Empathy model outline

A "clean room" approach to emotional communication


This introduction:

It is difficult to write about psychology because the traditional theories (which are still philosophy-based, using 2500 year old material) still confound observed phenomena, often obviously, such as in the cases of Freud and Watson. I wrote this synopsis of my "clean room" implementation of the empathy model primarily to focus and refresh the learning.  My learning, counseling psychology (masters degree), is being shared on the Wikiversity.

Resource model

• Emotional communication works to create a communication matrix that allows for the collaboration and mutual support that is found in higher organisms.
• Responsibility grows from emotional connections within the environment of family and community in humanity and with many animal groups.
• Those with dysfunctional emotional communication systems, who are unable to collaborate to create resources, are forced to group to use predatory strategies.  They often create predatory cooperation group systems that rely on digital communication (Humbolt squid).  This is organismic fate, which is, in nature, a mistake in the genetic code in higher animals, and especially in humans.  Capital structure, the dominant component of modern human society, leverages emotional communication dysfunction to develop predatory strategies to obtain resources violently such as through theft and through war.

Evolutionary empathy

• The emotion and emotional communication are ancient and below (or behind) the neocortex (mouse, cortex, PAG)
• Higher empathy appears to be in brain networks, such as in the pyramid cells of the neocortex, and  leads in two directions:

1. Compassion for others outside of the immediate family to the community and on to distant people--"intangible" relationships
2. Collaboration becomes so sophisticated combining analytic and emotionally communicative facilities to combine reason and affection into a technical responsibility-based desired ability to create resources

• In the opposite direction, the unempathic forces take this product, remove the community of knowledge and, in the process, natural responsibility so as to be able to direct  technology toward a predatory purpose: to take other's resources.  In recent centuries this has been in factories and mechanized warfare, and, more recently, to reduce productive society to a pure consumption mode.

Natural organisms are the successful result of evolution; organisms that are not finely-tuned in the ways produced by evolution to meet needs required by the environment are genetically defective and hence dysfunctional.  In higher organisms, emotional communication is the most important evolutionary refinement, and, in nature, emotional communication dysfunctions result in social isolation, and hence far fewer opportunities to reproduce.  This allows natural organisms to keep moving forward in evolution, and keeps social cohesion strong.  In contrast to nature, modern human society does not isolate the emotionally dysfunctional, and, in many cases, attempts to force them to become successful, which tends to place those with emotional communication defectives in control positions--with consistently bad and sometimes horrific results.  Further, they are often encouraged to reproduce for reasons of spirituality or human capital, which assures that future generations will be affected.

The model was initially based on empathy basics such elephant family observations and the monkey colonies of Cayo Santiago where members who unable to interact collaboratively, effectively forcing them to steal to survive, are marginalized. 

Predatory relationships

• Predatory-normal: victimize through a relationship such as an abusive marriage.
• Predatory-predatory: find normally empathic people to exploit. 

Someone may enter into a predatory-normal relationship, have children, and then find and marry a fellow-predator, a better "match," who can be a partner in an exploitative business.  Since predator-predator relationships lack the empathy that defines normal relationships, they are dependent on a resource stream that can very likely be defined in terms of capital.  Their relationships with their children will fall into the same patterns. 

The normal, or victim, in the relationship will often attempt to "fix" the predatory partner with the misconception that the predator has within the components necessary for normalcy, and will attempt to re-write the predators thinking, especially since a mutual relationship is more logical, and hence beneficial.  This is encouraged by capital structure, and especially by religion, which often views all as having a "holy" spirit or soul.  For capital, the goal is the development of valued human assets, or resources.  The process, which can be thought of as mapping, will often work temporarily, but the predator's basic mode will always return, forcing the normal partner to try again.  In effect, the normal partner "paints a pretty picture" of the relationship, a process which, in fact, is a cognitive disorder.

Children will attempt to reconstruct these defective relationships in future relations such as marriage if the consciousness has been mapped by a predatory parent.  With time, they see the ill-logic and marry appropriately.

Not surprisingly, as we know that societal structures have been refined from family structure, modern civilization often fits this pattern especially as we find it in Plato's Republic.

Mediated glandular responses

• Creating benefits through good work, especially through collaboration, produces the benefits of life, and with them good feelings that are the result of positive glandular responses to that beneficial work.
• Bad results produce bad responses that are negative glandular responses

The emotional benefit from the effort of developing physical benefits, especially through collaboration, gives people (and perhaps most higher organisms) a good feeling that is provided by the glandular systems of the brain in parallel to the physical benefits.  People who are consistently unable to obtain the benefits of life (possibly because they are not connected to the normal community process of creating benefits such as occurs in the case of an emotional communication dysfunction), will often attempt to use some means to create the same good feeling that accompanies natural benefits.  They attempt to mediate a response synthetically to obtain the same positive glandular response that beneficial activity provides.  Gambling is an example, as a gambler pays a lot for the opportunity to be able to feel the benefits of winning, despite having to lose many times to do so.  "Hard" drug users short-circuit the entire benefit-creation process by producing the glandular response directly, such as with a chemical injection.  In some cases they may take this mediated path this because their brains cannot produce positive glandular responses through any other means, such as through beneficial success. 

Poverty often precludes the ability to succeed, and hence the ability to naturally "feel good" as a benefit of collaborative success.  This, logically, would make it a cause for mediated and short-curciuted attempts to create positive glandular responses.  Poverty should then result in high levels of gambling and "hard" drug use.

Emotional VS character (digital) communication

• Conceptual versus sequential
• White matter versus purely executive function

The necessity, or urgency, of predator-victim model pushes the most important component aside, which is the underlying difference between the two.  Normalcy, or empathy, is the goal of evolution, which all you can find in nature.  Normalcy has slipped in humanity to possibly 80% with 20% only able to function in an exploitative mode.  Why?  In our time, cocaine, or powered narcissism, is probably the most to blame.  Throughout history humanity has been slipping away from natural appreciation, which is highly complex, to calculating thought, which is sequential.  Sequential roughly relates to linear thought, which is how sequential-only thinkers think of their thought, but it is not linear.  It is prone to error causing dead stops in logic, but continues in the crooked path that normal people are expected to accept--or else.

Sequential thought could be considered executive function, and complex thought all the other parts of the brain usually detected as white matter.  White matter is insulating fat on neurons that allows neural electrical activity to accelerate, so complex thought could be said to require a pick-up in processing speed to achieve the "critical mass" necessary for complexities such as higher emotions.  This is described as empathy and is usually attributed to the specialized spindle and mirror neurons, but many, if not most, animals have empathy without these neurons and interrelate without them, such mice and our pets do.  Researchers find it in the more ancient parts of the brain, and we find sequential communication in the very ancient Humbolt Squid with its humboldt squid chromatophores.  Those without the ability to reach neural "critical mass" are unable to conceive of what it is and attempt to thought purely in terms of sequential, usually calculating thought.  The vast healthy majority (80-90%) that is able to reach "critical mass" tends to take it for granted.

Mechanical and synaptic descriptions: Lewin and Boyton 

• The activity is in the spaces between us, much like Lewin attempts to describe using physics, but for corporate organizational psych, a behaviorist area.
• Extensions of that into person to person connections in psychoanalysis, or transference: Boyton

Constructivism

• The community of knowledge is where home is
• Loss of the natural and historical community of knowledge leads to moral collapse and mental illness
  

The economic phenomena of "churning" forces constant job-change, and in many cases, constant migration, guaranteeing the destruction of the established communities of knowledge that define human society and culture.  The churning effect results in the creation, or "development," of synthetic communities that are linked to non-productive mall-type commercial centers that attempt to imitate culture as a lure for resources for consumption.  Missing entirely is the basis of human collaboration, and hence responsibility and morality.  What is substituted for morality is synthetic: the rule of law, which, of course, does nothing to support mental health.  As this type of capital construct invariably lacks a productive component and functions purely on consumption, it has to locate remote resources to exploit to prevent economic collapse.

Counter-empathy
Un-empathy, the lack of emotional communication abilities, or emotional communication dysfunction (ECD) which is a noun and static.
Anti-empathy, action based on this dysfunction, which is the obtaining of resources by taking instead of by contributing collaboratively. 

The model tends to define anti-empathic phenomena in evolutionary terms, which would point to DNA.  Sociology and psychology more more demanding; the negative results of anti-empathy would have to be described in social or mental context.  Following the resources component of the model, it is likely that aggressiveness would result from a perception that resources may not be available, or that there is some threat, probably as a result of resource unavailability.  Since most organisms are healthy, including humans, this perception will likely be a misconception; in other words, paranoia.  Within the context of the Internet, where the model is being developed, there have been examples (that were easily documented) of paranoia being used to actually generate small examples of humanity's two big problems: bias and hate.

Society moves from a mutually supportive community to an un-empathic capital environment where controllers exclude normally collaborative people (Lewis Mumford's democratic technic) who created the benefits society into desperation.  Their contributions, or innovations, are transferred to the unempathic, Plato's upper layers, and the process is imitated with exponentially declining success usually protected with misinformation, preserved with exclusion strategies such as the high stakes testing of human capital systems (Confucian/Mandarin testing), and if not that, violence.

