Stage Behind the Mind

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In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt maintains that “I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of his own. When the elephant really wants to do something, I’m no match for him” (4). Haidt’s point is that mind is divided in two parts. There is a conflict between those parts and when it comes to a point where our unconscious mind has a desire to take the control, we can’t prevent it. It is impossible to overcome the elephant’s resistance. Basically the elephant is the unconscious part of our mind that evolved to store feelings, thoughts, urges and memories outside of our conscious awareness, also to protect us from ourselves, the environmental changes and outlanders. In short, no matter what we do, the elephant is the dominant and the wise one, not our will or our conscious wants. The rider should let the elephant go, because the elephant knows where it is going. They are two parts of a whole. The elephant and the rider want to go to the same direction — unconsciously.

When we try to think of a hundred thoughts and images or try to memorize fifty facts of some incident consciously, we probably won’t be able to do it — and we will probably have a bad headache afterwards. However, the elephant can do so many things without making an effort, such as storing infinite incidents and facts and generating thousands of thoughts and images every day (20). Haidt agrees when he writes “it’s hard for the controlled system to beat the automatic system by willpower alone; like a tired muscle, the former soon wears down and caves in, but the latter runs automatically, effortlessly, and endlessly” (18). Haidt empathizes that a person’s will -by itself- doesn’t even have an effect on the elephant. This is the reason why we need to do something in order to change a person’s affective style and start taming the elephant. Haidth suggests that “You need a method for taming the elephant, for changing your mind gradually. Meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac are three effective means of doing so” (43-44). I agree that Haidt is not wrong about these methods and all of them are effective but, a point that needs emphasizing since we should be the one who deals with the elephant, not someone else or a pill. If we are the one who are familiar with the elephant, then why should we trust something or someone else? If we start taming the elephant by ourselves, the elephant’s absolute power will be in our hands forever –unlike the other methods. The upshot of all this is that the most effective one out of those three is meditation. Meditation is the only therapy that allows us to explore our self – also the elephant- and permanently solve our problems.

Haidth demonstrates that reciprocity and vengefulness are a part of us which genetically come with the elephant when we are born. We are not blank slate when we born. Humans are born with some emotions and instincts (S.Pinker). And I think reciprocity and vengefulness are some of those emotions and instincts which are coded in our genes –maybe it has been coded for hundred thousands of years, because our evolutionary road decided that we needed those feelings. “Gratitude and vengefulness are big steps on the road that led to human ultrasociality, and it’s important to realize that they are two sides of one coin,” wrote Haidth in Happiness Hypothesis, “it would be hard to evolve one without the other” (52).

However, there are many ways to prove no matter what rider does, the elephant is always going to be there to keep everything on an even keel. Consider someone tries to change his breathing rate to faster or slower, what he is doing now is using his conscious mind to breathe. When he forgets about the exercise, he will notice how the elephant takes the control and returns the breathing rate to normal. Also if a person tries to hold breath and die, he/she can’t do it. Because after consciously holding the breath for a while, the person will pass out due to low amount of oxygen. At that point, the involuntary breathing reflex will kick in, and the person will start breathing again (control of respiration). In fact sometimes while we are doing something unconsciously, we feel like we are doing it consciously. “Our ego makes us think our conscious mind is in control of our actions, but that's simply not true. Our conscious mind is constantly controlled by our unconscious” ( Chhtraliya, Ravi). As a result it is not actually possible to overcome the elephant.

Every person comes into the world with an elephant. The riders start without knowing anything –our conscious mind. While the elephant is full of knowledge and wise. The elephant leads the way until the rider learns how to decide on his/her own to survive. Since the rider is not perfect (nobody is perfect) even after the rider learns how to decide and control his/her own path, sometimes the elephant takes the control. I believe we can’t judge the elephant because it’s the one with more experience. It’s the wise and sapient one. It’s there to help us out. As an illustration when we talk to a stranger, we unconsciously keep track on their mimics, voice tones and expressions. Then if the elephant detects danger or threat it tells us to walk away, if the elephant decides that it’s beneficial for us to stay it tells us to stay. Most of the time we do what the elephant says –we should do it all the time.

According to Haidth “The human mind have been shaped by evolutionary processes to play Machiavellian tit for tat, and it seems to come equipped with cognitive processes that predispose us to hypocorism self-righteousness, and moralistic conflict. But sometimes by knowing the mind’s structure and strategies, we can step out of the ancient game of social manipulation and enter into a game of our choosing” (80). Also I agree with Haidth’s idea of how human mind have been shaped by evolutionary processes up to a point, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that we can step out and enter into a game of our choosing. He may not realize that he notes “we are the rider, we are the elephant” (22). So as it seems there is a conflict in his words. Since we are the rider and the elephant, does it really make sense to step out the ancient game (elephant) and enter into a game of our choosing (rider)? I believe that consequently Haidt’s metaphor is effective, but we shouldn’t be trying to step out. We should let the elephant play the game with our support, and help the elephant to reach our, as we are the rider and the elephant, desires.

