“. . . AND GULLIVER RETURNS”
--In Search of Utopia--
BOOK 6--SMASHWORDS EDITION
Lemuel Gulliver XVI as told to Jacqueline Slow
© 2010 ISBN978-0-9823076-0-1
Dear friends—Obviously I wrote this series to be read from Book 1 to the end, but silly me! Readers often begin with what sounds interesting to them. This may leave them unaware of the characters, my friends and I. So let me introduce us. We were boyhood friends, as wild and as close as geese heading south for the winter. But our university educations split us philosophically like a drop of quicksilver hitting the floor. But like those balls of mercury, when brought together, they again become one. As have we.
Ray
became a Catholic priest and moved far to the right of where our
teenage liberalism had bound us. Ray calls himself a
neo-conservative. We think he is a reactionary.
Lee
slid to the left of our adolescent leanings, and somewhere along the
line became an atheist. Lee is a lawyer.
Concannon,
Con for short, retired from his very successful business. I guess his
business experience moved him a bit to the right, to conservatism—a
conservative just to the right of the middle.
Then
there’s me. I think I’m pretty much a middle of the roader—except
for my passion to save our planet by reducing our population before
global warming, massive poverty and far-reaching famines decimate our
humanity. Hope this introduction makes our discussions make a bit
more sense.
By the way, as most of you know, we have put our photos before every bit of dialogue. This should make you more familiar with us. So the books read more like plays. Since most of you read the books in PDF or EPUB format it is no problem. But if you read them in RTF or TXT you will probably lose the photos. This will make the transitions of the conversations more difficult to follow. LG
Table of Contents
Meeting Dr. Chan
Motivation—our reasons for doing
Freud–and the need for pleasure
The power drive
The need for love
Combinations of needs and drives
Nature or nurture
Freud and sex
Maslow’s characteristics of self-actualizing people
Power as a motivating force
Power and success as primary drives
Power over
Violence as power
War and conquering
Power in sports
Power and terrorism
Cruelty
Power and sex
Gender and power
Power in sexual harassment and abuse in sport
Power and religion
Power through social traditions sanctified by religions
Other illustrations of power
Addressing the power drive in education
To be human we must be able to love
Psychological intimacy
What is love
The kinds of love
The need for love
The development of love
The ingredients of love
Power over and power to
Loving—the continuum
Finding meaning in our lives
Hypothetical structure of our minds
Adjustments—rational and irrational
Attack and retreat
Adjusting to stress
Normal and abnormal behavior
Stress and adjustments
Some common patterns of adjusting
Attacking—the fighting approach
Types of attacking behavior
Types of withdrawing behavior—the fleeing approach
Forgetting reality
Distorting reality
Atoning for reality
Retreating from reality
Neurosis
Psychosis
How it affects parent licensing
How it affects our education
The path to mental health and its resulting happiness
Setting goals
Contentment and happiness
The capacity to be happy
notes
Meeting Dr. Chan
—“Good
morning gentlemen. I want to introduce you to Dr. Chuck Chan. He is a
professor of social psychology at our university.”
—“Glad
to meet you Dr. Chan. Wanda Wang suggested that we meet you when we
were in Singaling.”
—“Glad
to meet you all. Please just call me Chuck. I know you have spent
some time with Dr. Wang in Kino. She is a delightful lady. Wanda and
I go way back. We got our doctorates at the same time at your alma
mater Commander. Of course I was in psychology and she was in
philosophy but we knew each other socially. Then I got a ‘post doc’
at Stanford and she got one at Berkeley. Nowadays we are often put on
the same podium to debate our beliefs, my realistic belief in the
basic psychological drives that motivate us and her idealistic
concepts of ethics as higher level motivations. We do come close when
my ideas of power intertwine with her ideas of self-centered
motivations. The difference, of course is that I believe that most
people react into their behaviors and she believes that we can think
our way into our behavior. I would certainly like to believe her, but
the evidence points to the fact that we are psychological, not
logical.
“As you have probably heard, that’s why we psychologists study our field—to throw suspicion off ourselves.
“We are afraid we won’t be seen as logical. People are more likely to do something from a psychological need for power, then rationalize their actions based on the assumptions that Wanda talks about. I may have an inferiority complex, as probably we all do in varying degrees. I then may hit or kill someone who is less powerful than I am. I feel good. My rationalization for why I did it may be societal, ‘he is in a different gang.’ It may be God based, ‘he is in a different religious belief system’. It might even be self-centered, ‘I want to get into a gang.’ Or perhaps it’s greed, I wanted his watch or his money. The general lack of reasoning ability in our human race is sad, when we all think we are thinking, but we are generally just reacting. As Napoleon said, we have to laugh at ourselves to avoid crying for ourselves.
“Wanda told me about your diverse group of lifelong friends. She said you had some very interesting discussions about values. Now we are going to discuss another source of our motivations.”
—“Right.
Hopefully with your psychological input and her ideas on values we
can get a better handle on what makes people tick.
“You mentioned Stanford. Lee, here, is a Stanford man. I wonder if you are as liberal as he is. Ray is a priest and a graduate of Notre Dame. Con and I are UCLA grads.
“Having now looked at my own country, along with Kino and Singaling I wonder what it is that motivates us to behave as we do--to accept or reject such very different values, to accept or reject the leadership of the society, to accept or reject the lifestyles lived by our parents.
