12.7.6 FLIGHT 93 MOVIE AND THOUGHTS
Notes: Just saw the Flight 93 movie on DVD. It was painful. I relived my experience of 911. I got up to go to work, sat in front of the TV, turned on CNN, and, saw the report that a small plane had just crashed into WTC. then the second plane, then the pentagon, and finally Flight 93. I watch the first WTC fall, and heard the screams of all the lives being instantly killed, on live TV. Then the second, more lives killed on live TV. Panic, fear set in.
And so we attacked Iraq, to get rid of Saddam… How crazy, I thought. Blind emotional rage. Somebody had to pay, Before that, Afghanistan… that seemed reasonable…. But Iraq? I was confused. Now three and one half years of gross government incompetence. Resulting in misery for all.
Why did this happen is the philosophical question I have struggled with. My thoughts are that folly, was the result of the greatest frailty of our genetic makeup.
Evolutionarily, our brain, is really composed of three parts, the primitive brain, first, the mid brain, and lastly evolved the cognitive modern brain…
So, how does that get us in trouble? It’s like this. Our first response to danger is the primitive brain,,, or another way of thinking, the emotional brain. This brain, is the fight or flight brain of rapid reaction to a perceived threat… also, the euphoria of the teen age first love… (So, the primitive brain is not all bad.)
There are many emotional responses: hate, lust, terror, , ecstasy, pathos progressing to bathos, etc etc. you can think of others, Anyway, These emotional reactions, are uncontrollable, The reaction is lightning fast, automatic.
Think of the emotional brain as no more advanced than that of the cockroach, which scurries across the kitchen floor in panic when one turn on the kitchen light. It’s true… just think about it. When a cockroach scurries, it is using the same brain that we are using when we react with out primitive brain. It reacts unthinking, it is the release of a cascade of automatic reaction we have no control over.
Keep in mind; it’s not all bad… think of the ecstasy of being smitten for the first time. (Like what happened to me when I first met my wife, Liz) And I’m still smitten.
Or the glow in first holding a newborn baby. That aint all-bad, is it?
Yet, the positive, also has the opposite negative reaction, hate, revenge, striking out without thought.
And that’s what happened after 911. We, and our nation struck out with negative consequences…irrational war with Iraq…. Before, we also struck out with war with Afghanistan… but in this case with hindsight, at this time, there was a rational cognitive reason for that action.
Our brain’s, later temporal response, is the slower cognitive response based on reason… you want to still alive. Still the right move, such as when one reacts to a fast moving car heading straight towards you, and you automatically turn the wheel to avoid the danger… wise decision retrospectively, Right… but sometimes, the rationality is not there, like the war with Iraq.
I remember sitting on the edge of my chair, yelling at Bush to act… In February, of 2003, because Dick Chaney, looked me in the eye and said, Saddam could have an atomic bomb, as early as May, 2003.
Yeah, even me was only reacting with my primitive cockroach brain.
We did not question anything? … (And if you are more interested, check out, the psychology of Cognitive Dissonance, An interesting concept that even though we know that smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema, we even deceive our cognitive brain and top it off use our rational brain to rationalize our smoking, that, it is not really THAT bad for you… And so, what, it serves, a purposed calming the nerves in a stressful situation of s shy person, at a party with unknown strangers…. Amazing… isn’t it. buts this illustrates the power, the hold, and permanents, the primitive brain holds us captive.
We even use our cognitive brain to rationalize the actions of the emotional brain.)
And this is what happened… the power and strength of the primitive brain, even overrules the slower reacting modern, cognitive brain… And hence, we have Iraq and it’s failures… with this reaction, we become wallowed and stuck in the tar pits of destruction through the development of HUBRIS…. The rational justification. Which only cements our invincible non-rational,… just plain stupid, thinking to destruction, not only to ourselves, but to all those whom we have power over.
Much of all human misery, thought out the history of man, can be explained with this concept. Think about it, just regular average German citizens…. and the response to the Holocaust. I say much, not all, since there are situations of misery wrought on us not related to this concept… think, the pain of losing your child by a serious fatal illness.
The point I want to make is this. The cognitive brain, the modern brain, has a tough job, it must use it resources not only to think rationally, but also to be aware that your rational brain may deceive you, to reinforce the emotional brain… think Cognitive Dissonance.
So, how does one react to this dilemma? Ask the question, can the rational cognitive brain, actually ever overcome the illogic of the emotional brain?
Can all we say is that all we have to do is to say, hey; don’t let the emotional brain overrule the cognitive brain… easy enough, right…?
Rather than me explain this farther, Sharon Begley, my favorite science writer, for the Wall Street Journal. Does an excellent job in trying to answer this and below, is a column she wrote recently, about another School of Psychology that is looking into this very issue.
See below.
You Might Help a Teen Avoid Dumb Behavior By Nurturing Intuition November 3, 2006; Page B1
As adolescents and young adults head into another weekend of (for many) driving too fast, drinking too much, smoking and doing their all to perpetuate the species, at least we know why they engage in self-destructive risk-taking. Adolescents feel invulnerable ("Me, get hurt? No way.") and drastically underestimate risks ("Come on, what are the chances of getting pregnant the first time -- 100 to 1?").
Except that they don't.
For 40 years both popular and scholarly wisdom have held that the reason adolescents court risk is twofold: They believe danger bounces off them and they low-ball the chances that it will bring harmful consequences. They have weighed the risk (low), taken stock of their resilience or skill or smarts (excellent) and made the "rational" decision to drag-race down Main Street while inebriated. This explanation implies that when teens do stupid things, it is for rational reasons.
There is a problem with this explanation. "Adolescents don't tend to underestimate the probability of major risks, nor [do they generally have] feelings of invulnerability," argues Keith Stanovich of the University of Toronto in the new issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
That is bad news for parents and schools that try to reduce teens' risk-taking with a rational, fact-based approach. You know the strategies: Tell them the facts about the likelihood of getting HIV/AIDS from unprotected sex and reason with them about why it's a bad idea to book a hotel room for prom night, and all will be well.
If kids know the odds, and have no illusions that they are immune from the laws of virology, however, this approach won't make a whit of difference. "Interventions stressing accurate risk perceptions are apt to be ineffective or backfire because young people already feel vulnerable and overestimate their risk," Valerie F. Reyna of Cornell University and Frank Farley of Temple University write in the journal. That these approaches are so popular, they say, shows that prevention programs are "not based on [scientific] evidence."
The evidence they offer, from 300 studies on adolescent risk-taking, strongly undercuts the conventional wisdom. National surveys show that adolescents typically overestimate risks of contracting HIV and lung cancer, of dying in a hurricane or earthquake, and every other risk they were asked to assess. Their guesstimate of the odds that they will die from crime, illness or accident in the next year or by age 20 is much higher than reality. In short, they don't see themselves as invulnerable, but "as more vulnerable than adults do," says Prof. Reyna.
Here's the rub: Teens tend to underestimate the bad consequences of risky behavior. They think, yeah, smoking will give me cancer (only 18% of teen smokers deny that most lifelong smokers die of a smoking-related disease), or unprotected sex will give me a sexually transmitted disease. But how bad can that be -- especially compared with the benefits of smoking or sex?
Social acceptance and the allure of rebellion right now outweigh the costs later. (Even adults, not to mention financiers, prefer immediate benefits to future ones.) Teaching teens to assess risks accurately won't decrease stupid behavior -- they're already pretty accurate at gauging the consequences. They just aren't much bothered by them. No wonder three million new cases of STDs are diagnosed in U.S. adolescents each year.
Young people are especially bad at resisting risk when they're with peers and when they make decisions on the spur of the moment. In these cases, the emotional brain hijacks the logical one, so knowing the numerical risk of driving drunk won't stop them. That information is suppressed.
What, then, might keep teens from doing dumb things?
Mature adults manage to avoid risky behavior not because they're better at conscious deliberation, the scientists say, but because they intuitively grasp dangers. They go with their gut. "As a result of knowledge, experience and insight, they grasp the essence, the gist, of a situation," says Prof. Reyna. "They don't stop and deliberate on the costs and benefits of risky behaviors."
