By Patricia Burke ofSafe Tech International Images Courtesy Artist and Mother Michele Hertz
Transcendent Thinking
Several stories have been featured in the Safe Tech International News Substack about research confirming the benefits of hand-written notes over keyboards and screens, for comprehension and retention.
University of Southern California researchers have also reported recently that ‘transcendent thinking’ actually increases brain size.
“The more a teen grappled with the bigger picture and tried to learn from the stories, the more that teen increased the coordination between brain networks over the next two years, regardless of their IQ or their socioeconomic status. This brain growth—not how a teen’s brain compared to other teens’ brains but how a teen’s brain compared to their own brain two years earlier—in turn predicted important developmental milestones, like identity development in the late teen years and life satisfaction in young adulthood, about five years later.
In previous studies, the authors had shown that when teens and adults think about issues and situations in a transcendent way, many brain systems coordinate their activity, among them two major networks important for psychological functioning: the executive control network and the default mode network. The executive control network is involved in managing focused and goal-directed thinking, while the default mode network is active during all kinds of thinking that transcends the “here and now,” such as when recalling personal experiences, imagining the future, feeling enduring emotions such as compassion, gratitude, and admiration for virtue, daydreaming or thinking creatively.
The findings reveal a novel predictor of brain development—transcendent thinking. The researchers believe transcendent thinking may grow the brain because it requires coordinating brain networks involved in effortful, focused thinking, like the executive control network, with those involved in internal reflection and free-form thinking, like the default mode network.” Source
The implications of the research on devices and cognition and learning for school budgets and a growth economy beholden to Ed Tech companies are staggering.
And therefore, not being addressed.
Inclusive Thinking
In a previous blog, I noted that Nate Hagensinterviewed Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, discussing ‘hospicing modernity’ (also the title of her new book)”in order to move beyond the world we’ve come to know and the failed promises that “modernity” has made to our current culture.”
“It is related to opening that lid as we expand our capacity to see the different moving layers of complexity, to let go of the attachment to certainty, control, coherence, and consumption of things, to be able to sit with difficult, painful, and complex things without feeling overwhelmed or immobilized.”
“We, here, we talk about developing the stomach. To face the amount of sh*t that we need to compost without throwing up, without throwing a tantrum, and without throwing in the towel.“ Source
I would add a third category to her guidance.
We are in need of future-makers who can sit with the complexities, who will not throw a tantrum, will not throw in the towel, will not throw up, and who will not throw others under the bus.
It’s not an exact fit, but the tech industry as a whole has been somewhat like the Grinch –hating the Whos.
The Whos are the community of individuals who have been seeking to steer the tech industry and society off of the collision course with biology, including harm to the environment and human health, caused by inappropriate and unsafe technology choices, especially wireless.
https://www.best-poems.net/poem/how-grinch-stole-christmas-by-dr-seuss.html
This is exemplified by the ‘smart‘ meter debacle.
A wave of opposition started to build around 2010 when smart meters were installed, and some people got really sick.
Others were hurt, but didn’t’ recognize why,
See the short new film from Americans for Responsible Technology: (About 5 minutes)
If only it were just the utilities and the wireless industry that hated the Whos. But it wasn’t.
Many leading environmental “green energy” groups and politicians were so concerned about the planet that they joined the tech industries, in hating the Whos.
They did not mind in the least throwing the Whos under the bus, diagnosing them as mentally ill with an imaginary condition, and then moving to a more politically correct narrative – “these people are really suffering but it has nothing to do with us.”
An industry mantra should not be mistaken for appropriate policy making, diagnosis and treament, and medical care.
Thinking About Right Timing
We could be fifteen years ahead in addressing the outdated science, and the tobacco science, literally, that is underlying much of our wireless tech expansion.
As the European Environmental Agency notes in its case studies of Late Lessons from Early Warnings, a focus on safety fosters innovation. And failure to adopt the Precautionary Principle increases costs and carnage.
Many industries could pro-actively yield to emerging evidence of harm and pivot to appropriate course corrections with grace, integrity, and humility, instead of playing deny/defend/attack Whack-A-Mole, as the smart meter industry did when issues with privacy, billing, hacking, security, fires, green-washing, grid pollution, planned obsolescence, and injuries emerged.
When companies and empires fail to respond in a timely manner to risk and harm, the process becomes more destructive over time. This cannot be blamed on those speaking to truth.
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti observed, “We’re working with sanctioned ignorances that are rewarded. So whenever you present this information, there is a response and a reaction to deny this information again.”
This can change.
Repeating Stepping Stones Controlled by the Cigarette Industry: Labeling and Light Cigarettes? Are We Going to Do This Again?
In his book The Cigarette Century, Allan Brandt wrote, “It is my hope thatThe Cigarette Centuryprovides a strong foundation for a critical discussion of new strategies to avert a potential global health disaster.” [] “The development of new medical knowledge demonstrating the dire harms of smoking ultimately shaped the evolution of evidence-based medicine. In response, the tobacco industry engineered a campaign of scientific disinformation seeking to delay, disrupt, and suppress these studies. Using a massive archive of previously secret documents, historianAllan Brandtshows how the industry pioneered these campaigns, particularly using special interest lobbying and largesse to elude regulation.”
Many new and powerful voices are emerging in conversations about tech downsides.
For example, momentum has coalesced around the exemplary research on children’s mental health by Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch, reflected in the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, endorsing “government-mandated warning labels on social media, akin to those that a previous Surgeon Generalcalled forin 1964, on cigarettes.” Source
But should we celebrate repeating the tobacco wars?
Thinking That Protects Seven Generations vs. the Do-Gooder
The description of “Hospicing Modernity” notes, “This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers.
Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we’re part of. Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance—the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker—and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back . . . and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest.“
Can the movement to address children, smartphones, and social media not enable delay, disruption, and suppression of harm caused by manmade, artificial radiofrequency radiation?
Will our ancestors look back incredulously, not understanding how a so-called ‘dumb phone’ in the hands of a child mirrorred the adoption of light cigarettes? When we could have done so much more?
As my Canadian substack colleague Barb Payne observed, “I have not yet noticed anyone acknowledging that wireless connectivity is like a gateway drug to screen addictions. If wireless connectivity is not available everywhere at every moment, people of all ages would not as often fall prey to screen addictions or social media content.”
Heaing the Past, Present, and Future
In the early days of the smart meter debacle, two military experts, one from the UK, and one Canadian, began speaking publically about the dangers of smart meters, including the non-thermal effects of non-ionizing radiation.
When Jerry Flynn was introduced to his audience in 2012, he noted, “I shouldn’t be here, I should be home in my garage making things out of wood.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-F3nf47kAs&t=64s 1 ½ hours
Over the last 14 years, I have met many individuals – artists, homeopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, yoga teachers, scientists, teachers, pilots, engineers, writers, herbalists, firemen, meter installers, organic farmers, physicians, cooks, musicians, film makers, electricians, professors, parents, and chldren, – who have set aside what they thought their lives would be, to work on the very unpopular campaign to addrress unsafe tech. Some are extremely ill; some have been rendered homeless, some have perished.
Michele Hertz, instead of gardening, sculpting, or painting, is talking to politicans in New York about a smart meter bill, working with NYSUMA – NewYork Safe Utility Meter Association.
Solstice Darkness and Light
Will sanctioned ignorance prevail in New York?
Michele and others working alongside her do not belong under the bus. As new activist movements emerge with new concerns about technology, will those who have gone before, who are literate in electromagnetic harm, have a seat at the table?
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti noted, “We are talking about the ability to say the buck stops here in my generation.” Together. Now.
The North
As the Earth experiences its Solstice, for the North: “They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds”
Acorn Image Courtesy Artist and Mother Michele Hertz
The South
For the South: “After the longest night, tomorrow we sing up the dawn. There is a rejoicing that, even in the darkest time, the sun is not vanquished. As of tomorrow, the days begin to get longer as the light of day grows. While the gentle winter sun slowly opens its eyes, let us all bring more light and compassion into the world.” ― Dacha Avelin
Leaf Image Courtesy Artist and Mother Michele Hertz
We need to go back to basics, to reclaim our abilty to grow our brains, on the basis of transcendent, inclusive thinking. The stakes are very high.
“And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day” ―Dr. Seuss,
Be on the right side of history. It’s time.
