The truth is, starting from before we are born, we inherit a great river of knowledge, a great flow of patterns coming from many ages and many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past, we call genetics. The information revelaed thousands of years ago, we call religion. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago, we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago, we call family, and the information offered years, months, days or hours ago, we call education and advice.
Some people believe that humans are careful theorizers...rational scientists, constantly weighing evidence and testing explanations.
However, a rival hypothesis states that we automatically simulate others, and understand what others feel by a version of what they are experiencing, in ourselves. In this view we are unconscious Method actors who understand by sharing or at least simulating the responses they see in the people around them. We're able to function in the world because we partially permeate each other's minds and understand— some people more, some less. Human beings understand others in themselves, and they form themselves by reenacting the internal processes they pick up form others.
...the processes of perception and evaluation are intermingled...the more two people imitate each other's movements, the more they like each other— and the more they like each other, the more they imitate.
Minds are intensely permeable. Loops exist between brains. The same thought and feeling can arise in different minds, with invisible networks filling in the space between them.
Most jokes are intensely social and bubble up when people find a solution to some social incongruity. Laughter is a language that people use to bond, to cover over social awkwardness or to reinforce bonding that has already occurred.
People are born into relationships— with parents, with ancestors— and those relationships create people... a brain is something that is contained within a single skull. A mind only exists within a network. It is the result of the interaction between brains, and it is important not to confuse brains with minds.
Showing posts with label David Brooks— The Social Animal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Brooks— The Social Animal. Show all posts
Monday, July 11, 2011
David Brooks— The Social Animal: The Map Meld
Marital satisfaction generally follows a U-shaped curve. couples are deliriously happy during the first years of marriage. Their self-reported satisfaction declines and bottoms out when their children hit adolescence, then it climbs again as they enter retirement.
There's something to the old joke that women need to feel loved in order to have sex and men need to have sex in order to feel loved.
Highly educated women are much more likely to perform oral sex, engage in same-sex activity, and experiment with a variety of other activities than less-educated women. Religious women are less adventurous than non-religious women, though the desires of religious men are not much different than those of secular ones. (Roy Baumeister, The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life
They say that foreplay for a woman is anything that happens twenty-four hours before intercourse.
An organsm is not a reflex. It's a perception, a mental event... some women can achieve orgasm just by thinking the right thoughts... the mental traits that are associated with ease of orgasms— a willingness to surrender control, the ability to be hyptnotized, the inability to control thoughts during sex...
There's something to the old joke that women need to feel loved in order to have sex and men need to have sex in order to feel loved.
Highly educated women are much more likely to perform oral sex, engage in same-sex activity, and experiment with a variety of other activities than less-educated women. Religious women are less adventurous than non-religious women, though the desires of religious men are not much different than those of secular ones. (Roy Baumeister, The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life
They say that foreplay for a woman is anything that happens twenty-four hours before intercourse.
An organsm is not a reflex. It's a perception, a mental event... some women can achieve orgasm just by thinking the right thoughts... the mental traits that are associated with ease of orgasms— a willingness to surrender control, the ability to be hyptnotized, the inability to control thoughts during sex...
Friday, June 17, 2011
David Brooks— The Social Animal: Decision Making
Rob and Julia
Rob, being a certain sort of man, took in most of what he wanted to know through his eyes. His male Pleistocene ancestors were confronted with the puzzling fact that human females do not exhibit any physical signals when they're ovulating, unlike other animals. So the early hunters made do with the closest markers of fertility available.
Men everywhere value clear skin, full lips, long lustrous hair, symmetrical features, shorter distances between the mouth and chin and between the nose and chin, and a waist-to-hip ratio of about 0.7.
...there is nothing that so enhances beauty as self-confidence.
...when the tip of the eyebrow dips, that means the smile is genuine not fake.
Women, in general, are less visually aroused than men, a trait that has nearly cut the market for pornography in half... (Women) are compelled to choose a man not only for insemination, but for companionship and continued support. And to this day, when a woman sets her eyes upon a potential mate, her time frame is different from his... There are more lemons in the male population than in the female population, and women have found that it pays to trade off a few points in the first-impression department in exchange for reliability and social intelligence down the road.
People rarely revise their first impression, they just become more confident that they are right.
Despite what you're read about opposites attracting, people usually fall in love with people like themselves... People generally overestimet how distinct their own lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them like a series of miracle... people who are getting to know each other subconsciously measure to see if their vocabularies mesh, and they adapt to the other person's level...90 % of emotional communication is non-verbal.
Words are the fuel of courtship. Other species win their mates through a series of escalating dances, but humans use conversation... the most frequent one hundred words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4,000 words account for 98% of conversations... a couple will exchange about a million words before conceiving a child.
...there's plenty of evidence that men fall in love more quickly, and subscribe more to the conviction that true love lasts forever.
...kindness is the most important quality desired in a sexual partner by both men and women.
The richer the man, the younger the woman he is likely to mate with. The more beautiful the woman, the richer the man. A woman's attractiveness is an outstanding predictor of her husband's annual income. (That makes me an outlier... :) )
Human culture exists in lareg measure to restrain the natural desires of our species.
