The male characteristics, developed in the womb during pregnancy with the massive release of testosterone from the testes, produce not only the masculine physical characteristic associated with manliness, but also the male brain and the distinct qualities of the male character. (Location 442)
However, this crucial hormone, when temporarily elevated to allow for a normal functioning body, may be extremely harmful when it is released in high doses for prolonged periods of time. This state of high cortisol is caused by the mammalian limbic system’s perception of high stress, thus signaling the adrenal gland to constantly release cortisol into the bloodstream. (Location 482)
high cortisol causes a decline in testosterone levels, because it is made from cholesterol, (Location 486)
dopamine is the most significant hormone, acting as a neurotransmitter that encourages certain types of assertive behaviors. Of course, increasing testosterone raises dopamine levels, yet it is not only testosterone that can increase dopamine levels in the “dopamine-rich”[39] left brain. Previc explains: (Location 565)
Dopamine works to actually calm the body, to slow systems down under stress or duress, allowing a kind of clarity that boosts one’s capability to problem solve or drive toward a goal, despite anxiety or fear. (Location 578)
This attack against testosterone as a proxy for the male character is actually a result of the generational decline in testosterone throughout society (as we discuss later). Testosterone is required to create the dopaminergic mind that pursues reason, science, and moral ambitiousness and without it Western civilization would collapse, or rather, would never have grown and prospered as it has. (Location 616)
Furthermore, testosterone’s role of promoting self-interest and even minimizing “a propensity to collaborate” may manifest in behaviors that some people find aggressive or off-putting.[52] (Location 629)
The study concluded that “sexual differentiation of the hypothalamus in homosexuals is in a female direction,”[56] and other research has concurred with these findings. Noted Dutch neuroscientist, Dick Swaab, points to factors such as stress and smoking during pregnancy that can significantly impact the sexual inclinations of a person: (Location 654)
As previously stated, and as depicted below in Figure 3, testosterone levels rise in males up to the age of 27 years old, when fertility, mental aptitude, and physical strength all peak. (Location 671)
The effects of declining testosterone levels include compromised fertility viability, increased depression and mental disorders in men, increased rates of certain types of cancer, and diminished ability to cope with the stressors of modern life. Lower testosterone leads to lower levels of serotonin, causing anxiety and depression and the rise of violence in society. (Location 708)
This weakened psychological vitality makes entire populations susceptible to group-think, to a herd mentality, and to manipulation by controlling forces. (Location 720)
Similar to punctuated equilibrium, the Elliott Wave Principle also asserts that change is not gradual, but that major transformations occur in strong impulsive wave formations, interspersed with periods of relatively little change. (Location 873)
Prechter examines the phenomenon that crowd behavior “trends and reverses in recognizable patterns,” because “pattern formation is a fundamental characteristic of complex systems.”[86] (Location 877)
but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems “go critical.” A very small trigger can set off a “phase transition” from a benign equilibrium to a crisis—a single grain of sand causes a whole pile to collapse, or a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and brings about a hurricane in southeastern England.[87] (Location 883)
consciousness. It is social mood that “shapes economic, political and social trends” in a many-dimensional process of “unceasing dynamism.” This is what Prechter identifies as “the engine of history.”[88] And the fuel for that engine is the endocrine make-up of its components.[3] (Location 890)
The evolution of both civilization and biology is achieved through the accumulation and development of information: DNA is the information content of biology; and ideas—transferred throughout the generations by oral and written language—are the information code of society. (Location 895)
In the book, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust, author John Coates characterizes the ongoing manic euphoria that winning creates in the male brain and its contrasting anxiety, compulsive worry and worse in a losing streak: (Location 919)
“Obviously, if you put that much testosterone into your body your muscles will grow. But within a normal biological range, its main direct role is behavioural. Testosterone gives you more confidence and motivation and that makes you work harder, which indirectly influences muscle growth.” (Location 931)
have been shown to indicate coming financial decline. This graph offers a fascinating analysis by Prechter of that pattern, clearly supporting what Coates and others have asserted, that changing testosterone levels affect social mood and subsequently impact the economics, politics, and culture of human civilizations. (Location 942)