Layered Model
This is a gift from recent information technology; the Internet protocol stack model that describes, in abstraction, simultaneous yet different events, and sometimes seemingly unrelated events strike on each levels necessary for Internet communication.  Each has its own nature and purpose, yet each layer operates as a component of every action. Comparison of the "IP stack" with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

As a teacher in an autistic school, I learned to think of external human functions as abilities, and the underlying mechanisms as facilities that enable these functions, or give people abilities.  Most obviously missing in the severely autistic is speech; Chomsky describes speech ability as the output of underlying functionality that is somehow independent within the mind (and brain). 

The layered approach to digital Internet communication can be use to show how each of the interrelating components of each mental action can be abstracted into layers, starting from the very lowest neural activity and moving upwards to the point that the mental activity is communicated. , from the neural layers (which are analogous to circuits in many ways), up through the emotional layers, out to the surrounding environment (where emotional actions influence others), and ultimately upward to influence to the nature of human society.  From there a layered model can be used to show how actions affect the surrounding environment and ultimately society.  Healthy thoughts initiate with the actions of well-functioning neurons, and ultimately positively influence the surrounding environment. Likewise, badly-formed thoughts arising from poorly-functioning neurology will have unhealthy effects on the surrounding environment.  The model can abstract the effects of defective neurology in important places to show how they can, and often do, have exceptionally bad results for the World.

They layered, or stack, approach quickly brings the model to the sociological level.  Large organizations typically lack empathy as organizational control requires that executives may have to exploit people for the resources necessary to keep very large structures growing to offset the inefficiency caused by their overbearing managerial superstructures.  Within large, and sometimes small organizations, managers are required to have a cold approach to others as they may have to fire them.  In general, the empathy of an organization is proportional to the distance from people of its supporting foundation to the control center at the top, but small organizations are in no way immune.  Empathy quickly disappears within the first few layers of a controlling superstructure, or capital structure.  This was described in Michael Moore's Roger and Me.

Facilities (neural functional systems) produce abilities (neural constructs) that facilitate (predispose) unique actions to allow a person to produce a self (self-actualization).  The ability to speak leverages emotional communication, but does not define it.  The use of speech for emotional communication lies above the emotional constructs that utilize it for emotional communication, so, in a sense, the ability to speak combines both underlying speech facilities and expressive abilities.  The constructs that utilize speech can use other communication abilities, or channels, such as eye contact and touch.

Missing mental facilities result in mental disabilities, but, in the empathic model, mental disabilities are only limitations if they are so deep that they actually prevent the development of empathic constructs, and hence prevent emotional communication within the social environment.  A person may be disabled in significant ways, including communication abilities such as speech, but if they can develop and reflect emotion communication constructs, that is, to communicate empathically, they can always rely on the community support that comes from the responsibility of empathic people.

As an example, Down's syndrome victims have nothing wrong with them from the perspective of the model because they typically have an ability, and often a strong desire, to connect emotionally.  What we see as a problem is that they are missing an executive function facility that helps us moderate friendliness and use caution specifically to assure that we are not victimized by organisms that have no empathy: in humanity, the anti-empathic.

However, there is a problem with empathy.  Empathic people, through higher empathy, often attempt to provide support to the emphatically dysfunctional to empower them, usually as an extension of religion or spirituality combined with concepts of human capital.  As a result, people who outwardly appear normal, may in fact be disabled in terms of emotional communication, and despite this will be encouraged, or even forced, to attempt to succeed beyond the scope of their natural abilities.  The misconception is that people with empathic defects can be empowered to be responsible in the sense that they can be made to contribute to the capital structure.  As they cannot fully function at expected levels, they become angry when they are pushed beyond their natural abilities, and even if they have a degree of natural empathy, once they are empowered beyond their capabilities, they effectively become cruel.

Implementation
The empathy model is fairly easy to implement.  As a resource model, problems, in the most general form, result from someone, or a cooperative group, attempting to obtain resources non-collaboratively as a predator; someone else is being victimized.  This can be anywhere, including the family, as family members are sometimes thought of, by people lacking empathy, as assets.  FGM in ancient African nations is an example. 

Extending this idea of a person as a family asset is human capital; capital structures see humans if it can profit from them, and liabilities if it cannot.  Most institutions are structured around this, and as such, are looking to benefit people so that they can "contribute" to the national (and now global) capital structure's growth.  Often those who cannot succeed in similar school-type didactic structures, are pushed so hard that it is the "desire" of the capital structure for their success that is the cause of their problems; and hence the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

If it is difficult to find an actual resource benefit for abuse, then the next step is to look for a mediated "feeling" of benefit, or glandular response; many may be abusive because abuse has benefited them in the past, given them the good feeling of success, and they reproduce the feeling by repeating the action; this is a sadistic mediated glandular response.

The paranoia component has been addressed for several millennia; forgiveness is necessary to prevent the paranoia resulting from past transgressions, or "trespasses" as Christians say, from continuing a cycle of paranoia.

In all cases, whether predatory, victimized, or simply normally happy, happiness is dependent on a productive position that is within the scope of the person.

Contemporary-versity

Singly the most important thing is freedom of speech, and this is what distinguishes the Wikiversity (WV) from the Wikipedia (WP).  In the WV it is encased in the concept of original research, or OR.  Obviously I am referring to cold fusion (CF), but I am also talking about my research on the WP that has given real insight into the underlying mechanisms of humanity's big problem of hate.  (It seems reasonable to assume that energy-hungry humanity would have implemented it decades ago!)

Having said that, the successful anti-free speech strategy has been to utilize free speech itself as the vehicle for limiting it; this strategy is not only universal, it is so successful that it has consistently installed the non-productive in positions of control over normal productive populations to operate them un-empathically as a single organic mass in every single case--even in revolution!  (In keeping with free speech, it is necessary at this point to overtly state that free speech does not include the right to censorship.  This has to be stated in this way because censors are unable to view omnidirectionally; they are defective in this way, and, as a result, are pathologically biased and, hence, undesirable here--or anywhere else.  If there is information removal, it has to be done by consensus; three un-consensual removals lead to a lifetime ban, with previous bad-will being the enforcer.)

A concrete example
I cannot go forward without a concrete relevant example; I am forced to be critical to be logical.  Slogging through the mess of CF, I came across what I have recently identified as the reactionary rebellion within the open forum to dominate the open form, (Mumford's Democratic Technic), for the benefit of elite (Mumford's Authoritarian Technic) or the oligarchy to everyone else: Several of the cold fusion supporters compare themselves to Socrates.  Socrates is inseparable from Plato, and Aristotle spills the beans by taking credit for others' work, especially Hippocrates, and then convinces Alexander that non-Greeks are objects like "plants to be cut down."  It is impossible to be a humanist and a genocidal racist simultaneously as each requires radically different neural constructs; Aristotle was faking; he was as mentally isolated as Plato was. While their self-comparisons with Socrates and the Platonics may seem narcissistic, it is far more than that, it is clever.  By playing the outsider or underdog, they can follow the path of those who established Western Civilization; he is attempting to take the well-trodden revolutionary path to domination.  It does not matter if he, himself, believes in CF; his absurdity is his power; if he is challenged he will behave absurdly, precisely as Ayn Rand's characters do in the Fountainhead: her rebel oligarchs who seek to crush the unfeeling, corrupt mass of humanity.

That this strategy should actually work comes as a surprise to the average person as it is so counter-intuitive.  Key to understanding this strategy is perceiving of it is a picture within a picture.  Athens used a "naval tax" (based on its successful naval defense of Greece) to build the Parthenon, its democratic forum.  It implemented (Mumford's) diffuse tribute collection system that Rome would later use to build its Empire.  In other words, to build its democracy, Athens had to rip-off Sparta using tribute collection, or taxes, giving the Socratic-Platonic school (or the Academy from which all education descends) the rationale for treachery against the democracy of Athens (that unruly mass!) to, quite significantly and ultimately, create our Western oligarchy on behalf of the Spartan aristocracy.  The Confucian structure of Asia must be the same; we specifically know from the Vietnamese revolutions that the exam-filtered Mandarins viewed the normal, productive population as a nameless organic mass to be exploited; normal minds don't think this way, but will have to soon, as time is running out for humanity.

Restoration of humanity
Because Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle gave us such simple structures, each of us intuitively knows what to dismantle.  We also know that we as normal people can provide for ourselves all the basics (good-tasting food, attractive clothes, comfortable dwellings, and stimulating entertainment) except one: medicine (or perhaps, Medicine).  Socrates' oligarchy has successfully created a monopoly from this, the very thing we need for life, even though the majority of medicines come from the shamans of the forests.  Another related important monopoly is Education, which is of course, closely related to Medicine as it controls not only the factual information, but, more importantly, the certification system.

To be able to move past the misnamed "modern" but wholly ancient system, to our also misnamed "post-modern" contemporary system, we have half of what we need: an Education system!  From this we can build a Medicine system specifically targeted at the oligarch's core medical monopoly.  Also keeping the basics of food, shelter, clothing, and entertainment moving forward in the fashionable post-modern mode of "DIY."

