DrmDoc

DREAM CONTENT If I may entreat your interest just a bit further, this is my final post on this topic: Perhaps, through my prior posts and links, I have minimally established that dream content arises from the stimuli our brain experiences amid its metabolic arousal during sleep. I said that the sensory experiences (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) our dreams encompass are how our conscious, waking-state brain interprets or assesses the resonant stimuli it believes it experienced amid sleep. In support, I cited rapid eye movement (REM) as evidence of our sleeping brain’s interpretive responses to stimuli of a type that affects eye movement. While awake, eye movement is a reflexive response to visual stimuli, which is incongruent with the supposed effect of closed eyelids in sleep. While sleeping, our closed eyelids supposedly shield our sight from the distraction of real visual experiences in our sleep environment. The non sequitur of sleep stimuli relative to our actual experiences while asleep begs a question--what “type” of stimuli is it in sleep that our brain interprets and we perceive as sensory related when we awake? In prior comments, I said that memory storage is more like a path that stimuli travel to reach a state of permanency. I said that our experiences become permanent memories through a repetition of familiar stimuli along familiar paths (neural circuits) to their storage places in the brain. Further, I said that a functionally misunderstood subcortical brain structure (hippocampus) enhances what we remember through repeated stimulation of those memory circuits. For example, the memories we use to navigate our conscious, waking-state experience of life rely on the continual stimulation of the memory circuits associate with those waking-state experiences. This perspective of memory in brain function is applicable to overall brain function, as well as the type and source of the stimuli our sleeping brain experiences. As the memories we use to navigate life experience emerge from the continual stimuli or repeated stimulation we experience daily, our dream content emerges from the resonant, neural aftereffects of that same stimuli. Like a bell that resonates after striking, subcortical brain structures like the hippocampus continue to resonate the effects of unconsciously impactful stimuli into the interpretive response centers of our dreaming brain. Dream content interprets the resonant neural “effects” of stimuli that persist in sleep and, as essentially effects, dream content describes something indirectly related to an original and real source of sensory stimuli. This resonant relation to real experience extenuates the meaningful nature of dream content and why that content decrypts our unconscious experience.

Hello again, While re-watching a PBS NOVA program on the “Mysteries of Sleep”, I was struck by how little popular research understands brain function and how much misinformation is disseminated about sleep and dreaming to the public because of it. One research presenter on the program, neuroscientist Rebecca Spencer, described the impact of sleep on memory formation relative to hippocampus function. Rebecca described the hippocampus as storage for temporary memory files that gets moved and organized into permanent memory storage during sleep. Rebecca theorizes that when sleep is deprived our ability to retain memory of what we’ve learned is impaired but she doesn’t explain how or why this impairment occurs. Like most researchers, Rebecca’s concepts of brain function appear to be based on a functional appearance that has no clear basis in our brain’s functional evolution, IMO. Brain function conforms to the nature of its evolution in that the functionality of recent brain developments is dependent on the function of earlier developments. As with most structures along the neural circuit for memory formation in the brain, the hippocampus is merely a subcortical depot or weigh stations for stimuli before reaching the memory functions in the neocortex. As a weigh station, the hippocampus adds a quality to stimuli that defines its memory impact, quality or worthiness. From this perspective, the neocortex is where all memories--short and long-term--are filed and the hippocampus merely rates or categorizes the nature of stimuli on its path to the neocortex. Rather than a shuttling of stimuli from short to long-term storage, memory is more like a path that stimuli travel to reach a state of permanency. Our experiences become permanent memories through a repetition of familiar stimuli along familiar paths to their storage places in the brain. The hippocampus enhances what we remember through repeated stimulation of those memory circuits. When we learn something for the first time, the path of memory to that experience is short due to continuous stimulation. As we go about our day, the path of memory to that first time experience begins to lengthen as other experiences fill the divide with more recent stimulation. Stimuli produces cell waste, which litters the path of stimuli to memory. The glymphatic processes in sleep clears the path of continual stimulation to memory of recently learned experiences thus enhancing related memory functions. This may partly explain why PTSD sufferers experience abnormal sleep as these very same glymphatic processes also clear a path for memories of recent traumatic experiences also.

