Let's (Con) Neck
Several of my friends are conservative, a term used as a general description and not as a negative political divide; that said those same friends do use the term "liberal" in that political sense, as if casting a label on an entire group as easily as a curse or plague. And while my friends are savvy enough to not follow the medical opinions of Trump such as taking hydroxychloroquine (which suppresses your immune system) or swallowing or injecting Lysol (a disinfectant which even the company quickly warned against using in such a manner), they likely agree with 75% of more of what Trump says or blurts out, right or wrong. I am pretty much the opposite. As I mentioned to one friend who was emphasizing some of the issues he had with China's perceived global intentions, I quoted him this observation from the London Review of Books: True conservatives, as distinct from those merely wedded to the religion of the stock market, welcomed the prospect of a shakeout. It was time to slim down the businesses that had gorged on too much cheap funding, time for a return to discipline. There were the words of China paying 2 years of unemployment benefits and guaranteeing the pay and jobs of state workers, I wrote him; but then came this from the LA Times: Direct cash handouts have been minimal as individuals are largely left to the social security system. But that system covers only a small fraction of workers and excludes most migrants, who often work without contracts and have been blocked from urban welfare systems because of the hukou system, which ties people's access to social services to their rural or urban status from birth. The government is attempting to ease the burden on workers, including giving 67,000 jobless migrant the equivalent of $864 in a onetime cost-of-living payment. By the end of March, 2.38 million people had received unemployment benefits averaging $571 per person, according to official statistics. An additional 5.78 million people received small subsidies to combat inflation. Such measures are a step forward, but fall short of covering the tens of millions of unemployed workers. In the end, it all boiled down to the words of one side saying this and the other side saying that. But the end result? -- many of us are left in the dark about what is really going on.
It's good to stay open-minded and to hear other viewpoints. My friends and I may have our poitical differences but we each recognize that such views are just a tiny part of our friendships. How we vote, how we express ourselves, whether we believe in gun control, or the death penalty, or illegal field workers picking our crops, or abortion, or a host of other topics, well, these are our own opinions but overall they are just that, opinions which are overridden by those things we share...a solid foundation, good values (in our minds, anyway), an urge to do right (say, rushing out to help someone who has fallen or has been in an accident), and taking time to think about what we've heard or read before making a decision (which is why my wife and I avoid high-pressure sales folk as if they're active Covid-19 carriers). I can remember my teenage years of innocence, flirting and kissing (back in the day we called it necking), hormones going crazy while ingrained patriarchal and parental teachings tugged at me and held me back from "getting in trouble." That seemed to be the attitude of the crowd I ran around with as well, us turning a blind eye to the "hooligans" getting in trouble or getting girls pregnant, or delving into a world that for all we knew didn't exist. Fight those communists, get a haircut, go to work and follow the straight and narrow. And in the end, I guess one could say that the company I became close with turned out okay (judging from where we have all ended up). And while we may have arrived at this point by taking separate paths, we all seemed to have arrived safely at an older age, each relatively healthy and relatively stable.
Said Discover: It’s becoming increasingly clear that our biological responses to the outside world are stronger than we once thought. And it’s not all negative: Hormones associated with love and social connections can light up our nervous system and give us a health boost. The results run deep in the body, down to the very rhythm of our hearts....Vagus is Latin for “wandering,” and, in line with its poetic name, the vagus wanders everywhere through your body. It exits the brain stem at the base of your skull, deep in your neck, and runs down near the carotid artery. From that spot, it shoots down to your heart and beyond, where it regulates heartbeat, lung function and digestive flow, among other vital systems...Think of those pneumatic tube systems banks have -- you put your deposit envelope in the little canister, and it whooshes away. Now imagine that happening in the vagus nerve, up and down, passing messages between mind and body millions of times over the course of a day. A 2016 review of 28 studies showed just how deadly it can be if you’re cut off from social interactions. Researchers looked at data from over 180,000 adults who were lonely or socially isolated — defined as dissatisfaction with social relationships or having few social connections, respectively. They found that loneliness, social isolation or both were associated with a 29 percent increased risk of heart attack and a 32 percent greater risk of stroke. People who reported fewer social connections also showed disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, higher inflammation and greatly increased levels of stress hormones...The team tested their subjects’ vagal tone, or strength, before and after the study. They found that as study participants’ positive emotions increased through LKM, so did their social interactions. And as the number of social interactions went up, so did vagal tone. The higher the subject’s vagal tone was when they started, the more it increased over the course of the study. But quite the opposite happens when we neglect to interact with other people. That upward spiral of positivity in well-connected people becomes a downward one in those who spend too much time in isolation.
