Educating People How to Feel

I just finished reading Jeanette Winterson’s new sci-fi novel The Stone Gods, a profound book in many ways, dense with meaning layered via allegory and allusion.  It is set in a post-apocalyptic world we have destroyed by nuclear war, consumerism, pollution, and it’s about the longing for a “place to land,” a new beginning after the shipwreck of our birth.  At one point, the main character, Billie Crusoe (alluding to the shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe), is explaining to a Robo sapiens why World War III occurred.  It’s worth quoting at length:

The theory is that this latest war was a crisis of over-emotionalism.  Fanatics do not listen to reason, and that includes the religious Right. Since the Enlightenment we have been trying to get away from emotionalism….all those so-called gut feelings that allow us to blame our aggression and intolerance on what comes naturally.

Yet the evidence suggests that rational people are no better than irrational people at controlling their aggression–rather, they are more manipulative. Think of the cool, calm boss at work who has no care for how his workers might be feeling. Think of the political gurus who organize mass migration of people and jobs, home and lives on the basis of statistics and economic growth. Think of the politicians who calmly decide that it is better to spend six hundred and fifty billion dollars on war and a fraction of that on schools and hospitals, food and clean water.

These people are very aggressive, very controlling, but they hide it behind intellectualization and hard-headed thinking.

For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion–in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence.  We are not robots…but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgment. (141-42)

Winterson echoes the findings of recent neuroscience on the centrality of emotions in thinking (think Damasio, Minsky, LeDoux).  The point she makes about educating people how to think is simple but significant.  It reminds me of a previous post about “mind control,” about learning how to control our emotions, channeling the energy flow through our brain (”psychoenergonomics”).

A recent book by Thich Nhat Hanh, titled The Art of Power, has exercises in its appendix for learning how to control intense emotions.  Perhaps we should have classes in meditative practice in public school, as the Dalai Lama suggests in Destructive Emotions.

Connecting to Natural Energy Flows

Our “Green Sanctuary” book group at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill just finished reading and discussing Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, a book with so many ideas focused on the concept of energonomics or energy management that I could write a month of entries on just this one book. But I wanted to make sure I made mention of it at least once. I’m calling this book THE most important book on the planet, because I think it provides a blueprint for moving forward in sustainable living. The book proposes the elimination of waste–or, rather, the transformation of all waste into food (waste = food), which simply uses nature as its model:

Most packaging (which makes up about 50% of the volume of the municipal solid waste stream) can be designed as biological nutrients, what we call *products of consumption.* The idea is to compose these products of materials that can be tossed on the ground or compost heap to safely biodegrade after use–literally to be consumed. (105)

The concept of “connecting to natural energy flows” is ultimately a kind of energy management–an issue of energonomics:

In the long run, connecting to natural energy flows is a matter of reestablishing our fundamental connection to the source of all good growth on the planet: the sun, that tremendous nuclear power plant 93 million miles away (exactly where we want it). Even at such distances, the sun’s heat can be devastating, and it commands a healthy respect for the delicate orchestration of circumstances that makes natural energy flows possible. Humans thrive on the earth under such intense emanations of heat and light only because billions of years of evolutionary processes have created the atmosphere and surface that support our existence–the soil, plant life, and cloud cover that cool the planet down and distribute water around it, keeping the atmosphere within a temperate range that we can live in. So reestablishing our connection to the sun by definition includes maintaining interdependence with all the other ecological circumstances that make natural energy flows possible in the first place. (131-132)

Humans have come to rely on fossil fuels rather than “harnessing and maximizing local natural energy flows” (31):

For the majority of our simple energy needs, humans could be accruing a great deal of current solar income, of which there is plenty: thousands of times the amount of energy needed to fuel human activities hits the surface of the planet every day in the form of sunlight.” (31, 32)

I am happy that human ingenuity is beginning to turn its attention to capturing, storing, and efficiently employing energy. Perhaps it is not too late for us.

e=mc squared + information

I was reading Deleuzian Interrogations: A Conversation with Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi, and Torkild Thanem and bumped into this interesting quote:

Delanda:  “I cannot imagine a materialist philosophy which is not also realist. On the other hand, someone who believes that god and the devil exist independently of our minds is also a realist but clearly not a materialist. The only problem with the term ‘materialism’ is that not only matter but also energy and physical information are needed to account for self-organizing phenomena and the processes which fabricate physical entities” (3).

This reminded me of a book I read titled The Bit and the Pendulum: From Quantum Computing to M Theory–The New Physics of Information which left me with the same impression that DeLanda emphasizes here. As author Tom Siegfried writes, “Many scientists now conceive of information as something real, as real as space, time, energy, and matter” (7).    Siegfried speaks of how the study of biology benefits from this perspective as one example of how this new field is changing the sciences:

Information’s reality has reshaped the way biologists study and understand cells, the brain, and the mind. Cells are not merely vats of chemicals that turn food into energy, but sophisticated computers, translating messages from the outside world into the proper biological responses. True, the brain runs on currents of electrical energy through circuits of cellular wires. But the messages in those currents can be appreciated only by understanding the information they represent” (9)

This notion that “information is the foundation of reality” (59) made me consider creating a new neologism to capture this new sense of reality:  “infonomics” — the “management of information.”  Whatever word we use–whether it’s infonomics or energonomics–this book suggests that information must become part of what we consider when we speak of managing energy.

DeLanda points to how the term “materialism” falls short of capturing all that comes into play in the triad of energy-matter-information flows.  He draws attention to this phenomenon in his own book A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History when he concludes that

the flows of materials whose history we described involved more than just matter-energy. They also included *information*, understood not in static terms as mere physical patterns (measured in bits) but in dynamic terms, as patterns capable of self-replication and catalysis (259-60).

Psychoenergonomics

The March/April 2008 issue of Psychology Today had a number of stimulating articles, many of which might fall under this sub-category of energonomics I’m calling “psychoenergonomics.” (See my previous posts on this meme under a new tag by the same name). One titled “Second Nature” is about how we can change habits of personality (i.e. manage the energy in our brains) to make us more optimistic, passionate, joyful and courageous. I recently posted on this emergent field of “Eudaimonics.” There is the act of what Loyola University psychologist Fred Bryant calls in his new book (Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience) “savoring”: “the art of managing positive feelings. Whereas coping well means dealing successfully with problems and setbacks, savoring–glorying in what goes right–is an equally crucial emotional competence” (78).

A different article, titled “The Making of a Perfectionist,” is about how the way children are praised can affect their emotional stability, their ability to be satisfied. As a reformed perfectionist (haven’t quite got the reform part down perfectly just yet, though…), I recognize myself in this article and the kind of familial dynamics that produces a perfectionist. We have to learn how to be parents, learn what to say and how to say to our children, to avoid causing major problems in the way energy flows through their brains.

A third article, titled “Consuming Passions,” is also about managing mental energy–the evolutionary tendency to overeat and binge. The ultimate form of energonomics for each of us is managing caloric intake–how much energy do we take into our bodies? Is there a balance between what we take in and what we burn off? Evolution has also pre-disposed us to enjoy and reward gluttonous behavior with the use of dopamine such that “obesity, eating disorders, and even the ordinary urges of appetite might resemble addiction” (100).  In fact, “brain hunger” (when we want food but don’t need food) has some of the same neural pathways as orgasm!  One doctor says, “Now we’re not just talking about energy balance… We’re talking about human psychology” (100).

So the ultimate point here is that personal energonomics becomes psychoenergonomics:  in order to manage the influx of calories, we have to learn how to manage the energy in our minds.

The Energonomics of Leadership

I read an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe today titled “The Power of Charisma” which introduces the work of Joseph Nye, who invented the concept of “soft power” and has a new book out called The Powers to Lead  This is an area that I wish to investigate further.  It is a question of where the manifestations of physical energy (that trajectory from our sun to plants to calories to human brain) go after entering the brain.  I have suggested in previous posts that concepts or memes are transmitted via language, which acts as a form of energy storage (in the case of written language) or serves as a kind of catalyst (in the case of spoken language) to concentrate the brain-energy in the mind-brain of another on a certain subject or meme.  I have wondered about the sociology of mass movements, whether for the good (MLK) or for evil (Hitler) and how it is that leaders are able to focus the energies of many to make things happen in the world.

And so I wonder:  what is the psychology of charisma?  How does one become charismatic (assuming they have the “good looks” required of the charismatic)?  Perhaps Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” could point the way to answering this.

I bet there was an evolutionary advantage to certain people being leaders and most others being followers.  Obviously, the well-organized band of pre-humans was able to get more work done more effectively; they were able to manage the collective energy of the group so as to maximize its potential.

The Evolution of Evolution

 In his book Energy and the Evolution of Life, Ronald F. Fox writes of the energonomics of evolution.  I wrote about this book a couple of years ago (see Energy and the Evolution of Life), when I first got the book.  It’s quite technical and elaborate, complete with scary math-equations and what-not.  But those with a general education and curious nature can get a sense of the ideas he presents.  I jus recently picked it up again and peaked at the end, where he speaks of the evolution of evolution–that is, the evolution of what he calls “energy coupling,” the evolution of energy flow.   As he writes, “The mechanism of evolution is evolving as a natural consequence of the continuing evolution of energy coupling” (165).  The book is a survey of this evolution, which starts from the origins of life on this planet and walks the reader through the chemistry and physics of energy flow, through to the development of nervous systems.  In this passage Fox emphasizes the radical nature of how evolution has evolved:

*the biological advantage of this advanced nervous system system is to rapidly simulate the prediction of nonlinear events.* This step in the long history of biological evolution has critically altered the mechanism of evolution itself and transcends the genetic mechanism of Darwinian selection (156).

This is where we launch into the significance of sociology (or social psychology) as the next phase of energonomic study and as an indication of how energonomics is a form of “consilience.”  Fox’s book ends with a section called “Social Evolution” where he mentions that, “With brain, a new kind of life has emerged: multiindividual organisms. Humans are among them…. The emergent behavior of these metazoan collectives is predicated on the types of energy that the collective processes” (166).  I would add to this how it processes the energy (e.g. do we channel our brain energy away from the amygdala and toward the pre-frontal lobes?).

Fox ends the book with a question of whether or not we will survive the latest evolution of energy production.  Are we physiologically capable of making the necessary cultural adaptions at this stage of the game?  I will quote the last paragraph in its entirety:

A refinement in cultural mechanisms has occurred with every refinement of energy flux coupling. Some steps have led to dramatic, emergent behavior.  The practice of collective agriculture made an enormous impact, as did the advent of metallurgy and the bronze and iron ages. Recently, the nuclear age has followed the electricity age, closely and intimately. Suddenly, a new source of energy flux is available.  Is it possible that the energy flux parameter has now increased to a point that could drive the nonlinear, dynamical process called civilization to chaos? Or is man’s nervous system sufficiently advanced to predict future events and establish effective control mechanisms? (166)

I remain hopeful that the answer to the last question is YES.

Energy Studies

I bought a few books at the MIT Press Bookstore yesterday by Vaclav Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba who does interdisciplinary studies of energy and the environment.  The first one, Energies:  An Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization, is very much like the book I wanted to write about “Energonomics” insofar as it attempts to bridge the gaps in the sciences of modern energy studies:

Its basic idea is to offer a comprehensive and integrated survey of the energies shaping our world, from the Sun to pregnancy, from bread to microchips.  Naturally, such a sweep demands both a logical progression and selectivity.

So he begins with planetary energy flows, moves to plant and animal life, which leads to “human energetics” and then to energy usage throughout the history of society and culture.  While Smil focuses primarily on science, I am interested in bridging the science of energy flows with the social sciences and humanities.  For example, what is the energy value of a particular idea?  How do ideas (or “memes”) attract the energy of individuals such that they debate, fight, even die for them?  What is the science and sociology of such transmission?  So there might be a place for energonomics within this field.

Eudaimonics

While visiting the MIT Press bookstore the other day, I picked up the “MIT Press 2008 Philosophy” catalog, and on the back is featured a book called The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World by Owen Flanagan, which tries to address the question of “How can we make sense of the magic and mystery of life naturalistically, without an appeal to the supernatural….if we accept the fact that we are finite material beings living in a material world, or, in Flanagan’s description, short-lived pieces of organized cells and tissue?”

His answer, according to this catalogue description, is in trying to achieve a life of eudaimonia — to be a “happy spirit.” Flanagan names his new area of study “Eudaimonics”: the inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing. He draws on philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology as well as non-theistic spiritual traditions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Stoicism, Aristotelianism) in trying to discover how we can enhance human flourishing and how to live a meaningful life.

This is very much in line with my study of energonomics and echoes previous posts on “positive psychology” and “psychoenergonomics.” Energonomics attempts to have us focus on managing energy flows that come into our bodies (from the food sources that we eat). One goal is to discover how we can manage energy flows in our brains to maximize human flourishing, in the words of Flanagan. This looks like a book to put on my long list of books to read.

Remembering in Public

I was listening to the second chapter of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, and the authors quote the creator of the social bookmarking site del.icio.us Joshua Schacter as explaining that he created this site “as a way to keep track of all the things he was thinking about posting to his blog. He calls the service ‘a way to remember in public. . . The actual database represents crystallized attention–what people are looking at, and what they’re trying to remember’” (42).  This reminded me of my recent post regarding memory in the age of electracy.  In fact, I said almost the exact same thing: 

If del.icio.us is a way to publically remember personal websites, then networking with others on del.icio.us is a way of adding other people’s memories to your own.  Who you know becomes how you know:  epistemology as community.

I *promise* that I did NOT read this chapter before writing this post! 

I tried explaining the advantages of del.icio.us to a colleague today, and I said to him that searching for a topic in del.icio.us is different than searching in Google insofar as it’s like searching other people’s memories.

Memory in the Age of Electracy

I am reading Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, which talks about the neurological effects of learning to read–that is, how written words changes our mindbrains and possibly enables new levels of thought, changing the process of thinking itself. This book is absolutely fascinating and an important one for “grammatologists” (those who study the theory and history of writing). At one point she speaks of Socrates’ objections to writing as a threat to oral culture and the kind of learning he valued. Wolf is a kind of modern-day Socrates who wants us to consider what we are losing in the transition from literacy to “electracy” (i.e. the “literacy” of new electronic technologies).

As I read the part that mentions Socrates’ concern that writing would destroy memory, I thought of how the new technologies are changing the nature of memory. If we think of these technologies as “mnemonic prosthetics,” that is, as extensions of our memories, then our memories are changing quite radically. If books were a way to distribute our memory in physical form, web 2.0 is a way to distribute our memory into other people. Pierre Levy would call it “collective intelligence.”

I am thinking of two forms of social networking software–the social bookmarking site http://del.icio.us and http://slideshare.net (which lets you share powerpoint slideshows). I have used these over the past year and have experienced the “networking” aspect. People on slideshare.net, for example, offer to have me as a contact. Del.icio.us lets you add people to your network, and if they add you to their network they become one of your “fans.” These examples show me the value of having “friends”: they become, in a way, an extension of our memory. These are complete strangers, but we share common interests, and therefore the part of their (extended, technologically-enhanced) memories that correlate to this area of common interest are of potential use to me. If del.icio.us is a way to publically remember personal websites, then networking with others on del.icio.us is a way of adding other people’s memories to your own. Who you know becomes how you know: epistemology as community.

Pierre Levy’s vision in Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace is to have communities of individuals who publically map their skills so that everybody else in the community is aware of who has what available skills. The following excerpt from an interview with Levy shows this possibility of what is perhaps to come, which the above social networking examples anticipate:

We are not talking about the kind of communication where one person sends a message to another who, in turn, may pass it on elsewhere. What we are taking about is more the kind of communication in which a member of the group transforms his own image and in doing so sends everyone a message that his images has been transformed. Simultaneously, the overall map of the group is transformed.