Posts Tagged ‘education’
what can we learn from religion?
Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the Being of a God. Promises, Covenants and Oaths, which are the Bonds of Humane Society, can have no hold upon an Atheist.
John Locke, ‘A letter concerning toleration’, 1689
In my last post I referred to some aspects of religious belief that I think are worth focusing on if we want to get past the rational/irrational, or even the true/false debates. Alain de Botton created quite a stir recently when he claimed that arguments about the truth/falsity of religion were boring and without much value – or something like that. Typically, I both agree and disagree. There are essential empirical questions at stake, as I argued in my critique of Stephen Jay Gould here, but they’re hardly key to getting a handle on religion’s enormous popularity and endurance. That requires a deeper understanding of the psychological underpinnings of religious belief.
First, I’ve already written of the fact that, for all very young children, adults are supernatural beings. They’ve yet to learn about human mortality and limitations. They certainly learn quickly about their own pain and discomfort, but it comes as a shock when they first observe that all these competent, powerful, protective giants can be hurt, angry and frustrated just like them. These findings should hardly surprise us – children at this stage are entirely dependent on adults for their survival. These adults, they observe, can throw them up in the air and hopefully catch them, they can walk across a room in three seconds flat, they can transport them by car or plane to a completely different world, they’re not afraid of anything, and they miraculously provide all sustenance and succour.
While non-believers mostly understand such basic childhood beliefs, many are highly impatient of those who haven’t, at an appropriate age, abandoned this ‘theory of mind’ and replaced it with a more rational or sophisticated scientific worldview. The response of many psychologists in the field would be that, yes, we do change, but the idea of the supernatural, of transcending the usual limitations, has a long, lingering effect. The popularity of fairies, Harry Potter and Spiderman, which take us through early childhood into adolescence and beyond, attests to this. It’s worth noting that the nerdiest atheists are avid Trekkies and Whovians.
But none of this is really disturbing or unhealthy in the way that religious belief seems to be in the eyes of many non-believers – such as myself. The world’s most secular polities – in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and in many European countries, are also the most law-abiding, secure and contented, as countless surveys show. As a regular dipper into history, I can’t help but note that social life in god-obsessed pre-Enlightenment Europe was far more volatile, cruel and corrupt than it is today in the era of democracy, human rights and secularism. Locke’s remarks above, have been throughly refuted by modern experience – though I suspect this is due to having a more regularised legal framework and a functioning police force than to the greater moral virtue of non-believers.
So for many of us, the point is not to understand religion, but to change it. Or rather, to neutralise it by understanding it and then applying that understanding within a more secular framework. For example, one of the themes of the religious is that you can’t be good without god x, y or z. Atheists rarely concede that theists might have a point here. The stock response is a personal one ‘I don’t need a supernatural fantasy-figure to frighten me into being good, I’m good because I have respect for others and for my environment’, etc. Psychological study, however, tells us a different story.
The Lebanese-born social psychologist Ara Norenzayan, at the University of British Columbia, points out that many of the gods of small societies have little interest in morality. Instead, ‘being good’ in these small societies is enforced by their very size, and their inescapability. Kin altruism and reciprocity, being the subject of gossip, the fear of ostracism, these are what keep society members on the right track. As numbers increase, though, a sense of anonymity engenders a greater tendency towards cheating and self-serving behaviours. Studies show that even wearing dark glasses, like the Tontons Macoutes, makes it easier to engage in anti-social behaviour. People behave much better when watched, by an audience, by a camera, and even by a large drawing of an eye in the corner of a shop.
The idea that non-believers can be ‘tricked’ into behaving better by the picture of an eye watching them should make us think again, not about gods, but about being watched. And about how we still over-determine for agency in our thinking. Civil libertarians get their backs up about CC-TV cameras on every street corner, but there’s no doubt they’ve been a success in catching robbers and muggers and king-hitters in the act, or just before or after. Even those of us with no urge to steal or who, like me, have left that urge behind long ago, tend to notice when a shop does or doesn’t feature an electronic scanning device, and if they’re like me they’ll wonder about the shop’s vulnerability or otherwise, and the trustworthiness or desperation of the customers around them. As to the painted eye, I presume it doesn’t have the deterrent effect of cameras and scanners, but the fact that it works at all should make us think again about our basic beliefs. Or does it only work on the religious?
That was a joke.
So how do more secular societies utilise the idea that someone knowing if you’ve been bad or good makes for a more moral, or at least law-abiding society? Well, it appears from the statistics that either they’ve already done so, or they’ve found other ways of being good. I suspect it’s been a complex mix of substitute gods, comprehensive education and community expectations. Large scale society has naturally subdivided into smaller groups based on family, business, sport, academic or professional interest and so on, so the age-old stabilisers of kinship, reciprocity and reputation within the group are still there, and these are bolstered by a greater set of ‘watched’ networks. Trade and travel, international relations, the internet, all of these things are always in process of being regulated to reflect community concepts of fairness. We are our own Big Brother (another supernatural agent). Modern liberal education teaches kids from an early age about human rights and environmental responsibility, so much so that they’re often happy to lecture their parents about it. The Freudian concept of the superego is a kind of internalised supernatural parental figure, finger-wagging at us during our weaker moments. The declaration of human rights, accepted by most countries today, though criticised as artificial and without teeth, surely presents a better framework for moral behaviour in the modern world than the often obscure and contradictory stories and proverbs found in the Bible and other religious texts. In short, there are many ways we’ve worked out for behaving well and generally flourishing in a secular society.
So I’m basically saying there isn’t much we can learn from religion, with respect to moral policing, that we haven’t learned already. But what about community and social bonding? In the USA and in other highly religious societies, the populace seems to be very united in its religion – especially against the irreligious. Some non-believers are concerned to replicate religion’s success in this area, and I’ve heard that there’s an atheist church, or I think they call it an atheist assembly – meeting on Sunday – somewhere in my area. I’m not particularly inclined to attend. Non-believers don’t necessarily have much in common apart from a lack of interest in religion, and I’m wary of in-group thinking anyway. I’m wary of just the kind of bonding above-mentioned, a bonding that might depend upon mutual congratulations and mocking or belittling, or despising, believers.
Non-believers are of course no less community-minded than the religious. Business, sporting, scientific and small-town communities, these attract us as social animals regardless of our views on the supernatural, and I don’t think we need a top-down ‘alternative’ to religious congregations or community spirit as advocated by de Botton.
Many of the religious point out that they’re more involved in charitable works than selfish unbelievers. Where are the atheist alternatives to Centacare and Anglicare, the welfare and social services arms of the Catholic and Anglican denominations? But these organisations have built up their considerable infrastructure and expertise under extremely favourable tax circumstances which have been a part of Australia’s religious history for a couple of centuries, so they’re always more favourably placed to win government and other contracts for social and educational services. I’ve experienced personally the frustrations of humanist organisations trying to attain the same tax-exempt status for charitable purposes. They’re not given a look-in. Nevertheless there are many powerful and effective NGOs such as Oxfam and MSF, and important human rights bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, whose impetus comes directly from the secular human rights movement.
I would also argue, as a former employee of Centacare (as an educator) and of Anglicare (as a foster-carer) that one result of their having cornered so much of the education and social services market is that they’ve become more secularised. They no longer require their workers to share their supernatural beliefs, and this has enabled them to reach a wider market which they’ve been able to expand largely by downplaying or eliminating the proselytising. I’ve never heard any god-talk from Centacare or Anglicare employers, and this would surely not have been the case fifty years ago. It’s the same in Catholic schools I suspect, with so many non-Catholics sending their kids there due to doubts about under-funded state schools.
This is all to the good, as too-exclusive Christian or religious communities – as well as non-religious communities – lead to us-them problems. We need to be secure in our position on the supernatural without being dismissive.
So, what in the end do we have to learn from religion? My answer, frankly, is nothing much. We have far more to learn from history and from clear-minded examination of the evidence we uncover about ourselves and our fellow organisms in this shared biosphere.
what is ideology?
![ideology[1]](https://i0.wp.com/bonobohumanity.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ideology1.jpg)
I recall Daniel Dennett, in an interview on Point of Inquiry, saying that one of the main barriers to critical thinking is emotional investment in a particular position. This reminds me also of Nietzsche’s remark – a great favourite of mine – that ‘there’s no greater liar than an indignant man’.
This is what ideology is all about. It needn’t be a scarey word, it’s really quite simple.
An ideologue is someone who’s stuck – as we all can be from time to time. Their emotionalism or indignation has them repeating the same mantra over and over. Hence the love of slogans.
Some time ago I wrote about the issue of GM food – in fact. it was the last of several posts, as mentioned there, but the title of the piece, ‘Monsanto and GMOs are not the same’, might’ve indicated that I was going to write about Monsanto. My intention, in the title, was to separate the scientific issues around GMOs from the political or business issues around Monsanto’s decisions and behaviour. I also felt a bit daunted about entering the messy arena of what seemed to be monopolistic or even standover tactics – at least according to anti-Monsanto activists. So I left the Monsanto issue alone. However, a recent analysis of Monsanto’s practices and the accusations against the company, presented on the Skeptics’ guide to the universe podcast, has emboldened me to look more closely at Monsanto in a forthcoming post.
