The Scent of Desire

The sense of smell is very suggestible. It didn't evolve in a world where there was fragrance and perfume and aftershave. There's evidence suggesting in divorce rates that the [divorcée's] sense of smell was off. There's also good evidence that people who are similar in terms of their immune systems have a more difficult time conceiving, whether they're twenty or forty. So I think the reason women are having such a hard time conceiving these days is not just because they're [having children when they're] older, but also potentially because she met the guy while on the pill, or his cologne swept her off her feet, and by the time she got to really smell him it was too late because she was in love with him.

©2007 Nerve.com and Catrinel Bartolomeu

The Smell of Love

"Why do bulls and horses turn up their nostrils when excited by love?" Darwin pondered deep in one of his unpublished notebooks. He came to believe that natural selection designed animals to produce two, and only two, types of odors—defensive ones, like the skunk's, and scents for territorial marking and mate attracting, like that exuded by the male musk deer and bottled by perfumers everywhere. The evaluative sniffing that mammals engage in during courtship were clues that scent is the chemical equivalent of the peacock's plumage or the nightingale's song—finery with which to attract mates.

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De vanskelige menneskene

"... Noen ganger treffer jeg på slike “vanskelige mennesker”. De fremstår som unyanserte noen ganger. Og de får gjerne også høre det. Av leger, av saksbehandlere og av andre mennesker rundt seg. Aldri fornøyd. Det må være noe galt med dem. Stakkars saksbehandlere, tenker mange antageligvis.

Men jeg tar meg stadig i å lure… Hvordan ble disse menneskene sånn? Hvordan kom piggene ut i første omgang? Blir de behandlet dårlig fordi de er vanskelige eller er de vanskelige fordi de blir behandlet dårlig?"

Funnet på bloggen Fullt Hus og stormende jubel, av Lin

The roots of violence

If we know that the roots of violence are fertilized by childhood abuse, can we make a long-term commitment to reduce violence by focusing on our children rather than our criminals? What if we set a goal of reducing the cases of childhood abuse and neglect by 50 percent a year? What if we monitored statistics on childhood abuse as avidly as we track housing starts, inflation, or baseball scores? We would have to commit ourselves, seriously, to improving access to quality day care and after-school programs. We might need to educate and support parents so they could know how to nurture their children more effectively. We certainly would need to foster better relationships among peers and siblings.

Copyright 2008 The Dana Foundation All Rights Reserved danainfo@dana.org

Lifelong beneficial changes

Fifty years ago, Seymour Levine and Victor Denenberg showed that small alterations in their environment led to lasting changes in rats’ development, behavior, and response to stress. Something as seemingly inconsequential as five minutes of human handling during a rat’s infancy produced lifelong beneficial changes. We now understand through the research efforts of Michael Meany and Paul Plotsky that the effects of brief handling were highly beneficial and were due to increased maternal attention. Those pups whose mothers spontaneously lick and groom them the most (about one-third in a laboratory setting) display the same benefits as the rats with the human handling. By contrast, long isolation produces stress that has a deleterious effect on brain and behavior development.

Copyright 2008 The Dana Foundation All Rights Reserved danainfo@dana.org

Freedom

Rushdie: We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life. If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.

"Terror Is Glamour", Spiegel interview with Salman Rushdie

Rushdie: In my opinion the word “spiritual” ought to be put on an index and banned from being used for say 50 years. The things that are put about as being “spiritual” -- it’s unbelievable. It even goes as far as a spiritual lap dog and a spiritual shampoo.

SPIEGEL: You yourself once wrote: “We need answers to the unanswerable. Is this life all there is? The soul needs explanations, not rational ones but ones for the heart.”

Rushdie: Of course there are things beyond material needs, we all sense that. For me the answers are simply not in the religious, heavenly realm. But I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.

Interview conducted by Erich Follath, August 28, 2006,© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
All Rights Reserved, Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH

“Spirituality” Cements Childhood Blindness

When Tibetan Buddhism is celebrated today as the peaceful and calming practice of meditation, people overlook the reality of a brutal religion with bizarre traditions that has used meditation as a tyrannizing tool to quash the power of feelings and free, critical thinking. Not only one hell as in Christianity, but sixteen hells doom the believer in Tibetan Buddhism with terrifying horror scenarios! It is a tradition of this controlling religion to force children into becoming monks, remove them from their families, cut them off from contact with women and brainwash them with religious studies that must be learned and recited by heart. In the context of this inhuman religion, the word “compassion,” no matter how often it is conjured, has no real meaning because compassion is not extended to these abused and neglected children. In order to become “spiritually enlightened,” they are betrayed of their human right to a healthy, dignified development, their freedom and their lives.

http://www.alice-miller.com © Barbara Rogers, September 2007

Long time no love - on this blog

Hopefully more love in the world