorov imagined that his common task would fulfill the Gospel promise to raise the dead—only people must not wait passively for divine intervention but act themselves. “We must understand and define Orthodoxy as the universal prayer of all the living for all the dead, a prayer that then becomes action,” Fyodorov instructs.
By the same token, the millennium will be achieved only by human effort. Here Fyodorov’s views align with Lenin’s. Today’s learned patriots, Fyodorov explains, take pride in their forefathers’ achievements instead of feeling “contrition for their death”—as they should, because they have still not bothered to resurrect them.
Only the unlearned already know that as soon as the earth is seen as a cemetery and nature as a death-dealing force, just so soon will the political question be replaced by the physical question; and in this context the physical will not be separated from the astronomical, i.e. the earth will be recognized as a heavenly body and the stars will be recognized as other earths. The unification of all sciences under astronomy is the simplest, most natural, unlearned thing.
What does astronomy have to do with raising the dead? The answer, believe it or not, is that atoms of our ancestors have escaped into outer space. Before we can resurrect the dead, we must retrieve their atoms. Only then can we achieve the “patrification” (not “matrification”) of matter. Hence the “common task” is inextricably linked to space travel.
I remember the late George Kline, an expert on Russian philosophy, pointing out that it is not particular atoms that make us who we are but their organization. Atoms, after all, are replaceable and constantly change within us. A less obvious objection is that even if we could produce an exact copy of a person, how do we know that a duplicate of me would subjectively be me? If someone copied me while I was alive, would I be located somehow in two places, or would, as with twins, there be two distinct versions of me? Such questions did not trouble Fyodorov and his followers.
The need for women will disappear because men will “replace the bringing into the world of children . . . with the restoration to our fathers of the life we received from them”—from them only, because women apparently play no role in giving life.
One may also wonder at Fyodorov’s disparagement of “manufacturing” and “pure science,” as if they could never contribute knowledge useful for a project unlikely to be attained by just ordering scientists to raise the dead. He did not suspect that, just as “conscious,” “orderly” central planning is actually much less efficient than the “spontaneous,” “anarchic” market, so it is by encouraging people to exploit unforeseeable opportunities that the greatest advances are made.
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Russians usually credit the mathematician and rocket designer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) with founding (or at least inspiring) the Russian space program. “Fyodorov . . . believed that the stars didn’t exist merely to be contemplated and admired,” Tsiolkovsky wrote in praise of his predecessor, “but so that mankind could conquer them and settle among them.” What’s more, Tsiolkovsky enthused, Fyodorov “believed that the whole universe could be controlled by human will and consciousness.”
Once a cult figure for the few, Tsiolkovsky has become a national icon. When the USSR disintegrated, the Russian Cape Canaveral turned out to be in Kazakhstan, and so a replacement was built in the Russian Federation. It was named for Tsiolkovsky because, as President Putin explained,
“One of the first people in our country, and indeed the world, to have pondered these questions [about humanity’s relation to the cosmos] was Tsiolkovsky—and yet we have no towns that bear his name. We are not going to build just a cosmodrome and a launch pad here, but a research center, and a whole city. I think that if . . . we call this future city Tsiolkovsky it will be only fitting.”
“Cosmism,” Eltchaninoff instructs, “has come to be considered a philosophical discipline in its own right.”
Compared to Tsiolkovsky, Fyodorov almost seems, well, down to earth. Tsiolkovsky’s prose displays what Eltchaninoff aptly calls “metaphysical vertigo.” Tsiolkovsky began his article “Panpsychism, or Everything Feels” in the tone of an evangelist:
I am afraid you will leave this life with bitterness in your heart if you do not learn from me, a pure source of knowledge, that continuous joy awaits you. . . . I would want this life of yours to be a bright dream of the future, a future where happiness never ends.
The way I see it, my sermon is not even a daydream, but a strictly mathematical conclusion based on precise knowledge.
We sense ourselves thinking, Tsiolkovsky explains, but it is really each atom in the brain that thinks and feels. And not just in the brain: “in a mathematical sense,” every particle of matter feels and thinks. It’s only a question of degree. Thought does not stop with humans; to a lesser extent, dogs and rats think, and to a still lesser extent, plants.
Why stop there, since the line between living and non-living matter is entirely arbitrary? “Can anyone deny that in nature we have a continuous chain of links which differ only quantitatively?” In fact, everything senses and feels. “The inorganic world cannot express itself,” Tsiolkovsky asserts, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t possess a primitive form of sensitivity.”
Atoms have rudimentary feeling, like that of a sleeping person. They awake into full consciousness when they become part of something complex, like a brain. Although everyone dies and their brains disintegrate, the part of them that really feels, their atoms, lives on and eventually becomes part of other brains. In the interim they sleep and do not sense time passing, and so, when they awake, even if after millions of years, life will seem to have been continuous.
In that sense, we are truly immortal. Since the universe extends infinitely in time and space, we will have an infinite number of lives. Indeed, we have already had an infinite number! “What exists is a single, supreme, conscious, happy life that never ceases.” We can be sure of happiness because, Tsiolkovsky preposterously asserts, “the ethical code of the cosmos dictates that there be no suffering anywhere.”
As life extends indefinitely in time, so humanity will conquer ever more space. First, people will harness the sun’s energy, only a tiny portion of which is actually used, and so multiply human powers billions of times. People will use that energy to eliminate deserts and increase population exponentially. When they at last need more room, they will establish colonies on the asteroids and planets, then on worlds throughout the Milky Way, and then move on to other galaxies.
People will also perfect themselves. Like so many progressives of his time, Tsiolkovsky believed in eugenics. He envisaged central planners controlling mating to produce a superior species. Humanity will at first be divided into two parts, the chosen ones living together by conscious planning while the others endure spontaneously. Gradually, everyone will belong to the chosen, and then “all will be happiness; all will be contentment. And those who cannot be helped will be subsumed into nirvana, or non-being (temporarily, of course).”
Perfect happiness demands that atoms not be subjected to imperfect experiences in inferior beings, “such as our monkeys, cows, wolves, deer, hares, rats, and the like,” whose existence “is of no benefit to the atom.” We must therefore eliminate the animal world . . . . Likewise, the atom’s rare potential existence in the body of modern man encourages us to improve and eliminate all backward [human] breeds.
But what if humans are themselves an inferior breed? If the universe has quintillions of worlds, and has lasted forever, then there must be civilizations billions of years ahead of us who regard us the way we regard rats. So why do they allow us to live? Isn’t the fact that we exist proof that something is wrong with Tsiolkovsky’s logic?
As we might guess, he comes up with an entirely ad hoc answer. Every now and then, it seems, advanced beings “degenerate” and so “are eliminated as a result of occasionally occurring regressions. A fresh influx is necessary,” and so Earth and a few similar planets are allowed to develop “to replenish the losses incurred by regressive breeds in the cosmos.”
In short, we can begin to appreciate the significance of our existence only if we think cosmically. Then we will recognize that life is eternal. “Can we really doubt that the cosmos generally contains only joy, satisfaction, perfection and truth”?
The pantheon of cosmists includes numerous thinkers who propounded the preposterous as indubitable. Alexander Chizhevsky (1897–1964) claimed to have established, by strict mathematical deduction of course, that solar cycles regulate history:”that the greatest revolutions, wars, and mass movements . . . constituting the turning points of history . . . have tended to coincide with epochs of heightened solar activity and reach their peak in the moment of the most intense solar activity.’
Since the Bolsheviks utterly rejected anarchism, the anarchist Alexander Svyatagor (1889–1937) invented “anarcho-biocosmism,” which aimed to overturn not social but natural laws. Since this project demanded strict control of all human effort, anarchism morphed into its opposite.
According to Eltchaninoff, the embalmers of Lenin were inspired by the sort of thinking that eventually led to cryogenics (freezing of the dead until science can cure whatever killed them). The Bolshevik Alexander Bogdanov maintained that “mutual transfusion,” in which the blood of an old and young person is exchanged, would rejuvenate the former without aging the latter. This technique had the added benefit of transcending bourgeois individualism. When Bogdanov tried the process on himself, he (but not his young partner) died.
More recently, the futurologist Danila Medvedev, a founder of the Russian transhumanist movement and of the first cryogenic company outside the United States, argued that the universal immortality he promised would “create new possibilities for collaboration with the Russian Orthodox church,” which “has always had the custom of preserving the bodies and body parts of saints as relics. We’ll be able to offer them a service for preserving their saints, who will then be technically ready for resurrection.”
What’s more, Medvedev continued, we will be able to unite spiritual and secular power in one person by “transplanting the head of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow onto the body of President Putin. Then we’d have a single, unified leader. And I don’t see any blasphemy.”
Where but in Russia (or in Jonathan Swift’s Academy of Lagado) could such ideas flourish?
Some Russian thinkers agree with the former deputy prime minister Dmitri Rogozin, who became head of the Russian space agency Roscomos, that cosmist thinking is an “intrinsic part of the Russian soul” and that it was “predetermined by the national character of the Russian people.” Others stress how closely cosmist ideas resemble those circulating at the Esalen Institute and in Silicon Valley. Can there be more convincing proof, they ask, that Russian discoveries will conquer the world?
