Saturday, June 21, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Magenhormon stimuliert das Gehirn
Das Hormon Ghrelin wird im Magen gebildet, wenn die Energiebilanz negativ ist, also schon länger nichts mehr gegessen wurde. Das Hormon löst im Gehirn eine Hungerempfindung aus. Nach der Nahrungsaufnahme sinkt der Ghrelin-Spiegel wieder ab, um dann regelmäßig wieder anzusteigen. Die Verbindung zwischen Magen und Gehirn durch das Polypeptid legt nahe, dass man hier möglicherweise ein Mittel gefunden hat, um das Hungergefühl von Übergewichtigen zu stoppen, indem die Produktion von Ghrelin im Magen unterbunden wird. Allerdings könnte, wie nun US-Wissenschaftler herausgefunden haben, die Unterdrückung des Hormons auch unerwünschte psychische Folgen haben.
Für ihre Studie, die in Nature Neuroscience erschienen ist, haben die Wissenschaftler Mäuse auf Diät gesetzt. Sie erhielten 10 Tage lang nur 60 Prozent der normalen Kalorien. In dieser Zeit nahm der Ghrelin-Spiegel um das Vierfache zu. In den Schwimm- und Labyrinthtests zeigten die Mäuse weniger Angst und Zeichen von Depression als die der Kontrollgruppe, die so viel fressen konnten, wie sie wollten. Die beobachteeten Unterschiede können nicht, so die Wissenschaftler, auf Unterschiede in der sensomotorischen Koordination, der allgemeinen lokomotorischen Aktivität oder des Körpergewichts zurück geführt werden.
Auch wenn Mäusen Ghrelin injiziert wurde, Zeigten sie in den Experimenten kurz darauf weniger Symptome von Angst und Depression als die Mäuse, denen nur eine Kochsalzlösung injiziert wurde. Bei Mäusen, die chronischem Stress ausgesetzt wurden, was zu anhaltenden Verhaltensveränderungen führt, die mit Antidepressiva behandelt werden können, wird offenbar mehr Ghrelin ausgeschüttet. Dadurch nehmen sie mehr Nahrung auf, was ihnen helfen könnte, so vermuten die Wissenschaftler, mit dem Stress besser zurechtzukommen und Depression sowie Angst nicht zu stark werden zu lassen. Möglicherweise spielt der beoachtete neurobiologische Mechanismus zwischen dem Magenhormon und dem Gehirn auch eine Rolle bei der Magersucht (Anorexia nervosa). Menschen, die darunter leiden, haben erhöhte Ghrelin-Werte.
Die antidepressive Wirkung von Ghrelin könnte nach Ansicht der Wissenschaftler Orexin-Rezeptoren im Hippocampus aktivieren. In Mausmodellen, die Orexin nicht aufnehmen können, lassen sich zumindest die antidepressiven Wirkungen des Hormons nicht feststellen. Aus anderen Untersuchungen ist bekannt, dass Orexin auch mit Fettleibigkeit zu tun hat. Menschen mit vielen Orexin-Rezeptoren bewegen sich häufiger und sind deswegen schlanker.
| Florian Rötzer17.06.2008 |
http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/3/109516
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Triumph of Triviality
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=177&Itemid=1
Written by John F. Schumaker
The latest results of the cultural indoctrination stakes are in. Triviality leads, followed closely by frivolity, superficiality, and mindless distraction. Vanity looks great, while profundity is bringing up the rear. Pettiness is powering ahead, along with passivity and indifference. Curiosity lost interest, wisdom was scratched, and critical thought had to be put down. Ego is running wild. Attention span continues to shorten and survival is a long shot.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Half a century ago, humanistic thinkers were heralding a great awakening that would usher in a golden age of enlightened living. Pathfinders like Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Rollow May, and Viktor Frankl were laying the groundwork for a new social order distinguished by enlightened living. This tantalizing vision was the antithesis of our society of blinkered narcissists and hypnogogic materialists. Dumbness was not our destiny. Planetary annihilation was not the plan. By the 21st century, we were supposed to be the rarefied “people of tomorrow,” inhabiting a sagacious and wholesome world.
Erich Fromm's 1955 tome The Sane Society signaled the debut of the one-dimensional “marketing character” -- a robotic all-consuming creature who is “well-fed, well-entertained, but passive, unalive, and lacking in feeling.” Yet Fromm was confident that we could avoid further descent into the fatuous. He forecast a Utopian society based on the principle of “humanistic communitarianism” that would nurture our higher “existential needs.”
