evolutionary_psychology stork daddy when people describe how our current mode of living is in conflict with the default ways our minds work and expect, they assume that the demands forming the selective pressure in the envoirments our ancestors were answered in the most direct way. this is anthromorphizing design, and seeing a solution in direct terms of the problem, of the task to be solved. in truth, there are many designs that might have solved the variety of complex problems facing a creature whose niche was behavioral adaption. there is no truth in thinking that our capabilities or the breadth of our thoughts is in anyways limited by the barest of the workable solutions to whatever problems our ancestors supposedly faced, even when current evidence of those proposed solutions is what is used to assume them as our default mode of thinking. again, there is no telling what serendipitous qualities any of the mutations of mind might've had in addition to solving the problems faced in the envoirment they were formed in. i have no problem with conjecture on spirituality or romantic love. it is a beautiful and interesting area of study to piece together selective advantages they might've bestowed. my problem is limiting their capabilities or usefulness to the original problem they might've solved. for instance, romantic love need not be something which can only last until the children are old enough to leave the house, although this would of course provide the support and resources which might be necessary for such an endeavor. however, to conclude that is its limit, is to use backward reasoning and force an overdetermined effect to be determined only by one cause, in an efficient manner which represents our method of design rather than the less controlled method evolution is. 040315 ... stork daddyo exactly 040315 ... Syrope this week - for the first time in a long time - i met someone i really admired, and i was trying to formulate some sort of theory about the books i was reading and the ideas that have been in my head for so long, and she fixed her eyes on me and said "evolutionary psychology" and i stared. you_make_it_sound_so_easy 040315 ... zeke sd: design in the context of evolution is a trigger in me for a rant. design is a word which implies a designer. evolutionary theory continues to be filled with hierarchical, goal oriented, temporocentric, ideocentric and anthropomorphic language. it is very hard, even in the context of science, to describe things in neutral terms. in spite of this i think your idea is brilliant. i too believe that nuance is the key to understanding. 040316 ... zeke the theory of evolution is a description of the past, an observation of the present and has nothing to do with the future. 040316 ... a thimble in time As far as I can tell, young people are looking dumber and dumber. They watch more television, play more video games, do more shopping, and, thanks to the success of AIM, teenagers may now spend the better part of their lives contemplating the hidden meaning of an endless mumble of nonsense. But it is not just the teenagers. I would say that as a whole the Western man is digressing. His mind has dulled, his heart has grown pregnant with whims. Instead of psychology pinpointing and correcting these problems, it has become infected by a similar degenerative desease, incapacitating the best of its minds. The whole science of depth-psychology or social-psychology, which began with the dream of analyzing and explaining the psyche of man and mankind, has deteriated into a cryptic conglomeration of biology, chemistry, and sociological statistics. Professors in university psych. departments across the continents have cast a hypnotic spell over themselves. They've fooled themselves into thinking that if they can understand how all the chemical interactions in our brains work, they will also understand why we love and why we hate, why we hide and why we seek, why we devote our energy to this cause, or why sometimes we just lay in bed and listen to the afternoon breeze. I often ask undergraduate majors in psychology if they ever read Freud, Jung, Fromm, Maslow, Adler, or Frankl[the founding fathers of psychology] in their classes. Most say no. Many just stare at me blankly as I rattle off what seem to them to be meaningless names. These psychologists were interested in meaning, in understanding the meaning of everything. Today's reductionalist psychologists avoid questions about meaning and purpose, they can't fathom the answers, they can barely ask the questions. Instead they claim that everything can be explained by underlying neural and chemical elements. Thence the mentality of searching for the meaning of life has been replaced by a blind crusade to discover the mechanics of life. Such ideas will never cure the AIM addiction or the inertia which plagues our souls. The neuro-psychologician - who thinks himself an evolutionary giant standing on the shoulders of midgets - probably isn't even aware of the problem. Psychology is not evolving. It is degenerating, just as quickly as we are... 040317 ... minnesota_chris "What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?" -Plato 040317 ... z mc: well quoted! 040318 ... story of eau existential depression. 040610 ... minnesota_chris it's so easy to study evolutionary psychology and reach nasty conclusions. Like the fact that a man's chance of having sex is proportional to his income. 040610 ... minnesota_chris I heard on public_radio last night that women have sex the most during their most fertile six days of their monthly cycle. As they said, even if you don't want a baby, your body is working against you. 040610 ... dosquatch Heh. We think we're so clever and evolved, but we still go into heat. We can't reason our way out of being animals after all. 040610 ... minnesota_chris we? I thought you were a guy. Guys don't go into heat. At least, not on schedule, I don't think. 040610 ... dosquatch "we" in the sense of "human". I am male. We stay in heat. 040610 ... - - 090819 what's it to you? who go blather from