“As I have said, on my voyage I was able to read the works of the great, and not so great, intellectuals of our race. It now gives me cause to consider some of the psychological theories that may explain why we behave as we do. My reading and thinking do not give me such certainty that I can put all of us humans into one mold. Indeed, it appears that there are quite different drives and needs that motivate us. My guess is that we are not all robots who can be programmed by behaviorist planning --like so many rats in a maze.
“Oh, if I only had infinite knowledge and could tell the world my plan! But, unfortunately, I do not. I have neither an infinite mind nor infinite knowledge so I cannot approach certainty. My only hope is to clarify in my own mind what I have read and apply that to what I have experienced.”
--“Throughout
the ages, many sages have written about who and what we are, it took
the beginnings of psychology to begin to focus seriously on our
motivations. Just as the great religious leaders seem to be climbing
the same mountain from different sides, the astute psychologists seem
to be analyzing our similar behaviors only through slightly different
sets of spectacles. Each recognizes similarities in our
functions--but each emphasizes a different part. So Sigmund Freud saw
pleasure as the major driving force and found that any drive for
power we might have, which he called sublimation, is only a small
part of the pleasure drive. Alfred Adler, as you know, was an early
colleague of Sigmund. He found that power was the major drive, and
sex or pleasure was merely a part of the power drive.
“So let’s first acknowledge that most thinking people assume that everyone thinks like they do. They’re wrong. Genetics, neurotransmitters, hormones and our environments affect our thinking. Recognizing that, let’s see what I can do to help you. I’ll have to warn you that I try to go back to the basics as much as I can. There are so many theories in psychology about what motivates us, how we learn and how we perceive things that I don’t want to confuse you. I could probably start at a hundred different points, but let’s go back in history a bit. You know that Sigmund Freud popularized the idea that we have an unconscious part of our mind.
“I think we all agree that we have a conscious mind, at least mentally healthy people know what’s going on around them and what they are thinking. Mentally ill people don’t experience the same things in their conscious minds that most of us do. They may hear voices or experience their reality in quite different ways than the rest of us. Their ‘reality’ may be a product of a brain malfunction or maybe they just learned a different reality at some time in their lives.
“The brain malfunction is one thing. Learning a mentally unhealthy approach to life is quite different. The motivations for these people may be the same as for mentally healthy people, they just behave anti-socially. We’ll come back to this kind of behavior later.
“So let’s start our look at motivation with Freud. His classic theory was that our natural impulses often lead us to behave in ways that society doesn’t approve of. So society and religion develop a conscience in us to tell us not to do the naughty things that our instincts tell us to do. Then the free part of our conscious mind has to wrestle with how we are going to behave-- by choosing between our conscience and our more basic sensual pleasures.
“As you know, one of the basic questions in psychology, anthropology and philosophy is whether humans have instincts. It is clear that animals have them. But if we are going to operate with the religious and philosophical ideas that we have free will, we become responsible for our actions. If we are mono-theistically religious we can choose the way of God and if we act in accordance with His laws we can spend eternity with Him. If we have instincts we can’t be blamed for not following the path that some people say God has commanded.
“A powerful example of animal instincts was shown in the work of Eugene Marais. I’m sure you have seen examples of the nests of the weaver birds in Africa. These small finches build a large tear drop shaped nest with complicated knots holding the twigs and hairs of the nest in place. Marais took some of these finch eggs and removed them from their environment and had them hatched by canaries. When the new finches were born they were not exposed to any of the building materials common to their species. When they mated their eggs were removed and again hatched by canaries. He did this for four generations during which there was no contact with their parents, with nests, or with nest building materials. After the fourth generation Marais allowed the new birds access to the traditional nest building materials. To his surprise they built identical nests with identical knots to those of their great-great-grand birdies. (1)
“It seems that instincts are much stronger as we climb down the evolutionary ladder. Does that mean that humans don’t have any? It’s doubtful that we have shaken off every instinctual gene in our march toward free will! When you realize that our genetic make up is 98.77% that same as a chimpanzee and about 60% the same as a chicken, we would have to assume that we have some instincts.
“Psychologists, philosophers, historians and sociologists have all wrestled with the questions relating to ‘why we are who we are.’ Do our genes predispose us to a certain type of personality? Is it our families and neighborhoods, our environment, that is the all determining factor? Or, more likely, is it a combination of the two? To what degree are we limited or driven by our instincts, our heredity or by our environment?
“Are we basically violent beings as some anthropologists assert? Or are we primarily peaceful, loving beings, as some humanists believe? Is the fulfillment of pleasure, like sex, our basic drive or are we driven to find higher meanings in life? Serious students of human nature have expressed each of these theories.
“Perhaps by understanding some of the various psychological theories of personality we can better understand and direct our thinking and actions. Perhaps such knowledge can give us better control over our own lives. The more we know about ourselves, the better we can control our own destinies. This is what much of science and most of education is all about. If we can get a better grasp of the appropriate sciences and develop an appropriate set of values we can have healthier and happier citizens and a more nourishing society—then we can live more positively.
“With ten billion brain cells it doesn’t take much imagination to think that we might be directed somewhat by heredity, somewhat by what has happened to us in the past and somewhat by our present day thinking. I assume you are aware of the brain imaging work by neuroscientists that shows that our emotions are more important in making decisions than is our intellect. How much of those emotions are the result of our unconscious memories? This needs to be studied. But we often fear knowledge because it jars us from the ruts that guide the routine of our lives. If we are rational animals, there is little evidence for it.
“Do we have free will? The philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell said that if he knew all the laws of the universe and everything that had happened up until now, he could predict without error what would happen in the future. So one of the West’s great minds believed that we are merely going through the motions of living. It parallels the religious thinking of John Calvin-- that we are predestined for heaven or hell, because God knows what will happen. Yes, Father Ray.”
—“But
doesn’t Russell’s thinking refute his theory? Did his atheistic
beliefs and his mathematical genius grow from the input of his
environment? It would seem that his materialism is quite counter to
the religious beliefs of his society. And how did his mathematical
ability transcend that of his professors? I find it impossible to
accept the Godless materialism that has made some small inroads into
our traditions. And I cannot accept the instinct inspired ideas that
we are merely animals. It is obvious to me that we have free will. I
just look back at my life experiences and I see people making
conscious choices.”
—“Well
Ray, we like to think that we can think for ourselves and our quest
for a religious afterlife and our civil laws are based on that
premise. But is it true? Some say what we consider to be free will is
merely an illusion. Some research shows that we are
determined—determined by our genes and our past experiences. Many
studies have shown that the unconscious mind determines how we will
act, then the conscious mind does it—thinking that it made the
decision itself. Other research seems to indicate that some things
occur randomly. But then maybe we believe it because people deny that
they don’t have control over their behavior, except in court then
they are looking for excuses for their anti-social actions.
“New brain imaging is giving us pictures of how the brain will react. Imaging often shows us that the brain will react in ways quite different from the logical rules that we think of as our unique human ability. The limbic system in the brain often takes priority over the logical section of the brain. This has an effect on our buying habits, our preferences for films and television programs, and many of our daily choices. So there are many factors that may motivate us—and most of them are probably not consciously decided. But we hope that as we become more humanized we are more able to think for ourselves.
“Studies in Germany show that people’s unconscious minds have made their decision before the intellect or the conscious mind thinks it has decided, since the unconscious mind can make a decision up to ten seconds before the conscious mind thinks it has decided. Does this kill or cripple our idea of free will? For the religious, does it reinforce John Calvin’s ideas? For most religious people, does it make them question the scriptural mandate that they have the ability to make moral decisions freely and correctly.
“I think that many who have become atheists or agnostics have actually thought their way into their new beliefs because their thinking has taken them away from the belief system in which they were raised. By the same token, have people who were raised without religion but then converted also used some free will in so doing? Yes Lee.”
--“As
an atheist, I would like to think that we have all followed the lane
of logic to arrive at our new beliefs. But I have seen people who
have rejected religion only because it interfered with their pleasure
driven behavior. So I think some have rationalized their way to their
atheism rather than reasoned their way.”
—“Good
point, Lee. That illustrates the problems we encounter when we look
at our motivations and our behavior.
MOTIVATION--OUR REASONS FOR DOING
“For most of us, our real motivations determine what we do—our behavior. That behavior may be the result of brain injuries that we can’t control. It may be the result of factors in our unconscious minds that we are not consciously aware of. Popularizing this idea was perhaps Freud’s greatest contribution to the theories of psychology. As an example, perhaps a person was beaten or ignored as a child. He doesn’t remember any of it, but he behaves over-aggressively toward others. Or perhaps he withdraws from human contact. In either case he doesn’t know why. But since we can’t do an instant psychoanalysis on people with problems, we will have to limit ourselves to trying to understand with our conscious minds what might be influencing us and others.
“Our behavior is directed by a combination of conscious and unconscious forces, such as psychological drives and needs, values, and the pressures of society to adjust—or bust. These are very much intertwined. A psychological need for power may be directed by one society to make you holier and more saintly than others. In another society it might be to make you the most violent warrior. We need only look at the various sects of every religion to see how the spectrum of holiness varies from an individual union with the Almighty through a mystical experience, through the religion of compassion and love for all humanity, and to the religious militarism that seeks to annihilate all who do not have the true faith—even those who are members of their same religion but do not share all of the same ‘truths.’
“Most of don’t want to believe it but we are psychological—not logical. The common beliefs in spirits, gods, or in a supreme being satisfies a deep psychological need for meaning in our lives and they give us answers to the unanswerable and enduring questions of living, of nature and of the ultimate meaning of life.”
—“Is
there an ultimate meaning of life?”
—“Don’t
you believe in Monday Night Football? What could be more meaningful?
But seriously, few people want to believe that this short trip
through time is all there is. We want to be able to cross the River
Styx, drink wine with Allah, live in the Happy Hunting Ground, cross
through the Pearly Gates, or enter Valhalla. We can’t think of our
own non-existence. We can think of ourselves lying in our graves with
the worms nibbling on our ribs—but we are still thinking of us as
existing. Most of us seem to need to have a vision of our future
being. Our basic need is to live—if we are mentally healthy. So if
God did not exist we would have to invent Him—or Her. And who
better than God to provide us with an existence after death that
surpasses our earthly life in every divine dimension.
“Having an afterlife is a nearly universal belief, but the experiences during that afterlife vary considerably. Do we go to heaven or hell? Do we experience nearly endless reincarnations? Do we become the revered ancestors of our progeny? Does that afterlife start immediately after death? After three days as in Zoroastrian belief? Not until Final Judgment Day? These utterly divergent ‘truths’ are each believed by millions. How remarkable are our minds to be able to conjure up so many absolute truths! And so with psychology! But with psychology we can start with evidence, like any science. But unlike the ‘hard’ sciences, our variables are nearly infinite. But not as infinite as the possibilities expressed by the many religions of the world.
“Our cultures, religions, secular philosophies, economic needs and blessings each influence our needs for and, our views of, an afterlife. The same influences seem to affect our concepts of being—and our reliance on faith and hope. Theologians have given us many ideas of what we are and what approaches to life we need to take to be happy. Philosophers have added to the mix. As have playwrights, poets, witch doctors, novelists and our next-door neighbors. These bouquets of speculative bubbles may give us certainties or suspicions. They may make us believers or skeptics.
“But in the last hundred years psychology has attempted to clear up the muddle through a scientific approach to understanding what it is to be human. But the social scientists don’t have the potential of certainty that a chemist or physicist has. When a hundred chemists gather to discuss the elements in water there is agreement that there are two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. When physicists measure the speed of sound there are few variables. But when a psychologist declares that we are driven by an instinct towards pleasure or a drive for power, and we find that their hypotheses are based on a relatively few interviews with Viennese neurotics in the early Twentieth Century, we may question the validity or the reliability of the universality of their pronouncements. Still, there may be some truth in their ideas. If Freud said that orgasms are pleasurable, it is difficult to counter his observation. If Adler said we need to overcome our feelings of inferiority, we can find ample evidence of that need in the West. But is it true among the natives of Oceania or Asia? Still, let us look for a while at some of the major early ideas of Western psychology.
FREUD--AND THE NEED FOR PLEASURE
“Let’s start with Freud. He was a medical doctor specializing in neurology. His association with people working in what might be called the fledgling field of psychology redirected his interests so that he began to study the motivations of people and the psychological nature of some diseases.
“As a scientist, Freud looked for a cause and effect relationship in behavior. As a doctor, the behavior that he saw was generally that of mentally ill people. So his theories may have been unduly influenced by abnormal motivations and behaviors.
“His theories assumed that there was a life force or libido which gave people the energy to move and behave. He realized that a force must have a direction. The powerful drive toward which our energy pushed us must be toward pleasure for humans are pleasure-seeking animals. He called the part of the mind that contained this powerful drive for pleasure the ‘id’, which is Latin for ‘it.’
“However he found that the drive for the immediate gratification of pleasure was often frustrated by the dictates of society and religion which gave us our laws, morals and customs. We might call this the conscience. Freud called it the ‘super ego,’ which is Latin for ‘higher than the self.’ This super ego attempted to keep the pleasure drives in check. But as these pleasure urges were frustrated, the individual could become neurotic. The part of the mind that had to make the decisions as to whether the id or the super ego would win was called the ego which is Latin for ‘self’ or ‘I’. You might visualize it as a ladder with the id on the bottom with its little pleasure urges climbing upward. But on the top of the ladder the morality of the conscience is climbing down attempting to frustrate the id’s upward climb. Then in the middle is you, or your ego, deciding whether you will give in to the urges or do what your religion or your society tells you is best.
“Freud further believed that people of different ages satisfied their pleasures differently. The infant's greatest pleasures were found in the mouth, in sucking and eating. This was called the oral stage of sexual development. At around age 1 to 2, the pleasure or sexual center moved to the anal area. The child's greatest joys and feelings of accomplishment were found in defecating, urinating, or in withholding these excrements.
“The next stage he called the ‘phallic’ stage. It is at this stage that Freud believed that the sexual desires first emerged. Freud believed that children, by about age 3, become aware of sex differences and become attracted to the parent of the opposite sex while developing a jealousy and hatred of the same sex parent. This hatred then becomes repressed, which causes psychological problems. In boys this is often called the Oedipus complex, in girls, the Electra situation. Both of these ideas come to us from the ancient Greek poets and playwrights who told the stories of Oedipus unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother and of Electra’s mother and her lover killing Electra’s father, leaving her to be occupied by her father’s memory.
The latent stage follows. In this stage the child is attempting to work through the sexual desires by repressing them and making many ‘same sex’ friends. The adult stage is centered in the genitals. Interest is more directed toward people of the opposite sex. Sexual intercourse would be the ultimate gratification of this pleasure center.
“It can be readily seen why society had to repress the urges of the pleasure driven id by developing the super ego. In the oral stage parents must repress the urge to eat poisons, worms, and pennies. The anal stage needs to be repressed or there will be messy brown and yellow spots all over the kindergarten. And the adult genital urges need to be repressed or there will be rampant sexually transmitted disease and an increase in children born out of wedlock.
“Freud believed that the drive for pleasure, mainly sexual pleasure, was primary. He was not aware of the ‘pleasure center’ in the brain--the medial forebrain bundle. It is here that the major effects of orgasm are centered. Modern biochemistry has also found that cocaine and its analogues also stimulate this area of the brain. Then later research found that pleasure also stimulated the brain stem, the more primitive area at the top of the spinal column and some nearby areas. So it is conceivable that Freud's psycho-sexual theory may have a strong biological basis of which he was not aware.”
—“I
think there’s a lot to that pleasure drive. Most of the men I know
complain that after marriage they don’t get as much sex as they
want. It seems that mothers tell their daughters that the way to a
man’s heart is through his stomach. If fathers were asked they
would name the organ several inches lower as the path to a man’s
heart. Women know this when they are dating, but often forget it when
the ‘I do’ eventually becomes ‘I don’t.’
“I wonder if Freud would have taken the same approach to his science if he had been around today. Remember he’s been dead for nearly a hundred years. If he had the MRI and the other neuroscience tools available to scientists today I would guess that his research would have taken a different path and his theories would have been either strengthened or abandoned based on modern neuroscience. But there is no question that his insights were critical to Western thinking. He was one of the great minds of our history.”
