Neurosmokology

I'm going to start a little philosophical today and talk about the body-mind problem. The age old debate about whether the brain and the mind/soul are the same thing, where the soul is located etc.

I was thinking about this because I have just finished listening to the fascinating second half of an ABC Radio National's All in the Mind podcast about neuroplasticity, and also because I just had a personal experience that is sure to crack this field of science wide open.

We'll get to my discovery later on, firstly I'll explain that word I did not just make up in the last sentence? Neuroplasticity is what the two part podcast is about. Basically plastic-brain, that our brains are not as rigid as we once thought. It's a fascinating exploration of how the brain learns and retains things. Check it out for download here: part1, part2.

An easy example they cover is how we all know that kids are great at learning languages, whereas it's bloody hard for us. Well that's just because the thought processes and the neural pathways they create and reinforce are greedy, and if nothing else seems to be using the language part of the brain except English then English will completely take over and use up all the space. Then when Spanish comes along and tries to get in there is no room left because English is so entrenched. But, if you stop listening to English and immerse yourself in the Spanish language then the English pathways gradually get eroded enough that the Spanish pathways can start to form, then Equipo Traductor you can speak Spanish!

This is not new of course. Everyone knows that the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. What is new is the way of thinking about the brain while it is doing this. It is actually changing, and the most amazing part is that you can make it change. They go on to talk about people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other neuroses and how those symptoms are just defective pathways that are being accidentally fired to make the person feel like their hands are dirty or whatever. They then talk a little about the therapies they are working on where they explain the defective pathways thing to the patient and get them to realign their own brain.

Voila they say, the mind is acting upon and conscious of the physical workings of the brain. Dualism proved.

Or so you might think. But this morning I disproved it.

You see this morning I decided to give up smoking again because I was feeling particularly shit in the lungal area. While ironing my shirt I started thinking about how I should go about it. It was then I discovered that there is not just the physical brain and the spiritual mind, there is also another consciousness that can form in the brain. It is the consciousness of the addicted brain, and today I had a conversation with it. Observe.

Sam's Conscious Mind: Fuck cigarettes. I'm going to quit today.

Sam's Unconscious Brain: Need nicotine!

Sam's Conscious Mind: Shit, I have too many smoke packets lying around. I'll throw them all down the garbage chute this morning then I will have no temptation when I get home from work.

Sam's Unconscious Brain: Need nicotine!

Addicted Conscious Mind: Um, yeah dude. We should totally throw them all away and not smoke for a while

Sam's Conscious Mind: Yeah, no smoking for a week. That would be a good start

Addicted Conscious Mind: Yeah, that's great. A whole week is a long time though, we should probably just have one last one right now.

Sam's Conscious Mind: Yeah, good idea, better have one now... Wait a minute!

Motherfucker almost played me. Still it did prove the Triality of the body. Pretty good feeling to shatter the conventional knowledge of a field of science before breakfast. Better than finding out you're schizophrenic or something.

Ron Jeremy, Peter North in... The Large Hardon Collider

I'm sure you've all heard about the Large Hadron Collider aka blackhole creating end-of-the-world machine that came online last week. A few nutjobs were claiming that it was going to destroy the planet, while most of the world's press were hailing it as being able to fill in the last word of the quantum physics crossword. It will do none of those of course, but it's still pretty awesome.

The best part of it is that it is an example of humans getting together, across borders and scientific divides, to solve a problem. Of course there are many specific problems that the various scientists are hoping to solve but the one they will most assuredly solve is what happens when you collide protons together at 99.999999% the speed of light. What this will give us I'm not sure, but it's bound to be awesome.

The wiki article I just read says that some have criticised the LHC for not focusing all this money and effort into something more important, like climate change or world hunger. Nuts to that I say. You've got to start somewhere, and I think just getting all this money and all these people together is a bloody great start.

This thing is expected to cost between 6 and 11 Billion dollars. Shitloads really. Which makes it all that more awesome. It's $6 billion spent on something that is not really expected to give any return except for, and here is the point, the benefit to mankind's knowledge of the universe. This is the kind of stuff that should be going on all the time. Pure research for research's sake.

As everyone knows, we have fucked this world up royally. Business is not going to get us out of it while there is still a profit to be made maintaining the status quo. I am a fan of market economics usually but only when they are steered/forced in the right direction by government. It just doesn't seem like it's happening with this whole global warming-global pollution thing so I fear that by the time business switch over properly it will be too late. Basically what I'm saying is we need a miracle. And where do you get miracles? Billion dollar pure-research facilities, that's where.