To succeed we have to assure that we do not fall into Socrate's or Rand's "picture within a picture."  We need to assure that our rebellion is not an oligarchy in the making bringing us full circle back into the present state of disaster.  The solution therefore is not retaliation for all the evils of oligarchy and aristocracy (collectively the elite), but, as we showed this summer at the Rainbow Gathering, to find level-appropriate highly-productive niches for all--especially the mentally ill.  This applies especially for the overly intelligent (executive functioning) obsessively-compulsively driven (with broken brain networks), so that they don't attempt to succeed where they cannot by grabbing power because they cannot collaborate and hence be normally productive. 

Therapy
This theraputic solution has a problem; because available production positions are diminishing as a result of oligarchic expansion, there are fewer and fewer available productive niches for the defective oligarchs.  Such positions were increasing through the 1950s and 60s, but the growth of the elite and guardian structures has shrunk the productive layer until finally it was shipped out of the country.  We though we had a solution by implementing (this) information technology; but the oligarchy cleverly reversed this effort to create productive positions in the US, the "new economy," by handing information technology over to an especially hateful uber cast on the opposite side of the planet--possibly deliberately to halt this path to productivity for the defective oligarchs.  They, the oligarchs, understand their minds far better than we, the mass of normal people, ever will; they will always be a step ahead of our normal attempts at therapy, as it is their disease that we seek to cure, and especially because we are forced to practice within their maze-like structure.

What we have to understand is that people don't deliberately do bad things, they lack the ability to function at the top levels that wholly natural organisms do.  They synthesize as Plato did rather than organize as normal people do.  Evolution shows us that each organism operates at its full capacity; any mutations will result in an inability to pass along mutant genes, and also probably death.  We in society can prevent these unfortunate deaths, typically from starvation, but we tend to allow the mutations to reproduce, creating a humanity that may be as much as 20 or 30 percent defective, especially in terms of emotional communication and brain networks.  This kindness has to continue and increase, but the mutant reproduction must stop.  As Jon Scot showed us, "evil" is not so much evil as an absence of "good."  People can only function within the scope of their abilities; the high-intelligent whose executive are cut off from their lower ancient empathic constructs because of damaged neural pathways really need to live within their emotionally limited scope, as otherwise they will hurt the normally functioning majority.

In other words, the therapeutic strategy is that nobody gets hurt.  But finding productive niches for the compulsively-driven will prove problematic as production in the West has been halted and handed over to ill-prepared agrarians in Asia (who don't as of yet understand the concepts of critical inquiry into the morality of production) by the compulsively-driven.  This creates a possibly insurmountable problem that reminds me of violent revolution: struggle for the means of production.  I cannot imagine a solution that is non-violent as every attempt at non-violence in the global arena has met with violence from the globalist guardians through swat teams, billy clubs, arrests, and tear gas; and reverse violence from the rear by so-called anarchists who are merely terrorist egotists, and in my experience, fascistic themselves.

Latest empathy-evolution-oligarchy

From the free desktop of John Bessa:

I strongly believe in the evolutionary model that shows that apes, monkeys and elephants have the "higher" empathy that most humans have because of special neurons enabling the brain networks.  Whales have even higher empathy as they have a set of more advanced neurons possibly to link together parts of their huge brains.

Mice have "ancient" empathy, as the basic affection component is ancient and in the lower brain closer to the nervous system, but they are shown to have a high level of empathy, along with other "critters."

So it is all love, but higher empathy is able to plug in advanced thinking (in the frontal brain) into the long-standing love that animals have (that is nearer to the spinal chord).

The evolutionary purpose of empathy can easily be said to help families care for their children, and, I can say that there is a "freaky" tendency for higher empathy to form along different evolutionary branches.  Birds descend from dinosaurs, and they have empathy.  Doves, for instance, symbolize love for us.  If there are aliens out there, they (or perhaps most of them) have higher empathy!

Higher empathy boils down to the idea that higher animals have the ability to care for community, and in the case of humans, care for the World.  There seems to be a "will" of evolution to create beauty, such as flowers, and the ability to appreciate this beauty, which is very spiritual if you think about it.

The only "rub" in the theory is that a certain percentage of humans do not have this ability to connection especially with respect affection, as they act partly or purely as predators (1).  The more stupid of the predators get locked up; if they are clever, then can drive whole nations into a predatory mode.

My explanation for that is that they somehow did not get the necessary facilities to assure higher empathy, either at birth or during growth, and they have been able to leverage various human components to get into positions of control.  

Another factor, is that the non-empathic do not "feel" the pain that they inflict on others, so there is nothing, except possibly a strict upbringing or time in jail, that will prevent them from hurting others.  If they are especially clever, they can find loopholes in protection laws, or, if they are especially clever, they can add "riders" to laws that effectively nullify them.

And if they are especially--especially--especially clever (clever cubed), they can "liberalize" the laws as the Neo-liberal former US President George W. Bush did, by, for instance, effectively legalizing torture in a nation founded on outlawing that kind of behavior (2).

(Bush is ESTJ, or perhaps, Bushes are that.)

The most important factor, which is also a form of loophole is empathy itself.  Nature requires that you follow the evolutionary path, which, for community- and family-oriented organisms, means being responsible to the family and group.  Animals that are not responsible tend to get socially rejected, or at least harassed to isolation, preventing them from passing along their mutated non-empathic genes.

In humanity, we try to give them democratic rights, even giving them special compensation, and, most amazingly, empower them by encouraging them to achieve responsibility in the community (3).

So let's cut to the chase.  What is the therapy for people who lack empathy.

That is exceedingly simple to me, and I tested/observed my solution at the most recent national Rainbow gathering.  I have camped there with the "fairies" at the gathering for decades, now (4).  They are the descendent's of the gay rights movement from San Francisco's Castro, and NYC's Stonewall Rebellion.

This year a particular guy, who I will tentatively define as bipolar in nature (just for background reference), attempted to steer the camp towards a Hollywood version of primitiveness, that included sex shows (5).

My reaction is that this is not what the family-minded Rainbow Family wants in its culture.  In the bigger picture, I saw an example of how gay culture can isolate itself from normal culture by making something public that is naturally private.

What happened was simple.  The more sensible fairie members pressured him to lay off the Hollywood sex-savage-satan thing, and he very successfully transitioned into the guy who manages the fire and what was on the grill.

What happened, in my view, is that he gave up his unsuccessful attempt to be "great," and lowered his expectations to his abilities, as a bipolar person, which was to focus on an important role within the community that is not socially demanding.

What I am saying is that society demands that we all be "the best," or suffer highly-reduced positions in life that makes us feel like slaves or, even worse, components of a vast machine.  Options are becoming the slave-master, as this bipolar attempted, or rebelling completely.

I am also saying that the solution to the problem as I describe it: people just need to reach their normal levels (6).

I think it is easy to imagine that the people who set up this system are highly unempathic; the word system is telling, they are systematic and not emotionally caring: thinking and not feeling, or T's,

Rebellion introduces another rub.  Rebels are marginalized from society, and, while many are attempting to liberate society, many are trying to set up a splinter group (7).    

Moving to evolution theory--since the majority of organisms are normal, even in twisted human society, it seems that rebels, if genuinely interested helping the majority of people, or the normally empathic, achieve democratic rights, they can count on support of their support.  But if they are rebelling against the majority of people, because they believe the norm to be bad and against them (as gays and lesbians might) then they are actually working towards the opposite of democratic liberation, which is fascism in Western civilization.

This is were a key factor comes in (and why I wrote all this).  I was studying the evolutionary paths of the thinking VS feeling dichotomy, in terms of "reason" VS "sense" -- or rational versus sensual thinking, I looked at logic and the Socratic school.

I ran smack into Plato through his seminal work, "Plato's Republic."  I instantly identified the model for the modern corporation (as a technologist I worked for an endless list of global banks), and also the model for Fascism.  This latter lineage is based on Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" that places Roman colonial fascism as the source of our problems.  And also the ancient Roman historian Plutarch, who confirms that Rome's strength was built by implementing Plato's Republic (8).

I see the Socratic/Platonic school as a splinter group that complained about repression but actually formed the basis for repression that is the primary problem with Western Civilization.  This is the most significant component of our society, and it was created by a splinter group.

This a very interesting idea, and if it is true, then similar groups that started as splinter groups in other civilizations (Asian, Indian, Muslim) would necessarily have to follow the same development path.

I have not gotten that far yet, but I can give an embryonic example.

For centuries, Japan was a peace-loving liberal Buddhist dynasties kept Japan peaceful with activities like flower-arranging, rock gardening, and abstract pottery design.  The leadership wanted to keep Japan that way by isolating it, but an especially liberal dynasty allowed Chinese Confucianism to form a school.  

This Confucian school would ultimately become the University of Tokyo, and ultimately take over Japan through its military studies program.  With the Confucian takeover became brutal, ultimately destroying China during WWII.  

The change converted Japan from a pacifist isolationist country (like Bhutan is now) to an expansion-istic capital-colonial economy, and the change was actually the fault of the USA (9).