I mention all this because my writing about GMOs in the first place was inspired by an encounter with one of those ‘stuck’ ideologues. I’d known this person for years, and we were just chatting about stuff when GMOs came up. I described myself as open about the issue, whereupon she launched upon a fierce attempt to disabuse me of my openness. By the end of it she’d worked herself up into a state of great emotion, there were tears in her eyes about the horrors of this practice, and I got the distinction impression that our civilisation was at stake. Needless to say, I felt sceptical, and with good reason as it turns out. But doesn’t it always turn out that way?
We tend to think of ideology as an unthinking, or insufficiently-thinking commitment to some broad set of ideas, usually political, but I don’t think it’s substantively different from most ‘I hate’ statements (or ‘I love’ statements for that matter). Over the years I’ve heard people say in my presence that they hate animals, poetry, Albanians, potatoes, Proust, ants and Asians – and I’m sure I could come up with more. All of these ‘hatreds’ were essentially ideological, that’s to say involving an unreflective emotional over-commitment.
Not that it requires a heavy emotional commitment – in fact the vehemence of the declaration often masks an underlying vacillation or insecurity. It reminds me of some adolescents. Relentless ideologues are often like the worst adolescents. Stuck, again.
So I see ideology differently from some. Many definitions of ideology talk about comprehensiveness and a systematic set of views, firmly held, but I prefer to focus on the emotionality inherent in all ideology. Racism, for example, is an ideology, which you might describe as all-encompassing rather than comprehensive. After all, there’s not much comprehending going on. Nor is there really all that much system. There’s just a lot of feeling, or at least a lot of display of feeling. It’s the feeling that’s all encompassing, and you find it in the anti-GMO crowd, the climate change denial crowd, the conspiracy theory crowd, the anti-vaccination crowd, and so on – an intense emotional stuckness. And it is the toughest nut for skeptics to crack, and it’s all-pervasive. If we could persuade people that their feelings are the worst culprits in leading them astray,we’d be well on the way to successfully transforming our world into a more reflective one (and I’m not convinced by the claim, made by some, that we’re all ideologues). We have to start with ourselves, of course.
are biodynamic olives better for you?
cowhorns and bullshit
This afternoon I was watching a Landline program, in which an Australian olive farmer was described as doing very good business, the key to her success being that her olives were marketed as ‘biodynamic’. It’s such a catchy term isn’t it? Don’t buy those sluggish, more or less static olives, get stuck into these lively, energetic ones.
But what does biodynamic really mean? Is there any science to it, or is it just another fad? Well, anybody with a reasonably decent scientific education, or self-education, will not be encouraged by the fact that ‘biodynamic agriculture’ was first developed by Rudolf Steiner, that utterly earnest pedlar of pseudo-scientific dogma of the early twentieth century. So, okay, let’s leave aside the more loopy beliefs that he and his followers tried to put into practice, such as ‘astrological’ sowing, burying ground quartz stuffed into the horn of a cow (thus releasing “cosmic forces in the soil”), and the general treatment of the farm and its soils as an ‘organic entity’. What, then, is left of ‘biodynamics’ that makes it any different from integrated farming techniques practiced the world over?
Well, as far as I can see, nothing. However , biodynamic farming is also ‘organic’, in that it subscribes to zero toleration of synthetic fertilisers. What exactly makes it different from other ‘organic’ farming is an interesting question, but it seems that, like ‘organic’ farming, it follows a more or less arbitrary set of practices, which differ from country to country, in order to gain ‘certification’. Australia’s Department of Agriculture has this fact sheet up on its website, which conflates ‘organic’ and ‘biodynamic’ produce in a revealing way. There we learn that there’s a National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce, the most recent update of which I’ve tracked down here. Near the beginning of the document we have ‘definitions’, two of which are clearly relevant to my little investigation:
biodynamic: means an agricultural system that introduces specific additional requirements to an organic system. These are based on the application of preparations indicated by Rudolf Steiner and subsequent developments for management derived from practical application, experience and research based on these preparations.
biodynamic preparation(s): means the natural activators developed according to Steiner’s original indications.
All of which appears to indicate that ‘biodynamic’ agriculture is still based on Steiner, the Austrian founder of ‘anthroposophy’ and ‘spiritual science’ (he never did any farming in his life). But what are the ‘preparations’ indicated by Steiner, and what are the ‘natural activators’ derived from Steiner?
Well, we might find out (but we probably won’t) as we wade through this document, but meanwhile, I note, among the definitions, one for genetically modified organisms (now I wonder why?), and, even more disturbingly, homeopathic preparation/treatment, and allopathic veterinary drugs. Homeopathy is probably the most thoroughly discredited pseudo-science of the past 200 years, and its mention in these guidelines for ‘organic’ and ‘biodynamic’ farming should set alarm bells ringing from here to kingdom come (the term ‘allopathic’ was coined by homeopathy’s creator, Samuel Hahnemann). But it’ll be interesting to see how the authors of this document, namely the “Organic Industry Export Consultative Committee”, connect homeopathy with biodynamism.
Under the section “Scope of this Standard” we have this:
1.1 This standard stipulates the minimum criteria that must be met by operators before any certified product can be labelled as in-conversion, organic or bio-dynamic.
‘In-conversion’ presumably means a product in the process of being converted to being organic or biodynamic. Further along, we have this more controversial section:
1.5 Products or by-products that
a. are derived from genetic modification technology, or
b. treated with ionising radiation, or
c. which interfere with the natural metabolism of livestock and plants,
d. that are manufactured/produced using nanotechnology
e. are not compatible with the principles of organic and biodynamic agriculture and are therefore not permitted under this Standard.
The writer seems unaware that 1.5 (e) is not a similar point to 1.5 (a) to (d), but is part of the main clause that starts 1.5, and defines (a) to (d) as verboten. But nanotechnology? Really? Presumably any other newly developing science that might help agriculture in the future will also be banned, as GMOs have been – an indication of the thoroughly ideological nature of this ‘methodology’. It should also be pointed out that ionising radiation is perfectly safe and does not produce ‘radioactive food’. To quote Wikipedia, ‘This treatment is used to preserve food, reduce the risk of food borne illness, prevent the spread of invasive pests, delay or eliminate sprouting or ripening, increase juice yield, and improve re-hydration.’ It consists of stripping atoms of electrons, which interferes with chemical bonding and reproduction, and of course such processes are seen as ‘unnatural’ by ‘biodynamic’ and ‘organic’ ideologues, in thrall to the ‘natural is always better’ fallacy. In fact, 1.6 mentions other ‘environmental contaminants’ and pollutants – that’s to say, other than nanotech, GMOs and irradiation. Contamination is often used as a bogey-term here, always seeking to give the impression that all non-biodynamic and non-‘organic’ food is contaminated.
More specific info about biodynamics is given further down the document, in Section 3.23, where mention is made once again of Steiner’s 1924 lectures and the ‘natural activators’ or ‘biodynamic preparations’ he apparently recommended. What a surprise to find, though, that these activators or preparations aren’t described, either chemically or physically. They’re simply referred to as Preparation 500 through to Preparation 507. I wonder what happened to the previous 499? Some 14 ‘principles’ of biodynamic preparation or production are mentioned, most of which speak of nutrient cycles and dynamic biological processes without leaving us any wiser. Principle 4, though says this:
The Bio-dynamic Preparations are not fertilisers themselves but greatly assist the fertilising process. As the name suggests, these Preparations are designed to work directly with the dynamic biological processes and cycles which are the basis of soil fertility. As activators of life processes they only need to be used in very small amounts.
Very small amounts – hmmm, could this be the connection with homeopathy? And why are they so coy about the precise make-up of these ‘preparations’? Anyway these preparations are to be used in conjunction with more conventional ‘organic’ treatments, such as composting, manuring, crop rotation and diverse planting – all of which can be done without reference to ‘organic’ farming at all, I might add.
We do get some tiny tidbits of info about these preparations, which stop short of decent descriptions. That’s to say, the information describes their effects rather than their ingredients:
Preparation 500, and “prepared” 500 (500 with Compost Preparations 502 to 507 added) specifically enlivens the soil, increasing the micro flora, root exudation and availability of nutrients and trace elements via humus and not through soil water. 500 promotes root growth, especially the fine root hairs. It develops humus formation, soil structure and water holding capacity.
Preparations 502 to 507 are ‘Compost Preparations’, and Preparation 501 ‘enhances the light assimilation of the plant, leading to better fruit and seed development with improved flavour, aroma, colour and nutritional quality‘.
Apparently these are like Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe for KFC, you can’t have authentic bio-dynamic olives, grapes or whatever without them. Having said that, it doesn’t seem all that bad does it? Increased micro-flora, humus formation, putting hairs on your roots and nicely structuring your soil – where’s the harm? And when it comes to livestock, they’re very caring and sensitive. Yet you have to question some of these strictures:
Standard 3.23.2
(f) – Bio-dynamic Preparations 500 and 501 are to be stirred for one hour.
