INTERESTING TIMES

 If times were ever interesting, these are getting right up there.  In America, the Executive Branch sent an attack mob to the Legislative Branch of our government.  Marched them right down the avenue from the White House and up the Capitol steps.  One week ago.  That mob overwhelmed all barriers and invaded the Capitol through the windows, during a session.  The building was under lockdown for hours, with our representatives hidden in a subterranean chamber.  You can see the patriot invasion on youtube.  According to potus his mob looked "low class".  But then later he pronounced "we love you" to the same crew.

Then today the president is impeached for the second time.  How interesting.  Twice. May that be followed by a Senate trial and prompt Removal.  

The inauguration is planned to be a "hard target" so attacks may divert to state capitols which are considered "soft".  White supremacists have been booted to the backroads of the internet and are developing clandestine communications to sort out their next grand move.  They would enjoy a chance to kick some ass; a race war would do nicely.

The Executive Branch has been subverting the Judicial Branch by filling benches with sympathetic judges, but it is still a very separate Branch of power.  Lawyers and especially judges tend to be smart and willful and develop their own thinking rather than adopting half-baked ideology.  They see the obvious bogusness of the Big Lie.  The election wasn't stolen.  Those Attorney Generals, all 17 of them that signed on to a Texas lawsuit trying to flip the election, they aren't stupid.  They have been corrupted.  They must be getting rich.  Or have their nuts in a vise.  Or both.  Barr is probably still trying to get his nuts out.

Oh yeah and the pandemic.  Isn't that interesting?  What fascinates me the most is how utterly ignorant most people are about how the body works, and how a virus works, and why some people live and some die from the same virus.  The TERRAIN matters, my friends.  If your organs are sick, you can be weakened and susceptible without knowing it.  Science is really cool, too, it explains so much.

Ignorance about our government and institutions is also prevalent.  Broad ignorance is the terrain on which half-baked ideologies grow.  The difference is education.  But our schools have gotten as lazy as our Capitol defenses.  Believing that America truly is the greatest nation on earth has led to complacency and then denial.  What?  No problems here, we say, but the world knows better.  America was a great experiment in government, still is as of this moment. 

There is the possibility that Trump will function like a vaccine.  Just a tiny dose, well four long years.  Maybe that will autocrat-proof America.  Or maybe the booster shot will be worse.  And on top of that there is the possibility that this Republic will fail.  Trump tried to bring down this government and to date has failed.

Interesting, huh.

Gavin McInneshttps://www.newsweek.com/ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-palestine-israel-bds-trump-boycott-proud-boys-1454613 

There are those who would say I am an a-hole because I have a hard time telling apart the three Indian men that I know.  They are all great people, and I really have nothing against their origins or accent or skin tone.  I just didn't grow up around people from India.  I knew more people of African and Asian origin, and they look less the same to me than people from India.  I was slightly reassured that I am not actually an a-hole when I read this article (below).  World wide, across many cultures, people are likely to have difficulty distinguishing individuals of a race that is entirely unfamiliar.  This is not xenophobia, and it is not a-holishness.  It is just a fact of our evolution, or rather a fact of brain development.

In our first couple years of lives our brains grow very large.  Neural connections form based on our experience.  When we do not have experience of something, part of the brain gets "pruned" away.  A lot of pruning happens when we are toddlers.  It has to happen because we are having a lot of experiences and the brain has to get rid of unused parts in order to make room for all the connections we are making based on living a rich life.  When I was toddling, I didn't know any Indian men.  When I met one or two later they were unusual and they got lumped together into a category.  Now that I'm in my 50's I'm finding it embarrassingly hard to rewire fast enough to keep up with all the new people in my world.

It occurs to me that not being able to tell people apart is a basis for fear.  It is perhaps one of the reasons that humans are naturally untrusting of those who look very different from themselves.



