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The Up Series
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2320
"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man"
So runs the motto of "The Up Series" - a documentary that follows the lives of 14 children at 7 year intervals.
Beginning in Britain in 1964, the films documents the lives and attitudes of the children - a mixed group from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, at 7, 14, 21, and every 7 years thereafter. It's an ongoing project still in production. In the first film we are introduced to the characters, 3 wealthy boys who claim in turn - "I read the Financial Times" to "I read the Observer and the Financial Times" and so on, a young man from the Yorkshire Dales who resents being asked if he has a girlfriend (and in no uncertain terms tells the interviewer), and 10 others of mixed class and backgrounds. The stage is set. Each of them is observed in their own environment, is interviewed about various things, and the story continues. Especially notable is the change in attitudes not only of the subjects, but of society and the filmmaker.
Very worthwhile. You can rent it at Bird Dog Video.
Cellular Memory
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1979
An interesting idea is that of Cellular Memory. In essence it postulates that personality, intelligence and memories are not entirely local to the brain. This is not a new theory, but of late there is some anecdotal evidence from transplant patients of memories and personalities that they claim could only have come from the donors.
This is not necessarily as crazy as it might at first seem. In ancient Greece many believed the heart to be the seat of the soul. The brain has only relatively recently been assigned the functions of memory, intelligence and personality. And while there is no doubting that it has an enormous role to play, this does not rule out the possibility that other organs have a role - however small - to play as well.
Studies of planariums (a type of primitive flatworm) have shown that if a group of planariums was taught a behaviour (such as avoiding a light source), then minced up and fed to a group of planariums that hadn't learned the behaviour, the group afterwards demonstrated the same light avoiding behaviours.
Of course, cannibals have known this all along, eating the relevant parts of their victims in the hopes of recieving the appropriate benefit - the heart for courage, brain for intelligence, etc.
No serious emperical studies have been done on this topic so far. But if you're still curious there is some anecdotal evidence that would seem to support at least the thought that perhaps more study is required....
Further reading: Daily Mail & www.scienceray.com
Pursued by a Badger
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1805
I've got to go over to R**'s to fix his computer. He picks me up with a client and announce they've acquired some perverted domain - somethingperverse.com, R** is boasting about what a deal it was - "Only $400" he says, he's going to use it to link back to the sites I've been working on to drive them up in the search engines. I don't see the point, the site we're working has nothng to do with this at all, still....They stop a little mall, they have to run inside for a moment.
Outside the mall is a small parking lot, surrounded on all sides by short red brick buildings. It's very green, trees, lawn. I'm waiting outside. It begins to rain. Looking around I spot a small arcade, and think to go inside, I recognize it, familiar somehow, perhaps from another dream.
Inside there's a man behind glass to make change, another room you can go into to play the games, looking through the window I see a Ms. Pac Man game, I have a quarter, but wonder if I won't be too long, I can play for a while on this game. Water is dripping through the ceiling, somebody apologizes, bangs it with a broom and the water stops. I go back outside.
It's still raining, and I realize that I'm not supposed to fix the computer until tomorrow. And so I stop waiting for R** and begin to walk home.
There's a field outside a school, very green, like British Columbia or Vancouver in the fall, and it's still raining, but there's a thunderbolt and the rain turns into Hershey Kisses, quickly I fill my pockets, I find a small, elegantly wrapped egg in sheer plastic wrap and a bunny in foil, recognizing them to be Bernard Callebaut I pick them up as well.
And I'm walking home, alongside a narrow green strip of park, swinging the foil bunny and plastic wrapped egg beside me in a bag, congratulating myself on my good luck and eating the Hershey Kisses.
I notice a badger. He's walking alongside me, looking over and noticing me, he growls. I think it's unusual to see a badger, especially in the city, then he runs at me and makes to bite me. I knock him gently out of the way with my bag, he tries it again, I knock him away again. This is very odd, the badger isn't working very hard, I think....
There's a kiosk and a young plump blonde is working behind it in the park, an information booth of sorts, so I stop and tell her about the badger. She doesn't think it's odd. I explain how it's been pursuing me and trying to attack me and she thinks about this for a moment, looking confused, then says: "I know, I think it has rabies...". I'd already had the same thought. I persuade her to leave the kiosk, we'll trap the badger inside and call the SPCA before it bites anyone. She reluctantly agrees.
The badger comes after me again, and I sweep it up with the bag and into the kiosk. We can hear in there, it's annoyed...A green recycling tub is inside the kiosk, with some dirty water from the rainfall, I think to open it and get the badger inside, again I trap it in my plastic bag and throw it into the tub, it splashes, then sinks in the water bubbling, and I worry the badger might drown.... we close the tub lightly and tip it to let the water out, it strains out, through the lid I glimpse the badger nonchalantly lying on it's back eating a chocolate cookie. We take the tub out of the Kiosk and the blonde goes back inside, she's going to call the SPCA. A woman with her child stop, they crouch down by the tub, the plump blonde comes out again to open the tub slightly and allow the child to reach in and pet the badger...
Freud & Jung
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1975
At the moment I'm reading Carl Jung 's "Memories, Dreams and Reflections". And I'm loving it. It suits the cast of my mind perfectly, it was written for me.
And it stirs the thought of how out of fashion Freud and Jung have become.
Personally, I've always been a fan. "But the times, they are a changin" and you don't get blog anywhere now-a-days without a CGI of a firing neuron or an MRI scan. It would help to know a little NLP.
I'm not dismissing these advances, they are great advances, but as much as they sift and measure there seems to be equally much that they miss.
Freud. Very unfashionable, with his Ego, SuperEgo, Id, Eros and Thanatos. SO much mumbo jumbo....Many new psychologists know of him only by reputation, he is studied anecdotally in university, superficially, there are different theories, Stanley Milgram, BF Skinner and Bandler and Grinder amonst them, that are far more "current" and "hip".
That's not to deride or undervalue them. But Freud and Jung were amonst the first to move into this area. And they were mapping the human mind, the landscape of the unconcious, the soul. And they did great work. Great work.
My boy, at 4, maybe 5 years old, we're out camping in Jasper and I'd been teasing him. He has a fit, a rare (for him) tantrum - "I'm going to poke your eyes out with this stick, then kill you and marry my Mom.!" That's a quote. I watched him while I sipped my coffee, unable to express the impression his outburst registered. It was a classic Freud moment. Up until then I'd been a little leery, I had my own theories as well. That changed everything.
They studied the layering and ordering of personality, the concious and unconcious motivations. They were, in a sense, adventurers mapping an unknown, undiscoverd world. And, with the tools they had, pen and paper, conversation, patients, they did a remarkable job. An incredible job. Think of drawing a map of the world, without Google Maps or an Atlas to aid you, you have to discover it all yourself first. A very big job.
They were working on the big picture. I read studies now, they are tiny pictures, parts of a mosaic. Elements of personality and intelligence mapped by divisions of psychologists, psychiatrists and neurosurgeons in different universities. There is no "Whole Theory of Human Personality", just as there is no "Unified Theory" in physics. But these guys, Freud and Jung, they were undertaking the tremendous task of mapping the entire human personality. In Carl Jung's case, the "Soul".
If you doubt Freud's substance or impact try reading Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment". It sits on my folklore and fairy tales shelf in the office. No, you can't borrow it, buy your own. It's a masterpiece. It doesn't tell you anything you didn't know already, that you didn't intuit or understand or somehow in a deep way comprehend. But it uses Freud's theories to reveal plain truths in plain language, which in itself is a sort of genius. Think of Newton and the Apple. He was not the first to discover gravity, but he certainly was the first to notice it.
SO it's back now to reading Carl Jung. He suits me, somehow, his stories, experiences are not mine, but the world's. And while I don't recognize the events, the places or time, I recognize the humanity and emotion in his writing. The commonality of our experience. It's a great read.
Quotes: Carl Jung
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent."
"The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it."
Quotes: Sigmund Freud
"America is a mistake, a giant mistake." and "America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success." and "Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake."
"Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me."
"I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think."
"If you can't do it, give up!"
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
"The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water."
"Time spent with cats is never wasted."
"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult."
"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."
"The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing."
"The first requisite of civilization is that of justice."
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