Part Four: The Socio-Sexual Circuit
60309 postsposted 8th Jan '09
The socio-sexual circuit is activated and imprinted at adolescence, when the DNA signal awakens the sexual apparatus. The teenager becomes the bewildered possessor of a new body and a new neural circuit oriented to orgasm and sperm-egg fusion. The prepubescent human, like any other rutting animal, lurches about in a state of mating frenzy, every call gasping for the sexual object.
Imprint vulnerability is acute, and the first sexual signals to turn on the adolescent nervous system remain fixed for life and forever define the individual's sexual reality.
We should not be surprised, therefore, at the various fetishes that are so easily acquired at these sensitive moments.
In fact, we can tell precisely at what period in time a person was sexually imprinted by noting which fetishes continue to turn him or her on. Black garters, booze, cool jazz, and crew cuts define the sexual signals of one imprint group (generation) just as rigidly as sleeping bags, marijuana, heavy rock and tight jeans define another.
As Masters and Johnson have pointed out, most sexual dysfunctions are hooked into the nervous system at these adolescent moments of acute imprint vulnerability; their archetypal case is that of a male who, about to mate for the first time, in the back seat of a car, was traumatized by a policeman flashing a light on him and his paramour. The imprint of that ghastly moment was hooked for decades: the male remained impotent until reimprinted by Masters and Johnson in their clinic.
The choices of heterosexuality or homosexuality, brash promiscuity or timid celibacy, etc. are usually imprinted by exactly similar accidents at points of imprint vulnerability. Just as bio-survival anxiety or security are imprinted by accidents in the nursing period, emotional domination or submission by accidents in the toddling period, symbolic dexterity or "stupidity" by accidents of the learning environment.
Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, "ordeals," "rites of passage," etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a well-integrated member of that tribe at that time. Relics of these imprint ceremonies survive in Baptism, Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, Marriage Ceremonies, the Masonic "raising," etc.
It is important to realize that chance, genetics and malice (anger) are among the "accidents" that create imprints at the points of vulnerability.
Most humans do not, due to accidents of this sort, imprint exactly the socio-sexual role demaned by their society. The fourth circuit can almost be called the guilt circuit: almost everybody, almost everywhere, is quite busy hiding their real sexual profile and miming the "accepted" sex role for their gender in their tribe.
In ordinary language, the imprint on the socio-sexual circuit is generally called "the mature personality" or the "sexual role." It is "the Parent" in the jargon of Transactional Analysis.
It is the function of the nervous system to focus, to select, to narrow down; to choose, from an infinity of possibilities, the biochemical imprints which determine the tactics and strategies that ensure survival in one place, status in one tribe.
The infant is genetically prepared to learn any language, master any skill, play any sex role; in a very short time, however, he or she becomes mechanically, robotically, fixated to accept, follow and mimic the limited offerings of his social and cultural environment.
In this process, each of us pays a heavy price. Survival and status mean forfeiting the infinite possibilities of unconditioned consciousness. The domesticated primate, inside the social reality-tunnel, is a trivial fragment of the potentials for experience and intelligence innate in the 110,000,000,000-cell human bio-computer.
As Robert. A Heinlein wrote:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
But as long as we remain on the antique circuits we are not very different from the insects. That is, just as the insects repeat their four-stage program (egg, larvae, chrysalis, adult) from generation to generation, we repeat our four-cycle stage also. The antique circuits are genetically conservative. They ensure the survival and continuation of the species, but do no more. For future evolution we must look to the futuristic circuits.
It is sometimes mistakenly stated that there are no universal sexual taboos. This is not true. There is one omni-purpose taboo which exists in every tribe.
That taboo stipulates that sexuality shall not be unregulated by the tribe. That is, even though no other taboos are universal, the taboo against living without taboos remains constant. Every tribe has its own set of verbots and thou-shall-nots, bu tno tribe allows the individual to chose his or her set.
An American President may not marry his own sister (if he wants to get re-elected); and Egyptian Pharoah had to marry his own sister. Confronted by this moral relativism, many social scientists have failed to notice the invariable: both the President and the Pharoah are expected to obey local rules. So are the Samoan, the Russian, the Eskimo and the Cuban.
Why is there this taboo against sexual self-definition and self-actualization? Why is it that, while no two societies can agree what is sexually "good" and sexually "bad", every society thinks that it must make some definition?
The answer is that our first humanoid (symbolizing and conceptualizing) ancestors were very ignorant, but not at all stupid. They were ignorant of the laws of genetics, but they were smart enough to suspect that such laws exist. Sperm-egg fusion is surrounded by violent taboos and fierce tribal conformity because the survival and future evolution of the gene pool depends upon which particular spermatozoa reaches which particular ovum.
Etymologists confirm the Freudian theory that there are ancient linkages between the words for the sacred, the erotic, the obscene, the awe inspiring, the awe-ful, the divine, the "thrilling." All of these are primitive, powerful physiological responses to the mysteries of sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution. The earliest god-forms found by archeologists are pregnant goddesses and ithyphallic gods. The most intolerant, bigoted and recalcitrant of all prejudices -- the very last to fade away after cosmopolitanizing contact with other tribes having different values -- are the taboos concerning the right way to reproduce. If one nation insists that the head of state must marry his sister, and another insists he must not, both are acting on the assumption that the right way must be found and rigorously enforced.
There are unknowns in the area of sexual attraction -- He likes Her, but She doesn't like Him.
There are unknowns in the area of mating -- a young couple can make love once, and the woman becomes pregnant, yet another couple make love for three years and the woman remains barren. Very puzzling and frightening for primitives, in New Guinea or New Jersey.
There are unknowns in the area of reproduction -- why twins? Why three boys in one family and three girls in another? Why miscarriages and stillbirths?
There are unknowns in the area of inheritance -- "Why doesn't my son look like me?" many a domesticated primate has wondered uneasily, leading to a great deal of paranoia and male chauvenism.
There are unknowns in the area of genetic drift -- modern researchers recognize twelve or more variables, but still have more questions than answers.
There are unknowns in the area of future evolution -- "Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going?", the title of Gauguin's greatest painting, is the basic ontological question: the totem-pole, like the treatise on sociobiology, is an attempt to answer.
Amid all these unknowns -- of sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution -- the shamans of every tribe try to establish guide-posts to tribal (gene-pool) survival.
Thus "morality" is invented.
Sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift and future evolution are all stochastic processes. (That is, processes in which, out of a random series, some "intelligence" or something that can be metaphorically conceived as an intelligence, is selecting a final outcome.)
"Morality" attempts to control the stochastic evolutionary processes at two points -- interfering between sexual attraction and sexual consummation (Mating) by taboos and commandments, or else interfering between mating and reproduction. The latter case is represented by infanticide, a widespread birth-control measure always justified by the local shamans on magical grounds e.g. the infants selected for sacrifice are breach births, or birth-marked, twins, or in some way stigmatized by the "gods." The actual function of such practices, of course, is population control; and such customs are most common on isolated islands where runaway population would be a disaster. Similarly, Judaic taboos functioned to channel all sexuality into increased population, since the ancient Jews were surrounded by large and pugnacious Empires eager to conquer them; they needed more boys for soldiers and more girls to breed soldiers.
The most "idiotic" and "superstitious" taboos, from the Rationalist viewpoint, always had some function when invented. For instance, the most "pointlessly" elaborate (non-genetic) "incest" taboos, in which virtually everybody in the tribe becomes unavailable sexually to everybody else, force exogamy (marriage outside the tribe). This creates affectional alliances (family ties) between tribes and decreases warfare. Something like this primitive exogamy survived into very recent times, in the custom of marrying one royal family into another.
Every form of "morality" is, of course, irksome on some level to everybody, because no individual ever has exactly the sexual imprint desired by the tribe. The more sophisticated totem-cults (the "higher" religions, so dubbed by themselves) take account of this by the doctrine of atonement. In one form or another, this allows the individual to be ritually "forgiven" periodically for not being the perfect sexual robot decreed by tribal morality.
This becomes hilarious only when one realizes that most of what domesticated primates are asking their priests to forgive them for consists of what Kinsey so accurately called "normal mammalian behavior."1
1 This only refers to the silly and inferior religions of other people, of course, and has no reference to the Sublime Truth of the reader's own religion.
Time-binding (the transmission of symbols and tools across generations) begins on the third circuit. Acute consciousness time is, however, intensified on the fourth circuit.
The principal function of the socio-sexual circuit, in the higher primates, is to form an adult personality -- a parent. 2 By definition, the parent is onew ho cares for the young of the species; by genetic necessity, the parent also cares about the young. In symbolizing humans, this means planning, hoping and having aspirations. In the language of the mystics, this means being "attached" and "trapped on the wheel of karma"; the first effort in most mystical traditions is to break this fourth-circuit attachment by taking a vow of celibacy.
2 Homosexuality (like left-handedness) is probably included in the genetic script to serve auxiliary functions. In most primitive societies, the homosexuals (and the left-handed) are shunted into shamanic roles. In more complex societies they are (like spinsters and heterosexual bachelors) usually shunted into intellectual or artistic roles, which have quasi-shamanic functions of making, breaking or transforming cultural signals. Those who claim any perennial sexual variation is "against nature" are underestimating nature's variety, diversity and economy. The "mutation" of Leonardo de Vinci, a left-handed homosexual, was needed to break up the signal of the dying medieval reality-tunnel and remake our perceptions into the reality-tunnel of post-Renaissance scientific humanism. His success is registered by the fact that a Leonardo painting is still the "norm" of what we mean by realism, i.e., most people (including right-handed heterosexuals) are living in the scientific-humanist "space" this man invented.
The fourth circuit is located in the left neo-cortex -- the newest part of the left hemisphere of the brain. It is linked neurologically with the genetalia and breasts (fucking-hugging-embracing-protecting circuitry).
Persons who take their heaviest imprint on this circuit are beautiful. That is, their entire body has received so many sexual neurotransmitters from the brain that they are constantly radiating the "attractive" mating signals that make up our perception of what is "beautiful" in a human being.
According to accidents of imprinting, they can be coldly calculating exploiters, totally repressed Puritans or carry some other negative traits but they always look like (send the signals of) the ideal fucker-lover-protector.
Once formulated, "morality" serves as not only a check on the genetic drift but a brake against Circuit III innovation. The shamans, priests etc. define which new ideas are "moral" and which are "immoral." Anything new -- anything that will break the tribal cycle, i.e., take us out of cyclical mythic "time" into linear, progressive, revolutionary "time" -- is usually defined, very quickly, as "immoral."
To say that religion and priestcraft have played a conservative role in history is an understatement. One might as well say the bubonic plague has killed a few people, or that Hitler was a little bit strange. The chief role of religion has always been reactionary. This is its evolutionary function, in the dialectic of the circuitry of the brain.
Circuit III, unchecked, is like a cocaine monologue. You can't remember anything, because everything is changing too fast. This is profoundly disorienting to the average domesticated primate, so the tribal moralists keep stability and tranquility by acting as decelerators.
The average person, similarly, is philosophically most "open" and "curious" before the adult sex role of parenthood is elected. After reproduction, there is little time for Circuit III speculatiosn, and (because of the sanctions every tribe places upon "heresy," i.e., new ideas) there is also little inclination.
Thus, Circuit III teands to take us out of cyclical time into linear progressive time; but Circuit IV loops us back into the cycle again.
Homosexuals may or may not be the chief creators of cultural innovation, as some Gay Pride advocates claim; but it is certainly true that they have done more than their share. The reason? They are not trapped into parent roles.
The "married look," the "Mom and Dad look," etc., which are not scientific concepts but which everybody can recognize at once, have to do with an acute time-sense. The parent is concerned not just with acquiring bio-survival tickets for personal nurture, but with acquiring tickets for the young, and for the future.
Behaviorists tell us wonderful stories about the intricate patterns that can be conditioned into experimental animals. They say we have, by selective reinforcement, trained this rat so that at the sound of a bell, he runs up a ladder, presses button A, races across a plank and down another ladder, presses button B, dashes across the cage and waits at the food-slot for his meal to arrive.
Lest anybody think this book is written from a perch of superiority, consider the similar, but more complex, behavior which followed the author for twenty years. He would set an alarm clock before sleep every night. When the alarm woke him, he would breakfast hurriedly, rush off to catch a bus, ride to a subway, change to the train, ride to an office building, rush through the lobby, board an elevator, ride to a certain floor, enter an office, and toil at repetitious (and generally pointless) tasks for eight hours. This behavior sequence had been shaped, as B.F. Skinner would say, by reinforcement delivered every second week in the form of bio-survival tickets (money). These tickets were necessary to the bio-survival of four dependent children.
Introduction
Part One: The Bio-Survival Circuit
Part Two: The Emotional-Territorial Circuit
Part Three: The Semantic Circuit
Part Five: The Circuits and communication
C.
quoteImprint vulnerability is acute, and the first sexual signals to turn on the adolescent nervous system remain fixed for life and forever define the individual's sexual reality.
We should not be surprised, therefore, at the various fetishes that are so easily acquired at these sensitive moments.
In fact, we can tell precisely at what period in time a person was sexually imprinted by noting which fetishes continue to turn him or her on. Black garters, booze, cool jazz, and crew cuts define the sexual signals of one imprint group (generation) just as rigidly as sleeping bags, marijuana, heavy rock and tight jeans define another.
As Masters and Johnson have pointed out, most sexual dysfunctions are hooked into the nervous system at these adolescent moments of acute imprint vulnerability; their archetypal case is that of a male who, about to mate for the first time, in the back seat of a car, was traumatized by a policeman flashing a light on him and his paramour. The imprint of that ghastly moment was hooked for decades: the male remained impotent until reimprinted by Masters and Johnson in their clinic.
The choices of heterosexuality or homosexuality, brash promiscuity or timid celibacy, etc. are usually imprinted by exactly similar accidents at points of imprint vulnerability. Just as bio-survival anxiety or security are imprinted by accidents in the nursing period, emotional domination or submission by accidents in the toddling period, symbolic dexterity or "stupidity" by accidents of the learning environment.
Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, "ordeals," "rites of passage," etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a well-integrated member of that tribe at that time. Relics of these imprint ceremonies survive in Baptism, Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, Marriage Ceremonies, the Masonic "raising," etc.
It is important to realize that chance, genetics and malice (anger) are among the "accidents" that create imprints at the points of vulnerability.
Most humans do not, due to accidents of this sort, imprint exactly the socio-sexual role demaned by their society. The fourth circuit can almost be called the guilt circuit: almost everybody, almost everywhere, is quite busy hiding their real sexual profile and miming the "accepted" sex role for their gender in their tribe.
In ordinary language, the imprint on the socio-sexual circuit is generally called "the mature personality" or the "sexual role." It is "the Parent" in the jargon of Transactional Analysis.
It is the function of the nervous system to focus, to select, to narrow down; to choose, from an infinity of possibilities, the biochemical imprints which determine the tactics and strategies that ensure survival in one place, status in one tribe.
The infant is genetically prepared to learn any language, master any skill, play any sex role; in a very short time, however, he or she becomes mechanically, robotically, fixated to accept, follow and mimic the limited offerings of his social and cultural environment.
In this process, each of us pays a heavy price. Survival and status mean forfeiting the infinite possibilities of unconditioned consciousness. The domesticated primate, inside the social reality-tunnel, is a trivial fragment of the potentials for experience and intelligence innate in the 110,000,000,000-cell human bio-computer.
As Robert. A Heinlein wrote:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
But as long as we remain on the antique circuits we are not very different from the insects. That is, just as the insects repeat their four-stage program (egg, larvae, chrysalis, adult) from generation to generation, we repeat our four-cycle stage also. The antique circuits are genetically conservative. They ensure the survival and continuation of the species, but do no more. For future evolution we must look to the futuristic circuits.
It is sometimes mistakenly stated that there are no universal sexual taboos. This is not true. There is one omni-purpose taboo which exists in every tribe.
That taboo stipulates that sexuality shall not be unregulated by the tribe. That is, even though no other taboos are universal, the taboo against living without taboos remains constant. Every tribe has its own set of verbots and thou-shall-nots, bu tno tribe allows the individual to chose his or her set.
An American President may not marry his own sister (if he wants to get re-elected); and Egyptian Pharoah had to marry his own sister. Confronted by this moral relativism, many social scientists have failed to notice the invariable: both the President and the Pharoah are expected to obey local rules. So are the Samoan, the Russian, the Eskimo and the Cuban.
Why is there this taboo against sexual self-definition and self-actualization? Why is it that, while no two societies can agree what is sexually "good" and sexually "bad", every society thinks that it must make some definition?
The answer is that our first humanoid (symbolizing and conceptualizing) ancestors were very ignorant, but not at all stupid. They were ignorant of the laws of genetics, but they were smart enough to suspect that such laws exist. Sperm-egg fusion is surrounded by violent taboos and fierce tribal conformity because the survival and future evolution of the gene pool depends upon which particular spermatozoa reaches which particular ovum.
Etymologists confirm the Freudian theory that there are ancient linkages between the words for the sacred, the erotic, the obscene, the awe inspiring, the awe-ful, the divine, the "thrilling." All of these are primitive, powerful physiological responses to the mysteries of sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution. The earliest god-forms found by archeologists are pregnant goddesses and ithyphallic gods. The most intolerant, bigoted and recalcitrant of all prejudices -- the very last to fade away after cosmopolitanizing contact with other tribes having different values -- are the taboos concerning the right way to reproduce. If one nation insists that the head of state must marry his sister, and another insists he must not, both are acting on the assumption that the right way must be found and rigorously enforced.
There are unknowns in the area of sexual attraction -- He likes Her, but She doesn't like Him.
There are unknowns in the area of mating -- a young couple can make love once, and the woman becomes pregnant, yet another couple make love for three years and the woman remains barren. Very puzzling and frightening for primitives, in New Guinea or New Jersey.
There are unknowns in the area of reproduction -- why twins? Why three boys in one family and three girls in another? Why miscarriages and stillbirths?
There are unknowns in the area of inheritance -- "Why doesn't my son look like me?" many a domesticated primate has wondered uneasily, leading to a great deal of paranoia and male chauvenism.
There are unknowns in the area of genetic drift -- modern researchers recognize twelve or more variables, but still have more questions than answers.
There are unknowns in the area of future evolution -- "Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going?", the title of Gauguin's greatest painting, is the basic ontological question: the totem-pole, like the treatise on sociobiology, is an attempt to answer.
Amid all these unknowns -- of sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution -- the shamans of every tribe try to establish guide-posts to tribal (gene-pool) survival.
Thus "morality" is invented.
Sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift and future evolution are all stochastic processes. (That is, processes in which, out of a random series, some "intelligence" or something that can be metaphorically conceived as an intelligence, is selecting a final outcome.)
"Morality" attempts to control the stochastic evolutionary processes at two points -- interfering between sexual attraction and sexual consummation (Mating) by taboos and commandments, or else interfering between mating and reproduction. The latter case is represented by infanticide, a widespread birth-control measure always justified by the local shamans on magical grounds e.g. the infants selected for sacrifice are breach births, or birth-marked, twins, or in some way stigmatized by the "gods." The actual function of such practices, of course, is population control; and such customs are most common on isolated islands where runaway population would be a disaster. Similarly, Judaic taboos functioned to channel all sexuality into increased population, since the ancient Jews were surrounded by large and pugnacious Empires eager to conquer them; they needed more boys for soldiers and more girls to breed soldiers.
The most "idiotic" and "superstitious" taboos, from the Rationalist viewpoint, always had some function when invented. For instance, the most "pointlessly" elaborate (non-genetic) "incest" taboos, in which virtually everybody in the tribe becomes unavailable sexually to everybody else, force exogamy (marriage outside the tribe). This creates affectional alliances (family ties) between tribes and decreases warfare. Something like this primitive exogamy survived into very recent times, in the custom of marrying one royal family into another.
Every form of "morality" is, of course, irksome on some level to everybody, because no individual ever has exactly the sexual imprint desired by the tribe. The more sophisticated totem-cults (the "higher" religions, so dubbed by themselves) take account of this by the doctrine of atonement. In one form or another, this allows the individual to be ritually "forgiven" periodically for not being the perfect sexual robot decreed by tribal morality.
This becomes hilarious only when one realizes that most of what domesticated primates are asking their priests to forgive them for consists of what Kinsey so accurately called "normal mammalian behavior."1
1 This only refers to the silly and inferior religions of other people, of course, and has no reference to the Sublime Truth of the reader's own religion.
Time-binding (the transmission of symbols and tools across generations) begins on the third circuit. Acute consciousness time is, however, intensified on the fourth circuit.
The principal function of the socio-sexual circuit, in the higher primates, is to form an adult personality -- a parent. 2 By definition, the parent is onew ho cares for the young of the species; by genetic necessity, the parent also cares about the young. In symbolizing humans, this means planning, hoping and having aspirations. In the language of the mystics, this means being "attached" and "trapped on the wheel of karma"; the first effort in most mystical traditions is to break this fourth-circuit attachment by taking a vow of celibacy.
2 Homosexuality (like left-handedness) is probably included in the genetic script to serve auxiliary functions. In most primitive societies, the homosexuals (and the left-handed) are shunted into shamanic roles. In more complex societies they are (like spinsters and heterosexual bachelors) usually shunted into intellectual or artistic roles, which have quasi-shamanic functions of making, breaking or transforming cultural signals. Those who claim any perennial sexual variation is "against nature" are underestimating nature's variety, diversity and economy. The "mutation" of Leonardo de Vinci, a left-handed homosexual, was needed to break up the signal of the dying medieval reality-tunnel and remake our perceptions into the reality-tunnel of post-Renaissance scientific humanism. His success is registered by the fact that a Leonardo painting is still the "norm" of what we mean by realism, i.e., most people (including right-handed heterosexuals) are living in the scientific-humanist "space" this man invented.
The fourth circuit is located in the left neo-cortex -- the newest part of the left hemisphere of the brain. It is linked neurologically with the genetalia and breasts (fucking-hugging-embracing-protecting circuitry).
Persons who take their heaviest imprint on this circuit are beautiful. That is, their entire body has received so many sexual neurotransmitters from the brain that they are constantly radiating the "attractive" mating signals that make up our perception of what is "beautiful" in a human being.
According to accidents of imprinting, they can be coldly calculating exploiters, totally repressed Puritans or carry some other negative traits but they always look like (send the signals of) the ideal fucker-lover-protector.
Once formulated, "morality" serves as not only a check on the genetic drift but a brake against Circuit III innovation. The shamans, priests etc. define which new ideas are "moral" and which are "immoral." Anything new -- anything that will break the tribal cycle, i.e., take us out of cyclical mythic "time" into linear, progressive, revolutionary "time" -- is usually defined, very quickly, as "immoral."
To say that religion and priestcraft have played a conservative role in history is an understatement. One might as well say the bubonic plague has killed a few people, or that Hitler was a little bit strange. The chief role of religion has always been reactionary. This is its evolutionary function, in the dialectic of the circuitry of the brain.
Circuit III, unchecked, is like a cocaine monologue. You can't remember anything, because everything is changing too fast. This is profoundly disorienting to the average domesticated primate, so the tribal moralists keep stability and tranquility by acting as decelerators.
The average person, similarly, is philosophically most "open" and "curious" before the adult sex role of parenthood is elected. After reproduction, there is little time for Circuit III speculatiosn, and (because of the sanctions every tribe places upon "heresy," i.e., new ideas) there is also little inclination.
Thus, Circuit III teands to take us out of cyclical time into linear progressive time; but Circuit IV loops us back into the cycle again.
Homosexuals may or may not be the chief creators of cultural innovation, as some Gay Pride advocates claim; but it is certainly true that they have done more than their share. The reason? They are not trapped into parent roles.
The "married look," the "Mom and Dad look," etc., which are not scientific concepts but which everybody can recognize at once, have to do with an acute time-sense. The parent is concerned not just with acquiring bio-survival tickets for personal nurture, but with acquiring tickets for the young, and for the future.
Behaviorists tell us wonderful stories about the intricate patterns that can be conditioned into experimental animals. They say we have, by selective reinforcement, trained this rat so that at the sound of a bell, he runs up a ladder, presses button A, races across a plank and down another ladder, presses button B, dashes across the cage and waits at the food-slot for his meal to arrive.
Lest anybody think this book is written from a perch of superiority, consider the similar, but more complex, behavior which followed the author for twenty years. He would set an alarm clock before sleep every night. When the alarm woke him, he would breakfast hurriedly, rush off to catch a bus, ride to a subway, change to the train, ride to an office building, rush through the lobby, board an elevator, ride to a certain floor, enter an office, and toil at repetitious (and generally pointless) tasks for eight hours. This behavior sequence had been shaped, as B.F. Skinner would say, by reinforcement delivered every second week in the form of bio-survival tickets (money). These tickets were necessary to the bio-survival of four dependent children.
Introduction
Part One: The Bio-Survival Circuit
Part Two: The Emotional-Territorial Circuit
Part Three: The Semantic Circuit
Part Five: The Circuits and communication
C.
I have 2 kids & live in St. Catharines, Ontario
brebre003 postedmore scared this time then my first.3 min ago
Mr. Pink postedSexy.. sexy men..9 min ago
Mommy Pwnt Pwnt ♥ postedReason #16 min ago
DoveloSono postedDon't want to get my hopes up...18 min ago
Lovey-Dovey postedWhat are you listening to?30 min ago
