The Stuff Of Life

 Posted by my granddaughter:  A speculative piece on what I believe defines personality and whether personality persists in total isolation without external sources to react to.

https://soulleak.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/what-defines-personality/

An interesting article. Here is an excerpt: >But if a man was raised in a white, empty room without ever having human contact and assuming he does not need to be fed and has basic knowledge enough to be civilized and not like an animal, would he have personality? (In this example, he need not be fed for the sake of not having food to interact with). Without any faculties to react to, would he have intangible attributes of character?<

My response:  Interesting. Of course the problem with the thought experiment is raise a human being that way and they will simply die. Small children, especially babies, who don’t have sufficient human contact fail to thrive and die. Children adopted by Americans from highly neglectful orphanages have profound personality disorders that simply cannot be corrected. Look to Maslow‘s experiments with infant monkeys. Quite cruel, and today probably would not be permitted. However, quite informative.

Jun 20, 2018

PsychologicalScience.org

...the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact — many stayed separate from the group, and some even died after refusing to eat.

 https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/us-experiment-on-infants-withholding-affection/13213

 > In the United States, 1944, an experiment was conducted on 40 newborn infants to determine whether individuals could thrive alone on basic physiological needs without affection. Twenty newborn infants were housed in a special facility where they had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary, never communicating with them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile, none of the babies becoming ill. 

The experiment was halted after four months, by which time, at least half of the babies had died at that point. At least two more died even after being rescued and brought into a more natural familial environment. There was no physiological cause for the babies' deaths; they were all physically very healthy. Before each baby died, there was a period where they would stop verbalizing and trying to engage with their caregivers, generally stop moving, nor cry or even change expression; death would follow shortly. The babies who had "given up" before being rescued, died in the same manner, even though they had been removed from the experimental conditions. 

The conclusion was that nurturing is actually a very vital need in humans. Whilst this was taking place, in a separate facility, the second group of twenty newborn infants were raised with all their basic physiological needs provided and the addition of affection from the caregivers. This time however, the outcome was as expected, no deaths encountered.<

We are social animals.  Without society, without socialization, we do not survive. The followers of Ayn Rand, so much of today’s conservative movement, ignores the basic nature of human beings. Their philosophy, if you want to call it that, makes as much sense as breatharianism. Yeah, there actually is such a thing. People who claim that you don’t need to eat food or even drink water, all you need to do is breathe.

Our need for human contact, for human touch, for human affection runs deep. So deep that it defines the very nature of what it means to be a living human being.  To expand on my granddaughter’s question, at what point do we cease to even care about our own survival?. Are these poor abused monkeys really monkeys? Where those poor abused babies really human?

One thing is clear, they did not even value their own survival in the absence of the affection of their own species.

To withdraw love and affection from those who love you and need you is one of the cruelest of all acts.  Whether you are a biblical literalist or an objective rationalist, it is clear that we are, as human beings, one great family.  Every stranger is a distant relative. We must care about each other and for each other or we will fail to thrive.

Slice Of Life (Mine)

Hey Bobby. Why make a Facebook post that you won't notice? I'll just text you. I'm really worn out today, of course, because I have to pay for everything I do but the price is small compared to the benefits. I'm still feeling really happy and steady. Being with people makes life so much more endurable. Not to mention I had a really great time with all the discussions we had -- some really interesting stuff came through. Katy is really interesting I like her.

Glad you brought her. Yesterday was specially great because James stopped by and spent time with us.

You said I should let you know if any interesting anime came by here are a few, none of them deep and serious but I do find them fun. They're all on Netflix.

NeoyokioStrange look at a future? alternate? world. In spite of its seemingly silly storyline it is really a social commentary and it can be quite biting here and there. If you like it you'll love it, if you don't, you will find it really weird.

SaikiK. This one's fun but it's also a little odd. It's subtitled and everyone in it talks so fast sometimes I have to rewind in order to read the subtitles. But I enjoy it. What if you had superpowers, hated that fact, just wanted to be a reclusive loner but the world seems to keep conspiring to out you and force you to be involved with people?

Agretsuko. I told you about this one, not fluff but not serious either. I just find it a lot of fun.  Slice of life for a red panda salary slave.

Violet Evergarden.  This one is really good. The storyline gets serious here and there but it's a much more interesting as a view of an alternative world with some deep emotional context.

Children of the Whales. Interesting story with interesting characters. Creates a strange alternate world. Awfully violent. But still I found the story intriguing.

Fate Zero. Very popular and with good reason. No depth, no great meaning, but an interesting storyline. Any exposition would be a real spoiler. However, for what it's worth, extremely popular. But then again so are Dragon Ball Z and  One Piece and  a lot of  other animes I simply cannot stand.

Saw an interesting show on Ayn Rand. I know you remember her. Who could forget the mighty rallying cry of her adoring cult members , "Eine volk!  Eine reich! Ayn Rand!"

I enjoyed this video from C-SPAN:  

https://www.c-span.org/video/?461916-1/mean-girl

And here's a quote from one website that I found very telling:

>She allowed him to run the Nathaniel Branden Institute, a small society dedicated to promoting Objectivism through lectures, therapy sessions, and social activities. The courses, he later wrote, began with the premises that “Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived” and “Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world.”  <

How very individualistic. How very non-collective. I mean how very mind controlling and cult of the personality.

