Why Do You Care?
If there is one thing web logs have accomplished, it is confirming the fact that PEOPLE CARE ABOUT STUFF. I have referred to the plethora, richness, and abundance of content in a previous post.
From politics, to religion, to parenting, to income opportunity, to…ad infinitum. People care about stuff. What we have here is a virtual stream of caring-consciousness.
Why do you care?
What drives this caring and concern? Is there a natural ‘bent’ toward needing to focus on something…anything? Or is there an altruism gene planted somewhere in the depths of our human hardware circuitry?
What about those who do not care? Do you care about them?
I suspect humans care because mind and heart are woven together. Woven such, that we are able to process data that ‘explains’ our emotional experience. This capacity for meta-analysis could be a bane or a benefit. We humans, with our intellect, are still new at being and shaping our evolution.
This may very well remain an unexplainable mystery. Even so,
WHY DO YOU CARE? And WHAT DO YOU CARE ABOUT?
deorre
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We are social animals
To me, this "caring" is not particularly a mystery. Humans are social animals, who owe their survival versus other animals (not to mention wars among their own kind) through their ability to function as cohesive groups. It is no simple matter to assemble and maintain a cohesive group (try it sometime ... :( ); the costs are high and the rewards low - until you face a major threat, at which time you need practiced coordination in a hurry or you're toast. All the talk (and humans use verbal cues much more than any other social animal - ants, for instance, do the same trick using mostly chemical communication) is basically "group practice". People use it to find, assemble and maintain the groups and subgroups to which they belong.
Sociobiology and its related fields are the scientific research domains that attempt to tackle this aspect of humanity.
Good call, o.
Now explain schadenfreude.
From The Wig
Elementary, my dear Wigson
Now explain Schadenfreude
I'll knock that flat spinner for six. The paradigm of the origin of biological species through natural selection assumes that each individual is in competition with every other one for scarce natural resources. It's like your mother at the dinner table when you turn down a helping of one of her favorites (for you that should be favourites, I suppose): "Oh good, more for me!" It's perfectly natural, and, in most animals, adaptive, that, should I screw up, you'd express great joy at the thought of having one less conspecific to squabble with. The Darwin Awards are funny for no other reason. And they say so in as many words.
The trick, in nature and for students of evolution, has always been to suppress Schadenfreude and other expressions of our selfish competitiveness long enough, hell, for copulation, never mind social systems. Hence the high maintenance quotient of communities. And deorre's metaphysical dilemma.
Of course, Schadenfreude has a corollary:
DISEASE, n. Your anxiety over my good fortune.
- The New Millennium Devil's Dictionary
Caring a facade?
that enables community, but disables individual survival skills?
deorre
'Life Stew, With Psychosis
No facade
If you are in a circumstance where no individual survives that is outside of a community, then "individual survival skills" are precisely those that favor participation in the community. An example in extremis are worker ants that become living honey stores for the rest of the colony - they are literally hung up in rows like wine bottles and dole drinks to other colony members on demand. Such individuals literally cannot survive outside the community.
The human condition can be seen as one in which the individuals retain both the capacity for independent existence and the capacity for group function, and one in which the circumstances favoring "independence" versus "community" are constantly changing - war and famine (community) vs. peace and prosperity (independence), for example. Over the long term, the maintenance of both capabilities is adaptive, because it permits relatively rapid responses to changing conditions. But the coexistence of both abilities leads to tensions for individuals, especially during times of flux in circumstances, and can be devastating to the individual or community that does not perceive, or adapt to, the changing circumstances.
Extremely well put...
'Life Stew, With Psychosis
Um so we suppress part of our nature to survive as a
functioning group?
And individualist times allow the release of these damaging instincts?
Why are we not designed to do what is good for survival?
Wait one fudging minute; could those who have tendencies towards schadenfreude be those who would be naturally selected out of the human race?
I'll think on.
Thanks prof. O.
From The Wig
Yes we do
I argue that the principal function of the Good Books (Bible, Qur'an, etc.) is to encode the parts of our nature that need to be suppressed in order to stay in good odor with the group of your birth / choice / imprisonment.
And individualist times allow the release of these damaging instincts?
yes.
Why are we not designed to do what is good for survival?
There are six plus billion (sorry, thousand million) of us on the planet now, four B / TM more than in 1945. I would say our design is allowing us to survive pretty dinged well just at present.
could those who have tendencies towards schadenfreude be those who would be naturally selected out of the human race?
Correct but not excruciatingly correct. If perfect altruism were always adaptive, Schadenfreude would not exist - and human colonies would be like those of bees or ants. For humans, however, perfect altruism is not always adaptive, there are times and circumstances when survival and perpetuation are best favored by the actions of the individual. Schadenfreude, I argue, is one of the emotions tied to the preservation of the "individualist" mindset.
Good points, O...
Though I must say, it is a mystery to me how you can discount that ultimately, our caring function does remain a mystery.
The psychobiology and chemicals of emotion are indeed being 'tracked down', and that provides an interesting and useful synthesis of mind/body thought. Read Candace Pert.
Your anthropological approach, which gives birth to your sociological position, is valid. Just does not explain away the mystery. At least in my little mind.
Thanks for the thought-provoking comment.
deorre
'Life Stew, With Psychosis