Getting young people to do the same thing arguably holds more promise than improving their powers of deliberation. For one thing, that is limited by the fact that, until your mid-20s, the brain's frontal lobes are still maturing. Regions responsible for curbing impulsivity, thinking ahead and making sound decisions aren't necessarily up to the job. But grasping the gist is something even 18-year-olds can manage.
"Deliberately weighing costs and benefits often encourages risky behavior," says Prof. Reyna. "You have a better chance if you get teens to pick up, unconsciously, that a behavior is dangerous and intuitively avoid it."
She and colleagues are doing that in a continuing study of 800 teens. Through emotion-packed films and novels, they drum into kids' heads positive images of healthy behaviors and negative images of risky behavior (a benign version of how the doctors in "A Clockwork Orange" pair violent images with nausea). The idea is to make the thought of risky behavior reflexively trigger a no-go decision. All the evidence, as opposed to folk wisdom, says this is more likely to work than current tactics.
• You can email me at sciencejournal@wsj.com.
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Great article… isn’t it?
The gist of the article is that even the rational brain, cannot always abate the dangers of the rational brain… And the way, to sensitize the emotional brain, to emotinallly respond with retaining the emotional brain, to feel the pain of war by transference to one’s own emotional reaction… The mind is so complex, right!!!
Another classic in psychology, is William Sargent’s 1963 book, “The battle for the mind”, detailing the nature of brainwashing… that’s is thought conversion. The gist is that one becomes very susceptible to thought conversion, during any hyperemotional state, such as ecstasy, terror, etc. And it is only during this state that new ideas can be introduced into your brain… much akin, to Begley’s article… on reprogramming the emotional brain.
Sargents relates the story of Kim, by Kipling… and how Kim avoided the thought conversion of the svengali, by not becoming emotionally involved, hence knowingly, being brainwashed, but without cognizance. So Kim, when challenged with an emotional thought conversion, he refuses by continually going over the multiplication tables in his mind blunting the conversion… So, the way not to be brainwashed, is not to let the hyper emotional state open up the mind to thought conversion.
Much of Sargent’s works deals with the reason for American Soldiers to denounce the USA, when POW’S in North Korea… Sargent, I believe he testified in the Patty Hearst trial, stating, that Patty was essentially brainwashed, by the SLA. They locked her in a closet for three weeks, and from time to time opened the door, to emotionally assault her. Hence, she became so emotionally distraught, not knowing that each time they opened the door, whether or not she would be killed, raped or beaten.
SHE was not responsible for her actions… just like, the POW’s… and today, the torture techniques, such as water boarding, and the other techniques, often, of course the results is inaccurate information… given for the sole purpose of relieving the torture.
Hey, I would say anything, to prevent being water boarded. And most anybody else would too.
Sorry for the long discussion, but this is a fascinating field of philosophy… and think about how you can impress that special girl, with these ideas. She will think you are husband material, brilliant. And a class “A”guy… And the same for the gals, to impress, their man… Yell, she’s really smart.
More importantly, I hope this gives you some understanding about yourself, and how you behave… Always think about this… so you won’t blow it like our government did …
And it applies to everyday life also.
MARK DAHL… 12.20 AM 12.7.6, THAT DAY WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED IN THE MINDS OF OUR PARENTS. JUST LIKE NOV. 22, 1963 FOR MY GENERATION. AND 911 FOR YOURS AND ALSO MINE.
If you happen to read, “Covenant Betrayed”, you will understand my struggle with reality during the sixties… History in the present is difficult to evaluate… and Covenant Betrayed, reflects the confusion we all had during this time. And today, the same with Iraq; however, on thoughts, the Sixties, to me seemed a 100 times more divisive, than Iraq is today.
md…. Time to go to bed… gotta work tomorrow… Oh, Go, I’m gonna be dragging tomorrow. … Alas, I tonight, I am now at peace with myself… so I know I can at least sleep, and not toss and turn all night, in despair and uncertainty
Understanding of the primitive brain… and the cognitive brain.
