[evol-psych] MRI Studies: The Brain Permanently Altered From Infant Circumcision
Peter
> Hi
>
> Very interesting as always. The structural changes however
> shocking/interesting don't tell us what the functional outcomes might be
> however. Intuitively, we would say they are bad, but how long, beyond one
> month, do they last, what is their significance? Do they impart
> psychopathology or developmental delays? Unlikely, as the entire Jewish
> population of males seems to be unremarkable in that regard, across
> millennia, and rather, skewed towards disproportionate good
> educational/emotional, even Nobel greatness, or higher IQ than many others,
> and so on. Female circumcision, we know, confers no benefits apart from
> social belonging, and confers surely demonstrable adverse effects lifelong.
> Male circumcision, apart from when it is screwed up, seems to be benign on
> the face of it. Little boys should look like their daddies for the most
> part, so they say, hence some pressure from males who do not have other
> reasons for doing it. It may be that being held by your granddad/godfather,
> being fed sacramental wine by the spoon on a gauze in the mouth, given
> anaesthetic cream, or the speed at which the traditional Mohel's do it,
> perhaps alters the experience? Who knows, this should be researched? I
> have witnessed dozens or hundreds of these traditional ones, and never
> seen the child go berserk as described, but certainly the child cries
> briefly and must be in pain. General anaesthetics would be really
> dangerous. So what is the functional, adverse brain outcome, if there is a
> permanent, eg longer than one month, structural change? Is it sufficient
> to warrant the social upheaval it would bring to circumscribing religions?
>
> Roy
Thank you Roy, the fact that there is not more research into this, is
the
problem.
I started thinking about this subject, after watching Michael Moore's
documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' where he makes the point that gun
ownership in Canada, approaches gun ownership in the US, yet gun crime
in the
states is far higher, why?
So I started digging around in nationmaster as regards national
statistics and
male circumcision rates caught my eye.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Circumcision-(male)
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin,
Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia,
Ghana,
Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya,
Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Niger,
Pakistan,
Philip pines, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Samoa. Tonga, Saudi
Arabia, Sierra
Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan,
Tunisia,
Turkey, Turkmenistan, United States of America, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu
and Yemen.
My contention is that it does not change the individual that much, but
changes
society.
So the obvious question then becomes 'what changes does infant male
circumcision make to the individual male psyche'?
Many will say it is only a little bit of skin about 10 to 15 square
inches,
but some estimates have it that the 'little bit of skin' contains
around
20,000 nerve endings.
Presumably these nerve endings connect to the limbic system, my
hypothesis is
that the limbic system regulates neurotransmitter production, another
part of
my hypothesis comes from Plato, namely we must separate passion from
reason,
it is my hypothesis, that infant male circumcision, alters the balance
between
passion and reason in the individual.
It is my hypothesis that infant male circumcision makes the individual
more
reasonable and less passionate, which is good for the family because
it makes
the male tamer and more predictable, so one can see how the practice
became
entrenched.
This can be seen in the behaviour of arguably, the greatest chess
player ever,
Bobby Fischer, there is good evidence that Fischer was born of a
Jewish mother
and a Jewish father but was not circumcised.
After he demolished Spassky in 1972, when he returned to America, the
cold war
hero, he had the whole of the western world at his feet, but he turned
his
back on fame and fortune and became a recluse, not the behaviour of a
rational
man, one could argue, but one could also argue that emotionally he did
not
like American culture, where everything is bought and sold, including
foreskins. Probably he did not want to be sold like tooth paste
But it seems to me, the countries listed earlier are more narrow
minded, more
right wing and more cynical, less empathic, more ruthless and venal.
The enormous cynicism exhibited by the largely circumcised US in 1991,
when
they did not march all the way to Baghdad and try Saddam as a war
criminal
then, instead of spending the next 12 years torturing the Iraqi people
and
then trying Saddam, is the sort of thing I mean. And before anyone
says the
Brits were in on it too, I read somewhere or other, both Norman
Schwartzkopf
and Peter de la Billière wanted to finish the Job, but Colin Powell
said no, so
then you might say, why didn't John Major tell de la Billière to
ignore
Powell and finish the job, well around that time, Major was committing
adultery
with Edwina Currie, the Jewish MP and was effectively muzzled.
