RonPrice

I footnoted my quotations, swansont. A discussion could come from: (i) those interested in Antonin Artuad, a controversial figure who had years of psychiatric illness, (ii) those interested in the decline of civilization beginning as far back as 1914 and, (iii) several other aspects of my post. Those not interested in the content of my post can, of course, post no response.-Ron Price, Australia

BOTTOMING-OUT Part 1: In 1936, the Guatemalan poet and art critic Cardoza y Aragón, in self-imposed exile in Mexico City, met the also exiled French poet and dramatist Antonin Artaud. The image that Cardoza holds of the European traveler is definitive: "Antonin Artaud is just like 'El Desdichado,' 'The Wretched,' his brother Nerval." Cardoza adds, "The widower, the disconsolate, prince of Aquitania of the forbidden tower. The shadowy one, whose only star is dead and whose star-spangled lute bears the black sun of melancholy." Earlier, he would observe: "He came to Mexico in search of hope. Expelled from all parts, he lived bleeding, he lived atrociously, head in flames, the great master of misery."1 The two are brothers in exile. The Latin American, after living in European metropolises and traveling through the world, will return to his origins to finally settle, not in his own country, but in a neighboring country on the continent where he first saw the light of day. The European, despairing of the decadence of the Old World, left in search of Mexican politicians, to regenerate the West. He had just adopted another European country, Ireland, from which he was finally expelled to his homeland and once there, to a hospice. The journeys of the modernists let them vaguely see, through a mixture of irony and apathy, great and symbolic gestures of goodwill. Cardoza will say of Artaud and indirectly of himself: "In desperation, he confused the New Continent with a new content. There is something there, but not enough for his absolute need. Much of Europe also died in us."2 -Ron Price with thanks to 1Luis Cardoza y Aragón, "Antonin Artaud," Poesías completas y algunas prosas (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1977), p. 603, and 2idem, p. 607. Part 1.1: Antoine Artaud was born in 1896 in Marseille, France, and died in 1948 in a psychiatric clinic. His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and two siblings survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis, which gave him a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia, stammering, and severe bouts of clinical depression. Artaud has been cited as a profoundly influential figure in the history of theater, avant-garde art, literature, and other disciplines. His work proved to be a significant influence on the Theatre of the Absurd, particularly the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, and helped inspire a movement away from the dominant role of language and rationalism in contemporary theater. Artaud was an influence, and continues to be, on many writers and artists, directors and playwrights, indeed, creative people from many disciplines. Part 2: Civilization was bottoming-out back then in ’36; it was going down to the depths in stages: WWI, WW2, and an ongoing tempest that was shaking the world to its very foundations, with humanity gripped in the clutches of a hot devastating power, and smitten by those evidences of its ever resistless fury. The continent-peninsula was on the brink of chaos, and some said its spectacle of total decadence was drowning the souls of its inhabitants.1 ...And so it was that a long Plan was about to be launched that would in the course of the next century or two, take the world by storm by sensible and insensible degrees: the destruction of the world & its people would long continue having arrived, by degrees, as far back as the last half of the 19th century: the most great convulsion!2 1 In a literary magazine published in 1931, and quoted in The Stanford Humanities Review, Vol.7.1 by Silviano Santiago in his essay “The Future in the Stars, the Present in History: Artaud vs. Cárdenas”. 2 Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come, Baha’i Publishing Trust, New Delhi, 1976, p.1. Ron Price 8/8/’15.

There was certainly no intention to display a condescending attitude. Of course, the road to hell, it is often said, is paved with good intentions. Why don't we just leave Darwin in his reading style for now and bring this thread to its end.-Ron Price, Australia