Why does the fertility bust occur some years before the financial bust? In part, this is due to the principle of reflexivity, the feedback loop by which one thing influences another, which in turn influences the first. Many are familiar with this concept in anthropology, for example, where the very presence of an observer influences the nature of the culture being observed, which subsequently influences the observer, et cetera. (Location 963)
warning signs of an environment of deteriorating social conditions can be observed through disparities between conception rates, which are an indicator of growth hormones such as testosterone, and ebullient and euphoric conditions that point to a kind of manic state in the waves of social mood. (Location 971)
The human brain is actually designed to imitate behavior of other people in order to learn valuable knowledge that is transferred throughout society. The neurons responsible with this behavior are called mirror neurons, which also cause feelings of empathy among individuals: (Location 994)
Testosterone levels are the highest at the early stages of a rising cycle of social mood. This is a period in which the leaders—the high-testosterone personalities—emerge, exemplifying a systemic worldview of a rational man in an orderly universe. (Location 1010)
over the heterogeneous behavior of rational, independent thinkers. As testosterone declines and the culture becomes less optimistic, stress increase in the system and cortisol rises. The herd’s response to negative social mood and feelings of anxiety is to seek security within the group, which gives further rise to the group’s cohesion and a rise in oxytocin, the herding hormone. (Location 1014)
Hence, periods of negative social mood are much shorter, but cause much greater damage in comparison to their length. What the anabolic growth hormones take long to build when cooperation between independent individuals is fostered, may be devastated by the homogenous madness of the herd in a relatively short timeframe. (Location 1023)
According to the Socionomic model, when social mood is positive, the culture will be inclined to prefer rational thought, logic, and objective reality. The culture that seeks the power of reason to master the natural world is motivated by dopamine. (Location 1040)
Testosterone, as an anabolic hormone, not only induces the building of the masculine body, it also acts as the catalyst for building the dopaminergic mind, the mind of the rational man, the creator and builder. (Location 1048)
Cortisol, on the other hand, not only causes the breakdown of the structure of the body, but also inhibits the rise in testosterone and dopamine and brings emotions of anxiety, fear, and panic. These negative feelings inhibit man from exercising reason and shut down the frontal cortex from being able to think logically. (Location 1051)
David Hume, as we have seen, extolled the dynamic between the rational and limbic mind when he wrote “Reason is and ought to be slave to the passions”; and for that observation, he deserves to be called the father of neurophilosophy. (Location 1063)
Fundamental to the continuation of this good creation, the Bible recognizes procreation, literally to “create forth,” as the method of perpetuating life through the generations. Sex, therefore, is determined as good when it fulfills its purpose, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). (Location 1077)
“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). (Location 1081)
The great monotheistic revolution and the Bible’s war against idolatry, which forbids the association of the natural world of matter with pagan gods and supernatural forces, attests to this rise of testosterone and the dopaminergic mind that is focused on that which is real and disavows mysticism. This monotheistic revolution began with Abraham and reached its peak with Moses, who created the entire philosophical worldview based on this natural metaphysics. (Location 1136)
The God of the Hebrews is an aggressive, masculine, high testosterone personality, busy with creation and order and justice among his people and in the universe at large. In the New Testament, however, the ideal becomes more feminine, elevating qualities of empathy, love of all people without judgment, and denial of the self and this world, which are associated with temptation and the devil. Only in the afterlife in heaven is humanity united as one, whole spiritual purity. (Location 1178)
This nihilistic worldview that glorified death and destruction was the consequence of the extremely negative social mood during the third century CE, which caused the Roman Empire to plummet into the five centuries known as the Dark Ages. In these years, Western civilization totally collapsed from within and was taken over by Germanic barbarian tribes. The Plague of Justinian, taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian, brought a collapse in the European population, which was cut by half between the sixth and eighth centuries CE.[109] (Location 1201)
As discussed in chapter 1, research indicates that the male brain is resilient to stress, because it can deal with this stress through other “happy chemicals,” such as the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. (Location 1224)
In this circumstance, the only happy chemical available is oxytocin, which has an effect of causing strong group domination, but extreme animosity toward whomever is perceived as foreign to the group. (Location 1227)
This explains why, during the period of the decline of ancient Israel, extremely militaristic states such as the Assyrians came to power and brought the destruction of the kingdom of Israel and the dispersion of the ten tribes. In this vein we also see the extreme tribal aggression of the Spartans and other city-states in ancient Greece as well as the aggressive expansion of China. (Location 1234)
During the succeeding period of Hellenism, the focus of male love returned to women rather than men. However, the rise in testosterone levels must have been in a much smaller scale and duration, because Aristotle’s philosophy did not influence his contemporary society and was abandoned. Aristotle himself had to flee Athens towards the end of his life. (Location 1288)
After testosterone levels collapsed and reached a nadir in the fourth century, leading into the Dark Ages, they gradually started to rise again into the early Middle Ages. Peter Abelard, who is one of the great Catholic medieval theologians and who had a famous love affair with Heloise, vehemently challenged this anti-sexual bias incorporated into religious doctrine. Abelard wrote: (Location 1344)
As testosterone levels continued to increase, the systematizing male brain took over the empathizing, more feminine brain, and human consciousness was transformed with newly gained optimism. By the late-Medieval period, Aristotelian logic, empiricism, and reason were elevated over Dark Age Gnostic mysticism, pessimism, and the flight from reality. (Location 1353)
The stressed mammalian brain, bringing about a rise in cortisol, was beginning to turn social mood and to halt the momentum of optimism that gathered steam the previous century. Malthus’s worldview gained popularity and influence, in spite of the reality that the free enterprise system brought huge advances in technological innovation that raised real incomes of middle class English people by more than seventy percent during the period 1760 to 1860. The intellectual class, once again acting as the brain center of human society, was influenced by the innate stress signals released by the limbic system through hormones; and pessimism became the fashion in the British academy. (Location 1442)
Those philosophies that promote a fear-based herd mentality and exploit society under centralized controls are evidence of stress and the cortisol-driven mind. (Location 1453)
Every factor of the Testosterone Hypothesis points to lowered testosterone levels in early twentieth-century Europe—from plummeting fertility rates to state-driven control of individual citizens and even the mass murder of millions. The roots of the most venal forms of twentieth-century fascism as exhibited in Germany are found in the nineteenth-century philosophies that wore away at rationalism in a revision of Gnosticism under the names of “empathy” and “altruism.” (Location 1456)
Benjamin Franklin was reported to have said that they had just created, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” The exalted experiment of a society based on rational guidelines and belief in man’s right and ability to excel within those rational standards was, nevertheless, potentially fragile. (Location 1514)
This was a result of the systematizing mind reduced to the empathizing mind. Leading the crowds that were led as sheep into the collectivism and socialism of the twentieth century were not only maniacal demagogues like Stalin and Hitler, but plenty in the cultural and intellectual elite, as well. (Location 1518)
The rise of National Socialism in Germany further indicated increased cortisol and oxytocin levels that caused distressed citizens to bind together in fearfulness and xenophobia. (Location 1555)
In his classic Nazi history, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, author William Shirer describes Ernst Röhm as “a stocky, bull-necked, piggish-eyed, scar-faced professional soldier...[and] like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual.”[141] According to Shirer, as well, “homosexual Nazis felt more-or-less secure in the lap of the Party. (Location 1571)
Recognizing this pattern, it is helpful to return to the principle of reflexivity. The very manner of fighting the depressed social mood can exacerbate the problems, and in the case of the Third Reich (and other totalitarian regimes), their schemes only worsened the oppression of individuals and heightened the overall state of cultural despondency—leading, of course, ultimately to war and untold destruction of human life in the Holocaust. The Nazi party sought to alleviate the pain of the depression through enforced and very grandiose displays of German pride and unity that included the necessary villainizing of the “other”—the Jews: (Location 1610)