In his 1961 book, On Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers wrote “When I look at the world I am pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.” While acknowledging consumer culture's seductive invitation to disown our higher selves and enter the pointless dreamland of trinkets and desire, he believed that we -- the “people of tomorrow” – would minister over a growth-oriented society, with “growth” defined as the full and positive unfolding of human potential.
We would be upwardly driven toward authenticity, social equality, and the welfare of coming generations. We would revere nature, realize the unimportance of material things, and hold a healthy skepticism about technology and science. An anti-institutional vision would enable us to fend off dehumanizing bureaucratic and corporate authority as we united in an ongoing realization of our “higher needs.”
One of the most famous concepts in the history of psychology is Abraham Maslow's “Hierarchy of Needs,” often illustrated by a pyramid. Once widely accepted, it was also inspired by a faith in innate positive human potential. Maslow claimed that, rather than being materialistic by design, human beings naturally switch attention to higher-level needs (e.g., intellectual, spiritual, social, existential) once they have met lower-level material ones. In moving up the pyramid, and “becoming,” we channel ourselves toward wisdom, beauty, truth, love, gratitude, and respect for life. Instead of a society that catered to, and thus maintained, the lowest common denominator, Maslow imagined one that prospered in the course of promoting mature “self-actualized” individuals.
But something happened along the way. The pyramid collapsed. Human potential took a back seat to economic potential. Self-actualization gave way to self-absorption on a spectacular scale. A pulp culture flourished as the masses were successfully duped into making a home amidst an ever-changing smorgasbord of false material needs.
Operating on the principle that triviality is more profitable than substance, and dedicating itself to unceasing material overkill, consumer culture has become a fine-tuned instrument for resisting upward growth, and keeping people incomplete, shallow, and dehumanized. Materialism continues to gain ground, even in the face of impending eco-apocalypse.
Pulp culture is a feast of tinsel and veneer. The ideal citizen is hollow, an empty tract through which gadgets can pass quickly, largely undigested, so there is always space for more. Reality races by as a blur of images, surface impressions, and consumer choices that never feel quite real. We know it as the fast lane and whip ourselves to keep apace.
Rollo May described it accurately in his 1953 book Man’s Search for Himself: “It’s an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.” So it’s largely business-as-usual even as the sky is falling.
Some critics did predict the triumph of the trivial. In his 1957 essay “A Theory of Mass Culture,” Dwight MacDonald foresaw our “debased trivial culture that voids both the deep realities and also the simple spontaneous pleasures,” adding that “the masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial cultural products.” Today, the demand for triviality has never been higher, and our tolerance for seriousness has never been lower.
In this dense fog, the meaningful and meaningless can easily get reversed. Losers look like winners, and the lofty and ludicrous get confused. The caption under a recent ad for men’s underwear read “I’ve got something that’s good for your body, mind, and soul.” Fashion statements become a form of literacy, brand names father pride, and celebrity drivel becomes compelling.
Not even God has been spared. Once a potent commander of attention and allegiance, God has been gelded into a sort of celestial lap dog who fetches our wishes for this-world success. Nothing is so great that it can’t be reconceived or rephrased in order to render it insubstantial, non-threatening, or, best of all, entertaining.
The age of trivialization has left its mark on marriage, family, and love. In a recent A. C. Nielsen Co. survey, when asked to choose between spending time with their fathers and watching television, 54 percent of American 4-6 year-olds chose television. The same study reported that American parents spent an average of 3.5 minutes per week in “meaningful conversation” with their children, while the children themselves watch 28 hours of television per week. To which we can add cell phones, computer games, and other techno-toys that are inducing a state of digital autism in our young people.
Out of this cock-up comes the most pressing question of our age. Can a highly trivialized culture, marooned between fact and fiction, and dizzy with distraction and denial, elevate its values and priorities in order to respond effectively to the multiple planetary emergencies looming today? Empty talk and token gestures aside, it doesn’t appear to be happening.
Some of the great humanists felt that there are limits to a culture’s ability to suppress our higher needs. They assumed that we are ethical creatures by nature and that we will do the right thing when necessary -- we will transcend materialism given the freedom to do so. That seems a bit far-fetched given the ethical coma in which we find ourselves. Yet the ultimate test is whether or not we can do the right thing by the planet and for future generations.
Ethics and politics have never sat well together. When ‘citizens’ became ‘consumers’, political life became an exercise in keeping the customer happy. The marketing-style democracies we have today have never been tested with planetary issues, such as global warming and climate change, demanding radical and unsettling solutions. In the race against the clock, politicians appear almost comical as they try not to disturb the trivial pursuits propping up our dangerously obsolete socio-economic system.
