I reasonated with the example of the mother gorilla extending the nursing time with her young. I noticed that with nursing my kids. They began eating food on their own at 6 months but I felt a stong urge to continue nursing. It was relaxing for me and avoided sexual advances- unconscious motivations?
As always, great article. As a therapist is speaks to some flaws in our understanding of human behavior. Psychotherapy was founded on fostering "insight." But over the years i've become less and less interested in insight. In fact, i think insight and understanding have been fetishized in the pursuit of mental wellbeing. It's counterproductive. It is not necessary to understand why your child is crying before providing compassion and support. In the same way, I am not sure it is necessary for individual to understand "why" we behave in counterproductive ways, before having compassion for themselves and the wider world.
How about old Mister Negative, Arthur Schopenhauer? One of his ideas in the early 1820s was ....first we have desires for something and then we make up reasons for wanting it.
"The intellect is merely the minister of the will, and its business is to seek out and produce motives for it".
First we desire something and then we rationalize those desires. Our desire bubbles up from our unconscious and then we use conscious reason to dress up our desire.
His Wille seemed more continuation of the species but that was back in the day when half your children died of natural causes before they reached twenty.Now? I dunno? Most kids reach twenty but we are still demonstrating our Wille?
You do have to wonder about older men demonstrating their fitness to mate with Lamborghini's, and MiLFs after their latest Brazilian butt lift?
I see a book in the making! Very concise. This is how an evolutionary perspective can be raised from bleak determinism into an affirmation of the possibility of increased positive agency.
I think we can see things too dualistically, but really we exist as something that functions as one unified totality, even if all is not transparent and there is inner conflict.
I also think that consciousness can provide experiences that, even if they can (maybe) be related to evolutionary strategies, achieve value in and of themselves. Take the example of the sanctity of life referred to. Lets call it preciousness more neutrally. These are actual experiences that people have and that come in many forms, and the very sense that this moment, this new life, this friendship, this esthetic experience, etc. are precious is self justifying and unselfish. It makes it so. And of course life sucks as long as you are in that place.
Without wanting to weigh in morally or politically here, in empathy I would add this as an experiential reason or intuition for a pro-life stance, different than a religious belief genuinely held, and that has its own implications for sexual behavior.
Great article. I am curious about your use of 'silly'. I don't think I've ever used that word in my life (except now). When you write: "It’s silly to stigmatize signaling. Or use it as a pejorative" I think: I might not dismiss or mock the person who labelled behavior as signalling but rather I surmise that they find the behvaior annoying. And why is so called 'signalling' so annoying? I'm hoping you can shed light. Thanks Rob.
My only counter example is very modest. I am retired, and on some days , never leave my house. But I still may wear a shirt I really like in terms of appearance - merely selecting it and seeing myself in it makes me happy. Some of this is perhaps pride or satisfaction - for much of my life I could not afford (in money or time) clothes I liked very much. But I think most of it is not.
As this article points out, here are all kinds of significant things that go on in our brains of which we are not conscious. But to refer to the sum of them as "the unconscious" somehow strikes me as a mistake. Maybe it's the definite article? Reification I think is the word for it, implying a unity that may not exist. There are many subconscious processes but no subconscious as such.
I'm not adamant about this. It's more like a hunch, or maybe a prejudice left over from my years of taking Freud seriously, who turns out to have been something of a fraud. Or Jung, wooly minded Jung, with his theory of archetypes. We can find patterns where they may not exist. We want to find patterns.
I reasonated with the example of the mother gorilla extending the nursing time with her young. I noticed that with nursing my kids. They began eating food on their own at 6 months but I felt a stong urge to continue nursing. It was relaxing for me and avoided sexual advances- unconscious motivations?
As always, great article. As a therapist is speaks to some flaws in our understanding of human behavior. Psychotherapy was founded on fostering "insight." But over the years i've become less and less interested in insight. In fact, i think insight and understanding have been fetishized in the pursuit of mental wellbeing. It's counterproductive. It is not necessary to understand why your child is crying before providing compassion and support. In the same way, I am not sure it is necessary for individual to understand "why" we behave in counterproductive ways, before having compassion for themselves and the wider world.
How about old Mister Negative, Arthur Schopenhauer? One of his ideas in the early 1820s was ....first we have desires for something and then we make up reasons for wanting it.
"The intellect is merely the minister of the will, and its business is to seek out and produce motives for it".
First we desire something and then we rationalize those desires. Our desire bubbles up from our unconscious and then we use conscious reason to dress up our desire.
His Wille seemed more continuation of the species but that was back in the day when half your children died of natural causes before they reached twenty.Now? I dunno? Most kids reach twenty but we are still demonstrating our Wille?
You do have to wonder about older men demonstrating their fitness to mate with Lamborghini's, and MiLFs after their latest Brazilian butt lift?
I see a book in the making! Very concise. This is how an evolutionary perspective can be raised from bleak determinism into an affirmation of the possibility of increased positive agency.
I think we can see things too dualistically, but really we exist as something that functions as one unified totality, even if all is not transparent and there is inner conflict.
I also think that consciousness can provide experiences that, even if they can (maybe) be related to evolutionary strategies, achieve value in and of themselves. Take the example of the sanctity of life referred to. Lets call it preciousness more neutrally. These are actual experiences that people have and that come in many forms, and the very sense that this moment, this new life, this friendship, this esthetic experience, etc. are precious is self justifying and unselfish. It makes it so. And of course life sucks as long as you are in that place.
Without wanting to weigh in morally or politically here, in empathy I would add this as an experiential reason or intuition for a pro-life stance, different than a religious belief genuinely held, and that has its own implications for sexual behavior.
Great article. I am curious about your use of 'silly'. I don't think I've ever used that word in my life (except now). When you write: "It’s silly to stigmatize signaling. Or use it as a pejorative" I think: I might not dismiss or mock the person who labelled behavior as signalling but rather I surmise that they find the behvaior annoying. And why is so called 'signalling' so annoying? I'm hoping you can shed light. Thanks Rob.
So that's why I've been drifting through life in a daze!😂
My only counter example is very modest. I am retired, and on some days , never leave my house. But I still may wear a shirt I really like in terms of appearance - merely selecting it and seeing myself in it makes me happy. Some of this is perhaps pride or satisfaction - for much of my life I could not afford (in money or time) clothes I liked very much. But I think most of it is not.
As this article points out, here are all kinds of significant things that go on in our brains of which we are not conscious. But to refer to the sum of them as "the unconscious" somehow strikes me as a mistake. Maybe it's the definite article? Reification I think is the word for it, implying a unity that may not exist. There are many subconscious processes but no subconscious as such.
I'm not adamant about this. It's more like a hunch, or maybe a prejudice left over from my years of taking Freud seriously, who turns out to have been something of a fraud. Or Jung, wooly minded Jung, with his theory of archetypes. We can find patterns where they may not exist. We want to find patterns.