The world-wide state of depressed social mood that literally crashed in 1929 was preceded by not only the devastations of WWI, but a kind of maniacal upswing of the 1920s. While it is well known that Germany suffered from terrible economic woes after WWI, there was a strange kind of sexual exuberance that has mostly been misinterpreted as a season of liberation. In fact, as Judith Reisman depicts in Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences, the sexual atmosphere of the Weimar Republic was evidence of societal decline: (Location 1633)
One significant figure who demonstrates how the rise in testosterone levels during the late 1940s and 1950s brought the elevation of human reason, individuality, and capitalism to prominence is the famous American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. (Location 1720)
Although her novels became widely popular, her philosophy of Objectivism never gained acceptance in the academic establishment, which was already dominated by the socialist left. This suggests that though testosterone levels increased during the 1950s, they did so from a very low level and for too short a period to produce a critical mass of intellectuals with the attributes of the dopaminergic mind. (Location 1725)
It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgments. (Location 1742)
As depicted in Figure 7, fertility levels endured a huge decline during the 1960s and ‘70s. In these years, family values suffered again and gave in to radical feminism, sexual liberty, and the rise of the welfare state that replaced the family as socialism increased throughout Western civilization. In the US, the Great Society was a set of domestic welfare spending programs launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964-65. To finance the large government deficits incurred by government largesse, President Richard Nixon went off the Gold Standard in 1971 and enabled the Federal Reserve to engage in an unlimited program of money printing, which caused a major wave of inflation throughout the 1970s. Another product of the decline in social mood was the popularity among student groups and civil (Location 1782)
As seen in Figure 7, there was again a small trend of rising fertility rates in the 1980s. Not surprisingly this was accompanied with new spirit of capitalism and free enterprise best embodied by the new leaders elected in the West, Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Regan and the United States. (Location 1811)
Birth control pills and their manipulation of the endocrine cycle, repeatedly postponing ovulation, cause women to prefer more feminine men, indicative of the reflexivity effect: (Location 1846)
Yet another, rather alarming outcome of the gender confusion caused by plummeting testosterone is the movement of young men away from relational and sexual engagement altogether. Calling it the “Sexodus,” Breitbart.com reporter Milo Yiannopoulos chronicles this generational exit from the machinations of current sexual mores and politics. He summarizes: Social commentators, journalists, academics, scientists and young men themselves have all spotted the trend: among men of about 15 to 30 years old, ever-increasing numbers are checking out of society altogether, giving up on women, sex and relationships and retreating into pornography, sexual fetishes, chemical addictions, video games and, in some cases, boorish lad culture, all of which insulate them from a hostile, debilitating social environment created, some argue, by the modern feminist movement.[182] (Location 1870)
Their boyish, kinetic energy is drugged out of them with medication like Ritalin, and continues into adolescence, when they are ridiculed, chastised, and controlled around all facets of their sexual identity: (Location 1878)
In the United States, one of the most perilous health concerns seems to be a result of an aging, bloated culture. Abundance of food, but especially the wrong kinds of food, conjoined with the wrong kind of mindset leads to obesity. (Location 1940)
The Green crusade against eating meat, fat, and cholesterol, coupled with fads like the Pritikin diet, is a symptom of a society in self-destruction mode as its members are being instructed to harm their own health. The primary stimulus of such a mentality that has promoted a fundamentally destructive diet for the human body is the collapse in testosterone levels and the rise in tension and thus cortisol, which bring the culture to pursue its own demise. (Location 1968)
When they dissolve in the blood, they cause oxidation and destroy body cells and tissues in a way similar to how oxygen causes rust in metals. Saturated animal fat, on the other hand, does not contain oxygen and is very chemically stable and thus damage free. Furthermore, fat composes more than sixty percent of the human brain and is an essential part of every cell in the body, particularly the cell membrane, the wall that enables a cell to sustain a controlled environment. (Location 1975)
A high fat diet, such as the Atkins diet, is well documented to cause loss of extra body fat, which may be because it triggers the release of “satiety hormones” such as leptin and amylin and suppresses other hormones that create appetite. The Atkins diet was first introduced in the 1970s, but as a divergence from the culture of vegetarian or low-fat diet, it was attacked by the mainstream medical establishment. Furthermore, in the 1970s the high-fat Palaeolithic diet was first introduced, known as the “Paleo” diet and based on the diet of the Palaeolithic age, between 2.5 million and ten thousand years ago, before the agricultural revolution began that introduced grain farming. (Location 1989)
Some research debunks the myths that vilify meat, other work focuses on the problems inherent in high-carb diets, and still other investigations consider the human evolutionary relationship to eating meat. Anthropologist Leslie Aiello explains that eating cooked meat was a pivotal factor in increasing brain size and function in human evolution: (Location 1999)
Increasing carbohydrates incites the body to make more insulin, which subsequently activates the “Grim Reaper” gene. It is well known—from research and simply from experience—that eating sugars leads to craving more sugars. As insulin levels spike in the blood and then quickly drop, one tends to reach for more carbohydrates to pump up the blood sugar levels for more energy. Yet our bodies were designed to store energy in the form of fat and to pull from those energy-efficient fat cells. Kenyon’s research reinforces how problematic this vicious cycle of carb dependency is on the health and longevity of our bodies. (Location 2024)
It is well known that another critical component to health is the level of stress we endure. In an age of unprecedented convenience, abundance, and access to technology, it may seem a paradox that mankind is more stressed than ever—a state that critically impacts health status. (Location 2046)
If you're a gazelle, you don't have a very complex emotional life, despite being a social species. But primates are just smart enough that they can think their bodies into working differently. It's not until you get to primates that you get things that look like depression.[195] (Location 2058)
Sapolsky’s comment about primates being “just smart enough” to “think their bodies into working differently” carries important implications. He is referring to the developing frontal cortex that would culminate in mankind as the capacity to mentally supersede the limbic system. Ironically, however, that very capacity can be used self-destructively if we don’t recognize the ways in which the old brain functions. Overcoming deadly psychological stress is within the power of the rational mind, the dopaminergic mind. (Location 2061)
With aging, the levels of anabolic hormones, primarily testosterone, decreases, and the result is death and degeneration of cells. These cells are not replaced by new ones, which causes a malfunction of body tissues and vital organs. (Location 2123)
body in order to maintain life, cancer cells simply proliferate in the body, destroying it from within. Cancer cells have lost their ability to use oxygen to produce energy in the mitochondria, the energy unit of the cell, and thus cannot do productive work and become a destructive force in the body of the organism. (Location 2130)
German physiologist Otto Warburg, winner of the 1931 Nobel Prize, discovered that cancer cells have defective mitochondria and thrive on sugar. Dr. Thomas Seyfried has done much research to this end and advocates diet, particularly a “ketogenic” or paleo-style diet as the most effective way to combat cancer, as opposed to the highly toxic treatments of chemotherapy and radiation.[201] (Location 2138)
When testosterone declines and cortisol rises, people choose a carbohydrate-heavy, high-sugar diet. (Location 2156)
The illnesses that result are then compounded by radical and toxic treatments, taxing the sick body even more. In the same manner, the cancer of an expanding socialist government will eat the entire productive sector that sustains the life of a human society. The Pew Research Center for Social and Demographic Trends confirms the decline of the middle class since the 1970s in a study titled The Lost Decade of the Middle Class - Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier. (Location 2156)
During the twentieth century, as testosterone levels collapsed, the federal government in the United States, as in the rest of the West, has continued to expand from less than ten percent of GDP in the beginning of the century to close to thirty-five percent today. The government consumes resources from the economy through taxation, which are mandated by force from the public. It has little accountability or motivation to produce quality of either products or services. As a result, the diminished private sector is burdened with excess taxation and regulation, which inhibit production. The reduced entrepreneurship class is increasingly strangled by government bureaucracy and exposed to continued condemnation and vilification from socialists in academia and populist politicians. In addition, the ever increasing government spending and debt has caused a financial crisis and a malfunctioning economic environment that destroys private sector innovation and growth.[205] (Location 2172)
Adam Smith understood the division of labor—a heterogeneous work force—as a blessing to the entire economy, indeed a necessity. Marx criticized labor differentiation as alienating the worker from his work as he becomes “depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine.”[206] According to Marxist ideals in The German Ideology, the division of labor should be abolished: (Location 2191)
The dichotomy of heterogeneity and homogeneity is also apparent in the realm of ideas. A human culture in a mode of growth is directed by testosterone and thus the systematizing brain. This culture values reason and the pursuit of knowledge in order to expand science and master the natural world. (Location 2200)
In contrast, the extreme socialist systems in a declining testosterone environment pursue conformity. Organized in the twentieth century under Communism in Soviet Russia and National Socialism in Hitler’s Germany, these cultures demanded absolute homogeneity to one party line, destroying the possibility of the independent mind to pursue any objective truth. Ayn Rand’s ideas on such a contrast are perfectly expressed in the 1949 film, The Fountainhead through the character of Howard Roark: (Location 2203)
The achievement of timely synchronization between individuals to create order in complex systems is an essential requirement of their existence. Thus, each cell in a multi-cellular organism must have receptors to receive the hormones signals that proliferate throughout the body. Hence, it is not surprising that the same behaviors we observe on the cellular level are also seen in human cultures, because both are a product of biological evolutionary processes. Biologists have shown that each cell in a human body receives signals from other cells to remain alive, and in the absence of this, signals it will commit suicide, also called apoptosis or programmed cell death. Similarly, humans as well as other social mammals are psychologically dependent on receiving positive feedback from other members of their community, in the absence of which they may become depressed and eventually die. (Location 2227)
Relative levels of testosterone correlate strongly with everything from individual mindsets to fertility rates to sexual expression to overriding societal “mood” and even political systems. And so, this leads to the obvious question, what makes testosterone decline or rise? Is there a macro factor that is the engine behind the engine, so to speak? (Location 2238)
One example is the Axial Period of 800 to 200 BCE, in which Karl Jaspers found striking parallels between the development of similar philosophies across Europe and Asia. Another contemporary phenomenon is the global collapse in fertility rates, which is occurring simultaneously in the Western world, from the United States to Europe and Japan, and in developing countries such as Iran, Turkey, and China. (Location 2244)
Included in the complicated interactions between the sun and the earth is the phenomenon of geomagnetic storms. A Wikipedia definition gives a simple definition for the purposes of this discussion: A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field which interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. The increase in the solar wind pressure initially compresses the magnetosphere and the solar wind's magnetic field interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field and transfers an increased energy into the magnetosphere.[209] (Location 2254)
Just as the sun “rises and sets” each day, there is a daily circadian rhythm in which testosterone levels rise in the morning and gradually decline during the day until they fall to allow for the good night’s sleep. At this point, the hormone melatonin is released to do repair while the body rests. Thus, it is likely that the neuron circuits in the brain are very sensitive to changes in electro-magnetic solar energy that cause the hypothalamus to direct the release of hormones throughout the body. The brain responds, not to absolute energy levels, but to perceived changes in the electro-magnetic radiation. (Location 2268)
That energy allows for the plant and animal world to grow enough to sustain and further the food chain. When the brain receives signals of rising radiation levels, it interprets it as a signal that food will be abundant and increases the release of growth hormones such as testosterone. (Location 2274)
The microcosm of our cells offers a clear picture of how the energy level, the actual voltage, affects health. Cells need -20 to -25 millivolts (mV) of energy to function at a base level. To heal, however, we need new cells and that requires -50 mV to create. Chronic disease occurs when voltage drops below -20 or you cannot achieve -50 mV to make new cells. This voltage level can be ascertained by measuring the pH levels in the body. (Location 2280)
Abundant research in the past decade has brought the significance of vitamin D to prominence in regards to hormonal activity and health. Vitamin D is actually a steroid hormone that is made from cholesterol when the skin is exposed to ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation from the sun. Understandably, therefore, low cholesterol and low fat diets contribute to low vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is essential for proper body functions as well as in epigenetics, triggering numerous processes throughout the body. It is involved in the synthesis of serotonin and dopamine, which are linked to depression; and vitamin D deficiency is linked to Alzheimer’s, MS, diabetes, schizophrenia and asthma.[212] Dr. Alan Stewart of the University of Georgia points out that “…there is a lag of about eight weeks between the peak in intensity of ultraviolet radiation and the onset of SAD, and this correlates with the time it takes for UV radiation to be processed by the body into vitamin D.”[213] With all that has been presented in this book, it will come as no surprise that a connection can also be made to vitamin D and testosterone, and research confirms this. It should be noted that the testicles have receptors specifically for vitamin D, suggesting an important role for it with sex hormones. A study with Korean males showed the correlation with seasonal levels of vitamin D and low testosterone.[214] In other studies, low testosterone levels were found in mice that lack the receptors for vitamin D. Austrian researchers identified that low vitamin D combined with low free testosterone negatively impacts the mortality rate for men who underwent routine coronary angiography. The study looked at 2,069 men between the years 1997 and 2000 and concluded that there was a significant correlation between low levels in both of these hormones and a higher risk for all causes of death, cardiovascular and noncardiovascular alike.[215] These are but a few of various studies that highlight different indicators supporting the relationship of sun exposure and vitamin D levels to testosterone. (Location 2294)
The true paradox, however, is not even the reflexivity affecting mood, it is the fact that avoiding UVB rays stops the body from producing vitamin D, and D is crucial in a broad range of immune system supports, including the very cancer that using sunscreen was meant to avoid. Melanoma incidences per 100,000 have multiplied fourfold since the 1970s, when sunscreen was introduced. Dr. Edward D. Gorham, Ph.D., of the University of California at San Diego, explains that, “In vitro studies find that vitamin D is a potent anti-proliferative agent against various tumor cells including malignant melanoma 1.” Moreover, the sunscreens are screening out the wrong light spectrum, UVB, when melanoma is cause by UVA, which only some commercial sunscreens block.[219] (Location 2331)
Circadian rhythm is likewise linked to Bipolar Disorder, which is erratically cyclical, raising the question of whether geomagnetic storms could play a part in inciting bipolar episodes of either mania or depression. Almost all people suffering from this disorder also have irregularities in circadian functions including sleep/wake cycles, hormonal levels, appetite, and body temperature. Major disruptions in the sleep/wake cycle can trigger a bipolar episode. Many of the treatments for bipolar disorder, such as lithium, can shift circadian rhythms.[224] (Location 2361)
In the second half of the eighteenth century, while temperatures continued to be cold in Europe, there were innovations in agriculture that enabled many more northern Europeans to endure the cold. Historian Brian Fagan, in his book The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, argues that the collapse in grain yield due to harshly cold weather in the late eighteenth century led to the French Revolution. The starving populace blamed the ruling elites for their dire situation. Yet interestingly, because England had adopted new methods in agriculture, relying more on more animal farming than grain, they weathered the storms much better than the French: (Location 2430)
We, like the French of two-hundred and fifty years ago, risk a collapse in agricultural yields if the global cooling trend intensifies. That would cause rising food prices and political and economic chaos. Therefore, it is advisable to move to a more meat-based diet and agricultural system from a climate and ecological point of view, as well as the biological advantages laid out in chapter 5. (Location 2442)
Therefore, it is the philosophers who are at the top of the pyramid from which ideas disperse into the rest of the intellectual class, because they are the agents that promote the current moral standards. From there, the entire culture is influenced through the generation of students imbued with this knowledge as they graduate and fill top positions in government, media, and the business world. (Location 2513)
He did more to limit individual liberty than any regime prior to his in that great city—and would have done more had his efforts not been thwarted. To have him critique the academy for ideological overreach displays the distortion of a high cortisol mindset at the highest levels of Western culture. (Location 2532)
In her book Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand prophesized the collapse of the West due the collapse of reason and the capitalist system. This is similar to prophets like Jeremiah in ancient Israel who saw the collapse coming, though the masses ignored him. In a social environment dominated by collapsing testosterone, the few individuals who do not share this phenomenon will be ridiculed as irrelevant in the best case and persecuted in the worse. (Location 2581)
The paradoxical stance of Previc, and other academics like him, promoting the anti-life culture that would inhibit the dopaminergic mind, is exemplified vividly in the ongoing movement to control human population. M. Anthony Mills, a scholar at Notre Dame University, locates the genesis of population control in the philosophy of Rousseau, even if Rousseau himself did not necessarily advocate for such measures. (Location 2608)