In this context, I think it is important to note that the Confucianists invented the examination systems that in Asian determined, undemocratically, who would be in charge (10).  High scorers would be come Mandarins, the leaders and poets; middle scorers would become doctors and administrators, and low scorers would be sent back to the nameless mass of people, or the masses (11).

Links:
Empathy Model
Empathic Dariwnism
Capital Structure

(1) From quantifying observed driving and other behaviors, I believe that the unempathic percentage may be as high as 30%.

(2)

(3)   I am hopelessly heterosexual, and I am not certain why I gravitate to them, and fairies seemed to wonder why too, but got used to me being a straight among them.

(4) This defines libertarianism and ego-centric anarchism, as opposed to social liberalism and social anarchy.

(5) This cannot possibly exist as nature is evolutionary, and not satanic.

(6) This is something I think gay and lesbian culture needs to look at to help end anti-g/l bias.

(7) Plutarch goes farther, saying that the Socratic/Platonic school, called both the Academy and Lyceum, was repressed by the democratic Athenians, and, further, that the Athenians repressed all scholars and philosophers. Plutarch is obviously lying about the repression, as ancient Athens was the most liberal society ever, encouraging anyone with a significant thought contribute that thought for the benefit of the city's culture.  We also know that Athens was exceptionally gay-friendly, and it is believed that they Lyceum was largely gay.

(8) We call them "special," and I believe from observing an FASD who was pushed to get certification, which made him become controlling and cruel based on being pushed.  But if he remained at his pre-teen level, he was friendly and fun.

(9) The Western "high stakes" testing serves the same purpose, which is called human capital, and Japan is held as the model

(10) The Western communists are, or were, Platonic (as Marks was reading the classics), and they thought of "the people" as a mass to be dictated to, or over.

(11) The change happened just after an American fleet threatened to destroy Tokyo if Japan did not join the global trade of the time, this was during the 1800s.

Recognition, Thirdness, and the Mirror Neuron System

Relational synapse of the mirror neuron system

Jessica Boyatt talks about the mirror neuron system as a "relation synapse" that is part of the relational psychoanalysis (below, 2009).  The mirror neurons enable a connection that is in "the physical and experiential space" (p.2) in between people who are communicating, such as a therapist and client.  It can also be the space surrounding the members of crowd, or what she calls a social "bubble."  What emerges from the "bubble" becomes part of eveyone's experience, and is the cause for more communication, and more experience construction.  The quality of the experience, I imagine, would depend on its context and the emotions experienced in the "bubble."

"Conscious verbal articulation" Boyatt says, "is the tip of the iceberg."  There is "implicit, nonconscious communication" in the bubble that is derived from experience.  This reminds me of the constructivist "community of knowledge" where "knowledge is a complex of meanings continually negotiated" (Constructivism and education).  Boyatt calls communication within her system "languaging" and she says that it operates at a much higher speed than normal articulated langauge.  She describes in the context of the therapist/client relationship, but I would probably see it more explicitly in romance, and hence highly more emtional--perhaps emotional communication.


Boyatt, J. (2009). Relational Synapse: Recognition, Thirdness, and the Mirror Neuron System. Washington, District of Columbia, US: American Psychological Association.

Depression: Non-psychotheraputic therapies

It is widely agreed that two neurotransmitter systems are implicated in depression: serotonin (5HT) and norepinephrine (NE).  While many psychotherapeutic strategies have been adapted for the treatment of depression, the therapy of choice is the medication that makes existing serotonin more available by preventing its re-uptake, or the SSRI (Peterson, 2004). 

In depression, the brain networks become hyperactive, and the serotonin enhancing medication "calms down" the activity, helping the brain networks normalize and allowing a return to normal cognitive-affective functioning.  The SSRI medication helps reduce the dysfunction, or dysregulation, that causes depressive symptoms, especially uncontrollable worry (Peterson, 2004).

Sometimes there is no benefit from SSRI medication, and a common alternate strategy is non-SSRI medications such as bupropion, mirtazapine, or venlafaxine (Papakostas, 2008).  Mirtazapine and venlafaxine affect norepinephrine function (they are called noradrenergic) where norepinephrine is shown to reduce neuron excitability (Zhaoyang, 2009), and hence help keep the brain "calm" in ways achieved by SSRIs.

In the case of seasonal affective depression (SAD), a third medication, bupropion, is used to prevent the re-uptake of dopamine rather than serotonin (Modell, 2005).  SAD is a "hibernation-like response" typically triggered by the change of seasons that creates a desire, even craving, for sleep (Morano, 2003).  Bupropion is considered an "activating" medication (Rye, 1998) as it promotes the stimulating effects of dopamine.  Bupropion is also effective in treating the "sleepiness and fatigue" associated with major depression (Papakostas, 2008), which implies that there are widely differing seemingly contradictory types, or perhaps components, of depression requiring divergent treatment strategies.

Treatment resistant depression describes depression that won't respond effectively to medication.  While counselors remain a lifeline for the deeply depressed who cannot respond to treatment two electric stimulation therapies are used to stimulate the brain: electroconvulsive therapy and Deep brain stimulation (Bewernick, 2010).
 

References

Bewernick, B., Hurlemann, R., Matusch, A., Kayser, S., Grubert, C., Hadrysiewicz, B., et al. (2010). Nucleus accumbens deep brain stimulation decreases ratings of depression and anxiety in treatment-resistant depression. Biological Psychiatry, 67(2), 110-116. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.09.013.

Modell, J., Rosenthal, N., Harriett, A., Krishen, A., Asgharian, A., Foster, V., et al. (2005). Seasonal affective disorder and its prevention by anticipatory treatment with Bupropion XL. Biological Psychiatry, 58(8), 658-667. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.07.021.

Morano, R. (2003). The sun also rises. Better Nutrition, 65(1), 46. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Papakostas, G., Fava, M., & Thase, M. (2008). Treatment of SSRI-resistant depression: A meta-analysis comparing within-versus across-class switches. Biological Psychiatry, 63(7), 699-704. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.08.010.

Petersen, T., Papakostas, G., Mahal, Y., Guyker, W., Beaumont, E., Alpert, J., et al. (2004). Psychosocial functioning in patients with treatment resistant depression. European Psychiatry, 19(4), 196-201. doi:10.1016/j.eurpsy.2003.11.006.

Rye, D., Dihenia, B., & Bliwise, D. (1998). Reversal of atypical depression, sleepiness, and REM-sleep propensity in narcolepsy with bupropion. Depression & Anxiety (1091-4269), 7(2), 92-95. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Zhaoyang, X., Pan-Yue, D., Rojanathammanee, L., Chuanxiu, Y., Grisanti, L., Permpoonputtana, K., et al. (2009). Noradrenergic depression of neuronal excitability in the entorhinal cortex via activation of TREK-2 K⁺ Channels. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 284(16), 10980-10991. doi:10.1074/jbc.M806760200.

Ethical issues of anxiety disorders

Many adolescents (and children) require proactive care for anxiety disorders.  In the most optimistic cases, early intervention can stem serious problems later on.  But for many suffering from anxiety disorders, proactive care means that their rights are limited, and they may be coerced into therapy and medications that they don't want.  There is endless ethical "gray area" between the two extremes: a happy alliance with the therapist, and an  apparent removal of basic rights.

In the happier purely voluntary form of therapy the counselor/client relationship is called the therapeutic alliance, "a collaborative nature of the partnership between counselor and client" (Hawaii State Department of Health), counseling ethics are easily applied as boundaries to the relationship to assure that the therapy is beneficial and that no harm comes to the client.

This is described succintly as the "four principles for biomedical ethics" (Westra, 2009): respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice.

The phrase "no harm" (Sheppard, 1999), may be added to stress nonmaleficence.  When clients are harming themselves or may be harmed, this comes to mean "preventing harm," and ethical issues become difficult.

Another more subtle situation that equally relevant situation involves what treatment is used, specifically prescribed drugs, rather than if treatment is used.

An approach to these contradictions is to show that adolescents that need to be controlled, have that need because they are victims.  Adolescents who have been sexually assaulted are at risk for PTSD (Lawyer, 2006), and PTSD as often as not leads to anger (Saigh, 2007).  That may require involuntary treatment if the anger is externalized as violence.  Angry adolsecents usually come from angry families (Avci,  2010), and  "school refusal" is most often positively reinforced by family members or cohorts from the surrounding environment (Kearney, 2004).  Other adolescents who "refuse school" are anxiously reacting to real threats at school (Dube, 2009).  Professionals agonize when young assault victims have to be placed in forensic units, really prisons, when they become threatening or self-injurious as a result of their victimization (Welsh, 1998).

Self-injury may be the most dramatic of issues, along with often related suicide, and it is usually an effort to distract from the pain of depression, or the result of low self-esteem depression (Dickstein, 2009) from negative appraisal by others, or assault (Weismoore, 2010).  Effectively, they have neurotransmitter dysfunctions (Dickstein, 2009).

Perhaps the best information is that adolescent "delinquents" have normal empathy, and that they apparently suffer from executive function disorders (Lardén, 2006).  The stresses that they face force them to limit their cognizance of others' feelings, and there is no self-reported empathy gap between girls and boys. 











