Big Think - Humans: 10% Human and 90% Bacterial

Interesting stuff . . . .

Humans: 10% Human and 90% Bacterial

by SPARKS & HONEY CULTURAL STRATEGISTS
MAY 22, 2013

We are moving from a multi-decade focus on killing ALL bacteria via soaps, detergents, antibiotics and hand sanitizer, to a new understanding of the complex bacterial system in our bodies and in the world around us.

We now understand that humans are 90% microbial but only 10% human. The average human has over 100 trillion microbes in and on their body, and many of the latest discoveries are challenging previously held ideas about good and bad bacteria. We are witnessing the shift from a World ruled by the antibacterial obsessed and non-stop antibacterial marketing, to one that has a heightened awareness of the importance of the microbial ecosystem (the microbiome).

In sparks and honey’s recent report, Time to Get Dirty: Why the Ancient Wisdom of Microbes is the Future of Health, we explore five emerging areas that are shaping the conversations and debate around the microbiome.

Understanding an invisible World: microbes have been ignored because they haven’t been understood and because they are invisible to our eyes. This lack of understanding has allowed decades of poor relationships with these microscopic beings. Our modus operandi was to kill them, rather than synchronize with them. The debate over the microbiome will rage on, as the fear of the invisible and little understood will drive the masses in the short-term.

Helicopter parents and Purell: parents have become obsessed with keeping their kids clean – constant washing, sanitizing and keeping the kids out of the dirt. Contrary to popular beliefs, many of these practices not only kill bad bacteria, but also destroy the important good bacteria. Can parents begin to embrace Ancient Wisdom and create a greater balance with the microbial world?

Bacteria and Chronic Illness: Scientists have discovered that allergies, obesity and many other illnesses are linked to our microbiome. We continue to explore the importance of microbe integration during birth, breast-feeding and even contact with nature.

Mapping your MicroBiome: just as we spent the last two decades creating a deeper understanding of our genome, Scientists are now beginning to map our microBiome. Companies such as AmericanGut and uBiome are blazing the trail of microbial research and microbiome mapping.

Microbial Feng Shui: As the latest research in microbiology begins to fuel other industries, we are seeing microbes being leveraged in diet, food, beauty products and even design. Recently, the Ted presentation from Jessica Green explained the important role microbes play in our everyday lives.

This shift is an opportunity to begin to adjust market research, product design, and consumer messaging to work with the recent discoveries in microbiology. Will we soon see a backlash against antibiotics, hand sanitizers, and household cleaning products? Will Modern Families begin to embrace “playing in the dirt” and building a healthy microbial ecosystem for their families?

This backlash will lead to new opportunities for brands that understand how to navigate the shift to a new relationship with our microbiome.

To learn more about the world of the microbe, download our free report here.

sparks & honey is a next generation agency that helps brands synchronize with culture. Follow us on Twitter at @sparksandhoney to stay up to date on the latest high energy trends.

This article is pretty geeky for the psychology crowd, but it's an interesting examination of how stress-related psychological issues can produce symptoms of somatoform dissociation. For clarification:

Somatoform dissociation is a specific form of dissociation with somatic manifestations represented in the form of 'pseudoneurological' symptoms due to disturbances or alterations of normal integrated functions of consciousness, memory, or identity mainly related to trauma and other psychological stressors.

It's a decent study, and worth the read.

Full Citation:
Bob P, Selesova P, Raboch J, and Kukla, L. (2013, May 25). ‘Pseudoneurological’ symptoms, dissociation and stress-related psychopathology in healthy young adults. BMC Psychiatry, 13:149. doi:10.1186/1471-244X-13-149

'Pseudoneurological' symptoms, dissociation, and stress-related psychopathology in healthy young adults 

Petr Bob, Petra Selesova, Jiří Raboch, and Lubomir Kukla

For all author emails, please log on.

BMC Psychiatry 2013, 13:149, doi:10.1186/1471-244X-13-149

Published: 25 May 2013

Abstract (provisional) 

Background

Somatoform dissociation is a specific form of dissociation with somatic manifestations represented in the form of 'pseudoneurological' symptoms due to disturbances or alterations of normal integrated functions of consciousness, memory or identity mainly related to trauma and other psychological stressors. With respect to the distinction between psychological and somatoform manifestations of dissociation current data suggest a hypothesis to which extent mild manifestations of 'pseudoneurological' symptoms in healthy young population may be linked to stress-related psychopathological symptoms or whether these symptoms more likely could be attributed to unexplained somatic factors. 

Methods

With this aim we have assessed the relationship between somatoform dissociation and stress-related psychopathology (i.e. anxiety, depression, symptoms of traumatic stress, alexithymia) in a group of 250 healthy non-psychiatric and non-clinical young adults. 

Results

Results of this study show that the symptoms of somatoform dissociation are significantly linked to stress-related psychopathology. 

Conclusions

Findings of this study show that the 'pseudoneurological' symptoms may be linked to stress-related psychopathological processes which indicate that also mild levels of stress may influence somatic feelings and may lead to various somatoform dissociative symptoms.

Background

Somatoform dissociation has been proposed as a concept describing specific forms of dissociative symptoms experienced as somatic disturbances due to alterations of normal integrative functions of consciousness, memory or identity related to stressful experiences [1-4]. Frequently these stressors are linked to an exposition of a trauma in childhood and related to physical, sexual or emotional abuse [5-8]. The somatic manifestations of dissociation are likely caused by a lack of integration of somatoform components of experience, reactions and functions and represented by various forms of pseudoneurological symptoms [8-11] involving bodily functions such as motor inhibition or loss of motor control, gastrointestinal symptoms, dissociative seizures, painful symptoms, alterations in perception or alterations in sensation of pain (analgesia, kinesthetic anesthesia) such as unability to register pain or painful affect during traumatic event [12-14]. Several studies have shown that the concept of somatoform dissociation may explain various somatic disturbances in psychiatric patients and also in patients with pain disorders that in many cases have unexplained etiology and in principle it could be related to stress exposure and related processes of mental disintegration [2,4,6,8-10,14]. As expected from the psychological theory and clinical data several findings also show that symptoms of somatoform dissociation have close relationship to psychologically experienced dissociative symptoms [6]. For example a recent study of young population of students strongly suggests that various stress factors related to dissociation may have direct and continuous relationship to somatic symptoms that may be explained within the concept of somatoform dissociation [15].

