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February 1, 2015 — Burnt State

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That seems to contradict what you say about knowing the difference in imaginary versus real images. Or does knowing the difference not change the effect they have? I think it may not.

Either your daughter wouldn't be toughened up by horror films because she knows and processes them differently or the images are desensitizing her, which means they have some kind of effect. Doesn't desensitization involve a degree of trauma?

When I talked to my son about his desire to go into the millitary - his argument was that he played enough video games, he was desensitized. I told him video games don't project smells (which may include pheromones). They also don't project pain.

Here is the crux of the matter for today's societies. After many decades of glowing screen hypnosis, I'm not at all sure we understand the functional relationship between exposure to virtual media vs reality. Or most directly, the effect of a child's spending crucial and largely irreversible developmental years, lost for hours, in a world of shifting and blinking pixels.

Anyone recall the evil flying monkeys from "Wizard Of Oz" ? They inspired a sense of visceral fear in children of my generation. Comparing these to today's video nightmares for kids would be like comparing caffeine to cocaine. I really think something subliminal is at work here.

Here in the Bible Belt anyway, parents seem to have unlimited tolerance for violence in the media but no tolerance for sex/nudity (where kids are concernted) - even the relatively rare portrayals of healthy physical relationships.

There is a kind of mutual exclusivity at work here in the human character. Cultures so often seem to see either sex or violence as verboten, as if one of only two possible world views must be chosen. Recall that many of the favorite and most successful techniques used in the deplorable Abu Ghraib debacle to break down incredibly war hardened prisoners was some form of sexual humiliation.
 
Here is the crux of the matter for today's societies. After many decades of glowing screen hypnosis, I'm not at all sure we understand the functional relationship between exposure to virtual media vs reality. Or most directly, the effect of a child's spending crucial and largely irreversible developmental years, lost for hours, in a world of shifting and blinking pixels.

Anyone recall the evil flying monkeys from "Wizard Of Oz" ? They inspired a sense of visceral fear in children of my generation. Comparing these to today's video nightmares for kids would be like comparing caffeine to cocaine. I really think something subliminal is at work here.

There is a kind of mutual exclusivity at work here in the human character. Cultures so often seem to see either sex or violence as verboten, as if one of only two possible world views must be chosen. Recall that many of the favorite and most successful techniques used in the deplorable Abu Ghraib debacle to break down incredibly war hardened prisoners was some form of sexual humiliation.

Recall that many of the favorite and most successful techniques used in the deplorable Abu Ghraib debacle to break down incredibly war hardened prisoners was some form of sexual humiliation.

Yes, gleefully performed by our own hardened, desensitized, and debased American soldiers.
 
By altered state of mind, I'm identifying states of mind in which one is experiencing sensory hallucinations. (Incidentally, the neuroscientist G. Tonini has described normal consciousness as a waking dream, so in that regard, all experience would be a hallucination.)

Thus, roughly, a non-altered state of mind would be a state of mind in which ones experiences correlated strongly with their current environment. (Of course we could have a field day with that statement, so lets have at it, haha.)

Re: prove/disprove a capacity to experience altered states as an adaption.

My understanding is that evolution acts on individuals, not species, so this idea is already on shaky ground. Unless one were to consider that a capacity to experience altered states (hallucinations) was adaptive at the individual level.

Im sure an argument could be made; I consider dreams altered states, and I think important learning happens during dreams, so there's that. If humans couldnt dream, what then? (I did read about a man who went decades without sleeping; I wonder what effects this may have had on him, other than being grouchy all the time. Damn.)

Other than some type of cruel animal studies, no, I'm not sure it could be (dis)proved.

The hierarchy of selection
 
By altered state of mind, I'm identifying states of mind in which one is experiencing sensory hallucinations. (Incidentally, the neuroscientist G. Tonini has described normal consciousness as a waking dream, so in that regard, all experience would be a hallucination.)

Thus, roughly, a non-altered state of mind would be a state of mind in which ones experiences correlated strongly with their current environment. (Of course we could have a field day with that statement, so lets have at it, haha.)

Re: prove/disprove a capacity to experience altered states as an adaption.

My understanding is that evolution acts on individuals, not species, so this idea is already on shaky ground. Unless one were to consider that a capacity to experience altered states (hallucinations) was adaptive at the individual level.

Im sure an argument could be made; I consider dreams altered states, and I think important learning happens during dreams, so there's that. If humans couldnt dream, what then? (I did read about a man who went decades without sleeping; I wonder what effects this may have had on him, other than being grouchy all the time. Damn.)

Other than some type of cruel animal studies, no, I'm not sure it could be (dis)proved.

"Other than some type of cruel animal studies, no, I'm not sure it could be (dis)proved."

How would you prove it with animal studies?
 
The rating for this movie is: Suggested MPAA rating: PG-13 for Mature Thematic Material, Violence, Some Disturbing Images, Brief Sexuality & for Brief Strong Language so I don't really see it as too transgressive in any way for our daughter. Not to get into a parenting debate, but we process everything at our household, and I mean everything, and daughter has a pretty astute head on her shoulders. She would rate this movie as "casual" as far as horror movies go. She has access to the library and she's very aware of what is too adult for her and what isn't. We negotiate everything else inbetween and she adheres to our standards independently. She also was very there for the post movie follow up chat which included a very interesting discussion around parent child dynamics, child rearing and how tame and relaxed her family was comparatively. interesting convo followed around decompenstation and what happens when people lose their grasp on reality. She greatly enjoyed the storyline and plot aspects of this flick as it is a sophisticated feminist analysis and she's thoughtful enough to acknowledge and understand those parts as we deconstruct.

I don't see anything wrong with it . My son would never be able to watch such things. He took in Dr. Who Christmas movies with mom as we had popcorn and chills. She is a horror aficionado and rejects cheap gore and also understands that images are just images, as well as which images are disturbing and where do such images belong. If she was having bad dreams or not playing her saxophone because of image disturbance then that would be a different story but I would rank this movie as pretty light, but with some good sensations of dread all the way through. Knowing the difference between real life disturbance and horror entertainment is important. She feels that surgery is something that interests her greatly and so we do the occasional knee and hand surgery together but i'm mostly bored by such things. No one should ever watch things that disturb them or will worry them - household rule.

I kept finding "unrated" and R ratings for the film ... couldn't find it on CARA but BBFC rated it 15:

15 | British Board of Film Classification

And From IMDB:

The Babadook (2014) - Parents Guide - IMDb

The Wikipedia article talks about how the actor who played the son was protected during production:

"A script reading was not done due to Noah Wiseman's age at the time—six years old—and Kent focused on bonding, playing games, and lots of time spent with the actors in which they became more familiar with one another. Pre-production occurred in Adelaide and lasted three weeks and, during this time, Kent conveyed a "kiddie" version of the narrative to Wiseman."

"Kent described the filming process as "stressful" because of Wiseman's age. Kent explained "So I really had to be focused. We needed double the time we had." Wiseman's mother was on set and a "very protective, loving environment" was created.[6] Kent explained after the release of the film that Wiseman was protected throughout the entire project: "During the reverse shots where Amelia was abusing Sam verbally, we had Essie [Davis] yell at an adult stand-in on his knees. I didn't want to destroy a childhood to make this film—that wouldn't be fair."

Of course she doesn't have control over when he might see the film.

I remember Vivien Lee talking about the effect of seeing her on-screen murder in Psycho:

"Leigh was so traumatized by the film's iconic shower scene that she went to great lengths to avoid showers for the rest of her life."
 
I was going to post the following in the George Hanson "trickster" thread, but it connects with comments made by @Burnt State in this Paracast episode, and with LCs comments. Maybe at some point a single thread to discuss this approach will materialize.

Some of us have discussed in various forum threads the similarities between abduction, close encounter, NDE, hallucinogen/entheogen, meditative, psychotic/mystical, and dream experiences. Essentially, they are all altered states of consciousness.