Point made, point taken....thanking you Ron Price Australia

Part 1: This piece of writing is a revised edition of an earlier work, and it was inspired by watching Hawking, a BBC television film1 about Stephen Hawking's early years as a PhD student at Cambridge University. The film got me thinking about both physics and my own life and this piece of writing was the result. Hawking is now an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. This film-drama follows Hawking's academic search at the age of 21 in the field of physics for an understanding of the Universe; the film is aslo about his struggle against motor neuron disease. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Hawking and it premiered a decade ago in the UK, April 2004. By the middle of the 20th century I was just six years old and in grade 1 in a primary school in Ontario's golden horseshoe. I had just begun my somewhat tangential connection with astronomy and physics through the influences of my maternal grandfather and my mother's brother. The world of the cosmologists, by 1950, had developed two different theories to explain the creation of the Universe. Some supported the steady-state theory which stated that the Universe had always existed and would continue to survive without noticeable change. Others believed in the Big Bang theory which stated that the Universe was created in a massive explosion-like event billions of years ago. That event was later to be determined as 13.72 billion, or 13,720 million years ago. In October 1965 the Big-Bang theory had become the generally accepted explanation of the origin of the Universe. Some of the story of how this explanation came to be is found below. Part 2: "Observational evidence to confirm the idea that the Universe had a very dense beginning, came in October 1965, a few months after my first singularity result, with the discovery of a faint background of microwaves throughout space,"2 said Hawking in 2007. "These microwaves" he continued, "are the same as those in your microwave oven, but very much less powerful. They would heat your pizza only to minus 271 point 3 degrees centigrade, not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it. You can actually observe these microwaves yourself. Set your television to an empty channel. A few percent of the snow you see on the screen, will be caused by this background of microwaves. The only reasonable interpretation of the background, is that it is radiation left over from an early very hot and dense state. As the Universe expanded, the radiation would have cooled until it is just the faint remnant we observe today." Stephen Hawking(1942-) is British astrophysicist noted for his 1965 PhD thesis which argued that if a star can collapse inwards to form a singularity, coined a “black hole” in 1967 by American physicist John Wheeler, then so to can a singularity explode back outward; thus giving an explanation for the Big Bang. Part 3: Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson set to work early in 1963 putting their radio astronomy receiving system together. I had no idea at the time since I was 18 and studying nine matriculation subjects in the most demanding part of my formal education. Matriculation in Ontario was known as "grade 13" and it was then, and it became even more, a controversial part of the secondary school curriculum in Ontario. My interest in sport and girls back then far exceeded my enthusiasm for either physics or astronomy. In late 1962 I had had to drop my study of physics because I realized that, I would fail physics if I continued. I would then have to repeat the year if I wanted to continue into university and study science or medicine. I just could not understand the content of the physics curriculum. So it was that I dropped physics, picked-up history, went on to an arts degree, and spent my working life, for the most part, in the academic domain of the arts and the humanities. In the early months of 1963, as I was finishing my matriculation studies, and as the Baha’is of the world were preparing to hold their first international election, these two American scientists, Penzias and Wilson, were most concerned about the quality of the components they were adding to the system they were developing. It was a system they had been given to do their work and the existing components of that system had superb properties for the work they were engaged in. These two men began a series of radio astronomical observations so as to make the best use of the careful calibration and extreme sensitivity of their system. Of the various projects they were working on, the most technically challenging was a measurement of the radiation intensity from the Milky Way galaxy at high latitudes.3 Section deleted by moderator owing to plagiarism Wilson gave a detailed description of the development of their system in his 1978 Nobel lecture.4 Their discovery established the Big Bang theory as the unquestionable and leading contender by far for the explanation of the origins of the universe. For this discovery they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978. -Ron Price with thanks to:1 Hawking, SBSONE TV, 9:30-11:10 p.m., 18/1/'15 2The J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture in Physics, delivered 13 March 2007, by Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. Hawking spoke at Zellerbach Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley; 3Arno Penzias, “Autobiography,” Nobelprize.org; and 4Robert Wilson, Nobel Lecture, 8 December, 1978. --------------------------------------------------- I find the history of the sciences and the linkage with my own experience has an interesting synchronicity. I trust at least some readers will find this to be the case, and it may raise questions in their own mind about their personal histories and the events of our time in the world of the sciences.-Ron Price, Australia

Belated apologies for taking six months to respond. Ophiolite raises a good point to which I will respond below. As I point out in my post Darwin “often annotated heavily, prepared his own index of interesting passages, broke a book in half at the binding if it was too heavy and stopped to write about it in his notebooks.” He showed, as Howard Gruber puts it: “a man at work using books as tools for getting knowledge, not as exhibitions of knowledge already crystallised”.1 Gillian Beer characterizes Darwin’s reading style, as “full of questions & exclamations, enthusiastic rebuttals and problem raising queries”. For me these words have important implications, beside simple agreement. Raising questions is often more important than providing answers. Our society is very big on answers and the questions are often not asked. Darwin really got "into" the books he read and, for me at least, they point to detailed reading and note taking....that's enough for now.-Ron

GETTING KNOWLEDGE Part 1: Reflecting as I now do on my 65 year reading life from 1949 to 2014, I found Darwin’s way of reading a book of interest. He “often annotated heavily, prepared his own index of interesting passages, broke a book in half at the binding if it was too heavy and stopped to write about it in his notebooks.” He showed, as Howard Gruber puts it: “a man at work using books as tools for getting knowledge, not as exhibitions of knowledge already crystallised”.1 Gillian Beer characterizes Darwin’s reading style, as “full of questions & exclamations, enthusiastic rebuttals and problem raising queries”.2 Howard Ernest Gruber(1922-2005) was an American psychologist, and a pioneer of the psychological study of creativity. He had a distinguished academic career working with Jean Piaget in Geneva and later co-founding the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers. At Columbia University Teachers College, he continued to pursue his interests in the history of science, and particularly the work of Charles Darwin. Gruber's work led to several important discoveries about the creative process and the developmental psychology of creativity. I have taken an interest in Gruber's studies of creativity now in these years of my 70s due to the reinvention of myself in the last two decades as a writer and author, poet and publisher, online blogger and journalist, editor and researcher, reader and scholar. I have left my 50 year student-and-paid-employment-life, 1949 to 1999, far behind me now as I head into the evening of my life. After decades, too, of extensive work in Baha'i administration, in teaching and consolidation, service and social activism, I have now assumed a largely literary role. Part 2: Darwin not only continually challenged and examined the views of other authors, but he continuously questioned his own thoughts and definitions as a result. Darwin’s writing reflected his reading style, and it reflected his view that our judgment of the world around us can never be complete. A new fact or contribution is always potentially around the corner ready to disrupt what we think we know and make us think again. The ending of his book—“that from so simple a beginning in the chain of life endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been, and are being, evolved”3 is a testament to this principle.-Ron Price with thanks to 1Howard E. Gruber and Paul H. Barrett, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity, together with Darwin’s Early and Unpublished Notebooks, London: Wildwood House, 1974, p. 62; 2 Gillian Beer, “Darwin’s Reading and the Fictions of Development,” The Darwinian Heritage, editor, David Kohn, Princeton: PUP, 1985, p.547, and 3 Charles Darwin, Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character: 1874-76, 1882 cited by Elizabeth Banks in Persuasions On-Line, Vol.30, No.2, spring, 2010. Part 3: Literary works from many fields which bring writing skill & insight together in the examination of some aspect of human culture bring me a great deal of pleasure in this evening of my life as I head through my '70s and into old-age, the years after 80, if I last that long. Such works bring my critical faculties into play, and in1 the process, a penetrating scrutiny is brought into the literary game with a keen observer at the centre of things bringing about this meaningful & this deserving happiness in these my years of late adulthood and retirement from a 50 year student-and-employment life. 1 I thank Elizabeth Bankes for her essay: “Read and reread until they could be read no more: Charles Darwin and the Novels of Jane Austen", Persuasions On-Line, V.30, N.2, spring 2010. This essay contained many comments on the influence of Jane Austen's novels on Charles Darwin among others. Ron Price 23/7/'14.

