The Best Exercise Includes a Dose of Nature

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Josh

The British Ecological Society’s blog posted about a recent research article titled “What Is The Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise For Improving Mental Health?”

The article is a meta-analysis (that is, it synthesizes research from many previous research studies about the topic), and sums up its results with the following statement:

“This study confirms that the environment provides an important health service.”

And I have only two questions…

1. REALLY?!!! and,

2. AND?!!!

First, this information is anything but new. Anyone who has every gone hiking, who has ever taken a vacation in the mountains, or in the woods, or who has ever played in a creek behind their house, knows firsthand the difference between “exercising” (moving) outdoors in a natural environment versus doing the same or similar activity indoors or in a “built” (human-made) environment.

I’m talking here, not only your own first-hand experience, but also about the incredible amount of scientific research that shows the benefits of moving in a natural environment. The paper quoted above used a lot of that research to make its own (redundant) point!

I’ve pointed out at least one piece of this literature in previous posts (here, here, and here). So…it’s not even new to this blog!!!

However, even with that knowledge, and even with the rapidly mounting evidence, and my (and others’) incessant blog postings on the subject, it continues to be an “issue.” That is, people continue to choose Wii, and to choose justifying their Wii time, to actually going out into the woods and taking a hike.

I want to say one thing before I finish this post up with a final point, and that is this -People seem to have a tendency to feel better once they talk about something. That is, they feel little compulsion to do anything about a problem once it’s been aired, once it’s out in the open. In fact, on a few occasions I’ve seen this behavior up close and in person. Let me give one example:

There was a family that I spent a lot of time with. Everyone was overweight in that family, and they were aware of it. In fact, they would almost always say things like “We’re all fat in this family.” Or “We need to lose weight.” Or “We need to throw out all of that junk food in the pantry, and just have a bowl of fruit out for snacks.”

One time, I actually offered to help with the clearing of the pantry. I said “Ok, that’s a good idea! Let’s do that now!” Well, the younger children of the household weren’t home, and the adults decided that it would be too traumatic to just throw everything out all of a sudden. So we didn’t clear out the pantry.

There is a reason we are not connecting to nature. That we are not making this connection. That we don’t go out into the woods and take a hike. There is a reason you don’t do it. What is that reason?

My final point is this – The above question seems a good question for science to ask. Why isn’t science asking that question?

Here’s my answer(s) to that question:

1. It’s not the job of science to do anything about it. It’s the job of science to ask questions and get answers. But science is not a field of activisim. It is a field of questioning and answering. That’s all. Expecting action based on gathered knowledge is a bad habit (one which I’m trying to get rid of).

2. Science doesn’t want to ask a question that invalidates itself. I think part of the answer, of why we are not connecting to nature, in spite of overwhelming evidence that we should, has to do with the fact that our culture is largely based in a scientific approach to things. That is, nature and science (at least, the way we’re accustomed to doing science) are largely contradictory. So, science might find its own relativism, and find its own value being questioned, were it to ask “Why aren’t we connecting to nature.”

A couple of possible answers…what do you think?!

Teaching, Communication, Animal Behavior

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Josh

A few weeks ago I commented on a blog post by my friend JR Atwood. He had posted a brief clip from the Uncommon Schools‘ teacher training methodology. My comment, essentially, was “That looks just like dog training!”

In a private response, he mentioned that it would be interesting to see a comparison of the two – teaching methods for children vs. dog-training methods.

True to my word, I hit the books over the course of the past couple of weeks and read two dog-training texts. One of them, was Lew Burke’s “Dog Training”

Burke's book is about very specific techniques...

Ready for the comparison?

The first rule of dog training is that dogs require clear (matching your training method with your desired outcome from the dog), concise (one word), and consistent (always the same command for the same desired outcome) communication.

Regarding this first video from Uncommon Schools, we can focus on the “clarity” bit. But there’s another point, I’ll share with you after you’ve enjoyed this video:

Reward is a better motivator than punishment. More importantly, it’s crucial to discriminate between normal communication (acknowledgment, above), and praise. This is true for dogs as well. Giving a dog a friendly word is different from giving a dog a treat.