Hello All, Previously, I've posted my general thoughts on the Progression of Sleep to Dreaming in the Speculation Forum because they were based on my personal assessment of compelling meta data. I've finalized my perspective on this topic and I have posting my thoughts here in the Psychology Forum because I believe they are beyond speculation. If you should disagree, be well prepared with your arguments. Let us begin: Dreaming is a perceptual activity our brain engages primarily amid its unconscious state of brain function. The dreams we recall upon arousal from sleep are a collection of perceptual experiences because their content consciously interprets as sensory data (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) that describes something our conscious, waking-state brain perceives or interprets as having experienced while in its unconscious state of sleep. Dreams are not products of random neuron firings, neuron realignments, or memory consolidation processes as some researchers theorize or believe. In fact, they are interpretations of stimuli our active unconscious brain receives or experiences amid sleep and, as such, they are meaningful. The theory for random neuron firings, arises either from the nonsensical appearance of dream content or from researchers’ inability to clearly determine or understand the mechanisms for dreaming. The theory for neuron realignments and memory consolidation (Psychology Today) primarily arises through post-dreaming and brain damage cognitive studies without consideration of the glymphatic system's effect in the removal of cognition obstructing chemistry and interstitial cell waste (See Progression of Sleep to Dreaming). The basis for these popular dreaming theories is further flawed (IMO) through inadequate consideration for how the dreaming brain likely evolved. In consideration of a contiguous path of brain evolution, dreams are interpretations of stimuli synchronous with the evolved nature of brain function in that recently evolved neural developments are dependent on the functionality of earlier developments, which confers the neocortex's functional dependency on links to subcortical relays. Via its subcortical relays, our brain receives, accesses, and responds to stimuli. It mediates our bodily systems, behavioral and sensory responses based on the stimuli it receives and experiences. Dreams are interpretive responses to stimuli and, as interpretations, dream content does not describe sensory experiences but rather stimuli relative to those experiences based on our brain’s store of life experiences. Dreams are meaningful in that they arise from stimuli that can be related to real life experiences. For example, we would not be able to visually dream about a car or house without real life perceptual experiences and references relative to cars and houses. This is confirmed by the non visual, tactile dream content of the congenitally blind. So, one might ask, if dream content in an interpretation of stimuli relative to real life experiences and references, how and why does the brain confer such specific interpretations to this stimuli content? The short and most basic answer is metabolic homeostasis (See Progression of Sleep to Dreaming). The long and most complex answer regards the unconscious nature of human psychology. Although, from my perspective, our unconscious brain function and dream experiences can be extraordinary, it is not essential that each of us should have such interest. The cognitive, conscious experience of real life is more important to our mental health and wellbeing than immersing oneself in a subject where so much is misinterpreted and so very little is generally understood. Dreaming is an autonomous process which functions quite well without our conscious consideration or interference. I welcome your thoughts.

Hello Again, At the start of this discussion thread I referenced our brain’s metabolic homeostasis with very little context. My intent was to further but briefly describe how this process is at the basis our perceptual experiences and responses. In the brain, maintaining homeostasis involves the processes that balance the metabolic impact of our brain’s afferent, perceptual, sensory experiences with our brain’s efferent responses to those experiences. Essentially, the homeostatic mechanism in the brain is like a scale which balances our perceptual experiences with our perceptual responses. The neural transference of sensory experience to the brain from our sense organs relies on the extraction of blood nutrients in the brain. Conversely, our brain’s neural responses to those sensory experiences rely on those very same nutrients and extraction processes. Therefore, metabolic homeostasis regards maintaining a balance of blood nutrients in the brain to power the exchanges between our neural sensory and response processes. Sleep and dreaming are essentially aspects of our brain’s response processes and, in part, how our brain mediates its homeostasis. Many years ago, I began my study of the dreaming brain with an interest in understanding the significance of often extraordinary dream content. Along the way, I learned much more than I'm able to convey here other than to say that dreams are indeed meaningful interpretive responses to stimuli that emerge amid sleep when our unconscious brain function is uniquely receptive to such stimuli. Perhaps the clearest example for this is rapid eye movement (REM) amid dream sleep, which is a efferent neural response suggesting our brain's unconscious sensitivity to stimuli of a type that affects eye movement.

