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Showing posts from October, 2012

Why do we grieve?

It's very important first to understand that evolutionary processes do not have a causative role in all evolved behaviors or traits. Often species responses to various stimuli are simply that responses to either stimuli in presence or absence and not a behavior that has evolutionary causation. Grief is a perfect example of such a response. It is a reaction to the end of a continuous stream of signals that otherwise would come from an individuals (or items) presence and represents a momentary set of *shocks* at the re-realization at the loss when need presents. "Need" can be as simple as the desire to talk to a person who is gone or hear their laughter. Unlike the things we surround ourselves with...which we experience sensorially only in a limited band of ways (and thus impress networks in our brain in an equally limited way) The influence of individuals we've been close to on our brain networks is extensive...especially when those histories go back to childhoo

Loves new meaning...

Often I've had conversation with those in long term relationships who have through the years grown apart as a red hot passion reduced to burn as no more than a dull ember. I've often thought to myself as some one who has been in Love of deep intensity but as of now is free of those motivations, that passion and Love as we define them today will soon be as extinct as Short Faced Bear .  These independent qualities are in a slow process of revolution as we have both evolved as a primate species and through the creation of new modes of social organization, methods for acquiring the necessary items of survival and success and finding optimal modes for living with one another in the mostly monogamous relationships that we engage in. The revolution is being accelerated by an additional recent factor about our ability to survive on this planet that is due to our ability now to directly modulate the genetic information of living beings without risk of cancer. This discovery of only t