RACIAL PROSOPAGNOSIA 2017

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-people-suffer-from-face-blindness-for-other-races/

Some People Suffer from Face Blindness for Other Races

Certain individuals are seriously impaired when it comes to recognizing individuals of another color

By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on May 1, 2017

We tend to be worse at telling apart faces of other races than those of our own race, studies have found. Now research shows some people are completely blind to features that make other-race faces distinct. Such an impairment could have important implications for eyewitness testimony in situations involving other-race suspects.

The ability to distinguish among members of one's own race varies wildly: some people can tell strangers apart effortlessly, whereas others cannot even recognize the faces of their own family and friends (a condition known as prosopagnosia). Psychologist Lulu Wan of the Australian National University and her colleagues wanted to quantify the distribution of abilities for recognizing other-race faces. They asked 268 Caucasians born and raised in Australia to memorize a series of six Asian faces and conducted the same experiment, involving Caucasian faces, with a group of 176 Asians born and raised in Asia who moved to Australia to attend university. In 72 trials, every participant was then shown sets of three faces and had to point to the one he or she had learned in the memorization task.

The authors found that 26 Caucasian and 10 Asian participants—8 percent of the collective study population—did so badly on the test that they met the criteria for clinical-level impairment. “We know that we are poor at recognizing other-race faces,” says Jim Tanaka, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, who was not involved in the research. “This study shows just how poor some people are.” Those individuals “would be completely useless in terms of their legal value as an eyewitness,” says study co-author Elinor McKone, a professor of psychology at the Australian National University. The world's legal systems do not, however, take into account individual differences in other-race face recognition, she notes.

One's lifetime level of exposure to other races could factor into a person's ability to recognize people of another color, according to the findings published in the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Among 106 Asian participants born and raised in Australia, only about 3 percent were blind to Caucasian faces. In comparison, nearly 6 percent of the Asians born and raised in Asia had the impairment.

The effect extends to other races, too. In a study published in 2001 in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, black people recruited in South African shopping malls, who had average levels of interracial contact, were better at recognizing faces of their own race than of others.

This article was originally published with the title "Are You Blind to Faces of Other Races?"

 

 

Whenever I bemoan the culture of "safe spaces" and "microaggressions" on college campuses, said Andrew Sullivan, people argue that "the real world isn't like that."  But that's no longer true.  More and more of our public discourse is now shaped by the neo-Marxist Left's "identity-based, 'social justice" worldview, in which all interactions are defined by a hierarchy of power and oppression.   Free speech itself is falling into disrepute, as a tool of the patriarchy.  When some feminists recently got wind of a forthcoming Harper's essay criticizing the #MeToo movement, they not only personally vilified author Katie Roiphe, they also tried to force the magazine to drop the piece before publication--a "real-world echo" of students shouting down speakers.  Writers, like students, now know that one "incorrect" opinion on sensitive issues of race and gender can result in "instant social ostracism" and demands they be fired--so they remain silent.  Men cannot discuss sexual harassment; whites cannot talk about racism.  The goal of our society is not "the emancipation of the individual," but permanent placement of the individual in the proper identity group: white, black, brown, female, gay, etc.  "We used to call that bigotry.  Now we call it being woke."

--Summary of Andrew Sullivan's article (NYMag.com) from The Week February 23, 2018.

I was registered and attempted to attend some of it. I have never been to this event before, and it was free for me because I work for the University that hosted it. The keynote talk was Friday night, and the speaker was intriguing and beautiful, but it was held in Radelet Hall which holds about 200 people, but has air exchange sufficient for about 20. When I went in the room was very warm already, and the talk was just beginning. The O2 content had to be low, because I immediately felt sleeply. Perhaps all those young brains can withstand a high CO2 environment for 2 hours to get the wisdom, but I cannot. The University should improve the ventilation systems for that space, as it has no windows to open and doors only on one side.  It is stuffy even with a small crowd.

I hung out near the back door long enough to hear the theme of Ola Obasi's talk which was Deconstructing Reductionism. The theme continued to resonate from the entire gathering. I went to Paul Bergner's talk because his was a name that I have long heard in herbalist circles. I had no conscious expectation, but his appearance surprised me. Most famous herbalists are gaunt and woodsy looking, and he had a pot belly on a stocky frame and a collared shirt that made him look like a gas station attendant. Bergner was perhaps a little surprised at the turnout, for he was in a room that held 40 and there were 60 of us in there. I was stationed near the door because that is my rule when inside the academic building which is an old masonry structure that is likely to crumble in a quake. They're planning to replace it but that's years out.

Bergner talked a bit about how science is applied to herbal medicine. "A scientific trial is like a serial killer" he said, "because it kills the complexity of the herb." He said that all botanical science falls into one of two groups, 1. pharmaceutical companies prospecting for useful constituents, and 2. supplement manufacturers shoring up the plausibility of their formulations. In other words, the profit motive is always at hand. When Big Pharma finds a useful constituent, they extract or synthesize it and sell it as a drug. They are always looking for another blockbuster drug. When supplement companies conduct their own studies, they are usually trying to prove that one of their products works for a particular condition. In both groups the tendency is to bury negative results and exaggerate positive ones in order to generate sales and profits. It is no wonder that herbalists in general have a bad attitude about science when it is said to be reductionistic and corrupt.

What I hope that the herbalists will integrate is the fact that each one of those studies that does give us a result--this plant has that constituent which has such and such an effect--gives us an evidence base upon which we can build a case for herbal medicine. Sure, the studies are not done for our benefit. But we can learn from that and build upon it, even while keeping close the traditional knowledge upon which the studies are built. If we know from all that corrupt research that Scutellaria baicalensis lowers inflammation in the liver and the brain, awesome! We can use it for those purposes, and extrapolate that it might help with inflammation systemically. We can also remember all the indications for that herb in ancient Chinese and western eclectic traditions, and extrapolate beyond what the science says as to what the herb in its fullness (and not just one constituent) might do.

We need both. We need the subjective and the objective. Science does not have to be reductionistic. I suppose there are scientists that will say that everything is reducible to chemistry and physics. But there are just as many scientists who will tell you that we just don't know everything that is out there, and there could be surprises. The fact that we just don't know is not a rational reason to believe in nonsense, but it is a reason to stay humble and reject reductionism. Everything is more complex than we know. When we find out one detail about something through the scientific process, we know one tiny piece in a very big puzzle. Nobody knows how complicated things are better than scientists.

Berner's talk was officially about herbal pairings (and triplets). To him this means pairs of herbs with complimentary actions which he can see no contraindications for giving together, and no situations in which he would want one and not the other. One of the pairs he mentioned was dandelion and Oregon grape, aka taraxacum and mahonia. In general his pairings have a function so that he can grab that mixture off the shelf and add it to a more complex formulation, saving time in the formulation process.

I tried to go to a couple of other lectures but ended up walking out. One speaker's voice was practically sedating--though I imagine some in his audience might have been hypnotized. Social justice is a major theme for this group, and there was a lot of talk about finding our roots so that we could extract ourselves from the white supremacy paradigm.  I imagine the goal would be to begin to operate as a conglomeration of cooperative and complimentary minorities; a modern civil society. I appreciate this message, and I do not need to sit through another 2 hour lecture in which someone recites their entire lineage and teaches us their family traditions. I am fully aware that there is great variety in human life. And I have been quite educted enough about the advantages I have in this society because of my pale skin tone and heterosexuality. Berate me no more, instead go out into the world and be awesome. Run for office and help us bring nuance back to government. Model your own kind of success.

After I left the lectures I went home and processed my own herbs. I learn more from handling the plants than I do from lay-level herbal lectures. It makes me appreciate the difference between CE and not.  At least continuing education classes allow for the possibility that we might actually talk about how to treat a condition, because we have licenses that allow us to practice medicine. I believe I need to offer an herbal class, and I'm sorting out a topic.  Probably herbs for the mind, perhaps herbs for the aging mind.  The kiddos won't be interested yet but I'm interested.

I read this morning about a doctor who went mad and shot people in a hospital. As a doctor myself, I know that docs have terrible stresses trying to deal with a corrupt medical-industrial system that impairs our ability to help people regain their health. Then I went to look at the NY times article, here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/nyregion/bronx-hospital-shooting.html. He's richly melanated, that is to say, he has lived a life of fear because of his skin color. I infer from his violence that he may have been guilty of the accusation--sexual misconduct. He was a man, and he was angry enough to shoot others and hopeless enough to set himself on fire and shoot himself. He did not see any way out. He knew he would not receive compassion.

What people forget when they demonize any group of humans is that they are human. Dark skinned people. Doctors. Men. Gun owners. Murderers. Whatever group. All humans share the same basic needs. When those needs are not met, we have the same basic emotions. Driven hard enough, any of us could become dangerous. Hitler had reasons. The Arabs that flew airplanes into buildings had reasons. No one is pure evil, we are simply human and if tortured we can lash out, or become cunning.

My hope that that everyone who reads this will take a deep breath or three and think about the kind of pain that drives a person to such horrors. My hope is that compassion will rise in spite of the poisonous atmosphere of shame and blame that dominates our political world. We all deserve an opportunity to be free from fear, long enough to find our centers and our hearts and reach out into the world from that place. It will take a lot of us finding compassion to heal these wounds.

This documentary is well worth seeing.  It explains how the 13th Amendment did more than free the slaves, because it had an exception that said criminals could be imprisoned.  A massive cultural effort ensued to criminalize blacks, and our so-called "criminal justice" system was not sufficient to protect them from powerful white men determined to keep them down.

A Netflix documentary (called 13TH) shows us is just how easy it is to criminalize a previously enslaved population.  This history is ugly, and the present is not pretty either.  The percentage of our populace that is behind bars far exceeds that of any other nation, and the percentage of that imprisoned mass that is black or brown in skin color is also ridiculous.  There is definitely something wrong.

13TH was directed by Ana DuVernay who has quite a resume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava_DuVernay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13TH_(film)
( What I learned so far (we haven't finished watching the documentary) )

I'm reading an article in New York magazine (April 7-20, 2014) about the color of Obama's presidency, and the first thing mentioned is the Bill Maher show in which Bill Kristol was frankly upset at him for saying that the rise of the Tea Party was due to racism. My liberal friends here in Oregon, and the ones that live in the Rockies and the South for the most part agree with this assessment. They are certain that's the reason that some who call themselves Tea Party are in stark opposition to every single thing that Obama says or does, apparently without consideration of the details. It is reasonable to assume that this oppositional defiance is based in that base instinct that Obama is brown and different and must be wrong and evil. But this assumption is simpleminded too; there is more to the Tea Party than simple racism.

Those who hate Obama for his skin are not political creatures. They do vote, and host radio shows, but in they do not make sense or generate policy. All they do is upset everybody, stop policy and new ideas from being developed. We need to shut them up by ignoring them, instead of trying to beat them in rational argument. There is no point arguing with racism or insanity.

There are Tea Party libertarians who are political, intelligent and curious, and interested in shades of meaning without regard for shades of skin tone. These are the Tea Party core that most liberals haven't met, and won't meet, because their experience has been so bad trying to negotiate with the angry racists. There is a rational case for small government, for making the government operate according to the constitution, for the separation of church and state and for making corporations behave like responsible businesses instead of being "persons" with rights but no responsibilities under the law. These concerns need to be discussed and rationally balanced with our desire to take care of the less fortunate among us, instead of dismissed as rantings.

So I beg of you, Americans, to do your best to listen to and respect the other side, whoever they are. I beg liberals to consider that there might be real concerns about the longterm viability of large government. And I beg Tea Party conservatives to offer reasons, to be specific and soften your words when you despise something that Obama has done. It is my conviction that Obama is sympathetic to the libertarian position, but because he is a politician and elected as a Democrat, he must play the game within the parameters of his position or be removed. It has cost him dearly. It will be interesting to see what our first brown-skinned president does after his 2nd term ends and he is free to act on his real inclinations.