(g) – Stirring of Bio-dynamic Preparations shall be organised to achieve an energetic vortex, followed by an immediate reverse action – causing a ‘bubbling’ chaos and reverse vortex – then subsequent reverse chaos and vortex etc for the full hour (Steiner, Pfeiffer)
And of course there are more of these ‘Standards’, with not a scientific explanation in sight. How do you know when you’ve achieved an energetic vortex? How bubbly is a bubbling chaos? And how, exactly, do all these stirrings help plants to grow? You would think, wouldn’t you, that the scientific mechanisms that connect these activities with plant growth and health would be the first things cited. But no, there’s nothing, zilch, zero.
We move on, then, to “General Principles”. Again, there’s a great deal of vague but positive talk about healthy soils, a healthy atmosphere, and of course, dynamism and nutrient cycles, but no scientific detail on plant or soil chemistry. But get this one:
In accordance with the research evidence of Lily Kolisko on the often-dangerous effect of minutest substances (even less than a molecule), materials used for the storage of the Bio-dynamic Preparations, stirring machines, spray tanks etc., need to be carefully considered.
I do wonder how substances of ‘less than a molecule’ (supposing such substances exist in soils!) can have such deleterious effects on plants, but hey, don’t homeopaths think that the more diluted a substance is, the more potent? And who is Lily Kolisko? She was a leading anthroposophist who did lots of experiments trying to prove the efficacy of astrological and lunar plantings, and, as you can see, she also believed in homeopathy. Nothing has, of course, come of her theories and claims, and there is no ‘research evidence’.
Both biodynamism and homeopathy are products of the guru effect – allegiance to one charismatic purveyor of pseudo-science – Steiner in the case of biodynamism, and Hahnemann in the case of homeopathy. At least, to Steiner’s credit, he called for thorough scientific experimental support for his agricultural claims, made at the very end of his life. His call has gone largely unheeded, leaving aside hopelessly compromised anthroposophical rersearchers. Had this not been the case, we might not be plagued today by no doubt over-priced ‘biodynamic’ products. But given the gullibility quotient, I’m probably being way too optimistic.
Having said this, these products are no doubt very tasty, and their makers no doubt really care for the land and its fruits, and sustainability and all the rest of it. But biodynamics is something else altogether. It’s bullshit, and the products are not made better by following some guru’s directives.
Don’t get angry, get educated.
Why is theology so boring? Stanley Hauerwas
These are the posts where I get to be a not-so-nice guy. Theology is one of my principal bugbears, for many reasons, one of which is that I’ve rarely encountered a modern theologian or Christian apologist who can resist lashing out at atheists.
I suppose I should feel sorry for them, they make such soft, or frail, targets (they’re mostly elderly), but they do insist on making themselves targets, so I’m happy to oblige. Before today I’d never heard of Stanley Hauerwas, so imagine my lack of interest in encountering this soft-spoken elderly gentleman being interviewed on my favourite ABC this arvo. Well, not so much lack of interest but mild willingness to be interested – a willingness quickly dashed by some of the first remarks I heard Hauerwas utter (I didn’t know at the time that he was a theologian). He was being interviewed for all of ten minutes on the ABC show One plus One by Scott Stephens, the ABC’s ‘online editor for religion and ethics’. I now recall Stephens having conducted a series of soft interviews in recent times with prominent ‘believing’ Australians such as David Cappo and Clare Bowditch, but I didn’t recognise him immediately, otherwise I might’ve dodged this. Unfortunately I listened – well, ok, I do have a combative interest in what theologians say.
So here’s the little interview in total, together with my commentary and summing up. The interview material is in italics. Enjoy.
Stephens: You’ve written some very interesting things in your recently published memoir. You’ve admitted for instance – ‘you don’t need to be a theologian to be a Christian, but I probably did’. At the end of your memoir, you then say that the whole reason you’re able to call yourself a Christian is because your friends name you as such. In a time that values self-reliance and even fetishizes self-made men, it’s a very strange series of admissions to make from someone who is renowned as one of the most important Christian thinkers in the last half-century. How did you come to that conclusion?
Hmmm. What makes me think all this was in order to introduce Hauerwas as the best thing since Christians invented sliced bread?
Hauerwas: By necessity. I can’t imagine coming to it just by individual reflection, because I don’t trust my own subjectivity at all. So it’s exactly by discovering what I believe through friends who tell me that this is what I believe that I discover that I am a Christian. Umm, it’s not a natural thing for me to be, I oftentimes point out, hell I’m a Texan (laughs) I mean it does not come easy for Texans to become Christian in the way that I think we must be as faithful followers of Christ, that is, to be non-violent. But I think that it’s through friends that you are enabled to live that way.
All of this sounds unproblematic on the face of it, but I have two criticisms to make.
First, the Jesus of the gospels wasn’t an entirely consistent construction. Yes, he said ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, and I say hurray to that, but he also lashed out at the moneylenders in the temple, sending tables and chairs flying (Matt 21:12), killed a fig tree for not producing fruit out of season (Mark 11:12-14, 20-25, Matt 21:18-22), and damned for all time the townsfolk of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, villages in his own neighbourhood, for not listening to his preachifying (Matt 11:23, Luke 10:13-15). So much for love your neighbours, never mind love your enemies.
Second, Hauerwas describes what people ‘must be as faithful followers of Christ’, rather than what we, arguably, should be upon reflection. It’s all about following the leader, apparently. I’ve written about this before, but the difference between the ‘follow my lead’ approach of Jesus and other preachers and sermonizers, and the Socratic method of constructive engagement, getting the interlocutor to ‘go deeper’, is key, and should be key to the whole framework of modern education. It’s because of this approach towards independence and ‘ownership’ of ideas that religion is fading, methinks.
Stephens: Now this is interesting to me, because one of the themes that you’ve been exploring throughout your career is that, even though it might seem, looking from the outside, that the church is in a pretty good position here in the USA, it’s precisely because American culture is so saturated with Christianity – you’ve spent the better part of your professional career trying to convince Christians in the United States that their cosy relationship with American culture is pretty hazardous to its own health.
Hauerwas: Absolutely. I say I represent the Tonto principle of Christian ethics. The Lone Ranger and Tonto were once surrounded by 25,000 Sioux in the Dakotas, and the Lone Ranger looked over to Tonto and said, “What d’you think we should do Tonto?’ and Tonto said, “What do you mean we, white man?’ and I’m trying to help Christians in America recover the Christian ‘we’, which has been very much occluded in the celebration of the relationship between Christianity and America as the presumption that American democracy is the equivalent of what it means to be Christian.
Stephens: One of your great critiques is that it’s not simply just, say, a cultural issue, that many Christians assume that what it means to be American is to be Christian, and in turn what it means to be Christian is to be American in some sort of deep level, but you’ve even, in some ways you’ve also upped the ante. You’ve said that one of the great problems facing American politics and also Christian identity, is the assumption that the American god is the Christian god.
This American stuff is of course a bit of a yawn to me, but I will say that there’s no such thing as the Christian god – or rather, no clear-cut thing. In the same sense, there’s no such thing as the American god. There’s the god of Bush junior, who’s different from the god of Obama, etc etc. These are fantasies you can tailor to your individual personality and needs. Apart from that, I’m happy to let American believers simmer in their theological idiosyncrasies.
Hauerwas: Right, yeah, I think, that the reason – I mean, atheism is so uninteresting in America. I mean, atheism in general is uninteresting in our world, because the god that is being denied isn’t very (laughs), isn’t the Christian god. That’s the reason why Americans think it’s very important that you believe in god, irrespective of what ‘god’ names. I find it extremely uninteresting whether you believe in god or not. The god I worship is not some deity, but the father the son and the holy spirit. That makes all the difference in the world for a people that are identified as not religious America. So I want Christians to be able to recover that kind of theological integrity in a world that makes it very hard to even identify it.
This is the passage I first heard – ‘atheism is uninteresting’. Again, I’m endlessly amused that theologians and religious apologists just can’t help having a go at atheism, and so revealing their ignorance as well as their anxiety. And of course their denialism of the fastest-growing movement vis-à-vis religion in the west. Of course, in one sense Hauerwas is right, atheism is totally uninteresting when you compare it to being the pet project of a supernatural being who’s also the creator of the universe, created just for you. It’s a bit like being personally chosen by the Doctor as his lifetime companion in all his space-time adventures. Great japes! Only Doctor Who is a science fantasy TV show, not a religion (with apologies to the Whovians out there).
