When I moved from the big city to the country, over a quarter-century ago, most of my urban companions and cohorts thought I had worked a few screws loose in my cranium. They were puzzled by my desire to trade a good job and the cultural assets of the city for the loneliness, hard labor, and fiscal uncertainty of the boondocks. I could only respond unconvincingly to them that it was just something I had a strong urge to do. How could I persuade them, when I was almost as naïve about sylvan life as they were? A few of them seemed to have a wee bit of appreciation for my courage, but most of them, I was sure, considered it a foolish move, and probably expected me soon to retreat back to the comforts of city life.
At the time it seemed to me that urban life was endangering my mental and physical health, and a move to the boondocks could be a healing step for me. As it has turned out, life out here has certainly been a physical challenge and finances have had to be carefully managed. Nonetheless I've never experienced any desire to go back, and I've felt that my health definitely benefited from the move. But how do I really know that's true? I can't live out two simultaneous separate lives and then later compare them. Besides, there's a tendency for one to make a life-changing decision and then later justify it as a wise move.
Now, after all these years, I get some kind of independent verification. Unbiased scientific research has recently shown that “the brains of people living in cities operate differently from those in rural areas,” according to a study just conducted at the University of Heidelberg. I'm willing to allow that German brains are wired similarly to American brains, so the results should apply to me too.
The German researchers noted that previous research findings (before they began their study) had already shown that city life increased three mental disorders over country life by: (1) 21% for anxiety disorders, (2) 39% for mood disorders, and (3) 100% for schizophrenia. Those numbers alone impress me! But what the Heidelberg professors wanted to know is why this was so. That was the aim of their research.
In these days when brain scans are routinely done for most any human study, the German scientists examined the brains of two groups of volunteers (city dwellers and country folks) who were put under artificially-induced stress in the lab. They found that two areas of the brain were far more active in city dwellers: the amygdala and the cingulate cortex. The amygdala is the danger-sensor of the brain and is linked to anxiety and depression. The cingulate cortex is important for controlling emotion and dealing with environmental stress.
The researchers noted that these areas of the brain are very sensitive to developmental stress, and that cities are “known for a greater demanding and stressful social environment” than rural locations. Other similar studies have demonstrated that stress is aggravated in the city by “social threats, lack of control, and subordination.”
So maybe I am better off having come out here! Certainly, I recognize that all types of personalities do not suffer from living in the city. Some thrive on the excitement of urban life. The frantic pace there, however, certainly seemed to be increasing my stress level. It's nice to discover all these years later that I may not have had a screw loose, but just needed the peace and quiet of the sylvan life.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Unpredictable Life—Part 2
These are just a few examples of how our lives are guided by a string of contingencies. At any one moment there are an uncountable number of possibilities that could happen to me, but only one does. I lose sight of—am mostly ignorant of—all those other possibilities, because only one thing did happen and I thus get accustomed to thinking that there is some determinable continuity to my life. It's almost as if what happened was destined to occur. I come to believe that my life is either mostly under my control or is steered by an invisible hand. It must have been fate.
We don't want to believe that life is really so fickle. We look back and see a string of events that appear to be sensible, continuous, and consistent. Of course, if I live, for example, in a specific place and time and follow a certain lifestyle, there is some degree of continuity to my existence. If I'm a shepherd in Australia, it's unlikely that I'll get elected to a political office in New York. If I've been a farmer all my life, it's a pretty good bet that I'll be in my fields in May, rather than on a cruise in the Bahamas.
We can also narrow our contingencies by the kind of life we live, but this unfolding of events can make us erroneously conclude that there is far more determinism to existence than there really is. In fact, there is very little necessity to life. We are not fated to do anything.
This situation can seem to some people as a grim message about the meaningless of life; that we are just buffeted about by random forces. Instead, we want to think that our life has a purpose and an intent—as we long for continuity (read: meaning). We want to believe that we are who we are, because destiny wanted us to be here, not because a string of random events brought us here. Is my life nothing but a succession of accidental happenings; a whimsical and senseless existence? None of us want to think that.
In fact, life is neither random nor predetermined. I see another message—one that lies between these extremes. More importantly, I think it can also mean that I am free to be who I want to be—that I am not permanently stuck with the person I've been telling myself I am. We tend to buy into stories about the type of person who we come to think we are—shy, overweight, unable to dance, prone to anger, incompetent at sports, not liked by my family, etc.
These stories are not necessarily true. I am not necessarily destined to stay who I am. I can break free of my shackles and change. I can reorder my life. There's nothing compelling me to do the things I've been doing. I don't have to be passively reacting to life. If I acknowledge and accept the fact that uncontrollable contingencies do impact who I am and what I'm doing, I can open up to them and dance with them. If I don't futilely try to control them, but see them coming and roll with them, I can be much happier.
If my attitude is influenced by gratitude for simply being alive and having uncountable possibilities, I can accomplish things I never thought possible. Fate has not laid it all out for me—I can play a part in the dance and take the initiative. Sure, dangers and threats lurk around the next bend, but so do gifts and grace. When I give up struggling and quit fighting life, I begin to fully accept it and become positively engaged with and captivated by it.