Although the concept of somatoform dissociation seems to be clinically relevant, the distinction between psychological and somatic forms of dissociation represents a fundamental problem whether dissociative symptoms, reflecting disorders of conscious awareness, are always “psychological” in nature or they may have somatic manifestations mediated by somatization or conversion mechanisms [6-8]. With respect to brain-mind reductionism that rejects mental causation the problem whether stress and traumatic experiences may cause only psychological or also somatic symptoms is still controversial [2,5-9,12]. This discussion in principle suggests clinically relevant empirical question and hypothesis whether mild manifestations of pseudoneurological symptoms linked to the concept of somatoform dissociation in general population may be  attributed to stress-related psychopathological symptoms. Within this context, in somatically healthy people these symptoms likely cannot be explained by various underlying somatic factors.

With the aim to test the hypothesis we have assessed the relationship between ‘pseudoneurological’ symptoms represented by somatoform dissociation questionnaire, and stress-related psychopathological symptoms (i.e. anxiety, depression, symptoms of traumatic stress, alexithymia) in a group of 250 non-psychiatric and non-clinical healthy young adults, who represent population particularly vulnerable to stress influences.

Read the whole article.

Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad - Gurus and the Masks of Authoritarian Power

Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad wrote The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power back in 1993, but it's still an important book for anyone who is considering entering into a student-guru relationship (or who has survived one). While I think the book is good, I also think that those using the traditional techniques of hypnosis, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), subconscious suggestion, and other techniques of mind control have become much more subtle and sophisticated in how they manipulate their victims.

The perfect example of this trend is Marc Gafni. By employing "integral" ideas and concepts, he creates an illusory "plausible deniability" when accusations begin to fly (and they always do). But most people are easily cowed by a charismatic spiritual "teacher" who is also quite educated, intelligent, and verbally proficient - and quite possibly a sociopath (based on objective behaviors - a definitive label would require a psychological examination).

His grooming of potential victims is also subtle, seducing the women into willingly entering into sexual relationships with him. But once they are snared, the control and manipulations and demands for silence ("protecting the sacred vessel of our love") increase, while he also becomes less kind and generous. Classic abuser patterns.

Anyway, expect more on this topic. I am currently working with two "cult" survivors of ritual abuse, and two other ritual abuse survivors where there was no religious content at all, but multiple forms of mind-control were applied.

For now, here are some quotes from The Guru Papers assembled by Steven Hassan at Freedom of Mind. I did not repost all of the quotes, so check out his site for additional material and a lot of other interesting articles and videos.

The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power

by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad

Frog, Ltd., Berkeley, California; 1993

The following quotes are taken from Part One of the Guru Papers and are deemed by ex-members to be strikingly accurate in describing the dynamics of a cult guru.

“In ‘spiritual’ realms fear and desire can become as extreme as they get. When a living person becomes the focus of such emotions, the possibility of manipulation is correspondingly extreme.” (p.41)

“In the East a guru is more than a teacher. He is a doorway that supposedly allows one to enter into a more profound relationship with the spiritual. A necessary step becomes acknowledging the guru’s specialness and mastery over that which one wishes to attain. The message is that to be a really serious student, spiritual realization must be the primary concern. Therefore, one’s relationship with the guru must, in time, become one’s prime emotional bond, with all others viewed as secondary. In fact, typically other relationships are pejoratively referred to as ‘attachments.’” (p.49)

“So although most gurus preach detachment, disciples become attached to having the guru as their center, whereas the guru becomes attached to having the power of being others’ center.” (p.50)

“When abuses are publicly exposed, the leader either denies or justifies the behaviors by saying that ‘enemies of the truth’ or ‘the forces of evil’ are trying to subvert his true message. Core members of the group have a huge vested interest in believing him, as their identity is wrapped up in believing in his righteousness. Those who begin to doubt him at first become confused and depressed, and later feel betrayed and angry. The ways people deny and justify are similar: Since supposedly no one who is not enlightened can truly understand the motives of one who is, any criticism can be discounted as a limited perspective. Also, any behavior on the part of the guru, no matter how base, can be imputed to be some secret teaching or message that needs deciphering.”

By holding gurus as perfect and thus beyond ordinary explanations, their presumed specialness can be used to justify anything. Some deeper, occult reason can always be ascribed to anything a guru does: The guru is said to take on the karma of others, and that is why his body has whatever problems it has. The guru is obese or unhealthy because he is too kind to turn down offerings: besides, he gives so much that a little excess is understandable. He punishes those who disobey him not out of anger but out of necessity, as a good father would. He uses sex to teach about energy and detachment. He lives an opulent life to break people’s simplistic preconceptions of what ego-loss should look like; it also shows how detached and unconcerned he is about what others think. For after all, ‘Once enlightened, one can do anything.’ Believing this dictum makes any action justifiable. 

People justify and rationalize in gurus what in others would be considered unacceptable because they have a huge emotional investment in believing their guru is both pure and right.” (p.52)

“That interest in one’s own salvation is totally self-centered is a conundrum rarely explored.” (p.54)

“So disciples believe they are loved unconditionally, even though this love is conditional on continued surrender. Disciples in the throes of surrender feel they have given up their past, and do not, consciously at least, fear the future. . . Feeling totally cared for and accepted, at the universe’s center, powerful, and seemingly unafraid of the future are all achieved at the price of giving one’s power to another, thus remaining essentially a child.” (p56)

“It is not at all unusual to be in an authoritarian relationship and not know it. In fact, knowing it can interfere with surrender. Any of the following are strong indications of belonging to an authoritarian group:

1. No deviation from the party line is allowed. Anyone who has thoughts or feelings contrary to the accepted perspective is made to feel wrong or bad for having them. 

2. Whatever the authority does is regarded as perfect or right. Thus behaviors that would be questioned in others are made to seem different and proper. 

3. One trusts that the leader or others in the group know what’s best. 

4. It is difficult to communicate with anyone not in the group. 

5. One finds oneself defending actions of the leader (or other members) without having firsthand knowledge of what occurred. 

