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.