To check-out the evolution section of my website go to: ...FY possible I -Ron Price, Australia Link removed

I am not sure if I ever introduced myself at this forum. If I have done so, I am more than happy to have the following introduction which I have attached---deleted.-Ron Price, Australia -----------------------------------------------

Belated thanks for that notice, Swansont.-Ron

The rare conjunction of orbital mechanics, the transit of Venus, was perhaps the most anticipated scientific event of the 18th century. Expeditions set off for the far corners of the Earth, including one by Capt. James Cook who sailed to Tahiti to observe the transit. He went on to discover the continent of Australia where I have lived for the last four decades. Explorers like Cook went in hopes of answering one of the most vexing scientific questions of the day: How far away is the Sun? “This was the big unknown for astronomy 250 years ago,” said Owen Gingerich, an emeritus professor of astronomy and history of science at Harvard. Without that number, much else about the solar system was also uncertain: the size of the Sun, the distance between planets, inter alia. The answer that came out of the worldwide 1769 observations was pretty close at 95 million miles. “Historically speaking, it was the beginning of big international science,” said Dr. Gingerich. It was only in 1627 that anyone realized Venus transits occurred at all. That year, Johannes Kepler, the mathematician and astronomer, published data about the planetary orbits that predicted that Venus would pass directly between Earth and the Sun in 1631.-Ron Price with thanks to: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/sc...l?ref=eclipses What a set of revolutions we’ve seen since Captain Cook was in Tahiti and we finally learned the distance to the Sun among other bodies in our solar system! What a story it has been in the last 250 years! We each follow these many revolutions as suits our tastes and interests. My particular interest is in the revolutions that have taken place in history, science, politics, the many social sciences, applied and physical sciences, indeed, in more areas than can be listed here: revolutions that have eclipsed so many things that have gone before. * The term eclipse is derived from an ancient Greek noun, a noun which means "the abandonment", "the downfall", or "the darkening of a heavenly body." This noun is derived from a verb which means "to abandon", "to darken", or "to cease to exist." The prefix of the word eclipse, e, comes from a preposition meaning "out," and from a verb meaning "to be absent". Ron Price 8 June 2012 PS for my writing in many areas of these revolutionary changes go to my website at: url deleted

STEPHEN HAWKING The International Year of Astronomy was a year-long celebration of that field of science. It took place in 2009 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope by Galileo and the publication in of Johannes Kepler's Astronomia Nova in the 17th century. By 2009 I had been collecting resources for the study of astronomy for four years. I had only come to any degree of what you might call a serious and systematic study of astronomy after my retirement in the years 1999 to 2005 from a working life of FT, PT and casual-volunteer work: 1955 to 2005. So it was that yesterday evening that I gobbled-up Stephen Hawking’s Into the Universe, which premiered in the UK and the USA just over a year ago, and now on SBSONE TV. It was a cold night and I was keeping warm in my lounge-room here in Tasmania. I’d had had a long day; I had not had my daily sleep and after half an hour of this one hour program I was fast asleep. But I read about it the next day and here I am writing about it and about Stephen Hawking.-Ron Price with thanks to SBSONE TV, 24 and 31 May and 7 and 14 June, 8:30-9:30 p.m., “Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking.” Now in the evening of my life & on my sleep-inducing meds I dropped-off to my heart's ease as Chaucer once wrote, so soft to my eyes and the murmurer of low and tender lullabies, as Keats once wrote, the program not half over. But, still, Stephen, I was able to google the subject and this often makes up for the loss of a visual stimulation/I missed the computer generated imagery of the universe & the symphonic orchestral music. You’ve been going strong since ’62, Stephen, the year you got your B.A. and the year I started my travelling & pioneering for the Canadian Baha’i community in that town of Dundas Ontario in that Golden Horseshoe!! I’ve got to hand it to you, Stephen, with your motor neuron disease-& how you keep going especially since those books you wrote beginning with A Brief History of Time in ’881 when the Arc Project was just getting started in the port city of Haifa Israel.2 ….You have not been able to even feed yourself since I began my career in ’74 in a post- secondary education sector Downunder in Australia, & you could not talk since I moved to Western Australia in remote Pilbara in ’85…….How do you do it.... Stephen?......Really, how do you do it? 1 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Dell Pub. Co, 1988. It has sold 10 million copies. 2 In the letter of 30 April 1987 from the Universal House of Justice, while Hawking was writing his book on the subject of time, it was announced to the international Baha’i community that “the way was now open for the Bahá'í world to erect the remaining buildings of its Administrative Centre” at this climacteric of human history. Ron Price 8 June 2011