6. At times one is confused and fearful without knowing why. This is a sign that doubts are being repressed.” (p.57)

“Traditional gurus teach what they were taught. Most gurus’ training in dealing with disciples is through example – watching their own guru. They learn to recognize, reinforce, and reward surrender, and to negate non-surrender. Aside from the more tangible rewards, they reinforce devotion with attention and approval, and punish its lack by withdrawing them. Though some gurus say that doubts are healthy, they subtly punish them. Doubt is not the way to get into the inner circle. Believing surrender is essential for transmitting their teachings, some gurus could be aware they are manipulating people to surrender, but think they are doing so ‘for their own good.’ (If this were in fact true, it would mean that deep truths are only accessible via an authoritarian mode.) This can not only justify manipulation, but also justify dissembling in order to eliminate people’s doubts – all this being done in the name of fostering spiritual growth.” (p.62)

“The power of conversion experiences lies in the psychological shift from confusion to certainty.” (p.65)

“People whose power is based on the surrender of others develop a repertoire of techniques for deflecting and undermining anything that questions or challenges their status, behavior, or beliefs. They ridicule or try to confuse people who ask challenging questions.” (p.66)

“To be thought enlightened, one must appear not only certain that one is, but certain about most everything else, too.” (p.70)

“Gurus undercut reason as a path to understanding. When they do allow discursive inquiry, they often place the highest value on paradox. Paradox easily lends itself to mental manipulation. No matter what position you take, you are always shown to be missing the point; the point being that the guru knows something you do not.” (p.74)

“Their stance toward outsiders is of benign superiority.” (p77)

“As long as the guru still sees the possibility of realizing his ambitions, the way he exercises power is through rewarding the enthusiasms of his followers with praise and positions in his hierarchy. He also whets and manipulates desire by offering ‘carrots,’ and promising that through him the disciples’ desires will be realized, possibly even in this lifetime. The group itself becomes an echo of the guru, with the members filling each other’s needs. Within the community there is a sense of both intimacy and potency, and a celebratory, party-like atmosphere often reigns. Everything seems perfect; everyone is moving along the appropriate spiritual path. The guru is relatively accessible, charming, even fun. All dreams are realizable-even wonderful possibilities beyond one’s ken.” (p.78)

“But a cult in decline has more trouble selling itself. . . Members and the guru become withdrawn and the focus gets more internal, insular, and isolating. . . The fun is over. The rewards are now put into the distant future (including future lives) and are achievable only through hard work. This not only keeps disciples busy and distracted, but it is necessary because the flow of resources that came with expansion has greatly diminished. This glorification of work always involves improving the leader’s property (the commune or ashram), increasing his wealth, or some other grandiose project.” (p82)

“People are especially vulnerable to charismatic leaders during times of crisis or major life change.” (p.87)

“People don’t want a second-rate guru; they want the one who seems the best. Since purity is the standard measurement – the gold or Greenwich meridian time of the guru world – each guru has to claim the most superlative traits. This is naturally a breeding ground for hypocrisy, lies, and the cultivation of false images of purity. Gurus are thus forced to assume the role of the highest, best, the most enlightened, the most loving, the most selfless, the purest representative of the most profound truths; for if they did not, people would go to one who does. Consequently, it is largely impossible for a guru to permit himself real intimacy, which in adults requires a context of equality. All his relationships must be hierarchical, since that is the foundation of his attraction and power.” (p.88)

“Since adulation from any one person eventually becomes boring, gurus do not need any specific disciple – they need lots of them. Gurus do give special attention to those with wealth and power.” (p.89) [ME: Or physical beauty in the case of many male gurus.]

“Gurus likewise do many things to ensure that their disciples’ prime emotional allegiance is toward them. In the realm of sexuality, the two prevalent ways control is exerted are through promulgating either celibacy or promiscuity. Although seemingly opposite, both serve the same function: they minimize the possibilities of people bonding deeply with each other, thus reducing factors that compete with the guru for attention.” (p.92)

“. . . sex scandals go with the occupation of the guru because of its [the position’s] emotional isolation and eventual boredom. Disciples are just there to serve and amuse the guru who, after all, gives them so much. The guru’s temptation is exacerbated by the deep conditioning in many women to be attracted to men in power.” (p.93)

“Gurus, like fathers, are in a context that gives them enormous power because of their disciples’ needs, trust, and dependency. One reason incest is a betrayal of trust is that what a daughter needs from her father is a sense of self-worth not specifically linked to her sexuality. Sex with the guru is similarly incestuous because a guru ostensibly functions as a spiritual father to whom one’s growth is entrusted. Having sex with a parental  figure reinforces using sex for power. This is not what young women (or men) need for their development. When the guru drops them, which eventually he does, feelings of shame and betrayal usually result that leave deep scars.” (p.94)

“A primary goal in therapy is to free clients from their need to transfer unresolved issues onto others. This need makes people particularly susceptible to authoritarian control. Good therapists aim at being very conscious of how they deal with transference.

Because of the nature of the relationship which demands total surrender, gurus do exactly the opposite. They cultivate and reward transference, for a parental type of authority is at the very core of the guru’s power over disciples. The power to name, arrange marriages, and dictate duties and behavior are ultimates in parental authority, especially in traditional societies like the East. To give someone the power to name or marry you is to profoundly accept their parental role in defining who you are. The ostensible motivation behind this has to do with an attempt to break the ties of the past so the person can become ‘new.’ A deeper reason is that this aids the guru in becoming the center of the person’s emotional life, which facilitates surrender.” (p.105)

“Successful gurus, rock stars, charismatic leaders of any sort, experience the intensity of adulation amplified beyond most people’s ken. This can make ordinary relationships pale by comparison. Being the recipient of such adulation and devotion is exceedingly addictive. Here addiction is used in its loose sense to mean mechanically needing an on-going ‘fix’ of adulation to where it becomes the central focus of one’s life. Adulation has powerful emotions for the sender as well, and can be easily mistaken for love. It is likewise addicting for the sender, as it is an easy route to feelings of passion. Since adulation is totally a function of image, should the images crack, adulation disappears, demonstrating that it is essentially empty of real care.” (p.112)

“As long as people have unlivable ideals, they are manipulable.” (p.156)

Steven Hassan: Mind Control - The BITE Model

Back in the 1960's, Jay Lifton developed an explanation for how mind control works, essentially outlining the  mechanisms of brainwashing. His work was based on his studies of the Chinese model, under Mao Tse-Tung, of "thought reform programs."

Years later, Steven Hassan refined and elaborated on Lifton's work and developed his own model, called BITE (more on this below).