Avci, R., & Güçray, S. (2010). An Investigation of violent and nonviolent adolescents' family functioning, problems concerning family members, anger and anger expression. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 10(1), 65-76. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Dickstein, D. (2009). A closer look at non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. (Cover story). Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter, 25(12), 1-6. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Dube, S., & Orpinas, P. (2009). Understanding excessive school absenteeism as School Refusal Behavior. Children & Schools, 31(2), 87-95. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Hawaii State Department of Health (2010). Therapeutic alliance curriculum activity quiz. Retrieved September 16, 2010, from http://www.amhd.org/About/ClinicalOperations/MISA/Training/Therapeutic%20Alliance%20Curriculum%20activity%20quiz.pdf

Kearney, C. (2007). Forms and functions of school refusal behavior in youth: an empirical analysis of absenteeism severity. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 48(1), 53-61. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01634.x.

Lardén, M., Melin, L., Holst, U., & Långström, N. (2006). Moral judgement, cognitive distortions and empathy in incarcerated delinquent and community control adolescents. Psychology, Crime & Law, 12(5), 453-462. doi:1068-316X print/ISSN 1477-2744.

Lawyer, S., Ruggiero, K., Resnick, H., Kilpatrick, D., & Saunders, B. (2006). Mental health correlates of the victim-perpetrator relationship among-interpersonally victimized adolescents. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21(10), 1333-1353. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Saigh, P., Yasik, A., Oberfield, R., & Halamandaris, P. (2007). Self-Reported Anger Among Traumatized Children and Adolescents. Journal of Psychopathology & Behavioral Assessment, 29(1), 29-37. doi:10.1007/s10862-006-9026-9.

Sheppard, G., Schulz, W. and McMahon, S. (1999). The code of ethics. Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association: Ottawa.

Weismoore, J., & Esposito-Smythers, C. (2010). The Role of Cognitive Distortion in the Relationship Between Abuse, Assault, and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury. Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 39(3), 281-290. doi:10.1007/s10964-009-9452-6.

Welsh, J. (1998). In whose ‘best interests’? Ethical issues involved in the moral dilemmas surrounding the removal of sexually abused adolescents from a community-based residential treatment unit to a locked, forensic adult psychiatric unit. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 27(1), 45-51. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.1998.00502.x.

Westra, A., Willems, D., & Smit, B. (2009). Communicating with Muslim parents: “the four principles” are not as culturally neutral as suggested. European Journal of Pediatrics, 168(11), 1383-1387. doi:10.1007/s00431-009-0970-8.

Self-esteem

Kutob reports low self-esteem in elementary and middle school girls in California and Arizona manifested as "low academic performance, social isolation, depression, anxiety, fatigue, headaches, and stomachaches"  (Kutob, 2010).   The low self-esteem was largely caused by cruel teasing and bullying associated with appearance: body weight.  Kutob promotes "zero tolerance" for teasing.  He blames society for allowing a "mindless acceptance and promotion of stereotypic definitions of personal value based on 'Hollywood' appearance standards."

Self-esteem issues can be cultural
Self-esteem for White and Hispanic girls declined by age 11, but, for Black girls, self-esteem remained the same "between the ages of 9 and 14."  The Black girls were immune.  As global self-esteem for Black and White children is equal (Jackson, 2009), the difference appears to be cultural.

Chinese children with "absent migrant parents" suffer low self-esteem (Li-Juan, 2010).  Loneliness predicts low self-concept, which is restored when their parents spend quality time with them.  Here, family affection links to self-esteem and -concept rather than appraisal.

Top down (social) and bottom up (biopsychological)
Low self-esteem for White and Hispanic girls in California and Arizona resulted from negative appraisal rather than self-concepts of appearance.  There seem to be distinct internal and external components of low self-esteem and poor self-concept.  Mentoring improves self-concept and reduces anxiety, but may not improve school behavior or relationships, and depression may remain (Schmidt, 2007).  Bonding in group therapy benefits self-esteem (Marmarosh, 2005), but those who attempt bonding to reduce depression often become more depressed (Cambron, 2010).

Top down
Low self-esteem includes normal reactions (Hendel, 2006):

• need to win
• pleasing others
• perfectionism
• self-criticism
• withdrawing

Bottom up
It is also associated with three indicators of psychological distress (Huajian, 2009):

• depression
• anxiety
• "low subjective well-being"

Exercise improves self-concept, and hence self-esteem

Psychomotor programs "correlated with increased global self-esteem and decreased depression and anxiety levels" (Peter PV Van de, 2005).  Increased physical self-concept elevates low self-esteem--whatever its cause.


Reference

Cambron, M., & Citelli, L. (2010). Examining the link between friendship contingent self-esteem and the self-propagating cycle of depression. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 29(6), 701-726. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Hendel, A. (2006). Restoring Self-Esteem in Adolescent Males. Reclaiming Children & Youth, 15(3), 175-178. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Huajian, C., Qiuping, W., & Brown, J. (2009). Is self-esteem a universal need? Evidence from The People's Republic of China. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12(2), 104-120. doi:10.1111/j.1467-839X.2009.01278.x.

Jackson, L., Yong, Z., Witt, E., Fitzgerald, H., von Eye, A., & Harold, R. (2009). Self-concept, self-esteem, gender, race, and information technology use. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(4), 437-440. doi:10.1089/cpb.2008.0286.

Kutob, R., Senf, J., Crago, M., & Shisslak, C. (2010). Concurrent and longitudinal predictors of self-esteem in elementary and middle school girls. Journal of School Health, 80(5), 240-248. doi:10.1111/j.1746-1561.2010.00496.x.

Li-Juan, L., Xun, S., Chun-Li, Z., Yue, W., & Qiang, G. (2010). A survey in rural China of parent-absence through migrant working: The impact on their children's self-concept and loneliness. BMC Public Health, 101-8. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-10-32.

Marmarosh, C., Holtz, A., & Schottenbauer, M. (2005). Group cohesiveness, group-derived collective self-esteem, group-derived hope, and the well-being of group therapy members. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 9(1), 32-44. doi:10.1037/1089-2699.9.1.32.

 

Peter PV Van de, V., Herman HV Van, C., Ans AD, D., Joseph JP, P., Guido GP, P., & Koen KK, K. (2005). Comparison of changes in physical self-concept, global self-esteem, depression and anxiety following two different psychomotor therapy programs in nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients. Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics, 74(6), 353-361. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Schmidt, M., McVaugh, B., & Jacobi, J. (2007). Is mentoring throughout the fourth and fifth grades associated with improved psychosocial functioning in children?. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 15(3), 263-276. doi:10.1080/13611260701201943.

Comparing schizophrenia and bipolar (and also psychosis)

A review of recent material about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder confirms that the two diseases are genetically inherited.  One article suggests that families with a genetic tendency for one of these diseases also have a tendency for the other (McIntosh, 2009).  A search for genetic information about schizophrenia shows that a particular genetically expressed protein, NRG1, and its related receptors, ErbB3 and ErbB4, are central to schizophrenia.  Recent studies implicating NRG1 in schizophrenia also implicate it in bipolar disorder, giving oblique support to the idea that the two diseases are connected genetically, and in other ways.  But they focus on different areas, and hence have seemingly conflicting concepts: myelin and neurotransmitters.  Myelin implies neural speed, and neurotransmitters bring to mind, as an example, dopamine reactions to stress.

A myelin, or ErbB3, study (McIntosh, 2009), shows that mutations resulting in NRG1/ErbB3 signaling failures causes oligodendrocyte activity to be impaired so that less "white matter" is produced resulting in a diminished "anterior internal capsule in subjects with both disorders" (p. 2) including unaffected directly-related family members of the bipolar disorder and schizophrenia subjects.  This effect is assumed to be developmental, and myelin formation in "frontal lobes, continues into late adolescence and beyond" (p. 3), giving optimism that new drugs could reinforce myelination for those at risk. 

This study also says that plasticity relates to myelination, and that there is myelination in adults, and hence plasticity, that may relate to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in terms of both development and maturity.

    Genetic loading for psychosis and the internal capsule (McIntosh, 2009)

Neurotransmitter, or  ErbB4, studies have a brain-wide view with a focus on neuron and transmitter activity such glutamatergic hypofunction (Li, 2007), failures in the formation of inhibitory synapses (Fazzari, 2010), and neural development such as the "wiring" of GABA-mediated circuits (Fazzari, 2010), all in the context of schizophrenia.  While a bipolar disorder can be linked to schizophrenia in the context of ErbB4 (Chong, 2007), the more detailed material on neural activity focuses on schizophrenia. 

As dopamine hyperactivity is part of the schizophrenia pharmacological model (Stone, 2007), and methamphetamine is used to simulate it experimentally (Homayoun, 2008), studies concentrating on stimulants may give clues about the neural activity of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The "white matter" study links myelination to plasticity, and is optimistic that new drugs may reinforce myelination (p. 4), and so raises an idea about myelination and plasticity with respect to maturity: could such drugs help the elderly retain plasticity?

