Laugh It Off

My friends in Ethiopia each took a turn with the camera. Dragged from

home to home, served coffee and more, and lots of laughing involved.

  These kids have probably added years to my life, healthwise.

An ancient remedy, "Laughter does good like a medicine," is now scientifically proven.  

Norman Cousins, who suffered from inflammatory arthritis, claimed that ten minutes of hearty guffawing while watching Marx Brothers movies brought him two hours of pain-free sleep and that both inflammation and pain were significantly reduced.  It's in his book, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. 

Ok, that's pretty far outside what we might expect, no?

It's reasonable.  Look it up.  Research since Cousins wrote the book has shown that laughter ...

1. reduces levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine, and dopamine; 
2. increases health-enhancing hormones (such as endorphins), neurotransmitters, and infection-fighting antibodies; and 
3. improves blood flow to the heart

—all resulting in greater relaxation and resistance to disease, as well as improved mood and positive outlook.  Laughter is depression's enemy.

Community actually works well for these folks.  They depend on each other for most things 
from help building their homes to supervising their children to hauling in the nets. And they 
laugh when I try to speak their language and they try to speak mine.  

Africa, and some of the world's nicest people.

So then, laughter is surprisingly healthy and helpful.

Interestingly, so are heartfelt tears, love, loving friends, proximity and affection, affirmation, and a healthy diet. Who knew?

At the other end of the spectrum, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, stress, selfishness, and fast food will erode your health.  And life.

Ancient wisdom; worth a second look.

Pv.17:22, for starters, and there's more where that came from.

Peter Principle Problem

In a typical workplace, employees tend to be promoted up to incompetence. The principle is based on employees being promoted as long as they are productive.

At some point they will stall because they're no longer impressive performers. They rise to their level of incompetence and stay there.

Over time, every position in the hierarchy will be filled by someone who lacks what it takes to do the job well.

It's not a joke; it's a common problem that must be solved to stay competitive; reorganize, down-size, spin-off, cross-train, reassign, ... The larger the organization, the larger the problem.

 "The Peter Principle" was published in book form in 1968. The author sums it up by saying: "the cream rises until it sours."

Ignorance ignores its own ignorance.  

"Poor performers do not learn from feedback 

suggesting a need to improve."

~Joyce Ehrlinger

Ehrlinger, Joyce; Johnson, Kerri; Banner, Matthew;
Dunning, David; Kruger, Justin (2008).
"Why the unskilled are unaware: Further explorations
of (absent) self-insight among the incompetent".
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

The principle plays out most visibly with the transition into and through middle management, and it may leak upward from there.

In more recent scholarly work, we have the Dunning-Kruger Effect where unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority.  They mistakenly rate their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to their inadequate ability to recognize their own ineptitude. By comparison, genuinely capable individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, often thinking that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.  Again, middle management is the most visible venue.

The planning fallacy is a great example.

It's scary if you think about it.  The only hope we have of knowing we're helpful is if we think we're probably not all that great.  Reasonable humility, perhaps required for some measure of right thinking.  

Mount Stupid!
Ok, one more time down the mountain.

It's a lesson we must learn in each area of life.  I forget who in my early career days was the first to clobber me so effectively with that particular truth.  They required of me that I aggressively pursue all the stuff I didn't yet know.  It wouldn't be so bad, except fifty years later, there's still so many stinking things left to learn.

This particular article was occasioned by the discovery of yet another area in my own thinking that needs such an adjustment. Like I didn't have enough to do.

The Spice of Life

This is a short section of a DNA

molecule.  

DNA is fascinating.  It's a long, perhaps a 40-inch long complex molecule; a connected group of atoms, ordered and arranged in a unique, one-of-a-kind arrangement for each individual creature. There is a copy of the individual's DNA in every cell of the body from hair follicles to flakes of skin in a foot callous. You'd know that if you watched NCIS.

Most DNA molecules are formed in two strands that spiral around each other in a double-helix.  The strands are connected by bonds across the gap between creating base pairs.

A gene is the term used to describe a segment of the DNA molecule, and the number of base pairs in a gene segment is in the hundreds of thousands; not a simple thing.  The number of genes in the DNA of a life form varies widely.  Humans have about 22,000 genes which is more than a chicken has but less than a grape.  The actual number of genes in human DNA is still a matter of study and debate with ranges from 21,671 to 38,621 depending on whose work you follow.

Each gene controls a particular function within its host cell.  There's a lot going on in in there, apparently.  There's a copy of our DNA in each cell.

Take a break and watch the video here.  Note the production and industry processes, all of which are directed in their activity by DNA; it's the layout of logistics, just-in-time delivery, manufacturing, and transportation.  It handles factory systems maintenance and repair as well in parallel with production tasks.

