Re: adaptive behaviors in society


"Malcolm" <regniztar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eaqvqh$26mb$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
So if you repeatedly stimulate the mantle of Aplysia, it will gradually
stop
withdrawing its syphon. I'm sure you've all heard the story of the boy who
cried "wolf".

The underlying evolutionary reason in each case is the same, it is a waste
of time to continue to respond to stimuli that don't mean anything. But is
there really any other common neural process? Personally I find it a bit
hard to swallow.

It makes helluva difference (at least as far as understanding ourselves
against the
backdrop of our phylogeny) that some situations (of individuals) are not
meaningless but (1) adversely significant to the potential extent of being
self-defeatingly distressing or flight/fight inducing - and (2) that such
situational features are often *coinciding* with "positive" environmental
(and with complementary instrinsic) selection pressures (or, alternatively
put, overlapping 'opportunity type' such).

In *artificially restricted* respect of how phylogenetic patterning of fauna
(thereof not the least the psychophysiology folk) having being shaped by
lifetime challenges (cases of individuals in situations) that correspond to
1 (above), what primarily tends to evolve is synaptic/neuronal means of
highly specific self-inhibition - to the effect of "selective
unconsciousness";
[IOW, such lifetime challenges select for "selective" (as in precise)
preconscious preclusion and preconscious preemption (or - to use a very
fitting Freudian term - "sublimation") of visceromotor-level,
emotional-level, and cognitive-level "activate/responsive awareness of" (or
a paying/focusing of 'actention' to) such, NOT merely habituation demanding
but requiring of (likewise neural) *repression*.]

Evolution-pertaining Philosophical Thinking (mainly in respect of how we
evolved to become how we are) involves the simple recognition that a
persistent pattern (or tendency) of phylogenetic (including 'natural
selection principled' and evolutionary in the sense of non-devolutionary)
patterning 'is produced' by examples (perfectly obviously often to have
occurred) of overlap between the above aspects/points (1 and 2).
That is, cases of individuals (lifetime instances/situations) prevailing
long enough to produce progeny through blocking pain (doing so synaptically,
"on the inside") WHILST CONTINUING to be 'profitably' perceptive and
preoccupied (be productively/reproductively opportunizing, "on the
outside").

Given that lifetime challenges in the form of inescapable and if paid
actention to potentially overwhelming ordeals [or, IOW, potentially
self-defeatingly di/stressing predicaments, or, in yet other words, fatal or
'fecundity forbidding' if focused/paid actention to (or, self-defeating if
stressfully preoccupied with) adverse di/stressors] and challenges in the
form of environmental opportunities (including "nearby-enough new, or
relatively new, niches") do - obviously - so very often significantly
overlap in 'biospherical space and time', AND given what is known and can
safely be concluded about how our brains (and relevant sub, co, and super
systems) work, I have found it both fun and apt to summarize, from
this encompassing perspective, the way we are and have evolved as AEVASIVE.

Yours,
Peter







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