THE MEMORY OF LIFE
Bio-mechanics of consciousness and behaviour

We usually do not need to know how a washing machine works, only how to operate it. Should it break down, it needs to be repaired, unless we decide not to use it any more. If we believe the machine operated magically, we won’t be able to make it work again. On the other hand, we may know enough to call for a plumber, unless we decide to fix it ourselves, knowingly or by studying its mechanics.
    Unlike a washing machine that we buy or rent, we are the builder of our own self. As a creative mind we thus should know how we personally operate. What makes us tick? ... Experiencing depression, we should investigate the bio-stylistic mechanics of behaviour, to eliminate its effects and its recurrences.

 read more at the memory of life...

Mr Robb, please visit plan B for peace... more to come.

A survey of 18-24 year olds found 66% feel stressed or anxious at least once a week, with money and job worries being the main cause.

Almost a third of respondents said they did not tell anyone of their worries, raising the need to teach young people "coping strategies", said Rethink.

Women seemed most badly affected, with one in three suffering frequent anxiety, compared with one in 10 men.

The YouGov poll of 2,000 adults, 250 of whom were aged 18-24, found 33% of young women felt stressed or anxious most days or every day

The Mediterranean diet, already thought to protect against heart disease and cancer, may also help to prevent depression, Spanish researchers say.

They found depression was more than 30% less likely to develop in people who followed a diet high in vegetables, fruit and cereals, and low in red meat.

They studied 10,094 healthy adults over four years, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports.

However, the team stressed additional, larger-scale studies were required.

Researchers at the Universities of Las Palmas and Navarra recruited university graduates to take part.

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Meanwhile

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Jerome Kagan’s “Aha!” moment came with Baby 19. It was 1989, and Kagan, a professor of psychology at Harvard, had just begun a major longitudinal study of temperament and its effects. Temperament is a complex, multilayered thing, and for the sake of clarity, Kagan was tracking it along a single dimension: whether babies were easily upset when exposed to new things. He chose this characteristic both because it could be measured and because it seemed to explain much of normal human variation. He suspected, extrapolating from a study he had just completed on toddlers, that the most edgy infants were more likely to grow up to be inhibited, shy and anxious. Eager to take a peek at the early results, he grabbed the videotapes of the first babies in the study, looking for the irritable behavior he would later call high-reactive.

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MEANWHILE...

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SPINNING LEMONS (from a chapter for "The Age of Deceit", adapted from a book (unpublished) written 15 years by Gus....)


Stylistic uncertainty
Imagination and reality

“Imagination is more important than knowledge” (Einstein)

Raw imagination is the flux of aggressiveness/receptivity uncertainty before acquired action/reward mechanisms—experienced or learned. Imagination manages delusive values of environmental factors in uncertainty—value leading to related or unrelated associations of information/events. Imagination can float up into our reality, from subconscious reciprocal mechanisms relating sensory perceptions, habits and dreaming, without other purpose than maintaining necessary memory stress-flux activity, without which there would be no change, thus no consciousness.
    While intuition—the meshing of non-recalled existing memory of events/information perceived long ago with a more immediate reality—give us a surprising practical hint, imagination often results in the unreality of possibility—pleasurable or not. Imagination and intuition can be cultivated, enhanced or inhibited by choices, habits and drugs. Imagination can magnify fear and delusions, and induce personality disorders and depression.
    Imagination applied in knowledge exponentially increases our analytical and synthetic choices beyond action/reward mechanisms, as well as becoming the stylistic tool of creation/manipulation of illusions for pleasure.