Russian cosmists proposed a “nooscope” that could intervene in human thoughts, and today Elon Musk’s Neuralink project aims to train the brain—or, as the Neuralink website explains, the company will “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.” Paralysis will be a thing of the past, and, we may suppose, psychiatry as we know it will be superseded. It is also easy to see how intrusive government might create an unprecedented kind of tyranny.
“The link between cosmism and [American] transhumanism is pretty clear,” the British philosopher and sociologist Steven Fuller observed. Eltchaninoff offers numerous examples of American techno-wizards and transhumanists who were directly inspired by Russian cosmism, but even if the two movements developed independently, the similarities should make us reflect.
It is never good when Americans begin to think like Russians. Who can tell what young people educated to despise Western liberal values will do when they join a technological movement reflecting the cosmist “Russian soul”? The fact that, spiritually speaking, Silicon Valley borders on Moscow does not comfort me. ~
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2024/2/galaxy-brains
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NIXON MADE SOME ACCURATE PREDICTIONS
An aging president Richard Nixon made some incredibly astute predictions on Russia, China and their respective geopolitical futures. A clip in which he talked about these things recently went viral, and it was enormously interesting to watch.
See, Nixon is an interesting cookie… people hear his name and the knee-jerk response is to go: “Watergate! Corruption!” and call it a day. That’s far too simple a view.
In Bill Clinton’s memoirs, he goes into some detail regarding his relationship with an elderly Richard Nixon, in the first years of his presidency. The Cold War had successfully come to an end, and the Soviet Union had collapsed. Nixon urged Clinton to not drop the Russians like a hot potato and gloat of America’s supposed “victory”.
He said, rather, that this was a moment where the two systems stood at a historical crossroads — either a democratic Russia would prevail and become prosperous, inspiring other nations such as China to follow their lead… or democracy would fail and a more imperialist Russia would take over, the way Russia had been for centuries. Which would, likewise, embolden other countries to go down the same path.
Democracy in Russia did not prevail. The recent disposal of Navalny once again drove home this point for all those who may still be in doubt. Richard Nixon’s words are eerily prophetic in retrospect — he described a crossroads East and West were on. We now know the choices that were made, and the trajectory we were on. He neatly laid it out. And everything played out exactly as he said it would.
Below: Richard Nixon dining with Zhou Enlai in Shanghai 52 years ago
Nicholas C. Rossis:
I am reminded of a quote by the Palestinian envoy to the UK, back in the late 90s.
“To solve the Middle-East problems, we need a US president who is as astute as Nixon, as honest as Carter, and as popular as Reagan. Unfortunately, what we seem to always get is presidents who are as astute as Reagan, as honest as Nixon, and as popular as Carter.”
Over 25 years later, it’s still relevant!
Jurre Kieboom:
This wasn’t Nixon’s brilliance. A lot of US foreign policy guys: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wolfowitz and frankly Henry Kissinger where right on the ball on this, warning about the risks of a revanchist, nationalist and irredentist Russia after the collapse of the USSR. Given the prevalence of collapsing empires displaying exactly such tendencies toward nationalism/irridentism in history, it was not that much of a brilliant insight either.
All of Russia’s neighbors seem to have been well aware of it since gaining their independence.
* irredentism = “a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it.”
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THE US HOMICIDE RATE IS THE HIGHEST OF ANY OF THE DEVELOPED NATIONS OF THE WORLD (England, France, Germany, etc.) and it’s more like the homicide rate in Russia and undeveloped and impoverished countries like Yemen, Venezuela, and Mongolia.
The highest homicide rate in the US is in the southern states. In 2023 Washington, D.C., had 40 homicides per 100,000 people. That ranks it fifth nationally for per-capita murder rates.
(~ the page of John Guzlowski, Facebook)
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HOW THE HUMAN SKELETON EVOLVED OVER THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
~ Some 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens split off from a long line of human-ish primates to become the first fully human species, with abilities and ingenuity unrivaled in Earth’s history. But back then, in terms of behavior and intelligence, those early humans wouldn’t have seemed so different from the other hominins they shared the landscape with — Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus and so on.
Now picture one of these ancient people beside a 21st-century counterpart, and consider how wide the gap has grown. The average person today zips from place to place in a personal metal shell that would put any cheetah to shame. They seek beauty in paintings, novels and other depictions of worlds that don’t even exist. They are embedded in socio-political networks vastly larger than the entire population of our prehistoric ancestors.
And yet! Genetically (more or less), we are them. We, with our spaceships and particle colliders, our operas and crème brûlées, our megacities and globe-spanning systems of cooperation, are made of the same essential stuff as those club-wielding nomads cooking mastodon steaks on a spit.
So, how did we get from there to here?
What Is an Ancient Human?
An ancient human is identified not by a single moment in evolution, as this process is too gradual to pinpoint when exactly we became "human." We all share a single genetic ancestor, certainly, but that doesn’t mean there was any significant difference between them and their contemporaries; they just won the reproductive lottery.
When Did Modern Humans First Appear?
Based on fossil and DNA evidence, people that looked like us (anatomically modern) appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago. But the archaeological record of tools and artifacts suggests they only started to act like us (behaviorally modern) 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, after thousands of generations of stasis.
This abrupt shift is sometimes called the “great leap forward” (not to be confused with Mao Zedong’s disastrous economic campaign of the same name). Experts disagree on how to explain the lag between anatomic and behavioral modernity, but for whatever reason, it seems that humans only reached an intellectual apex long after they’d come to resemble us in most other ways.
Problem Solving and Long-Range Planning
Another staple of modern behavior is a knack for problem-solving and long-range planning. In the archaeological record this shows up as a sudden surge, beginning roughly 60,000 years ago, in the production of advanced artifacts like fish hooks, bows, and sewing needles. Around the same time, our species was rapidly colonizing the planet, including voyages to Australia and other Pacific islands that demanded maritime expertise.
What drove this unprecedented, world-girdling success? “It was not their technology alone,” as cognitive archaeologists Frederick L. Coolidge and Thomas Wynn write in The Rise of Homo Sapiens. “It was something about their minds, an ability they possessed that their cousins did not.”
The Evolution of Human Societies: From Stone Age to Modernity
But this isn’t the full story — in case you didn’t notice, there have been some major developments since behavioral modernity emerged near the end of the Stone Age. The mental landscape of our upper-paleolithic progenitors may have been similar to our own, but in many ways, they were still closer to the earliest humans than to those in the present day.
One possible explanation of what’s happened since then is that, in fact, we haven’t changed a whole lot as individuals. Evolutionary psychologist Nicholas R. Longrich notes that the great thinkers of antiquity, like Aristotle and Buddha, were clearly just as well-endowed with intellect as anyone alive now.
The Role of Global Networks in Human Evolution
What has changed are the increasingly larger and more global networks in which we live. “Much of the difference between our ancient, simple hunter-gatherer societies and modern societies,” he writes, “just reflects the fact that there are lots more of us and more connections between us.”
That’s important because innovation grows in step with population: The more people, the more likely one of them will be the genius who invents a better spearhead (or wheel, or combustion engine, or supercomputer), setting off an intricate feedback loop in which culture evolves to ever greater levels of sophistication. And a handful of special innovations, like agriculture and writing, truly turbocharged human progress, launching us far beyond the horizons of prior generations.
In other words, it’s not that our cognitive hardware has improved since the first behaviorally modern humans, just that we enjoy the benefits of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge.
Genetic Mutation and Evolution Across Continents
So much for our brains. When it comes to physical appearance, a glance at any diverse crowd shows that evolution was hard at work as humans fanned out across the continents.
When they embarked on their long journey out of Africa, our ancestors encountered all sorts of new environments and were forced to continuously adapt. Some of the results are visible: Genetic mutations for dark skin allowed them to withstand the harmful UV radiation of sunny locales, while small noses could better warm the cold air they inhaled in northern climates.
Other adaptations were subtler, but just as influential. Lactase persistence, for example, evolved in populations with domesticated livestock, allowing them to digest milk throughout their lives rather than only during infancy. And in mountainous Tibet, people living at high altitude acquired larger lungs to make efficient use of the region’s thin air.
Are There Ever Evolutionary Mismatches?
Amid all the changes of the past few millennia, the monumental shifts in our world and way of life, it’s also surprising how much we’ve stayed the same. Much of our behavior is calibrated for a long-gone ancestral environment, and we’re now often confronted by evolutionary mismatches — many traits that helped our forebears have negative consequences for us today.
Take our nearly insatiable cravings for tasty food. Ancient people often dealt with food scarcity, so it made sense for them to gorge whenever the opportunity arose. In the modern context of perpetual abundance, however, this instinct has fueled an epidemic of overeating and obesity.
All of this, the good and the bad, makes up our species’ legacy — at once fluid and enduring, it shapes our lives, our civilizations and, increasingly, the world around us. Maybe, once we brought them up to speed on spaceships and crème brûlées and what not, those early humans would even see in our world something of themselves. ~
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-is-the-difference-between-early-modern-humans-and-ancient-humans?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333%40cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_240229_DSTH00_0000000000&eid=ivy333%40cox.net
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RECYCLING OF PLASTIC IS NON-VIABLE
~ Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.