These studies show similar diseases apparently caused by the same mutations, creating a causal relationship that should point to a common location for both diseases.  But we find the expressions on completely different levels--the causal relationship is misleading!  Still, the "neurotransmitter" studies show causal relationships linking the neural functions of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to glutamatergic, GABAergic, and dopaminergic responses to stimulants, such as methamphetamine.  These relations may help show us how the disordered neurons may affect behavior. 

References

Chong, V.,  Thompson, M., Beltaifa, S., Webster, M., Law A., and Weickertad, S. (2007). Elevated Neuregulin-1 and ErbB4 protein in the prefrontal cortex of schizophrenic patients: Schizophr Res. 2008 March ; 100(1-3): 270–280. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2007.12.474.

Fazzari, P., Paternain, A., Valiente, M., Pla, R., Luján, R., Lloyd, K., et al. (2010). Control of cortical GABA circuitry development by Nrg1 and ErbB4 signalling. Nature, 464(7293), 1376-1380. doi:10.1038/nature08928.

Gever, J. (2009, January 15). Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have overlapping genetic roots. MedPage Today
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Schizophrenia/12480

Homayoun, H., & Moghaddam, B. (2008). Orbitofrontal cortex neurons as a common target for classic and glutamatergic antipsychotic drugs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(46), 18041-18046. doi:10.1073/pnas0806669105.

Li, B., Woo, R., Mei L., Malinow, R., (2007, May 24). The neuregulin-1 receptor ErbB4 controls glutamatergic synapse maturation and plasticity. Neuron, 54(4), 583-597.

McIntosh, A., Hall, J., Lymer, G., Sussmann, J., and Lawrie, S. (2009). Genetic risk for white matter abnormalities in bipolar disorder. International Review of Psychiatry, 21(4), 387-393. doi:10.1080/09540260902962180.

McIntosh, A., Hall, J., Lymer, G., Sussmann, J., and Lawrie, S. (2009). Genetic loading for psychosis and the internal capsule disorder. International Review of Psychiatry, 21(4), 387-393. doi:10.1080/09540260902962180.

Stone, J., Morrison, P., and Pilowski, L. (2007, January 26). Review: Glutamate and dopamine dysregulation in schizophrenia — a synthesis and selective review. Journal of Psychopharmacology June 2007 vol. 21 no. 4 440-452

Executive function, working memory control, and ADHD

Executive function (EF) and working memory
ADHD is largely defined in terms of executive function impairment (Biederman, 2004), and shares descriptive language.  Very recent studies describe executive function as "executive attention" (Kane, 2005) and show a unitary model that links it with working memory in terms of working memory control, or WMC, and higher levels of cognition.  WMC is central to  to EF, often called "central executive functioning"  (McCabe, 2010).  McCabe indirectly describes WMC in terms of ADHD: inhibitory control, and focus of attention.

WMC benefits from education
Gathercole shows benefits for impaired working memory through remedial education (Gathercole, 2006), and Berneir shows autonomy support as the "strongest predictor" for healthy EF in children (Bernier, 2010).   Jang suggests a blending of autonomy support and traditional structure, or "autonomy-structure," that has high understanding and leadership, and low admonishing and uncertainty in a way that should benefit working memory control in view of recent executive function material. 

Speculated benefits for ADHD
These executive function, ADHD understanding, and educational concepts form a tight matrix with respect to working memory and its control.  Perhaps, for this reason, parenting and early education strategies that target WMC development via autonomy and guidance will help children with ADHD and other executive dysfunctions.


Bernier, A., Carlson, S., & Whipple, N. (2010). From External Regulation to Self-Regulation: Early Parenting Precursors of Young Children’s Executive Functioning. Child Development, 81(1), 326-339. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01397.x.

Biederman, J., & Faraone, S. (2005). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Two case studies. Medscape

http://cme.medscape.com/viewarticle/513743_1

Gathercole, S., & Alloway, T. (2006). Practitioner Review: Short-term and working memory impairments in neurodevelopmental disorders: diagnosis and remedial support. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 47(1), 4-15. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01446.x.

Jang, H., Reeve, J., & Deci, E. (2010). Engaging students in learning activities: It is not autonomy support or structure but autonomy support and structure. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(3), 588-600. doi:10.1037/a0019682.

Kane, M., Hambrick, D., & Conway, A. (2005). Working Memory Capacity and Fluid Intelligence Are Strongly Related Constructs: Comment on Ackerman, Beier, and Boyle (2005). Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 66-71. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.66.

McCabe, D., Roediger, H., McDaniel, M., Balota, D., & Hambrick, D. (2010). The relationship between working memory capacity and executive functioning: Evidence for a common executive attention construct. Neuropsychology, 24(2), 222-243. doi:10.1037/a0017619.

L4 Criteria: an open letter to David Sugar

Hi David,

I have been following the L4 operating system's slow growth, and there is now a runtime environment that includes a framebuffer and a windowing service.

I am attempting to continue my socially motivated input into computer/network growth by adding suggestions to the L4-developers mailing list that are much the same as my initial suggestions in 1989 when I was one of the very few socially-motivated engineers (actually, administrator, same thing!)

My first "demand" is a drop-in replacement for Linux, so that common Linux users will not notice much of difference, but L4 developers can develop and implement on one machine.  This "demand" specifically attempts to create a pathway for poverty-stricken Third-Worlders who have limited equipment, and especially youthful programmers in the first world who are continually being told that they are wasting their time because Bhopal owns computing.

Of the two, I think youth support is the more important from our perspective because it is nearby, and the youth, of course, are the future.  Today's youth are purely open-minded with respect to culture, thanks to the efforts of previous generations--that would be us!

What I want to do is to help guide the purely technical low-level programmers with high-level design so that they can now that the GNU-type freedom strategies do work, and do make money!  These programmers need to know that the corporations that they are developing systems for free for, are not necessarily God-like and all-powerful, and that there is computer and network democracy.

I want to focus first on the social aspects, but then quickly get to the nitty-gritty of the lower technical layers.  In my very successful implementation of layered models, I think the social aspect is, in fact, the top layer -- morality, if you will.  This would imply, I hope, that simply feeding the cell-phone monster with free code is not moral, systems morality means modeling a full system that supports every aspect of humanity in beneficially in efficient ways.

I also see transforming the culture to being multi-localist, where localist literally means local activism (I am still busy attempting to redeine nativism as native activism.)  The international nature of computing already supports this with the use of the term "locale" to mean internationalization.

All I am looking to do is create short lists of desireable things so that these things are necessarily included.  Linux has fit many of these criteria, but as a monolithic kernel, it has been unable to fulfil other needs, such as a path for hardware driver implementation that does not include re-compiling the kernel, something the vast majority of users cannot do.  L4 is also vastly more efficient in every way.

I am still using the banner of "ThinMan" as an data-centric open network VM that still seems to be the obvious solution only to me.  The derivation, a ubiquitous thin client, really is excellent marketing, and I own it so I can assure that it is used in the spirit of the public domain, or sector--democracy.

I hope you can find some time to list out criteria with me, as I don't want to be the only person doing this, for obvious democratic reasons.

John

Oligarchy: What we learned in the Empathy Group

What we learned in the Empathy Group is that people who lack the necessary neurological constructs for collaboration will attempt control to gain resources because they cannot create them themselves, as the lack the ability to work with others collaboratively.  They will also resort to endless strategies to take from others and present themselves as something they are not.

This situation is so prevalent in society that it has formed society's control structure and that structure has been given a name: the oligarchy.  It is described nearly precisely in Plato's republic and it is the basis for control in our civilization--police enforcement, corporate management, judicial officials, politicians--and especially medicine: doctors and the medical and hospital industries that now absorb approximately half our money.

We termed the neurological defect "emotional communication dysfunction."  People with the dysfunction cannot collaborate in the normal way because they cannot connect using the emotional communication paths that humans and many higher mammals have.  Because of this, they cannot directly sense the pain they inflict on others, and further, they cannot conceive of the long-term effects of their actions.  This is a handicap in normal society, but society has been changed by them, as they can be intelligent, and they can cooperate to solve their problems, allowing them to obtain what they cannot create by trickery and force.  With time their cooperation became organization allowing groups of these dysfunctional people to gain control over large components of society.

For the West, the development of societal templates such as Plato's Republic, was a locus for their control, as Plato and his followers are credited for the basis of Western Civilization.  At the highest levels, Plato's elite, the dysfunction is complete; there is no human empathy, and the system is operated purely mechanically with only affectations to normal humanity allowed to create a thin, yet effective, pretense to humanity.  This is medically described as Aspergers  In the middle layers of the template is the guardian class; dysfunctional people whose inhumanity is part-time; they have hybridized diseases: bi-polar.  Some of the time they are humane and can connect with the mass of normal people, and sometimes they cannot and their disassociation allows them to be inhumane.  Without expert knowledge of these dysfunctions, a normal average person is easily confused by the changes, and hence the value of the part-time inhumane to the oligarchic structure.

OCD is another related dysfunction; those with it drive the system recklessly so that it can grow fast enough to offset the waste caused by its inefficiency: gambling is obsessive compulsion; Capital is obsessive consumption.

