Well it's obvious that all humans share various and fundamental universals - death and taxes! Quite apart from that famous observation about certainty, we're all susceptible to diseases like cancer, the flu and the common cold. Also universal are heart disease and heart attacks. We all have at least one phobia and we share common emotions as well as a common anatomy and body plan. We all need to fill what's empty; empty what's full; and scratch where it itches. Are there any exceptions for the need to sleep, perchance to dream? Let's explore several other universals, though this is not meant to be a universally exhaustive list, which are innate to our internal psychology and/or based around external realities.
Afterlife: Humans are probably unique as a species in having a before-the-fact awareness that we are going to kick-the-bucket. I doubt if any other animal has an awareness of the concept of their own death. However, relatively few of us probably want to die, though the alternative, if you stop and think about it, immortality either with or without eternal youth, isn't very pretty either. Anyway, it's not surprising that we have come up with the next best security blanket going - an afterlife. Alas, wishing for it doesn't make it so. You'd really think that if an afterlife was reality then somehow some definite proof would have filtered back to us aging mortals, just to shore up our belief system.
Bigger Is Better; Size Matters: If you ask any child or adult to name several dinosaurs, it's a sure bet they won't name the turkey-sized ones! Then there's the Guinness Book of Records that accents things that are big, bigger, biggest. Men want larger private parts; women bustier busts. And ask any Texan what really matters! We've all heard of keeping up with (and surpassing) the Jones family! They're not called 'Tiny Macs' but of course 'Big Macs' and we've all heard of super-sizing!
Civilization: There are universal mythologies that don't credit humans with any smarts in our march towards civilization. Important knowledge wasn't hard won by us; rather it was given to us by the gods. You name it; it was a sort-of from on-high Xmas gift. Fire is one example; agriculture another; weaving yet another. If it wasn't for the gods, we'd still be in the Stone Age, primitive hunter gatherers.
Clothing: To a greater or lesser extent, the human species now covers itself with clothing. Sometimes this is for protection, for the sake of art (so-called 'fashion'), for conformity, and because society says so. That wasn't always the case and in terms of animal life on Earth we're the lone exception in having that kind of nature of body covering.
Cooking: When you think about it, cooking food is somewhat anomalous. All other life forms are adapted to eat all their nutrition in the raw state, be it the flesh of plants or the flesh of animals. And so too must early humans been so adapted, and even today we do eat a lot of plant flesh uncooked. The central ingredient required for cooking was fire, but whether the use of fire for cooking was obvious to Blind Freddy is doubtful. Fire was useful for light; for heat; for keeping large dangerous wildlife at bay, but cooking? No doubt the first cooking experiences were accidental, but that art has spread through to all societies. Cooking is now one of those universals. And while we think nothing of eating cooked meat now, and usually avoid raw meat, it must have been quite the brave individual to actually try cooked meat, say a dead animal 'cooked' in a bushfire after a lifetime of eating nothing but the raw variety.
Creations: This one stumps me, unless we were told by the 'creators' or those more in the know that there were creations. I doubt we could figure out that things get created from personal observations and historical records. Consider the Sun. Every day we see the Sun rise and set. We ask our parents and they say that in their lifetime everyday the Sun rose and set. They say that their parents said the same to them, and their parents before them. We consult historical texts from thousands of years ago, and what do we read, well Mr. Sun rose and Mr. Sun set, it rises and sets, rises and sets. There is no person or history we can consult who can suggest anything other than the Sun rising and setting forever and ever and ever no matter how far back you go. If you could ask the dinosaurs their observations, well they too would have to tell you about that rising and setting Sun. Why would you not assume that the Sun has always risen and set? Translated, based on all available evidence you would have to conclude that the Sun had no starting point and based on probability, won't have an end point either. The Sun is infinite in time. The Sun had no creation. The same argument applies to the ground underneath your feet - Planet Earth is infinite in time. Since you can't actually question the dinosaurs, you have no reason, no contrary evidence not to believe humans as a species didn't always exist. So how come you have "In the beginning God created..."? Why does every mythology contain creation stories - for the cosmos, the Sun, Earth, plants and animals, even for humans? - Something's screwy somewhere.
Deities: We don't like mysteries. Well actually we do like mysteries as long as we can solve them to our satisfaction. If we can't explain a mystery, there's a convenient 'out' or explanation at hand. We attribute that unknown to some power higher than our own; a supernatural deity in other words. Unknown forces become 'acts of god' or godly miracles or 'god works in mysterious ways', etc. And so the unknown is explained. Mystery solved. That satisfies our curiosity, at least in the short term. That doesn't mean supernatural deities really exist, but since we've named so many thousands of them they probably do exist - as extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood 'deities' that is. Regardless of their reality, a deity is also very useful as a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong, instead of blaming yourself, which would probably be a better reflection of reality. Deities can in the popular imagination get up close and personal and if you piss one off - not all that hard to do apparently - that explains all your troubles from the insignificant to the minor to the major, even life-threatening. And it's a very universal human trait to shift the blame and find a scapegoat.
Fiction: When animals communicate with each other they tell the truth. Bees communicate where a new food source is; animals cry out warning/danger sounds and there is no doubting by those in hearing range the truth behind the message; dogs bark for a positive reason and whatever that reason, it's representing something about the animal's perception of reality. Humans however universally invent stories; untruths; fictions; lies; which sets us apart from other animals. The purpose of these fictitious inventions are varied - entertainment value; make a moral/ethical point, etc. Some fiction goes under another name - advertising! However, storytelling is a universal human trait; a universally absent one in the rest of the animal kingdom.
Fire: One thing common in major mythologies is that fire was a gift from lesser gods even if they nicked it first from higher authority. Prometheus is the obvious example though there are numerous parallel examples from North American Indians, even Polynesia and referenced in the Books of Enoch. However, that's rather odd. You'd of thought that the 'discovery' of fire; the 'gift' of fire, was universally a natural event - no gods, no gifts, required. It would be a rare environment that didn't experience natural forest or bushfires due to lightning strikes, or via lava starting fires from active volcanoes. Such natural sources should have prevented any need of an unnatural source, which is one via a deity.
Future Happenings: Animals have way too much on their plates to concern them in the here and now to worry too much about tomorrow. Even if they do it's probably a case of 'whatever will be, will be'. That's despite some animals squirreling or storing away food in the good times for when times are not so plentiful. That's just pure instinct on their part, not an original foresight concept thought through and through. Humans on the other hand from all walks of life, then and now, are obsessed with tomorrow and beyond. Maybe that's because we alone know that our demise looms in that future of tomorrows. And so there's a flourishing industry in astrology and soothsaying, prophets and oracles, tea leaves and chicken entrails. It's all nonsense of course except to true believers, and perhaps, for deeply embedded psychological reasons, that includes the majority of us, even if we won't admit it.
Ghosts: That reports of and beliefs in spirits or phantoms or more commonly ghosts are universal throughout all societies, past and present. They probably have origins in people latching on to any possible evidence that proves there's an afterlife. If the concept of an afterlife is a security blanket for humans facing inevitable death, ghosts are a security blanket that supports an afterlife. But, how do you then account for phantom trains and buildings or ghost ships or other non-living objects that sometimes appear as ghostly images? Something's screwy somewhere - yet again! Actually that screwy-ness might be evidence that we're actually 'living' in a simulated universe; we're just virtual reality not real reality and phantom trains say are just the residue of previously overwritten software.
Humans First: Actually that's 'humans first and foremost' in all things where there's a conflict between what humans want and what everything else needs. Translated, when it comes to the use of land, humans vs. the environment for biodiversity or endangered species, it is humans first and foremost. A typical case history is the Amazon Forest vs. humans - humans 1; forest 0. If humans want to use land that's home to an endangered species - screw the endangered species. If farmers have crops attacked by wildlife - kill the bastards! Universally, it's called 'progress' and nothing stands in the way of human progress - even other humans as the native Amerindians found out. Ditto that for the Aztecs, Incas, and the Australian Aborigines too. I recall here the Spencer Tracy narration for the film "How the West Was Won", narration that's not exactly something that's politically correct in today's society: "This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But, the names and the marks and the land all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man." [Easterners heading westward would] "Look at a mountain and see a watershed; look at a forest and see timber for houses; look at a stony field and see a farm". That's how the west was conquered.
Humour: Humans alone and collectively within the animal kingdom have a sense of humour. We tell and play practical jokes; comedy shows on TV abound as well as feature length comedy films. It's a rare work of literature that doesn't contain at least a few lighter moments; ditto most other works of drama. However, the question is why? Humour has no survival value in any Darwinian sense. I mean do your odds of surviving a shark attack just happen to lie in your telling the shark a few dirty jokes thus distracting it while rapidly back-pedalling out of the water? In any event, the transmission of humour usually resides in language, and humans were on the road to civilization way before we had language. So humour and survival do not seem to be linked. So, how do we explain this human trait? It's universal; it's yet another example of something's screwy somewhere.
Isms: We all feel more comfortable with our own kind. We tend to associate with others our own age, our own race, our own sex, our own religion, our own nationality, etc. Those who differ significantly from the standard 'me' get isms attached. Racism; sexism; nationalism, etc. are cases in point. It's all discrimination on the grounds that someone else isn't virtually your clone physically and/or in terms of worldviews (belief systems).
Music: Music is an art form designed for the ears. There probably hasn't, isn't or will be anyone of any race, creed or culture, male or female, old or young, who hasn't, doesn't and won't respond positively to music of one type of another. Exactly why however is a bit mysterious. Music, apart from bird calls and other animal 'noises' wasn't part of our natural primate ancestral background. You could hardly call crashing surf, thunder and howling winds musical. And while bird vocalizations and animal sounds have survival value - species recognition or identification, warning/danger cries, use in mating rituals - 'humans' even multi-tens of thousands of years ago didn't need to sing or strike rocks or blow across reeds to communicate. Though the saying "music sooths the savage beast" must have some significance, music appreciation seems to me to be more by design than by natural evolution. However, if we appreciate music by design, who was the designer and then what was the possible purpose behind that appreciation? If all music vanished from human society overnight, our life and civilization would still go on. Music is peripheral to our survival - then or now.
My (fill in the blank) Right or Wrong: The blank could represent spouse, child, family, town, county, state, country or even planet if faced with an alien presence or threat. That applies equally to other belief systems like religion or sports team. The logic of course is faulty in the extreme, but that is beside the point when you're engaging in your debate.