Yes, rejecting the existence of supernatural entities is not intrinsically interesting, but the point is that atheists don’t go around being atheists. If I can give a roll-call of some of my intellectual heroes – Aristotle, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Hume, Stendhal, Darwin, Russell, Einstein, Sagan, Attenborough, to name a few – I don’t so much care whether they were atheists, though clearly many of them were/are. What attracts me is their this-worldly concerns. None of these ‘uninteresting’ people are interested in theology, they’re too fascinated by how the real world – and its inhabitants on this tiny planet – works. We live in enthralling times – for exploring human origins, for exploring the world within and beyond our solar system, for exploring neurophysiology and consciousness, for exploring nanotechnology. So many realms opening up for exploration, it’s just endlessly fascinating. I just can’t see how ‘faith’ and theology, the eternally fruitless but entirely self-serving speculation about non-evidence-based supernatural entities, can possibly compare.
Stephens: What you’re saying, though, truly runs against the grain of the assumption that many people believe today, kind of guarantees a kind of social peace and cohesion, the assumption being that, if you wanna be religious, fine, just make sure your religiosity remains a form of inwardness, or even just, probably a better term would be sentimentality. Now, almost everything you’ve written is pitted against the reduction of religion to sentimentality, or ‘god’ to some sort of general deity.
These remarks of Stephens are simply intended to introduce the term ‘sentimentality’, a term that Hauerwas has apparently twisted out of all recognition to feed his theological concerns. I should simply remind readers that the currently agreed dictionary definition of sentimentality is something like ‘an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason’.
Hauerwas: Absolutely, I say the great enemy of Christianity is not atheism it’s sentimentality. and the deepest sentimentality in our culture is the presumption that we should have children in a manner that they do not have to suffer for our convictions. I think it drives people – it drives children absolutely crazy for our parents to think that they ought to raise children in a manner that when children grow up they get to make up their own minds. I mean, what kind of conviction is that, why did you have them in the first place, if you want them to make up their own minds? They don’t have minds worth making up until they’ve been trained. So exactly how to overcome those kinds of sentimentalities that, interestingly enough result in great violence, I think, is exactly the kind of challenge that Christianity presents to the world in which we find ourselves.
So Hauerwas has defined sentimentality, or one aspect of it, as ‘raising children so that they get to make up their own minds when they grow up.’ Imagine how Socrates would deal with such a distortion of a concept!
Maybe somewhere in his theological works Hauerwas has presented his views more cogently than here, but I have little appetite for anyone’s theology, so I must presume to limit myself to this little interview. I’m far from denying that human children need (and get) training, as do all social animals, including dolphins, elephants, wolves, lions and hyenas, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t have minds of their own, and that independence of thought isn’t a desired outcome. The trouble is, Hauerwas’s god only knows what he means by ‘being trained’. I suspect the worst, bearing in mind his remark that children should suffer for their parents’ convictions. This sounds to me like he thinks Christian parents should bring them up strictly to be Christians, and make them suffer if they stray. No Darwins, no… (name just about every significant thinker of the last century) would ever get to emerge in Hauerwas’s world it seems, they’d all be trained out of their independence of mind until they were black and blue. But I’m being mean – Hauerwas is an advocate of non-violence.
In any case, none of this has anything to do with sentimentality. We bring children into the world for a whole host of reasons, not all of them worthy, of course. We hope to contribute to their becoming good people and happy, but we don’t need to have read Pinker’s The Blank Slate (another boring atheist) to be aware that kids do indeed have minds of their own from day one. I have no idea what Hauerwas could possibly mean by saying that encouraging independence of spirit leads to great violence, but obviously he’s no student of history. Our modern education, which tries to combine a certain degree of training in the basics, without which children are unlikely to succeed in modern society, with independent analytical skills of the type that have created the scientific and technological explosion we’re currently witnessing, has, in fact, helped to create a less violent society than at any time in human history. And that’s not spin, it’s well-supported fact.
Stephens: Weeks before the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001, Time magazine named you America’s best theologian.
Hauerwas: Actually it was September 10, 2000 the 11th, by the time the magazine came out it was the day before, which was wonderfully ironic, because then no-one noticed.
Stephens: But after September 11 you issued many of your most public, most notable, and for many people now even most infamous critiques of the American response to that attack.
Hauerwas: That’s true. My response was, one, you could have done it as a just warrior. I said, you know, the most fateful words that were uttered after September 11 was George Bush’s ‘we are at war’. Now, I think that that was a deep mistake on ‘just war’ grounds. What happened on September 11 was murder, and you don’t go to war against a murderer. As soon as Americans agreed with George Bush, we are at war, you gave Bin Laden exactly what he wanted. You made him a warrior, not a murderer. I think then, the problem…. I think George Bush’s response was a pastoral response. The American people felt at a loss, we didn’t know what to do. We know war, so to say we were at war made this a comforting claim that gave us a sense that we knew what to do – we had to find someone to kill (laughs). So Afghanistan and Iraq were destined to be wars that we had to fight against the infidel. If we had been able to say ‘this was murder’, and how do you respond to murderers, it would have been… it would’ve required a patience that the American people find very hard to enact. I was recently asked, what would I suggest if I wanted America to be more thoughtful and possibly even non-violent, and I said the return to the draft. That we have the situation, we now have is because we have a paid military in which we expect very little cost from the broad American middle class, and it would be very interesting to have a return to the actual sacrifice necessary in order to pursue a legislated war against terrorism. It’s very… I think the Obama administration is to be credited with toning down the war against terrorism, because they understand that’s a war you can’t win in that way. But, generally the American people bought into that, and we paid big prices for it.
Okay, in this latter part of the interview we’ve left theology far behind, thankfully, and we’re into straightforward ethical issues. Apart from the remark about a ‘pastoral response’ from George Bush, there’s nothing in Hauerwas’s argument that owes anything to religion, it’s all secular ethics, and it’s the same ethical argument that myself and many others, such as Geoffrey Robertson, have been putting for years – that so-called acts of terrorism should be treated as criminal, police matters and dealt with under criminal law rather than glorifying them, inadvertantly or otherwise, as acts of war.
So Hauerwas seems to have some reasonable ideas, and a few dodgy ones (he’s a Texan, after all), but it’s unlikely that any of his best ideas emerge from Christian theology. Don’t be a faithful follower of anyone – or anything, except evidence.
who will speak up for science in this new government?
Professor Ian Chubb – toughing it out
I made a very quick video the other night after listening to some depressing news on Lateline, or rather a depressing interview with our chief scientist, Ian Chubb, about the changes being made by the incoming conservative government. But I haven’t yet got the facility to host my own videos so I’ll write something instead.
Chubb was being questioned about the new government’s intention to abolish the Climate Change Authority, the Climate Commission and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, as well as to scrap the position of Science Minister. Now, you might think that all this scrapping, discarding and abolishing is a clear indication of the value that Tony Abbott and his colleagues place on science in general, and that our chief scientist might have some choice words to say about that, but it seems Professor Chubb is a canny operator who knows how to keep a cool head and to emphasize co-operation and positivity under the most strained circumstances.
Asked first off about the axing of the science portfolio, he put a brave face on it by saying that, as science was spread over a number of portfolios, having an actual Minister wasn’t as essential as having someone in government who is passionate about science. [Only one?]. When asked who that might be, Chubb rather dodged the question, unless you can take seriously his suggestion, presented almost sheepishly, that this might be the Prime Minister’s role. Abbott, you’ll recall, once publicly stated, and not so long ago, that anthropogenic global warming is bullshit.
Chubb spoke, no doubt sincerely, of a strategic whole-of-government approach to science, using the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, but I’m sceptical that the new government will deal with anything strategically. My expectation is that it will govern like most conservative governments – do nothing innovative, abolish, cut and scrap as much as you can, make yourself as small a target for criticism as possible, and boast about your economic credentials while health, education, infrastructure and the rest are run into the ground.
Chubb went on – and I can only marvel at his bravery – to answer a question about Australia’s science education results, and how they lag behind those in Asia, by arguing for a more interventionist approach from government in this area. I thought I saw pigs flying across the screen at that one. Then the interviewer asked about the scrapping of the climate change ministry and the various environmental bodies aforementioned, on one of which, the Climate Change Authority, Chubb actually sits (or sat). The actual question asked was – did these to-be-axed bodies have a value? Chubb couldn’t really avoid that one, and had to respond positively, but he qualified this by saying he could only really speak about the body he sat on, and that, anyway, the CCA ‘will doubtless be compensated for by other bodies and groups and, doubtless, individuals who will be offering advice’. Doubtless? I doubt it.
One individual already offering plenty of advice at taxpayers’ expense is Abbott’s chief business adviser, one Maurice Newman, who describes climate change as a myth. What Newman actually means by this queer claim might be worth investigating, but here isn’t the place for it. When asked about this remark, Chubb was more blunt than usual, describing it as a ‘silly comment’. Generally, though, he countered the negativity and anti-science silliness of the conservatives with a lot of talk about the role of science, the importance of evidence, facts and informed debate. His many remarks about scientists being evidence-driven and free from beliefs seemed a trifle idealistic, but they still needed to be made in the face of the fixed, clearly uninformed beliefs of Abbott, Howard and others on that side of politics. Some of his remarks, such as that every contribution to the climate debate, whether pro or con, was valuable, seemed overly mollifying, but generally he gave science a good rap, in the typically cautious, under-stated way of most scientists.