Often, the Trickster is referred to a change agent. A mechanism that causes -- or perhaps manifests -- during times of system destabilization. During his Paracast session, Burnt State noted how historically individuals who entered these altered states were shaman; individuals who used their ability to access altered states for the good of their community. In general, historically, there seems to have been much more openness, acceptance, and value of altered states and the knowledge and insights that could/can be gained from them. (It might even be argued that the use of hallucinogens/entheogens was historically more integrated into human cultures.)

While it doesn't explain those cases in which external stimuli have been documented, it's possible that both exogenous and endogenous chemicals and the altered subjective states/experiences which they catalyze in humans may be an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism that brings novel information/knowledge into human culture. In other words, this noted capacity for humans to experience self-initiated and spontaneous altered states may be an adaptive mechanism.

Or, for those who disdain reductive explanations, it may be a mechanism that was bestowed upon humans by some Other(s) for the same purpose: to advance the species/culture.

With that in mind, I found the following commentary very interesting. It comes from a long read article from the New Yorker about recent psilocybin (Magic Mushroom) trials for treatment of anxiety in individuals with terminal cancer being conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and New York University. Although the entire article is excellent and I recommend reading it, the comments of interest come from neuroscientist Carhart-Harris.

I've underlined the juicy bits for the tldr crowd.

If the only way we can access the unconscious mind is via dreams and free association, we aren’t going to get anywhere,” he said. “Surely there must be something else.” One day, he asked his seminar leader if that might be a drug. She was intrigued. He set off to search the library catalogue for “LSD and the Unconscious” and found “Realms of the Human Unconscious,” by Stanislav Grof. “I read the book cover to cover. That set the course for the rest of my young life.” ...

When, in 2010, Carhart-Harris first began studying the brains of volunteers on psychedelics, neuroscientists assumed that the drugs somehow excited brain activity—hence the vivid hallucinations and powerful emotions that people report. But when Carhart-Harris looked at the results of the first set of fMRI scans—which pinpoint areas of brain activity by mapping local blood flow and oxygen consumption—he discovered that the drug appeared to substantially reduce brain activity in one particular region: the “default-mode network.”

The default-mode network was first described in 2001, in a landmark paper by Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University, in St. Louis, and it has since become the focus of much discussion in neuroscience. The network comprises a critical and centrally situated hub of brain activity that links parts of the cerebral cortex to deeper, older structures in the brain, such as the limbic system and the hippocampus.

The network, which consumes a significant portion of the brain’s energy, appears to be most active when we are least engaged in attending to the world or to a task. It lights up when we are daydreaming, removed from sensory processing, and engaging in higher-level “meta-cognitive” processes such as self-reflection, mental time travel, rumination, and “theory of mind”—the ability to attribute mental states to others. Carhart-Harris describes the default-mode network variously as the brain’s “orchestra conductor” or “corporate executive” or “capital city,” charged with managing and “holding the entire system together.” It is thought to be the physical counterpart of the autobiographical self, or ego.

“The brain is a hierarchical system,” Carhart-Harris said. “The highest-level parts”—such as the default-mode network—“have an inhibitory influence on the lower-level parts, like emotion and memory.” He discovered that blood flow and electrical activity in the default-mode network dropped off precipitously under the influence of psychedelics, a finding that may help to explain the loss of the sense of self that volunteers reported. (The biggest dropoffs in default-mode-network activity correlated with volunteers’ reports of ego dissolution.) Just before Carhart-Harris published his results, in a 2012 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a researcher at Yale named Judson Brewer, who was using fMRI to study the brains of experienced meditators, noticed that their default-mode networks had also been quieted relative to those of novice meditators. It appears that, with the ego temporarily out of commission, the boundaries between self and world, subject and object, all dissolve. These are hallmarks of the mystical experience.

If the default-mode network functions as the conductor of the symphony of brain activity, we might expect its temporary disappearance from the stage to lead to an increase in dissonance and mental disorder—as appears to happen during the psychedelic journey. Carhart-Harris has found evidence in scans of brain waves that, when the default-mode network shuts down, other brain regions “are let off the leash.” Mental contents hidden from view (or suppressed) during normal waking consciousness come to the fore: emotions, memories, wishes and fears. Regions that don’t ordinarily communicate directly with one another strike up conversations (neuroscientists sometimes call this “crosstalk”), often with bizarre results. Carhart-Harris thinks that hallucinations occur when the visual-processing centers of the brain, left to their own devices, become more susceptible to the influence of our beliefs and emotions. ...

In “The Doors of Perception,” Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of it. The mind is a “reducing valve,” he wrote, eliminating far more reality than it admits to our conscious awareness, lest we be overwhelmed. “What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.” Psychedelics open the valve wide, removing the filter that hides much of reality, as well as dimensions of our own minds, from ordinary consciousness. Carhart-Harris has cited Huxley’s metaphor in some of his papers, likening the default-mode network to the reducing valve, but he does not agree that everything that comes through the opened doors of perception is necessarily real. The psychedelic experience, he suggests, can yield a lot of “fool’s gold.”

Nevertheless, Carhart-Harris believes that the psychedelic experience can help people by relaxing the grip of an overbearing ego and the rigid, habitual thinking it enforces. The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is, and the emergence of a conscious self is its highest achievement. By adulthood, the mind has become very good at observing and testing reality and developing confident predictions about it that optimize our investments of energy (mental and otherwise) and therefore our survival. Much of what we think of as perceptions of the world are really educated guesses based on past experience (“That fractal pattern of little green bits in my visual field must be a tree”), and this kind of conventional thinking serves us well.

But only up to a point. In Carhart-Harris’s view, a steep price is paid for the achievement of order and ego in the adult mind. “We give up our emotional lability,” he told me, “our ability to be open to surprises, our ability to think flexibly, and our ability to value nature.” The sovereign ego can become a despot. This is perhaps most evident in depression, when the self turns on itself and uncontrollable introspection gradually shades out reality. In “The Entropic Brain,” a paper published last year in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Carhart-Harris cites research indicating that this debilitating state, sometimes called “heavy self-consciousness,” may be the result of a “hyperactive” default-mode network. The lab recently received government funding to conduct a clinical study using psychedelics to treat depression.

Carhart-Harris believes that people suffering from other mental disorders characterized by excessively rigid patterns of thinking, such as addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder, could benefit from psychedelics, which “disrupt stereotyped patterns of thought and behavior.” In his view, all these disorders are, in a sense, ailments of the ego. He also thinks that this disruption could promote more creative thinking. It may be that some brains could benefit from a little less order." ...
Once again, humans may simply be reinventing a "technology" that nature has already perfected over millennia of evolution. Spontaneous, endogenously caused altered, tricksterish states may be an intrinsic mechanism of the human (and other) species that promotes change, survival, and potentially progress.

The human brain is perhaps the most complex system there is, and the emergence of a conscious self is its
highest achievement.


So those with DID are over-achievers ...
 
I found the following commentary very interesting. It comes from a long read article from the New Yorker about recent psilocybin (Magic Mushroom) trials for treatment of anxiety in individuals with terminal cancer being conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and New York University. Although the entire article is excellent and I recommend reading it, the comments of interest come from neuroscientist Carhart-Harris.

Soupie, do you have a link to that New Yorker article? I'd like to read the whole thing. Thanks.
 
Here is the crux of the matter for today's societies. After many decades of glowing screen hypnosis, I'm not at all sure we understand the functional relationship between exposure to virtual media vs reality. Or most directly, the effect of a child's spending crucial and largely irreversible developmental years, lost for hours, in a world of shifting and blinking pixels.

Anyone recall the evil flying monkeys from "Wizard Of Oz" ? They inspired a sense of visceral fear in children of my generation. Comparing these to today's video nightmares for kids would be like comparing caffeine to cocaine. I really think something subliminal is at work here.
I break it down to what are you learning about human relationships in your media consumption, what attitudes, values and stereotypes are you consuming and how are you being taught to think about yourself? Most media is negative in all these areas because its primary goal is to sell products. In the early days of media literacy education back in the 80's the initial discussion regarding how kids are being affected by violent media found that kids have no problems telling the difference between cartoon/tv violence and real life. After all, you fall down in the playground you feel real pain accompanied by real blood - something the Warner Brothers never provided.

However repeated exposure to images that define self-esteem can re-script our brains subliminally to create things like anorexia and bulimia, and very twisted approaches to gender roles or racialized attitudes. My daughter recently did a speech at school regarding media stereotypes of ability and how mental health issues are portrayed in the media which results in marginalization. In the same class another kid did her speech on how positive Walt Disney was, completing skipping past his own racist, classist and twisted approach to gender. Media must be processed with youth, critically.

There is a kind of mutual exclusivity at work here in the human character. Cultures so often seem to see either sex or violence as verboten, as if one of only two possible world views must be chosen. Recall that many of the favorite and most successful techniques used in the deplorable Abu Ghraib debacle to break down incredibly war hardened prisoners was some form of sexual humiliation.
North American puritanical cultures have serious issues about sex instead to seeing it as natural, pleasurable and how to create equitable sexual relationships.

But in thinking about transgressive media I find that the news is more disturbing than any horror fiction we watch. If we accidentally tune in to national radio or television programs we have to deal with all manner of real human horror: beheadings, increasing sexual assaults on university campuses, moms killing their kids, dads killing their families, random shootings, knifings and the perpetual fear of terrorism in your hometown. Bleeding news has its own disturbance. I'd rather watch Night of The Living Dead with my kids and talk about racism in 1960's America than have to explain the news.

On a final note: teaching kids to be media producers instead of passive consumers is the great necessity of our times. It's right up there with, "Program, or be programmed!"
 
However repeated exposure to images that define self-esteem can re-script our brains subliminally to create things like anorexia and bulimia, and very twisted approaches to gender roles or racialized attitudes. My daughter recently did a speech at school regarding media stereotypes of ability and how mental health issues are portrayed in the media which results in marginalization. In the same class another kid did her speech on how positive Walt Disney was, completing skipping past his own racist, classist and twisted approach to gender. Media must be processed with youth, critically.

In America, at least, hundreds of thousands of children lack this kind of interpretive guidance and are left to assimilate what they have seen in the so very inadequate context of the inexperienced child's mind.


On a final note: teaching kids to be media producers instead of passive consumers is the great necessity of our times. It's right up there with, "Program, or be programmed!"

A great observation. One my peeves is shock-and-awe marketing. It's fashionable to express concern about what our kids see in mainstream media production and its effect on their emotional development. And yet somehow--the steady hailstorm of highly sophisticated sales video to which they are exposed almost always gets a pass. If it's in pursuit of "free enterprise" it must be morally healthy, right? Very shortsighted, I think.
 
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Like finding the charm on the street, in the sand by the curb, not snow, there was this sense of something from beyond entering our world or making contact. With Heather, it was an intriguing mystery that I was bent on solving. I was adamant about getting her death date and I spent countless hours panning through microfiche at our city library. The librarians came to know me well. I could not find evidence of her story, but learned a lot about the history of my town. When my Dad told me of the suicide I actually got a little scared.

I feel that finding the charm was just an impossible coincidence [...]
Heather is a common name. Why not someone in the neighborhood or visitor that lost their charm? Btw, what was the charm? Something cheap or common or ? What condition was it in? Do you still have it? I think you said it was a gold foot? Was it real gold or ?

Also, consider Heather was around for some time while you did the Ouija... so, how long were you conjuring Heather? How soon did you find the charm after the freaky incident, which wasn't Heather anyway, right? Or, was it before the door slamming?
 
