psychology

From the New York Times: Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss

Hilarious. Best quotes from a "science" article ever.

“Some of our sexuality has evolved to stimulate that same oxytocin system to create female-male bonds,” Dr. Young said, noting that sexual foreplay and intercourse stimulate the same parts of a woman’s body that are involved in giving birth and nursing. This hormonal hypothesis, which is by no means proven fact, would help explain a couple of differences between humans and less monogamous mammals: females’ desire to have sex even when they are not fertile, and males’ erotic fascination with breasts. More frequent sex and more attention to breasts, Dr. Young said, could help build long-term bonds through a “cocktail of ancient neuropeptides,” like the oxytocin released during foreplay or orgasm.

Science that justifies ogling, and also (perhaps) copping a feel = AWESOME. I can hear it now, "Oh sorry did you not appreciate me groping you on this crowded subway car - I was just trying to bond with you." Or. "Honey we need to have sex more often or I will leave you. No, that's not a manipulative threat -- it's science." Can't I just have the "cocktail of ancient neuropeptides" in a collectible mug shaped liked a pair of hooters, then I can even bond with the glass.

Luckily there is another option:

Researchers have achieved similar results by squirting oxytocin into people’s nostrils — not terribly sexy, but it seems to enhance feelings of trust and empathy.

That's right. You can now huff the love feeling.

Insomnia costing economy $20-billion a year. Interestingly are the comments (56 of them), the vast majority of which take offense at the suggestion that one should look at insomnia as a productivity issue, And not the sad result of working in the hyper-stressful global market economy.

I am reading the book 'Bedlam' by Greg Hollingshead this season. Christmas vacation, as far as I am concerned, is much better spent buried in a good book, then taking part in a tradition bedecked with historically satanic rituals that once upon a time scapegoated my people. (Ironically forcing the Jews to eat too much and then run great distances only to purge themselves dramatically was a saturnalia tradition. Then I guess someone invented turkey, gravy, stuffing and cheesy mashed potatoes all of which are obviously too yummy to waste on the Jews?)

The present set of saturnalia traditions we take good advantage of along with every other shopkeeper on the planet.

I am not being a bah humbug. Okay a little. I had lots of turkey last night and today I am going out to find some cheap (cheap!) something or others that I didn't think I needed but if they are marked down enough I will buy anyways.

The real purpose of this entry is to quote from this book I am reading and enjoying very much (between bouts of intense socializing and trying to remember if I brought enough clean pairs of socks).

So Bedlam is a story about one of the first documented cases of Paranoid Schizophrenia, a man named James Tilly Matthews who claimed to be the victim of a "gang" who used magnetic forces to control political outcomes in France and England during the era of both the French Revolution and England's Reformation.

I just finished reading this very nice article by Eric G. Wilson a Professor of English at Wake Forest University. in his article, In Praise of Melancholy the Professor suggests that by focusing too much on simple happiness as an indicator of mental health, Americans (He writes as an American, about his nation.) are losing an important dimension to their being, the dimension of recurrent sorrow, also known as melancholy. By losing the capacity to feel sadness, these "Americans" of Prof Wilson's essay, are foreclosing on their capacity to feel Joy. By sticking to the middle ground, a neither here nor there kind of generalized contentment, there is no acceptance for the bigger, (okay fine transcendent) emotions.

Wilson writes:

Melancholia pushes against the easy "either/or" of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the "both/and." It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to the ability to play in the potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds.

Indeed, the world is much of the time boring, controlled as it is by staid habits. It seems overly familiar, tired, repetitious. Then along comes what Keats calls the melancholy fit, and suddenly the planet again turns interesting. The veil of familiarity falls away. There before us shimmer bracing possibilities. We are called to forge untested links to our environments. We are summoned to be creative.