“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge: the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice.
The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns, the report shows.
The research draws on previous investigations as well as newly revealed internal documents illustrating the extent of this decades-long campaign.
Industry insiders over the past several decades have variously referred to plastic recycling as “uneconomical”, said it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution”, and said it “cannot go on indefinitely”, the revelations show.
The authors say the evidence demonstrates that oil and petrochemical companies, as well as their trade associations, may have broken laws designed to protect the public from misleading marketing and pollution.
Single-use plastics
In the 1950s, plastic producers came up with an idea to ensure a continually growing market for their products: disposability.
“They knew if they focused on single-use [plastics] people would buy and buy and buy,” said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and the report’s lead author.
At a 1956 industry conference, the Society of the Plastics Industry, a trade group, told producers to focus on “low cost, big volume” and “expendability” and to aim for materials to end up “in the garbage wagon”.
The Society of Plastics is now known as the Plastics Industry Association. “As is typical, instead of working together towards actual solutions to address plastic waste, groups like CCI choose to level political attacks instead of constructive solutions,” Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the trade group, said in an emailed response to the report.
Over the following decades, the industry told the public that plastics can easily be tossed into landfills or burned in garbage incinerators. But in the 1980s, as municipalities began considering bans on grocery bags and other plastic products, the industry began promoting a new solution: recycling.
Recycling campaigns
The industry has long known that plastics recycling is not economically or practically viable, the report shows. An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.
In 1989, the founding director of the Vinyl Institute told attendees of a trade conference: “Recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem.”
Despite this knowledge, the Society of the Plastics Industry established the Plastics Recycling Foundation in 1984, bringing together petrochemical companies and bottlers, and launched a campaign focused on the sector’s commitment to recycling.
In 1988, the trade group rolled out the “chasing arrows” – the widely recognized symbol for recyclable plastic – and began using it on packaging. Experts have long said the symbol is highly misleading, and recently federal regulators have echoed their concerns.
The Society of the Plastics Industry also established a plastics recycling research center at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1985, one year after state lawmakers passed a mandatory recycling law. In 1988, industry group the Council for Solid Waste Solutions set up a recycling pilot project in St Paul, Minnesota, where the city council had just voted to ban the plastic polystyrene, or styrofoam.
And in the early 1990s, another industry group ran ads in Ladies’ Home Journal proclaiming: “A bottle can come back as a bottle, over and over again.”
All the while, behind closed doors, industry leaders maintained that recycling was not a real solution.
In 1994, a representative of Eastman Chemical spoke at an industry conference about the need for proper plastic recycling infrastructure. “While some day this may be a reality,” he said, “it is more likely that we will wake up and realize that we are not going to recycle our way out of the solid waste issue.”
That same year, an Exxon employee told staffers at the American Plastics Council: “We are committed to the activities [of plastics recycling], but not committed to the results.”
“It’s clearly fraud they’re engaged in,” said Wiles.
The report does not allege that the companies broke specific laws. But Alyssa Johl, report co-author and attorney, said she suspects they violated public-nuisance, racketeering and consumer-fraud protections.
The industry’s misconduct continues today, the report alleges. Over the past several years, industry lobbying groups have promoted so-called chemical recycling, which breaks plastic polymers down into tiny molecules in order to make new plastics, synthetic fuels and other products. But the process creates pollution and is even more energy intensive than traditional plastic recycling.
The plastics sector has long known chemical recycling is also not a true solution to plastic waste, the report says. In a 1994 trade meeting, Exxon Chemical vice-president Irwin Levowitz called one common form of chemical recycling a “fundamentally uneconomical process”. And in 2003, a longtime trade consultant criticized the industry for promoting chemical recycling, calling it “another example of how non-science got into the minds of industry and environmental activists alike”.
“This is just another example, a new version, of the deception we saw before,” said Allen.
Seaholm, of the Plastics Industry Association, said the report “was created by an activist, anti-recycling organization and disregards the incredible investments in recycling technologies made by our industry.
“Unfortunately, they use outdated information and false claims to continue to mislead the public about recycling,” he added. He did not expand on which claims were outdated or false.
Legal ramifications
The report comes as the plastic industry and recycling are facing growing public scrutiny. Two years ago, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, publicly launched an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical producers “for their role in causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis”.
A toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February also catalyzed a movement demanding a ban on vinyl chloride, a carcinogen used to make plastic. Last month, the EPA announced a health review of the chemical – the first step toward a potential ban.
In 2023, New York state also filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, saying its single-use plastics violate public nuisance laws, and that the company misled consumers about the effectiveness of recycling.
The public is also increasingly concerned about the climate impact of plastic production and disposal, which account for 3.4% of all global greenhouse-gas emissions. In recent years, two dozen cities and states have sued the oil industry for covering up the dangers of the climate crisis. Similarly taking the oil and petrochemical industries to court for “knowingly deceiving” the public, said Wiles, could force them to change their business models.
“I think the first step in solving the problem is holding the companies accountable,” he said.
Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency and founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, called the analysis “very solid”.
“The report should be read by every attorney general in the nation and the Federal Trade Commission,” she said.
Brian Frosh, the former attorney general for the state of Maryland, said the report includes the kind of evidence he would not normally expect to see until a lawsuit has already gone through a process of discovery.
“If I were attorney general, based on what I read in CCI’s report, I’d feel comfortable pressing for an investigation and a lawsuit,” he said. ~
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
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RELIGIOUS ‘NONES’ ARE NOW THE SINGLE LARGEST GROUP IN THE U.S.
When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.'
A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is "nothing in particular" – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They're more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%).
Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew's new survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults shows that number has now risen dramatically.
Researchers refer to this group as the "Nones."
Pew asked respondents what – if anything – they believe. The research organization found that Nones are not a uniform group.
Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.
They aren't all anti-religious. Most Nones say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. Most have more positive views of science than those who are religiously affiliated; however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.
Nones could prove to be an important political group
Gregory Smith at Pew was the lead researcher on the study, titled "Religious 'Nones' in America: Who They Are and What They Believe.”
He says the growth of Nones could affect American public life.
"We know politically for example," Smith says, "that religious Nones are very distinctive. They are among the most strongly and consistently liberal and Democratic constituencies in the United States.”
And that could change electoral politics in the coming decades.
The political power of white Evangelicals has been well-reported in recent decades, but their numbers are shrinking while the number of the more liberal Nones is on the rise.
However, Smith points out that Nones are also less civically engaged than those who identify with a religion – they're less likely to vote. So, while they identify as Democrats, getting them to the polls on election day may prove to be a challenge.
Within the Nones, however, atheists and agnostics are more likely to be politically and civically engaged, whereas those who responded that their religion is 'nothing in particular' are far less likely to vote.
Pew also found that, overall, Nones are less likely to volunteer in their local communities than religiously affiliated adults.
Logic and avoiding harm help moral decision making
Beyond their numbers and their behaviors, Pew also asked respondents what they actually believe.
The survey found Nones are less satisfied with their local communities and less satisfied with their social lives than religious people.
While many people of faith say they rely on scripture, tradition and the guidance of religious leaders to make moral decisions, Pew found that Nones say they're guided by logic or reason when making moral decisions.
"And huge numbers say the desire to avoid hurting other people factors prominently in how they think about right and wrong," says Smith.
People of faith also say they use logic and the avoidance of harm to make decisions, but those factors are in concert with religious tradition and scripture.
Nones tend to be young, white and male
Demographically, Nones also stand out from the religiously affiliated.
Nones are young. 69% are under the age of fifty.
They're also less racially diverse. 63% of Nones are white.
Similar studies by Pew and other groups such as the Public Religion Research Institute have found that people of color are far more likely to say religion is important in their lives.
But Smith says to keep in mind that the Nones are comprised of three distinct groups – atheists, agnostics and those who describe themselves as 'nothing in particular.’
Nones who describe themselves are atheist or agnostic are far more likely to be white.
"People who describe their religion as 'nothing in particular' are more likely," says Smith, "to be Black or Hispanic or Asian.”
At first glance, Nones appear to be evenly divided be gender. But digging deeper into the data shows that men are significantly more likely to say they're atheist or agnostic whereas women are more likely to describe their religion as 'nothing in particular.'
Smith says that's consistent with other research as well, which shows, "women tend to be more religious on average than men.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226371734/religious-nones-are-now-the-largest-single-group-in-the-u-s
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FACING DEATH WITHOUT GOD
~ There are no atheists in foxholes, they say. My favorite uncle was, to all who knew him, a decidedly nonreligious man, never setting foot in a church except to bury his mother and refusing the visit of a minister in his last days. Yet the Haitian woman who tended to him as he struggled with his final breaths claims he spoke to God the night he died.
Research psychologists argue that religion was born from the fear of death, and it seems like every year there’s a new bestselling book about scientists finding religion in the face of their own mortality. So when I tell people that far fewer elderly people than young people are nonreligious, they are usually not surprised.
The proportion of religious Nones in the U.S. population has grown dramatically, but much of that growth is driven by the young: only 9 percent of those over 65 are unaffiliated, compared to 35 percent of those under age 30, and we see similar proportions for atheists and agnostics. Not only are older cohorts more religious, but some people actually get more religious as they age.