—“Right
Lee. I would guess that if he were researching today he would have
been looking for a biological basis for our unconscious minds. He
would probably be stimulating different areas of the brain to elicit
thoughts and emotions that have been hidden in the dark caves of our
brains as our minds have moved on to wrestle with the present. Have
we really forgotten so many things or do our ten billion brain cells
merely hide many of our experiences so they don’t confuse us in our
day-to-day living?”
—“Probably
if we remembered every single thing that has happened to us every
daily decision would require thousands of considerations based on our
previous experiences. That’s probably why we have better
‘forgeteries’ than memories!
“But Chuck, I see much more truth in the power drive idea of Alfred Adler. Orgasms are great, but I think our more important memories are far more often in the areas of power, love and meaning accomplishments.”
—“Well
Lee, Freud did allow for power. He said that we could sublimate our
drive for pleasure and use its powers to accomplish other things.
Still when Adler saw power as the main motivating force Freud didn’t
like that it conflicted with his primary thesis so they parted ways
in 1911 and never met again. They disagreed on a number of things,
like the role of instincts and unconscious drives in controlling our
behavior. Yes, Con.”
—“Briefly,
for my own sense of clarity, I see Freud's concept of libido to be
much more important than I did when I was in college. The work of
psychologist John Olds on the medial forebrain bundle, a pleasure
center of the brain, really intrigued me. In searching for the
functions which the lower levels of the brain control, he put an
electrode into the front part of the hypothalamus of his lab animals.
The hypothalamus controls a great many body functions, such as body
temperature, sleep, hunger, and the development of secondary sex
characteristics. But the front part of that organ, the medial
forebrain bundle, is a bundle of nerves which, when activated, give
an orgasm--or something quite like it. This is the area of the brain
which feels the sexual orgasm. This is the area of the brain that
cocaine hits. No wonder people have found cocaine so addictive! You
get the orgasm but you don't have to go to dinner with it or kiss it
good night.”
—“There
are other parts of the brain that have also been associated with
pleasure or orgasms. There are also hormones released that give
additional pleasure feelings. You probably know this, but Olds
wondered just how strong a motivator was his new found toy. He
inserted electrodes into the rats’ pleasure centers then showed his
rats how to trip a switch and get an electric ‘high.’ Then he set
up an electrified grid that the animals had to run across in order to
get a reward. First he placed food on the far side of the grid from
the animal. Even when they starved they refused to cross the grid
because of the pain involved. When they got hungry they touched the
grid but decided the food wasn't worth the pain. Then he showed them
that if they crossed the grid they would get a shock to their medial
forebrain bundles. They couldn't wait. Someone else did a study with
chimps that were given cocaine whenever they tripped a switch. Then
the experimenter stopped giving the drug. The chimp hit the switch
over 1000 times before giving up trying for the cocaine. So an orgasm
is more important than food for rats and chimps.”
—“Heck,
I could have told him that! Those little critters are just like
people. My guess is that if Sigmund were with us today he would have
renamed his pleasure drive to the more physiological component--the
stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle. Certainly many people's
lives are directed toward exciting that organ through sex and
cocaine. It is indeed a powerful drive. “How can such a drive be
handled by the people of Singaling when they are not allowed teenage
sex or drugs? What is it that keeps them so contented. Certainly
people in my country need both. The media extol the joys and the
promises of sex and the street corner businessmen guarantee you
happiness when you buy their mind altering wares. And the marketing
of sex in books, movies, and television has shattered our Puritanical
roots to the core.
“So tell me now, which would you rather do, have a Freudian orgasm or sit in a God influenced church? If you are looking at the future the church may be the place to be, but we live in the ‘now’. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ That was the call of the Beatniks of the 50's, the hippies of the 60's, and the uncommitted of today.
“But too many of my countrymen have capitulated to the need for immediate ecstasy and wear blinders to the joys of tomorrow. Because of this we have slid backwards while Kino and Singaling have taken over the values which once made us great. This saddens me, but it was to be expected.
“All civilizations perish from within. They rise because of a common purpose and dynamic leadership, they stop growing when the individual selfishness of greed pulls down the necessary bulwarks of the culture--family, religion, and a dynamic purpose. Then they fall and are replaced by new dynamic societies whose citizens look to the future and work for their dreams.”
—“It’s
not all about sex, Lee. Studies at Vanderbilt University showed that,
at least in mice, aggression stimulates the brain’s reward system,
with neurotransmitter responses similar to those of sex and
chocolate. Is it that violence gives a positive brain response, or is
it more general—that every time we fulfill a real need our brain
reacts to it with chemical responses to match our mental
satisfaction. So when I feel good, does my brain respond positively
in response to my good feeling? Or does my brain respond with reward
responses to a situation, and that’s why I feel good. It is the old
chicken and egg dilemma.
“So in an orgasm we could guess that the brain reacts first so we feel good. But in a power drive satisfaction is it the confrontation or the successful accomplishment that stimulates the brain. Or another possibility is that different people react differently to aggression. On another track, when classical music releases endorphins is it because we enjoy it or do we enjoy it because of the release of endorphins. The same question can be asked of an exercise high. Does the exercise cause the high, which I would suspect, or does the enjoyment of the exercise cause the high?
“Our motivations can come from the inside, intrinsic, or the outside, extrinsic. If I do something that makes me happy because of my deep down desires, I am intrinsically motivated. If I accomplish something for such a reason I will feel satisfied and happy--and nobody else has to know about it to make me feel good. If I do something because of a reward or punishment from the outside it is extrinsic.”
--"I
enjoy the poetry that I write. But I've never shown it to anyone.
