Quirks mode

Done.

Issues. World. Le problemas.

So. It does say. World has teh issues. World has teh biggies of teh problems. Seriously? So that makes us … world?

It does make the laughies jumping around the corners. People educates people. Right. World facing humanity. That’s more like it. Potential to rapidly escalate to those fine, severe crises? What the heck?

Sure. We’ve made those fine problems ourselves. World didn’t. Fragilities in the global economy ain’t a problem of World. World didn’t do a damn thing to the conditions seen in the 1920s either.

Sure thing. Of course the global economy will and shall bind the fate of that fancy, international community together with plenty of member nations. And it, of course, may preclude possibilities to a WWIII. Global economy are, of course, able to help rest of the World (yeah, helping World and all, rightioes …) facing new ideas, processing new and old products, and of course, sharing information. Now.

US. Standardizing. Of course World’s (poor World, facing the dirties) most powerful-bigger-the-better country of them all (guessies which country I’m talking about? First come, first serve gets a Sandwich-a-Dime …), is in poor, poor debt. Low rate for that poor dollar, housing markets facing the dirt, coming undone. Let’s hear a big yey for Buffet, Soros and Martin. Of course, Homo Sapiens likes to spend their pennies. Pennies they don’t have. And when poor World is going down on the economicas markedas, pretty people are trying to make wakies and baceys. “Hay! We’re getting poor!” Jeebus, people. Looming crises ftw. Let’s live longer, getting over and on for tree-hugging hippies and make less babies. But these babies grows up being old too (pretty much their mommas and poppas too!), what about the oh-so-promising already oh-so-strained budgets are already being scrambled to fund retirement programs, as promised? Okay, up for the choosies. Raise taxes, or cut benefits. Hah! Yeah, we sure are in the 1920s … eh? Heck, if it is that easy. Don’t spend the dimes you don’t have. Maybe Miss SpendAlot will be able to pay down her downtown taxes on her fancy apartement at upper street Manhattan. Right.

Of course, that good mixture of hydrocarbons, with various moleular weights from Mother Earth had a long, long and varied, fine role in our human history. Lookit the ancient Babylonians. Using those goodies as a great mortar building their cities. Some tribes of the native Americans used it as a form of workable medicine. Before Edison, us European used it as light in our homes. But it sure is hard to overestimate the geopolitical importance of that liquid stuff. Think Churchill and Iran. And WWII through Germany and Japan. The Cold War. And then again, we have OPEC …

It is also said and stated that petroleum has great powers (_rocket_ science and all that …). It powers about 96 % of transportation on our sweet, destroyed planet, and of course said to be the great key ingredient in plasticinas and fertilizers. And sure, cannot be overestimated. Our modern life makings would be impossible without it. But to the heck of it. When China and India is in big hunger and has a big appetite for that wonderful, pretty oil, the production sure is declining all in all in just about a few countries. We’ve all been warned of prancing peak oil. Global petroleum production will of course, like anything else, reach top levels, and begin to drop down in the low and long runs. Nothing lasts forever. Is that peak oil raining down decades away, or does it happen sooner than Lucky Luke could snip a tie? Expectations ftw. Lookit from a technological and geographic point of standing as stated above. Variables are cool that way. Determining inevitable peak in that fancy oil production and all. Occurring.

Leaving those poor waterholes alone in Africa. But what about that essential ingredient of life? It is becoming increasingly down as a scarce resource for everyone. Jeebus, leave alone that already over two billions of people lack the access for clean water, and over a billion don’t even meet their daily needs of water at all. Amount of pollution seeps into lakes and rivers. Of course our bodies and underground aquifers aren’t used to those pretty, colourful toxics. At least see the positive thoughts in it all in all. Less mouths to water or such. Oh, teh powah. How on earth is it even possible to look 51 years ahead of time and say we are about the exceed about nine billion human heads walking around this planet? Energy freezers, I say! Save up that watering bowls now. Funny thing being a monumental task of it already now. I’m sure if everyone close their eyes shut, we’d see bird and happy bunnies all over the planet. And of course, a glance of pink clouds. Maybe a rainbow made of pastels …

Will our well, beloved species be extinct by then? What about wasps? Putting the sharpies on, we do like to kill anything annoying our skin cells. So. Nature ain’t red in tooth and claw? Like saying, yes … “Hereupon, the beasts, enraged at the humbug, fell upon him tooth and claw.”

Modern science – are those pretty, little lies? Saying the norm is cooperation? Going a little high on ourselves, eh? Are we the only surviving species killing anything we see making sure of a massive extinction of other species? Are we the reason that plankton won’t be able to reproduce and by that, being able to undermining the entireness of the oceanic ecosystem? No more ocean fish? Look at it with your sunglasses on, right on the bright side, Earth weren’t meant to stay here for all this time cosmologically, and perhaps astronomically speaking.

Of course it makes the climate change rapidly. I’m pretty sick and tired of the pretty debate on global warming. Do that, and don’t do this. Greenhouse gases goes for the win with carbondioxide and methane. Extinct Mr. Cow, you are trapping heat within our pretty, eternal living Earths’ sorry atmosphere. I’m pretty surprised that our eyes opened all of a sudden out of nowhere. Jeebus, what did the Dinosaurs do for so many millions of years ago? Triassic. Paleogeography. Cretaceous. Jeebus. Things changes. They sure all of a sudden became extinct by the Cretaceous – Tertiary event. I sure hope they didn’t drive too many cars, airplanes and leaving their refrigerator door open to make themselves that much harm and sadness … and you say that World has big problems with little issues wrapped up and around.

Janey, get yourself and Polly a cracker. World incubates.

Intelligence with a dash of hierarchy

So, we’re on for the natural thing of mind. Who fits. Who adjust. Ranging. Is that what intelligence and hierarchy is all about? Noes. Most definitively not.

I do believe it has to be created by various levels of fragmentation for understand this whole thing. We are all said that every single one of us is born as an equal. And no, they did not give us any  kind of scientific reasons being unequal sufferings we are experiencing through, well, this thing called mankind. We do suffer due to fragmentation of their (rather losing) intelligence, which, of course, varies from one person to another. From that point standing, all our activities has its origin from their little state of a so called fragmented intelligence. If you throw in some acquired, or even perceived knowledge, dashed in with a bit of actualization with an object of desires which shall be motivated, through or due fragmentation. This ain’t rocket science either. Nothing is. You just put it together, and from that, something should be logical after all.

We are all human beings living along happily knowing we can decide and do what we want to to. Well, most of us can, really. But since we all are able to do these simple things, something bad will and shall happen. We create an unnatural and then it goes on to be an undesireable hierarchy of our intelligence. These things, will make conflicts, restlessness all over the place. Confusions are made to the top.

It is being said that human beings are being at the pinnacle of the lovely thing called evolutionary pyramid, because, we, of course, have a complex brain to flex around with. Okay, some say that this complex brain of ours, don’t only make us more intelligent, but kind of categories ourself from other organisms. We’ve been tested through both neurobiology and the way to go with anatomy. They’ve begun to chisel away that we, don’t actually, are smarter (go the way that our intelligence being associated with these kinds of things) than other beings, short said. It rather indicades that intelligence is on some kind of a continuum from the animals who should have a lower set of intelligence, to the animals which should have a higher set of it. Intelligence and evolution. So researches have actually showed that researchers in linguistics and biology have gone too many steps backward than forward from time to time. It is complex, and complex is always sweet. It gives you some challenge to work with, and everyone loves a good challenge.

So, is it really possible to build a hierarchy of cognitive abilities? Are we able to say that some animals are smarter than the other, by rearanging them in groups and saying the ant is dumber than the dove? Are there any clear blue definitions out there? Okay, of course the ant is smarter than any other being in his habitat. The cat wouldn’t be able to live the ant way of life, because the cat simply don’t know the way of the life of an ant. We can go on and forth with the biological intelligence of the animal. Back to the short words – in his world, every animal is the most intelligent being. Then we can move forward through eugenics (noes, not the holocaust way to go). If you have bad genes, we don’t need you. Keep your genes of hereditary clean, and all of us will be happy poochies. First come, first serve. By doing eugenics, like they do back with the other living beings back in the nature, they keep the healthiest, strongest, fittest, and most of all, the most intelligent one in their group of orgie matings. By doing that, they save resources and overpopulation.

But in your right mind, you will figure out that some animals _are_ smarter than others. We do, in fact, have some dumb animals around there too. It is true that the maggots are dumber than some fishes, and the fish is dumber than the dog, being dumber than the chimpanzee. Range them that way. None of these are more intelligent than Homo Sapiens. Or is this just something we’d call a result of anthropocentrism (the human kind being on top and centered of any other aspect of realitiesness). Or are we so self-centered we do believe in such things?

Our world ain’t no black and white. It does, in fact, contain plenty of colours in it (look away if you wear pink sunglasses!). Hierarchy in it self is ranged (oh, that’s the word again!) to be a kind of collectives. Through objects, people, grades and values. At all. It is all graduated and decided through yourself. Above and below the ladder of ranging. That being said, OED (Oxford English Dictionary) firstly ranged hierarchy as a reference to three orders by Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (yeah, the priest and philosopher, read it up, kiddo). That being said, hierarchy is a result of religion in this matter. It sure derives from our Greek friends, called hierarchia, which ranges from hierarches, which litterally means the president of sacred rites. Hieros, which is sacred, arkho, which means to lead. I’m sure hierarchy ring a bell when you think about someone or something above, perhaps below. But are you sure it is at the same level as one? Opposed anarchy!

Not going there, we are in for the things living in the ecological chain of life. Abundance of life. Interactions between organisms and their environment. Just to jump back and forward to confuse you a bit.

Like play and fraud. We all do it. It’s a new step in how to organize the lifely world, being a unreal activity. We cannot only categorize the world around us, but you can see your own activity as an object for categorizing and reflection. The outside world is not only being directly thrown at you, some action significances impaired, but your own actions will also be impaired to top it up. So, of course you can make an action, without a meaning for what it might have been if you bought flowers to your mother on her birthday. You can do, but not exactly do it as well. This kind of fraudulensnessess is very important for a complex social interaction among other. A kind of symbolic behaviour and thinking, to internationalization by thinking, and the consciousness about mental conditions.

Play is, in fact, a kind of an activity we do, but the activity cannot come with a conclusion. It’s a kind of an ordinary life activity or parts of this, really. This activity should not bring something up with thoughts in the back of your brain. The game is pointless. If it does get points or gets rationalized, a kind of a known function or meaning in life, it gets serious, and there is no game as an activity anymore. Isolated.

But play does play (yeah!) a big part in how to establish social relations and social intelligence. Social play makes you learn how to know one and another, and learn yourself and other how to get to know themselves. You get a preview how the outside world actually works in its social life. That symbolic behaviour explained above, is a wee bit gone from the part of playing. You are able to accomplish the given activity. Mating, you say? Le femme et homme.

There is most certinatly a wonderful dash of hierarchy of intelligence out there. Beware. We are on intelligence.

I’ve left the building. For now.

Homos and their history, with their subspecies

So we goes on with homos and their lovely history this time. Also throwing in their subspecies for that matter. Evolution is a good way to go, with depth or not. We kind of like depth, with a kind of depth of view on this whole thing. Right? Do we like depth? I don’t hear you! Do we like depth? Yes, of course we do! No bones about it. We do, though, go for the rambling. We also like ramblings, as much as we like that depth. So. Here we go. Enough rambling (and more to come!) already.

Thanks to our beloved Linné (yep, that man, with the peas), us “people persons” got our scientistic name in 1758, a wonderful latin name, and called you and me “Homo Sapiens”. What does it mean? There are lot of thinkies out there on that subject. Some say “the thinking person”, while other say “human being or man”, or even “the wise one”. So that’s what we all are? Thinkely people with a dash of human beings being a man, which, of course, is wise and loveable. We are species filled with monkey genes from the “apeman” as some would reckon to it, and yes, and their subbies, filled with ideologiesities from Darwin, steppin’ right up the red carpets of evolution. Right? Such a wide subject to get into, but so wide to be interesting. We likey. And when we like something, we do ramble. Ramble is good for that matter. Yes. We do like rambling after all.

So. Where shall we start. In the world of Marvels Universe, or the scientistic way? Science is my discipline, the world is my country and science is also my religion, and that’s too bad for you. No, wait. I might go the Marvel way to go too. I hear a great yey for Stan Lee!

Okay, we go sciencifistico first. I have two legs, and I’m called a primate, and yes, I do belong to the Homo Sapiens way of evolution. My family is called hominidae, which means I am a human monkey, so to say. So they say, my stuffies are filled with a highly intelligent brain. We can go the abstract way of thinking, talk (since we usually have a cool gene called FOXP2, which makes us do languages and also give us grammatical competence, which our other homos didn’t have in their pockets) and understand different languages and a mind of our own (okay, some of us do, actually …). But what about them Homo Neanderthalis? Them Neanderthals. Yes. Size ain’t all, because size don’t usually matter, they say, but is that really so? A swedish biologist being specialized in evolutionary genetics. named Svante Pääbo, is saying that their DNA has absolutely no affinity to mine and yours. But another lovely anthtropolitican, say that our genes are mixed from interbreeding between these two species. But, since our species have a high rate of intelligence, why can’t we work together with it? Always disagreeing on which discipline that can answer the right questions.