It would be easy to attribute these patterns to religion’s unique ability to give meaning to our mortality. Many people assume that facing death without religion renders life pointless and unbearable, that only exceptionally strong and stoic individuals can face the void that is death without a religious framework.
But that assumption is just that, an assumption, because we don’t have much data to back up such notions. The study of Nones has focused mostly on the young, and studies of the aged have tended to ignore atheists. Secularity is growing even among the old, and yet few have bothered to ask elderly secularists how they face death without religion.
How do atheists, agnostics, and other seculars find meaning at the end of life? How do they make sense of mortality without religion? I have spent the last two years exploring these questions, sifting through hundreds of studies and interviewing individuals in nursing homes, senior centers, and in their homes. This article reports on some of what I have learned.
When I reviewed the literature, it seemed at first that the foxhole theory was right. A substantial body of research suggests that religion helps people cope with dying. While some of that positive impact is tied to community (the social support offered by religion), the provision of meaning is a significant causal factor: religion can offer coherence, a feeling of confidence that our life events are ordered or purposeful, rather than random and chaotic, which in turn can confer a sense of control over one’s life.
The end of life is frightening because it’s a new experience; we don’t know where we are going. If a person is ill, dying may entail physical pain and disability. Even in the best of circumstances, we may find ourselves unable to engage in basic physical activities we used to take for granted, or facing the loss of mental acuity. And for most older people, the final years bring the loss of partners, family members, and friends who would otherwise support them at this time.
Religion can provide a framing for why we are in pain or why we had to lose somebody we love—for example, if suffering is viewed as redemptive or part of a divine plan. Religion also answers questions about what happens after death, whether through complex and varied conceptions of reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism, or through comforting beliefs that we will see loved ones again in heaven, as in some Christian traditions.
There are increased rates of depression and suicidal behavior among elderly people. Religious traditions can provide supportive social networks, and offer people in the final years of life steps to work through devastating losses and to continue living a purposeful life. Reading scripture or meditating is something an individual can do, even with physical disability. And when a loved one dies, rituals like sitting Shiva or preparing for a funeral mass offer structured, familiar activities for loved ones to do.
But saying that religion helps people find meaning in the face of death does not prove that meaning is absent without religion. Recent reviews of such studies show that they focus almost entirely on religious people, usually comparing more devout people to those who are less devout. Only rarely do they study individuals who are committed seculars, i.e., those who have replaced religion with some other source of meaning.
The few studies that engage in more rigorous comparisons suggest that nonreligious people do just fine. Peter Wilkinson and Peter Coleman found that both atheism and religion can be a source of meaning for older people, and it is the strength of conviction, rather than being religious or nonreligious, that enables effective coping. Coleman and Marie Mills suggest that while uncertainty is sometimes linked to depression, questioning also links to growth. Bethany Heywood and Jesse Bering have shown that the nonreligious do, in fact, frame life events using purposive narratives. But we know very little about the content, patterns, and sources of these narratives.
What we do know is that finding meaning is an interpretative act. Human beings make meaning by telling stories about our lives. Language does not just capture and reflect experience but creates it. Even when people are telling stories that are similar in content, they use linguistic, rhetorical, structural devices to create different sets of meaning. There are broader social narratives that shape individual storytelling, what Ann Swidler has called the cultural toolkit. These social narratives can come from religion or science, from a particular family background, or from popular culture.
I like to conceptualize meaning making as a kind of mapmaking enterprise. The stories we tell are the way we connect the dots and orient ourselves. It’s like when the ancient Greeks imagined lines between the stars and gave names to the various constellations. Without a constellation map to life, events can feel random, and we can feel lost, frightened, and confused, especially when we are entering new territory.
But when we have a map, we have a path to follow; we have agency and power. Religion has long been acknowledged as a powerful mapmaking tool because it creates meaning on two levels: it provides generic narratives that function as a cultural tool for constructing meaning; and these narratives inform, infuse, and frame each believer’s personal narrative. In my current research I am seeking to understand how this works for nonreligious people. Are there generic stories that secular adults use to make meaning, especially at the end of life? If so, how do they rework these stories to create meaning from their personal experience?
If meaning making is about storytelling, then I knew I needed to listen to respondents’ stories. So the study, begun in late 2017 and currently in its final phases, is based on personal interviews with elderly seculars. The two main criteria for inclusion are age (70 and over, though I include younger individuals with terminal illness) and nonreligious identification. Participants were recruited in nursing homes and senior centers, with the assistance of the AARP and various secularist organizations.
To date, a total of 97 interviews have been conducted in various locations across the United States. Although participants were not randomly selected and may or may not be representative of the nonreligious elderly population as a whole, this is a large sample for a qualitative study and reflects important demographic patterns. It is gender balanced and includes 12 black respondents (surveys show that only 4 to 7 percent of African Americans identify as nonreligious). It includes respondents from regions where nonreligiosity is more socially accepted (New England) and where that is less the case (so-called Bible Belt states such as Texas and Georgia).
Nonreligion comes in many varieties (e.g., atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker), and the sample reflects that diversity. Interviews are semi-structured, beginning with questions about the past and then proceeding to more reflective questions about the present and the future, including the respondent’s impending death. These conversations are conducted in private homes and in institutional settings, depending on the preferences of the subjects, and they range in length from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours. All interviews are transcribed for coding and analysis.
The study of so-called Nones poses unique challenges that are readily apparent as I begin to review the data I collected. The first and most obvious is theoretical: we are looking at a population that is defined in terms of what they lack—religion—and yet there is no consensus on what religion is.
The models of religion employed in the social sciences are largely based on Christian constructs. It has long troubled me that Pew, Gallup, and other big survey organizations use measures such as belief in God, prayer, attendance at services, and denominational membership or identification with particular traditions, and then apply these cross-culturally to places like China or Japan, despite evidence that this is a poor fit.
Even within the United States, where Christianity is the dominant religion, about half of Nones are people who identify their religion as “nothing in particular,” a phrase that leaves considerable room for further definition.
I have proposed that we distinguish American Nones into at least four categories: Unaffiliated Believers have conventional, usually Christian or Jewish worldviews, but reject organized religion; Philosophical Secularists have replaced religion with a distinct nonreligious worldview such as atheism, Humanism, Free Thought; Spiritual Seekers claim no religion because they create their own worldviews from more than one spiritual tradition; and last, those who are indifferent to any kind of religious, spiritual, or secular worldview. This model has apparently been helpful to subsequent researchers, and yet my current work on elderly Nones is raising new questions.
It would be easy to attribute these patterns to religion’s unique ability to give meaning to our mortality. Many people assume that facing death without religion renders life pointless and unbearable, that only exceptionally strong and stoic individuals can face the void that is death without a religious framework.
But that assumption is just that, an assumption, because we don’t have much data to back up such notions. The study of Nones has focused mostly on the young, and studies of the aged have tended to ignore atheists. Secularity is growing even among the old, and yet few have bothered to ask elderly secularists how they face death without religion.
How do atheists, agnostics, and other seculars find meaning at the end of life? How do they make sense of mortality without religion? I have spent the last two years exploring these questions, sifting through hundreds of studies and interviewing individuals in nursing homes, senior centers, and in their homes. This article reports on some of what I have learned.
When I reviewed the literature, it seemed at first that the foxhole theory was right. A substantial body of research suggests that religion helps people cope with dying.
While some of that positive impact is tied to community (the social support offered by religion), the provision of meaning is a significant causal factor: religion can offer coherence, a feeling of confidence that our life events are ordered or purposeful, rather than random and chaotic, which in turn can confer a sense of control over one’s life.
The end of life is frightening because it’s a new experience; we don’t know where we are going. If a person is ill, dying may entail physical pain and disability. Even in the best of circumstances, we may find ourselves unable to engage in basic physical activities we used to take for granted, or facing the loss of mental acuity.
And for most older people, the final years bring the loss of partners, family members, and friends who would otherwise support them at this time.
Religion can provide a framing for why we are in pain or why we had to lose somebody we love—for example, if suffering is viewed as redemptive or part of a divine plan. Religion also answers questions about what happens after death, whether through complex and varied conceptions of reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism, or through comforting beliefs that we will see loved ones again in heaven, as in some Christian traditions.
There are increased rates of depression and suicidal behavior among elderly people. Religious traditions can provide supportive social networks, and offer people in the final years of life steps to work through devastating losses and to continue living a purposeful life. Reading scripture or meditating is something an individual can do, even with physical disability. And when a loved one dies, rituals like sitting Shiva or preparing for a funeral mass offer structured, familiar activities for loved ones to do.
But saying that religion helps people find meaning in the face of death does not prove that meaning is absent without religion. Recent reviews of such studies show that they focus almost entirely on religious people, usually comparing more devout people to those who are less devout. Only rarely do they study individuals who are committed seculars, i.e., those who have replaced religion with some other source of meaning.
The few studies that engage in more rigorous comparisons suggest that nonreligious people do just fine. Peter Wilkinson and Peter Coleman found that both atheism and religion can be a source of meaning for older people, and it is the strength of conviction, rather than being religious or nonreligious, that enables effective coping.