The complexity of a cell is roughly equivalent to a large city like San Antonio.  And remember that cells are grouped together by task and function; skin, muscle, food processing, communications, data storage and analysis, sensor processing and rendering, and construction.  It's perhaps like an industrialized city with a primary product line.

Now broaden your perspective a bit and visualize those industrial cities as right next to each other, and run up the number of cities until you hit around 50 billion cities working together.  Each city is a labor and production center, and working together with those neighboring cities ... that's your heart.  Fifty billion cities, busy with work, cooperating to keep your blood flowing.

You have perhaps 100 trillion such little industrial cities working together in your body!

If you're curious about the cell and all the parts, here's a short Khan Academy class (right) on how it works.

And a narrated 3D look at the processes (left) for after you've got all the parts named.

And if your imagination is captured, see Inside the Living Body (lower right).

An overly simplistic view of life deprives us of the extraordinary beauty found there, does it not?  

Education is the spice of life.

Behavior Genetics

Our DNA decides who and what we are.  Our behavior is predictable before birth.  True?

No, but there are fascinating pieces that surface in the inquiry.  Nailing down the genes that perhaps would determine a particular behavior trait has been a difficult task.  The simple and perhaps popularly preferred result would be a 'hard-wired' brain where genes would unerringly create in us our personality type, our character traits, and our response to a particular type of situation.

To be violent or not, to be an addict or not, to be compassionate or not; the logical path suggests our brain operates like a computer with automatic responses built into the programming.  Popular science writers, much like the news media, have perhaps taken the simplest explanation as complete, suggesting everything from a brain circuit for bungee jumping to a plan for raising your child based on their DNA with a commercially available genetic profile.  The 'Gay Gene' has been similarly popularized.

Unfortunately, the science doesn't adequately support the premise, and the genetic contribution to character and personality development appears to be much more complex.

The surprising news from the human genome project in '01 is that we have a pitiful 25,000 genes or less, about twice that of a fruit fly and less than a mouse.  The expectation of a stunningly complex program defining the magnificence of humanity was squashed.  Just 25,000 lines of code won't make a decent word processor, much less a self-aware world-conqueror.

"We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right," asserted Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics, one of the two teams that cracked the human genome.

The debate regarding possible DNA related traits has two sides, one of which is potentially charged.

"Venter has wasted little time in playing down the importance of the genes he has catalogued. He cites the example of colon cancer, which is often associated with a defective 'colon cancer gene'. Even though some patients carry this mutated gene in every cell, the cancer only occurs in the colon because it is triggered by toxins secreted by bacteria in the gut. Cancer, argues Venter, is an environmental disease. Strong support for this viewpoint appeared last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers in Scandinavia studying 45,000 pairs of twins concluded that cancer is largely caused by environmental rather than inherited factors, a surprising conclusion after a decade of headlines touting the discovery of the 'breast cancer gene,' the 'colon cancer gene,' and many more."  Dr. Kevin Davies, author of Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA (Free Press, 2001). A graduate of Oxford University, he holds a doctorate in genetics from the University of London.

Popularly touted and culturally volatile, the emerging science is significant on several fronts, not the least of which is the emerging opportunity to choose your children based on preimplantation or in-utero DNA testing, the modern version of eugenics where children become a marketable, made-to-order product.  Possibly helpful?  Absolutely, but with potential for troublesome extremes.

From an engineering perspective, triggering
gene expression is just incredible.

Now comes the fun part.  Cause or effect?

Did the gene cause the behavior or did the behavior trigger the gene?

The roll of environment and experience is now being understood as one of the triggers for gene expression (activation). For 100 people with some common genetic trait, only a few might see the expected manifestation.  Why?  

Gene C controls fur pigmentation in Himalayan rabbits.
Because the gene is active when environmental temperatures
are between 15 and 25°C, the rabbit reared at 20°C (left)
has pigmentation on its ears, nose, and feet, where its body
loses the most heat. The rabbit reared at temperatures above
30°C (right) has no fur pigmentation, because gene C is inactive
at these higher temperatures.

We knew that, didn't we.  What we may not have considered is
the impact of experience on genetic expression.

We do understand that our genes illuminate much about our physiology.  The as yet inadequately addressed question is the roll of what we experience in gene activation (expression).   Does the environment in which a child is raised trigger gene-level activity?  Can living with street crime or domestic violence change specific gene-level activity in those affected?  

Only recently have we begun to see how experience (environment) can trigger gene expression and affect the development of everything from mental traits (order/disorder) to physical traits (stability/deterioration) and even male-pattern baldness ...
... in women.  Heredity vs. environment, determinism vs. indeterminism (free will) continues.  

",,, it is important to keep in mind that there is a very complex interaction between our genes and our environment that defines our phenotype and who we are."  Lobo, I. (2008) Environmental influences on gene expression. Nature Education 1(1):39

The debate continues furiously, of course.  Both sides are perhaps mostly right, and we'll be the fortunate recipients of their research and medical advances.  One thing we know for certain, though, is that the simplistic answer of genetic determinism has fallen by the wayside.  We shoulda spotted that one coming.

Adult Education

Learn for a lifetime, or miss all the good parts.  We get to choose, but there's effort involved.

When we finished school, we were ready for life, equipped with everything we needed to know. That's what we thought, and it never occurred to us that we'd need to continue serious learning for the rest of our lives.

Moving thoughtfully forward then, how do we tackle life and its opportunities?

Helps: listening to those with experience! Whether they have artisanal skills or business acumen or relational abilities, all are helpful, and perhaps especially the interpersonal relationship insights you might acquire.

Hindrances: thinking that the knowledge we have is equal to wisdom and experience. It's not, at least not yet; for now it's just information.

Best source for advanced study: others! When we're early in the process, it helps to have others who think like we do to reinforce the good parts. Once we're well begun, we need to hear clearly those who disagree with us and understand how they came to that point of view. Absolutely essential.

Worst source: mainstream and social media. When we find ourselves agreeing with a given source these days, we need to remember that most are deliberately one-sided.

“For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”  ― Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

Curious what it looks like?  Here's a summary ...

There's enough here for a multi-year personal study.

The most useful information is the last column, how we might relate
genuinely to others. This is an aggregation of several studies, the most
 notable being Kegan's Structures of Complexity of Mind.

If you're going to grow up, it isn't over until you reach the goal. There are markers along the way, if you're interested.

It's hard enough making it through adolescence and education, it's hard enough becoming a responsible adult, a marriage partner, a parent. All that is just the beginning.  😃

Ahead is the extraordinary world of identity and character, service and sacrifice, and meaningful life.  Growth and change are continuous, and there is so much to learn along the way.

___________________________________________________
An annoying note to self: those of us who think we've arrived ... haven't.

Jesus was weird ...

These kids, their gracious family, and their camel reminded me ...         

Jesus was a strange fellow.  According to him, if you're rich you'll find it extraordinarily difficult to enter the 'kingdom'.  And I wonder if that's the here and now kingdom, too, rather than just the by-and-by place.

OK, so why preach this gospel if rich people can't make the cut?  All his talk about loving the whole world, doesn't that include the rich?

There are arguments in every century about his statement, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."  

  

Attempts have been made        
by commentators to soften      
the apparently irreconcilable  
dilemma, suggesting perhaps a
small gate referred to as the    
'needle's eye' where a camel    
could possibly go through on    
its knees. There's no historical
or archeological support for
such a gate. 

So then, what if he was telling us something we need to hear?

What if someone depends first on their wealth and position for what they need?
What if they turn first to their station and influence for opportunity?
What if they trust first in their country for security and other needs?

If they we can ... and do ... perhaps that's what he was talking about.  
     Perhaps 'having' interferes.
        When you have all the bread you could ever need, can you pray, "give us bread today"?  
             And insulated from the world, would you ever pray, "deliver us"?

"Make me neither rich nor poor," a writer prayed, "but feed me with just enough, lest I become arrogant in wealth or bitter in poverty."

This 'camel and needle' teaching from the early days of Christianity has little impact in this country.  Perhaps it's because he's talking about us, or most of us anyway.  We take for granted that we won't have to walk to the river and carry water home in a jug.  We won't do our laundry and dishes and bathing in that same river.  We won't walk miles to the nearest health clinic and wait for hours.  We won't have to choose between feeding our child or sending him to school.  We perhaps presume our comforts are the norm and that everybody lives that way.  Everybody doesn't, of course.  Most do not.

So, for the rich folks who might read this, have you noticed how hard it is sometimes to take Jesus seriously?  Figured out why yet?

"We all know something's wrong.

At first I thought it was just me. Then I stood before twenty thousand Christian college students and asked, "How many of you have read the New Testament and wondered if we in the church are missing it?" When almost every hand went up, I felt comforted. At least I'm not crazy."   ~Francis Chan

Seven Questions:

1. The disciples asked, "who then can be saved?"  What does his answer mean? 
2. Why does Christianity seem irrelevant these days, especially among younger folks? 
3. How much of western Christianity is the real thing?  What parts?
4. How far back do you need to step to see things as they really are?
5. Is there a difference between folks in secular and sacred employment?
6. What effect does wealth have on relationships? (this is huge!)
7. If one path would fulfill your calling, what would it be?  (maybe that's the big question.)

If we can hold the thought long enough to truly consider the questions, we're one in a hundred.

If we can hold the thought long enough to do anything differently, we're one in a thousand.

That's a conflict in which we all are engaged.  And for the record, camels are fascinating animals, really.