We don't want to believe that life is really so fickle. We look back and see a string of events that appear to be sensible, continuous, and consistent. Of course, if I live, for example, in a specific place and time and follow a certain lifestyle, there is some degree of continuity to my existence. If I'm a shepherd in Australia, it's unlikely that I'll get elected to a political office in New York. If I've been a farmer all my life, it's a pretty good bet that I'll be in my fields in May, rather than on a cruise in the Bahamas.
We can also narrow our contingencies by the kind of life we live, but this unfolding of events can make us erroneously conclude that there is far more determinism to existence than there really is. In fact, there is very little necessity to life. We are not fated to do anything.
This situation can seem to some people as a grim message about the meaningless of life; that we are just buffeted about by random forces. Instead, we want to think that our life has a purpose and an intent—as we long for continuity (read: meaning). We want to believe that we are who we are, because destiny wanted us to be here, not because a string of random events brought us here. Is my life nothing but a succession of accidental happenings; a whimsical and senseless existence? None of us want to think that.
In fact, life is neither random nor predetermined. I see another message—one that lies between these extremes. More importantly, I think it can also mean that I am free to be who I want to be—that I am not permanently stuck with the person I've been telling myself I am. We tend to buy into stories about the type of person who we come to think we are—shy, overweight, unable to dance, prone to anger, incompetent at sports, not liked by my family, etc.
These stories are not necessarily true. I am not necessarily destined to stay who I am. I can break free of my shackles and change. I can reorder my life. There's nothing compelling me to do the things I've been doing. I don't have to be passively reacting to life. If I acknowledge and accept the fact that uncontrollable contingencies do impact who I am and what I'm doing, I can open up to them and dance with them. If I don't futilely try to control them, but see them coming and roll with them, I can be much happier.
If my attitude is influenced by gratitude for simply being alive and having uncountable possibilities, I can accomplish things I never thought possible. Fate has not laid it all out for me—I can play a part in the dance and take the initiative. Sure, dangers and threats lurk around the next bend, but so do gifts and grace. When I give up struggling and quit fighting life, I begin to fully accept it and become positively engaged with and captivated by it.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Unpredictable Life—Part 1
Who we are and what we're doing at any given moment is heavily dependent on specific events that occurred moments before—in the time immediately before “now.” At any moment an uncountable number of possibilities could happen, but only one does. All the other potential candidates remain mostly hidden to us. In our ignorance we view the one event that did happen as something that must have been destined to be so, as if fate or some superior power had decided ahead of time what would happen to us. An earthquake will be viewed by some as punishment from God. Winning the lottery may be perceived as a reward for being good.
Even if we don't see a divine hand steering every event, we want to believe that our personal lives have order, that there is meaning to the things that happen to us. We want to think that things have a reason for happening—that there is a purpose and continuity to this existence.
On the personal level we especially want to see a continuum to our lives. So we tend to adopt the belief that there is an understandable order in our lives—even that there is some guiding hand that propels us down a certain path. It's almost as if we were destined to become who we are. That belief is mostly untrue. Our lives instead are largely contingent on arbitrary events that continually happen to us—events that are unforeseen by us and mostly out of our control.
When I was 17 and a new driver of that several-thousand-pound vehicle called a car, there were a few times that I nearly got killed—but managed to survive them all. The grace of God? Pure luck? My first job out of college depended on a recruiter arriving a week late on campus and my spur-of-the-moment signing up to talk to him that day. A week earlier I was otherwise involved and would never have met him. Where else may I have gone to begin my career? I bought my favorite house after a stroke of luck (for me!) saw the previous buyer's financing fall through.
Why do we marry the certain person we do? What determines when our first pregnancy happens and the baby's gender? What brought us down with a near-fatal case of the flu in 1998? What made my plane land safely and the next one crash? Wasn't my birth dependent on a random string of events—for example the one sperm out of millions of my dad's that led to me? What if my parents had decided to make love another night, or a month later, when Mom had a different egg in her uterus?
At any moment countless possibilities, innumerable contingencies are waiting, just a few seconds into the future. What I will end up doing in the moment following will be only one of those things—but until it actually happens, I could be pushed in many unpredictable directions. I plan to go outside and weed the garden, but the phone rings and the caller dramatically changes my direction. I walk heedlessly out the door, sprain my ankle, and spend the next few days in bed. I go to a restaurant for a meal, order the “wrong” thing, and come down with food poisoning.
All contingencies, of course, are not unfortunate ones. For example, I was dating a certain lady years ago, who seemed like she'd make a good mate; but we soon broke up and I shortly found a gal who's made my life far happier. I took a drive in the country one day and found exactly the piece of land I'd been dreaming about.
More on contingencies next time...
Even if we don't see a divine hand steering every event, we want to believe that our personal lives have order, that there is meaning to the things that happen to us. We want to think that things have a reason for happening—that there is a purpose and continuity to this existence.
On the personal level we especially want to see a continuum to our lives. So we tend to adopt the belief that there is an understandable order in our lives—even that there is some guiding hand that propels us down a certain path. It's almost as if we were destined to become who we are. That belief is mostly untrue. Our lives instead are largely contingent on arbitrary events that continually happen to us—events that are unforeseen by us and mostly out of our control.
When I was 17 and a new driver of that several-thousand-pound vehicle called a car, there were a few times that I nearly got killed—but managed to survive them all. The grace of God? Pure luck? My first job out of college depended on a recruiter arriving a week late on campus and my spur-of-the-moment signing up to talk to him that day. A week earlier I was otherwise involved and would never have met him. Where else may I have gone to begin my career? I bought my favorite house after a stroke of luck (for me!) saw the previous buyer's financing fall through.
Why do we marry the certain person we do? What determines when our first pregnancy happens and the baby's gender? What brought us down with a near-fatal case of the flu in 1998? What made my plane land safely and the next one crash? Wasn't my birth dependent on a random string of events—for example the one sperm out of millions of my dad's that led to me? What if my parents had decided to make love another night, or a month later, when Mom had a different egg in her uterus?
At any moment countless possibilities, innumerable contingencies are waiting, just a few seconds into the future. What I will end up doing in the moment following will be only one of those things—but until it actually happens, I could be pushed in many unpredictable directions. I plan to go outside and weed the garden, but the phone rings and the caller dramatically changes my direction. I walk heedlessly out the door, sprain my ankle, and spend the next few days in bed. I go to a restaurant for a meal, order the “wrong” thing, and come down with food poisoning.
All contingencies, of course, are not unfortunate ones. For example, I was dating a certain lady years ago, who seemed like she'd make a good mate; but we soon broke up and I shortly found a gal who's made my life far happier. I took a drive in the country one day and found exactly the piece of land I'd been dreaming about.
More on contingencies next time...
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Jerky Birds—Part 2
These ocular avian advantages come at a cost, however. With such massive eyes crammed into the tiny skull of small birds, there is no room for muscles that rotate the eyes, so they have to turn their head to change their field of view. In addition, in order to have a wide field of view—remember all those predators—their eyes are located on the sides of their head, so they can see almost all the way around themselves. The cost for this capability is they have no depth perception, because each eye views a different image.
It's pretty hard to tell how far away things are if you have no depth perception. That can be fatal, if a hawk is rapidly zeroing in on your location. (There are no one-eyed baseball players, since catching a ball would be pure luck with no depth perception.) So what's a vulnerable little bird to do? He moves his head rapidly, from one position to another. This action accomplishes two things: one, he can triangulate on objects and two, he can better detect a moving object. Triangulation can help discern the form of and distance to things. When the head stabilizes for an instant, the bird can better detect motion “out there.”
Songbirds, being tiny little critters, move much faster than we humans can. Their eyes can resolve rapid movements—about twice as rapidly as we can. So they flick their heads about, helping them quickly to spot and track the movements of any potential predator. It's their critical ability to reconnoiter their immediate territory, without it all becoming a blur.
I got my first clue about what's going on with the jerky habits of birds when a neighbor described to me how he spots deer when he's hunting. The best indicator of a deer's presence to him is detecting its motion, since Mother Nature has gifted deer with such excellent camouflage. If a human is continually meandering through the woods, he's likely to miss the slight movements of a deer (who is always on the alert for predator motion). My neighbor demonstrated his hunting technique to me: quietly, yet fairly quickly taking three steps and then freezing like a statue for a couple of seconds, while his eyes sweep the area. That gives him a much better chance of spotting a deer.
After that demonstration, the more I watched birds twitch their heads about, the more I saw that it resembled my neighbor's hunting technique. With that hint to guide me, matched to the amazing ability of Internet search engines, I was on my way.
It's pretty hard to tell how far away things are if you have no depth perception. That can be fatal, if a hawk is rapidly zeroing in on your location. (There are no one-eyed baseball players, since catching a ball would be pure luck with no depth perception.) So what's a vulnerable little bird to do? He moves his head rapidly, from one position to another. This action accomplishes two things: one, he can triangulate on objects and two, he can better detect a moving object. Triangulation can help discern the form of and distance to things. When the head stabilizes for an instant, the bird can better detect motion “out there.”
Songbirds, being tiny little critters, move much faster than we humans can. Their eyes can resolve rapid movements—about twice as rapidly as we can. So they flick their heads about, helping them quickly to spot and track the movements of any potential predator. It's their critical ability to reconnoiter their immediate territory, without it all becoming a blur.
I got my first clue about what's going on with the jerky habits of birds when a neighbor described to me how he spots deer when he's hunting. The best indicator of a deer's presence to him is detecting its motion, since Mother Nature has gifted deer with such excellent camouflage. If a human is continually meandering through the woods, he's likely to miss the slight movements of a deer (who is always on the alert for predator motion). My neighbor demonstrated his hunting technique to me: quietly, yet fairly quickly taking three steps and then freezing like a statue for a couple of seconds, while his eyes sweep the area. That gives him a much better chance of spotting a deer.
After that demonstration, the more I watched birds twitch their heads about, the more I saw that it resembled my neighbor's hunting technique. With that hint to guide me, matched to the amazing ability of Internet search engines, I was on my way.
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