The other promising thing is how much the media and populations in general have gotten behind the LHC. Everyday people in the street are talking about the Higgs Boson for fuck's sake, it's bloody amazing. Short-lived I'm sure, but I can guarantee there were thousands of scientists around the world watching that and thinking "Holy shit, if we could get a fraction of that support behind our [turtle migration/algae blooming/oxide depositing/cold fusioning] research we'd be able to fund ourselves until our grandkids had PhDs!"

So that's my point. Science got us into this earthly mess we are in and, by Newton, science can get us out of it. We just need to fund it, and the LHC is a shining example of just that.

Two more LHC facts before I go:

1) All they did the other day is run some particles around the thing. They didn't actually collide any. That's not for a few more weeks. So the end of the world is still nigh.

2) Some girl in India apparently committed suicide just as the LHC was starting its test run. Premature maybe, or maybe she was just securing a good spot in heaven. Imagine the line up at the pearly gates when this thing goes live in a few weeks time.

Ok, no problem Sir

As I have mentioned before the UAE has a demographic that is surely unique in the world. Emiratis make up the ruling class and 20% of the population, relatively rich western expats make up maybe 10% and the rest are expats from Asia and the Subcontinent and have their own layers of class divide.

Australia is a relatively classless society. If you disagree with this statement, as I may well have before coming here, I recommend you go and live in an oil rich Middle Eastern Sheikhdom for a while and then reassess your opinion. Here class is basically broken down using nationality. Most jobs advertised in the paper here clearly state the nationality of the person they want to hire, with the salary modified accordingly.

Top of the heap are the rich as balls Emiratis, below them are the rest of the Emiratis then the Western Expats and Gulf Arabs, then the rest of the expat workers from Asia and the Subcontinent.The result of this is that if you are a bottom of the heap worker, you do what you are told. No questions, no arguments, you do what you are told. So you do this even if the following scenarios hold true; it is a stupid thing to do, it is pointless, it is unsafe, your are completely unqualified to do it, you will clearly fuck it up if you attempt it.

They do this because if they don’t do whatever retarded thing they are told to do then their boss will yell at them, or possibly fire them. Fair enough, I’d do it too. But this works on the next level too. For example;

The only reason their boss is yelling at them to move those twenty tonnes of gravel twelve metres to the left is because the boss’s boss has yelled at him because the gravel is in front of a truck, and the only reason the boss’s boss wanted the path cleared in front of the truck is because the boss’s boss’s boss yelled at him to get the truck round the front of the building, the only reason the boss’s boss’s boss yelled at him to get the truck round the front of the building is because the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss wanted a truck in some photos he was taking, which, in fact, would look much better with a pile of gravel in front of it. “Oi, move that gravel pile in front of the ....”

Officially around here things work according to best practice, protocol and common sense... but really they work according to once simple question “Who would I rather be yelled at by?” I first realised this a few months ago.

I had just gotten back from a work trip to Paris and as part of the airfare my work had arranged a car service back to my apartment. It has been booked a week in advance and I had a booking reference in my hand. I get to the team of people out the front of the airport directing cars and show them my booking number and I am assigned a place in the ‘queue’. I wait... wait... wait...

Many, many people get a car in front of me. It is 40 degrees and humid as hell and I lose my temper. I walk up to the lady running the show and I raise my voice at her “What is going on here? I’ve been waiting for an hour now and people who have arrived after me continually get into cars before I do. [In my desperation I yelled] Do you just give the next car to the person who yells at you the most?!”. “Oh no Sir”, she assured me.

I got the next car.

I clicked then just how this country works. Yell, argue and be rude to get what you want. I’ve got to say that I find this difficult because, well, I'm not a total arsehole.

This culture of fear encompasses pretty much every aspect of UAE employment. So the majority of people that you deal with are probably so used to being yelled at by their boss that they will do whatever that crazy bastard wants to avoid it. This leads to extraordinarily low levels of customer service and workmanship. Examples:

I wanted to buy a TV when I got here. A salesman saw me looking at TVs, asked me what TV I liked, talked up a certain TV, acknowledged my interest in said TV, gave me the price of said TV and when I asked to buy it he said it was not in stock. I asked what TVs were in stock and basically the entire store was empty of stock. Why would he go through that whole spiel with me if he had nothing to sell? Well because his boss would yell at him if he wasn't working, and me getting annoyed at him for wasting my time and talking for 20 minutes trying to sell something he didn’t have was a better option than the boss yelling at him.