Only give a dog a treat when it has done something to deserve it.

Dog training actually goes a little deeper than that, but you have to earn that lesson…

Strong Voice

It is important to use proper TONE when speaking to your dog.

NLP literature points out that 87% of communication is body language, 10% is the tone of your speech, and only 3% of your communication is conveyed in the actual content of your words. (I’m guesstimating those percentages…too lazy to look up the exact reference right now).

This lesson carries over to dog training as well. Your dog will discern a lot about you from the way you hold yourself. Raise a fist to strike it, and it isn’t going to respond kindly. Act wildly, and it will think you’re unreliable.

Tone is equally important for dog-training. Most people who have ever had a dog have used the old trick of saying a bunch of nasty names or things about their dog in a candy-sweet voice. The dog invariably wags its tail, not connecting the content to the tone.

Few dogs – showdogs, mostly – have the range of vocabulary to really understand that last 3% of human communication anyway…

Now watch this:

Eye contact is used here. In dog training, the books used for this post mention that either direct eye contact, OR removal of attention, can be used equally well to convey your “leadership” status.

For instance, when giving the dog food, you might look directly (and seriously) into its eyes as you give the “sit” command. Again, the dog must earn everything it gets from its leader (you).

Or, you might say “sit” and look away from the dog, removing your attention (a valuable thing to a dog). When it does sit, you can bring your attention back to the dog, lavish it with praise, put the food down, and leave it to eat.

Cold Call

A dog must respond to your command any time you issue it. It cannot be sporadic response.

That being said, once a dog has learned a skill, the best way to reinforce it is through random reinforcement.

More Thoughts

Now, before you go yelling at me, telling me how insensitive I am to suggest that children are just like dogs, think about this for a second. First, I’m not just talking about children here (read my previous post on the difference between “children” and “adults”). Second, and more importantly, I think it’s time we begin looking at how we actually behave, instead of how we’d like things to be.

The use of motivational tactics is nothing new. I’ve seen plenty of parents these days with leashes on their children!

I think what is (relatively) new in our culture is the lack of consistent understanding about how animals (dogs, pigs, cattle, human beings, monkeys, whatever) behave, and how to treat animals if you want something from them.

In older times (here I go, romanticizing the past…) we dealt with animals quite a deal more. We also had very real “survival” demands to take care of (for instance, if we were farmers). Now that we’re removed from those things, we think there is some sort of “distance” (real and figurative) between us human beings and the other animals in the kingdom of animalia.

Do you think so?

I’ll leave you with this, a quote from Nicholas Dodman’s book, “The Well-Adjusted Dog”:

“Think about it. You have removed your pet’s need to hunt by supplying food. You have removed his romantic interests by neutering him. You have removed his social needs by depriving him of pack interests and competition. He can’t even wander and explore his outside territory, let alone try to resolve his own problems – because there aren’t any…So what’s a poor dog to do? Channel his energy in unacceptable ways, that’s what.” pg. 136

Indeed!

Priorities in Education

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Josh

My good friend Kwame Brown recently posted an article from the Star Tribune’s “Your Voices” site, entitled “Stadiums versus our children’s future.” The article asks why $1 billion would go to a new Minnesota Vikings stadium, while funding for Early Childhood Development (ECD) seems impossible to get.

I posted a response to the article on Kwame’s site, which I am republishing in full here. I’d love to know what you think about this.

Interesting article, for many reasons.

This argument is old as the hills.

What blew me away was his honesty, right up front. The author says – “I’m not sure it was a realistic choice (in part because I love the Vikings).”

This is how he initially frames his review of different policies and reasons for ECD. So the entire time, in the back of our minds, we’re thinking “it isn’t realistic.”

He sums up by serving another seemingly insurmountable blow to the whole concept, quoting the unnamed state legislator, who says – “It’s simple, at the Legislature it is about entrenched interest and power and children don’t have either.”

How are we supposed to feel when we read an article like that? Does it lead us to come up with solutions, or merely to shrug our shoulders at the progress of the “inevitable?”

The question posed (which is never explicitly posed, or expanded upon) is “How do we get more funding for ECD?”