Jay Lifton's Thought Reform Model

Adapted from Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (Norton, 1961: reprinted 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press)

Dr. Lifton's work was the outgrowth of his studies for military intelligence of Mao Tse-Tung's "thought-reform programs" commonly known as "brainwashing." In Chapter 22, Lifton outlines eight criteria for when any environment can be understood as exercising "thought-reform" or mind control. Lifton wrote that any group has some aspects of these points. However, if an environment has all eight of these points and implements them in the extreme, then there is unhealthy thought reform taking place.

1. Milieu Control

Environment control and the control of human communication. Not just communication between people but communication within people's minds to themselves.

2. Mystical Manipulation

Everyone is manipulating everyone, under the belief that it advances the "ultimate purpose." Experiences are engineered to appear to be spontaneous, when, in fact, they are contrived to have a deliberate effect. People misattribute their experiences to spiritual causes when, in fact, they are concocted by human beings.

3. Loading the Language

Controlling words help to control people's thoughts. A totalist group uses totalist language to make reality compressed into black or white-"thought-terminating clichés." Non-members cannot simply understand what believers are talking about. The words constrict rather than expand human understanding.

4. Doctrine Over Person

No matter what a person experiences, it is the belief of the dogma which is important. Group belief supersedes conscience and integrity.

5. The Sacred Science

The group's belief is that their dogma is absolutely scientific and morally true. No alternative viewpoint is allowed. No questions of the dogma are permitted.

6. The Cult of Confession

The environment demands that personal boundaries are destroyed and that every thought, feeling, or action that does not conform with the group's rules be confessed; little or no privacy.

7. The Demand for Purity

The creation of a guilt and shame milieu by holding up standards of perfection that no human being can accomplish. People are punished and learn to punish themselves for not living up to the group's ideals.

8. The Dispensing of Existence

The group decides who has a right to exist and does not. There is no other legitimate alternative to the group. In political regimes, this permits state executions.

Hopefully, this summary will motivate you to read the entire Chapter 22, if not the entire book. It is considered to be one of the most important descriptions of political mind-control programs. It is also important to note, that now there are 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation mind-control groups and the patterns have evolved and become more refined and sophisticated.

From this model, Steven Hassan developed his own model of the mechanisms of mind control, The BITE Model. He offers specific manipulations within each of four realms, the Behavioral, the Informational, the Thinking, and the Emotional.

The following material is excerpted from Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs (FOM Press 2012).

Mind Control – The BITE Model

From chapter two of Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs (FOM Press 2012) formerly Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves* © 2000 by Steven Hassan; published by Freedom of Mind Press, Newton MA

Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:

I. Behavior Control
II. Information Control
III. Thought Control
IV. Emotional Control

It is important to understand that destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause. It is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present. Mind controlled cult members can live in their own apartments, have nine-to-five jobs, be married with children, and still be unable to think for themselves and act independently.

Behavior Control

1. Regulation of individual’s physical reality

a. Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with
b. What clothes, colors, hairstyles the person wears
c. What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects
d. How much sleep the person is able to have
e. Financial dependence
f. Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations

2. Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals

3. Need to ask permission for major decisions

4. Need to report thoughts, feelings and activities to superiors

5. Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques- positive and negative).

6. Individualism discouraged; group think prevails

7. Rigid rules and regulations

8. Need for obedience and dependency 

Information Control

1. Use of deception

a. Deliberately holding back information
b. Distorting information to make it acceptable
c. Outright lying

2. Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged

a. Books, articles, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio
b. Critical information
c. Former members
d. Keep members so busy they don’t have time to think

3. Compartmentalization of information; Outsider vs. Insider doctrines

a. Information is not freely accessible
b. Information varies at different levels and missions within pyramid
c. Leadership decides who “needs to know” what

4. Spying on other members is encouraged

a. Pairing up with “buddy” system to monitor and control
b. Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership

5. Extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda

a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.
b. Misquotations, statements taken out of context from non-cult sources

6. Unethical use of confession

a. Information about “sins” used to abolish identity boundaries
b. Past “sins” used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness or absolution

Thought Control

1. Need to internalize the group’s doctrine as “Truth”

a. Map = Reality
b. Black and White thinking
c. Good vs. evil
d. Us vs. them (inside vs. outside)

2. Adopt “loaded” language (characterized by “thought-terminating clichés”). Words are the tools we use to think with. These “special” words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous “buzz words”.

3. Only “good” and “proper” thoughts are encouraged.

4. Thought-stopping techniques (to shut down “reality testing” by stopping “negative” thoughts and allowing only “good” thoughts); rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism.

a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
b. Chanting
c. Meditating
d. Praying
e. Speaking in “tongues”
f. Singing or humming

5. No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate

6. No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or useful

Emotional Control

1. Manipulate and narrow the range of a person’s feelings.

2. Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader’s or the group’s.

3. Feeling-stopping (with number 4, Excessive use of guilt). Like thought-stopping, this is the automatic suppression or blocking of feelings that are not acceptable by the cult identity- such as feeling \”homesick\” or feeling \”depressed\” or feeling \”resentful\”.

4. Excessive use of guilt

a. Identity guilt

1. Who you are (not living up to your potential)
2. Your family
3. Your past
4. Your affiliations
5. Your thoughts, feelings, actions

b. Social guilt
c. Historical guilt

5. Excessive use of fear

a. Fear of thinking independently
b. Fear of the “outside” world
c. Fear of enemies
d. Fear of losing one’s “salvation”
e. Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group
f. Fear of disapproval

6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows.

7. Ritual and often public confession of “sins”.

8. Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader’s authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group.

a. No happiness or fulfillment “outside”of the group
b. Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: “hell”; “demon possession”; “incurable diseases”; “accidents”; “suicide”; “insanity”; “10,000 reincarnations”; etc.
c. Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group’s perspective, people who leave are: “weak;” “undisciplined;” “unspiritual;” “worldly;” “brainwashed by family, counselors;” seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.

TED Talk - Peter Singer: The Why and How of Effective Altruism

From TED2013, Peter Singer, a philosopher of applied ethics, talked about how to balance emotion and practicality to create an effective form of altruism. His most recent books are The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty (2010), The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (2011), and Practical Ethics (2011).

Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism

FILMED MAR 2013 • POSTED MAY 2013 • TED2013


If you're lucky enough to live without want, it's a natural impulse to be altruistic to others. But, asks philosopher Peter Singer, what's the most effective way to give? He talks through some surprising thought experiments to help you balance emotion and practicality -- and make the biggest impact with whatever you can share. NOTE: Starting at 0:30, this talk contains 30 seconds of graphic footage.

Why you should listen to him:

Peter Singer may be, as The New Yorker calls him, the planet’s “most influential living philosopher.” The Australian academic specializes in applied ethics, to which he takes a secular, utilitarian approach -- minimize suffering, maximize well-being. He gained recognition in the 1970s with his groundbreaking book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, which questions society’s tendency to put human needs above those of members of other species. And he draws fire from critics who object to his fascinating argument in favor of an obligation to help the global poor that sets the bar so high that it means we are almost all living unethically. His defense of euthanasia and infanticide, in some circumstances, has led to protests against his lectures and to teaching position at Princeton.

But Singer’s collective body of work is more acclaimed than controversial. He has written the classic text Practical Ethics and many other books, with more in progress. He lectures at Princeton, where he is professor of bioethics, and the University of Melbourne, where he is a laureate professor. You can find dozens of brief, brilliant essays at Project Syndicate, where Singer examines the philosophical questions surrounding current topics like Obamacare, computer piracy and obesity.

Alva Noë - Who Defines Who We Are?

From NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog, Alva Noë riffs on culture and norms and how they can influence our identities. Interesting . . . .

Who Defines Who We Are?

by ALVA NOË
May 24, 2013 

Istanbul Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images

In The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond offers a clever — if speculative — theory of the origins of race. After first dismissing the idea that racial differences are functional adaptations to different climates, he proposes that the tendency for certain people to look alike in respect of facial features, skin color, body type, etc., is a consequence of the fact that people mostly choose to reproduce with people like themselves. He points to studies suggesting contemporary couples tend statistically to be like each other in respect of finger size and the distance between the eyes. This is a kind of sexual selection. To understand the origin of traits, you need, in effect, to look at how we think and feel about the traits we have. What we are is fixed, in part, by us.

I thought of this last night when I arrived, for the first time, in Istanbul.

Although it was after midnight, traffic was heavy as my taxi worked its way along the water into the heart of the city. Booming Turkish hip-hop-like music bounced out of the car next to us. But the music sounded Eastern. At the heart of the song was a horn riff that sounded like something you'd expect on the soundtrack to an old Abbott and Costello movie set in the Middle East. The melodic twirl spoke loud: this is a Turkish sound!

I wondered: is this just what people here know and like, or do they know and like it because, after all, it is a tune that they think goes with being them? Is this like race — at least according to Diamond's hypothesis — something that defines us but only because, somehow, maybe unconsciously, we believe it should?

You can see evidence of this kind of downward looping everywhere. Cops in Law and Order-type TV shows affect working class accents. But maybe working-class people retain working-class accents because they believe, on some level, that this is how they should sound.

Could it be that speaking in broad dialect — like the man who served me a bratwurst in Dresden, Germany a few nights ago — is actually a kind of sophistication? A kind of universal irony that defines us all the way down?

This would explain the persistence of regional variation and dialect in the face of state-run education and the media.

Another example: The taxi driver on the way into town last night offered me a cigarette. Is smoking still normal here? Was this a simple act of politeness?

Back at the hotel, the clerk mentioned there were cups in the room that could be used as an ashtray. Ashtrays themselves, he noted, are forbidden. Ah, so the move to prohibit smoking in public places is known here in Istanbul, too.

So maybe the taxi driver wasn't just being polite. Maybe he was expressing an attitude towards smoking. Maybe he wasn't so much backward, an unreconstructed smoker, as he was, well, subversive?

I found myself wishing I smoked. It would have been nice to accept the smoke and, in doing so, be like the man who had offered it.


You can keep up with more of what Alva Noë is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe

MDMA has been shown to improve the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, so why not social anxiety as well?

Ecstasy-Assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety?

By TRACI PEDERSEN Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 26, 2013

The FDA recently approved a novel study that will examine whether the drug ecstasy could be of benefit to autistic adults suffering from social anxiety.

Ecstasy, known scientifically as N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDMA) has a reputation as a raver’s drug of choice and, in 1985, was classified as a Schedule I controlled substance — a category reserved for dangerous drugs with no medical value.

The drug, however, has been of interest to researchers who believe it could aid in psychotherapy.

Known for its “empathogenic effects,” MDMA has been shown to reduce the fear of emotional harm while promoting feelings of social connection. MDMA also produces a sense of euphoria and mild hallucinations.

Although “street ecstasy” often contains dangerous contaminants, the researchers believe using pure MDMA in a controlled setting could help certain patients.

“The study could start enrolling subjects in several months,” said Brad Burge, the communications director at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

“However, it could be six months or more depending on how long the [Institutional Review Board] review process takes, how long it takes to set up the study site at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center/Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, how long it takes to recruit subjects, and other factors. I estimate it will be four to eight months.”

The study would investigate the safety and therapeutic potential of MDMA-assisted therapy for treating social anxiety in 12 autistic adults.

“This study will be the first time MDMA-assisted therapy has been explored in a clinical trial for social anxiety, and the first time it’s been explored to help adults on the autism spectrum,” Burge said.

“The many case reports collected by study co-investigator Alicia Danforth in her recently submitted doctoral dissertation indicate that it is likely to provide at least some benefit.”

“Existing research also shows that MDMA is safe enough for use in clinical research,” he added. “It’s a promising area of research, and indicates a real shift in how the public sees MDMA and other psychedelics.”

The FDA concluded that the study was “reasonably safe to proceed as currently written,” but also offered some safety recommendations.

A similar study found that MDMA could help those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

One rape survivor reported that the drug helped her cope with trauma by allowing her to “control where I was thinking and going, and look at things differently.”

Source: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

Why Rituals Work - Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton

I suspect that humans have been performing rituals for about as long as we have been human. In the last couple of centuries, however, ritual has been relegated to dustbin of superstition. Yet there is now some science suggesting that ritual can actually perform healing functions for grief and anxiety reduction before stressful events.

This excellent article on ritual comes from Scientific American.

Why Rituals Work

There are real benefits to rituals, religious or otherwise

By Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton

Rituals can reduce anxiety

Image: iStock/EVRENSEL BARIS BERKANT

Think about the last time you were about to interview for a job, speak in front of an audience, or go on a first date. To quell your nerves, chances are you spent time preparing – reading up on the company, reviewing your slides, practicing your charming patter. People facing situations that induce anxiety typically take comfort in engaging in preparatory activities, inducing a feeling of being back in control and reducing uncertainty.