I'm really worn out I think I'm going to go back to sleep. I slept really well last night but I'm still tired. I'll probably post this on my blog because it's got some interesting points. I do so little posting these days it won't hurt.  

I'm glad you're my friend and I appreciate your being here for me in this very difficult time.

Dancin' The Hypocrite Rag

The oh so very Christian Republicans adore the teachings of Ayn Rand. They say "Jesus" endlessly while doing the work of the implacably atheist Rand.

-- Think of it like a vegetarian opening a steak house. --

Matthew 6:24
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."

But the Republicans sure try hard!

(Oh, on a side note, Ayn Rand died poor living off Social Security. So much for opposing big government programs and rallying for “personal responsibility.”) Jesus Christ believed in helping the poor; feeding the hungry; opposing greed; believed in acceptance; taught to provide for the needy, all while preaching love and generosity. Ayn Rand believed that we should only worry about ourselves, that the “self” is the only thing that matters and essentially charity was stupid. - See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/republicans-trying-mix-ideologies-jesus-christ-atheist-doesnt-make-sense/#sthash.7LGSTLGZ.dpuf

Idle Thoughts -- Scrooge's Ghost Haunts the GOP

Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption. Remember that Scrooge had a lot of bad things happen when he was young, so we can understand how he became a miser who only cared about money. Scrooge didn't even care about his own comfort. He lived in old almost abandoned house, ate bad food, and did not live well, even though he was rich.

Money for him was about power and control. It meant he was safe. Safe from all the bad things that had happened when he was younger.

His old partner, who was just as bad as he, comes to visit him as a ghost because he says his hurt himself through greed when he was alive and even though he was a miser, he cares about his old friend and partner and wants to help him.

So when the ghosts come to talk to Scrooge, they're all coming to help him. For him this is a very strange thing. The only people he really cared about or trusted were his deceased sister and his fiancée, who he abandoned because money was more important to him than love.

Scrooge had a very modern Republican Party attitude toward poor people. If you are poor, it must be your fault. The ghosts show him that this isn't true and he begins to realize that the poor aren't things, they are people. Maybe the most important moment is when he remembers the party his old employer gave to his workers every Christmas. It didn't cost much but it made everybody so very happy. That's when Scrooge realizes that you can have money and be powerful and cut yourself off from everyone or you can use your money to make everyone, including yourself, happier.

The best real world example of a Scrooge is Howard Hughes. Fabulously wealthy, perhaps the wealthiest man in the world, he ended his life hiding in a hotel room in Las Vegas, shuffling around using empty Kleenex boxes for slippers, terrified people were out to get him. He was mentally ill, but human relationships could have helped him find stability.

In other words, whatever it is which makes people insane, you can help it destroy you by becoming greedy and cutting yourself off from the humanity of everyone else. We need to remember we are all one family. When you make someone else happy, it makes you happy. Recent experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging show that the pleasure centers of the brain light up when we do kind things for other people. It's a real thing and cannot be ignored.

I also want to mention the moral belief system currently very popular among many elected officials. Ayn Rand says selfishness is everything. Greed is good. You should care about no one but yourself. Many people call her a philosopher, which is ridiculous. Philosophers think things through an attempt to understand life through the understanding which grows from the development of their ideas . All she ever did was scream and hiss about how evil collectivism was.

She never thought anything through, she just hysterically reacted. She also got everything wrong. Modern science has shown in many ways that man is a social animal and that we naturally work together. We are a species which practices reciprocity by nature. She is wrong sociologically. She is wrong psychologically. She is wrong in primatology, and so on. The reason people love her so much is that she gives excuses them to do doing horrible things and makes them feel good about it.

Altruism, an adaptive trait

From an interview with E. O. Wilson by Charlie Rose, quoting from the New Yorker magazine:  "Wilson's larger point is that, to the extent that altruism exists, it isn't an illusion. Instead, goodness might actually be an adaptive trait, allowing more cooperative groups to outcompete their conniving cousins. In a field defined by the cool logic of natural selection, group selection appears to be the rare hint of virtue, the one biological force pushing back against the obvious advantages of greed and deceit."

From Science News, April 7, 2012:  Cheney relays the story of Ruby, a young, low ranking but gregarious baboon who lost all her kin in a leopard attack.  Because kin are the lifeblood of social support in female baboon society, a low-ranker such as Ruby night might be left with little access to food and other resources.
 Despite lacking the skills to set up a Twitter account, likable Ruby managed to build a network of followers by taking advantage of the social opportunities.  She spent hours grooming one particular high-ranking baboon, Sylvia, and managed to climb up the hierarchical latter, gaining access to the best food in the most desirable resting places.

More and more proof of the natural, evolutionary nature of altruism and cooperation is being uncovered by biologists, geneticists, neurologists, and other scientists.  Yet the Radical Republicans continue to insist that science and Christian belief are wrong.  They declare that all humans are naturally and completely selfish.  Only the Social Darwinism of Ayn Rand and the most extreme beliefs of Friedrich Hayek can be trusted.  Ideology trumps reality every time.