Curse of Depression/Scourge of Cynicism

1st Axiom

Human Beings evolved to become "detectors" of one anothers phenomenology. To possess a mind means to possess a detector for the other. The other is already in you, as your very capacity to represent objects to yourself. Your "self" is an impossible reality without the pre-existence of an adaptation to know the intentionality of the other. This 1st axiom may be called "Shared-Intentionality", which in terms of systems dynamics would be referred to as a "attractor". We are genetically evolved for the other. To spurn the other, as will be shown, is to curse yourself with depression and cynicism

2nd Axiom

To have a mind you simply need a nervous system. We can call this basic "episodic awareness". Snakes, beetles, crocodiles and finches have a representation of their world mediated by their sense organs and organized for perception. But to have a mind that is more than simply input-output processing, you need to have first developed a large enough nervous system, and you need to have expanded upon this nervous system by becoming inter-included within the organizational systems of developing conspecifics. This higher level, which has been associated with the limbic system by the triune brain framework, is essentially an attempt to explain the existence of "higher level processing" that isn't found in cold-blooded creatures like reptiles. Social processes, or existing with others, paradoxically involves "needing them" to adequately meet your normal homeostatic organization. Social processes aren't easily or properly explained by Darwinian randomness because it really does seem as if the "social" necessitates more neural resources to process cues and features in the behavior of the other, all, were told, to enhance survival. Even if this is so, it is rather odd how much social organisms depend on an emotional closeness and affective relatedness with others of their species, particularly their parents and siblings.

These two baboons were captured hugging one another after a lion attack that killed a group member.



It's also been argued by some evolutionary biologists that attachment evolved from the need to maintain warmth, as demonstrated by these huddling mice:



Warmth -> Attachment -> Love. This seems to be the evolutionary progression in social evolution, from those which huddle primarily for warmth yet presumably experience positive affects, to those who attach yet not deep enough or long to progress further, and finally, in the line of hominids, the relaxation of threat-based emotions, and the discovery of fire - and the massive cultural transformation it afforded - slowly brings about the evolution of cognitive perceptual systems that can track their own functioning.

Axiom 2: mind is based upon sympathetic affects. Although disputes do occur in all primates, and obviously in human beings, neither primates nor humans can tolerate disconnection from other humans for very long. Human beings in particular are made especially vulnerable if they no longer find themselves affectively related to other people.

Axiom 3

This is going to be difficult to unpack.

Because sympathetic emotions underlie the evolution of consciousness (with nighttime fire sessions around eating and communicating being a paradigmatic situation in our evolution) this thing we call "mind" - which happens to be physically embodied as our brain - doesn't function well and begins to fall apart when it loses its sense of relatedness to other people.

How this can come about is of course enormously complex, as the brain is always "resetting" itself, and the human mind always entraining itself - hypnotizing itself - with it's own internal cogitation and commentary on the world, so of course it would be impossible, barring an atlas shrug sized book, to explore all the possible details. Nevertheless, any depressed human, I aver, has unconsciously (un-knowingly) put himself in such a situation because of the way negative social affects (shame, guilt) compel compensating actions. People need to realize that we do not merely see other faces and other people in our day to day life; we also recreate the implicit meanings in the actions we observe in other people. It's as if seeing is like a .rar file; condensed, packed. Only later on, when we come to perceive or see things in a certain way, does it become apparent that within the .rar file of our gestalt perception is the psychodynamic logic that applies across the human condition, and so, since we see actions, we also unconsciously internalize the affective meaning of all actions, because many actions, if we only seek to understand them, are defensive in nature.

The only way to see defensiveness (or dissociation) is to accept the principle that all people fundamentally want the positive evaluation of other people. It is not natural, normal, or plausible, for someone to possess a human brain (with all it's internal complexity - and homology) and claim to be organized in a way that is different from others. If you accept evolution as well as the 2nd law of thermodynamics, you will also need to accept the dynamical nature of human phenomenology - it's up and downs, and if pride is recognized as a "thing I really like feeling" and shame accepted as a "thing I hate experiencing", we can therefore recognize that human beings, when insensitive to one another's phenomenological experience, provoke feelings of self-experience (shame) that then generates a feeling of hatred.

Now, looking at society today, is it not obvious that were graced everywhere we look by people who respond to other people in terms of just such a dynamic: person A says T that implies x; person B's amygdala hears T but detects x and so stimulates defensive reaction y. Defensive reaction y is cloaked behind statement p.

People are implicitly aware of what they're feeling, and feeling "less than another" is an ever-present possibility when we are with other people, particularly people we don't enjoy being around. An unconscious cognitive comparison towards some cultural value is always happening within us. Indeed, thought occurs with this as a background referent. How we know the world is thoroughly a function of environmental imprinting.

Depression is a curse and cynicism is a scourge. They exist because the minds who feel this way possess beliefs - cognitions - which constrain the flow of what we can call good feeling. Remember: Axiom 1 and 2 explain what mind is; and depression is nothing other than the withdrawal of mind from reality. Humans NEED ONE ANOTHER.

Cynicism is a prideful response to ones own tendency towards depressiveness. It's a trap. A no-mans land. Depression and suffering awaits the person who can't keep himself from cynical thinking.

Indeed, one psychologist even suggested that suicidality might be a social correlate of apoptosis in cells. When a person kills themselves, they are fundamentally hoping for intervention. They're murderous self-ideation depends on their implicit distance from others - something they enforce with their prideful self-delusions about "not needing others". And yet, is it not true that the fantasy of a person tends to go towards what others will think when they die?

a reply to: Astrocyte

I think I could really get into some of your posts if you could speak in terms some of us less educated could understand. I often said to my brother, who holds a double masters in psychology and theology, that if you can't speak in a way the common (those less educated in your discipline) can understand you could reach many more people.

Your posts always leave me wanting to know more or understand what you are saying but just miss the mark.

Great thread Astro....

We, as a species, are about the goofiest
things ever created (or not).

Your post actually made me remember
that feeling of the first time I ever felt
a connection with a wild animal. Be it
having a squirrel eat out of your hand
or riding a horse, it is so different than the
psychotic interactions we have with each
other. The connection between man and
"everything else" is quite amazing.

It is asinine what we do to animals and
each other.

Maybe our entire existence (and mind), is suicidal.

originally posted by: Astrocyte
We are genetically evolved for the other. To spurn the other, as will be shown, is to curse yourself with depression and cynicism

Or to figuratively consign oneself to Hell.

Even if this is so, it is rather odd how much social organisms depend on an emotional closeness and affective relatedness with others of their species, particularly their parents and siblings.

Lizard mind. Look at mother alligators. They cradle their young in their mouth to keep them safe. Yet ... as soon as mom forgets who they are, they become prey. The offspring that understand threat development live to pass on their genes.

Axiom 2:

Sorry. Totally speculative. Can't comment without full development.

This is going to be difficult to unpack.

Because sympathetic emotions underlie the evolution of consciousness (with nighttime fire sessions around eating and communicating being a paradigmatic situation in our evolution) this thing we call "mind" - which happens to be physically embodied as our brain - doesn't function well and begins to fall apart when it loses its sense of relatedness to other people.

Worth an early Star & Flag. I don't have enough coffee in me yet to continue.

a reply to: liveandlearn

I apologize. It is, I think, something all 'big readers' i.e. people other people call 'intellectuals', have a problem with.

The more you read in different fields i.e. all the physical, behavioral and social sciences, and then philosophy and the rest of the humanities, you have this urge in you to reflect the complexity of what you understand about your subject. You try to order it, such that it meets certain logical demands you impose (i.e. what makes to you) on it. The entire time, as you write, your writing is focused on communicating to other people; but which people? In order to comprehend a complex subject, you need the cognitive capacity to keep in memory what you just read before; and a lot of people, unfortunately, don't read or do anything that requires the development of memory and other perceptual processes (such as self awareness) so that their brain essentially is what they have done; and whatever that is - the procedural repetition of mechanical actions, as when you work in a factory; or the social shmoozing with retail, or the 'constriction' of awareness that may accompany an informational job, which habituates certain problematic ways of seeing people. And this says nothing about the powers of culture and media.

I think part of the problem is the medium. If you and I were sitting and talking, I would more naturally and easily adapt my mind to your mind in that you would ask questions that would force me to attune to your 'conceptual arc'. This happens naturally, as emotions 'force' cognitive systems to harmonize with the intentional actions of the other (especially if its reasonable, as your complaint is).

If you want greater clarity with anything I've written, just ask. Figure out what it is you see that is wrong or ambiguous in what I've said, and I'll try my best to answer it.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Something is wrong with what you're implying. Can you see it?

Infinity.

What is emergent? Can something exist without its order (its potential) being predetermined/predestined (already existing)?

Is there more than one way to skin a cat? Is there more than one way to develop a wing?

Do we create 1 when we divide 3 by itself? Do we create 3 when we add 1 to 1 and 1 to 2? Are you sure?

Conception is of something preexisting; the Spirit.

Before you go on, you should work on conceptualizing infinity.

When we measure, we measure spirits (will).

Conception is the conceptualization of will. Quantification of forces. Quanta.

What is emergent properties? When we measure the will/forces by specific measure, qualia arise from eternity.

Evolution is the evolution of conception, of formed measure, specific measure reproducing preconceived measures. It is concept reproduction.

Why else would states reoccur? Why else would physicality have order?

It must be predestined infinity/eternity.

Ephesians 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

That is where we are measured of. Form is the image of the measure of will.

If you type into a calculator 1+1 and hit equal, 2 is more the image of your measure than it is the measure of what is encoded within the calculator (within the forces/purposed will of the calculator) -- 2 is more the image of your measure than it is the pseudo-infinite number/function set.

Can you grasp what I'm saying?

From where does it emerge? What is an emergent property?