Hello All, I'm compiling the meta data for inclusion in my next book but I thought I might briefly describe the process here for your blistering criticism before I do. Well, here go: The whole of healthy brain function is predicated on it's ability to maintain its metabolic homeostasis, which is its ability to maintain its metabolic balance. Through conscious cognitive activity, sleep emerges in the brain from an accumulation of interstitial waste (adenosine) which affects its ability to process or metabolize blood nutrients. This accumulation occurs amid brain volume swelling by as much as 6% from the previous sleep cycle. This swelling is likely a consequence of increased blood pressure and circulation caused by conscious related activity. The swelling this increase blood pressure causes narrows the brain’s ventricles and affects the efficiency of the glymphatic processes that remove extracellular waste from the brain. Melatonin production is triggered as a secondary effect of this waste build-up. Melatonin decreases or slows the brain’s metabolic processes, which decreases brain activity and produces drowsiness. As the brain cycles through increasingly diminishing activity, blood pressure begins to drop and brain volume begins to decrease. During sleep, brain volume may decrease by as much as 6%. When this de-escalation of activity in the brain reaches the prefrontal or when the prefrontal experiences sustained levels of decreased activity (stimulation), atonia initiates. During atonia, the brain disengages its muscle readiness postures, which may causes a more precipitous drop in our overall blood pressure as our musculature relaxes and blood flow to our muscles becomes less constricted. Atonal muscle posture is clearly evinced by male penile erection amid sleep. This drop in pressure causes an equally precipitous drop in blood supply to the brain, which creates a metabolic imbalance or deficiency. Once detected, that drop (deficiency) in brain blood supply triggers activations in the brain to increase blood flow and metabolism. This detection occurs as a consequence of the glymphatic system's efficiency in removing sensory suppressing cell waste (adenosine) and chemistry (melatonin) from the brain amid NREM sleep. Adenosine and melatonin suppresses the brain's sensitivity to afferent sensory stimuli. Dreaming occurs as a consequence of the increased metabolic activity caused by its increased sensitivity to stimuli amid atonic sleep. That increased metabolic activity involve the activation of the Glut4 protein which extracts glucose from the brains blood supply. (Seeker YouTube video on How the Brain Powers Thought) As these activations begin to reach sustained levels affecting our brain's prefrontal, it reengages our body's tonic muscle-ready postures, which may produce full arousal or return the brain state to NREM depending on the brain’s stage of waste removal. During the early stages of the sleep cycle, the brain may reemerge from atonia and dreaming into a state of NREM. Because dreaming produces extracellular waste, brain volume may not have recovered, and its ventricles may not have widen sufficiently to effectively facilitate removal of that additional cell waste. Also, the additional stimuli of tonic muscle posture coupled with the cell waste that dreaming produces, more melatonin may be produced to sustain lower levels of brain activation as the brain returns to another cycle of NREM glymphatic cleansing. Full arousal and wakefulness may only occur with sustained levels of increased or increasing prefrontal activations due to the removal of chemistry that suppresses brain activity. This is in no way a detailed description of the process but rather the direction the meta data appears to lead. I await your critique!

If not considered in earlier discussion, this election was a referendum on Trump that likely owes victory to Republicans rather than Progressives, Democrats, or some other independent affiliation. The evidence for this is suggested by the loss that House Democrats experienced and their failure to make significant gains in the Senate despite Biden's nearly 5 million more popular votes than Trump. This significant margin of popular votes suggests to me that a large number of Republicans crossed party lines to vote for Biden while continuing their support for down ticket Republicans. If other affiliations were responsible for Biden's victory, they likely would have also elected a congress that would likely support rather than potentially obstruction his administration's goals.