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Chhtraliya, Ravi. "What the Unconscious Mind Is & Can Do? - Free Online Library." News, Magazines, Newspapers, Journals, Reference Articles and Classic Books - Free Online Library. The Free Library, Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. .

Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic, 2006. Print.

Pinker, Steven. "Steven Pinker Chalks It up to the Blank Slate | Video on TED.com." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Sept. 2008. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. .

Wikipedia Contributors. "Control of Respiration." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 08 Mar. 2010. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. .

Neurons: Connecting People

-->Neurons: Connecting People

There are one hundred billion neurons in human brain. Each neuron makes a thousand to ten thousand contacts with other neurons that are in the brain. VS Ramachandran talks about how they put electrodes in different parts and record the activities of the brain. There is a group of neurons called mirror neurons that are located in the frontal part of the brain. Also there are ordinary motor command neurons in the front of the brain. These neurons fires when a person does a specific action. However, it was found by Rizolatti that some of these neurons will fire when somebody else does the same action. It’s like almost creating a virtual reality simulation of the other person’s action.

What is the significance of these mirror neurons? There must be imitation and emulation. But how and why is “imitation” is important? When we take a look at the evolutionary road, and go back about hundred thousand or seventy-five thousand years ago, we see that usage of tools, shelter, language, theory of mind etc. has evolved due to the sudden emergence of a sophisticated mirror neuron system. And he gives an example of Darwinian theory; it takes hundred thousand years for a polar bear to evolve and has its fur. However, a human child can watch his/her parents kill the polar bear and put the fur in the body and learn it in 5 – 10 minutes. Then it spreads geometric proportion across a population. This is the basis.

As there are mirror neurons for action, there are mirror neurons for touch. As an illustration, when somebody touches you, your mirror neurons will fire. They also fire when you watch somebody else being touched. But how do we emphasize with the person but not literally feel the touch? Because, we have receptors in our skin that goes to our brain and signals that “don’t worry, you are not being touched.” But if you remove your the arm, anesthetize the arm, there is no sensations coming in and if you watch somebody being touch, you literally feel it in your hand. In another words you dissolved the barrier between you and other humans.

In the end, I think the most important part of the video was “…this is not in some abstract metaphorical sense, all that’s separating you from him, from the other person, is your skin. Remove the skin, you experience that person’s touch in your mind.” This means there is no independent self away from other human beings. Also I liked the part where he says “you are connected not just via Facebook, and internet, you are actually quite literally connected by your neurons.”

Epigenetics

Epigenetics

Our genes determine who we are. When we see two identical twins, they look the same (they might not as they get older) and they act the same. There are many facts which bound identical twins together. Like running fast, facial expressions and laughing the same way. Because they come from the same egg and share the same genes, literally clones.
What if one of the twins has cancer, what is the other one supposed to do? Wait for symptoms? The video has an example of Anna Marie (twin) being cancer. And demonstrates that the question should be “how can two people so alike, be so unalike?” The answer is, (as we see in the mice example) there are exactly the same genes in identical twins body, however some genes might stay on all the time in one twins body, and the other twin might have methyl groups which turn (control –tighten or loosen them-) off those genes.
Epigenome: The overall epigenetic state of a cell. I really liked the example in the video. I think it is pretty good and simple. When we think genome as the hardware of a computer, the epigenome would be a software which tells the computer how to work, when to work and how much. It’s the epigenome which tells our cells what to be, like hair, skin etc. All cells have the same genes but their epigenome silents the unneeded ones make them different. However this situation is not permanent. For example in the experiment with mices, when we feed pregnant mother mice with rich methyl groups, we see it changes the color, and it’s an indicator that shows us the gene (sick one) has turned off.
Scientists made a research about the identical twins’ genes. As a result it shows us younger twins are almost like clones but the older ones are change epigenetically. And what we eat can affect the next generations (in a good or bad way). Cells can become abnormal and trigger diseases.
Few misplaced tags can kill a person. Cancer is a result of broken genes. And it’s a lot harder to fix damaged genes than to rearrange epigenetic tags. However we already have some drugs that we can use. Epigenetic Therapy; the idea of epigenetic therapy is to stay away from killing the cell. What scientists are trying to do is to change the instructions of cancer cells, reminding the cell that it shouldn’t be behaving that way by reactivating the genes. It seems like it is a good therapy, patients are happy. At the end of the video it indicates that we have a responsibility for our epigenome which can affect our children. We are not necessarily stuck with it, we can alter this.

Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good ?

The Story of Fries

The french fry was "almost sacrosanct for me," wrote Mc Donald’s founder Ray Kroc in his autobiography, "its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously"(pg 114). The fries are an integral part of Mc Donald’s. At first Mc Donald’s was just producing familiar traditional fries, which were delicious and healthier. But after a while the company started to expand and the bigger Mc Donald’s got, the more supplies it needed. This is the reason why the company began to sell Simplot’s frozen French fries (1966). Even if they were not as good as the traditional familiar fries, they were much cheaper and easier to serve. Most American people didn’t even notice the difference. The fries still tasted the same — maybe even better.