It is my belief, that what should run human civilisation is principle,
not
people or groups of people. Just groups of people to make sure
principles are
adhered to, a good example for principle is the Hippocratic oath,
first do no
harm.
One group of people that presumably exists to see principles adhered
to, are
UN delegates, in '91 when the logical thing to do, would have been to
march
all the way to Baghdad and finish the job, but this would have been
seen as
giving the UN teeth, countries breaking UN resolutions and tin pot
dictators
like Slobodan Milosovich would not like a UN with teeth would they? If
they
had have finished the job in '91, it is probable that Milosovich would
not have
embarked on his career of genocide.
Now I'm going to get a bit silly.
As to what caused the second world war, many pundits will say Hitler
caused
WW2, this is like saying Gavrilo Princip caused the first world war,
which is
ludicrous, it is not hard to see what caused WW2, it was WW1.
Men like Hitler are two a penny, given the right economic conditions
and a
homicidal maniac will come to power, history is littered with them.
So what caused WW1?
Up until 1867 Germany did not exist, then it came into existence
under the
helm of Bismarck.
From around the time of Columbus, European countries had been carving
up the
planet willy nilly, with Germany being the new kid on the block, and
wanting
a piece of the action, so Germany started colonies in North Africa and
the
pacific.
England and France did not like this so started blockading German
ships, or to
put a finer point on this, since the time of Waterloo, England said
jump and
France said how high?
And now for something completely different.
The first big row between Princess Diana and the rest of Royal family
happened
when she refused to let them circumcise William and Harry, this
interesting
piece of scuttlebutt, tells us something, namely Prince Charles is
circumcised, so how come the British Royal family were circumcising
their
sons?
One of Queen Victoria's sons, Edward Prince of Wales, was very
wayward, one
can imagine, Queen Victoria's Jewish Prime Minister, Benjamin
Disraeli
advising her that there was a method of taming the male, by ensuring
he gained
less visceral pleasure from sex.
All this leads me to guess that the Kaiser, Tsar Nicholas and George V
all
Grandsons of Queen Victoria were circumcised.
One bit in wikipedia made me laugh.
"Although they occasionally toured the British Empire, George
preferred to
stay at home with his stamp collection and lived what later
biographers would
consider a dull life because of its conventionality."
Is this the behaviour of a circumcised King or an uncircumcised King
is open
to conjecture, but what we can be sure of is, George was deeply
implicated in
the Jingoistic brinkmanship, that caused WW1.
In my studies of circumcision, I discovered that Hadrian banned the
practice
and this possibly led to the diaspora, because he could not tame the
circumcised tribes that lived around the coast of the Mediterranean
because
they were more fanatically logical, than European people, my evidence
being
Masada.
People reading this, will imagine that I am condemning circumcision,
not in
the past I'm not, in the past it was the right thing to do, so history
could
unfold as it did. WW2 led to the invention of computers rockets and
computers
all of which have given us the ability to colonise space.
All the people who suffered and died in WW2, will have suffered and
died in vain
unless we consider Heaven and space to be synonymous.
But I do think that this practise should be seen as child abuse in the
future
with MRI scans being done to acquire evidence.
My dream is that, identical male twins separately adopted from birth,
with one
being circumcised and the other being left intact, so psychological
studies
can be carried out.
Another possibility is to find a couple who would normally circumcise
their
sons and have just had identical twins and pay them not to circumcise
one of
their sons, to compensate them for the embarrassment of one of their
sons not
being sic normal.
Many people on this list will assume I'm anti Jewish, far from it, my
four
favourite men of all time were Jewish, namely Spinoza, Einstein,
Fischer and
Bob Dylan.
Regards,
Peter