If I now understand correctly, your question essentially regards whether there remains discoveries in science yet to be found that could lead to new inventions and innovations. The short answer is a resounding yes! We have not yet discovered all there is to be discovered in science; therefore, we have not yet reached the end of the potentially new inventions and innovations that new scientific discoveries could provide. Physics, math, exploration, and experimentation are all likely paths to the discoveries that will propel future invention.

The notion that someone with only specialized knowledge is capable of invention is limiting in itself. Need inspires invention and invention is only limited by one's own imagination and determination. A trite comment I know, but so long as we have needs and a capacity to think and reason, we will invent and innovate to satisfy those needs. Not just our contemporary needs but also those unforeseen needs that evolve as humanity and our world evolves. Need most often arise as we go about our careers and daily lives with a sense that what we are doing can be done more safely, beneficially or, perhaps, efficiently. Most often, we intuit invention and innovation step-by-step in small measures from what facilitates our efforts to achieve the safety, benefit, or efficiency we personally desire. Therefore, if the question is "How do I invent or innovate?", the answer is to begin by searching your own needs and then expand your search for needs that may extend beyond you as your society and this world evolves. Anticipate future needs, then look for small ways to satisfy those needs.

Trust begins with yourself and your own judgement. Indeed, as newborns, we acquire our measure of trust in ourselves and others by experiences that inform trustworthiness. For me that experience began with mathematics and how it always provides an unwavering basis for logical thinking. Specifically, for me, a very basic algebraic equation, (If a=b and b=c, then a=c) has been my unwavering basis in whatever I chose to study. Rational, trustworthy thoughts and perspectives should have a basis in logical thinking and real evidence. Trust also involves a capacity to consider the logic and evidence that opposing views offer. Experts may only be knowledgeable to an end supporting a biased perspective of which they might not be aware, which is why opposing views must be part of a rigorous vetting process. Before I trust, even my own perspective, I weigh all arguments and evidence against that trust. Whatever and whomever we chose to trust should have a basis in our own investigation of all the available evidence for and against them--in my opinion.

I recall a recent PBS/NOVA program on this very subject, which traced the evolution of the alphabet. This series traced the root path of the written language we all use today from a combination of stylized pictures to form words and phases (Rebus) to the actual letters many written languages use including Arabic script. I found the program most informative. I hope this helps.

After more than four decades of private study, there remains much I haven't figured out myself about dreams and the nature of dreaming. However, what meager insights I have managed to glean from the science suggest that every aspect of dream content is descriptive of either a mental or social influence. To understand why Doc Gooden often appears as a character in your dream, you'll have to view him as you would a word in a sentence that conveys either a mental or social meaning. For example, a house's depiction in your dream could describe your unconscious perceptions of either a mental or social structure such as the state of one's sanity or marriage. Very often, the people in our dreams interpret the mental effects of certain social influences. In your dreams, Doc Gooden describes as social influence that has had a Doc Gooden-like social affect on either your thoughts or behavior. How you might perceive Doc Gooden's personality in real life defines what social affect his character in your dreams interprets. If I may add, whatever we are capable of experiencing in physical reality, can and does appear in our dreams. The content of our dreams relies on the stores of memories we've amassed through life experience. For example, if we were raised in a world without knowledge of cars, cars would not appear in our dreams. Dreaming in either color or black and white isn't unusual. Like every other aspect of dream content, coloring is an interpretation--how our active unconscious brain interprets some aspect of what it believe it's experiencing amid the sleep process. If I may also add to other references in this discussion regard an inability to recall dream details and content, memory was evolved for experiences that had a real physical/material impact on the survival of ancestral animals. Dreams are mental experiences and do not arise concurrent real life experience. Our dreaming brain is able to detect our dreams' non-association with impactful real life experience and, consequently, do not retain memories of them easily.