We’ve been able to live on every continent we can think about from our first sight of light. We are able to think and do the vocal talking dance, up the wazoo. We have to get back to Darwin and his great theory of evolution, which is one of the greatest contributions that’s ever been made to science. It all started along when he started to do some writings in his book called “The Origin of Species”. But it was in “The Descent of Man” he first stated his theory of evolution that Homo Sapiens is a privitive monkeyish animal. Darwin’s theories were a drawback. They were considered to be offensive, blasphemous and against Gods creatures. In “The Origin of Species”, he states that “all life is a continuous struggle in which only the fittest can survive.”. In other words, you’d think that when you are in the struggle for survival, the one being strongest and fittest, will win in the end. They win because of their adapting skills in new environments. One thing is sure – they’ll manage.

Then we go. Homo Erectus was the first member of the great genus Homo. The first Homo standing up. It is, of course, an extinct hominid that lived between 1.6 million and 250.000 years ago. You can never be exact with them numbers, eh? Homo Erectus has been thought to be evolved in Africa from Homo Habilis, which is outbred from paranthropus boisei, which is an early hominin (going on australopithecine. Think hominini tribe. Think again, ardipithecus genus. Human taxonomy is interesting indeed). But if you go into its and bits, anatomically and physiologically through Homo Erectus, you will see that they will resemble contemporary of todays humans, with an exception for a stouter bone structure. Who’d know, eh? Homo Sapiens walking around the streets with stouty bonies. If you show me, I’d give _you_ a dime for my happiness! But if we went for Leakeys thoughts of this, we might see one, and we might don’t even bother to give that funky guy walking around a reaction. You do get mental images of the Hollywood making of the “Encino Man” (or “California Man”, if you want to), eh? Hehe!) They also have a, whatever you’d call it, a normal sized braincase, which is about 850 – 1000 cc that will approach us with good compareness, so to speak, Homo Sapiens. Their cranial bones are, though, more massive than ours and Homo Habilis. Ain’t that bad for walking around knockin’ ‘em skulls around every tree they see.

And for that, Homo Habilis is said to be the first Homo. Findings are said to be so. That Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus were found to be living in the same century. They just didn’t like living together and weren’t comfortable of that. Well, yes. Like chimpanzees and apes. Theories, theories, theories.

Just to quote Morris; It might, very well, be that Homo Erectus was a true man, indeed, but that he might have been degenerate in both size and culture, and that’s possibly because of inbreeding (flowers and bees ain’t much of rocket science), and poor diet and a hostile environment (Gish, which had the first word on that Homo Erectus was human). Just look away from the braincase, skeleton (which are one about the limit). So. He was wrong. Homo Erectus differes from Homo by many aspects other than braincase. Do we know? Do we know anything of these? Do we know any thing specific about their culture (yes, did they have a culture? Of course! Everyone living in a pack has it own culture!)? Just to point out what Talking Origins are saying about this. Interesting stuff. Okay, one time, a group of archaeologists led by Richard Leakey, found a fossil of a nine (or whatever. Underaged, at least. Homo Erectus developed heck of a lot faster than us, ain’t rocket science, since they were firstly straight off the origin of monkeydonkeys. Those mammals, do, well, yeah, mature faster. Why? You figure out yourself, or this, is going to be a very, very long post …) year old boy. This boy, is called the “Turkana boy”, or “Nariokotome boy”, if you want to. Well. This kid was hominid. He died 1.6 million years ago. His brain size was 880 cc, and would have been estimated to be around 910 cc when adult (where we’d have a brain size for about 1350 cc). He was about as tall as me, around 160 cm, and it was also estimated that he’d reach around 185 cm. This kid looked very, very similar to our group of kids, but they found that he has a big hole in his vertebrae (a irregular bone near something called the ischis). Where his spinal cords went, he only had around half of the cross sections that we do. This means that he lack the thorax that we have, so we can speak fluently.

So, well, later, Morris (said by Rickard Leakey) states that the Turkana boy would walk through our streets today without any thoughts and remarks from us with him being another specie of Homo. Then, later, Morris took his quote (by Leakey and Walker), well, very out of context, and stated that he could walk around _unnoticed_ covered in suitable clothes, a cap, well, to obscure his low forehead and beetle brow, then he would, probably, oh yes. Mark it. _Probably_, walk around unnoticed again … hey, is this evolution or variability, you think …? Gee.

Then Richard Leakey spoke a little about his great findings, and states through National Geographic that this finding, was well. In other words. Very, very cool.
“I think [the Turkana Boy] is remarkable because it’s so complete, but perhaps another aspect that is often overlooked is that many people who don’t like the idea of human evolution have been able to discount much of the work that we’ve done on the basis that it’s built on fragmentary evidence. There have just been bits and pieces, and who knows, those little bits of bone could belong to anything. To confront some of these people with a complete skeleton that is human and is so obviously related to us in a context where it’s definitely one and a half million years or even more is fairly convincing evidence, and I think many of the people who are fence-sitters on this discussion about creationism vs. evolution are going to have to get off the fence in the light of this discovery.”

So, is there anything to say about this? Jumping front and forward through everything. We should stick to what the topic of today states. Homo Neanderthalis versus Homo Sapiens. Yes, okay, not totally off the edge. We’re also taking their subspecies with us.

Would a kind of interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis result in sterility? Go on for Darwin and his “Origin of Species” (a must read too, by the way!). We do find out that intercrossing plants and such, will, whenever, result in some sterility. A F1 and with hybrids in such, there will be a 50-50 way to go on with the sterility. I doubt it will be absolute, but genes are cool that way. Playing with them, makes you play in a russian roulette. A H.S. x H.N. mating where both have male and female, with two more males and females, which are sired by another male, will give eight offsprings. These offsprings, will be 4-1/2 siblings to each other. If these eight offsprings were sterile, there would be no preserved H.N. DNA in their future generations. But are we sure they were sterile at all? Of course, not. We do see where we envolved from. A mitochondrial DNA is recorded to be longer within an unbroken chain of cellsharing. The mitochondrion in mtDNA, is, though, estimated to also contain about 2-10 mtDNA copies in each pair. This means it is coded to be nuclear DNA don’t originally originate bacterials, having to be transfered through the eukaryotic nucleus through evolution. Le Femme plays a big part in this game of mating and sharing. MtDNA is inherited by Le Femme maternally with dilutions, but is often destroyed when the egg is fertilized. Though, it is said that we can go ten generations backwards to break a chain to this date, then there would be a 11 % and even 34 % possibility of a breakage of the chain. Highly doubted that we can trace a person off the street today back to H.N. as a relative. We could go on and on with this, but please, don’t fall asleep yet! Genetic genealogy is sweet to the marrow.

The Neanderthalis were said to gone to exctincion because their big game of feed couldn’t grass for grazing anymore. The Homo Sapiens also suffered the loss, but we’re not at extincion. We were smart enough to go out fishing (which the Neanderthalis man did a bit later …), getting small game, like rabbits and birdies. The questions were asked. Why didn’t the Neanderthalis adapt culturally like us, and get Peter the Bunny for food instead? They later say that we were able to store our food. There is absolutely no evidence that Neanderthalis could not. Were they stupid? Were they slow? Were they lazy? Or just thinking wisely, first come, first serve? Or did they just die of the lack of speech or the close contact they had when hunting big game (oh noes! Where they killed by the big mammal? Could they get help? Oh noes! And, well, anyway … back to the back and all that)? So many questions to ask, but never a correct answer to get. Just theories. And theories are good. With theories, the world goes forward, because Homo Sapiens are curious species. Are there any plausible hypothesises in this at all?

Steeei tuuuned!

For more sweetness and happiness to come! We are all a nation full of pink, swirly cloudies!

About fear and behaviorism

Fear. Yes, what is it? Really? We have to get back in history to describe it, right? In old english, the word is put out to be of a meaning saying “calamity and/or disaster”. In other words, in our mental images of fear, was not intended to be an emotion. It has its roots of prehistoric common german, which word was “feraz”, which means, yes, you’re on it! Danger. The Old Saxons and the Old High Germans “far”, which means “ambush and/or danger”. Old Icelandic also have “far” in their odies for oldies dictionary. They say it means “treachery and/or damage”.

Two out of four, fear must be associated with danger. I’d rather not say disaster or damage. Causing it through fear will be completely different things. If you look at the Old English way of saying the word, they say it’s related to the verb “færan”, which they meant was “to terrify and/or take by surprise”. If so they say, in the Middle English, the word “fear” is firstly presented with a sense, a sense of emotion of fear. That’s about them fear-i-o’s. You live with them and they crank the sirens by living inside of you. You have great bed time stories with your fear, laying side by side by and inside you. O’rly the Owl?

As said before, fear is most certenitly a survival mechanism. A reflex which run through our nervous systems. And by that, it reacts when you throw a response to a negative stimulus. And to understand the different phrases of the lovely word stimulus, you have to understand a bit of behavioral learning theory. So I’d say, fear is, really, a man’s best friend. The old cliché with them dogs being a man’s best friend, can find itself a bed and go to sleep like the way Cinderella did. She had no fear, did she? Did she really?

Okay, back to basic. What is the origin of fear coming from, really? Did it just pop up out of nowhere from a bad dream? Fine, we all know where the word come from, but what about the relatives of it? The biological thingy? We don’t like biology, it is teh shitz. So we do have to get through the unconscious, lovely subcortical origin of fear of our beloved humans. The abstract way of saying it, is that fear is coming from negative stimulus. And when fear stimuli is coming through, it activates from the amygdala. Amygdala lives in your brain, looking like an almond. It will send lovely impulses to our beloved hypothalamus. Hypothalamus is a link that works through our nervous system, and goes on to the enocrine system, again through hypophysis. Hypothalamus is having a good time below thalamus, and thalamus is located above the brain stem. So, hypothalamus plays a big part playing with our nervous system, and is the high centre for the autonome nervous system and the enocrine system. These parts are linkies through each other, and in that lovely, colourful, slimey centre, they will control our blood pressure, brain rythm, hypophysis, temperature regulations and stomach and the and the reproductive tract. That’s a funny connection when you throw in some fear.

Anyway, back to fear and amygdala(e). It is a central word to activate fear. It happens with a itty, bitty low level of visual processing. It is, however, mediated by a bit of subcorical pathway. Studies and data from other patients in the primary visual cortex, is showing that the amygdalae will and can be activated in the lovely absence of a bit of naughty cortical processing. Visual stimuli will, and can access, the amygdalae through a pathway including superior collicus and pulvinar nucleus of thalamus. And I agree, it is an evolutionary argument. Even though it is abstract, with many theories around it. We never know.

But, what activates it? What is it? We can go on and on, different fears, different likenings. Fear, as stated, come along in different shapes and forms. We can induce unwanted fear and aversion by introducing an object, or using aversives. From that, we have to keep in mind that conditioning and repeating, will give a repetitive behavior system. Look at Watson, a true Pavlovian keeping his mind on his ideas. He was, like many psychologists, involved in animal research, but later on he was busy studying the human behavior. He thought that us humans were born with few reflexes, but the emotional reactions of love and rage had a big game in it. He later states that all other behaviors we set our selves into, is established through (yeah, that’s the word again!) stimulus responses associated through conditioning (associative learning, and our man is Ivan Pavlov, and goes on with conditioned stimulus and unconditioned response. Repeat them in pairs, CS and UR will be associated and the tested organism will start to produce a behavioral response to CS only. When this behavior occured, he Pavlov decided to call the given behavior a conditioned response). Ok, enough Pavlov (a great russian indeed!).

A new line drawed, and we shall continue with our lovely, human testing man, Watson. He had an experiment with a young boy named Albert (oh, no, not Einstein), and with him, he had a white lab rat. Albert didn’t mind the rat at all, and had no fear of it. But whenever Albert decided to touch the rat, Watson made a loud sound. Albert didn’t like that sound, and activated amygdalae. Albert didn’t associate the rat with something bad, but Albert was fightened by the noise Watson made. Then Albert was conditioned to the fear he had because of Watson’s loud noise, and Albert avoided the rat because of that. Later, that fear, was for Albert, generalized to other small animals, to be specific, rodents. But Watson did some more tests, and decided to extinguish Alberts fear for small animals by presenting the lab rat again, now, without the loud noise he presented when Albert touched the rat the first time. That study showed that this conditioned fear Albert had, was more powerful, and it was permanent. But this study shows us that the role of conditioning in developing emotional response to a certain stimuli, does work. Specific fear, phobias and even prejudices people develop over time, may have something to do with it.

But, is that all? We have another lovely man who I can call the man of behaviorism. B.F. Skinner (so, you are think the black box with his daughter already? You’re not alone. Interesting, though. That man was the God of psychology). I recommend his book “Science and Human Behavior”, by the way. So, he goes on with studying animals. He put it on the edge saying and teaching the animals in these tests, that they don’t have emotions or intelligens. The only thing they had, was behavior, and behavior alone. You shape behavior by rewards, positive and negative reinforcements and punishment through the environment. Something good happens, and then something bad happens. Take the consequenses of it. We all agree that punishment is bad, but negative reinforcement is good. If you produce and introduce punishment when something bad happens. But negative reinforcement is when something bad will stop happening, or won’t start happening in the first place, because of something you did. Negative reinforcement is positive through your way of taking something at you. Your kid is crying. You yell or cuddle or whatever to make him or her stop, and he or she stop crying. That is something positive occuring to you as positive. Repeat that behavior next time, and kid won’t cry. Or your kid is taking his or hers skateboard down the road, you said no, and take it away from him or her. Next time, he or she will most likely don’t take his or hers skateboard down the street again. If so, repeat. Positive for you, and positive for your kid getting that skateboard back. I like that variable ratio schedule of saying that the number of, well, correct repetitions for taking back the correct response for reinforcement varies. That’s why clicker training is a good doing for shaping a wanted behavior. Punishment given to a bad behaviour won’t be as effective as when rewarding a good behavior when working with an animal showing (not even that) what you want him to do. That ain’t rock science. Punishment will create fear in the long run either way. Animals are stimulus responsive machines. That’s just how it work. Our brain is powerful, and some people learn it the hard way (let’s take Skinners stroke, for an example, read it up).

So, I have no conclusion of the individual fear occuring. That’s what we are, individuals. What’s causing the different fears (or even phobias) in manhood, is still a difficult question to answer. So, what is fear, really? A lot of ethology and biological crap? Or something just existing in the air your breath? Them wonders, them wonders.

Fear out.

Hans-Georg Gadamer and the twelve world problems!

Interesting as a pair of brand new sunglasses you had someone right next to you, who sat on them and broke them into lovely bits of loveydoveys. So, no workies and happiness for them, not anymore! Now, they rest in sunglassheaven. Oh, that’s the irony for it!

So, Gadamer had some philosophical hermeneutics about the TWP (yes, you guessed right! Just have a look: Twelve World Problems. Yes, rightioes!). A typical Platonic-Aristotelian thinker he is. So who’s not? Lemme at ‘em numbers! Richard E. Palmer has the word at it for putting it in a bit wider perspective. I do agree in Gadamers statement of understanding Plato, as a way of working your way through the Platonic texts, but only to do it in a way that you won’t only enter the dialogues and dialectic set in those texts, but you will also need to repeat that dialogic movement in an attempt to understand.

Okay, he states – Pollution – of the air, the water, the soil. Of course, where will it end! I can’t wait to sit in my lovely car, and start a lovely pollution. I know my car loves me, and for me only, she will spit out some
carbon dioxide every now and then. And I love her for that. I love everyone who let out its and bits of a pound of carbon dioxide every day. I love them smell of it. Heck, I decide what I can do, and what I can’t do. I save world, world love me back. Isn’t that so! Flower.

His second way of thinking there are a few more problems out there. He say. Okay. Natural resources running out, or being degraded. Really? So what if there are limited resources for our lovely oil, water and dead, old wood. I so think we need some more oil around here! We like to get them pennies in our pocket, and pump out oil like drinking it out of something like a beer tap. Earth lose blood, and that’s not sad. We aim for happiness. And water? Who needs water, nonetheless! We don’t need to make more crops, just look at Simba in The Lion King. Look where it got him! Oh, happyland! I bet my car loves to feed the dead old woods some more CO2 to live it through, I say, more tree for the people, live on with the cars. Who gives a doop. Simba will manage.

Then, he states. Oh, waities. Okay, he states. Population growth outstripping resources worldwide. Is that so? So we should go back to what lovely Aristotle said in a happy time of go-lucky. A lovely man, full of systematicity. So he goes on thinking there is a chain of evolution, with beings all living and happy, who developed from the simplisestness creatures in the ocean to the simplisestness creatures walking on land. Of course, us humanicus was on the top of that chain with higher development. So, no haphazardness there, just the aim for perfection. Okay, China out. Right? Or was it something Leeuwenhoeks said, when the animaculists and ovists said? I obey Hartsoeker, truly.

So. Unequal distribution of financial resources, you say? Okay. Then stated that global poverty and hunger are increasing each year instead of decreasing. Is it? Then I say, seriously. We eat less, and that is the solution for saving the world from more hunger! Oh! The discoverness! World be saved. We share, then we are happy as Bunny Thumper.

Okay. The overwhelming power of multinational corporations over governments. I am in an “at it”-state of mind. Too bad I don’t have enough cash to show you all! If I only was smarter than my avarage shoe, I’d too own me something that feels viscous liquid, pharmaceutical companies (mmmm, I heard about some purple pills the other day …), media conglomerates (just because I can, and that’s kind of cute, just because I can), and make me some insurance companies! We don’t give a doop, as I can walk down the street and see the general public downtown smiling back at me. Gadamer, we should get married, make poverty history. I also say, do it the reflection way. Worth so much more, than even happiness for a dime. Who’d thunkz!

Nuclear weapons; the imminent danger of worldwide catastrophe, you say? Maybe, alright, it is so. So the danger is posed by an arsenal of 50,000 missiles in Russian and America s less today than 15 or 20 years ago when Jonathan Schell’s “The Fate of the Earth” saw catastrophe on the horizon and a real possibility of giving the earth back to the insects and grasses, just to quote straight out of the site. Yup, that’s fine. We don’t have a word in it, and can we change it! We use our bucks on weapons instead of social programs. The world is getting dumber, and world is put behind the weapons. Intelligence is overrated. Seriously.

And then we go straight on military means and thinking as a way of resolving political problems. In my dictionary, it states the word “war” as either “to wage or carry on warfare”, or “to be in a state of hostility or rivalry; contend”. Well, I can’t see why the word “obviating” is so frightening. We always hear about the talkies, but we never hear about the walkies. Fear is a heavy word.

World Problem number Eight is genocides in Africa, Indo-China, Tibet, Europe, North America. Again, I aim for the word fear, even as heavy as I statenessesit! Powerful, powerful, what can you say. At least, what can you do.

The ninth problem is saying something about racism, sexism, hatred of homosexuals, anti-Semitism. Again, I say fear. And fear comes in many shapes and sizes, you bet your dimes at it! We can go on with long lists of biological chatties and theories, and we can go on with our own theories. That’s fair, me thunkz. That’s what great about hermeneutics, understand it from somebody else’s point of view. Even though there are tons of definitions around the subject, so who is the one that knows anyhow?

For the tenth! Rising expectations in third world countries. What does religion have to do with everything? Liberation theology? Roman Cathaholic? Okay, fine, we all love sociology, okay, to understand poverty, right? So, where did them wars go … philosophical hermeneutics ain’t that bad after all.

Almost on the go, and we aim for fundamentalism and narrowness, exclusivism, particularism, terrorism. Is it fear? Is it happiness? What is it, really? Of course, I agreedios, that is a big problem today, and we always complain about it, but who does it? Again, we state for fear. Fear is a reflection we have in our bodies, a mechanism in a lovely way to defend ourselves. Many shapes and sizes, choose yours.

Then we finally ended up on the last of the Twelve World Problem. We survived all the way down from here. Ethnic groups clinging to land, to resources, to sacred space. So can we control the problems the Israelis and Palestinians are having towards each other? No. I believe the Israelis bear along a heavy grudge in their throat for being without a country for nearly 2000 years. UN solved one problem, but created another one. Blame the shrimps, I say. Or?

Then the big question, I say, the reinforcement will be, buy yourself a cookie when you can! So. Can earth be saved? Is it so that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics will rescue every single individual on this planet? Or are we individuals with our own ways of thinking and judging ourselves? Do we have an answer, if we only cooperated and lived in a happy-go-lucky kind of world? Or are we signle thinkers, living in an empty room of a world without colours. Is there really a black and white world out there? Who’s that? Saying that? Even five year olds ask the simplest questions for the goings. So. I bend my knees down to a level of a five year old. Then I ask. “Why?”. Simple question, even harder unanswered answers for your simple question.

I say, greens out.

Hello, world!

I owe you a pizza. Stay tuned.

World out.