"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
Classes and coursework.
Dear Kelly,
When you only have a small chocolate muffin and a small slice of coffee cake, coffee, and water, for close to nine hours, you’re going to get cranky towards the end of it. Really, really cranky. And then when you get home, and you eat like you should have done hours ago, and your blood sugar stabilizes, you will feel like an ass for being so cranky to other people.
Yours,
Your body
I have a bad habit. It’s called “reading psychology books” – I blame my stint, now nearly a decade past, as a psychology major for this affliction. But it’s stayed with me, and it undoubtedly influences how I see the world. I always had issues with Freud (it was the trendy thing, after all), but never really thought much about Jung until I joined CHID. That first quarter, the Buffy class had a segment on Jung and archetypes – I will always tie the cheese tray in the Season Four finale, Restless, to Jung’s navel of the dream – and he continued to pop up here and there for short chapters. 
At the same time, my interest in genealogies and narratives has grown exponentially, and I read whatever I can get my hands on about the subject. (Yes, another bad habit – I enjoy Foucault. Please don’t stone me alive.) So, it was with some interest that I checked out the book There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives by Jungian psychotherapist Robert Hopke. I’ve been meditating quite a bit on luck and synchronicity lately; we recently watched The Pursuit of Happyness, and several interviews I’ve read or proofed lately have also discussed the power of luck, chance, happenstance. In fact, my very religious mother has even been commenting on it lately, how so much of my life lately has seemed to just fall into place, as if I’ve been blessed by luck.
Needless to say, randomly finding a book about synchronicity while thinking about synchronicity was… synchronis. Naturally, I had to read it.
So far, Hopke is just discussing the mechanics of Jung’s breakdown of synchronicity, but it’s something I find myself much more receptive to than I would have expected. Our lives are stories, and we only notice this story when we are jolted out of our immediacy and can see a slightly larger picture, when we find ourselves adhering to patterns we would only expect to see in narration, because we don’t consider that we ourselves have a narrative. Hopke says that we have a
very human tendency to try to exert and establish control over our lives, as if somehow our consciously deciding what story we are going to be living and doing whatever necessary, come hell or high water, to make it turn out that way, is the best or only way to achieve happiness and fulfillment. Certainly part of the wonder of synchronistic events is the way that such an attitude gets turned on its head. By pure accident, without our willing them, certain events sometimes occur to us which show us that our lives may well be on another narrative track altogether, that the story we have made up for ourselves may not be our story at all, and only our own openness to reconsidering the plot will allow us to use this meaningful coincidence to our own benefit.
Not at all facetiously, wow. Talk about narrative and wonder and serendipitous events – how can I not love it? And how can I not relate?
I started back to school, several years ago, thinking that I would get a degree in journalism and turn my love of writing into a professional career. I tried to make it fit, but kept being pulled other ways and directions – and when I finally gave in, and let go of the mental idea of who I was and should be, life became better. Happier. More exciting and rich and all those trite things. I was only going to get a BA… but then maybe a Masters would be a good idea. No, no, a PhD. I’d stay on the West Coast, in Seattle, maybe California – okay, fine, New York. In many ways, life since returning to school has been an exercise not in academia, but in flexibility, letting go, and acknowledging that sometimes, the control you have is not to shape your life, but your response to the circumstances you find yourself in.
I was reading an interview the other day, of someone I rather admire. And it struck me how much of the story was based on (and acknowledged to be) luck, timing, and being in the right place. I guess it ultimately goes back to being in the world, and being open to what the world brings you, rather than to what you think the world should bring you. Opportunity comes in many guises, and often there has to be a set-up before there’s a pay-off (and while they exist here, I won’t point them out – you can find them if you’re so curious); if you are so closed off to the world to not be willing to have time, patience, and faith, and yes, even trust – then I wonder if you can ever truly succeed, or be aware of your own serendipitous synchronicities.
Originally written in Spring of 2005 for a class on biotechnological communication.
God
In The God Gene, Hamer builds on the work of several scientists who have been studying spirituality, religion and the brain, including (and leaning heavily on) Michael Persinger, who studies the construction of the temporal lobe and how its construction affects one’s God experience. Hamer takes the idea of God in the brain a step further, looking for and finding a single gene he believes controls how spiritual we are. This, the aforementioned VMAT2 gene, and is involved in how the brain uses monoamines, a class of neurotransmitters including dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. In simple terms, VMAT2 makes a protein that packages all of the different monoamines into secretory vehicles — the biological packages that the brain uses to store its signal molecules.
