I like to think about things. I especially like to contemplate about the big picture. And by big picture, I mean to dig deep to realize the most fundamental, underlying, pattern, mechanism that drive the big picture.

Therefore, I ask, “What could be one most fundamental element, beyond economy, beyond politics, that is lacking that wrecks havoc in the human world, or rather, preempt humans to wreck havoc with themselves? Why all the human issues because of this missing element?”

I can think come up with one idea… that is — wisdom.

We are sorely lacking in wisdom.

We value intelligence. We value knowledge. Therefore, we value smart (and usually the more aggressive) people. We know those are very much emphasized. But none of those are wisdom.

These days, nobody talks about wisdom. Nobody talks about becoming wise these days. It is not important. In fact, if you say “I want to be wise”, people probably edge away from you and think you are nuts.

We can all agree that someone extremely smart can be very unwise. Wisdom is not associate with smartness and intelligence. So, what could be wisdom? What comes to mind when you think of wisdom? Perhaps you can share. I will opine in the next post.

After the last post, I find it fitting to talk some about stress.

What is Stress?

Taking the fifth meaning from dictionary.com, stress is the physical pressure, pull, or other force exerted on one thing by another, meaning for us, environmental stress. This is comparable to how our ancestors have to worry about having shelter, finding food, and not getting eaten.

For the heck of it, let me first make a point using a bit of video game lingo.

Video Game Hero Burst Mode

Imagine our hero in a video game who has a burst mode. This burst mode makes him a few times more powerful than usual and not get stunned… however, his hitpoints gradually decreases in this mode. So, the idea is to use the burst mode only when he fights very strong enemy and otherwise absolutely necessary to not die. Definitely not always, because he’d die.

Human Burst Mode, aka Fight or Flight

Well, we have somewhat of such a mode… it’s been identified in science as “fight or flight”.

As the words suggest, when we are in “fight or flight” mode, our body is ready to either fight or flee from danger. Intuitively then, when we are in such a mode, because the body concerns only of survival, the last thing it wants to do is digesting food properly, peeing and pooping, breathing deeply and slowly, generating energy for us in non-detrimental manner, and lastly (for some most importantly), carrying out sexual activity. LOL

(description of the science behind these is further down)

Stress in Modern Days

Back in the days when our ancestors live in the wild, such a mode is imperative for survival, to be able to hunt for food or run away from saber tooth. It’s really an intelligent design and gift of nature.

I surmise some activities above that our bodies is not inclined to do when in “fight or flight” mode, which should inevitably makes us realize how stress is one factor that lead to many other issues that modern people face.

We, or rather most of us with a few exceptions, constantly render our bodies in this “fight or flight” mode.

With saber tooth out of the picture, the “danger” we are threatened with are things that we think we must do and that which put us under stress — paying bills, feeding the family, keeping everyone happy, making deadline at work, getting the next promotion, becoming famous and successful, attaining power, retirement, eating things that hopefully won’t kill us before retirement, saving the world and blah blah blah.

Additionally, we are currently living in a society that is driven by fear. If you disagree, I politely ask you to check the news.

Our Beautiful Mind is also a Curse

Beyond the environmental stress, there is one more factor that hits it home to have stress cause us so much grief. Our mind.

For because we are humans and we are capable of thinking. This is another gift of nature that can also become a curse by misuse. We think about past and future. We think to create the perception of what is.

Things that we think we need to make us normal.
Things that we think will lead us to a “bad” future.
Things that we think as truth by expectations and conditioning.

We abuse the mind and apply thinking everywhere. Then ultimately, our attachment to these thoughts as real causes stress to multiply by ten-folds. Buddha is not lying when he said, “Attachment leads to suffering.” Well, it certainly does in how it leads to stress in our life!

Positive Stress

And let us not forget, when we seek drama, indulgence, and excitement, it is more or less the same because positive stress is stress to the body too. And there is science behind it that our bodies react similar to positive and negative stress.

Anyways, when it’s all said and done, we are constantly putting our bodies in this “fight or flight” mode. When we are not stressing out on negative things, we are seeking positive stress. In other words, stress kills is really another way of saying, we are killing ourselves, albeit slowly.

The Chemistry and the Science

I am no scientist but this is a summary of the many things I self-studied on this topic that hopefully can be easily understood.

Mainly, there are two hormones generated when we are in “fight or flight” modes — adrenaline and cortisol — both produced by the adrenal gland. Both of them are geared toward getting our body ready and have enough quick energy to fight or run away. I will only focus just these 2 and effects due to having them for prolonged period of time.

Adrenaline
Real name is Epinephrine. Adrenaline is a hormone that boosts the supply of oxygen and glucose (think of them like gas to cars) to the brain and skeletal muscles. That means if you have a lot of it in your bloodstream constantly, these are the effects:

- Not have adequate supply of oxygen and glucose to other organs in your body, which includes organs in the digestive system, parts of your nervous system (that’s why probably you are less sensitive), sexual organs (sorry, no sex when adrenalized)
- Because the oxygen and glucose supplied to the brain and muscles in mass quantity, they will be very stimulated, which will likely cause insomnia and muscle restlessness.
- Behaviorally, our ancestors work off the adrenaline in body by fighting or running away… but we modern people involve no such kind of physical exertion for that purpose. So either we leave the adrenaline in the body doing all the stuff above, or we find ourselves overeating, crazy shopping, etc.

