Science genius says the governments are slowly killing us with stress.
Science genius says the governments are slowly killing us with stress.
I know this link is long, but the pertinent information is in the first 15 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=896&v=eYG0ZuTv5rs&feature=emb_title
Facts.
The rich control the governments.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Governments impose poverty and it’s stresses with their regressive and immoral tax control policies. Both income tax and regressive sales and V A Ts.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/01/04/why-vat-is-regressive/
Stress reduces our life expectancy and causes misery and hardship for the vast majority of us.
Most countries and our oligarch masters are the richest they have ever been and can easily afford to end poverty, should they choose to.
Should our governments and oligarch masters be urged to stop reducing our lifespans by using an immoral tax system when they could easily end poverty?
Thoughts?
Regards
DL
I know this link is long, but the pertinent information is in the first 15 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=896&v=eYG0ZuTv5rs&feature=emb_title
Facts.
The rich control the governments.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Governments impose poverty and it’s stresses with their regressive and immoral tax control policies. Both income tax and regressive sales and V A Ts.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/01/04/why-vat-is-regressive/
Stress reduces our life expectancy and causes misery and hardship for the vast majority of us.
Most countries and our oligarch masters are the richest they have ever been and can easily afford to end poverty, should they choose to.
Should our governments and oligarch masters be urged to stop reducing our lifespans by using an immoral tax system when they could easily end poverty?
Thoughts?
Regards
DL
Comments (77)
In Feudalism the noble aristocrat was the owner, the judge, a mini-king for the serfs. That's more power than Bill Gates has on your life.
I’m pretty sure the body causes stress, not governments.
Environmental factors are part of the causal story, no?
I may be quibbling here but I think a stressful situation is different than what causes stress. Stress itself begins and ends in biology.
Ah OK. I see what you mean.
The body becomes stressed, due to environmental (in the broadest sense) effects. Obviously cognition is involved.
I’m pretty sure stress is a response to an environment rather than an effect of an environment. It’s more a method of coping than the necessary result of being in this or that environment.
A serf had his life cut out for him, not much variation, nothing to look out for. Work hard, eat little. Get beaten, not have sex. Be screamed at, be humble. This was the road map to life for a serf. It is not pleasant for a peasant, but not stressful.
What gave him stress was the weather, the rodents, the thieves, the invading Huns. These were uncontrollable variables that he could only avoid by prayer, and prayer hadn't had a chance of a prayer to stave off losses much bigger than a prayer of a loss. And please notice that none of them were instigated by the overlord of the peasant serf.
I can't speak for other countries, but where I live it's inconceivable that someone starves or has to sleep outside when it's freezing, etc. Even those who have nothing will be given some care, albeit quite minimal.
So what is this stress based on, then, if not the desire to hold onto things or acquire more things? And why should people not have to take responsibility for those desires?
I'm pretty sure the government is made of bodies.
I don't think it is. Well more Jeff than Bill. But it's not that someone has ultimate power, but that they have ubiquitous power. The modern stress is that everything is up for judgement and control, your body-shape, how much you drink eat, fart, everything you say Did I hear the N word? Did you take a piss somewhere you shouldn't? Are you obese, or is that a suicide belt you're wearing? The mere power of life and death is a small thing. Having to dig dirt all day isn't stressful.
You are simply underrating the true advances in human society just to make a point how things still suck. This is quite typical when really don't think or know how things have changed. Yet there is quite a leap from feudalism to the present.
The thing is that one does have freedoms like choosing the place to live or deciding on what job to take. You don't have an owner who you have to ask permission to marry. You and your work cannot be sold or bought: if the company you work for is sold, you do have the ability to quit. You are not in an obligation to work for a lord. Also, the lord that own's the land isn't responsible of you. This is the crucial part to understand that separates modern ordinary contracts, rental agreements, jobs or simple buying and selling from pre-capitalist feudalism.
To say that the present is just a softened and disguised version of this isn't truthful. It's not a human right to own a smartphone and if the app providers sell that info gotten from you using the app, it really doesn't make you a serf. You are not obliged to take a bank loan. That the pay isn't good and you have a shitty job contract really isn't equivalent to real serfdom. We simply have this urge to portray this time as bad as it was earlier because we take all the freedoms and liberties totally granted as natural rights. When we see that things don't work, when poor people can be pushed around some jump to the conclusion that this is serfdom. It might look as if serfdom, but it isn't true serfdom. We forget that there wasn't democracy and the rights of the individual were quite few.
But of course, some are willing to make this argument that absolutely nothing has happened at all and invent definitions like corporate feudalism as below:
But it's simply rhetoric, just like saying that the US under Trump is a fascist country (or would be socialist under Bernie Sanders).
Umm... you think those are caused by our rulers or governments?