Still, what I heard in the interview, about what was still then a government-elect, hardly warmed my heart about the future of evidence-based decision-making in this country. Hang on science lovers, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
This is an issue worth keeping an eye on. I’ll try to report on any further developments, or lack thereof.
*Incidentally, I was bemused on reading, in the transcript of this interview, that little Johnny Howard, that Giant of Aussie Science, is to deliver a ‘Global Warming Policy Foundation lecture’ in November, bearing the title ‘One religion is enough’. Now think about that title. It does more than claim that anthropogenic warming is a religion, it claims that any more than one religion is too much! And what is that one religion? Well, Jesus, it must be that religion. So much for our resident Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Jainists, Pastafarians and whatnot. Talk about an expense of spirit in a waste of shame.
Anatol Rapoport’s rules: a tough ask
‘Anatol Rapoport…..once promulgated a list of rules for how to write a successful critical commentary on an opponent’s work. First, he said, you must attempt to re-express your opponent’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your opponent says “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” Then, you should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement), and third, you should mention anything you have learned from your opponent. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.’
These rules are useful for everyday spoken arguments too, of the more or less intellectual sort. They can be adapted for the spoken, to keep your interlocutor onside, (along with smiles, nods, effective impressions of interest, appropriate turn-taking and the suppression of irritated grimaces). I think I’m reasonably good at following Rapoport’s rules in writing – or trying to keep to them. In conversation it’s much harder, especially after a few drinks!
I once watched former High Court Justice Michael Kirby, whom I already greatly admired, in a television exchange with a Pauline Hanson supporter. He listened politely to the man’s bluster, then spent some time painstakingly and seemingly sympathetically presenting the Hanson view on immigration, and then he described in details its flaws while defending its validity as a position, at least on an emotional level. It was an extraordinary performance, full of discipline, grace and poise. I use the memory to punish myself when I perform disappointingly in an argument – sometimes ‘winning’ the argument, or at least seeming to, but losing the respect or interest of the opponent.
Monsanto and GMOs are not the same
scary protesters
The other day on the tram to the city I noticed people congregating on the steps of Adelaide’s parliament house, many of them holding green balloons. Always fascinated by demos, and usually well up on the news, I struggled for reasons as to what it was all about. The only ‘special day’ I knew of was for indigenous Australians – National Sorry Day on Sunday May 26 – but this was a Saturday, and the green balloons suggested something more environmental. I continued on into the city for a spot of lunch and window shopping, but then found presumably the same demonstrators wending their way through Rundle Mall, behind a megaphone-wielding leader and parroting after him three clear slogans – ‘No Monsanto’, ‘No GMOs’ and ‘No human experiments’.
A lot of thoughts went through my head at hearing these chants – I’m a very excitable fellow – but among them was this. Ages ago I began a five part series of posts on the subject of genetically modified foods, which I based on a piece of writing in a cookbook, The urban cook, by ‘celebrity chef’ Mark Jensen, who plies his trade at Sydney’s Red Lantern restaurant. The first four parts were written and posted here, here, here and here, but I never got round to finishing the fifth part, based on the last paragraph of Jensen’s little anti-GMO critique. So I’ll finish it now with reference to the demonstration the other day, which I’ve discovered was targeted specifically at Monsanto.
So now to look at the final of Mark Jensen’s five not very provocative paragraphs on GM plants, and to summarise my own take on the controversy.
In the United States, some farmers who use GM crops have had to resort to physically ripping horse weed [an example of a herbicide-resistant ‘super weed’] out of the ground by hand. Farmers who grow GM crops use herbicides that are designed to kill the weeds but leave the crop healthy. In this case, the GM food crop has remained resistant to the herbicide, but unfortunately the weeds have adapted to resist it as well. If the farmer uses another brand of herbicide to kill the weeds he runs the risk of killing the food crop. This situation is frightening and the only way to stop the cycle of stronger and stronger chemical use is to do just that: STOP IT. This is a classic example of man trying to circumvent nature and only succeeding in making matters worse.
The thesis in this paragraph is simple enough – the use of GM crops creates herbicide-resistant super-weeds, which will lead to the use of stronger chemicals and higher volumes of chemicals in order to control them. So is this true, and how much of a key factor are GMOs in the production or over-production of chemical herbicides and/or pesticides?
First, the horseweed problem. This weed’s growing resistance to glyphosate, the herbicide patented and marketed as Round-up by Monsanto [though its patent ran out in 2000], has been a problem for US agriculturalists for over a decade now. Glyphosate is the most commonly-used herbicide in the USA. It should be pointed out that it was first marketed in the seventies, well before any GMOs came on the market. Round-up Ready soybeans, engineered to be resistant to glyphosate, were not released into the market until 1996. According to this scientific report:
Common to all known cases of glyphosate-resistant horseweed is the frequent use of glyphosate for control of all weeds, little or no use of alternative herbicides that control horseweed, and long-term no-tillage crop production practices
That’s to say, monocultural farming practices and the one silver bullet approach to weed control seem to be the culprits in this resistance problem. The report argues that effective control of horseweed simply involves the adjustment of management strategies. Increased tillage, where possible, is recommended, and for well-established weeds, a three-way mixture of herbicides, including glyphosate, appears to fix the problem. The researchers name the herbicides to use, and the relative quantities. I would be very surprised if they hadn’t taken into account the possibility that such a mixture might harm the crop. The impression I get from this particular report is that we need not get too alarmed.
The use of herbicides will continue to be a feature of agriculture as long as monocultural farming is required to feed the world’s vast population. This type of farming has its problems – as does every other type of farming – but there’s no doubt that it has led to enormous efficiencies in terms of land use and crop yields. Monoculture was a key component of the ‘green revolution’ that began in the sixties and led to an unprecedented rise in crop yields, rescuing millions of people from the prospect of starvation. And the revolution isn’t over yet.
This is the point. The issues of weed resistance, difficult though they sometimes are, are minor by comparison to the benefits of high-yielding, intensively grown crops in effectively feeding our populations – regardless of whether those crops have been genetically modified in the old way through experimental hybridisation, or in the new way by means of gene splicing. Meanwhile we will continue to work on the weed resistance problem, which will no doubt involve a modification of current monocultural practise (among other strategies), rather than its abandonment. The situation is not frightening, it’s an ongoing problem, as it has long been, but it is by no means out of control. We need to be alert but not alarmed, and there continues to be a lot of research devoted to this problem. From what I’ve read, it’s not a losing battle.
GM foods are here to stay, and it seems to me that Australians should be given the choice of consuming them. Currently very little GM food production occurs in Australia, and only a limited amount is imported – mainly soya from the US. All GM food must be labelled as such here, but it’s highly likely that much is slipping through unlabelled, in imported cereals, chocolate and other foodstuffs. Next year marks the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of GM food in the US, the first country of use. Other major producers are Brazil, Argentina, Canada, China and India. As yet no health problems have been definitively associated with GMO consumption.
As to the demonstration the other day, its slogans and frankenfood banners do nothing to provide enlightenment on this issue. It gives the distinct impression that being opposed to the monopolistic practices of Monsanto means being opposed to all GMOs and all GMO research, as well as, bizarrely, to all human experiments! Presumably by chanting against human experiments they’re trying to make a link between Monsanto’s products and the risks to humans who use them, but to me, it’s unlikely that passersby would be able to make that connection – quite apart from the fact that Monsanto no longer has a monopoly on glyphosate. It goes without saying that human trials – of all new pharmaceuticals or medical procedures, etc, are not only vitally important, they’re mandatory, as they should be. Without ‘human experiments’ no new developments would ever get the chance to display a human benefit.
As always, what’s needed here is education and informed debate, not silly slogans.
For an informative account of the current situation with genetically modified food, especially in relation to Australia, check out this fact sheet from Australia’s Chief Scientist. Don’t get angry, get educated.
books and e-books
don’t bother, at least not with the ebook version
Change is the only certainty, and the world of books (made of paper), booksellers and publishers is having this little apothegm rubbed painfully in its face at present, it seems to me, and, as a person who loves books but has always been poor as a church-mouse, I feel rather caught in the middle of all this transition, and pulled more or less equally in the directions of tradition and transformation.
After all, the choice between e-books and the traditional version is a little more fraught than that between CDs (please note – no fucking apostrophe) and MP3 downloads. Books don’t just go back to the days of Gutenberg and Caxton, or the movable type that was used in Korea from at least the thirteenth century. The library of Alexandria, founded well over 2000 years ago by the Ptolemaic dynasty (Ptolemy Soter, the ‘illegitimate’ son of Philip of Macedon, half-brother and general of Alexander the Great, and subsequent ruler of Egypt, was probably its originator) is said to have contained some 500,000 papyrus scrolls, all now lost to history. That’s one advantage of e-books; they render book-burnings obsolete.