...smell is a powerful way to read emotions.
...lack of emotion leads to self-destrictive and dangerous behavior. People who lack emotion don't lead well-planned logical lives... emotions measure the value of something, and help unconscioulsy guide us as we navigate through life
The brain is not separate from the body— that was Descartes' error. The physical and the mental are connected in complex networks of reaction and counter-reactions, and out of their feedback an emotional value emerges.
The brain states and bodily responses are the fundamental facts of an emotion, and the conscious feelings are the frills that have added icing to the emotional cake.
Reason and emotion are not separate and opposed. Reason is nestled upon the emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.
Rob, being a certain sort of man, took in most of what he wanted to know through his eyes. His male Pleistocene ancestors were confronted with the puzzling fact that human females do not exhibit any physical signals when they're ovulating, unlike other animals. So the early hunters made do with the closest markers of fertility available.
Men everywhere value clear skin, full lips, long lustrous hair, symmetrical features, shorter distances between the mouth and chin and between the nose and chin, and a waist-to-hip ratio of about 0.7.
...there is nothing that so enhances beauty as self-confidence.
...when the tip of the eyebrow dips, that means the smile is genuine not fake.
Women, in general, are less visually aroused than men, a trait that has nearly cut the market for pornography in half... (Women) are compelled to choose a man not only for insemination, but for companionship and continued support. And to this day, when a woman sets her eyes upon a potential mate, her time frame is different from his... There are more lemons in the male population than in the female population, and women have found that it pays to trade off a few points in the first-impression department in exchange for reliability and social intelligence down the road.
People rarely revise their first impression, they just become more confident that they are right.
Despite what you're read about opposites attracting, people usually fall in love with people like themselves... People generally overestimet how distinct their own lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them like a series of miracle... people who are getting to know each other subconsciously measure to see if their vocabularies mesh, and they adapt to the other person's level...90 % of emotional communication is non-verbal.
Words are the fuel of courtship. Other species win their mates through a series of escalating dances, but humans use conversation... the most frequent one hundred words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4,000 words account for 98% of conversations... a couple will exchange about a million words before conceiving a child.
...there's plenty of evidence that men fall in love more quickly, and subscribe more to the conviction that true love lasts forever.
...kindness is the most important quality desired in a sexual partner by both men and women.
The richer the man, the younger the woman he is likely to mate with. The more beautiful the woman, the richer the man. A woman's attractiveness is an outstanding predictor of her husband's annual income. (That makes me an outlier... :) )
Human culture exists in lareg measure to restrain the natural desires of our species.
...smell is a powerful way to read emotions.
...lack of emotion leads to self-destrictive and dangerous behavior. People who lack emotion don't lead well-planned logical lives... emotions measure the value of something, and help unconscioulsy guide us as we navigate through life
The brain is not separate from the body— that was Descartes' error. The physical and the mental are connected in complex networks of reaction and counter-reactions, and out of their feedback an emotional value emerges.
The brain states and bodily responses are the fundamental facts of an emotion, and the conscious feelings are the frills that have added icing to the emotional cake.
Reason and emotion are not separate and opposed. Reason is nestled upon the emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
David Brooks— The Social Animal: Introduction
This is the happiest story you've ever read. It's about two people who led wonderfully fulfilling lives...because they possessed what economists call noncognitive skills...hidden qualities that cant be easily counted or measured, but which in real life lead to happiness and fulfillment.
The research being done today reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self. If you want to put the philosophic implications in simple terms, the French Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, loses; the British Enlightenment, which emphasized sentiments, wins.
...we have become accustomed to a certain constricted way of describing our lives. Plato believed that reason was the civilized part of the brain, and we would be happy so long as reason subdued primitive passions. Rationalist thinkers believed that logic was the acme of intelligence, and mankind was liberated as reason conquered habit and superstition.
A reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature has led to multiple failures of politics and economic policy, nationally and globally.
The Greeks used to say suffer our way to wisdom. The essence of that wisdom is that below our awareness there are viewpoints and emotions that help guide us as we wander through our lives.
Your unconscious, that inner introvert, wants you to reach outward and connect. It wants you to achieve communion with work, friend, family, nation, and cause.
The research being done today reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self. If you want to put the philosophic implications in simple terms, the French Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, loses; the British Enlightenment, which emphasized sentiments, wins.
...we have become accustomed to a certain constricted way of describing our lives. Plato believed that reason was the civilized part of the brain, and we would be happy so long as reason subdued primitive passions. Rationalist thinkers believed that logic was the acme of intelligence, and mankind was liberated as reason conquered habit and superstition.
A reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature has led to multiple failures of politics and economic policy, nationally and globally.
The Greeks used to say suffer our way to wisdom. The essence of that wisdom is that below our awareness there are viewpoints and emotions that help guide us as we wander through our lives.
Your unconscious, that inner introvert, wants you to reach outward and connect. It wants you to achieve communion with work, friend, family, nation, and cause.
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