Russell Brand With daily revelations about the COVID origin, Wuhan, and Anthony Fauci, as well as information we already know regarding Big Pharma and its influence on mainstream media, how much can we trust what we’ve been told so far? #Fauci#Covid#Wuhan#China#Coronavirus Elites are taking over! Our only hope is to form our own. To learn more join my cartel here https://www.russellbrand.com/join and get weekly bulletins too incendiary for anything but your private inbox. *not a euphemism Listen to my Luminary Original podcast, Under The Skin, to hear from guests including Edward Snowden, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson, Naomi Klein, Kehinde Andrews, Adam Curtis and Vandana Shiva. Subscribe to Luminary at http://luminary.link/russell My NEW weekly meditation podcast, Above the Noise, is available now only on Luminary. My Audible Original, ‘Revelation’, is out NOW! US: http://adbl.co/revelation UK: http://adbl.co/revelationuk AU: http://adbl.co/revelationau CA: http://adbl.co/revelationca For meditation and breath work, subscribe to my side-channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AwakeningWi… Instagram: http://instagram.com/russellbrand/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/rustyrockets Produced by Gareth Roy
The 32 Most Iconic Poems in the English Language
Plus Some Bonus Poems, Because We Love You
By Emily Temple
Today is the anniversary of the publication of Robert Frost’s iconic poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a fact that spurred the Literary Hub office into a long conversation about their favorite poems, the most iconic poems written in English, and which poems we should all have already read (or at least be reading next). Turns out, despite frequent (false) claims that poetry is dead and/or irrelevant and/or boring, there are plenty of poems that have sunk deep into our collective consciousness as cultural icons. (What makes a poem iconic? For our purposes here, it’s primarily a matter of cultural ubiquity, though unimpeachable excellence helps any case.) So for those of you who were not present for our epic office argument, I have listed some of them here.
NB that I limited myself to one poem per poet—which means that the impetus for this list actually gets bumped for the widely quoted (and misunderstood) “The Road Not Taken,” but so it goes. I also excluded book-length poems, because they’re really a different form. Finally, despite the headline, I’m sure there are many, many iconic poems out there that I’ve missed—so feel free to extend this list in the comments. But for now, happy reading (and re-reading):
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
The most anthologized poem of the last 25 years for a reason. See also: “This is Just to Say,” which, among other things, has spawned a host of memes and parodies.
T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”
Without a doubt one of the most important poems of the 20th century. “It has never lost its glamour,” Paul Muldoon observed. “It has never failed to be equal to both the fracture of its own era and what, alas, turned out to be the even greater fracture of the ongoing 20th century and now, it seems, the 21st century.” See also: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Otherwise known as “the most misread poem in America.” See also: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” And “Birches.” All begin in delight and end in wisdom, as Frost taught us great poems should.
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
This blew my mind in high school, and I wasn’t the only one.
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”
Bishop’s much loved and much discussed ode to loss, which Claudia Roth Pierpont called “a triumph of control, understatement, wit. Even of self-mockery, in the poetically pushed rhyme word “vaster,” and the ladylike, pinkies-up “shan’t.” An exceedingly rare mention of her mother—as a woman who once owned a watch. A continent standing in for losses larger than itself.”
Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death –”
The truth is, there are lots of equally iconic Dickinson poems, so consider this a stand-in for them all. Though, as Jay Parini has noted, this poem is perfect, “one of Dickinson’s most compressed and chilling attempts to come to terms with mortality.”
Langston Hughes, “Harlem”
One of the defining works of the Harlem Renaissance, by its greatest poet. It also, of course, gave inspiration and lent a title to another literary classic: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”
To be quite honest, my favorite Plath poem is “The Applicant.” But “Daddy” is still the most iconic, especially if you’ve ever heard her read it aloud.
Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage“
The most famous poem, and a terribly beautiful one, by our country’s first African-American Poet Laureate (though the position was then called Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress). See also: “Those Winter Sundays, which despite what I wrote above may be equally as famous.”
Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
This one takes the cake for the sheer number of “thirteen ways of looking at x” knockoffs that I’ve seen. But please see also: “The Emperor of Ice-Cream.”
Allen Ginsberg, “Howl“
With On the Road, the most enduring piece of literature from the mythologized Beat Generation, and of the two, the better one. Even the least literate of your friends would probably recognize the line “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness . . .”
Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise“
So iconic, it was a Google Doodle.
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
I mean, have you seen Interstellar? (Or Dangerous Minds or Independence Day?)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
Or Citizen Kane? (See also: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias“
. . . or Breaking Bad?
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
We had some votes for “Annabel Lee,” on account of its earworminess, but among the many appearances and references of Poe in pop culture, “The Raven” is certainly the most common.
Louise Glück, “Mock Orange“
One of those poems passed hand to hand between undergraduates who will grow up to become writers.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask“
Dunbar’s most famous poem, and arguably his best, which biographer Paul Revell described as “a moving cry from the heart of suffering. The poem anticipates, and presents in terms of passionate personal regret, the psychological analysis of the fact of blackness in Frantz Fanon’s Peau Noire, Masques Blancs, with a penetrating insight into the reality of the black man’s plight in America.”
e.e. cummings, “i carry your heart with me“
As quoted at many, many weddings.
Marianne Moore, “Poetry“
All else aside, the fact that it starts with hating poetry has made it a favorite among schoolchildren of all ages. See also: “The Fish.”
Rudyard Kipling, “If“
According to someone in the Literary Hub office who would know, this poem is all over sports stadiums and locker rooms. Serena Williams is into it, which is proof enough for me.
Gertrude Stein, “Sacred Emily“
Because a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
William Blake, “The Tyger”
Tyger, tyger, burning bright . . . Blake famously wrote music to go along with his poems—the originals have been lost, but this verse has been widely interpreted by musicians as well as repeated to many sleepy children.
