I was just going to say the same with a big air of superiority and be like thinking I'm all cool and stuff. Then I saw these comments and realized that I'm just an average everyday normal guy.
Narcissistic self-views actually decline with age (http://a-s.clayton.edu/bgoldman/Psy3560/fostercampbelltwenge2003jrp.pdf)
What is a narcissistic self-view? Let's say for example some researchers do a bunch of research and determine that your generation is the more selfish of the last three. Well maybe you identify strongly with your generation and feel compelled to overemphasize, exaggerate or otherwise "puff" up you identity. Under the circumstances you'd probably feel the need to defend your identity and may do so without any support except your own actively reconstructed and anecdotal memories.
"Well I know MY generation is not self-absorbed, because I am one of them." "The people I talk to in that age-group do not seem selfish to ME"
I, ME, MINE, rinse repeat. According to Twenge et al's research the use of personal pronouns and personal anecdotes increases relative to narcissism.
Am I the only person who doesn't feel the need to evaluate a person in such manner as to "like" or "dislike" them? They are what they are.
It's like celebrity is an opportunity for people to take preference where preference isn't really warranted. You wouldn't treat your mother that way, why treat someone else that way?
That would have damaged his frontal cortex which is implicated in impulse control. Many call it the "executive" of the brain. Without it, he would have an even harder time resisting drugs. It is possible that prior to the accident he already had frontal lobe impairment which contributed to his addiction.
Anyway, I notice a lot of mocking and judging of this man by people who know absolutely nothing about neuroscience. Knock it off.
Stephen Pinker, How The Mind Works (1997) The Softback Preview, London [page 355]:
"Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied. ... These concepts and relations appear to be the vocabulary and syntax of mentalese, the language of thought. ... And the discovery that the elements of mentalese are based on places and projectiles has implications for both where the language of thought came from and how we put it to use in modern times."
George Lakoff, 'The Neurocognitive Self' in The Science of The Mind, edited by Robert Solso and Dominic Massaro (1995) Oxford University Press [page 229]:
"We have discovered, over the past decade and a half, that a conceputal system contains an enormous subsystem of thousands of conceptual metaphors -- mappings that allow us to understand the abstract in terms of the concrete. Without this system, we could not engage in abstract thought at all -- in thought about causation, purpose, love, morality, or thought itself. Without the metaphor system, there could be no philosophizing, no theorizing, and little general understanding our everyday personal and social lives. But the operation of this vast system of conceptual metaphor is largely unconscious. We reason metaphorically throughout most of our waking, and even our dreaming lives, but for the most part are unaware of it. At present, the metaphor system of English has barely begun to be worked out in full detail, and the metaphor systems of other languages have been studied only cursorily. Working out the details would be a huge job -- not as big as the human genome project, but most likely more beneficial. For what is at stake is our understanding of ourselves and our daily lives, and the possibilities for improvement through that understanding."
You know logic's dirty little secret? Without enough background information, operating on faulty premises, it is easy to draw perfectly logical conclusions which are nevertheless completely wrong.
I feel what DJ Parker is saying, maybe he doesn't understand it the way I do, but I certainly feel like that is an apt description. In the time after the fall of Sodom and Gommorah people were forced to consider the basis of their desires and the consequence of their actions. They then referred to the past era of lustful indulgence as "The past times of ignorance".
Now, here we are in the new millennia discussing what is the best course of action, and we all seem to be caught up on lustful desires, asserting them axiomatically as the main premise from which our logic follows. But what if this premise is wrong? What if doing what you want is not really the same as being happy, and what if doing what you want subtlely affects your wants, such that doing what you want only makes you want to do it more. Like a drug addiction.
The same can be applied to sociocultural paradigms that affect global social change. You just have to think when you haul off and beat up a pillow; is this venting my anger going to make me more prone to anger in the future? Well yes it is! And is that sleeping around going to make you more lustful? absolutely!
The awesomeness of marriage is not in being sexually satisfied or appearing good or even always getting along, the power lies in the intimacy, something that develops over time. You have to get to know someone, over a long period, such that you know all of their idiosyncracies and faults, and love them anyway.
A good scene from the movie Good Will Hunting illustrates this:
"I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much." - Sean, Good Will Hunting
Hey if people are sensitive to whether the sage is a chinese, hindu or American, then there is no sense in trying to impart wisdom on them. You'd get more out of arguing the correct pronunciation of "tomato".
It seems I've made an error in my first comment. Upon reviewing the link to Ariely's experience the reverse was true:
"The speed at which the nurses remove the bandages is almost always too fast for me. They hold on to the edge of a bandage and quickly strip it off. This method causes me a short, but intense pain as the bandage is removed, followed by a longer and more muffled pain. "
Do you want me to? I could easily write 10,000+ words on nociception and noxious stimuli, and how spiritual progress almost always rides on the back of the darkest despair.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Khalil Gibran
BTW, this wavey-line is a good illustration of what is called the "Wheel of Rebirth". At each trough in the line we may say the person has "died". Their psychological state, which peaks with the line, is in a state of disintegration (death) during the down-shoot, and the under-shoot reflects a momentary period of calm before rebirth. Rebirth happens when one psychological state is disintegrated and a new state is integrated. Metaphorically speaking; one state of mind dies, and another is born. Generally people go through a life-time of being reborn in the different psychological states. We experience suffering and elation in different forms, and cycle through them like a wheel turns. Satori is like a perfect calm that goes neither up or down.
What is a narcissistic self-view? Let's say for example some researchers do a bunch of research and determine that your generation is the more selfish of the last three. Well maybe you identify strongly with your generation and feel compelled to overemphasize, exaggerate or otherwise "puff" up you identity. Under the circumstances you'd probably feel the need to defend your identity and may do so without any support except your own actively reconstructed and anecdotal memories.
"Well I know MY generation is not self-absorbed, because I am one of them." "The people I talk to in that age-group do not seem selfish to ME"
I, ME, MINE, rinse repeat. According to Twenge et al's research the use of personal pronouns and personal anecdotes increases relative to narcissism.
It's like celebrity is an opportunity for people to take preference where preference isn't really warranted. You wouldn't treat your mother that way, why treat someone else that way?
Anyway, I notice a lot of mocking and judging of this man by people who know absolutely nothing about neuroscience. Knock it off.
"Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied. ... These concepts and relations appear to be the vocabulary and syntax of mentalese, the language of thought. ... And the discovery that the elements of mentalese are based on places and projectiles has implications for both where the language of thought came from and how we put it to use in modern times."
"We have discovered, over the past decade and a half, that a conceputal system contains an enormous subsystem of thousands of conceptual metaphors -- mappings that allow us to understand the abstract in terms of the concrete. Without this system, we could not engage in abstract thought at all -- in thought about causation, purpose, love, morality, or thought itself. Without the metaphor system, there could be no philosophizing, no theorizing, and little general understanding our everyday personal and social lives. But the operation of this vast system of conceptual metaphor is largely unconscious. We reason metaphorically throughout most of our waking, and even our dreaming lives, but for the most part are unaware of it. At present, the metaphor system of English has barely begun to be worked out in full detail, and the metaphor systems of other languages have been studied only cursorily. Working out the details would be a huge job -- not as big as the human genome project, but most likely more beneficial. For what is at stake is our understanding of ourselves and our daily lives, and the possibilities for improvement through that understanding."
The eye I see the government with is the same eye the government sees me with.
I feel what DJ Parker is saying, maybe he doesn't understand it the way I do, but I certainly feel like that is an apt description. In the time after the fall of Sodom and Gommorah people were forced to consider the basis of their desires and the consequence of their actions. They then referred to the past era of lustful indulgence as "The past times of ignorance".
Now, here we are in the new millennia discussing what is the best course of action, and we all seem to be caught up on lustful desires, asserting them axiomatically as the main premise from which our logic follows. But what if this premise is wrong? What if doing what you want is not really the same as being happy, and what if doing what you want subtlely affects your wants, such that doing what you want only makes you want to do it more. Like a drug addiction.
The same can be applied to sociocultural paradigms that affect global social change. You just have to think when you haul off and beat up a pillow; is this venting my anger going to make me more prone to anger in the future? Well yes it is! And is that sleeping around going to make you more lustful? absolutely!
The awesomeness of marriage is not in being sexually satisfied or appearing good or even always getting along, the power lies in the intimacy, something that develops over time. You have to get to know someone, over a long period, such that you know all of their idiosyncracies and faults, and love them anyway.
A good scene from the movie Good Will Hunting illustrates this:
"I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much." - Sean, Good Will Hunting
"The speed at which the nurses remove the
bandages is almost always too fast for me. They hold on to the edge of a bandage and
quickly strip it off. This method causes me a short, but intense pain as the bandage is
removed, followed by a longer and more muffled pain. "
My apologies
Do you want me to? I could easily write 10,000+ words on nociception and noxious stimuli, and how spiritual progress almost always rides on the back of the darkest despair.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Khalil Gibran