So there we were, my wife and I, patiently waiting for the Zoom upload (and here you can substitute Face Time or Hangouts or Skype or a host of other video chat programs), and even though this was only our second such group meeting, we were joining a host of others in entering that world of "Zoom fatigue." Certainly it was great to see everyone and peek at what they chose as "backgrounds" (lots of cats on couches when we watch at-home reporting on the PBS Newshour, but lots of ceilings when we talk with our friends, perhaps giving insight into what exactly each person wants to show, a thought echoed by the editors of the NY Review: Working from home has made us unusually familiar with our possessions, and through video conferencing it has also made us intimate with the furnishings of others). Said the same magazine: Although we generally assume that the best means of identifying someone’s emotions is through their facial expressions, particularly their eyes—the “window of the soul” and all that—a Yale study cited in Psychology Today in 2018 suggests that we may, in fact, be better at reading voices than faces, that we’re more emotionally intelligent on the phone. It is certainly easier to gauge someone’s enthusiasm—or lack thereof—about getting together than it is through texting or email, which are often, at best, emotionless and perfunctory by nature. A similar sentiment came from National Geographic: Video calls seemed an elegant solution to remote work, but they wear on the psyche in complicated ways. Humans communicate even when they’re quiet. During an in-person conversation, the brain focuses partly on the words being spoken, but it also derives additional meaning from dozens of non-verbal cues, such as whether someone is facing you or slightly turned away, if they’re fidgeting while you talk, or if they inhale quickly in preparation to interrupt. These cues help paint a holistic picture of what is being conveyed and what’s expected in response from the listener. Since humans evolved as social animals, perceiving these cues comes naturally to most of us, takes little conscious effort to parse, and can lay the groundwork for emotional intimacy. However, a typical video call impairs these ingrained abilities, and requires sustained and intense attention to words instead. If a person is framed only from the shoulders up, the possibility of viewing hand gestures or other body language is eliminated. If the video quality is poor, any hope of gleaning something from minute facial expressions is dashed. “For somebody who’s really dependent on those non-verbal cues, it can be a big drain not to have them,” Franklin says (Andrew Franklin, an assistant professor of cyberpsychology at Virginia’s Norfolk State University). Prolonged eye contact has become the strongest facial cue readily available, and it can feel threatening or overly intimate if held too long. Multi-person screens magnify this exhausting problem. Gallery view—where all meeting participants appear Brady Bunch-style—challenges the brain’s central vision, forcing it to decode so many people at once that no one comes through meaningfully, not even the speaker.
The pandemic has presented some new viewpoints for most of us, and especially those of us fortunate enough to still be able to connect, be it by text or video or phone.* But in many ways it's also shoved us into a mirror of our world and ourselves. Things once distant now seem near, and things we held near and dear, now seem distant. Friends and family, acquaintances and routines, all have been thrown into a mix that we now have to sort out. Animal shelters begin to empty as we realize how much we're missing that closeness, that ability to touch, that ability to gauge something as simple as a roll of the eyes or a knee nervously moving. We're finding connections we thought were lost, and making new discoveries as to what is important to us. We're also realizing the disparity in our lives, how so many are proving so generous and giving of themselves (healthcare workers, neighbors, people struggling and yet hanging onto hope) and how once-important sports and political figures have sunk into the background. My friends and family may differ in our opinions and beliefs, but that only adds to our closeness and helps to give us more understanding.