Global calamity is forcing us into a post-political era in which ethically driven individuals and groups race ahead of the political class. Soon centre-stage will belong to culture change strategists who are able to inspire leaps of consciousness independently of hapless follow-the-leader politics. One such person is Jan Lundberg (www.culturechange.org). Lundberg is an environmental activist and a long-standing voice for pre-emptive culture change who understands that hyper-consumerism trivializes reality and numbs people, even to prospects of their own destruction. In his essay “Interconnectedness of All in the Universe,” he writes: “Unless we broaden and deepen our perception of both the universe and our fellow members of society, we all may perish in persisting to manipulate each other and our ecosystem with materialism and exploitation.”
Culture change strategists all agree about the urgent need to promote “global consciousness,” or “cosmic consciousness” -- a broad worldview with a high level of awareness of the interrelatedness and sacredness of all living things. It is thought that such a universality of mind leads not only to intellectual illumination, but also to heightened moral sensibilities, compassion, and greater community responsibility.
Behind the scenes are some noteworthy organizations working toward the goal of global consciousness, including The World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality (www.globalspirit.org) whose members consist of Nobel laureates, culture theorists, futurists, and spiritual leaders including The Dalai Lama. The group points out the huge backlog of positive human potential that is ready to unleash itself once we assume control and carve healthier cultural pathways for people’s energies. According to their mission statement, the fate of humankind and the ecosystem lies in our ability over the next couple of decades to revise our cultural blueprints in order to foster global consciousness and create new and more “mindful” political and economic models.
Even in the formal education system, a small but growing number of teachers are incorporating a “Global Awareness” perspective, aimed at dissolving cultural barriers and building a sense of global community (e.g., www.globalawareness.com). Some are even encouraging a “global grammar” that links students both to other human beings and to the entire planet.
In the war against trivialization some groups speak of “planetization” as the expansive worldview that can slow our cultural death march. It was French philosopher, paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who coined this term in calling for a global mind that fused our ecological, spiritual, and political energies, and thereby paved the way for harmonious living and lasting peace. The organization Planetization Rising (www.planetization.com) sees this next phase as the only means by which we can ascend to a higher knowledge and thereby find a life-sustaining path for ourselves and the Earth: “It’s the next watershed mark in our evolutionary journey which alone can provide us with the empowerment and insight needed to overcome the gathering forces of ecological devastation, greed, and war which now threaten our survival.”
The cultural indoctrination race is not over. The losers are still winning and the odds for a revolution of consciousness are no more than even. But is there an alternative other than to drown in our own shallowness?
* * * * *
John F. Schumaker is a Christchurch,
Further reading:
"Interconnectedness of all in the universe: Doom and gloom? Your perception calls the tune" by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #74, September 8, 2004
culturechange.org
"Can the ecopsychologically disturbed citizenry question legitimacy of rulers?" (first of two parts) by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #68, July 14, 2004
culturechange.org
"Factors of instability for a disturbed population: Are Americans fukked?" (second of two parts) by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #69, July 24, 2004
culturechange.org
Monday, June 9, 2008
How the War Will End in Iraq
candidates have taken quite different positions concerning the war in
Iraq. This is the wrong place to look. I believe it is fairly certain
that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. And
his views of the war in Iraq are almost the polar opposite of those of
his rival, John McCain. Obama was opposed to the U.S. invasion from
the outset. He believes continuing the war is harmful to everyone - to
the United States, to Iraq, to the rest of the world. And he says he
will seek to withdraw all U.S. troops in sixteen months.
Once in office, Obama will no doubt find that the definition of
withdrawing troops will be a matter of great controversy in the United
States, and that it will be less easy than he claims to achieve his
objective, were it a matter only of the internal politics of the
United States. However, ending the war in Iraq will not be up to
Obama, or up to the United States. The key to ending the war in Iraq
is what happens in Iraqi politics, not in U.S. politics.
I shall make the rash prediction that sometime in 2009 (or 2010 at the
very latest), the Prime Minister of Iraq will be Muqtada al-Sadr, and
that al-Sadr will bring the war to an end. Here is what is most likely
to happen. The world media remind us each day of what are now seen as
definitive cleavages in the Iraqi body politic. There are three main
ethnic groups - the Shi'a, the Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds. Each of
them is primarily located in a specific geographic zone. The main
exception is the capital city of Baghdad, which has mixed Sunni-Shi'a
population, although even here they are geographically concentrated in
specific parts of the city.
In addition, as we all seem to know by now, each of these zones has
internal divisions. There are multiple Shi'a parties, who each seem to
have a militia at its disposal, and have long-standing antagonisms.