if this post is either too long or not appropriate just delete it. From my point of view it could be a relevant post to some who come across this section of the site.-Ron Price, Tasmania ------------------------------------- 1.2 This is a longitudinal, retrospective account going back to my conception in the last half of October 1943. The story continues up to the last half of October 2010. This statement, even at some 66,000 words, is still a work in progress, as they say these days, some 67 years. Neurobiological, neuropsychiatric and affective disorders like BPD are found in diverse forms as well as in a broad range of age of onset and in a specificity of symptoms. Little is still known about its pathogenesis, that is, the origin and development of the disease. What follows is one person’s story, one person’s life experience of BPD, an illness that silently and not-so-silently shaped my life. It is a focussed account on a part of my personal life-narrative with the many manifestations, the symptomology, of BPD as I experienced it. BPD shaped, but did not define all that has been my life. It was a medical affliction that made for a certain inconstancy in living, a certain impulsivity and much else. The story of that ‘much else’ is found here. 1.3 I make reference to a strong genetic contribution to the aetiology of BPD, a genetic predisposition, a genetic susceptibility as a factor in the pathogenesis of BPD. A family history, what is sometimes referred to as a family pedigree, of affective disorder in a first-degree relative, in my case my mother(1904-1978) is relevant to this narrative. My mother had a mild case of what may very well have been BPD, at least I have come to think of her mood swings as falling into a significantly high place in what is sometimes called the BPD or affective spectrum during her 75 year life. Her mood-swing disability or affective disorder, though, was never given the formal medical diagnosis manic-depressive(MD), a term which developed from several concepts as early as the 1850s if not centuries before. The term MD was replaced in 1980 after my mother died in 1978 by the term BPD. In retrospect my mother exhibited symptoms which may be more accurately labelled: (a) explosive disorder disability, (B) neurotic disorder: anxiety state or (d) depressive disorder. I know nothing of the mental health of my mother’s parents or grandparents and so am unable to draw on what could be a useful knowledge base to explain the origins of my BPD. These episodes are usually separated by periods of "normal" mood, but in some individuals, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, known as rapid cycling. Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. BPD has now been subdivided into: bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia, and some other types based on the nature and severity of mood episodes experienced. The range of types and experiences is often described as the bipolar spectrum. –See Bipolar Disorder, Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. 1.4 My father also suffered from what seems to me now, in retrospect, a mild case of what today is sometimes called intermittent explosive disorder(I.E.D.) or impulse control disorder(I.C.D.), as opposed to planned acts of violence or a simple temper. Given the rarity of I.C.D., it seems to me that my father had only a mild I.C.D. Other names for I.E.D. include: rage attacks, anger attacks and episodic dyscontrol. People with I.E.D. experience anger which is grossly disproportionate to the provocation or the precipitating psychosocial stressor. My father may have been exposed to this type of behaviour as a child and so his I.E.D. may have been learned rather than organic and brain-centred. There are also complications associated with the diagnosis of I.E.D. and they include job or financial loss. My father lost much money on the stock market in his late middle age, his late 50s and early 60s. My father was also genuinely upset, regretful, remorseful, bewildered or embarrassed by his impulsive and aggressive behavior. In my father’s late 60s, and perhaps at earlier stages in his life, his disorder also exhibited, or so it seems to me now in retrospect, co-morbidity perhaps due to his genuine sense of remorse, but I don’t know for sure. I know nothing, either, of the mental health of his parents or grandparents all born in the 19th century. My conclusions regarding my father’s emotional disability are largely tentative. Perhaps he just had a bad temper. 1.4.1 About half of all patients with BPD have one parent who also has some form of mood disorder. There is then, or so it seems to me, a clinical significance in my mother’s and father’s mood disorders in the explanation of the origins and diagnosis of my own BPD. The high heritability of BPD has been well-documented through familial incidence, twin and adoption studies. There is an unquestionable justification for the inclusion of my family in the understanding of my BPD. No specific gene has yet been identified as the one bipolar gene. It appears likely that BPD is caused by the presence of multiple genes conferring susceptibility to BPD when combined with psychosocial stressors. 1.4.2 Advanced paternal age is a risk factor for BPD in the offspring. Since my father was 55 when I was born, the hypothesis that advancing paternal age “increases the risk for de novo mutations in susceptibility genes for neuro-developmental disorders” has some relevance to my having BPD.”( Psychiatric News, November 7, 2008, V.43 No. 21, p. 18.) The offspring of men 55 years and older, that same article went on to say, were 1.37 times more likely to be diagnosed as having BPD than the offspring of men aged 20 to 24 years. The maternal age effect was less pronounced. For early-onset cases, that is BPD onset under the age of 20, and that was the case with me, the effect of paternal age was much stronger; whereas no statistically significant maternal age effect was found. 1.5 For an elaboration of the subject of the genetic connection of BPD and in utero BPD see: David Healy’s Mania: A Short History of BPD Johns Hopkins, 2008. A short history of BPD is also available on the internet. Genes may also contribute to the age of onset of BPD and this is analysed now in the context of a phenomenon called genetic anticipation. Anticipation refers to the phenomenon of an illness occurring in successive generations at earlier ages of onset and/or increasing severity. In a recent study using registry data of BPD subjects, age at onset of the first illness episode was examined over two successive generations. Subjects born from 1900 through 1939(my mother) and from 1940 through 1959(myself) were studied. The median age at onset of the first episode of BPD was lower by 4.5 years in subjects born during or after 1940. It was not until my mother was in at least her twenties that her first episode of BPD occurred, although this is somewhat of a guesstimation. 1.5.1 BPD, affective disorders of various kinds runs in the family. I am unable to trace my BPD back several generations. But, if I knew more about the many generations that preceded me in my birth family episodes of hearing voices, delusions, hyper-religiosity, and periods of not being able to eat or sleep—I have little doubt would be found. These episodes, these types of experiences were remarkably similar across generations and between individuals. With modern psychiatry and chemotherapy treatments are now available. This is the story of my BPD and my treatments. 1.6 The goal of what is sometimes called ‘personalized medicine’ is to utilize a person's genetic makeup for appropriate disease diagnosis and treatment, an idea conceptualized initially in the recent years of the Human Genome Project. The current conceptualisation of MD/BPD can be traced back, as I indicated briefly above, to the 1850s, although its history can be traced as far back as ancient history in Turkey. Both terms, MD and psychosis, were coined in 1875 by Jules Falret, a French psychiatrist and he recognized its genetic link. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), the founder of modern psychopharmacology, also made a major contribution to the early understanding of MD/BPD, only one of the many disorders in the general mood disorder category, but a cyclical mood disorder associated with a circularity between D and euphoria. 1.7 About 37,000 years ago Neanderthals arguably intermingled with modern humans and thus a new gene entered the human genome, the DRD4 7R gene. This gene arguably originated from Neanderthals. This gene is associated with risk-taking, sensation-seeking and novelty-seeking, and correlated with openness to new experiences, intolerance to monotony, and exploratory behavior, features of Neanderthal behaviour. About 10% of the population have the activated DRD4 7R gene. So goes yet another theory on the genetic predisposition to BPD. 1.8 All manifestations of BPD share uncertain etiologies, with often opaque, obscure, relationships between genes and environment. Some medical experts and theorists in the field of such studies posit latent changes in the expression of specific genes initially primed at the developmental stage of life. Some studies and some experts emphasize that certain environmental agents disturb gene regulation in a long-term manner, beginning at early developmental stages in the lifespan perhaps even in utero. But these disturbances, these perturbations as they are sometimes called, might not have pathological results until significantly later in life. In retrospect, as I look back from these middle years(65-75) of late adulthood, the years 60 to 80 as some developmental psychologists call these years of the lifespan, these perturbations and pathological results were clearly manifested at the age of 18. I could easily theorize an earlier onset on the basis of behavioural perturbations manifested in early childhood and into adolescence and I do such theorizing later in this account(see sections 2.7.1 and 2.7.2 below). 1.9 I received two or three diagnoses between 1963 and 1980 from psychiatrists, friends, family, GPs and concerned others. The diagnosis that was made in 1980, namely, BPD, is a diagnosis that is standardized according The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMMD-IV) which provides diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. I use the term BPD not MD throughout this document and I use that acronym. In the DSM-IV MD is a 5 axis/level system of diagnosis that is used. 1.9.1 In my case, axis/level 1 is for clinical disorders that are mood disorders. Axis 3 in this system is for what they refer to as acute medical concerns that relate to BPD; axis-4 is for psycho-social and environmental problems that contribute to BPD and axis-5 is an overall caregiver’s assessment of my functioning on a scale 1 to 100. Most of the successful diagnoses and treatment of my BPD have come from psychopharmacology and its roots in physiological assumptions. In the last decade, say, 2000 to 2010, talking cures and behaviour modification techniques like cognitive behaviour therapy with their roots, their emphasis on assumptions in the domain of intrapsychic experience have also been successful as adjuncts to medications or separate from them. -------I WILL POST MORE OF THIS NARRATIVE AND ANALYSIS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IF INTEREST IS SHOWN---------

