And Now For Something Completely Different

Or: Two Heads are Better Than NONE!!!

Bryukhonenko wasn't alone in his fascination with bringing dead things back to life. As one might expect from a country that lost 6 million people to the Nazi's during World War Two, the science of resuscitation was something of a scientific and medical obsession The Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, where Bryukhonenko's dog experiments took place, was founded in 1936 by Vladimir Negovsky, a Soviet doctor who spent much of the Forties working on the front lines of the war with resuscitation teams, working to revive Soviet soldiers who were bleeding to death, and in some cases, had already bled to death. Negovsky's work prior to the war involved experiments with dogs, and Bryukhonenko was but one of many Soviet scientists working in this field.

In 1961, Negovsky defined his peculiar scientific specialty as "Reanimatology." From his obituary:

"Negovsky was able to develop reanimatology as a new medical discipline in the Soviet Union and trained and mentored several generations of "reanimatologists" in the communist countries, for whom anesthesiology, out-of-hospital emergency care and other acute clinical practices, became sub-specialties of reanimatology. Every hospital in Russia and former Soviet Republics has a Department of Reanimatology lead mostly by Negovsky's trainees."

Bryukhonenko also had protégés of his own, most notably Vladimir Demikhov, who in 1954 reportedly grafted a second head onto a living dog. You can see clips from his experiments here. The best view of Demikhov's creature is in the sixth clip (marked number "005").

Holy. Shit.

Elder Care and South Asian Families

One of the most frustrating things about living so far away from my family is that I often don't get news until long after the fact. It turns out that my parents have been trying to provide care for my elderly grandfather, who's had a pretty nasty infection lately. He seems to be doing better now, but it sucks that I'm not able to be there to help. One of the frustrations of my life recently has been that I'm pulled between the relationships I have here in Chicago, my family obligations in Florida, and decisions about school/work that don't necessarily lend themselves to either.

This situation also got me thinking about the challenges of South Asian cultural values about caring for older relatives crashing into the modern American always-on work schedule. In India (as in most Asian cultures) your family will provide care to your older relatives. No question about it. You open your home to them, you feed them, you cater to them, and you attend to them when they are sick. It's simply your duty, and most Asians I know accept it proudly.

But what do you do with an older relative who needs round the clock attention? My parents, thanks to a set of "mixed blessing" circumstances over the past few years, were able to provide this type of care directly while also keeping their jobs. But this isn't an option for most. It's especially not an option for those South Asians with legendary "Kwik-E Mart"-style work schedules. How do you care for an older relative if someone from the family absolutely has to be at the store? Even without a 24-hour obligation, the work schedules of doctors, lawyers, and other professions hardly allow much time for care.

So how do people deal with this? Some families I know just revert to long-established, and often long-buried, gender roles, where the woman is just expected to turn away from work in order to stay at home to care for an elderly father or mother-in-law (it rarely goes the other way). This just sucks. It promotes gender inequality, and losing about half the income is not a viable economic option for most families. One alternative would be for the man to stay home, but this is almost guaranteed not to happen, both because of Indian cultural norms and because of the economic issues. The way American families generally deal with this is (organ music, please) the nursing home.

But man. The compromise of cultural values needed to get South Asians to accept a nursing home is huge. The word itself is almost a slur -- it's shorthand for the perception of disconnection and lack of caring in Western families. I can see South Asian families being forced into this option by economic or medical realities, but I can't see them liking it. Does anyone out there in blog-land know of Asian families who've had to go this route? How did it work out? What were the effects on the family?

Hinduism in America

Poor little Not-Dead-Yet blog! I've been neglecting you, mostly because of a toxic combination of work, laziness, and a lack of bloggable material (lots of work + not wanting to blog about work makes Jack a dull blog).

But thankfully this post regarding commercial marketing of Dharmic (Hindu and Buddhist) religious beliefs at Sepia Mutiny forced me back in. The lovely and talented Cicatrix said:

But…but…but…I live in NY, land of the beautifully blonded yogis who teach classes on aligning chakras and smugly eat all-raw vegan meals while delicately puffing on their cigarettes. I’m wary of how easily complex Eastern philosophies become reduced to status items bought in a spiritual center’s gift shop. How easily the search for a harmonious understanding of one’s desires, relation to other people, and responsibilities in the world becomes transmuted into seeing oneself as a being superior to those who have not been enlightened.

I've always been really interested in the ways that people conceptualize and relate to the Dharmic faiths. It's complicated! It's particularly complicated because these faiths serve so many different, sometimes contradictory ends in the United States.

Ideas of Hinduism (I'm going to focus on Hinduism because it's my faith and I'm most familiar with it) designed to appeal to non-Indian Americans are distinct from those designed to appeal to Indian-born Hindus because they really try to market the faith. They focus on the exotic elements -- the polytheism, the rituals, the many famous traditions like yoga, Ayurveda, songs, etc... -- as well as spiritual-mystical elements that are supposed to restore balance to a heartless Western world by reorienting its chakras to sustain the atman (blah blah blah). I hope that these VERY shallow introductions to the faith will prompt people to explore the deep theological implications and vast diversity in traditions more deeply. But I doubt it. In my experience, they tend to attract people who think one yoga class at the Learning Annex entitles them to claim enlightenment. In short, this Western-oriented Hinduism often encourages a really noxious Orientalism. I'm not going to try to attribute motives to the people who teach these classes, but the net result is often to provide people a lifestyle accessory. A millenia-old religion as something you pick up in a gift shop.

But I think Hinduism is absolutely TERRIBLE at providing any sort of deeper alternative to people who did not grow up immersed in the faith. (A quick caveat here: my experience with Hinduism in America mostly consists of temples generally in the Vaishnav and Swaminaryan tradition in the Midwest and South, so I may be missing some huge cultural movement. If I'm wrong, please let me know.) The average Hindu temple offers virtually no access to people who feel most comfortable speaking English. They offer very little information about the theological underpinnings of the faith, and instead focus on the importance of staying true to the rituals and traditions of India. As a result, they serve as little more than a memorial of a lost life in India. Some have programs for American born youth, but these focus far more on maintaining traditional Indian cultural values (including the negative ones about caste, women, and skin color) than on understanding the theological implications of Hinduism. Now I don't want to sound too hostile here. Moving from India to the USA has to be a huge cultural shift, and it's important to have these institutions that make the transition easier. I know that it's especially important for older people, particularly since the temple has such a huge place in daily life in many Indian traditions.

But if the choices are theme park Orientalism for non-Indian Americans or a stuffy museum for Indian values, where do American-born Indians go? In particular, where do you go if some of your values differ greatly from traditional Indian ones? Where do you go if, for example, your strongest language is English (and you're ok with that)? Where do you go if you're in a relationship with someone who's not Desi (let alone in your caste)? Where do you go if you're not straight? Where do you go if you're a woman, and you think that women deserve to be treated equally?

I realize that all faiths have major moral lines, and that the exact point of these lines is often a subject of debate. In particular, I know that sexual orientation and gender issues are still major topics of debate in Western religious traditions. Gender equality is even a burgeoning field of debate in Islam (depending on the country, obviously). But I find it sad that (in my experience) there isn't even a debate about this stuff within a Hindu framework in the United States. People who feel strongly about any of these issues can either choose to silence their values, often in order to keep older relatives happy, or they can drop out of the faith altogether. I know that these discussions are happening in India, but I don't see them happening here. This is bad news because it leaves the millions of American-born Indians who have a mix of Western Enlightenment values and Indian Dharmic ones without a viable alternative.