Robert Burns, “To a Mouse“
As (further) immortalized by John Steinbeck.
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
The most famous poem from Whitman’s celebrated Leaves of Grass, and selected by Jay Parini as the best American poem of all time. “Whitman reinvents American poetry in this peerless self-performance,” Parini writes, “finding cadences that seem utterly his own yet somehow keyed to the energy and rhythms of a young nation waking to its own voice and vision. He calls to every poet after him, such as Ezra Pound, who notes in “A Pact” that Whitman “broke the new wood.””
Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse“
We know, we know, it’s all your parents’ fault.
William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 18” (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”)
Like Dickinson, we could have put several of Shakespeare’s sonnets in this slot. Most people only recognize the first couplets anyway.
Audre Lorde, “Power“
A uniquely American poem, written in 1978, that should be outdated by now, but still is not.
Frank O’Hara, “Meditations in an Emergency“
Courtesy Don Draper, circa season 2.
John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields“
Probably the most iconic—and most quoted—poem from WWI. Particularly popular in Canada, where McCrae is from.
Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky“
Still the most iconic nonsense poem ever written.
W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming“
Otherwise known as “the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English.” Just ask our hero Joan Didion. Joan knows what’s up.
*
One more thing. The above list is too white and male and old, because our literary iconography is still too white and male and old. So, here are some other poems that we here at the Literary Hub office also consider iconic, though they are perhaps not as widely anthologized/quoted/referenced/used to amp up the corny drama in films as some of the above (yet).
Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck”
One of my very favorites from Rich’s rich (sorry) oeuvre. I read it in college and have been quoting it ever since.
Patricia Lockwood, “Rape Joke“
The poem that officially broke the internet in 2013.
Lucille Clifton, “Homage to My Hips“
She’s just . . . so . . . damn . . . sexy. See also: “To a Dark Moses” and “won’t you celebrate with me,” because Clifton is the greatest.
Lucie Brock-Broido, “Am Moor“
This happens to be my own personal favorite Brock-Broido poem, though almost any would do here.
Sappho, “The Anactoria Poem” (tr. Jim Powell)
I’m breaking my rule about the poems being written in English to include Sappho, whose work is uniquely appealing for being almost lost to us. The Anactoria poem is her most famous, though I have to say I also have a major soft spot for this fragment, translated by Anne Carson:
so
]
]
]
]
]
Go [
so we may see [
]
lady
of gold arms [
]
]
doom
]
And when I say “soft spot” I mean it sends me into ecstatic fits.
Kevin Young, “Errata“
The greatest wedding poem that no one ever reads at their wedding.
Mark Leidner, “Romantic Comedies“
For those who enjoy snorting their coffee while reading poetry.
Muriel Rukeyser, “The Book of the Dead“
A long, legendary poem, written in 1938, about the illness of a group of miners in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. “Coming hot on the heels of modernist long poem masterpieces like Eliot’s “The Wasteland” or Stein’s “Tender Buttons,” the poem’s deliberate lucidity isn’t just an aesthetic choice—it’s a political one,” Colleen Abel wrote in Ploughshares. “Rukeyser, from the beginning of “Book of the Dead,” seeks the reader’s participation in the journey to Gauley Bridge. The reader is implicated from the first section, “The Road,” in which Rukeyser calls outward to her audience: “These are roads you take when you think of your country.” The disaster Rukeyser is about to explore is a part of “our country” and the reader will have no choice but to confront it.”
Carolyn Forché, “The Colonel“
What you have heard is true. This poem is unforgettable.
Rita Dove, “After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed“
Again, a thousand poems by Rita Dove would do; this is the one that sticks in my brain.
Nikki Giovanni, “Ego Tripping“
I mean, “I am so hip even my errors are correct” should probably be your mantra. Watch Giovanni perform her poem here.
Terrance Hayes, “The Golden Shovel“
Hayes’s homage to Gwendolyn Brooks is a masterpiece in its own right.
Emily Temple
Emily Temple is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020. You can buy it here.
Celebrate George Orwell’s birthday by reading his (scathing) 1940 review of Mein Kampf.
By Dan Sheehan
June 25, 2020 (lithub.com)
One year after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia (and a full year before the New York Times decided it was a good idea to publish an excerpt from Der Führer’s poisonous opus), celebrated writer, literary critic, and vocal opponent of totalitarianism George Orwell (who was born 107 years ago today) reviewed Mein Kampf.
He was, as you can imagine, not a fan.
As Orwell notes right off the bat, a previous edition of autobiography—published just a year before—seemed invested in presenting Hitler, despite the laundry list of atrocities he had already carried out, “in as kindly a light as possible”:
It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.
Then suddenly it turned out that Hitler was not respectable after all. As one result of this, Hurst and Blackett’s edition was reissued in a new jacket explaining that all profits would be devoted to the Red Cross. Nevertheless, simply on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler’s aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics. Probably, in Hitler’s own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia’s turn will come when England is out of the picture—that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees it. Whether it will turn out that way is of course a different question.
Orwell, the godfather of dystopian fiction, then goes on to imagine a nightmarish future in which a 250 million-strong German Empire extends from Western Europe to Afghanistan. He also astutely analyzes the particularly insidious martyr complex and toxic charisma that enabled Hitler to rise and entrance:
Suppose that Hitler’s programme could be put into effect. What he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250 million Germans with plenty of ‘living room’ (i.e. stretching to Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder. How was it that he was able to put this monstrous vision across? It is easy to say that at one stage of his career he was financed by the heavy industrialists, who saw in him the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists. They would not have backed him, however, if he had not talked a great movement into existence already. Again, the situation in Germany, with its seven million unemployed, was obviously favourable for demagogues. But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches…The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.