An obvious and immediate problem with the concept of a God gene is just that, and was pointed out by one of Hamer’s colleagues: “Do you mean there’s just one?” Hamer says that what he meant to say was “‘a’ God gene, not “the God gene ” ” [emphasis mine] and that “it wouldn’t make sense that a single gene was responsible for such a complex trait. …most of the inherited effects can’t be explained by VMAT2. There might be another 50 genes or more of similar strength.”
This isn’t the first time Hamer has promoted the theory of a single gene determining behaviour. Hamer is probably best known for his “gay gene” theory, brought to light by gay rights activists attempting to utilize the language of the Supreme Court to sway lower courts in a Colorado case on homosexuality and discrimination. Hamer and colleagues had published two reports that supposedly supported the existence of a “gay gene”, but the first and more substantive report was plagued with problems and the second report showed a much smaller percentage of men with the correct marker for the gene.
While he repeats the “mistake” he made with the “gay gene,” Hamer did learn from the controversy, and with his “God gene” is being very careful to say “the term “God gene” is, in fact, a gross oversimplification of the theory. There are probably many different genes involved, rather than just one.”
It’s important to note the difference here. Persinger is trying to describe where and why God (or similar transcendent and universal experiences) exist, not how. Persinger is looking at electrical activity and fields as a means for God; God is in the electrical impulse. Persinger finds God in temporal lobe transients, which are electrical perturbations of the temporal lobe.
When they occur, the innate feelings of the God Experience are displayed. Depending on the extent of the activity, some experiences would be mild cosmic highs… Other more intense transients would evoke the peak experiences of life… They would involve religious conversations, rededications, and personal communions with God.
_________ pp. 16
The beauty of Persinger’s work is that it is not a reductionist approach; he is studying the why, where, and what: why do God Experiences happen, where do they occur, and what are they? Persinger deals completely in the emergent properties of electrical patterns, you can’t break it down into component parts. It would be like trying to take the flour out of a cookie once it’s been baked. In contrast to this, Hamer takes a reductionist approach in trying to find how the God Experience happens. For Hamer, all things must break down into their component parts, and then build back up. You take the Lego pieces out of the box, build the castle, take the castle apart, build the castle, take the castle apart, ad nauseum. As self-described materialist
Hamer argues for a geneticized basis for God, going further than Persinger’s electrical God to say that God is in the Gene. As noted, contrary to both popular opinion and Hamer’s book title The God Gene, Hamer does not argue for a single determining gene that defines God, just that the potential for God is within us, and that our ability to perceive God is based on what genetic combination we have. Those who are more devout simply are more genetically inclined to be. It is a geneticization or biodeterminist belief; not only do our genes determine if we believe, they determine that all there is to believe is cultural constructs that were developed to house our internal God Experiences. These experiences are similar to one another solely because we all have temporal lobes
By acknowledging cultural constructs, Hamer appears be creating a role for environment, thus mitigating the nature/nurture controversy. As is popular with scientists, he uses twin models in an attempt to show neutrality by saying that they were raised in different environments and still have statistical correlation. The problem lies in Hamer’s definition of environment; he says “these twins were raised by different parents, in different neighborhoods, and sometimes even in different religions,” so “their similarities seemed to be the result of their DNA rather than their environment.” There are two immediate problems with this: first, the twins still shared the same in utero environment for nine very developmentally important months. Secondly, none of the twins Hamer uses to validate his point were raised outside the same environment of western Judeo-Christian culture. While income levels undoubtedly have an impact on a person’s beliefs, there is a core, shared national environment that should not be discounted for convenience.
Hamer’s first geneticized social issue was homosexuality, which he reduced down to a “gay gene” to argue for tolerance, equality and rights. Although he did backpedal on the singular nature of the gene, he repeats the assertion in his next social issue, religion and God — there is a singular God gene. Perhaps instead of looking at his reductive biological determinism, we should be paying attention to the issues Hamer chooses to focus on. Religion is undoubtedly one of the most debated and contested issues in our society right now. Many people consider it to be the cause of our current engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the cause of the World Trade Center attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin attacks in Tokyo, and so on. The list of things attributed, both negatively and (to a lesser degree) positively, to religion in the last ten years alone is awing. Over the course of history, religion has been responsible for more deaths, wars, and pogroms than all the governments combined. If we could explain religion, find its cause, could we neutralize it? Control it?