Coleman and Marie Mills suggest that while uncertainty is sometimes linked to depression, questioning also links to growth. Bethany Heywood and Jesse Bering have shown that the nonreligious do, in fact, frame life events using purposive narratives. But we know very little about the content, patterns, and sources of these narratives.
What we do know is that finding meaning is an interpretative act. Human beings make meaning by telling stories about our lives. Language does not just capture and reflect experience but creates it.
Even when people are telling stories that are similar in content, they use linguistic, rhetorical, structural devices to create different sets of meaning. There are broader social narratives that shape individual storytelling, what Ann Swidler has called the cultural toolkit. These social narratives can come from religion or science, from a particular family background, or from popular culture.
I like to conceptualize meaning making as a kind of mapmaking enterprise. The stories we tell are the way we connect the dots and orient ourselves. It’s like when the ancient Greeks imagined lines between the stars and gave names to the various constellations. Without a constellation map to life, events can feel random, and we can feel lost, frightened, and confused, especially when we are entering new territory. But when we have a map, we have a path to follow; we have agency and power.
If meaning making is about storytelling, then I knew I needed to listen to respondents’ stories. So the study, begun in late 2017 and currently in its final phases, is based on personal interviews with elderly seculars. The two main criteria for inclusion are age (70 and over, though I include younger individuals with terminal illness) and nonreligious identification. Participants were recruited in nursing homes and senior centers, with the assistance of the AARP and various secularist organizations.
To date, a total of 97 interviews have been conducted in various locations across the United States. Although participants were not randomly selected and may or may not be representative of the nonreligious elderly population as a whole, this is a large sample for a qualitative study and reflects important demographic patterns. It is gender balanced and includes 12 black respondents (surveys show that only 4 to 7 percent of African Americans identify as nonreligious). It includes respondents from regions where nonreligiosity is more socially accepted (New England) and where that is less the case (so-called Bible Belt states such as Texas and Georgia).
Nonreligion comes in many varieties (e.g., atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker), and the sample reflects that diversity. Interviews are semi-structured, beginning with questions about the past and then proceeding to more reflective questions about the present and the future, including the respondent’s impending death. These conversations are conducted in private homes and in institutional settings, depending on the preferences of the subjects, and they range in length from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours. All interviews are transcribed for coding and analysis.
Consider Jack, an 86-year-old retired engineer I interviewed at his home in the Northeast. He was raised Jewish in a family that fled Nazi Germany, and he continues to attend a conservative synagogue with his wife. But he identifies as atheist, proudly informing me, “I think Judaism is the only religion that does not require belief in God.” Trained in physics and chemistry, he rejects any kind of supernaturalist framework and sees all ritual as theater—and yet he finds value in tradition and creates his own personal meaning from it.
Thus, he and his wife regularly host a secular Passover at their house to pass on the family tradition, but Jack interprets the Exodus story as a metaphor for his hope that freedom will eventually triumph over oppression. Perhaps we need another category for people like Jack, such as culturally religious, or existentially secular, or both.
A second challenge in researching the nonreligious is methodological: how do you access them? Religious folk are easily located through the organizations they affiliate with. Not so with the Nones. Even among self-identified atheists, the vast majority do not affiliate with atheist organizations. The negative stigma still associated with atheism in the United States compounds the problem, especially for African Americans and the elderly for whom religious identification continues to be a strong social norm.
In the interviews I conducted with black respondents, the theme of being a “double minority” was prominent. They were old enough to have personal memories of the civil rights movement, which had close ties to the black church. Turning their back on the church can feel like betrayal, and they are unsure of their place in organized secularism.
Take Andre, a 70-year-old physician from Atlanta. Raised Baptist, he left church in his 20s to join the Nation of Islam and then a decade later came to reject religion altogether. He reports that his parents and his sister “got upset when I became a Muslim, but since I came out as atheist they won’t talk to me at all.” Andre has attended the occasional event at a local humanist association but finds he’s consistently “the only black person there.”
White atheists can feel isolated as well. I interviewed Fred, a 79-year-old military veteran, at a nursing home in Massachusetts. A high school dropout, he joined the army and after his release held a series of low-paying jobs in construction and long-distance driving. He fell into drinking and was homeless for more than a year before a social worker found him a place in a Catholic nursing home. Fred told me, “I can’t talk about my beliefs here.”
He feels like an outsider because he does not believe in God and thinks religion is a “giant hoax” invented to “make people feel better about death.” But he likes having a roof over his head.
I learned that recruiting respondents for this kind of study means finding ways to make them feel safe. When I posted flyers at that nursing home seeking volunteers for study of nonreligious people, I got zero responses (even though their records show more than a third of residents stated no religious preference). So I collaborated with the staff there to personally invite those individuals they thought might fit my criteria. I also spent weeks walking about and knocking on doors, introducing myself and telling people about my project (which was how I found Fred). This was a rather time-intensive recruitment effort, but it yielded many more interviews. I mentioned earlier that surveys show significantly lower rates of non-religiousness among blacks and older people. Now I wonder about those numbers.
As I listened to individuals tell their stories, I was struck by their eagerness to tell them. I remember sitting by the bed of a 91-year-old woman who was nearly blind and had both her legs amputated due to diabetes. We had talked for about 45 minutes and had gotten to the part where I planned to inquire about her thoughts on death. She was one of my first interviews, so I hesitated, reminding her that she did not have to answer if she did not want to. She cut me off, saying: “It’s OK to talk about this, honey. I am 91 and not in good shape, so I spend a lot of time thinking about death.”
The study of Nones has focused mostly on the young, and studies of the aged have tended to ignore atheists. Secularity is growing even among the old, and yet few have bothered to ask elderly secularists how they face death without religion.
The few studies that engage in more rigorous comparisons suggest that nonreligious people do just fine. Peter Wilkinson and Peter Coleman found that both atheism and religion can be a source of meaning for older people, and it is the strength of conviction, rather than being religious or nonreligious, that enables effective coping.
There is surely some selection bias at work here: respondents to an end-of-life study probably feel comfortable discussing their thoughts on the matter. But it is also true that meaning making is particularly salient as we approach the end of life. Not only is death humanity’s most profound crisis of meaning, but facing our own mortality also triggers an assessment of the life that is behind us: the good experiences and the regret, what our legacy is and whether there is still time to improve it. In other words, meaning making at this stage of life is both backward and forward looking, mapping past and future.
The 97 stories I collected confirm some of the conventional assumptions about nonreligious people. Most do not believe in an afterlife, at least not in the sense that a soul or spirit or some conscious aspect of the self survives the death of our brain. And most do not think the universe, or human life, has an inherent purpose. But, contrary to conventional assumptions, that does not lead to despair or anomie. Instead, I found that secular elders construct their own meaning-making narratives from secular rather than religious sources, and there are distinct patterns of secular meaning making that can be compared to religious ones.
There are certain story types that I encountered again and again, suggesting that these meaning maps are not idiosyncratic but represent a kind of ideal type of narrative nonreligious individuals use. These narratives function similarly to religious narratives by providing coherence (ordering the past) and control (action steps for the future). Like religious narratives, they articulate the meaning of human existence to something bigger than ourselves, and they suggest a moral dimension.
By far the most common narrative framework was rooted in the scientific understanding that we are all part of nature (more than half of the respondents used some variation of it). Previous research suggests that scientists are more likely than the general population to be nonreligious, so it was not unexpected that many of my respondents were trained in the sciences, as engineers, chemists, and physicians.
More surprising was how science functioned as a meaning-making narrative. We often think of science as cold and hard and value neutral. Max Weber famously wrote of how the ascendancy of science over religion in the modern world has led to “disenchantment.” Yet I found that science-based narratives can evoke a sense of awe and wonder, a perception that we are part of a meaningful universe that gives order to our past and offers insight for the future.
Although there were many variations, the basic arc of this narrative is that humans are part of nature; we have a place in evolution and a role in the ecosystem, and our role continues to develop and change. What happens to us has material causes that can be explained by science. And though there is no inherent purpose in the universe, we can create meaning for ourselves.
Life is reciprocal and interdependent; our actions ripple out into all aspects of nature. Death is part of life and should remind us of our kinship to other animals. Yet our intelligence also imposes a moral obligation to seek understanding (through science) and to preserve the planet for future generations.
Consider the story of Agnes. She’s 72, a retired science teacher who recently lost her husband after an agonizing battle with cancer. Agnes grew up a strict Catholic in what she calls “the Polish ghetto of New York.” Her family ran a bar, and there was violence and sexual abuse that was always kept a secret. “One of the mortal sins at that time was eating meat on Friday or not going to church. Then one of the venial sins was lying. As a six-year-old, I was saying to myself that there are people in my family that lied, and it caused horrible things to happen. If I eat meat on Friday, I haven’t done anything to anybody. If I don’t go to church, I haven’t done anything to anybody. That seems stupid.” Yet it took over a decade for doubt to turn into rejection of her faith and family.
Agnes left New York to attend graduate school in chemistry in California, then married and had two children. After discovering that her husband had cheated on her for years, she divorced him and raised the kids by herself. She was in her mid-60s when she met her second husband, Tom. They had seven happy years together.