the natural world. The mind’s ability to see patterns at increasingly complex levels and to recognize order is the gift of evolution. Yet, in actuality, the process of evolution functions on the boundaries of order and chaos. Because the human brain tends to see chaos first, and only then, over time, recognizes inherent order, it could be said that our understanding is always a matter of evolving perception. A rather recent example reveals this in concept as well as name. The 1970s brought us “chaos theory,” which, not unlike the ancient pagan conception, perceives nature as complex, non-linear, dynamic system that makes the future far too unpredictable—even in a deterministic system. (Location 2770)
The subsequent cataclysmic drop-off in testosterone levels between 1870 and 1933 caused the demise of reality-oriented Newtonian physics in the academic culture, particularly in the realm of quantum phenomena. The peak testosterone periods, such as that of ancient Israel and the Enlightenment, and the medium testosterone periods such as that Greek philosophy and development of Darwinian science, produced great scientific advancement. However, the total collapse of testosterone causes utterly unscientific theories that contradict the fundamental laws of logic, such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which actually destroys modern science.[4] (Location 2834)
“Men with low T [testosterone] die earlier than those with normal T.”[267] Supporting a therapeutic approach like BHRT is, as well, the straightforward act of eating a high-protein, good fat diet, which also promotes the natural production of testosterone in the body.[268] (Location 2857)
The problem with fighting our hormones, which are controlled by the limbic system, is that we are fighting our own mammalian brain. As declining testosterone brings a degeneration of the culture, becoming anti-reason, anti-reality, and anti-life, only a fraction of the population that does not experience this decline remains rational and productive. The most productive part of the economy is the information technology (IT) sector, where, not surprisingly, the highest concentration of the testosterone type, systematizing brains prevails. (Location 2889)
All of this vibrancy in the IT world comes with a warning, however, and that from a leader within its ranks. Founder and former CEO of PayPal, Peter Thiel, describes a real pessimism that permeates IT culture. Due to over regulation and other factors, innovation in many realms has actually stalled, becoming mostly focused on computing itself and not the potential applications of technological advancement. Thiel aptly describes the current state of affairs: (Location 2921)
You have as much computing power in your iPhone as was available at the time of the Apollo missions. But what is it being used for? It’s being used to throw angry birds at pigs; it’s being used to send pictures of your cat to people halfway around the world; it’s being used to check in as the virtual mayor of a virtual nowhere while you’re riding a subway from the nineteenth century.[277] (Location 2924)
In energy allocation and health innovation, among other areas, Thiel explains how we should be well ahead of where we are, given our knowledge, but there is a weighty cultural drag that has slowed innovation significantly. (Location 2928)
Particular to testosterone and improvement in the endocrine system, studies with mice indicate that magnetic therapies can create “a marked increase” in testosterone production, reinforcing the positive applications of TMS.[280] In a similar vein, another mode of brain stimulation is aptly called Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). In this treatment, a “brain pacemaker” is surgically installed in a region labeled “Area 25”: (Location 2956)
Even as testosterone levels have collapsed, a 2013 survey found that more than two-thirds (68%) of politically identified “libertarians” are men.[286] The “libertarian personality” has been investigated in a study that cites Previc’s Empathizer-Systemizer scale and notes that self-described libertarians score “a lot higher” on this scale as systemizers. An explanation of this study proceeds as follows: (Location 2993)
The second ray of optimism is equally significant: we are heirs to the Western philosophical tradition that developed over millennia—particularly since the Enlightenment—that elevates reason, knowledge of good and evil, and absolute moral standards. (Location 3013)
America is to “come back” to the recognition and protection of rights, Americans must discover and embrace the philosophical foundation that undergirds that ideal, the foundation that grounds the principle of rights in perceptual fact and gives rise to the principle that the only proper purpose of government is to protect rights by banning force from social relationships.[288] (Location 3021)
The liberated mind requires an internal locus of control that is a product of peak testosterone. Otherwise, the external locus of control becomes the dominant perception of reality as the human mind is enclosed in bondage to outside forces that seems above and beyond its control. (Location 3057)