I can't help but go back to the words of author and ecologist Alejandro Frid: Who benefits and who suffers and how badly? Which combination of plants and animals --and the myriad relationships among them-- get to endure or go extinct? Which human cultures --and their unique world views that allow alternative ways of seeking meaning to coexist-- get to live, or die? True, many scientists already understand that the questions we ask are inextricably linked to our connections with place and people. You can see awareness in some brilliant studies already out there, particularly those that analyze feedbacks between cultures, economies, and ecosystems. Yet, for the most part, that awareness is too vague. it needs to strengthen, become more widespread and explicit, so that scientists may provide better guidance on how to navigate the rapid changes that our world is undergoing. The world around us is changing, even if temporarily. This pandemic has given us a chance to slow down, to see the air and waters clearing, to watch our gas tanks remain fuller, to get creative in our cooking, to smile more at those working the cash registers and dropping off our packages and mail, to realize how much we've taken for granted when if comes to our doctors and nurses and others helping to keep us alive and healthy. And through all of our disagreements with the news and politics and opinions, it may be giving us the greatest chance....that of seeing what really matters in our lives.
*Hmm, to add to your possible worries about what 5G may or may not do to your health, well it may all be overblown as carriers begin to tout 6G with double the bandwidth of 5G, said MSN.
It's good to stay open-minded and to hear other viewpoints. My friends and I may have our poitical differences but we each recognize that such views are just a tiny part of our friendships. How we vote, how we express ourselves, whether we believe in gun control, or the death penalty, or illegal field workers picking our crops, or abortion, or a host of other topics, well, these are our own opinions but overall they are just that, opinions which are overridden by those things we share...a solid foundation, good values (in our minds, anyway), an urge to do right (say, rushing out to help someone who has fallen or has been in an accident), and taking time to think about what we've heard or read before making a decision (which is why my wife and I avoid high-pressure sales folk as if they're active Covid-19 carriers). I can remember my teenage years of innocence, flirting and kissing (back in the day we called it necking), hormones going crazy while ingrained patriarchal and parental teachings tugged at me and held me back from "getting in trouble." That seemed to be the attitude of the crowd I ran around with as well, us turning a blind eye to the "hooligans" getting in trouble or getting girls pregnant, or delving into a world that for all we knew didn't exist. Fight those communists, get a haircut, go to work and follow the straight and narrow. And in the end, I guess one could say that the company I became close with turned out okay (judging from where we have all ended up). And while we may have arrived at this point by taking separate paths, we all seemed to have arrived safely at an older age, each relatively healthy and relatively stable.
Said Discover: It’s becoming increasingly clear that our biological responses to the outside world are stronger than we once thought. And it’s not all negative: Hormones associated with love and social connections can light up our nervous system and give us a health boost. The results run deep in the body, down to the very rhythm of our hearts....Vagus is Latin for “wandering,” and, in line with its poetic name, the vagus wanders everywhere through your body. It exits the brain stem at the base of your skull, deep in your neck, and runs down near the carotid artery. From that spot, it shoots down to your heart and beyond, where it regulates heartbeat, lung function and digestive flow, among other vital systems...Think of those pneumatic tube systems banks have -- you put your deposit envelope in the little canister, and it whooshes away. Now imagine that happening in the vagus nerve, up and down, passing messages between mind and body millions of times over the course of a day. A 2016 review of 28 studies showed just how deadly it can be if you’re cut off from social interactions. Researchers looked at data from over 180,000 adults who were lonely or socially isolated — defined as dissatisfaction with social relationships or having few social connections, respectively. They found that loneliness, social isolation or both were associated with a 29 percent increased risk of heart attack and a 32 percent greater risk of stroke. People who reported fewer social connections also showed disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, higher inflammation and greatly increased levels of stress hormones...The team tested their subjects’ vagal tone, or strength, before and after the study. They found that as study participants’ positive emotions increased through LKM, so did their social interactions. And as the number of social interactions went up, so did vagal tone. The higher the subject’s vagal tone was when they started, the more it increased over the course of the study. But quite the opposite happens when we neglect to interact with other people. That upward spiral of positivity in well-connected people becomes a downward one in those who spend too much time in isolation.