ADD also appears to be an oligarchic component, though its use to the structure is less obvious.  Possibly the random nature of the attention deficit mind mimics the random changes to DNA that drive evolution.  It may introduce the only form of creativity internally available to the oligarchy, as the oligarchy has to obtain all of its ingenuity from the normal mass of people; people the oligarchs cannot trust because of all they have done.

The oligarchy has continually leveraged technological evolution to expand its control to offset the natural enlightenment of a continually modernizing humanity.  Today the annexation of technology is so complete that entire Information Society is skewed to obscure the mentally dysfunctional reality of humanity's controlling elite.  The oligarchy has corrupted morality by confusing its meanings to focus society on a singular task of empowering the empathically defective, what is often called "the high-functioning autistic."  Initially these misconceptions were forced on the native and natural by the Roman Church; now even socialists work to convert sadistic children into future leaders and healers.

The oligarchy is ancient in its core, but as adaptable as a virus on it's surface.  in the post-Apartheid era, even its capital component has adapted to using anti-bias as a tool for the benefit of the pathologically-biased elite by forcing the misconception that the further expansion of their control, what they call governance, and along with it, exponentially increasing rates of natural exploitation, will benefit the mass of normal humans.  Of course it has not as it has never done so before; the moral fabric of natural society if further torn apart as the planet is moved exponentially closer to environmental collapse.

The most recent strategy of using anti-hate as a weapon of hate against anyone or any group that attempts to resist oligarchy's inhumanity.  It followed the successful destruction of the last the slavery societies, South Africa, when democratic peoples effectively politically forced South Africa's economic isolation causing Apartheid's collapse.

Other biased groups preceded Capital's conversion pure hate to a hybridized anti-hate hate; the most biased group of all, Feminists, successfully converted the struggle for equality in democracy to equality in the oligarchy; these women were the only of the socially rebellious to benefit from the global expansion of Capital.  The Western oligarchy has internally incorporated equality within their structure and for themselves in a way that allows it to bond with oligarchic structures from regions that were former competitors.  But the peoples of these regions are forced into fierce combat for  resources made increasingly scarce by Capital's continuing growth; and any complaints from the lower productive levels can be dismissed as racism.  In their minds, they can plausibly deny their bias with the most absurd rationale; they and only they deserve to be elite, as only they are unbiased.  Of course the normal average person, upon hearing that, will obviously think them insane, but will be frustrated as the oligarchy has now, more than ever, dominant control over all of valid humanity.

1. Empathy and Emotional Communication Wiki
2. Capital Structure Cheat Sheet

Might was well bring it up... Wiki ML

I have seen a number of scattered posits on Wikipedia expressing dismay that there is no formal wiki standard, and that wikis are necessarily tied to the WWW as the WWW begins to decline into its predicted terminal case of "code smell."

But not XML: I started with complex structures with Perl, and had amazing success with them building a fully secure OO dataserver that we entirely editable from a recursive web page. In fact Perl is built around complex structures, though Perl got the "smell" a decade before the rest (Shell never did!)

XML is simply a complex structure system that has been deliberately crippled through arbitrary limitation from the outset, I believe, by the WWW Consortium.

In another closely related issue, as soon as I got serious about CSS, and learned that it is not what I assumed, a mirrored layer for the various document transformation and rendering models, and then learned what a mess Java Script is. From there I realized that there is a lost markup functionality within html that has never been invented because javascipt, and only javascript, was implemented by the management layer.

(I found a project called Water that does HTML programming, but the owner, at the time, was opposed to our domain of public software, or the public domain. Richard Stallman, oddly, also opposes the public domain, I can forward emails if you want to see them.)

To add to this thread following the Web insanity trail, Google has sponsored a python-to-JavaScript translator called pajamas. Wouldn't it make more sense to develop (or choose) a relevant programming language, create an interpreter that is less than 1M, distribute it, and shovel the dirt over the smelly code (as if it will impart nutrients to future life)?

Actions like this usually require an act of congress, such as the act of congress the forced the US phone monopoly (then called Ma Bell) to create Unix that in turn created the open system concept that led to BSD and Linux, and was also extended by IBM with the invention of the PC's open architecture.

But as we all know, insanity has replaced normalcy in US government. (There seems to be a glimmer of home with the NY State governor, Patterson, who has bonded with the last of the genuine activists in NYC -- but I doubt he sees votes in free software.)

Happy New Year

I want to wish everyone and their families, friends, and associates an excellent new year. I am speaking from the North Eastern US, but I assume that the new year is very much the same around the world; it is a time of renewal, reinforcement, commitment, and, well, improved navigation.

The last decade, the beginning of the new millennium, was an extremely difficult time for the Information Society, at least in my region. In September of 2001, our Information Society "head quarters," so to speak, was struck by the most concentrated violence in human history, essentially ending, at least for us, the most incredible growth spurt of the Information Society: the development of the Internet as the core of human communication with the invention of the WWW.

The last decade has been introspective; most people I know have been searching for answers, wondering what went wrong when things seemed so right. Now, exactly ten years out of synchronicity, we are finally empowered with the properly constructed knowledge that will enable us to adjust humanity's future history for its journey through the Twenty-First Century.

Unquestionably, completely open and freely available information systems are the key to us, as free and open describe this very system that we work and live in. I believe that they will be key to humanity's path into the future, and that the work we are doing here is blazing that path.

Google Docs: No privacy, No free speech

I use Google Docs nearly purely for academic research, usually as a scratch pad or Web formatting tool for work I do in the Wikipedia and Wikiversity.

The work I do is essentially classical in that it develops well-known areas such as economics and psychology and attempts to wrap societal concepts into a single model, such as Einstein attempted to do for physics.

A large proportion of human society is the Information Society--today the Internet, and if you understand human history, the Information Society, and with it information technology, has defined humanity's success for at least many thousands of years.

Recently a page with my citations was flagged as an abuse of Google Docs terms of service, and was "unpublished" as a violation of a rule against spam because it contains URLs that link to sources. The rule specifically says that a document cannot consist "mostly of links," but
there were no links, just URLs. (Later I "self-published" the document, with the links.)

The rule is obviously bogus with respect to academic work, which is a major use for Google Docs, as the Google advertises it as a collaborative environment. So I can't possibly be the only person with lists of online references. The rule is not a show-stopper, as anyone can easily get a web space and use the HTML editing tool to cut and paste their writing into any web page. The main loss is the use of Google Docs as a collaborative tool, which is primarily why I use Google Docs.

The history of the situation is thus. I had been happily embedding Google Docs text in pages that collect my work to essentially create a mini-site out of a page (and I got straight As for my work). At a certain point, I learned that my citations had been "unpublished" (is that a word?), and I immediately associated this event with web posters on the Care2.com site who had been hostile in the past for writing I had done about the Native America connection to the natural environment.

A poster here in the Google help forum, probably correctly, pointed out that I had violated one of the terms (CLICK), which he immediately added is BS; that I had created a list of links to third-party sites. The rule implies that I am advertising by creating a list of links, and hence I am using Google Docs as a vehicle for spam. But as I wrote above, there were no links, only URLs. And, it seems purely logical, that any page suggesting references--teachers' aids come to my mind as the most common example--will be flagged as abuse, and that the writer will hence be labeled abusive.

The TOS clearly states that "flagged material" will be read by Google employees to determine if there is a violation, and if what Google has had written in the TOS is true, then at least a single person read at least one of my documents. If the writing in the TOS is false, and employees are not reading Doc pages, and this does not happen, then, well, that is another issue... (or maybe it is the same issue on a deeper socio- and psychological level).

Now when I look at my table of contents, I see that many pages have been unpublished that I do not recall publishing. This implies to me that many of my pages are being read because they contain citations, and that there is no reasonable privacy on Google Docs.

Knowing that Google employees are reading my documents creates concern for me that my primary field of discussion, the Information Society, may be targeted by Google employees because there is criticism of their employer, the World's largest information company: Google.

In fact, here is criticism of Google in this very writing. I am very specifically saying that Google is using an unreasonable rule to suppress information that happens to be critical of how society
functions. I am explicitly saying that Google is denying my basic right to free speech as described in the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States, the law of the land, a grave crime. Google may rationalize information suppression in terms of spam, a security issue, but that does not make their suppression of free speech rights valid. In fact there are obviously no security issues associate with scholarly citations.

It can easily be argued here that my writing does not represent a desire on the part of Google to suppress information, but is simply the enforcement of a stupid rule. If that is the case, then it should be simple to request a modification of the rule by Google, but then another problem arises. There is no one to contact to modify the rule. Google employees, and possibly managers, (there is a difference) may or may not read this writing, but I feel certain that the issue will not be addressed. I feel this because Google, as many corporations, has successfully insulated its employees from contact with the people of the outside World, a condition described as a cult by Aaron Beck in his book Prisoners of Hate. (Aaron Beck is the most famous psychologist of all time.) Beck in this book shows information insulation to be the common form of organized abuse, what he calls hate, and a most extreme form of the abuse of information --by the largest Information Society corporation in the World.

