The Choice of Mind Fuel

Imagine that there are two fundamentally different fuels available to run the engine of the human mind.

Fuel of Fear and Fuel of Love.

Imagine that there are two fundamentally different fuels available to run the engine of the human mind.

Fuel of Fear and Fuel of Love.

But the possibility to choose from the two wasn’t really available for many centuries — fear was assigned as the default fuel and that setting remained mostly non-editable.

But the choice is now opening up — starting in the private realm of individuals.

It’s now possible to change the fuel type of your mind engine from the dirty fear-based fuels to the cleaner, sustainable love-based fuels. This can be seen as analogous to/in-pairing with, the human search for cleaner energy sources and the renewed vigor to value environmental/ecological sustainability.

It might be until 2100 (or a bit sooner or later) that the choice of love-based fuels becomes the norm. But individuals can get started right away, if they want to.

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Can Journalism have more say in the “making” of the world and not be limited to “checking”?

The generally-expected role of Journalism is as a watcher or checker. A watcher, recorder and reporter of incidents that happen.

It usually doesn’t concern itself with finding out “why” something happened. It mostly answers “what” happened. Sometimes it goes beyond the “what” and finds out “how” something happened. But rarely does it touch upon the “why”s – why did something happen? what’s the rationale behind that “doing”?

The generally-expected role of Journalism is as a watcher or checker. A watcher, recorder and reporter of incidents that happen.

It usually doesn’t concern itself with finding out “why” something happened. It mostly answers “what” happened. Sometimes it goes beyond the “what” and finds out “how” something happened. But rarely does it touch upon the “why”s – why did something happen? what’s the rationale behind that “doing”?

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Level of teachers’ knowledge about children’s nervous system health

  1. How educated/knowledgeable are teachers about the nervous system health and well-being of children/students?
  2. What percentage of actions or behaviours from teachers are detrimental to children’s well-being as supported by proven, realiable scientific data?
  3. What percentage of actions and experiences that come as part of the school system are detrimental to children’s well-being as supported by proven, reliable scientific knowledge?
  4. How does (1), (2) and (3) compare across continents and regions?
    1. How can the observations from the comparisons be placed in an intersectional, holistic perspective that takes into account the variations in the history and lineage of the people in those different regions?
  5. If there are high percentages of the above, what are the causes of that situation? Why isn’t science about children’s well-being – their nervous system health, their brain development needs, emotional attunement needs – not part of teacher training, curriculum design and testing methods?
  6. If the training and testing methods are found to be non-humanitarian and exploitative, will the government and private labor market disavow use of such elements as grounds for selection for employment and rewards? (Like how some raw materials from certain regions/nations are banned on grounds of unjust labor policies at the origin of the value chain.)
  7. Will there be an acceptable quantity of exposure to exploitation/unhealthy systems? Who decides this amount? Is the amount documented? Will efforts be made to the improvement of this metric? If such a metric can be established scientifically, can it start featuring in development planning, economic planning and policies?
  8. What’s the monetary value of improving teachers’ knowledge of children’s nervous system health by 5%, 10%, 50%?
  9. How might national and continental economies change in response to this?
  10. Will this improve social justice and well-being metrics? By how much?
  11. Is this one of the many areas where there are long-proven scientific data left unused or un-absorbed into policies? Why is that? Can we do that now?
  12. Can a new approach towards Journalism or a new strand of journalism – from an incidental-news journalism to Systems Journalism aid the progress of human society to justice, peace, health, joy?
  13. What would a society experiencing justice, peace, health and joy “do” with their lives?

The Normalization of Violence/Abuse in Newspapers

Something that I have observed over the many years of contact with various daily newspapers – Malayalam and English dailies in India: headlines containing metaphorical usage of words that define physical attack/abuse/violence such as “thrashed”, “whipped”, “muzzled”, “slapped”, “hit”, “handcuffed” and more such.

Research questions:

  1. What percentage of headlines in a day’s newspaper contain at least one word that stands for physical violence but which is used metaphorically in the headline?
    1. How does this measurement compare between newspapers from different countries and regions?
    2. Are there common links between them?
  2. How much of it (words referring to physical violence) is used in the context of individual-individual relations (issues between two individual parties) and individual-systems relations (issues involving governmental entities or corporate entities)?
  3. What would be some simple, factual, emotionally-neutral re-writings of those headlines?
  4. Can the neutral headlines be further made compassionate, non-startling and gentle?
  5. If made gentler and compassionate, how does the efficacy of the headlines change with regards to the basic journalistic goal “to inform”?
  6. Why is shock and inflation or stoking of fear used as the emotional carriage for news? What effect can this exposure to normalized shock and fear have on humans?
    1. Can/how does this affect the human nervous system – which regulates physiological health?
  7. Can a change in how news is written lead to favorable outcomes in human health?

Additional questions

  1. What percentage of journalists know about nervous system health of human beings?
  2. Do they know words and stories impact the psyche of readers?
  3. When they use words that refer to physical might and violence, how aware are they about the psychological+neurological+gut-brain-axis impact on the end-reader?
  4. Are the journalists taught to care for the well-being of its readers through the words they use, the emotions they trigger?