Cortisol
Cortisol is what we call the “stress hormone”. Cortisol does many things. A few key effects are:

- Increase in Blood Sugar (hyperglycemia) — Cortisol being a counter to insulin and probably also because it increases glycogen synthesis by liver (as source of energy for muscles).
- Weaker bones — probably because cortisol induces loss of collagen (monitored in rats), which are present in the skin, bone, cartilage, tendon, and teeth.
- Long-term exposure to cortisol results in damage to cells in the hippocampus, aka, your long term memory.

Both Hormones
- Interfere with thyroid function and affect the T-cells and thus interfere with our immune system, which is why we are easier to get sick when stressed out.
- Decrease in muscle tissue because they cause our bodies to burn carbs and lean muscle (protein) in order to obtain quick energy to fight or run. Because burning fat to get calories is slower. Hence, not a good idea to exercise and weight train as a stressed person.

There you have it. A quick run through about stress. Not short, but it could have been longer!

Of course, I’m no “expert” and these are my intuition and understanding from self-study. So, do your own study. If you are really interested, besides searching for stress/adrenaline/cortisol you should also look into “parasympathetic” and “sympathetic” systems.

My thanks to these resources:
http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol
http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/cortisol.htm
http://www.greenerchiro.com/Stress%20&%20Cortisol.htm

One important question we modern people would ask is, “Why is everyone so damn stressed out?”

Modern life is full of ironies. The irony here is how we always plan as attempt to feel more secure and thus make things less stressful. Yet, we get the exact opposite result.

Planning is fine but becomes bad when excessive.

We drown ourselves in all possible scenarios, which are mental images of futures that exist only in our mind. So they are more or less illusions. Then we completely forget that plans are just plans, and thus should change upon changes in us and the environment. While we forge that, we fail to adapt when things turn sour. And then we make even bigger mess when we control and manipulate, scratch and claw to try to force what has become into a future that exists in our mind — as if we are clinging for our dear life.

Attachment to plan. Attachment to accomplishment. Attachment to the thoughts we have of what future should be. Attachment to accomplishment. Attachment to fulfill our ego’s desires.

As humans, we now often fail to change and adapt, like water. We like rigidness. When we are both rigid and fluid.

There is even the field called Risk Analysis, and so every business and individual strive to take the risk out of things. Again, too much is bad. Imagine a life where risk is taken out. Imagine you know everything that is going to happen. What happen to life?

Like the game of tic-tac-toe, because I know it can only end in win or draw. I see no point to play it, unless my goal is to intentionally lose.

Like the game of chess, when we know one of us is going to mate in a few moves, we end the game to start over. There is no point to continue.

What happens to life when there is too much planning? What happens to life when risk is completely removed? I believe, the answer is clear.

A recent commentary in a BusinessWeek talks of a “No Cost Way to Motivate”. In a few words, the suggestion is that if managers start taking an interest in the employees’ personal life (a.k.a. treating them as humans?), they will therefore work harder and with more enthusiasm.

Oh my my, really? We are supposed to treat each other as humans? I did not know that. (Though, if they do it pretentiously, it would mean worse than not doing it… almost insulting.)

To have someone writes such topic in a magazine can only mean that we have failed miserably at it.

It is not difficult for any of us to find examples in our real life. It is not too far fetched to say… most of us at work, treat each other as workers. Personally, I find such difficulty for people to step outside of this framework. We ARE engineers and we work with engineers. Managers see each other as managers, and minions as engineers, etc. When the high level executives look at “us”, we become numbers and headcounts.

Maybe solely for work purpose, it is suffice for us to acknowledge and call each other by our employee serial number. Alright, that’s probably too cynical.

The things I said above, most of us are complying to it. That is why we are such nervous wreck when we need to talk to people “in position”, or people “of seniority”. Note, fear and nervousness is not respect.

A very specific example is a friend who briefly mentioned his recent engagement to manager who took no interest, and not even a second to congratulate. I am not saying we need to have a celebration at work, but no acknowledgement? No wonder we are all miserable workers.

This takes me back to the topic that to truly relate to each others, for us humans to connect, it is a good idea to begin with the basis that we are human beings. We are all connected and that is where compassion arises. With compassion, we are giving each other a hand.

So for both productivity and for our own sake, do we really need to be “more employee” or “more human”?

The question of the day is, do we need more advertising? Is more growing advertising revenue to be?

I have already given up on TV a long time ago. Not only were there few shows that are enjoyable, the ever more increasing commercials during a program has made my decision firm. I think there is one day where commercials take up more minutes than the program itself. Perhaps we are there already? I don’t watch enough TV, can someone tell me? :P

The one show I do still watch now is Daily Show (kudos to Jon Stewart), and I have been watching it online for awhile. During this time, I observe a trend. Between segments, it went from 15 seconds commercial, to 15/30 seconds commercial break, to now, 2-3 10/15/30 seconds commerical break.

Is it just me or are we simply gradually transferring the television advertising method to online programs? What happened gradually to television programs is happening to internet programs. It will be the same beast with another skin.

What is next? What is the next medium of “information watching” where we can avoid commercials before it gets overtaken by commercials? Can there be a next thing after internet? I don’t know.