Why did Mc Donald’s fries taste so good? Schlosser argues that the reason was the cooking oil and I agree, because the other fast food chains were using the same potatoes and almost the same fryers in their kitchens. But their fries didn’t taste the same. For a long time Mc Donald’s cooked its french fries in a mixture of seven percent cottonseed oil and ninety-three percent beef tallow (pg 120). This is the reason why its flavor was unique. However it contained too much cholesterol. In 1990, Mc Donald’s changed their mixture and started to use pure vegetable oil. There was only one problem left: how to make fries taste the same without cooking them in tallow. So the answer was devised quickly. “Natural flavor” this unknown, mysterious ingredient is now commonly used by all fast food chains. It’s the reason why fast food is delicious.
Health experts have recently suggested that Mc Donald’s fries are the healthiest. But in my opinion fries are somewhat unhealthy and they contain too much fat. So I think the value is all it matters when buying fries. Think about the cost, ingredients and the amount of fries. I think Burger King’s fries are the best and the most valuable ones. They are cheap and they are suitable for vegetarians. Burger King has removed the meat flavor from its natural flavoring a while ago. Its fries contain less fat than most of the other fast food chains’ fries.
I decided to go three fast food chains’ local shops and compare their fries. In a day I went to Wendy’s, Mc Donald’s and Burger King. Before I left my apartment to go get some fries I’ve done a short research on the internet about these three companies’ fries and how many calories each of the fries have. When comparing the fries my criteria were the amount of fat (calories), saltiness, heath serve, speedy serve, cost and amount of fries.
My first destination was Wendy’s. I ordered small fries. Wendy’s fries had a natural baked potato taste. They tasted just liked the ones I used to make at home. The fries were not really salty but it was okay. Serving was fast enough. It took a little more than two minutes to get my fries and they were hot. So Wendy’s serves fast and its fries are tasty, hot and somewhat salty. When it comes to the question of “Should Wendy’s be our first choice when buying fries?” most of us will readily agree that yes we should, the fries taste good and nothing is wrong with them. However after taking a close look at the ingredients and how many calories the fries have. One must say Wendy’s fries are not a good choice. Wendy’s small french fries have 440 calories. This is 80 calories more than Burger King’s medium french fries have. And there were around fifteen fries which cost $1.29. The cost per fry is more expensive than Burger King. On the other hand since Wendy’s use vegetable oil, most vegetarians tend to believe that the fries don’t contain any meat product and eatable for vegetarians. But Wendy’s fries are fried in the same fryer where chickens are fried. Regular fries become non vegetarian due to cross contamination.
My next destination was Mc Donald’s. There was a line when I got there. My order of small french fries were ready in about two to three minutes (except extra couple minutes on the line). The fries were pretty hot. I think there are only couple facts that explain why people like Mc Donald’s fries. The fries are hot and usually Mc Donald’s serves fast. Also Mc Donald’s small french fries have 230 calories which is not bad. But I have more reasons to dislike Mc Donald’s fries. First of all they are too salty and even the fries don’t contain too much fat; they always taste like straight oil. The fries cost only a $1.00, but since Mc Donald’s never serves its customers more than ten or twelve fries per serving (small).So the cost per one fry is almost the same as Wendy’s. Mc Donald’s fries are more expensive than Burger King’s. Many people contend that Mc Donald’s has been using pure vegetable oil to fry their potatoes. I agree it does use vegetable oil, but the natural flavor in Mc Donald’s french fries is form an animal source. So Mc Donald’s fries are not a good choice for vegetarians and for those who want to stay healthy.

My last stop was Burger King. I walked in and ordered my small french fries. Then I was holding my hot french fries in two minutes. The saltiness was really good and the fries were delicious. Burger King’s small french fries contain only 230 calories. Also, not like most of the other fast food chains’ fries, Burger King’s fries don’t have natural flavoring derived from meat product and Burger King uses only vegetable oil to fry its potatoes. Therefore the fries are completely suitable for vegetarians. An order of small french fries cost $1.00. It comes with 14-17 fries. The cost per fry is much cheaper than Mc Donald’s and Wendy’s. These are some of my reasons to like Burger King’s french fries.
Wendy’s french fries are unhealthy and they have too much fat. Mc Donald’s fries are too salty. Therefore it’s hard to eat them and they don’t even taste good. At the end of the day, I believe that Burger King’s fries won the competition. Burger King’s fries are the best ones. They taste really good. They don’t contain too much fat. And they are cheap. “The rise and fall of corporate empires — of soft drink companies, snack food companies, and fast food chains — is frequently determined by how their products taste,” says Schlosser (pg 123). And I totally agree. I don’t know about Mc Donald’s or Wendy’s but I think during the next few decades we will be seeing lots of Burger King Stores around.






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"Calorie Count." Calorie Counter Database. About.com. Web. 08 Mar. 2010. .

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.