Finally, the future Nineteen Eighty-Four author cautions against underestimating the emotional appeal of such a man, for whose promise of glory though “struggle, danger, and death” an entire nation sold its soul:
Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.
–George Orwell, The New English Weekly, March 21, 1940
[via Open Culture]
Swami Sarvapriyananda and Deepak Chopra – Discussion on Consciousness
“Whatever you are aware of is not consciousness. That which is aware of them is consciousness.”
–Swami Sarvapriyananda
Vivekananda Samiti IIT-Kanpur OFFICIAL CHANNEL of Swami Sarvapriyananda – https://bit.ly/3h5wIgb
Imagine the epigenetic effects of Translation and Releasing the Hidden Splendour (RHS)*
ep·i·ge·net·ics/ˌepəjəˈnediks/Learn to pronounce
BIOLOGY noun: epigenetics
- the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself.”epigenetics has transformed the way we think about genomes”
Etymology: Epi (above) + genetics
You Can Transform Your Own Biology
By Rudolph Tanzi, M.D. + Deepak Chopra™, M.D.
To date, one of biology’s greatest achievements, mapping the human genome, is only just beginning to translate into medical advances. But in 2014 there will likely be more headlines about another type of study in genetics that is already impacting everyone.
We are referring to a different aspect of our genome, which radically revises a model that is decades old, dating back as far as the original discovery of DNA. In the original model, the effects of our genes were considered to be fixed and unchanging, controlling every aspect of our physical makeup, behavior, and susceptibility to disease. Not just eye color, height, and other physical characteristics were predetermined by inherited genes, but perhaps all kinds of behaviors, from criminality to belief in God.
The new model, however, portrays a more fluid, dynamic genome that responds quickly, even instantly, to all that we experience, including how you think, feel, speak, and act. Every day brings new evidence that the mind-body connection reaches right down to the activities of our genes. How this activity changes in response to our life experiences is referred to as “epigenetics.” Regardless of the nature of the genes we inherit from our parents, dynamic change at this level allows us almost unlimited influence on our fate.
Theories of evolution and genetics have long taught that genetic mutation is entirely random. However, genetics has been gradually stepping into a new era of “self-directed biological transformation,” a mouthful perhaps, but with great significance in each word:
- Self-Directed: Voluntary activity in your thoughts, feelings, habits, and desires. This is the realm of personal choice
- Biological: Effects at every level of the mind-body system, including reactions by your genetic material
- Transformation: Major shifts in cellular activity leading to physiological changes
This means that control is being given back to each person; we are no longer seen as puppets of our DNA. The human genome is set to be the stage for future evolution that we ourselves direct, making choice an integral part of genetics. This is in stark contrast to the “biology as destiny” view where genes override choice. Unless decisions, lifestyle, environment, and personal preferences are included, a full picture of the mysteries of our DNA cannot be attained.
The speed and extent of change at the genetic level would astonish researchers even a few years ago. Yoga and meditation, for example, can trigger almost immediate responses in genetic activity. Exercise, a balanced diet, good sleep, and stress reduction—all well-known for improving bodily function—exert beneficial effects via our genes. So the next frontier will be to discover how deep and lasting such changes are, how much control we have over them individually, and how they can be passed on to future generations through so-called “soft inheritance,” in which the parents’ life experiences and behavior directly influence the genome of their offspring (transmitted via the epigenome, which controls how the activities of our genes are turned up and down).
How Genes Deliver Results
Genes don’t simply switch on and off but work on a sliding scale, more like a rheostat. In addition, genes communicate fluidly, so that the old view, where a single gene determined a single characteristic, like eye color, must be revised. There are some genetically determined characteristics that require only a single gene, but they are relatively rare. The vast number of genetic influences are created by a dance or symphony of genes delivering dynamic input to the whole system.
Between any two persons’ genomes there are an average of three million differences or mutations. The implications for medicine are major. Only 5% or less of disease-related mutations are fully penetrant, i.e., guaranteeing a disease when inherited. For the remaining 95%, other genes, lifestyle, and environmental influences also determine disease risk.
The Emergence of Self-Directed Biology
The mind and emotions directly affect gene activity, and since the mind is the source of a person’s lifestyle and behavior, it directs one’s biological transformations. Self-awareness holds the key to this process of self-transformation. Consciousness is invisibly reaching into the biochemistry of every moment of life. In your body, as in every cell, regulation is holistic, self-generated, self-organizing, and self-directed in concert with consciousness.
Darwin didn’t know about epigenetics and “soft inheritance.” Otherwise, he may have written a very different treatise, in which evolution wouldn’t solely result from random gene mutations. Self-directed evolution is the emerging paradigm.
As emphasized in our recent book, Super Brain, we believe there is also a better approach to understanding the brain. Your neural networks are being reshaped with every thought, feeling word, and act. This process is intimately tied to genetic activity. Today you will casually perform some very mysterious actions: As an aware being you will imbue your desires with intention (“I’ll have the tuna salad”), direct your attention to specific objects and aspects of the world (“Just look at that sunset!”), and experience the shifting landscape of your inner world (“This movie is boring”) as you navigate the terrain of your mind.
However, no research has been able to define the scientific basis of these actions. There is no explanation for how the firing of action potentials in trillions of synapses made by billions of nerve cells actually produces an experience.
This is a perfect example of how the map isn’t the territory. The wiring of your brain is ever-changing, depending on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and habits. Many millions of dollars are being spent on the connectome, a complete mapping of the brain. But this will not explain how genes and neural circuits work together to bring us consciousness.
Brain and genome maps must be aligned with the fullness of human experience, since what you think, say, and do today shapes your genetic future. Nothing less than the equivalent of a “consciousome project” will suffice to serve this loftiest of scientific endeavors.
[*Translation uses self-evident truths and logic to translate the evidence of the senses into the underlying reality. Releasing the Hidden Splendour (RHS) allows us to relive and release emotional and spiritual trauma. See “Prosperos Classes” page.]
The Healing Self with Deepak Chopra — Writer’s Symposium By The Sea 2018
Illness begins with “I”. Wellness begins with “We”.
–Deepak Chopra
University of California Television (UCTV) Deepak Chopra, MD, a leading pioneer in integrative medicine, shares insights from his new book, “The Healing Self,” on how to protect your immune system by managing stress and reducing inflammation – two key factors for lifelong wellness. Chopra is presented by the 2018 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University. [4/2018] [Show ID: 33478] Writer’s Symposium By The Sea (https://www.uctv.tv/writers) Explore More Health & Medicine on UCTV (https://www.uctv.tv/health) UCTV features the latest in health and medicine from University of California medical schools. Find the information you need on cancer, transplantation, obesity, disease and much more. UCTV is the broadcast and online media platform of the University of California, featuring programming from its ten campuses, three national labs and affiliated research institutions. UCTV explores a broad spectrum of subjects for a general audience, including science, health and medicine, public affairs, humanities, arts and music, business, education, and agriculture. Launched in January 2000, UCTV embraces the core missions of the University of California — teaching, research, and public service – by providing quality, in-depth television far beyond the campus borders to inquisitive viewers around the world. (https://www.uctv.tv)
The End of American Exceptionalism
New Economic Thinking “We don’t look after each other at all,” says Jeffrey Sachs on America today Jeffrey Sachs sits down with Rob Johnson to discuss his new book, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (Columbia University Press, 2018).
My Cancer Journey 5–28-21
Just wanted to let all of you who read this know that I had my last PET CT scan on Monday after my 6 chemo treatments were finished on April 16 and the new scan was clear for cancer. I will have to keep going to the cancer center for follow up labs and scans and Dr. appts every three months for a few years. They won’t call me cancer free until I have been cancer free for 5 years. This is very good news. I have no more cancer in my body.
After about the third chemo infusion, I really began to lose energy and clarity. Chemo brain kicked in and got worse over time. Fatigue kicked in and got worse and worse and left me just so tired of being tired all the time. This fatigue is still with me and will be for a while. The oncologist told me that for some people it can take a year for the chemo drugs to clear out of the system. I did not know that.
I have been depressed, withdrawn, and feeling low self esteem beside the low energy. The oncologist said that it is not unusual for a patient going through chemo — especially in isolation due to covid — to feel this way. And since chemo exacerbates this low energy blah kind of feeling, this may be with me for a while. The oncologist is referring me to the psychiatrist so hopefully I can get into some kind of therapy for the depression. That’s the only way I know to tackle it. But finally acknowledging to myself recently that I was back being depressed and withdrawn was a huge first step. I tend to be one of these suffer in silence kind of people. That is not good when dealing with depression since it just gets worse. I have had some form of clinical depression for most of my life and have been on an antidepressant for some 40 years or so. But the cancer and chemo just made it worse and I felt like I was falling into a deep hole and the longer I was in the chemo the darker it got down there.
The other side effect I am still dealing with is the neuropathy of my left foot. My foot is numb and painful at the same time and I am not steady on my feet. I use a cane for walking and but I need to rest often after just a few steps. I am a long way away from my old hiking days. The neurapthy seems to be getting worse not better but it’s hard to tell. I am doing both PT and acupuncture in addition to the drug the doctor gave me — Lyrica.
So cancer may be gone but it is kind of still with me as I deal with these aftershocks.
This will likely be my last post about my cancer. This blog served me very well as a place to go process all the feelings I was going through as an aggressive cancer seemed to be racing through my body. I talked about feeling like I was in a Sprint and I gave it all I had until I just ran out of energy sometime between infusion #3 or infusion #4. By the time I go to infusion #6, I had nothing left. And as I got further and further into chemo, my thinking got more and more muddled. My writing suffered and I would lose trains of thought and go off on tangents that may or may not have made any sense. I got into some personal things that were better dealt with in other places. Not that looking inside and finding what I found wasn’t a good thing because it was, but dealing with my guilt and shame (which was something I had long thought I had finished with after much work on it in earlier decades), is better done by myself rather than in a public forum like this. Blogs are for interesting stories, engaging reads, entertainment. I think my blog went off the rails somewhere along the line in my chemo brain fog. I was grasping at straws at the end there as I sought to understand what I was doing, what I was saying or even what to write about. I started to write about something that made me happy and sped off to something that made me feel guilty and sad in a flash. It just got too labored and well I was just too tired to try to write every day so I just let it go. But the beginning of the blog while raw and honest, helped me to navigate what for me was the most serious and scary a diagnosis as I have ever gotten in my life. And this was the beginning of the hardest fight I have ever had to fight.
There are some of you here among my “followers” that have been with me through thick and thin so this is a news update for you. Others I don’t know but I feel your support and caring as well. I just want to thank you all for your prayers, your translations and just your thoughts and support. It’s been a tough year but I am finally and officially on the mend. Thank you so much for listening to my fears, my rants, my process, and even some good music along the way. Here’s one a dear friend sent me this morning. She said, “It inspired me to hope that your fatigue is giving way to actual rest.” I don’t think I have ever sung this but it’s lovely. And this version was conducted by the composer and was recorded at Georgia State University right here in Atlanta.
And just for fun once again….
Equanimity
e·qua·nim·i·ty/ˌekwəˈnimədē/Learn to pronounce
noun: equanimity
- mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.”she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity“Similar:composurecalmnesscalmlevel-headednessself-possessionself-controleven-temperednesscoolnesscoolheadednesspresence of mindserenityplaciditytranquilityphlegmimpassivityimperturbabilityunexcitabilityequilibriumpoiseself-assuranceassuranceself-confidenceaplombsangfroidnervecoolunflappabilityataraxyOpposite:anxiety
Origin
early 17th century (also in the sense ‘fairness, impartiality’): from Latin aequanimitas, from aequus ‘equal’ + animus ‘mind’.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Equanimity (Latin: æquanimitas, having an even mind; aequus even; animus mind/soul) is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind. The virtue and value of equanimity is extolled and advocated by a number of major religions and ancient philosophies.
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Etymology
From Fr. équanimité, from L. aequanimitatem (nom. aequanimitas) “evenness of mind, calmness,” from aequus “even, level” (see equal) + animus “mind, spirit” (see animus). Meaning “evenness of temper” in English is from 1610s.
In religion
Indian religions
Hinduism
In Hinduism the term for equanimity is समत्व samatvam (also rendered samatva or samata).[1]
In Chapter Two, Verse 48 of the Bhagavad Gita one reads: yoga-sthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā dhanañ-jaya siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate. Srila Prabhupada translates this as: Perform your duty equipoised, O Arjuna, abandoning all attachment to success or failure. Such equanimity is called yoga.[2]
In his book Samatvam – The Yoga of Equanimity, Swami Sivananda states:
“An aspirant who treads the path to samatvam must make every effort to acquire the following essential qualities: Viveka, discrimination; vairagya, dispassion; shadsampat, the six virtues (shama, mental calmness and control; dama, restraint of the senses; uparati, sense withdrawal or pratyahara; titiksha, endurance; shraddha, faith and samadhana, mental balance); and an intense desire for liberation, mumukshutva. In order to possess the virtue of Samatvam, he will also need to dedicate himself to steadying the mind every moment of his yoga career…”[3]
Yoga
Another Sanskrit term for equanimity is upekṣhā. This is the term used by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras (1.33).[4] Here upekṣhā is considered to be one of the four sublime attitudes, along with loving-kindness (maitri), compassion (karuṇā), and joy (mudita). It is related to the idea of Vairagya or “dispassion”. The Upeksha Yoga school foregrounds equanimity as the most important tenet of a yoga practice.[5]
In many Yoga traditions, the virtue of equanimity can be one of the results attained through regular meditation, combined with regular practice of pranayama, asanas and mental disciplines, which clear the mind and bring one inexorably toward a state of health and balance.
Buddhism
In Buddhism, equanimity (Pali: upekkhā; Sanskrit: upekṣā) is one of the four sublime attitudes and is considered:
Neither a thought nor an emotion, it is rather the steady conscious realization of reality’s transience. It is the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love. While some may think of equanimity as dry neutrality or cool aloofness, mature equanimity produces a radiance and warmth of being. The Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as “abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will.”— [6]
Equanimity can also be cultivated through meditation[7][8]
Meditation is a contemplative practice that has been shown to associate with greater development of equanimity, allowing people to face all extreme states of mind or whatever arises at the present moment. During the meditative state, meditators can practice the technique called “single-pointed concentration” where the mind pays attention to one thought or emotion in the present moment and notices how the feeling is arising. This leads to awareness of the moment. With time and practice, it trains the mind to go from “ordinary conceptual modes of operation to greater stillness and equanimity.”[9] In Vipassana meditation, practitioners can come to understand and see clearly into the nature of reality, the impermanence of all experience. From this newly developed perspective of equanimity, the mind becomes less easily disturbed and suffered from unexpected conditions and emotional states. Meditation, indeed, can help to train the mind to be sensitive and flexible which results in developing and maintaining a state of composure, peace, and balance in all sorts of experiences.
Abrahamic religions
Judaism
Many Jewish thinkers highlight the importance of equanimity (Menuhat ha-Nefesh or Yishuv ha-Da’at) as a necessary foundation for moral and spiritual development. The virtue of equanimity receives particular attention in the writings of rabbis such as Rabbi Yisroel Bal Shem Tov and Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv.
Christianity
Samuel Johnson defined equanimity as “evenness of mind, neither elated nor depressed.” In Christian philosophy, equanimity is considered essential for carrying out the theological virtues of modesty, gentleness, contentment, temperance, and charity.[10] Temperance is to appreciate and choose every little sacrifice over the vexation of a source of happiness, that is humor. The waters of life flow over the self-will, and nothing is as elastic and irrepresible as the self-will of which it will be pressed upon and acquiesce to the incentives of resistance. His providence directs the vexatious shower of rain, and the ill-timed visitor, as certainly as it rules the issue of life and death.[11] “[All good works] with delicate instruments and the importance of great events can only be justly examined by the effects which they produce upon the character”.[12] Christian patience is to bear the interruption of humor. Subdue the self-will so that the weight of each affliction doesn’t increase with any encouragement.[citation needed]
Christian forbearance is the realization that all of man’s current experiences with sin will one day yield the positive results God intends.[citation needed] Working with our hands, and that labor which is reviled, as well as authority labors, we bless.[citation needed] This is Pauline forbearance which brings all current states of experience to the happiness and positive results of the ultimate end within the afterlife.[citation needed] Forbearance is needful, as stated in the beginning of I Corinthians 4:1,2, according to Paul; “Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.” Forbearance is a part of our stewardship responsibility, as Stewards we are required to be found faithful. Immediate responses or knee-jerk responses are in direct opposition to forbearance, thus this isn’t easy to master. Commonly it is found that the fleshly mind and impulse is quicker response than the response of forbearance.[13] The Christian belief is to know that God’s intent isn’t in the immediate response but in a longer forbearance, one which spans the entire life of an individual.