That is certainly an intrinsic joy.”
—“Right
Ray. Now gentlemen, let’s make a brief aside to our search for our
motivations. Our mental health is related in large part to how
effectively we satisfy our individual needs, drives and values. So
mental health can be evaluated, in part, by examining our
motivations. Why do we do what we do? Some thinkers, such as
Freud, believed that our motivations are inherited. Others, such as
B. F. Skinner and Alfred Adler, thought that our motivations are
based to a large degree on our environment.
The Power Drive
“Many of the people who have offered suggestions as to what motivates us have theorized that certain needs or drives direct our behavior. Freud felt that we are basically animals who are driven to seek pleasure. Adler believed that we are driven for power over our environment for superiority. He is backed up by such modern anthropologists as Conrad Lorenz and Desmond Morris. They see an aggressive nature in many of the higher apes and assume that humans may have these same primal urges.
The Need for Love
“Erich Fromm found our basic need to be that of overcoming our aloneness the need to love and be loved. He did not see the human being as a necessarily aggressive animal. Carl Jung found us to be seeking religious and moral values which were already deep within our minds. Viktor Frankl saw us as being in search of meaning in our lives. B. F. Skinner saw humans as primarily seeking rewards and avoiding punishment. And Albert Bandura sees the environment as the major way that people learn to be what they will be.
Combinations of Needs and Drives
“While there is some overlap in many of the above forces, there are also differences. Is it possible that many of us are motivated by several of these forces? For example, while Skinner might see social approval as an effective reward, Fromm might see social approval as an element of love. While Freud would see a sexual experience as the satisfaction of a basic drive, Adler might see it as an indication of power over another person-- an example of showing one's superiority. Skinner would say that it is not the hypothetical drive that is important, but the fact that it is a motivator of behavior. But others believe that there is a basic drive that motivates our healthy actions-- and that drive is all important.
“There is no question that we are all motivated to behave in ways specific to ourselves. Our needs, drives, values, and how we look at our genders, each play a role in making us what we are. All the while remember that each of us is different in our heredity, in the functioning or malfunctioning of our brain and in our perception of our world. What motivates each of us will therefore be somewhat different. As humans we are neither twins nor robots--we are individuals.
Nature or Nurture?
“This brings us to the question of whether our motivations are learned or inherited? As we have said, Freud thought that we inherited our basic drive for pleasure. Studies indicate that a great deal of our behavior can be attributed to our heredity,. Some criminal activity, some homosexual behavior, some personality traits have been strongly linked to the influence of our genes. There is also a great deal of animal research that points to the existence of instincts.
“We mentioned Robert Ardrey’s book ‘African Genesis’ in which he lays out a strong case for us inheriting an instinct for violence. If this is true it would be an instinct toward the power drive that Adler suggested. Desmond Morris, as an anthropologist, found similar instinctual traits. But Adler said that our need for power came mainly from our environment, because we had little control over it when we were young. It was mainly Freud who said we had instincts, but they were towards pleasure fulfillment, not towards violence. But Ardrey’s next book, titled ‘The Territorial Imperative’ indicated that in animals there is often a territorial imperative. The strongest ape, sea lion, antelope or other animal takes the most desirable spot. At Disneyland you may notice the two stags fighting on a hill with a doe looking on. The Freudian might see it as a fight for the doe. Ardrey and Adler would see it as a fight for the best territory, the hill. Whoever wins the hill will win the doe.
“Now we have evidence, at least from mice, that aggression gives a ‘high’ caused by the release of dopamine. This is similar to the highs experienced from some drugs, from sex, and from some foods. (1a) So our mammalian aggression may give us psychological ‘highs’ from warring, torturing and spouse and child beating.”
—“Wonder
if that explains the high we get when making a block or tackle in
football?”
—“Or
landing a left jab on our opponent’s chin in the boxing ring?”
—“Maybe
so. But never having been on a football field or in a boxing ring I
wouldn’t know. The closest I came to violence in my psychology
classes was in dissecting a flatworm or nearly drowning a white rat.
And neither gave me any orgasmic-like titillations. I guess I’m
more of a lover than a fighter! But seriously, it’s not just the
neurotransmitters that are involved, but also what area of the brain
they excite. If they excited the medial forebrain bundle on the
hypothalamus it could well have the effect of an orgasm or a cocaine
high.”
—“I
wonder if that explains the violence we see so commonly see in family
member abuse and in prisoner abuse and torture? When I was at
Stanford, Dr. Zimbardo, who was a psychologist, recruited a couple of
dozen male students for a two week study. He assigned some to be
prisoners and others to be guards. The guards were told to keep order
and make sure that no one escaped, but they were not to use violence.
By the second day some guards were hitting the prisoners with their
fists. Some of them made the prisoners do pushups, then they put
their feet on the prisoners. They often didn’t let the prisoners
sleep and they took away their blankets. Then they locked the
prisoners in dark rooms for long periods of time. Soon they stripped
some prisoners nude and made them simulate humiliating sex acts.
“The two week experiment was stopped after six days and some of the prisoners had already been released from the study because of strong negative stress reactions like crying and screaming. These reactions were caused by students at America’s most prestigious university by psychologically normal students.(2) Dr. Zimbardo’s conclusions were that it was the situation that was largely responsible for the way the guards reacted. The situation gave them the opportunity and the permission to do things they would never have dreamed of.
“In another university study students were told to administer electric shocks to others who were to learn word lists. Those doing the shocking were not aware that the people they were supposedly shocking were actually actors who were not really being shocked. When the actors feigned pain and the student ‘shockers’ were reticent to administer more shocks, the psychologist assured them that it was OK to hurt them. 60% of the shockers continued administering the punishment because a person in authority told them it was acceptable.(3) I guess that we shouldn’t be surprised when young Germans tortured and killed for Hitler, when young Chinese and Cambodians killed for Mao or Pol Pot, or even young Americans acting as they did in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Is it that the instinct for violence lashes out when the social restraints are removed? Is it that our need for power will take any road that leads to fulfillment? Is it that our inferiority complexes will seek any avenue that may lead to superiority? Is it that our values of right and wrong or of human rights are easily negated when a superior tells us that it is right to behave cruelly?
“Nobody believes that gangbangers think they are behaving ethically when they purposely shoot a two year old. Nobody believes that cheaters in school think they are doing as they should. No athlete believes that illegal holding or punching is within the spirit of the rules. But every one of these people has a power drive being fulfilled as the motivation for the trashing of values.”
—“In
the same line of thinking, initiations into clubs, fraternities or
sport teams may show the same kinds of power for the older members.
They may see it as good clean fun to humiliate the initiates, but it
is clear that it is the inferiority of the in-group members that
requires the neophytes to pass the childish tests of initiation.”
—“And
what about children teasing or taunting? The juvenile inferiorities
play out in all the simple and naïve obviousness of a cartoon.
Whether it be a toddling infant or a tottering grandpa, putting down
others to raise your own status is a cultural universal for the
immature.Is it human nature to try to be physically or
psychologically superior? Remember the story of the scorpion and the
turtle? When the scorpion asked the turtle to bring him across the
river, the turtle thought he was safe because there was no way that
the scorpion would kill himself through drowning. But he did sting
the turtle. As they sank the turtle asked why he killed them both.
The scorpion answered ‘because it is my nature.’
“If we have a human nature is it found in the animals from whence we have evolved? Do we have innate drives? Do we all have the same drives? Can education change those drives and raise our human natures? Homo sapiens seems to have eliminated a huge number of species of animals, along with the Neanderthals—and now homo sapiens has endangered itself.”
—“It
is exactly these kinds of behaviors that we work to eliminate early
in the lives of our Singaling children. When parents or teachers hear
or see an example of one feeling his inferiority, they step in
immediately to explain why making another person feel pain, mental or
physical, is not a loving thing to do and it doesn’t make them a
person with a higher status. Then later as they experience their
adolescent education we expose them, little by little, to the
atrocities that humans have perpetrated on others of their species.
But we teach them that anti-social mental and physical violence is
only a part of the power package.”
--“Chuck,
do you remember when our Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was
chided for dating beautiful women half his age? His retort was that
‘power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.’ So I guess its true from
mice to men. Get your power through politics, money, beauty or
celebrity and you’ll get enough sex!”
—“Generally
true, Con. Women have typically gained their power through physical
beauty, although that’s certainly not a universal. Eleanor
Roosevelt got hers from her brains, as did Marie Curie. But back to
Ardrey. He gives many examples of how male animals work to gain power
through physical superiority or owning an impressive territory. He
wrote about a type of bird that worked to make the most beautiful
nest. String, twigs, paper—all the things that girl birdies love.
If his nest was sufficiently attractive the females of the species
would fancy him and he could settle down to a year of nuzzling and
nesting.”
—“When
I got my Corvette in college I had my pick of the sorority girls. And
my buddy, with his penthouse overlooking the Santa Monica and Malibu
beaches has a harem-in-waiting. But it’s not just material goods.
Remember in high school all the cheerleaders were after Ray. He
didn’t even have a car. He was just so good lookin’ and such a
great athlete—I guess those are good sources of power for high
school kids.”
—“Lee,
I think you’re making that up. If it had happened I know I was much
more interested in catching a football than in pitching woo. I guess
my celibate life was pre-ordained!”
—“I
get the pun. I’m sure Thomas Aquinas is turning over in his grave
seeing you using language for frivolity rather than for philosophy.
But guys, let’s get serious again. Our mental environment is
undoubtedly important. What our culture expects, how we have been
treated, whether we have been praised or blamed, encouraged or
beaten, can each affect our motivations.”
—“We
can look at our environment from the perspectives of the past, the
present, and the future. I would just like to look at a few of the
drives and needs that are among the strong motivating forces that
some psychologists have found to be important to us. There is the
need to develop power in our lives and to overcome our inferiority
complexes. As we’ve said, Alfred Adler believed this. Then there is
the need to overcome our "aloneness" by being surrounded by
loving caring people, This was the concern of Erich Fromm. He felt
that the major need of modern humans was to be able to love--in the
broadest sense. Viktor Frankl developed the idea that we need to find
meaning in our lives and to be responsible for choosing and living
our values. As a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi death camp he saw that
some people gave up on life easily, others clung to life because they
had found meaning. The humanist Abraham Maslow had similar ideas.
Then there are the perceptions of our society, especially our
neighborhoods and the communications media, that influence us to make
decisions that direct our living. This is what is called the "social
cognitive" type of motivation. But many of these ‘social
cognitive’ decisions may be made based on the need for power or the
need to overcome ‘aloneness’ within one's social group.
“Being a socially concerned person, looking for the betterment of the society, and helping people, is seen as a major indication of mental health by many important psychologists. While Adler may have said it first, Fromm probably said it better. He believed that modern society has replaced deep human relationships with ‘separateness.’ Technology is one of the major culprits in changing our lifestyles for the worse. We, therefore, need to learn to love. This is not as simple a task as we would like to believe. The need to love, which Fromm saw, and the need for sex, that Freud identified, are poles apart--in fact, sometimes are diametrically opposed.
