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What if you had no fear?

A definition of fear is: to be afraid of (someone or something) as likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.

When we feel fear, the following happens to our body: The amygdala in the center of our brain sends signals to our autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS kicks in, suddenly our heart rate increases, our blood pressure goes up, our breathing becomes more rapid.  Stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released. The blood flows away from our heart and out towards the extremities, preparing our arms and legs for emergency action.

We all have our fears. Some fears are rational like the fear of bee stings, if you have a severe allergic reaction to stings or fear of growling animals that are acting erratically. Those fears keep us safe. Some fears are irrational such as believing all of your food is poisoned or that everything you own is secretly recording your every action (Though with smart phones, tvs and gps tracking, that might not be so irrational). These fears have greater underlying problems.  Some fears appear real as in phobias which are very real to the person experiencing them and also very debilitating.

Given all that,  what if we had no fears?

For people that are shy and not risk takers. Having no fear might be a benefit. It might get you to take more chances than you normally would and allow you to improve in things that you are weak in. It might help you become more creative. Where would most of the things that were invented be, if those inventors gave in to their fear of failure? Where would all the medical and technological breakthroughs be if people were fearful to go where no one has gone before? It would also help people that have phobias not be afraid of things holding them back.

Then again having no fears, might also work in the opposite direction, where people ignore real safety issues and do stupid things. I don’t have to look while crossing the street, no one will hurt me. I won’t get burned walking through that fire. I can stay out in the sun all day.

There actually are people in the no fear category right now and there are awards for them. The award is called the Darwin Award. These awards originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. The Darwin awards were named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution. They commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.  

Here is a story of a 2015 winner. A 24-year-old voter, trying to conceal his identity, appeared at his polling station with a bag over his head. That would be a plastic bag!! – http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2015-01.html Clearly, fear of suffocation was not on the table. I should mention that Darwin Awards are awarded posthumously.

So a lack of fear can go both ways. Your task is to look at the fears you have. Are they real? Are they imagined? Are they perceived as real?  Once that is decided you need to decide is this a fear that should or should not be dealt with. “It is a healthy fear that keeps me safe”. Or, “It is a fear that I know is keeping me from succeeding or moving forward”, such as fear of flying, or fear of speaking in public. For those Darwin award candidates, so really stupid that fear is not an issue, enjoy your award, you have nothing to decide.

Once decided, then act on that fear. Adhere to it, try to overcome it, either by yourself or with the help of others (professional or not) and let it move you forward in health and safety,

And what if your fear is reading blogs? No problem, you can just this.

What if we could control our dreams?

When I want you in my arms
When I want you and all your charms
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Lyrics from the song Dream by the Everly Brothers

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbU3zdAgiX8)

There is much information about dreams on the web. What scientists think cause them? What are the meaning of dreams? (think Freud). Can we manipulate them? Are they based on real happenings and desires, or just our brains having fun scrambling ideas in our heads? I’m not going to answer any of these. Most of the information that I want to share will be based on one article in Scientific American By Jordan Lite on July 29, 2010. Here’s the link if you are interested in reading the whole article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-control-dreams/

According to the article, the literal definition of a dream is “a narrative experience that occurs during sleep.” I’m sure there are other definitions including definitions of things such as daydreams. But I’m going to stick with that definition for now.

There are different types of dreams. One is the story that you create that is somehow connected to things you do. For instance, a problem you’re trying to solve, some particular content that you might be thinking about (a movie or book you’ve just experienced, a bad day at the office, etc.), or dreaming that you are in a dream (sometimes referred to as a lucid dream).
In terms of controlling your dreams, it depends on what type of dream you are having or want to have. Do want to solve a problem in real life? Are you having nightmares that are overwhelming you (called Mastery Nightmares) and want to stop them or make them less nightmarish (by creating a Mastery Dream)? Do you want to specifically dream about something or someone?

Here are some of the solutions that were recommended to try. I have not tried any of them yet as of this writing, so I’ll have to let you know sometime in the future, or through the comments on this blog entry if any are successful.

If you want to problem-solve in a dream, you should first think of the problem before bed, and if you can get a picture in your mind, hold on to it in your mind so it is the last thing in your head before falling to sleep.

Next, don’t jump out of bed when you wake up. Research seems to show that almost half of your dream content is lost if you get distracted. Lie there, don’t do else but try and recall the dream. If you can think of the emotions that occurred in the dream.

Often a simple photo you may have might be a trigger to help you dream of someone or something you want to dream about. The suggestion is if you used to have dreams of flying, find a photo of a human flying.