Knowledge can slow down imagination like a complex program slows down a computer processing speed. This is why children often have a more vivid raw imagination than adults. Children’s brain is still flexible to input of information and still unsure of information as experience is small in relation to the processing ability. Imagination fills the gap. As we grow up, realities rarely match our imagination and confusion occurs. Unless cultivated, imagination can dry up or become a weed in our garden of adult-ordered knowledge. Imagination being a bio-construct of memory in uncertainty, we often use consciousness-altering substances to enhance the pleasurable aspect of imagination— in contrast with other drugs which increase the fear of uncertainty. For the creative mind, imagination underlies our personal creation and acceptance of our success. Imagination can be channelled by beliefs into visualisation. It is at the source of new ideas in knowledge or it is a wild horse we don’t know what to do with.
    Imagination can become a tool of self-destruction through fear of uncertainty or a tool of self-creation via the complex network of stylistic interpretation constructed to provide a pleasurable outlet for uncertainty. The minimisation of imagination by knowledge can lead to plodding—a depressed state—a submissive attitude to knowledge: we know, so we are and we stay...

Gambling on uncertainty
Imagination feels like spinning wheels searching for the four aces in a gambling machine. The odds of a satisfactory result are often the same and we collect lemons. As we become addicted to gambling, we can be compelled to let imagination rule our reality, however fanciful it is.
    Imagination is thwarted by our inhibitors. On the other hand, imagination provides exciting scope for activities of a creative nature if we know how to transcribe it into stylistic success.

Artistic Creation
Many artists suffer from holes in their pockets. Some believe hunger necessary to spark genius/creativity, going from depressed moods to splashing anger on the canvas. Some believe to be misunderstood and this problem unfortunately threatens their survival. Some artists are adopted by niche-markets for renditions of emotional outburst which stylistically express the human uncertainty—but most ordinary punters refuse to be reminded of the uncertainty they have managed to swipe under the carpet after counting their losses in trying to define the meaning of life. Some artists manage well and create item of beauty that draw upon the stylistic endeavours of humankind. In fact, creation uncertainty is the ultimate of artistic activities though the manipulation of information—broad or singularly restricted—by imagination.
    Before the concept of free-expression entered the arena of “modern” art, most artists did not suffer the same angst, being supported by patrons who took them under wing. They only had to cultivate skills and talents, and channel imagination into a desired stylistic belief. The results became phenomenal, being executed from a reasonably secure position. Insecurity in the systematic search of the artistic new has led to a greater variety of focuses since.
    The stylistic purpose—imagination married to aggressiveness of belief—is what created the Pyramids and the Parthenon rather than technology which was only the practical application of imagination (although we are still wondering about the ancient skills). Imagination in beliefs also applies to the adoption of a natural environment as a sacred place. There is no need to build Uluru as it is there. The non-construction—being the adoption of the place is a most powerful form of stylistic imagination. Stylistic acceptance is thus part of the process, involving imagination and reactivity in belief, as well as understanding of the medium of transfer which cumulates and also modifies the stylistic values. Language is a medium of style, language is a stylistic support of information. This is why there are so many languages, including the incomprehensible language we use in our dreams.
   
Artistically being creative
Creativity is mostly misunderstood. It is often claimed that doing anything is creative and there is no point denying this. Being a creative artist is more complex. Art should be seen as a stylistic decision in the manipulation of information. Style as the conveyor of information, nominates the value of our relationship with the information as we accept it or we reject it—beyond, but not clear of, safe and unsafe characteristics. In a stylistically developed world, Style through imagination becomes the essence of interpretation. A tea pot is a tea pot is a tea pot. Style make us love a specific teapot versus another one. Our stylistic interpretation, creative or receptive, can be complex, simple, crooked, slanted but modifies the illusion—as the subject, purposeful or not, is the same.

What does this means for the depressed?
We need to make a safe stylistic decision in creation, as tiny as it may be, and accept it as a success, no matter its relative status, in order to escape depression. Doing so, we by-pass a destructive traumatic stage, choosing instead a shorter delusive pathway, direct to contentment, in a safe environment. We are conning our self deliberately and knowingly, but our habits of action/reward will automatically pay off. We have unblocked the drain. We can proceed as long as we make the decision to stylistically place a stylistic ratchet—fall-back positions—that stops us from going back. It is our decision not to become depressed. The process can also be used to avoid depression once we know its pathway. In a way we are slowly and deliberately performing processes that we perform at warp speed when we are in a full positive automatic mode of activity.

