Being Touched.
My roommate and I ended up getting into another one of our half hour long conversations, this time about the differences in the attitudes of South Koreans and Americans. (My roommate is South Korean). She told me that the South Koreans have a place to take public baths and there is a person there whose job is to scrub each person down with a cloth and make them feel clean.
I just couldn’t imagine having a stranger scrubbing my body in such a personal way in front of so many people. In my speech class, someone gave a speech about how we are a touch-starved nation. I completely agree. Everyone feels lonely in a different way. I think that breaking that fear of physical contact between people would help bring us together. Its clear that human touch is critical to our development both mentally and physically, so its odd that we are so focused on maintaining our distance from other people.
This past chat has made me want to spend hours researching South Korean culture. I really feel clueless about where my roommate is coming from and I would really like to learn more about how she has lived her entire life. I’ll probably post again next time something really interesting comes up.
Reductionism
Reductionism: all of thoughts and behaviors can be explained as neural activity.
When my psych teacher first put this on the board, I began thinking, “Here we go again with the theories about biological inheritance everyone knows to be only partially true.” Well, I ended up being completely surprised and mentally challenged for the first time in a long time.
The reductionism theories argue that the neurons in our body are completely responsible for every thought and action that we do, creating an illusion of “self” by creating explanations for our behavior.
Scientists have been conducting experiments on former epilepsy patients who had their cerebrum split in half to stop the conduction of neural messages from one side of the brain to the other. The way that vision is processed, if you see something on the right side of your body, it will be transferred to the left side of your brain, and vice versa. For patients with split brains, the right and left sides of the brain can’t communicate. Therefore, if you show a word to the patient on the left side of their body, it will be sent to the right side of the brain, and decoded there. The language center of the brain is on the left side, however, and will not be able to say or even recall the message that was shown.
Scientists tried this approach using a command. They flashed the command, “walk,” to a patient, and the patient got up and started walking away. While the left side of the brain had no idea why the body was walking away, the patient still responded to the scientist, “I need to get a pop,” when asked why they were leaving.
The left side of the brain had no knowledge that the right side had been commanded to get up and walk, but still created an excuse for the behavior.
This creation of a made up response on the spot may mean that everything we think or do is completely created for us as an illusion, while the neurons are actually in complete control.
I was just blown away by this theory, since I have never heard anything like it before. After I started digesting it though, it seemed more and more less likely that neurons, which are responsible for receiving and transmitting messages, would have the power to determine what is best for our survival in such a changing world.
Loss of Sexuality
The past couple months have brought about a huge change in my behavior towards the people I am attracted to. Usually I am oozing sexual energy, hardly able to control my flirtatious personality. Lately though, I have just been blocking that part of me. I’m tired of attracting guys to me that just want to be with me for my sexual and flirtatious nature. I actually want someone who will care about me for more than that; I feel like I have more to offer than the sexual side of my personality. Another part of it is a lack of confidence in my ability to keep a person’s attention without using my sex appeal.
I can’t decide if I like the new person I have become. I think by caging my sexual self, it is causing me to be someone else. At the same time though, I’m not sure if relationships work when there is so much sexual activity in and out of the relationship. I am just so confused about what other people like best and whether being less sexual is a better way to find a person to care for you.
I am looking forward to meeting new people this summer so I can try some new things out, since they wont have any pre-knowledge about who I am as a person or what to expect from me. That way I will be able to figure out what works best to really find a person that will care about me. Not necessarily in a serious, relationship-type way. Maybe more of a respect and understanding type of caring, since i’m not sure i have had much of either of those in my past relationships.