As to nightmares, try to rehearse in your head, while you are awake, the scenario in which you conquer whatever it is that you are being traumatized about. You can use other people to help talk you through this scenario. These mastery dreams seem to carry over into

DOGGIE DREAMS

helping you feel safer and even more healed in your daytime state.

So there are some techniques to try. Now take control of your dreams and good luck with them.

Then again, what if we can’t control dreams, but they foretold the future? I don’t want to think about that.

Catastrophe!

What if…all computers shut down?

Have you ever forgotten to put your watch on and discover it missing while you are away from home? Similarly, ever forgot your phone?  How did that day go for you? How about going away camping where there was no electricity or television? Did you go through withdrawal? Could you do it?

My niece once asked me, am I ever without my iPad? And the answer was, for the most part, no. So this past weekend I forgot to pack my iPad when I was visiting my son. Did I survive? I did. But I have to say that I did have my iPhone and I also had my computer. What I did discover was how much I relied on my iPad. I use it all of the time. When I’m teaching, I always carry it with me. I can pull up an app to demonstrate some concept I’m working on to a student, or open up my e-reader to continue a book I’m reading. I love learning new things, so I’m constantly looking things up on the web. I also use it to play some word games. Having my computer with me helped, but it was limited to about 3 hours before I had to recharge it. My iPhone worked too, but it has a very small screen, which made it more difficult, especially if I wanted to do something that involved writing, like this blog. So I managed to survive the 4 days I was without my iPad. I wasn’t very happy about it.

Let’s take that to a grander scale. Suppose there was some solar storm, worldwide blackout, super lightning strike or something like that, that shorted out computer power supplies. And to make this interesting,  your tablets and phones, once the battery drained, couldn’t  be recharged, so no longer worked. What would happen?

The biggest implication would not be whether or not you could handle the lack of computers, but the worldwide implication of what computers do to run our lives. Think of national defense, traffic control (both on the ground and in the air), many of our appliances, communication, as well as our electronic health records (which are mandated by law) use computer technology. These are issues that would be catastrophic. Our own little problems of having no computers would not be the problem, true survival might be the bigger issue.

So let’s scale back on our computer shutdown issue. Suppose all of the global things do work, it is only our personal devices that are affected. Could you live without them, and if so, for how long.

I have an advantage over the large population. I’m old enough to have lived quite a long time prior to all of these things being invented. I got my first computer (Apple //e) in 1983. I was 33 years old. So I have been able to survive without computers through some of my adulthood years. Things like writing and research and reading books, I would be able to do without much difficulty. I would definitely miss the speed and amount of information that I can retrieve and of not being able to have the books and writing I’ve done always at hand. I would probably take more walks outside and put more energy into things like writing and storytelling. Unfortunately most of my life I have been around televisions so I would still watch TV unless that was gone too. In that case, I might suffer a bit more withdrawal. But I think I could do it.

One could ask, that if I thought I could do it, would I be willing to go cold turkey for a length of time, such as a week to prove it. The answer would be, “No”. I have no need to prove myself.

What about the rest of you?  A large number of you have only known life with computers and technology. Your lives are built around its use. Unless you are living in some Amish country or anti-tech commune, your experiences without technology are very limited. What would you replace your gizmo’s with? How would you spend your time? Could you do it, for any length of time?

What’s interesting is that I’m not the only person to think about this topic. I googled the question, “ What would life be like without computers?” This is the number of hits Google got in 0.69 seconds: About 124,000,000 results.  Try it yourself.

And what if computers had never been invented, where would we be all today? Your guess is as good as mine.

?tahw yaS

What if everyone wrote sdrawkcab?

The brain is a very talented organ. Not only does it allow us to see, hear, taste, feel, smell, move, etc. It has the ability to decode and problem solve. All of you that are reading this, obviously can read. So how do you handle the following 2 passages, that have been travelling around the internet for years:
For emaxlpe, it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aepapr, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm.
S1M1L4RLY, Y0UR M1ND 15 R34D1NG 7H15 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17.
Based on the limited research that I have done, neuro-linguistic researchers have been trying for years to explain why we are able to read those passages. They have a lot of ideas, but no definitive explanation.

Reading itself begins from birth as part of process of language. We learn sounds, and connect those sounds to words. The more connections we make to words the greater our vocabulary grows. When we are introduced to letters we begin to connect those sounds to letters and then to words. The more we learn to read, the more connections we make until those words become familiar and we see words, phrases and sentences without having to break everything down to its basic letter/sound piece. Think about it…when you see the word “cat” do you say “C” “A” “T” “cat”, or do you just see the word cat as the word “cat”?