There is a common ecumenical belief that all paths lead to the same end point. That is, all religious beliefs and paths are merely different cultural interpretations of a single, unifying something. This ecumenical belief points out the similarities between all religions: the focus on family, love, respect, honour, peace, treating others well. Commandments like “kill the unbelievers” are swept away as cultural constructs that should be taken in stride with social conditions of the time
Science and religion have been at odds with one another since science escaped its “handmaiden of religion” role during the Enlightenment.
Nature Medicine
April 2007, Volume 13 No 4
Book Review
On race and organ markets p401
Reviewed by: Summer Johnson, Kelly Hills & Glenn McGee
doi:10.1038/nm0407-401
I’ve made no real secret of my long-time fascination with medical shows and their distortions of reality, and how I think that distortion creates an “ER-effect” just as much as we have the “CSI-effect” or “Law & Order-effect”. In fact, if I get off my rear and out of the house enough in the next couple of days, I’ll be tossing off at least one, if not two, abstracts proposing book chapters for just this sort of thing. (Well, one on this sort of thing in a broad sense. I might also submit one that’s more focused on the problems of representations of chronic pain, and the difference between addiction and dependency – but much of my critique of that still stems from the fact that their inaccurate representations have an effect on real people.)
Apparently I’m just always on the cutting edge of trendy. In the last couple of weeks, the number of stories and books I’ve seen around House have truly shot up in number, and most of them are cranky. Which is fair – I have rarely seen so cranky a show that deserves its cranky critics, more than House. But I do wish, if people wanted to be cranky about the show, they would do so in a more novel way. Yes, the hospital is bright and pretty and new. Yes, there are only four major characters, two supporting, and a host of rotating background characters. Yes, they do everything – a fact the cottages have even started commenting on.
But these are the complaints inherent with any television show. The medium itself demands these constrictions. You’re not going to find a falling down hospital from the 1970s if that’s not a central character in the story (and yes, the setting is as much a character as someone portrayed by an actor – just look at the fabulous use of scene-as-character courtesy of Joss Whedon’s Firefly). You’re not going to find as many people in a television show that are actually needed to run a hospital, because of salary and budget issues, and the fact that ensemble shows can only be so big before they fall apart. (ER suffered from this problem – in fact, most ensemble shows do.)
So you make sacrifices. You make the teaching hospital shiny and new, so that it drops more to the background – a well-lit place with little character. (In fact, there are only two settings within the show that I would argue actually have character – the MRI/CT room, which I’m convinced is the same set, and House’s office.) They drop back the number of supporting staff cast members in order to keep the focus on the main characters. People become more technically brilliant than they would be in the “real” world – all to move the story along. But these are accepted shortcuts to take in television. Show me a show based on a real life occupation that doesn’t make similar sacrifices.
The Salon article touches a sad note when the nurse writing it talks about how the stories she lives on a daily basis are not so engaging to make it to television, because she’s comparing her cases against the fictional ones of House. Of course fictionalized shows bring a more dramatic story to air than might be lived out – but that doesn’t mean the lived out story can’t be translated from a lived narrative medium to one of television. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong in a book, short story, column for Health Affairs “Narrative Matters” column. It’s another facet, I suppose, of the medical show effect. People become disillusioned with the life they live, because it’s not the life they see.
During my time at the University of Washington, I spent many hours roaming the halls of our medical center – for personal, academic, and professional reasons. I joked, many times, that I needed breadcrumbs and string to find my way through the dark corridors populated with half floors hidden in the middle of the building, stariways to no-where, and a jumbled architecture that only comes from piecemeal building. The brand new Foege building was lovely, as I was leaving, an attached jewel on a fading cardboard crown of a hospital – most of us lived and worked in tunnels that more closely resembled submarine quarters than the floor to ceiling windows that grace Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (or for that matter, Seattle Grace Hospital). Many of us watched the medical dramas (and comedies) that were on TV, and we had special affection for Grey’s Anatomy – being located just across Lake Union from us in the fictional world.
But few of us wandered around complaining about the lack of placed realities on these shows. Some of us banded together and blogged about the fictional Seattle and its geography. Some of us started to critique the medicine on the shows, much like Penn’s bioethics center did, and some of us even said “well, hell, I can write that!” and took to prepping and sending out our own scripts (and several even got picked up).
As much as there is to complain about these shows – and really, there is oh so much – they also open the door for dialogue, discussion, education, and so much more. As much as they define, often broadly and badly, they create a place for a public discourse to happen. We, those of us in the medical field (and its fringes) have a choice: we can rail against what’s there, or we can collect ourselves, join the fray, and insist on being heard.