I do yoga. Kinda. But not really. I have recurrent lower-back and neck pain, and to make the episodes less frequent and less severe I have found that daily sessions of yoga "mindful stretching" really helps. I don't think I can honestly call it yoga because I don't get into any traditional postures--that I know of. And I certainly harbor no belief that by doing it I am achieving some sort of spiritual transcendence or union with the godhead. No. I loosen my muscles, get the fluids in my joints circulating a little better. While I'm at it I try to "loosen" my thinking. Stress has a psychological component, so while relaxing my body I consciously attempt to do the same for my mind.
Recent research confirms my feeling that stretching is helpful for back pain. It also indirectly shows that the use of the word yoga may be little more than marketing. At least when talking physical benefits.
At the website, ScienceDaily, I found this press release: Yoga Eases Back Pain in Largest U.S. Yoga Study to Date
So yoga works? Am I missing out by merely stretching? Lead author to the study, Karen J. Sherman, concluded:
"We found yoga classes more effective than a self-care book -- but no more effective than stretching classes."
Well that's interesting. And noteworthy.
My bet: Health instructors of the yoga variety across the land will use only the first half of that finding to promote their brand of "stretching-by-another-name." Then again, when advertising their services they are doing "sales." And using fancier terms is what sales people do.
As an outsider, a person unfamiliar with altars and churches and Christian iconography (in this case within my photograph of items in a Catholic church of the Sicilian sort) encountering the above might cause you to think, What the heck?! What's with all the gold coloring and the scalloped shaped things and the wings on the little dudes?
Because an outsider's reasoning lacks the acculturation of the insider's, her or she is more likely to experience gaps in what makes sense. Sometimes this is for bad; but to those who value greater objectivity, it is often for good. Consider the "gaps" exposed by the cartoons below.
[cartoon thanks to JesusandMo.net]
[if you doubt the above exaggeration of a valid point, I recommend you read the Qur'an, front to back, as I recommend anyone read the Bible; cartoon thanks to Atheistcartoons.com]
[cartoon thanks to xkcd.com]
Holy flapping carp! Exposing children to profanity might make them more aggressive. What the fudgenuts!? How could that be? Could that be? I wonder.
A new study has raised many questions. A bunch of them, at least to my mind, are critical.
Consider the title to the news release -
Question 1: Linked? How linked?
The first sentence reads -
While it's been long established that watching violent scenes increases aggression levels, a new study in the medical journal Pediatrics suggests that profanity in the media may have a similar effect.
2: It has been long established? Not to my well-informed mind, it hasn't. You might say that watching violent scenes may increase aggression. But there are many studies that conflict with the above statement. The relationship is far from clear and consistent. [see these posts for more: Null News: Video Games and Violent Scrabble Players, Science Quickie: Depression, Violence, and Video Games, & Skeptical of Research Linking Video Games With Violence]
Next we come to this:
To explore this overlooked issue, scholars at Brigham Young University gathered information from 223 middle school students in the Midwest. The data is not longitudinal, but BYU family life professor Sarah Coyne explains that the statistical techniques applied give more clues than would simple correlation tests.
Brigham Young University, the Mormon school? Hmm. Does a "family life professor" carry any bias or agenda? More importantly,
3: What is/was the scientific value of the statistical techniques that gave more clues than simple correlation? Wait, here comes a partial answer:
Specifically, the statistical modeling points to a chain reaction: Exposure to profanity is associated with acceptance and use of profanity, which in turn influence both physical and relational aggression.
I'm sorry, but this sounds like a lot of gobbledygook: a statistical seek-and-find, a "stumble upon a connection" treasure hunt. Seems to have been. At list judging by a clue provided by this quote:
"On the whole, it's a moderate effect" said Coyne, the lead author of the Pediatrics study. "We even ran the statistical model the opposite way to test if the violent kids used more profanity and then sought it out in the media, but the first path we took was a much better statistical fit even when we tried other explanations."
Um. Scientific findings are much stronger if you first commit to your methods and hypotheses, then do your tests. Otherwise, before any confident conclusions can be made anything you find (generate) should be independently verified, preferably using a different data source.
Finally, there is this ridiculously simplistic reasoning put forth by Coyne-
"Profanity is kind of like a stepping stone," Coyne said. "You don't go to a movie, hear a bad word, and then go shoot somebody. But when youth both hear and then try profanity out for themselves it can start a downward slide toward more aggressive behavior."
Oh fudgenuts. "Hear a bad word"? Did my Mom conduct this research, or a full-fledged scientist? My last question is an important one, having two facets:
4a: How was "profanity" defined? Would an instance of cooing lovers creatively using the f-word count? What about wildlife trackers keeping their eyes open, taking about, and finding bear scat (but using a more informal term).
4b: Did the authors consider, and even better, control for, the nonverbal elements of language? Words are fairly inert in themselves; it is their emotional and motivational connotations that matter. I wonder if the effect would be the same if the tv and video scenes were revised so that the instances of profanity where replaced by a heated tone and perhaps menacing facial expression (and intimidating body language) employed while uttering the following:
BULLSCAT!
DOG-GUMMED SCATHEAD!
YOU MOTHER VOTER!
VOTE OFF!
YOU VOTING EVIL SCATHEAD!!!!!
Or something.
My point: We must remember that using words is a form of behavior. And behavior is complex.
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P.S. I have avoided using profanity in this post. I don't want to be responsible for my readers going ballistic.
[recycled material - first appeared here]
[This is the 3rd part in a 4-part series. Intro here.]
The concept of the mid-life crises provides a whopper of a belief-net. In the example discussed previously, at least one of the two variables -- sugar -- can be strictly defined. But both mid-life and crisis are sufficiently abstract as to allow all sorts of data to be caught,
whether it be genuine butterflies, or moths, locusts, sparrows and the occasional twin-engine Cessna. Does mid-life consist of the years between 40 and 60? That's a lot of years. And what about crisis? What constitutes a crisis? If recently divorced Dave across the street buys a boat that he obviously can't afford, is this evidence of a crisis?
Armed with the belief in a mid-life crisis, a person can readily notice and acknowledge those instances of mid-life-ish persons behaving in a crisis-ish manner. My own mother, at the age of 55, following three decades of driving a series of station wagons, bought a black, two door Trans-Am. A few relatives may have gossiped about my mother's otherwise hidden crisis, using this inkblot of unusual behavior as evidence. Someone with graying hair doing something odd -- must be going through a mid-life crisis. Meanwhile, opposing cases fail to register. We fail to pronounce, "Hey, there's a person who is happy and sane during the middle years of their life."
As for alternative cases, who, after observing Brad, twenty-nine years old and recently divorced, dating a much younger woman and bringing home a boat he obviously can't afford, is going to reckon, "gee, I guess twenty-somethings have crises as well."
In mid-life, male and female hormone levels do change. And thoughts about one's mortality may increase. In fact, it is a normative experience to enter middle adulthood (the years 40 to 65) with two living parents, and to leave with none. So there may be some are good reasoning as to why there could be a mid-life crisis. But how heavily should we weigh "good reasoning." What does heavier information reveal?
Unfortunately, direct evidence is lacking. No double-blind, placebo-controlled experiments have been performed on the link between mid-life and crises. (I guess psychologists have yet to figure out how to use time travel in the university basement laboratory to project one group of subjects into their own future while the control group stays behind. Or something.) But there does exist fairly strong data, or information, that highlights opposing cases. For example, midlife is actually a time of remarkable stability in personality traits. In one study, Paul Costa, a leader in the field of personality and co-creator of the "Big Five" model, summarized his findings this way: "older Ss were slightly lower in neuroticism, extraversion, and openness." He added, "There were no differences in personality scores that might be attributable to a mid-life crisis or transition." (3)
In their review of common mid-life changes, Aldwin and Levenson write, "In contrast to these perspectives on the putative crisis of middle age, surveys routinely find individuals in midlife to have fewer psychological symptoms, higher levels of marital satisfaction, better life satisfaction and mastery, and, in general, to be in fairly good health." (4)
Human minds could be described as perpetual reason-seekers. We like to attribute behavior, especially unusual behavior, to a cause. "A cause," as in "a single cause." Sometimes any old cause will do, as long as it allows us to park a striking observation in the web of our minds. Whether observations, the foundation for building beliefs, are deemed noteworthy can depend upon the beliefs we already hold. The resulting feedback process allows relatively vacuous propositions such as "mid-life is a time of crisis" to persist. Three decades ago Orville highlighted two contradictory aspects of the issue this way: "While the heuristic value of a concept of developmental periods is recognized, it is noted that data do not indicate that mid-life stages form an invariant progression of events." (5)
Sure, there are potholes in the road through mid-life. But I suspect that early life and late life have their share. Furthermore, those in mid-life who hit one rarely suffer consequences worthy of the term "crisis."
---
(3) Costa, P. T. 1986. "Cross-sectional studies of personality in a national sample: II. stability in neuroticism, extraversion, and openness." Psychology & Aging, 1 (2), 144-149.
(4) 4 Aldwin, C. M. & Levenson, M.R. 2001. "Stress, Coping, and Health at Mid-life: A developmental perspective." In: Lachman, M. E. (ed.). Handbook of Midlife Development. New York., Wiley, 188-215.
(5) Brim, O. G. 1976. "Theories of the male mid-life crisis." Counseling Psychologist, 6 (1), 2-9.
[Update: There is now cross-cultural evidence that males are more
likely to become depressed in middle adulthood. Evidence of a "crisis" . . . ? Hmm.]
Please answer "true" or "false":
[T]/[F] I have recently stopped abusing my spouse.
Well, I'm waiting. Please answer. No, there is no "C" option, "neither of the above." This is about truth. Or falsity. So weigh in with your #2 pencil by blackening one option. Is it true or false that you have recently stopped abusing your spouse?
The above scenario always makes me giggle. It nicely highlights that we often need to question a question before venturing to respond. Sometimes a question can be . . . wrong.
This topic was brought to mind by this recent finding:
Archaeologist argues world's oldest temples were not temples at all
It seems that on one "side" of the argument you've got option [T], "True -- them things are temples." On the other side: [F], "False -- them things are not temples."
Two sides. True or false. No, you can't weasel out and say, "But what if those things are temple-ish?"
The temples (or not-temples) in question are stone structures discovered in Turkey, dating back more than 10,000 years.
The oldest of the structures at the site are immense buildings with large stone pillars, many of which feature carvings of snakes, scorpions, foxes, and other animals.
But wait, rather than a specialized shrine, archaeologist Ted Banning argues that there is growing evidence for "daily activities at the site" including food preparation. Banning hypothesizes that the structures may have been large, communal houses.
Hmm. In ancient times wasn't there less of a clear distinction between religious activity and daily life? Education and religion, politics and religion, probably even family and food preparation and religion: these were not distinct, easily separable activities. Where you found one, you found the other.
Perhaps an important question would be, "When does a communal meeting/activity house where we find religious artifacts, and where religious behavior occurs, become a temple?"
Of course, by taking sides and arguing over a black or white proposition it is possible to shed light on the gray areas. For that reason, true or false questions can be valuable. But we must remember that words are tools, and we needn't commit to the wrong tool for the job.
Is temple the right tool? I wonder.
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