While a little extra preparation seems perfectly reasonable, people also engage in seemingly less logical behaviors in such situations. Here’s one person’s description from our research:

I pound my feet strongly on the ground several times, I take several deep breaths, and I "shake" my body to remove any negative energies. I do this often before going to work, going into meetings, and at the front door before entering my house after a long day.

While we wonder what this person’s co-workers and neighbors think of their shaky acquaintance, such rituals – the symbolic behaviors we perform before, during, and after meaningful event – are surprisingly ubiquitous, across culture and time. Rituals take an extraordinary array of shapes and forms. At times performed in communal or religious settings, at times performed in solitude; at times involving fixed, repeated sequences of actions, at other times not. People engage in rituals with the intention of achieving a wide set of desired outcomes, from reducing their anxiety to boosting their confidence, alleviating their grief to performing well in a competition – or even making it rain.

Recent research suggests that rituals may be more rational than they appear. Why? Because even simple rituals can be extremely effective. Rituals performed after experiencing losses – from loved ones to lotteries – do alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like singing in public – do in fact reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence. What’s more, rituals appear to benefit even people who claim not to believe that rituals work. While anthropologists have documented rituals across cultures, this earlier research has been primarily observational. Recently, a series of investigations by psychologists have revealed intriguing new results demonstrating that rituals can have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan wore his North Carolina shorts underneath his Chicago Bulls shorts in every game; Curtis Martin of the New York Jets reads Psalm 91 before every game. And Wade Boggs, former third baseman for the Boston Red Sox, woke up at the same time each day, ate chicken before each game, took exactly 117 ground balls in practice, took batting practice at 5:17, and ran sprints at 7:17. (Boggs also wrote the Hebrew word Chai (“living”) in the dirt before each at bat. Boggs was not Jewish.) Do rituals like these actually improve performance? In one recent experiment, people received either a “lucky golf ball” or an ordinary golf ball, and then performed a golf task; in another, people performed a motor dexterity task and were either asked to simply start the game or heard the researcher say “I’ll cross fingers for you” before starting the game. The superstitious rituals enhanced people’s confidence in their abilities, motivated greater effort – and improved subsequent performance. These findings are consistent with research in sport psychology demonstrating the performance benefits of pre-performance routines, from improving attention and execution to increasing emotional stability and confidence.

Humans feel uncertain and anxious in a host of situations beyond laboratory experiments and sports – like charting new terrain. In the late 1940s, anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski lived among the inhabitants of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. When residents went fishing in the turbulent, shark-infested waters beyond the coral reef, they performed specific rituals to invoke magical powers for their safety and protection. When they fished in the calm waters of a lagoon, they treated the fishing trip as an ordinary event and did not perform any rituals. Malinowski suggested that people are more likely to turn to rituals when they face situations where the outcome is important and uncertain and beyond their control – as when sharks are present.

Rituals in the face of losses such as the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship (or loss of limb from shark bite) are ubiquitous. There is such a wide variety of known mourning rituals that they can even be contradictory: crying near the dying is viewed as disruptive by Tibetan Buddhists but as a sign of respect by Catholic Latinos; Hindu rituals encourage the removal of hair during mourning, while growing hair (in the form of a beard) is the preferred ritual for Jewish males.

People perform mourning rituals in an effort to alleviate their grief – but do they work? Our research suggests they do. In one of our experiments, we asked people to recall and write about the death of a loved one or the end of a close relationship. Some also wrote about a ritual they performed after experiencing the loss:

I used to play the song by Natalie Cole “I miss you like crazy” and cry every time I heard it and thought of my mom.

I looked for all the pictures we took together during the time we dated. I then destroyed them into small pieces (even the ones I really liked!), and then burnt them in the park where we first kissed.

We found that people who wrote about engaging in a ritual reported feeling less grief than did those who only wrote about the loss.

We next examined the power of rituals in alleviating disappointment in a more mundane context: losing a lottery. We invited people into the laboratory and told them they would be part of a random drawing in which they could win $200 on the spot and leave without completing the study. To make the pain of losing even worse, we even asked them to think and write about all the ways they would use the money. After the random draw, the winner got to leave, and we divided the remaining “losers” into two groups. Some people were asked to engage in the following ritual:

Step 1. Draw how you currently feel on the piece of paper on your desk for two minutes.
Step 2. Please sprinkle a pinch of salt on the paper with your drawing.
Step 3. Please tear up the piece of paper.
Step 4. Count up to ten in your head five times.

Other people simply engaged in a task (drawing how they felt) for the same amount of time. Finally, everyone answered questions about their level of grief, such as “I can’t help feeling angry and upset about the fact that I did not win the $200.” The results? Those who performed a ritual after losing in the lottery reported feeling less grief. Our results suggest that engaging in rituals mitigates grief caused by both life-changing losses (such as the death of a loved one) and more mundane ones (losing a lottery).

Rituals appear to be effective, but, given the wide variety of rituals documented by social scientists, do we know which types of rituals work best? In a recent study conducted in Brazil, researchers studied people who perform simpatias: formulaic rituals that are used for solving problems such as quitting smoking, curing asthma, and warding off bad luck. People perceive simpatias to be more effective depending on the number of steps involved, the repetition of procedures, and whether the steps are performed at a specified time. While more research is needed, these intriguing results suggest that the specific nature of rituals may be crucial in understanding when they work – and when they do not.

Despite the absence of a direct causal connection between the ritual and the desired outcome, performing rituals with the intention of producing a certain result appears to be sufficient for that result to come true. While some rituals are unlikely to be effective – knocking on wood will not bring rain – many everyday rituals make a lot of sense and are surprisingly effective.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton are behavioral scientists and professors at Harvard Business School. Francesca is the author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Michael is the coauthor – with Elizabeth Dunn – of Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending (Simon & Schuster, 2013).

Big Think: The Cosmic Perspective

From Big Think, 4 articles on taking a cosmic perspective.

The Cosmic Perspective

by BIG THINK EDITORS
THE BIG IDEA FOR SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2013

Science can be depressing. The more we learn about ourselves and our relationship to the universe, the smaller we get. And yet, if we feel depressed, Neil deGrasse Tyson argues in today's lesson, that is the product of an unhealthy ego.

Having a cosmic perspective should strengthen and empower you, Tyson says. Even as you feel smaller, you are simultaneously bigger as well. So how can this perspective be applied to your life? In his Mentor workshop, Tyson teaches us how to recognize and seize big opportunities, set lofty goals that keep you challenged and growing and much more.  

PERSPECTIVES  

1.A Cosmic Perspective is Empowering, Not Depressing 

JONATHAN FOWLER AND ELIZABETH RODD, Big Think Mentor  

2. The Power of Cosmic Thinking 

DANIEL HONAN, Re-Envision  

3. Time Pretzels, Cosmic Music, and the Theory of Everything 

MICHIO KAKU  

4. Andrew Cohen Explains Cosmocentrism 

ANDREW COHEN

Steven Hassan at MIT speaking about the Psychology of Cult Formation (5-2-13)

Steven Hassan is the man behind the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, and he is the author of Combatting Cult Mind Control: A Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (paper 1990, hardback 1988) and Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs (2012).

He has recently found Marc Gafni on his radar and will likely be developing a page for him at his resources (Information) page. You can offer your own experience of Gafni or other abusive, manipulative, and purveyers of destructive control/power drives.

I highly recommend his article, Spiritual Responsibility: Avoiding Abuses and Pitfalls Along the Path.

The video cannot be embedded, so follow the link to watch the talk.

Steven Hassan at MIT speaking about the Psychology of Cult Formation 5-2-13

This talk was sponsored by The Secular Society of MIT as the last one in a series (ssomit.mit.edu/) and was scheduled months before the Boston Marathon Bombings.

The speakers before me in the series were:

• Steve Pinker on the evolutionary psychology of religion 
• Jonathan Lane on early childhood perceptions of the supernatural 
• Catherin Caldwell-Harris on the psychology of nonbelief 
• Monroe Butler on the neurology of religiosity 

When the two bombers were identified, people who knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were in total disbelief that he could be involved in such a despicable terrorist act as they knew him to be a kind, intelligent, warm, socially connected person. He was Captain of the wrestling team, graduate of Cambridge Ridge and Latin High School, who liked to party and had many friends. The big question in the media was: whether or not he could have been brainwashed. Immediately the suspicion was that his 7 yr older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had converted and became a more religious Muslim might have exercised undue influence over not only his brother but Katherine Russell, the woman he married. She dropped out of college, abandoned her life goals, converted to Islam and reportedly worked 70-80 hours to support Tamerlan and their young child.

I appeared on CNN, FOX PBS, NPR and other shows to discuss the possibility that maybe Tamerlan had been the subject of radicalization through undue influence tactics, and then influenced his brother and wife. Due to the lack of facts, my comments were based solely on my own cult experience in the 1970s and my 36 years of experience dealing with people who have experienced radical personality change due to mind control techniques described in the BITE model. The students and faculty present were particularly interested in me describing recruitment and indoctrination techniques.

This article (by Rob Hoerburger at the New York Times) pretty much sums up my affection for The Big Bang Theory, the only network show I have been hooked on in recent years (with the ocassional exception of Criminal Minds - profiling serial killers is so much fun!).

The Big Bang Theory, despite its brilliance in acting and writing (some of the most sophisticated humor I have ever seen on television, which is juxtaposed with some of the base humor one expects for a Chuck Lorre show [he is responsible for Two and Half Men]), has never really been embraced by the society as a whole - not the way have Seinfeld or, currently, Modern Family.

Viewers who love the show, however, spread the word to friends, family, acquaintences who might also like the show. The word-of-mouth approach has moved the show into the top 20 in the ratings wars. Deservedly.

I Love ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ And You Should, Too

Illustration by Tom Gauld

By ROB HOERBURGER
Published: May 24, 2013

There is probably no more grievous transgression in the current culture wars than being a late adopter, missing the boat, signing on to something that the rest of the plugged-in world absorbed, analyzed, digitized and deleted last year, last month, five minutes ago. Even though the avalanche of movies, TV shows, music, e-books, apps, social media, gadgets, etc., has made it impossible for anyone to be a prescient expert on everything — even everything good.

Such a surplus of options can lead to a kind of cultural snobbery, the denigration of an artist or art form simply because you missed it the first time around. More than one prominent music critic, for instance, didn’t anticipate the fireball that was Adele in 2011 and then, several platinum certifications later, wrote begrudging mea culpas that basically said, “I guess she’s O.K.”

I was guilty of this kind of critical elitism. Until a year and a half ago, I had never seen an episode of “The Big Bang Theory.” Yes, that “Big Bang Theory.”

The show, which seemed to be a fairly traditional sitcom about four scientists at a Pasadena university and their quest to navigate the world from a book-smart yet socially addled perspective, with the help of their street-smart waitress-actress neighbor, had been on the air for four years, and my avoidance of it was textbook snob. It was a prime-time network show, and I hadn’t been beholden to anything prime-time and network since “Seinfeld” ended its run in 1998. And “The Big Bang Theory” was on CBS, long seen as “the old-people network.” Moreover, one of its creators was Chuck Lorre, who was partly responsible for another CBS sitcom, “Two and a Half Men,” that seemed one-jokey and never really held my attention for more than two and a half minutes. When “The Big Bang Theory” appeared in 2007 alongside “Two and a Half Men,” I figured it would be a cheap grab at ratings from the undiscerning set.

Even when Jim Parsons, who plays the Nobel-craving, coitus-avoiding, Purell-packing, sarcasm-challenged, boy-man genius Sheldon Cooper, won an Emmy after the third season, the show still wasn’t generating much buzz in any of the oh-so-hip Web forums I visited or at my weekly happy hour, where more than half the discussion is usually about TV. In the back of my mind I was thinking, Eh, it’s O.K., even though I still had not seen a single episode.

Then Parsons won a second Emmy. The ratings steadily ticked up to the Top 20 from No. 68 in the first season. The show was moved to Thursday night, where it proved stiff competition for “American Idol.” Somebody, or rather, lots of somebodies, knew something was going on. In the fall of 2011, with the show now in inescapable syndication, I decided to actually watch an episode.

It took roughly a week of nightly viewing before I realized how impoverished my life had been for the four years that I was oblivious to “The Big Bang Theory.”