Besides critical inquiry of the Information Society, which I tend to publish, there may be writing of a more personal nature, such as psychological work, which I would never publish, that could be damaging if read by others, a complete violation of privacy and trust even in the most liberal sense. My writing, and nearly everybody elses', is simply none of Google's business, and should be left alone, unless there can specifically be shown to be published writing that is either a threat to system security, or egregiously damaging in some way.

This happens to be the law of the land, but because of the economic situation here in the United States and around the World, corporations have become more powerful than nations. If nations are to protect the sovereignty of their protective laws, then nations must move to the next step. You can imagine what that is!

I would like to close this by saying that technologically Google Docs has not been a "seamless" experience for me; I have encountered endless problems. For instance, Google Gears has never worked properly, not even once, even though it is a fairly straight forward technology. Google Docs, as with most WYSIWYG HTML editors, does not make effective use of Object Oriented "objectification." The Spread Sheet system makes it impossible to quickly transfer information between documents (not to mention that spread sheets themselves are obsolete on too many
levels to count). I have been unable to use Google Office as a Microsoft Office replacement. Its only use is as an HTML WYSIWIG and document repository, and only with moderate success, if you discount this particular problem.

Often people and organizations say that they "may not be nice," but that they "are effective." (CIA) That is impossible; if you are not nice, you are lacking the neural constructs necessary for effective collaboration (Darwin, de Waal), and hence the ability to truly self-actualize technologically.

Google, as has been well-predicted, has, along with Microsoft, become so powerful that it can violate nearly any accepted social contract of the Information Society, and is impervious to reasonable rights laws. I will update this writing .

I will attempt to find a suitable web forum for extending this exceedingly serious discussion and I will update this writing with the URL.

I will also very likely contact a US congressman with whom I have worked in the past on information issues, and I will bring this issue to the attention of the New York State governor, who has become a personal associate of mine on various rights issues.

Photographs at Brazen Betty's

Bessa's Photographs at Brazen Betty's Boutique and Gallery, Torrington CT

John Bessa

Having experienced much of my political and philosophical inspiration here in the mountains of Northwest Connecticut, or the Southern Berkshires, I am very happy to present for you photographs taken in the region that will be exhibited in Litchfield County's biggest city, Torrington Connecticut at Brazen Betty's

With time, the photos there will be replaced with photographic constructions that leverage back lighting in a way that resembles Joseph Cornell's Boxes. See them here: Windows and roots (click)


My photography is the art of photojournalism. What I see, and how I feel when I take a picture what I want to convey to the viewer truthfully. I photographed many crows in Poughkeepsie and many landscapes of Poughkeepsie's many artifacts, but rarely did a good crow shot appear within the perfect landscape. So I made this, my only composite from a picture of a crow landing on construction equipment, and typical Poughkeepsie roof-scape under a hanging cloud. The scene and the feeling it conveys is genuine however: the smart, social and often maligned crows over this old and beautiful, yet often troubled, city.

Window in Rain

The Window is an unplanned theme in my art, a happy accident. Many pictures that look good on a computer may not work in print, in fact, some dramatic pictures of clouds have come out muddy. Back lighting solved this problem, and I used glass panes from an old door for my first light box. Since then windows have become important, and this window is in the stairway where I live in Torrington.

Roll of tape

This roll was found in the abandoned lot of a long-closed factory in Poughkeepsie. It is old and useless, but iridescent. It is part of my series memorializing America's closed factories and discarded workers that hopes to help revive American manufacturing.

Warm Window in Torrington

Another in my window series, this one gives a warm feeling of the house within.

Late commute through the Poughkeepsie rain

Taken near the Poughkeepsie factory that gave me so many scenes, it is the trip home in the rain, snug and warm in the car with a pleasant, if cold, drizzle outside. Power-lines provide strong symbolism for photography. They are beautiful and imposing, and represent the power of our society, and also bring us back to the early days of modern America, the rural electrification of the 30s. The 30s were also a Rennasaince for photojournalism, especially during the continual crises in Europe photographed by the amazing photojournalists of the time.

Mythology on Birch Bark Parchment





Birch bark has significant meaning to the Native culture here, one of the most important documents of our continent, the Anishabe Prophecy that predicts a joining of all the World's people in peace through stages called "fires."

I was searching for the perfect representation of birch bark as an symbol of knowledge, and I found also a quill, and then mythological beast with in the span of the same roll of film, near Music Mountain.

The Anishinabie Prophecy has been maintained on birch bark since the mid-1700s, as European colonialists began the Native decimation. Today the Great Medicine Lodge, or the Midewiwin, maintains the prophecy only having stepped forward in the 1970s. Today the Mediwinin elders hold social science PhDs.

Julia Sloan, as Brazen Betty, Super heroine, has a fine jewelery, clothes, and art store that seeks only the efforts of desingers and artists in the Litchfield, or Southern Berkshire area of Connecticut. The clothes she features come from as far away as New York City, but the inspiration is purely local.

Julia Sloan, as Brazen Betty

Zwik's Defiance: "Nazi, Soviet, Zionist, same thing."

Note: I wrote this retro-review for Rob Kall's Opednews.com, and he published it--but not without "political cleansing." He removed this, the most significant line, and because he did, I know that it is telling. At a key point in the movie, one of the heroic Bielski brothers makes this observation, which is psycho- and sociologically accurate. Please learn about the Bielskis.Daniel Craig has failed so miserably as 007, that I decided to give him another chance when his film Defiance appeared in my local "Red Box" for only a dollar.

Billed as a violent thriller, the defiance enemy soldiers by loyal brothers, it delivers as advertised, and more, taking off right from the opening credits with the killing of family, family vengeance, and all-out world war.But as it happens, Defiance is much more. Not advertised is that Defiance is the true story of the Jewish Bielski brothers who operated extremely effectively as anti-Nazi partisans (historically true), and saved many Jews as Schindler did, not as refugees--as surviving natives of the forest they hid, and thrived, in.

The plot is simple: Tuvia (Daniel Craig) arrives home to find that collaborating police have killed his parents. He and his brothers move into the forest they know very well and accidentally create a community of Jews who, rather than being victims, become an effective if tiny combat force. There are many levels of drama in the movie, but the most significant is between Tuvia and his brother, Zus (Liev Schreiber), whose love/hate relationship makes them nearly as combative with each other as they are with the Nazi enemy.



Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber

The brothers fight each other one last time, and Zus, the more hawkish of the two, takes the best soldiers of the community to join a Soviet guerrilla force. Tuvia, a brilliant tactician, remains to lead and protect the community against insurmountable odds with minimal causalities. With the arrival of a major Nazi force, the Soviets retreat (cowards!), and the community is attacked and forced into a swamp that is compared (quite sentimentally) to the Red Sea. Zus and his fighters rejoin the community just in time--to the extreme relief of both the community and the audience!



I don't mean this as a spoiler, but as an in-road into the history of WWII: the just, if complicated war. I, as a pacifist, believe WWII was necessary.

Defiance also shows the military strategy that so has effectively defeated invaders through history, and especially in Vietnam: digging into the woods and living, literally, underground.
But most important, Defiance brings up the major ironies of the Second World War, and shows us how this irony still influences our lives today. Zus, when rejoining his brother after fighting with the Soviets, states it flatly: "Nazi, Soviet, Zionist, same thing."

While exposing us to the irony of this war, Defiance unintentionally makes us look at the issues surrounding the endless pogroms that occurred in Europe, not only to Jews, but an endless number of groups. The Bielski brothers were in fact traitors of a sort.

Completely based on reality, with minimal flights of cinematic fantasy, the family, according to the Wikipedia, fought the Nazis by with the Soviets who had invaded their region as part of an invasion of Poland. Not only did a few of the brothers fight for the Soviets, the family worked as low-level administrators for the Soviet occupiers. The Jews of the region, in fact, wholly supported the Soviet invasion, which resulted in the extermination of the Polish intelligentsia by Soviet partisans in the Katyn Forest with the full approval of the Soviet Politburo. The Bielskis have been accused of complicity with the Soviet invasion of Poland--and in fact, the movie is set in the Katyn forest.

The Bielskis brothers are unquestionably heros of the first order, making the sacrifices necessary not only to survive, but to thrive. But the holes created by the historical expediences taken by movie's maker, Edward Zwick, (and perhaps the story's author, Nechama Tec) are actually heightened by many of the characters statements, especially Zus' comparison of Zionism, Nazism, and Sovietism. The Bielskis never sought credit for their efforts, but then maybe there is a reason for this--their necessary but regrettable cooperation with the predatory Soviets.

From the military perspective, I writhed in frustration at some of the Bielski's strategic missteps. But as it happens, these were cinematic fantasy; in reality both brothers were experienced fighters, and adapted perfectly to the needs of forest survival. And they survived immigration to the US to found a trucking firm!

Get and enjoy this movie, know that it is often violently tragic (and a little long) but that it ends happily. Take it to the Net--learn about how it REALLY goes down in war and in war's aftermath!

Further reading:

• Bielski Brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielski_partisans
• Katyn massacre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_Massacre
• A pro-Soviet (?!?!) review of the Defiance: http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0907/defiance.htm

More Defiance!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defiance,_Ohio_(band)

Edward Zwick (right)