Notes: Just saw the Flight 93 movie on DVD. It was painful. I relived my experience of 911. I got up to go to work, sat in front of the TV, turned on CNN, and, saw the report that a small plane had just crashed into WTC. then the second plane, then the pentagon, and finally Flight 93. I watch the first WTC fall, and heard the screams of all the lives being instantly killed, on live TV. Then the second, more lives killed on live TV. Panic, fear set in.
And so we attacked Iraq, to get rid of Saddam… How crazy, I thought. Blind emotional rage. Somebody had to pay, Before that, Afghanistan… that seemed reasonable…. But Iraq? I was confused. Now three and one half years of gross government incompetence. Resulting in misery for all.
Why did this happen is the philosophical question I have struggled with. My thoughts are that folly, was the result of the greatest frailty of our genetic makeup.
Evolutionarily, our brain, is really composed of three parts, the primitive brain, first, the mid brain, and lastly evolved the cognitive modern brain…
So, how does that get us in trouble? It’s like this. Our first response to danger is the primitive brain,,, or another way of thinking, the emotional brain. This brain, is the fight or flight brain of rapid reaction to a perceived threat… also, the euphoria of the teen age first love… (So, the primitive brain is not all bad.)
There are many emotional responses: hate, lust, terror, , ecstasy, pathos progressing to bathos, etc etc. you can think of others, Anyway, These emotional reactions, are uncontrollable, The reaction is lightning fast, automatic.
Think of the emotional brain as no more advanced than that of the cockroach, which scurries across the kitchen floor in panic when one turn on the kitchen light. It’s true… just think about it. When a cockroach scurries, it is using the same brain that we are using when we react with out primitive brain. It reacts unthinking, it is the release of a cascade of automatic reaction we have no control over.
Keep in mind; it’s not all bad… think of the ecstasy of being smitten for the first time. (Like what happened to me when I first met my wife, Liz) And I’m still smitten.
Or the glow in first holding a newborn baby. That aint all-bad, is it?
Yet, the positive, also has the opposite negative reaction, hate, revenge, striking out without thought.
And that’s what happened after 911. We, and our nation struck out with negative consequences…irrational war with Iraq…. Before, we also struck out with war with Afghanistan… but in this case with hindsight, at this time, there was a rational cognitive reason for that action.
Our brain’s, later temporal response, is the slower cognitive response based on reason… you want to still alive. Still the right move, such as when one reacts to a fast moving car heading straight towards you, and you automatically turn the wheel to avoid the danger… wise decision retrospectively, Right… but sometimes, the rationality is not there, like the war with Iraq.
I remember sitting on the edge of my chair, yelling at Bush to act… In February, of 2003, because Dick Chaney, looked me in the eye and said, Saddam could have an atomic bomb, as early as May, 2003.
Yeah, even me was only reacting with my primitive cockroach brain.
We did not question anything? … (And if you are more interested, check out, the psychology of Cognitive Dissonance, An interesting concept that even though we know that smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema, we even deceive our cognitive brain and top it off use our rational brain to rationalize our smoking, that, it is not really THAT bad for you… And so, what, it serves, a purposed calming the nerves in a stressful situation of s shy person, at a party with unknown strangers…. Amazing… isn’t it. buts this illustrates the power, the hold, and permanents, the primitive brain holds us captive.
We even use our cognitive brain to rationalize the actions of the emotional brain.)
And this is what happened… the power and strength of the primitive brain, even overrules the slower reacting modern, cognitive brain… And hence, we have Iraq and it’s failures… with this reaction, we become wallowed and stuck in the tar pits of destruction through the development of HUBRIS…. The rational justification. Which only cements our invincible non-rational,… just plain stupid, thinking to destruction, not only to ourselves, but to all those whom we have power over.
Much of all human misery, thought out the history of man, can be explained with this concept. Think about it, just regular average German citizens…. and the response to the Holocaust. I say much, not all, since there are situations of misery wrought on us not related to this concept… think, the pain of losing your child by a serious fatal illness.
The point I want to make is this. The cognitive brain, the modern brain, has a tough job, it must use it resources not only to think rationally, but also to be aware that your rational brain may deceive you, to reinforce the emotional brain… think Cognitive Dissonance.
So, how does one react to this dilemma? Ask the question, can the rational cognitive brain, actually ever overcome the illogic of the emotional brain?
Can all we say is that all we have to do is to say, hey; don’t let the emotional brain overrule the cognitive brain… easy enough, right…?
Rather than me explain this farther, Sharon Begley, my favorite science writer, for the Wall Street Journal. Does an excellent job in trying to answer this and below, is a column she wrote recently, about another School of Psychology that is looking into this very issue.
See below.
You Might Help a Teen Avoid Dumb Behavior By Nurturing Intuition November 3, 2006; Page B1
As adolescents and young adults head into another weekend of (for many) driving too fast, drinking too much, smoking and doing their all to perpetuate the species, at least we know why they engage in self-destructive risk-taking. Adolescents feel invulnerable ("Me, get hurt? No way.") and drastically underestimate risks ("Come on, what are the chances of getting pregnant the first time -- 100 to 1?").
Except that they don't.
For 40 years both popular and scholarly wisdom have held that the reason adolescents court risk is twofold: They believe danger bounces off them and they low-ball the chances that it will bring harmful consequences. They have weighed the risk (low), taken stock of their resilience or skill or smarts (excellent) and made the "rational" decision to drag-race down Main Street while inebriated. This explanation implies that when teens do stupid things, it is for rational reasons.
There is a problem with this explanation. "Adolescents don't tend to underestimate the probability of major risks, nor [do they generally have] feelings of invulnerability," argues Keith Stanovich of the University of Toronto in the new issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
That is bad news for parents and schools that try to reduce teens' risk-taking with a rational, fact-based approach. You know the strategies: Tell them the facts about the likelihood of getting HIV/AIDS from unprotected sex and reason with them about why it's a bad idea to book a hotel room for prom night, and all will be well.
If kids know the odds, and have no illusions that they are immune from the laws of virology, however, this approach won't make a whit of difference. "Interventions stressing accurate risk perceptions are apt to be ineffective or backfire because young people already feel vulnerable and overestimate their risk," Valerie F. Reyna of Cornell University and Frank Farley of Temple University write in the journal. That these approaches are so popular, they say, shows that prevention programs are "not based on [scientific] evidence."
The evidence they offer, from 300 studies on adolescent risk-taking, strongly undercuts the conventional wisdom. National surveys show that adolescents typically overestimate risks of contracting HIV and lung cancer, of dying in a hurricane or earthquake, and every other risk they were asked to assess. Their guesstimate of the odds that they will die from crime, illness or accident in the next year or by age 20 is much higher than reality. In short, they don't see themselves as invulnerable, but "as more vulnerable than adults do," says Prof. Reyna.
Here's the rub: Teens tend to underestimate the bad consequences of risky behavior. They think, yeah, smoking will give me cancer (only 18% of teen smokers deny that most lifelong smokers die of a smoking-related disease), or unprotected sex will give me a sexually transmitted disease. But how bad can that be -- especially compared with the benefits of smoking or sex?
Social acceptance and the allure of rebellion right now outweigh the costs later. (Even adults, not to mention financiers, prefer immediate benefits to future ones.) Teaching teens to assess risks accurately won't decrease stupid behavior -- they're already pretty accurate at gauging the consequences. They just aren't much bothered by them. No wonder three million new cases of STDs are diagnosed in U.S. adolescents each year.
Young people are especially bad at resisting risk when they're with peers and when they make decisions on the spur of the moment. In these cases, the emotional brain hijacks the logical one, so knowing the numerical risk of driving drunk won't stop them. That information is suppressed.
What, then, might keep teens from doing dumb things?
Mature adults manage to avoid risky behavior not because they're better at conscious deliberation, the scientists say, but because they intuitively grasp dangers. They go with their gut. "As a result of knowledge, experience and insight, they grasp the essence, the gist, of a situation," says Prof. Reyna. "They don't stop and deliberate on the costs and benefits of risky behaviors."
Getting young people to do the same thing arguably holds more promise than improving their powers of deliberation. For one thing, that is limited by the fact that, until your mid-20s, the brain's frontal lobes are still maturing. Regions responsible for curbing impulsivity, thinking ahead and making sound decisions aren't necessarily up to the job. But grasping the gist is something even 18-year-olds can manage.
"Deliberately weighing costs and benefits often encourages risky behavior," says Prof. Reyna. "You have a better chance if you get teens to pick up, unconsciously, that a behavior is dangerous and intuitively avoid it."
She and colleagues are doing that in a continuing study of 800 teens. Through emotion-packed films and novels, they drum into kids' heads positive images of healthy behaviors and negative images of risky behavior (a benign version of how the doctors in "A Clockwork Orange" pair violent images with nausea). The idea is to make the thought of risky behavior reflexively trigger a no-go decision. All the evidence, as opposed to folk wisdom, says this is more likely to work than current tactics.
• You can email me at sciencejournal@wsj.com.
BLOG WATCH
Most Blogged About Wall Street Journal articles.
0. • A Photograph's Hidden History
0. • Military Calls Grow for Redoubling Iraq Effort
0. • Some Republicans Take a Scorched-Hill Tack
Full List of Articles
SEARCH THE BLOGOSPHERE
Search for these words:
Great article… isn’t it?
The gist of the article is that even the rational brain, cannot always abate the dangers of the rational brain… And the way, to sensitize the emotional brain, to emotinallly respond with retaining the emotional brain, to feel the pain of war by transference to one’s own emotional reaction… The mind is so complex, right!!!
Another classic in psychology, is William Sargent’s 1963 book, “The battle for the mind”, detailing the nature of brainwashing… that’s is thought conversion. The gist is that one becomes very susceptible to thought conversion, during any hyperemotional state, such as ecstasy, terror, etc. And it is only during this state that new ideas can be introduced into your brain… much akin, to Begley’s article… on reprogramming the emotional brain.
Sargents relates the story of Kim, by Kipling… and how Kim avoided the thought conversion of the svengali, by not becoming emotionally involved, hence knowingly, being brainwashed, but without cognizance. So Kim, when challenged with an emotional thought conversion, he refuses by continually going over the multiplication tables in his mind blunting the conversion… So, the way not to be brainwashed, is not to let the hyper emotional state open up the mind to thought conversion.
Much of Sargent’s works deals with the reason for American Soldiers to denounce the USA, when POW’S in North Korea… Sargent, I believe he testified in the Patty Hearst trial, stating, that Patty was essentially brainwashed, by the SLA. They locked her in a closet for three weeks, and from time to time opened the door, to emotionally assault her. Hence, she became so emotionally distraught, not knowing that each time they opened the door, whether or not she would be killed, raped or beaten.
SHE was not responsible for her actions… just like, the POW’s… and today, the torture techniques, such as water boarding, and the other techniques, often, of course the results is inaccurate information… given for the sole purpose of relieving the torture.
Hey, I would say anything, to prevent being water boarded. And most anybody else would too.
Sorry for the long discussion, but this is a fascinating field of philosophy… and think about how you can impress that special girl, with these ideas. She will think you are husband material, brilliant. And a class “A”guy… And the same for the gals, to impress, their man… Yell, she’s really smart.
More importantly, I hope this gives you some understanding about yourself, and how you behave… Always think about this… so you won’t blow it like our government did …
And it applies to everyday life also.
MARK DAHL… 12.20 AM 12.7.6, THAT DAY WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED IN THE MINDS OF OUR PARENTS. JUST LIKE NOV. 22, 1963 FOR MY GENERATION. AND 911 FOR YOURS AND ALSO MINE.
If you happen to read, “Covenant Betrayed”, you will understand my struggle with reality during the sixties… History in the present is difficult to evaluate… and Covenant Betrayed, reflects the confusion we all had during this time. And today, the same with Iraq; however, on thoughts, the Sixties, to me seemed a 100 times more divisive, than Iraq is today.
md…. Time to go to bed… gotta work tomorrow… Oh, Go, I’m gonna be dragging tomorrow. … Alas, I tonight, I am now at peace with myself… so I know I can at least sleep, and not toss and turn all night, in despair and uncertainty
Understanding of the primitive brain… and the cognitive brain.
