Re: Some brain questions i need help with

From: dan michaels (feedbackdroids_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/28/04 

Date: 28 Sep 2004 11:19:53 -0700

"JPL Verhey" <matterDELminds@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<415949e2$0$44090$5fc3050@dreader2.news.tiscali.nl>...

> Although I think it is not by default a bad thing to be an internaut and
> experiment with tricks, it appears most western internauts are just
> after "having experiences", not much different from seeking pleasure and
> sensation, drule over stuff for sale in shopping malls, visit brothels.
> It's mostly just in the "experiences for sale" market place. Stand on
> your head for a day "like the yogis" and feel special. I always wonder
> how kids and animals do it - they don't need all that.
>

Much of this stuff, I think, is a result of external behavioral
conditioning in one way or another.

BTW, you do know that John B. Watson, the great pioneer of
behaviorism, went into commercial advertising after being drummed out
of academia on the grounds of moral turpitude [that's a truly great
word - Latin base turpis, vile]. The middle-aged and married Watson
seems to have impregnated his teenage lab assistant. The issue was
named Albert B., after Watson's favorite lab rat. So the story goes.

In any case, we probably have Watson and his ilk to thank for the
modern schemes of advertising which are completely saturating our
modern western cultures. This aspect of america has become rather
sickening.
=====================

> > BTW, in his book The Muse in the Machine, David Gelernter the Yale
> > comp.scientist spends a lot of time hypothesizing that ancient man,
> > primitive peoples, and children tend to be more in touch with the
> > emotional aspects of thinking, as opposed to the logical aspects,
> > which govern behavior after the early teen years. His theory is about
> > a multi-level spectrum of thinking, and as we "mature" and become
> > socialized by our western cultures, we loose some of the abilities
> > possessed by those 3 other groups. Maybe the new-agers are tapping
> > back into that.
>
> I'm not sure what abilities we lose.. but in our rationalized and
> technologically advanced western societies where we move around in
> buildings and sit behind computerscreens at the workplace doing rational
> work under neon lights all day, much of the physiology of our organism,
> our senses that for hundreds thousands of years were tuned in and active
> in the wild.. get numbed. 15 years ago or so, I worked at a farm in
> Sweden - the simple and physically hard outdoor life. Cutting wood in
> the forests for hours, repair fences, feed the animals, experience
> winter moving into spring.. hard to beat by any new-age wonderland cult.
> > ==============

It's probably more the natural maturing process, than something
specifically being lost. As children we play with both real and
imaginary friends. Much more is made up. As adults, our critical and
logical faculties are better. We become enculturated. As Gelernter
says, thinking goes from being more basic and emotional to being more
logical and abstract. I suspect that much of the new-age business
involves reprising the early child-like mechanisms still present in
the brain.

I would also imagine that many of today's new-agers are like the
hippies of yesteryear. They grew up coddled in middle-class homes, and
didn't live the kind of life you lived as a youth. These children know
nothing of survival in the forest - other than what they see on the
tele.
===================

> >
> >
> >> Which reminds me: "better a bottle infront of me, than a frontal
> >> lobotomy."
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >
> >
> > Man, you europeans sure know how to live ;-).
>
> ..how to drink you mean? ;)
>

Back to Watsonian advertising paradigms again ;-), the way europe is
portrayed to romantic american tourists is ..... that you go over
there to engage in the "lifestyle". Sit in the outdoor cafes on the
Rive Gouche and near the Spanish Steps, and observe humanity at its
best, and absorb the great cultures. Etc ... Before coming back home
to commonplace materialistic america. Starbucks Coffee, BTW, I think
is capitalizing on this aspect of eurpoean culture.
===============

> I have an 87 year old uncle, a neuroscientist in his working life who is
> losing his memory for the last years, and always was an introvert. Some
> alcohol does miracles - he comes back to life, although it now means he
> keeps telling the same stories over and over again within minutes.

This is interesting, that alcohol to some extent possibly undoes
senile effects. [however to say it].