Richard
11-15-2010, 06:26
Some interesting research on the power of words and gestures, and a few conclusive thoughts to consider; I wonder if they might happen within our lifetimes - or if at all. :confused:
A metaphorical example:
Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is quite small. He has a vivid imagination. He composes horror music in the middle of the night. He is not very social, and he keeps to himself at political meetings. His past is a mystery. He warned us not to talk to each other about him, adding that there is nowhere any of us could go where he wouldn't hear us. We were quiet. When we began to talk to each other, he changed. His manners started to seem pompous, and his snarling voice sounded rehearsed.
Two dragons guard Fear's mansion. One is ceramic and Chinese. The other is real. If you make it past the dragons and speak to him close up, it is amazing to see how fragile he is. He will try to tell you stories. Be aware. He is a master of disguises and illusions. Fear almost convinced me that he was a puppetmaker and I was a marionette.
Speak out boldly, look him in the eye, startle him. Don't give up. Win his respect, and he will never bother you with small matters.
J. Ruth Gendler, Fear, The Book of Qualities.
This research (see Sapolsky article below) might be worth considering when dealing with a society whom Leon Uris describes in Jerusalem: A Passionate History of a Unique and Inspiring City as having evolved from:
The lifestyle of the peninsula was and remains alien to that of the balance of the world. The fight for existence was reflected in a brutal society. Strong men and strong clans emerged while the weak went under, with little pity shed on them. The peninsula consisted of dozens of tribal units that were never unified in a national sense but constantly shifted alliances. A system of absolute social order developed so that each man had a specific place within the tribe. The only way one could rise within the system was to destroy the man above and dominate the men beneath. Their ethics and sense of justice, totally foreign to Western concepts, called for cruel and final decision. The demands of survival left no room for convocations of scholars to equivocate in forums or parliaments to argue on democratic principles. The law of the desert was absolute.
Dozens of religious cults of various tribes were pagan and primitive. Their beliefs were dictated by the forces of nature. Colonies of Jews which had settled the more mercantile areas since the time of Solomon had lent many Judaic beliefs to these cults. Early Christianity, which was strong on the coast of North Africa, also filtered down to mingle with the Arab religious beliefs.
While the Byzantine Empire and Persia hammered away at each other and were bleeding each other into exhaustion, a power vacuum developed in the seventh century which was destined to be filled by a future Arab nation out of this peninsula.
Life was dull, dirty, repetitious and structured, with little room for humor and less for cultural and technical expansion. The daily search for sufficient food and water still left far too much time for one to find the shadow of a shade tree and daydream. Mirages of the mind abounded. Fantasy blotted out the cruelty of life, made great sheiks out of shepherds, made water where there was no oasis, made warriors out of cowards. Truth and fiction intermingled within the Arab mind so that, to the Arab, fantasy and reality were often one and the same. Fantasy was perpetuated with a language known for its overkill of exaggeration and verbal flights of imagination. The Arab describing the most simple scene can twist it into wild complexity. The act of an easy barter or purchase can become a play of monumental proportions.
The only way people could keep going day after day was to adopt a passive acceptance of their lot. The moment was ripe for a religion based on fatalism. There were actually two vacuums to be filled: one, the political/military vacuum with the decline of the reigning powers, and the second, a religious vacuum through creation of a faith to conform to their fatalism. Add to this the acceptance of fantasy as fact and the time was at hand for a dynamic personality to capture the Arab mind and unify it for the first time.
And so it goes...
Richard :munchin
This Is Your Brain On Metaphors
Rbt Sapolsky, NYT, 14 Nov 2010
Part 1 of 2
Despite rumors to the contrary, there are many ways in which the human brain isn’t all that fancy. Let’s compare it to the nervous system of a fruit fly. Both are made up of cells, of course, with neurons playing particularly important roles. Now one might expect that a neuron from a human will differ dramatically from one from a fly. Maybe the human’s will have especially ornate ways of communicating with other neurons, making use of unique “neurotransmitter” messengers. Maybe compared to the lowly fly neuron, human neurons are bigger, more complex, in some way can run faster and jump higher.
But no. Look at neurons from the two species under a microscope and they look the same. They have the same electrical properties, many of the same neurotransmitters, the same protein channels that allow ions to flow in and out, as well as a remarkably high number of genes in common. Neurons are the same basic building blocks in both species.
So where’s the difference? It’s numbers — humans have roughly one million neurons for each one in a fly. And out of a human’s 100 billion neurons emerge some pretty remarkable things. With enough quantity, you generate quality.
Neuroscientists understand the structural bases of some of these qualities. Take language, that uniquely human behavior. Underlining it are structures unique to the human brain — regions like “Broca’s area,” which specializes in language production. Then there’s the brain’s “extrapyramidal system,” which is involved in fine motor control. The complexity of the human version allows us to do something that, say, a polar bear, could never accomplish — sufficiently independent movement of digits to play a trill on the piano, for instance. Particularly striking is the human frontal cortex. While occurring in all mammals, the human version is proportionately bigger and denser in its wiring. And what is the frontal cortex good for? Emotional regulation, gratification postponement, executive decision-making, long-term planning. We study hard in high school to get admitted to a top college to get into grad school to get a good job to get into the nursing home of our choice. Gophers don’t do that.
There’s another domain of unique human skills, and neuroscientists are learning a bit about how the brain pulls it off.
Consider the following from J. Ruth Gendler’s wonderful “The Book of Qualities,” a collection of “character sketches” of different qualities, emotions and attributes:
Anxiety is secretive. He does not trust anyone, not even his friends, Worry, Terror, Doubt and Panic … He likes to visit me late at night when I am alone and exhausted. I have never slept with him, but he kissed me on the forehead once, and I had a headache for two years …
Or:
Compassion speaks with a slight accent. She was a vulnerable child, miserable in school, cold, shy … In ninth grade she was befriended by Courage. Courage lent Compassion bright sweaters, explained the slang, showed her how to play volleyball.
What is Gendler going on about? We know, and feel pleasure triggered by her unlikely juxtapositions. Despair has stopped listening to music. Anger sharpens kitchen knives at the local supermarket. Beauty wears a gold shawl and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. Longing studies archeology.
Symbols, metaphors, analogies, parables, synecdoche, figures of speech: we understand them. We understand that a captain wants more than just hands when he orders all of them on deck. We understand that Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” isn’t really about a cockroach. If we are of a certain theological ilk, we see bread and wine intertwined with body and blood. We grasp that the right piece of cloth can represent a nation and its values, and that setting fire to such a flag is a highly charged act. We can learn that a certain combination of sounds put together by Tchaikovsky represents Napoleon getting his butt kicked just outside Moscow. And that the name “Napoleon,” in this case, represents thousands and thousands of soldiers dying cold and hungry, far from home.
And we even understand that June isn’t literally busting out all over. It would seem that doing this would be hard enough to cause a brainstorm. So where did this facility with symbolism come from? It strikes me that the human brain has evolved a necessary shortcut for doing so, and with some major implications.
(cont'd)
A metaphorical example:
Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is quite small. He has a vivid imagination. He composes horror music in the middle of the night. He is not very social, and he keeps to himself at political meetings. His past is a mystery. He warned us not to talk to each other about him, adding that there is nowhere any of us could go where he wouldn't hear us. We were quiet. When we began to talk to each other, he changed. His manners started to seem pompous, and his snarling voice sounded rehearsed.
Two dragons guard Fear's mansion. One is ceramic and Chinese. The other is real. If you make it past the dragons and speak to him close up, it is amazing to see how fragile he is. He will try to tell you stories. Be aware. He is a master of disguises and illusions. Fear almost convinced me that he was a puppetmaker and I was a marionette.
Speak out boldly, look him in the eye, startle him. Don't give up. Win his respect, and he will never bother you with small matters.
J. Ruth Gendler, Fear, The Book of Qualities.
This research (see Sapolsky article below) might be worth considering when dealing with a society whom Leon Uris describes in Jerusalem: A Passionate History of a Unique and Inspiring City as having evolved from:
The lifestyle of the peninsula was and remains alien to that of the balance of the world. The fight for existence was reflected in a brutal society. Strong men and strong clans emerged while the weak went under, with little pity shed on them. The peninsula consisted of dozens of tribal units that were never unified in a national sense but constantly shifted alliances. A system of absolute social order developed so that each man had a specific place within the tribe. The only way one could rise within the system was to destroy the man above and dominate the men beneath. Their ethics and sense of justice, totally foreign to Western concepts, called for cruel and final decision. The demands of survival left no room for convocations of scholars to equivocate in forums or parliaments to argue on democratic principles. The law of the desert was absolute.
Dozens of religious cults of various tribes were pagan and primitive. Their beliefs were dictated by the forces of nature. Colonies of Jews which had settled the more mercantile areas since the time of Solomon had lent many Judaic beliefs to these cults. Early Christianity, which was strong on the coast of North Africa, also filtered down to mingle with the Arab religious beliefs.
While the Byzantine Empire and Persia hammered away at each other and were bleeding each other into exhaustion, a power vacuum developed in the seventh century which was destined to be filled by a future Arab nation out of this peninsula.
Life was dull, dirty, repetitious and structured, with little room for humor and less for cultural and technical expansion. The daily search for sufficient food and water still left far too much time for one to find the shadow of a shade tree and daydream. Mirages of the mind abounded. Fantasy blotted out the cruelty of life, made great sheiks out of shepherds, made water where there was no oasis, made warriors out of cowards. Truth and fiction intermingled within the Arab mind so that, to the Arab, fantasy and reality were often one and the same. Fantasy was perpetuated with a language known for its overkill of exaggeration and verbal flights of imagination. The Arab describing the most simple scene can twist it into wild complexity. The act of an easy barter or purchase can become a play of monumental proportions.
The only way people could keep going day after day was to adopt a passive acceptance of their lot. The moment was ripe for a religion based on fatalism. There were actually two vacuums to be filled: one, the political/military vacuum with the decline of the reigning powers, and the second, a religious vacuum through creation of a faith to conform to their fatalism. Add to this the acceptance of fantasy as fact and the time was at hand for a dynamic personality to capture the Arab mind and unify it for the first time.
And so it goes...
Richard :munchin
This Is Your Brain On Metaphors
Rbt Sapolsky, NYT, 14 Nov 2010
Part 1 of 2
Despite rumors to the contrary, there are many ways in which the human brain isn’t all that fancy. Let’s compare it to the nervous system of a fruit fly. Both are made up of cells, of course, with neurons playing particularly important roles. Now one might expect that a neuron from a human will differ dramatically from one from a fly. Maybe the human’s will have especially ornate ways of communicating with other neurons, making use of unique “neurotransmitter” messengers. Maybe compared to the lowly fly neuron, human neurons are bigger, more complex, in some way can run faster and jump higher.
But no. Look at neurons from the two species under a microscope and they look the same. They have the same electrical properties, many of the same neurotransmitters, the same protein channels that allow ions to flow in and out, as well as a remarkably high number of genes in common. Neurons are the same basic building blocks in both species.
So where’s the difference? It’s numbers — humans have roughly one million neurons for each one in a fly. And out of a human’s 100 billion neurons emerge some pretty remarkable things. With enough quantity, you generate quality.
Neuroscientists understand the structural bases of some of these qualities. Take language, that uniquely human behavior. Underlining it are structures unique to the human brain — regions like “Broca’s area,” which specializes in language production. Then there’s the brain’s “extrapyramidal system,” which is involved in fine motor control. The complexity of the human version allows us to do something that, say, a polar bear, could never accomplish — sufficiently independent movement of digits to play a trill on the piano, for instance. Particularly striking is the human frontal cortex. While occurring in all mammals, the human version is proportionately bigger and denser in its wiring. And what is the frontal cortex good for? Emotional regulation, gratification postponement, executive decision-making, long-term planning. We study hard in high school to get admitted to a top college to get into grad school to get a good job to get into the nursing home of our choice. Gophers don’t do that.
There’s another domain of unique human skills, and neuroscientists are learning a bit about how the brain pulls it off.
Consider the following from J. Ruth Gendler’s wonderful “The Book of Qualities,” a collection of “character sketches” of different qualities, emotions and attributes:
Anxiety is secretive. He does not trust anyone, not even his friends, Worry, Terror, Doubt and Panic … He likes to visit me late at night when I am alone and exhausted. I have never slept with him, but he kissed me on the forehead once, and I had a headache for two years …
Or:
Compassion speaks with a slight accent. She was a vulnerable child, miserable in school, cold, shy … In ninth grade she was befriended by Courage. Courage lent Compassion bright sweaters, explained the slang, showed her how to play volleyball.
What is Gendler going on about? We know, and feel pleasure triggered by her unlikely juxtapositions. Despair has stopped listening to music. Anger sharpens kitchen knives at the local supermarket. Beauty wears a gold shawl and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. Longing studies archeology.
Symbols, metaphors, analogies, parables, synecdoche, figures of speech: we understand them. We understand that a captain wants more than just hands when he orders all of them on deck. We understand that Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” isn’t really about a cockroach. If we are of a certain theological ilk, we see bread and wine intertwined with body and blood. We grasp that the right piece of cloth can represent a nation and its values, and that setting fire to such a flag is a highly charged act. We can learn that a certain combination of sounds put together by Tchaikovsky represents Napoleon getting his butt kicked just outside Moscow. And that the name “Napoleon,” in this case, represents thousands and thousands of soldiers dying cold and hungry, far from home.
And we even understand that June isn’t literally busting out all over. It would seem that doing this would be hard enough to cause a brainstorm. So where did this facility with symbolism come from? It strikes me that the human brain has evolved a necessary shortcut for doing so, and with some major implications.
(cont'd)