ice formation, AntarcticaTHE OCCULTISTS
for Denise
We were given coincidences
so we might believe there is a meaning.
~ J. L. Borges
My Waterwoman, Turquoise, Monkey,
I am Ram, Ruby, Rat —
a mystical convocation of r's —
but you see me as a sparrow,
feathers mussed
from sleety Polish winters,
pecking crumbs under the beaks
of fat, wobbly pigeons.
And I see you as a seedling
on a rock-scarred slope;
the wind whistles as the gang boys did
in the streets where fate scrawled
jail sentences in liquor-store neon.
My brave clairvoyant,
a dusty crystal ball
crowds your make-shift desk;
tarot deck, incense, I-Ching —
Survivors of the real,
why do we plunder the occult,
telling us nothing we don’t know —
How easily I foresee you
twenty years from now,
shimmering and jingling
in a beach bookstore,
taping messages to mirrors —
and I in a black halo, a nun
writing letters to the unforgiven god —
Is this our future inscribed
in numbers, in tea leaves, in stars?
Yet if on a planetless night you find
we live by accident,
not by destiny,
quickly put on an amulet,
a magic earring:
reality is too big
to be objective,
Nobel-prize scientists
secretly believe in omens;
our dreams dissent
from physics, we oxidize
everything we touch —
you are wind and I
am flame
carry me
carry me far
~ Oriana
*
“MUSIC WITHOUT SAUERKRAUT” AND THE MAGUS OF PARIS
History has not been kind to Josephin Péladan. An enormously prolific author with a vision for societal reform through art, he is usually consigned to a footnote or a few lines in scholarly overviews of Rosicrucianism or the French occult revival. Portrayed as an eccentric oddity, his defining characteristic is that of contradiction and paradox.
‘No literary figure of the late nineteenth century had been more ridiculed, lampooned, and caricatured,’ we are told by one biographer; and the majority of scholarly references and studies leave an impression of Péladan as an attention-seeking, arrogant, and eccentric braggart, whose significance in the worlds of literature, art, or esotericism, was negligible.
Yet, Péladan published over a hundred articles, books, plays, and pamphlets within his lifetime, committed to his belief in the Ideal, in Tradition, in Hierarchy. He left modern-day Rosicrucianism a rich legacy and was a key figure in the inception and development of fin-de-siècle French Symbolism, as well as in the overt marriage of art and occult symbolism during the French occult revival.
Overall, his work can be clearly placed at the nexus formed by Illuminist, perennialist, and esoteric Christian currents, with strong orientalist and Kabbalist influences. During his lifetime, he collaborated with some of the greatest figures in the modern esoteric canon, Gerard Encausse (Papus) and Stanislas de Guaita.
His first novel, Le Vice Supreme (1884), had been the catalyst for de Guaita’s involvement with occultism. De Guaita became his faithful disciple, but following a quarrel over doctrinal and philosophical matters, Péladan broke away (1891) from the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix (1888) that he had established together with Papus and de Guaita. A very public quarrel (1890-1893) ensued, dubbed the War of the Roses, resulting in permanent damage to Péladan’s reputation, and from this point on, he was openly ridiculed in popular and literary journals.
Péladan went on to establish his Ordre de la Rose-Croix catholique et esthétique du Temple et du Graal, an order dedicated to his core ideals of Idealism, Tradition, and Hierarchy, and strongly focused on his aesthetic vision.
These terms should not be taken at face value: Péladan’s idealism and reference to hierarchy are both Platonic (as evidenced by his own explanations); while his reference to occult tradition needs to be understood in the context of the late nineteenth century, and his particular take on world mythology.
His use of “Catholique” also requires qualification – he spells out that he holds to original principles of Catholic doctrine, which he felt the church of his time had lost sight of. He refers to the Eastern Orthodox Church as being more faithful to the foundations of Christianity and states that his use of “Catholique” is in the Greek sense – meaning “universal,” or all-encompassing, in terms of embracing both ancient and Christian wisdom.
Through his order, he sought to merge his own occult theories, which he perceived through a lens of aestheticism and idealism, with these principles to fulfill his mission of the reinstatement of the Primordial Tradition, the old philosophia perennis of the Renaissance philosophers, through the ritualization of art, which in turn would function as the manifestation of the divine in matter.
All of Péladan’s actions in the public sphere—regardless of their reception—were turned to the one goal of showing the world that: “Art is man’s effort to realize the Ideal, to form and represent the supreme idea, the idea par excellence, the abstract idea, and great artists are religious, because to materialize the idea of God, the idea of an angel, the idea of the Virgin Mother, requires an incomparable psychic effort and procedure. Making the invisible visible: that is the true purpose of art and its only reason for existence.”
Central to Péladan’s vision was his conception of the artist as initiate; select individuals who could bring a small part of the divine into the mundane sphere. Addressing himself to all artists, he wrote: ‘Artist, you know that art descends from heaven… it is a little piece of God within a painting… if you create a perfect form, a soul will come and inhabit it.’
A concept that would appear to reflect the Hermetic concept of statue animation. We will return to his sources of inspiration later, but suffice it to say that where art and esotericism overlap during this particular period, Péladan’s influence can be seen as a parallel, though more practically oriented current, to the Theosophical Society.
Although Péladan himself neither subscribed to nor particularly approved of Theosophical teachings, as they were at odds with his unique brand of French traditionalism, from a broader historical perspective, these two currents met in the work of Symbolist artists, and the artists belonging to the Salon d’Art Idéaliste founded in 1896 by Jean Delville (1867-1953), the mirror of Péladan’s Salon in neighboring Belgium, drew on the ideas of Blavatsky and Leadbeater (1854-1934), as well as Péladan’s work.
Yet where Blavatsky sought to intellectualize and integrate aspects of esoteric thought with evolutionism, Eastern concepts, and an occult-scientific perspective, Péladan sought revolution against realism and the re-enchantment of what he saw as a disintegrating and decadent society.
Péladan saw his work as a vast, cohesive whole, and the way in which he categorized and organized it testifies to this. He practiced what he preached, using his own literary talent to pen a series of novels which, far from being simple works of literary symbolism, were the main vehicle through which he communicated his esoteric vision to a mainstream audience.
His work developed in two parallel series; he would write a novel followed by an accompanying theoretical work — the former aimed at the public, the latter at the intellectual, or initiate. He wrote a further series of critical and theoretical works on aesthetics and art under the rubric La décadence esthétique, a seven-part series Amphitheatre des Sciences Mortes (1892-1899), exploring the social and political implications of his theories, while Les Idées et les Formes (1900-1913) comprised his most overtly esoteric theoretical texts. What emerges is an image of a man with a very clear vision, who ‘never denied his magical, aesthetic, erotic, and religious convictions.’
This vision manifested in the unique artistic amalgamations produced at the Salon de la Rose et Croix, perhaps one of the most ambitious artistic undertakings the French art world saw at the fin-de-siècle, featuring unique exhibitions and productions seeking to unite the arts into a revival of initiatory drama, with a philosophical underpinning rooted in the Western esoteric traditions, and with the ultimate goal of the spiritual regeneration of society.
Péladan termed the Salons gestes esthétiques; their form inspired by Wagnerian thought, Rosicrucian universalism in scope, their content rich with esoteric symbolism, and their purpose being a cross between initiatory drama and theurgical rite played out before an unsuspecting public.
The ultimate end of Péladan’s vision was no less than a spiritual revolution with beauty as the supreme weapon and art as the coup de grâce against the ‘disenchantment of the world’ so prevalent as first the scientific world-view and then the industrial revolution completed their conquest of the Western mind, in an age he regarded as characterized by rampant materialism and futile decadence.
In his own words, at the opening of the first, massively successful Salon (1892) – which saw some fifty thousand visitors: “Artists who believe in Leonardo and The Victory of Samothrace, you will be the Rose and Cross. Our aim is to tear love out of the western soul and replace it with the love of Beauty, the love of the Idea, the love of Mystery. We will combine in harmonious ecstasy the emotions of literature, the Louvre, and Bayreuth.”
Péladan was in earnest about this revolution, and despite his arrogant and eccentric manner, his tireless efforts to disseminate and popularize his ideals belie any charge of narcissistic self-promotion. Against a strongly legitimist political background influenced by Joseph de Maistre, the Synarchy of Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842-1909), and an ideological background comprising influences ranging from Catharism to Fabre d’Olivet to Chateaubriand, his work reveals an imaginal world in which artist-initiates in direct communication with divine inspiration would form the inner circle.
These initiates would then raise the souls of the masses to ecstasy through aesthetic bombardment, rather than subduing them by Machiavellian machinations, intoxicants, or soporifics. The first salon in 1892 featured a total of 250 works selected on the basis of Péladan’s manifesto, which expressly forbade historical or military scenes, pets, “accessories, and other exercises that painters usually have the insolence to exhibit.”
This went out in the official call for artists published in Le Figaro, and was later elaborated upon to state that: “The Order favors the Catholic Ideal and mysticism. After that, Legends, Myths, Allegory, Dreams, the paraphrasing of great poets, and finally, all lyricism.”
The Salons were intended as a direct reaction against the official salons of the day, which Péladan considered repulsive and decadent. The salon was a resounding success despite the disparate nature of some of the works. Not all of them met with Péladan’s approval, yet nevertheless, over 30 thousand Parisians visited the first salon, and it was considered one of the greatest events of the year.
The second salon was perhaps more in tune with Péladan’s dictates, as was the third. However, he ran into financial problems, and by the fifth salon in 1896, public interest and enthusiasm had begun to wane, and Péladan himself had begun to show signs of wear, not least due to the ongoing War of the Roses as well as the derision he continued to face from many quarters.
Despite the unexpected and considerable success of the sixth and final salon, Péladan suspended the order’s activities, declaring that he did not consider the artists’ work to be up to the standard of the Renaissance masters he had encouraged them to emulate.
Péladan’s driving force lay in the desire to achieve reunification with the Divine, both on an individual and on a collective level. He was not particularly fond of ritual practice and disapproved of practical magic, rather considering that the artistic process was a supreme sacerdotal act. The structure of his Rosicrucian order and his theoretical guide for artists reflect this.
Regarding the order itself, Péladan considered there to be three ways to reach God:
The first was science or the quest for God through reality.
The second was art, a quest through beauty.
The third was Theodicy, or the quest through thought.
These are reflected in the tripartite, though equal, trajectories offered through his order: following the initiation of neophytes, the second degree offered three directions, whereby one could select the red and black tunic of the Rose-Croix if one believed in nothing but art and science, or the white tunic with the red cross of the Templars, if one believed in the word of Jesus, or the blue tunic of the Grail if one worshiped the presence manifesting during the Eucharist.
It is also worth noting the protectors, or saints, that Péladan designated for his order: Leonardo da Vinci, in whose name neophytes took the oath of the first degree, Dante Alighieri, in whose name they swore for the second degree, and Saint John and the Holy Spirit for the final degree of Commander.
Péladan wrote numerous treatises and monographs analyzing and elaborating on the profound esoteric content of the work of both Dante and da Vinci, and the inspiration he gleaned from his interpretations of their work informed his own theories.
Overall, Péladan viewed occultism through the lens of art, but his understanding of occult traditions and esoteric philosophy was anything but superficial. To the contrary, he was both extremely well-read and had gone so far as to develop his own cosmology and to rewrite Genesis according to his own perspectives and teachings, based extensively on the work of Fabre d’Olivet.
Péladan had avidly studied both the Zohar and other related texts and displayed considerable knowledge of angelic lore. Inspired by his reading of Philon, Péladan conflated angelic entities with the daemons of ancient Greece and developed a syncretic dualist cosmology, with some Valentinian echoes, incorporating a secondary creative principle and a curious perspective on the Enochian legend of Fallen Angels – whom Péladan actually names ‘daemons of light’ in his novel Istar.
In his more exegetical and theological works, he drew on lesser-known rabbinical literature focusing on questions such as the world’s ‘creation by the angels, serial transformation, the creation of androgynous man, original, and almost fatal sin, and the relationship of spiritual beings to the world, the cataclysmic flood.’
All of these elements came together in his aesthetic curriculum, based on esoteric principles. In his seminal artistic treatise, L’Art Idealiste et Mystique, he wrote: ‘In these pages Art is presented as a religion, or, if you will, as an intermediary aspect of religion between the physical and the metaphysical.’ He summarized his whole theory in the axiom: ‘Art is the spirituality of forms,’ and lauded Plato and the Promethean potential within Man, saying that ‘Plato magnificently explains the propensity of the human creator, the ravisher of fire; he makes of him a daimon, an intermediary being between the mortal and the immortal.’
Péladan’s concept of the artist as an intermediary and supreme initiate, as well as his intensive use of Fall mythology, falls directly in line with the earlier work of Illuminist thinkers Fabre d’Olivet, Louis de Saint-Martin, and the ideas elaborated by Novalis, Schlegel, and Pierre-Simon Ballanche, whereby the poet is respectively ‘the recipient and transmitter of revelation and a divine universal language,’ ‘a priest who will lead humanity to its eschatological fulfillment by relinking the world here below and divine transcendence,’ and ‘poetry is the intuitive faculty of penetrating the essence of beings and things.’
Péladan’s aesthetic theory was rooted in his complex cosmology and obsession with Fall mythology. He believed that Adam’s sin was ‘to have detached the branch of Malkuth [the Kingdom, i.e. the physical world] from the Sephirotic tree,’ leading to ‘the separation of the primitive androgyne,’ and a rupture between mankind and the Divine. As a result, the perfect androgynous being separated into man and woman, and while man came to be composed of ‘an element, a substance, and an essence,’ respectively named Nephesh, Ruach, and Neschamah, women contained only Nephesh and Ruach, while ‘Neschamah, the spirit, the only immortal essence, remained entirely within Adam.’