Absorbing energies
Continuity of strong beat and simple musical phrases in electronic dance music often resonate with our innate and acquired biorhythms. It can provide an easy medium in which we let our body loose to activities which match the energy of the beat, while still pandering to a particular appreciation of melodic variation, be it in nuances.
    Romantic classical music tends to hook us on the emotional shift they create with relationships of events that are stylistically associated with it. In most instances, we learn to appreciate styles through familiarity rather than analysis.
    Intellectually constructed modern music using dissonance can demands a greater effort to relate to. On a first time, it is akin to learning a new language in a few minutes. In avant-garde construction, the composer and the performer often manipulates incomprehensible information in order to extend stylistic boundaries. The result thus upsets the plodding comfort of unprepared reactivity. In this process the artist is somewhat familiar with the stylistic results and keeps alert to maintain integrity of style. In an ultimate form, this leads to the fabrication of artistic objects without goal nor purpose, deliberately. Thus, a more creative person can accept, adapt and digest this art into personal knowledge to become intellectually accepting or critically rejecting of the event, while the less stylistically aware person will reject it for lack of instant comprehension—a value sought as a relating need, for comfort.
    In some way, this is the raw process of creativity used for itself. With small input of know stylistic reactivity, we can crank up our appreciation of styles. Give this creative streak a sprinkle of off-beat and Dada-ism is in front of our eyes. Give this stylistic activity a touch of reality and you have surrealism. Link this ultimate event with a smidgin of familiar beat and phrase structure, and Eric Satie comes alive, with his simple expressions yet complexity of emotion transmission. The base scent of perfumes is often unpalatable, yet mixed to other smells, it binds and sustain our notion of beautiful fragrance.
    In modern art, strength is also achieved through a deliberate distortion of accepted beliefs in order to shock or as a creation without any information in order to eliminate or disturb known emotions. In the ultimate context, nothings matters, except, may be, a proper space to exhibit this non communicative of this shocking manipulation.
    Non-communicative information can be propelled using chaotic structures and events that accidentally relate the results to our biotic rhythms and our knowledge, leading to interpretation of the illusion. This accident al illusion creates a substitute for comfort. We become absorbed in its surface and depths, accepting the relating interfaces of information that is not formulated penetrating our sub-conscience with abstraction that are not meant to be understood, just felt.
    Abstraction is the journey from reality to elimination of reality. The reverse is the deliberate realisation of accidental stylistic choices. it should be called Chaosism.

Inspiration and perspiration
The search for inspiration and technical perfection can be frustrating and many artists have suffered from delusion and depression, or addiction in order to combat fear of failure.
    The sheer determination to produce works which don’t sell is in itself a tour de force, and should be viewed as a positive step except for its inability to provide economic survival. Social structures are aware of this problem and often provide ad-hoc means of support through grants without which stylistic developments of a society would not flourish.

Style from tooling
Artistic creativity relies strongly on style and style relies strongly on methods and tools as well as beliefs. This notion goes far back in time. From the earliest recorded Aboriginal drawings, one can observe precise technical styles of symbol creation, adapted in various time frames to variation in the environment. In Arnhem Land for example, exquisitely drawn images dating as far back as 30,000 years, show deliberate motivation, strong intention of expression and strong relationships expressed in symbols. Each civilisation influences its artists by the environment the civilisation nurtures. The works of these artists reflect the substance of this environment, creating specific symbols, recording flora and fauna, and portraits its people.
    We use intonation of voice (style) to create an intention in the transmission of message. The natural mechanical origin of style becomes evident through intonation which cross many languages.

What does this mean for the depressed creative mind
We should revalue our imagination in activity as steps towards a stylistic interpretation, interested in the earnest  understanding of the importance of stylistic creation, past and present, despite being the necessity of the unnecessary. This process should provides new motivation by comparison with the aspirations of other people, what made them perform and how they performed, even if their motivations are not compatible with our own interpretation of past, present and future, imaginary or not.