The year I joined the Baha’i Faith the social psychologist Leon Festinger received the Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Psychological Association. He was also elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in that year. It was 1959. After masterful experimentation on the theory of cognitive dissonance, his research culminated in the publication of work that was at the time referred to as “the most important development in social psychology to date.”(1) Festinger also developed the theory of propinquity. The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they often encounter. In other words, relationships tend to be formed between those who have a high propinquity.–Ron Price with thanks to (1)Jack W. Brehm and A.R. Cohen Brehm, (eds.), Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance, Wiley, NY, 1962. Festinger did not rest his theory on observational data alone. He proceeded to test it experimentally. In Festinger and Carlsmith's classic experiment, in that same year of 1959 when I was in grade 10, students were asked to perform tedious and meaningless tasks. I won’t describe that experiment here. The result of the experiment, though, was in accord with the theory of cognitive dissonance. -Ron Price with thanks to “Leon Festinger,” in The New World Encyclopaedia. While I was just forming my belief system back in those days of the Baby Boom and the start of the X-generation, in those days of what was said to be the end of ideology;1 the days that offered the good life in the suburbs; the days when that mask of faith was drawn aside; when a superficial propriety reigned in the West and rock and roll woke people up from dreams of Doris Day, Ike the General, luxury without stress, or genetilia.2 People were given undeniable evidence that their beliefs were wrong but they did not change them. Convictions of their truth often increased acting with great fervour to convince others to believe also. What leads to such paradoxical behavior? Deeply held conviction & actions that must be taken for the sake of this belief and are very difficult to undo; the belief must be able to be disconfirmed by events in the world……such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and be recognized by the individual; and the individual believer must have good social support. Historical examples are the Millerites who expected the 2nd coming of Christ in the year 1843, but He came in a way that they never expected. Arousal of dissonance resulted when the prophecy failed. Altering beliefs would have been too difficult and it was the same for millions back then when I was putting my beliefs into some package of organic sweet reasonableness that would have to deal with my life’s inevitable dissonances. 1 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology, 1960. 2 D.T. Miller and M. Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were, Doubleday & Co., Inc., NY, 1977. p.302. Ron Price 2 December 2010