Mythical Creatures: There is no human culture on Earth that hasn't stocked a make-believe zoo with all manner of fantastic creatures. From dragons to thunderbirds, griffins to the hydra, Grendel and Pegasus, unicorns to hellhounds, they're all there and a whole lot more besides. Modern equivalents like Godzilla are clearly marketed as entertainment and fictional; not so marketed were the ancient beasts of 'mythology' according to our ancient ancestors. Why did they have a need to 'invent' so many weird beasties? Why did they believe these creatures existed? Perhaps the alternative explanation is that these mythical creatures weren't quite so mythical.
Rank Has Its Privileges: Are all men (and women) created equal? Not on your Nellie! In very society, past and present, and no doubt future, there, have been, are and will be the haves and have nots. That's nearly as universal and certain as death and taxes.
Rebellious: All humans tend to be rebellious. It's just about as universal as it gets, and I don't mean kids throwing temper tantrums or something confined to teenagers. 'Thou shall not' usually gets interpreted as 'Thou shall' if I can get away with it! I mean who hasn't exceeded the speed limit now and again; parked in a 'no parking' area or overstayed their parking time limit; dropped that piece of litter when no one was looking; engaged in inappropriate Internet use at work or maybe nicking a few pens and paperclips; failed to return a borrowed library book on time; or told the occasional 'little white lie'? What about fudging just a little bit on your tax return and declaration?
Resurrection: We've all seen the Sun 'die' at dusk only to be resurrected at dawn. The Moon 'dies' at New Moon, but then comes back gradually growing brighter each night until it's Full Moon, then starts to slowly 'die' again until it does 'dies' again - death and resurrection. Some plants 'die' in the winter, but are resurrected in the spring. A lawn that's been killed (mowed) usually survives to grow back again. A lizard can lose its tail but seemingly that tail is resurrected and grows back. So, viewing all these things, it's not surprising that humans think that they too will be resurrected after death.
Symmetry: Humans love symmetry, which might tend to reflect nature as nature often exhibits symmetrical traits. A sphere has perfect symmetry; symmetry in two-out-of-three dimensions might be a cylinder; human's exhibit symmetry in only one-out-of-three dimensions; left-right. But symmetry isn't confined to just geometry though that's probably the main kind of symmetry that one finds in nature apart from the biological like predator vs. prey or male vs. female. Humans apply symmetry to things that are relative and/or the more abstract - right vs. wrong; tall vs. short; black vs. white; heaven vs. hell; up vs. down; hot vs. cold; yin vs. yang - the list could be extended for quite a few more examples from politics to economics. However, as a general rule-of-thumb, for any concept humans conceive of, they will also conceive of an equal-and-opposite concept. Symmetry seems to be in our genes.
Three 'R's': Humans can be both literate and numerate. My cats couldn't read the most basic three-year-old primer, no matter how much instruction I gave them. No cat can read and understand the word C A T; their paws aren't equipped to put pen to paper and 'typing' or pawing on a computer keyboard is going to create gibberish. Still, cats specifically, and the rest of the animal kingdom in general, get by thank you very much without any need to read or write or calculate/crunch numbers. In fact, many ancient human societies or cultures never developed writing at all, and therefore reading, though they probably did calculations for various purposes, even if just in their head. Still, the odds are pretty good that the human species would exist today even if none of us or our ancestors ever had developed an ability to read and write. Yet being literate and numerate is one of those universals of the current human condition.
Time: All life forms on this planet, except those companion animals we've forced into adapting to our ways, set their biological clocks by natural time, usually the rising and elevation and setting of the Sun; the duration of daylight. To a lesser extent, the rising, setting and phases of the Moon play a role. All life forms on this planet, apart from those who live their entire life in eternal darkness - deep inside caves, deep underground, or in the abyssal depths - probably have the concept, assuming they have IQs high enough to have concepts, otherwise an awareness, of a day - sunrise to sunrise - or more likely half-days - sunrise to sunset, and sunset to sunrise. They certainly have no awareness or concept of, nor requirement to have any awareness or concept of, a second, minute, hour, week, month, year, decade or century. These are all manmade constructions of no use and of no interest to other living things. So, while nearly all living things are aware of 'time', only humans, universally, have turned natural time (night and day) into artificial time - like time zones. Every culture has had a go at forming a calendar - how many units per day; how many days per week; how many weeks per month; how many months per year, and finally what to do with the leftover residue. Even in terms of the 'day, there's nothing natural about midnight - one could take any point and call that the end of the old day and the start of the new day, as apparently we have some sort of need to label the days that other living things don't need to do. Ditto that idea when it comes to the end of our labelled year. There's nothing special about New Years Eve. It's a totally artificial concept. Only humans attribute some sort of uniqueness to it. To everything else on this planet it's just another ordinary moment in a lifetime of ordinary moments. And Daylight Savings is as artificially phoney as it gets even if it does have, or at least did have, some practical application. Birthdays are another artificial and phoney concept. If anniversaries have any meaning then your 'birthday' should be the anniversary of your conception, not when you were hatched. We may also observe the birthday of companion animals for various reasons, but to them, it's a non-event that has no real significance to them even if the concept had occurred to them. They require neither birthday card nor birthday presents and don't feel insulted when they don't appear.
Trade: Trade is a universal of the human condition. It's just exchanging what you have (skills, money, goods, crops, etc.) for what you need or want (money, food, sex, other goods and services, etc.). That trait, bartering, buying and selling, exchanging goods and services has gone on seemingly as far back in history as records allow for. There are no parallels that I am aware of existing in the animal kingdom, not even among our closest primate ancestors. Animals often share, but they don't engage in commerce.
Visual Art: Visual art are art forms designed for the eyes, though they could also be natural like scenery - sunsets, cloud forms, seascapes, etc. Art appreciation is universal, although it's often a case of different strokes for different folks. Paintings obviously come to mind, even Playboy pinups; eye-catching or pleasing architecture qualifies; 3-D sculptures obviously; dancing, the theatre and in more modern times cinema. The issue here is why art appreciation like music appreciation is appreciated or has a resonance at all since art appreciation has no obvious survival value. There's little to be gained standing around admiring the striped patterns on a hungry tiger that's got an eye on you that has nothing to do with its art appreciation. However, it would be interesting to be able to communicate with some of the higher IQ animals (birds and mammals) to find out if they appreciate the beauty in a rainbow, those northern or southern lights (the Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis) or the stalagmites and stalactites that's in their cave. Do flying birds have an abstract appreciation of their aerial view or is it just so much ho-hum? At least we suspect that pigeons in the park appreciate the statues they sit on!
Worldviews: I'm right; you're wrong, even if it's just opinions at stake. Today, there are no doubt a zillion debates that go on, on Internet message boards around the world that X is better than Y or vice versa. At least, despite the vehemence, nobody gets physically hurt! That's not of necessity in a face-to-face barroom encounter, or High Noon on the highway - road rage. Every day in every way, say over morning tea breaks at the office water cooler, over breakfast or dinner at home, differences of opinions make themselves known in no uncertain terms. The human trait of loving an argument; ever willing to engage in one at the drop of the proverbial hat, is a universal one. It's perhaps another side to territoriality. You stake out not a physical territory, but a non-physical one, yet defend it just as passionately. It's even been formalized in debating societies or in public debating forums and political institutions like Congress or parliaments.
Can We Change Human Nature?
What best describes 'human nature'?
In order to describe human nature, it is necessary to first be able to define it.
Definition 1: General conversation
The first definition is the general conversation definition. When someone refers to 'human nature' in a conversation it is usually to describe some form of behaviour that is seen to be common to all humans. In The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris divides his chapters into the headings of sex, rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding and comfort. In a later book, The Human Zoo, Morris adds the chapters of tribes, status, in-groups/out-groups, imprinting and stimulus. Perhaps this is a good place to start - with a list of human behaviours that are common to us all. (Another worthy reference is Human Universals by Donald E. Brown. )
The first definition is the general conversation definition. When someone refers to 'human nature' in a conversation it is usually to describe some form of behaviour that is seen to be common to all humans. In The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris divides his chapters into the headings of sex, rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding and comfort. In a later book, The Human Zoo, Morris adds the chapters of tribes, status, in-groups/out-groups, imprinting and stimulus. Perhaps this is a good place to start - with a list of human behaviours that are common to us all. (Another worthy reference is Human Universals by Donald E. Brown. )
Interestingly, the term 'human nature' would not be used in general conversation to describe uncommon behaviour, for example torture, pillage or rape, or, at the other end of the scale, breaking sporting records, composing as many melodies as Mozart or creating the kind of the work Leonardo da Vinci was responsible for. This would be considered uncommon human behaviour and therefore outside the general conversation definition of 'human nature'.
So it could be concluded that the conversational definition of 'human nature' is one that is around the behaviours that are shared among all humans across culture, and yet are restricted to a sort of normal or average behaviour.
Definition 2: It's academic
The term 'human nature' can also be defined as the full range of needs, values and beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are exhibited by the human species. As we work our way through this list, from needs to behaviours, we pass through different degrees of variant behaviours.
The term 'human nature' can also be defined as the full range of needs, values and beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are exhibited by the human species. As we work our way through this list, from needs to behaviours, we pass through different degrees of variant behaviours.
Needs: While it is easy to say that it is human nature to satisfy physiological needs, it is also human nature to satisfy needs that are driven unconsciously by evolution. These could include the need:
• to pass on our genes
• to increase our status
• for shelter
• for social contact
• to create/leave a legacy.
• to increase our status
• for shelter
• for social contact
• to create/leave a legacy.
These needs are well described in a number of books on evolutionary psychology, such as The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, Hardwired Humans by Andrew O'Keeffe, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Dr Daniel Dennett.
The Epicurean school of Greek philosophy argued well that much of human nature was driven by our need to avoid pain and move towards pleasure. So our human nature is, in part, driven by needs placed upon us by evolution.
The behaviours that result from needs are, by and large, less malleable than others. It is hard to imagine a time when we will not need to eat, reproduce or care for our young. While it is possible to overcome even the need for survival, it would be generally agreed that it is more difficult than overcoming the need for a chocolate biscuit.
Values and beliefs: Values and beliefs are often the product of unconscious messages from the environment. For example, in his book The Geography of Time, Robert Levine shares his experiments and research that suggest a pattern of behaviour based on location. The closer to the equator you live, the slower you will walk and the less likely you are to be aware of the passing of time, while people in temperate zones are more likely to be aware of the passing of time and they are generally more productive. This is a view echoed in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. So perhaps the protestant work ethic could not have come from a religion based in the Bahamas.