This led Péladan to take a somewhat singular view of women, and he has often been accused of misogyny. Yet this claim is inaccurate and misconstrued, as I detail in my book. Péladan admonished (and wrote profusely) on the Ideal that women should aspire to and believed Platonic love in the original sense: body, soul, and spirit, to be the highest form of erotic love.
Yet, through art, even this disparity could be corrected, and the imperfections of the Fall could be redeemed. In his treatise on Ideal and Mystical Art, Péladan used the portrait of the Mona Lisa to illustrate what he meant:
‘I know all things, says Mona Lisa, “I am serene and without desire; however, my mission is to distribute desire, because my riddle provokes and raises all who gaze at me; I am da Vinci’s gracious pentacle, I manifest his soul, which is never still, for it sees too high and too deep. I am she who does not love, because I am she who thinks – remember that for Péladan women were incapable of this – the only woman in art who, though beautiful, does not attract a kiss. I have nothing to give to passion, but, if intelligence approaches me, she will be mirrored in my expression as if in a multicolored mirror, and I will help some people become conscious of themselves; and those who receive from me the kiss of the spirit may say that I love them, according to the will of da Vinci, who created me to show that there is a lust of the spirit, that makes me love, but that denies love if it is not from thought.”’
In other words, through art, Péladan believed that the Ideal could manifest and correct the imperfections in matter, and therefore, as far as he was concerned, the artist who undertook such a creative act was performing a supreme act of theurgy. He further illustrates his point with reference to the painting of St. John the Baptist, once again in a first-person narrative: “I am the androgyne of forms (…) I am the announcer of the mysticism of Beauty, the mysticism of Art.”
Péladan wrote extensively on the concept and form of the androgyne, which to him was the supreme expression of unity and perfection. He was not the first to do so; in fact, the androgyne had taken on something of an emblematic nature in the literature of the early 19th century and had been taken up as a motif by earlier Symbolist artists.
In all likelihood, Péladan was more influenced by his reading of Fabre d’Olivet, Pierre-Simon Ballanche, and Charles Fourier, who ‘viewed the androgyne as a utopian goal of social progress,’ a symbol of equality and unity. Where Ballanche may have seen it as a symbol for equality between classes and genders, Péladan saw it as a symbol for metaphysical union and as the ‘ideal symbol of art.’ From his earliest writings, many androgynous figures found their way into Péladan’s novels, frequently playing the part of mystagogue or mediator ‘between the real and Ideal worlds.’
Péladan’s view of the androgyne is in many ways highly derivative of Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, in which Aristophanes speaks of a time when there was a third, androgynous sex, in which male and female were joined. They angered Zeus by being too self-sufficient and powerful, and even going so far as to attack the gods, and so he gave them a lesson in humility by splitting them apart forever. There are many commonalities with Péladan’s cosmology, and for Péladan, as for Plato, it is love that can ‘restore us to our ancient state […] and heal the wounds that humanity has suffered.’ Péladan considered the androgyne to be the ultimate symbol of that metaphysical Love.
Péladan’s teachings were greatly influential on the circle of artists participating in the Salons, although needless to say, his work was not the only such influence. The work of Schopenhauer, and his work on aesthetics, was particularly influential; and Schopenhauer’s concept that during aesthetic contemplation “one can thus no longer separate the perceiver from the perception” (The World as Will and Presentation, section 34) reflects Péladan’s Promethean objective of creating a new world through art, yet there is a sharp divergence based on Péladan’s conviction that art is a sublime intermediary able to lead to permanent metaphysical union and effect magical change on the material plane, as opposed to simply providing temporary solace from the pain of reality.
It is perhaps here that Péladan’s Neoplatonic influences are most visible; the dualism evident in his work is most certainly not anti-hylic [pertaining to material world]. Yet Péladan’s philosophy certainly reflects Schopenhauer’s view of a dialectic correlation between matter and Ideal, ‘intellect and matter are correlatives, in other words, the one exists only for the other, they stand and fall together […] They are in fact really one and the same thing.’
Whether influenced by Schopenhauer, Péladan himself, or the overall zeitgeist, the compositions by many artists associated with Péladan’s salons featured symbolic elements reflecting this curious dualistic interplay between Matter and the Ideal, and in many cases, also depicted resolutions of this divide.
Two main motifs stand out; although there are many worth exploring, these are best left for another time. The first is the recurring representation of variations on the androgyne, whether as masculinized feminine forms or feminized masculine forms. Although these have been interpreted from a perspective of gender theory by some, and it has been suggested that there are homosexual overtones to many of these works, certainly in the case of Péladan, this is a misconception; there is no such evidence in his work at all.
To the contrary, he wrote other treatises on marital relationships and suggested ways in which women could aspire to the Ideal Feminine. It was coarseness, vulgarity, and decadence he sought to eliminate, and through the constant creation and exhibition of these Ideal forms, he hoped to pave a way to return the soul to beauty and the innocence of Eden.
The following paintings are just some examples of several dozen works that appeared either at Péladan’s Salons or that were painted by artists directly connected to them. Jean Delville’s School of Plato would appear at first to be a depiction of Jesus with a group of effeminate disciples, but in the context of Péladan’s influence, it is more an idealized vision of Plato surrounded by his Ideals of the human form, implying the perfection that could be reached through Platonic teachings.
Jean Delville: Plato surrounded by disciples (Plato looks like Jesus)
In the other images, we have various depictions of an androgynous feminine form, to varying degrees of subtlety.
In this painting by Jan Toorop [The Sphinx], we see a fusion of the androgyne with the Sphinx, the second key recurrent motif. Just like the androgyne, the Sphinx was a popular motif among the Symbolists as well as the occultists of the day, at once mystagogue, guardian of occult secrets, a connection to our bestial – or mystical – nature, and androgynous feminine.
Edouard Schuré succinctly explains the esoteric significance of the Sphinx, which he saw as the supreme symbol of ancient Egypt and the mystery of Nature. ‘For before Oedipus, they knew that the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx is man, the microcosm, the divine agent, who recapitulates all the elements and forces of nature within him.’ This was an interpretation Péladan fully agreed with: ‘Esoterically it represents the initial condition of man, which is identical to his final condition. It teaches him the secret of evolution and the secret of bliss […] he knows that one day he will reconstitute his original unity.’
To gaze on the Sphinx was to contemplate one’s own initiatory journey, and the androgyne was there to remind one that it was possible to realize this potential.
All of this is summarized in Toorop’s painting, of which the artist himself explains:
‘They who are completely caught under the sphinx’s claws, are unevolved beings. In the center of the painting man and woman, struggling toward ever higher evolution, are chained to earth… To the right are those who have freed themselves from the sphinx’s claws and who therefore constitute the driving force of all spiritual labor.’
The Sphinx was of particular significance to Péladan and came to embody a powerful and humbling experience that he underwent in Egypt in 1898, the year after the final Salon. Following a series of serious mishaps and accidents in Egypt, he experienced an ‘awakening’ and ‘realization’ that his approach and demeanor had been entirely misplaced, and that more humility and less flamboyance were needed for him to live up to his calling.
According to his own account, when he finally stood before the Sphinx, he cried out, “Have I profaned the Rose Cross?” In his account of his experience, he stated: “You are guilty because you didn’t find the true divine expression of your purpose. […] You took men for demons and operated according to pride. You have disobeyed Tradition.”
Péladan’s mortifying realization was that in his insistence on taking the world by storm and demanding, rather than commanding attention, he had transgressed against his own rules, and everything he stood for. His changed demeanor after this period was not enough to salvage his reputation, and though he continued to write, the autobiographical elements of his novels reveal his despair at having failed in his mission. He died a broken and forgotten man.
Yet with the benefit of hindsight, it seems that Péladan had not failed as cataclysmically as he believed. His six Salons did indeed draw together those artists who would later be known as the Symbolists, and his philosophical influence on both art and esotericism traveled to Belgium through Jean Delville’s Salon d’Art Idéaliste.
Overall, the paintings from the Rosicrucian Salons are perhaps the finest encapsulation of his philosophy, and there is far more to them — and to Péladan — than meets the eye.
https://peladan.substack.com/p/who-was-josephin-peladan
from another source:
In the Paris of the early eighteen-eighties, at the height of the Decadence, the man of the moment was the novelist, art critic, and would be guru Joséphin Péladan, who named himself Le Sâr, after the ancient Akkadian word for “king.” He went about in a flowing white cloak, an azure jacket, a lace ruff, and an Astrakhan hat, which, in conjunction with his bushy head of hair and double-pointed beard, gave him the appearance of a Middle-Eastern potentate. He was in the midst of writing a twenty-one-volume cycle of novels, titled La Décadence Latine, which follows the fantastical adventures of various enchanters, adepts, femmes fatales, androgynes, and other enemies of the ordinary.
For all the creepiness, the moment is worth revisiting, because mystics like Péladan prepared the ground for the modernist revolution of the early twentieth century. In the years that followed, radical artistic thinking and obscure spiritual strivings intersected in everything from Kandinsky’s abstractions to Eliot’s The Waste Land and the atonal music of Schoenberg. In Yeats’s The Second Coming, the “rough beast” that slouches toward Bethlehem, half man and half lion, is no metaphor. Classic accounts of modernism tended to repress such influences, often out of intellectual discomfort. In recent decades, though, fin-de-siècle mysticism has returned to scholarly vogue.
In 1917, Max Weber said that the rationalization of Western society had brought about the “disenchantment of the world.” Péladan, and those who took up his mantle, wished to enchant it once again.
Péladan was born in Lyon in 1858, into a family steeped in esoteric tendencies. His father was a conservative Catholic writer who tried to start a Cult of the Wound of the Left Shoulder of Our Savior Jesus Christ. Péladan’s older brother, Adrien, was the author of a medical text proposing that the brain subsists on unused sperm that takes the form of a vital fluid. When Adrien died prematurely, of accidental strychnine poisoning, his brother perpetuated his ideas, suggesting that the intellect can thrive only when the sexual impulse is suppressed.
Péladan sparked little outrage in an environment that had assimilated Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Huysmans. Among impressionable youth, he had an appeal somewhat comparable to that H.P. Lovecraft. Writers as various as Paul Valéry, André Gide, André Breton, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline read him with fascination, as did Le Corbusier. Verlaine generously summarized him as a “man of considerable talent, eloquent, often profound , . . bizarre but of great distinction.”
“MUSIC WITHOUT SAUERKRAUT”
Péladan’s collaboration with Satie was rooted in the bohemia of Montmortre, where both men cut vivid profiles. Sastie was best known as a pianist at the Chat Noir and the Auberge de Clou cabarets, in 1888, he composed his trio of pensively dancing “Gymnopédies.” He heralded a new simplicity — music “without sauerkraut”— in defiance of Wagnerian grandeur.
He was also an incorrigible ironist who festooned his scores with unperformable instructions: “Arm yourself with clairvoyance,” “Open your head.” Such exquisite pranks seem far removed from the dark-velvet world of Péladan, yet Satie, too, shared in the mystical preoccupations of his generation. His unadorned sonic textures, often based on Greek modes and Gregorian chant, can have the quality of cryptic icons.
In the mid-twentieth century, Satie’s music mesmerized John Cage.
Before Péladan vanished from cultural memory, he received a couple of respectful nods from rising giants of modernism. In 1906, Ezra Pound embraced Péladan’s idea that the medieval troubadour tradition was a repository of hermetic wisdom. And in 1910 Vasily Kandinsky cited Péladan in his manifesto “On the Spiritual in Art.”
Although Yeats is the exemplary case among occult-oriented modernist writers, T.S..Eliot deserves a glance. After Eliot converted to Anglo-Catholicism, in the late twenties, he chastised Yeats for having resorted to a “highly sophisticated lower mythology” of supernatural lore. Yet “The Waste Land” begins with a clutter of Decadent elements, quotations from Tristan and Isolde, allusions to Verlaine and Mallarmé, chatter about tarot cards and séances, intimation of vegetation cults.
The poem ends with an Easternized version of the Grail Quest, culminating in a final chant of shantih shantih shantih. Latter-day readings of the poem tend to see Eliot’s intent as satirical, but the poem has the feeling of an initiation ritual, in the course of which the poet attains the mastery of all religious traditions.
In the wake of two catastrophic world wars, mysticism lost its luster. The ecstatic liturgies of fin-de-siécle rang false, and a rite of objectivity took hold. Hence the disreputable allure of Paladin, who dared to speak aloud what usually remains implicit in the esthetic sphere: belief in the artist’s alchemical power, in the godlike nature of creation, in the oracular quality of genius.
Péladan is the failed prophet of a nonexistent faith. Nonetheless, his conviction is unnerving. Entire religions, entire empires, have been founded on much less.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-occult-roots-of-modernism (condensed by Oriana)
Mary:
The interest in and entanglement of art and the occult in the later 19th century, as well as the development of the modern aesthetic, was not only a phenomenon in France, but was international, certainly pan- European. The Pre-Raphealites with their emphasis on a medieval, mythic, hand-worked aesthetic, encompassing everything from poetry and painting to clothing and home decor, infused with a sense of enchantment and sacred magic, as in their infatuation with the Arthurian and Grail mythos, was freighted with the same mix of art and mysticism as Peladan's occultism. This was followed into the 20th century by poets like Yeats, Eliot and Pound, the novelist Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and the flamboyant showman Aleister Crowley (a Péladan-like figure).
This movement of modernism looked back for inspiration to the medieval world, to the Renaissance, to Egypt, to ancient mythology and folklore, to occultism and magic, to the mystical, in pursuit of the enchantment and mystery of the pre-industrial world. They felt industry and mechanization had robbed the world of the richness of spirituality and meaning, and sought to recover those riches, that enchantment in art that embodied mystery, mysticism and transformation to a more magical, super reality. Symbolism and Surrealism were the results —reaching far into the next century.