I agree, dreaming isn't any more miraculous than how we might perceive a bike ride in the park. While bike riding, our perception of our experiences and surrounding is instantaneous. We immediately know that the trees we see are trees, the flower we smell are flowers, and the birds we hear are birds. While dreaming, the distinction that's not well understood is that the entire scenario of riding a bike, seeing trees, flowers, and hearing birds is an interpretation of an experience or stimuli with meaning beyond mere appearance. Perhaps more simply, the entire scenario describes a mental experience, which is something immaterial understood through material references. Our brain isn't creating data when we dream, it's presenting an interpretation of data. Perhaps the best way to understand dreams is to think of them in figurative terms. For example, a dream about running describes a mental action.

Those spontaneous, frame-by-frame dream depictions are merely a perceptual illusion, which our brain's unconscious interpretive processes create. Although not very well understood by most, our dreams are interpretations of stimuli or influence. As interpretations, dreams are akin to a type of language wherein perceptual references and experiences convey meaning rather than words alone. Ours dreams are not creations from our unconscious mind's recesses, they're references our dreaming brain extrapolates using our memory store of life experiences to interpret or understand what are essentially the mental effects of being unconsciously active and stimulated. Dreams are interpretive responses to stimuli that is quite like our responses to spoken languages. Our dreams seemingly seamless perceptual experiences are like the flow of our perception and understanding as someone speaks to us in our native language.

If I understand you correctly, If I'm not too late to this discussion, you experienced something in a dream you didn't understand that was later explained to you by another, more knowledgeable character in your dream. Because your dreams emerge from what appears to be the recesses of your own mind, you presumed this experience to be precognitive in that a character of your mind's creation revealed an insight before or beyond your initial understanding in the dream. First, this is definitively not an example of dream precognition. A clearer example would involve dream imagery and experiences of future events in your life before they occurred that you could not possibility have known would occur. An example might involve dreaming about a series of lottery numbers and then witnessing those exact numbers being drawn in an actual, subsequent lottery--which is something many, including myself, have often experienced. The mechanism for this kind of unconscious precognition involves the cyclical nature of life experience and our unconscious mind's extraordinary ability to detect and integrate the past and current presentment of those cyclical experience into a forecast of probable future events--it's like standing on a mountain and forecasting the arrival of a storm from the clouds we see in the distance. Dreaming is a byproduct of activations in the brain arising from its metabolic processes amid sleep. At about 5% of body mass, our brain consumes about 20% of our body's overall energy uptake. During sleep, our brain's metabolic need persist and that persistent need causes the arousal that initiates dreaming. Dreaming is our brain's interpretive response to the stimuli it perceives during its arousal process amid sleep as it engages its metabolic needs. Your dream recall interprets something your brain believes it experienced while in your unconscious state of sleep. Your dream appears to interpret your unconscious experience of something ordinary (dirt imagery) from which you would learn something more substantial (sawdust/bullet hole imagery) from a more knowledgeable individual (knowledgeable character imagery). I hope this helps.

Hallucination/dreaming vs. imagination/fantasy; superficially, there appears to be no descriptive differences between these efferent brain activities. Each of these activities can involve various faux sensory experiences that appear perceptually immersive and real. However, hallucination isn't imagination and the dreams that occur amid the sleep process aren't fantasy. The distinction is that hallucinations and dreams immerge from our brain's unconscious interpretive processes while imagination and fantasy are products of our conscious brain function with no interpretive quality. Imagination and fantasy are the immersive experience of our conscious thoughts and desires. These experiences are consciously mediated and have no interpretive value beyond their immersive distraction and nature. Conversely, schizophrenic hallucination and normal dreaming are unconsciously mediated and they interpret what we may unconsciously perceive or experience. For John du Pont, as previously referenced, the hallucination of ants consuming his legs figuratively interpreted or expressed something that was happening to him that he knew but perhaps did not consciously comprehend--thus the figurative nature of his hallucination.