Most what you listed there are obviously societal norms, not exactly laws or regulations. I gather there were norms before too. In fact, one could argue that the societal norms were more strict earlier. When is the last time you have heard university students having a duel because they had a disagreement?
No, I don't, particularly. What I do think is we lead more regulated lives and less physically active lives, and these produce more stress. Governments play a part, but mainly by their incompetence and uncaring; it's not by design, but by failure to mitigate. But Consumerism does deliberately multiply stress because discontent drives sales. Nobody will take you seriously if you don't use Dr Foul's patent beard oil!
Compared to 1980's or 1990's I agree. This regulation happened because of a) 9/11 and b) social media, the woke nonsense & me too etc. Next regulation is happening just now with the present pandemic.
Still, I think that compared to pre WWI era I think then it was WAY more strict.
We don't follow a moral objective, we are taught, false, Government morals. Christianity mix with individuality, is the Government's idea of good.
As stated in another thread, no man judges what's moral without noting everyone, and what the Gov is teaching is a man making this false judgement.
'Good is not killing, good is pleasure, etc.' because individuals profit from it.
'You can kill/suppress great evil; pain/toil can lead to paradise'.
Anything not to reverse the current status quo for the rich and powerful egos.
(Not to say these folks wouldn't change if we all did - the times are harsh - the Gov ain't heartless)
For instance, two people can be in the same environment, with one perceiving a threat while the other doesn’t. Only one will experience the stress. If they are both in the same environment and in the presence of the same environmental forces, why don’t they both experience stress? Because one perceived and interpreted a threat and one didn’t—because stress begins in the brain.
If I release a pathogen that causes a massive immune system overreaction in most people, but not all, and you die. Am I innocent of a crime because it was your immune system and because some other bodies do not react that way? Would a person doing that to you be, then, innocent of a crime since they did not cause anything?
I notice you did not respond to the limb or solitary confinement examples. You reiterated your positins.
Stress, as a biological phenomenon, starts in the brain. This is a biological fact. No, this does not imply child abuse is ok or that abuse is not really abuse. No, it does not imply you would be innocent of murder. No it does not imply solitary confinement is not a stressful situation.
The only meaningful example you could give to support your position would be that of a human being who would not experience stress under any circumstances.
Or someone unaware of a threat. I was just watching a videos of a woman swimming in the ocean, and underneath her swam orcas. She originally thought they were dolphins, but it wasn’t until she realized they were orcas did the fight or flight response kick in.
Another meaningless example.
An extreme (or stupid) position requires extreme support.
Simply calling it meaningless is itself meaningless without giving a reason why.
A person may be conditioned to not be fearful of swimming with orcas, or at least be much less fearful than others.
Does instinct and conditioning also begin in the brain?
A person is a body, and bodies can be conditioned to do many things, including coping with stressful situations. A person conditioned to swimming with Orcas may have less stress in that situation, but that isn’t because the situation was different, but because the body is.
This isn’t an extreme position, either, but simple biology.
Point is that the conditioning is in part responsible for the level of stress. Conditioning can be external to the effected brain, can it not?
If you mean that one can train his brain by exposing himself to stressful environments, and that these environments are external, then yes.
No, the original point was that things suck now. Pointing out how they used to suck more is besides that point. I’m not disputing that they used to suck more, just saying that that’s irrelevant to the OP.
:lol: but not yes if others (part of an environment) deliberately condition a brain?
I can’t make any sense of your question.
I am sure it was.
Have we not learned more from science than they knew back them?
Yes we have, so let's start with the best knowledge and ignore the past.
Regards
DL
I do not quite see it as rhetorical, but then again, I am a Gnostic Christian and all question are pertinent in one way or another. If not just the information from those who answer.
Regards
DL
Your body creates stress all on it's own without outside influence.
Ok.
You might want to watch that link again, for the first time.
Regards
DL
So the outside cause is not a part of what has the body create stress.
Watch that link again. is all I can say. If you cannot believe a genius on this issue ------ not to mention logic and reason then -------
Regards
DL
Does being in a good lot bring happiness and joy for life?
Why would the opposite not produce the opposite, which would be synonymous with stress?
Regards
DL
The people are the government. People doing the bidding of their oligarch owners.
If your people's ideas of success is to have a government that imposes poverty, then your country is not living in in best moral way. Neither would mine.
The world is quite rich today, richer than it has even been, and to continue imposing poverty is quite immoral.
Regards
DL
I do to a large extent.
Have you noted, for instance the government food guide in the U.S. shows a really poor diet which is meat heavy and vegetable poor.
That is a part of why the death age rate in the U.S. is dropping while it is going up in most other countries.
Your overly expensive health care also cause a lot of stress and poor health but Americans do not seem to care about each other to do anything about that heavy source of stress.
That is your government killing Americans prematurely.
Regards
DL
My point is that stress is self-generated, that it begins in the brain. I am not saying that it is not a response to the environments or certain situations, nor was I pooh-poohing the video. I was probably nitpicking when I brought it up and for that I apologize.
A good reply but this quote., Hmm.
I don't think I would want a government with a heart.
I think I would prefer a government with a decent brain that would produce policies where, even if some new leader with a heart and no intelligence was elected, he would not have to change a thing.
Logic and reason have all they need to know that it is not profitable for a demography to have an unhealthy base.
Most of us have our hearts at the right place. It is the governments and their oligarch owners that need hearts, and a smartening up of their brains to right moral thinking.
Law is more important than heart as it, if well written, will have mercy built in and that should please every heart.
Regards
DL
Can you come up with a real world scenario because your two people are obviously not anywhere near the same. If one reacts to a threat, one is normal. You posit someone not reacting to a threat, or not recognizing it, and that indicates that one is a lot smarter than the other.
Apples and oranges to me.
Regards
DL
You have to show this until I believe it. Usual guides talk about a 20%-25% of meat and fish.
Here is an Australian example:
And the US one:
From my country, where they go for pyramids and even accepting that people eat cake:
I don't think there's a sinister ploy here.
I just see poor grammar. As a Frenchman I try to be careful with English.
If self generated and harmful to us, why would a brain or mind subject itself to what is not good for it?
You seem to be aware of a cause from outside, yet maintain your self-generated view.
The brain does indeed produce the stress, but not without an ouside issue to pull the trigger of the brains self-creating stress.
A cat might create t's own stress, but to ignore that there was a G D dog after it is quite foolish.
Regards
DL
The point is simple, other minds (environment) can deliberately condition or manipulate the conditioning of a brain. In this way, it cannot be said that stress is self-generated or begins in the brain.
To use your example with the orcas, someone who believes that they’re swimming with dolphins could be tricked by someone else into believing that they’re swimming with orcas in order to induce stress in that person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmo6lZcdkO0
This same guy had another project on the various U.S. government entities like the EPA, that are supported by some of the worse polluters on the planet.
I am not a conspiracy nut but some facts cannot be ignored.
Regards
DL
Say you are being stalked by a lion while hiking peacefully through the savannah, but are unaware you are being hunted. If you were aware of the lion you would be stressed, but since you are unaware you are not. It isn’t the lion that triggers your fight-or-flight responses; it is the perception and interpretation of a threat that does so. Therefor the cause of the stress response is the perception and interpretation of a threat which then triggers a cascade of biological processes we call stress.
The stress response begins in the brain (see illustration). When someone confronts an oncoming car or other danger, the eyes or ears (or both) send the information to the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing. The amygdala interprets the images and sounds. When it perceives danger, it instantly sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
Stress isn’t always harmful. Quite often it is lifesaving.
People can stress by thought alone, even while in the least stressful of environments. So “outside triggers” aren’t necessarily a given.
They are stressing from their own thought, no argument, but the though is of a real or imagined issue from outside the brain. Take that trigger away, and your stress will never come.
If an outside trigger is not a given, give one example of self-induced stress that does not have one, other than stressing on if our insides are working well or not.
Regards
DL
That we eat more and exercise less isn't a government program. That Coca-cola or the tobacco industry try fighting regulations with their own "facts" is very much an American thing, but you have to still make the separation between corporations and the public sector. Where you can make the difference is for example in the meals given in schools. Even if I was a child back then, when I came to the US to the 2nd Grade, I could notice that the food was rubbish compared to what it was like in my home country. The amount of sugar was surprising even to a kid. Yet I wouldn't go so far to call it an intentional policy to get people fat.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Well, I would say that societal changes that happen when people get more prosperous and eat more meat than before isn't only because of the US. But Americans do have this urge to think they are causing everything bad in the World. It isn't so. You aren't SO important.
I hope that was a royal you as I am not an American, thank all the god.
I am a Canadian.
I see the older Americans as moral and contributing a hell of a lot to democracy.
The new Americans are a cowed and slaved people who fear their governments instead of the government fearing the people.
Canadian are about 75 25 with the 25 fearing the government.
That may be why our government does not lie nearly as much to us as the American government lies to it's coed people.
I liked and miss the older styled American's. Cowards I do not like.
I wish Americans would find their balls.
Regards
DL
Why, when the corporate heads own your government and writes it's legislation for it?
We all live in oligarchies and they, our masters, would have it no other way.
Regards
DL
You do know you are an American. Would North American be better?
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Ownership and having influence over decisions are two different things. Just as there is a difference between Canada and the US compared to Saudi-Arabia or North Korea.
Yes. In English, “America” refers to the United States. North America and South America are not parts of “America”, but parts of “the Americas”.
In Spanish and probably other languages it’s different. IIRC English is bit your mother tongue so maybe it’s different in your language too.
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
Quoting Gnostic Christian Bishop
What's new in all this? However, I suggest a rethink on the claim that stress is killing the poor. To my reckoning, it's not stress but disease, the infectious kind, that's the enemy of the poor. Stress seems to by and large attack the rich and relatively well to do.
https://www.verywellmind.com/relationship-between-job-stress-and-income-level-3145085
https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/PathwaysWinter11_Evans.pdf
Now higher income people may express more disatisfaction and stress than for example middle class people. But that's what they express, something they feel entitled to express and relating to their expectations. And I do believe they are stressed. But there are different kinds of stress, and shortcomes on expectations are a different kind of stress compared to not knowing if you are going to manage to pay the next power bill, etc.
Stress is defined as psychological strain but note that it is always induced; in other words stress is a reaction to a perturbation in a person's life. If we were to try and identify these "perturbations" in the lives of the unfortunate poor, the most common would be diseases and these diseases, by and large, are untreated because the poor can't afford them, eventually leading to death. Yes there's stress and even if stress could kill an epidemiologist would be hard pressed to find a solution for the confounding factor of diseases. The mistake here is similar to thinking the stress brought on by cancer killed the patient rather than the cancer itself.
The rich can afford the best treatments and the correlation between stress and death is therefore stronger; it's not diseases, but the stress that kills them.
I don't think you understand what I'm getting at.
Where I live, it is practically unthinkable that people would starve to death or freeze, or not be treated during an emergency. Yet, people are still stressed out about so called 'poverty'.
Why is that?
Because it is not really poverty most people are worried about. It is losing the wealth they currently own, or not being able to acquire the wealth that they would like to own, or living up to society's/their environment's expectations of them.
Here in Canada as well, yet too many die on the streets and in their cars every year, be it from heat or cold.
Where do you live?
Quoting Tzeentch
Because they are poor and the human animal is born the weakest and most insecure animal on the planet.
Regards
DL
If I ignore my political and geographical location, I am an Earthman on spaceship Earth.
As a Gnostic Christian, I am a universalist and since we are all pollution each other's environment, I think the world should start thinking the same sane way and stop thinking of their little tribe as important and join the human tribe.
That is how you love all of your neighborsQuoting ssu
Pfffft.
The owner who is paying the bill and buying off the guy you voted for almost always gets his way.
Regards
DL
Stress lowers the immune system and allows those diseases you have in mind to nail the poor harder than the rest of us who are better fed and housed and who can pay for medical services.
I think that link speaks of the various conditions that target the most stressed.
Regards
DL
A modern Canadian, I see.
Good point!
You're putting the cart before the horse. Stress is a response i.e. it doesn't arise spontaneously without a cause. It can be said that poverty itself is the cause for stress but that would mean you'd have to acknowledge the chain of causation: poverty -> stress -> weak immune system -> disease -> death. Doesn't that compel you to say that poverty itself, instead of stress, is the cause of death of the poor?
Think of it; anger is a reaction and always has a cause unless you have a psychiatric illness or are the incredible Hulk. Imagine now that someone insults you and makes you angry; you lash out and sock that someone in the face. If this goes to court, the causal chain in your case will begin not from the point you got angry because anger being only a reaction, there must be a cause for it, but at the true starting point of the causal chain, the insult hurled at you. Likewise, although stress can be a cause, it's always an intermediate cause and arises in response to something that precedes it, in this case poverty; ergo, poverty is the true cause of death by inducing stress that weakens the immune system and makes them prone to disease.
Quoting Coben
I agree. :up:
More of a redneck with a working brain.
Although some are telling me that I am starting to express myself like an educated person, even with my French influenced grammar.
I guess I can fool some people some of the time.
Regards
DL
I have already agreed on this and pointed to the government imposing poverty as the trigger to the stress they cause in the poor. I include the lower middle classes in my critique.
Regards
DL
Stress is only ONE of the bad things. Not all bad things are stress.
This is another concept of set theory; that some of the bad things are stress, and some of the bad things are not stress. Being opposite to good is bad, but being opposite to good is not always stress, only some of the time.
You make weird analogy that I can't agree with.
Good goes with evil, not stress.
Bad goes with good, not stress.
You seem to think that stress can be a good thing. Give an example or two please, of good stress.
From the definition.
2. a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.
I can give you that competitive stress --- might --- help a runner of swimmer reach a certain mind set, but if that stress actually helps his performance, IDK.
Is that what you were thinking with your view that stress can be good? If so, do you have performance stats to show the good?
Regards
DL
I had some vague memories from our days in Philosophy Now that you were from time to time totally whacky. But not all the time. I just caught you in a bad moment, I guess.
Again, I apologize.
Regard
DL