So writing on paper, or its antecedents, has a long and proud history, and is now being threatened for the first time in millennia by new technology. So I’ve been feeling this weight of history when ducking into the odd bookshop lately. I’ve been a bookshop-haunter for forty years, and it’s pretty obvious that they’re going through tough times now. As with CDs, makeshift shops full of cheap editions are cropping up here and there, then just as suddenly disappearing when the number of buyers drops off. I was in one the other day, and held in my hand a prettily-packaged volume of Ovid, called The Art of Love, selling for a mere $7. It was apparently an amalgamation of two collections, Amores and Ars Amatoria, and a ridiculous bargain, but even that tiny amount gave me pause. I’d always wanted to explore Ovid’s works on love, because of their influence on Shakespeare, but I’ve been so caught up with reading sciencey stuff lately, almost to the point of addiction, and then it occurred to me that, with my new Kindle, I could probably download all of Ovid’s works for free…
I ended up buying three cheap books, one of them sciencey. The lab rat chronicles: a neuroscientist reveals life lessons from the planet’s most successful mammals comes with a recommendation from Patricia Churchland, no less, and I suspect that such books aren’t available through Kindle, at least not at anything less than $10, the price I paid. Ok I’ve just checked, and it is available, at exactly the same price. The 2 other books I bought were God is not one: the eight rival religions that run the world and why their differences matter, by Stephen Prothero ($10), and How to win a cosmic war: confronting radical religion, by Reza Aslan ($8). Interestingly, the Prothero book isn’t available on Amazon, but the Aslan one is, for $10. So there are still bargains to be had offline. However Amazon is always reducing its prices, as books move from ‘must read-nows’ to ‘has-beens’. That’s happening in the bookstores too, of course, but not at the same rate. Then again, though you’re unlikely to get hold of the complete works of Plato (Benjamin Jowett translation, presumably with his excellent introductions) in a second-hand bookshop for a dollar – the going Amazon price – there are book exchanges (there’s one in the caf around the corner from me) where you can pick up one of an admittedly limited selection of books for free, with the idea that you exchange it for something of your own, honour bound.
So I weigh the pros and cons and ponder the senses of guilt and obligation. The kindle is light and convenient, and easy to read in bed. My eyesight is poor, so I appreciate a backlit screen as opposed to the foxed and mouldering pages of a second-hand text, though I wonder if the light is damaging my eyes even more. On the other hand its caveat emptor with some of these e-books. One of the first ones I bought (okay it was free so I’m not really allowed to complain) was A very brief history of the first crusade, by one Mark Black. Brief it was, more of a pamphlet than a book. I have a copy of Christopher Tyerman’s monumental history of the crusades on my shelves, but I gave up on it a few years back after about 200 pages = too many Count Theobalds and Sir Roberts, too many family connections and names and names and names, I felt as confused as any medieval plebeian might have felt when caught up in the thick of it, but without the concentration of the mind an imminent death would’ve usefully brought on. So I thought this brief history might offer a clearer view, but I was more than disappointed. I suspect everything in it was lifted from Tyerman’s book, so it told me nothing new. What was worse, though, was that the grammar was often hilariously bad. I have a feeling it wasn’t actually edited by a human being. Possibly the text was used as an experimental test case for robotic proofreading. A black mark for Mark Black, whose name, I note, crops up for many of these ‘brief histories’, mostly unrelated to each other. Anyway, an odd experience.
So I’m not entirely convinced of the new reading technology, though the possibilities are obvious, and it’s clearly a mode still in its infancy. Hopefully the two ways of packaging good reading material will live side by side for a while to come, and I look forward to accessing both, long into the future.
fountains 4: what’s a glial cell?
Here’s the transcript for the next podcast, which I won’t be putting online for another week or so, when I can afford to buy space to host podcasts directly from this site. Then I’ll be able to stick all the fountains podcasts in one place, with the new logo created by a friend of mine, Stuart Rose:
What’s a glial cell?
Today, I’m going to make my first, but hopefully not last, foray into neurobiology. And since neurobiology is about the most complicated subject imaginable, I’ve decided to enter it sideways, so to speak, by looking at glial cells, or neuroglia, as they’re sometimes called. Not that this will make it any easier.
Glial cells – ‘glia’ means glue in Greek – perform a whole range of tasks apart from holding neurons together. They also come in many different varieties, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about them. They make up about half the mass of the brain, and they outnumber neurons many times over, making up between 85% and 90% of brain cells.
Considering the great varieties of roles glial cells play in the central nervous system (CNS), the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and in neurogenesis or the development of the brain, it’s hard to start with a summary or overview. They’re generally a lot smaller than neurons, and the glia/neuron ratio varies greatly between species, with the human brain near the top end. Elephants, though, are much higher with 97% glial cells.
Glial cells emerge from the multipotent precursor cells of the neural crest and neural tube. Radial glial cells act as progenitors and also as scaffolding for the growth and migration of neurons in the brain. They play a role in the development and maintenance of synaptic plasticity in the cerebellum. This function of supporting neurons is typical of all glial cells, with some of them having their own quasi-neuronal tasks. In the vertebrate retina, for example, Muller cells or Muller glia have been found, quite recently, to play a role in the formation of synapses. They’ve also been shown, when the retina is damaged, to re differentiate into progenitor cells which can then become photoreceptor cells.
But I’m galloping forward a bit here. The three main types of glial cells in the CNS are the astrocytes, the oligodendrocytes and the microglia, and some of their functions have long been known, though the detail, as well as a growing number of other roles and functions, are only now being focused on, in what some are describing as a revolution in neurobiology. Dr. Douglas Fields, chief of the Nervous System Development & Plasticity Section of the National Institutes of Health in the USA, argues that our understanding of the brain has been overly influenced by what he calls ‘the neuron doctrine’, that’s to say, a relentless focus on the electrical activity of the brain in the form of action potentials between neurons. The fact that glial cells don’t communicate electrically has meant that their role in brain activity has been largely overlooked for the best part of a century, according to Dr Fields. My layman’s perspective suggests to me that, not being electrical, glial cells just aren’t as flashy or sexy as neurons. ‘I sing the body electric’, Walt Whitman memorably wrote, and maybe he wasn’t thinking about neurons, but he definitely wasn’t thinking about glial cells.
So let’s have a look at some of those glial cell types. Astrocytes – so-called because of their star-like shape and projections – perform lots of functions within the CNS, including providing physical support to neurons through the formation of a matrix, cleaning up chemical debris within the brain, and replenishing chemicals within neurons and so keeping them healthy and well-nourished. This clearly requires communication between neurons and glia. Astrocytes also monitor the fluid surrounding neurons and keep it chemically well maintained. They get rid of the flotsam and jetsam through a process called phagocytosis, which involves engulfing the unwanted particles and essentially digesting them, a process performed by dedicated cells throughout the body.
looks like an astrocyte
Astrocytes nourish the neurons by first obtaining glucose from capillaries, then breaking it down into lactate, the first product of glucose metabolism. The lactate is then released into the fluid surrounding the neurons. The neurons take up this lactate and transport it, as an energy source, to their mitochondria. Astrocytes also maintain a store of glycogen from this process, which may be used in times of high neuronal metabolism.
One of the essential functions of oligodendrocytes is myelination. Now I’m sorry for the polysyllabification there, but I’m talking about the production of myelin sheath, the insulating material that protects the axons of the CNS as well as substantially improving their electrical activity. Myelin is white in colour, and accounts for the white colour of the brain. It’s made up of 80% lipid and 20% protein and it increases, many times over, the strength and efficiency of electrical conduction down the axon. The axon is generally the only part of the neuron sheathed in myelin. The oligodendrocytes are able to sheath as many as 40 axons at once in myelin.
Microglia, the smallest of the glial cells, also engage in phagocytosis to clean up debris, but their most important role is immunological. The brain’s main protection against pathogens is the blood-brain barrier, a layer of endothelial cells similar to the types of cells that line blood vessels and internal organs. When somehow pathogens cross the blood-brain barrier or are introduced into the brain directly, microglia, which are ultra-sensitive to chemical imbalances in the brain, and particularly to extra-cellular potassium levels, move swiftly into action. Microglia perform a similar role in the CNS to that of macrophages in the blood system, but are not as easily replaceable as macrophages, due to the blood-brain barrier. However microglia are extremely plastic which allows them to perform a variety of immunological functions at short notice while also maintaining homeostasis in the brain.
Another type of glia, the Schwann cells, provide support to the nerve cells of the peripheral nervous system (PNS). They wrap themselves around axons, as with oligodendrocytes in the CNS, and in so doing produce myelin, though the process of myelin production is substantially different in the PNS, with one cell producing only one segment of myelin. Schwann cells also clean up debris and play a major role in the regrowth of PNS axons. They arrange themselves into cylinders which guide the tendrils of regenerating axons. When a functioning tendril comes into contact with one of these cylinders it will grow inside it a rate of up to 4mm a day.
There are other types of glia, and the glial cells already mentioned have their subsets and their developmental phases, which all play their part in the development and maintenance of the brain and the nervous systems, yet for a long time neurophysiologists considered the ‘white matter’ of the brain – the glia, predominantly – as passive, with the grey neuronal matter being the active component.