Gone to the loony bin
Imagination can be at the source of problems. From hearing voices to experiencing  alack of imagination, the writer’s block has been illustrated in many works from books to movies in which an artist cannot find the inspiration to create. A blank page or a blank canvas stares at us, and we are unable to find the key to satisfactorily start a work. Many great artists have suffered from this in one way or another, some becoming so unstable, they were committed to mental institutions or became depressed (inactive, uncreative).
    On the other hand. imagination can become so wild and unbound, we become threats to our self and others. Either we cannot provide for our own survival, we become dangerously focused or we become unable to understand the status of the environmental factors. The museum de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, was created by Dubuffet, an artist aware of this aspect. The work contained therein are from people committed to the loony bin because their vision of the world became internally compulsive, not active/reactive. Their creativity had fallen to a strongly polarised imagination. Works of strange quirkiness was created thus, such as the same landscape painted repeatedly on many canvases, or a continuous illustration, drawn on a gigantic roll of paper being rolled up progressively, never to be looked at.
   
Intuition
Events radiate a field through chaotic cause and effect. For example a car accident at one end of the city can affect the flow of traffic in other parts, making us late for an appointment. From this accidental event, we have an encounter with the love of our life, or we lose a job as we fumble through excuses for being late.
    In our subconscious memory we develop inner links of cause and effect from many experiences, and can subconsciously relate previous presently un-recalled experiences to the present situation.
    Suddenly, we feel something adds up although our present analysis show we should get a different result. Much of intuition develops thus and often speed up finding solutions. Subsequent analysis or the development of events confirming our intuitive feelings will reinforce confidence in our intuition.
    Managing intuition to our advantage can be somewhat difficult as it contains elements of imagination and internalisation of dialogue with oneself. When we are depressed, intuition, like other aspect of our mind, is not very effective. As we regain confidence with our self, operating in manual (slow deliberate motivation and actions), intuition can be one of the last mental activity to become fluid.

Dreams
Dreaming manipulates our memory, in a subconscious mode to reset our stylistic desires in tune with our biorhythms, by-passing our inhibitors. Many dreams at some stage of our life have included erotic and sexual activities resulting in uncontrolled hormonal activity such as ejaculation or orgasm while asleep. Like imagination, dreams can be very strong factors in unsettling or enhancing our contentment. The content of dreams usually eludes us when we wake up, although we can train to remember. Dreams and sleep may not be effective if we are too disturbed either by drugs or problems.

Controlling and understanding our dreams
Our ability to remember dreams is part of the interface between conscious and subconscious. Dreams link unrelated events or beliefs and the chronology of events in a way that is not allowed in a conscious mode, unless we let our imagination go free. While we are dreaming, there is a small window of opportunity through which we can control the development of dreams. This will not be possible on all dreams but the influence we can exert on a dream can influence our subconscious reactivity, improving it or not.

Dreams as memory of someone else’s past
Some dreams can develop in our minds while we are conscious, like a memory of a past that is not ours. Although usually weak, they can be unsettling. These dreams, visions and other manifestations are directly related to the communicative sharing of information from which we gather emotional shifts and knowledge of events which are not ours, but someone else’s being rekindled by present events. This aspect of dreaming can be at the root of some mental illnesses, in which we adopt as our own, the life-story of others, which we have learned and sometimes worshipped.

Dreams as intention of a goal
The vision of a goal is as precious as achieving the goal itself. As a depressed individual, we have lost track of these important stylistic dreams which are the tractors of our motivation through the fields of life. We need to create or revisit visions of goals. That we achieve these dreams in the long run, or not, is irrelevant as long as these dreams drives us to a positive state of mind and do not interfere with our minimum survival. They are the carrots in front of the donkey. Achieving one of these dreams is a bonus to contentment. It is important we have more dreams than we can achieve in a lifetime to avoid inactivity once dreams are achieved.
    We should not allow the inability to achieve some dreams push us into a depressed state. We should not let the feeling of failure destroy the dream either. Some conscious dreams can never be achieve but they can be very soothing and can sublimate our mind into contentment, while we are fully aware of the difference between reality and dreams, in a safe environment.

Thinking: power to manipulate imagination
As a depressed person we still have a small amount of ability to enforce ourselves to emerge from that state and reorganise small priorities. This can be achieved if we are aware of and willing to use this ability (we can move our hand, we can use our mind to imagine reaching a goal).
    Thinking is our ability to exercise our stylistic choices in imagination. It is best done by caring for our self to manoeuvre through the minefields of life. The combination of imagination and control is our thinking power. Juggling and controlling imagination is an activity we usually perform daily under the strong influence of habits and, more often than not, these habits stifle imagination. Challenging our thinking power by trying new tricks and discovering new horizons, intellectually and physically, will spurr our imagination and loosen our control mechanisms, eliminating the grip of depression.

Styles and imagination
The style of applied caring becomes our choice, as we deliberately reshape our learning away from emotional habits which have not suited our performance. We become lyrical, loving, romantic or whatever else with more self-confidence because we discover and/or relearn the carnal meanings of these styles. Carnal meaning here the application of a style to a reactive natural self in which our emotion, although manipulated by our choice of style are physically happening. We feel the forces of deliberate creative care within, that we can also apply with imagination to our physical activities, including creativity. We reinvent our emotional creative and caring self through stylistic decision without losing our natural reactivity.
        The gamut of stylistic expression becomes unbound. We are not reactive to environmental factors. We are pro-active to them by blending analysis, synthesis and imagination. The spinning lemons become the four aces. And we use our physicality to express this creative expression by acknowledging our success emotionally.

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The opposition’s former climate change spokesman, Andrew Robb, says the emissions trading deal isn’t good enough, dealing a severe blow to Malcolm Turnbull’s authority on the issue.

His comments came in a Coalition joint party room meeting this afternoon after the shadow cabinet has approved an emissions trading deal struck between Coalition frontbencher Ian Macfarlane and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, Opposition sources have confirmed.

An Opposition source told AAP the amendments included a number of welcome concessions from the Government including additional support for big emitters.

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With your small black dog barking mad at the ETS, Mr Andrew Robb, you leave a very bad impression that is depressing me... Your attitude is also depressing many good people who work hard at understanding what you obviously have no idea about but still want to judge and poke sticks at...  Wake up. Since you don't understand the problem of global warming, go and play marbles with your silly mates. But do not interfere in what is not yours to discuss anymore. Global warming is a serious issue. This particular global warming may be the most serious event this planet has faced for more than 120 million years. Even more serious than the last big extinction 65 million years ago... More serious than the last big melt 12,000 years ago... Far fetched? not on your nelly. These weak ETS are far from perfect but they represent a small step in the right direction to put on the negotiationg table... Please read Climate Change on this site...

Wakey-wakey... stop being a "politician"... Stop being the former spokesman of the opposition to climate change action...

see toon at top....

Mr Westfield attacked senior Liberal MPs Nick Minchin and Andrew Robb for undermining Mr Turnbull's leadership.

He accused the Opposition's former spokesman on emissions trading, Mr Robb, of "calculated treachery" for waiting until the last minute to voice his concerns about the ETS.

"Robb had been kept in the loop throughout the five weeks of the negotiations and had ample opportunity to voice any concerns he may have had through this process," Mr Westfield wrote.

"Instead, he chose to ambush Turnbull and [Ian] Macfarlane at a critical time. It was an act of calculated treachery."

Both Mr Robb and Senator Minchin have declined to comment.

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See articles about depression above and toon at top...

Federal Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb is lending his support to a Sydney magistrate who is fighting his dismissal because of a mental illness.

Brian Maloney is expected to appeal to state parliament this month after a judicial commission report considered him permanently incapacitated because of his bipolar disorder.

