#socilogy

There is an unspeakably primordial calculator, deep within you, at the very foundation of your brain, far below your thoughts and feelings. It monitors exactly where you are positioned in society— on a scale of one to ten, for the sake of argument. If you’re a number one, the highest level of status, you’re an overwhelming success. If you’re male, you have preferential access to the best places to live and the highest-quality food. People compete to do you favours. You have limitless opportunity for romantic and sexual contact. You are a successful lobster, and the most desirable females line up and vie for your attention. 

If you’re female, you have access to many high-quality suitors: tall, strong and symmetrical; creative, reliable, honest and generous. And, like your dominant male counterpart, you will compete ferociously, even pitilessly, to maintain or improve your position in the equally competitive female mating hierarchy. Although you are less likely to use physical aggression to do so, there are many effective verbal tricks and strategies at your disposal, including the disparaging of opponents, and you may well be expert at their use. 

If you are a low-status ten, by contrast, male or female, you have nowhere to live (or nowhere good). Your food is terrible, when you’re not going hungry. You’re in poor physical and mental condition. You’re of minimal romantic interest to anyone, unless they are as desperate as you. You are more likely to fall ill, age rapidly, and die young, with few, if any, to mourn you. Even money itself may prove of little use. You won’t know how to use it, because it is difficult to use money properly, particularly if you are unfamiliar with it. Money will make you liable to the dangerous temptations of drugs and alcohol, which are much more rewarding if you have been deprived of pleasure for a long period. Money will also make you a target for predators and psychopaths, who thrive on exploiting those who exist on the lower rungs of society. The bottom of the dominance hierarchy is a terrible, dangerous place to be. 

The ancient part of your brain specialized for assessing dominance watches how you are treated by other people. On that evidence, it renders a determination of your value and assigns you a status. If you are judged by your peers as of little worth, the counter restricts serotonin availability. That makes you much more physically and psychologically reactive to any circumstance or event that might produce emotion, particularly if it is negative. You need that reactivity. Emergencies are common at the bottom, and you must be ready to survive. 

Unfortunately, that physical hyper-response, that constant alertness, burns up a lot of precious energy and physical resources. This response is really what everyone calls stress, and it is by no means only or even primarily psychological. It’s a reflection of the genuine constraints of unfortunate circumstances. When operating at the bottom, the ancient brain counter assumes that even the smallest unexpected impediment might produce an uncontrollable chain of negative events, which will have to be handled alone, as useful friends are rare indeed, on society’s fringes. You will therefore continually sacrifice what you could otherwise physically store for the future, using it up on heightened readiness and the possibility of immediate panicked action in the present. When you don’t know what to do, you must be prepared to do anything and everything, in case it becomes necessary. You’re sitting in your car with the gas and brake pedals both punched to the mat. Too much of that and everything falls apart. The ancient counter will even shut down your immune system, expending the energy and resources required for future health now, during the crises of the present. It will render you impulsive, so that you will jump, for example, at any short-term mating opportunities, or any possibilities of pleasure, no matter how sub-par, disgraceful or illegal. It will leave you far more likely to live, or die, carelessly, for a rare opportunity at pleasure, when it manifests itself. The physical demands of emergency preparedness will wear you down in every way.

 If you have a high status, on the other hand, the counter’s cold, pre-reptilian mechanics assume that your niche is secure, productive and safe, and that you are well buttressed with social support. It thinks the chance that something will damage you is low and can be safely discounted. Change might be opportunity, instead of disaster. The serotonin flows plentifully. This renders you confident and calm, standing tall and straight, and much less on constant alert. Because your position is secure, the future is likely to be good for you. It’s worthwhile to think in the long term and plan for a better tomorrow. You don’t need to grasp impulsively at whatever crumbs come your way, because you can realistically expect good things to remain available. You can delay gratification, without forgoing it forever. You can afford to be a reliable and thoughtful citizen.

Danke sagen ist leichter zu vergessen als bitte. Bitte: vergiß das nicht, danke.

  by Esther O'Reilly

Isn’t it telling how criticism of JBP is all too often ad hominem attacks on his personality or the perceived defects of the people who benefit from his teachings? Nobody ever talks about his ideas. Teachings like “Life is bounded by suffering and malevolence and the only antidote is meaning, which is found through responsibility.” That’s something most people wouldn’t figure out on their own. Here’s a longer version:

“…Aim at something that’s worth aiming at. And how do you determine what’s worth aiming at?

Well you think: Okay, here I have my miserable, wretched life. Under what conditions would it justify itself, as far as I’m concerned, personally?

So you think. What sort of future would I have to have so that I could say ‘This is worth it.’? And that’s what you aim for.

And technically that works in part because we know most of the systems that mediate positive emotion in human beings. And so those would be the dopaminergic systems that have their roots in the hypothalamic exploratory centres…are activated in relationship to pursuit of a goal, not as a consequence of attaining something.”

My Brain exploded! One more:

Harland April 12, 2019

“If you stand up against the radical left, you’re in a group that also has Nazis in it. Because the Nazis also stand up against the radical left. So it’s perfectly reasonable, from a strategic perspective, for the radical left to say, “you’re against us, how do we know you’re not a Nazi?” Well, statistically, I’m probably not. But you could say at least the question is open. It’s motivated epithet slinging, because if I’m reasonable, and I’m standing up against the radical left, and they admit I’m reasonable, then there has to be an admission that reasonable people could stand up against the radical left, which kind of implies that the radical left isn’t that reasonable. And so they’re not going to go there. Of course, they’re not reasonable. They’re unreasonable beyond belief, as we saw with the situation with Lindsay Shepherd in Canada.” — Dr. Jordan Peterson

Van Gennep, who coined the term liminality, published in 1906 his 'Rites de Passage', a work that explores and develops the concept of liminality in the context of rituals in small-scale societies. Van Gennep began his book by identifying the various categories of rites. He distinguished between those that result in a change of status for an individual or social group, and those that signify transitions in the passage of time. In doing so, he placed a particular emphasis on rites of passage, and claimed that "such rituals marking, helping, or celebrating individual or collective passages through the cycle of life or of nature exist in every culture, and share a specific three-fold sequential structure".[8]

This three-fold structure, as established by van Gennep, is made up of the following components:[9]

preliminal rites (or rites of separation): This stage involves a metaphorical "death", as the initiate is forced to leave something behind by breaking with previous practices and routines.

liminal rites (or transition rites): Two characteristics are essential to these rites. First, the rite "must follow a strictly prescribed sequence, where everybody knows what to do and how".[10] Second, everything must be done "under the authority of a master of ceremonies".[11] The destructive nature of this rite allows for considerable changes to be made to the identity of the initiand. This middle stage (when the transition takes place) "implies an actual passing through the threshold that marks the boundary between two phases, and the term 'liminality' was introduced in order to characterize this passage."[12]

postliminal rites (or rites of incorporation): During this stage, the initiand is re-incorporated into society with a new identity, as a "new" being.

My undergraduates come to university thinking they are extremely smart as they can do differential equations and understand the use of split infinitives. But I point out to them that almost anyone walking down the street has the capacity to hold the moral and ethical dilemmas of at least five soap operas in their head at any one time. And that is what being smart really means. It is the detailed knowledge of society and the need to track and control the ever changing relationship between people around us that has created our huge complex brain.