Yourself?

Truth and Books

Because I never lie and I'm always right

I guess this is the recurring theme of this week for me. Prof Ling said "Jing Xin Shu Bu Ru Wu Shu" when Moses questioned him on something in Moore. What is it that leads us to believe what is written in books is right. What is it that leads us to have convictions that a certain factoid is wrong, even if we know very little about it.

I've been doing my own research on the Cortisol question, which is, why is Cortisol secreted when the body is stressed (e.g increased levels of Adrenaline), and specifically to reduce the inflammatory response? Shouldn't it be time for a stronger immune response? Ok right now I've got three possibilities to this idea which I haven't really cleaned it up.

1) Cortisol reduces inflammatory response because in stress states, Adrenaline secretion will increase Basal Metabolic Rate of everything, including immune cells. However, increase in activity of immune cells may take away energy from muscle cells for fight and fright response.

2) Adrenaline increase activity of immune cells and this is actually dangerous for the body. Cortisol reduces activity of immune cells to prevent auto-immune diseases.

3) Prof Ling said something about Cortisol and other steroid substance productions. Need to check that out.

Okay lets get back on track. I just needed to write that because it's been frustrating. The recurring theme is that of knowledge. While looking around the stress section of the medical library, I found this book on stress, with a very interesting preface. It spoke about this Brothers Grimm story the scientist told to his child, about a girl, who had to buy meat from this cook, and give bring it back to her mother everyday. However, one day she stole some meat, because her mother was very poor, and it ended up with the girl killing the cook, and the mother and girl living happily ever after. The scientist asked his kid, so where do you think the Daddy of the girl was. His kid immediately replied, "The cook was the daddy."

Of course, it may seem obvious in retrospect, but the minds of little children have a special sensitivity that we only begin to develop and understand as adults. The scientist claims that Freud, with his theory of repression leading to mental disorders, could perhaps be manifested in this anecdote he gave. The thing is, as we grow, we repress certain thoughts that we may have as children. We may be born knowing, but we end up forgetting.

Perhaps, the idea of children's stories were to continue passing on understanding to children without knowledge. We don't really tell them anything about the "real world" in our children's stories. No big bad wolf walks the forest, we don't even have forests nowadays in the city. We're telling them about violence and sex. And we're doing it in a way that we're not even subconsciously aware of it's significance. Children may be more perceptive of events in the stories that we may not realize ourselves.

I guess that is why this blog is important to me. This is why my prior work is important to me. I don't believe in self censorship, although I did a while back during a relationship. I think that the perspectives we get at every stage of our lives will be different. The only way I can recall what it was like to be at that age, would be an artefact or a memory of what I did then. Some piece of myself that will trigger those memories again. Then, if my children asked, I could tell them what I thought at their age. What I did then.

posted by Downhere. @ 10:22 am