Your opening poem says so much about what those modernist artists with their interest in the occult were addressing. We write our letters to "the unforgiven god"; fearing "we live by accident, not by destiny," we must reach for magic, for an amulet. We cannot be mere flesh, but wind and flame..infinite, eternal.
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WHO ENJOYS BEING SINGLE MORE, MEN OR WOMEN?
‘You’ll be single for the rest of your life’ is the sort of foreboding comment that has long been directed at single people. But increasingly, they seem to be asking themselves whether ending up single is a threat or a promise. Data show that, in some places, singles comprise around 40 per cent or more of the adult population, and research suggests that a good portion of these people are intentionally choosing singlehood over relationships.
Who is particularly likely to feel that singlehood works well for them? There is reason to think it would depend partly on gender. Historically, women have faced strict expectations when it comes to romantic relationships. In many cultures, women’s perceived worth has depended on their desire and ability to marry, while men’s worth has been based more on their ability to succeed financially. Women who hesitate to marry have traditionally been thought of as odd or selfish, the common assumption being that they will get with the program and become dutiful wives and mothers. Single women continue to be subject to cultural stereotypes such as the lonely cat lady or the miserable spinster, someone who is shunned because of her inability – or, even worse, her unwillingness – to marry.
Attacks on single women are also institutional. For example, a governmental body in China created the term ‘leftover women’, and single women in China are explicitly blamed in the news for China’s failing birth rates. But the rising tide of singlehood seems to be emboldening people to notice and question this kind of denigration. A recent and relatively radical example in South Korea is the 4B movement, which marks single women taking a stance against relationships, marriage and sex with men.
Beyond all the insults and the pushback lie some empirical questions: how are single women actually faring, and how do their experiences compare with those of single men?
Researchers have started to dig into this, but the small body of work that had been conducted until recently did not provide a clear consensus on whether men or women are happier in singlehood. In our research lab, we strive to understand who is more or less happy in singlehood, and why, by asking single people questions about how happy they are in different parts of their lives – for example, how much they like being single, or what their sex life is like.
Previously, researchers have found that samples of single men and women were no different in terms of their satisfaction with their lives or their singlehood. Yet some other research has suggested that single women might be happier with their lives and their singlehood. Most of this research did not ask about how much people wanted a romantic partner, leaving untested assumptions about what single women and men want in their lives.
In a recent study, we surveyed nearly 6,000 singles – one of the largest and most diverse groups yet examined on the topic of gender and singlehood. Here, we define singles as those who are not currently in a romantic relationship. The singles were from different countries around the world, including the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Poland; ranged in age from 18 to 75; and were required to have been single for at least six months. We asked them to report their gender, and got them to answer a few well-researched and validated questions about happiness.
What we found was that, on average, single women were happier than single men. Among our respondents, 32 per cent of single women (but only 20 per cent of men) scored in the highest range of satisfaction with their singlehood. Compared with single men, single women tended to say they were happier with their lives overall, happier about being single, happier with their sex lives, and – in a sign that singlehood was working better for women – that they were less interested in having a romantic partner.
We also wondered if women being happier than men was unique to singles. Whereas single women were more content with their single status than single men were, we found that partnered women and men whom we surveyed were equally happy in their relationships. Overall, women – both single and partnered – reported higher general happiness levels than men did.
It’s worth noting that consistent with past research, both men and women in relationships were happier than their single counterparts, on average. But it seems that, despite the negative historical pressures and stereotypes surrounding women’s singlehood, single women seem to be doing quite well after all.
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One potential reason why single women might tend to experience a happier singlehood has to do with their social support system, including their friends and family. It’s well established that strong social ties are an important factor in happiness, and they even seem to be one protective factor against an early death. Single people are no exception to the reality that social connections are a valuable part of a full life; singles often report that their relationships with friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances are important to their happiness.
But the likelihood that one finds and keeps these connections is related to gender. Studies have shown that women not only tend to have larger social networks than men, but that single women are happier with their social ties than single men are. Many young men don’t seem to be well set up for long-term social success, reporting difficulties in expressing emotions with their friends.
Although the support of a social circle is valuable for everyone, it may be particularly important for those who don’t have that ‘go-to’ person that many people have in a romantic partner. And this is particularly where men might find themselves feeling stranded. Research suggests that men tend to spend time with each other through activities, while women more often engage in intimate conversations during their quality time with friends. Women may also be more inclined than men to actively maintain their connections, such as by keeping up with people through social media. Tendencies like these could mean that single women are more likely to deepen their existing bonds and create more ‘go-to’ sources of support, compared with single men. Heterosexual men in particular tend to rely more exclusively on wives or girlfriends for emotional and social support, whereas women are more likely to have a proverbial village to turn to. For many single women, this could be a critical difference.
Women having a better time in singlehood might also reflect that, for many of them, being single seems preferable to the alternative. One perspective advanced by sexuality researchers proposes that women in heterosexual relationships are often expected to take on most of the household work and management in a way that leaves them feeling more like ‘mothers’ than lovers to their romantic partners. Add to this that women’s sexual pleasure often comes second (at best), and you can start to see why some women feel like relationships are a net loss.
The bargain might have seemed more worthwhile to some of these women in a time when men dominated the workplace, so that a relationship was the most viable path to having money in the bank. But as women have continued to make strides in the workplace and many societies have gradually moved toward greater pay equity, more women may be choosing ‘no deal’ when it comes to having a spouse. It could be that many of the single women we surveyed see singlehood as a space where there is less work, less hassle and more room for a life that addresses their needs.
Our aim in investigating gender as part of the story of singlehood is ultimately to understand what the ‘ingredients’ are in building a happy singlehood. Of course, our research findings might not apply to everyone across every context. They may or may not resonate with your experience, if you are single, and it’s possible that our results would change if we focused on different cultures.
One thing that might be universal is that singlehood doesn’t have to mean being disconnected. In his book Happy Singlehood (2019), the sociologist Elyakim Kislev describes the many ways in which singles can live fulfilling lives, such as through their strong, non-romantic social bonds. Singles who take advantage of the time and freedom to connect with a broad range of people – family, friends and others – are the ones who tell us they are enjoying singlehood the most.
If our data are telling us that this happy story applies more to women than men, on average, what can single men take away from it? In light of the growing concern about male loneliness, perhaps men can learn from women’s approach to singlehood. While social norms around masculinity might encourage them to focus more of their time and energy on pursuing financial success and climbing the career ladder, men, and particularly single men, may need to make sure they are directing enough attention towards building and maintaining social connections and taking care of themselves.
This might include things like initiating more coffee chats or other hangouts to catch up with friends, or speaking with a therapist to work on their mental health. For single men who want to partner up eventually, a stronger social circle might have the benefit of making them more attractive to potential partners. But more importantly, it might bring men greater joy in singlehood as well.
. . . but here is the more provocative article. I've posted it a while back, but it's worth posting again.
WOMEN ARE HAPPIER WITHOUT CHILDREN OR A SPOUSE
We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and childless women are the happiest subgroup in the population. And they are more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers, according to a leading expert in happiness.
Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioral science at the London School of Economics, said the latest evidence showed that the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.
“We do have some good longitudinal data following the same people over time, but I am going to do a massive disservice to that science and just say: if you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother.”
Men benefited from marriage because they “calmed down”, he said. “You take less risks, you earn more money at work, and you live a little longer. She, on the other hand, has to put up with that, and dies sooner than if she never married. The healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children,” he said.
Dolan’s latest book, Happy Ever After, cites evidence from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which compared levels of pleasure and misery in unmarried, married, divorced, separated and widowed individuals.
Other studies have measured some financial and health benefits in being married for both men and women on average, which Dolan said could be attributed to higher incomes and emotional support, allowing married people to take risks and seek medical help.
However, Dolan said men showed more health benefits from tying the knot, as they took fewer risks. Women’s health was mostly unaffected by marriage, with middle-aged married women even being at higher risk of physical and mental conditions than their single counterparts.
Despite the benefits of a single, childless lifestyle for women, Dolan said that the existing narrative that marriage and children were signs of success meant that the stigma could lead some single women to feel unhappy.
“You see a single woman of 40, who has never had children – ‘Bless, that’s a shame, isn’t it? Maybe one day you’ll meet the right guy and that’ll change.’ No, maybe she’ll meet the wrong guy and that’ll change. Maybe she’ll meet a guy who makes her less happy and healthy, and die sooner.”
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HOW GUTENBERG’S PRESS COMPARES WITH THE CHINESE PRESS
There are three things which Gutenberg did better than the Chinese:
Thick, viscous ink which would not drip and seep
Movable type instead of carving the whole page on one plate
The print plate was set above the paper, not below, and pressed with a screw press.
Gutenberg’s process was both tidier, faster to set up, and much faster to produce the printed matter. This led also quickly into standardization of paper sheet sizes.
The Latin alphabet consists of 26 basic letters plus up to 10 language-specific letters and punctuation marks plus accent marks. Movable type really comes on its own with abjad or alphabet instead of ideograms.
Where the Gutenberg press really caused a revolution was Korea. The literacy had so far been the possession of the priestly class and the intellectuals, as Korean language was written with Chinese characters. But after the invention of Hangul alphabet by king Sejong the Great, literacy simply skyrocketed. Hangul is as if created for the movable type and printing press. I personally consider hangul as the best existing alphabet, if tengwar is discounted. ~ Susanna Viljanen, Quora
Trashbean Soup:
Guttenberg’s greatest invention was not the moveable type so much as the master female molds to cast the vast amount of moveable type required to set each page.
The most remarkable thing with Gutenberg’s invention was just how many other inventions he made to solve ALL the problems of the printing press.
It wasn’t until the late 19th and 20th centuries that we really improved on Gutenberg’s original design.
Andy Wiskonsky:
I did some engineering research in the People’s Republic of China in the mid 1980’s.
I was amazed when a Chinese typewriter was carried into one of the hotel rooms used by our Chinese research hosts. It took 4 laborers with hand pole carriers to move that typewriter down the hall to the room. The typewriter seemed to have thousands of keys for its limited set of useful ideograms.
No wonder why Chinese moveable type was never very successful.
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SHOULD YOU EVER CUT TIES WITH YOUR PARENTS?
Estrangement between parents and their children is surprisingly common – this is what research says about making such a difficult decision.
Sarah first cut ties with her mother just days after her 21st birthday. "I was getting really angry," says Sarah, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. She ended the relationship during a furious phone call.
The fact that her parents had been too busy to celebrate her birthday was one thing. But there was more than that. Sarah was fed up with her mother's coldness, self-absorption and disinterest in her life. She belittled Sarah's education and constantly pressured her to help out on the family farm. Most of all, Sarah was hurt by her mum's failure to protect her from her controlling and sometimes abusive father.
For two or three years, Sarah had no contact with her mother, who also never reached out to Sarah. "It felt quite liberating," recalls Sarah.
However, when she eventually decided to move overseas, Sarah didn't want to leave things on a sour note and got back in touch with her parents. They were unrepentant, acting like nothing had happened, she says, and over the next couple of decades, further periods of estrangement followed.
Many argue that estrangement from family members is on the rise, but the data to support that is hard to find. It is surprisingly common, according to the data that does exist. And the decision to break up with your own parents is a big one.
When, then, is it the right thing to do and is it likely to make us happier, or wiser? Ultimately, what do our parents owe us – and what do we owe them?
There's relatively little research on estrangement, says Lucy Blake, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the West of England and author of No Family is Perfect: A Guide to Embracing the Messy Reality. "It's still taboo," she says. "It's quite a scary topic that people don't want to talk about. They think it's just something that happens to other people."
One study published in 2022 using data from a survey of more than 8,500 people in the US revealed that 26% of them had periods of estrangement from their father and 6% from their mother during a 24 year period. This included some people who still saw their parents on occasion. A similar study of 10,200 people in Germany found 9% of those who responded had experienced estrangement from their mothers and 20% from their fathers across a 13 year period.
In another US survey of 1,340 people detailed in a book published in 2020, sociologist Karl Pillemer of Cornell University says he found that 10% were currently completely estranged from a parent or a child – having no contact at all.
But as there is no data following up with people who have been estranged over long periods of time, it is hard to know whether this phenomenon is becoming more common. Some researchers like Pillemer, however, believe it is.
"In the generations prior to the baby boomers, there was a very strong norm of family solidarity – that blood is thicker than water. Those norms have weakened," says Pillemer, who argues that this is not necessarily a bad thing. New familial norms, such as non-married partnerships and childless couples have become more acceptable over time, too, he notes.
Joshua Coleman, a clinical psychologist who works with estranged families and who has written several books on the topic, agrees. He adds that rising individualism may also drive estrangement.
"The culture of individualism is a preoccupation with one's own self, one's identity, one's own happiness," he argues. "And so our relationships with other people are considered secondary." Studies suggest that older parents in the US are more than twice as likely to have a bad relationship with their children as parents in slightly less individualistic countries such as Israel, Germany and the UK.
Coleman argues this is further amplified by social media. It's becoming easier to find your own tribe of like-minded people online, and many influencers encourage us to cut ties with "toxic" people.
The increasing use of therapists has also played a role, he argues. And not always for the better – some therapists may, for example, "diagnose" family members with psychiatric conditions without even meeting them, after hearing just one side of the story. This, however, flies in the face of ethical rules in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. Coleman says he's met many adult children who have, following therapy, accused a parent of being toxic, narcissistic or having borderline personality disorder.
That doesn't mean that cutting ties is necessarily a bad decision. Many people have very good reasons to do so, particularly those who've suffered childhood abuse, says Pillemer. "There should be no social stigma about it," he says. Coleman adds that the same may be true if your parents are completely unrepentant about their behavior or refuse to even hear you out.