“A person's attempts to love are bound to fail, according to Fromm, ‘unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one's neighbor, without true humility, faith, and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement.’(4)
FREUD AND SEX
“Did Giacomo Casanova, the model for the legend of Don Juan, seduce so many women to show his power—were his exploits powered from a self-centered, self-love motivation. Was it really just searching for orgasm?
“Some species are prepared to die for sex. The preying mantis bites off the head of its male mate while copulating. The male red back spider is eaten by his mate after their date. Some salmon species, while not eating in their upstream trek, use up all their energy after mating and die. And a couple of humans have been shot by jealous mates when they have wandered, or have been caught wandering. Is it only the desire to reproduce or the desire for orgasms?
“In our human species we don’t need a partner for an orgasm. We can masturbate like many animals do. Is that why Abraham Maslow listed sex with the most basic of physiological needs?”
MASLOW'S CHARACTERISTICS OF SELF ACTUALIZING PEOPLE
–“Sorry
Chuck, I must have been asleep in my psych class when the professor
brought him up. Can you give me a bit of a background on him?”
—“Certainly
Con. Maslow started as a behaviorist, thinking that we can control
human behavior just as can control animals, with rewards and
punishments. As he matured, however, he became a humanist--thinking
that humans are quite different from others in the animal kingdom. He
looked at us as having several levels of motivations. As we satisfy
one level we are ready to go to the next stage in humanness. Many of
the ideas of others, like Freud and Adler, can be found at different
levels of Maslow's ‘hierarchy of needs.’
“Maslow wrote that the most basic drives are physiological. If we are not satisfied, our whole being pursues them. For example, if I am very hungry or very thirsty the desire to satisfy these basic needs will take precedence over any other desires I might have. Once these most basic needs are met my next need is safety. If I feel physically and emotionally safe I then would want love. If I am loved, the next most important need is esteem, such as the recognition of others. I can then pursue the highest human needs, those of ‘self actualization.’ These needs Maslow called the meta needs. ‘Meta’ is from the Greek word meaning ‘highest’
“The physiological need for air is accomplished without even thinking about it. We don't have to say to ourselves ‘inhale, exhale.’ It is done unconsciously. Hunger pangs develop unconsciously but our conscious mind picks up the signal and says, ‘I'm hungry.’ The erection of the penis or the lubrication of the vulva occur unconsciously, usually after the conscious mind says ‘I want to make love.’ We can see some similarities with Freud's ideas here.
“Whether they originate in the conscious or the unconscious mind, they express powerful needs. But even these needs have a priority. If I am being suffocated, my drive to get air will far surpass my drive to quench my thirst. And if I am very thirsty I am not going to think much about my desire for sex.
“The need for safety comes next up the hierarchy. If Tarzan has satisfied his needs for food and water he may build a tree house for his safety. However, if he is very hungry he may swim across a crocodile infested river to harvest a banana tree. An infant may seek the security of a parent's arms when encountering a threatening situation. A driver may buckle the shoulder strap because there is always the possibility of an auto accident.
I
have heardthat 80% of Italian men from 18 to 30 still live with their
parents. I guess there s a lot of safety and security in having mama
take care of you. When
do they start becoming responsible for themselves and the society?
Italy’s tight society and strong family security run counter to the
competitiveness needed in global economics. No need to fight dragons
when you are safe in your castle.
“That
would certainly thwart their power drive and leave their mothers in
control. From what I have seen they try to get their power drives
handed by braggadocio. Talk macho then go home to mama!
“But let’s talk about Maslow’s third step to mental health the need for love and affection can be met in the family, peer group, or in some other group in which emotional bonds are formed. The love need is aided by deep emotional ties. Maslow agrees with Fromm in his belief that a lack of love is the most commonly found reason for psychological maladjustment.
“Moving to the next level we find the esteem needs that relate to a person's feelings of self worth. If a person has been loved, it goes a long way towards helping to develop a feeling of selfrespect. If a person obtains the respect and praise of other people, especially when young, there is a good chance of developing an adequate feeling of self worth. We can see some of Adler's ideas here.
“The physiological, safety, love and esteem needs are called ‘basic needs’ by Maslow. These needs should be easily met in any civilized society. Sadly, the love and esteem needs are not met as often as would be desirable. But if these ‘basic needs’ are met the individual can go on to satisfy the ‘truly human needs’ or as Maslow called them ‘meta needs.’
“The meta needs include beauty, order, unity, justice, and goodness. When you successfully meet these needs you are ‘self actualizing’ or realizing your highest self. In his later work Maslow preferred the term becoming ‘fully human’ to the term ‘self actualization’ which he had used earlier.
“Maslow's investigations led him to believe that some people achieve at levels above what could be expected of them. They were not ‘conditioned’ to their behavior, as the behaviorists believe, rather they achieved in spite of their conditioning. The truly human being is one who does things rather than one who is ‘done to.’
“While many psychologists have looked at mental illness then developed their theories of what mental health should be, Maslow started by looking at mentally healthy people. He determined which people seemed to have their highest potentials realized, then he analyzed why they were healthy. These ideas about some people achieving at a ‘truly human’ level were initiated when Maslow decided to analyze two of his teachers. These two people held special places in his life. They were different. They were emotionally healthy. They were creative, happy and dynamic. After analyzing their characteristics, he began to look at other people who exhibited the highest human traits.
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