“He was an amazing man. It was an amazing relationship.” Then he was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer. When surgery and radiation failed, they spent much of their savings on alternative treatments. When Tom died, Agnes said, “It was stunningly shocking to my system.” Agnes is still grieving, but she does not despair, nor does she feel any inclination to return to the Catholic faith. Instead, she draws meaning from her scientific training to articulate an explanation of her place in the universe that is both rational and moral.
The way Agnes tells her story reflects several characteristics common to science narratives:
Mapping the past: Science narratives tended to explain life in terms of material causes. Looking back at their lives, respondents often spoke of good or bad luck, of random events of nature, of winning (or not) a genetic or social lottery that shapes one’s ability to make good or bad choices.
As Agnes put it: “Hurricanes, tornadoes, the family you are born into. All kinds of things are random and can wreak havoc with us, and we have absolutely no control over it. The only thing we control is our reaction. Every decision we make determines the consequences that happen to us. I don’t think that there’s anybody micromanaging anything.” She doesn’t blame anyone for the hardships in her life, explaining “it’s what I had to go through to become who I am now.”
There is a harshness in this outlook because nature isn’t fair. But there’s also beauty in randomness that can evoke awe at the unexpected. Agnes feels that Tom’s sudden death helps her pay attention and find joy in little things she previously might have missed. “Now I hear a bird sing in the garden and I just sit there and listen.”
Like several of my respondents, she spoke of the butterfly effect (how a butterfly flapping its wings in Chicago can set in motion a chain of atmospheric events that cause a tornado in Tokyo). For her, this is at once a metaphor for the power of small changes and for the limits of our control over the world.
Mapping the future: From a natural science frame, death is the end of individual existence and consciousness, and my respondents often imagined it as analogous to experiencing anesthesia before surgery. And yet life goes on. Our bodies are recycled and nourish future plant life. In Agnes’s words, we “are composed of our physicality and our energy . . . like with anything on this planet that dies, our atoms and energy are recycled back into the universe.”
If we have children, our genes live on through them. Agnes loves watching her two grandsons. “I am just amazed how much energy he has, he is so much like Sean [her son].” And our legacy is the impact we have on others, through caring for friends or family or by political organizing. For Agnes, that means volunteering for local election campaigns and committing to planting “only natives” in her garden.
A moral universe? Atheists are often portrayed as arrogant because they don’t acknowledge a higher power, but I generally found the opposite to be true. Perceiving themselves as part of nature, rather than created by God in his image, led respondents to a place of humility. The prevailing view about science (by nonscientists) is that it is neutral to morality, but I found that most individuals who relied on this narrative tended to see it as imposing a moral obligation.
To quote Agnes one last time: “We have the power to influence the direction of evolution by the choices we make. Humans may be at the top of the food chain but now we have overpopulated the world . . . and we’ve done so many things that are so destructive. I think our purpose now should be to try to make this world livable for future generations . . . at this point in history, that’s what our whole goal should be.”
The science narrative gives a sense of moral urgency to what respondents felt they should do with the time they have remaining: to show love for their friends and children, to appreciate nature or art, to be engaged politically, even as they may become increasingly physically disabled.
There were other types of narrative themes besides science, but they generally appeared in combination with it, and space does not permit description of them here (you’ll have to wait for the book!). But the data I’ve gathered thus far suggests that the foxhole theory (fear of death pushes us toward religion) is wrong. Instead, awareness of death pushes us to find meaning, and secular sources like science can be as rich a source of meaning making as religion is.
Religion is often touted as the only way to address the fear of death, but perhaps it’s just the oldest and most popular. What I’ve found significant about these generic secular narratives is how well they work to give meaning in the face of death. Secular meaning-making maps are actually quite similar to religious ones, at least in structure and function: they build coherence and control, they place human experience in relation to something bigger than ourselves, and they lend moral significance to our lives as we face its inevitable end.
They are different from religious narratives in key ways, too, in their materialist conception of life and their social constructionist view of meaning. By materialist conception, I mean the way that people rejected supernatural notions of a spirit or soul that survives death in favor of a scientific view that consciousness is located in the brain. While parts of us may live on (in the sense of genes passed on to our children or an energy that goes back into the universe), respondents did not think they, as individuals, had continued existence once the brain was dead. By social constructionist, I mean that to deny that there is any inherent meaning in the universe leaves it up to human beings to create meaning and purpose in our lives.
And yet, it is not just the secular who create their own meaning. The way that people mix and match from various sources should make us rethink the boundaries between “religious” and “secular.” When an atheist finds meaning in Buddhism, is that religious? What about someone raised Catholic who finds that Mass calms her, even as she rejects belief in God or the afterlife? There is a small but growing number of scholars exploring how people build their own meaning systems from a variety of cultural resources, both religious and secular. I hope there will soon be more.
A few months before my uncle died, I called to tell him about the study I was conducting. He had always been a private man, so I was surprised and pleased when he offered to participate.
We did not get around to it. By the time I visited, the cancer had entered his brain, causing swelling that made him hallucinate, and he was clear only for short periods of time when the nurse injected him with steroids. So I remain skeptical that he was talking to God on his deathbed. His caregiver was a Pentecostal Christian who was inclined to interpret whatever he said in religious terms. I am grateful to her for being there so he did not have to die alone. But I will always wonder how he would have told his own story.
https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/facing-death-without-religion/
Mary:
The articles in the blog dealing with death, religion and the secular "nones" were interesting. I never thought much of the idea that there are no atheists in the trenches. If you are profoundly aware that the tenets of religion are myths, the difficulty would be in "returning" to belief simply as a much desired or needed comfort. Perhaps some are capable of that in some fashion...as the man who followed observances as a cultural, family tradition...but true belief, that is more difficult.
In my case, belief ended in early adolescence. I found the God of religion inadequate, with his rules and punishments, his exclusions from grace, his provincialism. There were people better than that, more generous, loving and humble. The idea of a god who could be bullied by prayers was equally unsatisfactory — like a being who could be manipulated into granting wishes. Kindergarden stuff. Magic. Fairy tales.
When I was in real distress, when my brother was suffering and dying of cancer at 40, I tried to return to the "comfort" of belief, to pray and to see this suffering within the framework of redemption and eternal life. But I couldn't do it. The great temptation was to give up my unbelief for the comforts of belief, that all was held and cared for by a greater creator--No, that was fantasy. Once you have seen the man behind the curtain you can't fool yourself or force yourself into belief again.
I find the idea of immortality as uncomfortable as that of god and religion. Death is universal. Even stars die. The universe itself may end. And these deaths, these ends all seem to be a step in the return to new life, not your own particular life, another life. What happens without death?? No new life. No space for it, no stuff to raise it from, all becomes static, no moving, no growing, no renewal. The desire for immortality is a great selfishness, like the toddler's — a fear of the dark, of being lost.
In my work as a nurse I was familiar with death. With the obtuse materiality of the body. When death comes that is what's left: the solid opacity of flesh, already beginning the process of dissolution. The energy of that mind, the personality, is gone. The neural net that was its support, its architecture — broken, gone.
Working with the newly dead the overwhelming experience is of absence. It is mere fancy to think that individual persists without its foundation in living tissue.
Raised a good catholic and educated by nuns, and here I am. And like the older women mentioned, I am happy — even as I know the world is at a crossroads where it may take a very bad turn.
Oriana:
In the early years after leaving the church, I had a glimmer of hope that perhaps when I grow old I would be able to return to religion for its supposed comfort. Even now I experience moments when I feel that it would be easier to cope if I happened to be religious. But just a thought away lay the realization: "But then I'd have to believe all this garbage."
And that was impossible — unless I slipped into dementia. Then it would be a parallel with starting to believe — my brain wasn't yet mature, incapable of critical thinking. Nor did I have the mental toughness to defy the adults — until mid-adolescence, just like Mary. Once the truth makes you free, there is no going back.
I saw my mother's dead body within an hour of her passing. My first thought was: "It's no longer her." Now she existed only in my memory, and the memories of people who'd known her. This may be an important kind of existence in its own right, but on a totally different plane than physical existence.
One of the things I vividly remember about my mother was her bursting into wild laughter when she heard the phrase "mind not tied to the brain."
As for heaven, I imagine that for a while we'd be busy exploring the new environment. But then what? Without meaningful work, we might as well no longer exist.
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MORE THAN A BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE NOW OBESE
More than a billion people are living with obesity around the world, global estimates published in The Lancet show.
This includes about 880 million adults and 159 million children, according to 2022 data.
The highest rates are in Tonga and American Samoa for women and American Samoa and Nauru for men, with some 70-80% of adults living with obesity.
Out of some 190 countries, the UK ranks 55th highest for men and 87th for women.
The international team of scientists say there is an urgent need for major changes in how obesity is tackled.
Obesity can increase the risk of developing many serious health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
Ranking global obesity rates (the percentage of population classed as obese, after age differences are accounted for), researchers found:
The US comes 10th highest for men and 36th highest for women
India ranks 19th lowest for women and 21st lowest for men
China is 11th lowest for women and 52nd lowest for men
Senior researcher Prof Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London, told the BBC: "In many of these island nations it comes down to the availability of healthy food versus unhealthy food.
"In some cases there have been aggressive marketing campaigns promoting unhealthy foods, while the cost and availability of healthier food can be more problematic."
