[Paleopsych] Re: Tortured Souls & Eunuchs at Orgies...yet more

Mon Mar 7 01:44:58 UTC 2005

I have taken the liberty of posting below both of Howard's replies to Joe Quirk's commentary:
  "Once you win, you've got a reputation to live up to, even if you weren't so inclined, you get surrounded by an entourage that's also heavily invested in your reputation," said Redelmeier. "So you end up sleeping properly every night, eating well, exercising regularly every day."

In the first is presented a scenario in which 90% of kids who grow up with single, abusive, drug or drink-addled mothers end up unsuccessful yet the remaining 10% are able to attain success due to their bonding with suitable mentors.  Howard then offers some examples including one twin attaining BigMan status in womb while the other is relegated to the closet with his title: Loser in Womb Wars.  I doubt if these studies by an Italian researcher have followed the nurturing process throughout adolescence and into middle age.  Nature allowed, possibly by chance, prime real estate for one twin but whether that twin is able to maintain the family farm is another question.

In his second reply Howard has offered all of us the fear of success scenario whereby someone who attains early acolades "would make some folks edgy as hell--and nearly suicidal if they couldn't live up to their previous achievements and seemed to be slipping badly."  

Take your pick....but I'll guess that receiving an Oscar for best director at a ripe old age of 75 was an honor much appreciated by Clint Eastwood.  

Gerry Reinhart-Waller

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: HowlBloom at aol.com 
To: joe at quirk.net ; emdls at pacbell.net 
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: Tortured Souls & Eunuchs at Orgies...
    "Once you win, you've got a reputation to live up to, even if you weren't so inclined, you get surrounded by an entourage that's also heavily invested in your reputation," said Redelmeier. "So you end up sleeping properly every night, eating well, exercising regularly every day."

Your points are good ones, Joe.  It's like the problem of resilient kids.  Roughly one out of ten kids who grow up with single, abusive, drug or drink-addled mothers end up as very successful adults.  What do these kids have in common?  The find mentors, substitute parents to whom they bond.

This leaves us with a puzzle.  Do these kids become more successful because they have an attachment to a significat other, an emotionally meaningful, nurturing other, something most tormented kids like this lack?  Or do these resilient kids have an attachment to a mentor because the are born with better social instincts, the instincts of self-confidence and extroversion that make them bold enough to find others they can attach themselves to?

Which came first, the confidence or the social connection?  Is the success these kids have later in life due to their outgoing nature or due to the mentors that outgoing nature brings?  Or are the two--confidence and social connection--inseparable?

Is there a gene-tweak or a womb-experience that makes for more confident kids and others who are born with shyness and overwhelming insecurities?  In twin studies by an Italian researcher, regular sonographic scans of the two kids in the womb showed that there was a battle taking place in utero.  One twin managed to take over the living room of the womb--the central chamber,  The other kid was shoved aside and had to gestate in a corner, in a sort-of closet of the womb.

When the two finally made it from the uterus into the outside word, the winner of the womb war was outgoing and self-confident.  When a stranger showed up, the winner ran over clearly expecting to win the stranger over.  It saw this new social contact as an opportunity.

The loser in the womb wars saw the same stranger and hugged its mother's legs in panic, then ran off to something eerily like its old uterine closet--it hid in a side room.  ThIs kid saw a stranger as a danger, not as a new opening.

Did the winner of the womb wars win by chance and then gain the benefits of his land grab for intra-uterine space?  Or was there some gene-tweak that predestined him to win?

Does womb-real estate change the nature of the kid--does it change the way that genes express themselves?  Or does some small gene-fluke exist even in what we think of as genetically identical kids?   Howard

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Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net

*****************************************************

----- Original Message ----- 
From: HowlBloom at aol.com 
To: joe at quirk.net ; emdls at pacbell.net 
Cc: paleopsych at paleopsych.org 
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 10:30 PM
Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Tortured Souls & Eunuchs at Orgies...yet more

In a message dated 3/3/2005 8:08:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, joe at quirk.net writes:
  "Once you win, you've got a reputation to live up to, even if you weren't so inclined, you get surrounded by an entourage that's also heavily invested in your reputation," said Redelmeier. "So you end up sleeping properly every night, eating well, exercising regularly every day
This statement, as you've pointed out, Joe, is riddled with not-so-hidden assumptions.  Getting a reputation to live up to would make some folks edgy as hell--and nearly suicidal if they couldn't live up to their previous achievements and seemed to be slipping badly.  

Some folks feel utterly isolated and unwanted even when they're surrounded by an entourage.  Some wonder if the entourage is simply there for the glory of association with a big name or is really there for THEM, for the inner human stripped of his or her fame and accomplishments.

And some folks feel utterly bereft when the reach a pinnacle.  They feel they have nothing new to strive for, and the goal-lessness leaves them drowning in the acid of depression.

I've seen all these things happen to the stars I've worked with.

Which means that how you take winning an Oscar is a matter of perception.  Some folks can see new horizons beckoning from even the worst of things.  Others can see new hells in even the greatest glories.

My guess, a hypothesis to consider, is that those who see the best in what's around them, those who see opportunities even in catastrophe, are most likely to attract the kind of popularity among Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members that makes an Oscar possible.  Howard

----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net

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