Meditation Powers On The Brain

Art by dandingeroz

I am currently reading (among, possibly, 20 other books...yeah, I need to work on that) Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality, and though I'm still quite at the beginning, I already have so much food for thought!

The book talks about the science behind how our mind and thoughts can alter physical reality, starting with our own brain. As part of the intro on this topic, it brings up an article written by Tang, Hötzel, & Postner in 2015, which I'll partially transcribe down here for you.

The article talks about an astrophysicist/journalist, Phillips, who decided to check how meditation would affect his brain, and test it medically (to convince his skeptical self should there really be any major effects):

By Robert Voight/Adobe Stock

"After just two weeks of practicing mindfulness meditation, Phillips felt less stressed and more able to handle the challenges of his job and life.;He reported that he 'notices stress but doesn't get sucked into it.'
Eight weeks later, he [went back] for testing. ... They found that he was better at behavioral tasks, even though he showed diminished brain activity. ... [H]is brain had become more energy efficient. ... His memory tests also improved.
His reaction time to unexpected events had been cut by almost half a second. (...)
One of the brain regions the researchers measured the hippocampus, ... and the part of [it] responsible for regulation emotion in other parts of the brain. ... They found that the volume of nerve cells in th[at part of the hippocampus] had increased by 22.8%.
...Such brain reconfiguration is occasionally seen in young people whose brains are still growing, but it is rarely seen in adults. (...)
[There is an] accumulation of a large body of evidence [that has] identified neural growth in 'multiple brain regions...suggesting that the effects of meditation might involve large-scale brain networks.'"

So reading this, I of course totally want to try it out (especially if meditation will allow me to get less angry at, say, loud neighbors that keep me up all night, or help me stay focused on my writing). Despite being terrible at sitting for long periods of time with nothing to do but focus on my breathing and whatnot.

BUT...

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

Meditation is a double-edged sword.

Indeed, meditation can exacerbate problems instead of helping us overcome them, particularly if we are already suffering from certain mental or personality conditions.

So instead of calming us down, meditation could instead "trigger anxiety, depressive episodes, or flashbacks to past traumas," and turn one more aggressive. In worse cases, it can truly make you lose your mind entirely, lose yourself and your identity entirely as "the boundaries of [your] ego dissolve," and push you towards suicide.

So, yeah. There's that too.

All of this does prove that meditation changes your brain, but whether it's for the better is not necessarily a given. And with my kind of writer's mind, I think I need to be careful. So for now I think I'll stick to what I know works for me, which is what I like to call "active meditation" or exercise (which I definitely don't do enough of, quite frankly).

Still, it is fascinating to see how much of an influence our thoughts have on our body, is it not?

Additional Sources:
When Mindfulness Goes Wrong
What Mindfulness Gurus Don't Tell You: Meditation Has a Dark Side

Fantasy Vs. Knowledge

Einstein by VityaR83

Just a quick food for thought for the day.

Einstein once said (or wrote, not sure which):

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

I think this is a great point to bear in mind when thinking about educational programs. I believe it's

good to understand the bases for certain ideas/theorems/etc, but I don't think that individual thinking should be discouraged. Simple regurgitation of a teacher's or professor's lectures should not be the goal of one's education, especially not when pursuing higher education. That is why I feel privileged to have attended a university in the U.S. and at a school where professors encouraged critical thinking and questions in class.

PS: This is my own opinion, of course, and like anything human, subject to fallacy. 

PS 2: I'm not saying American schools are necessarily the best. I'm also not saying that this point should be the only one to consider when comparing programs on a global basis. However, based on my own experience, I do not believe I would have blossomed to the same extent (or at least not as quickly) had I chosen a university in the "regurgitation" system than in the "free-thinking" one.

Humanity's Tipping Point

I've just finished reading a(nother) fantasy book--Midnighters #3: Blue Noon--where one of the characters, Rex, considers the potential end of the world. For humans at least:

In the darkling part of his mind, Rex thought for a moment that perhaps this wasn't such a bad thing. Without predators to cull the herd, humanity had spread across the earth unchecked, crowding the planet beyond its resources, prideful and arrogant.
Maybe one night a year of being hunted would do them good.

Though one night a year may not seem like a lot, in this book it equates to thousands of deaths, if not millions. Granted, out of 7+ billion people, that's a pretty small number, but still.

Anyway, I know that end-of-world stories, or at least end-of-humanity stories have been quite popular lately (with zombies only being one aspect of them), and I think they do bring up an interesting point: considering we're at the top of the food chain (with nothing to cull our population growth), then how long can we continue on this path before we've outgrown our environment?

Population growth is currently at 1.14% per year. Granted, the rate has supposedly started to decline again (thanks to developed countries), but just over the 20th century the world population grew 264%, from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. Now that's not chump change.

So, since as Harvard University sociobiologist put it, "[t]he constraints of the biosphere are fixed," how many humans can our little Earth sustain? About 9 to 10 billion (according to some scientists). That's not much higher than our current level and, according to predictions, is a number that should be hit between 2040 and 2062. So in 25 to 47 years. Or relatively soon and, in most people's case, our lifetime.

Exciting news, isn't it?

So what are we to expect then? Short water supply (better start stocking up on those bottles!), short food supply (makes us feel bad about wasting 1.3 billion tonnes of food every year, doesn't it?), To make the picture a little bleaker, the 10 billion sustainability mark is assuming everyone becomes a grass-eater (vegans FTW!), so a more realistic picture would bring down that mark... Although, considering the current specie extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate (aka background extinction rate: rate of extinction without human involvement), that means between 200-2,000 (on the low end) or 10,000 to 100,000 (on the higher end) species are becoming extinct, I have a feeling this constrains our biosphere parameters even further. Robot bees just aren't going to be enough to make a difference...

So all you zombie/apocalypse fan boys and girls there might get to experience survival scenarios (who knows how people would react in such a world?). As for everyone else, well, let's hope we figure something out, and soon. (I'm totally for colonizing Mars, btw!)

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my time with my family and friends that much more and appreciate my Christmas dinner fully (with no wastage!).

UPDATE - 2015.01.22:
Just read this article about humanity tipping the earth's ecological and weather patterns into unsafe zones, with already two large "dead zones" reported, and more to come if we keep up with our current activities (especially the production of the chemicals phosphorus and nitrogen). The scientists in charge of the study stated that we've hit 4 out of the 9 "safe operating space" boundaries, getting closer and closer to the point of no return where life won't be as friendly as it has been up until now...

Sources:
Live Science - How Many People Can Earth Support?
World Population Clock (with amazing charts!)
UNEP - Food Waste Facts
WWF - How Many Species Are We Losing?
Center For Biological Diversity - The Extinction Crisis
Robobees

A Nation’s Key To Power

While reading a history book, I came across a very interesting passage:

“History as we know it came of age in tandem with the European nation-states.  As the structure of the modern university coalesced—with knowledge categorized into disciplines, and scholars categorized into academic departments—Europe’s global dominance in technology and economic power was so great that it seemed reasonable to imagine that Europeans had advanced to a higher level than peoples in other parts of the world.”

This brings interesting points, such as the fact that nations cannot become great (and enjoy power, I suppose, if they get high off of that sort of thing) unless there is a structured way of learning that encourages not only the spread of knowledge, but also of reasoning and healthy debates.

Methinks, therefore, that should any of these traits vanish, is when we start to see a country’s downfall…

Source:

The Heritage of World Civilizations: Combined Volume (9th Edition)