But Mr Robb, who himself has been treated for depression, says if Mr Maloney is sacked it will reinforce the stigma surrounding mental illness.

"If the NSW parliament decides to sack Mr Maloney, it will be a serious injustice and it will set back the cause of confronting mental illness by 20 years," he said.

"It will confirm that the stigma that prevents hundreds of thousands from confronting what is almost always a treatable disease or illness."

Mr Robb says it would be a serious injustice if he lost his job as he is being treated for his illness.

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Good on Andrew Robb for sticking his neck out on this serious issue...  As you can read from comments posted above, I too have not shirted from talking about it... However, knowing the full gamut of problems associalted with depression, bipolar activity and treatment of such using drugs, one cannot be confident that in a life "or death" situation involving justice, a judge may be in full capacity of his/her abjudicating faculties. Drugs, though efective in redressing the symptoms of the "black dog", always leave traces of fuzzyness and unreality in behaviour. For example, aspirin headache tablets make feel "floaty".. Stronger tablets make me loose sense of space and time... Gimme morphine and 12 hours vanish in 30 seconds... One could not care less that a politician is on certain drugs, such as prozac, to keep a black dog at bay... But a judge is like a brain surgeon.... he/she has to make very specific choices — choices which may or may not be interfered with by the drugs — BUT this we do not know.... I personally would find that a judge on anti-depression drugs not as reliable as a judge who has worked on sorting out his problem in a drugless manner.

My opinion... see toon at top...

Any suggestion that the federal Coalition is somehow urging the $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to act in an illegal manner is simply without foundation. The charge was levelled in a recent piece in Guardian Australia by Lenore Taylor, and it is a line that is being pushed by the Gillard government.

The CEFC was established by the government to provide favourable access to finance for clean energy projects which cannot secure required funding through conventional means. The Coalition has been vehemently opposed to these activities, and we have made it clear that should we get the privilege of government on September 14, we will abolish the CEFC – which is to be funded by the government with yet more borrowed money.

Yes, it is true that we have urged the CEFC to desist from entering into contracts and meting out loans this side of the election, which is now less than 100 days away. But far from asking the corporation to act unlawfully, we have simply put forward a most logical proposition given the distinct lack of bi-partisanship for a very misguided policy.

It must be remembered that like the carbon tax, the Gillard government has no electoral mandate for the CEFC, which was established to provide favourable access to finance for risky clean energy projects that cannot secure necessary funding though conventional means. This in itself has the alarm bells ringing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/coalition-clean-energy-finance-corporation

It is unnerving to me to read the writings of a man who claims he suffers from the black dog, but not to actually understand that his own stand on the CEFC is going to make a few people depressed and possibly suicidal... That is unforgivable. Robb should know that the party he is a member of, is a party of floggers and a party full of sociopath, in which climbing on top of other people is required to get to the top of a crummy dangerous ignorant leadership. 

I thought better of Robb, But now I can see he is a hypocrite like the rest of them, planning to destroy a fine concept just to save a few bucks now and damn the planet for the future. Unforgivably idiotic.

See toon at top and all articles below it...

Tonight on the 7:3- report, Andrew Robb talked massive bullshit plus... especially at the end, when he sort of said that many countries were lecturing Australia about curbing emission and that these countries did not meet their obligations agreed at the Kyoto Protocol, WHILE AUSTRALIA DID... 

Well, Mr black dog, I hope lying through your teeth will bring that black dog back in your pigeon loft... Australia only achieved its targets DUE TO THE CARBON PRICING set up by Julia Gillard... Since the repeal by the duo of trapezists Abbott and Palmer repealed the Carbon Pricing, emissions have gone through the roof while price of energy has barely gone down. Julia Gillard is the person who manages to reduce emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol and for you and your mob to take the credit for it is vicious, duplicitous and hypocritical. 

Robb, you are a duplicitous bastard. May the black dog of lies haunt you forever.