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Post by gailkate on Oct 13, 2009 11:04:44 GMT -5
I'm not sure where to put this, but it definitely has socio/political implications. I'm starting the thread as a place to put interesting research and observations that affect our world. David Brooks (my favorite conservative) apparently went to a neuroscience conference that revved up his little gray cells. His report did the same for me. The whole nature/nurture question is fertile grounds for theorizing, but this adds the dimension of culture to how we think, make judgments and feel empathy. See what you think. www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/opinion/13brooks.html?_r=1
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Post by doctork on Oct 13, 2009 12:00:29 GMT -5
I'm reminded of John Donne: As the islands of knowledge expands, so do the shorelines of ignorance.
I think about that a lot.
And I've followed psychoneuroimmunology for decades. How you feel influences how you brain acts chemically, which in turn affects how you immune system functions. Long story short: too much stress and you start getting infections.
And what I tell patients - there's lots more things going on in the human body (and no mind-body dichotomy) that we can detect or explain with our mere medicine and tests.
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Post by jspnrvr on Oct 13, 2009 17:55:15 GMT -5
And what I tell patients - there's lots more things going on in the human body (and no mind-body dichotomy) that we can detect or explain with our mere medicine and tests. Absolutely. I've seen too much in my years in health care to discount anything people tell me. I also like to tell folks that we are an amazing piece of God's handiwork, which means we can screw up at a very high level.
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Post by joew on Oct 13, 2009 20:23:31 GMT -5
That is interesting stuff, especially the bit about Japanese reacting to subordinate behavior the way Americans react to dominant behavior.
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Post by Jane on Oct 13, 2009 20:38:05 GMT -5
It is fascinating that behavior can somehow influence biology (or something like that). There are so many adopted Chinese girls at our church--several of them are very loud, boisterouseffusive, and I wonder how they would have fared in China. Would the culture have negated their natural inclinations, and would they have turned into "asian" personalities rather than noisy little American girls? One of them has been diagnosed with ADHD; how would that have worked inself out in a peasant family in China?
In another article, the NYTimes magazine a few weeks ago had an article about the Anxiety Gene; studies seem to indicate that researchers can predict with unerring facility what people will have anxiety issues as adults based solely on their behavior as infants. Does this contridict Brooks' article?
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Post by gailkate on Oct 13, 2009 23:54:19 GMT -5
I read Brooks's article as adding a dimension, not rejecting other explanations of behavior. I've read about the anxiety gene or the bashful gene with relief, because I'm certain I was born fearful.
But doesn't this culture business just add to what might mold that fearful child? I need to read more, but it seems the trend in this research is to see how a given child, with whatever traits are inherited or taught, may grow up wary of the 'other' or sympathetic or hard-hearted. One thing I noticed was the broad labeling - Americans vs. Japanese, and so on. Surely we can't all be lumped into huge classes like that. Wouldn't there be differences between a white child in a small midwestern town and a Hispanic child in a barrio?
But I'm intrigued and want to find out more. I've wondered, for example, how terrorists could possibly behead captives so agonizingly. It must be something about the way they perceive the 'other.'
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Post by rogesgallery on Oct 30, 2009 5:39:50 GMT -5
...And what a fascinating conversation from which to start this winter's (for me since I post so little in the summer) introspective. Thanks Gail and Hi everyone.
What I find equally interesting —and it was (for me) thought provoking to read the larger collection of comments to the article on the Times site— is the variety of opinion as to the implication, validity, and value of these studies. Everything from seeming visions of god with his mixing bowls and petri dishes to discounting the studies offhand for the youth of the researchers.
It is pleasant to hear of progress in research being done that cannot be immediately weaponized, or, like psychic research and remote viewing, have the potential to waste the funds of those who would attempt to weaponize the human mind while, ultimately, engendering an ever widening awareness and curiosity in humanity.
Personally I don't find the timing of this research all that surprising. In studying historic changes, some good and some bad, I have noticed that rough ideas which become popular, and seem whimsical or irrational in one generation, often coalesce into reality or science after two generations of incubation— that said, this science would be a natural development from the New Age movement, which could be mapped, in bi-generational leaps, back to the Swedenborg movement, which could be mapped, in bi-generational leaps, back to the Lutheran movement and thus the search for the (meaning of life?) could be, culturally. mapped all the way back through history. Potentially, the future could be predicted in the same manner.
This I believe could be found to be true in politics, industry, and finance or any human social application. This winter's study for me is the election year of 1968. I will attempt to find the essense of what will happen politically in the next ten years by studying the germinating seeds of the craft of politics in that very pivotal year.
I wonder what this research will inspire in two generations?
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Post by gailkate on Nov 1, 2009 20:06:09 GMT -5
Somehow I missed this comment, roges, and now I feel inadequate to respond. Darn, I'm going to have to look up Swedenborg and he sounds like one of those dour Scandanavian bachelor farmers. The development of science over generations works in reverse, too. I mean, some ideas that take awhile to gain traction can be blythely discarded within a generation or two. I'm thinking particularly of Freud, but all the interest in psychoanalysis and the significance of dreams (from Jung to Fritz Perls) seems to have been rejected for genetics and chemistry. My shrink just figures out my neurotransmitters; then we talk about gardening or dogs. Behaviorism is still holding on among talk therapists, although it's softened and expanded since Skinner. I see validity in all of them, as with this new direction, and I wish they could be kept alive even as we learn more. For instance, are there cultural defense mechanisms? Repression seems like an undeniable phenomenon to me, and I think maybe some cultures encourage repression more than others. Seeing that as a defense mechanism might be revealing. Did the Russians need to repress individualism for some reason? And now, are they struggling because that defense has been taken from them? My train of thought is breaking up. I think I might be full of hot air.
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Post by rogesgallery on Nov 2, 2009 3:01:44 GMT -5
Not to worry gail, at least in my case. As you well know it can be months before I reply to a post.
Your mention of Freud has some paralell implications in this discussion since he is reputed to have consumed enough cocaine in his life to incapacitate a family of Elephants. Today— in this country— he would have been demonized, his credibility discounted, his self esteem shattered, and his research trashed, if he had been able (or allowed) to accomplish anything at all. In his time, though he was considered somewhat eccentric, his work was considered the most compelling psychiatric research of the century.
What Does this say about the brush fire effect of cultural fears? Could the answer to our social inadequacies actually be buried/supressed in the most demonized portions of our population?
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