Prof Ezzati, who has been looking at global data for years, says he is surprised at the speed the picture has changed, with many more countries now facing an obesity crisis, while the number of places where people being underweight is regarded as the biggest concern, has decreased.
The report, spanning 1990 and 2022, found the rate of obesity quadrupled among children and adolescents. Meanwhile for adults, the rate more than doubled in women and nearly tripled in men.
At the same time, the proportion of adults classed as underweight has fallen by 50%, but researchers emphasize it still remains a pressing problem, particularly among the poorest communities.
World Health Organization (WHO) director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "This new study highlights the importance of preventing and managing obesity from early life to adulthood, through diet, physical activity, and adequate care."
He added that it would take the work of governments and communities and "importantly requires the co-operation of the private sector, which must be accountable for the health impacts of their products".
Study co-author Dr Guha Pradeepa, from the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, says major global issues risk worsening malnutrition caused by both obesity and being underweight.
She said: "The impact of issues such as climate change, disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine risk worsening both rates of obesity and underweight, by increasing poverty and the cost of nutrient-rich foods.
"The knock-on effects of this are insufficient food in some countries and households, and shifts to less healthy food in others."
The network of more than 1,500 researchers, collaborating with the WHO, analyzed height and weight measurements from some 220 million people aged five and over.
They used a measure called body mass index.
While they acknowledge this is an imperfect measure of the extent of body fat, and say some countries had better data than others, they argue it is the most widely used, making this global analysis possible.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68436642
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MEDITERRANEAN DIET WITH EXTRA OLIVE OIL BENEFITS HEART HEALTH
~ A traditional Mediterranean diet with added olive oil may be tied to a lower risk of heart disease at least in part because it helps maintain healthy blood flow and clear debris from arteries, a Spanish study suggests.
“A Mediterranean diet rich in virgin olive oil improves the function of high-density lipoproteins, HDL, popularly known as `good’ cholesterol,” said lead study author Dr. Alvaro Hernáez of the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona.
This type of diet typically includes lots of fruits and legumes that are rich in antioxidants as well as plenty of vegetables, whole grains and olive oil. It also tends to favor lean sources of protein like chicken or fish over red meat, which contains more saturated fat.
“Our hypothesis is that these dietary antioxidants may bind to HDL particles and protect them against different kinds of attacks,” Hernáez said by email. “As HDLs are more protected, they can perform their biological functions more efficiently and, therefore, they are able to remove cholesterol from arteries or contribute to the relaxation of blood vessels for longer.”
High levels of low density lipoproteins (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol and fats known as triglycerides are associated with an increased risk of heart and blood vessel diseases. HDL, or “good,” cholesterol is associated with a lower risk because it helps remove excess LDL from the bloodstream.
For the current study, Hernáez and colleagues examined data on 296 older adults at risk for cardiovascular disease who were randomly assigned to one of three diets: a Mediterranean diet supplemented with one liter per week (about 34 fluid ounces) of extra virgin olive oil, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with 30 grams (1 oz) of nuts a day, or a low-fat diet.
Participants were 66 years old on average, and they were asked to follow their assigned diet for one year.
Only the low-fat diet was associated with reduced LDL and total cholesterol levels, researchers report in a paper scheduled for publication in the journal Circulation.
None of the diets increased HDL levels significantly.
But blood tests and lab work showed better HDL functioning in the group assigned to the Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil.
While some previous research has linked a Mediterranean diet to weight loss and a reduced risk of heart disease and some cancers, scientists haven't conclusively proven that the diet itself is responsible, instead of other lifestyle choices made by people who eat this way.
Limitations of the current study include the fact that all three diets were relatively healthy, making it difficult to detect meaningful differences in outcomes, the authors note.
Still, the findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that HDL function may influence cardiovascular disease risk, Dr. Daniel Rader of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia writes in an accompanying editorial.
“We know the Mediterranean diet reduces risk of heart disease but still don't know exactly why,” Rader said by email. “There is probably more than one reason, and this study suggests that one mechanism might be that the Mediterranean diet improves the function of HDL.”
Even without clear evidence explaining why the Mediterranean diet may help the heart, eating this way can still make sense, Rader added.
“For people who are interested in reducing their risk of heart disease, the Mediterranean diet is probably the best proven diet to reduce risk,” Rader said. “I think the majority of people who don't have other major dietary concerns should look toward the Mediterranean diet as a heart healthy diet.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN15S2IT/
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FASTING-LIKE DIET MAY HELP REVERSE BIOLOGICAL AGING BY 2.5 YEARS
A study showed a fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) lowered insulin resistance, liver fat, inflammation, and other markers associated with aging. The diet is based on the consumption of formulated food with controlled levels of dietary macros on days 1–5 and then eating normally for 25 days out of a month.
This fasting-like diet style is not suitable for everyone, including pregnant people and older adults.
Three cycles of a so-called fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) was shown to reduce biomarkers associated with insulin resistance, liver fat in humans, and other markers associated with aging.
USC Leonard Davis School Professor Valter Longo the senior author of the new study, designed the FMD. This five-day diet is high in unsaturated fats and low in protein, carbohydrates, and calories. The study examined the diet’s impact in two clinical studies, which included men and women between the ages of 18 and 70. Participants who followed the fasting-mimicking diet went through 3-4 monthly cycles, following the FMD for 5 days and adhering to a normal diet for the other 25 days.
Results showed that patients in the FMD group had less insulin resistance, lower HbA1c results, and better fasting glucose results. They also had less abdominal fat and liver fat, along with improved immune system markers suggesting lower inflammation.
In addition, both clinical studies showed that those who followed the FMD had lowered markers associated with biological aging by 2.5 years on average. The study was published in Nature.
FASTING FIVE DAYS A MONTH
This clinical study, involving 100 participants, indicated that a plant-based fasting-mimicking diet done for 5 days a month could reduce the biological age of people after only three monthly cycles and without changing their lifestyle.
The researchers provided participants with food that had been formulated to contain certain proportions of macro- and micro-nutrients, such as soups, energy bars, snacks, and teas, for days 1-5. These were provided by the company L-Nutra Inc., a company that sells ready-packaged meals for people who are fasting.
(Two of the authors ‘have equity interest in L-Nutra’, the study disclosed.)
The first study carried out by these researchers was published in Metabolic Health and Disease in 2023, and showed similar results. “The results are particularly convincing because both studies, one done in Los Angeles and one in Tennessee, showed similar effects on the reduction of biological age by 2.5 years as measured by the biome method developed by Morgan Levine at Yale but also showed parallel evidence of rejuvenation or improved function/health of multiple system including the immune system, the liver and the endocrine system as measured by standard methods,” Prof. Longo told Medical News Today.
“The next step is to continue to allow many universities to perform clinical trials to test how cycles of this standardized plant-based FMD, which comes in a box like medicine, can help people stay younger but also prevent or treat diseases like diabetes, CVD, cancer, and Alzheimer’s considering that biological age and multi-system dysfunction are the major risk factors for these diseases,” said Professor Longo. “We also hope that these studies will convince doctors to add the FMD to their toolkit for disease prevention and possibly treatment,” he added.
THE BENEFITS OF A FAST-MIMICKING DIET
There are numerous ways this diet can improve overall health. Reducing inflammation “The FMD does exactly what it is named after- mimics fasting,” said Dr. Nicole Avena, nutrition consultant, assistant professor of neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, visiting professor of health psychology at Princeton University, and author of Sugarless. “This diet is beneficial to balancing blood sugar, improving insulin resistance, and reducing overall inflammation throughout the body. By giving your body time to rest, rather than digest, it allows us to heal inflammation and put energy towards more pressing internal ‘issues,’” she explained.
Lowering biological age and risk factors for disease
Many lifestyle diseases, such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease are associated with shortened lifespan. “These diseases raise inflammation within the body and allow for reactive oxygen species (ROS) to multiply,” Avena explained. “ROS in excess cause disease, therefore aiming for a low-inflammatory lifestyle like FMD is beneficial for aging.” “Biological age, in particular, is interesting because it is genuinely what age we feel versus what age we really are. The more inflammation and disease we have determines our abilities to perform acts of daily living,” she added.
Risks of a fasting diet
While the clinical consensus is that the FMD is generally safe, there are some people who should not follow this diet. “If you are pregnant or trying to conceive, and if you are considered an older adult, the FMD is not for you,” Avena said. “During pregnancy, we have higher metabolic demand, and in old age, we do not have as fast of a metabolism as we do when we are younger,” she added.
During pregnancy, getting enough nutrients is essential for the health of the baby and parent. For seniors, fasting is usually not recommended, especially if they already have chronic health issues.
How to incorporate fasting into your daily life
Usually, the FMD consists of higher-fat foods while staying relatively lower in protein. “This is a great time to try a Mediterranean-style diet, which includes beans, olive oils, fatty fish, and whole grains,” said Avena.
“Remember, you are trying to eat under your estimated calorie needs for 5 days while drinking plenty of water. Doing this once a month is the way it is planned, but you should continue to incorporate healthy foods like those included [in] a Mediterranean diet throughout the month,” she explained.
Oriana: OF MICE AND MEN
I don’t know how Victor Longo arrived at the idea of fasting for five days every month. It reminded me of the experiments on calorie restriction. One way is to provide fewer calories every day. Another customary method is feeding the experimental animals (mice or rats) only every other day. Mice fed every other day tend to eat more on the feeding days, so that their calorie intake isn’t much different from that of controls. But the mice that get food only every other day consume 90% of the calories eaten by the ad-lib control group, still live as long as the mice on daily calorie restriction.
Critics keep reminding us that the results in humans are never as dramatic as those obtained using mice, since humans are already a long-lived species. Small Japanese women climbing steep temple steps astonish us when we learn that these matriarchs are one hundred years old or beyond. According to my Japanese neighbor, the secret is to drink lots of tea. We know that tea is beneficial, but the greatest part of that longevity comes from being a small Japanese woman. You don’t see them become obese.
Basically, there are no obese centenarians.
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SWITCHING TO ELECTRIC CARS COULD ELIMINATE MILLIONS OF CASES OF ILLNESS
~ Hundreds of infants’ lives would be saved and millions of children would breathe easier across the US if the nation’s power grid depended on clean energy and more drivers made the switch to zero-emission vehicles, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
“Air pollution and climate change are putting children at risk today,” said report author Will Barrett, the association’s senior director of advocacy for clean air. “The impacts of climate change continue to intensify, and that will just add to the risks that children in the United States face as they’re growing up.”
The report, published Wednesday, determined that children’s lives could be made a lot healthier if all new car shoppers picked zero-emission options by 2035 and people bought only zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles like buses, ambulances and tractor-trailers by 2040, along with a switch of the nation’s electric grid to clean and renewable energy by 2035.
Electric cars and trucks are better than gas-fueled vehicles because over the course of their lifetime they emit fewer carbon emissions. EVs create 3,932 pounds of carbon equivalent per year, compared to 11,435 for gas powered vehicles, according to calculations from the US Department of Energy.
While battery-powered cars don’t emit greenhouse gases from tailpipes, they aren’t completely “zero-emission” even if that’s their official label. There are still emissions created when the cars are built, when manufacturers create the cars’ large batteries, and when they charge. Decarbonization of the electric grid is a key component to cleaning up the air. Without a clean source of power like hydroelectric or solar, the benefit of having an electric car is much more limited.
This latest report estimates that by 2050, a switch to zero-emission vehicles and a decarbonized electric grid would mean 2.79 million fewer pediatric asthma attacks, 147,000 fewer pediatric acute bronchitis cases, 2.67 million fewer cases of pediatric upper respiratory symptoms and 1.87 million fewer cases of pediatric lower respiratory symptoms, and 508 infants’ lives would be saved.
The research comes from a larger American Lung Association report that said a big push for zero-emission vehicles would create more than $1.2 trillion in health benefits for the US by 2050. Traffic is one of the biggest sources of carbon pollution in the country and accounts for 28% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to US government data, followed by electricity production at 25%. ~
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/health/electric-vehicles-air-pollution-kids/index.html
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WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS MAY HELP LOWER COMPLICATIONS IN HIP REPLACEMENT
Hip replacements are common in conditions such as osteoarthritis, and obesity is a well-known risk factor.
People who have obesity and receive a hip replacement are more likely to experience complications after the procedure than those at a healthy weight.
New research reports people taking semaglutide — the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic — had similar or improved postoperative outcomes after a total hip replacement than those who did not take the drug.
About one million people around the world have a total hip arthroplasty — also known as a total hip replacement — each year.
People who have osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis may need a total hip replacement, as well as anyone experiencing damage to their hip joint.
As with any surgery, there are some risks of complications. Past studies show that people who have obesity and receive a total hip arthroplasty are more likely to experience complications compared to those who are at a healthy weight.
For this reason, doctors may suggest a person who has obesity lose some weight before having hip replacement surgery.
Now, two studies recently presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ 2024 Annual Meeting examine the use of semiglutide — the active ingredient in Wegovy FDA approved medication for weight loss, and type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic — in people who undergo a total hip arthroplasty.
Researchers reported that people taking semaglutide had similar or improved postoperative outcomes after a total hip replacement compared to those who did not take the drug.
WHY FOCUS ON SEMIGLUTIDE?
According to Dr. Matthew L. Magruder, a third-year resident at Maimonides Health in Brooklyn, NY and lead author of one of the presented studies, with the approval of semaglutide for the treatment of obesity by the FDA in 2021, and the surrounding media attention, it was clear that this medication was going to explode in popularity.
“Given that many of our patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty [have obesity], it is inevitable that a growing percentage will be taking it in the perioperative period,” Dr. Magruder explained to Medical News Today.
“Therefore, we figured it would be important to review the data we already had on its effect (on) total hip arthroplasty. It will be increasingly important to understand the effect of this medication on our patients as orthopedic surgeons,” he said.
“In particular, for patients who [have obesity] and in chronic pain due to hip osteoarthritis, it can be very hard to lose weight in order to be indicated for total hip arthroplasty,” added Dr. Daniel Pereira, an orthopedic surgery resident at Washington University Barnes-Jewish Hospital and co-lead author of the second presented study.
“[Having obesity] and [being] in pain makes it much harder to burn calories through traditional means such as exercise or calorie cutting. However, the high risk for complications for [patients with obesity] receiving total hip replacements makes it so that many of these patients do not receive this procedure — for good reason,” according to Dr. Daniel Pereira.
“Thus, we need to understand if there were any effects on the outcomes following total hip arthroplasty in patients who took semaglutide when compared to controls,” Dr. Pereira said.
Dr. Pereira’s study examined hip replacement postoperative complications among patients with obesity who used semaglutide compared to those who did not use the medication.
Scientists recruited 616 people in each cohort with an average BMI of 35.5. Upon analysis, the researchers found postoperative complications after a hip replacement — including hip arthroplasty revision, prosthesis infection, and surgical site infections — were similar between people have obesity taking semaglutide compared to those not using the drug.
Dr. Pereira said they were not surprised by these findings.
“We hypothesized that patients who were on semaglutide and received total hip replacements would have the same outcomes, for better or worse, than those who maintained or lost weight by traditional means — we found this to be the case,” he explained.
“The implications are obvious — patients who otherwise would be at a higher risk profile for this surgery can take semaglutide to lose weight and be at a better chance at an equivalent outcome as anyone else. They do not need to receive bariatric surgery or go through other more rigorous means of weight loss in order to be indicated for the procedure,” he added.
LOWER RATES OF PROSTHETIC JOINT INFECTIONS WITH SEMIGLUTIDE
Dr. Magruder’s research evaluated whether diabetic patients taking semaglutide at the time of their hip replacement surgery had fewer medical complications, fewer implant-related complications, fewer readmissions, and lower costs than those who were not taking the medication.
Researchers reported people with diabetes taking semaglutide had lower rates of readmission within 90 days of their total hip arthroplasty and lower rates of prosthetic joint infection compared to the control group.
“These findings were not expected but make sense given the medication’s mechanism of action,” Dr. Magruder explained. “Two of its known actions are increasing insulin secretion, thereby decreasing blood glucose levels and slowing gastric emptying, thereby decreasing caloric intake and decreasing weight.”
“Given that poorly controlled diabetes and obesity are independent risk factors for prosthetic joint infection, it makes sense that this medication’s use might decrease its risk after total hip arthroplasty,” he added. “Furthermore, with less prosthetic joint infections, it would follow that there would be fewer readmissions.”
Scientists also found those taking semaglutide did not show statistically significant higher rates of complications compared to those not taking the drug. There was also no difference between the two groups for any other implant-related complication, lengths of stay, same-day surgical costs, or 90-day episode of care costs.
Semaglutide may reduce hip surgery complications
After reviewing these studies, Dr. Timothy Gibson, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and medical director of the MemorialCare Joint Replacement Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, told MNT these findings gave him both feelings of excitement and relief.
“It is reassuring to know that patients with obesity and diabetes who took semaglutide prior to hip replacement surgery do not have higher risks, and in some circumstances have lower risks of complication,” Dr. Gibson continued. “Obesity is a known issue for those undergoing hip replacement surgery. We encourage patients with a very high BMI to lose weight before proceeding with surgery to improve their safety profile.”
“Most, however, are unsuccessful, and often the surgery is never performed,” he added. “This new class of medications may open the door for many more [patients with obesity] to have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of this typically very successful surgery and to resume a more pain-free and active lifestyle.”
MNT also spoke with Dr. Gregg R. Klein, vice-chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, about these two studies.
Dr. Klein also expressed excitement over these research results.
“Historically, it is well-known that obesity and poor diabetic control have been significant risk factors for patients undergoing total hip replacement,” he detailed. “It has been a challenge for surgeons to optimize a patient with these conditions.”
“The use of semaglutide has become another way that physicians and surgeons can help patients treat obesity and lose weight before surgery. Clinically we have seen patients lose a significant amount of weight using these medications. Hopefully, the weight loss will translate to less complications and better outcomes,” Dr. Klein added.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/weight-loss-drugs-may-help-lower-complication-risk-after-hip-replacement#Semaglutide-may-reduce-hip-surgery-complications
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ending on beauty:
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.”
~ W. B. Yeats
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