Priorities will always be priorities. But priorities are shifted by action. The Minnesotan’s love of the Vikings is a priority that is manufactured by media, social persuasion, and everything underlying that (desire for power? money?).

The question is, how do we shift priorities, or at least make our priority (ECD) seem like a valuable partner-priority to already existing, dominant priorities?

Tax-breaks are one way. Why do we always see those United Way campaign commercials from NFL footballers? Well, teams/organizations and individuals get to write off charitable donations. Maybe that’s one way.

Another way is one that Arne Naess recommended the “ecological” movement in the 1970′s take – to make an economic argument for “green.” It took a lot of years for people to grasp his message, but now that it’s happened, you see it everywhere. Everything is sold as “green,” and people come together under the “green banner” to get things done (even very opposite groups, like Exxon and Greenpeace).

Under the “green banner,” and all of the ideals and slogans that it stands for, corporations can see a way to continue to make profits while serving the people’s desire for efficiency and ecological-friendliness.

Many of the efforts for ECD, or childhood development in general (including play and physical education, arts education, and education generally), fail to recognize this important fact – their “customer” is the organization from which they’re seeking assistance.

That is, they need to market to the groups they want help from…

Instead, these groups often just talk about their own interests – like a selfish boyfriend or girlfriend. “Blah blah blah, I want more money for the children…” is all the owners of the Minnesota Vikings hear. They drink their wine, look around anxiously at the other tables in the restaurant, wondering how the Redskins owners got that good looking partner, and why they’re laughing and having so much fun…they excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and then make a break for their car, never looking back.
Consider this – how would you create a “product” out of Early Childhood Development? What would that product look like. What problem would it solve for the people who could buy it (who are not children, by the way…they are adults, and in the case of the article listed, corporations)? What are the compelling fears and desires of your customer (those adults and corporations), and how can you appeal to those fears and desires in your marketing? How do you solve their problem? How do you put the risk of buying your product on yourself, and take the risk off of your prospective customer? Finally, how do you sell it? And once it is sold, what happens next?

The Education Debate – Full of sound and fury

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Josh

As MacBeth says in the eponymous play:

Life is…a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Reminds me of the education debate. For the high school kids reading my blog right now, here’s what I mean – there’s a lot of talk, and no action.

I just finished reading Valerie Strauss’ commentary on Obama’s revised education plan on The Washington Post’s site.

Then, as I often do, I started to read some of the responses.

Then, as usually happens, I realized I was wasting precious life, reading regurgitated doctrine from people who have been programmed to spew it out.

So I stopped, and started writing this.

My good friend Kwame Brown recently posted a blog entry with a similar set of questions as those raised by Valerie, and by an inquiry into education in our country.

In his post Education and the Tribe, he asks several good questions:
1. Why are citizens of the US (who are taxpayers) reticent to increase taxes (even minimally) to help pay for education?
2. What is happening within our education system, and what are the alternatives?
3. If funding is created, what should it be used for?

Kwame has some answers, and his readers have others.

My interest is in a deeper current.

The question I would pose is this – why is education in the state it is in today?

In order to change it, we need to know how it got to the state it is in. Some people advocate for activism, period. But I think that is misguided. Without understanding the background of the situation, you can easily waste time and effort, and potentially have disastrous results, opposite to those you hoped for.

Consider the case of a person who goes to a doctor with a problem. If the doctor does not interview the patient and try to find the possible cause of the problem, the doctor is merely treating the symptom – and may in fact hurt the patient even further.

Once we know how and why education is in the state it is in (and there are many many reasons – from personal to community to regional and national factors, and on to international factors, from marketing and consumerization/productization to cultural influences), we must then ask what is at stake for the people who brought education to the place it is now.

Again, there will be at least a few key stakeholders (I’m thinking of groups like Federal government, industry/business, state government, regional authorities, county authorities, and then parents, teachers and students, and others), and each group will have its own agenda, outcome and strategy.

What is at stake for each of these groups? What are their desires, fears, and needs?

When we find those, we can find the intersections, or “win/win” arguments to support our agenda (once that, itself, has been defined).

This, I think, is the way to make change. Yes, action can be organized and orchestrated now, and can be incredibly effective, but it must have its foundation in an understanding of the source of the problem, and a clear idea or proposal for the desired state.

Otherwise it’s all sound and fury…and will end up signifying nothing.

A Most Revealing Pyramid

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Josh

Another great post from JR prompts a follow-up piece by me.

This one is about food subsidies by the Federal government, the Farm Bill. It comes from The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Hopefully, I’m not violating anything in reproducing this chart they created:

These Pyramids Weren't Built By Aliens!!!!

As PCRM’s post points out, the Farm Bill not only provides food subsidies, but also decides much of what will constitute school lunches.

With a Food Pyramid like that, who needs enemies?!

The most recent post on the Neuroanthropology Blog discusses Obesity and family medicine – and the fact that some family physicians are starting to recognize family and environmental factors as decisive in treating childhood obesity.

I point this out in my comment on their site, but the author (and the physicians) forgot to include governmental subsidization of different food products (and governmental leadership, generally) in their factor-analysis.

As I’ve said before, the body follows the head. This is true in organisms, cultures, and governments.

In cultural/organizational terms, the Federal government is often the “head” of the social-body. It leads via policy (such as subsidies, land-usage policies, etc.), and also by example (accruing massive amounts of debt, etc.).

Further, much of what constitutes “popular” media takes its cue from the Federal government. “Truth in advertising” relies on governmental moderation. The nullification of the Radio Fairness Doctrine in 1987 had serious repercussions as to what type of messaging has dominated radio advertising since (see my post on the anti-smoking campaign of the early ’70′s and how the Fairness Doctrine was a decisive part of that movement).

I’m happy that MD’s are not as “isolationist” in their thinking as they may have been in the past, but the issue needs to be sussed out in its full depths – which includes holding governmental bodies, and the bodies (i.e., people) who make up those “bodies,” responsible for the way food is produced and marketed in our country.

How to (Teach) Communicate

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Josh

My good friend JR Atwood recently posted a piece about the Uncommon Schools project, and the Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices that the Uncommon Schools’ founder, Doug Lemov, has developed.

As the New York Times piece on this points out, Lemov came up with the idea when trying to discern what made some teachers more effective than others.

What he realized was that the good teachers were following very specific rules about how they interacted with their classrooms. The Taxonomy is a catalog of those rules.

Watching the videos, I couldn’t help but think that these rules are not merely “teaching” rules.

What, after all, is “teaching?”

I think, at base, teaching is about communication. In fact, it’s one of the most explicit, and most frequently-engaged-in, forms of communication we engage in as human beings, in our current culture.

As such, the lessons to be learned from this taxonomy can (and I think, should) be learned by everyone!!!

Check them out and see if you agree.

Percy Cerutty – Be Fit or Be Damned!

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Josh

Seems like I’ve only been posting book reviews lately…other things ahve been happening, honest!

I just read Percy Cerutty’s book “Be Fit or Be Damned.”

Unfortunately for all of us, this classic is out of print. Why, I have no idea!

According to the All Knowing Wikipedia, Percy was born in 1895 and died in 1975. He was an Australian athletic coach, and coached Herb Elliott, who won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympic games.

Now before you go saying “He only lived to be 80, I’m not taking his advice!” realize that 80 is a pretty ripe old age for someone born in 1895 who once battled with cancer – and who actually died of Motor Neurone Disease (called ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease in the US).

His book is about how to live. I think it sums up Cerutty’s “Stotan” (a combination of Stoic and Spartan philosophies) life-philosophy well.

percy picking up a man almost twice his weight, when he was 70!!

Through the “manliness” protocol that was very popular in his era, Percy explains that people (men) should exercise regularly. He gives the why and the how in about as simple and down-to-earth a manner as you would ever want.

Check this book out from your local library (or local university library), or buy it on Amazon used for $25. It’s worth the read!

Mind Programming – Book Review

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Josh

I’ve been meaning to put this review up for a while, and haven’t had the time. Now’s the time!