In his book Free Will, Sam Harris takes this idea - that the context in which we find ourselves has a massive effect on our decisions - even further. He asks: In a cause and effect universe, where is our free will in doing what we want, when what we want is the product of countless prior causes that one cannot inspect and therefore cannot select when making a decision? (I find this both compelling and frightening.)
Harris is quick to add that this is not to be confused with the idea that our choice doesn't matter... it is just that we cannot consciously decide. (This is doing my head in.)
I'm still digesting Sam Harris' argument and how he can say that we do not have free will and yet we can change... and so I will have to get back to you on this one.
Thoughts, feelings and behaviours: These are, perhaps, more malleable to the environment and are often referred to as 'personality'. While it is easy to identify specific human needs, human personality is a little more tricky as the variety of thoughts, feelings and behaviours and their interactions are seemingly countless. Wyatt Woodsmall, in his books Strategies and Metaprograms, lists hundreds of filters that we use when thinking, feeling and behaving. Dr Robert Winston, in a TV series called The Human Mind, casually suggests that there are over 2000 filters to human behaviours. It is no doubt that with this number we can achieve great complexity.
Like the software in a computer, if you combine enough 0s and 1s, you end up with software complex enough to store and retrieve all of human knowledge. Maybe life is binary!
And so to summarise, perhaps human nature could be crudely but neatly represented as a gradual gradient of shifting colours, as the following diagram illustrates:
Environmental---------------------------------------------------------------------Genetic
Behaviours -----------Thoughts/feelings ------------Values/beliefs ------------Needs
Behaviours -----------Thoughts/feelings ------------Values/beliefs ------------Needs
To what degree can human nature be changed by the environment?
Can we change?
The question 'Is human nature capable of change?' is one of those 'guilty until proven innocent' arguments. We only need to see evidence of change to know that it is possible.
The question 'Is human nature capable of change?' is one of those 'guilty until proven innocent' arguments. We only need to see evidence of change to know that it is possible.
There are many examples of human nature that we could identify as not having changed, and the listings provided by Desmond Morris and Donald E. Brown would be good places to start. But the fact that these have not changed over millennia could be evidence that they serve us well and not that they cannot be changed. Fortunately, evidence that we are capable of change is quite easy to find.
At the biological level, Dr Norman Doidge (in his book The Brain that Changes Itself ) examines many cases of people being able to overcome severe disabilities through practise, persistence and the reprogramming of their neural circuitry.
At the chemical level, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle explains the role of myelin in creating new habits. This is the chemical that the brain uses to 'insulate' a neural pathway as we practise a new skill. If we overlay this with the work of Dr Daniel Siegel, who discusses the studies that have shown that aerobic activity combined with meditation leads to the development of new neurons, we can see that change is possible at the chemical/biological level.
In his book Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, Timothy D. Wilson lists many examples of recidivism being dramatically reduced by the introduction of some well-targeted and often counter-intuitive strategies. He offers sufficient evidence that behavioural and cognitive change are possible.
Changing groups
Evidence that we are able to change the behaviour of groups exists in the areas of sociology, economics and history.
Evidence that we are able to change the behaviour of groups exists in the areas of sociology, economics and history.
To see how values and beliefs can be (and have been) shifted over time, consider the following. If we travelled back to ancient Greece, we would see that the most honoured members of society were its fighting men; it was considered a disgrace for a fighting man to be seen in the market or even to know how to count. But travel forward to modern day United States and the most honoured males are its entrepreneurs. It would be considered a disgrace for these men to not know how to count or how the market works. Fortunately, top white collar criminals like Jeffrey Skilling, Bernard Ebbers and Bernie Madoff didn't try the 'Yeah but if we were in Greece... ' defence.
As well as this, there are a plethora of books that document how people's behaviours in groups have changed. These include:
In sociology:
• Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan
• Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan
In economics:
• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
In history:
• The Upside of Down - Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilisation by Thomas Homer Dixon
• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
• The Rational Optimist - How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
• The Upside of Down - Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilisation by Thomas Homer Dixon
• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
• The Rational Optimist - How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
The complex thing is that many of these books would point to different levers to use when changing human nature. Perhaps there is a project in building a list of 'The Tools of Change'. Actually, that's not bad...
The speed of change
In order to measure change you need either a constant (such as centimetres, grams, litres, days or weeks) or a contrast (before and after). Sometimes change is difficult to observe because:
• it can be glacially slow and the changes take generations to become evident
• it is almost instantaneous and so takes us by surprise
• we have difficulty finding an appropriate measure.
In order to measure change you need either a constant (such as centimetres, grams, litres, days or weeks) or a contrast (before and after). Sometimes change is difficult to observe because:
• it can be glacially slow and the changes take generations to become evident
• it is almost instantaneous and so takes us by surprise
• we have difficulty finding an appropriate measure.
Glacial change: Darwin suggests that no animal's nature is fixed because nature is a process. So if we applied enough evolutionary pressure for a long enough time, we could make a leopard change its spots!
Instant change: One of the myths of change is that it takes time, but this is not always the case. Some change is instantaneous. For example the Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, made two decisions to change his country, and both changes happened in an instant.
• At 5.59am on 8 September 2009, people in Samoa drove on the right-hand side of the road. At 6am they drove on the left.
• On 29 December 2011, citizens of Samoa went to bed; the following morning when they woke up it was 31 December, as the international dateline had been moved.
So perhaps the saying 'Give me a lever long enough... ' can be seen in action here.
Other examples of instant change are very well illustrated in the book Flipnosis - The Art of Split-Second Persuasion by Kevin Dutton. Dutton examines situations where change has occurred within one sentence or one encounter. He analyses both the ethical and the dodgy, and in the process identifies some clear principles that seem to operate around instant change.
Examples of change in popular culture
The Biggest Loser: We all know the format - take people who have a compelling direction (I don't live like this); change their context (take them away from home, family and friends for months); and install new behaviours (diet and exercise).
The Biggest Loser: We all know the format - take people who have a compelling direction (I don't live like this); change their context (take them away from home, family and friends for months); and install new behaviours (diet and exercise).
Cults: These have a compelling message (the world is doomed but if you come with us you will be safe); they appeal to people who have an increased dependency on others (they've just had a downgrade in status, a loss of friends or romance, ideals or dreams); and they change their context (no contact with family or past friends - instead, live on our property, miles from anywhere).
If we accept the definition of human nature to include the needs, values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviours of humans, then we can see evidence of change in all of these things by looking into anthropology, evolution, history, economics, psychology, biology and chemistry.
Leading thinking suggests that our genes predispose but do not guarantee us a path in life. Our genes respond and react to input from our environment, and over a period of time this loop between genes and environment evolve the species.
We can change but, as is the case with many things, guiding or controlling this change is a little more complex than we might think.
In Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change, Timothy D. Wilson shows how the intuitive approach to dealing with post-traumatic stress is to have sufferers talk through their experiences. However, evidence suggests that this does not reduce the stress - in fact, the opposite happens. By constantly reliving the stressful event, patients strengthen the neural pathways that are used to recall the incident, making it easier to recall and often leading to embellished memories of events.
In Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, we learn how the apparent life-changing event of winning a large sum of money, or becoming a quadriplegic, does not change the majority of people's subjective happiness levels.
As well as these, there are a growing number of books that present a similar argument to Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. The suggestion here is that we are oversold the 'genetic talent' story and undersold the stories of persistence, practice and opportunity.
So while it is still difficult with our level of expertise to manage change in a highly predictable way, we do know that the change recipe includes a healthy dose of shaping the environment in which the protagonist needs to exhibit the new values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings and/or behaviours. The levers we need to pull to shape the environment include:
• opportunity
• reward and punishment
• practice
• support for assistance
• suggestion from other environmental factors (including written messages)
• surrounding people
• architecture and space.
• reward and punishment
• practice
• support for assistance
• suggestion from other environmental factors (including written messages)
• surrounding people
• architecture and space.
All of which is fine, but we still have not dealt with the ethical questions that have been raised through the history of eugenics:
• What do we gain/what do we lose in the change?
• Is the change an improvement/necessary? If so, by whose standards?
• What is the cost and how do you justify the cost to individuals who have to pay that cost?
• Is the change an improvement/necessary? If so, by whose standards?
• What is the cost and how do you justify the cost to individuals who have to pay that cost?
The Trouble With Human Evolution
Modern humans have evolved over the past six to seven million years a number of traits that make us, Homo sapiens, a very unique species indeed. We alone of all the mammals (as well as all invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles) have a bipedal gait. We alone of all of our primate cousins are for all practical purposes hairless. Of all the animals that are, or have ever been, we're top of the pops with respect to brain size as a function of body size, and in terms of intelligence, king of the hill full stop. And while animals can communicate via vocalizations and body language, none can communicate the extremely wide range of practical and especially abstract concepts that we can. Last, but not least, humans are nearly unique in making and using external tools, tools unique in terms of their sophistication.
All five major traits noted above, and a lot more that's related besides, don't seem to be a requirement for basic survival, since other species survive and thrive without them, and in fact all these major five defining traits (and more) seem to have some actual evolutionary drawbacks, not the least of which require very serious modifications to basic primate anatomy for apparently no increase in that Darwinian phrase "survival of the fittest". The proof of that pudding is that our ultimate primate ancestor still survives - the chimpanzee; their ultimate descendent survives - the modern human; yet all those in-betweens hominids who were presumably adapting via natural selection resulting in all those evolutionary changing improvements, went kaput - over twenty species of them. If these "survival of the fittest" evolutionary adaptations were all that crash hot and necessary, then why was their demise? Any ancestral hominoids that went extinct prior to 200,000 years ago can't have Homo sapiens as the villain. Those 20 plus extinct hominid species aside, why aren't many of those natural selection improvements really so crash hot for us modern humans either? Here's the trouble with human evolution. But first consider this.
THE ROOT CAUSE & DRIVING FORCE
The current standard model of human evolution explains the 'why' question due to rapid and extreme shifts in climate in continental Africa over that six to seven million year period. The central problem there IMHO is why these shifts failed to drastically produce evolutionary changes in the rest of the animal populations like elephants, lions, hyenas, giraffes, zebras, wildebeests and other African landlubbers as the Dark Continent went from jungle to forest to savannah to arid deserts and back again.
Now of course environmental change is a major driving force behind biological evolution, at least when it comes to natural selection. But one has to look at the Big Picture, the entirety of the bio-realm and not just isolate one changing species and link the two and ignore all else. The environment changes and hominoids change but all the other species seemingly don't change. That makes for an anomaly.
One of the key phrases in evolution is that "there is a price to pay" for change - no free lunch or get out of jail card is authorized. That "no pain, no gain" price applies whether you're dealing with natural or artificial selection. But I sometimes wonder whether one is getting a fifty-cent gain return on a dollar investment worth of pain. Consider the following.
OUR BIPEDAL GAIT
* Is an anomaly in that human beings, alone of all the mammals, walk routinely on just two legs.
* It called for a complete redesign of our musculoskeletal system vis-Ã -vis our chimpanzee ancestors.
* That results in an increase in all our various painful bad back trials and tribulations.
* And it also requires a rearrangement of our internal organ attachments.
* A bipedal gait needs a harder working heart to pump blood up to our now higher upper reaches, like the head and neck, instead of mainly sideways. A bipedal gait means having to fight the better fight against gravity.
* A bipedal gait results in an increase in difficulties in maintaining an upright balance (especially as one grows older) because the centre of gravity has shifted dramatically. It's much easier to push over a standing human than say a standing dog.
* A bipedal gait further results in a decrease in survival value due to the ever possible loss of or injury to a leg, foot, ankle, etc. Lose the use of a leg and in the wilderness, you're nearly helpless.
* A bipedal gait has to the best of my knowledge only arisen once before, and that was in the theropod dinosaur branch, like T-Rex, etc. That was the branch that gave rise to the birds, therefore they are also bipedal, but it originated with an early, early ancestor of T-Rex. Some may argue that kangaroos and their relatives like the wallabies are bipedal, but they don't put one leg in front of the other in a left-right-left-right-left-right fashion. They hop, which doesn't quite put them in the same category as humans or even birds. Further, the theropod dinosaurs, the birds, and even the kangaroos all have tails to help keep their centre of balance, well, balanced. That's cheating!!! Humans lack that support structure (a rather sad tale I'm sure), so I'll argue that the human bipedal gait is still unique among all animals, past and present. Humans remain the one and only really bona-fide bipedal entity. Okay, a few tailless primates can 'walk' for brief intervals, but their normal locomotion is via their four limbs on the ground when not swinging in the trees.
C - A bipedal gait isn't a lifestyle walk-the-walk gait that is commonly noted in cats - in fact it isn't noted at all. Why cats? Why not cats? C is for Cat; C is for Comparison. So as a comparison, let's take cats, who have a multitude of feline relatives (tigers, lions, etc.) and who have survived and thrived for quite some considerable time. Why cats? Firstly because I'm familiar with cats and secondly because they are an advanced multicellular relatively sophisticated mammalian species, much liken to us. Cats share a great deal with us humans apart from being warm-blooded mammals. Cats, like humans are curious, playful, tend to look after number one, are territorial, like to sleep, dream, have a good memory, show emotions, and like humans have colonized the globe - except Antarctica - either as domestics or as ferals or as wild animals, etc. But, they don't walk-the-walk on just their two hind legs!
A LARGE HUMAN BRAIN
* Is an anomaly, along with that associated brain thingy high IQ or intelligence we have, relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, which collectively aren't quite, by any stretch of the imagination, in Einstein's league. Humans have the largest brain size as a function of body size in the entire animal kingdom, again, apparently both past and present..
* A large human brain makes for an increasingly hazardous childbirth. The relatively large head of the foetus at childbirth, having to pass through the space available via the hip opening, has resulted in not just a rather painful experience for the mother (and presumably the infant too) but has often led to the premature death of a lot of said newborns and/or their mothers. Now another anomaly here is that if the human body has accommodated all the massive anatomical changes required for a bipedal lifestyle, you'd think an increase in the birth canal hip opening size would have been relatively evolutionary child's play.
* The human brain takes years to develop fully, nearly two decades worth in fact, leaving infants totally dependent on others for survival. Infants need care not just for a few weeks or months or seasons, but for many, many years, extending right through their teens, thus cramping the lifestyle of the parents. This length of time for brain development and associated acquiring of survival skills to fully develop is unprecedented in all other primates.
* A large human brain is a very energy-intensive organ. In fact 25% of our energy requirements are required to fuel our upstairs grey-matter wetware. That in turn puts additional pressures on hunting and/or gathering for that extra in food resources required to supply that energy need. Apparently the increase in those energy demands is what drove us to begin to hunt down and eat meat and invent cooking (to make the meat easier to digest). Well, maybe.
C - Cats, however endearing, are not a little feline version of Einstein.
A LACK OF FUR
* Is an anomaly since humans alone of nearly 200 species of our primate cousins are considered a "naked ape".
* Our relative lack of fur makes us dependent on sweating for temperature regulation, also making us highly dependent on sources of freshwater and salt.
* Our relative lack of fur has the apparent advantage of enabling humans to become long distance endurance runners since we can continually keep cool, even while running, by sweating, yet what we are running after (prey), or from (predators), don't sweat and therefore are quickly overcome by heat exhaustion. We get a meal, or escape from being one. Well that's the standard scenario. I think it would have made more sense to have used our social group numbers, increasing IQ and tool making abilities to hunt and ambush game rather than running them down. As for escaping predators, perhaps we should have retained our tree climbing abilities, and if no trees were available, there are always rocks to throw and sticks to club predators with. I'm not convinced loss of fur in order to sweat in order to run marathons in order to eat or avoid being eaten are related in a cause-and-effect way. In any event running is also very energy consuming and it isn't normally sound practice to expend more energy than you have to, especially when you don't know where and when your next meal is coming from. And if it is advantageous for evolving hominoids to lose fur, take up sweating, take up jogging, and run to exhaustion large prey animals, then it should also be advantageous for other predators, like the lion, to do the same. But that hasn't happened. Why not?
* Our relative lack of fur requires the need, as a substitution, for clothing in cooler environments. Why a human, originating in and adapted to a tropical climate without need of fur, therefore without need of clothing, would migrate into cooler, even cold habitats where fur, or now a clothing substitute instead, is a near requirement, is itself an anomaly. You swap fur for clothing, but clothing in itself requires a whole lot of special skills to produce - fur doesn't.
C - Cats, as well as their wildlife big cat cousins, do not lack a natural covering of fur.
A VOCAL LANGUAGE
* Is an anomaly in that only humans vocalise not only everyday, routine, survival 'language' (all manner of animals do that) but abstract concepts (which no other animals do).
* A vocal or spoken language required to communicate abstract ideas, as apart from just making sounds, requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the relevant internal organs required; lips, teeth, tongue, hard and soft palate, larynx, etc.
C - Cats meow, lions roar, but their meow (or the lion's roar) has nothing to do with communicating abstract concepts like basic mathematics.
TOOL USE
* Is an anomaly in that while a few other animals can make and use tools, that relative degree of sophistication relative to what humans have achieved is akin to comparing the survival skills of a day-old infant with that of an adult.
* Tool use requires an evolutionary rearrangement of the finger-hand-wrist-arm-shoulder configuration, as well as that extra-large brain thingy to figure out that a tool is required, what resources are required to make that tool, and how to manufacture the necessary implement from those resources. A lot of just-so conditions have to be met to accommodate even the most basic of tool technologies.
* Tool use could ultimately prove our undoing as tool use, or technology, is a double-edged sword. A gun can put food on your table; it can also exterminate humans.
C - Cats are not adapted at using tools. If they could use a can opener and a spoon they could get their own meals! That would suit me just fine, but alas.
BREEDS or ETHNIC/RACIAL DISTINCTIONS
* Are anomalous in that when taking into consideration the rest of the animal and plant kingdom, breeds (groupings that look different but can still breed and produce non-sterile offspring) tend to be associated with artificial, not natural selection. Are human breeds therefore a product of artificial selection, and if so, by whom?
* Human breeds cannot be adequately explained in the just 70,000 or some odd years since that one unique racial type of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and spread throughout the globe diverging into numerous racial types. Even if there were several migrations out of Africa, a wave of migrations, all those migrant waves were of one race or breed. The 70,000 year time period is very short, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, to achieve this uniqueness of going from a local African uni-race to a multiracial global society. Further, the evolutionary (survival of the fittest) advantage or reason(s) for ethnic distinctions are lacking any rational natural explanation, apart from in some selected races, skin colour.
C - Your standard pussycat comes in various breeds. That's artificial selection at work, albeit the whodunit in this case is well known.
UNIQUE FACIAL FEATURES
* Are a relatively human anomaly. Apart from identical twins, no two humans from the neck up look the same, and thus this is how we tell human identities, once seen, apart. We tend to tell animals of the same species or breed (if applicable) apart by size, colour, skin/fur patterns, abnormalities, or else we don't distinguish who's who at all. To me, all magpie faces look the same. The question is, why humans have unique facial features and not the rest of the animal kingdom?
C - If you took 100 pure short-hair black cats, same size, same sex, same eye colour, could you tell them apart by looking at just their face? I doubt if I could.
THE WHITES-OF-YOUR-EYES
* Are anomalous in that apparently no other animal show them, and based on all the animals and birds I see around my local environment, that certainly seems to be the case. So why do we show the whites-of-our-eyes? There would appear to be no rhyme or reason for this natural human evolutionary (if it was a natural selection) trait. The whites-of-our-eyes: how very, very odd.
C - Cats have whites-of-their-eyes, only you have to peel back the skin surrounding their eyeballs to see the whites-of-their-eyes. Looking at a standard cat, you'll fail to see the whites-of-their-eyes.
EARLOBES
* Are anomalous in that apparently no other mammal (and certainly not any fish, amphibian, reptile or bird) have them. So why do we have them?
* Earlobes? WTF you ask? Well we all know that our earlobes serve a cultural purpose or function as a prime site as an accessory to fashion - pierced ears and earrings. However, earlobes serve no actual biological function. You could exist, survive and thrive without them. Because we alone have earlobes, and because they serve no biological purpose, they are anomalous.
* On the other hand, earlobes apparently don't do us any harm. But, biological evolution tends to select for the positive benefit, not the neutral. Why would Mother Nature evolve them if they serve no biological purpose? WTF indeed!
C - Cats have ears; cats do not have earlobes.
RISK TAKING
* Is anomalous in that if done just for the sake of doing it, serves no positive evolutionary purpose or outcome while accenting a negative one, giving oneself a 'Darwin Award' for eliminating yourself from further contributions to the evolution of the human species.
* No animal will engage in any hazardous activity that doesn't have some connection towards its own, its immediate family brood, its community or its species survival. An animal doesn't take risks just for the sake of taking risks and just for the thrill of it all. Humans however will often engage in extreme risky activities, without any benefit to anyone, including themselves, except to perhaps remove themselves from the gene pool. Risky behaviour might include right up to and including suicide which most decidedly removes you from the gene pool. Suicide is not a trait that tends to be shared by our animal relations, and apparent exceptions, like whales stranding themselves in shallow water, have a physiological explanation.
C - Cats are not known to take risks above and beyond the call of their feline duty, even if they do occasionally get stuck up a tree!
PRIVACY AND EMBARRASSMENT
* Is anomalous in that no animal species, outside of the human species, seems to be the slightest bit concerned with privacy (not to be confused with territoriality or personal space, rather just privacy from being observed under certain conditions or in certain situations usually of a sexual or bodily function nature). Nor do animals, unlike humans, suffer any form of embarrassment. That suggests that there is no evolutionary or survival aspect to the need for privacy or the suffering of being embarrassed. Somehow, in humans alone (but not yet in babies or infants), these concepts have been imprinted onto our collective psyche. Imprinted by whom? What is the ultimate origin and how far back does it go? Why is it so? Who knows! But the upshot is that this has to be a cultural quirk; it's certainly not a biological one.
* There are apparently two real taboo places in human society where intruders are not welcome: the bedroom and the bathroom, or put another way, sex and bodily functions, where privacy is paramount and when violated, embarrassment ensues. The latter especially is puzzling in that bodily functions are universal. Every human has to go to the bathroom, all women have 'that time of the month', so why these should be embarrassments if witnessed by others is anomalous. That's also highlighted in that sex and bodily functions are not biological events which animals find requires privacy or causes embarrassment to them if witnessed by others.
* Nudity per se doesn't seem to be the root cause, as people seem to be way less shy of appearing nude in fairly standard social situations than when engaged in more personal bedroom/bathroom matters that require exposure.
* Embarrassment in humans can be caused by many other oops events, maybe comical, like wearing mismatched socks, maybe somewhat more serious like splitting your pants in public. But if an equivalent event happens to an animal, no such reaction comes to the fore. For example, if you stumble and fall down, piss your pants, or vomit in public, you're embarrassed. If an animal does the equivalent, it just picks itself up and acts like nothing unusual transpired. Animals don't blush.
C - Cats don't care if you or another cat sees them mate or go to the litter box. They don't suffer embarrassment and they don't blush.
CATS
C - Its only fair to ask in regards to my feline comparison, does a cat have any anatomical or physiological or behavioural feature unique to them and only them? The surprising answer is yes. Cats purr, and the reasons why and how are still not well understood. Humans don't purr. No other animal purrs. Their big cat relatives don't purr, but then again lions and tigers, etc. roar, and your pet pussy cat doesn't. So perhaps the two vocalizations are related from way back when they all had a common ancestor! But purr or roar, there appears to be no evolutionary drawbacks, just positive survival benefits like warning off rival lions (my roar is louder than your roar) or mother/kitten bonding in cats.
CONCLUSIONS
* There are four possible explanations for the various anomalies associated with the existence of the modern human species relative to our alleged ancestral stock which goes right back to the chimpanzees. In descending order of probability, IMHO, there's the simulated universe scenario inhabited by us as virtual entities (created by 'persons' or things unknown and probably forever unknowable); there's artificial selection (the ancient astronaut theory); there's natural selection (the Darwinian biological evolution concept); and way, way last, by a wide, wide margin, there's supernatural creation (the dust-and-rib theory and variations thereof).
* Why this ordering of probabilities? There are many paths to a simulated universe, from wetware to software, via extraterrestrials or maybe a future 'human' society, that it borders on the near inevitable. There's but one pathway to the artificial selection scenario, though that too is just about inevitable. There are many issues to be had with natural selection as this essay demonstrates, though that's the standard model. Lastly, the concept of an all-perfect supernatural deity who would screw up things so royally is laughable - as is the concept of a supernatural deity in the first place.
* The interesting bit is that a virtual reality simulation could easily be a simulation of an 'ancient astronaut' generated artificial selection, or Darwinian natural selection, or even a supernatural creator deity! Truth be known, only the simulated universe scenario makes any real sense, IMHO, because therein, "anything goes", and when it comes to the problems with human evolution, one needs an "anything goes" explanation.
Science librarian; retired.
The Human Problem
The human problem in the Yoruba religion is disconnection. We are disconnected from ourselves and from our destinies; we are disconnected from each other; we are disconnected from nature; we are disconnected from the Orishas and we are disconnected from God. The Yoruba religion offers several ways to help us to reconnect with our fellow creatures and with God. First and most important is to find out our purpose in life through Ifa Divination. Next we may talk face to face with the Orishas through spirit possession. The Orishas come alive through spirit possession and we may ask them questions about our problems. Further education also plays a significant role in the process. Education helps the initiate to understand the Orisha mystery. Last but not the least is offering sacrifices to the Orishas and participating in rituals that would restore our connection. According to the Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts, P.10) "Orunmila, as all true prophets, preached that humans must return to their divine nature. It is a human being's destiny to reach or return to her/his divine state internally-heavenly, and to live upon the earth plane-existence as a reflection of that divine state".
The human problem in Islam is pride. We are proud and think that we can live our lives without Allah. The solution to pride is submission to Allah. One can submit to Allah by living according to the Five Pillars of Islam including a verbal commitment that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet; Praying daily at specific times; Fasting during the month of Ramadan; Performing good works like charity and giving alms to the poor; and a Pilgrimage to Mecca in one's lifetime. According to the Qur'an 17:15, "Whoever is guided, is guided for his own good, and whoever goes astray does so to his own detriment. No sinner will bear the sins of anyone else. We never punish without first sending a messenger."
The problem in Judaism is separation from God and the solution is to return to God. One can do that by obeying or following the law of God. According to the Tanakh: Malachi 3:7, "From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from Mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith HaShem of hosts. But ye say: 'Wherein shall we return?"
The human problem in Christianity is sin. Sin came into the world through Adam and Eve. The first couple disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit that God told them not to eat. And by this singular act they changed the history of the world from creatures who were once close to God to creatures who are now far away from God. In order to release us from the sin of Adam and Eve God sent his son to die on the cross. However, in order to be saved we need to accept Jesus as our personal savior. Anyone who accepts Jesus as his personal savior will be saved and those who do not accept the savior will be damned.
According to the New Testament: John 3:16-18, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son".
The human problem in Buddhism is suffering. This problem is stated in the Four Noble Truths. After his Enlightenment the Buddha promulgated Four statements called the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is that life is suffering. Loss, sickness, failure, old age, tiredness, injury and pain are all forms of suffering. The Second Noble Truth is that suffering is caused by craving. The desire to have, the desire to be famous, the desire to control and the desire for sensual pleasure are all forms of craving. But getting what you want does not necessarily guarantee real happiness; instead you want more and more until you either overdraw your account or you hurt someone or something. The Third Noble Truth is the cessation of suffering. Suffering can be overcome. The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path that leads to the cessation of suffering. This is the Noble Eightfold Path which includes:
1. Right Understanding. Know that there is suffering in life but there is a way to end suffering.
2. Right Thinking. Follow the right path.
3. Right Speech. Do not lie, do not criticize, do not condemn, do not gossip and do not use hurtful language.
4. Right Conduct. Live by the 5 precepts.
5. Right Livelihood. Earn a living without harming others.
6. Right Effort. Hold good thoughts and replace evil thoughts with good thoughts.
7. Right Mindfulness. Be aware of your body, mind and feelings.
8. Right Concentration. Meditate often for a higher level of consciousness.
2. Right Thinking. Follow the right path.
3. Right Speech. Do not lie, do not criticize, do not condemn, do not gossip and do not use hurtful language.
4. Right Conduct. Live by the 5 precepts.
5. Right Livelihood. Earn a living without harming others.
6. Right Effort. Hold good thoughts and replace evil thoughts with good thoughts.
7. Right Mindfulness. Be aware of your body, mind and feelings.
8. Right Concentration. Meditate often for a higher level of consciousness.
The human problem in Hinduism is Samsara. Samsara is the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. The solution is moksha. Moksha means liberation or release. Moksha is the highest goal of life in Hinduism because it represents self-realization in freedom from karma and ignorance. According to Chandogya Upanishad (The Upanishads by Juan Mascaro p.121), "There is a Spirit which is pure and which is beyond old age and death; and beyond hunger and thirst and sorrow. This is Atman, the Spirit in man. All the desires of this Spirit are Truth. It is this Spirit that we must find and know: man must find his own Soul. He who has found and knows his Soul, has found all the worlds, has achieved all his desires."
The human problem in Atheism is religion. According to atheists religion is a product of human imagination based on fear of the unknown, irrationality and superstition. The solution is to replace religion with reason and individual responsibility coupled with ethical living.
The human problem in Daoism is ignorance. We are ignorant of the fact that the main purpose of life is to become a sage. The sage is one who knows and lives in harmony with the Tao. The way to become a sage is to live according to 4 principles and these principles include:
1. Wu-Wei: Wuwei means non-action or inaction. It is a doctrine in which we are able to do more with little effort by surrendering to the Tao.
2. Law of Return or Fu: All things return to the Dao. We are all part of nature and we all eventually return to nature. This law teaches a model of conduct to the Taoist because he or she is not going to live forever. Thus the Taoist uses his or her time wisely.
3. Non-Attachment: We tend to make things permanent but the truth is that nothing is permanent and everything is changing. If everything is changing it just means that there are no absolutes on earth: no truth is absolute and no institutions are permanent. The challenge for the Taoist is to live his or her life from this knowledge and cultivate non-attachment.
4. Laissez Faire: The rules of society restrict our actions to some degree. In his or her practice the individual must be free to live without restrictions.
The human problem in Confucianism is corruption. Corruption is moral decay and it includes but is not limited to bribery, embezzlement, extortion, blackmail, favoritism, nepotism and dishonesty which bring about a breakdown in the social order. The solution is to seek the common good and we can do that by living up to the following principles:
1. The Rectification of names
2. The Five Great Relationships
3. Rituals, and
4. Education
2. The Five Great Relationships
3. Rituals, and
4. Education
The Human Problem in Shinto is pollution from pride, evil thoughts, careless speech and destructive actions which displease the Gods, Kami and our ancestors. The solution is to remove the pollution by ritual or ceremonial purification.
Undoubtedly many minds have wrestled with the human problem, named the problem and suggested ways to rectify the problem. That is a good start. The bad news is that the problems are still here. And the question is, what now is the real problem? Apart from a few overlaps between Orisha and Judaism and Shinto and Islam the problems are mostly peculiar to the religions. For instance Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto and Confucianism do not have a doctrine of original sin. Further Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists and Confucians may not want to submit to Allah even if it will save them. You can see that it will be futile to use one religion as a yardstick to solve our problems. But there is something most if not all religions and circular organizations have agreed upon and that is "as we think so we are" Thus our problems may not necessarily stem from not obeying religious and circular teachings but from the way we interpret the world.
Thank you for your time and may you make each moment you live a moment of love, peace and happiness for yourself and for everyone you meet.
Global Warming's Effect on Human Health
As climate change becomes extreme, the whole world gets some dangerous extreme events. However, now, global warming's effect not only appears in a high frequency of storms, quick melting of glacier, crop failure and rising sea, but also appears in human health. The disease today especially caused by mosquito increases more and becomes an epidemic disease.
In Africa, malaria, which is a disease caused by mosquito, is highly increased. It is caused by the temperature change of African's land into the colder land, so mosquitoes did not move up to the mountain. This condition makes several places like Nairobi and Harar become a place to avoid mosquitoes because they are up in the mountain.
After malaria, there is another disease caused by climate change. The rising of sea levels not only causing human physical health becomes weaker, but also causes psychological aberration. It is possible because climate change can affect people to become stressful.
Stress is not always looking bad but the condition can lead you to negative act. Stress is obviously negative and recent studies according to scientists stated that the effect has been faced by citizens in the developing country, especially children. From systematic research in 2000, there were 150,000 premature deaths occur around the world.
The global warming effect on human health suspected will occur more in developing countries and 88% affect children. It attacks children who is fragile, malnutrition and those who live in a poor environment and having no access for health services. Lower agricultural productivity in areas where sea levels are rising, make places like Africa, India and the poorest places in Latin America get a malnutrition leads to malaria and vomiting as effects global warming.
Climate change will increase water pollution in the open air and directly damage the ozone layer. Ozone layer is very important for human because it is our protection from radiation of sunlight and has a function in temperature. Human failure to keep the earth makes the climate unstable than in past ten years.
Cell Phone Radiation and Human Health
Despite the challenges it poses to the human health, technology has come to improve the living standards of many people across the globe. Communication has undergone great changes over the years with better ways of communicating being invented. The mobile is one of the gadgets known to have made life better habits in communication. More than half of all the grown ups across the universe posses one of these devices. In fact owning a mobile phone these days is not fashion rather it is a matter of necessity. Comfort, ease and reliability are some of the issues raised for owning these gadgets. Unlike in the earlier days when the first few handsets came into operation, cell phones have become so cheap for anyone willing to part with a few bucks.
The coming of cell phones has not come without its share of issues and problems especially on the human health. One such issue is the health hazards it poses to the user. The radiations emitted when the phone is in operation have great health repercussions to Parents are not even aware of the risk such devices have on the growth of their children especially when they are introduced to cell phone use at a very tender age. Phone radiation can slowly damage the brain of your child. The side effects of cell phone use may not be an instant thing. However with time and as one ages they will surely begin to take a toll on the user. Shocking as it may sound this is the truth that the manufactures will never tell you. Do you know the reason why this information is not made available to you? Because if you know you may decide not to purchase.
Another issue with these appliances is the danger posed through the installation of the electronic boosters within homesteads. These communication boosters relay electromagnetic rays which are known to he hazardous to human health. All cell phones are held near the ear and near the brain for that matter. The brain is thus liable to get damaged and finally cause brain damage or brain cancer. Where do you keep your phone when you are traveling? Most people especially men put their cell phones in the pocket closer to the heart or in the trouser pocket closest to the kidney. This is quite dangerous since the electromagnetic rays emitted through the cell phone when making or answering a call can lead to heart conditions or kidney complications. For this reason it is advisable to be aware of these challenges and store your phone away from delicate body sections. You may not avoid the use of the phone but you can control the dangers it poses to you.
Several Facets of Human Resource Solutions
One of the vital reasons why the corporations have started assigning an inordinate prominence to the employees is the acknowledgement of the significance of the workforce. This is the reason why human resource information systems have attained such an importance in the past few years. It has been acknowledged that the employees of all the sectors need to be motivated and invigorated. A perfect strategy is required to keep them productive to their best capabilities.
To achieve all that, the corporations having a globally mobile workforce require effective human resource solutions and suitable administration in order to enhance the effective margins. The proficient providers work with their best strategies to ease out the concerns related to the administrative disbursement. This allows the corporations to divert their full attention towards their core strength. Such providers offer streamlined human resource information systems that provide for even the most challenging requirements of the customers.
An indispensable facet of human resource solutions is human capital management. Renowned providers are now offering tailored human capital management solutions with all those high-end features that satisfy the present technological standards. They offer implementation, design and services of a whole range of employee benefits including the retirement plans. Other than that, schemes are designed to act against the high expenditure of health care. The administrative burden is reduced, which enhances the overall workforce efficiency. Ideal supervision is provided to the clients to aid in making informed benefit judgments that accomplish budget objects while also satisfying employee requirements. They also assist in spawning communications that facilitate both the present and the potential employees in acknowledging the worth of the benefits that they have selected.
Just offering a sturdy human resource information system to the multi-national companies is not enough as per the present standards. The prominent providers also offer employee on-boarding solutions. This module allows the companies to influence the employment of employee self-service system and contract center in a cost-effective way. This system facilitates clients HR and the recruiting staff drawing the best personnel. Human resource solutions make the hiring of new employees extremely simple through the automated web-based on-boarding services.
Humanity and Technology: The Alliance
Technology is advancing at lightning speed. Faster all the time, it is spreading into all areas of our lives. Equipment that once was obsolete two years ago is now obsolete within 6 months. Technological tools are getting smaller and more affordable to the entire world. Businesses and governments are trying to find their economic equilibrium as consumers purchase goods laterally, from one another through the Internet, often avoiding traditional consumer shopping or payment of sales tax.
Humanity is reeling from the physical effects of technology as well. Normal human development does not happen at lightning speed; it is a timed and sequenced process that requires human interaction, behavioral learning, and real experiences, if we are to learn the full spectrum of emotion and mature into healthy and happy adults. In times past, the way we lived our lives incorporated human interaction. Technology has now changed the way we live. Pushed too rapidly, human development becomes distorted or retarded, and emotional maturity goes awry.
While we continue to crave new and faster technology, as physical beings, we also feel the physical effects of getting what we want. We are becoming isolated and narrow in focus, perpetuating a narrow, superficial, and isolated existence. Human beings were not meant to live in this way. The human spirit needs to be nourished and replenished with work, play, friendship and love. At the core of us, we are emotionally and physically interactive beings. When we lose our ability and the opportunity for emotional connectedness, we are in danger of becoming as inanimate as the technology we so greatly desire.
Our electronic media culture bombards the current world with mass reproduction and reproducibility that can fool the human eye. Reality can become distorted; what's real and what's not real? The word, simulacrum means an unreal or superficial likeness, a copy without the original. Photographs, TV, video games, advertising, special effects, and computers are part of our electronic media, offering images so realistically created or altered, they can appear real, even when they are not. This inability to differentiate the real from the not real causes us to question our reality and we begin to mistrust our own perceptions. We begin to believe that nothing is real. This leads to feelings of apathy, hopelessness, and, ultimately, anarchy. If nothing is real, then nothing really matters. We become as robotic as our technological inventions, and just as cold and unfeeling. This is death to a human spirit that requires the warmth of human connection, touch and trust as its foundation. And, the human spirit will not go quietly into the night; it will not vanish without a fight. It will find some other way to express itself, too often in the sensual world of substance abuse and addiction.
A basic knowledge of human development is needed to understand the fundamental nature of the gap that has been created by our technological advancements. Our experiences from birth to age five set in place the neurological foundations upon which future learning depends: self-awareness, self-regulation, communication skills, personal relationships and the ability to learn from cause and effect. When one of these core developmental processes is not successfully navigated, it alters the ability to learn, evolve and mature. As human beings, we respond to and grow from being held, talked to, read to, listening to music, and played with, and pleasurable physical experiences with others. Without these foundations we regress, into human beings with no self-awareness, no self-control, unable to communicate our ideas, needs or desires to others, difficulty making or keeping relationships. And, not aware of what is wrong, we are unable to learn from our mistakes.
This is especially troubling in a wired world of information overload, and becoming more so as technology expands and speeds up its domain. When technology is offered to children too early, during human developmental years, it creates a problem. It may offer an intellectual exchange, but not the nuances of a human exchange. When technology is used as a surrogate caregiver, it creates emptiness within the human spirit.
The word simulation means the process of pretending, an imitation or representation of behavior, of one system through the use of another system. The military, law enforcement and businesses use the technology of virtual reality as a training tool, to train for the real thing. The technology of virtual reality may provide a partial learning experience, an intellectual experience but not a human encounter. It is an incomplete experience that lacks the full inclusion of the five senses, the very senses through which we experience being human. When we become aware and feel a full sensory experience, integrated through a shared physical encounter, it becomes functional, developing a human skill that we can use in future interactions.
As modern technology requires our cognitive self to speed up, the rest of our nervous system lags behind. This ultimately becomes a bridge too far and we create a split within ourselves, pitting technical being against human being: a brain without a body, intellect without emotion.
It doesn't have to be this way. Technology can enhance the human world, but technology can also enhance the human being. What is needed are new ways to integrate technology with basic human needs and use that technology in the service of human development.
ONE SOLUTION
It is through the human developmental stage of pretend play and using The MovieMaking Process, that a creative alliance and innovative solution can be found between the world of human needs and the age of technology.
The MovieMaking Process is a simultaneous learning and teaching tool that incorporates human development with the best of today's digital technology. Brain, body, awareness and emotions, merge through a shared and meaningful experience with others. This shared and meaningful experience with others is something human beings are hard-wired to need. Without it, there is an emptiness within that needs and desires to be filled. This desire will not go away until it is filled. Digital cameras and editing technology become the tools we use to create. Real life presentations expand this experience on a local level, and the Internet becomes the wormhole we slip through to share what we create on a worldwide scale.
The MovieMaking Process was developed to retrace fundamental early childhood developmental stages, address alternative learning styles, as well as visual perceptual differences, and teach new, behavioral skills quickly through the power of neuroplasticity-the brain's ability to be re-wired. It does this through the tools of technology, self- awareness and play.
In the MovieMaking Process acting is used as a source of age-appropriate play. Pretend play is one of the developmental stages of early childhood, but the ability to play is needed throughout life; it is a human need. Play leaves the essence of reality intact; it is based on an actual physical experience that is shared with others. While simulacrum threatens to blur the difference between the real and not real, and simulation offers an imitation of an experience, pretend play incorporates mind and body through a shared sensory experience that teaches the subtleties of human actions and reactions-basic essentials of our humanness. It offers an experience to learn from and build upon. There are three distinct elements to The MovieMaking Process.
Clay and Art-Based Lessons: Initial clay and art lessons take the theme the movie will address and breaks it down into three to four core words, which are abstract concepts, focusing on the definition of these words required for total comprehension. These art based lessons teach from the perspective of an overview: the ability to see the larger picture and the relationships of parts to the whole. It entails using art, and physically creating these words and their definitions. By doing so, it is possible for almost everyone to conceptualize the meaning of abstract words, regardless of age or learning ability. Developmentally, this process takes advantage of the natural order of learning which must incorporate an interactive personal experience with another, that combines visual-spatial activities and involves touching, feeling or exploring objects. Simply put, these lessons can teach abstract concepts to concrete learners.
The theme of the movie may be any issue that needs to be addressed, or subject that needs to be learned, yet it must also have a functional goal, a link that addresses how can I use this information to make my current life better? Whatever the theme may be, it is within the shared experience of those participating and it is the experience that reconnects brain, body and awareness through active participation. It begins the filling of the emptiness.
Filming of the Movie: The filming of the movie provides the framework in which to plug in another early developmental stage in an age-appropriate way. Participants do not use dialogue; they use gestures and expressions to convey a message. This is one of the earliest human developmental needs, initially learned from the gestures and expressions of parents or primary caregivers. The reading of subtle body language is the foundation for learning the limits and boundaries of behavior.
Filming uses only one camera and one director/filmmaker. It is the participants who must develop certain human skills in order for the movie to flow with continuity and look more like a movie than simply action being recorded. Participants learn to freeze while the camera is moved and the lens refocused to show another perspective. Learning how to freeze for the camera teaches the basics of self-control. Participants must learn and use self-awareness to regulate themselves from the inside out. The need for self-control is obvious: without it, when human behavior becomes uncontrollable, a danger to others or ourselves, we eventually need to be controlled by others. Teaching self-control through the use of freeze, within the context of play, bypasses resistance to behavioral change.
The filming of the movie is often done in out of sequence parts, so the magic of editing technology now comes into play. The edited version of the movie creates something far more wonderful than anything the participants could have imagined. They see themselves larger than life, acting in a different way. Narration is added that contains the message the movie is intended to convey. More sophisticated language can be used within the narration, for it is added to the solid foundation of visual metaphors, and a real life remembered experience.
The final, magical touch, to The MovieMaking Process is the musical score that runs through the movie. Music is vibration and the combination of musical tones has always been able to inspire and move the human spirit. In listening, we are emotionally moved, and through that process we become more than what we are. The whole movie experience is now part of us: in our mind, our emotions, our body, and our spirit; aware, alive, and enhanced.
Several Presentations: Presentations of the finished movie are mandatory, using the latest in neuroscience research the power of paying attention in a positive and pro-active way. As participants present their creation to others, talking about their experience, what and how they created it, it is possible to bring a larger group into the experience and once again share a meaningful interaction, simply in a different way. As digital technology continues to expand and movie theatres acquire the universal ability to show digital movies, everyday people and community groups can become stars in their own lives. They can see themselves, literally, larger than life and learning from themselves, over and over.
By aligning with technology, using The MovieMaking Process as a learning and teaching tool; human development, through pretend play, can claim authority over simulation and simulacrum, overruling them with a meaningful, shared experience. At its core, The MovieMaking Process is differentiation, simply taking an issue as it is: learning to do it differently with a productive and positive ending and gaining the awareness to perceive the differences.
As digital cameras get smaller, they offer the ability for use with very young children, within classrooms, therapeutic learning environments and community groups, without being obtrusive. As they evolve in quality, they offer more clarity, more lighting corrections and more internal movement possibilities, getting closer and closer to the look of 35mm film. As digital cameras and editing equipment become more economical, they allow for their use by families, public education, community groups, faith-based groups, service agencies, even underdeveloped and economically disadvantaged countries.
As all-purpose, home entertainment devices permeate mainstream living-rooms, the neighborhood Premiere is only a step away. The Internet, with its variable and expanding forms of distribution, allows for global presentations of local creative projects, entertaining and educating at the same time. Ideas are community property and free access to information is meant to be a matter of principle. Instead of being isolated by the use of technology, technology can be used to reconnect humanity as communities engaged in creative and pro-active use of the media arts to address human needs and social issues.
CONCLUSION
The MovieMaking Process is an independent educational initiative. It was developed on the solid foundation of human development and alternative learning styles, while tapping into the positive power of the neurosciences through the media arts. It was developed as a way to use technology for the advancement of humanity. Training is offered in workshops for teachers, families and community activists.
This process has been used successfully with children and adults who have complex learning difficulties or exhibit atypical behavior, in education, mental health, probation and corrections. It's also been used with entire communities to address global issues on a grassroots level. It allows for the creative and diplomatic progress of technology and humanity, incorporating the developmental needs of human beings and the very best that technology has to offer, each urging the other to continually evolve and challenge one another toward excellence. Its potential uses are unlimited, allowing humanity and technology to co-evolve, creatively bringing out the best in one another. In 2008. it was nominated to SAMHSA's Midwest Science To Service Academy as one of the Midwest's most promising prevention programs.
Human Health Care - Prevention is Better Than Cure
Health was defined as being "A State of complete Physical, Mental, and Social Well-Being and not merely the absence of Disease or Infirmity". Being healthy is an ongoing process. Personal health, Hygiene and Stress management is considered to provide effective means for staying healthy. Human health care is derived from Prevention, Treatment and Management of any sickness and also through preservation of mental and physical health. The services rendered by the medical fraternity are indispensable tools in providing such health care.
It is said "An ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure". With new diseases coming up day after day, one needs to sit back and try to find out the major reasons for such diseases. Health and hygiene go hand in hand. And it is often the basic hygiene practices that make the difference between Healthy and Unhealthy Society. If we follow some basic hygienic practices in our day to day life, it would help a lot to prevent infection and illness. Daily bath, brushing teeth, Washing hands before eating, using clean utensils for cooking, keeping the place we live clean, are all ingredients to make a healthy recipe called "Long Life".
It is not only hygiene that leads to healthy living but it is also a general awareness of ones own personal health that makes one lead a healthy life. Today lifestyle changes have impacted badly on human health care. Junk food and stressful jobs are making the situation worse than before even in the wake of unmatched medical science advancements. It is always better to be safe than sorry. Thinking that everything is fine and certain diseases are meant for everyone else other than you will be a dangerous thought. Take the current swine flu epidemic for instance. We never realized the presence of such a disease until it showed its horrible face leaving thousands of human beings dead. It was unmanageable and all we were advised was to keep washing our hands regularly.
Life is precious. There is a saying "Every body wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die". Medical science is a marvel to mankind. Keeping yourself updated about the various health issues and following certain simple things will be the key factor for leading life healthily. Take advantage of the many preventive measures available. Just a simple master check-up reveals a lot. You are responsible for your health. Take the first step and lead your fellow human beings. Be the change you want to be.
Am I Creating the Spiritual Solution
Creation is available to everyone, not just inventors. It is through the conscious mind that we are able to create in our mind what we want. However, often we can identify what we want to create but we do not have the resources to do so. It may seem too hard if we are unaware of our life purpose.
A Spiritual solution comes initially from you. For the spirit world to create the solution, there must be a need. It is you who has the need. If you can identify this need then you will create the solution.
Sometimes you may think the solutions only come from the human realm. This is not the case. Think about the chair you are sitting on while reading this book. Where did it come from? It first had to appear in someone mind as an idea. The light went off inside their head and they decided what the chair would look like. Was that the end, was the chair created; No. It then needed someone to draw the design, and then make it out of whatever materials were needed.
Eventually the seat was created. There may have been only one created or many created. The solution for the chair came from the person who created the idea in their mind. Overall the chair was created by multiple people. The idea was first because it then generated the motivation for the chair to be physically created by the manufacturer.
Chairs are made by a person in the human realm. Did the spirit world get involved? Probably! How you may ask? When the idea was created in the person mind, they needed to find someone who would make it for them. They may have by co-incidentally seen an advert for a person on a board that had just been put up. It looked and sounded like the right person to get involved. When they contacted them, it was like a match made in heaven. Everything went well and the chair was produced quickly and easily.
Alternatively, the person may have thought I know people who make and design chairs. I can get them to make my chair. After a number of calls to the chair manufacture, they person meet the chair maker. They do not feel right, but as this is a human solution they go with it as it must be the right thing to do as they are on a time limit. Eventually the relationship breaks up as the chair the manufacture wants to produce is different to what the person with the idea had.
Is this the situation is all case. No. But you would be surprised how many time things seem to work when you create an idea and the spiritual solution.
Sometimes you may think the solutions only come from the human realm. This is not the case. Think about the chair you are sitting on while reading this book. Where did it come from? It first had to appear in someone mind as an idea. The light went off inside their head and they decided what the chair would look like. Was that the end, was the chair created; No. It then needed someone to draw the design, and then make it out of whatever materials were needed.
Eventually the seat was created. There may have been only one created or many created. The solution for the chair came from the person who created the idea in their mind. Overall the chair was created by multiple people. The idea was first because it then generated the motivation for the chair to be physically created by the manufacturer.
Chairs are made by a person in the human realm. Did the spirit world get involved? Probably! How you may ask? When the idea was created in the person mind, they needed to find someone who would make it for them. They may have by co-incidentally seen an advert for a person on a board that had just been put up. It looked and sounded like the right person to get involved. When they contacted them, it was like a match made in heaven. Everything went well and the chair was produced quickly and easily.
Alternatively, the person may have thought I know people who make and design chairs. I can get them to make my chair. After a number of calls to the chair manufacture, they person meet the chair maker. They do not feel right, but as this is a human solution they go with it as it must be the right thing to do as they are on a time limit. Eventually the relationship breaks up as the chair the manufacture wants to produce is different to what the person with the idea had.
Is this the situation is all case. No. But you would be surprised how many time things seem to work when you create an idea and the spiritual solution.