Applying for jobs as extensively as I did in the days before the email and the internet came on board in the early 1990s, became an activity, for me, that sometimes resembled a dry-wretch. Four to five thousand job applications from 1957 to 2007 has been a lot of applications! At least since the mid-1990s, a few clicks of one’s personal electronic-computer system and some aspect of life’s game could go on or could come to a quick end over a set of wires under the ground, the electronic world of cyberspace. During that half-century of job-hunting years I applied, as I say, for some four to five thousand jobs, an average of two a week for each of all those years! This is a guesstimation, of course, as accurate a guesstimation as I can calculate for this fifty year period. The great bulk, 99.9% of those thousands of letters involved in this vast, detailed and, from time to time, exhausting and frustrating process, I did not keep. I did keep a small handful of them, perhaps half a dozen of all those letters, in a file in my Letters: Section VII, Sub-Section X, a part of my autobiographical work which is now entitled Pioneering Over Four Epochs. So...keep at it folks---it can be a long story....Ron

During 2001/2 a file for ARCHITECTURE, SCIENCE AND HEALTH was opened in my study as part of my independent scholarship as a retired teacher. The material in that file was collected, for the most part, after my retirement from teaching and full-time work in the years 1999 to 2002. I have never had files for these subjects before although, in the 1980s, while writing articles on various Baha'i buildings, I did open a file on architecture(31/8/’03). In 2008 I opened a separate file on science and its many sub-disciplines in the physical and biological sciences. My life story, life narrative, life experience with these disciplines goes back, as far as I can remember, to grade seven when I was twelve and on the puberty cusp. “Egg, larva, pupa and adult,” are the first words I remember from that science course in 1957/8, half a century ago. I continue taking science courses from grade seven to grade thirteen in 1962/3 when I studied chemistry. I took one science course at university in the philosophy of science and one course at teachers’ college on teaching science to primary school children. As I primary school teacher I taught science from 1968 to 1971. Science, of course, is part of everyone’s life in this age, but the formal collection of information and the study of the relevant disciplines did not begin until these early years of the new millennium. My second wife, Chris, took an active interest in scientific subjects and her collection of books and articles is extensive while mine, even now after only half a dozen years of gathering articles, is not large. The social and behavioural sciences and the humanities have kept me busy for decades and that is still the story. It did seem timely, though, to write this introduction after six years of an ingathering of print resources on over a dozen sub-sections of science. I have always liked the view of science held by Douglas Martin, the former director-general of public information for the international Baha'i community, as “the systematic, the disciplined, use of the rational faculty.” In this sense, I like to think that my life has had a scientific turn in this last half century outside its formal study, my teaching of it as a subject and my general interest in its many disciplines. Ron Price 30 October 2008 updated for: SFN on: 12/11/'09:cool:

