The Extermination of Tibet

China is culturally cleansing Tibet. "Seven Years in Tibet", by Heinrich Harrer, and "My Land and My People", by the Dalai Lama.

It may be falling off the world's radar screen, but Tibet remains a tragically oppressed land, well worth our remembrance and sympathy. Two books, "Seven Years in Tibet", and "My Land and My People" describe the heartbreaking slide from a happy, innocent, and isolated region to the Orwellian horrors that succeeded and continue today. One of the first significant acts of the new communist government of China, fresh from its civil war against the government that actually faught the Japanese, was to fulfill not any orthodox communist aims or development for its people, but the most rapacious and ancient ambition of Chinese governments, to subjugate its neighbor to the West, Tibet. Amid a blizzard of lies, China invaded the virtually defenseless state, oppressing Tibetans from the start in an ever-escalating war of cultural extermination. After almost ten years of trying to get along with the overlords and calm the waters, amid general rioting, the Dalai Lama fled in a dramatic escape from occupation, to welcome refuge in India, where he and the Tibetan exile community remain today.

Tibet was, frankly, a medieval culture, with economic relations ranging from nomadic to feudal. But medieval in the best sense, of a people thoroughly engaged in a set of archetypes that yielded a richly nourishing, dramatic life experience as well as a durable social structure. Tibetan Buddhism is very demanding, taking a fair fraction of men and resources into monasteries where they live off the rest of population and devote themselves to philo/theological hairsplitting. But they also devote themselves to various traditional arts, and most of all to the cultivation of peace and compassion- the touchstones of Buddha's solution to the suffering of this world. After a long and martial history, Tibet eventually put itself under the control of its most respected leaders, the Lamas, creating a system that was peaceful and benevolent, if also hidebound and conservative.

Take the story of how the current Dalai Lama was found and put in power. It is a veritable fairy tale of portents, dreams, signs and wonders. It has a sort of Wizard of Oz quality, which obviously resonanates, not only with us as a romantic tale, but with Tibetans as a great origin myth. And one can make a case on a practical level that choosing a humble and obviously bright peasant child to rule one's land may be a superior method to one which relies on the most ambitious people to sell themselves in some way to various institutions of power, and to the populace every four years. How often do we fantasize that any halfway intelligent person could do as good a job as the current office holder? Especially if that person were from early on steadfastly dedicated to the cultivation of peace and compassion in him or herself and others?

Likewise, the Dalai Lama's secret and arduous escape from Tibet was again the stuff of legend, binding him to his own people, and endearing him to people around the world. The Tibetan system values spiritual attainment, expressed in the extremely pacifist ideology of Buddhism, combined with a great deal of pre-buddhist folk religion and symbology. The culture was thus temperate and peaceful, perhaps too peaceful for its own good, but surely a model to emulate in our spiritually unbalanced times. The Chinese, in contrast, brought rapacious domination, racism, and cruelty. They were and remain atheist. But it seems that their compassionless spiritual vacuity (which is quite a different thing) was more important, leading them (especially through the cultural revolution) to despoil the cultural treasures, institutions, and people of Tibet.

We may wonder whether China is more culpable in all this than the US was in its virtual extermination of Native Americans and their many cultures. The answer is clearly yes. The gulf between the American cultures was far wider, and the state of historical consciousness lower. Native Americans had no continent-wide governments of centuries standing, no meticulously recorded written histories and philosophical traditions, and little basis for common ground or negotiation with the colonists and their successors. We have belatedly granted Native Americans limited sovereignity in their institutions and barren territories, while China keeps pouring more Han Chinese into Tibet and keeps 100% social control. The world had just fought a war to end all wars, and to liberate peoples from totalitarian military oppression, including those of South Korea. But Tibet was a bridge too far- we could not lift a finger in China's back yard, and now hardly say a peep.

• Some numbers.
• Expert talk.
• This, as most other times, would be a good time for a job guarantee.
• Who is in charge here?
• How dare she?
• Poor people deserve less.
• Buddhist action thriller of the week- Milarepa.

Young Americans for Freedom

Is Bernie the next Ronald Reagan?

My father was an enthusiastic Reagan supporter, and contributor to many of the right wing organs of the day, one of which was Young Americans for Freedom, or YAF. As one can imagine, its idea of freedom was freedom from government regulation, freedom to found businesses, freedom to rise as high as one's talents allow. Freedom to use one's money to go to private schools, freedom to hire workers on any basis they are willing to work, freedom to discriminate, to contaminate the environment, among much else. Reagan led a long campaign in the wilderness of the Republican right, on these ideas which became and remain the foundation of the right, of FOX, and of our current government. The Reagan revolution was far more influential than observers at the time (and from the left) anticipated, viewing the aging actor and his gouche entourage with distain. Reagan repaid that distain in spades, doddering through the Iran-Contra scandal, and finally leaving office with imminent senility. But he also was on occasion remarkably articulate- in marked contrast to our current virtually illiterate executive- and even inspiring, and was decisive at key moments. The ideology that Reagan brought into the mainstream, which now seems so stale and self-serving, was at the time taken as a significant and intellectually advanced critique of a system that had over the preceding decades so carefully balanced the public and private interests.

YAF was a melding of libertarians and conservatives, hardly hip even in its own day, but with an intellectual case to make. Today, things have changed substantially, as we are living in the world that the YAF-ers grew up and built, notably as part of the Gingrich revolution, the Tea party revolution, and the advanced propaganda organs that have succeeded the paltry efforts of YAF and its ilk. It is a new gilded age, where Mitt Romney can run for president as a "job creator", where Trump can win on the backs of the dispossessed, then turn around and give the lion's share of the spoils to the rich, where billionaires  clog our political system, where employees are routinely underpaid and abused, climate heating is denied and ignored, and homelessness and despair are rampant.

The youth of today look at this world, and find a significant lack of freedom. Freedom is not a simple concept, and changes dramatically with one's situation and with the times. Is being homeless the epitome of freedom? In our world, money buys freedom, and poverty is a sentence of servitude and shame. With enough money, one can become president if one wishes, while without money, one can not even eat. This is the world that the Reagan revolution has sharpened, if not created- one of staggering and shameless inequality, where our communal humanity is being drowned in desperate competition and fealty to corporate overlords, and where we are presumed to be worshipful towards the blizzard of vanity foundations they sponsor in lieu of nuns and priests to chant their prayers.

The great task of society is to impose order and discipline, but also to inspire shared values and commitment, so that all members work towards the greater good, according to their respective abilities. There is a place for capitalism and hierarchy here, to supply the former. But the latter has been sorely lacking of late, systematically denigrated by the political right, in favor of an ideology of division, greed, and, frankly, hate. It is clear that the happiest societies strike a more compassionate balance, recognizing (and funding, with various public services) a baseline of common humanity and dignity (and freedom), while leaving plenty of room for ambitious achievement in the hierarchical, capitalist mode as well.

It is high time for the pendulum in the US to swing the other way, but how is that going to happen? I have been struck by the symmetries between Bernie Sanders and Reagan. Bernie is far from a lock on the nomination, but his accession would be a fitting bookend to the Reagan revolution. Both are outside politicians, who took over their party with a grassroots / insurgent campaign and pushed it away from the center, after decades of lonely ideological battle on the political fringe. Both have strong support among the youth of their parties, indeed a curiously militant sort of support, despite themselves being, by virtue of their long-march campaign, quite old.

But Reagan never had to face the kind of propaganda organs that the right marshals today. He benefitted from a much more decent, and unified, world. Today our fellow citizens are living in a starkly separate reality, which has bled strongly into the mainstream media. It is hard to fathom how Bernie's movement is going to make serious inroads other than over the dead bodies of FOX and its copycats. And the irony is that these outlets thrive even more in opposition than when their own party is in power, making it doubly difficult to imagine how our cultural conversation is going to change, no matter how momentous the Bernie movement is. Yet, all that said, hope springs eternal, and here we have to hope in Hegelian fashion that the forces of history, or of a timely leader, are able to break the witch's spell on the right, and bring our country back to a semblance of decency and rationality. And that that someone might just be the next Democratic nominee for president.

• Watergate all over.
• I'd move to a decent state.
• Wild-life extermination and trade at fault for new virus.
• Nuclear families are only for those who can afford to go it alone.
• Another perspective on Afghanistan. And then another. How many Afghans really have a role in determining Afghanistan's future?

Toxoplasma: What's Eating Your Brain?

A large proportion of the US population is chronically infected with a psychoactive pathogen.

Do you love cats? There may be a reason, quite beyond their noble indifference to your affection. Toxoplasma gondii is a parasitic microbe that passes from cats to other animals in their environment, including humans, and is notorious for causing mental disturbances in them. For example, rats infected with Toxoplasma switch from avoiding cat urine to being attracted by it. The evolutionary logic of this phenomenon is as obvious as it is macabre, but how does it happen? A recent paper presented a small step towards understanding this pathogen, by finding one transcription factor that runs a large portion of its program of differentiation into the brain-cyst form, the bradyzoite.

Toxoplasma is a complex one-celled eukaryote, in the same family as the malaria parasite, plasmodium vivax. These pathogens lead far more interesting lives than your average bacterium and come with larger genetic repertoires. Toxoplasma generates several different cell types, starting with sperm and egg cells, which form in the cat hosts. These mate and form oocysts which are incredibly tough- they survive defecation by the cat and survive thereafter in the environment for months. When picked up by another unsuspecting mammal, (we can ingest them either as contaminating oocysts from the environment, or from undercooked pork that was infected), they proliferate in an asexual stage, and can invade any cell or tissue, causing toxoplasmosis, which can be fatal. But usually it isn't, and the immune system fights these tiny cells to a draw, prompting some to hunker down in a specially dormant form, the bradyzoite, that forms cysts full of toxoplasma cells in muscle and brain tissue. These cysts are completely impervious, not only to immune system attack, but to any drug or vaccine yet devised.

A Toxoplasma cyst in a brain, full of pathogen cells, courtesy of the USDA.

Somewhere between a quarter and half of the US population is chronically infected with this pathogen, and it would be nice to know what effects it is having. Chronic toxoplasma infection is known to positively associate with schizophrenia, pose special dangers to pregnant women, and even contribute to traffic accidents, not to mention to the proliferation of cats. While we do not yet know quite what the bradyzoites are doing in our brains, their formation is more amenable to scientific study. It is stress factors from immune pressure, specifically chemical attack from cells like neutrophils and macrophages that cause Toxoplasma to respond by differentiating, in a program that involves hundreds of genes, (of its genome of roughly 8,000 genes), to the bradyzoite cell type, which is slow-growing and communal, with special protective surface features. The current authors have finally found one gene that, when knocked out, completely abolishes differentiation into the bradyzoite state, and also, they show, is a critical part of the normal program that generates it. They call this gene BFD1, for bradyzoite formation deficient.

BFD1 is a transcription regulator, from a well-known (Myb) family, which bind DNA and frequently participate in development and proliferation, some of which are also oncogenes. In this case, not only is BFD1 itself induced during such stress and able to completely block differentiation when absent, but it can also drive differentiation all by itself, in the absence of stress. This is shown by arranging overexpression under control of the experimenter rather than by the normal stresses, which leads to cell differentiation and formation of the characteristic bradyzoite cysts. It is a rare demonstration of a true master controller of a developmental process.

Toxoplasma gene BFD1 is driven by the experimenters by adding a chemical (called Shield-1, lower panels) that releases a destruction system over an engineered and over-expressed BFD1, and leads, after 6 days, to cyst formation. The control infection (upper panels) leads instead to the obliteration of the infected cells. This demonstrates that even in the absence of normal differentiating signals, BFD1 will initiate the full differentiation program all by itself.

This is a landmark achievement in the study of this pathogen, and will open up a lot of future work on its encystment differentiation program, on how these cells defend themselves in a hostile environment, and what they are doing in our and to our brains. For example, these researchers found 509 genes to which BFD1 binds, among which are itself (for a positive feedback loop), and other genes known as markers for the bradyzoite state. Is some unusual chemical or protein being expressed that causes neural alterations, or is it the locations the bradyzoites choose for their cyst formation? Or is it the occasional release from encystement, and the ensuing immune reaction, that generates these effects? It is an area of some public health concern, and another area slowly yielding to the advance of scientific inquiry.

• More on Russia, nascent capitalism, and the botched transition.
• Where are we at in Afghanistan?
• Guantanamo- part of the slide towards state lawlessness.
• Poem of the week.

Russia and its Sphere of Influence

What happens if no one wants to be in your club? Review of "Putin's World: Russia against the West and with the rest", by Angela Stent.

History plods on, despite our pride in having achieved "modernity", so that everything can now stop and rest at our state of perfection. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Russia, where the past weighs heavily, affecting attitudes and policy in substantial contrast to interests and current conditions. Russia has been an imperial power for centuries, gradually beating most of its neighbors into submission and incorporating them into a multi-ethnic but hardly socially equal empire. This process was capped by the Great Patriotic War, aka World War 2, which ended with the USSR in control of new territories inside Europe, and others inside Japan, and with ideological friends in many other lands. It was not a happy empire, but it was a huge one, and the Russians were and remain proud of its achievement.

Then everything fell apart, and since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been trying to get it back. That would be a brief synopsis of Stent's book, which goes in very professional fashion through Russia's history, current relations, conflicts, and friendships all over the world. On the whole, Russia has over the last couple of decades managed its relations quite well, leveraging what little strength it has (lots of oil and gas, a ruthless attitude towards politics near and far, and a prodigious ability to suffer) into substantial strides back to relevance on the world stage.

But what should the West think and do about it? We came in for a great deal of criticism for our cavalier attitude during the breakup of the USSR. We advocated "shock therapy", and boy were they shocked! Without effective state control or cultural traditions of capitalism, what was a rotten system of communism turned into a laissez-faire wild west of rampant economic and political corruption. State control has now been re-asserted, but the patterns that formed in those days, which frankly reflect a long history of "informal" political relations throughout the region, persist to this day, despite verying formalities of democracy and rule of law. There remains a fundamental misunderstanding (and mistrust) of what political and economic liberalism means and how the West has gotten to its dominant position, despite centuries of study, copying, inferiority complexes, and deep economic and political relations. Russia remains instinctively authoritarian, not only due to the cleverness of Vladimir Putin, but apparently as a general cultural default. Maybe this did not have to be, maybe there was an opening in the early days of Yeltsin's rule, but our thoughtless and disastrous prescriptions at the time helped sow a bitter harvest. Now Russia equates democracy with weakness, and has decided to demonstrate that principle by deploying its most expert propaganda into our free media spaces.

It is generally realized now that China, in contrast, did things correctly, becoming a booming capitalist state while keeping absolute political control. That is how an properly authoritarian state manages things, (as previously modeled by various Asian tigers, particularly Singapore), and is now a model for Russia among many others. Unlike the Russian breakdown, China's ability to change its spots from communism to capitalism raises deep questions of whether liberalism and democracy are the best system, not only in human rights terms, but in their ability to manage capitalism. For it is clear, from both the Russian debacle and from the Chinese success, that capitalism is not self-perpetuating or self-managing. It relies inextricably on a strong state and legal system that sets rules by which competition among oligarchs, firms, workers, and other actors remains on the economic level, not on the military, political, or criminal levels. Democracy can be responsive to these issues, but we are, in the US, currently in the grip of a very destructive ideology that denigrates the state, is restoring corruption at all levels, and appears heedless of the future in economic, political, and planetary terms. The outcomes of this ideology became frighteningly apparent in our chaotic occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the lesson may still not have been learned.

But getting back to Russia ... The nations of the former USSR have developed in almost linear relation to how closely they are positioned to Europe, geographically and culturally. The Baltic states turned relatively easily and completely to the European model. The middle area of Romania and Bulgaria, among others, have turned more slowly, but are also firmly in the pro-Europe camp. But those bordering Russia, like Belarus out east to Kazakstan, remain authoritarian and mired in "informal relations". Ukraine has tried to buck this trend and is deeply divided. Partly this is due to the large number of expatriate Russians living in these areas. But in any case, each has its own nationalism, and no one wants to re-unite with Russia to remake the old empire. Recent news stories show that even Belarus, Russia's most reliable and sycophantic ally, draws a line.

"Ultimately, Russia, China, and the states of Central Asia share fundamental ideas of what stability in the region looks like and how to maintain it. They are a group of authoritarian states dedicated to maintaining themselves in power and ensuring no Islamist or color revolutions threaten their rule. Whereas they view with great suspicion any Western attempts to open up their societies, Central Asian elites welcome Russian and Chinese support of the status quo."

So Russia is determined to have a club that few want to join. The ex-Soviet republics may share many cultural, political, and economic patterns, and cooperate to some extent in organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but Russia's dreams of expansion and re-integration are generally rebuffed. It has turned to invasions like the takeover of Crimea, South Ossetia, and the creeping war in Eastern Ukraine, treating its neighbors like piñatas to be whacked at will and bullied with fossil fuel subsidies and threats. It is reminiscent of the spoiler role Pakistan maintains in its region, fomenting unrest in Afghanistan lest that country ever have peace and positive economic development.

And then Russia demands that we all respect its "sphere of influence", as though we were still in Victorian times, playing some sort of great game on a map of the world, and heading in to World War 1. But this supposed sphere is entirely composed of unwilling and oppressed neighbors- not quite as badly treated as in Soviet times, but uniformly uninterested in recreating those glory days. Russia has no intrinsic or deserved "rights" in this respect, despite its vaunting desires- we need to keep offering self-determination and choice to its neighbors, as we do to all other countries around the world. Russia is armed to the teeth, and really needs no defensive buffer of this kind, nor is its cultural influence so positive that its bullying should be regarded as a family matter. Quite the opposite.

NATO countries of Europe, in blue.

Which brings us to NATO. We did not think through its fate very carefully when the cold war ended. NATO stood during the cold war as a defense against the USSR, pure and simple, plus a way to keep Germany pacified and integrated in Europe. When the USSR collapsed (foremost because its captive nationalities and "republics" wanted out), and the Warsaw pact dissolved, we half-heartedly offered coordination to Russia. But never really thought through what our military posture should be towards this new friend, or offered a comprehensive and durable peace. We were, however, eager to integrate as many of the newly ex-Soviet states as wanted to join, such as Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, not to mention various members of the former Yugoslavia. That makes it look like a rather offensive affair, from Russia's perspective. And then Ukraine wanted to join as well. Integrating all these countries into a modern mutual defence organization was certainly positive for them, as one more element of their cultural headlong run away from Russia and communism.

But what is it really defending? One gets the distinct sense that, like in the post-WW2 era, NATO's purpose has become keeping the principal adversary of the latest war at bay. But whereas Germany was integrated into NATO, subject to continued occupation, though of a relatively friendly sort, now the enemy, i.e. Russia, is outside, and is not being killed with kindness, but rather being provoked by encirclement. All this is relatively obvious and not terribly objectionable now, now that Russia has become increasingly anti-Western, but that did not have to be the outcome. (Though Stent is dubious- she maintains that Russia's historical attitude strongly re-asserted itself after the breakup, and it would be chimerical to think that Russia would ever align fully with the West, such as joining NATO and allowing extensive occupation / collaboration by foreign forces- see the quote below) We drifted into it by inertia- by lazy thinking in our foreign policy and military establishments, not to say simple gloating. Would Russia have responded more positively if we had given them a better deal? Only if we had matched it with more effective economic reconstruction assistance as well. But neither of these things happened, and attitudes in Russia quickly hardened and became, understandably, rather bitter. Nevertheless, this does not justify an undeserved sphere of influence or renascent empire on Russia's part. Does Britain demand a sphere over France? Does Germany over Denmark? No. Did we invade Cuba when it turned to communism? Well, sort of and half-heartedly(!)

"As Putin consolidated his rule, it became clear to much of the world that a main reason for Russian's rejection of Western-style economic and political programs was because they are Russians, not because they were communists. Seventy years ago, George Kennan understood that communist ideology reinforced and exacerbated, but did not contradict, the characteristics of traditional tsarist rule. Communism had been superimposed on centuries of Russian autocracy and personalistic rule, and had, if anything, strengthened those traditions. The ideology was a means to consolidate the Bolsheviks' rule, mobilize society, and, with great pain, drag Russian peasants into modernity. ... The minority who supported Gorbachev and Yeltsin and believed that Russia should become more like the West both politically and economically, were outnumbered from the outset."

Reading this book reinforces that it is the US and the West in general that is the revolutionary agent afoot in the world. We are the ones fomenting color revolutions. We are the ones planting thoughts of human rights, rule of law, justice, and prosperity around the world. We think that all this is obvious, progressive, and unexceptional, but democracies are still the minority, and the other countries, notably including Russia and China, have developed a countervailing authoritarian bloc who studiously refrain from criticizing each other's miserable internal politics, and complain ceaselessly about those who do.

Democracy Index, with darker green denoting greater democracy. Note how China rates slightly higher than Russia, due to its better governance and more functional political culture, despite lacking any electoral process.

Are we right to do so? The issue of self-determination is perhaps the thorniest area where this ideology hits the real world- not everyone can or should have their own country. The USSR broke up over the failure of the center to, in the face of countless failures, justify holding on to its huge empire, and has now turned into 15 successor states, most with an ethnic character. Several of those successor states have experienced civil wars and separatist movements of their own. The fact is that few large countries have ever become large by voluntary means. Given generally peaceful conditions, most peoples with any kind of distinct culture want their own country, as is being expressed in such places as Catalonia, Scotland, Quebec, Kurdistan, and even 150 years ago in our own Confederate South. As Stent acidly points out, separatism is Russia's (and China's) bête noir, leading to its brutal repression of Chechnya, among many other places ... until it comes to Ukraine and Georgia, where Russia uses separatism in the most cynical way.

"Russia will push to jettison the post-Cold War, liberal, rules-based international order driven by the US and Europe in favor of a post-West order. For Russia, this order would resemble the nineteenth-century concert of powers, with China, Russia, and the United States dividing the worlds into spheres of influence."

But there was one place that had a "velvet divorce". Slovakia and the Czech Republic parted ways without bloodshed, because they were oriented to the European model, and negotiated their differences. As a foreign policy stance, we should not encourage separatism generally, but should always support peaceful resolutions and reasonable accommodations. One might add in passing that, if one holds an election to validate a minority breaking away, referendums of this sort should have a high bar, such as 75% , rather than the typical 50%. At any rate, this episode illustrates a key point- that the Western model is good, and tends to lead to peaceful and durable outcomes, because it is not repressive and takes people's interests and rights seriously. Repression can keep the peace for a while, but durable, prosperous peace (and good governance) is best kept with respect, moderation, and truthful communication.

So the order of preference, from all these historical lessons, is as follows. The worst government is none, representing chaos and unleashing the worst forms of power- criminal and informal military. The next best is authoritarian, which can range from brutally repressive, like Stalinist Russia, to repressive and even quite functional, if not benevolent, like China, Turkey, and Russia today. And the best is liberal (and functional!) democracy, which respects its citizens while maintaining a strong state. Unfortunately, democracies are difficult to run, have various inefficiencies, and are perpetually at risk of turning to authoritarianism, particularly when new technologies of propaganda arise that can hypnotize and misinform the populace, as happened during the fascist era, and is happening again today.

Does this mean that we should agitate for democracy everywhere and all the time? Yes, in short, it does. We can and must work with all governments as they exist, to manage what interests we have in common. But we should never mistake our instrumental relations with countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China for true friendship and ideological compatibility. We need to keep our eyes on the interests of people across the world now and into the future, which are uniformly best served by freedom and democracy, with strong and effective states founded on the active participation and decisive decision-making by their citizens. Authoritarianism can be an effective form of government, and sometimes a stepping stone to better conditions. But it is not a desirable end-point, and nor is its correlate, a spheres-of-influence world. And who knows? Maybe one of the democracies that we encourage will someday be in a position to save us in turn.

• One view of Russia's tangles with the West.
• Russia's "productive" role in Syria.
• What are the prospects for democracy in poor countries? Dim, but possible.
• Will Russia save the world?
• The toxic legacy of gerrymandering. And of Citizens United.
• Our tax law becomes even more corrupted.
• War has been declared.

Success is an Elixir

We are besotted by success. For very obvious evolutionary reasons, but with problematic consequences.

Why is the James Bond franchise so compelling? It got more cartoonish over the years, but the old Sean Connery embodied a heady archetype of the completely successful hero. A man as skilled in vetting wines as in flying planes, as debonair with the ladies as he was in fighting hand-to-hand, all while outwitting the most malevolent and brilliant criminal minds. Handsome, witty, and brutally effective in all he turned his hand to, there was little complexity, just relentless perfection, other than an inexplicable penchant for getting himself into dramatic situations, from which he then suavely extricated himself.

We worship success, for understandable reasons, but sometimes a little too much. As Reagan said, nothing succeeds like success. It is fundamental to our growth from childhood to adulthood, to demonstrate and be recognized for some kind of effectiveness- passing tests, graduating from school, becoming skilled in some art or profession, which is socially recognized as useful, maybe through the medium of money. The ancient rites of passage recognized this, by setting a key test, such as killing the bear, or withstanding some brutal austerity. Only through effectiveness in life can we justify that life to ourselves and to others. The role can take many forms- extroverts tend to focus on social power- the capability of bending others to their will, while introverts may focus more on other skills like making tools or interpreting the natural world.

The Darwinian case is clear enough- each life is a hero's quest to express one's inner gifts and capabilities, in order to succeed not only in thriving in the given environment, but in replicating, creating more successful versions of one's self which do so all over again. Women naturally fall for successful men, as James Bond so amply demonstrated, but as is seen in so many fields, from basketball to finance.

But all this creates some strong cognitive biases that have some influences that are not always positive. Junior high school is the most obvious realm where these play out. Children are getting used to the idea that life is not fair, and that they can communally form social standards and decisions about what constitutes success, which then victimize those on the losing end- what is cool, what is lame, who is a loser, etc. Popularity contests, like politics and the stock market, are notorious for following fashions that valorize what one generation may believe is success, only to have the next generation look back in horror and redefine success as something else. In these cases, success is little more than a commonly held opinion about success, which leads to the success of con men like our current president, who insists that everything he does is perfectly successful, and who inspires sufficient fear, or confidence, or suspension of disbelief, or is so ably assisted by the propaganda of his allies, that many take him seriously. Indeed, it is exactly the unaccountable support of his allies who surely know better that force others in the wider circles of the society to take seriously what no rational or decent person would believe for a second.

The status of minorities is typically a "loser" status, since by definition their beliefs and practices, and perhaps their very existence, are not popular. While this may be a mark of true Darwinian lack of success, it is far more likely to be an accident of, or an even less innocent consequence of, history. In any case, our worship of success frequently blinds us to the value of minorities and minority perspectives, and is a large reason why such enormous effort has been expended over millennia, on religious, legal, constitutional, and cultural planes, to remedy this bias and promote such things as democracy, diversity, due process, and respect for contrasting perspectives.

We are victimized in many other ways by our mania for success- by advertisers, by the gambling industry, by war mongers, among many others, who peddle easy success while causing incalculable damage. While it is hard to insulate ourselves from these social influences and judgements, which are, after all, the soul of evaluating success; as with any other cognitive bias, being in our guard is essential to avoiding cults, traps, and, ultimately, expensive failure.

• The news from Chris Hedges.
• Who produces value, where is the money going?
• History repeats itself.
• A look back, at Afghanistan.
• Life on earth is suffering.

Altruism Through Execution

Does our good behavior arise from artificial selection against norm-violators?

This is a companion piece to the prior "Altruism Through Genocide", which presented a group selection theory for our human moral nature. In that piece, group cohesiveness was the driving force that benefitted those cooperative people who could effectively conduct warfare to exterminate their enemies, who were, on balance, less effective in their in-group altruism/cooperation.

Now we are considering a new book, "The Goodness Paradox", by Richard Wrangham, which presents an alternative, only slightly less grisly, theory. The book generally argues that humans show many signs of selective domestication- a syndrome common in animals that we have domesticated- of arrest in many aspects of development, towards more juvenile characteristics, such as docility, lower aggression, floppy ears, white fur patches, and skeletal and especially facial juvenilization. That much is clear. Despite our love of warfare, we are on balance, and compared to our chimpanzee relatives and most other wild creatures, far less violent, less reactive, and far more effectively cooperative. This is not just a cognitive development, but an emotional change and a deep change to our moral natures. So who or what did the domestication?

Remember in Western movies how good it feels when the bad guy gets killled? It is an archetype of deep power, and we hardly think about its moral and genetic implications. Chimpanzees don't have this moral sense, as far as we know. Wrangham cites various experiments and natural observations to show that no matter how terrible some chimpanzees are, the others of their group will not or can not cooperate effectively to ostracize or disable them. It just isn't done. In the modern world, we have grown squeemish about capital punishment, but primitive cultures had no prisons, thus pervasively practiced ostracism or death as the only practical punishments for serious crimes and unredeemable people. It turns out to have been common for communities (typically the men of the group) to gang up on a member who got egregiously out of line and kill that person. Wrangham places this development at roughly the emergence of modern Homo sapiens, two to three hundred thousand years ago. Thus there is quite a bit of speculation about the relative backwardness of Neanderthals, who had much more limited cooperative capacities, though being roughly as intelligent as moderns, and having many advanced characteristics such as complex stone technology and control of fire.

For a Few Dollars More ... Clint Eastwood hunts down the bad men.

The development of advanced hunting and killing technologies made each person, and especially each man, in primitive human bands quite powerful. But even more important was language and great scope it offered to organize, to collude with and against others, This created enormous incentives to maintain a good reputation. Primitive societies are characterized by an almost pathological fear of rising above one's peers- there is a notable lack of ambition, for the very good reason that the group is all-powerful, and signs that one wants to rule others, abuse them, or collude against them, are all treated very harshly. The idea, then, is that the unique human ability and motivation to detect and eliminate threats inside the group led to a process of natural selection that quickly domesticated the species in superficial metrics of reactive aggression, while advancing our organizational, deceptive, and language capabilities, which have made us by far the most deadly species when it comes to organized hunting and warfare.

The explains rather easily the intense motivation that teens have to conform to their groups, to party, to bond and seek power, and to be forever uncertain about their status. It explains conventionality. But does it explain the nature of the morality that human groups generally express? The posses that hunt down criminals, and the modern state apparatus that does the same on a more legalistic basis, the value we put on altruism and kindness? Not quite. For example, the morality could have become one of extermination, where leaders would use all their guile to eliminate, one by one, each of the other males of the group, thus gaining all the females for themselves. This harem structure is common among other animals, and has occurred occasionally in humans in historical times. But it has obvious defects. If such an endpoint is common knowledge, then coalitions would be difficult to build, though perhaps not necessary since even crude technologies allow relatively easy killing, even one-on-one, given a small amount of planning. More importantly, however, such an endpoint would leave the group very weak relative to other groups.

So both overall hypotheses are relevant, I think, the group selection hypothesis and the execution hypothesis, to explain the complexity and explosiveness of our group relations, and the generally pro-social and cooperative instincts that form our group values most of the time. There is a complex calculation to be made, in light of the status of the whole group, with regard to the value of each person, each one of whom would on the face of it benefit the group in any outward encounter, but who might also be so disruptive and destructive of group cohesion as to instead be a net negative asset. Wrangham unfortunately finesses this problem, of the actual content of our moral group ethics, and suggests instead that pure relativism prevails- that our groupishness / conformity / docility is genetic, but our morals are not, and become whatever the leading (male) coalition says they should be. One can grant that human groups have adopted very unusual moral codes, like sacrificing their own children into volcanoes, or conducting constant ritual slaughter as the Aztecs did, or making a fetish of celibacy, as the Buddhist and Catholic theocracies do. Nevertheless, there is a core of cooperativity and deep-seated conceptions of right and wrong (including the rightness of killing when the target is damaging the group, or is an enemy outside the group) that demand a better evolutionary explanation, one that focuses on the value of the group as a unit.

Wrangham also finesses another issue- that of eugenics. His theory is essentially eugenic. We have been our own selective agents, however unintentionally. In an afterword, he gives a brief case against capital punishment. Though it has had such positive effects by his theory, capital punishment is now unnecessary, since we have prisons and other mechanisms of social control. Yet the deeper issue is whether genetic selection is still needed to bias reproduction towards the well-behaved and away from the aggressive, psychopathic, misogynistic, and congenitally sleazy. Not a word on this, since it is a far more explosive and difficult issue, not to mention politically tinged at the moment.

• Mind control in North Korea.
• Insurers are promoting, rather than fighting, ransomware. Make sure to keep backups!
• "This administration is ultimately driven by sociopathic disregard for our future"
• North Carolina finally puts a nail in gerrymandering.
• Figuring out common threads in the diverse genetics of autism.
• Notes by Veblen.
• Just because ....

The End of Theology

Final part of three posts on Mormonism- into the current age. Review of "The Mormon People", by Matthew Bowman.

Prophets found religions, but bureaucrats run them. It has ever been so, an evolution that is recapituated in Mormonism. Mormonism's phophet, Joseph Smith certainly existed, which is more than we can say for sure about Jesus, though his golden tablets have a more tenuous grip on reality, to say nothing of the pseudohistory he cooked up in the Book of Mormon. The enthusiasm which Mormonism generated at the start, and the strong, if not universal, attachment and devotion its converts had to Joseph Smith as the self-proclaimed revelator and prophet, is incredible in a skeptical age, to skeptical people. Thousands of converts were eventually moved to pile their possessions on handcarts in Iowa, and wheel them on foot over a thousand miles to Salt Lake City. Smith's successor, Brigham Young, received roughly one revelation, and after that, further (highly infrequent) revelation was left to the committee that runs the church.

It has been a rapid evolution from crazy inspiration to buttoned-down middle-of-the-road-ism, exemplified in the newest temple in Salt Lake City, the LDS conference center, an incredibly lush and expensive building (on the inside), built with enormous discretion mostly below-ground and well-screened from the outside, with only a slight, modernist spire. Mormonism started with a revolutionary mind-set, moving out of reach of the US to set up its own theocracy, which grew and flourished for several decades. But after a war, enormous pressure from the US, and some strategic changes of course, it has shifted its outlook and become a bulwark of American-ism, spreading middle class values all over the world among its converts.

The LDS conference center, in Salt Lake City. Which is also a temple, under the covers.

Along the way, Mormon theology has shifted as well. There were the explicit accommodations discarding polygamy and racism. There were more subtle changes from strict adherence to Smith's revelation to progressive scientific inquiry and reasoned argument, popular in the early twentieth century when Christianity was still widely and generally thought to be consistent with the newest findings in astronomy, physics, archeology and other sciences. And then a turn to creationism when the realization began to dawn that science presented insurmountable problems and needed to be opposed or co-opted, not only on the main front of the origin and nature of man, but particularly for Mormons on the archeological evidence (or lack thereof) for the Jewish origin of native Americans, the existence of whiter Nephites vs the redder Lamanites, the great culminating battle between them, and the travels of Jesus in the New World, among many other issues.

