Being Human

I had to miss Sat. class so can anyone catch me up on the interesting things I missed.Did any great seminar discussion happen? Please keep me in the loop. See you all Wed. and catch up on the info.I think it will be interesting to see how many of you got something different from the class.

Terri 

I read the two reading preping for the world cafe. I must say from this perspective of my life as a want to be downsizer and not collector, I value a good slow-cooked meal shared with friends across the table from me. I like to see their expressions and share the humanity. I have takes several courses here that look at what world globalization is doing to us and now the rest of the world. I find that at work when I go on my computer it creates more work, not less. It moves information faster but that means someone half a country away gets to create more work for me! I have less time to spend on the floor with my people interacting. Computers are designed to be addictive. They get you hooked and suck the time right out of you. I like not killing trees but reading the articles was hard on my eyes on line, and what fossil fuel was used to generate the energy to run my computer.

What happens when the fuel runs out and unless you have solar computers does learning stop?

As far as "relationships" on line, I think it is a bad idea. I have read enough Carol Gilligan to be recruited to her way of thinking that this is another way to supress women. It dehumanizes and degrades people. When people can create false fronts it is called deception. We had a friend that was going to date an on line person that represented herself as a tea totaler and some other things she was not, we clued him in and he was able to avoid a real bad situation. Human networking one, on line dating zero!

Computers have thier place as proper tools. It is convenient to go to the library from my home computer. A virtual walk through fall leaves is just not the same as a walk through Mc clain nature trail or around Capital Lake. Anyway I want to return to relationships and friends as "old school" as possible. See you at the long house and we can chat eye to eye.

I have read a lot about twin studies to know that some traits are highly heritable. I have also read a lot about how emotional intelligence can be taught in ways to help people function in society. How children interact with parents and peers can change thier behaviors. Lykken and Tellegen (1996) believe in a genetic happiness set point. You can go high or low for a time then tend to return to that set point. You do have control of your life and can learn things to increase your happiness. If you google seligman/authentic happiness you can take a free test and be part of a longitudinal study. 

I wonder if there is a maturation point that you recgonize your "personality self" and think about changes you may want to make. This would be like when a baby first recgonizes itself as a seperate person from others. There seems to be a time in teens to twenties that an awakening happens. This is an extreme time of hormonal changes, peer awareness, seperation from the home nurturing situation and final brain growth. Any thoughts out there? 

in their book "The Scientist In the Crib,Minds Brains, and How Children Learn", the authors talk about one facinating phenomenon. Up to about 7 months of age babies from any country can differentiate sounds like l and r. At ten months the American babies still could hear the difference but the Japanese babies could not tell the difference! The mom's and care givers of these babies had laid down a biased, native language tract for these children. I speculate what if all babies were taught multi-language to hard wire for all intonations. Also in the book they talked about an experiment that had a baby kitten's one eye covered for a period of time. Even tho this eye was fine the kittens brain would not "see" out of the covered eye when the eye was uncovered. How crazy is that. We talked in seminar about how our brain networks inside itself. I guess you use it or lose it.

The question was asked in seminar " Why do people continue with behaviors that are bad for them?"

There exists in us times of cognitive dissonance. For example people that smoke. There is a lot of data that tells you it causes heart disease, cancer, emphasima, etc. yet people still smoke. They know smoking is bad but in their mind they are a good person. A good person does not do bad things. This is the mental fight that goes on so we justify our smoking by saying things like: I exercise, I only smoke one pack a day, I could quit if I wanted to and I only smoke outside. We lessen the internal fight and so continue the behavior. This is also why we are a fat and sugar, french fry nation, always on a diet. It takes a real cognative shift to change our misregulated behaviors. I have been on a one week cleanse and keep sugar, dairy, bread and red meat out of my diet. My sugar craving has gone down, I have more energy that is constant and not sugar/caffine driven spikes and feel better. This is why it is important that the person is ready to change their behavior for something like quitting smoking to work. If it is someone else's plan for you it usually don't work.

I could also go into the need for a level of emotional intelligence that Daniel Goldman in his book "Emotional Intelligence" explains as necessary for this process to work. We start out with our lizard brain that gives us fight or flight. Latter as we mature our frontal brain filters the automatic reflexes of our amygdala, lizard brain. If a person has not been taught how to stop and not just fly off the handle and react, misregulation happens. In our relationships this is what allows us to have positive social engagement. There is a course here at Evergreeen, "Transforming Relationships" that teaches under the Imago Therapy umbrella and sets this process in motion.