Racing mind........Well, Yeah.

I hear people complain about their minds racing, about constant mental chatter. A favorite blogger (I thoroughly enjoy reading his posts) mentioned our 50,000+ daily thoughts recently. I find these complaints confusing. I like my mind to have a dozen exciting new ideas filling it and rolling around in it at once. Suddenly, I have a lot of new questions regarding this. Please allow me to explain.

I have heard much about the peace and benefits of meditation, and find meditative exercise to bring great benefit. It does still the mind for me some. Or more accurately for me it brings me to a narrowed focus of thought. It allows me to contemplate one or two important concepts at a time versus the usual steady stream I am accustomed to. However, in recent months I have become interested in Buddhism, it seems, largely a pretty natural off shoot of where I am already. The problem I am encounterring is that as I try to meditate and quiet the mind I feel largely lost and alone. I find that without my thoughts for companionship and for reinforcement I sort of flop about in nothingness. I guess that is part of the whole letting go of attachment to identity thing.

For me, slowing the mind is a sort of denial of desire. There are few things that bring me the joy and elation of rolling a new idea around in my head and letting it flavor my entire existence for a while. To me total misery is stagnation of concepts, thoughts, and innovations. I like to have my paradigms shifted regularly. For my mind not to be full to the brim with things to be compare, cotrast, assimilate, regurgitate and distribute is painful. I often use continuous thought as a stimulant. It's true. I seem to run on a need for a constant upper. And since I have stopped using as much caffeine I seem to be seeking extra thought provocation incessantly. The reality check is that I am tired, alot. I get bored, easily. Lately I seem to see life like a beginner book and I am craving doctorate level material or at very least some good victorian erotica.

I guess it would benefit me to sit back and not consume so much info but I cannot see how. I slow down and all I want to do is sleep. I have been told that excessive sleep means one is driving one's self too hard. I don't know that I buy that either. I get tired when I slow down, but if I could need less sleep I would get so much more done. I used to have a 3 pot of coffee a day (plus supplemental espresso) habit. I have cut back to 2 cups a day plus a diet soda or two. I am slowly becoming more moderate in my habits. Moderation though, does not make me so much happier as it makes me more bland. I feel happiest when I more land asleep then drift off. Of course, sleeping the sleep of the dead, makes it less likely to hear my husband snoring, and that means deep sleep. Always a bonus.

I just think I am not meant to get the whole step back and be quiet thing. The only time I observe that centerring and quiet is in nature or in ritual. Somehow I doubt that is likely to change. I seek moderation, but I think I may already be overly moderalte and this is why quiet is not so much for me.

Veganism & Sentience Musings

I'm a vegan. Have been for over a year now. It comes up in conversation often. Not because I bring it up. But things as simple as choosing lunch locale's trading recipes, or choices of snacks bring it up. I am not an "in your face" vegan. I don't attempt to impose my dietary choices on anyone else. But I get alot of questions. I've been thinking on them more lately and my vegan voyage has been a progression for me.

I initially became vegan before my last surgery. I reached a point where eating certain foods hurt. Or caused other unpleasantness. The worst culprits were animal products and greasy foods. I am a largely rational person so I quit eating those things. And I went full bore. It was a bit hard at first, but wasn't long till I had made the switch. After becoming a vegan certain aspects of my eating habits were questioned (often not too kindly) by family and friends. I finally just listened and didn't explain my choices. I found that people had their own ideas why I had taken this route and no amount of explanation would sway them other wise.
My grandmother was sure I had joined a religious cult and that was why. My mom actually got it. My husband saw it as a grand new challenge. My friends all assured me I'd be deficient in protein and Iron, and my peers in nursing school (at that time) saw me as difficult or odd.