This all led to the main evolution of Mormonism, which has been to de-emphasize theology altogether, in favor of a strong social system with sufficient ritual to awe, but more focus on keeping its adherants so busy with offices, committees, gradations of status, services to all ages from youth to old age, that little time or energy is left for theology. The mission is a good example. This task is unimaginably arduous. All young men and many women go out for two years as a culmination of their upbringing in the church, to hand out Books of Mormon to unwilling passers-by, and serve by their clean-cut appearance as advertisements for the LDS church. Are they theological experts? Hardly. While the main point seems to be to re-affirm the missionary's own dedication to the church by this boot camp experience- a sense of being part of an elite or a despised few, with a special mission in fallen times- the proposition to potential converts revolves far more around the concrete social structures of the church than its miscelleneous revelations and claims to be the true and restored priesthood of Jesus. Indeed, seeing youngsters of nineteen called "elders" and "Aronic priests" does not inspire respect for such claims of superiority in god-given revealed priestly authority, in comparison with such more staid institutions as, say, the Orthodox and Catholic churches.

The problem of theological and spiritual decline. LDS elders distribute the sacrament.

This analysis was one unexpected pleasure of Matthew Bowman's book on the history of Mormonism, that while the founding of Mormonism is naturally the most curious and remarkable part of the story, his treatment of the later evolutions of the instution and its rationalizations is fascinating, subtle, and well worth reading.

It is thus difficult to pin down what precisely orthodox Mormon belief is. Mormons who wish to enter the temples must affirm their belief in Jesus Christ's devine sonship and atonement, in the truth of Joseph Smith's divine mission to restore Christ's church, and in the priesthood authority of the present leaders of the church. That is all, and particular key terms in those beliefs remain intentionally undefined. Through the church's 180 year existence, Orson Pratt, B. H. Roberts, Bruce McConkie, and many other authors have each offered up versions of Mormonism, and though ideas from many Mormon writers have seeped into the common discourse of the church, none is considered a final authority on what Mormons must believe. In an interview with Time in 1997, a journalist asked Gordon B. Hinckley about the doctrine that God was once a man, which Joseph Smith seemed to advocate. "I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it," he said. The reply was less an evasion than a recognition of the modern place of theology in the church: the focus of Mormonism is very much not on the particulars of belief but whether a member is in the pews every week, holds a calling, and can be relied upon if a bishop is looking for somebody to drive an elderly widow to the hospital. 

There is no trained Mormon clergy. The Church Educational System today espouses not only the conservative theology of Bruce McConkie but also his lack of interest in scholarship outside his own tradition. CES's work resembles a youth ministry more closely than it does the seminaries of other faiths. Similarly, leaders of the church today, unlike James Talmage or John Widtsoe or McConkie, avoid writing books about theology in favor of devotional or homiletic texts. This trend is likely intentional. After the public disputes over evolution in the 1930's and after correlation (a preemptive strike against potential doctrinal schism) the leaders of the church have decided to leave theological dispute alone.

Theology is like clothing. We know implicitly and unconsciously what course matter lies beneath, but do not want to see. Truth is hidden, and what covers it is not truth, really, but a contrivance developed to enhance our self-image and social existence, via bright dramatic colors, a stylish cut that, while following the natural form in some respects, alters and improves as well. Clothes ease social life, helping us keep boundaries, announce our allegiances, beliefs, and status. Many people like to wear uniforms, as a sign of belonging and status. Yet the impulse to innovation and novelty is irrepressible as well, creating sects of fashion and adornment. Styles change with the times, for incidental, technogical, or no reasons at all, fostering constant change in which theologies and theological institutions best meet the anxieties of the moment. Clothing builds progressively in an unending evolution, from work fabrics to jeans, to riveted jeans, to prewashed, stretch, and now ripped. So do theologies, which build one upon the next, each claiming to be the restored and true church.

Death is probably that truth which it is most urgent to hide, so theologies take its amelioration or suppression most seriously, even when each person, in their bones, knows the truth. Even that most sensible of theologies, Buddhism, professes reincarnation, though it violates some of its own central tenets and is obviously a cultural inheritance from Hinduism. Not even those who have escaped rebirth die, in the Buddhist system, but dwell permanently in nirvana, a sort of heaven. Temperamental differences lead to a great variety of styles and approaches, some people reveling in dense fabrics and shell-like protection, others in flamboyant display, still others yearning for nudism. The varieties of spiritual clothing are just as obvious, and just about as arbitrary. Great designers and other creators (think David Bowie, James Harden, Japan of the Edo era) come up with new approaches to clothing, while most hew to conservatism, which shapes the uniforms of millions. Clothing has both mundane and exalted elements, just as church life has its ecstatic moments and humdrum ones- its inspired creators and the trailing edge of missionaries struggling to get even one person to listen to the good news.

In clothing, all this obfuscatory effort of hiding reality has been practically rewarding and artistically elevating, and at worst harmless. In religion, on the other hand, for all its artistic dividends, theology has been a philosophical disaster of the first order. New versions always appear, as the need for spiritual clothing appears to be timeless. Yet we can only celebrate the cooling and bureaucratization of previously extreme theologies into bland uniforms of conventionality.

• Once I was a beehive, a charming, if sappy, look into Mormon culture.
• Fake news, from DOJ.
• Classic projection lie, to distract from the Trump=Epstein equation. Who elected this psychopath?
• Election security is not going very well.

Domestic Terrorism

For all the mass shootings, domestic violence kills more people and terrorizes them far more severely. A tribute to Andrea Dworkin.

We are enraged by the continuing insanity of the NRA and the legion of gun nuts it represents. A murderous phallic-worship cult so transfixed by the object of their adoration that simple human decency, let alone humility, fall by the way. But the mass shootings by young brain-washed men with automatic rifles, which form the media focus, are a minor problem compared with the more prevalent and damaging form of domestic terrorism and murder: domestic violence.

Roughly 2,000 people die yearly from domestic violence, half of which involve guns, and some of which are familicides that also count as mass shootings. In comparison, about 300 people have been dying in mass shootings per year over the last decade, though the statistics are disparate under various definitions and research methods. The gun violence archive lists 253 so far in 2019, 340 in all of 2018; 346 in 2017, 382 in 2016, 335 in 2015, and 269 in 2014.

Mass shootings count as terrorist incidents, since they are typically driven by an ideology of hatred that is expressed explicitly as motivation, and may also target a hated group, or, out of frustration, just a vulnerable group of opportunity. The intention is evidently to instill fear in society, excite copycats, and change the culture towards the desired hatred setting. But how effective are they? Not very effective at all, since their rarity insures that we as general citizens need not have, and do not have, fear of public places or other venues where such shootings take place. Yes, we are angry about the senseless carnage made possible by military fixations and equipment prevalent in some of our not-very-mentally-healthy subcultures. Yes, we are disgusted by the ideology, such as it is, and its leaders, first and foremost our dear president. But terrorized? Not at all. The elaborate security theater introduced in airports, and increasingly in schools, is a sad and wasteful consequence, but hardly bespeaks "terror". Rather, it represents the best our bureaucracies can manage to raise increments of policing and prevention, with the end result of keeping the populace calm, if not irritated and bored out of its collective mind.

Terror is something else entirely. Terror is when you are trapped in a place with no escape. A place where, if you try to leave, your chances of being killed are higher than if you stay. A place, where if you stay, you can look forward to unending torment, vicious abuse both physical and mental. A situation where, if you leave, you can count on being hunted for years, with lethal weapons. That is the reality of domestic violence. Andrea Dworkin blamed pornography, which I do not. But pornography is part of a larger culture of dehumanization and objectification, consisting of casual rapists like our president, pimps who traffic in women and girls, dedicated patriarchies such as the Catholic and Mormon churches, even Sports Illustrated, which traffics in a yearly turn into soft porn, among many other social institutions.

Objectification is not unique to sexuality, but results from any desire. The store clerk is a mechanism to obtain what we want, and is of little personal importance to us as shoppers. War could not happen without the objectification of the enemy. Nothing personal! But it is certainly ironic and distressing that the most personal relationship of all is driven by desires that can so easily head down impersonal, even spiteful, hateful, and violent channels when thwarted and frustrated, or even if let run free, by way of ideological or psychological perversion.

It is noteworthy that much of our language around sex is violent and used to express violence. Being "screwed" is not a good thing, but a bad thing. The gun nuts mentioned above marinate in a cult of masculinity and sexualized power so divorced from reality and humanity that it should form an intrinsic "red flag". Again, it is the powerful, even existential, motivating desire of sexuality which generates a quest for other forms of power and control, leading some down a path of violence and dehumanization.

As Andrea Dworkin wrote, in her inimitable style:  "Life and Death"

"These are women who thought that they had a right to dignity, to individuality, to greedom- but in fact they couldn't walk down a city block in freedom. Many of them were raped as children in their own homes, by relatives- fathers, uncles, brothers- before they were 'women'. Many of them were beaten by the men who loved them- their husbands, lovers. Many of them were tortured by these men. When you look at what happened to these women, you want to say, 'Amnesty International, where are you?'- because the prisons for women are our homes. We live under martial law. We live in a rape culture. Men have to be sent to prison to live in a culture that is as rapist as the normal home in North America. We live under what amounts to military curfew, enforced by rapists. We say we're free citizens in a free society. But we lie. We lie about it every day."

So it is a deep issue, a pressing issue of human rights, health and well-being, and continues in the age of #MeToo, which is only slowly filtering through the culture. What should be done? We can not all go back and get better upbringings, probably the single most influential causal / protective factor. A great deal has been done to set up hotlines and women's shelters, and to recognize that leaving an abusive situation is very difficult. But I think more can be done, principally by taking the position that a relationship where one person has reached out to police, or an abuse hotline, or a shelter, is already dead, and the helping institutions should do all they can to enable its parties to dissolve it and move on. That means not getting bogged down in a lot of mediation. Rather, the focus should be on setting the battered spouse into a new life, rapidly putting all the shared assets and income flows into escrow, and using them fairly, under official supervision and eventual division, to help each party live independently. Whether the batterer is charged criminally is a separate matter. The evidence in these cases tends to be poor, the parties unwilling to extend their trauma and drag their lives through the courts. Either way, separation is the more urgent and practical need, and one party's witness is quite sufficient for that.

Q: People think you are very hostile to men.
A: I am.
Q: Doesn't that worry you?
A: From what you said, it worries them. 

• How not to build infrastructure- Australian broadband whipsawed between right and left.
• Real gun nuts can't stand the NRA.
• And naturally, the answer is more guns.
• Methods of bad faith.

Awash in Authoritarian Atavism

Most institutions in the US are authoritarian, not democratic. 

How far we have come from the independent, agrarian ideal of Thomas Jefferson! Through the first century of the Republic, most citizens were self-employed, principally as farmers and shopkeepers. This bred an ethic of independence, self-reliance, and self-motivated political and civic participation, as noted by de Tocqueville. Then we all started working for corporations, and were sucked into a political system of work that was anything but democratic. Unions were an attempt to re-inject democratic principles into this workplace, at least in opposition to the main actor, management. But they have withered as well in our current age, as the corporation has become ascendent, and state regulation has largely taken the place of unions to remediate the worst problems of corporate amorality.

It all starts with the family, which, at least from the child's perspective, is very much an authoritarian institution. Care is exchanged for obedience. Hopefully love is exchanged as well. Viewing powerful people is known to be psychologically valent- we are to some extent inherently authoritarian. Churches generally replicate this structure, most explicitly in the Catholic system, with El Papa at the top, giving stern, loving, and infallible leadership. One of our most characteristic home-grown churches, the Mormon church, has an equally top-down authoritarian and patriarchal hierarchy. It was with the most extreme reluctance that its leaders gave up polygamy which had served as an extra reward and evidence of divine / patriarchal favor, to be followed by an eternity of connubial bliss.

The current LDS leadership of prophets, seers, and revelators.

These templates pervade our society, with even small towns that should be run by town councils giving up their executive functions to town managers. One of our political parties is dedicated to the proposition that authoritarianism is better than democracy, and pursues every possible means to make that transition. But it is really the corporation that takes up most of our waking lives and exemplifies the pervasiveness of authoritarianism today. In a typical corporation, there is an oligarchical board that is supposedly in charge of corporate strategy. But its members are typically chosen by management and are managers of other corporations, so fully entrenched in the authoritarian power structure. There are shareholders who supposedly own the corporation, elect the board, and supposedly vote about critical strategic issues. But nothing could be further from a democracy. It is management that proposes all the candidates, issues, and conducts all communications, and it is extremely rare for any contrary perspective or action to come to light. And the recent movement back to private corporate ownership has moved the dial even further away from any semblance of democracy.

The effects of this are clear, in the amorality and growing destructiveness of American corporations. For all the talk of "stakeholders", they steer all spare money to management and shareholders, and think nothing of destroying communities and workers, to be replaced with offshored supply chains or automated machinery as feasible. Our main streets have been eviscerated, our media prostituted, our environment abused, our government corrupted. The public good, which is what democracy exists to safeguard and nurture, means nothing to authoritarian institutions whose only purpose is the capture money by any means fair or foul and whose governance gives no place to greater considerations. Corporations have also invaded our democratic processes by way of the modern intermediaries of political participation- political consultancies, mass advertising, and PACs, not to mention old-fashioned funding / corruption of individual politicians, parties and institutions, and capture of regulatory agencies.

No wonder that our fellow citizens, after marinating their lives away in undemocratic social institutions, have little experience or taste for the rigors of democracy, and fall to the mean morality, domineering presumptions, and infantile ideas of demagogues. This will require some grass-roots psychotherapy to correct. One such corrective might be the work council system, as practiced in Germany. Every work place of any size has a democratically elected council of workers, which discuss and agitate for worker interests. They also elect worker representatives to the corporate board, up to half its members, depending on company size. This system gives workers real power in the workplace and a practice of participatory democracy, both of which are sorely lacking in the US.

• The eggs are OK.
• Explicit... tiny desk by Lizzo.

Battle For the Truth

The battle of Midway- success comes from dedicated engagement with reality. Not from fantasy.

Memorial Day brings up the Greatest Generation and the battles it fought to keep the World Wars away from the US, and save other countries from tyranny along the way. One of the greatest of those battles was at Midway, about half a year after Pearl Habor. It carries some object lessons in why this generation was so successful, and what makes America great. I am watching Battlefield 360, a History Channel program that profiles the aircraft carrier Enterprise. The production is absurdly over-the-top and padded with cheap filler, yet also full of compelling history.

The story of this battle, as for all others, is a search for truth, which then leads to success. A mere 33 years after the Wright brother's first flight, the US christened aircraft carriers like the USS Enterprise, which carried 90 airplanes. Mastering flight was the first step to a new form of long-range mobile warfare. The US had broken the Japanese naval code, enabling us to know the truth of what Japan planned for its invasion of Midway. The US ran an experiment to nail down the meaning of one word in the code, which clearly denoted a place, but which place? The truth came out when the Japanese took the bait and relayed our (fake) news that Midway was short of water. The word was their code name for Midway.

The US had learned quite a bit about the dangers of fire aboard aircraft carriers, which are awash with fuel, bombs, and artillery rounds, which led to a variety of novel equipment and training, such as CO2 purging of fuel lines before facing attacks, fire-fighting foams, and dedicated, pre-positioned fire control crews. This led to the Enterprise being able to take three direct bomb hits and not sink, while in the battle of Midway, the US sank four enemy carriers with only a couple of bombs each. The Japanese had not learned the value and truth of protective design and effective fire suppression.

The US had radar, a new way to find out the truth of enemy positions, so critical to both defense and offense. As in the old board game of battleship, naval warfare is a game of cat and mouse. The more you know, and the more you can blind your opponent, the more successful you will be. The search for truth has been so integral as to be almost unconscious in our military (not to mention "intelligence") culture. And in the post-war era, it led to a broader cultural commitment to education and research which has formed US preeminence in physics, chemistry, and biology, among many other fields, including notably climate science.

Which all leads one to wonder why lying is now one of our leading national characteristics. Who does our president regard as the enemy, and who the friend? Why is, for him, truth in journalism so dangerous? What is the morality of a whole party lying habitually about fundamental economics, about public interest regulation, about democratic values, and about the future of the planet? What has happened to us?

• Damage control on Yorktown.
• Wall Street wants docile Democrats.
• Cancer cure ... the hardest part.
• Some thoughts about the crazy.
• It is not entirely clear why we side with Saudi Arabia over Iran.
• Meanwhile, it is worth sticking with Afghanistan.

That's Cool: Adolescent Brain Development

Brain power and integration increases with development, particularly in the salience network and in the wakeful, attentive beta waves.

We see it happen, but it is still amazing- the mental powers that come on line during child development. Neurobiologists are starting to look inside and see what is happening mechanistically- in anatomical connectivity, activity networks, and brain wave patterns. Some recent papers used fMRI and magnetoencephalography to look at activity correlations and wave patterns over adolescent development. While the methods and analyses remain rather abstruse and tentative, it is clear that such tendencies as impulsivity and cognitive control can be associated with observations about stronger brain wave activity at higher frequencies, lower activity at lower frequencies, and inter-network integration.

An interesting theme in the field is the recognition that not only is the brain organized physically in various crinkles, folds, nodules, etc., and by functional areas like the motor and sensory cortexes or Broca's area, involved in speech production, but that it is also organized in connectivity "networks" that can cross anatomical boundaries, yet show coherence, being coordinately activated inside much more densely than outside the network. An example is the default mode network (DMN, or task-negative network), which happens when adults are just resting, not attending to anything in particular, but also not asleep. This is an example of the brain being "on" despite little conscious mental work being done. It may be our unconscious at work or play, much like it is during sleep on a much longer leash. As one might imagine for this kind of daydreaming activity, it is strongly self-focused, full of memories, feelings, social observations, and future plans. Anatomically, the DMN extends over much of the brain, from the frontal lobes to the temporal and parietal lobes, touching on regions associated with the functions mentioned, like the hippocampus involved in memory, temperoparietal areas involved in sociality/ theories of mind, etc. There are roughly twenty such networks currently recognized, which activate during different mental fuctions, and they provide some answers to the question of how different brain areas are harnessed together for key functions typical of mental activity.

Two networks relevant to this current work are the salience network (SN) and the cingulo-opericular network (CN or CO). The latter is active during chronic attention- our state of being awake and engaged for hours at a time, termed tonic alertness. (This contrasts with phasic alertness, which is much shorter-term / sporadic and reactive).  It is one of several task-positive networks that function in attention and focus. The salience network spans cortical (anterior insula an dorsal anterior cingulate) and subcortical areas (amygdala and central striatum) binding together locations that play roles in salience- assigning value to new events, reacting to unusual events. It can then entrain other brain networks to take control over attention, behavior, thoughts, etc.

fMRI studies of the activity correlations between brain networks. The cingulo-opercular and salience network connections (gray) take a large jump in connectivity to other regions in early adolescence. At the same time, fronto-parietal network connections (yellow), characteristic of frontal control and inhibition of other networks, take a dive, before attaining higher levels going into adulthood.

Here we get to brain waves, or oscillations. Superimposed on the constant activity of the brain are several frequencies of electrical activity, from the super-slow delta waves (~ 1Hz) of sleep to the super-fast gamma waves (~50 Hz) which may or may not correlate with attention and perception. The slower waves seem to correlate with development, growth, and maintenance, while the faster waves correlate with functions such as attention and behavior. Delta waves are thought to function during the deepest sleep in resetting memories and other brain functions, and decline sharply with age, being pervasive in infants, and disappearing by old age. Faster waves such as theta (5-9 Hz), alpha (8-12), and beta (14-26 Hz) correlate with behavior and attention, and are generally thought to help bind brain activities together, rather than transmitting information as radio waves might. Attention is a clear example, where large brain regions are bound by coordinated waves, depending on what is being attended to. Thus the "spotlight of attention" is characterized both by the activation of selected relevant brain areas, and also by their binding via phase-locked neural oscillations. These are naturally highly variable and jumbled as time goes on, reflecting the saccadic nature of our mental lives.

One of the papers above focused on theta and beta waves, finding that adolescents showed a systematic move from lower to higher frequencies. While fMRI scans of non-oscillatory network activity showed greater integration with age, studies of oscillations showed that the main story was *de-coupling mainly at the lower frequencies. What this all seems to add up to is a reduction of impulsivity, via reduced wave/phase coupling between especially between the salience and other networks, at the same time as control over other networks is more integrated and improved, via increased connectivity. So control by choice goes up, while involuntary reactivity goes down. It is suggested that myelination of axons, as part of brain development along with pruning extra cells and connections, makes long-range connections faster, enabling greater power in these higher frequency binding/coordination bands.

Brain wave phase coordination between all areas of the brain, measured by frequency and age. Low frequencies associated with basal arousal, motor activity, and daydreaming are notably less correlated in adults, while beta-range frequencies about 25 Hz, associated with focused attention, are slightly more correlated. 

Is this all a little hand-wavy at this point? Yes indeed- that is the nature of a field just getting to grips with perhaps the most complicated topic of all. But the general themes of oscillations as signs/forms of coordination and binding, and active sub-networks as integrating units of brain/mental activity on top of the anatomical and regional units are interesting developments that will grow in significance as more details are filled in.

• Teens and risk- more punishment is indicated!
• Status of the Muller report.
• Will the recycling industry survive?