When Buddhism entered China from the Greco-Buddhist world of Gandhara, it carried Hellenistic wind-god imagery: the wild-haired airborne form associated with Boreas and the great wind bag motif linked to Aeolus.
These Greco-Buddhist forms later passed into Japan through Chinese Buddhism, where they were adapted into the wind god Fūjin. The Gods took new names, but the Hellenic image endured from Greece to Japan.
Freudianism is an extreme example of the assertion of meaning where there is none, or very little.
It is extreme for two reasons: 1) because it is scientifically groundless and 2) because so many people believed it.
Communism, many religious beliefs and practices, fads, styles, ethnic myths, many “historical” misinterpretations, and much more are examples of false meanings that are asserted and believed by large numbers of people.
You could say that pretty much all human culture is a similar stew of strongly asserted falsehoods mixed with some facts.
Freud was an interesting writer and his ideas were and are worth considering, but they should have remained minor points in the history of psychology and never become “meanings” that influenced the entire Western world.
In this respect, Freudianism is an excellent sociological or macro example of what individuals do psychologically, on micro and meso levels with themselves and others.
Humans are extremely prone to append or assert meaning where it does not belong either because there is no “meaning” in that context or because the “meaning” being asserted is incorrect.
Freudianism shows how powerfully and massively wrong we often get meaning and how wrong our analyses of human thought, emotion, and behavior can be.
At the macro level of trends like Freudianism, we can and should have asked for evidence.
At the micro and meso levels of human psychological understanding we can and should ask for evidence or confirmation from the person or persons about whom we are asserting psychological meaning.
If you do this frequently with a trusted partner, you will begin to see that many of the “meanings” you append to that partner and to yourself are false.
False macro meanings like Freudianism can be corrected through science. At the micro or meso levels of the individual, wrong meanings can only be fully corrected through a practice like FIML.
In future we may be better able to understand micro and meso levels of interpersonal meaning through the use of brain scans, but even brain scans need interpretation and will be difficult to use during real-time, interpersonal interactions.
Introduction: Cannabis is by far the most widely used and abused drug listed on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule I, which includes drugs with a high potential for abuse. There is evidence of short-term negative effects of cannabis use on cognition, but only a limited number of studies have explored the association between cannabis use and age-related cognitive decline. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between cannabis use and age-related cognitive decline from early adulthood to late midlife.
Methods: The study population consisted of 5162 men who had participated in Danish follow-up studies on cognitive aging. These studies included scores on the military intelligence test Børge Prien’s Prøve from both the conscription assessment (mean age = 20 years; p1 and p99: 18 and 26 years) and from the follow-up (mean age = 64 years; p1 and p99: 55 and 72 years) as well as extensive data on lifestyle and health from the follow-up questionnaires. The association between cannabis use and age-related cognitive decline was investigated in linear regression models.
Results: Men with a history of cannabis use had less cognitive decline from early adulthood to late midlife compared to men without a history of cannabis use. Among cannabis users, neither age of initiation of cannabis use nor frequent use was significantly associated with a greater age-related cognitive decline.
Discussion and conclusions: In a sample of more than 5000 men followed for a mean of 44 years, we found no significant harmful effects of cannabis use on age-related cognitive decline.
Cannabis Use and Age-Related Changes in Cognitive Function From Early Adulthood to Late Midlife in 5162 Danish Men
Donald Trump is set to slash the arsenal of US fighter jets, warships and submarines reserved for NATO allies should a military crisis erupt in Europe.
A military envoy sent by Pete Hegseth blindsided senior NATO officials in a classified Brussels briefing late last week, revealing US firepower committed to defending Europe will significantly decline, Der Spiegel and Reuters reported.
The US fighter jet commitment to NATO is to be slashed by a third, while the Navy will withdraw destroyers from the alliance’s pool.
The cuts will gut the so-called ‘NATO Force Model,’ the alliance framework for defending Europe drawn up in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As the US prepares to eliminate its supply of submarines to NATO, it leaves open a massive military risk for the continent if its not able to fill the gap left behind by Trump.
US submarines are among NATO’s most critical assets in Europe because they are capable of monitoring Russia’s nuclear-armed underwater vessels.
Critical infrastructure for the west, such as undersea cables and oil pipelines, are safeguarded by the submarines.
This appears to be part of a major geopolitical reorganization. This sends a strong signal to Russia that USA is not going to continue NATO’s never-ending encroachment on Russia’s borders. And that means Russia and USA can now form real-world economic ties, beneficial to both nations. ABN
…What happened was captured on a neighbor’s security camera.
Shaw said her father stepped from his porch in an attempt to get the vehicle’s license plate number when Turner suddenly stopped his car and got out.
The two men exchanged words for several moments before the driver is alleged to have suddenly attacked.
‘Then out of nowhere, the guy punches my father on the side of the head,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t even try to defend himself. I don’t think he saw it coming.’
Poole crashed to the pavement after being hit, suffering a devastating head injury.
‘He fell, and the guy got back in his car and drove away,’ Shaw said. ‘He just left him lying in the road.’
Police later said Turner admitted to striking Poole and leaving the scene.
Not long ago, a sucker-punch was the sign of a coward and a knave, a worthless POS. A 40 year-old man sucker punching a 74 year-old man (he died aged 75), by standards some of us still hold, is a savage crime, as bad as it gets. That’s murder with a deadly weapon. Seems the interwebs have accustomed people to seeing sucker punches, and hearing some fool go oooh, oooh in approval off camera. There may be no way to go back to the old days when men valued honor, but that single punch given without warning and killing the victim is the fundamental reason sucker-punches have traditionally always been anathema among civilized men. Same goes for men hitting women. I saw a vid just last night of some woman slapping and punching her husband in the head many times. At some point, he belted her hard several times in the head, knocking her senseless to the ground. Guys, it’s a rare woman who can throw a punch that even hurts, and this woman was not that type. She was angry, she was being stupid, but all she did was land a flurry of very weak blows on her much stronger husband. A strong man can kill a woman, or an elderly man, with one punch. That’s why men hitting women—or old men without warning—has also always been looked down on in Western societies. Yes, there are times when a woman can and should be hit by a man, but they are rare and almost never warrant a deadly punch, full-force to her head. The dude in the video landed several hard punches to her head before she crashed into the pavement. Most of the comments on his behavior were approving, a sad sign of our times. ABN
Choline is one of the few nutrients where the US population is genuinely under-consuming by intake. NHANES data show only 6.6% of US adults aged 19 and above meet the Adequate Intake (Wallace and Fulgoni, J Am Coll Nutr 2016). The shortfall is even larger in adolescents.
That matters because choline is not optional metabolism. It is the precursor for phosphatidylcholine (the major phospholipid in every cell membrane and the carrier that packages VLDL out of the liver), for the acetylcholine that runs cholinergic neurotransmission, and for betaine, a methyl donor that backstops the folate-dependent methylation system.
This is a superb modern version of traditional political art cartoons that date back centuries. If you are on X, please give this genius a follow. I have zero relationship with the artist, but love her work. ABN
American Buddhist Net 