With the renewed interest in glia however, experiments are being conducted that show that when you remove or ablate relevant glial cells, it has a profound effect on an animal’s ability to sense its surroundings. This has been shown in worms and other creatures, and it raises many questions as to how glial cells communicate with neurons in facilitating an effective sense of our environment, without which, we wouldn’t last long.
We now know that the activation of calcium ions provides the principal means of chemical communication between neuroglia and neurons. An increase in calcium ions signals the release of what are now being called gliotransmitters, molecules that travel between cells in a manner similar to neurotransmitters. All this communication has a variety of purposes but it’s the immunological role of neuroglia that has researchers really excited. The neuroglia are able to pick up signals between neurons and respond by controlling neuronal activity, inhibiting or stimulating or refining the action potentials between nerve cells. All of this was completely unsuspected until recently. Their role in such diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, cancer and AIDS, and even such disorders as OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) are now being uncovered through a lot of experimental work. Communication between astrocytes and microglia and neurons are substantially altered in specific ways in each of these diseases. So important have glia become in contemporary neuro-research that there’s talk of ‘the other brain’ or ‘the glial brain’ as opposed to the neural brain. They of course work in tandem, but the point is that we have a lot of catching up to do in researching glia.
It’s worth noting that, though neurons in invertebrate animals are not substantially different from those in vertebrates, glial cells are far less numerous, in proportion to neurons, in invertebrates, where they don’t have the same myelin-producing role. Investigating the increasingly vital and diverse roles played by glia and how they came to evolve in more complex animals will no doubt be a focus of future research.
exercise, health, skepticism and my personal journey
‘Many of the most important benefits of exercise lie hidden deep inside your body.’ Michael Mosley
When it comes to diet and exercise, everyone seems to be an expert, and even a crank, to judge from many of the comments left on the SBS on demand site for its recent doco, ‘The Truth about Exercise’, presented by Michael Mosley. A scarily large number of these comments are of the ‘that’s all garbage, now I’ll give you the real lowdown’ variety.
And yet, considering how unique each person’s body and its requirements seems to be, maybe it’s not so surprising that general claims get up the noses of so many particular people.
So it’s good to be sceptical, though I was a bit surprised at the degree of scepticism about this doco when the subject came up recently – admittedly at a sceptics’ meet-up. So I’ve decided to take a closer look.
The program looked at a variety of surprising research findings, indicating, among other things, that your genes determine to a large degree whether intensive exercise will confer a benefit. There’s also controversial and counter-intuitive evidence that infrequent, sharp bursts of exercise, which get the heartbeat up and briefly racing, can provide a greater benefit than regular daily gym exercise. Offhand, I can think of an evolutionary basis for this finding, in that we evolved to combine a relatively indolent, social lifestyle with occasional energetic bursts to catch prey or run from predators. But what would I know?
Early on, we’re given a simple and salutary lesson about exercise and weight loss. Mosley, the program’s host and chief guinea pig, is monitored by a respiratory device on a relatively gentle [6mph] run around a training track. The device measures the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide exhaled. Looking at the ratio between the two gases enables us to estimate the amount of fat and carbohydrate, or calories, being burned, apparently.
Mosley was measured as burning some 16 calories per minute during his run. It was then pointed out to him that, at that rate, it would take him 55 minutes to burn off the calories consumed in a cappuccino and a blueberry muffin [which he proceeded to consume after his run], plus a banana. Sounds like bad news.
Some questions about this. How close to average is Mosley’s calorie-burning level at a speed of 6mph? If I did the same run, would I burn off more calories, or less? A lot more? A lot less? How wide is the range? And do you burn off less calories if you’re much fitter? How much less?
The basic lesson here, though, is, if you want to lose weight, eat less. Exercise isn’t likely to do it for you, but it will certainly confer other benefits.
The next section of the program looks at fat levels in the blood. Mosley is treated to a hearty Glasgow breakfast of baked beans, sausage, bacon, black pudding [I think], some sort of creamed egg concoction [I think] and toast. As we’re told, the fat in this meal will be processed though the gut into the bloodstream, inducing metabolic processes which will determine the amount of fatty deposits forming on the walls of the blood vessels.
Four hours after the breakfast, a blood sample is taken and placed in a centrifuge to separate out the fat. This is compared to a blood sample taken before the breakfast, and we see that the amount of fat in the post-breakfast sample is about double the pre-breakfast one. Note that this is one sample – double the amount in the whole bloodstream, and you’re talking quite a load of fat.
As the Glasgow researcher, Dr Jason Gill, points out though, a key factor here is where this fat ends up. Sub-cutaneous fat is much less damaging than visceral fat, fat around organs such as the liver and pancreas. Unfortunately, many of us, like myself, don’t know where our fat is going, or what percentage of visceral fat we have. Mosley does know, however, that his percentage of visceral, or abdominal fat is disturbingly high. A high load of this kind of fat makes you susceptible to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and other problems. Mosley’s father suffered from type 2 diabetes, adding to his disturbance. How much of a part do your genes play here?
Mosley is given another big Glasgow breakfast the next morning, but this time he takes a long but seemingly leisurely walk the night before (Mosley describes it, though, as ’90 minutes of pretty hard walking’). This walk should have triggered the production of an enzyme that in turn should affect the way this second breakfast is metabolized.
Again, Mosley is blood-tested four hours later, and although the interaction is a bit confusing to me here, it seems that the sample this time contains about a third less fat than the one the day before.
More questions. We don’t know what Mosley did the night before he had his first breakfast, so we can’t compare it to the exercise of the night before his second breakfast. We also don’t know, on either occasion, what he did in the four hours between eating his breakfast and being tested.
In any case the fat in the blood vessels has substantially reduced, because it has been taken up into the muscles where it will be mostly burned off.
This is a remarkable finding, and the key enzyme or protein is lipoprotein lipase, or LPL. But most people would begrudge, or simply not have time for, 90 minutes of solid, swift walking of an evening. Any alternatives?
Well, British government guidelines make a general case for 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, or 75 minutes of more vigorous exercise – and, unsurprisingly, most of us don’t manage this.
So, Mosley visits Prof Jamie Timmons in Nottingham whose team is looking at exercise differently, seeking to fit exercise regimes to particular individual needs. These researchers are looking at the wide variation of response to and benefit from exercise. They conducted a four-year study with a thousand subjects who exercised 4 hours a week for 20 weeks. Not surprisingly, average fitness improved, but it was the variation within the range that was the focus of the research. They found a spectrum with about 15% being ‘super-responders’, and about 20% at the other end recording ‘no change’. From this research [obviously there’s quite a bit of science missing from the explanation here] they were able to isolate 11 genes. This has further enabled them to devise a genetic test to determine which group a person belongs to, or where he sits on the spectrum.
More questions. So what if you’re one of the no-change types – is there really no benefit at all for them from this exercise schedule? That sounds almost crazy. And if this doesn’t have any effect, what will? The program doesn’t quite deal with this issue. Mosley states that the non-responders will benefit [which is essentially contradictory] but doesn’t say how. Which leads to the question – what exactly is being measured here? Obviously, a response to exercise, but what kind of response? Weight loss? Changed metabolism? Conversion of fat to muscle? Blood sugar levels, blood lipid levels? Sense of well-being?
Presumably it’s a combination of these elements, but the general point is clear – presenting benefits by means of averages doesn’t really help the individual, considering the massive individual variation revealed by this and other studies.
Personalised medicine and personalised exercise based on genetics may be the way of the future, but I wonder how easy, and how expensive it would be for each of us to access our genetic profiles. Of course the host of our program has no problems with that because he gets his genetic tests paid for presumably by the BBC.
Mosley is also tested for a couple of other things. First, he’s given a sugary drink (presumably glucose not fructose – the difference between these two sugars has become something of a dietary issue lately) to measure his insulin sensitivity. Insulin removes sugar and controls fat in the blood, and if there’s a problem with its production or activity you can become diabetic. After the drink, Mosley has his blood regularly examined to determine how effectively his insulin is doing its job. As it turns out, his results are not so good – the blood-sugar level shot up after the drink of course, but it drifted down only slowly to a point just below ‘impaired glucose tolerance’, putting him only just in the healthy range. The plan is to introduce him, and us, to some exercise that might improve his situation.
Before that, though, he has to undergo his second test, to check out his aerobic fitness, also known as VO2 max, with V standing for volume and O2 for oxygen. In other words, maximum or peak oxygen uptake and capacity.
Perhaps amazingly I’ve never heard of VO2 max before, in my fifty-odd years on this planet, but it’s probably all the rage amongst modern-day gym junkies. It’s a measure of heart and lung efficiency at getting oxygen pumping through the body. It’s not really clear what the number measured indicates, but it correlates pretty well with general fitness. The number for Mosley was 37mls per kg, after scaling for body weight. Top athletes get up to 75, and the much less fit are down in the twenties. As someone who’s become quite interested in weight loss, exercise and fitness recently, I’d be very interested to discover my own VO2 max, but as the program shows, people are put through a punishing exercise test to determine the number, which itself could be quite dangerous, if you’re elderly or have heart issues. So this is an issue I’ll come back to as I try to get more info on myself.