is much more a record of Adams's introspection than of his deeds. It is an extended meditation on the social, technological, political, and intellectual changes that occurred over Adams's lifetime. Adams concluded that his traditional education failed to help him come to terms with the rapid changes of his lifetime: hence his need for self-education. The organizing thread of the book is how the "proper" schooling and other aspects of his youth, was time wasted. His autobiography is a description of his search for self-education through experiences, friendships, and reading. The Education of Henry Adams purports to be the autobiography of Henry Adams(1838-1918). It in fact records the author's struggle, in early old age, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th century educational theory and practice. In 1907, Adams began privately circulating copies of a limited edition of his work printed at his own expense. Commercial publication had to await its author's 1918 death, whereupon it won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. I won't go into the comparisons and contrasts between my work and Adams. I leave that to interested readers which they can read if they google: RonPrice autobiography. But I will say, before moving on, that in the same way that Henry Adams' s life story is rooted in the 19th century American political aristocracy that emerged from the American Revolution, my story is rooted in the international Bahá’í community over a period of four epochs(1944-2021), a community emerging from a spiritual, a global, revolution that had been initiated by two-prophetic figures, two-God-men in the nineteenth century. The essence of this revolution was the search for the unifying agent, the unifying catalyst, that would help the planet survive the tempest of our times. The context for this search was an attachment to national, racial, cultural, class and political loyalties and an almost deafening withdrawal and apathy. The revolution of my time was out of human control; the process was giving birth to humanity, to a world community, a global society. My role was to help in the extension of the model of world fellowship that had emerged out of that spiritual revolution of the century preceding my birth, a model that had been born in Iran and in North America. Adams' book became an important and influential one in literary non-fiction in the next hundred years. It ranked first on the Modern Library's 1998 list of 100 best non-fiction books. It spread throughout America and the world in the years after the unveiling of the Tablets of the Divine Plan in 1919 and it is a useful comparison piece for this autobiographical work. My poetry and prose is founded, as it was in the case of Walt Whitman, on the principle of language as ‘‘a source of renewable creative energy.’’ My works are best read in light of late-20th century and early 21st theories from the social sciences and humanities, theories I have alluded to in the text but will not attempt to summarize here. My broad aim has been, not merely to describe the objects of nature in the spectatorial fashion of a travel writer or scientific essayist....enough for now.-Ron in Tasmania

ENCOUNTER This evening I watched Encounters at the End of the World(1), a program about Antarctica and the McMurdo research station, the largest research station in Antarctica. Here 1000 men and women live together in close quarters risking their lives and their sanity in search of cutting-edge science. In this TV program viewers listen to Werner Herzog the first outsider and filmmaker to be admitted. He is accompanied only by his cameraman. This rare access to the raw beauty and raw humanity of the ultimate 'down under' was fascinating and led me to write this prose-poem.-Ron Price with thanks to (1)Encounters at the End of the World, SBS TV, 10 November, 10:00-11:55 p.m. What caught my intellectual fancy in this aesthetic and stimulating visual display of a frozen continent and its icy waters were the words of: (a) a cell biologist describing the frightening world of small creatures---- not frightening to man but to those creatures under the ice—and his hypothesis that the 1st creatures to live on the land were driven there by fear of their life; and (b) a linguist who told of our losing several languages a day while we worried about extinction of birds and insects. Fossil evidence of animal-anthropoid tracks in dunes from around 530 MYA---like our scorpions---water-based creatures only came to the land to escape predators or possibly to mate......These creepy crawling critters came to the land while evolutionary advancements were occurring beneath the waves.....the first vertebrates--the fish---and I mused to myself on one of the thrusts of evolution: FEAR----- and in our time this fear will drive humanity to a global federation for its very survival.... ...part of what Teilhard de Chardin called our planetization and what we call globalization & which is unifying humanity faster than it knows amidst a tempest of chaos and confusion........... unpredictable and catastrophic in its effects....... Ron Price 11 November 2009 (In commemoration of the war to end all wars which ended 91 years ago today)

I watched with fascination the ABC2 program on 17 May 2009 at 8:30 p.m. “Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes.” Kubrick died in the last month of my 30 year full-time teaching career, in March 1999, and he left behind 1000 boxes in his mansion in England. This one hour program gives viewers a close-up of Kubrick’s creative process by its study of the contents of these boxes. We also get a biographic adventure into the mystery, the obsession and the genius of this cinematic legend. As a poet-writer who has been collecting printed matter rather than photos, in files rather than boxes for most of his life, at least since the late 1950 and early 1960s--and now in my computer directory as well—I could not help but draw parallels with my own work. No genius I, although I have always liked what is probably the most famous line uttered by the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, namely, that “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” If further explanation of the meaning of this quote is required Edison provided it by completing the quotation thus: "I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work."-Ron Price with thanks to the internet site: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/, 26 May 2009. Some, of course, are born with certain powers and gifts and we could call this genius......Others, of course, must strive with infinite pains and still others who accept their life with radiant acquiescence— receive confirmations of the spirit as He called them.1 And yes, they come, they do come, part of that mystical element in life as others would call it. Thank you, Stanley, for your example of persistence, of dedication, of an obsession which created truly wonderful experiences for billions around our globe—and may you now, perhaps, in some world of light continue in unearthly mansions what was found in your earthly one and which will now inspire generations, many not yet born.2 1 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p.126. 2 This prose-poem, originally written for several internet sites associated with cinema, Stanley Kubrick and creativity, had an obvious relevance--as it evolved--to a recent exchange of emails with an old friend Arini Beaumaris, now the secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Australia, Inc., and so I sent it to her for her possible pleasure. Ron Price 26 May 2009

Belated apologies for not getting back here after somany months. Life is busy even in retirement. I entered contests for 20 years. I won (a) a certificate and (b) an offer to put my poem in a book(for which I had to pay). Then I gave up the idea of contests as "not for me."-Ron

