I’m a bit of a late-comer and am only now getting around to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” It explores that instinctual decision we make in an instant without being bombarded by loads of information. To be fair, Gladwell explores the positive end of this when we make the right decision and the negative end, when for reasons he goes into, that moment’s choice is a faulty one.

The author looks at the notion of “thin slicing,” that is making a decision given limiting information, whether it be via a glance, body gestures, a facial expression or whatever. The idea is that this je ne sais quoi sensation allows as to pick up informational cues that perhaps don’t seem present when we’re making the split-second decision. However, were we to slow down our experience frame by frame, we might be able to capture evidence of why we made such a decion. In most cases, the less info a person is bogged down with, the more capable he/she is of making a decision with certainty.

All of this is fascinating food for my intellect. But ironically, it’s easy to get bogged down by over-analyzing the content of “Blink” and end up chasing one’s tale. It’s kind of like that Aranofsky movie, “Pi.” If you keep trying to analyze and discover a detailed “formula for what God is” you miss the point.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. There are simply so many distractions in today’s complex post modern (post human for that matter) life that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to sort the genuine article from the spam, for lack of better terms. So, I believe, we’ve lost touch with the very instinctual force that connects us to this planet and to each other. I’m going to keep going with the spam analogy…Remember the early days of email in the mid-late 90s when you did bother to write someone back, at length even. There was a genuine connection there, frankly because our in boxes were not barraged with as much crap. Now, even with our spam filters, we often find ourselves on overload. And in the world of email, ‘no answer’ seems to have become an acceptable answer. This is digressing a bit from the topic of instinct but I still think related and worth noting.

Our brains, like computer hard drives, keep on taking in more data (since they have the capacity), while our nervous systems, our human version of RAM, start malfunctioning, unable to process too much. The result is NOT optimum performance (in our human cases, ”wrong” intuition) and sometimes a system crash (panic attacks followed by total burnout). And so, by complicating our lives with the “necessary” evils–the web, Tivo, text messaging, cell phones–we are overloading our spirits with non-stop chatter which becomes white noise. Through that white noise it is impossible to hear the sound of our inner voices guiding us in the right direction. It is also very difficult to connect with others because that connection is also being weakened by the white noise overload.

Which brings me to the next factor–most specifically in human-to-human relations–the hormonal connection. Gynocologists’ long term love affair with the birth control pill (their favorite panacea) has led a vast majority of American women and girls today to be on said synthetic hormonal regulator. It has been proven in scientific studies that such medicated women may have trouble connecting with their chemistry-appropriate partners because their hormonal “scent” is off, masked by the pill. So their would-be boyfriends and lovers are off-mark when they make the decision to pursue them based on the good old primitive hormone/scent method.

I don’t want to sound too much like a dystopian hippie (if that oxymoron is even possible) and leave blog readers feeling completely hopeless. We live in a modern world and not all of us can go live off the land like an old high school friend of mine, Andy, who God bless him is really living the off-grid dream here in Cali. Let’s not get too caught up in the negative branding of the so-called hippie earth mother/earth father movement. We’re so past that. 

In quite simple culture-neutral terms, I believe it’s important to perform a sort of cosmological “system restore.” Links between a female’s menstrual cycle and the moon (and a male’s sperm production cycle and the sun) have been scientifically proven. The moon, with its ability to affect ocean tides, has an influence on the emotional cycles of both genders (we’ve all heard of emergency rooms being full and bar fights a-plenty during full moons). 

Since much of the planet is currently out of balance due to weather shifts, smog, light pollution and such, it is important to return to the old standbyes for grounding–the sun and the moon. These are the cosmic regulators that can re-align our systems. Apart from finding scent-suitable mates, why is such an awareness and connection vital? Firstly, its a means of preventing the previously mentioned burn-outs and panic attack episodes that so many of us Americans have grown accustomed to accepting (because we’re told to simply pop a Xanax or Clonopin at the sign of any such episode…and then given a list of nasty side effects on a TV commercial sponsored by America’s favorite pharmaceutical giants). But mostly because–if you haven’t noticed it being discussed on TV, the blogs or at the Latte spot/water cooler–there is a sense that we are so off-kilter now that there may be nothing left for us. People are feeling anxious, depressed, hopeless, disconnected…and self-help books are flying off the shelves and seminars and conferences filling up.

If women can become aware (that just means “knowledge of..”) the lunar cycles and thus attempt to match their menses with said cycles, some sense of balance can begin to be restored. In instructional terms, that means ovulation at the full moon and menstruation in the waning moon leading up to the first or second day of the new moon. For men, it’s a simple awareness and willingness to (as closely as possible) align their awareness with sunrise and sundown and an understanding of the equinoxes and solstices. Few men are farmers these days so this connection has been lost. It needs to be re-implemented.

So, want to save the planet? Don’t just bring your own trendy re-usable Kate Spade “green” bag to the grocery store and smile smugly that you are making a difference. Make the change an internal one before it’s too late.

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton