To present an alternative explanation of the data:
The brain is an evolving process that continuously refines itself. This refining involves things like perfecting certain motor movements as well as managing interpersonal affairs and subjective states. To assume that people would use the same self-regulatory strategies from birth to old-age is to overlook the evolutionary nature of the brain and mind.
There is evidence of a decrease in self-referential thought corresponding to a subjects age. Older people are less likely to ruminate on self-referentiality the way that teenagers do. The teenage mind is almost entirely consumed by self-referentiality, whereas the aged mind is relatively absent of self-referentiality.
Self-referentiality refers to states where thoughts of how one fits into the world are evaluated relative to an ideal.
This adaption reflects an implicit progress of the mind toward a self-less world-view. A perspective that does not view the self as a substantive part of the world. The elderly brain may view its failures as a consequence merely of an elderly brain and hold no higher or lower regard with respect to the self. Rather than perceiving its actions as issuing forth from a contra-causal and disembodied entity deserving of cosmic approval and disapproval; it views it's failures and successes as probabilistic occurrences of a diseased brain.
There is a "spiritual" (philosophical) tradition which views all of self-conscious life as a progression along this path toward a correct interpretation of the world which views human thoughts and actions as a continuation of the world-process (aka The Universe, Nature, God, etc...). As a basic premise of this tradition we are assumed to be born relatively ignorant, by a young age a flawed ego-centric cognitive structure takes hold which characterizes most of our lives. Though we are primarily trapped in an ego-centric cognitive structure we progress toward the eventual realization that the ego is false. Though this realization is not necessary and indeed most will never have it; everyone will progress in some degree toward this end.
Additionally, the ego cannot bring itself to the realization that it is false. So there is nothing that a person can self-consciously do to convince themselves that they are false. Rather, the world-process ("the unconscious") does all of the work furnishing the conscious mind with it's content. The ego is a product of the world-process which provides the basis for the appearance of things. So people, though they progress toward the end realization of the falsity of the ego, are completely unaware that they are doing so.
In other words; older people stop ruminating on regret self-referentially because they implicitly realize that it is not True. That doing so does not reflect the actual state of the world. They may still experience regret and it may still work its magic altering future behaviors, but it's not descriptive of a subjective ego and can be dropped afterwards.
Check out: The Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation, The Handbook of Self and Identity and perhaps Johann Gottlieb Fichte's The Science of Knowledge. There are very few philosophers who describe this position, even fewer who do so well.
Sounds pretty consistent with the feminine archetype. Also sounds eerily similar to our current societies.
E.g. whether or not female attire correlates strongly with the chances of being the victim of date-rape are irrelevant (See e.g.: Compendium of Crime Correlates), instead attention is focused on whether or not the claim is found to be "offensive" to some women.
Women will say that "nobody should be raping anyone" and that may very well reflect the absolute morality inhering in the universe, but at the same time "nobody should ever break into my home and steal my belongings" is equally true. The fact remains that people DO break into homes and steal belongings, and they are far more likely to break into a home that looks like it contains desirable content.
The prescription to dress modestly is not meant to be a rule women must obey or else they are "promiscuous", however sociological studies also suggest that both men and women tend to see "scantily-clad" women as promiscuous and there is actually a higher probability that such a woman is promiscuous than say a woman who wears more modest attire.
Point is that - at least in Canada - there is major pressure from feminine activists to obscure these facts and label anyone who makes any such cognitive assessment a "womanizer" or something else. Careers have been destroyed over it...
These "moments of silence" and what-not seem to me to be periods of time in which people drum up feelings of disgust, anger and futility. I guess my concern is that, that's not at all useful to preventing like atrocities. Disgust and anger may very well be the mental states which led to the Holocaust. I would think it much more beneficial to spend the time studying human psychology and the events that lead to the Holocaust. In that exercise we may hope to glean some underlying causes that could subsequently be avoided.
Perhaps there should be an annual review of Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgrim's experiments on human obedience.
I'm fairly sure it's always been a mixed bag. But calling it a "patriarchal" society is a good way for women to externalize responsibility. Just think; if women succeeded at externalizing ALL of their responsibilities, it would look just like a patriarchy. Now since all of her responsibilities have been externalized to the male and it looks like a patriarchy she is in the powerful position of getting a man to do everything, blame him for everything, and complain about not having anything. For someone who likes to be hand-fed and complain about everything under the sun, it's a pretty sweet deal. And, all they have to do is withhold sexual favors.
Worrying about fitting into your wedding dress won't help you lose weight, it may even discourage you from exercising and cause depression, worse it might make you try a ridiculous diet.
@Fae - True enough, as far as the monkey is concerned all the "words" are merely instances of a Class. There is nothing that seems to indicate in this synopsis that the monkey's recognize the Class of objects as consisting of speech. However, there are other studies, and perhaps in this study as well, in which the monkey's are in active dialogue with researchers through the words they are being taught. The extent of this dialogue is usually that the researcher issues a command like "Get the red ball" and the monkey's get the red ball. They mix it up a bit and say "Get the blue ball" or "Get the red block" and the monkeys interpret the command correctly.
I never went to any prom and can say that it doesn't make a difference. Well, I don't suffer from any illusory expectations about what life "should be" like. I'm well aware that I could be in much worse shape than I am. If I don't get invited to the next most popular party I probably wouldn't notice.
IMHO, the First President of the United States; George Washington said it all:
"nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur." - Washington's Farewell Address 1796
Happiness has little to do with survival when examining developed countries. Perhaps for a minority of the population, like the homeless, happiness is a warm meal and a soft bed.
But people are rarely satisfied with just having the needs for survival. Most of us want to believe we are important.
Happiness in this traditional (egoic) sense requires that an individual be able to think of themselves as a success in the sociocultural ethos. One study suggested the average American believed they would be content with $2.5M. For ease, let's say that the average person would not be happy unless they were a multimillionaire.
But this would not be the case if the standard of living weren't so high. As the standard of living goes up in a region, so does the standard of happiness. The two never seem to meet each other.
But there are those people who are called "hypo-egoic" who simply do not think about their own worth in terms of socioeconomic success. They evaluate themselves more or less on what they are, where they've been and how far they've come. Their evaluations are directly related to their own performances and do not depend on the images of success displayed by the media and sought after by most members of the society.
Most people, when they fail at some task, withdraw from that task saying "I'm no good at it" or something to that effect. They are self-conscious about failure, whereas the hypo-egoic individual sees failure as a learning opportunity. They see failure as merely an obstacle to be overcome. They recognize that they must learn and develop skills before they can be master of something.
The most characteristic thing about hypo-egoic people is that they almost never evaluation themselves according to the status quo. They are devoid of self-conscious thoughts. These people are also more vividly aware of their experiences because their experiences are not clouded by imagining all the potential hits to their self-esteem.
I've read you can make any kind of gate with a combination of NAND and NOR gates. Since they can "produce and invert". But I haven't got that far into it to understand it.
The brain is an evolving process that continuously refines itself. This refining involves things like perfecting certain motor movements as well as managing interpersonal affairs and subjective states. To assume that people would use the same self-regulatory strategies from birth to old-age is to overlook the evolutionary nature of the brain and mind.
There is evidence of a decrease in self-referential thought corresponding to a subjects age. Older people are less likely to ruminate on self-referentiality the way that teenagers do. The teenage mind is almost entirely consumed by self-referentiality, whereas the aged mind is relatively absent of self-referentiality.
Self-referentiality refers to states where thoughts of how one fits into the world are evaluated relative to an ideal.
This adaption reflects an implicit progress of the mind toward a self-less world-view. A perspective that does not view the self as a substantive part of the world. The elderly brain may view its failures as a consequence merely of an elderly brain and hold no higher or lower regard with respect to the self. Rather than perceiving its actions as issuing forth from a contra-causal and disembodied entity deserving of cosmic approval and disapproval; it views it's failures and successes as probabilistic occurrences of a diseased brain.
There is a "spiritual" (philosophical) tradition which views all of self-conscious life as a progression along this path toward a correct interpretation of the world which views human thoughts and actions as a continuation of the world-process (aka The Universe, Nature, God, etc...). As a basic premise of this tradition we are assumed to be born relatively ignorant, by a young age a flawed ego-centric cognitive structure takes hold which characterizes most of our lives. Though we are primarily trapped in an ego-centric cognitive structure we progress toward the eventual realization that the ego is false. Though this realization is not necessary and indeed most will never have it; everyone will progress in some degree toward this end.
Additionally, the ego cannot bring itself to the realization that it is false. So there is nothing that a person can self-consciously do to convince themselves that they are false. Rather, the world-process ("the unconscious") does all of the work furnishing the conscious mind with it's content. The ego is a product of the world-process which provides the basis for the appearance of things. So people, though they progress toward the end realization of the falsity of the ego, are completely unaware that they are doing so.
In other words; older people stop ruminating on regret self-referentially because they implicitly realize that it is not True. That doing so does not reflect the actual state of the world. They may still experience regret and it may still work its magic altering future behaviors, but it's not descriptive of a subjective ego and can be dropped afterwards.
Check out: The Handbook of Personality and Self-Regulation, The Handbook of Self and Identity and perhaps Johann Gottlieb Fichte's The Science of Knowledge. There are very few philosophers who describe this position, even fewer who do so well.
Sounds pretty consistent with the feminine archetype. Also sounds eerily similar to our current societies.
E.g. whether or not female attire correlates strongly with the chances of being the victim of date-rape are irrelevant (See e.g.: Compendium of Crime Correlates), instead attention is focused on whether or not the claim is found to be "offensive" to some women.
Women will say that "nobody should be raping anyone" and that may very well reflect the absolute morality inhering in the universe, but at the same time "nobody should ever break into my home and steal my belongings" is equally true. The fact remains that people DO break into homes and steal belongings, and they are far more likely to break into a home that looks like it contains desirable content.
The prescription to dress modestly is not meant to be a rule women must obey or else they are "promiscuous", however sociological studies also suggest that both men and women tend to see "scantily-clad" women as promiscuous and there is actually a higher probability that such a woman is promiscuous than say a woman who wears more modest attire.
Point is that - at least in Canada - there is major pressure from feminine activists to obscure these facts and label anyone who makes any such cognitive assessment a "womanizer" or something else. Careers have been destroyed over it...
Perhaps there should be an annual review of Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgrim's experiments on human obedience.
"nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur." - Washington's Farewell Address 1796
But people are rarely satisfied with just having the needs for survival. Most of us want to believe we are important.
Happiness in this traditional (egoic) sense requires that an individual be able to think of themselves as a success in the sociocultural ethos. One study suggested the average American believed they would be content with $2.5M. For ease, let's say that the average person would not be happy unless they were a multimillionaire.
But this would not be the case if the standard of living weren't so high. As the standard of living goes up in a region, so does the standard of happiness. The two never seem to meet each other.
But there are those people who are called "hypo-egoic" who simply do not think about their own worth in terms of socioeconomic success. They evaluate themselves more or less on what they are, where they've been and how far they've come. Their evaluations are directly related to their own performances and do not depend on the images of success displayed by the media and sought after by most members of the society.
Most people, when they fail at some task, withdraw from that task saying "I'm no good at it" or something to that effect. They are self-conscious about failure, whereas the hypo-egoic individual sees failure as a learning opportunity. They see failure as merely an obstacle to be overcome. They recognize that they must learn and develop skills before they can be master of something.
The most characteristic thing about hypo-egoic people is that they almost never evaluation themselves according to the status quo. They are devoid of self-conscious thoughts. These people are also more vividly aware of their experiences because their experiences are not clouded by imagining all the potential hits to their self-esteem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQYjZc7gKXc