Altering the brain and its chemistry through medication, alters so many things about one’s life that in some basic ways one becomes a different person much more so since the brain is the central data processing unit in the body. This ongoing story has been, is and will be partly about that different person I have become as a result of my BPD and the medication changes. I hope the above account(posted in a series of instalments) is as much use to others as it has been to me in writing it over these several editions and their many drafts in the last few years. It will be necessary, of course, to make alterations to the above document in the months and years ahead to: (a) include new information and new perspectives on my past experience, (b) add to the document as changes to my life occur that are related to my BPD, © maintain as comprehensive and succinct a story as possible; and, finally (d) to bring those to whom I write this account up-to-date on this story. 10.3.15 There are now 100s of people at some 90 BPD, D, mental health, general health and other internet sites for whom and to whom I write this account or part of it. Most of my correspondence with these people takes place only at the internet sites. There are, as well, a very small handful of personal friends and relations to whom I have sent this story for a range of personal purposes. Some in this latter group want to know this story. I feel it necessary, for various reasons, to inform others so that they have a better understanding of my present situation and past condition. But whatever the reason for my utilizing/writing this account, its contents have become of value to many others who suffer from this disorder, similar disorders or, indeed, have other problems of the human condition that possess a traumatic or quasi-traumatic quality. 10.3.16 Given the complexity, subtlety and difficulty in comprehending BPD and its many manifestations, written descriptions of this disorder and people’s experience of it do not necessarily and/or immediately produce understanding on the part of others. In addition, the very length of this account puts many off. This is due to a host of reasons associated with people’s disinclination to read long passages on the internet, a medium which for many is mainly focussed on short and pithy messages and quips, what one might call internet-speak. Even a personal understanding of the labyrinth, the twists and turns, of BPD keeps me busy. Understanding does not come easily here for the lay person. My story, like so many stories in life, is a work in progress. I look forward to receiving any feedback from anyone who feels moved to write words either of encomium or opprobrium, to make suggestions or to outline their reactions to this long essay/report. Ron Price Fifth Edition: 17 June 2008 Draft #2: 2 June 2008 57 Pages(font 14)....No of Words: 23,000 ronprice9@gmail.com Tel:03-63824790(from mainland Australia) Tel: dial the international access code # and then: 613-63824790(from overseas) 6 Reece Street George Town Tasmania 7253:cool:

1.1 This is both a longitudinal account, going back to my conception in October 1943, and a short term account taking in my most recent experiences in the last year(5/07-5/08)with manic-depression(MD) or bipolar disorder(BPD) as it has come to be called in recent years. Some of the personal context for this illness over the lifespan in my private and public life, in the relationships of my family of birth and of marriage, of work and now of retirement are discussed in this document. I include some of what seems to me my major and relevant: (a) personal circumstances as they relate to my values, beliefs and attitudes on the one hand--what some might call my religion as defined in a broad sense; (b) family circumstances; for example, my parents’ life and my wife’s illness; © employment circumstances involving as they did (i) stress, (ii) movement from place to place and (iii) my sense of identity and meaning; and (d) a range of other aspects of my day-to-day life and its wider socio-historical setting. This lengthy account should provide: (I) mental health sufferers, clients or consumers, as they are now variously called these days, with an adequate information base to make some comparisons and contrasts with their own situation, their own predicament whatever it may be, and hopefully gain some helpful knowledge and understandings; and (II) those assessing my suitability for work or for public or private office with a useful document for making their decision about my capacity to take on the task/responsibility an informed one. 1.2 Many do not feel comfortable going to doctors, to psychologists and/or to psychiatrists. Perhaps this is part of a general distrust of certain professional fields in our world today. Perhaps it is part of a general public being more critical. Still others do seek help; others try to work things out themselves and there are, of course, various combinations of those who try, those who have given up and those who go back and forth between the two poles of trying and not trying to sort out their disorder. Many often find the journey through the corridors of mental health problems so complex, such a labyrinth, that they give up in despair. Suicide is common among the group I refer to here—the sufferers from MD and BPD and I could include D and a range of other illnesses and life battles of a traumatic nature. This account may help such people obtain appropriate treatment and, as a result, dramatically improve their quality of life. I think, too, that this essay of more than 20,000 words and fifty-one A-4 pages(font 14) is part of: (a) my own small part in reducing the damaging stigma associated with BPD and (b) what might be termed “my coming out.” --------- I am not going to post my wholestory here. I am still seeking to understand BPD and this post is part of that process.-Ron Price, Tasmania:cool:

SOME BOOKS/LINKS/poetry ON THE INTERNET BY RON PRICE These three books were put on the Internet in 2002 and 2003 and contain some 6000 pages of content. In addition I have been able to put over one million words at some 4000 internet sites: forums, discussion sites, poetry sites, essay sites, et cetera. Anyone having questions or comments about this content can contact me at my email address: ronprice9@gmail.com_____________________________________________________________________ 1. The Emergence of a Baha’i Consciousness in World Literature: The Poetry of Roger White: 400 pages http://bahai-library.org/books/white http://www.juxta.com/main 2. Pioneering Over Four Epochs:3000 plus pages Website: http:// http://www.users.on.net/~ronprice/ 3. Pioneering Over Four Epochs: An Autobiographical Study and a Study in Autobiography: 1800 page book.—readers at eBookMall and Lulu.com will find many an ebook to read—my work among them. –Ron Price, Tasmania 4. Search Engines: Most major engines, like Google/Yahoo or Ask Jeeves, have dozens of sub-sites with my work. Just type the words: Pioneering Over Four Epochs or Ron Price or Ron Price poetry/history, religion, et cetera into the search box.