The principles of forbearance is to be without hasty accusation, fault-finding (Gal. 5:15; 1 Cor. 13:7; Rom. 15:1; 2:4), hyper-critical examination, over reactions, rash or hasty temper (Truth Commentaries: The Book of Ephesians 158). We should not over-react to a brother’s offense by making a “mountain out of a mole hill.” Paul warns of false teachers, “For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.”[14]
“The best does not always come to the surface. We should never, therefore, hastily imagine evil intentions in others. Nor should we allow ourselves to be easily persuaded that our companions or friends meant to treat us unkindly. A disposition to look favorably upon the conduct of our fellow men—is a wonderful absorber of the frictions of life.”[15]
Islam
The word “Islam” is derived from the Arabic word aslama, which denotes the peace that comes from total surrender and acceptance.[16] A Muslim may experientially behold that everything happening is meant to be, and stems from the ultimate wisdom of God; hence, being a Muslim can therefore be understood to mean that one is in a state of equanimity.
Baha’i
The voluminous Writings of the Baha’i Faith are filled with thousands of references to divine attributes, of which equanimity is one. Similar in intent and more frequently used than “equanimity” in the Baha’i Writings are “detachment” and “selflessness” which dispose human beings to free themselves from inordinate reactions to the changes and chances of the world. Humanity is called upon to show complete and sublime detachment from aught else but God, from all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth, from the material world and from the promptings of their own interests and passions. Related concepts include faith, the concept of growing through suffering and being tested, fortitude under trials, dignity, patience, prudence, moderation, freedom from material things, radiant acquiescence, wisdom and evanescence.[original research?] Baha’u’llah, the Central Personage of the Baha’i Faith, wrote: “Until a being setteth his foot in the plane of sacrifice, he is bereft of every favour and grace; and this plane of sacrifice is the realm of dying to the self, that the radiance of the living God may then shine forth. The martyr’s field is the place of detachment from self, that the anthems of eternity may be upraised. Do all ye can to become wholly weary of self, and bind yourselves to that Countenance of Splendours; and once ye have reached such heights of servitude, ye will find, gathered within your shadow, all created things. This is boundless grace; this is the highest sovereignty; this is the life that dieth not. All else save this is at the last but manifest perdition and great loss.”[citation needed]
The highly revered Son of Baha’u’llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, was an exile and prisoner along with His Father, for more than forty years facing a torrent of various hardships.[citation needed] It is written about him: “So imperturbable was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s equanimity that, while rumors were being bruited about that He might be cast into the sea, or exiled to Fizán in Tripolitania, or hanged on the gallows, He, to the amazement of His friends and the amusement of His enemies, was to be seen planting trees and vines in the garden of His house, whose fruits when the storm had blown over, He would bid His faithful gardener, Ismá’íl Áqá, pluck and present to those same friends and enemies on the occasion of their visits to Him.”[citation needed] When in London He was asked about His time in prison and said: “Freedom is not a matter of place. It is a condition. I was thankful for the prison, and the lack of liberty was very pleasing to me, for those days were passed in the path of service, under the utmost difficulties and trials, bearing fruits and results…Unless one accepts dire vicissitudes, he will not attain…When one is released from the prison of self, that is indeed release, for that is the greater prison…The afflictions which come to humanity sometimes tend to centre the consciousness upon the limitations, and this is a veritable prison. Release comes by making of the will a Door through which the confirmations of the Spirit come.”[citation needed] Asked about this He said: The confirmations of the Spirit are all those powers and gifts which some are born with (and which men sometimes call genius), but for which others have to strive with infinite pains. They come to that man or woman who accepts his life with radiant acquiescence. Radiant acquiescence—that was the quality with which we all suddenly seemed inspired as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá bade us good-bye.”[citation needed]
The following quote by ‘Abdu’l-Baha offers a perspective aimed at cultivating equanimity.[original research?] He wrote: “Grieve thou not over the troubles and hardships of this nether world, nor be thou glad in times of ease and comfort, for both shall pass away. This present life is even as a swelling wave, or a mirage, or drifting shadows. Could ever a distorted image on the desert serve as refreshing waters? No, by the Lord of Lords! Never can reality and the mere semblance of reality be one, and wide is the difference between fancy and fact, between truth and the phantom thereof. Know thou that the Kingdom is the real world, and this nether place is only its shadow stretching out. A shadow hath no life of its own; its existence is only a fantasy, and nothing more; it is but images reflected in water, and seeming as pictures to the eye. Rely upon God. Trust in Him. Praise Him, and call Him continually to mind. He verily turneth trouble into ease, and sorrow into solace, and toil into utter peace. He verily hath dominion over all things. If thou wouldst hearken to my words, release thyself from the fetters of whatsoever cometh to pass. Nay rather, under all conditions thank thou thy loving Lord, and yield up thine affairs unto His Will that worketh as He pleaseth. This verily is better for thee than all else, in either world.”[citation needed]
In philosophy
Pyrrhonism
In Pyrrhonism the term used for equanimity is ataraxia, which means to be unperturbed. Ataraxia is the goal of Pyrrhonist practice.
Taoism
Equanimity is the practice and the effect of that practice in Taoism.
Stoicism
Equanimity is a central concept in Stoic ethics and psychology. The Greek Stoics use the word apatheia or ataraxia whereas the Roman Stoics used the Latin word aequanimitas. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius‘s Meditations details a philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration. His adoptive father Antoninus Pius‘s last word was uttered when the tribune of the night-watch came to ask him for the night’s password. Pius chose “aequanimitas” (equanimity).[citation needed]
Epicureanism
Epicurus believed that what he called “pleasure” (ἡδονή) was the greatest good, but that the way to attain such pleasure was to live modestly, to gain knowledge of the workings of the world, and to limit one’s desires. This would lead the practitioner of Epicureanism to attain ataraxia (equanimity).
Cyborg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A cyborg (/ˈsaɪbɔːrɡ/)—a portmanteau of cybernetic and organism—is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.[1]
Definition and distinctions
“Cyborg” is not the same thing as bionic, biorobot, or android; it applies to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback.[2] While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, including humans, they might also conceivably be any kind of organism.