After these tests, Mosley’s introduced to the high intensity training (HIT) protocol, which represents one of the most exciting and controversial developments in ‘exercise science’, if there is such a thing. On an exercise bike, he’s asked to do three short (20 second) bursts of give-it-all-you’ve-got cycling, with rests in between. That’s a minute of HIT, to be undertaken 3 times a week – so, 3 minutes a week. Not worth going to the gym for. Actually the principal attraction the gym held for me, during the short period when I regularly attended, was the sight of athletically lissom females. Sadly, I got rid of my exercise bike, reluctantly, a couple of years ago. Now I’ll have to buy another, because I’m definitely keen on this HIT stuff.
So why does HIT work? The science isn’t clear, but it definitely does work, as shown by many labs around the world. This HIT regime is enough to break down the glycogen stores in the muscles – the store of glucose. This is a key signal from the muscle to the bloodstream saying ‘I need more glucose’, which presumably results in the sugars, the calories being sucked out of the blood into the muscular tissue. This sort of thing happens on a low level with any activity, such as simply walking, but HIT sends out this message from a far higher percentage of the muscle tissue than walking or other mild activities. So for those at risk of diabetes, HIT appears to be an excellent approach
HIT is also good for increasing your VO2 max, presumably because it primes the body to expect, every now and then, short sharp bursts of intense effort, as our evolutionary development might have done. As the researcher says, the sense, after only 20 seconds, that you’ve engaged in a thorough-going, lung-bursting, heart-pumping workout, is a good indication of the VO2 max benefits. The benefits of HIT are not immediate, but after about six weeks the effects should become clear.
So Mosley commits to trying HIT for a month or two, and in the meantime he checks out some more research, this time on NEAT, another low-cost, no gym fees way of keeping healthy. NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, a neat acronym for avoiding sitting around on your butt all day, which many people spend twelve hours or more a day doing. NEAT basically means the calories you burn in all your everyday activity and movement, apart from deliberate exercise, whether inside or outside a gym.
Mosley is asked by James Levine, of the Mayo Clinic, to put on a pair of ‘fidget pants’ or NEAT underwear, which are ‘wired up’ to register all daily, and nightly, movements. A bit embarrassing, thinks I, if you’re known to sleep alone and you register some suspicious nocturnal rhythms, but hey, if it keeps you healthy… In fact doctors recommend…
The point is that just about any activity will increase your metabolic rate – though I’m a bit sceptical of the numbers Levine throws around here – ‘this guy’s walking slowly, about 1mph, that’s okay though, he’s doubling his metabolic rate, and look that guy’s walking twice as fast, so he’s tripling his metabolic rate..’ Really? Sounds like this is based on averages again, and even at that, I doubt if just doubling your walking speed doubles your metabolic rate. But hey, picky picky, it’s surely all doing some good.
Mosley and two other subjects are to have their daily activities tested via the pants. One works in a busy cafe, the other is a writer, particularly on health issues, who goes regularly to the gym.
The three subjects are measured over a 24-hour period, and the results are presented a bit sketchily – a problem with cramming so much in in an hour-long doco. The cafe worker is described as gold medal material from a NEAT perspective, because she’s constantly active, as her graph shows – but in fact only in the morning. There follows a period of complete inactivity according to the graph, but this doesn’t get a mention. The health writer’s graph is sporadic, with occasional bursts of high-level activity, including a very fast and reasonably long walk from one building to another, which Levine doesn’t seem much impressed by (he simply says at the end that the cafe worker produced impressive NEAT results, while the other two failed, essentially). Mosley’s own results indicated regular but quite low-level movement, which didn’t add up to much. So he did an extra 24-hour session with the fidget pants, this time making a concerted effort to sit less, and to generally be more on the move. Levine tells him that his much-improved graph means that he’s burned off 500 calories more than in the first session, so potentially he could be burning off 500 calories daily.
Scepticism time again. The 500 calories thing is again based on an average. Metabolism varies enormously, and if it’s true that there are super-responders and no-changers when it comes to gym exercise, why wouldn’t it be true for NEAT activity? Also, is it really about calories?
Well, Levine answers that last question, sort of, in the next segment. Regular movement just keeps the system going, in terms of blood sugar and blood lipid levels and various other indicators, in a way that long sedentary hours, followed by a burst of activity, even at a gym, doesn’t. At least that’s what recent research seems to be telling us. It’s the sedentariness, according to Levine, that seems to be ‘the killer’. Sitting around in a chair all day is killing millions, is his stark assessment.
So Mosley continues on his journey among the researchers, while working on his HIT, and improving his NEAT. His next stop is the University of Brighton, where Dr Emma Ross is working on brain activity and fatigue. Mosley is asked to do some cycling in a hypoxic chamber, where the oxygen level is lowered (these are the in thing for pro distance cyclists, who often have to compete at altitude). The chamber shows a 14.2% oxygen level, compared to 21% outside the chamber. The idea is raise the fatigue level more quickly, but also the ‘brain concern level’, if you will. Mosley lasts only a few minutes. The oxygen saturation in his blood drops to 82% – presumably from 100%? The significance of this figure, and its effects, aren’t explained. Immediately afterward, he’s strapped into a chair, has electrodes placed on his thighs and has his leg strapped with a strain guage, to measure his kick strength. First he’s asked to push his muscles as hard as he can, then a trans-cranial pulse is attached to his head. This delivers a magnetic pulse to his leg, and the result of all this isn’t too easy to follow, but it seems as if the brain is communicating with the muscles and telling them not to strain so hard. That’s to say, the brain seems to be in ‘somewhat concerned’ mode, creating a safety margin for your exertion, which can be reduced through awareness and training. By reducing that safety margin, you can improve your overall fitness and health benefit.
We’re nearing the end. Mosley returns to Nottingham to see how his HIT schedule has worked out – though there’s a slight problem, as one expert has noted, in that Mosley has confounded the results by engaging in NEAT and other fitness experiments in the interim. This would tend to enhance the findings.
Never mind, it’s all good, and Mosley found that his insulin efficiency had improved by 23% since his previous test. So it seems that, with a combination of HIT and NEAT, you can’t lose…. Except that the test on Mosley’s aerobic capacity revealed no change, and this was in keeping with his genetic test. So, as the program concluded, good for science, bad for Mosley, at least so far as his VO2 max was concerned.
So my overall view of the program was that the science was persuasive, and quite exciting, especially re the ‘HIT protocol’.
On a personal level I find this very interesting, and in tune with my intuitions. When I was young I was a skinny thing who had little interest in food, in fact I actively disliked most of it, and my mother despaired of finding any kind of food I liked. In my teen years I was quite sporty and active but I hated exercise. I loved sport for the competition, not the exercise. In my early twenties I worked for a few years in a really good restaurant and discovered the joys of food and cooking, but I still quite active and sporty and rode a bike everywhere, but as the twenties moved into the thirties, sport became less of an activity and more of a spectacle, and I got my driver’s licence and could afford to eat out more, and my weight, as I got into my forties, began to creep up. In my teens and twenties I was around 69 or 70 kilos, just within the normal rate for my height (168cm), according to the BMI. In my thirties and early forties this crept up to the low to mid 70s, and then in the late forties it started to climb a bit alarmingly, reaching a maximum of 83.4 – that’s about a kilo below the obese range – in November -December last year. It’s probably fair to say that in the ten years leading up to that high, I’d exercised very little.
This morning, after a year, not of dieting, but of eating less and exercising a bit more – regular walking and some simple, non-strenuous CSIRO exercises, my weight was 72.9 and falling. I actually allow myself to feel hungry and quite enjoy it. I try to get back to the mindset of my youth when food didn’t matter to me. It’s not easy but it does work for periods. I also feel the benefits. I was over-eating and suffering gastric and digestive problems. They’ve disappeared this year.
So, although it’s unlikely that I’ll get genetically tested for my response to exercise – unless the test becomes freely available in the foreseeable – my guess is that I’m closer along the spectrum to the super responders than to the no-changers.
I also find the NEAT results are in keeping with my personal intuitions. As I got older and stopped playing sports, I became conscious of the dangers of sitting around all day. I’m a big reader, and a regular writer, so obviously sitting has played a big part in my whole adult life. When I lived alone, I used to read while pacing about in my flat. Nowadays, with podcasts, I can time a solid evening walk with a 70 minute or so episode of the SGU. When I visited people, I got mild complaints that I wouldn’t ‘sit and relax’, but preferred to chat while on my feet. That was more in my forties (I’m now 56). In recent years, before 2012, I kind of gave up, and relaxed into pudgy middle age. But 2012 has brought a change, in my dietary and activity habits, and it’s been all to the good. I’m only two and a half kilos from being out of the overweight range and into the normal range. Ultimately my aim is to get down to under 70ks again, perhaps for the first time in 30 years, and I’m on target to achieve that. Importantly, without strain. I’m aiming for a kilo a month, so my target is to be below 72ks by the end of January, and below 70ks by the end of March.