The touchstone, the lodestar, the flypaper for me at first was, predictably, Parsons. In his dervishy nerdiness, he seemed to evoke any number of classic TV neurotics or fussbudgets: Paul Lynde, Tony Randall, Pee-wee Herman. Watching Parsons’s every twitch, wiggle, full-body smirk or social paroxysm — his O.C.D. knocking on friends’ doors (three knocks/name, three knocks/name, three knocks/name), his recurring line about “I’m not crazy, my mother had me tested,” his litany of his “61 mortal enemies,” his continued rebuffing of the advances of his girlfriend, Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik) — is alone worth any half-hour spent on the show.

But as the weeks went by, the show’s many other virtues unfurled (by the end of 2011, I had seen almost all the older episodes more than once and started collecting the DVDs; some nights I would wake up after midnight just to watch the most recent episode as soon as it became available on demand). Here was a popular prime-time sitcom in which five of the seven main characters were Ph.D.’s and another had “only” a master’s from M.I.T., a hit show that regularly referenced bosons and derivatives and string theory, a show in which there were running gags about Madame Curie and Schrödinger’s cat.

The real behind-the-scenes heroes, though, are not the science advisers but the geek experts. The accuracy of the nerd oeuvre — the obsession with superheroes, “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” (before their umpteenth viewing of the movie, Howard, the M.I.T. engineer, says to Sheldon, “If we don’t start soon, George Lucas is going to change it again”), comic books and video games — is sometimes so eerie that I feel as if I’m watching a high- (or low-) light reel of my own life. In one episode, Sheldon goes to a computer store and is soon being asked for advice from tech-illiterate customers, to the point where he hacks into the store’s mainframe to check on the availability of an item. (“O.K., we don’t have that in stock,” he says to a customer, “but I can special-order it for you.”) He stops only when a real salesclerk reminds him that he doesn’t actually work there. Change the date to 1971, the computer store to a record store and the item in question to Judy Collins’s version of “Amazing Grace,” and that could have been me.

Beyond any navel-gazing thrill for me or other current or former nerds, the masterminds of the show — Lorre, Bill Prady, the showrunner Steven Molaro and others — have dared to produce a TV program that plays not a whit to the aspirations of its audience. You might laugh at the characters, pity them or love them, but you don’t want to be them (especially because you might already be them). There are a good amount of pre- and postcoital scenes, but they’re not especially sexy. These are not especially pretty people. A friend of mine who’s also a recent convert to the show says that she has a problem with Howard (Simon Helberg), the gnomish, dickie-sporting mama’s boy. “I can’t look at him,” she says. Even Penny (Kaley Cuoco), the bombshell across the hall, often appears rumpled or with a bottle of cheap wine hanging from her like an extra limb.

By the end of the sixth season, which wrapped last week, the characters had started to mature, while remaining true to their essence. Howard has been somewhat redeemed by living the ultimate nerd fantasy — becoming an astronaut — but even more by the love of a good woman, Bernadette (Melissa Rauch), whose oft-remarked-upon “ample bosom” is overshadowed by the fact that she’s smarter than he is and makes more money. Raj (Kunal Nayyar) finally seemed on the verge of a real relationship with a new character named Lucy (until she dumped him in the season finale last week), even as his sublimated love for Howard continues to surface in spontaneous belches. (In Raj and Amy, “The Big Bang Theory” could very well have two bona fide bisexuals among its characters.) Sheldon appears headed for some kind of revelation — either a Nobel-worthy discovery, his first real sexual experience or a nervous breakdown. The on-again-off-again (currently on) romance between Penny and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) may reach some resolution, but it almost certainly won’t have the fairy-tale ending of Ross and Rachel on “Friends” or Carrie and Big on “Sex and the City.” If they ever do marry, Leonard will most likely have one hand on his asthma inhaler at the ceremony and Penny will have one hand on a bottle of chardonnay. (Or a basic physics text; one roadblock to their relationship has been her concern that she’s not smart enough for him.)

The main direction that all of these characters continue to head in, though, is toward one another. With their social “shields” down (as one character puts it), they have direct access to their own and one another’s feelings — and buttons, especially when formulating the perfect insult. The intimacy that they achieve, and the chemistry among the actors, is certainly on a par with that of long-running sitcoms like “Cheers” or “Will and Grace” and is approaching the territory of maybe the greatest TV ensemble cast of all time, from the show about the Minneapolis TV-news producer and her coterie of kooky, lovable friends and co-workers, people whom you didn’t necessarily want to be but whom you always wanted to be around.

Unlike “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (29 Emmys in its seven years on the air), “The Big Bang Theory” is a bit underdecorated. Parsons has his two Emmys, but he should have easily won a third for his work in the fifth season, if for nothing else than playing the bongos and singing about the subjunctive mood. Galecki and Bialik have received single Emmy nominations, but the show has never won for best comedy series, and its writing and directing have never even been nominated, having most recently run up against the awards juggernaut of “Modern Family,” an altogether hipper, sexier (if not necessarily funnier or smarter) show.

And while my own proselytizing about “The Big Bang Theory” has earned it a few new fans, many of my would-be converts remain unconvinced. When at one happy hour I lauded the guest appearances of Christine Baranski as Leonard’s mother, one of my buddies sneered, “She’s too good for that show.” When I praised the show in passing in a previous column, one of my editors strongly urged me to reconsider (“Replace it with anything else,” he said). And this from my haircutter: “But isn’t it about . . . nerds?” (She eventually came around.) So even though the show has lately been earning its highest ratings (20 million viewers for one episode in January) and has been regularly finishing at No. 1 on the Nielsen list, it has remained something of a guilty pleasure, an affection that you don’t broadcast too loudly. It’s still a little lonely at the top.

For me, though, true validation came last summer when I was on vacation, walking up a darkened hill in the kind of resort town where the smart TV talk veers toward shows like “Girls” and “Mad Men.” I was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “bazinga,” Sheldon’s self-satisfied exclamation whenever he thinks he’s got the better of one of his pals. A car crept toward me, a window rolled down and my shields went up: Uh-oh, I thought, here comes some snarky comment. Instead the driver just said the word, Sheldon-like, quietly but rascally: “ba-ZING-a,” and then moved on. It was an acknowledgment of a shared secret, a coded utterance of the sentence that some people wait a lifetime to hear: How cool are we!

Twenty million nerds can’t be wrong.


A version of this article appeared in print on May 26, 2013, on page MM44 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: ‘Somebody, or Rather, Lots of Somebodies, Knew Something Was Going On’.