The two principal ones are the group led by al-Sadr and the one known
as SCIRI, led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. The Sunni areas have a less
clearcut picture. There are the sheikhs and the ex-Baathists,
connected with various politicians in the Iraqi legislature. And there
is also a small but important group of jihadists, largely non-Iraqi,
linked somehow to al-Qaeda. And in the Kurdish zone, there are two
competing parties, plus Christian and Turkmen minorities.
Actually, this kind of complicated array is no more diverse than one
finds in many countries all around the world. Think of how one would
describe the array of groups involved in U.S. politics. So, if we are
to understand what is likely to happen in Iraq, we have to cut through
this diversity to get at the most salient issue or issues.
It seems to me that the most salient issue in Iraq today for Iraqis is
whether or not Iraq will survive as a unified state and as one that
will be able to recover its strong position, economically and
geopolitically, in the region. Who is against this? Actually, there
are only two groups who are seriously hostile to a renewed and
revivified Iraqi nationalism - the Kurds and the Shi'a forces led by
al-Hakim. The latter dream of an autonomous, indeed independent,
southern Iraq, which they would dominate and within which there are
rich oil resources. They want to cut all ties to the Sunni regions.
And they want to weaken seriously the al-Sadr camp which, although it
is strong in that region, is virtually uncontested in Baghdad. Were
Baghdad cut off from that region, the al-Hakim camp believe they could
eventually destroy the al-Sadr camp.
The Kurds of course dream of an independent Kurdish state. But they
are eminently pragmatic people. They know that a landlocked Kurdish
state would find it hard to survive. Turkey would probably invade, and
so might Iran. The United States would probably do very little, and
would be quite embarrassed by it all. And Israel would be irrelevant.
So the Kurds are clearly ready to settle for continuing de facto
autonomy within a unified Iraq. To be sure, they are still quarreling
with the others over who would control Kirkuk. I doubt that they will
get Kirkuk, and I suspect that the most that they will do about it is
to grumble loudly.
Now let us look at the others. The Sunni Arab forces are also, by and
large, quite realistic. They realize that it is impossible to return
to an Iraq that they govern unilaterally. What they really want now is
their fair share of the state political machinery and of its resources
(since their zone has virtually no oil, at least up to now). While
they cannot hope to have a Sunni-dominated Iraq, they can hope to have
an Iraq restored to its former prominent role in the Arab world, and
they would clearly benefit, individually and collectively, from such a
restoration.
So, in the end, the key group is the Shi'a. Muqtada al-Sadr has been
quite clear from the beginning that he wants a unified Iraq. For one
thing, this is the only way his people in Baghdad can survive and
flourish. For another, he believes in Iraq. To be sure, he and his
followers suffered mightily under the Baathists. But he is open to
dealing with reformed and much weakened Baathists. And he has
demonstrated this clearly over the last two years. He gave moral
support to the people of Falluja when they were under assault by the
U.S. forces two years ago. And they reciprocated in the recent
fighting in Baghdad, when his forces were under assault by the same
U.S. forces.
That leaves one major player, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the
most important spiritual leader of the Shi'a in Iraq. Al-Sistani has
played a careful political game ever since the U.S. invasion. His
priority has been to hold the Shi'a together. Most of the time he says
nothing. But at crucial moments he is ready to intervene. When the
U.S. proconsul of yesteryear, L. Paul Bremer, wanted to create an
Iraqi government more or less by his fiat, al-Sistani insisted on
elections, and the United States had to back down. As a result, he got
a government dominated by the Shi'a. When too much fighting occurred
between the al-Hakim camp and the al-Sadr camp, he brokered a calm.
What does al-Sistani want? Theologically, he wants Najaf, his site, to
become once again the theological center of the Shi'a religious world,
as opposed to Qom in Iran, which has come to assume this role,
especially since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Geopolitically, this
requires a strong Iraq, capable of relating to Iran as an equal. And
to get a strong Iraq, he needs a united Iraq, and essentially one that
gets the U.S. invaders out.
Currently, the United States is trying to get Iraq to sign a long-term
military accord that would guarantee U.S. bases indefinitely. The
current prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is trying to maneuver
this without a vote even by parliament. Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for
a referendum. And so, it seems, is al-Sistani. A referendum, of
course, guarantees a defeat for the accord.
So, in 2009, it would seem logical that al-Sadr, al-Sistani, the
Sunni, and even the Kurds will come together on a plank of national
unity and U.S. total withdrawal without long-term bases. Muqtada
al-Sadr will implement this as Prime Minister. Al-Hakim will be
unhappy, but kept in line by al-Sistani. The Iranians will be
ambivalent. The U.S. public and pundits will be amazed at the relative
calm in Iraq. And President Obama and the Pentagon won't have too much
choice. They will graciously assent. They may even proclaim "victory."
by Immanuel Wallerstein
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Original article:http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm