This is the best documentary i’ve seen about Big Pharma. I encourage you to watch all 6 parts of this… totals at just under an hour, altogether. I also encourage you to share share share with your loved ones. If anyone can be saved from pathologizing their own human experience, it will be worth the email.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh99CN5tLrc&feature=PlayList&p=CAE3D87D47BB9CEA&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=22

Reposted from http://seeinggood.com/the-cure-for-discontentment-use-it/

In my unemployment I’ve become a bit of an Internet addict. Between Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, my blog, and the fifty others in my Google Reader, I could easily fill an entire work week seeking and sharing information. As I’ve trolled the net these past couple months, I’ve realized the digital era feeds into the collective discontent that defines us as a nation—this idea that no matter what heights we reach, there is still something missing. 10 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power; 15 Ways to Shrink Your Waistline; 20 Ideas to Make More Money—these posts just remind us we can always be smarter, thinner, stronger, richer, happier, or just plain better than we are now.

Yesterday I found a post on Zen Habits—one of my favorite blogs—that addresses this very issue. Leo offers several cures for discontentment, including:

1. Change your attitude and perspective.

2. Take some kind of positive action.

3. Do something that gives you meaning.

I think the first is the most useful suggestion, but not for the reason you may imagine. Perhaps our discontent isn’t something to be cured but rather something to be accepted, appreciated, and leveraged.

I’m not suggesting we should accept unhappiness as the norm—just that we need to acknowledge the factors that encourage discontent and realize they aren’t going anywhere. Our society breeds dissatisfaction because it feeds the consumer machine. We don’t live in Bhutan—a nation that measures its success in gross national happiness. We live in a place where every day someone creates a revolutionary diet, publishes a ground-breaking self-help book, and creates a newer, more exciting technology that promises to simplify our lives.

We’re constantly inundated with advertising messages that imply happiness is just a face cream, cocktail, or gadget away. According to Juliette Schor, Boston College Professor of Sociology and author of Born to Buy, we’re programmed to accept the connection between consumption and happiness when we see advertising as children—at a time when we’re incapable of rational thinking. My point: dissatisfaction is rooted in our culture. Hell, it’s part of the human condition: the never-ending pursuit of meaning and answers to why we’re here. While we may find respite from our searching through meditation, selfless giving, and appreciation for what we have, odds are we will never fully relinquish the tendency to look for something more.

That doesn’t have to be such a bleak realization. One of my favorite quotes (anonymous) is “Always be happy, but never be satisfied.” It didn’t resonate with me at first because I didn’t recognize the distinction. But there is one. Unhappiness creates emptiness. Dissatisfaction breeds progress. I believe in acknowledging the factors that encourage discontentment, we can learn to identify the difference between enough and lacking in our lives—and then leverage our discontent for positive change.

If you dislike that your excess weight affects your quality of life, you may start a new exercise regime and become stronger for you and your family. If you’re dissatisfied with the practices in your business, you could innovate and come up with a more efficient, streamlined process. If you’re unhappy with your mother’s experience fighting cancer, you might raise funds to support treatments that ease the side effects of chemo. If you’re frustrated with our government’s policies, you just may run for office and fill a nation with hope for change in a time when it couldn’t be more indispensable. Discontent is only dangerous if you turn it against yourself instead of letting it empower you.

If that’s what you tend to do—if you are, in fact, persistently unhappy—I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t think anyone can offer a complete recipe for happiness in a blog post (or even a book for that matter). But I can offer you a piece of insight that helps me when I start looking for more: if there’s something that’s bothering you that you can control, address it. At the same time, ask yourself this question: can I still enjoy this moment, even though there are things I’d like to change?

Related Reading: The Power of Realistic Positive Thinking

What do you think? Should we pursue cures for discontent? Is it possible or advisable to become permanently satisfied?

By Lori Deschene, Photo Romancement

If you enjoyed this post, please support seeinggood.com by suscribing or sharing this post on Digg/StumbleUpon/Twitter (@BeMeaningful).

Lori Deschene is a San Francisco-based writer and editor. Visit her blog about positive thinking at seeinggood.com.

“MacLean says that the three brains operate like three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory. He refers to these three brains as the Neo-Cortex or neo-mammalian brain of the frontal lobes of the cerebrum; the Limbic or paleo-mammalian system of the mid-brain and thalamus; and the Reptilian brain – the brain-stem and cerebellum.  Each of the three brains is connected by nerves to the other two, but each seems to operate to some extent independently, as its own brain system with distinct capacities. Each successive layer of the Triune Brain contains a progressively more complex infrastructure of nerve cells, and the neurons which connect them are terminated within the three levels, almost as if the higher functions were tacked on as an afterthought.”

The reptile brain handles our basic survival instincts while our lower mammal brain handles our emotions. Lastly, the frontal lobe is in charge of abstract thinking, empathy, and all the other things that make us (and other higher mammals) so unique in this world. What fascinates me is how these ancient artifacts lodged in our minds are still slaves to the old rituals. You would think that it’d be somewhat like the human appendix… obsolete with no signs of functionality. But we can see the lower brains at work around us every day.

Think of things in terms of the reptile mind next time you are out at a bar on a busy night. You can see ancient courtship rituals at work… males establishing their alpha-ness… People ganging up on the weak… nodding their heads in approval of the strong… and it becomes more pronounced as the alcohol takes it toll. The medulla oblongata activates… fights break out… muscles are flexed… colors are brandished.

When you understand that we are slaves to these atavistic tendencies, it explains so much. Like why so many of us to behave in petty ways under the pressure of social scenarios. We hold ourselves up to this lofty standard of human behavior and yet, at times, we seem to automatically react to situations and revert to behavior unfitting of a species so supposedly advanced and cultured.

I have felt guilty in the past when I’ve reverted to old reptilian behavior. There have been instances where I wonder why I have a hard time warming up to certain people… times where I’ve been irresistibly drawn to “show off” in front of others… times where I’ve been unnaturally butt-hurt over things that shouldn’t matter… and I have had also been upset with friends who acted in strange ways when girls are around and I’ve judged them for it… thinking of it as a character flaw or an issue of maturity. When I think of it from this new perspective though, this “auto-pilot” behavior becomes forgivable, natural and humorous.

These ancient subroutines govern our happiness and, when they kick in, we are at their mercy. I vow that we all stop beating ourselves (and others) up over these little slips in civilized behavior. Let’s embrace our reptilian components and learn to  appreciate these little rituals and outbursts when they happen. This is not to say we should just run amok with little regard for other people’s feelings… remember, the reptile part of brain occupies less than 5% of the total mass of our gourds. Rather, we should recognize it for what it is so that we can understand and adjust our behavior for the better whenever possible.

Update:  Seth Godin on Quieting the Lizard Brain

We were looking at this shape at work today right after i got done eating some fun-dip. Yes… fun-dip. As in lick-m-aid. Someone gave me one for valentine’s day… so when i looked at this popsicle-stick shaped thing, the first thing i thought of was the white stick that comes with fun-dip. My coworker, on the other hand, said “that looks like a pregnancy test.”

I just thought it was funny that the same shape made me think of something that you put in your mouth, and she saw something that you pee on.

Eye contact is a funny thing. When I’m in an interview or something, i have really good control over my eye contact. I spend several seconds looking into each person’s eyes and smiling… making it like I’m speaking only to them… but passing a coworker or a friend in the hallway? Things get a little weird.

Imagine you and i are about to pass each other in a hallway like two ships in the night… In the above image, the blue arrow represents your path… the reddish arrow represents my path… and the dotted line shows where the fuck my gaze travels as my brain desperately tries to excuse itself for being there with you.

Strange how that works. It’s the same thing as when I’m DJing. If it’s for a room full of strangers, i don’t even break a sweat (unless things go really wrong)… but if it’s for a small room full of close friends, i’m a nervous wreck. It has something to do with knowing you’ll see those people again, and with caring about what they think of you.

So when i see you coming down the hall, i acknowledge you first… then i do that shoegaze thing… followed by a wandering interest in the pattern on the wall. At around point (A) on the line, i realize how weird i must look to you so i look back over to you and make eye contact again… i smile at you. 9 times out of 10 we will have some kind of exchange… but that 10th time you just stare back… no smile… no words… and then i’m checking out the sound deadening tiles on the ceiling… my cell phone… the fire extinguisher…

A little eye contact makes a huge difference in things like client-meetings… sales pitches… presentations… so why am i good at doing it for those strangers but not you? Maybe i’m only outgoing for as long as i absolutely need to be. Maybe once you’re my friend, i am comfortable with sliding right back into my shell.

I like to do the bare minimum

Next week on I’m a Fucking Mess: “Who opens the door to the restaurant when you arrive at it simultaneously with your same-sex friend?”

As you can see, as time has gone by, my appreciation of language-based humor has become stronger and stronger… and inevitably, more “granular.” A friend recently told me “I don’t know anybody that appreciates typos as much as you.” And it is true. My recent dissection and adoption of “HAW” (link) illustrates this perfectly.

So if you refer to the chart, you can see how appreciation and usage rise pretty steadily together, until the “point of no return”, which i am well beyond now. After this point, my appreciation hits some sort of critical mass and i begin telling jokes based on other jokes… layer upon layer… so as the appreciation continues to rise steadily, my usage rises exponentially.

And as my usage goes through the roof, the jokes become more “inside” (requiring more and more explanation for those who haven’t been following along the whole time)… and accessibility falls off… What i find funny becomes so exclusive that it appears to be complete gibberish to the underprivileged masses.

The vertical line on the left with the +/- signs should probably say “level of gibberish.” The “point of no return” is really the point where the level of gibberish builds too quickly for the general public. But after thinking about this a while, it got me thinking about humor in general… are ALL jokes “gibberish” to some extent? What makes something “funny?”… Remember that scene in Short Circuit where Steve Guttenberg tests the robot for sentience by seeing if it could understand jokes? Getting a computer to understand the humor in “why did the chicken cross the road” is not a simple task. It must be more than the level or irony that makes something “funny”… It’s fascinating that a good sense of humor appears to be proof of free-thought or something… It’s all gibberish to a machine. So is gibberish evidence of free thought? Is the soul rooted in madness?

It’s like they say… there is no right or wrong… just popular opinion. Everybody is insane. You hear of those creative genius types whose art is argued over as being either “pointless” or “genius”… Are these people simply somewhere slightly above that “point of no return?”… and the crazy cat lady who stands on the corner laughing at passing traffic… is she just so high up on the gibberish level that she’s totally left us all behind? Maybe she’s not lost in there. Maybe she’s simply sight-seeing in higher realms of human experience.

So yeah… to all you janky people who continually crack me up with all the engrish and all the “wat?” and “feh” and all the numbers embedded in your exclamation points… keep it up. And to you i dedicate a hearty HAW. Carry on.

from an episode of 30 Rock i saw the other day:

Kenneth: The personal essay is way harder than I thought, cause it’s not in my nature to brag on myself.
Jenna: Not even a back door brag?
Kenneth: What’s a back door brag?
Jenna: Backdoor bragging is sneaking something wonderful about yourself in everyday conversation. Like when I tell people it’s hard for me to watch American Idol cause I have perfect pitch. You try it!

Back door bragging… now that they’ve brought it to my attention, it’s all i hear. It seems like just about everybody does a little back door bragging from time to time… Others do it almost continuously and never even realize it.

In my ongoing quest to be a better person, often i am stopped dead in my tracks by the realization that somehow i have fallen off my path… and i am humbled all over again… which is frustrating because, just when you think you are on the path to enlightenment, you realize how far away from the goal you really are. This 30 Rock episode brought me to yet another one of these epiphanies… this back door bragging thing is a new hurdle, previously camouflaged by my own ego. How often have i done it? Have i ever been looked down upon at my job because of it? It’s like suddenly i’ve taken a microscope to all the minutia of my behavior.

The other night i rewrote an email 4 times before sending it, taking great care to remove every instance of back door bragging… and i was constantly amazed at how it would rear it’s ugly head in a new form, every time i tried to remove it. I finally got it right… but man, i cut the length of my email nearly in half. I was worried that all i’d have left to say is “lol” or something… but as luck would have it, i really do have real things to say… it just takes a while to undress them sometimes.

It depends on the audience too… you are probably not at risk of back door bragging in the company of certain friends… but just wait until you run into your ex one morning on your way to work… before you’ve had your coffee… on the one day you dressed like a total ass-clown… yeah chances are your insecurities are going to kick in, and some bragging is gonna slip out your back door… another good reason to invest in adult diapers now.

They say that within a demon’s name lies it’s power. And now i get what that means. Now that THIS demon has a name, i have conscious control over it. It’s important that i don’t back door brag, considering how enlightened i am to begin with… more than most people, actually. People often compare me to ghandi and it wouldn’t be very becoming of me to start back door bragging now. I probably only did it a FEW times anyway… which was probably due to the enormous stress that comes with being such a positive role model. It’s hard for someone like me to rest, you understand, because when you’re everyone’s favorite, people just constantly need your attention. Why just the other day i was blessing this baby while saving a cat from a burning tree… ah nevermind.

Tonight is the birthday dinner of one of my best friends… and I totally flaked at the last minute. I texted him and told him I just wasn’t feeling up to going to the sushi bar in midtown… and at first I thought it was because of my anxiety issues… SPECIFICALLY those stemming from my bad experience with midtown at night and how i’ve always dreaded going anywhere in midtown after dark since that day.

So I called him and tried to explain this to him and i also mentioned how i wasn’t really feeling like being in a loud restaurant full of people… and he reassured me that it was a group of about 10 mutual friends… all of whom i know and know well. I should be stoked to hang out with everybody.

It’s true. I SHOULD be stoked to hang out with that many close friends at the same time. So what is my deal? Why do i play the hermit so damn often in a world so full of nurturing?

It just dawned on me that this is the same shit I always used to do in high school. I don’t know why i never connected my behavior of the last few years with my behavior back then. In high school i had a group of around 10 extremely close friends. We would hang out constantly… and quickly i noticed a trend. I was always breaking away from the group with one or two friends and starting a little “sub-group”…

Some of my friends didn’t understand why this was always the case. The truth here is that I much prefer hanging out in a small group. While i love large get-togethers, i really never feel like i get any quality hang-out time in a large group. I feel like everyone is talking at the same time and nobody really gets heard. A lot of times i get irritated in a large group when everyone is yelling to hear over the din. But i end up feeling really lame about it because i’m the only person i know with this hangup.

Take the Ambient Mafia, for example. I am quite fond of many of the folx in this group. But i have only gotten to hang out with a few of them in a one-on-one setting… and only one or two times at best. But I HAVE been to several handfuls of parties with almost all of them at once… Two years later, I still don’t know most of these people as much as i’d like. I feel like i have to divide my attention among so many people and catch up with everyone at parties and by the end of the night I haven’t had any deeply interpersonal experiences… maybe that’s my fault… i dunno.

So anyway…feeling kinda lame about sitting home alone while literally everyone that is dear to me is having fun together tonight out on the town… and mike i hope you understand a bit of where i’m coming from, even if you can’t relate. I really want to spend some time with you in a quieter environment next week. But tonight I’m just… just weird i guess. Maybe it’s my fear of midtown at night COMBINED with my problem with large groups… i really don’t know for sure.

So yeah that goes for all of the rest of you too… if someday you see me at a house-party or gathering and i’m off in a corner somewhere talking to just one person all night… please don’t take offense to it. The truth is, i am really really interested in who you are and what makes you tick. I guess i just need a little space so that i can hear you.

I know i hyped it up for so long and I spent every free moment this month practicing this live set… The fact of the matter is, I had a phone interview with a kick-ass design firm in Mountain View and I have until monday morning to put together a presentation that will knock their socks off… So I have to cancel on the whole weekend. Career comes first and all that …. (and i really think this is the one)

so anyway yeah. You can slap the shit outta me next time you see me… probably at SF SantaCon if you can make it. And by that time, if everything goes right, I will be living and working a lot closer… and we can stagger back to my place and throw up in our santa bags.

Seacrest out.

I swear the cup makes a huge difference. i just haven’t been able to figure out WHY.

This morning i realized that crisp new dollar bills make my fingers smile. Why does new money feel good?

Letting your head slide down between two cold pillows so they cover your ears… mmmm… that’s the stuff.

The first sip of carbonated soda in the morning… and that delectable burn that you can feel going all the way down your throat…. ahhhhhhh!

There are probably a milion other simple subtle pleasures that I enjoy… but i can’t think of any… what are some of yours?