But Pillemer says his research, which included a survey and in-depth interviews with 300 estranged people, found it is often a "build-up of minor negative interactions", such as tensions with in-laws, that leads to someone cutting ties.
In a US poll of more than 1,000 people by Coleman, most people cited specific actions taken by family members or general family dynamics as reasons for their estrangement. This is sometimes linked to the aftermath of a divorce, siding with one parent or not liking their new partner. Identity and sexuality can also be key factors, with some parents refusing to accept that their child is gay, for example. Nearly a fifth said political differences were a reason.
When Blake surveyed some 800 people in the UK who were estranged from a family member, however, she found that most people cited emotional abuse as a reason. "It's usually about problematic parenting, like really harsh parenting, controlling parenting, authoritarian parenting," she says, but stresses her survey participants were people who had specifically sought support to cope with the estrangement so are not necessarily completely representative of everyone who experiences it. But she says it highlights a commonly overlooked aspect of difficult family relationships.
"I don't think anyone has to stay in a relationship in which they don't feel safe," she says. "Often, we think of physical or sexual abuse, but emotional abuse is just as important to talk about."
Coleman and Pillemer say emotional abuse is a complex term and one that can be misused. Sometimes an adult child may have a mental illness or substance abuse problem that makes them rewrite their entire childhood history in a way that unfairly casts their supportive parents as abusive villains, says Coleman. But it is important not to disregard the effect that genuine emotional abuse can have on those who experience it.
Norms for healthy parenting also change continuously, he adds. What's considered emotionally abusive or neglectful today may not have been considered so in the past. For example, parents today often try to recognize and support their child's mental illness. But 40 years ago, the public's understanding of mental health issues was arguably far more limited than it is today.
Clearly, some people feel that cutting ties with their parents is sometimes necessary. But how much do we actually owe them?
"I'm torn," says philosopher Christopher Cowley from University College Dublin, when asked hypothetically whether we owe our parents a lifelong relationship. "In one sense, I owe my parents everything in the literal, metaphysical and existential sense. But clearly, if I have survived some awful parental abuse, then presumably that means I have no further duty." An ideal relationship between parent and adult child, he says, would resemble a friendship.
When we are children, the power and the responsibility of the relationship lies entirely with our parents. But this changes as we get older. Teenagers often need to blame and criticize their parents in a natural process of distancing, explains Cowley. "But once you become a full adult you cannot blame all your problems on your parents," he argues. And at some point, our parents become very old and vulnerable. Then, he says, we may want to show a bit more patience and mercy.
When we judge our own failures, we often blame external circumstances rather than ourselves. If we miss a deadline, for example, we might argue we weren't given enough time or claim that the (proverbial) dog ate our homework. But we're not always as understanding of other people. So, if we want to be fair to our parents, we should consider their external circumstances, too. Could a lack of knowledge, mental illness, trauma or poor finances have contributed to their bad parenting?
Pillemer recalls interviewing a mother and her estranged son. They hadn't seen each other for roughly 25 years. Of the mother, he says, "her husband had abandoned her in the early 1960s, and there were few options for women. So she remarried a guy who wasn't great but not abusive," he adds. "The son resented her for it, but she felt that her family needed protection, which he eventually came to have some understanding for."
Coleman, meanwhile, says that he sometimes encounters an adult child of a single mother who raised them without any paternal support. "And the kid says, 'You were gone too much at work and I felt neglected'," says Coleman. "And on the one hand, the parent should have empathy with that. But the kid should also have empathy that they worked two jobs to raise them."
Trying to understand our parents' behavior may give us peace of mind. It may make us realize that not all of it was wicked or intentional, which could take some of the pain away. That doesn't mean we have to forgive them, or even have a relationship with them. But by gaining clarity, we may neutralize the sinister power of the murky past. Thinking this way may also remove some of the pressure from us if we, too, become parents.
Cowley suggests we keep in mind the lifelong psychological effects of estrangement before we cut someone out of our lives. Would it still feel right if the parent died? "You can't control what you're haunted by," he argues.
For some people, it may be better to keep some lines of communication open as that at least leaves open the possibility of a further conversation. Should we cut ties indefinitely, we may spend the rest of our lives struggling to understand what happened.
Finally, you may want to use a tactic put forward in the Bible, and also by the philosopher Emmanuel Kant: to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. Imagine yourself in the future, says Cowley. How would you feel if your adult child suddenly turned around and said your parenting was poor, based on their modern standards? It's easy to think we'll never make the same mistake our parents did, says Pillemer, "but we'll make other mistakes."
A final thing to consider: are your memories of childhood entirely accurate? The human memory is fallible, and we often misremember things or make up entirely false memories, especially as adults.
This can help us remove clashing narratives about ourselves. Say, for example, that you considered yourself an extrovert. Your memories may be full of people and the social events that you have enjoyed. If you later decide you are an introvert, however, your memories might change – you'll remember more strongly the times you were alone or felt uncomfortable in social situations.
The same can be true for memories of our parents – as well as their memories of us. This might be one reason why some opt for estrangement. Coleman says many people find it stressful to have ambivalent or conflicting memories about their parents. By cutting ties, those people realize they no longer need to feel that way – they embrace the bad and erase the good.
Perhaps the most important question, however, is whether cutting ties will actually make us happy. For many people, it does. "Surveys show that adult children often say that they feel happier and less stressed out as a result," says Coleman. "They feel like it was a good decision, whatever shame or guilt they feel. Whereas for the parents it's the opposite. It's all heartbreak, sadness and confusion."
But in other cases, the severing of that relationship creates its own problems.
"Estrangement can be so isolating," says Blake, who has found that many adult estranged children struggle, especially during holidays when families traditionally spend a lot of time together. So, if you are serious about cutting ties with your parents, prepare by ensuring you have a support network around you, she advises.
In Pillemer's research, only about a quarter of people weren't bothered by their estrangement. He says it was rather common for people to start the interview by saying they were happy with their decision, but later on admit they felt sad and that things were unresolved. Many also feared regretting their decision."When estranging, I am cutting off the branch I'm sitting on," explains Cowley. "I think it harms the adult child to lose touch with where they come from."
Cowley, Pillemer and Coleman all say that, if you really can't stand having a relationship with your parents, you should start by distancing yourself for a limited period. "I'm dealing with heartbroken parents every day who have been estranged for years and they feel suicidal," says Coleman, who recommends that adult children who opt for estrangement check back in with their parents after a year. "Sometimes, that time is enough to wake up a parent."
Because parents often invest more time, money and effort in the relationship, estrangement is a bigger deal for them, meaning they typically need make the effort to fix the relationship.
Reconciliation is possible. The 2022 study of 8,500 people in the US estimated that 62% of people who were estranged from their mothers and 44% who were estranged from their fathers reconciled, at least for some time over a 10 year period.
That's what happened to Sarah, who currently has some limited contact with her mother. She is getting old, says Sarah, and "had a quite tough life", with periods of significant mental illness. "I feel a little sorry for her," Sarah says.
Parents don't owe their children a perfect childhood. And children don't owe their parents eternal gratitude. Perhaps what they do owe each other, though, is empathy, self-reflection and a willingness to listen.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250522-should-you-ever-cut-ties-with-your-parents
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THE VALUE OF GRANDPARENTS
~ To better understand the contributions of grandparents, I asked Melinda Blau, author of The Wisdom Whisperers, who has extensively studied children’s early lives, to explain why grandparents are invaluable in the lives of growing families. The answers go well beyond passing on family history and traditions.
Q: You have grandchildren. What do your grandchildren learn from you?
I have two grandsons, Henry and Sam, who are in college, and a third, Charlie, now 15, who is still at home. I make them more aware of ageism and show them, through my own life, how to keep living, no matter what happens. Once with Charlie, a stranger referred to me as “an old bag.” He still teases me about it, but he also likes that I call myself an old lady! This a great model of inspiration and fortitude to show kids—to embrace life, take what it gives you, and keep moving on.
Q: Ageism and its stereotypes are hard to combat. You call the women in your book, “old ladies.” How is that helpful?
Most of my contemporaries hated that I called these much-older friends “my old ladies.” They thought it was an insult. (“You can’t call them that!”) But my old ladies didn’t mind. When you reach your 90s and 100s, you’re not insulted. That’s what you are—old—and you’re grateful to still be here. I also called them “my old ladies” to change the connotation of that phrase: to mean an active, engaged elder who is still involved in and enjoying life, despite some of the limitations that age can bring.
These women and likely many older family members use what they’ve learned over the years to master the unexpected twists and turns. Zelda and the others show us that the sparkle of youthful passion can persist well into later years. Zelda played tennis until 99. She continued to take long walks and put on shows at senior centers until she died at almost 105. Marge actively invested in the stock market until she died at 104 and 1/4 years. Sylvia, the “queen” of social engagement, died while planning her own 98th birthday party.
Q: What lessons do the “old ladies” in your book offer parents to encourage children to respect their grandparents and other older relatives and friends and to challenge persistent stereotypes?
They embrace the idea that it’s never too late to try or to do anything you set your sights on. I think that’s the message the ladies in my book send and one reason why parents should expose young children to the older generation. Being with grandparents is also about making children aware of the life cycle and that change—say, in how you walk—is natural, not a reason to panic or mourn.
Q: What can a parent do when no grandparents live close by, they are not active in their grandchildren’s lives, or they are not even alive?
Make friends with another older relative or neighbor or their friends’ parents, people not necessarily related to them. These bonds are mutually enriching, offering us valuable insights and a depth of understanding that is impossible to obtain from our contemporaries.
In my case, they are friends I respect who just happen to be 20 to 30 years older. These are people I don’t have to spend time with out of familial obligation. Parents should choose to have older friends, who have a unique perspective. It’s good for children to see their mother or father reaching up and down the age ladder in the friendships they cultivate.
Q: How do children benefit from relationships with a grandparent or another older adult?
I’ve watched youngsters marvel at a grandparent who at 75 or 80 can beat them on a tennis court or around a pool table. What’s more fun than watching a grandma or grandpa chalk the cue and then sink the 8-ball? Kids marvel at the skill and learn from an older person’s enthusiasm.
Elders can portray courage and a never-give-up attitude that children notice and store away—hopefully, to copy in whatever they may pursue as they grow up. Seeing a grandparent strive helps a child develop similar resolve. Even as a grandparent struggles to overcome an illness, your child sees someone who fights through those difficulties.
Older people with limitations or a disability not only impart messages of persistence and encouragement but also present the opportunity for parents to model caring. Children see what it means to support and help their elders.
Absorbing the messages grandparents and other older friends send can be subtle yet enduring. The messages and lessons pop up and become useful in a child’s life unexpectedly and at different ages and stages.
In her book, Blau peels back the layers of societal judgment around being old to uncover the hard-earned wisdom and resilience that come with the unfolding of years. She writes, “Aging is nothing but a developmental process—growth. It is not the enemy. It’s a gift.”
Wise parents share that gift with their children.
Oriana:
I’ve heard people remark that being a grandparent is much more rewarding than being a parent. I’ve met parents who are jealous of seeing a child receive lots of non-judgmental affection from a beatific grandparent whom they remember as strict and harsh toward themselves.
For me the greatest gift a grandparent can give is not any kind of specific wisdom, but precisely that affection unmarred by the fear of “spoiling” the child. In a way, it’s similar to the deep bond one can develop with an animal — again, it’s the non-judgmental nature of that affection that makes it so precious.
In defense of parents, they ultimately bear the primary responsibility for child-rearing; grandparents, as helpers, are less burdened by the responsibilities and stresses of child care, and are more free to enjoy the joys of watching a child develop and learn and grow. Less stress translates into greater enjoyment. I've even heard it said that becoming a grandparent is a true reward for undergoing the ordeals of parenthood. (So yes, I can understand the grief of someone who truly believed that, and now faces the fact that the joy of grandparenthood is not coming (but then nobody gets everything they want in life).
No adult child should be pressured into childbearing just to make his or her parents happy — especially when those potential grandparents are still both working full-time and wouldn’t be available to help with child care.
There are a lot of ways of leading a happy and fulfilling life that don’t involve having children or grandchildren. The world has changed a lot, and we need to free ourselves from the expectations that stem from the past, often romanticized and incompatible with current realities.
One of those current realities is that quality day care is both hard to find and expensive. Some non-religious parents join a Unitarian or Anglican church just for the sake of affordable child care. That is an impure motive, though at least Unitarians are not likely to mess up the child with religious brainwashing. In an imperfect world, let’s rejoice in any workable solution.
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FROM MAHA TO TACO
You ou may be familiar with POTUS (President of the United States), MAGA (Make America Great Again), and GOP (Grand Old Party), but there’s a new acronym that President Donald Trump isn’t a fan of.
Short for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the phrase shortened as “TACO” to describe the President’s pattern of making major disruptive policy moves, such as levying hefty tariffs on effectively every country in the world, before reversing course after the moves cause panic and economic shock.
The shorthand, which has been picked up by others, has clearly ruffled Trump’s feathers.
“You call that chickening out?” Trump said. “It’s called negotiation,” adding that he “usually [has] the opposite problem—they say, ‘you’re too tough!’”
Trump’s apparent sensitivity will likely only ensure the acronym’s longevity among critics. “I want to be famous for my dumb joke, definitely, but I also don’t want the President to ruin the U.S. economy," Armstrong told Axios. “And so I’d like to have both of those things, if at all possible.”
But TACO isn’t the only acronym to take off in Trump’s second term. Here’s a guide to some of the others to know.
DEI (DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION)
“DEI is DOA,” Trump’s son Don Jr. posted on X in March, referencing the medical acronym for “dead on arrival.” It’s a common refrain among Republicans and supporters of the President’s push to dismantle diversity-related policies across the federal government and private sector. Whereas Trump’s first-term Administration focused most of its attacks on “CRT” (Critical Race Theory), his 2024 campaign and current Administration have made “DEI” a main target and scapegoat.
DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)
What started in the 2010s as a nickname for an internet-viral shiba inu and morphed into a “meme coin” became an official initialism in November when then-President-elect Trump announced the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body spearheaded by tech billionaire Elon Musk. The initiative, aimed at slashing federal spending, has overseen mass layoffs and sweeping cuts to government programs in the early months of Trump’s second term.
Musk, who announced on Wednesday that he is exiting the Trump Administration, has long hyped up the Doge meme, including naming a SpaceX satellite “DOGE-1,” and boosted the cryptocurrency, including when he changed the then-Twitter logo to the dog-image meme.
FAFO (F-ck Around, Find Out)
Amid a dispute over deportations with Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro in January, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself wearing a fedora with the letters FAFO in red on a sign next to him. “This is awesome,” Musk said, resharing the image on X. Trump had previously reshared a post by right-wing internet troll that said “5 days until FAFO” alongside an image of Trump, on Jan. 15, five days before Trump’s second-term inauguration.
The acronym, which stands for “f-ck around, find out,” has been adopted “as a slogan” by far-right groups, according to Merriam Webster, but is also widely used across the ideological spectrum “as an expression of schadenfreude” about someone receiving negative consequences for their actions. The Times of London dubbed it “Fafo diplomacy” when Trump pressured Colombia to quickly reverse its opposition to accepting deportation flights after Trump threatened to hike tariffs on the nation’s exports.
MAHA (Make America Healthy Again)
MAHA is a spin on Trump’s tried-and-tested slogan “Make America Great Again”—only with a focus on health. It took off in 2024 after Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—known for his fringe and sometimes disinformation-based views on health including vaccine skepticism—suspended his presidential campaign and threw his support behind Donald Trump. Trump nominated Kennedy to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Kennedy has since continued to use the slogan for government initiatives. 
TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)
“Are you or your loved ones suffering from illnesses such as TDS, also known as Trump Derangement Syndrome?” begins a satirical ad released by Kennedy’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, in late August, days after Kennedy suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump. (Trump even promoted the video on his Truth Social platform.)
“It’s a horrible, horrible terminal disease. It destroys the mind before the body, but the body eventually goes,” Trump said of TDS at a Moms for Liberty event in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 30, 2024.
While the phrase originated during Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, TDS has become an increasingly popular diagnosis Trump and his supporters like to give his critics.Five Republican state senators in Minnesota introduced a bill in March to codify TDS and categorize “verbal expressions of intense hostility toward” Trump as a mental illness. The bill defines TDS as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies” of Trump. It also lists symptoms as “Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump’s behavior.”
“This is possibly the worst bill in Minnesota history,” Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, a Democrat, said. “If it is meant as a joke, it is a waste of staff time and taxpayer resources that trivializes serious mental health issues. If the authors are serious, it is an affront to free speech and an expression of a dangerous level of loyalty to an authoritarian president.”
Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio, on May 15 also introduced a bill in Congress to direct the National Institutes of Health to study TDS. “Instead of funding ludicrous studies such as giving methamphetamine to cats or teaching monkeys to gamble for their drinking water,” he said, “the NIH should use that funding to research issues that are relevant to the real world.”
https://time.com/7289404/trump-taco-acronyms-meaning-dei-doge-maha-fafo-tds/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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CYANOBACTERIA AND THE “OXYGEN CATASTROPHE”
When this organism arrived on the scene, there was no free oxygen in earth’s atmosphere. This creature evolved oxygenic photosynthesis, and everything else died.
The introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere is referred to as the Oxygen Catastrophe.
What Was It Like When Oxygen Appeared And Almost Murdered All Life On Earth?
Oxygen is a reactive, corrosive, deadly poison to anaerobic life. Good for Cyanobacteria, bad for everything else. The result was the first and greatest mass extinction event in the planet’s history, that nearly sterilized the globe and permanently altered our atmosphere, giving rise to aerobic multicellular life.
Like us.
It’s fashionable in some circles to say that human beings are the greatest ecological disaster ever to happen on this planet. Ha ha ha nope. ~ Franklin Veaux, Quora
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THE CARBON PRINT OF THE WAR IN GAZA
Climate cost of war is more than than the combined 2023 emissions of Costa Rica and Estonia, study finds
About 50% of direct conflict emissions came from the supply and use of weapons, tanks and other ordnance by Israeli military.
The carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza will be greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of a hundred individual countries, exacerbating the global climate emergency on top of the huge civilian death toll, new research reveals.
A study shared exclusively with the Guardian found the long-term climate cost of destroying, clearing and rebuilding Gaza could top 31m tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). This is more than the combined 2023 annual greenhouse gases emitted by Costa Rica and Estonia, yet there is no obligation for states to report military emissions to the UN climate body.
Israel’s relentless bombardment, blockade and refusal to comply with international court rulings has underscored the asymmetry of each side’s war machine, as well as almost unconditional military, energy and diplomatic support Israel enjoys from allies including the US and UK.
Hamas bunker fuel and rockets account for about 3,000 tons of CO2e, the equivalent of just 0.2% of the total direct conflict emissions, while 50% were generated by the supply and use of weapons, tanks and other ordnance by the Israeli military (IDF), the study found.
Burning fossil fuels is causing climate chaos, with increasingly deadly and destructive extreme weather events forcing record numbers of people to migrate. The Gulf region is among the most vulnerable to extreme weather and slow-onset climate disasters including drought, desertification, extreme heat and erratic rainfall, as well as environmental degradation, food insecurity and water shortages.
The research, published by the Social Science Research Network, is part of a growing movement to hold states and businesses accountable for the climate and environmental costs of war and occupation, including the long-term impact damage to land, food and water sources, as well as post-conflict clean-up and reconstruction.
It is the third and most comprehensive analysis by a team of UK and US-based researchers into the climate cost of the first 15 months of conflict in which more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, in addition to widespread infrastructure damage and environmental catastrophe. It also provides the first, albeit partial, snapshot of the carbon cost of Israel’s other recent regional conflicts.
Overall, researchers estimate that the long-term climate cost of Israel’s military destruction in Gaza – and recent military exchanges with Yemen, Iran and Lebanon – is equivalent to charging 2.6bn smartphones or running 84 gas power plants for a year. This figure includes the estimated 557,359 tCO2 arising from the occupation-era construction of Hamas’s network of tunnels and Israel’s “iron wall” barrier.
The killing and environmental destruction of Gaza resumed when Israel unilaterally violated the ceasefire after just two months, but the findings could eventually help calculate claims for reparations.
“This updated research evidences the urgency to stop the escalating atrocities, and make sure that Israel and all states comply with international law, including the decisions from the ICC and the ICJ,” said Astrid Puentes, UN special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. “Whether or not States agree on calling it a genocide, what we are facing is severely impacting all life in Gaza, and also threatening human rights in the region, and even globally, due to the aggravation of climate change.”
The study, currently under peer review by the journal One Earth, found:
Over 99% of the almost 1.89m tCO2e estimated to have been generated between the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack and the temporary ceasefire in January 2025 is attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza.
Almost 30% of greenhouse gases generated in that period came from the US sending 50,000 tonnes of weapons and other military supplies to Israel, mostly on cargo planes and ships from stockpiles in Europe. Another 20% is attributed to Israeli aircraft reconnaissance and bombing missions, tanks and fuel from other military vehicles, as well as CO2e generated by manufacturing and exploding the bombs and artillery.
Solar had generated as much as a quarter of Gaza’s electricity, representing one of the world’s highest shares, but most panels, and the territory’s only power plant, have been damaged or destroyed. Gaza’s limited access to electricity now mostly relies on diesel-guzzling generators that emitted just over 130,000 tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or 7% of the total conflict emissions.
More than 40% of the total emissions were generated by the estimated 70,000 aid trucks Israel allowed into the Gaza Strip – which the UN has condemned as grossly insufficient to meet the basic humanitarian needs of 2.2m displaced and starving Palestinians.
But the most significant climate cost will come from rebuilding Gaza, which Israel has reduced to an estimated 60m tonnes of toxic rubble.
The carbon cost of trucking out debris and then rebuilding 436,000 apartments, 700 schools, mosques, clinics, government offices and other buildings, as well as 5km of Gaza’s roads, will generate an estimated 29.4m tons of CO2. This is on a par with the entire 2023 emissions generated by Afghanistan.
The reconstruction figure is lower than previous estimates by the same research group due to a revision in the average size of apartment blocks.
“This report is a staggering and sobering reminder of the ecological and environmental cost of Israel’s genocidal campaign on the planet and its besieged people,” said Zena Agha, policy analyst for Palestinian policy network Al-Shabaka.
“But this is also the US, UK and EU’s war, all of which have provided seemingly limitless military resources to enable Israel to devastate the most densely populated place on the planet. This brings home the destabilizing [regional] impact of the Israeli settler state and its inseparability from the western military-industrial complex.”
The war on Gaza has also provoked bloody regional tensions. The study found:
The Houthis in Yemen launched an estimated 400 rockets into Israel between October 2023 and January 2025, generating about 55 tCO2e. Israel’s aerial response generated almost 50 times more planet warming greenhouse gases. A previous study found that shipping emissions rose by an estimated 63% after the Houthis blocked the Red Sea corridor, forcing cargo ships to take longer routes.
A conservative estimate of emissions from two large-scale exchanges of missiles between Israel and Iran topped 5,000 tCO2e, with more than 80% down to Israel.
In Lebanon, more than 90% of the estimated 3,747 tCO2e generated by sporadic exchanges came from IDF bombs, with only 8% linked to Hezbollah rockets. The carbon cost of reconstructing 3,600 homes destroyed in southern Lebanon is almost as high as the annual emissions from the island of St Lucia.
Previous research has found that military emissions rise with spending and buildup.
Israel’s military budget surged in 2024 to $46.5bn – the largest increase in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Based on one methodology, Israel’s baseline military emissions last year – excluding direct conflict and reconstruction climate costs – rose to 6.5m tCO2. This is more than the entire carbon footprint of Eritrea, a country of 3.5 million people.
Yet under current UN rules, reporting military emission data is voluntary and limited to fuel use, despite the fact the climate cost of the destruction of Gaza will be felt globally. The IDF, like most militaries worldwide, has never reported emission figures to the UN.
Hadeel Ikhmais, head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority, said: “Wars not only kill people but also release toxic chemicals, destroy infrastructure, pollute soil, air and water resources and accelerate climate and environmental disasters. War also destroys climate adaptation and hinders environmental management. Not counting carbon emissions is a black hole in accountability that allows governments to get away from their environmental crimes.”
Oriana: This seems like yet another way the world has changed. War losses used to be presented using casualty figures and the cost of destroyed military equipment. Environmental destruction didn't seem to count. It is high time to start accounting for the cost to the earth as well, meaning, ultimately, the cost to all of humanity.
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BEN FRANKLIN’S 13 GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Temperance: “Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
Franklin was a practical man who preferred concrete writing/thinking. His first principle calls for eating and drinking in moderation, not to excess.
Modern medicine confirms the wide variety of health benefits that come from avoiding overeating and obesity, including the promotion of longevity. Likewise, imbibing alcoholic beverages frequently contributes to an increased risk of a variety of diseases and all-cause mortality. More likely along the lines of Franklin’s thinking when creating this first principle, gluttony from food and alcohol can stifle personal productivity and diminish others’ perception of you.
Silence: “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
Franklin hosted a variety of philosophical clubs throughout his life. These clubs would often involve debates and intellectual sparring between members. Franklin cut his teeth during these debates, which contributed to him evolving into the politician, diplomat, and founding father that he became. In his professional and personal life, Franklin preferred deep conversation over small talk. Social scientists have found that deeper conversational topics promote social bonding more than small talk
Order: “Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
Being organized in one’s physical spaces and in how one spends their time was important to Franklin. Both facets of this wisdom help us enhance personal productivity while simultaneously avoiding careless errors, such as losing an important document or missing an important business meeting. The order principle taps into the personality trait of conscientiousness, which is the strongest of the Big Five traits in predicting success metrics
Resolution: “Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
Here we see another tried and true statement about honoring one’s word. Franklin was a strong believer in commitment and performing work dutifully. Those who stick to their professional and personal commitments are held in higher regard compared to those who fail to do so.
Frugality: “Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself (i.e., waste nothing).”
Franklin did not tolerate financial wastefulness. He developed frugal habits early on in life. Spending money wisely was always front and center of Franklin’s mindset. Even later in life, when Franklin was wealthy, he practiced and preached the importance of economical behavior. He often wore old robes to high-stakes political meetings (perhaps to a fault), and he was quick to instill a lesson in frugality whenever a family member requested something extravagant from him. Indeed, research suggests that materialistic aspirations are negatively associated with happiness and psychological health.
Industry: “Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
The industry principle was the golden rule for Franklin. The list of lifetime accomplishments on Franklin’s CV is as astonishing: He discovered electricity, understood the cause of colds (germs, not cold air), observed that exercise prevents disease and exercise intensity is more important than duration, linked illness across a variety of trades as being caused by lead poisoning, established police and firefighting systems, established a postal system between the colonies and worked as postmaster, and established the declaration of independence. Productivity yields meaning in life, which is an important component of global well-being.
Sincerity: “Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”
Franklin was a proponent of telling the truth above all else. Franklin was a gentlemanly politician who preferred to discuss matters cordially and thoroughly. The sincerity principle operates similarly to authenticity, a construct that describes Franklin well and is associated with increased likability.
Justice: “Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
Treat others fairly and fulfill your moral duties. Avoid causing physical or emotional damage to others and go further by helping others whom you consider your adversary if it is your job to do so. This principle helped Franklin serve effectively as an intermediary between the U.S. and Britain during tense times. Psychology research confirms that seeking revenge can have negative consequences, personally and socially.
Moderation: “Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
The key idea here is to stay balanced in life. Franklin advocates for harmony across disciplines as evidence of the variety of accomplishments and careers he held. Social science research supports the idea that balance is important for avoiding burnout and maintaining creativity and consistency.
Cleanliness: “Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation”
Let this principle be your friendly reminder to bathe. Although perhaps less enlightening than the other principles, keep in mind this was before running water and the germ theory of disease. As silly as this sounds now, Franklin was forward-thinking in his cleanliness principle, which may have contributed to his significantly longer than average life. Health scientists are now unanimous in their recommendation of personal hygiene practices.
Tranquility: “Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
Franklin was a student of Stoic philosophy. If something negative happens to you that is outside of your control, accept your bad luck and move on without brooding in negative emotions. Psychology research finds that ruminating on negative events hurts well-being and mental health.
Chastity: “Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”
Keep it in your pants unless you need exercise or are trying to have kids with your partner. This one is a bit personal to Franklin: Franklin’s first child was conceived out of wedlock to a woman who was never revealed by Franklin nor discovered by historians. Franklin was criticized for his personal indiscretion by enemies throughout his career, and it took a toll on his marriage. Recent research finds that sexual misconduct is punished even more harshly than academic misconduct (misreporting or faking data). And, of course, all the news headlines of infidelity amongst household names support the proposition of the damage that can be done to one’s reputation.
Humility: “Imitate Jesus and Socrates”
Practice humility by learning from wise and virtuous role models. Franklin was a lifelong learner and an astounding scholar, receiving several honorary doctoral degrees despite having zero formal education. He believed in learning from others, which aligns well with the classic psychology finding of observational learning.
WHEN LIFE FLASHES BEFORE OUR EYES
Is the life review, when a person is close to death, real or a hallucination?
Beaufort first described “a calm feeling of the most perfect tranquillity… I no longer thought of being rescued, nor was I in any bodily pain.” He compared his state of mind to the “dull but contented sort of feeling which precedes the sleep produced by fatigue.” At the same time, his mind became incredibly alert and active, “invigorated in a ratio which defies all description.”
However, Beaufort’s account is most significant because he provides what is probably the first ever detailed account of a “life review.” His whole past life opened up before him, as if in a panorama, beginning with the most recent events. As he described it, "Traveling backward, every incident of my past life seemed to me to glance across my recollection in retrograde procession; not, however, in mere outline as here stated, but the picture filled up with every minute and collateral feature.”
What Is a Life Review?
Life reviews are very common amongst people who are close to death, such as in near-drowning or serious falls. They are also common amongst people who do die for a short time before being resuscitated — in other words, during what is commonly called a "near-death experience," when people feel that they leave their bodies, and journey through darkness towards a light. Studies suggest that around 20–25 percent of NDEs feature a life review.
Some life reviews feature a complete sequential vision of all the events of a person’s life, which is often compared to a high-speed film. Some occur as panorama rather than a sequence, as in Francis Beaumont’s example. Other reviews feature a selection of a person’s life events, rather than all. This usually consists of events that hold special significance or had a powerful emotional impact. In one example from my own collection, a participant recalled a violent attack when she was beaten unconscious: “I watched screenshots or snapshots of some of the moments of my life. It was like a film playing with the soundtrack of people screaming and shouting from the violence.”
It’s important to note that the life review is not just a replay of memories. People don’t just remember but re-experience events, as if they are happening now.
People often report that the life review is much more vivid and detailed than ordinary memory. They relive every thought and conversation connected to the events, and often describe details that they were unaware of at the time of the original experience.
Can the Life Review Be Explained in Neurological Terms?
It’s important to note that the life review is not just a replay of memories. People don’t just remember but re-experience events, as if they are happening now. People often report that the life review is much more vivid and detailed than ordinary memory. They relive every thought and conversation connected to the events, and often describe details that they were unaware of at the time of the original experience.
In 2011, the psychologists Dean Mobbs and Caroline Watt suggested that the life review in NDEs may be due to a stimulation of the brain’s noradrenaline system, based on an alleged link between NDEs and rapid-eye movement. In REM sleep, the brain’s noradrenaline system (which may be associated with memory) is stimulated, so this could also be the case in NDEs. However, the link between REM sleep and NDEs is tenuous. Mobbs and Watt discuss just one case in which a person displayed rapid-eye movement during an NDE.
More recently, in 2022, a team of scientists led Dr. Ajmal Zemmar of the University of Louisville accidentally recorded the brain activity of an 87-year-old man as he died of a heart attack. EEG recordings indicated that his brain activity took around 30 seconds to fade and disappear after his heart stopped beating. All the man’s brain waves decreased in activity over those 30 seconds, but his gamma waves decreased more slowly than others.
There was also a surprising integration between different types of brain waves, with the “strongest coupling” between alpha and gamma waves. In their paper based on the case, the authors suggested that these findings could "support a last 'recall of life' that may take place in the near-death state.”
However, the researchers admitted that it was problematic to draw general findings from just one case, especially as the man had a traumatic brain injury and was taking anti-convulsant medication (both of which affect brain waves). Another issue with the study is that memory recall involves so many different brain processes that to highlight a coupling of alpha and gamma activity seems like cherry-picking. For example, a more recent study has highlighted a strong link between theta waves and memory.
All the above theories are based on highly tentative links to brain structures or to neurological processes associated with memory. But even if these correlations were valid, another general weakness is that the theories portray the life review as simply a stream of memories. As we have seen, the life review is much richer and more vivid than ordinary memories. In addition, the life review is almost always described as a highly coherent, ordered experience, accompanied with feelings of serenity.
Spatial Time
In my view, the key to understanding the life review is time. As I point out in my book Time Expansion Experiences, our common-sense linear view of time may be a convenient illusion. In some sense that is very difficult for us to comprehend, time may be spatial rather than linear. This means that our past experiences do not disappear but still exist. Normally we don’t have access to our past experiences, except as memories. But occasionally, in radically altered states of consciousness (such as when we are close to death), a veil falls away and the past becomes as real as the present. In fact, we realize that there is no distinction between past and present: they are part of the same panorama.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-of-the-darkness/202505/when-life-flashes-before-our-eyes
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GROWTH IN SOLAR POWER IS OUTPACING FOSSIL FUELS
In 2023, the U.S. added more solar capacity that ever before, at 32.4 gigawatts.
This added capacity surpassed any other energy source in 2023, marking the first time a renewable energy source outpaced fossil fuels since World War II.
When reading about climate change, good news is hard to come by—hard but not impossible. Take, for example, this new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association, which states that renewables hit a milestone not seen since World War II. The U.S. added 32.4 gigawatts of solar capacity, which shatters the 2021 record of 23.6 gigawatts. That represents 52 percent of all added energy capacity in the U.S., with natural gas coming in a distant second with only 18 percent.
This solar boom can be attributed to a few things—chief among them the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which set aside roughly $369 billion for investment in and production of clean energy tech, as well as major incentives for installing rooftop solar. A dispute from a California-based solar manufacturer in 2022 also set back projects that finally came to completion in 2023, which helped further boost the year’s numbers.
But 2023 likely isn’t just some fluke, as the report also solidifies that we’re now living in the age of solar. While still only making up 5 percent of the country’s energy mix, the authors predict that, with the industry firmly established, solar capacity could grow to 500 gigawatts by 2034 (though, they also note that those outcomes could shift due to policy changes).
Texas surpassed California in terms of total solar capacity added. And CNET notes that the trend will likely continue as California launches new net metering (utilities call it “net billing”), which offers 25 percent of the original energy credit under the old system. This could disincentivize Californians to install solar panels that used to pay for themselves in 6 years— it could now can take up to a decade or longer.
This sunny outlook also arrived while the industry was facing its own collection of challenges. Things like California’s net metering policy didn’t help, but high interest rates also made it hard for some people to pull the trigger on a solar installations. In 2023 alone, around 100 residential solar dealers declared bankruptcy, often because solar companies rely on dizzying funding schemes or got caught in some less-than-reputable sales tactics.
But these troubles still didn’t detract from the fact that the U.S. just added more solar than any other energy source last year—the first time that’s happened since World War II, when the U.S. experienced a hydropower boom. And with the current push for all key components of the solar supply chain to be manufactured in the U.S., the age of solar shows no signs of stopping.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a60130391/solar-breaks-record-2023/
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A PERSON CAN INSTANTLY BLOSSOM INTO A SAVANT—AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY
Some people suddenly become accomplished artists or musicians with no previous interest or training. Is it possible innate genius lies dormant within everyone?
Savant syndrome comes in different forms. In congenital savant syndrome the extraordinary savant ability surfaces in early childhood. In acquired savant syndrome astonishing new abilities, typically in music, art or mathematics, appear unexpectedly in ordinary persons after a head injury, stroke or other central nervous system (CNS) incident where no such abilities or interests were present pre-incident.
But in sudden savant syndrome an ordinary person with no such prior interest or ability and no precipitating injury or other CNS incident has an unanticipated, spontaneous epiphanylike moment where the rules and intricacies of music, art or mathematics, for example, are experienced and revealed, producing almost instantaneous giftedness and ability in the affected area of skill sets. Because there is no underlying disability such as that which occurs in congenital or acquired savant syndromes, technically sudden savant syndrome would be better termed sudden genius.
The Case of K. A.
A 28-year-old gentleman from Israel, K. A., sent his description of his epiphany moment. He was in a mall where there was a piano. Whereas he could play simple popular songs from rote memory before, “suddenly at age 28 after what I can best describe as a ‘just getting it moment,’ it all seemed so simple. I suddenly was playing like a well-educated pianist.”
His friends were astonished as he played and suddenly understood music in an entirely intricate way. “I suddenly realized what the major scale and minor scale were, what their chords were and where to put my fingers in order to play certain parts of the scale. I was instantly able to recognize harmonies of the scales in songs I knew as well as the ability to play
melody by interval recognition.” He began to search the internet for information on music theory and to his amazement “most of what they had to teach I already knew, which baffled me as to how could I know something I had never studied.”
K. A. has a high IQ, is now an attorney and has no history of any developmental disorder. He makes part of his living now doing musical performances.
The Case of M. F.
This 43-year-old woman woke up one night in December 2016 with what she called “the urgent need to draw a multitude of triangles, which quickly evolved to a web of complex abstract designs. I stayed up into the morning with a compulsive need to draw, which continued over the next three days at an intense level.” She had no prior interest or training in art. By the third day she was working on a piece of art she named “the Mayan,” which took her two weeks to complete. Three months later she had created 15 pieces whose styles were reminiscent of artists including Frida Kahlo and Picasso. She presently spends about eight hours a day on her craft in addition to her work as a real estate agent. Incorporated into most of her pieces of art is mandalic style of which she was totally unaware prior to her sudden art ability.
The Case of S. S.
When she was in her mid-40s, S. S. began noticing changes in her perception of the physical world around her. She said when she looked at things like trees and flowers, she started to see colors, textures and shadows in ways she had never seen before. This new way of seeing things compelled her to express her “new vision” on paper. She had never painted before in her life and was not comfortable with a paintbrush, so she bought a cheap set of pastel pencils at Hobby Lobby, found a photograph of a gorilla on the cover of an old National Geographic magazine, and sat down to draw it. The result—a rich, complex pastel painting with uncanny realism—stunned her friends and family, particularly in light of the fact she had never shown an aptitude for art or even an interest for that matter, and she never took an art class growing up.
From that point forward drawing and pastel painting began to consume her every waking moment. Her “new vision” wouldn’t allow her to just sit around and marvel at the beauty of this “new” world. She felt she had to act on it—she must act on it. From the very beginning this gift of seeing things in a new way was inextricably tied to a compulsive desire to reproduce that new world on paper. It became an obsession that all but took over her life. “I found it nearly impossible to put down my pastels and do things I needed to do,” she stated, “I was spending way too much money at Hobby Lobby and art supply stores. I was almost frenzied.”
Even now, when she needs to focus on other more pressing things in her life, S. S. must put the pastels and art aside and store them away in a place where she is not tempted by them, sometimes for months at a time. She worries that “starting a new painting could completely derail her.” In the case of S. S., as with other cases of sudden genius, there is no history of autism or CNS injury.
The Uniqueness of Sudden Genius
Many people pick up a new skill or hobby, especially later in life. So what is different here?
—The skill has an abrupt onset with no prior interest in or talent for the newly acquired ability.
—There is no obvious precipitating event or CNS injury or disease.
—The new skill is automatically coupled with a detailed, epiphany-type knowledge of the underlying rules of music, art or math, for example—none of which the person has studied. They know things without ever having learned them.
—The new skill is accompanied with an obsessive-compulsive (OCD) component; there is the overpowering need to play music, draw or compute. It is as much a force as a gift, as is usually the case with both congenital and acquired savant syndromes.
—There is a fear the gift and OCD is evidence of losing one’s mind, and a tendency to hide the new ability from others rather than display it.
—I have 14 such cases now. Ten are female and four are male. Age of onset of the new skill averages 47.2 years. The new skill was art, painting or drawing in nine cases; mathematics or calendar-calculating in four; music in one.
These cases came to my attention via unsolicited e-mails by people seeking explanation or advice from internet searches. We are in the process of exploring these cases further with a detailed survey instrument.
Daniel Tammet, a prodigious savant, is author of Born on a Blue Day. The way Daniel can describe his inner world so articulately has given scientists a personal, verbal window into the brain that they never had before. In a documentary filmed at the Milwaukee Art Museum he states: “The line between profound talent and profound disability seems to be really a surprisingly thin one. Who knows there may be abilities hidden within everyone that can be tapped in some way.”
Indeed, the acquired savant particularly, and now the sudden savant, reinforce the idea that not only is the line between savant and genius a very narrow one but also underscores the possibility such savant abilities may be dormant, to one degree or another, in all of us. The challenge is to tap those special abilities without head injury or CNS incident but rather with some nonintrusive, more readily available methods.
We are working on that.
from another source:
THE MYSTERY OF WHY SOME PEOPLE BECOME SUDDEN GENIUSES
There’s mounting evidence that brain damage has the power to unlock extraordinary creative talents. What can this teach us about how geniuses are made?
It was the summer of 1860 and Eadweard Muybridge was running low on books. This was somewhat problematic, since he was a bookseller. He handed his San Francisco shop over to his brother and set off on a stagecoach to buy supplies. Little did he know, he was about to change the world forever.
He was some way into his journey, in north-eastern Texas, when the coach ran into trouble. The driver cracked his whip and the horses broke into a run, leading the coach surging down a steep mountain road. Eventually it veered off and into a tree. Muybridge was catapulted into the air and cracked his head on a boulder.
He woke up nine days later at a hospital 150 miles (241 km) away. The accident left him with a panoply of medical problems, including double vision, bouts of seizures and no sense of smell, hearing or taste. But the most radical change was his personality.
Previously Muybridge had been a genial and open man, with good business sense. Afterwards he was risk-taking, eccentric and moody; he later murdered his wife’s lover. He was also, quite possibly, a genius.
The question of where creative insights come from – and how to get more of them – has remained a subject of great speculation for thousands of years. According to scientists, they can be driven by anything from fatigue to boredom. The prodigies themselves have other, even less convincing ideas. Plato said that they were the result of divine madness. Or do they, as Freud believed, arise from the sublimation of sexual desires? Tchaikovsky maintained that eureka moments are born out of cool headwork and technical knowledge.
But until recently, most sensible people agreed on one thing: creativity begins in the pink, wobbly mass inside our skulls. It surely goes without saying that striking the brain, impaling it, electrocuting it, shooting it, slicing bits out of it or depriving it of oxygen would lead to the swift death of any great visions possessed by its owner.
As it happens, sometimes the opposite is true.
After the accident, Muybridge eventually recovered enough to sail to England. There his creativity really took hold. He abandoned bookselling and became a photographer, one of the most famous in the world. He was also a prolific inventor. Before the accident, he hadn’t filed a single patent. In the following two decades, he applied for at least 10.
In 1877 he took a bet that allowed him to combine invention and photography. Legend has it that his friend, a wealthy railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford, was convinced that horses could fly. Or, more accurately, he was convinced that when they run, all their legs leave the ground at the same time. Muybridge said they didn’t.
To prove it he placed 12 cameras along a horse track and installed a tripwire that would set them off automatically as Stanford’s favorite racing horse, Occident, ran. Next he invented the inelegantly named “zoopraxiscope”, a device which allowed him to project several images in quick succession and give the impression of motion. To his amazement, the horse was briefly suspended, mid-gallop. Muybridge had filmed the first movie – and with it proven that yes, horses can fly.
The abrupt turnaround of Muybridge’s life, from ordinary bookseller to creative genius, has prompted speculation that it was a direct result of his accident. It’s possible that he had “sudden savant syndrome”, in which exceptional abilities emerge after a brain injury or disease. It’s extremely rare, with just 25 verified cases on the planet.
There’s Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon who was struck by lightning at a New York park in 1994. It went straight through his head and left him with an irresistible desire to play the piano. To begin with he was playing other people’s music, but soon he started writing down the melodies that were constantly running through his head. Today he’s a pianist and composer, as well as a practicing surgeon.
Another case is Jon Sarkin, who was transformed from a chiropractor into an artist after a stroke. The urge to draw landed almost immediately. He was having “all kinds” of therapy at the hospital – speech therapy, art therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, mental therapy – “And they stuck a crayon in my hand and said ‘want to draw?’ And I said ‘fine’,” he says.
His first muse was a cactus at his home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was the fingered kind, like you might find in Western movies from the ’50s. Even his earliest paintings are extremely abstract. In some versions the branches resemble swirling green snakes, while others they are red, zig-zagging staircases.
His works have since been published in The New York Times, featured on album covers and been covered in a book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. They regularly sell for $10,000 (£7,400).
Most strikingly there’s Jason Padgett, who was attacked at a bar in Tacoma, Washington in 2002. Before the attack, Padgett was a college dropout who worked at a futon store. His primary passions in life were partying and chasing girls. He had no interest in maths – at school, he didn’t even get into algebra class.
But that night, everything changed. Initially he was taken to the hospital with a severe concussion. “I remember thinking that everything looked funky, but I thought it was just the narcotic pain shot they gave me” he says. “Then the next morning I woke up and turned on the water. It looked like little tangent lines [a straight line that touches a single point on a curve], spiraling down.”.
From then onwards Padgett’s world was overlaid with geometric shapes and gridlines. He became obsessed with maths and is now renowned for his drawings of formulas such as Pi. Today he’s incredulous that he once didn’t know what a tangent was. “I do feel like two people, and I’ve had my mum and my dad say that. It’s like having two separate kids,” he says.
Why does this happen? How does it work? And what does it teach us about what makes geniuses special?
There are two leading ideas. The first is that when you’re bashed on the head, the effects are similar to a dose of LSD. Psychedelic drugs are thought to enhance creativity by increasing the levels of serotonin, the so-called “happiness hormone”, in the brain. This leads to “synaesthesia”, in which more than one region is simultaneously activated and senses which are usually separate become linked.
Many people don’t need drugs to experience this: nearly 5 percent of the population has some form of synesthesia, with the most common type being “grapheme-color”, in which words are associated with colors. For example, the actor Geoffrey Rush believes that Mondays are pale blue.
When the brain is injured, dead and dying cells leak serotonin into the surrounding tissue. Physically, this seems to encourage new connections between brain regions, just as with LSD. Mentally, it allows the person to link the seemingly unconnected. “We’ve found permanent changes before – you can actually see connections in the brain that weren’t there before,” says Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist who directs the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research, Florida.
But there is an alternative. The first clue emerged in 1998, when a group of neurologists noticed that five of their patients with dementia were also artists – remarkably good ones. Specifically, they had frontotemporal dementia, which is unusual in that it only affects some parts of the brain. For example, visual creativity may be spared, while language and social skills are progressively destroyed.
One of these was “Patient 5”. At the age of 53 he had enrolled in a short course in drawing at a local park, though he previously had no interest in such things. It just so happened to coincide with the onset of his dementia; a few months later, he was having trouble speaking.
Soon he became irritable and eccentric, developing a compulsion to search for money on the street. As his illness progressed, so did his drawing, advancing from simple still-life paintings to haunting, impressionist depictions of buildings from his childhood.
To find out what was going on, the scientists performed 3D scans of their patients’ brains. In four out of five cases, they found lesions on the left hemisphere. Nobel Prize-winning research from the 1960s shows that the two halves of the brain specialize in different tasks; in general, the right side is home to creativity and the left is the center of logic and language.
But the left side is also something of a bully. “It tends to be the dominant brain region,” says Brogaard. “It tends to suppress very marginal types of thinking: highly original, highly creative thinking, because it’s beneficial for our decision-making abilities and our ability to function in normal life.” The theory goes that as the patients’ left hemispheres became progressively more damaged, their right hemispheres were free to flourish.
This is backed up by several other studies, including one in which creative insight was roused in healthy volunteers by temporarily dialing down activity in the left hemisphere and increasing it in the right. “[the lead researcher] Allen Snyder’s work was replicated by another person, so that’s the theory that I think is responsible,” says Darold Treffert, a psychiatrist from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, who has been studying savant syndrome for decades.
But what about more mainstream geniuses? Could the theory explain their talents, too?
Consider autism. From Daniel Tammet, who can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at stupendous speed, to Gottfried Mind, the “Cat Raphael”, who drew the animal with an astonishing level of realism, so-called “autistic savants” can have superhuman skills to rival those of the Renaissance polymaths.
It’s been estimated that as many as one in 10 people with autism have savant syndrome and there’s mounting evidence the disorder is associated with enhanced creativity. And though it’s difficult to prove, it’s been speculated that numerous intellectual giants, including Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Darwin and Michelangelo, were on the spectrum.
One theory suggests that autism arises from abnormally low levels of serotonin in the left hemisphere in childhood, which prevents the region from developing normally. Just like with sudden savant syndrome, this allows the right hemisphere to become more active.
Interestingly, many people with sudden savant syndrome also develop symptoms of autism, including social problems, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and all-consuming interests. “It got so bad that if I had money I would spray the money with Lysol and put it in the microwave for a few seconds to get rid of the germs,” says Padgett.
“They are usually able to have a normal life, but they also have this obsession,” says Brogaard. This is something universal across all sudden savants. Jon Sarkin compares his art to an instinct. “It doesn’t feel like I like drawing, it feels like I must draw.” His studio contains thousands of finished and unfinished works, which are often scribbled with curves, words, cross-hatchings, and overlapping images.
In fact, though they often don’t need to, sudden savants work hard at improving their craft. “I mean, I practiced a lot. Talent and hard work, I think they are indistinguishable – you do something a lot and you get better at it,” says Sarkin. Padgett agrees. “When you’re fixated on something like that, of course you do discover things.”
Muybridge was no exception. After the bet, he moved to Philadelphia and continued with his passion for capturing motion on film, photographing all kinds of activities such as walking up and down the stairs and, oddly, himself swinging a pickaxe in the nude. Between 1883 and 1886, he took more than 100,000 pictures.
“In my opinion at least, the fact that they can improve their abilities doesn’t negate the suddenness or insistence with which they are there,” says Treffert. As our understanding of sudden savant syndrome improves, eventually it’s hoped that we might all be able to unlock our hidden mental powers – perhaps with the help of smart drugs or hardware.
But until then, perhaps we mortals could try putting in some extra hours instead.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-mystery-of-why-some-people-become-sudden-geniuses
Mary:
The brain has immense capacities we can only begin to imagine. The stories of "sudden" or "aquired" genius abilities are fascinating in that they suggest such abilities may be possible for everyone if certain conditions are changed in the physical or chemical state of the brain. Sometimes injuries seem to throw the switch. Sometimes we have no idea what causes the change. Sometimes similar bursts of creativity, as mentioned, can come with ingestion of drugs like LSD.
I have experienced neurochemically induced changes that affect perception and behavior during episodes of hypomania. What is similar to the stories of the "sudden savants" is that there is a forceful impetus to activity almost impossible to resist. With me it was periods of almost obsessive drawing. I have always liked to draw and have certain ability, but this was a consuming almost continuous drawing, page after page, hour after hour, day after day, interrupted only by the bare necessities of living. And there was an altered sense of time as well...of concentrating so that there was little sense of how much time was passing. This went on for a while, then it stopped. I am sure all of it, the beginning, middle and end, were neurochemically engendered.
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THE STRANGE CHRISTIAN AFTERLIFE OF PONTIUS PILATE
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who faced the ultimate politician’s dilemma, was put to use as a Christian convert by the early church.
Christ before Pilate, from a French book of hours by Henri d'Orquevaulx, c. 1420-30
Towards the end of the second century AD the pagan intellectual Celsus wrote an anti-Christian treatise mocking belief in Jesus Christ. If Jesus really had been the Son of God, he asked, why hadn’t God punished Pontius Pilate, the man responsible for crucifying him? Why had Pilate not been driven insane or torn apart, like the characters in Greek myths? Why had no calamity befallen him?
While there are plenty of later Christian traditions about the punishment of Pontius Pilate, all of these seem to belong to a period long after Celsus was writing. Celsus’ challenge, and the response of early Christians to it, suggests that there was more than a kernel of truth in the claim that the Prefect of Judaea had evaded misfortune. This is implicit from the efforts early Christians made to absolve him of responsibility for the Crucifixion.
The only reliable statement we have about Pilate’s life after his time in Judaea comes from the pen of the Jewish writer Josephus. In his Antiquities of the Jews, written about 60 years after the events, Josephus states that Pilate was recalled to Rome after his mishandling of a riot involving the Samaritans in AD 36. For this he would have expected to face a hearing before the Emperor Tiberius, the aged but uncompromising ruler who had appointed him ten years earlier. Pilate hurried back, but by the time he arrived, in March AD 37, the ailing Tiberius had died. A new emperor, Caligula, had taken up the reins of power.
What happened next is guesswork. Josephus says nothing more about him, implying that there was no hearing. Perhaps, in the general euphoria surrounding Caligula’s accession, his case was put on hold, or simply forgotten. Maybe the hearing did go ahead and he was acquitted. For all we know, he was given another posting.
The lack of a suitably grisly fate for Pilate put Christian apologists in a quandary. As governor, it was Pilate’s job to pass judgement in capital cases: he was the one who condemned Jesus to suffer on the cross. There was no circumventing his guilt. Divine punishment should have followed.
Yet in the early years of Christianity it was difficult to make such claims. The Roman state was suspicious of the new cult and, if Christians wanted to avoid confrontation, it was best not to accuse one of Rome’s officials of deicide. The canonical Gospels stressed that Pilate was not fully to blame. He could find no fault in Jesus: ‘I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him’, Pilate declares in Luke’s Gospel.
John has Pilate twice announce ‘I find no basis for a charge against him’. The apocryphal Gospel of Peter, thought by many scholars to be among the earliest Christian texts, went even further. In this, Pilate and his soldiers play no part in the crowd’s mocking or torturing of Jesus. He himself declares ‘I am pure from the blood of the Son of God’ and, together with his soldiers, who guard the tomb of Jesus, he conspires to keep the miracle of the Resurrection secret from the Jewish priests.
The tradition of a blameless Pilate, a witness to the Passion, led to a strange early Christian fascination with him. By the second century AD, fake letters of Pilate, recounting the wondrous story of Jesus, circulated among the faithful. The so-called Acts of Pilate, allegedly deriving from the governor’s own records, portray Pilate as a convert.
Tertullian, the late second-century Christian theologian, described Pilate as someone ‘who himself also in his own conscience was now a Christian’ and alleged that Tiberius was so convinced by Pilate’s reports that he would have placed Jesus among the Roman gods had not the Senate refused. So influential were the various versions of the Acts of Pilate that in the early fourth century the Roman state created and promoted an anti-Christian, ‘true’, pagan version in an attempt to discredit the Christian ones. Needless to say this was no more reliable than its rivals.
All of this might seem merely capricious, but the absolution of Pilate came at a terrible cost. The early Christians shifted the blame for the Crucifixion onto others. A rebuttal of the arguments of Celsus, written by the third-century bishop Origen, shows this clearly: ‘It was not so much Pilate that condemned Him,’ he wrote, ‘as the Jewish nation’.
Celsus had chosen the wrong culprit; and the fact that the Jewish nation had been torn apart by the Romans and dispersed across the face of the earth was proof of God’s retribution. The fake letters and the Christian versions of the Acts of Pilate said much the same thing, as did other Christian apologists. The Acts went so far as to have the Jewish crowd telling Pilate that they willingly accept the blood-guilt, an echo of the Gospel of Matthew, which has the same crowd shouting ‘his blood be on us and our children!’ These claims formed a basis for Christian persecution of the Jews right up to modern times.
Pilate’s costly absolution was the product of specific religious and political circumstances. When the Roman Empire became a Christian state in the fourth century, there was no longer any need to emphasize his innocence. The Nicene Creed, formulated under Emperor Constantine in AD 325 and emended in AD 381, stated bluntly that Christ ‘was crucified under Pontius Pilate’. It became acceptable to cast Pilate as a villain and a range of myths developed describing his grisly end.
Some influential Christians demurred, however. Saint Augustine, writing in the sixth century, argued that when Pilate wrote on the cross ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’, he really meant it: ‘It could not be torn from his heart that Jesus was the King of the Jews.’
While the West went on to develop the tradition of a ‘bad’ Pilate who was punished for his misdeeds, the Eastern Church preferred a more sympathetic interpretation. Not only was Pilate a Christian; he was a confessor and even a martyr. One eastern text, The Handing Over of Pilate, has Tiberius ordering the governor to be beheaded for having allowed the Crucifixion to go ahead. First Pilate repents and then a voice from heaven proclaims that all nations will bless him, because under his governorship the prophecies about Christ were fulfilled. Finally an angel takes charge of his severed head. In some accounts he is buried with his wife and two children next to the tomb of Jesus – the ultimate martyr’s sepulcher.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate’s wife warns her husband not to harm Jesus and for this she achieved sainthood among Orthodox Christians. The Copts and Christians of Ethiopia took the next step and canonized Pilate himself. An Ethiopian collection of hagiographies lists St Pilate’s Day as the 25th of the summer month of Sanne, a day shared with his wife Procla and the saints Jude, Peter and Paul:
Salutation to Pilate, who washed his hands / To show he himself was innocent of the blood of Jesus Christ
Those familiar with the western tradition may find the idea of St Pontius Pilate curious or even absurd. But the fascination with Pilate never abates. From the Acts of Pilate to Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margerita, the man who cross-examined and crucified Jesus remains an enigma, a shadowy metaphor for opposites: equivocation and stubbornness, cowardice and heroism, cruelty and clemency. His dilemma – to do the right thing or the popular thing – is every ruler’s quandary. Perhaps that is why people can sympathize with him: we too must sometimes face a difficult choice; though, fortunately for us, its legacy is likely to be less enduring.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/strange-christian-afterlife-pontius-pilate
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LONGEVITY AND THE CALM BRAIN
New research makes a molecular connection between the brain and aging — and shows that overactive neurons can shorten life span.
A thousand seemingly insignificant things change as an organism ages. Beyond the obvious signs like graying hair and memory problems are myriad shifts both subtler and more consequential: Metabolic processes run less smoothly; neurons respond less swiftly; the replication of DNA grows faultier.
But while bodies may seem to just gradually wear out, many researchers believe instead that aging is controlled at the cellular and biochemical level. They find evidence for this in the throng of biological mechanisms that are linked to aging but also conserved across species as distantly related as roundworms and humans. Whole subfields of research have grown up around biologists’ attempts to understand the relationships among the core genes involved in aging, which seem to connect highly disparate biological functions, like metabolism and perception. If scientists can pinpoint which of the changes in these processes induce aging, rather than result from it, it may be possible to intervene and extend the human life span.
So far, research has suggested that severely limiting calorie intake can have a beneficial effect, as can manipulating certain genes in laboratory animals. But recently in Nature, Bruce Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues reported on a previously overlooked controller of life span: the activity level of neurons in the brain. In a series of experiments on roundworms, mice and human brain tissue, they found that a protein called REST, which controls the expression of many genes related to neural firing, also controls life span. They also showed that boosting the levels of the equivalent of REST in worms lengthens their lives by making their neurons fire more quietly and with more control. How exactly overexcitation of neurons might shorten life span remains to be seen, but the effect is real and its discovery suggests new avenues for understanding the aging process.
Genetic Mechanisms of Aging
In the early days of the molecular study of aging, many people were skeptical that it was even worth looking into. Cynthia Kenyon, a pioneering researcher in this area at the University of California, San Francisco, has described attitudes in the late 1980s: “The aging field at the time was considered a backwater by many molecular biologists, and the students were not interested, or were even repelled by the idea. Many of my faculty colleagues felt the same way. One told me that I would fall off the edge of the Earth if I studied aging.”
That was because many scientists thought that aging (more specifically, growing old) must be a fairly boring, passive process at the molecular level — nothing more than the natural result of things wearing out. Evolutionary biologists argued that aging could not be regulated by any complex or evolved mechanism because it occurs after the age of reproduction, when natural selection no longer has a chance to act.
However, Kenyon and a handful of colleagues thought that if the processes involved in aging were connected to processes that acted earlier in an organism’s lifetime, the real story might be more interesting than people realized. Through careful, often poorly funded work on Caenorhabditis elegans, the laboratory roundworm, they laid the groundwork for what is now a bustling field.
A key early finding was that the inactivation of a gene called daf-2 was fundamental to extending the life span of the worms. “daf-2 mutants were the most amazing things I had ever seen. They were active and healthy and they lived more than twice as long as normal,” Kenyon wrote in a reflection on these experiments. “It seemed magical but also a little creepy: they should have been dead, but there they were, moving around.”
This gene and a second one called daf-16 are both involved in producing these effects in worms. And as scientists came to understand the genes’ activities, it became increasingly clear that aging is not separate from the processes that control an organism’s development before the age of sexual maturity; it makes use of the same biochemical machinery. These genes are important in early life, helping the worms to resist stressful conditions during their youth. As the worms age, modulation of daf-2 and daf-16 then influences their health and longevity.
These startling results helped draw attention to the field, and over the next two decades many other discoveries illuminated a mysterious network of signal transduction pathways — where one protein binds another protein, which activates another, which switches off another and so on — that, if disturbed, can fundamentally alter life span. By 1997, researchers had discovered that in worms daf-2 is part of a family of receptors that send signals triggered by insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar, and the structurally similar hormone IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1; daf-16 was farther down that same chain. Tracing the equivalent pathway in mammals, scientists found that it led to a protein called FoxO, which binds to the DNA in the nucleus, turning a shadowy army of genes on and off.
That it all comes down to the regulation of genes is perhaps not surprising, but it suggests that the processes that control aging and life span are vastly complex, acting on many systems at once in ways that may be hard to pick apart. But sometimes, it’s possible to shine a little light on what’s happening, as in the Yankner group’s new paper.
Get Plenty of REST
Figuring out which genes are turned on and off in aging brains has long been one of Yankner’s interests. About 15 years ago, in a paper published in Nature, he and his colleagues looked at gene expression data from donated human brains to see how it changes over a lifetime. Some years later, they realized that many of the changes they’d seen were caused by a protein called REST. REST, which turns genes off, was mainly known for its role in the development of the fetal brain: It represses neuronal genes until the young brain is ready for them to be expressed.
But that’s not the only time it’s active. “We discovered in 2014 that [the REST gene] is actually reactivated in the aging brain,” Yankner said.
To understand how the REST protein does its job, imagine that the network of neurons in the brain is engaged in something like the party game Telephone. Each neuron is covered with proteins and molecular channels that enable it to fire and pass messages. When one neuron fires, it releases a flood of neurotransmitters that excite or inhibit the firing of the next neuron down the line. REST inhibits the production of some of the proteins and channels involved in this process, reining in the excitation.
In their study, published in October 2019, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, Yankner’s team turned to C. elegans. They compared neural activity in the splendidly long-lived daf-2 mutants with that of normal worms and saw that firing levels in the daf-2 animals were indeed very different.
“They were almost silent. They had very low neural activity compared to normal worms,” Yankner said, noting that neural activity usually increases with age in worms. “This was very interesting, and sort of parallels the gene expression pattern we saw in the extremely old humans.”
When the researchers gave normal roundworms drugs that suppressed excitation, it extended their life spans. Genetic manipulation that suppressed inhibition — the process that keeps neurons from firing — did the reverse. Several other experiments using different methods confirmed their results. The firing itself was somehow controlling life span — and in this case, less firing meant more longevity.
Because REST was plentiful in the brains of long-lived people, the researchers wondered if lab animals without REST would have more neural firing and shorter lives. Sure enough, they found that the brains of elderly mice in which the Rest gene had been knocked out were a mess of overexcited neurons, with a tendency toward bursts of activity resembling seizures. Worms with boosted levels of their version of REST (proteins named SPR-3 and SPR-4) had more controlled neural activity and lived longer. But daf-2 mutant worms deprived of REST were stripped of their longevity.
“It suggests that there is a conserved mechanism from worms to [humans],” Yankner said. “You have this master transcription factor that keeps the brain at what we call a homeostatic or equilibrium level — it doesn’t let it get too excitable — and that prolongs life span. When that gets out of whack, it’s deleterious physiologically.”
What’s more, Yankner and his colleagues found that in worms the life extension effect depended on a very familiar bit of DNA: daf-16. This meant that REST’s trail had led the researchers back to that highly important aging pathway, as well as the insulin/IGF-1 system. “That really puts the REST transcription factor somehow squarely into this insulin signaling cascade,” said Thomas Flatt, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg who studies aging and the immune system. REST appears to be yet another way of feeding the basic molecular activities of the body into the metabolic pathway.
A Biological Balancing Act
Neural activity has been implicated in life span before, notes Joy Alcedo, a molecular geneticist at Wayne State University who studies the connections between sensory neurons, aging and developmental processes. Previous studies have found that manipulating the activity of even single neurons in C. elegans can extend or shorten life span. It’s not yet clear why, but one possibility is that the way the worms respond biochemically to their environment may somehow trip a switch in their hormonal signaling that affects how long they live.
The new study, however, suggests something broader: that overactivity in general is unhealthy. Neuronal overactivity may not feel like anything in particular from the viewpoint of the worm, mouse or human, unless it gets bad enough to provoke seizures. But perhaps over time it may damage neurons.
The new work also ties into the idea that aging may fundamentally involve a loss of biological stability, Flatt said. “A lot of things in aging and life span somehow have to do with homeostasis. Things are being maintained in a proper balance, if you will.” There’s a growing consensus in aging research that what we perceive as the body slowing down may in fact be a failure to preserve various equilibria. Flatt has found that aging flies show higher levels of immune-related molecules, and that this rise contributes to their deaths. Keeping the levels in check, closer to what they might have been when the flies were younger, extends their lives.
The results may help explain the observation that some drugs used for epilepsy extend life span in lab animals, said Nektarios Tavernarakis, a molecular biologist at the University of Crete who wrote a commentary that accompanied Yankner’s recent paper. If overexcitation shortens life span, then medicines that systematically reduce excitation could have the opposite effect.
“This new study provides a mechanism,” he said.
In 2014, Yankner’s laboratory also reported that patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s have lower levels of REST. The early stages of Alzheimer’s, Yankner notes, involve an increase in neural firing in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that deals with memory. He and his colleagues wonder whether the lack of REST contributes to the development of these diseases; they are now searching for potential drugs that boost REST levels to test in lab organisms and eventually patients.
In the meantime, however, it’s not clear that people can do anything to put the new findings about REST to work in extending their longevity. According to Yankner, REST levels in the brain haven’t been tied to any particular moods or states of intellectual activity. It would be a “misconception,” he explained by email, “to correlate amount of thinking with life span.” And while he notes that there is evidence that “meditation and yoga can have a variety of beneficial effects for mental and physical health,” no studies show that they have any bearing on REST levels.
Why exactly do overexcited neurons lead to death? That’s still a mystery. The answer probably lies somewhere downstream of the DAF-16 protein and FoxO, in the genes they turn on and off. They may be increasing the organism’s ability to deal with stress, reworking its energy production to be more efficient, shifting its metabolism into another gear, or performing any number of other changes that together add up a sturdier and longer-lived organism. “It is intriguing that something as transient as the activity state of a neural circuit could have such a major physiological influence on something as protean as life span,” Yankner said.
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ending on beauty:
WILD IRIS
Here’s what slipped into my heart:
that crested yellow tongue
down the runway of parched truth:
and those petals’ pulsing blue,
the excitable color of now:
like coming on a meadow of wild iris.
Long ago in dank woods,
I blundered on a dell
of lilies-of-the valley:
lovers palm to palm
between leaves. That’s why God
must be forgiven, and why Dante puts
those who weep when they should
rejoice in a muddy pocket of hell
near the wood of suicides. After youth’s
‘love is pain’, that blue-purple flight.
On Non-Judgment Day,
in the Valley
of Saved Moments,
I will bloom, the wildest iris.
~ Oriana