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We had nothing like that. Were there odd and bizarre experiences without explanation - yes. Do I think a discarnate identity was responsible - no. I agree that the powers of the mind are relatively unknown and that groups of people focussing on a singular idea, constructed person etc. can create what appears to be evidence of their existence - though it's mostly thin or just strange. I think that when a collective, or an individual, is experiencing a heightened state a lot of really strange things can happen as if something else has been unlocked, another way of gathering information. Synchronicities are very bizarre and not easy to comprehend. Those things I have no explanation for, but it does suggest that our minds are capable of doing more than just reading newspapers or cereal boxes.
Heyyy... here's an idea: We should form a group together to try-out some distance experiences "experiments" we do as a group. I'm not sure what the "group think" should be, but I think this is a worthy idea to brainstorm to test out some of our interests.

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
 
Those ouija stories were fascinating. Still listening but this is one of my favorite episodes so far. Chris, you said you kept track of the murder you came across. What was the guy's story?
 
Re: altered states being adaptive

Amber fossil links earliest grasses, dinosaurs and fungus used to produce LSD

A perfectly preserved amber fossil from Myanmar has been found that provides evidence of the earliest grass specimen ever discovered - about 100 million years old - and even then it was topped by a fungus similar to ergot, which for eons has been intertwined with animals and humans.

Ergot has played roles as a medicine, a toxin, and a hallucinogen; been implicated in everything from disease epidemics to the Salem witch trials; and more recently provided the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

Apparently both ergot and the grasses that now form most of the diet for the human race evolved together. ...

"It seems like ergot has been involved with animals and humans almost forever, and now we know that this fungus literally dates back to the earliest evolution of grasses," said George Poinar, Jr., an internationally recognized expert on the life forms found in amber and a faculty member in the OSU College of Science.

"This is an important discovery that helps us understand the timeline of grass development, which now forms the basis of the human food supply in such crops as corn, rice or wheat," Poinar said. "But it also shows that this parasitic fungus may have been around almost as long as the grasses themselves, as both a toxin and natural hallucinogen. ...

Much later in evolution, grasses would become a powerful life form on Earth, creating vast prairies, nourishing herds of animals, and eventually providing for the domestication of range animals and the cultivation of many food crops. The rise of crop agriculture changed the entire development of the human race, and it's now estimated that grasses compose about 20 percent of global vegetation.

Researchers also noted in their report that "few fungi have had a greater historical impact on society than ergot."
 
tumblr_mlo5azM9dt1sonquko1_500.gif
 
Re: altered states being adaptive

Amber fossil links earliest grasses, dinosaurs and fungus used to produce LSD

A perfectly preserved amber fossil from Myanmar has been found that provides evidence of the earliest grass specimen ever discovered - about 100 million years old - and even then it was topped by a fungus similar to ergot, which for eons has been intertwined with animals and humans.

Ergot has played roles as a medicine, a toxin, and a hallucinogen; been implicated in everything from disease epidemics to the Salem witch trials; and more recently provided the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

Apparently both ergot and the grasses that now form most of the diet for the human race evolved together. ...

"It seems like ergot has been involved with animals and humans almost forever, and now we know that this fungus literally dates back to the earliest evolution of grasses," said George Poinar, Jr., an internationally recognized expert on the life forms found in amber and a faculty member in the OSU College of Science.

"This is an important discovery that helps us understand the timeline of grass development, which now forms the basis of the human food supply in such crops as corn, rice or wheat," Poinar said. "But it also shows that this parasitic fungus may have been around almost as long as the grasses themselves, as both a toxin and natural hallucinogen. ...

Much later in evolution, grasses would become a powerful life form on Earth, creating vast prairies, nourishing herds of animals, and eventually providing for the domestication of range animals and the cultivation of many food crops. The rise of crop agriculture changed the entire development of the human race, and it's now estimated that grasses compose about 20 percent of global vegetation.

Researchers also noted in their report that "few fungi have had a greater historical impact on society than ergot."

No question about it - my issue, concern and interest is the narrow, tautological use of the idea:

"adaptive"

And how Thee mayest and (may nottest) useth it.
 
The most interesting part of ergot is its effects on the uterus. In 1582 it was discovered to cause increases in contractions and is effective in postpartum as well to aid the birth mother. If anything, its big plus is the facilitation of birth.

4.3: The ergot alkaloids
 
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