The result, and the title of my post, is the phrase ‘Ok, no problem Sir”. This is what you hear from downtrodden salesmen, unqualified electricians, out-of-stock distributors and uncomprehending security guards. The reason you hear it is because they hope it will placate you for long enough for you to go away and stop causing them trouble and if it pisses you off that's ok because they would much rather you yell at them (in all your western pussy glory) than the hardcore BMW 745 driving Emirati bossman.

So they say “Ok, no problem Sir”. This means anything and everything from “Your dry-cleaning will be four days late“ to "I have no training but me and the boys will have a crack at installing your split-system" to “I know that sewage pipe is going to burst any minute but if I don’t get this ute back by 4:30 I’ll be deported”. It’s a catch all phrase that, on initial entry to this country filled me with confidence, but now makes me double-check where my passport is.

That and Insha'Allah.

Ramadan Breach!

Ramadan Kareem my fellow infidels. Unless you have been living under a rock, or perhaps living in a non-Muslim democracy, you have surely noticed that it is now the holy month of Ramadan.

I thought of doing some research and writing an in-depth post about the religious significance of Ramadan but you can all use Wikipedia for that. I’m going to talk about what Ramadan means for me, an atheist living in an Islamic country experiencing Ramadan for the first time.

First up, my limited knowledge of Ramadan; It is a holy month for Muslims in which they cannot eat, drink or smoke during daylight hours. That’s a bit simplistic though, actually they cannot do those things from morning prayer (4am ish) until the sunset prayer (6:30pm ish). The exact times of these events are based upon sightings of the moon or something.

Notice the word sighting there? That means that it is not based on the phase of the moon, or the length of the day or anything, but on when someone sights the moon. Phases etc can nowadays be predicted millennia in advance, but that doesn’t apply here due to it being a sighting. So, I’m guessing, a dust-storm could delay things for a day or so. This is why religious holidays in the UAE are just sort of pencilled in. Ramadan is scheduled for a certain period, but the ends of it can actually vary by a few days.

From talking to locals or long time residence here the basic Ramadan routine goes like this: Fast all day until the sunset prayer, then proceed to gorge yourself, smoke tonnes of sheesha and party with friends and family all through the night. Then, after the 4am prayer, you hit the sack and hope you’ve eaten enough to last until 6:30pm without dying.

The irony is that in this month of ‘fasting’ most people put on weight. They are basically turning the day upside-down and adding half a dozen feasts into the equation. There have been a lot of articles in the local rags about how to prepare healthy food for Ramadan, presumably to try and counteract this porking up (pardon my inappropriate language).

As you may well imagine, this temporary lifestyle change may affect the working life of a hard working Muslim, and it does. But most if not all businesses adopt special hours throughout Ramadan. My work has made working hours 10-3 for Muslims. It was initially thought that this applied to all of us, until my very Australian boss said the probably quite insensitive phrase ‘pigs arse it does’. So it’s normal hours for me I’m afraid.

So while 10-3 might seem pretty easy to most people, it doesn’t take into account the fact that these people are up until 4am every night. So, from what I am told, the attendance record gradually slips throughout the month and you would be a fool to rely on a Muslim to be at his desk this month should you need something done. It’s pretty much the equivalent of trying to get something done in the last week before Christmas. Most people are away and the ones that are there have clocked off mentally anyway.

What does this mean for Senor Westerner? Well since the locals are fasting during the day it is obviously insensitive for us to be scoffing down food in their presence, so we retreat to the lunchroom and try to keep the door closed. This led to the hilarious situation today where we were eating our lunch in the lunchroom and the office boy (that is his title unfortunately) who happens to be Muslim opened the door and my very loud colleague yelled “Ramadan Breach, Ramadan Breach!”

So for us it is no coffee, water or food in the office. We have to confine ourselves to the lunchroom for those guilty pleasures. Also no smoking (as I can imagine the torture of seeing someone puffing away if you were not able to) so we have to hide away when we need a quick durry.

Finally I will explain Ramadan to you through the ten year-old eyes of a colleague of mine’s son. His dad asked him what Ramadan was like for him at school and he said “It’s awesome. All the Muslim kids are really tired so I can finally kick their arse when we play soccer.”