Being Human

Hello Team...I am currently reading Descartes' Baby and am on the chapter about "Good and Evil." I got really excited about how action/movements effect our emotions. It ties into Patty's post about "laugh therapy" and how our actions can change our biology. Ok, the part that I thought was really interesting was the "mirror" neurons that fire off when we watch others actions or when you are doing an action yourself. The neurons that fire off are the same whether you are performing the action or if you are watching the action. It totally makes sense that your brain cannot tell the difference, hence the topic of empathy. As explained in the chapter we mimic the facial expressions of others to empathize with them. Example would be (A) you smile because you are happy (B) I mimic your smile and feel happy as well, in particular I feel your happiness. We in an essence can actually feel each others joys and pains because the neurons do not differentiate whether it is my emotion or your emotion. If you have healthy boundaries you can tell the difference, I am not saying we cannot conceptualize the difference, but our neurons don't. It is crazy, so empathy is a chemical reaction in my brain.

If I got the information correct that is what I took from it at this exact moment in time. I am excited to hear what you all have to say and develop this idea further.

On a side note do you ever feel like the professor from Gilligans Island? You know the episode where they are rescued and he re-invents all these items like Frisbee’s and skateboards, like it is his own original invention. I feel like that with my education, it's like re-inventing the skateboard. I am totally stoked to invent it for myself.

Last Saturday Rick said that we tend to "be-little" the amazing things we do.  He said something close to that, correct me if I am wrong, I don't want to mis-quote his intentions.  I have been really thinking a lot about that this past week.  I know, I am not grounding my thoughts in our actual reading, and this is frustrating to myself and probably the reader.  Nonetheless, I have been thinking about how amazing it is as babies the ability to experiment with movement, learning how to speak, walk, have expectations, mind read, and the list goes on.  It makes me get really excited about how amazing we are as individuals.  Regarding human development we are all on the scale of humanity.  I like how Patty put it in one of her blogs the different sub-catagories of human develoment.  I just felt really up-lifted regarding the amazingly "simple" tasks our bodies naturally develope and perform.  It is really cool and I am excited to learn more about it.  

Hey Team,

So.... I am online right now and when I read the posts they are one really long sentance. I have to drag the page horizontaly to read the blogs. On top of that, there is a line through the blog. In addition, all of the responses are also one singular line. This is very time consuming to read and post. How do I fix this? Please help.

Descartes' Baby helped me with a huge break-through in my therapy... The discussion of the development of mind reading really boggled my brain and this is why. Children before the age of two, before they can even speak, can understand that other people have desires. Not only can babies understand their own likes and dislikes they empathize with others. This creeps me out because before children have the vocabulary to tell their parents to not pass their personal baggage, and set up healthy boundaries, babies are empathizing with their parents. Before the development of language babies are sorting through transitions by their feelings. I am sure all of my personal emotional "crap" that I don't know where it came from can be traced to my development of "mind reading" my parents.