I think any model of how the brain actually works that doesn't conform to how it likely evolved is considerably less that reliable. Everything I understand about brain function and it's various efferent responses (e.g., thought, consciousness, dreaming, etc...) is informed by the remarkably clear path of its evolution contiguously suggested by its functional development from spinal cord to cerebrum. Self-awareness is essentially an interpretive response to sensory stimuli arising from an integration of that stimuli with the stored memories we've amassed through life experience. Mind is the environment of cognitive activity within the brain that arises from brain function. A mind is quantified by a brain capacity to integrate divergent sensory information with memory experiences through a neural process that produces behaviors independent of instinct. This behavioral independence describes an ability to engage proactive over reactive behaviors. Our brain produces two states of cognitive activity with conscious being one and unconscious, as suggested by states of dreaming, being the other. The basis for any extraordinary cognition or abnormality between brain states can be explained by a precise understanding of our brain's functional matrix as its evolution has programmed.

In past discussions, for those who recall or have interest, I described a diminished functional similarity specific to both the schizophrenic brain and the dreaming brain. Generally, both brains experience a decreased state of prefrontal blood flow (hypofrontality), which suggests decreased prefrontal brain activity. This prominent physiological effect that both brains appear to share suggests some shared root cause, which is not my focus in this discussions. My focus is the hallucinatory nature of schizophrenia relative to the nature of dreaming. My speculation is that schizophrenic hallucinations are similar to dreams in that they are interpretive responses to stimuli rather than just symptoms of some delusional state of mind. I recall the case of John du Pont who was convicted of murdering a prominent Olympic wrestler, Dave Schultz. As there was much exposed about John's mental illness, I recall discussion of a particular schizophrenic episode wherein he complained of ants consuming his legs. From a perspective of understanding the interpretive nature of dream content, I understood this hallucination of ants consuming one's legs as revealing how John's brain was unconsciously interpreting the deteriorating nature (consuming imagery) of his mental stability (leg imagery). I perceived John hallucination as an unconscious perception that had leached into his conscious experience as something physically real. If the similarities between the schizophrenic and dreaming brain confer commonality, then we all suffer mental illness when we dreaming...but that is not my opinion. The interpretive processes of the brain doesn't confer mental illness; however, in John du Pont's case, the wall between his conscious and unconscious interpretive processes had deteriorated to such an extent that his unconscious interpretations were leaching into and distorting his conscious perceptions and purview--in my opinion.

No, your arguments weren't nearly the same in my view. Essereio's comments were peppered with "black people this..." and "black people that..." without qualification. The difference between his references to rap music and yours, for example, is that his regarded his view of black people exclusively while yours regarded a your view of music. Unless your arguments also expressed your view of black people in that rap music is exclusively representative of black behavior and culture , then your arguments were not the same. Misogyny and bad behaviors expressed through music are not exclusively black or exclusively black expressions.

What you may have overlooked was Essereio's clear association of certain distasteful social tendencies (ex: loud music and voices, disrespect, drugs, and gun) specifically with "black people." His rap music references were a means to characterize his perspective of a people rather than his or our dislike for a certain music genre. "A good portion of black people", using Essereio's words, aren't anymore inherently loud, disrespectful, misogynistic, or into drugs and guns than a good portion of people of other racial distinctions. It wasn't what he said about the music that's important here, it was how he used that music reference to describe a people. Rap, as I understand, is a culture that engages people of multiple races. Admittedly, I'm no more a fan of rap music than my parents were fans of rock and roll. It a generational thing and one I accept as the sound of all young people and not just people of color.