Mind Programming, by Eldon Taylor, is a book about persuasion techniques, marketing methods, and self-change.

I SEE YOU!!!

While Eldon is a little redundant at times, and pulls from many other sources in the first half of his book, his summary of mental manipulation techniques is a good one, and worth reading.

The second half of the book is devoted to Eldon’s discussion of the subliminal self-help programs he has created, along with other methods for creating self-responsibility and feelings of self-affirmation.

They say that “knowing is half the battle” (thank you, G.I. Joe), and I agree completely. The other half is taking action on that knowledge. To that end, I really like Eldon’s book, and his presentation of the knowledge, and the know-how to make change.

On the “critique” side, I do think the book is a little redundant and stream-of-consciousness in places. It also begins to promote Eldon’s own views/methods more and more as the book continues.

While there are many facets to recognize in order to achieve true autonomy in our society (if that’s even possible), Eldon’s book does a great job of pointing out the main, media-driven, detractors from autonomy, and for that reason, I highly recommend this book.

Twilight of the Machines, by John Zerzan – Book Review

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Josh

I read John Zerzan’s book “Twilight of the Machines” recently. A good friend recommended it after my blog post on the book “The Coming Insurrection.”

After twilight...we gon' let it all hang down!

I enjoyed the book. It was very enlightening. Zerzan says that the “problem” with/of civilization stems from the development of symbolic thought via language. That is, that language itself creates a separation between things. This separation leads to the creation of other separations.

Specifically, the next separation to come was an original division of labor, which resulted in domestication. Some people stayed at home, some ventured out. They became very different.

If you couldn’t tell, this was also the beginning of the separation of the sexes, according to Zerzan. The separation or distinction between what is considered exclusively male from what is considered exclusively female led next to the separation of classes.

But Zerzan doesn’t stop there. Which is good, and bad.

Technology, he says, is the hallmark of the current separation. He discusses the ways in which technology has further separated man from himself and the rest of Creation (not in a “Biblical” sense, there – just, the Totality of What-Is).

He talks about postmodernism, and its apathetic relativism, as an outgrowth of this technology.

Like I said, I liked the book, but I had a couple of issues with it.

First, it’s a book. There’s no call to action within, except for a complete abandonment of civilization as we know it now. Which strikes me as odd. Zerzan wrote his book, presumably, on some piece of technology, and technology was used to reproduce and distribute it.

Apparently, he also does extensive speaking tours around the world. Doesn’t he know that airplanes are technology? And that air travel is considered to be one of the most damaging (in terms of carbon footprint)?

My second issue is more serious. It has to do with his critique of technology, and his critique of civilization.

Something happened before language turned us into slaves. What was that? Maybe boredom. Zerzan talks about the fact that there is evidence for the creation of seagoing vessels as long ago as 800,000 years, and that scientists now say that members of the genus homo were roughly just as “intelligent” as it is today, 1m years ago.

So why, if we were just as intelligent, would we suddenly create this new mode? Did it come exclusively from the creation of agriculture? Couldn’t agriculture be much older – as the cultivation of certain crops over others – given that homo has had the same level of intelligence for so long?

Was it boredom?

Or is it a combination of forces? The sudden presence of agricultural “technology,” combined with population density and the accompanying pressures and stresses. It’s interesting to note the development of similar practices in very diverse places in the world at roughly similar times (e.g., the development of culture and technologies in Central and South America, similar to those in other parts of the world, and sometimes even preceding those developments in those places).

Which leads to my final critique of Zerzan’s argument. “Technology” is not an “evil.” There are multiple “technologies” that have been used by various peoples at various times. In fact, the handmade axes of 130,000 years ago mentioned in the article above are “technology.”

Computers, “machines,” as Zerzan calls them, are modern versions of technology. But my computer has not stopped me from being physically active, or from connecting back to the earth. In fact, it has enabled me to get closer than I thought I ever would. Yes, I have to leave this technology for another when I go, but that doesn’t make one “better” than the other.

At base, Zerzan’s argument appeals to me – I do believe in the need for people to return to their own physiologies, and through that, to a deeper connection to and understanding of the earth. But the method he recommends is suspect to me.