I am comfortable in my vegan skin now. It makes me healthier, happier and more productive so it is good. But as I go along and hear the arguments for why people should eat meat I am faced with a defined speciesist argument every time. I for one am not ever convinced of a "natural order" of who should be predator and who should be prey. Nor do I necessarily buy that they are "lower" creatures. I have been wondering about tests for sentience in animals and how this will affect people's eating habits. Will they be less inclined to eat something if they believe that thing they are eating may have a rational mind with a comparable self-awareness? It occurs to me that part of the problem in addressing these issues is that a good selection of people around me do not think in these terms. And they are simply not interested in making that leap. Animal=tasty. No thought required.
I see this applying to the eventuality of AI too. In the minds of the masses, "It is a machine therefore it does not feel or if it does feel that feeling is not real." I really think that in order for them to accept something so new as the concept of machine sentience, they must first get over speciesism as relates to currently existing species. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe a thinking-feeling-rational machine may jar them out of their apathy and shake up their personal paradigms enough to allow them to reflect on other species as well. All I know is that with the current mass-media-pop-culture mindset where the mass of the populace has been lulled into a state of complacency I do not think much time is spent contemplating.
I view a good chunk of mass media right now as "capitalist porn". Let me define that for you. In pornography sex and partners and sexual gratification is readily accessible, there is not a denial (unless it enhances the gratification later) and there are no consequences to expending sexual efforts or energies any where with anyone. Modern mass media has developed a culture of readily available goods and services with no need to earn the capital to acquire them. The people portrayed always have the latest goods and services while seldom having a job or having to rationalize needs vs. wants. There is no bankruptcy as a common theme. Credit cards help distance from the tangible spending. That is what I mean by "Capitalist porn". I define it now because I use the phrase frequently.
This distancing of gratification from sources and consequences to the masses does not improve the ability to assay accurately future implications of the now. I wonder if we'll have to find a way to make a singing cow pop star that is fully sexualized in order to persuade people to stop eating meat.

Kool-aid urine and tinnitus acceptance.

As I finish Ironing my scrubs for another week, my head is full of thoughts and reflections.

Last week I saw one of my patients after chemo. One of the infusion nurses had said the patient was in pain, and also had the standard nausea that the harder core drugs often induces despite all the anti-nausea meds we pump them full of. We ushered the patient to a bathroom and acquired a urine sample. It looked like berry kool-aid or even beet juice. I was petrified, but smiled and stayed (on the surface) calm for the patient's sake as I ushered the patient to a room and laid him/her (I don't breach confidentiality) down on an exam table. I left him/her in the ultra capable hands of the infusion nurse and ran to the lab with sample in hand. Even the lab tech asked me to please tell her that the cup was anything other than urine. We rushed it over to the machines and I went back to tend my patient and continue patient flow for my Dr. once he had handled this crisis. We ended up admitting the patient to the hospital in the end.

This made me think about the drugs we use in my practice. There is BIG money in chemo drugs. We have one cabinet with a person's unused meds in it. There is a 10 month supply which translates to $55,000 worth of meds. That is only one person's drug. And that is a single drug. Many patients are on multi therapies. Or have even more expensive drugs. This is a burgeoning business of patents and promotion. All to treat the cancer. None of this cures cancer at all. The funding for research is given by those looking to make a profit. Curing is not really a goal. It is more cost effective for pharmaceutical companies to treat forever and accept pain and loss and damage than it is to cure. See a cure has a defined end point. A place where the $ stops coming in. It would not be viable for them to invest in unpatentable drugs either. So any and all research on unpatented drugs is left to researchers using indepenent funding. Now lets say an unpatented cure (Like the one covered in New Scientist last month) comes up. Who would fund the trials for that? Not the pharmaceutical companies. Without funding, the FDA won't even look at the viability of a trial much less approve the trials to start. It all seems very frustrating. Until we revamp the system enough that cure is more cost effective than treatment and acceptable loss there will be no funding for the right research.

This weekend I went to my husband's workplace and talked with a lady who works there. Her mom has had inner ear issues. The last doctor was willing to accept that hearing loss, loss of equilibrium, and lost mobility were totally acceptable because of her advanced age. I have encouraged the daughter to seek different medical care for her mother. Largely because I don't believe that accepting age as part of a debilitation process is reasonable. I think that the way we treat the elderly attests to our defeatism about the war on aging. So often doctors discount the realities because of aging. Well this lady's mother went from bedridden and hearing loss to regaining bits of her hearing (still a constant ringing in one ear) and regained mobility. All with the simple insertion of tubes. If they keep pushing they may even find some way to eliminate the ringing. I want to see wellness in the elderly. Not acceptable decrepitude.

Again there is not big money in improving quality of life. There is big money in end of life treatment, however. When health care as we know it collapses (and I truly believe it will, and hope it will) part of restructuring and values will be ethically driven cost effectiveness. Wellness over profit. It seems logical but I assure you in America the idea is still frighteningly novel.