Perhaps not overtly, but.... essereio wrote: "You're twisting everything without seeing the bigger picture of why a few or maybe a good portion of black people turn off a lot of other people. It's not just white people who are extremely annoyed by the rap/hip pop garbage personas. Loud music, loud voices, insults to innocent people, drugs, gun shootings and the list goes on. You get what you give. Injustice? Verbal abuse on a consistent basis is a lot worse than physical abuse. Black people are much less likely to be taken seriously because of the rude behavior/rap persona of a few. I feel sorry for a good portion of young blacks who get brainwashed by the rap/hip hop music and then go on towards causing psychological issues towards society." In this example, essereio's references here to "black people" and their "...rap/hip pop garbage personas...loud voices, insults...drugs, gun shootings, etc..." speaks to his emotions rather than fact or reason because these are not distinctions anymore adherent to a "few or maybe a good portion of black people" than they are to humans of different pigment. True, he didn't loudly proclaim his hate with that singular word, he proclaimed his hate through a totality of words delivered through his various comments in this forum. Like systemic racism, hate can be subtly expressed through contrived notions that have no basis in fact or reason.

We might all benefit from some therapy of sorts but not in this forum. Racism in America or anywhere for that matter isn't rooted in fact or reason. If I understand, you see essereio's ban as a stifling of meaningful discussions where opinions and ideas, regardless how heinous, are freely exchanged without rebuke. In this science forum, as I believe, our opinions and ideas should have some basis in reason or fact. If you read any of essereio's comments, you'd know they were based in neither. His "opinions" were clearly rooted in his dislike or hate for what he saw as the distasteful social proclivities of fellow human beings he appears to distinguish solely by skin color. This was not a expression of ideas but rather a spewing of hate. Although what happened to George Floyd has awakened our global consciousness to the hypocrisy of racism in America, America's racist and systemic racism won't be solved by therapy or discussion. Racism is a social disease that require social solutions and pressures to remove from our society as essereio has been removed from discussions in this forum.

Racism isn't about labels, it's about hate. Hate is an issue of emotion not intellect. As emotion, the afflicted may only be solved or remedied by therapy rather than by reasoned discussion as we may find in open forums like this. In this forum, we can intellectualize the causes and cures for hate but we can no more treat that condition via our online debates with racist than we can remotely remove a tumor. There's a reason why this science forum discourages visitors seeking medical advice. Similarly, there are reasons why hate filled sufferers are equally discouraged in this forum. They need help we can't render here.

If not too late to this topic, I've speculated about the social origins of belief in a god or gods in past discussions. I've speculated that this aspect of religious belief likely owes its origin to ancestral reverence shared among early humans. No sources to provide but I think strong evidence could be found for the idea of ancient people wanting to remember deceased family members and respected tribal leaders thought some ceremony or symbolism. I think it likely that belief in gods evolved from these symbolisms and ceremonies engaged by our ancient ancestors to soothe their grief and keep the memory of their fallen ancestors alive.

I agree, discussions centering on defunding the police is a shameful distraction from this history making movement gripping our nations conscience and the world....yet it remains a distraction arising from the movement itself and it is quickly becoming a significant part of it's message and call to action. I fervently agree and believe that "WHY" is profoundly important and should remain at the forefront of our nation's discussion but I also believe that "HOW" should remain as equally important if our goal is to remedy our country's inequities and create a nation more securely rooted in freedom, justice and true equality for our citizenry. What happened to Mr. Floyd is indeed the "Last Straw." The moment for action is now. This movement is a call to action and the HOW in its message should inform and direct our actions with resounding clarity if we want it to prevail.

Although I agree that services to a community might benefit from redirected funds, I think there's a danger to promoting this idea of defunding the police. In our society, I think most people have a tendency to consider only the bumper sticker version of an issue rather than read the fine print as Booker eloquently provides. Just today, Minneapolis protesters ejected their mayor from their peaceful action when he refused to support defunding and, specifically, removing police from their community. When the protests are done and the police are gone, crime in America remains. We are an uncivil and uncivilized society that require policing and the slogan "Defund the Police" sends our communities, citizens, police, and, particularly, our criminals the wrong message. A message that we are a reformed society, which we aren't, and that we do not require protection, which we do. I think "Defund Bloat and Waste, Fund Public Schools and Mental Health Clinics" would send a clearer more effective message.