So there we were, my wife and I, patiently waiting for the Zoom upload (and here you can substitute Face Time or Hangouts or Skype or a host of other video chat programs), and even though this was only our second such group meeting, we were joining a host of others in entering that world of "Zoom fatigue." Certainly it was great to see everyone and peek at what they chose as "backgrounds" (lots of cats on couches when we watch at-home reporting on the PBS Newshour, but lots of ceilings when we talk with our friends, perhaps giving insight into what exactly each person wants to show, a thought echoed by the editors of the NY Review: Working from home has made us unusually familiar with our possessions, and through video conferencing it has also made us intimate with the furnishings of others). Said the same magazine: Although we generally assume that the best means of identifying someone’s emotions is through their facial expressions, particularly their eyes—the “window of the soul” and all that—a Yale study cited in Psychology Today in 2018 suggests that we may, in fact, be better at reading voices than faces, that we’re more emotionally intelligent on the phone. It is certainly easier to gauge someone’s enthusiasm—or lack thereof—about getting together than it is through texting or email, which are often, at best, emotionless and perfunctory by nature. A similar sentiment came from National Geographic: Video calls seemed an elegant solution to remote work, but they wear on the psyche in complicated ways. Humans communicate even when they’re quiet. During an in-person conversation, the brain focuses partly on the words being spoken, but it also derives additional meaning from dozens of non-verbal cues, such as whether someone is facing you or slightly turned away, if they’re fidgeting while you talk, or if they inhale quickly in preparation to interrupt. These cues help paint a holistic picture of what is being conveyed and what’s expected in response from the listener. Since humans evolved as social animals, perceiving these cues comes naturally to most of us, takes little conscious effort to parse, and can lay the groundwork for emotional intimacy. However, a typical video call impairs these ingrained abilities, and requires sustained and intense attention to words instead. If a person is framed only from the shoulders up, the possibility of viewing hand gestures or other body language is eliminated. If the video quality is poor, any hope of gleaning something from minute facial expressions is dashed. “For somebody who’s really dependent on those non-verbal cues, it can be a big drain not to have them,” Franklin says (Andrew Franklin, an assistant professor of cyberpsychology at Virginia’s Norfolk State University). Prolonged eye contact has become the strongest facial cue readily available, and it can feel threatening or overly intimate if held too long. Multi-person screens magnify this exhausting problem. Gallery view—where all meeting participants appear Brady Bunch-style—challenges the brain’s central vision, forcing it to decode so many people at once that no one comes through meaningfully, not even the speaker.
The pandemic has presented some new viewpoints for most of us, and especially those of us fortunate enough to still be able to connect, be it by text or video or phone.* But in many ways it's also shoved us into a mirror of our world and ourselves. Things once distant now seem near, and things we held near and dear, now seem distant. Friends and family, acquaintances and routines, all have been thrown into a mix that we now have to sort out. Animal shelters begin to empty as we realize how much we're missing that closeness, that ability to touch, that ability to gauge something as simple as a roll of the eyes or a knee nervously moving. We're finding connections we thought were lost, and making new discoveries as to what is important to us. We're also realizing the disparity in our lives, how so many are proving so generous and giving of themselves (healthcare workers, neighbors, people struggling and yet hanging onto hope) and how once-important sports and political figures have sunk into the background. My friends and family may differ in our opinions and beliefs, but that only adds to our closeness and helps to give us more understanding.
I can't help but go back to the words of author and ecologist Alejandro Frid: Who benefits and who suffers and how badly? Which combination of plants and animals --and the myriad relationships among them-- get to endure or go extinct? Which human cultures --and their unique world views that allow alternative ways of seeking meaning to coexist-- get to live, or die? True, many scientists already understand that the questions we ask are inextricably linked to our connections with place and people. You can see awareness in some brilliant studies already out there, particularly those that analyze feedbacks between cultures, economies, and ecosystems. Yet, for the most part, that awareness is too vague. it needs to strengthen, become more widespread and explicit, so that scientists may provide better guidance on how to navigate the rapid changes that our world is undergoing. The world around us is changing, even if temporarily. This pandemic has given us a chance to slow down, to see the air and waters clearing, to watch our gas tanks remain fuller, to get creative in our cooking, to smile more at those working the cash registers and dropping off our packages and mail, to realize how much we've taken for granted when if comes to our doctors and nurses and others helping to keep us alive and healthy. And through all of our disagreements with the news and politics and opinions, it may be giving us the greatest chance....that of seeing what really matters in our lives.
*Hmm, to add to your possible worries about what 5G may or may not do to your health, well it may all be overblown as carriers begin to tout 6G with double the bandwidth of 5G, said MSN.
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