Healthy Human Food
Knowledge about food is essential knowledge for any human. It is surprising that in our world there are many persons, especially the young, who know more about sports and films than the basics of what constitutes good and healthy food. The first thing to know about food is that healthy food is not expensive. Much of it is derived from grass and other vegetation that grows in abundance on our planet, in spite of a burgeoning human population that exceeds seven billion. Milk and meat is produced by grass eating animals and we as humans consume the seeds of grass as wheat, corn, rice etc. let us just briefly list the types of food a human requires:
Carbohydrates: These are a primary requirement to mitigate human hunger. Wheat is a primary source for it supported by other food grains such as rice, corn etc. Wheat has excellent storage capacity and it can be consumed in a variety of ways such as numerous kinds of leavened and unleavened bread, noodles, spaghetti, biscuits, semolina etc. If bread is central to food and if it is prepared at home, food costs come down drastically and food becomes inexpensive. At the present time there is sufficient amount of wheat on our planet to feed all humans as well as domestic animals besides. More food goes waste on our planet due to apathy and carelessness than the food required by all humans who go to bed on a hungry stomach. A substitute for food grain carbohydrates are certain root crops such as potatoes.
Proteins: Food grains can provide a limited amount of protein to the human body. However, good health requires supplementing this with protein from other foods. The best such are eggs and milk or milk products. Whereas milk appears to be the best protein source for most growing children, cheese or yoghurt is better for grown-ups. Fish is another fine source of good protein. Unfortunately, due to a heavy human population on the planet and the pollution caused by indiscriminate consumption, water bodies have become polluted. This pollution has been picked up by fish. It no longer remains as healthy a food as it used to be historically. Vegetable proteins are a cheaper source of protein and foods such as beans may not cause flatulence if precautions to eliminate that are taken. Moong bean is the least flatulence causing of all beans. The washed split variety of this bean is easily digested by children provided the starch is reduced by presoaking and during cooking. It can easily be sprouted at home in order to increase its nutritional content several fold.
Fats: After the human need for carbohydrates and proteins has been met the next item of food has to be fats. The best of fats available on our planet are butter and certain tree oils such as olive oil. Both are relatively expensive and a variety of other vegetable oils may be used to substitute for this requirement. Oils and fats are an essential ingredient of cooked human food adding taste and nutrition. There is a need to increase plantations of oil yielding trees such as olives and oil palms on the planet. At the present time there has been much opposition from environmentalists to expanding palm oil plantations of South-East Asia. This opposition would reduce if a law is imposed in these countries to disperse uniformly around twenty percent other native trees uniformly throughout such plantations to maintain bio-diversity. Tree oils and tree foods tend to be healthier than other agricultural produce because trees are not replanted every year to deplete soil of essential nutrients. Their roots go wider and deeper inside the ground.
Fruits, Vegetables and Greens: A certain amount of raw vegetable foods or fruits are required to keep the human digestive tract populated with live enzymes. Drinks containing live yeast and yoghurt help in the same direction. Salads do the same job. The trouble with salads is that incase they are contaminated with bacteria such as e-coli and Salmonella etc. they would make a human sick rather than healthy. It is also dangerous to have salads when one eats out especially in developing countries where adequate standards of hygiene may not be maintained in farms and restaurants.
Central to the vegetable requirements of a human body is the leafy green ones. In fact it seems that a human who consumes just a few of the leafy vegetables such as spinach would be healthier than another who consumes a large variety of other vegetables and fruits but does not consume leafy green vegetables. The King of the leafy green vegetables is Spinach. Recent studies have indicated that there is more to the pop-eye myth than has been previously believed and it is not just because of the iron content of spinach. Baby spinach leaves can be consumed raw in salads but in view of what has been said earlier about bacterial contamination of salads, it is best to consume it cooked unless one is absolutely sure of the source. The best is if it is home grown for the purpose. Some persons have also expressed fear about the oxalic acid content of spinach. However oxalates are a naturally occurring compound in a variety of foods and human bodies and only appear to harm already compromised humans in a manner similar to sugar harming a diabetic or cholesterol harming a lipid compromised human. The average human need not worry about oxalates in spinach. Those who do can easily dunk spinach in boiling water for a minute and drain to reduce oxalates. The good thing about spinach is that it grows well even in saline conditions. Wider use of this food in a dehydrated form mixed with wheat flour will help utilize scantily planted saline areas on earth and go a long way in meeting human nutritional needs.
A real worry about spinach and other vegetables is the indiscriminate use of pesticides. It is a good idea to soak spinach leaves for at least half an hour in a bucket or large pail of fresh water and drain to reduce these. Washed and similarly treated spinach leaves can be dried and stored in jars for use throughout the year. It may be added to dals, soups and bread to improve their nutritional content.
There are a number of other leafy greens that are perhaps not consumed as much as they should in human food. Some of these are goose foot weed (Bathua), Malabar Spinach (Poi) and Drumstick leaves. The leafy green foods mentioned here grow far more easily than celery, lettuce or cabbage that is currently more popular amongst humans. These latter can be dried too and consumed as and when needed. It may be repeated that a human who consumes leafy green vegetables daily need not consume any other vegetable in order to remain healthy.
Food Imbalance and Obesity: The tragedy of our world is that whereas many persons are suffering from shortage of food there are others who are over eating and suffering from obesity. Whereas an underweight or normal person needs a healthy balance of all the four groups of foods mentioned above the obese must drastically cut down on two of them - carbohydrates and fats. However, they need to continue consuming foods from the other two groups - proteins with fruits, vegetables and greens in order to maintain good health.
Disaster Relief: From time to time various kinds of disasters take place on our planet and it becomes necessary to provide relief immediately to the affected population. This relief includes clean drinking water and food. A promising food in such circumstances are relief biscuits that can help mitigate hunger of humans including children for a few days until better arrangements can be made. Here is a simple recipe for a relief biscuit that a large scale biscuit manufacturer may wish to try as a part of their corporate social responsibility agenda. Just replace five percent of the wheat flour with dried spinach leaf powder and 2.5 percent of the flour with milk powder. Use both sugar and salt in the seasonings for such biscuits meant for relief purposes.
Vitamin C - The Small Wonder For Human Health
Vitamin C - The Small Wonder For Human Health
Vitamin C is a nutritional supplement, antioxidant, cosmetic enhancer, and food preservative, but this vitamin also takes the name as health coordinator. Vitamin C, also known by its chemical name ascorbate or ascorbic acid, has been shown by research studies to be an important substance for the maintenance of human health. The property of vitamin C is that of a small molecule (C6H8O6) with the appearance of white small crystals, similar to that of household sugar (Hickey Saul, 2008). It is also a weak acid (pK1 = 4.17), similar in acidity to that of citrus fruit and cola soft drink. Inside the human body vitamin C has a many functions but the most important functions of this vitamin is its ability to act as redox cofactor and catalyst in many of the biochemical reactions and processes of the human body (Johnston, Steinberg, and Rucker 529).
The capability of ascorbic acid to function as a redox cofactor and catalyst, allows it to counteract free radicals. Free radicals in the system are the species that lead to cell and tissue damage as well as exacerbate present illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even some forms of cancer (Hickey, and Saul 59). The role as a major immune supporting substance highlights the critical function vitamin C plays in the human system. With this in mind, it is therefore critical for humans to monitor their vitamin C intake to ensure proper dosages are met to counteract these present and future free radicals and thus hinder damage to the system. Unfortunately this is many times not the case, as indicated by the rise of specific disorders such as cardiovascular disease and cancer in the U.S. People today are not monitoring their dietary concerns and are consuming more of the free radical producers than antioxidants. This trend of consumption and ignorance will lead to greater pressures on health care systems as well as financial and emotional strains on family units.
Background
Unlike medicine which gained great momentum in the early 1900's, vitamin C did not gain significant importance and controversy until the noble Prize winner Linus Pauling presented his vast research findings to the scientific community (Hicky, and Roberts 52). A strong believer on the positive effects of vitamin C, Linus Pauling would later coin the term "orthomolecular" as treating diseases, biochemical imbalances, and disorders, with natural substances that are naturally found in food such as vitamins, fatty acids, and trace elements. The orthomolecular movement believes that many mental as well as physical ailments stem from some sort of deficiency or imbalance of these natural occurring substances in the body. As the movement progressed, vitamin C gained much of the limelight as a panacea for many disorders. It has been demonstrated that certain dosages of vitamin C have led to a reduction of inflammation, allergies, anxiety, prevention of the common cold and lip herpes, as well as a cure for fatty liver and some cancers (Hickey, and Saul 109).
The understanding of the deficiencies and imbalances does not permit a person to just take a number of supplements to counter these situations; rather, dosage depends on that individual's biochemistry (Pauling 81). Each person has a unique genetic makeup as well as distinct biochemistry; therefore, dosage will need to fit that individual's system. This occurrence explains why some individuals may need to take higher levels of vitamin C than their counterparts when combating certain ailments and disorders. Also, the pharmacokinetics of vitamin C plays a role in vitamin C dosage as vitamin C does not stay long in the body and is rapidly excreted from the system. This feature of ascorbic acid will also affect dosage levels for the individual.
Special Characteristics
Ascorbic acid's main function in the body is to act as radical scavenger by finding free radical molecules in the blood and then donate electrons to allow that molecule to become stable and unreactive. A free radical is a molecule with one or two unpaired electrons. Due to its state, the radical will steal electrons from any molecule near the radical, setting off a chemical chain reaction that results in tissue damage in the body. As an antioxidant, vitamin C acts as the electron donor to stop the widespread reactions caused by the presence of the free radical. Ascorbic acid itself is oxidized during the process and forms semidehydroascorbate which is a radical but is unreactive and is neither strongly reducing nor oxidizing (Hickey, and Roberts, 59). This unreactive property of vitamin C is the main reason why vitamin C is often utilized in fighting diseases and illnesses. Two ascorbyl radicals, however, can combine forming one molecule of ascorbate and one of dehydroascorbate. The oxidized form of dehdroascorbate is not stable and further breaks down forming oxalic and 1-threonic acids. A high level of ascorbate and low levels of dehydroascorbate are found in healthy human tissue indicating that proper dosage and intake of vitamin C will ensure that a balance between the two substances are maintained through the electron donation of vitamin C.
Vitamin C is also important in the human body as a catalyst for the production of collagen. Collagen is the connective tissue similar to that of fine fiber and it is found between bones, organs, and blood vessels throughout the body. This fine fiber holds the vast systems together and conducts proper blood flow to and from the heart. The vitamin is active both inside and outside the human cell where it hydroxylates two amino acids proline and lysine. This helps form the precursor molecule called procollagen that is later modified into collagen outside the cell.
Another important aspect of vitamin C that should be stated is how cost effective the supplement is when compared with prescribed medication and over-the-counter drugs. Vitamin C can be easily obtained in the fruits, vegetables and some meats that are found in a general supermarket. Also, many stores now carry a wide assortment of vitamins that can be easily obtained without a prescription. The financial advantage of obtaining a simple supplement that can improve and ensure lasting health is far too great to be denied.
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