D. S. Halacy’s Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman (1965) featured an introduction which spoke of a “new frontier” that was “not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between ‘inner space’ to ‘outer space’ – a bridge…between mind and matter.”[3]
Biosocial definition
According to some definitions of the term, the physical attachments that humans have with even the most basic technologies have already made them cyborgs.[4] In a typical example, a human with an artificial cardiac pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator would be considered a cyborg, since these devices measure voltage potentials in the body, perform signal processing, and can deliver electrical stimuli, using this synthetic feedback mechanism to keep that person alive. Implants, especially cochlear implants, that combine mechanical modification with any kind of feedback response are also cyborg enhancements. Some theorists[who?] cite such modifications as contact lenses, hearing aids, smartphones, or intraocular lenses as examples of fitting humans with technology to enhance their biological capabilities.
As cyborgs currently are on the rise, some theorists[who?] argue there is a need to develop new definitions of aging. (For instance, a bio-techno-social definition of aging has been suggested.)[5]
The term is also used to address human-technology mixtures in the abstract. This includes not only commonly-used pieces of technology such as phones, computers, the Internet, and so on, but also artifacts that may not popularly be considered technology; for example, pen and paper, and speech and language. When augmented with these technologies and connected in communication with people in other times and places, a person becomes capable of much more than they were before. An example is a computer, which gains power by using Internet protocols to connect with other computers. Another example are social-media bots—either bot-assisted humans or human-assisted-bots—used to target social media with likes and shares.[6] Cybernetic technologies include highways, pipes, electrical wiring, buildings, electrical plants, libraries, and other infrastructure that people hardly notice, but which are critical parts of the cybernetics that humans work within.
Bruce Sterling, in his Shaper/Mechanist universe, suggested an idea of an alternative cyborg called ‘Lobster’, which is made not by using internal implants, but by using an external shell (e.g. a powered exoskeleton).[7] Unlike human cyborgs, who appear human externally but are synthetic internally (e.g., the Bishop type in the Alien franchise), Lobster looks inhuman externally but contains a human internally (such as in Elysium and RoboCop). The computer game Deus Ex: Invisible War prominently featured cyborgs called Omar, which is a Russian translation of the word ‘Lobster’ (as the Omar are of Russian origin in the game).
Visual appearance of fictional cyborgs
In science fiction, the most stereotypical portrayal of a cyborg is a person (or, more rarely, an animal) with visible added mechanical parts. These include superhero Cyborg (DC Comics) and the Borg (Star Trek).
However, cyborgs can also be portrayed as looking more robotic or more organic. They may appear as humanoid robots, such as Robotman (from DC’s Doom Patrol) or most varieties of the Cybermen (Doctor Who); they can appear as non-humanoid robots such as the Daleks (again, from Doctor Who) or like the majority of the motorball players in Battle Angel Alita.
More human-appearing cyborgs may cover up their mechanical parts with armor or clothing, such as Darth Vader (Star Wars) or Misty Knight (Marvel Comics). Cyborgs may have mechanical parts or bodies that appear human. For example, the eponymous Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (from their respective television series) have prostheses externally identical to the body parts that they replace; while Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell) is a full-body cyborg whose body appears human. In these examples, among others, it is common for cyborgs to have superhuman (physical or mental) abilities, including great strength, enhanced senses, computer-assisted brains, or built-in weaponry.
Origins
The concept of a man-machine mixture was widespread in science fiction before World War II. As early as 1843, Edgar Allan Poe described a man with extensive prostheses in the short story “The Man That Was Used Up“. In 1911, Jean de La Hire introduced the Nyctalope, a science fiction hero who was perhaps the first literary cyborg, in Le Mystère des XV (later translated as The Nyctalope on Mars).[8][9][10] Nearly two decades later, Edmond Hamilton presented space explorers with a mixture of organic and machine parts in his 1928 novel The Comet Doom. He later featured the talking, living brain of an old scientist, Simon Wright, floating around in a transparent case, in all the adventures of his famous hero, Captain Future. In 1944, in the short story “No Woman Born“, C. L. Moore wrote of Deirdre, a dancer, whose body was burned completely and whose brain was placed in a faceless but beautiful and supple mechanical body.
In 1960, the term cyborg was coined by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline to refer to their conception of an enhanced human being who could survive in extraterrestrial environments:[11]
For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term ‘Cyborg’.
Their concept was the outcome of thinking about the need for an intimate relationship between human and machine as the new frontier of space exploration was beginning to open up. A designer of physiological instrumentation and electronic data-processing systems, Clynes was the chief research scientist in the Dynamic Simulation Laboratory at Rockland State Hospital in New York.
The term first appears in print 5 months earlier when The New York Times reported on the “Psychophysiological Aspects of Space Flight Symposium” where Clynes and Kline first presented their paper:
A cyborg is essentially a man-machine system in which the control mechanisms of the human portion are modified externally by drugs or regulatory devices so that the being can live in an environment different from the normal one.[12]
Thereafter, Hamilton would first use the term cyborg explicitly in the 1962 short story, “After a Judgment Day”, to describe the “mechanical analogs” called “Charlies,” explaining that “[c]yborgs, they had been called from the first one in the 1960s…cybernetic organisms.”
In 2001, a book titled Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer was published by Doubleday.[13] Some of the ideas in the book were incorporated into the 35-mm motion picture film Cyberman that same year.
Cyborg tissues in engineering
Cyborg tissues structured with carbon nanotubes and plant or fungal cells have been used in artificial tissue engineering to produce new materials for mechanical and electrical uses.
Such work was presented by Raffaele Di Giacomo, Bruno Maresca, and others, at the Materials Research Society‘s spring conference on 3 April 2013.[14] The cyborg obtained was inexpensive, light and had unique mechanical properties. It could also be shaped in the desired forms. Cells combined with multi-walled nanotubes (MWCNTs) co-precipitated as a specific aggregate of cells and nanotubes that formed a viscous material. Likewise, dried cells still acted as a stable matrix for the MWCNT network. When observed by optical microscopy, the material resembled an artificial “tissue” composed of highly packed cells. The effect of cell drying was manifested by their “ghost cell” appearance. A rather specific physical interaction between MWCNTs and cells was observed by electron microscopy, suggesting that the cell wall (the most outer part of fungal and plant cells) may play a major active role in establishing a carbon nanotube’s network and its stabilization. This novel material can be used in a wide range of electronic applications, from heating to sensing. For instance, using Candida albicans cells cyborg tissue materials with temperature sensing properties have been reported.[15]
Actual cyborgization attempts
Cyborg Neil Harbisson with his antenna implant
In current prosthetic applications, the C-Leg system developed by Otto Bock HealthCare is used to replace a human leg that has been amputated because of injury or illness. The use of sensors in the artificial C-Leg aids in walking significantly by attempting to replicate the user’s natural gait, as it would be prior to amputation.[16] Prostheses like the C-Leg and the more advanced iLimb are considered by some to be the first real steps towards the next generation of real-world cyborg applications.[citation needed] Additionally cochlear implants and magnetic implants which provide people with a sense that they would not otherwise have had can additionally be thought of as creating cyborgs.[citation needed]
In vision science, direct brain implants have been used to treat non-congenital (acquired) blindness. One of the first scientists to come up with a working brain interface to restore sight was a private researcher William Dobelle. Dobelle’s first prototype was implanted into “Jerry”, a man blinded in adulthood, in 1978. A single-array BCI containing 68 electrodes was implanted onto Jerry’s visual cortex and succeeded in producing phosphenes, the sensation of seeing light. The system included cameras mounted on glasses to send signals to the implant. Initially, the implant allowed Jerry to see shades of grey in a limited field of vision at a low frame-rate. This also required him to be hooked up to a two-ton mainframe, but shrinking electronics and faster computers made his artificial eye more portable and now enable him to perform simple tasks unassisted.[17]
In 1997, Philip Kennedy, a scientist and physician, created the world’s first human cyborg from Johnny Ray, a Vietnam veteran who suffered a stroke. Ray’s body, as doctors called it, was “locked in”. Ray wanted his old life back so he agreed to Kennedy’s experiment. Kennedy embedded an implant he designed (and named “neurotrophic electrode”) near the part of Ray’s brain so that Ray would be able to have some movement back in his body. The surgery went successfully, but in 2002, Johnny Ray died.[18]
In 2002, Canadian Jens Naumann, also blinded in adulthood, became the first in a series of 16 paying patients to receive Dobelle’s second-generation implant, marking one of the earliest commercial uses of BCIs. The second-generation device used a more sophisticated implant enabling better mapping of phosphenes into a coherent vision. Phosphenes are spread out across the visual field in what researchers call the starry-night effect. Immediately after his implant, Naumann was able to use his imperfectly restored vision to drive slowly around the parking area of the research institute.[19]
In contrast to replacement technologies, in 2002, under the heading Project Cyborg, a British scientist, Kevin Warwick, had an array of 100 electrodes fired into his nervous system in order to link his nervous system into the internet to investigate enhancement possibilities. With this in place, Warwick successfully carried out a series of experiments including extending his nervous system over the internet to control a robotic hand, also receiving feedback from the fingertips in order to control the hand’s grip. This was a form of extended sensory input. Subsequently, he investigated ultrasonic input in order to remotely detect the distance to objects. Finally, with electrodes also implanted into his wife’s nervous system, they conducted the first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans.[20][21]
Since 2004, British artist Neil Harbisson has had a cyborg antenna implanted in his head that allows him to extend his perception of colors beyond the human visual spectrum through vibrations in his skull.[22] His antenna was included within his 2004 passport photograph which has been claimed to confirm his cyborg status.[23] In 2012 at TEDGlobal,[24] Harbisson explained that he started to feel cyborg when he noticed that the software and his brain had united and given him an extra sense.[24] Neil Harbisson is a co-founder of the Cyborg Foundation (2004)[25] and cofounded the Transpecies Society in 2017, which is an association that empowers the individuals with non-human identities and supports them in their decisions to develop unique senses and new organs.[26] Neil Harbisson is a global advocate for the rights of cyborgs.
Rob Spence, a Toronto-based film-maker, who titles himself a real-life “Eyeborg,” severely damaged his right eye in a shooting accident on his grandfather’s farm as a child.[27] Many years later, in 2005, he decided to have his ever-deteriorating and now technically blind eye surgically removed,[28] whereafter he wore an eye patch for some time before he later, after having played for some time with the idea of installing a camera instead, contacted professor Steve Mann at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an expert in wearable computing and cyborg technology.[28]
Under Mann’s guidance, Spence, at age 36, created a prototype in the form of the miniature camera which could be fitted inside his prosthetic eye; an invention would come to be named by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2009. The bionic eye records everything he sees and contains a 1.5 mm-square, low-resolution video camera, a small round printed circuit board, a wireless video transmitter, which allows him to transmit what he is seeing in real-time to a computer, and a 3-voltage rechargeable Varta microbattery. The eye is not connected to his brain and has not restored his sense of vision. Additionally, Spence has also installed a laser-like LED light in one version of the prototype.[29]
Furthermore, many cyborgs with multifunctional microchips injected into their hand are known to exist. With the chips they are able to swipe cards, open or unlock doors, operate devices such as printers or, with some using a cryptocurrency, buy products, such as drinks, with a wave of the hand.[30][31][32][33][34]
More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg