#The text discusses the concept of perception and how it is influenced by the beliefs and intentions of an individual. It compares the world | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

psychreviews2 · 6 months

Text

The Presocratics: Leucippus and Democritus

Leucippus and Democritus

As the Eleatic challenge to explain movement and variety in experience continued, later Pre-Socratics were forced to come up with particle theories to unify perception with their knowledge of the interdependence of all things. It was debated how much credit should be given to Leucippus of Miletus or Democritus of Abdera, who achieved some of those goals. "On the whole we might accept the assessment of Cicero; all our other evidence seems to show that the main theory was originated by Leucippus and accepted by Democritus, who worked out the details and introduced a few minor refinements." Their lives spanned part of the 5th and 4th century BC. The lineages of who taught who are hard to prove, and being 'taught' in some cases could be more accurately defined as who was influenced by who. "Parmenides was a pupil of Xenophanes;...Melissus was a pupil of his, Zeno of his, Leucippus of his, Democritus of his..."

There is also debate on the authorship of the book the Great World-System, between Leucippus and Democritus, but most works in the pre-Socratic Atomistic canon are typically attributed to Democritus. Unfortunately, many purported texts have not survived. "Of his works, which according to the list preserved in Diogenes Laertius' Life were many and encyclopedic in scope, including a complete account of the physical universe and works on subjects including astronomy, mathematics, literature, epistemology, and ethics, none survive." Much of the theories of Atomism were discussed by Aristotle, which is why they have to be handled with caution since later philosophers were not just collecting facts about prior thinkers but actively critiquing them. Researchers tended to aim their attention towards what the pre-Socratic philosophers were struggling to try and move beyond in one arena or another.

"Aristotle plausibly regarded Leucippus' theory of indivisible particles moving in the void as an attempt to answer the Eleatic dilemma." That dilemma of course was trying to understand movement, change, and variety where some things had to be caused by other different things, when in Eleatic theory there shouldn't be any space between things, so therefore there could not be any unlike things originating from other like things. On the other hand, a void provides spaces for movement and for the possibility that different elements could combine in different ways and explain the variety seen in perception. Melissus posited a void would need to exist, but in the end he didn't think it did. Leucippus took that Eleatic platform and instead launched in that very direction, in which Empedocles and Anaxagoras also moved in, where indestructible matter could combine in different configurations. In this case now, those theories combined with a theory of a void so that atoms could finally have space to move. It required a belief in a void, which was just a negation of existence, that at the same time, exists in a way. "Leucippus and his associate Democritus declare the full and the empty [void] to be the elements, calling the former 'what is' and the other 'what is not.' Of these the one, 'what is,' is full and solid, the other, 'what is not,' is empty [void] and rare. (This is why they say that what is is no more than what is not, because the void is no less than body is.)"

At this early date, there wasn't a concept of space as much as there being gaps between objects. "The atoms differ from each other, not in matter, but only in arrangement and shape: all 'qualitative' differences in objects (which are conglomerates of atoms), therefore, are dependent on quantitative and local differences alone...The differences are three: shape, arrangement, and position. For they say that what is differs only in 'rhythm,' 'touching,' and 'turning'—and of these 'rhythm' is shape, 'touching' is arrangement, and 'turning' is position. For A differs from N in shape, AN from NA in arrangement, and Z and N in position. Concerning the origin and manner of motion in existing things, these men too, like the rest, lazily neglected to give an account."

There was a partial account for motion, but they explained the effect without the cause. "Leucippus and Democritus said that their primary bodies, the atoms, are always moving in the unlimited void by compulsion...Democritus, saying that the atoms are naturally motionless, declares that they move 'by a blow'...Democritus indicated a single type of motion, that due to vibration...No thing happens at random but all things as a result of a reason and by necessity...Nature employs to necessity...These atoms, which are separate from one another in the unlimited void and differ in shape and size and position, and arrangement, move in the void, and when they overtake one another they collide, and some rebound in whatever direction they may happen to, but others become entangled in virtue of the relation of their shapes, sizes, positions, and arrangements, and stay together, and this is how compounds are produced...They made the shapes unlimited, so that by reason of changes of the composite, the same thing seems opposite to different people, and it shifts position when a small amount is mixed in, and it appears completely different when one thing shifts position."

Here you can see the debate between perception and theory and the beginnings of a scientific method, albeit very crude. "He holds that the substances are so small that they escape our senses." When reality goes beyond perception, but manifests causes and effects, one is left with the predictive mind to explain what is going on without modern technologies to verify these particles. "Plato and Democritus supposed that only the intelligible things are true; Democritus <held this view> because there is by nature no perceptible substrate, whereas the atoms, which combine to form all things, have a nature deprived of every perceptible quality...A person must know by this rule that he is separated from reality...None the less he is found condemning them [the senses]. For he says, 'we in fact understand nothing exactly, but what changes according to the disposition both of the body and of the things that enter it and offer resistance to it...There are two kinds of judgment, one legitimate and the other bastard. All the following belong to the bastard: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The other is legitimate and is separated from this. When the bastard one is unable to see or hear or smell or taste or grasp by touch any further in the direction of smallness, <then the legitimate one enables us to carry on>."

The atoms themselves also had to be indivisible at some point because an endless division of atoms would eventually give way to a belief that everything is just an illusion, but we are still very far away from modern ideas of density, gravity, dark matter, and subatomic particles, which would have vexed ancient minds even more. The mystery as to whether there really is an indivisible unit continues, despite the fact that we now have particle accelerators. We are still using theory to penetrate into areas deeply out of perception and also hidden from our best sensing technologies. These crude early theories of indivisible bodies could also describe wild and hard to imagine situations for these ancients. "Democritus says that the primary bodies (these are the compact things) do not possess weight but move by knocking against one another in the unlimited, and there can be an atom the size of the cosmos."

These atoms also make up the perceiver and so these pre-Socratics thought that there may be soul atoms as well. "In reality we know nothing about anything, but for each person opinion is a reshaping [of soul atoms by the atoms entering from without.]" The frustration mounts especially when early physicians knew so little about diseases and the causes of most anything at that time. "Wretched mind, after taking your evidence from us do you throw us down? Throwing us down is a fall for you!" Regardless, any signs of health quickly led to more ethical forms of philosophy, which has to grasp suffering in all of its manifestations, big or small. "Cheerfulness arises in people through moderation of enjoyment and due proportion in life. Deficiencies and excesses tend to change suddenly and give rise to large movements in the soul. Souls which undergo motions involving large intervals are neither steady nor cheerful...Accept nothing pleasant unless it is beneficial." Of course, most modern people are aware of how we can find bad things pleasant, and many things that are good for us are not pleasant. An early form of psychology and medicine can be seen here. "To all humans the same thing is good and true, but different people find different things pleasant."

The main purpose for the Pre-Socratics was to focus less on the ethics found in later philosophers. Instead they had a strong desire to explain the nature of the universe and man's place in it. Like Heidegger pointed out, they had a natural sense of wonder related to existence, which was an innocent freshness in perception, that was far from the jadedness of mastery, and modern technocracy. Ethical questions involve more of an attitude of searching for ways humans could rearrange the universe to improve well-being. Despite that, their observations of existence as is, bled into later philosophies of Epicureanism and later influenced Enlightenment philosophers towards the world of ethics. Having soul atoms, intelligent designs and a goal for physical and mental peace, a proto-religion, or psychology, is implicit. If the health of the person is the starting point of ethics, then any theories as to how to maintain well-being and longevity have a religious notion of reward and punishment, being that good actions lead to rewards and bad actions to punishments. If there's an intelligent God, or Deity of some kind, then a parental projection onto those consequences can be made. The mystery of the limits of perception can also allow a theoretical God to be invisible and act in the nooks and crannies of human science and perception.

In worldly life, pleasures have many durations, and therefore what is peaceful and long lasting seems to be an early target for ethics. "Best for a person to live his life being as cheerful and as little distressed as possible. This will occur if he does not make his pleasures in mortal things...All those who make their pleasures from the belly, exceeding the right time for food, drink, or sex, have short-lived pleasures—only for as long as they eat or drink—but many pains."

Euthumiē

Since many of Democritus's writings were handed down summarized or paraphrased from other authors, there has to be some skepticism towards his authorship, but where maxims are considered more genuine, as per above, it's not improbable that Democritus was deeply interested in ethics. In The Ethical Maxims of Democritus of Abdera, by Monte Johnson, Democritus states the goal of ethics to be euthumiē in his purported text On Contentment. Being a precursor to positive psychology, like that of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's balance of skills and challenges, as well as the Taoist notion of the value of controlled and efficient effort, as well as renunciation, Democritus advised that "the man trying to enjoy euthumiē should not do much—whether in public or private—nor, whatever he does, choose beyond his capabilities and nature; but he should be so much on guard that even when luck falls upon and leads him to thinking about getting more, he puts it aside and does not undertake more than he is capable of. For a good load is safer than a large load."

The Secret Of The Golden Flower: https://rumble.com/v4ea5i6-the-secret-of-the-golden-flower.html

How to gain Flow in 7 steps: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

He was also very aware of imitation and how role models could provide examples that were inappropriate for one's skill level and stoke negative feelings, which hinted at the operation of object relations and the Oedipus Complex in the mind. He may have also seen the value of downward comparisons as a way to ward off envy. "One should (1) keep in mind one's capabilities, and (2) be content with what one has, having few memories or thoughts of those who are objects of jealousy and admiration, by not focusing on them; but one should (3) observe the lives of those who are enduring hardship, concentrating on how immense their sufferings are. In this way the things one has and already possesses will seem great and enviable. And no longer would you suffer distress in your soul because of desiring for more. For a man who dwells in his thought and memory at all hours on those who are objects of admiration, and who are deemed blessed by other people, is always compelled to find new opportunities and, because of desire, to overshoot by doing desperate things which the laws prohibit. That is why one must not be in doubt about what needs to be, but enjoy euthumiē with respect to what needs to be, by comparing one's own life with those who do worse. One must deem oneself blessed, keeping in mind the things those worse off suffer, and how much better than them one does going through life. For by holding fast to this maxim, you will go through life with more euthumiē and will drive away defects in your life that are not slight: envy, jealousy, and ill-will."

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html

One of the ways to find this, as mentioned before in other episodes, is using what is negative in your life and looking at opposites for new goals to aim at. "Democritus says there is one end of everything and euthumiēis the most dominant, and that pains are the indicators of what is bad." Because atoms are impermanent and unreliable, there's also a minimalism in this philosophy. "Fortunate is he who enjoys euthumiēwith respect to his moderate possessions, and unfortunate is he who does not enjoy euthumiē and feels upset with respect to his many possessions...Without sense they yearn for what is absent but neglect what they have, even when it is more valuable than what has gone." Democritus also saw quality of life mainly in the realm of expectation and consciousness, as opposed to a focus on the quantity of goods. "Poverty and wealth are names for need and satisfaction, so he who lacks is not wealthy, and he who does not need is not poor." This even extended into politics where the value of freedom, and the power to choose for oneself, and how it provides psychological well-being, could contend with any system where a philosopher king would provide most of the decision making for the populace. "Poverty in a state in which the people have the power is as much more to be chosen than so-called 'prosperity' under elites as freedom is than slavery." This is a precious counterbalance to Plato's portrayal of Socrates as viewing democracy as antithetical to happiness. Certainly, modern society ended up making a balance between Plato's understanding of Laws to constrain power, and the affordance of freedom within those laws for citizens to enjoy.

The Presocratics: Pythagoras: https://rumble.com/v1gsugl-the-presocratics-pythagoras.html

Democritus didn't want euthumiē to be considered a form of hedonism, but like with Aristotle, it was about moderation and balance. Euthumiē aims at mental peace, but it wasn't a hermitic lifestyle, and his pleasure via downward comparison wasn't meant to be a form of schadenfreude. Seeing the poverty in one's community was to activate the feeling of gratitude for one's current advantages. "Those who feel pleasure at their neighbor's misfortunes fail to understand that the results of luck are common to all and that they lack a cause for their own joy." Democritus also ventured into both regular justice as well as social justice as a way to make a cohesive community, and to protect a clear conscience. A clear conscience can also be preserved by facing duties that are unpleasant and putting them behind oneself. "The man enjoying euthumiē, who is carried on to just and lawful deeds, rejoices day and night, and is both confident and without concern. But whosoever does not reason about justice and does not do the things that need to be done, all such things are a deprivation of enjoyment whenever he calls any of them to mind, so he is afraid and reproaches himself...Those to whom something unjust is being done one must lend aid as much as one can and not look away; for to do this kind of thing is just and good...When those who have means undertake to contribute to those who do not, and to assist and to benefit them, herein at last is having pity and not being solitary, and they become comrades and defend one another, and the citizens are of one mind; and there are other good things, so many no one could enumerate them."

Euthumiē manifests in a person when there is Eudaimoniē, having a good destiny, euthumia, wellbeing, not alarmed, euestō, welfare and balance, and ataraxia, less rumination, and athaumastia, not being negatively possessed by role models. These are all markers for Democritus of the Soul. "Happiness and unhappiness belong to the soul."

All these attributes point to a person with agency who reflects on past behaviors and endeavors to improve them. It's a self-reliance so that one doesn't have to be led by the nose by other people and rely on punishments from the community in order to learn lessons. You're not scaffolding your sense of self on others or treating authority figures as a crutch. "No one should have a sense of shame before other people more than a sense of shame before himself, nor be more prepared to work a bad deed if no one witnesses it than if everyone does; rather he should have a sense of shame before himself most of all and impose a law on his soul, so that he will do nothing mischievous." He understood well the uselessness of laws when a community refuses to heed them in their own individual lives. All justice and enforcement vanishes when enough people let themselves get carried away in a community. Laws are truly tested then. "The laws would not prevent each person living according to his own will, if one did not maltreat another. For envy prepares a source of strife." This is an important point. It's better for people to behave because they want to, not because they have to. The more people police themselves, the less need there is for police. "Nature and teaching are nearly like. For teaching is transforming the human being, and by transforming, teaching creates a nature...For the sake of virtue, utilizing [urgency] and persuasion by reason is evidently stronger than by laws and necessity. For he who is kept from injustice by law will likely do wrong in secret, but he who is led to what must be done by persuasion will not likely do anything outrageous whether in secret or in broad daylight."

Democritus's ethics paved the way for later ethical debates and were precursors to modern therapy, which was always an undercurrent in philosophy and that influence made it easy for philosophy to bow out to psychology in the 20th century. Because of his thoroughness and humanity Democritus resonates with a modern readership.

The Presocratic Philosophers - Kirk & Raven: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521274555/

A Presocratic Reader - Richard McKirahan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781603843058/

The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus: Fragments - C.C.W. Taylor: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780802043900/

Annas, Julia. 2002. “Democritus and Eudaimonism,” in Caston and Graham, pp. 169–82.

Johnson, Monte Ransome, 'The Ethical Maxims of Democritus of Abdera', in David Conan Wolfsdorf (ed.), Early Greek Ethics (Oxford, 2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Oct. 2020)

Philosophy: http://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/

#leucippus #democritus #presocratics #greek philosophy

0 notes

theramblingonesie · 3 years

Text

Colonial Gaps in Understanding the Haitian Revolution

When embarking on this project, I was curious about women’s roles in the Haitian Revolution, particularly in the overlap between their lives and the representation of honored female deities. Upon diving into my research, it became apparent that I would end up with far more questions than conclusive support for this topic. Instead, a different narrative has emerged, one that emphasizes the impact of colonialism on the retelling of Black and Indigenous history. In keeping within the context of gender, this piece will also discuss the differences between Afrocentric and Eurocentric perspectives on gender, and how trying to learn about women specifically in the Haitian Revolution might be a misguided Westernized approach to understand a non-Western culture. Rather than seek historical information in text form, as many of the revolutionaries relied on oral traditions or were denied access to literacy skills[1], it appears that we might have to turn instead to religious traditions, language clues, and cultural knowledge from Central and West Africa in order to put the pieces together from the Haitian revolutionaries’ perspective.

“When the anthropologist arrives, the gods depart”, so a Haitian proverb goes.[2] This felt all too accurate while trying to conduct my research. I discovered that the key to beginning to understand the Haitian revolutionaries was to break apart my own perceptions and conditioning around how human beings organize themselves. It seems that in order to understand Haitian culture, and Voudon therein, one must be receptive to existence beyond the rigid boundaries of duality, and willing to locate the truth among what has not been said. The Haitian Voudon that was practiced at the time of the Haitian Revolution was a blended faith, comprised of various African cultures, Taino influence, and old and new world concepts. It encompassed Indigenous Haitian believes, African Voudon beliefs, and Catholicism. A less conventional but widely considered theory is that this blending was not necessarily due to colonization’s attempts at erasure, but rather these African traditions’ philosophies on inclusivity and adaptability.[3] Due to the unique nature of this practice, it is very challenging to provide direct translations from Haitian Creole to words and concepts we understand in Eurocentric cultures. This can easily contribute to misinterpretations of what happened during the revolution, which creates the challenge of trying to present evidence from a pool of contradictory sources. This research paper is my best attempt at presenting what we think we know, based on the shortage of texts written by the victors and our faith in the preservation of oral traditions passed down through ritual and music, with the awareness that it could all be more or less incomplete.

Similar to the French and American revolutions[4], Haiti also had a female patron saint, or lwa in the Voudon tradition, who symbolized the spirit of their resistance. Erzulie Dantor (also spelled Ezili Dantor; Ezili Danto; Erzulie Ge-Rouge) is considered one aspect of a larger all-encompassing spirit known as Erzulie. Though not completely translatable, Erzulie could be most compared to the concept of the triple goddess in European pagan traditions. In such European traditions, a triple goddess is generally understood as maiden, mother and crone—the three major life cycles of a woman’s life. However, known as a Goddess of Love and Desire, Erzulie’s three main aspects were less about life phases and more about the complexity of her spirit and responses to the world around her. She ranged from playful and flirtatious, to deeply grieving, to righteous rage. Erzulie Dantor is conventionally considered to be the warrior form of this lwa[5]. However, this oversimplified designation does no justice to the vast depths she represented to the Haitian people during the revolution.

Erzulie’s origins are challenging to locate with much confidence. Some sources believe she was a fighter in the revolution, while others believe she was an old-world archetype. Author and artist Maya Deren was taught by Haitian Voudon practitioners in the mid-twentieth century that Erzulie was a spirit brought over from Africa, but that her form as Erzulie Dantor was created out of the suffering of the slaves in Haiti. Historian Joan Dayan writes that Erzulie Dantor was manifested in Haiti and “dramatizes a specific historiography of women's experience in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean” (Dayan, 6). Dayan draws the clear link between this cultural icon and the experiences of enslaved women, indicating that she is the embodiment of the memory of slavery, and the desires for intimacy and revenge therein. While Erzulie was a deity of love and luxury in the African tradition, Erzulie Dantor emerged in Haiti as a more vengeful spirit who was jealous and possessive[6]. Dayan emphasizes that Erzulie exists beyond the dualities of Western religion- she is bisexual, caring, lustful, rageful, spiteful, childish, a virgin, a mother, a warrior, and is honored by both men and women. Even in her Erzulie Dantor aspect, she is as fierce as she is compassionate. Erzulie Dantor would be classified as a Petro lwa, a cult of lwa influenced by the rage of the Indigenous tribes that runaway slaves met while hiding in the hills. Prior to the Petro, Haitian Voudon primarily served the Rada spirits brought over from Africa, drawn mainly from Dahomey tradition. Rather than good versus evil, as is often assumed, the Petro were a more amplified, angrier version of the Rada spirits, who were born from traditions of order and the protection of harmony.[7] The Petro were a response to disorder and dishonor, a new type of spirit that had the mission of seeking justice.

The Western world’s oversimplification of Erzulie in both her Petro and Rada aspects is largely due to its obsession with duality. Her complexity and power during the revolution were threatening ideas to the Church. White slaveholders used this duality as a tool for domination. Dayan draws attention to this in her essay in reference to the slandering of Black women in order to elevate white women: “An ideal woman, pure of stain, fixed on her pedestal, is only possible in the male imaginary because of the invention of a dark, debased sister. (Dayan, 8)” Erzulie Dantor was threatening to the European oppressors for several reasons: she represented the multifaceted strengths of Black women, helped to spread the belief that women could have power and fighting skills that surpass men, and she was part of a religious faith that the Church needed to define as evil in order to assert themselves as pure and good.

The question remains—was Erzulie Dantor an actual slave and fighter in the revolution who has simply become mythologized? Or was she always a spirit who represented the collective consciousness of Haitians? Perhaps it was both to some degree. Cecile Fatiman, an enslaved woman and Voudon mambo (priestess), was famous for organizing the Bois Caiman ceremony alongside Houngan (priest) Dutty Boukman. This ceremony was essentially the first congress of Haiti[8], considered to be the event that officially initiated the revolution. In Voudon, possession by the spirits is a central component of ritual.[9] During the ceremony, Cecile was said to have been possessed by Erzulie Dantor, who ordered the enslaved people to seek revenge and fight for their freedom.[10] In allegiance to her, the ceremony’s participants swore themselves to secrecy and moved to fulfill these commands, beginning with lighting the plantations on fire. This does not quite answer the question of whether Erzulie Dantor was an actual spirit, or if it was Cecile as an inspired, furious revolutionary woman channeling the collective consciousness, later filtered into history under this spirit’s name. In the Voudon tradition, it is common that ancestors who carry a similar essence to a particular lwa will be served as said lwa rather than as an individual.[11] What is interesting here is that for something that seems so significant, I was more likely to turn up sources who either credited Boukman only or referred to Cecile as an anonymous mambo. Why is it that Cecile’s existence and influence are so uncertain, despite her massive significance when she is discussed, but Boukman is a consistent key figure when referencing Bois Caiman? Though it is not unusual that recounts of history can vary depending on the author, this uncovered a notable pattern that it is common to leave women out of the retelling of the Haitian Revolution.

I searched for more names of women who were leaders during the revolution, which resulted in a similar frustration to what I experienced while researching Cecile. Adbaraya Toya, aka Victoria Montou, was a healer and soldier in the Dahomey kingdom before being kidnapped and sold into slavery in Haiti. There she worked on a plantation with Jean Jacque Dessalines, and is said to have helped raise him and train him how to fight[12]. Considered the “Mother of Haiti” (quite a significant title), I once again came up short for reliable information about her. Is this pattern the result of a patriarchal culture, or our reliance on textual evidence for historical understanding? Laurent Dubois suggests that in order to get a clearer picture on the revolution’s participants, we should look to their homes of origin in Africa[13]. Toya’s backstory proved to be a valuable clue.

Whether she was one woman, or composite of many, Toya is commonly believed to have been a soldier in present-day Benin for N’Nonmiton (“our mothers”), an elite force of women who were tasked with protecting the king on and off the battlefield in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Europeans observed them as the Dahomey Amazons, likened to the Amazonian women of Greek mythology.[14] They were believed to be “superior to male soldiers in effectiveness and bravery (Grall 2016)”, and were a way for women to rise to positions of leadership, participate in politics, and live independently. The Yoruba, a large ethnic group in modern Nigeria, Benin and Togo dating back over a thousand years[15], are theorized to have had an egalitarian culture that did not prioritize gender in the way they organized their social hierarchies[16]. Instead, according to scholar Oyeronke Oyewumi, they were more likely to rank status according to age. She attributes the assumption of gender division forced by Europeans to their primary use of the visual in order to categorize and dominate other humans. She looks to language as evidence, noting that there is no mark of gender in the Yoruba language, but that there is a mark for age difference. In his critical analysis of Oyewumi’s book, Bakare-Yusuf points out that mention of the traditionally patriarchal Yoruba culture is missing from her theories. Just when we thought we were getting somewhere, it is time to reroute and dig further.

Rather than solely focusing on which scholars and sources are “right”, it is important to also look at why this segment of history is so unclear. There are several reasons why retrieving accurate information about Haitian history around the time of the revolution is challenging. Going back to Dubois, one of these reasons is that we need to look beyond textual evidence to understand cultures that rely on oral traditions. Most of the enslaved people were illiterate, and would not leave behind written texts of their experiences. Music and ritual were important forms for passing down information, but due to Voudon’s decentralized nature, different lineages and new generations would create their own versions of what happened.[17] At the same time, there is a great lack, or distortion, in many history classrooms in the United States on this important segment of history. It is either not taught, limited to very few key, male figures, or is glossed over as an offshoot of the French Revolution.[18]

By asking whether or not Erzulie Dantor represented the enslaved women of Haiti, I have had to consider that her influence in the Haitian Revolution exists so far beyond the gender binary we understand in our Eurocentric societies that the question itself is responsible for the lack of resolve. It is possible that Erzulie’s gender as a woman is merely secondary to her larger representation of dreaming and desiring all that could be, sprung very loosely from fertility associations.[19] She could possess both men and women in ritual. This ability to dream and desire, or be enraged by the oppression that blocks the ability to live well, was accessible to all who served her. In her Petro form, while her rage and her development out of the pain of slavery were very human, I am curious if her gender was more of an abstract assignment than a direct representation of Haitian women, meant to be more ethos than literal.[20] As much as I would like to understand women’s roles in the revolution, if I insist on framing it this way, religion might not easily give me the answers I seek.

In her mythology, Erzulie Dantor’s tongue was cut out so that if she was captured by the French, she would not spill the secrets of the revolutionaries. In her iconography she is pictured holding a child, sometimes her son, sometimes her daughter. This child served as her voice and translator. Much like the research itself, we have to go through several layers to get to this Petro lwa—with no way to speak for herself, she relies on her child to properly represent her, who in turn relies on the priest or priestess she possesses to accurately communicated with the people. The story of the revolution relies on many indirect sources to be told, whether the analysis of art and song, generations that pass down oral traditions and songs, or the colonizers who wrote down their interpretations of what happened. Far more research is required in order to make sense of this highly complex body of information and evidence. In the meantime, Erzulie will continue to elude contemporary scholars, mocking us with her song:

Ezili o! pa Ezili sa!

(Erzulie, oh! that's not Erzulie!)

A traditional song of Erzulie. [21]

Bibliography

Bakare-Yusuf, Bibi. 2003. "“YORUBA’S DON’T DO GENDER”: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF OYERONKE OYEWUMI’s The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses." CODESRIA. https://codesria.org/IMG/pdf/BAKERE_YUSUF.pdf.

Campbell, Joseph. 1953. "Editor's Forward." In Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, by Maya Deren, xiii - xvii. London: Thames & Hudson.

Dayan, Joan. 1994. "Erzulie: A Women's History of Haiti." Research in African Literatures 5-31.

Deren, Maya. 1953. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. London: Thames & Hudson.

Dubois, Laurent. 2016. "Atlantic Freedoms." Aeon. November 7. https://aeon.co/essays/why-haiti-should-be-at-the-centre-of-the-age-of-revolution.

Johnson, Elizabeth Ofosuah. 2019. "Meet the warrior woman from Dahomey who trained Haitian revolutionary hero Dessalines." Face 2 Face Africa. March 12. https://face2faceafrica.com/article/meet-the-warrior-woman-from-dahomey-who-trained-haitian-revolutionary-hero-dessalines.

Merrill, John. 1996. "VODOU AND POLITICAL REFORM IN HAITI: SOME LESSONS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY." The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 31-52.

Moghadam, Valentine H. 2005. "Gender and Revolutions." In Theorizing Revolutions, by John Foran, 140. Routledge.

Mohamud, Abdul. 2020. "Lesson 4 Bois Caiman Ceremony." YouTube. April. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQslvkhJfpc.

Raitano, Megan. 2013. Powerful Priestesses: A Look at Equality in Leadership in Vodou. University of Florida. Accessed 2021. http://cecilefatimanrca.blogspot.com/.

Woodson, Ashley, Tadashi Dozono, and Lagarett King. 2020. "Framing Race Talk in World History Classrooms: A Case Study of the Haitian Revolution." Educational Foundations.

ZamaMdoda. 2019. "WHM: Dahomey Amazons Were Bad-Ass African Warriors." Afropunk. March. https://afropunk.com/2019/03/dahomey-amazons-african-warriors/.

[1] (Dubois 2016)

[2] (Campbell 1953)

[3] (Deren 1953)

[4] (Moghadam 2005, 140)

[5] (Dayan 1994)

[6] (Merrill 1996)

[7] (Deren 1953)

[8] (Mohamud 2020)

[9] (Deren 1953)

[10] (Raitano 2013)

[11] (Deren 1953)

[12] (Johnson 2019)

[13] (Dubois 2016)

[14] (ZamaMdoda 2019)

[15] Invalid source specified.

[16] (Bakare-Yusuf 2003)

[17] (Deren 1953)

[18] (Woodson, Dozono and King 2020)

[19] (Deren 1953)

[20] Ibid

[21] (Dayan 1994)

#ezuliedanto #erzulie dantor #haitian revolution #colonization #french revolution #decolonizeyourbookshelf

14 notes · View notes

frizzy-hoot · 3 years

Text

Neuroessentialism and mental health

Hi!

Time for a little rant about neuroessentialism.

The aim of this post is to provide the opportunity to be conscious of the things that influence us when it comes the way we think about mental health and to challenge stigma around mental health.

First off, I’m not a doctor and the information here cannot serve as medical advice. Always consult your doctor before changing your medication or treatment approach.

Secondly, a lot of the information I present here is elaborated on and further discussed in an episode of the Psychiatry and psychotherapy podcast called “Free will in psychotherapy and psychiatry Part 3” and while I will link to as many things as I can, you can also find a lot of the source material on the website for the podcast. https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-podcast/2020/7/22/free-will-in-psychiatry-amp-psychotherapy-part-3

So, I see a lot of people talking about mental health on here through a neuroessentialist perspective in memes or text format and I don’t think they’re aware of it so. I’d like to talk a bit about it.

First, I’ll offer a definition of neuroessentialism:

" Neuroessentialism is the view that the definitive way to explain human psychological experience is by reference to the brain and its activity from chemical, biological and neuroscientific perspectives. For instance, if someone is experiencing depression a neuroessentialistic perspective would claim that he or she is experiencing depression because his or her brain is functioning in a certain way.” - Schultz, W. (2018)

I see people talk about, for example, depression in this way often: in memes when people say "I have a literal neurotransmitter deficiency, Karen." or " God forgot to add serotonin when he made me".

Now, why can this be problematic?

Before I get into the issues with this perspective, I will first acknowledge that one of the reasons this view has become so prominent lately is because it aims to reduce stigma around mental health issues.

In the podcast episode mentioned above they point out that “Efforts to reduce stigma should be praised, but they should also be critically analyzed to determine if they meet their goal.”

And that’s the thing neuroessentialism, while aiming to reduce stigma and shame it only does so short term and ends up contributing to stigmatizing attitudes about mental health.

I want to say that it's great to see people fight back when it comes to stigma around mental health. That's what I see people do in these memes. But the effects of neuroessentialist perspectives end up othering people; making them inherently “bad”, “defect” or “helpless”.

Here the deterministic aspect of neuroessentialism comes up - it tells us that there’s something wrong with our brain that we can’t change. It alienates people because it chips away at their and our belief in their ability to change. If you believe that someone's mental issues are rooted exclusively in brain biology, you're less likely to believe that they can control their behavior and so it is less worth the effort of getting them better. This brings about more stigma.

Another thing that’s important to talk about is how neuroessentialism is an extremely simplistic perspective on mental health. And that’s also one of the reasons it has become so big- because it offers a simple explanation to very complicated illnesses.

Here, I want to add a quote by Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr. David Puder:

“There are prominent theories out there that we know just aren’t true anymore and that get propagated because they are simplistic ways of explaining things; for example, depression is because you have low serotonin in your brain. That’s just not true. It’s a whole lot more complicated than that.

You could probably show 20 or 30 things that are going on in the brain during depression. Inflammation. Like initially I thought ‘oh depression is inflammation!’

Well, it turns out not all depression has inflammation. Maybe, only one third [of patients with depression] have inflammation markers in the brain.”

We have been looking to neuroscience for an explanation when it comes to mental health and been satisfied with the idea of a simple "chemical imbalance" but truth is that there are many more neurotransmitters which significantly affect our brains when we talk about depression – it’s so far from just serotonin.

Another example of how neuroessentialim can oversimplify mental health is with brain scans. So, in the podcast episode mentioned above, Dr. Puder talks about how he was really interested in emotions and especially studying anger and he was looking at all this research on the different areas in the brain involved in anger. After a while, he says, he began to understand that it’s really complex and you can’t just point at one area and say that’s the area that’s involved in the emotion anger. There are several areas involved in just that one emotion and different studies show different things.

The truth is that the manifestation of mental illness in the body is a very new area of research and we haven’t found physical manifestations for most mental illnesses and the important thing to note here is that despite this we still do have ways of treating all of them.

Alright, all this can seem quite removed from us so how does neuroessentialsim affect us?

In the episode the guest star, Mathew Hagele, further discusses the article which provided the definition on neuroessentialism above: “Shultz looked at studies investigating how patients viewed their own prognosis and later the same with professionals.

The study found that biochemical or genetic attribution scores were a significant predictor of longer expected symptoms duration and lower perceived odds of recovery.” (Lebowitz et al., 2013, p. 523).

Now, this means that the more a patient attributes symptoms of their psychopathology to genetic (inherited disorderes) or biochemical (serotonin deficiency for example) factors, the longer they expected to struggle with their disorder and the smaller the belief that they can recover.

If a person doesn’t believe they can be helped or get better they’re a lot less likely to try and a lot more likely to feel scared and hopeless.

The other side of this coin is the effect the neuroessentialist narrative has on clinicians which Matthew Haegel dives into in the next part of the quote:

“Another study shows that clinicians believe psychotherapy to be less effective when shown biological descriptions of mental health pathologies...

They took a couple different disorders that these clinicians were looking at and one group had a biological explanation and the other did not- had a different type of explanation. And [in] the results that were across disorders, the biological explanation yielded significantly less empathy than the psychosocial explanation. They also did some additional analysis and they found that biological explanations yielded less empathy than the psychosocial explanations among both MD’s and non-MD’s…..”( Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W. K. (2014). )

So, in these studies we see that a neuroessentialist perspective lowers empathy for the patient in medical health professionals and people who weren’t medical health professionals.

Okay, so how does this perception of the patient’s illness affect the patient’s treatment?

I’ll start with a quote where Hagele elaborates further:

“…and finally, that clinicians perceive psychotherapy to be significantly less effective when symptoms were explained biologically than psychologically…[ Lebowitz, M. S., & Ahn, W. K. (2014). ]

basically, linking the idea that the diminished importance of psychotherapy among mental health professionals ascribing to the concept of neuroessentialism is doubly harmful when considering the multiple contexts in which psychotherapy matches or outperforms pharmaceutical interventions.”

What Hagele points out here is the way neuroessentialism can lead to a less effective and ethical treatment of mental illness. It makes us approach an issue in one manner only- fix the brain, fix the behavior. But sometimes what can treat he issue in the brain is, working on the behavior. This can be talked about in terms of meds vs. psychotherapy.

So, seeing mental health from a neuroessentialist perspective, completely excludes the effects of psychotherapy. A classic example is CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) in which we have “Cognitive restructuring”: a psychotherapeutic process in which a person learns to recognize maladaptive or distressing thoughts and teaches their brain to consider other perspectives or different thought pattern. This is an example of “work on behaviour to better brain” rather than “working on brain will fix behavior”. According to strict neuroessentialism therapy shouldn’t work as well as it does but there is a really big body of science backing psychotherapeutic intervention and its efficacy compared to psychopharmacological intervention.

I feel I should address the discussion of Meds vs. therapy before I continue, (it is a whole topic worthy of a post on its own) but to be brief, they work best together and if you’re weighing one against the other psychotherapy has more long-term effects and barely any side effects compared to medication. There are other factor affecting what would be the most effective treatment approach that further nuances this discussion.

Now this is all a pretty big picture but how is this seen every day?

Well, its seen in the downplaying of the importance of therapy. Often, I see this as people normalize behavior where they kind of devalue the importance therapy or put off working on their issues in therapy with the excuse that it’s only for “crazy” people or not something worth the effort.

Therapy then increasingly is seen as this unimportant, extra thing rather than, in most cases, the most effective and safe treatment. And the less crucial therapy is considered, the less accessible it’s going to be – in the U.S. it can often be easier to get your insurance company to cover for a doctors visits where the treatment would be for your GP to prescribe you an antidepressant than an inpatient or outpatient treatment with a mental health professional.

Another point I wanna put out there is that that neuroessentialist narrative is incentivized by pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Puder talks about his own experience in the podcast episode and makes sure to stress that practitioners are humans too and will of course be biased towards something if that something writes them a check or pays some of their expenses. In the episode they discuss a way in which we have seen the neuroessentialist narrative progress:

“Second, there is evidence that the significant increase in direct-to consumer (DTC) advertising for antidepressants is related to rising prescription rates (Park & Grow, 2008). Such advertisements portray depression as a biological medical condition that can successfully be treated with medicine (Lacasse & Leo, 2005; Leo & Lacasse, 2008)” (613).

Now, medicine is an important tool in psychiatry and there is a lot of unnecessary stigma around medication for mental health conditions. I am under no circumstances arguing that medication is bad and therapy is the only right way to treat mental illness. That would be an extreme simplification and invalidation of human experiences. I also wanna acknowledge that being able to go to therapy in many places in the world is a matter of privilege. Therapy simply isn’t accessible for everyone and people can choose an “only medication approach” for many valid reasons. And if that’s the only treatment that was accessible to you I’m really proud of you for taking care of yourself and doing what you can.

If your doctor has prescribed you a medication please take it and know that the purpose is to help you and that you are worthy of help and good health care. The situation where I would suggest to be a tad critical is when people come in with disorders and issues that they have dealt with for years and most of their life and they are just prescribed an antidepressant and sent home. That simply isn’t effective and ethical care. In that case it is worth investigating getting access to a mental health practitioner as well as continuing with medicinal treatment.

I could talk about this for hours but the last thing I wanna get across is that this is a societal problem. I don’t suggest we turn away from pharmaceutical intervention which saves thousands of lives and helps people get better, rather that we work to make psychotherapy (which can be and is crucial for long term remission and recovery) more accessible for when it’s appropriate.

When your doctor tells you that this invisible illness is because of your biology most people feel validated and experience less shame. The fact that people feel like they need to have a tracible biological “anomaly” in their brains to be worthy of treatment and care speaks to an invalidation that many feel. But the issue here is that we're taught to invalidate invisible illness in society which in the end makes people delay critical treatment or blocks access to ethical and effective care.

We also have to acknowledge that with the technology we have now we are not able to know whether all mental illness manifests in the brain in a way we can see so hinging our worthiness of help and care on the definition is in the end harmful.

TL;DR

Neuroessentilism can validate a patient and bring relief of shame short term but ends up contributing to stigmatizing attitudes and thus doesn’t help reduce stigma overall.

The neuroessentialist narrative can downplay the efficacy and criticalness of psychotherapeutic intervention

Neuroessentialist perspectives foster lower empathy levels for patients in medical providers and non-providers alike.

Neuroessentialist perspectives of a patient significantly increases levels of prognostic pessimism which leads to worse treatment outcomes

Neuroessentialism arose because of a real invalidation people feel around their mental health and it is a societal issue we need to work on

We can combat neuroessentialism and stigma by working to make psychotherapy more accessible and talking about our experiences openly as well as giving each other kindness and empathy.

#i tried to make this a readable as possible but shoot me a message if i missed soemthing #neuroessentialism #rant post #mental health struggles #recovery data #psychiatry #medication #psychotherapy #therapy #psychology

13 notes · View notes

coldalbion · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on mythic morality

(Disclaimer/CN: This post discusses such things as depictions of rape, theft, murder, kinslaying and incest. None of what of what I write here should be taken as approval of, or apologia in relation to these acts.) “You look at trees and called them ‘trees,’ and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star,’ and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, ‘tree,’ 'star,’ were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of 'trees’ and 'stars’ saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was 'myth-woven and elf patterned’.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

The above quote is a charming one, isn’t it? Tolkien’s invocation of another way of seeing, of existing, beguiles us with its sense of possibility. It is, like much of myth and story, fundamentally conservative - not in the political sense, but in the conservational sense. As an attempt to preserve, or at least, keep possibilities open in the mind of the reader, it’s pretty good. Of course, the wrinkle is - or some may say - that this took place in the distant past. Nobody, they might say, sees the world like this - or if they do, then their perception is deluded - because we are past that. We see the world representationally now, striving towards accuracy. Anything else is just superstition, is it not?

The mistake these stereotypical straw men make - within the context that I have breathed life into them for - is to suggest that a linear path between “then-now”, and “past-future”. Actually, they make several mistakes, not least because of their unexamined bias. I’ll not elucidate them all here, but suffice to say that our vegetative friends have not considered, amongst other things, the role of the cultural, historical, and philosophical structures which influence how we perceive and know things. In philosophy, such consideration of knowledge and how, why, what, and where we know things is called epistemology. The thing with philosophy is that it covers many things: morality, ethics, metaphysics, linguistics, epistemology, sociology etc. We have words for all these things, and they are often their own disciplines. Philosophy - literally descending from “philia” + “sophia”, meaning affection or love for wisdom - can cover a kind of work in them all them all, precisely because understanding and using what is learnt in these many and varied arenas, and dong so well? Understanding the implications? Knowing that we know nothing for certain and that things are seldom as they first? This is wise, these things are wise, and so: wisdom is the useful, sound, and valuable deployment of knowledge and living life itself well.

Our straw men, conjured into existence by the magic of speech and words - shapings of breath digitized and transmitted across the planet to you, dear reader? They are brought forth into a world where the majority of its unexamined structures descend from the cultural shapings of men with pale skins. Dig further back, and deeper, and you will find that those men re-ordered, restructured and built upon the knowings and experiences of people who were not white or male. The structures of how we perceive, how we know what we know - even how we are taught to think, and express and feel? These did not come from nowhere - unfiltered and whole from the mind of one omnipotent, omniscient, Creator. Rather, many powers and potencies, principalities and agencies act all together. The flows of power, influence, propaganda, social and economic capital; the emotional and cultural response to events and experiences. All of these are contoured and shaped by the many. That many of the pale-skinned men shaped much of our world today is an accident of birth which is then compounded by economic and social factors based on climate, trade routes, geography, resources etc. This acquisition is then compounded and backward rationalized - the accidental conflux of factors becomes a self-justification for ideas of false superiority, which drives behaviours which weight things in the favour of that group. Make no mistake reader - there are still many worlds, even today. Bounded spaces, their boundaries staked out by those with the influence and ability to enforce them. That this is being written by a pale skinned man from North Western Europe is no coincidence. Nor is the fact that many will be able to read this, though my tongue is not what they speak natively - their first words carried a history different to mine. For various reason those people learnt my language which sneaks up behind others and mugs them in dark alleys, or engages in savagely lucrative trade deals. History literally is an accounting what has gone before, thus recounted by those later to be reckoned as accurate sources and authority. It is not all violence, theft and brutality. It is cultural exchange, trade, sharing, incorporation and diffusion also. All these things flow between in flux - this is influence. Influence is often codified and commodified under the rubric of power in an attempt to wield it more universally - which inevitably divorces it from its original context and forces a more acquisitive mindset amongst those who seek it, rather than seeking out points of influential confluence and integrating oneself within that. The orality of history, and cultural transmission, is not something often thought of today. With the advent of writing, information and knowledge conservation shifts to the texts themselves as authority - the metaphor of something being “there in black and white” refers to newspapers, but the sense of it descends from textual authority. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the historic belief structure of those pale people is rooted in a distortion of a heresy of a Middle-Eastern monotheism, which in itself seems been an offshoot of various Middle-Eastern polytheisms. That Judaism has a central authoritative text, leavened with thousands of years of oral and written commentaries and arguments should be noted. That this text was itself an edited version which scholars believe contains multiple texts, and was added to and redacted from, in response to socio-political and religious reasons over time, is also of note. That that text was selectively edited and canonized, before being translated in various languages in response to socio-political and religious reasons over time, is worth further note. That this collage of ancient material is elevated to holy scripture and used as basis for moral authority for the majority of the pale people for over a thousand years, and used as justification for imperalism, rape, murder, theft, oppression, oppression on grounds of sexuality, gender - and was a fundamental source of, and during, the social construction of the concept of race - would be shocking, were it not for the desire for that which is referred to as ‘power’ and ‘authority’. The singularity of authority and power presupposes scarcity. This is to say that fixed, codified protocols of behaviour, perception, and emotional affect allow definition and navigation in an unpredictable kosmos. By structuring experience, we make sense and it is by sense that we structure the world in a feedback loop. In a society based on orality, it is the stories that are told which preserve, iterate upon, and transmit knowledge and culture. In this, it’s worth quoting Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.” What this means is that how a message is transmitted influences the message content and context. Similarly, it is how and by whom-as-medium it is transmitted which influences the message. Oral societies are often conservative in nature - there are ways things are done, and for reasons. Thus, to deviate from that is dangerous, precisely because things are done that way for a reason which benefits certain people. Whether those certain people are an elite or a society as whole varies according to societal structures. Those who deviate are dangerous for several reasons - they are unpredictable, which in many societies at one time meant that they are or were a potential threat. They are non-conformist, which implies they may not honour the social contract which is supposed important in keeping everyone safe and keeping the world-order-as-society knows it running.

Recall Tolkien’s charm? His elder possibility is a world-order or worldview (weltanschauung) which sees the numinosity in all things. It thus sees flux and agency and multiplicity. In the case of polytheism and animism, the multiplicity of agents and powers suggests a multitude of agents all acting on one another and interpenetrating - rather like ripples or interference patterns. Gods and “Big spirits” ( terminology that is pretty much synonymous in the mind of this author for the purposes of discussion) can be said to have mythic “mass”. A large stone dropped into a pond will make bigger ripples and cancel or interfere with smaller ripples generated by smaller pebbles. When considering gods as establishers of world-order - or even creating worlds, it’s instructive to consider that in many mythologies, this is accomplished by the overthrow of a previous order or set of structures, and their reconfiguration. Which is usually, to judge my many world mythologies, a polite way to suggest murder and butchery; fundamentally catastrophic in all the linguistic and etymological senses of the word.. Once bloodily established, it is usually the actions and processes of the gods which keep the kosmos running. This accreted behaviour forms mores. Myth is thus a recounting of these behaviours and deviations therefrom, not simply as dry recounting but as felt experience which stimulates emotional and psychological affect which joins all participants (human and otherwise) into a shared epistemological framework. In any society, the element of performance is key in any media - not just what the media ism but how it does it, as mentioned above. In an oral society where knowledge is shared through speech, whether by poetry or storytelling, the performance of the teller is key, as is the setting and context of the delivery. Many myths depict rape, murder, theft, trade, sharing, incorporation and diffusion. In this, they are as much like other forms of media as anything else. Likewise, it of course is the choice of those personally affected by such things not to engage with such things if they feel it would be detrimental to them. Yet, in dealing with myth, particularly if one views it not as synonymous with falsehood, but in fact expressive of some world-reality which forms the root of of our perceptions and experience, we often have questions of morality. To say that myths containing rape, incest, murder, theft etc “offer a window onto a different time” or to suggest that the actions of a mythological figure are literally representationally true and thus that figure should be hated and despised is to present only a fairly shallow reading in the view of the author. Let us take the Norse god Odin - he who, according the texts we have, committed near- genocide against giant-kind; slaughtering his own kindred the god (along with his brothers) butcher the primeval giant Ymir and use his body to make the worlds. The brothers then create humans by breathing life into two logs/trees found by the sea shore - far better then men of straw, no? He steals the Mead of Inspiration (itself brewed from the blood of a murdered god) after seducing and tricking its giant-maiden guardian, but not before killing nine thralls in order to get close to her father - bearing the name Bolverk (evil-doer). He uses magic to impregnate Rindr after she turns him down repeatedly, making it so that Valli, the agent of vengeance for the death of Balfr, is a product of rape - regardless that he is in the shape of/dressed of a woman at the time. He attempts to have his way with Billing’s daughter, but is discovered and chased away by a pack of angry men. He sets up heroes to die in the midst of battle, abandoning them at the precise moment they need his aid. He is, in short, a major bastard. Did the Norse enjoy stories of rape? Was it a particular genre that pleased them? We have the images of Vikings as raping and pillaging, after all? Certainly, there are texts that suggest they had a different view of sexuality and violence than we do today. But is perhaps our take on Odin in the myths we have had passed down to us heavily biased? Of course. For one, it appears the idea of Odin as chief god in Iceland was due to the preponderance of preserved texts. Archaeology suggests Thor was more popular with the population-at-large than the weird and terrible bastard wizard Stabby McOne-Eye the murder hobo. But Odin is the Master of Inspiration - and both kings and poets were buoyed by his patronage. That this is passed down, collected and written down by a Christian after Christianization of Iceland, and then translated to English, some eight or nine centuries later?

This influences the medium and message. Further, amongst certain neopagans and heathen polytheists, there is a tendency to look at the preserved texts in a similar way to the Bible. This is a product of the mutations of that North West European brand of heresy we mentioned, contextualized in sectarian manner (Protestantism has a lot to answer for). Even if the myths are treated not as literal, we have been culturally contoured to look at myths which describe religious and numinous experience as exemplary. That’s to say, things that serve as examples or moral models, illustrations of general rules. In a sense, that’s akin to looking to police procedurals or popular movies, or 24hr news channels for a sense of morality today. Such things do contain troubling assumptions today - valourisation of violence if it “gets the job done” in movies, or news stories inciting rage for political or social gain as example. Yet their key raison d’etre is experiential affect. Information and mores may be passed on and inculcated unconsciously, yes. But to view their content as explicitly and directly representational without bias? This is surely dangerous. Furthermore, our attitudes to sexuality and violence, both as distinct groupings and how they interplay in all forms of media are worthy of critique - exactly what is acceptable and why? What is the historical and social context for this? So if myth is not to be read as moral exemplar, what then? In this we must engage beyond a surface reading, if we so choose. As method of epistemic transmission and framing, myth is is not exemplary, but does aid in modelling. It is the response to myth that aids modelling not the myth itself. To say Odin is a rapist, a murderer, and thief is important - not because he is, or is not these things, but what that means to the audience participating in the myth, both historically and currently in context. This is why his self-naming as Bolverk is so important, within the context of the myths. Performer and audience and mythic figure all acknowledge this behaviour as unacceptable to humans. Throughout the myth cycle, the “morally dubious” stories illustrate deviance from acceptability is only viable longterm if one is influential, and this motif exists across cultures. There are always consequences for such behaviour, whether it be the dooming of the world, or more subtle responses. Yet they serve a doubly illustrative function in the case of Odin, and other such figures (often Trickster or magical figures) wherein their behaviour and character is ambiguous precisely because of that nature - existing asocially, breaking rules and remaking them, surviving and prospering in impossible ways, in often hostile environments. This renders such figures “unsafe” “criminal” or “unnatural”, perhaps even queer in relation to wider society. For such figures, it is the transmission of this quality via the myth which the narrative preserves, even when preserved and iterated upon by time. In this context, to state again, solely literal representational readings of myth are mistaken. This is not to say it is all symbolic, but rather that metaphor transmits information - an Iroquois story says their people learnt to tap maple syrup from squirrels. An Iroquois boy saw a red squirrel cutting into tree bark with its teeth and later returning to lick the sap; the young Iroquois followed the squirrel’s lead and tried the same technique by cutting into the tree bark with a knife, thus discovering the sweet sap. Long derided as mere “myth” or “folklore” it took until the 1990s for a scientist named Bernd Heinrich to observe and record it, publishing in a scientific journal - thus ‘legitimizing’ pre-existing indigenous knowledge.

That such knowledge only became ‘acceptable’ or ‘real’ when performed outside of its original form tells us much about the biases of so-called ‘Western Culture’ as regards myth and folklore. Yet, this example proves the utility of such transmissions, existing over the centuries. That Iceland’s corpus of myth (even in those tales that remained to be written down) may contain metaphorically encode experience which can be re-experienced through felt-sense is made all the more likely, given the preservation of highly localized folklore and histories. Questions of legitimacy or lack are defined by flows of influence and power - inextricably linked to agency and consequence. Myth is therefore conceivable as a manifestation of currents of social influence and should never be held as a fixed thing, whether or not one has positive or negative emotional response to its figures

45 notes · View notes

taylorafergus · 4 years

Text

Social Media and Politics and Slacktivism, Oh My! - Week 6

Social media licences everyday people with the ability to disseminate an abundance of information, experiences, beliefs, and concepts with each other. With regard to the political sphere, social media platforms and social networking sites can act as an enabler for political participation and democracy amongst its citizens (Stieglitz et al. 2012, pg. 1). Whilst social media’s role continues to mature within this political realm, "there are definitive relationships to be explored between a politician’s use of these sites and the public’s opinion" (Hellweg 2011, pg. 31). Social media thus plays a pivotal role for both the candidate and his or her constituents during the electoral and political process.

Figure 1. Dwight Shrute Politics GIF. Source; Giphy c. 2020.

Political campaigns are meticulously crafted for each candidate. These campaigns aim to declare a candidate's political constituency in a way that projects them favourably to the public (Vonderschmitt 2012, pg. ii). The integration of social media into this political process has brought forth a "new means of constructing and negotiating a candidate’s image" (Enli 2017, pg. 59). Campaigns can tailor these messages to particular demographics in using social media analytics, and as such, there is a proliferating need to "continuously collect, monitor, analyze, summarize, and visualize politically relevant information from social media" (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan 2013, pg. 1277). Political campaigns can no longer rely on traditional media as the only medium to reach their constituents. In ignoring the virtual sphere they run the risk of "overlooking a new population of voters who use social media as integral parts of their decision-making process" (Hellweg 2011, pg. 31). So, with the integration of social media into this process, comes additional responsibilities on the part of candidates.

However, the efforts of some politicians online can be seen as amateurish and de-professionalised. Oddly enough, this approach deems some credit in the instance that it can generate feelings of authenticity and trustworthiness amongst viewers. An example of this tactic was illustrated in the 2016 Trump campaign (Enli 2017, pg. 55).

Social media has afforded its users with the capacity to access public figures at a previously unprecedented rate - "this allows supporters to feel a connection to the campaign and understand how the candidate will work to help him or her" (Vonderschmitt 2012, pg. 12). Now, more than ever, voters look to social media and social media-enabled campaigns as "important sources of information and perspective on a given year’s election" (Enli 2017, pg. 59).

Social media arguably affords its users with Habermas' public sphere within which users can debate upon such politics. Habermas delineates this 'public sphere' as a space where “private people come together as a public” for the purpose of using reason to further one's critical knowledge (Kruse et al. 2018, pg. 62/63). The individuals often involved in these processes are increasingly being denoted as ‘digital citizens’. Additionally, the term ‘digital citizenship’ refers to the ability of individuals to participate in society in an online and virtual space convening over topics such as society, politics, and government. (Mossberger et al. 2007, pg. 1).

However, the use of social media platforms as a discussion space for politics is often criticised as political slacktivism. The term ‘slacktivism’ conjunctures together the terms 'slacker' and 'activism' to describe the 'feel-good' measures taken by online users to illustrate their "token support for social or political causes through online means" (Chandler and Munday 201). Nevertheless, this is a gross simplification and criminalisation of the term and is significantly neglectful in failing to identify that "online engagement is key to turning a protest into a... movement and in prolonging its lifespan" (Groetzinger 2015).

Figure 2. Willy Wonka Slacktivism Meme. Source; Viral Politics c. 2020.

Digital citizens have long utilised means of shared communication, social media and social networking as political tools and orchestrators of digital citizenship. On the 17th of January 2001, during the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, devout loyalists within Congress voted to push aside damning evidence that would have led to his removal from office. Just hours after the announcement, thousands of Filipinos, furious that their corrupt president may remain in office, gathered on Epifanio de Los Santos Avenue - a central crossroads in Manila. The last-minute protest was partly organised by a forwarded message reading "Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk". The demonstration quickly garnered millions of attendees over the next few days with over seven million text messages forwarded. The publics ability to facilitate such a substantial and timely response concerned the country's legislators to the extent that the previous ruling was reversed, thus allowing the evidence to be presented in the trial. By January 20th, Estrada was removed from office (Shirky 2011, pg. 1).

Figure 3. Power to the People GIF. Source; Tumblr: iamjasee 2016.

The evolution of social media as an integral component of the political process is far from over. They will continue to integrate themselves into every avenue of our social and political life and demand that the relationship between a politician’s use of social media and the public’s opinion continues to be redefined.

References:

Chandler, D, Munday, R 2016, A dictionary of social media, Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Reference Premium Collection)

‘Dwight Shrute Politics GIF’ [GIF], in Giphy c. 2020, politics, Giphy, viewed the 28th of April 2020, <https://giphy.com/gifs/politics-d3DiXTPbqh83K>

Enli, G 2017, 'Twitter as an arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election', European Journal of Communication, February 2017, vol. 32. no. 1, pp. 50-61

Groetzinger, K 2015, 'Slacktivism is having a powerful real-world impact, new research shows', Quartz, the 11th of December, viewed the 28th of April 2020, <https://qz.com/570009/slacktivism-is-having-a-powerful-real-world-impact-new-research-shows/>

Hellweg, A 2011, 'Social Media Sites of Politicians Influence Their Perception by Constituents', The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 2011, pp. 22-36

Kruse, L, Norris, D, Flinchum, J 2018, 'Social Media as a Public Sphere? Politics on Social Media', The Sociological Quarterly, 02 January 2018, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 62-84

Mossberger, K, McNeal, RS, Tolbert, CJ 2007, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, Cambridge: MIT Press, Ebook Central (ProQuest)

‘Power to the People GIF’ [GIF], in Tumblr: iamjasee 2016, power to the people, Tumblr, viewed the 28th of April 2020, <https://iamjasee.tumblr.com/post/144628984098/we-rise-and-we-thrive>

Shirky, C 2011, 'The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change', Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2011, vol. 90, no. 1, pp. 1-9

Stieglitz, S, Brockmann, T, Xuan, LD 2012, 'Usage Of Social Media For Political Communication’, Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) 2012 Proceedings, Paper 22, viewed the 27th of April 2020, <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefan_Stieglitz/publication/259703948_Usage_of_Social_Media_for_Political_Communication/links/54d5e1e60cf2464758086d36/Usage-of-Social-Media-for-Political-Communication.pdf>

Stieglitz, S, Dang-Xuan, L 2013, 'Social media and political communication: a social media analytics framework', Social Network Analysis and Mining, 1 January 2013, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 1277-1291

Vonderschmitt, K 2012, 'The Growing Use of Social Media in Political Campaigns: How to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to Create an Effective Social Media Campaign', Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects, no. 360, pp. i-58, <http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/360>

'Willy Wonka Slacktivism Meme' [image], in Viral Politics c. 2020, How Memes Create Social and Political Change: The Guardian Tech Podcast, Viral Politics, viewed the 28th of April 2020, <https://viralpoliticsblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/how-memes-create-social-and-political-change-the-guardian-tech-podcast/>

#mda20009 #digitalcommunities #politics #democracy #digitalcitizen #Social media #public sphere #habermas #Protest #activism #digital citizenship

6 notes · View notes

ailahveyou · 4 years

Text

PUZZLE OUT; A REFLECTION

“I embraced who I am and I don’t want to stop.” - Supergirl; Kara Zor-el

How do you define ‘YOU’? How hard can it be to be ‘YOU’? - these questions help us understand more of what may ourselves have to pop out. In the midst of the journey you have in life, there are certain areas that you question and that we are about to find out.

These past few weeks we’ve had our classes in our GE HUMS 101, we learned about talking and recognizing LIFE in different aspect and perspectives of philosophers and sociologists. We gained more knowledge about the SELF. So let me give you a little tour of what we discussed and so you can catch up.

On the first part of our tour, this is about SELF THROUGH PHILOSOPHER’S PERSPECTIVES. This topic involves different philosophers explaining what they think about the self’s essence that is present in us. As you can see, with these philosophers we learn and reflect each of their ideas about ourselves.

Just like our friend above this text, Socrates, one of the early philosophers, paved the way of questioning and discovering more about self. He introduced the SOCRATIC METHOD to allow human beings to gain more knowledge. Not just questioning, we also tend to observe ours. The self has levels that we already know and some that needs to be discovered. in our daily lives, we tend to ask ourselves who are we gonna be today or how can we behave with what’s gonna come. These components on this topic helps us recognize more and just like me, I just learned that when you intact all the philosopher’s ideas you can get that greater picture of yourself and could understand more.

So let’s say good bye for a little bit to Socrates and let me introduce you to some Sociologists whom discussed about SELF THROUGH SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES.

Society is a big influence to an individual. It can either demand, command or request. They tend to change behaviors with the people around you for acceptance and it will mirror yourself of what you’ve become with the influence of social norms. As I observed, people nowadays, mostly teens, are looking for acceptance within the society. they tend to change their self-identity for the sake of fame an acceptance within their peers. It’s not that bad we tend to change ourselves of what we feel and for the better.

For example, Hua Mulan - the Chinese lady whom applied for the Chinese army as a man to help her father and bring honor to her family. Mulan was never the perfect daughter but she tried to do everything her family requested so she could bring pride and honor to her family. However, she failed to accomplish the request and disappointed of what happened with her and the matchmaker. She was in awe when she knew that there was supposed to be one man that can represent their family to apply for the army. Her father was sick and she couldn’t stand it. She ran away with her horse and the guardian spirit that her ancestors gave her. Before she deployed herself, she cut her hair and wrapped her breast as if she was not a woman so that the army will accept her. She hid her true identity for months as Hua Ping, she trained and she felt she found her self by being who she is. Then until the end, she revealed herself to the people as a woman. At first, they wouldn’t accept a woman in the army as if it’s a crime. But then she truly recognized her potential and alongside everyone accepted her even her colleagues.

There is good and bad of the influence that society can bring but the important thing that we should know that we have to recognize of what is better for us and even healthier to what we bring and cultivate among others.

Let’s just leave Mulan right there and move on with our tremendous tour. Let’s go and talk about SELF AS EMBEDDED IN CULTURE.

Culture. Culture is one’s way of life. Just like religion, traditions and lifestyle. It’s like a pattern that we do with our lives that we believe and follow.

Like me, as a Pinay, I practice by saying ‘opo’ and ‘po’ to the elders, being hospitable to visitors, likes to party and gather and also we, pinoys, celebrate the longest Christmas vacation. This culture that we have that we share is the bondness and this allows us to identify of who we are. Similar to the phenomenal series Harry Potter, a ficitional story by J.K Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry lived his life being a muggle (human) but everything changed on his 11th birthday. Harry went to the world of Witchcraft and Wizardry and learned different cultures and beliefs as a wizard. He shared the bond with his three friends and learned the meaning of magic and power.

I realized that culture is not the behavior itself but the bond and understanding that allows us to bond and share with different people to experience more. The shared culture you have is how you define yourself on how you deliver it and show it to others. Culture influenced us within our daily lives up until this century. This also bring us together as a nation through diversity.

So, carry on!

We are gonna talk about the PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF.

The self has many facets that help make up integral parts of it, such as self-awareness, self-esteem, self-knowledge, and self-perception. In the basis of psychology, the mental state of the self allows you to think, act and evaluate. For me, the psychological perspective of the self is really important because it constructs the idea of one’s identity to achieve. For example, as we grow up we tend to observe our parents and analyze of what they are doing. Also, we tend to copy and idolize them of what they are doing.

On this lesson, we learned how to be aware with one’s self and also by understanding. Being influenced by the people around your environment makes yourself vulnerable and attached so we have to make sure we choose the right path we take. So thumbs up for that!

We quickly continue to the WESTERN AND EASTERN CONCEPT OF THE SELF.

Western people are ideally aware of themselves. They objectify themselves as INDIVIDUALS purely. They are autonomous. While, Eastern self is believing that there is no meaning of the self that is independent.

Both of them play important roles within the different sides of the world. I believe the Western Self’s single-mindedness can be a weakness and also a strength, not just in our daily routine but also in different aspects. Eastern Self within us helps us appreciate the togetherness of one’s community and by depending and helping. Maybe both of them, don’t go good together but I believe that each of them have strong perspectives within different circumstances.

Moving along...

Let’s talk about THE PHYSICAL SELF.

The physical self refers to the body. Both external and internal. It is the temple of what we desire. People nowadays tend to get insecure with their bodies, mostly girls. It’s hard to say that most of them feel pressured by what they see in magazines and even the social media empire. Social media is technically perceiving the perfect body image of a person should and will have. That’s why they tend to buy stuff to maintain their beauty and body forms.

I learned that self-esteem is really important even if you do not have the perfect body image. People tend to judge the other people’s body image and some of them end up being depressed. Yet, it is much more important to be beautiful in the inside

Being beautiful is not just by having a pretty face but also with a beautiful soul. Our forms do not measure the weight that social media carries. We do not have nothing to prove and no one to impress with. It’s the personality that counts! . The thing you have to prioritize is how you avoid to intoxicate your inner self. You have to smile, be thankful and optimistic, and have a healthy and good attitude.

So let’s give that a big round of applause, folks!

Let me tell you something that I learned about SEXUAL SELF.

Sexual self is not just what you think. Some people misunderstood these type of perspective just because it has the word, ‘SEX’, on it. Well, you’re wrong! So, let me clear things up. Sexual self is the totality of all sex characteristics, includes with the reproductive systems, different STDs, puberty, sexual arousal, etc. Sexual self invites us to learn more of what we have rather than we think. It tells us how our reproductive system works and changes throughout our entire life even on experiencing sexual arousal.

It also talks about different components of love; on how people exchange or make a bond with their shared feelings for one another. Also, the awareness of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

So, if you’re reading this blog, I would definitely give you a perfect example. Have you heard or watched the series Sex Education? Just let me know, okay?

I’m gonna give you a quick summary about the story. In reference with Google, High school student Otis may not have much experience in the lovemaking department, but he gets good guidance on the topic in his personal sex ed course -- living with his mother, Jean, who is a sex therapist. Being surrounded by manuals, videos and tediously open conversations about sex, Otis has become a reluctant expert on the subject. When his classmates learn about his home life, Otis decides to use his insider knowledge to improve his status at school, so he teams with whip-smart bad girl Maeve to set up an underground sex therapy clinic to deal with their classmates' problems. But through his analysis of teenage sexuality, Otis realizes that he may need some therapy of his own.

This story is pretty nice with the topic about the sexual self, it allows teens to be more aware of what they do. Sexual self is really an important role to an individual, it helps to build a wall of self-awareness since teens nowadays are being pressured of what they see and also they tend to give there all just to be loved then some of them lead to teenage pregnancy/pre-marital sex and others may lead to death due to complication with some STDs.

Some are confused of what they feel and who they feel like being to be. It’s better to embrace who you really are and going out of your closet rather than being who they don’t want to be.

I just want to say and reflect that this generation that we have is unstoppable but it can yet be controlled. We can help them to educate themselves properly and being more aware of these things within the areas of their sexual self because it’s better to be safe than be sorry.

Moving on, let’s talk about the MATERIAL SELF.

The material self is the manifestation of one’s identity through his/her possessions. It can be their house, car, pet, and even clothes that you wear. They feel sentimental to a specific value. There is nothing wrong whether you define yourself from the the things you buy, you always have to make sure that you won’t lose yourself, even your credit card.

Material possession can be reflection of you hardwork (Belk,1988). It can also affect your personality and the way you see yourself. There are some people who get sick, literally sick, from being a compulsive/impulsive buyer. It could cause depression, anxiety and even death. Being satisfied with things is not a problem but we have to make sure that we do need it and not just go hoarding stuffs. So, one of the best Confessions of a Shopaholic shopping tips is to think first. Before buying anything, ask yourself a series of questions: Will I wear/use this more than once? Is this purchase going to affect me in a good way? Does this item match other ones in my closet?

For me, being materialistic also has it’s negative effects, being boastful and also decreasing of the budget that you have. People to tend to be jealous with others of what they have because merely the mass or social media manipulates each individual’s mind, mostly females. People measure you things for you to be accepted by them. In the bright side, people tend to measure success also through the amount of things they possess because that individual is seeking high level of achievement or in Layman’s terms - HE DESERVES HIS HARD WORK AND SATISFACTION. Just like by buying a phone with the money you earned from your first ever salary. Materialism has its ups and downs, as long as it doesn’t destroy the your identity and your pockets.

In the other hand, SPIRITUAL SELF.

Spiritual self is the inner essence of your life force.

Spirituality generally refers to the meaning and purpose of one’s life. Spirituality talks about worship, religion and act of faith. It doesn’t mean that we do have different beliefs and religion that doesn’t mean that we are different from each other. We strive, we suffer and we succeed. All of us experience the same virtue of life and it is in us on how we try to make it worth and different.

Spirituality also talks about logotheraphy - which is the pursuit of human existence as on man’s search for reflection. It is also a method that psychiatrists use to help their patients reconnects with themselves and stop being isolated with depression and anxiety.

I believe and I doubt; everyday we do not experience SUCCESS, VALUE, AND SUFFER. Life is not sweet if it’s not a roller coaster full of surprises and life is simple but not easy. Whenever we feel down, we come back and pray to our life force. We make ourselves feel optimism and faith to get back to ou feet. We reflect and meditate of things that makes us happy and worthy. No matter how hard and destructive life can be, you will never forget what is your true purpose in this world and we should go back to grounded in soil and fulfill.

I’m gonna give you a quick overview about the POLITICAL SELF

Political self begins defining politics. Politics exists in all human societies. It can be in school, family and also churches. Popularly visible in governments. This helps to be more focused and considerate with your knowledge and responsibilities. This will help the self to maintain an environment where people can participate and learn about dominance, freedom and rights.

As a democratic country, we have the right to vote. This resembles the importance of having human rights and free will.

I learned that we should know what is right from wrong about this. We can also be leaders and followers in our own way. People have power in their palms and also in their voices. I believe that the political self can provide the cultivation of individuals’ decision makings and also about their rights not being deprived.

Lastly, DIGITAL SELF.

Technology is fantastic. We send emails, watch movies online and just even use our phones to order food without going to the restaurant. Isn’t that amazing?

Digital technology is at the peak of our horizon. Technology influences the quality of life and the ways people act and interact. Technology is everywhere, we sleep with it and we even go to work with it. The whole world revolves around digital. But how does this affect ourselves?

People, mainly teens, are so obsessed with social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat). Digital self allows you to express or share yourselves through the internet. People tend to be more interested having ‘hearts’ and ‘likes’ rather than loving themselves. They depend of what people might say and to impress to get their social approval. As a matter of fact, you can also gain money with these ‘likes’ and ‘subscribers’ you have just like on Youtube. Take Cong TV as an example.

It may also change your life in a good or bad way. You’re taking all the risk for it. Just like the movie, Nerve, where this young girl, Vee decides to join Nerve, a popular online game that challenges players to accept a series of dares. It's not long before the adrenaline-fueled competition requires her to perform increasingly dangerous stunts. When Nerve begins to take a sinister turn, Vee finds herself in a high-stakes finale that will ultimately determine her entire future.

Another one is Xander Ford - keeps on being bashed just because people see him as senseless and has a horrible attitude. However, this may lead to social suicide. People being rejected and being embarrassed then end up getting depressed.

I do agree that digital technology is pretty amazing but it can hardly be forgiving.

Like what I said, Digital technology has it’s side effects, you can literally be hacked and also been taken hostage for SOCIAL IDENTITY THEFT or FRAUD. Criminals are also in the deepest areas in the internet.

So we have to make sure of what we put on social media and even in the internet and the internet does not measure who we are and how we are loved. They even see it as a wasteland where people shed their tears and not to mention it’s also where we can store our memories for a lifetime. We always have to remember that we should THINK BEFORE WE CLICK

I think that sums up our tour. Before I end this blog, as you can see I am very fond of Supergirl. She strives her way out of the shadows just to know what is her purpose and to know more what she can do just by understanding herself. I just want to let you know that it is really hard to understand ourselves. We keep on trying to ask the same question over and over again.

People cannot define ‘YOU’. You are the only one who can define yourself.

This subject made me realize that I am greater that who I knew I could be. That is it. No amount of words how grateful I am to realize that it is really important to understand yourself and to figure out your purpose in life. In addition, this subject helped me thought that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom and mastering yourself is the power and strength. You have nothing to prove and no one to impress with.

Sometimes understanding yourself is pretty tough but when you reflect and get all the pieces together. As long as you have hope and faith within yourself, I’m pretty sure you’re gonna know what purpose in life that you have and so that you can influence others through a lighter path.

#UnderstandingTheSelf #BeYou #Self-Awareness

1 note · View note

bluewatsons · 5 years

Text

Cliodhna O’Connor & Helene Joffe, How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of the evidence, 22 Pub Understanding of Sci 254 (2013)

Abstract

The prominence of neuroscience in the public sphere has escalated in recent years, provoking questions about how the public engages with neuroscientific ideas. Commentaries on neuroscience’s role in society often present it as having revolutionary implications, fundamentally overturning established beliefs about personhood. The purpose of this article is to collate and review the extant empirical evidence on the influence of neuroscience on commonsense understandings of personhood. The article evaluates the scope of neuroscience’s presence in public consciousness and examines the empirical evidence for three frequently encountered claims about neuroscience’s societal influence: that neuroscience fosters a conception of the self that is based in biology, that neuroscience promotes conceptions of individual fate as predetermined, and that neuroscience attenuates the stigma attached to particular social categories. It concludes that many neuroscientific ideas have assimilated in ways that perpetuate rather than challenge existing modes of understanding self, others and society.

Introduction

On 17 July 1990, US president George H.W. Bush declared the 1990s to be the ‘Decade of the Brain’. The following years saw major advances in neuroscience as a discipline – most notably in the establishment of fMRI as a standard methodological instrument – and an explosion in the volume of neuroscientific research published. As the field has progressed, the subjects it tackles have become increasingly complex, with particular acceleration of research with potential social and policy implications (Illes et al., 2003). Subject matters traditionally assigned to the humanities and social sciences – such as religion, love, art, crime and politics – now make frequent appearances in neuroscience journals (Frazzetto and Anker, 2009; Littlefield and Johnson, 2012). The expansion of the neuroscientific research programme to topics of acute social concern has raised neuroscience’s profile in society, propelling it into the public sphere. Neuroscience has been appropriated by many diverse fields that see it as relevant to their own interests, including law (Walsh, 2011), marketing (Chancellor and Chatterjee, 2011), public policy (Seymour and Vlaev, 2012), education (Ansari et al., 2012), parenting (O’Connor and Joffe, 2012) and economics (Schüll and Zaloom, 2011).

For social scientists, the increasing prominence of neuroscience provokes important questions about how members of the public engage with this new knowledge. This issue is often framed in ‘deficit model’ (Wynne, 1993) terms, placing priority on evaluating the accuracy of public understandings of neuroscience (Herculano-Houzel, 2002; Pasquinelli, 2012; Sperduti et al., 2012). Whether a conception is scientifically correct or incorrect is, however, largely irrelevant to its substantive effect on people’s thinking about themselves, others and society. The most important consideration in gauging neuroscience’s societal influence is not lay ideas’ correspondence with established scientific ‘facts’, but the meaning attached to neuroscientific ideas in personal and social life. Since the brain is regarded as the organ most closely related to mind and behaviour, some have speculated that the proliferation of neuroscientific knowledge has produced a shift in everyday conceptions of personhood or ‘folk psychology’ (Goldman, 1993; Sousa, 2006). Given the significance of folk psychological understandings in guiding everyday behaviour, perception and social interaction, examining neuroscience’s influence on commonsense conceptions of personhood is arguably a more pressing task than establishing whether public understandings of the brain are scientifically correct.

Within discussions of neuroscience’s societal significance, it is commonplace to encounter claims that neuroscience is producing revolutionary changes in understandings of individuals and society. For example, Lynch (2009) claims that neuroscientific knowledge is ‘propelling humanity toward a radical reshaping of our lives, families, societies, cultures, governments, economies, art, leisure, religion – absolutely everything that’s pivotal to humankind’s existence’ (2009: 7). Similar sentiments, though less dramatically presented, are in evidence throughout the academic literature that reflects on neuroscience’s position in contemporary society. For example, Illes and Racine (2005) state that neuroscientific insights ‘will fundamentally alter the dynamic between personal identity, responsibility and free will’ (2005: 14); Farah (2012) asserts that ‘neuroimaging has contributed to a fundamental change in how we think of ourselves and our fellow persons’ (2012: 575); and Abi-Rached (2008) speaks of ‘this “neuro-age”’, whereby human behaviour and the other aspects that define us as a species are predominantly formulated in neurochemical terms’ (2008: 1162).

Such claims clash with established models of public engagement with science, which cast doubt on the notion that new scientific knowledge, within a relatively narrow time-span, provokes revolutionary changes in public thinking. Social representations theory, one key paradigm for theorizing lay uptake of science, posits that the primary psychological task upon encountering new scientific information is ‘to make the unaccustomed familiar’ (Moscovici, 2008[1961]: 17) – that is, to transfer ‘strange’ new ideas into a conceptual register with which one is familiar and therefore comfortable. This is achieved by ‘anchoring’ the new idea within established cultural categories and ‘objectifying’ it with familiar symbols, images and metaphors. While different models of public engagement with science employ different analytical tools, research from a variety of theoretical standpoints converges on the conclusion that people selectively attend to and interpret science in ways that cohere with their pre-existing values, identities and beliefs (Joffe and Haarhoff, 2002; Kahan et al., 2011; Morton et al., 2006; Munro, 2010; Wynne, 1993). New scientific information can indeed challenge and modulate existing understandings; however, it can also assimilate into and reinforce established ideas. It is therefore not self-evident that neuroscience will substantively alter understandings of personhood in predictable directions. Delineating the influences neuroscience exerts on contemporary society requires careful empirical research.

A body of research examining the role played by neuroscience in everyday conceptions of personhood has recently amassed. However – perhaps because it traverses several disciplines, methodological approaches and fields of interest – it has thus far maintained a relatively low profile. It is often unacknowledged in scholarly or intellectual discussions about the cultural significance of neuroscience, with the result that such discussions remain largely speculative and polemical. The purpose of this article is to collate and review this empirical evidence concerning the influence of neuroscience on commonsense understandings of personhood. After probing the prominence of neuroscience in public consciousness, the article proceeds to examine the empirical evidence for three frequently encountered claims about neuroscience’s societal influence: that neuroscience fosters conceptions of the self that are dominated by biology, that neuroscience promotes conceptions of individual fate as predetermined, and that neuroscience abates the stigma attached to certain social categories.1

How prominent is neuroscience in public consciousness?

With neuroscience’s prominence in popular media escalating, several studies have undertaken to systematically examine the characteristics of media coverage of neuroscience. A recent analysis shows that references to neuroscience in UK newspapers increased sharply between 2000 and 2010, most often manifesting within advice on ‘optimizing’ brain function, demonstration of biological bases for intergroup differences, and recruitment of neuroscience’s scientific authority to ‘prove’ arguments or assertions (O’Connor et al., 2012). Regarding neuroscience’s practical applications, O’Connell et al. (2011) establish that the media show particular interest in applications involving lie-detection, marketing and public policy. Racine, Waldman, Rosenberg and Illes’ (2010) analysis identifies three key trends in media coverage of neurotechnologies (e.g. fMRI, EEG, PET): neuro-realism, which refers to the use of neuroscientific information to make phenomena seem objective or ‘real’; neuro-essentialism, which connotes representations of the brain as the essence of a person; and neuro-policy, which captures the deployment of brain research to support political agendas. Research also indicates a strong visual dimension to media coverage, with media text frequently accompanied by brain images produced by functional neuroimaging technologies (Dumit, 2004; Gibbons, 2007). The highly-mediated, technological nature of this image production is often obscured, such that the images may resemble direct photographs of neural activity (Beck, 2010; Roskies, 2007). These images may therefore afford a ‘truth value’ to the arguments proffered in media text.

The social significance of neuroscience’s expanding media presence is intensified by experimental evidence suggesting that neuroscientific information may wield particular rhetorical force. Weisberg et al. (2008) show that explanations of psychological phenomena that include logically irrelevant neuroscience information are judged more satisfying than the same explanations presented without the neuroscience information. Similarly, McCabe and Castel (2008) document how articles summarizing cognitive neuroscience research appear more credible when accompanied by a redundant image of a brain scan than by a bar graph or no visual information. Three-dimensional brain images are particularly persuasive (Keehner et al., 2011). These experiments suggest that the symbols of brain research confer legitimacy on the arguments they accompany. However, it should be noted that these experiments required participants to evaluate fictitious scientific articles, which may not be a highly ecologically valid task. A more recent study focusing on evaluations of popular news articles reports that inclusion of fMRI images does not enhance an article’s persuasiveness relative to articles accompanied by other, or no, imagery (Gruber and Dickerson, 2012).

Research thus indicates that neuroscience is widely reported in the mainstream media and is convincing in certain experimental contexts. However, this does not guarantee that it has meaningfully penetrated public consciousness. Evidence shows that there can be considerable divergence between media and mental representations of a scientific issue (Ten Eyck, 2005). People exposed to media information may ignore it, quickly forget it, or interpret and deploy it in idiosyncratic ways. Unfortunately, little research exists interrogating neuroscience’s prominence in the minds of the lay public. One exception is Wardlaw et al.’s (2011) survey of perceptions of neuroimaging applications, in which 17% of respondents report having ‘no awareness’ of neuroimaging applications, 47% rate themselves as ‘a little aware’, 26% as ‘quite aware’ and 10% as ‘very aware’. These figures do not suggest extensive familiarity with neuroscience, and the level of public awareness they indicate may be inflated by the study’s recruitment strategies, which included advertising the survey on science blogs.

Some insight into neuroscience’s position in public consciousness can be derived from Rodriguez’s (2006) semantic analysis of usage of neuroscience-related terms in everyday speech. This analysis shows that neuro-vocabulary frequently materializes in vernacular language (e.g. ‘she is brainy’), suggesting that neurobiology occupies a space in the conceptual schemata that underpin people’s everyday talk. As Rodriguez (2006) acknowledges, however, the study provides limited insight into the breadth of this space or the meanings that speakers have in mind when they use ‘brain’ terms.

In summary, empirical research has established that neuroscience is increasingly visible in the popular press. However, little direct research with members of the public casts light on either the extent to which brain-related ideas are spontaneously recruited in naturalistic thought and conversation, or the meanings that these ideas carry for people.

Does neuroscience foster a conception of the self that is based in biology?

Many commentaries on the societal significance of neuroscience have framed the issue within the historical battle between materialist and dualist theories of the person, that is whether what we call ‘mind’ is fundamentally physical matter or exists separately from the body on some non-physical plane. Neuroscientific advances have been hailed as the force that will drive dualism from society, ushering in conceptions of self, emotion and behaviour that are entirely rooted in biochemical processes (Churchland, 1995; Churchland, 2008; Crick, 1995). Sociological writings suggest that the assimilation of biological information into conceptions of self and identity is already in motion, a position exemplified by terms such as ‘neurochemical self’ (Rose, 2007), ‘cerebral subject’ (Ortega, 2009) and ‘brainhood’ (Vidal, 2009).

The suggestion that understandings of the self are becoming progressively materialized has, however, met with limited empirical support. In an analysis of focus groups composed of individuals with varying degrees of involvement with brain research (e.g. neuroscientists, patients, teachers), Pickersgill et al. (2011) report that participants professed an interest in the brain, but rarely directly attributed behaviour entirely to brain processes. Some participants actively resisted neuroscientific ideas, perceiving them as threatening their established conceptions of mind and self – for example, undermining the importance of family and socialization in development. This sense of threat was not universal, however, with others experiencing neuroscience as simply irrelevant to their self-perception. Choudhury, McKinney and Merten (2012)describe similar results from a study of how adolescents engage with the idea of the ‘teenage brain’: while teenagers stated that knowledge about the neuroscience of adolescence was important, they also rejected it as boring or irrelevant to their own self-understanding. Mirroring Pickersgill et al.’s (2011) findings, behaviour was rarely understood in purely biological terms, but rather seen as a product of relationships with parents, teachers and society more generally.

Research with clinical populations indicates a greater penetration of brain-based ideas into self-understanding. In Illes et al.’s (2008) survey of 72 patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, 92% reported that they would want a brain scan to diagnose depression if possible, while 76% believed that brain scans would improve their understanding of their mental state. Buchman et al.’s (2013) interviews with 12 individuals diagnosed with mood disorder revealed that participants very decisively endorsed the ‘chemical imbalance’ explanation of depression. Qualitative analysis indicated that much of brain-based explanations’ appeal derived from their apparent ability to provide an objective, morally neutral tool to legitimize people’s experience. Dumit (2003) and Cohn (2004) suggest that the visual element of brain scans is a particularly potent legitimizing resource, allowing for the objectification of ‘depression’ or ‘schizophrenia’ as material entities rather than nebulous diagnostic categories. This ‘proving’ quality of neurobiological information can be mobilized in efforts to sustain a positive identity. Fein (2011), Rapp (2011) and Singh (2011), for example, observe that individuals with developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders (and their families) can adopt neuroscientific language to represent themselves as subject to unique, ‘hard-wired’ challenges and abilities. Such identity-protective positioning of neurobiological information also characterizes the burgeoning ‘neurodiversity movement’. This campaign, spearheaded by the autism community, represents developmental disorders as simply alternative biological ways of being that are equally legitimate as ‘neurotypicality’ (Vidal, 2009). Thus, for people diagnosed with particular psychiatric conditions, neurobiological explanations of their thoughts and feelings are sometimes psychologically and socially functional, with their endorsement serving identity-supportive ends.

The divergent findings of research with clinical and non-clinical populations suggest that the brain’s prominence in self-understanding is largely contingent on whether a person has been provoked to consider their ‘brainhood’ by extrinsic events such as diagnosis and medication. The brain may not intrude spontaneously in day-to-day consciousness, but rather becomes salient when something goes wrong (Pickersgill et al., 2011). However, even this experience-contingent salience is equivocal: neuroscientific explanations of disorder can be hotly contested (Martin, 2010) and rarely represent the exclusive explanatory mode deployed in conceptualizing the disorder. When neuroscientific ideas are accepted it is usually in partial and contingent ways, operating alongside alternative – sometimes contradictory – means of understanding experience. Bröer and Heerings (2013), for instance, employ a Q-sort methodology to establish that the disorder-understandings of adults with ADHD comprise a matrix of psychological, sociological and holistic concepts that exist alongside, and interact with, neurological conceptualizations. Gross’s (2011)ethnography of a neuro-oncology unit further indicates the multi-dimensionality of disorder meanings, finding that brain tumour patients’ self-conceptions are split into two elements: one that is based in, and another that is completely separate from, the brain. A form of Cartesian dualism allows these patients to conceive of the tumour not as an illness of the self but as the disease of ‘just another organ’.

Thus, even when biological explanations of thought, emotion or behaviour are accepted, they do not drive out non-biological explanations. Assertions that neuroscientific advances will inevitably purge society of dualistic understandings of personhood flounder because they fail to acknowledge the complexity and multi-dimensionality of self-conception.

Does neuroscience promote conceptions of individual fate as predetermined?

Neuroscience has also been marshalled in the long-standing philosophical battle between conceptions of the person as a free agent with independent volition and as a being whose character, behaviour and life-course are pre-patterned by their biological constitution. Certain philosophers and neuroscientists have painted neuroscience research as the definitive refutation of the notion of free will, which is cast – in Nobel Laureate Francis Crick’s words – as ‘no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’ (Crick, 1995: 3). This debate can extend beyond questioning whether free will exists in an ontologically ‘real’ sense (an issue outside the scope of the present article) to encompass clear predictions about neuroscience’s influence on commonsense beliefs about free will. For example, Green and Cohen (2004) assert that ‘the net effect of this influx of scientific information will be a rejection of free will as it is ordinarily conceived’ (2004: 1776), celebrating this as a socially progressive prospect. It is important to note that such postulations are not universal: many scientists caution against premature over-extrapolation of empirical results (Lavazza and De Caro, 2010; Rose, 2005; Roskies, 2006) and the potentially troubling societal repercussions of rejecting free will (Baumeister, Masicampo and DeWall, 2009; Vohs and Schooler, 2008). In addition, recent findings regarding the brain’s ‘plasticity’ or capacity for change have been interpreted as evidence againstbiological determinism. This will be discussed shortly; first, however, the article assesses the empirical evidence for the contention – still mooted from certain quarters (e.g. Churchland, 1995; Economist, 2006; Farah, 2012; Harris, 2012) – that the popularization of neuroscience will transform conventional understandings of free will.

One of the key social arenas in which the free will issue plays out is within attribution of responsibility for behaviour. Legal and moral codes, along with daily interpersonal interaction, hinge on the conviction that individuals have control over, and hence responsibility for, their actions. Some have suggested that viewing behaviour as biologically determined fundamentally undermines the concept of personal responsibility. However, research shows that people confronted with behaviour that is framed as neurologically caused continue to interpret it through the lens of individual responsibility (De Brigard et al., 2009). Laypeople do not necessarily see moral responsibility and biological determination as incompatible, and are willing to attribute responsibility to an individual even when clear that (s)he did not intend their actions (Nahmias, 2006). Attribution of responsibility for unintended acts is particularly likely if they produce destructive outcomes or are morally ‘bad’ (Alicke, 2008). This implies that the movement of neuroscientific evidence into criminal defence cases will not radically transform jurors’ reasoning (Rose, 2007; Schweitzer et al., 2011). Research thus suggests that attributions of responsibility are complex and multifaceted, and a direct ‘more neurologically determined–less personal responsibility’ effect appears unlikely.

Belief in personal responsibility persists because it is predicated on what Morris et al. (2001) call implicit theories of agency: robust cultural theories, transmitted across generations, defining the kinds of entities that act intentionally and autonomously to cause events. In western societies, the individual human intentional agent is unambiguously positioned as the primary and ‘natural’ causal force (Wellman and Miller, 2006); people socialized into western cultures often cannot conceptualize how agency could operate at any level beyond the individual (Morris and Peng, 1994). Individual independence and self-determination is culturally valorised: the experience of possessing free will is positively emotionally valenced (Stillman et al., 2011) and people disfavour deterministic understandings of behaviour (Fahrenberg and Cheetham, 2000). It may be difficult for deterministic interpretations of neuroscience to pierce such culturally embedded folk understandings. In fact, far from contradicting traditional assumptions, some writers have suggested that neuroscientific explanations dovetail with individualistic attribution, directing attention inside the individual skull (Choudhury et al., 2009; Vidal, 2009). Neuroscientific understandings may thereby support the continued neglect of the socio-structural contexts that shape actions, perceptions and emotions.

An emerging nuance in debates about neuroscience and determinism acknowledges that neuroscience is a non-uniform body of knowledge, encompassing different ideas and approaches that could have differential societal effects. The implications of the brain for understandings of determinism/free will depend on what type of brain is represented. A key dimension here relates to whether neural structure and function are seen as genetically pre-programmed or as ‘plastic’ and thereby modulated by experience. The latter representation has recently come to prominence and has been proclaimed the biological condition for individual agency, the idea being that neuroplasticity facilitates the ability to initiate self-change (Papadopoulos, 2011; Pitts-Taylor, 2010). Some argue that neuroplasticity also has political implications: if the brain is the seat of beliefs and emotions, then if the brain is malleable so too must be identity and concurrent societal processes (Thornton, 2011).

The concept of plasticity has assimilated into popular arenas, manifesting particularly in exhortations to ‘boost’ or ‘train’ one’s brain (O’Connor et al., 2012; Pitts-Taylor, 2010). This trend represents the brain as a resource whose efficacy is contingent on its owner’s actions: individuals can enhance their neural function through nutrition, mental exercise or artificial means (e.g. pharmaceuticals), or endanger it through exposure to risky activities or substances. While the salience of these messages in media dialogue has been empirically established (O’Connor et al., 2012), the extent to which people endorse them in everyday life remains unclear. Most investigative attention has focused on pharmaceutical enhancement of neural performance, a practice portrayed as widespread by commentators in the media (Forlini and Racine, 2009; Partridge et al., 2011) and academic literature (Farah et al., 2004; Schanker, 2011). Some data indicate substantial levels of unprescribed neuro-pharmaceutical use within certain populations – for example, university students (Smith and Farah, 2011) – though other studies suggest it is rare (Coveney, 2011). Uptake of pharmaceutical enhancement may, however, represent something of a red herring in evaluating the depth of engagement with brain optimization: more likely, it is via less extreme and costly practices – such as purposefully changing nutritional patterns or attempting crossword puzzles – that the logic of brain enhancement most deeply penetrates everyday life. As yet, no research with lay populations assesses receptivity to non-pharmaceutical brain enhancement, though sales figures for electronic ‘brain-training’ devices indicate a rapidly expanding market (NeuroInsights, 2009).

The prominence of the notion of plasticity could be interpreted as liberating, conveying that individuals can control their neurological destinies. However, some have voiced concern that plasticity places ultimately repressive demands on individuals to ‘maximize’ their untapped neurological potential (Pitts-Taylor, 2010; Thornton, 2011). Brain optimization ideas appear to cohere with the contemporary zeitgeist of self-improvement, at the root of which lie concerns about self-control, a cardinal value in western cultures (Joffe and Staerklé, 2007). In recent times, demands for self-control have been most vocally articulated within the health domain: ‘healthism’ pertains not only to physical health but to establishing oneself as a virtuous, disciplined citizen (Crawford, 2006; Rabinow, 1992). One works on the self through working on the body. The language and substantive content of appeals to brain optimization echo the central ethos of contemporary health discourse, emphasizing individual responsibility and lifestyle choices (Blaxter, 1997; Crawford, 2006). The brain is emerging as a new site at which efforts to achieve self-control and self-improvement can operate. Much of the brain optimization discourse has coalesced around the topic of dementia, the promised aversion of which stands as the most compelling incentive for ‘brain-training’ (Palmour and Racine, 2011; Williams et al., 2011). The fear dementia elicits can be largely traced to a perception that it dissolves personal identity, independence and self-determination (Van Gorp and Vercruysse, 2012). Public dialogue thereby conveys that disciplined regimes of brain optimization can stave off the ultimate, permanent loss of self-control. Thus, much popular discussion of the brain appears to reiterate a cultural ethic of self-control. How this translates into everyday experience remains unclear, however, as analysis of the self-control ethic in media discourse has not been accompanied by research that directly examines how individuals engage with these ideas in daily life.

The suggestion that the diffusion of neuroscience will erode belief in free will therefore appears unsubstantiated. Deterministic ideas collide with deeply entrenched cultural understandings of individual responsibility and self-control, and as yet little evidence suggests that these values will buckle under the pressure. Indeed, it seems more likely that neuroscientific information is being co-opted into these value systems, rejuvenating them and driving them forward within superficial reframings.

Do neuroscience explanations reduce stigma?

A frequent context through which neuroscience manifests in society is the explanation of human variation, with observed differences between particular categories of people traced to reported differences in their neurobiological characteristics (Choudhury et al., 2009; Dumit, 2004; O’Connor et al., 2012). Systems of social categorization infringe on all stages of neuroscience research: from the selection of research topics – for example, investigating whether the predefined categories of criminals, adolescents or schizophrenics have distinctive neurological features; to research methodology – particularly in specifying the demographic variables to be factored into sample composition and the parameters of ‘normality’ that constitute an appropriate control sample; and research interpretation – as seen in the formal labelling of autistic traits as ‘male’ (Jack and Appelbaum, 2010). Neuroscience thus invokes and reproduces certain assumptions about social categories. Through what philosopher Ian Hacking (1995) describes as a ‘looping effect’, classifying people works on them and changes them, altering how they think about themselves and how others perceive them. If neuroscience is implicated in cultural efforts to delineate ‘types’ of people, how might this affect social identities and intergroup relations?

Some evidence suggests that new social identities are forming around neuroscientific information. As neurobiology has supported new classifications (e.g. certain psychiatric diagnoses) there have been instances of concomitant collective mobilization, with people assembling around shared neurobiological explanations to advocate for research, treatment and services (Novas and Rose, 2000). The aforementioned neurodiversity movement exemplifies this. Advocacy groups across a broad range of issues – for example, addiction, mental illness, juvenile justice and homosexuality – have embraced neuroscientific explanations, hailing their potential to divert society from a discourse of blame and moral condemnation (Corrigan and Watson, 2004; Hall et al., 2004; Walsh, 2011). Research with mentally ill populations has shown that patients themselves expect biomedical explanations to reduce the stigma they encounter (Buchman et al., 2013; Easter, 2012; Illes et al., 2008). Neuroscientific framings of behaviour – for example, representing addiction or mental illness as brain diseases – are thus widely expected to promote tolerance towards traditionally stigmatized groups.

The actual effect of neuroscientific explanations on orientations towards stigmatized groups may, however, be considerably more complex. Research on attitudes to mental illness indeed indicates that attribution of undesirable behaviour to biological factors reduces blame (Corrigan and Watson, 2004; Mehta and Farina, 1997; Rüsch et al., 2010). However, biomedical attributions for mental illness are also linked to increases in social distance (Bag et al., 2006; Dietrich et al., 2006; Read and Harré, 2001; Rüsch et al., 2010), perceived dangerousness (Corrigan and Watson, 2004; Dietrich et al., 2006; Read and Harré, 2001; Walker and Read, 2002), fear (Dietrich et al., 2006), perceived unpredictability (Walker and Read, 2002) and harsh treatment (Mehta and Farina, 1997). Longitudinal analysis of public attitudes shows that increased endorsement of biomedical explanations of mental illness has not been accompanied by increased tolerance (Pescosolido et al., 2010). Aside from mental illness, unfavourable correlates of biological explanations have also been detected for attitudes regarding gender (Brescoll and LaFrance, 2004; Morton et al., 2009), race (Jayaratne et al., 2006; Williams and Eberhardt, 2008) and obesity (Teachman et al., 2003). Furthermore, some data suggest biological explanations operate as self-fulfilling prophecies for those to whom they are applied, for example undermining women’s mathematical performance (Dar-Nimrod and Heine, 2006), increasing overweight individuals’ calorie intake (Dar-Nimrod and Heine, 2011) and promoting fatalism among mentally ill people about their prospects of recovery (Easter, 2012; Lam and Salkovskis, 2007).

In a comprehensive review, Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2011) attribute the negative social consequences of biological explanations to the operation of psychological essentialism.2Wagner, Holtz and Kashima (2009) define essentialism as the attribution of a group’s characteristics to an unalterable and causal ‘essence’, which involves (i) establishing discrete, impermeable category boundaries; (ii) perceived homogeneity within the category; (iii) using the essence to explain and predict the group’s surface traits; and (iv) naturalization of the category. Representations of neuroscience currently circulating in society conform to these trends, with long-established stereotypes of particular social groups (e.g. women, overweight people, adolescents) reconstituted as invariable features of their natural constitutions (Fine, 2010; Kelly, 2012; O’Connor et al., 2012). Essentialism has destructive effects on intergroup relations, promoting a sharp ‘us–them’ split in which particular groups are marked out as biologically ‘other’. Dumit (2003, 2004) and Buchman et al. (2010) argue that neuroimaging data have been particularly effective at constructing this ‘otherness’: it is commonplace both in academic and popular literature (on, for example, addiction) to encounter two differently coloured brain images placed side by side, establishing a categorical distinction between ‘the normal brain’ and ‘the addicted brain’. There is little sense of addiction as a spectrum; rather, addicts are homogenized as almost a different species. Neuroscience may thus promote essentialistic representations of social groups and incite concurrent movements towards stigmatization and discrimination.

The consequences of neuroscience for attitudes to social groups cannot be characterized as unambiguously positive or negative. The effects of neurobiological frames seem to vary between domains: for example, effects are generally more promising for attitudes to homosexuality than race, gender, mental illness or obesity (Haslam and Levy, 2006; Jayaratne et al., 2006). Effects also vary within domains: for example between different mental disorders, with tolerance most compromised when the disorder purportedly involves violence (Schnittker, 2008). However, it seems unlikely that neuroscientific explanations will eradicate stigmatizing or prejudicial understandings of social groups. In some cases, neuroscientific explanations of human difference may reinforce, rather than dismantle, the social and symbolic boundaries that separate categories of people.

Conclusions

Lynch (2009) contends that we are on the cusp of a ‘neurorevolution’ whose effects will eclipse the great societal revolutions – agricultural, industrial and informational – that history has thus far witnessed. However, the bulk of the evidence reviewed above suggests that claims that neuroscience will dramatically alter people’s relations with their selves, others and the world are overstated. In many cases, neuroscientific ideas have assimilated in ways that perpetuate rather than challenge existing modes of understanding. This is perhaps not surprising: beliefs relating to free will, self-control, individual responsibility and essentialism are entangled in dense networks of cultural narrative and symbolism and are consequently likely to prove obdurate. These beliefs are, however, not entirely inviolable, with the research reviewed above also documenting instances where traditional understandings – for example, in the self-conceptions of psychiatric patients – have been modulated by neuroscientific information, even if in partial and contingent ways.

This review shows that many empirical questions remain about neuroscience’s influence on lay conceptions of personhood. Uncertainties linger over issues as basic as whether the public are aware of neuroscience: is the media’s attentiveness to neuroscience reflected in ordinary thought? While existing evidence indicates it is unlikely neurobiology will come to dominate folk psychology, might certain factors (e.g. individual differences or socio-demographic variables) differentially promote acceptance or rejection of neuroscientific understandings? Incorporating neurobiological information into self-perception is more likely within clinical populations, but even here neurobiological explanations are not absolute: how do they interact with other non-biological understandings? Media analysis suggests that neuroscience is assimilating into existing ideologies relating to free will, responsibility and self-control, but is this mirrored in ordinary thinking about these issues? Finally, while existing data cast doubt on neuroscience’s potential as a stigma-reduction mechanism, research on biological essentialism has concentrated largely on mental illness. As neuroscientific categories move beyond the clinical domain – for example, into criminality, personality, gender and sexuality – their effects on attendant social identities and intergroup relations must be closely tracked.

The cumulative implication of the research reviewed in this article is that neuroscience’s cultural influence cannot be evaluated in terms of a single narrative about personhood that it imposes on society. The neuroscientific ideas that reach the public sphere do not encounter passive receptacles of information, but active audiences who approach it through the lens of pre-existing worldviews, assumptions and agendas. Neuroscience is open to a multiplicity of interpretations and uses in society, and has a corresponding multiplicity of effects. For social scientists, this means that the critical priority for forthcoming investigation must revolve around disentangling the contingencies under which neuroscience exerts (or does not exert) distinctive impacts. Necessary developments include complementing analysis of neuroscience in the media with examination of its manifestation in personal lives; more extensive investigation of engagement with neuroscience within non-clinical populations; and departure from the hitherto near-exclusive focus on developed, western societies. Ongoing debates about the cultural significance of neuroscience should closely attend to such research developments, thereby supporting a dialogue in which the nuances of the domain are openly acknowledged and empirical findings prioritised over polemic and speculation.

Notes

To provide some procedural detail on the literature review: the collection of literature on neuroscience and lay understandings of personhood reviewed here was amassed gradually over a two-year period. Relevant papers were identified via periodic keyword searches (using search-terms such as ‘neuroscience & self’, ‘neuroscience & society’, ‘neuroscience & identity’) of electronic databases (e.g. Social Science Citation Index, SCOPUS), and the bibliographies of papers thus acquired were examined to procure additional references. An electronic database was set up to store the literature gathered. This database was organized into folders based on papers’ subject matter (e.g. ‘neuroscience in the media’, ‘neuroscience and clinical categories’), with new folder categories created as required by incoming papers. The set of categories in the database thus provided a broad overview of the literature’s primary preoccupations. The majority of the categories addressed one of four overarching issues: neuroscience’s public prominence, its influence on self-conception, its implications for deterministic beliefs and its effects on social stigma. These four issues set the structure for the present article.

Though Dar-Nimrod and Heine’s (2011) review centres on the effects of genetic explanations, many of its conclusions can be generalized to neurobiological explanations (Haslam, 2011).

References

Abi-Rached JM (2008) The implications of the new brain sciences. EMBO Reports 9(12): 1158–1162.

Alicke MD (2008) Blaming badly. Journal of Cognition and Culture 8(1–2): 179–186.

Ansari D, Smedt BD and Grabner RH (2012) Neuroeducation – A critical overview of an emerging field. Neuroethics 5(2): 105–117.

Bag B, Yilmaz S and Kirpinar I (2006) Factors influencing social distance from people with schizophrenia. International Journal of Clinical Practice 60(3): 289–294.

Baumeister RF, Masicampo EJ and DeWall CN (2009) Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35(2): 260–268.

Beck DM (2010) The appeal of the brain in the popular press. Perspectives on Psychological Science 5(6): 762–766.

Blaxter M (1997) Whose fault is it? People’s own conceptions of the reasons for health inequalities. Social Science & Medicine 44(6): 747–756.

Brescoll V and LaFrance M (2004) The correlates and consequences of newspaper reports of research on sex differences. Psychological Science 15(8): 515–520.

Bröer C and Heerings M (2013) Neurobiology in public and private discourse: The case of adults with ADHD. Sociology of Health & Illness 35(1): 49–65.

Buchman D, Illes J and Reiner P (2010) The paradox of addiction neuroscience. Neuroethics 4(2): 65–77.

Buchman DZ, Borgelt EL, Whiteley L and Illes J (2013) Neurobiological narratives: Experiences of mood disorder through the lens of neuroimaging. Sociology of Health & Illness. 35(1): 66–81.

Chancellor B and Chatterjee A (2011) Brain branding: When neuroscience and commerce collide. AJOB Neuroscience 2(4): 18–27.

Choudhury S, McKinney KA and Merten M (2012) Rebelling against the brain: Public engagement with the ‘neurological adolescent’. Social Science & Medicine 74(4): 565–573.

Choudhury S, Nagel SK and Slaby J (2009) Critical neuroscience: Linking neuroscience and society through critical practice. BioSocieties 4(1): 61–77.

Churchland PM (1995) The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Churchland PS (2008) The impact of neuroscience on philosophy. Neuron 60(3): 409–411.

Cohn S (2004) Increasing resolution, intensifying ambiguity: An ethnographic account of seeing life in brain scans. Economy and Society 33(1): 52–76.

Corrigan PW and Watson AC (2004) Stop the stigma: Call mental illness a brain disease. Schizophrenia Bulletin 30(3): 477–479.

Coveney C (2011) Cognitive enhancement: Exploring modafinil use in social context. In: Pickersgill M and van Keulen I (eds) Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences. Bingley: Emerald, pp.203–228.

Crawford R (2006) Health as a meaningful social practice. Health 10(4): 401–420.

Crick F (1995) The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Touchstone.

Dar-Nimrod I and Heine SJ (2006) Exposure to scientific theories affects women’s math performance. Science 314(5798): 435.

Dar-Nimrod I and Heine SJ (2011) Genetic essentialism: On the deceptive determinism of DNA. Psychological Bulletin 137(5): 800–818.

De Brigard F, Mandelbaum E and Ripley D (2009) Responsibility and the brain sciences. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12(5): 511–524.

Dietrich S, Matschinger H and Angermeyer MC (2006) The relationship between biogenetic causal explanations and social distance toward people with mental disorders: Results from a population survey in Germany. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 52(2): 166–174.

Dumit J (2003) Is it me or my brain? Depression and neuroscientific facts. Journal of Medical Humanities 24(1): 35–47.

Dumit J (2004) Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Easter MM (2012) ‘Not all my fault’: Genetics, stigma, and personal responsibility for women with eating disorders. Social Science & Medicine 75(8): 1408–1416.

Economist. (2006) Free to choose? Modern neuroscience is eroding the idea of free will. The Economist 381 (19 December): 16–18.

Fahrenberg J and Cheetham M (2000) The mind-body problem as seen by students of different disciplines. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7(5): 47–59.

Farah MJ (2012) Neuroethics: The ethical, legal, and societal impact of neuroscience. Annual Review of Psychology 63(1): 571–591.

Farah MJ, Illes J, Cook-Deegan R, Gardner H, Kandel E, King P, Parens E, Sahakian B and Wolpe PR (2004) Neurocognitive enhancement: What can we do and what should we do? Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5(5): 421–425.

Fein E (2011) Innocent machines: Asperger’s syndrome and the neurostructural self. In: Pickersgill M and van Keulen I (eds) Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences. Bingley: Emerald, pp.27–49.

Fine C (2010) Delusions of Gender. London: Icon Books.

Forlini C and Racine E (2009) Disagreements with implications: Diverging discourses on the ethics of non-medical use of methylphenidate for performance enhancement. BMC Medical Ethics 10(1): 9.

Frazzetto G and Anker S (2009) Neuroculture. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10(11): 815–821.

Gibbons M (2007) Seeing the mind in the matter: Functional brain imaging as framed visual argument. Argumentation and Advocacy 43(3–4): 175–188.

Gross S (2011) A stone in a spaghetti bowl: The biological and metaphorical brain in neuro-oncology. In: Pickersgill M and van Keulen I (eds) Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences. Bingley: Emerald, pp.99–119.

Goldman AI (1993) The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16(1): 15–28.

Green J and Cohen J (2004) For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 359(1451): 1775–1785.

Gruber D and Dickerson JA (2012) Persuasive images in popular science: Testing judgments of scientific reasoning and credibility. Public Understanding of Science 21(8): 938–948

Hacking I (1995) The looping effects of human kinds. In: Sperber D, Premack D and Premack AJ (eds) Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.351–383.

Hall W, Carter L and Morley KI (2004) Neuroscience research on the addictions: A prospectus for future ethical and policy analysis. Addictive Behaviors 29(7): 1481–1495.

Harris S (2012) Free Will. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Haslam N (2011) Genetic essentialism, neuroessentialism, and stigma: Commentary on Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2011). Psychological Bulletin 137(5): 819–824.

Haslam N and Levy SR (2006) Essentialist beliefs about homosexuality: Structure and implications for prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32(4): 471–485.

Herculano-Houzel S (2002) Do you know your brain? A survey on public neuroscience literacy at the closing of the decade of the brain. The Neuroscientist 8(2): 98–110.

Illes J and Racine E (2005) Imaging or imagining? A Neuroethics challenge informed by genetics. The American Journal of Bioethics 9(2): 5–18.

Illes J, Kirschen MP and Gabrieli JDE (2003) From neuroimaging to neuroethics. Nature Neuroscience 6(3): 205–205.

Illes J, Lombera S, Rosenberg J and Arnow B (2008) In the mind’s eye: Provider and patient attitudes on functional brain imaging. Journal of Psychiatric Research 43(2): 107–114.

Jack J and Appelbaum LG (2010) ‘This is your brain on rhetoric’: Research directions for neurorhetorics. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40(5): 411–437.

Jayaratne TE, Ybarra O, Sheldon JP, Brown TN, Feldbaum M, Pfeffer CA and Petty EM (2006) White Americans’ genetic lay theories of race differences and sexual orientation: Their relationship with prejudice toward blacks, and gay men and lesbians. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 9(1): 77–94.

Joffe H and Haarhoff G (2002) Representations of far-flung illnesses: The case of Ebola in Britain. Social Science & Medicine 54(6): 955–969.

Joffe H and Staerklé C (2007) The centrality of the self-control ethos in western aspersions regarding out- groups: A social representational approach to stereotype content. Culture & Psychology 13(4): 395–418.

Kahan DM, Jenkins-Smith H and Braman D (2011) Cultural cognition of scientific consensus. Journal of Risk Research 14(2): 147–174.

Keehner M, Mayberry L and Fischer M (2011) Different clues from different views: The role of image format in public perceptions of neuroimaging results. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(2): 422–428.

Kelly P (2012) The brain in the jar: A critique of discourses of adolescent brain development. Journal of Youth Studies 15(7): 944–959.

Lam DCK and Salkovskis PM (2007) An experimental investigation of the impact of biological and psychological causal explanations on anxious and depressed patients’ perception of a person with panic disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy 45(2): 405–411.

Lavazza A and De Caro M (2010) Not so fast. On some bold neuroscientific claims concerning human agency. Neuroethics 3(1): 23–41.

Littlefield MM and Johnson J (eds) (2012) The Neuroscientific Turn: Trandisciplinarity in the Age of the Brain. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Lynch Z (2009) The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science is Changing Our World. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Martin E (2010) Self-making and the brain. Subjectivity 3(4): 366–381.

McCabe DP and Castel AD (2008) Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition 107(1): 343–352.

Mehta S and Farina A (1997) Is being sick really better? Effect of the disease view of mental disorder on stigma. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 16(4): 405–419.

Morris MW and Peng K (1994) Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67(6): 949–971.

Morris MW, Menon T and Ames DR (2001) Culturally conferred conceptions of agency: A key to social perception of persons, groups and other actors. Personality and Social Psychology Review 5(2): 169–182.

Morton TA, Haslam SA, Postmes T and Ryan MK (2006) We value what values us: The appeal of identity-affirming science. Political Psychology 27(6): 823–838.

Morton TA, Postmes T, Haslam AS and Hornsey MJ (2009) Theorizing gender in the face of social change: Is there anything essential about essentialism? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(3): 653–664.

Moscovici S (2008[1961]) Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public (trans. Macey D). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Munro GD (2010) The scientific impotence excuse: Discounting belief-threatening scientific abstracts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 40(3): 579–600.

Nahmias E (2006) Folk fears about freedom and responsibility: Determinism vs. reductionism. Journal of Cognition and Culture 6(1–2): 215–237.

NeuroInsights (2009) The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2009. Available at: http://www.neuroinsights.com/marketreports/brainfitnesssoftware.html (accessed 28 June 2011).

Novas C and Rose N (2000) Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic individual. Economy and Society 29(4): 485–513.

O’Connell G, De Wilde J, Haley J, Shuler K, Schafer B, Sandercock P and Wardlaw JM (2011) The brain, the science and the media. EMBO Reports 12(7): 630–636.

O’Connor C and Joffe H (2012) Media representations of early human development: Protecting, feeding and loving the developing brain. Social Science & Medicine. Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.09.048.

O’Connor C, Rees G and Joffe H (2012) Neuroscience in the public sphere. Neuron 74(2): 220–226.

Ortega F (2009) The cerebral subject and the challenge of neurodiversity. BioSocieties 4(4): 425–445.

Palmour N and Racine E (2011) Direct-to-consumer marketing of dietary supplements for dementia: An example of unhealthy commerce of neuroscience. AJOB Neuroscience 2(4): 30–33.

Papadopoulos D (2011) The imaginary of plasticity: Neural embodiment, epigenetics and ecomorphs. The Sociological Review 59(3): 432–456.

Partridge BJ, Bell SK, Lucke JC, Yeates S and Hall WD (2011) Smart drugs ‘as common as coffee’: Media hype about neuroenhancement. PLoS ONE 6(11): e28416.

Pasquinelli E (2012) Neuromyths: Why do they exist and persist? Mind, Brain, and Education 6(2): 89–96.

Pescosolido BA, Martin JK, Long JS, Medina TR, Phelan JC and Link BG (2010) ‘A disease like any other’?

A decade of change in public reactions to schizophrenia, depression, and alcohol dependence. The American Journal of Psychiatry 167(11): 1321–1330.

Pickersgill M, Cunningham-Burley S and Martin P (2011) Constituting neurologic subjects: Neuroscience, subjectivity and the mundane significance of the brain. Subjectivity 4(3): 346–365.

Pitts-Taylor V (2010) The plastic brain: Neoliberalism and the neuronal self. Health 14(6): 635–652.

Rabinow P (1992) Artificiality and enlightenment: From sociobiology to biosociality. In: Crary J and Kwinter S (eds) Incorporations. New York: Zone Books, pp.234–252.

Racine E, Waldman S, Rosenberg J and Illes J (2010) Contemporary neuroscience in the media. Social Science & Medicine 71(4): 725–733.

Rapp R (2011) A child surrounds this brain: The future of neurological difference according to scientists, parents and diagnosed young adults. In: Pickersgill M and van Keulen I (eds) Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences. Bingley: Emerald, pp.3–26.

Read J and Harré N (2001) The role of biological and genetic causal beliefs in the stigmatisation of ‘mental patients’. Journal of Mental Health 10(2): 223–235.

Rodriguez P (2006) Talking brains: A cognitive semantic analysis of an emerging folk neuropsychology. Public Understanding of Science 15(3): 301–330.

Rose N (2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rose SPR (2005) Human agency in the neurocentric age. EMBO Reports 6(11): 1001–1005.

Roskies A (2006) Neuroscientific challenges to free will and responsibility. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(9): 419–423.

Roskies AL (2007) Are neuroimages like photographs of the brain? Philosophy of Science 74(5): 860–872.

Rüsch N, Todd AR, Bodenhausen GV and Corrigan PW (2010) Do people with mental illness deserve what they get? Links between meritocratic worldviews and implicit versus explicit stigma. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 260(8): 617–625.

Schanker BD (2011) Neuroenhancement in a medicated generation: Overlooked uses of cognitive stimulants. AJOB Neuroscience 2(4): 28–30.

Schnittker J (2008) An uncertain revolution: Why the rise of a genetic model of mental illness has not increased tolerance. Social Science & Medicine 67(9): 1370–1381.

Schüll ND and Zaloom C (2011) The shortsighted brain: Neuroeconomics and the governance of choice in time. Social Studies of Science 41(4): 515–538.

Schweitzer NJ, Saks MJ, Murphy ER, Roskies AL, Sinnott-Armstrong W and Gaudet LM (2011) Neuroimages as evidence in a mens rea defence: No impact. Psychology, Public Policy & Law 17(3): 357–393.

Seymour B and Vlaev I (2012) Can, and should, behavioural neuroscience influence public policy? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16(9): 449–451.

Singh I (2011) A disorder of anger and aggression: Children’s perspectives on attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in the UK. Social Science & Medicine 73(6): 889–896.

Smith M and Farah MJ (2011) Are prescription stimulants ‘smart pills’? The epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience of prescription stimulant use by normal healthy individuals. Psychological Bulletin 137(5): 717–741.

Sousa P (2006) On folk conceptions of mind, agency and morality. Journal of Cognition & Culture 6(1–2): 1–25.

Sperduti A, Crivellaro F, Rossi PF and Bondioli L (2012) ‘Do octopuses have a brain?’ Knowledge, percep- tions and attitudes towards neuroscience at school. PLoS ONE 7(10): e47943.

Stillman TF, Baumeister RF and Mele AR (2011) Free will in everyday life: Autobiographical accounts of free and unfree actions. Philosophical Psychology 24(3): 381–394.

Teachman BA, Gapinski KD, Brownell KD, Rawlins M and Jeyaram S (2003) Demonstrations of implicit anti-fat bias: The impact of providing causal information and evoking empathy. Health Psychology 22(1): 68–78.

Ten Eyck TA (2005) The media and public opinion on genetics and biotechnology: Mirrors, windows, or walls? Public Understanding of Science 14(3): 305–316.

Thornton DJ (2011) Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media. London: Rutgers University Press.

Van Gorp B and Vercruysse T (2012) Frames and counter-frames giving meaning to dementia: A framing analysis of media content. Social Science & Medicine 74(8): 1274–1281.

Vidal F (2009) Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity. History of the Human Sciences 22(1): 5–36.

Vohs KD and Schooler JW (2008) The value of believing in free will. Psychological Science 19(1): 49–54.

Wagner W, Holtz P and Kashima Y (2009) Construction and deconstruction of essence in representing social groups: Identity projects, stereotyping, and racism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 39(3): 363–383.

Walker I and Read J (2002) The differential effectiveness of psychosocial and biogenetic causal explanations in reducing negative attitudes toward mental illness. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 65(4): 313–325.

Walsh C (2011) Youth justice and neuroscience: A dual-use dilemma. British Journal of Criminology 51(1): 21–39.

Wardlaw JM, O’Connell G, Shuler K, DeWilde J, Haley J, Escobar O, Murray S, Rae R, Jarvie D, Sandercock P and Schafer B (2011) ‘Can it read my mind?’ – What do the public and experts think of the current (mis) uses of neuroimaging? PLoS ONE 6(10): e25829.

Weisberg DS, Keil FC, Goodstein J, Rawson E and Gray JR (2008) The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20(3): 470–477.

Wellman HM and Miller JG (2006) Developing conceptions of responsive intentional agents. Journal of Cognition & Culture 6(1–2): 27–55.

Williams MJ and Eberhardt JL (2008) Biological conceptions of race and the motivation to cross racial boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94(6): 1033–1047.

Williams SJ, Higgs P and Katz S (2011) Neuroculture, active ageing and the ‘older brain’: Problems, promises and prospects. Sociology of Health & Illness 34(1): 64–67.

Wynne B (1993) Public uptake of science: A case for institutional reflexivity. Public Understanding of Science 2(4): 321–337.

#folk psychology #neuroscience #public engagement with science #neuroscience and society #science #psychology #narrative #stigma #personhood #self-image #theory of mind #humanity #subjectivity

2 notes · View notes

mikegremgonline · 2 years

Text

Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, What's the Difference?

Conflict can be a common part of many workplaces. While conflict can encourage change and inspire new ideas and processes, it is equally important to know how to negotiate during conflicts. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills allow you to reach a reasonable outcome among all parties. In this post, you are introduced to what conflict negotiation is, the techniques for conflict resolution, and why negotiation and conflict resolution are important.

Dispute resolution is a process that is best approached by using conflict resolution and negotiation techniques. Conflict resolution techniques attempt to reconcile the differences, violations, or incompatibilities that occurred with a resolution allowing all parties involved to move forward towards a common goal.

But how does negotiation relate to conflict resolution?

Negotiation involves resolving disputes or differences and reaching an agreement between two or more parties. This appears very similar to a wider concept of conflict resolution. However, the two concepts exist separately. One may impact the other during any given dispute and at any time.

For example, if a party experiences conflict during the negotiation process, the party may seek conflict resolution so negotiations can continue.

Similarly, two or more parties experiencing conflicts may also find that the primary conflict is a dispute that might have a resolution via negotiations.

What are the potential sources of conflict during a negotiation?

It is common to experience conflict in the midst of negotiating an agreement. Two parties involved in the process often have different perceptions, goals, and outlooks, which may prove to be a source of conflict. Sometimes situations may pop up during the negotiation process that effectively stall even the most well-meant conflict resolution and negotiation strategies.

Common sources of conflict during negotiation include:

The difference in core beliefs

Difference in goals

The difference in personality styles

Lack of resources

Differences in status, expertise, power, and influence

Misunderstanding

Confusion taking responsibilities

How can you employ conflict resolution during a negotiation?

Address the conflict, not the person

It is always wise to address the issue first instead of another negotiator’s personality.

Engage in active listening

Active listening will result in a deeper understanding of the issue and the other negotiator’s needs, which will likely enhance mutual trust.

Find shared interests

Before beginning to negotiate, it is always advisable to try and identify the other negotiators’ needs and find common ground. This may very well lead to a win-win situation.

Set an objective It is critical to developing an objective to work toward resolving conflict. Having a clear objective that requires give and take is a key element to a successful negotiation.

Determine the best alternative for negotiating an agreement Entering a discussion with the best alternatives in mind will provide an opportunity to minimize conflict and foster compromise. Know when to walk away.

Yes, conflict can certainly stall negotiations, but in the end, the agreement remains within reach with the implementation of negotiation and conflict resolution strategies. Approaching negotiation and conflict resolution as part of a process allows both to work together, providing you tools to enhance the probability of success.

If conflict is hampering your result, ‘The Collaboration Effect’ by Michael Gregory can help. This text will give you confidence when sailing through difficult situations, allow you to focus on the tasks at hand, and help you gain peace in both your personal and professional relationships.

Order the book today!

#conflict_resolution

0 notes

septembersunrise-blog · 6 years

Text

What does it take to become an effective communicator? A discourse on 21st century communication

by: Catherine V. Hernando

In the course of my first semester here in UP Cebu brings wide range of information that embodied me as a millennial. In this 21st century, we cannot deny that communication has been evolving all throughout different aspects of what it conveys to people. Thus, this course on Critical Perspectives in Communication helps me discover what communication entails in this present day. It is a course that explores how communication takes place in various levels of human interaction: interpersonal or group, mass or public, intercultural or workplace. As according to the our professor’s syllabus, the course objectives are the following: (1) Discuss the changing landscape of communication; (2) Explain the different theories and frameworks of communication; (3) Apply relevant communication theories and frameworks in the analysis of various issues; and (4) Formulate a critical perspective on a communication phenomenon or event. An outline of topics we had tackled can bring forth to what I’ll be sharing as who I am as a 21st century communicator. The following topics are as follows: the changing landscape of communication where Orality and Literacy has been focused integrating with media; Communication and rhetoric; Communication and identity construction; Communication and representation; Communication as culture and; Communication and discourse. All of which exhibits my in depth knowledge on exemplifying the character of a communicator in this present day century.

To be human, is to analyze. As human beings, we have a tendency to ponder new ideas and concepts on a regular basis. Such curiosity notes back to the days of primary orality. In Walter Ong’s article, “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media,” I learn about the difference between the oral culture and the written culture. He also tackles the differences and similarities between primary and secondary orality. Hence, in order to solve effectively the problem of retaining and retrieving coherent thoughts, it was compulsory to think in mnemonic patterns. The primary people believed that thoughts must come in “heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetition or antitheses, in alliterations and assonances, in epithetic and other formulary expressions.” Prior to that in this present day, nothing gradually has changed. Words tend imbue still being powerful. However, media communication is brought in to picture where in communication is done with technology.

Communication is dramatically changed by new technologies. In the 20th century, we have seen the effects of the telephone, radio and television, film, high-speed printing, and electronic mail what more could we expect now as of 21st century. These communication technologies have changed our national political life, corporate management styles, family connections, individual work habits. Additional change in the next century is inevitable, as we adopt video conferencing, multimedia, and internet technologies. Many of the effects of new technologies are unpredictable: the predicted “paperless office” has failed to materialize, for example, and word-processing software has transformed the labor of writing in a way that was never anticipated by computer developers.

But some aspects of communication, both oral and written, have not changed. Communication is still the social glue that holds together nations, corporations, scientific disciplines, and families. Social psychologist Karl Weick once noted that the key tool for effective leadership is the “management of eloquence” because “fluent, forceful, moving expression” affects the ways followers think, speak, and act. Communication also remains the source of problems when people fail to understand each other, fail to agree, and fail to act. Failures of communication contributed in material ways thus new technology does not necessarily make communication more effective, more persuasive, or more ethical.

Moving on with the topic of Communication and Rhetoric, Lloyd Bitzer made the case that rhetorical situation had not been adequately attended to by theorists, including Aristotle. Bitzer asserted that prior theorists have focused on the method of the orator to address the rhetorical situation, or ignored it completely. He then unfolded his theory of situation. He provided the exigence for his own theorization and argument regarding rhetorical situation and argued for the importance and relevance of rhetoric as a discipline beyond the understanding that it is merely the art of persuasion. Prior to the creation and presentation of discourse, Bitzer said there are three constituents of rhetorical situation: exigence (an imperfection marked by urgency, an obstacle, something waiting to be done); audience (persons capable of being influenced – even one’s self); and constraints. I personally agree to this discourse by Bitzer generally because up to this generation rhetoric is clearly evident when we convey our ideas to other people. Using the available sources of information that we have to formulate at least tentative answers to questions regarding whom we want address to, our purpose, the intended audience, and lastly situational factors.

As we’ve tackled on Communication and identity construction, Goffman (1959), argues that the front stage character is representative of the conception of self. In other words, this mask represents the self that one would like to be. The end result of this process is that the role becomes second nature to the person, forming an integral part of personality. However, there are certain downsides with this identity construction when integrated as of this present time. There difficulties of adapting the new technologies remain challenging in many parts of the world. The opportunities as well as the challenges of communication in the coming years cannot be separated from the social, cultural and geographical reconfigurations of the technological revolution. As what I’ve observed our collective identity as global citizens is constantly questioned as these new technologies are adapted to individual nations. As systems of advanced communication infrastructures increasingly become metonyms for development, issues of social and cultural identity increasingly need to be addressed.

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall interrogates the role of representation in images, and discusses cultures central role in representation. He looks at the issue within the most commonly used definition of representation, meaning: represent something which already holds meaning. Although meaning can’t be finally fixed, creating meaning depends on a kind of temporary fixing that allows meaning to build upon itself to take new forms and create new possibilities for meaning. Hall states that it is essential that meaning can be changed. Meaning can only change because it cannot be finally fixed. Stereotyping fixes the meanings that are given to groups limiting the range of perceptions that people can have about a group, what they can do, what the nature of the constraints on them are etc. A common strategy in challenging negative stereotypes is to re-present negative stereotypes in a more positive way- reversing the stereotype. However, the problem with reversal or positive stereotypes is, just as we can’t finally fix negative representations, we can’t finally fix positive ones either.

The signs relayed through the media are a very important area of study as they can form the basis of public perceptions and understanding, Lacey (1998). Within a television program for example, the viewer is exposed to a number of signs which they are required to decipher and recognize. Semiotics provides the interpreter with a means of accessing how signs are deployed and understood within the media. It enables the interpretation of the underlying meanings within media output and how the audience accepts, rejects or redefines those meanings. These theories are important because they reveal the way in which signs communicate ideas, attitudes and beliefs to us. In the context of television, film, newspapers and other forms of media, semiotics explains the way in which images are used to represent and relay information to the audience. In the everyday use of languages and signs, we combine several kinds of physical media in communicating and making meaning from voice and printed texts to mass media images, music, movies, computer Web content, and digital multimedia. The various material means of conveying meaning often overlap and pass on or interpret meaning from other concurrent media in our culture. We are constantly sending, receiving, and making meaning in various kinds of media, often conveying and interpreting meaning from one medium to another.

Edward T. Hall was an anthropologist who made early discoveries of key cultural factors. In particular, he discovered and examined high and low context cultural factors. In a high-context culture, there are many contextual elements that help people to understand the rules. As a result, much is taken for granted. This can be very confusing for a person who does not understand the “unwritten rules” of the culture. At the same time, in a low-context culture, very little is taken for granted. This means that more explanation is needed, it also means there is less chance of misunderstanding particularly when visitors are present. In fact, speech-like forms of written English are proliferating on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. As a result, this means that non-standard dialects are being written more than they used to (R.L.G, 2012). Specifically, new words and phrases are being developed and used by young people from all over the world. For instance: IDK – I don’t know, LOL – laugh out loud, Spill the tea – gossip, SMH – so much hate, and many more that the present generation made popular through social media communication. Nevertheless, it basically supports the idea that Internet speak enriches its users. It expands the modern language. In sum, language changes because people change. In the era of modernity we live in, it is ridiculous to avoid progress.

Baker (2011) tackles on Discourse Analysis mainly been a qualitative form of analysis; traditionally, it has involved a “close reading” of a small amount of text, such as a detailed Transcription of a conversation or a magazine article. Discourse analysts need to use Reflexivity, with researchers reflecting on their own position and how that has impacted on the research process and findings. Each individual human is unique and at the same time each person “voices” a given Discourse whenever he or she acts, speaks, or writes. It is our individuality and our participation in multiple Discourses means we can “spin” the discourse in certain ways and in the process, change it and adapt it across time and contexts. Discourses cannot live without us and we cannot communicate and mean without them. Our job, as discourse analysts, is not to and not to reach definitive truths. The job is to deepen the conversations among frameworks. This is the importance of discourse analysis.

To conclude, with all the topics I’ve learned for the past four months on Critical Perspectives in Communication generally is relevant to what communication has become in today’s time. The 21st century is fast evolving hence we really can’t predict what the future can bring to us as communicators. With the lessons tackled, surely one thing I can be proud of for I’ll be bringing this knowledge to be an effective communicator in this fast pacing world. Lastly, I’ll end this essay with a quote from a famous author named Tony Robbins, “To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”

References:

Ong, Walter. Orality, Literacy, Modern Media. (pp 60-79). Reproduced in Communication in History, Technology,

Culture, Society. (1999) by David Crowley & Paul Heyer. US: Addison Wesley Longman Inc.

Bitzer, L. F. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy & rhetoric, 1-14.

Goffman, E. (2002). The presentation of self in everyday life. 1959. Garden City, NY.

Steeves, H. L., & Silva, K. Communication in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges And Opportunities.

Hall, S. (1985). Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the post‐structuralist debates. CriticalStudies in Media Communication, 2(2), 91-114.

Lacey, N. (1998). Semiotics. In Image and Representation (pp. 56-75). Palgrave, London.

Hall, E. T., & Hall, M. R. (1990). Understanding cultural differences:[Germans, French and Americans] (Vol. 9).Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural press.

Baker, P., & Ellece, S. (2011). Key terms in discourse analysis. A&C Black.

#catherine v. hernando

2 notes · View notes

arinfmdxcs2 · 4 years

Text

Reading Report - K Woodward

Questioning Identity: gender, class and nation by Kath Woodward is an introduction to various subcategories regarding identity; this includes defining identity, social sciences behind perception, the conscious and unconscious influences on identity and advertising. The main discussions of this piece of writing are there to inform how identities are formed and the degree of control which we can exert over who we are (discussed pg6), in reference to social constraints and structures. Sections around the unconscious mind are extremely thought provoking in that it applies to everyone who will read it. The text reveals truths about yourself in a very skilful way. The introduction to this text explains the differences between personality and identity, arguing that identity involves active engagement. While personality is labelled as traits, qualities or categorisation – Identity has an element of choice. These elements of a person act as a combination of how you see yourself and how others see you, internal subjective and external objective.

Subtle representations of who we want to be is explored as a concept of symbolism in this text, how clothes, behaviour, imagery and collective identities can rule out other personalities, for example, dressing in dark or gothic clothing may limit how strangers perceive you as kind or approachable or vice versa. Wearing a symbol of your beliefs or support will rule out other symbols as well as provide a link between individuals and their relation to the world around them. This relates to the link between personal and social identity, advertisements depict lifestyles and characterisations that people recognise their selves in, the text describes that advertisements showing a person strongly placed within a societal identity position causes people to relate and purchase the items; “consumers purchase symbols of the identities they want to possess”[1]. Similar themes are introduced towards the end of the text in that people use their bodies as a way to convey who they want to be, body modifications such as tattoos, piercings, hairstyles or cosmetic surgeries allow for people to present the person they want to be more thoroughly, the text states that the body has “become a project. People attempt to alter or improve… in line with their own designs”[2] This is one way the concept of identity has been shifted, especially due to the current understanding of how the human body declines.

The text then goes on to explain legal identity, such as passports which only reveal occupation, nationality and age. These official documents are formal representations of our identity, yet they do not account for personal investments. Uncertainties of citizenship and belonging are explored in this text, as these legal representations of who we are, are not always accurate. There is no space to accommodate for who we are beyond surface level as it is a formal and legal document, yet many people’s nationalities are misrepresented.

Goffman explains in depth how communication with others says a lot about our identity. He describes the conscious and unconscious mind; “Information inadvertently given reveal more about a person than the information directly or intentionally given” [3] This argues that there is a mixture of active presentation of how you want to be perceived, and unintentional “hidden desires” in ones personality. Goffman argues that people in conversation are often “dramaturgical” in that their mind sees it as a performance to show who they want to be, and how this can change depending on the person “there is never one fixed coherent identity but several in play”[4].

Themes of constraint around identity are thoroughly explored throughout this text, how influences, pressures, opportunities and societal imbalances can “stop us from successfully presenting ourselves in some identity positions”[5]. Criminality and stereotyping are a key example of this, how unfair perceptions placed upon someone can impact how they are interacted with. This limits some people’s choice of how they want to be seen, as society has already placed connotations around them by their race or class for example. Identities are shaped by social, economic and gender systems and cause contemporary uncertainties with identity. “Assumptions about what is appropriate…”[6] for people in different occupations, nationalities, ethnicities, genders and classes highlight an importance in how society shapes your identity. Identities can become “uncertain” or “fragmented”, they can be fluid and insecure, especially in collective identities. Classifications of a person can highlight differences in a negative way, your place in society already outlined by society. Many people see differences as a way to assert power or superiority, with cultural diversity becoming a positive highlight in contemporary life, the unequal relationships between collectives are revealed. However, this also leads to a huge area of social movements starting in the 1960s (discussed p34), redefining identity and challenging social constraints, celebrating difference, including the black civil rights movement, women’s movement, LGBT pride movements and peace movements. These kinds of activism challenged traditional beliefs and politics surrounding identity and destigmatised many key features of people’s identities.

[1] Woodward, K. (1999) Questioning Identity. Routledge. Page 20

[2] Woodward, K. (1999) Questioning Identity. Routledge. Page 36

[3] Woodward, K. (1999) Questioning Identity. Routledge. Page 15

[4] Woodward, K. (1999) Questioning Identity. Routledge. Page 16

[5] Woodward, K. (1999) Questioning Identity. Routledge. Page 7

[6] Woodward, K. (1999) Questioning Identity. Routledge. Page 22

0 notes

ko15sy · 4 years

Text

Audience Studies (3P18) Blog #2 (Week 3)

We tend to forget how our home environment and how we grow up inform a lot of the things that we believe as we become adults. In class, we learned about a man named Charles Horton Cooley. He was one of the first “intellectuals” to make the connection between our worldview and our psyche. He realized that it was our environment and the “feedback” we received in this environment from people like our parents, friends, or authority figures that shape our worldview (Sullivan, p.27). To take it a step further, Cooley also figured out that media messages influence our worldview, whether it be through television, the internet, or other mediums (Sullivan, p.27).

When I look back at my childhood, I realize that I grew up in a conservative home. My parents are religious, so I grew up with those values influencing my worldview. It is only now as an adult that I recognize that Cooley was correct, and the “feedback” I received from my parents, whether verbal or non-verbal, laid the foundation for a belief system. Interestingly, I became more aware of this belief system when I moved away from home to go to Brock. I entered an unfamiliar environment and began to engage with people who had more liberal viewpoints. Over time, I found my belief system shifting as I began to engage in discussions, read texts, and have a more informed view of society.

In a similar fashion people, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, went through a gradual shifting of worldviews. In this period, people were forced to leave their small rural towns, much like I left home for St. Catharines, and went to a bigger city in search of jobs. These people came from tight-knit communities that informed them about the world through the stories they shared. In the bigger cities, these people were exposed to much more information and many new ideas through the media they consumed. Just like how my beliefs shifted because of new experiences and new messages I received, the people living during the industrial era also began to form new opinions. Although it may be partly common sense that our environment and those in it help to shape our beliefs, it is important to recognize that there is a reason behind why we do the things we do.

It is not only our environment that shapes how we view the world around us. Something as harmless as sitting down to watch a television show can inform something as crucial as our grasp on how dangerous the world is. A theory called Cultivation Theory delves into this concept. I do not keep track of the amount of time I spend in front of a screen in a day, but I would not hesitate to admit it is quite a bit. Thankfully, I am not alone as the average person spends over seven hours in front of screens in one single day. According to Cultivation Theory, when I am watching television, I am not just mindlessly taking in content, rather, I am framing an understanding of the world based on the content provided. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but through research, it has been proven that people who watch more television have an altered perception of violence. This perception causes people to believe the world is more violent than it is.

I remember I once decided to binge-watch the Game of Thrones series. It was during the summer when I had a week off. I pressed play on the first episode of the first season and was hooked. Although the show was entertaining, it was also violent. I remember how upset I was when one of my favourite characters was killed off within the first season. I was so invested in the narrative that Game of Thrones had brought to life that I felt a sense of loss when this character was killed. I spent the rest of that week within the world of Game of Thrones and ended it feeling a little desensitized to violence. I could imagine if I spent a lot of my free time watching similarly violent shows that I may come to expect the world outside my front door to be more violent like Cultivation Theory implies.

As I mentioned before, the more aware we are of the impact other things have on our behaviour, the better. If we can recognize that the environment we live in and something as simple as the television shows we watch affect us, then we can try to evaluate if these things are doing us harm or good. I believe the more aware we are, the easier we can identify an issue, and then get to work on finding a better way to do things. This course has opened my eyes to realize that we are “audience members” not just in front of a television but in our everyday lives. Our brains are always working, whether we are conscious of it or not. The key is to develop tools to become conscious of what messages we are receiving and whether they align with our beliefs or not. Through more learning, I believe we can begin to become not only more aware, but we can begin to develop healthier habits and lives.

Works Cited

Sullivan, J. (2013 or 2020). Media Audiences: Effects, users, institutions and power (1st or 2nd ed.). Sage Publications Inc., New York, NY.

0 notes

zaracoolstra · 4 years

Text

FN.05.21.20

Thursday, May 21, 2020

11:51 AM

I want to make it clear, I don't have a PhD in the subject matter, I find it financially ignorant to follow my dreams of doing so because I would have to undertake a LOT of debt for no return on investment. The intrinsic ROI (return on investment) is not worth it for me.

Growing up we are taught what to believe and what to not believe. What is the truth and what to belief to be false? In a conservative Christian home, watching Bill O'rilley and Hannity and Colmes every night at 9:00 pm there were segments on the show where I recall where they categorized each person on the show an idiot or a patriot, something like that. Anyway, when we grow up we are brought up with some measure of indoctrination in how and what we are to believe. Nietzsche calls the belief "something one holds to be true" (Will to Power). Defining a belief is one of the fundamental processes that philosophers encounter within the philosophizing process. The aim of this blog is to document knowledge and perspectives within 19th century, also considered continental philosophy by one of the most controversial philosophers of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche. Since I have been reading N's (Nietzsche's) work, I have learned a great deal of philosophy, why people do what they do, and the documentation of how historical norms and values were developed through history -- and much more. If you are reading this, bear with me, if you want to add onto or comment on what I discuss about even if it is refinements, I encourage all such suggestions. I will not tolerate unprofessional or degrading remarks in any way shape or form, take that somewhere else, people like that are not welcome here (you will not be acknowledge as you exist). As I take on the journey of becoming a father, husband, worker, and writer I find uses of N's work for my life, more than I have with any religious text. I consistently questioned pastors, youth pastors and other priests alike and I always asked them deep questions and I always received responses like "God is all powerful and his ways are beyond our capabilities". This is a tactic that many people, still today use to answer over-complex processes and knowledge and over-simplify some of the most demanding disciplines. I find myself asking myself what the purpose of this blog is because Nietzsche once said, "There are no facts, only interpretations" (Will to Power).

What is the purpose of this blog? Honestly, I have no clue, I have been debating on starting a blog, so I guess I am documenting my thought processes and deliberating what I have learned over the years of reading Friedrich Nietzsche when I first heard of him in my political theory class in community college. Now, I am not an atheist or agnostic but I feel there must be someone beyond any one's interpretation of who God is, especially if he is unknowable (according to Scripture of the bible). Through this blog I will make sure (at least to do my best) to offer the different perspectives while presenting ideas and thoughts. This entry is simply an introduction as to how my development and upbringing contributed to my current ideas, thoughts, and concerns that I have today. I apologize in advance if I go off on a tangent -- I write as ideas come to me.

The very first idea that struck me when taking my first political theory class, I was like, "Who the hell is Nietzsche" -- my professor at the time, Dr. Morrione, would always tell us I can teach Nietzsche and political theory because "I have a PhD in this shit". He will always be remembered as the one who introduced me to a major influence that has changed my whole perception of life itself. Here I am four years later, still reading Nietzsche and studying him as if I was still in his class.

That moment I started reading Nietzsche and understanding his work opened up a whole new realm of understanding and really, a journey -- the aim of this blog is to document that journey. The first concept that I remember from reading Nietzsche was his attack on faith. Which was the first concept that truly made me question the values that I was brought up with -- Christianity. Christianity's cornerstone is faith. Let's begin.

0 notes

keyshafirafs · 4 years

Text

Female Representation in Gender and Sexuality Discourse in Midnight's Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie

Gender and sexuality issues, as well as the representation of female characters in the text, are responded differently by researches. The issues presented in this novel represent much of India's situation after gaining independence. After trying to understand and find out what are the issues contained in this novel, formerly, I have found a multitude of interesting issues in this literary text. But for me, the issue that interests me the most to explore further is the issue about how the representation of female characters either in gender or sexuality discourse. Furthermore, this novel presenting well-known character Saleem Sinai as an omniscient character. The text is displaying many of female characters through Saleem Sinai's perspective as the narrator of the story. As what I see after trying to understand the issues in the literary text, I see that the text presenting female characters differently as to how the text offering male characters through the narrative. Male characters seem displayed as a positive and compelling character, yet female characters are often describing as something ugly, damaged, or despicable. That kind of different portrayal leads to a perception that the text tends to be a misogynist.

Many cases that appear in the text represent the characteristics of female and male figures in contradictions. The concept of representation per se may rank in the second position after gender in its centralization. Women's representation has been a process championed by many activists with the aim of opposing the representation of women in popular culture in the government and private sectors. A lot of feminist scholars have examined the political urgency and benefits of "descriptive" representation, in which "representatives are in their own persons and lives in some sense typical" of those they represent (Mansbridge 1999, 629).

The role that female characters have in the text is assumed as a part of gender discourse. Joan Scott (Butler et al. 2010) assumes that feminists first used the term gender with the intention of appropriation. Scott (1986, 1067) has an understanding that gender is a "constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes" which "involves four interrelated elements:" a symbolic aspect, a normative aspect, an institutional aspect and a subjective aspect. Scott added that a gender is a tool that is a marker of power relations (1069). In her article, Weickgenannt focuses on issues concerning the national role of women and the ugliness that is placed on female characters. Weickgenannt (2008), assumes that the way this text displays the role of women often perceived as misogynistic texts have a purpose as "a conscious and multi-layered strategy" (p.65-66), but she assumes that the misogynist assumptions often directed at Rushdie were often interpreted too quickly as a shortcoming. When Weickgenannt states that Saleem Sinai admits that women have an essential figure in his life, on the other side, Nalini argues that women obtain a minor role in the narrative (p.400). Three figures represented by Weickgenannt about the monstrous women of the nation represented in the figures of wives, widows and witches in this novel.

Partha Chatterjee has assumed that nationalist discourse in the range of the late nineteenth century has caused differences between the inner spiritual domain of the nation and the outer material domain. Western countries are known to be superior in the material and technological fields, but in spiritual matters, east is superior to the west. The world is likened to a place where men must imitate all the knowledge and progress made by western nations; their eastern values are no longer pure but mixed with Western culture and influences. Chatterjee saw that the inner domain that became the creativity of Indian nationalism was the differentiator of India from the western world. But there is one creative construction that is considered a model for Indian "new women" to make it a modern Indian woman. But this change must be willing to eliminate what is characteristic of Indian Muslim women. Purdah (the seclusion of women), is considered to be a central aspect for Indian Muslim women illustrated as an example of submission of behaviour by imperialist discourse. Because of the influence of the west, purdah in the nationalist discourse must gradually change the definition because if you want to accept progress, women must also access education and knowledge outside the world. In this text women who come out of purdah are assumed to be liberal women. But in this text, the figure of a woman named Naseem retained purdah and rejected her husband Adam Aziz who told him to start becoming a modern woman and told her to "forget about being a good Kashmiri girl. Start to think about being a modern Indian woman". (Rushdie, p.80). The male character has become repressive towards female character by regulating what has become the woman's belief.

Some people argue that sexualities are related to the body, desire, behaviour, identity. But some other people also assume that sexualities are not associated with all of those aspects. But based on what Rupp and Thomsen have written in their article, quoted from the Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, sexuality is hard to define "but I know it when I see it" (quoted in Stein 2010, 313). In the attempt to understand sexuality which is a tricky subject, Rupp and Thompsen discuss sexuality with the plural form "Sexualities", this aims to clarify that "Sexualities" is build formed by various factors, such as gender, race, class, nation, geography, ability, and another vector of difference. But on the other sides, Rupp and Thomsen also claim that there is no monolithic definition of sexuality since the views of feminist varieties have quite different views in defining sexuality. However, because there is a "sexual-politic" term, sexuality cannot be understood solely as a fixed biological essence.

Different from Weickgenannt, who is focusing on the striking monstrosity of the female characters. Cathrine Cundy emphasizes more on the problem of female character's sexuality in this text. According to Cundy (1993), "women and their sexuality offer both security and the threat of loss of identity. . . A woman can, therefore, confer and destroy the sense of a man's identity" (p.13). The sense of giving security carried out by female characters to male characters, can be seen when Nadir Khan, who is fugitive, marries Mumtaz Aziz. She gives him a place to hide in the basement of her family house. Another case shows when Parvati-the-witch who described as a female character who have great powers "she had guarded her own secret, which was greater than any of the illusionist flummeries surrounding her; Parvati ... had been given the powers of the true adept, the Illuminatus, the genuine gifts of conjuration and sorcery, the art which required no artifice" (Rushdie, p.578-579), helped Saleem Sinai escape to India from Bangladesh by smuggling him in her wicker basket. Although blessed with high power, Parvati as a female character only placed as an agent which serves to fulfil an individual male physic need (Natarajan, p.401). Whereas representation of a female character related to the loss of a man's identity as a person displayed by Sundari and the twin sister. Sundari has the ability to blind people only by looking at her beauty. Unfortunately, her beauty considered to be dangerous and lead her to the tragedy when her face was slashed nine times with a kitchen knife by a ruthless aunt. The twin sister who lives in the city of Baud, endowed by the ability to make all the men who see them "fall hopelessly and often suicidally in love with them" (Rushdie, p.569). Cundy assumed that the portrayal of the female characters presented by Rushdie was not problematic because of the scenario in each female characters. Still, it is problematic because women are only seen as "nurturer/destroyers" dichotomy (p.13).

Weedon (2003), identify the terms of identity in feminist discourse as "woman's conscious sense of herself—a sense of who she is"(112). While Susan Hekman (1999) declares that, "something or someone has a particular identity is to claim, simultaneously, that it is identical to other entities that possess that identity and that, as a particular thing, it possesses unique qualities, that is, an identity." (p.5). Beyond describing female characters based on their sexuality, this text also represents multiples characterizations that seem contradictory between female and male characters. Mr Dubash, a physicist who leads light in a nuclear research base (Rushdie, p. 270). Commander Sabarmati, one of the highest flyers in the navy (Rushdie, p.270) and William Methwold, an Englishman who owns Methwold Estate. Those examples depicted male characters as a figure who is respected based on their position and wealth. Contradictively to the description of female characters like Mr Dubash's wife description as "a chipper beneath whose blankness is a true religious fanaticism lay concealed" (Rushdie, p.270), and Mr Sabarmati's wife, Lila Sabarmati, who described as a woman with fancy taste who "gave in a promiscuity" (Rushdie, p.512). Some depictions show that the patriarchy present in the text implemented through the male character makes the female character lose her own identity. As an example of the incident when Naseem Aziz's father told Aadam Aziz to examine his daughter with the intention of wanting her to marry Adam Aziz, this represented a loss of Naseem Aziz's right to marry a man of his own choice. The seized identity also happened to the character of Mumtaz who had to divorce Nadir Khan because Aadam Aziz knew that his daughter was still a virgin after being married for two years. A fight broke out between Mumtaz who stated that "He was a good man and when it was possible to have children he would definitely find it possible to do the thing. . . A marriage should not depend on the thing" (Rushdie, p.158), in the end, Mumtaz had to divorce and marry Ahmed Sinai, after that their marriage her husband told her to change her name to Amina Sinai. This case shows the character Mumtaz (Amina Sinai) has lost her identity twice.

References

Cundy, Catherine. (1993). "Rushdie's women." Wasafiri. 13-17, DOI:10.1080/026900059308574321

Disch, Lisa. (2016). In D. Lisa, & M, Hawkesworth (Eds.), Feminist Theory: Representation (p.796-817). New York, United States of America: Oxford University Press.

Hekman, Susan. (1999). "Identity Crises: Identity, Identity, Politics, and Beyond." Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2 (1): 3–26.

Mansbridge, Jane. (1999). "Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent 'Yes.' " Journal of Politics 61 (3): 628–657.

Natarajan, Nalini. (1999). "Woman, Nation, and Narration in Midnight's Children." Feminist Theory I the body. Ed. Janet Price and Margrit Sildrick. Ney York. 399-499.

Partha, Chatterjee. (1993). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princenton. 120.

Rupp, Leila, J., & Thomsen, Carly. (2016).. In D. Lisa, & M, Hawkesworth (Eds.), Feminist Theory: Sexualities. (p. 909-929). New York, United States of America: Oxford University Press. Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997.

Weedon, Chris. (2003). "Subjects." In A Concise Companion to Feminist Theory, edited by Mary Eagleton, 111–132. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Weickgenannt, Nicole. (2008). "The Nation's Monstrous Women: Wives, Widows, and Witches in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 65-82.

0 notes

juniperpublishers-yoga · 5 years

Text

How Entanglement Phenomenon Offers a conscious Universe-Juniper Publishers

Juniper Publishers- Journal of Yoga and Physiotherapy

Introduction

The most basic definition for consciousness is simply awareness. In psychology, consciousness is generally used to describe a state of awareness. One common definition of consciousness that can be found in any dictionary is "the ability to be aware of and to be able to perceive the relationship between oneself and one’s environment" [1]. It also seems to be associated with the ability to process, store and or act on information gathered from that external environment.

Based on the rational implications of philosophy, our job here is to elaborate the concept of consciousness step by step. The existence of memory alone is not sufficient to quickly establish the claim that the world has the attribute of consciousness. As a matter of fact, the ability to process the information is the definition of the consciousness. When there is utilization from memory such as recognition, making a choice, determining, etc. it is indicative of levels of consciousness; so the two important factors are memory and utilization from memory.

Basic definition of memory

The main notion of Memory is ‘condensed information’that summarizes a large number of other pieces of information, all of which contributed to the formation of the memory. Therefore, the key definition of memory is the storage of the condensed information.

Numerous scholars asserts the "collective aspect of memory", which is derived from the "collectiveawareness or collective consciousness". Some scholars argue that these individual and collective memories mutually influence each other [2].

'Entanglement' phenomenon in physics

In a simple explanation, we consider two entangled photons or a pair of photon, one of those is sent to observer (A) and the second is sent to observer (B); the two observers could be in a notable distance apart. It should be mentioned that two entangled photons must have orthogonal polarizations; this is due to the law of the conservation of angular momentum: 'angular momentum of the system before the split must equal the angular momentum of the system after the split'. So when (A) measures the polarization of its photon and finds it to be, say (Figure 1), vertically polarized, we instantly know that (B)'s photon will have horizontal polarization even though (B) has not yet measured it [3].

Looking deeply in the above brief description, the first result is that entanglement represents "characteristics of being remembered". Several scientists considered it as "teleportation" in which two or sometimes more entangled objects serve as a link that moves quantum information from one physical location to another [4]. Therefore, the setup is really simple; one object records the information to be teleported [5]. Nowadays several papers are published about the generalization of this subject. 'Everything is entangled' or the 'Entangled Universe' are the common topics; For example, in article everything is entangled (2012), due to the cosmological evolution, everything evolves into an entangled state and the entanglement easily can be considered beyond the cosmic horizon. However, we cannot observe this entanglement too easily because the entanglement is diluted so a randomly chosen pair of nearby objects is not inherit too much of this entanglement. Therefore, it extends to everything in our universe [6]. So the first result of this, is memory feature, but as we mentioned earlier, the actions of remembrance and recognition from the storage implies as though there is consciousness. In fact, the final result of entanglement is 'universal memory' and then after the existence of 'collective consciousness'. This is really similar with some theories in Psychology, Social Sciences and religion.

Philosophical implications about universal consciousness

Carl Jungpsychotherapist, who established analytical psychology, stated the concept of the collective unconscious as universal datum or universal library of human knowledge and wisdom [7]. Moreover, the theory of Noosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky introduces the same idea. Noosphere derived from Greek language: nous is mind and sphaira is sphere. It denotes the sphere of mind or thinking layer of the world. As the mental cover of our earth, the Noosphere defines mind and consciousness as a unitary phenomenon [8]. Hagelin Quantum Physicist explores the concept of "field of consciousness". With considering the empirical scientific frameworks, it indicates that the individual consciousness exists beyond our brain and physical body. In fact, it is shown that we human are not isolated individuals but more we are as a part of a collective consciousness, which can be considered as the outcome or result of the individual’s consciousness [9]. In another terminology, it is named collective soul introduced by other thinkers in the field of sociology and philosophy. The consequence of all human feelings and perceptions is reflected in this collective soul and it implies the global population qualitative of developments. In fact, we can consider this as a memory like a big mirror or universal memory for consciousness, which record all individual's consciousness; when we humans pulse the radiations of our thoughts, insights, attitudes, beliefs and so on towards it, this memory after a while reflects the outcome of our thoughts to us. So it is given a fact that people are all connected to each other from the collective soul or collective consciousness; and the feedback of their thought, behaviors, attitudes, and so on is reflected back to them by the mirror of the collective soul [10]. The concept is truly showed in Figure 2.

Several instances of universal consciousness

Morphic fields by rupert sheldrake: Sheldrake by conducting experimental researches considers the Morphic fields in all beings, even crystals, atoms, plants, birds and human societies.For example in the case of rats in the laboratory, when a number of them learned a new maze, other rats would also learn it easily and quickly elsewhere. Sheldrake explains the whole process by the definition of Morphic resonance. Another example is a fascinating experiment among English students. Sheldrake chooses three similar Japanese verses: one is a traditional famous lyric and the other is a very new contemporary verse and the last is nonsense pointless poems. Students were asked to memorize the poems while they were not aware of the contents. The result indicates that English students easily learned the famous Japanese poem. So we can find out that the famous poem was recorded in collective consciousness and the students were affected by that. In summary, when a critical number of people learn something new, the process of learning would become easier for those that would get involved with it after. It means that we humans are unconsciously linked and nurtured in a collective consciousness by considering a collective memory to store knowledge when utilization from the collective memory and reflection will be taken place [11].

Monkey case by ken keyes: The projection titled the hundredth monkey by Ken Keyes explains the collective consciousness as a result of an observational experiment. Some monkeys started to wash sweet potatoes before consuming. Other monkeys even in other islands learned the new behavior not from observation but from the spread of new behavior. This is an effect in which learned behavior of monkeys spreads instantaneously from one group of them to all others once their number is reached to a critical level. Its key notion is that when enough species in a society or group adopt a new behavior or learning, an ideological breakthrough occurs among them that lead this new awareness to be communicated directly from mind to mind without the linkage of external experience and all individuals in the society or group spontaneously adopt it. Keyes presented the monkey case effect phenomenon in order to discuss positive change in a human society [12].

Maharishi effect: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, proposed a theory in transcendental meditation in 1960.He submitted his idea that if substantial population practices the transcendental meditation method, the quality of life for the whole population would change dramatically. He published his idea in 1976 about the decrease of the crime in the society. The result demonstrates that for 1% of the people practicing the meditation in a community, there is 16% decrease of crime in average. Later, this universal phenomenon was named "Maharishi effect" and expanded as a positive coherence in the field of TM and TM-Sidhi programs. Surprisingly, statistical analysis indicated around 11% decrease in violence at Washington and in total crimes at Metro Manila and Union Territory of Delhi. Another experiment was done in 1983 to test the Maharishi effect in Jerusalem. It was aimed to reduce the stress in the collective consciousness and behavior of people in Israel and Lebanon. The finding of this study demonstrated that for a large number of people for the Meditation group,the victims of war decreased by76%. It should be said that, this project were constantly repeated, for more than two years during the war [13].

Religious perspective: The importance of collective prayer can be determined herein in religious practices, such as allotting a day especially for global collective prayers. For example in Islam, Fridays are specified for congregational prayers because calling for congregational prayers are frequently mentioned in the holy Qur'an, which is the central religious text of Islam. People are mostly asked to gather at midday on Friday to perform a prayer as communion. Broadly speaking, such communities invocate universal peace, collective salvation, redemption and intercession. It is noted that there is a bigger reward in collective prayers as well as it could form mutual understanding and chain of love that leads to feeling of a collective unity. Besides, the value and power of collective prayers for seeking rain is also a means of providing religious lessons and spiritual advances in Islam because in several sections of Holy Qur’an is mentioned that the most merciful is God [14].

Similarly, in Christianity, Sunday is allocated for collective Orison and its central concept is about collective salvation. Such group invocations are performed for different purposes by considering social aspects of prayers, for example, to pray collectively for health as well objective conditions like for world peace [15]. Altogether, this indicates that human beings have a path, which is shared together and they are affected by this joint part. In Eastern tradition, Zen doctrine is likewise the expression of a general consciousness. According to the teachings of Zen, although individuals are separated and there is defined self-consciousness for everyone, yet from a very broad point of view, taken together it is seen as a single universal consciousness. Two perspectives of consciousness are considered; first it is only about separate individuals and the second, in a broader scheme, is universal. In this perspective, it is very childish to see the world only from one limited point ofsentiment that establishes the world and its constituents just from one plaza. It means that from an all-encompassing view, separate individual consciousness are all related and it creates a higher one by extensions such as towards the consciousness of a school, ethnic groups, political parties as well as towards the city and country. In fact, what we see onthe Earth, good or bad as well as negative or positive are outcomes of humanity’s actions that can harm or help, give out advantage or disadvantage toward the all [16].

Conclusion

In sum, our universe is able to act consciously to save information, process and then reflect. Considering the faculty of memory is possible from two sides: (i) one is the storage side and the (ii) is the utilization side. The second one truly demonstrates the features of conscious action; so, eventually, what quantum entanglement says is a consequence of Consciousness and then after, by gathering together empirical observations, we are able to conclude that our world is somehow functioning consciously.

For more articles in Journal of Yoga and Physiotherapy please click

on https://juniperpublishers.com/jyp/index.php

For more Journals in Juniper Publishers

please click on https://juniperpublishers.com/index.php

To know more details regarding our Juniper publishers please click on

https://juniperpublishers.business.site/

#journal of yoga and physiotherapy #journal of yoga #yoga #physical health #physiotherapy

0 notes