I’ve been learning American Sign Language for years. The biggest problem that I have when someone fingerspells a word to me is that I still see the word they’re spelling as its individual letters. I haven’t made it to the whole word visualized memory, that I do when I’m reading the written word.

As your brain adapts to understanding words and writing, changes in those patterns seem to be easy for some to recognize yet still retain meaning as in my examples.

So, what if everyone started to write backwards? There are two different types of backwards? One way would be writing each word in reverse order, but keeping the letters and sequence of words in the same direction: enO yaw dluow eb gnitirw hcae drow ni esrever redro, tub gnipeek eht srettel dna ecneuqes fo sdrow ni eht emas noitcerid.

And the other way would be similar to mirror writing, where the entire piece of writing is a mirror image of itself.

Assuming that you know how to read to begin with, I believe that over time, your brain would figure out what it was decoding and be able to read what was written with the same success as you had with those earlier passages. Of course once your brain has successfully been able to read backwards, you are bound to have difficulties, at first, trying to read a passage that is written in the right direction. The learning curve would be faster each time.

Of course learning how to write backwards is the other skill that would take some time to learn. For the mirror writing that I did on this entry, I had the help of the computer and the internet.

And then what if…you had to read this whole blog entry backwards. You’ll have to try.

Click on this link to try: B Blog 2017 – Mirror Backwards

Say what?

What if Animals could speak?

When you think about animal speech there are two different directions that you can take. One has to do with their own language and how they communicate with each other. The other would be what if they could speak to humans so that we understand them and vice versa.

Clearly animals do communicate with each other, so I won’t dwell on that, since that is not a What if… question. But what if they could talk/communicate with humans?

I would like to look at this from different perspectives. One is the way that they do communicate with us, using their own language and other methods of communication and the second being the way they communicate with us using our language, either by us teaching them our language in one form or another, or my fantasies of being able to communicate with animals on a non-verbal intuitive way which you can read about on a previous blog entry:  http://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=421

Some animal sounds and actions do communicate with short messages. A cat’s different meows;  dog’s bark or wag of their tail sends us information of love, affection, hunger, fear; or to use an example from a 4th grade student I was talking to, a crocodile making a hissing sound to warn off other animals from its territory.

We can train certain animals to understand what we’re saying, but that is usually rote training of commands, like sit, heel, play dead, etc. I wouldn’t consider that teaching them a language.

Scientists have attempted to teach apes how to communicate using sign language:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/six-talking-apes-48085302/

Chimpanzees – Viki (1940’s, 1950’s)Nim, Washoe (1960), Sarah, Lana;  

Orangutans – Tilda  – Cologne Zoo, Germany  whistled, clapped hands, smacked lips, deep-throated human-like garbled sounds (2010), Chantek (1978 – ?)

Bonobo – Kanzi doesn’t use sign language; he uses different combinations of lexigrams, or symbols, to communicate. (1980’s)

Gorilla – Koko (1970’s – present) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla))

I found that there are some animals that actually try to mimic human sounds. Here is a sound from a beluga whale named Noc, who started mimicking human sounds while held in captivity:

Now compare that with my son at about 1-½ years old: 

If they only could have talked to each other?

I’m pretty sure that this research doesn’t prove in any way that animals can learn to speak our language, or for that matter humans learn to speak, with understanding,  like animals. But just think of all the variations that might occur, should that be a possibility. Would all animals have some sort of universal language? If they learned our language would they be native to the places they are living, not to mention would animals of the same species have different dialects? Just check out these interpretations of animal sounds in different countries: https://goo.gl/khNO8n

Also think of the potential benefits and dangers to us being able to cross communicate. What could we learn from them, and them from us? What alliances could be made between us? Think of organizations like the U.N., Red Cross, NATO, etc. What would be the impact of having interspecies search and rescues? You think Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are bad trying to get along and agree, what about adding thousands of other species into the mix? And what about negative alliances? What would another World War look like? I rather not think about that.

For me, I’ll continue to imagine that I can talk and communicate with animals. I understand what they’re thinking and can be the interpreter for them when needed even though I still have a bit of difficulty in reading some flies, gnats  and mosquitoes. I hope they accept my apologies if I’ve misinterpreted their thoughts as death wishes.  

On second thought, what if all this time, animals were communicating and speaking to us and we were the ones that refused to learn their languages and respond.  I guess that is a What if…? for some other day.